I don't own Vampire Knight or any of its characters.
This plot bunny came to me while listen to Melanie Martinez's "Dollhouse". I just couldn't shake the idea and had to write this down. This isn't Kaname-bashing. I love YuuMe but there is no way that Kaname's love is healthy. He manipulates Yuuki throughout the story and this was an exploration of that idea.
"Oh, Lord Kaname! The Kuran princess-why she's such a doll!"
Yuki does not look up from her spot by Kaname's side. He positioned her there carefully, and it would be terrible to break from the walls he has built for her. She keeps her head upright and her spine stiff, the smile Ruka spent hours training her on shining perfectly through. She feels like plastic but dolls do not cry.
XXX
"Come away from the window, Lady Yuki."
She sends a withering glare Aidou's way. He barely reacts to the vase that shatters near his face. He has been Kaname's man far too long to be frightened by the dark moods of a pureblood.
"I'll have to tell him why if you catch cold."
Yuki snorts and turns back towards the window. She can no more catch a cold than Kaname an honest soul. She sighs. It is not Aidou's fault that the house that Kuran built keeps her trapped behind gothic windows and Kaname's love.
She escapes anyway and feels snow on her face for the first time in months. Kaname is the one who comes to fetch her. She smells Aido's blood on the hand that caresses her cheek and loves Kaname a little less foolishly. He pulls guides her into the house and the only thing she can say under the strain of guilt and dread is:
"Punish me."
He does, but only because she asked. He repeats this after every bite and all of her held breaths. His fangs torture her and when he is done, he whispers sweetly that he loves her. She whispers back, anguished that her love is also true.
She counts the bite marks as he sleeps and realizes she is a bird in a cage and will always be.
By whose hand she doesn't know.
XXX
The wedding is beautiful but it is not hers. She had wanted something small and intimate. Kaname had told her such things were not possible for sovereigns of the vampire nation. She had snapped that she never asked to be queen.
Kaname had smiled indulgently and continued to paint her nails. It took all of her self-control not to will them into claws and gouge out the smirk on his face.
She turned away when he came to her later that night and told him she was tired. He chuckled, kissed her temple, and draped his heavy arm around her waist. Under his hold, she felt his breath against her neck and dreamed she was not his.
The wedding was as he wished, with none of her suggestions, the dress tighter than Kaname's devotion.
XXX
"Hurt me any way you want."
And, she does because Kaname has all the power and he always has. The game they play only serves to show her that she has none. She may hurt him but only because he allows it.
He smiles at the blood she smears over his neck and face. She yearns to drink him dry and be done with his care, but then, he bucks in such a way that makes her clench her teeth and dig her nails deeper into his sides. A few more inches and she could tear through his chest into his heart. It is the least she could do to repay Kaname for always blurring her lines of love and hate.
XXX
The baby is the last straw. Kaname had promised her that they would wait, that he would be careful and she would have time to grow into the mother she wants to be.
He says it was an accident but it is too convenient that her expected due-date falls during the Kuran's millennial anniversary celebrations.
The walls crack and vases are smashed. None of the servants blink at the spider veined windows or shards of glass. They have the angriest, most violent sex. Yuuki is sure the house quakes under the power of her fury.
Kaname winces at the pressure of her growing, but not mature powers. She laughs and then cries because even with her cracking his bones, he has won. Her body belongs to his heir now, no one will even dream of helping her.
"Bastard."
Kaname looks at her with cabernet eyes that could be truthful but rarely are.
"You will be a good mother, Yuuki."
It feels like an order.
She bucks from under him when he brushes his lips across her womb. Even that he owns now. She rushes into the bathroom for a cry that she knows Kaname can hear and shatters all of the mirrors that reveal how perfectly he has molded her.
She spends the next two years a miserable mess only to turn around and do it again when Kaname conveniently messes up four years later.
She loves her children but dreads them both when they are born with their father's eyes.
XXX
"Juuri, come take a picture with your brother."
Yuuki hates that she has to say it. She also hates that she must do it too. Her daughter scowls up at her from the mess of her curls, Kaname's curls. Gently, she pulls the child to her son's side without thinking about how much she resents being at Kaname's side. Haruka, without prompting, wraps his arm around his sister with an arrogant confidence that the younger child is his in some way. Yuuki watches her daughter claw at her son and wonders if there was ever a time when she did not love Kaname, and how long he allowed it to be so.
"Come now, Juuri, be a good sister."
Yuuki shudders at the way Kaname says it. In the way that the tone is no different from the one he uses when he is displeased with his wife. Yuuki looks at her daughter and tries not to shrug Kaname's chin from her shoulder.
"Juuri is a good girl," she says it without thinking, without understanding who she is trying to convince.
"She is," Kaname agrees as he slides his arms around Yuuki's waist and rests his hands over the spot where their newest child grows.
Yuuki is a good girl too. Kaname used to say so. He still says so now.
"Smile," the court photographer orders.
Yuuki does not have to wonder if the pictures will come out perfect. She has become very good at practicing.