A/n: This will probable be my only Detective Conan fan fic. At least until I watch the whole series so far. As always please be honest but polite. Update with some editing corrections. If you spot any, just mention them in the review and thank you in advance.
Conan and Ran were getting married in two months. He was graduating high school in one. She didn't care that she was older. She didn't care that people thought she was trying to replace Shinichi. So what if Conan looked like Shinichi. So what if Conan solved cases like Shinichi. But he wasn't Shinichi. He was better. He had been there every time Shinichi disappeared to go on his "case". He would cheer her up and looked after her.
When they first met, he had been a curious boy of eight and she had been a fiery girl of sixteen. He needed a place to stay and she needed someone to keep her mind off her missing friend. Even then she knew things were different between them. He would go everywhere she did and help her father solve the problems they faced. When either would get hurt the other would lash out in anger.
For years it continued and Ran tried to convince herself that they were just friends. But Conan would ignore the girls around him just to spend time with her and she would become insanely jealous of any he did talk to. Ran watched him grow tall and wondered what it would be like to be held by him for a change.
When he was thirteen, their friend Agasa died of old age. Shinichi couldn't make it so Conan gave the eulogy. Even Haibara was moved to tears. That night when Shinichi had called to see how she was doing, he mentioned Haibara's crying. That had been the finally straw. Ran had screamed at him. Cursed him. Told him exactly what she thought of him. How could he make Conan go thru that while he watched from the shadows like the coward he was? She never wanted to see or hear from him again. As always, when she had gotten off the phone with Shinichi, Conan had shown up to see if she was okay. Ran had just cried and said how much she wished Shinichi could be more like him.
When he was fifteen, everything changed. A criminal empire that Conan had been trying to take down kidnapped her and everyone that she knew. That turned out to be their undoing. With the help of Kaitou KID, Conan and the police were finally able to bring the organization down. Finding a vial in the rubble, Conan had kissed her and said that they could finally be together. Realizing what he had done, Conan ran home.
His home. Conan had gotten permission from the Kudos to move into their house and help Haibara deal with Agasa's death. Ran would have felt jealous, but Conan still spent most of his time with her. She beat him there by five minutes. Surprising him, she asked why he had kissed her. He told her the truth; he had been in love with her since he moved in with her when he was eight. He told her that he was sorry, that he knew that she didn't want anything to do with him. She hit him calling him stupid. Then she had kissed him. They spent the night together and she moved in the next day.
Surprising for her, most of their friends had no problem with the romance. If anything they were glad that it finally happened, but there was still something off. Sometimes when Conan thought she was asleep, would pull out the vial and just stare at it. Other times when he was talking on the phone, she would hear him mention Shinichi and how what he was doing wasn't right. Ran just ignored it. Shinichi was her past, and Conan was going to be her future.
Following his friends' examples Conan proposed to Ran on her twenty-fifth birthday. Because they had a year before they could get married, they had enough time to plan and invite everyone they knew. But that's where the trouble started. Heiji was always arguing with Conan about how Shinichi should be the one marrying Ran. Conan didn't seem to disagree with Heiji but wasn't going to give Ran up without a fight. Finally Ran had enough and decided to send an invite to the Kudos and have them bring Shinichi with them. She would prove that Shinichi was no Conan and that she was marrying the right man.
When Conan found out, he asked her to come into their bedroom. Locking the door, he showed her the vial and said that it was time she knew the truth. He went on to tell her a story about how he was Shinichi deaged by a poison and how he had slowly realized his feelings for her. How he wanted to tell her the truth but couldn't. Every time Ran brought up the fact that she had seen Conan and Shinichi at the same time, he would explain it away. Finally he kissed her and told her he loved her. Downing the vial, Conan collapsed onto the floor turning into Shinichi as he fell.
The boy she loves is the man she hates. What is she to do?
Shinichi and Ran are getting married in a week. It had taken months for her to forgive him, but their love proved stronger than her anger. It helped that her friends and family, even her dad, had figured it out years ago and helped consul her with it. It also helped that with a new set of eyes she had looked on the past and realized that Shinichi had tried to be there for her, but when he couldn't he would be as Conan.