DCMK: Heavy Silences (7a/10)

[what_we_dream]

Title: Heavy Silences (7a/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 II, April 24th: Hattori Heiji's Trying Day

Heiji knows it's going to be a bad day from the moment he's woken at 5 in the morning by an ambulance parking in the alley beside his window and leaving its sirens on. It keeps him awake for almost half an hour, and when it finally leaves he falls immediately into a deep sleep and doesn't hear his alarm clock, buried under a shirt he threw off hastily the night before after a late kendo practice followed by a new book on forensics.

The realisation comes back to him as a feeling rather than a thought when his mother wakes him at 7:05, giving him five minutes to get out of the house if he's going to be on time for school. He stubs his toe hurrying to gather his homework, and slams his ankle against the doorframe struggling to pull on his pants. By this time it's 7:09 and he's running down the stairs with no time for breakfast. He only just remembers his lunch, sitting waiting for him on the breakfast table along with his now cold rice and soup. His mother, inclined to be absent-minded at the best of times, is probably already off doing some chore or the other. He hares out the door, hoping she remembered his chopsticks today, and very nearly runs smack into a passing kindergartener.

His bus is late, but miraculously makes up time on the trip, leading him to believe he may have escaped his string of bad luck. Kazuha meets him at the school gates, sharp eyes running over him in critical appraisal.

"You've buttoned your jacket crookedly," she points out, waving a finger at the buttons. He glances down, hair falling in his face. "And you didn't brush your hair," she adds, digging through her bag while he sorts out his jacket. She's handing him a comb by the time he's finished, and he pulls it through his hair a couple of times, aware that protesting will only make things worse. A gaggle of girls passes them, giggling. "Did you oversleep, idiot?"

"Of course not. My alarm didn't go off." It's almost true. In a way. For a given value of true.

Behind them, the chimes start ringing and Heiji curses, Kazuha pushing him around the gate in her own haste to get to the school. "Hey, stop pushing!"

"Start walking faster!"

In retrospect, it's amazing to him that he didn't trip over the steps and plough straight into the doors.

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Homeroom is unexciting as always, the teacher announcing a last-minute substitution of lessons in third period due to the chemistry teacher's unexpected absence. He takes the time to sort out his homework, all crammed together in a frantic mess. His pen, cracked without his noticing it, seizes this opportunity to snap altogether and spill ink all over his math answer book. Cursing again he pulls his handkerchief out of his pocket only to be stopped by Kazuha's smacking him over the head with a workbook.

"You can't mop that up with a handkerchief, the stain'll never come out. Here." She hands him some paper tissues, which he uses promptly. The ink seeps through onto his fingers, giving them a disgusting look of mortification – he's reminded of the book he was reading last night.

He's just finished cleaning up, balling the tissues into a small black lump to toss into the garbage – when the teacher returns and singles him out with a glance.

"Hattori-kun, could you come here?"

Surprised, he does so, throwing away the tissues as he passes the garbage can.

"Your father just called the school, apparently there's been a minor incident. You're to go home, and turn on your phone so you can be contacted."

Heiji's heart constricts immediately, painfully, in his chest, each beat aching. All at once his thoughts are sucked away as if by a vortex, leaving only one burning bright in the darkness: Something's happened to Mom – car accident, fall, heart attack. His next thought, edging its way in, is: There's a case, but while his father might covertly encourage his detective leanings he would never call him out of school to support them, and everything rips back to his mother, to accident, to emergency. He turns and stumbles to his desk, grabbing up his satchel from the hook on the side. Kazuha is watching him with wide eyes.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know. Dad's called me home. I'll see you later." He barely has the presence of mind to keep calm, to try to reassure her, and consequently it's not much of a reassurance. "Take notes for me," he manages to hiss, before rounding again and hurrying out of the classroom, the teacher holding the door open for him.

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He's halfway to the bus stop before he remembers the injunction to turn on his phone, slips it out of his bag and thumbs over the power button. It takes an age to turn on, each ad stretching over a ridiculous length as he watches it, urging it to hurry. He almost walks into a bicycle barrier.

Heiji's forced to look up to cross the road, which is the only reason the incoming call gets through before he can phone out to his dad.

"Hello?" he picks it up halfway across the road, answering without looking, quick and desperate. The voice on the other end is a child's, albeit a deep one.

"It's Kudou."

Heiji doesn't wonder why the boy's not in school, why he's phoning him at this very instant, why he sounds pressed, because he's thinking with his heart not his head. "Kudou, now's not–"

" Listen," cuts in the boy. "I made the call to the staff room."

Heiji stops a step from the kerb as the words slice clean through the fear. It still takes him a couple of replays to make sense of them.

"What?" he growls, stepping onto the sidewalk and then hurrying away from the distracting hum of traffic.

"Well, actually, it wasn't me. It was Kid." He sounds perfectly blasé, which is just icing on the goddamn cake.

"What?" repeats Heiji, snarling this time as fear makes a seamless transition into anger. He's unable to simply back away from the emotional storm the original phone call created, not when it's still running high.

"He's here. With me, in my house," adds Kudou, apparently thinking this will somehow make things better. Bring some sense into the equation. The logic is questionable enough that it distracts Heiji from his anger, allowing it to fade unnoticed while he brings thought back into the stream of the moment.

"Did he grab you? Is he holding you –?" Heiji's perfectly well aware that Kudou manages amazingly well for himself, can look out for himself almost all the time. But he's still a seven year-old, and when taken unawares that's an incredible disadvantage.

"No, of course he's not holding me hostage," says the boy, as if it were a stupid question. Heiji bristles, but calms immediately at the tone Kudou continues in. "But… Listen, Hattori, I need a favour." It's not a simple request. Not an easy one, either. And, judging by the lengths he's gone to to get Heiji out to hear it, it's damn important.

"There's been some kidnappings. Police officers' children. And the ransom is Kid."

Well. Fuck. Just… Fuck.

In the immediate shock of the statement there is no answer to that, and he makes none. Leans back against a wall slightly back from the street and turns his back to further muffle the sound of traffic.

"We might be able to track the kids through their phones – the kidnappers made the ransom call on one of their victims' phones, so there might be others. We have two victims old enough to have phones, but we need to know whether they do for sure, and what company they're with."

That, at least, there is an answer to. It's clear what the boy needs. "You want me to get the information." There's no point in making it a question.

"That's right. Got a pencil? I'll give you their names."

Heiji pulls a pen out of his bag, then the first book that comes to his hand, his English workbook. Flips to the last page and juggles the cell into the crook of his shoulder. "Okay, go ahead."

"Sawara Reina – she's officer Sawara's wife, 34 – that's Sawara like the fish. Reina – Kiritsu, rei's rei, Nara's na. Address is 5-2-8 Nomori, Setagawa-ku, Tokyo. Next is Yamamoto Nozomi – officer Yamamoto's son, 12 – Yamamoto as you'd expect, Nozomi in Hiragana. Address is 9-1-4 Fukaba, Kita-ku, Tokyo."

Heiji jots the information down, handwriting all over the page.

"There's another complication," Kudou adds as Heiji finishes up.

"It could get worse?" says Heiji, ladling on the sarcasm as he closes the book and fumbles with the pen.

"If at all possible, this needs to be done without the Tokyo police finding out about it. There's an investigation in Section Two for misconduct. We don't want anyone to know they went outside for help."

Well, that's understandable. In a horrible way. Kudou's got himself in some damn deep trouble. And that's saying a lot for a seven year-old who dabbles in murder mysteries as a hobby.

"Okay," he says, unsure how exactly he's supposed to manage that. And then, "Do you need help? I can catch a train over as soon as I get the information – or even now, have someone call it in to me." He's already planning times, contacts.

"No," says Kudou, forcefully, breaking Heiji's train of thought. "No, I've got everything covered. Besides, you wouldn't get here long enough before the deadline to be any help. I've got it handled. But I need that information – as soon as possible."

There's unmistakable need there, and Heiji agrees immediately. "You got it." If there's not enough time for him to get there, Kudou must be running on a schedule tight enough to strangle. Heiji hangs up before he hears the answer; Kudou's got his number if he needs it.

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He hurries down the road and steps in to the first park he comes across, crossing to gain himself some amount of quiet. Flips through his contact list, and thinks.

It isn't, after all, as much trouble as it could have been to get the Eastern Detective the information he needs. Ootaki-han is able to suggest a contact – after first quizzing him on his school situation – and the information is duly dug up and sent along. Leaving him to wonder whether he shouldn't go and check on Kudou anyway. Kidnapping isn't by any shot his specialty, but… leaving Kudou alone in a situation so desperate he agreed to the help of an international thief who he'd love to see behind bars rankles. Rankles badly. And it's not as if he has anything else to do, now that he's out of school.

And, he just happens to be in front of Shin-Osaka station.

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Heiji arrives at Tokyo station with his homework for the next couple of days completed, and his satchel well rearranged. Is just considering calling Kudou to arrange to meet him, unsure whether the case is based in Tokyo or Beika, when his phone rings.

"Hello?"

"Hattori? It's Kudou."

"I was just going to call you. I'm at Tokyo station."

A pause, and then, slightly wearily. "I thought you might be. You didn't have to come, you know."

"Hey, you're not the only detective in this country." Interest in the case seems the best way to play it, best way to keep from upsetting Kudou further.

"Yeah, yeah. Since you're already here, there is something you could do."

"Yeah? What?"

"I need someone to pass something to Inspector Nakamori – you remember him, the guy in charge of chasing Kid down."

"Sure." He has a vague memory of a moustache and a temper and a lot of misdirected energy.

"The thing is, Nakamori's expecting the information to come from Kid."

"What?"

"It'll be easy. You're about the same size. He left a spare costume, you can just put it on and hand over the information. Simple."

"Why can't he just go?"

"Who knows. He said he's busy. I'd rather not know more about what he's up to than I have to."

That, at least, makes sense. No point pressing complicity.

"So you want me to dress up like Kaitou Kid and give something to the guy who's job it is to arrest him?" clarifies Heiji.

"Don't worry. They've got a temporary truce – hence the reason they're under investigation by Section Two and all the hush-hush with the phone data. No one's going to arrest you. It might even be fun."

"You're just saying that because you know you're safe."

"Heh. So will you do it?"

Heiji sighs. It is true that there's no way Kudou could do it, and now that he's here he just can't let him down like that. "Alright. Where's the costume?"

"I'll read you the address. Oh, and one other thing. You'll have to call Nakamori to set up the meeting. Don't worry, I've got a place in mind."

"Oh, great," says Heiji, tone dripping in sarcasm. Kudou ignores it, the bastard.

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And so he ends up standing on the roof of Mitsukoshi department store in Ginza, dressed in a white monkey-suit in the middle of the afternoon, pretending to be an internationally wanted thief to meet a police Inspector. He's pretty sure by this point that there's no way his day could get worse.

It's only later he looks back on that thought and rolls his eyes at his own naivety.

The Inspector's brought along a handful of men, presumably the officers with kidnapped children, and Heiji can't help but feel for them. They're watching him with naked fear in their eyes, and he's suddenly horribly aware that he's pulled the same trick on him that Kudou – Kid, whichever – pulled on him this morning. Inspector Nakamori comes over to meet him, looking strained and haggard. So different from the blustering, confident man he remembers from the Memory Egg fiasco. And, although Kudou said nothing about it, he knows immediately that the man's one of the victims. Christ, they kidnapped an Inspector's kid? Who the hell has the balls to do that? And then to force a trade for the man he's supposed to be catching…

He hadn't realised until that very minute just how very bad this is. Just how much of a mess Kudou's landed himself in. He's suddenly very glad he came.

"What is it?" growls Nakamori, after the initial greetings, and Heiji recognizes his own tone of that morning, the latent fear there. Is unsure of how to deal with that, doesn't know what's on the disc he found with the costume addressed to the Inspector. Whether it's good news, or gods forbid, bad. He hesitates, and Nakamori's face hardens.

"You're not," begins the man, and that doesn't sound promising but an instant later he's forgotten. Pain rips through his chest as something hits him hard, as though a ball was kicked into him by Kudou's special shoes, and he falls backwards with the force of it. There's a split-second of panic, of pain and utter confusion, and then nothing.