Huh. How is it that I've been finishing chapters for both active stories on the same days, lately? Not that it matters, I guess. here you go!

Chapter 4

Nakamori Ginzo wasn't quite sure what to do. Kaito was like a son to him, and that Kaito's husband was missing under such grim circumstances was sobering, made worse by the fact that he actually liked Kudo Shinichi. Worse again by that Kaito was still holding on to hope, despite the obvious and wearing worry.

That there was someone else staying with him was a bit of a comfort, even if the someone else was six and not a native speaker of Japanese. Maybe more of a comfort for those things, because it forced Kaito out of his depression to take care of the kid.

And then he'd found out why Kaito and Kudo had said they'd take him until his parents recovered from their accident; why none of his American relatives had.

The kid had Kudo's luck.

That luck was horrifying enough on a teen. Oh, Nakamori had known that he'd had it his whole life, had found the reports from when he was a small child and a few from when he'd been a baby, but that knowledge was clinical. He'd met Kudo, and Kudo was terrifying on a case, all sharp eyes and impossible to deceive. It was probably why Kid liked him so much.

(According to Megure, who thought of Kudo rather like Nakamori thought of Kaito, the kid was the same, if hesitant about it. He was related to Kudo, though—some kind of family-borne curse? Something wanted those bodies found, and if the child had the same way of seeing the truth of things… well, Nakamori would finally have the 'why' answered, if not the 'what' or 'how'.)

And there was another problem. Kaitou KID had been silent a good long while, and Nakamori wasn't the only one to think it odd. The last heist had been the ridiculous Sherlock Holmes book, and that had been over two months before.

The book still hadn't been returned.

Which meant there was a distinct possibility that the snipers Kaito had unhappily mentioned and Nakamori and Division One had found evidence of may have managed to bring Kid down, and that was not a thought he liked. He blustered, and gods knew the bastard annoyed him, but he didn't want Kid dead.

Sometimes—just sometimes—he wasn't even sure he wanted him captured. (Then he'd do something that ended with the majority of his force in varying states of consciousness and dignity and Nakamori would curse and rage and resolve to throw the lunatic in the deepest cell he could find just to see how long it would take him to get back out. If they stripped him to his underwear and tied him up with duct-tape, it might even hold him for a while.)

The training sessions had been cancelled for the foreseeable future, though. He couldn't ask that of Kaito, not now. Not when Kaito had established and begun those sessions with his husband at his side, and the lack would be felt all too keenly even by the 'force. To put Kaito into that position… no. He couldn't even ask. Kaito probably wouldn't want to go to heists anymore, either, as they were also something that he did, if not with his husband, in competition against.

If Kid was even still alive.

Nakamori sighed and looked down at the report on his desk for the thousandth time. There, in black printed across white, was everything they knew of Kudo's disappearance.

Nothing new, nothing useful, and no further leads. If they didn't find him, Kaito would keep slowly fading until he was nothing but a shadow of himself. He'd been poorly off when his father had died, but this was worse.

If Kudo was dead—and Nakamori had worked Division One more than long enough to learn the odds of that before he'd transferred to Division Two—Kaito would break. But… it would be closure, the kind of break that might one day become an acceptable ache in the back of his mind, but no longer an overwhelming pain. (Nakamori knew that kind of hurt. He'd lost his wife, after all, and it was only too easy to see that Kaito felt at least as strongly for Kudo even if maybe it weren't the same kind of strongly.) This, this wondering, this holding on to an ever-more-futile hope…

Kaito was coming apart in a way that Nakamori didn't think could be fixed, not without closure. Not without a clean break.

It seemed that everything was spiraling away, and watching Aoko hurt over Kaito and Kaito just hurt was…

He'd head over and check on him after work. Meet his new house-guest and get a feel for the situation as it was now. Aoko had said Kaito seemed better yesterday, with the kid there.

Maybe it would be enough to stop the decline. Maybe it would even help.

Nakamori took a breath and slid the (useless) report into his top desk-drawer, fingers trailing briefly over Kudo's name. Sorry, Kudo-kun. I'll do my best to look after Kaito, but without you here… I know it's asking a lot, but please don't be dead. Come home.

He slid the drawer closed and turned his attention to the smuggling ring in Haido. Maybe he couldn't do anything for Kudo, but he could at least make some lives safer. Getting that large a group of drug-runners out of there would save some lives, especially with how many of the drugs were cut with substances that really shouldn't be mixed into that kind of thing. Opiates were bad enough on their own, nevermind mixed with other toxic substances.

xxxx

Conan groaned, flopping across the couch and ignoring the concerned sound from Kaito's direction and the questioning sound from Hakuba's. "L'me'lone," he demanded, the pillow muffling his words together with how he'd pressed his face into it.

He heard Kaito sigh and felt the afghan from the chair across the room settle over him before a familiar set of hands pointedly shifted him so he was on his side, facing the couch-back with his airways clear.

"Try to sleep," Kaito instructed gently. "Your body hasn't adjusted yet."

He had noticed that already, but Hakuba had wanted to talk and he could manage a conversation—

"Hakuba can do his homework here and stay for dinner. Rest, Shin-chan. We can wait a few hours."

Well. That was logical, and Kaito rarely resorted to explaining logically. Besides which, Shinichi knew he really wasn't recovered, yet. It had taken weeks for his body to adjust the first time, and the temps had left him sore and tired for near as long each time he'd taken them, for all that he'd pushed through it. The less he forced when he didn't need to, the quicker his body would stabilize.

He grumbled wordlessly and closed his eyes.

Sleep sucked him under in moments.

x

Kaito nodded slightly, unsurprised that Shinichi's body gave in so quickly. It was still worrying—but it was a familiar worry, one he'd long since learned to live with. As much as he loved Shinichi, he couldn't do anything less. They'd been partners too long for that, and even when they'd been enemies he wouldn't have turned away if he'd known his Tantei-kun needed help.

"Is he all right?" Hakuba asked quietly, looking worried.

Kaito sighed, brushing his fingers through baby-fine hair, "Not really, no," he admitted. "It's poison, Hakuba. It's killing him slowly—slowly enough that we didn't even realize it until too late to prevent serious permanent damage, the last time around. This time… we have the formula. I've already started to get what we need to synthesize it, and so long as he stays away from certain types of alcohol and a few herbal cold remedies, he should be all right in the end. But… he's so small, and his body never did take well to the transformations. It's little surprise that he's still recovering."

Hakuba grimaced, and Kaito was more than willing to echo the sentiment. "If we're careful, he'll be fine. If you don't mind hanging out more often, though… the whole 'murder magnet' thing is bad enough, but when he's this size, a lot of those types see him as an easy hostage. There have been close calls before, and I'd rather he didn't get shot again."

"'m not that bad," Shinichi opened one eye to give a hazy glare.

"Conan," Kaito raised an eyebrow, emphasizing the name pointedly, "You've been shot, stabbed, beaten, thrown out of an airship well over a kilometer above the ground, half-drowned, buried in an avalanche, and caught in more explosions than I care to remember. No, you're not that bad—you're worse."

Hakuba made a strangled sound and Shinichi huffed quietly, subsiding at the list. "Been fine, except for the shot and the poisoned," he pointed out, yawning and starting to sit up.

Kaito planted a finger in the center of his forehead and scowled until he lay back down again. "You've gotten out remarkably well," he agreed. "But the airship one… if I hadn't been there—that's a long way down."

"Mm. The fake bioterrorists. That was so weird—who fakes bioterrorism?"

"You got shot a couple times there, too," Kaito added thoughtfully.

"Grazed," Shinichi corrected. "Grazed, not shot. Those guys were nuts."

"More like 'will be'," Kaito grumped. "Damn it, we can't even skip the heist, because if they're there and we're not, things'll get really messy. Don't get thrown out the window again."

Shinichi hummed, "Give me a parachute."

Hakuba finally found his voice, "My god, you two are serious."

Shinichi shrugged at him.

Kaito grinned, wry and tired. "I tell him his life is a crime drama, but I really think it's worse than that."

"I've watched crime dramas," Shinichi agreed, "They don't involve half the ridiculousness that is my life. Who survives a body-destroying poison by turning into a six-year-old, anyway?"

"You!" Kaito stated, falsely cheerful. "Well, and Haibara-san."

"Haibara had the excuse of partial resistance due to long-term exposure."

Kaito blinked, "Huh. Hadn't thought of that. Anyway, you, go to sleep."

"I was asleep, noisemaker," Shinichi pointed out.

Kaito huffed, then scooped him up off the couch amidst indignant squawking, "I'm putting you upstairs," he informed cheerily. "You're taking a nap, Conan-chan. You need the sleep."

Shinichi gave up on his escape attempts, clearly aware that they weren't going to work. "Fine," he sulked.

Kaito settled him into bed, tucking the blanket around him comfortably, "I'm sorry," he said gently. "I just…"

"Worry," Shinichi offered a wan smile, "I know. I would too—go make Hakuba do his homework while I take a nap, will you? He's fretting and could use the distraction."

Kaito smiled, "Sure thing, Shin-chan! I won't even dye his hair green!"

Shinichi eyeballed him, "Or any other color?"

"You know me so well," Kaito waved, dodging back out of the room.

"That wasn't an answer!" he heard Shinichi grumble after him and he grinned. The whole thing was a mess, but it was better than it could have been and Shinichi was still entirely himself—not depressed as Kaito had feared.

It wasn't great, but that was all right. Things would get better.

Hopefully.

xxxx

Hakuba was starting to understand just how much Kuroba worried. Time-travel in and of itself didn't seem… bad, really, even if it wasn't supposed to be real; but if Kuroba had only been able to stand by and watch while someone he cared about slowly died in front of him…

Yes. Yes, the way he looked at Kudo sometimes made a lot more sense. The way he worried over Kudo now, as little Conan… Hakuba was starting to understand that, too. The words 'it's poison' immediately followed by 'it's killing him slowly', had him starting to feel that worry, himself, and he didn't have anything close to Kuroba's bond with Kudo.

When Kuroba made his way down the stairs with a smile that was softly fond, Hakuba's swelling unease settled a bit. They—well, Kuroba—had said they had time. That it had taken years for it to get bad. Months was only a fraction of that, and if Hakuba's presence could help… but he wasn't an actor. "Kuroba, are you sure I should be here?"

Kuroba rolled his eyes, "Conan says to do your homework," he informed in lieu of a reply.

Hakuba sighed and moved over to pick up his school bag, then started towards the table. He didn't want to broach the subject, but it needed to be brought up. "I'm not… I can't act the way you can, Kuroba. Not even close. Knowing this… I don't want to give anything away."

Kuroba paused, turning to look at him. "I appreciate the concern," he decided. "Conan is enough like Shinichi that even if you slip up, you have a perfectly good excuse, and Conan's also different enough from Shinichi that I doubt you'll need to worry about acting. You'll see as soon as he's feeling better—Conan's terrifying, but he's not Shinichi."

Odd way to put it, but… "How does that work? It's—he's not MPD."

Kuroba shrugged one shoulder, "I'm not Kid. I never have been. Kid's… he's someone else entirely. Shinichi's not Kid, but Kid can be either of us. Conan's not Shinichi. There are similarities, but… between us, there are four. It's not MPD. Kid can be one or two, but Conan's Shinichi's. It's… we're not acting. I don't know how to put it—it's more like I step back, and let Kid just… take over. I'm not Kid, but—he's me. Thing is, he's also Shinichi—sometimes I swear I get overlapping memories, and after learning as much as I have about mahou, I'm starting to think that's not entirely impossible."

That didn't make sense. "What do you mean?"

"The human mind is a powerful thing, Hakuba. We create. It's what we do. This entire world we live in—a lot of it has been so changed by human hands that it would be literally unrecognizable to anyone who'd come before we'd changed things. We have redirected rivers, reshaped mountains, stalled even the sea. And magic… it's got rules, it has things it cannot do—but those limits are based on the people who use it and our ability to transcend the world around us. It's easy enough to imagine something shifting position or color so much that the world sees it as we do—but the power to change things has to come from something; nearly always the one initiating the changes. Thing is, there are things that are not changes so much as concepts given form. Have you ever heard of a tulpa*?"

Hakuba shook his head, frowning. The term sounded vaguely familiar, but not enough so as to make sense.

"A more western equivalent would be 'thoughtform', I think. Tulpa are… they're concepts that have been fed so much power and belief that they become real, after a fashion. A true tulpa should have a visible form, near-always illusionary, capable of being seen and heard by others than its creator. They don't always have to be in one place at a time, either—as conceptual beings, they're significantly more fluid in time than 'real' things. The other catch is concepts can really get into your head, even if you weren't the one to originally come up with them."

That meant… what? That Kid was some kind of—separate entity? That Kuroba was only Kid because he was most convenient? Most open? Most similar to what Kid was?

That was a somewhat frightening thought, and made unnervingly feasible, after seeing two Kids standing side-by-side, completely indistinguishable from each other.

"Don't look like that—tulpa aren't ghosts, aren't quite that… How do I put it? You know me, right? Know who I am and a lot about me?"

Not sure where Kuroba was going with this, Hakuba nodded.

"Do you think you know everything about me? Everything I think and feel, all my memories, all my skills?"

"No," Hakuba was nowhere near that arrogant.

"I'm a person. A tulpa is very much like a thoughtform. It's only as real as it's believed to be. Which is why I'm thinking Kid's becoming one, or maybe has become one, because Shinichi and I think of Kid the exact same way and have poured that into him, into becoming him, at times, and… well. Just because it's in our forms instead of one of its own doesn't make it any less a tulpa. They aren't that… real. It cannot make us do anything we aren't first willing to do, and if there's one thing Kid has been made to be... it is nonviolent."

That, Hakuba was willing to believe. It also made a weird kind of sense—Kudo and Kuroba were completely impossible to tell apart when they were acting as Kid, and even when they were acting as each other, Hakuba had started to be able to tell differences. He wasn't entirely sure who was who, but there were differences all the same.

If that was because they'd given Kid some kind of rudimentary existence of his (its?) own, then they were just tapping into it for the duration, in which case there was a certain part of them that was the same, and there wouldn't be differences to find.

That was just… "And Conan is the same?"

Kuroba shook his head, "Not exactly. Conan's… a partition. He's more of a person, really—just, Shinichi can't be Shinichi in that form, not in front of others, so as much as he originally had no idea how to act as someone else, Shinichi is Conan. Conan's only a fragment, though. He's not—Shinichi is so much more than Conan is."

Hakuba considered that. "So…"

"So, we'll see. If it looks like it's going to get dangerous, we'll take a break and figure something out. For now, though, don't worry about it. Last time around, things were more dangerous. This time… well, it wasn't Gin that poisoned him. They don't know us, yet."

That was only slightly reassuring.

Hakuba sighed, "Have you ever sat down and wondered how this is your life?"

Kuroba shook his head with a grin, "Nope! I always figured it was the price of being awesome!"

Hakuba rolled his eyes heavenward, "How is this my life?"

Kuroba cackled at him, and suddenly there was smoke. Hakuba sighed when his hair drifted back into view, a dark shade of crimson.

How was this his life?

xxxx

*Tulpa are a Tibetan Buddhist concept. I elaborated slightly, but it is essentially so. Thoughtforms are indeed a western offshoot of the idea, somewhat less complicated in description. I've been fascinated with myths, legends, and a lot of wide-ranging religions and/or beliefs for a very long time, and have been looking for an excuse to plant tulpa in a story of mine for a few months now. Kid seemed a great place, considering this storyline has two of him.