"It is so beautiful here." Lina commented as she walked hand in hand with her husband between the line of brightly decorated shops and the river. It wasn't hard to discern the bright color of the umbrellas covering the tables on the patios of the restaurants that they passed in the night as tiny lanterns strung on strings hung between the businesses provided plenty of illumination. Even the trees were outlined with what appeared to be tiny light spells wrapped around them like lassos. All of it was reflected majestically in the river, and it seemed so magical that Lina didn't even miss the fact that she couldn't see the stars.
They had completed their meet and greets earlier during the day. Every morning the Eternal Queen's aide, Aliciane, would brief them on who they would meet and what festivals were being held in their honor, etc, and once that was done they tended to have the evening to themselves. In some ways it was more grueling than their previous life on the road. Now they were on a tight schedule, and if they decided they liked a city they couldn't stay a few extra days to explore it because they had to rush to the next city on the list. At the same time, they'd yet to be attacked, so in other ways it was more peaceful. Regardless, when Lina had left home she had not spent much time exploring other parts of Zeferia. Why bother exploring her own boring kingdom when there was a whole larger world out there and waiting? But now that she was traveling through Zeferia she was pleasantly surprised at how many interesting places were to be found so close to home.
"Yeah," Gourry agreed, the lights reflected in his eyes, "See anywhere you want to eat?"
"Too many places!" Lina said. "Are you craving anything?"
"Hey, maybe we should go on a gondola ride?" he suggested as one leisurely rowed by.
"Could be fun." She agreed. "I wonder where they load at."
"I think we'd have to cross that bridge." He said, indicating a stone half moon bridge that was bedecked with intricate carvings.
But before they could get there, they were stopped as someone asked, "Miss Lina Inverse?"
Lina felt a chill run through her. She recognized the voice! But it was impossible. Lina turned around and felt as though she had been punched in the gut as she looked at the woman standing in front of her. Gourry clutched her hand as his jaw dropped.
"M-milina?" Lina blurted out incredulously.
"I'm sorry," the woman with the long silver hair said, "I didn't mean to confuse you. People often mistake me for my sister. I'm Amina."
Lina exhaled a slow breath and extended her hand. It didn't occur to her to question if Amina was genuine or an imposter. She looked just like Milina! Her style of clothing was different, she wore a rather unremarkable dress and her hair was down. But she looked and sounded just like her sister. "Lina. And this is my husband, Gourry."
"Congrats. I heard that it was quite a wedding! I hate to drag this up during your honeymoon, but I was wondering if I could talk with you about my sister."
"Yes," Lina said nervously as she worried about having to break the news that Milina was dead. "We were trying to find some place to eat, actually."
"I know a good place, it's not too far from here." She said. "I heard you would be coming through when I arrived about a week ago, so I just stayed here and waited. I've gotten to know this is place a little as a result."
Lina and Gourry exchanged a look, and then nodded. They followed Amina quietly to a small restaurant and went inside. None of them glanced at their menus once they were seated. Amina instead launched straight to business, "Milina wrote about you two. She had a lot of respect for you."
"We had a lot of respect for her." Gourry said quietly.
Amina gave a sad smile, "I could sense it when she died. Twins have a bond like that. I'd hoped that I was wrong, but then her letters stopped."
"We went through her stuff after she died. She'd not left any forwarding address or any indication of where she was from, otherwise we would have contacted you." Lina explained as she felt some relief that she wouldn't have to break the news to Amina. "If you want to stop by our home in Maninstat in about two months or so I can give you her belongings."
"I'd like that." Amina said, "The reason I set out to find you, though, is because I need to know what happened. Not knowing is destroying me. My mom wasn't happy about me leaving. My brother died years ago, and with Milina gone I'm all she has left now. But I needed to know so I tracked you down. Left home for the first time ever."
"You're quite a bit different from your sister." Lina observed.
Amina nodded, "We were always complete opposites. It was strange because we look so much alike. My parents always said I talked enough for the both of us."
The waiter came to take their order then, and when he left Amina looked at them, "Please, what can you tell me about what happened?"
Lina could feel Gourry's gaze upon her, and for once she struggled to find the words. Slowly it came out, "We'd gotten caught up in yet another conspiracy. We had been attacked, and someone hit Milina with a poisoned knife. We could have healed the wound, but there was nothing we could do about the poison." Lina grasped her cup, "It was so senseless. We were in Sellentia, and you'd think we should have been able to find someone there who could have helped, but there was no one at the clinic who could help us. One priest refused to help because Milina and Luke were working for a different priest. And that priest didn't have the ability to help her."
"But why? Why couldn't anyone help her? There's lots of healers in Sellentia!"
Gourry looked at Lina nervously as she said, "The man she was traveling with had something bad in his soul. Our enemies hoped if they killed her it would unleash it."
Amina stared at her in dismay for a tense minute, and then she exclaimed, "There were so many times I wished I could reach through the letter and smack her and tell her to leave him and come home!"
She then burst into tears, and Lina looked at Gourry and hoped that he would be able to think of something to say. "Milina deserved better." He offered quietly.
"I'm sorry, I'm creating such a scene." Amina said as she wiped her face. "It's just as you said, she deserved better. She had dreams."
"She never shared them with us." Lina said, "She was so quiet."
"The whole reason she left home was because she knew bad people were out there and she wanted to stop them."
"She never struck me as a justice do gooder type." Lina said.
"I'm not sure she believed in that. And given what happened, where would it have gotten her? She just knew that bad people get away with hurting people, and you were either doing something about it or you were letting it happen. She didn't have much time or patience for people in the latter group."
"She seemed to have made quite the change in Luke." Gourry observed.
Amina gave a bitter smile, "No one was surprised more than her. She wrote a long letter after she met him. He was working as an assassin and he took a liking to her even though she was a bodyguard for his target, who Milina described as a good man. In the end she talked him out of it, but she just thought he wanted to get into her pants. She was stunned as time went by and he seemed to change. She realized she was a good influence so she tolerated him. She believed her hard work would be lost if she ditched him like she should have. Please tell me it didn't go out the window with her death!"
Lina felt her stomach knot. Breaking the news that Milina's hard work had been in vain seemed cruel. Gourry stepped in gently, "The bad person won the battle, but Milina won the war."
"What does that mean?" Amina asked.
"The bad person in Luke took over. But Milina had helped Luke to love humanity and the world enough that he couldn't destroy it like the people who killed her wanted him to, and he ended up asking for Lina and mine's help. He's at rest now, and the world is safe." Gourry explained, and Lina felt her eyes well.
She put her hand on his knee beneath the table and squeezed it. Amina looked at the table as she wiped her eyes. "I guess she got her legacy at least." Amina finally said, "she would have wanted that."
The waiter returned with their food, and when he left, Lina struggled with whether or not to ask the question at the forefront of her mind. "What were Milina's feelings towards Luke? I asked her once, but she dodged the question."
Amina pursed her lips. "I guess you'd have to understand my parents. My dad was one of those men who liked the chase. When my mom gave him her love, he lost interest, and started chasing after other women. She worked so hard, bent over backwards to try to get him to love her again and he never did. So growing up Milina said she would never be like that, and the only way she knew to do that was to never give anyone her love. So she never knew the pain of being jilted, but she also never knew how good it feels to give and receive love while it lasts."
"So there was nothing that Luke could have done to change that." Gourry said.
"Milina was touched by how much he changed, but she didn't trust it." Amina explained, "She didn't trust he wouldn't return to his old ways if she gave him an inch. So she kept moving the marker higher and higher. She kept saying that at least it kept one assassin out of the business."
"She did have him on a tight leash. I was impressed." Lina commented.
Fortunately Amina smiled, "Well, she was the oldest, technically. She was used to keeping me and my brother in line."
"I can see that." Lina said as she started to eat her dinner. They spent the rest of their time talking about their memories of Milina and ended up staying so late that the wait staff was piling the chairs on the tables when Amina mentioned that she should be going.
"Do you need us to walk you to your inn?" Gourry offered.
"It's not far, but thanks." She said, "I'll be fine. Thank you for talking to me. It helps to know what happened, and it will provide my mom with some relief."
"Thank you for finding us. We felt horrible, knowing that you didn't know." Lina said, and Amina leaned forward and squeezed her hands.
"I'll be by Maninstit in a few months." She said. "Take care."
"You, too."
Gourry grabbed her hand as they walked back to their hotel. The shops were starting to close, but the way remained brightly lit. "Just when I think I'm over it." She commented.
He squeezed her hand, "Something comes up that brings it back. It's good, though. Knowing her family doesn't live with the unknown anymore."
They walked in silence for a moment as she reached and then clung to his arm. "Damn! I forgot to ask her their surname!"
"That really bothers you, doesn't it?"
"It does. I guess I'll ask whenever she stops by Maninstat. Though, I guess I'm more bothered by wondering if I am a bad person if sometimes all I can think about was that I was glad it wasn't you who died?" she said quietly.
"It makes you no worse than me." He said, "It doesn't mean we wanted her to die. It just made us aware of what all we could lose."
"I never knew you could feel so many different and contradictory emotions at the same time." Lina stated.
"You feel, that's the important thing."
"I guess." She agreed. "It is sad though. If Milina did love him, that she didn't feel safe enough to express it. Do you think he would have left her if she had?"
"We can't really say, can we?" he said, "They never had the opportunity to mess it up."
They walked in silence for a little longer, and when she next spoke it was so softly she wasn't sure if he would hear, "We do."
But he heard. "We do." He agreed. "But don't worry, Lina. I'd never want to see what you would do to me if I took an interest in someone else."
She glared at him out of the side of her eye, "Good, because it wouldn't be pretty! And your ability to make time with someone else would be severely impaired!"
He raised his hands up in surrender, "Understood! If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you're not someone to pick a fight with."
He moved his hand so that it rested on her head, and she growled, "You know I'd wipe the floor with you, don't you?"
He chuckled, "Understood." and then he leaned in to whisper, "I also would never want to hurt you like that."
She smiled a little as they got to their hotel and started to climb the stairs to their room. "But what if I mess up? What if I hurt you? I mean, we are so young, and we have our whole lives up ahead."
He was quiet as he got the key to their door and opened it, "I think I spent so much time scared of messing things up between us that I wasted some time. But then I realized that even if you mess up, I care enough about you to make it work."
She took a few steps and wrapped her arms around him. "If I do mess up, I won't do it deliberately."
"Me either." He said quietly, "And it won't be because I have a wandering eye."
She smiled a little. "Then I care enough about you, too, to still make it work, even if you do mess up."
AN: While researching something for what was supposed to be chapter 16, I found myself wondering about Milina and why she traveled with Luke, and rather than writing a long fanfic that only 5 people will read about her, I decided to go with this approach instead. So the original chapter 16 is now chapter 17. I hope you enjoyed this interlude!