A/N: I've written quite a few fics in the Magic Kaito fandom but this is my first DC story. Please treat me well!
It's dark outside. Hopelessly, overwhelmingly dark. There's barely any light out. The streetlight across the office had gone out two weeks previously and it was yet to be fixed. There was never a time when the stars in Beika were bright enough to be seen clearly and the moon is hidden among the gray clouds that hang thickly in the night sky.
The clock in the room chimes an aching acknowledgement to irrelevant knowledge. Really, how would one benefit from knowing that on that particular night in winter, nearing the Christmas season, it would pass midnight. It always does. Time is known to be a faithful companion. The clock in the room chimes, yet it doesn't reach the two teens in the girl's father's detective agency.
If a neighbor, drunken from spirits and mahjong were to stumble into a scene such as this, what they were to witness would perhaps be dismissed as young teenage drama. Her own father would likely talk in a voice too loud to either of their tastes his distaste for the young man, but still push him to see his daughter. Really, the scene unfolding faster than either of the two teens can handle doesn't make sense to most, but it's a frightening thing what's happening.
Two star-crossed lovers, two would-be lovers, two god damn clichés trying to find each other's hand to hold as the world pulls them away, are beginning to see a divergence in their paths with only black ravens to guide them.
A girl, Mouri Ran, not a year over seventeen, stands facing the windows of the office. It's dark. She peers through the window trying to desperately find a shed of light but the streetlight she had always taken for granted is nowhere found and it's passed an hour for the town lights to prove their existence. She'd even rather take up the nothingness the night has to offer. Focus in on the abyss the outside has become. But all she can see is her own reflection in the window, looking piteous and pathetic and Kudo Shinichi, her childhood friend looking fairly plaintive himself.
It's dark outside. And in the darkness, it swallows her up too until she's screaming on the inside. Crying and screaming and yelling and fighting. She's been fighting so hard. And she's losing but no one seems to notice. No one seems to care enough to take notice of her losing battle.
Her alcoholic father doesn't seem to care. He, who pursues his career as a detective, mediocre at best, after the little boy that lived with them moved back with his parents. It seems that Ran's own father is more dependent on her for the domestic necessities to be fulfilled while he struggles to pay for the means to go on.
Her mother, whom she always took to be understanding and strong is too occupied with her work to meddle with the affairs of her daughter, it seems. Not once can Ran recall a time when her mother had called her first on the phone to talk; whether it was about birthdays or Christmas or everyday life, Ran never heard the American love song she had set as the ring tone solely for her mom play from her cell phone.
Her best friend, the ever so lovely Sonoko, always giving Ran spontaneous rain checks to pursue attractive men she had made eye contact with in a crowded room. She was always choosing romance over her. It had always been like that.
And Ran, so alone, struggling to carry the weight she had been forsaken to carry, never let resentment taint her life. But god, she just needs someone to save her. Someone to let her release the emotions she had bottled up inside her for so long. There's so much she wants to scream and cry about. She just want to be okay, and Ran's not even sure she can achieve that anymore.
Ran, already so fragile, so young, with her heart broken already by her arguing parents and large realities didn't need for Kudo Shinichi to strut into the canvas of her life and paint new colors over the dry cracking ones. But somehow, his bold brash strokes settled among the dainty little painting she came to illustrate.
They argued and fought, but it was never anything Ran couldn't take. She was becoming stronger, and Shinichi was her crutch. It wasn't until he disappeared into an idea of something much larger than himself and parted, with a half heart-felt promise to return, she had fallen back into the crevasse from the weight of reality. She hated him for doing that, sticking his head into unnecessary things, but for some reason she liked that about him too. Returning with stories of adventure that Ran would never be able to achieve.
But he ventured too far that day and fell into the mercy of a flock of jet black ravens. Pecking and scratching and clawing; scattering pieces and memories until there's too much to put it all back together. Everything up until then just turns to debris. How worthless. He had walked down his own path, leaving Ran standing alone, and waiting for him to return, just as he said he would.
An apology pierces through the night. "I'm sorry," it's fragmented and unpolished, but it's an apology nevertheless. "You're too late," comes the reply silvery and delicate. He's too late with his apology, but really when are they ever said when they need to be?
"Ran, I'm sorry,"
"Don't, Shinichi," she tries so desperately again to see something past her reflection but god, all she notices is how helplessly lost he looks. The ravens, they had cut him into too many pieces. It'll never be back. It was never there, really. They were only children, playing, joking, pretending with themselves. They were both just too lonely to see past that.
"Ran, look at me!" he yells, his voice resonating.
"No," she chokes, starting to sob, "Please, just leave Shinichi. Just go."
"Ran I'm not leaving,"
"Shinichi…"
"No!"
"Please just go…"
She can hear his heavy footsteps making his way toward her and its almost forceful the way her turns her around. "Ran, I didn't come here just so you could kick me out." Her back is pressed against the window, the iciness of the winter night leaching her of her critically needed warmth. She refuses to look at him, and in a blurry haze, she tries to focus on the clock that produces a quiet rhythmic tempo that she strains to drown under.
"Ran," he says again. "Ran, I love you."
And she doesn't know what to say. She had loved him once, before he left. A nostalgic memory of warmer nights and louder laughs.
"Shinichi…" is all she can manage. She hadn't said his name this many times in such a long time. It feels like an eternity. But an eternity would pale in comparison to the way his name lingers on her lips.
"I love you," he says for the first time in his life. "I love you!" Shinichi shouts in a cracked, needy way because London never happened. There were never tears frozen in her eyes, deep blushes staining both their cheeks, thousands of miles away from home. The knight and the prince romance remained only a fairytale play. Their date at the beautifully expensive restaurant was only a rumor their classmates had conjured up at school.
There, Kudo Shinichi stands in the dimly lit detective agency, whispering words hastily to her. "Please, Ran, I love you, now just say the same for me, I haven't got much time."
"You never have much time. Here one second then leaving as soon as you have your fun. I'm done being toyed with Shinichi. You know I can't say those words to you. Please, just see yourself out. Leave me alone. Please…"
He must be able to see the pain in her eyes. How dreadful it must have been for her to wait for someone for years only for him to return after accepting the arms of someone who had waited years for her.
"Fine," he says after a painfully elongated moment. "I'll leave Ran. I hope you happy with your boyfriend." "Yes," she says, her voice sounding a little hollow and maybe even a bit rehearsed, "Araide-san and I are very happy."
She's facing the window again so he wouldn't be able to see her cry, but he knows she's crying anyway. He hates himself for doing this to her but he takes her moment of vulnerability to open her bottle of sleeping pills. He thinks for a bitter moment how she never needed sleeping pills to lull her to sleep before he left. Out from his pocket, he deftly pulls out a small red and white pill in place of the old medication. Even before finishing the deed, he's filled with regret but he misses her too much. Yearns for her warm embrace and loud laughs to let her go. He can feel Haibara's disapproving look of disgust when she realizes that one of her pills are missing, and to what purpose. Shinichi leaves the detective agency without another word before he can stop himself.
And Ran, she doesn't turn around to bid him farewell for one last time. Maybe it was because she couldn't hear his heavy footsteps fade into the darkness or maybe she was trying just one final time to ignore him before she lets uninvited words of desire fill the space between them. Maybe her silence was just another form of her pain. She doesn't make a sound, but Mouri Ran is still screaming in the pain she is engulfed by from everything the world has inflicted upon her.
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