Detective Conan - Magic Kaito oneshots

For love

The lights of the courtroom are too bright and way too many voices are talking way too loudly. The roiling, rising nausea has become the persistent center of her awareness. Everything else is fading in and out as her senses are following their own agenda but the nausea remains, steady and uncomfortable.

And so does the bone chilling cold, outside and inside. Her skin is raised in constant goose bumps, that spot where her heart should've been filled with numbing, biting ice.

The big, masculine hand landing on her shoulder brings a spark of warmth and lights a rapid wildfire of panic between her ribs, mind flashing back to the hands of the unfamiliar man grabbing her on what should've been the ridiculously short and safe distance from her own front door to Kaito's. Aoko flinches violently at the sudden physical contact. The hand retreats immediately.

Her father's voice breaks through the hazy fog of noises and voices buzzing around the room, not clear enough that she could understand the words he's saying but just clear enough that she notices the apologetic tone of it. The blind panic is doused and recedes for the time being.

Aoko's stomach lurches again with a more intense bout of nausea as the wheelchair she's been deposited in for the time being is set into motion again, blurry shapes passing by her unfocused gaze. She's struggling to remember how she's gotten here, why she's here. Had she wanted this? Or had someone else decided that? Thinking straight has become so utterly impossible since that day.

The day that should've been like any other day but wasn't. She'd been intending to hop over to Kaito's and invite him over for dinner like countless days before. Only a few steps through the cold and dark winter evening that had never gone wrong until they had. She hadn't seen or heard the man approach, hadn't noticed his presence at all until he'd grabbed her and dragged her into the car parked around the corner.

The bruises from his grip are still somewhat visible, and some nights Aoko wakes up gasping for air and wanting to scream but being unable to, feeling that gloved hand's strong grip on her throat again where it was squeezing her airways shut so she couldn't scream or call for help. Sometimes her muscles still jerk and twitch uncontrollably like they did when he put the taser to her upon reaching the getaway vehicle.

And she'd scratched and fought and kicked and attempted to bite and he'd not budged at all. The echo of that utter helplessness is like another wave of ice water sloshing through Aoko's ribcage. Her father is talking again and his hands slowly make contact again to rub her arms, making her realize belatedly that she's started trembling and shivering violently.

Just as it's subsiding a bit there's the sudden sound of a man's rough, roaring laughter from the other end of the room and all progress is erased in a fraction of a second. He'd laughed at her too. Quieter. Meaner. Crueler.

Aoko distantly feels her spine curl around itself even more to the point it hurts and is surely in danger of snapping into two. The memory of her abductor's laughter fades to rushing static in her ears. Her rabbit pulse thumps a frantic beat to it.

She's not really aware that she's struggling to breathe because she's pressing her face into her thighs, feeling that choking grasp on and around her throat again. The voices get louder again, they seem to gather around, above her. Somebody gets a hold of and tugs at her wrist and somebody yelps. It takes her a long second to recognize her own voice. She's let go of. Her father's talking again, on the other side of her chair. Maybe he'd been talking all that time.

She cannot stand people touching her wrists and ankles anymore. Or her face. Or her hair. Or any part of her really.

The flashbacks bombard her at the slightest whisper of a touch, even if it's nothing even remotely like the painful bite of the cable ties and makeshift gag, nothing like his relentless tearing at her hair to maneuver her head around, to pry her jaw open and stuff her mouth with cloth to tie at her neck, all too tight to begin with and getting worse and worse with every minute struggle against her bindings.