Chapter Text
Conan takes a deep, deep breath, but no matter how much he inhales, no matter how wide he opens his mouth and sucks in oxygen, his lungs are still burning.
His breathing turns rapid, he can hear his own heartbeat in his ears. And his eyes? They can’t be normal, because everything looks crystal clear yet so distorted at the same time.
He takes in another deep breath, and then another, and another, up till his throat feels dry but he still feels lightheaded, everything just feels… wrong.
“Conan-kun…?”
The voice is so painfully light, so near yet so far away. Logically, he can feel Mitsuhiko close to him, but it feels more like he’s a ghost, a mere presence that Conan can’t touch.
He needs to snap out of it.
Mitsuhiko is real.
Mitsuhiko who is injured, and is depending on him, is real.
And the heavyweight of a SIG Sauer gun, a slightly larger model than the sub-compact he’s used to is also very, very real. Too heavy in his hand, to be expected though, since this gun doesn’t belong to him.
And you know what else is real? Something so vivid, so… tangible?
The body lying down just a few steps away from him, the original owner of the gun that’s now clutched in his hand, with a bullet pierced through between his eyes, rupturing his skull and splattering red blood and white brain matter on the pallets behind him.
“Conan-kun… Your… Y-your face…”
“We have to go–” Has his voice always sounded so foreign? Has it always been that deep, that fucking pathetic?
While his brain is caught up in jumbled thoughts, the physical training he went through in the past manages to give his mind a semblance of coherence to push his body up, approaching the corpse lying on the ground, he peels the side holster off the man’s clothes, hooking it on his own waistband before grabbing a magazine, just… in case.
It was hard because he’s trying to look away, it’s like those dead, empty eyes are looking straight at him, judging him for acting like a vulture, for picking up the belongings of a living being, robbing it for the second time.
Mitsuhiko stays silent, following him just like Conan told him to. He doesn’t ask any more questions even though he wants to. He wants to… ask if he’s okay… even though he’s obviously not.
Mitsuhiko knows that he should be more… panicked? In this situation? But all his mind can focus on is the fact that his childhood friend is obviously NOT okay, that he had just…
Killed…
Someone…
And this is not like the movies, this is REAL life, he had seen dead bodies before, he had seen people being killed, seen how their blood splattered everywhere, how messy it is…
This is no movie. Because Conan is not a hero, because he doesn’t look unaffected, focused on a mission. He looks… lost.
Mitsuhiko just went through something traumatic, just minutes ago before Conan found him. And yet, the only thing on his mind right now is how he can help his friend…
And the hardest thing is, he knows he can’t.
“Conan-kun…”
Conan is standing in front of him with a grotesque wound on his cheek. During the initial struggle, Conan managed to disarm the man and took possession of his firearm, he could’ve taken the shot but he… hesitated, and so the man grabbed a knife from his belt. Sharp. Jagged, something about that knife made Conan’s eyes bulge, hissing as he held his forearm where his extremely visible scars were. He almost dropped the gun, he tried to roll away but it was too late.
Mitsuhiko saw how Conan bit down on his lips as hard as possible to keep himself from screaming as the jagged surface of the knife missed his eye by a breath, lacerated his face all the way from the underside of his eye to the top of his ear, cutting through his skin like butter, and damn near splicing his ears in two if not for his quick reflexes; slamming the man’s forearm away with the back of his hand while kicking the man’s stomach in with his knee at the same time.
Conan took that opportunity to quickly roll away far enough from arms’ reach before kneeling with his right knee on the ground, back straightened as he leaned forward, aiming, and–
Well, Mitsuhiko snapped his eyes shut at the loud sound of a gun being fired pierced his ears, how Conan fell back, eyes wild and breathing heavy.
With his first man crumpled to the floor, lifeless and bleeding.
And Mitsuhiko stayed silent, he had always been like this. He just… understood the situation, he knew he had to be silent, that his friend just did something extremely traumatic, amongst other things he had to do to break Mitsuhiko out of captivity.
Mitsuhiko remembered the times when he was scared in the past, when they were still elementary school students, how Conan would convince him that everything would be okay, that he could do anything he set his mind to do as long as he had the will to do it. Back then, it was about helping Mitsuhiko get over his shyness to ask for autographs of whatever new Kamen yaiba show Sonoko managed to get them into, back then, it was all for the little satisfied smiles of a 7-year-old boy doing something for the very first time.
But the bravery he encouraged him can’t possibly be the thing that’s making him act like this now. How Mitsuhiko has to be the calm one, has to be the one pulling Conan out of his shock, because that dead body is just that, dead, while they’re still alive and have to move if they want to escape this place, if they want to… stay alive.
Mitsuhiko had always been the mature one out of the three kids, Conan felt like he could be dependable in the future, he was sharp, turning sharper as he grew older, but Conan never thought that he would have to depend on him like this.
“Conan-kun…” Mitsuhiko hisses, “We need to go… But I don’t know where to…”
“There’s only two ways out of here,” Conan finally answers, “Especially in this rain, but we of course can’t take that road. And you’re not strong enough to climb uphill.”
“True, but where else can we go?”
“We just have to hide, not here, but maybe in one of the empty houses. At least until we can call for backup.”
“Back… you mean the police?”
“Yeah, I meant that.” The police? He IS the police, and look at what little he can do,
Look at what he had done.
He let Mitsuhiko get captured, he let him be kept captive for hours and hours in these goddamn abandoned warehouses in the middle of a closed-off town, a place set to be demolished. Mitsuhiko could’ve fucking died here, only because he wasn’t smart enough, because he wasn’t sharp enough to realize that something was wrong… He could’ve let this boy die, his friend ten years younger than him…
A… A civilian.
(“Boya.” He remembers his dad saying. “The rescue team will have to focus on the civilians first, it’s just the two of us now. I need you to keep quiet okay?”
“But– But dad! You’re bleeding!! I can signal them, I can–”
The way his father grabbed him then, eyes sharp, one of those eyes where Conan knows he won’t deal with any of Conan’s stubbornness. “The civilians come first.”
Because Akai doesn’t want his son to turn into him, a ‘mission-oriented’ man, or to be someone like his godfather, Rei also wouldn’t want him to turn out like them. So, as an associate of law enforcement agencies, Conan has to understand. Civilians first. That was what Rei was also taught to do, before he was plunged into the cutthroat business of deep cover training.
Besides, Conan is uninjured, if it was Conan that’s bleeding in a dingy alley, just waiting for the FBI backup to arrive and extract them, like a hypocrite, he will not give a damn about the civilians, but Akai can handle a little bleeding, not the first time he got stabbed, unfortunately.
“They’ll come get us soon.”
“But, dad…”
“We’ll survive, trust me.”)
Conan snaps his head out of it, he tries to be as calm as possible, it’s hard. But he tries. He tries…
Mitsuhiko, knowing time is of the essence, nods and starts to slowly slip away through the now unguarded door, passing the previous guard’s corpse as they both make their way out of the warehouse, his ankle is still aching from the way he tried to run a few hours prior but that is the least of his worries now. He follows silently, trusting the moonlight to guide them through the dirt path in the forest that hopefully can still be traversed in this weather.
Great, not only are they stuck in a place with no signal, but they’re also going to freeze to death under this rain if they don’t find a place to shelter themselves in, and–
“Mitsuhiko!” Conan hisses at him, Mitsuhiko ducking down seconds before the headlights of a motorcycle illuminate the bushes they were hiding in. Conan presses his finger to his lips, signalling to him that they should wait it out for now and not make a sound.
God… It’s hard though, Conan has to bite down a wince, his cheek is absolutely ruined. The adrenaline is slowly dissipating and Conan can actually taste his own blood on his tongue, pouring in every time he opens his mouth as it flows down his cheek to his neck. The left side of his face might as well be fully red by now, he’s sure that he got the slightest bit of skin peeling off the exposed edges, and it burns, even blinking his eyes feels like it’s pulling on the wound with rope.
But he fights the instinct to rub the blood away since the rain is going to hopefully wash it off. He knows, from experience, that touching an open wound won't do anything but aggravate it even more, that trying to hold his damn skin together will only infect the flesh and nerves now open to the elements, that no matter what he does, if he tries to stop the pain, it will attack him thousand times more.
(There’s a voice. In the back of his brain. It kept reminding him.
A jagged knife. It says.
I wonder how ugly the scars will be now, I wonder,
How will you hide this one, Edogawa? )
Edogawa?
Edogawa?
Conan. Edogawa?
(“Edogawa! Agent Edogawa! Snap out of it! Hey! LET HIM GO! HE’S DEAD! WE HAVE TO LEAVE!”
But Conan refused to let the man go, the bodyguard assigned to him when he was fleeing a sniper, years ago in the U.S.
He refused to let the man bleed to death. He tried to save him! Shield him from the bullet! He owes this man his life!
He tried. But that cursed body, the body of a 10-year-old was yanked back easily by the FBI agent, and the moment they managed to stuff him in the armoured car, he saw his bodyguard’s body going limp.
His fault. It was all his fault. If only he was vigilant enough, if only he was strong enough.
It was all your fault, Conan Edogawa’.)
The sound of Mitsuhiko’s gasp breaks him out of his thoughts, Mitsuhiko is looking desperately at him, telling him that the stranger’s footsteps coming closer… and closer…
“Oi, kiddo!” Mitsuhiko gasps at the somewhat familiar voice. He had heard this voice in the past, he just can’t put his finger on it– but then the man removes his helmet. His hand pushes apart the top of the bushes, pushing away the vegetation just enough so he can walk into the space where the two, are hiding. “Are ya ‘kay!?”
“Hattori-san!” Mitsuhiko lets out an absolute, relieved sigh, he sounds like he’s about ready to cry, because who wouldn’t right? After hiding and running and almost getting captured, they finally meet another adult! A man they know who also works with the police! They’re saved! They’re–
“STAY BACK!”
Mitsuhiko gasps at Conan’s roar as he jumps in front of him, shielding Mitsuhiko with his gun pointed straight at the other man who instantly lifts his hands up. “Mitsuhiko, stay behind me.”
“W-why…? Conan-kun, wh–”
“Just shut up and do what I say!”
“O-Okay…” Mitsuhiko takes another step back, his eyes desperately flickering from his friend, to Hattori-san, and to his friend again, confusion clear in his eyes.
…
“Who are you?”
Both Mitsuhiko and Heiji stay quiet, unsure of what to say. Heiji, his hands still up, looks just as confused as Mitsuhiko or maybe even more because…
Because Kudo is standing in front of him, his stance firm and his finger already resting on the trigger, his eyes are wild and intimidating, locking right onto Hattori’s and yet looking unfocused at the same time. “Identify yourself!”
“Heiji Hattori.” He knows when to ask for an explanation, and this time isn’t it. Someone who clearly knows him is now asking him what his name is. Something isn’t right here.
“You’re Japanese…”
Think.
Heiji has to think quickly. His life, with the way Kudo’s gun is pointed at him, could be on the line. He can only think of one thing; play along.
“Yes, Sir.” He tilts his head. “Born ‘nd raised.”
“Are you with the infantry?”
Christ. Is that what this is? “I’m here with SAR.” He says, carefully, since that doesn’t seem to be the answer Kudo, this Kudo, is looking for.
“…What the hell is the search and rescue doing here?”
“We’re responding to your distress signal.” He answers, tilting his head yet again. “Don’t you remember?”
“Yes!” Mitsuhiko speaks out despite Heiji warning him with his eyes multiple times to stay put and let him handle this. “Conan-kun, we– we called for help, didn’t we? He– The– um, the team is… h-here, so maybe, maybe we can…”
“No.” Conan cuts him off. “We don’t know if he’s telling the truth.”
“Sir, with ‘ll due respect, whatever ya think that I’m doin’, I’m on yer side, m’kay? I’m ‘ere with the FBI.”
“FBI sent you…?”
“Mhmm, got the, uh…” Quick, who was that blonde woman Kudo talked about? The Lady that blondie-ojisan ‘hates’ so much? “Miss Starlin’– I mean, Chief Starling, sent me…” Damn it, he doesn’t know anything about the FBI or the time Kudo spent in the U.S. His time away is far from his favourite topic of small talk, but Heiji remembers bits and pieces, that will have to do for now. He’s counting on the fact that Kudo is also… not right, that his own mind is fractured and maybe even he doesn’t know when or where he is right now.
“Is the boy hurt anywhere?” Heiji says, breaking Kudo’s train of thought, it’s dangerous if he starts coming to a conclusion, and bringing up his friend’s safety should be enough, right? Heiji knows that Kudo is a protective person, and he seems fond of the kids who tail him every time he’s around.
“Yes. He was– He…” Conan looks… he looks confused.
He tilts his head back to take a peek at Mitsuhiko, frozen in fear and trembling from the rain. He’s okay, but he’s… He… Wait, wait, why can’t he remember what happened to him?
“Trust me, I’ll get ‘im out, get ‘im processed. Both of ye‘re safe now.”
“Where’s the rest of your team?”
“The rain made it impossible for ‘em to continue, I got lucky. Look, Sir. That boy’s not lookin’ too good. Just, lemme take y’all to safety, and I’ll get you processed, ‘kay?”
…
“You go ahead.” Heiji swallows a relieved sigh when Kudo finally lowers his weapon. “I’ll secure the perimeter.”
“The rest of the infantry can do that, Sir. I need ya to go with me.”
“There’s not enough space in that goddamn bike and you know it.” Conan hisses back, muttering under his breath about how weird it is that a SAR is using a goddamn bike. But he did tell him that he was the only one who got through the rain… must be because of that.
“I don’ care if I gotta have ya hanging off ma damn headlights, we’re leavin’!”
“I said–”
“How’re ya going to even ‘secure the perimeter’ with that damn gash fucken’ bleeding off yer–” Heiji stops mid-sentence, his eyes widen and body stills when Kudo pretty much speeds towards him, his hand raised up yet again and seconds later, he got a muzzle of a gun an inch away from his forehead, close enough that he could feel just how hot it was, the sound of the safety clicking off.
…It’s still hot.
“Go… Or I’ll make sure you can’t…”
“I can’t. I can’t do that.”
“Now…”
“Ku–”
“HE’S A CIVILIAN! YOU’RE SAR, GET HIM TO SAFETY FIRST, THAT’S YOUR RESPONSIBILITY!”
Yes, of course, that’s a search and rescue team’s fucking responsibility.
But he’s not SAR, he’s not in the military, he’s not a cop, he’s not anything else Kudo’s mind is moulding him to be, no, he is his FRIEND. That’s what he is, his best friend, he loves him, and it’s painful to see someone as close as your best friend looking at you straight in the eyes with a look akin to an animal, to see him looking like an insane mess, blood dripping down his face to his neck, pouring out faster than the rain could erase. Holding a gun Heiji knew that he had shot. Knowing exactly what must have triggered all of this, and yet not being able to do anything about it.
“I’ll bring backup.” He has no choice, he’s literally held at gunpoint, forced to do what Kudo wants, and so he walks past him, holding Mitsuhiko’s hand to lead him away.
“Keep–” Conan clears his throat, speaking is getting harder. “Keep him safe.”
“Will do, and ya too. Imma come get ya soon.” Heiji decides to test the waters. “Agent Edogawa.”
Conan nods, already turning back and walking down the path he came from, not reacting to the name that would usually make him wince, which means his mind is stuck in a time when people still address him with that name. This gives Heiji a bit of a timeline to speculate on when exactly his mind is lost in.
When he was still called ‘Edogawa’, when he was already living in the U.S. He remembered Kudo saying that Akai-ojisan only started training him in using firearms in his second year there so this must be around… 4 years after his initial disappearances. At the height of the conflict with that wretched Organization, a time where he had to run and hide to stay alive…
“He’s… Something… S-something’s not right with him, Hattori-san…”
“I know.”
“W-we have to… Oh god, what if I just stay behind? Maybe I’ll–”
“No, no, hey, listen to me.” Heiji leans down a little to get to Mitsuhiko’s eye level. “I needa drive, it’ll be hard to balance yerself but I need ya to try, don’t fall off, ya hear me? Can ya do that?”
Mitsuhiko has that fire of determination in his eyes, nodding as he climbs to the back of the motorcycle, hugging Heiji’s stomach as tightly as he can. The drive was challenging, to say the least, they had to drive with the lights off and that was one of the scariest things Mitsuhiko had to do.
This… This shouldn’t have happened. Not in this place, not like this, not ever.
It’s hard to think that just a few hours prior, not even a full 24 hours, they were having fun with the rest of their classmates in the beachside resort, they were talking about their plans for the last day of the field trip, the teachers giving them sheets to fill out for which activity they want to do so they can be sorted into teams, that Mitsuhiko was dragging Genta and Conan into his team so they can go fishing at the pier together in the afternoon.
This shouldn’t have happened. This should’ve been a normal, joyful field trip for a normal middle school end-of-the-year celebration, in a lovely vacation destination on the beaches of Osaka.
It was all his fault. He shouldn’t have wandered off, he shouldn’t have played detective, feeding into his curiosity and… and got himself captured, then Conan wouldn’t have to help him, wouldn’t have to… fire a gun.
This is all his fault.
He shouldn’t have investigated these things all on his own. All because of those stupid news clippings.
=
“LET ME THROUGH– LET ME THROUGH!! PRINCESS!” Rei speeds as fast as he can through the officers trying to stop him in the entrance, it took Akai flashing his badge quickly as he catches up with Rei for the officers to let them in.
Rei kisses her forehead, hugging Ai as hard as he can, a gesture that she returns, Rei can feel her trembling in his arms, it breaks his heart as if he can be more devastated than he already is.
“It’s okay…” He whispers as Ai clutches the back of his coat even harder, “Everything’s going to be okay…”
He smells like rain. still wearing the same clothes he threw on haphazardly when he got the news back in Tokyo, when he boarded the first plane he could book and arrived at the airport. Speeding like hell itself was chasing him when he got a call from Heizo Hattori that they got a report from the local police that there are two missing students reported by Haibara Ai; Akai Conan has been missing for 3 hours, and there’s another problem.
Rei decides to ignore the fact that somehow the Superintendent Supervisor had been keeping such a keen eye on his godson’s movement that ANY report with his name on it will be forwarded to him immediately. He doesn’t care, all he cares about is…
Akai walked straight into the meeting room in the precinct where a team of a couple of officers and Heizo Hattori himself are waiting, a physical map on the table, with drones being a no-go in the rain and the cell signal too weak to penetrate the dense forest.
“Where is my son?”
His voice, oh-so-calm and collected yet anyone with a fraction of a brain cell can see the terror veiled right underneath.
This is a father who just got a call a few hours ago that his son had gone missing and seems to have been entangled in a local smuggling syndicate that has been nestling in the area for a while, and that they couldn’t find a trace of him, any footsteps or car tracks undetectable by now.
“Does anyone have any–”
“Y-yes…”
A meek, tiny, painfully familiar voice pulled Akai’s attention in an instant, a boy, his son’s close friend, Mitsuhiko, is sitting next to the map, his body shivering while holding a cup of warm tea and his right hand holding a pen, scribbling on the map that’s compared to previous week’s satelite’s pictures.
“I-I know… w-where he might be, but…”
“Ojisan.”
That voice is familiar too. Heiji, Conan’s Osakan bestfriend who comes to visit way too often in his opinion is also there, his hair still damp, wearing plain clothes and wrapped in a similar thermal blanket as Mitsuhiko is.
“I saw him, he’s alive.”
Alive, not fine, not safe, just alive.
“But he’s armed.” He continues, a serious, apprehensive look on his face. “And he’s going through some kind of episode. He was having a full mental breakdown, do you know why–”
“Yes.” Another voice comes in, an EMT who was tending to Mitsuhiko joins their little circle. “I’ve talked to Tsuburaya-kun. It seems like the boy you’re looking for is suffering from undiagnosed PTSD, the stressful situation must’ve induced a sudden psychotic break.”
“Is he on some kind of medication?” Heiji cuts in. “If he is, can we use that to help him, we need to get to him quick, Ojisan, he’s not thinking straight.”
“My son doesn’t have PTSD.”
Even being the one saying it, he himself doesn’t sound convinced. Akai is looking at Heiji with something akin to disbelief, a look that Heiji has never seen on him before, a vivid show of emotion that is so painfully rare that it looks uncanny. “What do you mean ‘psychotic break’…?”
Heiji turns silent, looking at his own father from the corner of his eyes. God, this will be harder than they thought, and it was already bad enough.
“You,” Heizo ignores Akai for now. “Tsuburaya-kun.”
“Y-yes…?”
“Can you tell us what happened?”
“W-well… I already told you what I…”
“Yes, but can you take us back, to when it all started. From the beginning?”
“…Y-you mean from the trip…? At the airport? S-shouldn’t you be out there now…? Looking for him?”
“We are looking for him, but we need to know how to track him if we want to find him before he passes out or worse, be found out by these smugglers you were attacked by. Take us all the way back, boy.”
Heizo can see from the corner of his eyes how Akai had turned and ran out of the room, Heiji following straight behind him, calling out his name and trying to calm him down to no avail. Well, he’ll let his son deal with that, he has no time to entertain someone losing their composure.
“I… well, we arrived two days ago…” Mitsuhiko whispers. “And that… was when this all started…”