14th story in my series of short stories with various VK characters. Independent from the previous 13. :D

#: 14
Title: Drowning
Character: Guess who it is? XD (It becomes obvious pretty fast.)
Disclaimer: I don't own Vampire Knight, this is a fanfic written for fun and for love of the series. I'm not making any money with it.
Warnings: Spoilers for recent manga chapters, so you might want to skip if you're not up to date. Mostly up to chapter 38, but just in case.

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He woke up with a choking gasp, the blood in the back of his throat making him let out a gurgling noise as he suffocated for a moment and nearly lost conscience again.

Everything was dark around him, and he had no idea where he was or what was happening. Everything was so eerily still and silent, and his perceptions were completely off, unable to latch onto anything or even try to assess his surroundings. He tried to gather himself together, to reform, but it all failed, and at some point beyond the initial panic, he realized he couldn't open his eyes, or even breathe. He suffocated and passed out again, blissful oblivion taking over and relieving him of the agonizing pain for the moment.

He had half-woken that way countless times before this one, but they had all been too brief and he hadn't quite registered them, his sensorial perceptions being too jumbled for his brain and memory to be able to process the input.

The next time he woke up, he was in a slightly better condition, but not by much. Unconsciously, he had been trying to focus his body's healing on the parts that would matter for him to try and find out what was going on around him, so now he was actually able to breathe more or less, and to somewhat open his eyes. He closed them again immediately; his eyelids were too raw and it burn like a searing hell.
Everything was red. There was blood everywhere, whose blood he had no idea, but he was covered in it. The thick, semi-clotted liquid clung to him with a stale stench that invaded everything. He held onto his consciousness with frantic desperation, but it didn't last long and he passed out again.

More time passed, and he woke up again. This time, there were two other vampires in the room with him. They hunched over when they saw him try to open his eyes, apparently fascinated that he could do so.

He knew them, he had seen them before, but he couldn't place names on the faces, his mind felt like it had been torn apart and shoved back together too roughly, and even thinking was terribly painful at the moment. He barely could breathe, and staying awake was taking all his energy. His will was by far stronger than his body at the moment, and the force of pure obsession kept him awake when his failing senses were threatening to shut down on him yet again.

Over the course of the past several times he woke up, he had spent those brief moments of consciousness desperately trying to gather his very vague shreds of memories, to try and figure out where he was and who took him there, or what he'd been doing before. He knew who he was, of course, but he couldn't quite place what had happened to cause him to be in such an unsettling situation.

He remembered a bit more now, but it still wasn't much, other than the fact that he'd been under the guard of the council for a while, which wasn't so bad, since he was hardly a prisoner despite his official status.
Then, he remembered he had found out something that had made him terribly mad … the girl, there was a little girl… they had another child. He'd already broken the older one, Kaname, he couldn't let them get away with a second one. Or so it was what he'd been thinking at one point, but he wasn't sure he would have followed through with it. He mostly just really wanted to see Juri's face and pick up from there, deciding whether he'd really do something to the new child or not.
The council was convinced that he was going there to kill them both, and he had let them think whatever they wanted, as usual. He'd have scoffed at the memory of their foolishness, but he knew that would immediately make him pass out, in his current state.

He remembered more… he'd gone to their place, and things had quickly degenerated, as they usually did when he tried to do something that involved Juri. The previous time already, he'd planned to do something else altogether, but it was all such a slippery slope when his feelings got mixed into it, and in the end things had happened in a much more tragic manner than what he had originally intended to do.

And this time too, it all went downhill so fast.

He'd... killed Haruka, didn't he?

He was vaguely shocked, he couldn't quite believe that had really happened. Not that he really liked Haruka, he had often envisioned killing him as payback for taking Juri from him, but it was one thing to want to do it, and another to actually go for it. It was so unplanned. He had been so angry, but he had never meant for it to happen, or at least not that way.
But the looks Haruka and Juri exchanged when he had arrived… that companionship, standing together against him... It had made the blood boil in his veins, and before he truly realized, things had gone much farther than he'd planned.

He still wasn't sure where he was, or what exactly had happened after Haruka died.

One of the two vampires standing there was leaning over, looking at him with a calculating expression on his face. He vaguely remembered who that one was, now. It was one of the council people, Ichi-something. His mind was too raw to bother trying to remember the guy's name, and he couldn't care less for who they were.
He realized that he was tiring down fast from the effort to remember, and would pass out soon.
He still had to know how she was. So he focused all the power that he could muster in his state to try and locate the one and only person who mattered for him.

And then, there was a great black emptiness.

He tried again and again, in a growing panic, ignoring the screaming agony of his overworked synapses refusing to go on pushing so hard in a body that couldn't possibly use so much energy in such a condition.

If he had been trying to directly interact with the outside world from his dark dungeon, he would have little to no chance in that state. But it was a different situation, Juri and him had been partially bonded at one point, and finding her should have been an easy task normally, and a difficult one but still nowhere near impossibly even in his current state. The remaining thread of their former bond still inside him should lead straight to her.

He pushed on and on, but at the end of the bond there was nothing but a complete void, a gaping emptiness as if he stared past the edge of a cliff desperately trying to see a bridge that was no more, vanished completely like a dream.

He remembered vaguely chunks of what had happened then, more and more clearly.
Suddenly, understanding dawned on him in a brutal blow.

She had killed herself. He had gone so far, that she had thought that was the only way to protect her child, and she had taken her own life for it.

He let out a strangled cry of agony as the idea that she was no more really registered.
It was more of a gurgle from a man nearly drowning in his own blood than an actual cry, but it was filled with so much desperation and horror that the two council elders backed away swiftly just in case, frightened suddenly by the sheer horror in his voice.

He lost conscience again.

The next time he woke up, Ichiou was there again, with a vaguely wary look on his face as he surveyed the pureblood in the marble coffin-like receptacle.

Rido Kuran had never ever begged for anything in his whole life, and never thought he ever would until that moment.

And yet, the broken words that his torn lips could barely form were quite clearly a weakened, miserable plea, in a nearly intelligible raspy voice that caught in his torn throat as he tried to form the words.

"Please… let… me …die… just let… me die…"

The blond aristocrat ignored him altogether, merely pulling the chain for the blood funnel, reloading it with a bag of fresh blood he'd brought in, and opening the valve to send a small torrent of the crimson liquid trickling down onto Rido's mangled body.

"You'll be all better in no time, Rido-sama, just rest and heal. We'll take care of everything."

"N-no… no…"

"You're in good hands, Rido-sama. Just rest now."

"No… please… ple…ase…"

Ichiou was unmoved by the pureblood's breaking voice -- it was not the first time he heard a Kuran begging, and he was quite sure it wouldn't be the last one.
He calmly made sure the blood dispenser was dripping properly and then left the room, ignoring the weakening pleas as he closed the thick metal door behind himself, locking it securely and leaving the place in complete darkness.

Alone with the void, Rido despaired.

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The allusion to Ichiou having heard a Kuran begging before was not canon, of course. XD;
It was just because it would fit nicely with some of my Ichiou x Kaname fics, and so I slipped it in there.
Rido & Juri are not canonically bonded either. I just happen to have too many plot bunnies. XD

The idea behind this fic is that he never intended to push things so far, but he kind of loses control when he's angry, and does things much worse than what he meant, thus having caused all those tragedies, when he possibly intended to cause a lot of problems, but not to push Juri that far. So in the fic, when he actually realizes she's really dead, that it went that far and it's over… he starts to make the decision of dying, but he can't unless he gets his body back under his control, so until then, he has to play the council's game and do all he can to regain usage of his body.

Rido is puzzling, at times he seems to be a complete jerk, and in other moments he's strangely charming. (despite still being terrible. XD)
I'm still poking and pondering, wondering how far his mask goes, and how much of which part is fake and how much is real. XD
Chapter 43 of the manga is quite fascinating.

Spoilery rambling ahead, about chapter 43 of the manga:
You know, I'm not sure Rido really meant to do what he was claiming he would do. He got to the school, and was completely focused on his Juri obsession, to the point that Zero pointed out that he wasn't even trying to fight back properly or stop him from killing him.
Then, Rido hugged Yuuki and died just like that, without even defending himself anymore.
There's no way this was a "oops, he wasn't paying attention". Even if he was out of his mind at the moment or something, we saw he was REALLY capable of fighting and powerful.
The more I think about it, the more I think he went there to die, maybe... if he did indeed die, as he seemed to but chapter 44 makes me wonder. XD;