Detective Conan - Magic Kaito oneshots

Shinichi, Conan, Nero: Living Dead Detective

It had become increasingly obvious. The look on her face, the way she carried herself, how she acted when she ascended from the lab in the professor's basement. It was not a huge surprise by any means.

And yet he froze when she spoke the words into his ear through the phone's speaker, made them real. Real like the raindrops gushing from the heavens, and he stood in the middle of the street and allowed heaven's tears to soak him while his stupor was still keeping his own from flowing.

He didn't reply to her concerned voice. Didn't hang up, just lowered the phone, arm flopping downwards, a willing victim to gravity, no resistance. No cure. Her words were so simple, a statement, scientific and objective. Her words were his damnation to an eternal hell.

A part of him found it obscenely funny, a part that now pulled up every single effort he'd made, every risk that he'd shouldered to ensure the takedown of the Black Organization and now with what little remained of them almost gone, the part of him that was once inclined to believe in fairytales, far before he started kindergarten, felt abused at his story not getting its happy ending. It almost made him laugh out loud, bitterly. How pathetic.

That was a childish, naive part of him that he hadn't been sure had even survived after Tropical Land. A part that had nothing to do with the brutally realistic part of his thoughts that had already thoroughly contemplated different ways to stage the death of Shinichi Kudo, made some points on what the contents of Shinichi's last call with Ran would be, calculated how he could fairly split the money at his disposal into equal college funds for Ran and the detective boys.

That had imagined all the ways in which Conan could make a believable disappearance that seemed completely normal and wouldn't worry anyone, wouldn't tip anybody off that the boy who's parents were taking him back to America was as unreal as the rest of that story. He'd had dreams of how he'd leave Conan behind and go back to being Shinichi and how everything would be okay again.

It was stupid when he'd been forced to celebrate Conan's tenth birthday earlier that year, when he'd known that things couldn't just fall back into place as he wanted them to and everyone would live happily ever after.

He'd known that when they launched the first step in taking down the organization that had taken years of his life from him and even more from others. He'd known that when he attended the funerals of those who had paid the last price for their final victory.

He'd known it every time Ran had broken down and yelled and complained and cried and called him selfish when they talked over the phone. It had happened a lot in recent years. There had just been too many years. Three years too many. It felt like so much more than it sounded. Too many threadbare excuses, too many lies.

He could be selfish now, kill Shinichi off and live happily as Conan amongst the people grieving him and being none the wiser. Except he couldn't. He might've been selfish but he wasn't heartless.

He couldn't take them crying over him, couldn't stand the mere thought of being around his loved ones, around Ran, when he couldn't be who he wanted to be to them, to her, when he had to watch them, her, suffer. He supposed that was selfish in a way as well.

For the first time in what could've been minutes, hours or mere seconds, he sucked in a shuddering breath. Held it. Exhaled. Then he turned off his phone where it was still sounding Haibara's increasingly worried babbling from its speakers and shoved it deep into his pocket.

He slowly turned on his heel and after another moment of hesitation he walked down the street in a direction that was connected to none of the places he'd called home over the years.

—

Kiki was heading home in the absurdly warm early autumn night, the asphalt beneath her feet still radiating some warmth as she wove between the cozy yellow streetlights splitting the darkness apart every few meters down the road without a care in the world.