[Consumption]

Zero hates mirrors. He hates looking into them, unsure each morning what he might see. Would it be the flickering, burning red of insanity dancing in the corner of his vision? Bloodlust rose so quickly, sometimes; it scalded and crawled up the back of his throat, creeping into his mind with all the subtlety of a hungry wolf.

He hungered.

Already, though, he was fueled by the blood of monsters. That woman--everything about her white and light pink, the exact shade of a blood-stained blanket not-quite-cleaned by chemicals; her blood is in him.

Her madness is in him.

And that other--the Kuran, who's blood was acid to one such as him, and still some how desirable. The rich purity of that blood stripped the delicate tissue of his throat as he drank, ate at the lining of his stomach and left hot trails through his veins as it was absorbed and spread throughout his body.

That detestable prick is inside him.

Ichiru, the twin he lost and the stranger he hardly recognized--same body, different persons. His body made whole by the blood of their clan's murderer; his heart, turned hard, by the workings of Fate and the neglect of their parents.

His blood, flowing over a lapping tongue as he pressed Zero back into the stone wall.

Amazing; it seemed not even the Bloody Rose was save. In his hands, while his brother's body cooled beside him in the dungeon, the gun changed shape. He pressed it to his lips and then slid it down, against his bare chest--and watched it disappear inside him, slowly. The action was vaguely sensual--the length of spelled weaponry hiding beneath his flesh--but it was ruined by the sense of sadness that swept through him.

Another, consumed.

He thinks back on the irony of that--his hunger, which devours all. He has taken bites of many things--Kaname, Ichiru and through them, Shizuka. And the first among them all--the first of all his victims--Yuuki.

Her words come to him like the fluttering of wicked wings in the darkness.

"The vampire side of Yuuki ate the other part..."

In a way, he's glad of that--despite the burn in his chest and the wild, rapid beating of his heart. Denial, it screams. No, he must be glad.

Because even in his hunger, he managed to spare the one creature who was most deserving of the kindness. He has not consumed her.

But she was consumed, no doubt.

By some other thing, some other one.

He feels that perhaps, she has consumed him.

He doesn't think he minds.