Deeper than Love
By EtOhPower
Notes at the end
There is love, and it is a deep thing
but there are deeper things than love.
-D.H. Lawrence
Zero sleeps fitfully these days. Once he leaves the Academy, he commits himself to the circadian cycle of Hunters: the nocturnal hunts, and the sleepless sunrises that follow them. It isn't safe to sleep too much, too deeply, because that is a privilege reserved for those who live in the sunlight. They are the first charge and the last defense against the leeches, and if that means the shadows pile up under their eyes, well, it's not like they'll live long enough to get wrinkles. It's not like Zero could ever get them.
He drags himself home that morning. There's a fine grey mist in the air. It's too ephemeral to be fog, and too thick to ignore, and where it touches him, he imagines that it clings, fighting his movement into his Spartan apartment. There's a threadbare cot, a cracked sink, and a mirror long since smashed. Home.
Zero-kun! This place is so sad! Here, take this calendar, it'll brighten the place up—it's a twelve month photo collection of the most beautiful, amazing, kind angel, -
The bare concrete walls suck the warmth from the air, sobering him, and he gropes along the cold stone to find the light switch.
Not that you need to do that. Seriously Zero, you're the worst vampire I've ever met.
He shuts his eyes, throws a pillow over his head and wills the voice of the ghosts away. He dreams in words, disembodied voices and comments and screams that no longer have faces. He has forgotten most of the past 10 years and he remembers too much.
"What about Kiryuu?"
"That's not an option. You know that Kuran is a trigger for him."
"We can't keep coddling him forever. He's not a little kid. He's stronger than you think."
"It's not that I don't have faith in him, it's just that I never wanted this for him."
"None of us did."
Zero wakes at precisely 6pm. The sun has just begun to set, and in the dying light, he makes out the broken Hello Kitty clock, a gift from…someone else who he has forgotten. It sets his teeth on edge, and yet he can't bring himself to take it down. He tears his eyes away and instead goes over to the sink, splashing some cold water on his face. He shattered the mirror in a fight with yet another one of the not-ghosts. He can't remember it beyond the impression of heat and crimson eyes. The murky distorted face he sees staring back from the cracked glass is startling, haunted eyes and thin, colorless lips. He feels like he is losing his mind, as if all that remains of Zero Kiryuu is a pair of disembodied eyes and funhouse mirror smiles. It's a depressingly appealing thought.
Instead, he reaches for a worn blue cloth book, turning to a crisp new pages and writes, "Bathroom mirror broken in fight. Red eyed anon. Heat, anger." Zero's memories exist in the crisp handwriting, bounded in a 5" by 8" notebook. He sets it down gently, resisting the urge to fling it at a ghostly smirk in the corner of his room. It's another thing to write down, but he is tired. He is 21, immortal, and too tired to do anything other than step into his rusty shower.
The rush of cold water cools his head and by the time he dresses himself, he is in a passably decent mood. He fills up a glass of tap water, and toasts a piece bread before he downs his blood tablets. The dry toast glues them to the roof of his mouth and he briefly chokes at the sharp tang of iron that fills his senses. The blood rushes to his head, and he sees a red tinge in the periphery of his vision. It convinces him to ignore the voice of the Hunter Association doctor, and down the rest of the tablet box. He can always sneak some more from the Academy if he needs. He shudders briefly as the pills go down, and then he pulls on his coat and heads out the door.
Zero does not notice when the steel door fails to click shut behind him.
"What the hell is this?" Zero can barely bite back the urge to slam Chairman Cross against the wall. He's not sure where this familiarity comes from, but he's always had trouble respecting the Chairman. It's a mystery why no one seems to be bothered by his rudeness towards the Association President.
"What do you mean, Zero-kun?" Damn the man gets his hackles up. Zero knows, with a sudden certainty, that the stupid clock in his apartment is the President's doing.
"I mean this joke of a job. Protecting a pureblood? Since when did we care if a bloodsucker died?" Zero is seething, has been since he received a message that there was a special job for him.
"Kaname Kuran is a special case. He keeps the other vampires in line since the Council died. We need him alive." Cross's voice takes on an edge. The man is normally so mild that it's easy to forget that he was once a hunter that was known as the vampire without fangs. Zero, and the small group clustered outside the door snap to attention, and it sinks into Zero that this job is not a request.
"Fine." He snatches the job folder off the desk and turns on his heel, slamming the door behind him. He's not sure what the emotion strangling him is, so he settles for anger. It's easier than untangling the mess of fear and exhilaration that he feels at the moment. He's full of anticipation at meeting a vampire that he's never met before (but who he understands like the other half of himself). He feels more like himself than he has since the dream-voices began, but this awareness of the name Kuran doesn't belong in the book. Unlike the other myriad of drifting threads of memory, Zero instinctively understands that the pureblood isn't going to fade away in the morning light.
"Kiryuu is coming here to protect us." Kaname remarks, while running his fingers through Yuuki's hair. She's lying in his lap, and at the name, he feels her tense, and then forcibly relax the muscles in her body. He still remembers when this studied stillness was as foreign to Yuuki as the taste of blood and regret.
"He's the best they have." Yuuki's voice comes out neutral and unaffected, and Kaname's hand stills.
"Perhaps." Kiryuu is the best in centuries, was the best even before Shizuka turned him and Kuran blood muddled his destiny. "But that doesn't make him the best for this job. He no longer has a reason to protect us, after all." It's a gentle rebuke, the most that he can spare for Yuuki.
"I know." Her voice trembles a bit at the condemnation, and Kaname feels a brief flash of satisfaction at the collapse of Yuuki's cold façade. "I had to."
"Can you face him?" He's worried about his gentle Yuuki, the one who ripped her heart in half and burned it to ashes. She doesn't trust him anymore, and he's not sure if it's for the best, or if he's just selfish.
"It would be rude not to greet our protector, wouldn't it?" Yuuki gets up, fluid and graceful with the advantage of her vampiric blood. She brushes a chaste kiss on Kaname's cheek, and then she leaves the room with a meaningful look at Kaname.
Kiryuu might have been the one to lose his memory, Kaname mused, but I'm the one who doesn't know how things ended up like this. Still, he picks himself up and follows Yuuki into their bedroom.
Yuuki is waiting for him in the dark, facing the only window in the entire mansion. The moonlight wraps around her silhouette, and she is so beautiful that Kaname's heart hurts. His chest is tight with joy that Yuuki is his, finally his, after all these years. He loves her, even without her laughter and her smiles, even now when she closes her eyes and looks away as he embraces her from behind.
They make love like children clinging to each other, afraid of the monster in the dark. Kaname pulls Yuuki against his chest as they watch the sunrise and wait for the arrival of the Hunter.
Whew, done! This story takes place in a divergent Chapter 88, so Spoilers abound, especially since I'll try to wrap the story around what happens in canon. Yes, it is Kaname/Zero. Yes, it'll take a while to get there. I'll update one a week unless something goes wrong. Other than that, I still don't have a beta, so I'd love feedback.