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Songs my mother taught me, in the days long vanished;
Seldom from her eyelids were the teardrops banished.
Now I teach my children, each melodious measure.
Oft the tears are flowing, oft they flow from my memory’s treasure.
The world feels a bit shaky. Colours overlap and blur and the sky bleeds a little like the blood red fire of his darkened socket. Every now and again Kaneki thinks he hears a ringing noise inside his brain, ghostly whispers and long-dead voices. His hair is soft and frail, and sometimes wisp past his shoulders to lightly land on the ground.
The autumn flowers are so beautiful. There’s colour in this world, so bright that he clenches his eyes and his heart and he thinks he might feel peaceful like this. A boy with dark hair runs in front of him, achingly close and bitterly far away. Kaneki thinks he might stretch out his hand…
“I don’t want Amon to die,” he says aloud, and the words rock a little crazily through his fractured skull. There’s a fine sheen of sweat on his brow, and when his hand comes away it’s clear, and his heart stills. Little, little…
In this corrupted world, bitterness stings inside of him. “You’ve worked hard,” the other boy says, but Kaneki shakes his head. Droplets of sweat and water fall.
In the end, it’s all been for nothing. The beautiful flowers are rotting corpses. Yoshimura’s words, the dream; the words and feelings he tried to show Amon. Corrupted like his half-kakuja, corrupted like the world, tainted, impure, tainted like him –
How long ago when he thought that he could bring those worlds together? Adorned with naiveté and sun-dappled black hair, a broken crown and a useless figurehead. How long ago when he thought that he could change ghouls, he could change humans? When he could break the circle?
I am…a ghoul.
This world is messed up. Kaneki watches the bleeding sunset with eyes that stutter with tiredness and a heavy gait. A monster in a monstrous world can’t change anything. Dear Samsa, he thinks wearily. I am just like you.
Monstrous vermin, the clicking centipede that sends shivers through his vision and shaking, scrawling lines through his brain.
He walks dizzily forward.
It’s okay…to hurt others.
All this time, he’s been hurting. With the creak of his fingers and his bloody black mask – the blood lingers in the leather now, there’s too much – he can’t change the world, so he can only protect the people important to him.
A light rain is falling. The heavens open, clouds brew, and when Kaneki opens his eyes next he tastes the scent of rain.
It’s okay…you don’t need to worry anymore…
Because I am already…
The rain is cool against his cheeks. It turns him into an island, adrift in a small bubble. When he inhales, he doesn’t smell a thing. –
But he can’t be left alone for long. Kaneki moves again, feeling heavier and heavier. His other self waits for him and he takes him by the hand; and they walk amongst the white unfurled flowers in the breezy field.
“Look, the stars are out,” his other self says, and Kaneki looks up. They speck the sky, which still sits crooked like a broken glass frame. His dream is starting to fall away, he doesn’t have much time left. He tugs on the other Kaneki’s hand, and a mop of black turns to him inquisitively.
“Where’s Mum?” Kaneki asks, and his voice is a tremulous low, not quite breaking. The other boy points, far across the field, to the small street that at once becomes familiar to him. He pulls on the hand again, his fingers tight around his own. Just hold out a little longer, he thinks. I don’t want to wake up yet.
“It’s getting dark, we should go home.”
“Okay.”
*
His mother’s burgers have always been the best. When he bites, it’s exactly how he remembers. He hasn’t had a meal in so long, his stomach is starved of human food, and he eats holding on to every swallow, every flavour that he can taste in every layer.
Kaneki licks the juice off his fingers, rough muscle soothing over battle-worn hands. He crouches down, his mother bent studiously over the low table, rests his head against her shoulder. It feels comforting. Probably every bone in her body was made to comfort.
“Mum,” he says, and there’s a crack in his voice now, mirroring the one in his skull. “Is it – okay to live?”
“Are you thinking about dying?” his mother says, and her hands pause at the table. “You should keep living, as long as you can.”
“What if – living – means being alone?”
His mother bows her head and cries.
“I’m just like you, Mum,” Kaneki says, and his tongue drags along the dry expanse of his mouth, and tears film over his eyes. “I’m a coward, aren’t I? I’m a coward. I’m just like you. It’s…it’s enough to stop working. It’s enough.”
Then…is it enough…for me…?
“I don’t want to be alone.”
But isn’t it…wrong…to be like you?
“Mum…I don’t want to be hurt anymore…”
If I live like you…then I’ll die…
*
“All I wanted,” Kaneki says to the dying sun, “was to be loved.”
He’s selfish. There’s no way humans and ghouls could coexist; he’d always been fated to fail. And under the pretence of protecting everyone, he destroyed himself…
“You are,” the dark haired him says. He picks a fallen flower gently from the ground, cradles it in his hands. Its petals are crumbling and he holds them like fine glass. “We are. Everyone’s waiting for us.”
Kaneki feels burning pinpricks across his back, needles in his eyes. He presses the back of his hands to them, darkened nails resting coolly over his face. “I ruined everything,” he whispers against his knees. “I’m mad. I’m still mad.” His throat is parched; words roll coarsely through it. “I think I might be crazy. I did that. I did that.”
“It’s okay.” The other him smiles, and touches him on the shoulder. “I never blamed you. You protected me, after all.”
“So let’s rest for a while.”
*
“Did you think I’d let you die down here in a sewer? You’re wrong!”
Kaneki cracks open an eye. The sky is streaked pink and is a confusing whorl of colour, angry like the crunch of gravel beneath boots. He swallows. He just wants some water…
“Oh, H-Hide…I’m dreaming again…” His eyes roll helplessly up. The flowers accommodate Hide when he sits, bending so he doesn’t crush them. “I don’t want to dream anymore…I’m resting now.”
Hide draws in a deep breath, slams his palm on top of Kaneki’s chest, and sticks his face so close to his ear that the ends of blond hair tickle at his cheek.
“Are you a dumbass? Just hold out a little longer, Kaneki!”
His fingers clench in the soft fabric of Kaneki’s shirt, he can feel his nails drawing across his chest. “You can’t rest yet,” Hide says, his breath ghosting against the inside of his ear. Kaneki struggles, wrenches his head away, curls up, covers his ears.
“Don’t be so selfish, Kaneki,” Hide murmurs, and his touch makes Kaneki want to cringe away in self-loathing and despair. He doesn’t. Barely. “Fight just this once more.”
I’ve never been selfish, Kaneki thinks, and starts to disappear.
Maybe I have.
Maybe I have.
*
It’s a cloudburst over this dream world and the sky is cracking apart. Each roll of thunder rattles Kaneki’s bones and the rain falls harder than ever. He thinks it might be hailing, too. Through cracked lips, a tiny, tiny smile forms, and through the ooze of his falling-apart mind he recalls teaching, recalls difficult words soft on his lips.
Soon, he’ll wake up, and there will be no darkly lit storming sky, falling like shards of a mirror, glazing on a pane. He’ll be in a field of flowers – so pretty – to rest.
“It’s pretty,” he murmurs, stretching his hand towards the falling sky. The brightness washes everything out, bleaches his fingernails back to flesh, and water reaches his parched mouth, soothing. Kaneki closes his eyes.
*
Mum…I’m moving on.
Kaneki breathes shallowly, blood on his chin and blood from his eyes, his backless back so cold against unforgiving stone. It’s silent save for the heave of his chest and the dry, wet, cough in the back of his throat.
He turns his head and spits, draws in a ragged breath and sighs a laugh. The sound is so raspy, disused and misused, and he thinks he might choke. Where’s his chest?
Painfully, Kaneki drags his arm up and touches his chest tenderly. His fingers feel sticky and when his heart throbs he’s sure he’ll pass out. It’s so hard to breathe. He can’t breathe.
He sucks in another breath. Just this once. Just –
“I’m – I’m fighting, Hide,” Kaneki sobs. “With all – I’ve got.”
Just this one more time.