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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Sunsets in Paris…
Sunsets in Paris start earlier and end later than sunsets in Tokyo, you observe, letting your gaze follow the last rays of sunlight as they fade from the horizon. Standing on the terrace of M Jean Black's house, listening to the muffled music inside, you take time to behold the Seine and Notre Dame at night. Countless lamps are shimmering in the mauve darkness and in the moving water, engulfing the ancient buildings and trees in a mantle of light. Just as you're preparing for Pandora's Box and the downfall of the Organization, Paris is preparing for Christmas. Strings of lights cover the old city at twilight like gold-threaded silk and velvet envelop an aged courtesan. Like an erstwhile femme fatale who is now long past her prime, Paris reveals its former beauty only during twilight and at night, when the signs of deterioration are well camouflaged by darkness and artificial lights.
For the first time since your arrival in Paris, you're struck by the realization that you are "holidaying with Kudo" in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The occasion is precious and, once gone, will never return. Pleasantly sated after M Jean Black's fantastic welcome dinner (you love French cuisine!) and tired of the ceaseless pondering and reasoning of the past weeks, you allow yourself to fall into a reverie about how things could have been if Kudo and you had met by accident—preferably in a city like Paris or Venice—as holidaying strangers who were still unattached…
The attraction would have been mutual and instantaneous, more intellectual and platonic than what you felt for Gin but just as strong. It wouldn't have taken the holiday romance long to mature into enduring love. Even though you two challenge each other too much to become one of those perfect couples that never quarrel and always finish each other's sentences, a relationship between Kudo and you would have lasted!
Foolish delusions are dangerous once they've taken over one's mind, so you effectively nip it in the bud before the infatuation can take hold of you again. Something similar has happened before and ended badly, leading to betrayal and death. No love is worth the ultimate sacrifice, as you know from experience.
On the river bank, a lone figure is standing, smoking a cigarette. The dark man with long hair, whose face you cannot see, is probably waiting for a friend or lover. He reminds you of Rye, who was once waiting under the window of your hotel room in another winter night—before Gin's jealousy fueled his suspicions and Rye's cover was blown.
What are you taking me for, Sherry? I wasn't born yesterday… I've seen how you looked at him!
A third-rate FBI agent (Andre Camel, as you later learned) had mistaken one of Gin's informants for a bystander while preparing for Gin's arrest, Gin told you when he returned from his first real "rendezvous" with Rye (which, bungled by human stupidity and Gin's intuition, never took place). As you feared, Rye disappeared from your lives afterwards. He came back years later under another cover to protect you, partly out of affection, partly out of guilt. Initially, you feared that the old infatuation would be reignited. But in the end, the only thought of him is enough to remind you of Akemi-nee-san's death—and whatever you once felt for him is now buried so deep under the remains of your past that you can barely remember it.
"Your Blue Lagoon!" Kudo announces, pressing the cold glass against your cheek with a smile.
The drink in his hand is a deeper shade of blue than the cocktail you drank at Tenoh-san's place, and one sip makes you realize that you've forgotten to tell him to fetch the non-alcoholic version.
"I usually drink the mocktail version of this." You take the glass from him and button up your coat with your free hand. "But since tonight is a special night, I might as well make this an exception."
When you let your gaze roam over the river bank again, the dark stranger has disappeared—as though he had been only a figment of your imagination.
You've given up drinking because you were sometimes hideously drunk when you were working for the Organization, you tell Kudo on a whim. Tonight, you're in the mood to shock him.
"How do you behave when you're drunk?" Kudo asks, leaning against the balustrade. He seems in a great mood tonight, delirious with joy and anticipation. He has shaken off the Organization's spies, passed M Jean Black's test with flying colours, and been accepted into the group of individuals who knew about Pandora's Box: the surviving victims of the Organization, whose lovers, spouses, children, or friends had been ruined or killed. All of them dreamers, who don't work for the government but only for their personal revenge or for their ideals. Pitiful optimists, who have dedicated their whole lives to the goal of making the truth available to the public and bringing the Organization down.
"I tell the absolute truth," you shrug, stirring your drink, "and I kiss everything and everyone in my vicinity."
He colours and stares, fixing his wide eyes on your lips with a look of pure horror.
"Just kidding," you yawn. "It's a tired trope in romance live actions, you see. Just make the heroine smooch the hero or vice versa while they're drunk, and you get the premature, awkward kiddie's kiss that makes the audience swoon."
"A drunken kiss wouldn't appeal to me," he contemplates. "Actually, I'm sure I'd be repulsed by it."
You grimace in distaste, as his words have conjured up Gin's drunken kisses, which Sherry—for a reason you can no longer understand!—didn't mind and even enjoyed in the first months of their relationship.
"So when will the wedding be?" you ask to change the topic.
"Whose wedding?"
"Your wedding, who else's? Haven't you already made plans for it now that you're in your original body again?"
"Heaven forbid!" He opens the first button of his coat and then quickly, impulsively, steals a sip from your straw. "Not at this age! I can't even think of marrying anyone."
But he fears Ran would be happy about a proposal, he admits with an expression of intense pain. He learned about it when he overheard a phone call between Ran and her mother and heard about it again from Sonoko, who can't ever watch her tongue and who thought she had done her best friend a favour by urging Kudo to surprise his girlfriend with a romantic proposal (restaurant, candles, flowers, diamond ring, and all that jazz) on Christmas or New Year at the latest.
"Good luck then!" You knock back your drink. "Christmas is too early but New Year seems a good date. I abhor weddings in general, though. Don't expect me to come!"
As though you had finally removed the lid from a magical jar, Kudo suddenly unleashes a torrent of complaints about Sonoko's pushiness, his mother's unwanted and inappropriate interest in his love life, and all the dramatic differences between Ran and him, which they can't overcome. You calmly listen to his passionate rant and the muted chanson in the background while the first snow flakes are falling silently on the twilit world, reminding you of the night Gin and you met for the first time since you left the Organization.
You know that Kudo is talking nonstop to avoid the one problem you two had better address—the Gordian knot neither of you can bear to cut through. In retaliation for mocking it, Paris sneakily weaved its famous charm on you on the second day, when you were combing Quai Montebello for Monsieur Jean Black. While Kudo and you were walking along the quai hand in hand, the water glistened, the sun painted translucent rainbows on the sky, the few birds that hadn't flown south sang, his faint aftershave miraculously managed to hide the smell of the trash nearby, and even the smog abetted the city's plan to take revenge on you by taking on the appearance of a mysterious mist or a swirling fog, clouding your judgement when you were still intoxicated by the radical hormonal changes after taking the antidote…
Hattori, impetuous and frank, was the first to comment on the fact. The disguise of you two—he indicated your intertwined fingers—had become much too real, much too convincing. An old fairy tale should have taught you that you should "be bold but not too bold, lest that your heart's blood should run cold", he cryptically remarked in jest, patting Kudo on the shoulder and giving you a reproachful glance, for curiosity killed the cat and it was usually better to be content, to stick with what you already had.
But French couples are really much more touchy-feely than Japanese couples, Kudo vehemently protested in a wretched attempt to defend himself, although he grudgingly let go of your hand and kept his distance for the rest of the search. Nevertheless, infatuation always has an obsessive, compulsive side to it, and you two ended up holding hands again only minutes afterwards, when he spotted M Jean Black in the distance and Hattori's words were forgotten.
Monsieur Jean Black, a tall, aquiline man with Tenoh-san's teal eyes and fine mouth (who resembles an older, more stylish, shorter-haired version of Rye in a blue fedora), was just as frank as Hattori but less obscure.
I was sorry I could only send you the passports of a married couple since no one else fitted your descriptions. He gave you a firm, cordial handshake while his serious face creased into a genuine smile. But as everyone can see, you two are already so much in love that you don't have to pretend at all.
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"I really don't want to backstab her or belittle what we have," Kudo asserts. "She is the greatest girl I've ever met—the only one I can imagine being with! I only feel like marrying her would be a horrible mistake. Maybe it's just too early for me to think of marriage…"
Then he desperately tries to be a good boyfriend to Ran by listing all her positive traits, by conjuring up her presence and bringing her to Paris to plant her between him and you on this terrace, whose atmosphere has become too intimate for his liking.
"Marry her or don't marry her—I really don't care," you put a stop to his effusive praises. "Personally, I think you will do it some day if you live long enough. But you should pause for an instant to ask yourself whether you really want to open Pandora's Box."
Although you know you might as well repeatedly bang your head against a brick wall in the hope that it will listen to your words, you continue just for the sake of expressing your opinion: He is playing with fire, planning to steal files which not only the Organization and several intelligence services and terrorist groups want but also a staggeringly large amount of extremely powerful and influential political leaders need. Once his name has been connected to Pandora's Box, there is no turning back. They're going to find him and shut him up if he is not extremely careful.
"Do you know why there are so many agents motards among the guests?" he gravely asks with a sidelong glance at the hall.
You look up at him, resigned. Inside, they are now playing "Charade", Tenoh-san's mother's favourite song.
"I know."
You've overheard snippets of his talks with M Jean Black while trying to give your whole attention to the elderly man next to you, whose daughter has been murdered by the seven crows just because she had a short-lived affair with a secretary of them and accidentally read important mails (which she mistook for romantic messages from a rival) when he was sleeping.
"The seven crows and several high-ranking codename members once received special motorcycle training from former members of the national police," Kudo tells you nonetheless. "When that information was leaked, all of the people who knew about the identities of the crows were killed. Good friends and colleagues of those agents—among them people who didn't even know anything!—either died in an 'accident' or have been convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Many of them are still in jail, serving a life sentence. Jean Black knows about the affair because his wife was the youngest of the first-generation crows. She tried to leave the Organization and was murdered after their wedding."
Kudo didn't ask for details since he could see that the wound has never healed. But he will find the truth in Pandora's Box, along with all the evidence needed to free the people who are still in jail. There are many other cases like the agents motards—thousands of victims Pandora's Box can save. There are so many mysteries Pandora's Box will solve, so many murderers it will convict! Apart from that, the families of the dead cannot move on at the moment. But once a satisfying closure has been reached, many damaged people will heal.
"The odds are also many thousands to one that you will be assassinated after the first successful trial," you point out. He couldn't seriously expect that all the people whom he exposes with the evidence in Pandora's Box will sit back and enjoy watching him ruin their and their families' future. "I hope you're aware that the thousands of lives you save will be exchanged for yours. What would Ran say if she knew about it? Aren't you hurting her as well?"
"No, Ran would understand," he gently smiles (at a remembrance?)—and you can feel acutely that, although you are the one he wants at the moment, you are losing him to her. "She knows me. She would simply accept that it's impossible for me not to help them."
You let go of your glass, which he catches in midair while he distractedly adds, "I really wish you could accept it as well."
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