Disclaimer: I do not own VK. If I do, however, there would be about 60% less angst and 70% more plot.

Warning: There will be disturbing themes, especially incest, in the way that you probably don't expect.

A Rose in Every Other Sense

"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall."

- William Shakespeare

She imagined her birth wasn't very pleasant. The burning and squeezing of the birth canal pushed her miserable self out. It was burning, seething, and unbearable. She screamed and her mother screamed. Then her mother stopped screaming and there was an eerie silence.

In that moment, in her father's eyes, she was branded as a murderer.

He rejected the tiny baby being handed to him. It disgusted him and filled him with brimming hatred. He wanted to wrap his fingers around its fragile neck and snap it in half. He felt nothing looking the child she died bringing into the world. Nothing. No fatherly passion or a flicker of love. It was just there. A reason why his lovely wife no longer existed.

He refused to look at her or even acknowledge her existence. He didn't even give her a name even when her brother and nana begged him. He was soaked deep in his grief that he was barely aware of his surroundings.

It was her brother who named her after a few weeks. He said the roses in the garden all bloomed overnight the moment she was born and scent of roses overwhelmed the manor, so her name was Rose for the beautiful roses.

Their father gave a silent approval before retreating back into his dark room to gloom over the death of his wife. He wanted to kill the girl child, but when he laid his eyes upon it, it was smaller and paler than he remembered and it disturbed him. It would be easy, but he didn't kill it and allowed it to live.

He understood, rationally, intellectually that it wasn't the child's fault. However, it soothed him to be able to loath something with such intensity to replace the love and warmth he had lost. He could not bring himself to love or even look at the child, because every time it just reminded him of her death, and it overwhelmed him with the desire to kill.

Rose didn't understand when she was growing up why father was never home or never look at her. She was warned to stay away from the handsome vampire she called her father by her brother and nana, and they always clutched her wrist fearfully when he returned, flinching when his gaze swept past her. They were afraid of her father, but she wasn't, at first. Once, when nana wasn't looking, snuck into her father's office on one of those rare days he returned home.

She embraced her stiff father with a bright smile and yelled, "Welcome home!".

He glanced at her coolly; a cold shiver ran down her back and she discovered that it was hard to breath. A cackle of power swept her off her feet and she fell back.

"I don't like being touched," he hissed and the whips of his word burned into her heart and tore a bleeding hole. She flinched.

Before he could never glare anymore at her, she ran away with overflowing tears. She sobbed on her nana's lap for hours. But nana just brushed her hair and explained that her father just misses her mother. He didn't mean to hurt her. But even nana didn't sound truly convinced by her own words.

She asked what her mother was like. Was she beautiful, gentle, or sweet?

Nana thought about it momentarily and smiled softly. "Your mother was the kindest and most beautiful queen I have ever seen. When she walked into a room, she would lid it up like the sun."

And she asked her brother, who was surprised at her question. "She sang often and she was loved by everyone… I remember she would caress her stomach and smile. She smiled a lot and she was always happy and Father was happy." He realized he said something wrong and backtracked.

"Does father hate me? Why does he hate me?" she cried into his arms.

"He doesn't hate you," her brother comforted her, combing her soft brown hair with his fingers, "He will come to love you. He just loved mom too much to forget her."

Her brother hoped that his father will come to the senses one day.

Father was never home for long period of time. He would go away for months at times for meetings or political reasons, and locked himself in his study when he was back, Maybe he could not stand living in the manor where his wife passed away; it reminded him too much of the happiness he once grasped in his hand, or maybe he could not bear to see the child that was the source of much of his misery.

When she turned seven, her brother went away to boarding school, and he could only visited her couple of times. He wrote to her letters, but it wasn't the same.

The manor stilled with silence after her brother's departure. With only nana and a few servants to keep her company, Rose grew up.

She had governesses and servants and pretty dresses and glossy gifts that her brother sent her from boarding school.

The world around her was quiet, resting precariously on broken egg shells.

Her father's friend, a blond friendly man, often came by the manor and showered with affections and gifts. Sometimes she wished that he was her father instead of the dark brooding man. He cheered her up with light hearted jokes and dotted on her like a father she never had.

She studied her texts and impressed her governesses with her knowledge. She groomed herself and perfected her manners, the twirl of a hand and the sweeping of a skirt, hoping that maybe if she shone brighter and brighter, her father would part with some sought-after love.

But he never glanced her ways, even if she stood before him with a prestigious trophy, he pushed her away like she was never there and went on his way.

Nana cursed under her breathes at the displaced anger and hatred when she tended the purple bruises flowered on her milky limps. But Rose loved her father with all her simple heart. She simply wanted her father to talk to her, even a careless comment would lift her spirits for days.

But her father only glared at her with pressed lips and left the manor once more without any promises to return. He didn't speak to her, even one word, "move," was not wasted on her.

He hated her. She could read it in his eyes, but she refused to believe it. She wanted to earn his love, to earn what was rightfully hers. She wanted to please with like an attention-starved child.

Rose began to hate her own mother, for what she did to her father. She could not imagine a love to lingering and powerful that rendered a man like her father crippled and vile for the rest of his immortal life.

She thinned as she grew tall. At thirteen, her breasts started filling out and she developed a waists. She examined herself curiously in the mirror in the morning, and decided that she looked quite charming.

Her father's friend stumbled and gaped like an uncouth idiot when he saw her one spring morning and swore that she looked just like her mother at youth. She touched her cheeks and gazed into a mirror and wondered. There were no pictures of her mother around the house. Supposedly her father burned it all when her mother passed away. It bought him too much pain. But from her blond uncle's description it seemed as though the late queen was reincarnated with her daughter, especially when Rose allowed her hair to fall down her waist.

Her father's friend took her out of the manor, complaining that she didn't go out enough. She didn't have any friends, and her world was limited to nana and her brother. Rose was a protected child of her nana and brother, whose wish was overruled by the golden man who pulled her out of her gates despite the protests. She went to parties in French ribbons and exquisite skirts. Rose didn't really understand the society she begun to soak herself into, except it was beautiful and glamorous and everyone loved her.

Rose met vampires who claimed to be her father's best friends and ate her hungrily with their hostile eyes. They shook her hands with her cold, icy fingers, extending their claws over her soft skin like spider legs. They whispered compliments to her looks and she was compared often to her late mother with mocked praises. Her body shivered with discomfort as she attempted to exit the ballroom with the excuse of looking for a bathroom, waving off invites.

Rose found herself lost in the underground maze as she turned the same corner twice and ended up at a dead end multiple times. She grumbled with frustration as the gentleman who bought her here had disappeared a few minutes in.

She walked down another hallway that looked suspiciously like the one she encountered ten minutes ago.

Her sharp hearing caught winds of odd sounds in the air. She followed the guttural noises. Was someone getting assaulted, she wondered.

She turned another corner, following the source of the sound, before the sight sent her reeling backward.

She recognized the fornicating couple. The man, whose back she recognized, was her missing father's friend, and the woman, whose exposed left breast popped from the pulled collar… she racked her brain, then remembered. She was introduced as the wife of her father's close friend, a rich man by the name of Aidoh.

She had walked into a scene of an adultery affair.

The lustful moans and the shuffling of the clothes alarmed her. Blushing, Rose took a step back and ran away. She didn't know how she found the ballroom again, but she discovered that now she could hardly look at the blond man in the eyes without remembering the moans and the musky smell in the air.

Her face would flush red at the thought, and she would ramble listlessly to herself. Her heart squeezed tenderly and she didn't like it.

She distanced herself from that blond man and ignored the hurt in his eyes.

She confined in nana of what she had seen that night, which she didn't exactly understand. Nana looked at her sympathetically and patted her head, muttering, "You are still a child."

She never noticed how old nana had gotten over the years. She seemed to have shrunken in size, from towering over Rose to being just a head taller. Her winkles multiplied with years, but she still kept her silver hair in a tight bun. The old woman was now just fragile and small. Nana was like her surrogate mother. She had loved Rose like her own and always tried to protect Rose from the harsher world.

She recalled a moment in youth when she walked into a chamber to find two servants wrestling naked on the couch, panting heavily. She didn't understand it then, because nana pulled her fingers before her eyes and everything fell into darkness.

She had read books and pamphlets about romances, sex, and love, but it felt blank to her. Those passions, those needs, those urges were mysterious that she could not grasp. Nana explained that she was too young to know, but she was curious about the dark scene she captured. The curled up legs around the man's waist, the tight grip on the buttocks, and the rocking and thrusting of the hips, those details imprinted on her mind and would not leave.

Rose was metamorphosing into a woman, little by little, and bit by bit. Shredding her baby feathers, she rose from the ashes, new and naked. She woke up one autumn morning to find blood on her underwear. At first she was frightened and woke her nana up in a panic, persuaded she was dying. Nana touched her face sweetly and announced that Rose was finally a woman.

"This is the proof that you are all grown up," nana enlightened softly to a confused young girl. She didn't understand her change, but everyone else seemed to.

Father came and left, often at odd times. Often than not, he came back, swaying on his feet, carried by his friends. He still ignored her, regarding her as a servant around the house, speaking only when he must. Sometimes she wondered if he was the powerful and chilling pureblood she had heard so much about, who united the divided vampire society. It didn't seem like to be the pathetic man before her who reeked of alcohol and cheap perfume, whose wife's death broke him so entirely.

She loved her father best when he was drunk.

When her father was drunk, she caught him gazing at her as if he wanted to devour her, as if she were someone else who was not there. Then his eyes flickered away and his heart closed again. Once he touched her cheek with a gentleness she never knew as she winced with fear that he was going to strike her. But he only removed his hand a moment later and ordered her to leave. But it lingered in Rose's heart; when he was drunk, it was the only time he ever shown any affection for her.

The chilly winds breezed around the empty hallways of the cursed manor in the valley.

Her brother dropped his luggage on his foot when he laid his eyes on her.

He hugged her tightly, more tightly than she had ever remembered him to. He had been gone for a year even if his letters came a few times every month.

He pulled back and she thought that she detected something wavering in his dark eyes that weren't there before. He reminded her of father; their resemblance was uncanny.

But she smiled brightly at him and he felt himself melted away in her thinned eyes.

The day she turned fourteen, she found her father waiting for her in the living room after she woke up from her sleep. Still in her night flock, her father instructed her to sit down.

Rose did as she was told and tethered with anticipation that maybe, this, this will be the day her father will finally recognize her as his daughter.

Father was unsmiling as he handed her a package on the table, saying how it used to be her mother's and that she would have wanted Rose to have it.

Rose was in awe. It was the first time father had spoken so many consecutive words to her and not glared at her as if she were something nasty and unworthy to him.

Then he continued speaking seriously, sometimes watching her, but more often than not, his eyes were carelessly away and blank as if he were somewhere else already.

"You are going into deep sleep?" she gapped at him, standing up.

The sudden movement drew his attention for a second, but then it diverted again. He nodded and said that his duty to his wife was done. He will leave the crown to her brother, and the inheritance will be divided equally between his two children. He had no more business in this world.

But Rose didn't care. The first time he had spoken to her so directly and not harsh, those were words of parting. He will never see her, never love her as she so had wanted, wished for. She will never achieve it.

He will not allow it. He was going to leave, without her, and without letting her stop him. He had already made his decision firm and final.

Then she was alone with the package on the table. With a shaking hand, she opened the brown paper bag.

Drops of tears fell on the paper and soaked into a deeper brown.

There were few items in the package that appeared to be quite old and worn, but well taken care off.

A few silver jewelries, like bracelet and necklace… a silvery defensive stick of a kind… few yellowed letters from a late Mr. Cross… a rose frozen in amber with a glass case… finally a several old pictures all with a young smiling girl in them… Rose recognized her mother immediately as she traced her finger over the flat surface. They did look almost identical, except such careless happiness will not become an expression on her face.

She was gazing at her own mother, seeing her mother for the first time in her life. Tear overflowed her eyes and dripped down her face. She stared at the pictures and she touched her face. She remembered the times she looked into the mirror and felt as if she was watching someone else. How father only looked at her as if she were someone else.

The tore brown paper wrinkled in her hands as she looked up with determination and tears stopped flowing.

When father came home that night, stinking drunken as he always was on the anniversary of mother's death, she stared at him with trembling shoulders.

Father lied on his bed, feeling once again incapable and pathetic. He didn't like those beautiful, cheap women, but they praised him and pleased him and made him feel the way he used to feel, powerful and immortal. He closed his eyes as dizziness and numbness washed over his sensations. He enjoyed what alcohol did for him, numbing the excruciating hole where his queen used to be. When he drank, it pained less and he forgot. He forgot that she died years ago and that he will never see her again. He could fool himself into thinking that she still existed and the figure rested behind him was her.

Rose didn't really know what she was doing. She opened the door with her hair down, fluttering about her waist. She combed her hair the way mother did in her pictures. She sat down on the bed and caressed her father's hair with her fingers.

He opened his eyes and stared at her with misted eyes. He was not quite awake or sober.

"I look like her, don't I?" she whispered quietly to him.

He stared at her with surprise, and murmured a name under his breath. He reached up and touched her with so much love and gentleness in his eyes that she wanted to cry, because it was the first time she had felt so much love from her father.

She pulled away a little bit and started undoing her night gown. She dropped the clothes on the floor and slipped into his bed.

Rose recalled contents of the letter, gazing at her confused father with an uncharacteristic bright smile. "Kaname-senpai…" she sighed. "Kaname…Kaname…"

Then he pulled her down and pushed her against the mattress.

Her father knew it couldn't have been his wife. She was dead. She had been dead for a long, long time, fallen into ashes, crumpled into dusts. So completely gone that he didn't know where to start putting her back together again.

Rationally, he knew she couldn't have been Yuki, but he didn't care. He didn't care. He didn't want to remember her death, her horrid death. But tonight, his Yuki was alive, well, and breathing as she had not done so in years. She was before him. She was touching him, saying his name. She was under him, breathing heavily, so clumsy that he wanted to laugh.

It wasn't a very pleasant experience. He was too big and she was too small. It felt heavy and hot and uncomfortable. She bled and he hurt her.

She cried and dug her nails into his back.

When it was over, she rolled over her side, panting lightly, thinking how it would hurt to sit tomorrow.

When the sensation ebbed back to him, her father realized what he had done and felt sick to his stomach. He tried to say anything comforting, but he couldn't think of anything to say.

Rose smiled, even though she felt nauseated and sticky, but she knew she had made him acknowledge her in a way that no other woman could.

As long as she has this face, he will come to her.

He will see her.

This is basically my take on Kaname-Yuki-children fic.

There is 2 more parts.