"He proposed to me!" said Yuuki happily as she pranced around the room, showing off her engagement ring to Zero and Kaname.
After the rejection from Yuuki, Kaname had decided to leave campus and helped to run it from the outside. After the war with Rido, it was much easier to leave; the dead bodies of Hanabusa, Takuma, and other night class members had still haunted him to this day. Zero had left before him, not being able to take the deaths of his Sensei Yagari or Cross easily. And after a few months he was the best hunter of the Association. So unsurprisingly he was handed the title of President of the Hunter Association, after the other had passed. Ten years later and they were all in Yuuki's living room like a reunion. She was older now, her human body growing older by the day as Kaname and Zero's vampire body stayed the same as they were ten years ago. She beamed up at them.
Yuuki would invite them to visit her once in a while, and for some reason she had invited both of them at the same time, now they knew why.
"W-who?" asked Kaname trying not to show how sad he was at the news.
Zero and Yuuki gave him a look. "Ichiru…" answered Zero, seeing the heart break in Kaname's eyes.
"Oh yes, I knew you two had been dating, isn't that a bit fast? I mean marriage!" said Kaname, looking at Zero for his opinion.
"Since my brother is who he is and won't change, and I doubt he ever will, I'm surprised he did finally settle down. Perfect girl though." said Zero, turning to smile back at Yuuki.
"I'm so sorry Zero!" she said her smile faltering. She looked down a minute to look at her ring.
"Hey! It's completely fine," he said scooping her up in a hug. "Not your fault my adopted sibling is better than my biological one."
Kaname watched their exchange quietly and quizzically.
Zero watched from the tall balcony as Yuuki walked up to his brother with arms wrapped around Kaname. She reminded him of a beautiful goddess in her beautiful wedding gown. He knew it must've been hard for Kaname, knowing he had to give up his feelings and then having to give her to someone else. He looked to see his brother watching him, he guessed his brother was checking to see if he came closer. He couldn't understand his brother's hatred towards him. He apologized so many times for all the things that happened between them. Had sent gifts, money, letters, but everything was in vain. It had gotten to the point that his brother had body guards around and a restraining order. Ichiru had became a lawyer, a very good one, and now he had the power and money for those things. He was only allowed to the wedding because Yuuki begged and pleaded, no one knowing that besides him, Yuuki and Ichiru, but he had to keep his distance. The last bit of family left, and he hated Zero.
Zero looked up to realize he had missed so much of the wedding ceremony, that they were through exchanging rings. He turned to find, unsurprisingly, Kaname standing beside him watching the ceremony with his usual mask of indifference, but you could see the turmoil in his eyes.
"Hey," he whispered, not wanting to startle the pureblood. Kaname turned to look at him.
"It'll get better, tell her she was pretty for me." Zero said giving him his best reassuring smile. Kaname gave him a strange look, most likely wondering why he was leaving. Zero slowly walked away hoping and praying that it wasn't the last time that he got to see Yuuki.
Five years later, and he received a call from a whispering Yuuki. She said she had missed him and he told her how he felt the same. It was only a quick call then she had to go before his brother returned. She had promise to call again as soon as she could.
Six months later and she called again and had asked if they could meet. He wasn't sure because of her safety but she had insisted and he had no choice but to agree.
He waited outside of a restaurant that they frequently visited when they were younger. A woman in her early thirties walked up to him smiling with warmth. Her long brown hair wrapped in a bun and her matured body stood in front of him. He stared at her, just now realizing how much time had actually passed. The woman reached out and touched his cheek.
"You look almost exactly the same." said Yuuki.
"...Almost?" asked Zero lifting a brow.
"New piercing?" she said smirking, then she offered her hand to him. Then they both went inside the restaurant.
Once they had begun their meal, Yuuki asked. "How are things in the Association?"
"Boring! Ever since I became head of the Association, and Kuran became king of the Vampire World there isn't much to do but paperwork. And if we're "lucky" there might be a few rough level E's hanging around." he answered.
"I've been thinking…" she said slowly. "Maybe it's time Ichiru, gets his head out of his ass and give you another chance."
"Swearing now?" he smirked.
"Lawyer talk." she smiled back.
Zero dropped his smirk and gave her a serious look. "That would be a great idea, if it wasn't for the fact that my brother is as stubborn as I am." said Zero. "You've been married for almost six years Yuuki, you know as well as I do that Ichiru will never change his mind about me. Seen Kuran lately?"
Yuuki dropped the topic for now. "I haven't seen him since the wedding, we've talked on the phone a few times though. He is a busy man."
Zero and Yuuki met five more times over the next fifteen years. Yuuki was always so determined to bring the Kiryu's back together as a family, but Zero knew it was a false hope. He waited quietly at the bench looking at the Vampire newspaper that had a statement about Ruka and Kain's engagement. Being close to the King of vampires made them popular and susceptible to the paparazzi.
"Yuuki!" He said standing and putting the magazine back in his briefcase. He wrapped his arms around her middle-aged body.
"Hi Zero. Rachel sends her love." She said smiling up at his forever young face.
The inevitable happened, Yuuki and Ichiru had children. She was raised as human because Ichiru wanted to keep her away from Zero. Zero had met the girl only twice but talked to his niece frequently through the phone in secret through Yuuki.
Zero smiled back "Return my love to her." Then he escorted her to their favorite spot in the restaurant.
"Going to the wedding?" asked Yuuki.
"I got invited, yes, will I be going? I don't know." said Zero munching on his salad.
"I think it'll be a good reunion, even though my husband won't be going I accepted the invitation." said Yuuki looking for his reaction.
"O-oh." said Zero pausing in his eating.
"I knew he was the reason you didn't want to go." said Yuuki frowning a moment. "I couldn't get him to agree to go so I'll see you and everyone else there." she finished, smiling.
When Yuuki finished raising her children and made sure their lives were situated, like the good mother she was, she separated from Ichiru. She still loved her husband and couldn't find it in herself to divorce or leave him completely. It was just that her fifty-five year old self couldn't stand not being able to see her friends willingly. She bought her own apartment. She visited her husband often and now she had free will to also see her friends whenever she liked. Her life was great until she got a knock at her door.
"Are you Mrs. Kiryuu?" asked the police officer.
Yuuki gave him a look. "Y-yes."
"We are sorry to inform you that you husband was in a car accident and died last night. We were unable to save him".
Yuuki watched her husband be put in the ground with her twins on her left and Zero and Kaname on her right. Zero held her hand as they both cried in agony as Ichiru's coffin reached the bottom of the hole. It was one of the saddest and yet the only way Zero could ever see his brother again. After the funeral it was hard for him to face Yuuki, he knew he pained her just by looking like his brother. He completely separated himself from her life.
It wasn't until twenty years later that he received a call he didn't want to get. Rachel and Yuuki were in a car accident. Rachel was in a coma and Yuuki was placed in the same hospital. He hadn't seen, talked to, or visited her in such a long time he didn't even know Yuuki had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Kaname paying for it all, who was the one to call and inform him.
Stopping his work at the Association. He quickly made it to the hospital to see his niece and Sister-In-Law. When he arrived Rachel was wired and tubed up to different machines that held her together and Yuuki was quietly sleeping in a bed in another room. From that day on he knew there was no way he could stay away, he promised himself he would come to visit her.
For five years he would come and visit her and they would talk about how his jobs were doing. Then it became harder to see her, Rachel had died, and Yuuki couldn't even remember properly. He came less and less, to the point that he would only come once a week. Then Yuuki started to mistake him for his brother, it hurt so much that he would only come once a month. Every now and again he would visit and other members of the night class would also be there. It was only his luck that she remembered everyone else and thought he was his dead brother.
The nurses call it a good day, which means Kaname only has to restart his conversation with Yuuki once after she spaces out and then looks at Kaname like he hasn't been sitting there talking with her for the past 40 minutes. It pains him to see the woman he loves looking like this. Growing old, while there is nothing he can do to stop it.
It's starting to hurt less, coming to see Yuuki, but Kaname knows it'll still be just as bad every time Yuuki opens her eyes and Kaname realizes she forgot again. That realization is like a slap to the face, every time, and it hasn't been fading.
They're twenty minutes into their restarted conversation when Kaname hears an intake of breath in the doorway. He looks up, expecting to see a nurse bringing Yuuki her meds. Instead there's Zero Kiryuu, white-knuckling a bunch of flowers and staring at them.
Kaname startles, but Yuuki just smiles, says, "Ichiru. What a lovely surprise."
Zero twitches, a small, almost non-existent thing, but then he's smiling the smile Kaname saw back in school. "I see you're busy. I'll drop by later."
"No, no, come and sit with us," Yuuki says, waving Zero towards them. "You're always so busy, Ichiru, I always tell you that you should talk to people more."
Zero looks at Kaname, who shrugs helplessly, and then Zero comes to sit on the side of Yuuki that Kaname isn't already sitting at. "I brought flowers."
"Always trying to butter me up," Yuuki sighs, taking them and touching some of the petals. She twists and puts them on the bedside table next to Kaname, then looks at him, her eyes clouding with confusion.
Kaname opens his mouth to say something, salvage the conversation they were having before Zero walked in, but then Yuuki's face is splitting into a different smile than the ones she has when she forgets Kaname is there and then remembers. That other smiles crumple at the edges where this one glows.
She turns to Zero, reaches for his hand and grips it. "Ichiru, Kaname is back!"
"Yeah, I saw." Zero's smile was strained before, but now it's holding on by its corners. "It's great."
"Isn't it just great," Yuuki says, beaming at the both of them. She pats Zero's hand fondly before letting it go. "How's work been?"
"Good. It's good." said Zero, trying not to frown. "Maria sends her love,"
"Mm." Yuuki's smile goes slanted. "I haven't seen that woman in an age. She was looking distressed the last time we went for lunch, did you ever find out what that was about?"
"Uh, no." said Zero knowing she meant a long time ago.
Yuuki sighs. "Well, give her my love, would you?"
"Of course."
They talk like this for the next few minutes, and Kaname picks up that Yuuki is drawing on the period just after Kain and Ruka's wedding. Which most have been a fond memory of hers, since Yuuki starts talking about the wedding like it was a dream. Although this was after she was diagnosed.
Eventually Yuuki starts getting more and more distant, more confused, and one of the nurses come in to tell them they should come back some other time.
Zero makes a beeline for the door and Kaname follows, catching up when Zero's halfway down the hall.
"You visit her," Kaname says, stopping Zero with a hand on his arm.
Zero hesitates, pockets his hands and avoids Kaname's eyes. "Yeah."
"Do you visit often?" Kaname regrets it as soon as he says it. "Sorry, I-"
"Once a month, when I can."
"Oh." Kaname wets his lips. "Does she always-"
"Think I'm my brother?" Zero laughs, but there's no humour in it. "For the last few years."
"That must be- difficult."
Zero looks at him from over his sunglasses for a moment before saying, "Not as hard as you talking to her, I'm guessing. I wasn't in love with her."
Kaname tries to find something to say to that, but can't. He flounders, scratching the back of his neck, not wanting to leave it like this- he and Zero aren't close, but they're weren't enemies anymore, and he feels like this would butcher the progress they've made if he leaves it like how it is now.
Apparently Zero has the same idea, because something in his face changes. "You heading back to a hotel?"
"Yes."
Zero shifts on the balls of his feet. "I could drive you."
"That would be great."
They drive most of the way back in silence, and it's only when they pull up in front of the Kaname's hotel that Zero says, "I could talk to the front desk in the future before I go to see her. Wouldn't barge in on the two of you again. Sorry about that, by the way." Still not looking Kaname completely in the face.
"It's fine." Kaname swallows, looks up at Marriott Hotel, how it blocks out the sun when it's at this height in the sky. "Actually, I was thinking we could maybe go together while I'm here."
He looks over to see Zero raising his eyebrows.
"Really?"
"Sure, why not?" Kaname says it as casually as he can.
Zero hovers on the edge of speech for a few seconds and then says, "Okay," like he's not entirely sure Kaname isn't going to try to pull one over on him.
"Okay," Kaname nods, and gets out of the car. "Thank you for the ride."
"Anytime," Zero says, and he starts up his car and drives away.
Kaname stares after the car for a few more minutes before he shakes his head and walks inside the hotel.
Kaname goes alone, more often than not, but every few days he suggests it to Zero and Zero tags along, always with flowers, always with a brittle smile.
The conversations can go either way- if Yuuki's mind is in the earlier decades of their shared school time, or pre-Rido, it usually goes quite well, but if it's anywhere past her marriage to Ichiru, she's curt, snippy, often disapproving. Zero takes it all in stride, seems used to it, tells Kaname that Ichiru and Yuuki weren't on the best of terms for the last twenty years of Ichiru's life.
Kaname doesn't ask, mostly because he sees how stiff Zero gets when the subject comes up.
The conversations continue, Zero trying to be as docile as possible, which only riles Yuuki up more. At first Kaname doesn't know what they're arguing about until Yuuki bursts out, "He's your brother, Ichiru, of course he isn't going to live the way you want him to. He isn't some child you can just order around," and Zero goes still and Kaname doesn't know where to look.
Yuuki keeps going, "You keep putting all these expectations on him, impossible expectations when you should be letting him live his life! For god's sake, who bans their brother from seeing him and his wife?! Why do you continue to ignore your brother's pleas when all he wants is to have a relationship with his last remaining family member!"
"I'm- I'm sorry," Zero tries.
"Like hell you are," Yuuki snarls, with determined eyes that Kaname remembers. "He told me you'd get angry if you found out I was meeting him! And oh, don't get me started on that poor boy's face when I offered to tell you about our meetings. You know what he told me? He was so happy to see me, but then when I asked him to visit, everytime he told me he didn't want something to happen that would take me away from him. And that I was his last family member. He said he was fine as long as he could hear about you through me. As long as his brother wasn't dead he would be ok. For pity's sake, Ichiru, give him a goddamn apology for ignoring him, your brother, Zero deserves that much, he's such a sweet boy and you don't seem to see any of that."
Zero closes his eyes. "I'm sorry."
Yuuki stares at him. "You should be," she says, and then lies her head back down on her pillow, looking at the ceiling.
Zero excuses himself and Kaname follows, catches his arm, says Zero's name.
"What," Zero says, not looking at him. "Come on, what?"
"I," Kaname says. He drops his hand, flexes his fingers. He locks his jaw, says, "You deserved better."
Zero looks at him at that, eyes steely. Finally, he says, "I know," with the air of a man who isn't entirely convinced.
Kaname heads back to Yuuki's room after Zero tells him he's going to wait in the car, and Yuuki is sitting up when Kaname walks in, thumbing at the bed covers, frowning at her hands.
"Hi, Yuuki," Kaname says as he sits in his usual chair.
"Hello," she says. She smiles, but it's vague, shot through with uncertainty.
"Are you okay?"
Yuuki hesitates. "He said he was sorry."
"He did."
"That wasn't Ichiru, was it?"
Kaname can't fit the two together, the man he knew back in the school years and the man he turned into. The Zero that flinched every time Yuuki called him Ichiru. The man who grew up to impossibly fill large shadow of Yagari.
He covers Yuuki's hands with his. "No, it wasn't."
Yuuki nods slowly, purses her lips.
Kaname watches her eyelids flutter as she sits, lost in the decades. He's wondering where she's settling, if she's settling at all, or if she's instead getting hit with a mess of years that blur together.
He doesn't know where in her timeline she is, exactly, when she says, "Everyone's always comparing Zero to his sensei. They expect him to be an exact copy now that he runs the Association."
"I noticed," Kaname says.
Yuuki hums. "I shouldn't be one of them," she says after a few seconds, and then she looks at Kaname and for a moment Kaname sees the woman he fell in love with, etched behind the lines of her face that Kaname helplessly watched develop.
"He's a better man than Ichiru, than what Ichiru turned into. That boy may have been Ichiru's twin, but he's got his own way of living, and thank god for that." Yuuki laughs. "I do wish I had been around more often. Zero deserved more kindness than he got."
"I'm starting to see that," Kaname says honestly, and they sit there like that, hand in hand, until a nurse comes in and tells Kaname visiting hours are over for the day.
Kaname half expects Zero to have driven off and left Kaname to call for his driver, or something, but he's not too surprised when he walks out into the parking lot to see the car they came here in, with Zero tapping away at his phone in the driver's seat.
Zero doesn't look up from the phone when Kaname gets in. "You took your time."
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
"It's fine," Zero says. He stows his phone away, starts the car, and doesn't look at Kaname the whole way back to the his hotel.
Kaname starts to say something as they pull up in front of it, but Zero stops him with, "Can we just pretend this never happened, please?"
"Weren't you the one who told me it was important to go to therapy because if I didn't talk about what happened to me after the war it'd fill me up and I'd explode?"
"That- does sound like me," Zero admits. "But that's you talking about a war and your friends dying. You having to kill your uncle. It's not- family bullshit that happened years ago."
"Still," Kaname says. "I'm just saying, there are a lot of people who'd be happy to listen. Me included."
Zero gives him a look that Kaname isn't getting used to, one hand on the steering wheel. "Yeah?"
"Anytime."
"Okay."
"Okay," Kaname repeats, and he steps out of the car.
"Yuuki-" starts Zero.
"Zero!" she beamed.
Zero smiled, glad that she recognized him. He went to her bed and hugged her. "How are you today?"
"Great I had the best chicken today. Much better than Cross's cooking"
Zero shook his head, "Everything's better than Cross's cooking!"
Kaname quietly entered the room not wanting to interrupt them. He watched them have a conversation in which she was talking to Zero .
"Zero, you know Kaname came to visit yesterday. He asked about you." she said wagging her eyebrows.
"Oh yea. Is that supposed to interest me?" he said sticking out his tongue and smiling at her. "If you recall I told you I don't feel that way anymore."
Yuuki shook her head. "So stubborn!, I remember how much you liked him in school and can't help but imagine you two as a couple."
Zero gave her a look, "Not possible. There is no way a vampire King could be with the President of Vampire Hunters." He shook his disappointed thoughts away. "I gave up my feelings years ago Yuuki, and besides there's no way he could feel the same."
"I think this old woman knows what she's talking about," she said nodding towards the quiet pureblood. Zero looks up and blushing at the eavesdropping man. He quickly rushes out the door.
"I'll see you next week Yuuki." he said.
"Kaname it's awfully rude to listen to people's conversations," she smirked.
"Didn't want to interrupt and I'm glad I didn't," he said shrugging. "Guess you proved your point, he does feel the same way."
"Old women do notice things." she said sitting up and extending her arm out for a hug. Kaname obliged her request but before he could completely pull away she dropped something in his hands.
"I think these will come in handy." she said. "They were his mother and fathers, and then Ichiru and mine."
Kaname looked down at the rings holding them preciously. "Thank you." He looked to see Yuuki spacing out again.
That night Yuuki died in her sleep, thought to have been an aneurism. They say people know when they are going to die. Before her death, she finally had a conversation with Zero again and helped her two favorite people get together.