"There is a fine line between love and hate. Love frees the soul and in the same breath can sometimes suffocate it."

Cecelia Ahern

Chapter 1: Chapter 1, part 1

I don't hate you...wait, what?

"Alex's" POV

I suppose the best place to start this is from the beginning: to when we first locked eyes with one Barry Burton. …no, wait: actually, it might make more sense if we started a little earlier than that: six months earlier than that, to be precise. See, that was the day that, no matter how you look at it, that was the day the fates of myself and Natalia were intertwined: the day my former self transferred a flawless copy of her psyche into my companion's body…and that's an important distinction, as no matter how you look at it, no matter how *I* look at it, that was the moment I stopped being Alex Wesker. I don't really understand it, even now, but I DO know that it was one of many mistakes my former self made, thinking that she could dump one personality on top of another and expecting it to remain the same as it was originally.

What I can say WASN'T a mistake was that I…she (this is going to get rather confusing fast, isn't it?) knew that implanting a personality into another body wasn't something that you just DO: it would take time to integrate it slowly into the system as to ensure that rejection wasn't an option, which makes sense: *I* probably wasn't looking forward to dying a second time. Six months later, and the procedure (which for the sake of making sure no one repeats "my" mistake I won't be revealing the specifics of) was a success…for the most part. Originally, I was supposed to have overshadowed Natalia's personality entirely, but as I mentioned earlier, her will turned out to be stronger than anticipated. After a rather rousing failure at taking control, I…oh, just call it what it was: I threw a temper tantrum and "left", which just adds proof to what I've begun to suspect as time went on: between the "age" of my transfer and being in such a young body, I had perhaps been regressed mentally due to some unforeseen flaw in the procedure…not that I'm complaining: as I mentioned before, it's somewhat enjoyable getting to be a child again. In any case, I, or should I say Natalia, soon found herself waking up near the docks as a boat approached the island.

Natalia's POV

I'll take that as my cue to take over…but before I get to that, I should probably clear something up before I get too far. As I mentioned before, the events of Terragrigia left me in a nearly emotionless state that only started to go away after Alice (I know you're going to be mad at me, Sis, but I need to call you SOMETHING in order to keep you and the original Alex Wesker separate) started to interact with me. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean I couldn't react appropriately to a certain situation: you can be timid without being scared or react with surprise without being angry or excited…and I am NEVER going to get used to sounding so mature like that.

Anyways, to say that the man I would later learn to call "Dad" was shocked when he found me standing on the dock that day would greatly be understating things, though not as shocked as I was that he told me to stay behind while he checked things out. Could have been "Alex" trying to find a way to get the keys from Barry so she could get off the island using his own boat, could have been my re-emerging ability to feel fear reacting to the fact I was more-or-less going to be left alone surrounded by the monsters – yes, I know that's not the proper term, but even after all this time it's the only one that sticks with me – that I KNEW were still on the island, could have been a number of things really, but whatever the cause, I wasn't about to leave me on an idle motorboat all by my lonesome while he ran off who-knows-where to do who-knows-what all by HIS lonesome, and expressed that to my soon-to-be rescuer several times over on it pretty fiercely.

Now he argued: said it was too dangerous, but I was quick to point out that I wouldn't be much safer on a boat without any way to defend myself. Needless to say, while reluctant, he let me tag along so afterwards. We talked a bit: introduced ourselves, but that was one bit of our conversation that caught me, or Alice, off-guard…and before you go crazy on me, sis, I have to call you SOMETHING to keep you and "Alex Wesker" separate.

"Alex's" POV

Ugh: I HATE it when she calls me that, but I suppose I can't fault her logic...yet, I don't understand why she insists on THAT name. After all, taking everything into consideration, I'm not a "lighter" version of Albert Wesker's sister, not really: if anything, I'm a darker version of little Nat born from the ashes of Alex Wesker's defeat. …Nat…ashes…Natasha? Huh: that name isn't half-bad, now that I think about it, but I'm getting off-track.

At any rate, she isn't wrong: I was completely thrown off by one question raised by Barry Burton: "You're not scared of me?" Imagine my surprise when, after a second or two, I found myself giving the same answer as Natalia: "No: you're alright." Wait, scratch that: imagine my shock when I realized a half-second later that I had actually meant it. After all, this man, from what I had been able to dig up in my previous life, was at least partially to blame for all the trouble my father and brother both had to go through, even in an indirect way due to his daughter, Moira, in more recent times. Now here he was: the man who I should be more than willing to throw to the wolves, metaphorically speaking…and I couldn't find a reason to hate him. Might have been Natalia's pureness was – albeit unconsciously - starting to get under MY skin, might have been the previously established mental regression reacting to Barry's kindness, or it might have been something else entirely: whatever the cause, it was at that moment that I realized that the lack of hospitality in my former life meant that I literally had no reason to mourn my dead family. Despite every synapse in "my" brain telling me I should hate him…I couldn't find it in me to do so. Even as he helped to clear out a few creatures that attacked us on the way up to one of the island's MANY abandoned buildings, I had no idea just how much that would affect things to come.

To be continued…

Disclaimer:

In case it's unclear, I'm writing this using unlocked gameplay and/or important cutscenes as milestones for this story: makes it easier that way; also, from this point on, I'll be referring to Dark Natalia (aka the implanted copy of Alex Wesker's consciousness) as "Natasha"; in case you're wondering why, well as I've alluded to earlier, this story was going to get confusing fairly quickly if I didn't keep the two "Alex Wesker"s separate SOMEHOW; as for the name itself, gameplay-wise, Natalia in all her incarnations sort of reminds me of a younger Natalia Romanoff/Black Widow for some reason: heck, I could see her becoming something like that when she gets older, and be honest: how many of us would pay money to see someone like Scarlett Johansson appear in the "Resident Evil" series, whether it be films or video games?