Drifting

by Sapphire Insanity

He lived with it, now, that bordering panic and paranoia that exploded into being the moment anything related to Them cropped up. It had become so ingrained in his life that he could always feel it, simmering below the surface. It was so much a part of him now that he didn't think he'd ever be able to live without it.

Drifting

Summary; He lived with it, now, that bordering panic and paranoia that exploded into being the moment anything related to Them cropped up. It had become so ingrained in his life that he could always feel it, simmering below the surface. It was so much a part of him now that he didn't think he'd ever be able to live without it.

As Kudo Shinichi, he had been no stranger to the negativity that existed both within the world and himself.

It would have been hard to be, after all. He wasn't just a detective, he was an analyser, an evaluator… an observer. He watched the world spin around him with careful, cautious, watchful eyes, always seeing the people and making split second decisions about who they were, what they were doing, why they were doing what they were doing. His mind continued to tick and analyse and move at light speeds no matter what he was doing, and it had gotten to a point, when he was younger, that he had simply had to learn how to tune all this knowledge and understanding to a murmuring background noise in the back of his mind. It was still there, it would never go away, but he could choose when to recognise it.

In the same vein, there were many things that he recognised about himself, as well. He knew his own failings, understood why he made the decisions that he did. Shinichi knew himself, in almost every aspect, because he had deduced his own personality in much the same way as he deduced the people around him.

It didn't always mean he understood people, of course. One of his major failings was his inability to understand the social aspects of people, because he was always so focused on the data and the environment that he missed the more subtle cues that others around him could pick up. He could tell everyone in a moment about how and why a room was cleared of desks and chairs without anyone noticing, but he couldn't understand what it meant when a girl looked at him constantly.

Feelings, Shinichi had long since decided, were utterly confounding. He had long since known, ever since he was little, how he felt about Ran, but that was so utterly large it would have been impossible to miss in all the time he had to think about it. Everything else, though, all these emotions and actions that he couldn't figure out, he just didn't know what to do with it, whether it was someone else that was feeling them or himself.

Becoming Conan had, in a way, made things worse on himself. He was struggling to understand his own social peers, as it was, and now he had been thrown into an entirely different ball game. Regardless, it did make him sit down and evaluate a few things about himself and come to some realisations that he had managed to miss before.

He'd never thought of himself as a rash person (and he would still hesitate to make that claim while thinking of a certain hot-headed Osakan detective), but some of his actions over the last few months had been downright reckless. It wasn't until after the fact that he started to think about consequences.

It wasn't until he actually started thinking about what could have happened that Conan had realised that, as Shinichi, he had never done that. He had just acted and hoped that everything would be fine. It usually was.

Except the one time it wasn't, when he had gotten himself stuck in the body of his seven-year-old counterpart, forced to draw upon every last bit of acting ability he had lest someone discover him and kill him and everyone around him. In light of this, becoming Conan had probably taught him a little more caution, a little more apprehension about his actions. Becoming a sort of semi-mentor to a group of kids had further this lesson; if he didn't want anything to happen to them, he simply could not run ahead with only a half-baked plan.

There was something that Conan was discovering about himself as time went by, however, something that had not been present before he had been forced to take that drug. Dark emotions, raw and unhindered, had started scrambling for the surface the longer he was left in this situation, emotions that had started to well up from the moment it had happened.

Anger had long since been discarded in his every-day life. He would feel angry when the topic came up, naturally, because he was furious that his life had been taken from him in such a way, and that the people who did it were still free. But he had learned to only feel that anger at specific points, because he couldn't feel angry all the time. He wouldn't be able to hide it if he did and, frankly, he didn't want to always feel that emotion. He had enough on his plate already.

Similar to this was the sadness. It hit him harder than he had expected when he had discovered that the cure to his situation would likely be a long time coming. Sadness for Ran, in particular, who was forced to wait for him. Every time he saw her tears he thought his heart broke just a little more. But he couldn't feel that all the time, either. Because there were things to do, people to interact with, and he couldn't be sad all the time if he wanted to focus on getting back what he had lost. A part of his mind might have decided he deserved to feel this emotion, for everything he was putting Ran through, but Conan knew he would have to let that heap itself on him when he finally returned to his real body. For now, it would have to be put on the backburner.

What he hadn't expected, however, was the fear.

He lived with it, now, that bordering panic and paranoia that exploded into being the moment anything related to Them cropped up. It had become so ingrained in his life that he could always feel it, simmering below the surface. It was so much a part of him now that he didn't think he'd ever be able to live without it. It was just there, always there, waiting and hiding to the point where he was always looking over his shoulder, sometimes literally. A feeling of a pair of eyes on him was enough to make his heart skip a beat, and it had gotten to the point where that damn tune that he couldn't even do anything about was haunting him, making him see visions of Vermouth or Gin or Vodka or one of the numerous agents that he had started to come across whenever he saw someone on the phone. He was running scared, terrified that someone would put the pieces together, that he would lose everything in a snap moment just because his disguise hadn't been good enough at a crucial moment.

For the most part, he could control it. In the early days it had been a lot harder, when he had seen Them hiding around every corner, ready to leap out at him. After the first time he had run across Gin and Vodka unexpectedly he had been something of a twitchy mess for at least a week afterwards once everything had finally calmed down. Eventually, though, he had learnt to shove that fear into the murmuring background noise, only allowing it reign after the fact, when he didn't have to worry about being on the wrong end of a gun or someone discovering him.

Unfortunately, though, Conan couldn't control it completely. Mention of Them was always enough to raise the bar, but other things started doing it as well. Things that had no relation to evil organisations.

Like what had just happened.

It was raining, now, and Conan knew that Ran would be wondering where he was. Eventually she would call Agasa in the hopes that he knew, and she would get the message, as per the agreement that he and Conan had made over the phone, that her small charge was with him and would be staying the night due to the oncoming storm. It would likely take a lot for Agasa to tell this particular lie, worried as he was about Conan's whereabouts himself. Perhaps he might assume that Conan had gone to his own house.

But he couldn't even go there, not without leaving some sign that he was alive to anyone who might want to search it. It was bad enough going in to clean every now and then with the girls; at least that could be explained as Shinichi's friends wanting to look after his home while he was away. But the large mansion was no longer a safe haven, no longer somewhere that he could escape from it all.

To be honest, Conan didn't even know where he was right now. It was shocking, because Conan was always aware of exactly where he was, and he didn't think he had gotten himself lost in Beika since he was little the first time around and still learning directions.

But today he had just chosen a heading and walked blindly, not even paying attention to which way he turned corners or what signs he passed. As a result, he had ended up on a darkly lit street, soaked to the bone and standing by a tall stone wall surrounding what was obviously a rich property. He wasn't even sure if he was in Beika anymore.

He wasn't sure if he even cared.

Slowly, simply exhausted both physically and mentally, Conan slid down the wall until he was sitting on the wet ground. He was saturated anyway, so it didn't make much of a difference, did it? He thought his body might be cold, by the way he was shivering, but he couldn't work up the strength to do anything about it, or even consciously feel it.

He could feel the fear still racing through his body, though, and the long walk hadn't done anything to calm it. Over and over the case he and his small friends had just been on played trough his mind. Routine, it had just been a routine case, not even a murder. A robbery, a simple store robbery, not enough to really worry about, not enough to even make his detective senses raise its head. The police were already well on their way and the people in the store were keeping quiet, not wanting to draw attention to themselves until the guy got arrested.

But then he had started to wave around a gun and refused to let anyone leave and started giving out orders. That was when it became less a store robbery and more a hostage situation that could turn bad at any moment.

Except, Genta managed to miss that memo.

Righteously furious, especially when a little girl with her mother burst into tears after the man waved his gun their way, Genta had moved before Conan could even thing of pulling him back. Even now, trying to think about it, he couldn't remember exactly what the large boy had said. He had been too suffused with horror to even listen.

Because in those few moments, between the shift from robbery to hostage situation, Conan had looked at that man and analysed him. He had understood, on a clinical level, what was making him tick. He was desperate and reckless, no rational thought getting through his mind. He had come to get what he wanted, regardless of anything else, and he didn't care about anyone else.

People like that were dangerous. People like that made Conan take two careful steps back and think every avenue through before he even thought about confronting them. People like that needed to be taken by surprise because no one would be able to talk them down.

Provoking them by moving forward and shouting at them, as Genta did, was the worst possible action to take.

It had happened in a blur of motion. Conan was vaguely aware of throwing himself forward, of Mitsuhiko and Ayumi crying out, of Haibara making a grab for him before he got himself hurt as well. He heard the shots, saw one of them whizz past Genta's ear and another land on the ground at his feet before a third managed to clip him on the shoulder. There were other shots too, but by then he had reached Genta and, with all the strength he possessed in his much smaller body, he had tackled his surprised friend to the ground before a fourth bullet could hit him in the chest. In the confusion, the store manager had managed to take the criminal by surprise, disarming him in a surprisingly fluid movement before sending him crashing to the ground.

Afterwards, everything had calmed down. Genta had been terribly guilty about causing Conan to get hurt, but the bespectacled boy had been cheerful if stern as the wound was treated and covered, reminding his friend that he had been reckless and that he needed to be more careful in the future. After their statements had been taken, the five children had been allowed to head into the fading afternoon sunlight, eventually parting ways.

He had been three blocks away from the agency (and wasn't he glad he didn't get to the agency?) when it had finally hit him. That man had had a gun. It had been pointed straight at them with the intent to kill. He had nearly been shot. Genta had nearly been shot.

Not even fully cognizant of his actions, he had reached the agency. He had walked straight past it, hand raised to carefully cover his wounded shoulder. And then he had just kept walking.

Which ended in him being here, shudders of rushing fear after the fact wracking his body, the image of that gun burnt into his mind. It hadn't been Them, it hadn't been anything to do with Them, but he had gotten so paranoid with the idea of Them that any gun he saw these days could easily be held by Their hand.

And the experience had hit far too close to home. One his friends had almost gotten hit by a wild bullet from a reckless, senseless man. He, Conan, had almost been unable to protect him.

It was like some sort of terribly prophecy of what could happen.

His body shuddered again. Then, suddenly, something unexpected happened; his phone rang. Conan blinked and stared down at his pocket, uncomprehending. For long moments the familiar jingle sounded until, abruptly, it stopped. He blinked again and, with fumbling, frozen fingers, he pulled the phone from the pocket and flipped it open. 'One missed call', it said.

Before he could try and figure out who it was, it rang again, right there in his hand. The name flashing on the screen was 'Hattori' rather than 'Ran' like he had half suspected it would be. He didn't know why Hattori was calling him right now, but he didn't really want to talk to him. He let it ring out again, staring.

And then, right there in his hands, it rung a third time, 'Hattori' flashing insistently across the screen.

Something finally penetrated the all-encompassing he had felt since he had parted ways with his friends. Irritation wasn't exactly a pleasant emotion, but he grasped for it with both hands, hitting the 'call' button without even thinking about it.

It wasn't until the phone was to his ear that the fledgling irritation faded and he was left to realise that the fear wasn't any less than it had been before. Except now he had a detective on the other end who would instantly pick up that something was wrong.

Except he couldn't make himself speak. The greeting, rude as it likely would have sounded when it came out, got stuck in his throat, and he couldn't make his voice work suddenly.

"Kudo?" the familiar voice of Hattori Heiji came through the phone. "Oi, Kudo, I know you're there, so listen up, alright? That professor friend of yours talked to me not long ago after neechan called him wanting to know where you were. He said you were with him, but you're obviously not. So where the heck are you? You're too far away, he said, to be tracked!"

The explosion of words made a choked chuckle rumble through Conan's throat. "You're in… Osaka anyway," he said quietly. "What does it matter to you?"

"It matters because it's Friday and I came here to surprise you with a visit, you moron," Heiji said sharply. "'Cept you weren't at the agency and Agasa-hakase has no idea where you've run off to. And you're not in your house. So tell me where you are so I can drag you back here!"

Conan tipped his head back. Rain fell on his glasses, sliding down the lenses and dripping onto his cheeks. Above him the sky was a roiling mass of black and grey, perfectly synonymous with the feelings within him right now.

"…I don't know," he said after a moment, hearing Heiji take a breath for another tirade.

"Eh?" The statement seemed to have stumped the other detective. "What do you mean you don't know?!"

"I mean I don't know." His voice sounded remarkably patient, as though it was trying to belie every emotion that his mind couldn't stop sending to him. "I can't tell you where I am, because I don't know."

There was a second of pause. "Are you at least inside?"

"No."

A curse, one that Conan was vaguely interested to note he hadn't heard before. "What the hell are you doing sitting outside in this weather? Come on, Kudo, give me a clue to your location. Surely you noticed something?"

Conan tipped his head to the side tiredly. He was just so tired of everything, of all the lies and all the fear. He was tired of always being on edge and having to be strong. For once, he just wanted to sit there and let the world move around him without being an active participant.

But he couldn't do that. He had to move forward again, he could sit here forever. It was amazing that, when one negative emotion is stirred up a whole slew of others follow, until everything that was wrong with his situation swirled around his head. It had started with fear. Now…

Well, the fear was still there. But so were a lot of other things that he wished he wasn't feeling.

"I don't know," he repeated quietly. "I wasn't… I wasn't really looking."

Heiji cursed again. Conan closed his eyes. Maybe they ought to just leave him for a little while, let him brood in peace so that he could face the day better tomorrow. Except that it was raining, and he needed to be careful lest he hurt himself with this particular stunt.

No rest for the weary, then.

"Right, we're getting in the car and driving around," Heiji said firmly. "We'll be there as soon as we pick up the signal, Kudo. Though I don't know how you got lost…"

"Not lost," Conan corrected. "Just… not paying attention."

"Could you at least get up and look around for landmarks?"

"…I don't want to move."

There was another pause, longer this time. In the background, Conan could hear a car starting up, as well as the soft murmur of voices. It seemed that Agasa and Haibara were in the car. He felt a little guilty for disturbing them, but the emotion just got added to the rest of the onslaught.

"Is everything alright?" Heiji asked cautiously. "You're acting kind of strange, Kudo. Did something happen this afternoon?"

"Just a robbery case," Conan said tiredly. He leaned his head back, resting it against the hard wall behind him. "Did Haibara tell you?"

"Yeah, she mentioned it. Something about the guy going nuts and shooting at everything after your friend started shouting at him. She said that he was fine but you got a scratch. Oi, you weren't hurt worse and you didn't say anything, right?"

Conan couldn't help the weak laugh that escaped him. "Someone would have noticed if I tried to hide a wound of that magnitude, Hattori. It was just a scratch."

There was more murmuring in the background. He wondered if Heiji was talking to the other two in the car, trying to work out what could possibly go wrong. Conan simply sat and waited, huddling slightly to the side to try and protect the delicate piece of technology pressed to his ear from the worst of the rain.

"Kudo… you're not making much sense," Heiji finally said frankly. "This isn't like you. Why'd you run off like this? Why won't you move?"

"I didn't… I just needed to walk," Conan murmured. He wanted to say that he hadn't run away, but he had. When the fear had hit him, he had walked away from everything that was familiar in an attempt to get away from it. "I had a lot on my mind."

"Enough that you don't even know where you ended up?" The incredulity was clear in Heiji's voice. He simply could not reconcile Conan's current actions with the Kudo Shinichi that he had come to know. "You're still not making any sense."

"Sorry."

He drew his legs tighter to his chest and leaned forward a little so that the rain was pattering down on his back. His whole body was shivering, the cold starting to creep stealthily over him until it was much a part of him as his own skin. A distant part of his mind recognised that he would be incredibly lucky if he didn't get the flu after this. He probably should have been more careful; his immune system never had been the best.

Heiji, on the other hand, wasn't saying anything. He was likely thinking, wracking his mind for some idea on what was causing his friend to act like this. Would he discard certain ideas because he decided that it wasn't like Conan? Or would he look at all the avenues and confront him?

"…The case today. Haibara said there was a gun?"

The sudden question caused Conan to tense. Somehow, someway, Heiji had hit the nail on the head. Perhaps he was starting to become better versed in what made the shrunken detective tick. He was almost as oblivious about emotion as Conan was, but they had spent so much time together that it wasn't really a surprise that they had come to know each other so well.

"Yeah, there was a gun. Genta almost got shot. And so did I."

The memory made his shoulders hunch slightly. For all that he dealt with the worst sort of people that society that could offer, those that could willingly take the life of another, it wasn't that often that he had a weapon pointed at him or one of his friends. Usually the weapon was long gone by the time they got there. Perhaps that was why he had reacted so strongly, the image of the man with the gun interposed with Gin with that ruthless look in his eyes, knowledge of his identity washing over his face.

But it was stupid, foolish… it was logical to know that not every weapon pointed at him would belong to Them. He knew that They likely weren't even in the area right now and that, if They were, the Black Organisation certainly wouldn't bother with a seven-year-old child. Even when Gin had found the transmitter that he had accidentally planted on Mizunashi Rena, his first thought had been to accuse Mouri Kogoro, the adult detective, rather than the child.

But he couldn't help it. He knew that the Black Organisation was out there, and that one slip up could cost him everything. He was about as paranoid as Haibara, but he usually did a far better job of hiding it. Except that, sometimes, even he couldn't help but get overwhelmed by the onslaught of emotions that he continuously pushed away. When that happened, he'd usually hide himself away for a little while until he had dealt with it.

But this time he had slipped up, because he hadn't counted on the weather working against him. Now people were searching for him, and he wasn't sure if he was ready to be found.

"You still there, Kudo?" Heiji's voice filtered through his thoughts an Conan blinked tiredly.

"Yeah."

"Good. You want to talk?"

"Not really."

Heiji snorted, as though he had expected that answer. "Well, too bad. You obviously need to talk to someone. How often do you get the chance?" His voice softened slightly. "How often do you get so overwhelmed that you don't know how to deal with it?"

He could almost imagine the expressions of the people in the car. Heiji would be staring out the window with a small smile, not really seeing what they were passing. Agasa would be driving, but his eyes would have widened at the question, his hands gripping the steering wheel a little harder as he fought to keep his own questions in and instead concentrate on the road. And Haibara, she'd probably be a little surprised as well, but likely more because someone had caught him at this point than because he had been brought to it; he had long since suspected that she knew what his rare disappearances after episodes like these meant, and it was she that usually covered for him with the other kids when his paranoia levels were so high that he jumped at every small noise.

The image faded from his mind, a small mental deduction that had sprung up the moment Heiji had asked his question so that he didn't have to feel the emotions that came with it. He wrapped an arm around his knees and didn't say anything.

"Kudo, bottling it all up isn't good for you," the western detective persisted. "I know what I'm talking about. You… you're too calm all the time, you know? But even you need an out sometimes."

"I don't need to talk," Conan said. He tried to keep his voice firm, but there was just the smallest waver when he spoke. "I just need to sit and think."

"You think you're going to come to a rational conclusion on your own?" Heiji demanded, and Conan winced at the volume. "Feeling like you do now?"

"I'm not feeling anything," Conan snapped, hand clenching around the phone. He didn't know why he hadn't just hung up yet. "If you're so hung up on me being overwhelmed, give me proof!"

"You're actions now are the proof!" Heiji said loudly, obviously frustrated.

Conan clamped his mouth shut tightly. It wasn't good enough. He didn't want to talk. He didn't want to voice what he was feeling, because everything would become so much more real, and he didn't think he could deal with letting it all out. He had survived in this new life so far because he locked it all away and dealt with it himself when it became too much. If he spoke about it, if let the words drift on the air, he might just lose the fragile hold on sanity that he had managed to get.

For a brief moment Conan thought that Heiji would back away. The detective had snapped in temper, just as he had thought he would, and that should be enough to make him stop this line of interrogation. But then, suddenly, Heiji took a deep breath, calming himself.

That didn't factor into how he had planned this phone call to go. A wave of terror, that had nothing to do with what had happened and everything to do with what he knew was coming next, swept through Conan. His fingers trembled and he tried to tell himself to just hang up now, while he had the chance.

But he couldn't. He had suddenly frozen where he was.

"Alright, Kudo," Heiji said slowly. "If you won't tell me what you're feeling, I'll tell you what I've deduced. We're detectives, we live by deducting what we don't understand. So you sit there and listen."

"…To what?" Conan said hoarsely, barely breathing.

"To the reason you ran away. You think you could hide from your best friend? I know you better than you might think. Your friends here gave me a little information before I called, too. So I know more than you believe."

Conan shuddered. It was a lie, it had to be a lie, because he didn't want to listen, he didn't want it to be said, but he couldn't put the phone down. It was with a morbid fascination, the type that one might have when watching two cars collide when they could do nothing to stop it, that he waited to hear what Heiji would say.

"You're scared, Kudo."

Those three words, setting the scene for how the rest of this conversation would go, made Conan curl up tighter as though to protect himself from them. He had gone straight for the heart, delving straight into what the worst of it was. He wanted to open his mouth and argue, but his mouth had gone dry.

"The case today scared you, because you got shot at. No, not just you. Because your friend got shot at. And it reminded of how much danger everyone around you are in every day, of what could happen if those people find out who you are."

Conan tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. The words, striking chords on his innermost fears, were relentless and said with almost clinical detachment as Heiji waited for him to react, to prove that what he was saying wasn't false.

"You're scared every day for everyone. You don't want to make a mistake, but you've already slipped up and people have figured you out. Every time you see that organisation, you remember how big the danger is, and it gets larger as you find out about more of them."

Chianti, Korn, Vermouth, Gin, Vodka, Kir… and the one above them all, the boss that lived in the shadows and gave his orders where no one could see him. The organisation was so wide spread, so large, and there were moments, sometimes, when Conan wondered what they hell he was thinking in trying to take them down.

"But it's not just that. You don't know how to deal with it all, so you shove it down real tight so you don't have to. But you feel it all, and it's there and you…"

"Stop." The word escaped him before he could prevent it. "Hattori, stop."

"And you had to get away from it all when it overwhelmed you," Heiji continued relentlessly, as though he hadn't heard. "Which is why you're sitting in the rain somewhere and refusing to tell us where you are, because you don't want us to find you just yet. You want to just sit there and be overwhelmed so that you have space to shove everything down further when you keep feeling it all. Because you don't know how to get rid of it."

"No, I… stop it!" The sudden command surprised even him. "Leave it alone! It's… I'll be fine, it's fine, nothing's wrong with me, nothing."

"Kudo, everything's wrong right now," Heiji said quietly.

Conan choked out a laugh that he didn't feel. "But I can deal with it. I don't need… I just need to sit here. So go away, leave me alone."

"Leaving you alone isn't solving anything, moron!" Heiji snapped. "You need to talk."

"But I don't want to!" Conan squeezed his eyes shut. "None of it… it's never going to go away, Hattori. So I'll deal with it like this because it's the only way I can stay sane."

"If this is sanity, I'd hate to see your version of insanity," Heiji snorted. "Don't be so hot-headed, you idiot. That's my job."

This time the chuckle was more genuine. After a moment, however, Conan sighed and leaned forward more, touching his forehead to his knees.

"…I'm just tired," he said quietly, so quietly that he knew Heiji would have to strain to hear him. "Sometimes I can't do it anymore. I just can't. I don't know how… I don't know how to stop being so scared all the time. I'm tired, Hattori."

"I know, Kudo." The warmth and almost understanding in Heiji's voice made something hot prick at his eyes, but he blinked it away. Heiji didn't understand, naturally. But the fact that he was trying made the little bit of Conan's heart that had frozen in the face of all these powerful emotions melt a little. "But when you're this tired, that's when you come to us so that we can help you pretend that it's all better."

"I don't…" The words got stuck before he could say them. He drew in a ragged breath and wrapped his arm tighter around his knees. "Hattori… Hattori, I don't know what to do."

"It's too much, Kudo," Hattori said softly. "You've taken on way too much. Stop bottling it all up and talk to me. Or, if you don't want to talk to me, let me look after you for a little bit."

There wasn't much to say to that one. Conan laughed again, though it was so choked with emotion that he didn't think it even sounded like one. "…Okay."

Suddenly there was a voice on the other end. It was muffled, but Conan thought he recognised it at Haibara's. Exhausted, but somehow feeling a little better than he had before the phone call, Conan loosened his body a little so that he wasn't so tense.

"Geez, Kudo how far out did you go?!" Heiji exclaimed. "We've found you, so we're on our way to get you."

He didn't ask for permission. He was coming whether Conan wanted him to or not, and he didn't expect any argument on the matter. Conan heard that stubborn tone in his voice and simply sighed.

"I won't move," he said quietly.

"Good. I don't want to have to track you down again."

The rest of the night, after that, was a blur. He was so tired that he started falling asleep before the yellow car pulled up beside him, his phone only being held to his ear in a loose hold. He thought that someone might have pulled it away and closed it, but he didn't know who it was. He didn't remember the drive back to Agasa's house at all, and he only vaguely remembered being dried off and changed before being tucked into a guest room.

He did, however, remember the feeling of arms carefully picking him up, providing an anchor in the sea of emotion that wouldn't let him go. He remembered the warmth of someone holding him to his side. And he remembered a murmuring voice, both in his ear as he fell asleep and later beside him as the world moved around him, saying words that he couldn't quite understand, but which all carried the same message.

'It's going to be okay.'

He didn't know if he fully believed in that. He couldn't stop the fear, he couldn't stop everything converging on him when he least expected it, he couldn't stop pushing everything away until that happened.

But for this moment, for this single moment in time, he gave himself up to that warmth and stayed close, wanting so badly to believe in those words that he refused to let go even as that warmth tried to move briefly away. So it stayed with him the whole night, ever vigilant and quiet as it watched over him. He'd be embarrassed, in the morning, to discover that he had kept such a tight hold on Hattori's jacket that the teen had been forced to stay with him for the night, but for now none of that mattered.

All that matter was that someone was there… and he'd needed that more desperately than he had ever wanted to admit to.