A/N: oh god here I go. MORE ANGST, more commitment, more ShinRan :P

I think I got addicted to angst. We always knew this day would come. Don't worry folks, though I'm not going to be promising a Happily Ever After yet (because I have no idea what I'm doing or when I'm doing it), I'm usually too soft to end things to terribly. So this shouldn't be TOO bad, all around. It'll hurt a little one the way, but it'll be worth it~

It was raining at her funeral.

Ten years after the fact, Haibara Ai remembered.

Half way up the hill was where she was buried, in the family plot. The raindrops descended heavily upon wildflowers in full bloom, and the petals scattered among the wet grass.

Huddled under black umbrellas, she had watched as the wooden box was lowered to the ground. Genta-kun blew his nose loudly into a handkerchief, and Ayumi-chan cried into Mitsuhiko-kun's shoulder.

They didn't know that they were crying over an empty coffin. To them, their Nee-chan died a hero. To them, she died brave, died fighting, died protecting. To them, that was enough.

They didn't know how she had been taken and who she had been taken by. They didn't know that the Black Organization didn't leave bodies behind. They didn't know the things Haibara knew.

None of them knew why.

Death was not comforting, nor was it meant to be. Death simply was, and funerals were for the living. Graves were for the living. They said nothing about the dead, meant nothing to the dead, because the dead no longer had use for such things. Haibara knew, though the children didn't. She lent them a shoulder anyway.

She remembered the black umbrellas disappearing, one by one. The children left with their parents. Ran's friends followed. Mouri Kogoro left, leaning heavily against his wife, eyes glazed over and half senseless, whether from the rain or the alcohol or the grief. Suzuki Sonoko stayed longer than that.

Agasa-hakase had taken her home, where she'd finally broken, ripped apart by guilt because she could count on one hand the people she cared about and she'd just let another one die, let another one be ripped away from this world because of her, because of the drug she created, because of the fight she brought out into the light.

(It was stupid. It shouldn't have happened. It was a mistake. If the FBI hadn't chosen to move that night, that fateful night ten years ago, if the strike hadn't failed, if they hadn't found out about Kir and Akai, if Haibara hadn't let Ran out of her sight for even a single moment-)

(A selfish part of her whispered traitorously that it was Conan's fault. If Kudou Shinichi had been a danger to everyone around him because he'd stuck his nose somewhere it didn't belong, what made him think Sleeping Kogoro wouldn't cause the same?)

Haibara re-lived Mouri Ran's last moments in detail, just as she had Akemi's. The last words she would ever say tumbling from her lips, the last smile she'd ever give, the last time she would ever run, bravery in every step. Haibara saw vividly in her mind the way Mouri Ran left the house that day, saw vividly the face that turned, the hand that waved in the air, saw vividly the last time she had been alive.

("Goodbye.")

(She did because it was easier to remember it like this-easier to see the last of the warmth in Ran's eyes, than to picture the cruel grin on Gin's face when he'd announced, with cold triumph, that she was dead).

She remembered that Edogawa Conan-no, then he was still Kudou Shinichi-remained the entire night, staring at nothing in the dark-and did the same at the funeral.

Haibara didn't believe in afterlife. She didn't believe in heaven or hell or purgatory, didn't believe in ghosts, didn't believe souls could be stuck between two worlds. As a scientist, death was simply a biological state. If asked to be more poetic, more comforting, she might say that it was simply sleep, from which a person never awoke. An absolute certainty, one scientific process every living thing on this earth had to experience. In this sense she was like Kudou-kun. They were logical minds, ones that thrived on evidence and fact, not sentiments.

And yet.

Mouri Ran was dead, and when morning came, the one that became a ghost was Kudou Shinichi. He died with her, and he left behind an empty shell of a boy, a walking, breathing corpse with his eyes and his voice and his sharp intellect, but not his heart, never his heart, because it had followed the woman he loved to her grave.

It wasn't logical. But nothing concerning her had ever been logical, for him.

And so once a year she met Kudou Shinichi at that place. Once a year they came to mourn the woman they both loved, albeit in different ways.

Yes. The difference between them was slight, but it was there.

After a decade, Haibara was able to believe that Mouri Ran would be at peace.

They'd always disagreed on that account.

He was already there when Agasa-hakase dropped her off. The sun had barely risen over the hill. A bouquet of red roses rested against the slab of gray stone.

She purposefully made noise to alert him to her presence as she came up the steps, and did not look at him when she put down her own offering, whether out of respect for his grief or her own, it didn't matter.

A ceramic pot with a singular orchid was what Haibara had brought each year, for the second sister she'd found and lost. She had the feeling Ran would appreciate something growing. Orchids were delicate things that did not survive the harsh conditions of wilderness. Every year she had to collect the scattered remains of the plant from the previous year.

How ironic, and how fitting, that the flower for which the girl was named would wither at her grave.

Kudou-kun inclined his head toward her ever so slightly as she stepped back. "Haibara."

She said nothing. She never said anything here, simply watched, watched his eyes spark, watched him come alive, if only for a moment, if only to plunge headfirst into pain, into memories that a seventeen year old body should not have. Hands in his pockets, head bowed, staring at some unknowable thing in the air. His glasses are tucked into a pocket, and had she known him before he became a child she might have had a distinct sense of deja vu.

Ah yes, that was what she watched for. She watched for the shedding of the shell.

Once a year, if only for a moment, Kudou Shinichi came back to life.

Because he was always Shinichi, only Shinichi, for her.

They stood in silence.

Haibara didn't know how long they'd been standing there. Sunlight was beginning to creep over the treetops. Beneath them, across the mountainside, life was beginning to stir.

If they didn't hurry, they would be late for class.

Haibara leaned down one last time, to place her hand gently against the headstone. One last time, in the year, to feel this particular kind of warmth. And then she stood. "Kudou-kun-"

"Don't." The boy beside her said in a clipped, curt tone, and ice-blue eyes stopped on her face, sharp, piercing, for a second too long before he turned on his heels.

And then she was alone on the mountainside, the dead behind her, and the city brimming with life beneath.

Almost imperceptibly, Haibara shivered.