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4
To Dream

Kaito didn't go home. He moved in a disconnected haze, and it felt like he blinked, then he was in front of the Kudo mansion.

Usually, he'd sneak in, even with Okiya living there, but now…

Shinichi's parents were there, and… they deserved to know, and they'd probably notice him anyway. So…

He rang the doorbell, watching his hand reach out like it was someone else's.

The door opened to man who looked like his own Oyaji, except…

"Kaito-kun?" a voice only a little different than the one in vinyl records and tapes and memory.

He knew this man. He hadn't seen him in years, but he remembered the man as much his father's opposite as Shinichi had been his own, and he couldn't help but take a half-step, uncertain of where he was going.

Kudo Yuusaku reached out and pulled him into an enveloping hug, "Kaito," he said, dropping any formality in favor of simple comfort. "Kaito, thank you."

Kaito choked on a sound that could have been an incredulous laugh, except that it was a cracking sob, "I couldn't…"

"You were there for him more than Yukiko or I have ever been," Yuusaku murmured into his hair, arms tightening. "You were there when no one else was, and you tried. Gods, Kaito… as much as I wish… you did more than anyone else ever could have. I know he cherished every moment he had with you, so… that you were there, at the last…"

And Kaito folded into the hug, so like his father's, and let himself break down. He'd cried—he hadn't been able to stop crying—the night before, but he hadn't let himself break. He'd still had to act, but here, with Shinichi's father (who clearly knew exactly what had happened), he no longer had to hold that last bit of his Poker Face in place.

Kaito wasn't aware of it when Yuusaku picked him up like a much smaller child and carried him inside, wasn't aware when Yukiko saw him and burst into fresh tears for the heartbreak in his face, wasn't aware when Shinichi's father tucked him into Shinichi's bed and slid Shinichi's only recently-used pillow into Kaito's arms.

He cried himself to sleep, only knowing that he was safe enough to let go.

xxxx

Kaito hadn't had dreams (nightmares) of his father's death in over a year, that startled cry and flash of flame followed by people screaming. Tantei-kun hadn't died in fire, but maybe it wasn't so surprising that the old nightmare mixed with a new one, because while Shinichi hadn't died by fire, holding him as he'd screamed and grown had felt like fire, like standing too close to a furnace or an open flame.

Kaito knew he was dreaming (of course he was dreaming, even in sleep the memory of Tantei-kun slack in his arms was inescapable) but he didn't care that the dream was of being surrounded by fire, holding Shinichi as he gasped and panted and slowly died in his arms, because at least in the dream, Shinichi wasn't leaving him behind.

Maybe the burning house (his own, familiar home that Tantei-kun had never set foot in) would take him with it, and he could follow Shinichi into the next world without guilt, because there was no way out and if there had been, he would have had to try.

But, no, it was only a dream. A nightmare, maybe, except that it wasn't as terrible as the one he'd faced awake. Maybe he could stay in the dream a little longer, holding a Shinichi who hadn't yet died, and follow him into the dark.

Maybe Izanami would take him, too. She had been merciful, once. Maybe she could remember a shred of that mercy.

In the end, though, he woke in an unfamiliar bed in a familiar room that wasn't his own. No, Tantei-kun's, Shinichi's, tucked in by careful hands and wrapped around a pillow that smelled comfortingly of the person he knew had been stolen from him, light streaming through a crack in the curtain to fall across his face.

Kaito curled further into the pillow, burying his face in fluffy fabric.

He didn't want to face the world. Not yet. And while he couldn't deny what was (Shinichi may have been forced into a series—a life—of lies, but he'd never lied to himself and Kaito would honor that with his own self-honesty), he didn't think he could handle getting up and stepping out into a day where Tantei-kun was gone. No more chases, no more partnerships, no more smirks and close calls and terror and laughter.

He couldn't face that world yet. He needed to patch up the cracks in his soul a little before he tried to step back out into the daylight.

And he would start by making a list of what he needed to know, to carry on his Tantei-kun's mission.

(If Shinichi couldn't settle his debts with those who'd killed him, Kaito would have to do it for him.)

xxxx