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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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.

"I can't say for sure. It's not like EVERYTHING appears on a DVD. And it does seem when it's farther from the common factor, less appear, but it's possible," Conan said. "I know the other me has been looking for the DVDs of the world a Kaito's he's particularly close with in here and gets rid of them."

"It takes some time for them to appear. It was a while before I noticed one with me, but you may want to check to make sure none appear. They have pretty good descriptions on the back. If you know what you're looking for, you'll find it."

Except Kaito wasn't sure he could bring himself to look for the evidence of his torture. He looked a little pale with just thinking about that concept.

""Maybe later." He took a deep breath and released it again. "You said Absinthe was an exception? Are there... others? Exceptions like him?"

"...I can look for them. I frequent there a lot," Conan said.

"A few, yes. One is 1412. Everyone will warn you about him. He's a you, but has totally and utterly lost his mind. Though he doesn't quite seem willing to 'kill' anyone, aside from the Conan from his world. But he'll mess you up to the point of it," Conan said, putting his hands in his pockets as he thought. "The Conan from his world is also mad. A manipulator type. He plays off the kid act, but he's just a bit...off in his give away. Small inconsistencies. Then there's the Poltergeist. That's a me. Got buried as Conan and it drove him crazy, but he's sealed on the first floor. If you see ofuda, turn and walk away. So far, that's the only evil ones who are within the Mansion that I know of that usually aren't."

"No... I'll go look." Kaito made a soft noncommittal noise at the back of his throat. "Later. Taking care of Absinthe first."

First, he noted that there were no other 'Shinichi's mentioned. Just Conan or himself, although that one about a crazy version of himself made him shiver. "So the Shinichi's, or the videos of Shinichi's, will not be like Absinthe, but you think the dynamic is still there?"

"It's possible the evil Conan can revert to Shinichi at some point. He really is Shinichi, it's just a question of a cure, but other than that, no. And even then, he's more of a manipulator and like I said, there are inconsistencies I'm sure you'll be able to spot in his story. There shouldn't be any other evil Shinichi's though," Conan said.

"But that's correct. Absinthe, in essence, is Shinichi, but a more demented form. If you took how Shinichi normally acts, how he usually plays against you, it should give you more of an inkling on how he works. Just take what does happen in those videos and imagine if the Shinichi, or Conan, in those videos was a total sociopath."

Kaito hadn't even seen the videos yet, but imagining Absinthe anywhere else and he grimaced. "Not a pretty sight." But the only other Shinichi he met was the one he nearly shot a few hou- ...a week ago, and that one was so unlike Absinthe that the combination was hard to imagine.

He shook his head to clear it away.

"Later," he said again, although he hoped there would be one. Last time he was here, despite everyone's assurances that no one left without staying a while, he went back practically the next morning.

"Leormon will put them somewhere we can find them," Conan said and reached out to squeeze Kaito's hand reassuringly. "...is there anything you need?"

"Pain killers," Kaito muttered, but held up his other hand before Conan could go retrieve them. "Just simple ones. If there isn't any, I can handle this pain. It hurts and stings... but nothing I won't recover from." At least, not the physical wounds.

"The infirmary automatically restocks when everyone leaves," Conan said, going to get the pain killers.

"....were you slowed down at all? When you went back?"

"... didn't really matter." Kaito looked up at the ceiling, at the windowless walls, anywhere but where he knew Conan was likely to be looking at him expectantly. He whispered the next part under his breath, "I kind of wished I was."

But Kaito could see what Conan was getting at. If the drugs didn't carry over, he didn't need to worry about being lucid, though the idea of voluntarily being inebriated by drugs still made him frown.

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