This story is portrayed from the manga perspective (for example, there will be cursing to better illustrate the characters' true natures), but the visual references (for example, Yagarī's ice-blue eye) are portrayed from the anime perspective. Rated M for mature language, sexual references and eventual actions, and general content not safe for minours younger than seventeen years. You've been warned.
Disclaimer: Vampire Knight, along with its characters and locations, belong to Matsuri Hino. Reiko Souma, her parents and people of her hometown and prior residence, Shourim Manti, and Scian'tlo (not an actual village on the U.S. Virgin Islands) belong to me.
This is another attempt at an ongoing story. Please let me know how I'm doing with a review!
What was once a peaceful moment in the evening suddenly became a chaos of weather. Storm clouds rolled in and started to pour down rain with seemingly no end. It rained all around the facedown and barely conscious Reiko, but it didn't rain on her. How strange.
Kaname was the first to sense something amiss with the weather, and he turned to find the woman no longer on the roof.
That was when the cries could be heard from below: "Souma-san! Souma-san! Wake up, Souma-san! We have to get out of here now!" The voice sounded so far away, even though it was coming from right next to her. Suddenly, she stopped hearing anything at all.
—•—•—•—
Yagarī answered the persistent knocks at his door to find an unhinging Zero standing on the other side, breathing heavily. "What is it?" he asked gruffly. "You did what?!" Yagarī demanded when the silver-haired man told him of what he had done to Reiko. "Where is she?"
"Right where I left her, Master. Follow the rain! It started to pour right after she hit the ground! That's got to prove that she's a vampire!" Although the hunter didn't believe that about the weather, he allowed his idiotic apprentice to lead him to the very spot where Reiko had landed. One of the Day Class students, clearly out past her curfew, was trying to wake the fallen woman up. "Go back to your dorm. Now!" Zero ordered, glaring at the girl. She got up and ran off.
Meanwhile, Yagarī was checking the woman for injuries. She clearly had a concussion, but nothing seemed to be broken. Taking note of how she had landed on her back, his only conclusion was that she had tried to break her fall at the last second. It couldn't have stopped her from hitting her head hard, though. "You're coming with me to the Headmaster, Kiryū-kun," Yagarī told the angry Prefect. Confident that there were no broken bones or otherwise other tricky injuries, he picked the woman up and carried her inside.
—•—•—•—
The gauntlet came down inside of the Headmaster's office. "You've been holding a grudge against Souma-san since she first came to this academy, Zero. It's very much out of hand now," Kaien told the young man standing before him. Was he that determined to prove that the woman was a vampire? "Listen to me, she may come across as a vampire to you because she received blood from a Pureblood through a blood transfusion several years ago. She was taken from her parents and forced to receive that transfusion against her will, but she's as human as the rest of the Day Class students!"
Now he chooses to tell Zero all of this. It would have been more useful to tell him these things a bit sooner! The shock on the silver-haired man's face made him look like a little boy, though. "How can that be?" Zero asked after a long moment. "How can a human receive vampire blood and not know that she's actually a vampire?
The answer was easy. Her memories had been completely suppressed by the Purebloods who had kidnapped her. Reiko knew nothing about her actual parents, who were still being located. They could be anywhere in the world. "She doesn't know about any of this, so it's important that she doesn't find out from any of us...or from Kaname-kun," Kaien asserted.
—•—•—•—
"Your past will surely catch up to you." Kaname's words echoed through the young woman's mind as she came to. Were those really his words, or simply the power of suggestion? As her eyes slowly opened, the woman immediately found herself dealing with a migraine. Boy, did it hurt! Her hands went to her head right away. This had to be a concussion.
What had happened to her? One look to her right revealed an IV and wires stuck to a catheter in her arm; a look to her left rewarded her eyes with a series of monitors and wires attached to both it and her head and heart. I'd better not try to sit up on my own, was her bright idea. All she could remember was falling from the roof and trying to break her fall before landing hard. Before that, she had been standing on the roof outside of the second floor classroom. The ground was solid, which meant that someone with a grudge had pushed her...but who?
Sighing, Reiko started to go through her list of possible suspects. Who would want to do such a thing? Yagarī and Kaien were immediately ruled out. Yūki? She was too nice. Kaname? He was in class and had been ordered to stay away from the woman. Zero? He had attacked her in her own dorm room once before, so she wouldn't put it past him to do so again. To push her from the roof, though? What was he thinking?
"Good. You're finally awake," came Yagarī's gruff voice as he walked through the door that he had opened. Reiko's eyes shifted to peer at him, watching him pull up a chair and sit by the bed. "You're lucky to be alive, though I'm pretty sure you already figured out that my idiot apprentice is responsible." She nodded slowly and with a wince. It hurt to move her head. "How much of tonight do you remember?"
Leave it to him to ask that question. Not only did it hurt to move her head, it was almost too painful to think. Her low groan confirmed that when she narrowed her eyes. "I'd gone back out on patrol after my encounter with Kuran-san, despite that look on your face that you were trying to suppress. It was nice and quiet until I stood on the roof outside of the Night Class...and that's when Kiryū-san pushed me. I heard someone trying to say something to me once I landed, but...I couldn't make out what they were saying. I lost it and woke up here...how long have I been out for, Yagarī?"
Five hours. That wasn't a good sign. "Zero's been sent to the basement of the Academy to be dealt with accordingly." Kaien was going to suspend him for a month due to the seriousness of Reiko's injury. It was serious enough that she had to stay in the infirmary for just as long as Zero's suspension, if not longer. How bad was it, exactly? "It's bad. Kaien has to send your guardian and your doctor in to discuss how this will affect your condition." The hunter's hand reached out and cupped Reiko's chin from underneath. The two of them tended to share these soft moments in private.
"I have faith that Fate will prolong my health and allow me to recover." She reached out her hand for him, and he moved closer. His free hand took hold of hers whilst his other moved up to stroke her cheek. "Was I not born into a battle for my own life?" she asked just before Yagarī softly pressed his lips to hers.
Battling for her own life. Those words brought on a sudden realisation that hadn't before processed...until now. She has been fighting for her life since the very beginning. That's why she's able to stand up to vampires so bravely. Yagarī ended the kiss before sitting back in the chair. There was no official relationship between them, nor did either of them have it on their minds. It was a matter that was enjoyed privately, such as now.
Yagarī took note of the pain on the woman's face with indifference. "Just as little gets by you as it does me, eh," she stated to the man's surprise. The look on his face was priceless. "I don't know why you look so surprised. My concussion hasn't affected my intelligence any." Now a smirk took the place of the surprised look on his face. "That's more like it." Reiko laid her head back on the bed once more after raising it to a slightly reclined position. She didn't want to have to stare up at the lights whenever she blinked or woke up in this room. "Yagarī. This doesn't change my opinion of Kiryū-san...I'll still give him the respect that he deserves, even though he's attacked me twice now. He just didn't think before he acted."
The woman had to pinch both of her cheeks in order to stay awake. She knew better than to allow herself to fall asleep during the first day of her having a concussion, particularly when coupled with anemia. What else could she do to stay awake? She reached for her Katana and unsheathed it. It needed to be cleaned again. When was the last time she cleaned the blade anyways? Certainly a while had passed if she had to think about it.
Watching as she inspected her sword, Yagarī made himself more comfortable in the chair. He stared out the window blankly, every so often glancing back at the woman to make sure she was still awake. He really wasn't good at this, keeping another company, but Reiko wasn't just any other woman.
"Hey. Wake up," he said when Reiko started to nod off with her Katana across her lap. Giving her arm a gentle shake, her eyes fluttered open. "You can sleep all you want later. Not now." So began those reminders. Reiko glanced down to find her Katana still sitting there on her lap.
"Sorry." She rubbed her eyes and picked up her Katana. Then she held it out for the man to take. "As long as I'm in this condition, I'm not to be trusted with wielding it. Please keep it away from me until we know for sure that I'm out of the woods." Entirely against this as she was, it was a sensible decision to make. Her head was pounding worse than ever now, but that wasn't all that was bothering her.
It was her throat. Reiko suddenly felt like she hadn't drank anything in days, even though she remembered having her last bottle of water hours before her patrol, and it hurt like pine needles stabbing her. Her hands went to her throat painfully. "Reiko, what's wrong?" Now she was used to her throat being dry to the point of hurting. What she wasn't used to was this oddly warm taste on her tongue. What was it? It had a slightly metallic taste to it, almost like vitamins and minerals that she was used to eating with her food.
Among the most prominent of these was the iron from her daily medicine. Speaking of such, she hasn't taken her iron pills yet. "My medicine...is it morning yet? I have to take my medicine just after sunrise." The woman changed the subject so suddenly. How unlike her. This can't be the taste of...blood? So suddenly did those words come back to her. How exactly would her past catch up with her?
"Your past will surely catch up with you. Those words came back to her. Go away, already! Her hands moved from her throat to her ears. Her intent focus on trying to banish what she thought were Kaname's words made her oblivious to Yagarī moving from the chair onto the bed in front of her and lightly shaking her shoulders to get her attention. Reiko may be his best student who had his attention in more than one way, but he still thought of her as a somewhat troublesome woman.
"I don't want anymore people in my head!" the woman shouted. "Not that vampire who tried to kidnap me, not Kuran-san, nobody! I just want to live a happy life!" Then, just as quickly as she had shouted those things without thinking, the woman lowered her hands to her side and raised her head. Her eyes were void of any emotion, not shining that bright pink that Yagarī was used to. They almost seemed...dull.
She also pushed the tall man onto his back and leaned over him. What was going on with her? "You know, Yagarī, I think you're delicious." Her hands were planted between his head as she spoke. What an eery tone she used. "I'm going to prove everybody right, and myself wrong, right now." Reiko leaned her head closer to his. Lower it went, her tongue sliding out and running itself up the right side of his neck slowly. "I'm going...to turn you into a vampire."
Oh my! What's going on here? Don't forget to leave a review! =^.^=
