Archive of Our Own ^beta

A present for you, reads the text, black font on a white background on his phone’s sleek screen. The address is Gin’s, which can only mean the bastard’s planning to stir up some shit.

Lounging alone in his apartment, Rei’s thumb hovers over the play button on the attached video. Gin’s idea of humour is another poor son of a bitch’s suffering; despite the bloodthirsty role he plays these days, Rei still finds it distasteful. There’s no point in hesitating, though, so he goes ahead and starts the video.

The feed is very dark, black on black, with just faint background lighting filtering in hazily. As his eyes adjust to the darkness on the screen Rei sees a man’s shadow. The subtle motion of the video tells him that the camera’s either hand-held or body-mounted.

Without warning a gunshot sounds; the dark form on the screen staggers backwards, hand rising to press over a bloody chest wound. Amazingly the victim doesn’t cry out, just pants raggedly against the pain.

The victim, Akai Shuuichi. Rei’s eyes widen and he sits up sharply, pulling the screen closer to his face.

“But I shot him in the lung,” says a voice on the video – familiar, female. Kir. “Even if I leave him, he should only last another 30 minutes.”

Whoever she’s talking to gives an order, because her answer is, “Roger that.”

The camera jostles as she steps forward, then it shows the pistol rising into view. Rei feels his heart skip a beat. Feels a surge of indecipherable emotions all sloshing together in a toxic cocktail

Akai Shuuichi looks her straight in the eye. “To think you went so far,” he says, voice harsh and gritty.

Bang.

The camera captures the muzzle flash, and then Akai is slumping down, blood fountaining from his head.

The video cuts out, leaving just his phone screen and Gin’s smug message. A present for you.

Rei stares at the words for several seconds, mind scrambling to process what he’s just seen. No – scrambling to disprove it.

He has spent years feeding the voracious hunger of his revenge with plans and schemes and dreams. Has played out countless scenarios of Akai’s death, each ending in him triumphing over his enemy’s lifeless form.

He knows that there is only one person who has the strength, the skill and the right to kill Akai Shuuichi, and that person is him. Not Kir, not Gin. Not sickness or injury or accident. Akai has but one death awaiting him, and it is Furuya Rei. Therefore, Akai can’t be dead.

The only explanation is that somehow the video is a hoax. Which can only mean that Kir is in on it.

He starts a new text, this one to Kir. We need to meet.

Then he opens his laptop and sends the video to it. He has some investigation to do.

Kir texts back within the hour: Where/when? Straightforward and to the point as she always is. Rei sets up a meet for the warehouse district later that night.

A close review of the video shows no obvious signs of tampering. What’s more it’s clear from Kir’s one-sided conversation that the recording was transmitted live, severely reducing the opportunity to fake it. But that’s no real obstacle: if it wasn’t faked on the production side, it must have been done in real life. Good planning, blanks and high-quality make-up could create the video’s effect. Rei himself has assisted in faking deaths – with proper prep it’s not that hard.

He brings his P7 to the meeting, pistol nestled under his leather jacket. If Kir is a double agent then they have something in common, but he certainly won’t be outing himself to her. If she’s not, the reasons for her to save Akai’s life are vastly diminished, but not nought. Either way, getting her to open up won’t be easy – the pistol might or might not help with that.

The warehouse district is made up of long rows of corrugated metal buildings with wide street access at the front and narrow side alleys. In some cases wooden crates have been unloaded at the front of the cavernous buildings – they cast dangerous pockets of shadow which could easily hide uninvited guests.

Rei arrives early and scopes out the entire area, from a distance first with a pair of binoculars and infrared goggles, and then in person. He sets up motion detectors in the shadowy depths behind crates and in the two adjacent alleyways. Then he perches himself of one of the large wooden boxes, crosses his legs, and waits.

Kir arrives some thirty minutes later in a peppy little Mazda hatchback, presumably for ease of get-away. She pulls right up to Rei’s seat, the car’s front bumper less than a meter from his feet, and gets out. Mizunashi Rena brought the morning news to the country with a smiling, self-assured persona, but like a wounded animal Kir’s expression is always wary. Her recent illness seems to have stolen her self-possession, replacing it with fear.

In the harsh light of her Mazda’s headlights Rei can see the effects of her hospitalization – the paleness of her skin and the fragility of her hands; she’s lost more weight than she could afford to, is a shadow of herself.

Rei casually picks his P7 up off the crate beside him and points it at her, head cocked. “I’d like to know how you did it, Kir,” he says, expression stony. What he knows and she doesn’t is that he keeps the chamber empty – it’s the one old cop habit he can’t seem to break.

She looks slowly to the gun and them him. Then crosses her arms. “Did what?”

“I’ve seen the video. Akai Shuuichi taking his last breaths. Only one problem: he’s still alive. So how did you do it?”

“I shot him, then burned the body in his ridiculous Chevy. The Japanese police have already recovered it. Sorry to rain on your parade, but he’s stone-cold dead, Bourbon.”

Rei straightens, extending his arm to point the pistol closer to her forehead. “I don’t have much patience for liars,” he says, flatly.

She grits her teeth. “Gin and Vodka watched the feed live; they’ll confirm it.”

“Oh, I believe that they believe it. The problem we’re having is that I don’t. And nothing you can say will convince me otherwise. So maybe rather than discussing how we should be asking ourselves why.” He smiles darkly, uncrossing his legs and standing to face her. “Either you’ve saved him as part of a long con, or you’re a NOC. For your sake, it had better be the former.”

“You can threaten me – you can even kill me. But it won’t change the truth. Akai is dead. I hear he was even considerate enough to protect one hand for identification – the police will confirm his identity. With your intel skills it shouldn’t be any trouble to sniff out their conclusion.”

“I don’t think you’re hearing me, Kir. He. Isn’t. Dead.” He tightens his finger on the trigger slowly, deliberately, so she can see it. Her eyes are fixed on his finger, wide and truly frightened now.

“I’m not lying. I killed the traitor!”

He pulls the trigger; it clicks hollowly and she gives a little gasp.

“His death wasn’t any more real than yours just now, and we both know it,” says Rei. “And when I find out how you faked it, he’ll be the first to die – and you’ll be the second.” He lowers his gun and walks by; she trembles as he passes.

If she were truly a syndicate agent sheltering Akai as part of some private scheme, she would have admitted it rather than risk death. Which can only mean she has a bigger secret to hide still – she, like him, is a mole. Another FBI agent? The odds are against it – there are dozens of intelligence agencies out there; why would America’s national investigation bureau be sending multiple agents undercover in an international syndicate?

Whoever she is, it’s ultimately a secondary concern. What he needs to find out now is what’s become of Akai Shuuichi.

Akai wakes up on the first day of the rest of his life feeling sore.

The exploding caps filled with fake blood had been overpowered, slamming back into his chest and skull and leaving ugly bruises there.

Still, better bruises than bullet holes.

He lies on his back in the cheap hotel room – 3500 yen a night for a tatami room and shared bathroom – and considers his options.

He’s well and truly off the map now, and if living as Moroboshi Dai or Akai Shuuichi had seemed difficult, living as the ghost of Akai Shuuichi seems almost impossible. He can’t afford to leave any hint of his passing – no footprints where he walks, no fingerprints on what he touches. No trace of his face or voice.

A small, tired part of him that wears the scars of his years of failures wonders about the point of it. Of continuing on, of fighting an uphill battle every day, of refusing to show weakness for even a moment. He’s lost so much and gained so little, and it’s hard. Hard to keep focused, to keep committed, to keep breathing.

But he hasn’t lost everything, and if he gives up now then he won’t have any way to protect the few lives he still holds dear. So he hardens his heart and keeps strategizing.

With only James in the know, he’s not officially undercover yet. Which means until James is able to do the paperwork there won’t be any cash drops, no professional ID cards, no protection. He has to go underground for what he needs: a new identity.

Akai is familiar with America’s black market – as a stateside FBI agent he did his share of investigating illegal arms dealing and counterfeiting and documentation falsification. In Japan, though, he has few contacts, and it’s unlikely that anyone he could reach out to in the States would have a connection in one of the world’s most crime-free countries.

What he does have is a note written on a scrap of paper.

Call me when you’re safe. And, beneath it, a Tokyo-area cellphone number. It had been written not by a colleague, not even by an adult, but by the boy who foresaw not only Akai’s death, but his rebirth.

In normal circumstances, he would have already burned the note. Would have passed by this child’s offer of help and continued on all alone. But the boy has already saved his life – and right now, things are far from normal.

He leaves the hotel, donning the cap and cold mask he picked up yesterday after torching his truck and Kusuda Rikumichi’s body and fleeting the scene. It takes a while for him to find a payphone – they’re dinosaurs in today’s world, and very nearly extinct. When he does he slots in his coins and dials the number on the piece of paper.

It rings a couple of times before someone picks up. “Hello?” says Edogawa Conan chirpily.

“Congratulations,” says Akai. “You predicted their plans.”

The boy’s voice shifts, becoming suddenly serious. “You need a new face. I can help.”

“Oh?”

“Meet me at Agasa-hakase’s house. It’s –”

“I know it,” interrupts Akai. How could he not – it’s where Akemi’s younger sister has gone to ground in a child’s body. He’s watched over it often from afar. “But I don’t think the little girl who lives there would appreciate my visit.”

“She’s staying late at school on a project. We’ll be done before she gets back.”

“Very well, boy. I’ll see you there.” He hangs up and wipes his prints from the receiver and keypad. Then he steps back and looks around. He needs to find a bus stop.

Akai arrives in Beika some forty minutes later. He’s carrying with him everything he has to his name – a watch, about 30,000 yen in cash, two knives, a Glock 19M pistol with two spare clips, and the clothes on his back.

He’s not sure what he’s expecting to find when he reaches the professor’s house. What he’s definitely not expecting is to meet the famous actress Kudou Yukiko. But there she is, hovering behind Edogawa Conan when he opens the door to Akai with a proud smile.

“My,” says Kudou Yukiko in feigned shyness, “Conan-kun didn’t tell me his agent was so good looking.”

His agent, thinks Akai. But after all, he owes his life to the boy – he can hardly argue.

“May I come in?” he asks politely, stepping inside when they back up to make room for him and closing the door behind him. He toes off his shoes and turns the lock on the door. “I’m pleased to meet you, ma’am. It might be better if you didn’t know my name. Unless the boy has already told you?” he glances down at Conan, who shakes his head.

“You don’t strike me as the type who likes his secrets shared for him, Agent-san,” says Conan.

“You’re a good judge of character,” replies Akai. “I know Kudou-san, of course, but I’m not sure why she’s here…?”

Yukiko smiles graciously. “Oh, that’s easy! I’m here to make you a new face.”

Akai does not use product in his hair. He doesn’t moisturize or exfoliate. He’s never even lived in a flat with a well-lit mirror, and certainly never regretted the fact.

Consequently, he finds sitting on a stool in front of Kudou Yukiko’s elaborately set-up three-fold mirror with bright, warm lights casting out every shadow from his features more intimidating than he would have imagined. Especially when she starts laying out dozens of compacts and bottles and tubes and brushes on the surface in front of him.

“Let me guess,” she says, still smiling. She’s standing behind him, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “You don’t have a skin-care routine?”

“You guessed correctly,” he says, trying for a smile and barely managing a grimace.

“Well starting today, you do. If you plan to apply and remove heavy makeup on a daily basis, you need to take better care of your skin. These,” she indicates a few taller bottles with hand pumps on the top, “are for you to use to wash your face. These two remove make-up. This one is just a moisturizer. Use a soft cloth and wash the make-up off, then apply the moisturizer. Easy, right?”

“Sure,” he says, in a flat, hollow tone. Shooting a bulls-eye from 500 meters away is easy, breaking a man’s neck from behind is easy. How hard can taking care of his skin be? Somehow, he’s afraid of the answer.

“Now,” she says, pulling a heavy box up onto the side of the table and opening it. “Let’s talk about your new look.” She produces from the inside wigs and moustaches, silicone prosthetics, and glasses and fake eyelashes. “We need to change your most memorable features – for you, it’s probably your hair and your eyes. You’d be surprised how much changing just those two things can disguise you.”

Akai, who was trained by the FBI to recognize people in disguises, is not surprised. But he is a little impressed.

He lets her try what she likes – she experiments with a short blond wig (too radical!) and a long brunette one (definitely not you!) before finding an auburn wig slightly longer than his natural length. She stretches it over his scalp, carefully covering his netted hair perfectly, and steps back to consider the effect. “I like it,” she says. To add to the effect, she produces a pair of narrow wire-rimmed glasses and hands them to him.

Akai glances at himself in the mirror. With the glasses and the wig he does look significantly different. But… “Not enough,” he says. She nods in agreement.

“Let’s try these!” She holds up false eyelashes. “Your eyes are very distinct. We have to change that.” She shows him how to apply the glue, then the lashes. They narrow his eyes and disguise the sharpness of his lower lashes, creating a fox-like look. “And some make-up to change your skin tone,” she adds. She uses a little blue sponge to apply lines and dots of some light-coloured cream, then blends it out over his face. She applies a little eyeliner to bring out the long narrowness of his eyes, and some powder to reduce the shine.

This time when he looks in the mirror, he sees a different person. He is no longer Akai Shuuichi, he is someone else. A man with a kinder, softer look.

“Smile,” suggests Yukiko, placing a hand on his shoulder.

He smiles, tensely at first, then more naturally. It fits the look. Already he can feel himself adapting to this new face, this new persona. Someone less sharp-edged than Akai. Someone inquisitive, but trusting.

“What do you think?” she asks.

Akai swivels on his stool to look up to her. “I can live with this face,” he says.

She claps her hands together. “Good! Now we just need to change your voice.”

He blinks. “My voice?”

“Of course.” She picks up a thin black strap from the table which he had taken to be some sort of strange measuring tool. “Put this on – like a choker.”

He looks at it in his hand for a moment; it has a small round face like a watch, but smaller and marked only by raised notches – no lights or hands. There are clips at each end of the strap, and he puts it around his neck where it sits tightly over his vocal chords.

“What does it do?” he asks.

She smiles. “Tap it.”

He does, feels a tiny give, something in the mechanism depressing. “I don’t see,” he begins to say, and stops. His voice has changed, is now a smooth tenor. His eyebrows climb. “A voice-changer,” he says, this time very impressed.

“You’ll have to find a voice that fits you – you can adjust it by swiveling the outside ring left or right. Agasa-hakase made it. You’ll also have to change your clothes, of course. Not just to hide the voice changer, but … well, I have an incline that your fashion sense tends towards the more plain.”

“Black and more black,” pipes up Conan from where he’s sitting on the couch reading on his phone.

“Try colour,” suggests Kudou Yukiko. “You would look very nice in yellows and browns. Fall colours.”

Akai gets up off the stool, striding over to stand in front of the couch. Conan looks up, eyes serious – considering. “What do you think, boy?” he asks, in the mellow voice.

“I wouldn’t know it’s you A – Agent-san. Although there is something about the way you carry yourself… you look dangerous.”

“That will be hard to change,” Akai admits. “Harder than disguising my face or voice.”

“I’m sure you can do it,” Kudou-san reassures him. “Now let’s go back – I have to teach you how to take it all off. And then you can try putting it back on yourself.”

As Akai returns to the mirror, he spares a brief thought for those who must be missing him, may even still be frantically searching for him despite his falsified corpse. Jodie. Camel.

And, of course, Bourbon.

Japan has a special relationship with America, forged by both countries’ desperation to prevent an exceptionally bloody history from repeating itself. In their shared military rapport Japan is the shield and America the sword, each trusting the other to play its part in defending the Pacific.

That being said, the relationship between the PSB and the FBI is far less cozy, and Rei’s inquiries through Kazami as to Akai’s condition and whereabouts fall on deaf ears in Washington. His investigation of Kir doesn’t fare any better. He’s able to confirm that she does have ties to the States, but doesn’t get any farther.

In the days after the video comes to him, he finds himself driving up to Raiha Pass when he’s at loose ends. Sometimes he pulls over at the shoulder containing the tell-tale scorch marks, sometimes he just slows and stares.

Behind his façade of unshakable certainty, he can feel doubt beginning to grow. Like acid, it’s doing its best to eat away at his confidence, to break down his reassurance.

Since that night on the rooftop, he has hated Akai with all his heart. The man who was Rye may change his name, may change his face and his clothes and his habits, but those are just trimmings – it’s the person he is beneath all those things that Rei despises. He stole the only precious thing in Rei’s life, ripped a part of his heart out of his chest and left it cold and dead. But it’s not about Rei’s loss, it’s about Scotch’s. About the life cut short, the dreams destroyed.

And all for nothing more than prestige.

Even now the memories make him hotly furious, build a towering inferno of rage inside him that scorches.

If he’s not the one to kill Akai Shuuichi, he doesn’t know how he’ll ever douse this fury. It burns relentlessly, utterly unappeased by the video showing supposed Akai’s death.

He’s always believed that revenge was the only way to make himself whole. Now he knows it.

It’s two days later that he’s ordered to join Vermouth in Beika. Sherry’s alive, and it’s Rei’s job to fix that.

Rei looks at the world in a way few others do; it’s why he makes an excellent intelligence agent and, beyond that, a first-rate detective. Where the other members of the syndicate read the files on Mouri Kogorou and his family and saw only a bumbling fool saddled with a nosy brat, Rei sees something more.

Especially when he spots the young girl walking to school with Edogawa Conan. She’s the spitting image of Sherry.

The syndicate has long pockets and dark ambitions, and he’s been aware for a while now that the research branch – formerly home to Sherry – has been dabbling in not only unspeakable things but unbelievable ones as well. That was why they brought on Miyano Elena, after all. To invent the impossible: the fountain of youth.

It’s almost inconceivable that they’ve found it. But watching the children walk to school from the inside of his Mazda RX-7, he finds himself repeating the word almost.

As he drives by, he notices a sign in the window of the café beneath Mouri Kogorou’s detective agency.

Now Hiring!

He settles in quickly despite the ever-present simmering anger that keeps him up in the depths of the night searching the internet for any trace, however small, of the FBI agent. He gets the job at Poirot and starts right away making cakes and pastries, coffee and tea. And, he finds a niche for himself as Mouri Kogorou’s (paying) apprentice.

That’s when the letters start. Anonymous letters printed on a heavy-duty printer in plain black and white, likely at a conbini or print shop. Short, vague missives slipped through his mail slot when he’s not home to greet him on his return.

Time to start afresh.

And, You should move on.

And, Can’t you forgive a ghost?

“No,” says Rei aloud when he reads that one, crumpling it into a ball and throwing it across the room.

But deep down, beneath the layers of rage and indignation and shock at Akai’s gall, he’s pleased. The bastard’s taunting him, which means he’s still alive somewhere. Still waiting for Rei to end his life for him.

The heady wave of vindication lasts an entire three days, during which he feels invincible.

It’s not long after that he meets Okiya Subaru.

Rei is keenly attuned to anything that’s changed in the small world he’s stepped into – the world orbiting Edogawa Conan. So he notices the appearance of a stranger at the house beside Agasa Hiroshi’s. A young man with auburn hair and narrow eyes and a mellow voice who smiles shyly.

Rei is used to wearing a smile – he knows how effective a disguise it is. No one suspects quiet, pleasant people of being bloodthirsty undercover agents.

He’s known Akai Shuuichi for years, has shared a car and an apartment with him, has cooked his meals and bandaged his wounds and resisted his subtle suggestions that they go to bed together. He’s always known that Akai was attracted to him, and in later years has considered it both an advantage and rage-inducing. He knows if Akai had no feelings for him there would never have been any letters through his door, though, so these days he’s putting up with it.

All this is to say, he knows Akai Shuuichi. Knows when he needs a smoke, knows when he’s joking with a straight face and telling the truth with a crooked smile. Knows the smell of him, the way he holds himself, the way he moves.

Okiya Subaru’s body language screams Akai Shuuichi.

The letters keep coming. Rei sets up a camera to capture whoever is dropping them, and after that they start arriving in his mailbox downstairs in the apartment building’s foyer instead of the slot in his door.

Does revenge really tally with your sense of justice?

And, Do you believe blood can erase blood?

And, I wonder how blind your anger has made you.

Rei isn’t blind – his vision is perfectly clear. He knows that Akai didn’t shoot Scotch, that his lover killed himself. But Akai was an FBI agent, he could have saved Scotch. And instead he died at Akai’s feet like a dog, the only consolation that he destroyed his phone as well.

It’s like I killed a ghost. Creepy, Akai had said.

Well, this time it’s his turn to kill a ghost – and he fully believes he can do it.

In his free time, he begins stalking Okiya Subaru. Installs a directional mic and cameras in the neighbourhood, makes passes by in his car late at night and early in the morning when Akai might be off-guard. He follows him to the local grocery market, roving the aisles behind his target while Okiya picks out ready-made meals and bottled drinks.

Akai never was any good at cooking.

Okiya goes to Touto University library on occasion, picking out heavy texts on mechanical engineering and carrying them home in his ridiculous Subaru 360. He also drives along the river beneath the sakura trees, meandering along the winding roads and staring out at the dark water.

“Trying to wash away your sins?” mutters Rei, following in a rental car.

In the mornings Okiya rises early and waters the garden; in the evenings he sits in the house’s large bay window and drinks bourbon and reads.

Rei has the distinct feeling the bastard’s taunting him. But he still has no proof, nothing objective with which to confront him.

The letters keep coming, so Rei writes a note and puts it in his own mailbox, face up at the bottom.

Meet me tonight at Yodobachi Bridge, 8pm.

No one shows up at the meeting, although he waits for an hour in the moonlight.

After that, the letters stop.

Akai is conflicted.

The FBI Agent in him is relentless in its efforts to keep his identity hidden from the world. He knows that he can only be successful in his mission – successful in staying alive – by remaining beneath the radar. He is a sniper at heart, and has the cold-blooded patience of a snake waiting for his prey to emerge from its den. He can wait for days, months, years to strike.

However, the part of him that was Moroboshi Dai is broken inside. His father’s death shattered his image of their family, his conception of the safe haven he lived in. He grew up tall but crooked in the shadow of that trauma, and turned to Moroboshi Dai to make things right. Only to have Scotch take his life in front of his eyes, himself powerless to save him. Only to have Akemi murdered for his sins, more blood on his hands. Only to have Furuya Rei make him the target of his undying hatred rather than the affection Dai had once hoped for.

Akai’s cold affect has always hidden his secret: he falls in love too easily. With Jodie, with Akemi.

With Bourbon.

He’s done all that he could to protect them. He left Akemi alone after his cover was blown, never once communicated with her despite her texts to him – and that ended in blood and tears. He lied to Bourbon’s face and took the blame for Scotch’s death to shield him – and in doing so he earned himself not Bourbon’s regard or respect, but his hatred.

He’s made such a fucking mess of things it’s almost comical. For a man believed to have no feelings, his heart has completely and utterly screwed him over.

He’s shouldered that burden for years now, slowly cracking under the weight of it. He’s come to realise that he sees Okiya Subaru as a second chance, an opportunity to make amends. A way to shed the weight that is crushing him.

It was his need to start cleaning up after his mess that prompted him to drop the letters to Bourbon – to Furuya. Partially because he knew the man would never believe his death anyway, and partially as some kind of recompense. After his lies, Furuya deserves to know that he’s still alive.

And, Akai wanted him to know. Wanted to light even the tiniest spark of relief in Furuya’s flaming hatred.

Wanted another chance for the two of them.

Furuya’s been stalking him, hunting him like a fox after a rabbit. He knows the PSB agent has been following him on his errands and staking him out in the evenings.

Obviously Furuya doesn’t have proof of his suspicions, or he would already have broken the door down and come charging in. But most likely he knows Akai’s identity.

It’s a quandary. He wants to reveal himself to Furuya, to finally have it out with him and finish the battle that’s been playing out between them for years. But prudence suggests he keep his identity a secret, that the best way to protect himself is to stay silent.

Either way, he’s probably running out of time. Furuya doesn’t have his patience; the fuse on the PSB agent is short, especially when it comes to Akai. If he doesn’t find some proof to appease himself soon, he may just come bursting in anyway.

He wants to do this on his own terms.

He pulls out the small piece of paper he tucked away in his wallet weeks ago. Call me when you’re safe. Akai smiles and dials the number below.

It takes a lot of set-up. James has agents watching the PSB, and informs him of the changes in their movements, as well as Jodie and Camel’s plans. Kudou Yusaku and Yukiko are called back from their globetrotting to play their parts in the charade. And Akai digs Kusuda Rikumichi’s gun out of storage and tucks it in his holster.

Ready.

The whole act plays out magnificently. His revelation to Jodie and Camel as they climb the dizzy heights of Raiha Pass – and to the PSB agents behind them. His crippling the pursuing cars, but returning all the same. His conversation with Furuya, having handed the revolver over to his subordinate. Don’t get distracted by what’s in front of you and pursue the wrong prey.

He knows Furuya will have taken his meaning: I’m not the enemy. He’s equally sure he won’t believe it.

The entire op goes off without a hitch, which is shocking given how many moving parts there are. But perhaps a little less shocking given that it was in part orchestrated by the boy who saved his life.

At the end of it, though, when he takes Jodie and Camel back to the Kudou mansion to get reacquainted, he feels dissatisfied. His conversation with Furuya was perfectly scripted, including his revelation of his long suspicions of the PSB agent while within the syndicate and his awareness of Furuya’s true identity. It went perfectly, Furuya so shocked that he forgot his anger.

It was the conversation they needed to have, the re-introduction they needed to start again on new terms. But it wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have.

As far as Furuya is concerned, he’s still the man who murdered Furuya’s lover. A simple apology for his death, no matter how sincere, won’t even dent the surface of Furuya’s anger.

Now that he’s protected his Okiya Subaru identity, it’s time for Akai Shuuichi to do some talking.

It’s a long day. Rei wakes early to pull the opening shift at Poirot – he’s already been trusting with the baking and food prep which Azusa assures him is a sign of high praise – and then comes home only to be called in by Kazami to deal with a PSB issue on the other side of town. He’s gone all afternoon and evening without the opportunity to eat dinner; the cold can of coffee he swallows down does little to re-energize him.

It’s past nine by the time he returns to his apartment. Out of habit rather than interest he checks his mail.

There’s an unfolded letter in the box.

We need to talk. Now is as good a time as any.

Rei stares down at the words, face slowly darkening. He walks slowly to the stairs and starts climbing.

Akai wants to talk. Akai, the bastard. Akai, the liar. Akai, the son of a bitch murderer.

He starts climbing faster, then faster still, until he’s running up the stairs. Pounding the concrete steps and panting, his heart hammering in his chest. He runs faster and faster, shooting out the door at his floor and slamming his key into his lock, forehead beaded with sweat.

Akai Shuuichi is sitting at his table, drinking a cup of coffee.

Akai Shuuichi at his table.

Akai Shuuichi.

His gun is in his hand before the thought even forms in his mind, pointed straight between the bastard’s eyes. “You,” he snarls, blood pounding in his ears.

“Me,” agrees Akai calmly, putting down the cup (one of Rei’s cups – the bastard broke in here and made himself coffee.) “Should I put my hands up?” he asks, a small smile playing about his lips.

“You said once you’d killed a ghost. Come to see if I can manage the same?” demands Rei.

“I also asked if you could forgive a ghost. It’s the answer to that question I’m seeking.”

“Forgive you?” echoes Rei, furious. “Forgive you? For what you’ve done?”

“What I did was lie. I lied to my friends and my coworkers. I lied to my enemies. I lied to the ones I loved. I lied to you.”

“You were a NOC,” growls Rei, striding closer, staring down the barrel of the gun. “Of course you lied! We all do, every goddamn day of the year.”

“I didn’t lie for myself, Furuya-kun. I lied for others. To protect others. To protect you. I didn’t kill Scotch.”

“No. You made him kill himself. Do you expect a thank you? A fucking commendation: Thank You Akai Shuuichi-sama?” He picks up a wooden chair standing between them and tosses it into the kitchen, freeing his path; it clatters loudly on the floor.

“I tried to save him,” says Akai, calmly, staring up at him from under his black beanie. “That night on the rooftop I stopped him for one brief minute – long enough to tell him my identity. Tell him that I would help. But he was hell-bent on taking his secrets to the grave. And your arrival precipitated his death. He didn’t know it was a friend arriving, not a foe, Furuya-kun.”

“This is what you wanted to tell me? That it’s my fault Scotch is dead? That not only did you not kill him, you tried to protect me from the truth?” He feels like he’s burning, his chest alight with flames. He can hardly breathe, barely force air in and out through his constricted windpipe. His eyes are full of tears, his ears full of blood.

Akai crosses his legs. “What I’ve always wondered is why it never occurred to you that you might not be the only one to have lost someone,” he says. And then, meeting Rei’s eyes straight on so that he can see the conflict within them, the anger and the sorrow, “The syndicate killed my father. They killed my lover. Do you think I don’t understand your pain? Do you think it so inconceivable that I might act to lessen it?”

His words are like a blow to the jaw. “Why would you?” Rei chokes out. Inside he can feel his stone-hard certainty beginning to crack as if eroded by water, Akai’s words wearing it down.

“Because you were a friend, Furuya-kun. One of the very few I had in my life as Moroboshi Dai. And because, then as now, I hoped you might become something more.”

“Is that why you’ve been taunting me with those letters? Trying to get me to broaden my horizons? Accept that maybe I could wake up some day and not hate your guts?”

“I left you the letters so you would know I was alive. It was selfish, and stupid. But I wanted to believe that perhaps there was a part of you that would be glad I wasn’t dead.”

“This is pathetic, FBI. You expect your confession to make me swoon into your arms? Expect that I’ll realise I’ve loved you all along? Well I don’t. I thought you were an insufferable bastard then, and I think you’re an insufferable bastard now.” He lowers his gun slowly, breathing hard.

“But you don’t want to kill me anymore. Do you?”

“What do you want – a prize? Maybe you were right before – maybe there are other targets I should be focusing on first. That’s all. Now get the fuck out of my apartment.” He points at the door with his free hand.

Akai rises and slowly stalks out past Rei, putting on his shoes in the entryway and slipping out the door. It closes with a click behind him, leaving Rei alone in the apartment with his gun and a lukewarm cup of coffee.

Rei slams his fist into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. “Fuck!”

For some reason, it’s Akai’s eyes he can’t stop thinking about. Jade green and full of pain. They haunt his dreams and his waking hours, the FBI agent’s words in his ears like an accompanying background track: Do you think I don’t understand your pain?

Rei had mourned Akemi as the little girl he had once known, and as the woman whose life and happiness the syndicate had utterly destroyed for no reason other than its own convenience. But he had never once considered Akai’s feelings in the matter. The FBI dog had been dead to Rei by then for all purposes other than abject hatred.

Now, though, he wonders. Wonders how Akai must have felt when he heard of her death at Gin’s hands, knowing he was helpless to save her. Wonders if sometimes he wishes it had been his heart pierced by the bullet, as Rei does in the depths of long, hopeless nights.

Wonders just how blind he’s been.

It takes him a week to accept that, on the balance of probability, Akai was trying to help Scotch before his death. As a fellow NOC in good standing with the syndicate, he had little to gain and much to lose from destroying both Scotch and the only clue to his identity.

It takes another week to accept that somehow Akai cares enough for him to have protected him down the years at the possible cost of his own life. He doesn’t have to understand it, he tells himself. But maybe, just maybe, he owes Akai enough to believe it.

He meets Okiya Subaru again at the venue of an upcoming concert for a has-been musician releasing a 17 year-old single. Vermouth comes along made up as Azusa, and Rei minds his ps and qs.

What he can’t help but notice – and comment on – is that Okiya is left-handed. He had been right-handed when Rei met him previously. And, more than ever, he reminds the PSB agent of Akai Shuuichi.

He gives it a couple of days, slipping back into his old stalker routine and watching the man’s comings and goings until he’s sure. This isn’t the same person he spoke to while Akai was tearing up Raiha. But that doesn’t mean that it’s Akai Shuuichi.

As he drives by one night, engine humming and car crawling forward, he sees Okiya Subaru sitting in the front window. He’s drinking bourbon again, and when he sees Rei, he raises a glass to him.

Proof enough, thinks Rei, and drives home.

He writes Akai a letter. This one, unlike the FBI agent’s poor excuses, is hand-written and in a sealed envelope.

FBI,

I don’t regret hating you – that was your choice to make, and I’m not apologizing for it. But you’re right that I didn’t consider your side of the story.

Maybe after all neither of us can kill a ghost. It took your death to make me realize just how much I’ve come to define myself by my hatred of you, and just how pathetic that is.

Starting today, you’re not in my sights. Don’t expect bouquets and kisses.

0.

PS: Maybe when this is all over, we can start afresh.

He puts it through the mail slot in the Kudou mansion’s door early one morning on his way to work, and tries to put it out of his mind.

Six months later the Black Syndicate goes down in flames, some of them lit by Bourbon from the inside. It ends with blood and deaths and tears, half the syndicate agents preferring to die than to live out the rest of their lives on Japan’s death row. Gin is one of them.

Rei comes out of it with a broken arm and a bad cut over his right eye that bleeds like hell until he gets it stitched up by the newly-restored Sherry – no, Miyano Shiho – in the safe haven that Agasa’s house has become. He’s ushered upstairs to bed, his own apartment now off limits with his cover blown and a few unnamed syndicate agents still at large.

When he wakes up Akai Shuuichi is sitting at his bedside, a book in hand and a pair of crutches at his side. The FBI agent puts down the book (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) and looks up.

“Furuya-kun. I’m glad to see you made it out.”

“Me too,” replies Rei, dryly. And then, glancing at the crutches, “Looks like you didn’t have an easier time of it either.”

“Bullet to the thigh. It will heal.”

“You should be in bed.”

Akai smiles suggestively. “Is that an invitation?”

Rei colours, and Akai laughs (laughs! Rei’s never heard such a thing before from him). “I apologize,” he says. “It’s probably the morphine.”

Somehow, Rei highly doubts that. The idea that Akai has a sense of humour is foreign to him, but he finds himself already warming to it. “What will you do now?” he asks. “Gin is dead; your vengeance is complete.”

“So is yours,” points out Akai. He shifts, then looks out the window and shrugs. “Look to the future, I suppose.”

“America?”

“Or Britain. But… My family has settled here. I’ve spent the past 30 years running after my father’s ghost while leaving my family without both him and me. Perhaps it’s time for a change.”

Rei feels his heart give a little jolt. “Then you’d stay?” he asks.

Akai turns back, smiling gently. “Is that a request?” Rei likes this new, kinder Akai. He’s less sharp – or perhaps, Rei thinks, just less broken.

“No. Not yet. But… it could be. We don’t know each other. Bourbon knows Rye, but it’s not the same thing.”

“No,” agrees Akai. “It isn’t. But I would like to know Furuya Rei. Now that we both finally have the time.”

“And there’s still a lot of cleaning up to do. You could be useful there, FBI.”

“It’s nice to feel wanted,” he says, and for once Rei hears no sarcasm in his voice. “If you ask me to stay, I will.”

Rei can feel his heart thrumming in his chest, feel his blood running hot under his skin. For everything Akai’s done for him, it’s a tiny favour. And he realises, it’s something he wants. “Then I’ll ask: Stay.”

“Thank you, Furuya-kun,” says Akai.

END