Disclaimer- I don't own Vampire Knight, yay me!

Chapter 7

Shattered

Folding her arms over her chest and leaning back onto her heels, Reina eyed Kaname coolly. The brown haired vampire had stepped back, removing the horrifically sharp blade of the weapon he had let his right hand form into and then letting the hand morph back to its original state. She could see the emotions behind his normally guarded crimson eyes. Relief, disbelief, happiness, uncertainty. He didn't know what to make of the woman standing before him and it made a small smirk pull up a corner of her pink lips and one of her eyebrows raise in amusement.

"It would be nice if everyone stopped attacking me. I understand I'm supposed to be dead, but really," Reina said with an exaggerated eye roll. "That's no reason to try and kill me. Not that you could, but still, it's stressing out poor Ken over there." She waved a hand at Ken who was standing beside Yuuki a few yards away looking rather tense and serious as he eyed Kaname. "Don't," she hissed suddenly, turning her attention to Zero who was still sitting amongst the debris, his head tilted to the side so that he could see Kaname out of the corner of his eye as he reached for the gun at Reina's feet.

"If he wants to die so badly, I'll gladly-"

"You'll do nothing," Reina cut in, giving Kaname a cold look and then turning back to Zero. "I saw the look in your eyes earlier, Zero, you want to kill him, don't you? At the time you wanted to kill me too, didn't you? But...You protected me instead, blocking Rido's attack on me even as Ken was already moving to protect me. You're not the monster you think you are. The race you loathe so much is the same one that just protected every human here voluntarily. The same race that I belong to and I've never done anything but try and help you in anyway I could. You have a choice before you, Zero. Either continue down the path you're on and get your revenge, but remember that revenge will only breed more hate and you'll leave someone in the same state as you. Can you do that? You can also choose to make a difference by not killing, take a page out of your teacher's book and Cross', they don't kill needlessly. Anymore anyway. Don't let Rido control your fate anymore, it's in your hands now Zero, do something useful with it or...I'll kill you myself if you try to hurt anyone I love. Please don't make me do that Zero. I don't want to hurt you."

Zero couldn't even look up at her as she spoke, he clenched his fists and smashed his teeth together and chose to glare at the ground beneath him. Every fiber of his being wanted nothing more than to grab the gun that was only inches away and turn around to shoot Kaname, but he was well aware that Reina hadn't lied. She would kill him, easily, and she would feel guilt for it. He couldn't hate her, he couldn't have her and he couldn't for the life of him figure out why he couldn't make himself pick up the gun at her feet as his body screamed at him to kill the pureblood behind him.

"Get away from me," he finally hissed through his clenched teeth, his voice shaking with his pent up anger and rage.

Reina didn't say anything, but she did nod before stepping around Zero to walk up to Kaname who hadn't taken his eyes off of her, she smiled at him and then walked towards where Ken, Yuuki and now Aido were gathered several yards away with him following after her. "There's a lot to talk about, but where is Takuma?"

Kaname couldn't entirely hide the flicker of regret that flashed through his crimson eyes and Reina stumbled back a step, unsettled by it, only to have Ken appear at her side, a hand on her back and one on her shoulder, steadying her.

She could feel her chest tighten painfully as she waited for Kaname to give her a reply that he seemed unwilling to give. "Where is he, Kaname?" She demanded shakily.

"He's with his grandfather," Kaname replied evenly.

"I..I don't understand."

"I had planned on dealing with Ichio after the rest of the Council, but before I could, Ichijo interrupted. He-"

"You didn't leave him there. Please tell me you didn't leave him there alone, Kaname?" Reina was shaking her head from side to side, tears forming in her eyes as she tried to convince herself that Ichijo wouldn't be so stupid as to take on his grandfather on his own, but knowing that he would have felt it was his duty, his responsibility to deal with the man that had been responsible for so much pain and suffering... and her death. She didn't wait for an answer, her body erupted into a shower of sparkling dust like crystals and a sharp wind blew through the area, taking her with them.

"Reina," Aido protested, but it was too late, she was already gone.

"Yuuki, we need to go now," Kaname said to her, his eyes on the spot where Reina had just been standing.

"But..."

Finally glancing at her, he saw that her gaze was drawn toward Zero. He felt a spike of anger, but held it back. "Say your goodbyes then, but you no longer belong here, Yuuki. You know that."

Yuuki nodded sadly before slowly approaching Zero.

"As for you," Kaname said, speaking to Ken who regarded him calmly. "Reina seems to trust you, but I don't think you can be of much help to her right now."

"You're right," Ken answered. "She needs someone she loves by her side. I can look after your sister, I give you my word that nothing will happen to her. We'll join you as soon as she's finished saying goodbye."

Kaname nodded and without sparing a glance for Aido or anyone else that was approaching, he disappeared.

The blue eyed Aido could only frown helplessly as he looked over at Ken, the dark haired man's gray eyes were watching Yuuki intently as she talked with Zero. He then cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the other approaching vampires, his cousin included.

"You should stop them from getting too curious. Kiryu is no shape to be surrounded by the very race he's struggling to either hate or accept," Ken spoke quietly, his eyes never leaving Yuuki as the young girl nodded and began to turn away from her long time friend.

Feeling there was little point in arguing, Aido turned away to do as Ken suggested and keep the others away from the volatile Kiryu. He hadn't gotten far when he sensed Yuuki and Ken's auras suddenly fade and begin to move away from the Academy rapidly. Sighing, the blond looked around. The Academy was in varying states of ruin, there were fire blackened walls and spots of concrete, broken buildings and cracked sidewalks, uprooted trees and smashed windows everywhere. It was surprising that the whole place hadn't been destroyed in all of the different battles that had been fought, he realized then that everyone must have used caution in order to try and salvage as much of the place as they could. It had been their home for several years now and they had grown fairly attached to it. There was also the fact that the human students were all huddled together in their dorms and if those were destroyed then the humans likely would have been too and that was what they were trying to prevent. It showed just how much they had all grown to accept the very beings so many of them had always loathed or thought of as nothing more than worthless and expendable.

"Hanabusa, where did Kaname-sama and the others go?" Akatsuki asked as he got close.

"I don't know," he mumbled. "Reina disappeared after hearing that Ichijo went to deal with his grandfather alone. I can only guess that Kaname-sama, Yuuki-sama and Takamora-sama all went after her."

"Reina-sama is alive?" Ruka asked, she hadn't been with the group that had seen her earlier and had had no idea that she was alive.

Aido nodded. "I don't know how exactly, but she is and she's..."

"She's what?" Akatsuki pressed.

"Nothing," Aido replied. "It's nothing." He thought back to when he learned that Reina was pregnant and the look that he had seen in her eyes several times that day. She was happy, even as she had stood against Rido, there had been a hope in her eyes, it made him think everything would be okay. But now as he stared off into the distance, he had a feeling that things had just gotten worse, but not for all of them, just for Reina. The news that Ichijo had gone to face his grandfather alone was unexpected, it was well known that though Ichijo was strong, his grandfather was stronger, he wouldn't survive a fight with the older and more skilled vampire and he had to have known that, Ichijo may be odd, but he wasn't stupid.

Reina fell to her knees in front of a burning building. She could feel the heat of the blaze kissing her face as the long tendrils or red and orange writhed only a few feet away from her. Her eyes scanned everything, but she could see no sign of anyone in the massive fire that had engulfed the wing of the large mansion that had housed Ichio's study, the same wing where she could smell blood, lots of it and from more than one person. Her hands were limp at her sides as she struggled to breathe and ignore the ache that was forming in her chest and the lump that was growing in her throat. She refused to cry, she chose to cling desperately to the hope that the blood she had smelled didn't belong to Takuma and that he hadn't been in the building when the blaze had started.

"Reina." Kaname had appeared behind her, his crimson eyes assessing everything critically and slowly a frown appeared on his face and he crouched beside the woman who looked so fragile and as if she were about to break into hundreds of pieces.

"Tell me he's not here...That he wasn't here," Reina pleaded, her eyes never leaving the hypnotizing movement of the flames.

"I can't sense him," Kaname replied quietly.

Stifling a sob, Reina stood up shakily, brushing off Kaname's hand as he tried to help her. Taking a shaky breath, Reina focused on the flames and with nothing more than twitch of her fingers the entire blaze was suddenly snuffed out like it had been nothing more than a single small candle flame. What little smoke this had caused was cleared by a small breeze and once it was gone, Reina began to walk forward, carefully stepping around fallen stones and pieces of the now almost entirely gutted wing of the manor.

She felt the arrival of Yuuki and Ken, but paid them no heed as she made her way through the wreckage, her keen eyes searching for something, anything that could tell her whether Takuma had been here and what had happened to him. There was so much going through her mind that she never noticed Kaname following after her, prepared to do whatever he needed to, whether it be hold her, or protect her from whatever may still be lingering here.

She was having a hard time making anything out in the charred mess that was Ichio's office, everything was covered in soot or burnt beyond recognition. It was a small glint of something shiny that caught her attention and she quickly made her way towards the object that lay forgotten on the floor.

Moving aside bits and pieces of the battered and burnt walls and roof, Reina gasped when she realized what the glint had been from. Steel. A beautifully made katana with the smoothest blade and a hilt that looked as if it had at one point been wrapped in green lay discarded on the ground. It only took her a moment to recognize it as the very one that Takuma had shown her several times before, it was his preferred and prized weapon.

'He could have left it purposely. It doesn't mean anything,' she kept repeating the last sentence over and over again in her head as she leaned down to pick up the katana whose blade was miraculously unharmed.

As she was straightening, another small object caught her attention only a few inches from where the katana had lain. A small circular object.

Reina's eyes widened and her body began to tremble as she reached a shaky hand towards the soot coated object. Picking it up and dusting off the band that was no doubt Takuma's engagement ring Reina felt her legs give out and tears fill her eyes.

She was caught before she could fall into the black mess that surrounded her, strong arms wrapped around her and gently lifted her up as her entire world blurred and lost all color before becoming mind numbingly dark.

"You're going to leave her? After all that has happened today she is going to need someone she knows by her side. That person is not me," Ken protested sternly as Kaname sat in a rich brown leather chair behind an organized desk in a room lined with bookshelves, he seemed unaffected as he stared at Ken, his cheek resting against the backs of his fisted fingers.

"He..He's right, Kaname," Yuuki stuttered. She wasn't used to addressing him so familiarly, but it hardly seemed right to address him any other way now that she knew he was her brother and only remaining family. She fidgeted nervously as his gaze traveled to her, her hands tugging at the fabric of the red skirt she had been given by the servants.

"We don't have a choice. If we stay she'll be in more danger than she already is," Kaname replied.

"Which is another reason not to go," Ken pointed out. "If my family doesn't already know she's alive, they will soon and they won't be happy about it. She can't protect herself in her state."

Kaname's eyes shifted to Ken and narrowed. "What state is she in?"

Ken jolted. "She didn't tell you?"

"If she had told me I wouldn't be asking you, would I?"

"When I was making it seem as though she had died I ran across a few interesting things. One of them being that there was some sort of spell put on her to inhibit the amount of her own power she could use. Essentially her blood was weakened, purposely. She's a lot stronger than anyone ever thought and she's going to have to learn to deal with that, it's not going to be easy... She's pregnant."

Yuuki gasped and her hands stopped playing with the fabric of the flowing skirt to limply hang at her side as she stared at Ken. Even Kaname couldn't mask his surprise, he lifted his head from his hand and glanced at the door.

"You're certain?" He asked.

His lips tightly pressed into a thin line, Ken nodded. "I am. It was a bit of a surprise for me to run into that while casting the spell that would "kill" her, I had to move carefully after that. It's still very early though, she probably wouldn't have noticed for a few more weeks if I hadn't told her."

Letting his head fall back onto the leather, Kaname closed his eyes and sighed.

"She needs all of the friends and protection she can get right now. You can't still think it alright to leave her here," Ken pressed.

"I have no choice. I have many enemies at the moment and I don't want Reina involved, more so now."

"She needs her friends-"

"And she'll have them," Kaname interrupted. "I'll arrange for Aido and Kain to come and stay with her. I'm sure the Aido's won't protest and she thinks of him as her brother."

"She's going to feel as if you've abandoned her. Again," Ken said, turning on his heel to walk out of the room.

"Again?" Yuuki repeated.

"Yes. Again," Kaname answered tiredly, running a hand wearily over his face. "Only this time she might not forgive me."

Ken leaned into the wall of Reina's bedroom, staring out the window and into the dark night that had engulfed everything. He could hear Reina's even breathing as she slept peacefully for the first time in hours. Most of her slumber had been riddled with nightmares, her bedsheets were rumpled and strewn across her messily, her long hair was coming lose of the braid the kind Midori had put it in and her face was lined with sadness.

The large house was eerily silent and he wondered how it was that she had lived most of her life here by herself with only the servants for company. At the moment it was just the two of them and the servants, Kaname and Yuuki had left hours earlier while Reina had still been asleep. He couldn't help but think Kaname a coward for not waiting for her to wake, but he also knew that the man probably wouldn't be able to leave if she had asked him to stay. He felt bad for her, she had been dealt an unfair hand and just as she thought her luck was beginning to change, so much had gone wrong.

The sound of the phone ringing downstairs caught his attention and Ken silently left Reina's room to see who was calling. He met Midori just as he was turning the corner after descending the stairs, she was still unsure what to make of the man, but she bowed to him nonetheless.

"That was the Aido's. They called to let us know that the young Hanabusa and his cousin will be here tomorrow. He had wanted to leave tonight, but his father was insistent that they stay at least one night before leaving. They will be taking the train into the nearest town. I will make arrangements for them to be picked up as soon as I know when they will arrive," Midori explained without waiting for him to inquire about who had called.

"When who arrives?" A soft, musical tone asked quietly.

"Reina-sama," Midori said worriedly, bustling around Ken, her long black skirt fluttering around her feet as she climbed the steps to where Reina stood at the top in her floor length silk and lace black babydoll nightgown.

She looked tired, as if she hadn't just slept for nearly ten hours, and most of all she looked broken. Her eyes were rimmed with red circles and her cheeks were pale and she looked gaunt, too thin and frail as she stood at the top of the stairs, half in shadow as Midori carefully laid a hand on her thin arm and made to steer her back to her room.

"I'm fine, Midori," Reina protested, but the tremor in her voice and the sheer tiredness that she was exuding was a clear sign that she was anything but fine. She let her sapphire eyes drift to the door of her father's old study, the same study that Kaname had been in earlier that day before closing her eyes for a moment and sighing resignedly.

"You're not fine, Reina," Ken stated, his tone as even and calm as always as he made his way up the steps to stand in front of her, smiling reassuringly at Midori who protectively moved closer to Reina and made as if to step in between them. "I promise you I mean her no harm."

Reina sighed, waving a hand at Midori dismissively and almost as if annoyed. "You can trust him Midori. He may be a Takamora, but he isn't like the rest of his family. You have him to thank for me still being alive so treat him well. Now. Who is arriving?"

"Hanabusa Aido and Akatsuki Kain," Ken answered.

"Kaname's doing?"

"Yes."

"When did they leave?" Reina asked.

"Several hours ago now. He didn't want to put you or your child in any further danger by being near you. He's only trying to protect you and he also has his sister to think about now," Ken said.

"I wonder how Yuuki feels. She's lived as a human and in their society for so much of her life, marriage to a family member is forbidden, but it's quite common among many of the pureblood clans, especially the Kurans," she mused out loud.

"They're not going to be married. Yuuki doesn't wish to be," Ken told her.

"Really?" Reina replied, too tired to show much emotion and too drained to care.

"He would have stayed-"

"Don't bother, Ken. I know Kaname better than anyone. I know that he is doing what he has to and I'll support him however I can, but he wouldn't have stayed. I'm not the one he has to protect, regardless of what he says. I'm someone else's problem now. I've always been someone else's problem."

"Reina..."

She shook her head, blinking back the tears that were trying to break free of the dam she had built up to keep them hidden, shaking herself free of Midori's comforting hand, she walked back to her room, quietly shutting the door behind herself.

Please feed the review monster!