Hey guys! I'm back with this (not so) little one shot ^^ Might just be a tearjerker for some, so fair warning! Enjoy!
11 days before
For Hiro, the family car was just another example of the unfair advantages Tadashi had over him. His parent's and brother's repeated and detailed explanations of how he will soon get those same benefits as soon as he's a bit older, and how Tadashi had to suffer through the same things when he was younger, did little to satisfy the younger boy. As intelligent as Hiro was, he refused to understand why he still had to sit in the baby booster seat while Tadashi was able to sit directly on the actual seat. And washing the car was yet another example.
The fortnightly car wash was a family affair for the Hamadas, with Tadashi helping his father while his mother and younger brother looked on, providing drinks and snacks if they needed them, and keeping a fun conversation going. Hiro had used to enjoy watching his father and older brother on, squealing happily when on of them would playfully turn the hose on him, despite their mother's halfhearted chiding on "don't make the little one sick". But now the younger one was frustrated with having to sit at the side while Tomeo and Tadashi seemed to be having so much fun. Too many times over the past few months, Maemi had to catch Hiro before he ran down the porch steps and onto the driveway to help wash the car, and today was no different.
"But I wanna do it too," Hiro whined for the umpteen time as his mother held him firmly on her lap.
"Hiro, baby, you know you'll get sick if you stay in water for too long,"
"No I won't, and I'm not a baby!" Tadashi couldn't help the snicker that escaped him, and that only served to rile up his younger brother even further.
"Okay okay look," Tomeo Hamada was ever the peacemaker, especially when it came to handling his sons, "Hiro, you turn three in less than a week right?"
Hiro immediately cheered up at that, "5 days!" he chirped happily.
"Yeah, so after you turn three you can help, okay?"
"So from the next time onwards?"
"From the next time onward, I promise."
Hiro settled down after hearing his father, as even at such a young age, he knew that his dad would never back down from a promise. Instead, the young boy quickly took to observing all that was going on, his sharp mind silently taking note of everything he needed to do, in case his father decided he was too young to do a good job.
If only Tomeo, or any of them really, had known that there would never again be a 'next time', that in just 11 short days, instead of fighting over washing the car, Tadashi and Hiro would be fighting to get out of the flaming, wrangled mess of metal that had once been their car, that had already claimed the life of both their parents.
Three years after
It was Easter sunday, and the staff over at the Lucky Cat Cafe had just finished putting together a massive party order from the nearby church. Aunt Cass and the boys didn't really celebrate Easter per se, but nobody could deny that this was a huge opportunity for the still relatively young café, whose owner now had to take care of two boys and the impending need of putting both through college (especially since at the rate the six year old third grader was going, Hiro might end up needing his college fund even before Tadashi).
Just over an hour before the delivery was scheduled, Cass looked out the window to the car park along the street and almost had a heart attack as she realised how dirty and simply unacceptable the truck was, to deliver cakes to a church on Easter, no less. She momentarily freaked out, there was no time for her to wash it herself, and all the garages were closed today, until she realised that she had two little helpers lounging around upstairs who were bored out of their mind and were desperately in need of something to occupy themselves with.
"Tadashi! Hiro! Boys!" The thundering footsteps coming down the stairs seemed to overestimate the two small figures that appeared before her a few seconds later, rocking eagerly on their heels. "I need you two to help me wash the truck, and quickly, I have to deliver the stuff to the church in about an hour. Could you do that?"
Hiro rocked even more enthusiastically, eyes brightening at being allowed to wash the truck without Aunt Cass's supervision. Tadashi, always the calmer one, nodded obediently, and pulled his brother along to get the materials needed.
Outside, Hiro grabbed the wet sponge and began diligently scrubbing the bed of the truck, or at least as much as his height would allow him. Tadashi laughed as he walked past his brother to the tap, ruffling the younger one's hair along the way, "We don't have time to do a thorough job today buddy, just gotta do a quick wash over so it's presentable at church."
The younger boy pouted, but he soon brushed it off as soon as he saw the water fill through the hose and ran to help Tadashi, faithfully spraying after the older boy as he splashed soapy water from a bucket on to the truck. Hiro could barely handle the hose on his own, his superior intellectual abilities seemed to have taken away from his physical strength, but he refused to let Tadashi help him.
The latter couldn't help but remember just a few years back, when he was out on the driveway with his father, doing what Hiro was doing right now, with the said boy whining on the sidelines. It was heartbreaking, but something in Tadashi clicked that this was one of the ways he could help Hiro keep his fading memory of their parents alive (it was a cruel irony that despite Hiro's eidetic memory, it only seemed to be in academic terms, with the young boy remembering very little about his life with their parents).
Of course, Hiro was only too happy to accept Tadashi's suggestion of whether to volunteer to continue doing this every couple of weeks, despite never really fully grasping the whole meaning behind it, and needless to say, Aunt Cass never had to pay to get her truck washed again.
Until that fateful day 8 years later, of course.
Seven years after
School had just ended for the summer, and the Hamada brothers entered their Aunt's cafe happily, although for two very different reasons. Tadashi was excited over the fact that he had just gotten his learner's permit the previous semester, and Aunt Cass had promised to let him take the truck around whenever she didn't need it (there was the condition that he had to take Hiro along whoever he went, though this was more of a plus for the older boy who loved spending time with his younger brother). Hiro, on the other hand, was silently grateful that school had ended, the three month respite from the bullies seeming like heaven. Tadashi didn't really know about the extent of the bullying Hiro was undergoing, and the younger one had planned to to tell him everything that day, so that Tadashi had a long time to put his overprotective urges under control before having to face those boys again.
"Boys!" Aunt Cass cheered from behind the counter, pulling off her apron as she went to hug her nephews, "welcome home for the next three months!"
"Hey Aunt Cass,"
"Can't… breathe…"
"Oh, I'm so sorry sweetie," Does her enthusiasm ever end Hiro wondered silently as Aunt Cass continued on, "and oh Tadashi! I have a surprise for you! And Hiro you'll love it too, I promise!" She dragged the boys out to the garage, which had now essentially been turned into a mini robotics lab. And there, in the middle of the space where the brothers would sit and brainstorm their next big idea, stood a shiny red motorbike.
Both boys froze in surprise, but Tadashi recovered first, insisting that it was too much, that she shouldn't have, that the truck would have been more than enough. But Cass shushed her older nephew, "You young kids need something flashier than that old junk I have. Besides, the truck isn't fast enough to save this one," a pointed look was shot in Hiro's direction, "from all the trouble he's getting into." Tadashi thought for a second about the sinister, narrow alleys that he had to save Hiro from every few nights or so and had to agree, thanking his aunt over and over again and promising to take care of it all by himself, he had a new friend in school who would be more than eager to show him all she knew about bikes anyway.
Flash forward three weeks, and Hiro's punishment for (almost) getting into yet another bot fight was to wash Tadashi's new bike for him. "It doesn't count when I wasn't even able to enter the place, you know," he countered, trying to get out of the task, his childhood enthusiasm for washing the family vehicles slowly melting away. "Besides, you promised Aunt Cass you'd take care of it yourself, remember?'
Tadashi rolled his eyes as his brother's whining, laying back on the old couch in the garage instead, "Intention counts, and besides, my first priority is taking care of you, and I think a little lesson is best in making sure you help me with that."
"Whatever," Hiro muttered and headed over to the tap, planning to hose the whole thing over as they always did with the truck.
"I knew you'd see it my- woah wait WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Tadashi jumped up, alarmed, as he saw what Hiro was going to do.
"Helping you help Aunt Cass take care of me," he retorted, voice dripping with disdain.
"You don't just hose down a bike Hiro, you need to hand wash it carefully, especially the delicate parts."
"What."
"Hiro."
Hiro knew better than to continue messing around when Tadashi was using that particular tone of voice, so he bit back his tongue and started getting down to properly wash the bike. Turned out he ended up liking it more than he would ever dream of letting on to Tadashi, and soon enough it became yet another Hamada brothers' tradition.
For the next four years, at least.
Twelve years after (one year after Tadashi)
Hiro huffed as he opened the garage door, wiping even more mud from his visor as Baymax silently padded in after him. Tonight's perp hadn't been that hard to capture (they'd even done it without Fred who had to go for some family thing on his private island) but then again small-time smugglers rarely are. Too bad this one had decided to drag the chase down to the swamps along the coast- deep into the swamps. To be fair, this was pretty smart on the part of the perp, dumping the drugs into the mud meant that he was technically caught without anything on him, but it sucked for the team. Honey was especially upset that her beloved purse had gotten dirty, and Go Go swore her skate axles were stickier than they had been, not to mention borderline-OCD Wasabi's squealing the whole time he had to come into contact with the mud.
"Hiro, my suit appears to have been contaminated by the environment that we were just in. I think it would be best to clean it today, before any of the contaminants grow."
The boy sighed, he was exhausted, but also knew that Baymax would likely not let the matter go. He had to stay in school till late the next day anyway, and scratching off crusty mud was not exactly what her wanted to come home to. "Fine, just stay here, okay? I'll go get the stuff."
As Hiro returned with the old sponges he had sneaked out from the cafe, Baymax was obediently standing where he was told to stay and greeting him with a blink. It was only when he turned on the tap, and felt the familiar rush of water through the hose that all the memories of washing Aunt Cass's truck and the bike with Tadashi came rushing back to him, and he fell on his knees, letting the water pool around his feet as tears pooled in his eyes.
"Hiro? I am detecting signs of distress. Are you okay?"
The teenager looked up at the robot walking over to him, and was stung by how similar the red of Baymax's armour, glistening in the moonlight, was to Tadashi's bike. (Aunt Cass had gently told him a few months back that they couldn't really continue keeping the bike at the house with nobody to maintain it, but thankfully Go Go was more than happy to take care of it for Hiro, at least until the latter was old enough to drive it himself.) Was Baymax's amour some subconscious thing to match Tadashi? Hiro had realised that he was slowly changing his ways to become more like his brother- to become his brother?- but each time he noticed a specific similarity it still never failed to hit him hard.
"…Hiro?' Baymax continued watching over him, patiently waiting for a response.
Hiro blinked back tears at his- Tadashi's- robot. "I'm fine buddy. Just… just remembering some stuff."
"Tadashi?" Baymax asked knowingly and watched as his young patient nodded. "Would you like me to show you the videos?"
"It's okay buddy," he offered a small smile. "Let's get you cleaned up, shall we?"
"Okay, thank you Hiro."
Picking up the hose one more time, Hiro heard his brother's voice swim in his head. You don't just hose down a bike Hiro, you need to hand wash it carefully, especially the delicate parts. The bike, Baymax, operational equivalents right? So he dropped the hose, wetting a sponge instead, and started carefully detailing Baymax's suit, just as he had last had with Tadashi's bike over a year ago.
Later, as he finally fell into a fitful sleep in the soft arms of Baymax, Hiro dreamt of Tadashi once again. But at least this time, in a long time, they were happy memories.
Twenty nine years after (eighteen years after Tadashi)
At 32, Hiro was now the youngest head of department at the SFIT, running the robotics lab to its full capacity, and ensuring that the next generation of engineers continue with the same passion and gusto that he, his brother and his friends had. Speaking of, the team had split up, Go Go, Honey and Wasabi working in various states across the country, excelling in their own things. Fred stayed back in San Fransokyo, helping his father out and, ever the kid inside, still asking Hiro to upgrade his superjump boosters every once in a while. Big Hero 6 wasn't disbanded per se, but flying across the city capturing bad guys had started to take more and more of a back seat as adult responsibilities weaseled their way forward. The team still tried their best to meet up at least once a year, and so far it was going fine, but with everyone starting families of their own and taking on more responsibilities in their jobs…
Hiro forced those thoughts to the back of his mind. After all, the people who truly loved you didn't need to constantly be by your side for them to impact your life- he of all people would know that. Instead, he focused on the task at hand, washing out all the vomit from the back seat of his flashy new mag-lev car, gifted to him by the company's chief engineer. He knew he could always ask Go Go for a new one, but this was far too petty a reason to do so.
"I told you not to eat so many gummy bears at once, Tadashi," he sighed, a pang running through him as he realised he had just repeated the words said to him all too often by his first born's namesake. Wow, I really was a jerk kid. He looked up to the sky, as if to search for his brother amongst the clouds, "Making me pay back for all of that now with this kid, eh?"
"Hiro? Would you like some help?" Baymax waddled down the driveway to him, bless his AI soul. It was times like these when Hiro was so glad his best friend was a robot, who would never leave his side, and whom he wouldn't have to watch get old, suffer and die before him. Before graduating from SFIT, all those years ago, he had made sure to reproduce ample copies of Baymax's original chip and blueprints, so that if anything every happened, it would be less than a week before he got his buddy back. (Again, he of all people would know.)
"Nah, I'm fine. Just need to wash all of this out. Is Tadashi okay?"
"Tadashi Junior is sleeping now. I just administered him some soothing medicine for his upset stomach, he should recover by the time he wakes up." Baymax found it impossible to refer to the toddler by just his name. ("But Hiro, to me Tadashi will always remain the name of my creator, and I cannot override that. Also, I need to store the baby's patient files in my system, and I already have one by the name of Tadashi Hamada.") Technically speaking, his brother didn't really need his patient files anymore, but hell would freeze over before Hiro even thought about editing out any of the precious few scraps of his brother he had left in Baymax.
Instead, the prodigy, and now father of one (and a half!) offered his robot a wry smile and word of thanks, as he hosed down the carpet with a high pressure jet of water, trying-and failing terribly- to ignore the rough silhouette of Tadashi his mind was conjouring out across the yard. It was a hot day out, so he could easily have blamed the mirage effect, if not for Baymax who had closed the distance between them and placed a comforting hand on his primary patient's shoulder, pretty much instinctively knowing what to say after almost twenty years of caring for him.
"Tadashi is here."
Whoo! Okay, so that was my first time writing in this style, and I'd really appreciate any constructive criticism you guys might have (no flames please!), cos I've got another fic in this style lined up and I want to plug as many mistake as I can :)
Please review and tell me what you think!
Much love xoxo