Author's note: I am basing this off of the legend that Alchmene gave birth to tow children, one father by Amphtryon, and then Hercules, fathered by Zeus. In the legend, it Iphicles, but since the show established Iphicles as older than Hercules, I used the story for Melina. Also, this means that Amphtryon would have returned home after Alchmene had slept with Zeus and not died in battle. I don't own anyone you recognize, just playing.

I know, I know. How lame is it to fall in love with your brother's best friend? However, in my defense, they weren't even speaking to each other when I fell for Iolaus.

First, though, I suppose I should tell you exactly who I am. I am Melina, the daughter of Alchemene and Ampthryon, younger sister of Iphicles, and twin to Hercules.

How can I be Hercules' twin and Amphtryon's daughter? I really don't know, I just always assumed that if you sleep with a god, anything can happen. I guess that's why Hercules and I are about as different as two souls can be.

First of all being the obvious that he's a man and I'm a woman. He's fair and blonde; I'm olive-skinned and black-headed. He's, well, huge and I'm short and small. In fact, the only trait we share is Mother's blue eyes.

Hercules was all of six months old when he began to show his god-like strength. Mother told me that Hera had found out about the affair between her and Zeus, and so, decided to kill Hercules to get revenge. She sent poisonous serpents into the nursery to attack us. Killing me was just an added bonus apparently. Mother heard me screaming and came running in to find that Hercules had killed them and was playing with them like toys. I, on the other hand, was cowering in the corner, screaming like a banshee.

Then the scandal of my brother's actual parentage came out. If you ask me, it was way too big a scandal for what actually happened.

You see, my mother was a very beautiful woman. Unfortunately, she caught the eye of Zeus not long after marrying Father. She refused him time and time again, out of loyalty to her husband who was a soldier and off fighting most of the time. Well, one night, Father came home unexpectedly. Mother was overjoyed. They spent the whole night together, talking, playing with Iphicles, who was 2 at the time, just being a young family, and finally retiring to bed. When she awoke in the morning, he was gone, but again, this wasn't unusual for a soldier. Leave never lasted very long. Imagine her surprise when two days later, Amphtryon returned from the war for good.

When Mother began teasing him about not telling her that the end was so near when he had been home two nights before, he revealed that two nights prior, he had been on the battlefield in Corinth, fighting the very battle that ended things.

Mother realized she had been tricked.

At first, Father was furious and threw her out of the house, not believing that she had been deceived by Zeus. It wasn't until Iphicles started insisting that Father had been home before that Father decided she was telling the truth and begged her to come back. I assume that's when I came to be.

Anyway, Father stayed with her, even when it became painfully clear to everyone that Hercules was not his son. To his credit, Father did raise Hercules exactly as his son, even when the whole village thought him a cuckolded fool for it.

Now that that is out of the way, I hope you don't mind if I skip to my thirteenth year. That is when this story really begins.

Oh, I knew Iolaus before then. He and Herc became friends at the village school as boys. From then until we were around eleven, they were inseparable. My thoughts at the time was somewhere around 'stupid boys' instead of love.

I don't really know what happened then, but one day, Herc came running home from school very upset and declared that he was never speaking to Iolaus ever again.

At first, Mother just thought that thirteen year old Iolaus was just outgrowing Hercules, who at eleven could still be very much a boy at times and tried to soothe his feelings.

A few months later, Father came home with the news that Iolaus' father, the General, had left their family for another woman and that Iolaus was living on the streets and his mother and sisters had left town for parts unknown. Not that the General had ever been much of a father in the first place, but that's another story and not mine to tell.