Zero shuts his eyes and dreams of kind smiles, of pouts and blushes and teasing. He dreams of short brown hair and innocent giggles, and that carefree that he was never going to see the same way ever again. The same ninety-pound girl that had stood by him and guarded him against gunshot.

Now there's nothing left there but a bitter photograph, which is no longer a picture of reality but merely a record of what it once was.

There's nothing left but this cold fearsome hunger that takes over his entire body, against his will, against his mind and heart and everything he really is. And then it eats him up from the inside, and everything else (in his heart) along with it.

He wonders if he could've fixed things. If he could've helped her more than Kuran, protected her from her fears.

He wonders if his powerlessness is what overcame him in the end; powerlessness against his own hunger, against her questions and fears. Those could only be answered by Kuran the perpetual fear that could only be fixed by her new blood.

(He wonders if he could've offered something more than Kuran did, an alternative to what they face now.)

He wishes sometimes, more than anything, that her transformation into a vampire would have at least helped assuage her fears. He knows that he only frightened her more, becoming the thing that scared her the most. Then she became the thing that he hated the most. She was never supposed to be like him. She was supposed to be…

But it's pointless, thinking of those things now. She's not his to touch, to handle and to hold. She decided that herself, and he did too, with empty threats of revenge that will barely save him or resolve his endless search for a reason. He's left with the thoughts in his head and a gun that gleams from his nightstand like a beacon under the moonlight, tempting him with its seductive promise of sleep.

But no matter how tired he is, he won't sleep. He promised her that.

So, instead he's left staring fruitlessly at the ceiling at three o' clock in the morning, pointless "what-ifs" running over and over again in his head like unwound clocks. The path lies uncertainly ahead, lonely and unadorned with any real dreams of happiness, just ambitions that have been shoved upon him by others and by his own loathsome pride that still refuses to quit protecting the cowering, pitiable creature that is his heart.

But if he lets it go, he'll let go of everything. What will he have left if not his hatred, his imperishable anger towards his enemies? What will he have left to cling onto?

There isn't anyone left. Only Yuuki. And now she was gone.