A/N: This is what happens when people repeatedly post hate about a shipping event and it ends up all over my Tumblr dash. I don't really care for ShinRan but dangit I hate jerks more, so have some mildly ambiguous AU shipfic. It fills both the "protection" and "secrets" prompts for Day 3 of the 2015 Tumblr Shinran Week. As such, it was originally posted on Tumblr.
That said, it is an AU based on Jin's Kagerou Project. So, there are some warnings, including implied/reference suicide and major character death (don't worry, they're only mostly dead). I have also been reliably informed that this thing is pretty hard to understand if you don't know at least a little about KagePro. There are side-ships of various ambiguity, including, of all things, Kaito/Kazuha, because it fits the AU and I read Ama Ergo Sum by TinyTantei and liked it. Conan also appears as a separate person from Shinichi. This is unbeta'ed and was written in a single day, for reasons.
Inspired by a piece of DC fanart that you can find the link to on the AO3 version.
A Story of Hopeful Eyes
Work Text:
The summer breeze is tugging at her skirt as she emerges onto the school rooftop. As always, he's waiting for her there.
The red scarf he's worn since she met him, at the summer festival before high school started, is still looped around his neck, draping over his uniform jacket. The crimson and powder-blue clash, a little, but it's so familiar that she doesn't really notice anymore.
He's frowning, at something—a blackened rose, cradled in his palm like it's something precious. She doesn't know what it means. She never does.
Never—no—
The moment she realizes that it's a dream, Shinichi turns away and vanishes, and the rooftop follows suit, and then she's awake, panicked and near tears and alone once again.
A glance at the calendar tells her it's August 14th. Tomorrow, it will have been two years.
At least she didn't dream he was falling.
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They met at a school festival. Two of the upperclassmen were running a games booth and Ran stopped to watch Shinichi play against a little girl that turned out to be his younger sister.
"Ayumi thought it looked fun, and since we came out to support Kuroba-kun and Toyama-kun anyway…" Shinichi said. He'd looked embarrassed. "They're in Dad's class."
"You mean the weirdo's your old man?" Toyama demanded.
"Now, now, Kazuha-chan, you can't just say such things!" Kuroba said quickly.
"Nah, he's a weirdo, but he's not a bad guy," Shinichi said, shrugging. "Right, guys?"
His gathered siblings, all middle-school age—the oddly shy Ayumi, face buried in his scarf, a freckled brown-haired boy that clung to his jeans timidly, and another boy, burly, and rude-mouthed with hair a shade darker—nodded agreement.
"Now, I think it's time for us to get home, before Ayumi decides to vanish again!" Shinichi said, and his tone wasn't quite teasing.
"I'm not gonna!" Ayumi protested.
"You'd better not," Shinichi said, grinning. "I don't wanna spend an hour looking for you."
Ayumi's jaw tightened and she clenched her fists at her side. "I won't disappear. This time for sure!"
Maybe Ran should've noticed that something was odd back then.
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Nowadays, Ran doesn't go out much. She's not a shut-in. She's not. But…she doesn't want to go to that school again. Not when everyone's gone.
So, she takes online classes now. She still gets groceries, she teaches a karate class down at the community center, and sometimes her dad drags her out on cases…but mostly she stays around the house. She does all of the chores and haunts online forums when she isn't picking up after her father.
It's not much of a life, really. She does realize that. But…it doesn't really feel right, moving on alone.
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She and Shinichi were in the same class, in high school. Ran sat next to the window, and Shinichi sat in the desk in front of her. She remembered being surprised when he didn't take off his red scarf at the start of class. She remembered being even more surprised when it stayed on through changing weather.
"Why don't you ever take it off?" she asked him, gesturing to the scarf.
"It's a long story," he said, eyes a little distant. "It's leftover from when me and my siblings were kids. Back when they first came, we made a club, and I was the leader. I was the only one who didn't already have something red, so I started wearing this, and I got used to it. Kinda dumb, right?"
As a story, it didn't make much sense. But the way he said it…quiet, and nostalgic, like it meant something more than he could explain to her…it made her heart do something odd in her chest, just a little bit.
"Maybe a little dumb," she agreed.
He shook his head. "Come on, let's have lunch with the screeching idiots again," he said.
"Kudo-san!" Ran chided. "You'll hurt their feelings."
"I don't think Kuroba-kun has feelings," he said, a little wryly. "Anyhow…call me 'Shinichi-san,' at least, okay?"
Ran flushed. "Uh…okay." She paused, searched for words, and then replied. "…you could call me 'Ran-san,' if you wanted."
Shinichi beamed at her.
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"There's beer all over the keyboard!" KID says, panicked. "Ran-chan, please get me out before it gets on the CPU?"
Ran still doesn't know what KID is. He says he's a computer virus…but he also says he's a he, which is not what computer viruses normally do. At the very least, he's a good companion, for long days spent home alone. And he's willing to try to cheer her up.
Most of her friends and family have long since given up on that.
"All right, I'll connect my phone to the computer," Ran sighs. She uses the charger-cord to link the two devices, and in an animated puff of smoke, a small anime-style character in a white top hat, suit and cape is clinging to the tile icons on her phone.
"Do you have to be so dramatic?" she asks.
"Maybe if you were more careful with electronics…" KID complains.
"I'm careful enough!" Ran protests. "Dad usually only leaves empty bottles around like this. He needs the computer for work, though, so—I guess we have to go to the mall."
"It's Obon, though," KID warns. "It'll be crowded."
"I'll be okay," Ran says, with more confidence than she feels.
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Everything was like she'd imagined high school, for a while. She studied and ate lunch with Shinichi and Kaito and Kazuha, she went home and did chores, and then she woke up and did it again. And sure, sometimes she felt like, maybe, there was nothing that she did that was special enough that someone else couldn't do it—but then Shinichi would smile at her, and mention that he'd found a new mystery novel, or ask her about one of her dad's cases.
"I wanted to be a detective, when I was little," he said, one day, at lunch. "I still do, I guess. But I feel like I should be getting practice, and there isn't really time for it, right now."
"You're busy looking after your siblings, right?" Kaito asked, drowsy-eyed. He'd fallen asleep during first period again, according to Kazuha.
She worried about those two, sometimes. They didn't talk about their health a lot, but the fact that they needed to be in a special class…it had to be something serious. The looks Shinichi gave them sometimes made her think that he knew.
Shinichi nodded. "It's a full-time job, I guess," he said. "They like learning about solving mysteries too—but it's not safe to take them to actual crime scenes."
"Yeah, Dad has to use judo on suspects sometimes," Ran said, serious.
"Not only that," Shinichi said. "My siblings are…it's hard to explain."
And that was all he ever said on the subject.
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Ran comes to in an unfamiliar bedroom, vision still bleary as she tries to make out the details of the figures crowding around her.
"Wow, you were so cool, you even punched one of the terrorists!" crows a fuzzy-haired boy with thick eyebrows and a strong jaw.
Ran blinks at him. "I-I was just trying to buy a new computer…"
And yet, somehow, she'd gotten pulled into a ridiculous rescue mission, complete with a group of terrorists trying to take the mall hostage and how was this her life? Sonoko had somehow been there, too, and Ran had been sure her childhood friend had still been busy being an idol singer.
"But you helped Kojimaand Tsubaraya escape, so thank you," says a girl with cold eyes, dressed in a sweatshirt and khaki pants. "We have an offer for you."
"What kind of offer?" Ran asks.
"We have a club," the girl says. "We call it the Detective Boys, even though most of the members are girls now. We're trying to solve a certain mystery, and you seem like you might be able to help. Will you?"
A mystery, Ran thinks, and then, Shinichi would help.
"I'll try," she says.
Tsubaraya, a skinny, freckled boy, lights up.
"I'm Yoshida," the girl says curtly. "Sonoko-chan will explain the rest."
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It all went wrong when Shinichi's mother died. At first, he just seemed sad, and quiet, and Ran knew what to do—Sonoko had been the same way, when her mother drowned at Karuizawa. But then he started to get distant. He missed school, and when he came, he wasn't himself. She kept feeling like the Shinichi she was talking to wasn't even him, and she didn't know why.
And then, one day, it definitely was Shinichi, but she kept feeling anxious. It just felt like…like he was slipping away, somehow.
"You'd tell me, if you were going to leave?" she asked, at lunch.
"Wha—of course, of course I would," Shinichi said.
"You'd better!" Ran said, firmly.
"I'm sorry, if I've been preoccupied," Shinichi said. "There's a lot of stuff I'm worried about. But I'm going to take care of all of it, tomorrow. Then, I promise I'll explain, okay?"
"I'm going to hold you to that," Ran said.
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"Supernatural powers," Ran repeats, feeling a little sick to her stomach.
I made all of you omamori, but you gotta wear 'em all of the time or they ain't gonna work, Kazuha's voice says, echoing in her memory.
"You sound like Kazuha," she manages.
Sonoko gives her a sympathetic look. "This is for real. Look, I—remember, when I went to Karuizawa, and I nearly drowned?"
"Yeah," Ran says.
"Uh, turns out it wasn't nearly," Sonoko says. "Apparently how this works is that you actually die and then you come back with glowy magic eyes and superpowers."
Maybe ghosts are real too because it's Shinichi's voice coming out of Ran's mouth, now. "Bulls***."
Sonoko blinks. Her eyes shine the color of blood. "Look away from me," she says.
"What?" Ran asks, suddenly noticing how pretty her childhood friend is and how lilting her voice is and how—
"Look away from me," Sonoko repeats.
Ran tries. "I can't."
"Superpowers," Sonoko repeats. "Glowy magic eyes and superpowers."
"Anything else I should know?" Ran asks.
Sonoko sucks in a careful breath.
Ran waits.
"Apparently, it only works for certain people, and only ones who die on August 15th," she says, and doesn't wait for permission before wrapping Ran in a hug.
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On August 15th, Ran came to school hungry for an explanation for Shinichi's behavior but his desk remained empty through the first few periods. Kazuha and Kaito never showed up to lunch, and when she came back, she found a vase of lilies on Shinichi's desk.
Do the bullies around here get all their ideas from TV dramas? she wondered, disgusted.
"All right, who's the wiseguy that put the flowers on Shinichi-kun's desk?" she demanded, looking around.
No one met her eyes.
Finally, Santemillion-sensei said, "Ran-chan, why don't we step out in the hall and talk?"
There was pity in the woman's eyes, and Ran was suddenly terrified.
Santemillion-sensei didn't know a lot about what happened, but she did know enough to take Ran out the back door of the school, away from where the body fell.
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Ran doesn't know what to make of Ai. Even asleep like this, she seems otherworldly, more foreign than odd hair-coloring could possibly account for. Quietly, Ran moves forward, wondering if that hair, tangled up like a mass of corn snakes, could sense her even when its owner is asleep.
She's not as strange as the robot girl—Toyaka, or something?—who doesn't seem to have any long-term memory and reminds her of Kazuha in ways she can't explain. But compared to Sonoko, or Yoshida, or even angry little Conan—Ai just seemsunearthly.
Her eyes fall on a picture on a table near the bed. It's a picture of Shinichi—why is it here?
And then she realizes. Yoshida, Tsubaraya, Kojima—they're Shinichi's siblings. That's what he meant by special. "They were always wearing something red,"—always—
She remembers.
This isn't the first time.
The first time she really is a shut-in and she dies on the floor of the detective agency at the hands of something that looks like a photo-negative of one of Kazuha's robot OC drawings—oh, so that's what Toyaka is—hey, does that mean KID is Kaito?—
The second time she ventures out and there are terrorists and she meets the others but the dark-Toyaka is far too fast for them and Kojima—Genta—dies before her eyes, shot through the head before she can blink, and then the gun points at her and her chest is on fire—
The third time everything is going smoothly until Toyaka trips on the stairway and she tries to steady her and they fall and keep falling and everything turns black—
The fourth time—the fourth time isn't the fourth time, it's a dozen more times, blurring into one another and culminating In a promise between her and Ai—Ai, whose hair has turned short and who now has odd spikes spread out behind her like wings as the two of them hover in a sea of endless red light—that she definitely won't forget, not this time, that Ai won't have to turn back time again, that she'll use her own power to remember and save everyone—
She wakes up on the floor, shaking, and knows what she has to do.
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She was only going to stay home for a few days, but then she heard that Kaito's mom and Kazuha's parents had put out missing persons reports. No one knew where any of her friends were—well, except Shinichi, because he was—she couldn't think about that, not yet. Given how sickly Kazuha was—and how much Kaito cared for her, even if it was easy to miss—Ran wasn't hopeful.
She stopped texting Sonoko so much—surely, as an idol singer, she had plenty of people to talk to—and started letting her Dad drink himself into stupors when he wanted to. The effort of fighting him on it wasn't worth it.
She didn't want to go back to school. She couldn't stand all of the reminders. She couldn't look Kudou-sensei in the eye, knowing that Shinichi had told her that he'd "take care of all of it, tomorrow."
Maybe she'd just find some online classes.
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She only has the courage to run into traffic because she knows for certain that she won't really die, but the moment of impact is still a little terrifying.
When the other world, the one she visited with Ai last time, comes into view, it's even scarier. This time she knows what's here.
She's right where she thought she would be. And he's right where he's always been.
"I broke my promise," Shinichi says, rising from a copy of his desk in a classroom where all the angles are crooked, and light from nowhere in particular dyes everything redder than that familiar scarf.
"I thought you lied," Ran says, and somehow, her voice is even.
He shakes his head. "This," he says, gesturing around, "was always the backup plan, but I thought I could reason with hi—with it."
"It?" Ran asks.
"The thing possessing Dad," Shinichi says. "The one that keeps trying to take over that robot of Kazuha's."
"It wants to kills us," Ran says.
"I won't let it," Shinichi replies. "That's why I came here. I thought, if someone kept one of the people with powers here, he wouldn't try to kill the rest…but he's got another plan. So I'll protect you, and them."
"We'll protect them," Ran corrects. "I don't like how it turns out when you try to handle things on your own."
Shinichi ducks his head. "I don't like it either," he said. "You sound like you want to cry. That wasn't what I meant to happen."
"It better not have been!" Ran bursts out, the bickering half-instinctive—and, curse it, now she is crying, her face buried in the stitching of the scarf.
Shinichi is rubbing her back, now. "I'm sorry I died," he says, softly.
"Who even says that?" Ran demands, sniffling.
"I do, I guess?" Shinichi says, shrugging.
"You'd better not have a reason to say it again," Ran says, pulling back to look him in the eyes.
"I won't," he promises.
"Good," Ran says.
"And no more secrets," she adds. "You should have told me. I would've understood, about your siblings."
Yoshida Ayumi, who really can vanish. Kojima Genta, who can disguise himself as anyone—including, probably, Shinichi, during some of those days when Ran thought something was off about Shinichi. Tsubaraya Mitsuhiko, who can read minds. From the very start, Shinichi's been protecting them, first from the world and then from the thing possessing their adoptive father. And now, Ran's going to help.
"I'm sorry," Shinichi says.
"If you want to apologize, then let me help," she replies, and hugs him again. He's still solid. This is more than she could have hoped for.
The grin she gets in return isn't the sadness-tinged smile that haunts her nightmares. This one is cocky and bright and alive. "Then, let's start by getting out of here," Shinichi says. "The Detective Boys are still in trouble."
"That is such an idiotic name for a club," Ran accuses.
"I was in middle school," Shinichi whines in protest.
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August 16th is oppressively hot, but Ran barely even notices the humidity clinging to her skin. She's wearing a white dress that's been gathering dust in her closet for two years—and shouldn't she be concerned, that it's loose, rather than tight, on her now? Probably. But it is what it is, and Shinichi's waiting for her.
They all are.
Kaito, back in his own body and already steady on his feet again, is pushing Kazuha in a hospital-issue wheelchair.
"I stole her," he says, grinning, and she grins back. He's kept KID's smile, somehow.
Tsubaraya and Ai walk hand in hand, next to Kojima, whose smile is softer than it was yesterday, and Yoshida, who is humming a little, instead of just glowering at everything. Having their big brother back has been good for them.
The two country kids—Conan and the little blond girl—cling to each other for dear life, and she doesn't blame them. They're barely twelve, and they've seen far too much in the last two days.
From behind them, Sonoko waves. "Ran-chan!"
"Ugh, you're so loud," Shinichi complains.
"Ran-chan never told me you were such a wet blanket," Sonoko replies primly.
Ran just shakes her head. "Don't fight."
"Same old Mouri-han," Kazuha declares.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Kaito declares. "You were in another dimension for two years and you still didn't lose your accent?"
"Osaka pride!" Kazuha declares, attempting a fist-pump. She's not in the best physical shape, so it turns into more of a fist-twitch, but the sentiment is conveyed.
"Your friends are weird," Sonoko tells Ran, quietly.
Ran tries not to get teary-eyed as she watches them bicker, eyes flickering red every so often when the debate turns particularly impassioned.
"I know," she says. "Isn't it wonderful?"
"…whaddya got against my accent anyhow?" Kazuha complains, as Ran tunes back into the conversation.
"I find it unaccountably cute and I really wish you'd stop talking in it," Kaito blurts out.
"Oh my gosh you finally admitted it," Shinichi says out loud.
"Don't interrupt them, they're finally making progress!" Ran exclaims.
"Have you both known about this the whole time?" Kaito asks, flushing.
"Were you just laughin' at us behind our backs?" Kazuha demands, eyes narrowed.
"What?" Shinichi protested. "No, of course not! I mean, we knew, but—"
"We kept waiting for you to catch on," Ran says, coming up by Shinichi's side and grabbing his arm, leaning into his scarf like it's the most natural thing in the world. "If we'd known this was what it would take for you to figure it out yourself, we would have said something."
Shinichi relaxes against her. "Yeah, seriously," he says, chuckling.
Maybe she'll talk to Shinichi, later. Maybe it will be the kind of talk that Kazuha and Kaito are having, maybe it won't be.
For right now, he's here, and it's enough.
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