Disclaimer: "Detective Conan" belongs to Gosho Aoyama, and "Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon" belongs to Naoko Takeuchi.
This is an alternative story to my other fanfic "Encounter in Venice" and one of the possibilities of what could have happened if Ai had taken the antidote before Shinichi brought down the Organization.
Thanks a lot to my friends and betas Rae (Astarael00) and SN1987a and the Aicoholics on LiveJournal, without whom I would never have started this fic.
FS
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Ghost at Twilight
(edited version)
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Just like three years ago...
Just like three years ago, the situation doesn't culminate in a kiss as it would undoubtedly have if it hadn't been for a minor disturbance. Startled by the sudden ringing of his mobile phone, you abruptly draw away from him in the same way as you hurriedly slipped out of Kudo arms at Pandora's Box when you heard Hattori's steps in front of the door to the cabin. The parallel between the two situations throws you for a moment off balance; and with the peculiar feeling of waking up from a long deep sleep, you suddenly wonder how you could let yourself be swept off your feet like that by a complete stranger.
"Your phone," you explain when you notice his wondering gaze. Simultaneously, you realize that his ringtone is a quote from the song you heard in the café where you encountered the red-haired girl. Hearing it when Odango called him must have triggered the old memory and caused you to dream of the girl again when you fell asleep on the bench...
"Is there something wrong?" he asks, holding you back by your hand when you get up from the sofa. The little gesture lightens your mood more than you would have expected. Half-annoyed and half-amused at yourself, you realize you've even begun to find his toing and froing between exasperating shyness and outrageous boldness endearing.
"I'll tell you after you've answered it."
Throwing you perplexed glance, he lets go of you and walks swiftly in the direction of the bathroom, where his jacket is still hanging. At the door, however, he turns on his heel, returns with a smile, takes your elbow, and decisively pulls you with him.
"Too late," he points out the obvious while fishing in his jacket pocket for his mobile phone with his free hand. The washing machine (or, to be precise, the combined washer dryer) has finished washing your clothes for some time as well, as evidenced by the blinking zero on the display. However, the machine hasn't even started to dry your clothes yet.
"Only because it took you forever to answer the call," you remark. "Were you afraid I would go home in your bathrobe?"
"Yes, my mind-reading skills told me you wanted to flee and shift the blame onto me afterwards!" He grins before continuing on a more serious note, "You did consider it for a moment, didn't you?"
"I absolutely don't know what you mean," you unscrupulously deny, whereupon he only glares at you, resigned. Without a kiss, you still have the chance to pretend that nothing has ever crossed your mind, that all the things happening between you two in the past hours have been only part of a harmless flirt, and that you've never, ever, even considered kissing him.
It would be hypocritical but also be the smartest way to get yourself out of this flirt-gone-too-well without leaving a mess, you reflect. The only catch of this solution is that you don't feel like listening to the tedious voice of reason at all. Beyond doubt, one of the most disturbing things about the first delirious stage of love is the fact that it invariably kills the last ounce of common sense, you realize, shuddering at all the sappy thoughts which crossed your mind when you were lying on his lap a few minutes ago. A blanket of universal affection? The air throbbing with warmth? You were obviously mistaken when you believed you had finally overcome your sappy side after your quarrel with Kudo. If you were writing your memoirs now, in your present mental condition, this episode of your story would be classified as a mushy romance! Admittedly, an overdose of sentimentality can be excused in your situation, as the lack of sleep and a series of strange coincidences—added to the shock at the accident you witnessed yesterday evening—have joined forces to loosen a few screws in your head. This feeling of déjà vu, however, is simply absurd since the situation with Kudo then and the situation with stranger-san now don't have much in common...
Pandora's Box, as you remember it, was in essence the type of dilemma one wants to read about but not to experience. This situation, on the other hand, is in comparison completely harmless although it feels oddly similar. The thing you have rashly and imprudently labeled "love" is probably only a physical attraction or romantic illusion supported by a few very lucky coincidences. How could you get the idea that you are in love with him if you don't know anything about him but his name and the reputation inextricably linked to it? As much as you would like to trust your feelings because this feels perfectly right, you know from past experiences with Gin that emotions are essentially unreliable.
"What are you thinking?" he asks with audible apprehension in his voice, slightly loosening his grip on your arm as if he can guess the direction your thoughts are taking.
"Nothing," you lie, faking interest in his old washer dryer combo, which, with its blinking zero, has brought an element of the mundane back into your unreasonable instant romance. "I've only noticed you've forgotten to turn on the dryer. What about turning it on now so that I don't need to spend the whole day in your bathrobe?" Deciding that you might as well turn it on yourself since it doesn't contain only his but also your clothes, you quickly choose the delicate setting.
"Sorry, it seems I was too distracted back then—"
"Just erase that memory from your mind and don't ever dare to mention it again!" you darkly cut him off in the middle of the sentence. "May I ask who has called you at such an ungodly hour as six in the morning?"
To your annoyance, you can feel yourself getting possessive even though you two are only at the hands-holding stage. If the call was from a female acquaintance trying to lure him to Venice or somewhere else for another "awesome night", you will friendzone the little lying cheat and deny all feelings of attraction just to put a damper on his disproportionately big ego.
"It was Yaten," he informs you. "But since he hasn't left a message, I bet he is mad at me for leaving Taiki and him alone at Two Lights'."
Apparently, his oldest brother has already tried to reach him twice without either of you two hearing it due to the sound of the washing machine and the hair dryer. The sound of his mobile phone doesn't seem to carry far and the door of the bathroom was closed.
"What about calling him back now before he calls again?" you suggest in slight irritation. You've always hated the tendency of mobile phones to ring at the wrong moment.
"Good idea," he agrees. "Although, knowing him, I fear he has already turned off his phone or thrown it away in an angry fit."
"He sounds like the nastier of your two brothers."
"Only if he is in a bad mood, but then he is absolutely insufferable."
Giving your arm he is still holding a reassuring squeeze, he flashes you a fleeting smile and you smile back, relieved that things have returned to normalcy. It's difficult to explain why your mood continually alternates between euphoria and despondency, and nothing can account for these sudden spells of irritation and anxiety, which have been troubling you since last night. In the corridor, the large bouquets of red roses the two of you left on the floor are shimmering mysteriously in the dim light. Distractedly noting that the apartment above this one must be overflowed with the white and yellow roses Taiki and Yaten Kou must have received from their fans in abundance, it strikes you that you've never given much thought to the colours of the flowers of the red-haired girl.
Most probably, her boyfriend had surprised her with tickets for a Three Lights concert, which would explain why he didn't bother to wear a formal suit while implying that the evening would be special to make her put on something fancy. You can imagine him telling her about the plans for the evening while racing through the crowded streets, throwing one or two worried glances through the rearview mirror at the midnight-blue car, which had been following them to the flower shop where she insisted on buying three roses for Taiki, Yaten, and Seiya...
The sheer thought of the stranger's name disturbs you for a peculiar reason, as if giving him a name would either erect a barrier between him and you or ultimately change the nature of your nebulous relationship. For a few hours, it had seemed perfectly natural to talk with him about his and your private life and to ponder the question of whether to kiss or not to kiss while ignoring the other aspects of his life you wouldn't ever want to be a part of: the press, the paparazzi, the reporters; the celebrity friends, the female admirers, and the obsessive fans, who would disclose any little detail from your past they can dig up to the public if they knew about you. Now that you've sobered up a bit, you remember you've hated publicity, parties, celebrity talks, and the whole narcissistic film business in general ever since Vermouth discovered the pseudo-marriage Gin and you tried out after Professor Tomoe burned down Infinity and gave up his prodigy project. No matter from what angle you look at it, getting romantically entangled with a person like dear stranger-san is not a very good idea to start with...
"I hope all your clothes can be tumble dried," he remarks while waiting for his brother to answer the call. "Your dress looked pretty flimsy to me. Shall I take it out and dry it on a hanger?"
"Actually, my dress shouldn't be tumble dried. But since I can't go home in your clothes, there is no other option."
"You could simply stay here," he suggests with a perfectly straight face. "I'll even pack your luggage for you if you move in with me."
"No, thanks," you respond with the same fake seriousness. "Your housekeeping skills still need further improvement. As we've just seen, I can't even trust you with a tumble dryer."
Since he is confident about his learning skills, he will interpret your "No" as a "Not yet", he declares before turning his attention to Yaten Kou's answering machine. Something unexpected has prevented him from returning to Two Lights', he says. But if they can hold on until the rehearsal instead of barging in on him during the next few hours, he is going to tell them everything in detail.
"The short version is that I've found the ideal woman to take care of my paperwork," he chuckles. "But even though I've been trying to seduce her all night, she is continually eluding me."
Irked by his apparent compulsion to share all the details of his love life with his family and friends, you're about to shoot him a withering glare when you realize that, before leaving the message, he has already ended the call.
"That's what you've been thinking, right?" he frankly asks. "That I've planned this all along."
"Your innocence is bordering on stupidity sometimes!"
"What have you been thinking then?" he asks in surprise. "Why did you flee from me all of a sudden?"
Did you really flee from him as he claims? Or were you only hyper-reflexive and paranoid as you always are whenever you're reminded of Pandora's Box and the downfall of the Organization?
"When things are going too well, I'm sure that it won't last," you tell him to your own surprise, stepping out of the bathroom into the corridor.
"It never lasts," he gravely agrees, stops, and knees down to fish for a pair of slippers under the bench next to the umbrella stand with the parasol. "Good moments always seem to pass much faster than bad moments do."
"It's interesting how you can promise a woman lasting commitment one moment and claim that love is ephemeral the next," you coolly remark.
No, that's not at all what he meant since he only said that good moments will always pass, not that one can't simply make new good memories with the same person, he protests, gazing up at you with an expression of disbelief. You surely have the most destructive mind. How did you manage to live for so many years with it?
"So many years? I'm twenty-three," you darkly point out. "Younger than you, actually."
"It doesn't matter since you sound like half a century—" he impertinently quips and winces in pain when you spontaneously kick him in the ribs.
"I think I can get used to that," he tells you after a moment of silent contemplation. Placing the shoes in front of you, he cheekily asks, "What about going on the balcony for a few minutes? Maybe I can cheer you up in another setting."
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"You know, I'm sure someday I'll be thoroughly sick of your childish pranks," you tell him later when you're standing on his balcony, letting your eyes roam over the part of Azabu Juuban where you live. Kudo must still be sleeping, as he would have noticed that your mobile phone is gone and would have given you a call if he had woken up. For a moment, you wonder whether you would be able to see him clearly if he were standing on your balcony.
"I know," the stranger agrees. "Taiki and Yaten are already thoroughly sick of them."
"I'm sure you will hate me with time as well. I'm controlling, destructive, and perfectionist to the core. I'm going to nag at you every day about the smallest things."
"All right," he replies with a smile, carelessly leaning against the wet balustrade. "I'm going to deal with it somehow."
"Due to my upbringing in the Organization, I also have a hidden violent streak," you continue with growing enjoyment. "I'm going to kick you, hit you, and rip your pretty earring off whenever I feel like it."
He beams.
"Since I'm a closet masochist, I'm looking forward to it."
"It seems thinking is not your forte, isn't it?"
"Nobody's perfect." He smirks. "No normal man with the sufficient amount of brain cells would let you abuse him as much as I will."
On the surface, neither of you is taking this half-hearted Some Like It Hot parody seriously. But to you, this moment feels like the turning point. Standing under the roof while the wind is blowing the fine rain past you so that it barely grazes your face before landing on the balustrade, you feel like laughing because all of your oh-so-sound objections to this beginning relationship suddenly seem forced and wholly immaterial. Perhaps the real problem stems from the fact that, for all your brazen behaviour, both of you are painfully shy and have been tiptoeing around each other like thirteen-year-olds during their very first date? The way you two met has also complicated things. If he and you hadn't befriended each other by talking about your respective love interests, there wouldn't have been any misunderstandings and awkwardness and you two would have kissed hours ago.
After showing you Juuban Highschool where he met Odango and her friends, your stranger/friend/almost-boyfriend proceeds to pointing out all the other places he, his siblings, and their friends had frequented after school.
"...There is Hikawa Shrine, where Rei-chan, a good friend of Odango, lived and where Odango and her friends always met up to study. There—you can't see it well from here because it's kind of inconspicuous—is the little flower shop where Kakyuu always bought her roses. She used to buy a bunch or two every week and dry them for her incense burner..."
By coincidence, Kakyuu's favourite flower shop is the same where the red-haired girl and her boyfriend bought her bouquet of roses, and you can't help but wonder for the nth time since the accident how she is doing. What actually happened to her and her boyfriend after they both recovered from the accident? Did they simply repeat their date as if nothing had happened? Or did she break up with him because she realized that he wasn't the harmless guy she had thought him to be?
You recall that, years ago, after waking up from another dream haunted by her, you had been lingering over the same thoughts. Next to you, Gin had been smoking, staring into the distance with something like petulance on his lips while clutching his mobile phone. From what you could hear, the Boss was expecting him to pay Pandora's Box a visit to justify his actions towards the blue-clad biker, who had only been supposed to receive a little warning and not a full-blown accident. Back then you thought that it took the Boss unnaturally long to reprimand Gin for what had happened. Apparently, Gin had managed to hush it up for over two months before his surrogate father got wind of the unfortunate affair...
"Why do you have to go to Pandora's Box?" you remember asking him. "Can't you all meet up in a normal conference room to talk it over?"
The meeting was scheduled at Pandora's Box for a symbolic reason, Gin had answered. After all, the files the traitor had stolen were a backup of Pandora's Box's top-secret files about the first days of the Organization's foundation. A normal member would have had their fingers and head cut off if they had done what the seventh crow did. But the other crows handed down such a ridiculously lenient sentence because they were all cowards when it came to "that person" and "the little rat" was unquestionably one of his favourites.
"Say, the accident... Did I cause it?"
"Ah, don't flatter yourself! Stop obsessing over her and forget it already!"
With a pang of conscience, you recall that you had often wondered whether your interference had only made it worse. In one of your worst nightmares, you found out that Gin had only intended to scare the red-haired girl to draw her boyfriend's attention to the fact that Gin could kill his girlfriend whenever he wanted to. Your haphazard and emotional reaction, which caused the car to skid and turn at a wider angle than expected, might have caused the accident instead of saving the girl's life—a hypothesis which would explain why Gin wasn't beside himself with rage as he certainly would have been if he had really been trying to kill them and you had hindered him.
To Gin's credit, he had always brushed off your question when you asked him to tell you the truth, claiming that he would naturally have killed her if it hadn't been for you. As much as his evasiveness irritated you, he certainly meant well when he tried to protect you from something you couldn't deal with. He had always complained that he didn't like how you were prone to empathize with outsiders, people like the red-haired girl, who, if the situation had been reversed, would certainly not have spared a thought for you.
Just idle speculation, you think to yourself. Challenged by unanswered questions, your ungovernable mind is groping for a solution no matter how preposterous and fanciful. Hence—to fight your unfounded anxiety by turning your attention to a matter of more serious concern—you ask the stranger in passing whether he belongs to "Tenoh-san's little group".
A delicate question asked in a perfectly indifferent voice. This, you congratulate yourself, is a sensible approach to a problem! Instead of abandoning yourself to the emotional chaos, you might as well conquer it by exchanging the role of the anxious ex-criminal for the role of the imperturbable detective. An undertaking which is more difficult than it seems, as falling in love and thinking clearly are sometimes mutually exclusive.
He has never belonged to any group other than Three Lights, the stranger replies after a second of hesitation. Even if he had wanted to risk his life to fight for a better world, Haruka-san would have been the last person whose orders he would have followed because she was (and still is) such an obnoxious, bossy person.
"I did help them out a few times, though," he admits. "Odango accidentally revealed so much about them to me that Haruka-san decided to turn her weakness into strength. Actually, she managed to talk me into financing her hare-brained schemes more than once. Haruka-san always knew how to turn a mistake to her advantage, and she never had any scruple to do so." With a shrug, he cheerfully adds, "Back then I was always broke. I don't know what I would have done without Taiki and Yaten."
Odango... The cute little blonde was someone you would never have expected to be part of Tenoh-san's group. Dulled by your peaceful life in the past three years, you've forgotten that the most dangerous agents were often the most harmless looking.
"It seems you have a dangerous taste," you remark. "And you yourself have financed private counter-terrorism. Is there anything else about you I should know?"
"Oh, I think you have a much more dangerous taste than me. And you can't seriously expect me to make a declaration against myself." He gives you an enigmatic smile and, indicating the azalea shrubs in the distance, inquires, "Was Pandora's Box really the only reason why Kudo left?"
"Yes." You frown, searching in your memory for the one truth, which always seems to change its shape whenever you think you've grasped it. "It seems pretty petty, doesn't it? But I can't even resent him for it since I ruined three years of work and got rid of the perfect tool he needed to sacrifice himself for humanity and justice."
"Keeping it would have been suicide," the stranger agrees. "Did he really plan to do that?"
"Of course he did. Kudo would never pass up the chance to save the world even at the cost of his own life. In that aspect, he is sadly predictable."
You can still remember clearly the moment Kudo told you he knew about Pandora's Box. It was on one of those days in late autumn when the wind grew chill and the scent of kinmokusei began to fade from the air. You had been walking next to each other in silence, strolling through the woods behind the Professor and the Detective Boys until he finally began to fill you in on what had been happening. An eccentric FBI agent—Mr Black's cousin, a fencing teacher of Franco-American origin, who was still more or less affiliated with the FBI despite leading a secluded life in France—had insider information on Pandora's Box he was going to disclose to Kudo if Kudo could prove his dedication and his skills during a meeting at Quai Montebello.
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"Quai Montebello... How are you supposed to go there without papers?"
Liar, you thought to yourself. In reality, you had already finished the permanent antidote months ago. Furthermore, you had only pretended to be surprised by the place of the meeting to cover the real reason for your astonishment when Kudo described the FBI agent...
"Just like last time when I went to London. You will give me a few of your temporary antidotes, won't you?"
"Doesn't it bother you that you're growing immune to it?"
"Not in the least!" Kudo grinned. "I'm positive that, in that case, you wouldn't give it to me."
"You mentioned Pandora's Box once," Kudo continued as you two slowed down, losing sight of the Professor and the Detective Boys in the more heavily vegetated part of the woods. "Why were you so terrified of it?"
The children had been busy inspecting various plants for a school project and were preoccupied with themselves, as you two had already finished the assignment and they—getting more independent with age—didn't want any help from you. Without them around, this moment was the ideal one for a heart-to-heart. However, although you had been struggling with this issue ever since Kudo and you met, you realized you weren't ready for this conversation.
"I was shocked that you would have been stupid enough to ask the police to investigate their headquarters. Since we need a plan before walking into the Boss' favourite refuge as if we were visiting a new fancy restaurant, I was against you informing the police about such a dangerous number."
Much to your surprise, he suddenly stopped and turned you around to face him. Even in his child form and with his nerdy glasses on his tiny nose, he managed to look serious, almost imposing.
Mr Jean Black—or Monsieur Jean Black—claimed that Pandora's Box wasn't really their headquarters, he said. It was a storage of files containing information like the names of the Organization's members, affiliated groups and institutions, the details of your parents' research, and the history of the Organization. Since the FBI and the CIA seemed to have been infiltrated by the Organization's moles, Kudo and Hattori had decided to ask Kaitou Kid for help to secure Pandora's Box on their own.
"Since it's dangerous, I don't expect you to come with us. But if you tell me everything you know about it, it will make things much easier."
Naturally, you could simply have given him the key and wash your hands of it. But it dawned on you that there was another choice you had failed to consider. Since the odds were against two Jean Blacks of Franco-American origin being both fencing teachers living in Paris, you deduced M Jean Black must be the same man you had seen with Tenoh-san once. And rapidly going through the pros and cons of having an ally of Tenoh-san's calibre who wasn't particularly averse to resorting to radical measures whenever it suited her purpose, you agreed to assist Kudo, his Osakan friend, and the phantom thief on one condition...
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