Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan/Case Closed.

Summary: Being on the run while working at the same time to bring down a powerful, criminal syndicate could have been miserable, only Kaitou KID didn't do miserable. Four heads were a lot more interesting if not always necessarily better than one, and that was only just the beginning.

Status: Part 10 of 12

Pairing(s): Kaito x Shinichi centric, minor Hakuba x Ran and hints of Heiji x Kazuha

Countdown to Forever

By V. Shalyr

III

In His Footsteps

Shinichi tensed momentarily out of reflex when the bed dipped behind him but relaxed as a familiar arm slid around his waist.

"You didn't come to my heist," Kaito said, and he could clearly hear the pout in his voice.

Shinichi turned another page of his book though he was only really half reading it. He knew all of Sherlock Holmes's books so well that he could probably recite them from heart anyway. "It's not like I really have a reason to go."

"To see me?"

"I see you every day."

"But it's not as fun without you. I miss having my favorite detective in the audience."

He leaned forward to murmur the last few words in Shinichi's ear, making the detective blush. Staring fixedly at the text in front of him, he mumbled, "You can't really expect me to want to run around chasing you and trying to arrest you after everything that's happened."

"No, I suppose not," Kaito sighed. Reaching around him, he plucked the book from Shinichi's hands and put it on the bedside table before shifting around a bit so he could tuck the detective's head under his chin. "Even Hakuba only half tries these days, and I swear he's really only there to keep an eye out for trouble. I guess the game could only last for so long."

Closing his eyes, Shinichi relaxed into his partner's warmth, just glad that he was back in one piece. He wouldn't say it aloud, but they both knew that he'd only been up waiting for the thief to come home. Kaito was right about Hakuba partly being there to keep an eye on things. The three detectives had agreed amongst themselves that at least one of them should always be at a KID heist in case anything happened, but probably not more than one or else people could start noticing their lack of motivation to actually try and catch the thief. And since Hakuba and KID had the longest running history and it could be suspicious it he suddenly stopped going, he was usually the one who went.

"I heard from Hakuba that your heists are even more like shows now than they were before."

"Of course. Since my detectives aren't going to make things interesting, I might as well take advantage of the respite to please my fans."

Shinichi snorted at that, but the amusement didn't last long. "I assume that since you haven't said anything, the gem wasn't…?"

"No."

"And Snake?"

"Still nothing."

Which was good and bad: bad because that meant the sniper was still at large but good because it meant also that Kaito hadn't come home bleeding. You could only be so lucky for so long when dodging bullets.

"Next week… Are you sure you still want to go?"

Kaito's arms tightened around him. "Yeah… I think it's about time I went back."

Shinichi frowned in concern at the tone of his voice but only nodded. The magician was right. It was probably high time he went back, if only in an attempt to lay his own ghosts to rest.

.

The performance hall was old and showed obvious signs of renovation, the newest of which dated back to the night of Kuroba Toichi's final show. Shinichi had seen the photographs taken afterwards of the wreckage left by the fire. No one could have survived being caught in it.

They had checked in at a nearby hotel late yesterday afternoon and Kaito had left early this morning. Shinichi had been awake—when he was worried, he was almost as light a sleeper as Kaito—but hadn't opened his eyes or said anything. Kaito wouldn't have been sneaking out if he didn't need some time alone to sort out his thoughts and deal with being back at the scene of the tragedy that had forever changed and shaped the course of his life. When people passed away, the loved ones they left behind always needed time to grieve and then move on. But he didn't think the magician had ever really gotten to the "moving on" part, not really. Not if you could look past his jokes and smiles and laughter. KID was, in a way, proof of that. That was the problem when people got murdered. It left so many unanswered questions, so many confused memories and broken dreams.

When breakfast had come and gone and Kaito still hadn't come back, Shinichi finally made his way to the performance hall. And sure enough, he spotted the magician the moment he stepped through the front door.

Kaito, normally so full of unshakable confidence and endless possibility, looked suddenly small and uncertain, huddled in upon himself where he sat in the front row of empty seats. His head hung low and the shadow of his bangs obscured his eyes, leaving only the flat line of his mouth, turned slightly downward at the corners. He looked hurt, Shinichi thought, and it pained him to know just how much the magician was still suffering from his father's death. Or perhaps it pained him even more that he hadn't known until then.

Another reminder that even putting the criminals responsible behind bars could never repair the damage that they'd caused. The Black Organization might be gone, but the world still had yet to recover from its shadows. At least Shinichi hadn't really lost anything that he hadn't been able to get back.

Making his way down the middle isle, Shinichi hesitated then put a hand on the thief's shoulder. "Kaito?"

For a long moment, Kaito didn't answer, didn't stir—barely seemed to breathe. Then, "I can't forget—still dream about it sometimes. Funny how photographic memory can come back to bite you."

He laughed but it sounded incredibly fake and he must have realized it too because he stopped almost right away, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly—carefully.

"Maybe I shouldn't have come after all." I'm not ready.

Shinichi wasn't sure what to say. There were all the usual things of course—that his father wouldn't have wanted to see him like this, that he had to let go sometime, but he knew Kaito knew all that already. Instead, he sat down in the chair next to him and asked quietly, "What was he like?" Talk to me?

There was another long silence then, "He was the best magician ever and he was always doing tricks at home for Mom and me, and I'd bug him to teach me, only he wouldn't show me another trick until I could show him that I'd perfected the last one. There's nothing worse than a trick you haven't practiced enough. And he'd give me puzzles to solve when I got bored—Mom always assigned him the task of keeping me out of the way when she was busy and we'd go out and he'd almost always end up performing for me and the other kids in the park."

He stopped rambling and swallowed hard, closing his eyes and forcing his breath to even out. "Never show your emotions, Kaito, no matter what cards you hold in your hand. Never let it show… He taught me everything I needed to know to be KID, though I didn't realize it at the time—and of course, I've added touches of my own, especially with technology improving as fast as it does."

It made him wonder if his father had known or at least suspected that he wouldn't live to finish what he had begun.

Shinichi wasn't sure Kuroba Toichi had done his son a favor by teaching him how to mask his emotions so well. It seemed like his perfect Poker Face did almost just as much to hide emotions from himself as it did to conceal them from those around him. Still, Toichi had been the original Kaitou KID and had probably done what he thought was best to protect his only child.

Shinichi wondered what it would have been like to meet the man. He suspected that the famous magician would have been much like his son, especially with what Kaito had told him, full of mischief and masks, moonlight and secrets. But perhaps without the darkness that occasionally flickered across Kaito's eyes, a weariness left over from the burden of his father's murder and carrying on the legacy of Pandora.

"If only…" Kaito stopped, gave his head a rough shake and turned away. When he looked back at Shinichi, his wolfish grin had returned and indigo eyes gleamed with a mischief that hid away everything else. "Come on, Shin-chan! I discovered this morning that our hotel has the most amazing view from the roof, though getting up there might be a bit tricky."

Because sometimes, you couldn't allow yourself that kind of dream. Sometimes, you couldn't let yourself look back, not yet. Not unless you wanted the shadows to catch up with you and take you with them into the dark.

.

Shinichi, Hakuba, and Heiji sat around the coffee shop table, various documents containing the images of more than a couple dozen gemstones spread out before them.

"These were all targeted by the original Kaitou KID," Hakuba informed them, marking off several of the stones with a red pen, "and these have all been stolen at one point or another by the current one."

Another several stones were crossed out and they were left with a good couple handfuls of famous jewels. The three detectives sat staring broodingly at the array. They had spent the past couple months researching gemstones with legends that bore even a vague resemblance to Pandora and the papers upon the table contained the results of their labor. By silent agreement, they hadn't told Kaito about it yet, not wanting to get his hopes up. They checked the gemstones that they could and Shinichi would try and subtly direct Kaito's heist plans towards the stones they couldn't so easily get legal access to. Shinichi had personally asked Sonoko and gone to check all of the extensive collection of relevant stones owned by the Suzuki Family, but so far they had still had no luck.

"That still leaves round about a couple dozen stones," Heiji sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Maybe we're going about this all wrong."

Hakuba raised his eyebrows skeptically. "What do you mean?"

"Think about it. We don't even know for sure that this Pandora actually exists. But we have to keep looking because there are still people out there willing to kill for it."

"Your point?"

"If we can just catch the people—person—we know is killing to find it, it won't matter anymore if the gem is actually found, at least not right away."

"That won't stop Kuroba from looking."

"No, but we would be able to stop worrying about people shooting him."

"It's not that we don't know that, Hattori," Shinichi reminded him. "It's just that even with the information my father gave us, we're no closer to finding Snake than we are to locating Pandora. If anything, we know more about Pandora since we have discovered a bunch of gems that it's not."

"Right," Hakuba sighed, swirling the tea around in his cup, "about Snake… It seems that there might have been a suspicious character around at the last heist. Nothing happened so I didn't find out about it until later when I heard some of the men talking about it."

Shinichi tensed. "Was it him?"

"I don't know, but to be safe, I'm going to assume that it was."

"Which means we should all be on high alert from now on," Heiji concluded. "Be ready to call in the proper backup."

Hakuba nodded. "Leave it to me. With the Organization gone, I was able to reopen investigations on the KID shootings. One thing though—Kudou, do you think you could try to keep Kuroba out of Ekoda for awhile?"

"Ekoda? But why?"

"Well, I'm not a hundred percent sure, but it seems logical that if our unsavory acquaintance has begun looking for KID, he'd start there. I also have strong suspicions that a recent robbery in the area might have been carried out by him."

Shinichi left the coffee shop in a daze. It always felt a bit surreal when Hakuba nad Heiji agreed on anything, let alone talked like they were actually good friends—which Shinichi was pretty sure they were even if they preferred not to admit it to one another. In a way, they almost seemed to balance each other out, one overly cautious and methodological and the other more straightforward and instinctual. Actually, it was kind of funny, or maybe that was just Kaito putting in his two cents even in the absence of his actual person. That seemed to be happening a lot lately.

Speaking of Kaito, it worried him that he hadn't seen or heard from him all day. Of course he knew that the magician thief was more than capable of taking care of himself, but something about today felt wrong all of a sudden. He'd just had this odd sense of foreboding ever since Hakuba had mentioned keeping Kaito away from Ekoda. If only he could remember—oh, damn. He'd been half asleep still when Kaito had left the house that morning, but if he thought hard, he was pretty sure he could remember the magician saying something about scouting out a new gemstone that was just coming out on display for the first time in six decades.

At the Ekoda Museum.

And in the end, worried or not, you couldn't stop Kaito from being Kaito—beneath his various disguises at any rate. Come rain or shine, snipers or no sniper, his heists always continued as planned.

.

The Midnight's Tear gleamed in its simple, white gold setting in sharp contrast to the black velvet beneath. Shinichi examined the large diamond with morbid interest, wondering how much blood lay in its history already before turning his attention back to the members of the Kaitou KID Taskforce scattered around the room. It was the first KID heist he had attended in months and it had taken more than a little convincing to get Inspector Nakamouri to let him in. Really, Shinichi would have preferred not to have to endure the man's deafening roars and open dislike for him. But he was not going to let Kaito get hurt either.

On the bright side, the inspector was happy to ignore him as long as he "didn't get in his way", and if Shinichi didn't seem to be trying very hard to capture the criminal, Nakamouri wasn't going to complain.

"I told you that I don't want any of the museum staff in the museum!" the inspector was bellowing, gesticulating with great irritation at the unfortunate policeman, "I don't care if they've already had their face checks! They'll only give that damned thief more material to work with!"

"I'm sorry, sir, I'll ask them to leave right away."

"What? You can't just leave now! KID's scheduled to arrive in five minutes! Just—put them somewhere out of the way and tell them not to move an inch until this is over."

He continued to rant but Shinichi was no longer paying attention. Because he'd caught a glimpse of a shadow out in the corridor, a familiar shadow dressed like one of the police officers. And it hadn't been Kaito's.

It was Snake.

Damn, Shinichi cursed, stamping down on the panic that was trying to rear its ugly and intensely unhelpful head. They were prepared for this, he reminded himself. They had been preparing for it ever since Kaito had declared his intended heist target. Digging his cell phone from his pocket, he hit the necessary keys, not taking his eyes from the corridor doorway though he could no longer see his target.

"Hello?"

"Hakuba," Shinichi hissed, not bothering with pleasantries. "He's here."

It took only a moment for the other detective to realize who he was talking about. "I'm on my way."

Tucking his phone away, Shinichi double checked to make sure he had all his equipment then carefully made his way towards the exit. He'd thoroughly scouted out the layout of the museum days before and it didn't take much imagination to figure out where their target would be headed. After all, KID was famous for his aerial escapes.

.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Hands stilled upon the gun as narrowed eyes searched the seemingly deserted rooftop. Eyes with more than a touch of madness in them, Shinichi thought, pressing further back into the shadows.

"Who are you?"

Shinichi remembered that voice and he had to bite down on his anger. He needed to be calm. Kaito wouldn't let his anger show so easily. Taking a deep breath, he raised the voice changer to his mouth and chose his words with care. "Forgotten me so soon?"
Snake's eyes flew wide in rage and he spun, searching for the source of the mocking voice. But Shinichi had planned all this out very carefully. He had speakers scattered all throughout the building. Hakuba and his men were on their way, but first thing was first. He had to lure Snake back downstairs.

"You!" The man's voice slid through the silent night in a low hiss like that of the serpent whose name he bore. "You ruined everything. But this time, you aren't going to get away."

"Funny, I was just thinking the same about you."

.

Kaito noticed almost right away that something was amiss.

Oh, there was nothing obviously wrong. His Taskforce were as lively as ever—or had been anyway before he'd glued the soles of all their shoes to the ground. It was quite funny watching Nakamouri struggle out of his shoes, snarling as his men rushed after KID in their white socks which would probably not be white anymore when this night was over. But anyways, he digressed.

The problem was that he couldn't seem to find any of the usual detectives, and he knew Shinichi had planned on being here. His concern growing with every second that passed suspiciously detective-less, Kaito dispensed with most of his usual tricks, appropriated the gemstone in question, and went in search of something much more precious to him. Though he couldn't help but glance at the stone in his hand as he made his way to an open window, and that was enough to make him pause for just a moment. Of course, things always turned up when you least expected. It was practically a law of nature.

"Tantei-kun?"

Shinichi turned towards the figure in white that had landed upon the railing beside him and smirked, that triumphant, satisfied smirk that tended to put in an appearance whenever one of his truly challenging cases had been closed. Below in the streets, he could just pick out that single, all-important patrol car pulling away from the museum. With Hakuba and his trained reinforcements along with the preparations laid out by the three most famous up-and-coming detectives, the entire operation had been almost surprisingly easy. Add some of the hiding skills Shinichi had picked up from Kaito and his tranquilizer watch, and even a mad sniper could only do so much.

"We got him."

Indigo eyes stared at him for a moment, unreadable behind his glinting monocle. Then Kaito's jaw dropped just a fraction and he jerked his head back around to stare at the departing police car. "You mean you—Snake—he's…"

"Never going to bother us again," Shinichi finished, his elation breaking into an ecstatic smile as he threw caution to the winds and threw his arms around the master thief. "We've got more than enough evidence to convict him. He's going to spend the rest of his life paying for his crimes."

For several seconds, Kaito stood frozen in disbelief. Then a real smile settled onto his lips and he wrapped his arms around the detective's waist, returning the embrace with equal enthusiasm if not more.

Shutting his eyes, Shinichi let his head rest on Kaito's shoulder. "It's over."

"Not quite yet, but it will be soon."

Puzzled, Shinichi straightened to look at him. In answer to his silent question, Kaito snapped his fingers and cradled that night's heist target in his hand for a moment before lifting it so Shinichi could see the moonlight reflected in its crystalline depths—crystalline depths which suddenly burned a bright, bloody crimson.

Shinichi gasped. "You—it's—you found it!"

"What a coincidence, huh? I guess Lady Luck favors me after all." Kaito smirked and made the jewel vanish once again. "Now all we have to do is find a way to destroy it. Well, I have to go. My adoring fans are waiting for my getaway. I'll meet you at home?"

"Like I'd be anywhere else."

"Of course. And if you see Hakuba, tell him I said thanks." His manic grin back in place, Kaito threw him a mock salute, tugged down the brim of his white top hat, and stepped backwards into freefall.

.

Weeks later, all the papers were speculating on Kaito KID's sudden disappearance for the second time from the international stage. Rumors flew everywhere, people speculating on all the possible reasons—injury, weariness, an unpublicized capture, or even death. Shinichi just smiled and was happy in the knowledge that this time, at least, that was not the case.

Yet even though Snake now had a permanent home in prison and Pandora's fragments lay at the bottom of the sea, a convincing fake having been returned to the original owner of the Midnight's Tear, Kaito's good mood seemed to falter. He hid it well, but Shinichi had come to know him too well not to notice. He began spending more time by himself, disappearing usually for an hour or so during the night. Shinichi finally found him one Sunday evening standing in full KID regalia on the top of the Ekoda clock tower.

Kaito didn't move as Shinichi moved up to stand beside him, but a few minutes of silence later, he spoke. "Do you…do you think he's proud of me?"

Shinichi didn't have to ask who he meant. "I'm sure he is."

The magician's shoulders relaxed a little and he blinked rapidly as if to ward off tears. Still, his eyes when Shinichi managed to catch them seemed a bit too bright.

"I'm going to miss it," Kaito said a little wistfully, looking down at the white top hat in his hands. "Planning heists, the thrill of the chase, messing with my wonderful taskforce… I might have started being KID because of what happened to my father, but I sure as hell had a lot of fun. I'm going to miss being KID."

"You don't have to, you know."

Kaito glanced sidelong at his companion in surprise. Not quite meting his eyes, Shinichi reached out to tug the hat gently from his grasp and perch it back on top of his head. "You might not go on heists anymore—and god knows how many more years of you Nakamouri's heart could take—but you'll always be KID. He's too much a part of who you are."

The magician considered this for a moment then grinned, wrapping an arm around Shinichi's shoulders. "That's my Tantei-kun, correct as usual!"

TBC… (next chapter, II Like No Other)

AN: Thank you for reading and please review.