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Kaneki was, honest-to-whatever-gods-existed, so damn beautiful it would take Hide’s breath away so often it was a wonder why he was even still alive. His “lonely as a bunny” catchphrase stuck in his throat and he felt himself swaying from a surreal sensation that felt almost like vertigo, or like his head had been stuffed full with cotton and he couldn’t even try to think or speak, just look at the vision that stood at the threshold of the place.
The doors themselves were dangling from their bottom hinges, showing the aftereffects of a well-placed kick. Kaneki stepped over the carnage of steel and glass gingerly, like he was scared he’d incur someone’s wrath if he wrecked the entrance even further with his muscled legs. He looked at Hide, and Hide looked back, and maybe he could pretend that he was sitting at a kids’ playground watching the stars go by because that was exactly how it felt. It hurt that much.
It looked as if his own pain was mirrored, maybe even doubled or tripled in Kaneki’s eyes, and he felt his hands twitch instinctively to grab the guy by his shoulders and tell him, “Hey, it’s me, I’m okay, let’s go home, yeah?” And it wouldn’t have been wrong. Everything was over. The bloody battles had been won, and the seemingly almighty order of the world had been upset completely. It was over. It was time to clean up, count the dead, and go home to wait for the feeling of triumph to set in and for the work of rebuilding a new kind of peace to begin.
The power to speak seemed to fail Kaneki too. They stood in silence, a sea of dust and debris and broken glass between them. Hide exhaled, as if it’d loosen the longing ache in his chest. He couldn’t stay. He took a step back, his heel crunching glass and bits of cement. The ever-present cowl over his head had been thrown back long ago and there was nothing to conceal what Kaneki had done. He knew it hurt Kaneki to witness the full extent of what his delirium had wrought on Hide’s flesh. It hurt him to see Kaneki’s expression go through so much more pain than it needed to.
He turned around and pulled the hood back over himself. His legs were stiff. It’d been easy to turn his back on the pain, but it was even harder to walk away from it.
“Hide,” he heard Kaneki say. He exhaled again, inhaled, trying to get that knot of pain out and failing. “Hide!” He walked, picked up the pace. “Hide, wait!” He was running then, but he knew he couldn’t outrun a ghoul, even a half-ghoul, and especially not the One-Eyed King himself. He was tackled from behind, and pinned to the ground by his shoulders. He winced, pain reverberating through his body. Kaneki hastily got on his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said. He wasn’t even breathless. What a guy. “Are you okay?”
Hide dusted himself off and waved a hand dismissively. He was fine. He paused, sighing through his nose… then broke into a sprint and hopped out the nearest broken window. His feet landed hard against the concrete roof of another building. He ran. He couldn’t run far. It was easier to hide. Kaneki had always sucked at hide-and-seek.
Not this new Kaneki, though.
Hide was down on the ground again, gasping for air like a fish out of water. Kaneki pulled him up. He wasn’t smiling, or lost in whatever paralyzing feeling of nostalgia or relief he had when they’d first gazed at each other like they wouldn’t have cared if the sky itself had fallen around them.
“Hide, please,” this new Kaneki said, looking stern almost. “I want to talk to you. Just for a bit… If you want to run away from me, you can do it, but just… give me this, alright?”
Hide closed his eyes, opened them, and shrugged Kaneki off before sitting down heavily against the railing lining the roof of this building. He said nothing, but Kaneki sat next to him, leaving space enough between them for the entire staff of Anteiku to squeeze in if they’d been here. Touka would’ve been most definitely welcome, in Hide’s honest opinion. She could distract Kaneki long enough for him to slip away.
But Kaneki’s full attention was on him now and it filled him with an alien sort of shame he never thought he’d feel. He might even have pulled the cowl even further down if he didn’t know Kaneki was watching him out of the corner of his superhuman vision.
“So you’ve been watching me this whole time?” Kaneki asked, the question loud enough to ride over the wind that whipped at them now.
Hide nodded.
“And you never thought to say anything.”
He nodded again.
“Didn’t you know how worried I was?”
This time, he couldn’t help turning and shooting Kaneki a droll do-you-think-I’m-that-stupid look. Kaneki almost laughed. Almost. Then his eyes were unbearably sad again. Hide looked away. He hated that vacant, self-deprecating look. It made his stomach churn.
“Did the CCG fix you?”
Nod.
“They couldn’t let you keep your voice?”
If Hide could still laugh derisively, he would’ve. The sound was something between a wheeze and a snort. All air and no sound. He smiled at Kaneki and tapped his own temple.
“You always know too much,” Kaneki said flatly, eyes narrowing. He was trying to hide his guilt now. He couldn’t. His every breath and movement screamed of it. “I’m so—”
Hide stood up. It was time to go now. He’d heard everything, and there was nothing Kaneki could say that he hadn’t known he would say.
“Wait.”
He paused instinctively, and immediately hated himself for it. Kaneki was at his side in an instant, his fingers digging into Hide’s arm.
“I don’t want that to be the last thing you ever hear from me.”
Hide felt his body tense but Kaneki’s grip didn’t slacken. He couldn’t let his resolve weaken now. Please not now. Everything still ached and burned inside him and he couldn’t even bring himself to look Kaneki in the eye for more than a quarter of a minute. He didn’t want now to be the moment he broke completely, and totally. If he did, he’d never put himself back together again.
“Hide, I—Thank you,” Kaneki said, voice thick with memories between them that both of them remembered with startling clarity. “Thank you for everything, for saving me, and—and for being here, always.” He swallowed, hard. “I’ll miss you.”
Kaneki let his hand drop and Hide lingered where he stood for a moment before he started walking away, toward the roof exit. He wiped his mind clean of thought because if he let himself think, he would’ve turned around again and mouthed, I’ll come back, and then nothing would be done, and everything would begin anew, and the cycle of pain and hatred would repeat. If there was anything that he still wanted to do while he was alive, it was to spare Kaneki from experiencing that kind of agony again.
A weaker… or stronger… man might have thought, Maybe we could start over, as the door shut behind him. But he wasn’t that man. It was taking all of his strength to descend the stairwell without leaping over the banister and letting himself plummet the rest of the way down. He was exhausted, and he wanted to be lain to rest.
He walked the empty streets, melting into the shadows, and never did shake off the feeling that Kaneki was watching him leave everything they had ever had. He threw his head back, breathing hard as he walked, chest heaving, and when the rain came, he couldn’t trust himself to walk on without stumbling. He ducked under a store awning to wait the rain out. Then he wiped his cheeks and left, with every intention of putting Tokyo behind him.
At the edge of it all, of his consciousness, of the prefecture, of whatever thing he was using to keep himself together, he stopped. And with Kaneki’s voice still echoing in his dully pounding head, he did the one thing he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do.
He turned around.