The apartment changed at night, as if becoming a child again had rekindled old, nonsensical fears. In the shadows, the hallway stretched on forever and the doors yawned like open mouths. Any familiarity he had with the space during the day was gone, displaced by darkness, every creak of the floorboards roaring in his ears. The ticking clock was a bell tower in the distance. He reached his arms out, scrambling for handholds, and kept falling into empty air.
The rational part of his mind took a break from wrestling with the idea that he had been turned into a child to tell him that nothing around him had changed except for the light. It was the same hallway, the same floorboards, the same apartment that he had been staying in for the last three days.
Then why am I afraid?
The creaking floors sounded like snapping bones to him. He rested in a shaft of moonlight from a nearby window as he waited for his heart to stop hammering in his chest.
The Mouri's apartment was tiny, but then again, so was he. At his new size, the shapes of beds, tables, and chairs were warped and elongated, towering over him. Reaching for a doorknob was a herculean effort. He picked his way through a forest of cheap furniture.
Down the rabbit hole, Shinichi thought. With the effort of a mountain climber, he summited a chair by the dining room table. The kitchen cabinets rose above him like monoliths, but he couldn't remember which one held the glasses. Even if he did, he wouldn't be able to get one down without dragging a chair over and waking the entire apartment.
What would they do if I did? Would they be angry? Would they understand?
It had been three days since the incident, and it all felt like a nightmare, each morning the false awakenings of a fever dream. Vivid memories played in his mind like an old film reel; the alleyway with the men in black, the detonation at the back of his skull, boot heels digging into his skin. Then, a drug, his throat aflame, spreading wildfire down his bones and sinew. Waking up as a child in a world so much larger, and infinitely more hostile.
An hour of panicked sprinting down unfamiliar streets, soaked in rain and mud. Going home was not an option; he had been in Beika for a case, and home was several late-night train rides down south. Even if he made it without getting picked up by some kidnapper, any normal person would call the police after seeing a bleeding child in too-large clothes taking the midnight express. Ultimately, the decision to stay was made for him when his tiny body finally collapsed in exhaustion in some park.
If by some overdue miracle he did it make it back home, then what? All that waited for him was an empty house and the paranoia of surviving one's own attempted murder.
The creak of an opening door pulled him from his relived trauma. Down the hall, a tall figure tiptoed out of a bedroom, crossing the hall in soft, measured steps to the other door. It cracked the door slightly, dipping its head in to peek around. He watched its composure change in a flash, spine straightening in surprise, panic settling in like the cold shock of ice water. The figure pushed further into the bedroom, obnoxious snores leaking through the open doorway. It emerged, quietly frantic, moving quickly to the bathroom, the laundry closet…
She's looking for me.
The figure stepped out from the hallway into the living room. He heard fumbling, the clinking of a metal chain. A lamp blazed bright, and the shadowy figure transformed into a young woman in wrinkled pajamas.
"Hey, little wanderer," said Ran. Her tone was gentle, a vocal mask over her moment of worry. She sat down in a chair across from him, the movement so much easier for her than it was for him. "Why didn't you turn on a light?"
He shrugged. "I couldn't remember where they were." His voice was high-pitched and alien. His early attempts at a "child-like" voice were somewhere between screeching harpy and scary doll from a bad horror movie. He'd toned it down since then, but he felt it necessary to keep up the charade. A lost child was concerning. One that spoke like an adult was alarming.
She gave a small smile, looking down as she absentmindedly smoothed the tablecloth. "We could get a nightlight for out here. May make it easier for you."
A nightlight. What's happened to me? How far have I fallen?
His first thought after waking up in the park was that the woman called Mouri Ran did not look like the typical kidnapper. Detective instincts sputtered to life in his bruised and broken body, rattling like an old ceiling fan. She was young, likely in her mid-to-late teens, close to his normal age. Long brown hair. Thin, but there was muscle in her form, like that of a wrestler or judoka. He had no hope of overpowering her, a fact made very clear as she bundled him up and brought him here, to the home and business of her father, a private detective.
He called it a minor stroke of luck, like finding a silver dollar after falling down a well.
"For a moment, I thought you might have left." She said it lightly, with a small smile, but there was concern there, in the way her eyes scanned his face. Searching for a reaction. The ice-water in her veins had not yet returned to room temperature. Did she think he would try to leave? He'd have to get a chair to reach the front door, and Ran had probably locked it tight.
To trap him in here.
No, no. A precaution, meant to keep a skittish child from wandering the streets at night.
Even after three days of living together, sharing meals, even solving a kidnapping case, he could never shake the fear that these people were with the men in black. That this was some elaborate set-up, a terrarium, a habitat to watch this little freak of nature that defied their poison and returned as… this. That any minute now, the men in black would saunter in and vivisect him on the kitchen table.
After all, why else would this family open themselves up to a strange boy they found collapsed in the park?
After the events of the last few days, his rationality felt like roadkill moldering in the sun. Every so often he would poke it with a stick in an attempt to resurrect it. He knew his paranoia was false, that the whole premise was so far-fetched. If they were actually with the men in black, it would be so much easier to cart him off to some white-walled laboratory filled with syringes and scalpels. Or they could just shoot him in the head here and now-
"Whatcha thinking about?" Ran asked.
The sudden question tore him from his thoughts, and he wondered how long he had been staring into space.
"Oh, umm. Nothing, really," he said.
"Having trouble sleeping?"
"A-a little. I was going to get a glass of water, but I couldn't find the cups."
"Oh, Conan, why didn't you say something? You should have woken me up if you needed help." She stood up and walked to the kitchen counter, removing two glasses from the cabinets closest to the refrigerator. "Would you like ice?"
"Yes, please."
She opened the freezer compartment and rooted around in the ice box, dropping a few cubes into two glasses before filling them from the faucet. She set one down in front of him. He instinctively reached one hand for it, before realizing lifting it would likely require two hands. Pushing down this brief moment of shame, he drank greedily from the glass, forgetting how parched he had been feeling.
Ran was watching him as she sipped her water. These quiet moments alone with her filled him with dread. At times like this, she would ask questions about his parents, his living situation, what he was doing after dark that day.
Why he had been covered in bruises.
Ran had gotten better at asking them indirectly, trying to catch him when his guard was down, and sleep deprivation was making it more difficult to evade her questions. He would defend himself with a constant wall of silence, but this strategy would only last so long until the Mouri's became fed up with him, burning up all their patience and good faith.
His time here was limited. Sooner or later, a worker from child services would show up, interrogate him, and cart him off to an understaffed group home. They would search for his parents, but the pseudonym he gave them would, of course, have no parents. He certainly couldn't use his real identity. No one would believe this child was once a high schooler who moonlit as a detective, and more importantly, the men in black had stolen his wallet and knew exactly who they had tried to kill. Might as well sit in a lawn-chair on the Mouri's roof, light up a road flare, and wait for a sniper to put a bullet in him.
His best chance of finding the men in black would be here, with this detective.
He realized Ran hadn't said anything for several minutes, and was now calmly scanning the apartment, sipping her water.
What was she waiting for?
If you were going to question someone, now would be the best time, when the suspect is alone with nowhere to hide. She even made a play at being "good cop" by getting him a drink of water. Where were the questions?
On the first night, while riding in the car after the kidnapping case, she had asked him about his parents. He was tired, shell-shocked, dimly watching the glare of passing cars in the window above his head, and for a moment completely forgot he was no longer Kudo Shinichi.
"I don't really talk with them much." Not a complete lie. The calls had been more and more infrequent over the years. He wasn't even sure what country they were in anymore.
Shinichi gasped as the nearby clock rang on the hour, chiming three times. He glanced at Ran, who was back to watching him, concern written on her face. He could feel his cheeks redden, hot shame welling up inside.
She saw that, he thought. Jumping at every loud noise, every shadow. I used to be a detective, goddamn it! I solved murders, I stared down criminals.
"Did you have another nightmare?" asked Ran.
"Y-yes," he said. No use lying, she wouldn't believe him anyway. His hand-me-down pajamas were soaked with sweat. Unbidden, the memory of wildfire surged through his skin, lighting his nerves like matchsticks. He involuntarily shuddered.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"N-no."
He pulled his knees up to his chest, resting his head on them. He couldn't keep up the silence forever and their patience would only last so long. He was surprised he had been allowed to stay here as long as he had been. The miniature cityscape of beer cans within the apartment signaled that Mouri Kogoro was unlikely to be a foster parent. He had to admit, the man was a somewhat decent detective, when he wasn't stewing in a haze of alcohol and bad TV dramas, but the man could barely care for himself. Out of everything else, waiting for the other shoe to drop was going to drive him insane.
He needed to divert Ran's attention. Something to focus on besides the pseudo-child in front of her.
"Why are you awake?" he asked.
"To check on you."
Shit. Swing and a miss.
"I'm okay. I'm not a baby. I don't need checking on." Ran's mouth quirked up in a half-smile, filling him with humiliation.
He turned to look out the window, onto the alleyway behind the apartment. Grayscale buildings rose from the earth like tombstones, linked by webs of black power lines. Skyscrapers filled the horizon, gems of yellow and red light blooming from windows and radio towers.
Beika is much bigger than I thought. Lots of places for criminals to disappear.
The same could be said of me.
There was movement to his left, a blur entering his personal space, and he flinched away. Alarm bells rang in his head and the back of his skull throbbed sympathetically. He opened his eyes (when did he close them?) and saw Ran reaching across the table, frozen in place. Her hand hovered over his shoulder in a suspended attempt at comfort, shaking slightly. Her shadow completely eclipsed him. She retreated back into herself, eyes turned down to the tablecloth.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"It's okay."
It was too awkward to look anywhere else so he went back to staring out the window. Minutes dripped by, the only sounds that of the ticking clock and the late-night passage of cars on the street below. Finally, Ran stood up.
"Well, I think it's a little late for both of us. Let's try and get some more sleep. Don't want to be tired tomorrow, right?"
He hummed an affirmative, still looking out the window. He was resigned to sitting in this chair for the rest of the night until he realized Ran didn't immediately walk away, and was watching him expectantly.
That wasn't a suggestion, he thought. That was a command. Children don't decide their own bedtimes. I'll have to get used to that.
Ran made sure he was following her as they made their way back through the hallway. In the lamplight, it no longer looked as menacing, as foreign. The shadows were purged and in their place was simple domesticity; framed pictures, an end-table with a vase on it. Shinichi cracked open the door to Kogoro's (his?) room, the man's snores bellowing outward.
"Wait a sec," said Ran, vanishing into her room. She returned with a pale blue shirt, folded neatly.
"Change your shirt, you'll catch a cold," she said, handing it to him. He had forgotten he had sweat through it during the night.
"Thanks, but I don't think that's true." The fact that he barely left the apartment made it unlikely he'd be at risk for any infection at all, but, then again, his knowledge of biology had been twisted by current circumstances.
"Oh, really?" She bent down to his level, though still outside his personal space. He was surprised to notice that, for the first time that night, her smile didn't look forced. "Just trust me on this one. I know it can be hard to listen to grown-ups, but hey, sometimes we know a few tricks."
The shirt was probably from a few years ago, but it still was big enough that he could drown in it.
At least it's soft. And not pink.
"Thank you, again. Goodnight." He awkwardly clutched the gift to his chest and walked across the threshold into Kogoro's room.
"Conan?"
"Hmm?"
"If you need anything, I'm right across the hall."
Unprompted, a steam of memories strobed in his mind. His house, huge, filled with nothing but dust and empty rooms. Silent and without warmth.
"I'll see you in the morning." She waited for him to get back to his futon before closing the door. Before he realized it, he was already changing his shirt, the old one thrown into the corner and forgotten. The new one hung off him like a tent, but it was warm and dry.
The lamp in the hall stayed on the rest of the night.
For those of you who have read this far, thank you! This is meant to be an AU where Shinichi never met the Mouri's and grew up rather isolated and alone, without any support system. After becoming Conan, he is brought into the household of a semi-dysfunctional but mostly loving family. There are no pairings in this, focusing on family and sibling relationships. Shinichi (as Conan) grows to see Ran and Kogoro as sister and father-figures, respectively.
04/02/2022: Minor edits