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Shinichi doesn’t bother looking up when Hattori flops down beside him on the park bench, two cans of cold milk tea balanced precariously in one hand. “So, neechan seems ta think that you’ve been all broody over something lately.”
“Which one?”
Hattori frowns as he passes one of the cans over. “Which what?”
Shinichi gives him the most unimpressed look he can muster – what did Kazuha see in this man, honestly. “You call almost all of the women ‘neechan’, Hattori. Real specific of you.”
“Well, it works just fine, doesn’t it?” Hattori says with a shrug. “And it pretty much is all of them this time, anyway. Stop stalling, Kudo, unless you actually want your neechan going all Murder Soldier on ya.”
And that, well – aye, there’s the rub, Shinichi’s mother would’ve said.
At least Shakespeare’s still a thing in the future, he thinks.
Shinichi toys absently with the ring tab before pulling it up carefully (they’ve lost track of how many cans he’s ruined by yanking too hard). He doesn’t need any enhanced senses to feel Hattori staring a hole through his head, but he ignores it and takes a long drink.
It’s not fair at all, really, getting asked things like this when he can’t even get drunk.
“...damn,” Hattori says, eventually. “It is bad, isn’t it.”
Shinichi doesn’t answer, doesn’t trust his voice to, only reaches into his pocket to pull out a small wooden box that weighs heavy on his palm.
Hattori’s hesitant at first, but takes the box at Shinichi’s slight nod, turning it over in his hands. “A puzzlebox, Kudo? You really like your mysteries, don’t ya.”
Shinichi shrugs, this time, and leans back on the bench, eyes drifting closed.
It’s almost pleasant, listening to Hattori sliding the patterned panels this way and that, muttering to himself under his breath as he tries to figure out the sequence that Shinichi could’ve remembered in his sleep. To pretend, just for a while, that there’s nothing more to this than a puzzle, rather than the most important mystery of his life.
“That’s – ”
He’s managed to render Hattori Heiji, patron saint of banter, completely speechless. Kazuha would probably call that an achievement.
“...wow, um. That’s one hell of a thing, Kudo.”
Shinichi manages to quirk a smile at that – Hattori’s literally incapable of beating around a bush if his life depended on it, but apparently understatement is at least on the menu.
“They found it in my personal effects, after we – ” his voice cracks. “After. Either they didn’t realise what it was, or they never managed to figure out how to open it. Maybe they assumed that the mechanism had gotten damaged during a fight or something.”
Shinichi doesn’t bother entertaining any illusion that whoever had the box wouldn’t have at least tried opening it. The headlines of history didn’t allow for such things – The last tragedy: War hero planning to marry made for better news than Cap’s final secret remains unsolved.
(If it’d been anything else, anyone else, Shinichi might’ve been mad at that implication, that a bunch of strangers had looked at this and seen only another piece of history to be decoded, the last problem of his life on display.
This once, though – he’s just. Numb.)
“I was gonna propose to her once the war was over.” Shinichi laughs, bitter, and swipes one hand impatiently across his eyes. “Look where we are now.”
Hattori’s quiet for a long while – they both are.
Shinichi finishes his milk tea in the silence.
“Did she know?” Hattori asks.
“Only about the box, not what was inside.” Shinichi lifts the ring out of its hiding place, running a finger over the inscription, but leaves the box where it is. “Most of the people in my unit knew, probably – I kept it in my pocket every time we got sent out.”
Though he wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Howling Commandos had guessed – it was unsurprising, the amount of things you learnt about people when you regularly fought Nazis with less plans than grenades.
But they’d kept the knowledge to themselves if they had. Shinichi’s read the opinions from various sources – the speculation is wild, to say the least, but it means something that there are guesses about the box containing the last of the supersoldier serum but nothing even close to hitting the truth.
“Not that it ever blocked a bullet or anything, I had the shield for that, but it still felt like – ”
(Shinichi’s clenched his hand around the empty can without quite realising it, and he forces himself to let go, to uncurl his fingers from the metal.
He’s broken too many things already.)
“ – like a good luck charm, y’know? Like everything would be fine as long as I had it. And don’t laugh, I know you carry that omamori from Kazuha with you everywhere we go.”
“Do you see me smiling, Kudo?” Hattori retorts, and it’s true; he looks serious, more than Shinichi’s ever seen him. “I don’t – jeez, man, how long have ya been keepin‘ a lid on this?”
Shinichi bites his lip, and locks the box again with a soft snick.
“Oh my god,” Hattori mutters under his breath, and Shinichi smiles despite himself at how incredulous he sounds. “For the record, I’m deeply offended on all of our behalfs – behalves? Is that even a word? – our collective behalf that you actually thought we wouldn’t take you seriously. Even the robot neechan, and you know she doesn’t believe in this stuff unless she’s got another super lucky fortune from the shrine again.”
“Yeah, well. Didn’t work out so well in the end, did it.” Shinichi hasn’t thought about the train in a while, what with all the ruckus that’s happened – it both hurts more and less, knowing everything he does now.
He hadn’t even been able to look at the box without flinching, after the train. Almost been tempted to leave it in that bombed-out shell of a bar, though he’d settled for hiding it amongst his belongings instead. Regretted both choices when first the arctic ice then the twenty-first century had rushed up to meet him in turn.
He’s not sure which would’ve been the better option, even now.
(Sometimes, it feels like his entire life has been a catenary chain of afters: after the serum, after Azzano, after the train. After the ice. After the people they’d once been and could never be again.
He wonders what this will be, after.)
“And to think, this only happened ’cause someone gave ya infinite money and orders to get out of her sight.”
“Or a team of lawyers and free reign to bully every single memorabilia collector into submission, more like.” Shinichi snorts. “If Miyano wants to keep me out of her lab, she ought to invest in better locks. Most of the Tower’s made careers out of spy work – hell, the Commandos invented stealth missions, for goodness sakes’.”
“Like you don’t just bash locks with your shield until they break, Cap,” Hattori says between snickers.
Shinichi kicks him in the shin. “Say what, birdman?”
“Better me than Hawkeye. And no kicking with supersoldier strength, ow!”
“Right, no kicking,” Shinichi says, and shoves him bodily off the bench.
Hattori falls onto the grass with a loud yelp. “Who’s on your left now, you – ”
“I thought you could fly, Falcon!” Shinichi hollers back.
(The box is a familiar weight in his pocket as they walk back together; Shinichi can still remember the hot-cold flash of shock when he’d seen it listed among the inventory of his possessions that’d survived the end of days only to end up in some private collection. “Did you know, I’d almost forgotten about it until Miyano’s mafia of lawyers made me that list?”
“No,” Hattori says with conviction, looking directly at him, “you didn’t.”
And Shinichi’s too tired to laugh, only swallows back a sigh and says, “no. No, I didn’t.”)