A/N: First off—many, many thanks to Agirlcandream100 on Ao3 for allowing me to write this for her! I can only hope she enjoys it. I usually dislike soulmate AUs but I absolutely fell in love with her portrayal. Please make sure to check out the first fic on Ao3 (entitled Half of me) before reading this entry!
Second of all, my apologies to my Tales of Symphonia subscribers. The draft is currently undergoing editing.
Last but certainly not least, I hope you enjoy this story, dear readers.
Conan lay on a hospital bed, gazing at the ceiling.
It had been a long road. He had spent years adjusting to his weak and short body, being underestimated by criminals and allies alike, and going through kiddy school again.
At least he hadn't had to do art project after art project again. That stuff was mind-numbing.
"So. You're going to tell her."
Conan shrugged—well, as much as he could, given his recently un-dislocated shoulder. "Of course."
"It's dangerous."
"The Black Organisation's gone. We don't have to hide anymore."
The rush of exhilaration from being able to say those words surprised even Conan.
Haibara quirked an eyebrow at him. "You never know. There are those who would kill for the secret of immortality."
He shook his head. "But none of them come close to Their competence. And they don't know what we look like. I'm probably the only one who would come under any sort of fire, but since I've been televised for some six or seven years now thanks to Kaitou KID, I doubt that would happen. The FBI and PSB—at least the agents I interacted with—aren't going to report me, since I was so instrumental in their cause; really, it was more like they were the ones supporting me." He pursed his lips in faint amusement and gave her a tired look. "And I can't keep secrets from my soulmate forever, Haibara."
"I didn't say that." She was uncomfortable, he could tell. She stood eerily still, her arms crossed, and two fingers picked at her jumper as inconspicuously as they could.
"You're just wary," he said, and leaned back, only to be reminded that he'd suffered whiplash when Gin's Porsche had slammed into their car from behind. "Ow. Me, too. We've spent the last... all of our second childhood hiding from Them." Conan's gaze steeled. "But I can't live like this. I can't give them my fear. That way, They win. Gin wins."
Haibara swallowed.
He gave her a sardonic grin. "Besides, you'll have to tell Mitsuhiko eventually."
"Ah, yes, Mitsuhiko-kun, I'm actually eighty years older than you. He'll be so pleased to hear that he's actually the younger one in the relationship."
"You can drop the honorific now," Conan snorted, impressed by how deadpan her face was. "There's no need to protect him like that anymore. I've drilled in the instinct to be thorough in observation or analysis, and the kids picked it up quite nicely, as you know. After all, you and I have been on the receiving end more than once. Although he might go back to calling you Haibara-san for a while."
"True enough." Haibara cracked a tiny smile. "I suppose I could. Micchi would be happy."
He gagged on pure reflexive disgust; his sore stomach did not approve and, for the next minute, Conan dry-retched trying to keep it under control. Finally, he managed, "Don't ever say that again."
She had the gall to grin at him. "Oh? Why ever not?"
"Want me to finish the job?"
The sound of Haibara's laughter, free and real, was enough.
"So. You're going to tell her."
He groaned. "Can everyone please stop copying everyone else?! Yes, I'm going to tell her, no you're not invited, and how about you propose to Kazuha already!"
Hattori blinked. "Huh?"
Conan watched as bright red blossomed across his best friend's face.
The murmur of voices outside his door gave Conan a heart murmur.
She's here.
The door opened a short eternity later to admit a young woman with orchids in hand.
"Conan," she sighed, relief shining in her eyes, and that was all he needed.
"I'm back," he said, tears in his own. "I lied."
Ran's forehead creased in equal worry and rage. "You what? You never said anything to me about going off on your own in the first place. So I guess that's a lie of omission."
She walked forward slowly, drinking in the sight of him. Bandages around his head, wrapped just as they had been when they had first met, only far neater compared to Professor Agasa's rush job. The careful way he held himself: the stiff shoulder, the limp arm, the face turn towards her and away from his ruptured eardrum and the countless lacerations and second-degree burns from what she had been told was a shrapnel bomb. Conan's nurse had told her they wouldn't scar too badly thanks to his rapid treatment, although Ran theorised privately that he wouldn't mind them—he might, in fact, wear them proudly as a testament to his single-minded desire for justice.
Just like someone else she had known and grown up with.
"I thought we were partners, Conan. Halves of a whole. Weren't we going to be there for each other? No matter what." Ran fought back the lump in her throat, the sinking in her heart, the feeling that he didn't trust her.
All over again, his trust in her was shattered, and she didn't know how to pick up the pieces and glue them back together.
Was it her? What had she done to make him feel like he couldn't confide in her? Had she burdened him with so many of her concerns that he felt he couldn't give her his own? Had she inadvertently pushed him away?
She had thought they were getting along so well.
And just like that someone she had shared almost everything with, Conan barrelled on as though he had never heard her.
"I've been thinking about what to say for a long time. I've wanted to tell you since... since I."
The words were stuck.
She sat on the chair beside the bed and leaned forward to grasp his hand. Her hand was so much larger than his. It wasn't supposed to be that way.
Ran was supporting him, even when she felt that he hadn't done the same.
What have I ever done to deserve her?
How had fate inked her name onto his body so indomitably? How was it that his own pseudonym was inscribed on hers, an indelible tattoo?
Transfused strength through her warmth, he continued. Better he broke the news now than to wait until he could no longer hide the truth by virtue of looking identical to his previous self, matching Ran's memories of him perfectly. Even a drastic haircut would not conceal the shape of his eyes, the jut of his chin.
"I lied when I said I wouldn't be back. I've been with you this whole time." He huffed, scornful. "Well, half-lied. Shinichi really was gone because Conan had to take his place."
Ran's grip got much tighter, and Conan suddenly regretted his decision to spill the beans while helpless on a hospital bed.
"What do you mean."
"I mean." He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "That—"
Lady Luck had it out for him because at that moment his voice cracked.
He whipped his face away from her, heat scalding his cheeks.
"Stupid puberty, stupid kiddy body, stupid voice breaking and secondary sex characteristics—"
"Conan, it's all right." Her voice was steady despite the bewilderment she no doubt felt.
"No, it's not all right," he retorted, "because I went through all this already and I had every intention of not living through it again like ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-nine per-cent of the global population!"
Oh.
Ran's face was frozen in disbelief.
He'd screwed up again.
"So, yeah," he finished. "I'm Shinichi."
He had imagined many ways of telling her, but that had to be the lamest and least romantic revelation on the list. Regardless, Conan couldn't take it back.
He could feel her. Ran always wore her emotions on her sleeve. Shock, surprise, confusion. Later, he knew, it would give way to outrage, and there was little anyone could do to circumvent her karate.
But he had to.
Because they were a team, weren't they?
But, after this, would she still want to be?
"But-Conan—my soul mark—"
"Yeah. I just came up with a name while panicking on the spot. And it turned out to be your soulmate's name." He laughed dryly. "Crazy how things work out like that, hey?"
Ran's eyes bored into him. "But—all this time, you…"
She still couldn't speak coherently, he observed, inwardly amused in spite of his drumming heart.
"How," she spluttered. He could sense the tension rising but Shinichi had never been any good at defusing that, and neither was Conan. Twenty-something years of knowing Ran, loving her, and he still didn't know how.
Conan scratched his head. "It's kind of a long story, but you deserve it in full. For now, though, I'll just say a stupid pill reverted me to a kid and forced me to go into hiding."
Three. Two. One.
Ran exploded. "Why didn't you ever tell me! What, did you think it would be fun to disappear? Did you get a kick out of pretending you were dead? Was I supposed to just move on with life uncaring that one of my best friends was gone? That the last interaction I ever had with him was a phone call less than two minutes long?!"
"No—"
"I grieved for you, Shinichi!" She had let go of his hand by now and stood tall over the hospital bed. "I cried myself to sleep for so many nights because nothing and no one could ever replace you! But all this time you were actually safe and sound and just refused to tell me the truth!"
"Because I wasn't safe."
Her anger dissipated, but not by much. "What?"
"I wasn't safe," Conan repeated. His heart ached. "That phone call… I didn't lie. There was a syndicate that made an attempt on my life. Shinichi was never going to come back. It's impossible. There's no antidote. I'm never going to be your physical age again."
He had thought he was over this. Yet the intense cold, the rigidity in his muscles, the hoarseness of his breathing—all of it was witness to an old injury, reopened with unrelenting force and laid bare for the air itself to slice at.
"That's why Conan came into existence," he went on. "If They had ever realised I was still alive, They would have come for me and everyone I care about. And if your soul mark said Edogawa Conan—which just so happened to be the name I picked for myself—it meant that I was never going to get back to normal. So Kudou Shinichi had to vanish and never return."
Ran sat down with a thump.
She fixed her eyes on him for an age and a half.
Finally, she spoke again. "I think… I understand."
Conan's heart leapt into his throat.
"But," she continued, "I don't know."
The sun had set some time ago. Night air had never felt colder.
He fought past the trepidation. He had to ask. "What don't you know?"
Her eyes dropped. "I don't know if I can keep going."
Conan didn't understand.
"What?"
Keep going. She was going to give up? Give up on what? On himself? He would understand that—really he would; wouldn't anyone do that with the type of secrets he had been keeping? But he'd thought Ran was different. He had thought she would stay, come hell or high water.
He had thought that the day they exchanged their soulmate rings to manifest their red strings of fate meant forever. Yet any other interpretation of keep going crawled icy trails into his chest and squeezed a frostbitten heart.
"Ran, what do you mean?" he said. "What are you giving up on?"
She stood, but Conan could see her shaking legs, her pupils dilated in shock and grief.
"Us."
Conan shot up and out of bed, ignoring the pain in his side and shoulder and everywhere else that had been abused because winter had wormed into his very soul.
"Ran, please. Don't leave me. Ran. Ran!"
"Shi-Conan, stop." Her eyes. He couldn't move. "Just… give me some time to think. I don't know."
She left.
Conan was alone on the frozen tiles beside a bouquet.
It was chilly that night.
It had been exactly eight days (and fourteen hours) since she had last seen Conan.
"Ran, you've been totally out of it," groaned Sonoko, who had previously been picking at her chips. She had abandoned them in favour of staring down one Mouri Ran. Most people just would not have the guts to do such a thing to a karate champion, but Sonoko had always been an exception. "I know you had a fight with the kid and I gave you time to think about it, but I'm not tiptoeing on eggshells anymore, got it? So tell me."
Ran looked at her blankly.
Sonoko waited.
"I don't know how much I can tell you," she said at last. "It's his secret—I don't. I don't know."
She had been saying that phrase a lot these days.
"Fine," Sonoko acquiesced. "So tell me how it's affecting you and why you've been avoiding visiting him. It's going to be especially awkward if you're still like this by the time he gets released from the hospital."
"He's been lying to me," Ran blurted out. Her fingers curled around a serviette. The subsequent creases in it were the fissures where her soul had cracked open.
"Lying?" Sonoko blinked.
Now it all came out in a rush. "His name isn't Edogawa Conan! He made up that name when he met me, not knowing what my soul mark said. He didn't tell me this whole time! Edogawa Conan doesn't exist, and I've been waiting for a fake."
She was grateful that they had been able to find a secluded corner in the café; although she was furious at him she would not dare to out such a secret to the public, dangerous as it was. Ran could see her best friend torn between two reactions: angered for her, and trying to think about things rationally. Sonoko being Sonoko, the former was winning.
"Is he really your soulmate, then?" She crossed her arms.
Ran sighed. "Yes. It makes too much sense for him not to be."
Sonoko was not about to parse the implications of that latest statement.
"Jerk!" she yelled, uncaring of the other customers enjoying their meal. Ran jolted at the volume.
"Sonoko…" she reproached.
"Sorry not sorry." Totally unrepentant. Then she lapsed into concern. "But Ran, if you forgive him, will you be happy?"
Ran was going to sound like a broken record at this rate. "I don't know."
"Then, if you don't forgive him, can you live with that?"
It was crowded in the hallway and all Conan wanted to do was go to the bathroom.
"Is there something going on?" he asked one of the nurses.
"No, nothing you need to worry about, kiddo." She smiled and ushered him off, complete with his mobile IV stand. Conan fumed silently at the condescension. Although, it wasn't really intended, given that they thought he was eleven.
I'm your age.
Conan decided that, so long as someone wasn't shrieking, it should be okay to ignore.
His parents were coming the next day. If it turned out that Ran wanted nothing to do with him, he would probably take off to Los Angeles with them once he was discharged.
Ran… Do you hate me?
"Ran, dear, you should make up with Conan-kun already."
She lurched away from the kitchen bench, trying not to stab herself with the knife. "Huh? Mum, what do you mean?"
Her mother shook her head. Her eyes pierced through Ran. "You've been distracted for days and, though your cooking remains delicious, it doesn't have the same zest as before. You haven't been to see Conan-kun since the day he woke up."
"I've been going to the hospital…" Ran bit her lip.
"Ran, I'm no detective like your father or Conan-kun, but I know a lovers' spat when I see one."
"It's not a—!"
She blushed deeply.
Her mother leaned back with a self-satisfied smile.
Ran put the knife down on the counter and plopped onto the seat beside her. They sat in silence.
She was grateful that her mother was content to stay quiet until Ran could gather enough of herself to speak. She was grateful that she had stayed. That her parents had tried their best for her, even if not for each other—at least, not at the beginning. Nowadays, she caught glimpses of them late at night, fixing coffee for each other (a minor consolation as her father was allowed only one beer a fortnight) and chatting about all manner of things. She found them on the couch with their heads bowed over old albums, laughing about childhood stories and inside jokes; she found that their evenings had become rowdier through glee and playful bickering and not through needle-thin blades driving through chinks in armour.
Could she do that, too?
"Do what, Ran?"
Oh. She hadn't realised that she had spoken aloud. "Uh," she said, delaying. Her heart knew the solution but hadn't translated it for her brain; she flailed about, grasping at straws, wanting desperately to know what it had decided and why it hadn't punched its way through to her conscious mind so she could put it into words. In the end, she had to settle for a grossly inadequate description. "I wonder… if I could forgive Conan like you and Dad did each other."
Her mother raised an eyebrow. "I hardly think Conan-kun has done anything that approaches the least of your father's vices. Even so, for all his genius and celebrated maturity, he is still a child."
"No, he…" The words of protest caught in her throat. "He lied to me. For so many years."
And he's not a child. That's the root of the problem.
The final problem, as Shinichi would say.
"Can I really do this?" Ran asked, no longer sure whether she was questioning herself or her mother. "Can I build a relationship founded on such deception?"
"You have to consider that yourself," said her mother. "But, if the way you've been tearing yourself up about this is any indication, you already know your answer. You simply have to accept it."
"Accept it? I don't even know what answer it is. I don't know what it answers."
She felt the sofa shift as her mother moved closer.
"Ran, in the end there is only one question. Was it founded on deception or in truth and love?"
She lifted Ran's left hand, drawing her attention to it.
Red encircled her little finger.
It was then that she remembered.
I promised.
In the future, Ran would not be able to recall how she left the agency and reached the hospital beyond a crushing embrace for her surprised mother, but before long she was at the reception. The meal she was meant to be preparing lay scattered and forgotten in the kitchen, and one Mouri Eri would do her utmost best to complete it in her daughter's absence. The measure of her success would at best be described as nondescript.
"I'm sorry, visiting hours close very soon," the lady told her. "Even if I let you see him now, you can stay for only a couple minutes at most."
"One minute is all I need!"
"Well…"
"Please! He's my soulmate! I can't…" A hand pressed down on her chest like it would calm her beating heart; the ring scorched her very soul. And something else slipped out in the wake of her anxiety, faint and despondent.
"He can't leave thinking that I hate him."
The woman's eyes softened.
So it was that Ran made her way to her soulmate's room, fighting the overwhelming urge to run down the hallways to her beloved.
"Angel."
She knew that voice.
He couldn't sleep.
There was a general feeling of unease, and it made Conan nervous because he could not pinpoint the reason. The nurse had left an hour ago after adjusting the medications in his intravenous drip. They wouldn't tell him what exactly they had changed; Conan wouldn't blame them, as an ordinary eleven-year-old would have no clue what they were talking about. He figured they had slowed the release of the analgesic, though it hadn't seemed to kick in yet.
Still, adrenaline pumped through his veins, attempting to eject the medications from his system. He was getting dizzy. Or perhaps he had been for a while, yet simply had not noticed.
Wait. That wasn't supposed to happen.
The door creaked.
Conan fought past the growing drowsiness to glance at the newcomer through half-lidded eyes. It must be the nurse; she had noticed her mistake and had come to correct it.
"Kudou Shinichi. To think you were hiding like this all this time."
His eyes shot open.
It was difficult to pick out the figure in the mass of shadows and with his rapidly failing vision, but he was tall and his voice was undisguised. Even as Conan watched, the man moved into a lance of moonlight, illuminating a strand of silver hair.
"Gin."
The man's lips drew back into a feral smirk. "That's right. So you remember me."
Conan could not muster the strength to respond. More importantly, his limbs would not move to press the emergency button. Even if they were responsive, he was quite certain they would disobey him, pumped full of horror as they were.
"That's all right. Though you did manage to arrest most of the Black Organisation, there are a few stragglers. And I came here quickly enough that it seems no one has been able to inform you of my escape. Luckily, I still have enough clout to arrange for a few… unsavoury accidents. Such as the unfortunate administration and overdose of a blood-thinner to one Edogawa Conan, currently recovering from multiple injuries inflicted during an act of terrorism. He reopened a wound in his sleep, which caused excessive blood loss before a transfusion could be executed."
Gin stalked closer, placing a hand on Conan's tender side, and pressed down.
Pain flared.
A small gasp was all he could afford.
"You… You've already lost. The Black Organisation is done for," he grunted through the agony. He could feel the slit there beginning to reopen.
"Maybe so," acknowledged Gin, "but at the very least I'll take you down with me. I'll finish what should have happened long ago and remedy my error. You just got lucky I was forced to administer that defective poison to you."
Conan shook his head, inviting darkness to swim at the edges of his vision. His head became even heavier. "No, it was destiny. Mine was decided the moment Mouri Ran was brought into the world with the soul mark of Edogawa Conan."
He laughed, though breathy from the little oxygen he could intake; Gin's eyes narrowed. "Isn't it funny, Gin? I never believed in fate, not since the day I found out hers didn't say Shinichi. And yet fate is what brought me here. Cast into despair, I thrust myself into cases day in and day out, until the day I met you. At this point, I should admit that the Greeks were right about their self-fulfilling prophecies."
"Then let's see if the three Fates have anything to say about now."
Conan let out a weak yell as Gin applied more pressure. His tiny hands batted at the man's hands, tried to pry his fingers loose, atrophied legs kicked through the tangled blanket, and all in vain.
As he fell towards the pit of eternal sleep, he thought of everyone he loved.
He would miss the kids and their stumbling inferences. He wouldn't see them grow up. He would miss the professor's crackpot inventions and Haibara's sharp wit. He would miss his parents, who had supported him in whatever he chose so long as it wasn't too damaging to himself. He would miss Sonoko's banter and Hattori's smug competitiveness, and he would miss going on about Sherlock Holmes to people who actually appreciated the man, and he would miss his Watson.
He thought of her eyes, sparkling blue and laughing. He heard her voice, saying his name in fond exasperation. He saw her smile, genuine in its affection. He felt her warmth, cosy as a hearth in the frigid winter. He knew her heart, bottomless in its compassion.
Conan had not even apologised.
"Rest in peace. It's not every day I get to kill someone twice."
The door burst open once more.
"Shinichi!" a familiar voice screamed, and the world faded away.
He swam back to consciousness to be met with a pounding headache.
Someone was speaking and it was drilling holes into his skull.
"Loud," he murmured.
They hushed immediately. Conan went back to sleep, content that his complaint had been addressed.
The next time he remembered waking, Ran was sitting at his bedside, her hand atop his.
"Ran?" he said, just to check.
"Shinichi!"
And Conan was faced with one of the few things he still didn't know how to deal with, although it had occurred a number of times with all the close calls he'd gotten into: a girl crying on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry!" she wept. "I shouldn't have left you alone."
He patted her on the back. "I'm the one who should be saying sorry. It's my fault. I dragged everyone into this. I didn't give anyone a choice in the matter."
"No, it isn't. I made a promise to you. That was something I shouldn't ever have doubted. I said I'd always be there for you, and I wasn't. But now I will be, because I'm making a choice, now and always, to cheer you on."
He grinned. "Ran. Thank you. No matter what you say, though, you were there when it counted."
"Conan… Ah, Shinichi…"
"Gin?"
"Behind bars where he belongs." Her blue eyes met his. "But… you were so… The doctor said you had been drugged up on aspirin. I didn't know aspirin could do that."
"Oh," said Conan. "So that's what he got into me. It's a blood-thinner like warfarin." That's what Haibara, resident biochemist prodigy, had said once.
Ran was not really paying attention. She was a little preoccupied. "I thought you were already dead."
Conan hummed. "I feel pretty alive right now. Thanks to you."
She slapped him on the arm, eliciting a surprised yelp.
"Not funny," she scolded him. Then she sobered. "It was that Vermouth woman who warned me."
His brain went into overdrive.
"Vermouth? You met Vermouth? You know who she is?"
Ran nodded, solemn. "Yeah. She told me that someone was coming after you—the one who did this to you."
She gestured to all of him.
"So she's still free… Is she going to find another underground organisation to back or is she just going to lie low?" Conan asked himself, pinching his lip in thought.
Gentle patting on his cheek drew him out of his deliberations. "Please… Don't worry about that right now. She said you don't have to worry about her anymore."
"Worry…?"
"Look. Over these past few days, I've had a lot of time to think. And I came to realise something while you were out."
Ran's fingers curled around his palm.
"Shinichi... You... My soul mark doesn't say Kudou Shinichi."
He smiled softly, forgetting their previous issue. "No. It doesn't."
"You grew up with my name on your stomach, knowing that yours wasn't on mine."
Conan froze up, the dull ache of his first childhood firing barbs into his heart.
He was not at all prepared for the hug.
She enveloped him, her arms wrapping all around his body and then some. Her face was buried in his good shoulder. He could feel the wetness soaking through.
"I didn't know!" she sobbed. "All this time, you hated the very concept of soulmates, you hated the sight of soulmate rings, you became so distant at times, and I had no idea!"
He touched her arm, still not knowing how to react. "Silly. As if I could have told you. I couldn't ruin things like that. I just... wanted to be near you for the rest of my life. Even if it meant watching you marry someone else. If it's any consolation, it makes me happy that you wanted me in your life that much, even though you didn't know I was your soulmate."
Ran cried harder.
He let her.
When the tears had slowed and the hiccupping died down, he told her, "I've had a long time to come to terms with this. With us. And although I still wish I was back in my old body, these past few years have been the happiest of my life."
Her eyes welled up again.
"Crybaby."
Yet he couldn't help but smile.
It was warm that night.
"Listen, could you call me Conan from now on? I know it might be difficult, but Shinichi reminds me of my first life, when I thought you would never be mine… when I thought I'd have to watch from the sidelines."
"Of course. I understand."
"Thank you. I just… Maybe one day—"
"Conan, you don't have to justify anything to me. You only need to ask and I'll give whatever I can."
"Ran…"
"Because I know you'd do the same."
"Yeah. I would."
A/N: I originally planned to release this as a one-shot, but upon reflection, I think it flows better in two parts. The second and final update will be posted next week.
Comments, including constructive criticism, are welcome!
