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Zero Kiryu     DIRECTOR'S OFFICE
    ELYSIUM APEX

It has been three months since the mind dives that cleared up some of their problems.

It is a couple of hours until a meeting that Zero called for between the First, Director, and a few others concerned with the security of Grand Dorado. This scheduling was entirely deliberate, because he is dreading the conversation that he's committing to having and wanting to put a cap on how long they might have to endure a single sitting of it.

He arrives at the floor of Yuuki's office, nods in passing to the secretary (which he has done for some small while now instead of callously ignoring them) that's supposed to keep other people (which he has nevertheless made clear is not to include him, even when it does) from doing exactly what he's doing, and walks right in.

A briefcase is left lying next to the door, with his coat draped across it.

Zero sweeps the office with his senses searchingly, to see if he's a bit too early. He's used to finding Yuuki doing anything but sitting at her desk here.

One day he expects to find it absolutely covered in butterflies.
Yuuki Kuran Zero's premonition about butterflies isn't exactly right.
In another sense, it's painfully right.

Moving through Grand Dorado comes with a constant low-grade ping on his radar in every direction, her presence felt just off screen. The closer to Elysium Apex he gets, the stronger the feeling becomes, until he starts seeing white butterflies fluttering around and resting on lamps and black wolves prowling around the shadows just out of sight.

Entering Elysium Apex, it's worse: there's butterflies on the plants, across the reception desk, and a few fluttering around the first floor 'public' conference rooms. When he reaches the elevator up, there is a black wolf with a tiny bellhop hat on that 'stares' eyelessly at Zero as he punches in the second-highest floor.

The outer landing with Yuuki's secretary, a man always in an impeccable Business (black jacket, black pants, black socks, white collared shirt, black tie) getup, large plastic-rimmed glasess (black, of course), and perfect posture, barely turns his gaze for Zero's entry. He is Known, and more than that...

The only time he had ever pressed that Yuuki really wasn't accepting visitors, he had been set straight, and then Yuuki had just validated 'oh, yeah, not Zero', and so that was that. He was like thunder in a storm: uncontrollable, and solved only by being rode out.

A white butterfly sits on his crisply product-ed hair, slowly working its wings. He is paid enough that this is Within His Duties. He is paid quite a bit.

Entering Yuuki's office is like entering a menagerie or some arboretum. White butterflies are everywhere - mostly active. A window open just a crack lets in and out a steady stream of the white familiars, and Yuuki is - as expected - not at her desk. Instead, she lays sprawled out on a fainting couch with a black wolf laid out across her chest, the alert guard-dog watchful over the apparently asleep Yuuki.

Without needing prompting, Yuuki opens a glowing red eye, yawning and adjustingly slightly in the couch, stretching and sprawling simultaneously. "Oh. Zero. You're early by..."

The black wolf 'looks' at Yuuki's arm, as her eye closes back down, a weary shuttering of her softly glowing eyelids.

"Hours. Did you want to pick out a room, or something?"
Zero Kiryu The obnoxious ping of an arbitrary number of Yuukis scattered around monitoring everything in a paranoid haze is like staring into the goddamned sun in terms of sheer intensity of garbage going on around him. Zero isn't especially bothered by this, because he's used to Yuuki being far too prominent a presence in his own mind, but it does make it a little hard to determine exactly where she's actually choosing to exist at this precise moment.

Zero makes a deeply exasperated noise. It's too convenient an ability not to use at length, especially for somebody who is still proportionately new at this. But still, this is sort of ridiculous. He would be more critical of the practice if he wasn't starting to get into a similar habit from a different angle.

He presses a hand against a lamp in passing, vines twisting away from his fingertips and winding their way around its base in a decorative twist even as he moves away to stand before the couch.

"No. Any office will do." He answers, easing down on the edge of the couch.

Zero looks towards the black wolf, and then towards Yuuki proper.

"Please stop disassociating from your body for now."

Uncomfortably, he looks away.

"I wanted to talk to you. Back during the... during Mr. Parsons's dives, there was something hurting you that we were not able to resolve."

"I do not think we could have if we wanted." He looks towards the Yuuki-butterflies coming and going through the window, "So I wanted to ask you if there was anything on your mind."
Yuuki Kuran The most notable part of this fraying insanity, this sub-sub-subdivision of Yuuki's awareness into tiny forks and fragments, is that it's not possible that she's actively dividing her presence or attention. Certainly, the wolves have a greater tangibility to them, more of 'her' present, but her familiars don't just stretch 'Yuuki' out.

It's a multiplication of a sort.

Before, she could barely bring out a few wolves or a cloud of butterflies. Now, after her harmonization, the jump was noticible.

Cuddling up with her wolf-familiar like... well, like a dog owner, Yuuki curls up a bit more, drawing in her knees and muttering back. "I'm right here. I'm just over there too. It makes me want to sleep in the middle of the night, that's all."

A white lie, but she opens her eyes sleepily and pulls her attention back to her office. Her yawn, as she does, is far more pronounced, drawing her mouth open to show her prominent canines out in plain view - extending into a catlike back-arching. Suppressing her 'nature' during a split like this is clearly beyond her.

"You weren't? You fixed pretty much everything, though. I felt a lot better, afterward. There was something else? I can't think of anything..."

Scooching up, hugging her wolf to her chest as she sits more upright, hunched over to rest her chin between the ears of her eyeless wolf, Yuuki closes her eyes again, breathing in through her nose. "Something you couldn't fix... That's wrong. With me."

"Oh."

She cracks an eye, her brow furrowing and quirking ever-so-slightly. "My brother, you mean?"
Zero Kiryu "Sounds like it's wearing you out, then." Zero replies, drawing his consciousness in and trying to ignore all the extra pings. He doesn't need to be super-aware of the situation in this place, though he's sure that there are those who would disagree in the short term. The security breach that had occurred was unacceptable to the best of them, but letting it cause too visible a reaction was an unacceptable outcome.

"If you're hungry, I'll help. But draw some of yourself back in. Especially if you're doing it to expand security." He shifts his seating, turning to the side and looking down at Yuuki properly.

"It might make you feel better," he says, "but increased security is a lot more simple than measures like those. Deterring a person like that is practically impossible. It's more important to focus your efforts on keeping out the people who aren't insane."

It is, he observes, almost like watching her use a stuffed animal for comfort.

He knew that something was probably wrong, which hadn't been resolved. Was such a thing actually necessary, or was it no different from draping a blanket over one's self?

A distant, nagging urge to just look creeps into the back of his mind, and is swept away with considerable prejudice. They swim in one another's thoughts enough without doing it outside of feeding, and he can't think of a way to raise her hackles quicker besides.

Zero vocalizes a vague affirmative. He replies, "I didn't say that there was something wrong with you. I said that there was something hurting you that we did not get to address. If that's the conclusion you've reached, then I suppose that is the right track."

"No one else knows enough to even ask." More than a little uncomfortably, he adds, "I wasn't sure if I should."

Zero leans back a little ways, closing his eyes and fighting the urge to disengage. As much for his own benefit as hers, he remarks, "If it would make it more natural to talk about these things, I could yell at you through the door instead."
Yuuki Kuran "I'll... be fine." Yuuki answers to the questions about her being worn out, extending into Zero's concern about feeding. "I had Thomas install one of those little..." She spins a finger aimlessly as she searches for the word. "Refridgerators, the coolers from a hospital, in my office. I call it my 'strategic uselessness reserve'."

She snorts quietly at her own joke, the smile wavering and tugging at the corners of her mouth. It's more natural than most of her smiles, though no as radiant as her usual.

"I wanted to -- I had to try, Zero. Didn't I? I'm the Director, so I had to try. It's something I can do, but if I would bring it up during the meeting, then I'd be committing to it. And it's alright, but..."

The wolf that she's hugging yawns this time. "It wears me out. So much effort for nothing. It'd be much easier if I was in a fight, I think. Then I'd be interested. I could just let myself go."

Her next smile is more laconic, and far toothier. "Do things that you can only fantasize abo--" She stops up, her eyes half-lidding. "Sorry. But you're one of the few people I can say stuff like that to. You, and Priscilla. And no, I can't say it through the door." Yuuki finishes with a sour, pouting face. "Why would you even say that? You don't even have an argument to win."

"As for my brother... You and I have 'mingled'. Even if we 'know', it's still easy to lose myself in your feelings, if I'm looking to be lost. And Kaname did so many things to you. He did so many things to me. Things I can't hide from. I have to look. I think it's why we've grown apart. He's trying to guide everyone to a better world, and I'm... hugging myself in my penthouse office. I don't know if there's anything to fix. But I could be cut to ribbons and be fine."
Zero Kiryu "You could be better." Zero retorts, but he chooses not to press the matter. Food is food, and sometimes you're in the mood for a burger and fries instead of a steak and baked potato. His thoughts drift, faintly, in the direction of Hanabusa and his pharmaceutical company. That was something else he needed to discuss with her later.

The smile tugging at her lips elicits a small smile from Zero in turn. He reaches past the wolf to ruffle Yuuki's hair lightly, "You have a responsibility. Sometimes that means doing the job yourself. But in this case, the medicine that is 'Yuuki' is both too strong and exposes too much emotion in the response. You don't want people to think that you're worried, even if you are worried."

"Your job," he says, "is not to be the Guard at the gates, but to find a solution. To find the correct guard to post in your stead. The most basic layer of security we have is being too frightening for most people to take a swing. That is something that must be maintained."

"Think of how you would defend Cross Academy, if you had to now, with all the restrictions that we operated under before. That is, no one should ever know that anything is happening at all."

His matter-of-fact demeanor shifts in answer to Yuuki's sour look, genuine contrition registering on his features. Zero nods, "Sorry. That was childish of me. And it's alright. I know what you mean. Those thoughts, they're rather intrusive. I've been getting them more often, too."

It takes him a while to muster a response to what she has to say about Kaname. A brief, blink-and-you'll-miss-it look of agitation flicks across his features, but the desire to say something about it dies so quickly in Zero's mind that it surprises even him.

"You aren't giving your own works enough credit." He says, pausing a moment to take a deep breath before he continues.

"Just because you can be cut to ribbons and recover doesn't mean that each slice doesn't hurt." Zero eases up off of the edge of the fainting sofa, surveying Yuuki and dog-Yuuki for a moment before bending over.

Vines wind their way out of his form for a moment, providing additional leverage as he lifts Yuuki -- dog and all, using the extra vines to secure a proper grip so "nobody" falls away -- long enough to settle in on the couch behind her, dog and all.

He's sure this looks ridiculous.

Reclining on the sofa and in turn allowing Yuuki to recline against him, Zero winds his arms loosely around her. An awkward moment of silence passes.

Then, slowly, "Sometimes we hurt, and it's not possible to ever fix it completely, if at all. But that doesn't mean that we can't hurt a little less."

"You did that for me. If what you need is somebody to sit with you quietly..." He raises a hand to brush the head of dog-Yuuki, "Like that, then I'll be here."
Yuuki Kuran "I could be better." Yuuki agrees. "But feeling better and being better are usually not something you can have both of, at the same time."

Her arm moves up, under the chin of dog-Yuuki, and she thumbs at her right upper fang's tip. "I could feel great, but I'd be a monster. Worse: I'd be my uncle. But I'd *feel* good, and that's..." Both Yuuki and the Black Wolf heave a sigh, though the wolf's sounds more like a yawn or sneeze.

"That wouldn't be 'being' good. Just feeling good. And I think I can't abide that. And if I was to be extra-'being' good, then I'd be miserable. Somewhere in the middle, with a little bit of denial and a little bit of pain, is happiness. A best life. I'm sure we'll find the mix of those two, together, but..."

"I could be a little better. I could be a lot worse. I'm not, because of you and everyone else."

The security matters are waved off. "I was seeing if I can do it. It's the offical story. A trial, a bit of indulgence on my part. Thomas and the other admin team members are already abuzz with plans and counterplans and operations and dossiers and other big words. Just because I'm *supposed* to Direct doesn't mean I can't... help."

Her pout returns, but this time it's more affected than simply elicited. "If I'm not allowed to help, then what am I allowed to do? This, Zero... this is my Cross Academy. This place, this Dorado."

Being picked up gets a heaving, heavy, fidgiting sigh from Yuuki. "I dislike this especially. It was only yesterday I was the strong one, and now you're stronger. I wanted to be the bigger one for a while longer. You were always stronger, and now I've lost my chance to be the bully big sister."

She leans forward, not back, as a final little act of faux-resistance, though she's still parked on his lap. "All I've been doing is sitting quietly. Here, there, and everywhere else. I'm bored of it."
Zero Kiryu "I don't, ever, expect you to be 'extra good'. It's..." Zero shuts his eyes and exhales slowly, "incredibly unpleasant. Some of my juniors asked me about it, after I started calming down a little a few months ago. I was speaking with Chairman Cross when they worked up the nerve to ask me directly. The change was too dramatic, so they wondered what had gotten into me. All I could really tell them was that they didn't know what it was like to really starve."

"... But I was just offering you a snack, Yuuki. That's not going to turn you into your uncle."

On the subject of security and her role in it, the hunter opens his eyes again, "Ideally, you need to find some talented but inexperienced up-and-coming powers to act as the front line of security while acting as one of the higher forces at play when they can't handle it. Probably while seasoning the whole thing with a team of reasonably loyal, superpowered meddlers in your pocket. Neither Chairman Cross or Kaname elected to handle security by being too blunt about it."

"Small problems were handled quietly and off-record, big problems brought out the big responses. It's all about having basic coverage and holding in reserve sufficien force to 'handle anything that might come swinging too earnestly'."

"Think of it as a series of walls," he continues, "even though it wouldn't literally be walls. At the center you have 'Kaien and Kaname', in the middle you have, 'Hanabusa and less memorable company', and at the outer wall you have 'Yuuki and Zero'."

Allowing his eyes to drift shut again, he concludes, "We're too big to be the outer walls now."

In answer to her complaints surrounding his newfound strength, Zero says, "You're faster than I am. You heal quicker. Your command of others is greater. You twist civilizations around your finger and leverage what you want out of them. The differences in our abilities isn't something that I can fix. But I think you have something worth being proud about without lamenting that you can't overpower me so easily."

Seemingly unperturbed by her 'resistance', he replies, "If there is something you'd rather be doing, we can go do that instead. People-watching through a..."

He takes a moment to summon his radar back to the forefront of his mind, counts the CLOUD OF BLIPS, and rattles off the number he can immediately detect, "... familiars is bound to get dull. It's like a stake-out aimed at an entire city."
Yuuki Kuran "Would you ever expect me to be callous? It's tempting. To give up on restraining myself, to live as I tell Prisclla to. As whatever she chooses to be, her best life in her best world. That it's foolish to do anything else." Yuuki asks, incrementally relaxing, largely by scooching back into Zero's stomach. "That the fear I hold for doing so is unfounded. That it's..."

"That it's not the same as before. It won't be the same as school, or as with Uncle. After Mr. Parson's help, I think I finally understood."

"Hanging onto emotions..."

Yuuki makes a face, rocking her upper back into Zero's chest and craning her neck up and back, crown of her head rocking into his collarbone and neck. Her eyes flutter open, tired and glowing bright. "That's so useless. I can just speak clearly. After Mr. Parson's help there was something wrong. But it wasn't with brother. I love him, and it's painful, but I'm sure if you had explored where he should be, he'd be there. He's just been absent from 'my life', too."

"No, what I realized was that I didn't... really hate my uncle any more. I understood him. I... I didn't forgive him, but I let go of blaming him. For what he was. For what I am. It wasn't healthy."

She grows quiet for the rest of the discussion on walls and her abilities, though her shoulders relax gently into Zero's as he talks broadly about her amazing abilities. "I... I know. Kaname and Kaien had a lot of practice having walls around them. And I know that we don't have guard dogs for our own protection, but still."

"You don't have to tell me how many times I've split myself, either. It's not too hard to be aware of all that nothing."

Her chin falls, her har sliding against the underside of Zero's chin, as she shoves the large wolf out from her lap and off the couch. The black wolf lands lightly and immediately curls up at the base of the fainting couch, curling tail around haunches and placing chin against layered forepaws. Without eyes, though, it's unclear if its sitting sentry or dozing off.

"I used to be the stronger one. Now I'm not. Even if the rest of all that's true." Yuuki pouts, elbowing Zero lightly. "You don't really want to do what I want to be doing before a meeting anyway. Not really."
Zero Kiryu A long silence settles in before Zero sees fit to actually answer. It's a complicated topic, and one that he's had a lot of time to ruminate on while descending into abject madness, climbing his way back out again, and then sliding down the ladder a few dozen times. It's only the fact that he doesn't /sound/ asleep that gives proof to the notion that he hasn't drifted off here.

"Sometimes. Not because you're a vampire, but because you're a person. We can't be kind all the time, even when it's our nature to be so. But because you're a vampire, it's necessary for you to be callous."

"I ate my brother," he says, "and how bad do you think that actually felt to me? Not so much at all. I think I felt worse about getting my teacher's eye ruined than I did about that. And I certainly felt worse about what had happened to you than about Ichiru's death. It's not that I didn't care..."

"We're just not wired to respond to that the way humans are. I think if we were, we'd just go extinct."

He doesn't respond to the subject of Kaname at all, skipping right over to the matter of Rido, "I don't think that's quite right. I don't doubt what you say you're experiencing, but I think... you lend less weight to what he did, because it's so long ago now. There's a fresher thing to hate. Something new that has intruded on your territory. Feelings that you've struggled with, that you know aren't so different from what he felt."

"It seems small because of how many steps removed the harm is from yourself," he says, "but he was inches from killing Hanabusa, inches from killing Sayori. Inches from scarring your life in a way you'd never be able to ignore or forget. Although we don't and can't regard a death the way they do anymore, we sink our claws and fangs into a precious few lives that we can't bear to be deprived of and draw blood trying not to let go."

"There is no need to blame anyone for the things they feel alone. A Level E is not responsible for their actions, but Rido Kuran is not so pitiable, and it's less healthy to diminish that with hollow sympathies born of ugly urges than it is to blame him for what he was unquestionably responsible for."

"There is," he concludes, "nothing wrong with looking back and thinking that it was sad. Occasionally I have thought so, even about that woman. This is not the same as not blaming them for their actions."

He grunts a neutral response to Yuuki's pouting and elbowing him, eyes cracking back open.

"Won't know unless you tell me what that might be." He replies, flatly.
Yuuki Kuran "It's so annoying when you're always right, Zero." Yuuki complains, yet another pout that has neither teeth nor claws. Her shoulders pull in as she tucks her hands under her arms, exhaling through her nose and trying to express grumpiness that she doesn't feel or exude.

A cattiness purely for the empty and halfhearted show of it.

"I don't forgive Uncle Rido. I just found myself batting at it and caring less and less. Hanging onto prejudice and pain forever is why the other purebloods become cold and empty. All that's left is ancient sleights and ages of loss. Alone, because it's too painful to lose any more."

Yuuki lets her own eyes close, and the butterflies going in and out of the window begin to settle on the still and frame.

"He would have done terrible things, and was stopped. We live in that better world. We live in the better world that has us together, and you cured of what was ruining you."

The urging to reveal the thing she doesn't want to do before a meeting gets a little husky snort-giggle. "Zero, of the two of us, who is the mind reader, and whose mind is unreadable?"

She askews her head so she can rest it against Zero's shoulder, and the Black Wolf at the foot of the couch rises back up, using its atypically warm nose to guide Zero's elbow around and get his hand around Yuuki's waist.

If he needs a hint.
Zero Kiryu "I've spent a lot of time thinking about... the dividing line between 'me' and 'the thoughts that creep in, the 'feelings that I don't have', and how that reflects on me. I'm sure that you would arrive at similar conclusions given time." Zero replies, assuagingly.

On the subject of Rido, and Purebloods in general, a grim and breathy chuckle leaves the hunter's lips. Opening his eyes the rest of the way and rolling his shoulders animatedly as if to expel stiffness, he replies, "Whether they have different urges or no, Purebloods are still very much like humans. Vampires are still very much like humans. We have the things that drive us, and the things that keep us grounded. Those things aren't infinite either, Yuuki."

"I'm sure you remember getting frustrated with homework, and putting it away halfway through. Finishing it later, or not finishing it at all. Life isn't much different, I think. We have our box full of things that make us want, desperately, to keep going a little while longer at least. To be better, in some way. To thrive. A lot of the time the contents of that box are people. I tried not to be in anybody's box, for a long time."

"I tried not to have anybody in my box, either. I wasn't going to last, so it was better if I wasn't that important to anyone. But somehow I kept ending up there anyway, and somehow you kept ending up there too."

He continues, "When one of the things in that box inside us goes away, it can't be replaced. There might be other things that make us want to keep going, but once 'Yuuki' stops being a thing that exists in 'my' box, that is simply a source of drive that will never return."

"I don't think," he says, "that the Pureblood tendency to collapse is a consequence of too much hurt piling up. I think it is the gain of 'drive' outweighing what has already been removed from the box. The problem comes not because of a fear of losing further, but when existence has become purely arbitrary. When we have reached the point where, there is no reason to want to finish our work, and no break adequate to remedy the feeling of being done. But 'being done' at life is such an unnatural idea that most of us can't act on it directly."

"In that way, I think you mostly had the right idea back then."

Nose.

The casually serious expression on Zero's face is replaced by a flicker of loosely annoyed confusion as an unnaturally not-cold dog nose relocates his hand to Yuuki's waist.

?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?

"Oh."

Zero gives Yuuki a sour, embarrassed look, then glances at a wall clock. He shrugs awkwardly, offering no verbal response.
Yuuki Kuran "I think, Zero, I agree and don't agree. I agree that we have a box of fond things, but it's not so ordered and clean and nice that we have a place for every thing. It's more... of a bag. Our bag of joy and good things. Of emotions, and being fulfilled. And even, sometimes, of pain that we hold onto."

"I think... that it's things like that, those words, those thoughts, that are the poison of purebloods. The struggle, the consumption that seizes them."

"Before the Concord, we had Heaven or Hell. Before Heaven or Hell we had the Union. Before the Union, we had Cross Academy. Before Cross Academy, we had Kaien's house. Before Kaien's house, we had our families. There was so many things, so many times between each of those, hardships and joys and new experiences. And it was just a few years. A blink in the eye."

The sour, embarrased look gives Yuuki fits and starts of laughter, her cheeks blushing. "See? No time at all."

She leans in and up, to plant a kiss on the underside of his neck. "I'm going to take a long shower and pull back all my extra sets of eyes and wings. Most of them. Some of them.

The Black Wolf pads over to the attached set of side-rooms of the penthouse office, and pushes open the door, shortly followd by a nearly solid wall of butterflies. "Feel free to raid my fridge, if you've worked up a thirst!"

Yuuki peels herself off of Zero's lap, and swings around her fainting couch to head for the side-rooms herself. "And I'd suggest black collared shirts for pre-meeting meetings next time." She suggests, with another fit of laughter.
Zero Kiryu "Bag of joy." Zero repeats, dully. He nods, "I suppose it's more imaginative than my talk about a box." He had even imagined a plain old cardboard box while describing it. It couldn't get much more banal than that.

He exhales with sharp resignation at Yuuki's stuttering laughter, presenting a rather grumpy front that is as false as it gets. There's nothing to be angry about and, as it turned out, there wasn't really anything to be worried about at all, either.

Everything was perfectly fine.

Everything is perfectly fine.

The facade slips away in answer to the kiss Yuuki presses to his neck. Zero makes a contented noise, hesitating visibly as she extricates herself from their seating on the couch. He rises after her, drawing her up short for a moment to lean over and kiss her on the cheek in turn.

"I'll pass. Cold noodles doesn't smell appealing at the moment."

Zero looks down at what he's wearing.

"Yeah..." He agrees, comically halfway between utterly humorless and amused, in the way that only people who /are/ amused but don't want to admit to it /too/ much can be.