Current mood:	accomplished
Entry tags:	series:the grey agency

[The Grey Agency] Grey Conversations
Title: The Grey Agency, chapter nine: Grey Conversations
Author: Icka! M. Chif
Word Count: 3,830
Author's Note: Had a group chat with a bunch of DC/MK fans tonight and TGA was requested. So here it is.
Summary: "Something I can do for you, Edogawa-kun?"
Follows 'Veils and Bombs'

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Conan looked at the two nondescript grey buildings in irritation. While the Tokyo numbering system often resembled something organised by a drunk dyslexic high on some sort of illegal substance, he was pretty sure that he was in the correct place. At least according to the map he'd printed out.

And he was quite certain he'd seen Hakuba Saguru disappear into one of the buildings here.

He double checked the buildings again. He was correct, the buildings were missing a number. He frowned. Buildings normally didn't go missing, at least not without it being noted in the public records.

"I thought I glimpsed you." A smooth voice made him jump. He glanced up to find the British Detective standing next to him, his tie loosened and shoes untied, like he'd just gotten home before being interrupted. "Something I can do for you, Edogawa-kun?"

"I..." Conan glanced around. Hakuba certainly hadn't come out of either of the two grey buildings. "I'm here to see Kuroba."

"I see." Hakuba said mildly. "I am afraid that Kaito-kun is currently unavailable, but if you would like to come in and visit him, I am certain he would not mind."

Kuroba was unavailable, but he could see him anyway. That was a contradiction if he had ever heard one. "Thank you." He said, nodding his head. Hakuba nodded back, then turned back around. A door opened nearby and Conan glanced towards the office lady stepping out of one of the grey buildings. When he looked back, Hakuba was gone again.

There wasn't enough time for the blond to have gone into the other building. The lady who had stepped out of the grey buildings stopped and smiled down at him. "Are you lost, bouya?"

He smiled up at her, shaking his head. She smiled back, patted his head and kept walking, heading towards the convenience store on the corner.

"I see it is up to it is old tricks again." Hakuba said dryly, suddenly reappearing again, making Conan nearly jump out of his skin.

"How!?" He demanded, holding a hand to his chest and feeling his heart thumping rapidly on his chest like it was trying to escape. It was like the blond had disappeared and reappeared out if mid-air.

"Magic." Hakuba deadpanned, holding out a hand. "Come, I will lead you through."

Conan eyed the hand in distaste. He hated holding hands like he was a small child, unless it was with Ran. And even then he hated the reminder of his diminutive size.

"It is merely for a few metres." Hakuba said, looking like he was having similar thoughts to Conan's. Well, minus the Ran part. "I could carry you if you prefer."

Conan took his hand. Hakuba nodded. "Close your eyes, it may help."

Oh, hell no. He was going to keep his eyes and senses wide awake and alert for this. Hakuba stepped forward and he hopped slightly to keep up, watching the blond for any false moves. However, between one eye-blink and the next, he found himself off the sidewalk and in a slightly dilapidated rose garden. "The f..."

"Ah, we made it." Hakuba released his hand. "Excellent. I never know when it is about to develop a sense of humour again. Right this way." The blond strode forward down the path. Conan glanced backwards. Behind the rosebushes and white fence, he could see the spot on the sidewalk he had been standing on. The grey buildings rose on either side around him, casting no shadows on either the garden or the tall red house in front of them.

What the hell kind of trick was this!?

"Quickly now." Hakuba urged, snapping him out his shock. "It may still decide to lose us yet. And Kuroba is the only one the House will listen to."

The House? He trotted forward, eyeing the tall building. It looked old and very English. Victorian or Edwardian period most likely, in need of some repair. Cosmetic work at least.

"Say hello to La Rouge Maison." Hakuba said, looking almost bored as he stepped inside the house. "Be careful, it bites. You may leave your shoes on until we reach our living area, as there are still repairs going on. How energetic are you feeling?"

"Decent. Why?" He asked suspiciously.

"Because it can conceivably be more than one flight of stairs up to the first story." Hakuba sighed. "This way, stay close."

That made no sense either. He frowned, following the British detective up the stairs. It appeared to do a twist halfway up the first flight, nothing unusual about that. Hakuba glanced backwards to make sure that he was on the stairs, then started climbing.

The staircase turned. Then turned again. And again. And again. "How tall is this building again?" Conan questioned.

"Ground floor, first floor, second floor and a tower." Hakuba reported back, looking irritated as he turned around another twist. Conan followed, a few steps behind. They should have been approaching the second floor by now. Or at least the tower. He glanced up and realised that the blond had vanished again.

"Hakuba?" Conan called, feeling faintly alarmed as his voice appeared to echo in the stairway. He ran through the next twists of stairs, not finding the blond. "Hakuba?! HAKUBA!"

"Dammit, I told you to stick close." Hakuba's muffled voice cursed back. "Where are you? Up or down?"

"I don't know." He called back. There was no markings on the walls or the stairs, no way to tell which way -was- up or down.

"Stay where you are." Hakuba instructed. "Don't move."

Move? Move -where-? Conan did as instructed, leaning against the wall. A few minutes later, the blond came running up the stairs, looking annoyed and muttering something under his breath. "We have –got- to mark these levels one of these days." Hakuba finally cursed, pounding a fist on the wall.

How Conan had passed the blond was a mystery, he hadn't seen him at all. Hakuba sighed, pulling together his bland face again. "My apologies. Right. Hopefully it should be just another level or so. Stay. Close."

They had gone up enough stairs to be at the top of the building and it was another level or so!? ".... Right."

Hakuba gave him a dry look, then nodded. "We are here to check-up on Kaito." The half-Briton announced to the air. "If you could kindly please allow us to visit him?"

The air seemed to gain a strange quality to it, like it was listening, or someone was watching them. Then the feeling faded, leaving them stuck in a staircase in the middle of the house. Hakuba nodded, looking pleased as he took to the stairs again.

"How many flights have you climbed?" Conan asked conversationally.

"Six, today. My record is twelve. Kaito was not in the house."

"And it depends on if Kuroba is in the house?" He asked sceptically. Hakuba shot him a glance that clearly stated that Conan was an idiot if he didn't believe him. Conan frowned back.

It didn't make -sense-.

"Here we are." Hakuba said with a definite sigh of relief as they approached what looked like gap in the wall, not even a proper door. "This area is currently not under renovation, please feel free to take off your shoes. I apologise, we do not have any house slippers for guests yet."

"That's fine." He waved it off. Socks often times were better than large floppy slippers for wandering around houses anyway. Hakuba nodded and toed off his shoes, sliding into a pair of tan slippers with a brown and black argyle pattern at the top. A pair of plain black house scuffs and a smaller pale blue pair with umbrellas embroidered into the top sat next to the door. Kuroba and... a girl?

"Kaito is this way." Hakuba motioned with a tilt of his head. "You should be safe so long as you do not go on the stairwell again. Regardless, please practise caution when passing through doorways and windows."

He wasn't planning on climbing through any windows, but okay. He nodded anyway and followed Hakuba into a bedroom. The first thing he could make out in the dark room was a large four poster bed, which dominated the right side of the room, the headboard against the centre of the wall. Hakuba walked to the side of it and turned on a lamp.

Then Hakuba's comment about Kuroba being 'Unavailable' made more sense. Kuroba was lying in the middle of the large bed, laying so still that he almost thought the magician was dead for a moment.

Hakuba leaned forward, gently brushed the hair away from Kuroba's face, pressing his forehead against Kuroba's, his eyes closed. "Good. Still no fever." The blond commented.

"What happened?" He asked, glancing at the bare walls. It was hard to imagine something that could take Kuroba out, the magician always had a feeling of untouchability.

"You did."

Conan looked up sharply. He hadn't touched Kuroba! Hell, he hadn't seen him in months, save for two days ago when a large swath of silk had swallowed them up and spat them out, revealing Kuroba's smiling face.

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Hakuba quoted Newton's Third Law, sitting himself next to Kuroba on the bed. "Energy can be converted from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. Energy must come from somewhere. He has been asleep since he passed out."

... Asleep?! For two days?!

"I saw the news feeds. And the videos." Conan said quietly. He had gotten his hands on everything he could, trying to fill in the gaps. They had been investigating a probable man in black, Mitsuhiko and Ai had spotted a strangely blinking light. He'd realised it was a bomb as the light started blinking faster and pushed everyone out of the room, running them down the stairs. He'd hit the fire alarm as they ran, trying to get people out of the building.

Then the explosion hit, he'd had just enough of a mind to kick a potted plant through the window before they'd been thrown out of the building. They'd stayed clumped together, everyone pressing against everyone else as Ayumi screamed for help in his ear. He'd twisted, intending to use the soccer ball in his belt to act as a soft landing pad, although at the time, he'd been doubtful of its chance of working.

Then Kuroba had appeared out of thin air, waving a huge length of silver fabric. It had swallowed them up and he hadn't known anything else until the fabric had fallen away, revealing a shaky smiling Kuroba.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the entire incident had been caught by a multitude of people with cell phones with video capture and a few tourists with camcorders. The clearest footage was being shown on the television, but there was much more being posted on-line.

The stuff on the internet was much more complete than the snippets on television, not having the time constraints that television news did, and from a wider variety of angles. He'd watched them all, multiple times, putting the footage in sequence, watching for tricks, for traps, for some explanation for how the magician had done the things he had.

But the footage showed no evidence of anything other than exactly what Kuroba appeared to have done. Which was the impossible. There had been no way for Kuroba to have set anything up in advance. There were no trap doors, no hidden compartments, no trick wires. He had simply ignored or bent the laws of physics at his whim.

And apparently spent two days paying the price for it.

Kuroba rolled over, resting his head on the blond's thigh, wrapping an arm around Hakuba to keep him there. Hakuba made an amused sound, a fond expression on his face as he began to stroke Kuroba's dark hair, like one would a large cat. Kuroba made a pleased sound in his sleep.

"Did you find what you were looking for in the videos?" Hakuba asked calmly, as if he weren't being intimate with the thief on his lap.

Conan shook his head. "It still doesn't make sense. He -shouldn't- be able to do what he did..."

"And yet he did." Hakuba nodded, as if he were well used to this conundrum. "I have come to the conclusion, Edogawa-kun, that when dealing with both Kaitou and Magicians, it makes life far less stressful to simply... believe."

"Believe?"

"He has no idea that it cannot be done." Hakuba's lips seemed to twitch in a small smile. "So therefore he does what he pleases, logic be damned."

"... Like the house."

"Precisely." Hakuba sighed, the smug expression falling away. "Although I will also be the first to admit that said belief is not always easy. There is a price to pay, for everything."

Conan nodded, a small sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Logic. He could deal with things that made sense. This... was a bit out of his comfort zone. "So he did exactly what it looked like? No tricks?"

Hakuba snorted. "You have obviously never seen your roommate randomly decide to walk up the wall because it is too much effort to fetch a ladder to replace a dead light bulb. No. No tricks, no traps, no sleight of hand illusions. He did exactly what it looked like. Magic."

"I... see." How did one counter something that re-wrote the rules around you? He was aware of his fingers digging into the palms of his hands and made a conscious effort to relax.

Hakuba politely gave him a moment, turning his attention to the sleeping man on his lap, running his hands through the dark strands of Kuroba's hair, messing it up and then attempting to smooth it out again. Kuroba's face lay mostly in shadow, partly concealed by Hakuba's arm.

"He's the Kaitou Kid, isn't he?" Conan commented quietly. He knew that face. The evidence backed it up as well.

"-The Kaitou Kid is dead." The British detective's voice held a note of quiet finality.

Conan scowled at the blond. "They never found the body." Hakuba should know that as well.

"The Kaitou Kid is dead." Hakuba repeated, looking up to meet Conan's gaze with weary, almost haunted expression. "I saw him die."

Out of all the things for Hakuba to say, that was definitely at the bottom of the list. "What?!" Conan snapped. "Why didn't you tell the police?! Did you get the people who did it?!"

"Edogawa..." Hakuba sighed, impatiently brushing the blond fringe out of his face. "... He killed himself."

For a moment, Conan thought he had misheard what Hakuba had said. But the sad, almost sympathetic look on the blond's face left little room for debate. "No."

The Kaitou Kid wasn't supposed to be -dead-. Not for real. He was supposed to be laying low for a while, like he had last time he had disappeared, and then appear again, the ultimate challenge, contest of wits.

Had he been wrong? Kuroba wasn't the Kid? The evidence was circumstantial at best, Hakuba chased the Kid, Hakuba chased Kuroba, both Kuroba and the Kid looked like Kudo Shin'ichi. Kuroba and Kid were the only people he knew who could pull off magical stunts like they did.

-if he accepted that magic was real and not just some sort of fancy trick. Even this house, there could be mirrors or secret passages that Hakuba could have slipped through to come up behind him like he had.

It still didn't explain what Kuroba had done, saving them from that explosion. That was more than tricks and traps. Physical evidence couldn't be altered by mirrors.

"Why?" He finally demanded, nails biting into the palms of his hands, his knuckles turning white. When he had last seen Hakuba and Kuroba, they had been capturing Vermouth, planning something to do with the Black Organisation. He'd gotten word back a few days later through Hattori that they were both fine and that neither of them had to worry about the men in black chasing after them any more.

Hakuba sighed, looking tired. "The Kaitou Kid had been searching for something the Black Organisation wanted, which was why they were chasing him. I eventually discovered what it was, which made me a target for them as well. He found it. And with some assistance from Kuroba, the Kid either hid or destroyed it, beyond their ability to find it. Without it, they had no reason to continue to hunt us."

"And they didn't kill you?" Conan asked suspiciously. That didn't sound like the people he knew.

"We all had to give up something in return for our freedom. In addition to not having anything to do with them or attempting to track them down again." Hakuba leaned his head against the headboard. "Have you ever heard of 'The Tale of the Magi', Edogawa?"

"It's a story. A poor newly wedded couple want to give each other the perfect Christmas present. She cuts off her long hair to buy him a chain for his treasured pocket watch, he sells his pocket watch to buy her combs for her long hair. They each give up the thing that mattered most.... oh." Conan stopped, looking at the blond. "You gave up what was most important to you."

"I am no longer a Detective." Hakuba said with quiet dignity. "I can no longer blindly offer my services to assist people."

Conan winced. To not be able to be a detective any more.... would be like cutting off a limb. "And the Kaitou Kid..."

"Is dead." Hakuba closed his eyes, fingers still carding through Kuroba's hair. Conan repressed a shiver, watching Kuroba's peaceful sleeping face. If Kuroba was the Kid, the Kid was dead, Kuroba could never do that again, -be- that again. He knew how the men in black worked, it wasn't just Hakuba and Kuroba's lives in the balance, it was everyone around them.

"Wait..." Conan's eyes narrowed as he pondered Hakuba's words. "You said that you can't -offer- to help... But what if someone -asks- you?"

The slight smug smile he got in return told him that the blond had noticed that loophole as well. He wondered how many other people had figured that out. Probably not many. It might be something to drop into a few people's ears, that Hakuba could help if asked.

Not that he felt incredibly guilty about inadvertently passing around that rumour about Hakuba sleeping with the Kid or anything, but it might make up for it.

Conan smirked back. "I see."

Hakuba snorted, expression flickering way from smug. “How are you doing, Edogawa-kun?” Hakuba asked, his expression finally falling in serious.

He shrugged. “Same as I ever was. Living with Mouri, solving cases.”

”I see.” Hakuba said neutrally. “And your Ran?”

Conan hesitated for a moment, the urge to lie on the tip of his tongue. “She’s doing well.” He finally said. “Going to college now. She moved in with her Mother, it’s closer to school. And she gets to spend ‘girl time’ with Eri.”

It had just about killed him when she announced that she was moving out. He understood it, a chance for Ran to live a normal life, without worrying about people constantly being injured or dropping dead around her.

But it also meant that she’d given up on him. She called him occasionally, but there were no tears in her voice. She’d moved on, grown up.

And he was stuck in this body of a child.

Hakuba made a thoughtful noise, glancing down at Kuroba. “How is it, that every time I see you, you never appear to be any older?” He inquired.

Conan’s breath caught in his throat as he stared at the blond. “How?” No one else had noticed. He’d heard comments, people thought he was small for his age, or a late bloomer, but no one noticed that he didn’t seem to age at all.

He got a quirk of the lips in return. “Remember who I live with.”

”Ah.” Conan swallowed. “Haibara… Ai… She discovered a cure for our ‘little problem’.”

Hakuba straightened. “That’s good news, is it not?”

”The problem is that it is a very –permanent- solution.” He extrapolated. “There is no way for me to return to myself without completely destroying my body. Even the temporary cures no longer work. What once gave me a day as myself barely lasts a half hour.”

Which meant that he was stuck in this body. He gripped the material of his pants, the material bunching in his fists. “Ai… Ai said that apotoxin 4869, the one that shrunk us, has an unexpected side effect other than the shrinking.”

Hakuba made a hissing sound between his teeth. “Immortality?”

Conan snorted. “Not quite. Expanded life span. We’re aging at half the speed of a normal person. According to her, our life span should be twice as long.”

Which meant he would life longer than everyone around him, the Shonen Tantei. Ai had already chosen her path, planning on staying where she was. She was planning on saying she had Turner's Syndrome, where girls stopped growing after reaching the start of puberty. But that didn’t work for him.

And in the meantime, he was stuck where he was, living with Mouri. The only bright side was now he had his own room in the apartment… Ran’s. But it also meant that he was responsible for cleaning and cooking, since Mouri was helpless at it.

Even more helpless without Ran there. Both of them were depressed without Ran there.

Not that he was going to tell –Hakuba- that.

”I see.” Hakuba nodded. He peered over the edge of his spectacles and for a moment, Conan thought he was going to ask some more questions. But instead he didn’t say anything at all.

Kuroba let out a soft snore.

”I should finish what I came here to do.” Hakuba finally said, shifting Kuroba so his head was resting on the pillow again. Kuroba made a noise of protest, one hand flopping out and reaching for the blond detective who was carefully getting up. He leaned down, smoothing Kuroba’s hair away from his face, then kissed the sleeping man's forehead. Conan blinked, then turned away, feeling like an intruder on an obviously tender scene.

”Feel free to stay.” Hakuba said softly. “It will be a few hours before I need to head out and I wouldn’t recommend trying to leave without a guide. There are worse things than the stairs here.”

Conan nodded. “Thanks.” It felt kind of nice to get away for a little bit, even if it was for a couple of hours.

Hakuba gave him a slight smile in return and disappeared out the door, leaving him with the sleeping Kuroba. Conan stared at him for a while, distantly marvelling at the level of trust Hakuba was giving him, leaving him with Kuroba at his most defenceless.

He let his thoughts wander for a bit, then crawled further onto the bed, listening Kuroba breathe and wonder if he’d ever feel complete again.

-fin-