Bear with me; I'm admittedly rusty...

*Spoiler Alert* This is my attempt at writing my take on the events immediately after Ch.86 of the manga

Touka awoke with a jolt staring up into the stars and gasping for breath. She attempted to move but found she couldn't move her arms or legs at all. All she could manage was to lean her head to the side where it met against something soft and yet surprisingly firm at the same time. Blinking heavily, she found herself staring up into the warm dark and all too familiar gaze of Kaneki Ken.

"Is that you…Kaneki?"

His eyes were both warm and dark for the moment, looking down at her with quiet affection and that sadness that had never managed to go away since his kidnapping. Even as Haise, the investigator, she'd noticed it. Behind his giant smiles and silly puns, the sadness and tragedy of Kaneki Ken still always managed to bleed through.

"You're a mess…Touka-chan." He quipped quietly, subconsciously pulling her tighter to his chest, a small sad grin on his face as he repeated the same remark he'd spoken the last time he'd found her in his arms like this...after his kidnapping.

She sucked in a deep breath to let out a harsh fake laugh at his quip and found herself with a wracking coughing fit. Stupid Kaneki. What did he expect? Their time spent running and fighting through sewers and drainage pipes under Cochlea surely wasn't going to be pleasant had the rescue gone off without a hitch. But she was too weak to even properly yell at him and call him out for his stupidity. When her coughing subsided, she let her temple fall back to the side against his chest and she sighed.

"Why does every rescue mission I go on end with me in your arms?" she complained softly instead of insulting him. She lifted her head slightly off his chest and let it fall against him in a half hearted attempt at violence. His grip on her tightened as he chuckled.

"Just my luck I guess," he responded looking down at her with that awkward smile of his that she hadn't seen in years and she was sure that if he hadn't been currently holding her close to his chest, he would have been scratching the back of his head sheepishly in that habit of his.

"The others…" she started half sitting up in his arms and looking around desperately. How could she forget, what about Yomo, her brother, Hinami, everyone. The last thing she remembered was the weird inspectors in white jackets, looking up above as darkness and death came raining down...

He interrupted her with an answer before she could even ask the question.

"Squad zero is carrying them all. Yomo-san, Ayato, Hinami, Banjou-kun. They are all ahead of us." He nodded in the direction ahead of them and she turned her head slightly to see.

Sure enough, a number of white cloaked and hooded figures were walking ahead of them through the alley and she could the limp forms of her friends (her family) hanging over their backs.

"They are all going to be fine. They'll heal." Kaneki assured her before bringing his head down lower to hers so he was talking only to her. He paused a moment, considering his next words carefully. "They're still here Touka."

You're not alone

She closed her eyes tightly against his words, forcing herself to swallow the tears that threatened to spill as relief washed over her. They were all alive. Years of anxiety she hadn't fully realized she had been holding on to fell from her shoulders. Her head fell back against his chest as she breathed deeply into him and fought to keep her composure.

Everyone was still here. They'd rescued Hinami, picked up Ayato surprisingly on the way, and even more unexpectedly…

"And you." She said softly, opening her eyes to look up at him. He was no longer looking at her, staring steadfastly ahead as they walked through the moonlight, deliberately avoiding her gaze as she had been fighting to keep her composure. His lips were pressed into a hard line at her words as if they pained him somehow.

"You're still here." She said more firmly to him, assuring the both of them that this was real and not some twisted dream... He was still here, he had come back, after all these years and everything he'd been through…

"What did they do to you…?"

The words fell from her lips as soon as she thought them. She'd thought about it countless times over the years. About how he'd never gotten the chance to tell her the first time she'd asked him that question. She thought about how childish she'd been back then, when she WAS a child...stupidly writing off his decisions, being angry with him, hitting him, screaming at him, cursing his existence and judging all of the choices he'd made after they'd taken him…and all along she'd never known what had happened to him. Never known his reasons. In their time apart, she had regretted it so much it had threatened to nearly tear her apart.

She waited for his reply, the backs of her fingers ghosting gently over his bangs but he didn't even break his stride, just kept staring forward steadfastly. His hand that held her close to him twitched and she just knew that, if he were able to, he'd be scratching and touching his chin, searching for words in order to hide the truth from her. She reached up to brush his stark white hair out of his eyes.

"All this time…what happened to you…" still he gave no reply. She saw the muscles in his neck contract as he stiffened visibly before her eyes. She bit her lip as she saw his jaw tense up as he ground his teeth while remembering what manner of horrors she couldn't even begin to imagine.

The tears she had been holding back threatened to fall again as she watched him teeter on the edge. She ran her fingers more roughly and quickly through his hair, fisting the long locks as her emotions got the better of her. She just needed to grip onto him, terrified that he was going to disappear before her eyes again.

"What happened to you…" she ground out through gritted teeth, her voice growing thick with emotion. It barely registered in her mind that he had stopped walking, was instead standing in the shadows of the dark moonlit alleyway. His hands that gripped her waist and her legs were shaking and shuddering but his grip on her never loosened or threatened to drop her.

"Tell me." She added more softly, a whispered plea. She didn't want him to suffer alone, she wanted to know all that he had been through these years. Every moment she'd missed out on, no matter how horrid. He dropped his head and turned away from her, his shoulders stiff and tense. He shook his head once, in what she understood immediately to be his refusal. Her hand fisted in his hair reflexively and wrenched his head toward her.

"Look. At. Me." She commanded him as she used to, grabbing his chin as she turned his head and holding his head in place to force him to meet her gaze. Kaneki held his eyes closed against her command, his shoulders starting to shudder.

"I can't…" he told her through gritted teeth, a sob partially escaping him between deep breaths. "I can't, I can't I can't…." he repeated over and over growing increasingly agitated and manic, sinking down onto his knees with her still in his arms and crying out just as he had on that night in the alley where she had run into him so long ago…

"Look at me." She commanded again, more gentle this time but no less demanding. A harsh request. Tears leaked from his clenched eyelids and he opened his eyes and she was looking at Kaneki Ken…The same sad, sorrowful eyes she had seen that night in the alley when he had been driven by the ravenous hunger of the ghoul he had become...the same eyes he had when he learned just how twisted this world really was...

"I can't…Touka…" he stated quietly, calming ever so slightly as his eyes met hers. Tears leaked from her own eyes as she looked at him, and her fingers softened their hold in his head. "I -"

"You're still here." She assured him, as he had just assured her. "You're still here, you're right fucking here." she swore to him as her hand holding his chin in place shook with emotion..

"Whatever it was that happened…whatever they did to you..."

"You're still you."

His lips quivered as he met her gaze, never blinking and in one swift motion she released her hold on his chin to wrap her arm around his neck as he pulled her up higher into his arms and buried his forehead in the crook of her neck and crushed her to him.

"How-" he whispered into her skin, so soft she barely heard him. "How do you know? It's so- hard, sometimes, I don't know, I can't, I can't I can't…" he started repeating manically into her shoulder rocking them both back and forth on his knees as he gripped her to his chest like a lifeline. Her fingers tightened in his hair to shush him.

"Baka…" she cursed softly, the tiniest of smiles appearing on her face. "I told you once…"

"I know you better than you know yourself."

Kaneki bit out a small laugh at the bittersweet memory and she could feel him smile into her shoulder as he laughed gently for a moment before he finally broke down truly into wracking sobs.

They held each other, crying into one another's shoulders in the moonlit alley, the reality of their reunion finally reaching them.

"You're back," Touka whispered to him over and over again as Kaneki fell apart in her arms.

"I'm back…"

I had been working on this idea for a good two weeks and this is NOT what I was trying to write...but I like it nonetheless.
I forgot how stories can simply take a life of their own...

There will be a part two which will be the scene that I had been INTENDING to write here.