The Vampire Knight

Rating: T (coarse language, profanity, ideas generally unsuitable for those not open-minded enough to accept them)

Genre: Romance/Adventure

Plot Summary: Zero retired from being a Vampire Knight because of his agonizing, headache-causing visions. And now, he's being blackmailed into guarding the heir of the Kuran family, Kuran Kaname.

Early update! You guys are such a great crowd that I couldn't help but do this for you guys. Thanks to all who reviewed, alerted, and favorited! I also added a geeky Harry Potter reference in here! See if you can find it! I'll come up with a prize later. Also, yes, there is the good ol' morphine and Vicodin featured in this story, because Zero needs good medicine to help his headaches and I can't be bothered to come up with Japanese-to-English names.

Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Knight.


~~o~~

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." - Anatole France

~~o~~


"This is serious," said Cross, lacing his fingers together as he leaned forward onto the desk. "Order in this damn Court!"

He banged the gavel against the surface of the wooden table as he sat facing the entirety of the Court, almost all living Vampire Knights present.

"You must all listen to me."

The Court fell silent, and Zero peered out from under his hood, pulling on the sleeve of his jacket as he attempted to straighten it. His arm had healed yesterday.

Cross, with his glasses removed, was an intimidating figure when serious, and he called for no nonsense. He would have scared the shit out of Zero if Zero hadn't known him for the first hundred years of his, Zero's, life. A business-like expression was on his face as he stared out into the crowd of adept Knights, causing the most faint-hearted to look away. Yagari didn't even flinch away and looked at him with the same intensity.

"War is coming. War is coming to the vampires and us, and we will not return unscathed if there is not a way to prevent it. Someone sent a declaration of war to us, three days ago, and I was just notified." His face contorted into a pained, twisted look as he smiled. He held up a thin, folded piece of paper, and Zero faintly wondered how such a little piece of worthless paper could contain something important enough to bring the entire Knight body to Court. "We were given seventeen days to prepare, and this means that we now only have a fortnight to gather our might and send our troops out to war. I will not accept this outrage. If this is a petty prank, someone tell me right now, for I will not be fooled. I do not wish to be fooled, but if the only alternative to this is delegating everyone to needless bloodlust, we shall go to war.

"Someone," Cross said quietly. "Someone tell me this is not real."

Zero stood, and Kaien turned to him, a silent sit down look that caused Zero to step back half a step. But Zero did not falter. Cross was faltering, and he didn't know which way to go. A declaration of war. A fucking declaration of fucking war. And it was right before all of them.

"We cannot hide from reality, Kaien Cross. This is every bit as real as it is palpable. You have seen the note yourself. If it is a declaration of war, treat it as a war. If it is a petty little prink, still, treat it as a war. Hope that we can make it through; hope is all we have. We could keep faith. We can't fool ourselves into thinking it isn't time to fight; there hasn't been a war for so long, and it's time for one to happen. We just got caught in the storm. Let's live not in fear. There's no use living in fear, if there's nothing left for us at all. I say that we take this seriously."

Kaien's expression turned blank. "We could die."

"Then we'll die," replied Zero. This was no place to start preaching life, but if the Association lost its head, if the Association lost Kaien, the Association would lose its mind too. And they would all fall apart. "We'll die protecting people that we loved because someone declared war against us. We'll die because we fought a war. But you can't just wait for the war to come to us. What good will it do then if we still get killed, but we didn't even fight to save our lives? What would you do, Cross?"

He stepped back and held one of his arms akimbo as he flung back his hood and gestured with his hand to the Court at large.

"Our will is with yours."

~~o~~

After the meeting, Zero sat in a conference room with two unhappy Vampire Knights. Cross had left to gather his thoughts, so he was not present. One of them was his twin brother, Ichiru. The other was a man, missing an eye and looking extremely intimidating as he stared Zero down in what appeared to be a penetrating gaze. Well, Zero always felt uncomfortable facing off his mentor, be it the training ring or in a supermarket store with a box of salted Ritz crackers between them. Yagari Toga was not a man to fool around with, and Zero knew that a little too well to feel comfortable about it. He shifted slightly in his cushioned seat as he attempted to stare out of the glass door and onto the balcony of the Vampire Knight Association edifice.

No, Yagari did not look happy.

"Zero."

The silver-headed Knight looked up to Yagari, looking very calm and composed and feeling the exact opposite. "Yagari," he replied politely, dipping his head in respect. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ichiru lean back into his seat with an exasperated, annoyed look on his face. Whether or not the annoyance was directed towards him, Zero wasn't sure.

"You hesitated for a moment, when you shot the level E. I can see it on your face."

For a moment, Zero blinked. They had just gone through a Court session in which war was officially formalized. And Yagari was… What the hell. Just…what the hell? Zero's expression broke out of its cool, disinterested façade and turned to disbelief. "What the hell! After three hundred years of not seeing me, the first thing you say is a fucking 'You hesitated for a moment' to greet me? How does that make any sort of sense in any sort of way?" He threw his hands up and started to laugh. "You haven't changed at all!"

Yagari sighed, an old-time grin on his face. "Constructive criticism is good for you, kid. I heard from Cross about your fighting all these mountain lions and boars and bears. Didn't want you to get all high and mighty and end up losing to an E like nothing happened."

"Gee, thanks," returned Zero, a wry smile on his face. "So you heard from Kaien about my badass adventures. Did he tell you that I grew little more than an inch in height?"

"You make that sound like something to be proud of." Yagari smirked. "I'm still taller."

Zero muttered something that sounded suspiciously like 'old ass.' Then, he turned to Ichiru with a trying, award-winning smile, extending his arms out. "Are you still…mad at me, 'chiru? A life isn't a life without your twin…"

Ichiru rolled his eyes but smiled nonetheless, coming over and plopping down on Zero's lap, sufficiently sending Zero into a bit of pain. "And what about the people who have no twins? What do you say about them, huh, Zero?"

"They are their own twins." Zero brushed hair from Ichiru's face, ignoring the fact that his leg was losing circulation. "But I've got my twin right here." As he said this, he gave the resigned, attempted-but-defeated smile that he was renowned for that could crack Ichiru's cold shell in a minute. Ichiru glowered and looked away, pretending that he wasn't seeing Zero at all. "And I think he still loves me," Zero continued. "I hope he still loves me."

Yagari was across from them, silently amused. He didn't have to go to movie theatres to watch theatrics; he had a twin set of idiots, right here, to make him feel entertained.

Ichiru was still trying to ignore Zero, though he was sitting on his brother's lap. Zero's expression now wasn't a subdued, kicked-puppy look; he never did kicked-puppy looks. And it wasn't that Zero wasn't capable of looking like a kicked-puppy—he could. But he preferred to keep his dignity and settled for a I-tried-my-best-and-I-still-lost-the-one-I-loved-the-most look, like he came out of an apocalypse after failing to save his girlfriend or something. It was a melancholy look that made Ichiru's stomach digest itself even quicker as his hands shook with the effort not to glance at his brother to see if Zero had quit the look yet.

"Don't quit me yet, Ichiru," said Zero quietly, and Ichiru looked in surprise, cursing himself.

"Fine. I forgive you," muttered Ichiru, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at Zero.

But Zero grinned full out. "I won out."

"As usual," said Yagari, standing up. "Well, there's no point in hounding you about that E; that was the only criticism of construction that I had anyways. Good job, kid. It took them three years to find you."

Zero suddenly looked sullen. "Yes. And it took three minutes of Cross threatening to blackmail me to get me to come back."

"What blackmail did he use?" Ichiru asked, curiosity piqued greatly. Not many people could find any dirt on Zero except for the dirt on his skin when he refused to take showers out of weariness. "It must have been pretty bad if he got you to bail on your quest to become the Head of the Living-in-the-Wilderness Committee."

"Not telling you. The reason why I came back was so no one could tell you." He pointed to Yagari and Ichiru. "Both of you."

"You can tell us, Zero," Yagari replied with a straight face. "You could count on us to tell everyone afterwards." He lit a cigarette and balanced it at the corner of his mouth as he inhaled, an arched eyebrow as he continued. "How long do you think you could have hid it, Zero? I know you get really drunk off your ass and everyone's cradle gets rocked in the process."

Zero blanched. "You—you know?"

"Of course I know, you idiot. I wasn't that far drunk off my ass like you were to not be able to tell that my own student had kissed me." Yagari looked extremely amused now. "Wasn't the best experience of my life, but Cross was pretty pissed at that."

The implication was still there. It was a bit strange, but all Vampire Knights, once born a Vampire Knight or turned vampire, were willing to go both ways on the gender preferences in pursuing sexual relationships. Most of the time, Vampire Knights conformed to the way of the humans and stuck for ramrod straight. As for Zero, he didn't give a shit. Yagari could have preferred animals over humans and Zero would be drinking wine with him every other day to celebrate it.

"Cross is married," Zero pointed out.

Yagari rolled his eyes. "Cross might as well be married to me too, Zero. Spends more time with me than he spends time with that Ayano girl."

Ichiru sighed at Yagari. "Yagari," he said slowly, as if reprimanding a child gently. "You liked Ayano too."

"Don't remind me. That last escapade with the three of us was horrible. I decided that I'd just have Cross marry Ayano."

Zero resisted the urge to bang his head against a wall. "You won't be happy that way, Yagari. But enough of this marriage counseling shit; you and Shizuka, huh?"

"I'm sober right now," Yagari said defensively, taking the cigarette from his mouth and breathing out a thin stream of smoke. "And though she's the beauty of the century, she's ferocious. Crazy. Insane." He shuddered. "Scares the hell out of me. There's no way it would work out. There aren't any laws prohibiting it, since we do live forever and she won't die of heartbreak since I won't die at all—hell, she hates me, but that's beside the point—but all vampires have one mindset, and that's: maintain the Purebloods. Intermarry, for fuck's sake, but make sure the Purebloods stay alive and well. Be incestuous, for all the Council of Elders care, but the Purebloods must have their lineage continue."

"And if the Pureblood line continues with a mixing of Knight?" asked Ichiru, his eyebrows scrunched together in concentration as he attempted to read Yagari's expression.

"The Knight dies."

The three of them sucked in a breath, and Yagari had a rictus on his face.

"It's against the Elder laws for any Pureblood to have children with a Knight, whether or not the Knight is a noble or not. Usually, vampires that became Vampire Knights—weird notation, I know—are level D, like you guys. Easy to control and able to go out into the sunlight to do the Pureblood's dirty work, but I suppose it is possible for someone from the Aido or Ichijou family to become one just to protect the Kuran family. Either way, the Knight is beheaded, their bodies charred but not burnt to ashes, and they are buried facing the center of the earth to shame them."

"That's horrible," Ichiru mumbled, a look of horror plastered on his face as he pressed his palm to his mouth, his fingers digging at the hollows in his cheeks. "And the child?"

Yagari looked at them both evenly. "Dies with the Knight. It's horrible. The Knights are running low because of this. These Pureblood women seducing them; it's killed us off. They and their male children—all of them were born as male children who never lived past three years old—were killed in the same way. I hate it." His light blue eyes darkened. "They killed my brother. The Council and the Association killed my brother, and his kid. That kid… His fourth birthday would have been two days after he got beheaded and burnt."

"Yagari…" said Ichiru, rising from where he sat—on Zero's lap; yes, it was official that Zero lost circulation in his leg—and placing a hand on Yagari's shoulder in a gesture of consolation. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry about your brother."

Zero stood as well, trying not to fall over. "Don't do this to yourself, Yagari. Don't pity yourself." He looked at Yagari sharply.

"Don't assess me, kid."

"We're not kids anymore, Yagari. None of us here are kids anymore. I took a bullet four days ago to the arm because someone tried to kill the Pureblood I'm supposed to guard. The Vampire Knights are dying off. There's a giant war coming, and I can sense it. Don't pity the dead, Yagari," said Zero. "Pity the living."

Yagari looked up, almost in wonder. "You're right." He turned to Ichiru. "Both of you aren't kids anymore."

"Glad to have you back," Zero replied wryly, as the three of them engaged in a three way hug.

But as soon as Zero pulled back, a vision assaulted him, causing him to stagger back and hold his head in his hands.

A man, dressed in black. Reading a letter and perusing the contents for only a second before it goes up in flames. Then, a cruel laugh as he turned to the sky. He resembled Haruka and Kaname Kuran greatly. (So this guy was probably related to them.)

"Is that how it is, nephew?" he said quietly, a hint of dark fury in his voice as he laughed. "Then I shall wait for you to come to me."

He was in a dark cave, and there was whimpering from inside as he strode into the darkness.

A shriek was heard.

Nephew…

Zero ignored the concerned gaze of Ichiru and the questioning gaze of Yagari. Well, it didn't seem too likely that Haruka's brother, therefore Kaname's uncle, was too mean, by what Zero heard of him, so it was probably Haruka's uncle. At least, he hoped.

~~o~~

As soon as Zero and Ichiru readied themselves to go back to the Kuran Manor, Zero was sure that an attack had been planned on them. On purpose. During the night. Somehow, they had been attacked by another level E, and this one had been pretty strong—which meant the fall from grace must have been really hard. Within a blink, they had been ambushed, and Ichiru was pinned against a tree by a crazed vampire as Zero attempted to get up, trying to recover from being winded. Grimacing, Zero tried to raise his head, or his gun, but preferably his gun.

"Ichiru," he rasped, coughing. "Get out of…line…fire…"

Ichiru hit the level E in the face and fought madly, having her in a stranglehold. It didn't seem to bother the lunatic vampire, but Ichiru was doing better than Zero was. "Can't move. Do it, Zero."

"Hell no; Yuki will castrate me if I shoot you."

With the most willpower he could muster, he dragged himself up from where he lay, coughing as he stumbled over and cocked the gun right to the vampire's temple.

"Don't. Move."

But the level E turned around and ran her fingernails across his face, leaving one claw mark emblazoned into his cheek. Zero attempted to hold her still, but she got a couple good clouts on his face and his abdomen, causing him to keel over slightly as she clawed at his head again.

"Fuck!" he hissed as Ichiru took his gun and shot her right in the chest. Zero fell back onto the floor, clutching his face. Ichiru silently waited for him to get up; for the sake of everything in the world, he had just been shot in the arm four days ago. He could deal with this. Ichiru knew.

"I need to get shot and clawed more often," he muttered, finally recovered from his sudden burst of pain. He removed his hand and grimaced as he saw some of his flesh fall away. "Is my cheekbone visible? At all? Just in case the Kurans see me like this."

Ichiru knelt down. "Worried for appearances? You drama queen. Nope. No bone. Just open gashes. Two."

Zero groaned. "Shut up… My face hurts like hell and you're here telling me I'm a drama queen."

Both of them didn't expect it when the level E rose again and hit Ichiru on the head, enough to cause him to bleed. Ichiru collapsed to the floor with a thud and Zero shot her with Bloody Rose and got her for good.

"Stupid level E vampires!" Zero muttered, getting up. He tugged Ichiru on the collar. "Ichiru?" There was no response. "Ichiru!"

Ichiru's head lolled to the side. He was unconscious.

"Oh fuck this all."

~~o~~

Zero got back all right. He got back pissed, annoyed, and angry out of his mind, dripping blood from his cheek and bruised with a probable broken rib. Groaning, he carried Ichiru back to the manor, his face the perfect picture of irritation as he strode into the portal and past the maid who cursed him because she just finished mopping the floor. Zero didn't respond and went up the stairs two steps at a time, lugging his twin all the way to Yuki's room.

"Yuki!"

Her head, crowned with brown hair, came forward from the opening in the door, and her eyes widened as soon as she saw Zero carrying Ichiru.

"Um…which one are you?" she asked, her voice small.

"He's the rude one," Ichiru mumbled, and Zero rolled his eyes.

"Next time, I'm leaving you with the E," he replied, nudging the door open with his foot and striding into the room. He unceremoniously dumped Ichiru onto the bed, a groan received in his efforts, and turned back to leave when Yuki placed a hand on his elbow.

"I… I don't know what to do," Yuki said quietly, eyes brimming with tears. "He won't die, will he?"

Zero blinked at the question. He never really gave a thought about asking anyone if his twin would die, and he knew Ichiru never did either, because they both knew if the other was going to survive or not. And Zero knew that his brother was going to live, but it looked like Yuki didn't. "I—" He was about to say, 'I hope he does,' in a teasing way, because he knew Ichiru would laugh wryly and toss a pillow at him. But Yuki wasn't used to it, so he caught himself. "I know he'll live." He tapped his temple. "Twin telepathy."

"Really?" Yuki looked amazed.

Well, Zero wouldn't have called it that, but why not? "Yeah. Don't you worry, kiddo."

She pouted. "Don't call me kiddo! I'm probably older than you?"

"How old are you?"

"How old are you?"

"Four hundred and sixty-three."

She sighed. "I should have known."

"Didn't Ichiru tell you how old he was?"

"He said he forgot."

"Bullsh—crap. Bull-crap. Well, Miss Yuki, how old are you?"

She blushed. "Three hundred and twenty-seven. You're about fifty years younger than Kaname though."

"He's old," Zero replied, a grin on his face. "He's a really, really old vampire. I'm still very young compared to Kaname."

"Still very young compared to who?"

Cursing silently, Zero turned around, prepared to face his Pureblood. He attempted to smile charmingly at Kaname, but he was pretty sure that it looked weird with two scratches across his right cheek. He gave up the smile and settled for a bow, and Kaname's gaze flickered to Yuki's bed where Ichiru was, his blood-stained hair on her pillow.

"You're not a very pretty sight, Zero," noted Kaname.

He supposed he didn't look too good, with a blood-stained formal shirt and torn pants, as well as a bruise on his jaw and a hunching position to help alleviate some of the pain in his ribcage, but still, Zero gawked at him. "You know which one I am?"

"As Ichiru said, you are the 'rude one,'" he replied, amused.

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Zero stood there, at a loss of what to do. He could have stood there staring at Kaname all day, or he could have made some sort of movement to get outside of Yuki's suffocating, flowery room, but he settled for the former and stood there staring at his Pureblood. Kaname simply stared back at him, his garnet-colored gaze unfaltering as they remained standing there. Yuki awkwardly stood on the sidelines, watching them exchange odd glares that held no anger.

Both were snapped out of it when Ichiru shifted onto his side. Yuki hurried to the bed, and Zero sighed, striding out the door and wiping blood from his cheek. It stung. It most definitely stung, and Zero was going to go to the infirmary—they had to have one in this monster of a house, goddamn it was so big—to get it bandaged because his face hurt, and staring at Kaname made it hurt even more. Of course, he could hear Kaname's footsteps following after him. And soon after those footsteps stopped, Zero could feel Kaname's breath on his neck, a ticklish, feather-like sensation, his elbow was grasped, and he was pulled back so he was facing Kaname.

Zero was definitely spending a long time in hell, because he nearly leaned forward...and what would have happened then?

The two of them pulled back right before their foreheads collided, and Zero cleared his throat.

Kaname spoke first, unfazed. "I need to speak with you for important matters. I have heard of the upcoming war."

Isn't Kaname just full of surprises? Zero thought. "Yeah. We'll die if it happens."

"Don't do that, Zero," Kaname said, his voice gently admonishing. Was it always this soft? "Don't be such a pessimist. We can keep faith."

Zero had almost said that exact thing to Cross in front of the entire Court. He smiled at Kaname and leaned close, loving the fact that he was one centimeter taller than Kaname, though it didn't make too much of a difference. "I'm being a realist," he replied. "But yes, we could."

Kaname pulled Zero alongside him as they strode to Kaname's own office.

"Forget the infirmary then…"Zero muttered.

"We don't have one, actually," Kaname answered apologetically, pulling out a wooden spindled chair from a book-shelved desk and placing it before his giant table. He turned around and clicked his tongue distastefully at Zero's facial wounds. "What happened?"

"Attacked by level E's. They've been appearing so suddenly that I can't even ready Bloody Rose before I get Bloody Rose-d on my face." Zero took a seat at the now stationary chair; Kaname took his seat opposite him. "If there's no infirmary, I guess I'll just walk around with two scratch marks on my face." Zero made a face and pretended to sound like Yagari. "'Hey, kid, what happened to your face?' Well, Yagari, I tripped over a stone, and my face got assaulted by a rose bush."

Kaname chuckled and pulled something from his pocket. He tossed it at Zero. "Here. I suppose talking could wait. Go wash your wounds with it."

Zero caught it without blinking, noting that it was a soft fabric. A handkerchief. Of course Kaname would keep one. He looked like the type to do it.

"Thanks."

~~o~~

"So let me get this straight," said Zero, pressing the handkerchief to his face as he stepped out of the office's washroom. They had started talking as soon as Zero insisted they get it over with. "You think that a relative of yours may have some dealings with the level E's and that the forthcoming war was actually initiated by this relative of yours? Who is this relative of yours?"

Kaname absentmindedly lined up the pens on his desk. "My uncle."

"Your father's brother?"

Kaname sighed. "My father married his sister. My parents are both related to my uncle."

"Okay. So, your only uncle."

"Yes."

A sense of foreboding came to Zero, but he squashed it down. For some reason, his heart was telling him to remember something, but his mind was being an asshole and wouldn't follow through with it. "What's your uncle's name?"

Glancing to the window, Kaname muttered, "Rido. Rido Kuran."

Now he remembered. Shit, shit, shit. It was that guy. "Did you…send him a letter?"

Kaname looked up at Zero, shocked. "How did you know about it?"

Zero tapped his temple, pretending to shoot himself in the head. But he didn't smile as he told Kaname, "Not many people know this, Kaname—" He ignored the shocked look on Kaname's face as he called him by his first name, "—that I can see a bit of the future. I'm not loopy in the head or anything, but I have visions. Prognostications. Prophecies." Zero wrinkled his nose at the last one. "Let's just go with visions."

"And they give you major headaches? Migraines?"

"How do you figure?"

"Your records are in the hands of us Kurans now, Zero. I know about your overdosing on Vicodin."

"I could have gotten morphine, but they refused."

"They?"

"The Association with the Knight and all of them. Either way, you know about it? I didn't think you'd be that interested in my past criminal escapades. Although I wouldn't consider overdosing on Vicodin anything too serious. The headaches hurt like hell. You're lucky you don't have them."

"Do the headaches vary in pain?"

Zero laughed. "Oh, definitely. Before you got shot, I had a major headache."

Kaname's eyes widened. "You saw the shooter preparing to injure me?" He spoke as if he didn't even care that he had almost died.

"Yeah. Pushed you out of the way just in time and took the bullet. I was a second late though; if I had pushed you out of the way a second earlier, no one would have gotten shot." Zero looked rueful. "Except the Ori Manor, maybe, but they could use plaster to fill up the hole."

"Zero…thank you."

Zero removed the handkerchief and grimaced at the blood. Then he turned to Kaname. "What for?"

"Taking a wound meant for me," Kaname replied, his expression strangely melancholy as he stared at Zero. His face appeared to be almost…nostalgic. Reminiscent of a past occurrence.

Zero sighed and shook his head, standing right before Kaname's desk. He dropped the sanguinolent handkerchief before Kaname and placed his hands on the table, leaning close to Kaname so they were face-to-face, only a handspan apart. Zero mustered the most sincerity he could—and all of his dignity, so he wouldn't lose it—and said, in a very calm voice, "I'm your Knight, Kaname. I'm supposed to die for you, because you will always come first, before everything else."

Oh god, it sounded like a love confession. Kaname closed his eyes, and Zero wanted to pull back so badly, or just lean forward, or do something, because the silence was killing him, and in the moonlight, Kaname was beautiful. And everything was silent, and Zero, the notorious noise-maker, could not stand it.

"I didn't mean for it to come out that way," Zero said feebly, looking faintly embarrassed and repentant as he sat back down in his seat, a safe distance away from Kaname.

"Let's just focus on the war," Kaname said quietly. "I require one person to accompany me on my journey to find my uncle. I will kill him."

"I guess I'm that one person?"

"Correct."

Zero inhaled calmly; then he exhaled with excitement. "When are we going?"

"Tomorrow morning, where no one will track our movements."