The Vampire Detective 2 – Second Grace
Chapter Six – Forever Young
Let us die on let us live forever/ We don't have the power but we never say never/ Life in the sandpit is a short trip/ Music's for the sad man. . . Forever Young – Youth Group
----
Hakuba Saguru had never liked superstitions. He could never have been able to say such a thing before, and that counted for now as well. That did not, however, mean to say that he had never even once in his life believed in a superstition. That he had never done something to humour a friend, for luck, for his own state of mind. . .
After all, both of his heritages embraced the tradition of friendly superstition, Japan in everything from its decidedly non-Christian holiday origins to the annoying way that, if a good enough detective wasn't found in time, a crime could be pinned on a demonic being or spirit while the true criminal walked off Scott-free. England. . . had an innumerable number of wishing wells and folk tales about fairies, whether or not they were true and putting aside for the moment the fact that Doyle himself had been taken in by at least one of the stories.
He had never taken any of it truly seriously, though – it had always been said or done with a pinch of salt, a half hidden cynical smile behind his public polite one. Logic had always won, knowing as he did that money thrown into a wishing well did not grant the wish of anyone other than the one who collected it, and the rest of the time ignoring the possibility of anything truly abnormal unless he was proving it wrong.
With the arrival of the Kid, his ability to use reason in a tough situation only improved his ability to glaze over the details just enough to focus on the task at hand, which had at the time been catching the elusive thief.
Even now, when he was on the same side as the thief, he found himself putting a patina of denial in the guise of logic to some of the things the other was able to do.
With the coming of one Kudo Shinichi, his opinion had not changed in the slightest. . . and neither had his methods of dealing with such things the detective now currently personified.
The current actions said detective was taking, however, were a little harder to stomach.
He swallowed hard, attempting to bite back nausea after an exclamation he hadn't expected to come out with. He could only say that he was glad of the chair he was now sitting on, or else he probably be sat rather embarrassingly with a thump on the floor.
It was one thing to know something in his head – he had noticed all of those strange ticks that the Eastern detective had before being let in on the secret, and was now told of what Kudo understood from these new inputs if it was ever deemed necessary or useful, or just plain polite. But it was another thing entirely to see it happening right in front of you, the incontrovertible proof that vampires existed.
"Are you sure that you are all right, Hakuba-kun?"
He started at the still new tones of lightly spoken Japanese over old hints of northern Europe. Right. Mina. The one who had made Kudo Shinichi into the vampire detective of the east.
"Perfectly," he replied softly, absently trying not to be too loud. "Absolutely perfectly fine. Why shouldn't I be? It isn't as though one of my close acquaintances is in the process of draining most of the bodily fluids from one of my other close acquaintances. No, wait, it is. Still, nothing to worry about. Hardly as thought there's anything that could go wrong."
Mina gave him a long look with a slight frown. She was bent down slightly for them to see eye to eye rather than having to have him looking up at her.
"There really isn't any real reason to worry, you know," she said in a conversational tone.
"Enlighten me."
Most of the time, everything had been talked over with the ones directly involved present. Saguru himself was not one of them. He also now realised that he might have been trying to let denial rule over him for just a short while longer. A foolish concept.
She shrugged, as though either noncommittal or tentative with her words.
"Shinichi-kun and Kuroba-kun both trust each other implicitly. Kuroba-kun is Shinichi-kun's first donor, also. . . a taxing role, requiring an awful amount of reliance and dependence. However, this also means that Shinichi-kun will instinctively know when it is not safe to go any further, and will probably not even go that far, knowing the boy's reluctance to even agree to this method in the first place."
"Mina-san," he said in a carefully controlled voice, which Kudo's sire could probably see through as though the control was not even there, "it has already been two minutes and thirty-seven point five seconds. Kuroba's looking pale. I don't like it."
The woman glanced at him, but only briefly, her attention focused more on the two in the centre of the room.
"You don't have to," she said distantly. Just before Kudo's head came up, mouth bloody and releasing his grip on Kuroba, allowing the magician to stumble away, and even he could see that Kuroba was shaking, though not as much as Kudo was.
He couldn't help himself; he was hardly afraid of blood, but he was used to seeing it on corpses or injured people, not as a foodstuff, with the person drinking it a friend of his, fangs out in a predatory snarl. A small noise of unease found its way out as the vampire stumbled, now unaided.
Koizumi was instantly there, and for once he allowed her to help him get to the ground before his legs, which obviously couldn't hold up his weight by nerves or blood loss by now, gave way first. Saguru didn't have time to study the indignant and worried twinge of his emotions before the witch – funny how it was easier to accept that than vampires; he supposed he had lived with her presence longer – stood once more, chanting.
Saguru did not like the sound of the words coming out of the beautiful girl's mouth. They sounded wrong. As though they had never meant to be said. And, as she had said herself, they hadn't been. A vampire is supposed to live as a vampire, and their nature is not supposed to be toyed with. To do so, she said, is dangerous.
Seeing the detective as he was now, he couldn't help but agree. This was wrong, it was causing irrefutable and excruciating pain. And yet from what he had heard the others say, some of this at least was what Kudo Shinichi had gone through each and every time he had switched between Edogawa Conan and his ordinary self.
Suddenly, he felt quite green.
"You don't have to be here, you know. You had the choice. You still do. You don't need to see this."
"Then..." He swallowed, hard. "Then I am afraid that you do not know me, Mina-san. I said that I would stay. So stay I will."
Kudo Shinichi screamed, and he flinched. He was not entirely surprised to see Kuroba doing the same, but rather more perceptibly due to his physical state. Koizumi didn't stop her spell, however.
"Kudo-kun and Kuroba-kun put a great deal of trust in me, knowing that I would be present at a time when they would both be entirely oblivious to the world around them. Especially Kudo-kun, who will emerge from this far weaker than he would like, even if it would be far stronger than he first experienced the form."
He cut himself off at the expression on the older vampire's face; one that was cool and calculating, though with her experience of manipulation he could not see what the questions were she sought to have him answer. She looked as though she were about to say something more, but didn't.
At first, he didn't understand why, but then she started to move towards the middle of the room, where a cloud of smoke was enveloping the now unconscious high school detective, soon to be grade school detective once more. Then he realised that Koizumi had stopped her chanting, and was now looking on over by where Haibara was, talking in what looked from his distance to be a calm voice, but with shaking hands.
It was done. Not finished by any rate, but definitely, defiantly, done.
He let out one shaky breath, and released his white-knuckled grip on the chair – funny how he hadn't remembered doing that – and stood, to go over to Kuroba. Who was drinking hot chocolate with a warm thermal blanket wrapped around him on the floor.
The smoke cleared with painstaking sluggishness, taking its time even more than the worst of one of Kid's pink smoke bombs, the ones with the sleeping gas in them.
But when it did, all heads turned to what it revealed – the small form of one Edogawa Conan, fitfully unconscious and appearing uncomfortably feverish.
---
After that, they had taken watches throughout the night, with even Mina and Fritz taking their turns with sleep. Each one would watch over Kudo – no, he had better start referring to the boy as Edogawa-kun, now – for an hour or two, then wake up the next person for their watch. Even though for some it wasn't so much 'wake up' as it was 'make aware that they should have been asleep'.
Hattori Heiji's remark of Kudo-kun's sleeping habits from back when Saguru couldn't possibly have understood finally made sense. Kudo Shinichi really did sleep like the dead, and it gave him a minor heart attack every time he walked into the room; he was sure it would have been bad enough if the other had been his usual age, but as a child it was hardly the easiest sight to get over even once. He couldn't even begin to imagine how Kuroba had managed to sleep in the same room with him back when they had made the thief magician's house their base of operations, and he dreaded the reaction that the Mouris would have to it when Conan finally went back to them.
The evening hours and midnight had passed without anyone feeling very much of an appetite, the early hours of the morning passing by with excruciating slowness. Kuroba had been all but forced into sleep in a room nearby, in order to have the time for his body to replenish his blood through rest. Koizumi had retired to her room each time she had been able to, but had come back down punctually when needed once more. Mina-san had rested, or seemed to rest, in the same room as Edogawa. Fritz, however, had simply paced about, agitated and getting on everyone's nerves.
Saguru could understand the sentiment, even if he didn't exactly appreciate it very much.
It was perhaps five o'clock, going on for half past, when the boy showed his first signs of movement, if not of waking up.
His breathing had started to come back onto a more perceptible scale, alerting both him and Fritz – who promptly woke Mina up – that either he was waking up or something was going wrong. Their second guess was proven right when the almost normal sounding breathing changed to an uncomfortable wheeze.
Not long after that, the boy screamed, still asleep, the sound waking up everyone else who wasn't already in the room. Kuroba, for one, bounded back into the room with his eyes wide and reaching for the card gun that wasn't there until they realised what exactly was going on.
Mina was by Kudo's side in an instant, holding onto him gently but firmly, holding him back when he finally opened his eyes, blue eyes wide and in pain, and tried to bolt. His face was pale and yet flushing at the same time, sweat pouring off him and making his now outsized clothes damp, making Saguru wonder whether the others had known that this would come and hadn't put some more appropriate clothes on him before.
Though his face had been wiped down for the sake of his and the others' sanity, when he grimaced the two sharp canines were clearly visible, and his mouth still slightly cherry red.
Nausea turned Saguru's stomach, and it wasn't helped when Kudo suddenly convulsed into a tight ball with a keen. He turned to the woman holding the child-shaped detective, a question in his eyes.
"He shouldn't be reacting like this," she said. "But I think I know why. . . the last time this happened to him, he only had human limits and perceptions to get used to. Yet this time..." she trailed off as Kudo stifled a feverish sob.
"This time," continued Haibara Ai from the other end of the room, voice trying to sound professional but wavering, "he has his vampiric traits to battle, as well. Which I had warned him of. Meaning that his body still sees itself as being seventeen, and thus his mind feels that he is severely depleted in blood, even though he likely is physically fine."
Mina nodded in agreement and Fritz trawled his hands through his unruly light brown hair.
"Can't anyone do anything about this, then?" he asked faintly.
He had been expecting one of the two women to answer him, but it was actually Fritz who spoke.
"Not unless we want things to get worse, no," came the growled reply in heavily accented English, the vampire's Japanese forgotten in the moment. "Kuroba there's not out, but he'd be an idiot to try and help now – it'd undo everything, at this stage. Koizumi's just as bad, with magic in her very blood. And no offence, but Haibara's a bit too much of a chibi to be of any help right now, Hakuba. You didn't even have to be here – still don't have to, if you don't want to watch. Kudo chose this. He knew the risks."
Saguru blinked, his breath catching. He shoved himself off from the wall he had been leaning against.
"I'm afraid I don't understand your meaning," he said, switching to his birth language himself.
"What I'm saying," Fritz said, coming to an abrupt halt right in front of him, "is that there's nothing that can really, really help him right now. He needs to ride it. Unless someone could somehow trick his body into thinking that it's back to normal levels. Jolt it into remembering what shape it is now. Something like that, you get it?"
Saguru swallowed, hard, but hardened the expression on his face. He wouldn't let himself be intimidated. It had always been the way that Kudo had challenged everything that he had always thought to be true that had left him spooked, not Kudo himself.
"I'll kindly ask you to tell me what you mean by your saying that there's nothing that can help him right now, and then following it with that," he said coldly. He turned to Kaito, who was staring at them and looking as though he'd been trying to follow the conversation over the minor language barrier. When he spoke – switching back to Japanese as he did so – the magician looked at him as if he had grown a spare head. "Kuroba. What exactly did you do last week at the station to make him calm down and become responsive?"
"I – I – Are you absolutely out of your mind?" Kaito shouted. Kudo whimpered and held his now small hands to his ears. They both winced, and when Kaito continued, it was at a low hiss. "He's a vampire, you idiot. How else did you think I got him like that so quickly? Pink fluffy bunnies and roses? Are you really ready for that, Hakuba?"
Saguru met the other's gaze squarely.
"I would like to think that I am capable of telling what I am and am not ready for, Kuroba. And I assure you that I – that I won't..."
Kaito just stared for a long moment. Then he slowly shook his head.
"I was right. You are going insane. Completely and utterly bonkers."
There was silence. It was broken when Kudo, who had been wheezing in an effort to get what little air he still needed, cried out again before cutting himself off with a bitten lip, tears streaking down his lip.
"Perhaps I am finally going insane, but I don't think that this is a product of it," Saguru said softly, willing the others to understand. "I know what it's like to want to be able to save someone, to help them, and not be able to. That's part of what it is to be a detective, Kuroba. That is why I simply cannot stand by and idly let this go on. Not if I can help."
Kuroba finally looked up with the intention of meeting his bright violet eyes to Saguru's blue.
"Then I can't stop you, huh?"
"Is there any reason why you should want to?"
"I..." Kuroba hesitated when he started to move forward, toward where Mina and Kudo were. He sighed. "You don't even know what you're getting into, Hakuba."
"Then why don't you enlighten me?"
"Do you really want to be tied to someone like that? To not be able to really, really want to hurt them, even if you wanted to? To feel so – so attached?" Fritz and Mina stayed silent, still watching. Kudo, he could see, was still in an intense amount of pain – made worse, without a doubt, by the teeth that were still impaled in his lower lip. His breathing was still coming in and out with a wheeze. "To feel like there doesn't have to be a good reason, to help him, even though you've not known him for very long at all," Kuroba finished softly.
If the speech had been meant to deter him, it had not done its job very well at all.
"I believe," he said, continuing on until he was right in front of Mina, then crouching in place, "that all of those reasons that you have listed are things that would only deter a person so long as they did not already respect and appreciate the person in question. Which I do," he said, and proceeded to roll up his right sleeve.
The proffered arm was looked at, stared at, but untouched by hand or fang. Even though he could see that Kudo was badly feverish and in need of some respite. This went on for a minute and a half, until, voice unsteady, he asked if there was something wrong.
Everyone started at the sound of his voice in the steady quiet that had developed in the room. Kudo keened softly, small arms wrapped around his small form, rocking slightly.
Kuroba cursed.
"You're not marked," he said bluntly. "That's why he won't even touch you – Fritz, you said it'd be possible for him to bite someone he hasn't marked, but . . . he had a problem the first time he tried that. Things got out of control. That was when he marked me," he said, pulling up his sleeve underneath the blanket he had wrapped around him still and showing the long, well healed scar that had drawn Saguru to figure out what was going on with the two of them once and for all. "But you're not marked. He–"
"Oh, for heaven's sake! Like this," came the frustrated tones of the American.
He scarcely had time to register what was happening when two arms came into view, one holding his arm in place, the other hand taking control of Kudo's head, guiding the startled younger vampire's fangs towards his arm. A moment later, there was a numb sort of pain there that was quickly disappearing as his arm was turned over and released, only to be gripped by to slightly damp, much smaller hands straight after.
The first thought to find its way into Saguru's head after that was how odd the situation was. He had only found out about Kudo two weeks or so ago. And now this, and it he didn't really even feel it at all, only this strange tingling sensation which he now realised had been made by the fact that Kudo's fangs had been retracting slowly as he fell asleep, this time looking much more at ease than before.
He blinked to himself, bemused, as Koizumi wordlessly brought over the bandages that were required for the wound on his arm, along with some gauze with which to clean it. He thanked her quietly, to which she simply shot him an unreadable look.
"Like we said," Mina told them slowly, continuing to hold the boy in her lap. "He only needed a little. To remind his body. He'll be fine now, I should think." She looked up with a bright smile at him, as he had moved a short distance away out of propriety to clean the wound. "I should thank you, too. . . Welcome to the family, Hakuba Saguru. Well come and well met."
Saguru shot a confused look over at Kaito, who looked like he had just been hit by a fish and been told the most hilarious thing both at the same time.
"Oops," said the thief. "Never told him about the clan thing. Oh, well," he said, with a sideways grin, "does that make us brothers now or something?"
Fritz gave them a strange look from over where he was now slumped in an armchair.
"Only if you want to be," he said.
Kaito grinned, and Saguru busied himself with tying up the end of the bandage. It hadn't been that deep of a thing, but apparently, it had meant a lot.
----
Waking up was like clawing his way out of a human-sized vat of jam, treacle and custard, all mixed in together in an unholy mix that came out in one big uergh.
The first thing that came back to him as he attempted and failed to blink, due to the sheer amount of dust and whatnot that had gathered on his eyes during sleep, was his sense of heightened smell.
He sighed in pleasure at the aroma that wafted to his nose – whoever was cooking, whatever was being cooked, was good. He was starving. He rose, eyes still closed. Mmm. . . Ran. Ran's cooking. Occhan must be awake already, or I'd have been woken up by him snoring, instead. . .
He rolled off of the futon, rubbing at one eye with the back of a hand. Then the other. Soon, his eyes were clear enough that he could open them, and then he could see. Even if he thought he could find his way towards the smells just by his nose.
Slowly, his eyes did open, and it was then that he blinked, doing a double take. It wasn't the Mouri place.
Another blink and everything started to come back. Yes, he was Conan again. But this time, it had been his own decision. No, he wasn't at the Mouri place he was at Koizumi-san's, and that was because it was here he'd gone to change back. With a look around, he realised that it had to be not even dawn, yet. If his ears weren't deceiving him, the sounds of raised voices and laughter could be heard from the kitchen, which he'd discovered sometime yesterday during the interminable wait for twilight.
A look down at himself found a pleasant but not entirely expected surprise – he was dressed in the clothes he'd taken to change back into once he'd done. Idly, he wondered who had dressed him. It wasn't like there was much to look at like this, but he sincerely hoped it hadn't been either Koizumi or Mina. In fact, he didn't know whether or not to be thankful or mortifyingly embarrassed. A look back at the futon proved ruffled dark coloured duvets, and a dark stain on the pillowcase.
Shocked, he touched his mouth, but found nothing there.
"Sorry," said a tired voice from not too far away. "I'm afraid that happened when we had to get the futon out. I wanted to help, but my bandages ended up slipping slightly. Koizumi-san wasn't much pleased, either."
Startled, he looked around, only to find one worn out Hakuba Saguru sitting curled up slightly in a plush armchair. His attention was drawn to the other boy's arm where, indeed, were some bandages wrapped there. There weren't any stains on the outer sides of them, however, so they must have been changed since the incident he'd been talking about.
"How. . ?"
"I'm told that it should heal rather rapidly, and that I shouldn't have to worry about infection."
Just that one sentence was enough to make his face red, flushing with shame and anger at himself. His fists clenched and he looked down at the black carpet.
"I bit you. Didn't I."
"Yes," came the unwanted word, but confusingly enough it didn't have any condemnation in it. He wondered why. He deserved it, certainly. Then there were movements as Hakuba got out of the armchair and moved closer. "You're not at fault, Kudo- Shinichi-kun." Contact that he flinched away from as Hakuba's hand gently eased his head up again, so that he would be able to look him in the eyes. "You aren't. I offered. To your credit, the bandages are for the mark that Kuroba-kun realised I needed before I would take anything."
"That doesn't change anything. I shouldn't have. . . I never wanted to. . ."
"I could tell that much," Hakuba bit back coldly. "I could tell that quite clearly. Next time, don't be so much of a martyr. Kuroba's enough of a suicidal idiot for the lot of us, understand?"
And just like that, Hakuba stood back up, stretching as he did so. He didn't follow suit. He thought that his limbs were still shaking from what his body had been through – and, apparently, what he didn't even remember.
"O- oi!" Kaito's shout had him distracted, but the magician didn't sound particularly angry or in danger. "Knock it off," he heard, a bit more faintly. "Yo – Hakuba, Tantei-chan! Breakfast's ready!"
With a confused and slightly guarded look at Hakuba, he rose, disentangling himself for good from the sheets.
"Kuroba-kun and Fritz-san took the privilege of preparing food when we realised that hardly any of us had managed to get any more than a few hours' sleep," the British detective said in a deadpan. So far as I know, it should be edible, but I'd watch for any unpleasant side effects. The last time I ate anything that Kuroba had prepared, my tongue turned yellow."
"Oh," said the younger detective as they made their way through to the dining area that they'd been shown the previous evening. "Not black or blue, then? Or purple?"
Hakuba gave him a strange look. "No. Definitely yellow."
"Hm. Interesting. Can't have been one of the shop-bought ones, then. . . then again, Kid uses pink smoke, so he's gotta be pretty good at home chemistry."
"I would suppose so," the blond said flatly as they walked through the door. "From what I've seen of both of them – both sides, I should say – that certainly seems the case."
He didn't know what kind of reaction he had expected from the diminutive detective, but a suddenly brash smirk hadn't been it at all.
"Personally, I'm not all that fond of yellow, but it wasn't a bad choice. It's a good trick – I used it on Occhan myself for a prank when I was just starting out experimenting in chemistry. Ran's mom had made some comment about the way his tongue'd go blue if he stared at other girls so much, so I decided to test it out on him next time I eat at their place – this wasn't all that long before they broke up, though. But we had a good laugh, and he stopped pulling that stupid face quite so much for a couple of days 'til the stuff wore off."
He stopped his story, realising that Hakuba had started to stare at him with what looked suspiciously like horror. The blond stopped abruptly however when confronted by Mina, who had started to go over to them.
"Please tell me that personality quirks are not transferable through blood. I don't honestly think that I could stand it."
Mina immediately started to giggle against her usual mysterious front that she put up, probably having overheard their conversation. It ended up being Fritz who answered the blond's question as he came in to put one of the bowls of food onto the centre of the table. Even now, it looked awfully strange seeing anyone treat something that should be hot enough to burn with such a careless attitude.
"Not so far as I know," he said with a light smile on his face. "Otherwise, we'd all be a more than a bit weird."
Mina's giggles evaporated.
"And what do you mean by that?"
"Nothing more than I said."
"You implied something. I sincerely hope that it wasn't anything too disparaging."
"Not entirely, no."
She rolled her eyes and shook her head at Fritz's antics as she let them through into the dining area and to the table, which looked as though it had been carved from a black wood of sorts, with a white tablecloth on top that, it seemed, someone else must have donated or had been bought at short notice, since it was so out of context with the rest of Koizumi Akako's place.
He was irritated and startled, however, when Haibara, who had previously been in deep conversation with their host and was now seated at the table a couple of seats down from him, told him to be careful. He brushed her off. . . only to be cursing moments later when, upon trying to get up into the chair made for an adult, he had banged himself against some part of it. He was only glad that the chair itself wasn't entirely wooden as well as the table, and sent Haibara a glare, pre-emptive for the smug look he was sure she was wearing.
The smells of the home-cooked food were now tantalisingly mouth-watering, and it wasn't long before the last dish was brought in by Kaito, who presented it on the table with a performer's flourish before finding his own seat next to him.
"They smell good," he said as the lids were taken off. "I'm starving."
The two normal human males looked at him sidelong. Haibara smirked, and Mina attempted to hide a smile.
"Ah, the voracious appetite of a young boy. Much akin to a bottomless pit, I've found."
Fritz looked askance at her, helping himself to potatoes and noodles. Hakuba, he noticed, turned a strange shade of pale.
"At least we don't have to worry so much about your blood supplies," he said, throwing Mina a quick glare. "Body mass," he explained towards Shinichi's donors, and Shinichi himself. "Means you don't have to have as much to go around."
Kaito and Hakuba Saguru relaxed slightly, much to his and the other vampires' amusement, and the meal went on, conversation only happening rarely until almost everything had been eaten and people were starting to feel full.
"So," he said at last, "where is it that we go from here? I mean, as soon as I can, I'm going to think up some story and go back over to Ran's, but..."
"But you aren't doing that until I've run several tests on you, Kudo-kun. They shouldn't take too long, but they are necessary to figure out just how much you have been affected by this, and whether there will have to be any adjustments you will have to make, going back to this form in your current state."
He sighed the sigh of those who have long suffered scientists poking them with needles and making them jump when the scientist says jump for the sake of results.
"Fine. . ."
"And I will be expecting to see you in two or three days' time, to see how you're doing then. It would be no good if you came this far only to decline after only a short amount of time, now would it?"
"Of course not."
"And if you keep on like that, you're going to end up like Genta-kun."
At this, he snorted, spraying what he'd just put into his mouth back into his dish. He choked slightly, indignant.
"No I'm not! And you, I mean both of you, stop laughing at me!"
Both Fritz and Kaito wilfully disobeyed. The others fell only a little short of the same kind of mutiny.
----
Pacing around her father's office, Ran considered the benefits and disadvantages of going straight over to Shinichi's. He hadn't answered either his home phone or his cell all day, and she was beyond worried; she had tried to contact Kuroba-kun, only to get his mother, saying that he'd also been out. She had tried some of the others, but while she had been able to contact Aoko-chan, the other girl had seemed to have exactly the same problems as she had been having. Not to mention that Hakuba-kun was also apparently missing. And Akako-chan.
So wherever they all were, it was most likely that they were together. Which eased her state of mind only slightly, since if they were all together then it was less likely something awful had happened to them, yet if something awful had happened, then it must have been even worse than anything they'd ever known before to get past all of them.
She paced about some more, thankful that her father was out and wouldn't be due back until at least an hour or more, so that at least he couldn't get angry at her for distracting him from his precious shows. This was more important.
The sky outside was only just starting to get dark, and she risked one last long look out of the office wall-come-window. With the coming night, it might be that Shinichi was going to come back to her, or at least call her. She knew well enough how, even though he could go out in the daylight, it wasn't always easy and, in some cases, possible. So maybe he would come back to her now that it was going to be easier for him. She certainly hoped so.
Her eye was caught by three figures – two taller, one short, in fact child-sized she would say – walking down the street towards the detective agency from the direction of the bus stop that came from Ekoda way, which she had become familiar with ever since they had become such good friends with the others who lived over that way.
The first thing that struck her was that all three of them were well dressed, or rather, well covered up. There was hardly an inch of skin left bare, even though while it was the middle of October it wasn't as cold as the middle of winter tended to be. The second was that all three of them were carrying small bags, and the middle figure – hardly visible, surrounded by the other two as they were – was hunched up as he walked, unaided by the hand of either of the two taller people.
She hadn't realised that she had been clutching to the rim of her father's desk until she started to make herself try to breath normally again, sharp stabs of pain reminding her of such things.
She would call him again. She would stop being so paranoid and she would go and call him again, and then she would try Kuroba-kun, and if that didn't work then she would go over to his house, and then Agasa's, and then...
The doorbell buzzed. In her tensed up state, she jumped at the loud noise that had invaded the unusually silent office – the normality had come to be, for her, the sounds of her father cheering on the horses or Okino Yoko, with Conan-kun's acerbic remarks cutting in every so often, or the turning of pages or scratching of pen against paper. Even knowing that Conan had been Shinichi didn't stop her from remembering what she had become used to, as she rushed down, wondering who it was at the door, afraid that she was going to have to tell a potential client of her father's that he was out right now, when the man was out playing games with his friends.
The door opened only for her to see the very three figures that she had just been watching from the office; except that from this angle, the tallest was a woman, the next was a man and the last was a child. All three were wearing winter clothing, faces pale but not flushed with cold. She could see now, now that she had the light of the hallway backing her, that they weren't wearing black, as she had momentarily thought previously. It had only seemed so because of the lighting.
She did wonder, though, what they were here for. None of them had spoken yet, and the man – dressed actually, now that she looked at him closer, mostly in bike leathers and work-wear boots – elbowed the child lightly alongside the head, to which said child only sighed, without complaint.
He looked up at her, and she gasped, a hand going to her mouth in shock. It was Conan. Shinichi. Conan was back.
"H-hey, Ran-neechan. . ." he trailed off, sounding about as upset as he could, even though he looked like he was trying to pull off a cheerful countenance. It wasn't working, for either of them.
She was only just able to remind herself that they were standing in full view of the street, and that that was probably the very reason why Conan had addressed her so.
"But... but why are you back here? Like this? I – I thought you were-!" She broke off in a half sob – she didn't know what she had been about to say. When Shinichi had first returned, he had said in no uncertain terms that Conan was now dead, or as good as. ". . . in America," she finished lamely, falling back on the lie that he had told her, her father and the police.
He shrugged. It was pitiful, really – it really was. Now that she had had her Shinichi back for so long, without lies, she could see easily the sheer force of his personality pervading each and every move he made. Or maybe that was because he wasn't hiding from her, even though he had used his Conan-name for her.
"I heard about all the trouble Shinichi-niisan was having, and I had to come back," said Conan. But it all sounded not more than a scripted line. Blue eyes looked at her, willing her to understand their hidden meaning. "But Ran-neechan? I don't think you've met my ji-san and my baa-san."
Startled and reminded of the other two, she looked back up at them. Suddenly met first a pair of twinkling light blue eyes, and then some of irritated hazel. The owner of the blue eyes looked American, a hand holding up sunglasses so that they could see each other properly, and a mouth that was grinning sarcastically, first at her and then with a flash at the taller hazel-eyed woman, who had disavowed glasses but instead of a baseball cap wore a wide-brimmed summer hat type of thing that looked quite out of place in autumn. It was strange – despite the fact that Shinichi had depicted her as such, and the fact that she was taller, the woman did not look that much older than her companion.
Remembering her manners, she stood aside so that everyone could come in. She shut the door and led the way up silently, and went to ready some tea while they changed into house slippers.
By the time she had returned, they had divested themselves of their outer coats, hats and gloves, and for a moment she stood in momentary shock at the sight of Conan in his blue jacket, jeans and red bow tie that she had thought had been consigned to memory only. The glasses were the only things missing, and those only because he had them in his hands, rubbing furiously at them with a handkerchief.
"Damn things," she could hear him muttering as she went over to the table and put the tray down. "Clear lenses, and it still feels like they're someone else's prescription..."
Ran frowned, glancing warily at the two who were just coming over to sit down, the American laughing over something while fiddling with the sunglasses he was still wearing.
Apparently, Conan found the glasses too much trouble for the moment, and stuck them in a jacket pocket and out of the way while he sat down opposite her. His bright blue eyes, no longer hidden by the lenses for the moment, seemed to seek out anything but her to look at. He was flanked moments later by the two who had come with him.
"I, uh, sorry about out there, Ran," he said in a low voice. It was profoundly different from any – almost any, she amended herself – time that she had heard him speak as Conan before. "But we were out on the street, and, uh. . . anyway. This is Fritz," he said in a matter of fact tone, "and this baa-san here's Mina."
She stared outright at his blatant lack of respect for either of the two of them. She had what felt like a hundred questions all lined up and ready to be asked, but in the end, what came out of her mouth was probably the most inane.
"Why is it you keep on calling her that? I mean, she's not that old, is she?"
The man – Fritz, Shinichi had said – snorted.
"She's older than she looks," is all that he said.
Shinichi, funnily enough, smirked slightly despite himself at the man's comment.
"Oh," she said. Not really understanding the joke, if it was one.
Shinichi. . . Conan, that is, sighed, rubbing at his forehead.
"Look, I'm sorry, Ran. I really am. I just. . . couldn't keep going like that. I said. And it came to me that no one really took note of me while I was like this, and. . . it's not forever. Just until the case is done with. You trust me, don't you?"
Shocked that he would even need to ask her such a thing, she nodded. But couldn't help but glance at the two who hadn't so much as blinked throughout the entire speech.
"Mina and Fritz have known about me for a while," he said, sounding dejected again. He hunched up slightly, as though trying to make himself smaller than he already was. "I... I don't know how long, exactly... but they've never given me away. And if anyone asks," he said, now so quietly that she could barely hear him, "they're the 'friends' who took me back to America after the Unobo case."
She couldn't help it – she gasped, sitting back into the sofa to put at least bit more space between herself and the two across from her – the two who were not smiling and joking now, who were deathly serious, but also quiet, and looking at her with a certain questioning quality in their eyes.
"So. . . so you're. . .?"
She knew that there were tremors in her voice, but she didn't really care at that moment. If what he had just told her was true. . !
The woman inclined her head. Ran closed her eyes and focused on breathing.
"We will be posing as Edogawa Conan's aunt and uncle," she said. "Kudo-kun, who has not completely left town but has gone to investigate the case from a different perspective, has allowed us the use of his house, for the time being. Once the case is solved and Kudo-kun can return, we shall see where to go from there."
Still concentrating to a certain extent on her breathing, she opened her eyes to look at Conan.
"And you're all right with this?"
He shrugged hopelessly.
"They're all right, I suppose... I guess I can say I trust them, yeah." He looked up at her, into her eyes. "Please, Ran. I need you for this. I can't make this work without you."
She straightened her back and made an effort to at least look more composed than she still felt. The other two might be like Shinichi was, able to tell people's feelings by smaller signs than normal people could see, but she was willing to make a show if nothing else.
"Of course I'll help you, Shinichi," she said. "You'd never need to ask for that." A thought occurred to her, and she checked the time. A surprising amount had passed since their arrival, but they still had a good amount left... "You're still going to have to break this to 'Tou-san, though," she reminded him, completely serious.
He groaned.
"Damn," he said. "I completely forgot."
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AN: Longer than I'd expected, was originally going to have two other scenes as well as the ones written up. Those'll be coming up next chapter, though, so never fear.
I have to admit to having Fritz and Crowley from Good Omens merge at one point, when Ran first saw them. The opportunity for sunglasses-ness was too much to miss.
All right – anyone hate me/love me for this? I'm hoping that the chapter answered some questions. . . and others will be answered later on, too. Next chapter definitely will have the why of the return of Conan explained a bit more thoroughly.