Author's Note: Hi all, I'm terribly sorry for the late update. I had no motivation.

Editors/ Co-Authors Note: I'm sorry this time it was my fault got too busy. Es tut mir lied!

Aleksander

My name is Aleksander Balakov. I'm 29 years old and...I just want Vali well. I lost him when we were young. The adults kept saying that there was something wrong with Valentin. He would whisper to himself sometimes, but who didn't from time to time? He had this imaginary friend that he would talk to all the time, and the adults would say that he was sick. But Niko and I both knew that wasn't true. He was just being a kid.

Niko and I just figured he had created an imaginary friend because he couldn't always relate to Niko and me...

Oh, yes, about Niko. I had met Niko Alovic first when we were just toddlers and had been the best of friends ever since. I don't know when, but at some point I wanted to be around Niko more than usual. I wanted to always make sure he was happy, that he smiled. Oh, how I loved it when that boy smiled. And I loved it even more to know I was the cause of it. He had such a beautiful smile.

In truth, that boy was just beautiful all around. I didn't know it at the time, but...I had fallen in love with Niko. Yes. I had only realized my feelings for him the day, infect, the moment, that he was torn from me. His whole family packed up and left, running over my heart as they drove from our dank little village bordering Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania.

I thought I would get over losing him. I was young and taught that as we grow, we love many times. I thought that my feelings for Niko would fade over time, but...they didn't. I had become more protective of Valentin. Our family was torn apart, and I had to keep what was left of us together. Like Niko told me the day he left. My Niko...

Our family was like everyone else's. We were more than friends, had a bond stronger than brothers. Niko and I cared for Valentin like he was our own kin. In fact, we all cared for each other more than our families did, not to say that our families didn't care about us, we just preferred it to be the three of us.

So, alone I did my best to take care of Valentin, who still insisted to talk to "Adria".

Then came the day the adults stole Valentin. I had seen him happy as can be as we talked about our conversations with Niko the night before, and woke up to screaming and yelling sometime in the odd hours of the dark. I remember rushing out of my little home to see Valentin thrashing and screaming and crying in the arms of multiple adults gripping him.

I tried to get them to let him go, tried to pull him away from them. He reached for me but they pulled us apart and threw him in back of some obscenely white truck, locking him in there. He banged his little fists on the windows, tears streaming down his face. I ran to the truck as they pulled away. They stole him from me. I would never forgive the adults, his family, for doing what they did to ours. They all tore us apart from each other. I was left alone in a village I had come to hate.

I wouldn't leave the house, and my parents became angry with me for it. They kept saying I could just make new friends. But I didn't want friends, because Niko and Valentin weren't just my friends. They were my family and I wanted no one else. There could never be anyone else. At least I still had my letters from Niko. The adults wouldn't tell me where they took Valentin, they only told me he was sick, that he needed help.

Sick? Valentin was perfectly fine to me, I couldn't figure out why the adults kept saying that. It always came down to the adults. I ended up blaming them for everything. So when I moved further into Bulgaria, I was both thankful and angry. I had so many memories there and I had to leave them behind, and yet I no longer had to see those evil monsters that had torn my family to shreds.

So now I was alone without Niko and now without Valentine. I was truly alone. I only had my memories and desperate love for a boy who I had not seen or heard from since my childhood and my worry and longing form the little brother ripped out of my grasp.

When I was of age, I moved to the United States and built a life for myself and began to search for Valentin and Niko. It took me a year and a half to get the first hit on either of them. It turned out to be Valentin. He was...sent to an institution somewhere in northern Romania. I was shocked. And institution? I knew I had to get him out. So the first chance I had, I bought a plane ticket to Romania and drove non-stop to the institution. When I got there and requested to see Valentin, the secretary there gave me so many attitudes...

And then...Vali came out of those doors, he looked so frail and broken. He shook like a goddamn Chihuahua. I held him for so long, I was so happy to have him back. I took him back to the states with me to live with me. He didn't belong there.

Vali stayed with me for a few years before...well before Adria decided to come back. I tried to get him to stop, because he was too old for Adria, but...I soon realized Adria wasn't just an imaginary friend...Adria...was something much more...something much worse.

I tried my hardest to get Vali help...but...