[Feb. 23] [Detective Conan] No Honor in Escape

[candy--chan.livejournal.com]

Title: No Honor in Escape
Day/Theme: Feb. 23: ”Honour is purchas'd by the deeds we do.”
Series: Detective Conan
Character/Pairing: Shinichi, Heiji
Rating: R/M



Hattori Heiji really wasn’t that imposing of a figure under normal circumstances, unless one was a criminal trying to escape his detective’s eye or an opponent who had to face his kendo prowess. But to the average person, he was a seventeen-year-old high school student of more or less average height and slender build. There wasn’t too much about him on the initial glance that said he was a threat.

And Kudo Shinichi had never really had reason to fear his rival-turned-friend and occasional partner. Once he’d been found out, the Osakan detective had proved to be far more of an ally than a threat; they had worked countless cases together. They knew how to work with each other, and a strong friendship had grown between them. He had never felt Hattori to be a threat, save for his occasional tendency to blurt out the wrong name at the wrong time.

But right now?

Shinichi had never been more afraid of anyone in his life.

He was paralyzed by it; he simply stood there, immobile, as Hattori walked across the hospital roof towards him with the scalpel in his hand. And for inexplicable reasons, Shinichi found himself wondering if Hattori actually intended to use that on him—but he couldn’t be that angry, could he? A bit of his fear was put to rest, though, when the blade vanished into Hattori’s pocket. It was out of sight, and out of immediate reach.

Still, his mind was busily conjuring up all sorts of images about how that thing could be used…and it was accompanied by immeasurable guilt that he would think something like that about a friend. Hattori was a decent guy—he wouldn’t do such a thing. But he couldn’t help it. He had already been cut, torn, and sliced with blades wielded by others. Those were the physical scars that now criss-crossed his body.

They were deep, though the emotional scars were far, far deeper.

Really, if he’d felt like there was any other way for him to kill himself in this sterile place, he would have taken that route and done so gladly, but this was the first that had come along and seemed plausible; indeed, he had been offered ample opportunity.

There was no honor in suicide—he had never believed in it before. But he had been reduced to nothing. Taken away. Beaten. Tortured. Raped…what honor did he truly have left? There was nothing, and no one could possibly understand how he felt or what he was going through.

He was alone.

There was no honor in suicide. It was merely an escape from things he could no longer cope with. It was the first truly rational decision he felt he had made in a long time. Logic and reason.

But now, trapped in his childish form and deprived of that escape, he could only look up at his furious friend—who was far taller and stronger than he—and wait for the axe to fall. What was Hattori going to do, to say…who was he going to tell about this…

His eyes followed Hattori as he went down on one knee in front of him. But he did not meet Hattori’s gaze directly. He focused on a point just below Heiji’s chin—he could follow him that way, but not have to see his face, his expression, his eyes. He saw Hattori lift a hand, and instinctively winced…

The hand came down, gently, on his shoulder.

Startled, he cracked one eye open and looked up at Hattori again. And he was startled to see that Heiji did not look angry. He seemed more…disappointed; it was perhaps the saddest look Shinichi had ever seen his friend sport. It was strange, and a sudden wave of guilt crashed down on him for it.

“What the hell are you doing, you idiot?” Heiji asked in a voice that was quiet and oddly gentle, but decidedly firm. “Have you completely lost your mind?”

Shinichi found he could not look away, nor could he immediately respond, verbally or otherwise.

“I really want to know, Kudo. What the hell made you think this was a good idea?” he asked. “Tell me. Because I think I’m entitled to an answer, and right now I am seriously fighting down the urge to grab you and shake the living daylights out of you. Or smack you until you see stars. Which would make me feel a lot better, but would not help anything else about this situation. So tell me—what made you think this was an okay thing to do?”

All Shinichi could muster up was a shake of the head.

“You know, there are a lot of people here who are worried about you,” Hattori went on, his fingers squeezing Shinichi’s shoulder slightly. “Everyone’s scared to death for you. But I don’t know…maybe that really doesn’t mean shit to you. Or else we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

No reply.

“So maybe I should go downstairs and tell them what I just saw,” Heiji said, his voice taking on a lighter air. “I mean, I think they have a right to know. I’m sure they can help you. They’ll keep you safe from yourself. Put you under guard twenty-four hours a day and make sure you don’t try to—”

He started to stand upright but stopped when Shinichi frantically shook his head, a look of absolute terror flashing across his face. “Oh? You don’t want everyone to know you tried to kill yourself?” Shinichi again shook his head. “Really. That’s interesting. You certainly didn’t seem bothered by the idea of them finding your dead body when you first came up here. So why does it bother you now?”

Again, Shinichi shook his head, trying to figure out a way to reply.

“And I’m sure Neechan wouldn’t have been bothered by it at all,” Heiji said, and Kudo finally froze. “Seeing you dead, I mean. Especially by your own hand. Why would it affect her, though? It’s not like she’s been here for you every waking moment, worrying about you and watching over you and hoping for any sign that you’re getting better. So of course she would have been perfectly fine with it, right?”

Shinichi opened his mouth, closed it again, and then looked off to the side. For the first time in this conversation, he looked truly ashamed of himself and what he had almost done.

It was fascinating, really. Throughout this entire conversation, Hattori had not so much as raised his voice. He had been kneeling in front of Shinichi to be at the boy’s eye-level, with one deceptively-reassuring hand on Shinichi’s shoulder. Yet he had effectively torn Shinichi to shreds. Everything he had said was perfectly true.

It was one of Hattori’s great talents. For all his clueless behavior regarding women and his occasional idiocy in the area of keeping secrets, the man knew psychology. And right now he was using it like a dagger to make certain that Shinichi realized, at least partially, the extent of what he had nearly done and the ramifications thereof.

“Now I think you need to go back to your room and stay there,” Heiji straightened—again to that imposing height—and glared down at Shinichi. Now a hard edge found a home in his tone and his eyes narrowed, at last betraying his true feelings. “And if I leave you alone in there, can I trust you not to jump out the window?”

Shinichi seemed to withdraw, pulling in on himself. And he didn’t resist when Hattori grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the stairs. Once they were down in the hospital corridors, they walked side by side. Shinichi was silent and hunched over, and Heiji was unusually stoic.

After delivering the shrunken detective back to his room and telling him, in no uncertain terms, to stay there, Heiji returned to the roof. He walked to the edge and linked his fingers into the chain-link fence that ran around the edge. He stood there for several minutes, just looking out over the city and trying to force his temper down.

Ultimately, he withdrew the confiscated scalpel from his pocket. He stared at it for a moment, as though it had wronged him. Kudo had been intending to use this to add one final, fatal scar to a body that had know more pain than any should have had to.

Taken in a fit of rage, he threw the metal blade as hard as he could at the ground. It dashed off the stone blocks, seemingly unharmed. It really didn’t do anything, but it was something he could lash out at without actually causing harm.

He was almost frightened at how badly he wanted to hurt someone—no, not someone.

Kudo.

Heiji wanted to slap some sense into Kudo. But it would only make things worse.

Turning back to the fence, he leaned against it, feeling the cool metal links against a face flushed with fury. He closed his eyes and made a promise to himself. He was going to calm down. He was going to keep an eye on things. And if Kudo so much as thought of doing something like this again…

Well, Heiji couldn’t promise himself that he wouldn’t do anything if it came to that.


PS. Finished the scene. Hope it came out okay… >_>;;