Work Text:
I
At the age of six, Barnaby spends his Christmas night at the police station.
He gets put into a nice room, its walls painted a warm green, with a table on which the recorder and notebook of the police woman rest. She is small and soft around the edges, with a constant gentle smile on her face, which is probably why she was chosen for interviewing a small, traumatized child.
Even so, most of her efforts are in vain – he doesn’t talk to her besides sometimes nodding or shaking his head. Mostly shaking his head, at questions that start with Do you know.
Do you know what the murderer looked like? Do you know who might have wanted to harm your parents? Do you know if anything seemed out of the ordinary this day?
Mr Maverick is standing in the corner of the room, looking weirdly out of place in his brown suit jacket and with his face set in a tight frown. The police required a legal guardian to be present at the interview and while Mr Maverick had all hands full with trying to help the police and taking care of what other important affairs had to be settled because of his parents death – contacting their next of kin, which consisted only of his mother’s father who is living in a retirement home – he still agreed to accompany Barnaby.
The room has one window, with white curtains. It is dark outside and Barnaby can’t see much against the reflection of the lit room except for the soft falling of the snow.
It is hard for him to imagine that mere hours ago he had been outside, playing in the snow, his whole world safe and sound. Now, whenever he closes his eyes he can still hear the echoing bang of two gunshots, smell the smoke that still clings to his jacket which he hasn’t changed yet as all of his clothes had been burned.
The police woman finally ends the interview and pulls Mr Maverick outside for a moment. The door muffles most of what they are saying, but in the quiet of the night Barnaby can make out words like ‘trauma’ and ‘poor young boy’ and all he wants is to curl in on himself and forget all about the cruel harsh world outside.
Mr Maverick takes him home that night. Barnaby manages it up into his apartment without Mr Maverick having to carry him, but it’s a close thing. The exhaustion of the evening finally comes crashing down on him and he’s out seconds after he hits his pillow, which is quite the blessing as he will get to know during the next nights.
He wakes up in the morning and his first thoughts are to wonder what his parents might have gotten him this year, what his mother made for breakfast, if his father had put the big star on top of the Christmas tree without nearly crashing the ladder. Then the memories come back, his parents unmoving amidst the fire, the blood pooling on the couch and the ground and everything burning burning burning.
He doesn’t go out of the bed the whole day, no matter how much Mr Maverick talks to him.
II
Come next Christmas, he’s living permanently at an orphanage. Everything’s sparkling with holiday decorations – Mr Maverick, who had been very sad that he couldn’t take him in, had made sure that the orphanage would not be feeding him stale bread with various donations. There’s even a Christmas tree in the main room, which the children had decorated with their own self-made paper snowflakes and angels.
Barnaby hasn’t gone into the main room ever since the tree is there. He’s somewhat of a loner amongst the children, but he’s still well-treated and the women and men of the orphanage regularly try to encourage him to form a friendship to at least one of the other kids, to which he always silently nods and then doesn’t do anything.
So no one really misses him when he keeps to his room for the Christmas days as best as he can. He still has to come down for Christmas dinner and eats nothing before slipping the food over to one of the other children when their guardians aren’t looking.
Mr Maverick comes over on Christmas, bearing a little gift he sets on Barnaby’s bed when he refuses to take it. He doesn’t wish him a Merry Christmas, which Barnaby is glad for, and then slinks off, murmuring something about business not stopping for holidays. He buries the present somewhere deep in his closet, unopened, and doesn’t ever look at it again.
III
A few years later he has started to deal better. He stopped refusing to leave his room for Christmas, accepted gifts and didn’t feel the need to smash all the Christmas decorations around the city. He still cannot bring himself to feel cheer on the holiday though. The season of love, screams a big banner from over one of the big city halls, and what is a season of love without those you love? Which is why he is outside here, on Christmas Eve, the by now wrinkled sheet of paper with the Ouroborous symbol in his little hands. The streets are already emptying as the people return home to their families, but he doesn’t want to go back to the orphanage, doesn’t want to be told to smile, to rejoice at the small package of chocolate and toys the orphanage hands out to their children at Christmas.
It’s cold and raining, but he finds a dry spot at a bus stop, huddling in on himself to preserve warmth. The orphanage workers are probably already looking for him, and he will get a stern talking from Mr Maverick about running off, and that he shouldn’t be so ‘obsessed’ about the talking of a mad man. But for now he just wants to stay here, on his own, where no one will bother him and where he doesn’t have to look at all the things that remind him of this holiday where his parents were taken from him and which will always bear the memory of their death.
The orphanage workers find him two hours later, trembling and with his lips starting to turn blue.
IV
Maverick takes him in a few years after that, something about him now being old enough, but Barnaby’s also very sure that it is to keep a bit of an eye on him.
Mr Maverick is away a lot, leaving Barnaby with much free time. He buries himself in school work and higher education, intent on finding out what Ouroborous is, but no matter how much he learns and how much he researches, he doesn’t find anything.
Finally he tells Mr Maverick that he wants to enrol in the Hero Academy and come Christmas his application is through and he got accepted, with Mr Maverick telling him that with powers like his, as well as his good strategical thinking, he should have no problems with becoming a hero if he puts enough effort into it.
Mr Maverick is away on Christmas, a special party organized by Hero TV and Barnaby spends the whole day at the gym.
Normally Mr Maverick hates it when he does that, saying that he shouldn’t push himself too hard, but today he is not here and while Barnaby’s muscles are burning and his throat feels like dried parchment even though he kept an eye on drinking enough, he has no intention of stopping, even though it is already nearing midnight.
The staff of the gym are already eyeing him wearily, only seeing the a bit scrawny teenager who has been running for hours, but having told them that he was a NEXT seemed to have been enough to keep them off his back.
He considers just staying here for the Christmas days – the gym is open 24 hours after all, even on Christmas – but in the end he will have to leave sooner than that. He will have to return to Mr Maverick’s empty department, his own room which is still devoid of any real personal belongings, besides the one thing he has left from his parents.
He steps off the treadmill, panting and leaning heavily on the railing. Looks between the still rolling band and the exit.
Just five more minutes, he tells himself. Just five more minutes.
V
Kotetsu went to visit his family over Christmas and Barnaby tells himself that he is glad to not get bothered by the troublesome man anymore. The disaster at his birthday party had been bad enough and he didn’t think that he would be able to hold his temper in check if it were to be repeated on Christmas, but Kotetsu already left two days ago and resorted to actually just giving him his Christmas gift with the customary Christmas wishes, without making a giant scene.
It sits now unopened on the table and he glances at it warily from time to time.
Most of the other heroes also went to their families for Christmas, or their significant others. Which made Barnaby the first to volunteer for active duty on the Christmas days.
But it seems that there are no evil wrong-doers to distract him this evening, which means that he mostly just spends his time staring out of his window and watching the snow fall. He did spend some time watching TV, but there were just too many shows with Christmas-related themes that he had to switch it off after a while.
No matter how much he tries to banish the thought, Christmas still reminds him of his parents’ murder – and subsequently tells him that he still isn’t any closer to finding the killer than he was four years ago. He tells himself to be patient – after all he just started in the hero business, he could hardly expect for a lead to immediately appear. Sooner or later, he will find something.
+I
Kotetsu is released from the hospital on the morning of Christmas Eve and is promptly whisked away by his family, Kaede clinging to his side and not letting go the whole way from his hospital room into the car. Barnaby sees them off, having to promise Kotetsu again and again that he will come over to visit them the next day.
Sternbild is bustling with life, people on their shopping hunt for the last few presents streaming past him as he walks back towards his apartment. The air is cold and his breath forms tiny clouds in the air, but it feels refreshing.
Christmas will probably always bear the memory of his parents’ murder, even now that he has finally found the one responsible. But he is no longer driven by hatred and revenge. He no longer has to live in the past and only for the dead – that burden has been lifted from his shoulders and its weight that has dragged him down for all this years is finally gone.
It’s still seven more days until the old year ends, but for Barnaby his new life starts now.
…and a happy New Year