A soft and sad almost haunting melody dances gently and eloquently through the wind as moonlight shines brightly down into the room where a little boy of no more than ten plays immersed to the music as a melancholy and sad expression dons upon his soft and delicate pretty features as his fingers fly expertly across the keys in front of him.
Zero Kiriyu is blind and deaf to all but the piano and the music that flows so smoothly under his hands as he immerses himself in the Ill-fated and unwelcome memories that consume his every waking moment and thought as it burns him.
It burns oh and how it burns these confused and incomplete memories that he is forced to bare.
In the back of his mind, he wonders which burns him more… the vampiric bite from which warm thick life-giving liquid still leaks and flows from his bloody neck and that burns his veins as he changes into what so many for so many years have told him he should hate or the memories that oh so consume his every waking moment and has for so, so many years already.
Those thoughts are inconsequential though in the grand scheme of things he silently muses for in the end he is no more than a pawn, a knight in this game of chess that others have orchestrated and demanded he plays.
So, he plays, he plays the melody that haunts his entire being every moment of every hour that he loves and loathes in equal measure. A treasured and beautiful melody that so dominates and consumes and repeats in the incomplete memories that should not belong to him yet does and burns him oh so painfully.
Zero Kiriyu plays Moonlight Sonata long into the night and even as the morning twilight of dawn breaks through the morning horizon and even when he is discovered by people whose names he has already forgotten despite having seen them only days before.
Zero decides that he much prefers the vampiric bite than this all-encompassing and consuming ever present agony that replays on repeat in this everlasting painful melody that burns him.
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Zero says nothing as the seal placed on him sears his flesh as the hunters try to starve off him becoming the level E vampire they oh so detest and he says nothing as the one he vaguely recalls as being his master in training to become a hunter brings him to the doors of another with a little girl who looks nothing like him.
He says nothing as he is left in their cold untrustworthy hands and he says nothing as the days turn into weeks while he holes up in the room the one named Cross provided him.
He says nothing as the burning and painful incomplete memories that are but shouldn't endlessly play within his mind and soul as the melody he oh so adores and detests consumes him to the point he is deaf and numb to all else.
The first time Zero reacts to the one named cross and his ward named Yuuki is when a vampire that looks oh so alike in looks to the little girl named Yuuki and ward of Cross crosses the threshold of the cabin and into the dining room in which he and they sat eating a meal that he barely tastes or remembers the name of.
He does not attack for he has no hatred for anything but the melody that burns his being but instead stares as for a moment…. A brief and oh so precious but so, so unsatisfactory and cruel but blessed moment so inconsequential one might have never noticed.
For an oh so tragically blessed moment the soul-consuming melody and the painful and fatally burning memories that are but shouldn't be vanished completely.
Zero decided that the melody wasn't the only thing he hated that day but also the vampiric man who called himself Kaname Kuran for if not for him he would have never known the blissful and tragically blessed sound of silence.
From that day forward the melody of Moonlight Sonata and the memories that are but shouldn't be played louder and with more clarity than ever before that from then on also consumed his dreams.
The once only brief respite no matter for how short a time it was the melody and the memories that are but shouldn't be dared not followed and so Zero burned.
He burned while memories and dreams of burning flames encompassed him and the loud never-ending melody of Moonlight Sonata played within him endlessly.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
The moment Cross gave him a credit card with an unlimited spending limit is the same day he brought a grand piano and stopped coming out of his room.
Endlessly and tirelessly he played the piano and the melody that fills him tortures and completes him never stopping until he was forced to against his ever-silent protests.
They are worried he can tell, the ones he lives with Cross and Yuuki about the almost manic obsession he has with playing that melody and the grand piano in his room but Zero remains silent and ignores them as if they didn't exist like he always does.
For to him, they don't… nothing exists for him but the ever burning and torturous melody and the memories that are but shouldn't be that courses through and burns like acid and forever burning fire within every fiber of his being and soul and gives him an endless amount of soul-crushing painful agony every moment he struggles to breathe.
Given the memories that are but shouldn't be and the ever-present melody that beats to every beat of his heart and breath, he takes perhaps not even death would cease the torturous agony he eternally is forced to endure.
Cross threatens to confiscate his one and only source of externally expressing his internal and everlasting, source of tragically beautiful agony if he doesn't start taking better care of himself and interacting with them and going outside so for the next years until school that the one called Cross creates for both vampires and humans to coinhabit Zero spends his times eating regularly and doing missions he is forced to accept for the hunters while spending every other moment within the confines of his room.
Forever lost to the endless torturous melody as his fingers dance across the keys.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
Zero stares blankly at the human and vampire who asked if he wanted to join the night or day class after the vampire that he curses and hates as much as he is neutral towards as is the way he loves and hates the melody that burns him in equal but different measures had argued about him being dangerous to the humans while ignoring the fact he who is more regularly around them is as well if not dangerously more so.
Zero imagines that in another world or if the melody and memories that are but shouldn't be didn't burn him oh so tortuously sweetly and endlessly he would have argued to be in the day class if not for anything other than his non-existent hate of vampires but for his hate of the man staring impatiently at him next to the one called Cross who is his current guardian.
Or perhaps he would have scoffed at the blatant lie when Zero knows the one named Kuran cares nothing for humans but only for the girl named Yuuki that Zero could care less for.
Mayhap in another timeline Zero could have come to love the girl but that in a way would have been another tragic tale for him waiting to happen.
Zero has long since come to terms with the fact he the one named Zero Kiriyu is not meant to be happy or content.
Just as the boy named Seiji who became Asai Narumi was never meant to be happy.
The eternally burning melody would have never allowed it.
Zero Kiriyu doesn't care either way so long as he can play his piano and after writing said thoughts down leaves back to his soundproofed room and lets the burning acidic melody consume him internally as his fingers move in well familiar and memorised movements just as the fire physically consumed and burned the one named Seiji who later became Asai Narumi just as the same consumed his father.
Moonlight Sonata sounds throughout the night as it engulfs him just as it burns and consumes everyone who hears and dares to play it on moonlit nights.
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Zero doesn't know what to think about the night class as he listens to the teacher drone on while the melody only he can hear that he loathes and adores eats away at his threadbare and ever faltering sanity.
Given his vampire rank and the fact he could fall into the dregs of a level E at any given moment if not for the melody that destroys him just as it keeps him together… all the same, he is watched with thinly veiled disdain.
Not all look or treat him like he's below them or a disgusting creature no but all the same Zero cannot tell for the little life left in him that the melody and the memories that are but shouldn't haven't yet already consumed what he feels for them if anything at all.
Not that it particularly matters he thinks as when not in class he is within the confines of his soundproofed room as he lets the melody he hates and loves consume him both internally and out.
In a way, Zero, is grateful his nights aren't completely, filled with playing the piano where instead he plays in the daylight hours where the moon cannot heighten and intensify the burning feeling of the acidic flames that forever engulf him.
Though still Zero cannot help but wonder at the looks of curiosity the main court of the only vampire he hates along with the looks said pureblood vampire gives him.
Zero never wonders for long though, thoughts of anything but the melody and memories that are but shouldn't be never truly last for very long.
The heavy crushing pain and the melody would never allow him a moments rest or respite to do so.
So, while aware he ignores and disregards the recently ever present curious and interested stares of the purebloods court and the cold detached curious interest and somewhat soothing stare of the pureblood he hates own.
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On one of the weekends full moonlit nights on a break from lessons instead of Zero playing the piano, he instead can be found in the rose garden letting the agonizing beams of moonlight bath him in its painful but oh so gentle glow.
Zero for once instead of letting his fingers dance he lets his whole body and being dance instead to the tragic agonizing melody.
He dances and allows the memories that are but shouldn't fill his entire being as he is lost in thought to the incomplete memories for once actively trying to remember them in full.
He remembers a family slain and covered in cold dark crimson liquid as a man he vaguely recalls once calling father wails in tormented anguish.
He remembers the melody playing loud and true as the dark red fire burned and ate and engulfed everything it touched… he watched the man and everything he had once known burn into little more than ashes in the wind as moonlight bathed the earth in its soft cold warmth.
Unknown to Zero wine colored eyes stare in curiosity and interest from their hiding place as they watch the usually ever so silent and melancholy boy dance to music unheard.
Zero remembers growing up hating the man he or rather Seiji had called father until he found out the truth. A truth that brought the hatred Seiji had once had for his father burning and twisting brightly into a raging and boiling molten inferno of revenge set against those who had wronged the father he had at one time and for so very long hated with his very being.
Zero remembers Seiji achieving that revenge.
Stopping his dance Zero looks once again up to the full moon with a truly sad and tortured, anguished expression on his face and in his eyes that unknown to him the one watching his form eyes widen in surprised shock.
Zero also remembers that Seiji decided to end everything the same way his own father chose to go.
A grand piano playing a hauntingly beautiful melody oh so agonizingly familiar while the whole world burned to ashes around him.
As tears start to flow down his face in endless streams Zero lets out a wail of pure unfiltered and undiluted anguish to the heavens burning and ripping apart his throat that burn his lungs and constrict his breathing and while trickles of blood leak past his pale pink lips after so long of never speaking a word.
Unseen the one who watches him is even more shocked to his core that he can't even bring himself to move so shocked was he at the sight and sound from the tortured young man.
Zero remembers an intelligent young boy who figured out his ploy and fruitlessly tried to save his life while informing him of his father's true last will and testament.
Zero remembers Seiji throwing that boy out the window before resuming his melody as the whole world exploded around him.
The anguished and broken screams abruptly die as his voice is wrecked and completely spent that no more sound not even a squeak can escape past his bloody and cracked lips as he struggles to regain his lost and stilted breath while still, the tears continue to ever flow and the melody drowns and numbs out the world around him and his eyes start to darken that he doesn't notice the wine-coloured eyes moving towards him swiftly.
Zero smiles a small so utterly heartbroken tortured smile as he also remembers words soft and heartfelt words both spoken and written from a man he loved but grew to hate from lies, deceit, and betrayal of the worst kind.
As the world darkens and sways Zero keeps his eyes trained to the moon as he falls unconscious silently and soundlessly mouthing the words that haunt him just as the now complete memories and the never-ending melody do while unknowingly being caught and cradled in warm soothing arms by a curious and interested king unsure of what to do or make of the melancholic boy cradled in his own.
Live a full life Seiji.
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Zero doesn't know why but he knows that lately the only vampire he hates and his loyal court have been watching him more intently the past couple of months after the full moon night he danced, cried and screamed out the ever-present and unending torturous agony that consumes him internally, externally just as the melody does where he somehow woke up the next day in his room in bed.
Zero knows one of them must of either spotted him or found him and were kind enough to take him to his room but that still leaves the question of why they feel the need to watch him closely and for the one named Takuma to try and interact with him more than usual.
No, he doesn't understand but just like with everything else besides the melody and the now complete memories he ignores the looks and slightly stalker-ish behavior of them and the ones attempts of social interaction.
No instead he immerses himself ever more into the agonizing melody and memories and ponders on both what if's and whys.
Both of past and present.
Like right now as he ponders on the new girl that reminds him so much of the one who changed him. Zero doesn't care whether it's the pureblood named Shizuka in disguise or not though because he doesn't care if he becomes a full level D or devolves into a level E.
For Zero relishes in the searing pain and struggle of the unending thirst and battle of wills to not devolve into the E vampire both hunters and vampires themselves detest.
It is a blessedly welcome and blissful distraction from the never-ending melody that burns him endlessly from inside out.
Playing his piano once again to the melody etched and branded deep within his soul Zero ignores as the window that was once closed lays open as a being who looks so much like him now stands within the beams of light cast by the moon as the cold wind caresses his skin in gentle whispers.
He ignores as the boy he no longer remembers the name of comes closer, instead, he just closes his eyes as his fingers continue to dance across the board as the tempo picks up in speed.
"You always did play this song every night didn't you Zero?" the one whose name he no longer remembers whispers in his ear as he stands behind him and puts his ice-cold hands upon his shoulders while a silver knife lays snugly at his throat.
Like with everything though Zero ignores both the boy turned man and the knife that threatens to take his life even when his eyes do open a slit in wonder.
He wonders if the bewitching and excruciating melody would end if he were to die by any other means but the raging acidic fire that burns his being and scorches his soul.
The knife is removed so Zero no longer ponders on it as the man moves to tilt his head up to which he stares up at the face so much like his own but whose eyes hold unnamed emotions in their depths and an ever so slight frown tugging his lips.
After a timeless ever so infinite moment passes though he closes his eyes once again and the man allows his head to drop.
A moment more and the man is gone and Zero continues to play well into the echoes of twilight as the melody dances in the wind and out the window and to waiting and curious ears.
Zero decides in those ever so infinite hours that he doesn't want to die by any other means for no.
The only way he will ever be at peace is with a haunting melody dancing in the wind and burning fire touched by moonlight.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
Zero ignores the happenings of the night as Shizuka makes her move as he continues to play his melody.
He ignores how the girl Yuuki who looks so much like the vampire he hates is kidnaped and held within the dorms. Just as he ignores how the one who looks so much like him skulks about in the night and visits his room periodically.
He even ignores the one named Shizuka when she slips and just silently stands in the center of his room listening to the melody with a small ever curious smile.
"Would you like my blood Zero Kiryu? Or would you prefer the tireless agony" she asks when she moves closer to sit on the bench beside him and watching him with barely veiled interest.
Zero ignores her but opens his eyes just a tad before closing his eyes once more and she smiles in amusement and leaves with silent footsteps as the music plays out the open door and fills the whole night dorms with an enchanting and tortured melody.
Little more than two hours pass before another more disliked vampire stands within his room and listens to his melody and Zero for once finds a strange and callous comfort in the presence.
For perhaps the vampire he hates will become tortured to insanity like he is by the melody as well or at least become as cursed as he.
Zero knows better and otherwise though for, despite his twisted hopes unlike him, the pureblood will attain happiness.
For unlike the knight which is he the pureblood is the king and the king is the most important piece of the game.
The knight will forever be nothing more than a pawn no matter how important its role.
Live a full life Seiji.
The melody burns just that little bit more than the gracious and welcome agony of the thirst does.
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Sometimes Zero wishes that he understood what family meant. For both as Seiji and for Zero family was something neither were meant to have for long it seemed and both were destined to be murdered by the machinations of other people's whims, desires, and fancies.
Maybe that is why in the end and grand scheme of things the cursed melody and the memories that are but shouldn't choose to haunt and torture him in such an utterly endless and hopeless manner.
Though unlike Seiji who became Asai Narumi, Zero, never thirsted or desired for revenge, because after the memories that are but shouldn't be he just got so tired of it. He tired of the endless burning hatred and molten embers that is revenge and wanted nothing more than to rest.
To rest and let the melody that consumes him so to engulf him entirely so that even if in tortured agony at least he no longer would have to deal with the hatred called revenge.
Still, he wished that the one whose name he no longer remembers but looks like him could have shared in this endless agony with him for maybe then he wouldn't feel so very alone in the never-ending melody.
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When the thirst gets to be too much he is locked away and bound by seals and chains with only the maddening endless melody and the thankfully present and tortured thirst to keep him company in this ever so cold damp underground room.
Zero in a way for once in his life wishes that the rays of the moon could reach out to him and bath him in their ever burning and searing light, so he wouldn't feel this freezing icy cold that the melody and the dungeon in which he is caged brings forth.
Even as out of it as he is to everything but the agonizing thirst and melody in the back of his right now predominantly vampiric mindset Zero recognizes the presence of the hated king now standing in his dark cold and damp cell and wonders.
When the king kneels before him and shoves his face towards the neck he had cut with a nail Zero can't help but wonder if he should be thankful or not towards the king who still has a use for the pawn of a cursed knight.
"Drink little one and fight for just a little while longer so once again you can play your haunted and treasured beautiful melody" a warm and curiously honestly kind voices whispers in his ear and Zero decides he truly does hate the king kneeling before the cursed knight offering his sweet honeyed nectar with poisoned words.
For even as he sinks his teeth sharply into freely offered flesh he knows above all else that the cursed melody is the last thing he wants.
Though what is a cursed and broken knight left to do when the king still has need of his pawn?
As the thirst lets up and he detaches himself gently from the king and tears flow from his closed eyes Zero wishes Seiji who became Asai Narumi never existed.
For even as warm and gentle hands softly and excruciatingly kindly wipe away his salty tears and he succumbs to the unsafe confines of sleep he knows.
If Seiji who became Asai Narumi had never existed then the melody and the memories would also never exist and he would have been free.
Free to live a perfect tragedy in an endless but more soundless melody.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
Zero never liked being or training to become a hunter… much preferring the piano and watching the enchanting flickering burning candles dance in the wind as images of much larger and brighter flames lighting everything a blaze before erupting into a fiery explosion of ethereal proportions bombarded him in endless streams back when the memories that are but shouldn't were incomplete.
Zero remembers a time when that was all he ever wished to do was watch the dancing candles burn. For surprisingly those were the few moments when he was young when the excruciating melody never bothered him.
All good things must come to an end though and eventually, the melody consumed those once cherished moments as well.
He contemplates this as he watches one of the king's courts with the gift of flame play with the fire that gives him strength and wonders what he would have done if he had such a gift.
Zero doesn't believe he would have been able to take or resist such a caustic gift such as that. The sheer despair and torture that would engulf him would have broken something inside him that the melody hasn't already and he would have perished to both the flame and the melody long, long ago.
Abruptly Zero leaves the classroom while ignoring the stares that pierce him as he can no longer stand the flame that dances upon the court's fingers and the torturous anguished memories that blast him in endless streams he can't seem to breathe.
It's not until he collapses in the middle of the hallway minutes later that he realizes that he literally couldn't as his chaotic mind and the blaring melody and flashing memories consumed him in an anxiety-induced panic attack.
Tears rush down his face as he chokes on his gasping breath as the melody drowns out all else even the rapid beating of his heart as he curls into himself trying to calm down even as more and more anguished memories both of those that are but shouldn't be and those that should flash before his tightly shut eyelids like a fast and never-ending stream and crash upon him like a drum.
Zero doesn't scream despite how much he wishes to because of it being hard enough to breathe already so instead in a silent plea for help he bites his lip hard and lets the honeyed nectar run free.
Zero isn't sure what happens next or how much time passes but when he comes to he finds himself in the warm arms of a king he hates as he commands him to breathe while at the same time whispering sweet poisoned nonsense in his ears.
When he is relatively calm and the melody isn't so glaringly loud Zero stares vacantly and misty-eyed at the king he so hates and thinks of nothing at all as things slowly come back into focus.
Though in the back and deep recesses of his mind he wonders why the kings usually so cold wine-colored eyes had shown so much blatant and sheer relief and worry despite the calm and slightly hard expression that donned upon his face.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
Zero sometimes wonders why he had the memories of a boy named Seiji who later became Asai Narumi. Why out of the millions and billions of people out their he was the one cursed to bear the melodic curse that forever plagues him.
He never does find out the answer but sometimes he ponders the fact that perhaps he himself is Seiji who later became Asai Narumi and that Zero Kiriyu is no more than a phantom. A puppet on strings controlled by the melody called Moonlight Sonata and the boy name Seiji who later became Asai Narumi's heartfelt desires to have been somebody else.
To have a second chance of life.
Live a full life Seiji.
If so Zero feels sorry for Seiji who became Asai Narumi but at the same time sorry for himself.
For Zero isn't Seiji…. Just a melancholy boy forced to bare his anguished accursed memories and endless ever-lasting melody.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
During the weeks after his confinement and the sweet honeyed nectar, he was forced to consume by the king he hates Zero comes to notice the movements of Cross's charge Yuuki who looks so much like the king looking for answers to her unknown past.
Zero doesn't know the answers or the past to anything or one besides that of Seiji that became Asai Narumi not even his own, but he can guess.
Zero only wonders in the brief moments in time when the melody allows him to think of anything other than the accursed memories and melody of Seiji who became Asai Narumi if the one named Yuuki can come to accept it.
Or if the king he so hates will finally allow both him and the acidic melody to fully consume him in its forever brightly and tortuously burning depths.
Zero is once again swept into the endless melody though even then Zero wonders in curious anguish why the thought of the king he so hates, and the ward of Cross named Yuuki brings forth a pain so unfamiliar to sharply and with a crushing and ragged twist piece his heart.
Tears flow and Zero wishes oh so fervently for the game of chess he was and is forced to plays mounting final round to commence.
For then Zero can finally let the burning moonlight, the endless torturous melody, and the brightly burning flames once again repeat in its own final tune.
Zero smiles at the fruitless and pointless though.
For the haunting and accursed melody and all the anguished memories, it brings shall never truly end.
Moonlight Sonata shall forever play, while the ashes will endlessly fall on endless repeat.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
Zero has noticed that the continuous stares from the king he so loathes as of late have changed.
Where before the looks were curious and soothing cold warmth that belied his warm arms that twice held him when he needed it most lately that same stare is still ever present though different.
Different in how there is now added emotions…. One of confliction and indecision and one that Zero knows not the name of.
Like with everything that is not the memories and melody though Zero does not dwell or ponder and question for long.
Zero cannot ignore the stares of the level E vampires that surround him though, not unless he wishes to let anything other than his anguished and cursed tortuous melody to lay him to rest.
So, he fights and lets the honeyed rose-colored nectar coat his hands once again as he becomes the hunter he never wished to be or become.
Zero fights so nothing but the crushing melody, the ever-burning embers, and the bright icy moonlight consumes and ends him.
Zero fights for the only thing he knows will ever let him rest in peace and give way to the blessed silence he craves the way he so wishes and longs for in this never-ending misery.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
Some nights when the moon is high, and the wind barely blows and nothing, but the melody burns him, and the memories are nowhere to be seen Zero thinks back to the fruitless endeavor of the too intelligent beyond his year's little boy who tried to save Seiji who later became Asai Narumi.
Zero questions and wonders if the boy was perhaps like him, cursed to suffer a something, not of his making or control.
Not the same accursed melody he is forced to bare no but still a curse of another kind.
Another line of thought he questions is what would have become of Seiji who later became Asai Narumi if the too intelligent young boy had managed to stop him.
Stop him from completing and achieving his revenge of boiling molten hatred.
Stop him from repeating the accursed final requisition of the burning moonlight melody that curses, burns and haunts the people who hear its beautiful accursed and damning tune.
Zero has pondered all sorts of what-if scenarios and has concluded that despite it all… despite everything that the cruel choices and actions of others that led to countless tragedy's and the endless anguish and ever there burning acidic pain that the melody brings him that he wouldn't want or wish it any other way.
That frightens him more than words could possibly describe, to which he despairs that he wants in those dreaded moments the accursed torturous haunting melody and the memories that are but shouldn't be and the ever-burning moonlight that pieces and engulfs him to grow stronger.
To grow so strong that everything else fades away and numbs him so he cannot think… cannot feel and erases him so all that is left is the endless melody, the raining ash, and the bright embers flying and dancing in the wind in its accursed and gale force symphony.
To grow and continue growing so the confusion he feels over thoughts of the king he so hates and the ward of cross who looks so much like him doesn't pain him so and paves way for a type of anguish that is not caused by the despised and hated but oh so adored and loved melody that embraces and tortures him.
Zero play's tireless and endlessly as the anguish and the acidic burning melody fills him.
VVVVVVVVVVVVV
Zero is dosing and allowing the sun to warm him in a clearing during the day when the king he so hates gives him a visit. In his exhausted daze and the melody that burns and pains him so sweetly he hardly recognizes he's there.
The king doesn't speak and only continues to stare like he has many times before so Zero ignores him like every other time before.
Zero ignores everything but the melody and once incomplete but now complete memories as he doses in the suns warmth even when the king he hates moves closer.
Ignores and stares vacantly at the blue, blue sky as the king sits beside his form and only blinks when the sky is replaced with intense burning wine-colored eyes as unknown emotions swirl in their depths.
Zero wonders briefly if the king wishes for his cursed pawn of a knight to drink from his poisoned honeyed nectar again or if he wishes to give him order for the coming war they both know is coming.
"You have ruined all of my well-crafted planes Zero Kiryu" the king whispers and before zero can do little more than blink warm lips meet cold lips and the melody stutters to a screeching stop to heavenly and so dearly and fervently wished-for silence and his eyes widen in utter shock as even his breathing halts.
It doesn't last long though for the shock soon makes way to anguished and complete and utter panic as Zero realizes that the ever-burning acidic melody isn't playing.
The memories of Seiji who became Asai Narumi isn't consuming his thought's and the melody isn't playing and before Zero knows what's happing he screams, he screams and can't stop screaming and very soon warm red nectar coats his lips and fills his mouth and instead of burning he's drowning and he cannot breathe.
Moments later sound can no longer be produced, and he panics more.
Never has Zero ever been granted or blessed with true silence and the once desperately wished-for prospect now tortures him so, so painfully worse than the melody ever did and Zero truly despairs and loathes both himself and Seiji who became Asai Narumi and the accursed melody he loves and loathes.
Because now Zero knows that it was too late for him, that it was too late for him from the very moment he first heard the melody and saw the once incomplete memories that are now complete.
Zero is and was forever cursed to bear the hated and loved tortured melody of Moonlight Sonata and Silence is a terror Ill-wished-for nightmare of a dream that he cannot stand to bare lest it kills him before the burning melody.
Tears fall from his eyes and Zero blinks when he comes back to himself and realises he was never screaming and that warm lips were still connected to cold and once again the melody he both loves and loathes is consuming his every thought and feeling and so Zero closes his eyes in condemned anguish relief and closes his eyes and allows the king he hates to embrace him in warm arms and deepen the kiss.
Zero decides he loathes the king more than the melody and the silence he once wished for but now dreads to even contemplate as warm lips leave cold and warm arms to tighten around Zeros shaking frame and light butterfly kisses and oh so tortuously kind and gentle hands wipe away salty tears.
"I have fallen for both you and your adored and hated anguished melody my precious knight" Poisoned words softly and sweetly whispered brushes he's ears and Zero despairs.
Zero despairs as from that moment onwards the melody that burns and destroys him just as it saves him blares louder and stronger than ever.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
Ever since that day Zero realized how pathetically cursed and lost he was he is watched more closely by both the king and his court, in his tortured despair and just like with every other time before he ignores them though.
Just like how he ignores the now almost constant presence of the king he hates and his need to always touch his cold but always sharply burning skin.
He even ignores the now full-blooded vampire Yuuki who is the king's sister's slightly jealous but kindly understanding and happy gazes.
Zero admits though that it's not truly ignoring if one cannot even think let alone breathe with the burning melody rushing and loudly blaring in his veins and mind as the memories that are but shouldn't bombard him endlessly.
It's possibly why Zero now desperately clings, craves and anticipates the kisses and touches the king he loathes, despises and likes gives him.
Like not love for Zero doesn't believe he could ever come to love the man and king he so detests and play's him like the chess piece he was destined to be.
The one who made him realize how cursed and pathetic he truly was forever wanting something different than the melody and memories that plagues and tortures him so.
The one who made having the melody's and memories final symphony that much harder to play after his role as the cursed pawn of a knight is complete.
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When the war begins and wages between the kings of this game of chess he's in Zero wonders on what his true role in this whole game is or was.
He shoots seemingly endlessly and everywhere his eyes roam battle seems to play like the melody he loves and loathes but kill's and saves him in equal measure.
When the one who looks so much like him but whose name he has long forgotten is almost brought down Zero allows the melody to guide him like when either his fingers or body does and protects and saves him.
He vacantly accepts the blood he offers when a pause in the chess game or war happens though Zero could not tell you if he wished to drink the blood or not that kept him safe from ever turning to the dregs of a level E that both hunters and vampires themselves detest.
When the man who looks so much like him runs and is no longer around and he watches the battle between the white king he hates and the black king he care's less for but stole and kidnapped the sister of the white king who he likes but does not love he waits.
He waits like the hunter he never wished to be and bides his time.
He aim's and shoots his gun and he has helped win the war.
Zero's part as the cursed knight has ended this game of chess between the two kings and now he can rest.
He can go on to finish his own role and part in the melodic symphony that has cursed him just as it had Seiji who later became Asai Narumi just as it had done to his father that he loved, hated and loved again.
Zero wonders absently why he finds it so very hard to move to the cottage and the grand piano he prepared beforehand as he watches the king he loathes and likes to embrace and comfort his sister Yuuki who was once Crosses ward.
Zero silently moves away unseen and unheard from the celebrating king and his court though when the melody starts to get to be too much to bare than usual though.
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Zero always wondered how he would feel when he began to play the final notes to his loathed and beloved treasured haunted melody as the fire that burns, consumes and completes him starts to engulf and destroy everything around him in brilliantly blazing ambers while moonlight bath down upon him from its perch high in the dark night sky with his only audience the starts above.
Zero imagined all manner of emotions to sear through and fuel his final performance from relief, melancholy to even anger but not this detached nothingness.
Perhaps that is a kind of relief though, given the sheer pain, agony, and loneliness he has lived with ever since the day he was unfortunately given life.
As the fire burns more brightly and smoke is so tightly packed into the room he cannot breathe less he devolves into a coughing fit so body shaking it effects his playing and his finger's dance across the keys in a feverish pitch he allows a smile so filled with melancholy and sadness grace his usually so emotionless face.
As the wood starts to crash around him and coughs start to rack his body from a breath he unwillingly took a loud bang resounds as a panicked, worry and frantic plea of a voice rings true as the king he both hates and likes stands within the same room of the burning cottage as him.
"Zero! Zero you fool come we need to leave now!" Kuran shouts as his power beats back the flames and the falling debris but Zero only looks on hauntingly sadly and shakes his head in denial of the king's orders as he continues his playing of the endless melody.
He is abruptly stopped in his playing and forced to stand as the king holds him against his chest and looks anguished, hard and determined down upon him with a mind-blowing so filled with endless love, passion, devotion and desperation it feels like Zero's heart has stopped.
"I will not allow you to end your life to this melody that so ceaselessly haunts and torments you as long as I still draw breath do you understand me!? I love you too much to have anyone even yourself take you away from me you completely foolish boy!" is the softly whispered but hard words filled with both torment and love that all else drowns and mutes around him.
Even the detested and beloved never-ending melody that destroys and completes him that all Zero can do is give an almost imperceptible minuscule nod as tears seem to drown him in their never-ending rush from his tear ducts.
Then they're flying out the window as unlike before where Seiji who became Asai Narumi threw the intelligent boy beyond his years out the window and committed to his fate Zero chose to live another day.
Another day in the burning melody but in the too warm arms of a king he both hates and likes… no loves in equal measures and more than he ever did and does the melody the curses and plagues him.
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As he stands outside the burning cottage Zero ponders more on what could have been if things didn't turn out how they did in the one named Seiji's who became Asai Narumi's past.
Would the melody that unendingly tortures him so have never been? Or would it have been replaced by another more crushing melody and corresponding anguished memories?
Or perhaps what would have been if Seiji who became Asai Narumi would have jumped out of the burning flames and away from the melody that plagued him and enhanced his burning need for revenge with that intelligent beyond year's little boy.
If he had chosen to live by the words of the man he loved, loathed and loved again.
Live a full life Seiji.
Zero also wonders on how his life would have turned out had the memories that are but shouldn't be and the accompanying haunting melody never existed.
Zero ponders many scenarios in his head but discards them almost immediately for just the sheer thought of never having the melody fills him with so many torturous amounts of both dread and relief it's hard to breathe.
Mayhap the never-ending melody that consumes and is so completely a part of him is little more than something he can now no longer bear to live without and no other melody could or would compare, not even the once desperately wanted but now terror despairing silence.
Live a full life Seiji.
Most of all Zero ponder's on the words uttered and written and if they even if ever pertained to him.
Has he ever lived his life fully? Or was the melody so great and so, so loud that he died before he ever got to live?
Live a full life Seiji.
In the end, Zero decides he also detests those words along with the vampire named Kuran and the accursed melody that plagues him.
For if not for those cursed words and the blasted haunting melody and the damned hated existence of the king perhaps he could have lived a full life.
Though just like with the melody he doesn't think he could now live without those words and the hated and tortured beloved existence of the king.
"Are you ready to go Zero?" a warm kind and fond voice whispers in his ear and Zero turns to stare up at the man beside him and smiles a small rare and oh so agonizingly true smile as he speaks for the first time in years.
"Call me Seiji"
Perhaps he could learn to be happy and live a full life if he donned that name for evermore henceforth.
Live a full life Seiji.
Just perhaps.
Okay, this was done because I am stuck with the plot for Aki Heartfillia and got inspiration for this piece from another one-shot crossover between KHR and Case closed and the episode Moonlight Sonata.
Though I quite like this long one shot of mine despite not liking Vampire Knight all that much considering I only watched it for Zero Kiriyu since I thought of him as a better and hotter/cuter Sasuke Uchiha lol
Hope you enjoyed it because I am very proud of this even if others decide they hate it!
Also, finally downloaded Grammarly so here's hoping I did better than I normally do for spelling and grammar and that I didn't accidentally miss any words like I have been increasingly finding in my Aki Heartfillia story much to my own shock and horror.