A/N: Written for
Diversity Writing Challenge, a82 – write about losing something
Ultimate Sleuth Challenge, Ch 2 – red quest 4 - Find an old, discontinued/unfinished fic. Take one of the ideas and reboot it. The fic in question is called What did I do: Osamu and Ken, by 243Ash.
Without Ken
Here it was at last. The secret Ken had so doggedly kept, spread out at his feet. And he couldn't even feel smug about it, because it had cost him too much. His brother's dead body, with the doctors noting something on a clipboard and drawing up the sheets so they wouldn't have to look at the blood anymore. And his pride, because he'd failed thrice over: failed to work out Ken's secret with his own devices (and someone had to tell him the answer and not even Ken who was the only one who should have done so), failed to understand why Ken had been so angry (and he still didn't – though maybe it was because he'd understood something that Osamu hadn't?), and, finally, had failed to save Ken's life. Failed to even catch his wrist when he'd run onto the road without looking both ways.
And this was the result. The answer he'd been looking for, far too late and when it meant absolutely nothing. A world made of data and a crying caterpillar who'd apparently understood his little brother far better than he himself, and who'd been there when he hadn't.
And in his pocket, the device he'd claimed but had belonged to Ken all along.