Rating: T (for death and blood.)
Involving: Sherry and Gin.
Word Count: Approximately 1520 words.
Author: Dagron
Disclaimer: I have no claim upon the characters involved. They're all Gosho's.
Note: This is the translation of one of my participations to french site Naniwa's winter fan fiction contest. The theme was Winter. The inspiration was a snowy evening in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Title:

Red Snowflake.

The snow was falling heavily.
Flake after flake, tiny specks of white found themselves dancing around her, surrounding her.
There were so many flakes that they seemed to hide her, turning her into a silhouette of grey in the white night.

It was as if she suddenly found herself under the sea, a piece of seaweed stranded amongst a swirling cloud of plankton.
One of these rare landscapes that captivated you with their mesmerizing and surreal beauty.
A sight that came, however, with a very wintry feeling. A feeling of icy cold.

She hadn't noticed it at first, tightly wrapped as she was in a long black coat and red-patterned scarf. But as she felt the falling snow tickle her face and melt on her auburn hair before trickling down her neck, the feeling of cold grew and grew, sending daggers of discomfort through her flesh.

But she had no wish to move, she did not want to return to the house of tragedy. Not yet.

And maybe, if she stood here facing the elements long enough, they could help numb her to the sight of the dark pink stain in the snow nearby.

The blood of that child.
The white hand of the small corpse, like the rest of its body, was already half buried in a shroud of white.

The chill of the air around her was nothing compared to the disgust she felt when watching the crimson colour spread within the snowy mattress.

What-ifs, impossible wishes, and regret plagued her mind.
She would never forget the betrayed look the young boy threw her, when he had seen her, revolver at hand.

The gun now lay at her feet, half buried in snow.
She hadn't been able to shoot, but the child had been condemned from the start.
She wondered idly whether she'd one day be as unfeeling as a cube of ice, as cold hearted as Gin, when he shot the boy in the back.
She wondered whether it would really be a good thing...

Tears were threatening to run down her cheeks, but she could not allow that, ever.
In the Organisation, to show one's sensitivity, compassion towards a victim was a sign of weakness, generally rewarded by the swift kiss of death.
And Gin, being a devoted member of the Organisation, would most certainly be the one to deliver it without a frown.
She wiped away the tears in her eyes with a gloved hand, trying to regain her usually calm and stoic appearance.

There was no way she'd let herself be killed because of something so futile.

Especially not by him.

Exasperated by her weakness, she turned her eyes to the sky and sighed.
A small black hole could now be seen amongst the snowy clouds, allowing one to glimpse the glimmer of stars amongst the twirling snowflakes.
That boy, his parents, the old man...
All dead for nought.

She'd accompanied Gin and Vodka to investigate a rumour, which, as it turned out, was nothing more than a clever bait, a clumsy trap in wait for the organisation.

What was the boss thinking?
What could honestly justify so many victims?
Why should such an intelligent and charismatic man keep on chasing illusions?

The rare few times she'd been with the Boss, he'd seen right through her in a glimpse, and surprised her by his cunning. It was no surprise that Gin, Vodka, and so many others were so devoted to him.
With him, everything seemed possible, even the impossible... Even the worse.
She shivered, remembering what he'd hinted at then... Death-threats towards her sister, Akemi.

The sound of crunching snow from behind interrupted her thoughts.

Her heart skipped a beat, and without even thinking about it, her face took on a cold and sarcastic mask.
It was Gin.

"How much longer are you going to watch the snow fall, Sherry?"

She turned to face him.
Gin was a tall and imposing man, with a hard but now familiar face. She couldn't help but notice how, standing amongst the torrents of snow with his near-white hair dancing in the breeze, his menacing aura seemed to soften, melt away into that of the beautiful landscape. A rare occurrence.

"I was wondering..." She started to say...

"Hm?" He prodded, after she'd left her sentence hang a tad too long.

"I was wondering what you thought of the snow..." She lied.

He stayed still for a moment, seeming to consider what it was she'd just said.
In the end, he threw his cigarette to the ground.

"It's not like you to ask such futile questions." He said, closing the distance between them in a few strides.

She couldn't help feeling that prickle of panic she now associated with various black organisation members. She never let it show though.
Gin's face was showing an unusual emotion.

"Life is full of futilities." She answered with a shrug.

It was true after all. Trips for nought, useless thoughts... Futile deaths.

Gin grinned as he crouched in the snow. He picked up the gun Sherry had dropped half an hour prior. His eyes must have been really sharp to notice it there despite the freshly fallen snow that covered it.

"In that case..." He replied, standing up to give her back the weapon. "I must admit that I like to watch the snow."
Sherry lifted her eyebrows in surprise, hardly looking at the gun as she took it.

The man stayed quiet for a moment, contemplating the landscape. There weren't as many snowflakes falling now, the remaining few gliding leisurely down to earth.
At last, Gin raised a gloved hand in front of him, waiting for some snow to land there.

The young woman couldn't avoid noticing that his glove, just like his coat, was stained in black blood which contrasted darkly with his melancholic eyes.

"This snow which falls from the heavens, so white, so pure..."
He brought his hand closer to him, so as to inspect its contents.
"It's a bit like us human beings..."

His eyes darted over to the stone cold body of the child, laying in the snow.
"We come to the world pure as lambs, but sooner or later..."

He slipped his hand back into his coat pocket, before finishing his sentence with a kick in the powdery snow, sending both earth and flakes flying.
"We end up soiled."

Sherry was struck silent for a moment, but, realising her silence was out of character, checked herself.
"I didn't know you to be philosophical." She hoped her usual cynicism hadn't abandoned her.

"I'm not." Answered Gin. His face had regained its usual iciness. "Come. We leave early tomorrow."

"For Tokyo?"
"For Tokyo."

She could only wonder, as Gin lead her towards the country villa, whether it was on purpose he had placed himself between her and the cadaver, his right hand placed somewhat reassuringly on her shoulder. It hadn't escaped her notice that he had not remarked on her inability to shoot earlier.

"...Tell me, Gin..."

"What?" He asked. His chatty mood had definitely lifted.

"What happens when a snowflake refuses to be soiled?"

He laughed.
"You finished your studies in the States recently, and I've only been supervising you for a couple of months, but I thought such a clever woman as you would know the answer to that question."

Fancy that. He hadn't used the word girl.

"A snowflake that refuses to be soiled by the earth, isn't a snowflake long."

He smiled cruelly, the way he did when speaking of a personal kill.

Sherry wondered if it was really true, glimpsing at the mountains to the north, barely emerging through the dwindling snowfall.
Up there one could find glaciers covered in white and pure snow, renown as such for centuries.

However his earlier metaphor was not wasted on her, and she kept quiet.

"Say, Sherry. You favourite colour is red, right?" Said Gin, looking over his shoulder. Looking towards the dead child.

"Yes." She answered. "Blood Red."
A colour she both loved and loathed. She associated it with the dissection sessions at university, where the colour was a mere backdrop upon which one investigated the theory of the human body. She associated it with blood samples, a true mine of information on the health, even the identity of a living individual. A red both bright and vibrant, bravely fighting for survival.

She had forgotten that it was also one of the colours of death.

"Good." Replied Gin, smiling.

He removed his hand from her shoulder, and together they returned to the home of the recently decimated family.
They would sleep there, leaving Vodka on watch, just in case, and in the morrow they would leave these secluded montages for Tokyo, where Sherry would resume her laboratory research whereas Gin and Vodka would return to their usual shady transactions.

This trip had, however, without any of the involved parties realising it, sowed some of the seeds of the events to come.
The obsession of Gin for a snowflake stained in red, it's transformation into a tear, and the long awaited arrival of a flower named hope...

END.

Post note: In case you were confused, this fic takes place before the events in Detective Conan. It is also a clumsy attempt at a Sherry and Gin, erm... Romance?
And yes, Gin is not a brainless brute in my mind, so there you have it. Sorry if you find him out of character.
I hope you enjoyed never the less.