Archive of Our Own

A teenage boy was standing outside of the airport, watching people waiting for their relatives and friends who will be coming out on arriving area, waving banners and signs bearing the names of their expected person.

He walked to the place where the taxis were, holding his phone as he started to dial the familiar number. He smiled sadly, as he pressed the phone in his ear, waiting for the receiver to pick up.

After a few dialing tones, someone picked up and a female voice was heard, "Oh, it's you. She was waiting for you, dear. Have you already arrived on Beika?"

The teen nodded with a small smile, as he replied in a soft voice, "Yes, Kanzaki-san. I'll be right there. I can't wait to see her again."

With a polite goodbye, the teen lowered the phone and pocketed it, as he was looking at the city view in front of the airport. Beika has changed since he last saw it, and the teen could see that the city he had known nearly all his life was gone.

The wind blows gently, as he closed his crystal blue eyes, his chestnut hair ruffled slightly in the breeze. He missed the feeling of home, the smell of the city he knew ever since he was a child.

As he entered a taxi, the taxi driver asked the teen where is his destination. The teenager with a wistful voice, as he held the handle of his suitcase tightly, "Beika General Hospital, please?"

Then the taxi started to dash on the streets of Beika, as the teen inside stared at the passing of cars and people rushing to and fro.

The teenager looked at the hospital in front of him, his azure blue eyes reflected sorrow as he entered the building, and his suitcase lagged behind him.

As he walked inside the hospital, the entourage of doctors, nurses, and patients running around the lobby greeted the young man, as the place reeked of antiseptics and death. As much as he was used to the stench of death due to him being involved in many different cases, the idea of them still sends shivers on his spine.

He passed through people rushing to and fro in the hospital and entered the elevator, where he pressed the button that will land him on his destination, the third floor, where the hospital rooms and wards are located.

As the elevator rises up, the teenager sighed deeply, trying to calm his nerves. It has been a long time since he had been in Japan, and it was for a good reason he had left the country. Even though he doesn't want to come back to Japan and wanted to bury the memories, when he heard the news from a friend, he immediately booked a flight back home.

He wanted to see her personally.

As he pondered on his scrambled thoughts, the elevator stopped and opened its doors, signifying that he has arrived on his destined floor. He walked out of the elevator and into the corridor with a nervous look on his youthful face, his hand gripping tightly on his suitcase.

He watched at the door numbers and the kanji of the names below them, bearing the name of the patient staying in those specific rooms. He passed through doctors and nurses walking in the corridors, as he was trying to look for her name.

He found her name in one of the doors, and stopped in front of it, as his azure eyes traced the kanji of her name...with every stroke and curve of it. His hands are shaking due to nervousness, as he was pondering if he will knock or open the door. A million questions suddenly flooding on his mind, and his heart was pounding loudly as he was standing at the door that separates him from her.

He wants to see her angelic face once again. How he missed her smiles and her warm hugs, how cute she was when she laughs.

The feelings he tried to bury for years started to surface once again, blossoming like a red rose, and it was like its thorns were tightly clinging to his aching heart. He reached out on the door handle before he hesitated and shook his head.

Can he do this? Can he face her, after all, those times he was gone from her side? What if she never forgave him for leaving her behind?

Did she still love him or is she already moved on from him?

As he was standing in from the door, silently deciding whether to open the door or not, the door opened, revealing a tall lady with reddish brown hair and light green eyes tied in a bun. Anyone could deduce that she may be in her early thirties and came from a well-to-do family based on her outfit. The teenager knew who she was, as she was the female who he had contacted earlier.

"Kanzaki Nozomi-san," he meekly greeted the woman, trying to make himself small. The woman, Kanzaki Nozomi, stared at the teenager with widened eyes, as she scanned the teenager's form up and down before she smiled and replied, "It's you, isn't it? The one she's been waiting for, you're finally here. Come on in, she is now waiting for you."

The woman ushered the teenager inside, as the said person silently entered the room and looked around before his eyes landed on a hospital bed beside the window. There is a small table where a bunch of get-well-soon flowers and cards sitting on it. The teenager's azure eyes sadly stared at the person lying down on the bed, silently staring back at him.

The person was lying down on the hospital bed, her pale arms were full of IV tubes and bandages. The heart monitor was beeping, breaking the silence in the room. The teenager could see how the woman was breathing harshly, with a cannula attached to her dainty nose. The woman's amethyst eyes were glazed with tears as if she was trying hard not to cry.

The woman nodded as if beckoning the teen to come to sit down on the chair beside her. He got the message and slowly sat down on the chair, his azure eyes still never breaking contact with the woman's gaze. Nozomi was behind the teenager, grabbed the suitcase the teenager had let go, and placed it beside the door. She then spoke in a soft voice, as she smiled in understanding, "I will leave the two of you to reconnect once again. I will be outside, call me if you need anything."

The teen nodded as Nozomi left the room, leaving the two people in the room, awkwardly staring at one another. The sickly woman weakly reached the teenager's youthful face, caressing it. She flashed a longing smile as she softly remarked, "You had never changed."

"You still look the same as the last time I saw you, Conan-kun."

Edogawa Conan leaned to the woman's touch, as he was trying to feel her warmth on his cheek. He flashed a melancholic smile, as his youthful hand reached the woman's hand on his cheek.

"Ran-neechan..."

Mouri Ran smirked as her amethyst orbs traced her former charge's youthful face and the familiar clump of brown hair on Conan's head. His eyeglasses were perched on his nose, their lens reflecting Ran's pale face. His beautiful azure eyes were staring back at her, which seems like he was older than he actually looks, and she could see the emotions flashing in his eyes: sadness, anguish, regret, and a little bit of joy.

Conan's other hand reached to her face and fondled it with a sad look on his face, his hands then reached on Ran's hair and run his fingers on the strands, as he remarked in a somber tone.

"And you are an old woman, Ran-neechan."

Ran laughed softly as she let go of the teen's face, and spoke in a fake scolding voice, a smile on her old face, "Don't diss me, Conan-kun. I may have white hair and wrinkles, but I could still scold you like before. You are just lucky you got to be so young, while I was now as old as heck."

Conan chuckled as his hands traced the wrinkles on the woman's face. Then he remarked at the old woman with a slightly bitter tone, "Yup, lucky I guess."

Ran looked at the boy with sympathy, as Conan let go of Ran's face and lowered his head, trying to hide the glazed look on his azure eyes. He sighed as he tried not to let Ran see him struggling not to cry, as Ran had never seen him sincerely break down in front of her.

The old woman weakly reached Conan's face and seized his eyeglasses, making the boy's head look up at the woman in surprise. Ran's eyes stared at his own, her lips flashing a nostalgic smile, as she placed the glasses on the bedside table. She whispered softly, but Conan could hear the words clearly.

"I had missed you so much, Shinichi."

Conan's azure eyes widened as he inwardly panicked when he heard Ran. How does she know-

Ran continued when Conan stared at her with a shocked look on his youthful face, "Do you think I could never recognize you, now that you look exactly the same as Shinichi when you became a teenager? I may never suspect you after you has successfully fooled me many times back when we were still together before, but I could never forget Shinichi's face after all those years. I may not be a brilliant detective like you, but I had been around detectives that I could pick up some skills, Conan-kun, no, Shinichi."

Edogawa Conan, who was actually the shrunken Kudo Shinichi, was speechless, stunned as he couldn't believe that the love of his life, the ever-sweet Mouri Ran, had figured out him being Shinichi.

"So you knew all those years?" He spoke up, as Ran chuckled at Conan's reaction.

"I know that in my heart that it is you, but Ai-chan actually confirmed my suspicions when she revealed the truth to me 20 years ago," Ran confessed as Conan was stunned at the revelation.

"Haibara...did that?"

He was baffled as he wondered why Haibara had decided to tell the entire truth to Ran if she is one of the people who always told him not to.

He had never seen the Haibara Ai, real name Miyano Shiho, for years. The young creator of APTX-4869 and another victim who got shrunk by the drug, she had tried hard to make a permanent antidote for Shinichi to come back to his real self, even years after the defeat of the Black Organization decades ago.

Unfortunately for both of them, a problem had arisen while making the antidote, a problem that changed the life of Kudo Shinichi/Edogawa Conan forever.

"I had to tell you something, and I should have told you before you took the permanent antidote. I had found something terrible while working on the permanent antidote, Kudo-kun. Apparently, there is another strange side effect of the APTX-4869, and this one is rarer than the shrinking effect, in fact, there is only one in a million chance that someone who had taken the drug, survived, and taking the permanent antidote at the same time can have the side effect."

"What is that side effect you had been talking about, Haibara?"

"Kudo-kun, we had the one that the Organization has been looking for a very long time. We had accidentally made the fountain of youth."

Haibara once explained that the APTX-4869 activates telomerase, an enzyme that lengthens the caps at the end of DNA, called telomeres, whose length limits the number of times a cell can divide, and therefore affect a cell's lifespan and "reproductive potential".

The antidote stops the production of telomerase, causing the telomeres to shorten, and the cell enters a toxic state called "senescence". If these senescent cells are not cleared by the immune system, they begin to compromise the function of the tissues in which they reside, causing the aging of a person.

Unfortunately, there are some cases that the drug had increased the production of telomerase more than it was supposed to, more than what the shrunken person was supposed to have. Especially those who had taken the first batch of the apotoxin.

It is found that too much telomerase can cause aggressive cancer in the long run, but the antidote counteracts the damaging effects, as it will stop the overproduction of telomerase caused by the first untested batch of APTX-4869.

There is one problem.

The telomeres of the person who had been affected can't be shortened nor lengthened due to the antidote and that specific apotoxin clashing each other, as it was found out that the antidote does not fully deactivate the apotoxin's effects. As cells divide through mitosis, the telomeres will never shorten as it was supposed to, causing the affected person to heal quicker than it was supposed to be. If he got fatally injured, his body would automatically heal aggressively as a defense mechanism, causing that affected person not to face death anytime soon. This possibility increases if the said shrunken person has taken too many antidotes in the short run, whether temporary or permanent.

Unfortunately, there is only one person who got the rare side effect, the person who both took the first batch of APTX-4869 and multiple temporary antidotes at the same time.

"I am sorry, Kudo-kun, but you are functionally immortal."

Immortality. He was now immortal.

"Don't blame Ai-chan for telling the truth, Shinichi," Ran suddenly spoke up, breaking Conan out of his reverie. Ran's lips flashed a small smile, "She had said to me that she tried hard to reverse the effects so you could age normally, she worked hard to find the cure, but she never had found the cure before she passed away months ago."

"She...passed away?" Conan was stunned when he heard that Haibara had died recently. The last time he had heard about her, she never took the antidote and became Haibara Ai permanently, reliving her second childhood once again. He had never thought that Haibara was still trying to reverse the effects and find a permanent cure to his condition, even after he had left Japan to avoid suspicions of people around him, for, at this rate, they will notice him not growing older unlike the rest of the peers of his age.

He hated to leave Ran at that time, but he had no choice in the matter. He remembered how Ran was begging for him not to leave or let her come with him, but he tearfully said that she may have to move on and find someone who will never hurt her heart as he does.

He had to change his identity so people would never get suspicious of him, with the help of his parents until they died together in a tragic car crash 40 years ago.

The Kudo family fortune was secretly passed on to him, Yukiko's only living 'distant cousin', as the only heir of the fortune, as their biological son, Kudo Shinichi, had already 'passed away' and they had no known living relatives.

"Yes, Shinichi. She was happily married to Mitsuhiko-kun at one point and had a daughter with him. Mitsuhiko-kun apparently knew about her past and accepted her for who she was. She had said that she tried to contact you to invite you to their wedding, but you had fallen off the grid. Nozomi-chan was lucky that she got your current number because one of her family friends was one of your clients."

Conan mutely nodded as he looked at the window, watching the city. The city had gone on changes since the last time he had been in Beika, and he doesn't. He hated the feeling that the whole world had changed around him, and he doesn't.

He then asked a question that he had dreaded to ask his beloved, a question he always asked in his mind every time, for 60 years.

"Have you ever moved on and got married?"

He slowly caught Ran off-guard with his question, before she closed her eyes, her lips quirked off a small smile, as she replied softly.

"No, I haven't."

The old woman opened her amethyst eyes, looked into Conan's youthful face, and noted his rounded eyes, raised brows, and slack expression, realizing that she had surprised him with her answer. She had noticed how Conan's beautiful azure eyes started to become glassy, as he tried not to cry in front of her.

Then he muttered one word, a question, "Why?"

Ran's smile was like a sudden beam of sunlight illuminating the darkest corners of the room. She held Conan's hand as she replied to Conan's question, "Because I couldn't bear to marry another person when I know that the one I truly loved was out there, living the eternity he had been cursed out to live."

Shock crossed Conan's young face, his mouth dropping open slightly. He couldn't believe what he had heard, that Ran did not marry anyone because she was still in love with him, Kudo Shinichi, the high-school detective that was proclaimed dead 60 years ago.

Ran continued, "I promised myself to wait for him, and I did. I had stood by what I had promised to you years ago: to wait for you to come back. No matter when it takes for me. As long as you exist on this planet, I won't ever want to forget about my feelings for you."

Conan's eyes glazed over, as a stray tear fell down his youthful cheek. He had remembered Ran's dream back when they were kids when Shinichi was an actual kid: to get married and have a family of her own. Now because of her love for him, it never came true. He felt that it was all his fault that he ruined Ran's life because she loved him, a man who will never grow old for the rest of eternity.

He closed his eyes, as his voice laced with distaste, his other hand not holding Ran's own clenching tightly in frustration, "Why did you do this to yourself? Ran, you should have moved on and forget your feelings for me, as I had told you many years ago. I can't give you the one thing you wanted: to grow old with you, together. I can't die, Ran, no matter what I try or do, I will watch the ones I loved and cared about most had died before me, and I can't do anything about it! No matter what I wish to the deities above, I'll never join them in rest. I can't die with you, I can't grow white hairs, have arthritis and wrinkles old people had."

He continued speaking, as he opened his azure eyes, anguish marred his youthful features, "The Organization was foolish to seek out a horrible thing. For as I've learned, immortality, may it be wished or not, is nothing more, than a curse. It's not a blessing, Ran. How can it be a blessing when the one I loved the most, the woman I truly loved, grows old and die, while I was stuck as a young teenager?!"

Ran squeezed her beloved's hand comfortingly as her other hand weakly reached up to wipe the stray tears on Conan's cheek. She was breathing with effort as her lips tried to quirk up a nostalgic smile, "Because I love you, Shinichi."

"But your dream, remember? You wanted to get married and have a family of your own-"

She stopped Conan's rambling with a finger touching his lips, then she caressed his youthful face, as she spoke with a loving tone in her soft voice, " That dream is nothing without you. I will always love you no matter what. I don't care if I grow old while you didn't, because I only care about the fact that I truly loved you and you are the one who made me happy no matter what. I will always love you even if the stars will fade away."

"We may never grow old together, but I am happy you are with me at last, Shinichi. I am now happy even in the last days of my life because I had already seen you for one last time. And I will cherish every second of it."

Her breathing was erratic, but she tried not to show her pain to Conan, who comforted her as he spoke gently, "Don't push yourself, Ran. And don't say that you are going to die today."

The woman chuckled as she stared at Conan's azure orbs, as she was looking at the bunch of emotions flashing on them. She flashed a warm smile, as she remarked, "We all gonna die someday. We just have to cherish the memories we had shared for the times you are still alive."

Her eyes started to tear up, as she flashed a happy and contented smile, as she weakly squeezed her beloved's hand, "Promise me, Shinichi. Promise me that you will still continue to live on happily without me."

Conan was dumbfounded, as he tried to weakly protest, "But I can't be truly happy without you..."

Ran warmly stared at Conan as she weakly squeezed his hand, as she was struggling to breathe, "Promise me that you will be happy even after I am gone. Be the strong mystery otaku I had truly loved, the boy who will always smile and be strong no matter what. Don't let my impending death ruin your eternity. There will be someone out there who needs your help..."

Conan held Ran's weak hand and placed it on his cheek with a sorrowful look on his face, tears started to fall down from his eyes and unto the hand of his beloved. Ran's dainty hand was cold, compared to his.

Ran continued speaking to him as she beamed warmly at her beloved Shinichi, as she was struggling to talk, as she was struggling to breathe, "Someday...we will meet once again... I will always wait... No matter how long..."

She then slowly closed her glazed eyes, as her breathing usually slows down and becomes irregular. Her body started to relax, as her grip on Conan's hand started to become weak. Her lips quirked into a warm smile as Conan could notice that her angelic face has started to be peaceful as if she was accepting her impending death.

She uttered the words, those bittersweet words that will be remembered by one Edogawa Conan, no, Kudo Shinichi, for eternity.

"As I will always love you... my Sherlock Holmes."

As she uttered the words, her breathing slowly stopped, and her dainty hand on Conan's cheek became lax. Conan had noticed that she has no pulse, and the heart monitor was beeping loudly and turning flatline. A tear had fallen on her closed eyelids, and she smiled peacefully as if she was just sleeping.

Edogawa Conan, also known to Ran as her childhood friend and her beloved Kudo Shinichi, started to wail loudly as he could, alerting Nozomi, who rushed to Conan's side with a grieving look on her face. The former detective was trying to cling to his beloved's cold hand as he repeatedly uttered the words that he had hoped Ran would hear from him.

"I love you, Ran. I'm sorry!"

Edogawa Sennin was standing in a graveyard, his glazed azure eyes tracing the names etched on two faded gravestones as he was holding a bunch of beautiful white camellias. He placed them tenderly on the grave, as he prayed silently.

Kudo Shinichi

May 4th,19xx - January 8, 20xx

Mouri Ran

October 1, 19xx - October 16, 20xx

"For the girl who patiently waited for him and the boy who defied everything to make her smile. May death never part them apart."

The young man was smiling wistfully as his crystal blue eyes shed tears, which fell to his cheeks and to the ground. He then spoke in a voice full of love and longing, as if to convey his love to the one he had loved and lost hundreds of years ago.

He may forget a bunch of names, he may be starting to forget memories of his past life because even though he had lived and walked the earth for the rest of his eternity, he was still human and can be physically insufficient to contain a couple of hundred years' worth of memory...

...He could never forget the beautiful face and the sweet name of the woman he had truly loved for hundreds of years.

"Someday, Ran. We will be together once again."