A/N: I own nothing except for my own characters, and some plot line bits. All the rest is creds to BBC!

A small hand reaches towards the thin flame, which has invested its basic nature and gone still. The hand, belonging to a young, four year-old girl, does not falter, even when her fingertips are enveloped in searing heat. Her brain has momentarily bypassed the human instinct to avoid pain.

Her mother reaches her before the flame can curl its way past the Sera's wrist.

• • •

Helen Blaine leans against a doorframe, watching as her now six-year-old daughter wanders the room. A blindfold is knotted over Sera's eyes, and her faintly scarred fingers are outstretched in an attempt to locate Josie Andrews, a girl from school who had invited her over for a playdate. As is the case with many mothers, Helen had been invited in for tea, and never really left.

Next to her, Josie's mother chatters on about the outrageously cheeky new teachers.

"That's not fair," Josie says angrily when her Sera reaches her hiding spot, "you didn't give me enough time. Start over."

Helen chews her lip, resorting to anxiously picking at a curl of dead skin on the side of her fingernail, wondering which stunt would be enough to divert attention away from what this situation might develop into. Sera has not responded, she has instead stilled, the blindfold remaining in place over her eyes.

"You whine a lot."

Josie's mother flicked her gaze to the woman beside her, her mouth now shut in a firm line.

"But it's okay, everyone else does," Sera remarks, in an attempt to gain back the favor of her new playmate.

Josie remains silent, a sour expression on her face, as if she's aware she's just been insulted, but she straightens her posture nevertheless. She is impatient to get the game started again.

Helen feels her dread receding and she offers a weak smile. Josie's mother crosses her arms, making no comment, but she is later relieved when her daughter brings home a different friend the next day.

• • •

It began with nicotine patches, but those were exchanged for needles quickly enough.

The sixteen-year-old girl pushes the front door open, greeted with a clear view through to Helen's bedroom. The woman frantically pushes a drawer shut, pale fingers trembling as she tugs her sleeve down in a flash. The woman pretends to not have seen Sera as she slams her bedroom door quickly.

• • •

Sera, now a young woman, does not make any movement of pride or surprise when she receives her letters of acceptance from various colleges and universities, both in Europe, and North America.

During her years in high school, she'd allowed her grades to drop: it wasn't her fault her teachers didn't appreciate her 'fresh point of view', as Sera often described it. Still, it appeared that colleges and universities preferred the ability to think over the ability to test.

Though a rather necessary trophy, Sera wasn't continuing school for the shiny new degree that would be the product of her years. No, she wanted the experience. The chance to immerse herself in something different: a cesspool of hormones and conformingly rebellious young adults. Call it a getaway. A vacation from all the fake little people and the less fake monsters which had taken root around her. She was bitterly disappointed when she arrived to find no change.

She had many wonderful friends at University, or at least that's the line she liked to use when a curious uncle or aunt inquired about her education. There were, of course, people she preferred to spend her time with and those she didn't, but Sera didn't like the idea of placing them under the title of "friends".

These acquaintances are under the impression that they are far above Sera in their intellectual hierarchy. She is understandably irritated: it eats away at her, leaving a tangled mass of bitterness. But at the same time, Sera relishes their assumptions, for it becomes her little game, one that no one knows she's winning.

She completes her education with recommendations from many professors, who each endlessly recite that Sera Baine has a glittering career in psychology before her. Perhaps it is that promise that leaves her unsatisfied.

Perhaps that is also why she allows herself to be easily and completely ensnared with a single email:

Dr. Baine,

Quite an impressive degree. We have something that might interest you: a substantial sum will, of course, be provided. If you are interested, please respond and location details will be provided. Arrive at 2:00 next Sunday, with your belongings.

Signed, the Governor of Sherrinford.