AN: Hello all! And, after long last, welcome to the end of Bad Moon Rising! After this there is only the epilogue I'm afraid! If you're sad its the end, don't worry I am too, but if you like my writing style you can check out my AO3 under the same there where I will be officially moving after the epilogue is published. Everything will stay here, but I will no longer publish anything on this site, I know, about 3 years too late to announce such a move but hey, we adapt.
Thank you for reading Bad Moon Rising and all my faithful reviewers that gave their opinions on every chapter, I read and smiled at every single one of them.
Enjoy!
Arbutus
Flower Meaning: You Are The Only One I Love
When Kazuko opens her eyes, there is a single white butterfly circling the abandoned building above her.
Wiping away the tears from her eyes as she sat up, Kazuko watched it land a few feet away from her, slowly flapping its wings on an abandoned pipe near her feet. A speck of light within the dull greyness of the warehouse.
"Hello." She whispered, breathing without a weight on her chest for the first time in so long.
The butterfly says nothing, but she never expected it to say anything in the first place.
Beyond the abandoned warehouse, the sky is dark, and the air is cold, Kazuko tilting her head up and breathing out slowly, the weight of the situation laying deep on her soldiers.
Her siblings are dead, her lover is insane, Kazuko is all that remains of a dynasty that never came to fruition.
(Furuta is not dead, not yet she feels it deep within her bones that he still breaths, but that does not mean he deserves to live)
Furuta. Arima. Rize. Kazuko. Kaneki.
She wants to bash her head against the wall due to the unfairness of it all.
Yet, she does not, only placing her head on top of her knees, blue eyes following the butterfly as it flew around the empty warehouse, not yet realising there was no way out.
Wait.
Springing to her feet, Kazuko stared at the butterfly in amazement, a brief laugh escaping her lips.
The butterfly had to have got in somehow, and a way in meant there was a way out. Spinning around, Kazuko surveyed all the windows running alongside the edge of the warehouse before the wall met the ceiling. Tilting her head back to look at them properly, she felt a grin spread across her face as she saw the window panel was missing on the window on the fare left side.
Grabbing the closest ladder, Kazuko dragged it towards the missing window, balancing it carefully just below the missing panel, flinching as the aged metal whined underneath her weight.
Kazuko tightened her hands on the ladder, determination filling her.
She refuses to be the princess trapped in the tower, Kazuko was worth more than that.
("Let's make something clear Kazuko." He sighed calmly. Looking down at her with an odd look of seriousness painted across his face. "You are not a princess, I am not a dragon, and the CCG isn't going to ride in here on big white horses to save you and killing me isn't going to help anyone. Not even you.")
Uta had told her that much once, chewing down on fresh human meat while the stitches in her face had been even fresher.
That was a whole lifetime ago, and now so little of what was there now remain.
Her hands gripped tight on to the ladder as she climbed, her steps certain and unfaltering. She reached for the edge of the windowsill as soon as it was in sight, gripping it tight with one hand and using it as support as she slowly climbed the last few steps.
Her foot slipped, missing the climb to the last step by a hairs breadth.
The ladder gave out underneath her.
Clinging to the windowsill like a drowning man would cling to floating driftwood, a sharp shriek left Kazuko's lips when her feet met empty air, the ladder falling back onto the floor with a sharp ringing noise of metal hitting concrete at great force.
Tightening her grip on the edge, she breathed out slowly, heaving herself forward just enough to tumble out of the window, her arms twisted painfully as her feet landed on the flat rooftop of the neighbouring warehouse, straightening up and fully onto the roof before she fell through the gap.
Breathing in the cold air of the Tokyo night, the devastation to the city clear as Kazuko slowly stood.
If she didn't fear for her life, Kazuko would've stumbled back in shock.
Furuta, her stupid baby sibling with an infatuation with another of their siblings had managed to somehow pull off his plan.
A thousand red eyes stared back at Kazuko, a strange pulsing flower like construction staring back at her, something glowing emerald, green at the very top of it.
Oh, so that was the supposed dragon.
"Not my problem." She muttered to herself, turning on her heel to walk in the direction she knew Renji had gone. "Nothing to do with me. All of it's Furuta's fault."
Follow the dragon.
Kazuko would just like one normal day, she wasn't aware that it was too much to ask for.
The white butterfly passed her, flying out of the broken window and in the direction of the moon.
(Goodbye Arima, thank you for everything…)
…
Tokyo was a mess, panicked CCG members littering the streets as Kazuko slipped from rooftop to rooftop, sighing in relief as she caught sight of three distinctive people on the rooftop a few meters in front of her.
Thank Kami, she had been wondering around for ages.
What Kazuko did not appreciate, was the way Uta's hands were currently wrapped around Renji's throat, Itori standing helpless at the side lines.
"Let him go!" The scream escapes Kazuko before she could fully stop it, it's high pitch piercing the air as she drags herself up onto the roof, three pairs of red eyes turning to look at her dishevelled and desperate form. "Let him go, Uta!"
Uta burst out laughing, tilting his head to the clear sky and the manic laugh filling the cool air around them.
"Oh, darling Kazuko…" He hummed, not looking at all surprised that she had found her way to them despite being locked in a warehouse on the other side of Tokyo. "You always were much cleverer than anyone could expect."
"And you're not an idiot Uta, no matter how much you may pretend." Kazuko replied, standing strongly on her own two feet, digging her heels into the concrete. "You know that there is no way you can win this."
"Why not give it a go anyway?" He shrugged slightly, glancing between the other three. "That's where the fun comes, isn't it?"
"Sure," Kazuko tilted her head slightly to mirror his posture. "If your death can be counted as fun."
"Then I die how I strived to live, how poetic." Uta's grin only widened at her words, Kazuko staring back blankly. "I suppose it's all well and good that you're here Kazuko, we have an audience for the demise of the victor."
"I would prefer if that was not an option." She stated coldly.
"Don't look so worried darling, I know what I'm doing."
"Just let him go Uta, or I'll- "
"Or you'll what Kazuko?" Uta interrupted with a hiss, his eyes snapping to meet hers. "What do you have the power to do in this situation, my darling Kazuko?"
Kazuko's glare is cold, but the tears running down her cheeks are warm against her skin and her hands are shaking.
She looks, for the first time in so long, broken; and Uta craved to mend the fissures with gold.
"Or..." Kazuko chokes, panic wrapping its slim hands around her throat.
Kazuko doesn't have anything to give anymore, nothing he hasn't already taken.
Only... just one more thing.
With an unsteady hand, she reaches into the pocket of her jacket and brings the shard of Arima's quinque to her jugular.
"Or I slit my own throat right here and now."
The sharp shard is shaking in her trembling hand as she presses it to her neck with tears in her eyes, though the red the bleeds through the blue is determined and defiant, staring back at Uta while both of them ignored Itori's desperate placations.
Surprise flickered across Uta's form before he settled back down into a smug countenance.
"You won't do it." He stated calmly. "I've known you for many years Kazuko, and even you're not crazy enough to slit your own neck. Hush now my darling, let me just finish with this and then we can go home. Stay still, this will only take a second."
Oh, but she was.
Crazy enough, that is.
"I said," she pressed the shard further into her neck, and ignores the way Itori chokes on her own breath, "let him go."
It hurt, but everything hurt now so Kazuko barely blinked.
Her brother had done this once, Arima had reached up and slit his own throat to take death into his own hands. Adjusting her grip on the shard, Kazuko prayed she was strong enough to do the same.
"You won't do it." Uta challenged, calling her bluff.
Kazuko looked Uta dead in the eye as the blade pressed down enough to draw blood. Looked him dead in the eye as she began to move the shard across her neck, the breath she manage d to suck in was strained, her vocal cords and airway restricted by the pressure on her jugular. She could feel still warm blood start to well around her throat, beginning to drip down her collarbone, and stain the top of her shirt. Throughout it all she never looked away from Uta's face, watched silently as his smugness bled into surprise and then the surprise bled into horror as she began to drag the shard across her throat.
Uta snapped first.
"No!" He shouted, lunging off of Renji and knocking Kazuko to the ground, ripping the shard out of her hand, and throwing it onto concrete floor, anguish, and horror swimming in his eyes. "You can't do that, you're not done. You're mine! I'll decide when your done Kazuko."
"I have a soul." Kazuko spat back, the cut on her neck stretching painfully as she screamed back at him. "My own! Not yours! It never was!"
"You have a soul?" Uta asked coldly, leaning closer to her face with a sharp laugh. "Do you really darling?"
"Yes." Kazuko breathed out, choking as his tattooed hand began to wrap around her neck.
Fury came over Uta's eyes, his jaw tightening as he reached for her, placing his hands across her sluggishly bleeding neck.
"Where is your soul Kazuko?" Uta mocked her with a hiss, a single tear beginning to drip down her cheek as his hand tightened around her throat, red and blue blossoming under his hands as he began to choke her, her own deep red blood staining his tattooed hands. "Can I see it? Can I feel it? If I ripped into your chest would I find it there?"
For the first time in so many years, Kazuko felt sane.
She felt sane, and in her sanity, she felt fear.
"Are you going to kill me, Uta?" She asked, the tears still streaming down her face as Uta's grip went lax in shock. His red eyes widening above her, all the fury bleeding out of them, and her own heterochromatic eyes shining with tears, the scars on her face still visible through the lights of the city around them. "Have you fallen so deep in your need for revenge that you are going to kill me?"
Uta tilted his head, his grip fully loosening from her throat, tattooed hands now simply resting lightly on the base of her neck.
"I don't want to kill you…" Uta muttered, looking for the first time in so long lost and confused, staring down at her like he simply could not process what he had just done. "You're my Kazuko, why would I kill you? You're not still obsessed with your own death are you darling?"
("Are you going to kill me?"
"Now, what makes you say that?")
"Please Uta," She stated reaching up to cradle his confused face, thumbs brushing across his cheeks as she tried desperately to convince him. "Can't we just go?"
"Only when this is done, darling Kazuko…" He trialled off, tilting his head as he considered, though his voice was resolute, and his decision had long since been made. "Only when this is over."
"It is over." She croaked up, Uta's weight on her still forcing her to lay still of the concrete floor of the rooftop.
"No, my darling Kazuko." His tone is final, and by now she knows that there is nothing she can do to change his mind. "Not for us. Not yet."
He stepped back, leaving Kazuko abandoned on the floor as he walked towards Renji, his faced filled with determination.
"I've been waiting for this moment for a long time." Uta admitted, Kazuko's head falling back on the concrete, eyes shuttering closed in defeat. "Do you remember what I told you, the day you kept me away from my Kazuko?"
"The next time you will feel alive is when you were feasting on my heart, for I had torn out yours." Renji answered, his voice grim.
"How good of you to remember." Uta's voice almost had a cooing quality too it, like one would congratulate a small child for their colouring in. "Now," his voice was almost growling now, Kazuko turning her head, just in time to see his hands curl into fists, his kagune twisting to cover his body and transform him into something to be feared. "Why don't you make me feel alive, Renji?"
Kazuko had seen that monster somewhere before, had only caught a brief glimpse of Uta's kakuja form once before.
(Blood dripped into her eyes and distorted her vision, red crowding her eyes as hands grabbed at her from seemingly all angles, jerking her away from Uta's blood-stained manic grin. Her head collided with the black and white checkered tiles, blood filling her mouth as it pooled onto the floor, causing her to choke and splutter, cutting of her terrified scream.
Kazuko watched in a daze as thick blood travelled from her aching upper arm to pool down her forearms and reach its destination in the small dip in her outstretched palm. The blood collected there until it dripped through the gaps between her long, pale, and slightly curved fingers to drip onto the white square her hand rested on.
Out of the corner of her vision, her eyes too fixated on the blood, she watched Uta shift into something more.)
Cannibalism does not come without consequence, Furuta had told her that much about their biology, sometimes if a ghoul eats too much of their own kind, they shift into something worse than a ghoul.
At the thought of her half-brother, Kazuko's head turned to view the pulsing, almost flower like structure high above her, knowing that was what her brother had been striving for.
In the end, it didn't matter, somewhere at the bottom of it Furuta is defeated, and Kazuko laid abandoned on a small concrete rooftop, the sound of Uta's and Renji's fight clear at the outskirts of her hearing and vision.
This is how the Washuu end.
The thought comes to her in startling clarity, and the hilarity of it all almost causes her to laugh if it was not for the aching pains of her throat.
This was the ending of a dynasty that had been planned and ordered long before Kazuko herself had even took her first breath.
And all it took was the mistake of picking someone like Kaneki Ken.
Kazuko admired the younger half-ghoul in a strange way, but that did not take away the fact that he killed her brother.
Not Arima, she knows that now, but that does not take away from the damage done to Furuta.
(In that moment under the dusk, Furuta is simply her twenty year old little brother who no one ever showed what was right and wrong. And, despite his very severe faults, Kazuko doesn't want anything to hurt him.)
("Are you going to kill me, nee-san?")
Sanity hurts, it rips into Kazuko's every mistake and deed and is without forgiveness or mercy.
If Kazuko knew it would have hurt this much, she would have picked a more opportune time to go through with it.
Finally, the rooftop stills.
Focusing her hearing back into the present, Kazuko sat up slowly, watching Itori run to a bleeding Renji, Uta's kakuja form damaged and slowly fading away. The ghoul himself, standing victorious over the bleeding body of his long friend. Itori held Renji close to her, quietly trying to coax him into survival.
Standing up and shaking feet, Kazuko walked towards the scene, catching Uta's arms before he could lunge forward and deliver the final blow.
"It's over Uta, let it be." She whispered to him, slowly letting go of his arm and moving past him towards the edge.
"Is it darling? It was s over so quickly."
He sounds so broken, so lost, and so confused, Kazuko closing her eyes and feeling the breeze on her face as he walked to stand next to her, both of them staring over the city skyline.
"Darling, this is all I ever wanted for you." Uta admitted after a few moments of silence, tracing the scars he had carved into her face with that very same hand so long ago as Itori quietly spoke to Renji a few paces behind them. In an entirely different reality then they were. "For both of us."
Kazuko is silent as she stared over the city skyline, vaguely she registers that Renji is still breathing, registers that Uta probably never wanted to actually kill him in the first place.
Sanity hurts in a way she never expected it to, hurts because she knows what needs to come next. What needs to happen for this charade to end, for the final curtain fall on a drama over ten years in the making.
Love is a leap of faith, she remembered reading once, it's hurtling off a building and trusting that your partner will catch you no matter what.
Kazuko takes a step closer to the edge.
Sanity is a shock to the system, a jarring and nauseating recollection of reality, like suddenly hitting cold concrete after falling over into the abyss.
She could not clearly see the ground from where she stood at the edge of the roof, but Kazuko supposed that did not matter.
"Uta." Her voice is nothing but a whisper, her eyes trained on the skyline next to them even with Uta's hand still on her face. "Uta, do you still love me?"
"Kazuko." Uta's voice is low, honest in such a raw, innocent way. It hurts. All of this hurt in a way Kazuko never expected it too. "I never stopped. I have always loved you more than anything."
"Good." She breaths in deeply, her hand reaching out, fingers gently intertwining with the loops of his ruined jeans. "This probably wouldn't work otherwise."
Uta smiled slightly, eyes bright and clear for the first time in days, reaching back to place a hand on her cheek. Kazuko smiled back, bright, cheerful, and relieved. Yet, there is resignation in her eyes, grim determination because she knows what must come next. Uta's lips are cold as they pressed against hers, pulling away after only a few seconds.
In the end, it comes down to them.
Her final decision is made, the lines are drawn in the sand and now there is no going back.
She is a Washuu.
She is a Saito.
In the end, she is simply Kazuko.
I cannot live with neither with you, nor without you.
Uta was right, the ending was poetic in its own odd little way.
Kazuko is still smiling, even as she drags them both over the edge of the building.