Chapter 3

Mel shifted uneasily, trying not to look at Kallissa who was eyeing her thoughtfully. Cole had insisted that they talk after last night which she had agreed to readily enough, desperate for things to be the way they once had. But she had been horrified when the first thing the Cirronian woman had done was to direct Cole to wait outside.

"Why don't you tell me about it?" Kallissa advised gently once they were alone.

"I don't know. I just... it got to a certain point and... I guess I panicked again." She shook her head, still not looking at the other woman.

"So I had gathered or you would not be here now. Can you kindly give me a sequence of events?"

Mel shook her head. "Kallissa, I know it's different on Cirron, but on Earth you just do not talk about some things..."

"No, perhaps not," she agreed. "But I can not help but be struck by the fact that you seem to do worse when you attempt to overcome this without help. Melah en'i, you are not alone. For your sake, you must stop behaving as if you were."

"I feel alone," she admitted, looking up at Kallissa with tears in her eyes. "I feel so... guilty," the last word was half-sob.

"I see." She nodded faintly. "Melah en'i, I know this is difficult for you to talk about, for many reasons. But I honestly believe that it will help if you can. You have tried to recover alone without much success. Now, let a friend help you. You are not alone and you should not have to behave as though you are. We are given our friends for a reason. If you can not talk to Cole, talk to a woman who loves you both as dearly as if you were the siblings of her blood," she advised.

Mel closed her eyes and nodded once. Keeping her head bowed, she quietly outlined the previous night's sequence of events to Kallissa, glossing over the more intimate and personal details, but none of the main points.

"Then it was Cole's arousal that upset you?" Kallissa asked when she had finished.

"No. I mean... yes, only..." She shook her head. "Cole would never push. I know that and I love him for it. I just... I just never really stopped to consider what this must be doing to him, having these... these needs and not being able to do anything about them..."

"Mel, I am going to be blunt with you now, and I hope you will forgive me for it," Kallissa said quietly. "I know I have not been in a human body for long, but it is not lost, even on this Cirronian, that these bodies are well-equipped to satisfy their own needs."

Mel's eyes widened. "Has Cole been--"

"This is something you would do better to discuss with Cole," Kallissa countered gently. "Exactly as I can not tell him what we discuss together, I would not be able to tell you if I had been conferring with Cole. The comment was based merely on my observation of human physiology."

"Yeah, sure it was," Mel muttered, shaking her head. "I hate myself for doing this to him," she told the other woman. "I mean, last night, feeling his body against mine like that... it felt so good. I felt loved, safe... protected. Then I felt... Cole..."

"And this is when you became troubled."

"Yeah."

"Was it fear, Mel, or guilt?"

"I..." She shook her head. "Of course I'm feeling guilty about doing this to Cole. Wouldn't you?"

"That wasn't my question, Mel," Kallissa pointed out mildly. "You enjoy the feel of Cole's body? It makes you feel protected? Cole makes you feel protected?"

"Always," she agreed, nodding.

"Yet the fear endures."

Mel closed her eyes and nodded once. "I don't get it!" Frustrated, she slammed her palm against the desk. "What's wrong with me?" she asked, tears in her eyes.

"Mel," Kallissa sighed, leaning forward and caressing her throat. "In a situation such as this, can fear be anything but natural?"

"Fear of Cole?" she retorted, shaking her head and leaning away from the comforting touch. "It's insane and you know it!"

"Guilt, fear, and frustration," Kallissa murmured, dropping her hand. "You want so much to be better, as much for his sake as your own."

"Yes!" She shook her head. "He deserves that. He deserves a lover who really is one..."

"Lovers are people who love, Mel. You remain Cole's lover in spite of the current situation."

"But--"

"Would you love Cole less if he were unable to physically satisfy your needs?" she interrupted gently. "If he had come to this place and created his body imperfectly? If he were incapable of doing to you what a human male might?"

"What kind of question is that?" Mel demanded, shaking her head.

"One to which I already know the answer. I simply wish to hear it from your own mouth."

"If you thought I wouldn't, we would not be friends," Mel pointed out. "You'd have probably dragged him kicking and screaming back to Migar."

"In all likelihood," Kallissa agreed, nodding. "But you would still love him. Is that correct?"

"Of course," Mel answered, not sure what she was getting at.

"Of course," she repeated. "Therefore, is it fair to assume that Cole would continue to love you even if you could not satisfy his physical needs?"

"Yeah," she whispered. "He's Cole..."

"He is. Do you understand the point I am attempting to make?"

She nodded once. "He still loves me. He always will. He told me so last night, that, even if we could never be together that way again, he'd still love me."

"How does that make you feel, Mel?" she asked, her voice gentle.

"Worse," she admitted, bowing her head. "I hate myself for not being able to give him what he needs from me..."

"Do you think that Cole hates you for it?"

"No! Of course not." She shook her head, absently smoothing away a tear that was making its way down her cheek.

"Mel, I wish there was something I could say to you, anything at all, to ease this burden you carry. However, I find myself doubting that such words exist. All I can offer you is advice."

"Kallissa, I'd be grateful for anything," she told her honestly. "I'm starting to feel like I'm losing ground instead of gaining it and it's driving me crazy."

"You are not losing ground," Kallissa assured her. "Tell me about the night before last night."

"You mean when Cole gave me a bath?"

"Mmm." She nodded.

"It felt good. It brought back some nice memories."

"Wonderful. And was there anxiety?"

"Not much. I mean, I came close once or twice, but I kept reminding myself that it was Cole and that... well, that nothing would happen."

"And this was comforting to you?"

"Yeah." She nodded weakly. "You're the shrink. What's that say about me? That I was getting off on it and still grateful that it wasn't going to go any farther?"

"It tells me that there is a part of you that very much desires to return to your previous level of intimacy with Cole and another that continues to think of Khaeto." Kallissa shrugged. "It is not unexpected that you still feel fear, not any more than it is unexpected that your body remembers and desires the touch of your lover."

"Maybe, but it's so frustrating..."

"Of course it is." She nodded. "I can not imagine behaving any differently in your present circumstance." She patted Mel's knee lightly. "Now, tell me about last night."

"What about it? I told you, it felt good and then I panicked."

"Was it panic or guilt? You keep saying that you feel guilty, Melah en'i."

"Of course I do!" she snapped. "Wouldn't you?"

"Perhaps." She shrugged. "But it would be a groundless guilt. There is only one accountable party in all of this."

"I know that..." She shook her head. "Just like I know that Cole would never hurt me. But... that doesn't help, either. I can't help what I'm feeling."

"No, I can imagine not," she agreed. "But time heals many wounds..."

"How much longer am I supposed to wait?" Mel sighed, shaking her head in frustration.

"For as long as you must. Your Will to recover is strong, but you must not push yourself, either."

"What about Cole, though?" she sighed.

"Cole loves you and will wait for as long as he must."

"But..."

"Melah en'i," Kallissa interrupted, shaking her head. "You must do your best to lay aside your guilt. Many victims of these sort of crimes feel guilt, but it is unfounded."

"I don't feel guilty about what Khaeto tried to do to me," she protested, shaking her head. "I feel guilty for what I am doing to Cole."

"Then you should discuss this with him," the Cirronian woman advised. "In the meantime, I am much troubled by your continued anxiety and nightmares. I think it is time for you to seek professional assistance on a more regular basis."

"You mean like therapy?" she asked uncertainly. "Kallissa, I can't talk to some human about all of this."

"No. You would have to talk to me. Or I could arrange for you to talk with a Corps therapist from Migar a few times a week if you would be more comfortable with a stranger."

"I... No, Kallissa. This isn't the kind of thing I can talk to a complete stranger about."

"As you say. Then it would be best for you to talk to me."

"We are talking."

"No, Mel. Not about you and Cole. About you and Khaeto."

Mel shuddered, shaking her head. "No, Kallissa. I'd really rather not."

"I can imagine not. But sometimes talking can help. If I did not believe that, I would never have bothered taking my counselor's certification."

"I'd really just rather forget all about it," Mel told her, shaking her head again.

"What one wants and what one needs are often at cross-purposes. You are an intelligent enough woman to recognize this."

"I... I just don't like thinking about it," she whispered.

"Which is understandable," Kallissa assured her. "The real question is whether or not it is tenable. Thus far, your attempts to forget have been unsuccessful in the extreme. Khaeto still haunts your dreams and his acts still overshadow your days. I have been studying your planet's psychiatric literature, and no reputable therapist whose work I have yet read suggests that attempting to forget a traumatic event is a tenable treatment for its aftermath. Short of drug therapy, which is likely to be only marginally successful in a case like yours, talking is your best option."

"What about that thing your people can do? Where they erase memories?"

Kallissa shook her head faintly. "A neural rewrite is a last resort, and dangerous even for one of those. At best, you would lose large portions of your memory for the times around the target incident. At worst, your personality could be so radically altered that you would no longer be you."

"But do I have to talk about it?"

"You do not have to do anything," Kallissa pointed out. "No one here is in any position to force you to. I can only offer advice, and mine is to talk about the matter. It can help."

"Wh... what would I have to say?"

"Nothing that you did not wish to." She smiled faintly, reassuringly. "The content is less important than the meaning."

"So... it would be enough to say that... when it was happening to me...I felt... like I... like he wasn't doing those things to me?"

Kallissa raised an eyebrow at that, startled. "Who was he hurting, then, Melah en'i?" she asked quietly.

"Me, but I... I dissociated. It means..."

"I know what it means," she assured Mel, nodding. "I was not aware you were trained in psychology."

"I wasn't. I just remember it from college. Multiple personality, things like that." She shrugged. "It really did feel like someone else was experiencing the pain instead of me."

"Many species believe that we each of us have two natures," Kallissa told her. "If it was Mel feeling the pain and Melah en'i who was able to avoid it, perhaps it is Mel who feels an aversion to sexuality now?"

She shook her head. "It's me. They were both me. I mean, yeah, it was awful and it was like there was someone else there suffering for me at the time, but I'm still just me."

"Then what of this other creature feeling the pain for you?"

"Me. She was me." Mel shrugged. "It was just like... like I didn't want to feel it, so I segmented it off."

"It is a not-uncommon adaptive strategy," Kallissa assured her. "The problem is coming back from it. Now that you have learned the trick, you are more than capable of separating your mind into discrete spheres. And so there is a part of you that craves Cole's touch and a part that abhors it."

"So what do I do about it?"

"As hard as it is for you, Melah en'i, you must reclaim that part of yourself. Embrace her as fully and truly, as difficult as it may be. Because as long as she remains unhealed, so will you."

"You're saying I've developed a split personality?" Mel asked, frowning dubiously.

"Not at all. I am merely saying that the ambivalence that served you so well in that warehouse has become exceedingly maladaptive. It must be reconciled. But, before it can, you must come to terms with what Khaeto did to you in the first place."

Mel inhaled deeply, drawing her knees against her chest. "It would be so much easier if I didn't have to."

"Only in the short term. In the long term, this will be best for you."

Mel nodded slowly. "What do I have to do?"

"Tell me more. You have not told anyone all that was done to you, not even Cole. Sharing your burden makes it easier to bear."

Nodding again, Mel closed her eyes and quietly began telling Kallissa everything that had transpired in that warehouse, from coming to and finding herself a prisoner to her escape attempt to the torture and the solicitude to the part of her psyche that had taken the pain on itself to Lana's visit and Khaeto's threats, even the fact that she had accepted her own death. The attempted rape was harder to speak of, but she was even able to detail that, and to bemoan the fact that something she had always dreamed about with Cole would now likely always be fearsome to her.

"I would not worry so much about that," came Kallissa's encouraging reply. "Ones first time may always be frightening, it is true, but the same is perhaps also true of human mating. When you have once more come to accept Cole as your lover, there is little reason to suspect that accepting him as the other half of your soul will be substantially more difficult."

"You really think so?" Mel asked, regarding her hopefully.

"I do. Given time, I see no reason why you should not be able to join with him." She smiled reassuringly at Mel. "At least, I truly hope so. It is such a beautiful experience..."

Mel bowed her head, staring at her hands and trying to ignore her conflicting feelings. "From everything Cole says, it sounds beautiful."

"What did it feel like, Mel?" Kallissa asked, regarding her with blatant curiosity. "To have it forced upon you like that?"

"Awful," Mel whispered., shaking her head. "Horrible. It was like... I don't know, maybe like how it feels to be burned alive. I... it felt like I was on fire... It hurt and I... I knew I was going to die. It was... that was the first time I really accepted that Cole might not rescue me in time. I'd never felt so naked or vulnerable in my life."

"You poor child," Kallissa whispered, reaching for her throat again. "Khaeto has committed many horrible crimes, but this one is the most unforgivable of them all."

"What ever happened to the girl Khaeto raped on Cirron?" Mel asked.

"She... remains as she was." Kallissa shook her head sadly.

"Would that have happened to me?"

"It is hard to say. You are stronger than a child, but not by far. Death would not have been an inconceivable outcome. Coma at the very least would have been almost certain."

Mel sighed softly. "Sometimes I feel his hands on my throat, that energy..." She shook her head, closing her eyes. "I wake up in the night and it's his arms I'm in instead of Cole's..."

Kallissa's eyes widened at this intelligence. "Does Cole know this?"

"I think he suspects. He knows I have nightmares, at least. It just feels so real."

"Thus the difficulty getting to sleep."

"Yeah." Mel sighed and nodded weakly. "It makes me feel... God, it's beyond dirty, the things I feel remembering what he did to me. I tried to fight, so hard, but..." She shook her head again. "Cole never told me it was like that, that I wouldn't even be able to move. I felt so powerless."

"And understandably so." Kallissa regarded her sadly. "Especially for a human woman, it must have been horrifying."

"Isn't it scary for you, too? I mean... being so vulnerable?"

"For a Cirronian woman, vulnerability to ones mate is not true vulnerability." She shrugged.

"I don't buy it." Mel shook her head. "Vulnerable is vulnerable and helpless is helpless."

"Usually," Kallissa agreed. "But experienced through the filter of trust, they become something else." She paused for a moment, considering, before speaking. "Cole tells me that, his first night back here, you slept in his arms."

"Yeah." She nodded.

"He is very large by human standards, and incredibly strong," Kallissa pointed out. "And yet you trusted him, in spite of the fact that you knew how attracted he was to you, to restrain himself. And, for the past two nights, knowing how much he enjoys making love to you, you have trusted to him in the spite of even greater temptation. All relationships have an element of disparate power, Melah en'i, and marriage is no exception."

"So it's just... knowing that Cole would never hurt me?" she asked, frowning. "That'll make it okay?"

"Does it make the things he has been doing to you these past two nights 'okay'?" she asked quietly.

"It helps," Mel agreed quietly.

"And, with time, it will become easier still. Sexuality is meant to be a celebration of love. Experienced in love and in trust, vulnerability stops being vulnerability and becomes something else entirely. This is no less true of Cirronian mating."

"Guess so."

"Time heals many wounds," Kallissa assured her. "You will see."

"I believe you. I just... wish it didn't take so much time..."

"I wish for you the same. Seeing you in distress is no easy thing for those who love you. But you will get better. Already, you have made more progress than you can know."

"I've made some," she admitted. "I just wish I could make more, faster."

"Might I offer an analogy drawn from real life?"

Mel nodded.

"Cole's alcoholism."

"What?" Mel frowned, blinking in confusion.

"Admitting that you have a problem is, in itself, a step towards recovery."

Mel stared at her with wide eyes, uncertain.

"I mean it," Kallissa murmured, shaking her head. "Melah en'i, in admitting you have this difficulty, you admit the possibility of accepting help in overcoming it. It has been less than three days, and your progress is tremendous. Yes, it is still hard for you, and understandably so. But, still..." She shook her head. "You have made great progress."

"It doesn't feel that great," she sighed, shaking her head. "Damn it, Kallissa, all I want is to be able to hold him and touch him and..." She shook her head again. "I just want to make him happy."

"I suspect that you do make him happy, whether you know it or not." Kallissa shrugged faintly. "He derives great pleasure from being close to you, greater pleasure from touching you... What more would you give him? Would you lie still and accept his advances without fear or pleasure?"

"I..." She shrugged. "Yeah. Yeah I would. Anything has to be better than this."

"Do you honestly believe that? That Cole would be happier completely fulfilling his physical needs with you when you were not responsive than he would be fulfilling yours when you were?"

"I..." She shook her head. "I still feel..."

"I can imagine, Melah en'i. But you must consider the fact that Cole has more desires than his human ones. He is a Cirronian, and Cirronians are commonly known for emotional empathy to their mates. He knows what you feel, when you feel it. If he were to make love to you and you were to feel no pleasure from it... even if there was no fear..." She shook her head. "There would be no real enjoyment for him. He might as well be taking matters into his own hands for all the pleasure he would feel. No, Mel. A man like Cole needs more than acceptance..."

"What more is there?" she whispered, shaking her head. "How do I give it to him?"

"The same way you always have. From your heart." Kallissa smiled reassuringly at her. "He will wait. Never doubt that. But know that there are more ways of taking pleasure from your mate, and of giving pleasure to your mate..."

"I wish... I feel..." Mel shook her head. "I want him to be happy. I hate holding out on him. I don't want to any more."

"Then perhaps it is time for the two of you to find another way?" she suggested mildly. "Male human bodies are, I am given to understand, most responsive things."

"Yeah, they are." Mel gave a hesitant nod. "I think... I don't know. It can't hurt to try."

"As long as you can indeed take matters slowly, there is little you can try that will cause harm or set back your recovery."

Mel inhaled deeply, nodding once. "I think I need to start seeing you regularly. To talk about what Khaeto did to me, mostly. But... other things, too. Things that have... happened since. Things I've felt..."

"I see no reason why it should be otherwise. Shall we start tomorrow? Perhaps at nine in the morning. That will give you an opportunity to sleep and to be in the bar with time to spare."

"That sounds good." Mel nodded and rose. "Thank you, Kallissa. For everything. Cole and I are lucky to have you."

"As I am lucky to have the two of you. Go now," she suggested, smiling warmly at Mel. "And be sure to keep me updated."

"Yeah." Mel nodded weakly, but her smile was genuine. "Thank you for everything you've done so far."

"It is always a pleasure to be of service to my friends," Kallissa assured her as she left.