Chapter Text
Though I have seen a great deal of the sights, traveled a number of the available paths, there are always corners that remain unexplained, doors that remain unopened.
... When you think of it that way, isn't it just like magic?
Hide does not have the strength to jump with two people alongside him. They will have to take the longer route home—three days on a train and another half day on foot. It is a grueling test of patience and Ken still cannot believe it when Hide tells him that he made the journey in less than an hour to get to them in time. It had been risky, and he might not have woken up from the slumber he had fallen into, but it was a risk he was more than willing to take.
On the second day, he and Ken sit across each other as Touka sleeps with her head on Hide’s shoulder. Hide watches the farmlands and cottages flitting past the window and he can see, from the corner of his eye, that Ken has been watching Touka sleep.
“She slept fitfully in the garrison.” Ken has a grim expression.
Hide looks at him. “I doubt anyone can sleep peacefully in that sort of situation.”
Ken rolls his eyes—something that Hide feels he will start doing more and more often—and nudges him with his shoulder slightly. “I can count on one hand the number of times she said something that didn’t have anything to do with you,” he said smilingly. “You mean the world to her.”
“I hurt her.”
“I know you did. And I know it was all because of me. She knew too, but she still came for me. For you.”
The silence between them is thick, but not unpleasant. Touka sniffs in her sleep and a light scowl paints her features for a few seconds. Hide knows it is not the time to be feeling sentimental, that it is more apt to be reviewing his plans to confront Souta, but his mind insists on presenting him with the most superfluous details in jarring clarity—her hair reflecting the noontime sun, her hands folded on her lap, Ken’s tense posture, his fingers neatly curled over the velveteen-lined seat. Hide acts on impulse, reaching out to cover Ken’s fingers with his.
“She was stronger than I was,” Ken goes on, his voice lowering to a whisper. “She was adamant, but at the same time she… she would doubt sometimes. And I know she feels more than I do, that we didn’t deserve to be saved by you.”
Hide had leaned in close to hear him, and he balks slightly at these words. He opens his mouth to refute them, but Ken shakes his head before he can say anything.
“I’ve told you already and I trust that you know well what it means for me to be who I am,” he says. “But I haven’t told you about myself, and how I came to be this way.”
The train enters a long tunnel driven deep into the heart of a mountain and the compartment turns dark as Ken begins his tale.
“I was born deep in the countryside, on a farm that once belonged to my father. Luckily for us, my early years coincided with a great famine that was sweeping the continent. My father tended to the fields, all the while starving, and made sure my mother and I were both able to eat what we could. His love for us eventually, inevitably, killed him and my mother quickly came to the conclusion that I was a cursed child. She beat me, called me demon spawn, and cursed me while our crops withered away.
“When she died, I thought maybe I could be optimistic. I fell into the hands of my aunt, and she wasn’t so unlike my sister in what she thought of me. It was like my mother had never died, or like she’d come back through my aunt to remind me that I was worth less than leftovers at the table. Eventually I was able to run away. I joined a group of street children. Nevertheless, none of them were my friends. We couldn’t trust each other and not a night went by without one stealing food from another and a fight resulted in bad injuries, or worse.
“I was twelve years old when I decided I had the balls to steal from a pirate crew. Needless to say, it didn’t turn out to be as easy as I imagined. They had me at knifepoint and I was almost certain that they were going to throw me into the sea with an anchor tied to my ankle.
“But then—and I’m not so sure how this happened—they decide to spare my life. They lower their knives and pistols and swords, and I’m left there wondering why they let me live. Not long later, once we’ve set sail, the captain’s first mate comes up and tells me that I’m to be the newest powder monkey, to replace the other one or two lads that’d deserted ship or died from scurvy.
“It took me at least six years to work my way up the ranks, and by that time, there had been enough mutinies to completely change the men who had been in charge when I was taken. I became second mate, then first, then quartermaster, and when the captain was hanged for killing a seaside town’s mayor and his family, I took over the ship completely.
“I was about as good as any other captain you’ve ever heard of. Pillaging, killing, taking booty and women and as much rum and beer as we could carry… Soon enough, I’d made enemies of both lawful men and criminals alike. I was captain for about three years until my ship and crew were destroyed by the navy. We were all arrested, and sentenced to die.
Ken pauses at this point, and brings a hand to his face. Hide asks him if he’s alright with continuing, because if he is uncomfortable, he does not need to continue—
“No, I’m—I’m alright,” Ken assures him. “I just… I’m fine.” He sucks in a breath, as if to prepare himself for a nasty blow to the stomach. “I abandoned them. At the time, I felt nothing but fear of the noose, the guillotine. I’d seen it snuff the lives of many a fellow pirate, and I’d long given up on making friends or any relationship of the sort… I simply didn’t care. I was terrified for my life. I took the first opportunity to escape, and the moment I stepped outside the prison walls, the most profound sense of guilt consumed me, and I was brought to my knees by the weight of my sin. But in the end, I got up, I walked away, and I never again saw or heard of any of my crew.” He swallowed, hard. “I killed them. I made my choice, and I chose to kill them all.”
There was a terrible silence that grew out from the horrendous weight of Ken’s tragic tale. By no means can Hide tell him that he is innocent of his crimes, but he longs to hold him and take away the pain that he is stricken with. Hide knows, without Ken saying it, that he dreams of that moment, when he was on his knees and grieving his cowardice and cruelty. Wordlessly, he squeezes Ken’s hand, and waits for his trembling to stop.
“I’m… not the man to forgive you,” Hide says slowly, knowing that his words have the ability to either assuage the pain or drive the knife in deeper. “And I refuse to say that you’ve done nothing wrong. I understand now, much more than I could ever have hoped to understand you and the pain that you carry. But I can’t possibly hope to be so arrogant as to claim that I can save you.”
Ken’s expression turns crestfallen, but Hide continues quickly.
“That’s not to say that I don’t care about you and there’s so much—so much—that I wish I could do and could have done,” he says. “But the last thing you should feel as though you deserve, is to die. Not you, not the men you left behind, no one deserves to die.”
Ken is shaking his head, but Hide places both hands on his cheeks.
“I don’t think I was brave enough to come save you and Touka. I was just terrified of living a life without either of you. And if that isn’t enough of an excuse for you to feel like you deserve to live, then you can think of staying with me as punishment to equal death.”
It takes a minute for Ken to crack a nervous smile. “I could never think of that as a punishment,” he says.
“I guess I’ll have to keep thinking of something,” Hide says, grinning.
Their lips are a breadth away when the train whistle signals the end of the journey. As it rolls to a slow stop at their station, Ken and Hide exchange shy smiles, in silent recognition of what had come to pass, or almost come to pass. When passengers start filing out the train, Hide nudges Touka awake and she stands up, yawning and passing a hand over her eyes. She squints at Hide then at Ken.
“He’s a terrible kisser when he’s too excited,” she says. “You have to put a hand on his face or on his shoulder, to calm him down a little.”
Hide blinks, awed by the surreality of the moment and by Touka’s faint smile. “Thank you for the, erm, advice,” Ken says haltingly, red to his ears.
“Anytime,” Touka replies. “Shall we be off?”
The lightness of it all fades, replaced by the very real truth of what they are about to face. Hide nods with grim determination, and they leave the compartment and all of the brief solace and blissful ignorance it had given them for a few hours.
The plan is straightforward, because there is no other way to succeed. The rules of tradition dictate that Hide must face Souta alone and unaided, which Touka and Ken accept with much chagrin. They can only wait and pray that he can finish the duel and give Souta enough reason to fall back or give up or, at worst, die.
He requires a few calming breaths before entering the circus, which appears almost deserted, and almost immediately he senses the imbalance of power. He almost lets out a gasp of relief. Marude is alive. He is still fighting. He is still alive. That is all Hide needs to spur himself onward. He does not know where to find his father, but he knows exactly where to find the source of all the quiet chaos. Despite the seeming silence, Hide can perceive the mayhem lying deep within the magic conduits ingrained into the circus. It is simple enough to know where Souta is—at the clocktower centerpiece.
This is where it will end, he tells himself. I have to end it here.
Souta lounges at the foot of the clocktower, as leisurely as can be, and his smile seems—no it is—mocking all that Hide has suffered to be forced into this very moment. Souta’s expression brightens visibly when he sees Hide, not unlike a squirrel spotting berries ripe for easy picking. Hide feels his fingers twitch and he has no idea whether it is because he is nervous or angry or both.
“I thought you might come,” Souta says, walking toward him with a spryness in his step. “Though it would have been horrifically boring if you didn’t make it out of the garrison alive. Fortunately, I’m never wrong.”
“You planned all of this then,” Hide says. “You knew I would be easily swayed by my passions, and you took full advantage of it.”
“Hardly. I could never have predicted that you would choose both instead of one. It was quite a show, that.”
“Ken had nothing to do with any of this.”
Souta beams. “Hasn’t he told you that he was and is a criminal on death row? I only allowed the poor man some respite within the circus to escape from his pursuers, those bad, bad men of the law. How could I have known that you would meet and fall desperately, madly in love? How could I have known without, perhaps, manipulating either of you? A little deception of the mind is child’s play, after all. And to a man broken by grief over his past transgressions? Almost disgustingly easy. Now wouldn’t that make me the most terrible person on earth?” A note of laughter falls from his lips, followed by another and another, until he is laughing near uncontrollably.
The horror of his suggestion trickles down Hide’s throat, burning his insides like a deadly venom. His determination falters, and he seriously considers, for a few seconds, sprinting back to Ken and performing a cleansing magic and asking him, do you still feel for me as you used to? Is this real? Do you really, truly love me? The desperation is maddening and Hide can feel himself at the edge, only half a step away from falling completely into despair.
But he cannot. He waits until Souta’s laughter subsides, all the while trying to remind himself that Ken is not the sole reason he is here. Ken is but one of many reasons, and Hide knows he must to remember that. To forget is akin to casting aside his father’s sacrifice, Touka’s grief, and the fate of the circus and all that live within its confines. To forget is to create an artifice of truth, a comfortable bubble in which only he and his passions and desires reside.
“You,” Hide says with some difficulty, “are a madman.”
Souta’s smile does not wane. “That’s an awfully flattering compliment,” he says. “Are you certain you do not secretly desire me to be a part of your little harem?”
Fury inflames him, and he is not sure how he is able to wrap his hands around Souta’s throat, but when he is next aware of himself, there he is and there again is Souta’s eerily carefree smile. His fingers press into Souta’s throat, and the corners of his vision are tinged with red. He understands full well that he is angry beyond explanation, but while he is aware, he feels as though he is floating outside of himself, watching the spectacle unfold from a third party perspective.
Yet despite the imminent threat to his life, Souta laughs merrily. He does not sound at all as if he is being choked to death, and before Hide realizes this in full, Souta has melted into a pool of darkness in his hands. Hide steps back, the surprise of the moment briefly diffusing his anger.
“I don’t doubt your capability to love and care for those around you,” Souta’s disembodied voice echoes throughout the circus, surrounding Hide in its unearthly tones. “In fact, I laud you for it. What was it that the Frenchman told you? That you have space in your heart for many loves, not a singular love? I find it utterly fascinating that you are able to love even one of these plebeian fools.”
“Is this how you prefer to fight?” Hide snaps. “You slink around in the dark where no one can see you, and whisper in people’s ears?”
“Believe me, I would much prefer to physically flay you alive, but that would hardly be entertaining,” Souta chides him. “You think me lazy? Au contraire. I have been working with the utmost patience and singleminded concentration. You could perhaps call me a genius or an artist, I wouldn’t mind. Regardless, I retain some sense of… curiosity.”
There is a sound of a sleepwalker’s footsteps, dragging heels across the black and white painted grounds of the circus. When Hide turns, a ball of lead drops in his stomach. “Father?” he whispers. But it is not Marude. It is, but it is not. He is covered in blood, from his hair to his cheeks to his bare hands. Hide wishes with every part of his being that this is only one of Souta’s illusions which will melt away into shadows. But Marude remains very real and very much solid as he walks lethargically, a dullness to his eyes that is heartbreaking to watch.
He is still alive, which is worst of all. He should be dead, but something is keeping him tethered to life, prolonging his suffering. It is cruel, too much so, and it fills Hide yet again with the same rage that brought him close to murder only a minute before. Marude’s mouth opens and closes in mechanical replication of the act of speech, and Souta’s voice spills from it.
“Now isn’t this just the most delightful of reunions? Are you not touched to the very depths of your heart? Won’t you thank me for giving you this opportunity?”
Murderer, Hide’s mind rasps as his body reels, grasping at straws to stand his ground and stay his hand. Rage like fire runs in his blood, and he can feel the grief dampening it like the heaviest rainfall. But more than anything he feels colder and more alone than he has ever felt before.
“Hide… My… son,” Not-Marude struggles to move his jaw in unison with the words he speaks. “Come… Come here… Let me look at you…”
He is at a loss. His consciousness stands at a precipice and vertigo threatens to have him topple over the edge. He mustn’t, but even he cannot even begin to fathom the pain that has been wrought inside him. Why is he even here in the first place? What is he—no, what did he think he could do here? There is no point, no reason, and thus no purpose to his existence. He falls to his knees at Not-Marude’s feet.
And at that moment, he is more than ready to die.
“Oi, Circusmaster!”
There is half a second between the crack of stone against bone and the sound of Not-Marude’s body falling to the ground in a heap. Hide blinks and the world comes back into focus as Touka and Ken come running to his side. All panic and the angry urge to demand why they had disobeyed him and come into the circus, vanish when Ken drops to his knees and slaps Hide across the face.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Ken all but shrieks, his black hair as wildly in disarray as are the emotions in his grey eyes. His hands clutch Hide by the shoulders.
“He’s right,” Touka says, her face white though not with fear but with sheer shock. Hide can see she is just as distraught as he. “That’s not… he’s not your f-father anymore.” It hurt her not only because Marude had been just as much of a father to her as he had been to Hide, but also because she had lost her true father in a tragic fire. She had always told Hide that he was lucky to have a father like Marude. And now Marude is gone, replaced by a demented puppet that they must now do battle with.
Hide gets on his feet with Ken’s help and watches as Not-Marude struggles back up, arms and legs moving as though made of nothing but steel bolts and joints. It hurt. It hurt so much to see him this way. But Touka and Ken are right. There will be time to mourn later.
“The… real body is nearby,” Hide says slowly.
“Souta’s?” Touka asks.
He nods. “I know I’m breaking more than a few rules, but I hope it wouldn’t be too much to ask for your help?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she says, grinning.
He returns her grin and looks at Ken. “And you, Ken?”
Ken looks from Touka, then to Hide. He says, “I only know how to steal and kill, but—”
“That’s more than enough,” Hide says before Not-Marude lets out an inhuman screech. “Both of you, to the clocktower. At the very top, there should be something you can smash to smithereens.”
A wave of energy tears through the earth at them along with Souta’s distorted, raucous laughter. They duck, and jump back onto their feet as one.
“You can’t be more specific than that, can you?” Ken yells over the now increasing barrage of attacks from Not-Marude’s direction. He swipes his cutlass through the air and slices a thick wooden pole in two before it can knock into the side of his head.
“No, unfortunately I never mastered clairvoyant magic,” Hide calls back. “There should be a… a circle! Find it, and you’ll find whatever it is you’re supposed to destroy.”
This time a spray of scalding hot water comes at them but Hide throws up an arm and the water stops just shy of them, suspended in midair for a second. He looks at them. He shouts, “Go!”
Touka grabs Ken by the hand and they disappear between black-and-white tent flaps.
Hide drops his arm and the water droplets shower the ground, raising steam. Souta cackles somewhere close.
“I never imagined you would make this easier by bringing two of your greatest weaknesses to me on a silver platter,” he says. “For all that your father bragged of your strategic mind, you fail to grasp the basics, don’t you?”
Hide smiles as his skin glows a steady amber before suddenly flaring into a golden white bright enough to blind. “I prefer being at a disadvantage,” he says. “Because if and when I win, it would mean that I was not only the stronger man, but the smarter one too.”
“We’ll see about that.”
The darkness of night and the light of day meet and coalesce almost without any violent collision. Opposites attract, after all. It is like two pens dripping black and gold ink together on a sheet of paper. The colors resist each other, but then cannot help but mix, and then it is a fight for dominance.
Touka and Ken watch the duel unfold as they dart from tent to tent. Ken has not seen many of these tents before, and he cannot help but be dumbfounded when they dash into one where fish swim through the air and when he lets go of his cutlass for barely a second, it floats and begins to drift to the floor as though truly underwater.
“Many of these he made thinking of you,” Touka says, tugging on his hand. “But many of them are for me too. Someday I’ll show you all of it.”
The promise of a ‘someday’ is strong enough to spur him forward. Touka insists on a winding path that twists and turns, jumping into a tent from time to time, to confuse Souta and keep him off their tracks long enough for them to do what they must.
They reach the clocktower in a matter of minutes. Touka fiddles with the handle for a moment before cursing. “It’s locked!” she exclaims.
“Wait.” Ken pats over his pockets before pulling out two metal pins, one of which is bent and the other straight. He rests one knee on the ground and sets to work picking the lock. It takes a bit longer than usual, but when the door swings open, Touka has a wide-eyed look that has Ken preening a little.
“That was… impressive,” she manages.
“I could teach you,” he says.
Touka sniffs loudly and strides past him. He is far from mollified however, and remains cheery until he hears the first grinding gears and squeals. He unsheathes his cutlass and follows Touka closely.
When the first of the strange demons melt out of the shadows, she mutters a string of curses and bends down to pick up an old metal gear. Ken steps forward just as the creatures begin to swarm around them. “This is something out of a nightmare,” Ken breathes.
“Clearly you’ve never seen Hide drunk,” Touka replies airily. “Are you going to use that sword, or will I have to?”
Ken fortunately, does not have the time to respond. The creatures hiss and launch themselves at Touka and Ken. He shields her from the brunt of the attack and slashes forward. He is not sure if mere sword strokes can kill creatures made from pure darkness, but where metal cleaves through them, they collapse into puddles of shadow before vanishing. Before long he hacks them a path up the winding stairwell.
The familiar tick-tock-tick rhythmic sound of a watch is here magnified by a thousand and as they hurry up the steps that hug the walls, the sound becomes loud enough to rattle teeth. At the top of the steps, another horde of shadowy creatures assail them but Ken is able, just barely, to keep them at bay.
“Touka!” Ken grounds out between gritted teeth as he battles the darkness incarnate, “you have to find the circle. I’ll push them down the steps.”
She nods wordlessly and climbs up past him. Some of the creatures break away to chase after her but Ken catches them with a dagger he pulls from his boot. She smiles, shaking her head. Warming up to him might be an easier task than she originally thought.
She arrives at the final landing, breathless. With a quick glance around, she is more than a little surprised at how easy it is to find the circle. It is impossible to miss, right at the center of the landing, where a circle of sunlight from the clocktower face settles, almost predictably, at the middle of it. She wonders if this might be any sort of trap. Did Souta perhaps want them to find this place? Is this all a part of an elaborate scheme?
Touka does not know, and she aches for Hide to be here, to tell her what to do and where to go. Not that she does not have a mind of her own, but because she had grown so used to relying upon his advice that she can never face a decision without first wondering what he would do. Things are always easier—and much more fun—when Hide is around.
“Look for something to destroy,” she tells herself. Souta has never tried to conceal himself before. It should be in plain sight. Then she knows.
By the time she is clambering up a ladder and steeling herself for the inevitable sensation of vertigo, she does not realize she is being followed. Not, at least, until she steps out onto the minute hand of the clock as it slants down to just below 9.
That is when she first hears the low guttural growl.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she groans, as she beholds the larger-than-life shadow creature preparing to step onto the minute hand. She reaches out to the clock’s eggshell white face to steady herself as she slides her feet up the hand of the clock, to the center where both hands meet.
Wind in her hair and her heart hammering in her throat, she stretches her other arm out for the smallest glimmer wedged in the center. Her fingers brush against the stone, then the hand shudders violently under her feet and a scream is ripped free from her throat as she falls—
—and lands with one shoulder hooked around the minute hand. The pain that throbs from her armpit at the hard landing is nothing compared to the relief she feels at not plummeting to her death. Unfortunately, the relief is short-lived as she sees the shadow creature slowly inching toward her on the minute hand.
Struggling to pull herself up, she thinks, not unpleasantly, of all the times Hide told her he loved her. She remembers every single one, from the silly notes and games as children, to the interlocked fingers, tentative kisses, shy smiles… She remembers it all as she reaches, with trembling arms, for the black and white stone at the very center of the clock’s face—an ornament that meant virtually nothing, other than that it was the very first thing that Hide had been able to create with his magic for the circus.
With a loud cry, she dislodges the stone and feels her grip slacken on the minute hand. Using every last bit of her remaining strength, she smashes the stone into the black steel of the hand. It shatters. Her fingers slip.
She wishes she could have told Hide how she felt a little more. She wishes for so many things, but most of all, she wishes for his happiness with Ken for the rest of their lives.
Then the fall stops.
There are two hands wrapped around her arms.
Two pairs of fearful, yet determined eyes.
One pair of lips spread into a relaxed grin and the other in a smaller, more modest smile.
“On three,” Hide says. “One, two—”
Touka allows herself to be pulled up onto the minute hand with the two men. She does not let go of either of their hands.
“Is it over?” she dares to ask.
“It is,” Hide tells her, and his smile—oh, his smile—is more beautiful than the setting sun. He scratches his head. “Although… I’m not quite sure if I truly won that duel. After all, I broke the rules. There might be… what did Father call it… retribution?”
“Retribution or no, I want off this clocktower right this instant,” Touka says shortly. “I don’t want to risk falling off. Again.”
“I agree,” Ken says.
“I can fly now though,” Hide says with an impish grin.
“Yes, apparently, yet another thing about you that will take me a lifetime to get used to,” Ken retorts.
“Is that a proposal, Mr Kaneki?”
While Ken blushes, Touka elbows them both. “Off. The. Tower. Now.”
They nod. “Yes, ma’am.”
The sky is streaked in varying shades of red, orange, yellow, and pink, when they alight on the battle-scarred ground of the circus. All around them there is silence, and before Touka or Ken are able to ask, Hide says, “The performers and residents will be back soon. They won’t even remember leaving.”
“Where did they go?” Ken asks. “Are they even real people?”
Hide shrugs. “Most of them are. Others… I’m afraid I’d rather not know.” He chuckles. “Well, I do believe that we deserve a bit of a break after all that. Shall we?”
Touka and Ken exchange glances, and they know they are thinking the same thing. Hide’s cheery demeanor cannot fool them anymore.
“We have to make certain Marude has a proper ceremony,” Touka says.
There is a long, near-suffocating silence. Then Hide says in the most quiet of voices, “We can’t.” He pauses. “No, not that we can’t, but that… I already did. In the duel… I managed to pierce through his heart to render Souta’s control null. Without that magic, his body began to crumble. He returned to himself, just a little, before…”
Touka wraps her arms around him. “I’m so sorry,” she says softly. “I loved him too. It was terrible, I was angry, I… it hurt so much I couldn’t stand it.”
Hide returns the embrace. “It’s alright,” he says. “He said to thank you. He couldn’t wait to see Uncle Chika again, actually. I’m certain they’re three sheets to the wind by now.” When they laugh, it is tearful laughter.
As nightfall arrives, Hide pulls his coin out of his pocket and smiles widely. “Shall we play a game to decide what’s for dinner?”
“A game?” Ken asks, curious.
“Oh, don’t let him start,” Touka sighs, despite the amused expression she wore.
“Do let me start,” Hide says, eyes glinting. “Alright, you two, heads or tails?”
~fin~