Disclaimer: I don't own the characters. Contains spoilers.

I got the idea after hearing the song for the first time. This fic is also posted on AO3.

When her sister died, Cass Hamada had learned abruptly that she needed to treasure the people in her life. That she needed to love them as if she were going to lose them the minute they stepped out of her sight. She'd told her sister that she'd loved her and gave her a hug. She hadn't known that it would be their last.

The moment she became Tadashi and Hiro's legal guardian, she made sure to always give them one last hug before they left. She hugged them tight, Tadashi usually being more understanding and open to the affection than Hiro.

"Gah! Aunt Cass!" Hiro squirmed in her arms. "I'm gonna be late."

"Last hug." She closed her eyes, holding him close to her one more time before sending him off to school.

"C'mon Aunt Cass," said Tadashi, "I love you too, but I really need to get to the lab."

"Last hug," Cass murmured against his shoulder.

She'd tell them she loved them and they'd run off to wherever they were going. She did this every day. Even on that last night.

"I'm so proud of you! Both of two!"

Cass threw her arms around her boys. Hiro would be joining his brother at SFIT and she knew that together they would be unstoppable.

"Thanks, Aunt Cass."

That was the last thing Tadashi said to her. She wished she'd never let him and Hiro go off to talk that night. She wished she'd told them get in the truck and have their talk on the drive home. Maybe then it wouldn't have happened and her nephew would be alive.

Now with Hiro in his room, and her stuck downstairs making funeral plans for another Hamada family member, Cass felt herself falling apart. She never thought she would lose him too. Burying her sister and brother-in-law was hard enough, but burying Tadashi was too much. He was too young. She made a promise to herself to start hugging Hiro harder. She sat down on the couch and wiped her eyes.

"Aunt Cass?"

Hearing her youngest—now only—nephew speak made her heart sink. Hiro sounded exactly how she felt, so...broken.

"Aunt Cass?" He entered the living room and ran his hands furiously over his eyes.

"Hiro," Cass couldn't bring herself to smile for the teenager, "how ya holding up, kiddo?"

"I...I can't be upstairs anymore." Hiro sniffed. "I keep seeing things...his things...it's too quiet...I...Aunt Cass."

Hiro ran over to her and threw his arms around her neck. He clung to her in a way he hadn't done since he was about five or six years old.

"Oh, honey, honey." Cass shushed him. "It's okay."

It wasn't okay. It was absolutely not okay, but she had to act like it would be. She held Hiro close. It would have been so easy for her to have lost him too. A few seconds and Hiro would have been in that building. Cass couldn't have lost both brothers in one instant. She mentally wouldn't have been able to handle it. It would have been too much like their parents. Maybe the gods knew.

Cass swallowed the knot in her throat. Now she was left with one. One person to call family. One genius boy headed into his mixed up teenage years without an older brother to guide him and keep him out of trouble. She shook her head. She didn't need to think about that. They would cross that bridge later. For now, she had to continue to love Hiro and treasure their moments together as if she would lose him as quickly as she'd lost everyone else.