Scarlette here! To be honest, this is my first fanfiction, but not my first story. Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated... Praise is preferable. Reviews are applauded. Please? Own Death Note? Why no, no I do not.

And as the tears streamed down her face, he smiled. He smiled, as she looked up at him with gleaming eyes, he began to chuckle, his laugh harsh and piercing as the look upon his face. Beneath his ebony hair, his eyes gleamed red as passion, as blood. She uttered a pathetic cry, a whimper, if you will, and he stared down at her. The words he spoke had no purpose, no meaning at all as he grinned his malevolent grin...

Raven awoke with a gasp, her thin fingers clutching her throat, as if to hold it together, her face was wet with tears. The blank white walls of her New York apartment seemed to close in on her as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She rolled off the mattress onto the ground and stretched, musing upon the puzzling nightmare. The man was dark, intense, and entrancing.

"Only a dream Raven, nothing more, nothing to fear." She coaxed herself as she pulled on her coat in a whirl of black leather. She raced down the stairs with familiarity and alertness, all the while making sure she wasn't being followed.

Raven peered around the corner and casually followed a tall man that was holding a briefcase. My first client of the day… The smooth gesture took much practice; she had it down to an art. She grinned smugly as she ambled along the sidewalk, pausing briefly in an alleyway to count her findings.

"It's a living," she murmured "someone has to make use of what they don't need." Her emerald eyes glimmered darkly. She chewed her lower lip and clicked her boot heels together to the fast paced beat of the New York streets as she pondered her escape from the scrums of the wretched place.

The bricks of the building were cold behind her, the wind was icy and biting her nose and reddening her cheeks. She shivered and broke from her trance. A small blonde haired child passed by, in one hand, a balloon, the other, his mother's gloved hand. Raven smiled and waved briefly, the boy waved back, releasing his balloon, Raven followed it with her eyes as the boy's mother, a small and rather round woman, tugged her child away, a revolted look on her face.

"Away," Raven said with a smile, "I need to get away"

Raven had never had much, but then, she'd always been careful never to take more than she needed; bits and pieces for rent, small things for food when the world began to spin around her; not too much, just enough to live from, but today, she worked fervently, cautious, of course, not to take too much from any certain individual; never enough to put someone in her position.

The bitter wind nipped at her legs through her ripped jeans, the cold was nearly unbearable for her, blue fingers cold and numb due to fingerless gloves. Stepping into the travel agency, she rubbed her hands together in an attempt to regain some feeling in her frozen fingers. "Somewhere warm," she decided with a nod to overly giddy travel agent, "warm and crowded where I'll blend in." The paper said she was to leave in three days. "Three days until freedom," she breathed with a grin dancing across her lips.

Los Angles, California Raven thought in disbelief, reading the paper over and over again, checking her pocket once more for the plane ticket. She went back to the apartment she could barely call home and showered hastily. Pausing in front of the cracked mirror above the sink, she cocked her head to the side and studied her features.

She wasn't plain, of course, but not stunning either. She traced the line of her rounded jaw, and then studied her high cheekbones and petite nose, nothing was really quite normal about her, but her features were certainly not beauteous; undoubtedly so. She splashed warm water from the faucet onto her face, cringing at the irony taste of the liquid. She closed her eyes and thought of the dream man with ebony hair and red eyes. He was beautiful in a frightening and captivating manner.

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