a dead man's hand
(Kuroba Toichi may have passed on, but his memory and his legacy live on in Kaito. Who else would remember his soulmate? Kaito cannot help but wonder.)
post black org, soulmate-identifying marks au
a/n: for @spacebubblehomebase for the kaishin secret santa 2021 hosted by @dcmkkaishinevents! i hope you like it :) i had a lot of fun with your prompt
—
Kaito is nine years old when he learns about soulmates. He is nine years old and only just beginning to understand that his father is no longer coming home when he sees his mother clutch her wrist and sob.
Soulmate markings, he learns, are a way of connecting you to someone the universe deems your soulmate. The markings, usually related to your soulmate’s career or identity, came in when you were fifteen, and served no purpose other than to let you know that there is someone out there for you. When a pair of soulmates meet for the first time, the marks would glow brightly.
The slight catch though — was that if your soulmate passed on, your mark would disappear, leaving nothing behind besides a memory of what could have been.
His mother points to her mark, the outline of the poker card on her wrist already beginning to fade.
“It may be gone,” she says (he may be gone), “but we’ll always remember him, won’t we?”
Kaito is ten when her mark fades completely, and he is fifteen when he gets his own soulmate mark, a small pill on the back of his forearm.
(“It could be a lot worse, trust me,” his mother laughs brightly, and he pretends he doesn’t see the way she swipes her thumb over a mark that should have been there.)
—
Kaito does not think too much about his soulmate mark. Until one day, he does, because he’s only ever seen a mark lose its pigmentation like that once before. It hits him harder now, he realises, because he’s old enough to know what exactly it means.
His soulmate had died, taking with them the pill-shaped mark on his arm that had been his companion for years. Soon, he knows, it will fade away completely, and all that will remain of his soulmate’s existence would be their memory. His mother’s bare wrist is proof of that.
Some say it is a mercy, so people wouldn’t wait forever for a dead soulmate. Others call it a curse, claiming that they would have rather lived without the knowledge that their fated half had passed on. Kaito personally thinks that it is a mix of both. He tells his mother that much during their biweekly video call, showing her the faded outline of the pill on his arm.
He’s made his peace with it. Because, he figures, it’s kind of hard to miss someone you haven’t known. That you’ll never know. Anyway, Kaito reassures her, plenty of people whose marks have faded away have been able to find love, so she shouldn’t be worried about his future love life, or potential lack of one.
(He does mourn them though, because they were probably around his age. Far too young to have left the world.)
Later, he thinks as he dons the mantle of Kaitou KID, perhaps his lack of a soulmate is a good thing after all. He has no idea how he would explain to them that yes, he is an internationally wanted criminal looking for an immortality-granting gem. It’s exactly what it looks like.
Kaito is eighteen when he sees a soulmate mark fade a second time.
(Kuroba Toichi may have passed on, but his memory and his legacy live on in Kaito. Who else would remember his soulmate? He cannot help but wonder.)
—
It’s not like Shinichi isn’t aware of his soulmate marking, or the effect him turning into Conan would have on his soulmate’s mark.
Okay, so it might have slipped his mind for a long time because of the whole turning into a kid and taking down a huge criminal organisation thing, but he hasn’t forgotten about the clover that should have been on his shoulder, he swears.
(In his defence, he had more urgent matters to worry about. Like the possible ramifications of bringing down an entire criminal organisation in the body of a child. And of course, the apotoxin antidote that Haibara had managed to reverse engineer.)
Orchestrating Conan’s departure had taken far less effort than he had thought it would. With the cooperation of the FBI, it was easy enough to claim that despite the fall of the Black Organisation, Conan would have to go under witness protection just in case any remaining members decided to seek retribution for his role in their downfall.
The Detective Boys took it the hardest, he knows. He had smiled at them, reassured them that he would be okay under witness protection, and that he’d write to them, but it does nothing to stop their teary gazes.
Edogawa Conan would not be returning. He knows this all too well.
He would tell them, he decides, when they were older — when they understood more of what had been at stake when Shinichi woke up in a body many years younger than he had been. He hopes that they’d understand his choices, or at least forgive him for them.
The one person he hadn’t managed to track down was Kaitou KID, because, well, being untrackable is part of the whole internationally wanted jewel thief package. Shinichi won’t deny that part of him hadn’t wanted to say goodbye to the KID heists — because it would mean acknowledging that their rivalry had come to an end.
But Shinichi misses his old life, misses being himself, misses the freedom that comes with having an eighteen year old body. So, when he’s done saying his farewells to the people who only knew him as Conan, he heads to the Professor’s lab and knocks back the antidote Haibara hands to him.
It is only during his next checkup with Haibara that he realises the potential consequences the return of his soulmark brought.
Now, how to convince his soulmate that he has not, in fact, come back from the dead…
—
His mark is back.
Kaito checks his arm once, then twice, and then a third time, blinking the sleep out of his eyes as the realisation hits him. Well, to be more accurate, it slams into him like a tonne of bricks, leaving him winded and gaping at his arm. It does not change what he sees — the outline of the pill is exactly as he remembered it — the mark dark against his skin as he traces it gingerly.
Kaito had gone through many reports and articles back when his mark had begun to fade away, on the slim chance that he could at the very least, preserve what was left of it. Never had any of them mentioned a faded mark returning to a partner.
Which could only mean one thing — somehow, three years after kicking the bucket, his soulmate had managed to come back from the dead.
He lies back down. What the hell, he thinks, it’s far too early in the morning to deal with this.
Maybe, he muses, it was time to pay a certain detective a visit.
—
He can’t find the detective.
Kaito waits outside his elementary school for an entire week and does not see any sign of Edogawa Conan. At all. In fact, he stops showing up to all his regular haunts, including the Mouri detective agency. Kaito would know — he had spent an entire night setting up bugs and wiretaps all around the building.
No one seemed to be actively searching for him either — gone on a trip, perhaps? But all his usual travelling partners were still around Beika. Heck, Kaito even managed to get confirmation that Hattori was still in Osaka.
It is not until the second week of wiretapping that his investigations finally yield a piece of interesting information.
A (no longer) dead soulmate, a detective that could no longer be found, and an ‘antidote’ for a poison that had supposedly been plaguing a man whose face Kaito had worn countless times. A soulmark in the shape of a pill, he realises with a start.
He is no detective, but there were too many coincidences, too many pieces falling into place in a way that most people would not even stop to consider. Kaito, however, is not most people. His father had been murdered over an immortality-granting jewel, after all, so a poison that could turn someone into a kid — and consequently reversing their soulmark and the soulmark of their soulmate, was not too far of a reach.
All he needs to do now, he thinks, is to confirm his theory.
This, he decides, calls for drastic measures.
(And hey, he had been getting a little stir-crazy cooped up at home.)
—
If the setup of this heist seemed a little rushed, no one but Kaito and Jii-chan would know. Kaito was a man on a mission, so while it was regrettable that he had to forgo the crateloads of silly putty he had ordered months ago in favour of more practical traps, it would be worth it in the end.
He would get his answers.
Kaito has disguised himself as Kudou Shinichi far too many times, taking full advantage of the similarities of their faces. Logically speaking, he should know what he looks like. It still throws him for a loop when the detective appears on the rooftop, led away from the rest of the police force thanks to the combined efforts of Jii-chan and a lot of clear sticky tape.
(He’s even making the same face Tantei-kun would make when Kaito does something over the top during a heist.)
“KID—”
“You know,” he states conversationally, “For a thief, I’ve been doing an awful lot of investigating these past few weeks, and I have what you detectives would call a ‘theory’. Would you like to hear it, Meitantei?”
And Kaito smiles in triumph as the mark on his arm begins to glow.
(Kaito is eighteen when he meets his not-quite-dead soulmate for the first time, but he’s twenty when his mark informs him of this fact.)
—