Disclaimer: I don't own DC.
Not really a specific pairing in there. This is just my thought of what would happen to Ai and their current lives if the organization is gotten rid of and life returns to what it was like before.
Not beta-ed, please excuse some mistakes. ^^;
I.
Haibara, he said to me one night while we sat under the face hid in his palms, like a baby who he had never been before and I would never imagine him to be. Please.
II.
It was about time he noticed.
The fact was right in front of him for years, almost half a decade. I hadn't even bothered to conceal the truth, ever since the beginning. Or perhaps he has known from the start and ceased to care about the matter at all. Perhaps he had known it, even if the truth was never spoken aloud.
I owe him more that anyone could ever imagine, and truthfully—and I could care less about how shameless this sounds—I so often find myself rejoicing within his pain, the loneliness that had found a home within his battered heart, and the unforgeable bond that promised to be kindled for eternity since childhood, made impossible by my very existence. I am the root to all his problems, and perhaps he had already noticed.
But being as kind, as forgiving a person he is, he had never spoke a word of blame against this heartless monster.
III.
I'm going to tell him this time, she told herself. I'm going to tell him I like him now.
Ayumi stands in her pretty red shoes, a bouquet of flowers from her mother cradled to her chest that burst with colors against her cotton white dress. Her eyes—shining amber orbs, almost glasslike—are anticipating, waiting, holding down the excitement and anxiety and fear, as she watches him step off the stage and join the rest of the graduates that each held their own bouquets of flowers from their loved ones.
A high school girl steps into the crowd, locking eyes with him as she hands him what's not a nicely wrapped bouquet of flowers from the store, but a single rose, wrapped delicately within a thin sheet of cellophane. She speaks words drowned out by the thundering cheers, and finally he takes the flower from her and encloses his small fist around the stem—
But he does not release her hand. It was then that his perfect façade—the illusion of a child, the wall he has built up against them and along with his smile—crumbles into millions of particles of dust as she finally hugs him, the right way, the way he has always longed for but was never able to achieve.
And Ayumi thinks for a second—and she bites her teeth as tears threaten to smudge the makeup she had spent hours applying to her face—that maybe it was better off leaving the two of them alone.
IV.
Conan has been acting strange.
For the past few days neither he nor Ai had eaten lunch with them. After school, when they had invited the two to join them in their post-graduation party, they had both declined without giving it a thought.
Today he called them into the halls, once all the kids have gone home to their parents, have left the elementary school for good, he had asked them to meet in front of their homeroom.
His back was facing them as he said it.
"I'm leaving," he said, "and I won't be coming back."
Mitsuhiko laughed. Did you forget, we all applied for the same middle school?
But his response was resolute, firm. "I'm leaving."
He hears feet shifting behind his back.
To where, Conan? Her voice wavers. Why aren't you coming back?
"America," he simply says.
A silence washes through the halls as all life stills within the thickening atmosphere. Somehow, a feeling resonates within his ribcage, and slowly it gathers…
You're lying! She screams. You're lying, you're lying! You never told us!
Because he can't bear watching her cry, and he isn't going to turn around now. He has chosen.
He knows now that no matter how much they beg he would not return. Conan will fade away tonight, as he takes his last step into the sunset he will forever disappear into the world. And he will be home—where he belongs, where he was destined to be—and that is by her side.
But you will visit us, right?
She cries. The two others speak no words. Mitsuhiko coughs, to hide a sob.
He gathers all his courage and turns around, and what awaits him were the same faces he had befriended since the first day, and somehow at this moment, this crucial moment which he struggles to keep his composure, he is flooded with memories.
These faces—at picnic lunches on weekends, at movies, at home, on the phone. These faces have been with him, supported him, had called him friend. They have helped him solve cases and brought cases to him, have laughed alongside him and sought his help in fear. Their smiles, so brilliant and full of youth and bubbling with a child's innocence and grace, have been with him for what seems to be ever that he stopped noticing how beautiful they were. They saved him, when he had fallen into the pit of despair, they were there for him, and no matter what the case they had promised, they believe him.
Conan had not imagine it so hard to say goodbye to them. He knew it was unfair that he will disappear all of a sudden from their lives, exactly like the way he has entered. And as he looked at these faces once more (faces that admired him, faces that never lost hope, that brought him into a children's world full of laughter and love and chastity, a world he has long forgotten, and faces that believe that he would save them no matter what the situation), he bit his lip, tears gliding softly down one cheek and said of course.
It was at that instance that Ayumi had thought that maybe, just maybe, this boy who she had thought had been loved no stronger by anyone other than herself for four straight years, was more than she could ever imagine and understand.
We believe in you, Conan.
He believed in them, too. He believed they would do just fine, even if he was gone.
V.
I've always thought that no matter what was to happen, the name I chose for myself was indeed very befitting.
Sorrow was the fundamental element that paved the road of my life. Every street I pace, every corner I turn, every ocean, every land that I step foot on, what awaits me is nothing but sorrow. Of hopes to crumble, of feelings unspoken crushed, of longing and desires unfulfilled and trampled upon and the melancholy of the resonating past ringing within my ears as I sleep. I've gotten quite used to it, really. It's been that way since I was born.
But when I betrayed my past—taken the last path out of the cage I was confined in, perhaps out of impulse of a moment of whimsical deduction did I hope, hope!—as the professor thought hard for a name I had suggested "Ai"—
Was it really, a decision of depression, an absolute choice that spoke the irrevocable truth about my life, or was it really…
Because I had saw a spark of hope? Because when I had looked into the homonym and realize maybe it wasn't fate, and maybe, just maybe, amidst the hollow space in my chest there was love, instead of sorrow? That maybe there was really a future worth looking forward to, and even within despair love would reside?
That maybe a tragedy, be it predetermined or man-made, also had double meanings?
That is why this is stupid.
He sits across from me, the glasses that always made his eyes look smaller sat on the table in front of us, and he glared at it like it was ugly and filthy. I know what he's going to ask—and that is why it is stupid.
Because there shouldn't be a burning feeling on my thigh, where the little container sits within my pants pocket day and night and never to be touched. I shouldn't have a reason to hide the pills from him, because after all, the whole reason that I've lived in this house is to invent them for him, because that is simply my duty, my job.
But my mouth will never say the words. I've made the pills. I cannot.
I can see it—you will leave. You will give me a hug and thank me, then you will take the drug and dash home to her. You will have your life back. And you will rejoice. You will love her and care for her and make promises that will last. You will never leave her side again and finally make up for the time that I have taken away. Your loneliness will be gone. Everything will be the way it should be. And life will go on.
And I?
I, the creator of your problems, of the drug, the one who's robbed your youth and time and love and everything you had, will watch, and as the pieces of your puzzle snap together, and mine will break into countless pieces until there was any proof that it had been existent at all.
But he wants to return before she graduates for the third time. Sure, I'll do that. No problem. I don't think he realizes, no matter what it was he asks me I will do it. Anything and everything, as long as it eased him pain.
I hand him the square plastic box.
And he looks at me like I'm God. Like I've just untied a knot in his veins that in truth, was tie by me in the first place. And he looks hideous for a second, like he was about to cry. He leans across the table and kisses my cheek, and with a trembling voice whispers, Thank you.
While he dashes out the door, I cry. I sit on the couch and I cry. I don't even bother to wipe the tears away before they rolled into the collar of my shirt. After how long, I stop, and like all things I've ever cried over, this was the last and only time. I would wake up the next morning and never spare it another thought again.
This was the end of Miyano Shiho.
She is gone, so say farewell.
VI.
The smell of September dominated the air. The freshness of a new school year, of new classes and new people to look forward to meeting. He waits for her under the ceiling of the narrow stairs that lead up to her father's bad-excuse-of-a-detective-agency, walls browning and paint chipping as it aged on. "Ran!" He shouts upstairs, mumbling nervously to himself and glancing around at random, his left hand shoved resolutely into his pants pocket. "The professor isn't going to wait any longer!"
"I'm coming!"
She runs—trips—down the stairs and right into him, and the big suitcase of stuff he was bringing to college. He catches her with his right arm, and notices that her left hand is also hidden as best as she could.
The idea that maybe he wasn't the only one nervous about being flashy on their first day of school soothed him. And then he laughed, purposely grabbing hold of her ringed hand and waving it around. She almost had him in a headlock before he agreed to let go. "Geez," Ran pouts, "It's not like we're married or anything."
"Engagement is practically marriage, you know."
That voice.
The detective froze, whipping around and for the first time noticing the presence in the passenger seat.
"H-Haibara?"
She glances out of the corner of her eye, smirking at his dumbfounded face.
"Why are you—"
The middle-schooler cocks an eyebrow at him, finding humour within his disbelief. "Still a child?"
Shinichi doesn't speak.
And Ai closes her eyes for a moment. She turns away from the image in front of her, abandons reality once more like she's done many times before, and falls into a place where she's free to twist the plot and change the gears of things as she likes, a world of only memories.
She remembers the first day they've met, they way his eyes always said so much more than his lips. She remembers laughing at his singing while he never got mad. She remembered the hundreds of cases solved, under his calm impression and intelligence; the seldom times when he shed a few tears or two when he thought nobody was around; the way he sometimes looked at mirrors and saw an alien staring back, and at times when she was in danger and he would lose his cool. Times when he was sick, when she was sick, when they rode bikes down mountain trails and fished along shores. Hot springs, haunted mansions, camp grounds, hidden caves, back allies, movie theatres, shrines, exhibits, museums, and just about everywhere, with the three hyperactive children by their sides. And she remembers, that day when she had finally asked him Why, and he said:
He was thankful, that she had given him the opportunity to meet them all, and when certain things are taken away, others are being fulfilled.
When she finally grasped the meaning behind his words, her eyes opened and she smiled.
"And if I were to turn back, where in the world would I go?"
The answer is simple.
It is true, Miyano Shiho no longer exists.
Instead, she is Ai Haibara.
a little author's note:
I've really rushed this, diving into the detective conan fandom so suddenly without any experience whatsoever xD I've never written for this fandom before, let alone read anything here yet, so please go easy on me if I sound out of place.