China Sorrows hated love. A constant thorn in her side since the day she was born, love, was the one weakness she had. She hated it.
She first felt love from her brother. The beautiful feeling of knowing you'd have someone beside you forever, a constant welcoming shadow over your shoulder. And then he left.
Her mother was the second time she came in contact with it. The corsets pulled even tighter, the weeks where she'd be starved, her mother always reminded her it was because she loved her.
It was only years later when she faced a smashed mirror, more skeleton than flesh, teeth yellowed by days hunched over a chamberpot, does she realise how wrong she was to believe her mother.
But, to China, the first time she met love, the real, twisted meaning of it, was when she was eight years old. The man sitting next to her does the same as every other man, telling her beautiful she was, how he would never leave her. But then she felt his grubby paws all over her, and that night as she lays in bed, she never feels more spiteful towards her gifts.
China's seventeen, house burned down and her family with it, cries of witchcraft haunting her every move. And suddenly her brother steps in, knight in shining armour. She doesn't know it then, but when Bliss first saw her, he didn't even know who she was anymore.
And then she meets Skulduggery. Oh dear God, Skulduggery. Those emerald eyes which seemed to bring her back to life every time she so much as glanced at him. His very touch filled her with light. But, as she soon found out, Skulduggery saw her as nothing more than a pitiful, broken girl. A cracking piece of china, overflowing with sorrow.
So she screams rivers of hate and rage at him and flees from his regretful eyes. She finds herself living off men, letting them do what little they could to her. She slowly strings a group of followers, people who would consider themselves close friends. But China knows better.
She still refuses to eat most nights, her mother's teachings still forced on her, and slowly that haze of nothing which follows after drinking to near death becomes her only friend. She doesn't see the concern in even Murder's eyes, the fact that she's killing herself. Why should she care anyway?
She realises one day that she's killed hundreds and yet she doesn't care about any of them, not even when she meets the glassy gaze of Skulduggery's eyes which she used to adore. But then again, she never liked brunettes much.
China doesn't remember many things about her early life, as much as she hates to admit it. But she does remember the exact date when she met Eliza Scorn.
18th of July, 1693.
China knows that she was always in a dark place, but at that moment it seemed as if she was drowning alone in it. She felt as if even screaming was pointless, why waste breath?
And then Eliza comes along, burning with fire and life and China feels as if she can finally breathe. It's then she finally realise how much of a lie her mother's love, her brother's love and everyone else's love was. How much it had hurt her.
Slowly she heals, her smiles no longer broken, daggers things and her laughs don't scratch at people's ears. And every step of the way, Eliza is there, guiding her with that burning fire she never seems to run out of and that sweet smell of strawberries. How could China not fall in love with her. Although, she would never admit it.
But China grows to realise that the fire isn't just lighting her way, its burning and its flames grow on Eliza's bloodthirst. And soon, China can't stand that sickly sweet scent of strawberries mingled with blood.
It's at the beginning of the 1920s when Eliza tells China that she loves her. And suddenly, China feels as though she's about to be sick again. That monstrous word poisons their kinship and China flees. It's what she's best at.
She spends her days in her stronghold of books, for that's what it is, a final defence against the new world. Both mortals and sorcerers alike come to beg for her love.
She can't help but be disgusted and repulsed by them.
Then Gordon Edgley comes wandering into her life, all quite by accident. She has no interest in him at first, why should she? He was just like all the others. But soon, she grows to adore his bad jokes and awkward smiles. That slight crinkle of his eyes when he watches her read his first finished manuscript.
China thinks it was the day when Gordon has several grey hairs when she realises what's happening. And by God, she can't survive this heartbreak again. So, she cuts off all ties, trying not to imagine the grief-struck face of his. It would cause her little porcelain heart to fracture even more.
By the time the child comes storming in on the heels of the Skeleton Detective, for he's not the same man she loved, she's so tired of it all, almost begging for the eternal pain to end. For that's what love is.
But, as she watches the little girl, who has so much of Gordon, and that fire of Eliza's, she can't help but offer the little girl the same hammer and paste she offers to all she has cared for, the choice to heal or destroy her.
The little girl almost cuts herself on the shard of China's heart but slowly it begins to rebuild, and China can't help but be drawn to her. At first, because the ghosts of her former lovers seem to have been reborn in her, but soon she grows to care for the girl herself.
For the first time in years, she prays to love to not interfere.