Disclaimer: This bit of whatever-it-be is mine, but the characters, situations, etc. can be blamed on Gosho Aoyama and a bunch of other people otherwise known as "not Kat". The rest I'll just blame on little sleep, lots of stress, and exploring muses.
My Father's Ghost
by Kat Morning
Crying hurt. Not crying hurt even more.
She had seen the policeman to the door, ushering him out with false assurances that she would call someone to stay with her until her extended family arrived. She had even pointed out the Kuroba house and given the officer Kaito's number. He had bowed, offered condolences, and then swiftly retreated.
Aoko could feel the strangling tightness of tears that refused to fall spreading a dull ache through her throat and head. The house seemed echoingly empty now, and the emptiness felt permanent; solid in ways it had never felt when her father was out chasing Kid.
The cushions listed as another person settled beside her. Kaito. She could see the frayed knee of his jeans almost brushing hers. Birdseed and a downy feather fluff still clung to his clothes, telling the inspector's daughter that he had come directly from his dove coup; probably when he had spotted the police car parked in front of her house or the somber delivery they had made.
The sharp-edged shield of her father's shield bit into her palm and she sagged, falling against Kaito's wiry strength. She felt him stiffen to support her weight, and shift so one arm wrapped around her shoulders. Kaito sat quietly beside her, neither talking nor fidgeting with his usual barely-contained sugar high of energy.
They had sat with this awkward quiet closeness before: on Kaito's house steps when he had learned his father was not coming home had been the first time. Now they were sitting in her living room for her father.
"I'm joining the police force," she said, breaking the crushing silence and wondering as she said it why she had, other than it felt right. "Dad wanted me to apply for the academy last year."
He tensed around her, and pulled slowly away. He knew her father had suggested the police academy, and Aoko had vetoed the idea because she didn't want to spend her life chasing phantoms across rooftops. "Aoko, don't become your father's ghost."
Aoko stared at him, at the suddenly familiar stranger sitting beside her. He looked serious, so unlike the grinning trickster she had grown up with. His eyes weren't laughing, his lips didn't quirk up in his habitual grin, and what an odd thing to say. What did Kuroba Kaito know about ghosts?
"If you want to do this, don't do it to stop them in place of him," Kaito told her, with that same unnerving still intensity to him. "Don't become your dad's ghost."
Anger, an emotion safe and pure and enough to keep the threatening despair from her, flooded Aoko. Kaito had been set to follow his father from the moment she had met him. He couldn't tell her not to do the same! "They took him from me!" she snarled. "Criminals have always taken him from me, and this time they won't be giving him back! Why shouldn't I go after them?"
A white silk top hat dropped in front of her, followed by the ivory and glass of Kaitou Kid's monocle. Aoko looked up and finally saw the face of the Kid. The boy she'd grown up with, and who was reflecting her pain in his eyes.
"That's why."