"I Love Lina" Chapter 2

*Author's Note: This chapter has a lot of background story for this fic (which, obviously and purposefully, is very similar to the Slayers anime storyline), but I tried to make it interesting, entertaining, and to the point. Let me know if that actually worked! ;) I'll be getting more into actual drabbles of these character's lives in the next chapter, but I felt that, since this is an AU, I had to do a little more set up for the story itself. So enjoy, and please review if you feel so inclined!

Since it had been quite obvious that Amelia was in no position to make another attempt at cooking on her own, Lina graciously (or grudgingly) offered to let her eat with herself and Gourry if she helped out (or did all the tasks Lina didn't want to do).

Faced with the option of forced menial labor or an empty table to offer her husband, Amelia rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

Helping Lina really wasn't so bad. Sure, her friend was pushy, overbearing, and a bit of a control-freak, but over the years the two women had formed a sort of sisterly bond. Having been stationed together many times throughout the war, Amelia had first gotten to know Lina after having to tend to many of the red-head's wounds, which she got far too often from being reckless.

Of course Amelia was plenty reckless herself.

She was still a young nurse in training when the war began, but once the chance to fight evil and spread justice to the world had surfaced, the petite brunette had jumped on the opportunity. With a little help from her governor father, she had little difficulty finding a spot in the ranks of nurses sent out to help the soldiers.

Her father never knew however that during that time, his little girl had taken every opportunity to join in the fighting herself.

It was this tenacity and her surprising brute strength that caught the attention of tough Lina Inverse and convinced her that this young girl was someone worth getting to know. The feisty soldier took the nurse under her wing, teaching her skills and fighting techniques well beyond the levels of even other soldiers. She even started teaching Amelia how to fly a plane: a tricky talent the young girl wasn't quite sure she was ready for, but did fairly well at.

Only Lina was able to fly the bombers however. No one had quite the same flair that she did when it came to explosives.

By the time Amelia and Lina had met, the latter had already been fighting alongside her partner Gourry for months. According to him, he had rescued her from a tight pinch once during a raid over in Eastern Europe, and had from that time decided to be her bodyguard. Lina just said he had gotten confused, lost his way, and decided to follow her around for the rest of the war.

Amelia believed the truth was probably a mixture of the two.

It wasn't until a month later that Amelia would meet her own partner: It had been a dangerous mission. A small group of soldiers, including Lina and Gourry, had been sent on an espionage mission to find a person responsible for leaking military information about their base.

Having shown her top notch abilities many times, Lina had been charged as leader of the small group, and chose Gourry and Amelia to come along as back up.

The team traveled just outside of Germany, keeping undercover and going through many interesting (and sometimes embarrassing) situations as they worked to keep their identities secret, and ended up at an old, seemingly abandoned mansion where their Intel had told them the target would be.

Soon enough they were met by their target: a sharp, dark-eyed woman named Eris who had once been an assistant to the great physicist, Doctor Rezo. Rezo was known throughout Europe and America as one of the greatest scientists and physicians of the age, though much about him was a mystery. He was legally blind, and somewhat of a recluse, though he never stayed in one place for too long. He travelled the world with his assistants, curing diseases and calamities in ways that were nothing short of miracles.

And apparently he had been killed by Lina and Gourry only a few months prior.

To say that Amelia had been shocked to find that out would be an understatement. She was however in enough control over her emotions that she was willing to hear why the woman she so admired had killed one of the great wise men of the time.

As it turned out, Rezo was not the great man everyone thought him to be. He had for many years been working secretly with Nazi Germany, experimenting with lethal chemicals and designing weapons for Adolf Hitler, while at the same time purporting to be working with the allied nations.

His real goal it seemed was to find a cure to his blindness, and lines between sides were of no importance.

In a last mad attempt to see, Rezo had sold out Lina and her companions to Hitler, in exchange for a large grant that might have allowed him to finally find a cure. However, his boss had other plans. He double crossed Rezo, and in an act of vengeance, Rezo had attacked the Nazis sent after him and been killed along with them as Lina took them out.

So it was shocking to Amelia, and even more so to Lina, to see this man who was supposedly dead, standing next to Eris and smiling.

The man introduced himself as Kopie, Rezo's brother, who was determined to pick up where Rezo left off and succeed where he had failed – in killing Lina Inverse and delivering the weapon info she carried to Hitler.

Just as they geared themselves to fight, one of the mansions windows was blown open as a figure in beige camos burst through, throwing daggers at the guards around Rezo and Eris.

Amelia had received many shocks that day, but was unprepared for this.

The newcomer was tall and slender, though well-toned, and his hair was a dingy gray color that had a surprising luminescence – almost like steel wire. His skin was pale, but covered in splotches of purplish-grey scar tissue that surrounded his eyes and ran along his jaw. His expression was harsh, but turned into an arrogant smirk as he addressed Lina and Gourry with a cocky "It's been a while."

Lina and Gourry seemed happy to see the mysterious stranger, but Amelia wasn't so sure of him. She knew it was wrong to judge, but he just seemed so… creepy and suspicious looking.

In hindsight, she realized that she probably shouldn't have said that to his face.

He eventually forgave her for it.

They escaped from that pinch, only to meet up with Kopie later on in an all-or-nothing showdown. The mysterious man, whose name was Zelgadis, turned out to be a good fighter and a loyal friend; that is, he had been ever since he had turned against Rezo and helped Lina kill him.

He seemed cold and heartless, but Amelia learned that it was all just an act to hide his overly-sensitive heart. She knew this had to be the case after she saw him selflessly rush into the line of fire to save Lina and their friend Sylpheal while fighting Kopie.

She was so moved she had jumped into the fray to protect him from a grenade (which luckily both had escaped, though with Gourry's help) to which he responded with a harsh yell and a gentle smile.

It had greatly confused her at the time, and made her heart flutter just a little.

It wasn't until years later that she finally found out why he always seemed so contradictory.

Rezo, it turned out, was Zelgadis' grandfather. The seemingly young scientist had managed to keep a youthful appearance over the years through his many experiments with chemistry, and didn't (in Amelia's opinion) look at all old enough to hold the title "Grandpa".

Zelgadis had been extremely loyal to him, even assisting in some of Rezo's illegal activities. It had all been for the greater good; or so Zelgadis had thought.

Desperate for sight and maddened by obsessive research, Rezo had used his own grandson as a guinea pig for his experiments. His attempts to create an ultimate soldier for the Germans resulted in his grandson receiving extensive and severe chemical burns, as well as prolonged exposure to radiation which altered his DNA, giving him heightened senses and tough, thick and leathery skin.

The betrayal cut Zelgadis deep, and he became obsessed in his own right with trying to find a cure for the damage done to his body. He became a wandering soldier, without rank or army, hiring his services out to raise money to continue his research.

After meeting up again with Lina and Gourry, he devoted his services to helping in their missions, and eventually became an army informant. Amelia saw much of Zelgadis throughout the end of the war, and afterwards persuaded him to travel back to America with herself and the others.

Despite her first impressions of him, she found him to be a smart, engaging person with a sharp mind and cool demeanor. She even became used to his strange looks, and could tell he had a handsome face beneath the scars.

Which, she later decided, weren't so bad in their own right. They added a certain ruggedness to him that was actually quite appealing.

Before long, she was smitten with him.

And three years after their initial shaky encounter, he revealed he was smitten with her too.

As the governor's daughter, she received a lavish wedding, which was changed into a double wedding when Lina and Gourry decided to make their partnership official. Since then, the four of them had been a close-knit group, living next door to each other in the same apartment complex and doing everything together.

…..

And so it was that Amelia found herself sat around a small table which was piled sky high with trays of food while her husband sat next to her, head in his hands in defeat, as her hosts stuffed themselves with terrifying gusto.

"Amelia," Zelgadis began in a low, but obviously agitated voice, "while I appreciate your concern for my well-being and the opportunity for a free meal we have presented to us here…" he trailed off ominously and closed his eyes, seething, before standing up suddenly and yelling over the pile of plates "It doesn't do any good if there's nothing left to eat!"

Gourry continued gobbling roast beef without batting an eye, and Lina managed an eye-roll while stuffing a chicken leg in her mouth.

"Oh c'mon Zel!" Lina mumbled through her meat, "there's plenty of stuff here for everyone!"

"Not at the rate you two eat! I haven't been able to get a single helping of anything!"

"Oh Mister Zelgadis, you're just not trying hard enough!" came Amelia's cheery reply.

Zelgadis rolled his eyes faintly at her address. Even after a whole year of marriage, she still added that prefix to his name. Being the Governors daughter, she was used to addressing people politely, and had used "mister" for him since they had first met, especially in front of company. He told her it really wasn't necessary, what with being married and all, but, well… she just couldn't help it. It was sort of a pet name.

Glancing back down at his wife, Zelgadis saw that her plate had a rather nice amount of food covering it.

He was incredulous.

"Amelia, how the heck did you manage to get all of that away from these vultures?"

Even as he watched, she deftly slipped her hand into the writhing mass of limbs to pull out a bread roll.

"It's simple Mister Zelgadis Honey," she said, now portioning food onto his plate, as well as adding a suffix to his already too long title, "you just grab your food while they're fighting over each other's, and they never even notice!"

She smiled brightly at him, and he sat down with a thump to see his now full plate. He turned to face his small wife, a hint of awe in his eyes and a smile tugging at his lips.

"You amaze me sometimes, you know that?"

Amelia beamed back at him as she took another bite of mashed potatoes.

He just shook his head, still smiling, and started on his own meal.