A/N: Wow, did I actually, for once, FINISH a twoshot? The world is upside down. Although the quality is debatable...dang, this is literally just me emoting all over the place and trying not to sound redundant and FAILING MISERABLY. This is why I need to actually know what I want to write before I write it, ppl. Forgive Shinichi, he had to conform to the mayhem the authoress calls a plot.

Anyway. Just leaving this here to distract you while I go and churn out the rest of that FWYK update.

"I really am sorry."

"It's ok, deduction freak. But don't just stand in the rain, you'll get sick. Buy yourself an umbrella or something."

He couldn't help but smile. "Ok. I'll see you later then."

"See you."

Shinichi sighed and hung up, stuffing his hands in his pockets. The bus was delayed due to the heavy rain, and he was halfway across the city, when he had been meant to meet Ran at her house a half hour ago.

And he hated it.

He hated being late. It felt like he was keeping her waiting all over again. And every time he was afraid that something like the occurrence from a year ago would happen again…

He leaned his head back against the booth wall, shivering a little at the cold as he let his eyes drift shut and his mind wander on to more pleasant things. Like Ran's lemon pie. And coffee. Or tea. Whichever, he wasn't really picky.

"Is anyone sitting here?"

His eyes fluttered open and Shinichi nearly had a heart attack.

The girl who had put forth the question bore a striking resemblance to Ran. Large eyes, upturned nose, even the curve of her chin was similar. The only difference was her hair, a dripping dark mass that flipped every which direction at the ends. After the initial shock, Shinichi was able to observe that she was drenched, head to toe, hugging her shoulders and shivering. Wordlessly, he moved over. She sat down without speaking or looking at him, wringing out the hem of her shirt and smoothing down her wild, untamed hair.

He went back to daydreaming. When would the bus come? The girl's resemblance had only made him more impatient. Date night with Ran was still tentative and new to both of them, dammit. He wasn't going to let her wait too long.

"Say. You're Kudou Shinichi, aren't you?" The girl spoke.

Even their voices were somewhat alike.

Shinichi sighed and hoped to god it wasn't another fangirl. "Yes. Can I help you…?"

"Nakamori," The girl said. Only now did he notice the look in her eyes, something particular, like anger, sparking. "Nakamori Aoko."

"Well, Nakamori-san." Definitely scary. Please, god, don't let it be a fangirl. "If there's a case or an inquiry you want to submit, you could send it to—"

"Why did you do it?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Why did you lie to her?" A newspaper clipping, spotted with rain, was shoved under his nose.

For a second he thought his blood had gone cold, when he saw the headline.

And then it clicked in his head.

Ah. Nakamori Aoko. Nakamori-san. The keibu's daughter. The one he'd been told about.

"Which one told you, then, Nakamori-san?" Composure regained, Shinichi leaned back, expressionless.

"Half and half." Aoko begrudgingly admitted.

Shinichi sighed. "I'm not surprised. It's not in the papers and Kuroba would have only had time to tell you what you absolutely needed to know. Therefore, it must have been Hakuba that told you that I was Edogawa Conan."

"You didn't answer my question." She gritted her teeth, folding her arms.

He sighed again. "Is this about Kuroba, Nakamori-san? Why don't you ask for his reasoning instead?"

"I don't trust him."

"So you came to another liar, hoping for the truth? I'm not any better than him, you know-"

"I don't trust myself either," Aoko cut him off. A pause. "I don't want to forgive him just because he's him. Or go on hating him just because he's him."

Shinichi realized, a beat late, that this must be the reason that she had steadfastly refused to look at him throughout their entire encounter.

"So explain to me, Kudou-kun." She demanded. "You must have similar stories. You even look alike—but I'm going to turn my head, so I don't let some twisted hope of mine keep me from the truth."

Silence. Then.

"…If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Shinichi recited, closing his eyes again.

"…What?"

"A quote from Holmes. I'm a very logical person by nature, Nakamori-san. When I found myself in a seven year old body, left for dead by a crime empire that wasn't even supposed to exist, I had a few choices to make. Namely, who knew I was alive."

"…And that's how you made that choice? Eliminating the impossible?"

"It was the only way I could make that choice."

Aoko gritted her teeth. "No choice is impossible to make."

"For me, there is. The organization had nearly killed me. I knew what they could do and I knew that they would be ruthless in doing it. It was impossible for me to make any choice where I would put Ran into their line of fire. If that meant she had to know me as Edogawa Conan, I was willing to bear it, for the knowledge that she wouldn't be hurt."

"But she was hurt."

Shinichi knew what she was referring to. From the tone of her voice, too, he judged that she had known the same kind of hurt. "She was."

A long pause. And then, small, muffled, and just the slightest bit accusatory: "You hurt her."

"I did," He sighed, turned his face toward the sky. "And I'll always regret that. But I did it because I loved her."

"What part of that is loving her?" Aoko exploded, voice choked as she dragged her sleeve viciously across her face. Had she been crying? "You lied to her every day. While she worried over and missed you, you were right there. You used her trust to do what you wanted and all she could do was wait, never knowing if you were going to come home, if you were even alive—"

"She's alive."

"—What's your point?" She snapped, folding her arms.

"I was selfish, Nakamori-san. Selfish and selfless in the most stupid and frustrating mix. She had every right to know, and it would have been infinitely easier for me if she had known. Hiding from Ran and lying to her tore me apart. Hurting her even more so. But I couldn't risk her life. Even if there was only a miniscule chance they would find out through me, I couldn't risk it. I couldn't risk a world without her."

Silence. Aoko said nothing.

"I regret a lot of what happened when I was Conan, but the one thing I won't ever regret is that she lived. Whether or not it was because I had kept her in the dark, she lived."

She still said nothing. In fact, hunched over on the booth seat, the girl appeared to curl in on herself inch by inch.

Shinichi sighed. "We…make mistakes. Detectives or phantom thieves, brilliant or not, we make mistakes. Especially when we're concerned about the people we love. So maybe I ought to retract that first statement, since it too, has become a lie."

"What?"

"Logic, Nakamori-san. I said I was a very logical person. That seems irrelevant when talking about this situation, because there was no rational reason involved. The things I did were contradictions of each other. I didn't tell her my identity because I didn't want her to be in danger, and yet I went to live under her roof. I didn't want her to find out about it, and yet I desperately did because I just wanted to talk to her as me again, not the mask."

Aoko wasn't a good liar. She didn't lie to herself. Now she wished she could, because then she could pretend she hadn't seen almost the exact same emotion on Kudou Shinichi's face reflected in Kaito's, just a few days ago.

"He cares, Nakamori-san. Be sure of that, if nothing else."

She took a deep, deep breath.

Was that reason enough to forgive him? Did the reasons make the lying any better? The manipulation? He tried to keep her safe—by becoming what she hated the most, by drawing up an invisible barrier between them that was impossible to break, by worrying her out of her wits and then showing up on the doorstep one day, bloodied and bruised and explaining—

She really ought to hate him. Hate the smile worn by Kuroba Kaito and Kaitou Kid simultaneously. Hate that he chose to shoulder the legacy of his father. Hate that out of everything, the one thing he chose, consciously, to give up, was her.

He had to have known. He had to have known that she would've hated him. And he made his choice. He decided that he was going to be able to live with that.

Did he care? Really? Kaito always winged it. He was more spontaneous than anyone she'd ever known. If he cared so much then why? Why did he go off and do the one thing he knew guaranteed that they would end in tragedy, only to come back and spill his guts?

Did he think it would be fine, just like that?

The thought made her heart freeze.

The real world wasn't like a magic trick.

Kudou Shinichi didn't understand after all. No, he was a different situation entirely. Aoko got to her feet, slowly.

It had stopped raining.

An ironical smile picked at her lips, as she walked out of the booth. "I suppose I shouldn't trouble you anymore. The bus will be here soon. You've got to get home." She did not look at him when she said this, closed her eyes against the temptation because she knew that the face behind her was not Kaito's, because she knew that even though she knew that, the similarities may jar her out of her resolve.

"Nakamori-san?"

"…Yes?"

"I had every expectation that Ran was not going to forgive me when I told her. And I was fine with that."

Her hands wrapped into a fist, clenched tight enough that the blood drained out of her knuckles. "Why? If you cared so much then why-?"

"I was willing to let her forget me. Or hate me. Or blame me for the wrongs I did to her. If it meant that she could live a better life—if it meant that she could be happy—then what happens to me doesn't matter. I told her the truth because she deserves it, not because I thought what I'd done would be erased just like that. When it was over—when the organization was gone—the first thing Kuroba-kun did was go to you. He didn't even stay for the police briefing."

Aoko inhaled.

"We don't like to wear masks, Nakamori-san. But sometimes we have to. The fact that he took it off for you—and only for you—should tell you something about how he feels."

"I'm a detective. Reading people is what I do. If you really hated him, would you be here right now, listening to me talk?"

Aoko flinched.

"Don't feel like you have to wear a mask, Nakamori-san. Wrongs and rights are well and good but beyond that, when everything is said and done, all you really have to question is what you believe. What you think. And if you don't really feel like you should hate him—if there is even the tiniest bit of doubt—well, only you would know whether or not you would regret it forever. Confront yourself. Figure out what you think. It's his turn to wait for you."

Aoko turned her head. Blue-eyed gaze met blue-eyed gaze. She had to test herself one more time.

Could she really banish Kaito's eyes from her life?

She didn't hate him.

Not really.

She wanted to. God she wanted to but she couldn't. She just couldn't.

And after everything that he's done to her, the tiniest part of her was screaming for her to just forgive him already—

Did that mean that she was in love with him too?

Because it was irrational—there was no logic to it. It was stupid, and selfish, and selfless, in all the contradictory ways that made her head spin, made her frantic and sad and angry-

But.

But.

She was angry because she cared, wasn't she?

A faint smile curled at her lips, and her brows, furrowed, smoothed out. The irony utterly defeated her.

"Well. I won't keep him waiting for too long."

Behind her, the bus settled into the station. Aoko moved out of the way.

Kudou Shinichi smiled as he got to his feet and tilted his head.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"Having been in his shoes before, I'm more than glad to help."

The doors to the vehicle closed. On one side of the glass, the girl who looked like the person he loved stepped away. On the other, the boy who looked like the person she loved wished her very good luck from the bottom of his heart.

There weren't enough miracles in the world. If Ran was his miracle, then he hoped Aoko would be Kuroba's.

The floor beneath his feet lurched as they came to a stoplight and jerked him out of his thoughts, nearly sent him stumbling into another passenger.

Shinichi laughed a little at the ridiculousness of it all.

God, when did he become such a sap?

Cool freshness mixed with warmth and the scent of freshly baked cookies on the front step as the door was pulled open.

"Tadaima." He smiled, weary but content.

"Okaeri."

A pause.

"You don't actually live here anymore, huh?" She giggled.

"Oops?"

Matching blushes lit up their faces.

"Hey Shinichi?"

"Yeah?"

"Kaitou Kid came to me for love advice today."

"…I met his girlfriend at the bus stop."

"Wait, really? What did she say? Does she forgive him?"

A groan. "Raaaaaaaaaaaan. This is supposed to be our date."

"You're the one who decided to be late. Now come on, tell me all about it."

He did.

Somewhere in the city, a boy gathered the courage to leave a single rose on a windowsill, and a girl gathered the courage to pick it up.

And thus it began, all over again.