Corie=28

Kaneki=23

After showering and changing into loose pants and a shirt, Corie found herself in front of Amon's room.

"How are you feeling?" he asked when he saw her.

Corie lightly pounded on her chest as she coughed. "Like I still have more of that crap lodged in my lungs."

Amon felt slightly uncomfortable that she could act so flippant about nearly drowning.

Corie sensed his unease and decided to get more serious. "Thank you…for saving me back there."

With her arms now bare, Amon could see several cuts left behind from the shattered glass.

"Don't worry about these," she told him, noticing where he was staring. "They'll be gone by tomorrow."

"…Right."

"Kaneki told me you took control of the situation pretty well."

"I've been trained to remain calm in high-pressure situations."

"Yeah, so have we, and you can see how well we did with that." She sighed deeply and ran her hand through her damp hair. "It was stupid to go after her myself, I know that. It's just…I've seen Eto hurt so many people. When I heard her voice, I was so scared she was going to go after someone else in our group that I couldn't think straight. I was so desperate for all of this to be over. But…I didn't realize how far Eto was willing to go."

"What do you mean?"

"Did you recognize the liquid I was trapped in? She put me in that case in order to harvest my kakuhou and create more half-ghouls like you and Kaneki."

Amon clenched his jaw. And he thought his family was messed up.

"I've seen what that process does to a person. It's so incredibly grueling that it drives them completely insane. Eto doesn't want to just kill me. She wants to destroy me. She wants to take away everything I have and then strip me of my humanity. Her hatred is deeply personal and it has gotten to a level that I've never seen before. And to be honest…it's terrifying."

Amon rarely ever saw Corie scared. But tonight…as Eyepatch had held her in his arms, she had suddenly looked…so small and fragile. And right now, with her damaged arms crossed over her chest as if to protect herself, she somehow seemed even smaller.

He didn't like how that made him feel.

Amon took a step closer to her. "Corie, I swear to you that I'm going to do anything I can to make sure the One-Eyed Owl never accomplishes that goal."

Corie looked up to meet his eyes. Apparently, some of that horrible-smelling liquid was still in her lungs because she suddenly couldn't breathe very well.

She found that she couldn't doubt him when he spoke like that.

Did he really want to protect her that much? Had she truly earned his trust after all this time? Why did she feel so safe around him? Why did those words make goosebumps appear on her arms?

Corie had always been a pretty impulsive person, but what she did next might've been the stupidest and most impulsive thing she'd ever done.

She closed the small distance in between them and kissed him.

Embarrassingly enough, she had to stand on her toes to reach him because he was frustratingly tall.

Amon froze, but he didn't push her away. Whether it was because he was so shocked at the sudden action or because he didn't exactly dislike it, he couldn't really say for sure.

Corie finally pulled away and once again looked him in the eyes.

The realization of what exactly she had just done hit her and her eyes widened in embarrassment.

She rushed out of the room with her hand to her mouth.

"Corie, wait!" Amon called.

Corie ran down to the training area as if the space would somehow calm her racing heart. Things always made sense down here, or at least, they were supposed to. But even down here cut off from the world, her brain could not attempt to process what had just happened.

Her face warmed when she remembered every little detail of Amon's lips against hers and how nice his arms felt beneath her hands and how it felt like every single fear she had melted away when she kissed him.

She sank down against the wall and hugged one of her knees to her chest.

Corie wasn't sure how long she stayed down there, but eventually, Kaneki appeared down below with her.

"Uh-oh," he remarked when he saw the position she was in. "What's wrong?"

Corie looked up, her face reddening. "I kissed Amon."

Kaneki raised his eyebrows. "Oh."

She smiled sheepishly. "It was just the heat of the moment, you know? And my inability to not act on my impulsive thoughts." She shook her head as she looked down at her knees. "What was I thinking? I must be insane."

Kaneki took a seat beside her. "I could've told you that a long time ago."

"Very funny."

"All your previous actions considered, this is probably the least insane thing you've ever done. So…you like him then?"

"Maybe. I don't know. Does it matter? I can't do this with him."

"Why not?"

"I mean, the things he's done to us…"

"The things he's done to us? What about the things we've done to him?"

Corie chewed on her bottom lip, knowing that was a poor excuse before she even said it.

"Corie, come on. You were the one person to stay by his side after we found him in Kanou's lab and the one who helped him make the difficult transition from investigator to ghoul. You've never been one to hold onto the past in situations like this. So what's the real problem?"

Corie took a deep breath before telling him softly, "Eto has made it her personal mission to destroy me and everyone I care about. What if she realizes how important he is to me…and hurts him? I have already lost so many people. I cannot lose him too."

Kaneki put his hand on hers. "None of us are going to let that happen. It's okay to let yourself have this. You spend so much time taking care of other people that you forget to let people take care of you."

"You're one to talk."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But…I'm trying. I…found Hide again."

"You did?"

Kaneki leaned his head against the wall as he sighed. "His shoulder…knowing I was the one who did that…"

"Hey, I took a chomp out of your shoulder. Do you regret that?"

"Well, no, but I was capable of healing. And his injury is way worse than the tiny bite you took. I was out of my mind when I did that. I practically mauled him."

"It had to be done, and Hide knew that. I can promise you that he would do it all over again if he had to."

"I know that in my head, but…"

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Corie took a shaky breath. "Kaneki, there's something I have to tell you. I don't know how to say this, but I…don't want you to hear it from Eto. Um…when I was trapped in that glass case, Eto told me something. She told me that…she's the one who dropped the steel beams on Rize. She's the one who told Rize to go to the 20th ward in the first place, she's the one who planned for Yamori to take you, she even planned the night of the Anteiku raid when you fought Arima and lost. She planned everything. She thought that when you fought Arima last time, that you would die. And I would be so devastated that I would let her kill me.

"She did all of that…because she wanted to hurt me. She saw how much you looked like Reo and she knew how much you would mean to me as a result. She wanted me to protect you and care for you and grow close to you…and then she would make sure you died so that it would cause me pain."

Kaneki sighed heavily and ran his hand through his hair, trying to process all this information. He remained silent for a few moments as he tried to think about what he could say next.

"Well…" he finally said. "If you think I'm going to be mad at you, you don't know me very well."

Corie shook her head and let out a hoarse laugh. "Just once, couldn't you react to terrible news like a normal person?"

"Corie, if the positions were reversed and Eto was my insane cousin and turned you into a half-ghoul to hurt me, would you blame me?"

She looked down at her knees again. "No."

"Exactly. And even if Eto somehow did manage to plan all that, there's one thing she never counted on. Just how strong we are together. The only reason I didn't die in that fight with Arima is because it was the two of us fighting against him." He smiled a little as he bumped her shoulder with his own. "Besides…you're just thinking about all of the bad things that have happened to me. Before the steel beam accident, the only people I had in my life were Hide and an aunt who hated me and did whatever she could to make my life miserable. But now…I have a family. I have you and everyone at :re and my old squad at the CCG, you know, assuming they don't still hate me. And I have Touka."

Corie smiled a little. "When did you realize that you liked her?"

"I don't think I could give you a specific moment. One day, she was a temperamental girl who scared the crap out of me and then one day, she was a beautiful woman I wanted to protect. You know all those times I disappear at night? I'm out spending time with her, trying to make up for all the time I've missed with her. I'm learning to let her look out for me just as much as I look out for her."

Corie sighed and leaned her head onto his shoulder. "I'm glad she has you. She's grown ever since she met you. You help her to be a better person."

"She does the same for me. And you know, I think it's the same for you and Amon."

"Yeah, but a ghoul and an investigator? I feel like Romeo and Juliet."

"Romeo and Juliet were impulsive teenagers who decided to get married after two days and then they both died due to lack of communication. I don't think it's the same."

"I meant that we belong to two sides who hate each other, Mr. Smarty-Pants."

"Well, here's hoping you guys aren't as stupid as two impulsive teenagers."

"I may be impulsive, but I'd like to think I'm not that stupid."

After several more minutes, Corie forced herself to go back up to the rooms beneath the café. Wishing for the Earth to currently swallow her whole so she could avoid this conversation, she lightly knocked on Amon's door before slowly opening it and stepping inside.

"So, um, about earlier—" she started.

"You didn't give me a chance to say anything," he interrupted.

"I wasn't sure I wanted to know what you were going to say."

Amon paused, trying to choose his next words carefully. "I've spent almost my entire life hating ghouls. I hated them for what they did to me and the other kids at the orphanage, I hated them for mindlessly taking lives, I hated them for thinking that they could pretend to be human and integrate themselves into society, and I hated them for constantly taking the lives of the people I cared about."

Corie didn't know where he was going with this, but so far she didn't like it. "Amon—"

"Let me finish. Things began to change when I met Eyepatch that night Rabbit killed my partner. I…I mean, Kaneki and Touka."

The young woman couldn't help but smile a little. She wondered if Amon was ever going to get comfortable using their real names.

"And he was crying, begging me to leave so that he wouldn't kill me. Every time I saw him following that night, I couldn't understand his actions or why he was so different than all the other ghouls I'd seen. I started to question my understanding of ghouls for the first time. But…not so much that I changed my mindset or stopped seeking to eradicate them.

"Then my life went to hell at the hands of Kanou and his team, and I thought I was going to die. But then…you showed up after all that time. And even after everything I'd done and all the times we had fought in the past, you patiently if violently taught me how to adapt to my new life. You showed me what it is to live as a ghoul. You showed me that ghouls are nothing like society has portrayed them. You showed me that…you're as much a person as I am.

"And then I learned about your family and everything you've been through, and I wondered how you could still find ways to smile every day. I wondered how you hadn't completely lost yourself to hatred against the CCG or humans in general. I wondered why you could still smile and I couldn't.

"Tonight…when I saw you in that case…it took everything in me to stay calm and get you out. As I tried to revive you, I thought for a moment that the Owl had succeeded in killing you. And despite everything I've been through, I can't remember a time I've ever felt more terrified.

"For so many years, I have held onto the notion that this world is wrong and that it was up to me to fix it. But the longer I spent with you training or getting the absolute crap kicked out of me or holding you when you were having a nightmare or even just making a cup of coffee the way you taught me, the world finally started to feel right."

Corie sighed, her head reeling at everything he had just told her. Amon had never been much of a talker, and she couldn't believe that he had just confessed all of that at one time.

"Do you realize that if Eto finds out about this, she will destroy you in order to hurt me?" she asked softly.

"I've always been one to take risks."

"Look, I…feel very safe when I'm with you. But at the same time…you scare me. Even after all the time you've spent here, there's this part of me that still sees you as an investigator and perceives you as a threat."

"You think it isn't the same for me? That the investigator in me doesn't see you as a ghoul who wants to kill me?"

Corie took a small step towards him. "So what are we going to do about that?"

Amon stepped towards her. "I guess we'll just have to face our fears."

Corie was rarely intimidated by anything, but in this moment, she could safely say that Amon towering over her and looking at her like that was the most intimidating thing she had ever faced.

She wondered if he could hear how loudly her heart was beating inside her chest.

Amon took her head in his hands and gently knelt down to capture her lips in his.

Seeing as this was the second time they kissed and both parties were prepared, Corie easily she melted into it. Her hands touched his stomach (have mercy, was that an eight-pack?) and slowly slid up to his chest and then his neck. She wrapped her arms around him so she could deepen the kiss.

A former CCG investigator and a ghoul.

It should've felt wrong, and yet, nothing had ever seemed more right.