[01/12/15] It has been years since the last update, ne? Well, I am going to post a Shizuka-Kazuki oneshot written by my dearest friend, Her Little Doll on the 27/4/2011. I have been keeping this that long, yes. Coz I'm terminally in love with Shizuka and I was too greedy to share. Lol. This is an incredible piece set during Shizuka and Kazuki's younger years. Time passed, we grew and things changed. Are you all still here? Should we continue this project? I'd love to keep on dreaming so in the meantime, enjoy this little gift. I wonder if you are reading this, dearest Doll? ^^

Title: Mirror.

o0O0o

Why return to this place? It was the nostalgic feeling- Shizuka was sure of it. The very same window, the very same face, the very same eyes. It had not been every day of her younger years that she had seen the noble vampire- but it had felt like every moment. In truth, all Shizuka could remember about her childhood home was that girl, the comparatively feeble child who grew as Shizuka grew, who aged as Shizuka aged and whose progress was ever watched through the window.

The crying of a little kitten was most poignant in her memory- a tiny creature with round limbs and an awkward demeanor as though it only dreamed of attaining the grace adult cats possessed. Its tail was a short, frizzy thing that trailed after it uncertainly. The kitten's paws were delicate and tender, the core of the creature's fragility in their dainty smallness. A fly would be harder to kill.

It was a stray. It was affection-starved, a miserable, little soul that had wandered into the mansion's courtyard by some bizarre twist of fate. Its voice was high, curious, perhaps hungry and most certainly pitiful. Anyone with a shred of kindness would pity it. Shizuka watched it from her window and did not hate it.

But the noble girl also did not hate it.

Shizuka had been waiting for her to arrive, waiting by the window with endless patience as the week crawled by. The pureblood was a five year old child then but even at such a young age, time passed as an endless dream to her. Time…something she would always have plenty of.

And so, it had taken a week for the noble girl to come again to the courtyard, to dare to take up their game where they would meet each other's eyes and see who looked away first.

They had never said a word to each other and Shizuka was not always at the window. The girl was not always in the courtyard. It seemed, however, that whenever one ought to be there, the other was surely as well.

The sound of the kitten's cry drew the girl's eyes sooner than did the pull of the window from which Shizuka watched. There was that fire once more, those pale eyes burning with a warm light, burning with a gentle smile that suddenly lit her face. Shizuka's eyes locked on the noble as she approached the cat, knelt down and held out her hand. The creature trustingly sniffed her fingers then pressed its head against her palm. The pureblood's sharp ears could just make out the unpracticed sound of its purr as it lavished itself over the noble.

The girl did not look at Shizuka. She looked at the cat- like the pitiful thing was important.

Shizuka hated it then.

She pressed her fingers against the window, leaning forehead so that her lips almost touched the glass. Her power formed within her mind almost without her conscious will and she gently reached out, beyond herself, beyond the window into the courtyard. She took the life held in the girl's hands, the invisible force of her mind gentle encircling its tender body. Then she crushed it.

The kitten's neck snapped, its mewling voice cut off abruptly and its body going limp. The noble girl's smile froze, the fire in her eyes smothered by frost. With a stricken expression, she watched as the little creature collapsed to the ground.

Shizuka could taste her pain, the stabbing, bitter flavor of sudden and senseless loss. The kitten, an incarnation of trusting innocence, had been crushed, destroyed, it's life snuffed out for no reason but a whim.

Yet it was not 'just a whim' because now the noble vampire was looking at Shizuka, as she ought to have been from the first moment.

Pale eyes locked with pale eyes, one pair sharp and ragged with frozen pain, frozen shock and frozen rage. The other was merely cold, its cruelty subtly augmented by the curve of pureblood lips.

"Why…?"

The whisper was nothing more than an extension of that moment, a breath on the noble child's lips, frigid with wonder as the look in her eyes. They stared at each other in fascination, each second crawling by and the corpse on the ground crawling nowhere. Shizuka smiled coldly, slipped deftly away from the window and did not answer.

It felt wrong.

There were but a few paces of space between them, films of shadow existing as the only barrier to hold them apart. On the floor, kneeled the noble girl, her long braid falling over her left shoulder to the floor. Her eyes were downcast but every so often, they would flicker upward for one, stolen moment. Those moments each were brave. Before her sat her pureblood mistress, still as a statue of carved ice with quiet eyes, eyes that did not burn quite the same way. Silver hair spilled flowingly down Shizuka's shoulders, framing her face, brushing against her silk-shrouded arms and the obi of her kimono. The window was beside Shizuka and it was not separating them.

It felt wrong.

Yet Shizuka had done it. She had summoned the girl to her with a cold, self-mutilating wish and a steely smile on her lips. She was breaking something- breaking a mirror. The window was supposed to be between them. They were only supposed to gaze upon each other as one gazes upon their reflection. Shizuka knew that; she did not need to ask anyone the reason because it was apparent. The girl knew it too; that was the fear burning in her eyes, the powerless dread of one who cannot resist but secretly desires the very same thing. It was not supposed to happen. Shizuka acknowledged that she had undeniably broken something important and calmly resigned herself to the wounds she would attain from shattering the mirror with her bare hands.

And smiling at the noble, she spoke forbidden words. "What is your name?"

The girl's eyes widened, almost angrily, almost in outrage. She stared at the floor in furious horror, her delicate hands clenching into fists.

Shizuka let out a breath of laughter, tilting her head to one side. "Will you deny your mistress this knowledge?"

The noble looked up and her lips parted but she bit back whatever words had risen to her tongue. She returned her gaze to the floor and drew a low breath. "My name is Kazuki, Lady Pureblood," she replied softly, her voice hushed. She sounded just like the pureblood herself then- though her voice was not meant to be quiet. Kazuki- yes, Kazuki, Kazuki, the name was right- had a voice that burned and in softness, it was of timid sparks too hesitant to blaze.

Shizuka watched her mockingly, a contemptuous expression on her young face as she looked down at the kneeling noble. Her eyes however were trailing over Kazuki's features, hungrily, sharply- and her lips, her pureblood lips, were endlessly forming the shape of that name.

Kazuki.

Given breath, the word became alive in the silence of the shadows. "Kazuki."

Kazuki flinched, panic in her gaze. It was wrong.

Yes, it is wrong, isn't it, dear pet? "Kazuki," Shizuka said again, her voice soft and rightfully soft, "my name is not 'Lady Pureblood'."

Kazuki stared at the floor for a few moments more, her fingers slowly unclenching to splay across the polished wood. "I know," she said finally.

"And?" the pureblood prompted quietly, a playful note in her voice. In her mind's eye, she could see the ragged fragments of the mirror she had shattered and she crushed each piece slowly as if determined to turn them to dust.

"Your name is Hiou Shizuka-sama," Kazuki said and the name spilled lovingly from her lips, as if she wanted to kiss it. "You are my mistress, and I, your unworthy servant."

"Are you unworthy?" said the other vampire curiously, with interest rather than disagreement. "I will remember it."

"My lady," said the noble quickly, forcing her burning voice into a humble tone, "why have you summoned me here? Is there a task you require me to fulfill?" When Shizuka said nothing, she continued. "You have not lived in this house for some time. I had thought your departure a permanent one."

"Sou," Shizuka affirmed, leaning an elbow on the arm of her chair and letting her head fall to her palm. "It is permanent. Tonight I will leave and never return."

Kazuki's eyes widened and she looked up sharply. "You won't be coming back? Why? That man-"

"My fiancé," the pureblood stated deadly and it closed the unfinished question with finality. "Should you not be asking, however, why I returned at all? It is expected that I live away from here. The answer to your question is obvious; why, why did I return…is what you should wonder."

The noble's face became subdued as she stared at Shizuka quietly- but her eyes were on fire. The pureblood stared into those pale eyes, studying them, studying the longing, the almost-hope. She smiled suddenly, graciously, inclining her head.

"Would you like me to say, 'I returned because I wanted to see you, Kazuki'?" she offered kindly. She leaned forward in her chair, placing her hand on the side of the noble's face. "Shall I indulge you?"

Kazuki let out an unsteady breath, her head turning slightly as though she ached to look away but could not. "One such as I could not linger in the mind of a pureblood, my lady," she said finally as though proposing an agreement- and agreement she entreated Shizuka to accept. The clause- Kazuki was merely a servant and Shizuka was an exalted pureblood. The clause- their was a barrier between them, a mirror.

Shizuka seized a fistful of her silver hair and crushed their lips together.

Shatter the mirror!

Kazuki expelled a low breath that was almost a moan, something hopeless in it, something wanting. Her lips were soft, familiar- a familiar feeling. Shizuka knew those lips and as she slipped from her chair to capture the noble in her arms, she knew the other girl's slender frame. Silken strands tangled through the pureblood's fingers, the noble yielding as the dying fell to a sword. Shizuka drew back, their breaths mingling, their pale eyes locked together unbreakably.

"But it's true," the silver-haired pureblood whispered. "It's true. I came to see you again."

Kazuki watched her wide-eyed, utterly still- and somehow yet burning, her skin afire beneath Shizuka's fingertips, her voice aflame with hunger. "Why?"

The moment was intense so Shizuka broke it. She simply released the noble and stood, carelessly walking a few steps away as though disinterested. She toyed with a lock of her silver hair, smiling to herself at the lingering memory of a kiss on her lips. "You tell me," she instructed lightly, her back to the noble vampire.

Kazuki expelled a disbelieving breath, gathering her senses. "I am flattered, my lady, but never mind then. You should not have done it."

"Are you telling me what I should not do?" the pureblood asked, her voice dropping abruptly with a dangerous gentleness.

"No," the other vampire said, quickly shaking her head. "No, my lady."

"So thoughtless," Shizuka murmured, her soft voice cruelly unemotional. "It is as though you do not know what you are. Pitiful."

"I am your devoted servant," Kazuki said quietly and again the low tone did not suit her. She was only repeating something she had heard or believed in for a long time. It impressed Shizuka not at all.

"I grow weary of hearing that," the pureblood said dismissively. "After all, I don't really know what you are either…" Her tone became thoughtful, distant. "A friend? No, the very idea is absurd. You are not my friend. You are not my servant either…Kazuki, Kazuki…I want to own you, Kazuki." There was a lilting quality to the last.

Kazuki looked down once more, dark lashes veiling her eyes. "You do own me." These words, though soft in tone, suited her perfectly and burned.

"Is that so?" Shizuka wondered, still not turning around. Her manner was subdued. That confession made a strange pain twinge in her heart, something bitter but decadently sweet- a self-destruction that tore away everything that was supposed to be. "Then say my name."

Silence fell, a shroud that blanketed the room to intensify the curtains of darkness lurking across the floor. Even the window seemed dark- and it was not shattered. The glass panes were whole and unbroken, untouched.

"Mm," Shizuka murmured, accepting the wordless response. She let out a low sigh, walking to the door of the room. "We will meet again, I think…but perhaps by then, sorrow will weigh much more heavily on our shoulders. Until then…"

In her mind, Shizuka could see a mirror that her words and her actions and her questions…had still not shattered.

o0O0o

More? If only I have a tenth of Doll's talent.