A/N: Hello hello, it's Chelbi again. I was listening to my iPod on shuffle today and "My Immortal" by Evanescence came on first. It made me think of Zero, and this was originally going to be a songfic, but I decided halfway through that that wouldn't work. So... I ended up just sort of... writing. Ha! Hope you enjoy it anyway!
Musings
'Fed up' is a phrase that can be used many ways. It can mean many things, in varying levels of intensity. For Zero Kiryu, 'fed up' meant Yuuki. Yuuki Cross.
Kuran, he mentally adjusted with a grimace. Yuuki Kuran.
He wondered vaguely for a moment if he hadn't known it all along. There had always been a certain something about Yuuki that drew him closer and prevented his nearing at the same time; something that intrigued as well as infuriated him. In the end, though, the intrigue had won out.
And so he had found himself atop a roof, thorny vines sprouting from his very flesh, as he and Yuuki faced a powerful enemy. But it wasn't really the enemy he remembered. Oh, no. He remembered the vague outline of the ancient vampire, remembered the feeling of having to choose every movement carefully to avoid killing the wrong person or being killed himself, but he didn't remember anything about that moment exactly.
What he remembered were the moments after.
The moments when that enemy had crumbled into dust and another landed beside Yuuki. Kaname Kuran was viewed, by Zero, as a grudging ally at best and as the bane of his existence at worst. And that bane was directed point blank at Yuuki, who seemed only too happy to oblige.
Damn him.
The Rose wouldn't even attack him; try as he might, Zero could not make the vines attack Kaname once they realized who he was. He could only stand there and watch as Kaname talked Yuuki into leaving with him, deserting everything she'd built in the lifetime she'd been given.
She did just that, of course. She left. Without pretense, without teary goodbyes, without so much as a wave. She turned her back to Zero and swore to run from him, leaving only promises of a long, fruitless chase in her wake.
There was no love in those promises. None of the characteristically Yuuki compassion, none of her genuine kindness, none of anything that Yuuki Cross once possessed. It was completely spoken by one who turns from her life to a life she'd been pulled from, by one who jumps recklessly across the war's no man zone into her new safe haven, abandoning completely the one that had held her close all those years. It was completely spoken by Yuuki Kuran.
And that was one fact that Zero Kiryu absolutely abhorred.
"The new me ate the old me." He couldn't believe it. He wouldn't. So, he didn't. Yuuki Cross was still inside that body somewhere; just subdued. After all, the first safe haven still existed, in him, and it could reach out for her any time it so chose.
But maybe, just maybe, it shouldn't choose to. Maybe it should stand back and learn to hate Yuuki Kuran so it could one day turn into an enemy that could wipe her from its sight as well as its memory. He promised he would kill her and her brother. He promised he would kill all vampires with pure blood pumping through their veins, and he meant it. Once that deed was done, he would kill himself as well.
After all, the only thing pumping through his own veins was tainted human blood, forced by another's will into the fragile region between ex-human and Level E. The fragile region that could only be sustained by drinking blood. Even then, it was a temporary fix. Someday, he would die for becoming a vampire. It might as well be by his own hand.
He simply had a job to do first.
That job was proving harder and harder, though, as the vampire community spiraled out of control with its leading council murdered. The vampires who believed humans were merely cattle for their consumption came out of the woodwork like termites, gnawing at the foundation of the delicate coexistence until it almost collapsed. And then, suddenly, it all stopped.
The hunter's association, as well as Zero, had a good idea of just who stopped it. No one could find them, few people tried, but everyone knew that the most likely vampire behind the salvation was Kaname Kuran. A fact that irked Zero to no end.
He needed to leave him alive for the sake of the world's humans. He needed to kill him for the sake of his sanity. The two conflicting needs were sure to drive him up a wall soon; a conclusion had to be reached.
But none were going to be found inside his head, so he focused, for the moment, on abandoning all notions of remaining her safe haven. Yuuki Cross may have been able to get into his fortress, but Yuuki Kuran would remain far outside his new walls.