A/N: MIA for a long time since the last drabble. Sorry about that. /bows Anyways! I had this little story in my head a few days ago and decided to actually write it down before I get lazy. (Motivation is fleeting. I should try discipline instead.) So. thank you so much for giving this little fic a chance! *cookie shower* Please R&R till your heart's delight. I want to improve my writing so criticisms are very much welcomed!

Disclaimer. I do not own Tokyo Ghoul. You guys know who does. XD

"In this mad, mad world, I lost my mind like the hatter who lost his head."

Hunger is a natural instinct. An impulse of a functioning body.

Hunger discriminates no one and accepts everyone.

To a ghoul, hunger is the rawest of instincts. It strikes the body at the very core, reverberating in every bone, every muscle, every nerve, every cell. A ghoul is overwhelmed in an uncontrollable frenzy. An unstoppable and unforgiving hunger fest that negates all logical thinking.

It cannot be ignored, cannot be forgotten, cannot be abandoned.

To satiate their hunger, they are forced to hunt. Blood will be spilt, flesh will be ripped, lives will be lost.

Hunger is excruciating.

To be hungry is to be alive.

"Dear child, how would you like to see the other side of sanity?"

Your first kill. (Your first meal.) Which was it? A man? A woman? A boy? A girl?

I don't remember...

Who was it? Did somebody love them? Did they love somebody? Did they have someone waiting for them?

I don't know. I don't..know…

Stop it.

You murdered them. You ate them. You ate a person like you. You ate a human like you.

I didn't.

I didn't kill them... I didn't eat them…I didn't do anything!

It wasn't me.. It wasn't me!

It's the monster…I swear!

It's the monster's doing! It's all it's fault!

Not mine..

NOT MINE!

The mind struggles to keep its sanity.

But.

But…

bUT…

iT TasTEd So gOoD..

SO GOoD…So…GoOd…

mORE.

MoRE..

I NeeD MorE…

GiVE iT tO ME…

GiVe iT TO mE!

But it breaks.

"Come face to face with your insanity."

It feels so wrong. It feels so, so wrong. (It feels so right.) You know it's wrong. You know, it isn't right. Yet, you couldn't hold yourself back. Your eyes were pulsating, your mouth salivating, your muscles tingling. Your mind was clouded, muddled by the need that burned ferociously in the pit of your abdomen. Muddled by the waft of a human scent within the musky smell that encased the damp alley. It sent your body into a state of shock. Freezing, seizing, jittering, spasming. Your body was drunk in frenzy. It was craving. Craving for meat. Craving for human meat.

I don't want to do this.

Please stop.

Jaws clamping tight, you sunk your teeth forcefully into the arm of the person. The dead person. The soft skin broke, your teeth embedding deeper and deeper into the still warm flesh. Your mouth was soaked with the juiciness of the tender pink flesh, red red liquid dripping like a leaking pipe down the edges of your wet lips. With a tug, you ripped the arm in a mouthful, chewing with the grace of a hunger stricken beast.

This is nice.

The rawness of the flesh and the crunch of bone in your mouth as your teeth grinds it into a bloody pulp. The moistness from the blood easing it as it passes down the narrow tunnel of your throat. And the full satisfaction when the lump of meat hits rock bottom of your stomach. Truly, truly. It was a tantalizing feeling.

This is good.

This is very, very good.

This is delicious!

…

Delicious…?

What?

What did I just…?

No, not again…

Not again.

No.

NO!

Stumbling and falling onto the blood soaked ground, your eyes stayed glued on the body lying limply before you. Bleeding crimson and broken. Your face contorted in horrified shock. Your eyes were wide and wet as you stared at the body, mouth agape. Fear ravaged you. Body and mind. The frenzy that your mind succumbed to mere moments ago subsided. As your momentarily shattered mind started recollecting the pieces, you realized what you had done. Again.

Cannibal.

You're a cannibal.

Body attacked by violent spasms, you choked, hitting your stomach repeatedly, over and over again trying to force the goddamn chunks of meat you consumed out of your system.

One Two Three One Two Three One Two Three!

You felt your eyes hot with tears, realizing that it isn't working. It never works.

Why does it never work?

Your actions were futile. They had always been futile.

Spit it out! SpiT iT OuT!

You aren't supposed to kill. It's a crime. You aren't supposed to be eating humans. It's a taboo. You knew that. You KNOW that. Why? Because you are human too. You could never be anything lesser or anything more than human. You were born a human and you would die a human. Humans have moralities, have order, have structure, have conscience.

So why?

Why?!

And just when I escaped that hell hole of a 'home'. Away from that maniacal bastard of a father.

WhY?

WhY dID tHIs hAppEN tO Me?

"What is the reason for madness?"

The retrieval of Naki was the goal of the operation. Kaneki Ken stood on the edge of the building as his gaze swept over the city of Tokyo, surveying the possible routes of the CCG van that held the ghoul imprisoned.

He realized, Tokyo looked so peaceful. Shining bright in reds, whites and yellows beneath the wide, starlit sky. But any person would know. In the reality they walk, 'peace' was just a word that holds no ounce of truth. But still, it is a word of significance.

However, with the incessant war between the two kinds, humans and ghouls, peace seems like a naïve wish. A naivety born of unripe thinking and childish beliefs. A naivety within the constant madness of a civilization that is ever aware of their carnivorous counterparts.

Peace is just an ideal, so heavily sunk beneath the intricate weaving of the human conscience, it might as well be almost impossible for it to resurface.

Peace is lost.

Kaneki Ken knows this. Behind his leather mask, despite always wearing an expression of neutrality, he understands. His desire to protect his cherished ones. A desire that grows stronger by the day and even pushed him to turn away from Anteiku, to abandon his home, his friends, is the very desire that grew from the inhibitors of a peaceful living.

Awareness.

It is for their sake. He constantly reminds himself. It is all for them that he was willing to join the very group that stripped him bare of his humanity.

For the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

If that were the truth, everyone might as well be a 'friend'.

To gain the strength he needed to keep them alive and safe, he had thrust himself right into the heart of madness, Aogiri Tree.

Torture. Kill. Destroy.

Whatever it takes.

To protect the ones he love.

He would do whatever it takes.

"Silly girl, there is no reasoning behind madness."

An ear piercing scream pierced through the empty silence of the night. It sounded alike the wail of a dying animal. It was a terrifying sound.

The cry of a person on the brink of humanity.

Kaneki's ears perked up as it detected the cry resounding in the air. In that instance, his body tensed, the muscles beneath his skin petrified by the sheer intensity of such wretched emotion. It doesn't show on his face. But he can feel it. He can feel an ever growing emotion wrapping its thick claws around his body. He felt his heartbeat quicken its pace in his constricted chest. Felt the tightening of his lungs as the panic builds up.

That scream…sounded too familiar. Instinctively, he thought of someone precious.

Touka-chan..

That sounded like Touka-chan.

Racing towards the source, Kaneki only hoped that he would make it in time for whatever that has happened…

Your strangled voice erupted from your throat in a cry of despair. You were terrified. Fingers dug into the side of your head, you let your fear tear through. Gripping your hair so hard that it threatens to unroot from your scalp. Your body shaking so hard from your choking sobs.

You were losing it.

You know you were. You can feel the thinning strings of sanity slowly snapping in your mind. And this terrified you. You are not a monster. You didn't want to be a monster.

But the hunger..

The hunger that you thought had passed returned. It wrapped and warped your mind, driving your humanity to the edge of existence. And it didn't help being enveloped by the metallic stench of blood and that lump of body right before you. It only acted as a catalyst to the further degradation of your already brittle mind.

Hell.

This is hell.

In a desperate attempt to keep your sanity, you reacted. You tried to run.

Away.

Away from that blood drenched alley.

Away from that asylum.

But one cannot escape their own mind.

No matter how hard you tried, you couldn't move. The human wishes to escape; the monster wishes to satiate. Your body stays, solidly rooted to the concrete floor. Like a rabid animal, your cries were audible and ever increasing in volume and intensity, saliva and foam overflowing from your snarling lips. You fought. With your very mind you've now come to fear, you fought. Because you realized. This is the final battle. If you lose this, you lose everything. Your principles, your conscience, the very thing you call 'self", everything will crumble in the grip of the monstrosity residing in you. It wants out. A body to control, a body it can call its own. The ghoul was overpowering.

"SoMEoNe…"

"PLeasE. HelP mE…"

Your voice was fading. It had took every ounce of the little control you had left just to utter those few words of plea. But what good did that do? Who can help you when there's no one around? Your loss was a certainty. And your will to fight was disintegrating. You hoped for a savior. A person who would give you salvation. You wanted to stay human but if that wasn't possible, you'd give up.

Kaneki Ken could smell it, the reek of blood carried through the midnight breeze flooded his nostrils as he neared the source of the voice. He could also smell the presence of another ghoul. And from there he knew, someone had died. His running steps faltered when he reached the end of the block. Taking cautious steps, he moved into the shadows of the alley and was selfishly relieved at the sight he saw.

It wasn't Touka-chan.

The body that laid lifeless in a pool of its own blood was a man. Not a woman.

It's not Touka-chan.

The other form that kneeled by him though was that of a blood covered, female ghoul with dark cascading hair. He had found you. His relief lasted only that moment before his reflex kicked in, dodging the sudden lash of blackish red that smashed the wall of the building into rubble. You had sensed him.

He watched you stood up slowly in graceful movements, your kagune swirling in deep criomson in the black, black night. All it took was a blink of an eye, and you had already moved in front of him, kagune poised high before striking down on him repeatedly. Your attacks were erratic, striking all the time. They were strong, with the full brute strength of a rinkaku. But they lacked in precision. And it failed to garner the slightest of cracks in Kaneki's composure. You didn't faze him at all.

Being the newly 'born" ghoul you were, your body was still unaccustomed to the final stages of the ghoul metamorphosis and your body struggled obviously with the power of the kagune. It was evident in the way you moved. Stiff and uncoordinated. You still had the natural battle prowess of a predator. But that was it.

It was an advantage Kaneki had over you.

He was no longer the weakling he used to be. Unlike you, he had embraced his ghoul side. He fought many battles, took down enemies far dangerous and far more powerful. He thrived and he survived. Kaneki is a survivor in the ruthless world of ghouls. Not merely a survivor but also a seasoned fighter. He is experienced as he is strong. And he could tell, from your attacks that made no contact and footwork that could break your feet, you stood no chance against him. All he needed was one strike. One strike from his own blood stained rinkaku to put you down. It was easier now that you had exhausted yourself from the rain of missed strikes. You were heaving raggedly, body slumped, rinkaku wilted.

This was his chance.

He closed the distance between you and him that had been made from his dodging from your kagune, his rinkaku sharp and ready. And he struck.

But the attack never landed. His kagune stopped right a few inches from your forehead. What he saw now in the dim whiteness of a flickering street light, aroused the sense of familiarity and hesitation in him. He couldn't. Your face was clear now. It was blood smeared and crazed but that wasn't what had stopped him. It was your eyes. Or rather, eye.

You had only one eye of a ghoul's.

He stared at you. For once in the rare times now Kaneki showed emotion, he showed shock. A one-eyed ghoul that was unaccounted for. Neither by the CCG nor by Aogiri Tree. He wondered how it was even possible for you to have stayed under radar for so long. Until now. His thin lips parted so slightly and a question was uttered.

"Who…?"

But how could you answer? Your body was now the vessel of a starved monster. You were no longer in control. Your human side has resided under the power of your ghoul counterpart.

But not entirely, never entirely.

One can never be fully suppressed. All they need to do is fight. To continue fighting for a place in the portrait of life. When you heard his voice, it resonated with you. You didn't know the white haired man. But you recognized the tone of his voice. There was empathy in them. This was salvation. You could tell. And you didn't intend to let it go.

Against the ghoul in you, the battle was tough. You strained for dominance over it. No matter how brief, you needed it. This was you final chance at freedom from the monster's claws. From the hell in your mind itself. Just one last fight.

"Help..me…plea..se…"

Your voice was in a low and soft, barely escaping pass your cleched teeth. It sounded more of a growl than a plea in desperation. But that was all you could manage. It was good enough. It was good enough. Because from the look on Kaneki's face when he heard your uttered words, you knew he understood.

And of course Kaneki understood. He had been in your shoes once. He was like you. In denial. Resisting and resisting. Unwilling to lose the human in him. Unwilling to become a monster. Unwilling to accept the ugly face of reality. Kaneki craved for salvation then. A permanent solution to the problem. And salvation was given. But of a different kind. He was at odds end. Either he rejects the truth and accepts it. His saviour had held the former from him. It was not a choice ever given to him.

Death is never a solution.

Death is running away, a spineless escape. It is a cowards' act. But sometimes, deep down in Kaneki's mind, he wonders why he didn't choose to be a coward then instead of choosing to stretch himself for both worlds.

Death is lonely. He had lived his life in solitude to know its many faces and tolerate it. But death is also peace. A selfish peace. Kaneki was many things. But he is never ever, selfish.

Still, there were times he longed for it. And when he saw the state you were, the memory of the night he met Touka replayed in his head.

You were him.

And he was you.

You are given the same choices he was given. But you reject the ghoul in you whole-heartedly. You reject that very part of your existence that has diverged from original self. A body with split heads.

You rejected yourself.

Kaneki realized this from your glowering, wet eyes, you will never accept yourself. He empathized with you. He chose to give you what he could never have. He chose to give you the freedom that he can never have anymore.

By the red streaked eye that bonded you both, he chose to be your savior.

"There is only you."