A.N.: I never really see a lot of fics with a heavy focus on Aunt Cass, and so I wanted to fix that. (This is an AU where Hiro runs after Tadashi in the fire and both Hamada bros get blown to bits.)


Cassandra Hamada was a woman of independence and undeniable emotional strength. Tragedy struck her left and right, but she took it all with a brave face and maybe a donut or two. Everyone who saw her believed that she was invincible. It seemed true. She lived life on her own terms, running a successful business all on her own and raising two young boys with no former experience. Her younger, shyer sister saw her as an outgoing, confident hero, able to do and fix anything she wanted. Her high school voted her as 'Most Dependable'. Critics and customers of the Lucky Cat Cafe claimed that her character was 'as reliable as her service'.

But we all fall down. The news came to Cass when a somber policeman walked into the cafe, bowing his head and holding his hat in his hands. Cass cut off her conversation with Fred when he cleared his throat.

"Are you the mother of Tadashi and Hiro Hamada?" He asked.

"Their aunt, actually, but I'm taking care of them. Is something wrong? They were supposed be back home by now."

The man swallowed heavily before speaking. Worry began to tie knots in her stomach.

"There was a fire and an explosion at the auditorium at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. Your nephews were last seen in front of the burning building."

The whole group went silent. The knots braided her intestines.

"Are they- are they alright?" Honey Lemon asked.

"They both went into the building, Tadashi first and his brother following. The building exploded a few seconds later. We haven't found any remains...yet. Just a hat and a jacket at the bottom of the stairs. We think the elder ran in to save a teacher, and the younger one followed him," he shook his head sadly as he finished his statement.

"Wait...no..."

Blood rushed away from her head as she fell in a dead faint.

Two full, closed coffins for two charred brothers were laid side by side in the bare, open earth. A framed photo was off to the right, depicting the professor Tadashi had tried to save, the one who didn't have a casket because he had been turned to dust. Small tealight candles and glowing incense did little to penetrate the fog. Cass saw people much younger than her collapse to the ground in tears as their bodies shook. She helped them up and wiped away their tears while she tried to blink back her own. A withered priest muttered final blessings and benedictions as soil ws tossed over three empty caskets. A sudden downpour quickly extinguished the candles. Umbrellas spared the mourners from the rain as they walked way from the freshly-turned earth.

Cass drove home in silence, Tadashi's friends trailing behind her in Wasabi's van. The hills were waterlogged and the cafe was dark and empty when she turned the key. Bright lights flicked on, making the room seem to have a more cheerful attitude than it actually did.

People filed in one by one, quietly conversing as the storm pounded on the windows. She made small talk with all of them, purposefully avoiding the subject that crushed her every time she thought of it. No one said anything about her attempts or tried tried to talk about it. They knew. The day went on. No one noticed the evening approaching until the already-invisible sun let go of its final hold of the sky, letting darkness enclose the city. One by one, the guests left the Lucky Cat.

She was finally alone. For the first time in years, she didn't reach for the refrigerator. Food couldn't solve anything this time. She grabbed Mochi and curled up on the couch, letting her cat's warmth and soft breathing soothe her. A tear welled and slid down her cheek, but she didn't wipe it away or hide it like she did all the others before it. This one fell, warm and fat, into her lap. The fabric of her clothing let the droplet rest over the threads for a moment before soaking it up and turning it into a dark spot on her thigh. It was just one tear, but it held worlds more than it seemed.

She had refused to weep in front of anyone else for such a long time, saving the tears for when she was all alone. She never cried in front of anyone, especially her sister. She had to be strong for her little sister, and crying didn't set a good example. It was how she proved to herself that she was stronger, that she could be the hands to carry when their parents had no arms. As a result, Jasmine Hamada never saw Cass upset.

She remembered seeing her parents passed out on the couch by three, reeking of alcohol and ignoring Jasmine as she shook their shoulders and demanded they wake up. She remembered burning her small hands on the stove when she tried to make dinner by herself, remembered walking Jasmine home when they were younger and shaking with worry when she moved on to middle school, where Cass couldn't watch over her little sister like she always did. She remembered saving her awful school lunch so her sister could eat something, anything when they got home. She remembered waiting until her sister fell asleep in the bed across the small room before letting silent tears slip down her cheeks. She remembered becoming a mother to someone two years younger than she was.

And she was alone now, no one whose emotional state was more dire than hers. Shaky breaths and sniffles turned into silent sobs and flooded lungs. It went on for what must have been hours until she felt so withered and dried up she could barely breathe. Blinking was difficult because of the puffiness of her eyes. Mochi never left her side the whole time, kneading her legs and purring into her stomach.

Sadness gave way to exhaustion, and Cass fell asleep on the couch at three in the morning, surrounded by used tissues and cat on her lap.

The Lucky Cat stayed closed the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months as Cass kept falling.

Everything seemed incomplete. There weren't any explosions from the garage or the second floor, no pounding footsteps coming from the ceiling that told her they were chasing each other again, no muffled laughter at two in the morning on a school night. The whole house was empty. The whole world was empty.

She didn't know who or what to blame for this. She wanted to scold Tadashi for running into a burning bulding to help a dead man, and yell at Hiro for going after him. But then she realized that both of them were doing what they always did; Tadashi helping, Hiro following. She couldn't blame either of them for that. So she settled on Callaghan. The man had been inside the building long after the fire started, doing god-knows-what, not leaving the building as soon as he smelled smoke and basically made her nephews commit double suicide. Yes, she'd hate Callaghan, she'd spit on his grave if there was enough left of him to have one.

She knew that she should get out and find some help, someone to talk to. She majored in psychology, she understood how people worked and what they needed. She knew just how far she could sink from experience. Everything screamed at her to fix herself. But she couldn't bring herself to do so.

She was the last Hamada in existence. Grandparents, parents, sister, nephews, all of them had died in horrendous ways, never peacefully with old age in their sleep. She would always feel guilt for being the one spared again and again, the one left alive every 's why she swore to stay single and never have children, because she might wake up one day and find that she was alone again. That's why she was hesitant to care for her nephews, why she never seemed responsible or tried to settle down. Carelessness was a superpower, an armor she kept tightly wound around her body. Cassandra might be superhuman, but then again, she wasn't bulletproof.


A.N.: So how'd you guys like this? I was thinking of making this a series, but I'm a bit hesitant seeing as this can stand alone as a one-shot. Leave a review or something if you'd like to see Aunt Cass and Mochi go on a quest or something. You don't have to though. Thank you for reading this crappy story. Apologies for the bad spelling, I don't have a beta and I write most of these on mobile :(