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Though she was merely the manifestation of a madman, a construct through which to channel his own fears and fantasies, Rize still haunts him.
She is still the voice in his head and the guilt in his heart, the crimson crescents he claws into his hands when the guilt eats away at his bones, leaving holes behind that no amount of repentance will ever fill. She was no more than a passing crush, a chance encounter; and yet, she is who transformed him, who took everything from him as if he had anything worth taking, nominating him as a candidate for the king of mankind and ghouls alike. She made him Arima and Eto’s sacrificial pawn, marking him as the hero who would shatter the birdcage that chained them all.
He filled the shoes, he played the part. Never in control, never in doubt. The moment he wrested the luxury of choice from the clutches of his cowardice, the moment he decided that he would move forward, no matter what, if not for himself, then for the family he never thought he’d have, his moral hypocrisy was laid bare.
Better to live in ignorant bliss as the sweet dream than to wake as the nightmare.
Kaneki wonders, sometimes, if he deserves to live. If he has the right to cast aside his cloak of self-loathing, founded on the corpses left in his wake, Hide and the Oggai and her, all reduced to nothing more than stepping stones as he ascends toward a future he has not earned.
He is his own executioner, a clock ticking down towards an inevitable conclusion. He is not yet sure whether he will end as he began or be reborn from the ashes. He wants to live; that much is certain. He no longer resents the body that was stolen from him, nor does he balk at the consumption of flesh or curse his lungs for continuing to breathe. For the first time since the seed of resentment sprouted in his soul, pollinated by the soul-crushing abandonment of his youth, he reaches for the future.
He knows being physically alive is different from truly living. Towards the latter, he is no more than a stumbling foal, falling over himself in his eagerness to grow into the man that Touka deserves. She is who wakes him from his endless cycle of self-torture, who holds him close and reminds him to breathe, guiding his hand to rest over her rounded stomach to feel their child and drag him back from the brink.
They are a miracle he doesn’t deserve. A blessing for the broken. Spring after a bitter winter.
As he traces the proof of their sworn fealty to each other, his fingertips dancing across the indents in her exposed neck, gooseflesh rising in their wake, he knows he is more than lucky; he is blessed.
She kisses him as if with one press of their lips, the past can be erased. Sometimes, he believes her.
Together, they are a burning dawn. The flames purge them of their sins as a new day begins and they walk hand-and-hand into the terrifying, beautiful unknown. They are bathed in the color of regret and the color of redemption; they walk the line between heaven and hell, belonging to neither. They are new beginnings and false starts, white lies and precious promises.
- - - - - - - -
“How many are there?” His voice trembles, fingers clenching and unclenching around the phone. Touka stirs beside him, mumbling quietly. He runs a hand through her hair, looking down as her eyes flutter open and her lips quirk upwards in a smile.
“I understand.” Touka reaches up to smooth out the furrow between his brows. “I’ll be there soon.”
“Dragon orphans?” She cups the back of his neck tenderly, rubbing circles at the base of his skull.
“Duty calls.” Kaneki presses a kiss to her palm before sliding his legs over the side of the bed. The clock reads 3:30. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
“You better.” Her voice is steady, but he sees it in her eyes; the doubt.
He can’t blame her. He’s always been reckless, transparently self-destructive. A flaming comet, disintegrating bit by bit as it hurdles through space, unsure of whether it will reach its destination before its immolation, and not caring either way.
He fought to save, he fought to run. Searching for answers and pushing everyone away in his fruitless quest to get them. Forgetting and remembering and falling in love all over again, but without the naivety that comes with firsts. Because it’s not their first time. Not really.
Desperation colors their every interaction, even now. She looks at him like she’ll lose him, just like she did the day he came back to her in a body bag.
Trust is a luxury. He has not yet earned it from her.
He leans down to kiss her.
“Come back to me, Ken,” she breathes against his lips.
- - - - - - - -
Mutsuki won’t meet his eyes. They work together in tense silence, broken only by the stomach-turning squelch of kagune slicing through dragonflesh and Urie’s doomed attempts at conversation, shot down within seconds by Tooru’s brooding glare.
It’s awkward. Undeniably so.
Kaneki’s not sure whether the avoidance stems from the obsession or the destruction, the awakening or the aftermath. It doesn’t matter. The trust they once shared shattered long ago, and with it went the facade. The man they knew - the man Saiko, Urie, Shirazu, and Mutsuki trusted and bled for, died the night Kaneki buried him. Their little family fell apart the second he wrapped his hands around his throat and squeezed until the remnants of his innocence suffocated and slipped into endless sleep.
Though Haise was the intruder, and Kaneki the origin, to the Quinx, Kaneki was the foreigner, masquerading as their mentor and friend. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, donning the mask of a kinder, gentler soul while being anything but. While Haise dealt in platitudes and placation, Kaneki favored pessimism and painful truths.
He’d like to say he clawed his way back to the surface for the sake of those he loved. Sure, he would jump in front of a bullet for a stranger. But, as altruistic as his actions seemed, as unfaltering as his resolve to save was, he always hoped to meet his own end in the process.
Many argue that the ends justify the means. For him, the means justified the end. Only by living an outwardly selfless life could he die a hero and find the peace he’d always sought. He had to earn the right to die. He had to earn the right to be selfish.
With the Quinx, he was merely a rabid beast, fettered and tamed, expected to snap. A ticking bomb with a countdown already at zero. They were his keepers, ready to put him down if he became a true threat. They were only “family” so long as he kept the bit in his mouth and the collar tight around his neck. All of it was a farce. One they all blindly believed.
He wasn’t raised to see the good in people. No one stuck around. And the one time he found people who would, he left before they could. The fear of permanence, of putting down roots, when he knew that in the end they would be ripped from the ground, deprived of the very thing that let them grow in the first place, made him reject any notion of home.
By the time he realized, by the time he rushed back, it was too late. He could only watch and wage a futile battle, knowing this was it. Knowing there was no way they would all make it out. His sanctuary, in flames. His family, in tatters.
As Haise, he could trust. He could be ignorant. No need to doubt when only one side was shown, when the delineation between right and wrong was so clear. He knew his enemy, for once; he knew who to kill and who to protect. He didn’t have to fight against his own mind or abandon one love to save another. He was so sure of everything. It was simple.
Where was that simplicity now?
Mutsuki cleaves through the last dragon orphan. Urie shakes gore off his hands. Saiko wipes blood from her face with her sleeve. Kaneki just stares at them. He’d been so scared of having a family that he didn’t think it’d be possible to have two. Could he be that selfish? Could he go from wanting nothing to wanting it all?
“Hey,” he starts, voice rough, cracking around the single syllable. Mutsuki turns toward him. For once, he doesn’t flinch away from Kaneki’s stare. “You guys want breakfast? My treat.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Mutsuki scrapes his heel against the ground, tracing circles in the dirt. His shoulders shake, guilt plastered across his face. “After everything -”
“I know I’m not who you remember.” Kaneki smiles ruefully. “And I know a lot has happened. But I’d like a second chance, if you’d give me one.” The corner of Urie’s mouth twitches upward. Kaneki looks down.
“Don’t feel like you owe it to me or anything; I know I was terrible to you after-”
Saiko slams into him, arms wrapping around his waist in a bone-crushing hug. Urie joins, dragging Mutsuki with him so they’re all pressed together in a mildly uncomfortable crush of limbs. And though Kaneki feels a spreading dampness from where Mutsuki’s face is pressed into his chest, how tightly Urie is gripping his shoulder, and how Saiko trembles in his hold, he says nothing and tugs them even closer.
- - - - - - - -
“I don’t know. It feels like I’m losing him again.”
“You’re not. He’s here, isn’t he? That’s enough.”
- - - - - - - -
Too often, Kaneki wakes twisted in his bedsheets, throat raw from screaming and back drenched in sweat, chest heaving in his frantic attempts to fill his lungs with air. It’s usually Hide he sees as nightmare bleeds into reality. He feels the way the flesh ripped under his teeth, as it caved, as he bit through bone and sinew in his haze of starvation, leaving his best friend’s face a ruined mess. He relives it every time he sees him, guilt eating him away from the inside out, caustic as ever. But they’re healing. In little bits and pieces, he and Hide are becoming who they were before.
From stilted formalities at first, to slowly sneaking jokes in and teasing each other like they used to, they recover. On the nights it gets bad, on the nights he stares at his living room ceiling, mind refusing to quiet, he leaves Touka to sleep and texts Hide. They meet on the rooftop of his apartment complex and just sit. Sometimes they talk, other times they simply lay next to each other, backs pressed up against cold concrete, and look up at the stars until the sun peeks its way above the horizon and bathes the sky in warm hues.
He doesn’t deserve someone like Hide. Such unwavering devotion for nothing more than friendship in return. It was time for him to return the favor. He wanted to be to Hide what Hide had been to him. His rock. The one who took an outcast, used to rejection and isolation, of being called weird and a freak, and gave him his first place, his first person, to call home. And maybe he already was that to Hide, but he knew he could do better.
It’s a long time before Hide reaches out first, that their phone calls don’t involve Kaneki asking for a favor or begging for Hide to meet him on the roof. But when he does, it’s cathartic. They talk, truly talk, not just about the here and now, but about the past and how they can move forward. Together. They cry. They laugh.
Hide starts meeting him without the mask. Kaneki stops flinching every time he sees his face.
“I don’t know if I can -”
“Are you kidding me? Of course you can.” Hide slings an arm around his shoulders. “You’re gonna be a great dad.” Kaneki cracks his knuckles, now more of a nervous tick than anything.
“I’m still -” Kaneki tucks his knees up to his chest. “Not all right. What if - what if I hurt her? What if I mess up?”
“Oh, you’re gonna mess up,” Hide laughs, ruffling his hair. Kaneki bats his hand away. “All parents do. You’ll be fine.”
It’s been so long since he hasn’t had to be at war. Ever since becoming a ghoul, his mere existence was battle. Battle to stay alive, battle to protect those he loved from those who wished to exterminate them, battle to stay sane amidst the moral conflict tearing him apart. He doesn’t know peace. Even as a child, peace was merely the calm before the storm, the semblance of normalcy before it was torn away. But this feels permanent. It makes him uneasy; he’s never had this feeling last.
He hopes it sticks this time.
He offers Hide a sheepish smile.
“You really think so?”
- - - - - - - -
Hinami and Ayato are closer than ever. Whenever he calls Hinami, they’re always together. He’s pretty sure they’re sharing an apartment, though they lie about it when asked point-blank. And when he and Touka have the two of them over, he sees it plain as day; they’re good for each other.
Ayato softens around the edges after Furuta’s defeat, the bitterness slowly seeping out of him now that coexistence is permanent and constant vigilance isn’t a prerequisite for survival. Hinami grows up, finding her footing in a world she wasn’t sure she’d be able to step into at first, a scared little girl who had lost her mother and didn’t know how to be cruel enough to carve her own path. Now with no need to be callous to thrive, she’s confident, commanding attention, and unafraid to speak her mind.
He smiles and presses a kiss to the side of Touka’s head as Ayato reaches forward to grab the television remote, nudging her shoulder and gesturing towards the younger pair. Ayato’s other hand is interlocked with Hinami’s, and upon second glance in the dim light filtering in through the blinds, a vibrant blush sits high on her cheeks. Touka raises an eyebrow at him before her face melts into a small smile, resting her head on his shoulder.
New beginnings.
Healing.
Trust.
Hope, blossoming anew.
He’s glad to be alive to see it.