"Guilty."
The demon and the angel sat in opposite docks. The child in the angel's arms, sleeping and unaware. She was a new born, how should she know what her mother and father had been accused of. They were accused of creating her, demons and angels should never mix.
"You have two options." the judge said, "Your first, which is better for the both of you, is to leave the child for us to dispose of and carry on with your separate lives. The second is to look after the child for 13 years of its life, which as immortal beings will go in an instant, then be killed and the child will be placed in a reaper family and brought up as a reaper."
The child wriggled in her mother's arms and began to cry. The angel and the demon exchanged glances and nodded, they knew exactly what they wanted. Omnier Conquit Amor.
Guilty.
She knew the word well. It rang through her head every time she closed her eyes
"I want a story." The child demanded on the eve of her 3rd birthday. The demon would sigh, pick up the same story book and start to read.
"No." The child said. "A different one. Tell me another story."
The demon looked surprised. She was usually happy with the same old story every night, she had never done this before. He racked his brain for a story.
"Did I ever tell you the story of the demon destined to be a butler for the rest of eternity?" he asked his daughter. The child looked intrigued and shook her head. The demon smiled and carried on, "His name is Sebastian Michaelis."
Sebastian. Sebastian Michaelis. He's the reason why she was here, she needed to find him.
The child smiled brightly at her mother as she opened the present box to find a beautiful white dress.
"Happy 7th Birthday my little one!" The angel said as her daughter twirled around holding the dress to her chest. The child dropped the dress, ran and hugged her mother tightly. The child repeated "I love you" and pressed her face into her mothers stomach.
A tear rolled down the angel's face.
'6 years left' she thought.
She fingered the fabric of the dress as she took it out of her suitcase.
"I love you, mother." she whispered
For the two days before her 13th birthday, the demon and the angel would do nothing but stare at their child, drinking in all her features. At every chance they could get they would hug her, kiss the top of her head and nuzzle into her dark hair.
The child thought this was strange but didn't question it.
There was noise. Deafening, suffocating, burning away at her subconscious like a raging beast. Her dreams were flooded with it, tearing her eardrums, screams and cries and flesh ripping and blood and her name. Just her name, cried out over and over through the metallic stench of blood.
She wakes up to silence. Silence and smoke and ash.
Catherine
Silence, it's the sound that scares the girl most. There's nothing there but it still classifies as a sound, a nothing that is a thing. The child stands in what remains of her room. It was on the 1st floor but now it's on the ground. It had four walls and window but now it's rubble and glass and charred bits of wood. She had a chest of drawers and a wardrobe and a desk but all that remained had been crushed by the ceiling.
Through the dust and smoke the girl saw a dark figure standing amidst the ruins. Thinking of her father she darted through the bones of her childhood home unaware and not caring about her bare feet.
She ran faster and faster until she realised that the figure was not her father. In fact the figure had no resemblance to her father. The man, at least she thought it was a man, had long red hair reaching his thighs and was only a little taller than her. His glasses were on the end of a chain decorated in small human skulls and were bright red. His teeth were sharpened to the point of being spears and his green eyes smiled at her mischievously.
"Well dear me, what have we here?"