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“It’s going to be alright, Yuuki.”
“No. It won’t.”
“Don’t tell me something so insincere while hiding your expression from me,” he says softly to her, petting her hair. “You’ve never been very good at lying.”
She sobs. She shudders. She clings to him like he’s already a dead man. And maybe he is.
“Then don’t lie to me.”
“You know that I don’t lie to you.”
“That’s horseshit.”
Kaname sighs. They could still talk in circles like this for hours, couldn't they—just like in the old days, during what he remembers as his second childhood. “You mustn’t act as if you trust me if you’re having second thoughts about my integrity. Even now, you refuse to let me go. I’m unarmed. I’m not going anywhere. What is it you’re hoping to accomplish with these conflicting pursuits, my dear sister?”
“Don’t…” Yuuki shudders even more. She feels as if she might be sick. “Don’t call me that. Don’t call me that unless you’re going to call me your fiancée, too!”
“Of course, Yuuki. I’m sorry.”
“We are betrothed,” she cries into him, all but begging for him to remember the false truths she had been foolish enough to believe in all this time. “When… When we were young… You told me you’d make me your wife.”
“You’re right. My apologies.”
She rips herself away from him. Still, his expression is unreadable to her.
“When was it that you changed your mind?” she demands of him, steeling every last ounce of her resolve. “Tell me! When did you decide you were done with me?”
“I could never be done with you, Yuuki.” His wine colored eyes show no attempts to deceive her, and somehow, that makes all of this so much worse. “You are far too important to me.”
“Then make me yours.” Her shimmering eyes plead with him, and she means what she says. She has never wanted anything with such a burning, all-consuming fire in her chest. “Make me yours, and I’ll stay with you. Forever.”
Finally, there’s something like a pinprick of discomfort that flickers across his face, like a gnat flying too close to a piece of fruit. Unappetizing, he thinks without thinking. Pitiful, she hears without hearing.
“Yuuki… As much as it pains me to say, you must know that’s not an option anymore.”
“I don’t care,” she insists. “Make me yours, Kaname.” She omits the honorific. She knows exactly what it means to do so. She is proving to him that she is strong enough to do this.
Kaname knows better than anyone that she isn’t, and that no one is. But he will do everything in his power to play along, anything at all to keep that deep seed of despair from taking root in her accursed vampire blood… if only for just a bit longer.
In that moment, right before the final act, he resolves to make this one concession.
“If that is what you want, Yuuki—”
“And it is—”
“...Then, of course I’ll make you mine.”
He gently scoops her up into his arms, this poor girl who has been reduced to convulsions by the very hands that swaddle her closely to him. He is not making a decision so much as he is surrendering to the only choice that there is, something that he knows she will not understand for a very long time. The pureblood flesh and blood that binds itself to whatever is left of his soul has already seen to that.
“I could never say no to you… My beloved Yuuki.”