I never thought I would be writing this, but please note:

TRIGGER WARNING: this chapter contains mental instability, suicidal ideation.

Many thanks to Snickerer, whose wrenchbunnies apparently have a flair for the distinctly unhinged and are entirely responsible for several passages and many improvements. Many more thanks to RandomImagination for traditional betaing, and to the readers who continue to stick with me for their patience.

Nightmare Fuel

Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time
~Burnt Norton (III.12-16)

The trouble with allowing an adult to help you through the aftermath of a... difficult situation, Kaito reflected, was that it tended to make them overprotective. Even when one of those said adults was an older, alternate self.

Okay, yes, two days ago he'd been pushing himself when he'd said he felt ready. Kuroba and Kudou had both been right when they'd tag-teamed him with a list of signs that he was pushing himself, as irritating as it was to admit that. At least Kaito'd had the sense to not nab Saguru and leave anyway just to try and prove them wrong.

In the end, it had been good to spend more time outside and in trees and on roofs and very definitely not tied up or within a mile of Vermouth. Kaito was fairly certain that without Solomon Motou's tea every night, the nightmares about his thief-assassin counterpart would be fighting for dominance with a new set about the entire kidnapping fiasco and what could have happened if Vermouth had gotten away. Saguru being alive and nearby had also helped some, at least when Saguru hadn't been off working with Akako to put Saguru's head back together with more than bronze and duct tape. Kaito was still working to not feel guilty about Saguru having to do that, because he suspected that if Saguru knew, he'd lightly cuff Kaito and order him to stop being a twit.

So here Kaito was, being not-a-twit and ready to restart working on how to travel home without being pulled off course yet again. Not only getting home to Tokyo,, but also back to the navigable set of worlds they'd begun to grow familiar with. There'd finally been enough breathing room to start worrying about how Riku and the others had gotten on after Kaito and Saguru had vanished on them. At this point, Kaito felt about as settled as he was going to get without finally dealing with Vermouth and whatever other enemy he might have somehow acquired in that nightmare world. It was hard to imagine which would be worse: that there was someone with magic and Darkness from another reality who had it out for him specifically, or that there wasn't and this was still happening to them anyway.

Standing with Mouri, Kudou gave Kaito a wry little smile. "You do look better."

"I feel better; I think I'll go out for a walk," Kaito deadpanned, and was gratified that Saguru actually snickered and Kudou smirked.

"Just so long as it isn't a silly walk, I think we'll be satisfied."

"Only when warranted," Kaito promised with a grin. "It's not even registered yet."

"I still want to know who let you watch Monty Python, and your definition of warranted is highly questionable," Saguru retorted, mostly in jest, then looked at the Kudous. "I'll ensure he doesn't do anything overtly foolish."

A split-second pause, and Saguru added, "Insofar as this is feasible."

"Ha, ha." Kaito elbowed Saguru lightly, but Saguru just smiled mildly in return.

"This will, of course, be a much easier task if you keep your promise of warning me of your plans in advance."

"…I will." Kaito was utterly certain that he never wanted to have to see Saguru punch concrete like that ever again.

"All right, then." Kudou smiled at them, cutting the tension. "But stay for lunch, so everyone can stop by and say goodbye, won't you?"

Kaito relaxed. "Yeah, we can do that." As a thought struck him, he grinned. "Do we get chocolate for dessert?"

Mouri gave him an amusedly tolerant smile while the other two snorted. "Help Conan keep Shinji entertained until the others start to arrive, and I'll see what we can do."

"Yes, ma'am. Are dragons in the house okay?" If you don't mind? he added silently to Méraud. She'd seemed to enjoy the times he'd summoned her in miniature earlier in the week, showing off shamelessly to the kids and playing 'it' in a cross between tag and hide-and-seek until Kaito was too fatigued to continue (far too quickly, even if Summoning in a world like this was akin to running a marathon around the peak of Mt Fuji).

:Not at all,: came the immediate reply, good humor laced with what almost felt like a hint of wistfulness.

"So long as there's no running," Mouri allowed.

"We'll be good," Kaito promised. "Are you coming, Hakuba-kun?"

Saguru took a moment to retrieve his small leather pocketbook and opened it to what Kaito was almost positive was a completely random page. "Oh, I suppose I could pencil you into my morning schedule."

Kaito resisted rolling his eyes. "Come on."

They found Conan and Shinji together in the den, Conan typing on a laptop with Shinji curled against his side and reading a book. Conan immediately looked up at their entrance, tensing, before recognition hit and he smiled at them. "You guys finally finished talking with Niichan and Neechan?"

"Yep." Kaito flopped onto the couch on Shinji's other side. "We're leaving after lunch."

"Aww," Shinji said, lowering the book. "It's been fun having guests."

Saguru took a seat in the nearby chair. "Unfortunately, time marches on and we have a great deal left to do."

After a moment of subtle hesitation, Saguru removed his sunglasses from their perch in his hair, and Kaito very carefully tried to clamp down on all his emotions, even his surprise at the unexpected move. Saguru hadn't taken off his glasses in Kaito's company since the whole kidnapping disaster—not that Kaito could blame him—not even to sleep. He'd used to at least sometimes, before, but now...

Kaito wasn't sure how Saguru was making it through every single night in the same careful position, lying flat on his back with one hand resting under his head. Maybe it was the same sort of discipline that let you manage to sleep standing up and wearing your clothes.

Admittedly, Saguru had also avoided being unshielded around Conan, likely because it was easy for Kaito and Conan to unintentionally force an overwhelming emotional roller coaster onto Saguru. Kaito tried to not think too much about it, especially since he was also still trying to think as little as humanly possible about this reality's Vermouth and her now-thwarted plans. He filed Saguru's choice as a hopefully good background detail as Conan asked, "But you're never coming back, are you?"

Kaito shook his head. "It's better if we don't, even if we could."

Conan nodded thoughtfully. "Better to stay where you belong."

"Yeah." Kaito smiled at Shinji. "Méraud wanted to say goodbye before we go, but since you're enjoying your book we can wait until the others make it so you can all say goodbye together." Which would conveniently only require a single, time-limited Summon rather than anything that might wipe Kaito out before they could even leave.

"Cool!" Shinji grinned and settled back against Conan, becoming re-absorbed in his book. Kaito pulled out a deck of cards to shuffle and tried to pretend that all his nervous anticipation regarding the coming afternoon didn't exist. It didn't much help his concentration that Saguru only lasted another few minutes—spent staring into middle distance—before he replaced the glasses with a soft sigh.

"All right?" Kaito murmured, hands slowing.

Saguru shrugged lightly. "As well as I might expect."

"If you need more time, or practice..." As much as Kaito hated the idea of waiting, he would if it was warranted, but he'd thought Saguru felt more than ready to move on, too.

"I'll be fine." Saguru smiled in what was likely supposed to be a reassuring manner. "It won't make any appreciable difference whether we leave now or later."

Kaito gave him a dubious look. "You're sure?"

Saguru didn't so much as bat an eye. "Positive."

Kaito sighed, and hoped they wouldn't regret anything later. "Fine."

After about half an hour, Hanako and Touichi arrived with their respective parents, and the kids spent the next twenty-odd minutes playing with Méraud while Kaito supervised the game of hide-and-tag from the couch. It was relaxing to watch them, and the concentration required to keep Méraud present without draining his reserves left him with no spare mental capacity with which to quietly freak out.

There was no time during lunch, either, not with everyone talking about anything and everything but what he and Saguru were planning to step into. He took the distraction in the spirit it was meant and tried to enjoy the meal.

At least they didn't make Kaito and Saguru's departure a spectacle. After lunch, and a farewell of bowing and shoulder-squeezes and some hugs from the kids, everyone but Akako left them in the den and withdrew to other parts of the house.

"Any last advice for us?" Kaito asked with careful lightness as he hefted his bag, not entirely sure he wanted an answer.

Akako eyed him for a long moment, lips curving into a smile that had little to do with reassurance. "Don't die, make it home, and always be better than they are."

Her gaze shifted to Saguru. "And you. You'll have to ensure the both of you take care of yourselves, since goodness knows that one won't."

That… hadn't been quite what Kaito had had in mind, but he supposed he'd asked for it.

Saguru snorted faintly. "I'll try."

Her smile curved higher, just a little. "Good. I'd tell you boys not to do anything stupid, but I know you rather too well for that. So, go. Do what you need to do. And when you do, be sure you know full well what you're doing, why you're doing it, and where your backup is."

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," Kaito answered, giving an insouciant salute and ignoring with the ease of long practice the look from Saguru that said that he was getting the form completely wrong.

Akako clapped them each on the shoulder, gave a single firm nod, then stepped away, seating herself with one leg casually crossed over the other. "Go on, then. I'd best see you start off safely, else I'd never hear the end of it."

The thought actually made Kaito feel oddly better, knowing that if they got in over their heads from the start, there was someone at their back who would help make sure it couldn't spill back into this world. He glanced at Saguru—still there, safe, and breathing; good—and took a deep breath.

They'd already spent an afternoon arguing the pros and cons of where to aim. Aiming for a known assassin had little to recommend it, but Kaito could only be sure about the existence of a few inhabitants of the other world. The ones he knew of would be no more likely to take their sudden appearance well, or be willing to help them if they even knew anything useful. And that assumed Kaito would be able to accurately aim for any of them in the first place. Kaito also definitely didn't want to try aiming directly for the source of the Dark-tinged Shadowthread behind all this without knowing more about who—or what—it was. So, in the end, the plan of starting with the best-known factor had won out.

He reached for nightmarenotme-reflectiongonewrong-safeplacenear-o utofsight-unnoticed and hoped it would be enough.

Trusted, as Shadow caught and tore between Here and There, that it would be. It had to be.

The rift in the world widened and held steady. Kaito swayed on his feet but quickly waved off Saguru when he stepped closer.

" 'm fine." The unimpressed fraction of a breath from Akako's direction was quiet enough to be easily missed and Kaito let it pass as though it had been. "I'll eat a protein bar later," he murmured anyway, for her benefit, but his attention was already pulled toward the almost inhuman sound coming through the portal.

It sounded suspiciously like hoarse, broken laughter.

Kaito wouldn't have thought it possible. Not here. Insane laughter, yes, he'd woken up with it ringing in his ears both times in the last week that he'd tried abstaining from Solomon's tea. But hysteria? Hopelessness? He hadn't thought the operative knew the meaning of either word.

He traded an uneasy glance with Saguru. Well. They hadn't expected this to be pleasant… or straightforward. He started to shift his weight, to see if there were any clues in what little was visible through the Shadow-bordered rift.

:Wait.:

Kaito went completely still. …Lupin-san?

:The stakes are higher here, given what you seek. You should allow one who is more difficult to harm—and better able to go unseen—to lead.:

Kaito would have replied, but the sudden absence of a presence he had been only unconsciously aware of made him pause. He sighed instead and crossed his arms. Saguru glanced at him, starting to frown, but Kaito shook his head and motioned him to silence, waiting for any further sign.

After what felt like a short eternity but was really probably under a minute, Méraud's voice sounded in his mind. :It's a single-bedroom apartment. The only human nearby is your counterpart, in the other room. He is… not well.:

Kaito hissed softly and crept right to the edge of the portal for a better look at the other side, Saguru keeping a half-pace behind. The room on the other side was indeed empty. Spartan was a kinder description than sterile: blank walls, a small couch, a TV, and a laptop illuminated by the single window filtering in the growing dawn, a kitchenette near the closed front door, and another doorway that presumably led into a bedroom.

"Well?" Saguru demanded under his breath.

Kaito hesitated, then responded in kind. "…He's there. Alone, Méraud says."

Saguru took a moment to absorb that, then eyed the doorway the unsettling sounds were coming from with the wariness it deserved. After a moment, though, he shifted his bag to hang more securely, set his jaw, and stepped through the rift before Kaito could pull him back. Kaito carefully did not sputter imprecations at the move, or at the sardonic eyebrow Saguru raised when he didn't immediately follow. He still wasn't sure how much he liked the idea of walking into whatever was going on in there. But the thought of Saguru doing it ahead of him—the first nightmare, the gunshot, flashed vividly through his mind—and then he was pushing past Saguru to retake the lead.

Saguru didn't protest, but he did pull his staff out of his coat and silently extend it to its full size. Kaito pulled out his card gun for what little comfort its familiar weight could provide, then carefully coaxed the Shadowrift to constrict. He didn't let it reseal completely, leaving enough of a gap that he could easily sweep it back open if they had to retreat in a hurry, but the remaining line of Shadow beside the wall was unobtrusive enough to be missed by anyone not expecting it. Precautions complete, he started to move toward the bedroom doorway, only to pause while still safely out of sight. Determining where the man was and what he was doing was important, but startling an assassin of highly dubious sanity? Akako would not be at all impressed if he started disregarding her advice so quickly. He debated a moment, and then turned back, moving past the kitchenette counter to knock on the front door from the inside.

The half-mad keening stopped so abruptly the silence was almost deafening. Both of them waited, tense, for any sound or sign of motion. None came.

Instead, after a long pause, laughter began again: quieter than what had first greeted them, less frantic, and yet equally unrelated to mirth.

This was technically better than bullets, but not at all reassuring. When the laughter simply continued with no further sign of change, Kaito exchanged another glance with Saguru, took a deep breath, and sidled closer to the open door. He'd already eliminated as much of the element of surprise as he cared to. If he bothered opening and closing the front door, that might make the other man defensive against an intruder. A mysterious appearance out of nowhere was usually an advantage.

There was no way to approach entirely unseen if the occupant was facing the doorway, so Kaito resigned himself to advancing cautiously while staying ready to retreat at a moment's notice. Visibility was poor, the early dawn light mostly blocked by closed window blinds. Kaito could just make out a figure sitting huddled on a futon, facing the wall beside the doorway but with his head bowed, one arm curled tightly around a pillow. The person was still laughing, still with a mirthless, unfeigned quality that—especially under the circumstances—was downright eerie.

Retreating now would leave them no closer to their goal than before.

It was still tempting.

Kaito braced himself and advanced another cautious step. The figure showed no sign of noticing. Kaito bit his lip, prepared himself to duck very quickly, and flicked the light switch just inside the doorway.

The laughter stopped. The figure's head finally lifted, turned toward them, and Kaito found himself staring at an older face that wasn't quite his, an altered reflection in a black Organization outfit that he would never wear.

He looks like hell.

Kaito couldn't stop the thought from popping up even as he tried to calculate whether he needed to dodge back out of sight. The syndicate member's face was drawn with tension and bone-deep exhaustion, dark around the eyes yet too pale elsewhere, and marked by the loss of more weight than he'd really had to spare. Bangs longer than any Kaito had ever worn fell aside from the operative's face, limp and unheeded. This wasn't the monster Kaito had been bracing himself to face down, not by a long shot; he'd expected to find the catlike confidence, cold anger, or casual cruelty of the operative that had featured in his nightmares, but any trace of those qualities in this man had been erased by an unsettling hollowness in his eyes. His counterpart's face had never been visible in the dreams, but Kaito realized with a sudden shock that the eyes of the man before him were almost more blue-gray than the familiar deep blue he'd unconsciously been expecting.

They stared at each other for another tense, uncertain moment. Then the man on the futon closed his eyes and chuckled again, smooth and controlled, something about it raising the hairs on the back of Kaito's neck.

"You're not what I was expecting." A voice that clearly hadn't been used in days, going by the rusty quality of both the laughter and speech, should not have been able to also sound that effortlessly careless. Then again, Kaito could probably do the same if he really tried. Probably. And down that train of thought lay hysteria. "Though perhaps I should have."

"Why do you say that?" Kaito ventured cautiously. Being unexpectedly expected was... unexpected. And he was stopping that thought right there too.

The man—Kaito couldn't bring himself to think of him as Kuroba—smiled. He turned back to face the wall in front of him again, but Kaito had the unsettled feeling he wasn't actually looking at anything inside that apartment.

"Silly of me to think I could escape them just by staying awake, wasn't it?" he asked, disturbingly conversational tone at odds with the way his grip was digging deep into the pillow. "Of course they would follow me. Unless, of course, I'm not awake at all."

Kaito stared. Surely that couldn't mean what it sounded like. But the words made no sense unless he was talking about...

"Admittedly," the man on the futon continued, still disconcertingly casual, "seeing you from the outside is new. Just like you being here. But, then, if the dreams are going to be different now, why shouldn't that have changed?"

Dreams. Of me. Through my eyes, of bits of my life—

Before he could attempt to process that unsettling concept any further, the impression of movement behind his shoulder made Kaito suddenly wish very hard that he thought it would be safe to take his eyes off the man for even a moment. Or that he could believe Saguru had actually had the sense to stay out of sight. How exactly would he have to move to kick Saguru out of harm's way in a hurry if things went bad?

The man's head was shifting the few degrees it would take to see Saguru beyond Kaito.

No, no, no, don't—

There was another of those nerve-wracking, frozen moments.

Then the man suddenly smiled, a bleak, knowing curve that had no more relation to happiness than the earlier laughter. "Ah. But of course." He inclined his head in a grave sort of salute before his gaze drifted away again.

"...You've been dreaming about me, as well." Saguru stepped forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Kaito, head canted slightly.

The operative chuckled again, mercifully brief, and gave a sort of one-shouldered shrug. "You—and you. Naturally. Wouldn't you know?" A beat. "Then again, would you?"

Saguru appeared to ignore the commentary. "How long? Approximately three weeks?"

"Has it been?" Something in the smile shifted, though it didn't fade. There was an odd weight to it that subtly unnerved Kaito, something he didn't quite know how to name. Utter exhaustion was obvious, but... there was something more than that, something deeper.

The expression didn't feel like an act, either. That alone was strange... as strange as this entire encounter had been. What member of the Black Organization—what protégé of Vermouth—could remain capable of openly showing something this genuine?

How could this be the same creature of the syndicate whose eyes Kaito'd been forced to see through, night after nightmare-filled night? The anger and mocking hatred and devil-may-care attitude had all given way to something... else.

Saguru merely shrugged at the man's reply. "I suppose it could have been longer, or shorter. ...When did it begin for you?" Kaito shifted uneasily, seeing the obvious reasoning. Had this man's dreams started at the same time as Kaito's nightmares?

The note in the sudden laughter the question provoked, louder and harsher than even that which had greeted them, made Kaito wish Saguru hadn't asked.

"When? You ask me when? Oh, but shouldn't you know?" He turned to face them fully, lips pulled back almost into a rictus, eyes glittering. "Or no, perhaps you wouldn't. Not yet, at least."

Kaito swallowed, hard. Something involving Saguru, or at least a Saguru, that had started all this? The words escaped before he could think. "When you shot him."

The man froze, abruptly enough that Kaito almost wished he hadn't spoken at all, but then the brief humorless outburst dissolved back into the strange mood that had been on the operative since he'd caught sight of them.

"Ah," he said, almost softly, "that's right; you wouldn't know, after all, would you. Because you're not him. Won't be. Wouldn't be. Of course." The words slowed as he seemed to slip further into his own thoughts, his cadence oddly measured. His gaze shifted again, presumably to stare at Saguru; Kaito himself still didn't dare take his eyes off his deranged counterpart.

"I wonder if that's it?" He didn't quite seem to be talking to either of them, despite having not yet turned away. "If that's how it started, when I watched you..." He trailed off, but Kaito had the sickening feeling he knew exactly what he meant, and had to force down a shudder as a memory-flash of Sag—of the other Hakuba's lifeless eyes tried to cross his mind. "Maybe it's your turn now," the operative went on, sounding almost thoughtful. "Maybe you need to see it happen to me, for it to end." The hand that wasn't still gripping deep furrows in the pillow darted out to the side, startlingly quick, and how had neither of them seen that there was a GUN lying amid the folds of the blanket beside him—

Kaito's pulse pounded a jackhammer rhythm as adrenaline surged into familiar crystal clarity. Their quarry wasn't pointing the gun at them—for the moment—merely staring at the side of it contemplatively. That didn't stop Kaito from discreetly shifting position so that he could shove both himself and Saguru in opposite directions and out of the doorway. Which he promptly did when the operative gave a careless flick, spinning the firearm through his hand and across his knuckles as though it were no more dangerous than a chopstick. Perhaps both were equally deadly in his hands and so this seemed a perfectly reasonable course of action to him; all Kaito knew was that clearly the man was completely crazy and there was no point in expecting normal logic to apply in this room.

Kaito halted his momentum before he lost line of sight, since the idea of not keeping track of what was happening was still more terrifying. The syndicate member didn't seem to notice, eyes unfocused again even as he sent the firearm through a complex looping twirl around his wrist that no one sane would have ever contemplated trying to learn.

Kaito really, really wished he could see whether the safety on the thing was on. The gun was loaded, of course; he knew that with the same queasy, unnatural certainty as he did the precise feel of a blackjack impacting against a skull. But he was no longer sure how this man would have left the gun if expecting sudden, unfriendly arrivals... or whether he even cared about the possibility anymore. Kaito genuinely wasn't certain whether or not this unpredictable confrontation was less frightening than the last horde of Heartless had been.

"Would that be enough? If you saw?" The man's voice was soft, thoughtful, and completely failed to hold the appropriate concern for the gravity of the situation. Not when he'd just talked about seeing the other Saguru's death and whether it was his own turn now. "It's hard to be sure. I didn't think it really mattered then, you know. Not at first, at least. But clearly it did. So who's to say?"

Saguru's voice was so level you could have used it to set a building foundation. "Even if things worked that way, would it count if you did it in a dream?"

The man froze for a moment, gun coming neatly to rest in his hand in the proper grip. He stared down at it briefly—turned it and stared almost absently down the barrel and Kaito wondered whether his own grip was leaving dents in the wood doorframe—then tossed it completely up in the air in a complicated spinning flip and caught it.

Twice.

When he finally put it back down on the futon Kaito almost missed it because he was focused too hard on not actually hyperventilating. It wasn't as though Kaito hadn't seen fancy gun tricks performed before, but there was a vast and crucial difference between confidence born of preparation and this unnervingly blithe unconcern for possible consequences.

"I didn't think this was a dream, at first," the complete lunatic continued in that same unsettlingly conversational tone. It looked like he was actually talking to Saguru this time. Kaito was still too rattled to decide whether he found that an improvement, or whether he objected that Saguru had also returned to lean partially past the doorframe. "Not after what I'd thought was waking. But then, given that you're here, I suppose it must be, after all. Strange. I'd thought it was easier to tell. Perhaps something else has changed?"

He tilted his head a little, thoughtfully, gaze drifting back to the nothing off in the direction of the bare wall. When he spoke again, a chill ran down Kaito's spine at the apathy in his voice. "I wonder what's happening out there now. Really, I mean. Maybe they've noticed. I wonder if they did finally come and find me, and I simply... wasn't conscious enough to realize?"

He paused, and looked in Saguru's direction again. "Is that it?" His voice was still light, almost curious, as if the question was something of very little consequence. "Would I know if I died while I was still dreaming? Is that what happened? What this is, and why you're here?"

"The dreams occur because something went very wrong," Saguru said carefully. "We're here to fix it. You are still alive, and we won't be able to fix the problem if you're not."

The man laughed, again, for the first time with something like a brittle, bitter edge. "Oh, I know what went wrong," he said, smile devoid of anything like hope. "And that's not something anyone can fix."

Saguru exhaled slowly.

"It was easier when I didn't know, you know," the syndicate member abruptly went on before Saguru could marshal a reply. He was actually looking at Kaito now, or at least in his direction. Kaito still wasn't certain what the man was actually seeing, or whether the strange new calm was really a better sign than the previous tension had been.

"I never got to be you." His tone was still conversational, if almost distant. "I never could have been. I started to see that, once I understood the difference. What it was supposed to be. Supposed to have been." Wistfulness seemed so strange when Kaito had felt the cruel laughter that had lurked behind those eyes. But the nightmare mind he remembered would have scorned anything it saw as weakness, would have been unable to feign anything like this.

"It's always been too late for me, ever since that first day. They made sure of it. She did." The momentary spark of resentment faded almost as quickly as it had flared, giving way to a weary resignation. "The first step... was already too far. There was no other path, after that. Not truly." An echo of a humorless grin passed across his face. "I thought I could win, you know. At first. Fought for it, got better and better at what I did. Until I forgot why I was fighting. Forgot who..."

He went quiet. Kaito still hadn't even formulated a beginning of a response by the time he added, far too matter-of-fact, "Maybe I should have been on that stage as well, that day. It would have been better than this."

Kaito was frozen, instinctively certain that he meant the stage the Organization had turned into a deathtrap for Touichi.

"Don't say that. Don't think it." Saguru sounded so reasonable, as though this should be obvious. Kaito wished he knew how he was managing it; Kaito was stuck somewhere between appalled and horrified. "If you'd died then, you wouldn't have made it this far. As long as you're still alive, you do still have a choice. A chance."

The man in black clothing laughed again, no more than a movement of breath this time, as though he no longer had the energy to give it voice.

"A choice? What choice? It's too far already, and far too late. There's nowhere else to go, nowhere to go back to. And to stay..." The unvoiced wraith of laughter, again. "This isn't a life. It never was. I just didn't know the difference."

Saguru exhaled, long and slow. "Maybe you are right, to be so certain of that," he ventured carefully after a moment. "You are closer to the matter, and certainly know more about what you can and cannot accomplish for yourself. But… perhaps it's not so impossible that, with assistance, you could find another option. Somewhere else, something worth reaching for. Would you give us a chance to try, at least?"

Another dry, humorless laugh. "What good would a fool's errand do anyone? I couldn't stop you, I suppose." His tone dropped, gaining an edge of bitterness. "It's not like I have anything else to lose."

A small choked noise came from Saguru at that, though it was so quiet Kaito couldn't tell if the operative heard. The man wasn't looking at them anymore. "Such pretty promises," he murmured. "Such a lovely dream. Just like all the rest."

There was a long moment of stillness before he finally looked up again, wearing an expression that was all the more terrible for mimicking the curve of a smile. "I should thank you for that, I suppose. For offering. …Again. It was... good to get to see you again," he stated gravely in Saguru's direction. He hesitated, then added to Kaito, "and to meet you, in a way. Different. Strange, almost." His gaze fell away, as though he'd slipped back to talking to himself. "After this, though..." He paused. "I'm tired of waking."

Renewed alarm shot through Kaito as the syndicate agent continued, with increasing certainty, "Yes. I suppose I'm done with it. This is enough. The last. I don't want to, anymore."

Kaito heard Saguru's breath catch before it deliberately evened again. "Don't. Please. I don't want to see you do that."

A long, wavering moment stretched. Eventually, the man breathed realization. "...Ah. I suppose that might not be fair, mightn't it?" The statement seemed almost careless, holding little energy or inflection. "Yes. That does make sense. Not while you're still here."

Kaito couldn't think of anything to say, panic threatening to choke him. Not another death, not again, not even this one...

The man still sitting on the futon sighed, remaining strength slowly draining from his posture to leave only weariness. Almost too quiet to hear, he said, "I'm so tired."

Kaito heard Saguru shift position and offer a quiet, sympathetic sort of sound in reply. None of them moved for the space of a few breaths, then Saguru shifted again and, with a calm that Kaito wished he could match, ventured, "Can I ask you for something else?"

The operative's eyes had closed. The only reply was more of a bowing of the head than a true nod, but Saguru treated it as permission to continue. "May I have that?" Saguru's arm extended through the doorway, pointing toward the gun lying clearly visible on the futon.

Kaito held his breath. The other man didn't even move beyond a brief flutter of eyelids.

"If you want it." The answer was dull, uncaring.

Saguru hesitated anyway. "...Please pardon the intrusion."

He inched forward, carefully, slowly scanning for any other unpleasant surprises, until he stood within arm's reach of the futon and could crouch to carefully retrieve the firearm, tension obvious in his frame. Immediately, what little of Saguru's face that Kaito could see drained of color before he, with utmost care, put the safety on. The tension stayed firmly in place even as he backed up to rejoin Kaito in the doorway and Kaito realized with a sort of horrified fascination that Saguru's previous calm was apparently due to not actually realizing they'd been inducted into an impromptu game of Russian Roulette.

...Pity. Calm would be nice right now.

"Now what?" Saguru murmured out of the corner of his mouth, voice tight. "We can't leave him by himself."

Kaito carefully bit down on a full host of sarcastic responses to the statement of the blindingly obvious and half-snapped, "Working on it. Bringing in someone from... elsewhere is not a good plan for many reasons." Far too many complications could crop up if they dragged elements of any other reality into this one, assuming it was even possible in the first place.

Saguru started to say something, contemplated further, and subsided with a faint sound of unhappy agreement. "...Akako-san? She offered."

Kaito had been wishing that was an option. "She's not a traveler." Without any way for her to get back home on her own, if something went wrong... "Too risky for her to come. And bringing him there is a bad idea all around."

His older, more worrying double was still slumped in place, apparently ignoring their conversation, but Kaito kept glancing back at him in case the previous fey mood returned. After the man's reaction to encountering just the two of them, putting him in a situation where he would meet others who'd evaded his horrors would be even worse. Akako had implicitly offered backup, true, but Kaito did not think that dropping a highly unstable Organization assassin in the living room would end well for anyone involved.

Saguru apparently did still have a functioning detective's brain, because he didn't argue. "Who, then?"

Kaito would have been more impressed with that detective brain if it had any useful suggestions. "Working on it. Has to be someone local. There aren't many of those capable of handling him... Not ones that can be counted as allies, anyway, not when anyone significant on either side is... unlikely to be sympathetic."

A hiss of breath. "What about anyone capable but unaffiliated? Or any potential ally, even one not directly capable, who might be able to call on someone who is?"

"There aren't many unaffiliated, and not a whole lot of potential allies!" Kaito gritted out. "Most of the ones we might ask are unknowns, here, and the ones I do know about are too different. There just aren't many skilled enough to match him." Not when Vermouth had made her agent as deadly and elusive as she could, something that would have won him no friends in law enforcement. Jii wouldn't stand a chance, and Mizuki would be too much of a risk, if either of them were even still alive or in Japan at this point.

"We'd need someone we could trust to be willing and able to help. I'm not even sure there's anyone who knows both who he actually is and that he's still alive! The closest thing he has to an outside acquaintance, let alone any of the rest of it, is Kudou. How do you think he'd react?"

Saguru winced. Not surprising, as he'd seen that nightmare first meeting, the near-lethal injury that had left its permanent mark on Kudou, and the start of the twisted matches of cat-and-mouse—

Wait. That noise just then hadn't come from Saguru.

The syndicate agent was staring at them from the futon, motionless, eyes wide with sudden, overwhelming realization of horror. Kaito had just enough time to realize, with a sinking sensation, that his counterpart had clearly been paying enough attention to hear them before the man made a desperate, broken little sound.

Kaito went from merely glad that Saguru had dared to retrieve the gun to blindingly grateful as the operative grasped unthinkingly at the now-empty stretch of futon beside him, expression still frozen with horror. Kaito could only assume that that the full implications of his new perspective were just hitting him now.

And now the gears were turning in earnest in Kaito's own brain as he frantically tried to figure out what was going on, adding up all the unexpected changes from what he remembered from his own nightmares, all the little things the man had let slip since their arrival,l his unexpected reactions to their words, their presence.

His counterpart had clearly been dreaming as well, in apparent mirroring of Kaito's own nightmares. How much difference had those dreams made? The nightmares had been eating away at Kaito until he'd found Solomon's tea to block them out, at least temporarily. But he remembered what it had been like for him, being inside someone else's head, hearing what they thought and feeling what they felt. Here, there hadn't been that option; no escape from the dreams, night after night. Kaito also remembered what it was like to know the dreams were lurking, waiting to pounce and ruin any chance at actual rest every single time he closed his eyes. Had it been as bad for his counterpart? Worse?

Except how bad could it really have been, if his dreams were of—what? Seeing a normal life? Well, maybe not entirely normal, admittedly, but... compared to the life the syndicate agent lived?

Then again, it wouldn't really have been just seeing. For the operative to have been put through Kaito's life... with the way those dreams worked, it would have been a forcible reminder of what it meant to have things to care about. To have people to care about, people who might care back. For it to matter what happened to them. For them to be more than just broken dolls, game pieces, numbers on a collateral damage report to provoke irritation at a less-than-perfectly-clean execution.

Maybe for him, it had been like a slower, more insidious version of what Kaito's Change of Heart had done to break the conditioning forced on the Kudou that Vermouth had kidnapped from New York. The effect was eerily comparable, even if it wasn't the operative's own memories and thoughts reasserting themselves, but the complete perspective of a life he'd never had.

Kaito swallowed hard as some of the things his counterpart had said abruptly slotted into a less nonsensical shape. That was the key, wasn't it? For this man, it wasn't the dreams that were the torment; it was waking up from them. The worst part for Kaito had been the way the dream-perspective would stubbornly linger after waking, clinging as though it were truth; the toll on him had grown worse than he wanted to admit by the time the tea had afforded him a reprieve. A reprieve his counterpart clearly hadn't had.

Kaito tried to imagine an echo of his own mind waking to the knowledge that the Organization agent's life was the actual reality every morning—or no, even more often than that, how long would the man have even lasted each time before jerking awake again? The operative's memories had been distressing enough for Kaito, and he had known them to be nightmares. To constantly wake with a sensation of reflexive horror at your memories of your real life, lack of rest eroding the strength of your own mind to push the feelings away and dismiss them as irrelevant, with no escape for weeks on end?

What must it be like, to have a heart you thought long-dead return to haunt you, inescapable no matter how you tried again to deny it?

With Kaito and Saguru in the room with the man now, blurring the boundaries between his dreams and reality, especially when they'd started discussing how they saw his situation... it must have shattered the last of his ability to avoid those realizations.

To be forced to acknowledge now what it had all really meant, lives ended and crippled and pain inflicted merely because they had been in the way? The true shape of what he had done, everything that had been lost and harmed and irredeemably broken? Everything that was now forever beyond reach, by his own hand?

Kaito couldn't help but wince even as the wordless sound of pained denial rose to desperate keening. The operative was curling in on himself, the empty hand abandoning its fruitless search to twist violently in his hair.

Kaito traded only a frantic, dismayed glance with Saguru before he dashed into the room, already searching for—yes, he had two canisters of Kid's knockout special among his supplies. One was already about a third spent, but the second aerosolizer was reassuringly full, and he held his own breath as he administered the full dose as close to the man's face as he could. It was the only small mercy available; though it would still last all too briefly, Kaito knew from experience that the formula would bring only peaceful unconsciousness, with no dreams before it wore off.

The near-shriek of distress subsided to something between a whimper and a sob, and the operative finally went limp, slumping sideways into a pile of pillow and limbs. Kaito watched for a few extra moments to be sure, carefully loosening the man's grip from his hair to check his pulse.

It was steady, which put it in significantly better shape than the rest of him.

...And leaves us back at square negative-one with limited time, no resources here, and not a lot of options. This won't last long, we need help. There has to be someone in this nightmare that can make a difference. Someone, anyone please exist, I don't care where or who—

:Kaito-kun!: The panic in Méraud's voice startled Kaito from his frantic reaching, pulling his attention back to conscious awareness. :You're throwing yourself open to the Shadows! You don't know what you're risking, casting out blindly like that! You have to stop this—:

I have to help! he snarled back, not sure and not caring if he was speaking aloud as well. This—everything about this is just wrong! I can't leave it like this! I can't!

—tiny glittering shards of diamond on black velvet, unscratchable until just the right force shattered everything beyond repair—

The Shadows roiled as he threw himself back into searching, reaching, trying to find someone, something, anything familiar enough to be worth trying for. Anything that felt like help. To have come so far and helped so many, only to fail in the end at the crux of everything? There had to be something, someone, some way to fix this.

Anything.

It was like groping through a window into fog and darkness and the unknown, things he couldn't grasp or distinguish shifting about him like whispers. Even as he tried, Shadows and focus slipped through his grasp like wind and dust and moonlight reflected in water, tantalizing hints of what might serve as what they needed wavering just out of reach.

:Kaito-kun!: Méraud sounded as frantic as he was. :It's too dangerous, too risky, Deepdark only knows what you might find out there, or what might find you—:

If something can help, I don't care what it is!

Because this was wrong, this was wrong, this was all too wrong to be allowed to exist; it had been utterly wrong in nightmares, and was somehow worse still now that they had arrived to find not a smirking Organization threat but a man on the brink of destruction. None of it should ever have been, none of that nightmare-memory spiral of destroyed lives, theft and explosions and coercion and death, and damn the paradoxes, it should never have fallen out this way to begin with!

Even his counterpart agreed, and Kaito's mind flinched from the terrible calm with which his black-clothed could-have-been had just spoken of whether dying together with his father would have been better than allowing what he became instead.

No. That was not an acceptable option; it wasn't necessary; all that it would have taken to avoid all of this was for Vermouth to never have reached him that day, as she'd never reached Kaito himself back home—

For a moment his own memory of that day choked him: the confusion, the panic, the loss—

Something echoed it, fleetingly, something like a glimpse of a matching shape, a resonance.

Kaito pursued it, wild hope and frustration mingling as it slipped beyond reach, but he'd seen it, however briefly, sensed it more clearly than anything else so far, surely if he could push a little farther, reach just that last bit more—

:Kaito-kun!:

Kaito hadn't even realized he'd been reaching physically as well as mentally, leaning forward as he knelt by the futon until he was suddenly already off-balance, tipping forward into a churning void of manifest Shadow. There was shouting, his name, arms wrapping around his waist, but it was already too far – no floor, nothing to brace against, just the unstoppable tilting and the sudden soft shock of leaving the air of a world for the stuff in between.

And then nothing else but falling, spinning through the dizzying vastness of Shadow, his desperate reach sliding through a kaleidoscope of everything and nothing.

They had passed through a patch of Shadow before, briefly, on their way to finding Sora and Axel. This was nothing like that, no more than walking through an airport was like being thrown out mid-flight into open, storming sky. The Kaitou Kid had flown briefly in rain and storms and gusting winds, when there was no other choice. It had never gone well.

He had no glider now. The great currents that churned between space and time dwarfed worlds, and they were no more than two helpless, infinitesimal motes caught amid the surging tides.

And yet they were also that fraction closer to that elusive hint of a possibility to fix it, fix all of it, and he strained, reaching desperately for it even as roiling Shadow whirled them about like they were a speck of dust in a typhoon, even as all else slipped from his hold, leaving only the memory of the nightmare and its aftermath and the unrelenting need to remedy it. Nothing caught, the mental reach flailing aimlessly in search of that familiar echo, as unchangingly, tantalizingly close as stealing the moon from the sky.

There was a sudden impression of great wings and scales, as insubstantial and undeniable as the Shadows that carried them. :You'll be lost beyond recovery, you fool! Here, use this, you've no other anchor, and you'll never catch solid enough hold for an exit otherwise!:

Kaito had no time to react to the unaccustomed desperation in Meraud's voice before something was pressed into his mental grasp. But—he would have to give up his other reaching to take hold of it—

:NOW!:

The strength of emotion in her command decided him, insistence and panic and frantic urgency compelling him to seize and pull against whatever tether this was, this single solid line through the chaos, and throw everything he had into reaching exit-realworld-safe with every iota of impetus a powerful downbeat of frantic dragon wings could send against the storm.

Remember when I used to have time to write fic? Doctorate is over in a month. TBC. Soon.

Ocianne

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