part three: and when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into you.

or

Saya is a monster. Yui tries to look into her.

Despite Yui's fears to the contrary, very little really changed in her life. While throwing out some comments that left Yui flustered, Shu didn't drink her blood, despite what he'd said when he helped her. The other brothers, maybe remembering Saya's threat before she left the mansion, didn't try to drink from her, though sometimes they made her a little uncomfortable.

"Are you dumb?" Subaru asked her once, when he saw Laito teasing her.

"Thank you, Subaru-kun," Yui said, because he did help her by demanding she come give him a hand, and then pulling her away without waiting for a response. Not that Laito hadn't noticed, not with his laughter following them down the hallway Subaru pulled her down.

"What the hell are you thanking me for?" He scowled. "I just asked if you're dumb."

Not really having anything she could say to explain or defend herself, Yui shrugged.

Subaru wasn't going to let her off so easily. "Why not just tell her?"

He didn't give a name, but it couldn't be any clearer that he was talking about Saya. There was no other 'her' he could be referring to.

"Thank you for your worries," she said, because it was clear he had a kind side to him under his gruffness.

"I'm not fucking worried," he spat, but he averted his eyes.

"But I can't tell her," Yui continued. "She already has too much on her plate."

And Yui would be unable to bear it if Saya had to bear more of a burden because of her.

"She has what?" Subaru looked disbelieving.

It might not be obvious at first glance, not with how cool and composed Saya was all the time. The school was interested in how she had an unknown but very handsome young man escort her to a limousine different from the one that drove Yui and the Sakamaki to school every day, and Yui had to fend off a lot of curious questions. It wasn't like she had anything she could tell them from the vampire who introduced himself as Mukami Ruki and called Yui 'Eve'.

Initially, Yui started off making conversation with Saya in the desperate hope that Saya would be able to see Yui as a person and not someone to be easily forgotten. To just – appeal to whatever kindness that might be present, to be seen as someone that maybe wasn't equal in strength, but in capacity for conversation and therefore respect.

It had not taken long for Yui to realize that Saya did, despite her blank mien, treat Yui with that kind of respect from the start – at least, more than the brothers did. When Yui learned to read her expressions, she realized that Saya, for all that she responded with short answers, was relaxed when Yui was speaking.

Yui was still the 'sacrificial bride', and she still technically had someone who would suck her blood, but –

"She's a very kind person with a lot on her mind," answered Yui. "I can't worry her more."

But like a candle in the dark, it was a source of immense relief and comfort, and Yui hung on gratefully. It was so selfish of Yui, to hang tightly like this to someone who was obviously melancholic, maybe even mourning, and for that Yui could not possibly add to Saya's burden lest she end up being the one to crush her.

Tonight, dinner was lasagna. Homemade, not store-bought, because Ruki – as he made clear – had standards.

It did not stop Kou from complaining. The blond pouted and poked at his dinner with a fork. "Not Vongole Bianco? This is betrayal, Ruki-kun."

"I grew the tomatoes in that," Yuma said, before Ruki could say anything to that. "Stop complaining and shove it in your mouth before I do it for you."

To his credit, Yuma had tried to put a polite front for her. That had lasted five minutes into the first meal she'd had with them before he and Kou were arguing – over dinner, then, too.

Saya had quietly sat and wondered if she needed to excuse herself when Azusa leaned in, too slow to register as a threat even if she weren't who she was.

"They're . . . always like this . . ." he said slowly, a habit of his and not something to antagonize her. "Please . . . excuse us . . ."

"I'm the one intruding," Saya had pointed out, but Azusa had only shaken her head.

Ruki did give them a word of reproach, but he'd given up by the next meal, when Yuma slipped up on speaking more politely again and Saya made it known she didn't care. Better blunt honesty than polite pretense.

The food was delicious, like all the other meals that had come before. It wasn't to say that the ones served in the Sakamaki manor was not, because they were made to please the taste buds, but there was a warmth to the food cooked by Mukami Ruki, one that went beyond just lacking drugs mixed within.

Or maybe it was the atmosphere. If the brothers fought, it was eventually ended with good-natured grumbles and acceptance. There was a camaraderie, one that reminded her of Sirrut's members. Ragtag hackers and vampires might not have had much in common, but they had the sense of belonging and unity within.

The Mukami brothers were close. Saya couldn't claim to be an expert on the subject, but even so, just by observing them and the way they interacted, she could look to the four brother and say, this was family. Beyond what they were, or the blood that they didn't share – they were family, and together they were happy.

The sight struck Saya with a hypothetical scenario she had been too wary to imagine – one where Kisaragi Tadayoshi might have been able to meet the demons of her world, find somewhere to belong. Where there were others like him, who wore the skin of humans but were something else, something more. Someone different.

He would have been happy, a voice whispered the answer in her mind. So very happy that he wasn't alone anymore.

She could easily imagine him with them, an ease that she hadn't ever had with the Sakamaki. Maybe as a father – but no, she was too selfish a person to even imagine him as a father to others. Maybe an uncle, who could give them stability and receive stability in return – something he would deserve in full. Maybe it might have been easier for him, to have several sons rather than one 'daughter' with false memories that he cared about because he was drawn to how she was like him in a world where he was alone.

But Kisaragi Tadayoshi was dead, wasn't he? Saya had taken his life.

"Lady Saya?"

Saya blinked. Ruki had been the one to speak, but they were all staring at her.

Something wet dripped down her face. It was too warm to be a leak from the ceiling, and too clear and thin in viscosity to be blood.

Saya reached up and felt her face. The wetness was from tears. She was crying.

None of them really had much of an experience with helping crying women, and certainly not ones that cried like Kisaragi Saya did – unaware that she was shedding tears until someone pointed it out, but sorrow in every line of a face that was just on the edge of losing its usual blankness.

They didn't have to, because Saya stood from her seat.

"Excuse me," she said, face still somewhat in that usual mask-like composure despite the tears wetting it and stepped out of the dining room without waiting for an answer from them.

Leaving the four of them sitting in their chairs, exchanging wide-eyed glances.

"Is she okay?" asked Yuma, verbalizing the question on all their minds.

"She's hard to read," said Kou, unnerved. "But I think she's sad."

"Well, yeah," Yuma snarked. "She's not crying happy tears, now is she?"

"Enough," said Ruki before Kou could retort.

Had they done something? What would their master say? Did they report this when they didn't even know what the reason was for her tears?

In the end, because their job was to act and not think, Ruki reported it, but their master didn't seem surprised, as if he had predicted it.

"What does it mean, sir?"

"It means she is finally able to catch her breath and look around and at herself."

Ruki interpreted that to mean they had done something wrong, then, to make her shed a tear while in their home.

"No, Ruki, you misunderstand. We can only begin to heal when we realize what is wrong," Karlheinz murmured. "And we only realize what is wrong when we are no longer so driven that tunnel-vision is our only perspective, and have the chance to look around ourselves. It is not any fault of yours, Ruki."

A weight lifted from his shoulders at the knowledge that his master was not disappointed in him. "Then what shall I do, Master?"

"Take care of her," Karlheinz ordered. "Give her a place where she may be at ease. She has been through much, and is in need of rest."

Suppressing the automatic resentment that stirred in his heart, Ruki bowed. Above everything, his master's orders were always first. "Understood, sir."

A few hours later, when Saya came down again and asked with the same blank face as usual if there were chores she could help with, Ruki couldn't push her away with the claims that she was a guest and should let them handle it.

"It bothers me more to sit back and do nothing," she said bluntly.

Ruki averted his eyes from her gaze – dark grey, tired, empty, like a storm in the distant skies – and called for Yuma.

As if the world was conspiring against her, Yui's question the next day was about family.

"Do you have family, Saya-san?"

Karlheinz had mentioned that Yui was the kind of person more 'open' to the magical. Maybe that was how this question was being asked today, of all days, after the unsightly display she put on yesterday. The Mukami hadn't managed to say a word to her afterwards, and the silence did not suit the brothers very well.

Foreign matter stuck in the gears of a well-running machine, clogging gears. It was a good way of describing her, Saya thought.

Shu had his eyes closed, and earbuds in his ears. It didn't matter if he overheard, Saya decided.

"You said you had a father," Saya said. "Not related by blood, but someone who raised you with love nonetheless."

Yui brightened at her remembering Yui's stories of her only family and nodded.

When Saya first met Mana, she hadn't trusted the girl. She reminded her too much of 'Kisaragi Saya'. The parallels that she noticed, even after she trusted her, had always made it so that Mana was special.

And then Fumito revealed that Saya had been the one to kill her father, and Saya could not bear to face her.

Yui was another parallel, unintended as it may have been.

All Saya could do to try and prevent a repeat was to not kill Yui's father. She repeated the name she'd been told, Komori Seiji.

Not that she could, even if she learned who he was. Saya couldn't kill humans, and the man was of the Church. Some differences existed between the church of this world and the Vatican she'd worked with in that of the Elder Bairns', but some things remained the same.

"It was like that," she said. "He wasn't my father by blood, but he was like a father to me."

To the end. Trying to let her know that though everything else was false, his affection for her had been true even as he died.

Would it have hurt less, if it wasn't? Or would it have been more painful?

"He sounds like he was a kind man." Yui's voice broke through her thoughts, and Saya lifted her head. Yui flushed lightly. "I mean, um, you wouldn't have said he was like a father to you if he wasn't kind, right?"

Saya couldn't say anything, not with the lump in her throat, and so she just nodded.

AN: fun fact of the day, Saya's VA voices Alois Trancy while Ruki's VA voices Claude Faustus. Make of that what you will.