The day is a little warm for autumn. Kotetsu and Barnaby are both a teensy bit overdressed and overheating as they walk their favorite route through the park, but there's nothing they can easily shed, so they endure the slight stickiness and just continue as per tradition.
"Evan turned in his two weeks' notice yesterday," Kotetsu mentions. Small talk.
"Evan…"
"Edelman. My publicity agent," Kotetsu explains. Barnaby nods. Somewhere along the line, Kotetsu ended up on a first-name basis with his supervisor, but Barnaby had always called him Edelman, even after retiring.
"Did he give a reason for quitting?"
"He's moving on. Found a new project."
"What, better than heroes?"
"Corporate turn-arounds. Rebranding entire companies rather than just a hero. He's very excited about it, and it's not like Wild Tiger is particularly interesting at the moment."
"But just last week, making a slingshot with the momentum of that car—"
Kotetsu laughs. "Well, Hero TV likes me. The sponsors, not so much. It's still no big deal. Evan's come a long way, and I'll survive just fine."
Finally detached from that struggle of what's-hot-what's-not, and without a generation to date him, Kotetsu is like a classical myth: ungrounded in time, known and enjoyed by all. It took him a few decades, but he finally learned all the functions of his hero suit and gadgets, as well as what tool to use when without an engineer—Saito or Barnaby—giving him the answers in his ear. He's put that experience to good use. Wild Tiger: Eternal is the finishing blow. As other heroes pursue the criminals around town, by the time Wild Tiger shows up, it's all over. The day is about to be saved, and every time, he saves it. Unfortunately, while the how the day gets saved each episode interests the viewer audience, the sponsors are complaining of a static hero, someone inflexible and unmarketable. The most he can sell now is himself, and little else. Kotetsu hopes that popular opinion of Wild Tiger can protect his job even as the sponsors moan and groan. He's kept his promise this long, he doesn't want something stupid like other people's money to end him.
They reach one of their usual stops, and without a word, simultaneously gravitate to the bench and sit. After a quick check for Barnaby's comfort, they sit side-by-side, fingers threaded together. Kotetsu closes his eyes. A nice, strong breeze picks up, blowing away the sticky-warm weather. In the sweet coolness left behind, Kotetsu sighs, happy.
And then he looks to Barnaby. His partner's forehead still shines with sweat, even though the temperature has dropped. His chest trembles with short, shallow breaths, and his eyes, Kotetsu will never forget the look in his eyes, a horror that Kotetsu can't name—
"Bunny?" Kotetsu asks, fully turning to his partner, mentally running through his list of diseases and their symptoms, but before he can make a decision, Barnaby powers up and glows blue, shoving Kotetsu down the bench, away from him. "Bunny, what—"
Barnaby takes his other hand and strikes himself in the center of his chest, hard enough for Kotetsu to hear a sickening crack. But he can't do anything, because Barnaby hits a second time, and a third, a fourth. But after that fourth hit, Barnaby stops, and sits, breathing heavily, as his powers continue to run.
"Bunny! What's going on?" Kotetsu eyes are burning. "What did you just do?"
Barnaby closes his blue eyes. "My heart stopped," he says. "I restarted it. But we should go to the hospital either way."
"Wh… What?" Kotetsu stares. "Your heart—just—"
"Yes. I'm fairly certain I just had a heart attack. But I can feel it beating again. Everything is fine, Kotetsu."
Everything is fine? Kotetsu can't hold back the tears as they begin to spill. Nothing is fine, Bunny, you're falling apart at the seams and there's nothing I can do. How can you try and tell me that everything is fine?
"Kotetsu, call an ambulance," Barnaby reminds his partner calmly. The blue glow fades, and with a groan of pain, Barnaby adds, "Now."
He doesn't need to be told twice. Kotetsu does better than an ambulance, too: his hero transport is a tap away, and it's waiting for them at the edge of the park by the time Kotetsu gets there, having carried Barnaby in his arms away from the scene. By now, Kotetsu has a guess at what's still wrong. Barnaby successfully restarted his own heart, but the use of Hundred Power and the awkward angle probably means he broke some of his own ribs, and it's not like his bones are as strong as they used to be...
It's over. Some part of Kotetsu knows. It's a part that feels like everything wrong in his life. It's the part that feels like the schoolyard bullies eighty years ago. It's the part that feels like the judgmental teachers, the part that feels like the companies who turned him down, the part that feels like Jake Martinez or Maverick or everyone who ever told him that he couldn't be everything he wanted to be. That's the part telling him that it's all over. Barnaby is no longer aging. Barnaby is dying.
Kotetsu grits his teeth. It's not over. I won't let it be over. Not here. Not now.
But someday, it will be over.
That's someday. Kotetsu keeps Barnaby upright, tests for blood in the lungs, strings air nubs under his nose, and fastens a seatbelt across his lap, but not his chest. Barnaby looks at him, his eyes mostly clear but still tinged with that fear from before. Kotetsu takes his hand and squeezes it. This is today.
The hospital staff struggles to understand their family situation at first—Kaede looks like the matriarch, with her children and grandchildren beneath her, and Kotetsu is initially mistaken as one of her sons, just as he feared he would be. The nurses also aren't quite sure why all of these people who do not have the surname "Brooks" want to spend so much time with Brooks, Barnaby, but once Kotetsu can sufficiently prove that he is Wild Tiger: Eternal, Barnaby's common-law husband, they're all allowed to visit with only a few funny glances and whispers: Look, Wild Tiger is here. He's almost a hundred years old. Isn't it strange how young he looks?
The babies think the hospital is so cool. They play doctor and press toy instruments against Barnaby's forehead and arms (they are forbidden to touch his delicate torso) and declare that he is afflicted with the most dreadful illnesses they can imagine—chicken pox, or the flu—and they're going to make him all better… All better! Hooray! Oh wait, Grampa Barn-bee is still sick, better give him another check-up… The grandchildren's parents play middle-man, good-naturedly distracting the children when they accidentally become too morbid, and smiling positively the whole time, thinking that it's more respectful to Barnaby's dignity if they pretend that nothing is wrong. Kaede is wiser, and sees the true issue at hand: making sure Barnaby gets every last minute with Kotetsu that he can. To these ends, she bosses her unruly descendants around, from sending them on errands to orchestrating separate visiting appointments for her father and her children, and sometimes, just plain telling them to leave.
Kaede is a godsend to the both of them, Kotetsu in particular, as she keeps him from going home to an empty house. But it doesn't help that her own age reminds Kotetsu that it's not going to be this one death, and then no more pain. Death is going to keep coming for Kotetsu's loved ones for the rest of his unnaturally long life. Barnaby is the first in an onslaught of death.
But for now, Barnaby is in a hospice, a little offshoot of the hospital for the people who are never going to get better, but don't yet need intensive care. Slightly over half the people there are like Barnaby, aged and waiting to die, while the rest represent a wide variety of terminal illnesses, stretching all the way from childhood to late middle age. Kotetsu recalls, Tomoe never stayed in a hospice. They had known her illness threatened her life, but she had a chance of pulling through with treatment, with time, if not for Fate's other plans.
Barnaby doesn't have that chance. He's just trying to muster up as many good days as possible to smile at his family, at Kotetsu, before they send him to the special IC unit.
Then they send him to the special IC unit.
It's the special IC unit that Kotetsu has only visited one other time.
The nurses string Barnaby up with a spider web of tubes, with an IV to his arm and a cup over his mouth puffing oxygen for him to breathe. The room has a few splashes of color meant to brighten everything up—Barnaby's blanket is pastel green, the ceiling is baby yellow—but for all the good those colors do to stop Barnaby from dying, everything might as well be blank white. Kotetsu sits beside him and holds his hand, with a heart monitor chanting to the tempo of Barnaby's pulse, "still-here… still-here… still-here… still-here…"
Barnaby never asked for it to be like this. Kotetsu knows he certainly never asked for it to be like this. It's not fair.
"Hey… Bunny," He stares at Barnaby's pale hand, cradled in his tanned one, the hand he still loves, liver spots and bulging veins and all. Barnaby stirs the slightest bit, and Kotetsu takes that as a sign his partner heard him. "Guess what, Bunny? You get to ask me for a promise."
Now he has Barnaby's attention. His head rolls half an inch toward Kotetsu, and his eyebrows lower. He's confused.
"When my lover dies, they get to ask me for a promise. And I'll keep it forever, no matter what. Something you want me to do to honor you. It's a tradition. At least… it will be a tradition."
Barnaby's lips part, and his creaking voice asks, "What…?"
Kotetsu just holds his hand a little firmer. "Tomoe's last words to me were a promise. She asked me to always be a hero. It's been hard, but I think I'm doing a pretty good job, considering everything. And so long as I did that for her, it was okay that I moved on and… fell in love with you." His eyes start stinging. It's an all too familiar sensation. "God, I fell in love with you…"
Barnaby says nothing. He just stares at Kotetsu, wrinkled visage absolutely unreadable.
Clearing his throat and fighting not to cry, Kotetsu continues. "So! I'll make a promise to you, too, Bunny. The only thing I can't do is undo Tomoe's promise, but everything else is fair game. I'll do anything you want. Anything."
Barnaby says nothing.
The nurse comes in for routine measurements: heart rate, blood pressure, fluids, and the cocktail of drugs that Barnaby needs to not die then and there. She smiles at Kotetsu as she leaves, not a smile to cheer him up, but as if to say, I understand. Kotetsu wonders how many people like him she sees each and every day, clinging to their fading loved ones.
"…Promise…"
Kotetsu leans closer, prepared to hang onto Barnaby's every word. "Yes?"
He ignites with the soft blue glow of Hundred Power, clutching Kotetsu's hand and pulling back the plastic cup with the other. It takes a hundred times his normal strength to breathe unassisted, but Barnaby draws a deep breath anyway. "Kotetsu, promise me that you will live."
He stares at Barnaby. "Huh?"
"You've outlived me," Barnaby says simply. "At this rate, you'll outlive Kaede, too. Maybe even your grandchildren. I don't want you to be an idiot… and in a moment of weakness, decide you've lived long enough, when there's still so much you can do. For Sternbild… and for the world."
Kotetsu just gapes at him as he continues. "I don't know if there's a reason you gained the power to live so long, but you always believed your Hundred Power was meant to protect people. Maybe your longevity power is meant for something, too. Don't throw this power away, even if it's not the power you wanted."
"Bunny…"
The corners of Barnaby's mouth twitch upward in a smile. "I worried that you'd leave, as I grew older and it became harder to live with me. A few times, I convinced myself you should leave. No matter how many times you reassured me, I never quite believed you would stay. And yet… here you are. Just like you said."
"Of course…" Tears spill from Kotetsu's eyes as he grips Barnaby's hand all the harder. "Of course I'm here!"
"Now, keep both our promises," Barnaby broke into a full smile. "Live, Kotetsu. And since you're going to live, be a hero. To pass the time, if nothing else."
The potent combination of those two promises strikes Kotetsu, and he manages a dry laugh. "You're too damn clever, Bunny," Kotetsu lifts his partner's hand, kisses it, and brings it to his cheek. "Did I ever tell you that?"
"Yes," Barnaby twists his fingers and wipes away Kotetsu's still-falling tears. "Yes, you did."
"All right, then. I promise I'll do everything I can to stay alive. Happy?"
"I am… I'm very happy…"
The Hundred Power fades, and Barnaby's hand slips from Kotetsu's face. The hero catches it, places it to Barnaby's side, and fixes the plastic breathing cup over Barnaby's mouth and nose once again. The heartbeat machine continues chanting, still-here… still-here… still-here…
It crosses Kotetsu's mind that he should have called Hero TV, told them to take him off-call just for the night, because it looks more and more like Barnaby's last. But he doesn't want to let go of Barnaby's hand, even for a second, to opt out of any broadcasts. It happened to him once before, where the needs of others outweighed his own and he had to leave someone he loved to face death alone. It can't happen to him again. Kotetsu wills his call band not to ring. It won't. It just won't.
The band doesn't ring. And then, after a few hundred more heartbeats, they stop altogether. The machine next to him screeches as Barnaby flatlines, and a minute later, the nurse returns to turn the device off and record Barnaby's time of death. She sees Kotetsu still gripping Barnaby's hand, tears streaming down his face, and gently notifies him that the doctors can wait for about an hour, but they do have some end-of-life protocols to follow, for health and safety. She leaves him for the moment, but the time limit hangs in the air behind her.
Kotetsu checks Barnaby's pulse, just in case the machine lied. Nothing—not a spark of life in his wrist, or his palm, or his fingers, or back up to his forearm, elbow, shoulder… There's no life anywhere in Barnaby.
It doesn't feel like there's any life in Kotetsu, either. He's ninety-four years old, and for what? What good did it do him to live that long? What good will it do him to live any longer? To live in this world where no matter what, everyone he cares about is going to die, and no matter how many lives he saves, people continue to die. What good is being a hero if everyone dies, if not sooner then later?
But I promised. I promised to save them, and I promised to live.
Of course he's not going to die. Of course he's not going to quit. Those are the two promises he'll never break, no matter how much he wants to.
No matter how much it hurts.