Let's Talk

Warning: Lots of introspection ahead!

"Great parenting happens when you start controlling yourself and stop controlling your child." ~Rick.

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, everything belongs to Gosho Aoyama. I'm just playing around with the universe and its characters here, thanks.

The wind was blowing through his hair as he made his way to the front door, the school bag dangling off one shoulder languidly, the sun stroking his hair and face carelessly. The thoughts were swirling around in his head. He'd said goodbye to Aoko just moments before, her living in the house right beside his making the walk home easier with the company she provided. Recently, though, it had taken on a rather unpleasant tinge, seeing as he hadn't been in top form at all ever since…

A sigh escaped him. The heist had been a week before; only a week had passed and yet it felt as though half an eternity had gone by. His eyes turned downwards as he stopped on the porch.

Bitterly, he contemplated what it had cost him, that little prank his mother called a "heist". She'd been disguised as his father – or, at least he'd surmised as much from her implied utterances when she'd been at home the week before – and come to the heist as "Corbeau". Then, she'd employed an assistant to help her escape. The nerve…!

What she'd done was to test him, at least he'd interpreted her acts like that. It had been an experiment to see what he could do, what he'd be able to counter and adapt to while in his own role as phantom thief. Instead, it had given him the shock of his life, and sleepless nights and nightmares to boot.

A week had passed and he hadn't even slept for longer than two hours at one time. Another sigh, and his hands grasped the keys to insert the right one into the keyhole and open the door. Upon entering the flat, he closed the door, threw down his school satchel and pawned off his shoes. "I'm back", he announced to the empty silence that greeted him.

Allowing his shoulders to slump now, he felt the tension roll off in waves. His performance in school had naturally suffered, too, but what was worse was that all his classmates and thus, also his most immediate friends, had noticed that something was off with him. They hadn't known what had caused it, of course, but he had the suspicion that at least Hakuba had an idea of what had transpired to affect him this much.

He brought up his left hand and snapped his fingers, changing his clothes with a poof of smoke. An entertainer to boot, ne? A slightly bitter smile graced his lips as he thought back to his inspiration and role model, while entering the living room. Stopping in front of his father's portrait, he looked up reverently.

"Hello, Otou-san. I'm back home." His smile turned nostalgic. Reaching out a hand, he touched the frame tenderly. "Okaa-san has done quite a lot to stir up things back here, don't you think?" He still didn't know what to think.

Had she not known what it would do to him to see his father there? In person? Or even just person disguised as his father? His thoughts tumbled over one another in confused acceptance of the situation as it had happened. What had she intended to do? She might have had good intentions, but they had backfired. Badly.

His expression and his thoughts turned morose, once more. Didn't she know that he was already trying to cope as best as he was able? It'd been ten years by now, but he still wasn't over his father's death – his murder. He'd been killed, after all. Did she know? If she knew even a fraction of what had happened back then – and the evidence surrounding all the events at the Corbeau heist and other happenstances suggested she did, unless Jii was on another person's orders not to tell him anything about his father's past nighttime job? – then she would know. Certainly.

What had she done, though, to lure out and apprehend his father's murderers? Not a lot, as far as he could see. Instead, she'd decided to take another route entirely, masquerading as a counterpart to the Kaitô Kid, a black-clad gentleman thief that wore their family name as a cloak. "Corbeau", a raven indeed.

And here she had the gall to test him, to pronounce his skills good enough only on her terms. His teeth ground together in barely suppressed emotion. What was he feeling? He was confused, first and foremost, and he was hurt, too. His mother had no right to declare his skills "no good unless tested". He was doing his best as it was, didn't she see that? Yet, she decided to overlook his efforts; past heists and endeavors as the Kaitô Kid apparently had no bearing on his skill level from her point of view.

That wasn't good enough for her. He wasn't good enough for her.

She wasn't interested in his life or in supporting him emotionally or being there for him. Instead, she was there to test him, to experiment in order to figure out his skill set and adaptability on her terms and decide for herself if he was good enough or not, if he would be able to survive in this world of phantom thieves or not.

His stomach ached, he couldn't think through the disappointment he felt in that moment. She hadn't wanted to get to know him at all during the time she'd spent here around the Corbeau heist fiasco. The woman had flown back from wherever in the world she'd been only shortly before and been absent for the most part of his life prior to that. His own mother didn't know him and what his life truly was like, so she decided for herself that he needed to prove himself to her, to do… what exactly? To impress her?

She was his mother, for heaven's sake! Kaito wasn't supposed to have to impress her – he was her son! His mother should support him regardless of his skill set, his abilities and adaptability to difficult situations. She was supposed to nurture him and to build him up, not tear him down like that.

With that stunt alone, she'd managed to penetrate his mental defenses easier than any of his other nemeses had. He closed his eyes in resignation. And the "talk" they'd had later that day, after she'd let spill that remark on his propensity towards unconventional means of defending himself physically (he did admit, the heat packs were not all that safe, in retrospect), hadn't helped matters any.

He was trying his best. She hadn't needed to tell him that she was seeing the way he was living his life at the moment, living off of his father's money and the allowance she gave him, and wanted him to change something. His mother never did think that magic was the way to go, but she hadn't openly challenged his life choices this much before. He wanted to finish high school and then get an apprenticeship with a magician – Jody Hopper came to mind, as did several others he knew –, he didn't want to go to college or university. Those were his decisions to make, though. Judging him like she'd done… that wasn't the way to go.

Why else would she have told him her "observations" on his life – and he'd taken those with a pinch of salt, because he knew for sure that she wasn't as well informed about his life as she perhaps wanted to be or made it out she was – unless it was to tell him she judged him?

Why else would she have wanted to test him if she hadn't found his performances that had gone before lacking in whichever way?

He didn't know what to think. This whole matter was messed up.

To top all that off, she had had the nerve to board a plane to the US shortly thereafter. As if the talk hadn't happened or been in any way important to her. No. "Calm down," he muttered to himself. That was his interpretation of what had occurred. Her leaving needn't have been connected to that "talk" at all.

That had nothing to do with her, but everything with him and how he saw the actions that his mother had chosen to take. He still wasn't really sure what she was after in the grand scheme of things – did she know about Pandora? Did she and her assistant (she had to have had one who flew off at that heist) decide to go after diamonds and gems because of Pandora? They'd obviously known about Snake appearing, but had that truly been orchestrated by their hand or was there more to the puzzle that he didn't currently see? Jii wouldn't be of any help to him, he knew. The old man, as loyal as he was to him, was even more loyal towards his older friends and he'd not tell him anything if his mother played the "He's still a teenager" card that she'd apparently already used. Kaito was still peeved about that.

Ah, well. If he couldn't count on Jii to provide him with important information and still wanted to try to prove himself to his mother – who, clearly, was getting a lot of her facts about him via the old assistant – then he may need to do something to change her opinion of him. Certainly, she still saw him as her son, someone she needed to protect and care for, despite him having lived on his own for the better part of the last few years, seeing as she'd left him to do so quite a while ago.

"That's actually good timing," Kaito thought to himself in the confines of his mind, "I already wanted to try and get around being shot at during a heist anyways, might as well make it worthwhile for Kaa-san, too." The gears in his head started to churn out ideas and half-formed plans, some being scrapped as fast as they appeared. One plan in particular began to take on a shape that could work.

He would surprise not only Snake, but Jii and his mother as well in the process. This needed to be kept under wraps as much as possible. Nakamori-keibu would play into his hands this time around as at any other time, the police wouldn't want any news to get out if they could help it. Yet, Snake would have to be notified via the news. How to arrange this…? How not to tip off Jii or any of his mother's other spies – for, he was sure there had to be others besides Jii who reported his actions back to her.

How to best challenge the notion that he was incapable of protecting himself and maybe even get closer to the organization that was behind his father's murder? The idea that his father might still be alive was discarded. No, his mother was cruel enough to disguise as his father. His parents couldn't be cruel enough to… make him think that…

His thoughts ground to a halt in uncomfortable silence.

No way.

His head began to shake of its own free will.

This thought hadn't ever gone through his head before, why did it have to stop in to say hi to him now? The brunette scrunched up his eyes in obvious discomfort.

No.

No. Way.

Shaking his head quickly, he put the thought to the side. That was not a path he wanted to go down in his head, especially if he didn't have more proof than what he'd gotten at the last heist.

He would put that out of his head until he had definite proof and facts at hand. He would not be jumping to conclusions as his mother had done. The teenage phantom thief refused to stoop to that level. Instead, he would sit down and plan.

With a focus that hadn't been there when he'd first come into the room he regarded the portrait levelly. The reverie that he'd found himself in had not solved all of the mystery for him, but he'd gotten a clearer head, regardless. Thinking, alone and without distractions, had done him some good for once. With a mischievous shine in his eyes, he looked at his father's mirror image, the painted Kaitô Kid right in front of him on the painting. Smirking, he challenged, "I will bring Snake out of his hiding place, and I will prove to Kaa-san that I'm good enough to be called her son, to be called a phantom thief in my own right. You just wait and see. And if I'm correct and," his heart did a little jump in his ribcage at that, "you are still alive," he hesitated for the fraction of a second, "then I will find you." Closing his eyes, he didn't dare hope.

When, some three months later, the telephone started ringing in Jii's billiard bar, he didn't think much of it. The old man still didn't grow suspicious as he picked it up to reveal Kuroba Chikage's voice. Once she started going off about an international police investigation going on and ranting about her own son having gotten himself involved and talking about visiting him in the hospital where he'd apparently gotten admitted into upon his involvement in the mess, some wheels started turning in Jii's head.

The young master had indeed been exceedingly cagey as of late, going so far as to exclude him from parts of his life that he'd shared openly before and at times not listening to his opinions for longer than necessary. The boy had excused himself often from the heist planning, citing other reasons and in the past month there had not been one single heist at all – Kaito had excused himself as "being in the middle of a stressful time at school, with exams and tests and all" for that. Putting the telephone down after the call, the bar owner thought about the past few months and particularly the last one. Indeed, the absence of a heist, while not unusual, would have to be viewed under a different light now.

Jii realized belatedly that the spotlight had been deliberately diverted from the main action to leave them in the dark. A true magician, Kaito had shown them his right hand, hiding his left behind his back. The old man's eyes grew sad when he contemplated the ramifications. The amateur magician had felt he couldn't come to them any longer. How had it come to this?