All Kaneki could see was a black and white checkered floor. His head was in his lap, and the squares that should have been a perfect black and white had a sickeningly pink tinge. It was quiet, and he was quiet. He couldn't move. He could barely bring himself to speak. He was stuck there and he was tired and lonely and cold and so, so weak.

Yamori had picked him because he was weak, because it was fun to watch him scream in pain and grow to hate himself.

'I didn't need you for that,' Kaneki spat onto the ground. 'I hated myself enough already.'

But then there was a footstep on the tiled floor, and another and another. The sound of clippers filled his ears as something wriggled within the depths of his mind, and an acidic taste filled his mouth and spilled out onto the floor.

'Please... please... I'll do anything...'

'Kaneki...'

Amon was there. He sounded very far away, but he was there, and calling his name. There were hands on his shoulders now, and they were trying to pull him upright.

'Kaneki...'

He didn't want to look up. He didn't want to see that leering smile staring down at him. He wanted to be free of everything. He wanted to sleep.

He was wet, was it blood? It was running down his neck and onto his trousers, and it stank.

'Wake up!'

Kaneki opened his eyes. He was curled in a ball on the floor beside a sofa where he'd… yes, he'd gone to sleep there again the night before.

Amon was leaning over him.

'You've been sick, Kaneki. Let me pull you up.'

'Amon?'

'Get... up...'

Amon's voice sounded strained and impatient. The hands were firmly pulling at his shoulders, and he couldn't bear it.

'Don't touch me, please,' Kaneki muttered into the carpet that he could now feel beneath his cheek.

'Your lying in your own vomit, Kaneki. Please sit up so I can sort you out.'

Kaneki felt the hands pull at him again. He hated it. He couldn't do anything to pull the hands away because he didn't have any fingers, but he knew that Amon was telling him to get up for a good reason. He let the hands pull him into a sitting position, and then into a standing. He was shaking now, and he felt dizzy and dazed. The room around him was dark, with only the window letting in light from the city outside.

He clutched his arms around his middle, but now Amon's hands were pulling at them too.

'You're a state, Kaneki. Jesus. You need to get in the shower.'

'I can't move.'

'Don't be silly. Strip these clothes off and lets get you cleaned up.'

The hands were pulling and pulling and Kaneki felt himself close in more tightly towards himself. He just wanted to pass out and stop thinking. He didn't want to be here. He was embarrassed and lonely and cold. He just wanted to sleep.

No, he didn't want to sleep. Yamori wasn't here, but if Kaneki closed his eyes he could come striding into his thoughts once again. Into his consciousness.

'I haven't got any fingers.'

Rize was nowhere to be seen. She hadn't been there in the dream either. He wanted her to tell Amon to leave him alone.

'Kaneki... let... me... CHRIST. Let me take this off you, you damned ghoul.'

'Rize, tell him I can't move. I'm tied to a chair.' His own voice sounded very far away. Was he speaking at all? He wanted to sleep. 'No. No sleep. I have to stay awake. Count? He said I should count. That always made these things slow down. Backwards.'

'Don't you bloody dare start counting,' Amon huffed, grabbing hold of his wrists and trying to pull his top off.

'Don't! No!' He didn't want Amon to feel his hands. They weren't hands now, they were stumps, and he was embarrassed. Amon wouldn't want to hold his hand if they weren't there at all. He wouldn't want to kiss him if he was weak and mutilated.

Amon wanted to strip his clothes off. Yamori had wanted that too. Yamori had done that. He'd filled him with pain and left him to bleed in the room, strapped to a chair, as the centipedes ate his mind, all because he was weak.

'Why do you have to be so strange?' Amon cried, almost sounding sad. 'You're already a spot on my slate being a friggin ghoul, why do you have to be so crazy as well?'

'Just leave me alone,' Kaneki muttered, but Amon heard him.

'I can't, can I.'

The hands wouldn't let go off him. 'Leave me alone. Why not? Let go. Why can't you let go...'

'Exactly! EXACTLY!' Amon yelled his words across the room and kicked the sofa in utter rage. 'Why do you have such a hold over me? I'm risking everything, everything that I've built for myself because of you.'

Kaneki couldn't make sense of it. Amon was screaming at him. Did Amon hate him? He was in Amon's flat, but why?

As his eyes adjusted to the room around him he felt little bit of comprehension dawn on him, and he felt his mind wake up a little. Yamori's hold on him eased, and he looked about the room. He'd stayed here, in Amon's flat. He wanted to make the investigators see that ghouls weren't evil. He wanted to bring peace between everybody.

Someone was laughing. They were laughing so much it was almost annoying. Kaneki wanted to tell them to shut up. What was so unbelievably funny? He could feel tears in his eyes, and he couldn't tell if it was from sadness, or frustration, or just pure mirth.

Wait, he was the one who was laughing. It was hilarious. He loved so much to play the hero, didn't he? He was so self-righteous in his actions, but deep down he knew his real motivations. Bring peace between humans and ghouls? It was a load of rubbish. Rize wasn't there to be straight with him, so he'd have to be straight with himself. He'd stayed with Amon, in the dove's apartment, because he...

He was crying now, and twisting his arms about like a child. And it was so pathetic, because he just wanted to be loved.

Everything he did, it was because he wanted to be loved. He didn't want to lose his friends, because to lose that love would mean an abyss of nothingness would stretch out before him. He let Amon do whatever the hell he wanted to him and he stayed with him because he just wanted to be loved. And it was pathetic. Pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic...

'...pathetic pathetic pathetic pathetic. You pathetic excuse for a person. Pathetic excuse for a ghoul...'

'What are you talking about!?' Amon was shouting now, and suddenly Kaneki felt a violent slap against his face. He didn't fall over, because Amon was holding him by the scuff of the neck. Kaneki was sobbing and Amon was shouting as he pulled Kaneki into the middle of the room and ripped the clothes from his body.

Kaneki let him do it. He stopped fighting and shouting and tried not to think as the investigator ripped his sick-sodden trousers off with his bare hands and then pulled Kaneki's t-shirt over his head.

Then the pulling stopped. The touching stopped, and Kaneki was standing unsupported in the middle of the room. Amon was kneeling, he now realised, and he was transfixed on Kaneki's stomach.

Kaneki was shivering in nothing but his underwear, staring down at Amon who in turn was staring at Kaneki.

Amon let the ripped t-shirt he was holding fall to the floor. 'I don't understand.'

Kaneki looked down and tried to see what Amon was seeing. A naked man, who stank of vomit, and who was shivering almost uncontrollably.

'How... how have you got a scar?'

Kaneki's mind felt cold and clear, like he'd just been thrown into a lake of ice. Amon was looking at the scar on his stomach.

'Ghouls can get scars,' Kaneki said, as if that would quell the conversation entirely.

Amon was staring at the scar, leaning in slightly to see it in the dim light. 'Like that? Ghouls can get scars like that? It looks deep, and…' his hand reached up and lightly traced the raised skin tissue, 'there are lines from where there used to be stitches. Why would a ghoul need stitches?'

Kaneki felt strange, standing so still with Amon's fingers resting on his hip. He looked away and out of the window as Amon continued to talk.

'There are so many things about you that don't make sense, Kaneki. There are so many questions that I keep pushing to the back of my mind. Please.' Amon was being very placid now, almost as if he was talking to a puppy who had hurt its paw. 'Please, Kaneki. Just give me a straight answer.'

Amon's hand fell away, and almost as if it had been the last piece of Kaneki's energy holding him up, he sank down onto the floor. Now he and Amon were both level, both kneeing, and both silent. Confusion was hanging in the air between them, and when Kaneki spoke it seemed to cut through all the barriers between them both.

'I used to be human.'

Nothing moved. Anyone looking in on them would have thought they were looking at a photograph. There was nothing but silence and Kaneki felt like he had to say it again just in case he hadn't said anything at all.

'I'm not a ghoul, not a real one anyway. I was born a human, but now I'm something in-between.'

Kaneki was scared to look, scared to see the expression on Amon's face, but he did.

He had not expected what he saw. Instead of a furrowed brow like the waves of a violent sea, Amon face looked remarkably tranquil, and his mouth was turned up at the corners in a peculiar way, almost as if he was…

'Why are you smiling?'

Amon looked Kaneki in the eye, then back down at his scar.

'I don't know.'

'Do you think I'm joking?'

Amon blinked, and his face became neutral. 'That hadn't even crossed my mind.'

'Then why…?'

'I feel awkward, I suppose, I…'

Now it seemed like Amon's emotions were finally catching up with him. His eyes were looking down and moving quickly from side to side, like someone had shoved a very confusing document under his nose that he had to read as fast as he could.

'Wait, no. How can you be human? You're a ghoul. You eat humans. I've seen you, I have my own scar on my shoulder to prove it. People can't turn into ghouls. That's not how the world works.'

'I'm not lying Amon, and I'm not mistaken. My mother and father were both human, and so was I until very, very recently.'

There was one word forming on Amon's lips, and Kaneki knew it was coming long before he said it.

'How?'

Kaneki opened his mouth, and the words seemed to flow out of him like water. He slumped backwards to lean against the sofa, and as he spoke things seemed to flash across his head like headlines in a newspaper.

'Uni… date… Rize… Kanou... Transplant… Ghoul… Coffee… Yamori… Rize…'

Kaneki had noticed Amon tense up considerably as he mentioned Yamori; obviously the investigator was familiar with the so-called 'Jason'.

'Rize?'

'Rize, the ghoul whose organs are inside me.'

'Yes, I know,' Amon said in a whisper. 'But you said she died.'

'She did,' Kaneki said candidly.

'Then,' Amon said, sounding impatient, 'how did she help you escape from Yamori?'

Kaneki could just feel himself staring. Could he tell Amon about his Rize too? At that moment she wasn't anywhere to be seen, so she couldn't object, but…

'Kaneki?'

'Rize is, well, she just appears and talks to me sometimes. When Yamori locked me up, she convinced me to become stronger.' He was unsure if he had said too much, almost wishing he could sink further against the sofa and disappear from view entirely. He hadn't told anyone about her before.

Amon was pinching his brow, but the voice he spoke with was steady. 'That… makes a lot of sense.' There was more silence, and the stillness of the darkened room seemed to relax a little. 'So, when you go off on one, talking crazily, you're actually speaking to this 'Rize'?'

Kaneki nodded slowly, adding a quiet '...most of the time.'

'But, all that insane talk. I remember you counting backwards and screaming about centipedes...'

'Oh,' Kaneki said, pulling his knees up to his chest. 'That's more to do with Yamori.'

'What exactly did he do to you?' Amon asked, very quietly.

Kaneki found himself smiling and he didn't know why. It really, really wasn't funny.

'He did a lot of things, but er… well, for example, he cut my fingers and toes off repeatedly, and put them in a bucket beside me until it was full.' Kaneki flexed a hand and looked at his blackened nails. 'He used to get centipedes and put them in my ear.'

He had never said it out loud before, never actually told anyone, and it felt like a door had suddenly opened, and the room in his mind that had been full of stagnant air was finally being replenished with a breeze that was fresh and clean. 'I suppose that's why I don't always make a lot of sense, Amon-san,' Kaneki said, laughing again in spite of himself. His eyes felt wide in their sockets, and a little manic as he said, 'I think they devoured by brain a little.'

Amon was deathly pale.

'But Rize helped to get me out,' Kaneki continued. 'She told me to be strong, and I fought Yamori. I won and I escaped.'

Amon was nodding with a sudden deep understanding. 'I remember seeing you a few stories below me that night. That was the first time I saw you with white hair.'

'It turned white in that room.' Kaneki glanced sideways at Amon, who looked slightly taken aback by everything. 'Do you believe me?'

Amon gulped. 'You haven't lied to me before, at least not that I know of.' And now Amon looked strange, almost like he was ashamed and almost… horrified. 'But then, if you're not a ghoul, then you're not really one of them. And I've treated you like…'

And this was what Kaneki had been worried about.

'Amon, you have to understand.' Kaneki sat up into a kneeling position and leant closer and closer forward, almost like if he closed the distance his words would have a better change of sinking into Amon's brain. 'Yes, I used to be human, so I suppose I'm not a real ghoul, but I'm still the same as them. Since I was turned into this I've got to know them. They've become my friends and family, and they're not what we've always been told. They're not heartless demons with no emotions and remorse. They're exactly the same as us, except they have these bodies that dictate how they live their lives.'

A flicker of anger adorned Amon's features. 'There are ghouls who have committed atrocious acts. You can't deny that.'

Kaneki laughed humourlessly. 'Are all humans evil because some of them are locked up in prison for murder?'

Amon was frowning deeply, but then his face seemed to crumple. When he finally spoke, he was so quiet that Kaneki barely saw his lips move.

'I'm sorry.'

Then Amon was leaning forward and pulling Kaneki into his arms and resting his face in the crook of Kaneki's neck. Kaneki didn't move, and neither did Amon as he repeated the muffled words over and over and over.

Then, after they'd both been quiet for a short while, Amon lifted his head and spoke softly into Kaneki's ear.

'Do you hate me?'

The entirety of time seemed to stop for a moment before Kaneki replied.

'Yes.'

He whispered it, and his mouth made the words into a slight hiss, like there was an echo of Rize in his voice. But then he let his arms snake up to wrap themselves around Amon's torso, as he felt two people's tears fall down onto his neck.

What is this, two chapters in one go? Bit of a disappointment, sorry, I know you're used to waiting months/years between chapters. I'll try better next time hahaaaa.

Kaneki told him anyway... I hope it was anything close to what you expected. Thanks for your reviews on chapter 19 guys. It's nice seeing where people are from too I feel like I know a bit more about who's reading :)