A/N: Thank you for waiting a month, and welcome to the sequel to Riddle in Reverse, Steeplechase! If you have not read Riddle in Reverse, you can find it on my profile, and you need to read it first—I'm normally not that strict on adhering to continuity, but this thing really won't make any dang sense without that fic, and that fic will be less fun if you start reading this first and end up with spoilers.

Speaking of continuity! This is more of a DCMK fic than the last one, and you are gonna need to know a certain amount of Detective Conan canon. Specifically, anything up to and including The Clash of Red and Black is fair game, and the Clash of Red in Black in particular will be pretty thoroughly spoiled. There's also one major post-CoR&B spoiler, specifically one that has to do with Okiya Subaru. If he is still "the mysterious graduate student" to you, this fic will spoil you. The fic also references some of the movies: definitely 3 and 13, and possibly 10 in a section I haven't yet written. Movie 14 never happened, any of the others aren't very important but may have happened. I may reference random cases and magic files as convenient, but I will in general not spoil culprits or tricks unless it's important to the fic's plot.

You may have guessed from the summary that Heiji's going to appear. He is keeping his accent. If, once he appears (not for a few chapters yet) you have trouble making it out, feel free to leave me an ask on tumblr or a review here—you can do both anonymously, if you feel uncomfortable. I'm sorry, but he talks too much to make the last fic's hypertext translations a workable solution for me to do with my schedule.

You've read one fic by me, so you should be ready for the fact that I have a lot of headcanons, I occasionally use OCs, and sometimes I even have opinions about things. That said, I think I also have a pretty good story put together for you all. Well, mostly put together. This is a WIP, and while I am many chapters ahead right now, things can go wrong, I have a distressing tendency to get sick, and real life just got a bit busier, so if anything does go wrong I will warn you.

With all that said, I hope you guys enjoy me throwing all my DCMK feelings (well, mostly MK this chapter) at a wall and seeing which ones stick!

Chapter 1

"The last time I spoke to him, he said he was going to visit your son," Hakuba Tsuyoshi said quietly, his voice all but drowned out by the scuffling of forensic techs and uniformed police as they inspected every inch of his son's bedroom.

Chikage swallowed, thickly. The room had been nice, before the police got at it. Unsure of what to say, she surveyed the full bookshelves, a cage that obviously belonged to the boy's pet hawk, a desk that had probably been neat before someone started rifling through the papers—and the heirloom, quilted bedspread, the only surface in the room that was untouched.

Spread across it, in neat lines, were every single piece of official identification that Hakuba Saguru had. His adoption certificate and passport alone made up the first row. The next three were made up of his medical records, registration papers for school and extracurriculars, and even Watson's ownership papers. A shorter line, at the bottom, was slightly indented from the others. At the end of it was a large piece of paper, with a short message written on it in English: "Thank you so much, and goodbye."

The layout of the papers…it was exactly like a heist note, with the note to Tsuyoshi in the place of the so-called "KID doodle."

Two messages, then. One for Tsuyoshi: "I'm leaving, and you won't be able to find me." And one for Chikage: "You know now, and this is the result."

"I had asked to speak to both of you," Tsuyoshi continued, turning back to the empty room. "Where is young Kaito-kun?"

That question is so much more relevant than you know, Chikage thought, a bit hysterically, choking down something between laughter and a sob.

"Kaito isn't feeling well," she answered honestly. "Your son visited with a get-well gift—which was appreciated, by the way." She took a breath, and gathered herself. "He's a good child."

Tsuyoshi made a low humming noise. "How was he, when he visited?"

Chikage wanted to lie. Anything near the truth would just attract attention, and that was the last thing she wanted from any police officer, let alone this one. He'd never know she was lying. He was smart, but she was a veteran liar and he was unprepared for her deceptions. No one else had witnessed her conversation with Hakuba. No one else knew what had happened besides Hakuba-who-was-Kaito—and he wouldn't be coming back. When a person shed an identity as thoroughly as he had, they meant it. He wouldn't come back himself, and neither Tsuyoshi nor any of his men would be enough to track him down, not when he was Kaito, and KID, and trained to dodge the police in ways they would never even guess he knew.

But…Chikage owed Hakuba something, for protecting her Kaito, if nothing else. And, standing here, looking at the heist note of cast-off-ID laid out on a warm-looking quilt, half-obscured by the downward slope of Tsuyoshi's shoulders, she thought maybe she owed him this. The place he'd carved out for himself in a time that he didn't belong in, the one she'd accidentally chased him out of.

"He was acting jumpy," Chikage said, carefully. "Like he was afraid of something. We spoke about his past and I think something I said may have startled him…if that's what happened, I am truly sorry." She bowed at the waist, and straightened to find Tsuyoshi staring at her, alarmed.

"…He doesn't speak of such things," he said. "Not even with me. What did he say?" There was a rawness to the question that had Chikage clinging to Poker Face before she stepped back or flinched.

Logically, she knew that she should just stop talking. That was the best way to protect the Kaito still bedridden in her house. But…she couldn't quite put the disdain in Hakuba's eyes when he looked at her out of her mind. Not when she'd started seeing its rough outline on Kaito's face when she pressed him for answers about Hakuba; not when she could look around this bedroom and see how much Tsuyoshi cared about Hakuba without even looking at his face. Not when Hakuba had spent nearly two years keeping the Kaito of this time alive from the shadows.

So instead she scrambled for an answer, and found one that was honest enough. "He said he'd met Toichi," she said, voice a bit thick. It had been…some time, since she'd talked of her husband to someone she wasn't sure knew of the circumstances.

Tsuyoshi looked confused.

"My late husband," Chikage clarified, quietly. "He was a magician. He died in a stage accident when Kaito was in middle school." It rankled to call it an accident, even now—but there was little else she could do. Tsuyoshi was almost certainly trustworthy but the other police officers were unknown quantities at best.

"And how did this come up?" Tsuyoshi asked, eyes narrowed.

"I asked where his interest in Kaito had come from," Chikage said. "I didn't intend to—"

"I'm sure you didn't, but that's more than he's spoken of his life before he started working with Scotland Yard since we purchased Watson," Tsuyoshi said, expression stony.

Chikage's confusion must have shown on her face, because Tsuyoshi clarified, "He told Baaya that he had a bird, once."

The doves, Chikage thought. Did he miss them? He must have—"Is his hawk still here?"

"Of course," Tsuyoshi said, a parody of a smile on his lips. "He knows he couldn't provide for her. All that's missing is a single suitcase, some of his plainer clothing, toiletries and a few days' worth of nonperishable food. He's always been a practical boy."

He was trained well, Chikage thought, with a swell of utterly misplaced pride.

"Not a single keepsake," Tsuyoshi continued. "None of the Sherlock Holmes collections, not the Inverness, not even the cufflinks I bought him for his birthday." The twisted-up smile fell away, replaced by a look of deep exhaustion. "I wasn't home as much as I wanted to be, I'll admit that readily enough. But when I was here, I tried to make certain that he knew how much he meant to me, and my wife did the same. I thought, perhaps, that would be enough."

He took a breath. "But we always knew that he might leave. I just thought…I'd wanted this place to be somewhere that he could remember happily, so that he might at least want a reminder—" He broke off, frowning deeply.

I've made a mistake, Chikage thought, feeling blindsided. In trying to find the truth, I've stolen something much more precious from Hakuba. And phantom thieves don't steal what they aren't able to return.

I need to make this right.

"It's so you won't be able to find him," she said, softly. "Hakuba-san, can we speak in the hall?"

Tsuyoshi gave her a sharp look, but followed her into the corridor, a Western-style affair with thick carpet and tan-painted walls lit by sconce-encased lightbulbs. Chikage hesitated, putting a few final touches on the story she was fabricating before she spoke.

"Kuroba-san?" Tsuyoshi asked, forcing politeness into his question.

"I'm going to need you to trust me, Hakuba-san," Chikage said. "If what Hakuba said about when he met Toichi was accurate, there's a chance that some of what he hasn't told you about his past involves his family getting mixed up with people who knew a lot about running and hiding. So finding him might be a bit more difficult than you think."

Tsuyoshi looked alarmed, and Chikage held up a hand.

"Don't think that means it's impossible," she said. "It just means that relying on the police alone might not be the best option. There are some people I've met while working in Las Vegas that I can contact, and…well, I don't know how reluctant you'll be to do this, but if he's not found by the next KID heist, you might try asking KID for his assistance. That is, assuming he doesn't find out by himself and join of his own accord. He is fond of your son—and he's creative enough in his methods to have a chance at finding him."

"Kuroba-san, this isn't the time for jokes—"

"I wasn't joking," Chikage said. "Your son didn't bring keepsakes with him, because someone might be able to identify him if they found he had them. It isn't because he won't miss you. It's because he's worried about being found, and because someone taught him enough to know that he should avoid carrying identifying items."

"I don't like what you're implying about his childhood," Tsuyoshi said slowly. "What sort of people are you talking about, that he might have met at the same time that he met your late husband?"

"People Toichi mistook for legitimate," Chikage said, thin-lipped. Hakuba certainly has encountered that particular group. It's true enough. "They're not who he's running from, though. I believe he thought that I might be…indiscreet, with this knowledge of his past, and so he got nervous. Your son is a proud young man."

"I doubt he ran off simply out of pride," Tsuyoshi said, frowning.

"Figuring out the reasons is probably best left to yourself and your men," Chikage said. "But finding him? That may be beyond them. So I will contact people. And I do recommend, if enough time passes, contacting KID as well."

Tsuyoshi held her gaze for a long moment. "If he's run off like this…if he's putting forth so much effort…isn't it possible that he doesn't want to be found?" he asked. "I will miss him more than I can say, but that's not what's most important here. What he wants is. If I can confirm that he's not in immediate danger…this may have been something he was considering for a long time. It certainly looked that way."

He looked slumped and almost defeated in the muted light of the hallway, but his expression was utterly serious. He was ready to let a boy he'd spent years and time and money on run off without more than a short note, as long as he knew that he was safe and thought it might be what he wanted. When Chikage compared that to how she interacted with Kaito…she didn't like the contrast. Not one bit.

"I don't think he prepared for it," Chikage said aloud. "I just think he was being thorough. Kaito says he's like that. I don't think this was something he wanted to happen."

She paused, and thought about how long it had been since she'd stayed in Japan, about why she usually called Kaito and about how angry Corbeau had made Hakuba.

"He was happy here, wasn't he?" she asked softly.

"Not always, but more often than he was in England, I'm told," Tsuyoshi replied.

"Well, then, isn't being here what's best for him?" she asked, trying to keep her tone light. "I'm sure his birth parents, wherever they might be, would agree with that."

Tsuyoshi frowned. "I don't particularly care what their opinions are," he said, a bit darkly. "He's said that his father is dead, but he told me that the reason he's living under an assumed name is that he'd prefer not to be found by his mother. He said it was 'better for everyone involved' were she not to know where he was, but if the situation was such that he felt it necessary to go to London and live on his own, I can't really entertain a good opinion of the woman."

Poker Face was only barely sufficient to keep Chikage's face neutral. Internally, she was reeling. I guessed, that it was me that he was avoiding, but to hear it said like that…if Tsuyoshi knew he was talking to the woman he has such a bad opinion of, I wonder what he'd do? she thought.

And then, Living on his own? In London? …how long was he in this time before Tsuyoshi found him?

Something finally must've peeked through Poker Face, because Tsuyoshi's expression softened. "I do at least have some comfort, from that," he said. "Saguru lived in London for roughly a year before I adopted him. I can be secure in his ability to take care of himself."

He sighed, then added, "Perhaps not well, but adequately."

A year, Chikage thought. Kaito's personality isn't suited to spending that much time alone. And…I still don't know how old he was, exactly, when that happened…only that he was younger than my Kaito is, now, when he travelled back in time. My Kaito wouldn't be ready to live on his own. I wonder if he was?

"Well, then, we'll have to trust him to do it again for a while, at least until we can find him," Chikage said.

"Kuroba-san, why are you doing this?" Tsuyoshi asked, softly. "Even if you do suspect that it was your conversation with him that caused him to leave, that hardly makes bringing him back your responsibility…"

Yes, it does, Chikage bit down on her automatic reply. There was no way to safely explain a phantom thief's code of honor to Tsuyoshi. And so, she took the next best option and shuffled one piece of truth with another.

"I'm sure he was too humble to mention it, but your son saved my son's life," Chikage said. "As a fellow parent, you can understand that kind of debt."

Tsuyoshi blinked owlishly at her. "What—when—how?"

"You'll be asking me to bring Kaito with me for formal questioning about your son's disappearance, correct?" Chikage asked. "As a matter of procedure, of course. I'll explain then. It's not something I'd particularly like to discuss over and over."

After all, she thought, the more often one tells a lie, the more likely one is to mix up or forget details in one of the tellings.

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Kaito woke up, aching, the memory of Hakuba's visit foggy and distorted. He tried to remember it more clearly and failed, getting only a brief flash of Hakuba's hair and the sound of his mother calling his name in distress—wait, no, when did that happen?

To his reopened eyes, the world wasn't right. Normally, he knew where he was and where everything else was—spatial perception, far-off memory filled in—but right now, he wasn't quite certain of that orientation. He could tell where everything was within about an inch—but he'd long lost count of how many times an inch had decided KID's fate, so even a margin that small set his nerves on edge. Everything he looked at seemed just a bit too bright, almost glowing, and the room curved out before him at an angle that didn't quite match memory. Well, flashes of memory. Long-term recall was like picking a card when someone else was doing a magic trick—he wasn't quite sure if he was going to pull something usable or not. This was particularly true of anything since the heist—he tried to put together a metaphor about it using fifty-two card pickup and it somehow veered into trying to clean up the doves' feathers. In fog.

As he tried to focus his vision and his thoughts, his mother came into view. Not quite clear, not yet, but he could see enough to tell that she looked awful and it could be no one else's fault but his. The shadows of exhaustion under her eyes, how pale she was, the way her lips thinned until they were white-that was all on him. That was why he needed to be more careful.

"Mom?" he asked, his throat drier than he remembered it being. "Now that I've been awake awhile-how bad was it?"

"Only tissue damage from the bullet," she said, softly. "You've also got a lot of bruising from the fall and some of it is probably internal. The biggest problem is that the bullet nicked a blood vessel, and you were bleeding badly. I nearly had to figure out how to get you a transfusion without outing you as KID."

"Scarring?" he asked, glad she hadn't actually tried to do that.

"Definitely, internal and external, but it shouldn't affect your range of movement much," Chikage answered. "But—there's something else…"

"No, I have something to tell—" he broke off, as he realized that taking a deep breath in preparation to speak hurt. Okay, bruising sucks, just count, 1, 2, 3, and then—Poker Face. "To tell you first. Hakuba's been helping me. Like, sneakily."

Chikage's expression was grave. "I know," she said.

—What? "Did he tell you?"

"That, and more," Chikage said, softly.

"More?" Kaito blinked, trying to clear sleep from his vision. It wasn't working. "What more—did he tell you why?" I wanted to ask him that!

Chikage looked stricken for a moment, and Kaito realized, with a jolt as sharp as any actual pain he was feeling, that he'd gotten through her Poker Face. Which didn't happen. A little bit of panic started to seep through the bleary exhaustion that he could finally explain with the newfound memory of "hospital-grade pain medication."

"I…pushed him into telling me why," Chikage said, neutral expression back in place, if wearier than before. "I was concerned about his motives. They…weren't what I expected."

Kaito took a careful deep breath, and managed to say, "I kept trying to come up with a good theory, but nothing stuck. What'd I miss?"

"Your classmate the witch's involvement for one," Chikage said. "It isn't exactly an obvious reason, Kaito."

"Akako-san? Is she controlling—" Kaito tried to sit up, and that was a grade-A bad idea. This time, his vision just went completely white and when color and sensation snapped back into focus he was on his back and in more pain than he had been before he'd done something incredibly stupid.

"No, and be careful," Chikage said. "Didn't I tell you that you came close to needing a transfusion?"

Kaito answered her with a faint groan and the question, "Well, if she's not controlling him, how's she involved?"

Chikage rubbed her temples. "She brought him here. From the future."

"Um, what?" Kaito asked blankly. "Wait, is this like Terminator? Because on one hand Hakuba being a robot would explain some things," he took another careful breath, "but on the other I have had some bad experiences with robots that look like people." A third breath, Is this actually happening? When did my life get so weird? "At least this one doesn't look like me?"

Chikage's expression froze. Kaito was now officially worried.

"What did I say?" he asked.

"That's not…he's not a robot, honestly, Kaito, but he does actually look like you," Chikage said.

"Mom, I've seen him before—"

"Without the disguise makeup," Chikage corrected, and that sent Kaito's train of thought screeching to a messy halt.

"Disguise makeup?" he demanded, finding his voice rough. This doesn't make any sense. "Where the heck did he pick that up?"

"He learned it from Toichi, like you did," Chikage said.

Kaito froze, words piling up among fogged thoughts and then spilling out all at once.

"So, what, he travelled back in time far enough to meet Dad, didn't bother saving him," he took a quick, forced breath, choking on anger and pain that wasn't only bruising, "and then decided for some reason that he had to protect me?"

Bare-faced shock, then a flicker of horror, then plain, soft grief replaced Chikage's Poker Face. The grief stayed longest—Kaito blinked, and it was still there. "I didn't get a chance to ask, but I'm certain that if he had travelled far enough back to save your father, he would have," Chikage said. "I can't believe otherwise."

"You barely know him," Kaito said, exhausted.

Chikage's expression tightened. "I know him well enough to say that much. It's what you would do, isn't it?"

"Yeah…but Hakuba's not me," Kaito pointed out, wondering when he'd become the voice of reason.

Chikage said nothing but her Poker Face twitched.

What the—

"Hakuba isn't me, Mom," he repeated, patiently. "Even if he's from the future, Future-Hakuba is his own person, and—"

"Future-Hakuba apparently doesn't exist," Chikage said. She sounded like she was trying to be glib, but there was a bleak undertone to her voice. "And, to use your terms, 'Future-Kaito' created the one you know as a persona."

Kaito tried to come up with a response to that. All he managed was, "That's not funny."

"It's really not," Chikage agreed, looking very tired.

"You're serious?"

"Completely."

"Is this a hallucination?" Kaito asked aloud. "It would explain how the colors are weird."

"I didn't give you that much medication," Chikage said. "Though the dosage might need adjusting, if it's affecting your vision."

"You wouldn't make a joke like this," Kaito said, quietly horrified. "So either Hakuba is screwing with you or this is actually happening what the heck?"

If it's the former, I didn't know Hakuba's sense of humor was…well, existent enough for that? he thought, bewildered. And if it's the latter…

Okay, you can demand answers from Mom until Tantei-kun is an old man, or you can think, Kaito thought. If Hakuba is future me, then we must think kind of the same way. So, answer it yourself. If you came back in time, why would you become a critic, of all things, instead of just helping KID outright?

The answer was obvious, once he considered it. I would know that I wouldn't just accept help from a random person. Even me. Not to mention… The memories were blurry, and there were some that Kaito couldn't quite get to, but what he could recall of Hakuba's interference didn't follow a pattern of making heists easier, it followed a pattern of making them safer.

When I thought he hadn't saved Dad—he had to pause, at that thought, and ache for the him-who-wasn't-him, because traveling back in time but not far enough to save Toichi was the stuff of nightmares—I wondered why he was protecting me. That's still a good question. And the only reason I can think of is that he thinks I need it. Or knows, I guess, if he knows what's gonna happen.

But he only knows what's gonna happen as long as things don't change too much...which is why he wasn't helping openly. He couldn't risk affecting my plans and messing up his knowledge of the future. Still doesn't explain why he was a critic, but maybe he told Mom something?

And also…if his whole plan was about helping from the shadows, but Mom knows now, and so do I—what would I do, if that happened?

Kaito thought he knew, but he wanted to be sure.

"Mom, where's Hakuba now?" he asked, carefully.

"He disappeared and left all of his legal identification in his room," Chikage said, tone flat.

So, I was right, Kaito thought. Not that it's any consolation. Seriously, how can he stand being a critic? Always being right about things you'd rather be wrong about…

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A/N: Today's reminder to myself: No matter how bad my day gets, I can't possibly be having a worse day than Kaito is in this chapter.

If you have questions, you can come ask me them on tumblr—my username there is my penname here-or feel free to leave me shouty reviews.