falling down the rabbit hole of anime

It had never been beyond imagination - that she would find out.

Somehow, though, he never thought it would happen like this.

She'd stopped abruptly at the top of the stairs, fingers tight around her phone - the sea cucumber charm dangled from it, swinging almost hypnotically in the moonlight - and she'd picked up his glasses - the glasses he left folded up in a corner, forgotten on his way up. Conan-kun's glasses.

Her jaw slacked. "Shin...ichi?"

In that moment he felt oddly detached from his body - his heart jolted painfully, paralyzed, and panic coursed through his veins, but he was rooted to the spot and all he could see, all he cared about was the look in her eyes - a look like she saw through him, like she knew, all that time, like she knew now what was . It crescendoed inside his chest - the guilt, the fear - and the sheer relief, a rising cacophony.

"Ah," finally, he answered, deeper voice choked behind the bow-tie and misplaced, coming out of the child's body.

(In the end, there was no interrogation, no victory - he's ashamed to say that he came clean as easy as breathing. There were tricks, no doubt - countless tricks, excuses he's used before and will undoubtedly use again. But he had taken off the mask, if only momentarily and found he couldn't quite put it back on, faced with the woman he wronged - the woman he was more and more sure every day that he, perhaps, loved.)

Tears fell from her lashes then, fast and glittering, even though her face betrayed nothing at his nonverbal admission. Still, she didn't speak.

The silence - scared him. More than anything.

"Ran - " The voice that fell from his lips was Kudou Shinichi's, and he was Kudou Shinichi in that moment, wanted to be able to be Kudou Shinichi to her, always. "Please - say something." He swallowed. "Say anything."

And Ran - smiled.

The expression wobbled lightly as she reached to place her hand on the door-frame, leaning heavily against it. Her fingers trembled too. "Shinichi."

Confirmation and condemnation both. Not a question this time, a statement - the detective having no choice but to finally believe in her deduction. The voice he knew so well was gentle and devastated and doubled, in front of him and coming from the receiver still pressed to his ear.

Her hand dropped, slowly, slowly. The tone of the button was uncommonly loud in the silence as she hung up the phone.

"You - you were never really gone, were you?" There was wonder in the question - and pain, raw and real. The words came fast and easily, because she had suspected, many times, because many times she had laid out the evidence in her own head, had gone over it and questioned even her own sanity. "You were right here, under my nose, all this time, weren't you? Even still - you let me think -"

The words caught in her throat, wet and broken. For a moment Ran simply breathed, heavy and silent.

Tears prickled stubbornly at his eyes too. But he stood, silent, waiting for her. For justice or absolution, he didn't know.

"I don't understand why." Finally, she looked up at him. "It's a case, isn't it? I thought it must have been, when you disappeared. Something dangerous, maybe, something you can't - you can't be around for. I understood that, I understood that you had to go away. But this. All of this."

His lip quirked with irony - yes, all of this. The lie he made for them. The twisted fantasy he’d convinced himself that they had to live.

"I want to know how. How can you call every other week," Ran inhaled, slowly. "Every other week with your own voice - is it the bow-tie?" She cut herself off, swiping her hand across her face harshly. "It must be the bow-tie. But how can you talk like that? Like nothing's wrong? Like you're not - like you're not - "

"Ran -" He tried to begin, "I - "

"No. No," Fresh tears came in rivulets . "I waited - like - like an idiot, I waited for you. For weeks. For months. But you - every time you called it was 'Yo Ran' this and 'Baaro' that - listening to me worry, telling me I'm being silly like you weren't lying to me, like you weren't pretending to be Conan-kun, like you weren't - like you weren't driving me absolutely - " she pressed her hand to her face, silent.

"It's because I wanted to be me."

The moment the words left his mouth he knew it was true.

(And god - didn't that just make it worse?)

She looked to him expectantly.

He swallowed. "I - I saw something I shouldn't have seen. Meddled in something I should've left alone. They tried to kill me but instead - " he broke off with a shuddering breath, hands balling into fists, and he hated it. Hated the truth. "Instead I'm here. You figured out as much that it was dangerous to tell you."

What it was, was selfish, he knew. At the end of his rope, when it all came crashing down around him, he knew what to call himself. The excuses fell apart, as all things must. To the Professor and Haibara, it was necessity. It was need to know. He'd justified his lies to himself many, many times. He was just trying to protect her - if Ran didn't know then she wasn't in danger.

(Except she was. The moment he set foot in her house, the moment he decided to dart her father, she had been in danger. The calls, the letters, the contrived instances when he let her see him as himself. All of it was dangerous.)

"I never thought that it would go this far. For the first little while I thought - I thought I could solve it and come home. Figure out who did this to me, turn them in. I never meant to hurt you." He swallowed, thickly. "And I'm sorry. For lying, for - for doing all of this."

He told her what had happened in Tropical Land. Told her how he'd found himself at Professor Agasa's, how she had found him moments later. How he'd made up Edogawa Conan. Every time he used something or someone to lead her to believe they weren't the same person.

She sat and she listened, gaze burning holes through him.  

What else was there to say? How could he tell her? How could he tell her that it hurt him - that it scared him - when she was the one who had been hurt, when she was the one who was scared, when she was looking at him - seeing him - for what he was?

"I should have stayed away." Shinichi said finally, pulling the bowtie away from his face, hand dropping limply to his side - and he hated how he sounded then, too - voice thin and high like a child, like the child he currently was and would be for the foreseeable future. "I should have, but you were - "

She was the only thing keeping him tethered to this world.

He couldn't tell her he needed her. Didn't deserve to. Not in this body. Not with this voice. Not after the lie, after hurting her, after this thing that had spiraled away from him and out of control. "I guess just - wanted to believe." A chuckle, low and bitter, tore from his chest. "I wanted to believe that I could still be me. That I could still have my life. That I wasn't just this - this ghost of a being."

She - stared at him, eyes red.

He touched his cheek, numb, and found that his hand had come away cold with tears.

What did Ran see, now? When she looked at him? Did she see what he saw?

A child with tired, wet eyes, thin shoulders trembling. Frightened, angry, crying.

(Did she hate it too?)

He caught his reflection in the window behind her and it was wrong. The face, too round and the eyes, too big. The short legs and his hands, too small, slack at his sides. It was all wrong.

"I hate this, Ran. I hate worrying you - I hate not being here. I hate being stuck. I hate knowing that if Gin and Vodka barge into this room right now, even with this bow-tie and these shoes and whatever else - I'm still a helpless child. I guess I just wanted to pretend I'm - something better than these broken parts. I wanted to pretend I could be whole again- that I wasn't this mess that I am. Because if I pretend - if I just pretend then it's not real. If I can be Kudou Shinichi for fifteen minutes - if I could be him for you for even a second, then I - " He broke off, gasping.  

For a moment nothing was said and she simply watched him cry - watched his body shudder with hiccuping breaths, watched tears pour from stinging eyes and the bow-tie drop to the floor. The girl who he had called a crybaby as a child stood, back to the moon, silent and contemplative, as she watched him fall apart, seven years old all over again.

It was ironic, wasn't it?

"I really am sorry." Finally, he gathered his voice together - gathered the parts of himself he had shown her tonight, held them close and tight so that they could fuse into him, be a part of him again, even though he hated that too. "It's not an explanation - not an excuse, not a justification - I know."

Shinichi watched her turn. Ran said nothing.

He swallowed. Moonlight fell on her shoulders so that she almost seemed blurred at the edges. "I understand if you hate me. If you want me to go - I'll go."

Her knuckles were white in the fabric of her jacket. Still she didn't speak as she turned the corner.

Her footsteps sounded, close, and then further away.

(So it was over.)

He tried, this time - not to cry like a child.

(Ran stood on the bottom of the stairs, her face twisted in silent pain. Then, she unfurled her fist, picked up her phone - and dialed.)

He barely registered when the phone in his back pocket began to ring.

Shinichi's phone.

Dazed and exhausted, he picked up.

"Ne, Shinichi," her voice shook lightly, and then steadied itself in the receiver. "You really are a bastard, aren't you?"

“...Ran?” He tried his best not to sound - hopeful.

“You really hurt me, you know? Lying about all of it - I wish you would trust me a little more.” 

“I’m sorry - “

“I’ll kick your butt when you get back, Shinichi,” She cut him off. “I’ll use you for karate practice and I’ll tell Sonoko everything and you’re going to be paying every bill for at least a year after -” Her voice lifted, and he could hear the smile in her voice, hear the tears in that smile. “So don’t cry, please. Don’t cry. If you cry, I’ll cry - and then we’ll both be crybabies, won’t we?”

“Ran, I’m - “

“When you get back, Shinichi - I’ll also forgive you.”

“...Ran.”

“I think I - understand. I think I know why you did what you did, even though it was a stupid reason. I won’t pretend I’m not angry about it - in spite of all of that, though - I want you to come home. I want you to be you again. I want my best friend - the boy I care for - I want him back. I know. I’m supposed to be mad, scared, whatever it is - but if you’re allowed to be selfish, then I’m allowed to be selfish too. It’s only fair.”

He understood suddenly why she had left. Because, even as a child the first time round, he’d hated letting anyone see him cry. Because she knew him and against all odds - she had decided not to hate him.

“...you’re too good, Ran.”  

“You better know it. Shinichi?”

“Yes?”

“Please...don’t hide from me anymore. Your faces - your fears. The parts of yourself you shove down and pretend don’t exist. Don’t run away anymore - I’m not giving up on you, so you’re not allowed to give up on yourself, okay?”

“...Okay.”

And - it was, for the first time in a long while. He’d come clean, stepped out of the shadows and into the sun, the first step, the hardest step - and she had been waiting, arms open, tear tracks on her cheeks and a smile on her face.

(Years and years later, Kudou Shinichi would recall this moment in his life and remark that truly, he didn’t deserve an angel like Mouri Ran.)

(Said angel would smack him, flat-eyed, and tell him that it wasn’t about deserving, and besides, she did give him a proper ass-kicking afterwards.)