Sayonara
n. Goodbye (generally implies either for a long time or forever)
"Kudo…" Haibara stared for a long moment, then sighed, nodding. "I understand. I'll give you a few minutes alone—here, Agasa's kept your cellphone, you can use it. I'm coming back in five minutes; it's obvious that its starting already."
Shinichi nodded to the not-little-girl in front of him. "If this is the last time… I can't ask her to wait anymore. She needs to move on, and the only way she'll do that is…"
"... if she genuinely thinks you're dead. You're friends at Interpol might be willing to help in that regard. Give me that tie of yours—I can use it to help, too. If you twist the truth a little... well. I'll listen in on your end."
xxxx
"Sonoko! Stop trying to set me up with every other guy you meet!" Ran smiled, amused as much as exasperated. Her friend knew she was waiting for Shinichi to get finished with… whatever he was caught up in, but Sonoko was very much inviting her to anywhere she thought she could see cute guys anyway.
The phone rang, interrupting the moment.
"Hm? I wonder who that is," Ran got up and circled the desk to pick it up. "Moshi moshi?"
"Ran?" a little breathless.
"Shinichi?" Ran startled, happy and angry all at once.
Sonoko sat up straight on one of the twin couches and Kogoro paused in the doorway.
"Is anyone with you, Ran?"
"Um, hai, Sonoko and Tou-san." Ran replied, confused by the question.
"Good, that's good. I need you to-" a shuddered breath ended in a rough cough before the high-school detective regained his ability to speak, "-put this on speaker, Ran. I need someone else to hear."
Confusion was getting tainted by worry, but Ran did as she was told and hit the 'speaker' button. "There, it's on speaker. Shinichi, what's going on?"
"Where have you been all this time, you jerk?" Sonoko demanded on top of Ran's question.
A half-breathless chuckle, "Hey, that's… why I'm calling. Ran, you remember the night I first disappeared?"
"Of course I do!"
"I saw something; I'd thought it was a blackmail deal going down, maybe it even was. They had a lookout who spotted me and they…" another pause for coughing, a few moments of harsh breathing that had Mouri stepping into the room and closing the door behind him, intent in a way he rarely was.
"Shinichi?" Ran asked, alarmed.
"Heh," another shuddering breath, "They gave me some kind of poison. The one who found me afterwards, Sherry, she took the chance to get away from the Organization. She'd developed the drug, but it wasn't ready. It wasn't supposed to be poison, and there wasn't an antidote. It took a while, but I've been… okay, since she's made a reliable stabilizer. You remember that time Hattori showed up and I was coughing? I'd been doing better, I thought I should see you, but…"
Ran placed a hand on the desk, shaking with realization. "Shinichi?"
"I started crashing. I couldn't stay: the hospital wouldn't have been able to help and I would have been killed if the Organization had found out. I've been trying to… bring them down. Interpol and the States have people on them, too, we've got almost enough, but…" a longer pause, choked breathing.
"Shinichi, what's going on?"
"The place I've been staying the past couple weeks got hit, they—everything's gone. I don't know whether or not Sherry got away, but even if she did—ngh!" he broke of with a choked cry and a sharp clatter indicated the phone had fallen.
"Shinichi? Shinichi!" Ran clutched at the edge of the table, white-faced, and Sonoko jumped up to catch her by the arms.
"Ran!"
Another clatter, softer, and a loud beep. The line suddenly sounded like it was full of echoes. "Sorry. Can't hold the phone anymore," there was resignation in Shinichi's tone. "You're on speaker, now. Ran… I-I'm not coming back. Even if Sherry's alive, it's been too long since my last dose of the stabilizer."
"Shinichi, don't talk like that! You're—we'll find you, you'll be all right!"
"Sonoko-san, you and Mouri-san still there?"
Sonoko felt a little white-faced herself, "Hai."
"Good. Just bear witness, that's all. Ran, I love you. I had to stay away, and I'm sorry for that, but if they knew you knew I was alive, I don't even… want to think about what they'd have…" a sharp sound, followed by, "Damn it, running out of time… Ran, I need you to… find someone else. Move on. Be happy. You have a life ahead of you, don't… don't waste it on what-ifs. And don't look for what happened to me. Mouri-san, Sonoko-san… don't let her. They'll be taken care of soon enough." A longer silence, broken only by rough breathing on the other end of the line.
"Shinichi?" Ran silently cursed her voice for trembling, "Shinichi, please…"
"Gomen ne, Ran," Shinichi managed, pain clear in his voice, "I-" a shuttered cry, followed by a gritted-out, "Sayonara."
"Shinichi!"
There was a beep and a clatter; clearly Shinichi trying to shut off the phone and missing as the phone fell out of reach, a soft curse. "Hang… hang up, Ran," not breathless so much as broken, "I don't want you to hear when…" a thud and a choked-off cry of pain that tapered into gasps like he couldn't get enough air.
"Shinichi!" Ran's fingers tightened on the desk.
"Don't hang up," Mouri's voice cracked out, sharp with stress. "I'll get the police to bring a tracer. We can find him."
"No!" Shinichi's own order, "They'll—come after you! You can't! There's too many—ah!"
Three people in the main room of a private detective agency, listening to a fourth panting on the other end of a phone line. The panting changed, escalated to screams, and Ran fell to her knees with her head in her hands, Sonoko's hands shaking against her shoulders as she knelt beside her.
Beneath the screams, something else—shouting, a bang like a door hitting a wall, "Kudo-kun!"
An older woman's voice, "Kudo! Snap out of it!"
"Who's there?" Kogoro asked sharply, only to be ignored by whoever was in the room with Kudo, possibly unheard over the screams—and then the screaming stopped abruptly in a choked gasp and the silence in their wake was deafening.
"Kudo… damn it, it wasn't supposed to end like this!" Frustration, anger—grief, a bang like a fist hitting hollow metal. "You were… you were supposed to bring them down while I made you an antidote! You were supposed to get your life back!"
"Are you 'Sherry'?"
"Who's there?"
"Kudo called my daughter," the detective informed, hoping to keep whoever-it-was from panicking.
"You're… Mouri-san, then, where's the, ah," a scrape as the phone was picked up and the echoes disappeared, "He wouldn't have called anyone but Ran-san. Not… I'm sorry. It's over. I'll contact Interpol; they'll… need to know. I don't know what he told you, but don't get involved. They'll kill anyone who gets in their way. This is multi-national. Kudo… Kudo stumbled in by accident and it… I had hoped it wouldn't kill him. Now… I promised to do my best to keep Ran-san and her family safe if… if anything happened to him. So, please, don't get involved." The line clicked and settled into the whine of the dial-tone.
xxxx
Two hours later, Sonoko was hugging a shell-shocked Ran on the couch, Mouri sitting across from them with three cups of tea on the table between, and the phone rang again.
Mouri stood up and retrieved it.
"Is this Mouri Detective Agency?"
"Hai," he said, a little shortly.
"I'm Agent Harris of Interpol. Your daughter is listed among Kudo Shinichi's next-of-kin. I'm sorry; he's dead."
"I see. Thank you for letting me know." He hung up before the other could, free hand clenching into a fist as he turned towards his daughter and her friend, "That was Interpol. Confirmation."
xxxx
Three days later, Conan returned from his 'camping trip' with Agasa and Haibari, haggard and looking distinctly worse-for-wear, coughing and sniffling in turns.
Ran met him with red eyes and a hug, telling him that his Shinichi-nii-san had died.
Conan cried silent tears as he was put to bed with his fever, watching Ran's movements with worried eyes. She wasn't her usual graceful self, and was so visibly unhappy that it made Conan's heart ache. And it was Conan, now. He could never be Shinichi again—Shinichi wasn't coming back and Conan would always be Ran's pseudo little brother.
They both needed to move on.
Gomen ne, Ran.
