Title: A Different Fate
Author: jordannamorgan
Fandom: Seraph of the End
Characters: Yuichiro, Mikaela, Ferid, Krul.
Setting: Re-imagining of pre-canon events.
Rating: PG for vampire violence.
Length: 2,214 words.
Summary: Yuichiro refuses to leave Mikaela behind in the orphans’ escape attempt.



Yuichiro was watching his entire life crumble around him.

Scattered across the floor lay the bodies of his fellow Hyakuya orphans, their blood pooling on the once-spotless marble tiles. The only other child still breathing was Mikaela, but his blood stained the surrounding whiteness as well: gushing from the massive hole carved through his torso, soaking the empty sleeve where his right arm no longer was, dribbling in thin trails from the corners of his mouth. His still-beating heart only continued to pump out even more than what had spilled from those who died quickly.

Even so, by some miracle of his stubborn will, he clung to consciousness. He stared up at Yu with glassy, tear-filled eyes, forcing his lungs to draw in just enough breath for a trembling whisper.

“Go, Yu. Leave me here.”

Perhaps the words were not exactly surprising to Yu, but they tore deeper into his anguished horror. That slithering vampire noble tore apart Mika’s small body so much more savagely because, in his effort to create a distraction, he had tried to sacrifice himself for Yu. After seeing his last foster sibling do that for him, he could no longer comprehend the idea of running away. He couldn’t think of himself over the one person in the entire world—either before or after the vampires’ rise—who had ever placed his life ahead of their own.

“Don’t be stupid,” Yu gasped, forcing down the sob that threatened to choke him. “We’re going back together, remember?”

In his arms, Mika twitched, as if making the feeblest of attempts to pull away. “Don’t let us die for nothing.”

“Shut up, you’re fine!”

Yu spared an instant to glance over at his own handiwork. Shot in the head during that one moment when he was focused on Mika, Ferid Bathory himself lay sprawled and bleeding on the floor. For a vampire, even a bullet to the brain would be nothing but a fast-healing flesh wound… but maybe it would keep him down just long enough.

Yu got his hands under Mika’s left arm, and under the soggy mess of severed flesh and bone where his right arm now ended; and he started to pull.

“You’re gonna make it. Come on,” he breathed. Straining with the effort and his grief, he closed his eyes to the sight of the red trail left behind as he dragged Mika inch by inch. Even missing the weight of one arm, the blond boy was heavier than he looked, and Yu’s hands threatened to slip in the slickness of the blood.

Mika made no effort to get to his own feet, or even to help pull himself across the floor. Deep down, Yu realized that he probably couldn’t have stood up if he wanted to—but it was more than that. There was a passive resistance in his dead-weight stillness and silence. He must have thought that if he gave up on himself, if he just kept still and waited to die, Yu would finally surrender to his choice and flee alone.

But Yu was every bit Mika’s equal for stubbornness.

“…I can’t leave, Mika. I can’t.” Yu paused in his struggle for a moment, cursing the weakness of his own malnourished young body. “I finally have a family! I won’t lose you.”

He felt the ragged catch of Mika’s breath, the quiver of surprise at those words. At last Mika forced himself to move—but only to twist out of Yu’s grasp, to slap the darker boy’s hands away with his remaining left arm.

“Just go, you idiot. Now!”

Yuichiro scowled through his still-flowing tears. He reached down to regain his grip on Mika, drawing a breath to retort angrily that fighting would only make him lose blood faster, but then he saw the glimmer of movement that Mika must already have noticed: Ferid’s hand moved, stretching out to clench against the blood-streaked tiles. The injured vampire was beginning to come to his senses.

A new rush of horrified urgency flooded through Yu. He seized Mika again, no longer taking any time to be careful with his wounds, and redoubled the effort to drag him toward the open doors that promised escape. The tunnel to the human world beyond was so close now, yet those few meters of distance felt like as many miles.

As Ferid’s stirrings grew more pronounced, Mika fought harder in Yu’s arms, arguing—pleading—for him to run. The words fell on deaf ears, as Yu grimly continued to haul the squirming boy across the floor.

He realized that at the rate Ferid was recovering, there was no chance of reaching freedom with Mika. Even if they reached the tunnel, they would only be even easier prey for the vampire in its confined space. He would overtake them before they reached the surface, if not before they reached the gilded doors… and then he would take his revenge for the embarrassment of being shot by a mere human child.

It didn’t matter anymore.

With a sudden growl, Ferid pushed himself to his feet. He shook his head as if to clear it—and his gaze traveled straight to the two boys.

Yu froze where he stood, pierced by the vampire’s scarlet eyes as surely as Mika had been by his talons. Distantly he heard Mika’s voice, and while the words only dissolved into unintelligible sounds through the roaring in his ears, he knew the other boy was screaming at him to run.

Instead, he sagged down onto his knees, pulling Mika into his lap to clutch him protectively.

Mika would be the last to die. Yu would make sure of that. It was the one repayment he could make for his foster brother’s sacrifice.

The vampire’s expression of rage faltered. For a brief moment, his face reflected something more akin to bemusement.

“…The madness of human sentimentality never ceases to amaze me,” he muttered at last, casually wiping away some of the blood from his left temple. “If you’d only left Mika behind, you would have had time to escape on your own. Yet here you are, staying by his side—even though you surely realize that he could never survive his wounds anyway.”

“I don’t care.” Yu’s unflinching gaze burned with the heat of his hatred for every last vampire on Earth, and for this beast Ferid most of all. “Nothing up there can replace what you’ve taken from me. I’d rather die with my family than live without them!”

“Then I’ll be happy to oblige you,” Ferid murmured, and lunged forward.

In spite of himself, Yu’s eyes closed against the sight of his death rushing toward him. He bowed his shoulders over Mika, sheltering him from the death blow Ferid meant to deliver, and focused for one last time on Mika’s voice as it cried out his name.

It wasn’t the way they had intended it, but in a few moments more, they would be free of the vampires’ world after all.

Every muscle in Yu’s body tensed, bracing against the swift shock of pain he expected…

But it never came. Instead, he heard a violent thud and a grunt of surprise. His eyes flew open to see Ferid Bathory sailing spread-eagled across the room, where he crashed against a column with such force that the stone cracked.

In Ferid’s place, what now stood before Yuichiro was… well, a creature that at least bore the appearance of a young girl, not so much older than Yu and Mika themselves. She was petite and deceptively delicate-looking. Her cascade of long hair was colored a vivid pink Yu had never seen on a captive human child, and she wore a black dress trimmed with white lace, equally alien to the dully functional garments the vampires allotted to their livestock.

However, the girl’s scarlet eyes gave the lie to her girlishly innocent looks—and the cold, lofty anger they held in their gaze betrayed any idea that she was fragile.

At the moment, strangely enough, that fury was directed squarely upon Ferid. Underneath that furious glare, the noble looked uncomfortably chagrined as he picked himself up from the base of the column, and diffidently approached the vampire girl who was not even half his size.

“…My dear Queen Krul,” he grumbled, rubbing his chest as if a horse had kicked him.

Yu’s heart skipped a beat. Queen Krul…?

There had only ever been whispers of her among the other human children, and those were horror stories that conjured the image of some fairy-tale witch. In hindsight, he was sure no child had ever actually seen her, but merely heard passing mentions of her from the vampire guards. Certainly, not one of the young captives back in the Livestock Quarter would ever have dreamed that the ruler of the vampires would look like… this.

Almost like one of them.

“These humans belong to me, Ferid,” the Queen announced tersely to the noble. “Leave now—and be thankful that I didn’t simply tear your heart out where you stood.”

Ferid’s subservient expression lapsed, contorting into a look of indignant disgust. However, he seemed unwilling to cross Queen Krul any further. Without another word, he turned and slunk away.

Only then did Krul turn her eyes to Yu, and to the maimed and bloody figure of Mika in his arms.

“…So these are the last of my Seraphs.”

She said the words softly, as if to herself, like a girl musing over whether to take home a stray kitten. Still, there was something far gentler in her eyes than the hellfire she had subjected Ferid to. Yuichiro was baffled by that; but if there was any shred of mercy in the incongruous figure looking down upon him, he was willing to leap at the chance.

“Please…” he said faintly, his eyes darting down to Mika’s glazed and ashen face before returning to meet Krul’s gaze. “Please save him!”

Krul’s eyebrows arched, her expression quirking in obvious surprise. At the same time, Mika twitched in Yu’s grasp, moaning out something that sounded like No.

“Shut up, you idiot,” Yu ground out between his teeth, looking back down at Mikaela’s suddenly wide and terrified eyes. Words tumbled out, a frantic reasoning meant for the Queen as much as for Mika. “It’d be a waste for them to let you die, right? They can’t get blood from you anymore if you’re dead—so—”

His words were interrupted by a sudden, bright laugh from Krul.

“What an extraordinary idea.” She bent down slightly, bracing her hands on her knees, and regarded Yu with a tiny flicker of a smile on her lips. “I’ll make a deal with you, human. I can still save your little friend—but my price is that you give yourself to me willingly, and submit to me from this day forward.”

Mika thrashed with renewed objection in Yu’s arms. Yu ignored him, gazing up at the Queen as fresh tears leaked from his eyes.

“I’ll do anything! Just keep Mika alive!”

He didn’t understand the meaning of the Queen’s terms. She didn’t seem to be demanding his death—after all, she could kill him without asking at any moment she wished—so perhaps she intended to make him her personal blood donor for as long as he lived. In any case, it didn’t matter. If she granted him the survival of the last of his family, Yu was willing to pay any price she might exact from his body and soul.

Krul’s smile became darkly triumphant. “Very well. Then move back and leave him to me. Quickly—before it’s too late.”

Yu hesitated for a moment, reluctant to let go of Mika, but he obeyed when he saw a flash of impatience in the Queen’s eyes. He eased the blond boy onto the cold floor and scooted backward, giving Krul room to kneel and lean over him. Mika shuddered and whimpered softly, but he moved no further, having exhausted the incredible strength that kept him alive and resisting through his injuries.

A muscle in Krul’s cheek twitched oddly. Then, to Yu’s surprise and disgust, she pressed her lips against Mika’s mouth in a forceful kiss.

Mika’s eyes grew wide. For a moment he was still; then his body arched up from the floor, suddenly and convulsively. Krul’s lips muffled his first scream, but when she broke away from him, blood-curdling shrieks of pain continued to tear from his lungs—interspersed with violent retches as he coughed up clots of fresh blood.

Sick with horror, Yu lunged toward Krul. “What did you do to him? You said you’d—!”

He got no further. The instant he was within reach, Krul seized his arm and twisted it, dragging him close against her with a strength beyond anything such a dainty body should have possessed. Her mouth locked upon his as well, her tongue roughly forcing his lips apart, while she clutched the back of his neck to hold him immobile.

A gush of something cold and bitter filled Yu’s mouth, making him choke and gulp reflexively. As it oozed down his throat and into his stomach, it began to burn, a fire spreading outward through his veins as it turned white-hot… and then, Yuichiro was screaming too.

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2017 Jordanna Morgan