Chapter Text
3:17 AM
The digits glow red and angry in the dark. Shinichi sits up, skin clinging to the bedsheets, chest tight and lungs refusing to catch up with his pulse. It's not the dream that wakes him. It's the cold certainty that it will come back, always hungrier, always more detailed. The clock face blinks, each minute an accusation: Why are you still here?
He slides out of bed, feet hitting the wood with a damp slap. The room is airless, suffocating with the sticky heat of August and the impossible weight of memory. He pads to the sink, running the tap and staring at his reflection until the water overflows the cup and scalds his hand. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters except not thinking about it, which is a hopeless wish—his entire existence is now a monument to that night.
Gin’s smile. The gleam of the barrel. The way her voice didn’t even tremble: "Run, Kudo-kun!"
His hands shake as he pours the coffee, burning his tongue on the first swallow. There is a numb comfort in the ritual, a brief lull in the storm that lets him believe for half a second that he's in control. He hasn't slept through a night in months, but he compensates with caffeine and an arsenal of unfinished crosswords, logic puzzles, and case files that line the apartment like sandbags against a rising tide.
He solves the first puzzle before the sun is up. Two across, "regret." Five down, "absolution." The rest refuse to cooperate, mocking his old confidence. There is a time, not so long ago, when he would have blitzed through the entire page before breakfast. Now, each clue is a small minefield. He keeps seeing her name in the empty boxes.
H A I B A R A.
He rips the puzzle out, crumples it, and throws it at the trash can. Misses by half a meter. Typical.
At 5:40 AM he hears Ran stirring in the next room. There’s a brief shuffle, the muffled snap of her hair tie, and then the soft click of the kettle. Shinichi braces, knowing the conversation that will come.
She enters quietly, not bothering to turn on the light. "You didn't sleep," she says. Not a question.
He shrugs, tries for a smile. "Case backlog. The station keeps tripping over itself without me."
She sits across from him, mug cupped in both hands. She watches him. Not his face, but his hands—fingers twitching over the mug, unable to stay still.
"Did you dream about her?" she asks, even softer.
He laughs, a sharp bark. "Who else?"
There's a pause, long enough that he looks up. She isn't angry, just tired in a way he recognizes. She wants to help but knows she can't. He almost tells her that it's fine, that he's got it under control, but he can’t. So he says nothing, and neither does she.
She leaves for work at seven. Shinichi sits at the table for another hour, trying to make the pieces of the world fit back together. When he finally moves, it's only because he can’t stand the silence.
The walk to the precinct passes by in a blur. He threads through the morning crowd, head low, avoiding every flash of light hair in the sea of black. The detective in him tallies every detail, every threat. The man in him just wants to vanish.
The case is routine: home invasion, minor injuries, nothing anyone will remember in a week. Shinichi breezes through the crime scene, notes the fingerprints on the window, the scuff marks by the safe, the odd angle of the family photo. He should be in his element, but the evidence refuses to align, everything sliding just out of reach.
Then he finds a hair on the floor, almost invisible in the gray carpet. Blonde.
His vision tunnels. The room tilts. He is back in the alley, gunmetal and blood and her eyes on his, willing him to move. To run. The world goes white around the edges, a roaring static.
He doesn’t remember leaving the room. Only that he is outside, palms pressed to the cool brick, gasping in air like he’s never tasted it before. He fumbles for his phone, finds Ran’s number, but doesn’t call. What would he say? "Help, I’m defective. I can’t even look at a crime scene without falling apart."
Instead, he stands in the alley, shaking and small, while the city wakes around him. He is not the legendary Detective Kudo anymore. Just a boy, haunted by a single command: Run.
He never did.
A bookshelf lay on its side like a roadkill animal, paperbacks spilled from its guts. Three mugs dead on the floor, one in the remains of a manila folder. Thumbtacks embedded in the plaster from where a corkboard used to hang. The only unbroken thing was the black-and-white photograph of a grinning lab-coated girl, tacked at eye level next to the light switch.
Shinichi sat on the carpet, knees up, arms crossed tight enough to cramp circulation. There were scrapes on his knuckles and a wet spot on his shirt from coffee he’d thrown at the wall. The air reeked of burnt caffeine and adrenaline. His mind skidded, stuck in the aftermath of a panic so violent he’d half expected the cops to show.
Instead: Ran. Ran, standing in the doorway in her trainers and scrubs, taking in the disaster with a measured sweep. Her face didn’t change. Not even a flicker. She stepped over the edge of the bookshelf, the toe of her shoe nudging a paperback out of the way, and knelt to his level.
She said, “How many fingers am I holding up?”
He looked at her hand—three fingers, clean, precise. The silence lasted three full breaths. Shinichi tried to find something to say, but his mouth tasted like ash.
Ran let her hand drop. “This is it, Shinichi. No more ‘it’s just work.’ No more ‘I’m fine, really.’ We’re done pretending you’re okay.”
He picked at a loose thread on his jeans whispering weakly. “It was a hard week.”
She looked at the mug shards, the gouges in the drywall, the chaos mapped out in concentric circles around him. “Hard week, or hard every week?”
He refused to answer.
She exhaled—controlled, deliberate. “I’m making an appointment for you. Therapist. Trauma specialist.”
“No.” He winced at the petulance in his own voice. “No shrinks.”
She leaned back, crossing her arms in a mirror of his own defensive posture. “You trashed your own office.”
He shrugged. “It’s rented.”
“Ha-ha. You want to do this, fine.” Ran swept her hand around the room. “Is this what Ai-chan would want for you?”
Shiho's alias slipping Ran's mouth was the last blow he anticipated for. He stared at the ceiling, let his jaw go slack so his voice wouldn’t shake. “She’d want me to get back to work.”
“She’d want you alive,” Ran said, soft but not gentle. “She’d want you to sleep more than two hours at a time. Eat food that isn’t takeout. Maybe not scare your friends away when they try to help.”
“I didn’t ask for help.”
“You did, just not with words.”
He bit his cheek, hard, until the copper taste cut through the coffee residue. “I don’t have time for this, Ran. I’m behind on two cases. Maybe three.”
She shook her head. “You can’t save everyone, Shinichi.”
He wanted to punch the floor, but the urge fizzled before it could reach his muscles.
Ran’s voice dropped, low and certain. “You can’t carry this by yourself. No one can. That’s why you’re drowning.”
He rolled his eyes, fighting for a foothold of control. “I’m not—”
“Drowning. Yes, you are.” She grabbed his shoulder, not hard, but enough to pin him in the present. “Listen to me. I love you. But I won’t watch you set yourself on fire to keep up this act.”
She let that hang. Not a threat, not a plea, just a fact.
He blinked. “You’re serious.”
She didn’t blink. “I can love you and still leave if you don’t get help.”
The sentence made his chest hollow out.
They sat in silence. Shinichi felt like the room was tilting, slow and inexorable, and all the debris was about to slide and bury him. He tried to remember how to breathe without shaking.
He tried to say, “I’m sorry,” but the words clotted in his throat.
Ran’s hand was still on his shoulder, warm, steady. She said, “It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be sad. But it’s not okay to destroy yourself just because you feel like you deserve it.”
He coughed out a half-laugh. “You went to the library for that line?”
She smiled, barely. “I wrote it myself.”
“Could use some editing.”
“Could use some cooperation.”
He slumped back, spent. “What if I don’t want to talk about it?”
“Then don’t talk. Just listen, at first. Or talk about something else. Or do the thing where you pace and mutter until you figure out why you’re upset.”
She paused, then softer, “You don’t have to perform, Shinichi. Not for me. Not for anyone.”
A memory rose, involuntary: Ai Haibara at her desk, feet propped on the radiator, calling him an idiot for not knowing when to ask for backup. The echo stung.
He closed his eyes, pressed thumb and forefinger to his eyelids until he saw stars.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he whispered.
She squeezed his shoulder. “Then let me help.”