Chapter 1
[present/10 years post canon]
The cemetery wasn't like the ones she had seen in movies or back home. It didn't go on forever over grassy hills, where all of the rounded headstones stood in perfect lines, and were spaced out with enough room for each to breath. Just like everything else she'd seen in Japan since they'd gotten off the plane that morning, they were packed in close, pushed right up next to each other, but respectfully not quite touching.
Elaine followed her mom down the aisles of stone monuments. Each one was built up taller than she was, a stack of blocks that looked heavy and solid. She could almost imagine they were skyscrapers transformed magically into stone; that a whole city had been cursed to remain trapped here, frozen forever in the scale of a small garden.
There was a ritual for visiting a family grave in Japan, just like there was an important and solemn ritual for just about everything else. Elaine was only half paying attention as her mother explained what all she was doing. Through it all her mom kept that serious expression on her face; It was Elaine's least favorite of her mother's expressions. Was serious even an emotion? Could someone be feeling serious the same way they might be feeling happy or sad? It wasn't something Elaine wanted to find out for herself.
Eventually, it seemed like her mom ran out of things to do. She had stopped giving explanations a while ago. Elaine thought that her mom was going to be sad coming here, but she didn't seem like she was. Sometimes it took a while for adults to get sad. Maybe that was what she was doing now; waiting for the sadness to come. Elaine looked around while they waited and thought of the great stone city and what misfortune must have befallen it to be doomed to such a fate. The fantasy was somewhat broken when she saw a man pass by through the aisles of stone. He had been looking at her and her mother, but glanced away when she met his eye. She thought it was pretty unfriendly of him not to wave or something.
She turned her attention back up to the stone pillar where they waited. There was a family crest and a name in Kanji written there.
Elaine spoke Japanese just as easily as she spoke English, but she had been neglecting her Kanji studies. She knew it had to be a name, but she couldn't really read the characters. It wasn't Miyano, but other than that... She was drawing a blank.
"Should we go?" Her mother asked on an exhale before Elaine had the chance to ask what the characters said. The incense had burned out. That must have been why they were still waiting.
"What about that?" Elaine pointed to the black coat her mother had neatly folded over her arm. It was the only peculiar thing she had brought and hadn't explained. It wasn't even something they had bought when they arrived. Her mother already had it; although it was much too large for either of them, and Elaine had never seen it before this trip. "Aren't you going to leave that here too?"
"No," she smiled wistfully, "I don't think I can."
"It's not allowed?" Elaine asked, thinking it was yet another odd custom she was meant to learn.
"It's not that." Her mother said picking up the wooden bucket and ladle they had taken with them to the gravestone. "I've only decided not to."
"Okay," Elaine said, even if she didn't really get it.
It was odd that her mother had carried the coat all the way to Japan only to decide not to leave it where she had planned, but in the end, Elaine figured it wasn't any more odd than the other things she had done on this trip. She left with her mother, having entirely forgotten to ask how to say the name on the family gravestone they had visited.
...
The sunblock wasn't in the coat closet where Ran had said it should be. Automatically he walked to the old kitchen drawer where his parents used to keep it, but opening it only jostled the assortment of metal utensils within.
The Kudo manner looked nearly the same as it had in his youth, but he supposed this was because Ran had only been able to rearrange the small things so far.
He called up to where she was packing upstairs, "Where else could it be?"
She didn't give an answer so he started on his way toward her, figuring that she hadn't heard him, "Ran, it's not-"
He stopped short of the first stair, startled by the tall man who sat waiting on them. Akai made a quick gesture for silence to stop any startled outcry.
"What's wrong? Is Ran okay? What are you doing here?"
"She's fine, everything's fine. I just wanted to talk." Akai dismissed his slew of worried questions.
Everyone was planning to meet up in Hawaii on the following afternoon, so for Akai to have flown out here, alone, suggested urgency.
"Well?" Kudo prompted. "What couldn't wait eighteen hours?"
"Don't go and make it sound as pressing as all that; it's only, there's something I thought we should sort out before everyone is together."
"Okay," Kudo said. He thought of pointing out that it wasn't like he was the one who'd given their conversation the weight of secrecy, but held back, waiting for Akai to go on.
"It's about Shiho mostly, about what she's been hiding. Maybe it's nothing, but I have this gut feeling-" Akai rubbed at the dark circles lining his eyes. Those circles had only grown more pronounced with each passing year. "Did you ever figure out who fathered Elaine?"
The question struck Kudo as if out of nowhere. "Shiho asked me not to early on."
"Sure, she was sensitive about it then, understandably." Akai didn't explicitly say that it was because Elaine was a child born out of wedlock but it was in his tone.
The Japanese stigma against this was severe, so much so that to his knowledge Shiho had not lived in Japan for any of Elaine's life. He felt the familiar protectiveness swell in his chest, as the whole of him prepared to come to his friend's defense if needed.
"But even still," Akai said, "you must have an idea."
"Why are you worrying about this now? Shiho is a private person; if she wants us to respect that I don't see why we should break trust after all this time."
Kudo started on his way back toward the coat closet. "Come on, so long as you're here you can help me think up places someone might stash a bottle of sunscreen." It had been a long time since Akai had lived at the Kudo manner, but there was little doubt in Kudo's mind that he would remember its general layout.
A closet and a half of searching later, the questions left over from their conversation nagged at him still. He was sitting on the floor so he could reach the bottom few shelves of one, and Akai stood opposite him rifling through the top few shelves of another. Finally, curiosity overcame him and he asked:
"Do you have a theory then; a reason to be concerned?"
They both stopped a moment to pass a knowing look between them.
"There is one distinct possibility," Akai left the suggestion hanging in the air. It was a sour thought, one neither of them wanted to be correct.
"No," Kudo said. It was something that should not even be suggested without proof.
Akai turned back to their task, turning each of the spare bottles of bathroom products so their label faced forward. "The things Elaine has said; every time she mentions her father, it sounds strange. Sometimes she talks as if he is a part of her life, but she never mentions actual times that she's with him. Almost like he's some figure that's been built up in her imagination, but not someone she's met. Then I heard her talking to Akemi about why her parents aren't together, she said her mom didn't want people to see her differently because of who her father is, she wanted her to grow up with 'a normal childhood, and all that'."
"Something Shiho didn't get," Kudo interjected.
"I know, but still," Akai said as if his vague evidence could actually hold water.
"That's it? Having an odd relationship with her father doesn't mean that her father is-"
"You have to admit it's not impossible."
They had both stopped truly searching once more, their hands resting mid-task.
Kudo had about as much evidence to disprove Akai's wild claim as Akai did for it. The problem was he'd promised he wouldn't investigate the issue and so he hadn't.
"Akemi knows who it is, doesn't she?" He reasoned. "Don't you think that if it was him she'd be more concerned?"
"I can't speak for my wife." The statement was harsh, blunt, and Kudo guessed more than likely symptomatic of the true problem here. "If the truth was truly harmless I can't fathom why she hasn't just told me. Especially because she knows it bothers me like this. Shiho told Akemi from the very start, you know."
"So, they're sisters."
"They weren't that close before when they were in the Organization, but now-" Akai's scowl deepened. "It was three years after the fact before anyone else knew. Three years and Akemi had known from the moment Shiho found out she was pregnant."
"And?"
"Nothing, it's just, for all that time... To find out they could conceal something so monumental, for so long... and now with the question of Elaine's father; I can't trust that it's nothing."
"That's hardly a reason to think they're colluding. Shiho probably wasn't sure she was going to keep the child and was only minimizing the embarrassment if she did let her go; it's obvious why she would need her sister's, and only her sister's, support in that scenario."
"I was living with Akemi for the better part of those years." Akai rubbed at his stubble, and Kudo wondered absently if the man had become a less conscientious shaver with age, with time off work, or due to some other factor. "We spent nearly every moment in one another's company, and she hid Elaine's existence from me entirely. So when it comes to this-"
"You hid the fact that you were an FBI agent using her to get to a crime syndicate for the years you were dating."
Kudo had meant the remark to be jarring, something to shake him from his baseless mistrust. However, his stoic companion's eyes merely misted for a moment before he recovered.
"Not well," Akai admitted. "Besides that just makes matters worse. How can I expect transparency with this now, after what I did? It would only be fair for Akemi to keep her own secrets, even dangerous ones. Can you tell me with certainty that it's not possible they met up before that final raid? I know how you found her that day, clutching his unresponsive body; I don't doubt she loved him, once. Maybe even as much as she hated him."
"And if you are right? What does it matter?"
"Don't you think it would have changed how we handled everything with Shiho? With Gin?"
"No," Kudo said, unswayed. "We did what was needed. Even if she had made nice with him before the end. Even if Elaine is Gin's child, I don't regret our decision."
It was clear that Akai wasn't so sure of that decision anymore.
"You're not a father yet, so perhaps that is why you can remain so certain."
"Do you really think it would have been better for Elaine if we hadn't intervened?" Kudo asked harshly. "If that is the truth of things, isn't it better that we've all but undone it?"
"That's my worry exactly: That Gin would think that had been our intention if he were ever to find out the truth about Elaine. Can you imagine his reaction if he thought that deal was made to keep him not just from Shiho, but from his child?"
"He can't get to them, we made sure of-"
Kudo was cut off by the doorbell ringing, and both men hastened to answer it. But Ran must have been closer because they could hear her greeting someone before the door even came into sight.
Shiho's voice carried over with words of apology and something about her flight being diverted due to bad weather in Hawaii. Akai had talked over it somewhat as he whispered: "Don't tell her I was here." He started to back away from the entrance, and Kudo followed. "There is something else I'm afraid."
"Shinichi," Ran hollered to him, "where did you go?"
"Coming, Ran!"
"I'll try to be brief," Akai said nearly at the back door, "The FBI files on Gin have been classified. I'm not quite sure when, or why. But it means I don't know where he is, and not even my superior's superior has access codes that can declassify it."
"That doesn't-" He had meant to say '-make any sense,' but before he was given the chance a little girl with loose long black hair and more pent up energy than a shaken sodacan tumbled into the room dribbling a soccer ball artfully around walls and furniture, all the while calling for her 'Uncle Kudo.'
