Mikau: Hello there! Welcome! Thanks for checking this out! This was done for Poirot Café's Themed Writing Contest "Refuge". I have to say I'd never thought that I'd ever do a fic where someone else shrinks because I thought the chances of the Org picking up another one of the main cast was slim, but…this is a little different, and I do hope you enjoy it.

Disclaimer: If I owned it, there would be more cuddling in this series. I feel like a lot of the characters really just need a good cuddle.

…

Redo

Where do you go when the world is crumbling and the debris is raining down on you? Where do you turn when your closest friends become your bitter enemies and you don't know whom to trust? Where can you seek asylum when you're on the wrong side of the law?

Those were the thoughts—or at least the spirit of them—going through Kuroba Kaito's head as he raced away from the heist, tearing down the streets of Beika like a cheetah flying across the savannah…except Kaito was the one fleeing for his life. Kaito was the prey being hunted.

And it was all because of bad timing, rotten luck.

They were on the roof, and he'd narrowly escaped with some scrapes and bruises, minor injuries (one wound on his arm streaming blood from where a bullet had chinked him and another, a cut on his cheek, generously flowing courtesy of an additional round that had grazed him).

Kaito, beat up from his harrowing encounter and flustered, had to take an alternate escape route that sent him dashing around a corner and crashing into one Miss Nakamori Aoko, come to drag her father home directly after the heist since it was his fifth night in a row out late due to the thief.

The top hat went flying, and then there was nothing Kaito could do to protect his identity from her by the light of the full moon, equally full on his face.

He scrambled to get to his feet and threw his feeble disguise back on, hoping, sincerely praying to any deity that would listen, that she hadn't seen.

Those hopes disintegrated as the word "K-Kaito?" issued forth almost unwillingly from her lips. She didn't want to believe.

Their eyes met for a brief instant. Terror filled his; agonizing betrayal lit up hers.

That was all he needed to see. There would be no explaining to her now. She'd just break his arm and hold him in a half-Nelson until the cops came. His only chance was to flee and pray that Aoko didn't mention anything about her run-in with Kid to her father before Kaito could catch her in a good mood and plead his case.

Kaito decided to be optimistic even though he'd had no cause to do so yet that day. He ran.

She called after him desperately but did not chase. That gave Kaito's mind time to calm down and think rationally, decide where he needed to go and plot his route.

He determined that the safe house a few streets over would be his best bet, so he ran along the rooftops and entered his little Spartan apartment discretely through one of the windows.

He couldn't go back to his own home now. That much was certain. He had to hope for the best but simultaneously plan for the worst. He prayed that Aoko would think long and hard, really consider the matter before turning her best friend since infancy in to the police, but he had to plan as if his identity was already compromised. He'd need to give his mother and Jii-chan a quick, coded text in order to alert them to the danger as well.

But now what? What was he supposed to do? What could he do?

He let himself become lost in thought as he undressed, mindful only of the wounds and the blood all over his suit until the front door of the apartment burst open and Hakuba Saguru, looking frantic, rushed in.

"Kuroba!" he called in a panic as he darted back into the bedroom. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his friend relatively unharmed and went to lock up behind him.

"What the hell are you doing here?!" Kaito hissed at the detective, incredulous and enraged and oh so relieved all rolled into one as he stared down his confidante.

Hakuba bit the inside of his cheek, running a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry. I know I promised to stay out of things for the most part, keep pretending that I knew nothing even after I found out about the Organization and your father and Kudo and all that, but…" He pursed his lips, hesitant to go on. He met Kaito's expectant gaze for just an instant before he had to look away. He couldn't look the thief in the eye as he continued: "I got a call from Aoko-kun about ten minutes ago."

"Oh?" Kaito gulped as his body began to tremble. He was a fit of nerves; he felt cold, scared.

"She asked me if I knew where you were…. She told me that you were gravely injured."

"Oh?" His face lit up a bit as hope flited through his thoughts. Maybe Aoko hadn't turned on him after all. She called Hakuba out of worry for Kaito. She was afraid he needed help, that he might die if left unaided.

"…She also told me that you were the Kaitou Kid," Hakuba mumbled, knowing what a blow it would be. "She reminded me of my duty to the law and urged me to capture you should we meet."

"Oh," Kaito replied in a small, broken voice.

All of the blood drained from his face and his eyes began to sting with tears yet to come.

"So…" Kaito tried to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. "You're here to arrest me?" he asked hollowly.

Saguru frowned at him, his very eyes calling the fool seven kinds of idiot. "No. What the bloody hell is wrong with you? This was the nearest, safest location where I might logically find you, and I came because I thought you were dying from the way she carried on. I came to assist you, Kuroba."

"But your duty to the law…" Kaito mumbled stupidly.

Hakuba scoffed. "Is nothing compared to my duty to you as a friend. Please. As if I haven't been secretly helping you this past year since I found out about the Organization and your mission. As much as it pains me to say this, sometimes you have to work outside the law to achieve justice. I don't always agree with your way of doing things, Kuroba. In fact, ninety-nine-point-nine-repeating times out of one hundred, I would do things differently, but I acknowledge that something has to be done and you're operating as best as you can in the way that you think is right, so…Kuroba, who am I to judge you?"

"A better man than me." Kaito shrugged with a grimace.

Saguru rolled his eyes. "Hardly. Now let me see those supposedly life-threatening wounds."

After a quick inspection, Saguru asserted that the cut on the cheek should be fine once cleaned and bandaged. "It's only bleeding so much because it's a head wound. They all bleed like that." The other one on the arm, though, would need to be stitched up. "A task which I am not capable of accomplishing, I'm afraid."

"Well, I can't do it one-handed," Kaito sighed. "…Why can't you do it?"

"Well, I have no local anesthetic to dull the pain for you, for one, but… Chiefly, I can't stick a needle in you and sew up the wound. Frankly, I'd pass out before I got a quarter of the way done. I'm sorry," the Brit replied matter-of-factly.

"Seriously? You, Detective Hakuba, are squeamish?" Kaito snorted.

"Just about things like that…operations and such. If I had to do it in order to save a life in immediate peril, I could do it, and once people are dead, nothing about that really bothers me, but… Don't talk to me. You're afraid of fish," Hakuba grumbled.

"Point," Kaito begrudgingly admitted. "Then I guess we'll just have to go to Kudo and your little scientist cousin. It's good we're in Beika. It's not too far from here."

"What of your assistant? Jii-chan? Where is he?" Saguru prompted. If they could get someone to come here instead of trying to move Kaito—bleeding and wanted fugitive that he was…

Kaito shook his head. "Vacation. He's with my mom in Vegas for the rest of the month."

"Kudo it is then," Saguru sighed in resignation. "I'll give him a call so that it doesn't look suspicious."

…

They arrived at the Professor's house twenty minutes later. By that point Kaito was looking pale more from blood loss than anxiety. He didn't think he'd need a transfusion or anything, but…he was beginning to feel a little woozy.

"Get in here before someone sees you," Haibara scolded in hushed tones, sounding harsh in place of the worry she was actually feeling.

She ushered them in and down to the lab in the basement where one of the countertops had been cleared and covered with some sheets and a thin futon mattress. All the while the Professor and the shrunken form of Kudo Shinichi looked on in concern as Haibara grumbled under her breath that she was a scientist, not a doctor.

"Though you do have medical training," Conan spoke up as Hakuba helped Kaito up onto the counter with some difficulty in coordinating limbs. "You told me that they'd trained you in medicine and anatomy and all of that, so you're our best bet, Haibara."

The girl snorted, muttering, "They trained me in medicine all right. So that I could understand how the body worked and make poisons to more efficiently kill people. I am not a doctor or a healer. I don't know why you people keep coming to me." She sounded angrier at herself for being used than anything.

"Sorry, Ai-chan," Kaito whispered, smiling weakly as he slipped off his shirt with Saguru's help so that she could get at the wound.

She avoided eye contact. "You don't need to apologize to me."

"Thank you, Shiho-chan," her cousin broke in softly, sending her a grateful smile. "You always take such good care of him when he gets into a scrape. I'll trust everything to you." Saguru bowed and turned to leave, not willing to stay and watch the sordid proceedings.

"Shiho is dead," the young blonde replied emotionlessly. "My name is Haibara Ai." A hesitant but warm smile alighted on her lips. "…And I'll do everything in my power to help, Sa-chan."

Saguru nodded in acknowledgement, remembering her looking exactly as she did now a good ten years ago when her family came to visit his out in the country. "Thank you, Ai-chan."

"I'll go with him," Conan informed the others, heading for the door after Hakuba. "We have stuff we need to talk about, so… Just yell if you need anything, Haibara. You going to be okay, Kuroba?"

"That depends on her," Kaito laughed, but even that sounded frail.

The Professor stayed downstairs to assist while the two detectives ascended to converse about their current predicament.

"He'll have to go out of the country. He can use my passport," Saguru suggested.

"No. They'll expect that. You're too close to him. Let him use mine. Kudo Shinichi is in no way connected with him," Conan countered. "Let him…Let him be Shinichi from now on. That way he can still do some good. He'll have a place…. Ran will be happy," the forlorn detective whispered.

"Kudo, no," Saguru gasped, shaking his head slowly in disbelief and horror.

"Why not? I'm not using the name anymore. There's no way for me to go back to it since I'm stuck like this permanently. Why shouldn't he? That way he can stay here with us. Otherwise he's going to run off by himself and be absolutely miserable away from everyone that he loves, all of his sources of support and comfort. Do you honestly think that Kuroba would survive long like that?"

Hakuba thought about it for a minute before shaking his head sadly. "…No. He wouldn't."

They went on like that for a good while as the stitching up happened downstairs.

…

Kaito lay silently on the table as Haibara set to work cleaning and sewing. He was almost lachrymose as he thought of the look on Aoko's face, the fact that she'd told Hakuba to capture him.

Aoko was so good, so justice-minded. In her world, there was black and there was white. If Kaito wasn't white, he was black, and that was just the way that things were. She had no room in her scope of understanding for grey, and so she could not conceive that Kaito had a good reason for stealing. She could never sit down and listen to his story, hear him out like the detectives had done. Aoko didn't believe in vigilante justice. The only way to do things was by the book, sanctioned by the law of the land, so she would never be able to accept or condone Kaito's fight against the Organization.

She was so pure, so stubborn, and so trusting in the justice system. She believed that good people would get rewarded in the end while eventually all of the bad guys would be punished for their crimes. That was the world through Aoko's eyes, and Kaito loved that she was so resolute, innocent, and believing. She was simple, and that was part of what made her so beautiful and beloved to him. She was uncorrupted, unjaded.

But now he had lost her trust, lost his place in her perfect little world because he was now a bad guy. He was the man that made a fool of her father, dragged him away from her, put him in danger, and condemned her to many nights alone in Nakamori-keibu's absence. Kaito was a liar and a thief who had used her and broken promises.

And he could never make that up to her.

Somehow, that thought was worse than the threat of prison looming over his head. If only he could go back and do it over again. If he could turn back the clock a few years and stop himself from ever becoming Kid… If he could redo his life…oh, all the changes he'd make. Eighteen years thrown away because of the choices he'd made these past two. If given another chance…

He snapped out of his reverie at the sensation of a pinch to his cheek.

"Ah. There you are. I was beginning to think you had gone incoherent from the blood loss or something," Haibara snorted. "Stay with me. Don't go wandering off into your thoughts. Those dismal musings won't get you anywhere anyway."

Kaito blinked again, noticing that his arm was already bandaged. "How long was I spacing out?"

"Twenty or thirty minutes," Professor Agasa informed him helpfully. "I'm going to go get some tea for you, something light to eat."

"Thanks," Kaito mumbled, looking about the room.

His eyes fell on Haibara Ai, and he sighed. "How old are you?"

"Older than you," she replied with a shrug of indifference. "But somewhere around nine or ten at the moment. Why?"

Kaito shook his head wearily. "I was just thinking weird thoughts—that you were lucky to be able to start over like that. From what Hakuba and Kudo have told me about your past, it sounds like you had it really bad, but…now you're a little kid with your whole life ahead of you. You're so lucky to be given a second chance."

She stared at him unblinking, studying the whirl of emotions in his eyes, the lines of expression in his sallow face. After she'd made her investigation, she looked away with a shrug. "Some days I feel lucky; some days I feel cursed. Every day I feel undeserving, like an unworthy cheat. One day I hope to feel vindicated, but I don't dare to dream that that day will actually come. Most days I just feel satisfied with my punishment: another day of having to live with myself and all that I've done."

"You're beautifully tragic, Ai-chan. Did anyone ever tell you that?" he replied to her melancholy talk with a flirtatious lilt in his voice.

She rolled her eyes.

"Has anyone ever told you that you were tragically beautiful, then?" he pressed.

"I don't need to hear that from a man lying on a sickbed," she returned with a little huff.

He shrugged to the best of his ability. "…So…do you think you'll ever be happy like this? As Haibara Ai?"

The blonde turned away, fussing over the cleaning of her utensils just to have something to do with her hands. There was a wistful expression on her face as she replied, "Maybe someday. After the Organization is no more and I can be sure that no one else suffers due to my research."

Kaito frowned. He hadn't thought of that. He had always thought that she should be happy now that her old life was behind her. He'd always thought that all of her worries were gone and that she was wasting her precious second chance with her morbidly constant despair, but…she was right. The Organization very well could still be using her research to do indelible harm both physical and mental. Miyano Shiho was a good woman to refuse to give up her conscience and enjoy her new life when there were still victims out there.

"I think your remorse is good to a point," he hummed thoughtfully. "But…I also think that you take the guilt trip too far. You're a good person, and you're working hard on an antidote, doing your best to take down those crows now, so…you shouldn't think of yourself as such a criminal."

She was silent.

He decided to change the subject slightly. "So…in order to make an antidote, you have some of the original drug around, don't you?"

"Yes…. Why?" She turned slightly to raise an eyebrow discerningly at him.

He shook his head. "Just curious. Can I see it? I've always been really curious since Tantei-kun explained to me, so…please?"

She frowned for a full minute before getting up, going over to her desk, and unlocking the top drawer. From that she extracted a little pill box—one among a dozen—and brought it over to show Kaito. She kindly let Kaito peek for a measly ten seconds.

"There. You've seen it. Is your curiosity satisfied?" She shut the lid with a decisive snap.

Kaito pursed his lips. "Noooo."

"Too bad." Haibara smirked, delighting in his dissatisfaction as she carried away the coveted enigma.

"So…if I were to take one of those pills, I'd shrink ten years, right? I'd be, like, eight or nine years old?" he ventured to ask.

Haibara locked the top drawer with a piqued click. "Or dead." She glared at him with all the pain and suffering she had endured because of that drug. "APTX4869 is a poison. It kills people. Kudo-kun and I are the exception, not the rule, and if you were to take that drug, there's a better chance that it would kill you than not, so don't talk so lightly about it."

"Sorry," Kaito whispered.

He hadn't known. He'd assumed that the drug was a dud…that it transformed all of its victims into children, but…that had been stupid of him. If everyone turned into a child when the Organization used it, they wouldn't be using it anymore, and Kudo and Haibara wouldn't be alive. They would have been hunted down and eliminated.

"It's okay," she returned the whisper, letting all of the hostility and anger go.

Just then, Hakuba and Conan came racing down the stairs, followed leisurely by the Professor with Kaito's tea and snack tray.

"How is he?" was Saguru's first, impatient query.

"Well enough," Kaito replied for himself. "I should be fine after a week of rest and good food. Why? You look panicked. I'd say that you were probably overreacting, but…" Kaito cast a worried glance at Conan. "Kudo looks anxious too, so…?"

"I just got a call from Nakamori-keibu," Saguru gulped. "He was looking for you."

"Apparently Aoko-san told her father," Conan added mirthlessly. "And he told the rest of the police. There's a manhunt out for you. Hakuba and I have come up with several plans, but…what do you want to do, Kuroba? Do you have a plan?"

Kaito closed his eyes and shook his head. He swallowed the knot forming in his throat and determinedly held back the tears that were threatening to fall at this clear proof that his bond with Aoko had been severed.

"Let's talk about it in the morning. I should be safe here until then."

Conan was about to speak up, press the urgency of the issue, but Hakuba stopped him, seeing what a state Kaito was in at the moment.

"Let's give him some time to rest and think," the blonde detective suggested. "He's exhausted and in pain. He'll have more of his wits about him in the morning."

Conan really looked like he wanted to argue, but he nodded his acquiescence instead, turning and heading up the staircase once more without another word.

"We'll come back to check on you in an hour," Ai announced. "Try to eat something, and don't move around too much."

And with that, they were gone, leaving Kaito alone with his disturbing thoughts.

He was never going to see Aoko again, and even if they did happen to meet at his trial or something, she was never going to smile at him again. She would never look at him with that love and affection she'd had for him before. Those feelings were dead now.

It was all over.

And he wasn't just being melodramatic about his love life or anything. It really was all over. Soon his identity would be in the headlines, on the news, on magazine covers. Kuroba Kaito would be a household name and not for his amazing skills as a magician like Kaito had always hoped. The Organization would find out, and then they'd hunt him down and destroy him.

Death would be mercy. It was most likely that they would capture Kaito and force him to do horrible things at their behest by holding Kaito's loved ones captive. They would ravage Kaito emotionally and mentally without having to harm him physically. He'd become their little puppet, and then not even death could save him for fear of leaving his family and friends behind in the Organization's clutches. No. Kaito had to die before the Organization got to them. That, or "Kuroba Kaito" had to disappear. Forever. So that no one could find him and use him.

So Kaito had a choice to make. He could either sacrifice himself now, end it with his own hands, or run. Run so far away that he would never be found, never see his mom or Jii-chan, Aoko or Hakuba ever again.

Both fates sounded equally horrible. To die was…scary. Could he really be sure that whatever was waiting for him on the other side was better than what he was leaving? But to run away and be alone, never belonging anywhere, never getting close to anyone, never knowing how everything was back here in Tokyo where he was leaving his heart was…

A thought occurred to him, and he looked tentatively towards the desk at the top drawer where the drug was kept. What if he took it? There were two options there: death or a new life, a fresh start, a second chance. On one hand, he'd die in terrible pain…but then that would be that. On the other…he'd be a child again. He could do it all over, do it right this time.

Either way it would mean killing Kuroba Kaito, but…there was nothing left in this world for that man anyway. If he survived the drug, maybe then the new person that he would become would have a chance at happiness.

Was it worth the risk?

He lay there for a good half hour musing over it. He would either die and his suffering would be over, or he would live…probably to suffer many more terrible things eventually, but…that was how life worked, and at least he'd have a chance.

Or he could kill himself by some other means. Really, jumping off of a skyscraper was his preferred way to go, but…he couldn't. He wasn't selfish enough to make some poor sap clean the unrecognizable bits of Kaito goo up off of the sidewalk.

The final option was flight. He would have to get out of Tokyo tomorrow and never come back. Somehow that last option was the most terrifying of all.

Kaito sipped at the rice gruel that Agasa-hakase had brought as he ran through his options on a loop. Finally he came to a decision, slowly and carefully getting up off of the counter.

He gingerly lowered himself to the floor and hobbled over to the desk, holding onto the countertops for support. It took him a full two minutes to get the lock undone, but he soon had the desired box in hand, distinguishable from the others by its forest green color. He took out a capsule and struggled his way back over to the counter/sickbed with it.

Unable to get back up unaided, Kaito dragged the futon and sheets down to the floor. He made himself as comfortable as possible and then closed his eyes to rest a moment. As he did, he said his final goodbyes in case the pill ended up being suicide instead of salvation. He wished his mother a mental farewell, apologizing for always being such a useless son. He said goodbye to Jii-chan, thanking him for putting up with his selfishness. He mentally thanked Hakuba and Kudo for coming to understand him and trying to help. He thanked Ai-chan for patching him up so many times, even though she wasn't a doctor. He thanked Inspector Nakamori for taking care of him after his father died and the Professor for harboring a fugitive, making him all kinds of useful gadgets.

And that left Aoko. No words could express how sorry he was, how grateful he felt…how much he loved her.

So with a sad smile and her lovely face in mind, Kaito put the pill in his mouth and swallowed.

It didn't take long to take effect. Not even thirty seconds had elapsed before Kaito felt his whole body heat up. His skin was burning away like he'd been hurled into a vat of acid. His insides were liquefying, his heart roasting in the flames. It hurt. It hurt more than anything he had ever experienced before: crash-landing through trees, being shot, having Aoko beat the tar out of him.

It was intense. He would have screamed if he'd been able, but the pain was too much. It choked him. He couldn't speak, couldn't even breathe. All he could do was writhe and pray for it to end. He couldn't tell if he was dying or simply shrinking, but either way he just wanted it to be over. It was too horrible.

Soon Kaito's prayers were answered and the inferno and the agony melted together into black. Whether that was the darkness of death or just oblivion, he couldn't tell.

…

Kaito opened his eyes to find Hakuba and Conan sleeping in uncomfortable-looking chairs at his bedside.

He wasn't dead.

This was neither Heaven nor Hell, and Kaito was as sore as a mother. He was fairly certain that the whole pain experience was a mortal thing, so that meant he was still alive.

He tried to sit up and look around, but his movements woke Hakuba whose stirring roused Kudo.

Saguru smiled with unbridled relief. "How do you feel?"

"Like hell," Kaito replied gruffly…only his voice wasn't as he remembered it. He looked down at himself, observing his tiny hands, little arms, the Kamen Yaiba pajamas that he also happened to own a pair of, but…these were not his. They had obviously been borrowed from Conan. Which meant that Kaito was now fun-sized, just like Conan himself.

"I shrunk," he breathed.

"And I hope you're happy," Conan snorted, looking incensed. "You might never be yourself again."

Kaito smiled faintly at his friend, understanding how Shinichi might feel insulted and hurt that Kaito had thrown away the thing that he himself wished for more than anything. "That's okay with me," he tried to break it to the shrunken sleuth gently. "Our situations are different, Kudo. I don't want to be me anymore. I can't be me anymore. Kuroba Kaito, if caught, is going to jail…unless the Organization gets to him first. I don't have anyone waiting for me to come back to them like you do. Aoko…" Kaito closed his eyes and shook his head. "Kudo, my options were death at my own hands, torture and death by the Organization, or running far away to never see anyone I love again. I chose to risk death for a chance to start over. Eight years old is when my life went sideways with my father's murder. Now I can maybe try again and do better this time, so…don't hate me for choosing this fate, okay?"

Conan looked away. "Just so you know what you're getting into."

"But what are you going to do now?" Hakuba interrupted with the logistics. "Where are you going to live?"

Kaito smiled sheepishly. "I hadn't gotten that far."

"Who are you even?" Conan added. "You'll need a new name."

"What are we going to say happened to Kuroba? We have to give some account of him," Saguru muttered under his breath, almost to himself, as he thought about what he would tell Aoko.

"Kuroba Kaito is dead," the man himself replied firmly. "He committed suicide last night…jumped into the river off of the overpass or something. My name is Tsukishima Touya, and I'm his cousin, the illegitimate son of his mother's brother and his French mistress. I was abused and neglected a lot as a child, so I'm super shy at first until I warm up to you. I was supposed to come live with my Aunt Chikage and my cousin Kaito-niichan, but with Kaito-niichan committing suicide, I have nowhere to go, so Kaito-niichan's best friend Saguru-niichan is taking care of me. How's that?"

Hakuba sighed. "Good except for one thing."

Kaito cocked his head to the side.

"Tsukishima Touya? What kind of a name is that? Moon Island? And what characters are you using for Touya?" Saguru rolled his eyes in incredulity.

"The character for To Steal from my father's name and then the ya part is the kanji for Night." Kaito grinned cheekily, and the normally obnoxious expression looked kind of cute on the eight year-old.

"No one's going to believe that that's actually your name," Conan snorted.

"Your name is Edogawa Conan," Kaito scoffed right back. "Besides, I like it."

"Are you going to like it for eighty more years?" Saguru looked doubtful.

"If I don't, I can always change it when I turn twenty."

So it was decided.

Kuroba Kaito was dead, and Tsukishima Touya arose out of the ashes.

Only…he wasn't truly free of his past life. He had some cleaning up to do with both Aoko and the Organization before he could burry Kaito and move on, doing it all over as he had planned.

Still…he was optimistic, and he vowed solemnly to do better this time by everyone in his life.

…

Mikau: This might require a second chapter someday. Since I did it for the competition the word limit was 5,000, so I couldn't do more with it here, but…someday I feel like Touya needs to meet Aoko and smooth things over because you know how upset she's going to be over Kaito's "death". But for now I'm satisfied. I hope you enjoyed it as well.