A/N: Not much to say here except that I'll be posting art for this chapter on Tumblr soon, and that this chapter is full of my opinions and headcanons, particularly about Chikage and Kaito's relationship. It's really heavily based on MK 1412 over the manga, as well—not because I like the anime but because the anime is clearer on details that I needed for this chapter to work.

Warnings, links to art, and more notes at the end!

Chapter 10

When Kaito slept through the day after the heist, Chikage decided to let it be. Her scolding could wait. But the next day he went to school, and if he could manage school, he could at least attempt to give her an explanation of why on Earth he would ever attempt anything so idiotic as holding a heist a month after he'd been shot.

She'd been balancing her efforts to keep track of her son with her attempts to find the other version of him, but so far, both endeavors were fantastically unsuccessful. Both of them were too well trained—Kaito kept sneaking out of the house every night even when she was specifically trying to prevent him from doing so. Meanwhile, Saguru seemed to have dodged her entire information network—and at this point, it spanned most of the inhabited continents, all of them if you counted contacts at a few degrees of remove from her. But not one of them had caught so much as a whisper of him outside of the ripples caused by his initial disappearance. But it was her Kaito that was the problem now. She was almost impressed that he'd managed to have an entire heist without alerting her. Almost. Not really, because being impressed would involve approving and she did not.

So, when he came home, she was in the kitchen, waiting for him, a paper headlined with the words "KID STRIKES AGAIN" faceup on the table before her.

"There was a KID heist two nights ago," she said flatly, pinning him down with her gaze.

He looked exhausted, she noted—more reason why he shouldn't have done the heist.

"Yeah, but no note from Corbeau," he replied, almost immediately. He frowned in feigned confusion. "Were you busy?"

Caught off guard, she let surprise flicker across her face for a moment, and he smirked. She frowned.

"Did you really think I wouldn't figure it out eventually?" he asked, before lowering himself into a kitchen chair with KID's exaggerated grace. The flow of the movements was off, though. He was holding himself too carefully—either new injuries, or regression in the conditions of old ones.

"I did plan to tell you," Chikage said, carefully expressionless.

"Really?" Kaito asked, disbelief clear in his tone. "When?"

Chikage's lips twisted, just slightly. "At an appropriate moment." After I'd left, perhaps.

"I'm not even sure I believe you," Kaito said. He took a breath, and his expression shuttered into Poker Face. "I did research on Corbeau, after that first heist when he didn't show up. I heard who he was supposed to look like."

Chikage did not let herself react. He's trying to take you off topic. This is still about him and that heist he shouldn't have done.

"I can kind of understand that," he continued. "I'm wearing his costume, and his professional name, after all, so it makes sense that you'd want something, too. But the fact that you didn't show up…" He grinned, eyes narrowed, and the expression was all KID. "That was when you started looking into Hakuba, wasn't it? Because he stopped you."

Chikage cursed to herself, knowing her expression had flickered again.

"He stopped you, and he kept stopping you, and that's why I never saw Kaitou Corbeau in person," Kaito said. "Hakuba didn't get that serious about many things. He tried like h*** to stop Nightmare from even showing up in Japan, yeah, but most of the time, he'd leave as much of the heist as possible to me and only interfere with parts of it."

What's he getting at? Chikage wondered.

"Which makes me wonder—what, exactly, was he trying so hard to stop you from doing?" Kaito asked.

Chikage didn't say anything. If not incriminating herself worked with the police, it had better work with teenage sons.

"I figure it has to have something to do with you mentioning Las Vegas the first night you showed up," Kaito continued, almost lazily. "So either you were trying to get me to quit, or you were testing my resolve. Either answer's gonna tick me off, and I'm not really gonna believe you if you try to tell me it was something else. So you really might as well answer."

Who the h*** is this and what have they done with Kaito? Chikage wondered, a bit wildly. Then, she answered her own question. You know exactly who this is. It's KID, and it's who Kaito grew into, because this is the kind of personality that keeps a phantom thief alive and free. You know that yourself. There was never an outcome in which becoming KID didn't twist him a little, not as long as those people in black were involved too.

"I was here to test your resolve," Chikage said. "I was worried about your reasons for being KID, and I was worried that you weren't ready. I can see now that I was wrong."

Kaito's smile was line-thin and purely made of Poker Face; his eyes didn't match it at all. "So, was showing up with Dad's face part of the test?"

"I—"

"I see," Kaito said. The rage in his eyes vanished, but so did all of the other emotions. Kaito might well have been looking at a store window for all of the reaction he was showing. "I think I understand Hakuba-san's feelings a little bit better now."

Something heavy settled in Chikage's stomach. "Kaito—"

Kaito stood up, slowly, in an awkward parody of KID's effortless movements. Chikage was even more certain than before that he was injured.

"I'm just concerned that you've made your injuries worse by having another heist—" Chikage started.

"Someone took care of the injuries," Kaito said, voice utterly flat. "And Aoko and Akako have been watching me since I came back from school, so if I get worse or anything, they'll notice."

"Aoko and Akako aren't around all the time—" Chikage started.

"Well, neither are you," Kaito half-spat. "You can't just leave, and come back, and keep secrets and set tests without telling me and expect none of it to affect me!" He took a breath. "Poker Face is an act, Mom. Tell me you know that much."

"O-of course," Chikage said. But…maybe I haven't been acting like it. "Kaito, if you need to talk about anything, you know I'm here for you…"

"Do I?" Kaito asked. "We barely talk about Dad, you constantly pretend to be cheerier and less intelligent than you are even though I'm your son and it's not like I'm going to use it against you, you ask me to clean up messes from when you were Phantom Lady even though you're still active as a phantom thief too, not that I knew that until now—what, exactly, am I supposed to be getting from that? As far as I can tell, you don't trust me and it's kind of hard to see why I should trust you either."

He scowled at her, Poker Face discarded.

"That's not—I don't mean to—" Chikage stammered. Why do I do that? I mean, I'm just trying to be cheerful for him—that's okay, right?

"I know you love me and I know you're not trying to be cruel," Kaito said, softly.

But you're being cruel anyway, Chikage finished mentally.

"Just—give me some time, Mom," Kaito said. "Maybe there's a short show in Vegas you could do?"

He wants me to leave, she thought, half-choking on the thought of it. "Not while you're injured," she managed.

Kaito's Poker Face made its return. "If that's how you feel," he said, and walked out of the kitchen.

Chikage cursed to herself and watched her son half-drag himself up the staircase, wanting to offer help and knowing it wouldn't be welcome.

How did things get to this point? She wondered.

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Eisuke woke up to the sound of his phone ringing. He sat up, rubbing at bleary eyes, and fumbled with the phone, almost dropping it and then finally picking up the call. Ah, that stopped the ringing—but then he realized he ought to say something.

"Huh—Hondou," he managed. He blinked. "Kudou-kun? Did something—"

"Sorry to disappoint," came KID's smooth tone. No—not that smooth. Something was wrong.

"What happened?" Eisuke asked.

"Nothing related to the case," KID said. "I'm sorry for waking you. But—you aren't one of the critics that chase me."

"No," Eisuke said. This felt important. He wished he was more awake for it. Swallowing a groan, he swung his legs over the side of his bed and sat up straight.

"So, maybe, if you have a chance to poke at me and get answers, you could not take it," KID said.

"I think I could do that," Eisuke said. "KID-san, it's not even dawn here, I don't think I can poke at much."

KID made a frustrated noise. "I shouldn't have called—"

"If there's a reason why the first person you thought to call is a clumsy teenager half a world away, I don't need to know it," Eisuke said. "I said I wouldn't poke. But you should think about that, maybe. Why there isn't anyone else."

"There are other people," KID said. "But I'll have to lie to them. You at least know I won't tell you everything."

"What would you tell me, then?" Eisuke said.

"Nothing," KID said, after a moment. "But I might ask you to tell me how you're doing in America. And to…to not ask any more questions for a while."

"Are you sure that's what you want?" Eisuke asked.

"Please," KID said, with a desperation to his tone that nearly startled Eisuke off the mattress.

"Okay," Eisuke said, worried but willing to go along with KID's odd request. "Well, I'm getting a little better at pronouncing English. My grades have dropped a bit, honestly, but I'm not that concerned—I looked it up online, and CIA field agents don't need to go to elite universities, so as long as I keep mostly A's, it's all right. Oh—an A is sort of like a "Shuu" mark, it's for 90 to 100 percent, except that it's easier to get here. I don't think that's true everywhere in the U.S., though—but I'm beginning to think I transferred into a mid-level high school. It's an easy mistake to make, I guess—they don't have national rankings for high schools in the U.S. like they do here; how was I supposed to know which ones were the good ones? Except I think the really good ones are the private ones, and I can't afford them, so…"

"You're paying for all of this on your own, I guess, huh?" KID asked quietly. His voice sounded a little hoarse, but Eisuke didn't comment.

"Well, it's my inheritance from Mom, mostly," Eisuke said. "Though they do let high school students get part-time jobs here, so I got one! It's at a fast food place, and I've only gotten burnt a few times. Since all the shifts are afterschool and on weekends, it hasn't been interfering with the investigation. But anyway, that doesn't really pay for much more than groceries and a little rent. Everything else is Mom's money. I should be okay through the end of high school, if I'm careful and I don't have a medical crisis.

"But hopefully nothing like that will happen," Eisuke said. "Anyhow, work isn't bad. And I'll probably have a new neighbor soon. The Montenez family next door is moving to a condo because they want their baby to have a backyard when she gets big enough to walk, so they're leaving. The manager's been showing people around for weeks, but I don't know if anyone's made an offer yet…"

He continued babbling, KID interrupting with soft questions every so often, for at least the next hour.

"That's apparently what Common Core Math is," Eisuke said. "I don't understand it either. I think maybe they made it up as part of one of those pranks they play on foreigners."

"Maybe," KID said. "Hondou-san, I should let you catch up on a little of the sleep you missed. But…thank you."

"You're welcome," Eisuke said. Then, hesitantly, he added, "I don't need to know what happened. But I hope something better happens soon."

KID laughed softly. "That would be nice. Have a good day, Hondou-san."

"Goodnight, KID-san," Eisuke replied, before laying back down and setting his phone on the bedside table.

He really doubted he'd get back to sleep, though.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Nakamori Ginzou took another drink of beer and stole a glance over his shoulder at Chikage. She was on her third glass of something that looked like tea but smelled at least as alcoholic as the particularly strong sake they brought out to celebrate after heists that didn't go horribly. She'd showed up at his house out of the blue and declared that they were going drinking roughly an hour ago—maybe an hour and a half, his own drink was probably just about getting to his head. That had been the last time she'd spoken to him. She hadn't said a word on the drive over, she didn't talk once they got into the bar except to explain the unholy mixed drink she was having to the bartender, and she still wasn't talking. After about 20 minutes the silence had started getting to him and he'd struck up a conversation with the salaryman next to him, a nice guy named Terashima who was worried about paying for specialty food for his kid's golden retriever.

Ginzou kind of envied the guy his problems, honestly.

"Still can't believe it has a…a liver problem," Terashima said, his sake apparently starting to affect his speech. "I wasn't even sure it had a liver, you know? Like, animals don't have all the same organs as humans, why would it have a liver?"

"I think livers are important," Ginzou said. "I know it really hurts people if you punch them in them. Or maybe that's kidneys?"

"What'd you say you did for a living?" Terashima asked, squinting at Ginzou suspiciously.

"I'm a police inspector!" Ginzou said defensively. "It's part of my job to be able to…incapacitorate…er…stop suspects."

"I don't know if I want my tax dollars to pay for people to get liver damage," Terashima said.

A loud 'thunk' from behind Ginzou had him straightening on instinct.

"I screwed up," Chikage announced, voice low and rough. "With Kaito. How'd I screw up this much?"

Terashima's dog forgotten, Ginzou turned around, and his answer slipped out, unbidden. "I'm probably not the person to ask about that." Aoko'll deny it until the end of time but I know she was upset that I forgot her birthday. Still can't believe I did that.

"I guess not," Chikage said, with a hard-edged laugh. "She still loves you, though."

"Kaito -kun loves you, too, Chikage, why would you—"

"You didn't see the way he looked at me," Chikage said. "Might as well have been an ant on a sidewalk. Didn't care past that."

"Did you two fight, or something?"

"Did we fight, he asks," Chikage said softly. "I've never seen him angry like that. And he was right. Maybe not about all of it, but about the big stuff. F*** me, I forgot he was human."

Yeah, she's officially too far gone to realize what she's saying out loud, Ginzou realized. If I ask her about it now, I'm gonna hear all sorts of things she never meant to tell me. Wouldn't be right.

"That's going around," he said instead. "Think a lot of people dropped the ball with Hakuba-kun, and I'm on the top of that list."

Chikage made a pained noise and tossed back the last of her drink in one swallow. "Don't remind me about that mess; if I hadn't talked to him—"

"Chikage-san, if one conversation about Toichi-san was enough to make him bolt for the hills, it wasn't you who screwed up," Ginzou said. "He shouldn't have been on heists like that and I was the one who shoulda seen it."

"Not that pointing fingers gets us any-d***-where," Chikage said. "He's still in the wind. Know he's not in Paris, at least, but past that—"

"How the f*** do you know he's not in Paris?" Ginzou demanded. "When'd you go to Paris? I don't remember—"

"I didn't go to Paris, I had my friends in Paris look for him and one of them nearly found him so he ran," Chikage said, spacing out the words like she was talking to a small child.

Ginzou scowled at her. "You have friends everywhere; it's weird. But—Paris? The f*** did he do to get to f***ing Paris?"

Chikage shrugged. "He's probably somewhere else in Europe now." One corner of her lip quirked upward, slightly, as the rest of her expression remained grim. "He's a talented boy, I'm sure he's figured something out."

"He's probably sleeping on the d*** streets," Ginzou muttered savagely. "He's a f***ing thefts detective, he's not gonna steal money unless he's desperate and I'll bet you anything nowhere to sleep isn't gonna count as desperate to him, idiot kid that he is."

"Oh my—is your kid missing, have I been complaining about my dog this entire time while you're worried about your kid running away?" Terashima broke into the conversation, looking anxious.

"My—f*** no, he's the Superintendent-General's, I'm just in charge of the squad he works with when he does police operations," Ginzou said. "My girl's safe at home."

Terashima looked from Ginzou to Chikage. "So you aren't married."

"NO!" both of them shouted at once.

Terashima recoiled. "Sorry, you were talking about your kids, and you seemed so used to it, so I thought—"

"I'm a widow, and Nakamori-keibu is a widower," Chikage said, looking a bit confused. "The two of us are just friends. Who sometimes watch each other's children."

"If you knew our children, you'd know why we need two sets of eyes," Ginzou added. "Hers is a monkey that does magic tricks."

"Yours is a holy terror, and just as smart as him, and manages to pass herself off as empty-headed half the time," Chikage said.

"If she ever joins the force, Detective Satou called dibs on training her for undercover work," Ginzou said miserably.

"Don't let her," Chikage said into her glass. "Nothing good comes of training kids. You train them and train them and then they get better than you meant them to be and you forget they aren't good at everything and it all goes to s***."

"We talking about Hakuba or Kaito now?" Ginzou asked. "'Cause Toichi-san was the one who trained Kaito, mostly, wasn't he?"

"Nope, I helped," Chikage said. "Finishing touches and all that. I was proud, but—it wasn't such a good idea."

"Chikage, whatever you're fighting about, teaching Kaito magic wasn't a bad thing," Ginzou said. "It makes him feel closer to his dad. That's good, right?"

"Closer to his dad, that's what started this mess," Chikage said. She narrowed her eyes at Ginzou. "He seemed like he was coping but he wasn't and—ugh, I'm gonna drink until I forget his Poker Face."

"The h***'s a poker face got to do with this?" Ginzou asked, confused.

"Hold on to that innocence, Ginzou-san," Chikage said firmly. She turned toward the bartender.

"Um, should she really—" Terashima started.

"No," Ginzou answered. "Chikage, you're done. Let's get a cab."

Chikage glared at him. "I know you go out with the Task Force and get trashed after really bad heists."

"Yeah, and it's a bad habit," Ginzou admitted. "One you don't need." Chikage kept glaring. "Look, if you're fighting with Kaito, do you think staggerer—ah, d***-do you think coming in at three a.m. drunk is gonna help things?"

"No, no it won't," Chikage said. "With my luck the other one'll find out and he'll be pissed too."

"The other what?" Ginzou asked.

"The other Kaito," Chikage said. "It's a secret, but there's two."

"D*** it, Chikage, that's not funny," Ginzou said, with a reflexive shiver. "Two of him would turn half of Tokyo upside down. Not that one doesn't."

"Everyone keeps thinkin' I'm trying to make a joke, but it's not a joke; it's not even funny," Chikage pouted.

"You are a weird drunk, Chikage," Ginzou said.

"I'm a weird sober, too," Chikage replied with a giggle.

Ginzou sighed and started working past his phone's lock screen. The sooner he called a cab and got her home, the better.

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A/N: Warnings for depiction and discussion of a really dysfunctional family situation, including canon events being framed as a parent acting cruelly toward their child instead of just "testing them,"as well as alcohol and drunkenness.

You are all by now aware that I think that Corbeau was a screwed-up thing to shove in Kaito's face, and this chapter is the culmination of that. It's not the endpoint, though, if anyone's worried—Kaito and Chikage's relationship is one of many arcs I'm juggling.

There is fanart on pixiv for this chapter—a picture of Kaito calling Eisuke, and one of Nakamori and Chikage at the bar. I'll post the images on Tumblr tomorrow, probably.

Guys, I know I put out chapters every week, and that they're mostly prewritten, so it might not feel like reviewing is affecting much, but I really could use some more feedback. Real life is not currently awesome, and it's tiring, which cuts into writing time/energy, so I'd really, really appreciate the encouragement of hearing from some of you if you're enjoying this thing.