2013. 2013 was not a good year for writing due to Personal Life interference, and I apologize to any readers who have still stuck with me despite my long hiatus(es). I have not stopped, merely slowed to a crawl. Bear with me and I hope to continue to entertain. Thanks to RandomImagination for beta.

Since it's bee a while, a friendly reminder: outside of dialogue, first names refer to the protagonists, last names refer to alternate counterparts.

Negotiations

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
~Burnt Norton (I.19-22)

The door to the roof finally fell shut.

After taking a moment to master himself, Saguru turned to coordinate leaving before any officers arrived. However, Kaito's hand suddenly clamped his wrist with such fierce urgency that he winced at the pressure. His enquiring look was met with a sharp, silent headshake before Kaito held a finger to his lips, watching the doorway. Saguru's internal count of the seconds reached seventeen before Kaito exhaled, releasing his grip. "Okay."

"What was that about?" Saguru demanded, massaging his wrist. "The stairway was clear. Though it won't be, in a minute."

The fallen Copycat vanished from the view of the camera feed as Kaito shrugged, looking so worn that the elixir from earlier was likely the only reason he wasn't out cold. "Méraud said to wait until she said it was safe. She was pretty adamant about it. Figured that after everything else so far, I should listen to her for once."

Saguru sighed and decided that pushing for details wasn't worth the time. "Fine. Let's go now, at least."

Kaito scooped up the cards and stood to face Inspector Hakuba; Saguru could almost see his public face coming back up as his expressions shifted. "Do you know a way we can all get out of here unnoticed and unrecorded? Because if you don't, we'll have to resort to our methods, and... well, those are best reserved for emergencies."

Inspector Hakuba didn't look enthused with either option, but he nodded stiffly and tucked his laptop under his arm. "Follow me, then."

Their exit was slightly more nerve-wracking than their earlier infiltration, as there was a particularly bad moment getting out of the stairwell and a close call with two extremely drunk apparent residents. However, Inspector Hakuba's knowledge of the building and the police search patterns was enough to get them out without any real fuss. The alley they'd appeared in wasn't very far away from the building, and once they made it there free of pursuit, Saguru breathed a sigh of relief. Something had been managed at last without notable complications. The alley was empty, and the still-wavering distortion slanting through midair appeared to be undisturbed.

Relief was short lived, however. Hakuba stepped close enough to loom over them—an impressive feat, considering he had perhaps three centimeters on Saguru at most—expression gone dangerous with tightly-leashed fury. "I've kept my end of the deal. On my honor. Now you keep yours, and tell me what the bloody hell you are playing at."

"Tell me," he continued with pause, voice dropped dangerously low and eyes boring into Saguru's as if trying to find the truth there, "why I was required to stand aside and let him leave, free and clear. Tell me why, when there is a man dead at his hand in that room, I shouldn't be out there hunting him down right now before he kills anyone else!"

A bark of something that couldn't really be called laughter caught them both by surprise, shifting their mutual attention to Kaito. "Because you won't have to."

The Inspector's eyes narrowed. "And what, exactly, do you mean by that?"

Kaito was silent for a long moment, expression downcast. "We know where he'll be. And how to get there, and he'll go to pieces fast enough that no one else should be hurt in the meantime." Hopefully that was true; Kaito was in the best position to know how the operative would behave after a high profile murder, apparent or not, so best to not question that progression in front of Inspector Hakuba.

The Inspector's eyes remained narrowed, considering but giving away nothing of his own opinion. "How do you know all this?"

Kaito opened his mouth, considered the Inspector, closed it again, and turned to Saguru instead. "Maybe you'd better explain this one. He might not appreciate my answer very much."

If Kaito had been about to ask if Hakuba believed in magic, at least he'd realized how that would go over before he'd actually said it. Saguru restrained himself to a slight sigh. "I would recommend starting with a demonstration." He gestured at the closed portal. "If you would."

Kaito eyed it for a moment, then stepped back with a faint, shadowed smile. With perfect showman's grace, he clapped his hands together and then pulled them apart from palm to fingertip with a neat flourish, the warp expanding silently above him to its full, original extent.

The Inspector stared at the motionless seethe of nothing. "What..."

Given that Kaito (and possibly Riku) apparently saw something completely different, it had been a bit of a gamble to presume that an alternate counterpart would have a comparable experience to his own. However, from the way the Inspector was blinking, expression faintly strained as he attempted to observe what Saguru had personally labeled an eye-melting twist in space-time and subsequently given up on... well, it seemed close enough.

"This is... call it a wormhole, if you like," Saguru said as Hakuba stepped closer to inspect it, and promptly grabbed the man's wrist before he could try touching it. "Ah—I presume you are familiar with Clarke's Third Law regarding the interchangeability of magic and advanced technology, Inspector? I'd advise you to treat contact with it with the same caution you would unfamiliar technology, because all I can tell you is that proper use apparently allows wormhole-like travel... and I have utterly no idea what improper handling of one might do to you."

"A wormhole." Hakuba's voice was flat as he clasped his hands tightly behind his back and paced a circle underneath the portal, face upraised to take in everything he could. Even then, he never entirely turned his back on either one of them.

Letting him complete a full circuit, Saguru continued, "So. May I ask you to accept, for the duration of this discussion, that boundaries of technology, laws of physics, and common sense may not apply in the fashion that you are accustomed to?" It took some effort, but he not only managed the request with a straight face, he even succeeded in not eyeing Kaito pointedly at 'common sense.'

"I'm still not entirely convinced this isn't a dream," Hakuba grumbled. "It's too mad to be anything else, not when it's beyond explanation by even a very elaborate trick."

That really would be all they needed, having to deal with both their counterparts being convinced the whole mess was imaginary. Saguru let Kaito's pained, breathy laugh pass without comment; of anyone, Kaito had the right to be tired of this night appearing in dreams.

"We haven't gotten to that part yet," Saguru said dryly. "And if you start in on that line of reasoning too, we'll be here all night. Treat it as a lucid dream if you really must, but I'd not advise you to expect to wake up and find that all the upsetting things have gone away."

"That would just be far too easy," Kaito grumbled, a hint of wistfulness creeping in.

For a long moment Inspector Hakuba remained silent, staring up toward the distortion above them. "Suppose I do presume that the how of your story may involve such things," he said slowly. "You have yet to explain your purpose. Why was any of this necessary?"

Kaito actually glared. "I told you, and you saw—if we hadn't—"

With an impatient gesture, Inspector Hakuba interrupted, "Not that. You wanted to keep me from dying. Well and good. But surely that could have been achieved by simply keeping me away. Why was the rest of that whole charade necessary?"

Saguru allowed himself a slight, rueful sigh. "Honestly? Rather a muddle of circumstances, accident, and my best attempts at keeping the entire mess from getting completely out of hand."

The Inspector stared, motionless but for one slowly rising eyebrow.

The expression was far too familiar from seeing it in mirrors and TV interviews to be terribly effective; Saguru shrugged. "I suppose I should start the explanation from something resembling a beginning. If you're willing to accept what you hear."

The Inspector's gaze flicked pointedly from the impossible portal to them—the impossibly too-young doppelgangers—and he motioned wordlessly for Saguru to hurry up and get on with it.

For a moment Saguru attempted to organize his thoughts, as the whole situation was worse than a spider's web. "I assume you've worked out by now that we're, ah... not from around here." He took the Inspector's unimpressed stare as confirmation and went on, "The circumstances are a long story, but suffice it to say that there was something of a mess involving the time-space continuum and we got very, very lost. While trying to get home using some of the tricks we acquired during the mess in question, we landed here instead. Except... not exactly here and now."

Slipping a hand into the pocket where Saguru habitually stored his pocket watch, Inspector Hakuba glanced back up at the portal and sighed. "Fine. What was your landing point, then?" The dull resignation in his tone was as good as an admission that he'd realized where this was going.

"Several weeks from now." Kaito's counterpart had been hazy about the flow of time, and their personal timelines were quite obviously out of sync given the five year difference in age, but... the clear disparity only made it more likely that after the initial inception, whatever connection existed between Kaito and the operative had been experienced over the same span of subjective time. Having seen how badly off Kaito could be after a single nightmare of that sort, with days between each, several weeks of relentless exposure without a moment's reprieve could easily be enough to unhinge even a stable psyche. Kaito might be functional, but he didn't particularly qualify for 'stable'.

Watching the Inspector's face carefully for reaction, Saguru continued. "We've never done this before, and I'm sure you know the theories as well as I do. But it seemed only reasonable to assume... You see, tonight—or what would have happened tonight—was a catalyst for more of what has already happened to us than I have any hope of explaining without extensive diagrams and a great deal more time. Once we understood the situation, however… well, as Kuroba-kun has mentioned, leaving matters entirely as they were was unacceptable. However, simply eliminating the incident would destroy the sequence of events that gave us the knowledge to make the attempt in the first place. So, to change that world, while still trying to avoid the risk of merely splintering off and leaving it behind or destroying it via paradox... the obvious recourse was to make our change, and yet keep the timeline from finding out."

"Hence that little pantomime," the Inspector said slowly. "For his benefit. And that's why you didn't want me contacting any of my colleagues—so that no one would realize I survived." His eyes narrowed suddenly. "But you didn't leave a body. Or blood. If you did indeed follow the original chronology, then you've already changed things—those officers on the stairs would have discovered the aftermath."

Saguru exchanged a glance with Kaito, who took a deep breath and stepped forward to answer. "It's possible," he admitted, "but a missing body should produce the same reactions from anyone we need to worry about as a dead one. After this—after tonight—as long as there's no evidence that you're alive, everyone should draw the necessary conclusions for events to remain consistent with what we saw." It had held true with Kudou, after all, and no body at all was better than one disappearing out of a body bag.

The Inspector's stare turned suddenly forbidding. "You want to keep my survival a secret. So then what, exactly, were you planning to do with me once we finished this little debriefing session?"

Caught off guard, Saguru blinked back at him. "...We'd rather hoped you'd agree to come back through that portal with us?" He hadn't actually intended for that to be a question.

"Did you." Inspector Hakuba had the patient look Saguru usually reserved for listening to criminals who were slightly unhinged. "And it never occurred to you that I might possibly have objections to losing weeks of time in the blink of an eye? To leaving my colleagues without a word, my family worried and anxious without any hint of explanation, let alone reassurance?"

Perhaps they had not considered the other possible outcomes to this plan thoroughly enough.

"You don't understand!" Both of them turned at Kaito's outburst. Kaito stepped closer and met the Inspector's gaze with his own determined glare. "That's what will protect them. The more it looks like you and anything you might have found out are gone permanently, the better! It's nothing like a long-term solution, but for a few weeks? When they'll be watching closely after an operation with such a high-profile casualty? You don't want the people you care about to look like they have some reason not to be worried! The more clearly they all have no idea what really happened, let alone who might have been responsible, the less likely they'll be considered potential threats!"

"Threats?" Inspector Hakuba repeated, skeptical.

Kaito shook his head, that horrible bleak note creeping into his tone. "You have no idea what these people are like. How do you think your 'ghost-thief' has gone unknown for so long, to say nothing of the ones pulling his strings? As far as they're concerned, anyone who survives an encounter is an unacceptable information leak. If they had any reason to suspect you had, they'd kill anyone you might have told in a neat little series of tragic accidents. Your parents. Inspector Nakamori. Aoko."

Inspector Hakuba's eye twitched at Kaito's familiar form of address for Aoko, and he scrutinized them intently for a long moment. "If I knew as little as you seem to be implying, I would never have connected that... ghost-thief to Inspector Nakamori's injury, nor tracked him down accurately enough for tonight's encounter. You're very concerned with him, and what he knows. And you said you know where he'll be." His stare turned hard. "So. What exactly is your stake in what happens to him, other than claiming to bear his name?"

The line of Kaito's mouth went flat, his face smoothing into a neutral mask. Saguru suppressed a wince at the sudden drop of emotion and did his best to answer without succumbing to the newly developed tic of confirming his sunglasses and bronze chain were securely in place. This would be so much easier if Kaito didn't trip over Hakuba's mulish streak every five seconds. "You have to understand, from our point of view, there's... there's a lot that's gone wrong, here." He sighed. "I think Kuroba-kun's been fairly clear about his sentiments regarding any Hakuba Saguru dying."

Kaito's expression said very emphatically that they had better be clear by this point. Saguru took that as a good sign and continued, more quietly, "It might be less obvious to anyone who's never seen events unfold otherwise, but... what was done to the Kuroba Kaito here was no less wrong."

"What was done to him?" The Inspector's tone was blatantly incredulous.

Saguru only kept from angling between his counterpart and Kaito by reminding himself that there was no point and Kaito likely wouldn't appreciate it at all. "However you may wish to think of him after what you just saw, the you that would have stood at the top of those steps was more right than you might suspect. The Kuroba Kaito here, the one who was once your Aoko-kun's childhood friend? He was taken, by people who should never have touched him at all. They broke him and indoctrinated him more thoroughly than you would have believed possible."

"...You're talking about brainwashing." Inspector Hakuba's voice was once again flat, though whether from disbelief or horror was impossible to say.

"Something of that nature," Saguru allowed. "But you came closer to putting a crack in that conditioning than anything in years. Maybe just a hairline crack, but..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "But of course you never had anything like the chance to use it, the way that it went."

"Clearly."

Saguru chose his words carefully, mindful of the Inspector's steel deadpan and familiar skepticism. "You didn't, but it appears that someone—or something—did."

"Really." The Inspector didn't look any happier about this conversational turn than Saguru had expected. He forged on regardless.

"There's more about the history that you should probably know. About—how it started, and how it went wrong here, and how it all should have gone instead." Saguru glanced at Kaito, who wasn't looking at either of them, but the fractional head tilt in his direction was as good as permission, and he turned back to the Inspector. "The short version starts with Kuroba Touichi, called by some the greatest magician in his generation."

"Kuroba Kaito's father."

"Yes." Saguru nodded, moving on without missing a beat. "And a man sought by these same people for his skills, which he refused to lend them." He paused, glanced at Kaito again, but continued, "His death was not truly an accident."

"...I see." He sounded about as pleased as Inspector Nakamori did when confronted with a Kid impostor. Which was to say, not at all.

"You don't, yet. In our history, everyone accepted it as an accident, until Kuroba-kun found a message his father had left, and decided to follow in his footsteps and thwart their goals." Saguru didn't try to lighten the grimness creeping into his tone. "But here, rather than leaving him behind, they took him. Instead of working against the ones who cost him his father..."

"He was made their pawn." Inspector Hakuba looked like he was barely warding off a migraine. Saguru winced, remembering a very different chess analogy from Kaito's dreams, but nodded.

The Inspector exhaled. "So that's what he meant, earlier, about idealism killing a man. You're saying that being reminded of what happened to his father made him reassess his situation?"

After a moment's hesitation, Saguru ventured, "Ah. In a manner of speaking. You... might have trouble accepting this part of the explanation."

Inspector Hakuba stared at him for a long, level moment before glancing back up at the portal still floating in all its eye-twisting glory above them and back. He didn't actually say 'This part?' out loud, but the unspoken implication was clear.

A few steps of pacing bought some extra time to contemplate more palatable phrasing, but was ultimately futile. "I believe I mentioned that the circumstances of our arrival and the paradox were... complicated. This is part of it. As far as I can determine, my Kuroba-kun here and the one we encountered at our, ah, landing point had been exchanging memories in dreams for several weeks before we actually arrived. From this night going forward."

The Inspector's stare was the flattest yet before he pinched the bridge of his nose in a very familiar fashion. "Of course they have," he muttered, low enough that Saguru wasn't certain he'd meant to let it slip out.

A helpless shrug seemed the best response. "I can't explain that one, yet. I can only assume that it is related to why we did land here in the first place instead of getting home as we initially intended. But—neither of them reacted well. For Kuroba-kun, they were terrible nightmares. For your ghost-thief... whatever he found in them"—freedom, family, camaraderie? Saguru wasn't sure he entirely wanted to know—"seems to have undone his world at the seams over the course of those few weeks. Finally understanding that you offered him his only real chance at an alternative in years, only for him to have..." Saguru trailed off, and finally just shook his head. "He is not well," he finished quietly.

"...That is indeed quite a story," Inspector Hakuba said slowly, favoring them with another long, measuring look. "But none of that tells me why I should not bring a known killer to justice. Suppose I do go along with your... request, and allow myself to be whisked weeks into a future where everyone believes me missing or dead. What, exactly, do you want from me?"

The billion yen question, really. Saguru sighed. "What I want," he murmured, "is to be able to leave here with a clear conscience. I want to leave you able to return to your own life, and the Kuroba Kaito here safely out of their grasp for good, wherever that turns out to be. For that to be possible, this organization needs to be taken apart. The threat won't end, otherwise—if you did manage to arrest him, whether now or as soon as you find him on the other side of the portal, how long do you think they would let that stand? They would just destroy everything in their way and take him back—or write him off as a loss, already too compromised to remain useful, and simply eliminate him."

Saguru shook his head slowly. "No. For this to do any good, regardless of what you end up deciding to do afterward, they need to be taken down first. If you factor in what we know, and what we can do... it's not impossible to at least set you down that path. But it'll require both of you to actually pull it off." He met Inspector Hakuba's gaze unflinchingly. "Which means we need you."

"You want me to work with him, you mean." The Inspector looked thoroughly unhappy. Saguru took that as a cautiously hopeful sign; if the man had already made up his mind against it, he would have merely appeared obstinate.

"I'm afraid so. We'll need his help to make it work, after all. And... if you want him functional enough to assist with everything required for you to safely resume your normal life—frankly, if you even want him to survive to the point it would be possible to take him into custody, let alone manage anything close to testifying—well. At this point, I think you're the one person who'll have a solid chance."

"Oh?" Inspector Hakuba asked guardedly.

"Under the circumstances, especially given the dreams…" Saguru offered another helpless shrug. "I'm fairly sure he assumed the two of us were hallucinations." Logic would dictate that the state of mind necessary to create visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations would be at the level of fluffy pink unicorns doing the samba with Nyan cat, but the man had been understandably lacking in logic at the time.

"...Given tonight, I fail to see how he would interpret my presence any differently."

"True enough," Saguru admitted. "But even in that eventuality, you would still be one that he would listen to."

The Inspector grimaced. "Even if I grant you that, I still don't have to like it. You want me to what—view him as an asset? An informant? A victim?"

"He may be all of those things, but... perhaps start with thinking of him as a person." He risked another glance at Kaito, whose previous silence would have felt ominous if not for it being a miracle he was still upright and conscious.

Kaito smiled, wan and tired rather than the tight-lipped way he hid disapproval as Inspector Hakuba made a noncommittal noise and responded, "Perhaps."

Saguru took a deep breath. "So, will you come?"

The Inspector glowered up at the portal as though he was blaming the entire situation squarely upon it, probably not at all unjustly. "The explanations for my miraculous reappearance are going to be your responsibility. Including ensuring that they are of a caliber that will guarantee that various parties will not decide to actually kill me for making them believe I was gone for good."

Saguru smiled wryly. "I'm fairly sure we'll be able to manage that." Breaking a criminal organization like an egg was a very reasonable explanation, particularly for Aoko and Inspector Nakamori, provided they could make it truth.

"Fine, then. How do you plan get through that thing?" He gestured at the portal, which continued to waver unhelpfully just above head height.

Saguru quirked an eyebrow at Kaito, who inspected the arrangement thoughtfully. After a moment he rummaged through his supplies, pulled out another protein bar, and walked several steps to study it some more while absently chewing. Saguru paid no heed to the Inspector's eloquently skeptical expression and waited.

After finishing the protein bar, Kaito nodded at Saguru. "I should be able to hold a regular rip open too, at least long enough to start us back."

Saguru nodded in acknowledgment, then glanced at the Inspector and frowned thoughtfully. The journey through wilder shadows had been unpleasant, and only heaven knew what would have happened had he lost his death grip on Kaito's waist. Presuming their return would be much the same... "We need to make sure we don't lose you along the way."

"Well, that doesn't sound ominous at all."

Saguru ignored the muttered complaint in favor of sorting through his own supplies. He paused, eyebrows rising in speculation as he retrieved the handcuffs Kaito had used earlier, and glanced between them and Inspector Hakuba.

He was met with a spectacularly uninviting glower. "You cannot be serious."

"Why not?" Saguru asked reasonably. "They should work perfectly well, and it's not as though we can't get them back off easily enough afterward."

He could almost see the Inspector biting back at least three responses. Hakuba finally appeared to settle on, "We haven't even started, and I'm regretting this already."

Saguru snapped one side of the handcuffs onto his own wrist anyway, and politely offered the other open cuff. The Inspector eyed it with about the enthusiasm he might allot a rather-less-than-fresh dead squid.

Before Inspector Hakuba could make up his mind, something suddenly attracted his attention toward Kaito, his eyes widening. Saguru felt the sudden shift of energy in the air and turned just in time to see Kaito gesture to summon the other Shadow portal. The horizontal rent opened at ground height, echoed perfectly by the exit flickering in high above them, centered directly over the indistinct cloud of the time-portal.

The Inspector took an unconscious step forward in clear fascination; the new shadow-rimmed hole in the air gave the illusion of opening into a shaft that duplicated the concrete walls of the alley well below the level of the street. Saguru looked up instead, where the shadowrift just above their original entrance revealed the corresponding view of Kaito as seen from below. "Hm. That's going to be interesting. Still better than the alternatives, I suppose."

Kaito studied the relative positioning of the portals, then nodded. "This should do it. Might be a little bit of a bumpy ride, though. Are you ready to go?"

Saguru turned back to Inspector Hakuba, still holding out the open cuff. "This is your last chance for second thoughts," he said quietly. "I still think it would be a spectacularly bad idea for you to stay here rather than come with us, but... this will be a one-way trip, and I did make you a promise." He carefully felt in his pocket with his free hand, found the Inspector's firearm, and offered it barrel-down. "You have your explanation, your sidearm, and your choice, as agreed."

The older man reclaimed his gun without hesitation, efficiently checking the mechanisms and ammunition before shifting to sight briefly at a patch of unoccupied wall. Apparently satisfied, he holstered the gun and glanced back at Saguru. "...Thank you."

"I do keep my promises, insofar as I can," Saguru replied, shifting the handcuff to glint in the light.

"So I see." Inspector Hakuba regarded Saguru for another long moment, then let out a sharp sigh, stepped back toward him, seized the free cuff, and snapped it around his wrist. "Let's get on with it, then."

Saguru smiled politely, as careful to keep his relief from showing as he had been to hide his concern that the Inspector would truly walk away. While he had been a relatively agreeable listening audience, the active cooperation necessary to have any hope of succeeding in this venture could not be coerced with a hostage sidearm. For him to have agreed after all, at this point… they might actually have a chance at pulling off the whole mad scheme.

Kaito glanced at them as they arrived at the edge of the portal near the ground beside him. "Ready?"

"I believe so."

Kaito gave them a critically assessing look. "Hmm. That is a good idea, actually." He shifted closer, taking hold of the chain linking their wrists, and snapped one half of another pair of handcuffs around it before attaching the other to his own wrist. "There we are! Now we shouldn't have to worry about losing anyone to turbulence."

Saguru found himself slightly distracted by the suspiciously familiar look of the newly-employed handcuffs. He was certain his own pair had been in their designated pocket the minute before, but—no, a lightness there verified that this was no longer the case. He was tempted to raise an eyebrow at Kaito, but was fully aware it would have no effect whatsoever.

"Any final advice on how this works?" Inspector Hakuba directed a dubious glance down toward the portal, and the view through it of the eye-twisting anomaly nearly a dozen apparent feet below them. "And are you certain it's supposed to be... quite that far away?"

"It should help. I think." Kaito shrugged, eying the distance with more appraisal and less trepidation.

"Hold on tight, and I recommend keeping your eyes closed," Saguru advised the Inspector. "It'll be less upsetting that way,"

Hakuba shot him a vaguely dour look, but offered no protest as Kaito took hold of their arms and declared with entirely too much carefree cheer, "On three!"

Hakuba took a deep breath as Kaito counted. He shut his eyes, listening, and jumped, letting himself move with the grip on his arm. He had just enough time to grow accustomed to the freefall before they plunged from the air of the alleyway into the strange space between worlds.

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Ocianne

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