Claimer: I do not own the infamous Tokyo Ghoul nor any characters, all right belong to the owner. This is first of some of my stories.
"The first I recalled of my current self was my eye patch, unfortunately underneath it was proof of my demon who wanted to run amuck."
-Kanna Kaneki
Notes: Originally published on on A03
Pairing: Fem!Ken/Male!Eto.
Genre: Romance/Horror/Angst/Drama
Chapter 1: Taste of Death
The scent of blood hung heavy and thick in the air, tingling like lightning and smelling like rich, dark chocolate as it filled her nose. Kaneki idly wondered if the taste truly was the same to her changed tastebuds before remembering that chocolate tasted like chalk to her now and she could no longer enjoy the bittersweet confection that she used to eat with unsweetened milk tea, her once-favorite drink. The idle thoughts were swept away as her empty stomach growled like a starving tiger, and she gradually raised heavy lids as she tried to locate the source of the scent. She cast her gaze about in confusion, saliva dribbling down the insides of her mouth to pool on her dry tongue as the hunger pangs increased. Where was she?
The memories came rushing back as she looked at the too-familiar blackness, felt the rough cloth of the blindfold where it sat, soaked with sweat and tears to the point where the salt was crusting on her cheeks and eyelids. If she could remove it she would only see the dreaded room with the checkered floor splattered with abstract designs of red and brown from blood, so much blood, her own blood.
She could hear her breathing increase its pace as she trembled in horror, jerking against the chains that kept her shackled to the dreaded chair, knocking into the dreaded bucket the bucket full of fingers and toes and flesh flesh fleSH HER FLESH ThAt hE fed hER bit By bit To HEAL HER AFTER TEARING HER APART. Severed digits and a tongue poured out from the bucket into a pool of spreading blood, adding more red to the floor and making her eyes roll back in her head as a fresh wave of scent washed over her.
Kaneki's mouth fell open and she fought harder against her restraints. The hunger ravaged her insides like a chained beast, clawing and howling for fresh blood and tender flesh to sate its appetite. She could hear the chains creaking, feel her raw skin break and bleed where the steel strained against her softened ankles and wrists as she pulled and kicked. The chair wobbled and fell, wood clattering and causing a loud splash as the bucket was shoved into the pool of blood from her kicking.
Her head struck the ground and the centipede in her ear jerked about for a moment before stilling again. She didn't care that the flesh and blood had once been her own, that the severed tongue lying in the grisly puddle had been cut free of her mouth only hours before. She wriggled and writhed, kakugan active and wide beneath the blindfold as she shuffled towards the sustenance that could quell the raging hunger.
"Starving, starving, oh Kami I'm starving meat give me meat and flesh and blood MAKE IT STOP IT HURTS I CAN'T TAKE IT PLEASE I'LL DIE I'LL DIE!"
She strained her neck, feeling the wet congealing blood against her cheek and in her hair (It's filthy anyway, it doesn't matter) and she opened her mouth, keening and growling and whining like a stray dog begging for scraps. She turned her head and tasted the blood, the crimson liquid staining her face as she lapped it up like a child would slurp melting ice cream. Soon she began chewing on a finger, and then a toe, and then more and more, the beast purring and speaking to her with Rize's voice as it praised and encouraged and mocked her all at once (You're so hungry and it tastes good, doesn't it? You're just too delicious, go on and eat yourself it'll help you live you don't want to die, do you? Good girl, eat the scraps he leaves you and live).
"So very hungry, aren't you? How pathetic, lying in your own filth and eating scraps like a starving bitch in an alleyway."
Kaneki paused and raised her head, blood and bits of flesh and muscle clinging to her face and hair and neck, her own tongue hanging from her mouth (tender and delicious, you like it don't you?) The voice was jarring in its honey sweet mockery, familiar and yet not. She didn't care, the stranger didn't want to steal her meal, if they approached she'd tear free and eat them too. She heard faint footsteps, smelled the ghoul (yes, he's a ghoul, but he smells odd, did he just eat? Or is he human? Both? Neither? I'm hungry, never mind him.)
"Do you taste that good, I wonder? I've never tasted hybrid meat. Or has your hunger robbed you of all reason so you can't even taste the difference between yourself and human meat?"
The strange ghoul (ghoul, an odd ghoul but a ghoul, ignore him and eat your fill) was standing near the doorway, observing her but not interfering as she gobbled down the contents of the emptied bucket. He began pacing the room, and she strained her ears to follow him—he might change his mind and want her meal after all, and she wasn't done. Her attention was fully captured at last when he suddenly seemed to vanish from the other side of the room and reappear beside her, crouching down to observe her gore-stained appearance from less than a foot away.
Kaneki growled low in her throat, turning her face towards the intruder and baring her teeth. Blood and saliva dribbled in a grisly pinkish mess down her chin, and she snapped at him when he swiped a bit with his thumb and smelled it.
"You do smell delicious. Well, at least your blood does. You'd need a good bath before I'd consider taking a bite. You're disgusting, all covered in sweat and oils and dirt. Yamori really has been letting you stew in your own filth. Ah, but a torture maniac like him hardly cares for the comfort and appearance of his victim, ne~, Ka-ne-ki-chan?"
He spoke in a sing-song manner, sounding morbidly childlike, and the human part of her shuddered as her nose catalogued his contrasting scent, the scent of a strong and dangerous adult with the same darker undertone as the Manager, Yomo, and Jason. Kakuja. Her hunger finally sated from gorging on several pounds of flesh and bone, Kaneki swallowed the severed pinkie protruding from between her teeth, and the intruder made a small sound of amusement as he observed the movement.
"I really should write this down, I could use it in my next novel,"
He commented, giggling a bit as she growled and shook her head, trying to dislodge the blindfold. The centipede wriggled again in her ear from the movement, squirming and twitching and digging claws into the delicate insides of her ear canal. She shrieked as a claw ripped into her eardrum, smacking her head and wriggling as she rubbed her head against her shoulder, keening as the blindfold loosened slightly. Bandaged fingers appeared, untying the knot and pulling away the grayish cloth. Kaneki blinked, kakugan and human eye alike wide and dilated as the dim light of the room entered her pupils.
She recognized the ghoul now, vaguely. Eto, the mysterious bandaged ghoul that sat by quietly as Tatara had impaled her in front of the assembled Aogiri forces. She knew nothing about him, very few did, but as her hunger settled and her human and ghoul selves started to do battle again, she was just coherent enough to realize that the way he was staring at her was unsettling. He gasped in surprised delight as the centipede emerged from her ear, slithering from the passage onto the blood-soaked floor and scuttling hurriedly away, and tilted his head to examine her exposed ear, streaked with blood and inner ear fluids.
She was a filthy disgusting mess, reeking of blood, sweat, bodily oils, and traces of urine (Jason had even robbed her of that privacy, forcibly pulling down her skirt and panties and laughing at her humiliation as she was forced to relieve herself in a bucket and chastised for making the room stink). That same human part of her itched to scrub away at her skin until she was red and raw and the shameful feelings washed away with the grime coating her body. Eto left her there, lying on the floor and shattered inside and out, and despite the discomfort she gradually went numb and succumbed to exhaustion. She drifted and dozed for a time, at one point registering the chair being moved and the feeling of her clothes being changed, she lashed out, but heard the hushed murmurs of Nico as he crooned apologies to her, wiping her leaden body down with a wet cloth.
She was too drained to feel as embarrassed as she should have, and unlike Jason or Eto he was actively helping her, so she drifted off again, the dampness of sweat and blood exchanged for the remnants of her sponge bath. The small gesture made her human self murmur happily, though Rize complained about still being cuffed and commented that if Nico truly wanted to help he would let her go free and run back to the relative safety of Anteiku.
She didn't know how long it had been, minutes, hours, days, weeks? Jason returned again and soon her freshly cleaned clothes were ruined as thoroughly as before. He laughed long and hard upon witnessing the overturned bucket, and she paid the price for eating her fill in the loss of more of her blood and flesh. She saw and heard Rize more frequently, and hallucinated scenes of death and violence and loss. She saw her mother die again, felt the pain of her Aunt's disdain again, screamed as Rize ripped her open, witnessed the death of Fueguchi Ryouko, fought the young inspector on the river bank, battled the restaurant scrapper, fled from Tsukiyama, and intermittently returned to the horrific checkerboard room and Yamori's twisted games from the depths of her memories.
Sometimes the events were the same and other times they went differently—did she not let her mother leave? Did she protest against her aunt's mistreatment? Did she escape Rize? Fight and kill the investigators to protect Hinami and her mother? Beat Tsukiyama at his own game and devour him? Turn on Yamori? No. She didn't, and all of that was in the past, too late to change...except the last one, though the opportunity was unlikely to come to pass.
Yamori had her weakened from drugs, pain, and hunger, restrained and helpless to fight or flee. Nico bathed her again. The centipede was inside her again. The bucket was full and overflowing, reeking of blood and rotting flesh. Kei, the sweet and caring mother, and little Kouta, her quiet and obedient little boy, were lying still and cold in the corner, decomposing together in silence. What was she? She was weak. A failure, a monster, a human, a ghoul, a hybrid made by the lying doctor. His own personal Frankenstein's monster. An abomination with nowhere to go and no one to save her.
She awoke from a dream...or was it another flashback? More hallucinations? She was having trouble telling the difference. Rize's giggles rang in her ears as she blinked open her eyes once more. Her blindfold was off again, and she saw that the room was the same as it had been the last time her eyes were uncovered, filthy and dank and stinking of blood, fear, vomit, and rotten flesh. Yamori was gone, the designated cleaners were not present, and Nico had left after sponging her off and changing her clothes.
The feel of clean cloth, clean hair, and clean skin...it was a luxury she had dearly missed, and she could almost cry at the thought that this little gesture meant so much to her now that she couldn't change clothes or bathe on her own, that her captivity made her so grateful for little details like these. However, these thoughts ceased to hold her attention when her hearing picked up the sound of the door opening.
"Hello again, Kaneki-chan. Did you miss me?"
Eto had returned. His footsteps were so light and quiet that she had to strain her hearing to catch them, and he was skipping gaily around the room in a manner that probably should have sent loud thumps and thuds echoing through the room from the impacts of his feet on the tile. Leave it to a ghoul to defy expectations, even small ones like so. The ghoul hummed a little tune as he skip-hopped over the corpses of Kei and Kouto, and a part of her, buried beneath Rize and the pain and hunger, screamed and cried at the reminder of how she failed them and let them die, that in choosing both she chose neither, just like her FOOLISH MOTHER.
A hoarse, choked little sound escaped her parched throat, not quite a whine but not a groan either, and Eto paused. In less time than it took to blink he was standing in front of her, leaning forward until his face was level with hers. He was standing so close to her that Kaneki could feel his body heat, the warmth sending a shiver up her spine.
"Ne, ne, was that an answer? So you did get bored of Yamori! He's quite unpleasant, but he's very useful, otherwise we might have just killed him." Eto cocked his head, the outline of a smile appearing beneath the wrapping of bandages."Unfortunately for you, you aren't that great a bargaining chip. Perhaps if the doctor had held on to you instead of letting you to your own devices, and forced you to train more we would have considered more. At least you're keeping our resident psychopath occupied, having him kill his subordinates so often was starting to cut down our ranks of cannon fodder." Eto turned slightly, facing her from the side and dropping down to sit on the floor.
Kaneki growled low in her throat, ugly and harsh with anger. She didn't care if Eto would punish her for it, she hated him. She wanted to rip free of her binds and tear out his throat, silence those mocking chortles and vile words. Her ghoul self raged against her captivity and subjugation, while her human self protested against the cruelty and lack of care for the regular ghouls caught up in Aogiri's madness.
Aogiri's executives were the very worst, and she remembered Ayato's assertion that he was a "softie" compared to his comrades, the severed heads of Banjou's friends hanging from Jason's grip, Tatara's uncaring dismissal of her after running her through, the ruthless attacks of the Bin brothers against any who dared disobey or ask questions. They deserved to die, to be erased by the CCG or by ghouls strong enough to match them. And in that moment she longed for the strength to do that herself, the mental fortitude and physical power to stop these monsters for good. But it was not to be.
"Oh? Are you angry? Good." Eto's kakugan glowed from within the bandages, his scent growing sharper as his RC cells gathered beneath his skin and advertised his strength in response to her challenge. "You play at being a pacifist, but you have parts of the binge eater in you, an alpha ghoul that fought off strong opponents with ease. If only you unlocked that earlier instead of fearing and repressing it, then you might have been strong enough to fight off Jason like she could, we might have recruited you happily and given you a position of honor in our ranks. It's too late for that now. Jason will kill you before too long, and the bloody butterfly inside you will stay trapped in its human chrysalis."
"Shut up." The words left her in a low snarl, worthy of a cornered wolf as it stared down the barrel of the hunter's gun. Eto went silent for a moment, staring at Kaneki in curiosity before chuckling darkly and standing again, moving towards her with all the deadly grace of the predator that he was. He stood in front of her once more, between her spread knees, and leaned forward so that their foreheads touched.
"You're much more interesting than I expected. How delightful," he murmured, shadowed eyes boring into her own. His kakugan no longer shone, and she could just barely make out the color of his irises—a deep rich green like healthy grass or the newly grown leaves of trees in spring. She met his gaze with eyes of polished steel, cold and hard and angry, but the staring contest didn't last long. Her body was leaden and even speaking had drained her reserves of strength. Kaneki could feel the encroaching darkness pulling her under. Her eyelids flickered, and she faintly heard Eto's eerie little giggle as they finally slid shut and she slumped in her seat, unable to fight her own body.
Her awareness returned gradually, and when her eyes opened and focused again she saw that she had been moved and rearranged, stretched out on the floor (it was actually clean for once, how strange) with Eto kneeling between her parted thighs and staring at her face, his fingers playing with her hair. The touch was gentle but unnerving, and Kaneki flinched, frozen by shock and fear under the male that was too close, too comfortable as he loomed over her and touched her in ways only Hide had ever been allowed to, as her best friend and brother in all but blood. Only Hide and Hinami were allowed to touch her hair or her face, and both of them touched her with care and fondness, not this strange exploratory touching that set off a warning alarm in her mind, clouded and confused as her thoughts were.
The hand trailed from the tousled white locks that splayed around her head like a halo (when had they turned white? They'd been black, and then iron grey, and now snowy white?) and caressed her forehead and cheeks, skimming over the soft skin of her throat as light as the touch of a feather. Eto traced the rise of her collarbone and down her sternum, between the mounds of her unbound breasts, and even further down, over her navel to her hipbone. Kaneki shuddered as his bandaged thumb rubbed back and forth over the shape of the bone, letting loose a small squeak of surprise at the pleasant sensation. Eto chuckled and skimmed his hand over her stomach again, raising the hem of her shirt and licking a line from the waistband of her shorts to her navel and causing her to yelp.
His other hand stroked down her back, caressing the base of her skull and continuing down her spine until his fingers rested over her kakuhou, rubbing gently and sending sparks of liquid pleasure into her stomach. She gasped in shock, eyes wide, and if the RC inhibitors weren't still in her bloodstream her kagune would have emerged. She felt her tensed muscles forcefully relax, and as Eto continued rubbing that spot her body began responding, her nipples gradually hardening as wet heat slowly gathered between her thighs. The male ghoul cupped her left breast in his free hand, his hand beneath her shirt as he lightly pinched her erect nipple and kneaded the surrounding flesh.
Kaneki's mind was hazed from confusion, exhaustion, and lust. She was a virgin, though she had touched herself before, and this was something else, more intense and foreign than anything she had ever experienced. She wanted to stop this, to push him away and deny him the right to toy with her like this, yet she wanted more, craved the pleasure that rang through her body and made her blood sing in her veins, so different from the agony she had endlessly faced for so long.
Her legs spread wider and her body trembled from the building intensity of the pleasure and the confusing arousal that made her dizzy and breathless as he sharply prodded the sensitive spot. She instinctively arched her back, giving him easier access, and cried out as she felt his teeth scrape the shell of his ear and his tongue teasing her throat, tasting the faint mist of sweat that dusted her skin as her blood heated with unfamiliar warmth.
She didn't realize that he had pulled down her mutilated pants in the midst of distraction, not until she felt her legs being bent and the fabric sliding down her calves and ankles, and she abruptly noticed that she was now half naked. Nico hadn't provided her with any fresh undergarments, and her most private and vulnerable anatomy was now on full display to Eto's eyes. Kaneki pulled at the cuffs still binding her hands, wanting to cover herself, but Eto shuffled lower and the next thing she knew he had parted the bandages on his face and his tongue was on her.
Kaneki cried out at the feeling, thighs clenching and toes curling as he licked over her leisurely in long steady swipes, tasting the flavor of her arousal with the air of a cat lapping up cream. He teased her entrance with his tongue, pressing on her hymen and shallowly flicking his tongue in and out of her, slowly rubbing her clit with his thumb in time with the rubbing of her kakuhou. When he penetrated her with his fingers, the bandages getting soaked with fluid and scraping pleasantly against her inner walls, it drove her higher and higher until she finally fell from the peak of pleasure with a strangled cry.
Kaneki was lost in ecstasy, shaking from the force of her orgasm, and she mewled quietly as she came down to earth again, her body loose and relaxed. Aches she didn't know she had were gone, and she was so relaxed and exhausted that she nearly drifted off to a sated sleep. Unfortunately, the hazy cloud of relaxation began to fade when Eto decided to remind her of his presence, cleaning his face and fingers of her fluids with a wide grin on his face.
"You really are delicious, perfectly balanced between human-sweet and ghoul-sour. Does that apply to the rest of you, though?" He mused, and then grinned again. This time, he bared his teeth, and she experienced a flash of the same visceral fear she felt when Tsukiyama had had her broken and bloody on the floor of the church, when Rize stood over her with kagune extended and her blood on her lips. Was he about to eat her alive?
She was bound and helpless before him and she hated it, wriggling and trying to escape his grip but not having the strength to get away. She was strung out from more than a week of nothing but pain and exhaustion and starvation, her kagune refusing to emerge despite her attempts to call on it because of the drugs in her veins. He was ridiculously strong for such a short and slim...man? Boy? She couldn't shake him off of her even when she called on all of her remaining strength, and outside of the room the only friends she had were either locked away or on the other side of Tokyo. She would find no help here.
She thrashed and kicked, struggled and swore, pulling on her cuffs until her raw wrists were bleeding again, but her efforts were in vain. Kaneki's thighs were caught and lifted, bent upwards until her knees were level with her shoulders, and she barely had time to register that he was pressing against her before he pulled her hips towards him and slid inside. She expected to feel pain, but it was nothing, a mere pinch as she was stretched wide around him, and she was caught between the urge to moan at the sensation or to burst into humiliated tears for being brought so very low.
This was hardly the way she pictured losing her virginity, bound and held in place by a ghoul on the floor of a torture chamber. Even though he was being gentle, it wasn't because of love or care—he probably found it fun to wind her up and just wanted to get a stronger reaction out of her. He was a stranger that was...was this rape? She had tried to get away from him, tried to protest and reject this, but at the same time it felt deliciously good (wasn't it supposed to hurt?), and she felt little else but shame and reluctant passion as he started to thrust inside her, sheathing and withdrawing himself in a leisurely rhythm.
Their gazes were locked, Eto's eyes half-lidded and still human-green while Kaneki's were wide open, her right eye still as grey as the sky during rain while her left had transformed, her sclera pitch black and iris as red as fresh blood, boring into her captor with a confused jumble of conflicting emotions. He groaned quietly as he angled her hips, going deeper inside than before and brushing against something as he thrust in that made her gasp and throw back her head as it sent tingling electric sparks through her nerves. Eto leaned down to nip at her exposed throat, pushing down the collar with his chin and leisurely marking the pale flesh with sharp little bites that stopped just short of breaking the skin.
Upon reaching the junction of her neck and shoulder he bit down harder, causing her blood to run into his mouth and stain the collar of her shirt. Kaneki shuddered and tensed, fearing that he would rip open her throat, but he simply stayed there, teeth embedded in her flesh but not ripping it free. He finally picked up the pace, and soon her body was rocking back and forth from the force of his thrusting, and she started to pant quietly, staring at the ceiling as teardrops trailed from her eyes and into her hair. She could feel the same sensations as before, multiplied exponentially by the stimulation inside her, and when Eto flicked his thumb over her clit her orgasm hit her again, more forceful than it ever had before.
Kaneki was quiet this time, her mouth open in a soundless cry and her eyes squeezed shut as the pressure in her groin snapped and her entire body tensed, locking in place and shuddering for over a minute before she collapsed limply, her head lolling to the side as her bangs covered her eyes. She felt Eto bite down harder and go still above her as trickling warmth flooded her insides. Her human self recoiled at the thought that he came inside of her before her ghoul self cut in, reminding her that as a hybrid she was most likely sterile and she was going to be killed before too long anyway. Eto moved off of her then, withdrawing his teeth from her shoulder and pulling out of her. He tucked himself away with a sigh and grabbed her discarded pants, pulling them up her legs and re-buttoning them.
Kaneki was half-asleep, barely noticing what Eto was doing as he finished redressing her and placed her back in the chair. After arranging her limp form back into the position he first found her in, he yawned loudly, arms stretched over his head, and left the room without a goodbye or acknowledgement of any kind. The door closed, and shortly afterwards Kaneki lost the battle to stay conscious. Her last thought was that at this point she might have preferred if Eto had just snapped her neck and spared her the slow and painful death Jason had planned for her.
Notes: I in no way condone rape or molestation.
