Well, yeah, katie-chan, I've made my choice, and in the end it isn't one among the two I'd told you about. Shoot me. :P
Jokes aside, this is, in fact, part of a much larger fic that I've been planning for a while. The other's pretty much focused on KA, though, and I've been wondering how Heiji and Kazuha's side would be, which delivered this. It's AU, I think, or would-be canon if things went terribly wrong.
Disclaimer—I do not own either Detective Conan or Magic Kaito. Aoyama Gosho does. I don't own The Hollow Men either—poem's by by T.S. Eliot.
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Not A Bang But A Whimper
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This is how the world ends:—
..
Here is a situation:
Saguru is the one who suffers the most.
There are two huddled figures besides his prone form, hands fussing like ghosts about his wounded leg, in foretelling of what's to come, perhaps (they'll cut it off in the end.) One is blond, the other is dark, and they would be both unknown to Heiji if he didn't know they're friends of Nakamouri Aoko.
Nakamouri Aoko is sitting near to them, curled up on her knees, face down and hidden; she hasn't looked up in hours now. And opposite to her is a would-be mirror, for Ran lies on a mattress, a long band of cloth covering her eyes. She does not hurt anymore; or her pain is silent.
(She will never see again.)
Kazuha is holding her friend's hand with one and hugging little Conan-kun with the other arm. The kid is only five; he'd be the exact replica of his father, if the tears stopped running down his face, and if his sobs didn't sound so ragged and miserable. Heiji feels quiet kinship with the child, for he looks a little too much alike to the appearance his closest friend, rival, colleague, once held.
The two men who form the link between one group and the other are both missing, and Heiji clutches on the hope that they will come safely back, just as hard as he clutches on the windowsill whose shards bite into his palms.
"Heiji," Kazuha says, then, in a small trickle of a voice, and the world is—
(—still.)
"The sun's rising."
And when Heiji turns, it is.
(They should be thankful.)
..
The wreck of the tramway hardly bothers the passing people. Kazuha is half-sobbing as she and Heiji hurry past, and wants to rush to the rescue (because a child is crying, and many others will tonight when their father, their mother will not come home)—but Heiji grips onto her hand faster and drags her.
'We can do nothing. People will take care of it; we were lucky we took the one after that; come; we're late; they will be waiting for us…'
(—oh how he'd like to believe in everything he says.)
Here is a truth, though: they will be waiting for us. And here is something a little less true: we can do nothing.
Kazuha's sobs resorb as they get closer to the luxurious restaurant where they will be waiting. It is, after all, an everyday scene; they have seen many more of them, and many others. Sometimes they envy Ran. Sometimes. (Red, that's all they see when they blink.)
(But then she hears. And they don't know what's worse, really.)
In the restaurant, they sit around a round table. The irony of it is almost sickening, because (they are nothing like knights) it turns and turns and Conan always looks sad these days. Kazuha keeps him on her lap when Ran is talking, and Ran may not talk much, but when she does even her son is silent.
Akako is perhaps the one who copes with it best. She owns the restaurant, and Aoko's eyes are less blue than steel now, and Saguru limps and will go on limping. And Sonoko, well, Sonoko is gone. (One day: they found her room empty.)
Under the tablecloth, Kauha's hand has a vice-grip on his.
..
(When at night, they sleep in the same bed, the way they have for years now, bodies pressed together and fingers linked, holding onto each other as though the simple fact of relaxing would mean sinking.
They don't discuss it. They don't forego it, and it never quite becomes a routine.)
..
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends:—
..
. history of their first kiss:
It wasn't planned.
It wasn't, really—well, maybe. a little. on his side—and anyhow, not then.
They don't think about it (does anyone? realization comes later) on the spur of the moment. The moment spins and freefalls and oh, his lips are perhaps a little chapped, and hers are a bit more responsive than he had expected, but. Well. This.
Their noses, predictably, get in the way and make the whole position somewhat uncomfortable.
(They don't really remember it, now.)
..
They are the saner ones.
They think it's because they are together. They have a half to hold onto in those times when nothing—riches, connections, properties—is more important than this simple comfort a hug always provides. They—the others, the four others (five if you count Conan, which you don't)—could go by any other sort of warmth, and they don't.
Heiji doesn't think he would.
Kazuha has lost weight recently, and that worries him a little, as much as the curve of the sun in the evening worries him when he comes—returns—to the little room they share under the roofs. It's nearly night, and Kazuha looks a little like a ghost.
(Maybe they are, not simply her, but both of them. That's a thought he likes he play with, when Kazuha rises early and the bed is empty.)
Ran summons them to reunions once every month, but apart from this they don't see the others very much. There is not much need to. Akako is faring well, it seems. Saguru has found a job at a local printer's. Aoko—well, Aoko. She is—
(—waiting?)
They have all assumed the first-names basis quite well, they think.
They are the saner ones, and maybe the others hate them a little for it.
..
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends:—
..
Coming home is a difficult process. For them, it comes with a train whose windows are shuttered out, but through whose blinds they managed a gap, a crack to look out onto the country and the dark, thick smoke that comes with the heady thrum of the iron machine.
They're coming home; not because they long for the olden, golden city where they grew up, and Ran knew that; but because they need to be there, as much as Saguru and Aoko need to be in Tokyo. They do not go by the infamous titles of ambassadors. They go by other names, names that never were theirs to begin with.
They come into view of their olden city, and Kazuha does not sob, but that's mostly because she's fallen off the habit.
They're coming home— But they see the ruins, and ruins they are somewhat, because the sun slants across them, and they glisten and slide, almost magnificently. It's like, perhaps, looking onto light in a mirror (it's—water. Do you know? It's water.)
They're coming home.
..
Here is a situation:
"Heiji," Kazuha says, in a small trickle of a voice, and the world is—
(—still.)
"The sun's rising."
And when Heiji turns, it is.
(They should be thankful no one has died yet.)
..
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
This is how the world ends
Not with a bang but with a—
..
Hope you liked it, katie-chan, even though it's puzzling even me. (I need to stop using t.s. eliot all the damn time, seriously.)