Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was a dull throbbing in the base of Kaneki’s skull. It was clearer than the static also plaguing his mind, but both made it impossible to think clearly. It was just thudding and hissing and screaming.

Tears ran down his cheeks. Kaneki barely noticed them.

The name Hide pounded in tandem with the pain. It was quiet and yet could be heard through all of the noise. It was so loud but not loud enough. His whole world was blurred.

Kaneki heard Touka scream for him in the background, but it sounded underwater. It should have snapped him out of it, maybe. It didn’t though. He continued to walk through the crowded street. His best friend’s body was dead in his arms.

The spotlights from the helicopters were blinding, registering as aftershocks and blurred images. CCG agents stared at him. Their bodies were as rigid as Hide’s was limp. Kaneki could smell the fear and disgust as he walked by them, but none tried to stop him. They were too busy dealing with their own wounded, their own lifeless friends. It seems Kaneki had killed almost as many as they have taken from him tonight. He had no right to resent their stares.

In their eyes, he was the enemy. But he held no animosity toward them anymore. They had been pitted against ghouls, ghouls against them. It was war. He felt almost numb.

Yet Kaneki’s heart still ached. Everyone was dead, everyone but him and Touka.

Now Kaneki would leave her too, like the coward he was. Maybe he should have felt guilty but he didn’t.

He kept walking until he stood directly in front of the white-haired CCG agent, Arima. Slowly, he laid Hide down in the white snow.

A strange, detached thought hit him. He thought it weird how the dead don’t look human anymore. Kaneki had never really noticed it before. Or maybe he just never had such a strong contrast before.

There was light lacking in Hide’s face, the life from his eyes. His body seemed broken and… wrong somehow. Kaneki thought back to all the books he read about death and found them lacking. His own words were unable to describe it either.

It shattered what was left of Kaneki’s heart when the white snow stained red under his friend.

He turned back to Arima and let out his Kagune. It was out of muscle memory more than a desire to fight. Somewhere in the back of his head, he knew he should fight. But the buzzing was getting louder and louder. His head pounded harder and harder. He felt panic creep its way into his chest unbeknownst to his mind. Everything seemed pointless. He had destroyed himself, hurt the people he loved; even converted himself into a cannibal in order to become stronger and protect his friends. Yet now, he was the reason they are dead.

Snow started to stick to Kaneki’s hair and skin. It refused to melt. It seems that Kaneki really was as cold as he felt.

Kaneki looked straight into Arima’s eyes. There was no emotion. There was nothing. As if putting on a mask, Kaneki mirrored the expression. Arima raised his sword and Kaneki was ripped from the world he knew.

Chapter Text

Kaneki woke up confused.

He opened his eyes slowly and was met with blinding light and the blurry outline of evergreen trees. He felt sticks and leaves underneath him. There was a rock poking into his back. His ears rang but it was quiet.

He didn’t move. For the first few moments of consciousness, he didn’t know his own name.

He was disoriented and swept away in swimming vision.

But memories came back in waves and flashes. It felt like his head was cracked against a rock on the shore before being pulled back under.

His heart raced like everything was happening in real time. Yet he knew it wasn’t.

He looked back up at the sky and trees.

He should be dead.

Why wasn’t he dead?

Arima was supposed to have killed him. That’s how that was supposed to go. He was supposed to bleed out on the road with the friends he got killed a few feet away. It was all supposed to end.

Or maybe he was dead. Maybe this was the afterlife he was destined for. Somehow that made him angry. It was too quiet, too beautiful. Kaneki had expected hell.

He laughed almost hysterically. He rolled in the dirt and leaves, grasping at his stomach as he laughed harder. His whole body hurt. There was blood stained all over him.

No, Kaneki knew he wasn’t dead. He wished he was, sure, but he wasn’t dead.

Then again, what the hell did he know?

After a minute, his laughter turned into sobbing.

His throat grated while his whole body shook. His face scrunched up painfully and tears flowed freely. His hands shook to the point they couldn’t even grasp the fabric of his clothing.

It didn’t really matter where he was: Heaven, hell, alive, or dead.

It was supposed to be over and it wasn’t.

Whatever had saved him should put him back, it had no right to interfere. Kaneki broke down even more. He couldn’t see through the tears in his eyes.

None of them deserved to die. Hide didn’t deserve to die. Fuck I can’t even die right!

Kaneki punched the ground in frustration. It sent shockwaves up his arm and into his bones. It felt painful and heavenly. Over and over again.

It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault…

The act made his body stop shaking, but his mind just got louder. He wanted to scream. He wished it would make him bleed.

It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault…

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, but slowly he stopped. His punches became blind clawing at the ground. That too faded and Kaneki clenched his hands in fists. He leaned forward so his head braced against his forearms.

There was nothing left for him, not without Anteiku, not without Hide.

He suddenly felt tired and old.

Slowly he sat up. He felt dizzy from the lack of blood flow to his head and his crying.

The rest of the world seemed undisturbed. It pissed him off. Birds chirped. Leaves rustled. He saw a deer in the brush that cared little for Kaneki’s presence.

Even the sky lit up in beautiful colors as evening spread across the horizon. It probably would have looked breathtaking through someone else’s eyes.

Kaneki could imagine sitting here with the smiling Hide. Maybe it was pathetic, but he didn’t have the self-consciousness to care at the moment. Kaneki let himself breathe in the clear air and hurt himself more with his imagination.

He imagined them talking about school or life. Maybe Kaneki would talk about books that Hide had never read while Hide pretended to listen. Maybe Hide would talk about this annoying kid that sat next to him in class and how he was stressed about finals. Maybe they would talk about their favorite ice cream shop, the party that Hide was invited to, or an author that was coming to town. They could have sat there and talked about anything or nothing or everything.

He could hear Hide grilling him about eating more or taking care of himself. Kaneki would lie, say he was, and Hide would call him out. Kaneki would think that Hide was too observant for his own good.

Maybe they would just lay on their backs and look up at the sky, jealous of the bird’s wings. Maybe Kaneki would say so out loud and Hide would call him a romantic. Maybe Kaneki would finally tell him...

But none of that could happen now. His best friend, who had stuck with him through everything, was dead. His friend who always knew he was lying, who always took care of him, who always cared for him, was dead. Hide, who had known from the beginning that Kaneki was a ghoul and still smiled at him with all the brightness of the sun, was fucking dead.

Kaneki released the kagune from his back. In a trance-like state, he pointed the end at his neck.

‘You’re overreacting, Kaneki. He was just livestock. And your “friends” at Anteiku were weak.’ Rize appeared and touched his cheek softly with the back of her hand as if to soothe him. ‘That is why they died. It shouldn’t matter to you.’

“They were my friends, my family!” screamed Kaneki in his head, or maybe it was out loud, he didn’t know. He shoved her away, but only touched air. “And I am the reason they are dead.”

‘How is that any different from the other lives you have taken? What truly makes them different? In the view of the world, they are just another drop in the bucket, unimportant, insignificant.’ Rize’s voice was still calm. She spoke as if she truly didn’t understand. She probably didn’t.

“They are different because I am selfish. They are, were, more important to me than anyone else. Their lives were more valuable to me than the world itself. I would kill hundreds of lives to save theirs and if that is so wrong then so be it!”

The voice speaking changed. ‘You made a choice, Kaneki, to join Aogiri and become stronger. These are the consequences of that choice. You wanted to become stronger, then be stronger. Live with what you have done! You don’t get to bail out now! You don’t get to be the coward this time! Man up and live. Live since they can’t!’ This time it was Touka who spoke or at least the version he had of her in his mind. Rize smiled slightly and faded into the background.

‘You already left everything else. You don’t get to leave the pain by dying.’

His kagune limbs fell to the ground in defeat.

Kaneki found himself staring at the birds.

Eventually, he fell into a restless, self-loathing-filled sleep.

Chapter Text

Kaneki didn’t move until the next morning.

He felt numb and dizzy and bitter.

Who would have thought that his own insanity kept him from ending himself?

His brain wanted to keep thinking, keep contradicting itself, but the thoughts got jumbled.

He didn’t feel any better.

His body was stiff and his head never stopped pounding.

But he stood up. He stood up even when everything screamed at him not to.

Kaneki looked around for the first time since arriving and was once again struck with the realization that he didn’t know where he was. It all looked the same and unfamiliar. There were no signs, trails, or rivers. There was nothing beyond trees, underbrush, and animals.

He sniffed the air experimentally, hoping to smell running water or humans.

But a different smell hit him like a wall. It made him dig his nails into the palm of his hand.

It smelled like iron and rot and flesh. It was coming from everywhere in the forest, not just one source. Kaneki’s stomach rumbled and his eyes darted around him. Part of him was ready for a fight.

But a fight never came and the panic subsided quickly. The smell didn’t come from living humans. Kaneki wasn’t sure whether he preferred thinking that there were people here to kill him or not. It must be a suicide forest of some kind, though it didn’t look like it was the one at mount Fuji in Japan.

That struck him as weird. The deer from earlier had looked strange, now that he was actually putting thought into it. The trees looked unfamiliar as well. He didn’t think he was in Japan, which only opened up the possibilities of where he actually was even more.

But he didn’t think about it much more. Kaneki was hungry.

Letting his hunger guide him, he followed his nose to a not-so-decayed body deep in the forest. His stomach growled in sick anticipation. Blood was still flowing from his open wound-- a wound which, up until now, he had forgotten about.

He didn’t bother being quiet when he walked. Leaves and sticks crunched underfoot.

He passed several bodies and tried not to look. He ignored the blood splattered on the ground and the animal-torn clothing. He didn’t want to think about it.
He had been walking maybe fifteen minutes when he reached a fresher body.

It was a male teenager, seventeen at the oldest. The boy had brown hair and still open green eyes. He had hung himself from a tree. Kaneki noticed vaguely that the body was white, which gave him another hint as to where he was. But that thought was not at the front of his mind.

Kaneki felt a pang of both guilt and sadness. He felt that he didn’t have the right to judge, he knew he had no right to judge, but it struck him how young the boy was. He remembered how young he had been.

Kaneki’s stomach growled.

He cut the boy down with his kagune and caught him in his arms. It was unnecessary, maybe, but then he closed the poor boy’s eyes.

It was difficult to get his shirt and jacket off, but Kaneki managed to anyway. He needed clothing that wasn’t stained in blood in case he ran into someone. It didn’t make him feel less guilty, but he did it anyway.

Kaneki stripped of his own clothing roughly. He hissed as the rough cloth slid over the wound in his side but ultimately ignored it. There was a bag beside the body with a half-used water bottle. Kaneki used it to get the worst of the blood off of him.

He went through the backpack more, taking what he thought to be useful and leaving the rest.

Then he looked back at the body next to him.

It didn’t make him happy to do this to the boy, but Kaneki would do what he had to.

He has decided that he would live.

“I’m sorry,” Kaneki whispered as he bit into the shoulder.

Three months later…

An alarm ripped Kaneki from an unsatisfying sleep.

He swung his hand out gracelessly to turn it off only to fail and knock it to the floor.

With another groan, he turned and looked at his clock like it was the bane of his existence. It was five in the morning.

Kaneki rolled out of bed to get ready for work.

He had managed to find a nice job in a bookstore and café about a week after he arrived in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York. It was a strange new world, but Kaneki decided early on that all he could do was go with it. It was a world without ghouls.

When he first arrived, Kaneki had searched everywhere for a sign of ghouls. He went through hundreds of books and websites only to come up empty-handed. There were none to be found. There was only inaccurate mythos on the topic. Ghouls were something completely different here. They were works of fiction.

It felt relieving, in a way. He remembered crying in the middle of a library when he first figured it out. The CCG didn’t exist. Aogiri didn’t exist. He didn’t exist. He had no ties or obligations to anyone. He was free from it all.

But it also felt lonely. There was no one he could be himself around; no one who could understand him. He was the only one of his kind in this world.

Kaneki may still have to hide his true nature, but he didn’t have to run anymore.

He had finally gotten a chance to start over in a new life. It filled him with guilty happiness and relieved self-loathing.

But he has not forgotten about his old life. He didn’t think he ever could.

Kaneki hadn’t moved far from the forest he had shown up in, if only because it was a safe food source. Luckily, there was a small town nearby that had been very welcoming to the white-haired, black-nailed, slightly bloody, Japanese stranger who had appeared from the suicide forest. He had told them he had been robbed of his car and things when he was going for a hike not too far from here, though admittedly it was in broken English. They believed him or acted as if they did. From there it was only a matter of setting up a false identity and getting a job. Both were surprisingly easy tasks.

Kaneki grabbed the keys to his cheap apartment and headed out, but not before slipping his medical eye patch on and stuffing his creepy mask into his bag. It was a habit, but a habit he refused to break. He brought his mask with him everywhere. Just in case.

The cool spring wind bit at his skin as he left his apartment. His green sweatshirt didn’t seem to give his much protection. The sky was still dark, but you could see the stars like you never could in a city.

The road he walked on was completely empty. The buildings around him were still dark and the trees surrounding the town swayed at the sudden gust of wind. Kaneki stopped when he realized he was at work.

The building was a decent size with large windows coming out in a half-hexagonal shape on either side of the navy door. The building was a mix of worn red and black bricks and white trim, making it look old. It was two stories tall, both of which were filled with books.

Kaneki unlocked the front door. A brass bell rang, signaling his entrance. The front door opened to a large space with worn hardwood floors and cream walls. On the left wall was an old wooden bar where they served drinks and small baked goods. Across from the door were seats and tables, and the same could be said for the windows. And to the right was where the ocean of books began. Even more were upstairs. There were more books here than could ever be read by one person. That didn’t mean Kaneki wouldn’t try.

Kaneki changed into his uniform and slowly began to open up shop. He cleaned the windows, dusted, and started the oven for the muffins and cookies they sold. By then two other people had shown up to help out with the other chores. Then at six, they opened up shop. Just in time for the breakfast crowd.

It was calm, like it had been every day had been since he settled down. The people were kind. Many checked up on him to see how he adjusted. He would smile and give them a free muffin.

It was simple.

It reminded him of Anteiku before everything happened.

That was a sad thought that he buried quickly.

By the time lunch rolled around, the place was busy. Well, at least to its standards. It was a small town. Almost every seat in the front room was taken and there were several people browsing the books. It made Kaneki happy to see the store doing so well.

The owner was a small old lady who had lived in this town her entire life. Kaneki had never met a nicer or more understanding person in his life, except for maybe Hide. Kaneki wondered how his family was doing…

“Excuse me,” said a voice, cutting through his thoughts. In front of him stood a tall, mid-twenty-year-old, red-headed woman. She looked fit and strong, especially for a human. The woman wore a brown leather jacket, zipped up halfway, over a black t-shirt with tight blue jeans. She raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’m sorry. I must have spaced out a bit. What would you like Miss?” Kaneki said with a nervous smile. Kaneki had been stuck with bar duty today, and most days. According to the owner, it was because the coffee he made was amazing.

The woman sat down at the bar. “I’ll have a coffee and one of those blueberry muffins.” She said it kindly, but it didn’t take much to tell it was forced. He didn’t blame her though, he had been staring.

Kaneki grabbed the food and coffee, then gave them to the woman. “That will be five-fifty.”

She reached into her bag and gave him the exact amount of money, no tip. Maybe she was a little mad. However, she continued to sit at the bar.

Kaneki went to help out another customer, putting on a bright smile, but he felt the woman’s eyes on the back of his head. At first, he ignored it, but eventually, he tried to meet her gaze. As soon as he turned, he found her with her nose in a book. She was making him nervous. Her gaze made him feel exposed in a way he couldn’t describe.

“I haven’t seen you before, do you live here?” he asked her once there was no one else who needed to be helped. The one advantage of living in a small town was that you knew, or could at least recognize everyone who lived there. She was not one of those people.

“No,” she smiled, looking up from her book. “But I have a relative who lives here. I visit every so often. It really is a pretty place don’t you think?”

“Yes, it is truly beautiful in the spring.”

“Now that you mention it though, I haven’t seen you here before.”

Kaneki smiled politely. “I just moved here a few months ago.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You mind me asking why? It’s not like there is a lot to do in this small town.”

Kaneki sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess you could say I ended up here on accident. I did one of those stupid ‘soul-searching’ journeys. The kind where you sell everything you own and travel to new places with only the stuff you could carry on you. Now that I look back on it, it was pretty stupid. I had been in America for a week when my car with all of my stuff in it was stolen. I wandered here and ended up staying since I had no better place to go.” Kaneki recited his made-up story for what seemed to be the thousandth time.

She laughed lightly. “Where did you live before?”

“Tokyo.”

“Really? I’ve never been. What’s it like?” she asked.

“It was completely different from here: noisy, smelly, and too many people packed into not enough space. The people were rude and it was always bright out even at night due to all of the lights. It was like any other city. If you ask me, here is much nicer.”

Her smile became softer.

“Kaneki, the coffee maker is broken again,” yelled one of his co-workers.

“I’ll be there in a second,” called Kaneki over his shoulder. Then he turned back to the woman. “It was a pleasure talking with you miss…”

“Just Natalie is fine.”

“Nice to meet you, Natalie. I’m Kaneki.” He gave her a friendly smile, not faked in the slightest. “I hope to see you around.”

Kaneki started to walk off.

“Wait!” she said. Kaneki turned to look at her, confused. “What time do you get off work?”

Kaneki blushed a bright red. “I, uh, why do you ask?”

Natalie blushed slightly. “I was wondering if you wanted to get a drink or something with me.”

“Uh, I--”

“I mean you don’t have to, I am a complete stranger, and not to mention, I’m probably way older than you. You seem super nice too, I’m probably not your type--”

“Well, I would but I’m, uh, kind of... gay... so… if-if you are asking me on a date of some sort…” Kaneki looked away, but he could still see the slightly shocked expression on her face.

“Oh. Oh! I’m, um, sorry,” she said. Then quickly, “I mean for bothering you, not for you being gay… that came out wrong… I mean--” she sighed and put her head in her hands.

Kaneki laughed lightly. “If you still want, I could grab a drink with you, maybe as a potential friend?”

“Sure, that sounds like fun.” Natalie sounded relieved.

“I get off at four.”

Chapter Text

Kaneki ended his shift and changed out of his uniform. He knew he wasn’t going on a date, because, you know, the whole gay thing, but he still felt underdressed. He had on a tight black long-sleeved t-shirt, tight-ish blue jeans, and a green, zip-up sweatshirt. If he had known that he was going to go out, he might have dressed up a bit.

Natalie was waiting for him outside when he got off work. She gave him a friendly smile and waved him over.

“Where do you want to go?” she asked politely.

Kaneki laughed nervously. “I don’t know. I haven’t really gone out much since I got here. You choose.”

Natalie seemed to think for a moment. “I know a place. Follow me.”

They walked off in the direction Natalie led him in.

“It’s really nice out,” commented Kaneki, almost to himself. He loved the feeling of the cool wind against his face and the view of leaves budding on the leaves.

They walked in comfortable silence for a while before Natalie broke it.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

She cringed. “That makes me feel like an old woman.”

“I doubt you are that much older than me. At most, it would be by three years.”

“Ha, try seven.”

He gave her a shocked expression. “Yeah, right.”

“Flattery can only get you so far, Kaneki,” she laughed.

They cut through a park. There were some kids playing hopscotch or a ball game of some sort, other kids were just running around aimlessly. Kaneki and Natalie engaged in a sort of small talk. Kaneki found he liked her a lot; she liked the same books and had the same appreciation of older music. They disagreed on what type of movies were the best (Kaneki prefered romance, where she liked action) and they had different favorite cuisines (not that Kaneki could eat human food anymore) though.

Just as they were about to leave the park, the two of them saw a kid crying. The little girl couldn’t have been more than six.

Kaneki walked over and squatted in front of her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

She cried harder. “My-my mom. I-I can’t,” she sniffed and continued to wail, “I can’t find her. And I got a boo-boo.” She wailed. Kaneki noticed the small cut on her knee.

Kaneki reached into his bag and pulled out a band-aid. “Is it alright if I help you?”

She sniffed and nodded. Kaneki put the band-aid over her knee gently. By then she had stopped crying. “See, it’s all better.” He gave her one of the brightest smiles he could muster. “Now let’s find you mom, okay?”

Kaneki stood up. He scanned the area. Slowly, he breathed in through his nose, disguising his sniffing the air as a breath. Someone who smelled like the child was off to the left.

He pointed at a distressed looking lady. “Is that your mom, little one?”

The little girl’s face lit up. “Mommy!” she shouted and ran towards her mom.

The mom spotted her and rushed over. As soon as they met, the mother scooped her child up into a hug. The mom then looked at Kaneki.

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Again, Kaneki smiled. “It was nothing Miss. And make sure to check out your daughter’s knee when you get home, she cut it. I put a band-aid on it for now, but it should be cleaned out.”

“I will, and again thank you.”

The woman walked off clutching her child closely to her chest. Kaneki was aware of Natalie’s eyes on the back of his head again. He turned to face her.

“Sorry about that, I couldn’t just leave her. Though the way you are looking at me, it makes it seem like you thought I was going to kill her.” He said it in a joking manner, but something felt off about Natalie. It was like she was watching him too closely.

She laughed. “We are almost there now. You want to continue?”

Kaneki gestured for her to continue. “After you.”

They walked on for a bit more and ended up back in conversation. The sun was lower in the sky, giving everything around them an orange tint. The temperature started to drop, but it was still comfortable out. Kaneki almost walked into Natalie as she stopped abruptly.

“A club?” Kaneki asked.

“The only club in town.” Natalie shrugged. “I thought it would be fun, maybe we could both pick up some cute guys.” She winked.

Kaneki blushed. “I-I don’t know. I’m not really comfortable in these kind of situations.”

“Oh, come on. If you get drunk enough, you’ll completely forget about being uncomfortable.”

The club itself wasn’t the reason he didn’t want to go. He was starting to get hungry and sticking a ghoul in a group of large people while they are hungry really isn’t a good idea.

Despite his better judgment, Kaneki agreed to go. “Alright. But I can’t stay too late, I have work tomorrow.”

“Today is Friday.”

Well there goes that excuse, thought Kaneki. “Right. I forgot,” he said with a laugh and gave her a smile.

The two of them walked into the club when their senses were assaulted by booming music, flashing lights, and the smell of alcohol and sweat. The large room was mostly full of high schoolers and college kids. Despite it being such a small town, there was still a decent sized high school, and there was a college in the next town over, so there was an influx of kids on the weekends and breaks. There was even a band playing on the stage, though they looked like high schoolers themselves. Kaneki guessed they were good, but it wasn’t his style of music.

Natalie disappeared, so Kaneki grabbed a tall table a little ways off from the dance floor. He still felt horribly uncomfortable. He had to breath through his mouth to keep himself under control. His hunger wasn’t the only thing though. As much as he hated to admit it, he had only been to a club once before, and that was when he still had Hide. And as for the whole, ‘picking up a hot guy,’ Kaneki had never been a romantic relationship with anyone before. Not even a one night stand. He had never even thought about being in a relationship before, except for where Hide was involved.

You really are a love sick puppy, aren't you?

Kaneki suddenly felt overly hot. He started taking off his sweatshirt, just when Natalie showed up with half a dozen shot glasses full to the brim. She gave him a once over with her eyes.
“It really is a shame you aren’t straight, because…” she gestured to him.

Kaneki went bright red. He looked down at himself. His shirt hugged him well, showing off his muscular torso. And without his sweatshirt on you could see his toned arms, even if they were covered by the thin fabric of his shirt. Kaneki cleared his throat and put his bag and jacket on the back of his chair, before sitting down in the stilted chair.

Natalie laughed at his embarrassed face and set the tray of shot glasses on the table. Kaneki took three and downed them. One thing Kaneki was grateful to discover was that ghouls could drink alcohol; they just had to drink more of it to get drunk, the effects didn’t last as long, and they always had a horrible hangover afterwards.

Those didn’t even give him a buzz. Though Natalie looked a little shocked.

“I didn’t peg you as the type.”

“I figure, ‘what the hell,’ right? I can hold my liquor. I’ll worry about the consequences tomorrow. It’d be nice to let loose a little” Kaneki gave her a half smile.

She smiled and downed one too, though she looked more buzzed than he did. “This will be fun.”

Ten minutes forty shots later, Kaneki found himself jumping up and down to the beat of whatever song was playing. He still had some of his senses about him, but everything seemed really sparkly, and funny, and the song was amazing, and damn whoever that was was really hot.

He had quite a few girls walk up to him, but he shut that down really quickly. Honestly, Natalie was approached way more than him, but surprisingly enough, she turned every one of them down. If Kaneki was sober, he might have put more thought into the reason why, but it really didn’t even cross his mind.

He vaguely remembers Natalie asking questions about himself. She asked the same questions that she had earlier, such as age and where he had lived, but she asked others too. Some were pretty weird, but Kaneki just assumed that she was as drunk as him.

After another four hours and however many shots that was, Kaneki and Natalie both stumbled out of the club, supporting each other as they walked. Kaneki vaguely remembered grabbing his jacket and bag, but that was it. A headache started to form in his head. Much to his disappointment, he realized he was already sobering up. That sucked. Natalie on the other hand could still barely stand.

“Where's your house?” Kaneki may have slurred a little bit, but he couldn’t tell. He may be sobering up, but that didn’t mean he was actually sober, not after that many drinks.

Natalie just laughed. Somehow, that was really funny to both of them. Kaneki cracked up as well.

They kept walking. Kaneki was pretty sure that he knew where his apartment was, so he walked in that general direction. Under some miracle, they found his home and actually unlocked the door.

His apartment might have been a mess, if he had anything to make a mess with. At the moment, though, all he owned was clothes and books. The only reason he even had furniture was because it came with the apartment. He put his bag and sweatshirt on the table by the door and guided Natalie to the couch before she fell over.

His stomach flipped.

Kaneki sprinted to the bathroom and proceeded to empty his stomach into the toilet.

Well, he thought, it was fun while it lasted.

Kaneki remembered, at some point, downing four glasses of water, going back to his room, and collapsing onto his uncomfortable bed. He hoped that Natalie was feeling at least a little better than him, since he sure as hell felt like shit.

This will be fun in the morning.

And he fell asleep.

Natasha waited until she was sure Kaneki was asleep before dropping her drunk act. She slowly got up from the couch, careful not to make a sound. Not that he would have woken up anyway. He had to have a blood-alcohol level eight times the legal limit. If she had had half as many drinks, she would probably be on the verge of alcohol poisoning. And she was no light weight.

She put in her earpiece and pulled out her phone.

“Do you have visual?” she whispered as she pointed the camera on her phone at the door of Kaneki’s apartment.

“Affirmative, begin searching,” said Tony Stark into her earpiece. Natasha almost felt bad for tricking Kaneki. He seemed so nice and so innocent, but he also had something off about him. Natasha knew that their whole encounter had been him acting to keep up the smile. That said, the smile didn’t hide malicious intent, at least she didn’t think so, but instead it hid something else. He kept looking over his shoulder like someone was following him, he was overly stiff if anyone even came close to touching him. If Natasha had to guess what he was hiding it would be nothing other than fear. Still, Natasha couldn’t imagine this man hurting anyone without a reason.

The apartment itself wasn’t very large. The kitchen had a sink, stove, a fridge, and some small cabinets under the countertop. It opened up directly into the living room, which had a couch, a TV mounted to the wall, and a coffee table. Kaneki’s room fit a full sized bed, a nightstand, and a chest of drawers. The bathroom was barely large enough for one person to stand in, but contained all of the necessities. If there had been pizza boxes on the floor and random bottles everywhere, Natasha would have described it as a stereotypical, broke-bachelor pad.

“What exactly am I looking for?” she whispered.

“Anything suspicious. We already know he was the one who came through that portal, but we need to determine if he is dangerous.” This time it was Nick Fury who replied.

Natasha began opening drawers, only to find every single one of the ones in the living room empty. The bathroom was similar. The only thing she could find was a basic toiletries. She wasn’t finding anything suspicious, but the lack of things in itself was suspicious. It made him seem paranoid, like he might run and leave everything behind at a moment’s notice. Then again, if you just came to another world, you would be a little paranoid too.

Quietly, Natasha went into his room. There was nothing noteworthy in there either; just clothes and a few books.

She grabbed Kaneki’s bag. In hindsight, she probably should have started with that. His wallet had his ID and a large amount of cash in it, but not much else. There was also a passport and a change of clothes in there. Both the passport and the ID seemed real, even though she knew they couldn’t be. They must have cost him a lot. Natasha wondered where he got the money.

She rifled through the bag some more. She found some paper, a pen, and a few normal things to carry in a bag. Then the sight of metal caught her eye. She pulled the object out to find a creepy looking mask smile back at her. It was black with a mouth baring its teeth printed on it. A zipper laid right over where the mouth of the wearer would be, so you could open it if you needed to speak or eat. Last, but not least, there was an eyepatch; one that covered the opposite eye Kaneki wore his on.

“That isn’t creepy at all,” said Tony.

Natasha shoved the item back into the bag and continued on. All of the kitchen cabinets were empty, similarly to the drawers from earlier. It really was weird, you would expect a plate or two, maybe a box of cereal, anything. But all she could find was some cleaning supplies under the sink and a coffee maker.

“How has he survived this long without anything? He doesn’t even have food, much less a phone. This is plain weird,” commented Stark.

“Yeah, you’re right. This is strange,” said Black Widow under her breath.

Slowly, Natasha opened the fridge. It was the only thing she hadn’t looked through yet, not that she expected to find anything.

She had to stifle a gasp and cover her nose with her hand as the stench of blood hit her. Natasha nearly dropped her phone. Human limbs had been stuffed into the fridge. There was even a torso of one person. Fingers were stuffed in a drawer, disembodied eyes looked at her, human livers and hearts were stuffed in ziplock bags. Natasha had to fight the urge to vomit. Natasha could hear that Tony did vomit.

“Agent Romanoff, you need to get out of there,” said Fury. “We will call in reinforcements, they’ll be there in a few hours, until then stand by outside of the building.”

“I can handle one man by myself--”

“He isn’t from this world Romanova, there is no guarantee, so you are getting out now.” Fury’s voice was commanding.

Natasha gritted her teeth. “Yes sir.”

Chapter Text

Kaneki woke up. His head was killing him. And it was three A.M. And these four hours of sleep was more than he had gotten over the past three months.

He got up slowly. The world seemed to spin, but he still managed to walk to his kitchen and start the coffee maker.

Natalie was gone, but it didn’t bother Kaneki much. It stung a bit to think she didn’t even leave a note, but he had met her yesterday. For all Kaneki knows she had to leave in a hurry to get back to her family. He just hoped she was okay.

Kaneki realized he was starving. He opened the fridge and took out an arm. A few years ago, the sight of this would have made him hurl. He was still bothered by it now, but he had given up fighting the need to eat humans. He didn’t kill anyone since he had arrived on this Earth, and he never planned to. As long as he was near the forest, he would be set. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel bad about taking those bodies. Their families would never know what happened to them, there would be no proper burial. Kaneki didn’t have a choice though.

He finished off the arm to the bone and drank a rather large cup of coffee. His headache started to fade.

That was when someone kicked in his door. There was a loud crash and men dressed in black body armor rushed in holding guns. They turned to see Kaneki, with blood on his face, holding the remains of a human arm. A few of them turned a sickly shade of green. Kaneki didn’t blame them.

But Kaneki’s heart rate tripled at the sight of these men. Panicked thoughts filled his brain. Just when he thought he had been safe. There was no way he was going to let himself be captured. Flashes of the CCG prison and Jason were brought to the surface of his mind. But then the fear and panic vanished. Instead, he just felt disheartened. He could run, but where? There were no fellow ghouls to help him out this time. The only reason he had been able to hide this long was because no one knew he was here, much less a ghoul. They even had his face now.

“Hands on your head!” One shouted.

Kaneki obeyed not having the will to fight.

“On your knees!”

As soon as his knees hit the ground, they ran over and cuffed him. Roughly, they pulled him up and dragged him out of his apartment and into the night air. Before he knew it he was in the back of a vehicle, headed to who knows where. He caught a glimpse of Natalie, who sat in the front seat. Kaneki laughed. He should have known better than to let his guard down even for a moment. Natalie gave him an expressionless look in the reflection of the rear-view mirror. She was probably a spy of some sort. It made sense. She asked all of these questions about him, revealing very little about herself. She took him to a club hoping him would get drunk, giving her the opportunity to ask more questions or even get access to his apartment.

“I should have known better,” he mumbled bitterly and laid his head up against the car seat. And just like that, his nice, innocent, almost careless demeanor vanished to be replaced with the emotionless mask he wore so well.

Kaneki found himself locked in a small room on what he assumed to be a plane of some kind. They had put a bag over his head for the last part of the drive. The room had a cot and a toilet, but that was it other than the not-so-obvious-but-still-noticeable camera in the top corner of the room.

The still handcuffed Kaneki laid down on the cot and stared at the ceiling. It wasn’t like he had much else to do, but being alone with his thoughts was not desirable. He had no idea what would happen to him and speculating wasn’t doing anything other than adding panic to his situation. At least he wasn’t hungry.

Who knows how much time passed when the door opened up, revealing Natalie along with two armed guards. Kaneki got up and looked at her, no expression showing on his face. She was wearing a black, skin tight jumpsuit with long sleeves.

“Come with me,” she said.

Kaneki followed Natalie to what looked like an interrogation room. The two guards stayed by his side even after he sat in at the large metal table. Natalie didn’t leave either. Sighing, Kaneki stared at his reflection in the one way glass across from him. He still had a bit of blood smeared on his face, but he got the majority of it off when he was in his cell earlier. His white hair was messy and his face looked tired. There were deep bags under his eyes. He still had his eyepatch on, which surprised him. He must have forgotten to take it off last night.

The door to the interrogation room opened, breaking through Kaneki’s thoughts. A tall, blue eyed, black haired man walked in through the door. He had goatee like facial hair and a cup of coffee in his hand. If Kaneki was seeing correctly, he also had something glowing in his chest.

The man sat down across from Kaneki and put his feet up on the table. He looked bored. “Let’s start with the easy stuff. What is your name?”

“Kaneki Ken.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Birthday.”

“December twentieth.”

“Blood type.”

“AB.”

“Where are you from?”

Kaneki paused for a moment. “Twentieth ward, Tokyo Japan.”

“Do you know what I’m saying now,” said the man in japanese.

“Of course.” Kaneki replied, also in japanese.

“Father?”

“Never knew him.”

“Mother?”

“Dead.”

“Siblings?”

“No.”

“Any other relatives.”

“No.”

“You seem offly compliant, especially for someone who was dragged out of their home at three A.M.,” said the man, leaning back further in his chair.

“What good would it do me to be noncompliant?” said Kaneki, keeping a cold expression and trying to hide his annoyance.

“Uh,” the man didn’t seem convinced.

“Would you rather me not answer your questions? Because if you really don’t, I would be happy to oblige.” Kaneki couldn’t keep the snarl out of his voice.

The man got his feet off of the table and leaned in close to Kaneki. “I would love for you to do that. Because then I get to hit you, and trust me when I say, I really want to hit you.”

This time, Kaneki actually snarled, not dissimilarly to an animal. Kaneki leaned in as well, letting his anger get the better of him. “Give it your best shot. By the looks of you, my grandmother could hit harder.”

A fist connected with Kaneki’s jaw, but his head didn’t budge. If Kaneki was being completely honest, the punch didn’t even sting, though the man probably felt like he was punching metal. Kaneki let out a laugh.

“I guess I was right.”

The man started to wind up for another punch.

“Enough, Tony!” shouted Natalie. Kaneki had almost forgot she was there. Tony sat back down in his chair, obviously still pissed.

He wasn’t alone in that sense. Kaneki was irate, though not all of his anger was because of ‘Tony.’ It was the combination of Tony being a jackass, the fact he still has a headache, and because Kaneki had done nothing to deserve this bullshit, at least not in this world. He had been trying to live quietly without hurting anyone. He had been content, happy even, before whoever these people are decided to take him here. Now he was being interrogated by this arrogant dick in a plane going to who knows where. Wonderful.

They sat in dead silence for several minutes. Kaneki put his cold expression back on and stared at the glass again like an unseeing doll, Tony stared at the ceiling as if he were a kid waiting to be let out of time out, and Natalie just looked at both of them like they were pre-school children.

“Tony, why don’t you go take a breather,” said Natasha. “Come back when you aren’t going to act like a five year old.”

“Whatever you say Natasha.” He said rolling his eyes.

So that’s her real name.

Tony left and Natasha took his place at the table. Kaneki kept staring at the glass behind her.

They sat in silence for a moment.

“Why did you kill those people?”

“I didn’t. Those people were from the suicide forest, about a mile up the mountain from the town I was staying at.” Kaneki still wouldn’t look her in the eyes.

“Why would I believe that when you had their body parts in your fridge?”

“You could probably figure it out if you thought about it.”

Natasha sighed. “Humor me.”

This time looked directly into Natasha’s eyes. “I eat them.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. “You’re a cannibal.”

“That would imply that I am human, which I’m not. At least not fully.” Kaneki sighed and relaxed back into his chair a bit. Here came the long, complicated part of the interrogation.

“Then what are you?”

“From what I can tell, you don’t have my species on this Earth, but on my Earth, I’m called a Ghoul. Well, I’m a half ghoul, but that doesn’t make much of a difference.”

“And what exactly is a ‘ghoul?’”

“We are the same as humans in most ways; such as in outward appearance, intelligence, and emotions.” Kaneki said the last part bitterly. “The only main difference is that we have to eat humans. Trust me, all of us have tried to eat something else, anything else, but human food makes us sick. We can get no nutrition from it and it tastes horrible. The only things we can manage to have, the same as humans, is water, coffee, and, thankfully, alcohol.

“We are also much stronger than humans. Needles, bullets, etcetera, can’t pierce our skin. Most of us can lift four to seven times as much as humans can---”

Natasha cut him off. “Doesn’t that mean you could easily break those handcuffs?”

Kaneki kept his neutral expression. “Yes.”

“And the guns pointed at you, when we took you from your apartment; they would have done nothing to you?”

“That is correct. And even if they did, ghouls like me have healing powers that would heal the wound before it would affect me much.”

There was a pause in the conversation.

“Why did you come with us then?”

“I didn’t want to hurt any of you, much less kill you. I was hoping that we could just talk the whole thing out. I was cooperating earlier because I’m not stupid, it is quite obvious how bad the whole situation looks and being uncooperative would only make my situation worse. I guess that plan backfired.” Kaneki said bitterly. He looked back up at the glass, just hoping that Tony was there as his face pulled into a sneer.

Then Kaneki looked back at Natasha while wearing a neutral expression. “I assume you want me to continue.”

Natasha gave him a stiff nod.

“All ghouls have some form of Kagune, a predatory organ that comes out of our backs. There are 4 main types; Ukaku, which look like wings and focus mostly on speed; Koukaku, which is mostly a defencive type; Rinkaku which are scaled tentacles; and a Bikaku which is a bone like tail. They are determined by our RC types. I am personally a Rinkaku type.

“The last major difference is the eyes that ghouls have. Though they look normal most of the time, if we are hungry or our instincts kick in, the iris turns red and the white part of the eye black. Since I am a half ghoul, only one of my eyes turns; hence the eyepatch. I can’t always control it, so it is better to keep my eye covered incase it acts up.”

Kaneki finished and looked up at the ceiling, counting the tiles. Neither him nor Natasha said anything for a moment.

“How can I know that you’re telling the truth?” asked Natasha, folding her hands in front of her on the table.

Kaneki let out a sharp exhale. “Which part? The not killing people part or the me being a ghoul part?”

“Preferably both.”

“Well I could show you my Kagune or break the handcuffs, but I assume that would be a bad move, so you can take off my eye patch and I can show you my eye.”

Natasha looked at one of the guards and pointed with her head to Kaneki. The guard reluctantly walked over and unhooked the eyepatch from one ear. Shaking his head, Kaneki let the rest of it fell to the table. Then Kaneki purposely flared up his Kakugan. He could feel the guards stiffen behind him, and the same goes for Natasha. Though Natasha did a better job at hiding it.

“As for ‘proving’ that I didn’t kill those people, if you look at the DNA of those in the fridge, you should find that a lot of them went missing before I ended up here. It doesn’t completely prove me innocent, but it should at least help.”

There was another pause in their conversation as Natasha looked at the glass behind her, as if signaling someone.

“It seems that at least that part of your story is true. I only have one more question for now. Why and how did you come over here, to Earth?”

“I don’t know how I ended up here,” Kaneki said, eyes softening ever so slightly. His mind started to drift to what had happened. His heart rate spiked.

Natasha nodded. “Well, for now, I’m going to take you back to your cell. We will be landing soon. Then you get to explain all of it again for the director.”

Natasha left the room and the two guards started to take Kaneki back to his cell. He took a deep and calming breath as they took him down long hallways, obviously trying to disorient him so he didn’t know where he was on the ship. It didn’t work, it only gave him the layout. After about five minutes of walking, Tony appeared. He had some sort of red, metallic glove on.

“I’ll take it to it’s cell from here,” he said.

The guards looked at each other.

“I mean, I know that this is your job, but I need to have a little talk with it.” Tony gave a short, fake smile and, with his gloved hand, grabbed Kaneki by the back of the neck and pushed him slightly forward, signaling for him to walk. The guards looked confused as they walked away. Kaneki didn’t blame them. Something told him that this was not going to be pretty. And Kaneki didn’t appreciate being called “it.”

The two walked further down the hallway, Tony’s hand still on Kaneki’s neck. Right as they were about to turn the corner, Tony shoved Kaneki to the wall. Again, Kaneki took a deep breath to keep himself calm.

Tony held his glove inches from Kaneki’s face. “You know, I don’t know what it is but I just don’t like you.” His voice was clear, even though he spoke quickly and with slight motions of his head. He paced back and forth, while still keeping the glove pointed at him. “I can’t tell if it’s your voice, your face, your attitude…”

Kaneki didn’t say anything. It didn’t take much to tell that Tony was afraid of him. You could tell by his pacing, his quickened speech; his constant glances to Kaneki’s hands that were still behind his back. He was hiding his fear with the sarcastic, arrogant attitude. Even if Kaneki had been blind, he still could have heard the beats of Tony’s heart racing. It wasn’t the normal fear that someone has when they come in contact with a strange being, it seemed like true terror. The kind where someone was expecting to be killed slowly and horribly. Kaneki would know, since he had experienced it first hand. Terror and anger.

But Tony’s reactions worried Kaneki on many levels. Anger made people act irrationally, fear even more so. The best thing that Kaneki could do now is nothing. Let him get his anger out and hope that it didn’t go badly for him. Maybe if Kaneki had known Tony better, he would have tried to defuse the bomb, but it was better not to blindly grab a wire and cut it.

“I think I know.” He put his finger on his chin as if he were thinking. “It’s your eating habits. You know, I can’t comprehend how you can do it. You kill someone every time you need to eat? How selfish do you have to be to put your life over hundreds of other people’s in your lifetime? I know I’m an egotistical bastard, but that is just a whole new level.”

Kaneki bit down on the insides of his cheeks to keep himself from saying anything. It was all he could do to keep his face neutral. Though part of him wanted to argue, the other part agreed with him. Kaneki knew that he didn’t kill anymore, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t killed. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t put his life over others. Though, in the long run, who didn’t. Everything you do in life is taking away from others or putting yourself above others. It is human nature, it is survival. It’s the instinct of self preservation that every living being has in them. It is a primal part of everything that is never going to disappear. No one seemed to understand that.

Suddenly, Tony grabbed Kaneki’s shirt with his ungloved hand, pulling him close enough to feel each other’s breath on their faces. “If you hurt anyone, if I see one false step, don’t think I won’t hesitate to rip you apart like the vile monster you are.”

Chapter Text

Kaneki stared up at the ceiling for what seemed like forever. They must have lied about the whole “we are almost there” thing. Kaneki wished he could say that he was bored, but he wasn’t. Thoughts were swarming in his head like always. Thoughts that he would rather not bring up.

Finally, Kaneki felt the plane shift as they slowly descended. They didn’t, however, land on the ground. They landed on what seemed to be a bigger plane, at least from what Kaneki could tell from his windowless room.

About five minutes after they landed, Natasha came to his cell once again.

“Follow,” she said and Kaneki obeyed, keeping his forced apathetic expression on his face.

That said, Kaneki’s eyes widened as they exited their craft. Apparently, they had landed on a huge helicarrier. Jets lined the runway, cargo was stacked ten feet high, men with weapons ran here and there. Almost everywhere he looked, he could see a symbol of some sort. It looked like a stylized eagle on a coin.

The cool wind that hit Kaneki’s face felt like a blessing after being shut in a room for hours. He didn’t know how to take everything in. There had never been anything close to this advanced on his home Earth. The only reason he knew what this craft was was because of the few comic books Hide made him read.

He and Natasha walked down the ramp. Kaneki caught a few people giving him angry or disgusted glances. It wasn’t anything new though. It isn’t like eating people is something generally accepted by society. If it had been Kaneki in their shoes, he might have thrown the same judging glances. And if they had been in his shoes, they might understand what it is like to be the monster receiving those glances. Though they would probably feel hate towards those who glared at them, while Kaneki only felt a sad sense of understanding.

Natasha locked Kaneki in yet another interrogation room, though this one was larger than the last one.

Kaneki was getting really sick of waiting. Like, really sick of it. He had been staring at the wall or ceiling for at least four hours. Now add another half hour of waiting.

“Can I have a book?” he asked one of the guards.

The guard said nothing. Kaneki sighed and looked at the ceiling again.

He involuntarily started wondering what exactly they were planning on doing with him. They weren’t going to just let him go, he knew that much. They might kill him, they might lock him away. He just hoped they weren’t like the CCG. If they were, turning himself in may have been the stupidest thing he could have done. He couldn’t take torture again, not after his time with Jason.

The door finally opened up after what seemed like forever. Natasha walked in along with a bald black man with an eye patch. His demeanor was intimidating and he carried himself like a leader, but not like the leaders he had come to know at Aogiri. He had the air of a righteous man, albeit cold, unlike the anger and pride fueled commanders Kaneki had become accustomed to.

The man didn’t sit across from Kaneki like Natasha and Tony did. Instead, he stood leaning on the table and looking Kaneki in the eyes.

Kaneki immediately felt uncomfortable, making him drop his apathetic act and revert back to his normal personality. Kaneki looked away and squirmed in his chair. It didn’t matter that he was stronger than the man, the man was still intimidating. Kaneki had to resist the urge to run away from the man’s gaze.

“Now why don’t you start by telling me what you told Natasha.”

So that was what Kaneki did, even if this time he stumbled over words do to the man’s constant gaze. After he finished telling the man what he had told Natasha and Tony, he proceeded to explain the CCG and the social dynamic between ghouls and humans. Though only because the man had asked about them. He mentioned the ghoul organisations as well, like Aogiri and Anteiku. Finally, he explained the ghoul ranking system. He didn't mention much about himself or his friends. He avoided talking about his interactions with the CCG, or Aogiri, and he completely avoided the topic of Jason.

Despite Kaneki’s better judgment, he did tell the man one way that he could be killed- by other Kagunes. He just hoped that they couldn’t get their hands on one. But then again, how would they?

The man didn’t say a word while Kaneki explained. The most he did was ask another question when Kaneki had stopped talking. And the man’s face was perfectly neutral. Kaneki couldn’t tell if the man believed a word that came out of his mouth. But something told Kaneki that he has seen weirder things, so maybe he believed at least some of it.

“And where, exactly, do you fit into all of this?” asked the man with a slight cock of his head.

“What do you mean?” responded Kaneki, feigning ignorance. If at all possible, he would have liked to avoid the subject of himself all together, though Kaneki knew that it was impossible.

“We’ll start with what ‘ranking’ you are.” said the man, not asking.

“I’ve been an SSS rank for a while now.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “And which organization were you in?”

“I was in Anteiku, but then, do to certain events, I ended up in Aogiri for about two years.” Kaneki was trying to only say as much as he needed to.

“What were these ‘certain events’ that you spoke of?”

“Something I would rather not talk about, much less think about,” answered Kaneki as calmly as he could.

They continued talking. The man had gotten Kaneki to spill some of his life as a half ghoul, a bit about his mom, but that was it. Kaneki didn’t understand why they bothered asking these questions to begin with. Sure, they needed information on the person that they had apprehended, but it seemed that they wanted to know more than was necessary. Kaneki just wanted the interrogation to be over.

“What about your psychological state?” The man asked.

Kaneki crossed his arms self consciously and seemed to shrink into his seat. He looked at the floor. “There’s a lot going on in my mind. If I had to diagnose myself, I would say I have severe PTSD and a mild case of dissociative identity disorder. That said, I don’t know if I would call it DID since I’m fully aware of what is going on when I ‘switch’. It’s probably more of a mental defence mechanism of some sort. In fact the only time I’m not aware of what I’m doing is…” Kaneki trailed off then started back up again. “It is also possible that I’m developing schizophrenia, since I hear voices, but I don’t think that is it because I don’t have any of the other signs. I have the occasional panic attack, a side effect of my PTSD, but I haven’t had one since I got to this world.”

The man raised his eyebrow again.

“I was acing my psychology classes when I was still in college.”

There was an unnaturally long pause.

“Alright Kaneki, just two more questions and then we’re done for the day.”

Kaneki nodded, eager to get this over with.

The man sat down at the table, which surprised Kaneki. He sighed and looked straight at Kaneki. The man’s eyes looked tired and worn. He had seen way too much, more than Kaneki could fathom, but it didn’t take much to tell that it hadn’t broken him. This man had done what Kaneki had so desperately wanted to do. He had used the experiences to become stronger. The man was able to hide the emotions that bothered him and keep his mask secured so fully. To anyone else, they wouldn’t have noticed that the man had been affected at all. But Kaneki could tell that he has changed from his former self into someone worthy of anyone’s respect. Kaneki was envious, all he had accomplished was getting all his friends killed in the attempt to get stronger. Yet Kaneki’s envy didn’t overshadow his awe for the man.

“I want you to be perfectly honest with me-- are you a threat to the people of this world?”

Kaneki had to think for a moment. He was shocked and the voices in his head started to get louder. They were yelling, screaming; laughing.

‘Who are you kidding? We all know you want to kill all of them!’

‘If you say yes, you will never have your longed for freedom.’

‘You can’t control your hunger, no ghoul can. You will just be signing their death warrants if you say no.’

‘What are they going to do about it anyway? They couldn’t stop you even if you are a threat.’

‘What happens if you snap again? You nearly killed that ghoul investigator Amon three times.’

‘What about centipede?’

‘You are a monster.’

‘You are the reason for your friends’ deaths.’

‘You can’t even protect yourself, how are you going to insure the safety of the people around you from yourself?’

‘You are a monster.’

‘I bet you wonder what he tastes like. You haven’t eaten a live human in so long, it would be fun. I can feel the blood lust growing inside you.’

‘Give in to the monster you are.’

Kaneki didn’t want to say it, but he knew the truth. He knew it as much as he didn’t want to. He couldn’t control himself. Who was he kidding trying to live peacefully around humans. There was only one thing all of the voices in his head could agree on.

They were done.

“Yes.”

Chapter Text

“Now for the second question,” said the man seemingly unfazed. “Are you the monster that the people of your world think you are?”

Kaneki paused again before answering, furrowing his brow looking at the table in front of him. It took him a moment to see the difference in the questions. He didn’t understand why the man wanted to know, or even cared whether or not Kaneki was this so called “monster.” He was a threat, he admitted that he was a threat, they should just lock him up and be done with it. Why did he care?

“I’m not the monster they believe me to be, no, but I am still a monster nonetheless. Not that I understand why you care, I already told you I was a threat. Just lock me up and be done with it.” Kaneki’s gaze met the man’s.

The man just smirked, as if amused. “Why would I lock you up?”

Kaneki snarled. “Isn’t that what you humans always do? You see something that is a threat to your power or lives in any way, ‘then it has to be killed or locked away’. It has to be hunted down to fucking extinction, because it is new or strong or different. You can’t stand to not be at the top of the food chain, so you make up these excuses like how ‘ghouls don’t have emotions so it’s okay to torture them’ or ‘they are just animals so we’ll kill them like animals.’ Never does it cross your human brains that maybe we don’t want to kill you, that we just want to be left alone, that there are lots of us out there that have never killed a human in our entire lives. That maybe we just want to live. Is it a sin for anyone to live?” Kaneki’s voice was completely even, though he mumbled the last part, then continued.

“I’m not saying I’ve never killed. I’m not saying that every ghoul feels the same way that I do. I’m not saying that you should never kill someone who threatens you, but your inability to restrain yourselves from generalizing an entire race based on the bad ones will never cease to astound me.” It didn’t take much for both men to realize that Kaneki wasn’t talking about this situation anymore.

Kaneki was on the verge of both angry and sorrowful tears, not that he would let himself cry. It wouldn’t matter even if he did. He could tell that whoever this man was, he could read him like a book. He could tell Kaneki was fighting to keep himself under control.

“Do you feel bad about killing the people you have?” the man asked.

“For the most part, no.” Kaneki laughed dryly. “I wish I never had to kill anyone in the first place, don’t get me wrong. That doesn’t mean, however, that I regret taking the lives that I have. I did what I had to do and I would do it again if need be.”

The man replaced the smirk that had faded off of his face.

“Now Kaneki, I have a proposition for you. You were right about one thing. I can’t exactly let you go free knowing what you are, so I am giving you two choices. You can spend the rest of your life in a cell, as you rot away, waste your life, and drown in self loathing, or, you could join the Avengers and do some good. Maybe you could make up for the monster you were by becoming a hero. Call it balancing the scales.”

There was a pause.

“What?” said Kaneki.

The door to the interrogation room burst open, revealing Tony and four other people. One had short blonde hair and was kind of a pretty boy, one looked about sixteen, the third had a bow on his back, and the last one had salt and pepper hair. It might have just been his imagination, but Kaneki could have sworn that the last one had a green tint to his skin.

“What?” The people who had just entered said in unison. Even Natasha had eyes wide in surprise.

“You all heard me,” replied the man who had been interrogating him.

There was another pause.

Then Kaneki started laughing, not giggling and it wasn’t the insane laugh he had sometimes. Instead it was an unrestrained laugh that had Kaneki clutching his stomach. By the time he started to calm down, everyone was looking at him as if he had three heads.

“Let me get this straight,” he broke off into laughter again, “you want me, a being that eats humans, someone that has killed numerous people, someone who has admitted to being a threat, insane, AND a monster, to join the Avengers- a group of heroes that would kill someone like me without losing a minute of sleep over it.” Kaneki burst out laughing again. “Whoever you are, you have to be more crazy than me.”

“Maybe, but I was serious in my offer,” said the man. “And the name is Nick Fury.”

“How can you be serious?” said the exasperated Tony. “He told you to your face that he was a threat. Normally you would have already shipped him to the deepest, darkest prison in the world.”

“He isn’t anymore of a threat than any of the other Avengers. The mere fact that he admitted to what he is is proof that his intentions aren’t to cause us harm,” replied Fury.

“He eats people!” said Tony.

“And Hulk has destroyed cities full of people, and Natasha was an enemy assassin, and you created weapons of mass destruction. Need I go on? All of you have done your fair share of bad.”

“But we made up for that how many times over by now.”

“And I’m giving Kaneki here a chance to do the same.”

Kaneki had stopped laughing by then and was looking gravely at the two of them.

“If I join, I can’t promise that I can control myself. My actions aren’t always my own, and if something triggers my insanity, I will lash out. I’ve gone on killing sprees before in my own world, even if it was against an enemy.”

Kaneki’s statement cut through the fighting.

“If I join, you do realize what you are getting yourself into.”

“Of course,” Fury replied.

“Then what have I got to lose.”

Chapter Text

Natasha showed Kaneki to an extra room on the helicarrier. They had finally taken his handcuffs off and given him back his eye patch, but that didn’t mean that Kaneki didn’t see the glares directed at him. He didn’t know what possessed him and made him agree, all Kaneki knew was that he was going to regret it. It wasn’t like he didn’t expect the stares or the whispers though. He was a monster.

“We’ll arrive at the Avenger’s tower by two. Do whatever you want until then, but don’t wander around too much. Despite Fury trusting you, no one else here does.” And with that Natasha left, she had sounded indifferent.

Trust was probably the wrong word to describe Fury’s feelings towards Kaneki. If anything it was closer to an understanding. Fury could read people better than most, and in many ways, the two were similar to each other. Even if it isn’t clear on the surface. Fury simply knew what Kaneki would and wouldn’t do, there was no trust involved at all.

Kaneki laid down across the bed. The room he was in wasn’t very large, in fact it was about half the size of his small old apartment in Tokyo. There was a full sized bed, a nightstand, and a closet full of clothes, along with a small bathroom. On the nightstand there was a tablet of some sort as well, not that Kaneki knew how to use it. He may have been here for three months, but he still hasn’t caught up on all of the technology. His earth was years behind this one when it came to technological advancements. It drove him crazy, no pun intended.

Kaneki decided that it wouldn’t be in his best interest to leave the room, even if he was technically allowed to. That said, he was feeling restless after sitting still for about six hours, then having a combined time of two hours between the two interrogations. He looked down at his hands, they were shaking with unwanted nervous energy. It wasn’t long before he got up from the bed and started to pace. Then the voices started again.

‘Come on Kaneki…’

‘Whatcha doing…’

‘Are you just going to pace and pace and pace..’

‘Like some sort of caged animal?’

‘Screw the rest of the ship, why don’t we go explore?’

‘I bet Natasha locked us in, even if we wanted to go we couldn’t.’

‘I wonder if this is all some sort of trick…’

‘Yeah, yeah, I bet that is it. They want to lure you into a false sense of security then…’

‘I wonder what wonderful torture they can do with that new technology of theirs.’

‘Maybe they have weapons that can pierce through that hard skin of ours…’

‘You didn’t think this through at all did you?’

‘Can’t you hear all the heart beats on this ship? It’s so loud.’

‘Maybe we should silence them.’

Kaneki closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing.

Shut up! All of you just fucking shut up!

Just as they began, the voices in his head stopped talking, whispering into his ears.

Needing a distraction, anything to get his mind off of… his mind, Kaneki decided to do a small work out. It was the only thing that he could think of to get out his nervous energy. If he had still been at Aogiri, he would have gotten someone to spar with, or better yet someone who he could mutually beat the crap out of.

He hadn’t been slacking too much over the past three months, but he wasn’t in the same shape he was before. Touka would have handed his ass to him. Not that that would ever happen again. After about an hour of sit ups, pushups, etc. Kaneki had managed to drain some of his nervous energy, though the headache that had faded was back. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to work out with a hangover.

Groaning lightly, Kaneki jumped into the shower and turned it up to the hottest temperature it could go. The steaming water hit Kaneki’s back, relaxing his muscles. There were few things that felt better in this world than a hot shower. Kaneki’s headache slowly started to fade again, much to his relief. Now that he thought about it, he had probably reeked of alcohol up until now. It disgusted him a bit.
After an hour and a half in the shower, Kaneki figured he had better get out. They were supposed to land in another half hour.

The air of the bathroom seemed cool against his skin as he got out of the shower. After wrapping a towel around his waist, Kaneki walked into the brightly lit room. The closet was filled with multiple copies of the same shirt and sweatpants. The clothes were more like something you would work out in, but it was still better than staying in the same clothes you had already been in for thirty-three hours, not to mention the same clothes you had slept in and spilled booze on.

It took a few minutes to find his size, but he managed to find something. The sweatpants were a plain black, except for the SHIELD logo, with drawstrings. The t-shirt was a grey and also had the SHIELD logo on it, located over the left breast.

Suddenly, the door to the room opened up. “I’m supposed to take you to the--” The blonde, pretty boy from before walked in, but upon seeing Kaneki who was still only in a towel, he froze. “What happened to you?”

It didn’t take much to know that Pretty Boy was talking about his scars. He looked like he had been through a wood chipper. Thin white scars covered his entire body, overlapping each other, but that wasn’t all. Kaneki had various burns and whip lashes, not to mention a large brand on his left shoulder blade. A brand in the shape of a “J”.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kaneki almost growled, then pulled the t-shirt over his head. Luckily, it was long-sleeved so no one would be able to see the the crisscrossing of scars that enveloped his arms. Kaneki sighed. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Getting the hint, Pretty Boy left with a light dusting of pink on his cheeks.

Kaneki quickly finished getting dressed and followed Pretty Boy back out to the landing pad. The silence may have been awkward, but it was nothing compared to the silence that ensued when he and six of the Avengers were put on a plane together.

Kaneki couldn’t stop tapping his fingers on his leg for the entire plane ride. He would have been cracking his fingers instead, but he didn’t want to draw any more attention than he had to. The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife, and it was not helping Kaneki’s nerves. Everyone was stiff, calculating each other's moves. Natasha and Pretty Boy kept giving Tony looks of warning, since he was still fuming. Robinhood was flying the plane, but you could tell that he was on edge by the way his knuckles turned white when he gripped the joy stick. The sixteen year old had headphones on and was staring at his phone, but the screen had been on the same thing for nearly ten minutes and Kaneki could feel his gaze on him ever so often. Green-Bean was the only one who looked completely calm. He wasn’t though. His heart rate was going a mile a minute. And Asshat, a.k.a Tony, was staring a hole in Kaneki’s head.

Everyone let out a sigh of relief when the plane finally landed. Robinhood practically jumped out of his seat when they landed and was the first off the plane, quickly followed by the teen, Green-Bean, and Pretty Boy. Kaneki moved to get up, only for Asshat to get up at the same time and cut him off. Natasha, in turn shoved him forward so he had to keep walking.

By the time Kaneki actually got off the plane, the rest of the Avengers were on the roof. There was a scary looking girl in red, a tall blonde dude with a cape, a red and blue guy also with a cape, and a black haired guy with a gold, horned crown on his head. Though the last guy was in handcuffs and probably wasn’t part of the Avengers. The scowl Asshat gave him was even worse than the one he gave Kaneki.

“I suppose we should all introduce ourselves, no?” said the girl in red with a very strong eastern-european accent. “I’m Wanda Maximoff, also known as Scarlet Witch.”

Next to speak was Pretty Boy. “I’m Steve Rogers, or Captain America.”

“I’m Bruce Banner… and the Hulk.” That explained the turning green.

“Peter Parker, a.k.a., Spiderman,” said the kid.

“I’m Natasha Romanova, Black Widow.”

“Clint Barton, or Hawkeye,” said Robinhood.

“I’m Thor, god of thunder and heir to the throne in asgard,” said the blonde proudly.

“I’m Loki, god of mischief and mayhem, and sadly Thor’s brother,” said the one with the horn helmet.

“Tony Stark. Ironman,” Tony said shortly.

“And I’m Vision,” said the blue and red guy.

Kaneki nodded, acknowledging each introduction.

“I’m Kaneki Ken. As for titles or code names I’ve had several from my world,” Kaneki said with a small smile as he scratched the back of his head.

“Like what, other worlder?” said Thor.

Kaneki unconsciously cracked his index finger with his thumb. “I’ve been called Eyepatch, Centipede, and Mad Knight; though officially no one knows that they are the same ghoul.”

“Monstrous names suitable for a monster,” mumbled Tony.

It seems that the rest of the team had been briefed on everything since they had flinched at the word ghoul. It did relieve Kaneki that he didn’t have to explain it all again, even if it meant that first impressions weren’t what he had hoped them to be.

Natasha elbowed Tony in the ribs, probably both for the comment and to get him to say something. “How about one of you guys,” he gestured to the rest of the Avengers, “show Kaneki his room while I go get a much needed drink. Afterall, it isn’t everyday that a monster joins the Avengers so it has been pretty stressful.”

Tony left to go inside without another word. Natasha shot him another glare and nodded for Kaneki to follow her. It seems like he has just followed her around all day.

Kaneki didn’t forget that she was the one who brought him here and got him involved with everything, but that doesn’t mean that he blamed her. It was her job-- she was a spy and he was a threat that needed to be investigated. That said, Kaneki was still more comfortable around her than anyone else. That was probably because she reminded him a bit of Touka.

Kaneki could feel the looks of the others on his back as he left, though it wasn’t spiteful or full of hatred like Tony or the people back at the helicarrier. Instead, it was mere caution and curiosity. Wanda’s gaze was the only one that didn’t fall into any of those categories. And that unnerved Kaneki. She looked at him with pity and sadness, like she knew. But that couldn’t be possible… could it?

“You okay?” asked Natasha.

“Yeah, sorry, I just zoned out. Were you saying something?” He blinked and shook his head slightly.

Natasha looked at him with a slight tilt of her head. “Yes, just that this is your room.”

“Right.” Kaneki opened the door cautiously. The room was huge. It held a king size bed with a plain grey comforter, a black nightstand, a mini fridge, a desk and chairs, a dresser, a walk in closet, and a bathroom. The exterior wall was just a glass window, allowing Kaneki to see The City beneath him as long as the dark grey curtains weren’t drawn. The lighting made the room seem bright, even in spite of the dark furnishings. What surprised him the most though was the bags of stuff that were on his bed. One, he recognised as his own bag that was full of his money wallet, etc. The other one contained his clothes and books from his apartments, but the last one was full of new clothes more suitable for his new “job.”

“Get settled. Once you are done you can meet everyone in the living room,” said Natasha.

“And where is the living room?”

“Ask Jarvis.”

Kaneki stared at her blankly. “Who is Jarvis?”

“I am sir,” said a metallic voice.

Kaneki jumped a foot in the air. “Who… What?”

“Jarvis is our AI. If you need anything you are welcome to ask him. He operates this entire tower and all of its systems,” replied Natasha, slightly amused by Kaneki’s shock.

Kaneki just pinched the bridge of his nose. “I knew that this world was ahead of mine in technology, but this is just ridiculous.”

Natasha was even more amused. “Just how far behind us are you?”

“Enough to know that the screens on all of the nightstands on the helicarrier were called tablets, but not know how to get past the first screen.”

Natasha actually laughed at him. “Good luck surviving here then. Tony is the most influential and advanced mechanical engineer of his time. The technology here is more advanced than you will find anywhere else.”

“Joy, now there’s one more reason for him to hate my guts,” mumbled Kaneki as he walked into his room. By the time he turned back around, Natasha was gone.

There wasn’t much to unpack, but Kaneki decided to get that done and out of the way. That said, he didn’t unpack the bag with his mask and money in it. He probably never would.

The Avenger’s building had Kaneki on edge. He didn’t like that there were cameras watching his every move or that he was trapped in a building full of people that could probably kill him if they wanted to. His instincts wouldn’t let him relax in the slightest. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, his ears twitched at the slightest sounds, he kept clenching and unclenching his fists as he paced around his room. Every fiber of his being told him to run. He felt like a trapped and cornered animal, but then again, that feeling wasn’t new. Even being in the presence of a few of the Avengers was enough to make Kaneki unnerved. Specifically Thor, Loki, Bruce, and Wanda.

Kaneki sat down on his bed and noticed there was a tablet on his night stand as well. “Jarvis.”

“Yes, Mr. Ken.”

Kaneki cringed slightly. “Just call me Kaneki.”

“Of course Kaneki, now what can I do for you?”

Kaneki was embarrassed for being embarrassed. “How do you work this?” He lifted the tablet.

Steve, or Captain America, found himself curious about the new Avenger in spite of himself. He didn’t feel hatred or even disgust like he knew most people would. He didn’t feel those emotions at all for whatever reason.

Maybe it was because of his eyes, as cliche as that sounds. They seemed dull, like he had seen too much and was broken by it. It seemed like he could break down and cry at any moment. That or snap.
It also might have been the extensive collection of scars that littered the boy’s body. Those weren’t scars that you got from something as mundane as a car accident. Especially not the brand. People got those types of scars when they fought for their lives. People got those kinds of scars when they are strapped down and subjected to torture. He had hoped he wouldn’t have to see anyone else with those types of scars after the war ended. All he knew was that whoever this boy was, he had been through hell.

Steve sat with the rest of the Avengers in the living room; not contributing much to the conversation but listening nonetheless. Tony was still fuming about the entire situation. What else was new?
“I mean, he EATS people. How are we supposed to trust him to be in the same house as us? Much less fight with us? Fury must be out of his mind for letting this monster on the team.” Tony sounded exasperated.

“I understand your worries Tony, but he hasn’t harmed anyone while he has been on this Earth,” said Natasha, sounding more tired of hearing Tony’s complaining than actually trying to defend Kaneki.
“That’s if you take his word for it.”

“We ran tests on the bodies, they were all missing before Kaneki even came to this Earth.” Natasha pinched the bridge of her nose.

“That doesn’t mean he hasn’t killed them, it just means that they were missing. Not only that, but he has admitted to killing before. There is no guarantee that he won’t do it again. You were the one who saw the body parts overflowing in his fridge, how are you the one defending him?”

Natasha sighed. “It isn’t so much that I am defending him as it is that you aren’t thinking clearly. I understand your anger, but you need to have a little more faith in Fury’s judgment.”

“She is right Stark. Have more faith in him,” said Thor. “Besides, there is not a person in this room that has not killed someone before, whether be it intentional or not. Yet you find no problem forgiving them and yourself.”

“But we worked for our forgiveness and trust, he was just given it,” growled Stark.

“You know as well as everyone that Fury trusts few people, so if he trusts this person he must have a reason. And we don’t trust him yet, but the rest of the team is willing to give the boy a chance. Not only a chance to earn our trust, but also a chance to earn forgiveness.” Steve had finally spoken up.

“Not many of us were in good positions in our lives before we joined the Avengers. It is like a saving grace, giving us a chance to work off our sins. In case you forgot, I was an assassin. A cold blooded one at that,” said Romanova.

“Just because we were able to change to heroes doesn’t mean everyone can. We were willing to change,” said Tony, his face seemed to soften slightly.

“So why can’t we give him a chance to change?” asked Wanda, speaking for the first time. Her voice was calmer than any of the others voices’ so far.

The softness in Tony’s face disappeared as soon as it had formed. “His life relies on the death of others. How exactly do you change that?”

There was an eerie silence as the conversation stopped. Kaneki had walked into the room. His face held an expression of indifference, though his hands were clenched at his sides.

Kaneki sighed deeply. “Don’t stop your conversation about me just because I walked into the room,” he said sarcastically.

Kaneki walked further into the room and leaned against the wall across from the doorway he had come in through. He stared at the floor, as if his shoes were the most interesting thing available.

“I would like to point something out though, something you seemed to have missed entirely. Your lives rely on the deaths of others as well.” His voice was as indifferent as his expression.

Tony looked furious. “What--”

Kaneki merely raised a finger to cut him off. “You eat don’t you? You kill animals and plants to survive.”

“THAT”S--”

“Different?” Kaneki cut Tony off once again. “Can you explain to me how exactly it is different? It is only seen as different because humans put themselves above everything else in the world. Humans see themselves as superior to all of these other living, breathing, animals; so therefore it is okay for them to be killed by humans, but not for them to kill the humans. You think that it is different because for the first time you get to feel the fear of not being at the top of the food chain. So you are scared and like the scared animals you are, you lash out to protect yourselves.

“It isn’t like I blame humans for being the egotistical animals that they are, but you never seem to understand why. I don’t blame you for hating me, or fearing me, or even saying most of the things that you said about me, but live up to why you feel that way. Don’t hide behind reasons that make you seem like the bigger person. And realize that you aren’t any different from me.”

Tony let out a low growl. “Don’t compare humans to you monsters.”

Steve expected Kaneki to get angry, to defend himself further, or to do anything other than stand there expressionless with sorrowful eyes. But he didn’t say a word in return. That only made Tony more furious. Steve didn’t understand why Tony was looking to pick a fight or to get a rise out of Kaneki, or why Tony was so angry in the first place. Sure, Steve did understand that Tony wasn’t going to like Kaneki right away, especially when the person in question ate people, but this was going overboard. He’d never seen Tony this upset over something like this before.

Kaneki did raise his head to meet Tony’s eyes. The two of them engaged in a silent staring contest that made the rest of the Avengers feel uncomfortable. Kaneki’s face was still expressionless while Tony’s was still full of rage.

Kaneki was the first to look away. “Miss Romanova, you wanted me for something didn’t you? That is why you asked me to meet you here?”

Natasha blinked a few times, probably shocked by both the formality of the name and the break in the awkward silence. “Actually, Fury wanted us to evaluate your abilities and run a few tests in the lab.”
Kaneki flinched slightly, but agreed nonetheless.

Chapter Text

As much as he angered Tony, Kaneki didn’t regret saying what he did to the Avengers, even if he might regret it if he has to interact with Tony anytime soon. Then again, Kaneki doubted that it could make Tony’s opinion of him much worse than it already is.

Kaneki found himself in a training room, or more like training floor. The entire thirty third floor of the Avenger’s tower was full of training equipment. There were weights, weapons of all types, targets, a track, a wrestling/boxing ring, a basketball court, a simulator room, and more stuff that Kaneki didn’t even recognise. It was a jock’s dream and a nerd’s nightmare.

“The tests are simple; we’ll test your endurance, strength, reflexes, fighting ability on several different fronts, and your weapons skill,” said Natasha.

“Well, I’ll save you the trouble for one of those. I’ve never picked up a gun in my life and sure as hell can’t fight with a knife. I don’t use weapons.”

Peter spoke for the first time since Kaneki had met him. The brown haired teen had been on his phone unless he was giving Kaneki nervous glances, so he hadn’t been contributing anything to the conversations. This time, however, his phone was in his back jeans pocket and his attention was what was happening around him. His hands were balled up in fists and shoved in his sweatshirt pockets. He was uncomfortable, but not nearly as much as he had been before.

“Then what do you use to fight?”

Kaneki cracked his middle finger with his thumb. Just the sound was enough to make several of the Avenger’s stiffen. “I usually fight hand to hand if I can get away with it, but if not I’ll use my Kagune.”

He cracked his ring finger in the same manner before Vision spoke up. He cocked his head to the side ever so slightly. “We were briefed about this, you also have a Kakugan right? Behind your eyepatch?”

Kaneki cracked his pinky finger and nodded. “I can’t always keep it concealed, so--”

“Why don’t you show all of us?” Tony cut him off. He was leaning against the wall by the elevator before he started to make his way over to the group. “Your Kagune too while you’re at it, since you are confident enough to not learn how to use any other weapons.”

“Weapons wouldn’t have done me much good against other ghouls. As I mentioned before: blades and bullets don’t have the ability to pierce a ghoul’s skin.” Even as he said it, Kaneki still felt hesitant.

He didn’t want to show them. He knew that it was irrational on so many different levels, but there was still a small part of him that wanted to be liked by the Avengers. It was stupid and hypocritical and he knew it, but that didn’t make him stop thinking that way.

‘Fucking coward’

‘For the love of god, why do you even care?’

‘Do you think they are going to start hating you like Tony? Because--’

‘If you are you really are stupid.’

‘They are going to find out eventually anyway--’

‘Probably pretty soon if they plan on testing you--’

‘So just get it over with.’

‘Let them fear you if they do, let them hate you.’

‘Mad Knight was never such a wimp.’

‘Neither is Centipede.’

“Go ahead and show us this weapon of yours then.”

Kaneki flinched out of his internal, one-sided conversation in spite of himself. It was easy to tell Tony noticed as a smirk found its way onto his face.

Kaneki unhooked the eyepatch from his ear and flared up his Kakugan. It was a weird sensation; almost like flexing a muscle, but also like relaxing at the same time. It was more natural for his Kakugan to be exposed, comfortable even, especially after his time with Aogiri where he had it activated constantly.

The Avengers, however, didn’t seem as comfortable. Upon seeing Kaneki’s eyes they all stiffened even further, except for Natasha, who had been expecting it.

“Well that’s creepy,” said Clint under his breath, to which Natasha elbowed him in the stomach.

“And your Kagune?” said Tony expectantly. This time it was his turn to get elbowed in the side by Natasha.

Kaneki looked uneasy as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants, due to a sudden lack of a better thing to do with them, and slowly began to unfurl his Kagune. He didn’t know how to describe the feeling. How would you describe what it felt like to wiggle your fingers to someone who was born without arms? You can do it without thinking, but for them it isn’t comprehensible. He guessed you could compare it to having extra arms but it doesn’t feel like arms. Maybe it felt like having a tail, or even wings, but he wouldn’t know.

The Avengers gasped at the sight of the four, glowing, blood red, tentacles growing from Kaneki’s back. They whipped around his body, though not aggressively, as if they had a mind of their own.

Kaneki had expected fear from them, maybe anger or disgust, but not awe. They watched his Kagune as if they were in a trance, as if the crimson appendages were enticing, as if they weren’t the ugly, cursed objects they were. Even in spite of himself, Tony was in this trance as well. Kaneki looked at the floor.

“Beautiful.” Kaneki flinched as the word escaped Wanda’s mouth.

Kaneki looked up to meet her gaze while confusion took over his. “You find them beautiful?”

He scanned the faces of the people in front of him. There was no anger in his voice, only the pure confusion that he felt. Never had he thought of his Kagune as “beautiful”. Call it a lack of confidence if you like, but Kaneki only saw his Kagune as a way for killing. It was a weapon, nothing more than a means for survival. Maybe confused was how Touka had felt when her Kagune had been called pretty, maybe she thought of her Kagune as nothing more than a weapon as well. Kaneki wondered if Hide had found his Kagune beautiful.

Tony’s awestruck expression was slowly turning back into its original scrawl. “I might just agree with Kaneki on something. How can any of you find this… thing beautiful in any sense?”

That made everyone snap out of their trance. Thor was the first to speak up again, ignoring Tony’s previous remark. “It’s been awhile since I have last seen your species otherworlder. You are far from home indeed.”

“The ghouls of this universe have been extinct for thousands of years. I remember seeing the last survivors in Asgard when I was a child. They never did make it to this Earth though as our versions could live off of the vessels of gods,” commented Loki.

Another awkward silence enveloped them. The Avengers’ gazes bore into him. Kaneki wanted to shrink, or disappear, or be anywhere other than there. Kaneki was never one for being the center of attention, but this was different, worse even. There was pity in their gazes, judgement in some, and he hated it. He didn’t need their sympathy right now, and he definitely didn’t need their eyes peering into him. He especially didn’t need to be pitied for the extinction of a species that he wasn’t a part of. Those ghouls weren’t his people, only copies in a different universe. Maybe he should feel something, but he doesn’t.

That wasn’t the only thing though. Almost every single one of the Avengers smelt… off, or gave off an intimidating aura. It made every ghoul sense he had stay on edge. It made it impossible to relax. He just hoped that they didn’t notice the extent to which he felt uncomfortable, though he knew that that hope was useless.

Steve clapped his hands once, snapping everyone out of the silence and Kaneki out of his thoughts. “Why don’t we move on to testing?”

Kaneki let out a sigh of relief. He let his Kagune retreat into his back and put his eyepatch back on before following Natasha to the track. The rest of the Avengers followed in tow, obviously curious as to what was going to happen. Kaneki wished he wouldn’t have to be tested with this many eyes on him. He shouldn’t have expected any different though.

So much tension had left the Avengers it was quite astonishing. It seems that just the sight of his Kagune set them at ease. And it was weird, unexpected even. Maybe it was the irrationality of seeing ‘beauty,’ or maybe it was now that they thought they knew what they were dealing with, it wasn’t as bad. Maybe it had nothing to do with his Kagune at all, and it was merely the story that made him seem more human. In other words, he seemed more real and less like the monster they expected him to be.

‘Oh how wrong they are.’

Bruce then came over to him while holding something which made Kaneki take an involuntary step back, eyeing Bruce’s hand.

‘Calm down, Eyepatch.’

“I have to connect these sensors to you in order to check you heart rate and vitals as you run. It’s part of the evaluation. It would help if you removed your shirt.”

“If at all possible, I would rather not take off my shirt.” Kaneki sighed. He didn’t need this right now. There had already been one too many reveals for one day.

Of course, Tony had to jump in. “You got something to hide?”

Did he ever get tired?

‘No.’

Natasha rolled her eyes and Bruce spoke again. “They won’t stay on properly with the shirt over them, so I have to insist.”

Kaneki hesitated, again, but this time he let slight worry enter his, until now, cold expression. He was hoping to avoid the inevitable question of how he got those scars until later, especially since he had already told them so much already. It wasn’t only that he didn’t want them to know, which he didn’t, as it was that he didn’t want to think about it. He… he can’t let himself think about him right now, not after Kaneki spent over a year trying so desperately to get over it. Then again, it took more than that for the trauma of torture to fade. He just hoped it didn’t trigger a panic attack, or worse.

‘Just get it over with.’

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” mumbled Kaneki as he pulled his shirt over his head.

Gasps escaped the Avenger’s mouths. You would have to be delusional to think Kaneki’s torso was a pretty sight. Most of the Avenger’s skin tones turned to a sickly shade of green at the sight. Tony, Peter, and Clint actually threw up into a trash can. Surprisingly enough, Bruce was the only one who didn’t look “green”. He just stood there, shocked.

‘Do you see their faces? That’s hilarious!’

‘There are the “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” for you.’

‘Looks like you will fit right in Eyepatch.’

“Happy?” said Kaneki sarcastically before putting his shirt back on. “I’m going back to my room. We can do these ‘tests’ tomorrow,” he mumbled. He couldn’t do this right now.

Kaneki walked over to the elevator only to be, of course, stopped by Tony, who still looked sick. Kaneki started to let his self-consciousness and irritation turn to anger.

“What do you want, Stark?” Kaneki growled.

“Don’t think that just because Fury trusts you--”

Kaneki curled his hands into fists. He spoke as evenly and as calmly as he could manage, practically hissing to keep himself from shouting. “Fury? Fury doesn’t trust me! What the hell would make you think that? He trusts me about as far as he can throw me, but he understands the things that I will and won’t do. He knows how I would react in certain situations, He knows what I will and won’t do. He has been studying people for longer than you probably comprehend. He put me in an impossible situation and he knows it, he’s proud of it even. And he knows that even if he is wrong about me, he just stuck me in a building with the world’s most powerful beings to keep me in check. He has put me in a position where I am watched twenty-four-seven because of your cameras. You think I was put here because he trusts me? Fury doesn’t trust me, he doesn’t need to.”

Whatever anger had escaped into his tone disappeared at that moment. “Now, I am going to go to my room. I have had two hours of sleep and am getting over a shit hangover; not to mention I have been interrogated twice, once by an asshole and once by a person who scares the shit out of me, threatened numerous times, taunted, and put on display for a bunch of people I just met. All of this happened in a matter of twelve hours. I don’t expect you to trust me, I’m pretty sure that I have said that before, but for the love of God, you don’t need to know everything about me or my life. I’m not some trained dog that will answer you at your beck and call nor will I roll over and expose myself. I will be cooperative, I have been cooperative, even if I don’t like it, but right now I’m done. Now move.”

Tony reluctantly moved out of the way.

Kaneki turned to the other Avengers, who were standing in shock, with an obviously fake smile on his face. “We can pick this up tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

As much as he wanted to, Kaneki didn’t sleep for very long after he got to his room; maybe three hours. Instead, he resorted to learning all he could; whether it be about the technological advancements of this time, the Avengers, or SHIELD. Luckily, Kaneki was a fast learner. He had always been able to store vast amounts of information in his head without much difficulty, not to mention the fact that Kaneki’s IQ was around 170. He had always been told as a child that he could do whatever he wanted when he grew up, but you could imagine his teachers disappointment when he said he wanted to be a writer instead of some sort of scientist or mathematician.

Well I can’t be any of that now, thought Kaneki.

He looked at the digital clock on the wall. It was four in the morning. Sighing, Kaneki left his room, still in the sweatpants and long-sleeved shirt from yesterday. He put his eyepatch on as well, though only out of habit.

The entire tower was dark as he walked through the halls. It didn’t bother him though, it actually relieved him that no one was up yet, that meant no awkward interactions or questions he didn’t want to answer. He was sure that at least a few of them did not appreciate how he stormed off the day before. In all honesty though, he wasn’t exactly happy with himself either. He shouldn’t have said what he did. You would have thought that after so many years of schooling his emotions, and so many more being judged, he would be able to take the ridicule the Avengers offered him. It wasn’t even that bad either, except for Tony.

Maybe it was because he couldn’t stand the pity that was in their gazes. No one had ever offered that to him before and he never wanted it. He had enough pity for himself to go around. He doesn’t want sympathy, he wants apathy, strength. If you ask a doctor, they would say it was unhealthy to bottle up emotions, but he needed his fractured mask. He needed to be around people that didn’t care to try to break it.

Kaneki made his way to the kitchen and started making coffee, not bothering to turn on the light. He may have not been able to sleep, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t still groggy.

Suddenly, the light in the kitchen turned on, causing Kaneki to jump and whoever turned said lights on to trip and fall to the floor with a “thud.”

“Kuso,” breathed Kaneki. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Steve groaned and got off the floor. “What are you doing up this early?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” responded Kaneki, not really in the mood for a conversation. He got down a mug and filled it with the freshly brewed coffee.

Steve seemed uncomfortable with Kaneki’s presence, but tried to hide it nonetheless. “I was in the army for a while, I guess I just got used to the schedule of waking up this early. You know what they say about old habits dying hard.”

Kaneki smirked to himself. “I believe I’ve heard that before. You want some coffee?”

Steve seemed to hesitate.

“I didn’t do anything to it if that is what you are thinking. It’s just regular coffee.”

“I guess I could have some then,” said Steve. He cautiously walked further into the kitchen and grabbed a mug.

Kaneki could tell he was on edge, so he moved out of the kitchen and sat on a stool by the bar in the living room. Kaneki let himself zone out while staring out the floor to ceiling window. It was still hours before sun rise, yet the city was still bright and busy. It was the city that never sleeps after all.

Much to Kaneki’s surprise, Steve came into the same room minutes later with a granola bar and his coffee. It wasn’t hard to tell that he was still uncomfortable, but he sat down on the stool next to Kaneki.

“You don’t have to force yourself to be around me, you know,” said Kaneki, still looking out the window.

“What makes you think I’m forcing myself to do anything?”

“Your posture is stiff, your movements aren’t fluid but rigid and sharp.” Kaneki turned around on his stool to face him. “You won’t meet my eyes and you keep looking at my hands as if waiting for me to draw a weapon. Every sharp move I make makes you stiffen or shift in your seat. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you aren’t even close to at ease. And then, of course, your heartbeat is fast, plus you smell nervous.”

Steve’s expression held a mixture of shock and fear.

“That said I do appreciate your company.”

More shock.

“Even if you are afraid, no, not afraid, nervous is more accurate, you are still making an effort to be friendly to me.” Kaneki looked down at his almost empty coffee mug. “Not many people would do that in your position, not that I blame them in the slightest. I am a literal monster, the kind they make movies about in your world and the kind that are hunted down in mine.”

Steve just stared at him, now more confused than shocked or scared. In fact, Steve seemed to forget to be nervous entirely. He just looked at the tired person in front of him.

“What the heck happened to you?” was all the Captain could think to say.

Kaneki looked back up and smiled slightly. “That’s a long story filled with things I would rather not think about. Maybe another day, when the memories aren’t nearly as fresh.”

And with that, Kaneki got up and walked out of the room; leaving Steve alone with his mixture of curiosity and confusion.

Kaneki went back to his room and took a quick shower. He was thankful to have some of his own clothes. He didn’t know why, but the sense of familiarity comforted him, even if only a little.

When Kaneki had finished with his shower, he turned to open the door that lead to his room only to pause. Someone had been in his room. He could smell it.

Kaneki slowly opened the door as if he was waiting for someone to jump out at him, even though he knew that whoever had come was gone now. Doing a quick scan of the room confirmed it.

Now that Kaneki had fully entered his room, he could smell something else as well. Blood. Flesh. Looking around again, he saw a note lying on his bed with the SHIELD logo on it.

Check your fridge.
~Fury

That’s comforting, thought Kaneki sarcastically, but he went over to his mini fridge nonetheless. The smell was getting stronger.

Kaneki opened the door to find it full of meat-- human meat. Kaneki covered his mouth and nose and stumbled back a few steps involuntarily. It only helped a little to contain his lust for flesh, but enough for him to keep in his right mind. Well, the closest thing he had to “right mind” at the moment.

Then he saw another note in the door of the fridge. While keeping his hand on his face, Kaneki grabbed the note.

I figured you would need something to eat while you stayed here. Since I don’t currently know how often you eat, just know that it will be filled whenever it runs out. No it isn’t poisoned (though you could probably smell that), and yes, the… meat was from a suicide victim, not someone we killed. Enjoy.
~Nick Fury

Fury sure has a sick sense of humor, thought Kaneki as he closed the fridge and took a deep breath through his mouth. He threw the notes in the trash can by the desk before collapsing onto his bed.

While he had resigned to the fact that he had to eat humans, the bloodlust that flashed through him was revolting. And he had just eaten yesterday-- he shouldn’t have felt a pull that strong-- but ever since he had turned to cannibalism, his body craved more; more flesh. It was starting to get better though. Over the past few months, the past few relaxing months, he had started to heal. The damaging things he had done to his body to become “stronger” did have side-effects, yet his advanced healing capabilities were causing even those to fade. It had been nice.

Kaneki guessed the little time he had had to heal was over now. It was time to put his body and mind under the strain of fighting and surviving all over again. While he did still think he was crazy for agreeing to work with the Avengers, regretting the choice even, there was some small part of him that wanted this opportunity to make up for all of the bad things he had done. If the price to pay for that was strain, he would pay it a hundred times over. Let Tony hate him, let Steve be afraid of him. Kaneki knows that he deserves it.

He knows that he can never fully wipe all the blood off of his hands, but he can try. He can try to save the people of this earth. Maybe he will even be considered a hero.

But that doesn’t exactly help all the people he had hurt on his world does it.

Sighing, Kaneki continued to stare blankly at the ceiling before getting up. He didn’t know if he could handle the direction that his thoughts were going in. It did him no good right now to sit and think about it.

Instead, he grabbed the tablet that he had finally figured out how to use and selected one of numerous books to start reading. Even though everything else had changed, Kaneki’s love for reading remained unaltered. It still gave him the escape from reality he had always craved. He could pretend to be anyone else other than himself. He could be extraordinary or just a normal person, he could be a human or some other amazing creature, he could be anyone from the apprentice to the master. He could even be a hero if he wanted to. He wasn’t the cowardly, broken, and insane… monster he really was, even if only for an hour. Kaneki wouldn’t give up reading for the world.

Sadly his reading time was cut short as he heard a knock on his door.

After repressing a groan, he put the tablet down and went over to said door.

“Jarvis, who is it?”

“It’s Wanda Maximoff, sir.”

Kaneki sighed and put his emotionless face back on, even if his act had been broken several times already. Then he opened the door.

“Good morning, Miss Maximoff,” he said politely.

She seemed surprised to see that he was already up, but quickly recovered. “I’m sorry that it is early, but I wanted to apologize for yesterday. While the other Avengers might not admit it, we were out of line in more ways than one. And as for Tony… he isn’t usually this way. He never was the nicest person, but he was never this cruel to anyone in the time I have known him.”

Kaneki’s gaze softened a little despite himself. “You don’t need to apologize, especially not for Stark. I shouldn’t have blown my head, you and the rest of the Avengers were acting as anyone would have in that situation. If you ask me, you didn’t do anything wrong. As for Stark, I can tell that he isn’t like this with everyone. I don’t know why he has such a strong reaction to me, but all I can do is hope that it will pass. I am glad that you came to apologize though, even if it was unnecessary.”

Kaneki sighed lightly.

“But that isn’t the only reason you came by is it?”

Wanda looked down at her feet.

“Do you want to come in?”

She gave a short nod and walked in after Kaneki, closing the door behind them. Kaneki walked over and sat on his bed, looking expectantly at her.

“Do you know the abilities of the Avengers?” she asked shyly.

Kaneki furrowed his brow in confusion. “I know some things, like how Thor controls lighting with his hammer, and how hulk changes when he is angry, though I don’t know much about you or Vision. I know what the newspapers have said, but nothing more.”

“I don’t know a lot about Vision, but my powers are… complicated. I have several… mind abilities I guess you could say,” she said slowly.

Kaneki felt his pulse increase slightly. It didn’t take a genius to tell where this was going.

“I can move things with my mind, of course, but I also have the ability to feel others’ emotions, even see their memories if I get close enough or touch them. I can’t exactly read their minds, but I can feel ambitions or, how do you say, intentions of a person.” She stopped for a moment.

Kaneki clasped his hands in front of him and looked at the floor.

“I don’t know what you saw when you ‘read me’ for lack of a better word, but it is nothing for you to worry about. I have no ill intentions--”

“Towards us, I know. I don’t completely know your motives, but I know that much. I came to ask---”

“If you are going to ask if I’m okay, I’m fine. If you were going to ask whether or not I need help, I don’t. If you are going to ask if I need to talk, I honestly don’t think I can even if I wanted to. And if you were going to ask whether or not you can see the rest of my memories, they are private,” Kaneki said quietly.

“Keeping things bottled up never did anyone any good.”

Kaneki stood up and went to draw back the curtains in his room. “It never really does, but I’m not going to talk about it right now.” Kaneki laughed dryly. “No offence, but I just met you yesterday. I don’t think I can just tell you everything. Not even my best friend back on my Earth knew everything.”

“And as I think the expression goes, ‘for the record,’ I wasn’t going to ask that. I was going to ask whether or not you need a friend. I don’t fear you Kaneki, at least not the same way the others do.”
Kaneki finally turned back around to face her, studying her expression as if trying to find a flaw in a mask. Finally he smiled brightly, like the kid he never really got to be.

“I’d like that.”

Chapter Text

“Let’s try this again. Hopefully a full night of sleep gave you all the chance to remove the sticks up your asses, at least enough to cooperate.” Natasha clapped her hands together with fake enthusiasm once all of the Avengers gathered back on the training floor.

“Language,” mumbled Steve.

Tony scowled slightly at her remark, but didn’t say anything back. Kaneki just took off his shirt and allowed Bruce to attach the sensors to his chest, stomach, and back.

“What exactly do you want me to do?” asked Kaneki as he rolled his shoulders.

“For now, run. Go as fast as you can for as long as you can around the track,” said Bruce, bluntly.

Kaneki groaned and stretched his arms over his head. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. Line up on the start line, any of the lanes.”

The race track was like one that you would see for the olympics, though not quite as big if only because they were indoors. Kaneki walked over to the middle row and got down into a running stance.

“Go.”

Kaneki bolted down the track at full speed. It has been forever since he had run like this. Actually, it is possible that he had never just run a track, unless he was at school. To the best of his memory, the only time he had run at full speed was when Touka was chasing him to train him, or during a fight. He was honestly more motivated by the former. Can you imagine how horrifying it is to have the ukaku Touka chasing you down? Kaneki still has nightmares about it.

Kaneki started to smell burning rubber, only to notice that the shoes he was wearing weren’t exactly… holding up to his running. Once he got back on the straight away, he jumped up in the air, quickly peeling off his shoes, throwing them off the track, then landed back on the track only to continue running without missing a beat.

“Show off,” mumbled Tony. Kaneki couldn’t help but smile at that.

Who knows how long he was running for before he started to actually tire. Finally, once he was breathing too heavily to continue, he stopped and sat down on the track.

“I… really… need… to start… running again…” Kaneki panted.

“Well, I don’t know ghoul biology, but I think that someone who can run at a constant speed of sixty miles an hour for two hours isn’t exactly a slacker.”

Kaneki’s deep breaths started to shallow out. “My old trainer would be kicking my ass right about now.” Kaneki laid flat on his back. “She was terrifying.”

Honestly, Natasha reminds me a little of her.

Finally catching his breath, Kaneki got off the floor and stretched again. Bruce tossed him a water bottle which he downed.

“What’s next?”

“Strength.” Bruce pointed to the weight rack.

“You can bench 1700, deadlift 2000, squats with 1600, do over a hundred pull ups with 1800 strapped to your legs, and nearly two hundred sit ups with 1850 strapped to your torso, but you say that isn’t your best?” Bruce just raised an eyebrow. “You rank somewhere between Thor and the Hulk in strength, how is that not your best?”

Kaneki was actually struggling to catch his breath, he hadn’t worked out like this for months.

‘Weakling.’

He wiped the sweat off of his face with his hands. “For ghouls, we uh…” looked down at the floor with an expression of reluctance. “I guess you could say, to some extent, we get stronger the more we, um, eat. We have more energy, we’re stronger, we regenerate faster, etcetera. But… I haven’t been eating much since I got here. I’ve only gotten enough to keep my hunger at bay, so I’m not at one hundred percent…” Kaneki trailed off and looked anywhere to avoid the Avenger’s eyes. He was well aware that they understand that he eats humans, if he hadn’t made it obvious then Tony had, but he didn’t think they really knew. After all, wouldn’t they act like Tony if they really realized it?

A long awkward silence enveloped the room. If Kaneki hadn’t been so embarrassed, he might have been amazed at how Tony hadn’t made a comment yet. Though said man did scowl when Natasha gave him a warning glare.

Suddenly, Clint clapped his hands together, causing the entire room to jump.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but it’s noon and I’m hungry, so… how about we take a lunch break?”

Without waiting for a response, Clint made his way over to the elevator. It seemed he was always the first to leave an awkward situation.

“I think that I shall go too, I must also check on Loki,” said Thor.

“Alright, let’s just all take a break then,” sighed Bruce pinching the bridge of his nose. “I should probably grab a coffee myself.”

“You know you can’t live on coffee and energy drinks for forever,” shouted Natasha over her shoulder as she left the room.

“Maybe not forever, but as a doctor I know I can live on it for a good four months.”

Tony came over and patted him on the back. “It took you a PHD for you to figure that out? By mid high school my record was six, with two hours of sleep a week.”

“I hope you realize that the fact you are still breathing is a medical anomaly in itself.”

The two left the room as well, soon followed by the rest of the group.

Kaneki made his way to his room, collapsing on the floor. He would have gone to his bed, but as he was sweaty and there was no point in taking a shower. He didn’t want to get his bed dirty.

Not having much else to do, Kaneki looked up towards the ceiling. Then his stomach rumbled.

“I shouldn’t be hungry, I ate yesterday,” he said to himself.

‘But you are, so eat. What’s the big deal?’

‘Yeah, I mean, it’s not like you can call that measly arm a meal any way.’

‘Kaaaaaaannnnnneeeeekkkkkkiiii, I want to eeeeaaaaatttt.’

‘I bet Clint would taste good, though he maybe a bit stringy--’

‘I vote we go for the young girl--’

‘Fresh flesh is so good compared to that shit in the fridge--’

‘It’s probably poisoned anyway--’

‘I wouldn’t put it past them--’

‘If you don’t want the girl, I bet Pretty Boy would taste good--’

‘We’ve never had God before--’

‘Come on Kaneki.’

‘I’m sooooooo hungryyyyyyy--’

“Shut up!” Kaneki yelled, throwing his hands over his ears. Over the past three months, the voices had gone away, he thought he had been getting better. Then they had to come back, as soon as he got brought in by S.H.I.E.L.D.

It’s not fair.

Nonetheless, Kaneki got up and walked over to the fridge. He felt a sharp pain in his abdomen as his stomach growled again. He just shook his head and opened the door.
His vision went blurry with hunger.

Blindly, he grabbed a package of flesh and ripped it open.

Why am I so hungry?

He picked up the slab of meat with his hands and bit deeply into it. Blood flowed down his hands and chin, but he didn’t really care. It tasted so good.

His teeth tore into the meat again, making horrible ripping noises. He was no longer eating slowly, but instead he ate at his food like an animal. He let his hunger get the better of him as he finished off the last bite.

That didn’t mean that he ate the tracker that had been discreetly placed in the flesh.

“Really Fury?” he mumbled as he crushed it between his fingers and threw it in the trash can.

He ran his tongue along his arm, licking up the dripping blood. Then he went into the bathroom to wash off what remained. Luckily, he didn’t get anything on his clothes.

Kaneki watched the remaining blood run down the sink’s drain before looking at himself in the mirror. The morning’s bags were gone from under his eyes and there was some color in his lips and cheeks, but he still looked exhausted. That said, he looked much better than earlier.

I should probably get some coffee.

After drying off his hands, Kaneki reluctantly left his room. After all, who knows what kind of conversation he was going to interrupt today.

Kaneki walked through the living room on his way to the kitchen. No one stopped talking to look up at him, which he was thankful for. Ignoring the conversation entirely, he moved on.

There was no one in the kitchen when he got there. Kaneki let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding and poured himself a glass of lukewarm coffee. He could hear the Avengers laughing and having a good time even from this room. Part of him was jealous, bitter even. He missed that. God, the things he would give up to have that again. He missed his time at Anteiku. They were his first real family other than Hide.

But it was his fault they were dead. He really didn’t deserve another family or a happy life did he? It should be proof enough of that since as soon as he was finally content with his life, for the first time in years, he was torn away from it and put back into a life of fighting and blood. He could have had a life in that town, he really could have, but that was all taken away from him at a flip of a switch. There was a part of him that wondered what would have happened if only Natasha hadn’t looked in the fridge.

Bitter and envious, yes, but there was another part of Kaneki that was resigned to this fact, the fact that he won’t ever really get a family. If you knew the things he had done, the things he has been through, you might just think the same thing.

Then there was the last part of Kaneki that wanted him to go join them, to make this the family he didn’t deserve. But that part was quickly silenced by the others.

Kaneki finished his coffee, which by this point had become cold, and washed out his mug. In spite of better judgement, he walked back into the living room and sat down at the bar, away from the rest of the group. It looked like they were all trying to pick up Thor’s hammer.

“Only those worthy can pick up Mjolnir Tony, I don’t care how much you improved the thrusters on those gloves you use,” said Thor, looking mildly amused.

“Vision can pick it up! He’s a robot, surely a robot I build can pick it up too.”

“Vision is basically an infinity stone, which are energy in its purest form, and therefore have no corruption or ulterior motives. So they are quote ‘worthy’ in this sense. It has nothing to do with him being a robot,” said Loki under his breath. Kaneki still didn’t know why he was here, considering what happened in New York, but there must be some reason.

Then Clint spoke up. “If you put Mjolnir in an elevator--”

“We went over this already.” Natasha rolled her eyes.

“If I recall correctly, didn’t Cap’ make it move last time?” said Peter.

Thor looked to the side. “I don’t recall that ever happening.”

“Bullshit,” was all Loki said.

“Language.”

Wanda and Peter both rolled their eyes in sync.

“Would an escalator--”

“The fuck Clint?”

“Language!”

“Hey Tony, you lift it yet.”

“I swear to God Peter.”

“You guys are so fucking loud,” mumbled Bruce as he rubbed his temples.

“Lang--”

“Can you put it on a plane?”

“Clint!”

You could actually see the spinning wheel as Vision tried to compute what was going on.

“Is the Earth worthy because it can move the hammer? I mean we are technically moving through space all the time.”

“Not you too Wanda.”

“Hey Tony--”

“I will actually kill you if you say anything.”

“Oh come on--”

“I realize it didn’t work, you don’t have to rub it in Peter.”

Tony sat down in defeat as everyone else burst into a fit of laughter. Even Kaneki smiled in spite of himself. They really were like a big family. This time Kaneki didn’t feel the pang of jealousy or self loathing, just amusement and second hand happiness.

“Peter, Wanda, you guys haven’t tried to pick up Thor’s hammer yet have you?” asked Natasha.

They both shook their heads. “I already know it won’t move for me,” said Wanda.

Clint nudged her with his shoulder. “In case you don’t already know, no one else can make it move. Think of it as an initiation.”

She nodded, but Peter was the first to go up and try it. He wrapped both hands around the handles and pulled with all of his might. It didn’t budge an inch, not even when he put his foot on the table it was on to get better leverage. After a few seconds of groaning, he let out a sigh and sat back down.

Wanda went up next, but got a similar result. Mjolnir didn’t move. Not that anyone was really expecting it too.

As Wanda made her way back to her seat, she made eye contact with Kaneki and smirked slightly. It was just fast enough that if he blinked he would have missed it.

Shit.

“Why don’t you try it?”

Everyone jumped as they came to the realization that he had been here for the whole time. Tony’s face contorted from a smile into a scowl. All the joy that was in the room dissipated almost immediately and was replaced by a feeling of awkwardness.

“I don’t think that that would be a good idea.” Kaneki got up to leave. No one made any move to stop him, except for Wanda.

“I mean, if it is a part of initiation, shouldn’t you try as well?”

Tony scoffed. “I don’t know what gave you the impression that it is part of the team. It may be grouped with us in S.H.I.E.L.D’s files, but that doesn’t mean jack. You and Peter have both earned your spots on this team, it hasn’t.”

Wanda gave Tony one hell of a glare, but he just turned from her gaze.

“Are we going to continue my testing or not? Because to be honest, I want to get this iyarashī over with.” Kaneki started heading down to the training room.

Chapter Text

“I know that you said you can’t use weapons, but we still need some sort of baseline for at least your shooting ability,” said Captain America, handing Kaneki a gun.

They were in the shooting range on the floor below the training room he had been in before. It looked exactly like the ones in the movies, with “stalls” that each had a counter. There were a series of targets lined up on the other side of the counter as well.

Kaneki took the gun from Steve like it was radioactive. He turned it over in his hands. He could tell it was a handgun, anyone who had seen a gun before could do that. He knew that you needed to take off the safety as well.

“Where is the safety?”

Natasha, Clint, and Steve all sighed in unison. Clint pointed out a small switch by the trigger. Kaneki laughed nervously, but pointed the gun down range and flipped the safety off. He tried his best to mimic the stance that the men shooting at him always had.

Here goes nothing.

He aimed to the best of his ability and lightly squeezed the trigger.

The shot rang out and Kaneki had to resist the urge to cover his ears, which were now ringing. There were disadvantages to advanced hearing. He had to blink a few times before he could see straight again.

The bullet hit the very edge of the target.

When no one said anything, Kaneki corrected his aim and shot again. This time it hit the other side same target. He corrected again and shot again, then again, then again, until the clip was empty. He was actually pleasantly surprised since he hit the inner rings after the first four shots. His accuracy was decent after those shots as well.

“Pretty good for your first time. You know how to reload?” asked Natasha.

Kaneki just shook his head and Natasha showed him how to briefly. Kaneki shot a few more rounds, some at moving targets, before Bruce called it. Kaneki felt strangely pleased with his performance, even though he preferred his method of fighting much more.

Next they moved on to knife throwing, which Kaneki found himself much better at. That testing was over quickly. They had played with the idea of testing some other weapons, like swords or staffs, but they were written off as irrelevant for practical use. If someone had a gun, what was a sword going to do to stop them.

Not that Kaneki didn’t want to learn. On his earth, those skills would be useful, life saving even. A normal sword may not stand up to a Quinque, but the knowledge of how someone is taught to fight with one would be invaluable. Then again he wasn’t on his Earth any more.

“We are going to take a short break from the fighting. I know it can seem boring, but there is an actual written test Fury wanted me to give you,” Bruce mentioned.

“I can’t say I’m too surprised. It would make sense to want to know intelligence as well as physical ability,” Kaneki said.

“I can’t imagine a foot soldier being too smart though.” Tony just had to comment under his breath.

‘If only they knew how high on the food chain we were.’

“What do I have to do?”

“Nothing special, shouldn’t take more than an hour or two. It is a computer program: there are two hundred questions, each one progressively harder than the last, with about fifty questions for each of the core subjects. You keep taking it until you get six wrong in each of those subjects, meaning you don’t necessarily take the whole test. It can take a while, but don’t feel bad if you don’t finish. There has only been one finisher so far,” said Bruce.

“Who was it?”

“Tony’s father. After all, he was the one who created the test.”

Kaneki suddenly didn’t want to take it. Nonetheless, he found himself staring at a tablet screen. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to succeed or not. Sure there was part of him that wanted to show his skill and usefulness, but there was another part of him that felt like he would be undermining some great work if he could solve it. Maybe it was a bit arrogant to think that he had a chance of beating it anyway.

Then there was the fact that it might worsen the already bad relationship with Tony.

Kaneki found himself typing away, eyes scanning over each question quickly as his brain processed the answer even quicker. His unnecessary worry was gone by then. In fact, there was a smile of amusement coupled with a furrowed brow do to concentration on his face. He was starting to enjoy the challenge. He loved that it was difficult, he loved that he had to think. It was almost as pleasurable as reading his favorite book.

So he flew through the test, though not carelessly, and before he knew it he was done. He had finished the test in all but one subject, history, but he figured that was unfair to test him on to begin with.
The Avengers were astonished, but what else would you expect. There was of course Wanda whose astonishment lent more towards happiness for Kaneki, and Tony whose lent more towards resentment.

“Good to know we have another genius on the team.” Kaneki earned a small, but noticeable smile from Bruce.

“Now for the fun part,” said Natasha evilly. “Hand to hand combat.”

They ended up going back to the training room where mats had been set out. They had a rather large area blocked off, almost a 30 yard by 30 yard square. Kaneki was actually excited about this test. It was finally something he was experienced with. That didn’t mean, however, that there wasn’t a part of him that was worried about losing control. In fact, that worry was very clear in his mind.

“Who will I fight?”

“Me, of course,” Natasha said, with a smile that would cause anyone to fear for their safety.

‘Oh, so we get the girl.’

‘You better be careful, this one looks tough.’

‘For a human.’

Kaneki gulped and walked over to the mat, Natasha right behind him.

“Rules are as follows: no killing, no maiming.” Bruce looked at Natasha while saying that. Kaneki gulped. “No weapons or Kagunes, and please no destroying the room. The fight ends when someone is unconscious, yields, or something horrible happens. No going outside the matted off area either, but everything else is legal. Questions?”

Both shook their heads.

“Then begin.”

Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, Natasha swung her leg around aiming to catch Kaneki in the side of the head. Kaneki dodged effortlessly, but he had no time to counter attack as Natasha sent a series of punches and kicks his way.

He stepped to the side to avoid a punch, then grabbed her arm. He pulled it towards his body and punched her back in between the shoulder blades. Natasha stumbled slightly but then used her momentum to twist her body upward and wrap her legs around Kaneki’s throat.

‘If you had hit just a little harder, you could have incapacitated her in one shot.’

‘Though you might have broken her spine.’

Twisting further, she used her weight to drag him to the ground. Kaneki shifted under her, moving just enough to make her land under him as they fell. The impact made her lose her grip, allowing Kaneki to twist and throw a punch to her stomach.

Natasha rolled out of the way just in time, quickly getting to her feet. Kaneki was still getting up when she sent another kick at his head. He had to roll last second to avoid it. Again and again she kicked at him, not giving Kaneki a chance to get up, only block and dodge. Finally, Kaneki caught her foot and used that leverage to pull her to the ground again. Using her momentum to his advantage, Kaneki flipped himself up and landed on top of her, pinning her underneath him.

He sent several pulled punches her way, each one she blocked with her arms. Somehow, she managed to wrap her legs around Kaneki’s neck again. She threw him to the side, allowing her to get up once again.

‘Stop pulling your punches so much.’

‘You are fighting like a human.’

‘You could have broken her already.’

Not taking any chances this time, Kaneki stood up as fast as he could in order to prepare himself for another attack.

Natasha looked slightly dazed and Kaneki could tell that her arms were hurting her from where she had blocked. Nonetheless, she ran at him again, attacking just as viciously. Kaneki ducked and weaved through all of her attacks, blocking only when necessary. If he was being honest, he could just wait her out.

He could tell that she was tiring.

Kaneki blocked another one of her punches, pushing her arm to the side before counter attacking. She could barely block it. It wasn’t hard to tell that Natasha didn’t usually fight like this. If Kaneki had to guess, she was used to fighting with weapons or something at her disposal. Not only that, but she had probably only fought against foot soldiers recently, the kind that threw their weight around and relied on power too much. This simply wasn’t her element and Kaneki was the opposite of those soldiers.

Kaneki wasn’t in his element either though. He had to pull his punches so they didn’t cause any major damage when they actually connected. There is no need to rupture any internal organs in this spar. Not only that, but over the past few years, he had become accustomed to fighting for your life, not for sparing or practice. Especially in Aogiri. He was a bit frustrated that he couldn’t fight like he wanted to.

‘Then just kill her.’

While he was distracted by the voice, Natasha pulled a move similar to what Kaneki did earlier. She stepped to the side, grabbed his arm, and twisted it behind his back. Ruffly, she pushed him to his knees.

“Yield.”

‘Stop fighting like a human.’

‘What are you scared of.’

‘They already hate you, you can’t make it any worse.’

‘Well, much worse.’

“Not yet.”

Kaneki pushed off the ground from his kneeling position and did a backflip onto Natasha’s back, pinning her. She groaned in pain, but it was nothing compared to the sickening popping sound that came from Kaneki’s shoulder. Three or four years ago, the pain would have caused him to blackout, but now it didn’t seem like anything more than a scratch. He could see the rest of the Avengers flinch at the sound, only to flinch again when his shoulder popped itself back into place.

Unlike the last few times, Kaneki had Natasha pinned completely. Her arms and legs were pinned by his giving her no room to move. That coupled with Kaneki’s superior strength, and she was done for. And Kaneki wasn’t even sweating.

“Yield?”

Natasha sighed, “I guess I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

Kaneki got off of her, putting out his hand to help her up. She smiled slightly and took it.

Kaneki rolled his newly healed shoulder, flinching slightly when it stiff joints popped. Luckily not to the extent that it had before.

The rest of the Avengers began to head in their direction. Tony’s, Clint’s, and Peter’s faces were all slightly green.

“Didn’t that hurt?” Peter asked.

Kaneki blinked. He almost forgot that it wasn’t normal, too distracted to think whether he should have done it at the time.

Peter just looked at him like he had four heads.

Clint jumped in. “Your arm was bent three-hundred degrees further than should be possible.”

Kaneki avoided looking at them in the eyes as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve had worse. I guess the pain barely registered.”

‘Lies.’

‘Lying is bad Eyepatch.’

Clint just shook his head and dropped it.

“Alright, if everyone is good, I think we should move on,” said Bruce, clapping his hands together. A mix of sarcasm and fake enthusiasm filled his voice. “And Natasha, you should come too, I want to check your arms and back where you were hit.”

“I’m fine Bruce.” Natasha rolled her eyes.

Bruce just sighed. “Either way, Kaneki, follow me. Fury wanted me to do a full medical exam on you.”

Wonderful. Just fucking wonderful.

“At least let me take a shower first.”

Grudgingly, Bruce allowed him to go back to his room to get cleaned up. In the meantime, the Avengers found themselves waiting in the medbay. The silence was awkward to say the least. All of them were too caught up in their own thoughts yet conscious enough of the real world to realize the thickness of the tension in the air.

All were surprised that he had beaten Natasha, and all of them realized that they shouldn’t be. They had tested his basic strength and abilities before the fight. Anyone could have told you that, without a weapon of some sort, Natasha wouldn’t beat him. She couldn’t have even broken the skin do to the sheer toughness of his body if she did have a weapon. Granted, that didn’t decide a fight with the Black Widow, but couple that with years of fighting experience and it wouldn’t have been hard to place your bets on the right person. Then again, the Avengers didn’t know about his experience. Still, Natasha had been at a serious disadvantage. If it had come down to a real fight, however, the fight would have been close.

At least that is what they were convinced of.

Well, everyone except for Clint and Steve. They could tell how much Kaneki was pulling his punches, how much he had been restraining himself, while Natasha was having a hard time keeping up at all. Give her a weapon that could cut him, and Kaneki still would have won. She didn’t take more than two hits in the entire fight, and they are sloppily places blows.

The first hit Kaneki made would have killed her if he had a knife in his hands or if he had put actual power behind the punch.

That scared both of the two boys. There was little doubt that Kaneki could take just about anyone on the team in a one on one, maybe even two on one.

Both Clint and Steve, however, and for whatever reason, didn’t seem to fear Kaneki himself. Interpret that however you want to.

“Bruce, I told you, I am fine.”

Bruce gave up and rolled his eyes. “Fine, don’t listen. It’s not like I’m the team doctor or anything.”

Natasha rolled her eyes in a similar fashion. “What is taking Kaneki so long anyway?”

Just as she said it, Kaneki walked in. His white hair was still dripping slightly. “Sorry, I zoned out a bit in the shower.”

Bruce just waved him off and grabbed a clipboard. “First comes the boring stuff. You might want to sit, because this takes a while.”

Kaneki sat down on one of the many beds present in the room. Bruce helped himself to one of those stereotypical doctors’ chairs. Kaneki was eyeing the rest of the Avengers uncomfortably.

“Am I going to get privacy, or are you guys going to awkwardly stare a hole in my head the entire time?”

It didn’t go unnoticed by anyone that Kaneki was grabbing the edge of the bed with whitened knuckles. It didn’t take a genius to tell that he was uncomfortable. In fact, he looked nervous, like he was about to throw up. They doubted that “zoning out” was the reason it took so long for him to get there.

“I don’t think it is a good idea to leave you alone with any one member of the Avengers. You might eat them.” Tony spat.

“For once, Tony, can you just shut up.” Natasha sighed, pinching her nose.

Kaneki took a deep breath, desperately trying to calm his nerves. “You don’t have to leave me alone with Mr. Banner, if it really bothers you that much, but I think having eight people breathing down my neck is a bit of an overkill in anyone’s book.”

Tony scowled, but Kaneki paid him no mind. He was too busy trying to block out unwanted memories and voices and brase himself for the questions to come.

‘Remember the last time we were in a doctor’s office?’

‘The food was vile, to say the least.’

Tony opened his mouth to speak again, but this time, Wanda cut him off. “How about me and Steve stay then? The rest of you can wait down in the common area. If anything goes wrong, I can just, what did you call it, ‘brain blast’ either one of them and go get help.”

Before Tony could make another remark, Natasha started dragging him out of the room. Thor, Clint, and Peter soon followed. Kaneki sent Wanda a grateful look and took another deep breath.
“Now that that is over with, lets get on with it all,” said Bruce.

Wanda and Steve walked over to sit on one of the beds across from Kaneki, both looking uncomfortable with the whole situation. Still, Kaneki appreciated that it was them here and not some of the others. While he was horribly uncomfortable around all of the Avengers, he was least uncomfortable with them.

Plus, he did consider Wanda his friend.

Kaneki took one more deep breath, letting a small part of tension leave his body, before speaking. “So what’s the first question?”

“Simple stuff first. Age?”

“23.”

“Blood type?”

“AB.”

“Race?”

“Half japanese, half ghoul.”

“Allergies?”

“Not that I know of, unless you count the inability to eat human food as one.”

“Family illnesses?”

“Nope.”

“Last time you had a full physical?”

Kaneki paused to think. “Last time by an official, human, doctor was when I was eighteen, but I’ve seen some ‘ghoul’ doctors since then.”

“Ever broken a bone?”

“Yes.”

“Which ones?”

Kaneki winced, and took a deep breath. “Most of them.”

Bruce didn’t comment. The other two present shifted in their seats.

“Do you smoke?”

“One of me does.”

“Drink?”

“Heavily for a time, but not much any more.”

“Do you take any medication?”

“No, and before you ask, I never did drugs.” Kaneki’s death grip on the bed was loosening slowly.

“Surgeries?”

“Several.”

“Any STDs?”

Kaneki raised an eyebrow. “Not that I know of. I don’t think ghouls can even get those kinds of things.”

Bruce finished writing down some more notes.

“You mentioned mental illnesses?”

His grip tightened again. “I- I’ve never been officially diagnosed, but it isn’t hard to tell that I have PTSD coupled with the occasional anxiety attack. I’m also well aware of having something that resembles DID. On the few occasions that I do switch, I know what is going on, I’m just not the person in control, which I know is unusual. Lastly, the one I’m least sure of, is Schizophrenia. I mean, I hear voices but I’ve never really had hallucinations...”

‘Lies.’

“In fact, some of the voices I hear are my other personalities. I am pretty sure I know what is and isn’t real, not that that is reassuring coming from a crazy person.” Kaneki stopped for a second, as if debating with himself. “I guess I also have Marie Antoinette syndrome, which is why my hair is white.”

“Do you know your triggers?” Bruce actually looked up at Kaneki when he asked.

‘Ha! Did he just ask that?’

Kaneki took a deep breath. “Hospitals, that’s a big one.” Kaneki closed his eyes, his arms were shaking. “Hunger, being chained up n-never goes well, j-just about anything that reminds me of J-J-J-”
Kaneki stopped himself. He took several more deep, shaky, breaths. Steve abruptly remembered the brand that was on Kaneki’s shoulder. He didn’t know if the rest of the Avengers noticed it, but, to Steve, it was what had stood out the most. Whatever this person had done to Kaneki, it damaged him and took his sanity.

“Sorry--” started Steve.

“I don’t want your sympathy nor your pity,” snapped Kaneki, his head turned down towards his lap. Steve felt the sting of his words, but didn’t say anything more. Wanda put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“Have you ever tried to commit suicide?”

Kaneki closed his eyes again. “Thought about it a lot. I got far enough to be holding the knife at my neck, to have my legs dangling over the edge; even a handful of pills. That said, I never actually went through with it. I can’t say I never self harmed, I just didn’t do it in the traditional way.”

Kaneki let out a humorless laugh.

“Yeah, I’m pretty fucked up.”

No one said anything for a few minutes. Steve, well, he had met his fair share of people like Kaneki. They might not have been this hurt, but being at war did this to people.

“I don’t know if this would be a relief or not, but I doubt you have Schizophrenia. It sounds more like the voices are a side effect of your DID and PTSD, that or a part of depression.”
Kaneki just nodded.

Bruce didn’t say anything for a while, just wrote. “Alright, that’s it for now. Question wise anyway.” He scratched the back of his head. “Since we have no records on you we have to start from scratch. Take your shoes off and step on the scale.”

Kaneki did as he was told.

“150,” mumbled Bruce, then he pointed with his head. “Stand over by the wall.”

Again Kaneki did what he was told, and went to stand by the marked measurement stick that was mounted to the wall. Bruce wrote down his height, mumbling again. “Six feet flat.”

Kaneki made his way back over to the bed. Bruce followed and proceeded to take his blood pressure and his temperature.

“If you would take your shirt off.”

Kaneki drew yet another deep breath before pulling the cotton fabric over his head. The silence was broken by three poorly masked, sharp intakes of breath. The scars looked a lot worse up close. Steve also noticed Kaneki had two tattoos that he hadn’t seen before. One was along his left rib cage while the other was along the crevice of a scar on his back obviously made by a whiplash. Neither were in english.
Kaneki caught Steve looking at them. He pointed at the one on his rib cage. “νέα ποσσυμ τεχυμ ωιωερε, νεχ σινε τε. It means ‘I can live neither with you, nor without you.’ A… friend had a tattoo that said the same thing.” He then pointed to the one in Kanji on his back. “Tanin o kizutsukeru yori mo kizutsukeru kata ga yoi, meaning ‘It is better to be hurt than to hurt others.’”

Bruce finished with the rest of the check up pretty quickly. All he really had to do was listen to his heart, do a hearing test, and a few other things.

“In order to save time on the rest of the tests, I’m going to do a full body scan. It should tell me what previous injuries you had, your genetic makeup, etcetera. First though, I would like to draw some blood,” Bruce said, looking at Kaneki expectantly.

Steve looked confused. Bruce looked like he was waiting for Kaneki to do something.

“And you can’t get a needle through my skin.”

Oh, yeah.

“While normally you can’t get past my skin because of my Rc cells.” Kaneki thought for a second. Steve almost didn’t notice how his entire body stiffened at the mention of drawing blood. “I’ve never tried it before, but, where do you need to stick the needle?”

“One of the veins on either arm.”

Kaneki nodded and handed him his right arm. “Do what you need to.”

Bruce looked at him, skeptical, but tied the elastic, rope-like thing around his arm and wiped the crevice opposite from his elbow with alcohol wipes. Meanwhile, Kaneki’s other hand was grabbing onto the bed. He had his eyes closed in concentration.

Bruce looked up one more time from what he was doing before sticking the needle into Kaneki’s arm. Kaneki flinched in spite of himself, but the needle went in. Everyone let out a breath they didn’t know they had been holding.

“Please hurry, this takes quite a bit of concentration,” said Kaneki, though he wasn’t fooling anyone. The bed frame were he was holding had become deformed from his grip. Kaneki was just scared.

Bruce finally removed the needle, having collected the sufficient amount of blood. Kaneki’s body lost its tension. Almost immediately, the wound healed.

“Once you feel like you can stand, we’ll go next door to do the scan,” said Bruce as he finished writing down more on his clipboard.

Kaneki shook his head slightly and binked a few times before standing up. He followed Bruce out of the room, Steve and Wanda following behind Kaneki.

The room they walked into was surprisingly white. The walls, the floor, the desk, even the machine was white. The scanning machine looked like a huge MRI machine, there was a table that you would lay on and it would slide into the tube like contraction.

“You aren’t claustrophobic are you?” asked Bruce.

“No. Honestly, I prefer small spaces.” Kaneki mumbled that last part.

“If you would disrobe. You can keep on your underwear, but baggy clothing can mess up the readings.”

Cap saw a light dusting of pink on Kaneki’s face before he turned away from the group. “You could at least buy a guy a drink before you ask them to strip,” he said sarcastically as he took off his pants.
Now both Wanda and Steve had their own blushes as their minds went down the gutter. Bruce seemed to be unfazed.

Steve let his eyes scan over Kaneki in spite of himself. There were even more scars on his legs, but that wasn’t what was catching Steve’s attention. Kaneki’s entire body was muscular, not overly so or in a bulky way. You could tell that his muscles were dense from years of use. Kaneki looked like he had been drawn by some sort of artist. Everything was perfectly proportioned, there were no flaws other than the scars he bore.

Kaneki cleared his throat, snapping Steve out of his… questionable thoughts. He had been staring. Pink spread further into his cheeks.

Wanda looked like she just realized something, but whatever the revelation was, she kept it to herself.

Bruce eyed the both of them. “Kaneki, go lay on the table. It will move itself into the machine, just try not to move until the scan is done.”

The group of three watched Kaneki stiffly walk over to the table and lay down. After a good twenty minutes of nothing by standing there, waiting, Kaneki finally emerged again. He quickly put on his pants before looking at Bruce expectantly.

“The results are sent directly to the med bay computer. They should be processed within the next fifteen minutes.”

Kaneki nodded and walked back over that direction.

Chapter Text

Kaneki walked back to the room trying to get himself to calm down. He was shaking uncontrollably, his breaths came out unevenly. He had kept it together for as long as he could. Nothing bad had happened, it was all okay, he knew that, but he felt no real relief now that it was done.The amount of effort needed for him to not burst into panicked tears drained his will.

Kaneki found that he had stopped walking and was using the wall for support. He looked down at his hands, but his vision kept going in and out of focus.

“You’re fine, calm down,” he whispered to himself in japanese. After another second he pushed off the wall and continued back to the infirmary.

Kaneki sat down on the bed he was at before, putting on his shirt. That action in itself helped him to calm down a lot. Kaneki hated having that much exposed skin and not just because of the scars. It wasn’t like his thin t-shirt offered any protection, but he felt exposed without it. He knew he shouldn’t care but, for now though, he was fine with its superficial reassurance.

It wasn’t long before the three others entered the room. Not long after that the too familiar awkward silence enveloped the room. Kaneki felt Steve’s eyes on the back of his head, but didn’t turn to meet them. Wanda kept glancing between the two of them with an unreadable expression. Kaneki wasn’t sure he wanted to know why. Bruce on the other hand was on the computer looking over what Kaneki assumed to be his results. The idea of that made his heart rate spike again.

Just calm down.

Kaneki heard a knock at the open door causing his head to snap up. Natasha stood there in her famous black suit.

“I just came by to check up on you guys,” she said, noting awkwardness of the room.

Steve sighed and stood up. “Well, we’re done. Just waiting on the results.”

Steve stretched.

“I’m going to go grab something to drink. You guys want anything?”

“Just water,” replied Wanda.

“Coffee would be nice,” said Kaneki.

Bruce rubbed his eyes. “I’ll second that.”

Steve nodded and left the room. Natasha looked around the room, seemingly trying to find some sort of amusement in looking at medical tools.

Bruce lent back in his chair. “Sorry it is taking so long. Your physiology differs from humans more than I thought it would. It is harder to construct.”

Kaneki just shook his head. “It’s all fine. I don’t exactly have anything better to do.”

Soon Steve came back with drinks and they all started to talk casually with one another. It was nice. The topics were all light hearted and the air around them even more so. Kaneki found himself smiling at the four Avenger’s antics. He almost forgot where he was and the situation he was in. Almost.

Another twenty minutes passed when suddenly Bruce went deadly silent. His eyes hardened as he looked at the computer screen.

“Kaneki could y--”

“Tony, I don’t think it is a good idea to be here,” said a voice that sounded like Thor.

“Why not? The testing is done.”

‘Huh, I wonder how he knows. What do you think Eyepatch?’

“You could give the guy some privacy you know. I don’t think any of us would like all of our personal info given away,” Peter said.

Tony just scoffed. “I wouldn’t really care. It’s not like I have something to hide, unlike it.”

There was a pause before Peter spoke again. “That doesn’t mean that he owes you the knowledge of every injury he has ever received, every sickness he has ever had, or whatever else the tests tell you. You wouldn’t be pushing this hard if it was one of the other Avengers.”

‘Everything, that is reassuring.’

Tony just growled and walked into view. Any easiness that had been in Kaneki’s body vanished. Peter, Thor, and Clint followed Tony into the room, though they seemed more reluctant to be here.
“Is there a reason you are here?” Natasha asked, a hint of challenge in her voice.

Tony just put on an obviously fake smile. “I’m here for the results. Why else?”

“You know just as much as I do that that is none of your business Stark,” she growled in response.

“Again, you are getting so protective over it.” Tony rolled his eyes. “And why shouldn’t I know what I’m getting into with this thing in my home? It may have rabies.”

“Shut up Stark, and stop acting like a child,” said Steve.

Tony opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by Bruce. “I think all of you need to get out now.”

Bruce’s voice was deadly calm, but it seemed to have no effect on Tony as he started to speak again.

“I--”

“Now.”

Tony just snarled instead. “Jarvis, display Kaneki’s results.”

“Of course sir.”

“God damn it Stark.”

A blue 3D hologram of Kaneki appeared in the middle of the room. Well, it would have been blue if not for all of the red lines that covered his body depicting injuries that have occured. Kaneki found himself unable to look away out of morbid fear and fascination. He was already shaking again.

“Do you want to give everyone your medical opinion Bruce?”

“Tony--”

“No, well then.” Tony took out a tablet of some sort and scrolled through a list. “We’ll start with the easy stuff, bones. Fingers is a good place to start. It seems the distal phalanxes, or the first digit of fingers, were ‘repeatedly crushed and ripped off at the joint’ over the duration of two years. Total count being two thousand times a finger. The middle and proximal phalanxes had the same fate over the same time and just as often. Did you know that those types of injuries are found in torture victims? The amount of nerve endings in your hands make it excruciating, not to mention the sound of your own bones being shattered would have to be scaring. That is, if a monster like it can feel pain.

“The metacarpal bones themselves seemed to have been shattered several times as well as snapped, twisted, and popped out of their sockets. The same could be said about the carpal. Those injuries are common in those who struggle while being restrained or people hung by their hands. While I’m not looking at nerve damage right now, I wonder if that meant it was skinned alive.

“Next are the wrist bones--”

“Tony!”

“-- all of which had been broken, though mostly due to compression, making it seem like the restraining theory was correct, that or someone crushed them in their grip. I can’t say that isn’t true since there are more monsters where it came from. If that is the case though, whatever did this would have had to have done it a lot as they had been broken a total of three thousand times. The radiuses and ulnas have been snapped, broken, etcetera in eighty different places a total of five hundred times, each fracture. The humerus bones are in a similar state. Each rib bone has been snapped, shattered, or crushed in at least twenty places and at least one thousand five hundred times, again, each bone. God, it looks like Hulk punched the creature. The collar bones have been shattered as have the shoulder blades. The spine has been dislocated in several places and surprise, surprise: broken. One bone in particular was damaged to the point that would cause temporary blindness. I bet that was fun--”

“I swear to God!”

“The lower back seems to have had several fractures that no doubt caused nerve damage of some sort, probably leading to temporary paralyzation. Then there are the hips which seemed to have been broken several hundred times, though mostly from the inside, which is a common injury in male rape victims--”

Tony was cut off by a punch by Wanda who had tears streaming down her face. “You fucked up son of a bitch! You motherfucking ass hole!” She punched him again. “What the fuck is wrong with that messed up head of yours?” She threw one more. “How could you do something like this to him?”

“This crossed a line I didn’t think you could, Stark,” spat Bruce who had a death grip on the table in front of him.

Natasha and Clint both had their jaws clenched so tight you would think that their teeth were about to shatter. Peter had watery eyes that were looking at Tony with such disgust it would have broken your heart. Steve however, just stood there in horrified shock. That was until he heard a whimper from beside him.

“Guys.”

Kaneki had his knees pulled into his chest with red and clear tears falling from his wide eyes, white hair stained red from where one hand’s nails dug into his scalp, and blood dripping from his scratched up forearm, a wound most likely caused from the other hand. Steve could hear him murmuring something quietly and quickly as well. It sounded like japanese.

“993, 986, 979, 972, 965, 958, 951, 944, 937, 930, 923, 916, 909, 902, 895, 888, 881, 874, 867, 860, 853…”

Kaneki’s eyes darted around the room in panic. It didn’t take much to tell that his mind wasn’t seeing the Avengers in front of him, but instead he was seeing some horrific nightmare of a memory. His nails dug deeper and deeper into his own flesh.

‘Kaneki~. We’re going to have so much fun Kan-e-ki.’

Kaneki clenched his eyes shut and started shaking more violently. He had felt the breath of the words on his ear, smelled the odor of him, felt that demon’s skin touching his.

He isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here, he isn’t here...

But it didn’t even begin to convince him when he found himself trapped in his own mind’s memory. It didn’t help when he could still feel the centipedes in his ears biting and crawling and scratching, and eating his ear drums. They were squirming around in his head, slithering like snakes, scurrying like rats. He could feel them in his head and see them behind his eyelids. Kaneki felt the ghost weight of shackles on his wrists and legs. He was terrified and broken, shattered beyond repair. Please someone make it stop.

“790, 783, 776, 769, 762, 755…”

“Kaneki?” Steve reached out to touch him lightly, worry clear in his voice. Kaneki’s eyes shot open in panic as he scrambled away so fast he slammed the headboard of the bed into the wall, creating a dent. His breathing was fast and panicked.

““Onegai iyada, onegai! Watashi wa mō sore o toru koto ga dekimasen. Onegai tomeru, tomeru, tomeru, TOMERU! Nan demo suru,chōdo sore o teishi sa seru. Tada sorera o toridashite, sorera o toridashite kudasai. Watashi wa sorera o kanjiru koto ga dekimasu, watashi wa karera ga watashi no naka de kurōru kanjiru koto ga dekiru, watashi wa anata ni nanika o oshiemasu.” Kaneki was shaking his head and crying almost hysterically. His hands clasped his ears. “Watashi wa sorera o kanjiru koto ga dekimasu, watashi wa karera ga watashi no naka de kurōru kanjiru koto ga dekiru, watashi wa anata ni nanika o oshiemasu. Watashi wa karera ga watashi o tabete iru to kanjimasu. Sore o yamesaseru, tomeru! Sore o tomete kudasai. Watashi wa nanika o yaru, watashi wa anata ga nanika o teishi suru baai wa nanika o ataerudarou, nanika o oshietekudasai. Chōdo sore ga kizutsuku no o yame saseru. Onegai, onegai, onegai, onegai….””

Kaneki’s voice was broken off by sobs and shaking.

“Nat, what was he saying?” Clint almost whispered.

Natasha just stared at the half ghoul in front of her with her lips drawn in a tight line. She didn’t answer.

The sight of Kaneki was heartbreaking. They had seen him lose his composer before, at least partially, when he was talking to Tony or Fury, but this was something else. This was seeing a fear, a panic, a pain, unlike any other. They didn’t know what exactly happened to Kaneki, they could never understand even if they did. All they got to do was watch the aftermath of a soul splintering experience and do their best to help, should they be one of the few to choose to do so.

All of the sudden Kaneki relaxed, all panic leaving his body. The scared expression was replaced by a blood freezing smile.

“Kaneki?” Steve tried again.

“Not Kaneki,” breathed Wanda, who was looking at them with wide eyes.

The smile mearily grew. “Not Kaneki huh?”

Chapter Text

The white haired man stood up slowly, laughing hysterically. “Not Kaneki? I would beg to differ.”

He pushed his fingers through Kaneki’s long, bloody bangs to reveal a wild looking eye, only to pull said fingers away in disgust.

“You really got me… wait, would it be him?” He just shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve seen Eyepatch this messed up in a while. You got the full panic attack complete with hallucinations and everything. And he is the most stable of all of ‘us.’”

The man in Kaneki’s body raised his eyebrows at the silence of the room. He sighed and began to pull off his eyepatch.

“It’s so annoying that he still wears this thing. It’s not like he has to hide it at this point. Then again, if he didn’t wear it, his namesake would be null and void,” he mumbled as he threw the thing to the floor. “Well, you going to say something or are we going to just stand here looking at each other?”

That seemed to snap at least Steve out of whatever trance he had fallen into. “You are one of Kaneki’s personalities.”

The man smirked as he moved closer to Steve, who was sitting on the bed. He put a finger under Steve’s chin, lifting his head to meet Kaneki’s eyes. “Right you are Pretty Boy.”

Steve’s face went bright pink and the white haired man just walked towards the still projected body.

“So then, what is your name?”

The man looked over to Bruce with a cocked head. “I’m Kaneki, but I guess that’s not exactly what you meant. I’m not sure you would call it a name, but I’ve been dubbed ‘Mad Knight’ by the rest of the people up here.” Mad Knight pointed to his head.

“Wasn’t that one of Kaneki’s aliases? And how many people are ‘up there?’” asked Clint.

Mad Knight started to pick at the blood underneath his nails. “Right about the alias part. As for how many personalities I...he…we have: there used to be four of us: the original Kaneki--or at least as close as you could get-- who we called ‘Kid,’ then there was Eyepatch, Mad Knight, and Centipede. These only include the personalities though,” Kaneki looked up without moving his head, “not the voices.
“Anyway, are any of you familiar with the method of which doctors use to treat Dissociative Identity Disorder?”

Natasha nodded and spoke up before anyone else. “Talk therapy right? The goal is to merge the personalities back together into one person.”

Mad Knight smiled and cracked his knuckles. “Correct.” Then the smile was gone. “While we didn’t exactly go through talk therapy, we managed to merge some of our personalities together over our time on this Earth. The ‘Kaneki’ who you talked to and is usually in control is a combination of Kid and Eyepatch.”

“What about Centipede?”

Mad Knight’s expression darkened, he actually growled. “We don’t exactly get along with him, and trust me when I say that you won’t either.” Mad Knight sighed, face returning to a mischievous, neutral expression.

He turned his eyes back to the hologram in front of him. He looked at his body curiously, intrigued even, like he was looking for something. He seemed to furrow his brow, then turned around without warning. Mad Knight wore a sweetly innocent smile as he met Tony’s eyes. He cocked his head to the side, closing his eyes with his smile.

“So, are you going to continue?”

Tony just looked at him, wary of the man before him. There was a dare, a challenge, in the statement. Tony could feel a shiver run down his spine at the words. There was little doubt that he was afraid, more afraid than he had been since Ultron. That fake smile that looked so real, so morbidly genuine, radiated a courage crushing bloodlust. The rest of the Avengers felt it to. They stiffened, ready to jump up if anything were to go wrong. The question was whether or not they could stop this Kaneki even if they wanted to.

One ghoul eye opened. “Please do. I love hearing the list of every broken bone I’ve ever had,” the smile grew more in excitement as his human eye opened. “I love remembering how they cracked, broke, and ground against each other. I love remembering the sounds: the screaming, the laughing, the blood pouring from open wounds onto the distinctly tile floor.” His eyes unfocused for a moment as he ran the back of his own hand over his cheek. “I love remembering how Jason used to cut me open and stick centipedes in. Then there were the hallucinations, at least that is what I think they were. You tend to lose your sense of reality after a while.”

Mad Knight’s smile had fallen from his face only to be replaced again.

“What do you say Tony? Why don’t you continue bringing up those gloriously gory memories?” His words came out in a mix of harsh anger and childish excitement.

Tony just stared.

“What’s wrong? Huh? Ghoul eat your tongue?”

“You’re insane.”

“I thought you would have gotten that from the name, honey.” Mad Knight slammed Tony against the wall, earning yells from the rest of the Avengers. He ignored them. Loudly and quickly, he started speaking again. “Why did you stop reading that list of yours Tony? Go ahead read it, read it! Spill every dark secret I have for everyone in the room to hear. No? I thought you would be happy. After all, wasn’t it your goal to make me relive all those terrible, terrible things? Well it worked, and I’m not going to stop you from continuing. I’m asking for it. After all, who wouldn’t want to relive Hell?”
Mad Knight’s voice was getting angrier and angrier and he raised Tony higher and higher off the ground by his shirt.

“Who wouldn’t want to relive two years of fucking torture? I know I do. That is why I try to sleep every night even when I know what to expect.”

He laughed at Tony’s fearful expression.

“Oh Tony, you’ve been dealing with the sane one up until now, the soft one, the one that will control himself, the one that would rather hurt than be hurt. You took advantage of the last bit of kindness we have in our body. I don’t know what crawled up your ass and died, Eyepatch seemed to think it was a ‘past trauma’ and that we ‘should just wait for him to get over it’ so we don’t make it worse for you. That self sacrificing brat felt bad for you, was concerned for you, even after what you had done. I think we both know that his concern was misplaced on the likes of you. And I am not the kind of person that will wait for you to,” his tone turned mocking, “realize the bad you’ve done and apologize.” He switched back. “No, I’m the one that will tell you if you got get the fuck over yourself I will personally rip you apart.

“I’ll tell you now that I’m not him. You get to deal with me for a little while and I will tell you now that I won’t be walked on.”

Mad Knight slammed him into the wall again.

“One more thing: if you hurt Eyepatch and Kid ever again, if you take advantage of that blind fucking sympathy, I will personally show you exactly what two years of torture feels like before I rip your throat out with my teeth.” Mad Knight bared his teeth to make his point.

He threw Tony to the side, suddenly looking terribly tired. The rest of the Avengers just followed Tony with their eyes, before letting them rest back on Mad Knight. He ran his fingers through his hair again with one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose with the other.

“I need a drink and possibly a smoke. Once he calms down, I’ll send Eyepatch your way so you can talk to him about whatever it was you wanted Bruce. Until then, enter my room at your own risk.”
He left the room dead silent as he walked out.

Mad Knight found himself walking to the bar in the living room. He didn’t lie about the needing of a drink, though he doubted that anyone in the goody-two-shoes Avengers actually smoked, so he didn’t think he could meet his second desire.

No one came after him. No one said anything at all when he had walked out. It wasn’t like he expected them to, and he took enjoyment in being right about their unwillingness to. It amused him how scared they were of him. He could smell it on them and he reveled in it.

He had always found it strange how differently humans tasted when they were afraid. They tasted more metallic, for lack of a better descriptor. Maybe it wasn’t metallic, but something else. Salty? Spicy? It definitely wasn’t sweet, but he wasn’t sure. It had been so long since he had tasted with human senses that he was beginning to forget. He remembers that cake is sweet, coffee used to taste bitter, and that chips could be so salty you almost couldn’t feel your tongue; but… was corn sweet or savory? Was it the green apples that were sour? Was it pork or chicken that had a fatty flavor? Was it both? It was trivial, sure, but there was still this loathed human part of him that wanted to know.

It didn’t matter now though. Mad Knight just knew exactly what fear tasted like and to him, it was delicious.

He soon found himself at the bar. Not hesitating for a moment, he jumped over the counter and began looking for something strong. One of the many things he had noticed about alcohol is that the purer it was the better it tasted. Mixers tastes like ash, beer like shit, bitters like vomit; but strong, 190 proof vodka tastes like burning, as it should. None of it tasted as good as blood wine though. Sighing, he continued to raid the shelves under the bar until he found something worthy of drowning himself in.

Finally he jumped back over the counter. “If you want something talk, if not, I would appreciate not being spied on by a stalker.”

Loki appeared on the couch across from the bar, having lifted the illusion he had over him. He looked amused. “It seems that what they say about ghoul senses is true. Few people can see through an illusion.”

Mad Knight just popped the lid off of his chosen drink and took a swig as he leaned back against the bar. “I didn’t see through it, you just failed to mask the sound of blood pumping through your veins.” He smirked ever so slightly. “I hear that that is a common mistake that illusion weavers make.”

“Is is now? I’ll have to keep that in mind.” Loki cocked his head, returning the smirk. “As for the reason that I am, how did you put it, ‘stalking you,’ I merely have a question...

“Who are you?”

Mad Knight smiled and took a dramatic bow, bottle of liquor in the air while the other hand was across his middle. “Mad Knight at your service.” He met Loki’s eyes. “It is a pleasure to meet you God of Lies.”

“Mad Knight, huh? How does one go about getting a name like that?” Loki had his head propped up by his arm: his fingers were at his temples and his elbow on the couch’s armrest.

“I wouldn’t know, you’d have to ask the person who gave it to me--”

“I would think that you’d know better than to lie to the God of Lies,” Loki cut him off, smirking.

Mad Knight stood up straight again, smile on his face. “I had to make sure you are who you claim to be.”

“And now that you know...”

“Well I’m not quite convinced yet. A lie like that is easy to pick out after all. What do you say to letting me try again?”

“If you tell me you are going to lie, what is the point?”

“I never said I was going to lie, I asked to try again.”

“I see you choose your words carefully, a true trait of a liar.”

“It takes one to know one.”

“Then you admit I’m a liar?”

“I never said you weren’t.”

Both of their smiles grew. “So all you are denying is that I’m a god?”

“I’m sure you’re a god, it is a question of what.”

“So easy to believe I’m a god, but not that I’m one of lies.”

“How could I know for sure? It could all be a trick.”

“I’m the god of tricks as well.”

“Is that so? The God of Tricks and the God of Lies. Are you also the God of Truth?”

“Why would I be the God of Truth?”

“Well you know when someone is lying, so you know when someone is telling the truth.”

“True,” Mad Knight let out a short laugh, “But wouldn’t the God of Truth never lie?”

“Do you never tell the truth?”

“Best lies contain the truth.”

“And all lies have some truth.”

“Touche, but I’m not the God of Truth I’m the God of Lies.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why?”

“You could be lying,” Mad Knight finished, causing Loki to smile in return.

“You are one of Kaneki’s personalities, yes?”

“What else would I be?”

“Then who was the one in control before?”

“Eyepatch, for lack of a better name.”

“All aliases, correct?” Knight nods. “You never told me how you got your name.”

“I thought I did a fairly good job at avoiding that question.”

“You tried to trick the trickster.”

“Who would be more satisfying to trick than a trickster?”

“Why ‘Mad Knight?’”

The man in question paused for a moment. “How about this then, I’ll answer your question if you answer mine?”

“I’ll agree to do so after you answer mine.”

“How do I know you aren’t lying?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see, after all, I asked first.”

“Falling back on children’s reasoning?”

“I’ve found children reasoning tends to be more sound than the adults’ that claim to be smarter.”

“It’s true children have better reasoning in some cases, but the world doesn’t function based on reason.”

“Then what is fits in better than a child’s unreasonable reasoning?”

“I thought you just said that they are more reasonable than most adults.”

“That isn’t saying much, it’s a rather low bar to set.”

“I agree, rather low.” Mad Knight put his finger to his lips in contemplation. “How do you think children would rank on a scale of whales to mice?”

Getting the reference, Loki smiled. “Somewhere between house plants and dolphins I believe, definitely not as smart as mice though.”

“Of course not, after all, mice are the smartest beings on earth.”

“I think you are avoiding the question again.”

“Maybe I can’t trick a trickster then. I’ll cease stalling for now.” Mad Knight sighed. “I’ve been told that have a twisted sort of devotion. Once you earn my loyalty, I follow it to a fault, much like a knight. I just do so to an extreme. I’ll blow up the world, destroy myself to protect someone, whether they want it or not. My methods are sadistic, morbid, and amoral. I am insane, therefore Mad, and loyal like a knight.”

“Seems like a back handed compliment.”

Mad Knight let out a laugh. “It was never meant as a compliment at all, not by the person who gave it to me at least. ‘Loyalty makes you weak and madness makes you reckless,’ she had said, ‘and therefore the name fits you perfectly.’”

“And who is this ‘she?’’

“She was called Eto, not that that was her name. She was the leader of Aogiri. Anyway, that was two questions for the price of one. I think it is your turn to answer something.”

“We’re taking turns are we?”

“I believe that is what your reasonable children first learn to do.”

“It isn’t their nature though, they tend to prefer chaos.”

“You don’t get very far in life solely based on chaos.”

“Which is why children get away with it.”

“I guess that is true, though it seems it is now you that is stalling.”

“Turnabout is fair play.”

“Yet taking turns isn’t?”

“Only children think such a thing.”

Both inhumans were smiling again.

“Very well, then here is my question, you can answer it to be fair child or ignore it to be a lying adult--.”

“My choice will all depend on the question.”

“Then maybe I shouldn’t ask.”

“Why wouldn’t you ask?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“How would you know that I don’t want to know?”

“How do you know that I don’t know?”

“Why not tell me and find out?”

“Because if I ask it you won’t answer, so it is better left unsaid.”

“If you never ask, you can never get an answer.”

“Maybe I can.”

“And how is that.”

“Maybe it is something trivial, something that anyone could answer.”

“Then why wouldn’t I answer it?”

“Or maybe it is something that everyone knows but you.”

“Then why would you ask me?”

“Or maybe it is something that everyone knows but me.”

“You’ve stopped making sense.”

“Maybe my question won’t make sense.”

“I won’t know unless you ask.”

“Or maybe, just maybe, it is something that is so horribly revealing that you would never tell even your most trusted ally, something that keeps you up at night, something that the voices in the back of your head scream at you until you scream back.”

“I never was one to listen to the voices.”

“Do you want me to ask the question?”

“I’ll admit that my curiosity is piqued.”

“Then I’d hate to disappoint you.”

“Why not just ask the question?”

“Very well, since you asked so nicely, I’ll ask this question that you don’t know you don’t want asked. What is the destroyer of New York doing in the Avengers’ tower instead of locked up in some dark hell hole?”

Chapter Text

Loki seemed a bit taken aback. He didn’t know what he expected but it wasn’t that question. He should have expected it though. What else would he possibly want to ask him? This “Mad Knight” may be from a different world, but he had been here long enough to hear about that.

“I wouldn’t know.” It wasn’t phrased like a question and he couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice as he spoke.

“I thought the God of Lies would be a better liar.”

“I am, always have been. That lie wasn’t meant to go unnoticed. Most people would have taken it as a hint to back off.”

“I’m not most people.” Mad Knight took a long swig from the bottle still in his hand. “I did warn you that you wouldn’t want to answer my question, and it seems you can trick a trickster.”
The ghoul started to walk to the doorway.

“Still, I thought that I would give you a chance to explain before people put words into your mouth.”

“Why would you trust the answer I gave?”

Knight stopped but didn’t turn around. “I don’t like being spoon fed lies, especially by the people I work for. I trust the answer Fury would give me about as much as mouse trusts the cat hunting it. Then there are the Avengers who are either biased or ignorant to the situation. If I want to know what happened, even the God of Lies would give me a better idea.” He turned to look at Loki. “I’d like to judge your situation for myself, so it is beneficial for me to give you a chance to explain yourself. I will decide after you explain whether or not I believe you.”

Loki just looked at him. “I’m not quite sure what to make of you.”

“Then we have something in common.” Kaneki smiled. “I’m not going to try to force you into answering, but what do you say? A truth from one liar to another?”

Loki studied him for a moment, weighing the pros and cons mentally. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to bring the memory to the surface of his mind again, but… he also wanted to tell the man in front of him. No one had asked him before. No one had been willing to let him get a word in on his own behalf. He felt confused by the gesture, but there was also this small part of him that was happy; though he would deny it to his grave. That part of him was giddy to be given the chance to explain what happened to someone who just might believe him.

It is an opportunity that hadn’t been granted to him since he was a child.

“It isn’t easy to trick a trickster, much less the God of them, but it can be done. I guess, though on a minor level, you can attest to that.” Loki smirked before his voice turned somber, his eyes hard. “I won’t say that I was ever a good person, not entirely at least, tricks have dark sides as much as light. If you read the old norse myths you will find that I was chaotic in character. Chaos is never inherently evil or good though. It is just disorderly and unpredictable. When you finally knew that I was lying, I was telling the truth. When you finally knew I was telling the truth I was lying. But I have a code of honor, just not the kind that most follow. It is because of such that I would never do such a thing, willingly, to New York. I cause chaos, but never do I directly cause death.

“But that is besides the point. You can trick a trickster, especially one blinded by both jealousy and self loathing. I was angry, angrier than I had been in a while when my brother was given the throne. He was an arrogant, selfish, self-righteous, ass that would have torn the all of Asgard apart. So I laid a trap, a trick, for him to be sent to Earth. I wanted him to learn. Then I found out about my regrettable heritage and things went horribly wrong. I don’t try to justify some of the things I did, like going to the frost giants, but I was confused. Then I met Thanos. If only I hadn’t gone. I don’t know what he did exactly. One minute I was me and the next I was… something else. I was angry, hateful, sadistic even. I wanted control and I wanted people to bow to me. It got worse. The more I thought the more I hated. It wasn’t long before I was determined to see the whole universe burn.

“Thanos then made me an offer. He would give me the power to do so. That was when the part of me that was still sane started to protest. I wouldn’t call myself loyal in the slightest, that would be an insult to all that claim to be so, but I am not someone who would willingly kill off everyone I hold dear for something as petty as jealousy. It didn’t matter though. It didn’t matter that I ended up saying no, because as soon as the words left my lips I felt an invader in my mind. A pressure built up in my head, making my vision blur and skull throb. I lost consciousness for less than a second, yet when I woke up I was no longer me.

“I don’t know what it is like to have multiple personalities, but I do know what it feels like to be mind controlled. It is like you are watching a first person film, with all your senses numbed, with every vision so real yet so surreal. You can only sit and watch as your body moves, while the people around you are killed by some monster wearing your face…”

“And no matter how much you scream, you can’t make the monster stop. Your pleas never reaches the outside. It is a feeling of utter helplessness and worthlessness. You think ‘that’s not me’ when people learn to hate you. You desperately yell at them to get away when you know what is going to happen next.” Kaneki finished when Loki trailed off. “You are conscious but not in control and it is the single most terrifying thing to go through.”

Loki nodded. “I was knocked out of it at the end of the battle, then sent to Asgard to pay for the sins I didn’t want to commit. It was pure luck that a court magician found the effects of mind control during a check for weapons. After that, I only had to answer for tricking Odin into sending Thor to Earth, but the punishment was light. That was when I ended up back here, a newly freed man so to speak. Not long after, S.H.I.E.L.D. found out I was back and I went through an ordeal similar to yours. I just was never let out of the hand cuffs. Why Fury didn’t demand I leave as soon as I arrived on Earth is beyond me, no one ever knows what that man is thinking, but here I am.”

The two were silent for a minute. Mad Knight studied Loki with an emotionless expression.

“Fury does seem like the kind of man to keep secrets.” Mad Knight said with a smirk. “I would expect nothing less from a liar like him.”

Loki let out a short laugh. Already, he felt a weight lifted off of his chest.

“But as for the liar in front of me now… I think I’ll choose to believe him this time around. Maybe it’s a mistake, but what can I say? I won’t say that I trust you, that would just be stupid, but… maybe I can believe you. For now.”

Mad Knight took a long drink from the bottle in his hand, then reached back over the counter to grab a second bottle as the first one was half empty.

“You truly are strange.”

“I believe the word is mad and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” With that, Mad Knight started to make his way back to his room. Then he stopped. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pack of cigarettes would you?”

Loki smiled. “I’m afraid not.”

“It was worth a shot.” Then he was gone, glad to have been put in a better mood. Even if he never did get a cigarette.

Kaneki, whether it be Mad Knight or Eyepatch, wasn’t seen for the rest of the day by any of the Avengers. And Bruce didn’t leave the computer in the infirmary. And Natasha seemed to vanish. And Thor spoke quietly with his brother. And Hawkeye was on the roof. And Peter was with his aunt. And Vision was wandering the tower as always. And Wanda was in her room. And Steve broke through his tenth punching bag. And no one was talking to Tony.

The tower was too quiet, as if some sort of curse had been put on it. Everyone was trying to absorb the experiences they had earlier in the day. It was safe to say that they learned too much too fast about the ghoul they were to be working with. Everyone was entitled to their secrets, and god knows that the people of the tower had more than anyone should, but they took too many of those secrets away from Kaneki. What horrified them more though was his… cooperation. He had let them crack him open like a book, barely stopping them before they stumbled upon something they had no right to know. This time he hadn’t been able to stop them, but they couldn’t have stopped themselves either.

Tony put him on display for everyone to see. It was horrifying that he would do something like that. It was none of their business. It was none of Tony’s business. None of the Avengers could get the broken look Kaneki had on his face out of their minds. He was so scared, so scarred both mentally and physically. They had no fucking right.

In a perfect world, they would have stopped Tony before he got the first words from his mouth. But no, they hadn’t. They had been too swept up in morbid curiosity and blind shock to do anything. They had listened to every word Tony said. They were too swept up in their own horror to stop Kaneki from feeling his.

And who were they kidding, in a perfect world, Tony would never have said that. No that is wrong too, in a perfect world Kaneki wouldn’t have been put though whatever he was. The situation would never have been conceived.

No one had been willing to help Tony off of the floor when Mad Knight had left. They were too disgusted and furious. Even the doctor couldn’t bring himself to help. No, he wouldn’t even meet his friend’s eye. That was when the Avengers parted from the room, not a word spoken between them. They were too ashamed and angry.

So Bruce started at Kaneki’s horrifying results, trying to figure out what he was going to say to the man when he came by. So Natasha walked around the city, trying to push back her own scarring memories. So Thor filled his brother in, watching the expression of his newly returned brother turn to fury. So Hawkeye looked up at the sky, an unexplainable worry for his family in the back of his mind. So Peter ate dinner with his Aunt, trying not to let his stress and fear show on his face. So Vision wandered the hallways, trying to understand the events he saw on the camera footage. So Wanda let tears silently leak from her eyes. So Steve let his anger out on punching bags in favor of the man he had been calling a friend. And no one talked to Tony.

Chapter Text

Eyepatch woke up with a splitting headache. The light of his still open curtains was blinding, even though the sun was only barely poking over the horizon. He rolled over to look at the clock in the room. It was barely six o’clock.

“That makes three hours of sleep and a hangover. Sounds about right.”

‘I’m not going to apologize.’

“I would never expect you to.” Eyepatch sighed. Mad Knight’s memories mingled with his own as he absorbed the events of the previous day. “But it does get annoying, you know, waking up with a hangover every time I let you have control for a little while.”

‘There was very little let in that situation. I did what I had to do.’

Eyepatch just shook his head, knowing that ‘Knight was right.

He dragged his heavy body out of bed, his head throbbing like a bass drum. Too tired for moral conflicts and worry, he grabbed a package of food from his fridge and began to eat. He had always found his relationship with ‘Knight strange. For one, he shared memories with him and could speak to him, which wasn’t normal for people with DID. Usually they not only have different memories, but they are completely separate people. Different memories, different ticks, and ignorant to each other’s existence; all parts of the normal DID patient. They weren’t that separate though. They had the same ticks and the same loves. They were the same but also different. Maybe that was a sign of them coming back together.

The other thing that made their situation strange was their dynamic. They were dependant on each other whether they would admit it or not. They protected each other, each fought for the other’s survival and in turn their own. When Eyepatch had a breakdown, Mad Knight took over so they could keep fighting if need be. When Mad Knight got too deep into something, Eyepatch pulled him out. They were like brothers, like two parts of the same whole. They respected each other, they loved each other, and they would die for each other. It was a necessary but toxic relationship. One may stop the other from falling apart, but they also keep them from getting any better. Necessary but toxic. Brotherly but not quite. They were two parts of the same whole alright, two warped fractions of an unfixable soul.

Eyepatch threw the new tracker into the wastebasket and hopped into the shower. His headache was gone, but his mind was still processing. He wasn’t over his break down from the day before. He… he hated feeling so weak. He hated that something like that could put him out of commission for so long. He hated that a dead demon could still have such a hold over him. Every breakdown, every panic attack; every whisper, every ghost of a caress that he felt; all made him feel like Yamari won. It made him feel like it wasn’t Kaneki that devoured him, but the other way around. Kaneki killed Jason, but Jason shattered Kaneki. And he hated it and he hated himself.

Kaneki put his forearms against the cool tile, then his head. He didn’t know when he started to cry, but it only caused his self loathing to grew. He needed to pull himself together. He needed to get over it.

If only it were that fucking easy.

Mad Knight was silent. He knew that there was nothing he could say to help. He could have lied, sure. He could have told him that it was all fine, that he didn’t feel the same way, that they were going to be okay. But he couldn’t sell that lie to Eyepatch. They both knew that the other didn’t and wouldn’t believe it.

Finally, Eyepatch stopped crying and got out of the shower. Mad Knight moved to the back of his consciousness as he finished getting dressed. Kaneki picked up the empty bottles of liquor and walked out of the room, not letting his mind or eyes wander from what was directly in front of him.

He really fucking needed a cup of coffee.

No one other than Steve was up yet, and they had yet to run into each other. Eyepatch just made his way over to the kitchen, finding a bottle of aspirin in one of the cupboards, and started the coffee maker. He finished off the aspirin and threw both that bottle and the ones for liquor into the trash. He sat in silence while the coffee was made. Then he found himself sitting on the same bar stood, looking off in the same direction as the beginning of the day before.

Had he really only been here for a day and a half? It seemed like so much longer. He wouldn’t say it felt like forever, but it had to have been a week right? At least? There was no way that so much had happened in two days. Then again, so much could happen in two days.

Kaneki watched the sunrise. He could hear the sounds of cars on the streets below, of authentic New York City swearing, of laughter and of taxi calls. He could almost pretend he was back in Tokyo. He wasn’t sure that that was a calming thought though.

The elevator dinged behind him, revealing a sweaty and tired looking Captain America. Steve seemed to freeze when he saw the man in front of him as if he had just seen a ghost, not that Kaneki looked dissimilar to one. Steve tried to decide if he should say something, whether the man would want to hear anything that could come out of his mouth. Guilt started to build up making it hard to swallow.

“I’m so--”

“Don’t apologise.”

Kaneki hadn’t moved his gaze from the window. A moment of silence passed.

“But--’

“I said not to apologise. I don’t need nor want your apology, you did nothing wrong.”

“If I--”

“‘If’s are not something you can control, only something you make up in your head to torture yourself. What happened wasn’t your fault and you shouldn’t apologise for it.”

There was another pause. Kaneki felt like a hypocrite for saying what he did, knowing he would feel the same in Steve’s position, but he truly didn’t want the man to blame himself.

“I’m sor--”

Kaneki cut him off with a laugh that lacked the intended humor. “And don’t apologise for trying to apologise.”

There was yet another silent second.

“Are you okay?”

Kaneki took a drink from his coffee. “That is a very stupid question.”

Steve opened his mouth and closed it again.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” He finally decided to say.

Kaneki’s fingers unconsciously rubbed against the porcelain of the mug. “You are too kind to be a soldier, way too kind. A perfect amount to be a hero though. You are the type of hero that not only protects but cares, the kind that children look up to.” Kaneki’s voice was strained, like he was fighting back tears. “You are too kind, too innocent, even in spite of all that you have seen. I’m jealous.”

Eyepatch got up from his seat. He turned to Steve, the former’s face was still red and he had horrible bags under his eyes. He gave the man a small smile.

“It seems we are making a habit of meeting in the mornings. And no, there is nothing you can do to help me. I can’t think of one thing, and for that I truly am sorry.”

Slowly, the white haired man started to leave the room. His mind was lost in swirling thoughts. Steve didn’t move when he walked by as he was locked in his own battle of emotions. He did seem to want to say something.

But whatever it was didn’t make it out of his mouth before Kaneki found his way back to his room.

And there was part of both of them that was disappointed.

If it had been up to him, Eyepatch would not have left his room for the rest of the day. He didn’t want awkward interactions with the rest of the Avengers and he didn’t think he could meet Tony’s eyes if he saw him. He knew that if he left his room again, he would have to go see Bruce.

He didn’t know if he had the mental fortitude to deal with that right now.

There was also this looming sense of uselessness. What would he gain by leaving the room? The Avengers didn’t want to talk with him, not to mention what they would actually talk about if they managed to strike up a conversation. He had no job, no friends, no ties, no… anything. He had no reason for being here other than the threat of imprisonment. At least he knew how to get along with criminals. He felt like he was merely a tool that hadn’t been used yet. He was purposeless when he had been promised a purpose. He had no reason to get out of bed in the morning.

‘I know you don’t want to, trust me I do, but you probably should still go to meet with Bruce.’

Eyepatch closed his eyes and sighed, slowly dragging himself off of the bed for the second time. His feet hit the floor with a thud for every reluctant step he took towards his door.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

Eyepatch’s hand stopped right before they touched the doorknob.

‘After all, they know now.’

‘Of course they know.’

‘What will they think now that they have seen you in such a pathetic state?’

‘They could so thoroughly take advantage of a weakness as obvious as that.’

‘Steve didn’t. It will be fine.’

‘Oh, just because Steve didn’t say anything doesn’t mean that he doesn't think it.’

‘After all, you heard how hard his heart beat, how much fear he held for you.’

‘Stop listening to them Eyepatch! What about Wanda? She defended you!’

‘Like you wouldn’t punch Tony if you had any excuse to.’

‘She just pities you, pities your weakness.’

‘And now she isn’t the only one who knows.’

‘Everyone will either pity you or have something to use against you.’

‘You shouldn’t bother.’

‘After all, what do you really think that Bruce wants to talk about?’

‘He probably just wants to see how many ways he can make you flinch like Tony does.’

‘Eyepatch--’

“All of you need to shut the fuck up already.” Kaneki’s voice had no force to it. It came out shakily and breathy. The voices didn’t go away.

‘Tisk, tisk, tisk. You think someone like you can tell us what to do?’

‘You are going to have to be a bit more forceful, Eyepatch.’

‘That wouldn’t matter--’

‘He can fake it all he wants--’

‘The voices in your head always know when you are lying.’

‘Being forceful won’t scare us off--’

‘Like the humans you love so much.’

‘Our mere existence proves your weakness!’

‘If you were strong you could make the voices go away.’

‘Better yet, the voices wouldn’t have appeared in the first place.’

‘Kaneki, that’s not true. You can’t think of yourself that way.’

‘Oh, oh! I have an idea!’

‘Let’s let Centipede out.’

“No, no, no, no, no! Stop it, just shut up. Shut up!” Eyepatch clasped his hands over his ears, nails digging into his scalp.

And then they were gone. It was like they were never there.

Eyepatch was shaking and sweating.

“Are you alright Kaneki?” The voice of Jarvis made him jump a foot.

“I’m fine. Sorry. I--I’m fine.” He said in between breaths.

Ten minutes passed.

Ten minutes before he could even consider leaving again.

Ten minutes before he felt like he could breath.

Then he finally decided he needed to go talk to Bruce Banner.

Tony was scared.

The billionaire playboy Tony Stark was terrified. He was mortified. He was panicked, petrified, shaken, anxious; whatever you want to call it.

Bottom line was that he was scared.

And he had a right to be scared. Any normal person would be.

People tend to forget something about their heroes. They are human. They feel fear, they make mistakes, they can’t save everyone, they just… they just aren’t gods like the people want them to be. And even the few that are gods aren’t perfect. They can’t be expected to live through everything and come out smiling. It isn’t fair, it isn’t right. They need their recuperation, they need their semblance of stability. They need time.

People tend to forget that their heroes didn’t always choose. That they aren’t always ready when the calling for heroics is thrust upon them. Thor was born for this, Natasha and Clint trained for this, Steve chose this. The rest of them didn’t. Peter is just a kid, Bruce was just a doctor, and Wanda was an abducted child that was experimented on. And Tony was just an ignorant tech developer, billionaire or not. Brilliant, sure; kind hearted, for the most part; but he was not the hero he was expected to be.

Tony was less scared than he should be but more scared than he was given the right to be.

His fear led him to Ultron, his fear led him to his hatred for Kaneki. His fear has turned his brilliantly rational mind into a fun house for the twisted. He couldn’t let what happened in New York happen again. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t. It can’t happen again. It can’t, it can’t, it can’t, it can’t. Those aliens, the otherworlders, those monsters killed so many and destroyed so much. The people around the world didn’t see the army like he did. They had the luxury of seeing the battle through a television screen. He fought them, he killed them, he saw the armies that were about to be released on the world. He was the one who felt that fear in a minute. He was the one who saw what could have happened ever night when he closed his eyes. It wasn’t real to the rest of the world, but it was to him. They always thought that there was a hero that would protect them. The heroes had no one to save them.

Tony was not okay with the fear he had and even less so with the power he had. He called himself a hero, yet he was the reason so many were dead. His fear is what birthed Ultron, like so much else. It kept him up at night. It made him paranoid. Tony Stark was so fucking afraid he hated himself.

He was not a hero, no, he was a human. He was a vulnerable child of a human with issues that he had no way to fix. He was trying to carry the weight of the world on two shoulders, but lacked the inhuman strength to do so.

In his mind it was all his fault.

All his fault.

His fault.

It was his fault.

But Kaneki was the perfect inhuman otherworlder, someone who came from nowhere through a portal just like the Chitauri. Kaneki was the perfect person for his subconscious to pin the blame on.

Chapter Text

Kaneki didn’t allow himself to think when he opened the door to the med bay. Thinking only made things worse right now.

Bruce was sitting in front of the computer screen, before he jumped at Kaneki’s entrance.

“You really are too quiet, more so than Clint or Natasha.” Bruce turned around in his chair, meeting Eyepatch’s eyes.

Said man stood there uncomfortably under his gaze.

“Eyepatch right?”

“Yes.”

Bruce sighed, dropping his gaze. “You are welcome to sit down.”

Kaneki obliged.

“If I am going to be perfectly honest with you, I have never actually seen something this bad before. I… I am not sure what exactly I need to say to you. If anyone knows how bad it is, it would have to be you.”

Kaneki said nothing.

“I am sorry.”

“You say that like you were the one who held the knife.” Kaneki still didn’t meet his eyes. “Don’t apologise for something you didn’t do and cannot control.”

“Then the english language needs to come up with a better phrase. ‘My sympathy’ sounds fake, ‘my condolences’ makes it sound like I’m superior, and I know that sympathetic looks just make it seem like I pity you. What can you say to someone other than ‘I’m sorry?’”

Kaneki said nothing.

Bruce took a slow, deep breath. “Mad Knight gave me an idea of what happened, and I’m not asking for specifics. No, that would be cruel and unnecessary. But… I do have to ask.” Bruce took another breath. “I know it is a shitty, unfair, option, but if you don’t tell me now, I can guarantee that Fury will be the next to ask. And if he asks, there is no insurance that it will be discreet or private. I won’t for--”

“Torture.”

It was Kaneki’s turn to take a deep breath.

“You really shouldn’t ramble so much. I understand your position, and while I usually make it a point not to trust doctors,” Eyepatch let out a dry laugh, “Fury scares the actual shit out of me.”

Kaneki traded his gaze at the floor for one at the ceiling.

“I was a prisoner for a little over two years of a ghoul organization. The... man who was put in charge of me was insane. You think I’m messed up, you should have seen him. J-J-” Kaneki stopped himself. “He was an S class ghoul, stronger than most, but he… There are several ghouls that have resorted to cannibalism in their life. Some do it because they are desperate, some because they want power, some are just insane from the beginning. It is a taboo, for many reasons, but you gain so much strength. If a normal ghoul is four to seven times stronger than a human, cannibals, Kakujas as we call them, are ten to twenty. That power though, it… it comes at the price of your sanity.”

Kaneki shifted, bringing his eyes to the wall, yet his spaced out eyes proved that he was looking past it.

“He had been t-tortured while a prisoner of the CCG, his insanity was then amplified by his cannibalism. It caused him to... he would collect victims and put them through the torture he endured. Then he would eat them. I was… I was unlucky enough to catch his attention. B-b-but for whatever reason, h-h-h-he w-went off script with me. He got bored, or obsessed, or w-w-whatever y-y-you want to call it. It got worse and w-w-worse. He had the most fun with me he said. He kept me alive longer than he had anyone else before.”

A deep breath, a shaking body, and darting eyes.

“I escaped when my fri-- my allies came to save me.”

Kaneki finally turned his gaze to Bruce. The man had an unreadable expression on. His fists were clenched and his jaw was tight, but he didn’t say anything for a long time.
“You speak about Him in a past tense,” his voice revealed no emotion, but it was easy to tell it was forced.

Kaneki’s face scrunched up in anger, and for a moment, his voice came out layered like someone possessed. “That’s because I tore him apart with my teeth.”

Then Kaneki blinked as if confused, as if he hadn’t been the person to speak. Bruce’s entire body stiffened. He may not be able to feel emotions like Wanda or read minds like Loki, but he could tell that there was a temporary switch that just occurred. Whichever personality that was, he didn’t want to meet it.

Centipede.

“I ate him. It’s ironic really. I became an insane Kakuja because of an insane Kakuja.”

Wanda hadn’t slept the entire night. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t. She felt too guilty, too worried, too scared. She knew, just knew, that as soon as she closed her eyes she would be back in that place. She knew that she would hear the shrieks of her fellow subjects. She knew that she would see her doctors’ faces curl into demonic smiles, like they had so many times before, as they watched her writhe and scream.

Her only reprieve would be that at least her brother was alive then.

But more than anything, she was afraid that she would see that flash of memory that was forced into her mind. She hadn’t just heard Kaneki, no, she felt his fear, his disgust, his morbid and twisted insanity. She could feel him break as he was forced submissiveness. She experienced his cold, chaotic, and psychotic anger. She could hear his hallucinations. She felt flashes of pain, moments of hopelessness, cycles upon cycles of terror. It was worse than anything ever done to her, worse than anything she could ever imagine being done to her. She didn’t have an easy life, no. For most, her life alone could send them into insanity. Yet Kaneki experienced more. After all, you can get so much more creative when you don’t have to worry about killing off your play thing too easily.

Then she saw something she wished she could unsee.

---

At first, she saw a face.

It was pale with a large nose, small eyes wide with sadistic glee. It had a large mouth with too sharp teeth drawn into a crazed smile. Ghosts of blonde hair around its edges were stained red. It was the same color as the blood he licked off of a thick finger, making the mouth reveal a long writhing tongue set on absorbing every last drop like it was some sort of drug and he was getting his fix. The fear associated with this face made her want to puke.

Then she saw a naked body.

It was skinny, so much so that you could see ribs and individual vertebrae of the back. It had so many scars, so many bruises. Blood covered every inch of the skin like twisted body paint. The weak arms were handcuffed behind it, black nails popping against the red and white. Red and yellow stained bone was exposed through the skin on the forearm as if the flesh had been ripped off. Legs were spread wide by two disembodied hands, gripping tight enough for the skin to deform and break.

Then she heard a blood freezing scream and a snap.

“What is a thousand minus seven?”

She heard flesh tear and bones break, followed by a scream that would keep her awake at night. She saw blood spill and skin slap skin. She saw claws dig into the body from before. She heard screaming and panting and whimpering and moans. She saw organs and flesh ripped apart, she saw bloody teeth. She felt the tickle of centipedes under her skin, in her ears, down her throat. She couldn’t breath, couldn’t think, all she knew is that she wanted it to stop. She heard further ripping as screams turned to cries turned to desperate counting. Shadows began to dance and non-existant voices started to laugh. Bones snapped like twigs, the long tongue lapped up more blood, centipedes crawled into intestines. The sick acidic and metallic smell of bile and blood invaded Wanda’s senses. Make it stop, she wanted it to stop.

---

“Onegai iyada, onegai! Watashi wa mō sore o toru koto ga dekimasen. Onegai tomeru, tomeru, tomeru, TOMERU! Nan demo suru,chōdo sore o teishi sa seru. Tada sorera o toridashite, sorera o toridashite kudasai. Watashi wa sorera o kanjiru koto ga dekimasu, watashi wa karera ga watashi no naka de kurōru kanjiru koto ga dekiru, watashi wa anata ni nanika o oshiemasu. Watashi wa karera ga watashi o tabete iru to kanjimasu. Sore o yamesaseru, tomeru! Sore o tomete kudasai. Watashi wa nanika o yaru, watashi wa anata ga nanika o teishi suru baai wa nanika o ataerudarou, nanika o oshietekudasai. Chōdo sore ga kizutsuku no o yame saseru. Onegai, onegai, onegai, onegai….”

“Please no, please! I can’t take it anymore. Please stop, stop, stop, STOP! I’ll do anything, just make it stop. Just take them out, take them out. I can feel them, I can feel them crawling in me, I will tell you anything. I feel them eating me. Make it stop, MAKE IT STOP! Please make it stop. I’ll do anything, I’ll give you anything if you stop, tell you anything. Just make it stop hurting. Please, please, please, please…”

Wanda had no idea how she could help her friend, but she was determined to do something. She just had to. Even if it was merely giving him her presence, even if it was something like helping ward off Tony. Even if it was something as small as helping him get something off of the top shelf with her powers. She would try to help him with anything she could offer.

She just hoped what she could do was enough.

Natasha didn’t stop.

She didn’t stop kicking until the man stopped moving and the referee pulled her out of the cage.

She didn’t mean for it to go that far, she really hadn’t. In fact she found herself disgusted with the blood staining her fingers, at the aggression she had shown. She was disgusted that she could willingly beat that man into a bloody pulp.

She really didn’t mean to go that far.

But she was drunk on anger and self loathing. She had wanted a distraction, and it only made her dig up more unpleasant memories. She couldn’t deal with that right now, and she didn’t know what to do. Natasha was angry at everything and nothing. She needed a release, she needed a distraction.

She needed a distraction.

She craved a distraction.

It wasn’t hard to find a place to blow off steam. When you have access to S.H.I.E.L.D files, finding something as trivial as a place where you can hit something is easy.
It had been forever since she had done something like this.

She had made herself stop fighting when she decided to wash the red from her hands. Now she has bloody knuckles. She was both disappointed and relieved, like an addict that got a hit after so many years of being clean. She was appalled and exhilarated, horrified and thrilled.

Then she got back in the cage for the tenth time today. Blood from the last fight was still shiny on the floor, making her wince.

“You know the rules, after this, collect your winnings and you go home,” the ref whispered in her ear.

She didn’t care about the money, didn’t have a reason to. Instead, she just brushed him off as the next fighter entered the ring. She immediately recognised him. The strong but small build, the short dirty blonde hair, even the disappointed and angry furrow of his eyebrows was familiar. She was snapped out of her high right then and there.

But she didn’t stop fighting.

No words were exchanged between the two assassins, not when Clint took off his sunglasses nor when Natasha crouched into a fighting stance; not when Natasha threw a punch nor when Clint blocked it. No words, none were needed.

Instead Natasha found herself pinned to the ground within minutes.

Then Clint dragged her home.

No words were needed between the two.

Thor loved his brother. There should be little doubt of that after everything that had happened. He loved his brother, but he also knew that he was ignorant to everything about him. He didn’t realize so many things that he should have as a kid. He never noticed the bullying, how their father was biased against him, or how he had always shown up just in time to get Thor out of trouble. He never knew the trivial things that all siblings did. He never knew his least favorite food, the crushes he had, or the favorite childhood object he carried. Thor loved his brother, but was never there for him like the other was for him.

Now though, he was trying so hard to reforge a bond that had never existed due to his own arrogance. Ever since New York, they had become closer. He finally has his brother.

And that is why he knew that, for whatever reason, Loki was happy over something when he walked into the room.

And that was when he knew that he really didn’t want to be the one who informed him of what happened with Kaneki.

But he didn’t know that Kaneki was why he was happy, or at least, that Mad Knight was. All he knew was that Loki was happier than he had been since they had come back to Midgard. It was like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. It was like he had found a new puzzle he had to solve.

Thor was surprised that his brother was so angry when he had told him what happened to the white haired half ghoul. Even more surprised when he found that the man’s anger turned to sorrow and sympathy instead of the blind rage he was so used to.

Steve’s entire body ached.

He had been up most of the night training, then again for most of the day. He wasn’t sure what else he should do. He needed to think. What do you say to someone who went through that? How do you live with the fact that you don’t know how to help them?

He had been surprised when he ran into Kaneki that morning. He had been shocked by what Kaneki had told him. He had been called a hero by someone he didn’t know how to save.

It is a powerless feeling. It was like when he was a kid. He wanted to help, he wanted to save people, to stop their suffering. Yet he couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything then, and it feels like he can’t do anything now.

There was no one who could just give him the power to help this time.

No, physical injuries can be fixed so easily, physical enemies defeated without worry. What do you do for mental wounds, or psychological demons? His heart clenched when he saw Kaneki in that much pain. He felt a panic that he hadn’t felt since he felt Bucky slip from his grip on the train.

He hated being so powerless to save his friends, these people that he would do anything for. He would cut off his hand to save them, take a nose dive off a building to save them, sell his soul to save them. He was never one to sit back when he could do something to help. And this was the first time he felt like he couldn’t help.

That wasn’t the only thing though. He still couldn’t believe that Tony would do what he did. How could he? Tony was his friend, his brother in arms. Even if they didn’t always get along, Steve could always trusted Tony to watch his back and vice versa. Steve had thought he knew what type of person Tony was, he really did. Now though, he wasn’t sure. He felt like he was missing some part of the story. Tony had been accepting of Thor the alien God, the beast that was the Hulk, the assassins that were Clint and ‘Tasha, and was even the first to welcome Wanda and Peter to the team. What changed? What was he missing?

Peter found, that for the first time, he didn’t want to go to the Avengers Tower.

He found himself taking the long way instead of the short one, walking instead of taking a cab, feeling a sense of dread instead of one of eagerness; and he knew exactly why.

Tony was his idol. He was the one who recruited him, he was the one who supported him. Tony has offered to pay for any college he would ever want to go to. Tony helped him through so much, turning him from an ignorant vigilante to an Avenger. On a good day, Peter might even say that he was like a father to him.

But then he saw the look in that man’s eyes. He saw an anger and fear that he had never, could never, let himself associate with Tony Stark. Maybe it really was better that you don’t meet your heroes, since you never know what kind of person they are behind the facade.

So he didn’t want to face his hero right now. He didn’t want to deal with what might be waiting for him when he walked through those elevator doors into the living room. He didn’t think he could look Tony in the eye. He knew he wouldn’t be able to meet Kaneki’s.

But Peter didn’t turn around to go home. There was still a small part of him that wanted to go try to set things right. And there was a different part that wanted everything that had happened the day before to be a dream. And there was yet another part of him, smaller than the other two, that made his subconscious know that something was wrong.

He braved the fans and press, making his reluctant way into the tower he had used to dream of entering. It seemed eerily quiet. The unnatural silence that you hear right before a storm. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he got into the elevator. Even the purposefully shitty music that was playing didn’t ease the tension.
The door opened to let in Vision, who said nothing for the ascension of three floors then got out.

Then he found himself at the lounge floor. As if sensing his apprehension, the doors opened seemingly slower than last time. The break in the silence was almost immediate. Unintelligible shouting filled his ears when he stepped into the room.

Then the shouting stopped right as the elevator dinged shut.

All he had caught was Tony shouting, with his mouth curled into a snear and his eyes full of anger, and Steve standing there in front of him, with a deadly calm expression and clenched fists. As if the dinging sound had triggered an explosion, Steve finally lost his cool. He threw a punch hard enough for Tony to collapse to the ground, out cold.
This was the first time Peter had ever seen Captain America this angry, and probably will be the last. Even with all of his anger Steve still looked ashamed of his actions. Tony didn’t move.

“I’ll go get Bruce,” said the small voice of Rogers as he left the room.

“What’s wrong My Lord?”

A deep voice growled. “We lost influence over Stark.”

Chapter Text

A week passed since then, but tensions didn’t lessen much.

Kaneki rarely left this room during the day and Tony didn’t leave his lab. Nearly everyone had found their own corners of the tower to stay in and avoid everyone else. The only interaction they had with each other was the occasional eye contact made in the hallways, or the unplanned meetings during meal times. Sure, Clint still hung around Natasha, as their relationship hadn’t changed, and Loki was almost always seen with Thor. Bruce always gave out morning hellos and Wanda found herself chatting politely ever so often with passer-byes, but she almost never saw Kaneki.

That didn’t mean she didn’t check on him almost every day, not that he was much to interact with. Kaneki was closed off even with her, his mind and emotions so tangled together that Wanda couldn’t make heads or tails. He would make conversation, but he was never really contributing or listening. He seemed to be caught up in a state of dissociation. Wanda was concerned.

Steve still saw Kaneki every morning before and after his run, though no one else even noticed that the white haired man had left his room. Steve started to find himself looking forward to their brief conversations. He genuinely enjoyed being in Kaneki’s company, even if the circumstance was never the best.

Loki would walk by the ghoul’s room often, half wanting to speak to him and half wanting to apologize for something he had no part in. Loki knew himself to be a vengeful man, that was one of the many things he had accepted about himself a long time ago, but he didn’t know why he wanted revenge for someone other than himself. He didn’t know why he cared. Nonetheless, he felt a rage for what Stark had done. He never did go to talk to Kaneki though.

All in all, the interaction between the Avengers reduced drastically. They seemed to realize that, even with the way he was now, even with the hate that had manifested, Tony was what really held them all together. Right now though, they still could barely be polite to him if stuck in the same room. There was a loss of respect that could not be easily regained.

A week passed and there they were, depressed and silent. Everyone blamed themselves for what had happened, which is to be expected when in a house full of heroes with inherent guilt complexes, but no one seemed to talk about it.

What else did you expect?

“Kaneki, Sir, you are wanted in meeting room one,” Jarvis said over the speaker.

Eyepatch rubbed his eyes and turned off his tablet. “Thank you, I will head that way.”

“It is no problem Sir.”

Kaneki found himself walking to the meeting room on autopilot. He knew the floor lay out well enough by now to do so without getting lost, especially when all he really needed to remember was what floor meeting rooms were on, then find the right number.

It had gotten bad.

The voices won’t stop; the screaming, the laughing, the crying, the pleading, the taunting, the whispering, the moaning, the snarling, the mocking… the voices clouded his every thought and waking moment like a plague. It was so loud all of the time. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t make them shut up. They keep telling him to eat, or kill, or… it’s just so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud, so loud...

“Have a seat Kaneki.” Eyepatch walked into the conference room to see the rest of the Avengers sitting around a table, his expression tamed to its perfect neutral. Everyone seemed uncomfortable being in the same room. Even Fury, who had no doubt called this meeting, seemed to internalize the air of discomfort that was radiating from everyone else. Kaneki sat down at the end of the table near Wanda, who looked towards him with concern. He ignored it, keeping his eyes soully forward and his mind as blank as possible.

Fury studied the room, seamlessly taking note of everyone before he spoke. Kaneki noticed how the man’s eyes lingered on him and Tony for a second longer then everyone else. “Now that everyone is here, I have a mission for you.”

The wall of windows opposite of the door gradually darkened before the wall behind Fury lit up with a picture.

“S.H.I.E.L.D has recently captured a criminal by the name of Kei Aito, also known as Rabid Dog by people of the west coast branch of the Japanese Mafia.”

A video played behind him. A masked man with white hair tore through S.H.I.E.L.D agent after S.H.I.E.L.D agent, effortlessly dodging bullets with an almost inhuman speed. Key word was almost. He had skills that seemed to rival most skilled assassins.

The mask covered only the bottom half of his face with black material, a toothy smile painted on it.

“We have been chasing him for years,” said Fury while the video still played in the background, “yet he had always managed to get away from us until now. He is wanted for smuggling, murder, assault, torture, and human trafficking along with a series of petty crimes. If you needed someone killed, you called him. If you needed a guard to get something over the border, you called him. He is an important part of the function of the mafia on the west coast.

“His recent capture has given us an opportunity. In three days he is to report to an underground party of sorts, hosting some of the most dangerous and powerful people of our current time. This is big, but we don’t know why the meeting was called. Regardless, it is a perfect opportunity to bring them down. Not only that, but one of our own has been captured and we need to get him out.

“The Avengers have been called in to help the operation go smoothly, plus,” Fury looked at Kaneki, “we have a unique situation.”

The background changed from a video to a picture, presumably of Kei Aito. The man was unmistakably japanese in origin, but his white hair and grey eyes made him stand out. His features were smooth and soft, yet he had this intimidating air of madness around him. Just from the photo you could tell that he was not sane, that he had earned his title as a Rabid Dog. But the most noticeable thing about him was that he looked almost exactly like Kaneki. Sure, it wasn’t to the doppelganger level, but to the level that with a touch of makeup here and there you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

“This will be an opportunity for you to see how S.H.I.E.L.D functions, Kaneki. We need someone to infiltrate the party while the rest of us crash it, so we can make sure that our man gets out alright. That, and it will be necessary to find out why there is a gathering in the first place. While it is a large operation, meaning not something we bring newbees on, I have little doubt that you can handle it with your skill set.”

Kaneki said nothing, only nodding in response.

“Good. We won’t be sending you in alone on your first mission in S.H.I.E.L.D even with your skills though, not that I doubt your competence.” Fury’s tone implied that is was trust that was the problem. “You will be taking Natasha as your plus one due to her experience in infiltration. One thing that works in our advantage is that it is a masquerade party, as most criminals like to keep their identities secret even to their own. That means that Romanova will not be recognised and we have more leeway with Kaneki’s appearance.

“The location itself is in the middle of San Francisco,” a picture of a shop appeared in the place of Aito. “The store is obviously a front. Hidden metal detectors are at all entrances along with armed guards. That means Kaneki and Natasha will have to go in without support. Luckily for you two, you don’t need weapons to cause mayhem.

“The idea will be for you to stay for a good part of the party. After the main event, whatever that would happen to be, contact us using the undetectable wire that Stark made and we will start the raid.”

A map of a building appeared on the screen. The space was massive. There were six floors of potential threats and secrets below the shop, all seemingly impossible to get to without being cornered underground.

“While the two of you find the prisoner, we will block off exits too keep everyone trapped in. Vision and Clint will be outside for anyone who slips by while the rest will be inside. The goal is total capture.

“The agent is on the deepest level. Tony’s job will be to clear as much as a path as possible; keeping doors unlocked, cameras pointed the opposite direction, etc. so all of the attention remains on everyone else. Once you get the agent freed though, you will be mostly on your own to get out. It will be chaos, and realistically the situation will not be taken care of by the time he is freed. There will be a back door that you can get through,” a light appeared on the screen to demonstrate the location, “but there will be no one but yourselves to get you there.

“As for the Avengers that I haven’t mentioned yet. You will be inside, helping to apprehend the criminals. This is possibly the biggest opportunity we will get to apprehend people we have been chasing for years. I can’t stress to you the importance of this operation, but it will be dangerous as well. That is why, I am telling you right now, that you have the permission to kill if necessary.”

Kaneki didn’t know what Fury was thinking and he didn’t know if he wanted to. Kaneki had little doubt that the man was smart, he knew Fury was so, but the plan had holes. It was too simple, too many things could go wrong. It was a raid, a raid is what this was. They are going to lose people, too many people, and kill even more. This isn’t the smart or clever tactic Kaneki would expect. He would expect something more fool proof, less bloody. Fury hadn’t just given them permission to kill, they have given them no choice but to do so. When you are packed in with the enemy, a strong enemy at that, who are willing to fight to the death, you are going to have to fight to the death. Maybe that is pessimistic, maybe it is just realistic, and maybe there is another way to do things to avoid killing, but Kaneki doesn’t see how this will end up well.

‘What were you expecting Eyepatch? That this organization was going to be all holding hands and talking things out?’

‘Please, you have the wrong idea about Fury...’

‘If you ask me, this is just more manipulation...’

‘You should be used to that by now…’

‘It is just like Aogiri...’

‘Or maybe even the CCG…’

‘Control.’

‘Maybe the Avengers are innocent, maybe not…’

‘But Fury is putting them in a situation where they have to kill…’

‘And we all know that he knows it.’

Somewhere deep in the back of Kaneki’s mind, someone started to laugh.

Chapter Text

Kaneki found himself outside of Kei Aito’s cell, watching every move he made.

‘Creepy much Eyepatch? Shouldn’t you at least say hi?’

Mad Knight’s voice was dripping with enough sarcasm to make Eyepatch huff inwardly. Though he couldn’t help but smile in amusement as well.

Yet, like it or not, if he wanted to pass as the man in front of him, he needed to pick up on his mannerisms. There is only so much you can tell about a person from their file. Sure, a file can tell you what family is alive or dead, who they’ve killed, where they live, even the name of their weapons if applicable; but it didn’t tell you what they thought about their dead or alive family members, how they walked, how they talked. Were they loyal with a strict moral code or where they chaotic and went wherever the money was? You know the facts but not the person.

And Kaneki had no way of knowing how many people in that gathering would know the person.

That was why he was observing Kei from the other side of the electric field, the man unable to see Kaneki himself. He was never the best at imitating others or picking up on their subtle quirks, but he hasn’t had a choice but to do so in him past years. Even the smallest of a finger twitch can signal an attack or nervousness; both can be used in a fight or when talking yourself out of a fight. It was something that Kaneki had seen Hide do on a regular…

God does he miss Hide.

Kaneki heard a door open behind him as another person entered the large grey room. The cell Aito is in is different from the one Kaneki was in. The room was longer than wide, but still fairly big in both aspects. Instead of being in a closed off room as a cell, Aito was merely cut off from them by a forcefield placed about two thirds of the way into the room. Currently said man was pacing.

“Don’t take this wrong, but staring at the guy is a bit creepy,” Clint said as he walked into the room.

‘Told you.’

Eyepatch repressed as smile. “You are a spy, you should know that what I am doing is necessary. Especially since I’m unused to the whole roll.”

Hawkeye moved to his side, eyes now fixed on Aito as Kaneki’s are. “I’ve never really gotten the chance to observe the person I’m imitating. The file is all I’ve ever gotten. Eventually you can get pretty close even without ever meeting the person. S.H.I.E.L.D does keep pretty thorough records.”

“I never had the ability to read people that well, never had the talent for it. I only learned because of necessity. If I can barely pick up on those quirks by watching, I would never be able to become a person without observing them in some way.”

“I’m sure you would do better than you think.”

“Maybe.”

Kaneki turned from the cell to look at the man next to him. Clint pretended not to notice, letting Kaneki study him for the moment. Despite his serious expression, it seemed like something was bothering him. Clint’s jaw was clenched too tight, his posture to stiff. It wasn’t from nervousness, no. If it had been, Kaneki would have averted his gaze and taken a step away to give Clint space. It wasn’t nervousness, but worry. Eyepatch didn’t know him well enough to tell why.

Kaneki did turn his gaze back to Aito. Seconds passed and felt like minutes.

Clint opened his mouth several times, only to shut it before he speaks.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Clint’s eyes seemed to lose a bit of luster at the questions. He just stared off into space. Then he snapped out of it. “It’s nothing. Anyway, I came in here to get you. Fury needs something.”

Kaneki turned back to him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Clint snorted. “Hate to break it to you kid, but none of the Avengers are okay. My worries are just nothing you need to concern yourself with right now.”

Kaneki found his way to the office from which Fury had sent for him. Even as he walked he could feel the movement of the helicarrier under his feet, making the hair on his neck stand on end. It may not have bothered him before, but Kaneki knew that he hated flying. Well, it wasn’t flying itself. It was the feeling of confinement that he got. If he needed to escape, there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide; just a vast openness that he couldn’t maneuver in. If it had been up to him, he would have made Fury bring Aito to the Avenger’s tower so he could observe the man there. That, of course, didn’t happen.

Finally, Eyepatch was in front of the door. Not knowing what else to do, he knocked twice.

“Come in.”

Fury was sitting in a chair, both arms on the desk with his fingers laced, when Kaneki opened the door.

“Take a seat, there are a few things I would like to discuss with you.”

Kaneki eyed the chair across from Fury before reluctantly sitting down. Fury’s office was only slightly bigger than any other room he had been in. The walls were a light gray and there were shelves on the wall to Kaneki’s left. On the right was a single, but fairly large window with a monitor above it. Fury’s desk took up a majority of the room, stretching a good two thirds of the room’s width. Over all though, the room was less extravagant that he would have pictured for the director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

“First of all, who am I currently talking to.”

“Eyepatch.”

“Right then. Now, there are a few things I need to confirm. First, have you ever been involved in a spy organization before?”

“I would consider Aogiri more of a terrorist organization,” Kaneki said flatly.

“Do you have any experience in infiltration?”

“I’ve been on a few missions, nothing fancy though.”

“Success rate?”

“If I had ever failed a mission I would be dead now.”

Fury’s expression stayed steady, revealing absolutely nothing.

“What was your rank when a part of Aogiri?”

“Me or Mad Knight?”

“Both, though I’m curious as to how they are different.”

“I was a captain, though due to my… unique position, I was somewhere between the second and third rank from the top. Mad Knight though, he was a bit of an outlier. He didn’t have any authority, but no one but second tier and above had any authority over him.

“As for how the rankings were different… I believe I told you that the members of the CCG thought of ‘Eyepatch’ and ‘Mad Knight’ as different ghouls. That is because we were for the most part. You don’t show your face to anyone in that organization, at least, the smart ones don’t. We were functioning as two different people. There were only two people that knew we were the ‘same person’ and there was no gain for them to say anything.”

Fury was quiet for a second. “What was your function then? What role did you play?”

This kind of stuff would have been better to ask before you assigned me a role in this operation.

“I was in charge of a specific group of ghouls, like a large scale squad. Everyone in the third tier was the same in that sense. I was in charge of gathering food, some rescue missions, assassinations or massacres, and, due to who I took my position from, I was also in charge of...” Eyepatch looked down at his feet, trying to blink away memory flashes.

“Took your position?”

Kaneki let out a sigh of breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “I killed a previous captain and took his job so to speak.”

“And what was he in charge of?”

Incoherent whispering filled his brain.

They were laughing.

“He was also in charge of torture for information, and since I killed him I had to take that over as well. I’m not proud of it, but it was a necessity.”

‘Necessity? Necessity!’

‘Of course that is what you will justify it with.’

‘Of course you would act like you didn’t enjoy it.’

‘The ripping…’

‘The shredding…’

Kaneki let the voices continue even is he wasn’t listening. Fury kept talking but it felt like it was inside of a vacuum. Kaneki didn’t hear what he said and wasn’t sure if he wanted to. That didn’t mean that he didn’t catch the slight slip of Fury’s mask, a slip that revealed something so unlike the man that Kaneki was forced to disregard it as a trick of his mind. It wasn’t like that would have been improbable.

‘The taste of blood…’

‘And counting and counting and counting…’

‘Over and over and over…’

‘Did he really need to do it?’

‘You could have refused.’

He hated it. He hated it, hated it, hated it, hated it. He could try to blame Jason for the reason he picked up that finger crushing wrench. He could blame the man for putting him in such a mental state that he even considered doing something like that in the first place. Logically, he could justify his actions on so many sick and twisted levels, but it nothing for the build up of guilt. There was a part of him that had enjoyed it, the voices were right. It was twisted but there was that dark sadistic part of him that wanted others to feel what he had felt. Why did they get to be happy? Why did they have the perfect sanity that he had longed for since he was a child? It wasn’t fair and he was going to take that from them, take it like Jason took from him and Jason’s torturer took from Jason.

Then there was the other part of him that… well, still clung on so desperately to his mother’s words. There was this side to him that knew that he had just been feeding the obvious cycle. How could he hate them? How could he want to take away the happiness they had been able to scrape up in this imperfect world? He had failed, given up so much so that others could be happy, yet there he was carving people open.

‘You talk like you were the one who had the knife in your hand. You very well know that I was the one who ripped them apart.’

Eyepatch furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

“There is another thing I need to confirm. You said that normal weapons can’t pierce your skin, correct?”

Kaneki snapped himself out of it. “Yeah.”

“Do you know to what extent?”

“No weapon that you would have could damage me too severely, especially if I had just eaten. Though I’ve never been blown up by a bomb, so it is possible that that could take me out.”

Fury eyed Kaneki warily and paused for a moment. He pulled a stack file from a drawer in his desk. “Then I’m going to further your task in the upcoming operation. You will no longer be freeing solely our inside man but also freeing everyone on this list.”

Fury dropped the file on the desk.

“These people are innocents for the most part. New intel came in today regarding their capture. I wasn’t going to give you the task unless I knew you had the skills to pull it off. Your job is to get all of them out.

“There is more intel that came in today as well.” Fury dropped a paper map on top of the already placed file. It was of the building they would be infiltrating. “There is a sewer access on the fifth floor that can lead you out of the fight zone. This way, you don’t have to try to bring a good twenty people through the fight. But the place isn’t going to be abandoned. There will no doubt be guards with guns and weapons. Your job is to take bullets so the civilians don’t have to.”

Fury stopped for a second.

“I want you to be completely honest with me. Do you think you can pull this off? If not, the civilians would be better off staying where they are until after. At least they would still be alive even if we lose.”

Kaneki scanned over the list of names, and the map. He, for once, wasn’t worried. Though everything can always go wrong. “I don’t think it will be a problem.”

“Good. I will be briefing Natasha on the situation next. You may leave.”

Chapter Text

Kaneki didn’t know when it had become dark out, he had been too absorbed in his own thoughts and actions. Even while watching through Aito’s interrogations, Kaneki hadn’t been paying attention.

What had happened earlier shocked him too much. To an onlooker, it wouldn’t seem like that big of a deal. Hell, someone who could read his thoughts may not understand.
He had thought Mad Knight’s experiences were his own.

This was different from remembering what Mad Knight did. When he remembered there was always this wall of separation like he was watching a movie play out in front of him. There was none of that this time. He had felt the knife in his hands, felt the emotions that were correspondent with it. He tortured those people. Yet he didn’t.

Eyepatch wasn’t sure if he could be ecstatic or mortified.

The two personalities seemed to be losing their division. They were becoming one person again.

But did they want to be one person again? Eyepatch didn’t know if he could take it. He didn’t know if he could take on those memories as his own without losing the little sanity he had left. He didn’t know if he could add Mad Knight’s madness to his own. He also didn’t know if he could bear to lose the only comforting voice inside his head.

He and Knight have depended on each other for so long. If it weren’t for Kaneki’s split, they might not have survived. The mind does strange things to keep itself functioning and maybe that was why they were merging now. The damage that had been purposely done to save him was no longer necessary.

The idea was still scary.

Kaneki didn’t bother trying to sleep. He didn’t have the willpower to deal with the nightmares he knew would plague his dreams. Instead, he found himself outside to the side of the helicarrier runway. It was quiet except for the white noise of the propeller engines.

The sky was beautiful as well. There were so many stars, one of the many things he missed about his temporary home in the Catskills. He briefly wondered how everyone there was doing. Who knows how many people saw him being taken from his home that night. It is quite possible that even if he wanted to go back he wouldn’t be welcomed. Still, he hoped that they were doing well.

Kaneki laid on his back, just looking up at those stars. Just waiting for something. Something, but he had no idea what. Yet sleep still eluded him.

Clint paced around his room. He couldn’t get rid of the feeling in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to break something. He wanted so much for them to be alright...

He had gone home to visit and there was no one there. His wife, his children, they were all missing and not even S.H.I.E.L.D knew where they were.

He had been so goddamn careful. He had made sure that no one had known where they were, yet they were gone. They could be dead for all he knows and he can do nothing about it. Nothing. A week, that was how long he had already searched and there has been no progress made.

There have been no ransom calls, no notes, no anything. He wanted his family back. He would do damn near anything for that to happen.

And the worst part was that he knew that this was all his fault. He had put them in danger by being associated with them and look at what had happened. It was all his fault.

Crashing from the kitchen of the Avengers’ tower shattered the morning’s silence. Kaneki resisted the urge to roll his eyes at Thor, who had been attempting to do… well… something. It seems that something as simple as getting a glass of water caused much more of a ruckus than Kaneki would have thought.

Twelve hours, twelve more until the operation. He wasn’t nervous, but part of him knew that he should be. There were so many things that could go wrong and most of them revolved around him. What if he got hungry? What if the hostages were bleeding? What if he wasn’t fast enough to save them all? What if? What if? Those are the thoughts that usually occupied his overly anxious mind, yet right now they weren’t.

Kaneki’s mind was silent like it was somewhere between the planes of existence and therefore unable to focus on anything but static. Part of him thought it might have something to do with the trickster reading on the couch of the living room he currently occupied.

Absentmindedly, Kaneki cracked one of his knuckles with his thumb. If it really was Loki, then he would have to thank him sometime. The small smirk that found itself onto said man’s lips confirmed it.

Part of him thought he should be angry with someone else messing with his mind, even if it were for the sake of his own sanity. Though, to some extent, he guesses he was used to having people in his head.

Kaneki finished off his third cup of coffee before heading down to the training floor. If he had half a day left before the operation, he might as well do something more productive than staring aimlessly out at the skyline of New York City. It wasn’t like he was going to sleep either.

Purposefully bad elevator music still rang in his ears when he stepped into the training room. No one else was there, but he supposed that was to be expected when it was as early as it was. The static from before started to fade from his mind by the time he started running the track. It only made him run faster to expel the building nervous energy. The world was blurred by his speed.

Time passed too quickly and Kaneki slowed to a stop. Sweat soaked his white shirt thoroughly enough for the white to turn transparent and cling to his skin. He ran his fingers through his hair; it was getting long, almost reaching past his neck. Much longer and he would need to tie his hair back to see.

Kaneki heard the elevator open, but he didn’t turn around to see who it was. He didn’t need to when he felt his brain return to static.

“Loki,” he acknowledged.

“Eyepatch,” Loki smirked. “I see that you are back in control and out of hiding.”

“Who said I was hiding? My room wouldn’t be a very good place to do so.” Kaneki spoke monotonously, unless of course, you were someone who knew how to pick out signs of amusement from under his facade. “After all, everyone knew I was there.”

“Then maybe avoiding is a better word.”

“If you wanted to see me that badly, all you needed to do was knock.”

“Would you have answered?” Loki raised his eyebrows.

“I guess we will never know. You spent too much time pacing outside my door.”

“I see both of your personalities have a bit of bite to them.”

“We bite in more ways than one.”

“Kinky.”

Eyepatch let out a light laugh and walked towards where he knew the towels were kept. “Don’t know if I would call it that.” Kaneki wiped his face. “So why exactly are you here, Loki?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“No, but you do have one. You do very few things without a reason.”

“And how would you know that?”

Kaneki hummed. “I may not be as good at reading people as some, but,” Kaneki then turned to glance over his shoulder at the god. “I can read you.”

“Oh? And how is that?”

“If you consider Mad Knight the one who can trick the trickster, consider me the one who can get the truth out of the liar.”

“You haven’t gotten anything from me yet.”

Kaneki pulled his shirt over his head before continuing to wipe the sweat from his body. “Maybe. But I know you have a reason, and that you are the cause of the static in my head. I’m not sure how I feel about that by the way. Not sure if I should thank you for quieting my thoughts down or freak out that you are in my head.”

Loki only smirked more and Kaneki pulled a dry shirt back over his head.

“Would you like me to stop?”

“Depends. Are you conscious of my thoughts in my place?”

“No.”

Eyepatch turned fully to face Loki. There was a pause. “For the god of lies, you truly are a bad liar. Let’s keep the people in my head to a minimum then, why don’t we.”
Loki only seemed more amused as he made a mock bow. All at once, thoughts and worries and voices came back, but Kaneki wouldn’t let himself stumble. He only cracked his knuckles and tilted his head.

“You are just as interesting as your counterpart.”

Eyepatch smirked then matched the trickster’s bow, not dissimilarly to how Mad Knight had bowed the week before. “I’m glad I amuse.”

Then Tony found himself in front of Kaneki’s door, fist raised to knock.

He felt like he was drowning. He wanted to apologize but didn’t know what to say, he wanted to take it back but knew that he was no time traveler. Tony didn’t know why he acted that way. He had known that he was afraid, he had always been so, but he would never, could never have done something like this. Tony was prideful, he was an asshole, he was selfish and arrogant and too scared for his own good, but this wasn’t him.

The problem still stood though: he did those things, said those things. He crossed a line he never knew that he could.

So for once, he decided to swallow his pride and knock on the door.

Tony heard the light sounds of feet hitting the floor followed by a lock coming undone. Kaneki opened his door with the perfectly neutral expression he had been practicing for years now. Yet the door handle still bent under his grasp.

Kaneki said nothing, but neither did Tony. They just looked at each other, eyes meeting; emotionless ones and sorrowful ones.

“I suggest you say what you need to then leave Stark. I don’t have time for your bullshit right now.” Kaneki’s tone was dark and even, not letting any emotion slip through.
He started to close the door.

“Wait!”

Kaneki froze, looking back at Stark.

“I… I know this doesn’t make up for anything. I know you don’t have any obligation to listen to anything I have to say after how I have acted. I know that you have every right to never come near me again, but… but I have to say it or I don’t think I could ever live with myself--

“I’m sorry. I am wholly and truly sorry. I don’t have any excuse, I don’t have any way to make it up to you, but I am sorry. I don’t expect it to fix anything, saying something like that fixes nothing. There is just nothing else I can do. I’m not asking for forgiveness, that would be unfair and wrong. I’m not going to ask anything from you. I just knew that I had to apologize somehow.

“I’m sorry.”

Kaneki stood there, not saying anything. His expression didn’t change and neither did the coldness in his eyes. He just looked at Tony as if gauging whether he was lying, whether this was part of some joke. Kaneki just looked at the man in front of him.

“You ramble too much Stark.” Kaneki pushed his fingers through his hair. “I don’t forgive you, but I am willing to. If you are truly sorry, then act like it. If you can prove that to me, prove to me that you are sorry, I will forgive you.”

“I don’t---”

“I am well aware that you don’t want my forgiveness, you think you don’t deserve it and maybe you don’t, but you need my forgiveness. Earn it and you will have it.”
Kaneki started to close the door.

“And I would apologize to the rest of the Avengers as well. It will be hard to gain their respect back than it will be to get mine. They look up to you Stark, don’t ruin that.”

Kaneki pushed the door shut softly and shook his head.

The room was silent, making the white noises seem like thunderclaps and his heartbeat a bass drum. Blood was running through his ears.

He was hungry again.

And the voices won’t shut up.

Yet Mad Knight was uncharacteristically silent.

Eyepatch pushed himself off of the wall and went to his fridge. He wouldn’t let himself think about anything but eating. He couldn’t, not right now when he was about to go on a mission. He didn’t want his confusion to cloud his judgment.

Yet Eyepatch just… he didn’t understand. People don’t flip their personalities that quickly, they don’t just hate you one day then apologize the next. Something seemed off, Tony seemed off.

The most confusing part was that he had been sincere. Kaneki could tell that much if he could tell nothing else. The problem was that he had been sincere before as well. Tony had meant what he said every time he had spoken to him, yet they contradicted. Something had happened in the span of a week that made Tony’s viewpoint change completely.

Kaneki didn’t want to trust it, the change. Every part of his mind was telling him that he had to have missed something. There had to be one indicating beat of the heart that he missed, one twitch of the mouth, one flicker of the gaze, something. There had to be something that indicated a lie, didn't there? Even with all of the doubt…

‘You had to have missed something.’

‘You really trust a word that comes out of his mouth?’

‘He refused to call you anything but “it” or “monster.”’

‘Though he isn’t wrong about the monster part of things.’

‘He has made your life hell…’

...Kaneki still trusted what he had said.

Chapter Text

“The changing rooms are down the hall; to the left for the men, right for the women. Take the elevator down to the party afterward.”

The information was repeated over and over again, once for each person that went through the front door of the “shop”. Guards stood casually by the entrance, looking more like teenage loiterers than bouncers. They had been ordered to make this place look inconspicuous, and that was what they were doing. Guests to this underground meeting were walking in like any ordinary people before seemingly morphing as they crossed the threshold of the storefront.

Natasha and Kaneki were no different.

They didn’t meet the guards’ eyes and spoke to no one but each other until they found themselves in the loud space of a huge underground ballroom.

The floor was crafted from black and white stone lain out in a distorted checker pattern. The ceiling was similar and held up by intricate black iron arches and columns. Chandeliers made of black and white orbs lit up the wonderland-esk space in unnatural, almost eerie, light. Terraces overlooked the large dancing space and grand iron staircases connected the two levels. The room was stunning to look at, and the people who occupied it even more so. Every single one of them was wearing some sort of extravagant outfit, ranging from ball gowns to tuxedos. No two exactly the same.

Natasha wore a long gown that fell to the floor in waves. The bodice was black and transitioned to a lacy red by the time it reached the skirt. Her mask looked exactly like Aito’s, black with a toothy smile on it, except for the more intricate lacework that made it seem more “girly” than Aito’s original. It marked her as Kaneki’s plus one, something that the other criminals have done with their guests.

Kaneki himself wore an all-black three-piece suit with a red tie, along with Aito’s mask of course. It amused him how similar their masks were. Aito’s looked more like the Cheshire cat and didn’t have a zipper, but the similarities were still apparent. His almost doppelganger had an almost identical mask, what are the chances?

Music was playing in the background of the room, barely heard over the chatter of voices. Everyone gave Kaneki and Natasha a wide berth as they wandered around. They held themselves like the killers they were known to be, which seemed to intimidate even the crime lords of the room. It made their job harder because while they didn’t have to worry about Kaneki messing up his character, they couldn’t collect any information by talking to someone directly. Instead, they settled to eavesdropping on conversations.

Kaneki found a pillar to lean his back against while Natasha walked off. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes, and just listened to the noise of the ballroom.

At first, he almost cringed at the amount of unfiltered noise. The amount of sound seemed to override the rest of his senses leaving him with a piercing sense of overstimulation. It was the kind of overstimulation that made you lose all bearings, something crippling to those not expecting it.

He worked to tune out voices, focusing on one conversation at a time, trying to pick up anything important. It seemed though, that no one wanted to speak about anything worth listening to. All chatter was almost innocent; well, as innocent as can be expected. It made sense though. The most powerful people on the west coast were all shoved into one room, and every individual there knew it. Who would be dumb enough to reveal secrets to a potential enemy? Everyone here was competing against each other in some way or another. Kaneki and Natasha were in a den of snakes, all with their own toothy smiles painted on their faces.

“You hear about the new blood?”

Kaneki caught the stray sentence out of pure luck. The whispers were hard even for him to hear.

“Yeah, the new guy. He was taken under the boss’s wing right? What about him?” the dark voice of a girl spoke.

“He has already ranked up again, now he is in charge of intel extraction,” said the original male.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Is he here today? They didn’t dare let him come did they?”

“No one would let that sicko anywhere near a party this important. You all know what is at stake.”

“Of course we do. Not one person here doesn’t. Today is the day,” this time a gruff voice spoke. He sounded almost automated.

“Today is the day,” repeated the woman.

“I can’t wait.”

The voices stopped and Kaneki shook his head slightly. He cursed under his breath. That hadn’t helped him much, while it did pique his curiosity. There was a new player on the field, and it seemed to be someone skilled enough to be climbing the ranks quickly. He’d have to report that later. Other than that though, the conversation gave him a new sense of urgency in finding out what is happening. “Today is the day” implies something more than a gathering or even the forming of an alliance. Something was going to happen in the next few hours that is big enough to get ninety percent of the west coast’s most wanted in one place.

Kaneki realized just how little Fury seemed to know, and just how screwed they were going to be if this got violent.

The phrase kept ringing in his ears. Today is the day, today is the day, today is the day...

Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Kaneki’s eyes shot open and he twisted, grabbing the hand as he went.

“Come now Kei, is that any way to treat an old friend.”

Kaneki froze for a second, eyes scanning the face of the man in front of him. Nothing seemed overly unique about him: brown eyes and hair, handsome but not overly attractive, not too fat or thin, not too tall or short. If someone saw him on the street they wouldn’t look twice, but the smirk on the man’s face said all it needed to about him.

There was a reason he was here in the den of snakes, and it wasn’t to be prey.

Kaneki kept his cold eyes bored as he dropped the man’s hand, pushing him back in the process. Despite the plain face, Kaneki recognized him. Shoda Goro (or Goro Shoda since they were in America currently) was one of the many people Aito worked with on a regular basis, at least until the man gave Aito’s name over to the police in a negotiation to save his own hide. After that, the man had dropped off the grid, so thoroughly that not even Aito could find him.

“Really Rabid Dog? I never thought you would be the type to hold grudges.”

Kaneki growled, before taking a step closer to Shoda. Shoda backed up just as much.

“Are you really going to fight me here? Come on. Sore ga anata no hyōban ni nani o motarasu deshou ka?”

“What would it do to my reputation you ask?” Kaneki was thankful for the voice modifier Tony built into the mask. “Sore wa yoki senu satsugai no yōna monode wanai.”

It’s not like killing you would be unexpected.

Kaneki took another step forward, and Shoda took one more back.

“If you were smart, you would never have let me see you tonight. Avoiding me would have been easy enough.”

One more step, causing Shoda to hit the wall. He put his hands up in a universal surrender sign.

“I didn’t think you were going to make a scene on a day like today. Besides if you were in my position, would you have done anything differently?”

Kaneki grabbed the man by the throat, pushing him up against the wall. He smiled under the mask, knowing the expression would show in his eyes. “It doesn’t matter what I would have done, just know that I have a debt to pay you and I like to pay in full. I didn’t earn the title Rabid Dog by forgiving or forgetting. If I see you after today I will kill you.” Kaneki put his mouth next to Shoda’s ear. “You get a pass for now, but only because today is the day.”

Kaneki let go and started to walk away, surprised at how easy it was to fake his anger. Now though, he needed to find out the real reason everyone was here.

Fury paced back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until it seemed like he would wear a hole into the metal floor of the plane.

His facial features may have been schooled to their normal apathetic form, but it was a facade. It was a facade he had mastered so many times over he wasn’t sure he even knew how to show the usual concerns associated with the human psyche.

Fury was supposed to be strong, cold, collected, and apathetic. He was a leader that made the tough choices and did what he had to for the greater good. People trusted him even if they hated his guts. He was said to be an unbribable man.

People need to learn that every man has a price.

There is always something.

Maybe that thing is hidden.

Maybe that thing is in plain sight.

But even the unbribable man can be blackmailed by something. You just had to get your hands on it. You just have to send videos of torture that make the viewer want to vomit their guts out watching.

No one loves nothing and the ones who love few love fiercely.

In the end, Fury is only human.

As the night went on, the ballroom became more and more packed. With that, it got louder, too loud for Kaneki to eavesdrop in the manner he had before.

Nothing much was learned by that point anyway. He might have some things to report, depending on who made it out of here by the end of the raid, but almost nothing was said about the reason there was a meeting today, to begin with. The same words were said over and over. “Today is the day.”

Kaneki found himself searching for Natasha. He was nervous. The lack of information was concerning. This was something too big to be kept quiet. Even in all of the hundreds of people here, no one was letting it slip. Worse yet, he had a feeling that things were about to explode. Eyepatch needed to find Natasha now.

He tried to listen to conversation fragments as he went by people, but he did so distractedly. The crowd was making it hard to find Natasha. He couldn’t even smell her due to the thousands of other smells obscuring her.

That was when everyone went dead silent.

“Ladies and gentlemen…”

Eyepatch followed the eyes of everyone in the room to the balcony. A man stood there addressing the crowd. He was maybe forty years old, tall, and wore a black mask that covered the top half of his face. The man stood with his shoulders back, chin high, feet apart, and arms behind his back. His grey hair was meticulously combed back and held together with too much gel. His aura was one that demanded respect.

“...and anyone in between, thank you for joining us tonight.” His voice was smooth but welcoming like he was addressing friends instead of the most deadly killers of the west coast. “As you are all well aware, tonight is very special to all of us.”

“You guys need to get here fast, something isn’t right,” Kaneki mumbled into the speaker hidden in the lining of his shirt.

The man started walking around the balcony like it was a stage. “Everyone suffers in chaos. We can never truly get places in life if there are no rules to follow, no way to do things. Order is something that keeps the world spinning.”

Kaneki looked for the door he needed to go through to get to the hostages.

‘Are you an idiot?’

‘You should be looking for an exit’

‘We know you feel it’

“Without organizing, we can never achieve anything worth achieving. Maybe you just want to be the king of some trash heap, but I”d prefer to control an empire. No empire is born of chaos.”

Eyepatch suddenly caught sight of Natasha. They locked eyes for a split second before people moved to block his sight again. He could tell she knew something was wrong.
“But that is just my opinion and that isn’t why you are here tonight.” He looked out at the people and grinned. “However, I think that all of you can see that what we have planned for tonight can not be achieved alone.”

Kaneki started to push through the crowd to Natasha.

“Tonight is the night!”

The crowd started to grow restless “TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT!” they shouted.

“Tonight is the night that we kill the avengers.”

Then all hell broke loose.

Chapter Text

Kaneki bolted to the nearest door, Natasha right beside him.

‘Come on Eyepatch!’

‘You could kill them all so easily’

‘We could feast!’

‘So much blood…’

‘We could eat until we are full and play with the rest’

They dodged knives, punches, swords, and bullets.

‘Why dodge when they won’t hurt you?’

‘Imagine the look on their face when they see it bounce off.’

Kaneki and Natasha heard an explosion behind them. Both were conflicted over whether they wanted the other Avengers to be here or not.

The doors around the walls of the room all burst open at once as fully equipped soldiers ran through them.

‘They look like they’d be a little gamey’

‘I’m in the mood for lean meat.’

“I guess we are going through them then,” Natasha said under her breath.

She ripped the bottom half of her dress off revealing knives and guns strapped over a much more practical pair of leggings. Then she ran straight for them.

Kaneki pulled out a gun he had been hiding in the inner pocket of his suit and a knife that he had in his shoe. He wasn’t willing to give away all of his tricks yet and he sure as hell didn’t want to bring more attention to himself than necessary. He was the only one of the Avengers that people didn’t know about yet and he had to use that to his advantage.

Plus, his job was to get to the hostages and get them out. It would be hard to get past the guards if people recognized him as the threat he is and focus on him.

For now, he is just another one of S.H.I.E.L.D’s many assassins.

‘You’re no fun.’

‘I’m hungry!’

‘They smell so good.’

Natasha dropped men like they are nothing while Eyepatch covered her back. Out of the corner of his eye, Eyepatch saw the other Avengers entering. Suddenly, the soldiers weren’t focusing on him and Natasha anymore.

Regardless, they made it to the door quickly and before they knew it they were running down a long metal hallway.

Lights flashed red all around them and sirens pierced their ears. Even in the tight quarters, Natasha and Kaneki had little to no trouble taking out enemies as they appeared. Both of them were much more nimble than the bulky soldiers rushing to the ballroom. Kaneki was slightly amazed at Natasha and how she fought. There was very little movement wasted, and even less time wasted. She used every part of her environment to her advantage with ease. It was obvious that she was a killer, and if Kaneki was fully human, he wasn’t too sure he would win.

Kaneki let Natasha lead him through the tunnels, each door they approached opening automatically for them. Kaneki prayed to god that it was Tony doing that and not another trap.

‘Could be both.’

It hadn’t escaped Kaneki that something was off with this whole situation. Sure, these people had to know that a meeting of this size wouldn’t go unnoticed by S.H.I.E.L.D, but they shouldn’t have known that the Avengers themselves would show up. They also shouldn’t have known that Kaneki and Natasha were also infiltrators. According to Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D had been very careful to make sure Aito’s absence was explained. They even had an official stand-in so Aito still had a presence in the public.

That isn’t to say that it is impossible for someone to find out that Aito is missing, especially if a close friend had an interaction with the double. It is also possible that Aito let himself be caught so that S.H.I.E.L.D had a perceived “in” for this party. But for that plan to work he would have had to know about Kaneki, as his resemblance to Kaneki is the reason that Aito’s identity was chosen as a disguise. Few people knew Kaneki was a part of the Avengers and all of them were in S.H.I.E.L.D.

The problem with that theory is that Aito is notoriously a lone wolf, a hired contractor, even if he is usually associated with the yakuza. The likelihood that he voluntarily got caught is slim. He wouldn’t put himself on the line for a risky plan like this.

So maybe Aito was caught by S.H.I.E.L.D, but that doesn’t change that the people at the party tonight somehow knew that Kaneki and Natasha weren’t on their side.
Kaneki was beginning to think there was a mole.

‘Why are we still here then?’

‘We could leave.’

‘Or we could at least join the carnage.’

The density of people decreased significantly as they got deeper into the tunnels, causing them to slow to a walk. Pounding footprints turned to barely audible footfalls as Kaneki shook those thoughts from his head. Right now all he could worry about was what was in front of him.

The lights around them flashed angrily, giving only brief seconds of red-lit vision before the hallway went dark again. In the back of his head, Kaneki was annoyed that it kept his eyes from adjusting so he could see in the dark. Both Avengers kept their hands on the wall to help guide them. It didn’t take much longer for them to reach a fork in the path, almost missing it due to the strobing. Left was the way to the prisoners and right was the way to the exit.

This time, Kaneki took the lead down the path. He could smell that there were people but it was impossible to tell the hostages from potential enemies. With him in front, he at least had the ability to take bullets if there was an ambush waiting.

The sirens that had faded now that Natasha and Kaneki were deep underground were replaced by the sounds of thirty-something heartbeats. Natasha’s heartbeat was unnaturally steady and slow, like they weren’t about to start their rescue mission. Kaneki’s was loud and fast in his head. No matter how many missions he went on, no matter how apathetic he appears on the outside, his heart is always racing when he is in enemy territory.

The hallway ended with a door. This one didn’t open when they neared it and for that Kaneki is thankful. He can take fire, but he doesn’t need to be just as surprised as the people shooting at him.

Natasha walked to one corner and Kaneki to the other. She looked at him and holds up three fingers...

Two...

One…

Kaneki released his Kagune and ripped through the metal door, keeping in his crouched position. Gunshots rippled through the air immediately but neither of the Avengers flinch. Whoever was guarding hostages wasn’t very smart. The group opened fire simultaneously, and within 15 seconds, the bullets stopped as they all had to reload. Kaneki made eye contact with Natasha for a split second before they both charged in.

There were seven guards, all struggling to reload faster than the duo was running at them. Natasha grappled the first, pulling him to the ground and cutting him with the knife, before turning to shoot another.

Kaneki just pointed and shot, not bothering to make himself a hard target to hit.

‘They’ll all be dead before they get the chance to leave the room anyway.’

One man dropped when he took a bullet to the head and the four men left standing jumped behind cover.

The metal room was midsized, and it seemed to be mostly for storage. There were boxes lining the walls and miscellaneous materials lying around. Straight ahead though, there was a thick metal door not dissimilar to an industrial freezer. Kaneki could hear heartbeats pound behind it.

Kaneki saw a head pop up from a box in the corner and immediately shot. He felt slightly satisfied when he heard the body hit the ground.

‘Hey, Eyepatch, I smell blood’

‘So much delicious--’

‘Delightful--’

‘Tempting--’

‘Blood.’

Kaneki growled to himself right before he heard another body hitting the floor, courtesy of the Black Widow. He ate right before he came here. He isn’t hungry, he isn’t hungry, he isn’t hungry…

A bullet bounced off the center of his forehead. Kaneki quickly returned the shot, hitting the man right between the eyes. Kaneki’s own eyes were glued to the blood splattered on the wall. The last guard started to run towards the door only to be skewered with a Kagune tentacle purely on instinct.

The room was almost too silent at that moment; all echoes of gunshots had faded and all sirens were barely audible. Kaneki just heard his pulse in his ears and the sharp breathing of him and Natasha. The grey room was now accented in red blood that caused him to salivate under his mask. Kaneki bit down on his tongue.

‘Hungry~’

Natasha walked carefully up to him, seemingly sensing that something was wrong.

“Eyepatch?”

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, trying to steady himself, “Yeah, yeah it’s me. I just…”

Kaneki took a deep breath and steadied himself.

“I’m fine, I just needed a second.”

He squared his shoulders and shook his head one more time before walking over to the fridge-like room.

Kaneki motioned for Natasha to take cover by the wall before ripping the door off the hinges. He didn’t realize how much he was used to eating during fights. He felt hunger crawling up, but it wasn’t dangerous. He would be okay. Nothing much here could seriously injure him anyway.

There were a few terrified gasps and screams when the door came off, but other than that, the prisoners remained calm. The freezer was fairly small, with just enough room for everyone to sit down on the floor. It also wasn’t cold and had a vent for airflow that was obviously installed. It made Kaneki wonder if this place really had been a restaurant at some point.

The prisoners were mostly adults, but a few children were hiding in the corner. They were all in dirty clothes that indicated they had been there for a long time, maybe months. They all seemed to compress themselves into the corner at the sight of Kaneki.

“It’s alright,” Kaneki said as lightly as he could, “we are with the Avengers. We are here to get you out.”

Relief filled their faces, one woman even let out a choked sob.

Natasha came closer to him so the hostages could see her through the doorway. “Who here is part of SHIELD?”

A man raised his hand. He looked the worst of all of them. He was bruised from head to toe, bleeding from his side, and had one of his eyes swollen almost shut. All in all though, the injuries were surface level. He wasn’t in any danger of dying.

The man got up and walked to the door and Natasha held out a gun.

“You are helping us get out of here. The first priority is the safety of the civilians.”

The man stood up straighter and nodded. “Yes, Ma’am.”

Kaneki nodded his head to him as well, finally getting his emotions and worries under a semblance of control. He then addressed the rest of the prisoners. “Let’s get moving, we need to hurry.”

That seemed to be all the motivation they needed and they quickly left the freezer and made their way into the storage room.

‘Now for the real challenge, getting 22 civilians out of a combat zone.’

Kaneki almost rolled his eyes but refrained.

A voice came from the back of the crowd of hostages.

“Natasha?”

Black Widow turned from the SHIELD agent and looked into the crowd of people.

“Laura?”

There was something about how she said the name that panicked Kaneki.

“Laura, what are you doing here?” Natasha’s voice was a tense monotone.

Kaneki searched his brain for the name.

“Aunty Nat!” One of the kids from before ran up to her and clung to her leg. Tears streamed down the kid’s face.

‘Fuck.’

“Clint’s family,” Kaneki whispered under his breath.

He locked eyes with Natasha and all she did was set her gaze and nod her head.

“Everyone needs to get ready to run. We have a van waiting, but we gotta make it there fast.”

The older men picked up the youngest kids and seemed to ready themselves.

Kaneki’s heart felt like it was going to break out of his ribs.

“Let’s go!”

Kaneki didn’t let himself hesitate. He unfurled his Kagune and started down the hall.

He heard footsteps behind him and he was careful not to get too far ahead of everyone. Natasha and the other agent were bringing up the back. His job was to take any fire and clear the front.

But fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Clint’s kids were in here. He had to have known they were missing, but there was no way he knew they were here. According to Fury, the rest of the Avengers only knew one S.H.I.E.L.D agent was here.

They needed to let him know somehow. Clint was most likely the mole if his kids were here, but he could move freely his family was safe.

That wasn’t even Kaneki’s main concern though. This meant it wasn’t just a mole situation, this was a full-blown, fully thought out trap.

Kaneki didn’t hear anyone in the hall and he turned to look back at the group.

Bang!

Kaneki shot the S.H.I.E.L.D agent.

He could see the surprise in Natasha’s face before she registered the gun in his hand. The man had been about to shoot Natasha.

The group of hostages screamed and the kids started crying again.

Kaneki continued on, but now his guard was doubly up.

He didn’t think that anyone else would turn on them. It made sense that the “S.H.I.E.L.D agent” would be a plant. As far as anyone was concerned, he was the only one they were looking for. It would be easy to plant him.

A thought hit Kaneki like a truck.

Fury knew. That’s why this was all a secret. The fact that he sent Natasha specifically, not only someone who would recognize the family but also someone close to them, also meant he probably knew Clint’s kids were here.

This wasn’t just a trap, Fury sent them into a trap.

Fury was also a mole.

They had to have something on him. The fact that he gave them different information means he is trying to go behind these people’s backs. This isn’t a willing betrayal.

That didn’t mean he knew what was true and what was a trap though. He trusted that Fury wanted them to get the hostages out, but he didn’t trust him to have a van waiting that was actually safe.

Kaneki clenched his jaw. He needed to get these people out and get back up to the fighting. If they have Fury and Clint in their pocket, they know everyone’s weaknesses.

Everyone’s except his.

Chapter Text

Kaneki turned the corner and led the group to the exit. The hallways were near empty besides the occasional straggling guard. Crashing and explosions echoed above their head, but he tried not to think about it. He couldn’t do anything until these people were safe.

It felt like forever, but they made it to the exit.

Kaneki paused before he opened the door and signaled the group to be quiet. Natasha waved the group to line up against the wall to keep them out of the way.

Kaneki closed his eyes and forced himself to focus.

He couldn’t hear anything outside besides the sounds of the city. If there was a car, it wasn’t running.

Natasha made her way over to him, a questioning look in her eyes.

“No one is there, but that means there might not be a car either,” Kaneki whispered.

“Hopefully Fury had the insight to drop one off. It’s suspicious that there isn’t anyone here.”

Kaneki clenched and unclenched his jaw. “Maybe they didn’t think we’d make it this far. That, or we are about to set off another alarm.”

“Does that really matter at this point?” Natasha pinched the bridge of her nose. Her body was tenser than Kaneki had ever seen it. “What’s the plan?”

Kaneki was almost surprised she asked. “If there is a car, you should be the one to take them to safety. I’m hoping you have a few connections here on the west coast.”

Nat nodded.

“The hellicarrier isn’t safe until we know who all is involved. Neither is the tower. Take them and get the hell out. I’m going back to join the fight. Hopefully, I’ll find Clint in time and send him your way.”

Natasha nodded again, even if she didn’t seem happy about it. It made the most sense that he was the one to join the fight. Natasha is an amazing fighter, but she is also the only one that could feasibly get everyone to safety.

Kaneki returned her nod and gripped the handle of the door. Ever so slowly, he pried it open.

The door opened into an alleyway. He could hear the fighting, but it seemed to be mostly contained indoors.

Right in front of him was a large white van.

Kaneki motioned the group to stay before walking out into the alley. He sniffed the air for any sign of explosives or gas leakage but found nothing. It seemed safe.

He circled the van once more before opening the driver’s door with a creak. The keys were right on the seat of the car.

Kaneki turned to see Nat’s head poke out from the door. He gave her a thumbs up and quickly waved her over. In return, she waved to the rest of the hostages. Without hesitation, Kaneki tossed her the keys and made his way back inside.

“Don’t die,” said Natasha as she started the engine.

Kaneki smirked, “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Loki wandered around the Avenger’s tower aimlessly.

He had practiced magic tricks until they failed to amuse him, then watched human TV until he lost interest in that as well. He cooked a bit, drew a bit, napped a bit, and so on and so on.

In short, he was bored.

The tower that was usually loud was now eerily silent.

Loki wished he could have gone on the mission with the rest of them, but he knew he was here on a probationary period at best. He hadn’t built up the full trust of the team, much less that of S.H.I.E.L.D. They weren’t going to risk it. Hell, they barely let him out of the tower.

Green sparks of random magic danced around Loki’s head. He spun around with it in aimless circles with a bored sigh. He clicked his shoes against the floor in random patterns.

After a while, he found himself back at the gym he’d left Kaneki at.

The thought pushed boredom to the background of his mind.

Loki hadn’t met a ghoul for years, much less a half-ghoul. It made him nostalgic. It dragged up memories and emotions that lay dormant, buried by the years that were the rest of his life.

There was a disease when he was just a child that killed the ghouls of Asgard.

It appeared out of nowhere. Loki remembers it started with a single child. They wandered in from the forest in a fever-fueled trance. Loki was in the village that day. He remembered running for the child’s parents, tears beginning in his eyes, and he remembered the panic that spread as fast as the disease itself.

It caused their organs to shut down slowly and painfully; their regeneration wouldn’t keep up with the disease. That was the first time Loki truly felt the effects of death.

The ghouls had been among the most feared warriors, with strength rivaling gods themselves, yet it felt like they were wiped out overnight.

80% of the population died in a matter of thirty years, and those who survived faced sterility. That was when the number of half-ghouls spiked, but cross breeds between Asgardians and ghouls were sterile as well. Their numbers never recovered. By the time Loki reached full adulthood, only a few hundred ghouls were left. A hundred years later, there were none.

Loki always loved the ghouls. He connected with their chaos and insanity, and they with his. Their community took him in when his home was hostile. They helped him with magic when his mother was busy. They tutored him in things other than combat, something his father never supported him in.

There was a time when he lived with the communities of ghouls more than he ever did at home.

Killing the ghouls would be something he never forgave his father for. The man didn’t even deny it when Loki came crying to his throne. His lover had passed from the disease and in a blind rage, Loki accused his father of killing them. The king of Asgard merely shrugged in apathy.

Loki didn’t bother asking why. Odin has killed many a species, and ghouls had political sway. They were strong enough to stand against him.

Loki’s mind wandered back to Kaneki. He felt a connection with him that he hadn’t felt since the fall of the Asgardian ghouls. But this ghoul from another world… Kaneki had much more madness and sorrow than any he had met before. Kaneki’s world had not been kind to him, but humans are rarely kind to those that are different.

Loki did admit that neither were Asgardians. That was something he had seen and experienced firsthand.

But Loki had quieted the voices in Kaneki’s head and felt the weight lift from the young man’s shoulders. He wished he could make that chaos go away.

Loki decided against going further into the gym and instead turned to leave. Maybe he could find some TV drama that Stark watches that doesn’t make him want to jump off a roof.

Loki made his way to the elevator.

“Jarvis, top floor please.”

Silence.

“Jarvis?”

Nothing.

“Did Stark put you up to this again?”

Loki heard a crash and the sound of the elevator moving upwards. That couldn’t be right though, Loki had made his way from a higher floor. No one else was supposed to be in the tower.

Loki cursed and quickly moved towards the stairs, keeping his footsteps as light as he could. His hand barely grazed the door when he heard voices and stomping boots.

“It says he should be on this floor.”

“Where is the fucker?”

“Fury better have given us the right tracker, or I’m sending him her ear.”

Loki quickly backed away and ducked into a nearby room instead. His mind raced.

Tracker, tracker? Where the fuck did they hide a tracker?

They had let him roam without handcuffs starting weeks ago, so he knew it wasn’t that. Loki always suspected there would be a tracker on him, but he never found it before.

Loki quickly stripped out of his jacket and tossed it aside. He took off his shirt and shook it violently, then his shoes and socks. He scanned himself for magic and came up clean, so he knew it wasn’t that.

Loki heard footsteps getting closer and began to run out of ideas.

Then he wrinkled his nose. If it wasn’t on him, there was only one more place it could be.

“This better work,” Loki mumbled to himself before sticking his fingers down his throat and forcing himself to vomit. He didn’t have time for much else, so he broke the window, then went to the corner and made himself invisible.

Not a second later, armed men broke the door down.

“FUCK!” one yelled.

The two others rushed to the window to see if they could see a Loki that wasn’t there.

Loki made sure they couldn’t hear him, but he breathed as quietly as he could anyway. He didn’t dare move an inch.

“The boss is gonna have my head!” The man who yelled looked at the pile of vomit and scowled. “He figured it out. Calibrate the trackers to exclude the ones in this room.” He barked at the other men in the room. “We have about ten more hours until they are completely out of his system at this point. Let's hope they have the west coast on lockdown by now.”

He turned to leave. “Go, now. I’ll let the boss know the area is clear.”

Then all three left the room.

Kaneki sprinted through the building.

The pit in his gut grew bigger and bigger the longer he was away from the group. The halls were empty and the alarms had stopped, but the battle shook the whole building.

He didn’t know how much was a trap. He didn’t know how much was Fury trying to help them out. He didn’t know the plan these people had to kill the Avengers, but the level of planning means they fully intended to carry through.

Kaneki half hazardly stripped out of his suit jacket and threw his tie in a random direction. He didn’t need anyone grappling him using loose clothing, especially when there were so many people.

He growled and took off his shoes in one fluid motion. He needed to run faster than they would allow.

The first thing Kaneki noticed was the smell. Copper, iron, sweat, meat, and fear reached out to Kaneki. It was intoxicating and dangerous. His head felt light. Adrenaline started pumping through him. He felt the blood pounding in his head.

The second thing he noticed was the carnage in front of him. No one was left standing. All the enemies lie dead or unconscious on the ground. There were piles upon piles of bodies, hundreds of people dead.

The floors were cracked, chandeliers lay broken on the ground, and walls looked like crumbled messes. Everything was stained in blood. The tacky mess stuck to the bottom of his feet. It was a sea of red.

The third thing he noticed was a man in a white suit. It stood out boldly against the red.

Suddenly his head became fuzzy and he didn’t really register why.

He could hear his heartbeat in his ears like drums. It was so loud it hurt.

His body tensed and shadow pains danced across his hands and feet and legs and ears and arms and neck.

His eyes wouldn’t focus. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know why.

Kaneki forced himself to look. He scrunched his eyes closed and opened them again. Every voice in his head screamed.

‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.’

Kaneki registered light yellow, almost white hair.

‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.’

The man was tall. Maybe that was a weird thing to notice, but the shadow he cast triggered memories in Kaneki.

‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.’

He heard the cracking of fingers. Kaneki copied without thinking.

‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.’

Black and red eyes snapped to Kaneki.

Screams he hadn’t realized he’d filtered out stabbed his ears like knives.

‘Or centipedes.’

“KANEKI!” he vaguely registered the voice as Wanda. She was flat against the ground, over to his left. He didn’t look. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the man in front of him.

A scream came from Tony as the man in white snapped his arm in an awkward-looking direction. Kaneki flinched like he was slapped, but never took his eyes off that man.

Tony was dropped to the ground with a thud.

The man took a step forward.

“Ka-ne-ki-kun~.”

Kaneki took a step back. He felt dizzy.

The man licked his lips. “Your fear smells delicious.”

‘Jason is here.’

Kaneki just shook his head. He took another step back and the man took a step forward.

“You are dead.” Kaneki’s back hit the wall. “I KILLED YOU MYSELF!”

“YOU ATE ME BUT YOU DIDN’T KILL ME!”

The man’s eyes were wild; his smiling teeth were stained pink from blood.

“After you left me to die, after that twerp of a CCG agent cut out my Kagune, I ended up here. A portal swept me up and dropped me in a graveyard in Japan.”

Jason cracked his knuckle with his finger and took a step closer.

“IF YOU WANTED ME DEAD, YOU SHOULD HAVE EATEN MY HEART AND BRAIN WITH THE REST OF ME.”

Another step forward and another step back.

‘Let me out.’

“YOU SHOULD HAVE GROUND UP MY BONES AND SUCKED OUT MY EYES AND CRUSHED MY SKULL.”

‘Let me out.’

“I’ll kill you again.”

“I was never done playing with you.”

‘Let me out.’

Kaneki growled. He was afraid but he was angry.

And Kaneki was getting hungry.

‘Let me out.'

‘Let me out, Kaneki.’

His head spun. His Kagune left his back without him thinking. Jason's began to unfurl as well.

‘Let me out.’

‘Let me out.’

‘Let me out.’

‘Let me out.’

Eyepatch blacked out.

Chapter Text

Wanda was sure she was the only one still conscious.

She felt utterly helpless.

The second they entered the room, a mutant sent the Hulk through a portal to god knows where. It wasn’t shocking, but the loss of their largest powerhouse sent a surge of anxiety through her. Something was wrong. They all shoved the feeling down. The second after that Thor knocked the man out with his hammer and they thought that it was going to be alright.

The Avengers fought through the crowd and the numbers never seemed to dwindle. There were so many people that nearly every blow they threw hit. So many people went down and they went down quickly. It felt like a massacre.

But the numbers were overwhelming and the fighters weren’t weak.

They were getting tired, which is more dangerous than a strong enemy in so many ways.

And bodies began to pile up.

Tony was the first to go down. He was already having a hard time of fighting as he didn’t want to bring the building down on top of them, but then his tech malfunctioned and he crashed hard. Their coms went down with him. Wanda looked for the source, for a jammer or a telepath, but found nothing.

Steve rushed over to support him or to at least get Tony out of his suit so Tony could run. Thor covered his back and they managed to get Tony to the door. They yelled for Vision and Clint to come in from outside and left Tony with them to rejoin the fight. Clint gave him a gun, but Tony could barely stand or support himself to use it. The pair stayed with him, defending him more than attacking the enemy.

Then Steve took a bullet from behind. It went straight through his leg and he dropped like a stone. That stumble was enough for him to be overtaken. They wouldn’t let him stand up, much less get a solid hit in. Every time he pushed someone back, another was right on their heels.

Thor used Mjolnir to clear more of the room, seemingly giving up on not using lethal force. Wanda followed in suit, using rubble to take out large numbers of people at once.

They finally felt like they were making progress.

Then the gravity shifted.

Everyone was pushed to the ground, enemies and teammates alike.

Wanda swallowed a scream when she saw heads crushed right in front of her. Blood splattered the walls and her face.

A man walked down from the balcony. The people around him were crushed under the force of his gravity.

Wanda watched in horror as he made his way to Vision. He struggled to get up but to no avail. Clint’s and Tony's noses started to bleed.

Then the man bent down. He held a metal contraption, similar to a hand, and used it to pry the stone from his forehead. That was when Wanda screamed. She forced pressure into the man’s head. She wanted him dead.

His head exploded but Vision was already dead.

Thor got up slowly, followed by a barely stable Steve. Wanda sobbed. Clint looked at Vision’s body in horror. But no one had time to process it. No one had time to breathe.

Then the man in the white suit came. Wanda’s eyes were pried from Vision and snapped to him.

Wanda recognized him from Kaneki’s memory. Flashes of blood and gore and pain went through her mind. Fear and sorrow and anger and hate all flowed through her but her body refused to respond. She felt Kaneki’s fear like it was her own. Her ears rang. She felt her mind shut off.

Wanda barely noticed when one of the surviving enemies put a power suppressor around her neck. Her power lashed out at them right before her powers were sealed. Wanda vaguely heard the head hit the ground.

It didn’t take long for Thor to be knocked out cold. Jason walked toward him, even when thousands of volts of lightning ran through him. The room started to smell like sulfur and burning flesh, but Jason laughed through all of it.

Once he reached Thor, he took a chunk out of his shoulder and threw him through a wall. Wanda saw red, but it was just the blood.

Jason started toying with them from there. He threw Clint against the far wall like he was a toy. In a detached way Wanda marveled at the strength.

Then he picked Tony up by the arm.

Kaneki ran into the room…

Snap!

“KANEKI!”

“Ka-ne-ki-kun~”

“I killed you myself.”

Wanda barely registered it all, her head was swimming. She just looked at the ghoul in front of her in horror.

Kaneki’s eyes were wide and he was visibly shaking. He looked past the carnage, past the bodies and blood, past the Avengers collapsed on the floor. Kaneki looked at Jason with abject fear and panic.

Wanda thought he looked so small at that moment. The image of a black-haired child replaced him in her mind in flashes. She squinted, confused at the sight before she realized it was something she saw before. She saw it the day she saw what happened to him.

Tears started in Kaneki’s eyes, just at the corners. His breath got faster and faster and faster and blood dripped from his closed fists.

Wanda saw the moment the fear turned to anger. Kaneki bared his teeth like an animal. His body arched inward and his whole stance changed.

Then his arms went slack and bared teeth turned into a smile.

Kagune started to rip out of his back, but they looked different from before.

Kaneki screamed and laughed in a way that burned into Wanda’s brain.

Jason stopped walking toward Kaneki, watching him with an equally alarming smile.

Wanda watched as armored, legged masses tore from Kaneki’s back. His laughing became layered and echoed and blood-freezing.

A long mask grew from Kaneki’s face.

Wanda’s brain supplied one word.

Centipede.

The ground cracked as the two ghouls lunged.

Kaneki used his kagune-like whips. They tore through the ground and bounced off of Jason’s armor-like kagune. Blood splattered the walls when the second kagune limb ripped through the already dead bodies that happened to be in the way.

Their Kagunes met in the air, each thrust having the weight of their whole bodies behind it. Kaneki dodged attacks and broke his own bones. He bounded from ledge to floor to Jason with inhuman agility. He laughed like he was having fun.

Jason’s teeth met flesh and Centipede was unfazed. Crunching echoed through the room but Kaneki only twisted his body and grappled Jason’s head. Blood sprayed as Centipede ripped out Jason’s throat with his teeth.

Jason tried to scream, but the sound came out as a gurgling mess. Wanda gagged. Kaneki sent a kick to Jason’s body and sent him flying through the opposite wall.
Dust obscured her vision for a moment.

All she could hear was the sound of falling debris.

Then she heard crunching bone and tearing flesh.

The dust cleared and she watched Jason walk out of the rubble. His arm hung limp at his side before Wanda heard it pop back into place. His tongue hung out of the hole in his throat. It writhed around until Jason seemed to get frustrated and rip it out himself. Too quickly, the hole closed and his throat healed.

“You are so different from last time,” his tongue licked his lips and spread blood around his mouth. “I can’t wait to make you my toy again.”

The crunching hadn’t stopped.

Wanda turned her head despite her better judgment.

Kaneki sat on a pile of bodies, head buried in the rib cage of some woman. He looked up dejectedly at Jason. Blood covered his hair, face, and hands. Kaneki stood and jumped down.

The girl he had been eating fell with him. Her head turned to the side and met Wanda’s eyes. Bile filled Wanda’s mouth and she vomited onto the floor.

“Anata o koroshimasu,” Centipede said in his layered voice. He cracked his knuckle with his thumb and lunged again.

Wanda didn’t watch after that. She stared at the floor and squeezed her eyes shut. She clasped her hands over her ears but it didn’t help.

She heard ripping and tearing and crashing and choking and screaming and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing.

Blood splattered into her hair but she ignored it. Organs fell in front of her face and she squeezed her eyes shut tighter.

She didn’t look up again until she was grabbed by the throat.

The thing that grabbed her didn’t look human. His face was gone, leaving behind muscle and bone. His once white suit was shredded beyond recognition. The thing that held her up sould be dead. He should be dead but he wasn’t.

“I wonder how she will taste.”

Jason adjusted his hold on her so she was held against his chest, hand still around her neck, facing her outward.

Centipede froze at the sight of her, more so like he was thinking than hesitating.

Wanda tried to meet his gaze, but the one eye she saw was blank. He was soaked in blood, both his own and Jason’s, but there were no visible wounds anymore. It made her feel relief and horror.

Wanda wasn’t afraid of Eyepatch or Mad Knight, but she was afraid of Centipede.

She didn’t know how to process that they existed in the same body.

“I’LL KILL HER! YOU MOVE AND I’LL KILL HER!”

Centipede cocked his head as if confused. He took a step forward and Jason took a step back.

A Kagune raised to Wanda’s temple. “DON’T MAKE ME KILL HER!”

Centipede froze again, this time visibly struggling. That horrifying smile had turned into a frown.

Blood dripped down the side of her head as the kagune pressed deeper, deeper.

There was a second where no one moved.

The air settled but the room was loud with thudding pulses.

A sweat broke out on Centipede’s forehead. Suddenly he grabbed his head and stumbled backward. His Kagune retreated to his back.

The mask began to fade.

Wanda was thrown to the ground, but she saw Jason’s kagune pierce right through Kaneki’s stomach.

Kaneki coughed up blood and griped the limb for support. Wanda made eye contact with him just as Jason retracted his Kagune. Those were eyes that Wanda recognized, but whether they were Mad Knight’s or Eyepatch’s she didn’t know. They were blank through, like they didn’t fully see her.

Jason smiled a toothy smile. Kaneki fell to the ground with a thud.

“Maybe you didn’t change too much.”

Jason pierced his Kagune through Kaneki again.

“Still unable to make the right choice.”

Jason walked toward Kaneki casually. Wanda notices his face was nearly healed, except for the nose and one of his eyes.

Jason kicked Kaneki in the gut and Kaneki spat up more blood with a groan. He lifted his head slightly. Jason stomped down in response. Wanda flinched at the sound of his skull against the tile.

“I missed my favorite plaything.”

Jason pulled something out of his pocket, it looked like a syringe no bigger than her index finger. How the thing wasn’t crushed in the fight, she didn’t know.

He crouched down next to Kaneki’s head, putting his knee on the base of his neck. The panic returned to Kaneki’s eyes. He thrashed under Jason’s grip, but Jason just stabbed him with his Kagune again. Wanda heard Kaneki’s breath catch.

Jason grabbed his face and pried his eye open with his fingers.

“You aren’t getting away from me this time.”

He jabbed the needle into Kaneki’s eye.

Kaneki screamed. Wanda’s ears cracked at the sound. It took too long, too long for him to lose consciousness.

Jason then turned to Wanda with a bored look on his face. With little emotion, he stood up and walked over. Wanda crawled away desperately, but she knew it was futile.

Jason growled, took a handful of her hair, and cracked her head against the floor.

Chapter Text

Kaneki woke up with a start.

His body shot up, legs kicking out as he struggled to orient himself. His eyes darted around the room, looking for...

So much of him hoped it was another bad dream. He knows dreams, he can deal with dreams. He can’t deal with the implications of this being reality.

He felt like he was going to throw up.

He took a deep breath, trying to give his body a moment to catch up to his mind. He closed his eyes again and placed his hands firmly on the floor. One more slow, deep breath. Feel the cold metal. Slow your heart rate. Open your eyes.

In front of him were metal bars. They buzzed with energy that Kaneki didn’t need to focus to hear. Past the bars was a wall, pieced together with rivets and metal sheets. Those metal sheets curved down to a soft corner with a similar metal floor. There were no windows in sight.

Kaneki shifted to look to his right. The bars ended a few feet away from him and met another metal wall. From the angle he was at, he couldn’t see where the hallway outside the cell went, but at that moment he didn’t much care. On the right wall, there was a toilet and a small sink but the rest was bare.

“Eyepatch?”

Kaneki flinched at the voice in spite of himself. He turned his head to look to his left.

The other side of the cell was similar to the first but much longer. There was no furniture or beds or anything else, just three other Avengers.

Eyepatch made eye contact with Steve and nodded, then he looked at Tony, then Wanda. They looked nervous. They all stared at him.

“Yeah.” He breathed.

He looked down at himself only to see blood. It was mostly dry at this point, flaking off of his skin when he flexed his hands. He looked like he’d bathed in it. His shirt was all but gone with gaping holes in the front of it.

Memories came to him in flashes. Kaneki grabbed his head, sharp pain coursing through him, and groaned.

Jason.

He dug his fingernails further into his scalp and took a shaky breath.

In and out, in and out, in and out. Slowly.

Kaneki looked back up at the Avengers. Tony and Steve sat with their backs against the wall a few feet apart from each other. Tony looked the worst. His face was a mess of bruises and blood, making his features almost unrecognizable. His arm was cradled against his stomach and it was bent at the wrong angle.

Steve had bruising around his face as well, but it seemed to be on its way to healing. The dark purple was fading to yellow already. His suit was cut off at the knee to expose what looked like a large wound through his calf. It was sloppily wrapped up in a dirty bandage that made Kaneki concerned about infection. He could smell the beginnings of it starting.

Wanda was curled in on herself in the corner. Her neck had a collar on it, surrounded by deep purple bruising. She had cuts all over her body and a large bump on her head. It was sad that she looked the best out of all of them.

“I don’t…” Kaneki’s voice came out like a croak. He cleared his throat, absentmindedly rubbing his hand over his neck. “I don’t remember much. I remember walking in and seeing… then nothing until Wanda… then…”

Kaneki touched just below his eye. He scanned the faces of everyone in the room.

“Did I hurt you? Please tell me I didn’t hurt you.” He knew his voice sounded desperate but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

He dug into his mind, trying to find any flash where he harmed them, but it was useless. It was blank. The blankness made him panic more.

Wanda’s expression seemed to soften. “You didn’t hurt us. You’re probably the only reason we aren’t hurt worse than we are.”

Tony shifted uncomfortably, cradling his arm more than before. Kaneki wished he could do something for him, but there was no way to help. The apprehension he had for the man was pushed under by concern.

Wanda uncurled slightly, a bitter expression on her face.

“He cared much more about hurting you than he did about hurting the rest of us. After you showed up, he didn’t seem to give a shit we were there.”

There was a pause. Everyone looked at a different part of the floor.

Kaneki let out a short laugh, making the group’s eyes snap to him.

He tried to hold it back but it just came bubbling back up. Laughter just came out of him in a wave. He fell over backward and let them continue.

“I’m sorry, it’s just,” he laughed some more, “My abuser, torturer, and rapist just came back from the dead, and to another universe, and tried to kill us. But his fixation on me might be the reason you are still alright.”

Kaneki wheezed.

“Oh and, of course, the only reason I was there is because I fell through a portal and got picked up by some secret society. That society found out I ate people and decided to make me a legal vigilante. What the actual fuck?”

Kaneki felt the eyes of the other Avengers on him, but he just couldn’t stop. This was so ridiculous, the more he thought about it the worse it got. His body tensed painfully from laughter and a weird kind of anxiety.

He was shaking, his full body was trembling, but it only came out in laughter.

He wanted to run, to escape, to claw through the skin on his arms and face, but all that happened was laughter.

Wanda was the next to start laughing. She just lost it, laughing as hard as Kaneki was.

“I almost got eaten by an interdimensional cannibal,” Wanda giggled, “I almost got eaten by a psychopathic, interdimensional cannibal.”

Tony and Steve started to chuckle as well.

“For fuck’s sake,” laughed Tony, “We all almost got eaten by an interdimensional cannibal.”

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to contain his own laughter. “God damn it.”

That just made the rest of them laugh harder.

It took the group a few minutes to come down from the fit of laughter.

As fucked as it might have been, it made Kaneki feel a bit better about everything. He needed the release of emotion.

His heart rate slowed, and so did the others.

Kaneki stared at the ceiling, counting the rivets absentmindedly and slowly calming down.

Eventually, he pushed himself up into a sitting position.

There were several minutes of silence.

They began to come back to reality.

“Any idea how long I was out?” Kaneki asked.

“About a day, give or take,” answered Steve, “I was the first to wake up and we’ve been fed twice. There isn’t much to judge time off other than that.”

“I assume that also means we have no idea where we are,” Kaneki shifted so his back was against the wall.

“I heard a guard talk about it being blistering hot but that’s it,” remarked Tony.

Kaneki nodded. He paused and sniffed the air, but he mostly picked up blood, metal, and sweat.

“I can’t smell anything other than us. As far as hearing,” he paused to listen, “it’s mostly people moving around the compound. There are also faint sounds of running water, maybe a beach or something?”

“I don’t like that implication,” said Tony.

“It’s probably a beach, meaning we weren’t moved too far,” Steve shifted to stand, “That makes sense. The plan was to capture us, but moving us far would take some time.” He slid up the wall. “This was way too organized to be a ragtag group of villains. This was some kind of crime syndicate.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. should have known about them,” stated Wanda.

Steve managed to get to his feet and he walked over to the sink. “S.H.I.E.L.D. probably did know.”

“Or at least some of them,” Kaneki rolled his neck to get the stiffness out. “We –”

Tony held up a finger, looking up at the ceiling. Kaneki stopped and shifted to look as well.

It was small, but it was unmistakably a camera.

Kaneki swore under his breath. He forced himself to listen to the surroundings for the buzz of technology. It took him forever to filter out the electrified bars, but when he did he didn’t hear anything other than the camera. Meant there wasn’t anyone listening in at the very least.

Kaneki turned away from the camera and spoke again. “There aren’t any wires, just the camera. They probably can’t hear us.”

“Probably,” mumbled Wanda.

“That’s weird considering how sophisticated they are overall,” Steve spoke.

“Maybe this is just a holding cell then. Maybe we fucked enough shit up that this isn’t where they planned on holding us. It’s possible we are gonna be transported,” said Tony.

Kaneki paused. “Why do you think they didn’t kill us? I could guess why I’m not dead, but…”

“They killed Vision for the Mind Stone.” Wanda curled back in on herself. Her tone was flat, but Kaneki could tell it upset her greatly. Kaneki knew the implications of the mind stone being taken by someone.

No one spoke for a minute. Kaneki probably knew Vision the least well out of all the Avengers, other than maybe Peter, but he knew Wanda and him were close. He felt a pang of sympathy for her and the rest of the group, but he pushed it back. The pain of lost friends had its own compartment in his mind, but it wasn’t one he felt he could process at the moment.

Kaneki hated the apathy he knew he had to feign. But there wasn’t time for grieving.

Kaneki hesitated, “Where are Clint and Thor?”

“They were alive last I saw them. My guess is Thor is under sedation so he can’t call Mjolnir. I don’t know about Clint.”

Something clicked in Kaneki’s brain. He eyed the camera and did one last check to make sure no one and nothing was listening.

“You need to not react too badly to what I’m about to say, or it will look suspicious.”

Steve limped back to where he was sitting before and sat down. Everyone seemed to understand.

Kaneki started explaining what he knew.

Natasha had people on her tail the second she pulled out of the alleyway, and has continued to be followed since then. No matter how many times she lost them, they just kept popping back up.

The first chance she got she ditched the car. It was hard to find another van that would hold all those people, but they got lucky. It took less than an hour for the enemy to find her again.

She then checked everyone for wires and trackers, but there was nothing to find. She made sure they didn’t have any phones or recent scars where a chip could be. She was running out of ideas. She continued to find nothing.

She stopped driving in any particular direction early on. She couldn’t go to any safe houses until they weren’t being tailed anymore. It was safest to keep moving, even if she was exhausted, even if she had been driving for roughly 30 hours.

“Everyone hurry, we have a ten-minute break then we need to be gone again.”

Natasha pulled into a gas station and quickly got out of the car. She could hear the smaller kids complaining and their parents shushing them softly. She knew they were frustrated. She was frustrated herself.

They were lucky the car they stole had money in it or they would have already been screwed. She left one of the men with the car and ran inside to get food. The cashier kept eyeing her and it made her suspicious, but then again, she had 22 people shoved into a van.

She checked out quickly and got back in the car.

Natasha sighed and rested her head against the steering wheel. She closed her eyes, giving herself a moment of peace. She was tired, but would be okay. She could keep going.

She had gone for longer. She had been in fight mode for longer. This was nothing.

Or maybe she just needed to lie to herself to keep pushing forward.

She was running out of options and that panicked her more than anything else.

‘Please don’t scream.’

She repressed the urge but jumped in her seat. Her ears strained to hear anyone out of instinct. The voice was coming from her head.

“Loki?”

‘You don’t need to speak out loud, just think it.’

Natasha could almost hear the sigh, but she was too off-kilter to care.

‘I don’t have much time. You’re too far away for me to keep the connection long, but this is important.’

What’s wrong? She thought back. It felt awkward, but she shoved the feeling down. Her seconds of rest were over and it was time to focus. Processing comes later.

‘There are trackers in the food we’ve been eating. They seem to pass through our system like normal food, but that takes anywhere from 15 hours to 36 hours.’

Fuck.

‘The tower is also being occupied. JARVIS is down, but they can’t seem to access any of Tony’s files. I’ve also seen everyone’s location and I’m concerned for the others. They haven’t moved for hours and the location is some supposedly abandoned warehouse in California.’

There isn’t much I can do for them right now. I’m currently with 22 civilians and trying to get them to safety.

‘Just stay alive. Based on when the raid was, you have another sixish hours before everyone’s system should be clear. I’ll contact you again when the trackers go dead, just try to move further inland if you can.’

Stay alive yourself. Natasha scanned the area and saw everyone coming back. Be our eyes for now. There might not be much we can do to get the others out for a while. Just try to keep tabs.

Natasha felt when the connection broke. She took a deep breath and started the car.

“We are almost done guys.”

Steve tried to keep as still as he could stand, but restlessness was getting the better of him.

What Kaneki told them made sense, but it also meant they were in over their heads. Backup wasn’t coming. They were lucky if Natasha, Hulk, and hell, Loki, were still alive.

His leg throbbed every time he shifted.

Steve was frustrated.

His whole body hurt, but he knew he wasn’t the worst off. He worried about Tony. The anger he held towards the man had subsided and was replaced with reluctant concern. His shoulder was out of its socket and his arm had to be broken in several places. If he didn’t get medical attention soon, it might never heal correctly.
Physically, he wasn’t worried about the others, but mentally he was scared for them.

Wanda told them what happened while Kaneki was still unconscious. The story made his blood run cold.

Jason, the man that tortured Kaneki for years, was here. The scars covering Kaneki’s body were burned into his eyelids. He genuinely couldn’t understand how Kaneki could sit here with any semblance of calm. Steve panicked for him.

It should have been the smartest plan to keep Kaneki sedated like Thor, which also concerned Steve. Kaneki’s strengths and bloodlust are hard to contain, even with another ghoul here. This group’s plan was so thought out that there was no way they didn’t think to keep him subdued.

The fact that Kaneki was awake meant that Jason wanted him awake.

That thought, well, it sent a new kind of panic through his spine.

And Steve wasn’t going to lie. He was scared for himself too. He was terrified. He was crippled, bruised, tired, and terrified. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to run. He wanted to scream until his voice gave out and his lungs collapsed.

And he was angry with himself. He had finally gotten comfortable in S.H.I.E.L.D., after so long in the Avengers. Now he knows it was something he never should have let himself do. He trusted. He trusted for the first time since Bucky. He trusted Fury and now he was here.

The logical side of him didn’t blame Fury, at least not fully. He let Natasha and Kaneki get Clint’s family out at the very least, and if they could tell Clint they might just have a spy because of it. Fury obviously tried to get around whatever blackmail, whatever gun they had pointed at him, but there was another part of Steve that didn’t care. He didn’t care that they had to have gotten something so bad on Fury that he sold out the Avengers, because if someone had just threatened Fury, Fury would have let most things burn. That knowledge didn’t come from a place of trust, it came from a place of understanding men like him.

Steve never should have trusted like he did, and it was a mistake he might never be able to make up for.

Clint’s betrayal was more personal, but Steve found it easier to forgive him. These people had his family. Steve would have done the same and has done the same. Maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe it's because he understands Clint, and maybe that is a double standard.

But Clint wasn’t their leader, Fury was.

Clint was saving the family that had given him a home before.

And Fury was probably the one to give up Laura and the kids’ hiding place.

That was something Steve could never forgive. And he was too exhausted to analyze things further than that.