Fifty-nine...
Fifty-eight...
"Get me another surgeon in here, NOW!"
"We're going to need more blood than this - don't they have any more down there?"
"Good god, I've never seen so many broken bones before..."
The voices, the beeps, the clatters, the halting breaths; they're all a storm of white noise to Barnaby. The only sound he can hear is the clock ticking away behind him as he stands in the observation area, staring down at the surgical procedure going on below him.
Fifty...
Forty-nine...
Every second seems like it's going to last for a year. One hour...one hour of downtime, then he can use those powers again, and Barnaby knows what he can do with those, he's seen it. If he can just get those powers activated again, then he'll be fine. He'll be down for a while recuperating, but he'll be fine, he'll live, and that's all that matters right now.
Forty-four...
Forty-three...
The clock is deliberately dragging its metaphorical feet. He's absolutely sure of that. He can hear everything that's going on down in the operating room; the doctors hadn't wanted to allow him up in the observation area (very against protocol, they said; he glared at them and they promptly bent protocol on his behalf) but here he was, hands pressed against the smooth uncaring glass, staring down at the mangled, bloody wreck of a body that was his partner.
More than his partner.
So, so much more than his partner.
Thirty-eight...
Thirty-seven...
"God, he's bleeding out, we have to do something to stop the bleeding or we're going to lose him..."
"Shit, we need someone else in here, now, we don't have enough hands..."
Thirty-one...
Thirty...
Hours shouldn't be this long. Minutes shouldn't feel like centuries. Right now they feel like millennia, and each ticking second of the cruel, heartless clock behind him coincides with a beat of his partner's heart - beats which are completely visible to him, laid out in stark splattered reds on the table below.
That clock has to be the single most brutal object on the planet. Not even Jake Martinez was as uncaring, as vicious, as fatal as that clock is promising to be.
Twenty-five...
Twenty-four...
God, so close, so close. He can reactivate them in an hour and it's been exactly thirty-six minutes. Not that Barnaby is counting. Not that he hasn't been staring at the clock obsessively every five seconds, keeping track of that all-important interval. Below him green-clad worker bees are buzzing even more frantically; their words are starting to cut through even the white noise in Barnaby's head.
He's dying.
Right there, in front of him, he's dying.
Nineteen...
Eighteen...
He's dying. This is not something Barnaby can process. Twenty years after losing his parents he finally softened, he unbent enough to allow someone else into his life and into his heart, and now that person, the only person to manage that, is dying right in front of him. He's dying, just like they did, except now he's older; he knows how much this is going to hurt him, how he just won't ever recover.
That clock seems to be slowing down.
Thirteen...
Twelve...
The doctors are growing more and more frantic. It's obvious to anyone with half a braincell that he's on his last breaths, that within a handful of minutes he'll be gone and there'll be nothing left of that bright vital soul that could spur people to their greatest heights, supporting them all the way...supporting him all the way. He knows, as surely as he knows his own name, that the second that support vanishes he's going to fall. He'll have no way of catching himself.
Nine...
Eight...
He can't even fathom it. He can't process it. He cannot conceive of life on his own anymore. He can't grasp the concept of that giant, vacant place he calls his apartment without the obnoxious constant chatter behind him, the insistence that he try that absolutely awful beer (honestly, when is the man ever going to realize that microbrews are infinitely better than that dishwater he calls a drink), the leaving towels all over the bathroom floor. He sees no future past that point, seven minutes from now; it's all black.
Five...
Four...
The doctors are clearly on the verge of giving up hope. It's in the way they move, the slump of their shoulders; they're still working frantically, but they know...they know it's all going to be in vain.
Three...
Two...
Close enough.
There's an unexpected shudder of sound as Barnaby falls to his knees, fists meeting the unyielding glass surrounding the observation area. His cry isn't a plea, it's a scream; a sound of sheer desperation, ripped from his vocal cords, soul-searing agony made audible in a way that freezes the blood of everyone within hearing range.
"GodDAMNit, Kotetsu, USE THEM NOW! DON'T LEAVE ME!"
Silence follows, broken only by the ticking of the clock.
One.
Just as the surgeon begins to pull away, a blue light blazes up from the operating table, and a growl echoes from the patient's throat. Superhuman ability does what the best of medical science couldn't do, and both doctors and onlookers are struck speechless at the near-miracle they're witnessing.
Barnaby doesn't see it.
His eyes are too full of tears for him to see anything but the salvation that blue glow offers.