MY SECRET SANTA FIC! I'm wikipedia-- bet you guys never knew. :P For Shelf (the top one). Enjoy!
Merry, merry, merry Christmas, people.
Request:The Kaitou Kid and Aoko. Entombed.
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"The dead hold no treasure," a voice said.
"I wouldn't know," another voice said. "I didn't know."
.
It isn't really waking up, she thinks, if all the morning brings is dark.
She goes back to sleep.
---
It is dark.
---
It is dark.
---
It is dark.
---
It is dark—and cold, very cold, never been this cold before is it just her or are her insides actually—actually—
She looks for herself in the darkness and huddles around it, breathing mist that she can't see. And her bones, she imagines, are laid side by side before her, spun from ice and frozen marrow and with snow shoved in between the cracks, splintering, splintering—
Oh. They don't splinter. It is too dark to.
But then—what about everything else? There must be a lung or two somewhere, and maybe a heart, and something learned about in a biology? class during a time far, far away that is called a gut, a floating rib, or something
Somthng soomng,, smmetingg…
A person can get so absorbed with themselves, she muses, so morbidly absorbed, when there is nothing else around them.
---
Or, maybe (lots of maybes now, maybe they'll come, maybe they won't, maybe they'll come, maybe they—) a person was never there to begin with.
Inside it is cold, outside it is cold, in out down up above between left right over undenrn nnnnn
Ch-ch-chattering should make a sound, a nice, echoing sound, but it d-d-doesn't.
She must not be there, then.
Wait, then…
What…
And then there is a little bit of remembering.
"My name is Aoko," she tries, and feels something leap inside when she hears it—she hears it!—"My name is Nakamori Aoko and I am seventeen years old."
It's hard to talk because her lips feel heavy and burning (and what is the word for that—what is it, what is it? Oh, blue) but that is okay, because now her arms go up and feel around, and now the darkness isn't really a darkness because there is something hard and cold above her head, low enough so that she can't stand, and there are little pieces of rocks, they must be, that have fallen around her, and now how is this any different from a room that just has its lights turned off?
It's okay now, she thinks, and moves her lips again a bit. This is space. And time—
Oh.
It must have been—well, not seconds…minutes? Days. Weeks. Months. Years.
(dark)
Time can start now, comes the defiant idea. It can start now—here, she'll start and it can just follow along: One two three four five six seven, that was seven seconds, and now eight nine ten, ten seconds, and if she kept at it soon she would have enough to collect a year, and wouldn't that—
"But—" A realization, horrible and thin—"But if it was a year…"
"Aoko?"
She freezes, more than she already has.
"Aoko?"
Where is it coming from?
"Aoko," she says to herself, and then feels pathetic, because what kind of person pretends to hear his—
"Aoko, are you okay?"
Oh god. It's—stop torturing yourself, she thinks, it isn't real, the inflections are all upside down and—
"Oh god, Aoko, are you—"
"Well, I can't bloody well be okay, can I? I've been stuck under a giant rock for years and it's filthy. I need a shower."
A stunned silence, on both accounts.
And then—oh god, oh god.
There is laughter. It isn't full-blown, but it's there—the peals of smiling puncturing the dark, and for a split second Aoko almost feels afraid.
"Years, Aoko? The heist was last night."
Her mouth is hanging open.
"Kaito?"
"Yeah—look Aoko, I had no idea you were down here too, where—"
She thinks she hears fumbling in the darkness, and the cursing brings a smile to her lips.
"I don't know where I am."
"…Oh. Well, I don't know where I am either."
That's funny. That's funny, she thinks, and her smile stretches wider, and she starts laughing too, even louder, because that must be the most hilarious thing she's heard since—since ever—ha ha ha ha ha ha—
She's laughing alone.
"Aoko, are you hurt?"
Oh. There's nothing funny about that. "No. I'm cold. I want to sleep."
"Don't. You'll die."
This doesn't sound like Kaito at all, she wonders again. Or maybe it does, and she just never knew—
"Oh. Okay. And the snow—what if it gets in, then?"
"It won't. I'll stop it, Aoko."
That's more like it. That, is Kaito. A little bit.
"I'm still cold."
They both talk in whispers.
---
In the end, she does sleep. A voice can't stop her.
When she wakes, there is much louder rustling in the darkness. It wasn't a dream, then.
(Unless that one never ended, and this is still inside that, a mirror in a mirror in a mirror in a—oh, she can't see.)
"Kaito?"
"Aoko," comes a reply with something like relief in it.
"What are you doing?"
The rustling stops. A hiss of—pain? And starts again. "You'll see."
She waits, and listens to the rustling. Bits of metallic sounds in between, too.
Aoko brings her arms even tighter around her body and looks into the darkness, "What are you doing, Kaito?"
"Just wait, Aoko," comes the answer, all clenched teeth and brittleness. "Wait—almost done. Almost done—Okay. Here. Say something."
"Kaito?"
"Keep talking. Don't stop. I need to figure out where you are."
"…Okay." She's too curious to refuse. "Well—okay. Uh—the colors , uh, colors of the rainbow are blue, red, green, orange—brown—purple, I think, white…" Not black. Not black. "Um, I haven't seen a lot of real rainbows. They're supposed to be really big, and with lots of color—full of color—and—"
"Yellow." Rustling.
"What?"
"You forgot yellow. Like the sun."
"—Yellow. Like the sun," she adds tentatively, and continues. "And outside, the ground can be green or brown or white, and on top of it is blue—" Her voice closes up here, and then opens again with a shuddering sigh. "The sky is blue."
"Yeah. And your eyes."
"—Really?"
"Yes. Here."
The voice is much closer now, and suddenly—suddenly it feels almost right next to her. Kaito is right next to her, and there is another leap in her throat as she turns towards him.
Something soft and wide lands in her arms. He hisses.
"What—"
"Put it around you—here—" The soft, wide, thing leaves and she feels it again behind her, and then hands are draping it around her shoulders (Awkwardly, awkwardly).
"What—"
"It should be solid enough. Do you feel warmer now?"
She brings her fingers up to feel it—it's like canvas, sort of, and for some strange reason she gets a flash of white in her mind.
"Yeah—Kaito, what is—"
"It's—I took it apart. I was carrying it around last night."
"What is it?"
"Extra…precautionary…thing," comes the answer, sheepish and grinning. "You know, better safe than sorry and all that."
"But what—"
"Are you sure you're warm enough?"
"I—yeah. I am."
"That's good," Kaito says. "Wrap it around tighter."
She doesn't ask again. Aoko isn't sure why.
---
"How did they do that?"
"Do what?"
"That—color."
---
Time passes. Neither of them know how much, and one day (?) Kaito says,
"My arm is going to fall off."
Whatever she was going to say dies on her lips.
"My arm hurts like hell and it's going to fall off. I know it."
There's something strange again with his voice, she thinks.
"It's going to rot off—It's going to just bleed right off from the rest of—"
"Kaito, stop."
A silence.
"It hurts to move. And talk."
"Don't, then." Aoko wants to hold him. She can't see anything, though.
"…There's a room in my house, you know."
"What—"
"You've never seen it before."
But she's been going to his house since—
"It's kind of like those rooms in the Harry Potter books, you know. Like, the doors are all weird and creepy. Gryffindor's—Gryffindor's door was a painting. There's a room in my house behind a painting too—so it's like, like Hogwarts, ha ha."
She doesn't know what to say.
"Except the painting in Harry Potter moved and talked, and did stuff, and the one in my house doesn't—"
There's a sudden break, one where both of their throats are caught by wires and strained apart.
"—Or maybe it does," he continues, slower. "Sometimes I've felt him following me—his eyes, maybe, following me into the room and watching me. I wonder, does he watch my mother too?"
"K—"
"And I've never seen him move, either, but if no one's—"
"Kaito, stop."
"What?"
"Please."
And the voice melts into darkness again, gone and gone and gone. She waits. It's all so terrible.
"I'm going to sleep."
"…But—"
"I'll be okay. I'm going to sleep."
The silence grows, ever squeezing.
---
Maybe he's dead.
---
Nothing, nothngg,, not things
---
"Do you hear that?"
The break in darkness jolts her, and the canvas around her shoulders actually slips all the way down from her shake in shoulders. He's awake—how long has he—
"Listen."
The quiet sits next to them, peering up.
"Do you—"
"Shh."
The sound of machines has never been so pleasant. Whirring, groaning—they look up (oh, not look, but they understand) and hear creatures scraping across stone, thud thud thudding, cedar-rusted creatures and maybe even voices—
Other ones—
"It hasn't been so long, then."
"No, it hasn't. Your dad would have never waited."
She nods, and the leap is there again.
"Kaito—"
"I'm going back to sleep."
"—What?"
"I'm tired."
Yes.
---
It's like singing, almost. She shivers, hears breathing and machines, and smiles.
---
Something stirs inside her, raises its long, sleepy neck, and blinks at the ink crusted over its eyes. It's okay. It's okay.
Aoko fumbles around with stiff fingers and finds Kaito's hair.
She clutches it.
---
She grows a little bluer, a little redder, and shifts the canvas to drape over him too. Pats it down—up and down so cold can't—
There's a lump in his—pocket? Pocket. She draws it out and feels something small and metallic in her palm.
"…Aoko?"
She doesn't answer. What is—is this where—Oh. A flick.
The light leaps up from the flip, and she's blinded for a beautiful, glorious moment—light, gold, fire, burning—it fills the entire space, gleaming against metal and everywhere, everywhere is yellow like the sun, and Aoko turns to him to—
His eyes are old in the white suit.
"It's almost Christmas, Aoko."
Oh. Oh.
.
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"Merry Christmas."
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