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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When memories are…
When memories are too painful to be relived, it's best to delay the soul-searching until you can't delay it any longer. Once again, I shrink in horror from the moment when all the reasons why I can't ever be happy with my stranger materialized from the mist of blissful ignorance and haunted me like the vengeful snake-haired Furies or Erynyes with bloodshot eyes—the embodied self-cursing born from blood and pain. Safe in my conviction that I had been punished enough for the poisons I created, I had forgotten that Greek Gods are just as flawed and unreasonable as humans and that you have to pay them back with interest if they grant you a favour.
Since time is running out (Shizuka-san is going to give him a call when she is done with packing), he won't bore me with all the medical explanations and will only inform me about what Kakyuu would have had to endure in life if she had survived—says stranger-san, who is now standing at the low railing in front of the pond, resting a foot on it like he did during our first real encounter. He reminds me more of a celebrity husband who is about to go abroad to work on the set of a new movie than of an ex-boyfriend who is about to pack and leave—a thought which consoles me enough to help me focus on the story he is telling me.
It wasn't the usual heart-warming, award-winning, ticket-selling story of a stunningly beautiful young redhead in a wheelchair, who would eventually learn to walk again with the power of love. Kakyuu wouldn't only have been unable to perform the most basic acts of living like eating or going to the loo for the rest of her life—she would also have spent every waking moment in terror because she would have lost most of her spatial orientation.
She wouldn't have been able to write and read; she wouldn't have known how to open doors because she wouldn't have figured out how to handle a doorknob; she would have felt dizzy in her armchair or in her bed even if she hadn't been moving at all. She would have suffered from sudden seizures in which she could have bitten off her tongue. Since her hippocampus was damaged beyond repair but not damaged enough to spare her the pain, she would have been stuck in her past memories—almost unable to create new ones—but her pain and fears and nightmares would have been so horrible that she wouldn't have been able to survive without being on drugs for twenty-hours a day. Like most patients who suffered from the same condition, she would have tried to kill herself but wouldn't have succeeded because she wouldn't have known how to do it even if she had had the tools.
Since this was certainly not what Kakyuu would have defined as living and murdering Kakyuu after she had already woken up from her coma was too gruesome a task, Three Lights decided to end Kakyuu's suffering by tempering with the alarm system and deactivating the life support machine when they learned that she was "recovering". It was child's play for a hacker like Taiki to deactivate the alarm, but when it came to the question of who should pull the plug of the life support machine, it became clear that none of the three brothers were eager to do the deed, which was why they decided to draw lots.
"And you tricked your two brothers so that the task of pulling the plug would fall on you?" Although it hasn't escaped me what a great team Three Lights makes, I've also noticed that Seiya is their driving force and likely the one who has to pull the chestnuts out of fire.
"How did you deduce that?" His amazement at my lucky guess is most flattering; and since I've learned from Sherlock Holmes' mistakes that a magician should never reveal his or her tricks, I only flash my stranger an enigmatic smirk.
"Because I'm Sherry Holmes—and because I've learned to read your mind just like you're reading mine."
"One day, we two will have mastered our mind-reading skills so that we can skip all the talking."
He gives me a little wink, which reminds me of the one he gave me when we talked about Stinger and Infinity, whereupon we both fall silent to smile at each other. A green flash, like the one that usually occurs when the sun dips below the horizon, momentarily alters the colour of the world around us—and it wouldn't have surprised me if the sun, which has fully disappeared behind the horizon by now, had chosen this moment to rise again. I could have told my stranger that I would always enjoy listening to the sound of his voice even if he were blabbering nonsense—but I refrain from telling him, as he would have deduced that I was getting meaner and meaner towards him just because my feelings for him have deepened with time.
Taiki and Yaten would never have been able to live with their guilt after deactivating Kakyuu's life support system—Seiya soberly remarks—which was why he had to do it for them. The plan was deceptively simple. Three Lights were going to visit Kakyuu for the last time and do all the things they always did as a way of bidding adieu to the girl they loved. Afterwards, Taiki-san was going to manipulate the alarm system, and Seiya, the last foster brother to visit Kakyuu, was going to pull the plug. Seiya was also going to inform Mizuno-san about the mercy killing so that no one else would be suspected and let Mizuno-san, who was intelligent enough to be jury and judge, decide what to do with her knowledge.
"She would have had to share her knowledge with the investigators," I remark.
He didn't fear detection, my stranger asserts. If Kakyuu had survived, she would have suffered for the rest of her life. Apart from a few years of imprisonment or hard labour, nothing could really happen to Seiya, who was convinced that he would have hijacked the prison just as he had hijacked the "family business" his parents had left. The sentence would have been more lenient than what he could receive for leading an organization that plotted to overthrow the government—which was actually considered treason and could earn him a flatteringly harsh punishment like the death penalty.
Overcome with grief and the horror of the situation when the date of Kakyuu's death drew near, Seiya sought solace in his drums, which he tortured so often that the landlord of the studio thought he was going to perform again. After bidding farewell to Kakyuu with a pot of cyclamen, the flowers of true love, sorrowful resignation, and death, Seiya ran in and out of the hospital for a few times because he tried hard to pull the plug but couldn't do it.
On the sterile hospital bed, surrounded by tubes and cables, Kakyuu must have looked like a modern incarnation of Sleeping Beauty with the difference that she wouldn't have been woken up by a kiss even if Seiya had tried. Although my stranger knew that it was ridiculous to expect that his princess would recover, he clung to the tiny flicker of hope that she wouldn't suffer as much as the specialists had predicted. It was impossible for him to end her life when she didn't even look like she was suffering.
"I thought that even the best specialists could make mistakes although I had already consulted ten specialists or more."
Unable to pull the plug but also unable to stay away, Seiya went for a walk before returning to the hospital for a last time to ask Mizuno-san again how the chances for Kakyuu's mental recovery were, whereupon he received the same answer as always. If she woke up, Kakyuu would probably survive but stay permanently impaired for life since all the most important parts of her cerebral cortex and especially her hippocampus had been damaged beyond repair. An arm or a leg could be replaced but not a brain, and the greatest tragedy of the situation was that Kakyuu wouldn't only be an empty shell of her former self. Kakyuu would have possessed most of the memories of the girl she once was without having the capacity to become that girl again.
"I returned to Kakyuu to deactivate the life support system because it was the most sensible thing I could do for her—but it was like a spell I couldn't break! Kakyuu was pale but looked so peaceful, as if she was only fast asleep; and I simply couldn't pull the plug although this damn 'Beep, beep, beep' of the life support machine was driving me insane!"
"What did you say? The 'beep'…"
"The beeping sound of the equipment! You know these annoyingly high sounds, which the washing machine also makes? I'd rather die than endure the racket as a patient in intensive care! Taiki had deactivated the loud alarm which would have gone off when the life support system was disabled, but of course we couldn't have tempered with the life support system without risking detection before I could pull the plug. And this nasty 'beep, beep, beep'—" he taps the steady rhythm of the beeping sound, which I can hear faintly but clearly in my inner ear, on the back of his hand before he grabs his head in pain at the memory, "—was unbearable!"
Deep, faraway voices and shuffles accompany the beeping sound in my ear, but since I'm not particularly interested in hospital sounds, I blend them out to focus on the beautiful voice of the beautiful man in front of me.
"I had already removed all the fingerprints on the life support machine so that no one else would be suspected, but I still couldn't pull the plug. Meanwhile, the beeping sound had become so maddening that I didn't want to stay there any longer. Hence I did what I always did when I was saddled with a task I didn't really want to do…"
"You threw a coin?"
"No, I delayed."
"Ah, you procrastinator, you!"
He grins and tilts his head to blow me a kiss before his eyes light up at the remembrance.
"I told myself that if I couldn't do it—maybe I shouldn't do it! It was better to delay it than to make a hasty decision."
Thus Seiya went home and collapsed into bed to sleep on it. He didn't even talk with anyone so as not to let others influence his decision.
It was already evening when Seiya was woken up by the obstinate ringing of his phone. Taiki-san was calling Seiya to say that Kakyuu's death had been discovered and that Kudo Shinichi must be on the way to Seiya's apartment. Seiya shouldn't say anything without their lawyer, whom Shizuka-san had already ordered to come, and since the police hadn't received the permission to search the apartment yet, Seiya should play dead until the lawyer arrived. Seiya told Taiki-san that he didn't deactivate the life support system, which left Three Lights with a mystery of who the real culprit was since Taiki-san and Yaten-san, who were at the library and the hairdresser's, couldn't have pulled the plug either.
"But you said that you were the one who deactivated Kakyuu's life support system!" I exclaim, scowling in indignation at the realization that my stranger must have deceived me by pretending to be the culprit despite being innocent.
"Did I?" He smirks, shooting me a mocking, teasing glance, for which I could kick him. "No, I didn't! I only said it would be better for us if you didn't have such a high opinion of me when you claimed I couldn't kill anything but ants. You should see me with cockroaches—to my enemies and pests like cockroaches, I can be a cold-blooded, merciless mass murderer!"
He would have pulled the plug to Kakyuu's life support system sooner or later, Seiya asserts, as he still considers his hesitation a weakness. If Kakyuu had woken up, he would certainly have been the one who ended her suffering. As things were, Seiya was only bewildered by the news and devastated by Kakyuu's sudden death, which he, unlike Taiki and Yaten, wasn't prepared for since he had expected to see her again after delaying his decision to pull the plug.
"After Taiki's phone call I got up, showered, and sat down at the desk to ponder what to do with myself now that Kakyuu was gone. It shouldn't make a difference to me since she had been in a coma for so long, but somehow it did. I was struggling with the realization that she was no longer alive—that we would have to bury her or cremate her and that I would never see her again." His face clouds over with deep, overwhelming sorrow before he knits his brows and his blue eyes assume the colour of ice. "That's what I was doing when your detective came."
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"I was oddly relieved when Kudo turned up on the doorstep: finally there was someone I could talk to—a famous detective who would help me solve the mystery of Kakyuu's death! Of course I've heard of Kudo Shinichi before—who hasn't? I didn't resent Kudo for 'bringing down the Black Organization'—it wasn't his fault that we happened to be on opposite sides of the fight. Since he was a great opponent, I expected him to be a great ally. I was glad that there was another human being in my apartment because I didn't want to be alone but also didn't want to deal with Taiki's and Yaten's grief when I already had enough on my plate."
After ushering Kudo into the living room, stranger-san offered Kudo a drink, which Kudo declined with the comment that he disliked alcohol and preferred tea. Hence Seiya made tea for both of them (bourbon vanilla and peach, said my stranger when I asked him what flavour he chose) and asked Kudo to make himself comfortable in the armchair or on the sofa, which Kudo declined as well.
"He preferred to stand since he could study his surroundings better that way—so Kudo told me—and he seldom sat down at a suspect's place because he had to react swiftly if he was attacked. Weird guy—I thought—but since everyone had their pet quirks, I just accepted it and we began to talk about Kakyuu."
On the spur of the moment, my stranger and fairy godfather turns away from me and, closing his eyes, snaps his fingers twice before spoiling me with the most amazing transformation I've ever witnessed. When he whirls around to shoot me a cool, analytical, dissecting gaze, I can swear that Kudo is standing here, as I will always recognize my dearest guinea pig's presence after having studied him for so long.
"'Since I'm in a hurry, I'm going to keep this short!'" Seiya declares in Kudo's voice, imitating Kudo's pronunciation, manner of articulation, melody of speech, and gestures from memory so well that he might as well be Kudo. "First, only you and your foster brothers had a motive to pull the plug to Kakyuu-san's life support system—caring for a severely impaired person is a great challenge, and sometimes the relatives of the comatose patients who won't fully recover upon waking up from their coma want to spare their loved ones a life in dependency. But since Mizuno-san entered Kakyuu-san's room during one of your visits and we can safely assume that Mizuno-san would have noticed if Kakyuu-san had already been dead at that time, I deduce that neither of your brothers were in the hospital when Kakyuu-san died: both of them have an alibi while you were the only one on the crime scene!"
Stranger-san pauses for effect, darts me a Kudo-Shinichi-smirk, and then paces up and down again to continue his denouement.
"Second, since Kakyuu-san was still alive when you visited her, you're the only person who could have pulled the plug apart from Mizuno-san and Ishihara-san, both of whom have absolutely no interest in your foster sister's death because their reputation and the reputation of the hospital would have been severely tarnished by it! Third, you've played the drums 'like a maniac' for a whole week before Kakyuu-san's death, as I've learned from the landlord of the house where you and your brothers have your secret private studio—the place where I found your two brothers and where your agent expected me to find you!"
Flicking his wrist as though he were wiping a speck of dirt off his jacket, my stranger gives a perfect Kudo-Shinichi-chuckle. "You're known to be hedonistic and lazy in artistic circles, but playing drums obsessively is your way to cope with grief. No, I didn't have to snoop around: it was kid's stuff to get the information out of your scarily supportive but also dangerously talkative agent." His warm, husky voice has softened just like Kudo's voice usually softens whenever Kudo is hampered by a tinge of sympathy, but when he proceeds with his speech, both his voice and his gaze have cooled and hardened. "You've been grieving for Kakyuu-san for a whole week before she died because you knew in advance that she wouldn't survive your next visit! You didn't want her to suffer the life of a mentally and physically impaired, and you would have loved to shut off life support for her—but since the probability was high that she was going to wake up from her coma, you weren't allowed to do it!"
Although Kudo can be brutally honest and also lacks compassion when it comes to criminals (which must be a vocational disease since he has met too many of the most despicable specimens of the human species throughout the years), this insulting behaviour doesn't sound like him at all. It takes me a moment to recall that Kakyuu died on my birthday out of all days and that Kudo must have been in a hurry because he tried to make it on time for our date. In retrospect, one could say that Kudo has handed me his defeat as a birthday present without knowing.
"While I was waiting on the sofa, pouring him tea and listening to his deductions, he was pacing up and down and studying the shelves with an expression of annoyance and utter boredom," my stranger continues in his real voice. "It was obvious that he was eager to finish this case so that he could finally get away. Maybe he was only tired and irritated by the lack of hard evidence or by the simplicity of the case, which was no challenge for a detective like him—but I was exhausted as well! There was no reason why I should confide in a detective who made no secret of his lack of interest in Kakyuu and his contempt for me—a person he had never met!—and I was repulsed by his habit of checking his watch compulsively as if every single minute he spent in my apartment was one minute wasted on a senseless, unprofitable case of euthanasia."
Before my eyes, I can see the two loves of my life sharing this scene, which resembles a tragicomic vignette of miscommunication more than the denouement in a mystery movie: My stranger, despondent and puzzled after Kakyuu's mysterious death, is sitting in front of an exquisite tea set (which might have belonged to Kakyuu) and two full tea cups (which are getting cold), staring in disbelief at the blundering, overrated master sleuth, who is pacing the living room like a restless hunting dog while rattling down all the details of the case like an unfeeling case-solving robot would have done… My detective, meanwhile, is checking his watch every other second because he is eager to get away from the notorious playboy, womanizer, and second-rate murderer, whose only task is to confess the simple act of euthanasia to the other suspects so that poor Kudo Shinichi, who has once again stumbled over a blasted easy mystery while he would rather be with his lovely albeit difficult date, can finally wrap up the case and return to Haibara Ai's place…
According to Kudo's version of the meeting, Kudo had found my place empty before he visited the suspect he believed to be the culprit. Keeping in mind Kudo's reaction to my comment that he had sent me Kaito as replacement for him, I can safely infer that Kudo knew about Kaito's intentions towards me—Kudo said that Kaito had done his research on me well, and even a socially challenged man like Kudo couldn't have overlooked the yellow rose with orange-red stripes I received from Kaito at the goodbye party after the Organization was dismantled. Therefore Kudo must have guessed that I was on a romantic date with Kaito while he was stuck at Seiya's place—a situation which must have troubled my detective more than he had expected.
At long last, my resentment against Kudo evaporates—leaving me with a sense of lightness and peace I haven't known for a long time. The knowledge that my detective might have suffered just as much as I did from the distance we had put between us even when he was in a fairly happy relationship was the cure I needed—the last fragment of the truth I've hoped to find.
"Kudo wasn't only in a rotten mood—he also behaved like a diva worse than Yaten! After listing all the clues which led him to me, he glanced at his watch again, sighed, shook his head, and groaned—probably at the utter waste of time when he would rather be anywhere but here!—before he dramatically turned to me and barked, 'In view of the compelling evidence…'" For a moment, my stranger freezes before he (or rather Kudo!) whips around with a flourish to scowl at me with hostile, piercing eyes and to point his accusing index finger into my face. "'…and from the fact that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth, I deduce that the culprit—" stranger-san spits out each word individually, his beautiful face contorted with revulsion just as Kudo's whenever Kudo convicts a particularly disgusting murderer, "'is—'" my faux-detective pauses for effect again and takes a deep breath before he dramatically hisses, "'…you!'"
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