Closure

Eulene

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Gosho Aoyama.

Chapter 1

"So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."
- Robert Frost

"You brat! What are you doing? Playing with my shaver? This is not a toy for kids to play with!" Kogoro thundered as he grabbed the shaver away from the boy. There was an awkward little pause as the boy stood unusually silent for a moment, at a complete loss for an appropriate comeback.

Kogoro leaned forward, peering closely at the face of Conan Edogawa. "What… is that a stubble I see?" The famed detective guffawed, "My my, you're really growing up aren't you? Let me teach you the ways of a man! First and foremost… A true man always keeps a mustache. It's charming to the ladies you see."

"Dad! You have a call!"

"I'm coming!"

And with that, the boy was left alone in the bathroom, free to attend to the newfound concerns that came with growing up.

"Professor Agasa! Are you home?" The youth tapped twice on the door before it abruptly swung open.

"No he's not," was as much of a greeting he could ever get out of her.

"Haibara."

Conan followed her down into the basement where she kept her experiments confined to. "So how's it going today?"

"Not much progress with the development of the drug unfortunately." A tense silence followed her curt reply before she knocked over a bottle of pills.

Conan placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. "What's wrong, Haibara?"

"We let this dragged on for three years! Three long damn years! We won't need a cure to revert us back to our normal form if this drags on any further!" She pulled him to a mirror. She did not need to continue. He knew what he saw in there. Already, he was losing the childish roundness to his face that was sharpening into the angular jaw of Kudo Shinichi who would have been twenty-three this year. He had added on to his web of lies. Shinichi nii-san was now furthering his studies in America, where he would graduate with a degree in criminology.

All the lies had been part of his elaborate plan to buy time so he may keep everything and everyone he deemed precious to him, safe while he tracked down the Black Organization. Yet at the end of the day, time would betray him and everything he tried to protect to his pursuers.

"Even so, we have miraculously cheated death for three years. We are going to find a way out of this. We are going to regain our bodies someday. And when that someday comes, we will be able to walk freely down the streets, unafraid of any danger because by then, every single member of the Black Organization would be in jail." She looked away.

"Look at me Haibara. We can do this!"

She shoved Conan aside and curled up in a corner, hugging her legs close to herself. "We can't. Not when he's next door. He knows and he's biding his time before he betrays us to the Organization…"

"Who? Okiya Subaru?" There was no reply to this.

"Is that why all the curtains in the house have been drawn?"

"Professor Agasa is out of town today..."

He strode over to her and grabbed her hand, pulling her up to her feet and out of the house. "You need to get back on your feet if we are going to figure a way out of this. But first of all, you need some fresh air."

It was almost time when the sun would set. She was not a person fond of the crowded walkways of Tokyo and so he had brought her out to the quiet path by the river that he and Ran often took on their way back from school some years ago. It was a familiar piece of scenery that seemed immune to time. The sun would set in moments and the brilliant orange the sky had been dyed with would eventually blend in with the original blueness of the sky to give a soothing mauve.

"I shouldn't have acted the way I did earlier."

He glanced over at her, "What is this? An apology?"

She rolled her eyes at him, "It's the closest the one that you will ever get out of me."

He laughed a little. "Thank you Haibara."

Dusk saw him seated alone by the riverbank. Ayumi had rung Ai up and invited her over for dinner. The unlikely pair had forged a deep friendship over the three years and it was evident that Ai needed some time away from everything before it tore her apart from inside.

He idly picked up a pebble and tossed it into the river. It skipped a few times, marring the glassy surface with ripples before sinking to the bottom with a little "plop".

"I'll catch up with you right away!"

Those had been his last words to her before he was drugged and shrunken into the small frame of Edogawa Conan. "right away" had taken a little more than three years.

"Plop!" was the sad sounding sinking of the second pebble into the depths.

It was not that the three years had been futile. They had made some progress and gotten some leads on the Black Organization. But even so…

"Plop!" was the angry cry of the third pebble that echoed his frustrations.

He took off the thick framed glasses he wore to complete his disguise and bent over the trembling surface of the river. No doubt, they would find out soon if nothing was done.

A deep sigh escaped him before he could help it. The last lights of the sun were already receding into the corner behind the hills from a distance. He picked up his glasses and got ready to leave when he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulders.

"Shinichi!"

A/N: Please leave a review! Gosh it's been so long since I've last laid any attempt at writing anything fictional and it's difficult to start again. Any criticism, thoughts or comments are welcome! To be honest, I don't really know where exactly this story will be headed to. Hmm… this was born out of a frustrated moment after I had finished my most recent DC manga and realized that Gosho Aoyama had once again misled me on to think that the story would finally be on track to a decent ending where the Black Organization would get busted and Ran and Shinichi would have a "happily ever after" ending. Ah! Anyways it seems like it's never gonna end and so I decided to pen down how I think the series would end. How would you like to see it end?