The Loved Ones Who Ended Well

Well... to start things off this was a heck of a project and represents a lot of firsts for me. I believe this is my first ever sequential piece, and I even did it in CSP! Learning how to find my way around the UI probably contributed to this taking as long as it did, to say nothing of the weird workarounds I took to export the pages correctly, but I'm pretty happy with the results. Although, I have definitely come to the conclusion that I'm not really cut out for sequential stuff in general - and my admiration of Those Who Are has only increased T.T

So - I first thought of this sometime around the time I was fixing up my Desperate Revival redraw. [guiltily] You didn't hear it from me, but this is also... technically... a Desperate Revival piece... with some OVA 9 flavor.

OVA 9 is all about Shinichi hallucinating the Bad End to DC. When exactly the visions start is left up in the air, but they begin sometime after consuming the antidote and last right up until the moment he reverts back to Conan-- or perhaps even a few minutes afterwards (having already shrunk when he regains useful consciousness). According to Haibara, he becomes Shinichi for only a short time and is never actually awake for it, instead suffering at the hands of some phantom punishment until the antidote wears off.

I know the OVAs are not canon, but I also don't believe this turn of events to be outside the realm of general possibility, given the process of regrowing and shrinking is never really shown outright. Fading to black, so to speak, is obviously just more of a practical choice but it offers ambiguity and something to play with. It's not unheard of for people to experience fever-induced hallucinations, or to claim to see things whilst in severe pain - and these transformations are nothing if not implied to be extremely painful, so much so that (at least the first few times) the trauma causes Shinichi to faint. So... I wondered... does this-- the visions-- ever happen again? Has it happened before without us knowing it?

I would argue the end of Shinichi's tenure in The Desperate Revival is also his worst, because unlike The Diplomat Murder Case the "return to normalcy" here was completely expected, the notion of which is only reinforced after being bamboozled into thinking it was actually permanent (when he faints, but awakens as Shinichi, still). When the antidote finally starts wearing off, although without the energy to be outwardly desperate, he's probably so distraught and stricken by the imagery of Conan in the mirror, no I won't ever shut up about these two seconds ever that... surely... he could have hallucinated something in those few, brief moments... while begging for an extension of his time...?

Anyway, I close with this~ ;) Thanks for reading!