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“Excuse me, miss, could you tell me how to get to room 407?”
Kaito spun at the touch on his elbow, plastering on an innocent smile to cover his surprise. Right. I’m still in this nurse outfit. He gave the older woman directions to the specified room, suddenly very glad he had studied the layout of the hospital before coming in.
He glanced down the hall again. Visiting hours would end in fifteen minutes or so, and then he could approach his target without an audience. “Target” being a relative term, of course. He was waiting for privacy before he could talk to Tantei-kun – that surprising, wonderful, not-child who had single-handedly dragged Kaito out of an all-encompassing despair with his patient, steady friendship. The tiny boy who just hours before had been pulled out of the wreckage of a bombed building with a broken leg, some major burns and bruises, and a crack in his skull that might have been from a glancing gunshot wound.
Kaito had skipped all his heist planning for the night and come to Beika as soon as he heard the news. Jii was irritated with him, because he had been planning to deliver the heist note in the morning and for that it needed to get written first, but with his best friend’s life in danger, Kaito wouldn’t have been able to focus on heists and gems and tricks anyway.
When Kaito had arrived at the hospital, dressed as a flustered off-duty nurse who had left her keys somewhere, he had overheard that “Conan” was in stable condition and out of surgery, but the doctors were anxious for him to wake up so they could see if he’d suffered any brain damage, either from the injury, or from the lack of oxygen since the apparent child had been breathing only fumes for almost an hour before he was found.
He paced to another spot, disguising the fact that he was not actually working nor looking for the lost keys. Kaito made his phone appear out of thin air, glanced at the time, and then quickly stashed it back out of sight, briefly irritated that his current disguise never wore watches nor any other jewelry. Just another minute or two until Tantei-kun’s many visitors would leave.
Shinichi, please. Please be okay. Don’t actually hold me to that promise.
Finally, it was time. He listened from around the corner as another nurse encouraged the collection of police officers, private detectives, and one high-school girl to leave. Hattori Heiji had arrived less than an hour after Kaito had, meaning the Osakan detective had already been on his way to Tokyo before Tantei-kun was found, and he had spent his time bickering loudly with the staff and worrying quietly with Mouri-san and Mouri-chan about the smaller detective. Kaito had overheard Hattori call Conan “Kudou” at least twice in his concern, but fortunately, everyone else seemed too worried about the boy to notice the slip. Perhaps they had assumed Hattori was worried about two different people when really, there was only one.
Kaito let himself silently into the dark room, where his friend lay too-still, curled up on his side in a bed far too big for him, with an oxygen tube down his throat and an assortment of monitors beeping softly by his side. All at once, the darkness of depression threatened to swallow Kaito whole again. His breath caught in his throat, and he hesitated for a moment, focusing on returning his breathing to normal. Shinichi was alive, at least. But was he still Shinichi, whose humor and snark and friendship had saved Kaito? Kaito wasn’t sure he could handle it if his friend’s brilliant mind hadn’t survived. No, he wouldn’t think about that yet.
“Conan-kun?” he murmured into the silent room. And then more strongly, “Conan-kun, are you awake?”
There was an exasperated huff. “Don’ wanna be. Go ‘way.” The not-child didn’t make any move to roll or face Kaito.
Well, if Shinichi was being grumpy, maybe he was feeling like himself. On impulse, Kaito swirled his cape out and around him and quickly changed out of his nurse disguise and into slacks and a button-down, removing the nitrile mask from his face (no latex in a hospital) and slicking his hair back, emerging momentarily as the spitting image of the long-absent Kudou Shinichi. He tucked his cape away again and modified his voice to match his new face. “Come on, Conan-kun, I just have a few simple questions for you.”
Shinichi groaned, but rolled tenderly onto his back to look up at his doppelganger. “What?” he snapped
Kaito locked eyes with his shrunken friend, and immediately tore his gaze away from the unfeigned confusion in them, with no glimmer of recognition. He swallowed hard to clear a lump from his throat and keep his emotions firmly behind his poker face. There was no use clamming up now.
“I…” Kaito’s voice cracked and he started over. “Do you even remember me?”
In his peripheral vision, Kaito caught a glimpse of Conan’s face again, now pinched in thought, and brought his gaze immediately to the ceiling before that vacant expression broke his heart.
He waited in the terrible silence, and remembered
They were sitting on the roof of the Kudou mansion on the night of a new moon, admiring the stars. Kaito was wearing all black so no one would spot his glider-flight across Tokyo to visit his friend. White was for heists and shows, and Shinichi saw past all of that anyway, to the broken teen underneath who just needed someone to understand. Shinichi wanted to be his friend despite everything, not just because of their fractured pasts and the common enemies they shared.
Shinichi pulled two thermoses out of a bag and offered one to Kaito. Steaming hot chocolate greeted Kaito when he opened his, and he smelled the bitter tang of coffee from his friend’s.
“Hey, Kaito?” the once-teen asked, sipping his coffee and leaning back slightly so his shoulder touched Kaito’s elbow.”I need to ask a favor.”
“You’re trying to bribe me with chocolate, huh?” Kaito teased. “How big is this favor anyway?” He sipped the rich drink slowly, careful not to burn his tongue on it, imagining requests to appear as Shinichi when Conan was otherwise busy, or to sneak him out of kiddie-school for the next show-and-tell day.
“Kaito… You and I both know how I get into a lot of dangerous situations. That’s only going to get worse as we close in on the Black Organization. I have to ask. If I die as Conan, please fake my death as Shinichi so that Ran and my friends can mourn me properly.”
Kaito nearly dropped his thermos, surprised at the intensity of the request. “Tantei-kun. Shinichi. I…”
“Promise me you will!” the not-child demanded, turning to fix Kaito with an intense glare he usually reserved for suspects that would not confess. “Or if I’m in a coma or I lose my memory or something. Please. Fake my death so that Ran can grieve and then move on. So she doesn’t think I’ve abandoned her when she’s worried about Conan.”
“How can I do that?” Kaito had almost shouted, before he remembered they were in the middle of a residential neighborhood in the middle of the night. He brought it down to a hissing whisper. “That would be hard enough to do if you were dead, but what about if you lose your memory and then recover? Don’t you want to go back to that life someday?”
Shinichi deflated a little at that. “I used to. I wish every day that this,” he gestured vaguely at his small body, “had never happened, that I was still a regular genius teen.” Kaito snorted at that, and Shinichi had grinned in return, a sarcastic, self-deprecating smile. “But what I want most of all is to avoid hurting Ran. She’s been my friend longer than anyone. I don’t want her to mourn for me if she doesn’t have to. But if I’m not coming back and I can’t even call her occasionally to reassure her, I would rather she mourn and then get over me than pine for me forever and grieve for Conan.”
They had argued until their drinks turned cold, but Kaito had eventually relented. He had promised his shrunken friend that he would work with Agasa and Hattori, and maybe Shinichi’s parents and Takagi-keiji or Megure-keibu (without telling the officers why) to arrange his “death” as Shinichi if Conan had ever seemed unlikely to recover.
Please, Shinichi. Remember me; be okay. I can’t let you die. I need you.
The silence had only stretched on for five or six seconds, but they were the most terrifying six seconds of Kaito’s life, even compared to being shot at. Finally, the small detective spoke.
“Shinichi… niisan.” Kaito glanced down, hope prickling against the terror seizing his heart, to see the same determinedly-thinking expression on the not-child’s face, but this time he recognized the gears turning slowly, oh so slowly, in his friend’s mind. “Wait. No... Kid. Kaitou Kid.” Shinichi’s expression finally morphed into surprised recognition. “Kaito! You’re here… What..?”
Only sheer force of will prevented Kaito from crying tears of joy, but even Kaito’s well-practiced poker face couldn’t stop the lump from forming in his throat. He nodded mutely, and then cleared his throat and forced his voice to work. “I’m here, Tantei-kun. I came.” He resisted the urge to pull his friend into a tight hug, since he wasn’t sure where all the injuries were. “I made you a promise, but I had to check on you before I would follow through. You scared us all.”
Shinichi looked lost for a minute, gears still turning slowly, before worry flashed across his face, replaced by a resigned expression that looked like a stiff attempt at a poker face. “Oh. Yeah... So‘ve you killed me yet?”
“No.” Kaito breathed. “No, I couldn’t bear to. Not without seeing you first. You only got hurt this morning; I was going to give it a week at least.” Kaito stopped himself from saying any more before the terror made itself truly apparent in his voice. He tangled his fingers gently in Shinichi’s singed hair on the side that hadn’t been shaved, unable to fully resist the urge to touch his friend, to feel that he was alive.
“Oh.” Shinichi mumbled softly, relaxing, eyes fluttering shut. “Call Ran for me then? Say ‘m busy an’ let ‘er tell you ‘bout me. ‘N tell Haib’ra that…” He trailed off into sleep, exhaustion finally taking over.
“You tell her tomorrow, Shinichi,” Kaito whispered, running his thumb gently over a part of Shinichi’s brow that looked neither burned nor bruised. You’ll be okay.
Kaito pulled up a chair to sit by the bed. He stayed there for another half hour or more, watching the regular pattern scroll by on the heart monitor and determinedly not crying in relief.
In the morning, the staff found the window unlatched but closed and the chair still by the bedside with a white card on the seat.
Recover well, my little critic. There are gems to protect. ~O_^