Author's Notes:
This is my alternate ending/second half of Vampire Knight. It takes place immediately after Yuki and Zero separate following the Rido arc. I will have a few OCs, but their purpose is to act as supporting characters who make sense to the direction I'm taking with this story.
Rated T for mild language and some violence
Word count: 556
Prologue
He was alone. Utterly alone.
That fact became painfully clear as he stared at the gate before him. Countless times he had seen her in this exact spot, yelling as she tried desperately to succeed in her duty to keep the Day and Night Classes separated. It was so familiar he could almost hear it... He could almost see it... Her sweet voice that he had grown to love so much, her determined but pathetic attempts to hold the others back.
He loved her. He loved her more than he ever knew he could love anything. The reason he was alive was because of her—because she never gave up on him. No one else had been there for him while he wallowed in the depths of hell. No, only she sank to be there with him. Only she showed him the kindness and dedication that gave him the will to live. And yet...
The courtyard was empty. She was not there. She was gone. She'd left him, and he knew he could never have her; he would never have the girl he loved so much he thought his heart might burst. No matter what memories that yard held, they were only memories—wisps of a time that was nothing more than a "could-have-been." He would never hear her laugh again, or hear her desperate attempts to hold the others in order. He would never see her glowing smile, the smile that made him realize that perhaps living was worth it, so long as that smile was there for him.
But no longer was the smile for him. She wanted someone else, and so out of his love he let her go. No matter how much it pained him, even if it ripped his heart apart, he had to let her go. Her love was no longer his.
He collapsed against the gate and buried his face in his hands. His shoulders began to quiver.
"Yuki..."
She tried to relax herself into his arms as he held her. He was the man for her and always had been. He had always been there, protecting her, and now he was going to be there for her forever.
He brushed his lips against her forehead and held her in a confining embrace. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back like she felt she must, she said the words she thought she should. Words like, "I love you, onii-sama" and "I'll go anywhere, as long as you're there." He smiled at her with that lonely smile. She loved him. She did.
But then why did her heart ache so? Why did she feel like any instant she could shatter into a million pieces and never be put back together?
An image came to her mind. It was of a boy—no, a man. A man with silver hair and an expression of the loneliest agony she could imagine. It was for that boy, and that expression, that she had lived the past four years. It was for that boy that she had always managed to wear a smile, and because of him that she learned what unconditional dedication was.
So that was why her heart hurt. As she was stroked and kissed, there was only one word circling around and around in her head.
Zero.