Detective Conan - Magic Kaito oneshots

This is goodbye

It had only been about a year, really. It seemed so much longer now that it was over.

Ever since the day they first met, Conan's outstretched hand, reaching for her's, most times combined with a sweet small smile on his face, that was oh so similar to Shinichi's behind those glasses, had become a fixed part of Ran's everyday life.

She reached down to take his hand automatically by now when they were out together, noticed immediately when it wasn't there because he'd run off again to get involved in a case that wasn't his business, and knew immediately to chase after him.

When she was sad, angry, happy, shocked, confused, shy, tired or exhausted, scared or lost - there was always a little hand outstretched towards her as if its owner was reaching for her for guidance, even when it was her who actually needed it.

She was led out of danger by that hand, it lend her stability when they were walking away from a case so horrible it had shaken her to the core, it reassured her whenever negative feelings of abandonment, fear, insecurity, doubt, overwhelmed her, it made her feel capable of taking care of someone other than herself, reassured her that there was someone else who needed her except her alcohol addict of a father.

The little hand holding her's allowed her to lose herself in daydreams sometimes, giving in to the imagination that it was her child, Shinichi's child, walking by her hand. That she was a good mother and walking around with her and Shinichi's happy child.

And at the same time that caused her pain because Shinichi was still a very sore topic with her. She might rage at his elusive messages and rare contact at first, but in the end it always ended with her slipping into a hurtful spiral of self-doubt and painful questions she had no answers to. Why did he just leave, cast her aside like that? Was it something she did? Was it something she said?

There were countless examples she could remember for both cases that would validate a quick escape, plenty of reason for him leaving her behind. Or maybe it was something she didn't do, didn't say? Should she just have taken the risk and confessed her feelings for him? No matter how scared of rejection she was?

After all she was just a nobody, nothing special, rather the opposite, with an incapable addict for a rather poor excuse of a father and a mother who'd rid herself of both of them and had become successful because of it, and Shinichi was such a cool, kind, capable, fearless, intelligent, over all great person - why would he want to be with her of all people? Of course she was nothing special to him, why would he care about leaving her behind?

A little hand would always reach up and take her's when thoughts like those overwhelmed her and threatened to drag her down, a little boy's voice would pipe up and say something that distracted her so thoroughly that she wouldn't think of those dark thoughts for days.

A small hand in her's had become a huge pillar that she could lean against when her burdens weightened her down in these troubled times when Shinichi, the former pillar in her life, had left her and there was nobody else left to protect her from dark thoughts and distract her from her wrecked homelife and family situation.

Yes, Sonoko deserved some credit in the distraction department too, but she was anything but reliable, always a slave to her own whims. And seeing her live her best life with a rich and whole happy family only made Ran feel even more inferior.

If she spend too much time with her the ugly thoughts would come back to haunt her, stinging her with needles that had hurtful questions engraved in them, like why Sonoko bothered with a nobody like Ran, what she even meant to her, how she'd managed to become best friends with someone like her and ... if she wasn't going to abandon her from one moment to the next, in the blink of an eye and without any warning, just like Shinichi had done.