Work Text:
prologue
Three hundred years.
Five hundred.
Yuuki stops counting at nine hundred and one.
I.
"Did you enjoy the northern ocean?" her husband asks from behind his desk.
It was too cold. Too silent. It was long nights and days so short she could blink them away. It was getting to know every corner of her shadow, the shapes it took as it slid on ice under the moonlight. It was…
…perfect.
He nods at her smile, rises and makes his way toward her with slow steps. There's no need to rush. "I knew you'd like it, love."
She hasn't seen him in seventeen months. Before that, she'd stayed at home for five weeks after an extended trip through the desert. Before that, two months of rest after visiting the jungle. Before that…. It's been almost three decades of short encounters and invisible conversations.
"I did." She kisses his cheek. "Now I need to sleep," she says before she leaves the study. She won't fall asleep long after she has unpacked her bags.
It never occurs to her to return to the study in the meanwhile.
After all, they have all the time in the world.
*
All all all all all all all all all the time….
*
"Welcome home, Yuuki." Hanabusa touches her face, a small friendly gesture before he moves to retreat behind the breach between Pureblood and Noble.
She always lets him, even as she regrets that the breach exists at all. There is a difference tonight, though. Her grasp is quick, wrapping around his wrist to keep the back of his hand against the underside of her chin. Yes, there's the difference. She doesn't dare give it a name, so she lets her skin solve the puzzle of shallow lines that weren't there two (three?) centuries ago.
"Would you return my hand, please?"
The voice is the same, half exasperated and half amused. But his hand, his skin…. Hanabusa is now his father's age when she met the older vampire. Hanabusa isn't Hanabusa anymore.
"Yuuki?" He is peering at her with curious green eyes. "Should I call…?" The question trails off at her quick headshake.
"I'm all right."
She always is. She always will be.
It is her home that is changing around her.
*
The next day, the mirrors in her suite are covered.
Before the next dawn, maids hurry around the hallways, taking heavy gilded mirrors to the basement.
Yuuki spends a whole day in her husband's bed.
"You're too good to me," she says, lapping at a stray drop of blood on his collarbone.
He doesn't deny it. Instead he passes his fingers over the puncture marks on her neck. "You are everything to me."
She still hasn't learned how to answer to that.
II.
"The hunter is here," Ruka sniffs, and for a moment she is that haughty school girl again.
There are hundreds of hunters in the world, but only one who wouldn't be persuaded to walk away by Ruka's cold welcome.
*
Yuuki serves tea even as she eyes the vein at her brother's neck. Her husband's blood runs through it. So does hers. She's never worked out whether that's a deterrent or a temptation. "I can't remember Father's first name." Can't remember anything, really, except for the pressure of his arms around her and an echo of his voice wailing her name.
"Kaien," Zero answers, tilting his head to the side even as he takes his cup. The unsaid offer still stands.
"Kaien," she repeats, dragging her eyes from the vein pulsing through his tattoo to his face. The invitation is spelt there, too. Her refusal is just as silent. "I used to write down these things." Some things don't ever change. "But paper crumbles away so soon…."
He nods, reaches for the sugar. The moment has passed - they always do. "Maybe I'll carve it for you."
Her grip on the teapot tightens. A window in the next room explodes inwards. Zero's eyes narrow for a second, but he follows her lead and doesn't rise to join the two maids who rush to check the damage. "Please don't." She doesn't say she's scared that not even stone will outlast her memory. He wouldn't understand.
Would he?
*
He would.
He does.
*
She combs her hair five hundred times every night. It's an habit from when her husband used to do it for her.
"I miss you, Yuuki."
She lowers her comb. Looks into the space that used to be her mirror and finds not his reflection but a piece of flowery wallpaper instead. "But I'm not going anywhere." She doesn't have anywhere to go. The world had become too small for her. If she's going to run, she might as well do it within their home. "I will stay this time."
The silence is loud before he answers, "Yes, you will."
She could turn around and check his expression.
She could surrender the comb to him and start again.
She counts the points in the wallpaper rose.
*
Four thousand eight hundred eighty-six before sunset comes and her husband must return to his study.
She envies him that routine. It's been centuries since she was asked to wield Artemis, her self-imposed duty. Reading reports of the underground society and meeting with diverse vampire leaders may be tedious (and how long has it been since she last teased him about it?), but at least it's something to do.
III.
Eighty-seven....
It is Hanabusa who walks with her in the gardens under the full moon. "I needed the fresh air, I believe. Maybe we'll do it again next month?"
She's never come alone on these walks. She doesn't want to start now.
*
Two hundred seventy-two....
Zero turns automatically to an empty spot on her drawing room wall, hand half-way to sweep his bangs away before he remembers he won't find his reflection there. "I never thought I'd visit you this often," he mutters as he lowers his hand.
Often enough to learn the decoration by heart.
"Maybe you're making up for lost time."
Even the deepest grudges must perish under the weight of centuries. But Yuuki likes to believe it was his choice to come seek his estranged sister.
*
Three hundred forty-four....
Ruka directs the team of seamstresses buzzing around Yuuki, stopping Yuuki's protests with one arched eyebrow. "Do you want this gown ready before the end of the month?"
"Does it matter?"
Ruka looks at her. Really looks. "For some of us, it still does." She clicks her fingers and nods to the door; the women rise, pins and measure taps still in their hands, and leave the room. "You need to snap out of it, Yuuki-sama." In Ruka's voice, the formal address has always sounded like a rebuffal. "And you need to do it before I'm too old to tell you so."
Yuuki shudders at the idea of an old-looking Ruka. Somehow she still sees the beautiful school girl when she looks at her. "I'm not sure about this shade of green," she says instead.
Ruka frowns, but moves closer to inspect the half-finished work.
*
Four hundred ten...
Hanabusa drives her to town. Zero invites her to a local theatre production, and pretends he wasn't staring at her the whole time. Ruka comes over at tea time.
Yuuki thanks them for the company.
Four hundred thirty-seven...
Zero tells her about a girl who used to be her best friend, even if he can't remember her name either. Hanabusa slips a blood pill into the hot water. Ruka doesn't insist when Yuuki declines having her hair brushed by her.
Yuuki smiles at them.
Four hundred sixty-nine...
Ruka's eyes soften as she recounts the time Akatsuki took her on a fourth honeymoon. Zero starts a discussion over human politics - Hanabusa gladly takes the other side.
Yuuki can't help the feeling that something is... different?
Four hundred eighty-six...
Yes. Something is... off.
Four hundred ninety-one...
Something is missing.
It eventually dawns on her that her husband is giving her space.
Yuuki has no idea what to do with it.
...five hundred.
IV.
"I missed you," she says, two winters later. Or four.
His arms come around her. "Oh, Yuuki," he says. Nothing else.
The words she needs to hear have been said too many times, and she doesn't know how to answer to them anyway.
*
"I think it's time for a party," Yuuki announces.
Hanabusa straightens in his seat, and Ruka stares at her with betrayal in her eyes.
"Maybe…." Hanabusa looks between her and his closest cousin. Ruka still looks too thin, too unlike the force of nature that'd taken residence under the Kuran roof until her marriage, and returned to it not half a century ago. "Maybe it still is too soon, Yuuki-sama."
The honorific is a silent plea.
Yuuki nods.
She misses Akatsuki, too.
*
It is spring in the mountains. Green grass and a bed of orange flowers under her feet. "It's beautiful," she thanks her husband.
"Happy anniversary," he says.
Their wedding was in winter. Yuuki remembers wanting a snowfall for the ceremony. "Happy anniversary," she repeats.
Wouldn't do to ruin his present with unnecessary truths.
*
Far away, Hanabusa must be instructing the army of maids and butlers on how to prepare the Kuran residence for a proper welcome - he does it every time the couple leaves together. (The staff is awfully out of habit.)
Far away, Ruka still cries over her husband's death.
Far, far away, Zero might be sitting in a windowless office. There are no framed pictures, no memories except for a yellowed one hiding in the lowest drawer of his desk. Yuuki found it once, looking for a likeness of their father. She held up the picture, frowning as she tried to remember how it felt to wear such short hair.... Zero might be staring at that picture, too, not thinking about drinking his sister's blood.
Here and now, held in her husband's arms as the sun slowly makes its way past the mountains, Yuuki doesn't think of her brother's blood either.
V.
They come home to find an invitation waiting for them.
"It could be a trap," Hanabusa mumbles.
Yuuki lowers her gaze and silently agrees.
*
It's the Annual Hunter Association Dance.
Flowers, laughter and wine. Distrustful eyes narrowing when they land on her.
"This wasn't my idea," Zero tells her, his voice a whisper meant to a pureblood's ears. He doesn't invite her onto the dance floor.
It's not until the party is over that Yuuki realizes she wasn't the main recipient of that message. It'll take her three days to realize how important this is.
*
Still at the dance, Yuuki stands straighter as the empty circle around them grows wider. They are the only vampires in the room. "Do you want to dance, Yuuki?" her husband asks as if they weren't a live exhibition. "It is a new song."
She watches as another waiter avoids the route toward them. "I believe I have heard it before," she responds.
"Ah." He takes her hand in his. "It does sound familiar, now that you mention it." There is a pause, and then a minuscule tug. "It is to dance or to leave, dear."
Leaving would imply weakness.
Yuuki dances until dawn breaks in.
*
"Did you have fun?" Ruka asks, counting to three hundred seven under her breath.
Careful not to pull on the hair Ruka is brushing, Yuuki shakes her head. Sometimes, it is easier to surrender to those who don't care too much.
"I imagined so," her friend says.
She reaches five hundred, eyes fixed on her own reflection on the recovered mirror. "You were right, Yuuki. It is time the Kuran clan threw a party."
*
It's the third day since the dance, and Zero is sitting before her, a low coffee table spanning the distance between them. "You put them back," he commented, glancing at the mirror hanging behind the couch where she sits. He looks away quickly, fixes his gaze on his cup. "Just when I was getting used to it, too."
She laughs at that echo of young grumpiness. She can't even remember the last time she sounded like the Yuuki of old.
Maybe she did a little, right now. Because Zero smiles an old smile at her, the one that says…. Yes, that one.
"Are we in the list?" she dumps the topic that's brought him tonight.
His silver hair shakes.
"But they were looking for a reason, weren't they?"
"It's under control," Zero sighs. "This isn't the first time, Yuuki. In every generation there's a stupid one who thinks we should wipe out all vampires, that we could if we learned the weaknesses of the pureblood." He gives her another smile, just as old and even less appreciated. "Makes me a little nostalgic, really, to think I once had that passion."
It took them three hundred years to have a conversation without raising their voices. "I don't miss that part of you," she says.
Zero's head snaps up. It's not often she refers to the past unless she's asking about it. "Do you miss anything?"
Yuuki shakes her head.
She can't. He won't let her,
*
"I don't want to leave," Yuuki tells her husband shortly before dawn. They did once, three centuries (or two) ago. A number of the Hunters defected into an indiscriminate purge.
Hanabusa's father died defending their home.
They spent three years on an island before Zero sent news that the last rogue had been tried and executed. Yuuki hadn't been able to feel sorry for them - they'd made her count again, made her fear decades of isolation with her husband as her sole companion. Now she blames that time for her temporary depression.
"Promise me we won't have to leave," she pleads against her husband's shoulder.
He caresses her hair. "I promise."
VI.
Her husband keeps his word.
*
"It seems that a quarter of the hunters are missing," Hanabusa comments a few weeks later.
Yuuki looks up from her book just in time to see Ruka's smile appear.
"Good."
It takes her a moment to realize the voice is hers.
*
"You must think I'm a fool."
She started calling Cross - Kaien Cross - 'Father' six decades after he passed away, when she couldn't hold onto a name anymore and was too embarrassed to ask for it.
"The Association is still in my hands, Yuuki. Those were my men. I can't - I won't - stand for this."
Ater that, it seemed natural to call Zero her brother. Even when she hungered for the taste of him. Or maybe because she did. "Is this war?" she asks as she pours him more tea.
It wouldn't be the first. But it's been so long she can't remember the motions.
Maybe tea wasn't even involved.
Zero scoffs. "We're too old for that."
That's the problem: she isn't; she never will be.
*
Will she?
VII.
"I think it's time we had a baby," she announces.
Ruka and Hanabusa disappear in less than five seconds, leave the door open in their rush. Yuuki wonders how long it'll take her to enroll them back into planning her party.
Her husband folds a letter before meeting her eyes. "You wanted to wait," he reminds her.
Yuuki nods, closes the door behind her as she steps inside. "Until it was safe." She laughs at her old words. "Until I felt ready."
This time it is she who closes the distance between them, lowers herself onto his lap.
"It will never be safe. It's been centuries. Centuries, and we can't even make peace with our own blood." Because in all ways that count, that's what Zero is. "Who says the world will ever be safe?" There's a muffled sound on the other side of the door. Probably Hanabusa swallowing an 'I told you so' under Ruka's threat of pain. Yuuki ignores them; at least she won't need to look for them for long. "If that's the case, then who says I will ever be ready? But I want to be." Her arms surround his neck. Her forehead lowers until it touches his, noses brushing each other. "Is that enough, Kaname?"
He closes his eyes. "I need your word," he answers. When she doesn't answer immediately, his hands close at her waist. "Yuuki. Please."
It's his one condition. She asked for peace and time; he asked for a promise.
He's never asked for anything else.
"I won't use Mother's spell," she relents.
His body relaxes into his chair, the movement bringing her closer against his chest. Their faces are so close together that it seems a waste not to kiss. "I didn't mean we should start right now," Yuuki mutters after he lets her break away.
He is smiling, that same smile she has seen in half-remembered childhood dreams. "Whatever my sweet Yuuki wants," he says through a grin.
Because she is everything to him, he doesn't say.
Yuuki hears it all the same.
"Yuuki wants to stay with her husband," she says, caressing his face. She has been so focused in the things she was missing that she never paid too much attention to the things she had. From now on, she'll correct that attitude. "Only with you, Kaname."
By the look in his eyes, she's finally found the right answer.
epilogue
Three months.
Five months.
Yuuki starts counting at nine months and one day.
The End
21/03/10