"But I don't want to cut it!" She shouted at the man before her. Alexandra was pissed off beyond reason. Cut her pretty, long, sandy colored hair? How could he even consider making her do that? She had let it grow since she met him, which had been five years ago, and she was proud of its length. It was down almost to the back of her knees and he was starting to notice how it kept getting in the way.

"It doesn't have to be short, just to about here." He poked her side and she squealed from how much it tickled. She hated it when he did that. She also hated it when he tried telling her what to do. She wasn't a little kid anymore and he didn't have to keep bossing her around like he does. Besides, she remembered him saying he liked girls with long hair.

"I don't want to cut it, Zelman!" He sighed in defeat.

"Fine, Alexandra. If that's what you really want then don't let me get in the way." She felt herself well up with pride at getting him to see it her way and he would finally leave her alone. She was about to find her way through the house and do some exploring when she realized that her hair had gotten tangled and it was bothering her. She turned back to Zelman.

"Zelman?"

"Why do you always turn back to me when you try to walk away?" He mused. "It makes your point far less effective." She would have retorted had she not wanted a favor.

"Could you brush my hair? It's hard for me to brush because it's too long." He felt his brow twitch.

"That's it you're getting it cut, end of discussion." She wanted to fight back, but he had already flung her over his shoulder and was walking down the hall with her kicking and screaming. She was hitting his back with as much strength as she could, but for obvious reasons it had no effect.

"I'll get you ice cream if you stop that." She growled into his back.

"I'm not eight anymore. You can't bribe me with such petty things!"

"I'll get you ice cream for the rest of the week." She hated that he knew her so well.

"Fine."

.

"It's so short!" Really it wasn't. It went right below her shoulder blades, and she knew it was better this way, because now she could manage it better, but she still liked it longer. In the time that he had known her, her sandy locks had gone from large curls to slight waves that gave her a more sophisticated look. She had really grown up over the years, with her baby fat completely diminishing and her legs becoming longer. When she was all grown up, there was no doubt she was going to be a beautiful woman.

"It really isn't, Alexandra. It looks nice." She faltered for a second before continuing to walk in step with him in silence. He smiled, knowing that would shut her up.

"Zelman?" He glanced at her to show he was listening. "When was the last time you fed?" Without missing a beat he answered.

"Last night." The reaction he got from her definately wasn't expected. Certainly she knew that he had to feed on human blood in order to survive? Sure he never left the unconcious bodies laying around and he never let her walk in on him when he was feeding but she acted like it was a foreign concept to her. Now that he thought about it, it probably was. They'd never once talked about it.

"Really? So recently? On who? Was it a man or a woman? Did they do it willingly? Did you kill them?" He grabbed her arm and pulled her over to a bench and sat her down. He leaned over in front of her so that they were eye level.

"Did you talk to the people at the company about vampires feeding?" She shook her head. "I see. I'll explain a couple things to you. I can go three months without feeding because I am an old blood, but I am considerably weaker when that happens, so I feed regularly."

"How regularly?" He was starting to wonder if she could stomach all of this. He didn't even get through all of the details and she was starting to look queasy.

"Regularly is all you need to know. I don't kill people when I feed on them, and I don't feed without their consent because it's not very hard to get their consent." This is the part where it gets tricky.

"How is it so easy?"

"When a vampire bites someone, it's extrememly pleasurable. Far beyond that of even sex. So I have plenty of women willing to give me what I need." She stared at him blankly, and he realized something. She didn't understand sex. He never taught her (and had no intentions of teaching her) and her parents had probably never taught her because she was only seven. He never thought of that possibility.

"What's sex?"

"I'm taking you to the company for that one. They can explain it to you there. Make sure you ask a woman."

She nodded.

.

After an interesting conversation with a company woman by the name of Mimiko, Alexandra found herself alone. Zelman wanted to take no part in that conversation, so after dumping her in their care he ran away faster than she had ever seen him move. It wasn't unusual for her to go visit the people in the company building. At first they didn't like her much because she lived with Zelman, but after a while they warmed up to her and they expected her to visit a couple times a week.

She liked going there to get away from Zelman when he was being difficult or just to be away from him in general. Being with one person all the time was boring, even when you liked the person as much as she liked him. She loved him in the sense that he saved her life and raised her for five years, but she was starting to wonder if it was developing into a full blown crush.

She didn't like the idea, but there was no one else around worth liking. All of the other kids were scared of her when she came and they never really got over it. After a while they buit up enough courage to be around her but whenever they were they would call her bad names. After one particularly bad time when someone pushed her and she skinned both her knees, Zelman felt the need to go "teach them a lesson."

When he got back, he said something that scared her. He said that she should move out, and go live with other red bloods. She asked why, and he never gave a straight answer. He tried scaring her out, but she was immune to most of what he did now. This all happened a couple months ago and she was still worried that he didn't want her around anymore but after she started crying and telling him she didn't want to leave he never brought it up again.

That was the first time he ever made her cry.

As she thought back on all her time with Zelman it was weird to think of not being with him. She didn't remember much of her parents at all except that they weren't very nice parents and that they never let her do anything fun. The more she thought about it the more she realized they never acted like parents and acted more like care takers that hated their job.

She felt a buzzing in her pocket as her phone started ringing, knowing it was Zelman. She flipped it open.

"Yes?" She really wasn't in the mood to talk to him right now.

"It's dark out. Where are you?"

"Not home."

"Don't be a smartass." He growled into the phone. She knew it was wrong, but she loved pushing his buttons.

"Fine, fine I'm at..." She glanced around her and realized that she wasn't entirely sure where she was at. She must of zoned out while she was walking and not noticed when she passed her street.

"What was that?"

"I'm lost."

He sighed on the other side of the phone. She was such a piece of work. Couldn't dealing with her ever be easy? No, if it was he would have lost interest a long time ago.

"I'll come get you."He went to hang up when she shouted into the phone.

"Wait!" He waited. "Just send Sayuka. It's not that dark yet, I'll wait on a corner where she'll be able to see me."

"I'll just come get you, Alexandra."

"No, send Sayuka."

He wanted to respond and tell her that she didn't have a say and then go get her to make sure she gets home safely, but that's not what she wanted. She wanted someone else. She wanted Sayuka of all people. She despised her with all of her heart, and he didn't understand what the feeling was, which frustrated him and when he got frustrated, he got angry.

"Fine, but you're calling her yourself." His words were laced with such venom that she cringed as he spoke them. She didn't want to make him angry, but she didn't understand why he was in the first place. She just didn't want to see him right now. She almost said sorry, but she realized he'd already hung up.

With a sigh, she dialed Sayuka's number.

.

Zelman didn't understand. She was almost never home anymore, and was spending all of her time outside. It's been this way for almost three years. It started off slowely, and originally he thought she would get over it, but then a month became a year, and a year became three, and after the first year he started to wonder whether or not he did something wrong.

That stupid feeling came back and he didn't know what it was! It kept nagging at him everytime he found out she wasn't home or when she called Sayuka to come find her instead of him or when she started spending all of her time at the company with the company girls or worse... the company men.

The idea of them touching her gave him that weird feeling that he still couldn't place. It wasn't anger, or boredom, or amusement. Far from amusement. But every time he got the feeling he didn't know why it was there, so he would get angry. Just thinking about her not being home made him want to throw something. Or someone.

Finally she was home and awake when he was, and he was going to have a talk with her. But unfortunately, she made it very clear she didn't want to talk to him. She never wanted to talk to him anymore, and he wasn't about to just let this slide. He was in her room with her and she was laying on the bed with a book.

She picked up the habit of reading fairly quickly when she realized their sleep schedules weren't the same. She had adjusted a bit at the beginning, waking up late in the after noon and going to sleep late the next night, making it easier for him to take care of her, but when she moved to the special zone she realized that everyone slept during the night and was awake during the day, so she adjusted back.

"Alexandra," he called out to her. She glanced at him before resuming what she was reading.

"Alexandra, why are you ignoring me?" She didn't respond, but she did close her book and sat up to look him in the eyes.

"Well?"

"Why did you save me?" He gave her a wide eyed look. She never questioned it before, so why would she start now?

"Why does it matter?" She let her lips tug up into a snarl. She climbed off the bed and stood in front of him. She stood about a head shorter than him still but that didn't matter right now. What mattered was that he understood.

"The first year it was just you and me. I lived off of whatever easy made thing you could find. I rarely went outside because you rarely went outside. You and that house were pretty much my life." He nodded, even though he didn't understand where she was going with this.

"Then we moved here, and I had a chance to expand my world. It wasn't just you and me anymore. I got to talk to other people, but you want to know what I noticed? Because of you, I was different. Not only that I didn't know how to interact with other kids, but I was the little girl that hung out with the vampire. I was isolated, and when I was finally able to interact with other kids they hated me.

"You're different than the average person. You don't have or show very many emotions. I learned how to live and interact with a person like that. When I got here, I didn't understand things like being jealous. A girl at the company had to explain it to me. I read about things like love and hate and jealously and plenty of other emotions in books but feeling them for myself was a totally different thing and it frustrates me because I still don't fully understand it.

"Then when I had to talk to Mimiko about sex, I was so much more confused. There are all of these things that I missed out on because you had kept me under your wing and because I got so used to you, I didn't want to leave. I've been distancing myself from you because I need to learn these things. I need to be able to be around other people. I need to be away from you."

Then he started to understand it. That stupid feeling that kept coming back. The way he was feeling whenever she was gone. That knot in his stomach when she called Sayuka instead of him. He was lonely when she wasn't around, and he was jealous when she called anyone other than him. Worse, he was sad when she avoided him. He had considered her his for such a long time that when she didn't want to be his, he didn't know how to deal with it.

He still didn't know how to deal with it. He wasn't used to feeling things like this. He was so limited on emotions that when his subconsious started to expand, his conciousness couldn't keep up. It didn't change because he didn't know how to.

"Zelman," she whispered. "I don't think you know what it means to love something. You're possesive of me and consider me yours, but you don't love me. It's hard when I'm around you because I love you. You took good care of me, but you can never feel the same way. Maybe it would have been better for the both of us if you had just left me there. This is hard for me to talk about, and I need to be alone. So do me a favor, and get out."

He was stunned into silence. The gears in his head were spinning and he couldn't keep up with everything she had said. He needed time to think, and she wanted to be alone. So he nodded his head, turned on his heel, and left the room. When did keeping her around become so difficult?

As he shut the door, he heard a noise he hadn't heard in a long time. He hated hearing that noise, and it was then that he realized why he had picked her up and saved her. He realized why he kept her around and why he tried so hard to keep her safe. He hated to hear her cry. He would have done anything it took to keep her from crying.

And it hurt to know he was the reason she was crying.