Early update! Mostly because it's short honestly. Thanks, everyone who reviewed! And speaking of reviews, does it annoy you when I answer them in my updates, or do you think I should move the replies to the bottom of the chapters?

To the potty-mouthed guest, she is angry. And traumatized, to a degree. But there's not really anything she can do. She's both younger, smaller, and a human. Like you said, they think they know what's best. Yuuki knows a losing battle when she sees one, and even if she were to fight against such things like the mental manipulations and her lack of control, it's very likely that nothing would come of her efforts. Her only real choice is to go behind people's backs to preserve her choices and her memories, but you have to remember that she's up against people who have access to more information than her and who have a lot more life experience than her.

To Minnidog118 and Valen Goncalvez, thanks for the positive words!

It's summer! Updates might start becoming a little late, but I'll do my best to keep them to once a week at least. This chapter features me losing my patience and taking my chance, a look at the feelings and thoughts Yuuki doesn't acknowledge in the day time, and a cliff hanger that was too good to not include.

As she lies in bed, for once completely alone, Yuuki can feel all the stress she's been ignoring beginning to pile up atop her sternum. Terrible thing after terrible thing has been happening, one after another, and she feels like her legs and supports are being dragged out from underneath her. First Kaname's support, his erasure of her memories proving him untrustworthy and someone who had decided they knew best. Then Cross' support, lost when he'd apparently been complicit in the erasure. There's still Zero, but he's missing and she's not completely sure if he's still alive or sane, right now, and Yori, who she can't tell anything about what's been happening to her.

Her head aches as she suppresses tears, staring at the ceiling of her room. Her chest feels tight, and her eyes hurt. She lifts her hands to press her palms carefully against her forehead, eyes getting blurry with tears.

"Yuuki-san… If you want to save Zero, would you grant my wish?" Hiou's voice intrudes on her as she stares upwards and Yuuki's lip trembles, helpless anger, stress and fear pressurizing her insides, twisting everything together and causing a painful strain. Yuuki wants things to go back to how they were- how she had been able to climb into bed with Cross or Zero, or cling onto people, or feel comforted by Kaname, how she'd been able to trust all three of them unconditionally. It feels like she can't do any of that anymore, and those had been her main method of de-stressing and comforting.

She'd make her way to Yori to climb into bed with her, for some kind of comfort, but the dorms are so far away, and she doesn't want to go outside so late, tonight. Yuuki lowers her hands, and out of the corner of her eye, something moves. She rolls her head to look, and finds nothing but her mirror, which shouldn't be reflecting anything as it isn't pointed at her. Yuuki stares at the mirror for a time, but instead of going to investigate it, she turns her attention back to the ceiling, feeling useless and pained.

"Give yourself to me, or give me Kuran Kaname's corpse."

What am I supposed to do?

Her head feels a little fuzzy as she wanders around the dance hall, her classmates all around helping put up bolts of cloth to hang from the chandelier high above and attach to the walls and windows. The hall is beautiful and bright, everything shiny as her classmates mop and sweep to keep it that way all throughout preparations, but Yuuki feels like she's miles away.

She doesn't trust Hiou or Kurenai at all, and the deal itself is very suspicious, but she's thinking that she doesn't have much of a choice. A roll of tape rolls into her foot, startling her out of her thoughts.

"Sorry! Can you get that for me?" A nearby classmate, high up on a ladder, calls. Bending, Yuuki sweeps it up and makes her way over, not wanting to throw it and risk the girl overbalancing and sending herself toppling down if she failed to catch it.

"Here." She extends the tape upwards, and the girl's thanks is interrupted by the hall's doors being violently thrown open. Yuuki jerks around at the sound and the call of her name, the voice breathless and strained.

"Yuuki." It's Zero, his eyes glowing red and blood staining the left side of his torso. "That new girl. She came here, didn't she?" Yuuki jolts as Zero suddenly turns away and makes his way to one of the side rooms in the hall, the students around whispering about how there must have been a fight.

She's hoping nobody noticed the glowing eyes bit of Zero's appearance as she hurries after him. He throws open a door to a room, looking inside.

"Not here." Yuuki pushes him into the room as he breathes heavily, and closes the door behind her after a quick look around. As she leans against the wood, she can hear the students still talking amongst themselves on the other side as she looks at Zero with concern. "You… weren't you there last night?"

"I was," she nods and digs out his tablets from her pocket, throwing them to him. He snatches them out of the air and after a quick look at them, opens the box and dumps the entire contents into his mouth with no hesitation, the livid glow of his eyes dimming only slightly as he crunches on them loudly. "Zero, where have you been? You're hurt- Kurenai did that, didn't she? Or is she Hiou?"

"Don't-!" Zero cuts off his yell as he tries to push her aside to leave once more, and stops. "I'm fine. I just need to find her and-"

"You don't look fine," she protests, reaching out to push aside his jacket, revealing his shirt torn and bloody, a large slash present from shoulder to hip. His heavy breathing continues, and his eyes become brighter once more, drawing an unwelcome thought to the forefront of her mind.

Staring at him as he allows her to bully him backwards, Yuuki wants to offer Zero her blood, but she also really doesn't want to do any such thing. In her head, it's as though a list is forming; reasons to offer him her blood, and reasons not to do so. Zero's hurt badly, and he's seeking out a powerful enemy, and would need the boost of fresh, legitimate blood. But… it would hurt the both of them, physically and emotionally, and if he drank as much as she thinks he might, then she'd likely be unsteady and nauseous from blood loss until tomorrow night at least. Besides that, if Kaname were to find out that Zero'd drank her blood again, he just might kill him. She can't trust that Kaname will keep Zero alive for her sake, anymore, after last night… Probably can't trust him at all, anymore.

The thought hurts.

Zero is in control of himself right now, and she's proud of him for it, but she's also leery of just letting Zero out of this room and amongst the Day Class students when his control is so visibly straining. And… She trusts Zero. He's her brother now, for all intents and purposes, despite that she never says as much aloud.

"Zero... " She trails off, staring at his face as his eyes continue to bore into her own. "I... " She extends her arm in his direction, her head lowering on her shoulders as she hunches down slightly. "Here, drink some of my blood. You're hurt, and your control is fraying."

Zero stares at her silently for a second before taking ahold of her wrist carefully. She tenses slightly, preparing herself for the pain, but then Zero drags her towards himself, bending and walking her backwards towards the wall, his mouth landing on her neck momentarily. A quick pierce of panic shoots up through her and her senses ratchet upwards, making her hypersensitive as he licks her neck and then there's pain as he sinks his fangs into her neck.

From where her wrist is pinned against the wall, Zero's grip tightens around the limb, and Zero's other hand covers her mouth as she instinctively cries out in pain. She can feel her blood being pulled away, and she can hear him swallowing.

Her vision darkens and gets blurry as Zero continues to drink, and it seems like forever before he pulls away from her, his mouth dripping with her blood. He releases her then, pulling away and dragging the back of his hand over his mouth. Yuuki sways dizzily, and Zero, catching sight of it, lunges forwards and catches her as his eyes dim and go back to their regular pale purple shade.

"Yuuki?" He asks with apparent concern, watching her face carefully as her eyelids flutter sporadically as she tries to make them stay open, feeling abruptly distant from everything.

"I… Gave you my wrist to chew on," she complains eventually. "Why did you go for my neck?" She reaches a hand up to put pressure on the wound she can feel is still bleeding sluggishly, and frowns at him in irritation.

"...Sorry," Zero offers as he helps her stand up properly and unravels his tie completely, reaching out and using it to press against her wound. As she takes a few steps to test her balance, she finds that she no longer has any, one leg crumpling up beneath her. Zero catches her again and sweeps her into a princess carry, and Yuuki uses her new vantage point to wipe the blood off of his face. He gives her a look and she shows him the blood now collected on her sleeve, and his eyes narrow slightly, though not with anger.

"Are you okay now?" She asks as he starts to make his way to the door of the room.

"...Yeah," he tells her before leaving. The entire dance hall falls silent when they come into view, and Yuuki can feel eyes on them as she carefully curls her hands and her body around so they won't see the blood, her body covering up the visibly healing wound in Zero's side. They walk through without saying anything to anyone, and Yuuki silently acknowledges that Yori is going to be interrogating her at some point, if only to make sure she's alright.

"Kurenai-san came to me about a deal," she tells Zero softly, wincing as he presses a little too hard with a gauze pad on her wound at her words. Zero and she are in the Headmaster's private bathroom in the faculty building, utilizing its first-aid kit. Somewhere in the back of her mind, easily ignored but present nonetheless, the familiar plea of "I'm hungry" is playing on repeat. His eyes flash up to meet hers, flaring red with his surge of emotions. Maybe he sees them reflected in her eyes, because he closes them quickly, taking a second to calm down before he speaks.

"What."

"She told me that she knows how to save you from becoming a Level E, and she offered me a deal," Yuuki elaborates, feeling a little bit of tension and weight leave her as she finally begins to get this off of her chest. "She gave me two options. Kill Kaname, or offer myself to her."

"So we're killing Kuran, right?" Zero asks immediately, staring her in the face an stopping his hands all together.

"You know just as well as I do that I'm not going to be able to kill Kaname. And neither are you." She tells him, feeling tired and still woozy, the words escaping her without her truly dwelling on them.

"You're not going to give yourself to her!"

"I want to save you," she says, voice quiet and eyes averted. Out of the corner of her eye, something happens with the mirror above the sink, but she ignores it.

"Find a different way!"

"How? Should I ask Kaname? He tried to erase my memories of last night," she snaps, angry at his tone and some part of her snarling "ungrateful", "And Cross let him! I don't think they're going to tell me anything." She snarls the last part, feeling irrationally angry, and then stops, inhaling slowly and trying to get herself under control as they little voice in her head begins to hiss in an animalistic way that is really not helping her cool right now. Zero stares at her with something like shock, his eyes wide, and in his lavender eyes, Yuuki can see a flash of red.

Something tells her that the red did not come from his eyes when Zero's jaw loosens noticeably, his eyes flickering between each of her own.

"Yuuki?" Zero questions in a blank tone of voice.

"... What?"

"Has Kuran ever bitten you."

"W- No?" She yelps, jerking slightly. Her balance sways unsteadily, and Zero's hands lash out to catch her by her upper arms, preventing her from toppling down.

"Yuuki, this is important. Has he?" Zero persists.

"He hasn't ever bitten me, as far as I know," she says quickly. "The only person who's ever bitten me is you. What is it?"

"Your eyes just glowed red. Have you been thirsty, thought to attack anyone?"

"No!" Yuuki can feel something cold settling in her stomach, several thoughts and ideas flowing upwards from where she'd stowed them. That "hungry" mantra in the back of her head gets louder and more insistent, and with a wince, Yuuki lifts both of her hands up to press her fingertips against her temples gently.

"Yuu-"

"I look just like Kaname. I can always smell blood, even at a distance. I'm stronger and faster than is humanly normal. Artemis and Bloody Rose's reactions to me. Kaname's attitude to me. My memories must have been erased when I was a child," she murmurs under her breath, stacking things together.

"Your memories?" A distant part of her reminds that she'd never actually told Zero how she'd come to be with Cross.

"When I was maybe five or so, I woke up in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard. I was alone, and I couldn't remember anything. I think that's when my memories had been erased, or sealed away. I don't know. I was attacked by a Level E while I was out there, and Kaname saved me by killing the vampire, and then brought me to Cross," Yuuki says, her voice getting progressively quieter as her emotions begin to drain away behind the shock of her vague thoughts being verified, before she looks up at Zero, who is watching her with something like shock in his eyes, as well.

"Yuuki-"

"I think I'm a pureblood vampire," she blurts. "Related to Kaname. A sister or a cousin, maybe. I don't know how, but-" her head aches with a sharp pain and she chokes off her words, pressing her palms to her temples instead. "I was a vampire when I was a kid, and there was probably some sort of attack or accident that had me stranded in the middle of nowhere," she begins, trying to understand this. "Kaname came to get me and saved me from that vampire, and I was a human, then. I'm human, now, I think, but whatever turned me into a human is wearing off, and I'm becoming more like a vampire, again."

Zero stares at her silently for a time before sighing, slumping slightly in place before kneeling on the ground in front of her, resting an elbow on a knee and using his hand to cradle his chin in his palm, watching her for a moment before speaking.

"So we're both becoming beasts," he comments. Yuuki jolts again slightly, looking at him with wide eyes.

"Wh- don't you hate me? That I'm not human?"

"That would be hypocritical of me, don't you think?" He lifts an eyebrow at her, and she has a brief flash back to punching him in the head numerous times when they were younger about such a thing. "You're Yuuki. You might as well be turning, rather than being a vampire from the start." He tells her. Yuuki can feel her eyes watering as a pressure she hadn't known was there disappears from her. Her balance and strength leaves her completely, and she collapses forwards into Zero, eyes fluttering closed.

Zero swears and almost loses his balance as he scrambles to catch her in time. Her entire body remains limp as he carefully collects her into a sort of princess carry. Instead of walking to their house or the dorms, Zero walks to one of the guest rooms and tries to deposit her on one of the beds.

She does not release him, and after a few minutes of trying (and failing) to get her to release him, he groans and settles on top of the blankets of the bed with her. She curls close to his side, letting herself drift off to sleep.

She dreams of an eerily familiar forest, a cracked glass casket, a deal and a death.

Standing in her dorm room with Yori, Yuuki stares at her reflection once she's put on the dress that Kaname'd sent her. Finding that he'd sent her a dress at all had been an unwelcome surprise, as she'd intended to go to the dance in her uniform because that was easier and she was comfortable wearing that. The dress is lovely, and it's high quality. The small kitten heel shoes are also nice, if not something she's comfortable in wearing. But…

"Yori, tell me that you see it, too," she calls quietly to her friend, who had been sitting on a bed to the side, waiting up for her. Yori is already in her dress with her hair done, her shoes off to one side for the moment. Yori lifts from the bed and takes a few steps forward, looking at Yuuki's reflection before looking at her physical form and inclining her head slightly.

"Yeah…" Yori agrees. "The dress and heels are nice, but it makes you look like a kid." Her words and tone are blunt, and while Yuuki is sure that they're not intended to hurt her or seem rude, there's still a sting in her chest.

"Do you think it was purposeful?" She asks, fingering the soft, dusty pink material, feeling torn. She doesn't think that Kaname's intention had been to make her feel like a child, but she does, and the niggling doubt remains. When she looks at her hair, a few imagined scenarios reveal to her that no matter what she does with her hair, she is unlikely to alter the dress' effect on her.

It has a box collar, and a high low skirt, the lowest point reaching her ankles and the highest ending just above her knees. The sleeves are long, going all the way to her finger tips, and are ruffled at both the shoulders and the ends, tight over her arms, themselves. At the small of her back, there's a large bow, the ends trailing down to the ends of the dress. Included in the box was a corsage choker that held a rose in it which was a similar color of her dress.

To wear the dress would be to accept whatever Kaname had intended to convey with sending it. But to not wear it would be to cut herself off from Kaname in a significant way, and probably hurt him. As Yori steps away from the mirror to go and put on her shoes, not answering her, Yuuki meets her eyes in the mirror.

A flash of red meets her eyes through the reflection.

- OMAKES -

In response to this very short update, I bring you a few omakes!

" BLACK WIDOW MOVES "

She'd had a dream, and it had been amazing. When she'd woken up, the only bits of it that had stuck with her had been visions of a red haired woman fighting with dozens of men at once, pulling off grappling moves and being an incredible fighter. Yuuki had been too excited to go back to sleep despite it only being 5 in the morning, and had then dragged Zero outside to see if she could manage to pull off the moves. Not that she really explained that, but that had been an honest mistake.

And, well, she almost managed... Sort of.

What ended up happening was Yuuki jumping onto Zero's shoulders, and then trying to rotate to throw him off balance and into the ground. She'd taken Zero to the ground, but that was because Zero had fainted the instant she'd managed to get on his shoulders. When Zero had fallen, she had wound up with his shoulder slamming into the dip between her stomach and thighs, crushing against her pelvis. She had shrieked, because that was heavy and painful.

It had taken Zero five minutes to wake up, and just about that long for Yuuki to realize why he had fainted in the first place. When she had landed on his shoulders, she'd jumped for his front. She might be oblivious to her gender half the time, but Zero had just had it shoved into his face.

Literally.

He had then refused to look at her or speak to her for the next week, and Yuuki decided that grappling really wasn't anything she'd do unless it was a last resort.

" THE HAIRCUT "

Yuuki's hair had gotten tangled up in her sleep one too many times. She'd only been keeping it long because last time she'd tried to cut it, Cross had discovered her just before she'd managed to make the first snip, and had in response burst into loud, messy tears.

So it was 2 in the morning, her hair had gotten tangled up in her fingers and had subsequently been yanked, and Yuuki is done.

It takes less than a minute to cut her hair at her chin into a bob cut, and it takes even less time to cut off the lopsided bits left remaining. Fluffing her fingers through her hair as she looks into the mirror, realizing that due to its new length, is seemed to have gotten wavyer due to its lesser weight, and seems to be darker, somehow.

Shrugging it off, she drops the maybe two and a half feet of hair into the trash and goes back to her room to sleep.

Stumbling into the kitchen, Yuuki yawns and rubs her eyes, walking to the refrigerator and pulling out a bottle of apple juice. There's a muffled thump behind her, and she turns blearily as she opens the bottle to see that Cross and Zero both had already been awake and in the kitchen. Cross had apparently stood and then collapsed backwards into his chair with weak knees, one hand covering his mouth.

"Yuuki?" Cross asks with a rather weak voice.

"Mhm?" She mumbles as she swallows her juice, getting down about half of it by the time she needs to stop for a break.

"You cut your hair?"

"Obviously," she answers, looking and feeling somewhat bemused. It's fairly obvious that she cut her hair.

"Why?" Zero finally pipes up, looking a little uneasy and surprised.

"It kept getting tangled up while I slept even when I put it into a braid. So I cut it all off last night."

Cross continued to look very shaken, while Zero nodded his head in acceptance and continued to eat his food, though he glanced at her a few times, probably due to the drastic change her haircut had made to her appearance. She could understand that, she'd scared herself when she stopped in the bathroom this morning before she remembered. As they made their way to assist in the switch over, Zero finally stopped glancing at her other than to give her deadpan looks as Yuuki clung to his arm and was dragged along. Her short hair now ticked at her jaw and neck occasionally, which was a sensation that brought about a sense of unfamiliar familiarity, and she shook her head often to get it off of her face and out of her mouth.

When Kaname had seen her, his face had been horrified. Yuuki wanted to laugh about as much as she wanted to be annoyed.