AN: Part Two, from Xellos's POV. This was much, much harder for me to write, but I hope it came out okay.

The Addict

The road was dark and long and he felt strangely cold, a gnawing claw where his gut would have been, if he'd had one. The clouds were gathering heavy and pregnant and he would have given anything at that moment, power, dignity, fame, just to be finally in her doorway. He had been away too long and though it could not be helped, it humiliated him how viscerally he needed her. This last mission had been much more involved than he had anticipated.

"Or maybe," he thought wryly, "I'm just getting old."

The first time he met her, he had been startled at how young she was; most of the Golden Dragons he had come into contact with in the past several thousand years had been seasoned warriors or venerable elders, hardened with years and training. But she had been somehow raw and refreshing in her youthful exuberance and naïveté, and her over-zealous adherence to draconian dogma only added spice to rich, troubled, tortured stew of her doubts, fears and anger. He had never tasted anything like her before. Lina's dramatic emotions provided him more than enough bread and butter, but they were plain, easy emotions, and Zelgadis's self-pity and despair tended to leave a bitter aftertaste. Filia's emotion was full and flavorful and deeply, disturbingly intoxicating. The first taste left him reeling, hungry, desperate for more. Sometimes, in a dark corner of his mind, he wished he had never taken that first, fatal sip.

She had been so pretty in the flush of her anger when he left her, all piss and vinegar, pouting lips and thrust hips. He almost told her so, to watch her boil from pique to rage. He pinched her cheek and felt her anger muddle with her desire and flow over him like a sauna.

It was the richness and depth of her anger that first fascinated him, how she could so completely and truly loathe him and still have room in her heart to loathe herself. As time wore on, he, unable to stop himself, feasted on her more and more. He loved the richness of her awakening mind, grew steadily drunker on her growing, blossoming lust

and found himself developing an acquired taste for her delicate, bittersweet love.

He had never expected to love her back.

He wished he had paid more attention to his waning strength and saved just enough to teleport to her feet, instead of trudging, like a filthy mortal, in the mud and rain. A small part of his mind reminded him mildly that were anyone else in this situation, he would find it enormously entertaining. He ignored it, and continued to wallow. As he walked, he found his mind drawn back to her again and again, equally longing and resentful. It was her fault he was thins weakened! Her fault that he needed her to survive… How could he have become bound to someone so melodramatic, so selfish, so…. Disarming. Alluring. Sweet.

As they traveled together he had soon come to desire her and set about drawing her in. He set a thousand tiny traps for her only to find himself caught in ones she had not been aware of setting. Every seduction, every roll of the dice only drew him further in. When he finally had her, he looked around to find every fiber of his being woven together with hers.

He couldn't manage to even be remotely upset.

He ate the feelings that overwhelmed her psyche; she fed him with her excess of emotion. Their symbiosis was almost cosmically balanced, like a saprophytic orchid dually digesting and feeding its host. It seemed almost poetic that he would find someone to feed off of him as he fed off of her.

He loved the dichotomy of her, the half of her that was so truly good, so blindingly compassionate, so depressingly kind was made infinitely more palatable by the soupcon of her darker urges. He found himself delighted when she gave herself over to gluttony, stuffing her face in a rage of hunger, charmed when she allowed herself to make a catty, often quite clever remarks about friends or acquaintances.

He would never have admitted it aloud, but he loved that she could make him laugh, even when she was at her most enraged.

He'd known he'd been lost when he found himself reporting to Zelas still chuckling over one of Filia's bitter tirades.

Zelas had regarded him with a cold stare and a raised eyebrow.

"What's so funny?" she'd asked, sucking on her cigarette like a teat.

"Nothing," he'd replied, trying to choked down giggles, "Just something Filia said over tea about how Zelgadis…" He'd stopped himself in time, and Zelas had just given him a patronizing, pitying glance. Like she thought he'd been…tamed.

Had he been?

It had taken him so long to have her, had he been tamed along the way?

He had wanted her so badly that he hungered for little else, finding any excuse to visit her, often appearing with no excuse at all, just hoping for a chance to tease her, to seduce her, finally make her his, to conquer her, so she would no longer have a hold on him.

She'd met him one night in the foyer, when he'd returned early from a mission, and his belly ached to taste her confusion. He'd hoped to surprise her, but she'd been waiting for him, her tiny toes peeking out from the bottom of her pale, pink nightgown, her hair tied up in a loose knot.

"You're not really dressed for a social visit," he'd managed, and since his throat felt suspiciously dry, he'd tried to turn the tables, to make her blush and retreat.

"You should probably change or you'll give me the impression that you want to be seduced," he'd winked, expecting a tirade.

Instead, she'd just looked at him, calmly and steadily.

"If you're determined to seduce me," she'd said, raising her chin a little higher, "I think you'd just better come up to bed with me now. It's getting late."

She'd refused to be conquered, and he kept on falling.

A sudden knot of longing swept over him like the gastric flu and he pitched forward heavily onto his staff.

"Damn her," he thought and, gasping, slowly resumed his trudging walk home. They had walked this road together many times, to the market, to the lake, sometimes with Val, sometimes just the two of them. He enjoyed going to town with her, sipping the emotions she wrenched from others.

They were much of a height, she perhaps an inch taller, although he tended to hover slightly above the ground. He had a young athlete's lanky grace, but she was all dense muscle and sleek, soft hourglass. He watched how men watched her, hungry and lustful and delighted in enflaming their jealousy. He watched how women watched her, and drank deeply from their resentment and envy. However long he stayed with her, whatever they did together, he could always count on being sated. He had begun to take pride in leaving her sated as well.

He knew she would be waiting for him, hungering for him as he hungered for her, could feel it in the back of his mind, in the hollow of his chest.

He counted his steps. Three hundred eighty-four thousand and one, Three hundred eighty-four thousand and two…

Her house was a dark shadow on the dark horizon, but he could feel her pulling at him, feel himself being reeled in, even as the hunger reached a painful intensity.

The rain was cold and he was shaking, but with each step to her doorway, he felt his feet grow lighter. Her light was still on and he could see her silhouetted in the window, backlit like an angel. She was wearing white, her dress falling softly over breasts and bottom, and her eyes were like beacons, calling him in from the tempest.

Three hundred eighty-four thousand, two hundred and thirty seven, Three hundred eighty-four thousand, two hundred and thirty eight…

He collapsed into her arms in her threshold, felt her hot, hungry lips on his and at last felt the hole in his stomach begin to fill back in.

"I hate you," he heard himself saying, "I hate that I love you."

She knelt with him clasped against her chest, kissing and nipping at his collarbone, running her fingers along the sharp lines of his face.

"I know, darling," she said, "I hate you too."