A/N: Sorry for the late chapter, real life has made a task out of kicking my butt. I hope the wait was worth it, though!
I cannot stress how amazing a beta miladyRanger is. That said, she didn't get to look at the whole chapter, so any mistakes are mine and mine alone. Also, as always, warnings in the end note if you need them!
Chapter 43
The gate opened soundlessly. Hakuba didn't move, and for a moment, neither did Baaya, beyond pulling her hand away from the button used to operate the gate.
But then, she walked through, gait slow and steady, heels clicking so softly against the pavement that Kaito barely caught the noise over Tokyo's late afternoon traffic. Kaito hadn't known civilians knew how to do that, and was torn between duly impressed and mildly wary.
"Saguru-bocchama," she said, voice thin, stopping within arm's length of Hakuba and carefully extending an arm toward his shoulder. She didn't touch him, but instead glanced at his expression, and when she saw the same frozen quality Kaito had noticed earlier, she let her hand drop to her side.
That, on its own, was enough to demonstrate to Kaito that this was where Hakuba belonged. Maybe Baaya didn't know why Hakuba didn't like to be touched-heck, Kaito didn't even know for sure, he just had a few better-informed guesses-but she was aware of it, and she cared enough to respect it over her own desire to confirm that Hakuba was alive and well.
Hakuba took a breath, then bowed at the waist, one of those nearly ninety-degree bows that Kaito didn't think people actually did in real life, or at least not outside of boardrooms in which they were about to be fired. Baaya actually had to move several steps backward in order to accommodate the movement.
"I am sorry for worrying you," he said quietly, not moving from the position.
Baaya flushed, then snapped, "You-you stop that, right this instant! It's not proper! If you're sorry you left, your first step in making it right was coming back, wasn't it? So stop that!"
Hakuba straightened, wide-eyed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"
It's like watching a train crash, Kaito thought. "Um, not to interrupt," he said, except that is my exact intention, "but maybe we could go inside? I don't think it would really help matters if one of the neighbors notices all the excitement and decides to call the Superintendent-General before you get a chance to, ma'am."
Kaito suddenly found himself the focus of Baaya's intense stare. "And who are you, exactly?"
Kaito gave her the most winning grin he could muster. "I'm Kuroba Kaito, pleased to meet you! Hakuba-san and I are classmates."
Baaya's eyes narrowed. "You're KID," she said flatly, because apparently Kaito's week, near assassinations by the Black Org and all, had not been exciting enough.
"That has never been proven," he managed, somehow, Poker Face firmly in place, "and has in fact been disproven more than once."
Hakuba had the nerve to glance over and smirk before saying to Baaya, "I'm not considering him an active suspect any longer."
"Aren't you?" Baaya asked, raising an eyebrow. Without waiting for an answer, she said. "Well, more importantly, is he here to snoop about like his mother?"
"He'd need more practice to be any good at detective work," Hakuba said, still grinning.
Well, he was having fun at Kaito's expense, but he was at least relaxing. Kaito was willing to take it.
"So would she," Kaito offered.
"True enough," Hakuba said.
"You should respect your elders," Baaya scolded.
"I would normally agree with you on this matter, but in Kuroba's case…" Hakuba trailed off. "I believe you called her 'awful' when she first spoke with you?"
"Okay, that's enough of that, she's not a terrible person, she's just not a detective," Kaito grumbled.
Hakuba huffed in disbelief, then addressed Baaya. "He can be safely allowed into the house."
Baaya nodded, and led the two of them inside. Teasing Kaito seemed to have calmed Hakuba down enough that he wasn't radiating unease any longer, but there was still a noticeable hesitance to his movements. Kaito was just thanking whoever was listening that Baaya hadn't actually told him to leave-he'd been half-convinced that he would be told to leave so Hakuba's family could reunite with him in private. They had the right.
But he didn't want Hakuba out of his sight right now. Hakuba wasn't okay, but he was good at pretending he was, and it scared Kaito in a way that wasn't completely rational. It was fine if people didn't know when he was hurting-that was optimal, if people knew when he was hurting they might link it with KID somehow and that was a problem. But it was essential that he knew when other people were hurting. Otherwise, how would he be able to help them?
And leaving Hakuba with other people, who might not even know he was pretending, who hadn't been around for the roller coaster ride of the last few days and didn't know how to spot Poker Face? That scared him the way bullets scared him.
The Hakuba mansion, on the other hand, just made him a little nervous. Kaito didn't belong in places this big and fancy, not out of the dress whites. Not that he had any intention whatsoever of robbing the Hakuba family, but Kuroba Kaito, the ordinary student wearing the same wrinkled civilian clothes he'd had on for the flight from England, didn't belong in a place like this.
He still refused to let Hakuba out of his sight, though, so he followed Baaya through the front door, into a foyer that was almost entirely Western-style apart from the genkan and a hanging scroll painting on one of the walls that was definitely not a reproduction. Neither was the framed 19th-century Impressionist landscape on the opposite wall.
Yeah, seriously, this is the kind of place I only visit to rob, Kaito thought faintly.
"I'll just go put on some tea," Baaya said. "If you boys will just go sit in the living room...though, perhaps you'd like to go up to your room instead, Saguru? I did put it back to rights, after your father's men were finished looking over how you'd-" she broke off, shook her head, and continued. "At any rate, they didn't attempt to hold any of your things in evidence. You can also go check on Watson, if you'd like, though I'd really rather you weren't wandering around the grounds until after I tell the rest of the staff you've returned-"
Hakuba, halfway to one of the places where the foyer opened into another room, halted midstep.
"Watson?" he asked, interrupting.
"...You haven't forgotten her, have you?" Baaya asked, concern deepening the wrinkles around her eyes.
"No, of course not, but-you said you wouldn't take care of her," Hakuba said. "I had assumed, in my absence, she would be rehomed."
Baaya sighed. "But then you would have missed her when you came back."
Hakuba took a breath, then frowned. "I thought I made it clear, when I left, that I didn't intend to return. I really don't understand how so many people failed so badly to comprehend that."
"Then why did you come back?" Baaya asked, an edge of frustration creeping into her voice. "I want you to be here. I want you to come home. But I don't intend to stand by and let you break your parents' hearts again if you don't intend to stay."
Kaito didn't like the way Hakuba's posture shifted. It looked like a defensive stance; it said bad things about Hakuba's frame of mind. So he broke in.
"I helped drag him back, and I'll do it again if I have to," Kaito said.
"Excuse me," Hakuba bit out, in a tone that all but added you barely caught me this time, what makes you think you can pull it off again?
Kaito just grinned back.
Baaya smiled at him, and there was something softer to it this time. "Well, then, thank you."
Kaito felt his cheeks heat up. "Ah-it's not that I was looking for gratitude or anything, I just thought you might like to know that someone was making sure he wouldn't keep running off-"
"I'll thank who I like," Baaya said primly. "Now, you boys go sit down, please. I really do think a pot of tea is the best thing for this situation."
Hakuba sighed. "The living room is this way, Kuroba-san," he said.
Kaito glanced after Baaya for a second, before following Hakuba. Hopefully she'd have some time to gather herself while making the tea, and they could all have a nice, calm conversation when she brought it in.
...who am I kidding, this is going to be a mess, he thought.
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Tsuyoshi had been in the middle of finalizing paperwork to move some officers from Traffic to Narcotics when he'd gotten the text. Baaya was actually an avid texter for a woman of her generation; she'd taken to the technology like a fish to water once she'd realized that it allowed her to communicate with her employer and other house staff without pausing in her work to hold an entire spoken conversation. Her texts were always about household matters, but they were by no means infrequent.
They were also always fully grammatical, which meant that when she sent the message, COME HOME NOW. NOT A POLICE MATTER. WILL EXPLAIN IN PERSON, he'd been somewhat alarmed.
If she hadn't included "not a police matter," he would have brought at least two squad cars and a few officers as backup. As it was, he was promising the taxi driver who was taking him home extra if they could get him through Tokyo's traffic as quickly as possible without breaking any traffic laws. Fortunately, the man was earning that money, and his house was already in sight.
There was no visible emergency, nor was Baaya waiting at the gate. He couldn't even tell if his wife had been called home as well, though, even if she had, she might not have been able to come. Both of them worked in emergency services, but police matters, and particularly police paperwork, were much easier to delegate for short periods of time. Additionally, while Tsuyoshi tried not to abuse it overmuch, he was in a position that allowed him to take time off at his own discretion, whereas his wife still answered to a direct supervisor.
The front gate, he noticed, was unlocked. Not broken, but rather left open. Apparently, whatever had happened required that Baaya not wait by the intercom for his arrival. He slipped through and approached the house at a light jog, still scanning for any hint of what might be wrong. Everything seemed to be in place, though. He really couldn't make sense of it.
When he knocked at the door, it took nearly a solid minute for Baaya to answer. She was physically fine, but her eyes were bloodshot and the skin around them was red.
"Baaya, what's happened?" Tsuyoshi asked, careful to keep his voice level.
Baaya bit her lip for a moment. From inside, Tsuyoshi heard china clattering against a table, followed by an irate, young-sounding voice. For a moment, he almost thought-but it wasn't quite low enough to be Saguru's.
"He's come home," Baaya said softly. "I'm not sure what happened-he didn't want to come back, his classmate apparently did something to bring him, and he won't talk about why-but he's here."
Tsuyoshi's throat dried out in an instant. He wanted to ask Baaya to move aside so he could go see his son, but he could neither figure out how to say it politely nor force the words past the lump in his throat.
Baaya seemed to understand, however. She stepped aside, eyes now distinctly wet. "Perhaps...if you talk to him…"
Tsuyoshi wasn't sure if he would have any success in doing so. He'd tried talking to Saguru so many times over the last year, and yet he'd still run away, in the end. But he would be d*mned if he didn't at least try.
"Where?" he asked, voice still catching in his throat. That wouldn't do. He'd have to at least try to get himself together before talking to Saguru.
"Living room," Baaya said, and Tsuyoshi barely spared the time to take off his shoes before following her directions.
Saguru was there. A few months ago, that would have been nothing more than a mild surprise, as it was a bit early for him to be home from school, but now-
Just seeing him, sitting on the couch, moving, breathing-
He looked a mess. Once again, he was in ill-fitting clothes, but this time they were too small, the ends of the sleeves not quite extending to cover wrists that were bonier than they had been when last Tsuyoshi saw him. He'd cut his hair short, and while it could have looked well on him, given circumstances, it only served to make more obvious the way his skin pulled just a bit more tightly around his cheekbones than was healthy. There were shadows under his eyes. And worst of all, he looked nervous. He wasn't even hiding it. Every line of his posture said he wanted to run away, and there was fear plain to read in his eyes.
Tsuyoshi wanted to approach him, to offer some reassurance, perhaps to even borrow some of his wife's English customs and just hug the boy, but he knew it wouldn't be well-received.
Not when he rather suspected he was the object of fear in this situation.
"Saguru," he said, softly, slowly. "I am so glad to see you. Welcome home."
"I'm back," Saguru replied, mechanically. His eyes weren't focused.
Tsuyoshi had seen him like this, before. Usually only late at night, when Tsuyoshi had been up late with paperwork and Saguru had been wandering the house sleepless. Any offer Tsuyoshi made to listen to accounts of his nightmares had always been met with curt refusal. For that matter, every gentle attempt Tsuyoshi had made to steer Hakuba toward talking to someone, to getting help for dealing with what Tsuyoshi suspected was a sizable collection of demons, had been soundly rebuffed. He wished, now, that he hadn't taken no for an answer so easily. Would this have happened, if he'd been even a little more firm about the matter?
"Okay, dude, you're gonna scare the superintendent-general," Kuroba Kaito said, interrupting Tsuyoshi's thoughts. "Not good. It's, uh-" he took a phone out of his pocket- "Probably like a second past 3:12 in the afternoon, here, and we're having Baaya's awesome tea, and now is a time for paying attention."
Tsuyoshi hadn't even noticed the Kuroba boy's presence in the room. But there he was. In contrast to Tsuyoshi's son, Kaito looked much better than he had when last Tsuyoshi saw him, though that was no great feat. When he'd accompanied his mother to the police station, "death warmed over" had been an apt description of his appearance.
He also appeared to be using grounding techniques on Saguru, which raised a number of questions, none of them likely to have pleasant answers.
"It is, isn't it?" Saguru replied quietly. "Apologies."
Kaito turned to Tsuyoshi. "I can, uh, go, now," he said. "You probably want to talk, and-"
Saguru looked even more alarmed. Tsuyoshi didn't understand, as the last he knew, these two were on poor terms. But he didn't need to understand it; he just needed Saguru to feel as safe as he could.
"Please stay, if you would," Tsuyoshi said. "I trust you can be discrete?"
Kaito blinked. "Oh, uh, yeah. I'm great at discrete. Discrete is my specialty."
Saguru actually chuckled at that, though his posture was still strung with tension and the laughter never even approached his eyes.
Tsuyoshi approached as quietly as he could, pulling up half-remembered lessons about how to walk during stakeouts, and sat down in the chair across from the couch on which Saguru and Kaito were sitting. One of the coffee tables that his wife's family had sent over from England sat between them, with a pot of Baaya's tea sitting atop it. The scent of chamomile lingered in the air-apparently Tsuyoshi wasn't the only one who'd noticed how tense Saguru seemed.
"Are you well?" he asked, leaning forward as much as he dared.
He was aware that, broad-shouldered as he was, he could seem intimidating when he didn't mean to be. It had happened before with Saguru, particularly when he was first settling into the house in Japan. He'd startled at Tsuyoshi standing too close at him a few times before he'd realized what was happening.
"I-there was a small incident," Saguru said. "My arm...there's a gauze pad. Nothing else."
Kaito cast him a glance.
The first hint of animation came into Saguru's expression, in the form of offense. "You should talk!"
"Thank you for permission," Kaito said smugly. He turned to Tsuyoshi. "He hasn't been eating enough, or sleeping."
Tsuyoshi sighed. It wasn't shocking, but it was dismaying nonetheless. Saguru had shown such tendencies since he'd come to live with them, but they'd had fair amounts of success in curtailing them. Saguru would generally eat when offered food and sleep when reminded to, he just had a tendency not to do those things reliably when left to his own devices.
But of course he had been, for weeks.
Tsuyoshi swore to himself.
"Thank you, Kuroba-kun," Tsuyoshi said. He turned his attention back to Saguru. "Baaya told me you didn't intend to come here."
He laid down the statement neutrally, no note of question or accusation. The situation already felt as though it was balanced on the edge of a knife; there was no need to make things worse.
Saguru regarded him, wide-eyed, not speaking for a stretch before he finally dropped his gaze and answered. "She-that's correct. I never planned to come back. There were misunderstandings, and then I was already gone, and I thought coming back would just cause more trouble, but I've been informed that my conclusions related to this matter were not correct."
"Maybe you'd like a little reassurance on that?" Kaito asked quietly.
Saguru's eyes immediately turned to him, intent and more than a bit confused.
"I seem to remember a lot of worrying about police gossip," Kaito said.
"That isn't anything-" Saguru broke off. "That's wasn't my main reason, by any means."
"What, were you worried about my men talking about the facts of the case?" Tsuyoshi asked. "Because I'm sorry to report that you're old news. The young women in Traffic attempted to arrest someone from the German consulate for parking illegally last week."
"And once people know I'm here again?" Saguru asked. "I think I've rather gone past embarrassing the family, at this point."
Tsuyoshi was aware, at some level, that he should be moderating his tone a bit, to avoid startling Saguru, but his emotions got the better of him. "You're alive to embarrass it, and I really couldn't care about the rest," he said firmly. "If any relatives complain, we'll deal with the matter, of course, but any of them worth staying in contact with should feel the same way."
Heaven help him, Saguru looked like he could be knocked over with a light touch. Next to him, Kaito was beaming.
"I-I didn't think-" Saguru managed quietly, before lapsing into silence.
"No you didn't," Kaito said cheerily. "Fortunately, the superintendent-general makes better decisions than you."
Saguru looked up, raising an eyebrow at Kaito in an expression that Tsuyoshi couldn't quite decipher, but looked vaguely mocking.
Tsuyoshi, for his part, took a breath. If he's concerned about gossip, rather than anything else, does that mean….
"There was some concern, at the time you left, that it might have been under duress," Tsuyoshi began. Seeing his son immediately stiffen, he backpedaled quickly. "I am not asking for an explanation, or details. I only wish to know if you are in danger."
There was a sudden and intense exchange of glances between Saguru and Kaito, far too fast for Tsuyoshi to read but clearly loaded with meaning. At the end of it, both boys slumped just slightly, then straightened, almost mirroring one another.
"I am not," Saguru said, speaking as formally as he might to a reporter or a police officer from another jurisdiction. "Nor was I when I left. At some points in my absence, I involved myself in criminal investigations; that is how my arm was injured. But I am not under threat."
He swallowed, then continued. "I...there are matters, related to why I left, that I am sure you would like to have explained. I-I can't." He ducked his head, clearly waiting for some sort of reprimand.
Tsuyoshi weighed that statement, and the circumstances, and decided. "'I'd like to know, so I could know how to prevent you from leaving again. But you don't have to tell me."
"Are you certain?" Saguru pressed.
"I am," Tsuyoshi replied.
"Then-I will do my best, to tell you, someday," Saguru said. "But for now…"
"It's been a really long week," Kaito said, speaking up as Saguru trailed off. There was a hint of nervousness to his tone and posture, but his expression was resolute. "I don't know what it's been like for him the whole time, but I know what the last few days were like. We had transportation issues and slept on someone's floor-well, he did, he made me take the futon-"
"Your back is injured!" Saguru interjected.
"Whatever," Kaito dismissed. "Look, things have been hard and he's doing his best, so just, you know, don't-I don't know, let him off the hook a little I guess? I haven't slept well in a few days, I probably don't make a lot of sense."
Tsuyoshi smiled warmly at the teenage boy attempting to take up the role of Saguru's protector after Scotland Yard and the Tokyo MPD and even Tsuyoshi himself had all failed to adequately take care of him.
"No, I'd say you make a good deal of sense," he said.
A/N: Warnings for: Trauma, poor coping mechanisms, distorted thought processes related to trauma, poor self-care related to eating and sleeping (the former to an extent that could definitely be considered disordered eating), weight loss related to unhealthy eating habits, lots of adult fear re: children being hurt/missing/dead, brief mentions of the mistreatment of children, non-POV characters generally being in bad mental places, discussion of past injury.
Some of you have noticed that this story is winding down. We are definitely in the final arc, but I'm planning on resolving the emotional arcs I started, to what extent they can be resolved, so the story is not magically over now that we have put the Saguru back where he belongs. This story's still got a few more chapters in it so please be patient with me!
(I swear review replies are coming!)