A/N: Real life is a mess right now but I continue to update! Please see the end-note for warnings, as most of this chapter is inside of Kaito's head and I think most of you have noticed that I haven't been writing the most psychologically stable interpretation of his character.

Thanks to miladyRanger, as this version of Kaito is as much hers as it is mine, and she was invaluable in working out the issues in this chapter.

Chapter 19

"So, what did you want to talk to me about?" Eisuke asked, a bit puzzled, as he suddenly found himself the sole target of Hattori Heiji's intense stare.

"You're worried about Kuroba-han," Hattori said, without preface.

Confused, Eisuke replied, "…I thought the point of the last conversation was that everyone was concerned about Kuroba-san."

"Well, yeah, but there's concerned an' there's concerned," Hattori said. He scowled, and ran a hand through his hair. "Ugh, I'm not explainin' it right. "Not about him gettin' killed. About the state o' his head."

Oh, Eisuke thought. "Maybe a little, yes," he said.

"He an' Kudou are startin' to realize how much they have in common," Hattori said. "Which is makin' me realize how much they have in common. Which I do not like, especially when you add it to KID's baseline crazy."

"Excuse me?" Eisuke managed.

"Okay, tact isn't my strong suit, sorry," Hattori said brusquely. "Look, jus' in order ta be KID, ya gotta be willin' ta pull risky stunts, risk arrest and get shot at on a regular basis. Maybe it ain't crazy but it sure ain't the normal kinda sane, either."

"Okay, you have a point," Eisuke agreed.

"And now it's seeming like he's got Kudou's control-freak tendencies and his habit of keeping secrets from everyone around him, an' the paranoia ta match on top o' that," Hattori said. "'Scuse me fer bein' worried."

"I don't blame you for being worried," Eisuke said. "I'm worried. About both of them."

"Can't drag 'em to therapy or somethin' without puttin' their secrets and their lives at risk, can't let 'em carry on like this much longer without the same problems," Hattori said, with a distinct air of someone who's been through a dilemma enough times for it to have become familiar. "Kudou's been good about keeping his breakdowns quiet and private so far, but all it would take is one slip. Kuroba-han's jus' as bad off, seems like."

"You've really thought about this," Eisuke said.

"I'm the one out of us who has the least of his own s*** goin' on," Hattori said. "Nobody's tryin' ta kill me—well, at least not consistently." He paused, thoughtful. "I've had people try to kill me before, but those have always been one-offs."

Eisuke made a noise somewhere between choking and a laugh, and tried in vain to shove his hands over his mouth fast enough to stifle it. Fortunately, Heiji didn't seem to have noticed him at all.

"An' I won't say my family situation's ideal but it ain't bad, either," he continued.

"Kudou's parents are both alive though, aren't they?" Eisuke asked.

"Fer now," Hattori said darkly. "Kudou'll go off on me if I get into it without him at least listening, but they ain't exactly the Parents of the Year, okay?"

Eisuke was not at all heartened by this news. What, exactly, convinces a homicide detective to make death threats in that tone? I'm not even sure he was joking!

"So yeah, Kudou's got issues, and Kuroba-han's clearly got issues, and you, no offense, also have issues," Hattori said.

"None taken," Eisuke said, as much because he was used to Hattori's bluntness as because he knew Hattori had a point. He was not sure what dealing with his circumstances in a healthy manner would look like, but he was pretty sure he hadn't quite managed it.

"So I'm tryin' ta make sure no one has a breakdown," Hattori said.

I'm not sure if I should be grateful or insulted, Eisuke thought. Best to go with nonplussed until I figure out a coherent response.

"Related to all of this…there's a conversation I had with Kiyoshi-san that I think might have been partly about Kuroba-san…and if it was, I'm worried," Eisuke said.

"Okay," Hattori said. "What kinda conversation?"

"She was telling me to be more honest about how I was actually feeling," Eisuke said. "She—well, Hakuba, really—mentioned a person she used to know that was never very honest about their feelings, and said that it really screwed them up."

"Ya think it was him she was talking about?" Hattori asked.

"Yeah," Eisuke said.

"Well, it sure fits the Kuroba-han we know," Hattori said. "But it could also fit Hakuba, couldn't it?"

"Huh?" Eisuke asked.

"Then again, I guess you never met him other than as Kiyoshi-han," Hattori said, with a quirk of his eyebrow. "He didn't ever show much emotion, outside o' smugness, curiosity, and maybe the occasional bit of frustration or disgust. Rumors went 'round that he wasn't capable of anythin' deeper, but most people would say he was an' jus' didn't like showin' it."

"We knew he probably had some sort of issues, to want to run off like this," Eisuke said slowly. "Even if it really was just for external reasons, they would probably be traumatizing ones."

"You know what my theory about 'im is," Hattori said, crossing his arms. "If I'm even half right, he'll definitely need therapy."

"So, add Hakuba to the list of people who probably need counseling?" Eisuke ventured.

"Looks like it," Hattori said, looking very tired.

"Just…don't take on too much for yourself, okay?" Eisuke said. "I think it would be nice if you could help, but no one's expecting you to fix anything."

Hattori grinned back, expression slightly lopsided. "Yeah, I know. I'll do my best to not mess myself up in the process of tryin' to help everyone else out."

"Good," Eisuke said. "Now, I've got to go if I want to feed Smiley and Q before school."

"Um, who?" Hattori asked.

"The doves," Eisuke said, feeling his cheeks heat. "I named them."

"Smiley?" Hattori asked, clearly holding back a laugh.

"After George Smiley," Eisuke said, affronted. "From Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."

"That's not what people are gonna assume," Hattori said, chuckling.

"Hakuba named his hawk after a book character; I thought it was only appropriate," Eisuke said, a bit sharply.

"So I guess Q is after the James Bond character and not after the one from Star Trek," Hattori said.

"Yeah….except I don't remember a Q in Star Trek," Eisuke said, confused.

Hattori blinked. "How much of it have you watched?" he asked, skeptical.

"I watched the entire Original Series, thank you," Eisuke said.

"But nothing else," Hattori said.

"No, not yet," Eisuke said. "Mom always liked The Original Series best. I think she had a bit of a crush on Sulu. Hidemi-nee liked Spock best and they used to pretend to fight about it."

Hattori snorted. "Still, never even saw The Next Generation, man. We gotta figure out one of those video-streaming sites so I can convince you that naming your dove Q was a very bad idea."

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Kaito tracked Shinichi's footsteps down the stairs of the apartment building, and waited for the slam of a door to announce the detective fully leaving hearing distance. It wasn't that he didn't trust Shinichi….

No, it was exactly that, wasn't it?

Well, not so much that he didn't trust Shinichi. If he trusted anyone, anyone at all, Shinichi was arguably one of the nearest candidates. Oddly enough, in the last few months, Eisuke had gotten just a bit closer to "trusted" than Kaito's longtime rival, though Jii was still closest. Not quite there, because the older man had been a vulnerability rather than a partner too many times for Kaito to rely on him fully again, but...he at least knew Jii wouldn't tell his secrets. His mom...Kaito had no idea where she fell anymore and Aoko had been complicated since the second he put on the monocle.

But the fact was that, as close as he came to it with some of them, he didn't fully trust any of them. He could accuse Shinichi of being paranoid, and still be right, but he couldn't do it without being a hypocrite, because he was exactly as wary in his own way. He played with the critics and the police, he joked with Aoko and the others at school, but no one ever got close, because that was a risk.

He'd thought of that as a reasonable precaution, for the Kaitou KID. If no one got close, no one could notice. Not the similarities between him and KID, not the injuries, not the constant wearing of stress that Kaito was always worried was going to slip past the carefree attitude he put on at school and heists. KID would remain some sort of myth made real who disappeared at sunup and Kaito a quirky magician's kid and nothing more. Safer for him, easier for everyone else, right?

He pulled his knees up to his chest, secure in the fact that they'd all taken turns checking and rechecking the apartment for bugs. No one would see him like this. It wasn't quite as nice as curling up in the attic room where the doves lived-but getting back there would involve a dash across town with Poker Face wavering, and likely as not a game of "Dodge the Concerned Mom" too. Kaito was content to stay here, for now.

Still, he needed...something. Something besides Tantei-kun's words and his own insecurities bouncing around in his head. He dug through his pockets and pulled out a battered box, cardboard cottony-soft with wear at the corners, then opened it and tipped out the cards inside.

He did a Braue cut, and a simple dovetail shuffle, then started flipping cards between his fingers, the motions all but automatic and incredibly calming in their familiarity.

It seemed...it seemed like he'd miscalculated. It was like all that distance he'd been putting between everyone else and himself was a particularly good hiding spot at a heist location. He'd forgotten that even the best hiding spots involve a couple of blind spots. Except this one seemed to involve some really huge ones.

Somehow, creating distance between himself and everyone else actually, well, created distance. But then, the problem was that he ended up alone. And, okay, this wasn't like kindergarten, he wasn't going to start crying if he didn't have the right number of friends. But he knew what isolation did to people, psychologically, and it wasn't good. And he was starting to see it in his own behavior, just a little.

His perspective on himself? Just a little bit skewed. Looking back, there was no way that Shinichi wouldn't have reacted to someone trying to kill him. Look how he reacted to people trying to kill Shinichi! Or Heiji, for that matter, and he barely knew Heiji before this case.

He cut the deck again, then tried a Zarrow shuffle-to an untrained eye, it would look the same as a dovetail, but the cards wouldn't change order at all. Less productive, but a little trickier, and more distracting.

Because, the thing was, if Kaito admitted it to himself, he wasn't that surprised about the skewed perspective. When you took on a job that involved getting shot at in order to find a legendary jewel, you were making a choice about whether your own safety or finding the jewel was more important.

Another Zarrow shuffle.

I basically chose finding the jewel, he admitted.

Another Zarrow shuffle, a modest little half-meter card spring, and an overhand shuffle calculated to land the ace of diamonds at the top of the deck and keep emotion out of this thought process.

And so Kaito ended up with a that niggling little voice in the back of his head that said, But I'm not as important, which he was starting to realize was maybe a thing he should be concerned about in a long term sort of way. Which was to say, like Shinichi's paranoia, Kaito's lack of regard for his own happiness and safety was maybe not a thing that he could easily carry into a peaceful civilian life after all of this ended.

Okay, he didn't even know what to do with the thought of not being KID anymore, and wasn't that terrifying, since at the beginning he hadn't even wanted the title.

He took a deep breath, did a good old fashioned Erdnase top palm to grab the ace of diamonds from the top of the deck, and melted a true dovetail shuffle into another Zarrow before putting the ace back in.

One crisis at a time, he told himself sternly, and refocused on the matter at hand.

So, okay, he was really bad at trusting people. But he also apparently didn't really care that much about risking himself as long as it was in pursuit of Pandora or protecting the people he cared about, so maybe if he convinced himself to risk trusting the others because it was important for saving Hakuba…

Okay, no, that's way too messed up, Kaito thought, physically shaking his head.

Scissors cut, overhand shuffle, and a marlo tilt to put the nine of hearts on top of the deck.

Then, he blinked. Oh, no, Hakuba!

Because, if the inside of his head was like this, Hakuba's was probably not that different. Hakuba...Hakuba had spent months saving his past self's life and not saying a word about who he was to anyone, not even himself, which definitely said "trust issues" and pointed strongly in the direction of "thinking other people are more important" too.

So, good, he'd at least figured out some of Hakuba's issues!

...Except that was not the point of this. The point of this was to actually get himself to trust the detectives as backup. And seriously, why couldn't he? It's not like he hadn't wished to have backup so many times he'd lost count. And Hakuba, good intentions aside, didn't count here-part of the deal with backup was supposed to be knowing someone was on your side. And even if someone had been protecting Kaito every step of the way, he'd never known.

No matter what had actually been happening, to him, it was always just him standing alone against a bunch of people who wanted him dead or in jail, which amounted to the same thing.

The stakes were high. They were always high and everything was so delicate; how could Kaito possibly trust anyone else-

Except this wasn't just anyone else. This was Tantei-kun who was good enough to nearly catch him multiple times, Tantei-han who saw through Hakuba when no one else knew there was anything to see through, and Spy-san, who had a Poker Face and an eye for plots. They were smart enough to keep up with him but they also had strengths that he didn't, ones that could complement his.

And they were good people. Shinichi could be brutal but it was always with a purpose, either to protect or to prevent further harm, Heiji was only cruel by accident, and Kaito had yet to see Eisuke's dark side, though Kaito had seen a few hints that it existed if you pushed him far enough. The four of them had a common goal, in finding Hakuba and in taking down the Black Organization. He had more than adequate reason to trust them.

And yet...it was hard.

And it wasn't just relying on them, though the thought of that alone very nearly made him fumble mid-shuffle. Trusting them-really trusting them-would mean telling them things. Explaining tricks. Leaving himself as vulnerable as if he'd painted a bullseye on the cape.

He shuddered reflexively. The ace of spades slipped out of his hand in the middle of a Sybil cut and he tried really hard not to see it as an omen.

This wasn't just something about Thurston's Laws. It was half the desire to always keep something hidden that he could spring to protect himself, and half..half, if he was honest, the desire to keep his father's legacy his and his alone. Jii was his father's assistant, that was one thing. But these three critics? They didn't deserve to know-

He fumbled the next shuffle entirely, fingers suddenly clumsy.

But...He was his father's legacy, not just KID. And that was what the others wanted to protect.

No, that's what they'd already been protecting. Shinichi said he'd known who Kaito was, past tense-he hadn't even said how long, just that he'd known. And he hadn't done a thing about it. Even Shinichi agreeing to not poke at KID's identity at the start of the case, and Heiji and Eisuke doing the same, well-they weren't obligated to actually not do it. As detectives, if they'd broken their word with a criminal, no one would have judged them, especially when said criminal was really obviously not telling them things related to the case. Kaito was not proud of how well he'd been lying recently. But they didn't go back on their word, and when Kaito had shown up to that meeting injured, all three of the others had been worried, and all of them had helped when he'd needed first aid. This recent display of worry...it really hadn't been unprecedented at all.

His fingers found their rhythm again and he did a particularly fancy little Charlier cut and another Zarrow shuffle.

He still didn't want to show them everything. Or really anything. But...one step at a time. Just...trusting them enough to talk to them, and trying to work his way up to telling them enough that they could actually be effective backup someday...that might be enough for now. It was more than Hakuba had ever managed, unless the misanthropy was just an act.

He ran his fingers along the edges of the cards as they slipped across his palms: Charlier cut, Hugard palm with the queen of hearts, Zarrow shuffle, lay the queen down, repeat.

But...Kaito pretended to be close to everyone while keeping distant. Hakuba had just been distant, without even making a pretense. If Kaito continued as he had been, would he eventually end up acting the same way? Was that why it was so hard, now, for them to get Hakuba back-because he didn't have any connections deep enough to pull him back to Tokyo?

The scary thing was, now that Kaito thought about it, he could do it too. He knew he could, because it was his backup plan if anyone ever found evidence that he was KID. He would just run. He had so much he cared about in Ekoda...but he could be content knowing that the people he loved were safe, even if he could never see them again-even if they came to hate him.

If he filled in "even if they didn't know him as who he was," that was basically Hakuba's situation, wasn't it?

He tried not to let that sting. It didn't quite work.

He tried a Tenkai palm with the king of diamonds, an overhand shuffle, then a false running cut. Those worked, at least.

That wasn't what Kaito wanted for himself. And he did want things for himself, besides destroying Pandora. It wasn't good to focus that exclusively on just one goal and nothing else, he knew that; it wasn't healthy. Having connections with the detectives wouldn't stop him from finding Pandora. He might even be able to do it faster or more safely with them on his side. And...having people he could really rely on, not just people he felt he needed to protect or ones he loved but had to lie to...that would be a good thing.

Kaito had never quite been sure what his father's hopes for him as KID had been. Sometimes he wondered if his dad had really wanted him to have to become KID at all. But he was pretty sure that his dad hadn't meant KID to isolate him to the point that the role had isolated Hakuba. Kaito had always loved people, and his dad had known that; he would have never meant for Kaito to end up alone.

Deep breath. Lay down the king of diamonds, stare at it for a few seconds, then pick it up do a quick overhand shuffle.

Shinichi said that his father knew KID; maybe it was okay for this KID to have a slightly larger circle of detectives. And for him to drag Hakuba out of isolation too, if he could manage it. But one step at a time.

Fixing his own trust issues was probably going to be hard enough; it might be a little ambitious to take responsibility for his future self's as well.

One more deep breath, another quick dovetail shuffle, and he put the cards away. That was enough for now.

A/N: Blanket warning for discussion of unhealthy coping mechanisms. Specific things in the first section include characters discussing their friends' mental health without them present, KID's unhealthy risk-taking behavior, more allusions to the Kudou's bad parenting and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it hint at the Hattori parents' issues, and a callback to the discussion of hiding emotions and the psychological outcomes thereof. In the second section, self worth issues everywhere, trust issues everywhere, paranoia, grieving, and a lot of self-deception.

The ace of spades is a card associated with death. It's not foreshadowing; it's an act of chance and Kaito psyching himself out.

For anyone not getting this from the text itself, I want to point out that Kaito has not, in fact, plumbed the depths of his issues. That would be unrealistic. When it comes to magic or the detectives, Kaito is the sharpest person around, but when it comes to his own mental state, consider him an unreliable narrator.

All of those card tricks are real; I found them through wikipedia and verified them on other sites. If you google them you can find directions for and videos of most.