Disclaimer: TG and TG:re belong to Ishida-sensei.

Notes: Written for Tokyo Ghoul Week √2, Day 3 Wrath - "Desire for Harm" / "A plot, a scene, a character that made you really angry".

A Common Love

"Aaa~ why did you bring one almost dead?" Eto complains, as she is seeing Dr. Kanou performing a surgery in the nearly dead investigator. The left arm, along with a piece of his torso, isn't there anymore, as they had been eaten by Noro, according to Tatara's report. She thinks that the dove can hardly survive. It would be a waste if their first experiment failed.

"He's Houji's subordinate," Tatara replies, his tone carefully devoid of any emotion.

Even so, that's more than enough for Eto to understand.

Yes, he thinks. And he had Fei with him. And Fei had been named as Douhi.

Fei and Yan would never hurt him.

But in the shape of a quinque, handed by humans, they would. They would also hurt other ghouls.

And that enrages him to his core.

Nothing more fair than they turning the investigators into weapons, too. And it's not a sense of justice; it's a rage that guides him.

But to him, they could mean the same thing.

Eto's soft voice snaps him out of his thoughts.

"There is enough treachery, hatred, violence, absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day. Beware the average man, the average woman, beware their love. Their love is average, seeks average, but there is genius in their hatred, there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you, to kill anybody. Not wanting solitude, not understanding solitude, they will attempt to destroy anything that differs from their own¹.Did you know it, Tatara-san? It's Bukowski." And though he does not answer, Eto notes that she has Tatara's attention. "I guess we're not different from them – not in this, at least. And maybe that's why we hate each other so damn much."

And Tatara, much as he usually appreciates Eto's poetic raptures, feels the hatred and anger boiling in his veins, for being compared to humans; but he chooses to stay silent, once more.

Realizing this, Eto smiles to him, apologetic. Then, she asks:

"Did you bring him with you?"

She doesn't elaborate who she's referring to, but Tatara immediately catches it. He thinks back to the quinque left behind, the only thing in the world that it has been left of Fei.

"I left him behind so Houji will know that I found his subordinate."

"Is that so?" Eto asks, after an instant of silence, and her tone is indulgent, like she was talking to a child. "…Or you couldn't bring yourself to take him with you?"

He doesn't reply. Yet Eto has a knowing smile in her face – and if he didn't known her, he would say that it was almost a kind one –, and Tatara wonders if he did not really answer. Because even if he uses a mask, even if his face doesn't show any emotion, Eto seems to find an answer in his eyes.

Apparently satisfied with this, she leaves the monitoring room, in her fairy-walking. Tatara follows her with his eyes until the door shuts behind her, and then sighs. Well, he doesn't mind.

Tatara, on his part, chooses to stay.

He wants to see everything, until the very end.

And Tatara, as he watches the surgery, feels as if he's wearing Kanou's hands like gloves, as if he is the one that is cutting apart sinews and nerves, pushing organs and bones, shedding the blood, opening a way through the flesh, remaking the investigator to a ghoul's image.

Takizawa Seidou is only the first.

There would be others.

Their screams would shatter the dirty walls. Their blood would paint the ground. Their humanity would be slaughtered on that table.

Fei. Yan.

Are you seeing this?

Are you hearing this?

This is my toast to you.

¹From Bukowski's poem "The Genius of the Crowd".

Notes 2: The truth is, this scene, more than letting me mad, made me so sad. None of the investigators deserve any of this. Seidou… ;_;

And about quinques: when I think deeply about them, it makes my heart ache too. That person that you used to know is now just… a weapon, an object. (The scene in Root A where Ayato "meets" his father is just heartwreching.) Though I find Tatara cruel and all, I can see why he was so enraged at the sight of Seidou's quinque.

But just arghhh. Just why humans and ghouls can't understand each other, really.

Well, that's it. Comments are always appreciated.