[DC] Untitled "What If?"-Type Fic
Untitled
Fandom: Detective Conan
Rating: G
Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan or any of its associated characters. I do own the OC that I kinda had to throw in this fic. I think I like Gosho's characters better than mine, even if the Gosho Boys are such Sues. xD
Hattori Heiji walked up to the front desk. He wouldn’t have admitted it, but he was nervous. He didn’t know what to expect, but he’d heard of Kudou Shinichi. Who hadn’t? Anyone that hadn’t known about Kudou’s miraculous solutions to impossible mysteries had at least heard about the incidents at TropicalLand and the media circus that followed.
“Uh…” The nurse sitting at the reception desk look up at him. She was a short, kind-looking woman with a pleasantly bland smile. “’Scuse me, I’m here to visit Kudou Shinichi.”
Something in her expression faltered for a moment, but she nodded politely, sympathetically.
“And you are?”
“Hattori Heiji.”
“An acquaintance?” He shook his head.
“Nah. I’m another detective, like he was. I was curious about what happened, exactly.”
“I see. Well.” She paused, looking him over. “We don’t allow you to question him, unless you’re with the police. You can still see him if you want, but you can’t pressure him for answers.”
“Okay.” That didn’t seem like too much to ask. From what Megure had said about Kudou, he wasn’t really capable of answering questions very clearly anyway.
“Do you still want to visit him?”
“Sure.”
She stepped out from behind the desk and led him down the hall to the left. The walls were white and plain, except for the occasional print of a landscape or a flower in light, unoffending colors.
“You must not agitate him or overstress him,” she instructed him. “If he asks for Ran, tell him that she’ll be visiting later. And if you try to interrogate him, I’ll break your neck.” She gave him a smile, this one with much more life to it than the first one. She paused at a door and unlocked it with a key on the lanyard around her neck. The door opened, and she lowered her voice as they went in.
“He’s in here. He can’t stand to be around the other patients, so we put him in an empty ward.”
The room was painted in the same bland white as the halls. A few high windows let in slivers of natural light that dropped to the ground in dusty patches. The room contained several hospital beds. A teenager was sitting on the edge of a bed, maybe a bit too naturally, and looked up at them as they came in.
Recognition flitted across the boy’s features.
“Kudo-kun, you have a visitor. This -”
“Hattori?”
The nurse blinked at Heiji, who felt just as confused as she looked.
“I thought you said that you weren’t acquainted?” She looked at Heiji, then back at Kudou.
“Well, uh…” That was what he’d told her. Because they weren’t acquainted. This was the first time he had seen Kudou outside of a newspaper.
Kudou’s expression cleared instantly. “No, no. I’ve just seen him in the paper once or twice, Kiwara-san,” he reassured the nurse. “Hattori Heiji, correct? I have a good memory for detail.” He said all this very earnestly, but there was something too clear, too blank in his expression that was rather unsettling.
“Well then, you two should get along very nicely,” Kiwara-san said kindly. “I should go back, but if either of you need me, please call.” She gestured to a button by the door. “And make sure he stays calm,” she added to Heiji. He nodded.
The door clicked behind her. Heiji stared at Kudou, who stared right back, with those blank blue eyes. It was hard to believe that he was really face to face with the Kudou Shinichi, savior of the Japanese police force. Who had solved mystery after impossible mystery. Who had risen like a star, loved by the papers and so many fans. Who had solved a murder case while at a popular theme park with Mouri Ran, and a few hours after ditching her, had been found alone with a slight concussion at the bottom of the stairs behind the arcade, tripped out on a set of powerful, unknown hallucinogens. The police still hadn’t managed to identify the chemical signatures as any drug that had been seen on the market. It was guessed that Kudou had done his own experimenting, and the police had searched both Kudou’s house and for some reason, the one next door. But no trace was found of any sort of drug lab, and the hallucinogen refused to show itself anywhere else.
Kudou, meanwhile, came off of his high babbling, paranoid, and unable to distinguish his memories of reality from whatever his imagination had conjured up for him. Heiji hadn’t thought to ask what Kudou had been like while on the high, but he got the impression that it had been pretty bad. Kudou’s mind had been ruined, and within days of the incident, Kudou Shinichi was placed in a psychiatric ward.
Heiji realized that he had been staring an awfully long time.
“Uh, nice to meet you?” Heiji tried to stop staring and get himself to sound more intelligent.
Kudou’s mouth turned up at the corners. “Nice to see you too, Hattori.”
“Right.” It wasn’t working.
“So, what brings you to Tokyo?”
Heiji shrugged. “I had the time, so I decided to see what the big fuss was over here. You’re getting a lot of publicity.”
Kudou nodded, looking thoughtful. His eyes weren’t so empty now, but there was still a far-off quality to the way he was looking at Heiji.
“It’s not so bad,” he said decisively. “At least I don’t have to worry now about my name being in the papers.”
Heiji felt that there had to be some joke he was missing. He guessed that maybe, since everyone assumed the worst of Kudou Shinichi, there was no point in worrying over unflattering speculation.
“So…” he said slowly, stepping a little farther into the room. “Doesn’t seem like there’s much to do with yourself here.”
“I’ve been through worse. It’s better than grade school, anyway.”
Grade school? Heiji decided not to comment.
“I at least have stuff to read. Ran brings me mystery novels.” One hand fished between the mattress and the bed frame. Kudou pulled out a book. Heiji walked up to see what it was, and Kudou handed it to him.
Heiji examined it. “This is new, isn’t it?
It was the latest novel in a fairly popular series. Heiji hadn’t gotten a chance to read it yet. He wondered if it was any good. He held it back out to Kudou, who took it.
“Yeah, it is. Ran snuck it in. The nurses don’t like me to have them,” he informed Heiji casually. “Too much blood and psychos for their tastes, I guess.”
He held on to the book for a few seconds, before reluctantly sliding it back into its hiding place. Heiji wondered if Kudou had been reading before they came in. They’d certainly been talking enough to give him the time to hide it.
“Do a lot of people visit you here?”
“Not really. Just Ran and the police, and now you. Kiwara-san keeps out the press and the fangirls.”
Heiji raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. That might explain the two girls he’d seen sulking outside the building on his way in…
“What about friends from school? Don’t they visit?”
Kudou didn’t look at him. For a long moment, he seemed to be intent on watching the pillow on the bed across from his. “Just Ran. I never had many close friends in school.”
Heiji wasn’t sure whether or not to feel sorry for Kudou. It had to be terrible, to be stuck here with barely anyone to talk to, and there was no way that one person could be around that much. And being delusional didn’t sound like too much fun, either.
Except Kudou didn’t seem all that crazy. He definitely wasn’t as bad as the police had implied. He was certainly strange, but probably not crazy.
“Conan had friends,” Kudou said suddenly. “That was kind of nice.”
“Who’s Conan?” Heiji hadn’t heard anyone mention Conan before.
Kudou became very still. He still wouldn’t look up. “Conan was me.”
Oh.
Okay. Well, maybe Kudou was a little off his rocker on occasion. It was just hard to tell.
Kudou mumbled something.
“What was that?”
“You really… don’t remember anything, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
Kudou shook his head, looking back up at Heiji. “It’s nothing. I guess I just - never mind. It’s not important.”
“Alright…” Heiji tried to think of something else to say. “So who are Conan’s friends?”
Kudou sighed. “Ayumi-chan, Genta-kun, Mitsuhiko-kun, and Haibara.” He sounded sad. “I wouldn’t mind if they visited me.”
“Do you think maybe they will?”
Kudou stared. Heiji guessed he had said something wrong.
“Of course not.” Kudou was still looking at him funny. “They don’t know Kudou Shinichi, they were Conan’s friends.”
Heiji tried without much success to figure out what that meant. “Well, maybe they would visit Conan?”
“They don’t know Conan anymore.”
“Ah. Well, expecting anyone else to visit?” Heiji felt slightly bewildered.
“My parents, eventually.” Kudou didn’t sound like he was looking forward to it. Heiji could imagine that he wouldn’t look forward to seeing his parents either, if he’d just taken some really weird drugs and been stuck in an insane asylum. It wasn’t the greatest atmosphere for getting the “So Let’s Talk About Drugs” lecture, anyway. He looked around the room. It felt dead.
Kudo was quiet. Maybe he wasn’t very good at keeping up small talk. It didn’t bother Heiji, though - it gave him some room to think. He still didn’t quite get most of what Kudou was saying, but it was certainly interesting, maybe because he couldn’t figure it out. Kudou acted like they were supposed to know each other, but from where? He’d said that the only reason he’d recognized Heiji was that he’d read about him, but-
Wait a second.
“Kudou-san?” Heiji said suddenly.
Kudou looked rather nonplussed. “Just Kudou.”
“Kudou, then. How did you recognize me?”
“I told you already. The newspaper.”
Heiji frowned. “I know I’ve been in the newspaper a few times, but I’m not anywhere near as famous as you are.”
“Is it that unlikely that I might have heard of you before?”
“Not at all. But the newspaper has never carried my picture.”
A curious look passed through Kudou’s eyes.
“Is that so…” He smiled. “You caught me again, I guess.”
Heiji opened his mouth, bewildered, then realized he had no idea what to say. He closed it again.
And then the door opened, making him jump about a foot in the air.
“Hello,” Kudou said blandly to Kiwara-san as she came in. The blank look was back in his eyes, and Heiji belatedly realized that it hadn’t been there while Kudou was talking to him.
“Excuse me, Hattori-san, but Kudou-kun always has his lunch at exactly eleven-thirty, before all the others, and it is now eleven-twenty-five. In a minute, I’m going to have to take him down to the dining hall.”
Well, this place was certainly on a schedule. Woe betide them if they were a minute late on their meal schedule.
“Oh, it’s fine. I should probably get going anyway,” Heiji lied. Honestly, he had no idea what else he could do for the next few hours. He supposed he’d have to get lunch too, eventually. “Nice meeting you, Kudou.”
Kudou nodded rather absently as Heiji walked out. As he left, he could just hear Kiwara-san speaking to Kudou as if he was a frightened animal. The words were indistinguishable. Heiji had to resist the urge to run through the hall. It was just that kind of hall, where you felt like you had to run, as quietly as you could, just to see if you could, without getting caught.
He’d caught Kudou. In a lie? Probably. He wondered where Kudou had seen him before. Maybe they’d met once and he’d never realized it. Or maybe he just forgot.
Heiji decided that he would just have to ask about it next time.
In other news, I am going to be abroad in Nicaragua for the next six weeks, starting on Wednesday. I'm a volunteer for Amigos de las Americas. Should be lots of fun, and a worthwhile way to spend my summer. Don't expect me to be posting anything while I'm out of the country. Because I'm such a regular updater normally. *shot*