Hi guys. So, this just so happens to follow rather nicely after my first chapter, but I might jump around in the future. This also follows canon rather closely...but I have a few ideas for later that might diverge a little. Thanks for reading, and please review! :)
Setting: When Kaneki gives Touka the rabbit keychain, and later, when they meet on the bridge.
I don't own these characters.
Kaneki
It was raining on the day Kaneki found the rabbit keychain. He was on his way back from the bookstore, Hinami in tow (precariously so, as she was attempting to read her new book and carry an umbrella at the same time). Around them, droplets plummeted from the sky like so many silent petitions, taking Tokyo's colored cityscape and painting it grey.
Kaneki loved the rain. It was an honest, unbridled thing, let loose from the clouds above—mournful yet refreshing, pensive yet pure. Behind him, Hinami stepped into a puddle and giggled before hopping away, her book closing with a solid thump. He turned his head to the side and smiled.
It was then that he saw it: a large, glistening shop window with a display of various trinkets on the other side, arranged atop a draped, scarlet cloth. He stopped. They were mostly trivial things—colorful bookmarks and warm scarves with cartoon kittens knitted along the edges; an assortment of themed coffee mugs (these also had kittens on them); lunch boxes shaped like fruits and vegetables (why anyone would want a lettuce-themed lunch box, he wasn't sure); and there, in the center, was a collection of keychains.
He spotted the rabbit at once.
Without thinking, Kaneki leaned forward, his fingers pressing against the glass; a ghostly outline twirled along the outside of his handprint.
Images came, each one as fleeting as the patter of raindrops around him:
A white mask with tall ears, gripped tightly between pale fingers.
A distinct click as a cup of coffee is set before him; he looks down, breathing in the scent of the beverage that binds his past and present, and sees the intricately swirled pattern of a rabbit in the foam.
A button clipped to the lapel of a school uniform.
Violet eyes: a mixture of accusation and carefully-contained laughter—and something else, he thinks, but it vanishes before he can name it—as she catches him reading for the third time that day.
Hinami caught up with him and followed his wide-eyed gaze. She tugged lightly on the sleeve of his sweater.
Kaneki swallowed.
Protect.
He had to remember that word. He had to steel himself with it. Otherwise….
"Onii-chan?" Hinami tugged again at his sleeve, more urgently this time.
He blinked. Pulled his hand away from the glass. Willed himself to forget those violet eyes—no—to remember them. To remember what he fought for.
Kaneki glanced down at Hinami, apology written in the upward lilt of his voice. "You said Touka-chan is taking her exams soon?"
Hinami's eyes glistened; she was more observant than she let on, he thought. More observant, and more resilient. "Yes. Next week." She nodded bravely and hugged her book with one arm.
He sighed thoughtfully and looked once more at that rabbit keychain. He couldn't see her—it wasn't safe yet—but this one small, precious, trivial thing, he could do.
Because he needed to know.
She needed to know.
That he remembered.
Kaneki gently patted Hinami's head, inclining his own, and then they walked into the shop.
Touka
It was sunny on the day Touka received the keychain. The first thing she realized (or rather, she would realize, but not until much later) was that she whispered his name, and she said Kaneki, instead of Shitty Kaneki. Because even though she was still angry, still confused, still (dare she admit it?) hurt, she could not hate him forever.
Kaneki was simply not a person deserving of such derision, because he was, at his core, good and kind and gentle.
Even if he abandoned them (her).
Even if he was self-righteous and naive and a complete one-eyed half bastard.
Such was the content of her conflicted thoughts as Touka brushed past Yoriko and went running out of the school doors, the rabbit keychain bouncing along as she pumped her arms with each step.
She must've looked like a complete idiot, a painfully cliche high school girl, as she went charging down the street, her violet eyes hopeful in spite of their sting.
Hinami said he was close, she thought.
She said….
Maybe….
She ran until her legs ached more than the pressure behind her eyes, until she knew (long after she knew) that he was gone. Touka stood in the street and rested her hands against her legs. Her ragged breathing was all she could hear. There were no cars. No humans. No ghouls. Just the street and the keychain and that sun, so relentless, as it beat down upon her back.
She was glad it was not raining. That, most certainly, would've driven the cliche image just a little too far. Touka sniffed. Drew a breath in. Squeezed the rabbit until she thought it might explode. Wished it would explode, if only to make her feel better (it wouldn't). Then she straightened her back but kept her head lowered and her shoulders slumped as she looked down at the little token in her palm.
"That is...unfair of you, Kaneki," she said, to no one at all, for only the sun was listening.
(If only she had looked up instead of down...she just might have caught a flash of white hair and the dull glimmer of an eyepatch as he turned away).
The sky was violet on the day Touka finally saw him again. The air was warm and clear. She had slipped twice on her way up the bridge steps, due to her haste. Kaneki, in contrast, was walking rather slowly away, his shoulders straight and determined, and he did not turn around until she shouted his name.
Many things filled the space between them.
A stretch of bridge, dry and open.
The faint wisp of a warm breeze.
Words, like rivers, flowing back and forth, but not quite loudly enough to be spoken just yet.
Touka was struck by the placid calm of his gaze—the normalcy of it, as though nothing had changed. Here stood Kaneki, such a small (great) distance away, and after all of the words she had saved for him, all of the rivers she had hoped to cross, she had no idea what to say to him.
Should she ask him how he was doing?
Make a joke about his white hair?
Kick him hard enough to send him flying over the railing?
Or should she say nothing at all, and wait for him to explain himself?
How….
Just how….
Can I convince him to come back?
In the end, it didn't matter. She accused him of being selfish (as she always did). He attempted to justify himself (as he had in the first place) by saying that he wanted to protect the ghouls of Anteiku. But as he finished, he did a curious thing, his hand reaching up to touch his chin.
His tell.
After that, well...Touka had never been all that great at controlling her temper. She attacked him—out of anger, hurt, desperation, or spite, she wasn't sure—and Kaneki blocked every swing with measured ease.
Protect?
What a ridiculous notion.
In what way, she seethed, kicking and spinning and throwing punch after punch (to no avail), is abandonment a way to protect someone?
She was used to abandonment—first by her mother, then her father, and at last, by Ayato. But this was different, somehow. Such a betrayal, a stark, unprecedented wrong, simply because it came from him. Kaneki didn't abandon people. He wouldn't. And yet, here he was….
It wasn't him.
She told him as much. That he didn't know himself, that he had lost his way. That he was wrong.
And then she said (why did she have to say it?) that he didn't belong at Anteiku.
He stopped blocking her punches after that.
Touka ended up on top of him, pounding weakly against his chest, as he stared brokenly into the sky.
She tangled her fists in the dark fabric of his shirt as her vision blurred. "Why," she pleaded, "did you have to change?"
"...why, indeed?"
Later, she regretted it. Every inch of it. The Manager had been right—she needed to learn to listen to people—for there was no way he would come back after an outburst like that. Touka leaned away from the desk in her room, laden with open books and scribbled notes, and closed her eyes. She pictured his face as it once was: kind, and honest, and maybe a little nervous.
If only it had gone differently….
Next time, she thought, if there is a next time...I'll listen, instead. Like I should have in the first place. He may be wrong on some levels, but….
The truth was simply that she needed to remember that boy, needed to help Kaneki remember that boy, the one he truly was, beneath the pain he so tightly wrapped around himself.
She needed to know.
He needed to know.
That she remembered.