Darkest Salvation

A Vampire Knight fanfiction

by Miarath

Zero's thoughts many years in the future (AU)

It's a bit dark and - yes - a one shot. It just popped up and wouldn't let me go.

Yep, another, um, fanged plot bunny...

Actually, its title was Damned Salvation at first, but oh well, there's this thing about those words ... sigh.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything of Vampire Knight and there's no profit made out of this.


Strange, that I had to lose it all, just to save me. Strange, it would almost be funny and in a way it was.

I'm not sure if you still remember it, but to me it feels like it was just yesterday - sometimes.

But I know now, that he had been wrong. You see why most human vampires become insane, is because they cannot accept. They cannot accept being turned into a predator, being turned into a killer. You may wonder why I say he had been wrong, as I've struggled as hard with it like any of them, maybe harder than most.

But the thing he had been wrong about was something so essential to my very being as a born hunter. The fact that every hunter is a natural born killer; we have to be. If we were not, how would we be able to do what we had to? It had been in my blood from the very beginning, the hunt. The instinct to kill, it really is hardwired in all of us.

Weird, huh? But true, oh, so true. Think about all the extra senses we hunters have. Senses to find them, to find our prey. So what, we do not need to hunt to survive. Well, that doesn't makes us any less predators.

I snigger. Actually it makes it worse. It makes us cold-blooded killers.

We are, in a way mirror images of them. It takes a thief to catch one, doesn't it? So, we need to be at least a little like them to be able to do our work.

All right I shouldn't say that as I am one of them but old habits die very slowly.

Yeah, just like those habits from the Hunter Association do. They still believe me being their tame vampire, being at their beck and call.

I let them.

Let them believe that I was their wolfhound to hunt down the wolves.

I have to smirk at that thought. Well, it is fine to do that. But you better make sure your wolfhound is in fact not a wolf itself.

But it suits me.

It keeps life interesting.

It keeps me safe.

Safe in a world, that is a far cry from the Headmaster's dream. I smile at this thought. It had been a beautiful dream after all. Even if I hadn't agreed with him back then. I still don't.

Cross Academy is long gone, only a memory now. My thoughts stray to her for a few minutes. She's still often in my thoughts even if I haven't seen her for years now.

I hope she's safe but I can't be sure, not in these times.

Cross Academy had been a dream, like utopia, sadly. And dreams seldom come true.

But nightmares do.

Sometimes I'm one of them, sometimes not.

But I am always a hunter.

I doubt that will change anytime soon. I smile at that. Time, I have enough.

Time to track down my prey.