Sarah ended up ignoring the papers while she ate.
She took them into the study to review them.
Leaving the pages in their original order, she worked through them, struggling through sheets strewn with Undertaker's nearly indecipherable writing. With every word it seemed as though the pit of confusion in her chest became darker and deeper.
The stack of information continued to occupy her throughout the afternoon, and when Sebastian entered with the tea tray she had propped her head up on her arm, grey brows drawn together in extreme thoughtfulness, the last two unread pages held forgotten in her fingers.
"Any luck, my lady?" the butler asked, setting down the tray.
The sapphire eyes slowly focused on him. "Yes," his mistress answered mysteriously.
Calmly, Sebastian waited for the elaboration. Noon sun glinted off the golden trinkets still dangling off of the girl's pale neck as she sat up.
"Sebastian, what is the Immortality Association?" Instead of an explanation, a question was asked. It was answered, despite the butler not understanding how this could tie into the rouge Reaper's notes.
"The name of the group responsible for the rituals that used you and your father to summon demons."
The gray head nodded, the fact affirmed. "It seems Undertaker has a bone to pick with them."
From the spread of paper on the desk Sarah plucked out a few of the handwritten pages and slid them towards the butler. His the red brown eyes that were his facade of humanity widened as he read through them, his mistress narrating a condensed version.
"The Immortality Association was not always aware of demons, but all humans know of death. And who else would grant eternal life but death? So at first the Association's target was Grim Reapers. Their ritual for conjuring Death itself was simple; muster as many people as they could, and kill them all." Sarah handed another few of the scrawled papers to her butler.
"Their plot was the Peterloo Massacre, 1868. The common people were protesting their government, and the cavalry was sent out into the crowd. Their sabers took 400 lives. This is when a group of Reapers appeared, our Undertaker, a veteran even then, among them.
"Normally they go unnoticed doing their duty, but the Association had dispersed their men through the crowd, and they managed to capture two of Undertaker's weaker colleagues in the madness. He went after them, but after being forbidden to do so from the Reaper Dispatch.
"Undertaker located the place where his fellows were being held after days of searching, and interrupted a torture session being executed on Bill Humphrey, whom he was superior to, but was his best friend. Bill, not knowing the secret of immortality, can say nothing to stop his captors. Still having a hold on sanity, Undertaker wrings out the human's tale.
"Furious, he attacks, killing five of the six Immortality Association members present while Bill screams at him to stop, as this is a severe violation of the rules Reapers are to abide by. The last human left is the crazed torturer of Bill, high on bloodshed. Undertaker swings a crazy arc at his neck with his scythe, but he dodges the blow. However, Bill, immobile, cannot. Unintentionally Undertaker beheads his friend with his back swing. His defense sloppy with grief and guilt, the human is able to crack his torturing whip across Undertaker's face, shattering his glasses and scarring him. After taking several more blows Undertaker kills the man, sending his blade through his heart. He finds Bill's severed head by the unnoticed corpse of the other captured Reaper."
The two beings are awash in this story, but both take the information that a Grim Reaper can indeed be killed happily.
More pages are pushed to the front of the desk, the writing on these even sloppier.
"He returns to the Dispatch, and his talk of going after the Association is rejected immediately. His dissolving sanity results in him falling down the ranks and being put on probation many, many times. Eventually it seems as though his dismissal is inevitable, but before that he decides to retire. Just the day after he murders several more members of the Association."
"Revenge." Sebastian contributes, the papers held in his gloved hands ignored.
The girl nods. "He dedicates himself to hunting down the Association, and discovers that they had pulled perhaps a hint to immortality from Bill; demons, their new pursuit. Undertaker believes to succeed in wiping them out before they could begin experimentation on this lead. His goal attained, he adopts the job and title of Undertaker, fostering an obsession with the human corpse. But the Association returns, unknown to Undertaker until 1893, when he wipes out the Aurora Society, a new branch of the Association." Sarah pulls a list from a separate pile on her desk.
"If you check the death list for the Campania disaster, every one of the Aurora members perished. Of how he assured that they all would die is not detailed. After that he abandoned his practice and again started tracking and eliminating Association members." The girl's mouth drew up into a humourless smirk.
"Unknowingly, both father and Undertaker were working on the same project. Both contributed to the second extinction of the Association, and in Undertaker's notes he gives no sign of suspecting someone else to be slaughtering members just as he is. Now the Association has again risen, and he has decided to find the leader who continues to revive this group."
The official papers stamped with royal seals were now at the center of Sarah's desk, and Sebastian drew the conclusion quickly, eyes widening. The girl affirmed the unsaid statement.
"Yes. Undertaker believes the Queen to be the leader of the Immortality Association. The answer to why he thinks this is available only within his crazed mind, it seems."
The papers were handed back.
"What do you suppose we do?"
Sarah added the last two pages to the stack of Undertaker's notes.
"Infiltrate the Queen's palace and investigate her."
"The Guard Dog would turn against it's master?" Sebastian questioned. Sarah was not fazed.
"My purpose for selling my soul was not to serve the Queen. I feel no loyalty to her, nor this country. I live for eliminating evil, so not another soul will have to wander down this path."
So alike, yet their motives are so different, the demon thought, and he knelt, hand over that beating thing called a heart.
"Yes my lady."
I never thought I could actually hate paper, Sarah thought as she flipped through Funtom paperwork. Some of it she still didn't quite understand, and had to push those pages away for later. She had been sitting at this desk since lunch, and it was almost dinner.
The door banged against the wall, pushed too hard, and Sarah looked up angrily, ready to scold whichever servant was bashing the door, but in the doorway stood Victor.
She immediately softened her expression, but still reprimanded him.
"Be careful with the doors Victor. That's not good for them."
The boy snubbed the toe of his shoe on the floor, ashamed. "Sorry."
Sarah pushed back from the desk and went to crouch by her blonde brother. "It's okay. What did you want to see me for?"
Victor smiled, half shy and half proud, and took his hands from behind his back. Twined around them was a silken scarf, it's likely imported fabric glimmering deep green. Reaching up, he draped it over his sister's neck. She stroked it, struck.
"What's this for, Victor?" He again pressed his toes into the floor, nervous.
"I just wanted to make you happy..." At those words the boy's sister smiled and crushed him to her.
"You make me happy all the time Victor," she told him, and he smiled and tugged on Sarah's short locks, something he often did since they had been cut.
"Where'd you get this?" She asked, releasing him.
"The cellar!" He said, happy that his gift was appreciated so much. A grey brow raised.
"Victor, you shouldn't go down there. There's rats and it's damp, you might catch a cold." Her brother wasn't concerned.
"It was okay, Sebastian went with me!" Both brows went up this time.
"Did he now?"
"Yeah! I said that I wanted to do something nice for you, so he took me to the cellar and opened this trunk for me, and I picked out the scarf and he said that you'd like that very much."
"Really?"
"Yeah!"
Calming a bit, Victor put his fingertips against the silk. "He said it was Mama's scarf."
Sarah's hands settled on the scarf too, the new meaning of it making her want to touch it.
The two siblings were frozen like that for several moments, both reaching for a person that was no longer there, that they hadn't known.
Victor was pulled into an embrace again. "I like it very very much Victor," Sarah whispered to him. "Thank you."
She could practically feel her brother's grin against her shoulder. The grey haired girl let go, ruffled the blonde head.
"Go wash. I'm sure we'll be called to dinner soon."
The little boy darted from the room, brain now swimming with the prospect of food, leaving his sister in the doorway with silken memories around her neck.
Warm food sitting comfortably in her stomach, Sarah's mind grew fuzzy, and she gave up on the black words that swam before her tired eyes.
Unwilling to call a servant, she pulled her nightclothes on herself, and climbed into bed, warm, sweet bed.
The nightmare seemed to start the instant she fell into sleep.
It was dark, and this was wrong. The dream world was not black, that color only belonged behind her eyelids.
Fine, the darkness seemed to say. And it sent a giant blue eye out from itself, and Sarah was relieved. That was her father's eye, come to break the darkness.
But the eye did not intent comfort. It grew bigger, closer, and an accompanying patch appeared with it. Both loomed over her, stared down at her.
That blue eye, believed her savior, lost it's living sheen, became dead, it's whites rotting brown, and it's brilliant iris crumbling black. The eyepatch flipped up, but the blue eye's pair was not to be seen.
Instead a red eye hovered there, it's the catty slit set in the middle viewing her. Looking at her. It beamed terror at her, and the darkness laughed.
See! it screamed. Do you see?!
See what? She cried back, All I see is that stupid eye!
See! the dark said again. See that I'm just darkness! Darkness is not evil! What lurks in it is.
And a giant mouth formed beneath the eyes, a mouth lined with sharp teeth.
It ate her.
Sarah jerked awake, her forehead wet with sweat and her throat hot and dry like she had swallowed coals. She looked around the room.
It was dark.
The hot covers were pushed off and she went to light a candle, but halted, her feet dangling from the bed brushing the cool floor.
Darkness is not evil.
I'm not afraid of darkness, she told herself. I never have been.
Then what are you afraid of?
That big red eye.
Sarah shook herself. No I'm not. I fear nothing.
Everyone has fears.
Not me. I fear nothing.
She drank some water from the pitcher on her nightstand, washing the coals down into her stomach, swallowing fear.
She walked the room, spiteing darkness.
The green scarf seemed to leap from the black, and she snatched it. Returned to bed.
The girl watched the darkness, waited.
It did nothing.
She laid back. Watched.
Nothing.
The scarf's smell wafted up to her. It smelled like the cellar. She pretended it was her mother's scent, a scent she couldn't quite remember.
Her eyes drifted closed as she tried to recall.
Her mother held her in her lap, tying a bow into her hair, then letting her climb up on a stool behind her and do the bouncing blond strands into a style.
Her mom pushing her out from behind her pink skirts to greet two brown skinned men. The short one gave her a flower.
Her mama making a game out of picking the toys strewn about the floor, singing a little song with her.
Her mommy setting Sarah's hand over her stomach, the end of a green scarf dangling down from her neck and onto her round belly.
The memories were shuffled and brief, but Sarah did not mind. It was her mother, her mama, her mommy.
Her mother, beautiful and pure, would protect her.
She smelled like lavender.
A/N: I fudged a some of the information for the Peterloo thing: It really happened, but only 15 were killed and it happened in 1816ish (can't quite remember the date, but that's close.) I changed those bits to make the dates correspond better and so that the amount of people killed was bigger, because 15 doesn't seem very big. 400 hundred was the lower estimate of how many people were killed.
I'm going to start throwing some dreams so we can get a better taste of Sarah's past and we can better see how she... evolved I guess.
I made up Undertaker's past... just so you know. :P
Thank you!: VampireSiren, and MusicIsMyLanguage!
Hope you all enjoyed chapter, um... (remembers how to read roman numerals) twelve! Till next Sunday!