No Strings Attached
Part 2: Poker Face
By Hikari-chan
Disclaimer: I'm too tired for this. Not mine. Don't sue.
Notes: Part 2 of 3. I'm a strong believer that if you're going to split up a story into parts, such as trilogies, each part should be able to stand on its own. So if you're reading this and you think you could have understood what's going on without the first part or the third part, then I've done my job. For awhile, I was dissatisfied with the ending to this part. For some reason, it really bothered me, and then the awesomeness that is doRaemon pointed out what was wrong with it. So, big hugs for that. )
Genre: General, pointless (yes, pointless is a genre. P)
Rating: PG for innuendoes
Pairing: Kid/Ai/Conan; I suggest vodka to go with the fic, by the way.
Word Count: 4489
To June, for the original inspiration towards a Kid/Ai/Conan fic that I've wanted to write for a long time. To Rae, for being an awesome and hilarious beta.
-----
"Why are you following me?"
The look on her face was one that promised certain pain and suffering if his answer wasn't satisfactory. Then again, the shrunken detective had interacted with the miniature scientist long enough to know that whatever he said would not meet her expectations anyway.
"I'm not following you," he denied.
She raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. "I walked into a broom closet and you were right on my heels," she deadpanned.
Both Kudo Shinichi and his alter ego, Edogawa Conan, might have been well-known for their quick minds and sharp retorts to offenders of law, but in the face of Haibara Ai's accurate observations and dry wit, they were often rendered speechless. He gulped when she narrowed her eyes at him, and quickly retraced his steps, wondering if retreating from the broom closet before she tore him apart was possible.
How did he land himself in these situations anyways?
It had just been one innocent observation.
Following Ran's graduation from high school three years ago, Conan had suggested that he move into Agasa-hakase's house. His "guardian" had been disappointed that he was moving out, but since she would be leaving Tokyo to attend Doshisha University in Kyoto, it was impossible for her to stay at home. She would be moving to Kyoto, and she agreed that leaving Kogorou to take care of Conan was not the best idea in the world, as the boy was only nine and her father was often drunk. Conan had not been particularly thrilled about the idea of Ran leaving Tokyo, but even he had to admit that living with the professor and Haibara was a lot easier than living with the Mouri family. For one thing, going "home" really meant that he could relax and drop the pretenses.
Both Haibara and Agasa-hakase spent a lot of time in their respective labs, the first no doubt working on the antidote to APTX-4869 and the latter doing God-only-knows-what. That left Conan with a lot of free time to investigate the one case he was desperate to crack - taking down the Black Organization.
A few months ago, his hard work all these years had finally paid off. In a showdown that had almost taken his and Haibara's lives and left more than a few police officers heavily injured, all of the Organization members were now either dead or arrested.
Perhaps it was because this case was finally over that he had suddenly noticed the change in the girl he now called his best friend. His observation skills had been too focused elsewhere in the past to notice that there was something weird going on with Haibara, although to be really honest, Conan hadn't even noticed the fact until recently.
Haibara dressed up for Kid heists.
Conan was pretty darn sure of it. Why? He still had to figure that out, but when he had gotten ready to leave for the heist earlier this evening, she had come down to the front foyer in a sleeveless blue and green sundress that fell gracefully down to her knees, a thick white ribbon tied girlishly around her waist.
Conan had gawked at her.
"You're catching flies, Kudo-kun," she had remarked dryly while pulling on a pair of comfortable sandals.
"Why are you dressed like that?" he remembered blurting out tactlessly.
"I can dress however I want," she replied, crossing her arms. "Or is there a law against that nowadays?"
Conan had shaken his head and the two had left the professor's house side by side, heading for the museum where the Heart of Eternity, a heart-shaped blue diamond that was part of the Millennium Jewels collection, was currently on display in Tokyo. It was on their way there that Conan's mind had started to wander, automatically thinking back of the last time he had seen Haibara dressed the way she was right then. Surprisingly, it had been a couple of months ago, during another Kid heist. Frowning, Conan had tried to recall all of the Kid heists he had gone to with Haibara, only to find that she had dressed up, at least in comparison to what she normally wore, for all of the ones that had happened in the past year. He had been suspicious, not to mention very curious, about her behaviour.
"So Haibara," he had said as they walked up the steps to the museum. "How come you've taken an interest in Kid heists? You were always indifferent before."
She shrugged. "You're the one who always tells me to get out of the lab," she replied. "And in comparison to the dead people you seem to attract everywhere you go, I would rather see a jewel being stolen by a flashy, obnoxious magician."
Conan had nothing to say to that, not that he would've had a chance to, since they had arrived in the room where the jewel was on display, promptly being spotted by Nakamori-keibu, the head of the Kaitou Kid Specialists.
"You!" he bellowed, stomping over to the two fake pre-teens.
"Nakamori-keibu," Conan had greeted.
"I thought I told you to stay out of crime scenes!" he yelled. "Kid is a dangerous character!"
"If you're allergic to pink smoke," Ai snickered.
Conan scratched his head. That was one of those things nobody understood about the Phantom Thief. What was up with the pink smoke? Couldn't he use something a little easier on the eyes, like white smoke? He coughed to attract the inspector's attention.
"I hope you don't mind us coming to observe, Nakamori-keibu," he smiled innocently. In truth, he stood a better chance at catching Kid than the inspector could ever hope to, but the best way to be allowed to stay where you weren't supposed to was to flatter the authorities, as Conan had learned in all his years as a shrunken detective.
Nakamori snorted and turned away from the two of them, obviously still fuming. Since Conan had earned a fantastic reputation with Megure-keibu and the First Division, Nakamori couldn't exactly kick them out without a great excuse. Besides, Conan had always been more of a help than a hindrance, so he had always found a way to stay despite Nakamori's protests.
"As long as you stay out of the way!"
"Yes sir!" Conan called back.
He turned to Haibara and dropped the happy mask, wanting to complain about his size, only to find that the girl had left the room while he had been busy convincing Nakamori-keibu to let him stay. Taking a quick glance at his watch and noting that he still had fifteen minutes before the appointed time of the heist, he hurriedly ran into the hall, just catching sight of Haibara's dress as it disappeared around the corner. He managed to stay out of sight and follow her for another couple of minutes, but he didn't exactly know the museum's layout, so when she had turned sharply around a corner, he had run around the corner close behind her, so as not to lose her.
It was rather unfortunate that around the corner was a broom closet, a place he had no reasonable excuse to be.
"Why are you following me?"
The look on her face was one that promised certain pain and suffering if his answer wasn't satisfactory. Then, again, the shrunken detective had interacted with the miniature scientist long enough to know that whatever he said would not meet her expectations anyway.
"I'm not following you," he denied.
She raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. "I walked into a broom closet and you were right on my heels," she deadpanned.
Conan laughed nervously and tried to get out of the closet before she decided to make his life a living hell once they went home. He held up his hands in mock surrender and backed into the hall.
"I was just looking for the bathroom and walked into the wrong place," he blurted out quickly, and before Ai could reply, he was running down the hall and back towards the display room.
The heist was supposed to happen in a few minutes anyways. He had no time to ponder why Haibara liked to dress up for Kid heists and hide in broom closets. A frown came to his face as his steps slowed to a stop. If Haibara wanted to watch the heist as she had claimed earlier, why would she be hiding in a broom closet? And if she was going to hide in a broom closet, what was the point of dressing up?
He turned around and headed back towards the broom closet. Some part of his mind reminded him that curiosity killed the cat.
"Detectives are supposed to find the truth," he muttered quietly to himself. "Besides, satisfaction brought the cat back."
-----
Ai sighed as she reached over to close the door to the closet and flipped on the light switch next to the door. One of these days, Conan was going to find out. Then again, with the issues that she had already gone through in her life, dealing with a pissed off detective was the last thing she was worried about. If worse came to worst, she could always deny him his antidote, and then he would leave her alone, and all would be right with the world again.
"Little girls are much prettier when they smile," a singsong voice drifted to her ears from the vent above her.
Seconds later, the figure in white literally dropped in from above, landing gracefully beside her. In a swift motion, he lifted her small hand to his lips and produced a red rose with his free hand, which he held out to her. She plucked the small flower from his grasp and tossed it carelessly onto the shelf behind her, which was filled with dustpans of various shapes and sizes. The Phantom Thief gave her a wounded look, the same one he always gave her after she threw the rose away at every meeting.
"Little girls would smile more if they didn't always meet phantom thieves in broom closets or the public bathroom," Ai remarked dryly.
"I'm open to suggestions," Kid replied with a shrug.
Ai crossed her arms. "I'd like to try midair one of these days," she stated, a mocking tone in her voice. "Fresh air is healthful after all."
The corner of Kid's lips twitched upwards. "I don't think the police would appreciate a second person who jumped off random buildings with hang gliders," he commented.
"When did you have any consideration for the authorities?" she asked, raising an elegant eyebrow at him in the dimness of the room.
He grinned lazily at the question. "Just because I don't have much respect for the authorities, doesn't mean I don't have any consideration for them," he pointed out. "I know they work hard."
"But you work harder, right?" she finished for him.
"So do you, Ojou-chan," he responded.
"I have a reason to keep working," Ai said, "but what do you have to gain from this continuous stealing when all of them are either dead or in jail?"
"I get to see you all dressed up for me every time I show up," he answered cheekily.
An uncharacteristic blush spread itself onto Ai's cheeks, and she looked away from him, focusing her stare on the apparently fascinating broom behind him.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," she replied monotonously.
He gave her a mocking smile. "I sure hope you don't dress like that every time you solve a case with chibi-Holmes," he commented.
"What if I do?" Ai challenged, obviously irritated by the thief's obnoxious behaviour.
"I won't feel special anymore," Kid answered as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "And I'll be jealous because more people drop dead around him than there are jewels I want to steal."
"Right," Ai drawled sarcastically, "and I'm jealous you spend more time thinking of riddles for Edogawa-kun than of me."
"We could fix that," Kid grinned, the flirtatious tone still in his voice. "I could drop him a note saying I'll steal you one of these days."
"I'm flattered," Ai deadpanned, "but I'm sure that classifies as either kidnapping or pedophilia."
The thief shrugged as he leaned down and gave her a soft, parting kiss on her cheek. "I already have a rather impressive list of crimes to my name," he replied in a neutral tone that left Ai wondering if he was proud of or guilty about that fact. "One more or one less wouldn't exactly stop them from locking me up if they caught me."
Before Ai could come up with a witty response, Kid had climbed up into the vent, leaving as quickly as he had appeared. The girl looked up into the dark tunnel above her, shaking her head. She would never figure out how he managed to keep the white outfit immaculate, and if she did, she would be selling the product to mothers of children everywhere, and getting rich from it. Oh well, she had more important things to worry about, like finalizing that antidote to APTX-4869. Shrugging, she switched off the light and opened the door.
The last thing she had expected was to come face to face with Conan, who did not look pleased at all.
Still, it would take a lot more than an angry detective who was barely three inches taller than her to make Ai nervous. She crossed her arms casually and looked at him with cool indifference.
"You're going to be late to the heist," she commented.
Conan scowled at her. "Why would I need to attend the heist when I have you right here in front of me?" he asked dryly.
"Oh? And how would having me help you stop the heist?"
Ai sounded genuinely unconcerned, and that perhaps bothered Conan more than the fact that he had overheard her meeting with the thief before the crime. He grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her towards the stairs to the roof. When in doubt while dealing with Kid, just head up.
"Kudo-kun," Ai hissed. "What are you doing?"
"Taking you to your accomplice," Conan answered tonelessly, although Ai, having interacted with him for so many years now, detected the disgusted undertone of his words.
"I can only be an accomplice if I've aided him in wrongdoing," Ai interjected flatly.
"You're letting him escape," Conan snapped, turning to her with a spark of fury in his normally calm eyes, one that made Ai wonder for a brief moment if she knew him at all. "Isn't that aiding him in wrongdoing?"
He pushed the door to the roof open and the cool night air suddenly surrounded them like blankets of ice. The wind was blowing mildly, but it was enough to send the ribbons around her waist dancing, intertwining gently with her loose hair like Parisian lovers. The skirt of her dress fluttered softly around her knees, and it suddenly struck Conan that Haibara was very much a girl, a girl that Kid had managed to charm from right under his nose.
The shrunken scientist paused for a second, and then shook her arm out of his grasp. "Arrest me then."
Conan stared at her as though she was crazy. "Arrest you?" he echoed in disbelief.
She shrugged and started to wander towards the edge of the building, looking down at the police cars below and the ruckus around the front entrance. It was obvious that Kid had succeeded in stealing the Heart of Eternity – not that it was a surprise, considering his rival was too preoccupied with her to stop the thief.
"Yes, lock me up," Ai suggested, clasping her hands behind her back and staring up at the moonlit sky. "I'm a criminal, after all. I always was. I'm only here because I still have a mission to accomplish."
"You're not a criminal," Conan insisted, sounding annoyed. "I told you I stopped thinking of you like that years ago."
"Because you needed the antidote," Ai pointed out with a sharp glance in his direction. "You're such a good citizen that if you kept thinking you're living in the same house as a criminal, it would drive you insane. I find it hard to believe that you wouldn't have turned me over if you didn't need me for something."
"That's not true!" Conan denied. "You're not just a cure."
"It is true," Ai countered. "Wouldn't I be just like Kid if you didn't need the antidote? I would just be another person who committed a crime; and you wouldn't care about the reason or if I had a choice."
"But you chose to leave the Organization," Conan argued.
"That doesn't make me innocent, does it, Kudo-kun?" Ai said quietly. "If Kid chose to stop stealing tomorrow, the only reason you wouldn't lock him up is because you don't know who he is."
Conan was silent to this, because he knew she was right. If he knew who Kaitou Kid really was, he would arrest him, even if the thief chose to retire tomorrow. So what was different about Haibara? He knew he wasn't lying when he told her he wouldn't turn her in, even if she found the antidote for him. Why not? Was it because she was his friend? That certainly couldn't be right. He had once told Ran that if Agasa-hakase had committed a crime, he would still turn the man in. Why was Haibara a different case?
"Someone like you, Kudo-kun," Haibara's soft voice interrupted his train of thought, "someone who has never seen the darker side of life, would never understand what it means and what it feels like to commit a crime in order to protect someone you love."
Then, as though she knew she couldn't get past him without being subjected to further interrogation, she ducked underneath the railing at the edge of the building.
Conan's eyes widened. "Haibara! Are you crazy?" he shouted, starting to run forward.
She gave him a familiar smirk and a shrug. "See you at home," she said casually before jumping off the ledge.
"Haibara!"
Conan ran to the railing and looked down, the haunting image of her body lying at the side of road already forming in his mind before he had reached the edge of roof. But when he looked down with absolute horror and fright on his face, the only thing he could see was the familiar triangular shape of an obnoxiously flashy hang glider. He sunk to the ground, hands shaking as he gripped the railing, trying to calm his heart and his breathing.
He had never been so thankful to see Kid in his life.
He would have to sit down and really talk to Haibara when she came home, if she came home. Conan shook his head. She had to come home. An unwanted image of Haibara with Kid flashed through his mind, and an emotion he had only felt for Ran before emerged to the surface.
Jealousy.
Realization hit him like a ton of bricks. He did not like the idea of Haibara meeting Kid in broom closets because he was jealous. Haibara was his best friend. Conan had always thought that he was the closest to truly understanding her. The revelation that Kid understood her better made him afraid that he was going to lose her. She would leave him someday, whether that someday came in the form of him getting his antidote and returning to his previous life or her choosing to walk out of his.
Conan swallowed, a second revelation coming to the forefront of his mind. She had always been right there beside him, and he had always taken her presence for granted, too preoccupied with cases or Ran to notice that she didn't need to be there. And now that the possibility of losing her seemed very real, he was finally realizing something he should have a long time ago.
Sometime in the years they had spent together as teenagers trapped in children's bodies, he had fallen in love with Haibara Ai, the one girl who had the mind to challenge and mock him for everything he said and did.
-----
"You know," Kid drawled as he guided the hang glider over the city of Tokyo, the miniature scientist in one arm, "when you said you wanted to meet me in midair, I didn't think you were also going to start jumping off buildings, Ojou-chan."
"Liar," Ai accused him. "If you didn't, you wouldn't have caught me."
Kid grinned as they landed on top of a lamppost in the park near Agasa-hakase's house. In the dead quiet of the night, there was nobody around. "Although if you missed me so much that you needed to see me before and after the heist, you could have told me instead of doing something so very dangerous," he mock reprimanded with a dramatic tone. "What would I do without you there to accept my roses at every heist?"
"I'm sure Edogawa-kun would be happy to take my place," Ai snickered.
The Phantom Thief blanched for a brief moment at the connotation before the poker face returned and he was grinning mischievously at the girl again. "At least Ojou-chan didn't deny missing me," he remarked.
Ai rolled her eyes. "Whatever," she muttered before tapping the pocket above his heart, where she knew he liked to keep his heist objects. "Is this Pandora?"
Kid sighed dramatically. "It wounds me greatly that Ojou-chan is trying to get rid of me so quickly."
"Because going home to a pissed off detective who will hound me with more questions is just that much better than balancing on lampposts in the middle of the night with an internationally wanted thief," Ai replied, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
"At least it's home," Kid whispered.
Ai looked up into the thief's eyes and for a brief moment, her face softened from the usual mask of indifference and annoyance she wore for the world.
"Yes," she agreed quietly.
Kid jumped from the lamppost, landing gracefully on the ground. He placed Ai onto her own feet and reached into his pocket, taking out the Heart of Eternity and dropping it in her hands.
"No pink smoke?" Ai raised her eyebrow at him.
He grinned. At the snap of his fingers, the gem disappeared in a puff of pink smoke. "Until the next heist then, Ojou-chan," he said, tipping his top hat down and taking off on the hang glider.
Ai sighed as she watched him fly away. Then, she walked over to the lamppost. Sure enough, the blue diamond was winking back at her from the place the Phantom Thief had somehow affixed it. She reached up and removed it from the pole.
"Not what he wanted?"
The voice almost gave her a heart attack, and the girl whirled around to come face to face with Conan for the second time that evening.
"Kudo-kun," she said quietly. "How did you know we were here?"
"I'm a detective," Conan answered with a shrug. "And a white hang glider in the middle of the night is a little hard to miss."
Ai shrugged and held out the gem. "Here, take it back to Nakamori-keibu," she offered.
He stared at the heist object for a long moment, and then gingerly taking the jewel, he looked back up at the girl who had held the valuable as though it was worth nothing more than a dead fish.
"Haibara, if I said I didn't want the antidote anymore, what would you do?" he asked quietly.
She seemed to seriously consider his words for a moment, her eyes clouding over with memories that he wasn't familiar with. She had thought that she was constructing the antidote solely because she felt responsible for restoring his life, since she had ruined its perfection in the first place. But now that he was suggesting he didn't want it, it slowly dawned on her that she didn't want to stop working on it. The Organization may be destroyed, but as long as humankind had ambition and a wish to become God, someone was going to try and finish what the Organization had started. Finding the antidote was stopping the path to death, and perhaps she was trying to atone for unveiling that path in the first place.
Similarly, she was beginning to understand why Kid wanted to find Pandora despite the disbandment of the Organization. He wanted to stop the ability to grant immortality. As long as Pandora and APTX-4869 existed, the heart of the Organization had not yet been destroyed.
Ai closed her eyes and let out a breath she didn't realize she had been holding. "I would keep trying to find the antidote," she answered.
"Even if I don't want it?"
"Why don't you want it?" she countered. "I thought you were desperate to return to your original life."
He bit his lip noticeably. "I think," he stuttered, taking a wary look at her, "that maybe...maybe I…. maybe I like you, Haibara."
His voice had faded to a whisper by the end of his sentence, but Ai heard the confession nonetheless. She merely stared at him as though he had grown a second head.
"That's not funny, Kudo-kun," she finally replied flatly.
"Of course it's not!" he responded, eyes snapping up to meet hers. "I..."
The rest of his words died on his lips. Neither of them spoke; but in the silence, Ai seemed to have heard the soundless eloquence of his sincerity, and Conan heard the mute harshness of her response.
"He's not real," he finally managed to choke out in a hoarse whisper. "He's just a costume, a symbol, a mask to hide what's underneath."
"And maybe that's why we work," Ai explained. "He's just Kid the Phantom Thief. I'm just 'Ojou-chan'. I don't really care who he is under the mask, and he doesn't really care who I am behind the facade. There's no strings attached."
"That's a really sad way to go about a relationship," Conan couldn't help pointing out.
Ai's smile was melancholic when she spoke. "You know what's sadder?" she asked as she turned away to walk back to Agasa-hakase's house. "If you had told me that you liked me two years ago, it would have made a difference."
Conan didn't know whether she was joking or sincere, and he didn't think he would ever find out. Even meeting as many people as he had in his experience as a detective, he still thought Ai was the hardest person to read. She wore a mask of cool indifference for the world and only those truly privileged could sometimes glimpse what was really underneath it.
Just like it was only possible for an esteemed few to see beyond Kid's poker face.
Or even Conan's own smile of fake ignorance.
-----
End of part 2.
Word Count: 4489