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

Pairing: KaitoxShinichi

Chapter Rating: T

Warning: None

Collection Summary: No matter where or what they are, their lives are always entwined. KaiShin stories in fantasy settings.

Chapter Summary: As an archeologist, Shinichi dedicated his life to uncovering the mysteries of the lost empire. His search, however, leads him to a stranger he feels he should know and the remnants of a terrible magic.

Remnant of a Lost Age

[Archeology Verse]

Part 3

It was a beautiful flower. And it was unlike anything Shinichi had ever seen before. Of course, since he'd never had much interest in flowers beyond what their presence might indicate about the climate of a place, that wasn't saying much. Still, it was a clue, and Shinichi knew how to make clues become more clues.

With both Kaito and Shinichi needing answers of different kinds, the two spent the next two weeks secluded inside the largest library in the city.

They had taken over one of the reading corners available in the library for their work. Shinichi's end of the table was heaped high with botany textbooks and encyclopedias on flowers through the ages. He had also found three books on flowers that bore special meaning to the ancients and how they were used for ceremonies and symbolism, yada yada yada. If he hadn't already been well versed in the lifestyle of a researcher, he might have found the hill of books daunting. But Shinichi was of the opinion that too much information was better than no information when trying to find something elusive. Sure, some info could be misleading, but that was where you used your brain to figure out which facts were helpful and which were not.

Kaito's table, on the other hand, was heaped even higher with biographies, autobiographies, newspapers, history books, magazines, news clippings, and even a few old school year books.

"You weren't kidding when you said this guy was always in the media," he said. "Man, it's going to take forever to read through all this."

"Guess you'd better get started then."

-0-

He dreamed that he was in a library—a different library from the one he had been in. It was both much larger and much grander, and he felt like he knew it. Knew it the same way he knew his own apartment. Yet he also knew that he had never seen it before.

He was sitting at a reading table much as he had been earlier in what was rapidly beginning to feel like another dream. This table, however, stood beside a tall, arched window that looked out upon a courtyard complete with lush flowerbeds, stone walkways, and a bubbling fountain surrounded by stone benches set far enough away to avoid any spray.

Sighing, Shinichi looked down at the book he'd been reading. It was a collection of short mysteries by various authors originating from the towns and villages in the great mountains to the north. Normally, it was easy for him to lose himself in literature of any kind. Mysteries in particular had always fascinated him. It was the puzzle—the process of taking a myriad of strange and seemingly inconsequential things and piecing them together into a whole, understandable picture. He loved that process. Today though, even his favorite type of literature was failing to keep his attention.

Then again, it was always like that on this day of the year.

"I knew I'd find you here."

Not having heard anyone approach, Shinichi started in surprise, but he recognized that voice. Turning, he looked up into a familiar pair of warm, indigo eyes. The laughter that usually sparkled in those sharp eyes was absent today, however. Instead, they regarded him with a quiet concern and sympathy that made Shinichi look away.

"I know it's far past time to move on," he said quietly, gazing unseeing at the pages of the book he had been trying and failing to read. "I mean, it's been ten years, and it's not like I even remember them all that well, but I just…"

He heard the scraping of chair legs against the library's stone floor as Kaito pulled out the chair across the table from him and sat down. Then calloused hands reached across the table to grasp his own, their grip firm but gentle. Reassuring.

"They were your parents," Kaito said, giving his hands a squeeze. "It's natural that you still miss them no matter how long it's been. It's not something you need to be ashamed of."

"I know. And it's not that I'm ashamed or anything. I just…" Shinichi trailed off, not sure how to put the turmoil in his mind into words. Then again, he always felt like this on this particular day of the year—the anniversary of the day his parents' coach had skidded over the edge of a cliff in the middle of a storm.

They had been on their way back to the empire's capital city from a trip to a remote town. His father, having been a writer, had traveled to that town to gather materials for a novel he'd been working on. They had traveled to the town with a theater troupe with which his mother had been performing, but they had been returning on their own because they had promised Shinichi that they would be home for his eighth birthday. In the end, Shinichi supposed that that was the problem. It wasn't just that he missed his parents. It was that he couldn't help feeling as though, in some ways, it was his fault that they had had that accident. It made him feel all the worse that, in all honesty, he could only barely remember his parents. After all these years, it was guilt more than grief that haunted him on the anniversaries of their deaths, and that realization only compounded the feeling. It made him feel like he had betrayed them somehow even though common sense told him that he was being ridiculous.

"I just wish that things were different," he murmured, though even he couldn't have said exactly which things he meant, be it what had happened or the way he felt about it or something else entirely. Or perhaps he meant all of it.

Kaito gave Shinichi's hands another squeeze then stood up, pulling the smaller boy up with him. "Come on. I didn't come here to watch you brood. I'm here to take you out to lunch."

The moment faded, and Shinichi blinked open bleary blue eyes to find himself still sitting at a reading table with his head pillowed on an open book. Only this was no longer the reading table in that strangely familiar yet alien library with the stained glass windows and fountain courtyard outside. No, this was a more ordinary library. One he knew he had visited countless times since he'd begun his forays into archeology (but he'd gone to that other library countless times too. But how could that be?).

Sitting up straight, he looked around, disoriented and confused. For an instant, the dream seemed reality and this place a faded imitation in a world that shouldn't be. That made no sense though, and the truth quickly reasserted itself.

He was researching flowers that held significance back during the age of the old magic empire, and his parents were both alive. His father was the editor for a travel magazine, and his mother was a singer, not an actress.

He shook his head, frowning. That dream… It had been so real—more like a memory than a dream. He could still remember the way the sunlight slanted through the panels of stained glass and the dry texture of the pages in the book he had been reading.

"Are you all right?"

Shinichi jumped, head jerking up to find Kaito watching him from across the table. He'd all but forgotten that the magician was there.

For an instant when their eyes met, Shinichi was back in that other library, but the moment passed just as quickly as it came. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I'm just tired," he said and tried to ignore the feeling that he was trying to convince himself.

"Then we should call it a day," Kaito declared. "It's about dinner time anyway."

Rising, he waved a hand over the books and papers he had been perusing. The whole lot vanished without so much as a shimmer, presumably returning to wherever it was he had gotten them from. Shinichi looked around quickly to make sure there was no one around who might have seen the display. There wasn't. By the time he turned back to the table, his own research materials had vanished too.

"I was going to borrow some of those," he protested only to be met with a raised eyebrow.

"They'll still be here tomorrow," Kaito pointed out. "We've spent more than enough time buried in paper for one week. And don't give me that look. You didn't fall asleep reading because you're well rested."

Well, Shinichi couldn't really argue with that, especially as he found himself covering a yawn.

Outside, the evening was a warm one, and so they found themselves an outdoor table at a small but classy restaurant that served chicken, fruit, and vegetable skewers. All of them, even the fruits, had been seasoned with spices. Kaito devoured his skewers with gusto, praising their vivid and energizing flavors. Shinichi, however, found he'd finished two and a half cups of water before he'd finished one chicken skewer. Taking a deep breath, he picked up his next skewer in one hand and preemptively retrieved his water glass in the other, wishing that the ice cubes hadn't all long since melted.

He was looking at the water in his glass when the translucent liquid seemed to come to life. It flowed up and twisted together only to flare out and pull in until it had become a perfect rose of pure ice standing in his water cup as though it was a vase. The water that had not become part of the ice rose now chilled about its long, thorn free stem.

He stared at the rose then up at Kaito. "Did you…?"

The magician only grinned and swept his hand out in a grandiose gesture. "You looked like you could use some ice."

Shinichi nodded slowly, but, in his mind's eye, he was seeing another glass of water on a very different table. A fog white, stone table, round and elegant. It stood on a balcony overlooking a splendid rose garden.

"Flower for your thoughts?"

Then he blinked, and the image was gone.

-0-

That night, Shinichi dreamed of a field of pearl white flowers that glowed with their own soft light beneath an evening sky. He had never seen such flowers before (or had he? Warm and smooth like blown glass…). They glimmered like an ocean of stars, stretching away from the house and all the way down to the gleaming waters of a lake. In fact, the entire island upon which the small but elegant house stood was carpeted in those luminous blossoms. Standing on the balcony outside the master bedroom (well, the only bedroom actually), Shinichi could see all the way down to the water and beyond to the far shore of the lake where a wall of trees, all tall and topped with luxuriant crowns of deep green leaves marked the edge of the forest.

This was Crescent Lake, so named because of the perfectly round island that sat just off its center, giving it a crescent-like shape when seen from above. It lay in the heart of House Kuroba's lands, and it was said that its waters had powerful magical properties. No one who was not a Kuroba was allowed to set foot in this inner sanctuary of their estate.

Well, no one except a Kuroba or a Kuroba's spouse.

The thought brought a soft flush to Shinichi's cheeks, and he clasped his hands on the balcony railing, gazing down at the flowers like starlight and moonlight spun into flora forms.

He wasn't either a Kuroba or married to one. He wasn't even noble born. He had been adopted into House Vin, but he was still the orphaned child of an actress and a novelist. He didn't have the right to be standing here.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

He felt a presence come up behind him. A moment later, a pair of strong arms wrapped around his waist from behind and pulled him back against the newcomer's chest. The feeling was familiar and very welcome. Shinichi relaxed instantly, allowing himself to snuggle more comfortably into the taller man's embrace.

"It is," he agreed, though he felt that beautiful was simply too inadequate a word for the pure splendor and deep sense of tranquility of this place. Simply being here seemed to wash away tensions and worries alike. Even his own sense of displacement seemed to grow more distant and unimportant the longer he stood here.

"Why did you bring me here?" he asked quietly because all words said in such a place at such times must be said softly. He tilted his head back to peer up into those sharp, indigo eyes he loved.

He was met with a smile and a gleam of mischief and something else—something warm and tender yet fierce and unbending all at the same time.

All Kaito said, however, was, "I wanted you to see this place."

Which really didn't answer any of Shinichi's questions, but he supposed he had expected as much. Kaito never was one for straight answers. He delighted in spinning riddles. And while it could be frustrating, Shinichi loved that about him too.

"We're not going to get in trouble for being here, so you can stop worrying," Kaito murmured into his ear as though he'd read Shinichi's mind. "I got permission to bring you here."

Shinichi shivered at the sensation of warm breaths tickling the shell of his ear. Then Kaito's words truly registered, and he blushed. Kaito had gotten permission to bring him here? Did that mean what it sounded like it meant?

"What's the matter?" Kaito asked, tone growing concerned as he noticed the way Shinichi had suddenly gone tense. "I thought you'd like to have some time away from the capital with everything that's been going on. But if you'd rather go somewhere else— "

"No! No, I want to be here," Shinichi said quickly then blushed. Despite that, he turned around in Kaito's arms and leaned up to brush a quick, chaste kiss across the taller boy's cheek. "I mean, thank you. For sharing this place with me."

Kaito's arms tightened around him as the magician leaned down to bump noses with him, grinning. "You're very welcome. Though I have to admit, I didn't bring you out here just for your sake."

"Oh?" Shinichi quirked an eyebrow at him, noting the wicked twinkle in those indigo eyes. "I don't suppose you'd care to share why else you brought me out here?"

In answer, Kaito closed what little distance there was left between them to capture Shinichi's lips in a deep, heated kiss that had Shinichi all but melting in his arms. One kiss became two then four. Then Kaito had scooped him up and was carrying him back into their bedroom.

-0-

Shinichi stared at the ceiling of his hotel room for what felt an eternity, heart pounding and face flushed. Several minutes of slow, deep breaths had him gradually relaxing, but the images continued to dance before his eyes.

Those dreams…memories? But they couldn't be memories. Why would he even consider that they might be? Yet he couldn't quite make himself believe they were just dreams either. Well, whatever they were, they had been so vivid, and they had told him things… Things he knew but couldn't know. Things he half thought he believed but didn't dare. Something was going on here, something much greater than just whether he was going mad, and Shinichi needed to figure out what it was.

And yet, for the first time in his nineteen years of life, he was afraid of what the answers might turn out to be.

-To Be Continued-