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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If I…
"If I hadn't betrayed you back then, you'd be dead by now."
A different answer to the same accusation he threw at me three years ago. Or was it the same answer only in other words? For a split second, time seems to have stopped as I'm catapulted back to Pandora's Box. I can feel the wind changing as the masses of black clouds are scudding towards the ship, obscuring the stars above like a funeral veil. The scene has been indelibly imprinted on my mind as if it was an intriguing pattern Kaioh-san has expertly engraved on an intaglio plate. But while the sensations have all been preserved intact, the emotions which once choked me are gone.
I can watch the whole episode as if I were watching a movie, with the same amount of emotional involvement and distance. While it's possible for me to care about two people at once, it's impossible for me to equally distribute my capacity of suffering to both of them. Now that my broken relationship with Seiya has left me with the feeling of being run over by Tenoh-san's Ferrari and then by Gin's Porsche hard on Tenoh-san's heels and then by Tenoh-san's car again, it has become impossible for me to agonize over Pandora's Box or Kudo's imminent departure as much as I'm mourning my recent loss. Therefore I'm watching almost curiously the young woman, who is now leaning over the ship's rail—how she frantically tries to rip open the lid of the box, whose mechanism has been (pathetically!) rendered useless by the locket pendant stuck in the damned container…
If only she hadn't been so fatuously sentimental and had simply sacrificed the replaceable piece of jewellery in time before he arrived, the movie would have ended differently. And in an alternative timeline—in a remake, spin-off, fan work—they might be lunching together in another restaurant (probably that smart restaurant where he intended to propose to Ran), bickering over who should do the laundry and who should do the washing-up (not the cooking, which she always does since he can't cook without poisoning her).
Finally—much too late, as he has already stepped on the deck—she decides to separate the necklace from the pendant even though she still hesitates to throw it away.
What are you doing? he asks. And at the remembrance of those four innocuous words which preceded the break between us, my wall of detachment crumbles, Pandora's Box slips out of my hands, and the present—represented by the once steaming and now cold fish and soup on the table—seems to fade away, making way for the unrelenting past…
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"What are you doing?" asks Kudo's inquiring voice.
Startled by his appearance and another jerky movement of the ship, you let go of both the necklace and the deactivated Pandora's Box, which is now only a harmless little laptop after all the files on its hard drive are gone.
The answer to his own question dawns on Kudo only a second after the box slipped out of your hands. And he instantly rushes to your side to stare into the waves, bending over as if he seriously considers throwing himself over the rail.
"It's no use jumping after it unless you're itching for a nocturnal swim. I've erased all the data and reformatted the disk."
It's elementary, really. Your plan would have been perfect if you had been less sentimental and more determined. No sooner had you touched the blinking Delete button than Pandora's Box erased the files, disconnected itself from the Organization's cloud, and reformatted the disk without any complications. When you rose from the floor and noticed that your locket pendant was stuck between the laptop and the box covering it, you weren't alarmed by the small inconvenience even though you knew you would have to take off the necklace to get it out. In a run of bad luck, the blasted lid of the box snapped shut when you kneeled down to remove the chain from your neck. Freeing the pendant from the box seemed a sheer impossible task. And since you could already hear Kudo's eager steps, you didn't have time to continue trying.
Since Kudo had been going through the piles of papers in the cabin—all of them disposable rubbish just like the files in the main computer—and Hattori had been patrolling the decks, you had decided to use the moment they switched (the short timespan when Hattori left the deck and Kudo walked down to the galley where you were crouching) to rush to the ship's rail unnoticed so that you could get rid of the real Pandora's Box without being seen. If you hadn't clung to the necklace, Kudo might never have found out; and you had to stifle the hysterical laughter stuck in your throat when the thought hit you that, if only he had arrived a few seconds later, he would be repeating his impromptu proposal on the phone to you now instead of staring at you in detached abstraction.
"What have you done?" he only asks, staring at you as if he had just discovered that you're a perfect stranger to him.
"Decluttering." You smirk, helpless at the sight of his incredulous gaze and his white knuckles against the black rail. "Now that the Organization is down and we have all the files on the codename members as you wanted, there is no need to open Pandora's Box anymore. You can let go of it now and return to your Ran-nee-chan as planned. Aren't you thankful that I've just rescued you from a lifelong mission?"
He freezes for an instant and then turns away from you to gaze into the waves, lost in thought until he faces you with the silent and unwavering resolution you could observe during all of his cases before he delivers his final blow.
"This," he points his accusing index finger at the waves, "was the chance of a lifetime!" He scrutinizes your face, eerily calm and smouldering with fury until he proceeds in a voice as cold as his glacier-blue eyes. "You've just destroyed it. Why?"
"Security." You give him a flippant smile. "Security and peace! It doesn't matter much to you, with your over-developed sense of justice—but it matters to me. It would never have stopped if we had continued this."
"We were a team, dammit!" he snaps. "You should have told me all about this beforehand. We could have backed up all the files without anyone knowing."
"We couldn't. All of our particulars have been sent to the cloud the moment we opened the door to Pandora's Box." You pause, shivering at the memory of Gin's smile, which is still haunting you. "Or do you really believe that we could have got past the Night Baron and hacked into the account of admin?"
He would have found a way to deal with it if only you had told him about it in advance, he insists. "We had so much help from everyone, Hakuba, Kaitou Kid, M Jean Black, the FBI and the CIA, even from people inside the Organization."
"The CIA and the FBI!" You give a dry laugh. "You mean we three had to sneak to Pandora's Box in the middle of the night, hide our location from the FBI, distract our enemies and allies alike with the help of the British detective and Kaitou Kid, steal the most important files, and let this ship explode before informing our trusted allies because we know we can depend on them?"
"Have you read the files before deleting them?" Kudo asks, alarmed. Perhaps he has realized the gravity of the situation at last.
"No, I'm not that tired of living. I've only erased the data during the countdown. You can rest assured that it's over now."
For a while, he is quiet again, watching you wordlessly while the wind picks up and lashes the falling rain against your faces. Lightning flashes in the sky, followed by a crash of thunder announcing an approaching storm.
"I knew there must be another Pandora's Box apart from the cabin. But I didn't expect that you were the one who hid it from me."
As a matter of course, he has noticed that the files in the main computer seemed oddly incomplete: as if someone had filtered out the most important information and hidden it somewhere. The files on you, for example, contained your education at Infinity, your grades, your status as a leading researcher, and even your long-time relationship with Gin but neglected to mention APTX and your parents' research. Moreover, all of the Organization's victims and affiliates (small firm bosses, lawyers, hit men, local drug traffickers and weapon dealers) seemed rather insignificant compared to what he would have expected from a syndicate with such ambitious goals as eternity. And even though he could find the files on all codename members in the captain's cabin, the files on the most important members like Vermouth and Gin appeared to him rather sketchy at best. He was sure that there must be another Pandora's Box on the ship but didn't tell you about it because he didn't want you to worry.
"The real Pandora's Box… So many lives have been sacrificed for it," he coolly reflects. "Three generations of ceaseless fighting! And you simply threw it away like that. I can't make out what's been going on in your head."
"It's ironic, isn't it?" you raise your voice, as the sound of the storm looming on the horizon has begun to drown your conversation. "So many people have died for something a little traitor like me could delete in a few seconds. And I only got the key because Gin was drunk and in love. Three generations' worth of work destroyed by a bottle of sherry and a few nasty hormones! Thinking about it, I almost feel like laughing."
Contrary to your words, laughing is the last thing you want to do despite the smirk pasted on your lips. Gin once loved you and you might have loved him. But things must have gone awry at some point although you can't pinpoint the moment it happened. Before Akemi-nee-san's death, before the handcuffs and the cigarette butts, even before the complaints, accusations, and jealousy, something must have happened which drove a wedge between Gin and Sherry.
"Why did you do it?" Kudo asks again.
"To keep you safe," you could have said, but it seemed horribly wrong to say it at this moment.
"I wanted this to stop since I don't believe that three people can fight against the world and win. You're mad at me because now you're never going to find out the truth. But is the truth really worth it if it's unpalatable? A lot of people are going to celebrate their freedom tonight after receiving the message that Pandora's Box has ceased to exist. Just think of the ones who were born into circumstances which forced them to live as sharks and not dolphins—people who can finally live in peace and start anew. Justice isn't such a grand thing for the people whose lives will be ruined by it. I suppose I did it for all the people who aren't heroes. People who are more like me and less like you."
Strangely enough, your thoughts are drifting to the red-headed girl you haven't seen for years, to her and the seventh crow, who is just as much of a loyal member as you. What is he thinking now that he has finally gained his freedom five years after he attempted to steal a back-up? He might be jumping on his monster of a motorbike at this moment, racing through the dimly lit streets to break the wonderful news to her.
What about the victims? Kudo's sharp voice cuts through the sounds of the sea and the rain. People like your sister?
He hasn't brought up her name in years, and you're surprised to discover that he is still thinking of her.
"Let the dead rest in peace! Life is for the living, isn't it?"
Realizing that you've said something inexcusably banal and seeing the anger rising in his eyes, you admit in an attempt to defuse the crisis, "I know I wasn't fair to the victims."
What is "fair", after all? Akemi-nee-san, who had never deliberately inflicted pain on others, bled to death while Gin, who had killed more people than he could remember, died while you—out of nostalgia, pity, remorse?—were holding his hand. But has life ever been fair? What did six-year-old Gin do to deserve the childhood he had? A past so unbearably cruel that it turned a normal child into Anokata's most loyal crow?
"Life is never fair," you continue since Kudo doesn't bother to say anything in reply. "In life, security is what matters in the end." Managing an ironic smile, you add in a parody of an old gender stereotype, "Just try to look at it from the standpoint of a woman."
"Security?" he only echoes, missing the joke completely or choosing to ignore it—you will never know. "I'm a detective, dammit! If I'd wanted security, I'd have chosen another occupation to begin with!"
"Well, then try to look at it from the standpoint of a criminal like me," you suggest, "although that's probably even more of a challenge for someone as pure and principled as you."
Criminals like you? His lips tremble into a smile before he suddenly bursts into laughter, bitter and dry, a sound unfamiliar to your ears. "How on earth did you get the idea that other criminals are like you? I know so many corrupt judges who can kill legally during the day and sleep well at night, sick psychopaths who will torture their victims over and over again until they die, serial killers who wouldn't even stop at toddlers and elderly people—and I really don't care that the culprits might be mentally disturbed and can't control themselves. Why should I?"
You've seen him angry more than once. But never has he been so beside himself as he is now. Just as he didn't know what Pandora's Box meant to you, you didn't expect that he would crack under the disappointment like this. You knew that he wanted Pandora's Box so much that he would never have been able to resist, but you couldn't imagine that it was so important to him that he would go to pieces after losing it.
"I want all of them locked up in jail or in a mental institution so that people like you, the Professor, and the Detective Boys can live in peace!" He slams his fist on the rail. "What's so hard to understand about this?"
You shrink inwardly from the undisguised loathing in his voice, all the while remembering how it sounded on the phone only a few minutes ago.
"How come you didn't think of all the innocent people we could have saved? All the scapegoats who have been wrongly convicted of crimes they didn't commit because the Organization faked the evidence, bribed the judges, and silenced the witnesses. What about the family members and friends of the victims whose murderers have never been found, whose lives will never be the same again? And all the victims whose lives have been ruined? What about them?"
The anger in his eyes slowly die down, displaced by an expression you've never seen before. For years, his eyes have fascinated you with their extraordinary brilliance and intensity—and you can't remember seeing them so desolated and empty, the expression of someone who has been betrayed by the person they loved.
"I trusted you!" He grabs you by your arms, pinning you against the rail. This time, his voice sounds slightly different, and you suspect that he is crying even though you can't see much in your present mental state. The moistness might as well be the rain.
"After deleting the files on you, I thought that it was over, that we could finally be partners, you and me. I had been looking forward to all the cases we could solve together. I trusted you blindly. But you know what? I've realized that it was a case of blind love, and an unrequited one on top of that. You've never taken it seriously right from the start!"
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I can't remember what happened directly afterwards. All the things he flung at me in his rage can be condensed into a few sentences—none of which were more hurtful than what he had already said before. The next thing I can remember is the laughable freak accident. In retrospect, it was a miracle that he hadn't gone overboard as well even though we were idiotic enough to fight on the deck during the storm.
You and I, we two don't match. We have so different values that we might as well belong to different galaxies. I wish we had never met!
Drama always seems redundant and ridiculous on reflection—but while it unfolds, it feels like an unstoppable natural force. He tightened his grab at me—or rather at her since this memory has become impersonal as it retreated into the past—hurting her so much that she winced in pain. Finally registering that he was digging his nails into her injury, he quickly let go of her arms. A sudden movement of the ship threw her off balance. Out of reflex, he caught her, holding her for a moment. But directly afterwards, he shuddered and pushed her away as if he had been burned.
Simultaneously, an enormous wave threatened to overturn the ship, and she felt the floor slipping away from her feet while a second wave washed her against the ship's rail. Another wave transported her almost gently overboard until she felt the air beneath her and became aware that she was going to die in less than a minute. Instinctively, she grabbed at the rope in front of her, but her wound ached from the jerky movement and she unthinkingly let go.
"Hold on, Haibara," called Kudo's voice in the distance. And then again—this time more an anguished cry than a command: "Hold on, Ai!"
Why did he choose this moment to call her "Ai", she wondered in detached amusement before she hit the wall of water and sank into the numbing darkness, which enveloped her like a block of ice.
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