Hi everyone! We hope you're having a good winter break, and that you will enjoy this chapter! Once again, Demonicballerina is to thank for the corrections :)
She had retreated into an alcove, sitting on a windowsill. On the other side of the cross-braced glass, snow was falling again. The sky was darkening, the veiled sun disappearing slowly.
Her head leaning against the wooden frame, she sighed softly and opened her eyes as the drink dissolved within her, its healing faculties slowly seeping in. She blinked, and her red-laced mahogany eyes fell on the cup she was holding in her hand. The red liquid and its fragrance still had no appeal to her. Yet she raised the glass to her lips to drink one more sip.
Eyes closed, she tried to remember, to convince herself that this bland, flavourless liquid on her tongue was his blood. But nothing, absolutely nothing on earth could ever compare to her lover's blood. With dry eyes, but a heavy heart, she took a few more sips from the cup, and put it down soundlessly.
And finally, she straightened up and deigned to look at the person on the other side of the room, unmoving, accusatory. In his hand, the Bloody Rose was waiting.
She watched him calmly, despite the hate and anger blazing in his amethyst eyes. His thin shoulder-length dishevelled grey hair gave him a slovenly appearance. But it did nothing to ruin the vampiric charm he unknowingly exhaled. His sabre was already on his belt, and his white shirt was hastily buttoned, revealing his bandaged chest.
She looked, without fear nor nervousness, at the anti-vampire sabre waiting to be unsheathed. Then at the Bloody Rose, its safety off. Their gazes locked. Silence persisted, dragged on forever. The Pureblood's gentle apparent neutrality contrasted with her liegeman's bottled up and implacable fury.
Her mahogany eyes finally blinked. She had a faint smile, and leaned again against the wall. Her gaze got lost in the contemplation of the outside world, where snow was falling gently.
Maybe because of what she had just drank, she was serene. Danger was looming, but she felt no distrust, no fear. Her survival instinct temporarily soothed by the peace of mind given by the concoction, she closed her eyes.
Although she knew that by doing this, she might die.
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"Yuuki" means "snow"
And tonight, it falls, falls soundlessly...
I whose name comes from the winter's bitter cold
Let me embrace it withoutrespite...
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Bloody Cross Chronicles
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Chapter Five
Hopelessly
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The shot rang. Gifted with vampiric abilities, she saw, heard absolutely everything, with an unbearable accuracy.
The shooter's tortured expression when he raised his weapon.
The bursting light, blinding her dilated pupils, dazzling her for a split second.
The detonation; a roll of thunder to her adrenalin-filled senses.
The bullet piercing her chest, breaking her bones, tearing her flesh, lacerating everything before coming out of her body, digging through her back in a pour of blood.
Pain.
She suffocated, panicked, eyes wide under the shock and violence of this new, cruel and burning sensation scarring her chest. Maddened by the pain, she fell to her knees, a hand upon her chest where the deadly seal had just disappeared, leaving a horrible and gashing wound in its wake.
Missed the heart.
This was what her instinct was telling her, as if to reassure her. In vain. But if the shot wouldn't kill her, she was certain that suffering would. In her panic-stricken mind, corrupted by pain and looming death, only one word remained: why?
Two arms held her tight then, and beyond the scent of her own blood, she sensed the familiar and beloved aroma, recognized against her cold skin the warmth of this other body she had learnt to love in those last few months.
Her ears didn't stop ringing. She understood then that it was because she was screaming, screaming breathlessly, with a piercing, shrieking voice. Out of breath, she coughed, the acrid taste of her own blood coming out of her throat, crimson trickles spurting on her partner's shoulder. Panting, she fought to put in words what was obsessing her:
"Wh..Why? Kaname!"
He, her brother, her lover, her soulmate, he just signed her death warrant, carried out the sentence himself. She was going to die, die by his hand! But why? What had she done, for him to betray her like this?
What had she done, if not loving him with all her being, all her soul?
What had she done?
"Ka...Kaname!" she sobbed, clinging to him, pain wrenching screams and tears out of her.
"Calm down, Yuuki. Calm down."
She shook her head, moaning, distraught. She tried to pull away from him, horrified by what he had done and still fearing for her life. But he held her even tighter, trapping her in an iron circle.
"You are a vampire, Yuuki. A vampire. A Pureblood. You cannot die. Not from this."
She let out a harrowing sob, unable to understand what he meant. The pain was so strong, so poignant that she was going to lose her mind.
"Control yourself, Yuuki. Let your instinct speak. You are a vampire. Listen to your body."
Paralysed by the pain, shaking, she couldn't get over this suffocating panic that took hold of her. Die, she was going to die!
"Yuuki, look at me!"
She felt his large, willowy and warm hands pull her down, placed on her tear-stained cheeks. Her wide eyes met her lover's and stayed captivated by their dark, crimson colour.
"Yuuki, I had to do it. You're not human anymore. Your body knows it already, but your mind still denies it. Listen to your body, Yuuki. Calm down, and listen to your instinct. You will know that you won't die. A Pureblood like you is powerful..."
At last his words made sense to her ringing ears, and she tried to focus on her pain, something she had refused to do until then, in the hopes that running away from the suffering would maybe lessen it.
And slowly she realized that her blood had stopped flowing. Her eyes still lost in her brother's, tears running on her cheeks, panting, she understood that the incredible vampire magic had taken over her body, and already partly closed the wound. The bones were soldering again, painfully but stronger than ever. Her heart was pounding so fast that a human being would have died from tachycardia. But for a vampire, she knew, it was natural and necessary in order to heal.
While her body was mending itself, other sensations were flowing in, becoming stronger, more imperious.
Exhaustion, but especially...thirst.
"Listen to your body, Yuuki..."
She felt then that for the last few seconds, her canines had been changing into fangs she never had before, even in her worst pangs of thirst, even during the most exciting carnal lovemaking she had known with Kaname.
Sharp and hungry fangs, made for survival, if not for healing.
Her eyes lost in his, she saw him unbutton the top of his shirt and baring his shoulder. Her slender hand went immediately to this willing flesh, stroked it longingly. She knew, she felt that her widened eyes had taken a shining scarlet colour. But within her, a twinge of fear, distrust of her brother remained, stopping her from going further.
Lost in her contemplation, she shivered, like a frightened doe cornered by a predator, as Kaname put his hand behind her head and pulled her close to his shoulder.
"I had to wipe out of your mind what was still human in you, Yuuki," he whispered in her ear. "You are a vampire, and today you felt it at your deepest core. You know it now: a gunshot, even with a silver weapon, cannot stop you. You are immortal, Yuuki."
Whimpers took over her again, as well as the throbbing pain and the panic.
"But…it hurts...the pain is...unbearable..." she managed to articulate despite her fangs and growing thirst.
"You will get used to it in time, and soon it will mean nothing to you. Just as your body will heal faster with experience."
His hands, one behind her head, the other against her back, became more pressing. Surprised, she realized suddenly that he was shaking. His voice wasn't as assured as it used to be.
"I beg you, I can't stand seeing you like this...take what you want, as much as you want. I've prepared myself for it."
Shivering, she glanced at him one last time, and understood how desperate he must have been to have shot her.
"Drink, I'm begging you..."
She didn't wait any longer. With a swiftness that surprised even herself, she sank her fangs into the soft flesh, savoured Kaname's blood as she drank hungrily. It had always seemed delicious to her, but never before did she find it so subtle, delicate and irresistible. The myriad of aromas plunged her into a swirl of amazement and elation, so much that pain soon became nothing for her body.
While she drank, in bliss, she felt her life and strength coming back tenfold, accelerating her healing at an incredible speed. Tears of joy joined with her and Kaname's blood on her chin and lips: she felt herself live again!
After so much pain and terror, she was alive. Greater, more powerful, stronger than she had ever imagined.
She was a vampire. A Pureblood. Immortal, forever at the side of the man she loved, both of them indestructible. Together, like their parents before them, they would defy time.
Later, Kaname would explain that he had no other choice. That sooner or later, they would have faced overzealous hunters, mercenaries, or even other vampires who didn't take well the sudden addition to the formidable Kuran family. A day would have come when Yuuki would be badly hurt...
While a Pureblood's bite began the transformation irremediably, one did not become an accomplished vampire in one day. Descendant of the Kuran family, and as such, immortal since her transformation, Yuuki was still a burgeoning vampire: a being with yet-unseen abilities, enhanced endurance and senses, but whose mind was still restrained by her human experience. Something like pouncing, fangs bared, on an armed man, was simple enough for a vampire-born, but would have been a feat for the old Yuuki. A small wound for a seasoned Pureblood such as Kaname, could be deadly to a young vampiress like his sister.
Deadly, not fatal. But too often young vampires, in the past, had been overwhelmed, panicked by their regenerations, the pain it caused...and it drove them insane.
And this was the reason why Kaname, a few months after they left the Academy, once they were safe, miles away from any threat, grabbed the small anti-vampire revolver Yuuki had kept with her. Better for him to finish the process, rather than a group of enemies, if Yuuki was hurt...
And, with a heavy heart, without a warning, he had shot.
That day, that very day, Yuuki had become a full-fledged vampiress. A near-invincible being, whose body and mind were in accord with her Pureblood nature.
A being whose every ounce of former humanity had been smothered, by the very hand of the one she loved. And so, she could fully accept, at her core, the ultimate truth.
That she was immortal in body, but also in mind and heart.
Blinded by bliss, she took far more from Kaname than was necessary that day. But, still lovingly stroking her soft silky hair, not once did her soulmate try to move away.
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"That day, his eyes..."
The pen ran over the paper. Her eyes full of burning tears, Yori was barely able to see the curves of the letters she hurriedly wrote, entirely caught up by this poignant memory.
Within her, the familiar voice seemed to think for her, veiled by sorrow. The burning pain in her chest was finally fading, but her heart was still heavy.
"Oh, Kaname...Forgive me!"
Yori closed her eyes, shaken by an irrepressible sob, while her hand, tirelessly, was still writing down the memory possessing her, writing down what she dictated.
Never had Yuuki seen Kaname as harrowed by despair than this accursed day. Never. The Pureblood had only understood far later: this day, they both felt themselves die. He had to aim, pull the trigger, watch...
On her cheeks, Yori quickly wiped away the tears that were falling onto the manuscript. In the dark of her tortured memory, a silhouette was curled up, prisoner of an almost unbearable sorrow. Her whimpers were so strong inside Yori that she thought she could hear them surrounding her, on her dusty bookshelves and her piles of forgotten books. She didn't notice, as she wrote, that her own voice was the echo of this intolerable sadness.
"I who couldn't protect you,
I was about to lose you once more..."
In another reality, another memory, Yuuki was still sitting in her alcove, eyes closed, indifferent and facing with renouncement, Zero and his loaded Bloody Rose.
"I can't give up. I can't give you up. Not yet.
Not until I have avenged you. Not until the one who did this has died in the most painful way possible.
I swear to you, my love. I will carry on. I will live, without you by my side. Until the one who tore us apart…
...gives back what they stole from me..."
Yori sniffled softly. Without noticing, she put away the sketchbook, inside which she had written Yuuki's memory, from an era long past. Entranced, she went back to the sheets of paper she had covered hurriedly a bit earlier. Her writing changed, became more defined, more assertive. More masculine.
And somewhere in this sea of memories Zero had unwillingly given her, she saw Yuuki open her eyes.
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Zero sensed the change right away. Something more, in Yuuki's eyes, in her aura. Something that hadn't been there when he entered the room, armed and ominous. At his approach, she had lowered her eyelids, leaned against the wall. And he knew, inexplicably, that if he had unsheathed his sabre or raised the Bloody Rose in this precise moment, she wouldn't have flinched.
A second of renouncement, pure and simple, a sudden and total surrender. A bare soul behind a defenceless body.
He couldn't shoot. Or rather, he hadn't wanted to. It would have been beneath him. Just like killing someone in their sleep, taking advantage of a weakness, an opening to raise a merciless blade and slash easily, shamefully.
For a few seconds, there had been in front of him, someone other than Yuuki. A young lonely woman, surely a vampire, judging by the half-empty jug of blood beside her. But who had, in this instant, given up everything that made her a Pureblood.
The one he wanted an explanation from...It was upon her that he wanted to aim the Bloody Rose. Not on some poor creature, withdrawn and wounded, shattered in her body and mind.
So he waited. For a few seconds that seemed to stretch forever. And at last, when she opened her eyes, Yuuki was there again. Yuuki the Pureblood. The one with mahogany eyes illuminated by a gorgeous slight crimson. Their colour, her looks, her very stature, everything betrayed that she was a Kuran princess. Kaname Kuran's sister, daughter of Juuri Kuran, said to have been as beautiful as she was deadly, and of Haruka Kuran, whose charm was only matched by his valour in battle.
Yuuki was there again, as she had always been since this stormy night when she reappeared in his life. Haughty, inscrutable, powerful. The last of her line, fiercer and more dangerous than ever.
And the crack he now saw in her armour wouldn't stop him from getting things straight.
"Why, Yuuki?"
He knew perfectly well that his question was both too vague and too ordinary to be understood, so he didn't react when she tilted her head, slightly surprised.
"Why did you protect me? Why me?"
In his hand, the Bloody Rose was waiting, ready to shoot. Nervous, it seemed to him that the grip was burning his hand.
"Why did you risk your life?"
"Because you're my only chance," she whispered gently. "Didn't I tell you enough times already? And "risk my life" is a bit of an exaggeration. They barely knew how to shoot, and their weapons were far from being efficient. Their smuggler really swindled them..."
"Don't lie to me, Yuuki."
There was a heavy silence. Zero shook his head. He blinked, before taking a hold of himself.
"I know that you could have died there too."
Sitting on her windowsill in graceful nonchalance, he saw her stiffen...as expected, he thought bitterly.
"I know it...and not only because of what I saw earlier."
Despite of himself, he remembered the blow he had given her in the bedroom, simply to push her away, and her incredible recoil. Her moan of pain. Zero looked away, closed his eyes briefly.
"I know...I knew it already, somehow. You received a full load of the Bloody Rose, and you didn't fight back when they shot at you instead of me. Yet you escaped it, carrying me on your back. I don't know how long ago it was, days, maybe weeks...But during all this time, you never stopped nursing me back to life by giving me blood, while you didn't have enough for your own recovery. Even today, while I can get up, walk or even run away, you've only barely healed."
When he finally looked at her, he both appreciated and regretted the surprise on her face. She rose, alert. Under the few brown bangs brushing her alabaster face, the reddened mahogany of her pupils blazed.
"I feel it, Yuuki. Under your coldness, your looks of power and your arrogance, you're still not as strong as people think. You let yourself wither away at your own expense...at the risk of seeing me turn against you."
He quieted, waiting for a reaction. For a long time, she stayed still. Surprise deserted her face, replaced by a doubtful expression. Then, to his stupefaction, she calmed down, took the cup to her lips. Instinctively, he smelled the air, wanting to identify the aroma from the cup, and was alarmed to find it awfully familiar.
Where had he smelled it before?
After two long sips, she was wearing a faint smile.
"So, the bond between us has strengthened again. I can't lie to you anymore…at least, to a certain extent."
She lowered the cup and looked outside again. Her smile faded away, and she had once more this neutral and mysterious mask she wore so often.
"You're right," she whispered. "I'm hurt. Me, a Pureblood. And I will not heal for a very long time – all this because of you. If you wanted to..."
"I could kill you with a few bullets. Yes, I know."
Despite this threatening declaration, neither of them moved. She kept looking out of the window, and he was still watching her with growing surprise and wariness.
"Yuuki."
The Pureblood didn't move. Zero called her again, but the still and serene creature stubbornly continued just admiring the snowflakes, her silhouette simply lit by the dying whiteness of a dreary snowy day. He breathed in, ready to argue once more, then hesitated and finally gave up with a sigh. With a clicking sound, he put the safety of the Bloody Rose back on, put it back in his holster.
"Yuuki...I..."
"Alone, I don't stand a chance."
Yuuki's voice was cold, as sharp as a knife. When Zero raised his head, he couldn't see her face, still stubbornly looking outside. A slight crack was heard, and he looked down at the vampiress' hand, the one holding the glass cup: the object was cracking under her whitened, clenched fingers.
"Absolutely none."
The cup was shattered, the few remaining red drops spilled onto the black velvet of her sleeve. Instantly, another aura, a familiar and tempting essence blossomed in the closed room, making every inch of Zero's skin stand on edge. He shivered, and tried to contain the inexplicable desire taking hold of him.
If Yuuki noticed his turmoil, she didn't react to it, nor to the liquid staining her dress. Her whispering voice was hardly contained.
"Kaname trained me, for five years, to be deserving of the title of Pureblood, as the Kuran family viewed it. For five years, he taught me how to fight, to stay in control, in order to survive and remain unseen by the human world... for five years, he taught me how to become a vampire. All to end up like this!"
Quickly, she threw away the remains of the cup; it shattered loudly on the polished floor.
"To end up...like this!"
She whispered those words in a barely-audible voice, while staring at her bloodstained hand. And finally, Zero understood why he felt all the symptoms of a true and unwavering thirst.
"A vampiress cutting herself with a mere crystal shard..."
Yuuki's palm was blemished by a neat and deep cut, blood already oozing from it. At the sight of a crimson pearl dripping to the wrist, Zero almost fainted. Panting, he fought with all his will to stop himself from sinking his fangs into the tantalizing wound. Unaware of Zero's unease, lost in her own world, Yuuki licked the pearl of blood, and followed with the tip of her tongue its scarlet trail up to the faint cut, exhaled briefly on it and closed her fist. She put her forehead on her closed fingers, and Zero could swear he heard her hold back a whimper.
"Kaname..."
A few seconds later, when she straightened up – her face more expressionless than ever – she opened her hand again, unveiling her once-again flawless palm. Immediately, Zero's breath became easier, and he briefly closed his eyes to calm down completely.
A Pureblood licking carefully her own blood. Such an image. It had been almost...irresistible...
"Yuuki," he said in a raspy voice, before clearing his throat. "Alone or with me, you will never bring him back. I don't want to risk my life chasing chimeras. This desire for revenge won't lead us anywhere."
A strange, broken melody suddenly filled up the darkening room. An enticing melody, but a sad, lonely, terribly bitter one. A laugh.
In front of Zero's dismayed eyes, Yuuki was laughing. It only lasted a few seconds before she stopped and looked at him with mocking and caustic eyes, almost condescending. Silently, they stared at each other, and slowly her false smile faded – it had been as bitter and forced as her previous laugh.
"A desire for revenge leading nowhere...Are you really the one saying this to me, Zero?"
He didn't flinch this time, although a storm of unpleasant memories, stained in hatred and tears, filled his mind. She was right: who was he to talk about the useless destruction of revenge? He who spent the greater part of his teenage years nurturing such ideas...
"I know nothing will bring him back, Zero. We were both resilient to the point where we were considered immortals, but we are not gods."
Yuuki's hazelnut eyes gained a far-away look. At last, they were free of their impressive crimson colour.
"I know that nothing will bring him back to me...that every day, I will have to carry on living without his smile, his words, his voice. That every hour, I'll have to deny this truth he managed to teach me, at the price of a painful sacrifice..."
The Pureblood's hand grabbed the amber pendant gleaming on her neck.
"Eternity..."
She let silence loom, while she lost her gaze in the iridescent depths of amber. In the semi-darkness, Zero distinguished pale and tiny glimmers of light against Yuuki's white skin, probably caused by the small trapped crystal. Softly, she kissed the jewellery, and put it to her forehead, her eyelids piously closed.
"Desire for revenge is not enough of a reason for you?"
Once more, the Pureblood's passivity had been short-lived, and her voice was sharper than a silver blade on a vampire's skin. She opened her eyes, and her pupils fell slowly upon Zero, piercing. The pendant fell back against her chest, a golden tear against black clothes.
"Then I can give you other reasons..."
Yuuki finally descended from the windowsill, left the alcove slowly and cautiously. Her fists clenched while she scowled at Zero with her mahogany eyes.
"Yes, to make this assassin pay a hundred times for the suffering he caused us, and kill him in the most painful way possible; it's something that would carry me to the end of the world... but this is not what keeps me still standing. This isn't what stops me from joining Kaname, wherever he is!"
Her voice quivered in a tremor filled with emotion, while she stepped closer to Zero. Fascinated by her beauty and presence as well as her irrepressible eloquence, he didn't even think of stepping back. All this bitter rage he saw in the Pureblood's eyes wasn't aimed at him, but it drew him to her like a moth to a flame...
"I want to find the wretched being who did this, to awaken my memories. I want to get them back! I want to know the last few minutes I spent with Kaname...they remain out of reach no matter what I do! Our last fight, side by side, his last words, his last look...his farewells! The farewells of the man I loved more than anything, as he laid dying in my arms!"
Her mahogany irises blazed, and Zero couldn't take his astonished eyes off them. Yuuki's voice, full of tears, rang through the great sleepy house, and it broke his heart. He who was about to kill her a few minutes ago...to his ever-growing surprise, he found himself feeling compassion for her!
To realize it, threw him into an unspeakable dismay: where would this bond chaining them together end? How much would it continue to enslave him?
"I want to be certain!" she shouted. "I want to know that I was as brave as my father, as belligerent as my mother, and just like my brother! I want to know that I did my best, that I gave everything that night to protect him! I want to remember his smile, if he comforted me, and that he doesn't hold my survival against me! I want to remember our...our last moments!"
She put a hand on her belly, and Zero almost felt, through the memories she imposed him, the horrible wound she received on this tragic day.
"The assassin has to pay for what they did to us! They took everything from me that night, everything!"
A rumble suddenly shook the furniture, while a brief gush of wind slashed the wall behind Zero, tearing the drapes. The crystal chandelier jingled plaintively, and the windowpanes of the alcove were scratched. The vampiress closed her eyes briefly, twitched her head nervously while she reclaimed full control of her power.
Without paying attention to this barely-contained surge of power, despite the danger it held, Zero looked her in the eyes.
"At least, you're still here, Yuuki. You're alive..."
She was startled, and seemed to come back at last to her senses. She abruptly turned away from Zero.
"I was spared...I didn't die, but I might as well have. Without Kaname..."
She was ashamed of her own outburst; Zero, through their bond, felt it clearly. And, in a way, he understood her.
"Without Kaname, I am nothing. Nothing at all."
Motionless, she whispered this truth with such sincerity and bitterness that at last Zero saw her as she really was. She had become an adult, a proud and haughty Pureblood, gorgeous and deadly...
But not that tall, in truth. Because she was close enough for them to touch, he realized suddenly that she barely reached his shoulder. He himself had grown since the Academy, and he was taller than most. As such, their height ratio seemed unchanged since the past. And the way she kept her head down, her eyes avoiding his, reminded him so much of the former Yuuki that it hurt.
Troubled, he didn't know what to do or say. Something inside of him urged him to fully sympathize with her, to kneel before her sorrow, to comfort her. He hurriedly pushed away this pity he felt, persuaded himself that it was caused by their unwilling bond.
He looked away too, surly, and his eyes fell on the table where there were other cups just like the one Yuuki had destroyed. Near them was a carafe filled with clear water, and a pillbox. Zero's amethyst eyes widened when he recognized it.
"...Blood Tablets?"
Yuuki straightened herself right away and follow his surprised gaze. With a strangely relieved sigh, she walked to the table and grabbed the pillbox, pulled out a number of them and, without looking, diluted them in an intact cup. Zero sensed once more the familiar aroma he couldn't identify earlier.
"You're taking them willingly?"
She nodded.
"It was one of Kaname's principles. If I still respect them...it's a way of keeping him alive."
With these words, she took a big sip of the mixture. Zero saw her mahogany pupils redden almost immediately.
"Even if," she added pensively, "It's not worth the blood of a vampire...or even of a human, so they say."
He pondered on this declaration as she drank, without disgust but without precipitation either. He finally yielded.
"True...it doesn't compare."
Lost in thought, almost detached from everything, Yuuki sat back near the window, in the dusking light of the alcove. Seeing her move away made Zero feel torn apart, filled with an uneasiness he couldn't admit to, but too strong for his soul, still fighting against this dependence.
Dependence on her, her presence, her delicate and overwhelming perfume, the imperceptible shudder of her heartbeats, the gentle song of her blood running under her opal skin – a muffled but charming song, obvious for one who knew how to listen. Zero gulped hard, overcome by ever-changing torments: near the Pureblood, each of his senses seemed to be enhanced, to better throw him off-balance. He wanted to hate her, loathe her from the bottom of his soul, but the reality was different, and far crueller: he couldn't do anything against her. Absolutely nothing.
Yuuki…
...The first person to whom he had shown the truth of his vile nature, that he had until then kept secret – jealously and fearfully.
She upon whom he had, for the first time, used the strongest, sharpest, most imperious of his abilities, the one shaping his vampire core and essence: to bite to survive.
She, whose blood was so divine it would have warned any seasoned vampire. But he, a disgusting creature barely discovering its taste, could only savour its quintessence, with as much delight as remorse.
She, the first to have fed him. The only one back then to do so willingly, without ulterior motive or self-interest, for only one reason: to save the abject monster he was at that time.
She. His childhood friend, his sister in soul and mind.
Yuuki.
Zero closed his eyes on the out of reach silhouette. Once again still and dreamy, she gazed upon the snowy landscape. Impassable before, now he sneered, filled with apprehension and hesitation before the bare truth: there was a bond chaining them.
He couldn't deny it anymore...but this bond had existed well before that fateful day when she had bewitched him. A chain which, against all odds, had not been broken the day Yuuki was revealed to be a Pureblood.
A link that was born, another snowy night, as she wiped the blood from his body.
A link that began one night when, filled with pain and sorrow for him, she stopped him from mutilating his throat and swore to help him, come what may. A link that strengthened through the years, while he slowly learnt to tolerate her, live by her side...and to like her. Trust her. To wish for her happiness.
A link that was sealed, at last, one morning when she chose to offer her own life, to soothe him. Him, a vile, worthless creature, desperately resigned to his own fate. And yet, she had believed in him.
Zero sighed, trapped by a gentle and insidious torture. Ever since she betrayed him by chaining him to her, he had sworn that she would pay, had cursed her every second of every hour of his never-ending torment. And yet, now, in this silent and dark old house that reminded him of their former Academy, old memories resurfaced, like mindless ghosts. Nostalgic and, sometimes, even happy. Memories of the former Yuuki, the pretty "tomboy" so sensitive, so mindful to her friends' well-being. A teenager, in some aspects still a child, absent-minded and reckless in her quest for justice, but touching in her weakness and her bravery.
Was it so different today? That young human girl with a will of steel but a fragile body, now gone, was she so different from the vampiress broken in her body and heart; this Pureblood kept going by only a sparkle of determination, alive, proud and unshakable? As Zero looked at her, he felt a pang in his heart: between the Guardian of the past and the Pureblood of this frozen present, it seemed that there was but a step, a veil...
Was the bond between them to blame for this change of heart, this beginning of acceptance of something that seemed unforgivable a few weeks ago? Without this chain, would have he even thought about this? Would he see this thing he didn't dare – out of pride and fear – to call likeness between the "former" Yuuki and this one?
But this wasn't the point anymore, he conceded bitterly. He was tired of fighting this fate he had so unfairly received.
"It's settled..."
Tired of fighting this great and unbreakable current, breaking him over and again, sweeping him away to other shores, other goals he did not chose.
"...I accept."
Yuuki looked up, curious. It wasn't Zero's words that pulled her from her torpor – his voice was too weak to be heard – but his tone, monotonous and resigned.
Incredulous, the dulled mahogany eyes locked with Zero's amethysts. He hesitated, then briefly bowed before her; the proud and spirited horse he had been until then could not keep resisting the pull of destiny. Exhausted, panting, he accepted his new master without conditions, for in battle he had given everything. The master had better make no mistake about it: this surrender would only be temporary. But until their goal was met, the liegeman would put all his might, mind and soul, to his mistress' service, in the hopes of being freed faster from his burden.
His anger and power, which hadn't been enough to free him, he would turn them against his master's enemies. And then, they better watch out…!
"I agree to help you", Zero added, straightening up, in a stronger and more assertive voice. "I still don't know how you plan to find the assassin. But I will do everything in my power to assist you."
Zero didn't blink this time.
"You said it well enough: denying this won't lead us anywhere."
They both knew, in this instant, how much these words were both true and false. Zero was doing this because he was fated to do so... but also because he felt indebted to her. After all, a ledger of blood still remained between them. A debt going back from a forgotten Academy.
At first, Yuuki remained speechless, sincere surprise livening her usually neutral features. She jumped off the windowsill, so quickly that for a second Zero thought she would leap and hug him. But her dignity stopped her in time, and she stayed in the alcove, the snow falling outside giving her a white, fuzzy halo.
"Thank you, Zero."
She had a smile which, compared to the former Yuuki's, looked faint, but it wonderfully illuminated the Pureblood's sullen face. Instantly, he sensed her relief, and himself felt like an invisible vice had loosened its grip, allowing him to breathe more freely.
Was that what was happening? Did one's feelings influence the other? It was a strange sensation: as if the core of his body and soul didn't really belong to him anymore.
But Zero didn't have time to ponder on this new aspect of their relationship.
"It's been a few days since you took something, and you're still recovering...You must need it."
She pulled gracefully on the collar of her black-laced blouse, baring the alabaster skin of her neck. She hadbarely finished her gesture or her sentence before he felt his fangs lengthen, a most explicit answer to her invite.
He thought he could see, under this milky white skin, the carotid beating, promising a warm, delicious and uninterrupted crimson flow.
She closed her eyes. Mesmerized, he stepped forward.
One more chapter to go before the end of the year! Incidentally, it will also be the end of the current arc. We'll see you there! In the meantime, why won't you leave a review as an early Christmas gift?
Elenthya & Vanamonde
