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A Curse Marked Fate

33: Where You Stand

"I have come to a few conclusions regarding your condition," Haibara said. She was seated across from Shinichi, Ran and Kaito in Professor Agasa's living room. They each had a cup of coffee on the table before them. She picked hers up now and sipped delicately from it before setting it back on its saucer with a nearly inaudible clink.

Shinichi kept his own cup cradled in his hands to keep himself from fidgeting. He had no idea what to expect, and, to be honest, he wasn't sure what he was hoping to hear. It wasn't helping his nerves to have Kaito and Ran seated on either side of him like they were his guardians and he a sick child about to hear the doctor's bad news. It would have been easier to talk to Haibara about this without them, he thought, but he knew that they were worried about him. Knowing that, he hadn't been able to bring himself to ask them not to come.

"Is it bad?" Ran asked anxiously, unable to stand the waiting any longer.

The small girl met her gaze with a calm, unreadable expression that cracked just briefly for a smile. "I wouldn't call it that. Though it does raise some complications."

"What complications?" Kaito demanded, leaning forward.

Between the two, Shinichi sighed. Couldn't they just let the girl talk already so they could get this over with?

Haibara seemed to be thinking the same thing because she leveled them all with a look that had even the usually dauntless Sky Mage quieting.

"If you want me to explain then stop interrupting me," she said. At their silence, she nodded, satisfied, and turned her attention back to Shinichi.

"As you know, the spell used on you was a perversion of my blessing. It made your body regress through time and should have killed you by causing you to regress all the way into nonexistence."

Shinichi felt Kaito tense beside him at that, but the mage stayed silent.

"The reason that you instead became a child is that you have the Blessing of the Cat. Its magic kicked in because you were about to die and halted the regression spell before it could kill you. However, according to the tests I've run and my knowledge of how Curse Marks typically work, I believe that your blessing should have returned you to your natural state after preventing your death."

Shinichi blinked and started to say something but cut himself off at a look from the cursed scientist.

"Here is where things get complicated. Because you live with Mouri Kogoro, whose Mark weakens and occasionally erases or warps all magic around him, your Curse Mark is—and probably always has been—at less than what we shall call full power. So what you have now is two opposing spells, if you will. There is the one that is still trying to regress you into oblivion and the one that is trying to block and reverse that regression. When Miss Ran and Sonoko found you, the two opposing spells had found a balance at your physical age of six. Since then, the two spells have continued to work in your system, both hindered by Mouri Kogoro's curse."

"Are you saying I'm stuck being six forever?" Shinichi asked, more than a little horrified by the idea. Ironically, that was one possibility he had not considered. Now that he was considering it, it was definitely on the bottom of his list of desirable outcomes.

Haibara looked amused. "No."

Shinichi let out a breath of relief.

"There is a distinct difference between the two spells," the girl continued. "The power of an amulet—any amulet—is finite. There is nothing sustaining it. So once it runs out of energy, it will cease to exist. Your blessing, on the other hand, is part of you. It isn't going to dissipate. You may be able to speed up the process by spending less time with Mouri Kogoro, but naturally there would be other risks attached to that."

Ran brightened. "That's good news though, right? It means Shinichi should go back to normal on his own." Then she frowned. "But you said something about complications."

Haibara nodded. "From what I have been able to discern, Kudo-kun is already growing slightly faster than a typical child would be. Chances are high that he will grow increasingly quickly as the amulet's spell deteriorates until he finally returns to his original age—in other words, the age at which the spell was first cast on him. At that point, he will resume growing normally."

"I still don't see the problem," said Ran.

"Someone will notice," Kaito replied before Haibara could speak. "Kids grow fast, but not that fast. People will start wondering what's going on eventually. And it's totally the kind of thing that would make the news and draw all kinds of attention."

"He's right," the little girl agreed. "The process will also demand an increasingly large amount of energy. You will need to take care that you get sufficient nutrition and rest or your body may expire from the strain. You see, based on the records, your blessing affords you a certain number of, shall we say, lives. It is my belief that, while it is in the process of saving you from the amulet's curse, it will not be able to protect you from some other life threatening injury. Of course, there is no way to prove this theory—or rather none that I would recommend." Her lips quirked into a sardonic smile. "Either way, I recommend that you be very careful for the foreseeable future."

"Hold on a moment," Shinichi said, frowning. "I always thought my blessing applied to narrow misses as well as fatal injuries." He clearly remembered his father's warnings on the matter.

Haibara shrugged. "I suppose it is possible that it does in some way. It's not like chance is something we can measure. But there is no way to quantify narrow misses. However, all the records are very specific about the number nine—hence the reference to cats in the blessing's name. We can therefore deduce," she emphasized the word with a pointed look, "that that particular limit is applied to more observable incidents. Logically speaking, those would have to be injuries or illnesses that should have been fatal but from which the bearer of the blessing miraculously recovered. So tell us, Kudo-kun, how many lives do you think you have left?"

X

The question kept surfacing in Shinichi's mind at odd moments over the following days, although, if asked, he wouldn't have been able to say why. He had spent nearly half his life with the understanding that he was much more likely than the average person to run into freak accidents at any moment and therefore under the assumption that, sooner more likely than later, one of those accidents would be the end of him. Based on what little information he could find, he had determined that he would probably never see thirty. And he had, he'd thought, made peace with that.

Haibara had, however, rather nonchalantly handed him a way to calculate just how close he might be to that moment when his time would be up. Of course, she could be wrong. Even if she was right, it would be difficult to actually tally up exactly which of his close calls would count towards his "nine lives", as she'd called them. Still, the thought nagged at him.

A few times, he caught himself combing through his memories, trying to decide which of his experiences had been lives used up, but then he would stop himself. Part of him wanted to know, but another part very much did not.

It was all just confusing, and that frustrated him. He didn't understand why this idea should change anything for him at all. It wouldn't change his past, and it certainly couldn't have any bearing on his future. What would happen would happen either way.

He supposed he just needed time to assimilate the information. Still…

With his thoughts running circles like hamsters in his head, he found himself having difficulty falling asleep at night. He would toss and turn and eventually give up and go in search of a book to read. That would eventually lead him to falling asleep in the wee hours of the morning. The dark circles growing under his eyes were beginning to earn worried looks from Ran.

Or maybe that was Haibara's dire warnings getting to her.

Ran had started standing over him until he finished every bite at mealtimes. While this would have been a bit awkward, it wouldn't have been quite so dreadful except that she had also started increasing his portions.

"It's like she's trying to feed three of me all at the same time," he told Kaito one evening over the phone after he and Ran had had their first real argument in years because he hadn't finished his dinner (like he was the six-year-old he wasn't and she was his overzealous mother). In Shinichi's defense, he was pretty sure the part of his dinner he had eaten would have made an ugly reappearance if he tried stuffing another bite of anything down his throat, and he'd offered to pack the leftovers and have them on the morrow, but Ran had gone into a tirade about how he needed to take better care of himself. How point A related to point B, Shinichi still had no idea. He could only assume that she was worrying (extremely prematurely) about what Haibara had theorized. So he'd told Ran she was overreacting.

She hadn't taken it well.

"It's like she thinks I'm going to shrivel into nothing if I don't stuff myself sick at every meal."

"She's just worried about you," Kaito said, sounding far too amused in Shinichi's opinion. "You always eat like a bird, and Haibara-san said all that about you needing more nutrition. Ran-san just wants to make sure you get it."

Shinichi let out an exhausted sigh and blimed up onto his desk chair. "I know, but I don't think I can take this much longer. And I really think she's overreacting. Logically, if I do start growing faster, I should naturally get hungry more. That's what the human body does. Stuffing yourself when you're not even hungry is just unhealthy."

Kaito hummed in thought. "True. How about I have a word with her?"

"Uncle already did," Shinichi said dryly. "And let me tell you, that doesn't happen often."

"Did it help?" the Sky Mage asked curiously.

"Nope. She is now officially upset with both of us."

Kaito laughed. "Ah well, at least he tried. Really though, I'm pretty sure I could talk her around. I'm good at soothing ruffled feathers."

The Sky Mage also excelled at the ruffling, Shinichi thought with some amusement, though he kept the thought to himself. The truth was that he was in no position to turn down help. He couldn't remember Ran ever being so unreasonable, but he supposed she had never been told a family member might soon just up and expire before either.

In lieu of that, Shinichi mused, maybe he was the one who was under-reacting. After all, his life was the one at risk, but Ran was the one freaking out. He was much more preoccupied with speculating on the nature of his Mark and its ramifications.

"I'll come by tomorrow and have a word with her," Kaito said decisively. "Then we'll go out for lunch."

"Um, okay…?" Shinichi said a bit uncertainly. It didn't sound like Kaito was asking so much as that he had already decided these things would be so. But since Shinichi didn't have any other plans, he saw no reason to object.

"Great. I'll see you tomorrow then."

A small, soft smile made its way onto Shinichi's face. "See you tomorrow."

TBC

A.N: Happy holidays!