Original Kin

Vampire Knight © Hino Matsuri

In a dark room locked away in some faraway castle, a figure sat among the shadows. A shift, a sudden movement, sends him bent over his knees in pain. An uncharacteristic hiss leaks from his lips like escaped gas, flashing a set of ivory fangs. Blood-red eyes flutter open, peaking through spread fingers.

For a long while, Kaname sat in reverie – one hand shield half of his face, half of his pain, and the other clenched on his lap. His eyes, usually sharp like a crimson-stained blade, were unusually soft – almost vulnerable. But this was Kuran Kaname – the progenitor of the prominent Kuran clan, a vampire of the highest pedigree, an Ancestor. He could not afford even a sparse second of weakness.

And yet… there was a faraway look in his eyes, an almost nostalgic feeling invades his body, as if he was transported across time and space, over three millennia ago, to a place where he was so naive and weak and helpless. It shocks him that he still remembers, can still relive, that past – a dark age when his heart had been soft and unhardened by his immortality.

Kaname.

Ba-dump. His heart creaks into work, like starting the engine of an old and very unused car, but it stutters back to life anyways. Even if it only lasted a heartbeat, Kaname took this as a sign. Deathly quiet, he retracts his hand from his face and places over where his heart was buried in his chest. Instead of the frigidness of a dead heart, he feels radiating warmth – and a soft gasp escapes past his lips. He thinks, she's here.

He dismisses his thought – to him, wishful thinking is garbage. Dead, he reminds himself, she's dead. But a flashing image of silver eyes strikes his mind's eyes like lightning. Electricity runs through his veins like a circuit, and his heart stutters a strained but valid ba-dump. Another evanescent pair of eyes dance in his vision, but instead of translucent silver, the irises were an eerily familiar shade of glassy violet. Despite the differences in color, Kaname knew they were the same eyes, therefore the same person.

The realization sparks a revolution in his veins. His blood sings, calling out to one whom he had thought was long gone, calling out to him – to take the siren's call. Kaname stands up, stalks to a draped window, and wrenches it open. He stares out into the inky blackness of the midnight sky, but what he truly sees is the silhouette of his mortal enemy – and of his first love.

In the reflection of blood-red eyes, a shadow of a woman – a Pureblood – hovers over the figure of a man with his back against the viewer. Kaname parts his lips, drawing out a name he hasn't heard or said since an eternity ago.

Rei

In tandem the man and the shadow turn to face him, two faces – smooth lips, straight noses, and luminescent eyes – overlap one another, boosting each other's individual beauty, which was enough to pierce even Kaname's impassable composure. Both pairs of eyes soften in the same way that made his heart ache and flutter at the same time. Two sets of pale lips part, Kaname, they whisper. Rei, the woman, and Zero smile at Kaname – love shining clearly in their eyes.

Rei and Zero – a Pureblood, an Ancestor like him, and a Hunter – are the same person: both his deceased mate and his mortal enemy. For once, Kaname can find nothing ironic or funny in this particular joke from Fate, only cruelty.

Kaname disperses into a cloud of bats, each winged fragment flying desperately to the same location. In his flight, Kaname questions, Is it reincarnation, or something else entirely? He has an idea – more accurately, a gut wrenching hunch – of the latter, but he hopes it isn't the case. Because, with this possibility, all his carefully laid out plans will be ruined – thousands of years in scheming and orchestrating will be shred into irrevocable pieces like flimsy parchment. Kaname knows better – it probably is something else entirely.

Kiryuu Zero may have a vampiric atavism – the first, and only, one in human history. Kaname knew of only one place that kept any and all records about such subject matters, and to infiltrate that place usually meant death for his kind. Still, he bats his leathery wings fast enough to hear the bones whine in their sockets, I need affirmation…evidence that Zero will only remain a piece on the chessboard, and not the advent of an endless war.

Kaname was well versed in war: he knew that it was like a fire, that it could start with the smallest spark of conflict and spread like wildfire – uncontrollable and fast-paced. No one escapes the flames unscarred, either with their lives or with their souls.