notes on the end of the fic
"Do you know what her name means? Ai? It means sorrow. Frau Miyano doesn't want her found, but still call her Ai. What do you-"
"Then we shall call her Ai. Her Spitzname. But we shall name her Abigail."
"Abigail? 'My father is joy'?"
"Ja. Are you not happy we have a daughter now? Little Abigail Freund."
She was eight years old when she woke up in a hospital with no memories to call her own. On her bedside stood a woman with dark brown hair with equally dark brown eyes. She speaks in an unknown language that sounded vaguely familiar but she couldn't quite understand.
"Schließe deine Augen. Schlafen."
Later on, she'll learn that she was adopted by this woman, a pianist, and her husband, an inventor. Later on, she'll learn to call them Mama and Papa. Later on, she'll know her new name. But in the meantime, she'll do what the voice urged her to do: she closed her eyes and slept. With the drugs in her bloodstream, it was quite easy to do.
Abigail Freund, nicknamed Ai, was nine and was already fluent in German when her violin teacher found her writing some compositions of her own. Her teacher praised her and told her she was a genius. For some odd reason, the word made her head ache and throb. She did not like the word.
That night, she heard her mother talking with someone at the phone, and this is what her mother said:
"I know what you mean. My daughter is a genius and you think that if I don't send her to some huge prestigious school I'm trying to stop her education. I am not. She can study very well in here. With her family. I would not send her alone in some foreign land to learn something she very well could learn her. I am not letting my daughter leave my side."
She left the door and stopped eavesdropping then, because she was happy with that. It was enough. She did not want to leave her family either.
The week after that, she had a new teacher. She did not complain.
She was already twelve when she played her first concerto. It was unnerving. And frankly, while she played, she gets the urge to run. She hated people looking at her. She felt bile rising from her throat as soon as her solo came up, and she ran off the place, without looking back.
It took her mother half the day to find her (beside a trash heap, no less) and then comfort her, two days for her father to finally come home from some science convention abroad and cheer her up, and almost a week before she got over her mortification.
The next time she was to play solo, she went to the venue with a raincoat on, and she was on the comfort room emptying the contents of her stomach before the program began. Behind her was her mom, holding her hair up just in case.
It became some sort of ritual, along with the 'wishing love' of family and friends before every performance.
It was her birthday-her "Sweet sixteenth!" as her father called it, when her father finally managed to 'go on his own.' He now had a small business. It was also the year she first played onstage with her Mama. Just the two of them, a wonderful duet between a piano and a violin, a mother and her child.
It took on, and they began to play in concertos as a pair.
She felt better, less nervous, because at least this time, she had her mother backing her up.
Ai Freund was eighteen when her mother asked her about going to Japan.
The girl froze and it took her awhile to respond. "Why?" she croaked.
"To perform for a concerto, of course. Margareta said someone was interested on booking us there."
It took her the whole night and blistered hands from playing Kreutzer before she reached a decision, because Japan, to her, sounded like a box full of nightmares.
The only things she knew were what her father had told her. Her name (Ai Haibara), her aunt's (Shiho Miyano) and her biological mother's (Akemi Miyano). The name of the man who had adopted her after their deaths (Professor Hiroshi Agasa) She didn't know anything else.
"I'm going if you're going, Mama," she had told her.
Because she'll stay by her family, and wouldn't let them go. She had this feeling that if she did, they just might disappear all of a sudden.
"I'm glad," her mother replied with a smile.
notes:
-this is (supposed to be) a one-shot prequel to a chaptered story I plan on writing
-however, I will be writing more chapters to this: drabbles of Ai's second time growing up, with no memories, is she more child-like? the next drabbles will be exploring that.
-it is just i wanted some sort of "overview" to what it could have been like
-I do not speak German, and know nothing about the language so correct the German of this fic if it's wrong
-I also do not play any sort of instrument-so me haphazardly tossing around musical terms... i know it's bad, so just, correct me if i'm wrong alright?