DISCLAIMER: Hino-san owns. I play!
SUMMARY: Set in the time between Kaname and Yuuki leaving Cross Academy and the next manga chapter. Kaname comes home. K/Y.
RATING: Mild R.
WORDCOUNT: ~1000
Written at vk_guardians. Prompt: 'When love isn't madness, it isn't love.'
IN HER HANDS
by Leni
The room is dark when he enters. New moon outside, wispy clouds cutting the sky into a blurry, mist-touched edge of dawn. The curtains are open, letting the wind play with the heavy hangers around the bed.
His eye follows a thin playful breeze; the scent of rock, bird and evergreens building into the room before it moves on to play with a loose strand of long brown hair. The soft movement unveils her young face, skin unmarked but for a drying film of tears, long dark eyelashes that flutter even as her limbs twitch. Her cheeks are pale, even in the darkness; her lips, thin as she continues her nightly journey in the dreamland.
Her nightmares spike when he isn't there to tuck her in bed, to lie at her side as her breath evens and her hand slides down his chest; he's read the truth in Hanabusa's averted eyes even when she won't say a word. Months have gone by since that night at the Academy, and still he wishes that the Bloody Rose gave Rido the hell he deserved before destroying that body. If only.... His hands fist, helpless against the past; for the first time he understands Juri's wish to push her daughter into another world even if he can't (won't) do what she did.
The price is too high. He knows because he's paid it in full once.
He can't....
A jerking movement in the bed, the smell of blood as she bites her lip. Her fingers curl into his pillow. Looking for him?
"Yuuki," he whispers, at her side within a thought.
She moves away from him, body twisting in the tangled sheets before it stills. Her breaths become deeper, her features soften until he sees the girl she used to be before she learned to fear. But she does not fear him; she doesn't. Something deep within him gives way when Yuuki relaxes, something in her having recognized him through the gap between the awake and the asleep.
Sweet Yuuki. He sits at the edge of the mattress, smiling when she rolls closer to him, a bundle of silk and half-unbuttoned pajamas. He scoops her upper body onto his chest, waits until she roots her head into the already familiar spot between collarbone and shoulder.
The wind plays with both now, secreting itself into his open jacket and breathing up to his neck, brushing against the marks she left before his morning meeting. The ends of her pajama top are rustled until they lay on top of his hand, letting him graze the skin at her waist. The wind is restless with her hair, too, lifting a few wild strands and bringing them against his white pant legs. He doesn't touch it, afraid it'll be the small movement that'll wake her up; doesn't close the windows, acquiescing to her wish to keep them open.
This moment is what he envisions through every hour away from home. The taste of her still running through his veins, the easy acceptance with which she welcomes him, the memory of her face under his lips, her body a rippling painting under his fingers.
She is the reason he clung to this realm, the baby in Juri's arms and the girl under Cross's protection. She is the one for whom he built a world and destroyed it when it could no longer fit her. The school girl. The Kuran princess. To him, she is wide excited eyes and a happy smile, warm arms that round about him and don't let go.
She is the girl, the sister, the only judge and jury he'll allow to oversee his actions.
The woman.
(His.)
And when she is cuddled against him, covered in sheets that smell like both of them and seeking in him refuge from bad dreams, he dares to hope. From the moment she was born, she brought the future to an empty timelessness. That truth had been acknowledged by Haruka and Juri, it had been accepted by his sweet little sister… and then she was torn away.
For long years, he only knew one other truth: as his bloodline could be traced to her parents, so his sanity was cradled in her unknowing hands.
Should Yuuki have forsaken him….
He doesn't dare think of the consequences.
But even in the shadows of her human life, she refused to let go. Drawn to him, bound by blood and buried memories…. It couldn't have ended any other way.
"Sweet, gentle Yuuki," he murmurs to the sleeping girl, shedding away the pressures of the day, Aidou's counsel and the hostilities of a Hunter's Association that's more cautious around a single pureblood than when the Council held the power of the vampire world - laying in the grass like a snake, they are, and Kaname tires of waiting for them to show their poison. He'd rather deal with Zero's straightforward ire than the word games he's sidestepped for months, can't wait until the boy steps to the post he's been reserved.
But not today.
He wants to shift the smaller body in his arms even closer, or at least bend his head to kiss her crown, her hair, wherever he can reach. But Yuuki looks so peaceful…. Instead his hand moves from her waist to search for hers, covers it where it has been resting against his heart since the moment she pressed against him.
That's enough for him.
He leans back against the headboard, content to hold her, and it is the utter silence which stirs her.
"Kaname…" she says against his jacket, stretching until her toes touch his calves and her mouth brushes his earlobe. "I missed you, Onii-sama."
Then she kisses him on the edge of his cheek, a sleepy goodnight kiss, and he can't help but bring her closer and take her mouth in his. "Don't ever go, Yuuki." He knows she could; he knows she won't.
He knows every path, yet he is willing to follow her lead.
She looks up at him for a moment, her eyes wide and her arms already moving to wrap themselves around him. "Never, Kaname." An oath against his lips. "Never."
He smiles, wanting (needing) to believe.
But then, she knows nothing at all.
The End
01/03/10
p.s. New set of prompts at vk_guardians every Saturday ar 19:00.
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