A/N: Here's the alternative universe story. There's a lot of changes in here and I'm sort of happy with the outcome of it. The main character, of course, is Zero since he's by far my favorite character in the series. Yuki's age is much younger in here for the sake of the flow of this story and so she doesn't even stand a chance of gaining love from Kaname Kuran and she definitely has no chance with Zero! This prologue may seem confusing to you guys at first and maybe even rushed but don't worry, it'll tie up in the end.

Disclaimer: I don't own the series, or the characters but give me some credit for the idea of this story! I'm trying to be original.

Warning(s): Boy and Boy pairing, OOC (Out of Character), typos, cursing, and long.

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Being Mortal

Type: Alternative Universe

Summary:

From one lifetime as a vampire hunter to the next lifetime as a regular high school student with no memories of the last, the ex-hunter finds himself in a relationship of student to teacher with his old rival.

Pairing: Zero X Kaname

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One: Prologue

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"A long, long time ago in a place far away where the grass was green and the sun was a radiant bright yellow, where the birds flocked and despair was only found in horror stories, there lived a young, and beautiful girl who had a strong heart and a kindness that was as contagious as any cold…

She was innocent, and yet the past that surrounded her was as mysterious as the shining stars that shone up in the night sky. Her inner demons and torments were pushed into the deep abyss of her mind…

Until two beautiful, young boys showed up…

One had brown hair that flowed around him, making him look like a prince. And the other boy, a sullen and arrogant minded boy, he had abnormal silver hair that made him almost demonic. But they were both pretty and the innocent, princess like child decided to keep them…For all of eternity.

So, the morning after she found them, she branded them as hers and only hers. The princess child cast a secret spell on the boys and before they knew it, they were thrashing and clawing at each other's throats. She had complete control over them and where ever they went, she went with them.

And the more they stayed with the now selfish girl, the more they loved her, and the more they despised each other. The day after that, the sullen boy became even more distant and angry as the brunette haired prince became to think of himself as superior. The princess was happy with the outcome either way as the boys seemed to drift further and further away from each other just as she secretly planned it…"

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"…And so as the wolf turned around in shock at the sound of the door falling down, the large woodcutter chopped its head off and was able to save the little red riding hood and her almost eaten grandmother. The end," the sound of a book closed with a small thud and the dull voice trailed off slowly.

A little brunette haired girl smiled wistfully down at the book that was being placed on her lap. She giggled and tried to stifle the sound with her little pale hands but to no avail as more leaked out when larger hands started to grab her waist and tickle her stomach endlessly. A silver haired boy smiled down at her and pulled her gently on his lap, "Did you enjoy the story, Yuki?"

His once dull voice was more joyful and she nodded all too eagerly, ignoring his stare at her head bobbing up and down with such insane speed that he thought her ties to her pigtails would fall off at that very moment. The boy glanced at the digital clock that sat on the dark wooden round table next to her pink bed. He shook his head with a sigh, a smile lacing onto his lips quickly.

As he tried to carry her to tuck her in for bed, she started squirming and squealing as if sleeping was going to cause the whole world to end, like her very decision to get all tucked up in was going to make time, itself, freeze. But luckily for him, he was stronger than her and so had no problems with forcing her under the covers. In fact, the silver haired boy actually enjoyed this time of night.

He loved his sister very much, no matter how bad she got.

"Hush, Yuki, hush. Go to sleep, okay? It's already ten."

"But…But…I want you to read me another story. And nothing too scary," she put on a small pout, which he found quite adorable on her.

The boy chuckled.

"Yuki, don't be so selfish."

Yuki's eyes suddenly brimmed up with tears, fake tears, he knew. He frowned as she grabbed onto his shirt and held him tightly, trying to send him on a guilt trip. Though Yuki was only just eight, she was actually quite smart for her age but the bad side to it was that she needed a lot of attention. The silver haired teen sighed.

Yuki, of course, took that reaction as a positive response. She immediately reached for a book, her favorite one, when the boy latched onto her small hand, "Zero?"

He looked intently at the small book shelf beside them and took one out, one that she wasn't at all familiar with. It was thin, red and on the cover had a dark haired man with piercing eyes. His hair was a dark brownish color; much like hers and his narrowed eyes was a tinge red. The eyes made him give off an almost sad kind of aura and she was much transfixed.

On the front read the words Vampire Knights. Vampires. Yuki didn't really know what they were but somehow when she was on the internet, the search brought up the name before on one of the many websites she had skimmed through.

He began flipping the pages, transfixed as well. Yuki had to lean over the boy's shoulder and looked at the pictures with interest. The girl also noticed the pictures on the side of jumbled together words had such great details in them that she was amazed someone had drawn them in. She really had no idea that they had a book like that; with that title and it just so happened that it was in her room all along! Zero suddenly started narrating; making sure his voice was loud and broadcasting and at the same time soft for no one else but her to hear which was odd since no one was home except for the two of them.

"Once long ago, in a school named Cross Academy, there lived a man, (the headmaster) a girl who befriended all with her kindness, a sullen boy who was arrogant and impolite," he raised an eyebrow at the sound of giggling from behind him but continued, "And another boy who was said to be as beautiful as an angel fallen prince."

Yuki suddenly looked very interested, "Ooh! This seems better than one of those Mother Goose stories. Continue, Zero, continue!"

"Why?" he asked it awkwardly.

Yuki grinned up at him, "Because there's a prince and a girl in it, of course."

"Che," he rolled his eyes but continued anyway.

"So anyway, the two boys were rivals. They had always been and are destined to be rivals until the end of time," he got no further than that; abruptly closing the book and snorted loudly, "This is such a cheesy story."

Yuki wailed out loud, wanting to hear more about the book, more about the girl and about the so called prince. As any normal little girl, she always dreamt of happy endings, of ever lasting love; Zero could see that in her so very clearly. He was almost afraid of her growing up, of her finding out the truth of real life.

And he absolutely hated the feeling that rose in him whenever he lied to her day in and day out, pretending that prince charming was real and that one day, like in any fairy-tale, she'd be swept from her little feet by a gorgeous guy and fall in love at just first sight.

Zero sighed peacefully to himself when she finally drifted herself to sleep from all the screaming and crying she made. She looked so peaceful when she was sleeping. She was so adorable. And as Zero stared down at her tiny body, he suddenly got the huge urge to open the book he left lying by his side and continue it for his own curiosity.

Shaking his head as he found his hand running down the smooth cover, he snatched it back at once and walked out before any more weird urges nagged at him to pick it up. The house was dangerously quiet as he suspended down the stairs, straining his ears to hear any signs of his step-father, Cross, had come in. But there was no such, and Zero began to wonder just what Cross always did that made him so giddy and nervous when he got back home.

Usually by ten thirty, he would lounge in the living room, on their rather expensive leather sofa in front of the television trying to kill a brain cell or two by watching it to pass the time. He would wait for Cross to get home, help them both to some late night snack and take another peek at his little sister before grudgingly go to his own room to get a night's sleep in as well. Tonight, however, he suddenly felt more tired than usual and decided to sleep in early.

Besides, it was really his first day of school tomorrow and now he was just getting into his sophomore year. He wasn't too excited like he was the previous year but he really didn't see what he had to enjoy in the second year of high-school. Zero also hated knowing he had to wear a dreadfully awful uniform for this school and suddenly he didn't seem all that tired.

Well, he wouldn't have seemed very tired had it not felt like his eyelids were a ton of pounds heavy. As he walked up to his room, his gaze lingered at the nearly shut door that connected to Yuki's room. He froze in mid-step as he remembered the story book; the thin red colored book that had written on it: Vampire Knights, a supposedly fairy-tale that was on the girl's little book shelf.

Somehow, during all the times he came into his sister's room to read to her before bed, he never remembered seeing the book before tonight. It was odd and something churned in the pit of his stomach before he scoffed into the air and started walking toward his room again. He already told himself that he wouldn't dare pick up that book unless he had to read more of it for purely Yuki's entertainment and nothing more because something nagged at the back of his mind that something was oddly creepy about that book that magically ended up in her shelf.

"Che and I still remember parts of it too. The two boys soon became rivals. They always had been and are destined to be rivals until the ends of time," he recited the two last lines he read to the girl with a small huff; "It really did sound cheesy. Destiny…Right."

He finally reached his room at the very end of the unlit hallway. The boy climbed into his bed and relaxed as he immediately tried falling into deep sleep. After an hour of counting numbers in his mind, he was able to close his eyes with much less difficulty than at first and minutes later, had entered into the back of his mind in form of a dream.

His dream was mildly perplexing even to him, which he found it unnaturally odd. Usually he would have dreamt up of failing an exam or the first day of school but tonight, it was different. At first, he was confused as to why it felt like he was falling into an open void that went on and on forever.

Then the scene of the pitiless fall changed into bright multi-colored lights and suddenly he was in a classroom of some kind with empty desks surrounding his body. The silver haired boy looked down at himself and noticed he was wearing the same outfit he was made to wear at his own school which was a white, fancy kind of jacket over a darker kind of shirt.

He felt his lips pull downward into a small frown, "Maybe this is a nightmare about me flunking a test…"

As quickly as the scene had changed in his mind, students began to pour in, pushing past him as if they actually had physical bodies of their own. He winced inwardly as one of them deliberately shoved him to the back wall in his rush to his seat. The boy turned to smirk at him and Zero felt his own eyes widen in recognition.

The taller boy turned back and his dark tussles of hair flowed behind him as he walked away. Suddenly the bell rang and Zero noticed another man open the classroom door that stood next to him. That man also looked familiar. Very familiar.

His lips quivered and the next words that the brunette uttered had him frozen in place with surprise and confusion.

"Headmaster Cross."

Cross. That was Zero's step-father's last name. The thin man pushed his glasses up over his nose, stared at Zero and then turned to smile at the brunette haired boy. The silver haired teen almost let out a visible groan and wanted to bang his head on something hard. He almost gave into the impulse except at that very moment, a girl came waltzing in.

A familiar girl came waltzing in.

A very familiar girl…

Only she was older than the one he knew to be true in his real life. He instinctively ran over from the wall and lifted her up in a hug before he knew what he was even doing. When she started pushing away and trying to squirm out of his hold, only then had he pulled himself back together and put her back down. She tilted her head in innocent confusion and the urge to hug her tightly again was playing strongly in his mind.

"Zero, what are you doing here? And wearing that?"

She looked ready to puke and pointed, rather stupidly, at his clothing. In return to the girl's gesture, he raised a thin eyebrow and asked, "What do you mean, Yuki? This is my regular uniform. You've seen it a million times by now."

He furrowed his eyebrows together when she shook her head almost feverishly. Things weren't adding up. Even though he knew this all to be a dream, an illusion; he also knew that his mind wouldn't make this up, already knowing his relations with these people. The other part that also didn't add up was the addition of the brunette haired kid that looked to only be a year older than him.

The only thing he really recognized about the boy was his face but he didn't remember ever coming across another teen like him. Although from the brunette's previous action, it seemed they did know each other. Zero found it extremely frustrating trying to figure out the reason why his brain was doing this to him, casting him into an unfamiliar place with no so familiar people who he knew, he haven't ever ran into before.

Meanwhile, while all of his thoughts were focused on why his dream was like this, his illusion of a sister that happened to be about six or seven years older than her current age was trying to shake him back to the present, back to his own dream. She looked worriedly at him when he snapped back into the dream and wouldn't let go until he admitted he was okay. Then she went rambling on about something that seemed completely nonsense gibberish to him with the word blood in it.

He immediately tensed up when she asked him if he had drunk any blood lately and the boy looked at her in suspicious confusion. Something was very unusual about this dream and he convinced himself he would find a way out of his own head soon enough.

"Zero, don't you remember?"

Zero looked at her, feeling even more confused than he was previously, "Remember what?"

"Your humanity is lost…" her soft voice trailed off with a level of uncertainty and suddenly he found himself barking out laughter.

A laughter that was dark.

A laughter that wasn't his.

And it scared him.

Then he talked; his voice more sane, "I have no idea what you're talking about, Yuki. My humanity has always been with me. I'm not a monster."

She fidgeted and he wondered, vaguely, why he was even talking such nonsense to her and wondering why his mind was even showing this to him. He barely recognized two or three out of thirty people in here. It felt weird.

And what she said next was much weirder.

"You're a vampire, Zero."

Zero winced outwardly; it felt like her words just took a stab at his throbbing heart. He looked sideways to his so called "step-father" and found him staring at him with unreadable eyes. He also felt another pair of eyes boring holes into the back of his head and found the brunette staring at him as well. The boy rolled his eyes.

Everyone sure loved staring at him in his own mind.

Damn him and his inability to try and stay serious only to make dumb jokes at himself.

He sighed and decided to go along with his sister's idea of a "joke", "So I'm a vampire, hm? Then what about you, my dearest little sister?"

She blinked at him with her wide, innocent eyes. Damn her and her eyes. He found it easier to curse at his own imagination than the real objects now a day, "Zero, seriously, are you feeling okay?"

Zero grumbled, "Of course."

She visibly relaxed, "Well I'm human, remember? You're a vampire hunter."

"How in the world can I be a hunter of vampires and a vampire at the same time?" he found himself mumbling.

She frowned at him, "I thought you said you were okay."

"I am."

Before she could answer though, the dream started to fade and he began to purse his lips tightly together in a show of his own annoyance. He tried to reach out for her as the scene started crumbling down but couldn't quite reach her fading distance. The only thing he noticed before he would wake up, drenched in cold sweat was the familiar tinge of red eyes that pierced through the darkness of his mind.

Then he uttered the unfamiliar words that seemed to have stuck into his mind from out of the blue.

"Kaname Kuran."

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"From one lifetime to another, no one can outrun their destiny, for destiny always has her own way of catching up to them when they least expect her."

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A/N: Hopefully I'm going to put Kaname into the twist next chapter so be ready for it. I may update this one much faster than the last story, but I'll be totally honest with you all here; I don't know. I may have time, I may not. And also, for those who don't read profile notes, please do so. If anyone is interested in continuing my previous story, Hunter and Prey, you have my permission to do so as long as you give me credit that it was my story somewhere.

Anyway, that's about it. Thanks for reading. Hope you review!