Work Text:
Understanding Phantom Thief Dark's goals has never been difficult.
He steals artworks. Voices collect and lament his criminal actions while tempering them with saccharine labels of "gentleman" and "phantom".
A wide grin bears his fangs to the world, brilliantly white in the searchlights. Feathers twist around his feet, black tufts of magic scatter in the wind in the area. His tamers fall in line easily, with varying degrees of enjoyment at his showmanship. No one questions. Not even the hunters bat an eye at his trail of evidence.
It was all standard, expected at Dark's crime scenes.
Guards jumping at the slightest sound, already brimming with adrenaline and delusions of victory, is enough to set his own borrowed heart racing. He feels their excitement in his bones and tastes their grudging admiration on his tongue. The air freezes in the blackness, the world stands quiet as it waits, and for one aching moment, emptiness begins to creep back into him.
So he gets to work. Triggering the alarm sends the guards into a frenzy and the furor rises to the roof, where he arrives with his prize. Crowds below sing out their cheers and speculations and curses for another successful night. The city of Azumano hums with life and he drinks it heartily.
Adoring girls will take feathers home, clutched to her chests in the shivering cold and dreaming of warm love. Grumbling policemen will bag and tag any that the wind has spared, spitting curses at the "gentleman" thief who keeps them late into the night, away from their homes and families.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Thousands of human lives. Even more glued to their radios and television sets around the city, country, perhaps the world.
Thousands of emotions. More carried over into the following days. Chattering inside of him.
With a practiced grin, can he make them forget what he truly is? Does his borrowed heart suspect at all? Even the family that created him lost sight of his true prize. It was once their prize too.
What use does he have for a basement of decaying artworks, locked away from human sight where they withered and crumbled? In their dramatic absences, he shines all the brighter through the memories of twenty generations. Centuries of voices and feelings soak greedily into the dry canvas, paint, flesh, spirit that make up the stolen half of Kokuyoku.
An artwork seeks nothing from humanity but its attention.