Fandom: Detective Conan
Title: Inertia: Part III
Author: Eeveebeth Fejvu
Theme: #17 – Black Wings; Wings
Pairing/Characters: Kudo Shinichi and Miyano Shiho
Rating: T for sexuality and violence
Disclaimer: I don't own Detective Conan. I requested Haibara to make me a pill that would somehow turn me into the creator of the shrunken tantei-san, but my order is in line behind the antidote to Apoptoxin-4869. …So, for now, I write fan fiction.
Summary: "Please, oneesan. …Help me to be useful to him."
Author's Note: This is Part 3 of 3 of the "Inertia" collection; however, each section mostly stands on its own.
Shiho felt the sheets shift behind her on the bed. That accursed hearing aid had been placed on the nightstand next to her thick-lensed glasses, so not even a faint rustling broke the silence in her head. The air in the room felt muggy, empty. Shinichi had cracked the bedroom window before climbing into bed, but the paltry breeze slipping in through the crevice did nothing but transport a peculiar mix of fresh-but-grimy Tokyo air to her sensitive nose.
Her head resting on the pillow, she stared into the darkness of their bedroom. She had realized several years ago that staring into the dark was almost like being able to see without glasses again. Her eyes did not burn in the dark as they did in the light; the world did not seem blurry to her when she could not see the outlines of the furniture anyway.
It was ironic, really. She had spent so much of her childhood in the dark that when she had been finally exposed to the light, she had hesitated on the edge, wanting and willing to stay in the shadows. But he had gradually coaxed her out, brought her out into the sunshine, and for a while, she had been something like happy – for, of course, she could never be just happy; she had been in the dark too long to ever be just happy.
And the light had not lasted forever, as she had always intelligently and logically known it wouldn't, even when she had pushed such thoughts to the back of her mind. First, the light had been obscured by some sudden clouds, creating an overcast sky. And then, dark storm clouds had suddenly shut out the sun and had plunged her, and everyone around her, back into darkness.
It had almost been a permanent and eternal darkness, for her at least, but something had kept her from giving in and letting go. Perhaps it had been the hot tears on the back of her hand or the sound of her true given name – lacking any honorific – called out in his captivating voice. Regardless of what it was, she had suddenly found herself not surrounded by darkness or light, but by a nightmarish distortion of both. All she could see was a blur, nothing concrete anymore, just a mix of black and white and the shades in between, a crazed artist's abstract gothic masterpiece.
And here she was, four years later, lying next to the man who had originally coaxed her out into the sunshine, the man who had hurdled into the darkness after her or maybe had simply been dragged down as she grasped for any hold she could find. She had never decided which.
She felt the bed moving beneath her as her husband rolled over in his sleep. About fifteen minutes ago she had sensed his breathing pattern relax into slumber through the steady vibration of the mattress. For a long moment, she continued to stare out into the darkness in silence.
Then, in a sudden burst of restlessness, she found herself turning over onto her back and struggling to prop herself upright. Her inept, unfeeling legs pulled at her heaving body, but she had practiced sitting up so many times during her extensive rehab that the dead weight did not jerk her off balance. With a raspy grunt of exertion, she leaned her head over her own body, her short hair falling about her face, and braced herself with her right hand against the mattress. After a breath, she turned her eyes to Shinichi, but she could see only a blackened blur.
A soft, raspy sigh escaped her lips. She rubbed her left thumb up and down her left ring finger, feeling the absence of any engagement ring but feeling the wedding band cold against her skin. She was not tired enough to drop right off. What had happened to those long-ago days when she would nearly faint from exhaustion after working twenty or more hours straight in the lab?
The repetitive (and admittedly boring) forensics testing that she still performed for Shinichi's cases did not tire her out. Nevertheless, she completed every test thoroughly and accurately, as if it were one of her own personal experiments. After all, she wanted to be useful in some way. That was all she wanted, when it came right down to it; to just be useful to him was enough to satisfy her, especially after That Night, when all of her apparent worth had seemed to evaporate in an instant.
In return for her sudden uselessness, however, she had received more of him than she had ever dared to hope for. She had received his total commitment to her in the form of a plain gold ring. She wondered, sometimes, how strong their marriage vows were. After all, his original commitment so long ago had come in the form of an ally's offhanded promise to always protect her from harm, and in the end, that promise had become an unintentional lie.
Shiho was certain that that particular broken promise was the reason that he had chosen to break off his long-awaited engagement to the Angel, why he had chosen to do anything and everything he could to help her as she began the long road to semi-recovery. She knew this was why he had insisted on sacrificing a life of happiness with the one woman he truly loved for a life filled with such trials, such pain, such misery. Nothing could ever relieve him of his guilt except to rot in it.
The arm that was supporting her body was beginning to shake, so she carefully let herself down onto the mattress, facing Shinichi's blurry, sleeping face. She would not be upset with him if she ever found out he was having an extramarital affair with his former fiancée. Of course, she was sure that Ran's pride, and his pride as well, would never allow it: but she would not blame either of them if it did. It was only fair, for as utterly humiliating as it was, there was nothing that Shinichi's paralyzed wife could do for his corporal needs.
That was where she was useless the most. Every day, they went through the same pattern. He would get up and take a shower, then wake her up, carry her to the bathroom, and assist her in washing herself. Then he would help her dry, help her get her clothes on, help her get comfortable in her wheelchair. He would rush to get himself dressed as she fixed him a quick breakfast, and then he was out the door to work. She would stay home, sometimes reading, sometimes playing with the Papillion, mostly staring out the window and thinking. Throughout the day, he might come home for lunch or to give her some forensics evidence to test, or Agasa-hakase might walk over from next door to check on his adopted daughter, or the three teenagers might drop by after school for tutoring on chemistry homework.
Then, as the afternoon passed away, he would come home to the dinner she had prepared, and they would eat together, sometimes at the table and sometimes in front of the fireplace. They would retire to the library after that, where he might read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle aloud to her and ignore her blunt criticisms of his favorite stories, or he might explain the cases he worked on that day and try to get her to guess the culprit before he finished with the dramatic denouement. And she would relate to him stories of Agasa-hakase's current outrageous inventions, or the latest high school mystery exploits of Ayumi, Genta, and Mitsuhiko. Then, it was back to the bathroom, where he would help her wash and dry again and change into pajamas. He would carry her to their bedroom and she would lie on the bed, waiting as he prepared for bed himself. When he was ready, he would come up and climb under the sheets next to her.
And he would go to sleep, while she would stare into the dark and think. It wasn't as if this abrupt ending to each day had been the original plan. There had been nights where they had tried, tried so hard to make it work. She was his wife and he was her husband, after all, and it was something that husbands and wives did. And it only seemed fair after all they had been through, that each deserved something to look forward to after the sun went down.
He would pull her close, and she would wrap her arms around him and they would kiss in the same manner as their intellectual quarrels, deep and unrelenting. Then she would bury her face in his neck and slowly unbutton his nightshirt one button at a time. So patient were his hands as they moved up and down her back, caressing her skin beneath the nightgown. He was good at ignoring the raised scars at the base of her spine, the ancient bullet wounds, almost to the point where she forgot about them herself. But neither could forget the repulsive facts once his hands would roam lower, because she would open her eyes and look at him unknowingly and ask why he had stopped touching her, and he would suddenly and hideously start to cry because he hadn't. And she would realize all over again that she would never be able to feel what he sought to give her, and she would press her torso closer to him and her fingers would skim his bare skin and she would try her very best to give him what he wanted and what would please him. But he would always stop her. If she could not have this pleasure, he did not want it for himself. It was not fair, in his opinion, though all his refusal did was make her want to scream at him in her raspy voice and beat her fists against him again and again.
And that was why she would never blame him if she heard of an affair.
Shiho found, to her relief, that her eyelids were becoming heavy. Sleep, consoling slumber, was fast approaching. She relaxed her head into the pillow and stared into the dark at where Shinichi's form would be. For a long moment, she waited for her eyes to close, but they refused to shut any more than halfway. She felt a chill pass over her, and she allowed herself to wish childishly that she were warm in the encircling embrace of his arms. But he was asleep, and she would rather die than wake him for something as trivial as that passing notion. Instead, she found the energy to give a halfhearted scoot towards him, drawing his inviting body closer, and upon sensing one of his hands resting on the sheet nearby, she reached her hand out to lay it softly on top of his.
Please. She found herself praying as she did every night, her eyelids beginning to droop lower. Please. She did not pray to any god, but to the only celestial guardian that she was sure was out there somewhere. Please, oneesan. Please, Akemi, my sister… help me. Help me to be useful to him. Help me to be strong. Help me to be… Help me to be at least a halfway worthy replacement for her… Please… Please, oneesan… Please… Please…
It was not long before her restless mind found itself deep in her usual nightmare.
Shiho had walked into the office that morning a few minutes late for once. Her punctuality, disrupted by (of course) a dead body on the highway, had triggered her to clutch her Fusae purse and manila folders with a bit more ferocity than usual. And perhaps her irritation had shown on her face, for most of the officers and lab techs still milling about the main lobby beat a hasty retreat towards the stairs to avoid her cutting glare in the elevator. Finally arriving on the floor that housed the forensics department, she was surprised to find Kudo waiting for her, leaning against her desk with arms crossed and head down. The "sudden clouds" had created that overcast sky in her life not too long before: Kudo had finally gotten his fiancée and all of his energies had seemed to be directed in the appropriate direction - Ran. And Shiho had made it even easier for him by avoiding him as much as possible.
Seeing his solemn expression, she raised an eyebrow in mock interest and questioned why he was not out on the highway investigating the most recent victim of his "if-I-go-anywhere-near-you-you'll-probably-drop-dead" curse. In response, he stated that the string of connected murders he had recently been investigating involved the remaining loose ends of the Organization.
She had always known that all of the members had not been eliminated. Of course, he did as well. All of them did. There were no more important members loose, but out on the streets still skulked the ones that had been clutching onto the syndicate's black coattails: the common burglars, murderers, scientists, and corrupt businessmen; the ones that had remained attached to society and were only linked to the Organization through their black market income. Most had seemingly gone back to their former lives, carrying out their illegal acts alone or attempting to turn legit. But many had not been happy that their well-paying source of income had been utterly destroyed by the law, and several had tried to gather themselves into small gangs in an attempt to create a new order of the dead syndicate. They ran around in their black trench coats and fedoras and sunglasses, stealing and experimenting and killing; but they missed the whole point of the organization. There was no goal, no purpose for these copycat bands, other than creating general chaos and anarchy. They were not the Black Organization; but she, Kudo, and the police knew that they still needed to be stopped before one of them finally figured out how the original syndicate had stayed so secret and so powerful for so long.
Kudo had been given authority over all matters concerning the Black Organization by his superiors, so it was up to him to figure out a strategy for bringing them in. He told her that he had been thinking over the issue all night and had come to the conclusion that he only wanted to take a small group on his raid at the dockside warehouses that he had discovered were their "headquarters". By his deductions, there were only three or four in the particular band he was investigating, and they seemed to be the sort that would easily turn tail and run if the odds were against them. He had asked Takagi and Satou if they would accompany him and both had readily agreed. And now, he was asking her if she cared to join them.
She informed him acidly that she was, in fact, neither a police officer nor a detective, but a scientist who was currently trying to get to her desk to finish some paperwork. He replied genially that he had gotten permission from his superiors for her to come along, seeing as how she had always been considered by the higher-ups in the department as their trump card on information regarding the Organization. He even held his private manila folder (full of classified information concerning the syndicate) in front of her face, as if trying to entice her with something that she had wanted to leave behind. Somehow, with those disturbingly blue eyes of his penetrating her own, it had not been long before she had given in, slapped her own files down on her desk, and peevishly followed Kudo back to the detectives' offices.
It was late afternoon before the raid took place. There had been preparations, double-checking, observing of the "headquarters", and a thousand other miscellaneous tasks that had to be completed before the three detectives and the chemist found themselves sneaking towards the unsuspecting warehouse, each with their hands clutching their loaded and ready guns.
And then the dark storm clouds of the Organization had suddenly shut out her sun, ready to plunge her, and everyone around her, back into the darkness.
The entire band of miscreants – totaling four, as Kudo had deducted – had abruptly emerged from the warehouse, oblivious to the equally large band of law enforcers about to drop in on them. However, at the first shouts of "put your hands in the air and drop your weapons!" the criminals panicked and ran, splitting up to escape in different directions. Kudo had immediately split his team up as well, a member to each criminal. Shiho had hesitated for a second; something in her was screaming that this wasn't the wisest thing to do. But Kudo, as always, was dead set on his actions, and the criminals were getting further away, so she dashed off in pursuit.
She ran for a while without seeing the man that she was chasing, clutching her gun tightly in both hands. Soon enough, the warehouses and the giant metal shipping containers all around her began to look alike, and she realized that she was becoming disoriented in the labyrinth of steel walls. Finally, however, she caught up with him. Her criminal had foolishly run into a dead end, and he had no visible weaponry on him. With a cry of alarm, he turned around to see the barrel of a gun pointed straight at his heart, but to Shiho's sudden horror, he began to claw at his vest. She could see in his eyes an expression of fatalistic acceptance that she knew too well; she had worn something very similar on her own face before she had put the apoptoxin to her lips for the first time.
Cursing, she retreated, dashing as fast as she could towards the nearest shipping container, watching him fumbling with crisscrossed wires and duct tape. With a few steps to go, she forgot running and instead gave a great leap behind her shelter. It was just in time. The bomb exploded with an unexpectedly thunderous reverberation that pinned her flat to the ground with its intensity. As had been her hope, the shipping container protected her from most of the debris that flew past her. Her hands struggled to get to her ears where she lay facedown on the ground, and she coughed, choking on the dust. She waited for what seemed like ages before shakily getting to her feet.
She placed a hand on the side of the container to support herself, wondering if she dared poke her head around the corner to glimpse the gruesome scene. How desperate they had gotten, these men, to deviate so far from the syndicate's original methods. Though it was not particularly unlike the Organization for a member to kill oneself when cornered by law enforcement, it was unlikely that a cocktail member would have ever rigged themselves up to explode. That was suicide, after all. What were they planning next? Kudo had only connected them to a string of murders… Wait… Kudo. He needed to know about the bomb, as did Satou and Takagi. Perhaps the other criminals were rigged as well.
And that was when she noticed it. The reverberations of the bomb seemed to still be going off in her head, though now a sort of ringing had invaded her ears. She shook her head in aggravation, and the ringing began to clear, though it was being replaced by copious amounts of cotton. In growing frustration and a hint of dread, she dug her fingers into her ears violently, then withdrew them to listen again. Her eyes widened. Why was that muffled feeling still plaguing her?
All too late she felt a horribly familiar sensation crash over her, that unprovoked terror she had always associated with danger. Only a slight breeze as a rope passed in front of her face clued her in before she suddenly began to choke. Immediately, her hands flew to the restricting cable, trying to tear it away, but it only tightened. A ragged cry escaped her; pain was clouding her eyesight, but she tried to hang on to her reason and not panic. Where was her gun?! She cursed mentally. It had to be laying on the ground where she had fallen, now out of reach. She felt the heavy vibrations of their footsteps on the ground, one… two… All three of the other criminals were here; they had snuck up behind her and captured her with a noose made of fishing net rope.
Her fingers tore at the binding, and she gagged as the criminal holding her captive tugged her backwards. She was forced to step with him until he had pulled her into his arms. Internally she shuddered as he drew her still closer, tugging violently on the rope to keep her in a state of half suffocation. The three men were talking to each other in panicked tones, but the feeling of cotton was still in her ears so she couldn't really make out what they were saying. Suddenly, however, one began to yell loudly and she heard him well, though his words suddenly made her wish that she hadn't.
"Drop your guns! …We mean it! You don't, we'll kill Sherry!" The rope tightened more, and Shiho felt something snap in her throat. She choked and tried to blink away the moisture blinding her eyes. She could see them several yards away: Satou, Takagi, and Kudo. All three were slowly lowering their guns and leaning down to place them gently on the ground. She cursed in her mind. She was a hostage, and what was worse, they knew exactly who she was, or at least who she had been. She wondered if her unique hair had given her away; it had always caused her problems.
"Now back away… slowly!" The three detectives did as they were told, their hands hesitantly held up in the air. Instead of rewarding them for their cooperation, however, the criminal holding her did not loosen the rope. Suddenly, she found herself being dragged backwards, and her feet instinctually moved along with them. "Stay there or we'll kill her!" She cursed in her mind once more. So they weren't going to release her; they were taking her with them. There was another offense to add to their several counts of homicide and other various activities, Shiho thought sarcastically, half in delirium. One count of assault and kidnapping.
Before the criminals dragged her out of the detectives' sight, her eyes locked onto Kudo's. From the intensity of his stare, she knew the message he was sending her.
And then her associates were out of her range of vision, and she was forced to run to keep up with the criminal holding the rope around her neck. She dug her fingers into the noose and managed to open up a little space, but her captor noticed and immediately gave a quick jerk, causing her to gasp violently and almost trip.
The rest of the journey back to their hideout in the warehouse was a blur. The next thing she remembered clearly was the rope slackening just enough for her to get a good (though painful) breath of air before several hands gripped her shoulders and legs offensively, picked her up, and threw her roughly into an unknown container. She hit the floor with a smack, and as she lay stunned, she heard the screech of a lock and her surroundings grew dark. For a moment, she was silent and still, listening through the cotton to the voices of her captors fade away. Then, she forced herself to lifted her head and look around. As she became used to the dim light, she was surprised to find herself in what was an almost familiar setting.
It was like being in one of the Organization's laboratories again, albeit much smaller. There were several shifty racks of carefully labeled vials, containers of solutions, water bottles, and Bunsen burners, a metal table with a closed laptop on top of it, and some plain cardboard boxes all crammed haphazardly in the small space. So this small band of miscreants had not only been interested in killing, but in the sciences, she thought. That explained the potent suicide bomb and how they had known immediately that she was Sherry, former head of apoptoxin research. The portability of the equipment quickly led her to another conclusion, namely that she was in the back of the criminals' getaway vehicle, probably some unmarked white service van.
In a few moments she was standing, tightly clutching onto one of the shaky shelves. She knew she had to focus on getting out of the locked hold, rather than the pain in her ears, throat, and across her whole body, but that simple task was getting harder to do with every moment that passed. Observing the meager equipment available to her, she quickly decided that the best way to open the door would be to have her kidnappers do it for her.
With a grunt of exertion, she slammed her side into the door as she had seen Kudo do to locked doors, though she had no intention of breaking it down. Perhaps if she had the martial arts skills of Kudo's fiancée, but... Though leaving no visible dent, her actions caused a great, metallic racket, which was enhanced by the shaking of the shelves in the compartment. Twice more she repeated the slam until she fell wildly back into the metal table. Bracing herself against its cold surface, she listened desperately, trying to hear the sound of her freedom coming through the cotton sensation… And there it was; footsteps, pounding the concrete and almost to the van. Whichever one of her captors was coming let out a curse of frustration. Though barely on her feet, Shiho turned resolutely towards the door. There was a metallic screech as the handle turned.
Shiho did not even hesitate long enough to see if the man had a gun. Seconds after he wrenched the door wildly open, the criminal howled in pain, clutching his profusely bleeding nose, and staggered back from the opening. Shiho lowered her foot back to the floor, amazed at the power behind the simple kick she had employed. Mouri-san would be proud, she thought.
The man recovered faster than she had predicted, however; halfway out the van's doorway, she had to retreat back into the compartment as he staggered angrily towards her. At the last second, he lunged ungracefully forward and caught a hold of the leg of her pants. She felt herself fall backwards and threw her arms out to catch her, though all she managed to do was upset one of the shifting racks as her fingers caught onto the edge. Gasping for breath after hitting the floor, she saw too late the vessels plummeting towards her. Glass vials shattered and canisters burst open around her, bathing her in jagged shards and unknown chemical solutions. She got an entire face-full of one fetid liquid as it splashed from its busted iron container into her open eyes. She shut them immediately, shaking her head and kicking out blindly. A groan and a thud rewarded her flailing, and she paused, trying to slow her erratic breathing.
Shiho's eyes were beginning to sting, so she kept them closed as she pulled herself onto her knees and ran her hands gently over the wet, glass-strewn floor. The criminal must have been knocked unconscious, she reasoned, for as she strained to listen, she could hear no more sounds of movement. Slowly, she pulled herself onto her feet again and held lightly onto the edge of the unstable rack. She sucked in a deep breath – she sounded raspy even to herself – and tried to think, but her eyes, which had begun to sting harder, disrupted her concentration. She rubbed at them with her damp sleeve and tried to remember what had been written on the label of the container she had glimpsed as it fell. It had been in English, but she knew the language well, so she had had no difficulties in recognizing the letters as a chemical formula. But what had it been exactly…? And suddenly, realizing what sort of container the solution had been in, she remembered. The label had read "NaOH". The substance was sodium hydroxide.
Shiho cursed violently in her head. Blindly, she reached down towards where she remembered seeing the bottles of water. When she finally closed her searching fingers around one, she twisted off the cap, tilted her head back, and poured the contents directly onto her eyes. She scrubbed at the skin around the eyelids venomously, then cautiously opened her eyes to rinse them out; it was a struggle, but she felt she was managing it well, all things considered. As the last of the water in the bottle trickled down the front of her shirt, she suddenly gasped at the discomfort and exhaustion that had overtaken her body. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to go back home to Agasa-hakase's, crawl into bed, and sleep off the aching that had consumed her…
Her pained eyes abruptly opened. Gunshot! She swore she had just heard a gunshot through the cotton sensation. Motionless, she listened intently and clutched the edge of the stable metal counter. There it was again – another shot! Water droplets still streaming down her face like tears, she immediately stumbled passed the chemical carnage and motionless kidnapper, lurched out of the doors of the service van – which was indeed white and unmarked – and paused as the giant, nondescript warehouse she was in came into a hazy focus. Several more gunshots sounded, and Shiho's head whipped around towards the source. There was the giant door to the warehouse, opened just enough for a person to squeeze through. She squinted, then staggered for the door as she heard another few shots go off. She had to warn Satou, Takagi, and Kudo about the suicide bombs – though she was sure, after her scuffle, that at least one of the three remaining criminals did not have any explosive devices on their person.
She finally came to the warehouse door and paused in the crack. In the late afternoon light she could see Satou and Takagi standing several yards away, their guns drawn, yelling at the criminals to put down their weapons. Satou had received some sort of injury to the forehead that was bleeding profusely and clearly disrupting her vision, though the officer never once seemed distracted. Takagi seemed to have a hard time holding his gun; the back of his knuckles were red with blood. Closer to her and directly in front of her stood Kudo, posed in an almost comically heroic position in the midst of the battle. His blue blazer was unbuttoned and was swinging around his body like a cape, and his face was locked in an expression of deep concentration as he gripped the gun in his hand tightly. He surely is Superman, Shiho thought.
She considered how best to help, ignoring her critically injured state. She turned her eyes to the criminals, who were barricaded behind a shipping container farther down the dock. As one poked his head out and gave a quick shot at the detectives – he missed – Shiho could see that he had a bleeding shoulder wound. Kudo and the others were making some progress, then.
Shiho turned her eyes back to Kudo and squinted. He was standing out in the open, even though Satou and Takagi were standing near a shipping container for quick access to cover. And suddenly, he stopped shooting. Shiho's eyes widened. Though he was keeping his eyes trained on the criminals' blockade, he was trying to reload his weapon in the middle of the shootout. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Shiho wanted to scream.
And then his gun jammed, and his eyes shifted down to the object in his hands to see what had gone wrong. In that second, Shiho sensed more than watched one of the criminals throw himself around the container, gun held high and aimed at Kudo.
Her mind barely registered any thought as she sprang to life, tearing across the dock towards the detective. She only knew that she had to get to him before the bullets did, knock him down to the ground or push him to safety behind the shipping container that Satou and Takagi had fled behind. As she ran, a strange sensation came over her, and she began to feel as if she were in a trance: the thunderous sounds of gunshots were muffled, her breath was coming in hard gasps, and her eyes were burning fiercely despite the washing. She almost felt as if she was out of her own body, simply a spectator of her own movements.
A second before she reached him, his blue eyes flickered up from the gun and towards her, seeing her for the first time. His eyes widened in surprise, but she didn't have time to do anything except get him out of the line of fire. Shiho dove at him, ready to pull him down and out of harm's way.
She felt a sharp crack across the lower part of her back, and everything went black.
With a start, Shiho woke up.
For a long moment, she lay on her back, gasping for breath through her damaged throat. Finally, she relaxed and sighed in aggravation. What a realistic nightmare that had been; the haunting memory of that night. The ancient bullet wounds on her back were even throbbing as if fresh. With a groan, Shiho struggled to gain a sitting position on the mattress. Accomplishing this, she blinked and glanced around, her sight blurred. She was safe in her and Shinichi's bedroom. Morning light was streaming in through the window. It was a new day.
She glanced to the left towards her nightstand and was just able to read the numbers on the digital clock. She stared in surprise. How had it gotten so late?! She whipped her head around to Shinichi's side of the bed, only to find that he was missing. She frowned. Why hadn't he woken her up?
With a snort of irritation, she turned back to her nightstand only to notice the small piece of paper lying next to the clock. She reached for her black-rimmed glasses and set them in place, and the world instantly came into focus. She reached for the note and, reading it, grumbled to herself. So, he had thought that she had looked so exhausted yesterday that he hadn't had the heart to wake her up this morning. How… considerate. But what was she supposed to do? Stay in bed all day and sleep? According to his note, yes, or at least until he came back from the department for lunch.
With indignant and mutinous thoughts, Shiho let herself flop back down onto the mattress. She stared sullenly at the note for a long moment, then violently crumpled it up and threw it at the closed bedroom door, where it bounced off and landed harmlessly on the floor. There. Let him pick it up himself.
For a while, however, she did as he had suggested, burying her head back into the pillow to block out the sunlight. She managed to doze off for a bit after the pain from the old wounds subsided, and once she woke up from her dreamless sleep, she felt less exhausted; with this newfound energy, though, came restlessness.
She lay on her side, eyeing the wheelchair across the room and wondering if she should just drag her body out of bed and across the floor, get into the chair, and get her own self ready for once. Surely Shinichi would be surprised when he came home. He might be pleased to see that his wife was able to do some things by herself. But what if instead it would make him upset to learn that she didn't necessarily need him for everything, especially after he had sacrificed his everything to help her? And the more she thought about it, the more Shiho was convinced that this was really all a test he had devised for her, and that made her angry because she had always been the one that had confused him with her enigmatic actions.
And then she began to wonder if he had fed the dog.
Soon, lunchtime came… and went. Though Shiho had replaced that accursed hearing aid in her ear, she never heard the sound of the front door opening. A flicker of concern began to nag at her thoughts. If he knew he would miss lunch, he would have called to tell her. He had always done that before. He should be home by now, she thought, so why is he not? Soon, it became an anxious mantra in her head: He should be home by now. He should be home by now. Why is he not? Why is he not?
Her thoughts began to grow darker as the minutes continued to creep by. Perhaps several tough cases had arisen today and he was simply busy at the office, but perhaps… perhaps he wasn't at the office… Perhaps… perhaps he was… at Ran's apartment… Perhaps he really was having an affair with his old fiancée, knowing that his paralyzed wife would never be able to find out if he left her alone and in bed.
Perhaps. …So what if he had really left her stranded in their bedroom on purpose? The only other reason she could think of for him doing such a thing was… if something had come up in a case… that had to do with… them.
Shiho suddenly pulled herself upright. If he really had found out something about the remaining traces of the Organization, he should have known better than to try to hide it from her. When she had been Haibara Ai and he had been Edogawa Conan, he had never been able to keep her from learning about his investigations into the syndicate. The more she thought about it, the more that familiar sense of sinister foreboding began to wrap around her mind like a thick woolen blanket.
When the clock finally told her that Shinichi was an hour late, her patience snapped. Summoning all of her physical strength, she pulled herself off the bed and onto the ground. Her deadened legs hit the floor with a thump that would probably cause her to bruise, but of course she felt no pain and thus ignored it. It took less time than she imagined it would to make her way over to the wheelchair. Snapping the breaks in place, she realized she was at the hard part: getting into the chair from her position on the floor. As she pulled and jerked, she cursed Shinichi in several languages for getting her used to his assistance in this task. He had done that with everything, getting her more and more used to the peace and comfort of a normal life, and it had made her careless and had eventually put her and him and everyone into the miserable positions they were in now.
Somehow, after several attempts and failures, she made it onto the seat without tipping the wheelchair over. She sat for a long moment, breathing heavily with exertion and wondering for the umpteenth time why women had to have less upper body strength than men. Then, checking the clock across the room, she propelled herself towards the door, running over Shinichi's crumpled note in the process. She knew she needed to get some clothes on – not go wheeling about in her nightwear – but her stomach was in knots for lack of food and she still wasn't sure if Shinichi had fed the Papillion.
She spent the next hour or two in a bland, domestic mode, fixing lunch for both herself and Ai (Shinichi hadn't forgotten the dog's breakfast, fortunately) and straightening up some the rooms as best as she could. She hoped that neither Agasa-hakase nor the three teenagers would come by today to see her in her untidy state; fortunately, the doorbell never rang. Shinichi, however, failed to make an appearance as well. The whole time she busied herself with activity she had left her hearing aid turned up, listening for the key in the lock, though the prolonged silence caused it to begin buzzing obnoxiously.
When he was three hours late for lunch, Shiho began to feel the worry she had suppressed creep back up on her. He should have called, at the very least. Suddenly, in the middle of straightening a pillow on the couch, Shiho found herself smirking sadly. So, this was what Angel had gone through for so long, waiting for her Shinichi to come home to her, always waiting with one eye on the phone for his next infrequent call to arrive. How ironic. What was it about that man that always kept women so helplessly and hopelessly waiting for him?
The furry Papillion leaped onto her lap, breaking Shiho out of her reverie. She petted Ai, and the dog closed her eyes happily. The tag on the red collar jangled slightly, and Shiho turned her hand from Ai's fur to the tag. The kanji for "love" written there made her sigh hoarsely. She remembered when Shinichi had brought the dog home for her a year ago. It was because they could not have children, Shiho knew, though Shinichi had never said so. They could not have children because Shinichi could not bear to touch her in the first place.
Shiho tried reading with Ai curled tightly in her lap, but her thoughts could not stay on the chemical explanations and diagrams for long. So she decided to find a way to get dressed, for Shinichi would certainly tease her whenever he got home for going about the house in her nightgown. She felt dirty for not having washed first, but getting into the bathtub by herself was out of the question. She would certainly only hurt herself on the slippery porcelain if she tried, so she began to root through her clothing for something that seemed easy to get on, finally choosing a plain sweater and pants.
She wheeled herself over to the bed for her attempt. Lying on the mattress, she struggled to get on her underwear and pants, but everything else was easy once that was done. After struggling back onto the seat and resting for a moment, smug satisfaction filled her at her accomplishment. So he had thought to keep her in bed all day, had he? Well, she had showed him; though she was still a bit anxious, wondering if he would be upset at her newfound independence. Of course, how could he ever find out what she had accomplished if he never came home?
It was late afternoon when, again, she snapped, though this time it was her anxiety rather than her patience. She wheeled herself over to the telephone and picked it up, paused for a brief moment, then dialed the familiar number of the Beika district police department.
When she was finally connected to the correct office, a perky voice answered the phone. "Hello; this is Nara-keiji. Can I help you?"
Shiho's stared at her lap, deadpanning. Why couldn't someone she knew well, like Satou-san or Takagi-san, pick up the phone? Why did it have to be that new officer Shinichi had told her about, the one that had only been at the department about a month now? With an internal sigh, Shiho decided to answer anyway. "I need to speak to Kudo Shinichi, please."
"Uh…" Apparently, the officer was trying to figure out who exactly she was talking to. Shiho was sure that the rasp in her voice didn't help.
"I'm his wife. Kudo Shiho."
"Oh! Oh… yes, uh…" Nara sounded rather nervous, and suddenly Shiho wondered if she knew about her. "Yes, well… I'm sorry, but Kudo-tantei isn't here right now."
"Where he is now, then? …Was he even there this morning?"
"Well, yes, he was definitely here this morning. But then he left with everyone else a few hours ago. …Well, everyone except me and a few others. Someone has to take the phone calls, you know!" Nara gave a dry, nervous laugh. Shiho rolled her eyes.
"Where did 'everyone else' go?"
"Um, well…" There was a pause, as if Nara was unsure that she should say. A moment later, though, there was a sound of shuffling papers. "I don't know much about this case myself, but… they left some information when they left. Darn it, if they catch me looking at these, they'll probably… Wait, here it is. …Well, it's not too far from here… I suppose they're staking out some warehouse…" Shiho felt her chest turn cold in dread.
"What were they going to do?"
"Well, from these papers I've got here, they've found some criminals or something that they've been tracking for a long time, and are going to try to catch them. …Again, I'm sorry, but I really don't know much. I mean, I am new here, and they all seem to know what they're talking about without really saying anything."
"Hmmm…" Shiho stared hard into space. Everything seemed to be supporting her worst fear. Shinichi had to have tracked down some of the last traces of the Organization, and now, he had taken a full force of officers out with him to finish the job. That had to be it. And suddenly, anger filled her being. How dare he keep this sort of thing from her!? Suddenly, however, she realized that Nara was asking if she was still on the line, so she murmured, "What?"
"Oh, well, I was just wondering… Would you like me to take a message for you? I can have Kudo-tantei call when he gets back."
"Tell me, where is this warehouse located?" There was a long pause. "…Now!"
"Okay!" Nara squeaked. Shiho sighed. She was fortunate that the officer seemed willing to obey her. Nara obviously knew that Kudo's mysterious wife did forensics work on the side and was technically a superior at the department. After another shuffling of papers, Nara hesitantly told her. Shiho felt her heart almost stop. That was where… where Gin had… Shiho closed her eyes. Oh, oneesan…
"Kudo-san? …Ku- Kudo-san? Uh, are you-"
Shiho hung up the phone.
After making sure that Ai was sound asleep on her cushion, Shiho paused only for a moment in the foyer, listening to the ticking of the grandfather clock, before wheeling herself out the front door. In less than five minutes she was on the road, tightly clutching the steering wheel of the heavily modified vehicle. Shiho had insisted that Shinichi have his own normal car, one to drive to work or any other place without her, as the vehicle she was currently driving had been totally customized by Agasa-hakase to accommodate her handicap. The first time she had seen all of the modifications her adopted father had done for her, she had felt quite accepted.
Shiho's mind was blank of any distressing thoughts as she navigated through Tokyo's traffic. After several minutes, the motion of the vehicle started to make Shiho a bit sick; though Agasa-hakase had created the customizations to allow her to get around, it was rare that she actually went out. Pausing at an intersection, Shiho watched as other driver's eyes glanced over at her and notice the vehicles' customizations, perhaps in apprehension. Apparently, they didn't think a person in a wheelchair should be able to drive at all. She wondered what they would think if they knew the paralyzed woman was driving out to a dangerous police raid; probably that she was crazy. She wondered if they would be right.
Soon enough, Shiho steered the vehicle off of the main highway and onto a series of side streets. Suddenly, her anxiety reappeared and increased tenfold, sensing how near she was to the raid site. Why had Shinichi not told her? Why had he left her alone in the house? Her hands slowly clenched into fists. He hadn't even woken her up to tell her that he was going to work! Why?
She parked the vehicle next to one of the many police cars sitting in front of a giant fenced-in enclosure. Shiho stared past the fence at the rows and rows of foreboding warehouses. She felt a shudder pass over her at the horrible familiarity of the situation. The second she and her wheelchair were safely on the ground outside of the car, she wheeled herself stubbornly towards the entrance gate then into the compound.
As she passed the first row of warehouses, the sound of gunshots reached her ears. Shiho's heart almost stopped. "Hurry!" she hissed at herself, clutching the wheels tightly, eyes behind her glasses darting back and forth. Listening intensely, she tried to concentrate on figuring out which warehouse the shots were coming from.
The next gunshot was louder. Shiho eyed one warehouse looming at her on the right. The giant doors were partially opened.
"There!" As she approached the door, the pinging noise of a ricocheting bullet met her ears, followed by shouts of various volumes and intensities. She paused. The wounds at the base of her spine suddenly throbbed with a warning pain as they had right after her nightmare.
Panicking, Shiho just stared at the warehouse. "I didn't come out here to almost get to him," she suddenly grumbled softly to herself and again began to wheel herself towards the opening. "I came to get to my husband." The closer she came, the louder the yelling and the gunshots sounded, but somehow, it didn't make a difference anymore. After all, she thought, with her mind on her paralysis and other ailments, what more can they do to me?
With a grunt, she pulled at the wheels harder, but her muscles were already strained from the extra exertion of getting ready for the day, so each pull only had her gritting her teeth in pain. A little more, a little more, and then she would be at the entrance of the-
And suddenly, she stopped – or rather, the wheelchair stopped. Startled, she looked up to see what had prevented her from going through the door, only to realize that the door was what was holding her back. With a grunt of effort, she pulled at the wheels again, but they were trapped between the two doors. The partial opening had not been wide enough for her to maneuver the wheelchair through.
In anger, frustration, and even humiliation, Shiho cursed in a raspy hiss, and slammed her hand against the chair's arm. Why? WHY? No matter how many armed Organization-copycats she had to go through, she didn't care; she only wanted to get to her husband, to find out why he had left her alone in bed, why he hadn't called her, why he hadn't come home, why he had sacrificed everything he had ever wanted to help her in the first place! Why, she thought, why? WHY?
A gunshot was suddenly ringing in her ears, and her head jerked up; the sound had been close. Apparently, the confrontation was gradually moving closer to the door, and closer to her in her trapped wheelchair. She could see the officers now – Megure, Satou, Takagi, Shiratori, Chiba, and the others – amongst a mix of black-cloaked figures as their fight carried them towards the exit.
And suddenly, there was a great cry of anguish, and Shiho's head whipped around to the floor in front of her. She knew that voice. Her heart plummeted.
There was Shinichi, kneeling on the ground, clutching his right hand with a pained expression on his face.
A handgun skidded on the floor and came to rest halfway between Shiho and Shinichi. She stared at it for a second, then at Shinichi, and then tried to look around for the man who had obviously just shot the gun out of Shinichi's now-bleeding hand, but the doors prevented her from getting any look at his opponent. Her eyes immediately turned back to Shinichi, only to widen as his horrified bright blue eyes pierced her own.
"DON'T MOVE!" a rough voice screamed, and all of the officers froze, as did Shinichi, his eyes darting back towards that man that was just beyond her range of sight. "IF ANY OF YOU SO MUCH AS MOVES A MUSCLE, I'LL BLOW HIM TO HELL!" From the looks on the police officers' faces, Shiho knew that the criminal was serious; all of their eyes immediately went to the detective on the floor, while his eyes remained locked on the one that was targeting him.
A long moment of dead silence fell upon the frozen scene, but Shiho didn't notice. The blood was pounding in her ears, and her knuckles were turning white from clutching the arms of the wheelchair. She had thought that there was nothing more that they, those who continued to commit crimes in the name of the Black Organization, could do to her. She had been wrong. There was so much more they could still do to her, and it was so much more painful, more painful than her ears or her eyes or her throat or her paralyzed legs. They could take him away from her. And that would be all it would take to bring her down permanently, to plunge her into that bottomless pit of darkness forever more.
She couldn't look at him anymore. She couldn't look at him, kneeling on the ground, blood flowing freely from his wounded hand. She just couldn't.
So she closed her eyes.
Oh, Akemi, she thought, and the thought turned into a desperate prayer. Oh, oneesan, what can I do? I'm too useless to do anything for him, and now he is going to die. I'm of no use to him, so why did he do all of those things for me? Why?! Oh, sister… please… help me to do something… anything… I have to protect him… Help me… Help me… to be useful for once… Just one time, help me to give something back to him… Perhaps wings, oneesan… If you could give me wings to get up out of this chair… Give me the strength to get to him, and save him from Death… Please oneesan…
She could see it in her mind, like a hazy dream.
The muscles under her shoulder blades would tense, and then her entire torso would tense, summoning strength that came from far beyond her own mortal body – from her sister looking down on her from wherever Akemi's soul was residing. And suddenly, the muscles of her dead legs would tense, and she would feel a faint stirring in her legs, the first time in four years. That faint stirring would be enough, though, to force her leg muscles to prepare to spring.
Then her body would launch itself out of that blasted wheelchair, frightening the police officers who were looking on and even herself. At first, she would stumble, not sure if the stirring was going to give her enough power to stand, but she would stay upright and take her first step in a long, long time. It would feel strange to have all of her weight centered on such small places as the soles of her feet, but after the next few steps, walking would become natural all over again.
But she would not walk for long. She did not have time to move slowly, for as she passed the doorframe, the criminal whose gun was trained on Shinichi would now be able to see her and would turn his eyes to her in shock. She would not be afraid, however, because she wouldn't have time to think about fear. Instead, she would propel herself forward, her eyes darting back and forth from the gunman to Shinichi to the handgun lying on the ground. Out of the corner of her eyes, she would see Shinichi turn his head to look at her, but she wouldn't have time to meet his astonished gaze.
As she closed in on the gun lying on the ground, she would begin to bend over, and even though she would think that this action might send her tumbling to the floor, her revived feet would be moving too fast for her to fall. She would scoop up the gun as she came upon it and would see the gunman turning his gun towards her, and she would be glad because it was away from Shinichi. She would not, however, allow herself to be shot, never again, not after it had taken her four years to move her legs after her last bullet wounds.
Instead, she would straighten up, never stopping, and would turn the gun in her hands towards the gunman. The feeling of the cold metal in her hand would be as familiar as walking, and her hands would unconsciously go through the motions of preparing the gun to fire.
And then, she would pull the trigger before the gunman across the room even had time to think about putting his finger to his own gun's trigger. The vibration of the blast would set her arms trembling, but she would clutch the gun tighter in her hands. The cry that would come from the gunman, as his weapon dropped out of his newly damaged hand, would send a shiver down her spine that would make its way all of the way down her tingling legs to her toes.
This shiver would make her knees buckle, even as her feet would continue to carry her forward towards Shinichi. Almost to her husband, the strength from her sister would falter and her buckling knees would get the best of her. She would stumble and then fall towards the ground, releasing the gun to catch herself with her hands. Shinichi would be right there, though, to catch her and she would fall face-first into his arms. She would bury her nose into his neck as they both collapsed on the ground in a heap, and his warm arms would suddenly be around her, pulling her close. And he would begin to cry out, and at first Shiho would think it was in distress, before realizing he was crying out in happiness.
She could see it all in her mind, like a hazy dream.
She opened her eyes.
"SHIHO! SHIHO!" Shinichi's loud voice pierced her ears; for a second, she panicked. If he was trying to get her to move the wheelchair out of the doorway and get away, she wouldn't be able to do it; she was stuck.
But then, she blinked. His voice didn't sound upset. In fact, it sounded… joyful, and… awfully close by.
She glanced up, dazed, and found herself staring right into his wide, bright blue eyes.
"Oh, Shiho, where did you…? How did you get…? And how… how did you…?" Shinichi was at a loss, and he suddenly pulled her closer. Shiho's lips parted in shock, and she turned her head to the side, her glasses askew, as he pressed her tightly to his chest.
There was the doorway across the room, and in the doorway sat her empty wheelchair.
"…No…" she managed to rasp out disbelievingly. A blast of sound suddenly met her ears. Cries of delight, pounding footsteps; the police officers were cheering as they ran towards the pair on the ground.
"Yes! Yes!" Shinichi cried, pulling back so he could see her stunned face. Blinking, she recognized the vibration in her hands that the gun's shot had left behind, and… and…
"My… legs… I can… They feel… fuzzy…" she whispered. A sharp sting zipped across her legs and she watched – felt – them twitch.
"I knew…! I knew… someday that…! Oh, Shiho!" His warm hands were suddenly cupping her cheeks, and even though his right hand was bleeding all over her from its bullet wound, she couldn't think of one sarcastic thing to say. Her stomach was churning, but it had less to do with the dizziness that had come over her than with the sensations Shinichi's touch was filling her with.
And suddenly his lips pressed against hers. Immediately, she kissed him back, her arms encircling his neck desperately. For a long moment, they stayed still in that embrace until Shinichi pulled his lips away so he could hug her closer to his body.
"Oh, Shiho…" he murmured, and one of his warm hands began to stroke her back. "Why… why did you come all of the way out here…?"
She didn't know what to say at first, but finally found her voice, though it came out quiet and raspy. "I… I needed to ask you why… Why did you… leave without waking me up this morning…? I was so… concerned that-"
"That's why I didn't," he whispered back. "I didn't want you to worry about me, because I was going after the Organization again."
"Stupid," she muttered, burying her nose in his neck. "Stupid, stupid idiot. You should know better than to try to keep these things from me."
He sighed softly. "You're right about that." Then, quietly, she heard him murmur the one thing she really wanted to hear.
With a playful smirk twitching onto her face, she turned her head towards the doorway once more. Beyond the wheelchair, high in the sky, a ray of brilliant sunshine was pouring out from behind the sky's dark clouds. Her smirk slowly softened into a small smile.
"I love you, too."