Disclaimer: I do not own Magic Kaito.

Note: Nope, totally not second-person POV, I'm just being creative with first-person POV.

Oneshot Twenty-Six

Janus

Eight years have passed. It is time for you to fulfill a promise.

Standing in front of your dresser, the uneasiness fluttering in your stomach makes you want to ignore your duty. Why should it matter to you? You lost your place in the world, and the only one who is aware of the promise is your wife, whom you have been separated from by no fault but your own.

You take a deep breath, feel your lungs swell like bellows, pulling painfully on disfiguring scar tissue that twists and knots across your chest, and as you do so you recall your training. Your expression settles like liquid ivory flowing over your face. It is a cold that seeps into your skin and depresses the beat of your heart; a curious claustrophobia, a constant pressure that even now you still have to resist tugging off in that moment of transition.

And then you're no longer you. Less than just the Fool, you're the faceless man, taking colors from the world around you to paint your empty image.

You get to work (idleness has never become you, though you are a regular in the devil's workshop), assembling the items close on hand that you will need. You have a task to fulfill, after all.

The latex mask is quickly applied, and afterwards you uncover the mirror to check the finished product of your transformation. The genial face of an elderly man with a modest but well-kept amount of grey hair stares back at you. You go through a routine of various expressions, seeing the way that the false visage moves as seamlessly as your real one. One which you haven't looked upon since the first time you had made the mistake of seeking out your reflection after the attempt on your life.

Feeling spry – something about this night is breathing the old times into you – you perform a small and cheeky bow to the person in the mirror, who is a familiar figure after the years that you have spent perfecting this persona.

You pause as you place on a jeering mask, quirking a wry grin at the situation. A mask over a mask over a face that has not been for nearly a decade, pantomiming a persona over Poker Face all the while. And you feel something crack inside a little more, and recognize that you teeter on a precipice that drops into the state known as dwelling, a brooding thing that overwhelms you like acrophobia (though the sky has always been your refuge) when you don't take heed of its edge.

And sometimes, when you lie lonesome in bed and driven restless by regrets and questions that have no answers (the soul has no face to form lies like your masks), you wonder if it will ever stop hurting (it never will) and, even more gnawing, if it is wrong to want it to.

But you're not you at the moment, so it's easy enough to ignore this.

Donning the familiar white suit, you feel like an old friend has returned to you. For a moment you're whisked away to a time where the world consisted of moonlight shining on obfuscating smoke and silver phantoms, a rush of wind and adrenaline that carries you above mortals.

Like those illustrious beings before men, like stars rejecting servitude, your Fall was rutilant with fire and trailed with smoke.

The silk feels cool against your skin, like your prosopon.

You are the most brilliant star, and for a moment you will shine.

You bow, deeper this time, and tip your hat at your pseudo-reflection.

If all goes well (you ignore the guilt, chasing it back to the vast shadows you hide in yourself), you look forward to (dread) your rebirth.

Phantoms never rest.

End

A/N: This is an AU where Konosuke Jii is really Toichi who is subtly guiding Kaito, and it came from a conversation with Ten-Faced. Was written quite a while ago (try way too many months, before ten installments of Collection were even uploaded), but I forgot to upload it, so I tweaked it a little. I wanted to upload something now, since updates for Collection will be slower what with important real life responsibilities and The Wolf taking up most of my writing attention as of writing this.

Notes: "Devil's workshop" is a reference to the idiom "idle hands/mind are/is the devil's workshop/workhouse/plaything," which essentially means that a bored person is prone to get into trouble.

Janus: A two-faced god in Roman mythology who is associated with transition.

Prosopon: mask/face in Ancient Greek (according to Prosopon. The Acoustical Mask in Greek Tragedy and in Contemporary Theatre by Thanos Vovolis).