One Third Human
Part Six
by: Shell Presto

Disclaimer: I don't own the Slayers, Hajime Kanzaka, Rui Araizumi, and various companies do. However, this story is my own, and I'd like to keep it that way. Have honour, okay? Enjoy.

Email me at mangetsu@email.com with any commentary. Even the smallest suggestion is appreciated, and the more critical comments are indispensable. Please drop me a line even to tell me if you are reading this. It helps. Also, be sure to check out my webpage Inspiration Stemming from Sleep Deprivation for the fanart that goes with this story (Also, be aware that when I get my hands on a scanner I will post the first few pages of One Third Human: the fancomic.). I'll do my best to get back to you if you email. Well, enough of that, on with the story.

She did not hear him gasp. He did not hear himself gasp. Zelgadis had to make a conscious effort to keep every single reaction in check, keep his eyes from widening, keep his breathing steady, make sure he did not utter a word in response before thinking about it. The gasp won the competition with all the other reflexes, but it was an empty victory. Emotions that had died long before they could have been born shot up into the back of his neck and into his mind like a bullet. It was the happiest moment of his life. Moment. Then his brain kicked in with lightning speed. Images of blood flashed through his mind like a movie projector gone haywire, all having to do with Amelia. Four seconds after Amelia had spoken six fateful words, he let his emotions spread across his face into a deep, bitter frown. "You're a fool, Amelia."
The princess felt a sob in her throat. "Don't say that. There's a lot to like about you. There's a lot that I like about you."
Matter of factly he informed her, "It will never work."
"Because you're a chimera, right?" she near whimpered, emotion seeping up her throat.
He could not find an answer.
"Is that why, Zelgadis?" her voice was rising.
An answer was not coming on its own.
Frustration leaked into her words. "Because you're a chimera?"
He wanted an answer.
"Is that why?"
Any answer except what he wanted to say.
"Well?"
Words he had never said before were pushing at his throat.
"Is it?"
Human words, not his, not anymore.
"Because you don't consider yourself human anymore?!"
She was crying because of him.
"Is that it?!"
For him.
"Because you don't think..."
She would cry more if he said.....
"you're..."
Because he was not...
"...good enough to...."
He wanted to tell her how he...
"...love me."
He needed an answer.
"Well!?" Her voice was all rage while her face was all sadness, tears streaming like blood from a spiritual flesh wound.
The human side of him wanted to grit his teeth, yet it was the human side of him that also forced him to hold a somber expression. "I don't feel the same about you. I'm sorry."
Her breathing was cold, and his ears heard a slight crackle as her neck turned her face away from him. "You don't..." Amelia truly believed that she had found a place in his heart, somewhere. "at all?"
Zelgadis covered his face with his hand in a gesture that appeared to read "deep thought." The guise was to keep himself in check as heat built up behind his eyes, to muffle a voice that wanted to break; although he could not understand why. "Not at all. I don't...." So hard to say.... "love you."
She staggered up. "I'm sorry for... I mean I didn't...." The weakest, most genuine, most tortured smile he had ever seen shown before his eyes as she sobbed, "What's important is that you know someone cares, though. That's what's important."
The young woman managed to make it to her bed before she was completely overwrought by pain and gripping despair.
He cried. He cried harder than when a young man found out that his curse was permanent, incurable. He cried harder than when that same young man had first looked into a mirror to see a monster. He did not know why he was crying, and it hurt more than any wound or knowledge he had ever received. He felt human again, vulnerable, yet his stone hands grated against his stone eyelids to try to stop tears. He hated his face. He wanted to tear it off, shatter it and see the blood underneath, but even his skeleton had his unnatural fangs, even his eyes had that demonic look to them. There was no escaping his curse. He damned Rezo a thousand times as he locked the door and walked to the window, wanting to find solace in the burning moonlight.

His guard was lowered; it took him until she was halfway across the room until he heard the soft sound of her footsteps. His tears had long since dried, and the sobbing in the room next to him had died down. "You shouldn't be in here, Lina. As a matter of fact, you shouldn't have been able to get in here," he scolded, not turning to face her.
She smiled her daring bandit-killing-dragon-slaying Lina smile, but it was empty. Her disheartened voice forced her cocky tone, "C'mon, Zel, did you really think that I didn't know a simple unlock spell?"
The chimera leaned a little more heavily on the window frame. "Not really. You shouldn't have come in, although.... as long as you're here...." His voice faded to the palest shade of itself, ".........how is she?"
The cockiness was instantly sucked from Lina's throat. "She's... devastated, of course." Zelgadis winced, closed his eyes, and Lina wanted to ease his suffering just as much as she had tried to with Amelia's. "She didn't give any warning that she would tell you so soon. Otherwise I would have talked her out of it."
His eyes locked onto the reflection of Lina's worried face in the window. "Does she.... hate me now?"
Lina sighed, the casual sharpness returning to her voice, "Of course not, Zel. Feelings like that don't just turn sour so easily. She loves you, that won't go away. I mean, she'll definitely get over you in a while; she's young and all, so you don't have much to worry about."
Her proud voice made him edgy, and he agreed, "That's good."
Zelgadis nearly jumped when he realized that Lina's accusing reflection was staring hard at his own. A slightly dark and heavily knowing voice erupted from within her. "Of course, that is what you want, isn't it?"
"Why wouldn't I want it that way?" he whispered to the sky.
"Because you care about her, Zel. You like her, don't you?" Lina asked softly.
"I don't know." He turned to her, eyes blazing with silent rage. "But that doesn't matter now, not..."
"She won't wait forever, Zel!" Lina argued away his point before he could get it out. "Besides that, if you don't have it in you to figure out your feelings now, you'll never..."
"It'll change when I'm human again!"
"Will it, Zel?" the redhead questioned intolerably. "You've spent so much time like this, hiding your feelings, keeping everything pent up inside of you, suffering with your past, do you really think that your cure will make all the scars go away?"
He was silent.

An hour after the disappearance of Lina, the third live specter visited upon our protagonist.
Gourry saw the statue that was his friend still locked into position at the window. A saddened, vacant expression was chiseled onto the face of the chimera, and it unnerved Gourry to think that he looked neither human nor alive anymore. He placed a hand on Zelgadis' shoulder, gently, so not to break him.
Being touched brought unbearable pain, and Zelgadis's arm moved freely from the rest of his body, shifting slightly forward to escape the swordsman's grip.
The blonde realized that merely stepping into the room with either Zelgadis or Amelia brought pain with it. He struggled, as he had with Amelia, to grasp words to go with what he wanted to say. It was times like these when he feared his lack of intelligence; in times like these saying the wrong things hurt people. "Maybe," he suggested hesitantly, "we should talk, Zel."
There was a long pause before Zelgadis emerged from his sorrow to the point where he could speak up, or even realize that he was being addressed. "we've never talked before," he feebly argued.
"Sure we did!" Gourry retorted with forced cheeriness. "Remember how you were trying to teach me your Astral Vine spell?"
"that wasn't really..." the chimera stared down at the floorboards, his eyes couldn't even make it to Gourry's boots. "how's that going anyway?"
Gourry smiled, "Slowly, but I think I'm getting there."
"that's good." Although the statement was sincere, it had no feeling of it whatsoever.
Gourry was never the brightest of the traveling party. He always had more questions than answers, and he knew he did not understand the current situation between his friends. He never really noticed that Amelia had a thing for Zelgadis, but moreso, when he thought about it, he could not figure out why Zelgadis would be so against it if she did. They did not seem like a bad couple to him. "Why don't you like her, Zel?"
The chimera's eyes had more confusion in them than the blonde's. "I... I think I might like her, I just..."
"Really? You like her?"
"maybe." His legs gave out and he slumped to the floor. "but i've no right to."
"Why?"
Just as Zelgadis began to think that he really hated that word, Gourry changed the subject.
"You know, Zel, you're lucky."
Zelgadis could have choked on his disbelief. "I'm WHAT?!"
"Amelia knows all about you, even when you don't tell her anything."
"What... do you mean?"
Gourry looked down at his friend somewhat knowingly. "Lina and I... we... we don't understand each other too much, although.... I mean.... we still... Anyway, if Lina was a bit more like Amelia... I'm not saying I want her to be or anything, but I'm just saying things would be a lot easier. I wouldn't want that, you know? But you.. you need it, Zel. You need someone that knows what you're feeling cause you don't talk."
Dumbfounded was the only word to describe what Zelgadis felt. It seemed impossible that such analytical words could have come out of the blonde's mouth, yet they had. What was even more surprising was that Gourry realized all of this before he had.
"Did I say something wrong?" the swordsman questioned as he watched his friend stand up.
Zelgadis walked over to the door. "No. You said everything right."

Lina thought she imagined the soft tap at the door. She left her post over the lightly sobbing princess to answer it. "Gourry," she started as she jarred the door. "I think maybe its best if you just.... oh."
The yellow glare of a candle down the hall glinted off of his silver hair. "Is she..?"
The sorceress stepped into the hallway. "She's awake."
Zelgadis quietly wiped his hands on his pants legs, walked into the girls' room, and shut the door behind himself. The sound of Amelia's crying cut through him, and he wanted to back out of the room. It was hard to accept what he had done, yet his legs managed to get him close to her bed.
"miss lina..." she whimpered. "really... i'd rather be alone."
"Really?" he asked softly.
The princess gasped as she got out from under the covers to see the chimera. It seemed like a dream that he'd actually be in her room. "zel..gadis?"
He sat down on the edge of her bed, careful to keep his back to her. He was glad the room was dark; it was harder to see his shaking hands. "I... just wanted to say that... 'not at all'... may have been too strong a phrase."
Amelia wanted to jump, but her nervous hand could not even reach for his shoulder. "Really?!" she wondered.
Each word was chosen meticulously. "Maybe.. it would have been better to say 'not yet.'"
She smiled and she did not want to stop her tears. "Mister Zelgadis, that's..!" As she said this, she came closer to hugging him from behind.
He sensed it, and rose swiftly. "I can't," he clarified.
"oh.." Amelia murmured, feeling as though she had made some horrible mistake. "Well," she requested optimistically, "maybe we should talk..."
"There isn't anything to discuss," he told her sharply, walking towards the door.
"Just one thing!" she pleaded as he opened the door.
He looked at her in the dark, a silhouette against the window. Her hair was mussed and her breathing was ragged, yet the vision evoked a sort of passion from him. Her persistence irked and soothed him at the same time, and he hated that he could not respond to it. Still, her quiet voice calmed the storm inside him.
"Ze...... You meant what you said, didn't you?"
Only the dullest moonlight reflected off of his hair was visible, yet as it shifted it told her that he had nodded in the affirmative. A sigh of relief escaped Amelia when she heard the door click shut, yet for some reason she remained crying.

Xellos yawned from his perch in a tree outside the inn. My my, I never thought those two would go through with it, he thought matter-of-factly. Still --he stretched-- this is getting awfully boring. He smiled sadistically. When are we going to finally pay Milgesia a visit? I'm getting impatient waiting for the game to begin!
Even he realized that his eagerness was getting the best of him, yet a slight twinge of guilt tugged at him. These were, after all his former colleagues. He decided to merely savor the guilt as a taste of the enjoyment to come.



Tsuzuku....

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