Work Text:
“Haise Sasaki has been poking around for an files mentioning the Eyepatch ghoul. Dissuade him from looking any further.”
Matsuri Washuu commanded, leaning forward over his desk and staring at Akira. There was a challenge written in his face that she didn’t appreciate. It said that she was getting soft and failure would not be tolerated.
She knew Haise better than the rest of them. She knew exactly how to make him look away from his past.
However, she didn’t know Kaneki Ken quite as well.
Akira mentioned Amon Koutarou a little more often in the following week, despite the pain it brought her. A shadow skittered around behind Haise’s eyes and she knew he’d go looking for Amon’s reports.
She moved them out from hiding just for that.
Matsuri was right - she was getting soft. She wasn’t willing to harden her heart again, not when Haise was curled around the journal, crying on the floor. Haise was not Kaneki Ken. He wasn’t a monster.
He’d been through too much already (she regretted so much).
So, she’d just have to be strong enough to be soft to him. Whatever punishment Matsuri had in store, she could take it. Whatever betrayal Haise could heap onto her…she could take it.
It would be weaker to refuse to trust him.
To push him away.
To let him drown in the pages of the journal belonging to the man he’d killed.
“So, you found it?”
She asked him, kneeling on the floor next to his shivering body. Tentatively, as if she had never done it before, she reached out to stroke Haise’s hair. It was only with a hand on his head that she was able to feel him nod minutely.
“You aren’t him, Haise.”
She said, continuing her stroking,
“You are you.”
Akira never hid the journal again. She left it out, waiting to get caught. It hadn’t driven Haise away from his investigation like it had been meant to. The reason it hadn’t was because she’d gone to him.
She waited, her punishment came, but the journal was never removed.
She reread it with Haise almost a month later.
“The Eyepatch ghoul…I wonder if he was fighting, too.”
“He had changed - was he alright?”
“What is it that makes a ghoul cry? Was it a trick? Was it sincere?”
“I get the feeling him and I will meet again. Donato implied that he was something important.”
“I wonder…will he tell me his story?”
Before, when her partner had first died, Akira had only read the passages about her father’s death before shutting the journal. Amon didn’t always write like a proper investigator - often his writing wandered into the personal (he’d written notes about her apartment, her cat, and how Seidou acted when he drank).
It had felt too much like seeing him again.
Reading his words again with Haise, she had to wonder…
Were Kaneki Ken and Haise Sasaki so different?
“I killed him.”
Haise would tell her when his nightmares were exceptionally bad and the auction mission was fast approaching. Akira would tell him that Centipede killed Amon, not Haise, and she would wonder why she was comforting someone else over the event that had hurt her most (losing so much in so little time: Seidou, Amon, countless people she should’ve been there to defend).
She wondered if Kaneki Ken really killed Amon Koutarou.
She wondered why his name meant something to Haise before the contents of his journal ever revealed that they’d met.
Saiko grinned brilliantly, excitement and hero-worship glittering in her eyes as she spoke of her saviour from the auction.
“He was like a mecha! He was gigantic and had this heavy armour and reallllly big quinque! He kindof reminded me of Guts, from Berserk you know?”
She babbled as Akira took notes, glancing at Haise’s rapidly paling face (he never coped well when his kids were in danger, even if that danger was past).
“He patted my head and said I was fluffy, just like…what was the name…”
A name? That could be an identifier to help the CCG find this mysterious man. If he was strong enough to knock members of the White Suits aside, they were interested in recruiting him.
“Right! I was fluffy just like Maris Stella!”
Saiko announced proudly, grinning at her Maman who awkwardly responded,
”That’s…oddly specific.”
Akira’s chair made a screaming sound against the wooden floor as she rushed out of her seat and out the door.
Haise found her in the library, gazing at an entry in Amon’s journal, tracing his fingers over the lines.
“He’s alive, Haise.”
She whispered, not even trying to hold back the tears anymore (hope wouldn’t make her weak. It would make her strong. She’d find him).
“He came to my apartment once. He wrote it right here.”
Her nails scratched against the paper right above the inked name ‘Maris Stella’. She hiccuped and soon found herself wrapped up in Haise’s arms.
“He’s alive.”
He whispered in wonder, burying his face in her hair.
“He’s alive.”
His hallucination whispered, the mask falling off of its face. Its hair turned black and the face of 19 year old Kaneki Ken peered at Haise and Akira on the floor.
“He’s just…like…me…”
Kaneki breathed, one eye glowing red in Haise’s peripheral vision.
Shutting the hallucination out for now, Haise focused on sharing his joy with Akira. He’d deal with the consequences later. For once, the hallucination didn’t mind, staring into space in thought.
For once, Haise wasn’t afraid of it.
Things had changed.
Kaneki Ken wasn’t a murderer.