A/N: So this is an interesting little idea I've had since seeing the movie Krampus and reading the prequel comic. The latter of which will have lots of meaning here, as you'll soon find out. As I will be making the canon there work here as well meaning:

1. They aren't dead at the end.

2. Everything resets the day after.

3. Those that don't learn their lesson are brought back and made into the demonic toys.

Basically, this is an origin story set years before the movie. Why DID Krampus soften his ways and begin to spare those he did terrorize. How did he chose who was worthy of saving and who wasn't? Since Nana's family obviously was taken and never given back. What made him shift his values?

This is probably going to be a short story. How short? IDK. But I wouldn't expect it to go TOO far. Just long enough to tell the story I have in mind - which isn't horribly long.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Krampus, his elves, etc but I do own Sam.

CHAPTER 1
Taken by the Demon

"I'm sorry..."

The boy, Max, stared back at Krampus with a look of utter remorse and sadness. And in other situations, this would be nothing new. He knew that the boy had learned his lesson - as had the rest of his family. They would be spared as would all that had learned their lesson. It was done, as far as he was concerned, and the boy had nothing to worry about...

Yet behind his mask, behind his thoughts, he remembered the last time he faced this situation. With a young boy willing to give everything for those he cared about. A young boy so defiant he was ready to give himself over to someone that people around the world saw as "the Christmas Demon".

Yes, one look in the child's eye, and he remembered that boy well. His mind drifted toward that night so very long ago. As he stood there, so many years later, he could hear that boy's voice overlapping with Max's. Even as he dropped him into the pit, watching him fall as his followers quietly cackled.

The boy's name would forever haunt his memory...

Samuel...

He'd met him so long into his many centuries of life, but he had never left his memory. And as he closed his eyes, he was yet again before him...

It was in the eighties, and he'd just finished off the deed he was sent there to do. To spread the fear of what happened when one "lost the holiday spirit" and became spiteful. It had been his job for so many decades since Santa Claus, the fat old bastard, had banished him and degraded him to this that he ultimately had become used to the routine.

Samuel, was anything but routine.

Much like Max would many decades later, he stood in the snow. Before the pit, standing before all of Krampus' many helpers, and holding the bell defiantly in his hand. When they met, he was a short, gangly haired little boy of twelve, with fierce green eyes and a spark.

For the first several moments before he arrived his words still rang in his head. "I'm the one that sent for you!" he had declared. "This is not what I wanted! Don't hurt them! Take me instead! Take me!"

In his many centuries alive, Krampus knew every person who summoned them would come to realize what happened. But Samuel was the first... He was the first to take those brave steps forward and offer themselves, selflessly, up to him for damnation.

And for reasons that, to this day, he did not fully understand, Krampus spoke to a human that night for the first time in many centuries...

"You'd give yourself up, for them?" he had asked, taking a step forward, then another, until his tall form leered over the boy, hot breath moving through his mask and covering him. "You do realize what you are doing, human? I have no doubt you have surmised their fate. Do you truly wish to meet it instead? Think very carefully, you cannot take it back."

The boy looked at him with a stare that told him he might have wet himself right there and then. His eyes moved towards the pit, then up to Krampus again. "Will you let them go... My brother, and my friends?" he asked. "My brother is all I have left. He's only four... He doesn't deserve that."

Krampus was silent, unsure of how to respond to the human. He'd forgotten how much weight that an orphan, who were growing up in a foster home, may put on family - or perhaps he'd have seen this coming. "Just for being so foolish I may," he told him - causing a silence in his elves as he grabbed hold of his arm, yanking the boy close. "I do not damn those with foolish bravery. But I will make use of you. I again advise you, chose wisely, human. If you come to my domain, you shall not come back."

"But you'll let them go..."

The creature groaned, annoyed at the persistence. "Choose, and then I shall."

The longest silence that he'd ever spent was followed by the quiet answer. "Yes... I'll trade myself for them. Please, let my brother go."

That left Krampus with the dilemna that would drive his next several years. What on Earth would he do with this boy? The boy was the one that made the deal... And that was not his function, to damn the ones that summoned him. He didn't know what punishment may await him for that, nor did he want to find out. Yet, the human had looked at him so pitifully, so fearfully...

And so he pulled him towards his sleigh, where many of the toys under his command waited. "Are you not going to throw me into the pit?" the boy asked as he continued to drag him by the arm, grip tight as could be. "If not then..."

"Do you want to go in the pit!?" he said it in such a snarl as he shoved the boy into the sleigh, and turned to the elves that stared so dumbly at him, you may have thought they had not heard the exchange. "Well... Start fetching them..."

"But master!" they spoke in their elfish gibberish.

"The boy was brave," he spoke in their tongue. "Stupid, but brave. If he wishes to exchange his freedom for the lives of his friends, so be it. Ol' Claus always said I could do well to have a little pet."

He then turned to the boy, reaching back into the sleigh, and found what he required: an empty sack. Before Samuel could even argue, could even change his mind, he had thrown it over his body, as the boy now began to regret his decision. They helped him tie the sack carefully, though leaving a small open area on top to breathe.

He then threw the boy unceremoniously in the back. Knowing it would knock him out and therefore make his ride more peaceful. The last thing he wanted was a little brat screaming at him, and fighting him. No... This boy had given his life over to him, and he would resign to his fate, for better or worse.

When they'd gotten to his workshop, Samuel said nothing once he'd woken up.

Krampus, however, not being a cruel individual, immediately brought the boy to the den. Where he sat in what he could only imagine was pure shock for his situation. The creature almost watched him with amusement, as he sat there on his dark couch, before a fireplace, with blankets draped over his body to keep him warm in the frigid air.

He'd expected him to beg for his life, but so far the boy had said nothing. Nothing, that was, until a small voice spoke up. "If you didn't throw me in the pit, what are you going to do with me?" the quiet question was almost an utter surprise to Krampus, when he finally spoke. "Are you going to eat me?"

Krampus threw back his head with a cackle so loud it made the boy jump. "Eat you? Why on Earth would I want to eat you? No, humans are disgusting thank you," he explained as he began to pull off the mask he often used on his excursions. "You may have forfeited your life to me, but I do not eat humans. Nor do I keep slaves..."

Samuel looked as confused as Krampus expected. Though he had said he was to be a "pet" to the elves, he hadn't meant it. What use did he have for a pet? No, Krampus had other uses for him. A few centuries alone and one grew lonely. Especially with nothing but toys and annoying little elves as his only company. No, he related to the humans as far as intelligence and attitude.

And for the first time, he didn't have to send this one to hell.

He heard the small gasp as he turned to regard the child again. Of course he would gasp, his face was a ghastly sight: the face of a goat mixed with that of a man, with his two large horns sticking out. Not quite human, but not quite monster, and nothing like anything that Samuel had liabley ever seen. "No, I think I will simply "keep" you. Not as a pet but as a resident," Krampus replied. "You will live here now, and under my watch."

Samuel shook his head. "You won't beat me? Or feed me to some giant pet?"

"You've seen one too many of those films you humans love so much," Krampus replied, his voice tense. "I am a very ancient being child, I could do any number of things to you. But then I would miss an opportunity."

"What opportunity?" the boy asked shakily.

Krampus smirked as he crossed over to the hot cocoa on the nearby table. He knew that the elves didn't make the best cocoa, but he by now needed it. "Companionship, if you must know. I'm bored. A few hundred years of this and you will be too," he took a second cup, offering it to the boy who merely glared at him. "You are merely something to quell my boredom. To keep me company and give me someone to talk to that perhaps will not be a moron."

The boy stared at him quietly, shifting uncomfortably. "So I'm your pet?"

"No, pet is too broad a term. It implies that I'd have to provide you with everything. And I am no babysitter, child," Krampus replied, then motioned all around. "You are now the latest resident of my abode. And your job is to accompany when I demand and for what I demand. It's your job, as I must give you one or be forced to listen to you cry in the dungeons as long as you remain alive."

"You have dungeons?" Samuel asked.

"Of course I do," Krampus replied. "Need somewhere to put the elves when they act up."

"Are you supposed to be Santa Claus?"

Again, cold laughter, God, how naiive Samuel was in those days. "I am not that fat old prick," Krampus snapped. "Say that name in here again, and I will lock you in the dungeon. I promise you that."

The boy was silent at that - staring quietly at his new caretaker quietly. After a long sigh, Krampus turned his head toward him. "You needn't be afraid if you keep that out of your vocabulary, child. I am not as evil as my occupation makes me seem," the boy shrank back a little as he came forward. "You'll have a warm bed to sleep in, three meals a day, and run of my workshop. Once you look less like you do now."

"Like I do now?"

"You're covered in sweat, wearing pajamas, and smell of piss," Krampus groaned as he leaned forward and sniffed the air. "Which albeit fair, makes you very unpleasant to be around. Krius, Vulpin!"

At once, two elves came into the parlor, taking one side of Samuel each. After which Krampus addressed them in their native tongue. "Scrub him down, and find something for him to wear until we can tailor some clothes for him," Krampus took a seat in his favorite chair as he said this. "Then show him to bed. He has had quite the day, and I believe he will need sleep."

"What did you tell them?" Samuel asked.

"Just go and get a bath and some sleep," Krampus waved him off as he watched the fire stoking in the fireplace quietly. "You'll feel better after you have."

He knew the boy probably wouldn't. Especially being uprooted from his entire existence to be kept as a somewhat-unwilling resident in the home of the legendary "Christmas Demon". A demon he may not have been, but terrifying he knew he was. Especially when one did consider his unholy line of work that he'd been set on this Earth to do. And as such, he believed it would be a very long next ninety or so years before the boy inevitably grew old and died.

He had no idea just what it would really be like.

A/N: So what do you think? Is it any good? Should I continue Krampus and Samuel's story? Let me know!