Chapter Text
The room was still dark when Zero woke, head spinning and lungs gasping for air that didn't exist. Sweat soaked his sheets and flames ate at his skin, his body thrashing uselessly away from an intangible attacker. He spasmed and jerked, his head thrust back into the pillows, hands clamped on his throat where the burning was the worst. His fangs dug into his lips, filling his mouth with blood. He choked, coughing blood, struggling to take in a deep breath. His mouth full of wet copper, Zero closed his eyes and scrambled to focus on something, anything, other than his traitorous body.
It went on like that for maybe fifteen minutes. It felt like an eternity. Finally the pain receded, flowing back from whence it came. Minute by minute he managed to wrangle his body back from what had possessed him. He suck in deep breaths and winced as the air caught in his sore throat.
He tried to breath more gently, forcing his chest to move in conservative, controlled increments. He opened his mouth, spitting out the blood in coughs and moans. His eyes (his red eyes, he was willing to bet) slipped shut from the weariness—the deadness—he felt in his aching limbs. Exhaustion ate at his body and his mind.
And it wasn't even that bad this time, Zero thought ruefully. Grimacing, he tossed an arm over his face and shifted so that he could see the glowing numbers on his alarm clock. 5:42 AM. Fuck.
Deciding that moving wasn't all that prudent, Zero stared up at the ceiling, content to watch the pre-dawn light paint everything in eerie blue. Zero relished the peace. Peace was rare.
The last few months had been a new kind of Hell for Kiryuu Zero. He had sunk himself into rebuilding Cross Academy, but with the reconstruction slowly finishing Zero was more often left without distraction. The attacks had come as though to fill his spare time. They appeared randomly, searing him with physical pain unlike anything Zero had ever felt, locking his body stiff with agony. Somewhere in the midst, his eyes turned red and his fangs sprung forth like he was in the grip of bloodlust. But Level-D bloodlust was something he didn't experience anymore, of course. Not since Ichiru’s sacrifice. He just had the pain. Blinding, breathless pain.
You win some, you lose some . Zero understood that. He wouldn't even be that concerned if the attacks didn't make his seal behave weirdly. Zero could cope with pain; he was practically designed for it. But the pulsing, crackling, straining against his skin; the pulling, like the ink wanted to jump off his neck if not shatter entirely, made Zero's heart stand still. It was like something was pushing against the binds of the seal's magic. It was different from the tearing, rending sensation he felt when his sanity slipped.
Zero had decided that the attacks were residual from whatever freaky vampire shit he'd encountered fighting Rido. Since he'd done his damnedest to keep everyone from finding out about them, no one had been given the chance to burst his bubble. He tried not to think about it. Hence, Zero only had one other theory: either Rido had cursed him, or Kuran Kaname had finally grown the balls to work some freaky vampire shit of his own. Perhaps they both had, as a final Kuran family bonding activity.
A vision of Kuran Jr. wearing a blue wizard's hat covered with silver moons and stars, standing over a black cauldron, swam into his mind. There were dancing dishes, nursery rhymes, and a wooden wand involved.
Snickering, Zero slowly hauled himself up from his soft blue sheets. They were gross with blood and sweat, and needed to be changed. First, though, Zero needed to stand. He managed to on shaking legs, his humour lost to the lingering muscle aches. Yet, slowly, he did manage to rise to his full six-foot height. He winced as his body rebelled against the action, his stomach rolling, before slamming his hand down on the alarm clock, three minutes away from ringing.
Sighing, Zero let himself have one last, long breath. Then he hit the lights, balled up the sheets for the laundry, and consigned himself to preparing for another day. The process was easier than many would have expected. Unlike Yuuki's room, back when she'd lived in the Day Class dorms, Zero's room was tidy. Some—Cross—had said to the point of obsession. Not actually, Zero would maintain.
Zero was, perhaps, slightly obsessive by nature. After all, his most memorable childhood moment was stabbing a Pureblood with a butter knife in an attempt at revenge-fuelled genocide. But he didn’t much care about neatness. You just had to look at the way he dressed (or his life) to realize that. Rather, Zero just didn't have a lot of stuff. You didn't need a lot of stuff when you figured you were going to die before you finished high school.
Outside of Zero’s personal trauma, hunters were ultimately trained to be spartan. His uniforms were all neatly folded and tucked away in his closet. A desk sat beside the closet and played host to his school stuff. A portable music player lived on the bedside table beside Zero's cellphone. They were neighbors to the digital alarm clock, though he rarely ever used it anymore between his insomnia and the attacks. His secret pride and joy, a slightly beaten-up guitar, rested against the window seat. Pressed against of the only available wall space was a shelving unit stuffed with books—not sleeping much left Zero with more free time than most people.
Anything of his that was irreplaceable was in a black backpack under his bed. He displayed none of those things. They were too precious and—too much. He couldn't look at those things everyday. His parents' wedding photo, still in the original frame; Ichiru's first knife, carefully maintained; Yuuki's last Christmas present to him, a photo collage of happy memories. A few other bits that Zero couldn't make himself throw away. Those items were tucked between a change of clothes and accompanied by close to three thousand dollars in cash. A minor armory of weaponry filled the rest of the pockets, with ration bars and the bare minimum of medical supplies. A passport and papers with his face and a different name were sewn in under the lining.
It was a go-bag. It was everything he needed to disappear. It wasn't a part of his hunter training. Hunters were trained to rely on the Association. A hunter who disappeared was a dead hunter, one way or the other. The bag was all Zero. Not that Yagari would have disapproved, Zero imagined. But then, most hunter masters weren't like Yagari. They weren't as suspicious of the Association. They didn't have Kiryuu Zero, hunter prodigy and Level D vampire, as a student.
(Zero recognized that he was probably responsible for most of Yagari's paranoia. That didn't mean that he wasn't grateful for it. Or guilty about it. But that wasn't something Zero liked to think about. So, he didn't.)
Yet despite Zero’s hard-won nihilism, years of living with Kaien Cross meant that his room did have some personality. There were a couple pictures of himself, Cross, and Yuuki from before Rido; one of himself and Yagari, wearing matching glares; Kaito and Zero, eleven and smiling.
Ichiru had taken the photo. Cross hadn't known that when he'd snuck in and hung it up. Even he wasn't that socially inept. But Zero hadn't taken it down. He didn't examine why.
Less explosively, there was also a film poster for a parody horror movie, Vampires Suck—Kaito's fault.
Zero's lip quirked, looking around his room. There was evidence here that he had a life outside of Cross Academy, vampires, and killing vampires. Not a big life, but some kind of life. What would the Night Class say if they found out about that?
With that amusing thought to entertain him, Zero showered and dressed. He checked the mirror to confirm that his eyes weren't still red and left his room with his tie undone and his vest abandoned on his bare mattress.
Moving silently, Zero made his way up to the roof of the Day Class boys' dorm. He had an hour until class and the roof was one of the few places he could find some quiet when his room felt too small. That was because, Zero reasoned, the door to the roof was supposed to be locked. No one had yet figured out that someone might have used his vampire strength to snap the lock in half.
Rido had left chaos in his wake. Zero was prepared to do much more difficult things than break a lock to find some quiet.
Careful to avoid the roof’s edge, where a do-gooder might notice him and whip Cross into a panic, Zero sat down at the threshold and leaned back against the door. Up here, the birdsong was loud and cheerful. A lingering summer breeze ruffled the treetops. The tallest trees dappled shade over the roof, granting a little respite from the sun. It was pleasant.
Sitting there, surrounded by all that pleasantness, Zero pursed his lips and let his mind go to his list of problems. Priority one was the Association—it was in an uproar over the President, increasingly obvious vampiric corruption, and the conflicts associated therewith. There was an election coming up to decide a new president, but until then Cross and Yagari were only just keeping the hunters functioning. There were rumours of a schism between the older generation and Zero's floating around. It was up for debate whether there would be a revolution, a coup d'état, or a complete immolation.
'Kiryuu Zero: hero or vermin?' was a polarizing point of division.
If the hunters were on fire, then vampire society was already in ashes. More than a hundred human deaths had occurred in Rido's attack, not including the hundreds of Level Ds Rido had created. There could be even more than that; what was left of the Association theorized that at least thirty percent of his Ds had escaped. All of those deaths and missing persons had to be covered up. That alone would have been enough to keep the Senate busy for months, bullying the human governments into turning a blind eye. But, apparently, the Kuran family hadn't been done screwing up the world.
After the bleeding had begun to slow on the Rido Incident, Kuran Kaname had decided to prove just how powerful he was. According to the reports, Kuran had walked into the Senate chambers unopposed by the Senate's elite security force. The entire assembly had been gathered to debate what to do with the future. They hadn't gotten very far when Kuran blew them up in a flurry of sparks and ash.
So. There was now no ruling vampire authority except for Kuran and a handful of competing Pureblood courts. No central authority meant that a sea of piranha-like nobles now thought that they had carte blanche to do whatever the fuck they wanted. The hunters, scrambling already, once again became the only line standing between humanity's vulnerable neck and the vampires' fangs.
Zero had gleaned that the most popular theory on both sides of the hunter schism was that Kuran was on a warpath against all of the major organizations in the "Vampire World," including—gasp!—the Association. The panic was immense.
Zero, upon first hearing this theory, had laughed. Out loud. He'd laughed right there at the official oak table he and the other Association councilmembers had been gathered around, Cross sending him a wide-eyed look while Yagari kicked him under the table. It’d been unprofessional as hell, but Zero hadn't been able to help it. The council’s fears were ridiculous.
Kuran didn’t give a flying fuck what the Association did. So long as they didn't interfere with his plans, the Pureblood Prick would pretend that they didn't exist. Kuran wasn't impulsive. He wasn't stupid. He was reckless, but not with his own life or the lives of his court—especially his precious sister. He wouldn't slaughter the Association, because they were useful; they did the grunt work of hunting down Rido's Ds and keeping the idiot nobles mostly in line. So long as the Association was needed for those duties, they would be tolerated.
Zero had tried to explain Kuran to the council. He really, really had. But outside of Cross and Yagari, no one was willing to trust his word.
Zero was only on the council because the Association had needed to do something to recognize his part in killing Rido. It was too big a deal to ignore. But they couldn’t give actual influence, power, to a level-D. So they gave him a seat on the council where they could watch his every move and vote down any ideas he had that conflicted with their own views.
When they finished dismissing Zero’s analysis this time, the council descended instantly into panic. The squawking and finger-pointing eventually culminated in the decision that Kuran had to be put somewhere the Association could keep an eye on him. Amazingly, they’d recognized that there was no hunter capable of bringing Kuran in. Except maybe Zero. But no one had been stupid enough to suggest that plan with Zero sitting right there, glaring at them.
Instead, in all its brilliance, the council had decided to order Kuran to return to Cross Academy.
Zero had watched Cross and Yagari try to dissuade the other councilors. Zero hadn't tried at all. He knew that no one could order Kuran to do anything that he didn't want to do. He had, very obviously, killed the last people who tried.
For a moment, Zero had considered that the council had just gone from ignorable to signing their own death warrant. From Cross and Yagari's expressions, they had thought so. But Zero had quickly dismissed the idea.
According to the rumours, the Kuran Princess was unhappy in her castle. Kuran, apparently, was also in an exceedingly bad mood. Zero suspected that the dream couple was going through some rocky waters. Waters that, Zero theorized, Yuuki was liable to think could be fixed by returning to the couple's original nesting grounds.
Kaname would do whatever he could to make Yuuki happy. If that meant appearing to submit to the Association’ stupid plan, Kuran would make it work. Zero had long thought that his devotion to Yuuki was Kuran’s only redeeming feature.
Zero breathed deep and easy, trying to let the sweet early September air clear out his cluttered mind. In the months since the attack, Zero had been working to let go of his anger at the Kuran couple. Yuuki had chosen Kuran because there was no other choice to make. Zero had never had any place with her but for what her elder brother had allowed. Zero could not hate Yuuki for following her nature.
Kuran Kaname was another animal entirely. But Yuuki’s happiness depended on him. For that alone, Zero could keep his hatred to himself.
Besides, the school was more important than his personal bullshit. With the Night Class coming back under Kuran's command, Cross Academy was once more the only institution worldwide hosting both vampires and humans. It was a bastion of politics, drama, and often violence, but it was also a crucial example of coexistence in a world barely clinging to the concept. It was Cross's legacy and his child as much as Zero and Yuuki had ever been.
Loath as he was to admit it, Zero owed it to Cross to try and keep the place in one piece.
Protecting the school had quietly, conveniently, become his mission in a reality that felt increasingly…unreal. Dull. With Rido in ashes, Zero's personal world had descended into a fog that only cleared to let the pain attacks in. He felt like he was functioning on autopilot. That's what happened, Zero guessed, when you made it to your senior year unexpectedly alive. He couldn’t think of another reason for the numbness.
Sighing, Zero rested his hands on his knees. The sun was growing warmer and firmer in its insistence. Zero's eyes itched. The part of him that was vampire, a part that seemed to grow everyday, flinched at the light.
For a long moment he focused on pushing the deep, throbbing ache in his bones off to a dark corner in his mind. Then, when he felt that he had as strong a grip on himself as he could manage, he focused on summoning enough energy to leave the roof and drag his ass to class. It was not easy, but he managed. Nothing was ever easy. But somehow Zero always managed.
He had no reason to break his record now.