Characters: Strauss, Kayuki, Stella
Summary: Fate's come to collect her due.
Pairings: Strauss x Kayuki, Strauss x Stella
Author's Note: Nothing to report. Feedback would be appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Record of a Fallen Vampire.
When her light hazel eyes look on him with something not even distant kin to cold disgust, that's when Strauss's iron resolve starts to fail him. Her eyes are infinitely warmer and softer than before, the veneer of ice melting away to let spring take hold, and Strauss falters, not sure how much longer he can keep this up.
When Kayuki hated him, Strauss could tell himself that there was no trace of Stella in her and actually believe it. But now when there's no hate left in her, there's no longer any way not to see Stella peering through her eyes, no way to look at Kayuki and not see who he lost, so long ago.
Kayuki is becoming she whom Strauss loved, piece by piece.
Everything about her starts to remind him of Stella when she lets her guard down and her real self is allowed to shine through. The sweet cadence of Kayuki's voice is quieter but tilts upwards on the same syllables as Stella's did; she walks, when out of her furisode and geta, with the same vigorous, bouncing step; Kayuki's eyes glimmer when she looks at Strauss, so much like Stella that he's being stabbed; they even smell the same.
Strauss isn't sure if it's the Black Swan or just the universe who hates him so much as to dangle Kayuki in front of him. But the poison's all he's got anymore, even if the taste beneath all the outward saccharine sweetness is acrid and bitter. Until he finally falls, Kayuki is as close to Stella—as close to heaven—as he'll ever get.
For once, Strauss is thankful that the Black Swan prevents him from touching its host, for he's not sure of what he would do if he could touch Kayuki. She's so like Stella; it's easy to forget himself these days when the anguish grows long and the agony, blinding to the truth.
When the day comes for battle, Strauss isn't sure that he'll be able to go through with it. Killing Kayuki is the only way to ensure that he'll live to see another day but he doesn't think he can kill another fragment of Stella, not again; impaling Komatsubara Yuki was hard enough, and Kayuki is even closer to the source.
And every time he kills a Black Swan it's Stella who stares out of their eyes in their dying moments, so Strauss has killed his beloved forty-nine times over and doesn't think he can let fly the blow a fiftieth time.
Maybe it would be better to let Kayuki carry the day.
Fate's way of torturing him is sweet, and agonizing, and terribly fitting.
For when Kayuki falls under his gaze, Strauss inevitably sees Stella.