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hysyartmaskstudio · 8 years

Text

Gifts

~3.4k words

Characters: Furuta Nimura, Kaneki Ken, Arima Kishou

Pairings: Furuta Nimura/Arima Kishou (?)

It isn’t so much a pairing as. A thing. That happens a little? I guess there’s some weird one-sided... stuff?

Warnings: Blood, gore, and all that jazz, Suicide, discussions of suicide, unhealthy discussions of suicide, suicidal ideation, body horror probably, self loathing, The entire mess that was the second half of ch. 82, the entire mess that is Furuta Nimura, I guess there’s some kissing of barely conscious persons too...

(very very brief mentions of things that might trigger emetophobia, but nothing happens. It’s just the words and some metaphors. I have this one to a degree, so...)

Sorry if I missed some tags.

“additional tags”: Almost certainly an AU, No one in this fic is sane, references to philosophical thought experiments, extended metaphors, some parts border on vaguely surrealist pseudo-philosophical absurdist prose poetry (again, sorry), catch the accidental buffy reference, obscure three way Nietzsche/Art History/Greek Mythology punning, I have a humanities problem, save me

Notes: @nimawalker and I were talking about how our second dear hanged man might react to Arima’s actions, and that plus other extensive talks about weird possible Furuta headcanons and possible AUs led to this.

You also have Nima to thank for the existence of a bunch of this dialogue because I got a note back on the first draft saying Nimura should talk more. I hope you like the added bits!

Thanks to @nimawalker for the notes on the first draft and @sunlitfuruta for putting up with me while I fell down bizarre wikiholes trying to wrap this thing up and title it. And for your wonderful headcanon ideas and indulging all my terrible horrible fic ideas that went nowhere until the fic fairy felt like visiting me for once.

I have about a thousand fic ideas and dozens of WIP but I have a fic fairy that’s a petulant motherfucker and decided to visit me now and give me this one.

It’s... Very potentially multichapter. My fic fairy might ship Arifuru, because if this continues, it is likely to get more shippy. My fic fairy is fickle and an asshole though, so who knows.

I apologize profusely for any dumb tiny grammar mistakes. I’ve been up all night writing and my roommate refused to edit my grammar.

Feel free to send me notes, even if it’s “you used the wrong form of “there” in this line.” I’ll feel stupid, but I’ll thank you for correcting me (if you send it off anon or by chat. If you send it on anon, I’ll just tuck tail and edit the post in silence, but I’ll be grateful.)

I hope you like it!

Also, I am still working up to AO3. OTZ

But because this is an AU, It might be easier for me to post there without worrying about future canon. We’ll see.

Come back and read this next bit after you’ve read the fic:

About the Ecce Homo bit at the end there, Ecce Homo is a term in art history from the New Testament meaning “behold the man” and is used to describe art that depicts Jesus’s display before the crowds or parade to the cross. It is also the name of Nietzsche’s final work, a work that is both self-aggrandizing and self-mocking, that talks about the philosopher as a Dionysian, rather than Apollonian or Christ figure. As someone who creates chaos and inner turmoil rather than clarity. He signed the book “Dionysus versus the Crucified.”

That entire bit was self indulgent humanities garbage and I’m sorry you had to read it.

Headcanons: A lot. Please consider this an AU. For this chapter, all you need to know is that Arima is more or less human. There is... stuff going on with Furuta that will come up in future chapters, but you can kind of pretend to ignore if I never get around to updating this.

Anything I happen to get right about Furuta or Arima’s weird biology, or ghoul biology in general in this or further chapters will be entirely by chance.

Again, I am basically considering this an AU that diverges from canon after TG:re 82, at this point.

I’m kind of new to the world of canon divergent AUs so bare with me. I might keep swerving in and out of new canon information.

Excerpt: (this is from a bit further in than I usually go, but...)

He knows Kaneki Ken as much by scent as anything. He’s hardly a man anymore, all red-black plating and twisting, writhing limbs. But there is no one else it could be, a huddle on the ground sending coiling and thrashing appendages out for meters and meters. They have mouths on them, each screaming and wailing. A true cacophony. True chaos.

Beyond the mask he’s wearing, Nimura has the urge to revel in it. This total destruction of man. This madness. It’s as the good doctor always goes on about. His “greatest creation.” Kaneki Ken at his limits is a thing of beauty in its savagery.

But he has work to do, he reminds himself. The smell of Kishou’s blood is thick and the man himself is silent. And that won’t do. There are pieces that belong on the board, even if only out of his way. Something itches at his spine through the nothingness. Kaneki Ken at his limits. Arima’s blood in the air.

He beats the other investigators by taking the most direct route. Straight down through the bowels of this place. Fitting that they should smell like shit. Like ghoul blood and rot and metal.

He lets her kagune out as he falls, lets them ghost along the pipes and steel and guts of the place. When he lands, they cushion him. Such a good girl. Finally helping out after all this time. He knew she would. Just needed a little push, after all.

He heard enough of the fight to expect carnage, to expect the smell of Kaneki-kun’s blood, both so like his own and so different, to be trapped in the stagnant air here. It’s amazing, the way his mind zeroes in on the limbs strewn about. So many of them. Another gift from Rize. He should eat, probably, after that fight, but he doesn’t want to be infected with whatever that woman is - those grotesques she uses with eyes and mouths. There’s no need for his beautiful kagune to become like that. He’s plenty strong without such things.

Besides, there’s something stronger in the air now. Sweeter. He can’t say he was expecting this.

Before he can take in the scene any more, something seems to slam into him from beyond the pillar he’s landed behind. Something that sends a shutter straight through him, from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes, through the ends of the kagune still curled at his sides. The sound hits after. A scream like a newborn’s, like an animal caught in a death trap, like a desperate sort of thing one way or another drowning in blood. It sets his muscles twitching.

Run, his mind tells him. He should run, shouldn’t he? Run and avoid the fight. Avoid the danger. Live another day. Cower and run and—

No. Nimura clamps down on those instincts. They’re quite useless now. He knew who he was coming to see. Those thoughts won’t serve him down here. And so he stops them. Crushes them until they stop flowing through his brain.

The screams have become wails now, but Nimura is hardly listening. He has a job to do down here, an experiment of his to check on. And that smell in the air. Whatever Dear Kissho-san has gotten himself into, surely he ought to see to that as well.

It’s with practiced ease that he pulls on the mask he needs, pulls in his kagune, and strides out into the battle field. It’s so easy to become nothing at all. His stomach, he knows, wants to taste the carnage around him. Eating off the floor. Really, ghouls can be ever so disgusting. His back, he knows, is still that tender sort of aching. But none of that matters. He has business.

He steps forward, dodges a wayward swinging appendage. They have eyes, but they do not seem to see him. There is no aim to their movement. Good. He keeps his eyes on the mass that is Kaneki Ken as he walks. Has his hair gone white again? Surely that can’t be healthy, so many ups and downs. He dodges another swing. Takes another few steps. Remembers Nico going on and on about how it happened the first time, the bits he cared about, anyway, stuck in between descriptions of that brute and his overgrown chest muscles. White hair again, huh?

Dodge. Step. Dodge. There’s no pattern to the flailing, no reason. Still, it’s simple enough. He can use his kagune if he needs them, of course. A nice reassurance to have, but ultimately unnecessary.

The closer he gets the harder it is to block out the screaming. And the smell. And his stomach. That damn Owl had taken more out of him than he thought. The hunger of a ghoul, eh? Or was it just this smell. This blood. It was - so familiar. Perhaps that made it all the more appealing.

He’s surprised Kaneki hasn’t noticed him, as close as he’s gotten. Surely his senses should be at their highest now, as feral as he is. Surely. But the figure at the center of the swirling limbs hasn’t moved. Hasn’t turned. Doesn’t seem to know he’s there at all.

Perhaps some other time, he’d be insulted. Perhaps some other time, he’d use the opportunity to surprise him, to play a prank or attack or—

But he’s close enough now to see, and the pieces come slamming into place. This is no longer a battle field at all, is it? Kaneki is not fighting. He is mourning.

Oh Kishou.

—

Nimura can’t say he’s incredibly familiar with the sensation that follows. Not enough to give it a name. It’s like vomit, like bile rising up from his gut, almost, but spreading out into every corner of his body. Infecting his veins, his muscle, his bones. Like replacing his cells with the sting of alcohol or turpentine. A volcano, perhaps. The implosion then sudden expansion of a star.

The mask shatters. He can hear himself laughing.

A kagune comes at his face, hard and fast. He doesn’t notice it, not until it’s being blocked by one of his own. He hadn’t felt them come out. Hadn’t felt anything but the fire and the bile and the disgust.

He knows disgust. This is. This is more than that. Laughing. He’s still laughing.

“Oh Kishou-san.” He hears his own voice say.

There is so much blood. It looks. It looks delicious. It looks like he can swallow it all up, drink up Kishou’s life force entire. The God of Death is bleeding out in front of him. And he is laughing. Oh, Oh. Oh, how the mighty fall.

Kaneki charges him again, face smeared in blood - Kishou’s blood, his own blood, Rize’s blood - and tears, and too many emotions. They melt off of him and puddle on the ground like the dirt and gore. Furuta matches him blow for blow. The fire inside of him burning him to coal. Coal, he thinks, can turn into diamonds.

This is a waste of time. Kaneki is a waste of time. The Owl was a waste of time.

He gathers his strength and shoves, sends Kaneki and all his sprawling limbs as far away as he can. Later. Later they will fight, surely. Later Kaneki can hate him for everything he has done. For all the gifts Nimura has given him. Stupid Kaneki-kun. Stupid child of a boss. Stupid. He’s screaming again. Can’t he see that Furuta has no interest in him now. Can’t he tell that—

“Don’t hurt him!”

Nimura doesn’t know why he freezes. He shouldn’t. There is no reason for Kaneki’s words to effect him at all. He doesn’t have time to waste, besides. But that voice. So broken. So—

Fuck.

This— this was not supposed to happen. Nimura clenches his fist. He doesn’t need the complication of this bond they’ve formed. This fucked up compound Stockholm syndrome folie a deux.

“Hurt him?” Nimura says, sinking all the venom he can into that word he knows holds such power over Kaneki Ken. “How could I hurt him any more than you have?”

He presses a gloved hand down against the slash across Kishou’s neck. It’s hot. So hot. He’s had his hand inside a human body before, right up against a beating heart, but this? This is like lava, eating through the leather of his glove. Latex would keep it out at least, keep it from touching him, covering him and swallowing him whole.

It’s supposed to be the other way around, isn’t it? The ghoul eating the human.

“I- I didn’t,” Kaneki is saying. Nimura knows where he is, though he doesn’t know how. His senses are good enough to track him, the spread out monster of a man, kagune trailing behind him like all his sins. But there is no room in the world for that now. Only the blood that seems to be crawling up his arm and pulling him down.

Dying. Arima Kishou is dying.

“He just—,” Kaneki is still talking, like a gnat. No, like a child. Like he doesn’t realize that Furuta figured this all out the moment he saw the blood at the tip of the broken Owl quinque.

The blood on his hand ripples. Because he’s shaking. There are— parts of himself that he never wanted to let Kaneki see. Parts of him he’d rather never let anyone see. But somewhere between working for five or so different factions at a time, he’s learned how to prioritize, he supposes.

One of his kagune shoot out and knock Kaneki in the face. He feels it connect and all it does is fuel whatever is building inside him.

“Oh, my dear, sweet child-boss,” this searing thing inside him croons. This fury edged in lunacy. This face without a mask. “You think that because you didn’t hold the blade, that you didn’t do this?”

Several meters to his left, Kaneki shutters, stumbles, and vanishes from Nimura’s world.

“Kishou,” Nimura says, “Kishou, oh Kishou.”

What he told Kaneki was a half truth, only. He watches the red-black scales pull around from his back and press into the wound. It’s a sort of reunion, the three of them. Here of all places.

“You’re the worst kind of bastard, you know,” he says to those dying eyes under him. A laugh bubbles up and spills out his mouth, moist with saliva.

He spits on Arima’s glasses, over that defective right eye of his. “I don’t mind cheaters, you know. But this?” Looking at his hands, his kagune— he could be strangling the man instead of trying to save him.

Death, he thinks, is a gift. ”What have you done to earn this?” He asks, wonders if Arima can hear him at all. He presses tighter. “Or was all that praise, that admiration, too much for you?”

There is so much blood. He could cover himself in it, in Kishou, in the Reaper they all noticed, in V’s little broken down toy. He could paint a message for the CCG’s footmen to find. Here lies your god. Killed by your undying love.

There is still so much sickness ahead of us, dear Kishou, he thinks. So much pain. How dare you think you deserve to be free of all that?

If he can just stop this bleeding. Arima Kishou’s first retreat.

“I suppose we’re all liars in the end,” he says, down to the engraved CCG insignia on Kishou’s armor. He presses the kagune deep into the wound. RC cells are just cells. They are formed and shaped by the mind, though often unconsciously. Formation. Attachment. Decay.

—

Dr. Kanou had that soft, deceptive smile on as he spoke. “I’m curious, Nimura-kun, how all the theory on kagune usage measures up to the real deal.”

At the time, Nimura hadn’t had the inclination to indulge him, but that had never stopped Dr. Kanou from speaking his mind.

“Have you heard, Nimura-kun, about the thought experiment known as ‘Mary’s room.’ ”

It had been recently after his surgery and everything was intense and raw and it had seemed like the Doctor had come into his recovery room simply to annoy him.

“The Garden certainly didn’t educate its child soldiers in philosophy, Kanou-sensei.”

Kanou’s laugh was obnoxiously gentle. The sort of thing someone soft and breakable and boringly normal might describe as “sounding like home.” A total fiction.

“Mary’s Room describes a scientist by the name of Mary who has been in a room her entire life where everything is completely devoid of color. Being a scientist, she has read everything there is to know about color, about the brain and its visual system, and about the eye. Being a bit of a romantic, she’s read poetry that describes red as passion or anger. But she’s never seen anything that is actually red before.”

“Wouldn’t this example have been simpler if she were just color blind?” Furuta had provided.

“Oh, Nimura-kun, you have no sense for the whimsical,” the doctor replied, leaning back against the wall, far too smug in his accusation.

“The question this thought experiment poses is such -” he had finally continued. “if someone were to show Mary the color red, would she learn anything new? Would she be experiencing anything new?”

—

Nimura is covered in red, now. A kagune can be shaped by a ghouls mind and is limited by the quality and quantity of the RC cells the kakuhou can produce. Formation. Attachment. Decay.

He’s studied more than that, kakujas and the strange things that Eto and Kaneki can create. Detachable kagune and kagune walls. The theory behind remote cell activation and kagune sharpening and so much more. Had his hands up against more kakuhou than most of Chigyou’s assistants. Watched the way the cells flowed and coalesced. Watched them form walls and devour people whole.

He thinks about Mary and her room and how the Garden could be at once so full of color and so utterly, utterly grey.

He lets the RC cells flow.

—

There’s a hand on his shoulder and Nimura barely has a second to register it, to stop the flow of cells from his body through the kagune and into Kishou before he’s jerked backwards.

“What are you doing.” Kaneki. Again.

He can feel Kaneki’s breath, smell it, right over him. Is he… on the ground? He doesn’t know. It feels like he’s floating, like something is still flowing out of him, bouying him on a stream of his own making.

“What did you do to him.”

What did he do? His eyes are closed. He wonders if Kaneki is crying still. Wonders if he looks sad or angry or scared. Little boy all alone. Nimura doesn’t know where that thought belongs any more. What did he do?

He had imagined a throat, as it should be. The anatomy of it - the arteries and veins, the nerves and muscles. A throat as he’d scene them laid bare on Kanou’s table.

What did he do? RC cells were just cells in the end.

Kaneki moves away, and Nimura lets himself float there.

“Arima-san. Arima-san, can you hear me?” Like a gnat.

“Arima-san, please. You have to stay awake. Please.” Like a child.

“Arima-san, I—” Kaneki shutters, chokes back tears.

Enough. He’s heard enough of this groveling. That unnamable fire sparks again somewhere inside him, coats itself thickly over his stomach and up his spine. He feels both lighter and larger now, like he’s spread thin. Maybe he’ll really burn completely this time. Burn to ash and be blown away.

“Hypocrite.” He says, and his tongue feels foreign in his mouth. His vision is warped, somehow — his vantage point higher than it ought to be — but looking down on this pathetic scene feels right, so he doesn’t question any further. There isn’t enough of him left to wonder about such frivolous things.

“Hypocrites, the both of you.”

“I don’t know what you are Furuta-san, and I don’t care.” Kaneki isn’t looking at him, but at Arima. There’s a pang of petty jealousy somewhere in his chest, somewhere in the hollowness.

“But you should leave.”

He thinks at one point this grand reveal was important. Ah well. Situations come up. Plans change.

“I don’t think so,” Nimura says.

Kaneki is cradling Arima’s head, stroking his hair. It’s disgusting. And Kishou’s blood is still soaked through his gloves, still dripping off the ends of his fingers. This whole place reeks of it. Even his appetite nauseates him. He could throw up again if he didn’t already feel so empty. So he lets words spill out instead.

“You’re cowards, you know, the both of you.” Kaneki tenses for a second, but refuses to turn. “What? You think you can opt out of this?” He gestures, spreads his hands out, and feels the rest of him spread out too. He seems to raise higher as he does, reach out further than he should. Like he’s part of the space itself.

“You think you get to choose whether or not to play this game? That perhaps this is all some school club you can quit if your studies are too hard, or someone is mean to you, or your mother wants you home early?” He’d aimed that last line, but it hardly seems to hit. A shame. He wants Kaneki Ken to understand what all his childish emotions have done. Wants him to see that they have no place in the world he’s found himself. A lesson he will have to learn again and again and again, it seems.

“Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could all just quit whenever we wanted,” he continues. He wants to get closer to them, and so he does. He isn’t present enough to know how or care why. Close enough that Kaneki turns, fixes that one kakugan eye on him. Almost a match, the two of them.

“You know, Boss, I’m sure that’d be a great way to get all of this work we have here finished.” He says “work” like office work, and smiles wide at the fallen Associate Special Class. He will really miss those days, he thinks. All of these days. Things are changing now. He leans in further. Closer, still.

“No, Kaneki Ken.” And if feels so good to say that name to his face after all this time. “We play this game until the end. You, me, and Arima-san.” Nimura is breathing heavily now, saying too much, probably, but he’s gone this far and the words keep tumbling out as if pulled by gravity.

“If you want out of this cage, Kaneki-kun, break it.”

Mary, as it turns out, knows nothing about the color red at all. As Nimura wills it, Kaneki flies away from Arima’s body.

He isn’t quite prepared for the lurch his stomach makes, seeing it again. Part of his throat is raw, exposed flesh, and it’s both repulsive and inviting. But theirs something formed around his neck, a brace of sorts of red and black, that ducks in and out of the cut in his skin. He leans closer, close enough to feel the ragged exhale from Arima’s lips. Bloody lips.

He is beyond caring. He holds the kiss until he is certain the breaths will continue. In and out. Tasting of sweetness and copper. He swipes his tongue around the inside of Kishou’s gums, savors the flavor. The victory here.

“I think,” he whispers, against Kishou’s mouth, “that I’ve quite grown into my role as jailer, wouldn’t you say?” The scent this close to the wound is intoxicating, and Nimura lets his mouth move to taste Arima’s bottom lip again, to the blood still pooling at the side of it. He disgusts himself, really, but that is hardly new. This whole world disgusts him.

“We’re trapped here together, Kishou,” He whispers against the edge of this demonic frame he’s woven around the Reaper’s neck. This inverse necklace of thorns, this anti-crucifixion. Ecce Homo. Nimura thinks he fits the role of Dionysian prophet well, drenched in Kishou’s blood and weaving together his own flesh. Madness suits him.

He licks up the side of Kishou’s neck, from where the thing has buried itself inside to right up against his ear.

“You can’t run away from this, dear Kishou,” he says, pulling away and savoring the blood as it slides down his throat. “I won’t allow it.”

#furuta nimura #arima kishou #arifuru #tokyo ghoul :re #tokyo ghoul fanfiction #tokyo ghoul #my fic #i am self indulgent humanities GARBAGE #i can't believe i actually wrote a thing #go to SLEEP charade

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