5.

Ruby Roux was always going to be on board with darkness and there was never anything that her brother could ever do to ensure any kind of alternate outcome, even if he could had known from the day she was born, of what would be in store for either his sister or for himself, there would have been nothing he could have done to alter who she would ultimately be, still, no matter what, she is still his sister.

Yeah, life was difficult ever since his mother became pregnant with Ruby but in the early years of looking out for his sister David had no reason to believe that all what went on was nothing more than a mere rotten run of luck.

There is nothing mere about your mother becoming so ill almost from the exact moment she became pregnant for a second time to the point where she needed constant care. There is nothing mere about your father being involved in a freak terminal accident only forty-eight hours prior to mother going prematurely into labour.

There is nothing mere about losing your mother as you gain a sibling, a sister of course, and there is nothing mere about being thrown around along with your sister from relatives to relatives for four years plus, relying on their charity rather than care so that your existence and the existence of your young sibling continues.

If all of the above isn't tough enough as is then there is also nothing mere about becoming a guardian to your four-year-old sibling and moving into an apartment of your own while you are not all so far away from your nineteenth birthday. And to think that at this point you are only really at the beginning of one heck of a journey.

Add onto that a moment with which you do not understand. You do not know if it were a dream or something else entirely. If it were a dream than it was surly threading into nightmare territory for your dead father comes to you in the early hours of the night. He steps out of the shadows but before you can even begin to get any answers he is gone back into those shadows and back to wherever he came from, and this occurs before you can attain a home you can call yours.

Not long into your stay in your new home it happens again. David Roux, for the second time since his father's accident, sees his dead dad and once again it wakes him from sleep.

For David, the impending years moved at a snail's pace, each year becoming more difficult than the last, and then a Ball comes through means of an invite for Ruby with a request for the attendance of her brother. At eighteen, and as if she didn't already know, a revelation comes. Indeed, there would be nothing new in this revelation as far as Ruby was concerned but for David, ensuring that nothing like this event would pass him by, the revelation was beyond the realm of nightmare.

It is not right, it can't be. Yeah, Ruby has been horrible and has been difficult to be around over the years to put it mildly, evil had always seemed to be in her blood but darkness too? No, she cannot be offspring of evil, but she is. And if David is to move forwards, he must choose a road to take. He can stand at his sister's side if he chooses, she is his sister after all, or he can face her and do all he can to ensure that Darkness does not just rule the day but not rule the future either.

***

If only David could have known the full relevance of a late Friday afternoon stroll back from school to an aunt and uncle's house, then the following eighteen years may have at least been a little more endurable or at least it may have held a little more understanding and perhaps a little more ... hope.

At a time only a few short months after having become both a brother and an orphan David did take his time returning to a place he could not and could never think of as home, he came close to an alleyway. He was lost in a moment of thought while slightly registering some emotion out loud and not being aware of exactly what he was doing, Dave, for a moment, thought he heard a brief cry, a cry which sounded like it was that of a child or of an infant perhaps.

The cry had been so brief, and David had been so lost in himself that he allowed the thought to pass after a couple of seconds. It couldn't have been a real cry; his daydreaming mind must have created something that is not there at all. He would hardly get to move on all so far when he would hear a brief cry for a second time and this time, he was positive that he really did hear what he thought he had heard.

He searched all along that alleyway as quickly as he could and as cautiously as he could. There was nothing at first, and nothing as the seconds passed that seemed to be out of the ordinary but then it was there, in between two full black plastic bags of rubbish, a blanket with just enough room between the two plastic bags to contain a child, an infant, a brand-new baby girl.

How odd, that at the instant he lifted the child, blanket wrapped and all, a light shone down from the sky as if a spotlight had been turned on and had purposely been directed at the child. How odd too that in all the time the child was with David before aid came that there was not one single further cry out of the infant. It was as if the previous two brief cries were released so that David could be the one to find a little parcel of life.

The child, this little girl, was indeed brand new, possibly being no more than one week old and a full three months or so younger that his own sister. David had called out for aid and it had come quickly, and the only information subsequently given to David about this little girl was that she too was an orphan. He was told that she would be well taken care of and that there would be no need for him to worry, so how odd it would be that at a Ball almost eighteen years later that Dave would feel a comfort fill him when he would catch sight of a blonde-haired girl.

Yeah, this blonde haired girl at the Ball David was invited to accompany his sister to, David could feel an instant connection with her and the reason why this would be so came clear when during a moment of friendly chat this girl told David that she, just like him, was an orphan, is an orphan and that she had been found in an alleyway when she was just a few days old only that at the time of discovery she was not actually an orphan at all despite what had been told.

Indeed, information at the time David was first given it was ... wrong. It would come to be true one day and it too would be true long before the occurrence of a Ball as the infant he found had parents, living parents. Her birth occurred under mysterious circumstances, circumstances which brought about her separation from them.

By the time a Ball came round almost eighteen years later, the infant now coming on to be a young adult, had lost both her biological parents. Like the nine young ladies, if any could be called a lady, are daughters of Darkness, she who had been found by David Roux is a daughter of Light.