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The thief didn’t look up. Though he had been the one to come over to the other’s house, he didn’t want the detective to see him like this…
As he recalled the events from earlier that night, the tears wouldn’t stop. He could still feel the hand of the man he had tried to save, just before his grip had…
A choke escaped him and he lowered his head even more.
“There was nothing I could do…”
If he were honest with himself, and he wasn’t usually, he actually cared a great deal more for KID then just simply as a friend. There was a lot of internal debate with himself over this and why it wasn’t a good idea, yadda yadda… There was just this feeling he got when it came to the thief, something he hadn’t felt with anyone else before.
“I know you don’t but you also have to remember that I don’t want something to happen to you either.” He was still playing with Kaito’s hair, eyes still off staring at the wall across from them, frustrated with himself because damn it he needed to just let KID know exactly what he was feeling and couldn’t. At least not on his own.
Suddenly the magician’s hold on him loosened, and he blinked. Pulling his head away where it had been resting on his counter part’s, curious (and maybe a little confused) blue eyes watched the magician as he asked his question. Ah, well… That was a bit of a loaded question now wasn’t it?
“Mm, that is a question for the ages now isn’t it?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light and not at all nervous. For Shinichi was never a nervous sort right? Right. Maybe. Shame he wasn’t the smooth sort of personality KID could often be.
“… I suppose it does seem weird, huh? A detective, especially one who seems so righteous, caring for a thief instead of putting him away behind bars. Wanting to get to know the person who pretends to be a phantom… That’s not things normal detectives do, right? So maybe there’s something wrong with me. Or at least I ask myself that a lot sometimes.”
A heavy sort of sigh left him, moving his gaze from the still hidden face to once more look at the wall. This time though he kept himself from leaning against the master thief.
“But then, I guess that’s the difference. I’m not a normal detective. I’m not normal no matter how much I want to be, no matter how much I once tried to be. And it’s funny, you know? All I wanted was to fit in, to be normal, to stop being this person no one seemed to like because I wasn’t like them. And sure, pretending to be this arrogant, self serving sort of prick seemed to help a bit but it wasn’t me and it wasn’t all that fun.
"Then one night Megure asks me to do something, go up in a helicopter with him. There’s this thief who’s trying to steal a clock tower, wants me to help try and catch him because this clock tower is important. And it’s not my usual sort of thing but why not. Anything to help make myself fit in, feel better. And it’s fun. Figuring out this guy’s every move is a challenge and it’s fun and knowing that I had him there at the end, revealing his trick with a simple bullet. And for the first time in my life I feel like I know myself."
Oh god he word vomiting at him, couldn’t bring himself to shut up but… It was like that question had just opened up this dam he couldn’t fix, didn’t want to fix. There was so much as to why he cared for this thief and he wanted him to know all of it.
"That was it, afterwards. I didn’t try and chase him again after that because I’m a homicide detective, stopping the killers and saving lives is my thing no matter how much I enjoyed that night. Then I got myself in trouble, left my best friend behind at an amusement park and I could have died that night. I wanted to die that night. Instead I managed to hit that lucky minuscule percentage that would instead age me back ten years and I became Conan Edogawa.
And don’t know you know, I met that same thief again one night on the top of a hotel. I didn’t know it was him at first, of course not how could I. But this thief he did something no one had at this point. He treated me not like a child but as an intelligent human being. And it kept happening. Every meeting it was like he knew there was more then met the eye and he treated me like everyone else. Respected my intelligence, treated me like very few had in my life a-and…”
And his voice was breaking, had started to around the time he confessed he had hoped to die that night. When he’d been told that pill was going to kill him there had been so much relief in him that night he could have cried, probably would have had the concussion not made him lose consciousness. He was trying hard to keep himself together for this thief who needed him, he was supposed to be the strong one right now!
It was just so hard to when he was confessing so much to said magician. And some of the things he said not even Ran had known, at least not consciously.
Kid remained silent while the other spoke, not wanting to interrupt the sort of rambling Shinichi had started. He had asked and he wanted to listen. Couldn’t say he was happy about all the talk of the other thinking he wasn’t normal, even if a part of him knew that being intelligent and having an interest in something most didn’t, a passion, didn’t exactly help in connecting with people. Gained fans and earned attention, maybe, but also formed a gap, a distance between oneself and others that couldn’t quite be crossed without being able to put aside what was causing the gap long enough to at least form a bridge, a separate connection that didn’t have to do with the direct cause of the distance, that one could use to get closer.
Both as Kaito and Kid, he knew that feeling very well. However, he was much better at putting on masks than Shinichi. Made it easier for others to be around him, but harder for them to actually know him. A magician, a trickster who was as likely to pull a prank out of thin air as he was a rose. A thief, a gentleman, polite to almost everyone, but remaining a mystery to all but a very, very small number of people.
A smile started to rise when the detective described the clock tower experience, however.He’d held that ‘heist’ to preserve a memory he had with Aoko, and had inadvertently created another memory of meeting someone he now cared about attached to it. Well, sort of meeting, anyway. They hadn’t seen each other’s faces, nor had they even really learned each other’s names, though he had looked into it after the fact. That night was just the experience of going up against someone challenging, someone who had predicted almost all of his moves. It hadn’t been the first time someone had done it, but most at least had known about the thief to begin with. From what he could tell from what he’d heard later, Shinichi had just come and interfered on a whim, and still completely managed to throw him off, though he did still manage to complete his purpose.
But smile quickly fell and he could feel his blood turn cold at the mention of wanting to die.
No matter how much Kaito had been hurt, no matter how broken he’d gotten, how depressed he felt, death was never welcome in his thoughts. Escape, yes. To run away from it all, to forget, yes. But never to abandon life.
Though, he did have to wonder why that was. As lonely of an existence he led, and as much pain and guilt he often felt, why hadn’t he ever wished for death? Not suicidal, which might also be expected of someone like him, but not even the general ‘I’d be happy if I were to die right now’. Even before he actually had a purpose as Kid in living. When he’d drawn back from the world after his father had been taken by death, never once did he himself want to follow after him. It wasn’t as if he particularly valued his own life either. He threw himself into danger constantly, with his job in general and just in protecting others without ever once considering himself, beyond that fact that he would need to try and stay alive long enough to keep someone safe.
Kid’s musings almost distracted him from the rest of what Shinichi was saying, but the broken words kept his attention. By he end, he was holding the detective tight again.
…How broken we both are, that just having someone else treat us differently than what we’re used to can affect us so much….
Shinichi had given him plenty of bridges, and he was still being a coward and barely giving him the one of affection and comfort.
The tiredness was pushed back as much as he could force it. Sleep slurred words weren’t fit to respond to something like that.
”…I treat people how it seems they want to be treated. Even if you looked like a child, you figured out the riddle and came with every intention of getting me caught. Even if you tried to act like it was a coincidence, it was fairly easy to see you were too bright for that to be the case. I’m not exactly one to ignore when someone decides to take things seriously, even if I might not have known that ‘child’ wasn’t as young as he appeared to be at that time. I’m not exactly surprised by someone not being normal, tantei-kun.“
Though later, yes, he’d been doing it with more of a purpose…
The thief hesitated before speaking again, lowering his head and clutching at the other’s shirt. Shinichi had opened up so much, probably too much. And it made him want to give him something in return. Not his name just yet, though. He would do that when the timing was better, and he didn’t feel like that time was now. Nor could he give away his motives. And he’d already given away pain he hadn’t meant to. However…
”…You say I’m pretending to be a phantom. Really…. it is true, though. I’m a ghost.“
He swallowed thickly. He had to get this out, at least, before he changed his mind and let caution and sleep make him stop.
"The ghost of the first Kid.”
Moonlight Archive 