Don't own Detective Conan or Magic Kaito

Farewell in the Moonlight


Whatever else Shinichi was going to think in this strange fugue state shattered as Haibara's hand suddenly clamped down on his again and she pushed herself as much as possible against his legs. His eyes shot down to see her shaking. "Haibara? Hey! Are you okay?"

"They're here." Her voice was barely audible and Shinichi crouched down to better hear her. "Kudo-kun, they're here."

What? But they'd taken down the Organization! He bit back his questions and slipped off his jacket to drop on top of her, pulling the hood up to obscure her hair and face. He then pulled out his Conan glasses that he'd taken to carrying with him and slipped them on. A push of a few buttons and the infrared vision flickered to life before his eyes. He swept the buildings around them and then –

"Ladies and gentlemen!"

There, on an adjacent building. Single person, too far to be in a good position for media personnel. He switched to night vision, zoomed in, and saw the gun. "Stay near the police," he told Haibara, and he waited long enough for her to nod before tearing off toward the building.

As he ran he pulled out his phone and called Jodie. When she picked up he gave her the relevant information and she agreed to send people his way to help detain the man. They wouldn't be fast enough, but that was alright.

He didn't have anything left to lose.

Sneaking onto the rooftop honestly wasn't the hardest thing he'd ever done. He took the elevator until he was about five levels from the roof and went the rest of the way by foot, inflating a soccer ball when he was a floor away. When he got there the man's gun – a sniper rifle – was trained on the building the Kid heist was taking place in, and he had a second to line up and kick the ball before the man noticed him.

The ball hit its mark and sent the rifle skittering away from the man, stunning him enough for Shinichi to inflate another ball and send it slamming into the sniper's face. As he was bent over and groaning Shinichi was able to close the distance and shoot a tranquilizing dart straight into his neck.

As he waited for the FBI team to arrive Shinichi tied the man up with his and the man's belts and patted him down. He found a paper on the man and quirked a brow as he read it.

Xtmiam tqabmv
Itt wn bpm wbpmza izm owvm
Vwe qa vwb bpm bqum bw nitbmz
Lw ia gwc emzm qvabzckbml
Wvm apwctl jm mvwcop
Zmuiqv nzmm, uioxqm
Ivl bpm kzwea eqtt zmbczv

He blinked at the note for moment before running the first line through various caesarian shifts. With the key found he ran through the entire note again.

Please listen
All of the others are gone
Now is not the time to falter
Do as you were instructed
One should be enough
Remain free, magpie
And the crows will return

While not explicit, it said more than enough for Shinichi. He took out his phone and snapped a picture, first of the message and then of the man.

The rest of the wait he spent on the roof, watching the heist through his glasses and smiling at what little he could see. The squad arrived just as Kid appeared on the roof, to the roar of approval from the audience, and Shinichi shut off the telescopic function to turn and talk with them.

"Glad you caught this guy, Boss," one of them said, and he laughed as he watched the man carefully disassemble the sniper rifle.

"Last I checked I wasn't anything close to your superior, McCoy."

The American grinned at him. "You might as well be. Last I heard, some of the FBI are –"

Whatever the FBI were doing Shinichi would never know as that was when Jodie appeared and all of them came to attention. Shinichi offered her a nod that she returned with a slight smile before he went back to an impatiently waiting Haibara. The only people left as the scene besides them were the police, who shot him a nervous look as they clearly recognized the boy who'd just been banned from participating in heists, but he ignored them to crouch down next to his friend.

"Well?" she demanded when he was level with her, and he smiled and flashed her his phone with the photo of the captured man. Her breath left her in a whoosh.

"I got him," he said needlessly. "He's now detained by the FBI. And," he flicked his thumb to show her the next picture, the encoded message that she decrypted as quickly as he did, "he should be the last of them."

She raised a shaking hand to swipe back to the photo of the captured man, and stared. "It's over?" she asked, and he smiled softly at her.

"It's over."

He didn't say anything as she threw herself at him and cried into his shoulder, only rubbed her back with a gentle hum. When she stopped but didn't release his neck he picked her up and carried her back to Agasa's.


When his windows blew open that night Shinichi threw himself out of bed on the other side more as a survival instinct than any actual thought-out plan, his phone getting knocked off his bedside table along the way. This was apparent when he hit the ground with an oomph and, when he connected the dots on who that could possibly be, groaned into his plush carpet. When a peek over the bed confirmed that it was indeed Kid, perched on his window sill like a demented gargoyle in a top hat, he slowly got to his feet and shuffled over. "Kid?" he enquired, and felt a flash of apprehension as Kid's face remained hidden from view.

"You weren't at the heist tonight." The thief accused, and Shinichi was ready to argue that he was there, what did he –

"You are no longer necessary nor wanted for these heists."

– right. "I was…detained," Shinichi told him, and Kid twitched like he wanted to make a gesture and had forced himself to stop.

"What could have detained you?" he asked, sounding genuinely irritated, and for a second Shinichi was tempted to tell him about Hakuba and Nakamori, about being banned from the heists, and not being needed anymore.

But what if he agreed with them? Kid already had a history of dressing like Shinichi, both to help Shinichi and to mess with him, and what if he started dressing like Shinichi as a simple solution to move around the heist scenes as he pleased after finding a way to let him participate again?

Shinichi wanted to be needed, but he refused to be used anymore.

So instead he took out his phone, got the picture of the sniper from last night, and offered it to Kid. It disappeared from his hand as the thief took it to scrutinize the photo and went so still that for a second Shinichi wondered if he'd replaced himself with a dummy and vanished. "I saw him at your heist and captured him. The previous photo –" Kid swiped to bring that one up "– implied that he was the last free member of the Organization. He's in the custody of the FBI now."

Kid was silent, but Shinichi thought he saw a tremor run down his arm, gone before it reached his hand. "So he's gone? He's not running around anymore?"

"He's not running around anymore," Shinichi confirmed.

And then suddenly there was a thief in his arms trying to hug the life out of him.

Tension flowed in and then out of Shinichi like a wave on a shore before he hesitantly raised an arm to herd the other teen closer to him. Kid followed the direction and loosened his grip on Shinichi, tucking his face into the detective's neck. Shinichi felt a great shudder run through Kid's frame and sighed softly, rubbing Kid's back as he felt liquid drip onto his neck. Him too, huh. These people sure knew how to bring ruin wherever they went.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, Kid trembling occasionally before tightening his grip on Shinichi's sleepshirt and releasing it again. Shinichi didn't say anything, and eventually Kid released a shuddering breath before slumping forward in Shinichi's arms. Shinichi blinked at him, momentarily stupefied, and gently moved him to sit him on the bed.

His monocle was skewed and his hat nowhere to be seen, but Shinichi just smiled and adjusted the eyewear to sit comfortably on Kid's face again, before his hand drifted down to Kid's cheek to brush away the shimmering tear track he saw there. Kid gave him a brief smile and began carefully tucking away his thoughts behind a neutral expression. "Thank you, Meitantei. That was…relieving to hear."

"I can imagine," he said lightly, tugging gently on Kid's hair before letting go and stepping back, missing the way Kid's breath hitched at the action. He nodded to the phone that had reappeared in the thief's hands. "Email that to yourself if you'd like, I imagine you can keep where you got it a secret."

Kid smirked at him even as he unlocked the phone – his hands fumbled on the password for a second and Shinichi smirked back when Kid gave him an almost flustered glance – and started up an email. Shinichi looked away and instead checked his traveling pack. He'd packed it the night before, but had been so out of it from the adrenaline rush of finally destroying the Black Organization that he wanted to make sure he'd packed the right sized clothing.

He had just taken out the suspenders Agasa had remade for him and was contemplating if he really wanted to bring them along when he noticed that Kid wasn't typing anymore and was instead watching him with an amused smile, arms wrapped around a bent knee. He folded the suspenders away with an almost embarrassed huff. "Can I help you?"

Kid's smile widened into a grin. "I would say you've already done more than enough tonight, Meitantei. I should really go." The man got up with a swirl of his cape and slipped the hat that had just appeared in his hand back into place.

Shinichi nodded and watched the thief walk back to his open window. "It was good to see you, Kid," he said, and Kid paused on his window sill. He felt the other's eyes flit back to him for a moment.

"And you, Meitantei," the thief said, and then he was gone.

A quick glance through his email history confirmed that Kid had deleted the message from the sent folder and removed it from suggested contacts, and Shinichi turned the phone back off with a fond smile.

With Kid gone Shinichi considered going back to bed, but he was jittery with the rude awakening he'd received, and so grabbed his laptop and retreated to the library. He had wanted to examine the note a little more, and now was as good a time as any. Once he'd settled onto his couch he opened his laptop and typed in the translated note.

The English seems deliberate, he mused as he stared at it. He searched English and magpie, and read through the nursery rhyme that came up. It wouldn't be a stretch for an Organization that used the Nanatsu no Ko in their communications to use nursery rhymes from other languages.

One for sorrow, seems fitting, he thought grimly before looking a little further. Oh? "Jackdaws, crows and other Corvidae are known to be used instead of magpies in places like America where magpies aren't common," he read out loud.

If you only counted based on the crows from Nanatsu no Ko, it would be "a secret never to be told" or "the devil himself", both also fitting. But add in the stray magpie and it became "a wish".

That still wasn't enough information, he groused, if it was anything at all. It didn't tell him anything about what the secret was or what they wished for. But, before he could try and look deeper into the rhyme, he heard a throat clear behind him and nearly jumped out of his skin, his hands flinching as he stifled the instinct to protect himself. He spun around to see Akai standing there, looking slightly abashed but mostly amused.

"If you're so tired you didn't even notice me coming in then you should be in bed," he admonished, but Shinichi just shrugged back at him.

"Couldn't sleep," he told the older man, and Akai hummed in acknowledgment.

"Mind if I join you then? I'll be leaving shortly."

Shinichi waved him further in and watched him in curiosity. "It's oddly early for you to need to head out." With the stuff that happened with Kid and his research it was only – he checked a nearby clock and grimaced – three in the morning.

"Masumi's somehow managed to wrangle our entire family into going on a trip to the countryside with her and Mouri-san," Akai told him. "I should be back in a week." Shinichi tucked that information away. Less people to make food for, especially as Haibara and Agasa were going camping with the Detective Boys for a week as well, but that also meant Shinichi would be cooking all of the meals he was at home alone.

"Have fun," Shinichi said, and Akai gave him a smile before settling into his chair with a book he'd grabbed from one of the nearby shelves. Shinichi looked back down at his laptop to continue his research and froze.

When his hands had twitched he'd managed to type gibberish onto the document (away from the message fortunately) and align everything to the left. And there, running down his screen, was possibly his last clue.

PANDORA.


Shinichi wished Haibara, Agasa, and the kids a fun time camping and studiously avoided the look Haibara was leveling him. He'd slowly been looking worse and worse as of late, he knew, and his suddenly upswing in health that morning, while relieving, was most likely suspicious to her. But it looked like this time she was going to count her blessings with him and reminded him to eat regularly while she and Agasa were gone.

Once the car was out of sight Shinichi burst into action, settling the house into the state his family used for when it was vacated for a short amount of time. When he finished he grabbed his travel pack and checked it one last time.

Clothes, toiletries, gadgets he might need, identification, and a ticket to Greece. Shinichi smiled and threw the bag on, checking the locks one last time before slipping on his shoes and leaving, locking the door firmly behind himself.

His taxi arrived ten minutes later, as instructed, and he was taken to the airport.

Shinichi didn't know what Kid was looking for, why the Organization had been trying to kill him, what the leader of the Organization "wished" for, or what any of that had to do with something called Pandora, but he was going to find out.

He was waved through security quickly and settled into a seat in the airplane in short order. As he read through a basic introduction to the Greek language, he thought briefly to the people who would notice his leaving. Haibara, Agasa, and Akai, definitely, but they were all adults who didn't need him sticking around for one reason or another, and could support one another like they have been.

Hattori would notice, but that may be some time yet, seeing as the two could barely interact without Hattori getting in trouble with Kazuha – at least that's what Sera had told Akai, who in turn told Shinichi.

Division One might notice, but they had more than enough detectives hanging around these days to pick up his slack.

Kid would definitely notice, but – "no longer necessary nor wanted" – he had Division Two and Hakuba to keep himself entertained.

Shinichi closed his eyes as the plane's engines started up and began to lull him to sleep. It was fine.

No one really needed him anymore.


Shinichi wasn't sure what surprised him more. The fact that his English and what he'd learned of the written language was enough to get him through Greece without much issue, or that the first tiny bookstore he found and asked about a gem associated with Pandora immediately got him a crumbling paperback about obscure Greek myths.

Either way, he spent the next four hours holed up in his hotel room reading the book and hoping no one was dropping dead outside because he'd siphoned away all of their luck.

So it was a gem that reacted to moonlight and granted immortality under special circumstances…honestly, with the life Shinichi has lived, the existence of an immortality stone wasn't as surprising as it could have been.

But how was going to find the stone? Or, more importantly, examine a potential candidate under moonlight?

It was at this point, as he wasn't looking for any trouble in the slightest, that a hand landed on his shoulder. "Hey there, boyo, mind serving as a temporary hostage?"

Shinichi felt a grin creep onto his face and thanked his luck for the first time in a long while. "Only if you don't mind helping me steal a particular gem, Lupin-san."

A familiar face appeared, grinning cheerily back at him. "I'm listening."


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