A.N.: My fic for the third prompt exchange at Poirot Cafe forums. The prompt I received was: "Ran and Heji meet for tea at cafe. Basically, Ran knows Conan is Shinichi but pretends she doesn't. She wants Heji to spill the beans on why Shinichi won't just tell her. Heji can either tell Ran the truth or avoid it leaving the problem unresolved. "

I did have to make some stuff up (Shinichi's blood type) for this story; I went with a rare one since it was stated to be rare but couldn't find any confirmation of what it actually was. Also if I've messed up on the whole family registries thing, let me know; I've never had personal experience with one and some of my research went through google translate.

Quick warning, though: Despite starting off humorous, this does go some dark places. Not dark places I've deliberately introduced, mind; everything that's discussed is stuff that's actually happened in canon, and I'm just pointing it out for what it is. So if emotional abuse, especially that involving manipulation, is a trigger for you... Read with caution. (And if anyone thinks I should put a warning for it in the summary, let me know and I'll be happy to put one up.)

And apologies for the fairly abrupt mood-180. Hope nobody gets whiplash.

Hattori Heiji is anything but stupid.

Well, okay, some people (Kazuha, mostly) would disagree with that. But he's not. Reckless is an entirely different thing from stupid. And he does, contrary to some opinions (Kazuha, again), have common sense. He just usually chooses to ignore it. But he's really, really not stupid.

Which is why Ran "invites" him over to Tokyo for tea, he knows something's up.

His first instinct is to decline. It's a pretty long way just for tea, for one thing, even if it weren't suspicious. And he's not that fond of tea in the first place. Plus that whole suspicious thing, considering she's never been overly interested in him in the past, and this is just a little out of the blue. So he thinks he can say no.

He can't.

Ran, being cleverer than he usually gives her credit for, has enlisted Kazuha. Who knows why, and who knows how. But Kazuha informs him at school one morning that he is going, and he is going to be happy with it. And nice about it. And if he so much as thinks about skipping out she'll break his bokken over his head and beat him with both pieces.

In a kind and feminine way of course.

Heiji thinks maybe he should have picked better childhood friends.

But that's not the point now. He's not stupid; he knows something's up. He texts Kudo to tell him what's going on, and ask if he has any ideas, but apparently nothing's been overly out-of-the-ordinary at the Mouri household (you know, other than the arson, murder, and jaywalking that they stumble into on an alarmingly regular basis) and Ran isn't acting any stranger than usual. And if anyone was going to notice, it would be Kudo.

Which really just means Heiji's going in blind.

Kazuha comes with him on the train up to Tokyo. She claims she's going to spend some time shopping with a friend of Ran's who's offered to help her figure out her best colors (some fashion thing, apparently), but he's not that blind. She's here to keep him from running. And that gets confirmed when she walks him all the way to the cafe, and refuses to let him "remember" anything important he has to do elsewhere right now.

Ran and Ran's friend meet them outside. The friend is real, which Heiji wasn't sure about. And she's fancy. He's met her before, though briefly – Suzuki something, maybe? – that one time he was dressed as Shinichi. Or maybe that other time he was dressed as Shinichi. Or maybe both. But more importantly, she doesn't seem to like him much. He gets a scorching glare when they arrive five minutes late. Ran introduces everyone – Suzuki Sonoko, apparently – and Suzuki-san greets Kazuha effusively before swooping in and practically carrying her off, saying something about needing a neutral light source to determine her undertone. Whatever that means.

But what it means right now is Heiji is now alone, defenseless, with whatever Ran has planned, and no escape in sight. He tries not to let his nervousness show.

Maybe someone will get murdered.

But no, he's not that lucky. Ran turns to him with a sweet and entirely harmless smile, clutching her bag with both brick-breaking hands. "Shall we go inside?"

He stammers through an affirmative, and she steers him to sit down in one of the booths. The waitress brings the tea immediately – no time to stall and settle himself with the excuse of looking at the menu – and Ran thanks her with the kind of friendliness that make her think they know each other personally.

This is such a setup.

But the waitress – his last hope of stalling somehow – strides away, leaving Heiji alone with Ran. She smiles at him over her tea, and his blood runs cold. It's not Ran's usual friendly-harmless-karate master smile. It's not even her I'm-being-polite smile. It's the narrow eyed, thin lipped, almost snake-like smile she only pulls out when she's cut off every other route of escape. He recognizes it from Kazuha.

It's the I-have-you-now smile.

"So!" he starts, trying to push his nervousness back. "Ah – how's Conan-kun?"

"Oh he's fine," Ran says. The smile doesn't get any less threatening. "He's having a Kamen Yaiba party with his friends today. I'm sure he's having loads of fun, and the professor said that it's no trouble to keep them over there. He should be busy all afternoon." And he is definitely not imagining the way her eyes narrow and her voice drops on the last couple words, almost like a threat. Or a promise: There is no rescue for you from that quarter. "How are things in Osaka?"

"Um, good, good, there was a – a case," he stammers – and good grief, he has better control of himself than this. He has faced down murderers, smugglers, blackmailers, leaders of gangs, and his father in a bad mood; there is no call for him to be this intimidated by a high school girl. "Someone poisoned a plate of Fugu, tried to blame the chef; wouldn't have gotten away with it, probably. Cyanide looks totally different from tetrodotoxin poisoning, and the timeline didn't -" Her smile thins a bit, and it makes him stammer. "- Didn't match up. Pretty obvious in retrospect."

"That's good to hear," she says sweetly. "It's always nice to catch a liar out."

...And that isn't ominous at all.

He laughs, a bit nervously, and sips at his tea. Ran gives him that smile for a moment longer, apparently enjoying watching him squirm, before she sets her teacup down and sighs.

"Hattori-kun," she starts. "I appreciate what you're doing to help Shinichi with his case." Oh no. Oh no. That's where this conversation is going? "And it's good to know he has a friend he can count on to keep his secrets. I'm sure he really appreciates your discretion."

"Uh... Thanks," Heiji says.

"After all," she says, and the smile thins again, "it would be a shame if he were in danger of some kind, and couldn't trust anyone else to help him. I know he'd try. Because he's a stubborn idiot. But if someone knows what he's working on, and where he is, I imagine they can help. Which is much better than him facing down something awful on his own." The smile drops. "Right, Hattori-kun?"

"I... Uh, yeah. Right." He swallows hard. He needs a lie here, some kind of cover story. But he's an awful liar, he knows, so there has to be enough truth in it to pass. "But, uh... I don't know where he is right now. He talks to me about his cases, I mean, but if something happened I wouldn't – wouldn't be able to tell you exactly where he was."

"Hmm," Ran says. She doesn't look at him, which is a relief. He's fairly sure he has liar written on his forehead in big red letters. Instead, she gazes calmly at her teacup, casual as anything.

This is an interrogation tactic, and he knows it. She's waiting for him to drop his guard. A sympathy play, justifying his actions before he can defend them, like only one end of a good-cop-bad-cop routine. Not pressing. Until she does, and he knows she's going to. He has to be ready for it. He steels himself and tries to think of something to reinforce his story.

"I mean, I've seen him a few places? Not often though; you know how he disappears. Someday I'm gonna have to put him in a headlock so I can show him around Osaka without him running off on me," he says jokingly. That's something he would do naturally, because he needs to act natural, because that's how you lie effectively. Don't consistently maintain or avoid eye contact, speak in generalities, don't fidget, keep the hands relaxed, maintain normal body language. He runs through his mental checklist and yeah, she's not falling for it. "It's always a case, or a body, or you just turn around, and bang, he's gone."

"Mmm, yes," she says. "About that." She looks up suddenly, and pins him with her eyes. "I know where he's going. I know where he is. And I know you know too."

"...Uh," he says. "What are you talking about?"

She doesn't buy it, and the expression shifts from suspicious to annoyed. Her eyes narrow but there's no creepy smile with it this time. "Hattori-kun. Don't lie to me; you can't pull it off. You know."

"Um," he manages. Think fast. "Maybe... maybe you should tell me exactly what it is that I know, so I can tell you or not whether I know it?"

"You know," she says slowly, "that Shinichi is, at this moment, at Professor Agasa's house, watching Kamen Yaiba." She pauses. "Against his will, I might add."

He freezes, catches himself, and tries to play it off as a natural pause to think. "What – you mean Conan?" He deliberately widens his eyes, rocks back a little in his seat. "You think Conan-kun is Kudo?" Acting really doesn't come naturally to him, and his natural tendency to blurt out the first thing that comes into his head is fighting against him right now. Still, though, he does his best to play the shock up. It's a completely ridiculous notion, after all – nevermind that it's the truth. "Seriously? He's – what, seven? And you think he's secretly seventeen somehow?"

"I don't know how," Ran says, completely calm, never looking away. "And I don't care if you tell me. But I know you know."

"I know – I know that the first grader is Kudo." He keeps his voice flat, almost neutral, trying to let how ridiculous it is stand for itself. "You're – you really believe that?"

"I do," she says. "And you do too – unless you have some other explanation for why you call him Kudo every time you see him."

"That's – he just reminds me of Kudo is all. They're a lot alike."

"Even though one is seven and the other seventeen?" she says, a deliberate mirror of his words.

"Well, yeah." He shrugs. "He's like – mini-Kudo."

She watches him for a long moment, eyes slowly narrowing as he tries to keep the lie out of his face. And doesn't succeed, judging by the look she's giving him. "Alright," she says. "Fine. I was hoping to go for the being-honest-with-friends route. But I can do the detective route too." She pulls the bag she brought in over from where it rested against the end of the seat, and pulls out a folder inside. It's organized, well labeled, exactly what he'd expect to see in an actual detective agency – because, as he recalls slightly too late, she lives in an actual detective agency. "We'll start with this."

"Er – okay?"

She set a page in front of him. A photocopy of two papers, one of what looked like case notes and the other what seemed to be – a shopping list? "Handwriting analysis. Not the katakana he uses for his schoolwork. It's the chickenscratch he uses when he's writing fast. One is Conan, one is Shinichi. Tell me which is which."

They're identical. "Kudo," he guesses, tapping on the case notes.

"Nope. Conan," she says. "But you couldn't tell. I couldn't tell, and I read his notes for years. Nobody can tell. So, point one: identical handwriting." The page flips over and is replaced by another one. "Point two." The new paper she's shoved in his direction is another photocopy, this one with two different photos on it. Both of the same sleeping six year old, missing his glasses. "Identical distant cousins: not a thing that happens. Tell me which one's which."

He cannot get this wrong. His eyes flicker from one to the other. On the left is slightly longer hair, on the right is older style pajamas. On the left the background is blue, on the right it's a pale yellow, and he doesn't recognize either room. The bridge of the nose – no recent marks from glasses on either, darn it, and both of them look equally young, equally exhausted. The right, though – that might be the couch from Mouri-san's office. "Conan," he says, tapping the right photo.

"Kudo," she says, and the I-have-you-now smile is back. "And it took you a full three minutes to get that wrong."

"So they look alike," Heiji says. "That can happen."

"And that's why I'm not relying on that anymore," she says, almost snaps. "Not by itself. Not anything by itself. Point three, blood type." She slides a medical form in front of him, covering the pictures. One of the boxes is circled with orange highlighter."B negative. Negative. Do you know the percentages on that here in Japan?" She looks him in the eye. "Zero point one percent. One in one thousand. That's rare enough to be a problem."

"But not rare enough that it couldn't be a coincidence," he points out. "I mean, you're B negative, and you're not Shinichi. Or even related to him."

"You're right," she says. "But we're not looking at these points alone. We're looking at them together." The next thing out of the folder is Conan's koseiki – the family registry. "Point four."

He blinks at it, and looks up at her. "How did you get that? Those aren't publicly available anymore."

"Did you know a lawyer can get someones koseiki if they're involved in legal proceedings?" Ran asks dryly. "Do you have any idea how many trials he's been either a witness or evidence in?"

"Okay, right." Heiji squeezes his eyes shut. "Why are we looking at this one?"

"Because it's faked," Ran says flatly.

"...What?"

"It's fake," she repeats. "Mother's name, checked that, koseiki for her maiden name? Doesn't exist. Registered ancestral residence? No record of Edogawa. It's fake. It's well faked; just looking at it doesn't give you any hints. But if you look into it it all comes apart."

Heiji stares at the paper for a moment. "Oh."

"Yeah," Ran says. "Oh."

"Have you – have you talked to him about it?" he asks. This one's going to be much harder for Kudo to get out of, he's sure. "There might be some other explanation."

"I haven't," Ran answers. "I'm done presenting one piece of evidence at a time and letting him talk his way out of it. This one," she taps the koseiki, "doesn't prove he's Shinichi. But it does prove he's not Edogawa Conan. I'm saving it."

"...Right," he says.

Between them, the tea is going cold. He picks up his cup and forces himself to drink it, just so he won't have to say anything. Ran sees it, and soldiers on.

"Point five." This time, it's Conan's school records. "More faked documentation. I called his old school. They weren't his old school. They'd never heard of him. Point six." Another medical record, much like the one she'd handed him for blood type. "Or more accurately, his complete lack thereof. No vaccination record, no birth record, no nothing. And wasn't that fun to find out when he was shot; if I hadn't guessed – yes, in retrospect it was a guess – that we shared a blood type, we wouldn't have been able to get him a transfusion. Nobody bothered to fake those papers. They figured they wouldn't need to. Point seven." Financial records – a bank transfer. "We receive a monthly stipend for taking care of Conan. It's more than we should probably get, but I'm not complaining. And this," she hands him another transfer, "is the payment made for the electricity bill at the Kudo house. Please note," she says, "that both payments are coming from the same account."

Heiji blinks, and checks. Crud. "Neechan, this is – I don't know how you got this, but this is borderline illegal, at best."

"I've been handling his mail. With his permission," she says. "That includes the bills."

"Oh," says Heiji.

Kudo, you got yourself into that one. You can get yourself out.

"Point eight," says Ran, because she is a freight train right now and there is no stopping her. The papers – a stack of them, this time – are a full record of every time Shinichi has appeared or disappeared. Dates, approximate times, how he looked, what he wore, what made her look away so he could vanish. And, in some (most) cases, there's a record of who Shinichi actually turned out to be. (Him, more than once. Also apparently the Kaitou Kid.) And in each case, where Conan was, how Conan acted. Whether Conan seemed to be himself.

"This one, I know he'll pick apart. And you will too. It's mostly self reported, and I might be writing down what I want to see. But every time it's been Kaitou Kid pretending to be Shinichi, Conan sees him straight off. Whenever it's you pretending to be Shinichi..." She narrows her eyes at him again, and shivers run up his spine. "...He pretends you are. Despite you being considerably less good at it."

"Um." Heiji does not like this conversation, not one bit. "Sorry? In my defense, he was a pretty terrible me that one time, too."

"Not the point," she says. "At no point – except with Kaitou Kid, because he can fake it – have I seen Conan next to Shinichi with Conan acting like Conan and Shinichi acting like Shinichi. I've seen Shinichi acting like himself, but Conan acts like Ai-chan. I've seen Conan acting like himself, but Shinichi acts like – well, you. Or the Kaitou Kid. This is going in circles but my point is at no point have they been in the same room at the same time without something suspicious going on."

"To be fair," Heiji says. "There's not a whole lot of time around either one of 'em where something suspicious isn't going on."

"True enough," she says, cracking a real smile. She looks back down to the stack of papers, and the smile vanishes. "It doesn't stand on its own. But it doesn't have to." She takes a deep breath, and pulls the next thing out of the folder. "Point nine."

A photo of two identical cell phones.

"Uh, do I have to guess which one's Conan's?" he asks, looking up at her.

"No. They're both, apparently, Conan's," she answers. "Or at least, both of them came out of Conan's pockets at one point. He forgot to empty them before I did the laundry. One for the left pocket," she taps the left phone, "and one for the right. One set to Conan's ringtones, and one set on silent. One that belongs to Conan..." She hands him another photo of the two phones, this one with the left phone's screen lit up and a text reading This is a text to Conan's number. "...And one belonging to Shinichi." She sets down the second photo. This is a text to Shinichi's number. "Both have the same lock code, I should mention. And both are covered in Conan's fingerprints." She takes a deep breath. "And speaking of Conan's fingerprints... Point ten."

It's an official police force document.

Oh, no.

Oh, Kudo. Oh no.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," she says. "But part of the procedure for police evidence is to take the fingerprints of everyone who entered the crime scene or handled evidence, in order to allow the fingerprints of investigators to be distinguished from those of suspects. As Conan has handled evidence – and as Shinichi has handled evidence – both of them would naturally have their fingerprints on file."

He isn't getting out of this one.

"That's – yeah, that's pretty much the case," Heiji croaks.

"Recently, according to our friends in the police force, there's been an upgrade to the system software. It's better able to scale fingerprints, particularly in the case of juvenile suspects with growing hands, to better link them from case to case. And... They weren't looking. But they caught it anyway. Conan Edogawa shares an eighteen point fingerprint match with Kudo Shinichi. Twelve is a match, enough to convict." She stares him down, expressionless. Not even the I've-got-you-now smile.

He swallows hard. "It – it could be a software error. The scaling technology doesn't always work. The chances of that are... are low, yeah, but..."

"But what, Hattori-kun?" she asks. "If it was just that, or just the blood type, or just the disappearances or just the paperwork or just anything, you could play the numbers game. But there's too much. I'm done presenting one thing at a time and trying to let it speak for itself, because that doesn't work. The evidence speaks together, or not at all. Edogawa Conan is Kudo Shinichi."

He is reminded, for a brief moment, that Ran really is the sum of her parents.

Half decent detective.

Half terrifying, man-eating lawyer.

He thinks desperately for a moment. There has to be something he could say here to deflect her, but she's played it well this time. If Kudo'd realized she was building a case he could've thrown her off it, but he hadn't. Put together it looks pretty airtight.

"Y'know," he says, almost croaking, "I'm sure you've heard this before from Kudo – probably about a million times, actually – but there's this saying. Once you've eliminated the impossible..."

"Whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth," Ran finishes. "Why?"

"This. This is pretty improbable, that all of this could be wrong," he says. "Like you said – the numbers game. Improbable. But. What you're proposing – that he could just... lose ten years."

"Do you have a better explanation?"

He freezes, thinking, then thaws to slump in his seat. "Other than coincidence."

"Yes."

"...No." He takes a deep breath. "I... I don't, Neechan."

"You believe me then?"

He can't say anything to that, so he just stays silent, staring down into his empty teacup.

"...You won't confirm it," she says slowly, sounding almost disappointed. "Even after all that. Even with – everything... "

"...Tell me. Neechan." He looks up slowly. "Why are you so desperate to prove this? Why go to so much trouble to put this together?"

That actually surprises her. Then it's her turn to stare down at her teacup, thinking. It takes her longer than he expected it would, and she bites her lip like she's considering something painful.

"I..." she says, after a moment. "I've been pretending I don't know for a while now. At first just pretending that I didn't suspect, and then once Sato-keiji gave me the fingerprints, that I didn't know. Because. I." She takes a deep breath. "There's two options here."

"Yeah?"

"The first is... That I'm losing my mind," she says quietly. "That I've become so obsessed with the idea that Conan might be Shinichi that I'm manufacturing things from thin air. That I'm almost willing to press a first grader to the point of physical abuse to prove myself right. That I'm so angry at Shinichi sometimes that I almost take it out on Conan and have to stop myself." Heiji sits up, sits back, shocked. "If that's the case, if I'm going insane... I'm not a fit guardian for him. It's not safe. I'm not safe for him, because I could hurt him or worse."

"Neechan," he says, mouth dry. "You wouldn't."

"I might," Ran answers, and he can hear tears in her voice. Oh, no, panic, panic, not good, not good. "I can break cement walls with my bare hands, Hattori-kun. I don't have to lose control for very long to kill him."

"You wouldn't," he repeats, then forces himself to swallow. "What's... What's the other option?"

She shakes her head, as if trying to force the emotion back. "The other option... Are you familiar with the term gaslighting?"

"...No, don't think I am," he says.

"It's... a form of emotional manipulation. A form of emotional abuse. Convincing someone that their memories, their perceptions, are wrong... Creating impossible situations to force doubt, denying that parts of events or entire events happened. Spinning and denying information to create a picture of something that they want to be believed or remembered instead of the truth... With the intent or eventual end result of making the victim doubt their own sanity." She looked up, very slowly. "If he's... If Conan is Shinichi... It's what he's been doing."

Heiji opens his mouth to deny it, but his brain's latched on to the idea and suddenly he can't. He gapes, openmouthed, feeling a bit like a fish.

"He's used... Recorder tricks, to put himself in different places at different times. He's got a voice changer – I found it, that bow tie he always carries around – but I think he'd claim that it's a toy. I know I've been... sedated, at least once, so I wouldn't see... something, I don't know what. He's had body doubles. You, at least twice. Ai-chan, I think, once. He yelled at me, once, when I thought I'd figured something out with the phones, set up this whole trick – I felt so bad about it, him and Conan both were mad at me..."

"He. He wouldn't. He wouldn't mean it like. Wouldn't mean it as abuse," he stammers. "If he... Ran-san, he's not like that. He wouldn't do that to you deliberately."

"You're saying this stuff could happen by accident?" she asks, with a small, almost crying sort of smile. "He doesn't have to mean it as abuse for it to be abuse. Considering his family, just... the way they are, I don't know that he'd realize what he was really doing, or that it was... Wrong. That it could hurt."

And considering the upside-down and backwards on and off and around the world relationship his parents seem to have... that's not unlikely.

"But the worst part is, it's working. Either I'm losing my mind. Or..." She takes a deep breath. "Or he's gaslighting me. One of the two." Ran shakes her head, as if clearing it, and reaches out to pour herself more tea. Her hands, Heiji notices, are shaking. "Either way. Either I'm not a safe guardian for Conan-kun, and we need to find him someplace else, someplace safer... Or I'm being manipulated, and I have to stand up for myself, for my own judgment, and refuse to be a victim any longer. Either way." She sips her tea, and a little spills out as the cup shakes like an earthquake. "Things cannot stay the way they are. Something has to change."

He stares a moment, exhales slowly. She's... not wrong. She's not wrong at all. That's exactly what Kudo's been doing, though with nothing close to those intentions. And he's... Oh, Kami, he's been a part of it. He's enabled it at best, and at worst thrown her off, made her doubt, twisted information and lied. He's doing that right now.

He can't blame Kudo for not realizing what they were doing to her, Heiji thinks numbly, when he didn't realize either.

But now that he knows.

He can't.

He honestly cannot.

He cannot do this any longer.

"...Neechan," he says quietly, almost breathes, looking down, away, anywhere but at her eyes. "What do you want me to tell you?"

"...I'm not crazy," she says, slowly setting her tea back down.

"You are not."

"I'm right." She puts her hand on the folder, on the stack of damning evidence that he knows Kudo will do his best to deny. "I know I'm right."

"I won't deny it."

"Then... Okay." She steels herself, steels her shoulders, rolls them like she would before a karate match. Shrugging everything away to face the present. "How did you... How'd you get him to tell you?"

Heiji pauses. "...You're not going to like it."

Her smile is brittle. "I know."

"Right. I, ah, threatened to tell you that I'd figured out that he was him." Heiji ducks a bit, tucks his shoulders inwards. "Before then it was all, no, I'm not Shinichi, but the minute I threatened to get you involved..." He trails off, and looks up at her.

Yeah, she doesn't like that.

"It's... just me then." She exhales slowly. "He's willing to... why. Why just me?"

"Not just you," Heiji says. "Don't think like that. He's..." He trails off. This is not his to explain. "It's not like – not like that. Look." He takes a deep breath. "You know this is how he's gonna explain it to you, so... I'll explain it like this too. You know how Sherlock Holmes..." She cuts him off with a snort, almost a bitter laugh, and he forces himself to grin, because even if she's still on the edge of tears they haven't fallen yet. "I told you, it's how he's gonna explain it! Sherlock Holmes fakes his death, yeah? Doesn't tell Watson a thing for the whole time he's gone. You know this part, right?"

She nods.

"Right. So he wanted to tell Watson – got that whole speech about it. But he didn't. He couldn't. Because Moriarty's guys are watching him; if he tells Watson and Watson slips up once, he loses his whole advantage, and takes the risk that Moriarty will go after Watson too. He wants to tell Watson, but he can't. That's where we stand here." He picks up his empty teacup without thinking, just so he can gesture with it. "So, you're Watson here. Trusted, but in a position where he just plain can't tell you." Tap tap tap goes the teacup against the table, punctuating his points. "But Sherlock doesn't run off telling everyone else. Doesn't tell Lestrade, doesn't tell Mrs. Hudson, doesn't tell anyone. Tells Mycroft, but only because he can't do it if he doesn't. Watson isn't the exception – he's not singled out. But he's the only one that it hurts not to tell." Heiji sets down the teacup, and takes another deep breath. "I found out because he couldn't stop me. His parents found out because he couldn't stop them. Everyone that knows – and that's a short list, trust me – everyone but probably Agasa, if he could've stopped them from knowing, he would have. He's a tiny shrunken ball of secrets." He meets her eye, forces himself not to look away even though there's tears on the horizon and guilt that this won't fix. "Same way here – you're not the exception. But you're the only one it hurts him not to tell."

"...Oh," says Ran. It doesn't fix things – he can see it in her face even if he didn't already know it in his gut. It won't fix things. It can't. Not once they've gone this far past not-at-all-good. "So..." She trails off again, and looks away. She doesn't have the words to respond, not yet. Probably won't for a while.

"I know it doesn't fix this," he says. "But I can tell you... For a while, they – the guys that shrunk him – didn't know if he was dead. Broke into his house and everything trying to confirm it. Back then, it was... really important that you didn't know. Now that it's been a while... I don't know." He shrugs, helpless, because he cannot go back in time and undo this and he cannot make this better now. "I do not know, Neechan. This is... I'm not him. I can't say why he did what he did; I can only say I helped him because I thought he needed help." He swallows. "But I can say I'm sorry."

She looks up at that.

"I'm so sorry, Ran," he says, and manages to keep her eye before it gets to be too much and he turns his eyes back down to his teacup. "I didn't realize what we were doing, and I didn't realize what it was. I never would've if I had. I know sorry doesn't fix it, but... Sorry."

"That's... That's okay," she manages. "You didn't know." Which is a long way from I forgive you but he thinks it might be all she can do right now.

They sit in silence for a long moment, staring at their teacups, neither willing to look up. The tea shop bustles around them; the waitress from earlier is alternating between giving Ran sympathetic looks and Heiji a fierce promises-of-violence glare whenever she gets a free moment. He glances back down to the pile of very incriminating papers, then finally gathers the courage to look up at Ran.

"So," he starts. "...What now?"

"I... I don't know," she admits. "I was hoping you'd have... However you got him to tell you would work for me. But..."

"Yeah, no. I get that," he says. Deep breath, just enough false bravery, professional sorry-for-your-loss policeman face, just enough to get them through this and out of here without someone bursting into tears or throwing a teapot. "Do you want me to talk to him?"

She thinks a moment, shakes her head. "No, I... I should confront him myself."

"Never worked for you before," Heiji points out. "And... Okay, I'm saying this as his friend, but... Until he realizes he's hurting you, he's going to keep escalating. Him trying to talk his way out of this," he taps the pile of evidence, "is gonna end badly for everyone."

He's not sure, in that moment, whether she's about to cry or put her fist through the table.

She takes a deep breath, forcing calm the same way he knows she does before her karate matches. "Fine," she manages. "If you talked to him, what would you say?"

"That you know," he says. "Not gonna say you have a pile of evidence he can't talk his way out of, because he's gonna take that as a challenge. I'd say that you know. And maybe tell him to look up gaslighting." He pauses, thinking. "...Actually I might yell that part."

That actually gets a smile out of her. A small smile, hesitant, still almost sad, but a smile none the less.

He counts it as a victory.

"Right," she says. "But... It's my life. I need to be the one to confront him."

"You will be," he answers. "I'm just gonna make sure he doesn't try to get out of it."

She glares, but there's not as much heat in it.

"Neechan," he says. "I'm not taking this away from you. But... Here's how it normally works, Kudo and me. He knows I'm here, and he knows I'm talking to you. And we both know that he's not stupid."

"In most respects."

He snorts. "You and Kazuha, geeze. But he can put one and one together. He's going to call me and not let up until he gets answers. I'm gonna talk to him; can't get out of it. I guess what I'm asking is what you want me to say."

She thinks about that for a moment, less upset than she was. "This might be an impossible thing to ask," she finally says. "But... tell him not to lie. I don't care what you say, or what he knows, or what parts of this you're going to warn about. But I... I just don't want him to lie."

"Right," he says, nodding slowly. "I can do that. Can't promise he'll listen, but. Well. I'll tell him."

"That's all I can ask."

There's a tortuously long silence after that, where the conversation is over but neither one knows how to walk away from it. Heiji considers apologizing again (for all the good it won't do), considers trying to make small talk to break the tension. Considers cutting his losses and making a break for the door, consequences be damned.

The third option sounds more appealing than it probably should.

But the waitress, finally, comes to their rescue, apparently sensing that the conversation is over. Heiji apparently looks repentant enough that her death glare has softened into something half-sympathetic. And it probably helps that Ran is no longer on the edge of tears. "Done?" she asks.

"Yes, thank you," Ran says, and Heiji breathes a sigh of relief as she stands. She's paid for the tea ahead of time, and he follows her out back into the sun.

It's only been a few hours.

It feels like the better part of a week.

"Well, um," he starts. "Thanks for the tea."

"You're welcome," she starts to say, but she's cut off by her name, called loudly from down the sidewalk. Her friend Suzuki-whatever is back, dragging Kazuha along and... Oh. Wow. That's what "figure out her best colors" means. Suzuki drags Kazuha up to Ran, stands back, and does a Ta-da! gesture, complete with jazz hands.

Anything else he might have said is blown away by the whirlwind that is Suzuki's fashion-rant about warm undertones and greens and yellows and fantastic shades of forest colors that Suzuki could apparently never wear (but look amazing on Kazuha.) He's lost the plot thirty seconds in, and tries to keep from looking as confused as he feels. But eventually Suzuki breaks for breath long enough for him to escape, and Kazuha follows a few moments after, waving goodbye to Ran and Suzuki.

"How'd it go?" she asks.

"Er," he says. He's not sure how much of the conversation to share, so he doesn't. "Are you aware that Ran-san is completely terrifying when she wants to be?"

Kazuha laughs. "So she got what she wanted, then?"

"Best as I could give it, yeah," he says with half a shrug, and they board the train back to Osaka. Kazuha shows him some of the things Suzuki-san picked out for her, then settles in with the romance novel she'd been reading on the way up. He waits a moment longer, then excuses himself to find somewhere he can make a call.

He's not looking forward to it.

But... They owe Ran better than they've given her. Kudo especially.

He takes a deep breath, and hits dial.