Nathan headed for Honeybuns, a little bakery he'd started up as a sideline a few years back. He'd once claimed to have named after Rock Bison, who hadn't been wildly flattered for some reason. They'd have it to themselves for a few hours before Priya and Daniel, his bakers, showed up, and the two of them would be busy in the kitchen for several hours after that.

He unlocked the door and swept past the handful of tables and upside-down chairs. There might be some leftover pastries in the breakroom fridge, but what he wanted was coffee. "Anything to drink?" he asked the judge — Yuri, Lunatic — looking up after a moment when there was no response. The judge was still standing by the door, looking faintly lost.

"I don't bite," Nathan said. "Usually. Unless you'd like me to."

Yuri's eyebrows shot up, and Nathan grinned at the sight. "Aren't you used to me, Your Honor? At least by reputation? The breakroom's that way," he added, jerking his head towards the door behind the counter. "Coffee, tea, water? My latte will take a second. And we may have something to eat if you'd like." The more he inhaled the scent of baked sweets that never dispersed here, the more he wondered if there were any of those strawberry croissants left over.

"Tea," Yuri said after a moment. He sounded dazed.

Yuri Petrov. Nathan watched him move slowly, deliberately, through the narrow area behind the counter. The lower half of the Lunatic costume was recognizable: tight, flaring pants, with the stripes down the front and the odd cutouts over the boots, and the boots themselves, with their pointed, slightly curved toes. Maybe more significantly, it was out of place beneath a perfectly mundane dress shirt and borrowed sweatshirt a size too big. Nathan thought of exhibits in court, comparing a photo of Petrov like this to footage of Lunatic.

Yuri stopped at the break room door, his hand on the doorknob. "None of this feels real," he said. He opened the door, and Nathan saw the light go on, heard the footsteps moving further in. There was something to that, but it had to be even more surreal for Yuri than it did for Nathan. The judge had deliberately and undeniably given away his biggest secret after falling for a transparent bluff. And it would have been so easy to dispose of the only witness in a near-untraceable way. Untraceable enough. Nothing that would link Yuri Petrov to Lunatic or to the death of Nathan Seymour. But now, unmasked, they'd walked together into a business Nathan owned, right underneath the security camera.

The security tapes were just compiled in the event of a break-in; he didn't have anyone watching the tapes live, not here, and they were discarded every three months. The bakery wasn't in a high-crime area, and the cupcake recipes weren't high-level corporate secrets. But if he was killed here, Lunatic's distinctive flames would tie him to the crime scene, and the cameras would link Yuri Petrov. Nathan had been improvising since Yuri had unmasked, so the bakery had been a spur-of-the-moment choice, but it suited his needs perfectly. At this point, he doubted he was in any danger, though Lunatic had proved unpredictable before, but it was insurance. Yuri might even have noticed the camera and followed the same train of thought, though if not, Nathan didn't intend to point it out.

It was just insurance. But it was nice to know he had it, as he revisited his high school barista training. The staff had reorganized since he was in here last, so he had no idea any longer where they kept the to-go cups. It'd be ceramic mugs for both of them.

Yuri was sitting in one of the plastic breakroom chairs, slightly slumped, when Nathan came in with his own steaming latte in one hand and a mug of hot water, the string of a bag of Earl Grey dangling over the edge, in the other. "I should have asked how you take it, but I only have so many hands," he said. "Sugar, honey and creamer are all on the condiments bar across from the register." He slid the mug over to the other man. "And there's milk and cream in the glass-fronted fridge behind the counter, if you like that better."

"I see," Yuri said, rousing himself after a moment.

Nathan listened with half his attention for the jingling of the front door, but after a minute or two, Yuri returned with a spoon and a plastic honey bear. And the mark of his dying father's hand on his face, the makeup that normally masked it a victim of sweat and friction. Could the sight of that in the mirror ever grow routine? And if not, what did that do to you? Though he supposed he had his answer in the results. Yuri settled into the chair again, moving slowly, as if uncomfortable in his skin or just in the setting.

"I take it I took you by surprise," Nathan said, and took a sip of his drink to let Yuri work himself up to an answer.

"Yes." Yuri stirred his tea, eyeing it critically, then leaned back. "I had plans in place for several possible types of defeat, but not this."

"You'd call it a defeat?"

"Wouldn't you, if our positions were reversed?"

"A cease-fire," Nathan suggested. Yuri gave that a thin smile, but didn't respond further. "So tell me," Nathan continued, seeing Yuri intended to let the silence grow awkward. "I could be considered an accessory for not turning you in, couldn't I?"

"I suppose," Yuri said. "Technically, yes. But a man in your position would have no real need to worry."

A man in his position. As if he hadn't had to drive to a prison to prove himself innocent when a fire NEXT killed three men in their cell. As if he could just pull the 'do you know who I am' card when he got pulled over rather than keep his hands in full view on the steering wheel. Nathan sighed. Maybe he should have just worn his PDA. Let Agnes track him and send Tiger and Barnaby to swoop in, catch Stern Bild's most wanted criminal, and vault back into the first league. If he found himself missing his fights with Lunatic too much he could always visit the judge in prison, to carry on the discussions without all the grievous bodily harm. It would have taken the decision out of his hands. He could probably have made himself live with the fact it was the easy way out. "I think you may be overestimating Stern Bild's law enforcement," he finally said, dipping every word in all the obvious tact he could.

"This would be a discussion between the prosecutors and your lawyers. No doubt they're the best in the business. Believe me, you'd be operating at a significant advantage." Yuri dipped the spoon into the mug of tea and fished out the teabag. "So why haven't you turned me in?"

"I wish I knew." Nathan sipped his latte. "You've gotten to me, over the months. You've got me thinking in your terms, more and more. Trying to decide whether arresting you would see justice done."

"Whereas I've begun to question my own beliefs due to your influence. Or if not beliefs, at least my ways of putting them into practice."

"That was the idea." In the silence, he heard the chiming of the spoon against the teacup as Yuri stirred in honey. Lunatic, tired and dazed and wearing Nathan's own hoodie, squeezing a little plastic bear around the middle. "If I arrested you, what would you do? Plead insanity?"

Another silence. "Not that," Yuri said finally. "I don't know, now. I used to have a plan. Should I begin work on another?"

Nathan shook his head. "I wish I could believe you felt guilty and not just doubtful."

"I almost wish I could," Yuri said. "If I did, perhaps I could just surrender." He took a sip of his tea. "You were not what I expected, Nathan Seymour."

"What did you expect?"

"A frivolous hedonist, challenging me over a petty grudge and sure to give up once he realized he was outmatched. The classic playboy billionaire."

"Doesn't the classic model sleep with women and inherit his money?" Yuri was looking into his tea mug, and his expression didn't flicker. "Or were those just more things you didn't expect?"

"I knew your sexual preference. You made it difficult not to, you realize."

"Not to get repetitive, but that was the idea. Why do you think I became a hero?"

"As a role model?"

Nathan bristled at the skepticism in the other man's tone. "When I was fourteen, do you know what I would have given to see someone like me as a hero?"

"I might have some small idea." That was when he looked up, gray eyes meeting Nathan's. "Not to the extent you do, I'm certain."

"I see." Maybe Yuri wasn't quite what Nathan had expected, either. He hadn't had many encounters with the judge, except in his role as Hero TV curator, but he could read between the lines.

No, he knew this man wasn't what he'd expected, because he hadn't expected to empathize with him in the least.

They'd started out talking in their usual circles about the justice system, about justice in general, but something had shifted, beyond the fact that they weren't attacking each other. The conversation became less a circle than a series of loops; justice led to law school led to undergraduate education. They'd probably had some overlap in their time spent on the Stern Bild University campus, they concluded. "Was your hair pink then?" Yuri asked, and Nathan laughed.

"Honey, it was whatever color I felt like that week. I'm surprised it didn't fall out with all I did to it."

"I wonder if I ever saw you," Yuri said.

"You'd probably have remembered. Was your hair long back then?"

Somehow Yuri found himself talking about his mother's mental state, her delusions, her fear of him. "When the whole point was to keep anyone from hurting her," he said, bitterly. "But after fifteen years, sometimes I want to. The fact she still sees him as a good husband and father, after all he did, and thinks I'm the threat to her..."

"You lied," Nathan said. "You do feel guilt."

Yuri stared at his empty tea mug. "Perhaps. Over her, at any rate. I... my father haunts us both, but I don't..." He stopped himself. He didn't want Nathan to know how literally he'd meant that sentence. "It's self-serving, too. I don't want her to tell strangers about my powers."

"If she's as bad as you say, it seems like a very self-loathing kind of self-serving behavior." He shifted in his chair, leaning back slightly, but without any appearance of relaxing. "What about your latest kill? Daniel Miranda?"

Yuri thought of the news reports, the young man's mother sobbing to the cameras that he was a good boy. "That was an accident," he said. "I regret the young man's death, but he associated with criminals—"

"I can think of at least two heroes that could have described, too, when they were his age," Nathan said, and Yuri couldn't have missed the hard edge to his voice. "You think that merits the death penalty, now? And here I always thought you had a soft spot for Tiger."

Yuri looked at the mug between his hands, the centimeter of tepid tea growing colder in the bottom. "He interested me," Yuri said. "He reminded me of someone. And he seemed to be the only hero with any ideals backing up his actions. I didn't know you then." He lifted the mug, draining the last of the cold and now too-sweet tea. "That is why I regret the boy's death. I know he had committed no crime yet."

"It's not 'yet.' It's about the fact that two boys just like that grew up to be—"

"If I could take that death back I would!"

"It doesn't matter if he would have grown up to be a hero or a janitor. Forget Tiger. Bison's not one of the ones who talks about justice all the time, or even thinks about it as far as I know. But he was going to put himself between you and those 'sinners' you were aiming at. He's the one who convinced me to get CPR training. And if you'd gotten him by accident when he was sixteen it wouldn't have mattered to you, because he was a criminal."

"Did I say it didn't matter?" He'd been through all of this with himself, many times, after the second kill, while he was considering his decision. "Would you like a scene? Should I break down, overcome with remorse? I did not enter on this path lightly."

Nathan passed his hand over his face wearily. "Fine. Whatever you want. Yes, I would like to see you break down."

"You may need to wait for some time. I spent a great deal of time preparing myself for this. After—" He stopped himself, but too late.

But instead of pressing, Nathan stood. "I could use a refill. More hot water for you?"

"Please."

He already knew he'd tell the story when Nathan returned. He just needed to decide precisely how.

When Nathan returned with a mug in each hand, he wasn't entirely surprised when Yuri spoke before he'd even seated himself. "It was four years ago," Yuri began, and Nathan kept his expression neutral as he settled back into his chair.

"I'd presided over a case — a man shot his girlfriend, and left her to bleed out in her apartment. He said he'd been drunk, that they'd struggled over the gun, and he hadn't realized how seriously she'd been injured. They'd been in the midst of a bad breakup. Apparently it's quite common for men to punch women in the face during bad breakups. He was acquitted. I'm sure you see where this is going." Nathan nodded, but didn't speak. "He was acquitted, and I took to driving by his house at night, thinking about my father. One night I got a call on my cell phone while in his neighborhood. My mother was upset that I was out past my curfew. She seems to believe I'm eternally sixteen. I pulled over to take the call. After it was over, I was upset, and stepped out of the car to take a walk and calm down. I didn't consciously choose to walk past the killer's apartment building, but once I was there I did choose to walk past the doors, looking at the numbers."

He covered his face with his hand, touching the scar. Nathan didn't dare sip his own drink; he didn't want to disturb the other man, remind him that anyone else was present, because at the moment he seemed not to be aware. "I didn't use my powers for years after my father's death," he said. "It made me sick to try. But when I was in law school I took a seminar on NEXTs and the law, and I decided I had to learn to control my power for fear of another accidental flare-up. That was how I learned I could use it for flight, or to... to rearrange matter, I suppose you could say. That was what I did this time. I walked through the man's wall, and found him asleep on his couch. The TV was still on - he'd been watching some police procedural." A smile flickered over his lips, but it was soon gone. "I don't know what I thought I was going to do when I went in there, but seeing him watching this, with no sense of the irony at all - at the time it infuriated me. Now... I wonder if he'd dropped off to sleep hours before. He could have been watching anything before he dozed off." Yuri wrapped both hands around his mug, as if to warm them. "So that was it. I didn't even realize what the burning sensation in my eyes was until he went up in flames. It felt like my eyes were dry, like I had allergies. I was outside before he even screamed, and I got into my car and drove away."

Yuri lifted his spoon to stir the tea. Nathan wondered if that was really a tremor in the other man's hands, or just wishful thinking on his own part, but it was certainly a nervous gesture, because he did nothing else with it. "And after that, you decided to become Lunatic."

"I waited. I didn't know if there would be anything in the crime scene that might remind an investigator of my father's death. When time passed and the case was ruled a freak accident, I began to investigate my father's death, to find out as much as I could about the police officers involved in the investigation. When I knew that the two men who'd responded at the scene were retired, I decided it was safe enough." Another sip of the tea. "But yes, that moment was the turning point."

"Why the costume, then? You called us 'fellow heroes,' once, I think. Why set yourself up like a mirror to us?"

"You answered your own question. As a mirror, reflecting the flaws in the hero system..."

"That's not what I meant. Why the grudge? Why the desire to bring down the hero system, rather than the courts or the police?"

There was a long silence. Nathan watched him over the rim of his coffee mug; it had grown colder than he liked, but it warmed again quickly. "I have my reasons."

"I suppose you've told me plenty for one night," Nathan said, lightly. He'd have plenty of time to circle back to that later.

"I've told you more than I've ever told anyone else in my life," Yuri said, his voice low. "I'm not sure you can possibly realize—"

On impulse, Nathan reached across the table, covering one long, pale hand, the uninjured one, with his. The judge's hand was thin, warm, and very dry; for one giddy second Nathan thought of suggesting moisturizer. He kept his hand there, not wanting to jerk away and reveal how impulsive and ill-considered the gesture had been, because Yuri's face, shadowed by long hair, might be unreadable right now, but his voice had given away everything. Far more, probably, than Yuri had intended.

After a time — surely no more than a few minutes — Yuri lifted his head enough that his hair fell away from his face. Nathan squeezed his hand and withdrew to his own side of the table, sending another spark into his mug so he could finish his coffee.

"Why the manicure?" Yuri asked, and Nathan suppressed a giggle. He hadn't been the only one thinking of irrelevant details. "It seems like it would get in the way."

"You get the hang of typing with them. I don't do a lot of punching, except when it comes to you. And the manicure... same reason as the makeup, really. A combination of habit and artistic expression."

"Artistic? Really?"

"Cosmetics are an art, like everything else," Nathan said, and was rewarded with an incredulous grin.

"Did you just quote—"

Nathan grinned at him. "Plath. I was an English major for about five weeks, back in the day. I thought I'd get a raised eyebrow at most. Is it me, or are we both getting a bit giddy?"

"I can't see the clock," Yuri said, then fished a phone out of his pocket. "Three a.m. I suppose you're right."

"I do need my beauty sleep," Nathan said. "Do you need a ride back to your car?"

"I'm afraid so."

The cleanup only took a few moments. He hoped he wouldn't spark some employee warfare over the responsibility for a breakroom left messy. And then when he opened the door, the cold air hit Nathan like a blast wave, knocking him out of the cozy, late-night bubble of talk without consequences.

And Yuri as well, it seemed, because as he locked up, the judge asked, "Is this... it, then?"

"It," Nathan repeated.

"Can I expect an arrest, tomorrow?"

That was something he wasn't ready to answer. Hadn't been thinking of since they walked in here. "What, no full-moon rendezvous next month?"

Yuri swallowed noticeably. "I couldn't stomach attacking you again."

Nathan studied his face. Yuri was impassive, maybe just by nature, but Nathan hadn't forgotten the way his voice had sounded. "I didn't say anything about fighting."

"You were the one who realized the legal implications," Yuri began, but Nathan headed him off.

"I don't want to be the one to suggest meeting again," he said. "It feels a bit too close to blackmail for my taste. But I'm sure you know how to contact me."

"I do," the other man admitted.

"Then that's settled. I see no reason to wait a month, unless that's how you'd prefer it," Nathan continued. What the hell was he saying? What was he shooting for now? He was supposed to arrest Lunatic. That was the point of all the battle scars, the showdowns themselves, the long attempt at persuasion. He was supposed to make Lunatic surrender, one way or another.

They stood in silence for a moment, breath condensing in the air. "Do you have a goal in mind... Nathan?"

Nathan's hand closed around the keys in his pocket. "I'm winging it. I have been for months."

"Then why...?"

It'd feel like betraying him to call in the authorities now. Which implied that Yuri had some kind of trust in Nathan — but he did, he'd admitted as much — and that Nathan had some measure of loyalty to him. Why, though? "Oh, honey, I wish I knew."

The push of a button unlocked the passenger door for Yuri. Outside the car, Nathan waited for a moment, and tipped his head back to look at the sky. Even in Stern Bild, with all its light pollution, he could still spot Orion.

.

Author's note: Continuing to update on is more trouble than it's worth. All future updates will be posted solely to AO3 dot org (the fact I can't even include a URL is a big part of what I HATE about this site,) so please read the fic there if you want to continue following it.