Chapter 1: a dark beginning
1983 was not an exciting year. Nothing truly of note happened, but it was this unassuming year that the fates of several people changed and not for the better. It was this year that two very unique children were born, Tate Langdon and Annan Brimm. They were born within hours of each other, to mothers who were best friends, and as is natural became the best of friends and nearly inseparable. Tate was Annan's only friend, despite her kind nature. Her mother died only a year after her birth from kidney failure due to the strain of birthing her only daughter. Her life away from Tate and his warm smile was a cruel and terribly lonely one. Her father and aunt blamed her for the death of her mother. Treated as a slave as she grew Annan learned to do a great many things for herself. She learned to cook, clean, and keep herself from notice. In their precious idyllic neighborhood, Anna's living nightmare was thoroughly ignored by all but her dearest friend.
Things only worsened for Annan after her eighth birthday. Lost to his rage and bitterness her father grew more and more violent, leaving terrible wounds and broken bones on his young daughter. Tate discovered them and raged futilely against her treatment though he could do nothing. Annan had told him how it only got worse after some one tried to help. With her father's new violence came something far worse, something she couldn't bring herself to tell Tate about, the touching. It was shameful and disgusting the way her father would paw at her and force her to touch his most private places. She felt sick but couldn't truly understand until much later just what kind of monster her father had devolved into. No.. not until she turned thirteen did she fully understand.
It was a dark and balmy night. The fire flies were out en mass and painted a beautiful summer night, perfect for romance or a quiet walk under the pale moon, all was calm. In a pale blue house just across the street from a grand brick house though, everything was the opposite of calm. Annan was fighting for her sanity and life as her father tried to move his touching to something far more. She was cornered in the closet of her bedroom and struggling to draw a deep breath from the terrible kick to her ribs. She knew that if he caught her she would never see the light of day. He'd violate her in the worst way and kill her. She had to fight but she couldn't clear her mind enough to come up with a plan of escape. With every step he took closer to her hiding place the panic in her grew and when he finally reached the closet door, long dormant powers awoke in her blood once again.
Black fire burst to life around her and latched on to the reaching arm of her father. He had no sooner looked at his arm that he began to scream in pain. The black fire seemed to burn only his skin and was gone with Annan's consciousness. She woke only hours later to find herself untouched and her father nursing terrible burns that reached his shoulder and had blackened edges. Sufficiently warned away from his disgusting plans for his child he resorted his old favorite of breaking her through physical violence. It was only then that she admitted to Tate what her father had been doing. He wasn't happy.
If the adults in their lives had been paying more than the bare minimum of attention to them, they would have noticed then that something was wrong with these young children. Time and torture had isolated the two from their peers, Tate to worried that Annan would need him to try and make other friends. In their isolated little world, it was only Tate who realized that Annan felt nothing for the outside world anymore. She only cared about him, bandaging the injuries he got from the many fights defending her. If anyone had given them more than just a side glance, they would have noticed that while they cared for very little outside themselves the things they did care for, mostly each other, were held close with terrifying amounts of obsession and possessiveness.
None of the adults around them cared though, far to busy with their own melodrama and stress, and so the ever shifting balance the two kept remained a secret between them. They put on a masterful show of normality and by the time they were 18 no one knew them as anything other than normal yet bullied teenagers in their last year of high school.
Oh how soon that was to change