"I'd feel bad," Hattori began, "about keepin' you all locked up, if I'm right or wrong," he said slowly, "but Kudo is," he trailed, "occupied."
Kudo had given him a call and informed him just how occupied the cat was after the whole faberge egg deal. Kudo had managed a simple message: "yo, Heiji, pick up all the cats— and as for me, I'm good, I'm more than good." He'd then dissolved into a din of terrifying cat noises that Hattori was unsure how to even begin interpreting, and the guy's sanity had taken a leave of absence.
At the time, Heiji was holding the small, rusty, overly smart tabby— and she gave him a look much like the one she was giving him now, imprisoned in Hattori's spare room.
His parents were confused by the matter, to say the least. Heiji had explained vaguely that he was watching a friend's troublesome cat, who was allergic to most of their house save this room— a shoddy excuse, but he had to make sure his parents didn't release hee when she yowled.
Because… because she had been way too smart. The other cats in Kudo's gang (as much as he would hate Hattori to be calling them such) the intelligence level he would expect— Kudo could train them more intimately since he could understand them and vice versa (something which Heiji both found amusing and intensely fascinating), and thus they could learn new seemingly intelligent responses. However, there was a vast chasm of difference between those behaviors and what he'd seen this rusted one do— complex thinking, concern for human life, attempted communication.
The tabby had saved the group from burning in that tunnel by showing everyone an exit only accessible through a secret passage with an opening a cat wouldn't have noticed. A cat wouldn't have nodded along with his questions and attempted to show everyone the way out, either.
Unless the smug thing trapped in his room wasn't a cat.
So yes, the long and short of it was that Heiji suspected Ai was more than a cat, and thus had her locked up, because that raised a litany of questions. Chief among them: does Kudo know?
Based on the way she had attempted desperately to wiggle out of his grasp in the aftermath of the faberge egg ordeal, Hattori would guess no. She had writhed like there were consequences, looking guilty and regretful, though maybe he was just seeing emotions that weren't there. Still. Disregarding that, surely Kudo would've mentioned there as another like he, if he knew.
Which lead back to the fact that Kudo was currently… absent. (Specifically, though Heiji was unaware, in that exact moment he was dining on a bird, tearing at its feathers).
So, Hattori settled back in contemplation, staring up at the night that shone through the window that he'd meticulously sealed— he'd seen Kudo's valiant escape attempts from shelters in the past, knew better than to trust the clumsiness of paws. From his feet, that cat stared mulishly up at him.
"So, uh, yeah," he huffed, bringing himself out of his reminiscing, "I guess I hope most of all you're a regular cat, 'cuz that would make this a little less," he cut himself off with a grimace.
Said cat was not giving him any indication either way; there was no text scratched into the floor, and she was petulantly avoiding his gaze so he couldn't see a spark of knowing. Still, Ai also didn't do anything decidedly cat. Perhaps she had too much dignity to contemplate licking herself clean, even for cover's sake.
Maybe she just wanted to see what happened.
...Or maybe she was just panicking.
Heiji contemplated leaving Ai to the room, sleeping in his own room— but one look at her conniving face, and he could tell she would bolt for the door as soon as he opened it, not to mention that she would then likely go for the window or the lock. Those last two hypotheticals were based on the whole human idea, granted, but still.
So, Heiji slid down the wall, and resigned himself to a sore back and a night of playing prison-guard for a freaking cat.
He eyed her again. "Either you're a person, or I end up looking crazy," Hattori mused gruffly. He added with barbed humor, "at least if I'm crazy, ya won't be able to tell anyone."
Haibara said nothing.
xXx
Heiji slept.
Haibara didn't.
It wasn't to do with strange cat sleep schedules— though she was woefully experienced in the fickle schedules of feeling dozey or energetic— and more to do with obsessive panic.
She'd been caught. There wasn't much she could've done, granted; if those people in the cave went without her guidance, they'd likely be dead— and she'd promised herself not to cause any more death.
Still, all her lies surrounded her; surely, if Hattori confronted Kudo, those suspicions would be the straw that broke the camel's back in Shinichi's large pile of little evidences he'd obviously been building (if his suspicious gazes, fleeting fear, and avoidance of her were anything to go by).
What came to her first was I understand why Kudo hasn't come clean to anyone willingly, now. It was a strange thought, but one she'd contemplated before. After all, why had he not told anyone? He was a little bit careful with his identity, but not careful enough for that to be the singular justification— especially when (as evidenced by the current situation) people like Hattori and who-knows-else knew.
But now, faced with the idea that someone would catch her in this vulnerable state and lay bare all her lies in front of her… she got it— at least partially, given Ran and Shinichi were rather close in an unfamiliar way, but still. The concept of the ordeal of being known, and of your lies and your deceit being knives you have given your opponent to twist against your neck whilst you are too small and helpless to protest— it… was becoming clearer and clearer.
Once he found out, she'd be at Kudo's mercy. She didn't think he'd be violent, even, but all she could picture was his jaws at her neck, killing the liability, because that's what They would do (had done).
Hence the lack of sleep.
Realistically, she didn't think he would kill her, but all of the paranoid swirlings in her mind assumed the worst. The most likely scenario would be that Kudo would kick her out of whatever weird little clan thing he had going on, and that would be the end of that: a useful resource gone, and Ai alone. Again. This wasn't exactly a pleasant scenario, either, granted.
From a pragmatic point of view, Kudo was her best shot— with his allies and detective prowess— and Ai was also his best shot, given her information. That, at least, gave her a bargaining chip to beg forgiveness and partnership with. Still, she had seen Kudo burn both cold and hot, so it hard to say whether he'd approach this betrayal with logic or emotions first, and the tension of the mystery alone was enough to have her mind whirling.
And that isn't even getting into the consideration of her own responses— elaborate lies constructed with nothing better to do— and the many hypothetical conversations she holds in her head. That and the spite allow her to overpower the boredom of a sleepless night.
She does fall asleep eventually, because of the aforementioned cat sleep schedule; it's a sleepless night, yes, but once the warmth of morning rolls around… sleep.
xXx
Heiji wakes up just as the rusty cat is nodding off; he remembers hazy night-memories of the cat being a ball of tenseness, chittering a little to herself and being a bit disturbing to his sleep.
Hattori deems the way she had fought sleep— long and slow blinks, unfocussed eyes, slowing breathing— and is sleeping is too realistic, and too long. To test, he makes a bit of noise opening the door. No reaction.
Breakfast it is. And a computer and books for entertainment, because presumably he'll be here a while.
xXx
By night, at which point Haibara is awake again and has been for a while, she wonders if Kudo just died. Got hit by a car, died from unseen wounds (he did go through a fire, and Haibara had heard gunshots), starved in the forest, overdosed on the ridiculously dysfunctional cure… any number of things, really.
It would be… a convenient solution to her dilemma that took the choice of what to tell Kudo out of her hands, to make a euphemism of the morbid.
Haibara turned her gaze on Hattori and wondered how long it would take him to relinquish hope; already, she was plotting her escape with renewed vigor, far more motivated than her previous fearful despondent state.
At least. Until a phone rang. That in itself wasn't odd or even worrisome, it was merely enough to snap the tabby out of her escape fantasies.
No, it wasn't until Heiji began talking that she got worried.
"Oh, hey Ran." The tone was casual, friendly.
Shinichi's not-girlfriend, Haibara mused with a chortle to herself— then her brain realized why Ran was probably calling.
It fully registered when Heiji let out a relieved breath, saying, "oh, he's alright, that's good then."
Another pause, and Ai's ribs felt sharp against the breath trapped in her small lungs.
"Oh, can ya tell him to call me? Soon as possible." Ran, presumably, gave an affirmative response on the other side. "Great, great," Hattori grinned into the phone, and just like that, the conversation was over.
Needless to say, Haibara was back to dread.
xXx
"I think the dark orange tabby is a human, too," is the first thing Hattori says when he picks up an exhausted Shinichi's call. No greeting— just that bomb.
Shinichi blinked. "Huh?"
"She lead us out of the cave through a secret passageway and—"
Then Shinichi yelled, because the initial statement has settled in his drug addled mind. "I knew it," he crowed triumphantly.
In turn, this gave Heiji pause. "You did?"
"Haibara is way too smart," he started, "and there were other things. She didn't walk or jump right at first, either, and she seems… hesitant to do cat things." It's simply disgusting to any given person to lick themselves, for one— and he'd never seen her doing that.
"Why wouldn't she tell you?" Heiji grunted. Then he seems to realize— "if you thought that, why wouldn't you tell her?"
Kudo winced. "I— well, if she didn't say anything, how did I know for sure why she didn't say anything?" he proposes. Paranoia is a bit conflicting to rational explanations, so it's not the best, most logical train of thought.
Heiji just huffed and decided not to question any further, lest he find himself subjected to a torturously long and circular exploration of Kudo's every thought on this matter. He felt like that would come if he decided to scoff, or laugh, because Kudo was that kind of meticulous and prideful.
Thankfully, Shinichi let him off without all that tripe. Instead, he questioned, "where is she now, then?" It was obvious that Kudo assumed the other cat had run away, judging by his tired and disappointed tone.
Heiji beamed. "I'm lookin' at her!"
Shinichi blinked. "She stayed?" Haibara was a flighty creature, so it was surprising she stuck around.
"Er," Hattori grunted, "more like she's trapped."
"Oh," Shinichi winced.
"She hasn't really tried to escape," Heiji amended quickly, trying to make things a little better. "I mean, she was just gonna skulk off before I chucked her in here, but since then, she hasn't tried to escape." He would've expected her to go for the window or door handle, or even start bargaining with scratched-out text— but… nothing.
Kudo hummed in thought. "Maybe she does trust me." To some extent, at least. "Or at least, needs me." She'd know of the antidote by now, not to mention the voice changers; it was a rather cold take, but Shinichi was a wealth of resources that would fit Haibara's needs and goals as well.
Heiji made a vaguely agreeing noise. "So, uh. What now?"
"Let me talk to her," Kudo huffed.
"Should I just… put the phone down?" Heiji asked slowly, frowning, already lowering the phone.
It seemed to occur to Kudo how weird it was in that moment, if the tightness of his "yes," was anything to go by.
Surprisingly, Haibara did hesitantly edge closer to the thing, never dropping the wary look.
"So," Kudo said slowly, "you're like me, huh." It wasn't a question, more a statement.
Ai just gave a very, very long sigh. "I'll come back," was her only response.
"And I can trust you to do that," Shinichi deadpanned. "Why even lie in the first place?"
"It's complicated," was the huffy response, leaving Shinichi to drag an exasperated paw down his face and flick his tail in irritation. "Trust isn't the right word, anyways," Ai asserted, "you have things I want, and surely I have things you want."
Shinichi's ears pricked. "What could you have that I want?"
"We're talking about it in person," Ai snapped.
Shinichi ignored her. "What'd you do to get on Their bad side?" he questioned, thinking aloud.
"Not on the phone!" Ai hissed.
"What, scared they'll listen in?" Shinichi asked cockily, smarmy and sarcastic. Plaintively, he meowed, a meaningless sound. "That's all anyone would get from this conversation."
Ai blinked, disconcerted— she hadn't even realized that Kudo had turned the translator that took his thoughts and made them noise off. "Oh," she grunted, feeling kind of stupid. "I guess that," she paused, cut herself off, then continued again, "I guess it didn't matter, then."
"No," Kudo agreed in an embittered deadpan.
Haibara briefly combed through all the lies that she had built carefully in her head, thinking of constructing some reality where she'd been an ordinary person that had gotten on the organization's bad side.
One thought destroyed them, though: he's a detective. He'll figure it out. He would wonder how she knew all that she did, especially her specific knowledge in regards to the poison and its machinations. In her mind's eye, she could picture the hooks of his questions sinking into her, dragging that cover of lie off.
Lying once, like this, she could get away with— be forgiven for, perhaps. Lying twice, though… he would disregard her, and she needed him. Before, she lied because it was her best option to investigate him without triggering his suspicions— and now, to keep Shinichi's resources in her grasp, altruism was the best option.
It was an entirely selfish thought process, but Haibara had gotten used to being selfish now that her sister was dead. Survival of the self above all; her sister used to be included in that, of course, but, well. Kudo had failed to save her sister from the gun of the organization after her sister's attempted heist not too long ago, but so had she.
So she decided the only thing Shinichi didn't need to know was that. He didn't need to know about her sister.
Instead, she leads with: "I worked for them." She emphasises them in a low hiss.
On the other end of the line, Kudo's entire small body prickles and sharpens.
"Yes," Ai continues, "them. I made something," she continues, and her words have him paralyzed, "a compound intended to induce an extreme reaction, more similar to a failed mast cell reaction, an immune attack against the body, than a poison, making it untraceable. To force the body to become foreign to itself, and thusly attack and die in the combined shock."
Silence, more tension.
Then, slowly, bafflingly and non-sequitur, Shinichi's first question was, "but why cats?"
In that moment, Ai felt all her intimidation she'd built up fall away— or at least, most of it. She snaps back angrily, "I was experimenting on rats, so it couldn't be rats, so I needed something easy and—"
"Wait, you made the poison?" Kudo snapped, interrupting her, having fully processed what Ai said. His voice wavered in shock and fear.
Blissfully, that sweet, cloying taste of intimidating power returned. "Yes," Ai says simply.
"Ai—" he cuts in.
She interrupts him this time, simply asserting, "Sherry."
"You took it too," Kudo zeroes in on. "You did something, got on their bad side," he hypothesizes, "and they fed you your own poison."
"I tried to die," she corrects, voice light. "The one person holding me there died, so I tried to join her. And instead…"
"Your poison failed," Shinichi scoffed, regaining his ordinary sarcasm quite quickly, though his voice still warbled with fear— and was that some soft twinge of sadness?
"What the hell are you two talking about?" Heiji interrupted, boisterously loud as ever.
Ai found herself twisting in the air after a shocked jump. The crash on the other end of the line says that Kudo reacted much the same way, much to both of their wounded pride.
And, once again, Haibara felt the built up intimidation slide away— disappointing, considering as a small cat it's hard to build up such.
Heiji leaned over the phone so that it would pick him up while on speaker mode, and while doing so, continued to ramble. "I was quiet until ya started yowlin. C'mon, fill a guy in." He points to Haibara. "You're obviously human, no way a cat would use a phone. Dunno why you were hidin it, but."
"Jeez, Hattori," Shinichi groaned into the phone with his bowtie. "And I thought I had as much adrenaline as I could have already— before you yelled."
"Adrenaline over what?" he snapped.
Haibara stiffened on the floor. "Don't say it in Japanese over the phone," she commanded, earning a weird, thoughtful look from Hattori— clearly, he's trying to decipher anything. "Don't say anything to him," she amended.
"I know, I know," Kudo griped, and she can hear the eye roll. Before Heiji can make Kudo play translator, Shinichi elects to please both Heiji and Haibara, Kudo promises, "I'll tell you later, Hattori, not over the phone." And then, before further protest erupted, Shinichi demands, "put me back on with her." It's not an ideal solution, but it's deemed largely good enough by Haibara, at least.
"Aw, c'mon," Heiji protested.
Shinichi just flipped his bowtie off and gave an overly innocent meow to Hattori in an obstinate reply, leading Heiji to gruff a few complaints and grumble, but ultimately he slid out of the way of the phone, allowing Ai access again.
"Well," Kudo chirped, "can you even be trusted at all, let alone to come back?" He asked the same question again, yes, but it's a fair ask.
"I need you," Haibara pointed out, revealing her pragmatic logic and hoping to appeal to Kudo's rational side.
He made a vague oh? noise.
"Your resources, your research," she elaborated. "The translator alone is reason enough to continue to keep you around, and that's not even mentioning your… moderate success with antidotes."
"I feel so loved," Kudo barked a laugh. "I guess I need all the allies I can get," he acquiesced, "and I can't constantly keep tabs on you, anyways." He doesn't mention that he had to some extent attempted to do that, and it had failed kind of spectacularly.
Haibara cut in. "Not to mention, you could use my knowledge, too," she purred.
"So, if you run, you run," Kudo finished in agreement. "And if you stay, you stay."
"You should tell him, not me," Ai gritted, pointedly glaring at her captor. Heiji, in return, made a face at her, clearly still trying to glean anything from the phone conversation.
Kudo snorts, and there was a slight clicking sound that indicated the bowtie's whirling. "Heiji," Kudo's true voice came out of the speaker, and Hattori snapped to attention. "Let her go."
"Oh, okay," he says slowly. He narrowed his eyes down at the phone, as though Kudo could see him. "You will fill me in on this later." It's not a question, but rather a command.
"No, he won't," Haibara snipped smarmily, flicking an ear. Heiji couldn't understand the words, but he did understand the aura of smugness.
Kudo overrode her. "I will. In person. Next time we meet," he promised, and it sounded (per usual) like some crazy declaration, a see you on the other side type of speech that would be followed by some dramatic clapping of hands (if they were in person, and both had hands). Haibara was beginning to learn— first from the whole KID egg thing, and now this— that everything the two teen detectives did had this air of a bizarre action movie in which they were the two passionate rivalry inclined partners who were constantly in danger. It was all very strange, and it made her desperately wonder what on earth she was getting herself into. Her life was turning into some junky, genre confused thing— a comedy mixed with some kind of action-type detective garbage— and whatever this was… it was the center of that storm.
She wasn't given time to dwell on all that, though, because Hattori was wordlessly opening the door.
Ai trotted out.
xXx
Following Kudo around had revealed how much people didn't notice or care about cats, in general. Even being on his level, she had a difficult time following his quick, lithe movements around a place— a person, who wouldn't see them without deliberately looking down, had no chance. On top of that, who would be suspicious of a cat? The worst case scenario was always getting thrown out of a place, or maybe being taken to some shelter.
Which was a long way to say: catching the train back to Tokyo was easy. It wasn't pleasant, considering every train ride in this form was done crouched amongst detritus in order to stay hidden and tucked away, but it worked.
On the train, Ai mused on if she should simply bolt— everytime, though, she reminded herself that not only has Kudo accepted her back (to some extent, at least) and they could help each other in some strange exchange.
So, she stays. Or, more accurately, she goes back.
xXx
haibara this entire chapter: well well well. if it isnt the consequences of my own actions.
also haibara upon seeing heiji and shinichi: my god! these bitches gay! good for them, good for them
mm i wanted this to be longer initially but hey
anyways, this fr marks my complete departure from canon because f that i dont want to watch anymore conan
