AN: It's here at last, the much awaited update! I hope everyone enjoys reading this, given how excited ya'll were for it last chapter, so I hope it doesn't disappoint! It's been awhile since I wrote a chapter that only had one scene in it, but it felt appropriate to solely focus on this one thing for this chapter. Anyways, thanks for reading, and as always, please leave a review on your way out!

Until next time!

Phantasmal Black

Chapter Eleven

Kazuha

It had started with the faintest of tugs on her little finger.

If one were to ask her, then she would have no discernible answer for why she had decided to take this path in the first place. It had simply been some kind of instinct, a vague feeling crawling up the back of her neck, as the faint tug on her little finger grew stronger with every step that she took. For some reason, she found her heart pounding loudly in her chest, echoing in her ears. She didn't know quite why she had taken this path, but she had the strangest idea that she knew what she would find at the end of it.

She had always believed that she and Heiji were connected by the red string of fate- even if it took her awhile to realize it herself. Sometimes, she didn't know what it was she saw in him- whenever he flaked on her, or blew off a promise, she wondered why on earth it had been him of all people she had fallen in love with. And yet she couldn't deny her feelings, especially as they grew and grew. She would always tell herself that this time, she would try and confess to him- this time, she would do it for sure.

In the end, she had missed her chance, and Heiji had vanished from her world without ever knowing the truth. It had been at the funeral, where Shinichi had told her with almost expressionless eyes, what he knew of Heiji's feelings, the truth that he had always been wanting to tell her himself- and now no longer could. At the time, she thought she had used up all of her tears- but it appeared that she still had a few left, coming out unbidden. Mourning what could have been, mourning what now couldn't be.

But not once had she ever truly felt as if their connection had been severed.

She almost missed the figure, sitting in the dark as he was. Between his black clothes, dark hair, and dark skin, he almost melted into the darkness itself, as if he and it were one and the same. But Kazuha knew- even without seeing his face, she knew. It was an intense, overpowering sensation that sent a surge of memory through her, visions of her childhood friend flashing through her head, seeing echoes of his bright smile dancing just beyond her. Once again, once more, he was right there in front of her, and for a moment, it was almost as if no time had passed at all.

When her name escaped from his lips, those blue eyes that she had come to know so well as they grew up together fixed upon her, she felt everything come to her at once, all in a rush. She had always believed that somewhere out there, that he was still alive- that there was no possible way that he could be dead. She always held on to the belief that one day, their paths would cross again, perhaps in the most unexpected of ways. That one day, the same fate that tied them together, only to break them apart, would bring them back together again, connecting them once more.

"It really is you." Kazuha took a step forward, feeling her breath catch in her throat. She half wondered if he would disappear if she so much as blinked, wondering if perhaps she had never left her hotel room, and was now fast asleep in her bed, simply dreaming this encounter. "Heiji!"

Taking another step forward, half intending to throw her arms around him- goodness, but he had grown up rather well, she couldn't help but think in the back of her mind- Kazuha quickly halted, realizing that there was something very wrong with this scene. In the dark of the night, and against the dark of his clothes, it was hard to make out- but she was almost entirely certain that was blood staining his clothes.

"Heiji, are ya hurt?" Kazuha asked, a million questions racing through her mind all at once. Where have you been? Why didn't you come home? Why are you here now? Are you really-? And while this question might not be the most important one, it was the most pressing, and thus, it came out before any of the others. "Do I need ta call an ambulance? That doesn't look good."

Opening and shutting his mouth, he could only avert his eyes from her. He never expected that something like this would happen- that the two of them would just simply cross paths like this. Some might say that it was fate at work- but such a thing as fate surely didn't exist. And in such a situation as well- placing a hand over his wound, Paikaru's eyes narrowed, wondering what he should say to this girl that he barely remembered. Tell her the truth? It wasn't possible to convince her that she had the wrong person, even though he half felt that she did.

He was, but he wasn't. Fighting back Merlot's taunts, fighting back her promise of an easier existence if he laid aside what he knew about his true past, accepting that he could never be anything other than who he had become, Paikaru tried instead to focus at the matter now at hand.

Kazuha's name had slipped out of him without even thinking about it, but he knew that if he hadn't been shown the recent picture of her by Shinichi yesterday, that he never would have recognized her in the first place. At least, that's what he felt- there was no great surge of memories welling up in him upon seeing her. There had been the faintest tug at his memory, true enough- but aside from those brief hints and vague images, nothing more bubbled forward, and trying to pursue them only caused his head to ache with pain.

"Heiji-" Taking another step forward, a worried look crossing her face as he remained increasingly silent, an unfamiliar expression crossing the face of her childhood friend, Kazuha's brows furrowed together as he raised a hand, silently leveling his gaze with her. It was the eyes alone that nearly made her stop in her tracks- for all that she knew them so well, for all that she had recognized them in an instant upon first glance, there was something- someone- within them that she didn't know.

"Stop it." Paikaru finally spoke, lowering his hand once he realized she'd come to a stop. "Don't get any closer."

At the sound of his voice, Kazuha briefly found herself taken aback- there was something wrong with it, she knew that at once. Taking a slight step backwards, she carefully searched his eyes, once more feeling that dark, cold feeling bubble up within her gut. No, it wasn't his voice that his the problem- it had gotten somewhat deeper since growing into adulthood, but it was otherwise mostly the same. Rather, the problem lay in his manner of speech, his accent. Since when was Heiji able to speak in such a standard Tokyo dialect? He'd always been the type to struggle with it, she knew that much from the one time he'd tried to badly impersonate Shinichi. It was more than just the way that he spoke, however- there was something in his gaze, something in the way he moved that she didn't know, didn't recognize.

Even though every part of him was screaming at her that this was none other than Hattori Heiji, her childhood friend, who the entire world thought dead. And yet at the same time, once the moment passed, and once she gauged him a little better, somehow she got the strangest impression that she didn't know this person at all. It was as if a stranger had appeared before her, wearing Heiji's face, speaking with his voice.

"Who are you?" These words too slipped out without thinking, but Kazuha didn't take them back once she had spoken them. Even as what she knew to be pain danced through the young man's eyes, she didn't take them back. Watching as he rose to his feet, gathering his things neatly with one hand, she felt something clench within her heart as a smile that was unlike the one she remembered appeared on his face, laced with what she could only see as regret.

It was then that she wished to take back her unbidden words.

"I'm not really sure how you want me to answer that question." Paikaru spoke again, pressing his hand up against his wound, using the pressure to stop it's bleeding for the moment. Well, he wouldn't die from something minor like this. "I don't really have a good one for you. It seems that you've mistaken me for someone else."

"That's not-!" Kazuha found herself saying without thinking, even as she cut off her own protest. "You said my name."

"I know." Paikaru said after a moment, closing his eyes. "I did."

"Why?" Kazuha asked, forcing herself to look up at him, to lock eyes with him. "There's no way I could have mistaken ya fer someone else, ya have ta be Heiji! But you..."

There was a long pause then, as Paikaru was the one who broke eye contact with her, unable to hold it. Just as he thought, there was no way that he could fool the people who had known Hattori Heiji the best- there was no way that he could ever pretend to be him, not when he didn't remember the first thing about him. This woman, this Toyama Kazuha, who had known him for all of his years of life, right before he'd vanished to give way to himself, to give way to Paikaru, looked at him as if she barely knew him.

And yet for some reason, he found himself not wanting to turn her away. God, but maybe Shinichi's crackpot theory had been right.

"I was shown a photo of you." Paikaru said after a moment. "That's where I learned your name from. That's all. I know who you're looking for when you look at me, but I don't know what to do to help you, Ka-" Her first name almost slipped out of him, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from saying it. He didn't have the right, he didn't know her. "Toyama-san. My memories only go back five years."

Hearing that unfamiliar form of address was almost like a bullet to her heart, and it was a wonder that she was still standing after taking it. Searching his eyes again, she realized that he was telling the truth. Certainly, it had been one scenario that she had always imagined, one reason as to why Heiji couldn't return to her side, but- but still, she couldn't have imagined that it would have brought such a change to him.

It was the sinking feeling in her gut, as she slowly started to put the pieces together against her wishes, that told her the likely reason why. The culprit wasn't just memory loss- the real culprit as to why she couldn't fully recognize her childhood friend behind those eyes was something else, something far more sinister.

The timing really was too perfect.

No.

The faintest of cries from within her heart was all she dared to let out- before Kazuha steeled herself, taking in a long breath. The way Shinichi had left so suddenly on the night of the memorial. The way that he had avoided giving too much detail about the Organization member they'd linked up with, Paikaru. Hakuba's unexpected defense of him. Sera's insistence that he would be someone that she would get along with. Even Ran's slightly peculiar behavior that evening. The stack of Ellery Queen novels, those familiar eyes on her back. The look in Shinichi's eyes when she had spoken such cold words, pointing out the absurdity of allying themselves with an assassin.

A young man with a dark complexion.

Paikaru.

No.

How could it have ended up this way? Heiji had nearly lost his life to these people- and for such a thing to be true now, for him to have become one of them- he wouldn't. He never would. For Heiji, her precious childhood friend, who brought murderers to justice, for him to become one himself, of the worst of sort... it was impossible. Such a thing couldn't possibly be true.

But that was Heiji with his memories. For a Heiji who didn't even know that was even his name, things were different. There had been a spark, faint and momentary, when they had first locked eyes- but it had vanished almost as quickly as it had come. If he'd remembered something in that instant, it wasn't nearly enough.

"At the very least, we don't think he willingly became an assassin."

"...Paikaru's circumstances are special, from what I've gathered."

"Five years." Kazuha finally spoke, swallowing a little, feeling the weight of everything hit her like a pile of bricks. She stood steady however, not wavering- not now, not in front of this person, who was Heiji and also wasn't quite Heiji, this person that he should have never become in the first place. Her first instinct was to lash out with anger, with frustration, that he could have the gall to stand in front of her with that face, with that voice- but that was useless. It wasn't his fault. She couldn't blame him, she couldn't hate him.

A Heiji that wasn't quite Heiji was, in the end, still Heiji.

She had been waiting for Heiji to come home all this time, and she had always vowed that even if he had lost his memories, she would accept and embrace him no matter what. Lashing out with hate and anger to someone who had no choice in the matter of what he'd become, because he wasn't someone that he couldn't remember, was the exact opposite of that. There was a story here, that much Kazuha could sense- if he really were some kind of monster, there wouldn't be that look of regret, of remorse in his eyes, that apologetic tone to his voice.

He knew what he had done, and carried it with him, even now. Perhaps it might be something that was as easy for him as breathing- but he still hadn't truly forgotten the value of a life. And in front of her, that burden was almost more than he could take, as if he couldn't even face her. She wondered what it was that Shinichi had told him, and how much of the truth that he knew. She wondered how he had become like this, and who it was that she should be turning all of her anger towards, all of her hate, redirecting it to the one, true culprit behind all of this.

There was someone to be angry at in this scenario, to be sure, but it wasn't him.

"Five years ago, my childhood friend, Hattori Heiji was nearly killed, an' went missin'. I've been lookin' fer him ever since." Kazuha said, taking a slight step forward, almost hesitating for a moment. As something shifted in those blue eyes, she felt her gaze soften a little- it was more than just the fact that they had the same face. There were still traces, when she looked, of the one that she knew, had grown up with, of the one that she had fallen in love with. He was still there, it wasn't as if he had disappeared along with his memories. "Everyone thought he was dead, everyone gave up hope but I knew- I knew that he was out there somewhere, just unable ta come back ta us fer some reason."

The charm that hung around her neck, she thought, was rather warm. And even in the dark of night, faintly, she could make out a worn purple string twined about his own neck. She didn't need to ask to know what it was. She knew.

There was a long moment of silence then, neither of them quite knowing what to say to the other- before Kazuha once again broke it, looking up to face him. The slightest trace of a smile made it's way to her face- though it wasn't really one of happiness. "I guess I can finally understand why."

"I-" Paikaru opened his mouth, watching as Kazuha shook her head, reaching out and snatching the bag of medical supplies from his hand. She didn't miss the way he flinched as she did so, but put it aside.

"We can talk more properly once we treat yer wound." Kazuha said simply, shaking her head. "Kudo-kun told me enough earlier. Now, show it ta me. I know first aid myself, ya know."

"I didn't." Paikaru admitted after a moment, half unsure what to do with himself in this situation. He didn't want to push her away, in spite of the rather complicated array of feelings that she had racing around in his head. And for reasons he didn't fully understand, it didn't appear that she was going to push him away either- in spite of the fact that she had silently arrived at the truth herself. He didn't understand.

He had thought those who had been closest to who he was would resent him the most. Especially after those cold words that she had spoken earlier, a cold tone of distrust and disbelief to her voice at the mere prospect of allying themselves with him. Of course, she hadn't known then- but he had struggled to imagine that knowing would change things all that much. If anything, he had expected her to act something more like Hakuba- or even worse.

"Well, now ya do." Kazuha said simply. "That's one more thing ya know about me now. Come on, I can't tend to it if ya don't show me it. How did ya get injured anyways?"

"Got into a fight." Paikaru curtly mumbled, finally complying with her request, and tugging up the material of his hoodie and his shirt alike. He didn't miss the way her fingers twitched a little as she caught sight of the pistol that had been holstered in his belt, as he deftly picked it out with his free hand, setting it aside, so that it wouldn't get in the way of the bandages. She had already drawn the right conclusion, but seeing him with something like that was something else.

Well, perhaps she really shouldn't say anything. Her job also required her to carry one- and while her job revolved around helping people, she knew full well that even within her line of work, there were those who still used them for wicked things- too many, really. An instrument of murder was always an instrument of murder, regardless of who carried them.

The faint traces of an old scar, from a gunshot wound that Heiji had obtained while saving someone's life, stood out to her even within the darkness of the night. Strangely, it was comforting to see- even if she could make out the sight of other faint scar traces that dotted his lower torso. Wordlessly, she bit back any comments for the moment, instead focusing herself on treating his injury. He hadn't given her any specifics, but for someone like him to get hurt in a fight, then his opponent must have been someone rather strong.

He didn't even wince as she disinfected it with the rubbing alcohol, and that too, caused her to suck in her own breath. Cleaning it up as best she could, she carefully wound bandages around his lower torso, making sure that they were tight, but not too tight. She didn't miss the way that each time one of her fingers trailed too close to his skin, the one before her flinched- she got the feeling that he wasn't used to close physical contact- at least, not of the good kind.

Heiji was different, in that regard. He lived for that sort of thing.

"There." Kazuha said, pulling away from him, watching as he seemed to breathe easier once she was outside of his personal space. "All done. Thanks fer yer patience."

"You're pretty good at that." Paikaru couldn't help but observe, taking a moment to study the applied bandages, before he pulled his clothes back down, tucking his pistol back away once more. He didn't miss the way Kazuha's gaze followed it as it disappeared back to whence it had came, but whatever she was thinking, she was keeping it to herself. "...Thanks, I guess."

"Yer welcome." Kazuha said, brushing a stray strand behind her ear as she looked up at him, a faint smile tracing her lips. "Yer stayin' with Kudo-kun, aren't ya?"

"Yeah." Paikaru said after a moment, slowly nodding his head. "I am. Toyama-san-"

"It's Kazuha." Kazuha said after a moment, her expression softening somewhat. So this is what Sera had meant by him not being a monster- well of course he wouldn't be. Even with memory loss, even though he had obviously been lied to about who he was, there was no force on earth that could change someone like Heiji into a complete monster. "You can call me Kazuha. We're childhood friends, after all, even if ya don't remember that much, Heiji."

"I'm not-" Paikaru began, opening his mouth and shutting it again, shaking his head. "I don't know if I can be Hattori Heiji for you, Toyama-san."

"Ka-zu-ha." Kazuha repeated, carefully enunciating each syllable. "An' don't be ridiculous! Even if ya don't remember that much, that doesn't change the fact that yer Hattori Heiji. That's only one person in the whole world who's a big enough idiot ta try an' bandage himself up in the dark, after all!"

"You know though, don't you?" Paikaru asked, his eyes narrowing, searching those green of hers, for some sign of something that he was expecting, some kind of rejection. Why? He didn't understand. Why didn't she resent him? Why was she treating him that? It wasn't as if she was entirely wrong, but still... "About who I am."

"I know." Kazuha said after a moment, her gaze falling away from him. Taking in and letting out a long breath, she turned her eyes back up towards him, locking hers with his. "I know. I'm not a great detective, but even I can put two an' two together when ya give me this many clues. Right from the start, I always had this awful feelin' in my gut whenever that codename was brought up, an' even more so when Hakuba-san finally got a description of him- of you- but..."

"Heiji is still Heiji, after all." Kazuha said, carefully reaching out, taking his hand in her own. There it was- the scar that she remembered so clearly, the one that she had given him herself. In the dark night, she hadn't taken notice of the Lichtenberg scars that dotted that same hand now before, and she forced herself to close her eyes once more, still refusing to drop his hand. "There's no force on earth that can change that. Even if ya don't remember, even if yer..."

Her grip on his hand tightened again in spite of herself, but she forced her eyes open once more, turning to look up at him. "There's a proper conversation that needs ta be had between the two of us, but I've been waitin' an' waitin' fer you ta come home all this time, Heiji. Whatever the circumstances are, no matter how bad things are, that's not a fact that will change."

"I imagine that yer goin' through some stuff on yer own as it is, an' I won't try an' talk over that." Kazuha said after a moment, letting her smile grow somewhat. "I don't know the full story either, but I can guess at bits an' pieces of it, given yer memory loss. It must be confusin', right? To suddenly have all of these people around ya, actin' like they know ya, yet ya don't feel like ya've ever met them before."

"That much I can admit." Paikaru said after a moment, using his free hand to scratch his cheek, wondering what Kazuha's expression seemed to soften as he did so. "It's been one hell of a week, an' it's only been about three days."

"Ah, that's more like it!" Kazuha said, her eyes almost sparkling, seeming to light up the darkness for a second. "Ya don't need ta try an' speak proper Japanese around me, Heiji! Rather, I'm just surprised that ya've managed ta get so good at it! But this way is much more natural fer ya, right?"

Blinking a little, half not realizing he had slipped back into his Osakan accent, Paikaru couldn't help but feel the edges of a faint smile pull at his lips. "Well, yer not wrong about that. But that name..."

"Name?" Kazuha asked, blinking a little. It wasn't hard for her to determine what he meant, though. When she thought about it, it made perfect sense. "Ah, that's right. I guess it's pretty strange ta be called a name yer not familiar with, right?" She admitted, finally letting go of his hand. "But ya really are him, aren't you? Yer really..."

"Paikaru." As the codename slipped out of his lips, he watched Kazuha's body tense- before she drew in and let out another breath, steeling herself once more. She'd braced herself for the impact, but it still hurt. "Ya don't have ta use it though if ya can't manage it though, Toy-"

"Kazuha." Kazuha repeated, sharply cutting him off, shaking her head. "I'll manage it. Now then. Yer stayin' with Kudo-kun, right? I'll walk ya back there. We can talk along the way, if ya want."

"I don't need ta be escorted back." Paikaru couldn't help but note, slightly quirking a brow. Honestly, he wasn't certain what he had expected this woman to be like- but she wasn't anything like what he was expecting. "Shouldn't ya be asleep now, anyways? It's past midnight."

"I could say the same fer ya." Kazuha noted, raising her brows. "An' given the state yer in, I'd say somethin' happened." Locking eyes with him briefly, a rather serious expression crossed her face. "Did she come here? That one called Merlot?"

Giving her nothing more than a long look for a moment, Paikaru eventually let an annoyed sigh escape from his lips, sensing that she would keep pressing if he wasn't honest. "She did. Showed up in front of Kudo-han's place. I had ta chase her away fer the time being."

"But she'll come back, right?" Kazuha asked, a slightly nervous note to her voice. After all, right now, Ran was also staying at Shinichi's place- what if something had already happened to her? "Should we be hurryin' then?"

"No." Paikaru said, shaking his head. As much as she wanted to take him back, he didn't have any reason to believe that she wouldn't uphold her end of the bargain- for tonight at least. Tomorrow night would be a different story, however. "At the very least, Merlot's a woman of her word. If she makes a promise, she doesn't go back on it, even if it's ta her disadvantage. Says it's her pride or somethin'."

Letting out a slight sigh of relief, Kazuha placed a hand over her heart as she did so. "Well, that's good." She said, turning around on her heel. There was the faintest of crawling sensations as she turned her back on him, her fine tuned instincts as a martial artist warning her that this wasn't a wise move- but she shoved them aside. Whatever might happened to him, even if he didn't have his memories, Heiji was still Heiji. The proof of that was in the fact that he had allied himself with Shinichi even now, really.

Sera was right. Paikaru wasn't a monster. He had done monstrous things, things she didn't know if she could really forgive him for- but somehow, she didn't think he would blame her for that. Even if there was some small part of her that wanted to hate him, to resent him, feeling that he had stolen Heiji away from her, to hurry up and give him back already- it wasn't his fault. He hadn't asked to lose his memories, hadn't asked to be taken advantage of.

If their situations were reversed, she didn't doubt that Heiji would still welcome her home with open arms.

"It must have been scary, wakin' up with no memories." Kazuha said, realizing that the moment of silence had dragged on for much longer than a mere moment. "Do ya wanna tell me the story, He-" Biting back the name that she knew so well, that even now, wanted to surge forward from her lips, Kazuha took in a deep breath, sparing a glance back towards him. That haunted look in those blue eyes was something she had never really seen before- and frankly, she didn't really like it. If she could do something in her power to prevent it, she would.

If she had known that when her beloved childhood friend would finally return home, he would come back carrying identity issues with him, she would have studied up on psychology. What was the correct thing to do here? Use his real name, in spite of the way it clearly twisted at him? Use the codename that had been given to him in lieu of it, one that twisted at her? Maybe if she kept using his real name, he'd get used to it after awhile- names had power, after all, and perhaps the name would bring more and more of the Heiji she knew out of him.

But, she didn't want to make him uncomfortable in the process. Wasn't that just being selfish of her? Frankly, she didn't know what the correct answer was, so she simply decided to do as she had been asked- if she wanted him to call her by her first name, after all, then at the very least, she could call him by the name he asked to be called by in turn. For now, at least- maybe things would change.

Hopefully, his memories would return. If they didn't... well, that would be a hurdle they would overcome when it became clear that it might not happen.

"Paikaru." Kazuha said finally, casting him a small smile, before she turned back around, facing the front again. Lacing her fingers together behind her back, she took several steps forward. "If ya wanna tell me all about it, I'd be willin' ta listen."

"Yer weird." Paikaru couldn't help but note, even as he fell into step behind her. It was with practiced care that he didn't outpace her- his stride was naturally longer than hers, after all. Strangely enough, there was almost something faintly nostalgic about this. He couldn't really remember anything- but it definitely didn't feel like this was the first time he had done this, walking just behind this person. "Between you an' that Neechan- super weird."

"Ah, ya call her Neechan still?" Kazuha asked, glancing back at him, her smile even stronger this time. "But I see. So Ran-chan figured it out after all. No wonder she was actin' so weird when she came back ta her place this evening. I thought somethin' was odd."

"Well, it just came naturally." Paikaru admitted after a moment, scratching one of his cheeks, his gaze darting away from her. Really, it felt like he was meeting nothing but weird people lately- or maybe he was the weird one? "...I guess it was kinda scary." He admitted after a moment, closing his eyes. For a moment, he found himself back in the shoes of that newly amnesiac seventeen year old boy, waking with no real knowledge of who he was, and too much knowledge of things he felt no decent person should know.

"I'd imagine." Kazuha said, nodding her head. "How did ya end up with them?"

"That woman- Merlot- was the one who found me in the first place." Paikaru said finally, tucking his hands in his pockets. There was a strange air between them- calming, really. It was almost enough to lull him into dropping his guard- almost. Still, it was the more enough to make things flow a little more freely than they usually would. "She saved my life, I guess ya could say, an' I guess when I woke up an' revealed that I didn't know anythin', it must have been like Christmas mornin' fer her."

"She lied ta ya." Kazuha said, casting her eyes downwards, tracing her footsteps as she put one foot in front of the other. "That's horrible."

He couldn't say anything to that, really. Casting his gaze upwards, watching the faint twinkling of the stars in the sky, Paikaru took in and let out a long breath. "I spent five years livin' a total lie. What's worse is that I figured out it was pretty much a lie on my own, but at that point, there was nothin' that I really could do. I thought that maybe once I was in Japan, I could link up with that Kudo Shinichi fellow, an' use him as an avenue of escape, but..."

Shrugging his shoulders, he found a rather sheepish grin crossing his face. Somehow, speaking with this person felt as if it were the most natural thing in the world- was that what it meant, then, to have a childhood friend? Even though the memories were gone, did the feelings, long ingrained into him, remain behind? "I didn't expect that he would be the one lookin' fer me."

He wasn't used to being this honest. But at the same time- it wasn't really a bad feeling.

"Kudo-kun must have been pretty shocked as well!" Kazuha said, allowing a faint laugh to escape from her lips. Nothing was funny, but she found herself doing it anyways. At first, she wondered how actually speaking with him would go- but at it's core, it didn't feel too different than it was when it came to speaking to Heiji. Less bickering, maybe, but while she could already find herself picking out places where they weren't the same, and where they weren't the same, the overall feeling was the same. "What sort of things has he told ya?"

"My name. My real one." Paikaru said after a moment, pulling his gaze away from the glittering stars, and back downwards, watching the woman that walked with careful paces in front of him. "What sort of person I was. Those sorts of things. Showed me pictures as well, though it's still a bit hard fer me ta wrap my head around, really. I believe him though."

"I'm sure he'll do whatever he can fer ya." Kazuha said. Deep down in her heart, she fully understood what she was saying here- considering that she had been chasing Paikaru all this time trying to get him to pay for his crimes, she didn't miss how much she had changed her tune once she learned the truth of who he was. Just because it was Heiji, didn't mean that he could be forgiven for what he had done, didn't mean that his crimes could just be washed away- but because it was Heiji, she couldn't carry hate within her heart. There were ways that he could begin to redeem himself- and somehow, she knew that he would. "It's not yer fault that ya ended up in this situation. There's definitely arrangements that can be made."

Perhaps he could never truly redeem himself- but trying to do so anyways wasn't meaningless. Maybe the FBI or the CIA, or even the Secret Police, all the groups that Shinichi had deep ties to, might have need of someone of his talents- and maybe they'd be willing to overlook the things that he had done in order to obtain them. He'd probably never live a normal life again- but any hope of that had vanished long ago, the first time he'd been given that name.

Living the best life that he could, even if it wasn't normal, wasn't bad.

"No." Paikaru admitted finally, closing his eyes. "But everythin' that happened afterwards was."

There was silence between the two of them then- but it wasn't heavy nor uncomfortable. It was simply there. "It's a good thing, ya know." Kazuha said finally, breaking it herself, unlinking her fingers from one another, feeling her bones crack as she stretched them out in front of her. "The fact that ya feel regret like that. I don't think yer heart has changed that much, really."

"We just met." Paikaru pointed out, once more wondering about the strange woman before him. "Don't ya think it's a little too early ta be sayin' that sort of thing? Just because I might feel somethin' akin ta regret now an' again doesn't mean that I couldn't still do it if I wanted ta. Wouldn't even think twice about it really."

"With time, that will change." Kazuha promised him. "Ya've been livin' that kind of life fer five years, after all. We can't expect ya ta recover right away, that's just unreasonable. Take things one step at a time, as ya need ta, Paikaru. If ya rush, ya might only make things worse fer yerself."

"Well, although I'm not expert on psychology myself, but that sounds kind of right, ya know?" Kazuha said, glancing back towards him, giving him something of a sheepish smile of her own, the red tint to her cheeks coming from her own embarrassment at her words. Honestly, she might just be getting ahead of herself here. "Besides, I have plenty of time ta get ta know ya again, an' more importantly, you'll have plenty of time ta get ta know me again. At least, once we bring down those Organization bastards, that is."

"I'm one of those Organization bastards, ya know." Paikaru pointed out. "I still feel like I belong more over there than I do over here."

"An' yet, yer still here." Kazuha said, coming to a stop, turning around to face him, a bright smile crossing her face. "That speaks louder about ya than anythin' else."

"What if I never remember anythin'?" Paikaru asked, tilting his head to the side.

"Then, we can make new memories." Kazuha said simply. "An' fer what ya don't remember, I'll carry it right here in my heart fer ya."

"Ya really are a weird person." Paikaru repeated, narrowing his eyes a little- before he managed to crack something of a smile. If there was a look of pain and regret every time such an expression crossed his face around Shinichi, then the look that blossomed on Kazuha's face couldn't be more different- as she met his smile with that of her own.

She knew that smile. That smile she had been waiting to see again all of this time. It hadn't changed.

"Sorry fer bein' weird, idiot!" Kazuha said sharply, feeling the faintest pinpricks of tears forming at the edge of her eyes, which she forced back. "Besides, I don't want ta hear that from someone with amnesia! That's pretty weird in it's own right."

"I guess ya've got a point there, Kazuha." Paikaru admitted, allowing the name that came so naturally to him slip from him once more- and this time, he didn't move to take it back.

"Ya finally called me by my name again." Kazuha said, her expression growing soft- before it turned into a wide, almost impish grin of her own, as she turned around on her heel. "Now then, let's hurry an' get back ta Kudo-kun's place! There's some words I wanna have with those two detective jerks, after all~. They definitely aren't waitin' until mornin' ta be said either!"

Ah. Paikaru blinked, finding himself snorting a little, his smile strangely growing. For some reason, that killing intent felt nostalgic too.

Though he kind of got the impression that in the past, it had largely been directed at himself.