Ch. 1 So it begins

"Hey mom! What about this?" The fourteen year old girl held up a black shirt that held captive an image from Lord of the Rings. It had Pippin and Merry with the Ent and it held her favorite quote: "The closer we are to danger….The farther we are from harm."

"Why on EARTH would I want that shirt Tyler? I don't understand it and it makes absolutely NO sense to me." Her mother shot an amused glare at her daughter.

"And I don't understand why you would choose to name me that! It's a guy's name and it doesn't make any sense to me as to why you chose that name for me." Tyler retorted. Since the age of five Tyler had hated her name. She decided that all girls should have girl names and all the boys should just keep their names to themselves. If she had had her choice of what to be named she would have chosen Natallia. At least that name would never be mistaken as belonging to a boy.

"Come…." Her mother said sadly, disrupting Tyler's aimless thoughts. "Your father—"

"He is NOT my father!" Tyler interrupted, almost shouting. "Don't you DARE ever call him that." She added bitterly.

"Fine….BRIAN will be angry if we are late with his dinner." She said distantly, rubbing her wrist where Brian had grabbed her that morning. As Tyler tenderly grabbed her mother's arm and led her to a cab, she cursed her self for not having been awake. She could usually prevent her mother from being harmed by taking it upon herself. But every now and again, she failed. As they waited to get home, fear only mounted in Tyler's worn heart.

"NO! GET OFF OF HER! I WANTED HER TO GET A SHIRT! IT'S MY FAULT! DO NOT HURT HER FOR WHAT IS NOT HER DOING!" Tyler screamed at Brian as he tackled her frightened mother.

As soon as Tyler and her mother had reached the house they met Brian, who was at the bottom of the stairs, his fiery glare holding the door as if it would melt at any moment and reveal his two punching bags with his dinner.

At the second the mahogany door closed, Tyler wished it would reopen. Brian was on them in a second and slapped her mother to the ground, yelling about her being late. Her mother had retorted and begged that they were only two minutes late. But this was a horrible mistake. In an instant Brian was on top of her and slapping and yelling even more than he normally did. At the sound of Tyler's outrageous outburst, Brian turned on her, his brown eyes full of an animal rage. Tyler attempted to back up, but she was already trapped between Brian and the door. He slapped her across the cheek, leaving a gash from his long, unkempt fingernails. Tyler gritted her teeth at the pain. As unshed tears built up and blurred her vision, her eyes turned from a crystal blue to a deep purple with her mood. As she looked up from the ground she saw her thin, fragile mother. Her shoulder length burgundy hair was stringy and wet with a little bit of blood from her fall. Her bony, muscle-less body was battered and bruised. Her Amber colored eyes glistened with the tears that continuously leaked onto her raw, swollen cheeks. Eyes full of regret, fear, and sadness. 'No…I can't cry…..Mother….I have to be strong for her….she can't know how much this hurts…..' With that thought still present in her pounding head, she looked up defiantly into Brian's hateful eyes. This earned her a hard knee connecting with her abdomen as one fist uppercut her in the lip, slightly contacting with her nose, and another fist bunched the back of her silky raven hair, forcing her to look back up at him. "You're so good at fighting huh? You have the highest belt in all the martial arts classes and you are the best swordfighter in the country and an archer….yet you do not fight me…..hmmm….why is that? Is that because you simply cannot???" Brian taunted. When he saw the defiance still plastered on Tyler's unblemished face he picked her up roughly and threw her into the corner of the wall closest to her mother. After a little bit of coughing she was back on her feet, though shaky. Brian threw his head back and laughed maniacally, like all of the villains on T.V. Tyler took this moment to grab her mother and force her up the stairs. Just as she was about to reach the landing Tyler felt a rough, blistered hand squeeze her ankle, cutting off the circulation. She also felt jagged fingernails digging into her tender skin. In that moment she vaguely felt like Achilles, her ankle being her weak spot. Before she had long to dwell on this, she felt her mother yank her the rest of the way up the stairs, causing fingernails to scrape off most of the flesh on her bloody ankle. The next scene happened so fast that it was all a blur and she was never fully aware of what happened. She remembered being shoved into the nearest door, which happened to be a closet, before the door closed fully, the slowest moment of her life passed. She saw her mother, Brian coming up behind her reaching for the hand gun on the table. She saw her mother's eyes. They were the same amber that they had always been, but there was something different about them, about the emotion that they held. An emotion she had never seen cross her mother's eyes before. There was hatred. The hatred of letting this man hurt her only child, the only thing she loved, and her not doing anything about it. Hatred for the fact that her child had protected her and taken care of her more that she had cared for her daughter. Well no it was her turn. She would protect her daughter no matter what.

Tyler pounded helplessly on the hollow sounding door screaming with all her might. "MOTHER!!! NO!!!!!!!" But, she quickly started loosing air and realized that her ribs, which were cracked and bleeding, were slowly cutting off her air supply, poking into her lungs. As she fell she braced herself for impact on the hard red wood floor. But it never came. The last thing she recalled was being consumed by darkness as a blood curdling scream was heard from the other side of the door.