Chapter Text
Conan’s legs are moving before he consciously realizes it, and they’re chasing after KID because that’s what he does. KID runs, and he follows. That’s how it’s always been. But this time seems different, somehow, and he needs to know why —
(In that case, I shall bid you adieu, Tantei-kun. One phrase is all it takes for Conan's worldview to turn upside down. How had he not noticed that Asano Keisuke was really Kaitou KID?)
Before he can take more than a few steps forward, the kids tackle him, clinging to his arms like they haven’t seen him in weeks instead of just a few hours.
(KID planned that. Conan is almost completely certain that he timed his departure so that Conan wouldn’t be able to follow him.)
Haibara and the professor are only a few steps behind them. The professor looks visibly concerned, even though he knows that Conan can handle himself, but that’s not unusual. He doesn’t like it when Conan disappears abruptly.
Haibara, though — she takes one look at him and immediately a slight furrow appears between her eyebrows as she frowns at him.
He mouths, “Later,” and she nods curtly.
Conan’s not entirely sure what his face is doing, or what she’d seen that had made her worried. He’s not even sure what he’s thinking, honestly.
(He’d been chasing KID because he wanted to capture him…right?)
-----
Okay, so.
Look.
In Conan’s defense.
He’d just finished dealing with a case where a guy decided to leave his corpse to be used in a vampire-themed murder-revenge plot, then he’d been subjected to the Detective Boys screaming their camping songs in his ears for the entire two hour car ride to Gunma. He was exhausted and not feeling particularly charitable towards people faking the supernatural.
And, also, like. There was no reason for Kaitou KID to be at some random cafe in Gunma? There weren’t any big jewels on display nearby, privately or publicly, because Conan kept track of that.
That did not change the fact that Conan was, apparently, a shitty fucking detective, because he hadn’t figured out Asano Keisuke was KID until he was watching KID walk away from him. This, of course, was after Conan had insulted him to his face and more or less told KID that he saw him as nothing more than an occasionally useful chess piece.
(Why was he posing as a psychic, though? Conan had many questions.)
(Though, he supposed, if anyone could credibly fake speaking to the dead, it would be Kaitou KID.)
Anyway. Conan had, in fact, realized that he fucked up.
He just. Wasn’t sure what he could do to fix it.
His relationship with KID had already been a precarious one. They’d met a little over a dozen times, depending on how he counted, and most of the time they’d been adversaries. There were times when they’d worked together, sure, but there had always been a reason for it. Their goals had aligned conveniently, or KID had decided he didn’t want anyone to die, or Conan had blackmailed KID into helping him out. There was no reciprocity, other than Conan not turning KID over to the police. To be fair, that was a pretty big concession for him to make, as a detective.
…It was, right?
Conan considers this conundrum.
Would he turn KID in if he had the chance?
…He wasn’t sure anymore.
The thing was, KID wasn’t really dangerous. Conan was sure that he could be, if he wanted, but he very clearly didn’t. Not when he went out of his way to prevent people from getting hurt, even at the expense of exposing his identity.
Conan did everything in his power to bring murderers to justice. KID was a criminal, but he wasn’t a murderer. Catching him wasn’t a matter of life and death. Even if Conan failed, he’d get another chance, and it was highly unlikely KID would murder anyone in the meantime. The stakes just weren’t very high compared to the murderers he needed to unveil on an almost daily basis.
Was that why chasing him felt different?
“Why are you so quiet today?” Haibara asked him, shattering his reverie into tiny pieces.
She stirred the stew they were cooking over the campfire while the Detective Boys were out hunting beetles. Agasa had volunteered to go with them as a chaperone to keep them out of trouble, but Conan was pretty sure that he’d been just as excited about the beetles as the kids were.
Conan was silent for long enough that Haibara actually glanced up from the stew. She looked at him like she could see right through him, her gaze flat and expressionless.
It only took her a moment to take in his state and come to a conclusion.
She sighed. “You did something stupid, didn't you?”
Conan winced before he could stop himself. The thing was, she wasn’t wrong, as much as he'd like her to be. He had done something stupid. In fact, he had done several stupid things. Some of them had even been in the past eight hours.
Haibara nodded, like he'd said all of that out loud. “Does it affect me?” she asked mildly.
Conan gave the question the consideration it deserved. “...Probably not,” he admitted after a few moments.
“Good.” Haibara shifted her attention back to the stew. “Keep it that way.”
Despite her blunt words, something in the line of her shoulders relaxed slightly, and her hands suddenly seemed steadier.
Oh. She'd thought –
Well, it was understandable. It wasn't as if they'd sat down and talked about what happened on the Mystery Train, and he hadn't exactly had the chance to tell her about the whole Akai/Subaru/Bourbon thing while it was going down. And, well, to be honest, he wasn't really sure if he should have?
It seemed pretty clear to him that she wanted to stay far away from anything related to the Black Organization, and that she would've preferred he do the same. But that just wasn't feasible for him – not so long as he wanted to get back to his original body and his real life.
Haibara didn't have that desire. She was more than happy to spend time holed up in her lab trying to make a cure for her poison in an effort to make amends for her time in the Black Organization, but he doubted that she would ever take it. She was much more likely to stay young – she'd built a whole new life now, and he couldn't see her giving that up to be Miyano Shiho again. It didn't seem like she had anything waiting for her, not like he did.
But Haibara wasn't stupid. She'd seen named members of the Black Organization on the train, and she must have figured out that Conan had needed to make some sketchy deals to get her off the train alive. Had she been waiting for the other shoe to drop all this time?
(Wow, Conan was really doing a great job at fucking up his friendships today. If Ran called, he was just going to let it go to voicemail and blame the spotty reception at the campground later. Based on how today was going, he'd probably end up accidentally answering his Conan phone with his Shinichi voice.)
Conan cleared his throat. “...Will you help me anyway?”
His current conundrum wasn't anything to do with the Black Organization, and it had the added benefit of Conan screwing himself over in a way that he was about eighty percent sure she’d find amusing, so she probably wouldn't mind if he told her.
Haibara stopped stirring the stew again, this time letting the handle of the spoon fall against the side of the pot as she turned to face him. Conan let his sheepishness show on his face, giving his regret and guilt a chance to rise to the surface.
He really hasn't been doing a very good job of keeping her in the loop, especially about things that might affect her. So, maybe…
“It depends,” Haibara said finally, folding her arms across her chest.
…Maybe Conan should have been more open with her about the Black Org stuff?
Conan shook his head internally. No. She didn't need to know, so he would respect her wishes to stay as far away as possible from anything Black-Organization-related.
Instead, he said, “It'll make you laugh at my life choices.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Well, in that case…”
Conan grimaced. Yeah, he'd had a feeling that might work.
Haibara kept her expression blank as he told her about what had happened after they'd been separated. He'd chased after the criminal on his skateboard and narrowly avoided being blown up when they'd somehow managed to hit the engine at just the wrong angle, then used that momentum to jump onto the back of the culprit's motorcycle and distracted them until they'd driven directly into a police box.
After the criminal had been arrested, Conan had trudged into the nearest cafe to borrow a phone off an unsuspecting customer, since both his phone and his means of transportation were shattered into tiny, unusable pieces. Then, of course, because his life was apparently a murder mystery serial, someone had been killed in the café, and it wasn't like he could leave finding the murderer to Yamamura. If it had been Takagi or Megure, then maybe he would have, but – oh, who was he kidding. He was too much of a control freak to let anyone else take charge.
And then the guy whose phone Conan had borrowed introduced himself as a psychic detective. Conan felt his lip curl involuntarily even as he told Haibara about how Asano Keisuke had been surprisingly helpful, if a bit scattered.
Haibara’s face didn’t twitch, her expression flat and distant as he told her how he’d used Asano Keisuke to solve the case more expeditiously. How Conan had ignored his claims of being able to see ghosts until he couldn’t anymore.
(He didn’t mention that his firm certainty that ghosts didn’t exist had wavered, if only for a moment. Somehow, he thought she knew anyway.)
He really should have known that only Kaitou KID could have pretended to be a psychic so convincingly that even Conan himself had considered, for a split second, that ghosts might be real. He didn’t tell Haibara that, either.
Instead, he vaguely implied that Asano Keisuke had been someone he’d met on a previous case, and that he’d been helpful then, but hadn’t said anything about ghosts at the time. KID probably didn't live in Gunma (although that would give him a believable excuse to be there), but he must have been in disguise for a reason. Conan wasn’t about to out him just because he needed a second opinion. Especially not when it was so clear that he’d been trying not to be recognized, to the point that he’d decided that pretending to see ghosts was a good idea.
“...I should have recognized him,” Conan summed up. “I don’t know why I didn’t. I’ve been kicking myself ever since.”
Haibara was silent for a few long minutes, her expression unreadable. Finally, she said bluntly, “You messed up.”
Conan raked a hand through his hair like that would do anything to diminish his self-directed irritation. “Yeah, I know. What do I do about it, though?”
Haibara shrugged. “I'm not sure why you're asking me. All my friends are six years old. If I mess up, they'll forgive me if I apologize or give them some candy.”
Conan considered that. He was pretty sure he'd seen KID eating a croissant or something at the café. Maybe he liked chocolate? Or was that only an Asano Keisuke thing? Maybe KID actually hated chocolate. He had no way of knowing.
…Wait.
Friend?
He could feel Haibara's eyes examining him, calculating but not cold. She nodded once, satisfied that she'd sparked an internal crisis, then pointedly went back to stirring the stew. It didn't really need to be stirred at this point, and they both knew it. She was giving him the space to work through whatever was going through his mind, and he was grateful.
First off, KID was pretty indisputably a criminal. Conan was not friends with criminals. It was that simple.
…Except it wasn't. Because Haibara was, technically, also a criminal, since she was living under a false identity that wasn't government-sanctioned. (Also, there were all the people her drugs had been used to murder. She was at least somewhat culpable for those.) But she wasn't hurting anyone anymore, and it wasn't like she had any other options, really.
…KID didn't hurt anyone, either. His heists were more like magic shows than anything, and half the time he was expressly invited to steal whatever jewel was on display, so he wasn't even trespassing. The worst he'd done was some minor property damage and knocking some people out with his sleeping gas so he could impersonate them.
…Which was exactly what Conan did when he needed to use someone more credible than a seven-year-old to corner a murderer. Honestly, his soccer balls had probably done more property damage than all of KID's heists combined.
Conan frowned. He wasn't sure he liked where this was going.
A rustling sound came from the forest at the edge of the campsite, and Conan's and Haibara's heads snapped towards it in unison, ready to dodge at a moment's notice. Conan relaxed as the Detective Boys and Agasa-hakase made their way out of the forest, talking exuberantly about the various types of bugs they'd spotted.
Oh, good. Perfect timing.
“The stew isn't quite ready yet,” Haibara warned them as they grew closer, ignoring the way that Genta's face visibly fell at her words. She glanced at Agasa wordlessly, and he nodded, ambling over to his car to get out the bowls and spoons (and the marshmallow sticks he'd hidden from the kids earlier). The Detective Boys trundled off to their tents to set their beetles down (Conan sure hoped the tanks were sealed properly) then returned to the campfire to mill around, waiting for the food to be ready.
They were about two minutes away from someone proclaiming they were bored and wandering off to do something dangerous, so Conan decided to nip that at the bud with a small distraction. “Hey, I've got a question for you guys.”
The Detective Boys’ heads swiveled around like their eyes were magnetized to his face, which was kind of creepy.
“Is it a quiz?” Ayumi asked suspiciously.
Conan chuckled. “No, I wouldn't want to cut in on the professor's turf,” he told them.
They perked up again, eyes gleaming with excitement. “Tell us!” Genta demanded.
“What makes someone your friend?” Conan asked. He didn't expect their answers to be exactly what he was looking for, but maybe they'd be useful for triangulation.
The Detective Boys turned to look at him in eerie unison, matching looks of concern on their faces.
“You know you're our friend, right, Conan-kun?” Ayumi asked, brow furrowed with worry.
“Yeah! We're definitely friends!” Genta agreed staunchly.
“Did we do something to make you think we weren't?” Mitsuhiko asked, a little timidly.
Conan waved his hands frantically, ignoring the way Haibara's eyes glinted with mirth at his expense. “No, no, I know you guys are my friends!”
The Detective Boys let out cartoonishly relieved sighs, once again in unison. Did they practice this or something? It was kind of creepy. Then Ayumi paused.
“...Did you make Ai-chan mad again?” she asked knowingly.
Conan winced. He knew he was pretty talented at accidentally pissing Haibara off but he hadn't realized it happened so often that the kids picked up on it. He waved the comment off before responding; he was fairly sure Haibara wasn't mad at him at this exact second.
“I'm just trying to figure out if someone's my friend. You don't know them,” he added, before they could ask.
They did know Kaitou KID, though, obviously. Not the same way that Conan knew him, but they'd met him once or twice. Conan didn't want to distract them by mentioning it, though. He had a feeling that telling them he was wondering if Kaitou KID was his friend or not would severely derail the conversation.
The Detective Boys took his statement at face value and took a few minutes to ponder the question like it was a particularly difficult math problem.
Genta was the first to answer. “Someone you share your favorite snacks with,” he declared confidently.
Conan nodded. He probably should have expected that answer – unfortunately, it wasn't really relevant to his situation.
“Someone who shares their toys with you!” Ayumi jumped in, which also wasn't particularly applicable, unless Conan counted borrowing KID's phone or sharing stolen personnel files, which he probably shouldn’t.
Mitsuhiko looked thoughtful. “I think,” he said slowly, “a friend is someone you like spending time with and talking to. Someone who supports you, even if they don't agree with you.”
Hm. Okay, yeah, that seemed more relevant.
“Thanks, guys,” Conan said absently, mind already starting to chew over their answers. Before any of the Detective Boys could interrogate him about why he was asking, Agasa returned with arms full of plateware and Haibara announced that the stew was ready. They were immediately distracted, clamoring for the first bowl of soup and the best sear by the campfire.
Conan let their voices wash over him as he considered their answers. They were definitely answers from six-year-olds, but he had to admit that there was some merit to them.
He and KID had never really been in a situation where sharing food was feasible. Heists either banned food or they were fully catered — there was no in between. Though, there had been that time at Sonoko’s magic lovers’ forum meet-up, he supposed. Ran had mentioned that Doito Katsuki had examined him after he’d collapsed and given him cold medicine and orange juice.
(Why had he done that? Conan wondered. Had it been to maintain his cover as a medical student? What had been the point of pretending to be a medical student in the first place? Has KID known that they would need someone with that kind of knowledge?)
As far as sharing toys went, he didn't recall ever explicitly handing one of the gadgets Agasa had made him to KID, but he had trusted him enough to shoot a crossbow the second time they'd met. He'd even let KID use his true identity as a disguise more than once, which was arguably a few levels higher on the friendship scale. It was annoying (and dangerous for KID) when he impersonated Shinichi without asking, but … surprisingly, he didn’t mind it as much as he'd expected he would.
(As long as KID stayed away from Ran, that was.)
The thing was, KID was, fundamentally, a good person. Conan knew that much just from interacting with him a couple times. If anyone asked for proof, it was simple to point to the time that KID had saved Senma-san after she jumped out of the helicopter at Sunset Mansion, or when he’d rescued Lupin from Suzuki Jirokichi’s safe without asking for anything in return, or when he'd prevented Genta from getting bisected under the mansion Kichiemon had designed.
Even just looking at his regular heists, it was obvious — he could so easily have poisoned the people he impersonated, instead of drugging them with sleeping gas. It certainly would’ve been more practical; if he'd killed them, there would have been no danger of them waking up in the middle of the heist and blowing his cover. And yet, KID’s heists were one of the (very) few places that Conan could go without stumbling across a murder. As an added bonus, his heists even had mind teasers that were legitimately difficult to solve, except the only consequence to not figuring them out in time was that KID got away with a jewel that he was going to return in a few days anyway. There was pressure to solve the puzzle, sure, but it wasn’t the ‘if I don’t figure out who killed this person then they might kill someone else’ type of pressure.
It was almost… relaxing in comparison.
Upon reflection, Conan found that he would probably be willing to help KID out occasionally if it meant that he could keep that kind of refuge in his life.
Oh, shit.
Did that make KID his… friend?
Conan winced.
…Not after how Conan had acted earlier, probably.