I wonder if you guys know how much I research for things that I write. I'm a history buff, and I still sat here for hours looking things up to make sure that what I wrote at least SOUNDED real. I even looked up when Superman first appeared.

And I know not everything is accurate. I wasn't trying to be dead on. I'm taking fictional characters from someone else's fictional world and putting those fictional characters into my own fictional world based off of the real world.

Your Letters Have Become My Heart Beat

2.

Miss Cass Hamada

We regret to inform you that your nephew Private Tadashi Hamada was on twenty first February slightly wounded in action in Germany. You will be notified as reports of condition are received.

The Adjutant General

"He's coming home, right?" Hiro timidly asked. "In one piece, perfectly fine? Breathing and everything?" He continued to speak as his aunt kept rereading the telegram.

She sighed, looking a little relieved, but not completely. "He was slightly wounded in Germany. That's all it says." She handed the paper to her youngest nephew so he could read it himself.

He took the paper gently from her, as if it were to rip and destroy any chance of Tadashi coming home in one piece with it.

"I'm sure he's fine sweetheart." She tried to sooth him

He stared at the typewriter stamped words for a minute longer before placing the paper delicately on the hall table next to him. "If you don't mind, I think I'll go to bed now." He started walking towards the stairs. "Night Aunt Cass." He gave her a quick good night hug before rushing upstairs, completely bypassing his bed and headed straight for his brother's.

Hiro could feel his heart beating against his ribcage as his tucked himself into his brother's blankets, nuzzling his older brother's pillows. They didn't smell like Tadashi anymore, hadn't in a long time, but they gave the younger boy some much needed comfort in that moment.

(-)

A sudden sharp pain radiated in his left shoulder before he felt something actually hit his arm. He stumbled back a few steps, trying not to drop his rifle and keep his balance at the same time.

Then something hit him in the chest. His breath left him when the force of whatever it was, his mind to confused and scattered at the moment to really focus on one thing, finally registered to him, knocking him to the ground.

Over the blood rushing in his ears and the sound of his heart beating mixing with the echoes of gunfire, he faintly heard one of his two comrades yelling to him. Yelling what, he didn't catch.

Even though every other thought in his mind was screaming at him not to, he let his eyes slip close.

"Ah, you're awake, sir." A feminine voice greeted him before he even knew he was awake.

Tadashi opened his brown eyes slowly, trying to avoid as much light as possible. It took him a moment, but he was able to glance over at the nurse standing next to him. He didn't verbally answer her, but gave her a small head nod in acknowledgement.

The army nurse gave him a small smile. She went on to tell him about what happened to him, since he couldn't recall anything at the moment from earlier; she told him not to worry about that he was probably still in shock. But she told him he was shot in the shoulder and had almost been shot in the chest. She patted his uniform jacket on the small table next to his cot before picking tow objects up. "These were in your breast pocket."

He reached his good hand up to take the objects – Hiro's letter for the day and the pocket watch him and their aunt had gotten Tadashi.

"And, I don't know if you'd want this, but," She held up a bullet between her fingers. "This was in your pocket as well."

Tadashi looked from it to the letter and watch in his hand, giving the two objects he held another, more thorough look.

Hiro's letter had a bullet hole through it, and the watch had the biggest dent in a metal Tadashi had ever seen.

The young adult reached up and gently took the bullet from the nurse. "What?" His voice cracked a bit.

The nurse looked at the things in his hand. "Pocket watches make great bullet deflectors." She gave another small smile.

Tadashi's slightly delirious and scared-shitless mind found that a little funnier than the nurse probably intended it to be. "That would have been dead on." He commented, motioning to the bullet in her hand.

"Yeah, it would have." She added.

He leaned back and stared at the ceiling as he thought back. "I don't even think I was fully standing up either. Someone has some good aim."

"But you have a pocket watch." The nurse handed the once-deadly bullet to him.

He nodded as he twisted the weapon ammunition in between his fingers. "Yes, I do."

(-)

Hiro re-read every letter Tadashi had sent to him over the course of all four years he was gone. The thirteen year old sat on his older brother's bed, swimming in one of Tadashi's button-down sweaters, and all the letters spread out in a disorganized, but somewhat orderly fashion all over the bedspread. He kept the ones he had yet to open for the rest of the week on the small bedside table, still debating on whether or not to open them early.

He was in the middle of reading through an old letter when there was a knock outside the entrance into the door-less room. Hiro looked up from the words on the page to be greeted by the sight of his aunt.

"What are you still doing up, hun?" She asked gently, practically tiptoeing over to Tadashi's side of the room.

Hiro shrugged. "Can't sleep."

She sighed softly and sat on the edge of her oldest nephew's bed, next to her youngest. "Are these all letters he's sent?" She asked, looking at all the slightly torn envelopes.

Hiro nodded. "Yeah." He reached over and grabbed one from a month ago. "This one's funny. He met these two guys when he changed units and one of the guys, Fred, has a habit of giving nicknames to everyone from embarrassing moments." He handed the opened envelope over to her. "And Tadashi said this poor guy got the nickname 'Wasabi' when he dropped some."

Cass chuckled quietly and gently felt the edges of the paper. She didn't pay attention to what the letter actually said but more along the lines of how neat her oldest's handwriting was; how the lines of the letters connected and curved together. She ran a fingertip over the dark ink carved onto the page.

All Cass could think about was how their teeny tiny family had already lost enough; Hiro didn't need to lose his brother to add to the smallness of their little clan. Cass's parents were gone, almost a decade and a half now- both suffered from cancer, the boy's parents, Cass's sister and brother in-law were killed in a freak car accident. They didn't need to lose another Hamada. Please make sure he's all right. She silently prayed to everyone above. Keep him safe, keep him protected, bring him home in one, breathing piece.

She sighed and glanced over to Hiro, who was buried in reading a different letter Tadashi had sent him. She reached over and pulled him into a hug. "He'll be fine."

He dropped the letter and accepted her hug, but didn't reciprocate except leaning more into her. "I hope so."

She leaned her head against Hiro's for a moment before pulling away. "You should really get some sleep."

After a second of hesitation, Hiro nodded. "Okay." He mumbled. He really didn't want to, not that he probably could sleep – his mind was running all over with worry and fear for his brother. But he got ready to try to sleep anyway. He organized the letters back up by their dates, returning them to their drawer and climbed back into Tadashi's bed.

"Goodnight sweetheart." His aunt gave a forced, but soft smile.

"Night aunt Cass." He snuggled into Tadashi's pillows as the light was turned off.

(-)

The medic had told Tadashi that he was to stay in his cot for the next day or so to make sure that his body was going to be fine after the shock wore off.

"Do you have some paper?" Tadashi asked the nurse when she walked over to check on him.

She nodded, went off somewhere and returned with a few pieces of paper and a pen. "Here you go." She gave him a smile. "Does your arm hurt at all?" She asked as she began her routine of checking up on him.

"Thank you." He gave her a smile. "No not at the moment. One of the medics gave me morphine a little while ago." He straightened out the papers and opened the pen.

She nodded. "Stupid question since you were given morphine, but does your chest hurt at all?"

He shook his head. "Hell of a bruise though." He told her.

She let out a giggle. "I bet. Well, let me know if you do start to feel any pain." She started to walk away to go to the next wounded solider.

Tadashi sighed to himself as he began writing his letter, scribbling the pen at the top of the page to make sure it worked.

I am fine.

He plainly states as he started his letter to his family.

And I'm not sure if I can say this enough, but really, thank you for that pocket watch. I was in one of the trenches with Fred and Wasabi when a group of Germans came out of nowhere. Not entirely sure what happened, but I was shot in the arm and at my chest. Note I said 'at'. And this is where the pocket watch comes in. I had it in my pocket on the inside of my jacket. The bullet hit it and bounced off. So really, thank you for the watch.

He was able to send that letter off the next day, hoping it would reach his aunt and brother faster than their normal letters.

(-)

It had been about three weeks since they last heard about Tadashi, and while Cass seemed to be happy about it – since 'no news is good news, right?' But Hiro wasn't convinced.

And everyday, the thirteen year old dreaded waking up and finding out something happened to his brother since that first telegram. Granted, from the very beginning, Hiro knew that there was a possibility of something happening to Tadashi, the at the time nine year old wasn't stupid, but he held on to that childish thought that his big brother was invincible and could take on Superman if he really wanted to.

But reality was harsh, and it seemed to be a bit sadistic when it came crashing down on you.

Hiro was sitting outside the apartment, on the fire escape, when he saw the mailman come by.

"Good afternoon, Hiro." Mr. Jenkins, a nice old man who had been delivering mail for a better part of his life, greeted the thirteen year old when he saw Hiro on the steps outside his living room window.

"Hello, Mr. J." Hiro gave a small wave to the man.

The close to eighty year old held up a letter. "Have something for you."

Hiro brightened and rushed into the apartment to get downstairs to get the letter Mr. Jenkins teased to him.

"Quick today." The mailman commented. "Here's your mail." He handed a whole handful of pieces of mail, but the letter on top, the one Mr. Jenkins showed him, caught his interest and every other piece of mail in his hold was obsolete at the moment.

It was a letter from Tadashi.

As in, from Tadashi himself not some insensitive typewriter written telegram from an unsympathetic person and being delivered by an unconcerned messenger with a plastered smile on their face. It was a letter, hand written by Tadashi, shipped who knows how many miles to be delivered by the friendly neighborhood mailman, Mr. Jenkins, to land happily in Hiro's hands.

"Thank you, Mr. J!" Hiro gave him a smile and a wave and rushed off back into the apartment building to his family's little cozy unit.

He unceremoniously dropped the other envelopes in a heap on the kitchen table and ripped into the letter Tadashi sent.

The thirteen year old had to calm himself after he read the first sentence 'I am fine' before he could continue on.

"I'm home, Hiro!" Cass called as she walked in the door. She worked at a café down the street and had just gotten off.

A repetitive 'Tadashi wrote' was what greeted her and she then had a sudden armful of Hiro waving around a piece of paper.

"Slow down?" Cass laughed a little after Hiro pulled away.

"Tadashi wrote." He shoved the paper in his hand at her again, telling her to read it.

She gently took the paper and read what her oldest nephew wrote. She smiled and gave Hiro's hair a ruffle. "I told you he'd be fine."

"Glad we decided to get him a pocket watch." Hiro told her.

She nodded. "I'm sure we all are."

"Now we just have to wait for him to come home."

(-)

I'm thinking one more little chapter after this one. Maybe, this'll be marked as complete though, I'm still thinking about it. I told you this wasn't going to be very long. And it's really not written out great at all, not my best work. Maybe I'll edit it one day. Who knows. But for now I have some other stories I'm working on.

Kinda excited, I've never taken on more than one story, aside from the odd oneshot or two before.

Heehee. This'll be fun.