Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan.
Oneshot Seven
Fisher with No Bait
Hit the floor, heavy bodily thud. Grunt and roll, a metallic flash and a knife is embedded in the floorboards where he had just been. Rising shakily, knees like loose-screwed hinges that threaten to buckle. No can do, must remain standing. Poised to flight, coiled tension of muscles to spring.
A sing-song voice, hideously dragged out as if with resisting claws hooked to the smoke-scarred throat. Words cross the distance, muddled beyond recognition, meaningless regardless of whether they are comprehensible or not.
Taste of rust in mouth, spit it out to no avail, chokes any words to be said. No breath to spare.
Condemnation in the barrel of a gun at his head, sleek monochrome utilitarianism, paints only with red. Abyss in the jade eyes staring into his own, seeing his reflection with lightless eyes like still water staring back. It is not a mirror he can shatter, paint the fluorescent-lit white tiles red and cast aside the shards like a fisherman reeling for hope.
Blade-toothed smile arranged like a cemetery fixated on him, wonders if his grave will be added to those ivory ranks.
No, cannot be, will not be. He is already a ghost; what fear did he have of death?
Feints to the side right before a crack of thunder sounds, feels autumn in the form of the knife nick his arm. Blood, the red of a leaf's leave with a bang, trickles down and paints his hand. Superficial like his porcelain skin, it matters not, mortality abandoned for Prophecy of what was and will be, time looped and his soul stretched along a Mobius strip rack.
The raven crows with carrion-feasting delight, the smoke of battlefields it gleefully beheld lit with fires-metal-passing of humanity-BLOOD STAINING SKIN UNTIL ALL MEN ARE PAINTED AS DEMONS embodied in its harsh cries like Ankou driving his cart along misty lanes, skeletons rattling the brittle cold iron bars of their cages to his indifference, calling out pleads and warnings to the mortals that walk through mist and do not see. A werewolf comfortably ensconced in human skin, striding leisurely among the Men that it does not remember ever being, had it ever.
Strike of silver, swift as a bullet. The gun falls and the werewolf curls inward on itself, gloating giving way to snarls that now bear as much threat as a sheep's bleating. Fingers curl into claws, shedding pretense even as beasts cannot resist the perfume of the flowers, the bobbing of a wan lantern drifting over a salty river. They scrabble futilely against the bullet that holds fast to its form, and the boy-ghost-of-a-man-that-once-was bears the assault modeled after a martyr, allowing the blood he spilled with his enemy's weapon to cover him, color his porcelain skin the red of strontium salt fire, cover his front entirely.
Even though the ebbing of life's tides leaves him cold and without water to fish in, he remains like this, allows the paint to dull to rust, leaving him as tarnished silver.
The Angel comes too late and now not even she can save him. Nor would he let her, lest in his desperate vying for her salvation he tear her feathers out and drag her Down with him. He accepted his crown and place as the sovereign of fishers, and although the smarter martyr does not die, the wise would gladly.
AN: An experimental attempt at blending my original story-writing style with the coherence of my fanfiction which the former usually does not possess. Writing this felt so good, it makes the awkwardness and ashen taste of how I typically write fanfiction all the more acute. This was about Gin and Conan and with Ran at the end, in case that wasn't clear.