Another kink meme de-anon fic. Writing these kinds of fics are almost cathartic, if very saddening. Feedback is always appreciated. I hope you enjoy it.

It's the numbness that hurts her the most

It's the fact that whenever Karina opens her mouth to sing, her throat closes up and her eyes well with tears.

She can't sing
She doesn't know if she'll ever be able to again without breaking apart. Karina can only remember performing at that bar, looking down at seeing Kotetsu clapping for her, looking genuinely enthralled by her voice and piano. What I would give to see that again.

She can't dance
Because all she can remember is teaching him how to. The memories of his silly, goofy robot dance play when she closes her eyes, curled up in the corner of the studio in her exercise clothes. She remembers her dream of asking him to dance at the next charity ball. She would pretend to be offended by him stepping on her toes, but it'd be a lie. It'd be such a big lie, for she's love every second of it.

She can't think
Her mind is blank. It feels so blank, and empty, she feels torn apart and chopped into pieces from that last fight. The week after Kotetsu's death, she doesn't go into work. She stays home curled up in her bed. Parents are gone on business, she tells them that she really is fine. It's a lie. It's a disgusting lie. She, Karina Lyle, is a disgusting lie wrapped inside a toned body and a pretty face.

The dam building up inside of her finally bursts when, one the seventh day, she rifles through her bag and accidentally pulls out the ugly towel he gave her. Then, everything shatters inside her. Bringing the fabric to her chest, she begins to sob, big, gulping shudders, snot running from her nose and her whole body trembling as she falls against her bed.

"I'm so sorry, I'm sorry," she cries, unable to do anything, because she is the pretty idiot Blue Rose who runs away from the villains in her skimpy outfit. At the moment, she feels closer to sixty than sixteen, closer to a dying widow than a silly teenage girl with a sillier teenage crush that never would've been reciprocated. Between his dead wife and Barnaby, she was a very distant third, if that. And yet, she can't help but feel the empty, gaping hole inside her chest, filling up with the tears that trickle down her cheek, off her nose and onto her exposed collarbone.

"Oh, Kotetsu," she sniffles, wiping her nose on her arm, burying her face back into the towel. Nathan calls her later, but she won't answer her phone. Pao-Lin texts, 'Please answer us,' but she doesn't respond. It isn't until Keith shows up at her door with the most pained expression on her face that she finally opens her home to them.

"Miss Rose..." he whispers, offering her a white Chrysanthemum. A flower for the grieving. Suddenly, she falls into his broad chest, her body shaking with adolescent sobs.

"He's gone, why is he gone?" she sobs, curling her fingers in the soft fabric of his shirt, soaking it with her tears. His arms instinctively wrap around her and they stand in her doorway. It isn't until a tear drips off his crooked nose that Karina notices that he's crying to.

"I don't understand," he says, quiet and more innocent than she's ever heard any man be, "I don't understand why Mr. Tiger had to die. He was a good man. He was one of the best men. He had honor, he was a real hero. And...and I don't understand why he died. Heroes shouldn't die like that. Never. Never..." and he trails off, clinging Karina to him like she's a rag doll for him to hold. She can't say anything to answer Keith, she can't offer him comfort because the same thoughts run through her mind all hours of the day.

All she can do is murmur, "Because the world is cruel and unfair."

He clings to her and strokes her hair, clumsy in his comfort but also overwhelmingly sincere. It's too much. She can't take this physical contact so close after his death, it feels like a betrayal and it hurts, for she wants to feel loved, taken care of...but she doesn't know by who.

"Come in," she whispers, wiping at her eyes, "I'll make coffee."

As she walks into her kitchen, Keith following behind her, she only thinks, He would want me to be happy. I know he would, because he's Kotetsu...and he always tried to make me smile. And yet, even as she rationalizes this to herself, the hole in her chest just rubs raw even more.

He feels like a failure.

No, scratch that, Ivan is a failure. He's a big failure of a hero, whoring himself out to the sponsors and missing the true point of it all. To save people. To make the world a better place. While he had entered the spotlight more, he still clung to the safety of his sponsors and the media. He didn't get out there like the other heroes did, he shied away from the more dangerous situations in favor of making sure the cameras caught him.

He has survivor's guilt, and he knows it. But he can't change it. It'd feel like a betrayal to be anything other than purely guilty. If he'd been a better hero...if only...if only he'd followed Kotetsu's advice to the hilt, maybe then things would different. A possible sort of butterfly effect, perhaps, although he can't quite fully understand it himself. He forces himself into the gym after Kotetsu's death. He works his skinny, noodle arms until muscles start to form and sweat soaks through him. Even when his throat goes dry and his eyes blur from the exercise, he keeps doing it. It's atoning. It's apologizing.

The pain keeps him going. When he feels something pop while lifting dumbbells, he keeps going. When his muscles shred and tear on the treadmill as he sprints, he won't stop. He's making himself fit. He's making himself strong, in memory of Kotetsu. He will be a hero for the people now. I will protect everyone,he thinks to himself as he does his hundreth pushup.

But when Ivan thinks about what Kotetsu would say if he saw him killing himself like this in the gym, he falls to the floor and clings to the sweaty ground. 'Hey, Ivan, take a break. I'll buy you a drink!' he would say, grinning that cheesy smile and slinging an arm around his shoulder like an uncle would.

"Fuck," he mumbles, feeling all the pain of the past few weeks catch up to him, ripping through his body and making him sore all over. "I can't do anything right...I just can't...I've failed everyone...Edward, Kotetsu, sponsors, Sternbild..."

He lies like that until she pulls him up into a sitting position. Pao-Lin is there. He realizes he hasn't seen her in weeks, and now she presses him into a hug.

"You haven't, you know," she mutters, her low voice a cool ice pack for his aching muscles, "Ivan...you haven't failed as hard as you think. If you have, then so have I. Don't say otherwise," she says, one step ahead of his mouth as he opens to protest her words, "Silly little kill-stealer girl with the funny wig, always going after criminals to get more points, like she's playing some video game, while men like Kotetsu act like real heroes and save the civilians. It's hideous of me."

Ivan turns to look at her properly. Her big green eyes seem faded, exhausted, and her under eye circles are colored a deep shade of purple. The short blonde hair now hangs longer, skimming her shoulders, but the clip still pulls part of it back. She's thinner than normal and he realizes that they've been killing themselves in different ways since his death.

"Don't do this to yourself," she pleads, gesturing to the bruises that mottle his legs and arms from the weeks of throwing himself around in the gym. Her hand clasps his, and it feels cold. He sometimes forgets that she's only two years younger than him, for she seems years older now. Then, he realizes he wants to throw her words right back into her face, because it makes him ache to see her this way.

"I...it hurts, Pao-Lin," he whispers, wiping at his eyes, "Everything hurts." He buries his face into her collarbone, feeling the barest traces of her body heat, and she rubs his back. They're both too young for this. For the hurt and the loss, and she murmurs what sounds like Mandarin into his ear.

"Bu ku, Ivan, wo ai ni, wo ai ni...Ni hen jian qiang, keshi ni bu zhidao. Zhao dao ni de shili...because if you aren't strong then I can't be either."

His muscles are torn, and hers are atrophied. Both of them are broken in their own ways, and, as they clasp each others hands, they pull each other to their feet.

"...Do you want to go get lunch?" he asks, looking at her thin, but still lovely, face. She nods, and he sees tears escape her eyes as she squeezes them shut. Pao-Lin leans into him, and he into her, as they both leave the building.

Antonio is even quieter than normal after Kotetsu's death. He quits being a hero. It's not even a question. He immediately goes to his boss and tells him that he's done.

He only got into heroing because of Kotetsu and Tomoe, his best friends, and how eager they were to all be swept up in the glamour of the hero world. The costumes, the photoshoots, fighting for points and catching the bad guys, like living in a movie.

He remembers the first week of his job, working with Kotetsu. They'd been happy, and every night they'd pick up Tomoe and take her out with them. A lively girl cruising around Sternbild with some of the top heroes, calling herself the Tigress as a joke and leaning into Kotetsu when she grew sleepy. Yes. Like a movie.

And it couldn't have changed more since those glory days. He feels like a soldier, one who entered the war with rose colored glasses, only to have them be shattered by harsh reality. Now he's a shell-shocked veteran drowning his sorrows in a bar. It's a war that he's been fighting, even if it's not consistently, against the villains of this town and the politics of Hero TV itself. War is hell. But it'd been heaven with his best friends.

When Tomoe died, he and Kotetsu drank themselves into a stupor. They both cried. How could they not? She was Kotetsu's wife, one of his best friends, the little girl who'd (along with Kotetsu) helped him get away from gang life. That night, he thought Kotetsu was going to die. But, he lived for Kaede. Later, he confided that he also lived because he didn't want to leave his best friend 'alone with those sharks'.

"...That turned out well," he mutters, staring at the bottle of his beer glass and feeling the bitterness wash through him. Both of his best friends are cold in the ground now.

He, Antonio Lopez, is alone.

He's so lost in his memory that he doesn't even notice when Nathan saunters up next to him, his fluffy pink outfit gone, replaced with a deep magenta shirt that manages to be subdued while also capturing his flamboyance. Antonio suddenly feels so tired, and even angry, that he just casts a sideways glance at Nathan.

"I'm not in the mood to be groped, Nathan. Leave," he almost snarls, but contains himself as he downs the remainders of his beer. Nathan doesn't act haughty or miffed, but sits and waves down the bartender.

"One cosmopolitan and another beer for this man," he orders, crossing his arms and leaning forward on the table. He too, doesn't directly look at Nathan, but instead glances towards the hanging television. Antonio wants to hit something.

"It took me awhile to find you," Nathan says as the bartender hands him a girly looking drink and slides another beer towards Antonio, "After you quit, I mean. And I'm not here to grope you. At a time like this, I'm much classier. Kotetsu was a good man," he says, tipping the drink back into his mouth, "A goofy, dorky man, but still a good one. He enjoyed making people happy. I know that you miss him."

"How?" Antonio asks, his voice hard and breaking as he feels saltwater drip from his eye into his drink, "You haven't lost your best friend. I'd known Kotetsu since our sophomore year...I was his best man...I helped take care of his wife when she was pregnant. She was also one of my best friends. And now I've got nobody." He sees Nathan purse his pink lips and swallow the last of his fancy drink.

"Antonio, you're right," he murmurs, his baritone voice hushed, barely audible in the bar, "I can't know what it's like to lose Kotetsu as my best friend. But that doesn't mean I haven't felt loss before. When you're a black NEXT growing up in a low income neighborhood, you tend to lose more than you gain." The bitterness in Nathan's voice is so very unlike him, the opposite of happy flamboyance, that Antonio becomes dumbstruck.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. This isn't about me, and it never has been. It's about Kotetsu," he flags down the bartender to get a new drink and gently clinks the glass against Antonio's half finished mug. "To Tiger. One of the finest men I knew."

Antonio stares at Nathan, touched by the action, and as he mutters 'cheers' he thinks that maybe, just maybe, there is a future for him. He doesn't know what it's in it...but he just hopes to any kind of god that it exists.

He doesn't want to live anymore.

Barnaby Brooks Jr sees no reason to get up in the morning. His life is in shambles. He is alone. Only thoughts of death and Kotetsu occupy his brain, tracing along his cerebral cortex, teasing his mind with the promises of pain. He curls up on his side, clutching Kotetsu's hat to his chest, and feels pathetic for doing so. He is a fallen man and it's all Kotetsu's fault.

It's Kotetsu's fault because, if he hadn't met him, if he hadn't partnered with the goofy old man, he would've stayed hard-hearted and colder than Karina's ice. But instead, Kotetsu lit a fire within his chest and melted him from the inside out with the dorky smile and the kind words. That silly old man made Barnaby fall in love with him.

Love is a very dangerous emotion. In another life, Barnaby thinks, things could've gone well. He could've...he could've told Kotetsu how much he loved him.

Maybe Kotetsu would've told him back.

Maybe they could've held hands, kissed, dated, moved in together, gotten engaged, married, got a mortgage on a nice house, a dog, been two different kinds of fathers to Kaede, Maybe they could've woken up next to each other every day.

And...and maybe Kotetsu wouldn't be dead.

Barnaby is out of tears. He exhausted his tear ducts the few days after Kotetsu's death and at his funeral. The way his voice shook as he told everyone of how wonderful Kotetsu was...a year ago, he wouldn't have recognized himself. Not at all.

He will never love another man the way he loves Kotetsu. It's impossible. It's unthinkable. He can't even imagine another man who could reach so deep inside and grasp onto his soul; there is nobody else who could even dream of making him feel so deeply. If I'd told you sooner, we could've had time, he thinks, feeling the scab rip off the Kotetsu shaped wound once more and blood pour out onto his bed, Your last words would've been 'I love you.'

"Forgive me," Barnaby says, and his eyes ache from crying as he buries his face into a pillow, "Forgive me for not trusting you sooner. If I had...oh, Kotetsu, if I had then we could've had ages. If we'd had that trust...we could've had years. We could've grown old together, two hopeless idiots trying to save a rotting city."

He keeps expecting Kotetsu to wrap his arms around his waist and bury his face into a shoulder for another hug. So many regrets swim in his mind, and it's painful. He's got nobody. Mother, Father, Aunt, and True Love...gone. The other heroes make weak attempts to contact him. Barnaby knows that they're all splitting apart at the seams in their own way.

Pressing the hat to his nose, he feels tears drip onto the fabric as he inhales, remembering just how...how wonderful everything used to be.

Snow fell on the day of his funeral. It coated the ground, four days after Christmas. The season of giving. Barnaby would give anything to feel the touch of those rough, tanned hands once more, hear his goofy laughter. He's not selfish. He just wants to see Kotetsu again.

He wants to spend Christmas morning with him. He's dreamed of it, waking up curled in Kotetsu's arms as snow ravages the city, the two of them waking Kaede to sit down around a fragrant green tree. A family. The present he bought Kotetsu sits inside his closet, never to be opened. He'd...he'd been looking forward to the reaction. A stuffed tiger plush to go with the bunny the old man had given him a year ago. It's silly, sentimental, but Kotetsu would have loved it.

It is only then, he realizes, with a gut-wrenching sob, that Kotetsu is truly gone.

Nobody will ever tease him about his hair. Nobody will ever cook for him. Nobody will ever slap him across the face when he's a wreck.

Nobody will ever call him Bunny again.

Yes. Barnaby doesn't want to live anymore. He is a broken man who destroyed himself. However, he can't bring himself to commit suicide. Every time he places the pills in his hand or stares down the kitchen knives, he remembers how Kotetsu took a bullet for him so long ago. He was ready to die for you. Don't make his suffering in vain,a voice in the back of his head pleads.

All he can do now is to just wait out the pain. He knows that the suffering will slowly kill him.

It'll just take some time.

Please review, and stay strong for episode 25. Hopefully my fic will be entirely AU after that.