Chapter Four

"bed, absence, bicycle"
by rednightengale and ysabet
theme music: What Happens Tomorrow, Duran Duran
insert song: The Tempest, Pendulum

Kid woke in a hospital bed. He could tell what it was even before his eyes were open; when he did get them open, with difficulty, the glare of white ceilings and white light and white everything was strong enough that he squeezed them shut again. He instinctively reached to rub the grit from his eyelashes, but as soon as he crooked his index finger to do so, the pain made him flinch and relax every muscle again, holding his whole body perfectly still until he could figure out what hurt, and why.

And more importantly, until he knew exactly how much trouble he was in.

"No one knows who you are, John Doe." The voice was light, young, and directly to his left. Conan, probably sitting in a visitor's chair. Kid turned his face toward the sound of Conan's voice - then, slow thoughts belatedly catching up with his situation, turned his face away quickly. The fast motion yanked on his bandaged throat and he winced in pain.

"Stay still. You have been asleep exactly eleven hours and twenty seven minutes, about half of the time that the hospital staff estimated you would need to regain consciousness. Dr. Agasa and myself are the only persons who know where you are. Inspector Nakamori sent us to admit you to a hospital for your burns. Your throat will probably scar. Your face will probably not." Conan's voice was cool and detatched - mostly. Underneath the professionalism, a thread of unsteady tension, like a stretched and strummed rubber band, threatened to snap at every full stop.

Perhaps because of this, Conan left little silence between his words, threading sentences together without leaving space for Kid to respond. That was just fine with Kid; he wanted as much information as possible, as quickly as possible. The odds that he had made it through this situation with any of himself intact - and he didn't mean his body or his skin - were vanishingly thin, but he couldn't help but cling to the hope that somehow, by some thread of chance, he might have gotten very, very lucky.

"You are officially admitted here as John Doe. You are listed as a protected witness in last night's crisis, and are under a police order of confidentiality that forbids the hospital from releasing any information at all about you to anyone, and also forbids any staff from running identifying bloodwork, DNA sampling, or fingerprinting tests, unless Inspector Nakamori approves that release. Inspector Nakamori has instructed Dr. Agasa and myself to judge when, and what, information should be released, if at all."

Conan's voice paused, hesitating, as though what more he had to say was hard for him to voice. When Kid attempted to speak, licking his lips and coughing to try to clear his throat, Conan coughed as well, then said without inflection:

"Inspector Nakamori did not see your face."

But I have.

Kid could hear the implication in Conan's statement as clearly as if he'd spoken it himself. Conan - Shinichi - had seen the Kaitou Kid's face.

And had met that face before. At the park, where Kid had thought he'd be perfectly safe to be perfectly himself, hiding behind his lack of disguise.

A soft curse made its way from between clenched teeth.

"I feel similarly," Conan's voice answered again, but this time the inflection was transparent, not seeking to hide the true identity of its speaker. An offering, maybe? "I would give nearly anything not to have seen you." The breath of silence that followed this was complicated; and it was almost as an afterthought that the young detective added: "Of course, I suppose we're on more of an equal footing now; you've seen my real face too."

There was a water-pitcher on the bedside table; small footsteps soundless on the floor, Conan slipped from his chair and carefully poured, inserting a straw and holding out the institutionally-plain plastic glass. "Can you drink this? You need to hydrate yourself as much as possible," he said in his light child's voice, just as if everything else that had been said had been normal, without consequence.

You've been injured. You're in the hands of your enemies. I know who you are. You know who I am. Just everyday conversation, nothing to worry about. And Conan's hand, holding the plastic glass, looked steady as a rock... if you discounted the faint, almost invisible tremor of the water contained within. Funny how the little things gave people away.

A hand that shook more than the delicate meniscus of water lifted, fingertips touching the straw and helping to guide it to his mouth. Kid lifted his head off the pillow a small distance, neck straining to hold up the weight, throat working while he swallowed the cool water. Conan's hands, wrapped around the glass, were brushing against the heel of Kid's hand as he held the straw still; when he'd drunk enough, and sank back to the pillow, Kid didn't even seem to have noticed - or more importantly, cared - that their skin had touched.

Slow movements. He's a wounded tiger, not a tame rabbit. Unless you want him bolting out the nearest window the first time your back's turned, you're going to have to give him reason to believe he's safe.

IS he safe? Nakamori promised not to stop by. But--

All of this had passed through Conan's mind in the time it took for him to draw back, put the glass back down and refill it. "The officer who drove the boat has been sworn to secrecy as well," he said quietly. "Turns out his cousin's one of the men you rescued, so I don't think you have any problems there. So..." He hesitated, slipping back up onto the chair, hands gripping the wooden arms as he studied the silent thief. "I guess the question now is what to do with you. Or, more to the point... what do you want done?"

Kid frowned - subtly, because of the bandages holding the skin of his face mostly immobile.

I want my monocle.need to hide.

I want to undo this.

I want a computer screen between us.

I want shadows.

I want to stand up, to not be flat on my back and too weak to move.

I want you to stop looking at me like that.

I

Of all the conflicting urges flying through Kid, that last one - the need to hide, run away, and in doing so be safe - was overwhelming, a screeching klaxon growing in volume with every rational, calm, reasonable statement that Shinichi made. Fighting to keep the rising panic from his eyes (monocle, please, where is my monocle, please!), Kid carefully formed quiet words, relying more on Shinichi's lipreading skill than on pushing enough air to make clear syllables.

"I want to go home."

Conan merely nodded; he'd expected as much. There was a memory in the back of his mind, one that he usually didn't let out of its box: the first night after his change, when he'd huddled on his futon on Mouri Kogoro's floor and bitten his lip almost bloody, keeping silent while terror and loss beat wings inside his head until it was too much to bear. He'd never known if he'd just fallen asleep or blacked out in despair that night; what he remembered (when he allowed himself to, which wasn't often) was the way that fear could become a presence behind your eyes, a pressure that pushed everything else out of the way and tried to claw itself free.

"Is there someone I can contact?"

(He remembered... waking up. Knowing that the world'd flipflopped and that he couldn't go back, couldn't undo what'd happened or wrap his former safety around himself like a blanket of Kudo Shinichi-ness. And he remembered clinging to things like talismans: his housekeys, the clothes he'd been wearing (he hadn't even let them be washed; the green jacket still had bloodstains on it from his injured head), the plastic Tropical World rides-pass bracelet. Oh yeah; he remembered.)

Kid froze. Contacting someone...would require giving their identifying information. It would lay them as bare as he himself was. It would rip open yet another seam of his carefully enclosed world; let light come pouring into the studio of his fleeting nighttime missions, searing the film both exposed and not, wrecking past memories and ruining the chance to make future ones. It would be like a flood through a printing press, washing away what it didn't rust.

"No," he rasped. "I can walk. Let me sleep. Then I'll leave."

The boy rolled his eyes. "Don't be an idiot," he said calmly. "I'm not asking you to break confidence with anybody; right now you're about as anonymous as you're going to get-- I just don't trust it to last forever." His gaze flickered across the figure on the bed before he turned it away, resting instead on a heavy-duty plastic garment bag in the closet, opaque and as unrevealing as the room's official records were. "Can you dial a cellphone?"

If he could... if there was someone (and there had to be; not even the Kaitou Kid worked in a vacuum, did he?), then... "Here." The cellphone that Conan placed on the bedside table beside the glass was plain, the cheap kind you could purchase with preprogrammed minutes: anonymity again. "No trackers, no GPS, no tricks. Make the arrangements, tell me when you need my back turned." There was something in his pocket; Conan fingered it, thinking about talismans, and his already quiet voice dropped even lower.

"I'm not going to pretend that this is anything like a normal situation; 'normal' has been suspended until further notice." He sighed, tugging off his glasses with his free hand and rubbing at his eyes, still not looking at the other person in the room. "Nakamori has been given-- 'discretion', I think was the term; so far as the rest of the authorities know, his men were saved by a good samaritan who prefers to remain unknown. Now, are you going to help yourself stay that way, or do I need to begin playing guessing-games?"

It wasn't a threat; Conan hadn't even tried to find anything out about the young man from the park. But he could have, and they both knew it. He drew out the small item from his pocket, unwrapped the layers of tissue from around it and-- slowly, unthreateningly-- held it out. "One more thing. This fell out of your pocket in the boat."

The speed at which Kid's hand snatched the monocle - cracked, but carefully cleaned, bright and smooth of ash and debris in the unforgiving light of the hospital room, green clover charm slightly singed but still dangling cheerily from its featherweight chain - was almost so fast as to render his hand unseeable. Pain lanced across his face, and he closed his eyes against it; the scorched flesh of the back of his hand was not happy with him. But something in his heart could BREATHE now.

Even though he knew it would do no good - even though he knew it would be more a liability than an aid - he ached to clip it to the bridge of his nose, settling it into place where it belonged. Being without the monocle was like being without half of his own face. It hurt, much as though the area exposed had been ripped free of his bones and left to scab over. Gruesome, distracting, heartwrenching pain. And with the little sliver of glass and ego in his palm, Kid just couldn't resist the need, the drive, to replace it. Instead he compromised, clutching the monocle in his fist and laying that hand, knuckles pressing his cheekbone and temple, over his right eye. The charm and its chain laid across his cheek, links catching on the bandages there.

"Thank you." Kid formed the words silently, just mouthing them, and all it took was his single, uncovered eye to convey the happy, relieved, watch-out-you-just-gave-me-a-weapon smirk that then suffused his face. He picked up the cell phone.

Conan blinked; swallowed hard and recovered, though not without effort. "Uh. Fine. --Just please have the courtesy to not attempt climbing out the window," he added dryly, slipping out of his chair and moving towards the door. "You've been given the minimum dosage of painkillers for your injuries, but if you lose consciousness and land on your ass the nurses are going to want to bandage it for you." With that very ungradeschooler-like comment, he opened the door, and paused before going out.

"...and you're welcome. Keio Gijuku Hospital, room 307. I'll knock first; five minutes."

Click.

Outside, in the hallway of a very private wing in a very private hospital, a passing nurse raised both eyebrows as she walked past a door marked 'Quarantine - Do Not Enter'. There was a boy standing beside it, and as she went her way she wondered why he seemed to be quietly, methodically banging his head against the wall.

The car ride home was silent. Jii-chan -- Jintarou, really; "Jii-chan" was a relic from Kaito's childhood (or Kaitou's, if you wanted to look at it that way) that never really retired. Much like the man himself, who drove the car silently, gently avoiding every possible obstacle that might jostle his passenger. Kid sat in the back seat, clutching the monocle to his face with a tightly-fisted hand. A handkerchief and bandages had been wrapped around his fist, monocle and all, to staunch the blood that flowed from the dozen splits that had ripped open, like the snapped skin of overripe tomatoes, across his knuckles and the back of his hand.

Kid knew that Jintarou needed to be told what had happened. He was not only the Kaitou Kid's assistant, but his friend, guardian, and something of a parental figure to him; he had to be worried. Not twenty-four hours ago, Kaito had left his care perfectly intact. Now Kid returned, handed into Jintarou's care by Edogawa Conan.

And yet he could not open his mouth. With his monocle in hand, he could summon enough strength to sit up and remain conscious, but barely. His body fought him for every minute, seeming to know what Conan - Shinichi - had told him upon his waking, that he had been expected to stay out for another eleven hours at least.

Can't sleep, Nakamori'll get me, Kid thought morbidly. Throat dry, lips parched, eyes stinging, skin seared, ears ringing from the tension that clenched his teeth together until they squeaked, Kid sat shaking in the back seat of Jintarou's small, nondescript car, desperately thinking of nothing but the dark, black safety of Kaito's bedroom at home. When he reached it, when they got there, he could collapse. While he slept, Jintarou and his mother would poultice his burns with the same medicines and aids that had protected and healed his father, and then himself, in his work. They would bathe him, care for him, keep him safe.

They would coaxe Kaito back from wherever he had fled, bring him back so that Kid could run from the daylight and the danger.

He just had to make it home.

Kudo Shinichi was, most definitely, in need of some good advice and a dose of perspective. And so he'd found a nice, private place to have a consultation with the best authority on his current situation.

The setting was okay: the fifth-floor observation deck of the Beika City Public Library, a bit of open rooftop with broad railings, comfortable benches and decorative plantings here and there. Usually kids weren't allowed up to the roof, but Conan had charmed the library staff into letting 'that bright little boy, you know, he works with the police!' go pretty much wherever he felt like. So a day after the disaster found him five stories up, ensconced in his favorite corner where he and his consultant could have a little privacy.

It was just a pity that his consultant happened to be himself.

I mean, who else am I going to talk to about this, anyway? Heiji? He'd go batshit. Professor Agasa? He twitches if I even mention the Kid at this point. Ai? Nooooot likely. My parents? Tousan'd want to interview him for the Night Baron books, and Kasan'd squeal like a fangirl. God. No, not them. Chin on hand, Shinichi considered the depressing fact that he had just named off the entire list of people who still knew him by name, and yet he still had five fingers left to count on. If you didn't count the Kid, that is.

Right. First question, Kudo. WHY did you let that nutjob go? No, never mind 'let', you damn well aided and abetted the escape of a known criminal, wounded or not. Why? If we went into legalities, you could say as seven-year-old Conan that since Nakamori'd not pressed charges or identified him, you were... no. Not even Mouri'd let that one fly. So no excuses. Why'd you do it?

Because he didn't have to risk his life, his freedom or the success of whatever insane private mission he's on by helping those men, but he did. Because all he bargained for was no attempts at apprehension. Because if that's insanity, it's preferable to the kind of sanity that'd leave four new names on a police memorial wall.

Because.

Restlessly he kicked one foot out, propping his sneaker on a potted palm's container. Other than a couple of students in the opposite corner and one elderly gentleman with a newspaper, the rooftop was deserted this morning. Ran was downstairs digging up research material for a school project; he had plenty of time to think.

Assuming he could think. Current events pointed to 'no' in that regard.

Savagely he kicked the palm's pot; the thud resounded across the rooftop, making the students' heads pop up like prairie-dogs' (the elderly gentleman remained hidden behind his newspaper; perhaps he was deaf.) Shinichi-- Conan-- hastily picked up one of the children's books he'd brought with him and flipped it open, pretending to read.

So, next question. What, what, WHAT THE HELL are you going to do about knowing who he is? You met him. You know his name. If you had even half a brain you'd be spilling your guts to some uniform right goddamn now, but that's not going to happen, is it? Nakamori doesn't want to know, and you've got enough problems in that area as it is. Face it, nobody in their right mind would've invited a child into a police-boat like he did, Agasa or not. I don't think he's thought things out; he was working on gut-instinct, not actual fact or even conjecture. But he's going to think about it, and he's going to put two and two together and come up with Something's Wrong With Edogawa Conan. Might as well prepare yourself for that, Kudo; it was going to happen sooner or later, you just thought it'd be Takagi or Sato or maybe Megure-keibu.

The book drooped in his hands, brightly-colored illustrations lying open and unseen as Shinichi stared past them and out across Beika's skyline. "Kuroba Kaito, miss," the young man in the park had said, handing Sonoko a carnation all the colors of the sun. He'd been, what? Ran's age or so and an obvious friend of Nakamori Aoko (a classmate? a childhood friend? maybe a relative? He'd looked peculiarly familiar, too. Weird, how he'd seemed so different from Kid, though) So, 17 or close, skilled in prestidigitation and extremely light on his feet with acrobatic skills that had been, if Shinichi'd heard correctly, honed by frequent assault via mop.

...maybe he'd gotten that last one wrong. Whatever.

Shinichi sighed, massaging the place between his eyes where all the frustration seemed to gather. Alright, Kudo. You know who he is; if you tried, you could almost certainly find out where he's gone, or at least possibilities in that area. Do you want to? You don't, or rather you don't want to have to. Putting aside the 'why' for the moment, just what IS your next move?

Try as he might, there wasn't an answer for that one.

It was seven days until Kid saw Shinichi again. The part of him that would have made light of the situation - joking that he was acting like a wistful girlfriend or worse, a stalker - was still missing and silent. Kaito was either in trouble, or leaving Kid no excuse but to deal with his own troubles. But Kid didn't feel a tug of crisis or need from Kaito's direction, so for all odds, he was probably just exercising some tough love toward his counterpart. And in a sad way, Kid could admit that Kaito was right - Kid was in a right complicated mess this time, like none he or his father had ever managed. Well. Except for getting killed.

Kid shook that thought off briskly. The fact was, running away from this tangle - and from the decision of what, exactly, he was going to do about Nakamori and Edogawa - would only prolong the inevitable, and might actually make things worse for him at the next heist. Because of course there was going to be a "next heist." That was the one constant that even this dangerous convalescence couldn't change - the Kaitou Kid was anything but down for the count.

Regardless, certain issues still needed to be addressed, and the safest way he could think of - applying "safest" as a very relative term - was that which he'd been working on for the last five days, since he'd recovered enough to be propped up in bed, laptop in hand. And finally, it had paid off. Kid had too much faith in Shinichi's irrepressible curiosity to doubt that he would have, eventually, had success; but it was a fortunate thing that it had only taken seven days for Shinichi to take one very straightforwardly obvious action.

1nb!u says: konbanwa, ddctshn.

Conan... had had a bad day. Rain plus a forgotten umbrella had equalled sogginess for the first part of the equation; sogginess divided by sniping from three preadolescents (had he been such a know-it-all at that age? He'd probably been worse, actually) had equalled overpowering irritability. And when you factored in general crankiness, worry and an abiding paranoia that Nakamori was going to show up, scoop him up, lock him in an interrogation room and wring him dry-- well. You got something that was the sum total of black depression with only a small remainder of sardonic humor to lighten it.

Perhaps he needed to stop playing Sudoku so much. It was, he suspected, beginning to rot his brain.

The chatwindow had been an impulse, brought on by at last giving into curiosity and, very tenatively, looking up a certain name. The response? That hadn't exactly been a surprise, but the rush of relief that'd accompanied seeing it had been.

Konbanwa yourself. Up and around, I see, Dductshn typed, hunching a little over his laptop and edging his homework up just enough to block the screen.

Kid shifted a little in his cocoon of blankets and pillows, carefully lifting a glassful of sweet juice from its bedside stand. The twisty straw that was threaded into its lid was tall enough that Kid didn't have to bend much at all, especially not his neck, to take a sip. Paramount were the priorities of keeping himself hydrated and making sure there were enough nutrients and electrolytes (and stuff; he'd zoned out through most of Jintarou's explanation) in his body to help him heal quickly. Meanwhile, the constant aches from his injuries kept him awake and focused, working his way through one problem at a time as he analyzed the tricky challenge of safely - and confidently - returning to work once he was well. A busy Kid was a happy Kid, or at least a content one, and so he didn't have to fake his sauciness as he answered Shinichi.

ur either underestmting the # pillows on my bed, r overestmting how far i reached 2 grab my laptop.

On the other side of the looking glass (so to speak), Shinichi snorted, though softly enough as not to attract either Mouri or Ran's attention. Little Conan had had 'the Talk' from Ran-neechan a day previously (no, not that 'Talk'. He wasn't sure that he could survive hearing about the birds and the bees from Ran without having his head explode) regarding internet safety, stalkers and Being Careful Who You Talked To Because You Just Never Knew. He'd solemnly promised to call her if he ran across any problems with weird strangers accosting him in chatwindows; and then he'd very carefully reset the safety parameters back to unblocked.

Staring at the screen, Shinichi felt his eyebrows rising. Oh well... I take it you're healing well? Apparently the old adage of 'no rest for the wicked' doesn't hold true, hm?

Kid laughed, grinning at the messenger window overlaid across several tabbed displays of two or three internet browsers. Each was organized by theme, or relevance to each other; congruent tabs played off of each other, while tabs in separate windows of the same browser represented or informed about tangential thoughts and considerations related to the main tabs. Each individual browser contained the research for one 'project.' funny! tryin a lil too hard thre, tho. & actually im -not- gettin much rest u think. workin frm home 2day ;)

Nnngh. Shinichi's brain stuttered slightly as the tiny winking emotocon seemed to briefly develop a familiar, toothy grin. 'Working'. Well, it wasn't like he'd expected the thief to turn up his toes and accept an early retirement just because of a little brush with death. This was acceptable, this was predictable, this was-- going to be trouble. Surprise, surprise.

Feeling a little sorry for your keepers here, he typed back as lightly as possible. Must be like trying to take care of a flying squirrel who just did a barrel-roll through your campfire. Sounds like getting your tail scorched didn't set you back much, did it? ...Typing in 'Good' at the end of that sentence would probably be a bad idea, wouldn't it? It was a certain relief (God knew why) to see Kid like this, not a bandaged figure in a white hospital bed. It was also, Shinichi assured himself, the appropriate response that anyone would have towards an opponent who played on the same level as one's self-- a little like watching Heiji figure the ins and outs of a case while he worked it through as well, though with added larceny.

Kid smirked, making a mental bookmark of his place (45 000 000 yen in average gain per transaction) and then tabbing over to the chat window, typing his response before the gentle alert chime had finished sounding. my 'keeprs' signed up 4 ths. thyre pros. also f i have a tail wht kind f tail is it? shironeko-chan? A quick image search produced a small .gif file that Kid promptly hotlinked into the conversation.

[link] im more cheerful thn ths.

The small cat-gif was just... no. Didn't work. Too innocent. On the other hand-- Calling up a certain link, Ddctshn typed: More like this, actually: The link led to a very old picture of a kitsune in human disguise, furry feet and snout peeking from clothing. And you know the tradition; kitsune always give themselves away. Their whiskers show up, or a paw or a tail, no matter how good their disguises are. Can't handle their alcohol, either.

smhow i doubt u could drink me undr the table, kitsune r no, chibitantei. Kaito frowned at the screen, vaguely irritated. His good humor was too robust to let the irritation stick very strongly, but still, Shinichi's words rankled.

"I do not let my whiskers show," he pouted to his empty room.

"Very good, sir," nodded Jintarou, traveling the hallway outside Kaito's bedroom door just in time to overhear the muttered comment. He continued past the doorway too quickly for Kid to be sure if he'd seen or imagined the smirk on his elderly assistant's face, but he frowned more deeply regardless, his tone petulant.

"Or my paws."

Shinichi, on his end of things, was also slightly irritated; he dragged the cursor across the screen in curling loops and zigzags before bringing it back to the chatwindow and briefly considering adding a few emotocons of his own. It wasn't his fault that he was more than a decade away from being legally able to drink, rather than less than half... Oh hell, whatever. Moot point at best, he typed, feeling as if points were even so far. unless things change for me someday. If they ever do, you're on. Which had to be the craziest thing he'd ever considered doing, when you got right down to it; next he'd be challenging the damn thief to a kareoke match, voice-changer versus voice-mimic.

"Conan-kun? Who's that you're talking to?"

AAGH.

Ran had walked up; he'd vaguely registered her movements behind him, but she'd been seeing to her own homework and he'd let the familiarity of it become white noise, background to his own concerns. Now he quickly narrowed the chatwindow and typed in a fast sentence:

My favorite's the Red-Headed League. Have you read all of Holmes' stories yet? I want to get better at English so I can read them that way, but we don't start studying that in school for a few years. Hitting the enter key hurriedly, he turned to look at the young woman and frowned. "Ran-neechan, you're not supposed to read over people's shoulders. It's rude."

Sorry, Ran. The last thing I need right now is to have to explain this, because I think... well, it'd be that head-explosion thing all over again. Only it might be yours that exploded, not just mine; you DID warn me against talking to strange people in chatrooms.

However, she merely made a face. "You're right, it is rude. You're just so intent, that's all." Her eyes rested on the window (which showed the Welcome Holmes forum listing) and she smiled, the little amused quirk that he'd always secretly liked so much. "That Holmes club again? Well, have fun, and tell your friend hi for me, hm?"

And he swallowed a sigh of both relief and guilt as she walked away, back to her own screen and keyboard. "...okay, Ran-neechan."

On the other end of the connection, Kaito fiddled with a set of small juggling balls that Kid had set aside, frowning in confusion at Shinichi's nonsequitur.

Kid blinked at him.

Kaito blinked back.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?"

The room, lushly furnished, absorbed the sound of Kid's shout. The thief frowned, his laptop forgotten for a moment. "It's been a week! Your mother's worried!"

Kaito snickered, scratching lightly at the peeling skin at their hairline, where the lightest of their burns were healing, as he rolled one of the juggling balls over the back of their other hand. "I wasn't the one in the hospital this time, you know."

"You should have been there with me. Don't do that again!" Kid squished the ball in his palm and crossed his arms, mindful of the still-tender backs of his hands.

Kaito uncrossed them, laying palms flat on the bedspread to resist the urge to make fists that would strain his knuckles. "Do what? Leave?"

"Yes!" Kid missed the ball, arms tired already, his grip too loose. Frustrated, he grabbed it up, then handed it off to Kaito for him to deal with. The magician got two balls into the air easily, watching them arc as he answered his counterpart testily.

"No. I leave plenty of other times and you don't mind. I all but send you out the freaking door with a kiss and "Honey, do well at work tonight!" right before every heist. Why's this one different?"

Kid set aside the juggling balls and picked up a pair of 100-yen coins, immediately beginning to shuffle them across his knuckles. The process was slow and careful, hampered by the tenderness of his hands and the numb stiffness of both skin and joints. "...You should have been around this time."

Kaito tsked (but allowed Kid to keep shuffling the coins) while dismissing and countering the thief's protest. "There wasn't a single moment that you needed me to cover for you. There wasn't any disguise involved this time! Even before everything went pear-shaped, you were in the ductwork. I do not go into ductwork on a regular basis. So it wouldn't have done a damn thing if it was me, not you, getting caught in that ductwork. You didn't need my cover this time!"

Kid humphed, answering in a delicately offended tone. "You're being ridiculous and I'm injured. Leave me alone."

Kaito flicked their forehead. Kid swatted that hand away with their other one, and thanked the Lady that his mother or Jii-chan weren't watching through the open door. They would understand, of course, but they'd also still laugh.

Distracted, Kid didn't think to block the second flick, either. Brow stinging, he glared into the empty center of the bedroom, brows pulled low over an expression that, while eloquent, was rather wasted on its audience.

"You're ignoring your company," Kaito murmured only for Kid's hearing, directing their attention to the chat window where Conan's last message had been followed by another one as well, sent in the delay while Kid and Kaito talked to themself.

"Oh, that phrase doesn't sound problematic," Kaito laughed, before retreating and leaving Kid to his more-or-less private conversation.

Hello? Still there? Shinichi hit Enter again with a slightly aggravated sigh. Ran says hi. Don't worry, she thought you were another Holmes fan. God, WHY am I telling him 'don't worry'? he asked himself, or the ceiling, or Anyone who might be listening. This was getting too damn complicated; it was enough to make a detective long for a nice, safe, dead body or two to settle the nerves.

sry, Kid typed quickly, had a intrruption ovr here 2. i dealt w him. Then he paused, rereading Shinichi's last message. After a moment of consideration, he added another line:

dont think mouri-san wld appreciate me saying hi bck, so ill refrain.

The reply was short and dry enough to carry through screen and distance: Kind of you.

Shinichi sat back, contemplating the thief's last comment with a scowl of concentration. 'Him'? Likely one of Kid's so-called 'professional caretakers'. Just how many people were in on his secret, anyway? General profiling of the Kid's M.O. suggested that he had at least one accomplice, more likely several, though it was considered a given that his heist plans, notes, et cetera sprang from a single demented and extremely wily mind.

So, working from home. Writing your memoirs? That'll be interesting reading, he typed out. What did internationally-acclaimed criminals do on their days off, anyway?

Kid's answer was prompt.

memoirs happn when ur done w ur lifeswork.

im nowhere near done.

Was it Shinichi's imagination, or did that phrasing sound... sad?

The next few days chased the tail-end of summer into autumn, the season turning so rapidly that you'd expect to see skid-marks on the changing leaves. The weather took on that peculiar scent that comes with cool damp air when the things it flows around still expect to be hot and dry; and on an afternoon when you could actually taste the first breath of Fall when you drew in your own, Conan found himself quite a long ways from home, staring from a distance at a certain street-sign.

He hadn't planned on being there, not at all. But... the Shonen Tantei were occupied with one thing or another for once, Ai was deeply involved in some new line of chemical pursuit, Ran and Sonoko were having a Girl's Night In at the latter's home (and hadn't that been a narrow escape?) and there'd been this new bookstore he'd wanted to see, not all that long of a train-ride away and nothing Mouri'd care about what with the all-night majhong... The adults in Conan's admittedly narrow world hadn't put two and two together; he had, however, and now he had that rarest of things: an evening to himself.

There were times that he sympathized in extreme with the blond child in that American movie-- what was it called? 'Home Alone'?

The new bookstore'd been decent but not all that Conan'd hoped for; his train back didn't come for another hour or more. And-- when he'd looked up Nakamori's address, he'd noticed how close to the station it was. As was that of a certain neighbor of his, if you checked the right school records.

But really... this hadn't been planned out. It had just happened: time and opportunity and a solar-powered skateboard, all of these leading to an impasse, one short block away from the address of--

I could do this. I could go right up to the house, just like he came to Mouri's stairs. Hell, I could knock on the damned DOOR if I felt like it. 'Hello, can the Kaitou Kid come out and play Cops and Robbers?' I don't think so. He couldn't quite see the house in question from where he sat; but if he got up from his bench and walked just a short ways down the street, just a few hundred feet... It was a little like being some sort of predatory creature: a shark, swimming in circles, closer and closer until-- until, until, until.

No.

Not happening. Not fair, not by the rules, not happening.

Looking away, looking anywhere but down that particular street, Conan tucked his skateboard beneath his arm and stood. Maybe if he hurried he'd be able to switch out his ticket and catch an early train back.

A handful of days after speaking with Shinichi online, Kid had regained enough strength to walk around a little bit. Never satisfied except when he was pushing his personal limits to their breaking point, he escaped his mother's watch, ran a quick pass around Jintarou's blind spot, and was out the door with a bicycle and warm jacket before either of them could stop him. His health, not the weather, demanded the extra layers of warmth, but as he biked, a leisurely pace in a roundabout route that took him along only all the flattest streets, the cool breeze on his face still felt good. Tendrils of chill air snaked their way down into his turtleneck, brushing against his bandaged throat, and he frowned even though the sensation was a nice one. He still hadn't found a way to explain things to Aoko, and in all probability he wouldn't be able to throw together a convincing enough story before she had poked holes all the way through it anyway. He tapped the volume higher on his music player, smoothing out the sounds of city traffic around him into one continuous buzz muffled by heavy bass and an artificially distorted voice.

Saw you the other day
Looking so undermined
Acting like it wouldn't happen
Making sense of anything that you could find

It couldn't have lasted forever, Kid told himself, biking through streets and past intersections he couldn't recognize, face uplifted to find his landmarks by the heights and shapes of the buildings that stood high above him. He wished for a different perspective; wished he were hanging from his glider, hundreds if not thousands of feet above the limits of fear that tethered most of the rest of the race to the ground.

Sometimes, Kid didn't really feel like he was human, if being human meant fearing the sky.

Because it's just about to happen
And you'll be there
You must have known the storm was coming
When clouds appeared

Kid feared the ground. He had always feared the exact situation that he now found himself in: grounded, pinions clipped. His body wouldn't be able to handle the strain of gliding yet, even if he had the strength to actually try it. The thinner air at altitude might be enough to disorient him, considering how easily he was able to wear himself out during this past week. And even if he kept his senses, he didn't yet trust his hands. Sure, he could steer a bike, but steering the glider - and doing his work while hanging in it - was entirely different. On top of all of that, there was now as much risk to Kaito the civilian as there was to Kid the criminal. Exposed as they both were, each endangered the other.

So why - facing what just might be the end of the Kid, the end of his wings, and the prematurely forced end of his life's work - did he feel so calm?

The sky was downshifting from an orange-edged blue into grey twilight when the skateboard's power at last ran out; Conan'd been pushing it too hard, and he thought the power-cell might be loose in its casing. Letting the almost-silent growl of the motor die away, he scooped it up under one arm and trudged the rest of the way to the station on foot, thinking hard.

Had he just screwed up royally, or just the opposite?

In the big picture of things, Kid's a very minor menace. He doesn't kill or hurt or do anything other than theft and property damage, so long as you don't count Nakamori's blood pressure medication bills. I don't go after thieves as a rule; he's just... such a challenge. Addictive. As insane as he is, there's always a logic and a method behind everything, as opposed to your average or even intelligent murderer. Murderers just want to get away with their crimes, success over anything else.

The unfamiliar station was crowded with people on their way home from work, school, shopping; Conan changed out his ticket with little trouble beyond the usual weird look (What's a kid that young doing on his own?) and found a seat minutes later on the hoped-for early train. Barely aware of the other passengers, he continued his inner diatribe.

So... I didn't follow this through. Why not? Same reason as I came up with at the library the other day; fine, I can deal with that. Shouldn't have come in the first place. Restlessly he turned, propping his small form up and resting his crossed arms on the windowledge behind him. He knows who I am too, after all; he could betray me in a heartbeat, one little email to the right people and-- So. Guess I did the right thing, or at least something I can live with.

Funny, you'd expect the bad guys to feel the guilt, not the good guys. We're supposed to have the strength of ten because our hearts are pure and all that crap. So much for fantasy.

The rest of the ride back was quiet; and if Conan still regretted the impulse that had sent him out in the first place, for some reason it didn't sting as much as it might have before.

Thank you for reading! Please let us know what you think of this chapter. Next week the story continues with "Guun-Guun, doves, coffee." Look forward to it!