Chapter 1

All Tadashi Hamada wanted to do was help people. Why go through life watching others suffer alone when you could offer assistance? To him there was nothing better than lending others a helping hand. Well, except science perhaps. Science was pretty freaking awesome. His combined love for these two things was what prompted him to make Baymax.

Baymax was his biggest accomplishment. There was nothing like the rush of satisfaction someone gets after having all their hard work pay off. In fact, there were very few moments he had felt more proud than when he unveiled his creation to Hiro, Making Hiro happy was always one of his top priorities. He may have had a bit of a brother complex.

He was starting to worry he'd never see his brother truly happen again.

Honestly, that was probably the worst thing about dying for him. Maybe his priorities were a little skewed putting his little brother ahead of, y'know, never growing old or getting married or stuff like that, but what could he say? Alright, his brother complex may have been way larger than a bit. It wasn't that he didn't care about the other things. He wished he could have lived a long, full life, but clearly that wasn't going to happen. Besides, he'd much rather this happen to him than to Hiro. That kid had things to show the world. As for Tadashi? Well, he made Baymax and basically raised Hiro, so that would have to do.

And he could handle that. For the most part. What he couldn't handle was watching his friends and family grieve for him. Aunt Cass and his friends were at least handling his death as well as could be expected. His Aunt already had some experience with death under her belt from when his parents passed away. The thought didn't really comfort him when he watched her cry at night, whispering to herself about how unfair it was for him to die so young, and how she wished she'd told him she loved him more often.

It seemed impossible for anything else to hurt more than that, but unfortunately it was all too easy.

Hiro, his sweet, completely ridiculous, genius of a brother hadn't remembered what it was like when their parents died. He'd been too young to fully understand what was going on. Sure, he'd been sad for a while, but it hadn't affected him as much as Tadashi or Aunt Cass. This was his first experience with death that really hit home.

Tadashi was forced to watch helplessly as his brother faded away. He watched as Hiro sat stone-faced and silent during his funeral, remembered making the same expressionless face himself when he watched his parents' coffins lower into the ground. He knew that beneath that emotionless mask somewhere deep inside him was probably writhing in agony. He remembered the feelings struggling in turmoil inside him, and locking them up so that nobody could see how much they were tearing him apart. It had hurt so much back then, but it hurt so much more seeing Hiro go through the same thing. Especially knowing that he was the cause of it.

He wished there was something he could do. He had tried everything.

When he first came to after dying he'd found himself smothered in the ashen remains of the student showcase. It was alarming to say the least. At first he thought he'd miraculously survived. His second thought was that he'd suffocate if he didn't claw himself out of the rubble. He summoned enough energy to crawl out to safety and took great heaping breaths of smoke free air when he got to a reasonable distance. After that he had searched high and low for his little brother, who had been too close to the explosion for his comfort. He first realized his new… condition when he tried to talk to some cops on scene.

"Excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you, but do you know if anybody was seriously injured? I'm looking for my little brother you see. He was pretty close to the building, and I- excuse me!" he tried to catch a policeman's shoulder to get his attention. He was promptly shut up when his hand passed right through the other man's body. The next few moments were spent in complete shock and dawning horror when he realized he must be dead. He probably spent about ten minutes just sitting on the ground with his head between his knees, trying to breathe properly and calm down.

One he'd gotten a hold of himself, he decided to try and find his family somewhere else. Home or the hospital seemed like viable options. The nearest hospital was still a fair distance away though, so he went to check out the café first. Nobody had returned yet, so he assumed that meant they'd probably be at the hospital then. Tadashi had taken about five steps out the door of the café before the situation came crashing down on him again.

He was dead. There was no way he could have survived that explosion. He was a ghost. .And a really lame one at that, considering he couldn't even walk through walls or float or anything. He also had to breathe. He had always thought that dying would get rid of that problem, but apparently not. Oh god he was actually dead.

Hiro could have been dead as well for all he knew. Or grievously injured. He had wanted to rush down to the hospital to try and find out if his brother was okay- he really had. He just couldn't bring himself to do it though. He was struck by morbid fear that his worries would be true, and he couldn't handle seeing Hiro like that. He couldn't bear to watch his brother die. Instead he went back inside the café, walked upstairs to their shared bedroom, and curled up on the floor next to Hiro's bed. He forced himself to take deep breaths, put his head back between his knees, but everything just felt so overwhelming. It was like the room was getting hotter, and his head felt like it was going to burst into flame. He waited for what felt like an eternity before he heard the light tinkle of the bell over the front door, signaling the arrival of someone at last.

He almost cried in relief when Hiro dragged himself into the room and collapsed on his bed. The only reason he hadn't was because he saw the hollow look in his little brother's eyes, as though a part of him had died in the fire along with Tadashi. The tears came when Hiro's came bursting forth and refused to stop until after he'd fell into fitful sleep. His hands hovered over his brother's head, stroking the air just over it so he could pretend like he could actually give his brother a comforting touch rather than just pass through him. He tried to tell him things would be okay, that he was glad he was safe, anything to make the furrow in his brow disappear while he slept. It didn't work of course because he was absolutely useless dead.

The next month passed in much the same manner. He spent countless hours trying to get Hiro to take care of himself- pestering him to eat his food, begging him to register for classes, giving him hugs he couldn't feel, and just overall worrying. He was almost out of hope of ever getting his brother to recover. Sure, these things took time, but…he didn't think Hiro would last much longer if he kept this up.

It was a peaceful night. The sky was partly cloudy, giving slight leeway to the moon and the rare star he could make out despite San Fransokyo's brightly lit streets. The air was warm, but he could feel the slightest chill that signaled the coming of fall. All in all. It was a good night to be awake, which was nice because after he had died sleep had been a nonexistent thing for him. Usually the only thing that kept him entertained during the night was watching the golden streams of light he saw curling through the sky.

The first night he saw them he thought he was hallucinating. Could a person even do that when they were dead? He didn't know, but considering how sucky the afterlife seemed, he wouldn't be surprised. He would have considered swatting it away as it got closer, but the scientist in him told him to wait and see what it did before attacking it.

Boy, was he glad he waited because as he watched it swirl around his brother's head, the furrow in the other's brow disappeared. He stood stupefied while the light danced above his brother's head. Upon closer inspection he discovered the light was actually made up of fine sand particles. He, Tadashi Hamada- who had been taking care of his little brother for ten years- was being beaten at his own job by a bunch of sand. He had been forced to come to terms with this fact when his wounded pride admitted that at least Hiro was sleeping well now.

Speaking of the sand, it was almost time for- yep, there it was, whirling across the sky in great arcs and splitting off into smaller columns. He leaned out the window and smiled as he saw a strand approach, moving aside as it twisted into the room. Not for the first time, he wondered where this dream sand was coming from. He'd tried to follow it back to its source multiple times, but alas, he was never able to find it. He had walked about twenty blocks in his search before it had retreated back to where it came from. Wherever it was, it was safe to say it was pretty far away. After that night he had given up on finding the source.

Tonight though…well, he wondered if he should try again. Maybe if he pulled on the strand he could bring the source to him. That didn't seem like a very likely outcome though. He didn't even know if he could touch the sand, much less pull on it like a rope. It couldn't hurt to try.

He reached out cautiously towards the twirling sand and tentatively brushed his hand along it. Turns out, he could in fact touch this magical sand. It shuddered as soon as he did though. Perhaps touching the sand was not a good idea. He swiveled to see if it had caused a disturbance among the rest of the sand streaming throughout the city and almost had a heart attack.

"Holy-!"

There was a little man staring intently at him outside the window. A little golden man. He looked almost surprised actually, but mostly puzzled. Who the heck was this weird little guy and how was he standing outside his second story window?

"Um…hi?" he asked awkwardly. He was seriously starting to contemplate the whole hallucinating thing again because he had absolutely no explanation for this.

The shiny little man smiled brightly and waved back. That was a good sign. He didn't seem hostile. So if he was hallucinating, at least the projections were nice ones.

"So…what brings you around the neighborhood?" he asked and then winced because it was pretty clear the guy had showed up because of him.

He wasn't entirely sure what was going on because next thing he knew little golden symbols and pictures were popping up above the other's head and bursting apart in quick succession. Then the little gold man went flying off in a flurry of gold sand, leaving Tadashi dumbfounded in his wake.

The afterlife just kept getting weirder and weirder.

The next night Tadashi waited anxiously for the strange little man to reappear, but the other didn't show. The gold sand was still there at its usual time, but that was it. Everything was back to usual. And it stayed that way for almost a whole week.

He was watching over his friends at the lab when his world was once more turned upside down.

It was a fairly standard day at the lab. Wasabi was meticulously reorganizing his work station after Gogo had once again disturbed all the tools from their perfect placement. Honey was tinkering with her lab equipment, as she had been since classes had restarted, seemingly uninterested in actually starting any work. They were all being unusually quiet though. The other students made up for the lack of sound coming from the trio, but it was still unsettling to see them so quiet and yet unfocused. Usually they were only quiet when they were hard at work. And even then, Fred had usually been there to fill the gaps in conversation. Fred wasn't there though. He hadn't been coming to the lab as often this semester. Half the time he came he acted like his usual self, cracking jokes and trying to cheer everyone in the lab up. The other half of the time he simply went into Tadashi's old workspace and stared silently into the distance.

Tadashi's death had really hit Fred hard. At first appearances it looked as though he was taking it the same as their other friends, but they all knew better than that. He acted like he was okay, but they all knew he was having as rough a time as Hiro getting over Tadashi's death. He supposed it was important to mention that they had been dating for about four months before the accident.

He knew they weren't the most conventional of couples, but they went together well. They had been friends for a few years now, and after getting dopey looks from Fred for weeks, Tadashi had finally asked him what was going on. His answer was being told that he was" too beautiful for words" followed by the biggest, dopiest grin yet. He was pretty sure he had blushed right down to his toes because whatever he had been expecting, it had certainly not been that. Yeah, he was pretty much a goner after that. Knowing somebody thought about you like that was hard to ignore, especially when you might have had the teensiest attraction to them already. And by teensiest he meant freaking huge.

Tadashi's time was usually spent at around 50% worrying over Hiro, 15% watching over Aunt Cass and his friends, and 35% worrying over Fred- who was only doing the most miniscule amount better than Hiro.

He was just about to leave the lab to go look for his boyfriend- well, ex-boyfriend he admitted ruefully- when a cold burst of air hit him from behind and he was manhandled into a giant sack.

A/N: Ah yes, another fic I'll probably take 500 million years to update. But I really wanted to do this because I really love this crossover- especially after I read the fic "Lighting Candles" by PitViperOfDoom on AO3. Oh my God. So good. You should totally read it. This fic won't be the same as that one though because I always imagined some things going differently than the way that author did. Also, please understand that no, I did not make this just because of that fic. It was in fact because as soon as I watched Tadashi die I decided he would make a great guardian. And thus the idea of someday writing this fic was born. So I'm really hoping it doesn't seem like I'm ripping them off. But if it ever becomes influenced by that fic I'll be sure to credit them.