Title: Decisions and regrets
Characters/pairings: Kaname x Yuuki and Zero x Yuuki. (No yaoi.)
Disclaimer: I don't own Vampire Knight, this is a fanfic written for fun and for love of the series. I'm not making any money with it.
Warnings: Non-canon pregnancy and spoilers for chapter 35 of the manga.
Yuuki is pregnant, but which of them is the father?
.
.
"He's yours, there's no way he could be mine."
"Hmm, I wouldn't be so certain. It's still too early to tell for sure."
"But the power…"
"The mother is a pureblood, the power is only normal."
"My hunter instincts tell me that mayb-"
"Kiryuu, I'm a pureblood, and I say I can't tell yet, so will you leave this matter alone already or what?!"
They glared at each other across the small space they where half-crouching-half-kneeling over to be able to put their ears against Yuuki's protruding, eight-and-a-half months pregnant belly, trying to feel the baby's movements.
At long last, the woman of the house intervened, slightly raising herself on her elbows from her resting position on the reclining chair.
"If you two don't stop fighting now I'm going to do something drastic."
She tapped them both on the head lightly, leaving her hands in place on each of their heads as the playful fake-slap turned into a loving caress. Kaname chuckled and leaned into her hand, welcoming the touch, but Zero was still a bit put off.
He wasn't sure at all, truth to be said, but Kaname's persistent insistence in claiming that he couldn't tell which of them was the father of the child Yuuki was carrying somehow made him even less certain that it could be his, as if the pureblood was trying to hide the obvious for whatever obscure reason.
Zero didn't have anything tangible to believe the baby was Kaname's, but there was a certain something in the power emanating from the small form inside Yuuki that definitely reminded him of the pureblood.
Although, Yuuki herself reminded him of Kaname ever since she turned back into a vampire, something that never ceased to disturb Zero.
The war had ended, almost an year earlier. Rido and their enemies were no longer, and things were almost blissfully peaceful. Well, except for the constant bickering. Zero and Kaname still got along as well as water and wine, but more or less put up with each other for the sake of Yuuki. It was what they had always done after all.
Not long after the end of the war, Kaname had asked Yuuki for her hand in marriage, and Yuuki had explained that she had come to realize that while she did love him with all of her heart, she also loved Zero the same way. If they would have her, she would give them both her heart and her love, but she couldn't possibly pick just one of the two, it would be like tearing out a part of herself.
Zero had been amazed to find out that she had for him feelings that he'd only considered in his wildest dreams.
Kaname had been inevitably hurt, but as he always did, he put Yuuki's happiness before his own, and accepted to share her with the hunter if that was the only way for her to be happy.
Instead of a wedding, they had a simple bonding ceremony, held in secret and only among the closest friends. No vampire in their right mind would ever agree to the bonding of an ex-human with a pureblood, and even less with a pureblood that was also bonded to another pureblood – it was doubly a sacrilege, both for the impossible union between the highest and the lowest ranks of the vampire society, but also because it was so insulting for the pureblood forced to share his mate with an ex-human.
But Yuuki loved Zero regardless of his rank, and in Kaname's eyes pride was little compared to happiness and love, especially the happiness and love of Yuuki. He would rather share both feelings than have neither.
As for Zero, he was the one who wasn't too sure if he was doing the right thing after all. One pureblood was hard enough, but two around at all times?!
In his love for the human Yuuki, he had accepted the arrangement regardless of the fact that she was now a vampire. Deep inside, he knew he still loved her, and he couldn't help but think that even if she was now of a race he hated, he still wanted her to be the same Yuuki too much to take the risk of losing the chance of being with her.
And yet, months had passed and the hunter was still a little unsure. Not of his love for Yuuki, but of the viability of their triangular relationship.
Zero had more or less come to terms with the fact that Yuuki was still Yuuki – despite the fact that her Kaname-like glances and pureblood instincts still freaked the hell out of him and played a great part in much of his insecurities – but he really didn't see himself living next to them as a kind of third leg that would over time become more and more of a burden, perhaps relegated one day to the category of youthful mistakes one regretted but couldn't really erase.
Purebloods lived practically forever, while ex-humans hardly managed to reach a normal level C's lifespan, even when they were very lucky and received their master's blood to avoid falling to level E.
In his case, things were a bit different, since the amount of pure vampire blood Zero had ingested so far kept him stable and boosted his power and life expectancy to that of a vampire noble at the very least, but still, he didn't really see himself leading a life of hundreds of years the way things were going.
They may be sharing Yuuki, but he couldn't help feeling like he was an extra something that didn't belong there.
Not to mention that, to a smaller extent, living anywhere near Kaname was impossible. Everything was perfectly arranged and organized in their lives, and it infuriated Zero. It wasn't a mere matter of details, but perhaps more of the compatibility of their personalities. And if he complained that Kaname controlled things too much, then the pureblood inevitably would tell him that he could also make choices and decisions for them, that he was free to do so as much as him. The problem was, Zero didn't want to. He wanted things to simply flow, and when Kaname couldn't understand the concept, it inevitably lead to Zero exploding and leaving for a while – when he didn't simply explode without leaving, which had led to a few very heated arguments. Yuuki had lost count of how many times she had to part a fight between the two, a few times having to actually use her newfound strength so they wouldn't be at each other's throats.
The closer to the birth, the more Zero's mood grew dark. He was quite convinced the baby would be Kaname's, and the thought of the pureblood couple and their baby happily together made him feel like even more of a spare wheel.
He was happy for Yuuki, he really was, but… it just hurt to imagine the scene, the two cooing over their baby while he played the depressing role of the 'uncle' or whatever who just happens to live there and stand awkwardly in the background. It hurt too much, and inevitably it led his mind to wander back to ideas that had never really disappeared quite completely, such as disappearing one day, going back to the Hunter Society or elsewhere.
He was starting to wonder if it was even possible for an ex-human to impregnate a pureblood – he'd heard nasty rumors about level D's being sterile, but considering the way the vampire world viewed ex-humans, there was no way to possibly be sure if those rumors were true or not, especially when one took into account how extreme the stories vampires made up about ex-humans often were.
For reasons one couldn't fathom – but which were possibly the same reasons for which Yuuki still stuck to so many of the habits she had as a human – she insisted in giving birth in a normal human hospital, rather than the vampire clinic which had been discreetly monitoring her pregnancy. (Discreetly because if the baby turned out to be Zero's, it wouldn't be good to have a nurse having babbled anything about the 'upcoming birth of an heir to the Kurans' beforehand, as the disappearance of said heir would be difficult to explain.)
There would inevitably be quite an amount of memory wiping needed afterwards for the medical personnel who might realize that things were off, but that would have been the case just the same in a vampire hospital, for privacy sake and due to their unorthodox bonding situation, so Kaname just sighed and as usual rearranged all his plans, canceling the other clinic and so on.
--
Finally, the day of the birth arrived, making Zero more and more jittery.
With the baby inside the mother, it was still much too difficult to tell their auras apart, but he hoped that once the boy was born, they would know for sure, once and for all.
Even if in his heart, he already knew it, or believed he knew it. It would be Kaname's son, and he would just leave the two purebloods with their child and fade away, leaving as soon as he could.
Zero was forcing himself to put up a happy face just so that Yuuki wouldn't be even more nervous than she already was – the only one more nervous than her was maybe Kaname, who couldn't stop pacing around in the waiting room, shocking his friends who were used to seeing him so controlled. Once she was taken into the room to give birth, Zero's smile dropped, and he felt the need to go for a walk.
Kaname's nervousness made it a poor idea for him to be in the room with Yuuki – purebloods had to maintain a completely flawless control of their power at all times, or it could be dangerous for everything around them, and he didn't want to risk a negative effect on the baby.
Zero on the other hand wanted anything but being in the room during the birth, because he wasn't sure how he would be looking or reacting if it was obvious right away that the baby was Kaname's.
That and the fact that his urge to just up and disappear was becoming bigger by the minute, and it wouldn't be easy to do so in the middle of labor. He could hardly turn around and go 'oh, excuse me, I forgot something.'
In the end, the hunter left Kaname and the Night Class pacing in front of the door while he wandered off, but rather than leaving, he found himself sitting in the hospital's garden for what felt like an awfully long time. He had no idea how many hours had passed, he just started walking, found the place strangely soothing, and sat down to try and put order in his thoughts.
That last part wasn't quite successful; his mind was just as much of a mess after sitting there for hours as it had been when he arrived.
But at least, now he felt less doomed. There was a certain peaceful feeling in the idea that even if he did disappear – whether because he returned to the hunters or because of a more definitive disappearance, one he'd been considering for a very long time, and that was ever so tempting even now – at least, Yuuki would be fine, she would have Kaname and their pureblood child. She wouldn't need him anymore.
With that thought in mind, he stood up and straightened up his clothes before walking back in to leave. A certain curiosity made him wander by the maternity ward, figuring that by now the child must be somewhere there with the other newborn babies, and tempted to take a look before going. He got very close to the room before he shook the thought out of his mind and turned around to head for the nearest elevators instead.
Kaname's voice calling him startled the hunter even though he felt the pureblood's presence just before he heard him. A sudden'I knew I shouldn't have come this way' rushed through Zero's mind.
"Kiryuu, where are you going? Won't you even get a look at your child first?"
"What?"
The hunter approached warily – trying to run off while Kaname looked at him would only be completely ridiculous at this point, but Zero wasn't sure he had really heard what he thought he heard.
The pureblood just gave him an unreadable smile and walked back down the corridor, in a silent invitation for the hunter to follow him.
The way Kuran always did that sort of thing angered Zero, but there wasn't much else to do, so he walked up to the large glass panel in front of which the pureblood had stopped.
Behind the glass, there were rows and rows of baby beds, their little occupants doing a variety of things ranging from squirming to crying, with two nurses walking in between the rows gently trying to calm down the crying ones.
Kaname pointed out one of the cradles, and Zero felt his heart skip a beat. A baby boy with silver hair laid there, awake but not crying, just slightly moving his little hands around peacefully as if he didn't mind much the noise the other babies were making.
"We were waiting for you to come back, so I couldn't help but stand guard here, in case something happened. The Night Class is guarding Yuuki's room."
Not that anything was going to happen in the maternity ward, most likely, but Kaname was paranoid that way, and Zero couldn't help but feel a wave of gratefulness for his paranoia, at the current moment.
"My son… my baby…? How is it possible?!"
Zero was bewildered, and Kaname couldn't help the hint of amusement seeping in his tone as he replied.
"You wouldn't be so surprised if you had listened to me. I told you we couldn't tell yet, but you just had to assume the worst."
As always. It was a tendency Zero had, and that Kaname had grown used to.
And much as those various annoying traits that they each had were normally infuriating to one another, that was momentarily forgotten on both parts.
Right about that moment, Zero was so nearly out of his mind with fatherly glee that he had to hold himself back so he wouldn't do something horribly embarrassing such as, oh say, hug Kuran. He wouldn't be caught dead doing that, but he did address the pureblood a look of immense happiness, and Kaname was taken aback, not having known that the moody hunter could display such an emotion.
"I'll continue guarding him if you want to go see Yuuki, you know."
Zero did want to. He had a lot to tell her, and he couldn't help but want to apologize for his foolish ideas and the most stupid thing he would have done in his life, if not for Kaname having seen him and halted him just before he left. Zero couldn't believe he had been so close to making such a terrible mistake.
It was more than just the fact that the child –his child with Yuuki-- gave him the legitimacy he needed at his own eyes to remain by her side. It was like a dam of repressed feelings breaking open at last, so many things he'd felt or thought and that he'd just buried because he assumed he was nothing but a burden. He wouldn't be making that mistake anymore!
As Zero disappeared out of sight in the direction of Yuuki's room, the pleasant façade Kaname had been putting up faded from the pureblood's face, and he leaned back, letting the back of his head touch the glass. He sighed painfully before he turned around to look at the baby again.
"I hope you'll forgive me one day, my son."
Tears that he couldn't allow himself to shed here or now were burning in Kaname's eyes.
Right about now, the pureblood really wished he could erase his own memories.
The baby wouldn't remember his father sneaking into the room and using his power to cheat against nature, to do something absolutely unforgivable, altering his child's very nature, binding his power down to hide it, and pushing his own pureblood control over the matter and molecules far enough to even change the very color of the child's hair from brown to a silvery grey, completely concealing his nature.
The nurses wouldn't remember anything either, even the one who had walked in on him and exclaimed in a shocked manner 'what do you think you're doing?!' when she saw him in the babies' room, leaning over the little cradle. He had only been able to whisper "I'm saying farewell to my son."
He'd completely modified the memories of all the ones involved, and he had replaced everything as it was, before he went to stand outside and wait, displaying more control and methodical-ness than he had expected himself able to have in such a moment.
Now, came the hardest part. Living with it.
Considering what the normal length of pureblood fertility cycles was – there was a reason why they were so rare despite being nearly impossible to kill – it would be a good thousand of years before Yuuki and him could have a child again. A child he could actually hold in his arms and call his, a child that would look at him and know he was his father.
So much could change until then. It was such a dangerous gamble.
But Yuuki needed the two of them so she could be complete, and so Kaname had to carve out a chunk of his heart once again to ensure that things would remain balanced and go smoothly.
With luck, he would survive this pain too, and go on as he had to. For her, always for her.
Maybe one day his son would grow up to understand the horrible things one may be forced to do for love, and perhaps forgive him.
.
.
The End.
.
I was going to post this in my collection of short stories, but it was a bit longer, so I decided to post it as a separate one-shot.
This is a fic idea I've had for a few months now, and that was originally a medium-length series, but I had decided not to write it because it would be too depressing (there is such a thing as too much angst after all XD), and in the end, the idea stayed, so I ended up turning it into an one-shot ficlet instead.
In the series version, this was just the beginning, and the fic idea covered their life in the years afterwards, as the child grew up not knowing Kaname was his father, but despite the alterations Kaname had done Zero was getting more suspicious. (Due to the child's aura/power/etc and various incidents, such as the fact that at some point, to grow up healthy etc, the kid needed his father's blood regularly, and, well, Zero's blood was having no effect, while Kaname was sneaking in to give the boy his blood in secret.)
There's also the fact that Zero heard more about the ex-humans being sterile thing, and realized it was probably true, so... XD;;
There was a load of angst, especially because at some point, Yuuki was assassinated, and so they were left with just the little boy, and Kaname was completely torn by the fact that now he had nothing from Yuuki, officially in any case.
This fic wasn't yaoi, (as you already noticed XD), so there was no 'happy raising the kid together' type of idea: once Yuuki died Zero wanted out and away from Kaname, and was going to take 'his' kid with him, while Kaname was desperate.
It was all a great mess and would have turned out much too angsty, so the one-shot format makes it less painful. XD lol
And lastly while I'm rambling in the notes, the reason why Kaname couldn't go in the room while Yuuki gave birth wasn't actually because he really was too nervous for it to be safe – he just used that as an excuse, when in fact it's because if he had gone, Zero would have gone too, and would have seen the baby before Kaname altered him.
I was going to add that, but it would have made things longer, and it was just a detail. :)
Similarly, it wasn't really true that he couldn't tell whether the child was his or not. He knew from the start, just like he knew what Zero would do, hence why he planned all this ahead. He was indeed just hiding the obvious, as Zero suspected he might be doing. (But once Zero saw the baby, those suspicions were forgotten...)
Of course, all the background settings such as fertility cycles and sterility of ex-humans (unless turned into full level C by having their master's blood) is all made up for this fic and totally not canon. :)
Just thought I'd mention just in case. XD;