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Yet another Conan has come to the Dressing Room. One who was actually a bit taller than the usual Conan. He looks more like he's eleven. Maybe even twelve.

Brought in kind of at a bad time too.

Which should be obvious to anyone who happens upon him as he stumbled through the hallway as he's clutching at his arm. Which is bleeding. Quite heavily. And that's not accounting for all the smaller cuts, torn clothing, and bruises covering the rest of his body.

"Damn it," he muttered, leaning against a wall. "Hello! Heiji! Kaito! Anyone!" Damn, damn, damn, where was he?! One minute he's running from Snake after escaping narrowly from the 'little surprise' left for Kid in his landing spot, and now he's in some hotel. At least it felt like his arm was only grazed, but he'd need stitches and he really couldn't afford going to a hospital.

If he could find a phone in...wherever here was.

He didn't even recognize this place!

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Ran paused, then reluctantly put the pills back in the drawer and quietly closed it.

"Then you should rest," she said just as softly, coming back over to sit next to him. "Come on, we should find you a room."

Conan nodded, standing up. "How do rooms work here?"

"We just find an empty one and use it," Ran answered. She held out her hand to Conan, then let it fall when he didn't take it. "I think most of us are staying on the third floor, but there's bedrooms all over the place."

His head shifted to look at her hand, but he wouldn't take it. Couldn't take. "The third floor is fine," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, wincing a bit as he moved his arm. But if he kpt his hands there, then it seemed less obvious he was avoiding contact with her.

The wince didn't escape her notice, however.

"Be careful with your arm, Conan-kun," Ran scolded gently, opening the infirmary door and holding it open for him. "Do you want something to eat first? There's a dining room, too."

He flinched slightly. He didn't want to hear her call him that. He had even avoided being called Conan-kun from anyone back home for months now.

That happened when he wasn't around the shonen tantei and the people who didn't know didn't really talk to him.

"I'm fi-" He was about to refuse the food when his stomach growled. Traitor.

Ran smiled faintly at him, a hint of her usual humour in its depths. Some things never changed.

"This way," she told him, counting the doors to the dining room. She could still see blood on the handles of the doors she had tried while searching for the infirmary, and she quickly looked away again.

Luckily she had remembered to wash her hands before they'd left the infirmary. Ran was certain she'd had more than enough blood for one day.

She found their second destination much more easily than the first, and held the door for Conan once again with a smile.

"You can take whatever you want," Ran explained. "It never seems to run out."

Conan walked into the room, for the first time looking up. He kind of had too. He wasn't that much taller than the tables.

"So the food just appears?" He asked, grabbing a plate and getting some food. Talk about facts. Facts were good. Facts meant knowing his situation and not thinking about stuff he didn't want to think about.

"Un." Ran wasn't very hungry herself, having just eaten a short while before, so she simply followed Conan around and retrieved food for him when he had difficulty reaching it. "No one has ever seen anyone bring it it in."

"It hasn't made people act weird, has it? Or change them into animals or the opposite gender or wrong age?" Conan asked.

...it happened a lot in the Inns.

Ran gave him a strange look. That almost sounded like the kinds of things that happened on the community. "No... Oh, but the other day all of us were leaving paint on everything we touched."

"Is that the worst thing this place has done? Aside from the kidnapping?" Conan asked, turning to find a place to sit to eat.

Ran took a moment to think about that, then nodded.

"Most of the bad stuff that happens here is because of the people who come in, not the mansion itself," she clarified, picking a small table and sitting across from Conan. Her expression darkened. "Be careful, okay? One of the Conan-kuns was attacked by someone here."

"Ah, another similarity. I wonder if when they reveal themselves, it'll be because they want us to 'save' this place?" Conan said allowed and let out a hollow laugh. "And yet they bring the villains."

"Don't worry. It's a concept I'm used too. Even Kaitou Kid found one villain a challenge and we were the ones to deal with them," he said before he started on his food.

"Conan-kun." Ran's tone was just as serious as the gaze that she fixed him with. "What happened to you?"

Conan fell silent, frozen in place. Then after a moment, he sent down his silverware.

"Please...stop calling me Conan. The one consolation I had was that wasn't the last name you called me."

Ran looked at him, long and just as silent. There was so much here that she didn't understand...

"Then what should I call you?" she asked quietly.

He shouldn't say. Wasn't his Ran. Would sell out the other. Shouldn't say, shouldn't, shouldn't.

...

Like he cared anymore. It'd work out just fine for them anyway.

"Shinichi."

The karateka paled, a multitude of emotions flickering over her face.

It couldn't be -- that can't --

"Th-that's impossible," she finally managed, her voice small and tight. It couldn't be. She'd seen Conan and Shinichi together at the same time, as two separate people. Had spoken to them both at the same time. How could someone pull something like that off? It was crazy!

But it isn't the first time you've wondered, whispered a sinister little voice in the back of her head.

"We're in another world where you meet versions of people you know from other worlds. Distorted, broken, changed. None quite the same as another..." Conan said, still staring at his plate.

"You really think...it's impossible, when there's such things like that around?"

"I..." Ran stared at the tabletop. Strangely enough, Conan's-- Shinichi's-- statement consoled her a little. It was true: there were plenty of different versions of people she knew here in the mansion. Surely there had to be at least one where Shinichi actually was Conan. That didn't mean that hers was.

Or so she tried to tell herself. That sinister, niggling doubt didn't seem to be going away at all.

Ran glanced up and, impulsively, reached out for Conan's glasses, pulling them off his face. His face, which had been so keenly familiar on more than one occasion, now looking so broken--

It was strange. She should feel worse seeing Conan with that look than seeing Shinichi with it, but it was the other way around. Perhaps it was because she knew just how tough Shinichi was -- had seen him face down terrifying and dangerous killers with calm repose and unflappable bravado. To see that courage so completely shattered...

...It shook her to the core.

"Shinichi--" and the whispered name rolled off her tongue so easily, so firmly, despite the age of the boy sitting across from her-- "what happened?"

Conan didn't stop her. (Couldn't touch, couldn't touch.) The glasses were off and he didn't bother to hide his face anymore than he did before. He refused to meet her eyes.

And then she said his name, his fingers clutching at the table, knuckles turning white. "Experimental poison. Miracle chance at it shrinking the person versus killing them." His voice is cold, clinical. It has to be or he'd lose it.

Ran, in turn, was unnaturally still and careful as she placed the glasses down on the table. She felt as if everything had turned to glass, including herself, and that one wrong word or movement would shatter everything.

This was somehow worse than meeting the dead Shinichi, or the broken version of herself. At least then she had felt free to let out her sadness, to allow her hurt and her sympathy to show through. But right now she had the feeling that Shinichi was two steps away from -- she couldn't think of it as anything other than completely losing it. Like he'd fall to pieces if she said or did the wrong thing.

And she was afraid that if he did, she'd break too.

Or at least her heart would.

She wanted to reach out to him, hold him, make him tell her everything -- do anything to wipe that look off of his face!

But all Ran had to do was look at her friend to see how deeply that pain was etched and how badly he must have been hurt.

Could anything she do really help?

"Do... do you want me to leave?"

The question slipped out without her volition. She didn't want to leave him here, didn't want to leave him alone when he was clearly in so much pain, but if her presence was only causing him more hurt...

Yes.

No.

He didn't want her to go. More than anything, he didn't want her to go, but if she stayed. If he stayed around her, let himself break down, let her in...

"Please..." Conan whispered, barely audible. "Please...go..."

Ran's eyes slowly closed, and for a moment she just sat where she was, expression completely blank. Then she braced her hands on the table and got to her feet, the scrape of her chair unnaturally loud in the fragile silence.

When her eyes opened again, they were carefully guarded, but it was obvious how much pain she was holding back behind the normally vibrant blue. A little more broke through the slight smile that she gave him.

To her credit, that was all that escaped. Ran wouldn't have allowed even that much through if she'd been better at hiding her emotions, but unfortunately she'd never had much practice with that.

This was what Shinichi needed. Her feelings didn't matter right now. His did.

"My room is number 321," she said evenly, and was proud of the fact that her voice didn't waver. "If you need anything, you can come find me, okay?"

She paused, then added, "No matter what time it is."

It wasn't like she'd been sleeping very well anyway.

Having said everything she trusted herself to say, Ran paused, gave Shinichi one last glance, and then forced herself to turn and go.

It wasn't until she'd left the dining room and had the door firmly shut behind her that she allowed a tear to fall.

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never-returned.livejournal.com - 2010-01-31 06:43 (UTC) - Expand

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