Yuri spent the ensuing days berating himself for giving in to the temptation. The bolt had struck, not his target, but one of the sinner's companions, a mere boy with no violent offenses on his record. Convincing himself that the youth had been well on his way to emulating his criminal mentor was little consolation, not with the young man's grieving relatives sobbing and shouting at the news cameras everywhere he turned. Especially since a careless shot like that could as easily have hit one of the heroes. And especially since he'd also, in his anger, put Fire Emblem in the hospital.

As much as Nathan Seymour enraged him, Yuri had grown sick of letting the man make himself a burnt offering, at Yuri's own hands, to a hollow ideal. Yuri had resolved after his anger cooled, after their last encounter on the roof, that he would not do Seymour any further injury, a resolution he'd already broken. He was tired of this game, of Seymour flinging himself repeatedly into the fire, and of the way his own judgment had grown clouded and irrational over the course of this... acquaintance.

He should never have accepted that first challenge.

He should never have agreed to visit Nathan Seymour in the hospital, either.

His assistant had suggested it. No hero had ever been injured this severely in an encounter with Lunatic, and there was a card that someone had passed around the office for those who worked with Hero TV. Yuri had looked at it, when it was laid on his desk, as if it were a dead mouse, while Melissa continued her sales pitch. He should go speak to Fire Emblem, bring him the get-well card, and see if he wanted to make a statement for the Hero TV archives. Yuri had looked at the card full of signatures from people Seymour would never have met, and tried to think of a way to say no, but his hands throbbed and he couldn't come up with an excuse. "All right," he said, finally, ungraciously.

"And I'll try to find the space heater while you're out," she said. He stared at her blankly. "You must be cold. You haven't taken off your gloves all day."

"Yes, of course," he said. "But just my hands. Poor circulation, I suppose." He'd burned his palm, blocking Seymour's punch and holding his fist still; he was taking the pain as a sort of hair shirt, the mirror to Seymour's injured hand.

"Well, you can warm your hands at the space heater," she said. "I'll send you the hospital info."

Melissa's question had made him aware, though, that just covering his hands wasn't enough, so he kept his overcoat on as he trudged through the hospital. His excuse would be that he planned to leave right away. It wasn't too late to just drop the card in the trash and go back to the office, he reminded himself as he stepped off the elevator, but he knew he wasn't going to do that.

He knocked pointlessly at the open door, then called out, "Excuse me?"

"Oh, I'm really not fit to see visit— Judge Petrov?"

Yuri felt some of his own dread evaporate at the look of astonishment on Seymour's face. "Not who you were expecting, I take it."

"Can't say that you are, no." Bereft of makeup, his face faintly shadowed with stubble, Seymour looked ill-at-ease. It didn't suit him, even if Yuri found his features more attractive this way. "What brings you here, your honor?"

Yuri produced the get-well card. "Best wishes from the Lunatic task force and the Hero TV coordinator's office," he said. "I'm not quite sure why I was selected to deliver it. I suspect they wanted me out of the office for some reason."

"Most likely." Seymour accepted the card in his bandaged right hand, smiling slightly. "You're the boss, after all. Hard to get away with ordering margaritas at lunch when you're around."

Yuri wasn't quite sure what to say to that — he hoped they weren't drinking at lunch, but that would just prove the point — and cast about for a topic of conversation or a reason to depart. "Is your injury serious?"

Seymour shrugged his uninjured shoulder. "I should be out in a day or two, if the skin graft takes. I'll be on medical leave for six weeks or so. What can I say — 'debridement' is one of those words that takes on a whole new meaning once you've experienced it firsthand."

"I know," Yuri said. Only too well. Seymour was looking at him, though, an eyebrow cocked, observing. "I was badly burned in an accident when I was in my teens," Yuri explained. It was an honest answer, albeit incomplete. It was also dangerously close to the truth he'd already told the man, but he hoped he'd left out his age that time.

"My sympathies, then," Seymour said. "I know exactly how it is."

And had known, for months, in fact, if not to this degree. "I should probably go," Yuri said. "You may be expecting other visitors."

"No, I asked everyone to stay away," Seymour said. "I don't like being seen like this."

Yuri resisted the urge to ask why. He saw nothing wrong with the man's appearance at present. But he understood wanting to be seen in only a certain way; constructing an appearance, a persona, and maintaining it. Or a pair of them. "I apologize, then," Yuri said.

Seymour dismissed that with a flick of his hand. "You were on a mission of mercy. I just wish I had my face on, that's all. But I won't keep you."

Yuri nodded. "All right. Take care."

The temptation to talk to Seymour — to continue the discussions that had developed out of their fights, to get to know the man without the expectation of violence — was strong, but far, far too risky to indulge. He'd been too honest, in recent encounters. He'd given too much away. If Yuri Petrov got to know Nathan Seymour, the similarities between Yuri's own story and Lunatic's would soon be glaringly apparent, or if he attempted to disguise his own past, he'd inevitably be caught in a lie or tripped up by the details.

That temptation, and the sight of Seymour in the hospital bed, both nagged at him as he continued his afternoons' work. Yuri was used to seeing Nathan Seymour exactly as he wished to be seen: as Fire Emblem, for the most part, a mass of sculpted muscle for all the feminine curlicues and flourishes. Or as Nathan Seymour, the energy tycoon, well-dressed, self-possessed, and flamboyant, too rich and powerful to care what others thought of him. Not as an injured man in a hospital bed, vulnerable and all too human, face bare except for the stubble that he normally fought back vigorously — as the entire city knew, if they'd cared to remember, courtesy of Wild Tiger's dramatic attempt to reclaim his name.

Yuri had remembered. He'd been aware of Seymour, as of all the heroes; the fellow flame user had snagged his attention early, while he was still establishing his files on the heroes before beginning his work as Lunatic. Yuri had opted, then, not to dwell on him, on the way Fire Emblem was the opposite side of the coin, all good fortune and warm colors. He'd been somewhat frustrated, even before that, that Fire Emblem was "the gay hero," that such a stereotype had been selected. Or that the gay hero had elected to play such a stereotype. Fire Emblem hadn't needed to blow kisses to the camera, make a point of wearing lipstick, grope other heroes at parties.

Yuri's own identity as a gay man was almost entirely theoretical. He didn't care for clubs and bars, and he didn't like people enough to bother dating. The odds of finding someone worth his time were remote, and not worth the trouble. He hadn't been with a man since law school, when his mother had thrown a frightening tantrum on being introduced to his boyfriend. She'd threatened him with his father, he'd lost his temper and reminded her that his father was dead, and poor David had gotten to see exactly how delusional and out of control Olga Petrov really was.

The worst part, in retrospect, was that his father, at least before he started drinking, likely wouldn't have been as upset as his mother. Papa had been good friends with Poltergeist, a telekinetic hero who'd retired in the late 60s, who was out to friends and coworkers but not the public. His son might have been a different matter, granted, the focal point of more hopes and fears and projected elements of his identity, but he probably would have reacted more rationally than Mama had. Yuri wondered if things might have gone differently if he'd tried that argument instead.

Yuri wasn't flamboyant by nature — or so he'd always believed until he began designing Lunatic — or terribly drawn to other people. His sexuality really was just a tiny part of his identity. But he could still be bothered, offended, that Hero TV had decided to represent gay NEXTs with a man as unlike him in every way as possible.

Or he could get to know the man, learn what was behind the effeminacy and the public facade, how much was real and how much an act. He could learn that the frivolous billionaire playboy was capable of seriousness and a fairly alarming degree of self-sacrifice, and draw altogether too close to him for his own good.

The day he was discharged from the hospital, Nathan finally got a chance to shave and make himself up to his own satisfaction. He was a bit surprised to be greeted by Barnaby Brooks Jr. and not by the young man he employed to tend to his collection of cars, but he didn't let it throw him. He greeted Barnaby as his rescuer, threw his arms around Barnaby's neck, and kissed him on the cheek.

"It's good that you're feeling better," Barnaby responded to that, diplomatically.

"You know it, honey. Can you get my bag?" The overnight bag Veronica had brought him wasn't that heavy, but he was supposed to be careful with his shoulder. He wasn't supposed to go around lifting it much, for instance, like he had when he'd greeted Barnaby.

"Of course. Have you eaten?"

"You are my knight in shining armor, Handsome." All the more so since Barnaby was, left to his own devices, fairly selective about the restaurants he frequented, the wines he drank, and the like — more so than Tiger, bless his heart — and the Indian restaurant he selected was excellent. They were shown to a private room, where Nathan wolfed down the first decent meal he'd had since lunch the day of the Lunatic encounter, not even bothering to be ladylike, while Barnaby filled him in on what he'd missed. Much of the news aftermath of the Lunatic encounter had reached him in the hospital, but there were still blanks, and specifics, to be filled in.

"Kotetsu pulled his hand off of you while I went in to get you away from him, and that was the end of it, really," Barnaby explained. "Lunatic burned off the wire, and just disappeared." Nathan just nodded, not terribly surprised, but then he remembered that much of the Tiger and Barnaby partnership had been dogged by a sort of grudge match with Lunatic. Normally he wouldn't have left just after they arrived.

"Maybe I hurt him more than I thought," Nathan said. "Where is your partner, by the way?"

"His daughter's in town," Barnaby said. "I wanted to make sure they had at least a bit of father-daughter time without me tagging along. And I wanted a chance to talk to you."

"Oh, Handsome, I didn't know you cared!" Barnaby just smiled thinly at that, and Nathan let his girlishly-clasped hands drop. "You used to be a lot more fun to tease."

"Really? That seems unlikely. Fire Emblem, I have to ask — how many unrecorded encounters have you had with Lunatic?"

Nathan picked up his fork, using it to chase the last few grains of biryani around his plate. "What makes you ask?"

"His approach was different this time. Normally he'd position himself much higher, though that could be situational. Regardless, he usually goes for altitude and keeps at range. You were able to get in close with him, and stay close, which is something that Kotetsu and I have always had difficulty with. And usually he'd attack the criminal immediately."

"He's been inactive for a while," Nathan hedged. "Perhaps he's off his game."

"It looked like more than that," Barnaby said.

Nathan rubbed his chin absently. Good to have it smooth again, at any rate. He'd certainly noticed that Lunatic had dropped most of the bizarre movements and mannerisms in their private encounters. The fight on the freeway had made him realize that Lunatic had also dropped the voice he used as part of his vigilante persona. He hadn't really noticed that Lunatic had also changed his fighting style. They could attack each other at range, but it had only been up close that Nathan had succeeded in doing any real damage to Lunatic. So in a way, he was handicapping their fights.

That was actually almost insulting, because Lunatic still trounced him every time they fought.

"Why would he do that?" Barnaby asked, watching Nathan steadily.

"That I can't answer, Handsome. If I knew how his mind worked..."

"You've been fighting him on your own, though."

"You caught me," Nathan admitted.

Barnaby smiled. "It wasn't just me. Kotetsu noticed the change too, though if he drew the same conclusions I did he didn't say so." It made sense that they'd both see the change. The two of them had fought Lunatic more than the rest of the heroes had put together. "He's been inactive for... four or five months?" Barnaby said. "Or rather, he hasn't killed anyone in that time. How are your encounters with him going? I seem to remember you once said his power was stronger than yours."

"It may be, barring actual measurements. More to the point, the way it works is different, and he has amazing control over it. He uses it to fly, and seems to use it to teleport, unless that's an unrelated power."

"Was this the first time he's injured you?"

Months and months of hiding it all, and yet he wasn't sure he could just lie outright. At least the damage from the latest burn had done away with some of the scar tissue on his shoulder; he'd look better after the skin graft despite the severity of the second burn. "Not quite. It was the first time I'd been hurt this badly. He's hard to hit, and usually he runs circles around me. I did land one solid blow on him... the second time we fought, I believe." He forced himself to take his hand away from his chin; it was a tell he'd tried to break before. "That was up close. I took a page from Tiger's book, and I suppose it paid off."

Barnaby sat back in his chair. "So he's adjusted his fighting style to give you more of a chance? How bizarre."

"He seems to like playing games," Nathan said, but he didn't think that was quite right. The wording implied that Lunatic was a cat toying with a mouse, but if anything, Lunatic was playing by the rules of a game that he could potentially lose. "I almost felt like I was getting through to him," he added, before he'd quite realized what he was saying. He felt foolish, but Barnaby just looked contemplative.

"If you were, that's more than Kotetsu's ever managed. Which is astonishing, since Kotetsu's so very articulate when he's angry."

Nathan laughed. "Now, now, don't be mean to your partner. He's not here to defend himself." He took a sip of his tea. "Do you think it's possible to get through to Lunatic?"

"Kotetsu seems to. At least, I assume he must, or he's spent a lot of time yelling at Lunatic about justice to no purpose. And..." He seemed to be considering. "I'd have to agree." Nathan watched him, hand at his chin again, thinking. He'd honestly been surprised when Barnaby hadn''t killed Jake Martinez. Tiger's influence had been enough to stop him, or so Nathan had concluded after watching the replays on TV. Barnaby had ample reason to believe that a potential killer motivated by certain circumstances could be reached, and Barnaby had been considerably more impassioned than Lunatic had ever seemed to be. Though he also hadn't spent the last two years killing regularly.

"I always thought Tiger was trying to arrest him, not reason with him."

"Maybe so. I'd have to stand by my own statement, though. Lunatic's doing this for a specific reason. Maybe I'm wrong, and he's just a lucid-sounding serial killer, but he seems to have some kind of logic behind his actions. And the fact that he stopped killing during the duration of your encounters with him... did something spark this latest incident?"

"I think I pushed too hard," Nathan said, but that was just guesswork. He didn't know exactly what had set Lunatic off.

He didn't know what he'd do at the next full moon, either. But he did know a few things. He hadn't seen Lunatic's face, not in full, but he'd seen a stripe of skin. The flames at hand, the streetlights, and the fact they were in the middle of a struggle could all have affected his perception, but he was almost sure that he'd seen someone exceptionally pale.

And Judge Petrov hadn't taken off his gloves, not even when he fumbled the get-well card out of his coat pocket.

"We could help you bring him in," Barnaby offered, as he pulled up the long, curving drive in front of Nathan's house.

"That's sweet of you, Handsome," Nathan said. He blew the blond a kiss once he was at the door. He didn't ever answer the offer.