Worlds Away {Ghoul! Suzuya Juuzou x female reader}

Threats

I reached my arms out lazily in a still-half-asleep stretch, eyelids fluttering open when my fingertips landed on a cool expanse of sheet instead of Juuzou's sleeping form.

I sat up, taking in the smoothly tucked sheet. I shivered in the brisk morning air as I tiptoed to the bathroom down the hall from Juuzou's room and, not finding him there either, padded down the remaining length of hallway to Amaya's room, where I knocked gently on the door.

It opened almost immediately and Amaya beckoned me in quickly before shutting it behind us.

Amaya was already fully dressed, hair combed, ready to leave the house whenever the boss spoke a command.

She sat down on the bed, hands tucked under her thighs, waiting patiently for me to tell her why I'd knocked at her door.

"Amaya... Have you seen Juuzou?"

She cocked her head, bangs falling across her eyes, but not before I saw a flash of something off in the depths of her caramel brown eyes.

"I haven't seen him since last night when you guys said goodnight." Her voice faltered.

"O-okay. Well he's not here, do you have any idea where he might have gone?"

She shook her head slowly, picking at her cuticles.

I sighed and left her room, closing the door loudly behind me.

**Juuzou's point of view**

"A ghoul?" Marude seemed to struggle to wrap his mind around the phrase.

"Mhm, need proof?" I gave him a toothy grin and leaned forward, resting my elbows on his desk.

He moved his chair back incrementally, only starting to shake his head before I took my eyes off his face and searched his desk, my gaze landing triumphantly on a letter opener resting near a stack of mail.

I grabbed it, watching the fear fester in his eyes as I made a quick slice across my inner wrist with enough force to sever veins and possibly nerves if I were human.

Instead the blade tugged at my skin, but left it completely unmarred.

I smiled at him, sliding the letter opener across the desk. "Would you like to try?" I watched a parade of emotions cross his face fleetingly, unable to identify any of them except the one that remained, fear. Marude was scared of me, here, in a building full of investigators who could easily take me down. Here, where all he had to do was sound an alarm and I'd be put down like a rabid dog. Why?

"You know the cost of turning yourself in, don't you Suzuya? If you don't have information that we need, you'll just be executed."

"Yes," I purred. "But I have information that you'll want."

**

I showered and dressed like it was a normal day, but the trembling of my hands claimed otherwise.

Something about the way Amaya looked... She was so nervous... She's hiding something.

I grabbed a knife from the drawer of my things in Juuzou's dresser and headed to Amaya's room, tapping at her door for the second time that day.

She opened it and I barged in, pushing her slender frame against the wall and holding my knife to her throat.

Her eyes were wide, filled with betrayal. "Just tell me where he is. I know you know, because you're a terrible liar. I just need to know if he's in danger. Please." My voice cracked.

She grabbed onto the wrist that held the knife, nails digging into my flesh, wordlessly begging me to remove it from her throat, where the blade rested just below the neat row of stitches holding together her still-healing cut.

I let my arm fall to my side, shrugging my shoulders in defeat. "This knife wouldn't have hurt you anyway. It's just a plain knife. I don't want to hurt you, Amaya. I just need to know where Juuzou is."

Amaya let her legs go limp under her, sliding down the wall to the floor.

"I don't know exactly where he went. He just told me... That he was going to fix what had happened, since it was his fault. And he told me not tell you no matter what. But Y/N, I'm worried about him too. So I can't keep it to myself. I think.." Her voice dropped to a whisper barely above the sound of an exhale. "I think he's going to try to give information to the police about our boss. Which will end really, really badly for him."

I sat down on the floor next to Amaya, my voice copying the volume of hers. "I thought you didn't know anything about him?"

Amaya clenched her fists. "We didn't. Until about 10 days ago."

She took in a shaky breath. "He thought we'd left for an errand already. I came upstairs because I forgot my phone. I saw his face... it was the face of someone I used to know. When he realized I'd seen him, he went crazy, starting throwing me around like I was a doll. He... He tried to rape me. It wouldn't have been the first time...He raped me years ago, when I was still a child." She choked back a sob and I instinctively reached out my hand, placing it over hers.

"That day...Juuzou heard all the noise and came upstairs. He stopped him b-but then... He just beat Juuzou worse than he had me, and I couldn't do anything to stop him, I was so scared." She put her face in her hands.

"What happened then?" I whispered.

She wiped her face quickly before meeting my eyes again.

"He said that if we spoke a word to anyone, or if we tried to quit working for him, he'd kill the people precious to us, and then he left. Switched his location out of fear of being found out, in case his threat wasn't enough to keep us quiet. I don't have anyone, but Juuzou has you. I'm scared for you Y/N-chan. I don't doubt that he'll do what he threatened. My old partner, the one I had before Juuzou. The one who recruited me..she-"

"You can tell me that story on the road. Amaya, we need to leave. I don't know where we're going to go. But anywhere is safer than here." My blood ran cold. I felt trapped, taken over by a nervous energy, a need to flee.

Amaya nodded slowly, running my words through her mind as she stood up, starting to pack without me even telling her to, like she was used to running.

I went to Juuzou's room and began to do the same, packing what little stuff I kept there into a plastic bag.

**Juuzou's point of view**

I felt the cold metal of the too-tight handcuffs biting at the skin of my wrists, but I didn't feel anything else as one of Marude's lackeys threw me roughly into a CCG transport van.

I watched the scenery out the window flit past my eyes, knowing exactly where I was going.

I'd earned myself a fast pass to Cochlea.