The most hunting they had ever done was for bugs to feed a bird. Their dad had always been the one to bring home something to eat in neatly wrapped parcels, unsuspicious and unassuming. The parcels had looked like something humans would bring back from the store to cook into disgusting dishes that tasted like something rotted and felt like they had been laced with poison.

Somehow, human food tasted even worse as it was shoved into Ayato's face, a hand nearly crushing his nose in its haste to shove the poison down his throat. He gagged, stumbled, and lost the contents of his stomach on the floor of Satou's apartment.

There was a second of silence, the room full of tension. He had never seen their neighbor look so cold. He had always thought that she was someone kind. Ayato felt tears prick his eyes as he realized that even someone as kind as Satou could look at ghouls with such disgust.

Touka took a sharp breath, and it was easy to hear the hitch in it: the fear, horror, anger, helplessness. He looked to his sister, and there was already an apology on his lips, because this meant that they had to run. They had never had to run by themselves before.

But her eyes weren't trained on him.

He followed her gaze and felt his heart try to stop in his chest, because there were investigators emerging from the adjacent room.

"Oh," he wanted so desperately to say. "Oh, so you planned this all along."

But he couldn't seem to find the air to do so.

The first tear fell as the first dove stepped forward, a weapon that smelled somehow familiar held in his hand. Ayato was frozen, staring up at the human who would be his death. He heard Satou shuffle backwards, further into the safety of her kitchen. He thought about the disgusting cookies she had given his family, the way she had carefully shaped each one into hearts or rabbits or birds and then covered them in frosting that tasted like mud and stuck to the sides of his mouth. He thought about the smile she had worn as she explained that she had made the bird ones special for him and the bunnies for his sister.

He sobbed and Touka let out a shrill, broken scream.

There was the sound of cloth tearing and Satou cried out as a light illuminated the room. Ayato looked towards his sister, took in the two wings of flickering fire that had burst from her back, ruining one of her favorite dresses, and thought, "Dad was supposed to be here to see this."

The doves stepped backwards, eyes going wide, and it occurred to him that they hadn't expected a fight. It seemed like no one in the room had.

When the doves fell upon them, weapons drawn to kill two frightened children not even a third of any of their ages, Ayato felt no pity as Touka struck one down. He wished that he could find the strength to summon his own kagune, wished that he could protect his sister like his dad had asked him to.

He wished that he could kill Satou with his own hands.

Then suddenly Touka was screaming again, one of her wings guttering out, her back bleeding and staining the light blue of her dress black. He reached out, grabbed her hand, and they bolted for the door. She stumbled, cried out, but they couldn't stop.

Somehow, though, he still managed to lock eyes with Satou. She was looking after them, her gaze full of horror and, much to his disgust, the slightest hint of excitement. He let his kakugan flash. He smiled as she trembled.

The door slammed shut and he and Touka ran for it.

They had to eat eventually.

Touka cried the first time she had to kill someone. It made him feel sick watching the tears stream down her face. He'd never seen her cry before.

When she had fallen and broken her leg when they were much younger, he hadn't seen her shed a single tear. She hadn't cried when the bird had died, or when Satou had betrayed them. She hadn't even cried when dad never came home, or when her kagune had been forever deformed by a quinque cutting through her back, or when she had the blood of the doves all over her hands and face and her own blood soaking through her dress.

But with the blood of a homeless man staining the cuffs of her sleeves and a single splatter of red across her cheek, she sobbed as though her world was ending. She was on her knees, curled over them as though in prayer, nails digging into the dirt and body trembling. The sounds that ripped from her throat made tears well in his own eyes.

Ayato scrubbed at them. He felt somehow empty, like he was void of any emotion left of his own. Touka's pain rattled around inside him, echoing as it bounced off every slowly sharpening facet of his body. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, these second-hand emotions.

Kneeling beside her, Ayato let his hand rest upon her back. At first she stiffened, jerking away. He didn't move, refused to let it show how much her reaction had stung. Eventually, she relaxed, leaning into him.

He rubbed small circles into her back, staring blankly forward, refusing to really focus on their meal for the night. He didn't want to acknowledge that this was what they were, and what they had come to. His stomach had been growling for days, sharp hunger pains bringing him nearly to tears after the sun had set and there was nothing left to draw his attention away from them. This man, who had so gently offered them what little food he had and had welcomed them into the shelter he had found below a bridge, and who they would kill and eat in order to stay alive, deserved more than Ayato could ever offer him.

He couldn't even bear to look at him.

He didn't deserve to.

So instead he just stared into the distance and listened to his sister's shuddering breaths and wretched sobs. He wondered what they had ever done to deserve this, or what the man who would become their meal had done. None of this was fair.

After a long time, Touka was able to compose herself.

She took a deep breath, and Ayato looked at her, waiting. She refused to meet his eye, attention trained on the man's still form.

"Let's not let this go to waste," she said. Her voice was a hoarse, rasping whisper. "Let's eat up."

And she reached out and pulled the man's arm from its socket, the flesh tearing like wet paper in her grasp. Ayato watched, curious and a little sickened, yet also impressed; he'd never realized his sister was so strong.

They had dragged the man's body under the bridge so that no passersby would see what was going on. In the shadow that was cast, he could see the way that Touka's eyes glowed red as she went through the motions of tearing off limbs, tears still clinging to her eyelashes but refusing to fall.

She offered him the first bite, and though the thought of eating this human's flesh as his dead eyes stared back at them made Ayato feel woozy, he accepted it. His hands were trembling as he lifted the meat to his lips.

The first bite tasted amazing after going so long with nothing.

The feeling of disgust that welled within him as he faced the remnants of the man he was devouring wasn't quite enough to make the growling in his stomach fade away, or to stop him from salivating as he took another bite.

Touka watched him silently as he finished the arm she had offered him. She licked the blood that had dribbled from her cheek to her lips absentmindedly, then stiffened. Ayato met her stare, and his father's words echoed through his mind.

"Touka, you need to eat. You won't be able to keep your strength up otherwise."

She didn't respond, just blinked away her tears as she turned away. Ayato's frown deepened. He was going to say something more, but before he could speak, Touka reached out and dug her nails into the tender flesh of the man's thigh, pulling away a bloody, still-warm chunk of meat and fabric. He could hear her as she gnashed her teeth angrily, chewing like the human had personally offended her.

Ayato's brow furrowed, but he made no comment on it. Instead, he mumbled, "Like you said, sis. We shouldn't let this go to waste. Let's make sure to eat everything, so we won't have to worry about hunting again for a while."

"Yeah. Alright, Ayato," Touka mumbled, her back still turned to him. Her shoulders trembled, and Ayato pretended that her voice was muffled because of the meat in her mouth instead of the tightness of throat that crying caused. It was easier that way, to think of her as his immovable, indomitable big sister. They had a better chance of surviving, if at least one of them could be strong.

Ayato wished that that person could be him.

"Hey, Touka?"

"What?"

"Should we be leaving a trail or something?"

"What? Why would we do that? Do you want the doves to find us?!"

"No way! It's just, if we're not leaving some kind of clue, how will dad find us?"

"Ayato, I don't... I don't think dad's coming back."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Now go to sleep, Ayato."

Ayato killed his first dove when he was eight.

It had been an accident, something that had happened through sheer dumb luck. He hadn't even managed to awaken his kagune; he had simply panicked, used teeth and nails and an inhuman, adrenaline-fueled strength. Then, Touka had taken care of the rest.

They had been trying to be careful, to stay safe. They hadn't gone searching for the doves, and had kept their heads down and tried to kill as few people as they could, to the point of being near-starving. None of it had mattered. They had still been found out.

The doves had come for them in the dead of night when they were asleep and helpless. They fought dirty and didn't care that their opponents were children who were alone and cold, tired and hungry and scared. Just kids who were trying to do their best with what they had to be good. None of that mattered to the doves, because to them, ghouls would always be less than human.

After that fight, with blood staining his hands and deep, ugly wounds covering his body, as he watched his sister try to staunch the flow of blood from a gut wound with a hand that was nothing more than shattered bones and mangled flesh, Ayato made a decision.

If the humans wanted monsters, monsters they would become.

"We'll need to eat if we want to heal," he whispered, the sound like broken nails dragging across concrete. He barely recognized his own voice. Touka looked at him, her eyes glowing red in the dim light of the back alley. He could see her clenched teeth through the hole in her cheek.

"How are we supposed to find anything like this?" she demanded, voice tight with pain. It was strange to watch her tongue move inside her mouth and the way her teeth clacked together. Her cheek was slowly, slowly beginning to stitch itself back together, but not fast enough. He could feel his own flesh wriggling, trying desperately to close wounds but lacking the proper nutrition to do so. He pressed harder on the gash on his arm, teeth grinding together from the pain of it. He met his sister's eyes, and there was something so unbearably sad in her expression, something like defeat and betrayal, which was ridiculous because they had already known.

They had known for years now that the world was messed up and cruel, and that it didn't care if they were just a couple of kids left to fend for themselves by a father that they had adored and who they had thought loved them back. The world didn't care that they had been doing their best to be as good as they could be, that they only killed when it was necessary and that they scavenged whenever they could. The world didn't care about them, so why should they care about anyone else?

In this world, the only ones who were going to care for them were each other. So he leaned close to her and touched her shoulder with a hand that was covered in blood, and met her eyes steadily as he said, "Stay here and rest. I'll take care of it."

He could see the surprise as it flickered across her face and the objection as it formed on her lips. Quickly, before she had the chance to try to change his mind, he stumbled to his feet. He smiled at her and he knew that it was a strained, hollow thing. He could feel her eyes on him as he walked away, refusing to look back.

When he returned soon after with a stolen raincoat full of bloodied chunks and tears drying on his cheeks, Touka didn't ask any questions. She simply met his eyes, her expression solemn but understanding, and accepted what he gave her. Ayato did his best to forget the face of the child, younger than himself, whose blood was on their lips.

That human didn't matter, anyways.

Thanks to Touka, they slowly started to make a name for themselves among ghouls and humans alike. Not because they wanted to, but because there was no other way for them to survive. In a world this cruel, they had had to learn early that no one would watch out for them but each other, and that in order to live, their only choice was to kill.

His sister's kagune, though damaged, was beautiful enough that it drew eyes even when they didn't want it to. Their combined efforts, their speed and ferocity, were enough to draw attention away from how young they were and the fact that Ayato fought without a kagune. They couldn't afford to let anyone know that Touka was the only one of them with any real power. The doves would take advantage of that fact, would go after her first, and he could not bear to let that happen.

So they watched each other's backs, and Ayato did all that he could to keep a promise to protect Touka from everything that would hurt her. It took them both a little longer to realize that the list of people who would not hesitate to kill them included ghouls, as well as humans.

Ayato couldn't help the scream that ripped from his throat as he felt teeth tear into his skin, ripping through muscles and scraping against bone. There was an arm wrapped tight around his waist, another pinning his arms to his side and pulling him flush against the body behind him. He was nine years old, and he suddenly understood a little better what the humans he hunted must have felt.

Blood gushed from the wound in his shoulder, dribbling down his front and soaking into his already filthy clothes. He squirmed, snarling to hide the way his eyes were filled with tears, shouting curses in an attempt to keep himself from sobbing. He could feel the eyes on him, assessing and unsympathetic.

Even terrified and in pain, he knew that if he survived this, the safety of Touka and himself would still be riding heavily on the reputation that they had only just begun to build for themselves. He couldn't let himself show any more weakness than he already had.

Takara cooed around a mouthful of his flesh, and he couldn't help but shudder at the feeling of her tongue lapping at the wound, her arms pulling him closer as he struggled and fought. She was older than them, and much stronger. He and Touka had both thought that because she was a ghoul, because she smiled so softly and spoke so sweetly and shared her food – because she had a little sister she was just as desperate to protect – she could be trusted.

They were wrong.

Touka was splayed out on the floor, blood pooling around her head. Her arm was stripped down to the bone, her back bent at a strange and horrific angle. Ayato couldn't see her chest moving at all and that, more than even the teeth buried in his flesh, was what made his heart jump to rest in his throat.

The younger sister, Hana, watched him struggle against her sister with a hollow gaze. Ayato watched as she dragged a finger through Touka's blood and stuck it in her mouth, sucking thoughtfully. He watched, fury rising to meld with his horror, as her face twisted in disgust.

"Why are you doing this?" he snarled, trying to keep the edge of hysteria out of his voice.

Takara didn't answer, just moved to lick at undamaged skin, abandoning the wound on his shoulder. He felt his own blood as it was smeared against his throat. Hana tilted her head at him, brown eyes empty and distant, and then dug her fingers into Touka's side.

As blood gushed, his sister convulsed, choking on a half-conscious scream. The relief that she was alive was quickly drowned out by anger. It rushed to fill him, a cold fury that made his chest grow tight and the world around him disappear in a haze of red.

"Don't touch her!" he snarled, soft and dangerous. He felt Takara's chest vibrate as she hummed, pressing closer. From where they were still brushing against the side of his neck, Ayato felt her lips curl into a smile.

He wanted to scream. The horror and the fury were mixing together, a pressure building in his chest. Betrayal seemed to climb his throat to rest heavy on his tongue and choke him. He shuddered, broken nails digging into the soft flesh of his thighs. His eyes itched, his back ached where she pressed herself against him, and the pressure grew and grew and grew until, suddenly, his body could not seem to contain it anymore. Just like years before, his only thought was that his dad was supposed to have been here to see this.

Takara wasn't smiling anymore. She made a soft sound against his skin, her breath wet and sticky as it caressed his neck. Ayato flared his kagune for the first time, stretching them like a butterfly first emerging from its cocoon. Takara's flesh tore with the movement and she gurgled out a sound that might have been a scream, if he hadn't ripped through her lungs already.

He jerked forward the second her grip went lax, ripping the shimmering appendages from her chest. She gagged, choking on blood, then collapsed. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Hana screaming.

The world was tinged red on the edges, everything around him in too-sharp focus. He watched Hana as she ran forward, not even glancing his way as she shoved past him to reach Takara. He felt nothing but disdain as she fell to her knees beside her sister, tears streaming down her cheeks, desperately begging her to keep breathing, to stay alive.

Hana was young enough that she hadn't awakened her kagune. She was soft and weak from Takara watching over her with such devotion all her life. Kneeling on the ground, sobbing over her sister's quickly fading body, Hana was not a threat. She was someone that Ayato's father would have told him to have pity on and to help.

Ayato killed her anyways. Then, with his shoulder aching and his neck smeared with blood, he devoured her corpse. It was disgusting, like something rotted despite the fresh blood staining his hands. Takara watched with glazed, tear-filled eyes, unable to move except the slight twitching of her fingers and the parting of her lips over a low, pain-filled moan.

Watching the way she cried over her sister brought him no satisfaction. His kagune twitched, almost thoughtlessly, and the crystallized RC cells that pierced through her brain and heart ensured she knew no more. He stared at the mangled bodies before him, felt the ache of his wounds and the stinging of his eyes. He wondered why it was that he found himself wishing so desperately that his dad was there, even though it had been years since he had abandoned them. What was he supposed to feel, in this kind of situation?

Ayato shook his head angrily, almost violently, and wiped away the tears that had spilled from his eyes. What he felt didn't matter. All that mattered was making sure that Touka was alright. All that mattered was making sure that he and his sister would get the chance to live another day.

He turned his back on the mutilated corpses and, with his fists full of bloodied chunks of meat, went to tend to Touka.

The majority of ghouls looked upon them with a mix of trepidation and uncertainty, these new variables. It was easy to ignore the pitying looks and soft murmurs of older ghouls, the ones who could guess how these two children had been thrown into this situation. They never raised a hand to help, anyways. No one seemed quite sure what to make of them, a couple of kids with cold eyes and far too much power desperately grasped in tiny, shaking hands.

Since Ayato had begun using his kagune in sync with Touka, they had steadily been increasing their territory and building up the reputation that Touka had been clumsily cultivating. It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep them fed. The stretch of city blocks was the closest thing they had to a home since they had lost the one they had shared with their father. It wasn't much, but it was theirs.

Which was why the newcomer was not welcomed, no matter what role he had once played in their lives. That had been before, when they had still had hope for the future and hope in the goodness of everyone. Yomo hadn't been there to help them when they were forced to flee, and they didn't want any of his fumbling attempts to help now, either.

He always seemed so sad when he looked at them, when he tried to extend a hand in that cautious, cold way of his. His grey eyes seemed to see ghosts every time he found them after a fight, whether it ended in a victory for them or not. Ayato hated it, and by extension, found himself hating Yomo and his ghosts a little more each day.

"There is a place," the man said one day, hands hanging loosely by his side despite the blood that stained their mouths and the ghoul that lay dead just feet away. "It is safe. They can offer protection and food."

Ayato sneered at the man's words, showing bloodied teeth. His Kakugan glinted in the low light of the alleyway, and his heart was still singing with adrenaline and elation over claiming yet another bit of the city as their own. The ghoul tasted rotten on his tongue, but he could feel power inside each bite as it hit his stomach, warming him in a way he still wasn't sure he liked.

"We don't need any of that shit," Touka told him, her voice cold and hard, her hands soaked with blood. Ayato still dreamed sometimes of the way she had cried over that man's body, the first time she had killed. "We're doing fine on our own."

"Your father wouldn't want you to—"

"Our father is gone. It doesn't matter what he would or wouldn't have wanted."

Yomo bowed his head, eyes dull. He nodded, once, sharply. In the dim, flickering glow of the streetlight, the man looked insubstantial and ethereal. He had become the ghost, or had perhaps simply been possessed by one of the many that haunted him.

Ayato snarled when Yomo drew too close to Touka, his kagune flickering into life in warning. Yomo was unconcerned. He leaned in close and whispered into Touka's ear, so low that Ayato could not hope to hear it.

There was no flicker of emotion across Touka's features, nothing to even indicate that Yomo had spoken at all. Something inside Ayato's chest settled at that, some possessive, aching part that was always afraid that his sister would disappear one day, just like their mother, their father, and their home. She was his last safe place, the last good thing that he had and could hold close to his chest.

He shook the thoughts away and stared after Yomo as he went, sneering at his retreating back. Yomo's broad shoulders were rounded, his head hanging low with some emotion that Ayato couldn't bring himself to name. Watching the older ghoul retreat didn't feel like as much of a victory as he had thought it would.

With their expanding territory and growing reputation, it was inevitable that someone would come along to challenge them. They beat Tsukiyama Shuu easily the first time and left him sniveling in the dirt; he didn't have any territory they were after and he obviously wasn't a threat, so it was a waste of time and energy to kill him.

When he came back a month later, Ayato decided that it would be smarter to just kill anyone who dared to challenge them from then on. Tsukiyama wiped the floor with them that second time around, and even their combo attacks did nothing to deter him. There was something ravenous in his smile and unhinged in his movements. He was not fighting them to win territory or food – he had plenty of both already – but for nothing more than his own enjoyment. He wanted to see them suffer, to hear their screams, and to make them beg for their lives.

Neither Ayato nor Touka would ever give him the pleasure. They kept stubbornly silent even as their blood sprayed the walls of the alleyways and their bones crunched beneath his fists and teeth.

Their silence seemed to make him all the more eager to get the reaction he wanted from them. He let them live, walked away with blood on the hems of his fancy suits and his wounds already healed, and promised to see them again soon.

It became a game of sorts, albeit one that they wanted to have no part of. He would seek them out and they would try to ignore him, to move on and live their lives in their own little corner of the world. Tsukiyama would taunt them, his lips curled around ugly words and laced with a tone that made their skin crawl, and eventually he would find the right words to say to piss one sibling or the other off.

When one of the Kirishima siblings fought, the other would inevitably join them. There was not one without the other even in these matters, where it would have been easy to walk away, to drag their sibling along with them. But that was not how they operated. Only they could have one another's back, after all.

It was one of these stupid fights that led them directly to the very place that would one day drive them apart. Ayato would never forgive himself for that.

They fought, more than the usual little squabbles and sibling blow-ups. Ayato knew how to deal with Touka's temper, knew what to do when she was tired or hurt or scared and was lashing out because of it. He knew how to ignore curses and threats, how to duck punches and block kicks.

What he didn't know how to handle was the way his sister spat acid at him, eyes cold. She didn't smell familiar anymore, more like coffee and unknown ghouls than his sister. He didn't know what to do when she chose this place and the strangers inside of it over him, again and again. He wasn't sure how to wash away the hurt and the fear he felt when he learned that Touka was planning on going to school with the humans.

They were too much the same. Their tempers and their pride were too alike. Touka couldn't bear the thought of apologizing for the ways she hurt him. Ayato couldn't fathom bringing himself low enough to tell her what, exactly, was bothering him. So the tension between them grew, and the hurt inside them festered.

When she found out what Ayato had been doing on the streets, about the gangs and the killings and the name he had been building for himself, Touka exploded in a fury. It felt almost like how it had once been, with worry thinly veiled by yelling and a few good punches. It made the beginnings of a smile twitch at his lips, and something in his chest began to unravel to release the tension that had been building.

"Why would you hunt innocent humans?" she demanded, cheeks flushed with anger and eyes aglow. Ayato felt like every one of her hits had connected all at once, driving his stomach up into his throat. He froze, and Touka froze with him, knowing that she had made a mistake.

"Innocent humans?" he parroted, skin crawling and tongue thick. Touka wouldn't meet his eye. She pinched the fabric of her new sweater between two fingers, twisting and plucking at it until the hem started to fray.

She wet her lips and swallowed hard. He watched the delicate skin of her throat move, watched the way that the blood pumped through her veins, and thought, "How could you?"

"Ayato," she began, soft and wary and so very un-Touka that it made bile rise in his throat. He wanted his sister, the one that he had relied on for most of his life to have his back no matter what. He was sick of looking at Touka and seeing a stranger.

"Don't," he said, scowling at the floor and refusing to look her in the face. His voice was softer than he had intended, and he hated the hurt that he could hear in that one word.

"Ayato, please just wait. We can talk about this, yeah?"

"No. We're not going to talk about this." He forced himself to look at her, to meet her dark eyes and hold them. "You have to make a choice. It's them or me, Touka."

She hesitated. Ayato felt sick.

"Please—"

Ayato didn't wait to hear what she had to say. He turned on his heel and stormed away, slamming the door hard enough that a crack formed in the empty cafe's fancy glass door. Even as he stormed away, though, he was hoping that she would chase him and demand that he listen. He was praying that she would show a hint of the sister he knew, the one that would fight tooth and nail to hold onto what was important to her.

He wandered the streets for hours, but she never came.

Someone else did, though. Aogiri offered him a spot among their ranks, and Ayato waited three whole days to say yes, checking over his shoulder every moment in the hopes that he would find Touka there, fist raised and eyes ablaze.

She never came.