Chapter 5: Melissa and Mary: Heart-Sisters?

Hello. I am Melissa Katain. That sounds somewhat foolish to write, but I feel like I need to introduce myself properly to the woman I hope will be the sister of my heart. I am writing this because first of all, I want to save Alex some credits, to record a proper video would take up space that would not be served. Then again, if I am to be honest with you, my sister, it’s because I don’t know if I could say these words out loud. Not where he could hear them.

First, let me set your mind at ease. I NEVER will hurt Alex deliberately, because he has saved my life and my family’s life. More than that, he has given me a reason to keep living. It is a sad thing to be rejected by one’s family, and altogether another to be effectively disowned by one’s blood, and then to the point where they intend to use your pain, suffering and death to forward some twisted design of their own. When I was on that foul ship, I felt my soul slipping away. All I had left to live for was to do what I could to protect my family. Alex has done that, first by rescuing us, and now by treating us as equals and giving my sisters and I hope. I call him my knight and my soul aches to properly reward him for all that he’s done and continues to do.

That is not yet my place, however. That’s because the first claim upon his heart is YOURS. He has told me of what happened on that fateful trip, and I have seen the scars that still lay on his soul from that. That leads me to my one and only complaint.

Please, sister, if you will let me claim that title, PLEASE, update your avatar to reflect your adulthood when you talk to Alex, whether in your messages, or in more immediate conversations. I venture to guess you do it because you want to still be that girl he wanted nothing more than to protect when foul traitors to your House unleashed their designs upon you. And he does still see you that way, in part. That is part of his problem.

He still sees you as the “One he could not save”, despite the fact that he did everything that could conceivably be asked of a scared boy. And I saw his face in that unguarded moment where he started to view your message. Seeing you again as you were before that day is a reminder to him of all that was taken from you, a burden that he thinks is his to bear. I think you and I both know differently, but he still dreams of the impossible, the path where he came up with some brilliant plan to keep the two of you safe until your House security could track you down. He blames himself for that impossibility. That first night, when he woke me with his thrashing, he actually knocked me off his bed in his panic, scaring me greatly, not for my own sake, but for the raw wounds he still bore upon his soul.

I did not tell him this, because it would add another wound to the one he already carries, but between what I could make out of his nightmare, and what he told me afterwards, that he would have taken on your burden gladly if there had been some option for him to do so. That he would rather have taken the torture that you went through a thousand times over rather then to see you go through one moment of what you did. I sometimes think that he does what he does out of some imagined penance for losing his mother, and having to listen to what those... foul creatures did to you. Somehow, he could drown the universe in pirate and slaver blood, and still think that he owes you a life debt.

That is why I love him so, and I imagine you do as well.

You saved him then, you know, when you told him that you shared his dream. He thought that there was no way in life he could make up for all the pain and suffering you went through, and you managed to get him off the path of self-destruction that he was on, and focus towards a goal to LIVE for. It is the only reason my sisters and I are alive now, and for that I too owe you more than I could ever repay.