Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note or any of the quotes I use at the start of a drabble. You don't sue, I don't sic my flying monkeys on you.
A/N: TYVM to mangaluver34, Featherz, Tails-Coyote-Carnivore and Rizera for reviewing, Possessed4evr for Alerting, Sonny101 for Favoriting and Alerting, and Grace Raven for reviewing, Alerting and Favoriting! Thanks so much!!
Once more, I am going to twist the laws of canon until they break.
Intro.3: River
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"There used to be a real me, but I had it surgically removed." –Peter Sellers
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He is small even for his age, Nate River, but three times as smart as any other child around.
His mother calls him precious. His father calls him strange. They both watch their tiny blond son out of the corners of their eyes, silently wondering what new oddity is going to make itself known. Nate feels their gazes and ignores them.
He goes to preschool and plays, bored, with handheld puzzles. His teachers have given up on trying to stump him and now prefer to pretend he does not exist.
His mother comes to pick him up from school, always. It's routine. It's safe. It's constant.
One day she does not come.
The boy waits outside, his face remaining colorless even while the wind whips it, his light hair collecting quickly melted flakes of snow. The teachers lock up and go home without a backwards glance at the ghostly child that scares them so.
Eventually the scarce sunlight begins to fade into darkness, and young Nate decides to take matters into his own pale hands and walk home alone. It isn't far.
He reaches his house in a matter of minutes, and upon touching the cold metal of the door handle knows that something is off.
The door is locked. The door is never locked. His father only locks it when he is afraid of someone or something outside; it's an unusual quirk.
Fear and caution battle curiosity. Curiosity prevails after his adept mind calmly points out a lack of other options. It is the middle of winter and daylight is fast vanishing.
He goes around to the back door (which is never locked, period) and slips through.
The lights are all off.
The creak of the old wooden floor, so familiar, sounds eerie to him. Every sense is heightened, on alert-even an un-prodigious child could have sensed the wrong-ness in the atmosphere.
Or smelled the blood. Any dolt could have smelled the blood.
The next minute or so are the seconds forgotten (best forgotten) and buried. Seconds in which a child's hair turns white as the shock of seeing his parents dead and dismembered begins to settle like a bad smell-like the smell of this blood that's everywhere, like a red river, imprinting itself permanently in his brilliant, terrified mind.
Those are the seconds, the heartbeats, the moments in which the course of a future is altered, and the child turns and screams. Screams for the first and last time in his life. Screams as he comes face to face with a demon with black hair and eyes that shine with forbidden knowledge. A demon who has no interest in him, for whatever reason.
A demon who smiles a wide and mad smile, and mutters a string of numbers under his breath while fixing his gaze on a spot directly above the boy's head. A demon who says "Hello, Nate" in a friendly voice and vanishes without looking him in the eye.
The snow falls, a neighbor eventually gets curious, and before Nate knows it he is being taken to an orphanage.
Time flies, memories are burned, and Nate doesn't cry.
4Fin
A/N: Don't ask, because my guess is as good as yours.