Won't mean a thing if you're not here
Seven weeks.
Seven weeks.
A month and a half. Forty nine days. Seven weeks since the last time Ran had seen either of his best friends in the Mansion, since he'd woken up one morning to find the bed empty of its patient and Sonoko's room completely vacant.
Seven weeks of wondering where they'd gone, whether it was home, and why he hadn't gone with them. Seven weeks of worrying about Shinichi, who'd been drugged up on an overpowered antidote with his arm still far from healed when he'd disappeared. Seven weeks of trying to make some kind of sense of how this was going to affect their time, and utterly failing, and always circling back to why am I here while they're gone?
It had not been a good seven weeks.
Ran had heard about the five stages of grief once from Shinichi, and while he wasn't entirely sure they applied to the crap the Mansion pulled, he still felt like he'd gone through at least half of them since his friends had vanished. At first he thought they'd gotten shifted to another room somewhere. Then that they'd show up in a couple of days, or that he'd disappear as well. When that didn't happen, he'd gotten angry, letting his temper fuel long searches through the Mansion's endless halls and floors in an attempt to find something, anything that would offer some kind of clue as to what was happening.
Finally, exhausted, he'd fallen back on sheer stubbornness.
Ran was determined to believe that things couldn't stay like this forever (that he wouldn't be stuck here forever, in some kind of bizarre limbo). So he'd done his best to put together a routine that would help him power through things until Sonoko and Shinichi came back or he was able to go home. He spent long hours in the gym, much longer than usual, using the excuse that if he went home, he'd need to be ready for the karate tournament he'd been about to enter when he'd first been snatched away. There weren't any other Sonokos in the Mansion, but he sought out the other Shinichis to spend time with; even though it wasn't ever really the same, it helped a little bit. He spent long hours in the library, getting a head start on homework that hadn't been assigned yet, and finally even trying a few Holmes stories on for size while Shinichi wasn't around to tease him for it.
It wasn't enough.
The one consolation was that there hadn't been any news of a murder or a kidnapping in the Mansion. Disturbing as the disappearance was, Ran vastly preferred his friends going home to 1412 or the evil Shinichi having gotten their hands on them.
Still, that didn't stop him from wanting to be home himself. The Mansion was amazing and full of friends and impossible things, but all of the confusion and the chaos wore a person down, and it was far from being a safe haven. Not to mention that Ran hadn't seen Beika for an entire year, and he was even beginning to miss his dad's griping. He wanted his real room back; he wanted the agency, and school, and his family, and progress against the Black Organization so that Shinichi could go back to normal. He wanted to be able to stop lying to Sonoko, and to get Hattori and Shinichi to stop dancing around each other, and to go back to a place where all the faces were different and they had doctors and police and teachers and classmates. He wanted to go outdoors and see more than just trees and fog.
He wanted out.
But the Mansion didn't seem to be in any hurry to give him that. And Ran wasn't a brilliant detective like Shinichi, or Hattori, or even Hakuba, to be able to suss out the Mansion's origins and figure out a way home. He couldn't even offer anything of use to the other Shinichis. So one day after another, he hunkered down and did what he did best:
He played the waiting game.
((Feel free to find Ran-kun in any of the aforementioned locations! Everyone's welcome to comment, but all other threads will be set chronologically before the one with Conan and Sonoko's return.))
Seven weeks.
A month and a half. Forty nine days. Seven weeks since the last time Ran had seen either of his best friends in the Mansion, since he'd woken up one morning to find the bed empty of its patient and Sonoko's room completely vacant.
Seven weeks of wondering where they'd gone, whether it was home, and why he hadn't gone with them. Seven weeks of worrying about Shinichi, who'd been drugged up on an overpowered antidote with his arm still far from healed when he'd disappeared. Seven weeks of trying to make some kind of sense of how this was going to affect their time, and utterly failing, and always circling back to why am I here while they're gone?
It had not been a good seven weeks.
Ran had heard about the five stages of grief once from Shinichi, and while he wasn't entirely sure they applied to the crap the Mansion pulled, he still felt like he'd gone through at least half of them since his friends had vanished. At first he thought they'd gotten shifted to another room somewhere. Then that they'd show up in a couple of days, or that he'd disappear as well. When that didn't happen, he'd gotten angry, letting his temper fuel long searches through the Mansion's endless halls and floors in an attempt to find something, anything that would offer some kind of clue as to what was happening.
Finally, exhausted, he'd fallen back on sheer stubbornness.
Ran was determined to believe that things couldn't stay like this forever (that he wouldn't be stuck here forever, in some kind of bizarre limbo). So he'd done his best to put together a routine that would help him power through things until Sonoko and Shinichi came back or he was able to go home. He spent long hours in the gym, much longer than usual, using the excuse that if he went home, he'd need to be ready for the karate tournament he'd been about to enter when he'd first been snatched away. There weren't any other Sonokos in the Mansion, but he sought out the other Shinichis to spend time with; even though it wasn't ever really the same, it helped a little bit. He spent long hours in the library, getting a head start on homework that hadn't been assigned yet, and finally even trying a few Holmes stories on for size while Shinichi wasn't around to tease him for it.
It wasn't enough.
The one consolation was that there hadn't been any news of a murder or a kidnapping in the Mansion. Disturbing as the disappearance was, Ran vastly preferred his friends going home to 1412 or the evil Shinichi having gotten their hands on them.
Still, that didn't stop him from wanting to be home himself. The Mansion was amazing and full of friends and impossible things, but all of the confusion and the chaos wore a person down, and it was far from being a safe haven. Not to mention that Ran hadn't seen Beika for an entire year, and he was even beginning to miss his dad's griping. He wanted his real room back; he wanted the agency, and school, and his family, and progress against the Black Organization so that Shinichi could go back to normal. He wanted to be able to stop lying to Sonoko, and to get Hattori and Shinichi to stop dancing around each other, and to go back to a place where all the faces were different and they had doctors and police and teachers and classmates. He wanted to go outdoors and see more than just trees and fog.
He wanted out.
But the Mansion didn't seem to be in any hurry to give him that. And Ran wasn't a brilliant detective like Shinichi, or Hattori, or even Hakuba, to be able to suss out the Mansion's origins and figure out a way home. He couldn't even offer anything of use to the other Shinichis. So one day after another, he hunkered down and did what he did best:
He played the waiting game.
((Feel free to find Ran-kun in any of the aforementioned locations! Everyone's welcome to comment, but all other threads will be set chronologically before the one with Conan and Sonoko's return.))