Detective Conan and Magic Kaito characters, settings, and ideas do not belong to me but to Aoyama Gōshō.

Warnings: Violence, language, major Mystery Train arc and beyond spoilers, minor Movie 20 spoilers

Search and Recovery

By Taliya

II: Recovery

He watched from the shadows as Edogawa Conan's American allies arrived at the warehouse from his vantage point the next warehouse over, the four figures cautiously approaching the appointed location with weapons drawn. Unlike the two men—Gin and Vodka—that he had recently taken out, these were people he had researched in the past in order ascertain whether or not they would pose a threat to Kudou. The man he had called, Okiya Subaru, had not made an appearance. In his stead was Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Akai Shuuichi, someone he knew to be likely the best sniper on the planet. With him were two other men and a woman: Andre Camel, James Black, and Jodie Starling. He observed as the two unconscious males were taken into custody and breathed a sigh of relief as Kudou was carefully placed in the back seat of the Mercedes sedan. While the detective had been whisked off to what he was almost positive would be a hospital, the sniper, Akai, remained behind to watch his two comatose captives.

It had been his first time to encounter these particular two men, though after the Mystery Train incident, he had inadvertently been dragged into the shrunken detective's affairs and had learned quite a lot about Kudou's opposing Organization. It was similar to the Syndicate that opposed Kaitou KID, though with a much more focused intent on getting the job done. They named their agents after alcohols: Sherry, Bourbon, and he had heard in passing of Vermouth as well. He could now add Gin and Vodka to the list of names working against Kudou—the list of people to keep an eye out for.

Still, secure in the knowledge that the American probably knew what he was doing hanging back in the warehouse with the two bound men, he returned his attention to a hostage of his own: Bordeaux. He checked his pocket watch and grinned darkly as she began to show signs of consciousness. Right on time. He stood by, card gun clasped in a loose grip as she woke, starting upon realizing she was bound. But unlike her cohorts, he had elected to bind her with knotted strings of scarves, which were much gentler on the skin.

"Sleep well?" he purred in flawless French, and her hazel eyes snapped to his single exposed eye.

"Phantom Thief 1412," she gasped upon realizing who exactly stood before her, instinctively replying in French as well.

He gingerly crouched down before her bound form, putting himself closer to eyelevel with the female. "Well met by moonlight, Bordeaux," he greeted in Kudou Shinichi's voice, tweaking the phrase from English playwright William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He cocked his head in mock inquisitiveness as he added, "Aurelié Paquette, if memory serves correctly? Or should I address you as Dorothée Moreau?" he whispered softly by her ear, calling her by her true name.

Bordeaux's eyes widened in fear and uncertainty, and he hid a grin. As an undercover, abroad member of the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the woman's personal information was considered top secret by the French government. It came as no surprise to him that she would be utterly terrified of him at the moment if he was able to hack into the DGSE's database with such ease.

"Fear not, milady, I will not reveal your secret," he promised. "I try my utmost best not to get people killed. And thank you, by the way, for keeping Gin from offing me right then and there."

She snorted. "Well you did tip me off that it was you."

He chuckled. "Now, would you like me to untie you? There is much we need to discuss," he said briskly, and at her hesitant nod, he made the scarves disappear with a quick snap of his fingers, along with all of her stashed weaponry. He tucked away his card gun and carefully helped her to her feet, even going so far as to offer her a white handkerchief to dust herself off with. She stifled an amused snort at the KID caricature embroidered in the corner with a rich indigo thread. She brushed herself off before offering the cloth in return, and he shook his head.

"Keep it, so you can remember me," he joked, and she rolled her eyes with an amused huff and tucked it into a pocket. Offering his arm, he led her to a pair of comparatively intact crates, helping her settle on one before seating himself on the other. "Now," he hummed, eyes gleaming in the moonlight with anticipation as he idly twirled her open folding knife in one dexterous, gloved hand, "Tell me what I want to know, and I'll consider your debt repaid. What can you tell me about Them?"

Consciousness came and went in brief bouts. Mostly what he remembered was quick glimpses of white light and snatches of frantic voices. Then, he was dreaming.

He dreamed that he was no longer a nine-year-old boy, but his would-have-been normally aged nineteen-year-old self. He stood on the roof of a building, staring out at the moonlit skyline of an unfamiliar city as he wondered where exactly he was. A cool breeze blew, playfully tugging at his clothing and hair, and he inhaled deeply. It was peaceful up here, and could see the appeal of taking in the sights from a height, as was KID's wont.

As though in a daze, he began to walk towards the edge of the building, propelled by some urge he could not quite identify. Despite the fact that he realized that walking off the edge of a skyscraper was a surefire way to become a rather gory pancake on the ground hundreds of meters below, he continued to lurch towards the edge as he began to fight his body for control, but to no avail.

He paused on the threshold, swaying as he reflexively kept his balance while the wind tried to nudge him forwards. His eyes gazed down at the street below, pedestrian scurrying on the sidewalks like trails of ants. He wanted to voice his desire to step away from the edge of the building, but his voice, like his body, was no longer his to command and not a sound issued from his throat. Instead, he could only gasp in terror as his right foot lifted over the void, and the weight of his leg was enough to tip him forwards so that he tumbled into free fall.

I'm going to die, he thought wildly as he watched the ground come rushing towards him.

"I've always thought this was the most fun part of heists—the rush of adrenaline that comes with base jumping as a method of escape," a voice commented indolently beside him, and a glance revealed none other than Kaitou KID plunging headlong to his death with him. The thief's cape fluttered like broken wings behind him, and a tranquil smile graced his face as he stared calmly at the street below them. He tried to yell at him, tell him to save himself with his glider, but again no words formed on his lips. He struggled to reach out, but was incapable of twitching a finger. Instead, he was helpless as he continued to fall, the thief serenely humming at his side. "Perhaps we should quit our falling," KID murmured thoughtfully, and before he could react the magician twisted midair and pulled, his back to KID's chest, and wrapped strong arms around his torso. "Hold on!" he whispered, and there was excitement in the magician's voice.

There was a sudden flurry of white—an explosion of both long flight feathers and fuzzy down curls swirling around them that had him gasping, and then he felt his breath forcefully expelled from his chest as their descent was abruptly halted. He wondered inanely how he had managed to initially evade inhaling feathers.

"Up we go," KID sang, and with a powerful flap of the wings covered in feathers of pure white that arched from beneath his caped back, the thief catapulted them back up into the air. The pair rose high above the tallest buildings, the magician stabilizing them at a high enough altitude that he could see the curvature of the earth by the reflection of the moonlight on the glittering surface of the ocean. Above them, a cloudless sky sparkled with an endless sea of stars. The view from this elevation was absolutely phenomenal and it stole his breath away, much to a certain phantom thief's satisfaction. And despite the fact that only KID's arms kept him from plunging to a quick and sudden death kilometers below, he had never felt safer.

"Don't worry, Meitantei, I've got you," Kaitou KID murmured reassuringly as the dream began to blur into quiet darkness. "I've got you."

"… and that's why I ended up investigating Edogawa Conan," she said. "Had I not been ordered to, I would have left him alone to continue sniffing around for Gin and Vodka." Her lips curled in derision at the mention of her two compatriots. "Keeping him alive served my interests much better than having him dead."

"As long as you keep his identity a secret. You are sure you can create it?" he asked, his expression as serious as his question. "You will kill him if you formulate it wrong."

Bordeaux scoffed. "I cannot guarantee anything," she retorted. "Half the work was Miyano's, and we had been instructed to work on our parts of the drug separately so that the formula could never be replicated by someone else. Though I'm not sure why Kudou failed to die, if Miyano is still alive—and I'm sure she's alive, sneaky bitch that she is—" she retorted with fondness in her voice, "—then any antidote she creates for the detective will not work without my half of the working formula."

He eyed her carefully, weighing her sincerity with her trained propensity to backstab and lie as he debated (re-)introducing Bordeaux/Aurelié Paquette/Dorothée Moreau to Sherry/Haibara Ai/Miyano Shiho. In essence, he would be exposing a former member who had been denounced as a traitor and presumed dead by the Organization to one who was still active but undercover. He thought back to the man known as Bourbon/Amuro Touru/Furuya Rei—egads, there were too many names for too few people, damn it all!—and how ruthless he had been in his apparent quest to kill Sherry on the Mystery Train. And this did not even bring into the equation Rye/Okiya Subaru/Akai Shuuichi, who had become the "killed" former member's unofficial guard dog.

He resisted the urge to knead his temples and sigh as his brain cramped with the multitude of names and attached stories… at least he only had one pseudonym he answered to. But Kaitou KID's Poker Face was impeccable, and nothing he did not want to reveal slipped past that mask—a performer to the last. Instead, he adopted a thoughtful mien as he studied the DGSE operative before him. "So if you had Sherry's notes, you could potentially restore him?"

The woman sighed. "I could, but without her input it might take me years to formulate." A bitter but wistful smile curled her lips. "But if she's dead… then I hope she's happier, wherever she is. Considering the circumstances of her involvement, I'd say she was one of the more innocent of the OHs, as she was not tasked to be an assassin." She added softly, "I actually considered her a really good friend despite everything."

Thoughts buzzed in his mind, one of the more inane being, Only a scientist would refer to alcohol by the hydroxyl functional group. While he would not outright admit that he knew for a fact that the scientist was alive but de-aged—he had been her stunt double during the Mystery Train fiasco, after all—he could not let this opportunity to restore Kudou slip by. A year back, Kudou, as Edogawa, had managed to capture Snake at a heist, and like a line of standing dominos the Syndicate had fallen in a ripple effect under the sleuth's ingenuity. It was the reason he tried so hard to help the shrunken teenager—he owed the detective more than he could ever say.

Eying his companion with a calculating expression as he considered how easily he could break into Agasa Hiroshi's home—and more importantly, Haibara Ai's underground lab—he began, "If I can get her notes… how soon do you think you can have that antidote ready?"

He noticed several things straightaway as consciousness slowly returned to him. First was the sterile scent of antiseptics and medicine, which was closely followed by the constant beep of a cardiac monitor. Next came the sensation of radiating pain from his neck, along with the reflex to close his eyes when he tried to pry his eyelids open. He moaned softly in his throat as he opened his eyes once more, but it was enough to bring attention to himself. Noise that he had not realized was low conversation abruptly stopped, and his ears were assaulted as a chorus of voices exclaimed, "Conan-kun!"

He flinched—or rather he tried to flinch, shrinking back from the auditory onslaught. It took him a moment to realize that he was physically inhibited from movement, and his head in particular was immobile. The noise, thankfully, died with his knee-jerk reaction, and he slowly blinked his eyes open, allowing his pupils to adjust to the ambient light. Faces hazily swam into focus, and concentrating on any one specific set of features long enough for recognition to set in was a particularly arduous task. The faces whispered amongst themselves, and while he was appreciative of their circumspection regarding his current state of affairs, they were still much too loud. He closed his eyes once more, releasing a sigh as sleep beckoned once more.

"Is Conan-kun still awake?"

"Do you think he's forgotten us?"

"The doctor said Edogawa-kun has suffered a cervical dislocation, which was why he needed surgery, as well as a concussion. It's possible he night suffer from amnesia."

"No way! He couldn't have forgotten us!"

"Now, now, if you're going to talk, either talk more quietly or do it away from his bed so that he can rest, okay?"

He was grateful for the last voice, for the speaker herded the chorus of inquisitive complainers away from him despite their arguments that he could possibly be awake now. The voices were exceedingly familiar, though at the moment the ability to identify them eluded him. His head felt as though it had been stuffed with cotton and his body raked across coals, and it was only then that he realized he had a thick, padded collar around his neck to keep him from moving his head. A Halo device then, proving that aside from the pain he felt, he had indeed suffered a spinal injury of sorts. He focused on trying to string together fragmented thoughts and observations.

He had been held captive by the Organization—hence his current state of achiness. Noted.

Kaitou KID had come to his rescue… disguised as his older self…? He did not remember much of what happened next, up until he woke up in this hospital room.

He released a thin, barely-audible whine of pain and frustration. When he healed up, he would need to question the thief extensively. But until that time came, sleep sounded like a great idea…

The key to growth and maturity lies in France
When the sun hangs longest in the skies.
Polyphenols and pharmaceuticals will meet
In order to make way for Holmes' resurrection.

He read through the riddle portion of the note several times more before nodding his head in satisfaction. It was suitably abstruse to the uninformed, yet it hinted to Sherry what exactly was at stake and much time she would have to decide. She had only one day until the summer solstice, at which point she would need to decide whether or not she wanted to meet with Bordeaux. The rest of the note was a short message informing her to call an encrypted number that he had provided should she want further details for their rendezvous.

Dressed in his reconnaissance blacks, he eased a window of the Agasa home open and gingerly but quietly deposited the note somewhere the shrunken scientist would easily find before vacating the premises. His destination now was St. Luke's International Hospital, where Kudou had been taken immediately following his "rescue" by the American FBI agents. He had heard through his planted bugs that the detective had suffered a cervical dislocation—and surgery implied that there had been damage to his spinal cord. It had been two days since Kudou's rescue, and he calculated that the sleuth would wake soon from both the strain of his torture and subsequent surgery, as well as the sedatives from both ordeals.

The injury to the detective's spine worried him greatly. When he had seen how stiffly Kudou had moved when he had been chained, it had set off alarm bells in his mind. It was the reason why immobilizing the sleuth's head and spine had been his main priority on his agenda after taking care of certain dangerous undesirables. He had been as gentle and careful as he could, but he had been fearful of aggravating Kudou's injury. He had been lucky enough to have never dealt with a spinal injury himself, but he had had just enough experience with concussions to keep a watchful eye for symptoms. Kudou had unfortunately exhibited a number of those signs, and he had done his best to stabilize the detective as best he could with the materials afforded to him. He had been immensely relieved to learn that the sleuth had been admitted to a hospital, though the mention of surgery had sent his worries skyrocketing.

He slipped, unnoticed, into the hospital, anxiety clawing at his insides as he swiped the badge of a tired nurse on her way out of the hospital after her shift was over. He nonchalantly sidled back into his car in the parking lot, relocated to a nearby neighborhood, and began the transformation into demure, graceful Kiyosato Tomoe. The nurse returned to the hospital parking lot and stepped out of the car, her somber, pale face at odds with the black clothing she wore. She entered the hospital, greeting various coworkers who had the graveyard shift as she made her way to the locker rooms, looking for a fresh pair of scrubs. She dressed quickly in a set of periwinkle scrubs and made her way to the intensive care ward. She checked the patient registry at the circulation desk, zeroing in on the room that housed one Edogawa Conan. With a grin that was ill suited for her face, she made her way towards her target's location.

She easily located the room after a quick glance at a map, and with a nearly preternatural quietness, she eased her way into the patient's quarters.

He was not sure what exactly woke him up, but when he opened his eyes, his room was dark. The curtains had been drawn shut, yet a sliver of moonlight crept through the space. A dim illumination glowed from somewhere under his bed, allowing the nightshift nurses to maneuver about his room without having to turn on the overhead lights. His eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, roved over the silhouettes of the footboard of his bed, the guest chairs and side table, the woman by the door—

He blinked. No, he was not hallucinating despite the fact that he still had a morphine drip in his IV. The statuesque nurse stood by the door, leaning against the wood as she simply gazed back at him. "Who're you?" he asked, voice hoarse from disuse.

"Kiyosato Tomoe, the attending nurse this evening." She pushed herself off the door and stepped quietly closer. "How are you feeling?" she asked, her voice a gentle, soothing timbre as she stopped by his bedside.

"Tired," he admitted, eyes lazily blinking as she reached out a hand to tenderly run her fingers through his hair. Some of the strands caught against her fingertips, and a frown crinkled his brow as he tried to rationalize why his hair would catch there in particular, much less touch him so familiarly in the first place. The idea bloomed in his mind, which meant… "I wasn't expecting a visit from you so soon, Kaitou KID," he sighed, sinking back into his pillow and fully enjoying the thief's careful ministrations.

"Oh?" the magician replied in his own voice, which was tinged with amusement. "What gave me away this time, Meitantei?"

He smirked. "Rubber latex on your fingertips," he answered drowsily. "But I wanted to ask you something," he insisted, forcing himself to mentally wake up.

The phantom thief chuckled. "More like several somethings, I'd wager. But, fire away, Meitantei, and I will do my best to answer," KID prompted.

The Halo device kept him from moving his head, and with the white foam padding it was difficult to see anything directly on or around the bed as his fingers blindly searched for the buttons that maneuvered the bed. KID helpfully pressed the button built into the side railing for him, tilting the upper half of his bed so that he was in a slouched but seated position. "Thanks," he grunted, the shift in positions pulling at his neck and forcing him to ride out the pain with clenched teeth and hissed breath. It took several moments to realize that KID had inserted his fingers in his grasp and had allowed him to squeeze as tightly as he had reflexively needed.

"You okay, Meitantei?" KID asked, and he glanced up to find the thief peering down at him with concerned eyes.

"I'm okay," he reassured softly, releasing the thief's fingers as the pain faded to its more usual background level. "How did you find me?" he asked, recalling that his badge had been confiscated and his glasses broken. He had honestly thought he would die with no one the wiser.

KID pulled up a chair and sat down. "I found you because I was told where you were—or rather, Kudou Shinichi was told where you were."

Gazing at the broken-but-still-alive Kudou, he felt nothing but relief that the detective had survived this particular escapade. At his pronouncement, Kudou's blue eyes had widened in surprise. "What do you mean, it was addressed to Shinichi-nii-chan?"

He had to chuckle. Even though there was no audience aside from himself—and he was in the know—the detective had become too used to the performance. "Are you really going to refer to yourself like that, Meitantei?" he asked with humor in his tone.

Kudou scowled. "Oh, shut up, KID," he groused. But his displeasure did not last long as he refocused on the topic at hand. "Why was it addressed to me?"

A heavy sigh escaped him as the atmosphere thickened. "You were missing for three days, so I decided to conduct a search for you myself. I was in your house when I found that note." He produced the aforementioned note and held it out for Kudou to read, helpfully illuminating the paper with a small flashlight. "As for the why… well, let's just say they found uncontroversial evidence that Edogawa Conan and Kudou Shinichi were on and the same. They wanted proof that you could not be in two places at once."

"So that's why you came as me," the detective sighed as he closed his eyes. "Thank you, KID." Kudou's voice was heavy and pained, and he opened his blue eyes a moment later. "They didn't hurt you, did they? I vaguely recall hearing gunshots."

His hands reflexively brushed his still tender thigh, which beneath the clothing was tightly bandaged. "Nothing you need to worry about," he assured, grateful for the cloaking darkness that partially hid him from the detective's too-keen eyes.

"Did you get them all?" Kudou asked as he closed his eyes where he rested.

"I let one go," he replied, and the detective's eyes popped wide open.

"You what?" he squeaked, then winced as his startled reply jarred his neck. When his levels of pain had dropped to a sufficiently manageable level, he eyed the thief as he asked, "Why?"

He settled back into the chair as he produced a small, folded square of paper. "Because of this," he answered. "I nicked this off you. It was tucked in the waistband of your underwear." His eyes stared into the detective's. "Do you know what it said inside?" he asked as he repeated his actions from before, illuminating the paper so that Kudou could read the contents.

亡命の探求者
Demandeur d'asile

Translated, "Seeker of asylum". Beneath the two rows of vastly different languages was a stamped seal in royal blue ink, along with the address to the French Embassy printed in a fancy gold letterhead at the bottom. He read Kudou's initial confusion on his face and answered. "That, and Bordeaux wasn't exactly who you thought she was." As the detective's gaze crinkled in further bewilderment, he expounded with a simple, "She owed me one."

It took some more detailed explaining on Kaitou KID's part before he truly understood what had happened that night, along with the implications. Gin and Vodka had been taken into custody by the FBI, Bordeaux was in reality an undercover agent of France's equivalent of the United States' CIA, and KID had somehow finagled a hold over the Frenchwoman that he had cashed in the night of his rescue. Somewhere along the way, Kiyosato Tomoe had disappeared and Kaitou KID had reappeared in all his pristine white glory. Still, the tale the thief had woven was somewhat… surreal. The phantom thief had managed to put into play so many additional cogs that he could not help but be impressed with the man's ability to manipulate anything and everything around him. It was an utterly baffling thing to realize that KID was in the process of facilitating a meeting between Haibara and her former laboratory partner with the intent of developing a final antidote for him.

It had been something of a combination of shock and relief to know that not all hope was lost for his return to his former life as Kudou Shinichi. He knew how hard Haibara had been working to formulate the correct antidote to the apoptoxin, but not once had she ever mentioned the presence of a partner who knew the complexities of the poison formulation as deeply as her, and the thought flitted through his mind as to why she had never saw fit to inform him. Perhaps she had not wanted to bring up memories of her time in the Organization, as he knew those were intricately tied to the memory of her late sister. Perhaps she had absolutely hated Bordeaux despite the fact that they had worked on the same project. Or perhaps cutting ties with Bordeaux was fraught with fear of the other woman's retribution, as he had never once heard of Sherry accompanying the Organization's assassins on a mission, and therefore the woman had a more bloodthirsty personality. Whatever the reason, he was fairly sure Haibara had a good reason not to mention her former partner.

"So she'll be back in with no problems?" he asked. Now that he knew the true identity behind the codename Bordeaux, like Kir and Bourbon, he could not help but worry about them on a most basic level. They were his allies in this silent, unknown war, people that he needed and would need to work with in order to bring the Organization down. It was in his best interests that he kept them alive. Safe, with as little fear of blowing their covers as possible, and able to do what was needed when the time came to act—even if it meant killing people. He acceded that point with a mental grimace.

His expression must have shown on his face, for KID leaned towards him and asked, "Your thoughts must not be all that pleasant right now, ne, Meitantei?"

He sniffed. "I was just wondering exactly how lucky I am to be in the presence of the most annoying phantom thief to ever walk the planet," he grumbled, masking his far more dark thoughts with his characteristic sarcastic humor.

"Oi, oi," KID protested with a pout as he mimed being shot through the heart, "You wound me, Meitantei."

All the thief received was an exaggerated roll of the eyes. "I wonder about you sometimes," he announced flatly. "I really do."

As the night transitioned into early morning, he was gratified to find Kudou's disposition gradually lifting as they transitioned from the somber discussion of what had happened the night he had intervened to the current lighter atmosphere in which they verbally poked and prodded—there was absolutely no way anyone could convince him to physically poke and prod the detective—not when he had a Halo around his neck and fractured cervical vertebra.

He laughed at some snarky comment the detective had made, pleased by the grin on Kudou's face. The sleuth's next words caught him by surprise, however. "Why are you trying so hard to help me?"

The smile from earlier bled off his face as he gazed at the suddenly solemn detective, his mind formulating the best answer to Kudou's question. Perhaps it's time, he admitted, and he treated his favorite critic to a smile. The smile was not his usual mania-filled grins, but rather, it was a soft curve of the lips that portrayed past hurts and deep longing. It was an honest, naked expression bared from the deepest recesses of his heart, the reason and driver behind his determination, his need to see that Kaitou KID sought his justice. And he had obtained it in the end—obtained it with the help of the bedridden, shrunken teenager before him.

"Because you helped take them down," he said softly, reverently, the mood within the room changing to something almost mystical, deferential. "They murdered my predecessor, my mentor, my idol." His eyes flicked away from Kudou's, the detective's gaze suddenly much too penetrating. "As a phantom thief, I could not arrest them—but I could lure them out. And so I did, planning my heists to be as attention-grabbing as I could make them—all with the hope that someone would see, and realize that I was the significantly lesser of two evils."

His eyes rose from where he had stared at the floor to lock with Kudou's, and he blinked to clear the tears that pooled along his lower lashes. "And so I thank you, Kudou Shinichi, for administering justice in my stead." He rose from his seat with utmost grace, swept his hat off his head, and bent into a deep, reverent bow.

He had known—had always known—that whenever Kaitou KID was involved, his personal reactions were never quite what he expected. Gratefulness when KID had rescued him midair after being kicked out of an airship, surprised when the thief had endeavored to uncover a forgery ring, irritation when the magician had disguised himself as Genta just to prove a point. Instances like these had proven to him that Kaitou KID, despite being a criminal, was someone who did not harm, but rather usually tried to help. The rather recent potential meeting between Haibara and Bordeaux came to mind. It also helped that the thief was as cunning, resourceful, and brilliant as they came. KID was someone he genuinely respected, and he was infinitely glad that he had been able to call the man his ally—perhaps even friend.

Right now, however, he was just flat out embarrassed. "Get up," he hissed frantically, "Get up! There's no need to bow!" The thief slowly straightened, his expression that odd mixture of melancholy and gratitude as he replaced his hat on his head. "You didn't have to—" He tripped over his tongue, too flustered to properly speak.

"But of course I did," KID responded serenely. "I owe you."

He felt his already red cheeks burn a deeper crimson. "I—you owe me nothing," he insisted.

The phantom thief shook his head. "Au contraire," he protested softly, "You fulfilled a goal that I had been seeking since I was sixteen. To know that his murderers received their just desserts… I don't know how I can repay you."

"A name and a face," he blurted without thinking, then scrambled to retract what he had spoken with wide eyes that matched those of an equally surprised phantom thief. "Wait, no, I didn't mean to say that! I don't want you to reveal your identity!"

Kaitou KID chuckled knowingly despite the shakiness of his quiet laughter. "Oh you don't? But the fact that those were your first words is really quite telling," the thief teased, though there was a hint of trepidation in his tone. "It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that your curiosity, your thirst for knowledge and truth overrides nearly everything else. Are you sure you want to give up this opportunity?" he questioned tantalizingly.

If he could duck his head, he would have. But instead, he had to make do with lowering his eyes. "I want to know who you are," he admitted softly, and he knew the thief could hear how badly he yearned for that knowledge in his voice. "I want to know why you steal, what you're after, why you return your thefts. But I don't want to find out this way—not with you just telling me who you are. I want to catch you before you reveal all of that to me. I want to earn the right to know your identity."

The thief's smile was warm and understanding. "But all the same, it's hardly enough of a reward for the favor you've done for me. You've more than earned it." It went unspoken that the detective could very easily send the thief to prison with such knowledge, and the fact that KID was still willing to offer up his identity on a silver platter moved him deeply.

He closed his eyes. "I don't want it," he maintained. Keeping his eyes closed, he continued. "Instead, what I'd like is for you to do your absolute best to keep me from catching you."

KID snorted. "As if I haven't been doing that already. You won't ever catch me, Meitantei," he stated with no arrogance in his voice, only a calm assurance that what he had spoken was the absolute truth. There was conviction in both his words and his abilities.

"We'll see, Kaitou KID," he replied, a smirk curving his lips as he opened his eyes. KID gazed back at him from beneath the shadow of the brim of his hat, a mirrored grin on his face.

"Well then," he purred, as though greatly pleased with the way their chat had gone. "I suppose I should take my leave." The thief's indigo eyes locked with his, and the sincerity in those eyes was clear to read. "I hope Sherry and Bordeaux agree to meet in order to restore you, Meitantei. I eagerly await the day I can face off with Kudou Shinichi in the flesh."

He grinned. "I look forwards to that day as well, Kaitou KID."

KID swept into another graceful bow. "Until we next meet, Tantei-kun," he hummed, and with a puff of smoke, the thief disappeared from his room.

His eyes roved to the window, where KID had pulled the curtain back to allow moonlight to shine in. He gazed at the waxing crescent, pondering the significance of the lunar orb to the magician. Despite the fact that his discussion with the phantom thief had his mind buzzing in all directions, his body demanded rest, and slowly he succumbed to the desire to sleep.

When we next meet, KID, I'll find the truth. But beyond that, and even more importantly, thank you for saving my life.

Author's Note: Let me first start by saying that switching POVs that frequently is really tiring to write! This ended up being much longer than I expected, and yet I've forsaken sleep to write this in less than a week. Work's really sucked because of my sleep deprivation… The title actually comes from a PADI scuba diving training course. The names Aurelié Paquette and Dorothée Moreau are a mix of several Paris Opera Ballet Étoiles, and the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure: the General Directorate for External Security, or DGSE for short, plays a similar role to the CIA. Bordeaux's "OH" is a reference to the hydroxyl functional group (–OH) that is bound to a saturated carbon atom, which is a characteristic of any molecule considered an alcohol for all you science nerds (like me) out there. Kiyosato Tomoe is a mix of Kiyosato Akira and Yukishiro Tomoe from Rurouni Kenshin. 亡命の探求者 reads as boumei no tankyuu-sha, if you were interested. I hope you enjoyed it.

Completed: 30.06.2016