Disclaimer: I don't own DC. If I did, ConanAi would be the official ship of the series.
He could feel it again.
That feeling.
The small boy of seven let his head hang, eyes shadowed by darkly colored hair. A small smirk snaked across his round, childish face, at once both self-depreciating and smug.
He had figured it out.
It had been so very simple in hindsight, the trick used. He, the great Kudou Shinichi, should have puzzled it out within the instant the task had been delivered to him. The code itself wasn't difficult: simple hiragana characters mixed in with kanji; a moon to represent the time, encircled with small, barely legible numbers; the chemical symbol for Helium within an inverted, solid black triangle to signal who sent the note; and two horizontal lines to indicate the place.
For Shinichi it would have been easy. It should have been. A child could have solved this sort of thing, given the right sources.
Yet he hadn't. Not until it was almost too late.
But he was here now. Here, in the street where the truth of his situation was first agonizingly shoved in his face.
And where he had first really met the girl he knew among friends as Haibara Ai.
He waited. He had been waiting for two hours, and his legs felt like jelly beneath him from the time they had remained still, but he persevered. It was terribly out of character for Haibara to call him out like this—let alone leave him a code to solve before he could identify the meeting place, but the detective figured it was just her way of testing him.
Always testing him.
It was cold out, the waxing gibbous hanging high overhead. It must have been at the very least midnight; only the occasional, distant roar of a car passing on the main street or the clatter of a cat knocking over a trash can breaking the veil of silence.
The air smelled strange, too. It took hold of his attention, stirring an alarmed, wary feeling within his chest. He was feeling 'the feeling'; the feeling he felt whenever immediate danger was near, or when a particularly dangerous criminal was backed into a corner by his astute deductions.
It was a natural ability of his to sense the airs about a person. It triggered his highly tuned sense of paranoia, his sixth sense about things when someone had a predominantly striking, standout air. Always around murderers, hardened criminals and the like he felt like a cold worm was wriggling its way from his stomach, up his throat, through his nasal passages and deep into his brain. He could taste the taint of killing someone on his tongue whenever he opened his mouth in his or her presence, and it sickened him. It was what alerted him to many things, as when an apparent suicide turned out to be a murder. It urged secret warnings within him, and he always followed them. It had kept him alive.
He tapped his foot. It was becoming a bad habit of his.
Take Ran, for example. Around Ran he always felt like a flower in the sun, slowly unfolding petals to the warm light. He felt radiant, and it was a comforting feeling. He also experienced an apprehension that was as gripping as it was telling. He always feared for her safety, her life whenever she was dragged along into a case with her father and himself. Whenever he opened his mouth around her it was like someone had shined a heat lamp upon his tongue.
And he experienced different things with each person. Ayumi irritated him slightly, but he could never be too terribly harsh with her. She shined with an innocence that scared him, as it would inevitably be taken away; and he would never be able to bear doing it himself by being cold. She tasted like honey. Mitsuhiko gave a studious and well-put together air, though he could sense deep within the self-doubt and secret fears of being left behind. He tasted like old parchment, dried ink and melted candles. Genta was an open book, all things considered, but he had a sincerity that was shocking for a boy of his nature. He tasted like salt and vinegar coated with sugar, an interesting blend of his heart and his mischief.
And then there was Haibara, for whom at the moment he was waiting. He felt cold around her. He would admit it. Their play of words, whether in front of others or private, forever left him feeling confused, embittered about his own jumbled emotions or reactions over the venomous things she would say. He shouldn't expect more; she was, after all, a chemist whose work had taken many lives. The idea that she would be particularly pleasant towards him because of his promise to protect her was at best a foolish and naïve wish, hidden deep within himself, and one he rarely dared let breathe for fear of what it might mean for him. He had never been able to identify her taste. It had eternally eluded him, even when she seemed the most open to him.
It wasn't like with Ran. With Ran he felt the need to protect as strongly as he felt it with Haibara, but Ran was perfectly capable of defending herself. Haibara…
She was vulnerable. No matter what impression she gave, the heartless masks or the even-tempered insistences that she could take care of herself, she was nothing but weak inside. He had once told her she must like to cry; she had responded negatively, as he remembered, and Conan wouldn't have expected less from her. It was her way, as it was his way to poke and pry until he uncovered the one truth that would lay everything bare, if only to appease the deadly curiosity he felt towards her inside.
Or so he told himself.
And unlike Ran, she felt natural. She didn't hide her irritation, her opinions about certain situations. She didn't sell her own happiness, her own comfort for the sake of another. Ran was always worried about those around her, ready and willing to sacrifice everything to take care of them. She would hide what she's feeling, and bottle it up inside for her to deal with when she was alone. She acted cheery and happy in public and around her family, but really, Conan knew she was far from it. How could she be happy, when Shinichi was gone to someplace she had been led to believe was far away, despite the fact that he slept in the room near her's every night?
He sighed to himself, a hand coming from his watch to slap himself lightly in the face. It was no use comparing the two; they were as different as night and day, and he could care less how Ran measured up against Haibara.
Wait! That came out wrong. It was the other way around. He didn't care how Haibara measured up to Ran; they were incomparable.
He nodded, unaware that he was talking to himself silently. That was it. There was no way he would think of Ran and Haibara in the same category. There was no way.
Yet again, or so he told himself.
"Talking to yourself again, Kudou-kun?" An amused voice rang through the air, cutting the silence as effectively as a hot knife through butter. Conan started despite himself, and was not pleased to see Haibara before him, smirking at him.
"How long have you been standing there?" He demanded of her, angry with both the girl before him and with himself. How could he not have noticed she was there?
"Plenty long enough. It's interesting to hear what you say to yourself when you think nobody is around, Kudou-kun." The smirk grew distinctly self-satisfied. "I wonder how I should take it."
The color drained from Conan's face, staring at her with stunned realization. How much had he said aloud? And better yet, how much had she heard?
Haibara easily read his face. "Oh, don't worry. I won't use it against you. That wouldn't be a nice thing to do, would it?"
Conan cleared his throat, trying his best to ignore the conniving tone she used.
"What did you call me out here for?"
Haibara's smirk slipped off her face faster than he could catch, the expressionless façade that was her trademark taking its place.
"Why don't you tell me? It said it in that code of yours."
Conan resisted the urge to growl 'It's your code!' but instead straightened, pulling the paper from the pocket of his jeans. He smoothed it out, eyes flitting to her face to watch her eyes as he began his deduction.
"The first part is easy. The moon—tsuki—means nighttime. The shape it took told the specific night, and the small numbers circling it tells the hour. You know you're late, right? By about an hour?"
Haibara said nothing, and after a few moments Conan continued, frustrated with her silence. "The two horizontal lines is a sign often used to indicate roads, so that must be where it would take place. Though I don't know why you'd pick somewhere so public." And he wouldn't tell her it had taken him three hours to find the right road.
Haibara still yet said nothing.
"Also," Conan went on through gritted teeth, irked at her lack of reaction to his reasoning, "the chemical symbol for Helium in the inverted black triangle told me it was from you."
Haibara raised a solitary eyebrow, quietly asking him to elaborate.
"At first I thought the Helium symbol was used because of your profession, but I didn't understand yet why you used that specific symbol. After I racked my mind a few times I came across something I had read a while back." He would not tell her that he had to go to a library to look up the answer. He would not. "It's interesting to note that the myth about the phoenix originated in Egypt. It says that at the end of its current life cycle, a phoenix sometimes, after being reborn, embalms the ashes of the old phoenix in an egg made of myrrh and leaves it in the ancient Egyptian city of Heliopolis. It took me some thinking, but after some time I figured out why you used Helium in particular. You—Sherry—'died' after taking the APTX 4869 and were reborn as 'Haibara Ai'. You hid yourself from the Black Organization, effectively 'embalming' that part of yourself."
He grinned, satisfied with this part of his deduction. Haibara clapped sarcastically.
"Anyhow," he continued, still grinning, "The black inverted triangle was a clue as a whole. The triangle gave another indication to Egypt. The fact that it was black and inverted was to reference the fact that you left the organization, betraying it and becoming a member of the opposite, or 'inverted' team.
"Lastly, the hiragana and kanji mixed together was meant to tell me what you called me out for."
He hesitated in the continuation of his monologue. Haibara noticed.
"Well?" She asked neutrally, seemingly uncaring of his answer. He knew better. "What was it?"
Conan struggled with himself for a moment, opening and closing his mouth several times. At last he dropped his head.
"I couldn't figure it out," he mumbled.
Haibara brought a hand to her ear.
"What was that? I couldn't hear you."
He grit his teeth again. He could hear them grinding together.
"I couldn't figure it out!"
She looked smug, and he was intent upon poking a hole in her balloon of self-satisfaction.
"It didn't make any sense!"
"Of course it didn't," She retorted suddenly, regarding him with a mixture of boredom and exasperated disbelief. "If I didn't want you to know the reason would I have written it down and handed it to you?"
Conan paused briefly in his tirade, considering this thought before stowing it away…for the moment.
"Then why include the letters at all?!"
Haibara gave a colorless smile. "To make you want to know the answer. What better way to ensure you'd come?"
Conan wanted to kick something, hard, but he refrained. Instead he regarded her with a barely restrained temper.
"Then what was I called out here for?"
Haibara raised an eyebrow. "You've forgotten how important today is?"
Conan looked perplexed, an odd expression to find on his face. "What's today?"
Haibara sighed, bringing a hand to her forehead.
"The great Kudou Shinichi-kun can't figure it out," She muttered, bringing the hand down to massage her temples. "How irritating. I shouldn't have to tell you."
Conan was getting impatient. "Just tell me!"
Haibara stared at him, expressionless and motionless. Finally, she pulled the bag slung over her shoulder around to her front, digging deep within the cloth pack to find something. She pulled it out, something rather old, wrinkly and yellowed with age within her hands. She threw it upon the ground before him with harshness, though there was a sad gentleness to the gesture that baffled him completely.
Until he looked closer at it. He stared.
It was a newspaper. He gauged it to be around a year or so old, falling apart but obviously well cared for. Splashed across the front was an image he would never forget.
There he stood, immobilized forever in the photograph, staring down through eyes hidden by glasses at the rain-soaked body before him. Ran kneeled aside him, arms wrapped around his small frame with the effort of comfort, though she appeared to be crying herself.
Conan jerked when she spoke.
"Happy anniversary, Conan-kun."
She walked away then; back stiff and shoulders rigid. Her movement was graceless and forced, as if she wished dearly to run back and snatch up the newspaper that still lay on the ground as if it were her dearest possession. It probably was.
Conan watched until she was out of sight, making no effort to stop her. He leaned down, carefully taking hold of the paper. He lifted it, balancing it upon his splayed hands. He took notice of the dark spots randomly dotting the front page, and with a cautious whiff he identified the scent as salty.
The air still left an impression of her. Apprehensively he smelled it, and with a hesitation previously unknown to him, he tasted it.
It tasted bitter. He wasn't surprised. It was Sherry.
A/N: Wow, my first DC fic. And a one-shot. I'm cruel. ;--; Anyhow, before anyone asks, I know Sherry (the wine, not the character) is sweet. However, when in its natural state (before fermentation) it is dry, and widely considered bitter.
Moving on…
Still, wow, my first DC fic. Can't get over that. And, of course, it's ConanAi. Like I'd write anything else…