Nearing the fourth anniversary of its completetion, I'm finally posting this in a conspicuous place. It's still probably my greatest work, and if any of you were on the TRAD mailing list waaay back when.. My name was Kamui, and this was my story.

I'm a little nervous about casting it out into the unfiltered realm of Slayers fics on , but here we go.

Set post-TRY, canon couples. Any and all Amelia bashers, if they're still out there, need read no further.

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Prologue: Everything We Never Were

"Boys on my left side
Boys on my right side
Boys in the middle
And you're not here..."
-"Caught a Lite Sneeze", Tori Amos

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"Princess, you have to make a choice."

"Princess, time is growing short. We cannot wait forever. You have to decide."

"Amelia, sweetheart...please, you have to do this. I know it's hard, but..."

Amelia slammed the door to her room, shutting out all the voices that cluttered the halls, cluttered her head. She headed straight for her bed and threw herself on it, burying her face in her pillow. When had it come to this?

The storm of letters had come up so quickly she barely knew what hit her. It was as if she woke up one morning, and found her life taken out of her hands. Not much more than four months after the defeat of Dark Star, she had begun to feel the pressure she'd dreaded since she was a little girl. She was getting close to being eighteen. She needed to pick a suitor.

Raising her head, she looked down at the damp spots where her tears had fallen. She hated crying like this, but the whole imperial council had all been shouting at her at once. She tried to rebuff them, tried to find reasons to disagree, but she was drowned out by too many insistent lords and ladies. Even the council members she had known since she was a child had turned against her.

"You've read so many letters. Surely one of them caught your fancy."

"There are a hundred young men who would have you. Why can't you just settle for one of them? What is the matter with you?"

Amelia sniffled and hugged the pillow tightly. She knew all too well what the matter was, and why she couldn't make a choice. None of them were that certain man. That one person whose face she saw when she closed her eyes at night. She knew none of them spoke with that same, smooth voice, the one that rang in her ears when she was alone.

Sighing deeply and wiping at her eyes, she walked over to her vanity, pulling off her tiara as she sat down in front of the mirror. She looked at herself, her red eyes, flushed cheeks...and then down on the piles of letters just below the mirror frame. They were all fine young men from across the countryside, each of them trying to outdo the other to impress her. But none of them...none of them were... from him.

She picked up the top one, smiling a little as she read it and remembered it was a recent letter from Lina. She and Gourry were still traveling, wandering where the wind took them, but they intended to stop by Seyruun soon and say hello. They hadn't seen Zelgadis recently. Had she?

Her thoat closed and her eyes blurred as she read his name.

"No Lina-san."she said quietly to the paper. "No, I haven't seen him. He's not here now, when I need him the most."

Hearing herself say the words, she dropped the paper as if it had bitten her, and once again looked back at her reflection. She'd finally verbalized it. Something she'd that had been inside her so long, but had never dared to be put into words. She studied herself and feeling her insides start to burn with pain and anger long kept restrained, she forced herself to speak once more.

"He's not here when I have to make this choice and he's the only one I'd choose. He's not here...because he doesn't care."

Her voice broke on the last syllable, and she began to cry again, the agony of the truth spreading throughout her body and forcing the tears down her cheeks.

She had never meant as much to him as he had to her. For every loving look she sent his way, his response was the same cold stare he always gave. She had never been any desire of his, his whole mind devoted to his quest to regain his humanity.

Well, then, she decided coldly to herself as she tried to quiet her sobs. What had he never been to her? He had never been someone she could turn to with her problems. He had never treated her as anything more than a companion he didn't always need. He had never loved her.

She took some deep breaths, and clenched her hands at her knees, but when she raised her face to the mirror once more, her eyes were dry. It was time to let go.

Determination swelled inside her, battling against the longing, the pain that could never truly be soothed. It was time to let go of him, to move on, to find someone else who might look her way, hold her hand, wrap his arms around her in the cold night.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and stood. She was not going to moon uselessly over Zelgadis Graywords any longer. Amelia Wil Tesla de Seyruun was not going to tolerate waiting for an inconstant friend anymore. She would-

A knock at the door interrupted her reverie, and, checking her face for any sign of tears once more, she hurried over to the door. Her chambermaid bowed and handed her a letter and a small package wrapped in brown paper.

"This just came for you, Princess."

"Thank you, Enara-san."she said softly, and shut the door, leaning against it as she opened the letter.

She was not surprised in the least to find it was another letter from another prince. But the penmanship was nicer than many of the ones she'd received, and it was clear the gentleman had taken a lot of time to write it all out himself. Reading it, Amelia slowly walked back to her bed and sat down on the edge. His tone was very pleasant, and she was surprised to note how many things they seemed to have in common.

"Arret Vahn Tiolas."she tried out his name. It wasn't a bad name... "Amelia Wil Tesla de Tiolas." that didn't sound nearly as good, but then again, none of the others had either.

Finished with the letter, she turned to the parcel, carefully unwrapping it. It was a little velvet box, and the princess's heart sped up; she knew all too well what would be inside it.

And, opening it, she proved herself right. On a cushion of dark blue silk sat a diamond ring. Her eyes widened as she took in its size. She picked it up and tilted it to this side and that, watching the light dance off it. As she turned it to the left, she happened to glance at her bedside table, and on the crumpled piece of paper that sat on it- her one and only letter from a stone chimera. Too many times, she had crunched it into a ball and hurled it across the room, only to walk over to it later, unfold it, and hold it to her heart.

Her resolve started to break as she looked at it, but, making up her mind, she held out her right hand, and slid the diamond onto her finger.

She stood and looked down at the letter once more, a changed woman. A woman fed up with her circumstances, sick of rejection, and just wanting things to be done with. An engaged woman. Although her eyes were rapidly flooding, she held her head high and spoke clearly.

"Goodbye, Zelgadis-san."