Chapter Text
There he stands, once again on the edge of death without anyone else being aware of it. He isn't hurt, nor is he old enough to decay the way he does. Things end all the time, whether it be a moment or an era. He is not exempt from that, as much as it may seem that way. They can worship him all they want, with monikers carved from his sins falling from their lips, but it does not change the simple biology that Arima has become acquainted with. Their scorn, their hope, their adoration means nothing in the face of death. He may be the White Reaper, but who said he couldn't escort himself down to the depths of hell?
Or maybe he was meant to be done in by one of his own.
Across from the ivory so-called 'god', Kaneki Ken looks down at the broken weapon lodged in his abdomen. His grey eyes (like cemetery stone, when had they become so lifeless?) scanned Arima, searching so deeply that Arima felt somewhat exposed.
Was he angry? Shocked? Did he have any doubt in his mind towards the man who had mercifully eradicated him only to bring him back from death with nothing but a 20 year gap in his brain to show for it? What was he to the one-eyed ghoul, anyway? For Haise, he'd been the only father the younger man had ever known. For Centipede, he was only an obstacle. But Kaneki Ken, with his once snow white locks dyed pure black like a loss of innocence, was another story.
"18 years," Arima began, but he never got the chance to finish his sentence.
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Haise lacked the ruthless nature engrained in most investigators' resolve. He was far too kind, yet cruel when he let himself go. His bloodlust knew no limits when it was exposed; no human, ghoul, or anything in between was spared from his often violent outbursts. They were scattered and erratic, intense in a way that only a ghoul could display, yet painfully human. Those caught in the crossfire were often desperate for some kind of resolution. But Haise, with his two-toned hair and mismatched eyes, didn't seem to favor balance.
Maybe that was the part of him that Arima ran through with his trusty quinque, creating space for a model investigator. It wasn't a clean cut, he knew, and that was the main problem. No matter how hard Arima buried the worries of the other, Kaneki Ken was a vengeful bastard who had too much to fix before the curtain call. Although he was still an insect who writhed in agony, begging to be put out of his misery, he knew when it was time for an encore. The messy aftermath that followed the wreck of Anteiku was certainly a clear indication.
It didn't matter how much of a pacifist Haise Sasaki was, nor did it matter how different he was from his original counterpart. Like the black roots underneath silvery locks the color of clouds, the ghost of Kaneki Ken still screamed requests that were impossible to hold off for long.
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Though his left eye was failing him and his attention was elsewhere, Arima Kishou saw the scene in front of him with startling clarity. He saw the way the boy's lips curled slightly upwards, felt the unspoken emotion within the faint expression. He watched as the crimson scaled hands wrapped around the stub of a quinque still impaling him. And then, almost too fast for him to track, they zipped upwards, splitting Kaneki Ken in half from the bottom of his ribcage to the tip of his head.