justonetruth | In one of the infirmaries...

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In one of the infirmaries...

When Kaito woke up, he saw only sterile white. The room was that, as featureless and impersonal as any hospital setting he has ever seen. Medical equipment and supplies were around, unused but organized with readiness. Nothing marked him where he was, not even a small window to show him outside.

He was laying in a bed, naked as the day he was born except for the swath of bandages that kept his torso wrapped beneath the flimsy bedsheets. His chest was wrapped tightly, as was his left knee. Thin strips of gauze bandages encircled his neck and collar area, and a long strip went down his inner thigh. Rather, his left arm's old nicks were left untouched, although his left shoulder was nestled nicely within clean bandages too.

Although completely unharmed, his hands holding the top of his sheets trembled.

Unable to find the will to explore this new place, or even the will get out of bed in search of his missing clothes, Kaito just curled up onto his right side. He wept quietly in the empty room.

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A small spark of curiosity flashed briefly in Kaito's eyes when the clothes appeared, but as quickly as a blink, the flash was swallowed by the rest of the shadow.

"Thanks..." But he didn't move forward to get them. Rather, he stared sullenly at them in such a way that it was dubious if he was even looking at them.

"Just a bad few hours." He chuckled, but it was a panic ridden sound of someone forcing themselves too hard.

"If you're doing that only for my sake, don't. I can see through all of that. Have been for a while now," Conan said. "Aoko freaked out. We never knew someone could vanish so fast. How long were you gone?"

He'd get the general information, see how much time had passed before trying again for what happened.

Kaito seemed to deflate a little with those words, or relax a little, like his overstrung elastic was finally given some slack.

"I don't know... an hour? Two? ... I lost track." A corner of his mind thought Conan's wording as weird, but he didn't have the energy to commit to it. "Tell her... I'm sorry for disappearing this morning."

"....that was a week ago. She'll probably attack you with a mop as soon as she sees you for doing that," Conan said, giving Kaito a bit of a smile. Of course, mop chases='don't make me worry, you bastard' for Aoko at times.

"Usually the time is longer away, but it's not impossible for it to be shorter."

"A week ago?" Kaito fell silent again. His memory was from a few hours ago at the most.

"Time here and in the real world are not proportional," the thief concluded softly. Thinking on something else seemed to help him. At least his hands weren't shaking anymore.

"That's right. Once you're able to break the barrier of dimensions, time travel is pretty simple," Conan said. "It's hard to keep track."

"So you were gone a few hours. What happened when you got back?"

Kaito pulled the thin sheets up over himself more. If a week had passed, it made sense for the chibi to not remember what Kaito's situation was before he got caught. He himself couldn't remember if he let it slip, and it was only a few hours ago for him.

A few long hours though.

"Absinthe."

"...so he hadn't left you alone," Conan murmured. Of course he hadn't forgotten, but he'd have like to hear Kaito just got in a fight with muggers while doped up on painkillers instead of THAT.

"He was more thorough this time."

Kaito closed his eyes and shivered in pained remembrance. It wasn't even physical hurt this time, although there was that in quantity, but the emotional roller-coaster Absinthe took him on. That was why he was in his current state. He felt like he was scraped raw.

"There was no escape."

"...he did more this time. Than just hurt you," Conan said. It wasn't a question. Physical pain, Kaito could deal with. There was more than that.

Kaito just kept his eyes closed. Long minutes passed with nary a word from him. He didn't want to answer.

"... why can't I have any defenses against any Absinthe?" Indirectly, his murmur included the counterparts.

When Kaito opened his eyes, it was to fix Conan with an exposed expression. "If I resist, he'll just cut deeper until it strips away too." He closed his eyes again.

"...it's how things are between us. Usually it's not that bad a thing," Conan said.

There a long moment of silence before Conan reached out, taking a hand into his own and squeezing it gently. "...I'm sorry. I know my advice probably made it worse, but...if he killed you, there'd be no hope."

Kaito's hand tensed within Conan's small grasp, but he didn't pull it away. His hand was trembling again, his whole body was.

"He wasn't trying to make me scream..." His voice wavered. "He was trying to open me. Make me helpless."

A burst of self depreciative laughter burst forth.
"He wasn't trying... he did. I was completely his mercy." Kaito choked back a sob. "He knew everything about me. He was just toying because he's bored."

Conan frowned at that, thinking it over before a look of surprise crossed his faces. Which quickly turned into horror and just a bit disturbed. "Even someone like that...the poker face is always the hardest to get through. To get you to show the honest expression," he murmured and squeezed Kaito's hand, though not enough to hurt. "All in a demented way."

"Maybe I'm weak," Kaito bit back, mistaking Conan's meaning. He jerked his hand out of the boy's and turned away from him onto his other side. This placed his weighty on his injured shoulder, but he didn't let that show beyond a slight grimace of discomfort.

"...moron," Conan said, putting a hand on his other shoulder, tugging him a bit to get him to stop putting the weight on his shoulder. "You're not weak. I know the game he's playing and I've seen so many people break under LESS than that and never get back up again. You are not weak."

Whether the shoulder really bothered him, as it should, or Kaito accepted Conan's explanation, he rolled back to facing the ceiling.

"Damnit."

The good thing, however, was some of his old fire was returning. Just a kindle in his weary soul, but it was a start. "I want to take him down," he said tiredly, "but I don't even know where to start."

Conan was silent for several moments. "When you're able to move, I'll take you somewhere. It won't be the most perfect of explanations, but it should at least let you get into his head a bit more," Conan said, looking over his shoulder. "Leormon, find the ones with Kid in them. Closest to what I've said about my world before I went back. That's the common factor world...the clip one is too brief, so just leave that one out."

"Gotcha, Conan!" Leormon said, turning to do what Conan had ordered of him.

Conan looked at Kaito. "You need to play his game. It seems like he still has his curiosity though."

Kaito gave Conan a tired glance. "I didn't remember anything from here the past two hours. Not his name, his motives... nothing about this place until you showed up at the doorway a few minutes ago."

He sighed again. "I appreciate it, but I don't know if it'll do any good."

"...even if you forget, there might be a subconscious remembrance. You were also under stress and there's disorientation when you hop back and forth. If it might help, it's worth a shot," Conan said.

Kaito looked grim, but he nodded tot he reasoning. "It might... even if this is a half remembered dream, it may still be of some help."

He didn't try sitting up though. If he had the time here, he didn't want to get out of bed yet. His body was telling him it can use the rest.

"You seem to operate a lot on reflex and impulse, so a half remembered dream might be even better in that case," Conan said.

Conan did say he knew Kaito well, but it still felt a bit unnerving to have a child be talking to him about all this.

Any less unnerving than everything else that has been going on?

Reconciled with that thought, Kaito nodded, but added wryly, "I do and it might... but I haven't had much chance to act on either reflex or impulse around him. Except to upset him more."

"And here I thought that was your instinct," Conan said, a quip that was out before he could stop it. But, on second thought, maybe a joke would do Kaito good.

"Because of the affects of it being a dimensional nexus, the idea that our lives are just a show, something that happens to a lot of dimensions, also come into play here. There's a room with DVDs from all of our worlds. I'm having Leormon dig up the cases where a 'Shinichi' was going against Kid. Most of them are Conan, but I'll look for ones that might help with his mentality more when I go look."

"No, that was my natural charm." But the bantering came to a stop when Conan suggested that all the events in their lives were caught on DVDs here. Did that mean... "What happened with Absinthe.... are also caught on them?" Kait's voice weakened again near the end.

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