This is what happens when you reread VK chapter 40 and listen to Reila by the GazettE at the same time. Such a fitting song for the IchiruxZero pairing... HOOOO BOY. I'm pretty depressed now. ;; -slitslitslit-

"I don't want to lose anything else anymore!"

Saying it was one thing, but Zero could smell the life seeping out of Ichiru, and he felt as if his own heartbeat was numbered along with his twin's. He had never been the kind to preach and not practice, but in a situation as hopeless as this all that fell from his mouth were empty words.

"I'm so happy..."

Well, he wasn't happy. Happy had always sounded to Ichiru like a weak, pallid emotion; he didn't have a name for what he felt now as he clung onto his reflection, his bloody fingers scoring furrows in Zero's white shirt. Maybe deja-vu. But whatever he was thinking couldn't be put into words, and talking was far too painful┘ if he hadn't been as proud as he was, he would have let go of any inhibitions and pressed his face into Zero's shoulder and cried. Just like when...

"I thought I was dead inside Zero's heart..."

Shizuka's face had been in his mind for months, but there was only one picture burned onto his eyelids as he spoke, and it glowed like the afterimage of the sun. He smiled very slightly as the blood gave another sluggish surge out of the rips in his side. It was a curious feeling; he was dying, and he knew it, and he could feel it, but he wasn't scared... or rather, the fear was hidden so deep underneath that nameless emotion that it was hardly making an impression on his misted thoughts.

"Zero and I... will become..."

Maybe it was a day of new impressions. Ichiru, for example, had never felt fangs in his neck, and despite his ebbing strength his head jerked back a little and his mouth fell open in a gasp. It was leagues apart from the pain of the wounds Rido had torn into him, and he wasn't sure whether this was because of the nature of what Zero was doing, or the fact that it was Zero doing it. Or both...?

As for Zero, he could taste himself in the blood he was drinking, and it sickened him as it strengthened him: he was killing Ichiru, because Ichiru had wished it. Zero was doing what he had done all his life - making the fact that he followed orders bearable by telling himself that he wasn't following them.

He bit a little deeper and closed his eyes.

"...as one."