Notes: This will not be a romantically themed story. Cute moments? Yes, in the next few chapters, I can promise you that. This is not the first story I've ever written, so I hope I've corrected majority of errors.

Disclaimer: I don't own Black butler.

Ch 1

A little girl shivered in the sharp cold wind that pelted her skin, big white snowflakes ending their great fall from the heavens by catching in her hair, decorating her thick blond curls like jewels. Her nose was tinted red and numb as she sniffed and sneezed into her mittens, made of old wool and worn with gaping holes and rips. Her coat was in a similar state: two buttons were missing, fallen out of their stitches long ago, the pattern a faded from a brown plaid to an almost creamy colour. The open ends of the coat fluttered like banners in the rushing wind.

As she walked down the wide and snow-covered street with all it cracked cobblestones, the cold nipped at her ears and the girl gazed at the familiar spectacle of the nighttime city with listless eyes the colour of storm clouds. The small shops that lined the sidewalk were dark, their doors shut tightly for the night. Some of their windows sported cracks, lines in a crude spiderweb pattern over the glass. Crumpled balls of paper and empty cans and loose cardboard littered the street, and the girl wound her way carefully through them. She hated it here' yet she loved the familiarity of the place, the confidence that she knew this place almost as well as she knew herself.

This place was the dreary and poverty ridden section of the city, and no one needed to tell this child that. She knew it as she scampered quickly past the shadowed alleyways, and kept to herself always, never stopping to speak to the occasional night wanderer. Here was a place one had to often look over their shoulder on a simple morning stroll and to never leave their doors and windows unlocked. A prison to those unfortunate enough to reside in it. One wrong move, and you could end up dead in the gutter like your neighbor, or that nice fellow who gave you directions just the other day to the market.

The night was quiet but for the occasional shouts of men, drunk at the tavern and itching for a brawl, or the occasional rumble of a distant carriage. Not a kind place for a little girl to be, all alone in the heart of the night. She hadn't meant to be so late in getting back from her walk. Randa and Oscar would surely scold her profusely when she got home. Randa in particular had always been so against her explorations.

The girl bit her lip and forced herself not to look back as she passes the body and turned the last corner that would lead to home, and her eventual punishment. She didn't want to spend the next few days confined to her room. Boredom worked wondrous pain on her mind, and Randa knew it.

"Home" was a cramped house tucked in between two others, both according to city records deserted, but in which resided two other families, one with a seven year old child and the other with a ten year old. None of the children around were quite as young as this little girl, only five. She heard the adults curious and worried whispers as she passed by, about how such a tiny thing was wandering the streets alone, and then the sighs, and she saw the pitiful looks that followed. She did this often.

After her parents had disappeared one day and had not come back, she had been left alone in their home with the broken windows and rotting wooden floor. It had been a day since she had seen them last, and she was so hungry, her stomach ached, and there wasn't a morsel of food left. Her parents had left to go get more, but it didn't take an entire day to walk to the market, she was positive of that. It only took her a half hour at most walking hand in hand with mother when they went together. So she went out to look for them herself. Sometimes she wished she hadn't.

She had searched the alleys, the dim lit shops with their sparse wares, and eventually the market itself, questioning the merchants, but none of them had seen any traces of her parents. She never found them, even after searching until the orange and purple sunset coloured the sky. But she did find something strange. One of the men who were like to sit on street corners was smoking a cigarette, the smoke curling in thick tendrils around his bearded face. The child stopped and stared, her heart catching in her throat. The man crushed the cigarette beneath the heel of his boot and smiled warmly at her, the gap where his front tooth used to be gaping at her.

She didn't return the smile; she was too busy observing his coat. It was worn and threadbare, mere strings holding the brown cuffs of the sleeves together. It didn't look like it provided much warmth in the cold weather of late. However its unfortunate state of disarray was not what caught the girls interest. It was the coats familiarity, the smooth dark fabric she knew she had run her hands over day after day, the dusty scent that it emitted like a sort of pungent perfume. She gasped suddenly and tensed, her feet braced to flee to the emptying street behind her. A few stray yellow curls were freed from her wool hat, and they caught in her fingers as she put a hand to her face, as if she could shield herself from the horror that accosted her, its cruel vibrations touching her very soul, making it shrink with fear and disbelief.

She had seen this garment before, and the very sight of it made her eyes water, as the snowflakes of winter melted on its surface.

"Something the matter, kid?" the man asked, with a slight undertone of warning, an invisible threat that she understood perfectly well. Yet still his face was inviting, with that's mile still plastered upon it like a mask.

"No, sir," the little girl answered, and how she wanted to leap at him and scratch at his face with her nails, to knock him about as a strong adult male might. But she did not have the strength.

She forced her feet to move, step by painful step, and turned her face away, so he would not see her cry. Don't give him the satisfaction. Or perhaps it would bring him grief, to know the thing he had so utterly destroyed in a single moment. She didn't think so. He would go on, and she would have to as well, even if all she wanted right now was to join the rotting corpses that occupied the sewers, to lie in the foul water and stop her heart by mere will alone.

"Daddy?" she asked, as she gazed at the crowd of hurrying pedestrians, eager for the warmth and safety of their homes. It was getting late; the vivid colours of the sunset were fading to a mixture of the deepest purple and black. None of the men who strode along the sidewalks or were in conversation with others were her father, and yet something made her keep scanning every passing face, a hope that was dying like an ember in the cold snow.

She tried to push those thoughts away, like the undesirable things they were to her. She opened the front door and slipped inside, bolting it securely. She sighed.

Randa was not lying in wait in the living room as she thought she would be. The ripped leather chair was empty, and the side tables were free of any tell-tale coffee mugs or dishes. The bedroom? The girl crept down the hallway as quietly as she could, noticing the closed door of Randa and Oscar's bedroom. they could have gone to sleep without her, and simply assumed she was already in bed. They didn't always check.

Randa and Oscar had taken her in the very night after she had returned home after seeing the beggar man wearing her fathers coat. They had been her parents neighbors, and they had found her with her knees drawn up to her chest in the armchair, weeping and breathing in long, drawn out gasps. There son Daniel had been with them, staring curiously behind his mother as he watched her take the strange little girl in her arms, and announce determinedly to her husband Oscar that they had a new addition to the family. They never asked her what happened, what it was that had made her cry that night. They probably already knew.

She liked Randa, but sometimes the woman could become very distant and detached, and sometimes she would stare at her pensively for minutes on end as she played with her toys or with Daniel, for reasons she never spoke aloud. Only one time had she almost made her thoughts clear to her adopted daughter.

Oscar had been playing with the little girl, tossing her up in the air ad catching her. She was giggling with delight, and Randa had been watching, her hand tangled in her red hair. "Oscar, you that she..." Then she had taken on that look of detachment and pursed her lips, silencing herself as quickly as she had begun to speak.

"Uraiah," The child had whispered when Randa gently asked her for her name that first night. She had been close friends with her mother, so she already that information, but she had asked anyway, just for introductory purposes.

Now Uraiah passed their door, and saw that Daniel's too was also closed, which didn't really surprise her, seeing as the older boy had never been a night owl as long as she had known him. She was about to retreat to her bedroom, to bear any possible punishment the next morning, when she turned the corner and saw the yellow glow of soft light from the kitchen, and froze in her tracks. Her eyes widened. She tiptoed forward and peeked in cautiously as the sounds of banging pots and pans echoed through the house.

She was met with an unexpected sight. a small figure was bent over the wood stove, cursing as it tried to light it without success. Uraiah took a step forward into the light, and the figure paused, either hearing her or sensing her, and turned its head sharply.

A boy with some of the blackest hair she had ever seen, like the black of a ravens wing, longish with strands shielding one of his big blue eyes. oddly enough, he wore an eye patch over one eye. and he stroked it nervously, a personal gesture she felt she wasn't meant to see.

Uraiah fidgeted awkwardly on the balls of her feet, aware of the rock that had become stuck in her boot and was currently digging into the sole of her left foot. "Hello..."

Who was this? One of Daniels friends? It wasn't likely. Daniel had always been a sort of solitary boy, mostly preferring toys and drawing to playmates. In fact, the only playmate Uraiah had eve seen him with was herself.

"Sebastian!" The boy suddenly shouted, and she backed up a step in surprise. His brow was furrowed in distress, and his voice had a distinct cultured, persuasive tone to it.

She looked to the corner where he was now glaring. There was the kitchen table in all its scratched and wobbly glory, and sitting in a chair with his legs folded across one another was one of the most frightening and alluring men she had ever seen. He had black hair, almost the same startling shade as the boys, and his eyes half-lidded in a relaxed satisfaction. He was not at all disturbed by Uraiah's presence. She could have sworn his eyes were a dark red. His black suit and boots were a part of him, a piece of the picture he and of shadows and silk. He was elegant sitting causually in their kitchen chair, and he gave a carless smirk towards the boy.

"Master'" he started, his voice that of a native Englishman. "With all due respect I believe I made you aware of the residents of this household."

The boy composed himself with obvious effort and slowly rose to his feet. His garments were entirely out of place in this part of the city, very fashionable and screaming of wealth, as with the man sitting at the table. The boy wore a loose shirt of gauzy material, with wide poet sleeves that ended cinched at his wrists, and black riding breeches with buckled boots shining with shoe polish. His whole attire was spotless, as if he'd never walked through the filthy streets outside, or in the rain when mud was plentiful on the cobblestones.

Uraiah's own dress was was spotted with mud, and the lace embroidered at the hem was ripped and smudged. She blushed with embarrassment and a faint squeak came from her lips, words she hadn't planned that refused to come.

"Sebastian, why?' The boy demanded, striding over to him and standing his arms folded against his chest. "You said you would get what you needed and then we would leave. it's been an hour. What are we waiting here for?'

The man called Sebastian stood and towered over the boy, who couldn't have been more than thirteen years old, but the boy was not deterred. He clearly expected to be obeyed. He remained in place, waiting for an answer. The one visible sapphire blue eye burned intensely.

Sebastian gave a small laugh. "We shall be on our way momentarily, worry not Ciel. I have a small matter to attend to first, is all."

His eyes...! Uraiah saw that they were indeed red, and not the red of an albino. They were not he sweet and fiery red of a rose, either, but the red that spread through her veins and seeped out of her finger when she pricked it on a thorn.

And they were looking straight at her, scanning her from her light hair to her mud-stained boots, and he nodded, as if something crucial had just been decided.

Edited slightly.

Woah, that took a while to type. my first black butler story. I very rarely use OC's, but I'm giving it a try here with Uraiah. Sebastion and Ciel will appear much more after this chapter. Oh, and Grell, because I just love Grell. Hehehe.

Reviews are always awesome.

Me: *visits Undertaker*

Undertaker: May I fit you... for a coffin?

Me: Sure. *smiles enthusiastically and climbs into nearest coffin* I'm 5'7.

Undertaker: O.O