badfic_manor | Conan Edogawa - Case 030

[Once again-fear spreads across his face and he looks around-the area is secure. Calm down Kudo.]

I didn't think you'd be stupid enough to start a conversation like this with him in ear-shot.

Which is a good thing, since you didn't think about it yourself, did you?

[Yeah, you answered his question.]

.....No.

But I'm not exactly used to looking over my shoulder every fucking five seconds.

It shouldn't be a matter of looking over your shoulder "every fucking five seconds". Just a matter of caution, taking reasonable precautions, and thinking rationally.

Do you know what happens when you get afraid enough to stop thinking in front of a predator?

I'm not an amateur-of course I know.

You freeze up you miss your opportunity to escape or catch them.

Even if you don't freeze up, you start missing opportunities, or reacting to things on impulse and emotion without thinking and damaging your own chances - you make yourself easy prey.

I didn't freeze up until he asked me about the black hawk. I do know what I'm doing.

You haven't really frozen up. You have been jumping to conclusions even in just this conversation with me, which is never a good sign for a detective, is it?

[...]

Before him, did anyone ever really push you past the point of desperation?

Truthfully? No.

The black organization is the first case it's taken me over a week on.

I'd suppose they're probably also the first time you've seriously, truly feared for your life, as well?

[Shinichi pauses and thinks about that]

Feared for other people's lives-no. But I guess it was the first time I had to fear for my own.

[He's going to sit down; closer to eye level and easier for a few things he's pondering.]

There's a couple things I could say here. Do you want to know what my impression of Gin was from talking to him, or why I only called him the second most terrifying person I'd ever met, in spite of the threat he poses to myself and the people I care about?

Because you haven't seen some of the things they've done.

How long have you paid attention to noticeable cases outside of Japan?

anytime something comes up in the news-it's much harder now that Occhan won't let me read his paper.

2006, Cardiff. [Here - you can scroll down to where I gave it a heading for now that's bolded, and there's the part at the end of that with the idea of what made it into the news. The killer's name was Kurt Loxby, recently drug out of the muse.]

[He's rolling up his sleeve cuffs, too; there's a couple ragged scars on his wrists/the heels of his hand on both sides, like the flesh on the outer parts of the bones got scraped off pretty good at some point.] Can you figure out how I got these during that case?

Edited 2010-11-24 13:24 (UTC)

Of course I can, but what are you getting at?

I didn't find his lair - I got drug down to it after I'd figured out what area it was in, because he'd noticed me snooping around, and I was there for two days before I had some opening to get away. There's more scars, they're just not so easily visible. It didn't help that the way things were normally, I could be out of communication for a week or two before someone would notice I was missing, so there was no help coming in time. The three other survivors? There'd been four people there when I was hauled down. If the one person with an idea what area I was in hadn't made the connection on the church bells going off at the wrong time, and hadn't managed to get one of the cops there right then - Hell, even another five minutes - I would've been dead, the blood trail I'd left would've been cleaned up, and his list of victims would probably be approaching a hundred or so by now. They found me hiding in the bell-tower scaffolding with him trying to get me down, and I only had a grip to stay there on adrenaline and fear alone.

I only deal in the usual incidental murders - jealous husbands, bitter siblings, work rivals - if they come up when I happen to be hanging around the police station. I'll often not hear from family for weeks at a time, I'm not that close with the cops, I didn't have anything like friends until last year - I never had half the safety net you did, and I dealt with complete predators as a habit. Gin has a special tier of that, I'll admit, but as brilliant, skilled, and connected as he is, he's a human predator.

Gin's the first person to actually push you into a corner, he made you half-helpless in the process, and he's kept you there for what, a year now?

You have no idea what's it like-to have to lay there, unable to move while while your body heats up faster and faster until finally it feels like your insides are on fire and your bones are melting away and before it's over you pass out-and there's no way to know if you'll wake up again.

--And then you do wake up. And for a moment a thought of hope hits 'the poison didn't work?' And then you realize everyone is so much taller then they should be and they can just lift you up without any effort and call you a little boy- you get taken back to the police station and you try to tell them what happened-but they just laugh and then it hits you your clothes are too big-and going over to the mirror you don't see your own reflection-you see this beat up little kid. Then other guys that are normal sized now that you know you're the one that shrunk- are talking about taking you to Creche.

So you run off and try and get back home-only apparently those guys are idiots because they send the dogs after a supposed six year old- dogs that are suddenly bigger then you and could tear you to pieces.

Going home doesn't work either-you can't reach the gate-suddenly you're too short to even get in your own house. You just don't know.

[He gives a minute, and continues on, mostly slowly.] And suddenly you're much smaller, much more fragile, much weaker, and nobody listens to you, or thinks you might have something useful to say unless you jump through hoops to make them listen; and whatever safety net you had, has been abruptly cut out from under you for the most part, and the predator you just narrowly escaped is still out there and still hunting.

[Conan's eyes narrow and he looks away -bingo!]

.....

And since you've never actually been pushed into a corner, and actually had to deal with being desperate, fearing for your life, and not being able to easily make a predator who doesn't work like a normal person go away, being shoved into the deep end of the ocean on it has you trapped in a very small box - they're the first case that took you more than a week, and it's been what, a year? Your first real kick to your confidence was a savage beating more than a kick, and you've had things too easy before to be willing to admit how afraid you are.

...It's been nearly two.

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