Keep giving all the love you can
Thabo did not escort Aoko back to the holding room, instead letting her walk back through the hallway alone.
Her thoughts in that hall for those few brief strides were a blur. She was a jumble of emotions – relieved, to be done with the questioning for now – nervous, that she'd said something wrong – scared, of what Thabo might ask her next – and most surprisingly, comforted, by Thabo's completely sincere demeanor. Thabo had seemed genuinely interested in assuring that justice was served for everyone involved. He was a stark contrast to Galambos and did wonders to restore her faith in a law enforcement system she had started to become jaded to in the recent years.
Reaching the end of the hall, she entered the holding room and found Kaito looking bored, stretched across the metal bench like a cat and seemingly dozing off. Aoko knew him better than to think that, though.
"He wants us to wait here a little longer. He has more questions," Aoko said, announcing her entrance and making Kaito stir out of his own thoughts. He stretched and made room for her next to him. She sat, the heat of his body close to her now and warming her chilly blood. She made to look at him, mouth open to say something, when she suddenly stopped short.
In the tension of the interrogation - in the jumble of her emotions from that hellish experience - she'd forgotten about what he did… but when he opened his eyes to look at her, she saw Shinju's eyes.
Shinju.
The anger flooded back to her instantly.
A younger Aoko – perhaps the one from high school, who always reached for something long-handled and sturdy when Kaito pissed her off – would have spontaneously combusted right then and there. In a rageful fit of pettiness she would have yelled to the security officers around her and condemned Kaito to prison. Sure, she probably would've gotten arrested too, but wasn't that just a small price to pay to get back at Kaito? She would have been happy to go to prison if it meant he did, too. Anything – she'd do anything – just to hurt him back as badly as he hurt her.
But she was older now. (Not wiser – she certainly didn't feel wiser – just… older.) And she was tired. And she knew Kaito's heart as well as her own.
Yes, he had hurt her so deeply that she thought she might just die from the pain. No, she didn't forgive him. Yes, she was still brutally angry with him.
But hurting her like that – deep down, she knew he hadn't meant to.
He was a good man. Stupid, but good.
(But what a horrible thing it was that he did to her! How could she just let that go?!)
She didn't have to make up her mind to stay silent. It was the only thing she could ever consider doing. They would talk about it in private, when the coast was clear and they didn't have six pairs of airport security guard eyeballs trained on them.
Kaito must have sensed her internal turmoil, because she found his voice in her ear, asking, "Are we… okay?"
"No," she said honestly, ice biting through her tone. None of this was what she would call okay. "But yes. I'll cooperate for now. Just let me know what I need to do."
Apparently that was all he needed her to say. In the span of a heartbeat he picked up her hand and dragged her to stand upright beside him. The six guards in the room, alarmed by his sudden movement, moved to the ready.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Kaito declared to the guards, still frozen where they stood. "I regretfully must bring this performance to a close."
"Sit down, Mr. Kuroba," a wary guard commanded him, as two others stepped forward to restrain him if need be. Always at the ready…
Kaito stopped them in his tracks by pulling out his card-gun and aimed it at Aoko's head. In a faint lucid moment of clear-headedness she recalled his card-gun wasn't made with metal, so of course he could carry it on his person on an airplane, which explained why it was possible at all that he had it now - but for some reason that realization didn't comfort her as much as she thought it would. Maybe it was something about the unhinged glint in Kaito's eye that he'd had since that horrible heist in Edinburgh, maybe it was something about what else he might have been planning to do with that gun. But she knew better than to question him – knew that, after all, this was just part of some demented trick - although she couldn't resist a small, nervous gulp as she felt the gun's cold barrel press against her temple.
"Ever see a head explode?" Kaito asked, voice smooth with a hint of underlying malice. "I promise it doesn't take a very skilled magician to pull a neat little trick like that off!"
"Put the gun down," a guard tried. "You don't want to do this."
"I do," Kaito promised.
He pressed the trigger, arm jolting back with the recoil as he did. In a fluid swoop, Kaito pulled Aoko into his arms, dipped her dangerously close to the floor, and held the gun – now brimming with a bouquet of a dozen white roses – between them.
"My treasure," Kaito said. "Forgive me."
His eyes implored her, filling in the line she knew he wanted her to say; and say the hell out of them, she did, contorting her face into the best impression of horrified shock and disbelief as she could:
"No! I can't believe it! You bastard!"
She took no small amount of joy in shrieking her one and only line in this farce of a production. Kaito looked pleased with her performance as he swung her back upright and held her close, as one would do with a lover… or a hostage.
"That's right! I am Kaitou KID, the Phantom Thief," Kaito stated boldly, addressing the stupefied guards. "Consider this my confession: all the crimes you attribute to KID were committed by me, Kuroba Kaito, and me alone. And now I take my bows, and my captive jewel!"
They disappeared in a blast of light, Kaito picking her up bridal style and running out of the airport security office before anyone's eyes cleared enough to see them. She clung to his neck, trying her best to make carrying her as easy as possible – but at the same time trying not to make it look like she was going too willingly. His plan, after all, had been clear: she was being stolen away, like one of his gems, and she was not to be suspected as an accomplice. Her heart might have fluttered from his thoughtfulness if she weren't already so infuriated with him.
They ran out of the airport and found themselves in the midst of a large, sprawling parking deck. Kaito heaved her down behind a pillar, trying to catch his breath.
"Jeez, what have you been eating, bricks and cement?" Kaito gasped, clutching at his cramped, spasming leg as pain spiraled through the muscles. Making a run for it had been necessary but he was definitely feeling the consequences… as he always did, these days.
Aoko stuck her tongue out. "I'm not heavy, you're just weak."
Kaito rolled his eyes, but couldn't help but feel like a sense of familiarity wash over him. It almost felt like they'd had this conversation before, just – differently, perhaps?
No matter. Business talk now, weird nostalgic musings later.
"Take this," Kaito said breezily, reaching in his back pocket and handing her a passport. She opened it to find a picture of herself staring back at her. It might have been her real passport, if it wasn't for the name: Aoko Holmes. "I figured I'd give it to you now in case we get separated."
"How did you…?"
"My mom," Kaito said. He held up a second matching passport and showed it to her. Like hers, it had a fake name as well: Kaito Lupin. "She gave these to me when I went to the bathroom. They'll allow us to travel a bit more before Interpol catches up to us again."
"And then what?"
Kaito gave her a confused look, as if the answer to her question was quite obvious, and was about to respond when –
"Attention! The Phantom Thief KID is on the loose on the airport premises," a loud voice boomed over the speaker system, echoing around the parking deck walls. "If you see him, alert authorities but do not attempt to confront him alone. He is confirmed to be armed and dangerous, and has taken a middle-aged Japanese woman as a hostage."
Kaito looked at Aoko sheepishly after the announcement had finished reverberating around the concrete structure. "That's not good."
No, it most certainly was not…
"I'm not middle-aged," Aoko complained.
"Oh, for the love of -" Kaito nearly laughed at that, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her with him. "Let's get out of here."
The airport was easy enough to escape from. Airport security was laughably easy to avoid, especially once they were outside the complex and had hailed a sketchy-looking taxi. They ordered the driver to just go, and he did, and when they finally figured out a destination they gave him a huge wad of cash and asked him very politely to forget he ever saw them.
Now Kaito and Aoko were camped out in a decrepit, musty motel of ill-repute, feeling the heavy weight of the day's events falling down around them.
Kaito sunk into the scratchy armchair, bones weary from carrying the brunt of their escape. When did he get so old? He propped his bad leg up on the radiator and used his foot to push the curtain aside so he could get a glimpse of the outside. Meanwhile, Aoko paced the length of the small hall in front of the bathroom, trying to collect herself and sort through her feelings.
"What a day!" Kaito groaned, shutting his eyes.
Kaito's voice took Aoko out of her thoughts, and she glanced over at him as she paced.
"Kaito," Aoko said, a dangerous edge to her voice.
Kaito peered over at her. "Aoko?"
"We need to talk." She stopped pacing for the moment and just stood, looking at him.
"Do we have to? Come on, we're awful at talking."
"Yes, we are." Aoko pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to collect her thoughts, tears threatening her eyes with stinging pricks. What was the mature way of approaching this conversation? "I'm very unhappy with the way you chose to handle things today."
Kaito sat up straighter, actually turning his body to face her. "Aoko, you have to understand, I was backed into a corner. I didn't really have another choice."
"I? What happened to we?"
"You know what I meant."
Oh, to hell with being an adult.
"No, actually, I don't." Aoko pointed a finger at him. "It's always you running around and screwing shit up, and then it's always me figuring out how to fix it. I lied to that Interpol Agent today, Kaito!" She threw her hands up in the air. "Do you know how much it hurt to do that? I'm a police detective! My father is an inspector!" Her eyes were welling up, obscuring her vision. "Do you know how much it hurts to be with you when you make me compromise every single one of the values I was brought up with?"
"Aoko, I never asked you to do any of that." Kaito replied, tight-lipped, eyebrows creasing. "I told you I had the situation under control."
"Confessing that you're Kaitou KID is your idea of having the situation under control?!"
"If it keeps you from going to jail, then, yeah, it is!"
"You're always making decisions for me! Why can't you just ask me what I want before you do it?"
"Because I know what's best!"
"You know what's best? You?! You sent our daughter away!" Aoko finally screamed, tears blurring her eyes. "You made me abandon my daughter! I hate you!"
"Hate me all you want!" Kaito shouted back. "I did this for her, not you!"
That stopped her in her tracks. For her? "…What do you mean?"
"I just wanted Shinju to be in a safe place! She deserves that from us. We're her parents. We need to look out for her wellbeing. And right now, she needs to be far away from us. As much as it kills me to say that."
"She's my daughter, Kaito. It kills me to be apart from her…" Aoko said, before hanging her head in defeat. "I feel like the worst mother in the world."
"We're probably the worst parents in the world, honestly," Kaito sighed, collapsing back into the armchair. "So I thought the best thing we could do at this point was to ensure Shinju would be safe and brought up in a normal household. Or… as normal as living with my mom can be. I'm sorry I didn't tell you but I knew you'd try to stop me." He cast his eyes away from hers. "And I knew I wouldn't have the strength to resist."
"Well…" Aoko collapsed on the bed. "I guess that's it then. We're definitely going to have to talk about this more in the future. I need you to trust me, Kaito. Make these decisions with me next time, please. But for right now - it's not so bad, I guess. When you finish being Kaitou KID and find whatever it is that you're looking for, then we can go back to Tokyo and pick up where we left off. We can be a family with Shinju again."
"Aoko," Kaito said quietly. "I still don't think you understand."
She picked her head up and looked at him questioningly.
"We're never going back to Tokyo, Aoko."
She sat up straight. "Of course we are. You said it yourself; you don't think you have it in you to steal for many more years. So either you find what you're looking for or you don't. Either way you'll retire, and this whole stupid thing will be over with."
"You just don't understand," he said, shaking his head.
"What don't I understand?" Aoko pressed. "Tell me."
He didn't offer an answer. Instead, he flicked his wrist and produced a scarf. Aoko recognized it; it was the light floral one she had picked up in Edinburgh to wrap around her bald head to keep it warm on windy days.
He held it up like a flag, giving it a slight wave, and suddenly Aoko's chest felt very heavy as she realized what he was trying to make her understand this whole time.
She took the scarf from him and let its silken fabric run across her trembling fingers.
"Do you get it, now?" Kaito said as he closed his eyes. "We're never going back to Tokyo."
The days passed slowly, muddying into each other seamlessly. They didn't dare leave the motel room, except to go to the vending machine in the lobby or to renew the reservation at the front office. And even those things they did on off-hours, trying their best to avoid contact with the outside world – and therefore avoid recognition.
Over the course of what was probably a week, Aoko watched Kaito retreat further and further into himself, drawing back deeper into the dark clutches of his mind. He'd sit in the armchair for hours at a time and wordlessly stare out the window. Any conversation she tried to start with him would be ignored.
She tried to busy herself with other matters of concern: namely, their belongings. They had none of their luggage bags, having been forced to leave it all at the airport. For Aoko, that meant she only had to go through the unpleasantness of living in the same (rather ripe) clothes for the week. For Kaito, on the other hand, it meant something completely different.
Everything was gone. All his props, his equipment, his costumes, his supplies – everything. If he had been hoping to pull off a heist here in Pretoria, he was going to have to do it with nothing but the shirt on his back… and apparently the card-gun in his pocket. But as Aoko gazed over at Kaito's sullen form, she doubted that heists were a problem they'd have to deal with in the near future.
Obviously, this was no way to live. Aoko reflected on the last actual conversation she'd had with Kaito. Perhaps he intended to shell himself up in this motel room and die right here? Even more so – perhaps he intended for her to die in here as well with him, like some sort of Juliet who would martyr herself for her dearest Romeo?
She wanted to laugh off the thought, but she couldn't bring herself to find any humor in it. It was a little too close to the truth.
Kaito's silence was an unsurmountable third guest in their motel room, but as the days wore on Aoko became more and more convinced that she was the intruder. More than once she became so fed up with him that she considered walking out and boarding the next flight back to Tokyo. It was his hand that stopped her from leaving every time.
He was wearing their wedding ring.
She had no clue at what point he began wearing it again. He was always moving his hands around, fidgeting, shoving them in his pockets, as a magician does; her attention was always carefully drawn from noticing any one specific thing. No, she couldn't remember when he started wearing it again. Her heart beat a little faster as she contemplated the idea that he never stopped wearing it in the first place.
Regardless, she was determined to sit in that dirty old room for however long it took Kaito to deal with… whatever he was dealing with. Demons of his past; grudges against Galambos; grief and regret over Hakuba's fate. Checking the news showed no updates on any of their fronts; the Tokyo gunmen (led by Snake, as Kaito had accidentally revealed earlier) were still coasting safely under the radar, Galambos was enduring a slow convalescence, and Hakuba had pretty much disappeared from the news altogether. Aoko's understanding was that he was in rough shape and Akako had brought him back to Ekoda, but whether she brought him home to care for him better or just to die, she wasn't sure.
There was no doubt Kaito blamed himself for what happened to Hakuba. It was hard watching him soundlessly beat himself up over it, day after day. Sure, she agreed to stick by him through thick and thin. She'd be there for him if he wanted to talk, or if he just needed to know someone was near. But some days it just became too much.
Some days – like today.
Aoko averted her eyes from her phone. She missed her old phone; Kaito had made sure they tossed their old phones immediately after fleeing the airport and had purchased them a set of burner phones. Her new burner phone was a flip phone and had enormously less uses. For a while she had just played around with the 8-pixel camera, trying to capture the Pretoria sights from behind the motel's moth-bitten window curtain, but flipping through indistinguishable images got boring after so many hours.
She needed to do something to get her mind off everything.
No, scratch that. She needed to do something to get her mind around everything. She needed to make progress. She couldn't keep avoiding their issues. Maybe Kaito wasn't in the right mindset to be dealing with the fugitive lifestyle, but Aoko was. Which meant it was up to her to pick up the slack. Because they were a team, dammit, and damn her straight to hell if she didn't help him when he was down.
They were in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. The news hadn't changed much on the Kaitou KID front – after all, Interpol had already released a statement to the press saying Kaito was KID – but she knew Kaito's confession had definitely changed the game on the internal part of the investigation. Now there was credible evidence against his innocence that could hardly be refuted.
(Although, she wouldn't put it past him to find a way to deny it.)
They couldn't run forever. Interpol had many resources. Galambos, unlike Hakuba, had taken a turn for the better and was recovering. Eventually he'd be looking for them again, and with his iron will it wouldn't take him long to catch them. What did criminals do when confronted with the certainty of an eventual arrest?
Aoko could think of one thing. But Kaito wouldn't like it.
She picked up her phone and went to the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She doubted Kaito would bother listening, trapped as he was by his own mind at the moment, but she figured it'd be better safe than sorry.
So there, sitting on the toilet, a piece of crude, cheap plastic in her hands, she dialed a number she knew by heart since middle school. The call was picked up after a single ring.
"Oh my God! Aoko? Are you alright?" Keiko gushed worriedly.
Aoko couldn't help a small smile that appeared on her face at her friend's concern. "Keiko, I'm fine."
"It's all over the news!" Keiko said. "Kaito is Kaitou KID! And Aoko – oh my God – your dad is worried sick! Interpol contacted him and said Kaito kidnapped you! Please tell me you're okay!"
Aoko felt her stomach sink. She hadn't thought about her father's reaction to her apparent kidnapping. She hadn't thought about anyone's reaction, because as far as she cared it wasn't even real. But they didn't know that… of course they didn't... but at the same time, how could they even think that of him? It was just such an inconceivable, unbelievable notion! "I'm okay. Seriously, I'm safe."
"Where are you?"
"I can't tell you that," Aoko said hurriedly, trying to get to the point. This was not a social call, after all. "Keiko, I need to ask you for something."
"Anything!"
"I need a lawyer," Aoko said. "Would – would you be able to be that for me? You interned under Kisaki Eri, didn't you?"
"Yeah, but…" Keiko sounded nervous. "Aoko, I practice civil law. Divorces and family matters, you know…"
"But you studied criminal law, didn't you?"
"Wouldn't you rather have a lawyer that actually practices it?"
"Keiko," Aoko said, pleadingly, "I don't trust anyone but you. Please. Rent books from the library or something. I need you."
"Wait, why do you need a lawyer, anyway? What did you do?"
Aoko took a steadying breath, wishing she could just be forthright with her oldest friend. "I can't tell you unless you agree."
"Aoko -"
"Please."
Keiko's end was silent. Aoko could only assume she put the phone down and walked away without hanging it up.
Aoko clutched at the phone, an iron grip keeping it next to her ear for what felt like an eternity, until Keiko returned with a quick, "You still there?"
"Yes."
"Okay," Keiko sounded more business-like now, "I just pulled out all my notes from school. I think I have everything I need here…"
"So you'll…?"
Keiko let out a sigh. "Yes, I'll be your lawyer."
Their conversation lasted nearly two and a half hours, during which Aoko burst into tears exactly five times, called Kaito a no-good thieving scoundrel bastard exactly twelve times, and used the phrase Fucking Kaitou KID exactly one-hundred-and-seventy-six times.
At the end of the conversation, Keiko promised she'd call Aoko back at the end of the week.
"Please don't," Aoko said sadly. "I can't be too careful right now. I don't want Interpol to get a whiff of any of this and start tracing calls. Call me if something comes up, but otherwise -"
"I get it," Keiko replied. "I-I'll keep an eye on things here. I'll pour my heart into building your defense until – if the time comes."
"Keiko, I have one last request."
"Anything, Aoko."
"Tell me if I'm asking too much – but look in on Shinju. She's going to be living with Kaito's mom. I don't know how Chikage-san's going to explain how she has Shinju… I'm sure she'll come up with something. But with everything going on with Kaito, I wouldn't be surprised if Interpol starts looking into her. Like I said, I don't know what she's hiding but it definitely won't be good if they start asking questions. I just don't want Shinju getting caught up in the middle of it all."
"I'll look after her, Aoko. I promise."
Aoko nearly cried for a sixth time at the everlasting generosity of her dear friend.
"Thank you…"