As a small child, Kuran Yuuki had wanted for little. All she’d ever desired was the sunlight, the air of the outside – even the sight of the moon, full and round and glowing would have appeased her child’s heart.
How ironic that it wasn’t until she was no longer Kuran Yuuki that she was able to experience those things. And how ironic, she mused, that when she finally had the thing that Cross Yuuki had thought she wanted more than anything else, she had to give up those things that she had taken for granted for ten years, never realizing how much her much younger self would have given for them.
Her year of darkness, preceded as it was by ten of light, was particularly hard on her when Kaname was not around. When he was, it was easy for her to remember her life as Kuran Yuuki, to remember the joy she felt at being in the arms of her brother, to remember the heavenly taste of his blood and the feel of his heartbeat against her ear. Cross Yuuki would have given anything for those days, she knew. It was all she had wanted.
But Kuran Yuuki was no longer satisfied by the darkness. When Kaname was not around, she found herself savoring the words her enemy had spoken to her, rolling the threat on her tongue as though a rare vintage – or perhaps the rich taste of Kaname’s blood, she thought with a rare humor. Zero would not give up, he would not rest until all of the Purebloods were eliminated, and she still lived. Surely, Zero, who had never failed her in anything, great or small, for the four years they’d spent together, would keep his word. He would not die, would not allow the shards of his humanity to slip into a Class E until she was dead. So long as she lived, please, by all that is or ever was holy, let him live.
Zero was all that she equated those ten years of sunshine with. Silver hair, silver eyes, like the sun’s relfection on the ocean in the summer, so bright that it nearly hurt her eyes to look at it, but so entrancing that she couldn’t look away. If Cross Yuuki had only wanted to be near Kaname, then Kuran Yuuki wanted nothing more than to recapture her years with Zero.
Fickle, fickle female! She scolded herself. Kaname-sempai had risked so much to keep her alive, and all for love of her, and this was how she repaid him! By thinking of another, one who’d sworn to kill them both, when he wasn’t around. She shook her head ruefully as she realized that even in her thoughts, she was still addressing her lover as Kaname-sempai. For perhaps six years she had lived as his younger sibling, and then for ten she had been his distant satellite, circling around him, praying to get ever closer to the handsome, older man that she viewed as her savior.
She would save Zero, she had decided as a girl, as Kaname had saved her. And she realized now that she had. She had been the figure that rose from the mists of his despair and gave him a reason to continue on. And she’d betrayed him by her very existence. Better that she had left him alone, left him to suffer as he’d so obviously wanted to. Better that she hadn’t tried so hard to bring sunshine into his life, only to take it away the moment her memory returned.
Would he remember that threat, she wondered in the silence of her mind. Would he remember that he’d sworn to kill her – sworn not to die himself until she was dead first? Where was he, her dear Zero? How did he stave off the dangers of Class E without the blood of someone Pure? Had he staved it off, or was it already done? Was he gone?
She daren’t ask. She knew, now, why Kaname had so disliked Zero, especially as she finally realized what it was that he’d felt for her. She knew, now, why Kaname had allowed Zero to live at all when it was obvious that his jealousy hadn’t wanted him to suffer the other man’s presence. To utter Zero’s name in this house would be akin to committing a sin. She would never know for sure if her guardian had fallen to Class E until the day he caught her. If that never happened, she would never know. And given the way she’d been forced to live, yet again, it seemed likely.
She would live for centuries, a Pureblood princess, revered by everyone she came in contact with, perhaps even longer, without knowledge of Zero. She had turned her back on him, determined to keep him alive, no matter the cost, with only the promise of his threat in her ears. As long as she lived, he would live, because he wouldn’t give up until she was dead – until they all were. The hot tears coursed down her cheeks, scalding her as the enormity of what she’d done bore down upon her.
Away from Kaname’s presence, she finally allowed herself the luxury of contemplation. The duality of Zero’s threat warred with the duality inside of her. For seven years of her short life, she had been Kuran Yuuki, but for ten she had been Cross Yuuki. As much as she had loved Kaname without knowing who he was, a bitter part of her, the part that tasted the tears on her cheeks and realized that they were the same flavor as the kiss Zero had given her at their last meeting – that part of her wondered if her feelings for Kaname during those ten years were just Kuran Yuuki trying to break through.
Just who was she, anyway? Which one of them was in control? There were two persons inside her body, she had been acutely aware of this since the day that her memories had returned. Until now, she had been content to let the vampire take the lead. It was the vampire’s body, after all – it had been all along. But in her heart, she knew that it wasn’t – not anymore. The vampire might be a part of her, but she was nothing more than Cross Yuuki. She might be the Pureblood Princess inside, but that wasn’t all she was, and she resented being made to leave the rest of it behind.
Kaname could have removed the fog from her memories years before, woken her to herself before the lie became the dominant personality inside of her. He should have seen what was happening and forced the issue, pushed it aside before it overwhelmed her.
The threat – the promise – that Zero made to her rang in her ears as her two sides warred with one another. Before she realized she’d made up her mind, she was standing outside in the snow, facing off with a pair of silver eyes, eyes so bright that they hurt to look at.
“Yuuki?” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
“Zero?” she said quietly, staring at the figure as though afraid it would disappear if she blinked.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I want you to kill me, Zero.” Her voice did not change. “If you kill me, then I won’t have to lie awake any more, worrying that you’re already dead. If I’m dead, then you won’t have to chase me anymore and you can finally rest. If I’m dead perhaps they’ll both shut up and I won’t lie awake, praying that your threat was really a promise, and I’ll stop resenting that both of you want me to give up half of myself in order to be what you want, and I can finally just sleep.”
“I won’t kill you, Yuuki, not this way,” he muttered. “You’re supposed to make me chase you, dammit! If I’m chasing you, then I know you’re still out there, somewhere – that Cross Yuuki hasn’t been completely swallowed by the vampire and that she still cares if I live or not.”
Yuuki blinked, pushing the scalding tears from her eyes. In the instant that he was blocked by her lashes, he vanished and she found herself sitting on her bed, having never left. A chill along her spine alerted her that she wasn’t alone, and she turned slowly to find Kaname staring at her, a curious expression on his face.
~~~
Zero awoke from the most disturbing dream he could recall having since he became a vampire in a cold sweat. Cross was staring at him, obviously having been in the room for quite some time, the most peculiar expression on his face.
“What!” he demanded, allowing his temper to release itself onto the nearest target.
“Does she do that often?” the older man asked slowly. “Visit you in your dreams?” His eyes widened for a moment before he shook his head no.
“This is the first that I know of,” he admitted.
“It must have been important, then.” The words were nonchalant, as though the speaker didn’t really have any interest in the contents of the dream, but the gleam in his eye belied the too casual speech.
“She wants me to kill her – Yuuki does,” he muttered. “She wants me to kill her.”
“She is as conflicted as you are, then?” the other asked and Zero nodded absently. He failed to notice the expression on the former Chairman’s face, failed to notice the way his eyes lit in a curious manner – almost as though he was a very large cat, staring at a canary it very much would like to eat and plotting out its demise.
