Fallen Petal

by Kuro Warau

A/N: I'm very sorry for the long wait. I have had a running assignment for school, but I'm afraid that can't take the entire blame. I hope you all haven't lost interest in this story. And I hope you'll enjoy this chapter!

As for the location of the Kuran Manor, since the original manga is completely uncertain about time and location of Vampire Knight, I use city and area names from Japan, since I figured that they speak Japanese. Kyoto was chosen, since it's the old emperor city.

As for the names of Aidou's sisters, Tsukiko is the only name given in the manga, but it is shown that he have three older sisters. I just invented the names for the other two. Hanako is "flower child", while Mariko is "circle". Tsukiko means "moon child". And by Tanaka, I mean the Aidou family's butler or servant or whatever he is, who is shown at Aidou's residence during the holiday in chapter 28-29.

Chapter Two: Turn Your Eyes Away

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Yuuki once again pressed all the water out of her cloth with tender hands before dapping it against her brother's temple, slowly cleaning the blood away. It had loosened from the skin by this point and the small bowl of water that stood on the end table was filled with red. "What did you do to end up like this?" she asked, bathing the cloth again.

"Well…" Kaname answered hesitantly, "there was a group of them and they got track of me before I got track of them, due to the wind. They had hoped this would be a killing shot, so they weren't ready to deliver a second, which gave me time to run. And then there was a boy…" Kaname's voice faded away, when he lost concentration. Yuuki observed him with a small smile. Then she turned and spoke to a couple of nobles in the other end of the room.

"Hanabusa, Takuma, now you better hurry. It seems Kaname's got a boyfriend," she remarked in a lovingly mocking tone and turned back to the work of cleaning her brother's temple. Kaname jokingly pretended to sulk, but when he saw the nobles' gazes, he thought he might as well defend himself. "Yuuki. He's not a boyfriend, but a guy, a hunter no less, that I just happened to run into and who just happened to look so innocent and inexperienced that I let him live."

Yuuki, as always, understood. She knew that Kaname, perhaps less than any other here, would like to be called "hunterlover", even in fun. She hadn't been old when they escaped, so her memories of that time were hazy. Kaname, on the other hand, had seen the terrors of war and massacre all too close. So had both Aidou Hanabusa and Ichijo Takuma, two of Kaname's old friends. They even knew each other from before everything got turned upside down.

Ichijo Takuma was a childhood friend, the same age as Kaname and, in extension of that, an obvious target of Juuri's desire to create friends for Kaname in his own age group. That Takuma had survived in the first place was almost a miracle in itself, much like the case with Kaname and Yuuki. Takuma's grandfather had been leader of the Vampire Council and, naturally, it was such high-ranking nobles and purebloods that the hunters targeted first. In fact, the Ichijo Estate had been one of the first places the hunters went and it had been overrun only a couple of hours after the Hunter President was found. Takuma had only made it because he was absent from home when the attack occurred and, after being informed of what had happened, had luck to escape.

Aidou Hanabusa was a noble of very good family, although he was the only one still alive by now. He and Kaname had met when the Kuran couple had business with the Aidou family head, Hanabusa's father. At that point, Hanabusa hadn't been overly kind to Kaname, but later, in the forest, they had met again and ever since then, they had established a very strong friendship. Hanabusa was fiercely loyal to Kaname, and in return, Kaname cared deeply for Hanabusa. Yuuki also knew Hanabusa well, they had accompanied each other most of the way through the forest and seen friends and family die around them. The three of them were the only ones who had managed to escape the crushing grip of the escape.

Both of them lived in apartments not too long away from the siblings' and naturally, they met often and accompanied each other in patrolling. Aidou was carefully pressing a wet cloth against a split eyebrow, almost afraid to touch it. He grimaced every time the cloth made contact with the flesh and breathed out through gritted teeth.

"Hanabusa, what did you do to end up with that?" Yuuki asked, still keeping her eyes down on her brother's forehead. "A too close encounter with a hunter?"

Ichijo suppressed a grin, the laugh coming out as a muffled sound. Aidou's eyes shot lightening in the green-eyed noble's direction, but when Ichijo noticed Yuuki's questioning gaze, he continued. "No… More like a too close encounter with a branch of the tree outside," Takuma explained, nodding towards the open window and the tall tree outside.

Yuuki turned her gaze back towards her brother with a smile, noticing how it pulled slightly in the corner of Kaname's mouth, but the older pureblood didn't make a sound. He knew how highly Aidou put his dignity, especially when it came to the pureblood's opinion.

Ever since Kaname had taken care of Aidou after his sister's death, Hanabusa had looked up to the pureblood in a drastic adoration that was sometimes warming and sometimes irritating to the pureblood. Ichijo, on the other hand, had a less formal relation to Kaname, they were seeing each other as equal. They were close friends, whereas Aidou and Kaname's relation more was that of worship from one side and care from the other.

Before the massacres started, vampires had been divided in sections, split by levels and political beliefs. There had been four main groups, consisting of the purebloods, the "pureblood-minded" nobles and common vampires, the "council-minded" nobles and common vampires and the ex-humans, who had little insight into the political system and life of vampire society. Most purebloods minded their own business and left it to the nobles and commoners to fight over politics. The Kuran family was the only purebloods to care about politics, probably because they were a central part of the fight itself. Those who were "pureblood-minded" wanted a return to the monarchy of earlier days, which meant that they wanted the Kuran family to govern vampire society.

But now, no such things as division coursed by political belief existed. Since there technically didn't exist a political system between the vampires anymore, there was no need for such problems. Even without a political system, it worked fine between the vampires, they were all united in a shared hatred towards the rest of the world, basically, towards those who took their lives and their loved ones away from them. The three purebloods still alive made up such a small part of the vampires that levels mattered less than before, although they were still present, as it was something biological that was impossible to undermine. It was any vampire's natural reaction and response to protect, respect and fear purebloods, and that instinct couldn't be changed because of a changed way of life.

"All done," Yuuki announced and squeezed the last blood out of her wash cloth. She really just wanted to get back to the apartment and rest a little, perhaps to get something to eat. Her brownish eyes took on a red undertone as she poured out the bloodied water of the bowl. It was weeks since she'd last had any blood, apart from a not very satisfying feeding from a hunter on the mainland that had already died. Vampires saw it as highly disgusting and vile to feed off dead blood, but she hadn't been able to hold herself back.

Kaname took her home.

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"Just a little more. I can almost see the end of the wood now," Kaito announced, giving the wooden stick in Zero's arm yet another careful pull. The younger of the two grimaced every time he yanked on it, but else looked like he was thinking of something else.

"Master, how did hunters organize themselves when they went hunting for vampires? They were so swift. How come the vampires could regroup?" he asked, supporting his head in one hand and having the other arm stretched out to his side to grant Kaito access to the hurting area. Yagari was sitting across from him, in the midst of the time-consuming process of counting and organizing bullets.

"Well, when the President was found, word quickly got out to the entire hunter community. It was important to begin quickly so the vampires wouldn't have time to leave. Such shouldn't go unpunished," he explained, not looking up from his work, but following the out pulling of the wood from the corner of his eyes.

"But… surely not all of the vampires were guilty of killing the President." Zero inhaled sharply as Kaito finally gave the wood one last, hard yank and it got out. Kaito cleaned off the wound with an antiseptic mixture that they always used to clean such wounds so they wouldn't get infected. "Well… no, of course not. But you've never seemed to understand that the reason why some of them did it, was because all of them are in a certain way. They're all alike," Yagari fought to explain. "They're not human. They're a strange combination of new, better adaptations and old, primitive instincts."

Vampires evolved some thousands years ago, during a period where the numbers of humans fell drastically due to climatic changes. Evolution is natural selection, but during extinctions, the natural selection is even higher, since it's only the very best suited who survives. Vampires were perfectly suited to outlive the climatic changes.

Physically, they were so much alike humans that it allowed them to breed. The males were tall, usually over 175 cm, and the females a little lower. They had a slender built, with long limps, and they were strong and fast. They had a well-functioning immune system that could fight down almost everything.

But the real difference lay in their blood and in their brains. They were intelligent, imaginative and, first and foremost, their brains worked incredibly fast because of their heightened senses. The ones with the purest blood were gifted with unimaginable powers. The purer the blood, the stronger the vampire. The ones with completely unsoiled bloodlines, the purebloods, were akin to gods, revered and feared by other vampires.

During the war, the hunters had been successful in erasing almost all of those vile beings from the face of the earth. And yet, three had escaped. Once, they'd almost had one of them but she had managed to run away and escape at last minute. And another had encountered Zero today.

The first purebloods and high-rise nobles were killed with bullets. In a fair fight up close between a hunter and a pureblood, the hunter didn't stand many chances. But after some time, after all the vampires had scattered and fled into the woods, those purebloods or nobles that were captured were usually slowly tortured to death.

Some were killed by knives and sword. The hunters considered it a waste of bullets to shoot a prisoner and at the same time, it provided public entertainment. Since vampires weren't considered to have feelings or be on the same level as humans, in any way, it was not considered cruel or merciless to treat them like that. It was merely a good sport and nice entertainment.

Some years ago, Kaito had pulled Zero along to such an event, but he'd never really been able to see what was so fun about the blood and the screams and, while not directly pitying the vampire, had just wished that they'd put an end to the creature and stop playing around. After that, he'd never allowed himself to be coaxed to go witness such a thing again.

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"Yuuki, mind giving me the spoon?" Kaname asked, his face red from the warmth of the fire. As electricity was sparse to say the least, the only way to warm food up was to cook it over a small fire and regulate the amount of wood. The steam made the pureblood's head overheated.

On a positive note though, vampires had quickly learned themselves to make very practical lights. The stearin burned slowly, which was good, because stearin was hard to make in the middle of a war, so it was hard to get a new candle, but it was the only source of light after dark.

"Kaname… I was wondering… Do you know where we buried that box? You know, the one you're always talking about," Yuuki asked, fingering her necklace tentatively while waiting for dinner. Kaname lifted the food off the heat, letting it burn on for additional lighting. The spoon moved around in the make-believe stew as he checked if everything was done. "Of course I do, Yuuki. How could I forget?"

She looked up at him with trusting, brown eyes. "Can't we go pick it up then? I'd like to see it. I don't remember how it looked." Kaname closed his eyes in remorse. Yuuki could sometimes be rather naïve and often, her sense of logic was overruled by her zeal.

"Yuuki… we buried that box on your fifth birthday. It's on the mainland. We can't go that far from the island. That's suicide." He poured the stew into two bowls and served it. Yuuki sat across from him, her face showing her heartbreak. It was clear that she'd never considered that that box was lost for good. Kaname reached a hand over the table to lay over hers. "I'm sorry, Yuuki. I thought you'd considered that. I… I really want it back too, but… we lived very, very far away from Hokkaido before."

"Yes…" her eyes shone with unshed tears. "I hadn't considered that. I wish I could recall the house I was born in…" Her eyes suddenly lit up. "How was it, Kaname? Please tell me, I love when you talk about it." Kaname smiled gently, then gestured for her to start eating while it was warm.

"Well… Your grandfather built the house you were born in. I've never met him, but I know that he owned a big piece of land in Kyoto, and that he continually build estates for the Kuran family there through centuries. Your parents were born in one of those houses as well. After your grandparents died, they took over the management of the estates. Some fifteen years ago, you were born in the main estate. Your father was the leader of vampire society, together with your mother. They were siblings, like us." Kaname stopped to smile at Yuuki's bright smile. She loved when he told her everything, even though she'd heard it a million times already.

"Haruka told me that both him and his brother had went to a real school, and that he'd been the best, but I suppose you can say that there was a bit of a rivalry between them, so if that's true, I don't know. At the time when the all three of them were young, all the higher educations were at boarding schools. After elementary school, if you wanted to go on, it was a boarding school. But since all the other students at these boarding schools were nobles or below, your grandparents didn't like to send their children there, so they were homeschooled after that."

"Juuri, on the contrary, didn't go in elementary school. Well, she did, but only for a week. She really looked forward to it, but one day she cut herself and all the nobles had stared at her wound, which frightened her. When she told her parents about it, they found it best that she didn't return. Purebloods are quite overprotective of their offspring. You, too, was a spoiled little girl," Kaname suppressed a smile at her look.

"After elementary school, your mother learned to sew and cook and all such things. She really loved being a home wife. She used to sew your clothes when you were a baby and I loved watching her sew and knit. Well, she really wanted an education, or perhaps, she really wanted a break from her family, so she asked her parents to let her attend a human university for three years. Of course, they said no. She had to plead with her grandparents, which was a breach in her honor, I think. But they let her, on the condition that Haruka accompanied her. She wasn't very happy for that. I think he was a tad clingy. But they fell in love during those three years."

"After your grandparents died, Haruka and Juuri moved into Kuran Manor. They were newlyweds, I think. When they finally decided to have children, they had been married for centuries. When I was three, you were born. I remember that I loved watching when Juuri breastfed you. Then you lay and suckled so eagerly, looking at me with big, clear eyes," Kaname smiled at the memory and Yuuki smiled too, happy to hear Kaname talk of her own childhood.

"When I was seven, Juuri talked Haruka into sending me to a school for nobles. She was very interested in finding some friends of my own age for me. In the end of first grade, I was going to a final test and it was so important for you that I would do great. The test was ended with a presentation, where every student got their grades for some creative product. Juuri wanted me to make a small blanket myself, but I couldn't figure out how to do it and besides, I didn't care much. I wasn't interested in grades. So, when the finishing date neared, and I still hadn't made anything worth presenting, you got worried. You tried to tell your mother that you'd really like if I passed with a good grade and that I needed help. Juuri wasn't pleased, but either way, she made a small, nice blanket for me. It was perfect and I got a good grade."

"Both parents and children attended the last school day to get the grades presented. Haruka tagged along and when my name was said on a shared first place together with Aidou's sister, Tsukiko, he later said that he got so proud. And when I got home, you got happy to hear about it too. You laughed and looked so proud. And of course you also told Juuri how you were right that I'd needed a little help. Although, of course, since Juuri had helped me and since I'm a pureblood, it wasn't completely fair, but you didn't care," Kaname explained, cleaning the dishes in a bowl of water. Yuuki was walking around, putting all the lights out.

They had few possessions, no electricity and they had to be careful not to burn more stearin than highly necessary. Besides, the patrolling and sailing back and forth every day was exhausting, so after dinner, there wasn't much else to do than go to sleep.

The beds were made up of two old mattresses, some old pillows and some rough, linen sacks that they'd split to make duvets. Yuuki would sometimes dream about the house she could barely remember, but still very much loved. Just to think of the luxury of a soft bed that wasn't slightly damp because the house wasn't isolated. Or how nice it would be to eat something else than the tasteless, protein-filled nothingness day after day.

Pitch-black darkness invaded the room as she put out the last light and went to her bed. She looked out the window, out at the moon and stars. Like usual, she wondered if she'd be looking at the moon tomorrow evening. She thought about what Kaname'd said, but while she loved the stories he'd tell, she had little opportunity to think of them as other than just that – stories.

She could barely remember about her mother or her father, or a life that was any different than this. She could vaguely remember the sense of the rooms she once lived in, but apart from that, imagining another place than this only brought the memories of the forest, which sadly hadn't vanished in the same way. She remembered the feeling of walking, merely walking, endlessly followed Kaname, Aidou and the others while the flow of vampires fleeing into the forest got smaller and smaller. Their own group, too, disappeared little by little. They died of attacks from hunters, of lack of food, water or blood or from diseases that their broken immune system couldn't handle as usual.

Of a huge group of young vampires, only the four of them, Kaname, Yuuki, Hanabusa and Takuma, had managed to escape. Although… in truth nothing was certain. Neither of them knew anything definite concerning their loved ones, the ones of them who were still alive during the escape. They just knew that all these people weren't on Hokkaido now. And there was no other place for a vampire to be.

"Kaname… What happened to Aidou Tsukiko?" she asked lowly, knowing from his breathing that he didn't sleep yet. He turned around on the bed, facing her. "I don't think we should talk about this, Yuuki," he mumbled lowly, almost regretfully.

"Please," she pressed, her thoughts wandering to the vague memories of a smiling, blonde-haired girl with big blue eyes, who held her hand when she became tired of walking. And when they stopped to put up an old tarpaulin as cover for the sun, so they could sleep during the day, she would help Yuuki putting up a mattress and then run her fingers through the brown hair and whisper "Yuuki-sama… how are you doing?"

Kaname was silent for a second, before he apparently decided to share his knowledge. "Yuuki… we left her in the forest. You remember that, right? Kain told me, that I was sick to think that way. I'm sure I was, but for me I had to be cruel and heartless to protect you. You were the most important for me. But she stayed with her sisters. Her oldest sister was very ill, she couldn't walk fast. I knew we had to speed up to reach the bridge before the hunters closed it. So I acted in cold blood and left her, and those who wanted to stay with her, behind."

Kaname's eyes were steely, but it was clear that he despised himself for that. He understood, perhaps better than any, the egoism that was the natural follow of the struggle for survival. Yuuki knew that what he did saved the rest of them. And yet, even though they were five people splitting up from the main group, only three of them had made it out. Takuma hadn't joined the group at that time, still walking around on his own, utterly lost, simply following the flow.

What later happened to Tsukiko, her two older sisters, Mariko and Hanako, Senri and his mother, Rima, Seiren and Tanaka, no one knew, but Kaname was sure that the forest and cruel forces had claimed them.

Two days after they'd crossed the bridge, vampires had come running past them, explaining that the hunters had closed the bridge, capturing the remaining vampires in the forest, and had killed every vampire near. With bullets or, more commonly, katanas or small knives.

"Go to sleep, Yuuki."

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Zero yawned, stretching up to reach the lamp's switch and turn it off. He put down his book on a side table, got down under the duvet and reached a hand over to the other bed to stroke his brother's hair reassuringly. Ichiru was already fast asleep. His health was frail, so even though he patrolled too, it was for shorter time and he was completely exhausted when he returned. Zero was walking around with a constant fear, when he was patrolling, not believing that he'd have many changes if he encountered a strong vampire.

But Ichiru insisted on joining as best he could, he didn't want to be left behind when Yagari, Kaito and Zero went. And Zero couldn't say no. He never could.

Zero withdrew his hand and instead moved it to his arm, feeling the bandage around the wound left by the wood. His thoughts wandered back to the bright garnet eyes. Are you a demon or a person?

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To be continued…