Work Text:
Their beginning was not where either of them suspected.
Akira thought their beginning, their true beginning (the first time they touched each others lives, the first time they tore their destiny to shreds), was when her father exposed Arata Kirishima to his neighbours.
Touka thought they began when she assisted in the murder of Kureo Mado (the child she had been when her father was taken…that child was so far removed from the woman she was now. She couldn’t consider that a beginning, not when it involved neither of their hands).
In truth, it was both earlier and later.
Their first beginning was when they both lost a mother. It was in their shared experiences with loss, with family (a father who cooked stew over the stove all alone, men their neighbours thought a little strange), and with independence at a young age.
Their second beginning was when they both learned what it meant to be women when no woman stood beside them. When they internalized that showing care was weak. When they buried their anger with the world (the way the neighbours looked at their dad, the way the other children didn’t understand how to live alone, play alone, be alone) in brutal uncompromising competence. When they were punished for that, too.
Their third beginning was when Kaneki Ken stumbled into both of their lives. Unstable as a newborn, he knocked over the things they had carefully laid out, things that they believed (about humans…ghouls…themselves), and hurt himself in the process.
Their third beginning was when they were both foolish enough to show him care (knowing that caring was weak…knowing that this man was more vulnerable than them both, knowing that he bled salvation all over the floor).
Their fourth was when they both lost him (and so much more).
Their fifth was the one that really counted. Their fifth was shaped by all the beginnings that came before it, but the fifth was simultaneous for them both. It was a fixed point in time. A touchstone.
Akira was dying, held together by a man she’d never met after taking a blow for one she’d thought she lost, and Touka was right within reach. She knew who she was. Ayato was well-known to the CCG and, when they were right next to each other, it was obvious who the female rabbit was.
Akira had been tired though. Too tired to lift a finger, too tired to be angry, too tired to ask ‘why now, why here?’.
Touka had just…looked at her (like she knew. Touka looked at her like that even now, curled up safe in bed, whenever Akira couldn’t find the words). Akira had fallen asleep pinned under the weight of her gaze. She had thought she was a hallucination, to be honest.
But then she came back. Touka hovered at the edge of her treatment room often, studiously avoiding Seidou’s gaze, knocking him down a peg or two when he started pacing anxiously or screaming (a twisted reflection of the man she remembered). Akira didn’t even realize how often she was there until she disappeared.
(Later, Akira would find out Banjou had told Touka she was making Akira nervous. It was true - she was rarely coherent, but she had been doubly confused whenever she spotted Touka. She hadn’t known how to handle it)
When Touka returned next, it was when Akira had no one else. Hai- (no, that’s not his name, never was, though he was her-) Kaneki had disappeared, taking half the voices she heard daily with him.
(Touka had worried she would be lonely, Christ she was so good, Akira was always struck by how good she was)
At first, Akira had honestly expected to die. She thought Rabbit was there to finish what had started so long (so many beginnings) ago. Instead, Touka had started talking. Though Akira remembered very little of it, she could recall one part (that she shamelessly brought up to Touka months later, just to watch her cheeks darken and to see the flush spread all the way-):
“After I realized you were his daughter, I always thought we’d be the same. A little bit monstrous. Murderers. But instead of killing for somebody, you stood in the way of the blow.”
She could recall the way Touka sighed perfectly. The way she had delicately traced the bones of Akira’s wrist with her fingers,
“I’m a coward. I could’ve just healed my body. But you, you’re human, but stood out on the battlefield like some kind of - of - angel. Ugh, Kaneki is the biggest martyr I know and he calls you mom, so you probably are an angel…”
Of course, Akira was no angel. They were both a little bit monstrous. Murderers. However, the comparison, the idea of bravery, had struck her enough that all her conscious moments were filled with the thought.
Showing care was weak, though it was the strongest thing she’d ever done.
All the things she’d ever regretted involved not showing care (not telling Amon how much he meant to her, not fixing things with Seidou, not hugging Hai- Kaneki more often, not saving Shirazu, not telling her dad-). All the things she was proud of, all the things that really mattered on her deathbed, the things that even monsters feared in her…they involved caring.
It made her wonder what Touka regretted.
And that was their fifth beginning.