A/N: So, there's some ShinRan this chapter. In case anyone was wondering, this isn't going to become a shipfic. I'm not much good at those, and I'm not much of a ShinRan shipper to begin with. But I am gonna poke at their dynamic for angst purposes, and I'm gonna be a little realistic about it, which means if you are on "Team ShinRan is 800% Healthy" you may not enjoy the Ran POV this chapter. Same, if you're someone who absolutely can't stand the ship at all. Feel free to skim if you gotta; people in this fandom are a lot more hardcore than me about their ships and I am willing to respect that.

This is a talky chapter, but it also has all the warnings for discussion of horrid things because when you let two murder detectives and a spy-in-training talk for a while it's not always nice things (no matter how hard the nonviolent thief tries to slow them down). See the end notes for specifics.

Chapter 8

Ran wasn't really sure what Conan was up to recently. Honestly, if Hattori wasn't involved, she'd probably be interfering, but—as reckless as he could be, Hattori probably cared more about Conan than anyone else besides Ran did. If whatever they were doing turned truly dangerous, he'd get help, or, at worst, let himself get hurt before Conan did.

Still, it was bizarre. Hattori didn't usually show up in Tokyo for this long. At this rate, he'd spend most of his school break in the city. Not to mention the snatches of conversation she was catching from Conan talking to him over the cell phone…

"—another false lead," Conan had said, real frustration in his tone, as she walked past his room to go clean her dad's. "We keep trying, but we aren't finding anything concrete. At this rate..."

His tone was so bleak when he said that. Maybe it was a game they were playing…but Hattori wasn't really the kind to play games with Conan, not when he could just ask his younger friend along on real cases.

So what was Hattori so stuck on? And why was Conan so upset about it?

The whole situation was worrying, but Ran didn't want to say anything to Conan. He'd know she was eavesdropping, and every time she so much as hinted that she'd overheard a single phone call of his, it resulted in two solid weeks of him being edgy and secretive and hogging the bathroom so he could have private phone conversations. And then her father complained, and the whole thing just got out of control.

She wondered, sometimes, about how Conan's life with the Edogawas had been. He was a happy enough child, but he was oddly private, and jumpy, and prone to nightmares—though she could probably blame that last one on her father's cases as much as anything else.

Still, she was worried, and while Sonoko would be supportive, she didn't know a thing about childcare and only really tolerated Conan's general existence for Ran's sake. And going to her dad would just end up with Conan grounded and sulking while her dad and Hattori had a screaming match over why "The Great Sleeping Kogoro" hadn't been called in on their case. Her dad meant well, but his priorities got out of order pretty often.

Shinichi wasn't really good with kids as a rule, but he understood Conan—of course he did, they were too much alike for him not too. Of course, Shinichi almost never picked up his phone nowadays. But…well, it was always worth trying.

She sat down on her futon absentmindedly, like she was planning on calling Sonoko. That always helped calm the butterflies that started up in her stomach at times like this. She didn't even need to find his name in the cell phone contacts, or look down at the numbers as she pressed them. It rang once, twice, a third time—

And then, Shinichi's voice, sounding breathless, asked, "Ran? Is everything all right?"

"Y-yeah," Ran said, half-shocked just to be getting an answer. "I-I mean, nothing's really bad, no one died"—and, with the way their lives were, she really did need to say that—"but I wanted advice on something, so I thought…"

"Of course," Shinichi said. "What is it?"

"…Aren't you busy working on your case, or whatever?" Ran asked, dumbfounded at how easy this all was.

"Yeah," Shinichi said softly. "Yeah, I am." He paused for a moment. "…I'm sorry, Ran. I understand better, now. About what it's like to worry about a person who's missing. I didn't mean to put you through something like this."

"Shinichi?" Ran asked, concerned. "Did something happen?"

"I've shifted focus a little bit," Shinichi said. "I'm helping some other people search for someone who's gone missing. He's kind of doing the same thing as I am—he's off working on a really tough case too. But he's also cut contact with everyone."

Just the thought made Ran shudder. After all this time apart, she wasn't sure if she and Shinichi were going to have the same relationship to each other that they'd had before he left, but, the thought of just never seeing him again was deeply unsettling. When her mom had been gone, when her dad had been too busy drinking to notice, he'd always been there. The fact that he wasn't physically present was bad enough, but the thought of losing contact completely—no. She didn't want to think about it.

"I thought about doing the same thing," Shinichi admitted. "I thought it might have been safer."

How can he talk about that so calmly? she wondered, caught off-balance. She knew it wasn't just that Shinichi had been a constant for her—he was the one whose parents had been constantly haring off to different parts of the world and paying varying amounts of attention to him—meddling one second and barely noticing what he got up to the next.

Even if he didn't return my feelings, I thought I was at least important to him, was I really this wrong

"But now I'm really glad I didn't," Shinichi continued. "Because I know how worried the people that know him are about him. And I'm glad I'm not the one making you that worried."

"I still worry about you, Shinichi," Ran said, not sure how else to respond.

"I know," he said, voice thick with guilt, and just like that, she felt ridiculous for ever wondering whether he cared about her. "But you know I'm doing what I can to come back, right?"

"You keep saying that," Ran replied. Even if it is a little hard to believe.

"Well, it's true," Shinichi said, in a tone that brooked no argument. "I'll be back as soon as I can. What did you want to ask me about?"

"Conan-kun's been working on some sort of weird case with Hattori-kun, and I'm starting to get worried about it," Ran said. "Hattori-kun's been here a while, and Conan-kun seems frustrated…I can't tell if I'm getting upset over nothing or not."

"I'll talk to him," Shinichi said. "I'm sure it's just a difficult case. If it was anything dangerous, Hattori would be taking measures to make sure Conan-kun was safe."

"That's what I kept telling myself!" Ran said.

"Well, you were right," Shinichi said, smug.

"Don't say I was right, just because you agree with me!" Ran protested. "You're still an arrogant Holmes geek."

"Heh, yeah, I guess I am," Shinichi said. "It's nice to know that some things don't change." There was something a little wistful to his tone as he spoke.

"What do you mean by that?" Ran asked, confused.

"Nothing," Shinichi said, with a weary-sounding chuckle. "I'm just tired, probably."

"Hey, don't forget to sleep," Ran said, worried. "You always get so obsessive about cases—and a few of the times I've seen you since you've gone off on this case, you've had a fever. That's what happens when you don't take care of yourself!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Shinichi said, almost fondly. "I'll be more careful. But seriously, don't worry about Conan-kun. I'll take care of it."

"Thanks, Shinichi," Ran said. "Now, go get some sleep, okay?"

"I will soon," Shinichi said. She could practically picture the smile he was wearing right now—half-tired, half-fond. "You should, too. Don't stay up worrying about the kid and your dad."

"Maybe if they stayed out of trouble for five seconds at a time," Ran said with a laugh.

"Not too likely," Shinichi replied. "Bye, Ran. Be safe."

"Bye, Shinichi," Ran replied. "You too, okay?"

He didn't answer—he was already off the line. If she was lucky, that meant he hadn't noticed the worry in her tone. But of course he probably had.

Stupid detective dork.

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Kaito kept his expression neutral as Shinichi walked back into the main room, cheeks brushed with red.

"I'm sorry you had to listen to that," he mumbled, shoving his phone back into the pocket of his shorts.

Hattori was very pointedly looking at a handful of printouts, but he was frowning, and when he glanced up at the other detective, his expression was sympathetic.

"This place isn't really built for privacy," Kaito said aloud, thinning his lips slightly. That would be enough for Shinichi to catch his intended meaning. There really hadn't been a place for Shinichi to have that conversation in private, given how thin the apartment's walls were—and the best form of sympathy Kaito could offer Shinichi as his rival, under the circumstances, was pretending he hadn't heard a word of it.

On the phone's screen, Eisuke looked distinctly guilty. Kaito wasn't sure what was going on there, but there was probably a story to it and it probably wasn't any of his business either.

"So, what have we got?" Shinichi asked.

"Berlin had a bit of a drugs crackdown, but that turned out to have been in the works for about three years," Eisuke said. "It was all politics, there was a member of the Bundestag and some impending city reelections tied up in it, I don't need to get into details. Other than that, the fluctuations weren't anything I wouldn't expect given changes in tourist activity."

"Reims is actually gettin' worse," Heiji said. "There's a heck of a lot of unsolved crimes pillin' up and I'm pretty sure KID's source was right about Them bein' there. But like I said, they're unsolved. The actual arrest rate's jus' about steady."

"Omsk is holding steady, too," Kudou said. "No rises, no drops—well, nothing that's enough to be statistically significant. KID, you're watching the Google Alert Eisuke set up, right?"

"Yeah," Kaito said. "The only thing I have actually learned is that Google's search algorithm has more holes than old man Suzuki's security on a bad day. Once I actually cleared out all the useless things it picked up, the other large arrests were all like Eisuke's drugs crackdown in Berlin—federal, and planned."

"I mean, we're assuming that Hakuba didn't lay a groundwork before he ran," Shinichi started, before trailing off.

"He mighta, but there's limits ta how much groundwork ya can lay," Heiji said. "Especially if he wasn't sure where he was goin' 'til he talked to KID's contact. I could see him knowing people, yeah, but having long-term arrest operations like that waitin' for him to run away from home?"

"He would've had to be planning to leave, and there weren't any indications of that, right?" Eisuke said.

"None the police noticed," Shinichi said.

"For what it's worth, I didn't see anything, either," Kaito said.

It was true, even. Hakuba had never given the impression that he was ready to run away at the drop of a hat. Kaito still occasionally found it hard to believe he'd done so at all.

"Okay, Occam's razor—the simpler explanation is that he didn't have plans waiting for him, and we just haven't caught his activity yet," Shinichi said. "All this waiting and researching is getting to me too. I feel like we're letting him slip out of reach. But we really don't know enough to go after him."

Kaito nodded, slowly.

"Speakin' of that, now might be a good time to start workin' on theories about where the heck he came from, anyhow," Heiji said.

Okay, that is not something I need them figuring out—not that they'd ever guess, Kaito thought. Aloud, he asked, "Why do we need to know that?"

"Because if he is running away from someone dangerous, by going after him, we're putting ourselves in their path," Eisuke said seriously.

Can't really argue with that, without tipping my hand way too far, Kaito thought.

"Plus, it's probably affectin' our strategies," Hattori said. "It's a thing all o' us have in common—we like ta be inside o' our opponent's heads. But Hakuba's complicated 'cause we don't know how much o' what we know o' him was real and how much was cover, so we could all end up strategizin' for diff'rent versions of 'is head if we ain't careful."

Shinichi nodded. "I have at least one theory," he said grimly. "We want to know where he came from, where he is now, and his reasons for leaving there, coming here, and then leaving again. Occam's Razor, again—we know his reason for leaving has something to do with Them, so is it possible that the other things do, too?"

"Are you saying you think Hakuba is one of Them?" Kaito asked cautiously. No use getting angry until I'm certain of what you mean.

"I think he used to be," Shinichi replied. "It's not impossible to escape Them—just incredibly hard. It would explain his skillsets, why he's hiding, and why the slightest indication that he might be discovered sent him running."

"One problem," Eisuke said. "He's a third-year high school student. That isn't old enough to have joined Them, gotten training, and left."

Shinichi looked away slightly, grimacing. "Yes it is. If his parents were members before him…kids grow up inside, and they start contributing young."

Kaito felt ill at the thought. Had Shinichi talked to one of those members? Come to think of it, his source, that girl from the Mystery Train…nope, nope nope, not thinking about it, not thinking about it.

"So, not too young," Eisuke said, his voice the shocky sort of breathless that Kaito was used to hearing out of substitute teachers in the aftermath of his pranks, but with a much darker undertone. He didn't like it half so much, this way.

"Not too young," Shinichi confirmed. "And I can think of an alarming number of reasons why they would try to train an agent with the same skills as KID, the most obvious of which is because they wanted to find that jewel KID's looking for."

"That theory doesn't explain why he went after Them instead of just running, though," Kaito said. If this conversation's going to happen anyway, I might as well participate. I don't want to mislead them more than I have to—not about things that might affect how likely they are to find him—but I definitely don't want to tell them the truth.

"There are two possibilities," Shinichi said. "One, he's been planning to go after Them for a while but this pushed him to act faster than he was planning to. That's the one I'm hoping for." He frowned, not quite meeting anyone else's eyes.

"An' the other?" Hattori prompted after a few seconds, expression grim.

"It's a suicide run," Shinichi said quietly. "Members are taught that you can't leave, and I've seen Them back that up. That ex-member I know is the only ex-member I know of that survived leaving, with the exception of a few people who joined as undercover agents." He took a breath, and Kaito tried to decide whether his expression or the words coming out of his child-sized mouth were more jarring. "If he thinks they've found him, he might be trying to choose the time and place of his death."

Heiji swore quietly.

Even knowing it wasn't true, Kaito couldn't help being chilled. Just the thought

"So if you're right, there's a chance that we have a deadline," Eisuke said.

"If that's what he's doing, yeah," Shinichi said reluctantly. He quickly added, "But it might not be. It's just one theory."

"For what it's worth, I got another," Heiji said. "I'd agree wit' Kudou that it's more'n likely that he picked up a skillset like KID's working wit' criminals. There ain't a lot o' reasons for a law abidin' citizen ta need most o' those skills, let alone all o' them. But if he were really one o' Them, well, wouldn't They've trained that habit he's got of flinchin' at corpses outta him?"

Shinichi nodded. "Probably, yes," he admitted. "So you think it was a different group of criminals?"

"I'm figurin' they're the reason for the flinchin' at corpses," Heiji said. "Ya usually see that from people who either ain't ever seen one before, or ones who have trauma. Since Hakuba's either actually high school age or young enough to pass, they must've started training him young, an' if they wanted 'im gettin' hands-on experience—"

"Then we're looking at someone who saw his first dead body as young or younger than the Detective Boys, but no one told him it was okay to be upset by it," Shinichi finished grimly. "And he might have even been forced to help with the murder."

Okay, holy s***, this is why I am not a detective, who looks at the evidence we have and immediately assumes something this nasty? Kaito thought, having moved from chilled to more than a little nauseous. This is apparently what too many murder investigations does to you, and I want no part of it.

"That's a lot of speculation," Eisuke said. "I mean, it would make sense for criminals to train him that way, but isn't it possible that he just really isn't used to dead bodies?"

"He's solved hundreds of cases, and I'm sure a lot of those were murders," Shinichi said. "There's a point when you have to get professional about it. Especially given the way he acts the rest of the time, it's significant that he can't seem to."

"That's another reason why I think it mighta been that he got trained by somebody as a kid," Heiji said. "The degree ta which he relies on procedure. I mean, there are people who just like followin' rules. But bein' as strict about them as he is? That's usually a sign of a rookie cop, which he ain't. He's solved more cases than I have. But really, the reason rookie cops follow rules is that they don't trust their instincts—and Hakuba wouldn't, if his instincts, from all the way back when he was a kid, were for somethin' other'n bein' a detective."

He's probably right about that, Kaito thought, startled. I wouldn't trust my instincts as a detective, if I were one. Even though I've only been a thief for a little while, I've been a magician for a lot longer, and so my instincts are for how I could pull off a neat trick in any given situation—not whether a person's guilty. I guess it's the same for Hakuba.[CW1]

"That would be true if he was one of Them, as well," Shinichi pointed out.

"It's possible that you're just using yourselves as unrealistic standards," Eisuke said. "I mean, Kudou-san, you're the son of a crime novelist and Hattori-san, you're the son of a police official. You both had an edge in terms of learning to deal with crime scenes. As far as we know, Hakuba was living on his own in London under a false identity when he started solving crimes with Scotland Yard. It's possible that he just never learned to deal with it in any constructive way."

"Do you have any ideas about where he might have come from?" Shinichi asked.

"Another possibility is that he's a runaway from a family like mine," Eisuke said. "I think it's more common for parents involved in intelligence work to be like my dad, and just not tell the kids, but there are stories about parents who know their kids are going into 'the family business' training them when they're kids. In this scenario, his reasons for leaving could have been anything from a normal family argument that escalated to his parents dying."

"His mother's alive," Shinichi said absently. "Takagi mentioned it. I think his father is dead though."

"So, what, you're saying you think he's got secret agent training?" Kaito asked.

"Disguise, escape, combat, breaking and entering without leaving traces…if we weren't comparing him to KID, isn't that what it would sound like?" Eisuke asked.

"Well, at least one of your theories features a possibility that Hakuba isn't irrevocably psychologically damaged," Kaito sighed.

"Sorry, but his actions are not those of a stable person who feels like they have a lot of options," Shinichi said.

"And you keep glaring at Heiji for being less than tactful," Eisuke said with a sigh. "KID, we'll find him and we'll get him help. It's the best we can do."

"If we're right, it wasn't that he got hurt, he came ta ya hurt," Heiji said. "There ain't much ya can do about it, but you ain't the one ta blame, either."

Kaito offered his shiniest version of Poker Face in return for their efforts. "Well, I'm afraid I don't have any incredibly depressing theories, so I'm going to suggest we break for the night and come back tomorrow, hopefully with more conclusive results."

"That would be nice," Shinichi said.

Kaito stood and waved, then slipped through the door quickly enough that none of them would be able to follow the movement. Part of that was to make sure that no one actually tried to follow him—but honestly, he didn't really think they'd try anymore. Mostly, he just wanted to get home and get to work on his other project for the week. He'd spotted a news item about a new exhibition of jewelry at the Beika Museum, and it was both promising and the perfect opportunity to give Hakuba's father the chance he needed to talk to KID.

Jii would disagree with the heist, since he was sure his mother had told him about what happened last month. His mother would probably even disapprove. And the detectives would probably get all huffy about him actively committing crimes while working with them. He couldn't exactly fault them, either—he knew this was a bad idea. But it also needed to be done. So he was going to do it.

Just, without a lot of publicity so he didn't get caught and stopped by his erstwhile allies before the police even got a chance at him.

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A/N: Warning for discussion of: child abuse, harm to children, children being exposed to violence (though really this is DCMK you should be used to that), indoctrination and murder. ….I'm sorry?

Incidentally, all of these poor, screwed-up kid's theories about Hakuba are up for adoption as AU fics if anyone wants to write them. Half the credit for them goes to my lovely beta, miladyRanger, even if she can't remember helping with them because it was after 11 p.m. and she was exhausted, but she gives her permission as well (and denies personal responsibility for your trauma; I meanwhile, accept any credit and/or blame you feel necessary to throw around). I personally think BO!Hakuba (which I've never seen, not by himself, anyhow) and/or ex-criminal!Hakuba could be great fun.

(Yes I am on a mission to give all of you plotbunnies. PM me if you use one of my ideas, okay?)

Please leave a review on the way out!