~May 28th 1536~
Melanie Fray had sat across from her best friend at dinner; the only sound in the room that of their spoons gracing their plates, along with short chatter about what each had been up to for the time they'd been away. As it so happened, Harry had become a teacher in the local school and found himself on a journey to write a book; whilst Mel, of course, told him of her life at court, serving the young and sadly executed Queen Anne Boleyn, and the means in which she had found to have a gift for tailoring; both friends spoke to each other as if they had never stopped being in contact at all, but once dinner came to an end, the spell faded away and a cloak of tension wrapped them in a warm hug the moment they both decided to continue speaking and moved to sit in Harry's living room.
They sat in front of each other near the fireplace; both aware of what they wished to speak about, for it nagged in both their brains and tainted the air around them with unwanted difference. But, given the means in which the two seemed unable to figure a good way in which to voice their thoughts at all, the room fell eerily quiet, the crackling of the fire in the chimney made the only sound in the atmosphere, the echo of carriages passing outside became the only means to let the two know the world had not abandoned them or ended; that is until finally Harold McClair decided to speak... "There were so many bodies buried under that shoe maker's shop that no one ever bothered to look for anyone specifically." He began, gulping back the knot of his own discontent before he could continue. "Not the moment they recognized Alice's body, that is, for they knew of your celebratory venture." Mel's eyes, that had been deep in concentration watching as the fire consumed the firewood, suddenly fell to her lap. The faces of her friends had suddenly started to be visible to her within that fire. "But I didn't want to let them give up." Harry continued. "I looked everywhere... I refused to believe you were dead until there was absolute proof."
"Harry..." Mel had started, but to her surprise, he interrupted her.
"Don't." He said, making Mel look up from her lap, where her fingers played with a small sheet of paper, into the glassy green of his eyes. She knew it well; her intentions were to merely say goodbye, for she knew the kind of danger she brought forth onto her best friend's life merely by being close to him. She knew... "I looked, Mel, I never gave up." Harry confessed, his head shaking from side to side in slow motions. "And you were alive at court, making dresses for the Queen no less." Her eyes lowered once more with guilt. I deserve to know, Harry thought. And Mel heard it as clear as if it had been her own voice.
"Yes, of course you're right." Mel admitted within a short sniff and a released breath. "You do deserve to know." When her gaze lifted once again, the confusion within the boy's green orbs did not come in vain, and Mel knew, and therefore realised, that without meaning to she'd responded to something the other had merely thought; thus, even if she hadn't been looking inside his mind, the Lady could see that he suddenly wondered how she had known what he had been thinking. And so, before she could truly think much of the consequences, Mel told him everything: what had happened to her family two weeks before they met, what had happened behind the shop the day she disappeared, the way her eyes changed colour (something she had grown to control within the past three years, if anything), the conversation she had had with the demon that called herself Cassia. In fact, within such an introduction to the world she still didn't entirely have another choice than to believe in, she had actually showed him, within the worry and guilt that drowned her, the means with which her eyes shifter colours; and he watched, listening with intent attention as if he were listening to a mere tale being read from a book. At least until the moment in which Mel had started making her case as to why she needed to leave his life for good.
"No." Harry quickly interrupted Mel, whose eyes hollowed into the very deep black she'd been talking about, for the first time since she'd started explaining, before she could continue speaking about leaving him once again. "You cannot leave."
Mel's eyes slowly faded back into the natural blue of her human hues as she looked at her friend in disbelief. "Have you not been listening to me, Harry?" She questioned her best friend's sanity. "I'm dangerous."
"I have been listening." He quickly admitted, lifting a hand to travel against his messy brown curls. "And that is exactly why I cannot possibly allow you to leave." Startling Mel slightly, he stood from his chair to walk the few steps that separated them toward his friend. "They were accidents." He complied as he knelt in front of Mel, whose eyes widened with surprise and watched the determination with which the other seemed to share such gaze. "That was a demon who overtook that servant, thus you had to kill her." Mel's lips shut again as her eyes studied her dear friend. "But the others; their deaths rest not upon thy hands, and you must see thus, for this thing inside you did. The side of you that, as you tell me, you have begun to learn how to control."
"Learning, Harry. Only learning!" Mel suddenly yelled, standing from where she sat, making Harry stand along with her. "I cannot possibly know when this thing will choose to surface again and make me murder someone I love."
"But you are learning to control it!" Harry quickly voiced, his long fingers making Mel turn around as they set upon her arm. "You can control it. And I can help thee against it; I promise: if you stay here I can help you control... whatever this is."
"Are you daft!?" Mel yelled, breathing deeply, even through her loud tone, as to keep that overwhelming power from taking over her the way she'd felt only three times before. "By God, you fail to understand." She lifted her arms to move his hands away from her. "I could accidentally kill you!"
"You will not." He said, "You won't kill me, I know you won't." It was truly almost as if Harry were trying to convince himself instead of her; while with Mel's blue eyes dancing in the depth of his greens, he pleaded. "Stay here." He offered once again. "We can work on this, whatever it is. Together."
Mel took a step away from her best friend swiftly with wild features as she moved away. "Oh, to have thought you would have understood." She voiced before turning to walk toward the hallway that would lead to the front door of his new house. "How daft I was, to even have thought..." She continued; her heart beating wildly within her chest as it reached in an echo against her ears. "I shouldn't have come here." She stated in a hurry upon her trembling hands. "I should have stayed gone." Her every fibre moved hurriedly as she felt the clear smoke of power lift inside her, lifting any veil away from her orbs to see everything clearly, to make such strength flow within her, to free her; she could already hear silver plates clanking against each other from the kitchen, and the crystal squares of the candelabra within the drawing room clicking against each other. "Oh, no. No, no, no." Mel chanted against her fear upon the recognition of the horrors in her past; even the echo of the fireplace as its flames grew brought forth shivers along her back along the echo of surprise from Harry's lips. "Not you, please, not..." She began as she reached for her black cloak from the hanger by the door. "I shouldn't be here, how stupid of me, how could I have thought to bring this upon you, how could I-" But before she could even take one step toward the door, her best friend's long fingers wrapped around her hand, pulling her toward him and making her turn around to face him, only to have his warm and soft lips meet hers the moment she did.
The overwhelming feeling of the power she had felt rising inside her, slowly subsided; as they kissed, the hand that did not hold hers moved to rest against her back so he could hug her toward him, and slowly, the clanking of the objects stopped, even the fire upon its fireplace and any other spot that it had tainted drew back onto a minute flame. Her free hand rested on his chest as she remembered what she had allowed herself to have forgotten: Harry had always been the boy who fought for her. He was the boy who had never given up on her, just as much as she had never given up on him when he had needed her the most.
His lips pulled away from hers moments before his lake-like eyes lost themselves into Mel's ocean blues. "I already lost you once." He stated, his deep green hues glistening with the couple of tears he'd been holding back from the moment he'd laid eyes on Mel upon that staircase. "I beg of you, don't ask me to do it again."
That's when Mel understood; during her stay in the parish there had been no incidents, all that time when they were kids... Harry McClair had kept her sane. And as it seemed, she did the exact same for him. He saw her, all of her, the real her as he had a few moments prior; in fact, he had saved himself from her without even realising it upon that moment. He'd stopped her, he knew exactly what she was and he still wanted her around. How could she ever let him go after that?
-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-
Mel had to look down again, feeling as if her eyes wanted to release rivers of tears regardless of the minute droplet that followed; Tate had lowered himself from the bed to sit close to his girlfriend on the ground with her old clothes almost serving as an echo of the tale with which she trusted him. At the sudden tear filled pause, he moved to wrap his arms around her, doing the only thing he could think of doing at that very moment: comfort her.
Of course, her eyes closed for only a few moments as she allowed herself to comfortably nearly melt into Tate's warm embrace; for she knew, even at that moment, that she wished she could let the story end there, with not but the reality of their newfound bond, but she also knew she couldn't. For it'd be a lie, and there rested an awareness within her mind that Harry's memory would be absolutely insulted if she ended her tale there. No; she had to finish it, to come clean upon every detail she could speak whilst feeling her stomach curl inside her at the memory. Thus, within a soft hold of the fabric of his worn out shirt, Mel heard herself whispering a reassurance for the other to let go; her eyes opened, and he did. One of her hands lifted to rest against his cheek gently, her eyes looking into his and almost wishing she could hold him there in that very moment. But when she spoke, the owner decided to lower her hand and pull away only shortly, her darkened hues locking into his. "I trusted him." She started again. "I gave into him and his own logic without caring about what my instinct told me..." Her head shook one more time.
Tate simply watched his girlfriend as she told the tale of that who had been Violet to him. "Tate..." She sniffed. "He was my friend for so long. He accepted every single side of me even after I showed him exactly what I was. And he helped me, he..." Mel had to give herself a silent moment. A moment in which Tate allowed one of his hands to take Mel's and found himself shortly confused and curious for the reason behind Mel's sudden little sad laugh. "He used to hold my hand like this whenever I was about to lose it, and that alone would stop me."
He wouldn't admit it, but Mel had begun to break Tate's heart, curve his senses until he couldn't see straight; especially when she told him of the familiarity of the gesture Harry used to do for her. He tried not to, but automatically he let go of her hand; he didn't just let it drop, though, he lifted that same hand to push back a couple or dark curls of hair that had escaped her French Hood behind Mel's ear. "Your friend loved you, Mel." He stated, knowing fully well that he couldn't fix her past; no more than she could've fixed his. Only able to be told and heard, that's what it was. Tate allowed himself to listen to the rest of her story, for something in her eyes could tell him that it wasn't over. "He did." He finished.
Mel's eyes stayed on his for a moment, echoing thankful at her boyfriend's sudden understanding, but then she had to make herself speak, for her recognition upon an unfinished story burnt within her soul like the very fire that had ended so many lives. "He wasn't just my friend, Tate..." She continued thus. "I mean, he was my best friend. But some months after that day... he became much more than just that." She announced, finally looking down and away from Tate's dark chocolate hues as she reached for one of his hands. The news of Harry being her boyfriend didn't come as much of a surprise to Tate; as the story had been going, and even before, he'd assumed that's what it'd been: that the so called Harry had been to Mel what Violet had been to him. And that thought continued to be true... at least until the moment Mel reached inside the trunk once more.
She reached in the deepest part of the trunk to retrieve a small blue, dusty velvet box, and thus became exactly the moment in which Tate's ears started ringing with alarm. No. He thought. No way. Band new tears had started forming in Mel's eyes, and only one lonely silent tear trailed down her cheek as she managed to open the velvet box with shaky digits in only one hand; she didn't want to let go of Tate's, truly afraid of what he would do. Is he going to hate me? She wondered: Is he going to wish he'd never spoken to me that day in the basement? That and many other questions hammered around her mind as she revealed the insides of the little box: a pair of obviously old, yet still slightly glistening, golden rings. Inside of each, a name was incrusted. Harold Frederick McClair was spelt inside the smaller one, and Melanie Jane Fray was spelt in the bigger one.
Mel gulped for a moment before she forced herself to speak the words that she'd been afraid of speaking, but as Tate looked hypnotized at the two golden bands, she spoke; making Tate realise that he hadn't even needed to hear her next words to know what she'd say. Regardless, Mel placed the small blue velvet box on the palm of his hand. "Harry McClair became my husband." She finally calmly announced.
To Be Continued.