A.N.: Done for the "Refuge" competition at the Poirot Cafe Forums. As per usual, not super on-topic. But at least I'm in below the word count this time.

They tell the doctors that he fell down the stairs.

It's true enough. He did fall. There were stairs. The injuries largely resulted from that.

There were also police. There were also snipers. There were FBI and at least three detectives, with handcuffs and bullets and bokkens and soccer balls. There was an ill-advised trap set by a billionaire with too much free time. There was a gem that shouldn't have existed laying shattered on the floor. There was an unexpected twist to his fall to protect a (not-really) child from a man with flowing hair the color of Kid's cape. There was blood and there were sirens, white on dark like stars, and enough secrets to choke any story.

But there were also stairs.

So they leave out all that other stuff.

It doesn't matter what they tell the doctors, in the end. The verdict is the same.

And Kuroba Kaito is left without the very thing a magician needs the most.

His hands.

He has them. They work, sort of. But they won't stop shaking; he can't hold a card steady, and can't keep hold of anything awkwardly shaped at all. He doesn't have fine motor control now. It takes him active, conscious thought to pick up a pencil, and trying to write just produces a jagged line across the paper. He can hardly feed himself.

The hospital staff, sunny and cheerful and bright-side-of-things, tell him the nerve damage might not be permanent. With physical therapy, he can regain his ability to write and use chopsticks; he can live a normal life. It's not that bad. You'll feel better soon.

How soon?

Months at best.

Years, at worst.

But for the really fine, smooth control he needs to move cards and lockpicks and the components of his tricks...

Maybe never.

He cannot be a magician without his hands. Kaito knows that. Jii knows it too, and cries for the both of them, because he knows Kaito won't cry at all.

Kaito may follow in his father's footsteps, but he won't do it on the same timetable, and he may never rise to the same heights. Kaito will not achieve his dream, despite his talent and his years of obsessive work, despite the heights to which he as already risen and will never truly be recognized for.

And therein lies the crux of the matter, because Kaito has also lost his spotlight.

And that may be worse.

Kaito attacks physical therapy with the same determination he's put into every other aspect of his life; he works as hard and as long as the therapist will let him, practices obsessively at home, and refuses to take even a day off. But it's frustrating. He's gone from complex magic to basic holding a pencil. His handwriting looks like that of a first grader.

It is frustrating, immensely so, and Jii worries that he will hurt himself trying to progress. It wouldn't be the first time, but the stakes are higher with nerve damage. If he aggravates the injury, the damage will get worse. Kaito cannot afford to rush.

Jii cannot convince him of this. And he knows why.

Kaito is... broken, in more than his hands.

He has been for a long time. Ever since his father passed, he's been fighting to control himself, to be what he thinks Toichi wanted, to fight the feelings of abandonment and loneliness that were left behind when that fire finally went out, as if by pretending to be alright for an audience he can actually heal himself. No one can get him to take the mask off; not Jii, not Chikage, not Aoko. It's poker face, and it's a problem. Not that Jii can convince him of this, because if there's one area in which Kaito has already exceeded Toichi it is stubbornness.

But if poker face is his mask, than the spotlight is his stage, and without it he has nowhere to pretend to be alright.

Now, nobody's looking, and there is no other outlet. There's a lot to bottle up; disappointment and rage and frustration, loss and loss and loss and loss. Jii would have cracked under the pressure long ago. He suspects Toichi wouldn't have fared much better.

He's not keen on finding out how much pressure Kaito can take.

He asks Chikage about it. She was never a performer, not in the way her husband and son were and are, but she was more of one than Jii ever was. She came home in a frantic rush when Kaito was hospitalized, but as he healed she drifted away, then drifted all the way back to Las Vegas.

She has an insight, though.

"He's lost the spotlight. It's... it's almost like disguise." She had to pause to think of how to phrase it. "Disguise is... is turning your emotions into someone else's emotions. But they're still yours."

"...I see."

"But someone has to be looking for it to work. Even if the part he's playing isn't quite him, it's close enough for catharsis. He needs an audience to act out who he is."

Jii doesn't understand, not really. But it tells him what he needs to know.

Kaito needs an audience.

And Jii has worked with far too many performers to think that a small one of friends and family would do.

Kaito does not make things easier. He excels in school, now that there are no late-night gem-stealing distractions, fast approaching tests and graduation. It gets him no attention whatsoever, since it comes as a surprise to literally no one that Kaito is a genius. Not even the British detective had apparently remarked on it, though whether that was distraction or guilt or just a lack of interest in Kuroba-minus-Kid is anyone's guess.

He refuses pity with a stubborn streak like an iron bar.

Aoko is not allowed to pity him. She is not allowed to worry about him. Neither is Jii. Jii is not allowed to cry about it. (Aoko is allowed to cry, because he can't stop her.) He responds to pity with a renewal of poker-face, burying his emotions even deeper, pushing people away, and refusing to talk.

(Pity means it's permanent. Pity means he's lost it forever.)

(He refuses pity.)

Months after the incident, he refuses to think about doing anything but magic with his life.

His hands are healing – slowly. He can write now. He can use chopsticks again. The physical therapist is thrilled with his progress, but he can't – he still can't do magic. If he can't do that, it would all be for nothing.

And to even consider something else would be an admission of failure.

Jii is not equipped to make the young master do something that he doesn't want to do. But he also is not equipped to deal with it if Kaito finally cracks. And it is coming. He can see it in his eyes fixing on the middle-distance, in his still-shaking hands that had used to gesture and now lay still at his sides, in the bitterness that creeps into his usual sarcasm. He needs an outlet, and he needs it now.

Wouldn't that be great to explain to Toichi in heaven. Kaito snapping and hurting someone, or hurting himself... Or worse.

(There is always worse.)

They are running out of time.

He has an idea.

Not one of Kaito's. Kaito's ideas were always brilliant like a knife-edge, sharp, glittering, dangerous. Jii's were, at best, blunt as the tip of a billiards cue. But he can do great things with a billiards cue, though Kaito is a bit less predictable than nine-ball.

Kaito will never give up until he breaks. Jii knows that. That is a rock in the center of his plan, a magnificent wall of stainless steel that cannot be overcome. But no wall is endless.

Jii intends to go around it.

There is a woman that Toichi taught, once; one of several. But this one is cheerful and exuberant and has a boy just Kaito's age, and understands very stubborn teenagers with dangerous streaks. She's married to the Detective-Who-Knew. She also might owe Kaito something, like the life of her son.

She's an actress. She has connections. And she is more than willing to help.

She's also willing to play along and phrase things to get Kaito to do what is in his own best interests, dammit.

So when a beautiful blonde woman sweeps into the Blue Parrot, interrupting Kaito's methodical practice of the appearing-rose-trick for the seven thousandth time, gushing about how Jii doesn't look a day older and Kaito's grown so tall, will you look at that, Kaito only sees a woman that he barely remembers meeting and doesn't see Jii's plan behind her at all.

She's famous. He knows it. She talks about his father for a carefully-calculated two minutes, a brief reminiscence that segues nicely into the super small favor she's come to ask, because she knows he'd be perfect and they really need someone good, and she always thought it such a shame Toichi-sama never looked into it because his voice was lovely and if nothing else it would've been wonderful PR.

She's taken a small role in an anime, as the voice of the protagonist's condescending aunt. And wouldn't you know it, the voice actor they had for the one-episode antagonist has dropped out of the project! And they need someone this week, since management pushed up production, and so if he'd be willing to come in and read a few lines – not even an hour, it's a small role, really – it would save them so much trouble, and could he please do this small favor for her, an old friend of his father's?

Kaito never stands a chance. Kudo Yukiko never gives him a chance. The woman is scary like that. She makes it not about pity, and not about loss, and not about magic or life without it.

Of course he says yes.

The recording session is on Saturday. Jii goes with him. Kaito is nervous, and Jii takes it as a good sign. He used to be nervous with his hands, with cards and juggling balls, but now he's nervous with his feet, bouncing softly on his toes, more animated and less poker-face-lockdown already. His copy of the script is rolled up in his still-shaking fingers.

Tenth floor. Kudo Yukiko is there, and she welcomes Kaito with an exuberant hug that leaves no doubt in the minds of the producer, director, and audio technicians that messing with Kaito will be messing with her. She has such an open confidence in his skill, and Jii realizes that it's the same as it was with Nakamori and the rest of the detectives; they all knew he could do it, and the only question was how spectacularly he'd pull it off. Kaito is absorbing it like a sponge.

Introductions all around. Oogawa, the producer, dark suit, square face, jowls like a bulldog. Satoshi, the director, fighting middle age with an on-trend haircut and ear piercings. The two audio techs, Hashimoto and Fujimoto, both looking harried and impatient to get on with it. And of course, Kuroba Kaito, who apparently had the most impressive range of voices that Yukiko had ever heard, and Konosuke Jii, introduced as his guardian while his mother was out of the country.

They want to hear him for themselves. Into the recording booth he goes.

They have a picture of the character tacked up next to the microphone. A punk young man with a cigarette in his mouth, glaring at the viewer over sharp-edged sunglasses.

"Alright," says one of the audio techs, "Give me... Watch where you're going, brat."

Kaito pulls his face into the best imitation of the character he can pull off without makeup, an angular glare and scowl. "Watch where you're going, brat," he growls, with a genuine darkness to it that surprises even Jii.

The director pauses. "Can you do it a little younger? Same emotion, just younger"

"Watch where you're going, brat," Kaito growls again, a bit less crisp and with less gravel to the sound. It takes ten years off his voice. The audio techs look at each other, eyebrows raised.

"That was good," the director says. "Alright. Next line."

"What, you think you're some kind of hot stuff?" Kaito says, without prompting. His eyebrows raise and his barely-shaking hands come up to gesture in a clear physical challenge. "You think you're better than me, huh? You think you're some kind of heisei samurai?"

The Kaito that they're seeing now – the mask they're seeing now – is so different from the Kaito they thought he was that it rattles them. The director gives a few notes, Kaito does it a bit differently, and they move on.

There are no more notes after that.

Kaito makes it through the rest of the script, acting with his body and voice both, through the character's anger and loss and frustrated vow of revenge before his untimely death, more animated than Jii has seen Kaito in months. They run out of lines. The director comments that it was what they needed, and comments to Yukiko that the kid's pretty good.

She takes the pretty good comment in her own way, with a sly side-eye and a sweet call-out to the producer, reminding him about that one background villager part they just added two days ago, who's doing that?

That part is a woman.

Page three of the script. The director thought they'd have one of the love interests voice it, but Yukiko remarks that she'd have to come back in, and won't that put things behind? The producer glares at the mere thought of the word behind.

Kaito just grins, and does a pitch perfect woman's voice of the line, somehow managing to put real emotion into "My baby! Someone save my baby!"

The producer chokes. The sound techs do double-takes and check their equipment to make sure they didn't bump the pitch up. The director stares open-mouthed for a moment, then remarks "Ah... can we get that again?"

Once they realize that Yukiko was serious about the impressive range comment, they start pushing him. Can you do a little kid? Yes, says Kaito in perfect first-grader, matching it to big eyes and a smile more childish than usual. A smoker. I can, says Kaito in a voice that sounds like he's been swallowing gravel, a cross between Nakamori Ginzo and Mouri Kogoro. Do an insane villain. Stalker insane or happy insane, Kaito asks. Both. He makes everyone's skin crawl with the performance. Kaito's wearing one of his favorite masks – that of the freaking wonder child, one that he hasn't put on since he lost magic – and he's having the time of his life with it.

He is still Kaito. He is still a Kuroba, with or without magic. And he is still talented beyond belief.

They find some parts in the next episode's script that aren't cast yet.

Jii watches as Kaito proudly proclaims his intention to wed one of the love interests as a sickly young man with a rich father, then tears the protagonist a new one for insulting his daddy. He drawls about the power of love as an old barkeeper, with lazy speech and smiling like a man with a secret to tell. He does ignorance and fear as two disposable henchmen of the main villain, doing their conversation as a fast back-and-forth that makes the audio techs start cracking up.

Through it all emotion is bleeding off of him, in his face and his voice and his still-shaking hands, and Jii watches as his shoulders loosen and his eyes open up and he starts smiling, even outside of the masks, and Jii can't help but smile along.

Kaito belongs here. The place where poker face is strongest is also the only place where it can come off, in the form of these thousand smaller masks. These characters aren't Kaito, but the emotion is still his. Frustration and protectiveness and fear and loss and anger. They're his, and Jii watches them fall out of him in fragments.

At the end of the recording session, the producer remarks that he owes Yukiko a big favor for this one.

Jii takes Kaito out to lunch. Kaito orders triple chocolate fudge cake as an appetizer, and Jii nearly cries.

Kaito's not breaking yet.

Kaito is offered a contract as a recurring antagonist (and every background character) the next day. His hands shake as he opens the envelope, and for once it has nothing to do with the nerve damage.

It's not magic. But it's a spotlight, and Kaito needs the spotlight like most people need air. It's a chance to be what he needs to be to survive until he can get magic. And maybe if he doesn't get magic... it's enough.

It has to be.

He's ridiculously successful. It's surprising to no one, least of all Jii. He has fangirls in more countries than most people can name. The few tricks he can do, he does as publicity, and his identity is still wrapped up in magic as much as his voice.

Someday his hands will stop shaking. Someday he'll do more magic than appearing roses and card tricks. Some day he will equal his father again.

Someday he won't need the spotlight to act like himself.

Jii will be with him until then.