Don't own Detective Conan or Magic Kaito

Prologue

Shinichi had felt the tug to travel since he was little, a toddler barely capable of speech as his parents took him to place after place. He remembers the joy of seeing a new location, the anticipation that going to an airport would fill him with, the laughter in his parents' eyes as he pointed to items on the map of where they were going next that he wanted to see.

It had been fun, Shinichi would think wistfully as the years went by, as he turned four and suddenly had two new reasons to stay in Japan (well, he thought, one and her tagalong). He enjoyed Ran's company, but it wasn't the same as the utter relief at leaving a country, the wonder of seeing the lights in a city you've never been to before.

His parents felt the same, he knew, and he went with them as often as he could when they had the spontaneous urge to go somewhere new. They were contained to Japan, now, but that was okay; he went to the beach with Ran and solved a case with a nice not-pierrot; he went to Nara and pet the deer that approached him, as curious of him as he was of them; he climbed Fuji-san and explored the island of cats and watched the sun shine through the branches in the Arashiyama. He and his parents did everything they could think of.

And, eventually, it would grow to not be enough.

He felt the clawing of dissatisfaction intensify when he was twelve, and went to his parents. They looked at each other, then at him, and his father frowned and knelt to place a hand on his head. "We've been nearly everywhere in Japan, Shinichi," he dad told him, and it felt like an omen.

"Then what can I do?" he asked. His hands itched, and his feet twitched, and his chest felt tight.

His dad frowned, picking up on the anxious tells his son wasn't bothering to hide. "I'll fill out the library more," he said. "Books can take you to different places without having to leave the house –"

"But it isn't the same," Shinichi argued, and his dad's frown deepened.

"I know it isn't, but do that for now. We'll figure something out."

And as Shinichi was leaving the room, he heard his mom. "I feel it too, Yu-chan. I'll want to leave soon too."

The only time Shinichi felt like the world itself wasn't crying out for him to explore was when he was caught up in his own adventures. Solving crimes, investigating places, even playing soccer was enough to make the itch abate. And Ran, his companion in his adventures, was enough to keep the urge to just walk out of the city at bay as well. First as his friend, then as he became her pillar when her parents separated, it was easy to hold off. Ran needs me, he thought, and that was enough to stay.

Two years passed and his parents sat him down. "We're planning to leave," his dad said, and Shinichi felt first confusion, and then relief.

"I allowed to go with you?" He asked, a little surprised, and his parents exchanged glances.

"You are," his mom confirmed, before holding up a hand when he started to speak again. "However, we'll have to figure something out with your education. We wouldn't be staying in any one place long enough for you to go to school."

And that was when reality returned to Shinichi with a sharp, clinical clarity. I have to go to school if I want to be a great detective, he thought. And Ran…

And Ran had started trying to get her parents back together and would email him if she was upset and needed him to grab ice cream for her and Sonoko as the other girl tried to comfort her. I want to go, he thought, felt, ached. But I can't leave Ran.

His parents read his answer on his face and his mom hugged him to her heart. He wondered if she could feel his own cracking a little.

They took him to Hawaii for a week.

They sent him back alone.

That gap where he wasn't allowed to go to crime scenes was sort of hell, and Ran spent a lot of that time complaining about him not being home. "Are you sneaking out and trying to solve crimes on your own?" She asked once, fuming at him while Sonoko rolled her eyes on Ran's other side.

Shinichi frowned. "Of course not," he huffed back. Not on purpose, he added in his mind. Ran seemed incapable of understanding that if he didn't look for trouble, then trouble often found him. "I went to Akiba," he settled on telling them. He heard that there was a convention taking place and wanted to experience it. It was as simple as that.

They didn't look like they believed him, but he wasn't going to bother proving it. They didn't need to see the buttons and the shirt someone convinced him to buy, didn't need to hear the stories he'd gathered from the people there. He doubted they would share his enjoyment at seeing such passionate people, of living for a moment in a life as fantastical as the ones those people saw.

He went out the next weekend and worked as an extra set of hands for some fishermen, then helped a couple evaporate the weekend after, then saw a geisha performance after that. He was tied to the land, but he wouldn't let that restrain him.

He went to museums, aquariums, theaters, concerts, conventions, anything to make it feel like he wasn't dying a little inside. He accidentally got tangled with the Yakuza for a month before parting on amicable terms and visited more hot springs than anyone his age had a right to.

His parents were understanding. He had unlimited access to their travel funds and his dad told him their plan to put aside money into an account just for him. "Once you graduate, you can use that," he'd said, and Shinichi loved them for it. Any money he made on his odd jobs would go into their travel account to try and make it back to them, and he'd only had a few arguments with them about it.

He learned English when his parents told him of their plan to have him visit America, and he took Ran with him.

The plane seat was more comfortable than any bed could ever be.

After the plane ride and the case that came with it Shinichi was back on call for Division One, and that horrible tightening around his chest, like a noose placed improperly, eased enough for him to be able to take ragged breaths when no one was looking.

The cases kept him sane, the English books he now read kept him content, the weekend adventures kept him happy enough, and Ran kept him in Japan.

He was sixteen when Megure let him ride in a helicopter with him, when he interfered with an attempt to steal a clock tower, when he barely knew what was going on but had the time of his life trying to stop the thief. The urge to leave was sated, but only for a moment, and he chalked it up to the joy of being in a helicopter as it took him away from the scene.

He was seventeen when he went to Tropical Land with Ran – and she never questioned how he knew the amusement park like the back of his hand, how some of the employees would wave at him as he passed and he'd nod back, the free cotton candy they were given as the worker there grinned at the face he made back at them – and solved a case that would lead to a year that felt decades longer.

Being Conan was…an experience. He was tied to the ground in a way he had never been when he was originally a child and that stung in a way, but Ran and the old man were frequent travelers themselves and they would bring him along. He'd forgotten how fun it could be to travel with other people, he wasn't ashamed to admit.

He met a lot of people on cases that he wouldn't have on his own, celebrities and masters of their fields, CEOs and their children, went to islands he couldn't when his parents were still around.

He met the Detective Boys, and he loved that their drive to see everything matched his own. He loved following them on adventures, no matter how much he complained, he tolerated their teasing and their badgering him to play video games with him, he reveled in going on field trips with them and telling them random bits of trivia he'd picked up over the years that they all absorbed with gusto. It wasn't enough to be happy. He would never say that.

But with this new childhood came a new trauma he'd not had in the last one, the understanding that, had he been in his original body, he could save more people, do more good. He remembered trying to pull a serial killer out of a fire only to not be strong enough, trying to save Miyano Akemi only to not be fast enough, trying to save Ran and only just being enough.

Sometimes he looked down and thought he saw blood on his hands, but then he'd blink and they'd be as clean as he usually kept them.

When his parents kidnapped him and tried to instill the fear of the men in black they thought he lacked, they probably didn't know that he hadn't felt that alive in weeks. It should have been his first tip off of who they were, really.

"Come with us, son," his dad entreated, and Shinichi felt his breath catch, his heart thump for a moment in relief, before reality caught up again and his eyes clamped shut. Ran still needed him, he remembered, now as her support as Shinichi disappeared and wouldn't call her near enough for her to be happy.

And what if the old man investigated something only for it to be tied to the men in black? What if they tried to silence him? What if he wasn't as lucky as Shinichi had been?

Shinichi had to stay, and that realization was like a knife in the chest.

"I can't," he made himself say, and his parents looked at him in concern even as they said they understood and ensured that the Mouris wouldn't question where his parents were again.

And he couldn't help but be sad that, no matter how much they loved him, he wasn't enough for them to stay.

He made friends he's not entirely sure he would have were he still Shinichi, but he treasured all of them. Hattori was a great best friend; he may not entirely understand Shinichi's growing ennui, but he was always willing to show him a different part of Osaka whenever he visited and Shinichi could appreciate that.

Haibara was a partner in crime that Shinichi never expected to make, but would never complain about. Her presence gave him a new purpose: keep her safe from the Black Organization, be her guinea pig for potential cures, be her support when she couldn't walk on her own anymore. She – and the agony of the cures – made the burning in his lungs and the stinging in his feet feel like nothing in comparison.

There were so many others – Sera, Amuro, Akai, Jodie, Nakamori – and with each new connection made as Conan, each connection severed as Shinichi, he felt like someone was cutting off the ropes that were tying him to port.

And then there was Kaitou Kid.

Shinichi isn't sure what it was about the thief but going to his heists, chasing after him, doing everything he could to outwit him; that made the creeping dread and the overwhelming desire to leave ease far more effectively than anything he had done before.

Even as he stayed in one place, even as he struggled and screamed through every antidote, even as he felt a moment of relief as he one week went to London and another week plummeted off of a cliff, Shinichi knew that Kid would be there for him to return to.

And that kept him in Japan too.

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