DCMK: Heavy Silences (4a/10)

[what_we_dream]

Title: Heavy Silences (4a/10)
Series: Magic Kaitou/Detective Conan
Pairing: None
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Follows Slip and Fall/Pride Goeth Before

Summary: "We would like Kid delivered by the 24th. For every day you're late, one bright face vanishes from the world." Children kidnapped, Nakamori has only one place to turn for help. Kaitou Kid.

 

Interlude I, April 23rd: Family Men

i. 大川 (Oogawa)

Tsubasa is sitting on the couch waiting for him when he finally gets home, a small knitted cushion clutched tight in bloodless hands, a dark bruise spreading down the side of her delicate face. She doesn't stand to greet him, stays crouched where she is, tense as a wire.

It is only later he notices she's stopped all the clocks in the house.

Almost the first thing she says, burning eyes on his worried face – he's never been able to hide anything from her – is, "I'll go to the bank tomorrow. Empty the safe-deposit box. Mortgage the apartment."

"They don't want money," he says thinly, leaning against the wall. As if the distance could protect her – or him – from this. Could soften the blow of what he's brought down on their family.

"Then-?" She has nothing else to suggest; they have nothing else of value. As if lives could be valued in currency.

Oogawa hesitates, duty and loyalty to his job, duty and loyalty to his wife, and simple guilt scrapping out a three-way battle in his gut. But with Tsubasa standing right here, watching him with shaking hands and a bruised temple, there is no contest.

"Kaitou Kid," he says, soft as snowfall.

Tsubasa gives a thin, involuntary whine and sinks back on the couch, eyes falling to stare dully at the wall.

"It's not just Emi," he adds, to fill the silence. "5 other children were taken. Including Aoko-chan. And," he adds after a pause, "Sawara Reina."

It's enough to break the barrier between them, unseen, unfelt, and he crosses to his wife in two swift steps and pulls her close. Gods, he feels for Sawara, all alone on the edge of losing absolutely everything.

"We should invite Sawara-san to stay here," she says, pressed against his shoulder, thoughts running parallel to his. He's never been so grateful for her strength.

"We'll get them back. The Inspector's got a plan."

"Kid's never fallen in with his plans before," she says, his loyalty to an ineffective superior still a sore point after all these years, all these years of following in Nakamori's shadow rather than leaving it to find recognition. He's never regretted it before, but as much as it burns it would be impossible to say he doesn't now.

"He's never let anyone die because of him," replies Oogawa softly, feels his wife shift against him.

"Can you trust Emi's life to a thief?"

He's been on hundreds of chases, has pursued the thief on foot, by car, train, 'copter and boat. He's seen the thief knock out a room with sleeping gas, trip up pursuit, bring down canvasses and debris on chasers. But he's also seen Kid bend over backwards to keep men from falling off roofs, even seen him catch one once.

And he's seen him take a bullet to the chest for a girl he doesn't know.

"I doubt," he says slowly, "I could think of anyone better."

ii. 山本 (Yamamoto)

He's always been good at waiting. Very few men who aren't make it more than a couple of weeks in the Squad.

This isn't waiting. It's agony. The slow, excruciating, drawn-out awareness of every passing hour, minute, second. Like dying of thirst in a desert, aware at every instant exactly what's missing, what's desperately needed. Equally aware of the end ticking closer as the sun crawls by overhead in the blazing sky.

Yamamoto never credited himself with much imagination, until now.

Yuka is in the bathroom, scrubbing the tiles in a desperate attempt to do something, to distract herself, to keep from thinking. She's already washed all the floors and cleared out the kitchen, and it's only 10 a.m. He says nothing. He's no better, kneeling at the table with a notebook fresh from the local convenience store open in front of him – not one of Nozomi's, he couldn't bear that, couldn't keep from flipping back to his son's writing, from losing himself in the childish strokes – painstakingly compiling a list of every police officer he's ever known. He's working his way down by rank and intimacy, starting with those best in a position to be helpful and who know him well enough to be willing. He's held several positions and has plenty of friends. The list is a long one.

He knows it's utterly useless.

Yuka comes back in from the bathroom, hands red and slightly swollen from the hot water.

They're caged like animals in the apartment, caged by their own fear, the fear of missing a call. They've both got cell phones, but outdoors there's a chance they might miss them, might not hear the ring, and they simply cannot take that chance.

"Do you have anything to be ironed?" she asks, twisting her hands, voice pitched so that it very nearly sounds normal.

He looks up from his pages of precise, detailed, worthless information.

"I'm sure I do," he replies, in exactly the same tone.

iii. 宝意 (Takarai)

"Shouldn't you be at the station?"

It's the fifth time this afternoon his mother-in-law has asked. Takako is beyond dealing with her, is sleeping a drugged sleep in the next room.

"I've been stood down, mother. I can't go in." The same words he's used the past 3 times. His reactions to her wore down long ago, frustration and irritation ground down to a flat, blank surface. It's the only way to deal with her, with the senility that began to settle over her mind like a fog not long after Shin was born. But now his reactions are rapidly sharpening to a point, strengthened by desperation and fear, and the fact that her confused mind has latched on with arthritic strength to the kidnappings but not to any of the subsequent events. Why can't she forget? It may be the first time he's wished that.

Tired of sitting, tired of doing nothing – tired of her – he gets up and pads into the kitchen. He's been waiting for the phone, hoping, praying, but there is no call. No escape. He fills the kettle and turns on the range, places the heavy pot over the blue flames.

The kitchen is calm, is as always the one calm place in a too-small, too-cramped, too-busy apartment. Here Takako's timid presence has asserted itself in tiny, cheery watercolours in wooden frames; in blue-and-white checked linen; in carefully ordered bottles and pots decorated with ribbons. He searches through the cupboards for tea and finds everything well-ordered, the only part of the house his mother-in-law doesn't constantly rearrange, the only space the boys don't spill their mess into. The only place, he supposes, he doesn't clutter up with papers and dishes and a thousand small things he's too busy to put away.

It's been a while, he suddenly realises out of nowhere, since he last saw Takako smile.

He spoons the tea leaves out into the tea pot, taking care to seal the tin and replace it where he found it with newly-astute hands, fitting it into the perfect niche left for it in the cupboard.

Too impatient to wait for the water to finish boiling, he pours it into the pot when it's just hot enough to spit as it rushes through the searing metal spout, spilling a small lake's worth on the counter. He mops the water up with one of the many matching tea towels, wincing at the heat of the water against his skin when he waits too long over the puddle.

The tea is too week and despite his reddening fingertips the water is too cool. He's never been much good at cooking, has always left that to Takako. That, and the cleaning, and the boys, and her mother… She's always been so happy to take care of him, to save him trouble.

He never realised just how little he's done to repay it.

Cooling, tasteless tea in hand, he returns to the sitting room. His mother-in-law looks up, face wrinkling in disapproval. "Shouldn't you be at the station?"

Takarai sighs, sits down. "No, mother. I've been stood down. I'll be staying here for a while to look after things." It's the least he can do.

For now.

iv. 鷲尾 (Washio)

He hasn't said anything, but he is furious, and his wife knows it. She's trying not to cry because she knows that upsets him, but she can't stop sniffling and that's not much better.

He's heard from the others; Oogawa's wife was knocked down protecting her child, Takarai's larger family was subdued with knock-out gas, Yamamoto's wife had run out to the store to pick up something for her husband's late dinner.

His wife just didn't wake up.

She didn't notice her own house being broken into, her child being carried off into the night. His daughter was stolen right out from under her without her even rolling over.

She's sitting straight as a board, trembling slightly. The silence is more cutting than anything he could say. Her own guilt and the weight of the blame she imagines is heavier than any he could put on her with words.

"Are you hungry?" she stammers at last, flinching from the biting silence. "I could make you some soup, or onigiri, or heat up yesterday's –"

"I'm fine." Tired of this half-assed confrontation, he stands abruptly, chair clattering on the cheap flooring. Turns and walks over to the balcony window.

Dusk fell a while ago, leeching away the colour from an already bland view of concrete apartment buildings and cheap dirt playgrounds. They've been saving up to move, to get out of this slum and into a better neighbourhood with better schools, better parks and playgrounds. He's lived here all his life, but he's damned if he'll let his daughter grow up here. He's always planned for something better for her. Something better than a bastard of a father and a depressed spend-thrift of a mother. There's a rustling from behind him. Then, sharp as glass:

"It's my fault."

He says nothing.

"I should have woken up. I should have fought for her. That's what you want me to say, isn't it?"

He says nothing.

"And if I had? If I had fought, and they had knocked me down and taken her anyway, just like they did with all the other mens' children, would you be talking to me then?"

He stares out at the falling night, and says nothing.

"When she comes back, I'll apologize to her. Apologize until she's sick of it, until she tells me to stop, because I couldn't be a mother if I didn't. But here and now between us, I have nothing to apologize for. You never wanted that in me."

It's true. He married the woman she was, a proud and haughty almost-idol who led him a damn long chase. But that part of her seems to have wasted away with age or marriage or childbirth, leaving her a dry, shrivelled, whimpering thing trying to appease itself anyway it can, and he has no patience for that.

It's the first time in a long time he's heard strength in her voice and he turns to see her standing at the head of the table, pale and scraggly and bony in over-sized clothes. But there's a fire in her eyes that hasn't been there in years, and for the first time in a long time he gives her his whole attention.

"You'll get her back," she says, crossing her arms, and there is no question there.

"Yes. I will."

v. 鰆 (Sawara)

He sits on their bed all evening, flipping through old photo albums Reina put together, running his thumb over the silly embellishments, all the stamps and paper figures and stickers. All the pictures of the two of them, of her. Reina, laughing at him over crooked reading glasses. Reina, with her hair twisted up out of her face in a messy bird's nest planning the wedding on limited finances. Reina, dressed in white and glowing against his black tuxedo. Reina smiling at him from underneath a sakura tree, soft petals lying like snow in her hair and on her shoulders.

Reina, his wife, with her arms wrapped gently around the curve that will be their child.

He waits for 9 o'clock to strike and then pulls on his coat, wrapping it tight around him, and steps out into the cool spring air with a grim face.