A few of you brought up my decision to make Yuuki a level C vampire- let me explain that.
So, what influences my decision there is that it was explained to me that the spell to make Yuuki be human was specifically broken by Kaname, and that it might have been that a Kuran was necessary to make sure Yuuki would be a pureblood again. That makes sense to me, and for plot reasons and to avoid Yuuki being either overpowered or overwhelmed by too much at once, I've decided to use that.
And, anyways, I can't see Juri using a spell that can be completely broken by just any pureblood. Leaving it open for Rido to potentially break is a weird idea but just any pureblood? Unlikely.
I can see that a few of you are upset with me over that decision, but try not to be too upset with me? I can't exactly answer all of you directly because it will give too much away (and I can't direct reply to reviews on mobile).
Thanks, everyone who had positive things to say! It means a lot to me, especially with my updating habits lately...
As a heads up, Zero cusses in this chapter. It's, like, one time but it's there. And since Yuuki kickstarted some of my personality traits she's gonna seem a kind of out of the character I've developed for her, I think, for a little while at least. That'll settle eventually probably but here ya go, this is my attempt at this chapter (it isn't what I wanted, length wise, but it's all I've got for now and withholding it any longer is pointless). The next chapter will have some canon in it, so that'll probably be written faster, but I don't know how long it will take.
I've got a lot on my plate right now, and doing a lot at one time is hard. I have a few other things up on my profile now, though, because it's a little nice to spread myself out instead of stressing on this one thing. I'll do my best to keep working on this, though! I won't give up!
Pacing around the living room of the Cross personal home, sweater tossed aside, Yuuki can't help her worry as Zero takes longer than she'd expected to finish his patrols. She's already searched the house for Cross and found him absent, and Zero and she had long since discovered the soundproof nature of the home when all the doors were securely closed.
She's... honestly kind of nervous to have an involved conversation with Zero, after everything that'd happened the other night. Yuuki's pretty sure they'd both been in shock at the time, and he'd told her that he was fine about her actully being a vampire before, but she hasn't really explained anything to Zero, yet. Obviously he knew something, as Cross had received a report and she doubts that it'd come from Kaname, but it hadn't come from her and that was what was important.
Though... she's not really sure what she'll do if Zero shuts her out because of her admittedly stupid and impulsive decision with Shizuka and her own life. She doesn't regret it, and there hadn't been time to do anything else, but... she's worried. What is she going to tell him, anyway? She has to tell him something.
"Yuuki," the voice is jarring and she jerks to a stop, a faint feeling on her bicep telling her that Zero had tried to stop her pacing before he'd spoken up and she'd either ignored him or brushed him off. Shs looks over and meets his vaguely wary and concerned eyes ffom where he'd backed a few feet away from her. "Are you alright?"
"I... Yeah, I guess. Did patrols-" Zero interrupts her, apparently satisfied with her answer, though his eyes are narrowed with something not unlike suspicion.
"I even left some for you," Zero says in a carefully blank tone. "That's what Kuran told me. He explained himself pretty well, but can you explain, too?" His tone isn't really questioning, but she has the sense that he'd allow her to avoid this conversation a little longer if she isn't ready yet.
She can't, though. She needs to explain herself, and not leave her brother in the dark, because this is important and she won't let Kaname be the one to explain anything to him.
"I saw him attack her- Kaname, I mean. Attack Shizuka. So did Aidou, actually, but- I- when I went in to see if I could try to keep her alive long enough for you to- she wouldn't have made it. Kaname made sure of that- he tore out her heart." Zero inhales sharply, pupils flexing. "I- I... panicked. Her blood was evaporating and would disappear after she died, and I didn't- didn't know what to do."
She's starting to speak quickly, so she stops to inhale and calm down, ordering events in her head to explain them more coherently.
"I didn't know what would happen if I drank her blood, as a human, especially because of the spell my mother put on me. But then I thought... since I wasn't naturally human- maybe I could preserve her blood in me. She agreed that it would work, but... only if you drank all my blood-"
"Absolutely not!" Zero interrupts again with a loud, vicious denial, eyes flaring vivid scarlet.
"- But I knew you wouldn't kill me to save yourself," she continues. "So I thought... Vampires are hard to kill, even by methods like that. So if I let Shizuka bite and change me, I could drink her blood and... be a living cure. Or at least medication, if all else failed..."
"You moron-" Zero grits out in the following silence, and Yuuki's eyes fall to the floor, something hot burning behind them, reminding her of her crying fit earlier. She hears him growling and muttering under his breath but can't make out the words properly until he raises his voice. "Don't make decisions for my benefit when they endanger you without talking to me first, you dumbass brat!"
"I didn't have time!" Yuuki protests instantly, looking up to look at Zero defiantly. "She was going to die and without her blood, you're as good as dead, aren't you?!" Her voice hits an uncomfortable pitch and she inhales before continuing, ignoring his stunned look. "I won't just stand aside and let you die!"
There's a tightness in her chest and behind her eyes, and she knows that if she doesn't calm down she's going to start dragging loads of petty things up into an argument or burst into tears. Which wouldn't be fair to Zero, because he's only worried and stressed and she's the one in the wrong here, right? It had been her stupid and impulsive decision, and she'd used him as an excuse for it.
But... she can't just let Zero die.
She sniffs a little and looks away from Zero's twisted and pained expression, lifting her hands to press against her cheeks. Somewhere in the back of her emotions she can feel something foreign and painful unfurling like an invasive plant and she ignores it, not knowing what else to do.
"Yuuki," Zero's voice is low and strained and before she can look up, she's receiving her second hug from Zero for the day. She can't manage to bring her arms up around his own, which are wraped around her shoulders and waist tightly like steel bands, but she manages to wrap her fingers around some of his shirt beneath his ribs. "Don't make sacrifices for me, okay? Moron."
"Shut up," she grumbles, that terrible suffocating feeling disappearing just as fast as it had appeared. She wiggles a little and Zero gets the message, letting her go, and Yuuki drops to sit on the floor of the living room without preamble. Zero blinks at her, surprised and confused, before she waves him down as well. "We really need to talk," she answers his quiet question, and he sits with little more prompting, managing to do it more neatly and maturely that her limp-noodle drop.
"About what?"
"Easier things first; I remember being a pureblood vampire, but I don't think I'm one now," she explains as nonchalantly as she can manage before her eyes flick around the room. There's nothing she can see that's off, and she doesn't have that familiar crawling feeling when someone she dislikes or doesn't trust is watching her, so she continues on. Explaining first what little family information she can remember, and then what she can remember of being sealed away.
"That's what I remember, but there's something off, now. I'm too big and somehow too small now, it's messing with my balance. You remember how I stumbled."
Zero doesn't say anything and she continues.
"We need to spar. A lot. Because I can still fight, but my brain is being weird…" Looking at Zero's face, Yuuki feels some unease. "Zero?" He doesn't respond, simply looking at her with a face she doesn't understand, and she shifts a little in place, trying again. "Zero, hey. Are you listening? What's wrong?"
"This is a lot to take in," he finally says in a blank tone of voice. "Can we… talk about the rest some other time?" He questions, and Yuuki feels a little embarrassed and dumb. Of course it's a lot to take in, why did she just expect he'd be able to roll with everything? She hadn't been, she'd freaked out badly. Just because it wasn't him personally dealing with everything didn't mean it wasn't a lot to deal with.
"Yeah, that's fine," she nods with a small, understanding smile, masking her more negative emotions beneath that. "Sorry for dropping everything on you all at once like that. We can talk more tomorrow, maybe?"
"Maybe," he nods and climbs to his feet. "I'm going to go lay down." She watches him go quietly from where she's sitting on the floor before getting to her own feet as well and walking to her room. She doesn't feel tired, but she doesn't really want to just sit in the open, so her room it is. Zero needs his own space, and she won't bother him just because she doesn't want to be alone.
Looking over at her desk as she flicks on her light, she catches sight of the books she'd borrowed from Cross awhile back and decides that now is as good a time as any to do some of the research she'd been meaning to do for awhile now. She'd just kept pushing it off, but there's nothing stopping her now.
Sitting down to begin to pull one over to look through it, Yuuki sighs, looking over the complicated first few pages.
Maybe she'd overestimated her ability to understand these...
Yuuki wakes up with a start, a painful feeling in her chest and a stab of fear, unable to understand what woke her as she sits up from where she'd been laying her head on the desk, looking around wildly. Her window is closed and the curtains pulled, her bedroom door closed, the light still on. Her eyes linger on the darkness beneath her bed, and with some hesitance that she feels stupid for, she slides out of her chair and kneels down on the floor, looking beneath the bed carefully.
Like she knew, there's nothing, but she feels a little better now that she's checked. Still, though, she feels terrified and unsettled. Straightening to a stand, Yuuki checks herself over before changing into her pajamas and then grabbing both of her weapons. She checks the gun, making sure there's a bullet in the chamber, a loaded cartridge in place before also making sure the safety is on. She holds onto both things before grabbing one of the books off the desk that she hadn't managed to look over.
The book still open on the desk shows a demonic depiction of some archaic vampire, it's face twisted up and blood flowing down it's lips, chin and exposed chest, a human man dead at its feet and a broken collar dangling from one of it's clawed hands. Yuuki looks away from that, knocking the book closed and kind of regretting looking into vampiric history- it was a vampire hunter book, it was bound to be biased somehow.
The book in her hands is about ex-human vampires, supposedly, and while she's not expecting it to be a much nicer read, she's hoping it will help her understand what's going on with her and Zero, though Zero is more of a priority than she, herself. She has time, and he… doesn't.
Making her way into the kitchen, she drops her stuff off on the counter and then pulls out a pan to heat up some water, wanting some hot chocolate to drink. She doesn't bother turning on the kitchen light, not really feeling the need as her eyes adjust to the darkness and she pulls the book over onto her lap, pulling it open.
She can't read very well in the level of light available to her, which is annoying, but when she pulls the book closer to her face it becomes easier. With a sigh, though, she figures that she's going to need the lights on after all, but the longer she sits in the dark, somehow the safer she feels. She hops down from the counter and walked over to flip on the kitchen light, jerking in place when doing so reveals Zero standing in the kitchen doorway.
The breath she'd caught in her throat rebels and she hacks, bending down as her throat constricts and she tries to breathe. She feels a little light headed and feels Zero's hand pat against her back, trying to help her jog her breathing into its proper rhythm.
Eventually she manages to recover, and she steps back away from Zero, not looking at him as she walks back towards the counter, dropping one hand onto the book there and hesitating to lift it or draw too much attention to it, instead looking over at the pot on the stove.
"What are you doing awake, Zero?" She eventually questions. "It's late. Did you have a bad dream?"
"You're one to talk, Yuuki," Zero answers, dodging her question with apparent ease. "Did you have a bad dream?"
"I guess," she shrugs and watches as the water on the stove begins to boil, bubbling ever so gently. It's the right time to pull it off for her drink, but she doesn't want to lift her arm from the book and expose it to Zero.
She realizes what she's doing with a tiny jolt- why is she trying to hide the book from Zero? She hadn't even noticed she was hiding it until she realized she didn't have an excuse to do so, anymore. With a swift shake of her head, Yuuki lifts her arm from the book and rounds the counter to grab her mug down from a cabinet, along with the hot chocolate mix. Flicking aside her eyes, she meets Zero's own.
"Do you want some hot chocolate?" She offers, hand hesitating in grabbing a second mug down. He doesn't reply for a minute before nodding.
"Sure," he shrugs a little before leaning against the counter, his eyes drifting aside and undoubtedly spotting her book and weapons on the counter as she pulls down the second mug, setting it on the counter and beginning to distribute the coco powder. "Going to do some late night reading?"
"... I planned on it. It might do some good, maybe," she shrugs herself a little, carefully measuring out the amount of powder in each cup to the amount of water she has ready to pour, carefully fishing out the marshmallows from Zero's own, remembering that he hates them.
Dropping them into her own cup and then grabbing the pan, she ignored the heat coming off the metal and begins to gently pour in the boiling water, setting it on the counter before turning to fish out spoons.
"What's that book about?" Zero asks, though he doesn't sound particularly interested in her answer, still watching her with that look she isn't able to understand and avoids meeting for too long.
"Um... Ex-human vampires. It was written by the Vampire Hunters Association, so I don't know how good it will be to read it, but I borrowed it from Cross' study a while back to look through," she admits after a pause, one hand hesitating over the spoons before grabbing two of them out, setting them into the mugs and stirring a little bit before offering Zero's to him, holding her own mug close to her chest.
It's warm…
Yuuki kind of doesn't want to actually drink it, now that she's got it. It's too hot to actually drink right now, either way, as she doesn't really want to be burned, but suddenly the thought of drinking it at all seems nauseating. Her fingertips feel like they're burning, as well as her palms, but she ignores that as she watches Zero set his mug off to the side to cool, steam wafting from it.
"Yuuki," Zero's voice is calm and serious, and her eyes meet his with a start. "Are you alright?"
"Huh?" Her lips twitch into a smile without her deciding to make them do so, but she feels just as tired and bland as she did seconds ago. "I'm fine, don't worry." At his continued silence and lingering stare, her face goes completely still before she forces the smile down, trying to answer him more honestly. "I feel alright, just… Unsettled. Nothing terrible, really."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Promise." She can taste ash on her tongue, something sour in the back of her throat, and so she takes a drink of scalding hot coco to get rid of it. It doesn't really help, and Zero looks away from her, picking up his mug to blow on it a little before taking a drink. She looks away from him.