EDIT 1/11/15: changed a few continuity errors. Thanks, anonymous Guest reviewer, you rock! \(OWO )
-o-o-
The days pass slowly, settling into a routine of sorts. Two months, one of those spent attending college (nerd school, Tadashi chuckles in his head), working tirelessly in the lab to remake his microbots and design prosthetics for Tadashi (and take his mind off his brother's comatose form), and both months spent helping out Aunt Cass in the cafe on weekends and visiting the hospital to sit by his brother's bedside and tell him about his day.
Tadashi's stabilized enough by now that the hospital has moved him out of the stasis pod and into a regular bed, to make room for other patients that require the pod more urgently. At his bedside, there is an assortment of various fragrant flowers given by Tadashi's friends, placed in a vase and watered regularly; a veritable mountain of colourful cards sits beside it, all heartfelt wishes for his brother to get better, we miss you, dorkface, wake up soon.
The cherry blossoms drift gently down outside the window. Hiro pulls up a chair, lays his hand over his brother's limp intact one (careful not to nudge the various wires and veins lest the nurses bite his head off), and talks endlessly, rambling on about the college, his new classmates, his teachers, the latest hilarious incident at the cafe. Ayaka-san tells him that sometimes coma patients remember what people say to them in their sleep, and so Hiro keeps up his one-sided conversations to fill the silence, wishing for closed brown eyes to flutter open, or fingers to twitch, or something. Anything.
Of course, there's nothing but the steady beep of the monitors, and Tadashi's soft breaths into the respirator, and Hiro's lonely voice, echoing in the quiet of the room.
"...we miss you, Tadashi."
He clutches his brother's hand, says a quiet goodbye, and leaves. If he doesn't go now, he'll miss the tram home and he'll have to walk even farther than he needs to.
-o-o-
"Ow!"
Baymax activates and Hiro has the most embarrassing conversation he's ever experienced with a robot in his life. Puberty. Jeez. He finds one of the Mk I. microbots still trapped in his jacket, thrown under the bed and forgotten, and somehow that ends up in him chasing Baymax across the city on a Sunday morning to an abandoned warehouse, where he finds machines and a masked man and endless rows of cans filled with his microbots.
Someone stole his tech. The masked man stole his microbots in the fire, set off the blast to mask their tracks, and made off with Hiro's inventions, leaving Tadashi broken and burned and crushed under the rubble. It's his fault Tadashi doesn't have an arm, doesn't have a leg, has scars marring his skin and chunks taken out of him and it's his fault his brother nearly died.
For the first time since the fire, Hiro burns.
-o-o-
They barely escape the warehouse. His first instinct is to head to the police, but naturally they're skeptical and treat him like some bratty child. Evidently, he can't trust the law with apprehending this man, so he runs.
He doesn't want to stress Aunt Cass any more than she already is, so he sneaks back in and tells her that he took a walk around the city. That night, he and Baymax hole up in the lab, and he programs a new fighting chip for the robot and makes him armour for seizing the villain. Hiro's not stupid and not torn up by grief; what he is, though, is angry, and filled with possessive familial rage at this bastard who dared to steal his work and nearly kill his brother.
They sneak back to the warehouse to try and find the man again, but predictably, he's cleared out, and so it's another round of follow the microbot compass as they track the man and his stolen neural transmitter down. They find him at the docks, hefting debris with bots out of the icy April waters, and Hiro sees his masked face and yearns to rip that mask off for what he's done.
He doesn't expect for Tadashi's friends to track him down and get caught up in this entire fiasco. A car chase down the streets of San Fransokyo by a man in a kabuki mask and a literal sea of microbots is not high on the list of things he wants to do that night. Plus, he kind of owes Wasabi a new car now.
-o-o-
They walk, dripping wet and shivering, to the comfort and safety of Fred's mansion (and that's the biggest shock, Fred, comic-book geek and slacker extraordinaire having a mansion) and Hiro tells them everything, about the masked man and his bots and the strange sparrow symbol on the debris the man was lifting out of the bay. Gogo's mouth is a hard line; Honey's face a picture of concern; Wasabi nervous; Fred utterly elated at the idea of a supervillain in real life. They all agree to help. Tadashi's their friend too.
Gogo pops her bubble, and speaks first. "So, what do we do now?"
"We," says Hiro, resolute, "are gonna get the guy who did this, and we are going to bring them down," and that's that.
-o-o-
First things first is crafting upgrades for Baymax and his friends. For Honey, a miniature portable laboratory of chemical compounds; Gogo, wheels fitted to her feet instead of her bike; Wasabi, jade plasma blades from his hands that slice and dice smoother than the thinnest scalpel; for Fred, a kaiju suit with physical augmentation and firebreath; and finally, for Baymax, an upgraded scanner and all kinds of amazing upgrades, from rocket fists to rocket wings to a scanner than can cover the whole of San Fransokyo. Hiro makes himself a flight suit, and another neurocranial transmitter hooked up to the same frequency as the Mk I. microbots, as opposed to the Mk II, Mk III and Mk IV's sitting pretty in the laboratory. Better to wrest control of the masked man's force than add to it.
A weekend of brainstorming and building and test runs later, they're ready to take on the masked man. Baymax's scanner tracks down the man on Akuma Island, and it's there they find a quarantined base, the remnants of a massive project, and the quite unexpected conspiracy plot lurking in the video logs left on the computers. A government funded project to create a working set of portals, and its subsequent failure.
He doesn't expect Callaghan's survival either, much less his betrayal, and the thought that his brother's teacher and mentor, Hiro's own idol, nearly caused his death? His heart twists, his blood boils.
Red flooding his vision, tears welling up, Hiro snaps.
Baymax's medchip is clutched in his gauntleted fists as he stands by and simply points and orders the hulking red behemoth to destroy, and Hiro takes satisfaction in the fear twisting the bastard's face as he scrambles for his life.
He thinks of Tadashi: burned, mangled, bleeding out on the concrete in the rubble, ashes mixed with blood and raw flesh and Hiro's tears falling on his half-eaten face -
-Gogo speeds forward on yellow red-edged wheels, angry and betrayed and this isn't what we signed up for, knocked aside by the robot's fist into a wall; the boy tightens his fists and yells louder, destroy Baymax destroy!-
-through the glass in the wall of the operating room, bloody and comatose on the operating table as the surgeons rush to sew the broken shards of his big brother's body back together -
-Wasabi and Fred spring towards Baymax, anguished but certain that this is the right thing to do, and are brushed aside like annoying flies; the mask is knocked out of his hands and the boy yells, tries to reach for it - can't they see that this is only what the bastard deserves -
-cold in his bed, breaths heavy through the respirator, limp and deathlike, torn apart by the flames and spat out missing pieces of himself-
-Honey flings bombs desperately, trying to slow the raging robot down, but Baymax tears through the azure substance like paper, knocks aside the hands futilely trying to hold him down; Callaghan is getting away get out of the way HE HURT MY BROTHER GET HIM-
-Dr. Ayaka, red eyes meeting his in sympathy, consoling hands on his shoulders, hushed voices to adults in dimly lit white-walled rooms, your nephew may never wake up; mountains of get-well cards and gifts and brightly-coloured flowers, trembling hands and salt on his tongue and all the goodwill in the world won't make his brother whole-
"This isn't what Tadashi would have wanted!" someone screams, and the boy genius goes ashen.
-smiling, laughing, showing off his labour of love, he's gonna help a lot of people, only ever concerned about the wellbeing of others, always concerned for his little brother, wouldn't have wanted his creation to become a killer-
-his feet carry him forward, the green medchip slides into place with a click.
Baymax blinks.
Hiro, drained and hollow, sinks to his knees.
(Tadashi, comatose, lets out a deep breath, and twitches.)
His friends look at him in sympathy-betrayal. Gogo pops off her helmet, the clattering of it on the hard concrete drowned out by her irate questioning, hard truths hitting home with each word that his friends throw. Hiro feels awful for every reason; for letting his brother's almost-murderer go, for betraying his friends' trust, for twisting Baymax into a killing machine, for not being strong enough to stand down. Apologies spill from his lips, bubbling up and rushing out past the lump in his throat; tears well up in his eyes, but he angrily rubs them away, failure failure you couldn't control yourself, couldn't bring down Callaghan, not good enough.
Gogo kneels and slaps him. His cheek burns with the sting.
"Stop crying, genius. You screwed up. It's okay."
Then she tugs him forward and wraps him in a tight hug, and the others follow suit, yellow and green and pink and blue all around him. Baymax reads the social cue and gently embraces them all. It's tight and uncomfortable, the armour pokes him in the ribs but Hiro can't be bothered to care that much.
Gogo pulls back and looks him dead in the eye. "Don't you ever fucking do that again, you hear me?" Hiro nods jerkily, and stuffs the hiccup in his throat back into his gut. No time for feeling sorry for himself right now. They have stuff to do.
They crowd around the screens in the aftermath, watching a tragedy play out in slow motion. A dead daughter, a corporate sleazebag, and a bitter, broken father with both nothing and everything to lose.
Baymax flies them home in the dead of night. Hiro told Aunt Cass that morning that he'd be sleeping over at Fred's to study, and they crash in the guest rooms with a promise from Heathcliff to wake them early. Sleep blankets them easily, tired as they are.
The morning comes, and with it a vengeful maniac with the weight of a dead daughter on his mind and a legion of microbots at his fingertips. He (predictably) attacks the grand opening of Alistair Krei's new school, and as the guests run away screaming and the businessman gibbers in fear, Hiro and his friends burst onto the scene. Big Damn Heroes indeed.
It's a tough fight, and Hiro winces with every yelp and grunt of pain that filters in through the comms, and feels his frustration mount as Callaghan tries to wrest control of his microbots from him. The portal nearly sucks him in, knocking the neurocranial transmitter off his head and into the void, and leaving Hiro breathless and hanging by a cord. He rallies the team to think, and with the power of their nerd brains they break free, send the bots hurtling into the hungry jaws of the portal, and bring Callaghan down.
Then Baymax detects signs of life in the swirling vortex, and once again it's just the two of them, running against time to save Callaghan's daughter. It ends with sacrifice and tears and Baymax floating into the void as the pod rockets back through the portal to land on safe ground. Abigail Callaghan is alive and well, and her father's actions turned meaningless in her sleeping face, but the joy he feels at having stopped a maniac with his friends is dampened by the loss of their soft white beating heart.
Hiro's heart is broken and bleeding, but the little green chip clutched in a red fist mends a little bit of it, with its smiling face and promise of a new beginning.
We have the technology; we can rebuild him. I'm not going to face Tadashi when I wake up and tell him that I got his magnum opus destroyed trying to get revenge on his unintentional attacker.
When they stagger back to the mansion, fatigued but still buzzing with adrenaline, Hiro fishes out his phone from his pocket and checks it. He didn't get a chance to earlier, when it vibrated during the fight, but now the action is over and he can read in peace.
9 NEW MESSAGES from AUNT CASS flashes on his screen.
[9:35] Aunt Cass: Hiro? The college called and told me you haven't been in class for a few days. What have you been doing? Have you been botfighting again? I swear, if I have to collect you from the police station one more time I am going to throw a fit.
[9:36] Aunt Cass: The college also told me your friends haven't been in either. What exactly is going on, young man?!
[9:55] Aunt Cass: NEVERMIND MY LAST MESSAGE COME QUICK TO THE KONOHA REMEMBRANCE HOSPITAL HE'S AWAKE
[10:21] Aunt Cass: HIRO HAMADA DROP WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING AND GET YOUR SCRAWNY BUTT OVER HERE RIGHT NOW
[10:25] Aunt Cass: TADASHI IS ASKING WHERE YOU ARE HIRO
[10:45] Aunt Cass: wait why are you on national television in a purple flight suit
[10:47] Aunt Cass: is that gogo next to you in the yellow suit? and wasabi in the armour getup, and honey in that dress?
[10:48] Aunt Cass: Tadashi is laughing and crying at the same time
[10:50] Aunt Cass: Young man, you are so grounded when I get home. And then, you and I are going to have a little talk about communication. And explanation.
Fat tears stream down his cheeks as he stares at the third message in wonderment and pure, utter relief. Two months. Nine weeks of sitting around, not knowing, just waiting for Tadashi to wake up, and finally, he has. Hiro will finally have his big brother back; no longer will the other bed in the room lie unused and musty, the bathroom be cold and lonely, the mornings unsettlingly quiet. He's going to get to show him all of the amazing advancements he's made, show off the stunning armour for his friends, show him Baymax's insane upgrades-
Hiro freezes in realisation, and curses. Shit. He hasn't even rebuilt Baymax yet, how is he supposed to face Tadashi now?
More pressing; Aunt Cass is going to flay him alive. Double shit, with a generous side of FUBAR for good measure. And it isn't even half past noon yet.
At least the rest of the day is looking to be just as awesome as their morning.
The young hero finds his voice. "Hey, guys?" He waves his phone in the air, a grin spreading on his face like the sun over the horizon. "Guess who just woke up."
-o-o-
AN: Well. Um. This is late as fuck, sorry for that. I've had this chapter written up for a while now, but I procrastinated bc of exams and visiting relatives and other happenings. Yeah. Really sorry, everyone (-_-") Aunt Cass's texting style is based off my own. I'm coherent when calm, but devolve into chatspeak and capslock when excited/agitated. Punctuation flies riiight out the window.
FIC NOTES: The setting is currently April, since cherry blossoms bloom around then, and school starts in March in Japan. So that neatly coincides with the sakura blossoming time. Of course, there's certain sakura trees in this verse that bloom all year round, but they don't count bc they're genetically modified to do that because of beauty reasons.
REVIEW RESPONSES:
Serendipital : *waves hand* weeeeelllll that depends... This fic is less Tragic Death Angst and more Recovery Angst with liberal amounts of Hurt/Comfort mixed in. Tadashi's got a long and hard road to recovery. On the other hand, he is now Edward Elric and Hiro gets to design prosthetics, so there's that.
Guest : Yes, it was a Kagepro reference, and thank you for the compliment, friend!
Michiyo Makino : Yep, Kagepro. Thank you!
TheParadoxicalOxymoron : Ahaha hey there I see you reacting with pain thank youu! ALLL OF THE KAGEPRO REFS, MAN. No-one dies in this fic bc Tadashi Deserved Better, and Callaghan didn't die in canon anyways. Yes, Callaghan is still trash. Thanks for your support!