Detective Conan - Magic Kaito oneshots

Little savior

Trigger warning for substance abuse and thoughts of self harm.

Kogoro blinked against the orange beams of sunset lighting up his freshly formed detective agency. He couldn't remember falling asleep, but... The beer cans on his desk and the raging headache behind his eyes painted a clear enough picture, despite the fog in his head making it hard to form coherent thoughts.

His head barely even felt like a head anymore, more like a balloon, weightless and empty with a strange pressure to it. He was nauseous too, but he pushed all of that aside to focus on the feeling of something nagging at the back of his mind. Something important, something he needed to remember. Something...

A loud clang from the kitchen startled him. Then another, and another. With the utmost effort he struggled to his feet and stumbled towards the source of the noise, feeling like he was about to be sick. Somehow he didn't throw up, swaying through the kitchen doorway. The scene in front of him was a sight to behold.

It jerked everything sharply back into perspective, breaking through the hazy quality of his thoughts, a slap in the face by reality coming to crash down upon him. Kogoro took a deep breath, trying to ignore how he felt like drowning.

Eri had left him. Eri had left him, he'd fucked it up, and now he was left with their little daughter, little Ran, only seven years old. Ran, who sat on the floor of their kitchen, surrounded by pots and pans, trying to muffle her crying with her little hands, tear-stained face gleaming under the somewhat harsh lighting.

Kogoro felt his heart constrict painfully in his chest, there were no words coming to mind that he could say to comfort her, no way to sugarcoat that her mother wasn't coming back home to them, that he'd drank and slept the day away, that he hadn't even noticed when she'd taken herself to elementary school or when she'd come back home. Again.

All he could feel was helplessness smothering his lungs, his own tears pricking at his eyes. She didn't deserve this. She deserved a mother who didn't leave her, the only thing he could truly reproach Eri for, she deserved a stable home with parents who didn't separate, who hadn't already regularly made her cry with their arguments before they even split up.

She deserved a father who was actually capable of taking care of her, capable of earning the money to feed her, not drink and smoke away half of what little they had. Ran deserved so much, so much more than this. So much more than him.

She shouldn't have to try to cook dinner because he'd been asleep all afternoon. Had she even come home after school? Been out with her friends? Had she eaten? He didn't know. A pain like a dagger, stuck in his chest, being twisted.

Surely this situation of theirs counted as child neglect at this point, didn't it? It would be better for Ran at this point to be taken away from him, to be taken to live with a healthy family. To provide the stability he couldn't muster.

He wasn't her only legal caretaker, yes, but he didn't even know if Eri had found work and a place to live yet. She hadn't given him any sign of being alive since she left. He only knew she was because sometimes Ran would mention her, in passing, as if unaware that they didn't talk, as if he already knew Eri called their daughter every other week. Weeks. It was too rare, wasn't it? Ran deserved better.

And yet the selfish part of him wouldn't let her go, she was the only thing he had left in this life to give him meaning, to give him the strength to get up most days... he had always been too selfish. He'd drag her down with him even if she was worse off for it.

"Dad?", round, watery eyes had drifted up to notice him leaning in the doorway, the sound of a helpless little voice rang hollow with its undertone of hope in their otherwise silent kitchen. By a miracle Kogoro remembered how to breath. And then how to talk. Even though his stomach protested and his throat ached for it.