Author's note: I know, it's been ages. So, I'm updating! More angst! I hope you're all very happy. Still, it won't be much longer anymore. That is, I hope (since the rule for updating this seems to become of once a month. I keep trying).

Back to Kaito's POV! and in the present tense, which isn't something I usually do. Only a part's in the past tense, and that's a flashback. Well, I'll let you find out!

I still don't own anything. It's not very likely this should ever change.

-

Watching her

-

It's been a long night. It's been like a Venetian masquerade – catches and escapes nearly colliding, curses and mockeries playfully exchanged under our respective masks – my clown smile, and her job-acuteness. The game tonight has been simple, like it always is – I steal the jewel. She tries to rescue it. And this go on, while the moon, overhead, laughs at us and at our attempts to elude each other.

So yes, it's been a long night. And I don't think it at all likely that it should ever come to a finish.

We're just drowning ourselves into it, hopeful that it should make us forget everything – let ourselves be wrecked in this peculiar game, full of curses and fears, endless pursuits following one another, and we're not able to get out of the maze anymore. We're trapped. Usually I was the one who tricked, but she's tricked me on more than anybody else ever did. What's funny is that she doesn't even know it… she doesn't even know the effect her glowering blue eyes have on me, nor how much I feel about the dance we're both leading.

It reminds me of Victorian dances – you can see them in old films, and I remember she was very fond of them. Pulled me into watching them with her. She used to laugh back then about it; she would never have imagined we should one day undergo the same moves with one another – facing and turning, smiling and crying, loving and hating.

Parting and meeting and parting again.

I land on the balcony. The wind flaps my cloak sideways when my feet touch the floor, but I don't care. She's here, already back from the heist and from all the paperwork it necessary involves – there's light on the other side of the flinging curtain, and through its warm glow I can see her moving about, probably fixing some dinner. She must feel exhausted after the chase we've had… she's tough, though. But even I can feel weariness in every one of my limbs, attacking every time I move.

Still, more than the physical pain, it's probably being so close to her that hurts most. So close to her… and yet if I entered the living-room (and the open window does look like an invitation) she'd be after me in no time. With either a mop or her gun. Which is worse, I can't say.

I miss her… In two strides I could take her in my arms, and keep her there forever. But there's no way I can do that now. Maybe we just grew too old, and we don't believe in fairy tales anymore. Still, I do miss her…

But I just sit here, on the railing of her balcony, and watch the golden light of her lamp illuminate the curtain in the total darkness of the windy outside, while she passes and repasses listlessly, then finnaly settles at the table and moves no more.

And this warm glow, bringing heat to my cheeks even though it's very cold (November night), reminds me of a sunset I watched once, and of words which were spoken then. It happened less than a year ago, but I feel like it's already been something like a lifetime…

-

The sun was definitely sinking in a sea-sky of golden and white. It had now reached the top of the clock rower-s spire, like a copper-coloured orb on top of a thin, dark spike, which pierced through it and let it escape a flood of bright silvery light, flowing over a paramount of clouds. No sound came to break this sight but the slight, irregular creaking of the swing I was sitting on, as if Tokyo itself was keeping a religious silence for this day about to disappear in the endlessness of this falling night…

Right. Always the romantic soul when not clown-acting, I'm incurable.

I leant against the swing's rope, listening to the soft creaking over my head and half-closing my eyes upon the square facing the clock tower. The dying sun was glimmering on the cobbles, where, years ago, a little boy offered a little girl a rose…

Arrgh. Stop thinking about this. Don't let those ghosts invade your eye-sight… because if they do, you won't be able to sleep tonight. They're in the past. They're gone. Yeah, way gone now.

Way gone…

"Kuroba," a voice said behind me, and it came out so abruptly that had I not recognised the unmistakable tone of one half-brit Hakuba Saguru – in all the fullness of his pompous English accent, I might even have turned around. This being not the case, I merely cocked my head towards him, feeling Poker Face fall slowly into place while he seated himself on the swing beside mine.

"So," I said lightly, in a perfect rehearsal of our long-past high school quarrels, "you're back, aren't you?"

"Only temporarily," he said grumpily. "In fact," consulting his faithful waist-pocket watch, "we shall be departing again in forty-six minutes, twenty-two seconds."

I grinned. Whatever his other defects may be (conceit and self-arrogance, among others), Hakuba's punctuality was always highly reliable. If he said he would be departing in forty-six minutes, twenty-two seconds, then so he would, no matter what.

"And what brings you here?" Poker face, full mode. "High school remembrance-courtesy?"

He gave me one of his sharp don't-give-me-that-shit look (one of those he always hits murderers with when he asks them his famous question, 'can you tell me WHY you have committed that crime?' I hate 'em). "As if you didn't know."

"Pray tell me." Poker Face held on. But it was getting more and more difficult to keep it on.

"We saw Aoko in the street." He scanned my face, obviously hoping for some kind of breakdown at the sound of her name. But received nothing. "She looked… worn-out. Put-upon. I'm sure you know what that means."

'Course I do. My feelings exactly.

"And I linked that with this." He unfolded a paper before my eyes. Headlines in English. Seems that Koizumi and he had been in Europe lately… Column: 'Daughter of late Nakamori-keibu takes after her father! – in more ways than one.' And a picture of Aoko, shouting at her men. Oh, yes, I knew this case. It wasn't that long ago.

Hakuba said nothing all the while I was flicking through the newspaper. But when I shoved it back in his hands, he appeared to lose a little of his British self-control. That is, the only way he could – some little colour flushed his so-pale cheeks and he said eagerly, "I take it you've told her everything?"

Never befriend detectives. They read your mind. Really, they do.

"Yes."

"And how did she take it?"

As if you didn't know. "As expected."

He looked away. I looked back at the clock tower. The sun sunk on.

"You're a fool." I glanced sharply at him. He deadpanned me with his usual cold stare. "You know you are. You should have foreseen she'd react that way, since she's always hated Kid. I just hope she hasn't suffered too much because of you." Which was a way to say, Of course she has. He was evidently thinking sometime or other I'd finally give up and bring down my defences… and, by Jove, he was right. Poker Face held by nothing but an eyelash.

"Besides, you don't deserve her in the least. She's a very good girl, and you're a criminal."

Poker Face crumpled. I'm not actually sure it made a sound; though I did hear it – like glass crackling all the way down and shattering – but the fact is that he glanced at me again, looking stricken.

"I know that.' He opened his mouth. But found nothing to say. "I knew it from the beginning. I knew I had nothing to do with her the day I took up the mask – or, rather, the monocle. She is a very good sort of girl – temperamental but straightforward – and I've been selfish enough to deserve all of her reproaches."

His mouth closed and opened again like a – urg – fish. He might have expected a breakdown, but not a confession. He should have known. At last, he recovered enough of his proverbial impassivity to reply, though with difficulty, "Selfish? But you did it for her– or, at least, that's what I thought I'd understood," he added dryly, finally keeping his self-control in check. "Didn't you try to protect us, as well as your mother… as well as us?"

I nodded but didn't look back at him. I could feel my lips curl all by themselves in a contemptuous smile – the kind of one my mirror flashes back at me when I'm not aware, I'm sure. "Yeah. Right. Easy words, uh?" I said, and felt Hakuba start. I went on. "As easily uttered as easily believed when you really want to… like I did for a long time. Until I realized I couldn't fail to tell her." My mouth shot closed automatically since I couldn't help remembering the way she looked and talked that night, the glint of understood betrayal more than acute in her eyes.

I pulled on my feet and rose high into the golden-shaded sky, feeling the same pinch in falling back to the heart as there always is when I take up flight on my handglider. My eyes glided up and down upon the clock tower, then turned back on Hakuba's, exactly the same colour as the clouds overhead – a sharp, sad gold, piercing through me like I was only a thin surface of looking-glass.

"I thought that way for a long time. Always the good guy, the showman – 'I wanted to protect you, I did all that fro you…' even if I had said those to her, she wouldn't have believed them. And she would have been right – it was me I was trying to protect, much more than any of you."

He started again. Just a little jerk of the head as he turned to look at me fully. And I knew what he thought – and my next words were close to an apology.

"I lost my father when I was very young," I said, deciding for once to follow Kudo-kun's advice and tell the one whole truth. "I loved him very much. And when I took up the mask it was like… getting to see him again. Every time I'm in the midst of a heist, I almost expect him to come by with his amused grin, ruffle my hair and say, 'not bad. You've got some more to learn though.' … and then every time I realise he's gone forever. It's like seeing him…"

I stopped swinging and leant backwards, watching the sun gradually disappear behind the clock tower. Its light was beginning to fade and darken. The cobbles on the square were grey already.

"… die every night."

I don't think I've ever told anyone such things. And I'm not sure Hakuba really believed them, either.

"Every time I take off the mask, he's going away."

My feet racked against the sand, calling me back to reality. "And so," I added with a great yawn and a stretch, "my little selfish me decided he couldn't see anyone else die whom he loved. Simply because it would hurt too much. Especially if it was Aoko."

"Then…"

"Then – do you understand? Protecting her was a way to protect me, to protect my own hurt feelings. I never thought she might want to be by my side, might want to help me – especially since, if those black people discovered who I am, she would be killed anyway, simply because she was my best friend."

I fell back into silence. Hakuba did not so much as stir. I knew that next time we'd meet, things would all be back to normal – that I'd mock, and he'd scowl, like we've always done, and that we'd never be so close as we are now. This was the paramount of our friendship/rivalry, and from then on we'd never reach such trust in each other to be able to make confessions. Eventually we'd be back at the high school relationship we used to have, I suppose.

Not a word more was spoken. The sun had nearly disappeared behind the skyline buildings. And all the gold of what had been a shiny afternoon resolved to a thin line in the horizon, which finally came to vanish, leaving the night settle in onto the park and the clock tower.

-

Nothing moves in her living-room anymore. It's probably been quite a while, but I didn't realize – I was too busy drowning myself in my memories. Freaking memories they were – I shouldn't let myself go gloomy like that.

The window's not closed. Even if it was, I wouldn't have had any problem coming in… as I do now. Aoko's sitting at the table, her head buried in her folded arms. Her eyes are closed. She really, really looks like she's asleep – unless it's all a booby-trap, but I doubt it. I can see dried tears on her cheeks.

She groans a little when I take her in my arms – she's definitely asleep. If she wasn't, she would already be struggling free and threatening me with her gun. God, she's not heavy in the least. I don't think she eats much. Nor sleeps, for that matter.

I carry her over to the couch. Her face instantly relaxes when her head lies upon a cushion. I flap a blanket over her body, then keel beside the couch.

She looks so beautiful and fragile. I know she's not – fragile, I mean. She's never been weak, not even when she was faced with me. Tonight as well, she deadpanned me with her usual coldness, just like she always does. Just like her father did. We only had time enough to exchange a few pleasantries before I escaped, but that's enough to me. I'm satisfied with that deformed reflection of our high-school quarrels.

But when she's all alone in her flat, I suppose she feels exactly as lonesome as I do, when I'm in mine.

A lock of dark-brown hair has gone astray on her nose, bothering her sleep. I push it away, and caress her cheek in the same gesture. Her skin's soft and cold. She sighs a little, as innocent as she used to be at seventeen. As innocent as she should always have remained, had it not been for me.

I know I should leave – I'll be in big trouble if I fall asleep and she wakes up to find me here, in my kid tux. I should be leaving already. But I just can't seem to be able to stop watching her.

-

Not the average Kaito, uh? He's darker than usual in this. What I'm trying to show is that maybe that's what he's been hiding all the time through this story… or maybe not. Maybe I'm completely mistaking his character. Whatever.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the angst! 'Till next time!