Pretoria I: Entr'acte

They flew off to Pretoria the next morning.

Kaito's eyes never seemed to move from the window as he sat, still as a statue, on the plane ride down the African continent.

Aoko sensed he needed space. What for, she had no clue. They hadn't spoken about anything specific in regards to the past heist, and she'd been too busy with the flight arrangements and the hotel cancellations to watch the news up until this point. But now, on a fifteen-hour direct flight from Edinburgh to Pretoria, with a sleeping seven-year old on her right and a unspeaking shell of a husband on her left, she suddenly found herself itching for a peek at her phone.

She pressed it on, carefully, and navigated to the news.

"SHOTS FIRED: Phantom Thief KID heist ends in bloodbath!"

Her face paled. What exactly had gone on at the heist after she left? She had seen Kaito's injuries, of course, but her inspection of the bullet graze on his scalp found it to be just a shallow wound. Nothing to write home about, and especially nothing for the news to call a bloodbath.

So what happened? She read further, feeling her heart sink further and further as she did.

"Two foreign law enforcement officers were left in critical condition after sustaining life-threatening injuries while in pursuit of the Phantom Thief KID. Saguru Hakuba, a Japanese police detective, was discovered with a gunshot wound to his chest outside of a burning warehouse a block away from Glenmore Manor, where the heist had taken place earlier that night. Istvan Galambos, a Hungarian Interpol agent, was discovered inside the warehouse and sustained severe burns. Both officers are currently receiving intensive care at Cheshire Falls Medical Center. Further details as to their conditions have not currently been made available to the public."

Aoko stared at the words for a long moment, scanning the letters, trying desperately to tell if she had misinterpreted something she had read. Please, let me be mistaken...

"What did you do?" she breathed out loud to the man beside her before she could stop herself, the question alight in fear.

No response.

"Kaito?"

Still nothing.

She knew he was awake, and just ignoring her. She put a firm hand on his shoulder, her nervous grip like a vice. "Kaito, what did you do? Explain this to me!"

He shook off her hand, but did eventually turn to face her.

Nothing could have prepared her for the sheer devastation wrought on his face. His eyes were bloodshot, his forehead bore creases she'd never seen before, and his mouth – usually cracked into a wide Poker Face grin - was pressed tightly in a thin, narrow line.

"You finally saw the news, I'm guessing?" Kaito asked, trying but failing to keep his voice light.

Aoko had tears in her eyes as she begged him, once more, "What did you do?"

"What I had to do." Kaito's face tried to harden, but broke, and suddenly he was crying, too. "I think I actually wanted to kill him."

"Hakuba?" She asked the question in a whisper, carefully, hardly believing it even as she spoke it.

Kaito's fist clenched. "Of course not! Never in a million years would I have wanted him dead. But Galambos, on the other hand – Galambos, I could – I could -" He pounded the armrest. "- I could kill that man!"

Aoko's eyes widened at his words. "Kaito, you don't mean that…"

"I do. I really, really do," Kaito sneered. "That man deserves to be dead in the ground for what he did to Hakuba."

"What did he do?" Aoko cautioned, hardly sure if she could believe what he was implying.

"You read it yourself, didn't you?" Kaito snatched the phone out of her hand and read the words of the article out loud to her in a mocking tone. "Saguru Hakuba, a Japanese police detective, was discovered with a gunshot wound to his chest!"

"But that doesn't make any sense!" Aoko said. "If what I'm thinking you're saying is true, then -"

"It is true! Galambos is an evil backstabbing monster. He shot Hakuba in cold blood with a pistol issued to him from the embassy!"

"Why did the embassy issue…?" Aoko trailed off as she realized the answer to her own question. "Oh no."

"I'm in dangerous territory now," Kaito concluded. "I should have known that the torture chamber wasn't just a scare tactic!"

Aoko glanced around, suddenly remembering everyone else on the plane and the fact that their conversation was very, very public. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be paying any mind to them – speaking Japanese in a very much English-speaking environment seemed to have its perks. Still, she tried to keep her voice lower to avoid unwanted attention. They were discussing highly private matters, after all. "You keep bringing up a torture chamber. Kaito, what did that man do to you?"

Kaito's face folded in on itself, draining its color as he shut his eyes tight. "Don't… don't ask me about that."

"I need to know, Kaito." She placed a gentle hand on his arm.

He pulled his arm away like she had just burned him with her touch. "Why, Aoko? Why do you need to know?" He turned his face away and pressed his forehead against the window, muttering, "Can't you just leave me alone? What does it have to do with anything, anyway? I got out of there just fine."

"I think he scared you," Aoko said, leaning in. "I think you were prepared to deal with a very different type of pain than Galambos has been inflicting on you, and now you're not able to heal because you don't even know what to make of the injuries you have now. Those gunmen at the heists in Tokyo were more straightforward than Galambos has been, after all."

"Snake's more of a shoot-your-problems-away type," Kaito conceded after a long moment of contemplation. "He's never been bright enough to construct an elaborate scheme to catch me, let alone hurt me. Even to kill my father, all he did was plant some basic explosives underneath the stage. And that's not even -"

"Snake killed your father?" Aoko interrupted.

"Well," Kaito thought for a moment. "Yeah."

There was a heavy silence between them.

Aoko considered everything she'd learned about Kaito since he'd revealed himself to be Kaitou KID in the most unclimactic way ever. He never had explained anything to her, letting her just fill in the blanks from her own observations. She'd only found out about the gunmen from her father, when he came home ranting about some crazy thugs that were taking shots at His Thief. And she only found out the gunman's name was Snake after Kaito had referred to him by that name while they were escaping from him during that one heist in October. And even after all this time, she still had no idea why he had even become Kaitou KID in the first place. She'd suspected it was something to do with his dad, but then Jii was killed in the Kaitou KID suit and she was left wondering if maybe Jii had been the original KID after all, and perhaps Kaito's dad was just his assistant? There were so many unanswered questions, too many things to ask and not enough words with which to ask them.

Aoko set her shoulders and mustered the strength to ask, finally, "Why do you do it?"

Kaito shook his head, rolling his forehead against the window as he did. His voice was almost as pathetic as his response. "I need to."

"You… need to?" Aoko felt his answer in her mouth, a bad taste forming. "It's not for your father, it's not for revenge… after all of this, you're telling me that Kaitou KID is just a way to chase an adrenaline high?"

"No – no," he took his head off the window and turned back to her, a very serious expression on his face. "Maybe at first, when I was in high school. I had fun back then. Now it's hard to find any enjoyment in it at all."

"So then why do you do it?!"

"Because I need to." He stressed the last two words.

"Because you're an adrenaline junkie?"

"We're not having this conversation here, Aoko." Kaito crossed his arms and leaned his head into his seat. "Just trust me on this."

"Kaito, you know I trust you," Aoko said with a sigh. "I just want to understand what it is that I'm trusting you about. I don't want to see you get hurt again."

He turned away from her. "Every time I become Kaitou KID, I stand the chance of getting killed. I have so many enemies around the world that would like to see me dead. Not every one of them is a crazy psychopathic mastermind like Galambos, but I've made my peace with the fact that I need to do this, regardless."

"You told me before that I wasn't allowed to die," Aoko said slowly, voice near breaking.

"I know."

"You told me that I wasn't allowed to leave Shinju without a mother -"

"I know, Aoko, dammit! Okay? Don't remind me. It's bad enough that -"

"Now it's my turn." Aoko put her hand on his, and when he tried to pull it away she just held her grasp firmer. "You're not allowed to just die, Kuroba Kaito."

He made a sound that was neither a yes nor a no, and returned his attention to the window. He made no further movement to remove his hand from hers, and they said nothing more to each other for the rest of the flight.