This is just a short, sweet story I wrote one night while I was staying up. RukaxKain is my favorite couple EVERRR!!! I felt it was finally time to add in my two cents to the numerous RukaxKain fanfics. They're all wonderful :)

Chapter One:

Mirror, Mirror

Hanabusa Aido slammed Ruka's door open, leaving it to smash into the opposite wall. Due to superhuman strength, a large crack split through the wood in protest.

"Ruka! Ruka! It's happened! It's happened!" He cried. His blonde hair ran wild on his head, every which-way it could. His blue eyes ran even wilder until they found Ruka.

"It happened! Kaname-"

Ruka looked toward him and sighed, bothered. "Slow down. I cannot understand you."

"Kaname has bitten Yuuki, and it is revealed that she is a pureblood- and his younger sister." Akatsuki appeared behind Hanabusa. He was noticeably calmer and more collected.

"Wh-well!" The other boy rebuked, indignant. "I was trying to put it a little more gently-!"

"It's fine, Aido," the girl replied solemnly. Her breath softly escaped her as she rose up from her desk.

She hadn't been able to sleep, of course.

"Is he coming back?" She inquired softly.

"Yes! At least, I hope so- I mean everything around here's gone crazy!-" Hanabusa ranted, the rant of a boy who was about to lose his sanity from suspense, curiosity and confusing events. His wild yellow hair only accented this.

Ruka turned her head to the side then looked back to Akatsuki and Hanabusa. Her eyes softened, avoiding there gaze. "Go," she told them softly. "I should put a coat on. It's cold outside."

She didn't need to explain that of course she was going with them, to whatever lay beyond.

Ruka ran out into the hallway, a long violet robe over her lacy nightgown, prepared to go out and brave the night. Her dusk-colored hair rolled unkempt down her back, waving with wild abandon. Her face was pale, but her caramel-colored eyes bright and red-tinged and shining out of the hollows of her face. She pulled the covering tight around her shaking body, mentally preparing for the cold outside.

She inhaled. She murmured to herself: "I can do this. Hold it in-"

Her voice stopped dead in her throat. There were light, catlike footsteps behind her. Footsteps she had grown the recognize instantly. She turned around.

There he was, Kaname Kuran.

"Lord Kaname!" She cried.

He smiled back at her slightly. The air between the two of them froze, heavy with unsaid emotions.

Kaname started speaking, but Ruka's ears shut. He said something about an apology, something, something- her heart lit like a fire and started beating way too fast. She couldn't think straight. Something he could tell, she was sure. She got nervous- she had to go, before she lost it all, right here, right now-

Crying was for later! Don't cry in front of him, god dammit!

"I need to go to the Sun Dormitory, I need to be useful…" she muttered, desperate to get away.

"Ruka-"

"Don't worry," she smiled back weakly over her shoulder. "I was only dancing with myself." She turned to leave at last.

"Perhaps unfairly," he replied behind her. "I trust you."

Ruka's heart dropped for a minute, and a soft flush graced her cheeks as she warmed.

"Thank you."

The rest of the night was a hazy blur; Akatsuki, Hanabusa, and she had stayed by the humans. No danger had really emerged.

But something surprising did happen. The humans begged not to have their memories wiped- they begged to remember that night.

Why some simple mortals would want such a horrid, heavy night weighing on their minds, Ruka didn't know, but she complied. She did nothing to stop them, anyways.

When Ruka got back to her private room, she made sure no one else was within hearing distance. She looked outside- the hallway was empty, the doors were all closed, and their inhabitants were sleeping contentedly. She waited for a disturbance- heard none- and then turned into her room. She took her violet robe off, pulled her unkempt hair out of her face, and sat down at her dresser.

The dresser was actually a vanity table, with a large circular mirror attached to a small wooden desk, which was elegantly carved and shaped, with lion paws for table legs. The top was littered with large, fancy, and variously colored bottles. Some smelled of sweet perfume, others of softly scented lotions, and others were powder or blush or eye shadow (none of which Ruka needed of course, but if she felt creative…). The mirror had light bulbs fastened to its frame, in a way that was elegant and fancy, but clownish now.

Ruka looked into the mirror. In the crude fluorescent light, it showed how nightmarishly dark her undereye area looked, in contrast to her colorless face. There wasn't even a trace of blush.

She studied her bright red eyes which lighted up even brighter as her mirror's light reflected off of the tears gathering by her eyelashes.

Now you can cry, her mind assented.

A great sob wracked Ruka's exhausted frame. She gasped sharply, with a high shriek at the top of her sobs. Sorrow controller her then, as she cried and cried and cried. Ruka watched the mirror, fascinated, as the tears ran in pure rivers on her face, over her cheekbones, down her jaw, slipping silently down her neck. She thought about how much of a tragic beauty she made. The red in her eyes made her brown irises seem more vividly colored. Her dust tinted tresses streamed down her body, catching her tears in its soft and supple net. Her pale lips opened in a silent prayer.

Mirror, mirror, if you could speak, I wonder what you would say. She thought. I wonder if you would think me silly, for all the times I've cried over this one boy.

Hanabusa, Akatsuki, Shiki, Toya, Takuma, not even Kaname knew what she was truly like, she reflected sadly.

They didn't know the romantic part of her, the part that daydreamed and sighed, fantasized and smiled and winked with secret affection.

See, there were three types of love to her: lust, infatuation, and true love. Lust was only shallow desire. Infatuation was a blind illusion imitating love. Infatuation didn't last long. True love was the kind that made your heart jump and fall with the strength of mountains. It was real- it was a genuine love that made you want to be around the other, made you think about them all day long, and your only wish was to be around them all the time, to feel the light of their smile shine on your face. It was pure diamond, true love. It could withstand everything. And even as you receive the invites to the other's wedding to someone else, you still believe in your heart that he is going to turn around and come to you.

Nobody knew about all her secret wishes. All the times she'd prayed on rose petals, on her lucky numbers, at special times like 11:11, silly human superstitions- but she tried nonetheless.

Nobody knew about all her fanciful daydreams. Not even she could count all the times she'd had silent reveries: Kaname would walk in and insist she stop calling him Kaname Sir, only Kaname. She wondered, when she went shopping for perfume or dresses, which he would like best. She would come out in her finest silver dress. 'You look especially lovely tonight,' he would say, with one of his slow smiles. 'That perfume, it's the one. It smells of roses. It reminds me of you.'

Nobody knew that even when he spoke, that she closed her eyes to listen to the sweet honey of his voice.

Nobody knew that when he passed her, she held her breath in nervousness.

Nobody knew that her world had just fallen in around her.

Yuuki. Yuuki. Yuuki Cross, Yuuki Cross, Yuuki Cross! She held in a rising scream. Yuuki? Why Yuuki? What did Yuuki Cross have that she didn't? What made Yuuki so much better, in fact, acceptable, and what made her not? It wasn't like Yuuki was unbelievably beautiful- she was cute- but Ruka was also the envy of the girls and the love of the boys! It was Ruka, who had devoted so many things to him, who had always wished on a star, prayed on a rose, held her breath- none of it mattered to Kaname! All the simpering sighs and doe eyes in the world meant nothing to him. He only wanted Yuuki.

She reflected. Yuuki was small with large, round eyes that dominated her round face. She had rather short chocolate brown hair, and cheeks that were always blushing- at least when Kaname was around. Yuuki, stuttering, light-hearted, and pure. And, oh right, a pureblood.

Ah, there it was. There was the difference. She was a pureblood, something that, no matter how hard she worked, Ruka would never be able to attain.

But Lady Sara was also a pureblood!-

And so Ruka thought. But, she realized, Yuuki was the one, the one for Kaname. She was the one that had slipped through his barriers of darkness and light, known the real him. She knew the real Kaname. Something Ruka had never done.

Face it or hide, Ruka was an outsider. She always would be.

How in her silly head had she ever thought she could be with Kaname? Kaname was a pureblood, imposing, regal, and strong. He wasn't cruel, he was good, he was handsome. Everything that Ruka wanted, but nothing she could get-!

She broke away from her reverie and looked into her tear stained reflection.

"Mirror, mirror," she whispered. "Tell me what you see. Could there ever be anything between Kaname and me?"

The mirror remained blank, impassive, and suddenly, a wave of rage, rejection, pain, fear, and loss broke upon her.

She was worth nothing! What was all the beauty, wealth, and status in the world if she couldn't have the one thing she truly wanted?

The diamond that had grown in Ruka's heart for Kaname wilted and disintegrated, turning to dust, flying away in the tidal wave of her emotions. Her heart turned to paper, Ruka decided. Her useless heart, all it was made of was paper- it wanted to run away, it was so easily damaged, and now it was in its last throes. She let out one great cry, and swept all the useless bottles off of her desktop; she threw her chair aside, and gazed into her cursed image in the mirror, until at last, she ripped the mirror off of its hinges and tossed it away. She collapsed on the floor, swallowed up in her misery. She was a victim of her emotions, helplessly trying to stay afloat in the crashing waves of her heart, crashing, crashing, crashing…

It was then she heard a knock on the cracked door.