Tantei-kun

Eleven

AN: i wrote this way back when and just recently found it again. it was supposed to be a longer one-shot (i think, i'm not really sure) but i felt, after a couple of years since writing it, it's better this way.

warning for mentions of self-harm, suicide, murders and some dark thoughts. this is not the happiest of takes on detective conan.

stay safe!

ps. sorry for not updating.

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"i hate you," he says and it's so easy to accept, so easy to understand.

she's a stranger- an anomaly against his perfectly-laid puzzle pieces. but she's willing to help, if only things were as easy as they seem.

still, she'll help him.

it's all her fault, anyway.

"i know."

:

an angel, she thinks.  no wonder he adores her.

tears mars her soft face and ai knows it's her fault.

"it's all my fault," she hears him whisper. "all my-"

ai doesn't have the gentleness to heal her wounds but she tries. for him. it pains her to see people fall apart because of her. no one should pay for what she had done. the scars run deep and somehow, she doesn't realize that it also bleeds through her make-believe reality.

mouri ran is bleeding and edogawa conan is unconscious.

and really, ai is at fault.

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two weeks before christmas, she receives a letter.

a sorry excuse of a love letter from some eight-year old. it contain five words- none of which are spelled correctly. he doesn't even write her name properly. ai is for sorrow, not love. why do people assume the best?

but still, she confronts him that afternoon, a pathetic sorry already on her lips. she makes him cry and soon, people already know her as a heartbreaker. she doesn't remember being seven like this. this petty. these kids barely know how to add.

then there's him. out of impulse, he corrects the words (and her name) and defends her like it is the easiest thing in the world.

it is unfair, she thinks, how he is made.

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christmas is disgusting.

apparently, that opinion is non-existent to these people. the kids shower her with gifts (popularity comes easily) and hakase gives her new books (which is the only gift she actually needs). she tries to put up a show. it's good enough, she dumbly realizes as they crowd around her. ai is a good actress. being seven will be the-

"you really hate christmas, don't you?"

she grits her teeth and remembers that he is a detective and no matter how bright her smiles are, he'll always see through them.

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january comes and goes and so do two double homicides.

the first is simple. a cheating fiance and the man she cheated with. the fiance has an alibi for the time of murder. so of course, everyone was in on the game. seven murderers. ai thinks it's a real tragedy and finds some kind of beauty in the murder but all he sees is red.

the second is simple. two ten-year olds who wander into a forest. four suspects but nobody did it. the kids actually kill each other for some reason ai does not know. it is horrifying, yes, but ai has experienced worse. however, he vomits on the crime scene and all she can do is wonder why.