Happy birthday! rare pair hc for ToukaxKimi: when Kimi first saw Touka at the church, there was a broken stained glass window of an avenging angel behind Touka. It looked like the angel stepped out of the window: beautiful, just, and wounded
!! that is BEAUTIFUL. i feel like i could see perfectly too how any light emitted by touka's kagu (which seem to emit light?? sometimes???) would have played really beautifully across the glass ////and maybe even though kimi is the one who has been hurt, at that moment, with touka wounded as she is, kimi feels that same thing she felt with nishiki, like she wanted to embrace her and use some of her life to help make touka well again ///////thank you!!
for tgfemslashweek! the prompt is sound. hope you’re having a good day~
contains // ~1900 words, major character death, some violence/blood, angst.
excerpt //
Thinking back on it more, Kimi was there often. She was just — quiet.
She waited for Nishiki at the end of his shifts, cracking shy smiles at their biting conversations. She smiled and waved wordless hellos and goodbyes with her bracelet glittering.
Touka barely gave her a second glance, then. Now, she looks up and stares as Kimi places a can coffee on the table in front of her.
“O-oh,” Kimi says nervously, when Touka doesn’t respond. “Do you…not like these? I just thought…maybe…”
“It’s not that,” Touka tells her. “It’s just…it’s…”
She trails off. Amends her words. “It’s not my favorite,” she finishes weakly.
For a while, Touka thinks, I barely even know her.
She barely even remembers her. But, thinking back on it more, Kimi was there often. She was just — quiet.
She waited for Nishiki at the end of his shifts, cracking shy smiles at their biting conversations. She smiled and waved wordless hellos and goodbyes with her bracelet glittering.
Touka barely gave her a second glance, then. Now, she looks up and stares as Kimi places a can coffee on the table in front of her.
“O-oh,” Kimi says nervously, when Touka doesn’t respond. “Do you…not like these? I just thought…maybe…”
“It’s not that,” Touka tells her. “It’s just…it’s…”
She trails off. Amends her words. “It’s not my favorite,” she finishes weakly.
Kimi smiles, though it’s more like a grimace.
“I…see. Well, I just have…a lot of them left over. So…I thought, maybe…I mean, it’s okay if you don’t…”
She doesn’t finish. Touka is reaching forward, snapping the can open loudly, taking a hearty gulp. The taste of Nishiki’s favorite drink is very close to real coffee, with an extra tinge of metal, though maybe that’s just because Touka’a teeth are digging into the can’s rim.
The can makes a harsh noise as Touka smacks its down onto the table and wipes her mouth.
“Thanks,” she says, with some effort. She takes a shaky breath. “Why don’t you…go and get some sleep? You look like you could use it.”
Kimi’s eyes are red and dark beneath, and lack is sleep is certainly a good excuse for why.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Touka tells her. “Go.”
It’s only when Touka alone that she can bear to let herself grieve, and even then she does it with another full gulp of coffee and two palms pressed up against her eyes.
:::
You’d think that after losing so many people, you’d just get better at it.
Instead, their old banter flurries in her head. No matter how sharp it had been, it had never truly cut, except for once.
“I have no idea what you see in her,” Touka said at that time, and Nishiki’s eyes had flared at the grain of honesty in it.
“Just promise me,” he snapped quietly, and he was so serious about it that Touka huffed.
“Fine. Whatever.”
Now here she is. Mapping out the silent parts of Kimi’s apartment so that she can pace in utter silence. Going through one coffee can after another to keep from nodding off. Strategically plotting out the best time and route she can take to put out Kimi’s overflowing recycling.
Too late, Touka realizes everything wrong with what she vowed. There’s no way she can protect Kimi like this. There’s no way she can protect anyone at all.
Still. She teaches Kimi some basic fighting skill. She goes out to stock Kimi’s fridge with food, and makes sure that Kimi eats it. She shadows Kimi across campus, and is both annoyed and relieved when no one shows up to drag her off to Cochlea, or whatever worse place there is for humans that betray their kind.
It’s useless to be working this hard.
Everything, really, is useless.
Useless, and ugly.
Touka spins an almost-empty coffee can on a table, staring with hooded eyes, listening to the splash of liquid inside. There’s just a little left. Too small of an amount to escape the can’s inner surfaces.
“Do you need some more?” Kimi asks. “I can go get some.”
“No,” Touka says dully. “Don’t bother.”
She could stop there, but exhaustion makes her just a little mean. She flings the coffee can at the recycling bag, and Kimi winces at the loud clang of it.
“I need real food,” Touka tells her.
“O-oh,” Kimi says. “I see. Have you not…from the cafe…?”
“That cafe is long gone,” Touka tells her.
“Oh,” Kimi says. “Right, I know that, but I thought…I mean, Nishiki mentioned that…there was a new one. That you started.”
Touka grits her teeth. She should be nicer. Instead, she repeats herself.
“That cafe,” she says slowly, “is long gone.”
“Oh,” Kimi says softly. “I see.”
She shifts her weight visibly from foot to foot. “If you need to go hunting,” she says, “please, go. I’m sure I’ll be fine for a little bit. It’s better for you to do what’s best for yourself.”
She’s so meek. Touka sighs. “I’ll be alright for another couple days,” she says. And when Kimi opens her mouth to interrupt — “Don’t worry. Nishiki wouldn’t have forgiven me if something happened to you.”
“Oh. I see.”
There’s no more conversation after that. Kimi takes up her usual spot on the far side of the table and studies while Touka paces, picks over a spare biology textbook, watches out the window.
The silence between them is tenser than usual, and she regrets her outburst enough to allow Kimi some time alone after school when she asks for it. The whole time, though, Touka fidgets and gnaws on her lip and suppresses a thousand images of Kimi being dismembered, Kimi being eaten, Kimi being caught and thrown into a suitcase. When Touka finally spots Kimi heading up the apartment stairs, her relief bursts out of her in a groan.
“What took you so long?” Touka demands, opening the door. Kimi doesn’t answer her; instead, she comes in, locks the door, and pulls a package out of her backpack.
She doesn’t need to explain what it is. The sound of waxed paper crackling away from something soft is a subtle noise that Touka understands immediately.
“Please,” Kimi says, “help yourself,” and Touka’s stomach is too loud and empty for her to protest. She swallows it all down, with her bare hands, partly out of her true hunger, and partly just to see what Kimi will do about it. She brushes her hair aside to check Kimi’s reaction, and sees only a smile.
Touka swallows.
“Where did you get this?” she asks, and Kimi laughs, feebly, in answer.
“You better not have done anything to put yourself in danger,” Touka tells her, and Kimi’s smile only broadens, shyly.
“Don’t worry. It’s just...Nishiki wouldn’t have forgiven me if something happened to you.”
She sounds — so cheeky. Before she can stop herself, Touka laughs, and Kimi laughs too, loudly.
They are at it for a while, then, helplessly. They laugh themselves weak. Sometime later, they search for a box of tissues.
:::
Touka still doesn’t really see what Nishiki saw.
But…it’s not totally unpleasant to watch over her.
Slowly, she learns more. Kimi lost her family too; not in the same way, but with the same senselessness. They both had a mother, a father, a brother. And they both had Nishiki, too, sort of.
“He was a jerk,” Touka says, and Kimi laughs.
“I kind of liked that about him.”
Slowly, Touka feels pity. Kimi jumps at every small noise, and rubs her goosebump-covered arms, and studies relentlessly. Touka makes her coffee to help keep her focused, and helps her review.
“I was sort of interested in biology,” Touka finds herself admitting one day, and Kimi brightens.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Touka says. She tries to shrug it off, but then they go together to the campus bookstore, and pick out a lower-level biology textbook.
“I’m going to give you assignments,” she tells Touka warningly, and Touka rolls her eyes.
“Thank goodness. I was dying of boredom.”
It’s…nice.
It’s easy to think that after losing so many people, it would be hard to let herself get close again, and still it happens, as surely as the sun setting every day on that small apartment, as surely as the arrival of winter and their ankles brushing beneath the Kimi’s small, humming kotatsu.
Kimi is quiet, but still their soft chatting reels Touka back, inexorably. Soon, Touka is on her second textbook. Soon, she’s spending more time perusing it than watching out the window.
And that’s when it happens.
:::
How could she have forgotten?
On that day — things happen faster than even she expected. One moment, Touka is about to doze off. The next, the doorknob is rattling.
Touka stiffens, straightens. She and Kimi exchange a panicked glance. Then Touka scrambles to her feet, just in time. There are multiple silhouettes out the window, and then — there isn’t a window at all.
Noises assault her. A crash as the glass shatters — Kimi’s gasp, and her scream — the razor-sharp whoosh of Touka’s kagune gusting out in full force, the high-pitched whistling of crystals through the air. Flesh tears. There are shrieks, followed by shouted commands, and the sound of suitcases slapping open.
“Kimi,” Touka gasps, “run, your bedroom, run,” and she turns to face the Doves, and isn’t prepared when Kimi grabs her hand and yanks her along. Touka yells, in surprise and then in fury, but Kimi’s grip is surprisingly strong. Some kind of bladed monstrosity buries itself in the place where Touka stood and Touka ends up following her into the bedroom, shutting the door, holding it as Kimi works furiously at the window.
:::
How could she have forgotten?
A voice, from the past, echoes in her mind. It was quiet then, but now Touka hears it, deafening, over the sound of the door splintering, and the sound the window finally opening.
:::
Touka swallows. She needs to protect Kimi. She needs to —
“Touka!” Kimi cries. “Let’s go!”
“You first,” Touka tells her, and when Kimi shakes her head, Touka snarls at her and shoves her out onto the landing. “Go! Get out!”
Kimi tumbles out of view. Light spills into the room like sabers as the door breaks down, and Touka fires, her kagune emitting roaring static. She doesn’t have a huge amount of energy left, but she has — enough.
Just enough.
:::
You’d think…that after losing so many people…you’d just get better at it.
Despite her best efforts, her memories of everyone that’s gone before her become hazy, smeary blurs. In the last moments, she tries to summon all of them, as many as possible, and the blur starts infecting her, spilling into her own body — into the screeching and numbing of her agonized muscles — into the mud of her spilling blood.
All around her are the bodies of those that have fallen before her. As she looks around, all she can feel is a hollow in her chest that can admit almost the entirety of her right hand.
Her vision stings. Darkness encroaches, just as the apartment door opens again, to admit another fucking human. Touka tries to lunge, and instead collapses.
She hears the loud splash of her own blood as someone approaches. She almost laughs.
It was useless to be working as hard as she did.
Everything, really…was…useless.
Useless, and —
“Touka.”
Just like before, a quiet voice spears. Touka’s eyes roll open, partly in shock, and partly because there’s — there’s food, there’s food, there’s food. Her mouth opens, and her muscles work, struggling mindlessly for existence, the way that those textbooks taught her. Her wild eyes spot a scar, and then all she knows is brilliant flavor.
She stops, as soon as she can control herself. Kimi is crying, and clutching Touka close, and Touka’s bloodstained arms tremble as she raises them. Feebly, they rest around Kimi’s waist, and Kimi buries her face in Touka’s hair.
Kimi could have just left. She’s just some — weakling human. She could have — she should have just left Touka behind. Instead, she’s here, bleeding, and firm, and warm.
Touka’s eyes water. Those old words echo out to her, filling her with living heat. She understands, so suddenly and with such force that her own voice spills out of her, before she can stop it, before she can stifle it.
