December 2, first day of life

It was cold. And it was bright. The place he'd been ejected to smelled like ice and frozen dead things. He wasn't sure where he was, who he was, or the people around him, but he felt the others hand slip from his, and then the other started crying.

"She's healthy." Someone said. "That's good. She's very strong. And a full head of hair."

"But her kakugan. They aren't supposed to display until after the first month, right?" A woman answered.

"It's rare, but it happens. Look, her brother has it too." Something warm touched his eyes, something that smelled similar to him, but more aged, and then they were coming open, and he was looking up into bright light. He started crying, trying to display his displeasure with the little touch. He kicked and shook his tiny fists, and was finally released by the gentle hands on his eyes. The cradle he was in was soft and yielding, pulling him close to a warm, sweaty body. "He's healthy too."

A previously quiet, male voice spoke up. "What will we name them, love?" His voice shook with some type of emotion, but the newest male to the world was focused on the crying other. Why wasn't someone helping her? Why was she still crying? Where was she? He started crying again, only to be bounced gently to a soft rhythm, and soothed. He let the crying continue, reaching out for the other to try to find her. His other half was missing. Where was she?

The woman continued to speak, ignoring the cries. What was wrong with her? Why wouldn't she understand? Could she understand that the other half of him was scared, that she needed help? Maybe she couldn't. Maybe they weren't able to understand that the two of them had this bond, that they could communicate before communication was a word they could know.

"I want to call the girl Kenji. Her name is Kenji." She said softly, still trying to lull the little boy in her arms into silence. "And the boy...I want to name our son Uta."

Uta, now given a title on this earth, reached out, trying to cling to Kenji. Where was she? Why wouldn't she touch his hand? Where had they taken her? She was still nearby, still wailing, but no one would bring her near.

Then there was a screech, different from the rest. A wail Uta responded to on a physical level, his kagune forming to try to defend his sister. Where was she? He had to protect her. There was a meaty thud, and then more crying. The room went quiet, all but the crying of the children. The words that changed his life were uttered then.

"Keep her away from Uta."

####################################################################

4 Years Old

Uta had only ever listened to his parents strongly on one thing. He was told ever since he could walk to stay away from the rolling doors that seperated the guest house from the main house. He was never told why, but he was told that he was not allowed to go there. His other three siblings all obeyed this order religiously, even staying away from Uta's room which was close to that side of the house. He didn't mind. His other three brothers were too... normal. They hid their eyes, laughed at Uta for not doing the same. They wore light colors and listened to the same music as Mom and Dad did, and loved blending with humans.

Uta loved his kagune too much. His parents let him leave it out in his bedroom, so he hardly ever left his bedroom. He loved to explore and run around the property late at night when Mom and Dad and his brothers were in bed, and he especially loved pretending to swoop down on unsuspecting people.

But today, he was too curious. He'd gotten all the amusement out of this place as he could. He'd tried everything, but nothing would make the main house any more fun. The same pale walls and well lit rooms had gotten boring, tedious, and Uta needed to be amused. He got bad when he wasn't.

He stood staring at the forbidden doors, wondering what could lay behind them. He was patient. Patience made the curiousity better when it was sated. He thought carefully. Maybe it was a food store. His parents didn't hunt, but Uta wanted to hunt. He wanted them to take him to hunt down some lone prey, but they always said the same thing. "Our ward is too safe. If we hunt here, we'll be caught." Any suggestion of going to a more dangerous ward was met with a scary look and a warning of reprimand. Uta hated reprimands. He was stronger than his parents thought, and he let them get away with their reprimand one time. It had been a long time, but it had happened. He looked down at his black fingernails in reminder. He had to be smart when exploring, otherwise the amusement was useless, because it would cost him.

He waited for a moment longer, letting other suggestions roll through his head, before he opened the door as stoically as he did everything else. Inside, where he had expected in his most realistic fantasies to see dust and a few broken windows, maybe white sheets over furniture, he saw the exact opposite. He enterred a perfectly kept entryway, just outside of the entryway to the main house, with a little wooden box for shoes and a coat rack beside that. It was warm and the lamp on the wall in place of a light fixture burned dim, like he liked it. There were more along that hallway, and he followed them around.

The guest house was spacious, and kept meticulously clean. The floors were swept and polished, the mirrors on the wall perfectly clean and hanging straight. He explored and saw that the kitchen was the same meticulous clean, though it seemed like it was never used. The three bedrooms were the first bit of personality he saw all throughout the house. Only one had anything of personality in it, a bookshelf stacked high with new books, some from horror authors, others romance, others nonfiction and old fiction novels that Uta had never seen before. He couldn't read the titles just right, but some of them he had heard around before, and even recognized from his oldest brothers shelf. The walls were mostly bare, but there were shadowboxes everywhere, with different species of flora and fauna in them all around. One shadowbox held butterflies, the other ladybugs and lady beetles, some stinkbugs, and even spiders. There were flowers of every shape and size, pressed and framed in big picture frames like collages. Everywhere there were rocks with wooden planks over them strapped shut, and Uta was curious as to what was in them.

Instead of trying to pry them open, however, he kept moving. There was a living room, and then a library. And the library was what shocked him most.

There, sitting in a big comfy chair holding one of those books, was a little girl, with long blonde hair to her waist. She looked to be about his age, and her eyes were kakugan black and red as well. She had a gentle, stoic look on her face, the face that looked exactly like Uta's. Uta blinked, just staring at her, and when he stopped moving almost soundlessly, only a floorboard creaking to give him away, she looked up at him.

It was like looking directly into a mirror. Uta tilted his head, and she did the same thing, even tilting it the same way. She closed her book and put it down on the table beside her, then stood. "Who are you? What are you doing in my house?"

She didn't sound scared. She just sounded curious.

Uta squared his shoulders. "This is my house. This is my guest house. I live here. What are you doing here? Who are you?" He asked.

She didn't seem intimidated, and rather than make him angry, that made him feel better. He felt whole, where he hadn't for as long as he could remember. "I'm Kenji. I've always lived here. I guess I could go if you don't like me here." She said.

Uta shook his head. "No. You can stay. Why don't you ever come out of this part of the house?" He said.

"I was always told to stay here. There used to be another lady who lived here with me, but she left a couple weeks ago and didn't come back." She said.

Uta brow scrunched up. "That doesn't sound very nice. Didn't she even say goodbye?" He asked.

Kenji shook her head, tilting it to the side. "Do you want to come sit with me?" She asked. "My chair is big enough. We'll both fit."

Uta shrugged, jogging over to sit with the little girl. She seemed to notice his hair for the first time. "Your hair is the same color as my hair!" She announced, holding up the overlong strands to his so he could see that hers matched the ones that hung in his face.

Uta nodded. "I like yours. Yours is really long. I want mine long, but they won't let me keep mine that way." He suggested, sitting beside her.

Her brow came together. "What are parents? I've never had any. What are they like?" She asked.

"You have to have parents. If you didn't have parents you wouldn't be here. It isn't nice to lie." Uta explained.

She seemed ashamed. "I'm not lying." She snapped. "I don't have any parents. I just wanted to know what they were like."

Uta's brow came together. "But you have to have parents. Who takes care of you?" He asked.

"I do." She said. "It isn't that hard. I just have to keep this place clean."

"But how do you get food? Do you hunt?" He asked excitedly.

She blinked. "Why would I hunt? I have food in the kitchen. The refrigerator is always full." She said, jumping off the chair. "Come on, I'll show you."

The fridge was indeed stocked with little brown paper packages that, when unwrapped, revealed food. They ate and talked alot and when Uta left, he determined to come back everyday and learn more about this girl, even the weird holes in her hands that she let Uta touch. After a few weeks, he ran excitedly to his parents, the day he learned she was born on the same day he was.

"Uta, we've told you again and again not to run in the house." His mother said sternly.

"Did you know that there's a little girl here? She lives in the guest house and she's really nice and she doesn't even know what parents are, but she was born on the same day as me!" Uta crowed.

Both parents whirled around and stared directly at Uta, his father putting down the book he'd be reading. His mother knelt down in his face. "You weren't supposed to go anywhere near your sister!" She barked.

Uta blinked while his mother recieved a reprimanding word from his father. "My sister?" He asked, shaking his way out of her arms. "I have a sister?"

His mother stood up, running her fingers through her hair. "Listen to me, Uta. You are not to go back over there, do you hear me? You are not to go see your sister again. She killed a man the very day she was born." She answered.

"Why didn't you tell me I had a sister?" Uta shouted. "She's not mean! She wouldn't do that!"

"But she did! Those damned things in her hands put a hole in the man who delivered the two of you a whole foot wide. She was trying to protect you or something, like the freak she is, and she could have killed you too! She could kill you!" His mother yelled.

"The holes in her hands are harmless! I've touched Kenji's hands! I held her hand when she showed me her butterflies. She didn't hurt me!" Uta howled.

She slapped Uta, and when he turned to glare at her, she stepped back. "You are not to go back over there." She breathed.

Uta ran from the room. For almost a week, he was under high watch. His father watched him during the day time, and his mother patrolled at night. He waited patiently until they stopped watching him, thinking he was not going to fight him. In the late of the night, he snuck back over to Kenji and found her asleep in the bedroll on the floor. She was quiet, her face seemingly restful though her eyes were spilling bloodred tears on the pillow. Uta crouched by the head of her pillow, crying as well. How was his sister a monster for something she couldn't control? They were ghouls, weren't they? Humans and ghouls were predator and prey. Ghouls were natural predators. They killed their own for territory and killed humans for food.

"You came back." Kenji mumbled, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

Uta looked up at her. "Did you know you were my sister?" He asked.

"What's that?" Kenji asked quietly.

Uta's brows pulled together. "A sister? It's a person who was born and they were a girl and they had a boy as a sibling." He answered.

Kenji thought about it for a minute, then looked back up at him. "Are you crying?" She asked.

He scrubbed his eyes. "No." He lied. "You were my sister this whole time and I didn't even know you were here. I thought you were just living here. They're so mean talking about you."

Kenji reached out and took his hand. Uta turned her hands up to look at them, at the odd pit in her palm before he pressed his fingers inside. The pit felt familiar, and he felt soft, tiny grooves on the inside that felt like his fingers belonged there. She closed her eyes and leaned onto Uta's shouder.

"Will you go again after this?" She asked.

Uta thought, then pulled her closer. "No. Mom and Dad have stopped watching me. Start sleeping during the day, I'll come at night and we'll play then." Uta promised.

She nodded, smiling. "Okay. Can we always be sisters?" She asked.

Uta knew he wasn't her sister, but he decided then that he didn't care and he would definitely stick by her side and protect her. He nodded, hugging her where she was on his shoulder. "Forever sisters."

###############################################################

8 Years Old

Uta felt two emotions as he tore his oldest brothers heart out of the fucker's chest. Rage. It burned in every cell of his body and fueled the heaviest punch he'd dealt to date. Sure, he'd done damage before, but his family didn't know that. His oldest brother still thought that Uta was weak and hadn't been tested. He thought that his follower status in one ghoul gang made Uta afraid. It had made the brother feel safe enough to tell Uta that he would sneak in one night and kill Kenji.

The other was apathy. He was sure that when the body of a murdered family member dropped in front of an eight-year-old, even when that murdered family member was murdered in an angry flurry by the eight-year-old in question, most would cry, or scream, or be frightened. Uta felt nothing. He merely watched his body hit the floor in the hallway outside his room, and when his parents came around the corner, he merely watched them cry, and scream in pain and sadness. He stood there, brushing off the oversized black jacket that hung off one shoulder that Kenji had given to him the day before, and when his mother looked up at him, he dropped his brothers heart to the floor, staring back at her.

"You're just as much a monster as she is!" His mother sobbed. "You're just like her!"

Uta still felt nothing. He watched his family sob around the dead body staining the floor with blood, and realized that they were less his family than the humans outside were. He realized there was only one family member he had that he could ever love and trust and care for like they did for the dead boy. Kenji.

He was moved to the guest house to live with Kenji then. He stood there and watched the doors close that day, when Kenji was still asleep. He waited until the door rolled shut, and then he nailed it that way, so no one could act on the threat his now dead sibling had made. So they couldn't come over this way again if they tried.

###########################################################

15 Years Old

Uta let Kenji work on busting out a new prosthetic mask while he went to go and check the refrigerator. It had gotten low again. He glanced over his shoulder at Kenji. She had grown a lot like he had, only where he had grown handsome, she had grown beautiful. He was thin, but muscular, and coming out of the awkward, wiry phase, and she was curvy and growing more womanly every day. Her hair was soft and long, and she let him brush it out when she wasn't planning on playing with the polyfoam and plaster that day. She was intelligent, and kind, but she was sheltered. She hadn't known there was a difference between humans and ghouls until Uta had explained the CCG to her.

So when the refrigerator had stopped filling up, she had assumed it broken. Uta had been forced to go into another ward and hunt humans like he'd always wanted to. It had been thrilling, but terrifying. He'd never left Kenji alone unless it was late and he was sneaking out to see his small gang, the people he'd decided to call the Clowns. The friends he had that understood his insanity and determination to protect his sister.

Kenji glanced up from her music and her mold. "Uta, what's wrong? Is it broken again?" She asked.

He shook his head, turning to look at the dwindling supply. "No, no, it's just being slow." He called over his shoulder. "Be careful breaking that thing open. You cracked the last one and it took forever to fix. Alright? I'm going to grab something out of the main house, okay?"

Kenji nodded, and smiled. "Be careful sis." She smirked when he shook his head, rolling his eyes, and then put her headphones on.

Uta turned around and moved to the rolling doors. He opened the doors after removing the nails and crept out. The whole thing was empty. There was no furniture, no people, and nothing else around the place. Uta was confused. Where had they gone? He walked past the entryway again, and there was a slip of paper on the floor he'd walked past. It was dated two years earlier.

We left. We won't be coming back.

Uta crumbled the paper in his hand, glancing back into the guest house before dropping it in the trash. Kenji didn't need to know. She was content where she'd always been. He wouldn't pull her out of there now. He nailed the door shut again, and went out to refill the fridge before telling Kenji he'd 'fixed it'.

One less danger to his sister.

###################################################################

18 Years Old

No less than three days after they celebrated their eighteenth birthday, a slamming door and child's laughter woke Uta. He jogged to Kenji's room to make sure she was asleep still before he jogged to the nailed doors, peeping out of a peephole he'd carved to see intruders.

There were five. Two girls, one maybe thirteen and the other maybe four, and one boy, who looked around fifteen. The parents were right behind, looking the stereotypical suburban family that showed in every TV program that Uta had never focused on heavily like his family did. They nattered excitedly on what they called 'their new home,' and then the father tried to pull the nailed doors open.

Uta fell back onto his butt on the floor, glancing over his shoulder back to where Kenji was, and then ran for her room. He jostled her awake, meeting her roused face with near panic. She rubbed sleep out of her eyes, looking at him confused.

"Uta? What's going on? It's really late, or really early depending. What's the matter?" She noted his disheveled state, and got worried. "You're breathing heavily. Is something wrong? Are you sick?"

He shook his head, listening with half an ear for the creaking door trying to break loose. "We have to run." He suggested.

She blinked, rubbing hair out of her face. "What do you mean? What's going on?" She stood when Uta pulled the covers away from her, yanking her to her feet.

"We have to leave. Someone's here, and they're trying to come in this are, and we have to go!" Uta cried, pushing her for the door.

He heard the nails splinter free of the wood, and pulled her faster, pushing her straight toward the back door. He saw the father peering in through the wood as he and Kenji ran through the hall to the door, and heard him cry after Uta to stop, but he pushed Kenji out the door, into the tree line just outside the house. "Run Kenji!" He cried, pushing her one way.

She stopped, reaching back for his hand, and he didn't take it. "What about you?" She asked.

"Just run! I'll find you! Go, and keep your kagune inside of you. Don't let it out in public!" He cried, shoving her again and running the other way when he saw her run, leading the human male after him before losing him. He doubled back and picked up on Kenji's scent.

And then the clouds started rolling in, and thunder started in his heart. No. He couldn't lose her! She didn't know the world the way he did. He needed to catch up to her, and protect her. They were sisters damn it! He couldn't lose her! She had never even seen live trees. Did she grab the mask he'd made her on her way out? What if she ran into an inspector? He'd barely gotten the prosthetic she'd made for him in his fingers before the father had spotted them. She needed to protect herself somehow. She was...

Totally defenseless.

The rain started.

Uta lost the scent.

Kenji was gone.

###################################################################

For the next few years, Uta had slowly lost the emotion for the world. He began to hate everyone with a burning rage, inspectors and fools even more so. What if one of them had hurt Kenji? Every face he passed became, 'that man hurt my sister', 'that child got my sister hurt', 'that woman killed my sister.' Then slowly, everyone was the one who had killed his sister. Because with as long as it had been without her coming to the place he knew she knew where he hid out, she had to be dead. He would see the kagune he'd grown to realize was half of his own held in some inspectors hand, or smell her blood on a ghoul's shirt, and he would finally have closure for the sister he'd only had for ten years when he should have had them all.

Kenji never surfaced. He waited, and changed his hair, his body, his everything, just so he could stop seeing her in the mirror staring back at him, grew cruel. Grew hateful. He grew to look perfectly calm when inside he was always angry. He lost all love for anyone or anything other than his amusement, because that was all he had left in this world. He started to play Kaneki, and then truly met him, and it rekindled that love. He determined himself to take better care of Kaneki then he had of Kenji, not to lose Kaneki running. He wouldn't run. He would fight. He would die for this man, the way he should have done for his sister. He would keep him safe.

So when she showed up to save his bacon in an alley in the fourth ward, surrounded by six biker ghouls and a teenage girl, he was more than a little shocked and confused.

Kenji blinked, snapping her fingers in Uta's face, waving at him as she had for the fifth time since he'd gotten Kaneki back to the loft above the shop, and settled her face down into his. "Kaneki, is he prone to fits of nonresponsiveness?" She asked.

Kaneki leaned on his shoulder, now a little less critical even though the occasional blood drip got past his tight hold on his ribs. "Every now and again he talks." He said sideways, still a little mistrusting of the now black-haired Kenji, sitting across from them. "Uta, are you alright?"

Uta blinked hard, rubbing his eyes for what felt like the thirtieth time. He turned away from the woman across from him who still looked so much like him, even with the long black hair in the same style and a tribal style sun tattoo peeking out over her shoulder on her breast, to look at Kaneki again. "I'm fine. I just am having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that my sister is on the couch across from me." He answered.

Kaneki nodded, wincing at the wound on his neck, which was still bleeding. That jumpstarted Uta into his right mind again, realizing that Kaneki was still bleedng. "Jesus. I wasn't even..." He realized his hands were still covered in blood. "Did you walk back or did I have the decent sense to carry you back?" He wiped them off on his pants and gently pried Kaneki's fingers back from the wound.

Kaneki grit his teeth. "I'm fine. It's just healing slowly." He told Uta.

Uta rolled his eyes. "Which means my common sense went out the window with the rest of my fucking brain." He grumbled. "I'm sorry, Ken."

Kaneki's face blushed crimson when Uta called him Ken, and the blood poured a little faster. Kaneki wavered, his hand gripping Uta's shoulder sharply. "I think it was one of those high-ranking level quinques." He answered. He hissed through his teeth for a minute before he did something that bothered Uta. "993."

"Stop that. You're going to be just fine." Uta demanded, pulling his lover's arm over his shoulder. "Come on into the bathroom, and get out of this."

"What can I do, Uta?" Kenji asked, standing too.

Uta ground his teeth, looking at Kaneki to calm himself. Kaneki saw the glance and jumped in to assist. "I'll be fine, miss. Uta knows what he's doing, just give us a few minutes alone, please." He answered.

Kenji nodded, but when she motioned to the girls to go downstairs, Uta took her arm by the upper shoulder. "No, don't...don't leave this room. Please." He asked. "Stay right here until I come back, please."

The words he wanted to say he left unspoken, but Kenji seemed to hear them all the same.

I can't lose you again.