Hattori Heiji steps through the door, sees the five of them looking at straight at him, blanches, then backtracks. "I mean, Kudō-n't you tell me the room was filled with people before I walked in, hahaha?" he laughs nervously. "Isn't there a limit to the number of visitors per hospital room?"
Ran giggles. In retrospect, it's really, really obvious he knows about Shinichi's "little" problem.
"Hattori," Shinichi says. "Give it up. They know." He sounds exhausted, the slightest bit exasperated, but fond. "It's not like I can hide it anymore."
"Of course you told the Osaka brat," her father grumbles.
"I didn't tell him," Shinichi says, annoyed. "He deduced it on his own." Ran wonders when. It had to be relatively early in their acquaintance, the way he was always going on about "Kudō" this and "Kudō" that. It explained the mystery of how he and Shinichi had met, certainly, if it had been the locked room library case. Only he must have seen through Shinichi. It's something she's always wondered about.
Hattori blinks, absorbing the information and recalibrating his mindset. He opens his mouth to say something, then he catches sight of Ran, half-tucked behind Shinichi. "Missy!" Hattori says. His mouth gapes open for a moment before he gets his bearings back. "You're little!" He shakes his head, does a double-take. "What happened to your face?" he says, walking over to the hospital bed, giving Ran a thorough once-over.
Well, trust Hattori to always be tactful. "Hello to you too," Ran says.
"What happened? I'd heard you both disappeared while you were on a date with Kudō, but…" he trails off. Ran blushes at the word date. It wasn't then, not really. "You both look like you been at the devil," Hattori says, leaning over the edge of the bed to look Shinichi close in the face, gripping Shinichi's chin to keep him from moving away, turning it from one side to the other. "And the devil returned the feelin'."
"Something along those lines," Shinichi says. "They've found me out, Hattori. No one's safe anymore. They kidnapped us in broad daylight from a public place. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't already put word out on the rest of us."
"I ain't afraid of 'em," Hattori says, his jaw set and his face grim. "Let 'em come. We've outdone 'em before."
"This isn't the first time?" Inspector Yokomizo asks.
Shinichi shakes his head. "We've outmanoeuvred them on several occasions."
"They got you with what they hit Kudō with?" Hattori asks, turning to Ran.
"Yes. I was the test case for the new solution," Ran says. "From what I've seen, it was slower, though no less painful." Ran shivers in remembrance. She'll never forget the way Shinichi fell apart in her arms. The cracking of his bones, the way he literally slipped through her fingers will haunt her dreams forever. The thought that it happened to her still makes her sick if she thinks too much about it.
"Is that why they needed you both?" Hattori asks.
"One of the reasons," Shinichi says. "Their new scientist was working from the same base, but needed the version of apotoxin used on me in order to further her own work. She succeeded. I wouldn't consider it lucky, but…" Shinichi glances over at her. "Thanks to Ran, we got the data she used. With any luck, I'll be back to myself in no time."
"Ah. Does that mean the other little missy is gonna make you a cure now that she's got what she needs?"
Shinichi winces. Ran's not far behind. That can only be one person. Ran didn't know Hattori knew, but she's not surprised. He and Shinichi are close, for all that they compete.
"Other little miss?" her father says. "What other little miss?"
"There's someone else?" Her mother says, giving them both a look. She and Shinichi almost as one hang their heads, caught out in a lie of omission. For the first time since this all began, Ran feels the age she looks.
"You know what?" Hattori says, realizing he's just made a mistake. He throws up a hand, darts to the door. "I'm thinkin' I should go. Tell me everythin' later, all right, Kudō?"
Before he can leave, her father grabs him by the ear, imitating his Kansai accent. "An' I'm thinkin' you should stay an' explain yourself."
He pulls him over to the bed much to Hattori's loud protests. "Hey, I don't sound like that!"
"Who are you talking about?" he demands, forcing him to sit down.
"Well, one of Conan's friends just so happens to have shrunk too?" Hattori scratches the back of his head. He says it like a question, but it's anything but.
Her mother crosses her arms. "And?" Oh, her mother knows a weak link when she sees one, and she presses against it. Hard. She's tapping her foot, giving him a disappointed look. Hattori doesn't take long to snap.
"And she's the one that invented it in the first place?"
"You're saying she worked with the people that kidnapped my daughter?" her mother demands.
Ran shakes her head. "It's not like that. She's alone. And afraid. She's been working against them out of sight, just like Shinichi." Ran may not know everything that has happened, but this she does know.
"Look. I can vouch for her," Shinichi says. "Please. Trust me?"
"To look out for Ran's well-being if nothing else, I'll give you that," her father says. "You're still going to tell me what else you left out." It's a demand, not a request. Shinichi's eyes narrow, his expression, resolute.
Another knock on the door. "Oh, for the love of—" her father starts. He doesn't get to finish before two more people enter: Assistant Inspector Satō and Detective Takagi.
Ran wonders why they're here. They both focus primarily on homicide, and it's not like the smaller prefectures where the size means working on something else as needed. Ran bites her lip, then winces as she realizes it's only slightly healed. It's a habit she needs to break.
Inspector Yokomizo stands, walking over to them both. He and Detective Satō have a hurried, whispered conversation before he claps a hand on her shoulder and departs, giving a quick farewell.
"I'm told you need an escort back to Beika?" Detective Satō says cheerfully, jerking her thumb towards the door and towards the Tokyo itself. "I'm assuming it's you, Detective Mōri?"
"Not really," her father says gruffly. "It's for my daughter and the brat on the bed. Whose idea was this?" Ran's father says, instantly suspicious.
Takagi mouths 'daughter,' presumably looking around the room for Ran and frowning when he can't find her. At her father's glare, he shakes his head. "Um, Inspector Megure got a call from an old friend? Said to only send people he absolutely trusted to pick up a couple of patients from this hospital room?" Detective Takagi sounds almost bewildered. "So he sent us."
"That sounds like my father's doing," Shinichi says. "We can trust these two. They need to know."
"Know what?" Satō says, confused.
"He knew?" Ran's father says.
"Conan?" Detective Takagi says. "Whoa, you look rough."
"So does your little friend there," Detective Satō adds, peering over to look at Ran. "Say, don't you look an awful lot like Ran?"
Ran squeaks and hides behind Shinichi's shoulder, peeking out above it before realizing the futility of it. "Um, I am?" Ran says. She bows. "Please take care of me."
"You're not," Detective Satō says. "You can't be." Her expression is slightly amused but patient, like she's wondering when she's going to be let in on the joke.
"Wait, that's Ms. Ran?" Detective Takagi says, but he's staring hard at Shinichi, thoughts whirring, the progression clearly visible across his face. Confusion, contemplation, realization, shock, awe, acceptance.
"Of course he knew," Shinichi says. "Made sure I knew how reckless I was, too."
"Why didn't he come himself?" Hattori wonders. "It hasn't stopped him before."
"Probably didn't want to make things worse, depending on what he's heard," Shinichi says. "If I know him, he'll be rallying his contacts. It's my problem and he's been content to let me deal with it, but I'm guessing that changed with my disappearance. He thinks I can't handle it," Shinichi says, sounding offended.
That's right. Shinichi's father knew it was a matter of pride for Shinichi handle his own battles. For his father to have to interfere must hurt. "It's bigger than us now," Ran reminds him gently. "With so much against us, more people can only help at this point."
"She's right, ya know. Informed decisions are better decisions," Hattori says.
"Which reminds me," her mother says. "I will be having words with Yukiko about this. Yuusaku, too."
"Yeah, join the club," her father says.
"Kudō?" Takagi says slowly. "Kudō Shinichi?" he says faintly, looking from Ran to Shinichi and back again.
Shinichi lifts his head. "Hmm?" Then he blinks slowly, narrowing his eyes to look at the nervous police detective. "Oh, right. Yeah. You don't know. Yeah. That's me."
"You doing all right, Shinichi?" Ran asks as he rubs at his eyes.
Shinichi's blinking hard, face contorting. He looks like a sleepy child way past his bedtime, forcing himself to stay awake. "Yeah. Just tired."
"That makes sense," says Takagi, still stuck. "That time…" he trails off, "all the rest, that was you," he says. "You saved my life."
"What? Are you telling me— " Satō begins. "It can't be. That's impossible." But her eyes are wide, and the longer she looks at Ran the more Ran thinks she's coming to believe it.
"Oh yeah, it's possible," Hattori says. "Either that or we're all havin' some kind of mass hallucination. I'm sure you know which one's the more likely."
Hattori starts to fill the two in on what he knows. She and Shinichi will have to tell them everything again, but she can't, not right now, and Shinichi looks like he's about to keel over. It will be better to wait, at least for the moment.
Ran tunes him out. "How close are we to being discharged?" Ran asks her parents while Hattori is talking to the police detectives. She just wants to go home and take a long, long nap.
"Oh, the doctors were apparently just waiting for a guardian to sign off on the paperwork. Ideally they'd like you to stay a few more days for observation, but they've done pretty much all they can. You just need time, and rest," her mother says. "You can get that back at the Agency. They were reluctant to give me the information, but no one else has come forward to claim you." Her mother cracks her neck, looks down, rubs her forehead with her fingers and thumb. "I don't even know how to begin explaining this."
"We can't, not to the general public at least," Shinichi says. "I think I've had enough of being an experiment for the time being."
Oh, Ran hasn't even thought of that possibility. "But we won't be for long, right?"
"Depends. If she knows who took us, she might be in fight-or-flight," Shinichi says. "We were missing long enough she might have holed up somewhere."
"Well I don't blame her," Ran says. She can't even imagine working closely with those people.
"And if the data I uploaded is viable."
"It better be after all we went through to get it," Ran says darkly.
"But she can make a cure, right?" her father says. "Who is 'she' anyway?" he wonders. "Not little Ayumi?" Ran groans internally. She knows her father is smart, but sometimes she wonders. Considering that Ai is the only one without relatives and the only other girl in Conan's friend group…
"No, not her," is all Shinichi says. Her father is looking away, scowling at something Hattori had said, and Shinichi is smiling at her father's back like he's fond.
Ran spaces out a little after that as they go through the motions of filling out their paperwork so they can go home. It's not long before she and Shinichi are tucked inside the back of an unmarked police car, her mother sitting in the front seat and her father in another car.
Her parents' truce is apparently over. They'd argued about who went where, too, and her mother had won.
Hattori is coming back to Tokyo with them. He'd argued with Shinichi there was safety in numbers. Shinichi had argued it made them easier to hit, so they'd eventually agreed to spread them out in different vehicles, renting another car.
She and Shinichi being the prime targets are in the center of the secret procession. Shinichi is already asleep against the door, having lost his fight with consciousness a long time ago.
She's tired too, but she stays awake, just for a little while, just to watch him breathe, his sleep peaceful and pain-free. Something in her eases a bit. Alive they remain, even though it feels like a dream. Being caught, escaping, making it out alive…she shivers.
Maybe someday it won't feel like a dream.
Hattori and Shinichi are already making plans for his return as Kudō Shinichi and maybe striking back at the people in black; her father demanded he be let in on the plans too, and then Satō wouldn't be left behind the more she heard, pulling Takagi in with her.
Once Yokomizo knew the significance, he told them the pharmaceutical company slash prison they had been inhabiting burned before the police could raid it. Ran's not really surprised. The police are still going through the evidence, Ran knows they won't find anything. It means Shinichi won't be implicated at all for Gin's death.
Gin apparently didn't exist. Ran wonders what that means for him, for them.
There's an uncertain future ahead of them, but for the first time since this all began, Ran feels truly hopeful.
She looks at her small hands. If Ai can make a permanent antidote—
One last trial and then—
Who knows?
