The Bonds of Friendship

Summary: After the Battle of the 11th Ward everything changes, Kaneki cannot return to his previous life, but can't join Aogiri either. He tries to make a new path for himself. His goal: keep his friends safe, bring down Aogiri, and somehow make the CCG see that humans and ghouls are more alike than they know. But a certain blonde seems to have other plans. You see the bonds of friendship can be a tie, a lifeline, and sometimes a red string of fate…

AN: A new story! So basically, this is a parallel universe where Kaneki doesn't join Aogiri, and a romance unfolds for the best relationship in the fandom, between Hide and Kaneki. Enjoy! - LadyLutra

The Battle of the 11th Ward

His bicycle rolls to a stop on the bridge. He can see most of the city from here, from the fallen burning buildings to the smoke billowing into the sky. He knows there are countless bodies in the streets from the battle, but is glad that he can't see this detail from this distance.

"Kaneki, where are you man?" He speaks this only to himself. He takes out his phone and scrolls through the hundreds of unanswered messages he has sent his best friend. This was so unlike him to disappear like this.

The blonde-haired boy remembers a time that the two were together at the movies. They had just exited the building and returning to reality again after being so engrossed in the fantasy of the film. His friend had checked his phone to find three emails from his university tutor marked urgent. The worried frenzy that Kaneki whirled into was enough to cause the boy to cry. It took Hide a long while just to get him calm enough to read the emails. It turned out that it was a congratulatory email about the quality of his assignment and that he wanted to use it as an example to the other students. Hide shook his head and smiled at the memory.

Hide knew that Kaneki would never knowingly ignore his messages. The boy would have turned into an anxious mess. That meant that something had happened to him. It's been over ten days since he had seen or heard from his friend. The last time he hadn't seen him for this long was when his mother had died.

The boy on his bicycle had already exhausted all of his leads on his best friend's disappearance. He had gone to Anteiku to interrogate Touka, only to find the glass front completely destroyed. The café had closed for remodelling, but he had managed to talk to both Touka and the manager by hanging out in front of the building. Both had denied any knowledge of Kaneki's disappearance.

This irked Hide, there was no way that he could conceive that the two events weren't connected. The place he knew to be a ghoul safe haven - and probably the base of the group which controlled the 20th ward ghouls – was attacked the same time that his half ghoul best friend had disappeared, and that was just a coincidence? No chance.

The blonde-haired boy shook his head. He focused his attention on the destruction before him. Armoured vehicles and troops had moved in, he assumed his was to assess the damage and treat the wounded. Hide continued to watch the CCG's movements, anxiety tightening his chest. He hoped that his friend wasn't down there somewhere, but somehow knew that he probably was. He needed more information. He vowed to help his friend in any way that he possibly could.

A dangerous thought popped into his head.

"Take her to safety." The white-haired boy tells a hooded figure with a flash of bright orange hair. He was referring to the girl he had just set down on the ground. He brushed the blue hair from her face and saw that she was still unconscious, but her breathing was even. His white hair fell into his eyes while he assessed her injuries, there was no blood at least, but he could tell that it would take her a while to recover from her internal injuries.

"You aren't coming?" Nishiki asked as Kaneki helped load the girl onto his back. The white-haired boy offered no reply as he turned and walked back the way they'd come.

Kaneki surveyed the damage as he walked through the silent city. The smoke and fog were disturbed by his presence, revealing the rubble, lost limbs and rivers of blood beneath his bare feet.

'When it comes down to the state of this screwed up world, you can't point your finger at ghouls or humans. We are all to blame.' His words to the investigator came to mind as he walked. This was the doing of the terrorist group Aogiri and the supposed law, the CCG. 'We need to stop fighting. And start talking.' And how the hell was he supposed to do that.

He thought of Ayato and what he'd learned about him that night. The younger boy had been so desperate to protect his sister that he joined the enemy. Kaneki had figured out that his rabbit mask was to keep attention away from his sister; he would take the blame for her actions to keep her safe.

Should I do the same? If I join Aogiri, I would get stronger. It would be the quickest way to learn about ghoul combat. It would help protect my friends at Anteiku and protect Hide. I can't let anything happen to them again. They all risked so much to free me tonight. I am so incredibly lucky that they have all survived, myself included…

Visions of a black and white blood smeared chequered floor flooded his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook the memory from his mind's eye.

Girlish giggling shattered the illusion. He looked up to see a petite girl wrapped in bandages from head to toe, a maroon hooded robe with catlike ears draped over her childlike frame. She giggled again and vanished in a cloud of fog that had rolled in with the breeze.

The giggling was behind him now. He didn't play her game and stood motionless, staring dead ahead, "What do you want?"

Giggling to his right, she had moved again. If it wasn't for her laughter, Kaneki wouldn't know her location, she was silent in her movements.

"Ghouls deserve to be at their rightful place in society. Humans are nothing but food. They are cattle." Her voice was as childish as her laughter, this unsettled Kaneki further.

So that's what they want: to destroy the CCG, to enslave humans and farm them for meat. She wants me to join them. As much as I would learn by joining them there is no way I could contribute their goal.

The giggling was in front of him again, he looked up to find her looking intently at him, her hooded head cocked to one side. He met her gaze with the fury he was feeling, the resolve that he would stop them somehow.

The white-haired boy turned and retreated, walking away from her condescending laughter. His hands clenched in a tight fist, his jaw set. I will not be like you.

'You're a ghoul and you're also a human. You're the only one who belongs to both worlds.' Yoshimura's words echo in his head.

I need to be the one that reunites the two worlds. But how?!

Kaneki finds his friends from Anteiku, happy to see they were all there, they were all safe. He looked at them all in turn, silently thanking them for their sacrifice. Touka was conscious, he walked over to her.

"Glad you're okay." She smiled up at him, "I like the hair. You might want to change it back though. You can't show up for work looking like that. You're going to stick out like a sore thumb!" Her voice was upbeat, seemingly unaffected by her injuries. Kaneki helped her up, supporting most of her weight by wrapping an arm around her waist. She winced slightly at the movement but put her arm around his shoulders, grateful for the help.

Kaneki forced a laugh at her joke, but there was no mirth in his eyes, "Let's go home."

AN: So yeah, we start at the second series of the anime, from here we will follow some canon events but with a HidexKaneki twist. Please review! I thrive on feedback.