Where the stars are all broken, so are the ties. But the one thing remaining is you.

[foolishwren]

WHO: Heather Mason (Silent Hill) and Kaito Kuroba (Detective Conan/Magic Kaito)
WHERE: A shabbily nondescript apartment building somewhere in Portland, Maine.
WHEN: Six months after Kaito returned home from Johto (route_29)
WHAT: And then Styx and Kit got really sad and needed sappy fluff And then two friends were reunited.
RATING: DIABETES.

After the the warmth and color that bubbled up in every last corner of Johto's world, even in the dead of winter, good old planet Earth could seem like a very gray place.

That pine-covered chunk of land called Maine that sat at the top of New England like a precariously-placed hat seemed even grayer than most.

Or maybe that was just because it was winter here.

... And somewhere in the city, where there were fewer pines than there were telephone poles.

... And the very top floor of an ugly apartment building, a hideous product of some architectural dark age that looked more like what would happen if you filled a waffle-iron with concrete than anywhere that someone would actually want to LIVE in, nestled between a warehouse and a law firm.

It had taken awhile for the search to actually lead to this last destination, which was hours away from the place where it had actually begun.

The town of Silent Hill could be called a city only by the blind and perhaps those who had grown up there and knew nothing bigger. The place was different at first glance, perhaps, to anyone who'd heard of it only by a description from someone who'd seen its true face.

On the surface, the place was downright pleasant. A steadily-declining but still somewhat-known New England tourist trap, the old historical town sat in two halves around a large lake, nestled in by mountains and forests, with patches of farmland dotting its outskirts. It was tiny and remote-- hardly a blip on the radar to anyone who wasn't some newlywed looking for a Honeymoon spot.

Research would show that the place was rich with history, from the pre-European civilizations that once considered the land a sacred place, all the way through colonization, plagues, the industrial revolution, even the Civil War. The promotional material hyped it all up to the max, boasting historical buildings and artifacts-- a nice place to vacation with the whole family.
Needless to say, a look at more recent records told a slightly different story. Mysterious accidents and disappearances throughout the entire 20th century, a strange local religion, rampant drug abuse (the investigation of the supposed drug ring had been left dangling ever since the late eighties, ever since its key investigator had been murdered ...), and strange rumors coated the town's reputation like poison.

A visit would prove pleasant enough, but, well...

Kaito would know better, wouldn't he?

The town, as important as it was, would not yield what he was looking for.

Neither would the first apartment he found in a city rather far from Silent Hill, a shabby and depressing little downtown complex called Daisy Villa. Apart from ugly striped wallpaper, a few scraps of magazine cutouts that may once have been part of a collage, and an old armchair covered in a rust-stained sheet, there was nothing to be found there.

But this.

THIS was the place. Hopefully.

According to the superintendent, who had recognized the name 'Cheryl Mason' (as given, along with the address, by P.I. Douglas Cartland) and directed him to the top floor.

Where there was a door.

Comments

[pandorabox]

[The ease and simplicity of Johto travel had spoiled Kaito completely, no doubt. Finding his way to the foggy, dreary New England region of the United States had taken him much longer and was much more difficult than he had originally anticipated. Life on Earth wasn't filled with hours upon hours of free time, nor were the routes between cities (countries) easy three-day-to-a-week treks through the wilderness. Plane tickets were expensive, almost too expensive for a Japanese teenager living by himself, and he had to scrounge up and save every last yen he could to make sure he could afford this trip.

And all of this hinged on whether he could actually find Heather Mason in the first place. On whether they truly did share a world, or if they were dimensions upon dimensions apart. But after a year and a half of friendship, there was no way he wasn't going to put forth the effort needed to confirm or deny her presence on his Earth.

... locating Heather Mason hadn't been an easy task, not even for one of the world's greatest criminals. But the sleepy tourist attraction of Silent Hill had been rather simple to find, and that have proven to be an incredibly starting place.

That was how Kaito Kuroba, while on his yearly winter break from his school studies, determinedly bought himself a plane ticket and crossed the globe to track down a girl he had met on a world that only existed in most people's imaginations.

Silent Hill had been his first stop, though he had been acutely aware of the low probability of finding her there. This town-- as he remembered-- was a nightmare for one of his closest Johto friends, and he didn't linger long enough to really see the damage beneath the sleepy town's service. His searches from there took him to Heather's old, abandoned apartment (appropriately hours and hours away from the town she called hell), and it was all he could do not to sink into crushing disappointment when that lead turned out to be a dead end. He wasn't about to give up just yet, however... that phrase wasn't in the Kuroba's vocabulary, and in a world where Heather Mason existed, one Douglas Cartland had to exist too, right? Acquiring her new address (and name?) from the friendly detective helped stave off any fears he may have had about her remembering him, and once that information was obtained... well.

Now there was only a door.

A door that Katio was currently staring at, half in disbelief, half in excited anticipation. Sixth months was an incredibly long time (and who knew how much longer she had stayed in Johto than he had)? His travel bag was slung loosely over his shoulder, his shirt wrinkled and untucked in all of his casual-slacker glory. The piece of paper with Heather's new address was clutched loosely in between his fingers, and with a deep breath, he finally allowed a hopeful smile to curl around the corners of his lips.

Sixth months is really too long.

There was no point in putting it off any longer. He had come this far. All that was left to do now was to knock.

He rapped his knuckles sharply against the door of her new home, and waited]