Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

      The first time he consciously met Kotetsu’s daughter, she was crying so much her face was barely recognizable. 

      In a strange way, they met equals. They met incapable of seeing each other through the tears that blurred their eyes.

      He met her during the worst week of his life.

      She met him during what probably was the second worst twenty-four hours of hers. 

      None of them knew that they would, one day, call the following years the very best of their existence.

      Barnaby expected their first encounter to be full of Kotetsu’s smile, awkward moments, autographs signed on napkins or teenage diaries and silly stories told about classmates. He imagined joy, exuberance, laughs, smiles. Maybe a tad of discomfort or second-hand embarrassment.

      Never would he have thought of guns, fear, blood, mind wiping CEOs or murder robots.

      Never would he have thought he’d meet her crying.

      And nothing could have prepared him for the sound of her wails, the sight of her tears and the shattering strength of her sorrow. He expected her to be a whirlwind of childhood energy. Instead, she first was a piercing cry. A voice, a sob. Then a striking, heart-breaking realization; that’s her. She is his daughter. Those little hands, those painted-pink nails and tiny fingers getting drenched in blood, gripping his armor, are his child’s. 

      So, the first few seconds, she was nothing but a brownish blur, something his brain refused to understand, because hers wasn’t a voice he recognized, because she wasn’t Kotetsu. Kotetsu, who had been losing his powers for months and didn’t trust Barnaby enough to tell him. Kotetsu, who had been suffering for weeks and weeks, Barnaby none the wiser, too focused on himself that he was to even notice his partner drawing back, getting tired, tired, and slowly pushing him away.

      Barnaby had not even tried to question the lies. Even when they became barely believable.  

      Even when…

      When…

      But it doesn’t matter. Not anymore.

      Because Kotetsu is in his arms, gone, because of him. Because Barnaby’s just shot him.

      So, the first few seconds, the poor, sobbing child is nothing but a cruel reminder, a harsh realization. She’s the dire and direct consequence of his blindness, of his failure as a friend, as a partner. And her cries only solidify the horror of what he just did; he took her father from her. Her mother is dead. Her father, dying, maybe already dead, right here, right there, in their arms.

      Barnaby orphaned her. 

      For a moment, it threatens to suffocate him.  

      But inside his heart, a voice, sounding strangely like Kotetsu’s rasping timbre, begins to shout. 

      No, it hurls, so strongly it nearly hurts, it’s not your fault. 

      It’s Maverick’s. It’s always been Maverick’s. 

      From day one, Maverick’s. 

      It’s the strength of the voice, the sheer ire and hate it brings in its wake that makes Barnaby raise his head, that gives him the will and strength not to give in to the bone-crushing sorrow. This man, this man he loved as a surrogate parent for two decades, this man he begged for help had been the ghost he’d been chasing all along. The murderer who took everyone from him. His parents. Samantha.

      And now, now… 

      It’s unforgivable. In its cruelty, unfathomable. 

      So Barnaby stands up, the rage the only thing moving his trembling limbs, and forces his eyes to quit Kotetsu’s unmoving form. You’ve done it once, the voice also whispers. You can do it again. There is a child wailing at his feet, bend over the body of her father, and oh, how Barnaby understands. He knows, maybe better than anyone, who she could become if he were to let Maverick go unpunished.

      They met equals is more ways than one.

      But, he promises himself, they will differ. He won’t let her father’s murderer win.

      She will grow up strong, satiated. Avenged.

      His ankles shake when he takes the first step. The little girl raises her head with the movement, and suddenly stops sobbing. Their eyes meet. Whatever she sees in his at the moment, she stares for a full minute, mouth agape, a sob caught in her breath, suddenly interrupted in her grief.

      In a few years, she will tell him, bashfully, seated in a café, hands tinkering with the straw of her cocoa, that she saw death in his eyes this day and thought she was going to lose him, too. ‘I thought the world was ending’, she will say. And Barnaby will lower his head, strangely ashamed, and think: ‘In a way, mine was’.

      But Barnaby does not understand it yet.

      Because rage and grief consume everything, despair lurks in his lungs and there’s nothing he can do to bring Kotetsu back.

      The fight goes on. It’s a losing battle. Every breath hurts, every inhale of air feels unfair, when Kotetsu’s lungs stand empty.

      And somewhere in the darkened room, Kaede cries. 

      Barnaby fights with the sound of her tears echoing inside his helmet, already knowing the noise will join the chorus of his ghosts and haunt his nights. For once, he isn’t wrong.

      Somehow, miraculously, the horrendous murder robots stop. Saito manages to save the day, the whole city, down to the second.

      It’s the first miracle of the night.

      Barnaby can scarcely believe their luck. The other heroes are completely worn down, in various states of injury. His own muscles ache so much he can’t even stop them from trembling anymore.

      They would not have held on much longer.

      But the miracle continues, and Barnaby nearly chokes on his own breath. Because somehow, somehow, Kotetsu comes back, all smiles and awful retorts, but oh so warm and so alive Barnaby knows the tearful embraces are inescapable.

      Kotetsu’s gloved hand gripping his back might be the best thing he ever felt. For a full minute, he is pretty sure he died as well and that his fading brain is making him see things. Because Kotetsu did the unthinkable. Did what his parents never could.

      He came back.

      Kaede starts crying again. But this time, hers are tears of joy, relief, and love.

      Oh, how Barnaby understands.

      Because were it not for Kotetsu’s miraculous return, for his well-aimed and so, so well-deserved punch, this little girl might not have seen the morning. And neither would’ve Barnaby.

      It’s the second miracle of the night.

      So Barnaby cannot really help himself; he lets his eyes wander down, down to the shape of brown and pink that she is through his blurred vision, huddled so close to her father she might as well have fused with the neoplastic of his armor.

      If Barnaby were to drop his right hand just an inch, he would hold her, too.

      But he cannot. That’s not his place. It never will be. She’s too precious, too unreachable to hold. He’s not allowed such sacred things.

      Maverick’s just proved it; he’s undeserving of family. Maybe there is something rotten, something broken inside him, something that time could never mend, that prevent him from actually building real relationships. It’s not a happy thought, but Barnaby can’t help it. Everyone he ever loved is either dead, or betrayed him.

      Apart from one, his brain supplies.

      Apart from one.

      One he nearly lost.

      Kotetsu against him smells strongly of metal, melted plastic, blood and sweat. It’s not an agreeable smell per se, but it’s grown so familiar to Barnaby that his eyes prickle again. So he smiles through badly-held tears; at least, even if he’s not allowed family, the universe has allowed him something close enough; familiarity. It’s allowed him back something he thought he could never have before. Before Kotetsu.

      Finally, he breathes.

      His life almost shattered twice tonight.

      Kaede sobs. Her body shakes against the metallic part of Barnaby’s thigh and it’s making his entire leg tremble. For a second, he’s tempted to hide his face in the crook of Kotetsu’s neck, surrender his fight against his own tears and imitate her. To become the child he never was allowed to be. Because Kaede and him are equals, again, in a very strange way. Because on that dreadful evening, they both plunged deep into grief and suddenly met a new, bittersweet sense of euphoria. They shared luck, and fate.

      But they differed. Because Barnaby is no longer a child, Kaede no longer an orphan, and Kotetsu came back.

      It really is a double miracle.

      So Barnaby laughs instead, hidden in the heady smell of burnt plastic, safe against his partner’s warm skin, and finds in the tears of this child a new form of solace.

      De dono lacrimarum, fidem invenio, the voice of a cantatrice sings in his memory, a strange part of a lyric his young mind probably learnt from his mother’s operas, and that he never really understood. Because how could one find faith through gifted tears? How could they be anything else than a scorching, abrasive reminder of lost things, shattered chances, missing embraces?

      But, he thinks, maybe he could never understand. Not before today.

      Because there definitely is something sacred in this little girl’s relieved tears. Something that weaves into his heart and heals something he could never reach. Maybe, he thinks, he’s holding on to something sacred. Maybe she’s a thaumaturge. Maybe Barnaby himself is not so doomed to loneliness. Maybe there is still a future to be written in the ashen-tears of a vengeful son and a prodigal daughter.  

      Kaede sobs. Kotetsu lives.

      Two miracles in one night.

      Barnaby might just become a religious man.

      It’s only after everything, after the departure of the Hero TV crew and their cameras, when the three of them are waiting for the ambulance, with Kotetsu already lying in a makeshift-stretcher, that she raises a hand in front of him. Her face is laden with ashes, blood, and grim tears streaks. None of those things belong on the face of a ten-year-old, but her gaze is sure and fierce. The pink of her jacket has been turned grey by dust and dirt, her jeans are in shambles and there are metal flakes stuck in her braid.

      But her eyes… her eyes are tiger brown. She looks so much like her father Barnaby’s heart aches. Just like him, he thinks, she’s radiant. Even now, after saving the day and all their lives, traumatized, scared out of her skin, there’s a spark of determination firmly lodged in her eyes.

      A real hero in the making.

      “I’m Kaede, by the way!” she chirps, and Barnaby can’t prevent his eyebrows from flying up to his forehead. He expected accusations. A shaking voice. Not this pure, childlike, innocent… joy. “I’m... well, I’m Wild Tiger’s daughter! I’m so pleased to meet you, Mr. Bar- sorry, Mr. Brooks!” 

      He gulps. I almost took him from you, he nearly says. 

      “The honor’s all mine, Kaede,” is what actually comes out. 

      Finally, she smiles, and the world at least looks normal again. 

      “And please, call me Barnaby.” 

      Her smile grows so much it brings new tears to her eyes.

      Barnaby’s heart clenches.

      A few minutes later, it’s the memory of her smile that convinces him to climb in the ambulance and sit next to Kotetsu in the vehicle and not join the crew of law enforcers that came to get Maverick and put him in a police van.

      In a way, it feels like choosing the future over the past.

      And Barnaby’s had enough of pretending. Enough of charming his way around the cameras. He’s done with the lies. Done with the showboating, done with performing himself for others. Done. He wants something new, something else, something true. Something purely him.

      And this new chapter, he feels, will begin in the back of an ambulance. He does not know where the exploration will lead him, but he knows one thing. One thing that stayed true from the moment Jake fell off the roof, one thing that buoyed him through the last year and, he hopes, will guide him through the coming weeks.

      He’s found someone to be true with, to be loyal to. He’s found where his heart lies.

      And for now, it’s laid in the stretcher, making horrible puns at nurses, pretending not to have a second-degree burn to the side.

      So, for the first time, nearly bend in half to fit between the medical tools of an ambulance, covered in sweat and blood, exhausted but free, Barnaby isn’t where someone put him. He’s where he wants to be.

      Kaede follows and sits beside him, so young and small in the precarious balance of the bench seat that her legs don’t even reach the metal floor, her tiny hand firmly held by her father’s. Kotetsu smiles, jokes – something about a rainbow car he doesn’t understand and doesn’t try to, a shared memory obviously trying to reassure her – and then he looks at his partner.

      The smile they share feels different.

      It’s the first of many.

      Barnaby lets out a shaking breath. Kotetsu will be fine. Kaede has long stopped crying.

      The ambulance’s door closes, the engine starts, and hero and child watch the Justice Tower’s front step getting smaller and smaller with each mile from the tiny window.

      A page turns.

      And finally, the night begets its third and last miracle; Barnaby’s life begins.

Chapter Text

      The second time he has to face her tears, she’s been way more courageous than any twelve-year-old should have to be. 

      The day, and wasn’t that already uncanny, had begun quite normally.

      Barnaby definitely hadn’t been nervous. Why would he be? It was already the sixth or seventh time they saw each other. As in, face to face.

      Granted, it’s not very much, considering they officially met nearly three years ago.

      Oh, they did develop a habit to chat a bit when Kotetsu calls her every two or three days, Kaede’s even got his personal and suit number saved on her phone since the disaster of the Justice Day four months ago, but their actual meetings in person are still scarce. And Barnaby has to admit he would not be averse to them multiplying.

      Kaede is a great kid, and Kotetsu’s unconditional love for her is infectious.

      Still, he may have felt quite a bit anxious, for their next encounter was going to be their first since her father told her about their relationship. And there is a world, it would seem, between trying to get along with your partner’s daughter and wanting to get along with your partner’s daughter. The difference is in the stress. In all senses of the word.

      Because Barnaby may have been nervous.

      Even if he knows that she is okay with them being an item, he has yet to see her since Kotetsu’s Big Announcement, which consisted in a series of phone calls to his family and friends.

      (By the way, the phone calls went fine. More than fine. To Kotetsu’s endless dismay, his mother had only smiled, as if she was only waiting for her son to step up and tell her something she already knew or, more likely, guessed the first time she hosted Barnaby in Oriental Town. Muramasa had only hmphed, but, as his younger brother explained afterwards, coming from him it was as good as a heartfelt congratulation.

      As for Kaede… She had frowned, looked straight into her father’s eyes on the video call, and said: “well, okay then”. Only once Barnaby had been out of frame, and, she thought, out of earshot, had she dared ask, in a strange and fearful voice; “But you’re not going to forget Mom, are you, Dad?”  

      Kotetsu had sworn he never could.

      But still. It had stung a bit, and the fear not to be accepted had taken residence in Barnaby’s heart ever since).

      So what if he really had been anxious? Nobody ever has to know that Barnaby Brooks Jr. spent every free evening of the previous week trying to dig up advice on how not to fester jealousy and resentment from a stepchild. Not that it was very helpful. Or that Kaede actually was his step-anything. Anyway, neither the internet nor the books he borrowed from the public library had a clear answer on “how to get along with the daughter of your work-partner turned life-partner when her mother’s passed away and she used to be your fan”. Too specific of a situation, it would seem.  

      So, if accused of panicking, Barnaby thinks he would have quite a few reasons to state in his defense.  

      But had he known how the day would end, he would not have been anxious at all.

      He would have completely freaked out, scared himself out of his skin, died of fright on the spot and ascended heaven. No pass Go, no collect $200 Stern dollars.

      So, in the grand scheme of things, nothing would have been a problem.

      The day had begun normally, though.

      They had decided to keep things simple; a bit of sightseeing in Stern Bild’s most amazing spots on Gold Stage in the morning, a stop at her favorite fast-food for lunch, and an afternoon in the biggest mall of the city, shopping for a new pair of sneakers as an excuse to wander around the shops.

      So far, it’s going swimmingly. Apart from a minor disagreement at midday between father and daughter on how much mayonnaise it was actually acceptable to pour on fries and a strange comment about how he looks taller in the magazines, it had been going fine. Kaede had seemed to enjoy herself, and, to Barnaby’s endless relief, she had not seemed embarrassed or different around him, now that she knew that Kotetsu and him had been a couple for some months.

      She had even turned to Barnaby for advice in fashion, which he was half proud of and half amused at Kotetsu’s expense, because the older man had not even been looked at by his daughter when she debated about trying on a discounted skirt.

      Barnaby can’t really blame her. Kotetsu finds everything she puts on “cute” and he doesn’t have a very trustworthy opinion when it comes to color matching. After all, between the two of them, Barnaby’s the one who listens to their managers when it comes to clothing and style advice.

      In truth, though, Barnaby’s not that picky with his looks. He learnt quickly that it was the backbone of his public image and his professionalism led to him actually taking care of his appearance. But he doesn’t really mind a bit of slip up now and then… especially if it’s Kotetsu. Especially if it means borrowing one of his partner’s old shirts, one of those that smell like his laundry detergent and a bit like him, too.

      “Barnaby! What about those?”

      He shakes himself out of his thoughts and goes back to Kaede, who’s seated on a bench in the third shoe store they entered this afternoon, a new pair of sneakers on her feet. This one is mostly black, with big patches of bright pink and green. It’s not the best designed shoe Barnaby’s ever seen, to put it gently.

      But Kaede’s been attracted to those colors a lot lately, he noticed. He’s sure Kotetsu noted it as well. They haven’t said anything, neither to each other, and least of all to her.

      Maybe it’s not even conscious on her part. In a way, it’s very flattering. But Barnaby’s unsure if he should encourage her too much in this; wouldn’t it be better if she were to explore other things, build up her identity out of her fascination for heroes?

      But Barnaby’s not strong enough to tell her to stop. Not when he remembers Kotetsu’s whispered admission, on OBC’s freezing roof, the way it had lightened up his eyes when he’d whispered to the stars: “my dream… is that my kid thinks I’m cool”.

      Oh, if he had known at the time that his daughter would one day chase his signature neon-green up to her clothes.

      “Mh,” is all he answers, pretending to consider her choice for a full minute, and actually thinking on how to best phrase his thoughts. “I’m not sure they’d go well with most of your wardrobe. Take your brown pants, you know the ones with the embroidery on the pockets? It’d clash. Why not try to find something easier to match?”

      Years and years of PR and eloquence training, and he uses it with his partner’s teenage daughter. Worst thing? He doesn’t even feel bad about it.

      Kaede frowns and follows his gaze on the side of the shoes. She doesn’t seem very convinced by his argument.

      Barnaby risks a glance around him; Kotetsu, who was supposed to help by scouting the store for pairs her size, has been AWOL for nearly ten minutes. Barnaby strongly suspects the old man found either a child to coerce into taking some of his Wild Tiger cards, a cotton-candy stand, or, God help him, both.

      Likely, both.

      It’s also entirely possible that his scheming partner ditched them to give Barnaby some alone time with his daughter. Because Barnaby had the marvelous idea of talking to him. About, you know. The stress.

      “You own a lot of very nice blue clothes, or pastel patterns. Why not try and find a pair that would bring those out?” he offers.

      “Yeah… Maybe you’re right,” she concedes, and begins undoing the laces. Barnaby drops on one knee and helps her with her other foot. “But aren’t these very cool?”

      “That they are. The flashy colors specially,” he smiles.

      I also associate this particular mix with happiness, you know, he doesn’t add. Every time he suits up, every time he puts the TV on a rerun of one of their programs, every time he sees the lights of their chasers behind them, painting the city with bright stripes, he falls a bit more in love with neon lights.

      Especially if they’re green and pink.

      So, yeah. He does think those colors are very cool.

      He gently takes off the shoe and tries not to think too much about how tiny her foot is in his hand. It’s entirely normal. He’s feeling entirely normal about all this. After all, she’s twelve. Even if she’s adamant about being considered grown up and responsible, she’s still a child. Kotetsu’s child.

      “You’ve got quite the eye for the style,” he adds, because his throat suddenly feels tight. “Those are very neat high-top leather sneakers.”

      “There’s also very comfortable. I feel like I could run miles in them!”

      Her enthusiasm is endearing, in a sense. But Barnaby has to force his smile a bit; her old sneakers are so worn down she can probably count the gravels with her toes. He remembers them yellow. They now are a faded beige, stained and browned up in some places.

      No wonder she finds this new pair extraordinary.

      Still, Barnaby holds his tongue. He knows money had been a problem for Kotetsu for a long time, and before Barnaby meddled with their contracts when he discovered Kotetsu ran the streets without even the shadow of health coverage, and then proceeded to force Lloyds to insure them both properly and durably, his partner had struggled to make ends meet when the job got him to the ER. He wasn’t paid that well before the whole business with Jake, even after his transfer to Apollon Media, marketed and hired as he was as Barnaby’s sidekick – oh, how the word still stings, years later – and his savings often burnt in damage fines. His pay never lasted long, between the rent of his two-bedroom flat, everyday groceries, and heroes-related needs for medicine.

      All he had left at the end of each month? Straight to his mother’s account, for Kaede.

      From the start, money had been one of their biggest differences and Barnaby knew it. To this day, he’s still trying to get Kotetsu to accept some material things from him. After all, his parents left him quite the inheritance, that Maverick used smartly, invested in all the right places, and, in short, magnified tenfold. His mother, he learnt, came from Britain’s middle wealth and his father from France’s late bourgeoisie. Both decided to try their luck in Stern Bild to get closer to the research field in robotics.

      Everyone knows how that ended up.

      So here Barnaby stands now, alone, without any living relatives that he knows about that could have a claim at his money, with his bank account quite furnished, absolutely no desire to invest it for profits, a part of it already going directly to the SB Children Centre every month, and, for the first time in his life, the strange desire to use his resources to give back even a tiny part of the happiness he found with Kotetsu.

      He knows damn well that he cannot buy back the life his partner saved in more ways than one. But, still. He wants to help.

      So, Barnaby compromises.

      It took him nearly two weeks of strained negotiations, but he managed to convince Kotetsu to let him get Kaede a new pair of sneakers. It’s off the book, though. His partner will be the one to pay today, because he doesn’t want his daughter to see their wheel and deal, but Barnaby intends on repaying him the very evening.  

      “Say, Barnaby…” Kaede asks suddenly.

      She sounds a bit uncertain. Barnaby realizes he’s still staring at her foot. Probably has been for a full minute.

      “Yes?” he inquires, putting the sneakers back in their box, as if it were nothing, as if he didn’t just zone out while holding her ankle.

      “Do you really like me?”

      The question is so abrupt and blunt and unexpected that Barnaby can only open his mouth and close it, once, twice. He gapes at her a third time, feeling like a waterless-fish, and tries to find something that isn’t just consonants to say to her, because what?

      Some of his confusion must show on his face, though, because Kaede continues: “Or are you just being nice to me for Dad’s sake?”

      He closes his mouth. He has no idea how to begin to answer this. But Kaede’s silent, she’s watching him intensely, as if looking for lies directly on his face, and he doesn’t remember ever seeing her so dead serious.

      This, he understands, is her summoning the courage to say something she must have thought about for a long time.

      Barnaby rises up from his knees and sits next to her, on the bench. Both of them look down on the green and pink sneakers displayed between papers in the box. The card lid drops. Green and pink disappear underneath the pompous brand.

      Barnaby tries very hard not to read a very ironic metaphor in their half-obscured meddled colors.

      “I am not being nice to you because of your dad”, he finally manages to say, trying and failing to capture her eyes. “You’re an amazing young girl, Kaede.”

      “But you have to be nice to me, even more now that you and Dad are dating.”

      There is a finality in her voice, something he can’t quite place that bothers him.

      “I don’t have to,” he stresses. “I choose to, because I do like you. I always have, even before your dad and I decided to get together.”

      There’s a non-committal “mh” at his left. Barnaby, suddenly feeling like the biggest douchebag of the universe, mentally goes back over every single one of their interactions, and adds before he can stop himself: “Do you feel… that I don’t like you? That I pretend to like you? What gave you… What made you doubt?”

      Kaede sighs. She looks both defeated and exasperated, if such a thing even is possible.

      “Nothing in particular. It’s just something that Am… That I heard. Read. Online. In a book. I read it in an online book,” she mumbles, but not quickly enough: Barnaby finally understands that someone told this to her.

      Damn. How is he supposed to deal with this?

      “Is it… I don’t want to force you to tell me who said that to you. But…” he hesitates. “Is it someone who knows me? Or someone who knows Kotetsu? Someone who might be scared for you, in their own way?”

      She levels a determined gaze at him. For a few seconds, he feels he’s overstepped badly, but after an instant, she seems to deflate, and admits: “It’s Amar. Saroja’s big brother,” she adds, in front of Barnaby’s lost look. “He’s not mean, okay? And, so far, I was a hundred percent sure it only was because his mom got remarried, and her new husband is very hypocritical with him and Saroja, he’s treating them well when she's here, but there are remarks, and last week, he insisted that maybe you… Well.”

      “I think I see what you mean,” Barnaby tempers, because he does not know this kid or his family and he’s not going to judge a child on another child’s perceptions. Still, he’s a bit relieved; whoever this young boy is, Barnaby doesn’t know him, and if he’s her best friend’s brother, he may know Kotetsu, but not as well as to be able to actually be aware of some real issues. “But it’s not my case. I really do like you, Kaede. I like spending time with you.”

      She’s slowly turning a bit pink. Maybe she’s realizing what she dropped on Barnaby and where, but he doesn’t care. Now that she broached the subject, he feels as if he hasn’t exactly been honest with her, either.

      “You know, actually… I was quite scared before seeing you today.”

      She turns towards him, eyes as big as saucers.

      “You were scared? Of what?”

      He smiles, gently, but he cannot help but note that a part of her still idolizes him. How do you tell a twelve-year-old that you’re not what the TV made you to be? How do you break the bad news to her, that you’re flawed, filled to the brim with doubts and fears, and that all she ever admired on screen has been a lie?

      How do you tell a child, you don’t know me, but I’d like you to?

      “Of you not liking me,” he admits, and it’s so true the words hurt when they pass his lips. “Of you disapproving of me in your father’s life.”

      The store keeps blasting some sort of new pop songs in the aisle. It’s comically discordant with the tone of their conversation, but Barnaby’s suddenly glad that it drowns out their words from any passing customer.

      “I don’t disapprove of you in Dad’s life.”

      She worries her lips, and Barnaby doesn’t know what to say, because he can feel she wants to add something else.

      “I'm... I’m scared Dad’s going to forget Mom.”

      For a moment, Barnaby thinks he might have dreamt her hushed words. But his earing is good, even over the music, even without his power activated, and Kaede’s cheeks are turning slightly pink.

      “I cannot talk for him, you know,” he says with some prudence, as always unsure on how to tread when Tomoe’s brought up, both terrified to disappoint and mesmerized by the aura the woman managed to leave in her wake, “but I am not trying to make him forget her. He talks about her sometimes, and I don’t intend on telling him to stop.”

      That seems to strike something in Kaede.

      “He does? What does he say?”

      Oh, how he prefers when there’s curiosity painted on her face. This, this is the Kaede he’s familiar with, this is the passionate and amazing young girl he’d like to learn to know better.

      “Half of the time, he’s sharing memories of their time together,” Barnaby reveals, “and the other half, he’s saying that you look and sound just like her, sometimes.”

      It’s actually one of the things Barnaby hears the most when Tomoe’s concerned; how Kaede definitely is her mother’s daughter.

      What Kotetsu often overlooks is how similar his daughter is to him.

      Kaede smiles, but it’s a sad one, one Barnaby doesn’t really know.

      “I wish I had more memories of her,” she admits, still whispering over the music who failed to catch the mood and is still blasting some catchy pop song in their ears. “I only have one or two things I remember, mostly flashes and feelings, and if it weren’t for the pictures…”

      I would have forgotten her face, Barnaby completes internally when she doesn’t.

      He knows. He understands.

      Both of them were four when they lost their family. It’s already a miracle they remember anything, especially in Barnaby’s case.

      “It’s the same with my parents”.

      It’s not something he told a lot of people, even after all the work he did with his therapists in the wake of Maverick’s destruction of his mind.

      “I don’t remember much.” And I don’t know if I can trust what I do remember. “So I talk about them instead, to try and maintain their memory this way”.

       Kaede is looking at him. Her eyes are bright, serious, focused and a bit damp, but she’s not crying.

      “I would never ask you to give up any part of your mother you can have left,” he swears, because it’s true, and he had not realized how important that might have been for her before this point, “nor would I encourage your father to do the same”.

      He knows better than anyone what losing a parent does to you. And he can imagine quite accurately, from those dark, infinite and dreadful minutes inside the Justice Tower, what losing a partner might feel like.

      Kaede only nods. Barnaby shuts up and looks back at the shoes in their box. If he tries to utter another word, anyway, his voice might break. And it’s neither the time nor place for such emotional outbursts. Not in public, in a shoe store. Not alone with a young girl. Someone might see him, the press might get a hold of it, and from there? Nothing but trouble.

      He can already see the titles; “Barnaby Brooks Jr. devastated by hideous sneakers; what ill plagues our ancient MVP?”; “BBJ broken by a metaphor! Superpowered sneakers now on auction!”

      Yeah, no, thanks. Lloyds’ already busy enough with Kotetsu’s latest stunt on East Gold’s Lane.

      “I’m sorry,” she says after a while. “That was a bit stupid”.

      “It wasn’t,” he immediately answers. “It’s important, actually. You’re right about one thing; my relationship with your dad will make me see you more. Which, and I will say it again, is very good news on my part. But it also means that we can try and get to know each other better, without any intermediary. Without your father’s goofy stories on my part, and without the magazines’ meddling on yours.”

      She scoffs.

      “Are you aware they’re still saying you can cook?”

      There’s genuine teasing in her voice, so Barnaby narrows his eyes at her and accepts the olive branch for what it is.  

      “I can cook.”

      “You can boil stuff and put salt on it. Doesn’t count.”

      “Alright, I can bake.”

      “I still need a proof for that, you know.”  

      She smiles. He smiles back, feeling stupidly relieved, almost ready to tell her I’d bake you any cake you want, we could go home right now, and just do it. Except they’re still on a mission. And he doesn’t want to risk this new complicity he feels shyly blooming between them.

      What was he nervous about, again? She’s the greatest child there is.

      He must have stared a bit at her, because she snorts, and playfully adds: “Be careful, though, you’re starting to borrow some of Dad’s looks. And not his bests.”

      Barnaby scoffs, but accepts to turn his eyes back to the sneakers. Privately, he hopes it’s Kotetsu’s look of absolute wonder with his daughter.

      “Thank you for talking to me, though,” he recognizes, after a time. “I really want to know you better.”

      There is a strange mix of vulnerability, hope and joy in her eyes when she answers: “Yeah. Me too.”

      Barnaby’s heart feels so full he’s not sure it’s not going to explode. He turns back to the sneakers, left abandoned in their box.

      It’s going to be fine. They will be fine.

      After all, he did survive the metaphor, didn’t he?

      “Come on, let’s see if they’ve got these in white, at least.” 

      She goes up, and follows him around the shelves.

      When Kotetsu comes back to them, he’s got two paper bags of gummy bears in his hands and, of course, a dozen Wild Tiger cards poke out of his shirt’s pocket.

      “Can you believe kids these days? They didn’t want my free Tiger cards, and they even tried to sell me their T&Bs!”

      Kaede and Barnaby share a look. Why would Kotetsu keep on trying to lumber kids with his own merch, when it clearly doesn’t work (and never did), and when the whole city already knows his face and name is a mystery. Will Barnaby try and stop him, though? Definitely not. Kotetsu shines when he interacts with children, and it never fails to put a light in his eyes that is on its good way to become Barnaby’s weakest spot. What a mess it’d be if the criminal populace of Stern Bild were to be made aware of that fact.

      “Maybe you met very good future sales rep,” he jokes.

      “Yeah, more like mini Agnes and Lloyds, lemme tell you, they were fearless.”

      He’s got this look on his face that means he’s feeling a bit guilty about something, and Barnaby pauses. Gives him a quick break, then sighs: “Alright, how much did they extract from you?”  

      Kotetsu side-glances at his daughter, and deflects attention from himself by asking her about their progress with the shoes, most likely trying to escape his partner’s interrogation. But Kaede’s on his side, and she crosses her arms: “Dad. How much?”

      Kotetsu, biggest man-child of Stern Bild that he is, pouts and fishes a handful of gummy bears in answer. Barnaby steals a good half from his palm before his partner manages to put everything in his mouth, and shares it with Kaede.

      “So?” he insists, strangely distracted by the sweet flavor of the candy. He’s not going to admit that he hasn’t eaten those things in nearly twenty years. Still not the time and place to have a mental breakdown. Not over sneakers, and not over lost childhood tastes.

      “Fifteen bucks,” Kotetsu mumbles sheepishly.

      Barnaby’s laugh drowns out Kaede’s cry of indignation.

      “Fifteen!” she repeats, sounding bewildered. Barnaby will definitely not tell her that for Kotetsu, this isn’t much.

      “Can we see the card you bought us, at least?”

      “You haven’t even told me if you found anything,” he grumbles while rummaging in his pockets.

      “We haven’t, yet. We’re looking for a pair that'd fit with most of my wardrobe,” Kaede explains, stealing another gummy bear straight from Barnaby’s outstretched hand.

      “Oh, that’s good, that’s sma-”

      He’s rudely interrupted by a chorus of striking, metallic beeping. Barnaby stops chewing; the noise, and it’s probably a Pavlovian response at this point in his career, has made his heart pump up and his attention strike up. He looks down at his PDA.

      The three of them stop talking, and all their gazes converge on both their transmitters, all idea of foolery suddenly forgotten.

      They press the button at the same time.

      “Bonjour, heroes!”

      As it turns out, the shoppers of Kronos mall had not been having as great a time as them.

      “How many casualties so far?” Barnaby asks without stopping his run, straight into his PDA to Agnes’ shaking face.

      “At least a dozen wounded,” she answers, all business, “The statue toppled over and took off a big part of the roof in its fall. Bison and Cyclone are already on scene, they’re evacuating the rest of the civilians. I called everyone, but Dragon Kid, Fire Emblem and Blue Rose are on the other side of the city for a meet-up, they might get delayed,” she sighs. Barnaby is going to give her the benefit of the doubt and interpret it as a genuine dread for innocent lives in danger, and not a regret for lost screen-time with the very popular trio, or the FiRoLights, as the fans now call them.

      “What about Sky High?” Kaede shouts beside him. She’s been jogging with them from the moment they received the call. And she’s amazingly not getting distanced, even though Kotetsu and him have been running at a good pace for nearly four minutes now, jumping over stairs and barriers. Barnaby has to admit he’s impressed. Not only is she in top shape, but she didn’t even sound breathless.

      “Who’s that?” Agnes enquires, sounding distrustful. From the angle, Barnaby guesses she cannot see Kaede’s face neither on his nor Kotetsu’s transmitter.

      “That’s my daughter,” Kotetsu immediately reveals, “we were shopping!”

      “Hi, Miss Joubert!” Kaede joyously chimes in.

      “Oh! Bonjour, Kaede,” Agnes answers with an appreciative smile that even Barnaby does not get. He suspects it’s because Kaede managed to offer her the show of her career the day she turned up on the roof of Apollon Media and singled-handedly broke out all six heroes from Maverick’s hallucination. Top ratings and all that. Appears it grants you privileges even BBJ does not get. “Sky High’s on his way, too.”

      “And Ryan?” Barnaby asks. He’s only been back for a couple of days, but he’s technically on duty, too.

      “Not fully reinstated, and not judicially approved yet,” Agnes dismisses quickly. “Take the alleyway on your left! Saito’s coming to pick you up at the next intersection”, she says instead, looking up to her monitors, “you have two minutes and a half before you’re on screen. Good luck.”

      She hangs up.

      They all leap over a turned-over bin on the pavement, and hurtle into the next street.

      “She’s so cool!” Kaede squeals.

      Kotetsu and Barnaby share a doubtful look. As far as they’re concerned, Agnes oscillates between ratings-leech and terrifying boss. But hey, maybe, from a twelve year-old perspective, she’s cool.

      Finally, they reach the end of the alley and burst off the street straight into Saito’s blinding headlights.

      “This is all so freaking cool,” he hears Kaede mutter to herself before jumping in the transporter.

      They’ve been running across two blocks. She still isn’t breathless.  

      In the one minute and a half it takes them to suit up in the van, Kaede somehow manages to win Saito over by calling absolutely everything she sees in his portative lab the coolest thing she's ever seen and asking nonstop questions to their engineer. She doesn’t even seem particularly surprised to hear him shout his answers through a megaphone and for a moment, Barnaby wonders what kind of life she lives in Oriental Town. Maybe he gravely underestimated her, there.

      When she discovers the changing room and the automated process that puts their armors on, literal stars appear in her eyes.

      In a sense, her way of looking at things is refreshing. Barnaby, so used to it that he is now after a few years, has forgotten how impressive the machinery actually is, and how lucky they are to have Saito as their mechanic and designer.

      She’s so over the moon she even switched to Japanese a few exclamations ago.

      Barnaby can now surely add kakkoii to the list of words he learnt with the Kaburagis.

      “Saito, buddy, can you look after my daughter for a while?” Kotetsu asks, when the machine drops the last piece on his shoulders.

      Their engineer holds up a thumb in agreement but Kaede shouts, louder than his whispered 'no problem, Tiger': “What? No, I want to come with you!”

      Kotetsu’s eyes grow huge. Barnaby’s surprised he didn’t see this one coming; from the moment she began jogging with them, he’d been sure she would insist on tagging along.

      “This is a joke, right? It’s too dangerous, sweetie, you have to stay here!”

      “I can help!” she protests. “I can copy your powers, or Barnaby’s! Or even Tonio’s!”

      “Kaede, no,” Barnaby intervenes, knowing she’s more likely to listen to him than her father in this situation. “You’re vulnerable on the field without any armor or training. Please stay here and help us from within the van. Saito’s got our location and he will need you to help guide us to the civilians.”

      She opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, Kotetsu puts his helmet on, and bends down, trying to put a hand on her shoulder. She dodges it.

      “Kaede, please,” he adds, with what Barnaby would call his father voice, which is laden with authority but manages to stay soft at the same time. “If you really want to help us, help Saito, alright?”

      The last thing Barnaby sees of her before jumping of the transporter is her frowning, displeased face.

      For the first ten minutes, it’s all business as usual. Barnaby manages to save a dozen civilians from the smoking building, and with Kotetsu’s help, they are able to secure the area in record time.

      But, and isn’t that just customary as well, when Saito’s readings finally come from their integrated scanners, they learn that they still face three tiny, teeny problems.

      The first is that the Minotaur’s statue, Kronos Foods’ prized possession and the mall’s biggest symbol, which tumbled over like a big bag of rocks, landed straight into a machine room. Since it’s not enough bad luck in Barnaby’s life, apparently, one of its horns perforated a very big carboy of what, from the symbols he managed to catch sight of, is sure to be very flammable and very explosive material. So, if anyone, hero of panicked civilian, were to move it by an inch, everything might just blow up. And the integrity of the whole mall might be shattered, because, of course, the damned machine room stands just underneath a supporting pillar. So well-conceived. So well-thought on the architects and investors’ part.  

      Their second problem is that the machine room wasn’t empty when the Minotaur’s head crashed into it. It was occupied by four mechanics, all on maintenance duty, and who are now trapped in a giant time bomb.  

      Their third problem is the gravity. The statue, big, heavy heap of lead and bronze that it is, is still sinking into the building, taken down by its own weight. So the danger of it triggering the biggest explosion of the year is not only a possibility but, at this rate, a terrifying certainty. The police, Agnes warned them in their earpieces during their second briefing, is now evacuating the whole neighborhood.

      Saito estimated their time of action at seven minutes before the blast.

      In the four years Barnaby’s worked with him, he’s never once been wrong with his calculations.

      Their mission, on the paper, is simple enough: they need to find a way to get into the machine room, save the four poor people who had the unfortunate idea to make a career in mechanics, remove the statue’s horn from the carboy without letting it catch fire, and then lift up the entirety of its forty-thousand tons from the façade it smashed in. And even doing so, they’re not entirely sure to be able to prevent the massive blast.

      “Easy-peasy,” Kotetsu had said when Agnes hung up.

      Yeah, easy-peasy, Barnaby thinks, a little bit uneasy, sweat already trickling down his neck, watching his forearm-piece slowly fade back to a dull pink.

      Both their powers are dried up, all their combined six minutes used to save the shoppers from an impending doom. They now operate without any help from the Hundred Power, only protected by Saito’s little wonders of technology.

      Inside his helmet, Barnaby sighs.

      Business as usual.

      When Blue Rose, Fire Emblem and Dragon Kid finally arrive on scene, things are not looking good and Barnaby is getting slightly concerned about their survival chances.

      They’ve managed to get in contact with one of the mechanics trapped inside the plant room, and with the link open, they’re working towards directing all four workers to the southern door, which has been badly twisted by the Minotaur’s elbow but might still be reachable. Sky High, who’s been levitating non-stop for fifteen minutes, is still trying to find a way to lift the statue from the air. All the other heroes are working towards alleviating some of the weight it puts on the building.

      The main problem? They’re all way too slow.

      Inside his armor, Barnaby’s countdown indicates that he has fifty-seven minutes left before his power comes back. On his left, another countdown states, in terrifying blue numbers, that they’ve arrived at the mall sixteen minutes ago. They’ve all cut down Mario’s voice, narrating everything live, who’s way too enthusiastic about all this, but asked Agnes to keep all lines open between them.

      By all means, it’s not looking very good.

      “Barnaby!”

      His real name is rare enough on Kotetsu’s lips, even in costume, that he immediately turns and rushes to his partner.

      He arrives just in time to deflect a heavy block of concrete from hitting Kotetsu’s skull. His partner, who'd been holding the statue up in hope of preventing it from sinking in deeper inside the building, couldn’t have dodged. His arms, held up, have begun to shake.

      Shit. If even Kotetsu’s infamous resilience is getting thin…

      “The door’s down!” Bison suddenly shouts in their communicators. “I need help to evacuate the four civilians!”

      Karina, Pao-Lin, Nathan and Ivan’s strained answers confirm his worries: they all have their plates full already, and Barnaby has to move.

      He turns to Kotetsu.

      “Can you hold on by yourself?” he asks.           

      Kotetsu strains, groans, changes his grasp on the statue, and nods.

      “Not much longer,” he admits.

      They’ve been a team for long enough by now that Barnaby can recognize his tone and what it implies: Kotetsu needs help.

      “Saito,” Barnaby asks instead. “How long we got?”

      “Two minutes,” their engineer immediately shouts back. “But, Tiger, Barnaby, we have another probl…”

      He doesn’t have time to finish his sentence. The building suddenly shakes, Kotetsu’s grip loosens, and Barnaby’s heart nearly stops. Kotetsu tumbles, his hand slips and for a second, he almost drops the whole statue. When the ground stops trembling, he’s breathless.

      Except he’s not alone anymore.

      For the second time in the span of a minute, Barnaby’s heart skips a beat.

      Right in from of him, Kaede stands, glowing blue, hands outstretched, strongly supporting a good part of the statue’s weight alongside her father. Teeth firmly clasped, jaw set, eyes focused and determined, half crouched to bear most of the weight on her higher back and shoulders, she doesn’t look twelve. She looks fearless, strong, and unsinkable.

      She looks like a hero.

      Barnaby, stupidly, thinks of Atlas.

      “Kaede!” Kotetsu shrieks, frantically looking at his left, where his daughter now is. It cannot be called anything else but a shriek, with how much terror he puts in the cry. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

      Barnaby assesses the situation. Thinks back to the gummy bears, their sweetness and Kaede’s hand against his. Her power, he knows, is his.

      She is offering him something very precious; time. She’s holding on the heavy load of the statue alongside her father… and Barnaby now has the five minutes her strength is going to last to try and save the mechanics.

      He cannot let them go to waste. Not when there are lives on the line.

      “Be careful, both of you,” he asks, almost pleas, before starting his boosters and disappearing inside the narrow corridor at his left.

      Praying he is not making the biggest mistake of his life, Barnaby leaves them, taking with him the life-changing image of this young girl, crouched down with the weight of the world on her shoulders… and lifting it.

      When Barnaby finally reaches Bison, there’s only one man left in the machine room.

      “Can you take care of him?” Antonio asks, helping the third mechanic to get out of the atrium. He sounds strained and wounded.

      “I can,” he swears. “Go help Kotetsu, please, we have a problem.”

      “Oh carajo, what now?”

      “His daughter is here. She might need to copy your strength, her Hundred Power only has four minutes left, now.”

      There’s a blast of expletives in his ear, coming from all the other heroes, that verges from “Kaede’s here?”, to “what a courageous girl!” and some “she’s gonna get herself in trouble! What is she thinking!” He’s almost sure he hears Agnes order the cameras to stay away from Kotetsu and Kaede, otherwise Hero TV is going to have so many lawsuits.

      Yeah, like that’s the urging matter, here, he thinks, bitterly.

      Not the fact that they have put a child in danger, right in the middle of an impending explosion.

      Antonio curses in Spanish again, something about a family and a heart condition from what Barnaby gathers up, and then he flees.

      Barnaby turns towards the door. There’s an outstretched hand coming from it.

      “Sir, this is Barnaby," he warns. “I’m going to take your hand and lift you up, okay?”

      The hand makes a thumbs up, and were it not for the absurdity and grimness of the situation, Barnaby might have laughed. Instead, he kneels down, seizes the shaking fingers and manages to see the man the arm belongs to. His face is deformed by terror, but his eyes are clear. Not ideal, but Barnaby can work with that.

      Suddenly, another tremor comes and surprises him. He nearly loses his grip on the mechanic’s hand. Inside the machine room, which Barnaby can glimpse through the broken door, a big part of concrete falls… and lands on the leaking carboy.

      Time, as it always does in situations like these, seems to slow.  

      “Shit,” Barnaby says, one second too late.

      He pulls the man out, brutally tugging on his hand, and has the time to see the first spark.

      “It’s gonna blow up! Shield yourself!” he shouts in his transmitter.

      He leaps on the ground, putting the mechanic under him, covering his head with both arms, and hopes that the pillar they ended up under holds up.

      The next second, everything explodes.

      His ears are ringing. His head is pounding, and he’s pretty sure he swallowed up blood. Slowly, his surroundings come back to him, and Barnaby lifts himself up on his elbows and knees, assessing the scene.

      The entirety of the floor collapsed, but the building held up. Not so badly conceived, then. Around him, there are now more fragments of concrete than actual concrete. But, miraculously, he’s alive, and he doesn’t feel wounded. For now, at least.

      “Are you okay?” he asks, shakingly, to the man he had pinned down to the floor.

      No answer. A quick scan teaches him that the poor mechanic passed out, his shoulder might be dislocated, Barnaby may have broken two of his ribs in shielding him with his armor, but he’s breathing.

      Barnaby calls the paramedics on his position, then stands up in search of the others.

      He hasn’t even walked three steps when a voice echoes through Kotetsu’s transmitter.

      “Dad! Dad, wake up!”

      Barnaby freezes on the spot. Kaede’s voice is unmistakable and her shrieks are chilling. Suddenly, he feels like he’s back on the head of the Justice Tower, three years ago, the day they met.

      With her voice, her tears, her yells. And the all-encompassing sense of grief, of losing everything.

      Please, God, please, no.

      Oh please, please, please, please, please, no.

      “Please, Dad, wake up! Dad! You’re hurting me!”

      A quick look at Kotetsu’s vitals, that he got displayed on his visor, tells him that his partner’s unconscious, but not gravely injured.

      Concussion, the label states when Barnaby activates the scanner remotely.

      Relief nearly shakes him off his feet.

      Kotetsu’s alive.

      Power recharging. Forty-two minutes remaining.

      Barnaby’s counter is at thirty-seven.

      Great. At least now he knows that he lost consciousness for a few minutes, if not less.

      Putting a trembling hand on his helmet, he activates Kotetsu’s position to try and find him. Luckily, the system’s not fried up and he quickly spots the green dot on his map of the building.

      He runs, and discovers that his legs feel like jelly. He’s pretty sure he will discover a sprain or two when the adrenaline will have run off.

      But not now. Now, he doesn’t have the time to care about sprained ankles or strained tights.

      “Kaede! Where are you?” he shouts when he gets closer to Kotetsu’s position but can only see rubble.

      “Barnaby?” it’s a shaking cry, coming from his left, immediately followed by another: “Barnaby! Here! Please! Help! Barnaby!”

      The scene in front of him has Barnaby stopping short for the second time in two minutes.

      There’s a heap of metal and limbs in front of him, underneath the heavy smoke and blocks of fallen concrete. He would recognize Kotetsu’s armor anywhere, and it’s currently buried under long shafts and heavy slabs. His partner is completely lifeless, laid out on his stomach, with only his shoulder pieces and their sizzling green light visible. But, peeking out from under him, there’s a second silhouette, way lighter, way younger, way more fragile, trying to extricate herself from his dead weight.

      It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what must have happened; when the blast came, Kotetsu rushed to his daughter and shielded her. He probably took a block of concrete to the head and passed out, crushing her underneath him.

      The problem is that he didn’t manage to fully protect her.

      Barnaby gulps. One of her legs, sticking out from under Kotetsu’s, has been run through by a sharp shaft. The metal is still poking out of her calf, likely sunk deep in her muscle.

      There’s blood streaming on the floor, staining Kotetsu’s white armor, running to Barnaby’s feet.

      It isn’t Kotetsu’s.

      And it’s still flowing out.

      When Barnaby finally comes back to his senses a second that feels like ten minutes later, his first reflex is to press the emergency button on his suit again and call for the team of paramedics.

      His second is to rush to them and manage to capture the little girl’s eyes.

      “He’s not waking up, and it hurts, Barnaby, please, please, please, why isn’t he waking up?” she begs.

      “Kaede, listen to me. Kotetsu’s unconscious, but he’ll be fine, he probably took a heavy blow to the head and it knocked him down.”

      “How? Wh…”

      “I can see it, I have his vitals in my suit, okay? He’s alive, and he's gonna be alright.”

      He raises his faceplate up. It seems to calm Kaede a little, seeing his eyes.

      “I will lift him up from you, okay? You’re wounded too, so I will need you to try and stay perfectly still. Can you do it?”

      She trembles, and tries to nod. It’s good enough for Barnaby, who gathers Kotetsu’s unmoving form in his arms, and lifts.

      He groans.

      Kaede shouts.

      He knows it’s pain because he can see the state of her leg, but he cannot stop, not now that he’s begun, and if he were to leave Kotetsu on her, the weight of his armor might crush her for good and she needs to breathe. So, Barnaby carries on, clenches his teeth and manages to put Kotetsu in a recovery position by his side. He lifts his partner’s faceplate, checks with the back of his gloved hand that Kotetsu’s still breathing, and trusts both the armor and their comrades to take care of him.

      For now, Kaede’s his priority.

      “Mr Brooks? Paramedical team online, we've picked the mechanic up and we’re coming in. Tell us what you can”, a voice shouts in his ear.

      “I have a wounded child here, twelve years old, important blood loss, shaft ran through her leg. She’s O positive, just like Wild Tiger. They’re blood compatible,” he states, as clinically as he can and knowing that they have a blood pouch for each hero ready for the taking in their van. Kaede’s face slowly drains out colours while he speaks. “I am sending you my position, make it quick.”

      As soon as they hang up, Kaede tries to lift her shoulders off the floor to assess her injuries. Barnaby puts a hand on her and forces her to lay back down.  

      “Don’t move.”

      “Barnaby.”

      He gulps, again. So much terror and pain shine in her brown eyes.

      “Barnaby, it hurts.”

      The admission is so tentative and shy it’s even worse than if she had just shouted. Her brown eyes are getting glassy and her whole face is twisted in pain.

      It’s the worst thing Barnaby’s ever seen.

      “The medics will be here in a minute, okay? You’ll be alright,” he promises.

      “Can you stay? Please? Please, don’t go, Barnaby, please.”

      He sits down next to her and takes her hand in his. He cannot really say it, with how clogged up his throat feels, but Kaede seems to be reassured by the gesture, for now.

      The coms are back online and the other heroes are all shouting in his ears. He cannot answer any of them.

      “It is bad?” she asks, trying again to gauge her injury.

      The movement makes a tear fall from her eyes. Once the first one is out, the rest cannot stop and she begins crying silently.  

      “You’ll be alright,” he repeats, dumbly.

      “Mr Brooks?” a voice suddenly says from a few meters away.

      “Over here!” he manages, half-shouting, half-stuttering around the words.         

      He’s endlessly relieved to recognize the blue jackets of the paramedics in the middle of the rubble.

      But Kaede isn’t. The second one of the first-aiders tries to approach her leg, she squirms and pulls on his hand so brutally that Barnaby nearly ends up face first on the ground.

      “I’m scared, Barnaby, I’m scared, I don’t want them to touch it, I’m scared, please, I’m scared.”

      He recovers quickly, and squeezes the hand he’s still holding, moving his shoulders so that his metal epaulettes shield her from seeing too much of what the team is doing.

      “Look at me, Kaede, okay? I want you to look only at me, don’t mind them, they’re doing their job, you’re doing yours, and that’s looking at me and not at them, right?”

      She nods frantically. Tears fall so fast out of her eyes they’re beginning to pool in the shell of her ear. Barnaby raises his second hand, wipes them without even thinking, his glove probably rough on her cheek. He ends up smearing blood and dirt all over her skin.  

      “Can you please repeat it for me?”

      “Looking at you and not at them. Looking at you and not at th- what are they doing? It hurts, Barnaby, it hurts, what are th-”

      “Hey, I’m here, Kaede, look at me. They’re doing their job, you’re in good hands, I know it’s scary, but I promise you, you’ll be fine.”

      She begins sobbing in earnest, and another broken “Barnaby” escapes her. Her whole face blurs, and Barnaby actually has to gulp twice before his voice accepts to croak: “Hold my hand, squeeze it as tight as you need”.

      Her face is soaked. Barnaby feels like he might drown.

      “You’ll be alright, little one, I promise,” he whispers.

      Barnaby, on the contrary, will be forever changed by the sight of her crumbling face, the smell of her blood and the world-shattering fear coursing through his veins.

      He will never recover from this, and he knows it.

      Because this goes way beyond the dread of failing at his task, of losing Kotetsu’s daughter, he realizes, dumbly. This, this fear, is pure dread of losing her. Not just what she represents. Not just a child. Not just Kotetsu’s child.

      But Kaede.

      She’s already someone he loves, he understands suddenly, stupidly, watching her sob. This is definitely not the time to dwell on it, but Barnaby can’t stop his mind from wondering. What if he were to lose her, right here, right now, to a blood loss? What would he tell Kotetsu? What would he tell himself? How could he live, in a world where she no longer lives? How could he ever hope to fill the immensity of the void she would leave behind?

      “We’ve got the anesthetic ready, Mr. Brooks. With the stress and the pain, it might knock her down.”

      “Kaede, they’re gonna jab you. You might pass out, but it’s normal, okay?”

      “Will you be there? Will you stay?”

      The sheer terror in her eyes makes him want to scream.

      “I will, I swear I will.”

      A minute and a million tears later, she loses consciousness.

      Barnaby sighs so heavily it’s hard to convince himself the sound wasn’t a sob. Around him, the other heroes are trying to evacuate. Someone tries to gauge his own wounds, but Barnaby cannot really move. Not yet. The paramedic at his left squeezes his shoulder. He barely feels it.  

      Kaede is rushed, along with her father, to the nearest hospital.

      Barnaby does not let go of her hand.

      A few hours later, Nathan wordlessly comes to hug him in the hospital waiting room. Barnaby lets himself sink in their embrace and dumbly realizes that he’s shaking. He’s cold, somehow, and he’s not sure it’s only because he’s still in his sweat-reeking under-armor.

      “They’re both gonna be alright, Handsome, you know that? I’ve just talked to their doctor,” they whisper, one of their hands vigorously rubbing his shoulder.   

      He nods. He knows. Kaede will even be able to walk and run again, after a few months of recovery.

      But there’s still blood on Barnaby’s gloves, painting his fingers and palms in a brownish red.

      It may be dry, but it’s still blood. Still Kaede’s.

      Nathan’s right hand stops trying to warm him and drifts to his back, drawing mindless patterns between his shoulder blades. Barnaby tries to reign himself in. His friend smells like expensive skin products, floral perfumes, but a bit like fire, too, and a part of their furred vest is tickling Barnaby’s nose. It feels nice, but… not enough.

      Four more hours before he can be allowed in Kotetsu’s and Kaede’s room.

      “Saito asked me to give you this,” Nathan says after a moment of wordless comforting, handing Barnaby a strange brown bag than makes a heavy noise of rubbed plastic when he seizes it.

      “What’s it?” Barnaby slurs.

      “No idea.”

      Barnaby opens it. His fingers shake.

      It’s the second packet of gummy bears.

      This time, it really is a sob that comes from his throat and that he muffles on Nathan’s shoulder.   

Chapter Text

      The third time comes as an accident on a Saturday morning.

      They spent a quiet, calm night-in the previous evening, watching a movie Kotetsu picked up from his old sizzling VHS and which ended up being a romanced remake of Mister Legend’s most famous arrests. The whole thing had not been as sappy as Barnaby expected it to be, therefore he appreciated it. Also, old Legends episodes have a tendency to put stars in Kotetsu’s eyes, and Barnaby has yet to find a parade to stop his heart from fluttering like an idiot when it happens.

      Even Kaede had not complained too much about the bombast of it all and held up to the very end of the credits before claiming that it was going a bit out of style.

      Overall, a success of an evening, by their standards. They had even managed to go to bed early without Barnaby or Kotetsu’s PDAs forcing them to postpone all their plans. That fact itself was already a miracle and it should have alerted Barnaby more than it did; if he had gained one certainty those last few years, that was it: in his life, things never went to plan. And especially not when the Kaburagis were involved. Not even such mundane things as a treetop course were safe from the sweet chaos they inevitably brought in their wake.

      But Barnaby had been growing lenient; he had let himself believe that everything would follow his well-crafted schedule. Because for once, he had planned things ahead not for the father, but for the daughter.

      “Sleep well, and see you tomorrow for kicking your ass in the trees!” had been the last words Kaede said to him before going in her room for the night.

      He had smiled, Kotetsu had laughed. “She’s getting cheeky”, Barnaby had noted, not without fondness.

      “She’s getting that from you, you know”, was Kotetsu’s immediate retort.

      He was right, and Barnaby may have felt a tiny spark of pride. May have.

      (Who is he kidding? He’d been proud as a peacock and found himself smiling stupidly at the ceiling of Kotetsu’s bedroom half an hour later, cradled by his partner’s soft snores at his side, completely incapable of falling asleep, overwhelmed by the implications of what it meant that this young girl was actually taking up some of his mannerisms.)

      For weeks now, Barnaby and Kaede’s little treetop adventure course expedition had been on the table, but the right occasion never presented itself. At least, not before this particular Saturday. 

      Everything actually seemed to come at the exact right time; Barnaby and Kaede would get the whole day for themselves, as Kotetsu would spent it helping his mother get a battery of medical tests from the big Stern Bild hospital. Nothing important, just routine checks, but Oriental Town was less equipped with the new machineries and what would have taken three different appointments divided between three centres and, most likely, three months of waiting, only necessitated one day of chained up appointments in Stern Bild.

      Both Kotetsu and Barnaby saw an opportunity. To spend some time with his mother for the former, make sure she’s treated right and gets every medication she needs (as well as monitoring she doesn’t evade some doctors… again), and bond with Kaede for the latter.

      The previous times such appointments were needed, Anju had managed by asking her eldest to close his store for a few hours, but with Muramasa’s family extending and his now three children to care for on one salary, he had told Kotetsu that every extra hour was precious. The brothers shook on it; it’d be easier to line up the consultations and for the youngest to deal with their mother’s appointments.

      Twice, Kotetsu valiantly tried to fulfil his mission.

      Twice, his PDA went off while he was on his way to the station.  

      But the third time’s the charm, as they say, right?

      And since Kotetsu and Barnaby became an item, since the Kaburagis learnt of their relationship, Kotetsu’s been easier to convince to take some leave from hero work. For little periods, at least.

      Therefore, this time, he decided he would not tempt fate again and actually talked to Lloyds two weeks before the date of the appointments to make sure that both his and Barnaby’s transmitter would not ring unless there was a world-shattering attack on the city. Once he got the confirmation from Apollon, he called his family and decided that not only would he accompany his mother on her medical exams, but he’d also take her to see one of her favourite actors in one of Stern Bild’s largest 3D movie halls afterwards. As a treat for putting up with hospitals, which they both grew anxious about for similar reasons. He presented the project to Barnaby with a coy smile, asking if he felt up to the challenge of handling his biggest fan for the whole day. 

      Barnaby did not have to force his enthusiasm. He had been kind of waiting for such an occasion to bond with Kaede.

      So, he immediately texted her the idea.  

[To: Kaede] If your father manages to go with your grandma this time, would you be okay spending the day with me?

[From: Kaede] omg for real?

[From: Kaede] yes!!

      Barnaby had been at his desk, trying to fill up some forms, and his smile had been very difficult to contain.

[From: Kaede] but please tell me you’re not going to attempt to bake me cookies this time

      She was teasing him, again. It hadn’t been that much of a disaster, the cookies. They had only turned up a bit bronzed out, they were perfectly edible and quite good, in his opinion. And Kotetsu agreed. And so did Nathan, Ryan, Ivan, Pao-Lin and the children and the nuns of the SBCC, whom he brought some afterwards because okay, maybe six batches had been a bit much for three.

      But still, she insisted on tormenting him with it. Strangely, he didn’t really mind.

[To: Kaede] Hey, leave me some room for improvement, there!

[To: Kaede] But no, I was thinking more of going out. Doing something outside, for a change. We could go somewhere, do something fun?

      There is no answer for five minutes, and suddenly, Barnaby grows anxious. What if he’s getting ahead of himself? What if she doesn’t feel that comfortable with him yet? He scrolls back on their conversation. She never sounded uncomfortable or ill-at-ease before, quite the contrary, but… He glances at the clock, in the top right corner of his phone.

      Five to ten. He’s a moron. She’s in class. She shouldn’t even be texting.

      At ten, when he’s sure she’s on break, and because he can’t help but overthink it, he adds:

[To: Kaede] I’m thinking something along the lines of waterparks or amusement parks, but only if you want to! Are there some types of parks you always wanted to try out?

      The shedload of enthusiasm that followed these texts had been heart-warming, quite reassuring, and by midday, his smile impossible to hide. Kotetsu at his left definitely picked up on his mood and pocked at him mercilessly until Barnaby actually told him what he’d been giggling about the whole morning.

      Kotetsu had loved the idea, but pouted a bit and made him promise to join them next time. Barnaby, who had expected his giant man-child of a partner to show some form of jealousy (over the time spend with Kaede or over the amusement park, who knew), gave his word. 

      Also, he didn’t giggle.

      Since that morning, Kaede had been talking about treetop courses nonstop. Barnaby had even been treated to a face-to-face presentation, with a personalised slideshow, when he made the mistake of asking why she didn’t want to try the waterpark instead.

      Not the day he expected to learn so much about pine trees from a teenager’s colourful slides, but hey, life’s made of surprises.

      So it had been settled, reservations had been made, plans had been elaborated, and new sneakers had even been bought, this time without incident. They would depart early in the morning, just after Kotetsu, and spend the whole day together, climbing their breath out in the trees, discovering the nearby region and making the most of their time together.

      Overall, a perfect plan.

      So, of course, because this is Barnaby’s life now, it all came unstitched before it even began.

      When D-day comes, Kotetsu disappears after a quick peck on Barnaby’s lips, heading for the station, and Barnaby smiles while pouring some coffee in a thermos for the road. Somewhere in the flat, Kaede is still getting ready, muttering under her breath, running into stuff in her haste. Living with her, Barnaby has learnt from the few days he now spends in his partner’s flat when she visits for a week, is like having a mini Kotetsu on hands; a real dynamo, passionate about a lot of things (and a lot of what an ignorant Barnaby used to call unimportant things, such as what toppings should go on a vanilla cream or what condiment is a crime put on rice), exuberant, loyal to a fault, excessively loud but filled to the brim with love.

      She’s her father’s daughter in more ways than one, and Barnaby’s getting more and more attached to her with each passing day. She sneaked her way into his heart so quickly he cannot really believe they’ve known each other for four years only. Just as Kotetsu, he feels as if she’s always been there. She is a blessing, even if the whirlwind sometimes is challenging to contain. Especially when said whirlwind has NEXT powers and can copy yours any time she wants.

      But oh, for all the problems and near heart-attacks, he wouldn’t give her presence away for the world.

      Sometimes, he almost feels like a parent. Not that he sees her enough for it to actually be true, in any shape or form, but he doesn’t know how else to call the feeling that blooms in his heart every time he hears her name or sees her smile.

      It’s fondness, worry and consideration, desire to protect, to care and love for years all in one.

      It’s a feeling turned towards the future, and a feeling he knows, deep down, from his core, from his bones, that is here to stay.

      It is not something he expected so early in his life, and certainly not like this. But it’s a blessing all the same, and he feels strangely lucky thinking about it. His therapist says it’s a good thing, him feeling like he can finally take care of somebody else, feeling parental. Barnaby’s not sure, because Kaede is a teen and plainly capable of looking after herself.

      But still, it’s a very nice feeling.

      Nine o’clock strikes in the kitchen. They are supposed to depart in ten minutes and Kaede’s been in the loo for fifteen. They are already running late on their schedule. Barnaby sighs. Apples, trees, yada yada yada…

      He prepares the cool bag, leaves it on the stool and goes to gently knock on the toilet’s door.

      “Kaede? Are you almost ready, now?” 

      The answer takes some time to reach him. 

      “Yes, yes, just a minute!” 

      Was it him, or did she sound tense? He goes back to the cool bag, checks that they’ve got enough water and loads their sandwiches from the fridge. All done, he puts the bag, ready to grasp, by the door. 

      She still hasn’t come out. 

      “Kaede?” he tries again. “Are you alright?” 

      The “yes, yes” definitely seemed forced, this time. 

      “What’s wrong?”

      “Nothing! You go on, I’ll catch up with you in the car!” 

      “What? Are you sure you’re alright?” 

      “Yes, yes, sorry, give me five more minutes!” 

      That definitely sounded panicked and distraught, by his standards. What could be wrong? Did she eat something bad? Out of the three of them, he’s the one with the most delicate stomach, and they only ate Kotetsu’s chahan last night and the same breakfast she had the day before.

      So, why would she lock herself in the bathroom like this?

      He gets his phone. Five past nine. He frowns in front of the screen while a row of muttered “fuck, fuck, fuck, oh no, please no, no, no, no, not now” suddenly comes from the other side of the door. 

      Okay, now, he’s definitely worried. Kaede is not the kind of teen to curse freely, not unless she’s really panicked, and she is usually very cautious in Barnaby’s presence, in a way that is both amusing and touching. 

      Something is definitely wrong. 

      “Kaede, dear, what’s going on?” 

      There are other sounds, more curses, paper being torn and ripped, some sniffling and what sounds like a shaking exhale. Barnaby is getting anxious. She was fine just an hour ago, looking forward to their little expedition. What could be wrong? What ill plagues thirteen years old at nine in the morning? A row with a friend? He turns around. No, her phone is still on the kitchen table.

      He tries and imagines all sorts of terrible things. None of them is neither reasonable nor plausible. On the other side of the wood, the half-muttered curses keep coming, muffled, as if she were holding a tissue over her mouth to keep herself silent.  

      “Kaede, please, talk to me. You’re worrying me.” 

      What he receives in answer really sounds like a sob, this time. 

      “Sorry, sorry, Barnaby, I won’t… I won’t be able to make it today. I’m so sorry.” 

      There are tears in her voice and Barnaby’s heart leaps in his throat, all ideas of being late suddenly forgotten. 

      “Hey, hey, don’t apologise, tell me how I can help. Do you need some medicine? Want me to call a doctor?” 

      A sniff. 

      “No, no, no, it’s just… I…” 

      Barnaby pinches his lips, one step away from barging into the adjacent bathroom, grasping the first aid kit and breaking the toilet door. How does Kotetsu deal with this? One more minute like this and he’ll be back to his horrendous habit of biting his nails.

      “It’s come”, she finally croaks. 

      He almost answers back “what has?”, then the dots connect, and he says, quite eloquently: 

      “Oh.” 

      He lets go of the breath that had been stuck in his throat, strangely relieved. She's thirteen years old, turning fourteen in a couple of months. This is normal. This is not life shattering, and she’ll be fine.

      And immediately, the panic strikes again. He has no freaking clue how to deal with this. 

      “Don’t worry, you can go without me!” 

      What. 

      “It defeats the whole point of a day together, don’t you think?” 

      “I’m sorry, I won’t… I don’t know if… I don’t think I will be able to go out today.” 

      “Hey, everything's fine, you had me quite worried for a second there, but don’t fret, we’ll take it slow.” He cannot prevent himself from rubbing at his temple. “What do you usually do on your first day?” 

      He is not going to be the lame dude overwhelmed by the mere idea of a menstrual cycle. He read about this. He knows women. Some women. Mainly trans women, or menstruated folks with whom he definitely doesn’t talk about such things, granted.

      Anyway, not the point. He’s got this. 

      “What… What do you mean, what do I usually do?” 

      Her voice is shy, but she’s talking now, so he dives in. 

      “I mean when it happens when you’re at home, with your dad or your grandma. Are there things you cannot do, things that hurt, things that help?” 

      Do we have paracetamol in the medicine cabinet? he asks himself but doesn’t dare leave the toilet door to go and check. He’s pretty sure he bought a new box the previous week, when Kotetsu strained his shoulder during a high-speed chase with the water-powered and very slippery NEXT they captured. Knowing his partner and his infuriating habit to suffer alone and unaided, the wrapping must still be intact.

      But is the medicine suited for children? What dosage is acceptable for a teen? How much does Kaede weigh? Is it something you can ask a thirteen-year-old?

      Dear Lord. Barnaby’s way out of his depth, here.

      “I… It had never happened before.”

      Barnaby freezes. Ah, well, fuck.

      Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

      “Oh”, he says again, because it seems his mouth decided to commit not one but two treasons this morning. 

      “Well it’s not the… first first, I think it came before, but it’s never been… And I thought… But now it’s… Well… You know.” 

      He really doesn’t, but assents all the same.

      Dear Lord. If it’s her first period, what should he do? What does she need? Will he have to talk to her and explain what’s actually happening? She’s got internet, she must know things, right? He’s not even sure he knows exactly how cycles function… Don’t they study this in high school? Would she be mad if he actually had to research it?

      Darn, he’s spiralling again.

      But, being the hero that he is, Barnaby does not allow panic to settle in his heart and takes a deep breath to calm himself. He’d be absolutely useless panicked. He needs a clear head to deal with this.

      He breathes out once. Looks at what he knows. Where he is.

      No imminent or impeding danger. No one to push away from the site. Just a frightened child, on the other side of the door. A child he loves and needs to reassure.

      He breathes in, out again, and reigns himself in.

      A frightened child, he can deal with. He’s a hero. That’s his job.

      “Okay, Kaede, everything’s alright. Do you want your phone? Or do you want me to call someone for you? Your grandma? Kotetsu?” 

      “No! Don’t call Dad!” she shouts.

      Barnaby can’t help it; he startles. As if feeling his surprise, Kaede explains: “He’s great, he really is, but he’ll overact, as always. And if I tell grandma, he’ll hear.” 

      He glances at the clock. Ten past nine. They probably arrived at the health centre a few minutes ago and are likely either queuing in line or already seated in a waiting room. Anju will definitely answer her phone with Kotetsu nearby. And if she picks up and Kotetsu hears that it’s Kaede… Yes, they will both run straight to the flat, medical appointments be damned.

      He hears her letting go of a heavy breath. Good, he thinks, she’s trying to calm herself. He imitates her, discreetly, feeling like a total idiot.

      “Do you want them to come back?” he asks, tentative, “because we can call them, it won’t be a problem at all, you know.”

      “I know. And no, Grandma needs the tests, and I…” 

      She does not finish this sentence. 

      “Barnaby?”

      Her voice is so hesitant, it’s going to break his heart. There’s a part of Barnaby who is just a hairbreadth away from shouting you can ask anything, Kaede, please don’t hesitate, please don’t be ashamed. What I don’t know, I’ll research. What I don’t understand, I’ll listen to.

      “Yes, dear?” he says instead.

      “I don’t suppose you have… stuff?” 

      Stuff? What on earth is stuff? 

      “Sanitary protections?” he valiantly tries.

      “... yes. That.”

      He doesn’t. But he should. They should have prepared for this. Because he’s ready to bet that Kotetsu didn’t, all convinced he is that she’s still so young, still his baby duck, his little cub, so far from adulthood… Well, one step into it, now, he thinks.

      “I don’t, but I can hop to the minimarket just downstairs, it won’t even take ten minutes. Would you be okay staying here alone in the meantime?” 

      The shop actually is around the block, and it normally takes a little bit more than eight minutes to reach it on foot, but what Barnaby does not tell her is that it will effectively take him ten minutes for the round trip if he activates his power. 

      As far as he’s concerned, this counts as an emergency. The sheer idea that Kaede did not pick up on the fact that he used the verb to hop is worrisome.

      Ergo, emergency.

      “... okay. I’m very sorry, Barnaby, I…” 

      “Hey, don’t apologise, we should have seen this coming and bought some beforehand. I’m going to give you your phone, and you’ll text me what products you want me to buy on the way, okay?” 

      He tries to make his voice sound as calming and comforting as he can. He isn’t sure he succeeds. But Kaede doesn’t call him out on it, so the façade must have held.

      She’s still sniffling in the toilets when he grabs his keys, his card, and skedaddles out of the flat with the distinctive impression to be fleeing the most important intervention of his life. He gets down the stairs four steps by four steps and runs straight into the door at the end of the staircase. Luckily, he’s alone and there is no one to witness him crashing into the wood or, God help him, film it.

      He’s Barnaby Brooks Jr. He’s a hero. He will ace this. He will not freak out because his partner’s daughter is alone with him on her very first period.

      He’s BBJ. He’s been crowned King of Heroes two years in a row, he’s faced countless dangers and threats. He got held at gunpoint, set on fire, drowned, crushed by buildings.

      He will not freak out. 

      He proceeds to freak out on the whole journey to the store. Almost texts Kotetsu three times, Nathan and Ryan twice and even Karina once. His phone finally beeps when the shopfront comes into view, and he breathes out. She sent him two pictures, each with a box of pads, clearly downloaded from an internet search a few minutes ago.

      God bless this kid, he thinks; he only has to find the matching boxes in the store and will not need to tear his hair out trying to figure out which one to pick. 

[To: Kaede.] Got it. Need anything else while I’m in there?

[To: Kaede.] Food, medicine?

      The check mark lights green; she’s read it. He puts his phone back in his jacket, enters the store, grabs a basket, and skilfully pretends he’s completely at ease. Nothing unusual to see here. Just Barnaby Brooks Jr. doing his everyday shopping. Making a bee line to hygienic products.

      He checks his phone. There are three moving dots under their conversation; she’s writing. He stops in the middle of the aisle. Waits. A minute passes, then two. He’s certain she’s mortified, and hesitating, but he has no idea over what, and his imagination is failing him.

      After another minute that actually feels like ten, he decides to resume his shopping.

      He adds tissues and cookies to the basket, more to occupy his time and hands than anything else, then goes back to the pads. Fortunately, the brand she sent him appears to be quite common, for they are the second he notices on the shelf. Still no new message. He takes four different types. It never hurts to have choices, right? 

      “Good morning, Mister!” 

      Oh, crap. The staff knows him and they usually leave him the hell alone. He heard two employees chatting under their breath when he barged… well, calmy entered the store, but ignored them. He’s used to people noticing him and interfering with his everyday life, but now is definitely not the time.

      He should have grabbed the hideous, ridiculous but very effective baseball hat Kotetsu got him, and put his hair in a ponytail, and put on a sweater, and…

      He turns to the young woman, “Katie, she/her” according to her nametag, trying to appear busy and polite and not-at-all like he wants to tell her please leave me be my kid’s got her first period, she’s alone and I have no idea what I’m doing.

      He hopes his face convey the sentiment. Well, not such a good morning to you, Katie she/her, he thinks, petulantly, and immediately regrets his childishness. He’s better than that, for crying out loud. And the poor girl is not responsible for his total lack of knowledge in the field, his fear to be an inconvenience or his terror of disappointing both Kaede and Kotetsu. He’s the one who should be better. Who should have known. Should have prepared.

      “May I recommend you some of our products to complete your basket? I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but we’re making a very cool discount on hot water bottles!” 

      He blinks, too surprised to say anything. Why would she try to sell him hot water bottles?! How on earth do hot water bottles complete a basket full of sanitary pads, cookies, and tissues? He summons all his PR training and manages to sound confused and nice and not at all like he wants to rip all his hair out and run straight to Kotetsu and Anju tail between his legs when he asks:

      “I’m sorry, hot water bottles?” 

      The smile he gets is very strange, and very unusual. He’d be completely incapable to say if it’s compassion, amusement, pity or a bit of the three shining in her eyes. It only lasts for a second, though; the next instant, the nice and approachable mimic that seems delivered with the sales assistant’s position is back on her face.

      “Yes, a very special offer! It’s a pack, it comes with an herbal tea, a blend made specifically for these situations. Well, personally, I still prefer plain chamomile or peppermint, but with cramps, you need to try to know what works on you! Anyway, I’ll leave you to check it out for yourself, but don’t hesitate to ask us if you need help!” 

      And just like that, she’s gone. 

      He blinks again. Goes back mentally over his entrance in the store.

      Mh. Well. Maybe he had not been that subtle.

      This young woman saw Barnaby Brooks Jr. running into the shop, clearly distressed, head straight to the hygienic product aisle, then proceed to wander aimlessly around the store, frantically checking his phone, with nothing in his basket except period pads, a tissue box and a pack of cookies… yes, okay, maybe it was a bit obvious that he’s way out of his league here. 

      He sighs. Kaede still hasn’t answered, but the dots are still moving.

      Oh for love’s sake, he thinks, just say it, Kaede!

      He goes to check the hot water bottles, finds that there is, indeed, some sort of discount for one of them, a kind of ugly, stuffed thing, probably made to look like a sheep. Except that it’s pink. And strangely squared-shaped. It resembles a sheep the same way a MadBear resembles a bear. Intellectually, maybe. Because the labels states it. He seizes it, gauges it with scepticism and ponders for a while over the state of the economics and the English language.

      He's somewhere at “what part of the signified stands in the signifier if the sheep never was a sheep” when the message comes. The vibration makes him jump and he nearly drops the squared-shaped plushie. After thirty seconds of tossing and bouncing the thing between his hands in the worst game of hot potato played in Stern Bild, he manages to balance it in his arms, and breathes out loudly.

      What a mess.

      He’s a mess.

      And oh, how Kotetsu would gloat and coo if he could see him, right now.

      Barnaby’s glad he cannot. And he’s glad the store is mainly deserted, because if anyone had captured this on camera… Let’s just say that his reputation as a fearless hero would be dangerously questioned. The great and confident BBJ. Shaken up by a text alert.

      He takes one last second to tuck the hot water bottle in his elbow and make sure it won’t fall before fishing out his phone.

[From: Kaede] Do you know if Dad’s got some medicine?          

      He’s sure this is not what she really wanted to ask. Damn. 

[To: Kaede] Do you mean painkillers?

      No answer. He adds:

[To: Kaede] I’m buying some more to be sure.

[To: Kaede] Are you alright? I’m almost done here.

      She reads his messages, he can see it. 

[From: Kaede] Yes, I am, and sorry again.

[To: Kaede] Don’t be. I’ll be back asap.

      He puts the ugly sheep in his basket, then proceeds to go around the entirety of the store one last time to grab a few useful things.

      He comes back to Kotetsu’s flat ten minutes later, eyes glowing blue, with three bags of groceries and two sachets of her favourite candies.

      When Kaede finally emerges from the bathroom, nearly half an hour later, her face is so flushed Barnaby’s worried she caught something on top of everything.

      “Hey there”, he smiles. “How do you feel?”

      She joins him on the couch, where Barnaby piled up all the blankets and pillows he found in Kotetsu’s closets, her phone tightly clasped in her hand, and sits so straight he wonders for a second if she also hurt her back. He quickly closes the fifteen different tabs he managed to open on his phone over the past quarter of an hour after his call to the treetop course centre and puts the device down. No need for her to know he’s been freaking out again.

      She looks very pink. Is it really just embarrassment? Barnaby does not dare put his hand on her forehead to take her temperature.

      “I…” she hesitates. “Weird”, she admits, burring herself under a tartan plaid so that only her toes are sticking out, “I feel weird”.

      “Do you… want to talk about it?” he risks, heart pounding, memories of articles turning over in his mind like the worst kebab of information known to man.

      She gains a new shade of crimson, shakes her head.

      “Do you at least… er… know what’s happening? Do you need… Do you want me to explain some things to you?”

      Her face actually disappears beneath the blanket.

      “I’m good, Barnaby. I have internet, you know”, she mumbles.

      “Okay”, he says, feeling like a total idiot.

      The silence stretches. Barnaby looks at his phone, locked, on the couch cushion. Kaede stares at her animal-themed socks like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. It’s monkeys, today. He’s sure she chose them specially for the tree-top course, and his heart clenches.

      She looks so young, hunched over herself like this. And ill-at-ease.

      Barnaby’s never felt uncomfortable in her presence before, he’s pretty sure she didn’t either, and if it’s up to him, it’s not going to start now. 

      “Do you want to eat something? Drink something?”

      “I’m… not really hungry.”

      And she had breakfast not an hour ago. Well done, Barnaby Brooks Jr. Other great ideas while you’re at it?

      “Not even a tea?”

      She raises her head from the plaid.

      “A tea sounds good.”

      Barnaby rushes to the kitchen. Tea. Here comes a good idea; tea. And he even got new blends, made specifically.

      He’s a genius. Tea.

      He comes back with two steaming mugs and finds Kaede still rolled up on a plaid, but with a tissue balled up in her right hand and her phone open on a mini game in her left.

      “Careful, it’s still hot”, he warns when he sits down again, putting the cups on the coffee table.

      She thanks him quietly, opens her mouth, and closes it. Pink is back on her cheeks and she’s hesitating, again. But this time, Barnaby is determined not to let her wallow in embarrassment.

      He can’t let her add discomfort to her already stressful state. He’s used to blood, dire situations, and all the kind of things a body can do while in panic or in shock. It’s part of being a hero, surely, but it’s also part of being alive, of being able to help, of being here at the least glorious moments, so that the next glorious ones will continue to exist.

      They’ve known each other for four years now. He needs her to know she can rely on him, even sick, even in pain, even angry, sad, or afraid. He won’t flee, won’t laugh, and he won’t think less of her. Never.

      “Kaede…” he starts. 

      “I’m sorry about the treetop adventure course”, she blurts, cutting him off, “I know you wanted to try it, and we made reservations, and it’s gonna cost you so much, I’m sorry.” 

      Her eyes are beginning to shine. The moment she realises how close she is to crying, she bites her lips, sniffles, and manages with a grimace and a shaking breath to reign herself in. It’d be impressing were it not so heart-breaking and so similar to what Kotetsu does in similar circumstances. The only notable difference is the lack of a self-depreciating joke on Kaede’s part.

      “Do not even worry about the treetop course”, Barnaby says, “I called them earlier and it was absolutely not a problem.”

      “But the money…”

      “Isn’t a problem, Kaede. And what’s more, they asked if we wanted to cancel or to postpone, and I said postpone, so we’ll definitely have another opportunity to ape up the trees together.” 

      She sniffles, and swallows so heavily he can hear her gulp.

      “But... It was important to you, and I…”

      “You’re important to me”, he corrects, firmly but gently, “Not the trees.”

      For a moment, he’s sure she’s going to answer, to argue. He watches her jaw clench and unclench, the tissue in her right hand ruffle, and her mouth wince. But after a minute, she only nods, and reaches out in silence for her steaming tea.

      “I almost forgot”, Barnaby says, “I got you something else from the store.”

      There is a spark of curiosity on her eyes when he rises, still frail underneath the embarrassment, but he counts this as a win. 

      He comes back a few minutes later with the hot water bottle filled halfway up. He has to admit, just holding the thing feels nice; it’s soft, warm, and the weight of the added water makes the belly of the so-called-sheep look strangely round and cute, in its very own, bizarre way. 

      “What is this?” Kaede asks, looking at the plushie like it’s the weirdest thing Barnaby ever gave her. Which, granted, it probably is.

      “It’s a hot water bottle. I think it’s supposed to look like a sheep.”

      “Oh.”

      “You can say that it’s ugly, you know, ‘cause it definitely is.”

      She smiles, a bit shyly, but it’s there.

      “I wouldn’t have said ‘ugly’. But I’m not sure it really is a sheep. It looks a bit like a mix between a cartoon dog and a baby hare.”

      Barnaby scoffs, and hands it to her.

      “It does, doesn’t it?”

      “Oh, it’s warm!” she exclaims when her fingers actually touch the synthetic fur, and her gaze meets Barnaby’s.

      “Yes, I poured the water that was left from our tea in it. Be careful not to joggle it too much, though, I don’t want you to burn yourself.”

      Her hand has begun caressing the plushie’s head absentmindedly, and suddenly, Barnaby is struck by the realisation that even if she’s well-spoken, cheeky and responsible, Kaede is still definitely a child.

      “It might help with the cramps.”

      Her forefinger traces the shape of the sheep’s big sparkly eyes, and he adds: “The warmth, I mean, not the weird face.”

      Kaede scoffs. Tears have completely retreated from her eyes now, and she gently places the sheep on her belly.

      “You know what? I think both will help. Thank you, Barnaby.”

      This time, he cannot stop his hand and ends up squeezing her shoulder.

      “What would you say to kicking my ass at board games instead? I discovered quite a few boxes when I rummaged through your father’s closets.”

       “I’d say I’d hope you didn’t find all his special Hero TV editions from Legend’s time.”

      “I didn’t find anything else.”

      “Of course you didn’t.”

      The morning goes like this, with the two of them playing board games on Kotetsu’s living room, Kaede on the couch rolled up like a human burrito in her tartan plaid, the ugly-pink-sheep strongly held against her stomach.

      The image shakes something in Barnaby, makes his heart clench. He does not understand why. 

      She tries three different infusions, declares the first “the foulest thing ever made from leaves”, the second “a spinach-brew”, and the last one only grants a non-committal pout. He tastes each one with her, and agrees on the two first sentiments, but actually likes the last. By midday, their two mugs stand abandoned on the counter, and a timid smile appears on Kaede’s face when he jokes about the irony of his non-existing dexterity with “Tumblin Civilians”.

      A minute and another attempt at a joke later, she laughs.

      Stupidly, Barnaby has never felt more proud of himself.

      The afternoon is more tricky. A close-call makes her paranoid and she refuses to sit on anything that has not been towel-protected first. Barnaby, unsure on how to tell her that blood does go off this couch easily, and that he knows it from first-hand experience from bleeding out on Kotetsu’s lap after a nasty blow from the corner of the kitchen cabinet’s door, humours her. But by 3PM, her cramps prevent her from concentrating on any sort of game, she’s getting cranky, annoyed and she’s got ants in her pants. Figuratively.

      At least he hopes it’s still figurative. 

      They’re in the middle of a Monopoly game when she suddenly runs off to the toilet. Ten minutes pass. He hears sniffles and hiccups, then the flush, and the water running for two more minutes. 

      She smells heavily like the lavender soap they store in the hand dispenser when she comes back. 

      “When did you take your last paracetamol?” he asks, tentative. 

      “With the second gross tea.” 

      So, nearly ten. 

      “It’s been more than five hours. You’re clear to take another one, if you need.” 

      She obeys without a word. She’s looking pale. When did she last eat? She nibbled through the sandwich they had prepared for lunch, but has not touched anything else since, at least that Barnaby knows about. For the umpteenth time today, he wonders if he should break his promise to her and call Kotetsu. 

      “Do you want to try to sleep it off?” 

      She shakes her head and bites her lips. Is she trying to be nice, because it’s him? If it were her father with her, would she be more sincere, allow herself to be irritated, in pain? 

      “What do you feel like doing?” he asks instead.

      “I… have no idea. The nausea’s passed, at least. But I’m not sure I can finish this up.” 

      God, she sounds miserable. It takes Barnaby an awfully long time to understand that she’s talking about the Monopoly game.

      “My properties will thank you. You were robbing me blind, there”, he tries to joke. She only answers with the ghost of a smile, and comes back on the couch with the precaution of a heavily wounded soldier, her hands holding her stomach like it’s going to pop out of her belly any second.

      Is this normal? Should he call Kotetsu? Anju? A doctor? Barnaby feels on the verge of panic.

      “I’m really sorry for ruining our day together”, she mumbles, once more.

      He takes her hand in his. Her palm is clammy, warm, and slightly trembling. He adds his second one, rubs at her knuckles, and tries and fail to meet her eyes. She’s determined to keep looking at her knees.

      “Kaede.”

      Her mouth does something complicated that Barnaby knows a bit too-well by now, both from her and her father. It’s the pout that indicates that tears are not far and that they hate themselves for it.

      “You didn’t ruin anything, love. I’m here to take care of you, and you’re allowed to feel like shit some days, okay? Especially on your period.” 

      He does not know what finally does it, what becomes the final straw; the endearment that completely escaped him, his weird hand-rubbing, or the curse, also quite unusual for him, but either way, her face crumbles. She nods frantically, tries to sweep her eyes, but the tears are coming quicker than she can wipe them. 

      Barnaby, not knowing what else to do, squeezes her hand.

      “So-sorry”, she mumbles again, between hiccups, “I’m sad, I’m disappointed in everything and it feels so weird”.

      “Come here”, he offers, awkwardly, putting his elbow on the back of the couch, hoping she will understand the invitation, because how else do you ask a teenager to hug you?

      Miraculously, she does understand, and her face ends up squashed between his chest and the couch. There is no way the position is comfortable, but once she’s settled, she does not move and Barnaby does not dare either. 

      “And stop apologising, you’ve done nothing wrong, you’re getting older, things change, it’s not your fault.”

      “But the treetop course…” he hears, muffled by his shirt and the cushions.

      “Again, it’ll wait for us”, he interrupts, final. “Trees aren’t going to disappear overnight, and we’ll have plenty of other opportunities.”

      “Still”, she sniffles, finally moving and blindly grasping a tissue from the coffee table. She all but buries her face in it. “I ruined your day, and now you’re bored, and I’m lame, and it sucks”, she croaks, suddenly overwhelmed by sobs again.

      “Kaede, no”, Barnaby whispers, his hand leaving hers to cradle her head. Her hair is soft and a bit tangled up. “You’re not here to entertain me. You’re here to just be you, and there are days when you’re down, and that’s alright. I just wish I knew what to do to help you, relieve the pain a bit, at least.”

      He turns more firmly towards her, gently guides her head back on his shoulder, but keeps his fingers in the brown strands. Finally, she surrenders, and her arms snake around his middle, squeezing tight. Barnaby’s shirt is getting damp, but he couldn’t care less.

      On the coffee table, the Monopoly stands abandoned, Barnaby’s properties ejected from the board by Kaede’s previous reach for a tissue. He looks at them and tries to will his heart to stop hammering in his ribcage.

      Kaede is still crying. He holds her long after the tears stop. None of them mention it.

      The texts from Kotetsu come at six PM.

[From: Kotetsu] Mom and I are done! Heading to the movies now!

[From: Kotetsu] Everything alright with my two flying monkeys? 🐒🥰

      “What should we answer him?” Barnaby asks Kaede, who retreated to the bundle of plaids and towels at the end of the couch an hour ago and hasn’t moved since, tapping on her phone. She’s snickering and smiling from time to time, so he guesses she must be texting Saroja the whole affair.

      He hopes she’s not telling her how lame he’s been. Or at least that Saroja won’t babble too much about it to their classmates. It really would be bad for his image if it were to be known that Barnaby Brooks Jr. cannot deal with menstrual cycles. It’s a bit of a disgrace, for a man like him.

      Realistically, he knows they wouldn’t, but living with a kid, it seems, dives into your insecurities.

      The TV is playing in the background, re-enacting some shows none of them pay attention to. It manages both to calm and distract Barnaby, who's been skillfully pretending to play Scrabble on his phone for the past hour but has, in fact, been gathering information on endometriosis. He landed here by accident, led into the rabbit hole that was typing “how to help someone on their period” on a search engine.

      “Tell him I said ‘Barnaby’s amazing’”, Kaede answers without looking up.

      “I’ve never even tried tree-climbing. I doubt this would be true.” 

He goes up, ready to pour himself another tea. “Still no idea for a three-letters word with a J?”

      “If you still can’t do ‘BBJ’, then no. And I’m sure you’d be very good at treetop courses. But I’m not talking about our failed attempt, I’m talking about today.” 

      Halfway into pouring himself another cup of the “spinach brew” that isn’t so bad after all, Barnaby freezes. Flushes. Looks at her silhouette from over the counter. Did she just…? Next time she raises her head, she levels an eyebrow at him, knowing perfectly what she said and what it implies.

      Barnaby cannot, for the life of him, stop his surprised smile. And he knows it’s not the type of smile that make his face look seductive or attractive. It’s the type of shit-eating grin that makes him look like a total idiot. But he cannot stop. So, instead, he drops his gaze down to the kettle and tries to hide the fact that he’s probably also blushing.

      Was that what Kotetsu felt, the day she claimed he was the coolest dad?

      Did he also had to deal with a fluttering heart, flushing cheeks, and the strange feeling of having accomplished something huge, something world-shattering?

      How did Kotetsu cope?

      Barnaby ends up overflowing his mug and burning his fingers.

      When he comes back to the Scrabble, he enters “JOY”.

[To: Kotetsu] She says to tell you that I’m amazing.

[From: Kotetsu] Urgh, of course you’d be perfect at tree coursing as well 🙄 💖

      Barnaby laughs. But before he can think of anything to answer, another text comes in:

[From: Kotetsu] Well, drive safe on the road back! I’m putting my phone on silent, the movie’s about to begin! 😃 📽️🍿

[From: Kotetsu] Love you both! 💚

[To: Kotetsu] We love you, too. Enjoy your movie, old man. ❤️

      They end up ordering pizzas for supper. Kaede has finally gotten her appetite back and Barnaby would have been ready to let her order anything at all if it meant seeing her face gain up some colours again.

      But the day, however quiet it had been, seems to have taken its toll on her; at quarter past eight, the now empty pizza boxes abandoned on the table, she begins dozing off on the couch, in front of a musical she can quote by heart but still wanted to make him watch.

      By half eight, she’s sound asleep.

      Barnaby finishes cleaning up in the kitchen, lowers the sound of the TV and considers for a moment carrying her directly to her bed, but stops himself short. He feels he would be crossing a line, in some ways.

      At nine, he grabs his phone.

[To: Kotetsu] Have you noticed yet that you forgot your keys again?

[From: Kotetsu] I didn’t! They’re in my bag!

      Thirty seconds pass.

[From: Kotetsu] … ah. Or maybe in my overcoat.

[To: Kotetsu] Unbelievable. Can you please not ring the bell? Kaede’s asleep.

[From: Kotetsu] Trees tired her out? 😂🌳 

[To: Kotetsu] Not the trees, no. I’ll tell you when you’re back.

[From: Kotetsu] Everything ok?? Is she alright??

      He snaps a picture of Kaede, rolled up on the couch, sleeping soundly. 

[To: Kotetsu]  [📷 Picture]

[To: Kotetsu] Behold, Wild Tiger, your mighty cub.

[From: Kotetsu] AWWWWW 😻😻💕

[From: Kotetsu] Mom says she wants the pic, can you transfer it to her?

      Barnaby does.

      Ten minutes later, Kaede wakes up by herself and disappears for twenty minutes in the bathroom. He hears the shower running, then some badly covered curses about Kotetsu’s storage system, which he can only agree on. When she comes out, Barnaby has found himself on the couch again, really playing Scrabble this time, gently dozing off as well.

      “Off to bed?” he asks when he spots her. She nods. She’s wearing her tiger-themed PJs and has put her hair in a strange braid for the night. Kotetsu is right; she does look cute like this. And maybe a bit less than thirteen, but he’s certainly not going to tell her that.

      “You should go, too. You look pretty tired.”

      He smiles, rubs a hand against his forehead.

      “I will, soon. But first I need another tea.”

      “It has to be, like, your seventh of the day! How do you manage to put so many plants in your body?”

      “I have to live up to my plant-eater reputation”, he says before even thinking about it. Judging by Kaede’s amused face, she knows it too. “Don’t tell your father I said that.”

      “I won’t”, she lies. He knows it’s a lie because she’s smiling way too much and there is this spark in her eyes that says it’s going to come back to bite him in the worst possible time.

      The fact that she feels good enough to tease him is so comforting Barnaby cannot really regret his words. Yet.

      “Good night, Barnaby”, she says, and when she comes around the couch, he finally notices the hot water bottle she’s holding against her stomach, with a towel she must have dug from her father’s messy closet. All things considered, the sheep’s almost cute. At least, the way she cradles it is.

      “Good night to you too”, he answers back, suddenly feeling warm and fond. Some of it must slip from his voice, because Kaede stops just before getting out of the living room. Barnaby frowns. Is she okay? Was his affection inappropriate? Does she need another painkiller? Another tea? He’s halfway up when she turns back.

      There is determination in her eyes, and her cheeks are so pink they match the sheep-plushie.

      The next instant, she’s taken four steps ahead and found herself standing just behind him on the couch.

      Barnaby turns around, one elbow on the backrest. 

      “Is everything alr-…”

      She takes a final step, bends down. And kisses his cheek.

       It’s quick, a bit clumsy, landing mostly on his jaw, just underneath his ear, but Barnaby’s heart nearly stops.

      He doesn’t even have time to say anything before she turns heels and disappears in the corridor with quick strides. A few seconds later, he hears the door to her room closing, and the switch going off.

      Barnaby blinks, tears in his eyes, heart in his throat, and swears never to mock Kotetsu again for his sappiness with his daughter. 

      He spends the next half hour trying and failing to get his emotions in order.

      He’s terrified. Terrified just like he had been the night he finally asked Kotetsu if he could kiss him, terrified like he’s standing at the edge of a precipice. He’s terrified of what it actually means, that Kaede is warming up to him so much that she feels comfortable enough with such displays of affection, displays he only saw her give her father some rare times she felt like it.

      Because, deep down, Barnaby knows that something is changing between them. She allowed him to see her vulnerable today and he’s slowly taking a place in her life he’s not sure he’s allowed to fill. He’s scared he’s going to get pushed over, rejected, for trying to be something he’s not allowed to become.

      But oh, how he wants it.

      How he wants to be able to watch her grow, to help her, guide her, reassure her, and just be there to see who she’s slowly becoming.

      Maybe he should talk to Kotetsu about it.

      But first, he’s going to need another tea.

      A gentle knocking on the door is what actually shakes him up from his thoughts. He rises from the couch, quietly checks through Kaede’s door that she’s still sound asleep and goes to greet Kotetsu and Anju back.

      “Hello, Mrs Kaburagi”, he whispers when the two of them are inside the flat, so troubled by his earlier considerations that he goes back to her last name.

      “Barnaby. It’s been years. Why are you back to such formalities, now?”

      “Bunny!” Kotetsu cuts Barnaby’s apology short. “Is our little monkey still out?”

      Barnaby forces himself not to overinterpret the possessive. But after his last half hour of introspection and panicking, it is very hard not to read something into it.

      Kotetsu all but throws his jacket on the couch, misses, and graces his partner’s eye roll with a quick peck on the lips. It’s infuriating that it actually works to help Barnaby forgive him.  

      “Yeah, like a light. She fell asleep on the couch and went to bed an hour ago. I hope everything went well this morning?”

      Anju hums her agreement, already three steps into the kitchen, making herself some tea.

      “Oh, you’ve purchased new infusions?” she notes, grabbing the peppermint bag that he left on the counter. He can spot the moment she notices the other three new boxes and reads their names.

      “Yes, this morning, for Kaede. The clerk recommended it.”

      There’s something in Anju’s eyes, telling Barnaby that she somehow already guessed everything. On a simple tea box. Are mothers (and grandmothers, by extension) really that powerful? Is this a gendered thing, a parent thing, or an Anju-thing?

      Kotetsu, on the other hand, true to himself, remains entirely oblivious.

      “So! Tell us everything, Bunny! How was it?”

      He hesitates, unsure on how to explain the very strange day they both lived.

      “They didn’t go. Did you?” Anju asks, and Barnaby drops his eyes to the floor.

      “No, we didn’t”, he confirms.

      “What? But why?! What happened?”

      Kotetsu, predicably, sounds concerned.

      “She’d gotten her period this morning, so we decided to rest today and postpone our little expedition.”

      Both Kaburagis stop. Anju, with the kettle in her right hand, and Kotetsu, his arm halfway to the fridge. Surprise appears on both their faces, and Barnaby, stupidly, cannot help but think that they look a lot alike. Kotetsu’s got his mother’s nose, chin, and eyes shape, and surprise has a way to highlight those similarities.

      Will Kotetsu keep looking like her with age? he wonders. Is it strange if Barnaby hopes and wishes he’ll be here to watch time carve new lines and similarities on his face?

      “What?!” Kotetsu nearly shouts the moment his brain manages to catch up with his mouth.

      “Shhht”, he immediately scolds, and grabs his partner’s arm before he can barge into his sleeping daughter’s room. “She’s fine. You’re going to wake her up”.

      Kotetsu opens his mouth, probably to add something stupid along the lines of “but I need to make sure she really is”, as if her uterus could somehow come alive and eat her whole in her sleep, and Barnaby interrupts: “By the way, your daughter’s nearly fourteen, how come you didn’t have any hygienic product in your flat?”

      Kotetsu gasps, but stops. Opens his mouth once, twice, but nothing comes.

      “Have you eaten?” he asks Anju instead, because Kotetsu is completely useless now, babbling on like a waterless fish and nearly panicking. Barnaby knows from experience that it’s best to let him spiral himself to reason. “Do you want anything to eat, to drink?”

      “We picked up some fries on the way, thank you. But do you have some of this quatre-quarts cake you made left? I admit I’d like to end up on a sweet note.”

      On the other side of the kitchen, Kotetsu’s braincells seem to be done with their update.

      “She’s had her period?!”, he says with the same tone as if he’d just heard she had grown a second head. 

      “Yes, Kotetsu, and keep your voice down, she’s sleeping!”

      “Why didn’t you text us?!”

      “Because she asked me not to.”

      “We would’ve left imme- wait, what? Why?! We would’ve dropped everything and came home!”

      “Yeah, that’s precisely what she didn’t want.”  

      “Calm down, son”, Anju scolds him, side-eyeing the tea boxes on the counter. “She’s fine. Barnaby took good care of her, it seems.”

      He flushes pink. He’s not sure one could describe what he did today as taking good care of her, but he tried to make her comfortable, at least.

      “We played board games, watched some TV. I just made sure she ate, drank, and took some painkillers every six hours when she needed.”

      “She needed painkillers?!”

      “Oh my God, Kotetsu, please stop freaking out! Yes, I gave her painkillers, I wasn’t going to let her suffer from cramps, and I monitored the doses.”

      Kotetsu drops on the couch, head in hands, looking way older than he really is. He’s sobering up from the frenzied panic. The spiral’s end is near.

      “Fuck, she’s really growing, isn’t she?”

      Anju and Barnaby share a look behind his back.

      “Yes, son, she is. Does not mean she’ll stop needing you.”

      Kotetsu whines. His tone is getting more hysterical by the minute and the quantity of Japanese curses Barnaby cannot really understand but definitely identifies is getting worrisome.   

      “She’s had her period. Her period. My baby’s slowly becoming an adult. What am I gonna do?”

      “You’re going to be there for her”, Barnaby simply puts, bringing his partner a slice of pound cake. Kotetsu takes it absentmindedly, but his eyes raise from his knees to Barnaby.

      “It’s a big step”, he whispers, “and once again, I wasn’t there.”

      “You’ll be here tomorrow”, Barnaby retorts, letting their legs touch, “as far as I know, she’ll still be on her period tomorrow.”

      Anju takes place on Kotetsu’s other side.

      “And what’s more, Barnaby was.”

      Barnaby reaches out, and squeezes Kotetsu’s knee.

      “Sorry”, he mumbles, “I freaked out a bit, there.”

      “Yeah, a bit. But if it can reassure you, I freaked out too this morning.”

      Finally, Kotetsu reaches back, lets his hand unclench. Barnaby raises his palm without a word, and Kotetsu intertwines their fingers.

      “So, what if you told us about your day, then?” Anju asks.

      Barnaby does.

      When he’s finished, the cake is completely done and both Kaburagis look at him with strange eyes he cannot quite place. On Kotetsu, it looks a bit like wonder, admiration and sadness mixed up together, but on Anju, he’s not sure. She looks as if she somehow understood something profound about the universe. Listening to Barnaby explaining the rules of Tumblin Civilians.

      He only hopes none of them is going to tell him he crossed some lines, there.

      “She did say you were a great dad, you know”, Barnaby reveals, because how could he not, when it makes Kotetsu look like this and that he now has a faint idea of what it might feel like.

      “You are, son”, Anju chirps in. “But you need to buy pads now. Can’t have your daughter coming to your home and not finding what she needs”, she scolds, not without fondness, a fresh teacup in her hands, seemingly nonplussed by the whole affair. Raising Kotetsu, it would seem, has a way of getting you to get a grip on your nerves.

      “But maybe let her buy what she likes”, Barnaby adds, already knowing Kotetsu’s habit to overdo things.

      “I bought one.” he mumbles.

      “What?”

      “A box. Of pads. A few months ago. It’s under the kitchen sink.”

      “Why on earth would you keep some sanitary pads under the kitchen sink?”

      No wonder he didn’t find it.

      A few minutes later, when Anju excuses herself to a trip to the bathroom, Kotetsu turns towards him and softly kisses his lips. He tastes like salt and sugar at the same time, and the mix brings a smile to Barnaby’s own lips. It breaks the kiss, but doesn’t make Kotetsu draw back.

      There’s a hand gently caressing his jaw, and his heart melts.

      Oh, how Barnaby loves when he’s tender and soft like this. Lately, those moments have been multiplying and if he’s not sure what is triggering them, he’s cherishing them all the same.

      “I’m glad she was with you, you know”, he whispers, quietly, like it’s an admission of some sort.

      Barnaby offers him a tiny smile. He understands. This is Kotetsu realising that his absence had not been a failing on his part, because his partner had been here.

      And strangely, even considering how daunting and terrifying the whole day has been… Barnaby’s glad, too.

Chapter Text

      The fourth time, he’s the one who comes to her. Softly rasps his knuckles against the wood of her door.

      He can hear her sobbing on the other side. 

      “Kaede? Can I come in?” 

      No answer. He risks a glance at Kotetsu, who’s aggressively chopping an onion in the kitchen, pretending that his eyes only burn because of the vegetable, and not because of the very loud row he’s just had with his daughter. Barnaby, who’s just come back from a meeting with Lloyds, only heard the very end of it, but he caught enough to have a good idea of what it was about.  

      He knocks a second time, waits for a full minute. Then a voice, tentative and muffled, comes from the other side of the door:

      “Barnaby? You can come in… If you want. If you’re still here.”

      Of course I do. Of course I am, he thinks while turning the handle.

      He enters. Kaede is lying on her bed, on her side, back to him, her favourite plushie clenched against her chest and her face disappearing between heavy pillows.

      “Hey… What happened?”

      She raises her head enough to send a glare in his direction. Her eyes are red.

      “Can’t you ask Dad?” 

      “I’m asking you.” 

      She sighs, and her breath trembles. Barnaby grabs the tissue box on her desk and sits at the edge of her bed. For a full minute, the silence stretches.

      He lets it thicken, trying to give her time, eyes glancing at the posters around him. They’re mostly representing the SB heroes as a group, in poses of various degrees of ridiculousness, but there are also a few pop and rock bands Barnaby doesn’t really know about but can recognize from her phone’s playlists. On the opposite wall, in direct line of sight from her bed, two of her oldest proudly stand; one is his, from a photoshoot at the beginning of 1978 he barely remembers, and the other is Wild Tiger’s debut. They’re both autographed, but signed with one of her glitter pens, pink for Barnaby’s, and green for Kotetsu’s. On both their faces, a ridiculous moustache has been drawn, along with a few hearts.

      The moustaches are green. The hearts, pink.

      Barnaby still can’t stop his heart from fluttering every time he sees them standing side by side, and remembers the afternoon Kotetsu spent pinning them up with Kaede while he had tried to defend his latest attempt at baking (a batch of ginger and cinnamon cookies) from their mortal enemy (his partner’s old and cranky oven).

      Who would have thought that watching them bicker and argue about thumbtacks and tape would make him think maybe this is it. Maybe I’ve found it. Maybe this is what happiness feels like. Maybe happiness smells like cinnamon powder, tastes like brown sugar and lemon zest, and looks like a father and his daughter trying to line up some posters with the lines of the ceiling.   

      But the posters are not all there is of Kaede in Kotetsu’s old guest room.

      Frankly, there isn’t much left of the bland space Barnaby once knew, where he used to crash sometimes, when the loneliness became too much, when it was easier to pretend that he was too drunk to drive back to his flat (he wasn’t), where the myriad of ghosts would patiently wait for his return.

      When he first crashed in, the evening after Maverick’s funeral, the walls had been nearly bare, the bed was used as a folding space for clean shirts and pants and the whole room smelled a bit musty.

      It’s a far cry from what it looks like now, years later.

      Because slowly, month after month, cloth after cloth, Kaede had made the space hers.

      It had begun discreetly. A sweater left on a chair, a pair of pants on the bed, an old and worn-down PJ abandoned in the laundry basket, that her father would find days or even weeks later. Then, it had been her toothbrush, a tiny, bright orange thing, forgotten one Sunday in the holder.

      Barnaby had spent the week thinking about the image it painted, set down like it was, beside Kotetsu’s green and his pink, electric one.

      The toothbrush had seemed to break some sort of dam. Because from there, every time she would visit, she would leave something behind, sow parts of her in her wake, for them to find. It quickly became a sort of game, to try and be the first to notice what she hid and where.  

      Kotetsu had been the first to notice the towel, deliberately left hung on the hook behind the bathroom door and that they somehow didn’t see for two whole days.

      Then it’d been Barnaby’s turn to notice the pair of slippers slid under the carpet.

      Then Kotetsu’s, who found the scarf in his own coat’s sleeve.

      It lasted for nearly two whole months. Two months of tiny, strange, sometimes even bulky or heavy things left in places they didn’t belong (how did she manage to put a hairdryer inside Kotetsu’s glove box, Barnaby would never know), that they would race each other to discover first, or notice by sheer luck days later.

      When Barnaby discovered a pink lipgloss in his leather jacket’s inside pocket a day where he was having lunch with Ryan and had to explain that oh no, no, no, wait, Ryan, this isn’t mine, give it back, don’t make this face and no, don’t tell Nate!, he decided to tackle the matter head on. He texted Kotetsu not to wait for him, left Apollon at 7PM on the button and drove directly to a furniture store.

      He came back to the flat with a series of wooden boxes that he displayed on the bathroom counter, with said lipgloss proudly put in the centre. He hesitated two days before adding Nate’s sample beside it, a real, fancy rosy lipstick that his friend insisted he brought back home, and added a post-it that read : “courtesy of Fire Emblem, who said that their own brand lasts longer”. He never told anyone, and certainly not Kotetsu, who the lipstick had really been offered to.

      The next time she came, the lipgloss stood between a handful of crayons, liners and brushes.

      And so, the rules of their little game changed, from hide-and-seek to leave-and-find.

      From there, it had been an avalanche of tiny things left behind, which, piled up, made quite the number. Earrings, bracelets, books, school stationery, a whole army of hairbands and clips, shirts and skirts and hair products Kotetsu thought for days were his, animal-themed socks and underwear, additional chargers or cables for her phone, and even some figurines that none of them were allowed to call toys anymore.

      “My bag’s lighter if it stays here”, she would say, every time, as an excuse.

      To which Kotetsu, too afraid that the wrong word would make her stop, only smiled and said: “well, while there’s still room, you need to take it!”.

      Oh, there was a room indeed.  

      And she did take it.

      One day, she stepped down the train with a full suitcase, that she wordlessly emptied on the wardrobe Kotetsu had bought a few weeks before. Barnaby had been here, and watched, enraptured, as she allocated each of her belongings around the flat with a look of determination on her face that toyed with boldness, as if she dared them to say anything.

      They didn’t.

      And so, Kotetsu’s guest room had officially turned into hers.

      And now, even in the privacy of his own thoughts, Barnaby refers to the space as “Kaede’s room”. Kotetsu’s flat is slowly becoming the flat, even if he’s still coming back to his lot on Gold Stage sometimes, mainly to check on the plants that he didn’t already bring here, home. Kotetsu told him, multiple times, that Barnaby could move in anytime he wanted. He’s got the keys, all his stuff, and spends all his nights here.

      But there is still a voice inside him, softer and duller every week, who whispers what if you’re too much? What if it stops? There is a part of him, the same part that spent two years pining silently after his partner, who fears the possessives, who’s scared to say our flat, our bed, the same way he’s afraid Saito’s cables will break, his memory disappear again and his life go back to the endless pit of despair it was five years ago.

      They’re slowly but surely pervading his speech, thought. The possessives. But it’s a long run, a marathon and never a sprint, and the way Kotetsu reacts every time he slips, every time his tongue ends up on our instead of your, has been a very good and effective motivation, because Barnaby’s been hugged, pecked on the cheek, kissed passionately, pushed into walls, elevators’ buttons, and one time even his own chaser’s seat.

      So. He’s getting there.

      But this room? This space? It is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, Kaede’s.

      Kaede who still hasn’t said a word.

      Barnaby forces himself out of his considerations and turns back from the posters. It appears he’s going to have to be the one to initiate the discussion, this time.

      “So… Wanna tell me?”

      She sighs again, but slowly sits up. Her hair is in complete disarray, the eye-liner, crayon and eyeshadow she carefully applied on the morning reduced to sad black patches stretching underneath her eyes.

      She looks miserable.

      A few years ago, she would have died before allowing Barnaby to see her like this.  

      “It was today. The appointment with Principal Massini.”

      Of course, Barnaby already knew that.

      “He wanted to make me sign up”, she sniffles, and rubs at her cheeks, making the black tracks even worse. “I could have joined you next season, had Dad agreed to sign the contract. I could’ve…”

      Fresh tears appear in her eyes, and she frantically wipes them, putting make-up everywhere, spreading it on her eyelashes, cheeks and even ears. Another bad move and she’s going to put some in the white of her eyes. Barnaby stands up.

      “Give me a second”, he asks, and quickly disappears in the bathroom to fetch two cottons and some make-up remover. The soft squares of cloth are some of those things that appeared on the bathroom counter last month and that he’s slowly getting acquainted with.

      When he comes back, she took the whole tissue box with her and is making half-hearted attempts to aim correctly at the bin under her desk.

      “Let me?”

      She blows her nose one last time, and he’s pretty sure it’s principle more than necessity, before surrendering and allowing him to climb on the bed next to her. One calf folded underneath his thigh, hovering over her, Barnaby begins cleaning off the black tracks. He keeps his movements soft and careful, as not to hurt the delicate skin of her face and hoping that the gentleness might prompt her to speak. So far, in the five years they have known each other, he never really had any problem making her talk to him with just a bit of patience and gentleness.

      Once more he’s proven right, for a few seconds later, eyes still closed and face turned towards him to let him work, she says:

      “I just don’t understand why he’s being so narrow-minded about it, why he’s preventing me from actually helping people. That’s so hypocritical of him, that’s what the two of you do for a living.”

      It’s Barnaby’s turn to sigh. He puts the first cotton, already turned black, on her desk to wash later, and readies the second one. 

      “Yes, but Kaede, we’re both adults. The difference is that you’re still young, and you’re under our care.”

      Kotetsu’s, technically. Barnaby does not have any say in her education. He flushes a little when he realizes that the possessive escaped him, again, and Kaede, damn this smart girl, does notice as well. She exhales loudly.

      “I’m taking you don’t agree either to me joining the heroes.”

      There is sadness in her voice, but no surprise.

      “I do not exactly have a say in the matter”, he tries, but they both know it’s a lie. Were Barnaby okay with her being a hero at fifteen, Kotetsu would listen to him, and probably change his mind.

      “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

      Okay, well, it is.

      “Close your eyes”, he says instead, half-expecting her to tell him to get lost, but she obeys and he resumes his task. He’s even more gentle this time, wiping around her eyes. Slowly, all traces of make-up disappear from her skin.

      “Yes, it’s bullshit”, he concedes. “I agree with him, because I think you’re way too young to join us yet.”

      He’s working on a tenacious mark on her cheek when he notices a tear rolling down her temple, straight to her hairline. He follows its path until it disappears in her brown strands.

      “Kaede…”

      “Don’t ‘Kaede’ me, Barnaby.”

      For a moment, she sounds older than fifteen, and Barnaby stops, but she doesn’t push his hand away, nor does anything to make the tears stop rolling on her cheeks.

      “I really don’t understand, you know”, she repeats, voice cracking. Barnaby hearts follows and he inhales sharply in the same time as her. When she opens her eyes again, they’re drenched in salty waters, but her gaze is sure and unwavering.

      “Dragon Kid was thirteen when she debuted. I’m nearly sixteen. I’m not a child anymore.”

      Barnaby wipes a last trace of liner on her cheek, and cannot help himself from catching some tears in his cotton as well.

      “You’re not a child anymore, but you’re not adult yet, either”, he says, with all the gentleness he can muster, “as for Dragon Kid… Well, it was Pao-Lin’s parents’ decision to let their child be a hero at such a young age. I’m not blaming them, I’m sure they had their reasons, and don’t misunderstand me, Kid’s one of our best, but your father does not wish for you to be thrown to the wolves this way.”

      “You agree with him, stop saying your father as if you weren’t part of this decision.”

      Barnaby lowers his hand and looks at the blackened cotton.

      For once, he’s at a loss for words.

      How could he explain to her the myriad of new feelings he’s discovered since she allowed him to be part of her life? How could he make her understand that each time she’s in danger, he’s afraid he’s going to lose his mind again? How could he tell her that he still has nightmares about the time she hurt herself in the mall, doing a hero’s job, and he had to watch her lose consciousness alongside her father?

      It’s simple; he cannot. Those are not things you say to a kid. It’s his own mess to handle, with Kotetsu, his therapist, and his friends.

      She’s still looking at him, waiting for an answer, so he tries: “I agree with him, Kaede, but not because I think you’re not ready for the field, not because I think you won’t be a good hero, because we all know you’ll be magnificent. But because… Because it’s often grim and gruelling. I don’t wish for you to see that much blood, that much death, on a daily basis. Not while you’re that young. Because I… I know what it does to you, facing violence this young. You’ve already seen a lot.”

      “I know”, she immediately answers back. “And I keep telling you, I’m ready.”

      “Maybe”, he concedes. “But that’s not the point”.

      “Then what is?!”

      She nearly shouts, and Barnaby winces. Damn. They had been doing so great, talking without the discussion evolving into shouting matches, again. He does not want a remake of the heavy argument she had with her father. That’s why he came to her. Why he thought, presumptuously, vainly maybe, that he could do something.

      But maybe the tiny voice is right. Maybe he’s out of place.

      He takes a few seconds to breathe, force himself to think, and not follow every instinct he has that scream to answer with as much passion as he hears in her voice, and cry because we care too much for you, because we risk losing you, because it’s going to change you, to force you into adulthood too quickly. Kotetsu already told her all of this. She knows, and it’s not what she needs to hear.

      “You know… As soon as Maverick told me I should become a hero, I nagged him every year to let me join.”

      Kaede has fallen silent. If she’s surprised by the abrupt change of subject, she doesn’t say anything, and waits, her gaze fixed on him. He rarely discuss his former guardian with her… with anyone. Does not like to dwell on it too much. These days, the only ears who hear Maverick’s name pass his lips are his therapist’s and Kotetsu’s, and he’s rarely the one to initiate the discussion.

      “I resented him each time he refused”, Barnaby continues. “And he held on for nine years. But today… I understand why he did it, mischievous schemes aside. I was way too young. I felt ready, but I wasn’t.”

      “I know what I feel! I…”

      “I’m not saying I do not believe you when you say you’re ready”, he cuts her. “Our experiences, our lives, our motives, thank God, are very different. I’m just saying I know from first-hand experience what this job does to you when you begin it young. And we… I do not wish this for you.”

      “You think I don’t know what I’m signing up for.”

      “I think you can imagine it quite accurately in some ways, because you live with us, because you know other heroes, and because you’ve lived your fair share of dramatic situations. But… No, I don’t think you know what you’re signing up for, and that’s actually a good thing, because none of us did”.

      She opens her mouth, ready to retort something, when there’s a knock at the door.

      Barnaby and Kaede both look up. They didn’t pay attention to the kitchen sounds, but now that they do, it’s unmistakable that the noise has stopped. It doesn’t smell like Chahan yet, either.

      “Kaede? Can we talk?”

      Kotetsu sounds both hopeful and miserable. Barnaby knows, just from hearing him, that he’s got his puppy eyes and pouting face on.

      “I think I heard all you wanted to say, Dad”, she grinds, but he opens the door nonetheless and does seem a bit surprised to find Barnaby seated on her bed, the cotton still in his right hand and a bottle of make-up remover ready to plunge over the bedsheets onto the floor.

      “I’ll leave you two to talk”, he says, raising up to get off the room and put the cottons in the washing machine.

      “No, stay.”

      It definitely sounded like an order, and coming from Kaede, that would be a first. Barnaby stops, risks a glance at Kotetsu, who only shrugs. He looks tired, and very much forty-one. There are crow’s feet beginning to appear at the edge of his eyes.

      Barnaby knows he’s very self-conscious about them, but, privately, he cannot help but adore them. They’re not only a mark of time, a symbol of all their victories over death, they also appear every time Kotetsu laughs or smiles. It's been six years, and Barnaby’s heart still aches when he does.

      At this point, he’s given up trying to stop.

      So, in a way, the crow’s feet represent Barnaby’s victories as well.

      “You’re part of this anyway”, Kaede explains, drawing Barnaby back from his day-dreaming. “If you two have to team up on me, at least do it to my face.”

      There’s a heavy pang in Barnaby’s heart. He knows she’s feeling betrayed, alone, probably also misunderstood, but what could he have done differently? He agrees with Kotetsu. She’s way too young to be a hero.

      He falls back on the bed, defeated. She bounces back a bit when he lands on the cushions and Barnaby feels stupidly heavy. And not only physically speaking.  

      “So?” she asks, a bit petulantly, while Kotetsu pulls himself a chair.

      “So?” her father parrots, puzzled. Knowing Kotetsu, it’s probably genuine surprise, but it ends up sounding a bit sarcastic anyway. Were it addressed to Barnaby, it would have surely led to another snarky remark, and, most likely, some raised voices. They’re getting better at communicating through calm discussions, but sometimes, their old habit of shouting truths and feelings at each other’s head come back.

      Luckily, Kaede isn’t Barnaby, and she doesn’t berate her father for his tone.

      He should take a page from her book, here.

      “What did you want to say that you haven’t already?” she enquires, her arms crossing against her chest.

      “Oh, I… Well.”

      There’s something bashful on Kotetsu’s face.

      “I wanted to apologise for shouting at you in the car. And the bit in the flat. I didn’t mean to sound patronising, or act like a fucking hypocritical helicopter dad.”

      Barnaby turns towards Kaede, who at least has the decency to look ashamed. He has to give her a point for elocution, if this is what she managed to shout at him in a fit of anger.

      “Yeah, well… Sorry for that, too. Didn’t mean to insult you.”

      She hesitates for a moment, then adds: “And I shouldn’t have brought Mom into this.”

      And something just clicks in Barnaby’s mind as comprehension downs on him like a lightning bolt. Of course. This is what sparked things off, this is why both of them had been crying, why the row had seem to take its toll on them that much.

      Because Kaede knows her dad, knows where to strike to hurt him. Unfortunately, it’s often the same place to hurt her as well.

      Kaburagis.

      Kotetsu’s lower lip wobbles a bit when he finally finds his voice, sighs deeply, and answers: “We can never know what she’d have thought of it. If she would have agreed with me, or with you. But I’m not sure it’s gonna help either of us to try and imagine what she would have said in this situation, especially if it’s to prove a point to each other. She’s worth better than that, Kaede. Better than to be used as an example for the sake of an argument.”

      It's the first time, at least to Barnaby’s untrustful memory, that he’s seen Kotetsu like this with his daughter. Somehow, she crossed a line, and both of them know it.

      Kaede nods, and her face crumbles again.

      “Sorry”, she manages before the sobs catch her and drown the rest of her sentence.

      “I’m sorry too, baby.”

      It’s not often that this particular endearment escapes Kotetsu, and Barnaby knows Kaede only forgives him for it because there are tears in his voice, too.

      “Can I hug you, sweetie?”

      It’s barely a murmur, but she wordlessly shifts on the mattress, leaving a place on her other side, where Barnaby isn’t. Kotetsu doesn’t need to be told twice and immediately reaches for her, taking her in his arms. Her face disappears in his chest.

      For a moment, Barnaby does not know exactly where he stands, where his place is in the middle of this intimate scene between father and daughter. But then a tiny hand reaches back, feels its way along the bedsheet, finds his, grabs his fingers, and tugs.

      He cannot resist; how could he? He goes with the pull and ends up squashed against Kotetsu’s head, his partner’s elbow digging into his side, Kaede’s shaking form between them.

      It breaks, mends and awakes something Barnaby thought buried, unreachable, deep inside him.

      The desire for a family.

      Because this is what it looks like, to his hopeful, treacherous heart, right now. Like he has a place with them, not only as Kotetsu’s partner, but also as a bit more. It feels as if the team they make extend from their work to their lives, now intertwined, joyfully inhabited by this little ray of sunshine that is Kaede Kaburagi. It feels as if she allowed them to create a new sense of partners, a new way to share life.

      It makes Barnaby curiously sad and happy at the same time.

      He hasn’t dared voice all of this to Kotetsu. Not yet. Not when there’s so much to risk, so much to lose. He knows he should. Rationally, from moments like these, he knows that it’s the pervasive voice inside him speaking, the one who still sounds a bit like Maverick’s, making him doubt, making him think they could ask him to draw back.

      But how could he risk losing this?

      There comes the danger of the possessives, the one he isn’t strong enough to face yet; maybe Kotetsu’s flat, bed, and heart became his, theirs, yes, but Kaede? Kaede is out of reach, Kaede will forever be Kotetsu and Tomoe’s. And Barnaby knows from first-hand experience how defensive his partner can get when his daughter’s concerned.

      So, Barnaby aches, and hopes, and relishes in the crumbs and slivers they keep throwing his way.

      “Do you really feel as if our compromise is not enough, for now?” Kotetsu asks after a while. Kaede has stopped crying, but stayed cradled in her father’s embrace, Barnaby’s hand squished in the middle, stuck between her ribs and Kotetsu’s hip. He cannot feel his fingers anymore, but doesn’t really care.

      The compromise itself had been the result of long and tenuous conversations between father and daughter a few years ago; Kaede would attend the Hero Academy to learn and use her powers, and by her majority, if she still wanted to, Kotetsu would pay her tuition for the special hero course.

      But principal Massini had had his eyes on her already, and derailed everything by letting her know she could become a hero way before then.

      Barnaby does not blame the man, not really. Kaede managed to get a grip on her powers admirably quick, she’s courageous, adventurous, passionate, a bit headstrong for sure, but also infinitely kind and empathetic. If Barnaby were Timo Massini, he wouldn’t even have waited that long to talk to her about joining.

      In many ways, she’s already a hero.

      “I want to do more”, she sniffles, but accepts to draw back from her father’s now damp shirt. “It feels unfair, and cowardly, not to help people when I know I could.”

      “Oh, honey…” Kotetsu whispers, suddenly overwhelmed. Barnaby guesses this is what happens when you hear someone unintentionally quote yourself to your face, nearly word for word.

      What is it with this family and their infinite, all-encompassing and visceral need to spread good and hope around them? Sometimes, Barnaby thinks there is a spark of deity hooked up in the Kaburagis’ souls. He doesn’t know what he did to be graced with knowing them, walking around them, but no amount of words will ever convey his gratefulness.

      He can profess his love for Kotetsu any day, because this is a feeling that people will recognize or, at least, understand. But he has yet to find the words to express this. Because, somehow, Kotetsu is not only his lover, his work and life partner, he’s also his anchor, his guide, his compass, his sun, and his focal point. He’s warmth and light and sometimes, Barnaby thinks he might just go and call him for what he feels; life. Were Barnaby as religious as he was told his parents were, he would probably call it a miracle.

      Because some days, knowing Kotetsu definitely feels like having been graced.

      But the term’s improper, in a way. Because the Kaburagis are not perfect, far from it, they’re humanity at its best with all its faults and flaws.

      So here Barnaby stands, unable to actually describe what Kotetsu and Kaede actually mean to him. He’s tried in English, tried in French, even tried in the few Japanese words and sentences he’s been learning at Kotetsu’s side. Has planned to ask Ivan and Antonio about Russian and Spanish words, one day.

      He’s not sure there are words for it anyway.  

      “It’s also your duty to take care of yourself”, Kotetsu explains, successfully dragging Barnaby out of his linguistical considerations, as if he didn’t need to carve this motto into his very own skull, “and for now, your only duty is to grow up, figuring out who you want to be, and try some things to know if it fits for you. It’s not yet your duty to protect the city, or other people.”

      “There’s also many ways to be a hero, you know”, Barnaby intervenes.

      Two pairs of identical amber eyes turn towards him.

      “You don’t have to wear sponsors to help people. I know Hero TV allows us to do good on an unprecedented scale, but sometimes you can make the most with the tiniest things, or in an unofficial, non-public way.”

      “Oi, Bunny, are you trying to encourage her to go rogue?” Kotetsu teases.

      It’s always been a bit of a bone of contention between them, going rogue, especially when they discuss the Lunatic case, but as years pass, as Agnes and Lloyds’ unsatiable lust for ratings and results grows, Barnaby finds himself more and more drawn to Kotetsu’s view on the matter. It’s a dangerous path to follow, both in thoughts and in real life. And it definitely wasn’t what he was trying to say.

      “I’m not.”

      He frowns when Kotetsu and Kaede both seem to lighten up at his reaction, realizing that he’s been played but determined not to let them get side-tracked. “I’m just saying that she’s already a hero for some people”.

      “Us included”, Kotetsu adds, incorrigible sap that he is.

      “Us included”, Barnaby concedes, “But what I meant was that you can always find ways to do good, to be good. Or even to prepare yourself for a heroic career, if you’re sure that it’s the place you’ll want to take in a few years.”

      Kotetsu nods, then adds: “Please don’t do what either of us did, though.”

      Kaede draws away a bit, and leans against the wall. She raises one eyebrow, and Barnaby’s heart clenches. This, this expression, this way of dealing with Kotetsu, she learnt from him. This is Barnaby’s infamous quizzical look, Kaede-reinterpreted.

      “And what exactly did you do that I shouldn’t?”

      Barnaby hesitates and Kotetsu beats him to it: “Very stupid stuff. I’m talking trying to infiltrate criminal networks stupid, picking up fights with mafia bosses, and toying with fire guns to try and understand how to become resistant to them stupid.”

      Barnaby gasps. It keeps surprising him how similar Kotetsu’s experience and his are, sometimes. But he wouldn’t have dared saying that to a fifteen-year-old, either. There’s a glint in Kaede’s eyes that is slightly worrisome, in Barnaby’s opinion.

      “You became a criminal to learn how to be a hero?”

      Maybe it’s her phrasing, but Kotetsu seems to be slowly realising his mistake.

      “No! Wait, that came out wrong, I did not become a criminal, merely a delinquent.”

      “That’s not better”, Barnaby chimes in, voluntarily unhelpful.

      “I never hurt anyone, or actually helped a criminal hurt anyone, and…What I am trying to say”, he continues, bravely, oblivious to his daughter and partner’s now shared smiles, “is that I thought it would help me, but it didn’t, it only led to more problems, and there are better ways to prepare for what’s ahead of you than meddling with shady stuff.”

      The smile on Kaede’s lips is still here when Barnaby looks at her again.

      “I know that, Dad. I was kidding. I’m not you. Nor am I Barnaby. I’m not going to try and find mafia bosses or Ouroboros members at fifteen.”

      Barnaby lowers his eyes to her comforter. He knows she meant it as a joke, but still, it stings. He’s not proud of who he was during his teenage years. Sometimes, he even feels as if he never really existed as a person before 1977. Before Kotetsu. Thinking back on it now, it seems pretty stupid, trying to find criminals with only a drawing on a piece of paper. He’s incredibly lucky not to have been shot on the spot. Well. Incredibly lucky… or just well-protected from the shadows.

      “What I am actually hearing from this”, Kaede adds, “is that you could teach me.”

      Barnaby raises his eyes to Kotetsu’s. Something passes between them, a shared look that he interprets as I know we’re probably going to be on the same wavelength on this, but let’s talk more about it later, before they both nod.

      “We could”, Kotetsu says, “but frankly, I’m not sure what we could teach you that you don’t already learn at the academy.”

      “I think I may have some ideas”, Barnaby tries, and, when he receives two curious looks, continues: “I have pretty good memories of the hero training. If it hasn’t changed that much, we could… complete it with a few useful things.”

      “Really?”

      “Yeah, really.”

      “Would that help, then? As a new compromise?” Kotetsu asks, gently.

      She sighs, then nods.

      “Would you also be okay with finding a plan B?”

      She glares at her father. “But you just said…” she begins, quite defensive.

      “I know, I know”, Kotetsu immediately adds, “it’s just that…”

      “We’d like you to have something to fall back on. Just as a guarantee, you know? Even if you do get a contract, being a hero under OBC’s rules is uncertain”, Barnaby explains, when Kotetsu begins tangling himself in his words.

      “What about under my rules?”

      Kotetsu whines.

      “See, Bunny? This is your fault, you’re the one who put the idea of going rogue in her head!”

      “As if I could put any idea in her head.”

      “Technically, you have. Many times”, she clarifies, vile, little thing that she is, and adds when he sends a betrayed look in her direction: “But yes, I think I could. Think about a plan B, I mean. And I promise it won’t be ‘rogue hero’.”

      “Thank you”, Kotetsu says, with a seriousness in his voice that sobbers up both his daughter and partner. “And in the meantime, I promise I’ll find things to teach you about being a hero. And… That I’ll try to stop being too meddling.”

      “It’s a deal, then?” she asks.

      “Yeah, it’s a deal.”

      She raises her hand, a new look of determination and business on her face that makes her look older than she is, and when Kotetsu shakes it, she smiles. They both turn to Barnaby, who suddenly realises that his throat feels tight. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to understand that they’re waiting for his confirmation, too.

      “It is”, he assures, and if his voice if a bit hoarse, nobody makes a comment.

      Somehow, it feels like more than just promising to teach her the ropes. Because the first compromise had been made without him, just between father and daughter. But, here, now, with him in the equation… It now feels like a commitment Barnaby will not be able to get out off.

      In a way, it feels like a handover. Like promising the city its next guardian.

      She raises her hand, again.

      Barnaby thinks of the Justice Statue, of tear-streaked cheeks, and of the smile that convinced him, that day, to step into the ambulance. The smile that became his first step away from the past and into the future.

      The first time he chose to shake her hand, it led to the best years of his life.

      How could he hesitate, now? How could he, when the tears have disappeared from her face, when her eyes have gained that much maturity, and when she now looks at him like he belongs here, in her life, on her pink comforter, in the middle of her plushies and dreams, no matter how heavy he still feels?

      He cannot. Because deep down, there’s nothing he wants more.

      He wants to stay.

      Because somehow, along the way, she became his future.

      “The honour will be all mine, Kaede”, he murmurs.

      He doesn’t know if she remembers their first encounter as clearly as he does – and for him, clarity in memories is a rare thing – or if she’s only moved by the emotion in his voice, but either way, she uses the hand she’s now holding to pull him back into a hug.

      This time, he’s the one to offer the first smile.

Chapter Text

      The fifth time is so mundane and unpredictable it takes Barnaby entirely by surprise.

      He’s come to pick her up from the Academy for the weekend, and has been waiting in the car, parked a few streets over as not to draw attention, trying to find a way to stop Kotetsu from shuffling his songs when they drive. Their new and shared SUV, this overpriced, overequipped treacherous thing, isn’t helping.

      He’s been at it for ten minutes already and isn’t getting anywhere. Frankly, it’s a bit vexing. He’s been muttering under his breath, accusing the downing lights, the setting sun dusking the control panels, but it’s in bad faith. There’s backlighting on everything in this damned car. Even the ignition. Their chasers, which are the most backlighted things Barnaby’s ever laid eyes on, do not even have the option.

      And his ego’s slowly getting ruffled, here. After the week he’s just lived, he would have loved a victory of some sorts. Even over a car.

      He's spent years dealing with Saito’s tech, even understood some of it. He should be able to program the freaking stereo of a freaking civil car.

      But he isn’t.  

      So far, he’s managed to save two radio stations, disrupt the sound balance between all five speakers, and add his phone to the list of dangerous devices never to be accepted as a musical source.  

      The only small mercy the universe seems to grant him is that Kotetsu isn’t here to mock him or, more probably, contribute to the chaos and make the stereo unusable for good.

      He’s halfway into rummaging in his pockets to find his multi-tool and use the skills he developed those last four months studying mechanics and robotics to try and strip down the integrity of the system when the truck opens, then slams.

      The car viciously beeps its disagreement and Barnaby starts. So does the radio.

      “And you did it!” a well-known voice shouts from the speakers.

      I most definitely did not, Barnaby grinds back interiorly while fumbling with the sound. There. Back to regular hearing tones.

      He landed on OBC’s channel, which is currently broadcasting Nathan and Keith’s latest interview. At least the sound’s still working, he thinks bitterly, listening to his friends’ voices coming very harmoniously from the build-in amplifier he was scared he completely messed up with his earlier toying.

      The car shakes, beeps again, and a blue indicator lights up on the dashboard. Barnaby’s almost sure it’s supposed to be a more refined, designed and classy version of a trunk, but it’s closer in looks to an overgrown leg on a stick man. He doesn’t even have time to turn back and appraise what’s happening in the back with his own two eyes that the annoying beep comes back and the light goes off.

      This car doesn’t make any damn sense. And he can’t even blame Kotetsu. The SUV was his pick.   

      “What on…” he begins, then the door opens and Kaede lands on his right, throwing her bag over her shoulder on the back seat.

      “Sorry about the trunk”, she says, “I’m still not used to it.”

      He smiles at her. It’s Friday evening, but she’s still wearing the tracksuit version of her white and blue uniform. It hasn’t changed one bit since Barnaby’s time in the Academy.

      He remembers wearing it.

      Remembers how it felt on his shoulders.

      The truth is, it didn’t feel life an achievement. It felt like a step closer to the truth, like a new mile walked in his terrible and (almost) self-imposed way of the cross. For him, the uniform never really was a victory, it never meant he belonged to something. It felt cheap, and unsatisfactory, because it hadn’t been the hero suit he was promised, the hero suit that was his magical key to resolving everything and getting him back his life.  

      Oh, how gullible he had been, then.

      And how far it all seems, now.

      Barnaby nearly sighs.

      Either Kotetsu’s nostalgic stance is rubbing off on him, or he’s really getting older.

      Because on Kaede, the uniform looks like it was always meant to go on her shoulders. On her, it looks like a victory, an achievement, a promise.

      She’s deserving of it in ways Barnaby never was.

      He turns in his seat and looks at her. She seems tired, not fully on her plate, and her face is a bit red, but maybe this is just Barnaby’s imagination. Or maybe they had to do a lot of outdoor exercises this week and she ended up gaining some colours. If Mr Damysos really still is alive and kicking, and in charge of the general training of the NEXTs in the Ac like he was in Barnaby’s time, he can definitely understand the tiredness. The man was convinced pain built strength, the sun helped muscles work, and that November-chill was actually good for your running lungs. Barnaby, who swore only by these guidelines a decade ago, has mixed water with wine since joining the heroes and working with actual teenagers.

      “Don’t worry, I’m not used to it either”, he smiles, turning off the radio completely and cutting Nate mid-sentence. “I’ve been trying to program the music for ten minutes, and I still can’t figure it out.”

      “I thought you studied mechanics now.”

      “I am, on my spare time”.

      Which he doesn’t get a lot, but. He is. The idea actually stemmed from Ryan, who asked him one day why he never pursued his parents’ research when he learnt that Barnaby also had a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The answer, quite predicably, and wasn’t that sad, was that he had religiously listened to Maverick.

      But since Ryan asked, the idea never really left him. So Barnaby reactivated his account in the SB Public Library, borrowed a few books so heavy that Kotetsu still uses them as weights to flatten his shirts when he’s feeling too lazy to get the ironing board out of its closet, and subtly began asking Saito a lot of questions.

      It had taken roughly three hours for their mechanic to bust him out, and now, Barnaby has a weekly appointment with him to learn everything about robotics.

      He doesn’t know where this will lead him, yet, and isn’t really sure he needs to.  

      It just feels nice, and rewarding, to learn things for themselves. Just out of curiosity, interest, and without ulterior motives like revenge or gaining the upper hand on a enemy.

      Barnaby’s world feels way easier, way better, these days.

      “And a car is resisting you?” Kaede asks, one eyebrow raised.

      “It’s a very smart car.”

      “Mh-hm”.

      There’s a smile toying in her voice, so Barnaby allows himself to relax. He must have been wrong. She looks fine now, and she must feel okay as well, if she’s in a good enough mood to mock him.

      The teasing had surprised him, at first, many years ago when they began spending regular time together. Because for a young girl that Kotetsu had always portrayed as “completely enraptured with you”, he expected a bit more fascination and a bit less poking.

      It took him an awful long time to understand that this is who she is, cheeky and funny and even mischievous when provoked.

      Because with him, she’s a bit different. She’s particularly facetious, sometimes even more so than she is with her father, and Barnaby, after many hours of considerations and even some talks with his therapist, concluded that this was probably her way of getting her revenge on her disillusions with the BBJ she expected. He cannot blame her, really. He’s boringly ordinary and sometime very far from the heroic picture the magazines are adamant on painting. He’s probably light-years away from who she wanted him to be. And if her only retribution is bugging him a little? Big deal.

      He'll suffer it gladly, because there is affection in the teasing.

      There always has been, just like there has been fondness and care in Kotetsu’s meddling habits since the Jake incident. Maybe even before that, in his partner’s case. Because Kotetsu’s love language has been toying with his nerves from the very beginning. Even now, after seven years of partnership and five years as a couple, they haven’t stop bickering, haven’t stopped taunting each other or trying to get the other to pull out of the comeback match by declaring himself outsmarted.

      Barnaby hopes they will never stop.

      So, he got used to his feathers being ruffled, by Kotetsu first, then by Kaede. Kaburagis, he learnt, began mocking you when they really appreciated you. These days, even Anju is starting to enter the game. Last time they visited Oriental Town, she tried to expend his knowledge in plants to her botanical garden, and didn’t mince her words when he began mistreating her carrots and radishes. (He didn’t know, alright? He can repot a plant, singular, any time and with great skill, but had no idea how to plant seeds for a whole freaking line of vegetables.)

      She called him her little carrot-head for three whole days.

      Kotetsu, who’d been laughing so much he managed to get the hiccup when he heard his mother call to him to help for dinner with this ridiculous epithet, had changed his contact picture in his phone to an actual bunny eating a giant carrot with huge and sparkling eyes the very same evening. Anju, God bless her, stopped mocking him after a few days. Kotetsu, on the contrary? Barnaby knows he will never let him live this down.

      And what is it with Kaburagis and rabbit imagery anyway?

      But for all his complaints, there’s a part of Barnaby that actually likes the challenge, the little barbs and witticisms, that now feel like a game he can play at his full potential, knowing the rules and players.

      He doesn’t have to look very far to know who taught Kaede to be this cheeky and teasing, though. Because if Kotetsu’s meddling, quite the busybody and if his puns are the very definition of a dad-joke sometimes, his daughter’s remarks are actually a lot more cutting and sharp. And… Barnaby’s to blame, because he’s the one who set a bad example, who laughed at her jokes and snickered each time she toyed with her father, outwitted him or answered to his puns with a raised eyebrow and some comments about his age.

      He dug his own grave, there. And he now rests in it, quite content with himself.

      There must be something very wrong with him.

      Because the grave doesn't feel like a grave. It feels nice, cosy, domestic, and his.

      It feels like a nest.

      “Ready? Got everything?” he asks, hand on the ignition, forcing himself out of his thoughts.

      “Yep.”

      The “p” pops on her lips like a bubble gum explodes. Barnaby starts the car, gets out of his perfect parallel parking manoeuvre, see Kotetsu, it is possible to park perfectly with the PAS, you’re just old, and gets out of the lane.

      Of course she’s fine. Why wouldn’t she be? He’s reading too much into it.

      A few minutes of silence later, she fumbles with her phone, stretches to grab her bag and rummages in it for the longest time possible, rattling and messing all her stuff. They’ve reached Hephaestus Station Plaza when she pests under her breath: “I forgot those damn headphones in the dorm”, she admits, sounding defeated. “Can I put on some music on the stereo?”

      “Of course”, Barnaby smiles, already resigning himself to forty-five minutes of indie rock or catchy pop. He’s getting better with music, alright? Expanding his tastes, trying to understand the appeal of everything that isn’t opera or classical pieces.

      And frankly? Sometimes he’d rather deal with Kaede’s overenthusiastic boys’ bands than Kotetsu’s CDs from the 50ies or, worse, his old jazz records that seem to have developed their own sense of rhythm and skip and wobble without prompting. By comparison, his daughter’s obsessions are at least bearable.

      He knows he’s making a song and dancing about it, here.

      And isn’t that ironical.

      Because Kotetsu’s jazz and blues records are more than fine when the vinyl doesn’t skip, when they’re alone in the flat, surrendered by the familiar smell of a homemade dinner, and when his partner’s feeling playful or flirtatious enough that he pushes Barnaby to dance.

      But what would they become, if Barnaby stopped complaining? Kotetsu would have to stop forcing him to change his mind, and Barnaby may not get invited to so many musical evenings.

      He definitely cannot risk it.

      He tried, once, to turn the tide a bit and get Kotetsu to slow-dance to his favourite opera duet.

      He backed off of Barnaby’s arms two minutes in, eyes misty and eyebrows furrowed. How he managed to fully understand the lyrics on the first go remains a mystery, but he's also been able to figure out each and every one of Saito's hushed words for years, so. Barnaby isn't that surprised he can actually follow the exchange between a soprano and a bass singer.

      “Wait, and then she really died? Again?”

      “Yes.”

      “Because he glanced back?”

      “Yes.”

      “And he couldn’t save her?”

      “No.”

      “That’s horrible.”

      In retrospect, he should have seen it coming, knowing Kotetsu’s over-reaching empathy and personal experience with grief and loss. Maybe he’s a bit to blame, here.

      Anyway. His point was that he can gladly suffer through Kaede’s music.

      They’ve reached the fast lane when she tries to synchronise her phone with the car. Barnaby must have done something wrong with his earlier toying though, discovered a new species of mistake unknown to mankind, because it doesn’t work, and the car abruptly protests by beeping profusely.

      At his right, Kaede starts with the first striking noise. Barnaby can sympathise.

      “Why is it shouting at me? I just tried to put on some music!”  

      Maybe this car will find its place quickly with them, Barnaby thinks, suddenly. It appears as pig-headed and obtuse as they all are. What a pick he made, there.

      “That’s probably my fault”, he apologises, “I kinda… lost my temper with it earlier.”

      He cannot exactly try to repair the damage now, though. It’s 6PM on a Friday night, the streets are crowded and he needs to pay attention to the road. He’s pretty sure Kaede won’t miss this opportunity to laugh at him; after all, Barnaby’s just handed it to her on a silver plate…

      “Can I just put on the radio, then?”

      His eyebrows raise. No snarky retort? No teasing?

      “Help yourself.”

      He steals a quick glance at her while she’s got her gaze fixed on the stereo. Twilight’s painting lines of amber and vermillion on the concrete, and the setting sun’s getting in her eyes, making them appear almost golden. But there’s a sadness in her posture, between her brows, in the curve of her lips maybe, he doesn’t know exactly, but he can feel it. It’s there, and now that he’s seen it, it’s colouring the whole passenger compartment.

      Maybe something did happen.

      But what? He wonders. What could it be? And is it really a sadness he’s seeing here, more than just ordinary exhaustion? If he asks her, there’s a high probability she’s going to tell him off, and his chance to understand will be lost.

      The backlighting on his dashboard interrupts Barnaby’s thoughts by joyfully informing him that his passenger pushed a button.

      The radio turns on.

      They land back directly on OBC’s channel. Kaede doesn’t change it, and Barnaby’s surprise and suspicion that something is indeed wrong continues to grow. Usually, when she comes back for the weekend, she likes to distance herself a bit from hero stuff. He’s not going to stop her or say anything, though: if she’s feeling like listening to their friends on the radio, why would he say no?  

      Sadly, Fire Sky’s interview is over now, and Mario’s late-night show has begun.

      For all his respect and personal admiration for Mario’s work, Barnaby’s not very fond of it. But the rating, Mr Brooks, you wouldn’t imagine the ratings we get with such programmes.

      Yeah, he does imagine, actually. Two hours spent discussing the heroes personal lives and making jokes that always end up being sexual innuendos, usually at the expense of his female-perceived colleagues and, sometimes, even directed at the rest of the League. Ryan and him remain their favourite targets among the men, though.

      So fundamental for the city, for the well-being and protection of the citizens, that all is.

      Who would have thought that being a hero meant sitting in front of famous TV hosts and talking seriously about boxer briefs.

      Sometimes, he wonders if Hero TV even realises how absurd it all sounds.

      Tonight, Mario’s hosting a very impressive bevy of celebrities, ranging from actors to former and actual heroes, to so-called experts that, in Barnaby’s experience, are more often hardcore fans than real scientists. One time, during his first year as MVP, they even managed to fish a guy that called himself an academic, claimed body and soul that Pao-Lin’s lightning could be used during intercourse, but couldn’t even cite one of his sources when asked about electrical currents and intensities. Of course he couldn’t. They were forum discussions. And, most likely, personal fantasies. Over a child.

      Thank God Pao-Lin was forbidden to listen to it at the time.

      He clenches his teeth. If Kaede wants to listen to it, they’ll listen to it.

      At least ten minutes. He’s ready to give her ten minutes, or three stupid remarks, before turning it off.

      They’re currently commenting on Hero TV’s latest live episode, though, so Barnaby doesn’t bear much hope. Passing another car, he tries to no avail to shake the whole incident away from his mind.

      It happened on Tuesday morning. All twelve of them had been training when their PDA rang, and sprung to the old docks in a flash.

      The problem had been quite simple; a huge freighter had collided with a pleasure craft a few feet from shore, and both boats were slowly sinking, drifting dangerously close to the beach and its sports complex, taking all their passengers with them and spreading their fuel in Stern Bild’s bay.

      Needless to say that it didn’t go smoothly, because gasoline, fire and undercurrents… Well. They didn’t mix well.

      The next day, when Agnes came with the official reports, looking grim and wearing all black, she announced them the numbers with a raspy voice, then left immediately. Probably going straight to the hospital.

      Forty-seven dead.

      Twenty-two seriously injured, still in critical condition in the ER.

      Among the victims, a whole class of seventh-graders. They had come on the beach, to the sport complex, to practice for a tournament.

      Only three of them will be able to tell the tale.

      And Barnaby’s been haunted by the flames, by the screams.

      He knows he’s one of the lucky ones.

      Bison and Origami, first on scene, first to respond and first line of defence, have taken the first explosion head-on and are amongst the twenty-two. According to Kotetsu, who had Tonio’s surgeon on the line earlier today, their lives are safe and they should be back on the show before the end of the season.

      Karina, protected from the worst only by Ryan’s amazingly quick shielding reflexes, fell apart in his arms the second the cameras left and then dropped her transporter to walk to the nearest hospital, her bloodied heels in one hand, her partner’s shaking fingers in the other. The image is still carved in Barnaby’s mind, branded with the hot iron of unspeakable violence.

      Lara, bruised and burnt but not seriously enough to necessitate a full hospitalisation, has taken the rest of the week off, and Pao-Lin did too, to stay with her.

      Thomas and Subaru are nowhere to be seen. Barnaby at least hopes they’re together.

      Kotetsu and him, along with Nathan and Keith, are the only ones who got out of the intervention mostly unscathed. At least, Barnaby counts a few bruises and a whole evening of sobbing in his partner’s arms as lucky, compared to what his friends had to deal with.

      The four of them had been at sea when the first explosion rang out, trying to save the families still sinking on the first boat.

      They saw everything, from afar, and wasn’t that worse, in a way, to be away from the bay, from the fire, from hell. With no choice but to look at the flames engulfing the rocks, the children, their friends, everything.

      Kotetsu had tumbled with the first wave, lost control of his wires for a second, missed his jump, and when they both reached the scene, trying to save their friends, the seventh-graders, someone, anyone, the worst had already happened.

      They had been too late.

      At least, it hadn’t been broadcast live.

      Well. Not all of it.

      Barnaby doesn’t really know what parts they kept or what the general public thought of it, though. He hasn’t had the time to watch the episode, and, frankly, doesn’t feel very inclined to do so.

      Mario’s not talking about it, it would seem. So far, the emission’s mainly centred on an earlier mission, that had Blue Rose doing one of her famous Cutie Escapes.

      Small mercies. At least, for his friends. Because he redirected his guests from talking about the sheer horror of Tuesday… but in doing so, he pushed them towards their favourite topic of conversation: the heroines’ sex appeal and dating life.

      And right now, Karina’s getting her full share.

      Barnaby glances at the clock. Alright. Seven more minutes of this before he cuts everything.

      “… she sure does argue a lot, doesn’t she?”

      “Oh, yes, but we do love to see it.”

      There are crass laughs. That’s what you get, he thinks, bitterly, when you fill your set with three rich men who have been bodyguarded their whole life and never stood in front of a riffle, stepped in a wall of fire, or confronted heavily-armed thieves and crooks wearing only a thin layer of cloth and nothing else.

      “Well, I personally think she’s quite justified”.

      And thank God for Sumo Thunder. Barnaby cannot understand why the Second Leaguer keeps accepting those invitations. Their contract clearly stipulates that they have to do one TV appearance a fortnight. One. And believe him there, one sure is enough.  

      At least, Sumo’s defending Rose. “I mean, you’ve seen her outfit. She doesn’t wear anything on her tights and shoulders, no wonder she flees every time someone opens fire on her… And no wonder Ryan ends up shielding her, either.”

      “Ah, but you can’t ask our beloved Blue Rose not to be a bit of a diva, or not to dress like one! What would we be, if she were to wear the same armour as her partner? What’s more, I know for a fact that a lot of fans do love seeing Ryan protecting her!”

      Barnaby can hear the perverted wink that punctuates this sentence.

      “That they do! And I’m sure Ryan doesn’t mind finding himself with a lapful of our Queen!”

      “Ah, who would?”

      Barnaby pinches his lips and swallows back the insult that came to his teeth.

      Yeah, Blue Rose flees. Or runs behind her partner. Because when Ryan doesn’t jump in front of her, she ends up spending a week in the ER. And those men don’t want to know about swollen eyes, infected and deformed toes, or cervical aches that turn into chronical pain.

      They want the glorious side, not the real one.

      They want the idea of Blue Rose, not the human beneath.

      Barnaby knows for a fact that Karina has tried for years to make her producers change her outfit. When he debuted, she had already given up trying to get them to cover her chest, but was still negotiating for lower heels and more hip coverage. She never obtained anything, and since the introduction of the Buddy System, since she’s developed a chemistry with Ryan so strong that it pierces the screen, the comments have been getting worse.

      Her physical aches and pains only grew with time. Her safety? Not an inch.

      But sure, let’s remember the most amazing GoldenRose moments of this season. What a flock of vultures, they are.

      Fortunately, none of them know that Karina and Ryan have actually started turning around each other. Because if they did… That wouldn’t compare.

      These damned rats.

      Lord. Barnaby’s really turning into Kotetsu.

      Is it a bad thing, though? His mind immediately asks.

      “We’d be lost without our Super Sadist Queen’s naughty outfit!”

      “Nah, maybe you’d finally become freaking decent people”, Kaede mutters at his right.

      Finally, Barnaby smiles.

      There’s a part of him who legitimately cannot wait for her to be a hero, who’s eager to watch her become the glitch in their well-lubricated machine. Because he knows that if she succeeds in getting a contract, she’s going to learn from all of their past mistakes, his and Kotetsu’s and Karina’s, and she won’t let some things slide.

      But there’s also a part of him genuinely terrified of what those people, those men, could do to her, because he saw what they did to Blue Rose, Dragon Kid and Magical Cat. And all three of them debuted as minors. Kaede, and that’s the whole deal, will begin as an adult.

      With a bit of luck, Karina, Pao-Lin and Lara will still be on duty when Kaede joins the League.

      “At least, she’s still going strong! Can’t say that about all of our heroes right now… Looking at you, Tiger!”

      And he laughs. Barnaby wants to drive back to the studio and strangle him. He doesn’t care if he’s a very important sponsor. Doesn’t care if that might cost the company thousands. He’s going to barge into the recording studio and shake some sense into that stupid idea of a man.  

      “Wild Tiger may have missed his jump on Tuesday’s tragedy, but he saved the whole family. He’s still got it, and the fans know it.”

      Thank you, Mario, he thinks, strongly.

      At least, someone looks like he’s on their side, here.

      “Yes, but Mario, no one is immortal, not even Tiger! Don’t you think he should step down now, while he still can, before his firm fire him for good this time? He’s so lousy as a he-”

      Kaede all but slams the button. The radio abruptly stops and silence fills the car.

      “Sorry. But it’s bullshit.”

      Barnaby won’t contradict her, but, hey, language. He remembers the time when she couldn’t even say crap in his presence. It now feels like eons ago.

      He sighs, trying to concentrate on the road.

      “You know how they get. One rumour, and the latch onto it like leeches”, he tempers. After all, he’s the adult here. He should be the reasonable one, shouldn’t he?  

      “But is it still a rumour, at this point?”

      Barnaby risks a glance in her direction, heart suddenly hammering. He almost runs the stop sign. He hopes his voice isn’t quavering when he asks: “What do you mean?”

      “He would have told us, right? If he were going to resign?”

      Barnaby does not know what to say to that.

      The truth is that they are not entirely wrong, because last month, Kotetsu began losing seconds again. He is now at fifty-five left, but when he admitted it to Barnaby, both of them knew what it meant; they had to consider the fact that Kotetsu might lose his powers entirely. And soon.

      The sword of Damocles, that they had grown so good at ignoring, became suddenly impossible to deny and now hovers, loud and clear, in the air between them.

      It hasn’t been the easiest and best weeks of Barnaby’s life, even before Tuesday’s ordeal.

      Their evenings were filled with long and hard conversations about the future, about what it meant to be a hero. Hours and hours were spent exploring paths and ideas, re-reading their contracts and trying to find a way to accommodate what would become their new reality.

      So far, only Barnaby knows. Well, Saito too, because he’s checking their vitals every second when they suit up, monitoring the duration of their powers and couldn’t have been lied to anyway. But they haven’t told anyone else. Not Ben, not Antonio or Muramasa for Kotetsu, and not Ryan or Nate for Barnaby.

      It still feels way too soon, and the inevitable way too far.

      They need time, Kotetsu needs time, to try and figure things out.

      Barnaby has tried not to worry Kotetsu with his own insecurities even more, has done his best to support his partner, but before the previous Wednesday, he had struggled a bit with it all.

      Because on Wednesday, just after dinner, Kotetsu received a call from Timo Massini. They had been doing the dishes, discussing in hushed tones the pros and cons of telling Ben the next day, when the phone rang. Kotetsu picked it up with his fingers still soapy, and froze immediately.

      “Principal Massini? Is Kaede alright? What happened?” he’d nearly shouted, worry so strong in his voice it’d made Barnaby stop in his tracks as well.

      It had taken four real minutes to convince Kotetsu that everything was alright, Kaede was fine, and the call had nothing to do with her at all, and everything to do with him.

      Timo Massini had heard the rumours, been shaken by Tuesday’s events, and decided to drop a proposition on Kotetsu: if he ever decided he wanted to step down from hero work, dwindling powers or not, he could come and bring his legacy to the academy. As an instructor.

      A teacher.

      Kotetsu had hung up looking sad, his face a strange mix of conflict, relief and grief.

      He hasn’t said yes.

      He hasn’t said no, either.

      But for Barnaby, it’d been like a lifebelt thrown in the dangerous tempest they were caught on. It’s only been three days, but now, he can’t stop picturing it. Kotetsu, training the next generation of heroes. Kotetsu, working with children all day, teaching them how to do good, how to be good.

      The image feels right in a way he never imagined anything could, beside Tiger in his green armour, next to him on the field.

      But Barnaby now has another, even harder problem to solve: where does he fit, in all this?

      “You would have told me, right? If Dad was going to resign.”

      He turns back towards Kaede, who’s still watching him from the passenger seat.

      There is suspicion laden in her voice now, and Barnaby is glad he cannot really turn his eyes off the road, because if he had to look straight at her, he knows he couldn’t exactly say what he’s about to. He’s not exactly lying, per se. He’s just slightly pushing the topic away, gently redirecting it with a well-aimed nudge.

      “Kaede. You saw what happened last time they tried to fire him. This is just the media making the most of a rumour.”

      “It’s not just the media, it’s the whole fucking school!” she shouts.

      It’s sudden, loud, and her voice breaks after the curse.  

      They’ve arrived at a red light.

      Barnaby uses it to look at her. Her face is painted crimson, but it’s not just the LED’s fault.

      “What?”

      “They’ve said that the whole week”, she admits, softer, calmer now. “They’ve…”

      She turns towards the window, and falls silent for a full minute. Barnaby does not press, turns right and drives into the roundabout.

      “They’ve begun saying it again”, she whispers to the city lights when they’re out of the mangle of vehicles and honking that is the Silver Medaille at 18:37. “They’ve begun turning on him again. One week you’re both saving people and he’s the greatest, and I have the coolest dad, and the next his wires miss, children die and he’s back to lame and I’m going to be as lousy as him, apparently.”

      Barnaby nearly misses his turn. There is anger in her voice, but he isn’t fooled: underneath, it’s pain, and way too rough. She heard this before.  

      “Who said that?”

      “No one, everyone, it’s not important. I’m used to people talking shit about him, it’s alright, that’s the game, isn’t it?”

      “Kaede…”

      “Sorry, Barnaby. Didn’t want to spring this on you, too. Must be hard enough to deal with on a daily basis, and I can’t imagine what it’s been like these last few days.”

      It’s been hell. And Barnaby’s lived the aftermath of Jake’s attacks, of the Maverick’s and Schneider’s scandals. But somehow, failing was always the thing he couldn’t really recover from. At least, not alone, and not with reporters more concerned about Kotetsu’s failings than the death of a whole fucking class of kids, coming at him trying to get the scoop of the season, sponsors breathing down his neck, and Lloyds’ glare that definitely meant ‘don’t you go and keep things from me again’.

      He knows, he knows that they’re putting Kotetsu’s mistake centre stage to make people forget that the city lost a whole class of its children, of its future, but still.

      They’re not the ones living in the eye of the storm.  

      “It’s not the easiest thing”, he concedes, “neither for you, nor me. And it’s unfair, it’s bullshit, but you’re not alone in it, that’s why I’d rather you tell me when those things happen”.

      If she still choses to become a hero, it will become her daily life, and Barnaby feels strangely sad thinking about it.

      How could he wish this for her? How could he accept without batting an eye that one day, she will put her life on the line, and that everyone will feel entitled with her image, her body, and dreams? How could he wish for her the week he’s just lived?

      “This is the part of the job that we’d rather do without. It’s the part you cannot face alone, because otherwise, it may cost you too much.”

      “Like friends?”

      That sounded a bit too heartbroken for a general comment. He hesitates, images of so-called friends dancing in his mind, of boarding school roommates, of interested parties he thought he could count on, lost over the years.

      Yeah. Sincerity is a rare bird when your name’s plastered on billboards and when people think they can gain money, exposure or other favours by rubbing elbows with you at dinner parties.

      “Yes”, he admits, maybe more sincerely than he’d expected. “Friends.”

      There’s a sniff at his right. He risks a glance towards her, and shit, there are tears slowly flowing on her cheeks, painting her face in blue and white with the dancing city lights.

      Barnaby gravely underestimated the matter, here.

      “Kaede…”

      “Sorry, sorry”, she mumbles, trying to reign herself in, to wipe away the tears, but it would seem that now that she’s been caught, she cannot hold the façade much longer, and she is slowly crumbling, right here, right there, in the passenger seat.

      Fuck.

      Barnaby looks back at the road and gets honked at for not moving quickly enough. The muffled sound of her sobs echoes in his ears, and he turns.

      He’s not going to let her cry her eyes out doing nothing.

      He gets out of the main lane, finds a narrow street, then a park with a parking lot beside it. That’ll do.

      The SUV shakes when he forces it to climb a part of the sidewalk, and Kaede’s shaking form plunges forward. The seat belt dives in her bust, but luckily prevents her from going too far on. Not his softest move behind a wheel, but, hey.

      He’s got a teenager crying on his passenger seat.

      Barnaby parks the car, puts on the handbrake, and turns towards her.

      She seems to realise that they are out of the street, and now stopped under the trees of a deserted parking lot. The night’s nearly fallen, and even if someone passes them by or strolls through the park, they won’t be able to see what’s going on behind the tainted windows.

      “This is stupid, I’m sorry. You didn’t have to stop”.

      He uses the hand that is no longer holding the wheel to bridge the gap between them and squeeze her shoulder. This time, she’s the one who initiates the hug, turning left and leaning towards him.

      Barnaby catches her.

      “It’s far from stupid”, he whispers into her hair.

      The angle’s awkward, he cannot really reach her back, and her face is mostly resting on his right collarbone, but it isn’t going to stop him.

      She blindly reaches for her bag, most likely looking for a tissue. Barnaby beats her to it and hands her the packet he put on the driver’s door yesterday after a particularly greasy panini stop.

      She dabs at her eyes, blows her nose, and when Barnaby manages to capture her eyes, he asks, as gently as he can: “What really happened, dear?”

      Her breath hitches. There’s a sigh that turns into a hiccup. Barnaby, who’s trying to keep his heart in his ribcage against all the organ’s efforts to jump up in his throat, cannot stop himself from reaching out and putting a stray strand of hair behind her ear.  

      His instinct was right. Something did happen.

      He doesn’t know what he put his finger on, here, and it’s terrifying.  

      “It was at recess”, she admits, voice broken, looking defeated and so depressed that even the blurred lights of the city cannot cover her tiredness. “They were talking about Dad’s intervention on Tuesday, and I… I don’t know why, but I just lost it.”

      And the truth spills out.

      Barnaby, leaning on the wheel, his left elbow one inch from the horn and his throat feeling like sand, learns about what can only be called an aggression. From five of her schoolmates.

      “They began laughing, calling him lame, and I… I snapped. I called them all names, but they laughed even more, saying that I’ll just follow in his footsteps if I ever become a hero”.

      He opens his mouth, ready to say something, anything, to convey both his indignation and his rage, when she adds:

      “I’m not popular at all in the academy, you know? I’m not like you, who had a fan club and everything. And it’s just… I know that popular kids have a higher chance at getting a contract when they do get into the hero course. And even if I’m Tiger’s daughter, even if they could market me this way, I just… Sometimes, I feel dumb. So hearing them say it, it’s always…”

      There are tears in her voice, infusing each of her words. And Barnaby cannot even say something to her, doesn’t know where to begin to comfort her, because he never lived it. Never even tried to fill the shoes of the kids who were put in the dugout during his days. Because he was selfish, blinded by revenge, and couldn’t even see people that weren’t useful to him.

      What he called determination was always closer to negligence.

      “And I know it’s stupid”, she croaks, sobs pervading her voice and making her sentences harder and harder to understand, “but I thought that… with moving in Stern Bild, it would stop people from laughing at me. Because I would finally be among NEXTs, so they couldn’t insult me or act like I’m a freak. But now it’s this, and it’s the jokes about my name, my eyes, about Dad and Oriental Town, and about me as a person, as a hero, and I…”

      Her voice breaks on a gurgle. It deals a fatal blow to Barnaby’s heart, and he unties his seat belt with trembling fingers, turns completely towards her and pushes her back into his arms.

      In front of him, the little park stands deserted, lit only by the crackling light of a street lamp. It’s showering the grass in a strange halo of greys and blues.

      It all looks quite surreal, when there’s a teenager crying on you.  

      He stops looking at it, closes his eyes and lowers his chin into her hair.

      She smells like cafeteria-grease, recalcitrant dandruff, cheap perfume and homemade deodorant, and like the sun itself.

      Barnaby loves her.

      “I’m tired”, she hiccups against his chest.

      He bites his lips, trying to find strength in the beating of her heart that he can feel, hammering, against him.

      But the truth is, he’s never going to be as strong, and brave, and good as she is.

      So, this time, he doesn’t even try to find the words, and lets his fingers, now tangled in her hair and pressed on her back, speak for him. Maybe they can offer a language better at comfort than he is.

      She seems to understand them, anyway.

      “What can I do?” he asks, after a while, when they have separated from each other and when Barnaby is sure he can continue the conversation without breaking, too.

      “What?” she sniffles, blowing her nose.

      “To help you. What can I do, Kaede?”

      “I… don’t know. I’m sorry. It’s not that bad, not that serious, it’s-“

      “It is, dear.”

      “Well, it’s over, now. I’m glad I’m with you this weekend, I think it’ll be good to just be… Just be allowed to be me. And not think about all this shit. But what’s done is done. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t really have turned the tide, managed to make them see sense.”

      “But… What about Tony? Or Saroja? Weren’t they with you when this happened?”

      Why on earth didn’t they defend you? He doesn’t say. They’re supposed to be her best friends, why didn’t they say anything, if not on the moment, afterwards? Why aren’t they on her story, in her words, in her mind?

      “Saroja’s still home, the flu’s put her to bed last week. And Tony’s expelled for one more day.”

      Ah. That would explain that.

      Tony was actually the main reason he asked. Because he knows Saroja, and her friend’s a little bit too shy to talk back to some bullies, and she doesn’t want to become a hero, but Tony? Tony would have been livid, and would probably have been expelled again for trying to take her side.

      “Did you tell them yet? What happened?”

      “No.”

      “Maybe you should.”

      She hums. Barnaby isn’t really sure what that means, but doesn’t push it.

      He doesn’t know for Saroja, but Tony will probably try to confront her classmates when he’ll learn about the incident. So, better telling him now, while he still has the weekend to cool down, than letting him learn everything Monday morning.

      From what he heard and what he observed the few times the kid came to their flat, he’s got a quick temper. And quite a soft spot for Kaede.

      The Tony Barnaby knows would have died before letting anyone talk to her like this.

      (He’s also becoming a real mini-Wild-Tiger, but that’s another matter, one that Barnaby decided he would ignore blissfully up to the day his parents would call Kotetsu to blame the man for his bad influence. He’s sure this will happen, because since his partner saved him in the ice rink, the kid’s been adamant on becoming a hero. And he’s been a real Tiger fan. Barnaby strongly suspects his admiration for Kaede doesn’t stem from nothing.)

      “And…”

      She hesitates. Her cheeks are still pink but there’s real hurt in her eyes, so Barnaby waits patiently. “The one who said first that I’ll be as lame as Tiger… That was Matthew.”

      Barnaby feels his eyebrows shot up, and his left elbow slides on the wheel.

      It honks.

      Loudly.

      They both start and so does the poor jogger who had the unfortunate idea to pass by the car and get out of the park this exact instant.

      Barnaby apologises profusely, both to the man outside who’s making a run for it anyway, and then to Kaede, who’s at least smiling a bit at his clumsiness.

      “Seriously?” he says after a while. “Matthew? ‘Nice and funny-Matthew’? This one?”

      She looks away. Her jaw clenches, she gulps and sniffs, obviously trying not to break down again, but this is a battle she loses, because new tears roll down her cheeks.

      “Yeah, that one.”

      “Oh, Kaede, dear…”

      They share a look. Or, more accurately, Barnaby sends her a sympathetic gaze and Kaede glares at him like she’s trying to gauge exactly what he inferred from the whole situation. It would be a little bit intimidating were she not still crying.  

      And the answer to her silent question is everything.

      And absolutely nothing, because they’ve been aware of her little crush for months now.

      “I’m sorry, Cub, I really am.”

      “You… knew?”

      Barnaby exhales, mentally getting himself ready for this discussion. He’s not exactly fond of going in without Kotetsu, but… Hell. They need to stop talking in riddles. He needs to make sure he understands, and make sure she’s understood.

      “What he meant to you? Of course I knew. I have eyes, and I’ve begun to know you a bit, these last few years.”

      And you didn’t need to be a genius to understand what it meant that she was always talking about him, remembered what he wore and what he said even weeks afterwards, and that she tried to trade classes to be with him. She hasn’t been like this with Saroja or Tony, or anyone else.

      So, yeah, both Kotetsu and him had it figured out quite quickly.

      “But… You didn’t tell Dad?”

      “I didn’t exactly need to. He knew, too.”

      “What?! But… But he…”

      Hasn’t said anything? Yeah, because Barnaby asked him not to stick his nose into it. Just as he asked him not to ask about Tony, who they caught making love-struck eyes at her more than once. He’s far from discreet, but Kaede’s following her father’s footsteps here and being completely oblivious.

      Let her live her life, Kotetsu, he’d said, put the boundaries on her relationships herself, make her own mistakes, and meddle in only when she asks you or when her days are threatened.

      This isn’t the case, it’s just an high-school crush. Yes, you married yours. But not everything is doomed to repeat and not everything is set in stone.

      It’s just an high-school crush, Barnaby had assured his partner.

      It’s just a shame it had to end like this.

      There’s a part of Barnaby genuinely upset about the incident. About the racism and the discrimination, obviously, but that’s hardly a discovery, because this is a lingering rage he now bears with him since he started listening to what people actually said and did to Kotetsu and, sometimes, Kaede as well. But even about her heartbreak, he strangely feels… disappointed with Matthew. Angry.

      He would have liked the kid to be worth her time and feelings.

      He expected him to be more than this, frankly.

      But he doesn’t know this child. Only has what an enraptured and smitten teenager told him for nearly ten months over the weekends.

      Still, he’s upset.

      And that doesn’t make any freaking sense.

      “And I’ve… When he said that, and when the others began agreeing, I thought…”

      “Yes?” he presses, feeling that they’re holding onto something important, here.

      “I thought: ‘I’ve touched Lilo last. Their fire is quite strong. I could burn him, just a bit.’ I know it’s not worthy of a hero in the making, but I… I thought it. And for a moment, I really wanted to hurt him.”

      She buries her face in her hands. This is shame, Barnaby suddenly understands. From her point of view, she just admitted something horrible.

      “Oh, Kaede…”

      “I know, this is serious, and I swear I wouldn’t have killed him! Please don’t rat me out to Massini.”

      “I won’t.”

      “Does that… Does that make me a bad person? Wanting to fire-punch the guy I liked because he insulted my dad?”

      He sighs. “No, it doesn’t.”

      “But it’s not hero-like”, she whispers, softly, and then adds: “it’s not me, either”.

      Barnaby turns for a while over the city lights. In front of them, the shadow of a woman is walking her dog in the park.

      Does she know, he wonders, how vulnerable all heroes are? Or does she look at her screen like they’re not really people, more like abstract concepts and ideals of strength and morality, supposed to succeed in everything?

      If that is, does she know how wrong she is?

      “All heroes are human, you know”, he says after a while. “You’re not supposed to be perfect, because you’re not a robot, not a machine. The fact that you wanted to hurt Matthew doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It means you were hurt enough to want reciprocation. But even if you wanted to, you didn’t do it, and that’s the important part.”

      She sniffles. Looks at him with a strange look he cannot quite place.

      There’s a part of him who’s afraid to call this faith. Admiration. Trust. Whatever. Love. Because they don’t do that, the two of them, telling each other I love you, at least not directly, not face to face. Between them, it’s Kaede who sets the pace.

      But Barnaby cannot really let this slide, cannot really let her believe she’s less than absolutely amazing.

      “You could never be a bad person, Cub, because you do know it wouldn’t have been you. You said so yourself; this isn’t who you are.”

      She sniffles again then glares at him with this piercing gaze she uses sometimes, which makes her look older and that Kotetsu would probably say reminds him of Tomoe.

      “You’ve felt it too, haven’t you? This urge to hurt with your powers?”

      The question’s shy, but clear enough.

      “Yeah, I did”, he admits. No point in lying to a kid that saw your failings on live TV. “And I did worse than you, because I actually acted on the impulse.”

      He nearly strangled Kotetsu on the edge of a building, years and years ago, when revenge coloured everything and he thought that his best lead to Ouroboros had been wiped clean.

      “You saw our fight with Jake”, he confesses instead, “I almost killed him, that day.”

      “What… What stopped you?”

      He had wondered the same for many months afterwards. What was it, that he saw in Kotetsu’s eyes that day, that made him drop the criminal to the floor and prevented him from turning into a murderer himself?

      “It wasn’t who I am”, he smiles, and the gesture is infused with both sadness and certainty.

      Because Kotetsu’s eyes had been calm, sure, weary… but not worried.

      In his eyes, this day, Barnaby saw a version of himself he suddenly wanted to become.

      “It wasn’t who I wanted to be.”

      He had had Kotetsu’s voice in his head, shouting we’re here to save people, whoever they are! You’re not judge, jury and executioner, who the fuck do you think you are? You’re a hero! We don’t get to pick. We’re saving everyone, and that’s not negotiable!

      It had been one of the only times Kotetsu raised his voice like this. At least, that Barnaby remembers.

      “That’s not who I want to be, either”, Kaede rasps.

      When their eyes lock, she still looks stricken, tired and sad, but there is now a light in the amber. Something that speaks of the fearless determination he’s come to know and love.

      “I still need to ask, Kaede… Do you want us to intervene? Contact your teachers, or Massini? At least about the racism? You know how serious this is, right?”

      He has no clue on how to approach the situation, frankly. What’s the adult thing to do? The appropriate, expected way to deal with this?

      “Yes, I know. But I think it’ll sort itself out if I don’t add fuel to the fire. It’s just that… I thought Matthew… I thought he was different.”

      That, sadly, Barnaby can understand.

      “He’s not bright, then. At least, not as bright as he could have been, because he doesn’t know who he’s leaving behind with behaving like a jerk.”

      “A stupid girl who’s not even popular enough to get some signing for the school raffle”, she mumbles.

      “Hey, don’t you dare”, he retorts, with maybe a little bit too much authority, because this a bad habit of Kotetsu he won’t let her take, “you’re the brightest girl I know”.

      There’s a ghost of a smile appearing on her lips, shy, tentative, but definitely there.

      Barnaby feels like a king. Scratch being crowned King of Heroes.

      This, this feeling, is what pride feels like. 

      “And they say that, but in the end… You’re the one being brought home by a former MVP”, he adds, playfully.

      “Dad’s also a former MVP. And… You’re more than that, Barnaby.”

      There is a sincerity in her voice, something that refuses to take his attempt at a joke.

      “I know I often say that it’s funny, how far from the BBJ image you really are, but I don’t want you to be the BBJ they know. If that makes sense.”

      Barnaby’s heart is going to melt.

      He’s sure it’s possible, because right now, it feels way too hot, way too liquid, for his ribcage.

      “I think it does”, he whispers.

      “And I’m really glad, that’s what I mean, to have you in my life. The real you, not the you they think they know.”

      “Kaede… You know you don’t have to-”

      “It’s just that”, she cuts him, “I realised lately that I’ve never… At least not to your face, because I know I’ve texted it a few times, but I’ve never said to you that I love you. So, there. I love you.”

      And she said it looking straight into his eyes.

      Alright, so hearts can melt.  

      “I’m gonna have to hug you again, you know that?” he whispers, trying not to let the emotion overflow everything.

      She rolls her eyes, but yeah, the smile’s still there.

      “If you must.”

      “Oh, I definitely must.”

      This time, holding her feels like sealing a pact. Crossing a threshold, passing a door which had been open for years and that he could only look at from afar.

      It feels like coming home.

      “I love you too, Cub. So much”, he says in her hair, trying not to let his eyes mist.

      “The nickname’s gonna stick, isn’t it?” she complains, but without any real fire.

      “I’m afraid so, yes. Does it bother you? Cause I can stop. I’m not your father, I can actually control what my mouth is saying.”

      She snorts.

      “No, I don’t mind. I’d rather be a tiger cub than a kitten. And don't tell him I told you that, but I don't mind being compared to Dad like this.”  

      She already has the grace, wisdom and playful side of both, though, he smiles interiorly. And he knows she’s going to be huge, life-turning, maybe world-changing, when she’s going to take her father’s mantle. She’s going to put his wild roars to shame, one day.

      So, the only thing she lacks from an actual tiger?

      Stripes.

      “Come on, we should go back to him, he’s going to worry.”

      She nods.

      When the car starts again and when the radio comes back full blast, this time, Barnaby feels like listening to pop songs.

      They haven’t even passed the doormat that a very loud “Welcome home, my darlings, sweet little dumplings, lights of my life!” echoes in the apartment.

      What is it with his partner and pet names, Barnaby will never know.

      But Kotetsu sounds way too joyful for his daughter, and he winces. This could go either of two ways; one, Kaede accepts to let him goof around and tries to use his racket as a distraction. Two, the nerves are going to take control and Barnaby gives her two full minutes of paternal cooing before she snaps. Likely, at him. But maybe, at Barnaby, too.

      Claws or not will be her pick.

      “So, sweetie, how did it go, this week? Learnt any new cool moves?”

      He illustrates this with a ridiculous throwing of arms that manages to put tomato sauce on the kitchen cabinets beside him. Judging by the two stains already on the cupboard, it’s not his first over-enthusiastic movement of the evening. Barnaby rolls his eyes and resigns himself with wiping it.  

      Kaede ignores her father’s theatrics, mostly, and all but throws her bag on the couch and leaves her suitcase in the hall.

      “T’was shit.”

      Kotetsu stops with his spoon raised up above his head. There’s tomato sauce slowly dripping from it. It’s going to land on his hair if he doesn’t move in the next mi… And there it goes. He didn’t even feel it.

      Barnaby, with a dish towel in hand, crouched next to the cupboard’s door, has stopped, too.

      He frankly didn’t expect her to just be this brutally honest.

      “Oh? What happened?” Kotetsu asks, suddenly serious, and Barnaby intercepts a quick glance in his direction. He doesn’t even have the time to make a mimic at his partner, whether to say “you have tomato sauce in your hair, you numbskull” or “Warning! Minefield! Slippery slope!” that she adds: “The boy I had a crush on turned out to be a jerk.”

      Kotetsu nearly drops his spoon, but recovers admirably quick and pretends that he wanted to put it in the sink, anyway.  

      “Ho-… Wha-… Matthew?”

      “Yeah”, she admits, her cheeks slowly turning pink. “Turns out he’s a dumbass, and a bully, and has no idea what a true hero is.”

      A true hero, Barnaby notes.

      This is one of those things he’s definitely going to rat out to Kotetsu later if she doesn’t do it first.

      “Oh, sweetie…”

      Her jacket gets thrown over the couch, and she marches determinably towards the kitchen, where they both stand, a bit taken aback. Kotetsu still hasn’t dropped the bowl he used to make pasta sauce. Barnaby, still down beside the cabinet, rises up with a slowness than verges on comical. He’s scared he’s going to break the moment if he's too quick.

      Kotetsu stops moving.

      Kaede doesn’t.  

      She all but slams into his middle and snakes her arms around him. Baffled, he puts the bowl down, and raises a hand to hug her back. He mouths “Matthew?”, looking puzzled, in Barnaby’s direction.

      Barnaby nods, watching them hug, heart strangely tight.

      The first time he saw her clutching at his middle like this, everything smelled of blood and burnt plastic. And Kaede barely reached his chest.

      Now, the kitchen smells like basil and thyme and she can comfortably rest her forehead on his collar bones.

      “Spaghetti Bolognese and a musical, then?” Kotetsu asks, his voice soft and deep, and yes, hearts are liquid, tigers are the best things to happen to rabbits and Barnaby doesn’t ever want to leave.

      “Spaghetti Bolognese and a musical”, she nods.

      Barnaby looks back to the tomato sauce he didn’t even wipe from the kitchen cabinet.

      The splatters look like three sharp lines on the oak wood.

      He smiles.

      There, he’s found the stripes.

Chapter Text

      When she finally decided to broach the subject with her father, a few weeks after the Matthew-incident, he did not cry, but his eyes shone during the whole conversation. 

      “Dad. I can see you cry, you know. What is it? If this isn’t okay with you, even just a little bit, I won’t ask him, and we’ll never speak of it again.” 

      “No, no, sweetie, it definitely is okay with me, it’s just that… Gimme a moment, will ya?” 

      Kaede folds her arms across her chest and watches him wipe his eyes with his sleeve. There’s snot on his wrist now. Ew. She raises the tissue box without a word. He grabs two without even looking, mumbling something she chooses to understand as “so grown up, already”.

      Still, she rolls her eyes. It cannot be that much of a surprise, can it? The two of them have been together for five years now (than she knows of, at least. She’s convinced it began way earlier than when they told her it did), and since she’s been studying in Stern Bild, she’s been spending more time with them than with her family in Oriental Town. She’s got her room in their new and shared apartment on Silver Stage, their address as hers in every official document, and spends all the time she’s not in the dorms or with her friends with them.

      For all matters and purposes, she lives with them.

      And slowly, gradually, they’ve all come to a new dynamic, one that she actually likes, one where she feels she belongs. Selfishly, it’s also one she wants to keep. To secure, in some ways. And one she also wants people to recognize for what it is. For what it’s become.

      “I’m not trying to replace Mom.” 

      The smile Kotetsu manages is wobbly. 

      “I know that, honey. Neither am I. Tomoe’s irreplaceable.” 

      She loves that, even after twelve years, her mother’s memory didn’t stray away from them. She used to fear the day she’d disappear for good, but her pictures were never pushed away from the shelves, her name never left her father’s lips, and even now, even after falling in love again, he speaks of her with fondness, pride and this spark of sadness that Kaede knows is indissociable from grief and loss. She’s sure a part of him still loves her, and will love her come hell or high water.

      It's making her happy, in a way. Making her feel like what their parents had was strong enough to survive death.

      Because Tomoe never became a sore spot, a taboo, a subject anyone needed to walk on eggshells about.

      She doesn’t haunt them, she inhabits them.

      She’s a presence, not a ghost.

      And Kaede loves her still, too.

      “It’s just that… Grandma’s not getting younger”, she admits. “You’re doing one of the most dangerous jobs there can be. And I… I’m scared of losing you, I am, and I… I would like to have someone to depend on, if there ever was any necessity. Not that I’d wish to, but it’s… If it ever comes to that. And for all the rest.” 

      “You can depend on Bunny, sweetie. Whatever the circumstances.” 

      “I know that. And I do. But if you… If something happened to you, and I were still under eighteen… And even after that, it would… What I am trying to say is that, under the eyes of the law, he’s… he’s not entitled to help me. He’s not my parent, not my guardian.” 

      Kotetsu hums. She does not know what it means, and chooses to point him the snot-stain on his sleeve instead. He wipes it with his tissue, and continues, as if nothing happened: “I have to be candid with you here sweetheart, we talked about it once or twice. A few times. In those ‘what if something happened to me’, ‘what place do you want to take in her life?’ type of talks. And he kind of… always imagined taking you in. Or at least giving you the option. But I’m not sure the idea of a legal guardianship ever crossed his mind.” 

      “He does act like my second dad, though.” She hesitates a moment, then playfully adds: “He’s just the cool one.” 

      “Hey! I’m the cool dad! I’m your original dad, I’m the blueprint! Therefore, I’m the coolest!” 

      She smiles. There couldn’t be two more different people than Kotetsu and Barnaby when it comes to parenting. But in the end, she does feel loved, guided, and protected, in two very distinct ways. Is there something else you need, in a parent? her therapist had asked when she told her about her decision. I don’t know, she had answered, honest and somehow taken aback by the question. And the very same night, formed a solid “no” in her mind. No, that’s all I need. That’s all I want. They’re not perfect, far from it, but they’re hers.

      “But… Daddy, I also want you to know that there’s no risk of you being replaced.”

      That earns her a crushing wild-hug, from which she manages to extract herself only after two way-too-long minutes. When she does, Kotetsu looks serious. It’s a rare enough look on his face that she takes advantage of it and adds:

      “I don’t want to impose myself on him, either.” 

      Her father gives her this look he has sometimes, between impressed, grieved and proud. She suspects it’s when she does or says something her mother would have phrased or done in the exact same way.

      “You won’t. You definitely won’t, sweetie.” 

      She grabs her mug, drinks some of her cocoa, more to occupy her hands than anything else.

      “Do you plan on explaining your reasons to Bunny then? With… like… a slideshow and everything?”

      She frowns and squints at him. The seriousness never lasts long, she should be used to it by now. Still, it’s frustrating.

      “Are you ever going to let me live it down? It happened once, and it was necessary to prove him that the treetop course was way better than the waterpark.” 

      “Sure, sure.” 

      She glares. He raises his hands in front of him, palms to her. It’s a peace offering, but she’s not taking it.

      “And Barnaby liked it.”

      “That he did. Threatens me on a daily basis to draw inspiration from it to make me some diagrams about damage fees.”

      She laughs, but refuses to let him change the subject.

      “It’s simple enough this time”, she admits, slowly, “I love him, Dad.” 

      Kotetsu smiles and raises a hand to ruffle her hair. He manages to ruin her ponytail but she cannot find the heart to push him away, overwhelmed by the tenderness he puts in the gesture. His eyes have begun to shine again.

      “I know the feeling, kid. And I’m glad you do. I have to say, it was one of my biggest fears, that you two wouldn’t connect, that you’d reject him.” 

      “Dad”, she says, with this tone she uses when he’s being particularly obtuse. “He’s BBJ. How could I ever reject him?”

      “You damn well know he’s not perfect! And sometimes far from the whole ‘BBJ’ image.”

      God, how does he manage to make the quotation marks audible?

      “I was mostly worried about that, actually. For when you’d realise he’s not the person you idolised.”

      “I never idolised him.”

      “Mh-hm.”

      “Dad! I never did! I may have developed a tiny, teeny obsession after he saved my life, but I can assure you, the charm’s been broken since the day I found him drooling on your shoulder on the couch. Or when he told me off for playing with his hair products. Or when I saw his stupid socks.” Her father’s smile is getting wider and wider by the second and Kaede realises she’s getting side-tracked. “What I mean is that I’m still a Barnaby fan, I’ll be one for life, but just like I’ll be Wild Tiger’s. Those things are kind of… out of my control.”  

      “I know.” 

      “And anyway, it’s not BBJ, or Barnaby-the-hero I want to ask. It’s... just Barnaby.” 

      Kotetsu laughs softly. It’s gentle, full of comprehension and pride, and she smiles in answer. She loves him so much when he’s like this, when he’s treating her like an adult.

      “Then you should ask ‘Just Barnaby’, officially.” 

      She does so at Christmas, during their traditional present-opening ceremony on the morning of the 25^th. The three of them are reunited on the little living room, wearing matching horrendous sweaters  – Kotetsu got them as a joke last Christmas but grew so fond of them that he decided to wear his unironically, surprising absolutely no one – a plate of gingerbread cookies being slowly emptied of its content laid out on the coffee table. Kaede and Kotetsu are mainly responsible for the disappearances; Barnaby, who still isn’t a morning person, seems content to just sip on his coffee-flavoured eggnog. The three of them have abandoned the couch for the carpet a few minutes ago and Kaede has finished opening up what they offered her this Christmas.

      She’s been spoiled, and were those normal times, she would have squeaked and taken pictures of everything for Saroja to see.

      But this year’s different.

      This year’s special.

      So, with the new wallet she gives Barnaby, Kaede wraps another present. Just a simple envelope, a brown thing, with a cute neon-pink ribbon scotched on it, along with a rabbit sticker that acts as a label, in which she scribbles his name with one of her glitter pens.

      She waits for her father to leave for the kitchen to refill his glass to actually give it to Barnaby. 

      “Don’t you want to wait for him to come back?” he asks, surprised, when he sees her handing him the well-wrapped, neat, stern but present-looking envelope.

      “He knows what this is.” 

      God, she’s sweating. What if he says no? What if he doesn’t dare say no but wants to? What if it’s way too soon, way too much? She shouldn’t have assumed. Shouldn’t have put it like this, as a Christmas gift. He lost all his family at Christmas, what if he sees this as a replacement? What if he likes her but does not want to actually burden himself like this?

      She’s crazy. She’s completely out of her mind and she should have tested out the waters first. This is awful, this is going to backfire horribly, oh, Lord-

      It’s too late. Barnaby has already gotten the pair of scissors to cut out the end of the envelope.

      It scratches.

      Who opens a present with scissors? Barnaby Brooks Jr., that’s who. Kaede feels her heart pounding in her throat while watching him getting the papers out. He frowns when he discovers the heavy wad of black ink. Clearly, he was expecting some framed drawing, a picture, a book maybe, not twenty pages of printed official documents and a sweating, anxious, overly-watchful teen who can’t get her eyes off him as he peels out the rest of the envelope.

      “This is just a proposition, of course”, she blurts, making him look away before he can read anything, “you don’t have to accept.” 

      And finally, finally, he reads it.

      For a moment, the frowning deepens. 

FAMILY COURT COVER SHEET;

GUARDIANSHIP FORM: STEPPARENT ADOPTION.

      And then his eyebrows fly up, both at the same time, disappear under his fringe, his eyes grow huge, his jaw drops and when he finally raises his head, everything is blurred, the tears have won, Kaede is crying and all she can manage is a smile, wobbly and tentative and shy and so, so, so hopeful. 

      “I… wan-wanted…” she stutters.

      Words flee. The papers state clearer all she could ever voice. 

      “Is this… Kaede…” he rasps.

      “I’m not trying to replace Mom with you!” she all but screams, voice breaking. Well, not her best. She can be excused, she thinks, because Barnaby hasn’t let go of the pages and his grip has begun to shake. “I am not trying to push you into a role you do not want either”, she continues, through the tears but calmer now. “It’s just that… Over the past years, you’ve looked over me, taken care of me, even though you didn’t have to, and I… I love you. And I know that if something ever happened to Dad, I could count on you, and I… You’re…” 

      She stares at his fingers, still on the ribbon, clearly shaking now, but does not dare lift her eyes to his face.

      Damn, she had prepared this, she can say it. She needs to say it.

      “You’re the second parent I already have”, she croaks. “And I’d like… I'd like to make it official.” 

      She swallows the tears. Raises her chin. Finally meets his eyes and holds them. It’s scary, it’s huge, but she’s never been more sure of anything in her life.

      “I want you to be my family.”

      Somehow, that’s what does it.

      The dam breaks, papers crumple, green overflows and tears fall.

      Barnaby all but crumbles. 

      Her first coherent thought somehow ends up being “shit, I’ve made Barnaby cry.” Her second is to launch herself at him and hug him so hard she actually feels the air leaving his lungs. When he reaches behind her to cradle her head and back, his entire being shaking, she cannot really blame herself for sobbing as well. 

      She grabs his ugly sweater. It’s a bit rough, strangely pink, and it smells like the cinnamon biscuits they’ve been cooking the previous afternoon, like coffee, like her father’s softener, like him, like home.

      So, huddled against Barnaby, Kaede cries.

      Gripping her so tight she can feel each of his fingers, Barnaby cries, too.

      Hey, Mom, I hope you can see us from over there, she thinks, strongly.

      You would’ve loved him.

      He takes care of me, Mom.

      The thoughts make the tears come harder. But for a moment, she doesn’t care. Eyes tightly closed, Kaede pushes her head on the wool of Barnaby’s sweater, nearly drowns in the familiarity of his smell and tries and fails to stop sobbing like a child. It’s alright. She’s allowed to be a child. She’s sixteen, but he’s crying too, so that means it’s alright, isn’t it?

      “O-kay, does this mean all went well? Did he say yes?”

      Kotetsu’s voice somehow clears up a path over their heads. Kaede feels his hand on her hair, right next to her ponytail. One day, she’ll tell him that it feels like a giant paw when he does that. One day. She’s not sure he won’t make a big scene out of it, yet. 

      “You… You knew about this?” Barnaby stutters, voice completely broken and tumbling over each vowel. He gingerly accepts a tissue from Kotetsu, who, as it seems, heard them sniffling from the other room and came back armed with the full kitchen roll.

      “She asked me a few weeks ago, yes.” 

      It’s a very strange sensation, feeling Barnaby softly blowing his nose from somewhere over her head. She’s not ready to let go of the ugly sweater. If she lets go and he’s still crying, she’ll begin sobbing again, and she needs to stop, she's not a baby anymore, she’s sixteen, for God’s sake.

      These are just adoption papers.

      Just adoption papers.

      Freaking adoption papers.

      For Barnaby Brooks Jr. Which made him cry. Good Lord. 

      Because Kaede’s jut asked Barnaby to adopt her.

      Oh, no. Tears come back and within a few seconds, she’s sobbing, again.

      Kotetsu all but throws himself on the floor and joins the hug without any invitation. She lets herself be cradled into their combined embrace for a few moments, then, tentatively, she moves back, seizes a tissue, and does not even complain about her father’s hand that somehow ended on her back, drawing mindless patterns on the wool of her own sweater. 

      Hers is less ugly than Barnaby’s, at least.

      “So… Is it a yes? Or a maybe?” she asks, plainly, but the tremble in her voice must give out her uncertainty, because Barnaby immediately softens and answers: 

      “Yes, Kaede, yes, it’s much more than… That you’d… That I’d… Fuck. Of course. Yes.” 

      He smiles. There are stars in his eyes and tears streaks on his cheeks.

      They look like stripes.

      “You’d be stuck for life with me, though”, she dares, only half-joking. 

      She has never seen his eyes that green. 

      “Isn’t he, already?” 

      She elbows her father in the ribs for breaking the moment. But Barnaby scoffs, sniffs, and looks at the papers again. 

      “Are you… are you sure about this? If I were to adopt you, we would be… legally family. You’d be… Kaede, you’d be my daughter.” 

      The word brings new tears to his eyes. She follows the new lines they paint on his cheeks and feels water rolling down her own face. Oh, how alike we already are, she thinks. And I’d be his daughter.

      The word feels warm. It feels right.

      “Yes, I’m sure”, she murmurs, like it’s a promise, a secret, a prayer all at once, suddenly feeling like the world solidified under her knees, right here, on her father’s stupid idea of a carpet, beside a half-full plate of gingerbread cookies. 

      “You’re the family I chose”, she says, like it’s the easiest and truest thing in the world, and maybe it is, because Kotetsu repeats it, changes the I into a we, his voice soft and maybe a bit wet, too, and it makes Barnaby bite his lips, make a strange pout, a breathless sound that she is definitely not going to call a sob, and the next thing she knows she’s drawn into another hug, cheek pressed between Barnaby’s shoulder and her father’s arm, and the two adults are crying.

      It's alright. They’re family. Have been for a long time now, but maybe they needed her to come to the front and state the obvious. Maybe they had been waiting for her to do it, to choose it.

      And so Barnaby cries, huddled between them, in the heap of arms and shoulders they have formed on the carpet.

      Somehow, it’s the sight of his tears that make it all real.

      He’s not just her dad’s partner anymore.

      He’s her parent.

      He’s hers, too.

      She accepts the whole emotional ordeal for a full minute, as a Christmas treat, then decides that there’s been enough tears and embraces for a full month and undoes the bundle of limbs that formed over her head. 

      “All right, that’s enough, if we stay like this I’m going to cry for a whole hour. Who wants more eggnog?” 

      Both men look at her with strange wonder. Their faces are drenched with tears and Barnaby’s hand has not let go of her father’s. She does not look too closely, for if she were to, she’s pretty sure she’d see their fingers trembling. 

      “I do, thank you”, Barnaby rasps, another tissue already in his hand.   

      She disappears into the kitchen, wiping her eyes absentmindedly, wondering when exactly it became so easy to cry in front of Barnaby, or if she will one day be able to forget the look in his eyes, the way green became so bright, when she called him family. 

      In a way, she feels like she’s creating a life-changing bond between them. Like something inside of her had been growing, expanding in her chest, and hatched in their waiting hands. Like something clicked into place.

      It feels right in a way few things ever did before.

      Through pain and laughs and cries and so many lazy mornings or quiet evenings, they became family. So maybe it began in the back of an ambulance. Maybe it began in the rubbles of a mall, or in the passenger seat of a car, or the day she stopped seeing Barnaby as a celebrity and caught sight of the man beneath. Maybe it began at a dinner table, with her mathematic schoolbook open next to their plates and his hushed explanations of Thales’ theorem.

      Maybe it was there, all along, ready to be, ready to burst, to explode. But still hers to name, hers to seize.

      It doesn’t matter, really.

      Because her father never forced her to spend time with Barnaby. She’s the one who came to him, learnt to know him, to let him in, inside her life. She’s the one who wanted it.

      She doesn’t regret it one bit.

      Because they’ve been family for a while, in this strange unspoken agreement they all had, that they now were a unit, a front, joined by a shared wish to care for each other.

      But she made a page turn.

      Because now, the unspoken is written in black letters, and the agreement is a promise.

      Kaede isn’t really sure she’s the one who sealed it.  

      Maybe it’s the tears. The tears, painted on all their faces, drawing lines of gold and amber on their skins in the dim and colourful lights of the Christmas tree.

      On Barnaby’s face, on Kotetsu’s, and on hers too, the lines look like streaks.

      The tears, like stripes.

      Yes, she smiles, pouring herself a new drink, family.

      This night, when they all go to bed full to the brink with turkey leftovers and ginger cake, and when calm reigns again in the flat, she lets her mind drift watching the stars twinkle behind the glass. From her bed, she can see Orion’s belt, his quiver and outstretched arm.

      It’s always been soothing, watching the night sky.

      She prays for a moment, then, as she always does on Christmas days, and addresses her mother.

      What a strange life I’m living, Mom, she thinks. What a curious, bizarre, amazing conjunction of events led me here. Wanting Barnaby Brooks Jr. to adopt me. Actually wanting another parent, when it all seemed impossible, undesirable, a few years ago. 

      I think I’m happy, Mom. 

      I think Dad is, too. 

      As in answer, a star shines brighter. It could be a satellite. It could be a sign. It could mean anything or everything. 

      It doesn’t matter.

      What does is what you do with it, a voice inside her, sounding calm and serene, says.   

      So Kaede smiles at the star, thinks about the future, and lets one last tear fall.

      This one is full of hope and love. This one, Barnaby does not see.

      It doesn’t matter.

      He’ll be here to wipe all the rest.  

I still seek shelter in black streaks 

Guidance in their orange obliques 

Because in troubles great, mild and prized 

I too have been weak, cried, and realised,

Ushered between the stripes of tigers wild:

It’s in your smile that family lies, my child.