AN: Oh hey, here I am, back at it again with this AU! Alongside the actual cases, I will be publishing shorter intermission chapters in between each one, such as this one! They will, of course, touch on their own things, because there's just so much to explore in this universe that exists outside the bounds of the altered canon cases!

As always, thanks for reading! Leave a review if you can!

In Reverse

Intermission One

Father and Son

"I hear that you got yourself mixed up with that serial murderer, Heiji."

All but freezing at the sound of his father's words, Heiji bit his tongue to keep himself from lashing out in response to them at once. He'd known that they would come sooner or later. Instead, he forced himself to draw in a long breath, trying to steady himself before he turned his father's way, only vaguely wondering since when he had gotten home.

"If ya want ta complain, shouldn't ya be sayin' that ta Kazuha?" Heiji asked, leaning back in his chair, doing his best to look as unperturbed as possible by the man's presence. "She's the one who got shot, after all."

"Kazuha is not my child." Heizo said firmly, eyes locking with those of his son's the moment Heiji turned his way. "I will leave that matter up to her own father."

"So what? Ya come ta lecture me again?" Narrowing his eyes, Heiji forced himself to keep his temper in check, knowing that it wouldn't do him any good right now. "Fer all ya know, things might have turned out worse if I hadn't been there. Ya heard how he stabbed the kid, right?"

"I did hear about that." Heizo noted, his expression, as always, unchanging. That was the most frustrating part about him for Heiji- no matter how hard he tried, he could never tell what the man was thinking. "However, there's no reason that you should have stepped in. Police work is no place for amateurs to butt in."

His father, the chief of police for the entire Osaka prefecture. His father, admired by his fellow police, and feared by criminals. His father, whose approval he would never have. His father, whose shadow it seemed that he would never be able to escape from. His father, whose shadow he had already given up trying to break free of.

"Like I said, ya should be tellin' Kazuha that sort of thing, not me." He could put on an act of dismissing the man's words all he liked, making a show of breaking eye contact with him, giving him an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders. In truth, he wouldn't be able to let them go that easily- and he knew that his father probably knew that much himself.

If it wasn't for him...

If it weren't for his damn shadow, then-!

"After all, she's the one runnin' around doin' that high school detective thing, not me." Heiji noted, making a show of turning his attention back towards his magazine. "Even landed herself in the hospital, tryin' ta keep Sakata-han from offin' himself. That idiot."

"You could have gotten yourself just as badly hurt, Heiji." Heizo said simply. "And I'm not done with you yet, boy. Don't avert your gaze from me."

"Ya might not be done with me, but s' far as I'm concerned, I'm already done with this talk." Heiji said simply, turning the page of his magazine, only casting a disinterested glance towards him. "Besides, it's not like I went ta that mountain cabin intendin' ta pick a fight with a serial murderer. It just sorta happened that way, s' all."

"Besides, what are sayin' old man?" Pausing to glance back at him again, Heiji's eyes narrowed. "That I should have just sat by an' let him swing his knife around? Kid was damn lucky that the knife got caught like it did, otherwise he would've gotten off much worse than a bit of a bruise."

He still didn't understand what Kazuha's reason was for giving the kid her charm, but if she hadn't, he might be dead by now.

"It was yer cops that let him get the knife in the first place, anyways." Unable to help himself, Heiji let a smirk cross his face, a challenging expression in his eyes even though he knew full well what was like to result from it. "Ya should be thankin' this amateur, if anythin'."

"Had you not left the car with Kazuha's guest, the situation would have not occurred in the first place." Heizo said simply, his stern expression not faltering in the slightest. That was his father for you... a man whose feathers couldn't be ruffled by anything, the perfect police officer.

Someone that he could never compare to, no matter how hard he tried. And if he couldn't, what point was there in even trying?

Too quick tempered, too hotblooded, too impulsive, too reckless- he'd heard any number of reasons already as to why he was such a disappointment in comparison to his father. Over and over, he'd heard them, to the point where he'd all but memorized them, words resounding in his head whether he wanted to or not. Too unlike his father, they said- and sometimes, when they thought he couldn't hear them, they'd even go so far as to wonder if they were really father and son.

Everyone expected things from Hattori Heizo's son. Nobody expected anything from him. To these people, he'd never be anything more than an extension of his father- and a lousy one at that. He was too much of Hattori Heiji, and far too little of Hattori Heizo. And that, apparently, was a bad thing.

What use was it then, trying to impress them? It was just a waste of energy.

"That Neechan's the one who left in the first place, ya know, not me!" Heiji noted, unable to bite back his anger this time. "I just followed her ta make sure she wouldn't get lost. Honestly, it's like ya try an' make everythin' out ta be my fault!"

"I can see you're not in the mood to have a reasonable conversation." The first hint of emotion that escaped him was the faintest of sighs- and the sound of it was enough to make Heiji's blood boil.

Reasonable conversation? He was the one who had come to him, and had started saying things like this!

"We shall continue this discussion later, Heiji." Heizo informed him. "I hope at the very least, you properly saw Kazuha's guests off in her place."

"I can at least do that right." Heiji half-growled. "Shouldn't ya be goin'? I'm sure ya've got people ta arrest or somethin' like that."

For a moment, Heizo merely lingered in the doorway, half giving Heiji the impression that he was going to say something again. Instead, the man merely closed his eyes, and without another word, turned on his heel and left.

"Damn old man." Muttering to himself, Heiji slammed his magazine down on the desk, kicking his chair away from it to create some distance. He was hardly in the mood to sit still right now, not after taking all of that- he hadn't even done anything wrong!

But it seemed like no matter what he did, there was nothing he could that would ever win his father's approval. He might not come out and say it, but he probably viewed him the same way as everyone else- as a disappointing failure of a son. If he was just going to be viewed that way in the first place, there was no reason to bother to even try and be anything more than that.

Grabbing the keys for his motorcycle off of his desk, Heiji shoved his wallet and his phone in his pocket. For now, he just wanted to get as far away as possible from here- it would probably only just earn him another lecture later, but for the time being, he didn't care one bit.

As long as he could get away from here, and from the expectations that he'd completely failed to live up to, what came later didn't even matter.