Archive of Our Own

When the white light faded, everyone was in motion. Hands to their heads, murmuring to themselves, or trying to talk to him. What had happened? What was going on? How could they have just forgotten him like that? Who was the little girl? They were all talking at once, trying to sort out the mess...

Except for Barnaby.

Barnaby hadn't so much as twitched.

To everyone else, it was merely another confusing piece to the already scattered puzzle.  But after a few seconds, it became clear to Kotetsu that the lack of movement was a glaring sign that something might have gone terribly wrong. He quickly edged past Bison and moved between Barnaby and his daughter in case the non-reaction turned into a violent one. "Bunny?"

Nothing. Barnaby continued to stare right through him, eyes glassed over like a doll and expression strangely blank. Slowly, so as not to accidentally spook his partner, Kotetsu raised a hand a put it on the younger man's shoulder.

Barnaby finally blinked, first tilting his head to look at the hand touching him, then at his own, sheathed in the gauntlets of the black armor. A look of almost puppy-like confusion crossed his face, slowly evolving into nervous apprehension as he glanced from hero to hero.

But it wasn't until Barnaby finally looked him in the eye that Kotetsu's heart sank a little.

That fear, that confusion...

They were all that showed behind the sheen in those green eyes.

Barnaby still didn't know him. But now-

Barnaby tried to pull away, but Kotetsu caught him by the arm, holding on tighter. In this state, there was no telling how the kid might accidentally hurt himself, and he wasn't about to let him get out of reach. Barnaby struggled for a moment, then went still, and even through the armor, Kotetsu could feel the body in his arms shaking.

"Dad... what's going on?" Kaede asked, beginning to grow a little bit agitated herself as she realized that her rescue may have just had a huge unfortunate side effect. Emblem was whispering something to Rose, but Kotetsu didn't try very hard to hear.

"He's-" Kotetsu cut himself off before he could voice his fear, and swallowed thickly. "We just need to get him to a hospital, okay, sweetie? They'll figure this out."

"We'll cover you," Dragon Kid said quietly.

"Agreed," Emblem said. "There's no telling what might be coming if Maverick knows what just happened up here."

Kotetsu nodded. "Barnaby..." he said hesitantly, using his partner's name to keep from confusing him further. "I need you to hold on to me, okay? Please?" The expression that got him did absolutely nothing to ease his worries, but at least the kid complied, slowly wrapping arms around his neck. "Kaede, you too."

Once she'd climbed onto his back, he didn't hesitate to activate his Hundred Power, streaking off across building rooftops towards the nearest hospital.

And silently praying he was wrong the entire way.

The doctors wouldn't let him go with Barnaby. Kotetsu understood the whys -he wasn't family, whether or not he was a murderer was still being sorted out, a thousand other reasons- but knowing didn't make him feel any better about having to wait in this cramped little room. He'd managed to force himself to stop pacing for Kaede's sake an hour ago, but, truth be told, neither of them was managing to hide their fear very well.

The door cracked open and both looked up, Kotetsu making a noise of surprise when a laboratory tech in scrubs slipped into the room before changing into Ivan. "Any news?" the blond asked quietly.

"Nothing concrete. Just that it's not looking good. What about your end?"

"Maverick hasn't made any moves yet, but we don't know if that's because he's not aware of what happened, or he is and is waiting to see how he can work it."

Kotetsu's hands clenched on the armrests of the chair. "That lowlife's not getting anywhere near Bunny. I don't care what his clearance is or how much trouble we get in for blocking him."

"Agreed. Nathan's on his way. I'll let him know at the door what's going on; maybe he can find out what they're not telling you yet."

Once Ivan had taken the form of a security guard and snuck out again, Kotetsu sank back into his chair. Then he noticed that Kaede had been awfully quiet the last few minutes. "Kiddo?"

She shook her head, and the expression on her face was pained and a little brittle, like her mother had always been whenever she was trying her damnedest not to cry and doing really badly at hiding it. He gently nudged her hand with his own, and didn't even mind the creak in his bones when she latched on and started to glow blue from his powers.

It had gotten dark outside by the time a nurse came to collect them. He was at first relieved to see Nathan waiting for them in civilian garb by the observation window-

-until he saw the solemn look on the other man's face. "How bad is it?" he asked, not entirely sure he wanted to know the answer now that it was looking more like his fears had weight. Nathan hesitated, glancing at Kaede, and that didn't help at all either. She glared up at them both and tightened her hold on his hand stubbornly -'You've left me out too long; don't even think about it,' he could read in her expression- and finally, Nathan sighed.

"They don't know if it's some kind of shock, or something else, but he's not responding to anything verbally right now. Going off our explanations of what happened, they resorted to running neuroimage scans to test him."

"Neuroimage... like... how the brain responds to stuff?"

"Exactly. Basically, they took what information about his life they could get public access to and exposed him to it to see what his brain would respond to in ways they read as recognition. It's... not exactly an encouraging list." He took a small pad out of his coat pocket, and Kotetsu caught a glimpse of a long series of notes in the man's usual flowing hand.

"He responded to his own name, and the hero names of the rest of us, but didn't recognize any of our civilian names. Including yours." Kotetsu winced, but he'd been expecting that. "He doesn't appear to remember any major events of his career, like making King of Heroes or his fight with Martinez, but he does remember having been a hero at some point. Sort of. That was rather hard to gauge."

That... wasn't entirely a surprise. "Just before all this went down, the two of us found out Jake had an air tight alibi on the day his parents were murdered. And I interfered with that fight, remember? If he doesn't remember me as a person, makes sense those are gone too."

Nathan raised an eyebrow at his admission, before his expression went dark. "About that... he doesn't seem to remember the murder at all now either."

Kotetsu bit his lip, feeling sick. "What else?"

"He had no reaction to Maverick in any of the tests, which was a surprise. And..."

"And?"

"They tried with his parents. He responded to their names, and their voices from some old scientific reels, but when they tried showing him photos... Nothing."

Kotetsu turned his head to stare at the other man. "Nothing?" he repeated weakly, that sick feeling getting worse as it seemed like his stomach had dropped into his toes.

"Even a couple of the ones with him in them. He didn't cue on his parents' faces even once," Nathan said, a faint trace of banked anger in his voice.

He didn't have it in him to be angry just yet. Right now, he just wanted to be ill. His parents... the murder... Barnaby's very reason for living... all of it had been doctored enough that Kaede had accidentally stripped it away?

A choked little hiccup jolted him out of his shock, and he crouched down to let his daughter cling to his neck.

"I didn't mean to hurt him," she sobbed miserably against his shoulder, and Nathan bent to rub her back.

"Honey, it's not your fault at all."

"Nathan's right. You couldn't have known that Maverick did a whole lot more to him than he'd done to everybody else. Nobody knew."

She nodded, but the tears kept coming, and he was suddenly finding it very hard not to join her. Giving her a tight squeeze, he looked up at Nathan.

"I'll keep watch and try and give the others an alert to what we're dealing with. Go calm down, get something to eat, and get out of that costume, then we'll regroup."

He didn't want to leave, and he doubted either he or Kaede would be eating, but he couldn't deny that continuing to run around the hospital in this suit was going to be a problem. "Right," he murmured, straightening with her in his arms, and for once, she didn't even protest being carried as they left.

"Years of memory editing? On the kid you adopted? What the hell kind of bastard does that?" Kotetsu heard Antonio saying as he approached the 'conference' room near the stations where Barnaby was still being tested, and knew Nathan must have finished filling in the others.

"I'm not sure there's even a word for it," Nathan replied. "It seems he left nothing completely untouched in Handsome's head, even from before the murder."

The grip on Kotetsu's hand tightened, and he looked down to see Kaede still looking a bit white, a troubled expression on her face. She'd threatened to break something irreplaceable if he'd tried to leave her home, but this was still a lot -too much- for a ten-year-old to handle. But when she caught him looking, she gave him a repeat of her 'don't you dare' scowl, and he sighed and ruffled her hair with his free hand before reaching out to open the door.

The others all looked up when they came in, and the tension in the room was palpable. He swallowed. "What's the news?"

Nathan fastidiously examined his nails, a nervous habit Kotetsu was well acquainted with. "No movement from Apollon still, and the tests have determined that Handsome has no physical head trauma, recent or past, that could possibly explain this."

"So now we're sure all of it's definitely from a NEXT power."

"Mmhmm. He's still not talking either. Can't really blame him. Even if he wasn't suffering a complete crisis of memory, the psychological shock of being pushed around like a lab rat isn't doing him any favors."

Kotetsu gently nudged Kaede to a soft chair and looked around the room. No one was looking at each other now, expressions distant and uncomfortable, and he could guess why. He'd been doing it himself as he took a shower and changed clothes; going over every memory he had of Barnaby to try and find some kind of clue he'd missed. Something, anything that should have been a tip-off that something was very, very wrong. Trying to catalogue his own behavior, to see if there were any other points his memories could have been changed.

Aside from what had happened with Kriem, he couldn't think of anything specific. And his fruitless efforts to try had only left him with the feeling that he'd catastrophically failed his partner. His friend. All this had been going on under his nose since before they'd ever even met, and he'd never noticed.

But that was the fucked up brilliance of Maverick's power, wasn't it? Whether it had been intentional grooming or a side-effect of being altered so many times, Barnaby had ended up exactly the kind of social odd duck that no one really pried too much into. The kind it was more fun to make up shit about than find out the real story. He was a pretty face and a bright hero and some well-rehearsed cues, and kind of a jerk when he wanted to be, and that was it. Even if someone, like him, did press the issue, everything was all neatly set up that it could be brushed aside with minimal effort. Barnaby was a scripted character and nothing more.

Only now it seemed that he didn't even have that anymore.

"Are they letting in visitors yet?"

"He was put in a room about twenty minutes ago. No one's really said anything... but we didn't really ask," Karina admitted. "It felt wrong for any of us to go first."

Kotetsu swallowed again, the knot in his throat much thicker this time, then nodded. Kaede's hold on his hand tightened for a second, then she let go and he kissed her on the forehead before going to look for the nurse's station. The woman behind the counter had given him explicit orders not to upset the patient with too many questions and to limit physical contact, but had buzzed him into the ward.

When he reached the room, for a minute, he could only stand in the doorway and stare. Barnaby sat quietly in bed, looking out the window with an empty, tired expression. He was ruffled from all the examinations, and his armor undersuit had been changed out for the pajama-style garments of a long-term patient. Some well-meaning nurse had wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. He looked so small under it. Almost fragile. He looked helpless.

Even when Barnaby had been freaking out over the results of their visit to Kriem, at least there'd been some kind of fight to him.

Kotetsu had to take another minute to screw up his courage, then knocked gently on the door frame, not wanting to scare his partner by appearing out of nowhere. Barnaby looked over in his direction.

Still no recognition.

Kotetsu forced a smile onto his face. "Hi, there. Mind if I come in?" The question got a slight tilt of the head in response, which he took as permission. He dragged a chair over by the bed and sat down, noticing Barnaby's hand poking out from under the blanket wrapped around him. His ring was gone, probably taken along with the undersuit. Kotetsu resisted the urge to touch, remembering the nurse's warning.

For a few minutes, they just sat in awkward silence, then he took a deep breath. "Listen, Bu- Barnaby," he said softly, and green eyes flicked up from staring at the bed to look at him. "I can't- I can't say that everything's going to be okay... But I'll be here if you need me." This time, he did take hold of that pale hand. "I'm going to take care of you, okay? Because this... this isn't fair."

He was probably just imagining it, but he was sure that Barnaby's expression softened just a tiny bit, but the blond otherwise didn't move at all or give any inclination that he understood the weight of what was going on, and dammit, that knot was coming back.

He wasn't going to cry.

He wasn't.

Finally managing to successfully fight back tears, he just sat quietly and held on, gently brushing his thumb over the back of Barnaby's hand in a comforting gesture. After a few minutes more, long fingers gave the tiniest squeeze back.

It wasn't much, but he'd take what he could get right now.

Kotetsu ended up staying until the nurse came to administer another sedative and shoo him out. He'd managed to keep himself from violating the 'no upsetting questions' rule, and had even gotten a few more tiny responses out of Barnaby, but nothing more encouraging than that. When he went back to their mission control of sorts, Pao-lin and Karina had both gone home for curfew, and Kaede was sleeping in her chair, the other guys' coats draped over her. "Anything?" Keith asked hopefully.

Kotetsu shook his head. "The hospital staff is trying to keep him calm for now, which limits a lot of conversation topics. He didn't pick up on anything about me either, or at least it didn't look like it. He only reacted when I touched him, and even then, it was just barely."

"Hm... Maybe we're going about this wrong," Nathan said.

"How do you mean?" Antonio asked.

"From what I can tell, it seems Handsome has the most trouble with visual cues, like faces and such. Auditory is a little better since he at least recognized his parents' voices, but not by much. But we might have better luck with something Handsome can actually hold himself. Does he have anything particularly valuable? Something that might be tied to a strong memory?"

He scratched the back of his neck in thought. "Not really... his apartment's as bare as a realty advertisement. Oh!" He snapped his fingers. "There's one little toy robot he's really protective of. He told me once he'd accidentally forgotten it in Samantha Taylor's car a few days before the murder. It was the only one that survived the fire."

"That's a good start. Anything else?"

"Um... Just that necklace he wears all the time. But it's probably in his locker at Apollon."

"Maverick might be having his apartment watched now, too," Ivan pointed out quietly. "I could probably still get into one, though."

"I could get into the other."

They all jumped in surprise at the small voice. "Kaede, you're supposed to be asleep."

"I was until you got back."

"Oh. Well... it's really nice of you to offer, but-"

"Don't." She reached up and grabbed his sleeve, pulling him down to her level. "You've been trying to push me out of this since I got here, and I'm not going."

"Honey, it's not that I don't think you're capable, it's just that this is all-"

"My fault. Everyone keeps saying it's not, and I know we wouldn't be here if Maverick hadn't been such a big jerk all those years, but I was the one who set off whatever bomb he put in Barnaby's head. I can't-" The hand on his sleeve trembled as she visibly struggled not to start crying in front of his coworkers. "I can't just not-"

He bit his lip, then folded her into a hug, knowing the guilt she was feeling all too well. "Okay. We'll figure something out."

"Since you and Pao-lin are the only ones who know where Handsome actually lives, the apartment team could be you three with Antonio as lookout," Nathan pointed out. "Meanwhile, Ivan, Karina, and I can take on getting into Apollon with Keith as ours."

"We'll have to watch our backs, though. For all we know, they might be selling us as kidnappers next or something," Antonio muttered. He didn't even look relieved to not be on the same team as Nathan, just still angry about the whole situation in general. And Keith nodded solemnly, all traces of his usual humor gone in favor of the Mission.

"Right, then," Kotetsu said, trying to clamp down on the constant feelings of worry and dread he'd been carrying since Barnaby had reacted so strangely to Kaede in favor of getting into Hero Mode. "We can work out some more of the kinks tonight, then when morning comes, we get moving."

Ivan's hunch had been right. There were men in black suits scattered around Barnaby's building, just few enough that the untrained eye wouldn't notice them, or just guess they were bodyguards for some important guest. But Kotetsu knew better. The gun he'd spotted on one's hip was sure as hell not service issue. It made him even less happy about sending Kaede into Barnaby's apartment, but at this point, he had to admit he didn't have any better ideas.

Antonio stayed on the ground level to keep an eye out if anyone suspicious came to the building. Luckily, there were no men or cameras in the stairwells, so Pao-lin headed up one and Kotetsu and Kaede went up the other. When they reached the right floor, he carefully cracked the stairwell door open just a tiny bit. Seeing Pao-lin doing the same from the other end of the hall, he turned his attention instead to their obstacles. One by the elevators, two near Barnaby's door, which had been kept open, possibly so no bright sparks could climb up via window or something. Not impossible, but not good odds either. "You still sure you want to do this?"

Kaede nervously chewed her lip, then tugged at the opera gloves Nathan had given her as soon as she'd touched Ivan to get his power and squared her shoulders. "Yes."

He stepped back to give her some space, and she took a deep breath before rearranging herself into a fluffy Snowshoe cat they'd seen sunning itself in a window on the way up. He nudged the door open again to let her out, then held his own breath.

For once, luck seemed to be on their side. None of the three noticed as Kaede crept into the apartment, belly to the floor to make herself as small as possible. Even so, he didn't relax his guard or breathe again until she snuck back out several minutes later, the prized toy in her teeth. Once she'd made it back into the stairwell without getting caught, he quickly signaled Pao-lin that they had to get out.

Kaede was shaking a little when she changed back into herself, but there was a huge grin on her face as she presented him with the toy, and he had one to match, scooping her into a tight hug. "You did great."

"I just hope it helps," she said with a weak, adrenaline-and-nerves giggle, and he set her on her feet again, ruffling her hair.

"Me, too. Come on, let's catch up with the others."

They were halfway back to the hospital when Antonio suddenly skidded to a halt, causing Kotetsu to nearly crash into him. "Hey, what's the hold u-"

He got his answer when he peered around the man to see one of the news screens through the window of a restaurant. They couldn't hear anything through the glass, but Maverick was on camera, and the words "BARNABY BROOKS JR. HOSPITALIZED AFTER ATTACK BY UNKNOWN NEXT." scrolled continuously across the bottom of the screen. He had to bite his tongue to keep from swearing vividly in front of the girls.

"Kotetsu." He looked up to see Antonio standing rigidly, jaw tight. "Activate."

"Wha-"

"Something's off about this. He had people watching the apartment and Apollon when he already knew Barnaby was in the hospital."

A cold spike of fear went through his stomach when he realized what Antonio was saying. Why it had been so easy to get in. Why the guards had seemingly not even noticed Kaede. They hadn't been there to stop them, just... "He was waiting for us to do something. To leave. Then no one would be around to guard Bunny."

He didn't have to be told again after that to power up, the blue glow racing over his skin as he kicked his NEXT into gear. He didn't even stop to argue when he felt the tiny shockwave of another Hundred Power activation and suddenly Kaede was keeping pace with him. All that mattered was getting to the hospital as quickly as possible and hoping to God they got there before Barnaby went 'missing' again.

They'd managed not to cause any crashes in the hallways of the hospital, but he knew they'd made it with only seconds to spare when he saw a nurse and an orderly struggling with unlocking the door to Barnaby's room and yelling at whoever was inside. 'God, please don't be Maverick,' he willed. "Move!" he yelled at the pair, and they barely managed to scoot aside fast enough before he ripped the door off its hinges.

Everything always seemed to move slightly off when he was in Hundred Power mode. Like being underwater, almost. In slow motion, he saw a man in a black suit grab Barnaby by the arm and rip out the IVs before producing a needle, Barnaby go wide-eyed and panicked with a cry of pain, and that panic grow even stronger as his own body went blue before the blond even saw him enter the room.

He clocked the intruder across the face, for once not caring if he broke bone, and Kaede hit the man low with a solid tackle to knock him flat.

If there weren't already more shadowy types lurking about, their entrance certainly would have brought them running, which meant they were going to have to take the quickest, messiest way out. He gently scooped Barnaby up into his arms -a tiny part of his brain found it hilarious that he was the one getting to do a princess rescue this time, but he quickly stomped on that thought. "Hold on to me tight, just like before, okay?" he said gently, and was glad when the blond obligingly clung to him. "Kaede, jump!"

They crashed through the window of the room, and even though Barnaby was active as well, Kotetsu curled around him and Kaede both to take the brunt of the impact. Dropping three stories to the roof of the hospital's parking garage, they landed in a deep crater -shit, one more story and they probably would have gone through the roof- before trying to find a place in the garage where their blue glow wouldn't be so noticeable. It was only when they'd stopped to catch their breath that he felt Barnaby shaking. "H-hey, what's-"

Though it didn't especially hurt with both of them active, the sudden blind punch caught him off guard, forcing him to drop the blond as he recoiled back a few steps. Shaking his head to clear it, he went to grab Barnaby again, and when they looked each other in the eye for the briefest second during the struggle, that was when he figured out the problem.

Barnaby wasn't trying to get away from him.

'He doesn't remember how to handle being a NEXT. Oh, God, he doesn't-'

Kaede had to intervene at that moment to save him from getting his head taken off when his own powers deactivated. "I'm sorry!" she squeaked, putting all her weight down on Barnaby's chest to try and keep him from struggling so much.

Ignoring his own risk, Kotetsu crouched down beside the pair, catching Barnaby by the shoulders. "Hey. Hey. I know this is really scary and you don't know what's going on right now, but I promise it'll be all right. Just lie still and breathe deep, okay? Just a few minutes longer, and this will wear off. I promise." Surprisingly, despite looking like he was still on the verge of a panic attack, Barnaby obediently stilled, just like he'd listened to Kotetsu's commands earlier.

Good enough for now.

"Kaede, stay with him. I need to call the others and see if we can regroup."

She nodded and shifted to sit beside Barnaby instead of on top of him, and Kotetsu moved away to pull out his cell phone.

Only to nearly drop it when it suddenly rang before he'd even pressed anything. "Hello?" he asked after fumbling a second.

"You don't do things by halves, do you, honey?" Nathan's voice asked, and Kotetsu let out a relieved sigh.

"I know what it's going to look like on the news," he said, rubbing his head. "But we didn't have any time. They already had someone there to either kill him or drug him for transport. He's not safe there anymore."

"Where are you now?"

"Hiding in the parking garage. He activated on reflex when the guy tore his IVs out, and he's really tweaked about it right now."

"Hm. Well, that answers the question of how much of his training he remembers. I was wondering about that when they said he both did and didn't remember being a Hero." There was a brief shuffling noise over the line. "I have a few small holes in the wall that might suffice. Stay put as long as you can, or call me if you have to move."

"Sure thi-" He cut off at a pull on his vest and a rather urgent hiss of "Dad!" "What is it?" he asked Kaede.

"You better come look."

He bit his lip, then told Nathan to hold on a second and followed her back to where Barnaby was now lying curled up on his side. His power was flickering like it was about to shut off, but what concerned him was how pale and clammy the blond looked. Crouching down, he put a hand on Barnaby's face and found him weirdly cold. After a second, it hit him.

The IVs.

"Hey, Nathan?"

"Hm?"

"See if you can find out what the hospital had him on, too. It looks like we're going to need it as soon as possible."

The man made a soft sound of concern. "Will do."

Closing his phone, he went to sit with the pair, tugging Barnaby so the blond's head rested in his lap and letting Kaede huddle against his side. They were still going to have to come up with a way to throw Maverick and his associates off the track, or hiding Barnaby would be impossible.

'Okay, think,' he told himself. There had to be some way to make this work.

Barnaby still wasn't looking so good. He was still shivering a little, still felt cold and looked even more pale than he usually did. Even as they had to duck every time an unfamiliar car passed, Kotetsu kept shaking him occasionally to keep him awake, afraid that if he went to sleep, he'd lose consciousness. The blond had graduated to making wordless protests at the action, which was better than silence, at least.

"I know you don't like it," he said apologetically when the sixth time finally earned him a barely-there scowl of annoyed discomfort. "As soon as we get you somewhere safe and find your medications, you can sleep all you want."

At that moment, his phone beeped. 'Fourth floor, south side,' the text read when he brought it up on screen. "Okay, good."

"We're moving?" Kaede asked from where she was keeping an eye out for more black suits.

"We're moving. Help me get him up, would you?"

Nathan's car was easy enough to find, but he was mildly surprised to see a familiar little yellow taxi sitting next to it. "Ben!"

"What's with that shocked face? You think I'm gonna back out now?" the older man asked with a wry grin. "May not be much, but my cab's at your service."

"We ran across him in the park and he insisted on coming," Pao-lin explained. "Antonio vouched for him."

"Great! Actually... better than great. This is perfect."

"What do you mean?" Karina asked.

"We've all seen how Maverick rolls by now. It's probably all over the news networks already that I've kidnapped the kid after killing the last of his family-"

"They're calling you a crazed stalker, too," Nathan cut in, looking at his phone screen, and Kotetsu flinched. He'd suspected it, but being proven right still stung. A lot.

"A- anyway," he managed to continue. "We can't risk me going with you guys right now. If I can make them think I've stashed Bunny somewhere close by and fled, I might be able to lead them off the track and give you the chance to get him to one of Nathan's safe spots. With more than one car, it'll be easier for you all to move."

"It would be best to let him ride in the taxi," Nathan said. "This is one point where I admit my car stands out too much. Also-" he held up a small black case. "-this was all we were able to get access to right now, but I have a couple of people tracking down a better supply. It'd be best to get what we've got into him as soon as possible, though."

"What's that?" Kaede asked.

"From the looks of it, they were keeping Handsome on a pretty potent cocktail of mood stabilizers, possibly to keep him from shock activating during testing. They're harmless while he's on them, but the withdrawal is exceptionally nasty if the patient isn't gradually weaned off."

That got a few shudders and not-so-subtle glances at Barnaby's current condition. Kotetsu took a deep breath, then carefully guided his friend over to lean against Nathan's car. "How long will the dosage you've got hold?"

"About four hours. It'll be enough to get him hidden, at least."

Kotetsu made a noise of acknowledgment, then gently coaxed Barnaby into rolling up his sleeve and motioned for anyone who didn't want to watch to turn. "Shh," he soothed when Barnaby twitched at seeing the needle Nathan took out of the case. "This is just like in the hospital, okay? And you'll feel a lot better when he's done."

Barnaby bit his lip, then buried his face into Kotetsu's shoulder, but otherwise didn't flinch as the syringes were applied, one, two, three, four. When they were finished, Kotetsu gave him a gentle hair ruffle. "All right. Everyone ready?"

"I could come with you," Ivan piped up. "It'd be easier to fool your pursuers if they actually thought you still had Barnaby with you at some point."

"Good idea."

"What about me?" Kaede asked. "I could-"

Kotetsu put a hand on her head. "I need you to stay with Bunny, okay?" When she stiffened, he shook his head. "This isn't about keeping you out of the loop, I swear. Someone has to look after him until I can get there and he doesn't know anyone else well enough, but he trusts you because we've been hiding together. So stick with him and keep an eye on things. Got it?"

She looked over at Barnaby, who was still a little shivery, but already looking a bit better, then gave a decisive nod. "Got it."

Straightening, he squeezed Barnaby gently, then tugged him over to the taxi. "This is Ben. He's an old friend of mine and he's going to take you somewhere you can rest. Kaede will be going with you, too, to make sure everything's all right. Is that okay with you?"

There was a long, hesitant pause, then Barnaby nodded as well, the most positive reaction he'd given so far. Relieved, Kotetsu helped Ben get him situated and laid back so he wouldn't be seen, and Kaede climbed into the back seat.

"I will keep an eye on things from the air," Keith said. Even though the situation called for it, it was still a little on the weird side to see him so serious that his characteristic repetition had fallen away. "It would be very bad if we were to be caught unawares by anything or anyone. This is already very, very dangerous."

"That's a good idea, too."

Nathan and Pao-lin and Antonio got into his car, and Karina gave Kotetsu a brief, surprising squeeze before joining them. Keith headed to the other end of the parking garage drive to get out one of the window gaps.

When the two cars had vanished around a corner, Kotetsu and Ivan looked at each other, then Ivan shifted, reconstructing himself into a perfect copy of an ill-looking Barnaby in his patient's uniform. "Let's hope we're convincing enough."

"Right."

They had to stop to catch their breath under the window ledge of a high-rise once Keith had sent them an all clear that they'd temporarily evaded their pursuers. "That might have worked a little too well," Kotetsu muttered. While the media had taken note that the first-league heroes were suspiciously absent in the hunt for the man who'd kidnapped one of their own, said absence had only made the cops and the second-stringers all the more determined to make the capture.

Ivan shook his head, then jumped a little when his phone beeped. "They've got him hidden," he said after checking the text.

"Good. That's the cue for you and Keith to scram."

"You sure?"

"I have to dump Bunny to save my own skin at some point, right?" Even coating it in dry sarcasm didn't make the fact that people would believe that was exactly what he'd done hurt any less, but he tried. "Go find a way to catch up to the others, and I'll give these guys the runaround for awhile longer."

Ivan still looked hesitant, chewing uncomfortably at his lip. After a minute, though, he blew out a breath and nodded, regaining his own shape. "Let us know when you're at least somewhat safe, so we can get you the location."

"Got it," he said with a jaunty salute, and Ivan shifted into a bird shape to flutter down and vanish into the streets. Once the younger hero was gone, though, Kotetsu uncomfortably scratched the back of his head with a small groan. Okay. Okay, he could do this. Barnaby was safe and being looked after, Kaede was safe and looking after him. Now he just had to save himself, and he could collapse and take a breather later.

Bracing himself, he jumped.

For all their numbers, he'd been doing pretty well at keeping one step ahead his opponents. A tiny part of him was actually kind of disturbed by it. Had the show become so commonplace that people were just expecting every crime that made a news splash to be handled by the heroes?

He didn't really have time to think about it as he jumped the gap of a drainage ditch and scaled an alley wall. The important thing was to get himself out of here in one piece-

Something hit him hard from behind, and he went down with a yelp, only to find a very familiar and unwanted face when he managed to look over his shoulder. "Oh, crap. You again."

The black Wild Tiger armor said nothing, merely aiming a wire to wrap around his throat. More by luck than skill, he managed to dodge being snared and lunged to his feet to run. He'd just about made it to the end of the next alley when something whizzed past his face at the armor, and the resulting explosion threw him against a wall.

Wow. Damn. That had really hurt. Painfully favoring his ribs, he rolled to his knees to find Lunatic now standing over him. Well... better him than the armor, he thought.

Wait... The armor. Who had been inside it? Had Lunatic just-

He got his answer when he saw the charred pieces and shrapnel and wires scattered about the alley. His stomach lurched at the idea that this was what Maverick had intended to replace him; that this thing would have probably been put in charge of Barnaby if he'd been captured, leaving the poor kid no human contact at all... except for Maverick.

He belatedly realized Lunatic was talking, and tried to focus.

"- clearing one's name for murder by being guilty of kidnapping is hardly-"

"I'm not guilty of anything!" he protested. "Bunny came with me willingly, and with good reason! The only person he should be afraid of is Maverick!"

The vigilante stopped, and Kotetsu could imagine a single disbelieving eyebrow being raised under that creepy palm-faced mask. "Explain," the modified voice intoned with all the flat command of a teacher calling him to the board, and Kotetsu swallowed nervously.

"A- ah- um- Maverick's a NEXT," he said in a rush. "He's got the ability to take away or rewrite memories and he used it on everyone at Hero TV. That's- That's how he pinned this whole thing on me. My daughter- she can copy other NEXT powers and she crossed paths with him at some point, so she was able to snap them out of it, but Bun- Barnaby..." He had to stop, had to pull himself together, because saying it out loud still weighed heavy in his chest. "When he got caught in the removal of the fake memories, he... He didn't really have anything left," he finished weakly, the obvious implication hanging in the air between them.

"Do you have any proof of this?"

"The hospital tried neuroimage scans to gauge what he could and couldn't recognize. He doesn't even know what his parents looked like."

That seemed to strike some kind of nerve, as Lunatic visibly stiffened, before turning his head. "This will have to be investigated. If what you say is true-" Another head shake, then Kotetsu had to cover his eyes at the sudden eruption of blue flame as the vigilante made one of his dramatic exits.

For a second, he stared in the direction the man had gone, then shook himself out of it and continued on his way.

It had gotten dark outside by the time he was sure that he'd thrown off the trail, at least for the time being, and he found himself a little alcove to hide and send to the others that he was all right. The response had been an address sent by Nathan, and he took a few more minutes to get another wind before he dusted himself off and set out.

When he'd located the address he'd been given, he found himself at a pretty nondescript-looking house on the outskirts of the Silver stage. Wide lawn, flower bushes and a tiny vegetable garden, Ben's taxi in the driveway. No sign of Nathan's car, but it could have been in the garage. Didn't look like a place anyone would expect Fire Emblem to own, which was probably the point. Cautiously, he stole around the house to the back door, less visible to any neighbors than the front, and knocked.

The door cracked open just enough for a single green eye to peer out through the chained gap, then it closed again and there was a rattling noise before Pao-lin let him in. "The search is still on the news."

"I ran into the robot about three hours ago, but that was the last anyone got near me. Lunatic took it out."

"Well, that's- wait, robot?"

"Later," he said weakly, following her to the kitchen. Karina silently pushed a plate of food across the bar at him, and he mumbled his thanks as he sat down. "How is he?"

"Sleeping," Nathan said. "He's been pretty good for Kaede, we only had one minor panic attack once we got into the house."

"Good."

"We brought what we'd gathered," Pao-lin said, laying a tiny pile of stuff on the bar. "Even with what you said... it wasn't much. Just the street clothes he'd left and a few other things."

There was an extra pair of glasses, the robot, the necklace... And a torn strip of white ribbon. Kotetsu blinked at it. "This is from..."

"When we got sent to the Academy," Ivan said. "It was in his locker when we checked it. I don't know why he would have kept it, though. He didn't really seem to enjoy being there."

Kotetsu fingered the frayed edges, then realized it wasn't ripped. It had been burned. His scarred side suddenly twinged at the memory. This was-

"Well... you got injured protecting me..."

"This one was mine," he said quietly. "I was still wearing it when-" He bit his tongue as words suddenly became hard to form. That had been one of the turning points of their relationship, hadn't it? But he hadn't given a single thought to what had happened to the sash afterwards, a little more immediately occupied. And yet Barnaby had-

Barnaby had-

His eyes were suddenly burning painfully, and this time, he couldn't force the stinging back. His fingers clenched around the sash, and he had to lay his head down on the bar, covering his face with his hat. The others quietly made themselves scarce, giving him a little while alone to cry as the tidal wave of emotions he'd been fighting back since the confrontation on Apollon's roof finally came crashing in on him.

Once he'd pulled himself together, it had been decided that the others would take watch in shifts to give him time to rest -his insistence that he would be fine to take a shift himself had been thoroughly shot down- and then he and Kaede would stay hidden with Barnaby and try to work on what, if any, of his memory could be recovered while the others tried to ferret out anything useful and cover their tracks back in Sternbild.

When he rolled off the couch in one of the guest rooms the next morning and went to check Barnaby's room, it was empty. He found Barnaby and Kaede alone in the kitchen, the latter working her way through a bowl of cereal while the former nibbled at some toast and cut up strawberries, quiet as ever. Someone had given Barnaby one of the retrieved pairs of glasses, and while his overall demeanor hadn't changed much, he did look slightly less tense now that he could at least see.

"How did getting up go?" Kotetsu asked, fetching himself some coffee.

"He showered and dressed on his own once I pointed him in the right direction, so I guess his body still remembers the routine stuff," Kaede said. "And he didn't fight Nathan when he had to be given another dose of his medication. He still doesn't really pay attention to conversation, though, unless you call him by name, then he figures out he's supposed to be listening to you."

"Well... he was kind of odd about social stuff-" Kotetsu almost said 'to begin with', then remembered just how much conditioning and programming had apparently gone into Barnaby's previous behavior and caught himself. "We'll see if we can sort out some of that later," he said instead. "Anyone tried with the memento objects, yet?"

"Just his glasses and clothes, and he didn't really twig on anything except to sit up a bit straighter after I put his glasses on him. Nathan thinks we better take it slow, or he might get overloaded."

"Probably a good idea." He headed over to the table and, unable to help himself, brushed a hand over blond curls in a light, affectionate gesture. Barnaby blinked up at him, and while there was still no recognition of him, there was that vague sort of 'this person looks after me' flicker in those green eyes that Kotetsu had started seeing during their time hiding in the garage. Biting his lip, he sank into a chair, then jumped when his phone rang in his pocket.

"Apollon's gone on lockdown," Antonio rumbled from the other end of the line when he answered. "No interviews, no statements, no information leaks, no nothing."

"Weird, considering how happy they were to splash everything on the cameras earlier," Kotetsu said, scratching his head, and noticed Kaede sit up to take interest.

"No kidding. We're trying to find out what's going on, but even Agnes has been completely cut out of the loop. Whatever Maverick's up to now, he's the only one who knows about it."

Which was something to be very worried about, considering the results of Maverick having spent the last twenty-one years doing something only he knew about, Kotetsu thought as he glanced at Barnaby. "If you hear anything, try and keep us updated, all right?"

"You, too," Antonio said, then hung up.

For the next few hours, they just tried to focus on finding some kind of normalcy. Kaede flipped channels without actually being interested in any of them, save the occasional twitch of anger when she crossed a news broadcast, and Kotetsu passed what little information he could back and forth with the others as they came and went.

But as the hours ticked on, he started noticing something slightly peculiar about Barnaby.

He'd caught it first when Pao-lin had fixed a problem with one of the breakers in the circuit box near the stairs when she'd been by. Then again when Keith blew some leaves and dust off the back porch. Or whenever Kaede would borrow someone's abilities for her own self-imposed chores.

It was after Nathan had created a fire in one of the pans to help with cooking that he finally brought his weird little observation up. "How do you mean?" Nathan asked.

"Well, he freaked out when he activated, but that was because his body was doing something he didn't understand. This is... I dunno, more like some kind of phobic reaction."

"Hm." Nathan pursed his lips in thought, turning his head to watch Barnaby as the blond chased a carrot around his plate with his fork. "Barnaby," Nathan asked, remembering to call him by name. "Would you mind looking at me, please?"

Barnaby obediently raised his head, and Nathan used his power to create a candle-sized flame in the palm of his hand. The effect was instantaneous; Barnaby seemed to shrink in on himself and begin to tremble a little, eyes going wide as he clenched his hands in his lap. But he wasn't looking at the fire.

He was looking at -not into, at- Nathan's eyes.

Nathan extinguished the flame by turning off his NEXT, and Barnaby made a tiny shake of his head, looking confused, before turning back to what was left of his dinner like nothing had happened. "I see what you mean. It's definitely more the fact that I'm using a NEXT ability than anything else."

"Any thoughts on what might be causing it?"

"I'm no psychiatrist, but it seems to be a classic conditioned response."

"So there might still be some memory in there?" Kotetsu asked. He didn't want to get his hopes up, especially considering the terrible memories that would have had to cause such a reaction, but if those still existed, then maybe some of the better ones would-

"I don't think it's that complex," Nathan replied, cutting off that thought before he could give it voice. "It's likely something buried in the same routine memory part of his brain that lets him shower like normal. He doesn't remember that he's been damaged, what power was responsible, or who did it-"

"But it's been done so many times over so long that his body knows to have a fear response to seeing glowing blue eyes," Kotetsu finished, stomach sinking. It was like a dog expecting to get kicked, even after it had been given to a new owner. His hands tightened into fists, nails biting into his palms as he struggled against the sudden surge of anger. Goddammit-

A hand settled on his shoulder, and he looked over to see Nathan shaking his head. That same anger lurked in his eyes, but he was doing a better job of restraining it, and Kotetsu forced himself to tie his own reins tighter as well. "Okay," he murmured, shoulders slumping a little. "Work on fixing this first... if we even can. Then punch Maverick later once he can't hurt Bunny again."

"Good plan."

As far as the mementos went, Kotetsu chose the robot toy as the safest one to start with. Though he had no reference, there was just something in his gut that was dead certain the necklace had probably been Barnaby's mother's, and he didn't want to force that on the kid immediately. And the sash... well, it was probably better if he could do this without crying in front of Barnaby. So the robot it was.

Kaede was curled up in a chair, pretending to read and keeping an eye on the situation, when he cautiously approached Barnaby and put a hand on his back to get his attention. "Hey," he said softly when Barnaby looked up. "I thought you might like some company."

Barnaby's hands were resting in his lap, and Kotetsu carefully laid the toy in them, then held his breath.

Barnaby stared down at the toy, making no move to actually close his hands around it or otherwise touch it, but Kotetsu could almost see the wheels struggling to turn in his head. After a few minutes of watching him painfully try and fail to put together what pieces might have been floating around in his brain, Kotetsu started to reach down to take the toy back and apologize.

Instead, Barnaby quietly hugged it to his chest and looked up at him pleadingly. Kotetsu faltered, then leaned down and brushed a light kiss against his hair in silent permission before drawing back. Even if Barnaby couldn't understand why he felt the toy was important, at least that feeling was still there in some form. It was something. He motioned for Kaede to follow him, and as they left to go give the others a progress report, he saw Barnaby curl up on his bed, still clutching the toy.

Almost like Barnaby was a kid again, the little robot seemed to have become a comfort companion for him. As long as he was holding it, he didn't twitch nearly as badly when someone was using their powers, and as long as it was in some near vicinity, he seemed to be a little more lucid. He still never verbally joined in, but at least he seemed to be aware when conversations were about him as well as directed to him now.

Which had the unfortunate side effect of the rest of them having to limit information-passing conversations to when he wasn't there to hear them. The NEXT power phobia had made it clear that there was still some risk of setting off triggers none of them wanted to hurt him with, so when it was time to begin one of their collaboration sessions, Kaede was put on Bunnysitting duty and they took the information to the upstairs study.

Antonio and Ivan had been keeping tabs on Apollon via every method they knew for the last three days, but Maverick was still being suspiciously quiet, aside from ordering that the show be run as usual, sans Barnaby and Wild Tiger. Cover-ups weren't exactly unusual in a city like Sternbild, but the nature of this one was making more than just them anxious. Police had been stepping up patrols, Keith had reported, and some small anti-NEXT fights had broken out in the Bronze Stage and had to be put down. "Like the whole city's holding its breath," Keith said, and they were all reminded of the tension over the Martinez incident.

Karina and Pao-lin had gone to work trying to find any kind of personal connections besides Kotetsu that Barnaby might have had; something that they could work with. They'd met similar failure.

Nathan was busily recording all of the information, or lack thereof, in his laptop, when he suddenly started. "What th-"

"What is it?"

"An email to my personal account from an anonymous proxy. And it's about Handsome," he added with some mild surprise after clicking.

"Well, what does it say?" Kotetsu asked, leaning in.

Nathan tapped several keys to bring up a blank email and a series of files, and cautiously opened them. "Oh my God..."

"What?"

"It's all his records with the Justice Department. Only someone took all the blocks off of them." He scanned down the pages with a fingertip, then swallowed. "Here's something in particular you might want to see."

They all crowded around him to get a look, and Kotetsu sucked in a breath when he read the words Nathan was pointing to. 'NC 1958/01/12 - NC 1963/11/30 - Resident of Dovedale House.'

"Dovedale House..." Ivan said quietly. "That's an orphanage, isn't it?"

"In one of the higher areas of the Silver Stage," Nathan said. "Did you know about this, honey?"

"Hell, no," Kotetsu said. "Barnaby told me Maverick took him home with him on the day of the funeral."

"So, if this record is accurate, then we know for sure that's almost six whole years rewritten," Ben said. "But why take him at ten specifically?"

"Couldn't have been emerging powers, he'd had them for years already. Hero Academy?"

"No, he didn't join until he was thirteen. But there had to be something. We know there's no way Maverick just did it to get the kid into a better home."

They all went quiet as they racked their brains for ideas. "Hey, Kotetsu," Ben said. "You told me and Nathan both that this current mess all started when you went to see Kriem, right?"

"Yeah. She gave Martinez one hell of an alibi, and then we found out he didn't have the same tattoo Bunny remembered. That was when he started freaking out saying he couldn't trust his own memories." And damn if he didn't feel like a heel now for having written it off as nothing more than a stress breakdown. But then something prodded at him through the small wave of guilt. "Wait a minute. Bunny said he'd started looking for information on his parents' murder just after he turned ten."

"Ten? Seriously?" Karina asked, looking a little bit disturbed by the idea.

"Yeah. I've seen the files he kept. The collection was huge, big enough that it would have taken years to put together, and I definitely remember him saying that."

"So his birthday's on Halloween, something gets his attention and he starts doing research, and by the end of the month, Maverick scoops him up and wipes the orphanage from his memory. If they're connected, then that's twice he's intentionally used his powers to interfere with Barnaby's work."

"More times than that," Nathan pointed out. "Remember how dead sure Handsome was that Martinez had to be the one, until he couldn't ignore the evidence otherwise? For someone who was supposedly helping with the search, Maverick seems to have guided it entirely off the rails."

"But why bother?" Ivan asked. "It seems like an awful lot of time and effort just to set up a hero story to sell."

"Maybe the hero story was secondary to the coverup, or a beneficial effect of it. Though that still leaves the question of why there would need to be a coverup at all-"

"Unless he was involved in the crime itself," Pao-lin cut in, spiking the terrible possibility they'd been leading to -dancing uncomfortably around- home.

Silence fell over the room again, and this time, Kotetsu was sure the temperature fell with it as the horrible realization sank in for all of them.

"If he was-" Keith started to say quietly, but couldn't make himself finish the sentence.

He didn't need to.

Kotetsu squeezed his eyes shut, resting his head in his hands. He'd stopped thinking that things couldn't get any worse, but he hadn't given a thought to how much worse they could get. It was too disgusting as it was. The Brookses had been part of the show's Old Guard. If it hadn't been one more lie that Barnaby had been told, they and Maverick had been best friends. To think that not only had he abused his power to completely brainwash their son, but that he might have had a hand in their deaths to begin with...

Kotetsu thought of all the docile obedience and quiet adoration Barnaby had shown his supposed parental figure in the time they'd known each other. How he'd hung on every word, obeyed every command no matter how much he disliked it, just because Maverick had been the one to tell him to do so. He'd even spilled his sorrow and desire for revenge to the city as a source of macabre entertainment, on the orders of and to benefit the man who might have arranged it all in the first place to cover himself and put the kid on display. Like some kind of fucking trophy of what he'd accomplished.

"Excuse me a minute," he mumbled weakly, hefting himself to his feet, and pretended not to see the concerned looks as he stumbled out the door and down the hall. Lurching into a bathroom, he barely had time to drop to his knees before he began to throw up. When he'd finished, eyes and throat burning, he barely took the time to rinse his mouth out before going downstairs to find Barnaby.

The blond in question was asleep, toy wrapped in his arms like before. Kotetsu gently waved off Kaede's worried query and shooed her off to meet with the others, then closed himself into the room and just sat against the door for a few minutes, watching the younger man sleep. He made himself get up and go to the bed, and Barnaby stirred a bit when he laid down, blinking at him sleepily.

"Go back to sleep," Kotetsu murmured, managing to keep the pained hitch out of his voice as he smoothed ruffled hair away from Barnaby's face. Barnaby stared at him a little while longer, expression unreadable, then closed his eyes, relaxing back into the rhythm of sleep.

He had no such luck himself, and just spent the rest of the night holding his partner tightly.

He hadn't really felt much like eating that morning, but Kaede had prodded him into at least accepting some oatmeal. The irony that his daughter was nagging him the way he used to nag Barnaby wasn't lost on him. Most of the others had already left with the usual promises to keep the information feeds running, but Nathan and Pao-lin breezed through long enough for the former to grab some coffee and the latter to snag some toast as they headed out to get Pao-lin to her tutors.

School.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kotetsu watched his daughter eating, and swallowed back a sigh. Sure, she was on holiday break now, but until they could get this mess sorted, it would hardly be safe for her to go back. He wondered how his mother and brother had been handling her disappearance... the news... everything.

"Kaede, when you get a minute, call your grandma. Or at least send her a text to let her know you're okay."

She nodded without looking up, and he got to his feet to get himself a cup of coffee before heading down the hall.

Barnaby was sitting up when he poked his head in, turning the robot over and over in his hands. Something about the look on his face bothered Kotetsu, and he set the cup down on the nightstand before taking a seat on the bed. "Hey-"

"I'm sorry."

Kotetsu froze in the motion of reaching out. 'He spoke. Bunny spoke,' looped in his mind for a few seconds until he managed to knock the metaphorical record back in place. "Ah- for what?"

Barnaby didn't raise his head, but Kotetsu could see the tension in every line of his body. "I don't know. But you... everyone... you always look sad and angry when you look at me. I must have done something."

He gingerly pulled the younger man into his arms. "That's not it at all. You- I know you can't remember it, but someone else did something terrible to you. That's why we're sad and angry. You didn't do anything wrong at all."

"Really?"

"I promise. This isn't your fault," he said, gently rubbing his partner's back. "We're just worried about you."

Barnaby said nothing more, even when Kotetsu guided him in to get some breakfast, but at least a tiny bit of that tension seemed to have eased. Once the blond was eating some fruit, he slipped away to call Nathan with what little good news they had.

Karina dropped by around lunch time with ice cream for the lot of them, and Barnaby mumbled a quiet thanks when she shoved a cone at him, but aside from that, he seemed to have entirely gone back to the silence that had become his norm. Kotetsu didn't worry too much about that, though. What concerned him was the fact that they still weren't managing to get much of anything on what movements Maverick might have been making.

And the more they dug into Barnaby's history and that of his parents, the more that secrecy worried him.

Ben had managed to track down some retired former camera crew members and techs who hadn't left the Sternbild area once they'd finished their tenures on the show, and none had been spectacularly helpful. The fact that they couldn't be sure whether it was just a matter of old memories or altered memories didn't help. But one former aide living in the Silver Stage had given them a rather cryptic comment about some tension behind the scenes in the weeks before the Brookses' murder. Something about the scientists not approving of the usage of certain tech that hadn't finished their testing stages.

It raised the question of how much the show itself might have been motive for getting them out of the way.

Chewing anxiously at his lip, he'd been reading over and adding to the notes Nathan had left on a datapad for him when Barnaby wandered in, toy cradled in one arm and a puzzled look on his face. Kotetsu motioned him over and tugged him close. "You okay?"

"Can I ask you something?"

Nathan had been coaching him during their talks what to do and say when Barnaby started asking questions, so that they wouldn't end up scaring the hell out of the kid. No matter how dire or dark the question, he was prepared to handle anything Barnaby had to throw. "Go ahead."

"Who's Bunny?"

Except that, he thought as his breath left him in a weak, choked hiss. He looked away, taking a few seconds to get himself back under control. "I- why do you ask?"

"You talk about them a lot to the others," Barnaby replied, and only then had it hit him that he'd slipped up. He'd still been careful to police how he spoke to Barnaby, and they were all careful about how much information they traded around him now that he sometimes actually listened... but he'd forgotten to cross those two bits of information and stop using the nickname to the others when Barnaby might have been paying attention.

"U- um... well..."

Barnaby tilted his head, and there was no accusation or demand in it, just questioning curiosity. That was enough that he decided he might as well start from the beginning. "Bunny... Bunny is you. That's my name for you."

"Why?"

"Well... I'll be honest. It started as an insult. I'd call you that to piss you off, because we... kind of hated each other. Er, not hated," he amended hastily when Barnaby looked hurt, and Jesus, that expression pulled at him. "We just didn't get along. Our viewpoints were too different."

"Is it still an insult?" Barnaby asked, that wounded look still on his face, and Kotetsu reached up to put a hand on his head to calm him down before he could get upset. "Are we still-"

"No. No, we're not. We've- we've been friends for awhile now." At least he hoped that had been the case. The deeper they dug into this mess, the more he found he couldn't really be sure of anything anymore. "I kept using it because... because you let me. If anybody else had picked it up, you probably would have at least yelled at them, but you didn't even roll your eyes at me anymore when I used it. So it was just... sort of... our thing."

"Oh." Barnaby looked away, considering that, and Kotetsu tried hard not to hold his breath. "You can keep using it, then, if you want."

Kotetsu blinked, surprised. "Ah?"

"You don't look as sad when you call me that," Barnaby said, then stiffened at whatever Kotetsu's expression was when he looked up again. "Did I say something wrong?"

Kotetsu pulled him into a fierce hug -which got a surprised squeak out of the blond- and buried his face into curls that were much looser and more natural than they used to be. "No, Bunny," he said quietly. "You're a good kid."

Barnaby seemed a little lost as to what was going on then, but made no effort to pull away until they heard a few of the others arrive for dinner. Then Kotetsu apologetically let him go and guided him downstairs.

By the time he went to bed, he was actually feeling... pretty good. Sure, the overall situation hadn't really improved much, but the baby steps Barnaby had made since being given the robot toy were, at least in his opinion, pretty damn significant. They'd actually had progress.

He slept peacefully for the first time in over a week, until an insistent beeping roused him. Groggy, he reached over and grabbed his cell phone, finding a text from Ivan.

Then immediately sat up, bright and alert, and swore under his breath before lunging to his feet to get dressed and grab Barnaby and Kaede. Even as he scooped his bleary-eyed daughter from bed, he knew it was too late, as flashing blue and red lights illuminated the walls from outside.

'Maverick's found the house's location. RUN.'

Kaede was pressed anxiously against his side and Barnaby was nervously clinging to his shirt sleeve as they huddled in the front hallway. The police were making announcements outside, but he wasn't listening to them at all. How the hell had Maverick tracked them down? Had they not been careful enough? Was there a tracer on Barnaby somehow? It was an outlandish thought, but right now, Kotetsu's panicked mind wouldn't put anything past the old man.

"-yourself in."

"What?" he asked when he realized Kaede was talking.

"You can't turn yourself in," she insisted, having been paying more attention to the police than he had. "They'll throw you in prison forever and give Barnaby back to Maverick."

Which he'd known from the beginning, but somehow, it sounded so much more dire when his little girl was saying it. He clenched and unclenched his hands in thought, trying to come up with some kind of plan. What he ended up with wasn't very good, but at least it would buy them some time. "Okay," he said quietly. "Bunny, come with me. Kaede, hang back and try to stay out of sight. When I do this-" he made a little hand motion, "-you activate the Hundred Power and follow me, got it?"

Kaede swallowed, then nodded. Barnaby didn't quite seem to understand, but between the two of them, they could shield him if they had to.

He hoped.

"Here we go."

There were a whole lot more police cars -and guns- than he'd been expecting. But considering he was a super-evil psycho dangerous NEXT with a kidnapped hostage, he supposed he should just be glad that they hadn't opted for sending some kind of specialized SWAT team in after them or something. Barnaby was visibly shaking, the toy having been left behind with Kaede, and Kotetsu had to fight down the urge to put a hand on him to calm him down. That probably would have spooked a sniper, and the last thing they needed was bullets flying.

He put his hands behind his head on the orders of a cop with a megaphone, then there was a whistling screech from above as something -no, someone- dropped out of the sky, moving too fast for the police and their cameras to keep up with.

"Mr. Wild!"

'Bless you, Goodman,' Kotetsu thought to himself as the torrent of wind Keith's entrance had kicked up kept cops from getting any closer. "Change of plans, Bunny. Hold on to him just like you would me, okay?" As soon as Barnaby nodded, Kotetsu activated his power. "Kaede, let's go!" he called back as he tossed one blond up to the other, and another blue streak erupted from the house as he and his daughter took off after them, back towards the city. It wasn't the best idea, considering Maverick's presence there, but having any cover was better than having no cover at all, and most areas in the other direction were too open to hide in.

Kaede caught him when his power suddenly flickered out a full fifteen seconds sooner than it had the last time. She was clearly concerned by the unexpected loss, but he shook his head. They were in too much of a rush for that, or even for him to be embarrassed about being carried by someone half his size. Hide first, questions later.

Keith and Barnaby dropped into a Bronze District warehouse ahead of them and they followed, Kaede quickly skidding to a halt and extinguishing the blue glow before anyone could see. When they made it through a rusted hole in one of the bay doors, Keith was trying and failing to calm down a terrified Barnaby. Even though it had been necessary to escape, Kotetsu felt a bit guilty for subjecting his partner to his first flight in so traumatic a manner, so he didn't protest at all when Barnaby transferred a rib-crackingly frightened hold to him. "It's okay," he soothed, petting wind-ruffled hair. "You did fine. Keith, how the hell-"

"We don't know," Keith said, and the quiet anxiety was especially unnerving coming from him. "Mr. Emblem got a very confusing alert from our unknown person in the Justice Department, and then they realized that Maverick would only be making a move that big if he'd found Barnaby or you. All we had time for was to send a warning, so I was supposed to try to beat the police to you." He drooped visibly. "I failed. I'm sorry, and again-"

"Hey, don't worry about it. If you hadn't shown up, we would've had a much harder time getting out of there at all. It still worked out," he said, giving the man a consoling pat on the shoulder. "Right now, we have to-"

He didn't get the chance to finish his sentence as sharp somethings shattered through a skylight above them, whistling down to embed themselves in the floor as they dodged. He blinked at one when it streaked past his face. Some kind of... metal feather? Who would-

A slender figure shot through the hole in the skylight with a shriek like an enraged bird. The stranger had arms encased, winglike, in more razor-sharp steel feathers, and glowing blue eyes.

And a very familiar tattoo prominent above her collarbone.

"Mr. Wild! Miss Wild! Run! I will try to hold her off and get help!" Keith called, trying to knock her out of the air with a burst of wind, and though Kotetsu didn't want to leave him behind, he didn't need to be told twice. Grabbing Barnaby, he and Kaede squeezed back through the hole they'd used to get in and bolted down an alley to the street.

They'd made it about twelve blocks before having to stop. As they struggled to catch their breath, he noticed Barnaby was getting twitchy about something, glancing around nervously as though he were looking for something lurking around them. After a few seconds of trying to figure out the cause, he felt a strange prickle against his skin, like they were somehow being watched. He tried to shake it off, but it refused to go away. And the fear found substance when a wall nearby suddenly exploded as a huge man who looked like he was made of rock crashed through it. Oh, shit. "Get moving!" he snapped, giving the other two a shove.

Unpowered, he was probably going to regret this, but he grabbed a heavy metal pipe laying in a nearby puddle to try and get the big jerk's attention before he could zero in on Kaede and Barnaby-

And did regret it when the stranger responded to the swing by turning himself to the same metal as the pipe as soon as it made contact. Kotetsu barely managed to duck in time to keep from losing his head from the punch aimed at him, and bolted.

As the man came after him, he saw the tattoo, looking like it had been scratched into the metal of his face. Why-

He landed on a plywood covering for a below-ground window and it cracked under him, dropping him out of the way of another swing at his head. Crawling through the broken window and not caring about the rips he got in his clothing as a result, he found he would have had a good hiding place from his attacker... but finding Kaede and Barnaby was more important. Wriggling out of a hole well away from the stranger and hoping the ass didn't spot him, he went searching for the others.

He dropped down next to a culvert in a drainage channel, then hands suddenly reached out of the shadows, clamping over his mouth and dragging him back into the shadows of the overpass. With a muffled yell, he wrenched free and automatically turned, ready to fight-

-only to find wide pairs of brown and green eyes staring back at him. He let out a breath, forcing himself to calm down, and joined them in their hiding place. "You two okay?"

"As we can be," Kaede said quietly, and Barnaby silently nodded agreement. Kotetsu sank down to sit on the ground, exhaustion starting to catch up to him.

This didn't make sense. Both of their NEXT attackers had the sword and snake tattoo, and it was clear they'd been targeted specifically. But why here? Why now? Were they just Martinez-supporting-opportunists looking to take Barnaby out now that he was vulnerable and on their turf? How would they even have known he was going to end up here? Maybe...

He glanced up, and noticed Barnaby was starting to get twitchy again. Like he had just before the shapeshifting NEXT had attacked, and might have before the bird woman had shown up, Kotetsu wasn't sure. "You feel something, don't you, Bunny?"

"I- I don't know," Barnaby said hesitantly, then Kotetsu got that itchy sensation himself.

"Let's go, before whatever's coming next shows up."

This was getting insane.

Three more NEXTs had attacked them, despite their efforts to stay hidden using whatever Barnaby's weird forewarning sense was. Keith had apparently succeeded in getting an alert out to the others, and the third fight had been explosive enough to get Pao-lin's attention and bring her down from the Silver Stage to save their necks, but they still had to keep moving.

Something was still so very off about this, Kotetsu thought as they took refuge in an abandoned furniture factory. All of their opponents had possessed that goddamn tattoo. And tracking back over their journey was just as weird. It was almost like they were being-

He felt his stomach drop when a pink glow appeared in the shadows. A pink glow he had really hoped not to see ever again. "Bunny. Kaede. Stay behind me," he warned, and his sudden sense of foreboding proved to be entirely correct as the robot -or was it another robot?- strode out of the darkness.

"You've made yourself into a very big problem, Mr. Kaburagi," Maverick's voice came from somewhere else in the room, and Kotetsu turned his head to find the old man and a woman he didn't recognize standing near one of the doors. "I had to enlist extra aid to find you."

She had the tattoo on her upper arm like the others. Which meant all this time, Maverick must have been-

Oh.

Oh, hell.

"Barnaby, come away from the criminal," Maverick said, holding out a hand. "You're safe now. We'll see to it he doesn't hurt you again."

"He's lying, Bunny," Kotetsu murmured, putting a hand on Barnaby's arm when it looked like the blond might obey the command.

Barnaby looked back and forth between the two of them, clearly confused and anxious at having been put on the spot. "He- He takes care of me," he told Maverick hesitantly, and Kotetsu was sure that for a brief moment, he saw something akin to rage or disgust flicker across the old man's face.

"He has warped you, my boy. But we can fix all that. We can give you back your memories again."

"Shut up!" Kaede snapped from Kotetsu's side, holding on to Barnaby's other hand. "We know what you did to the other heroes! And what you did to Barnaby! We're gonna prove it!"

"Oh?" the old man asked, and his voice was so calm, so goddamn smug that it made Kotetsu's blood boil. Like hell he was going to let the slimy old bastard threaten his daughter or get his hands on Barnaby ever again. Eyes narrowing, he shifted to a fight stance.

"Barnaby." Behind wire-rimmed glasses, those eyes went electric blue, and Barnaby froze. Kotetsu lunged, trying to stop Maverick before he could do anything. "Guard."

Kotetsu was only inches from the man when something collided solidly with him in midair, sending him skidding painfully across the concrete floor. When he opened his eyes again, Barnaby was standing over him, expression empty and hollow as the familiar blue glow enveloped his body.

There was a crash above them as Pao-lin caught up to their current location and headed straight for Maverick without asking what was going on, and Barnaby barely glanced up before he was across the room and knocking her flat with precision he shouldn't have been able to remember how to use. Hell, he shouldn't have been this calm at all. He should have been freaking out at his power activating, not kicking their asses-

-to protect Maverick.

Wait.

Kotetsu felt the urge to throw up come up once again as the pieces all clicked into place. The muscle memory issue. Barnaby's fear of NEXT powers. His earlier twitchyness when he felt them nearby. That dead-eyed stare. His memories hadn't been the only thing that Maverick had been rewriting.

"Command triggers. The son of a bitch implanted command triggers," Kotetsu breathed.

Heaving himself to his feet, he went to grab Kaede out of the path as the robot launched itself into action as well, and desperately sent out a mass embergency flash-text across his list of other heroes. Pao-lin and Kaede could power up, but he still had another fifteen minutes to go.

Without any more backup, they were going to be so very screwed.

His head cracked painfully against the metal rims of the conveyer belt he landed on, and he had to roll quickly as Barnaby landed on it, breaking through the frame with a force that nearly got Kotetsu tangled up in it. "Bunny! Wake up! You have to-"

Antonio and Nathan had arrived to help with the fight against the robot, but capturing Barnaby had proven to be a much more difficult task. He still had three more minutes on the clock and had left all of them with at least one broken bone, and was still keeping anyone from getting close to Maverick. Knowing it was going to end in bloodshed, Kotetsu had finally thrown himself at the blond to force his hand, drawing him away through every trick he could think of in order to keep him away from the old man without getting himself killed.

Pain lanced through his side as a broken pole clipped him, shredding through shirt and scarred skin. Legs buckling, he collapsed into a heap, unable to keep running. Shoes came into view, and he weakly raised his head to meet that empty stare. "Bunny... please..."

Without response, Barnaby drew back, as if to attack again.

Then everything went white.

When the spots cleared from his eyes, Barnaby was standing stone still. Then his power flickered out as his eyes rolled back and he slumped lifelessly to the floor, revealing Kaede standing behind him, hands outstretched and tears streaming down her face.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I didn't want- I had to-"

Kotetsu held out his good arm and she very, very carefully moved around Barnaby before going to cling to him. He hissed a little when that jostled his injured side, but managed to keep himself together long enough to make sure that Barnaby was only unconscious.

From their position, he couldn't see what had happened with Maverick. Kaede would have had to have been able to get in close in order to steal his power and hit Barnaby with it, but was he still-?

His vision was starting to go a little grey and blurred around the edges, reminding him that oh, right, he was still bleeding. And injured. And completely burned out after all the running and fighting and wow, he didn't feel so good all of a sudden now that shock was wearing off and he was becoming aware of the pain from his injuries.

"Dad-?"

"S- sorry, sweetie. Daddy's gonna have to pass out for a little bit," he slurred as his legs buckled under him again.

Not exactly the best thing to have said under the circumstances, but he was no longer awake to think about it.

He came to and found that he was handcuffed to a bed. And not in the fun way, either. The guard at the door had informed him that until his case went one way or another, he mas more or less on "hospital arrest" until he healed enough to go to court.

Which made sense, but he didn't have to like it.

Once news of his change in condition had gotten out to the others, he had supervised visitors to tell him what had happened while he'd been out. Nathan informed him that Maverick was in custody, thanks to Ivan knocking out the woman he'd been working with and taking her place... which also explained how Kaede had been able to get to him. The woman in question had been identified as a NEXT with a record, and some ability Nathan had called "farsight", which let her see the location of any target in ten miles. As much as they could figure, Maverick calling her in had been what had tipped off their mysterious informant in the Justice Department.

Damn, small wonder Barnaby had been getting so antsy. Especially since she'd somehow managed to wake up and slip away from the fight before anyone had noticed.

Pao-lin came to tell him that Kaede had been sent home, and, with the permission of the cop on guard duty, had used his coworker's cell phone to sort of give him his one phone call so he could talk to his daughter. She was grouchy about being booted out of the city before he'd woken up, but otherwise fine, and had given the robot toy to Pao-lin before leaving for safekeeping close to Barnaby. Nathan probably had the necklace and the sash, knowing him.

And on the subject of Barnaby, no one had been able to give him much. The revelation of Maverick's NEXT power and a leak from somewhere in the hospital had started a whole new media storm, as everyone wanted to know all the sordid details of what had been done to their golden hero, but the neurological ward was on lockdown per his doctors' orders. And Agnes had put Apollon on some kind of gag order to keep the press from sneaking in to hassle either of them, which Kotetsu was glad for.

All in all, the others had done pretty damn well in keeping things on an even keel. This wasn't too bad. It almost seemed like things were starting to look up.

And then, the fourth day after he woke up, Antonio and Ben came to see him. And he knew just from the looks on their faces that it wasn't going to be good news.

"They had to handcuff him in front for interrogation," Antonio explained. "Before that, he'd been more heavily restrained to keep him from touching one of the guards and making them think he'd been mistakenly incarcerated or something. The cop who was doing the questioning just looked away for five seconds to check his notes-"

"The video caught him touching his own forehead right before the flash. They're not exactly sure how, but he managed to use his power to self-induce a fatal stroke."

He stared at them, the room suddenly feeling very cold. "Suicide?" he finally squeaked in a tiny voice, part of his brain absolutely refusing to accept that fact. "He-"

Ben put a hand on his shoulder and Kotetsu vaguely heard him apologize, but was still staring numbly at the sheet and blanket covering his legs when they left.

Maverick had killed himself.

There was never going to be a trial.

He was still mostly in shock from that when he was visited later that week by a representative from the Justice Department -had it been Petrov himself? Maybe he'd been out of it enough to hallucinate that- to update him on his own case. The news that charges against him had been dropped due to the investigation having been tainted should have been good.

But he was still stuck on the unfairness of it all.

Not for him- he was sure that if this had still ended up going to trial, he would have been able to prove himself innocent. But Ms. Taylor, the Brookses... everyone else who'd died to hide Maverick's involvement in whatever fucked up conspiracy he'd been a part of... They'd deserved some measure of justice. At least for the old man to be hauled in front of a judge. And Bunny... God, he wasn't even sure if the legal system had anything for the situation he'd lived through, but jail time would have been better than nothing.

Like this, it felt almost like Maverick had escaped again. And that was probably exactly how the old snake had intended it, too, which only pissed him off more. Somewhat selfishly, he regretted that he'd never gotten the chance to make good on his desire to put a fist in the bastard's face.

It was almost three weeks into the new year before he'd been declared recovered enough to begin physical therapy and some light personal exercise without the risk of reopening or re-tearing anything. He'd balked at the cane they'd ordered him on, until one orderly who'd evidently been present when he'd been brought in had threatened him with a call to his "very formidable" daughter. And while he was always perfectly happy to talk to his little girl, and even if the man had been joking, he decided it was probably better to not find out how she'd earned such a description from a trained patient-wrangler who had a foot and a half and a good sixty pounds of muscle over her.

He opted for the cane.

Free to wander around most of the hospital as long as he used it and kept to his allotted time limit, he inevitably found himself standing before the double doors that blocked off the neurology unit. As he'd been told, a guard was standing outside to keep out any nosy press, and the woman gave him a flat look. "Name?"

"He's with me," a familiar voice interrupted smoothly, and Kotetsu looked over his shoulder to see Agnes striding down the hall. The guard raised a somewhat dubious eyebrow, but after checking Agnes' hospital-issued badge, she'd pressed the button to let them in.

"Thanks for the save."

"Lucky for you, you came just as I was arriving for the week's progress check," Agnes said as they passed into the next hallway. "Everyone but me has been banned from seeing him."

"No offense, but why you?"

"Maverick had both personal and business power of attorney for Brooks-"

"Of course he did," Kotetsu muttered bitterly under his breath.

"-and while I have no legal state in his personal affairs," Agnes continued as if he hadn't said anything at all, "As interim CEO of Apollon, I've more or less inherited control of him as an asset of the company, per the business-level agreement, until such time that he's declared competent to make his own decisions."

"Wait... Asset of the- you've got that kind of power as his boss?" Kotetsu asked, staring at her in a mix of horror and incredulity. "That's... that's not in all our contracts, is it?"

The look she gave him was all the answer necessary, and he swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat. No. It wasn't. Of course only Barnaby would have been convinced to agree to that. He'd probably signed and then had that part wiped out of his memory or something. It was just one more chain. One more opportunity for the control-freak to keep the kid under his thumb if Barnaby had ever gotten wise enough to sever the personal-level agreement.

He gritted his teeth, grip tightening on the cane, and forced himself to get back under control. He'd managed to be back to breathing normally by the time they stopped at an observation window, and while Agnes went to talk to a nurse, he peered in to see Barnaby lying on a gurney, mostly covered with a blanket and staring blankly at the ceiling lights.

Christ, he was even thinner than usual.

Impulse got the better of him, and he very gently tapped on the window between them, trying to get Barnaby's attention. Barnaby turned his head at the noise and, for a second, there was nothing. Just emptiness. Before Kotetsu could well and truly work up a nervous freakout, though, there was a faint, unidentifiable but noticeable, flicker in those green eyes, and Barnaby raised his left hand off the bed a tiny bit, just enough to give a little wave.

Kotetsu waved back, then belatedly realized a nurse was staring at them both.

A flurry of activity exploded behind the glass as one nurse grabbed a tech, and then more people were whispering and there was someone in a white coat, and there was a lot of pointing and gesturing towards both him and Barnaby.

Oh, crap.

"What the hell did you do?!" Agnes hissed when the nurse she'd been with had been pulled back into the testing station to join the conversations, and Kotetsu fidgeted anxiously, feeling rather like a kid who'd been caught passing notes.

"W- well. I was just- Um-"

He wasn't sure which she wanted to do more: hit him or yell at him. Thankfully, before she could do either, White Coat poked his head out into the hall. "Mr...Ah, Kaburagi, is it?"

"Yessir," Kotetsu said as he straightened quickly, grateful for the rescue, and accepted the offered handshake with his good arm when the man approached.

"Doctor Rabi Sengupta. I've been put in charge of handling this case for the neurology department. If you and Ms. Joubert would follow me, please?"

Kotetsu swallowed nervously, then did as told.

"I do apologize for the scare," Sengupta said as they entered the testing lab. "The reaction to your presence came as very much a surprise to us. Mr. Brooks has been entirely unresponsive to nearly all non-physical stimuli since he woke up."

"When... did he wake up?" Kotetsu asked.

"About three days after you," Agnes replied. "That was the last actual progress reported."

Barnaby had been in that semi-vegetative state for that long? Small wonder he'd lost weight; they'd probably put him on IVs or a tube or something. "So... what are we doing now?" he asked as he saw two nurses helping the blond onto the table of a scanning machine.

"If you don't mind, we'd like to run his tests today while having you converse with him, to see whether he has truly regained a form of awareness, or merely simple recognition. Considering his scans from before he was removed from the hospital-" The man didn't make it sound like an accusation, but Kotetsu winced faintly anyway, "-we're hoping this might be a sign for future improvement. Highly unorthodox to do it this way, but then, very little about his case has adhered to any standard form of procedure," the doctor said.

"Okay. I can do that," Kotetsu said, sitting down in a little rolling chair another nurse pushed over for him.

"Excellent. I must ask, however, that you avoid topics that would be too strenuous for him to respond to. Such as the circumstances that brought you both here."

He had a feeling Barnaby wouldn't remember much, if anything about that fight anyway, but nodded. Mostly, he was just hoping Barnaby would talk to him at all. The possibility that he'd been knocked back into that childlike state of not knowing what was going on around him and afraid of everyone... that would have been too much. The nurse who'd brought him the chair pushed him closer as the platform of the scanning table smoothly guided Barnaby into the machine, and he reached out to take hold of a thin hand.

"Hey, Bunny."

There was no verbal response, but the hand he held squeezed his fingers. He nervously licked his lips, then held on a little tighter. "Do you know who I am?"

More silence. Then, in such a small rasp that he could barely hear it: "Yes."

He ignored the whispers the response got. "Who am I?"

"You're Kotetsu. You took care of me."

He got a little fluttery feeling in his stomach. It wasn't quite the answer he'd wanted; some pie in the sky part of his mind had still been hoping that the flicker meant something more had clicked, that maybe more solid memories had returned. But considering the mentally traumatic hell the kid had gone through recently, it was still a pretty encouraging response. "Yeah."

"Why are you all bandaged up?"

"That's... I'll explain later, okay?"

"Okay."

They stayed like that, conversing about nothing really for the next several minutes, and out of the corner of his eye, he'd occasionally see Sengupta showing Agnes something or directing nurses and techs about. Then finally, a nurse came to pull him back so that they could get Barnaby unloaded back onto his gurney. Once that was done, he let the others continue their discussion and made his way over to lean down and gently rest his forehead against his partner's. "How are you feeling now?"

"Sleepy. But... a little better, I think. It's easier with you here."

"Easier to what?"

Barnaby didn't have an answer for that, but he didn't mind. Whatever answer the blond could have given, it seemed the doctor was agreeing, from the look on his face as he conversed with Agnes. "I think they might let me come see you more."

"Good," Barnaby murmured before he made a small yawn and his eyes fluttered closed, and Kotetsu gave a small, sad, fond smile as he straightened and brushed fingers through light hair.

He had no idea if Barnaby would ever get back what he'd lost in the past months. Despite his hope a little while ago, now that he was thinking about the situation a little more clearly, maybe... maybe it would be best for the kid if he didn't recover that part of his life. He wasn't sure. But surely he and Agnes could work something out to let him be part of the rehabilitation. He still had the mementos, and Nathan was still doing information hunts. At the very least, they'd be able to teach Barnaby about the family he used to have, and help him retrain his powers. What Barnaby decided to do after that would be up to him, really.

Kaede would probably jump at the chance to assist with the training, Kotetsu thought with some amusement. She still wanted to make up for the memory bomb, and getting to spend so much time with her favorite ex-hero as a bonus? She'd definitely be all over that.

Amidst the new rush of movement in the lab, he just sat down and took hold of Barnaby's hand again and let his mind wander as he considered all the possible options. He wasn't in a particular rush about it.

With no one chasing them and no reason to be chasing anyone themselves, they had time now.

They'd figure something out.