guiltyhipster this is entirely your fault and you should feel bad
disclaimer: I don't own the copyrighted material within
it begins with the expect hysteria
Hiro curls tighter under the blankets, nails digging into his arms and his mouth rasping against the mattress with one two three dry sobs. It hurts, his throat hurts and his eyes hurt and his stomach hurts and his heart wants to finally break and drag him down into the black. He doesn't know how to fix this, how to stop Aunt Cass from crying at night, how to stop himself from crying every second that Tadashi
Tadashi is dead, he died and he's not here to show Hiro how to stop his sobbing and face the upcoming days weeks months lifetime alone. Hiro cries and there's no more tears but it burns all the same; he cries for Tadashi, his brother, his niisan, the man who filled in the blanks called "father" in Hiro's mind.
He lost them both, how is he supposed to get out of bed now when everything is so broken and bleeding and Tadashi isn't here to fix this?
"Please," he begs the still ashes lying six feet under, "please help me."
They don't answer, if Hiro's parents don't then why would Tadashi's, doesn't Hiro know that he's alone now? Hiro chokes down another one two three dry sobs and spends the rest of the night in smothered silence, and the night after that, and the night after that.
sure, it gets better when there are others around
Hiro sighs; the Christmas lights aren't going to come down themselves, but it's cold outside and he's feeble armed and Baymax 2.5's designs need some more tweaking. Mochi kneads Hiro's foot and Hiro whines, "Can't we just leave them up? It's still December!"
"We are not tacky," Aunt Cass doesn't bother to come downstairs with her retort, "and you need the exercise, noodle arms."
"I do not have…that much of noodle arms!" Hiro grumbles and trudges outside, glaring at the lights. Stupid stapled on lights, Hiro wants to build a bot designed just for easy light removal, it would rake in the big bucks post-Christmas season. Alas, he has no bot, only a pair of pliers, and Hiro nearly kills himself when he yanks too hard and falls off his ladder.
Wasabi catches him; the whole gang is there, in the middle of heart attacks, and Gogo snaps, "Watch what you're doing, genius!"
Hiro blushes and Abigail shakes her head, "You're going at this all wrong, you need better leverage." Wasabi sets Hiro down so he and Abigail can take over, "Here's a lesson in denuding a house of moderately overpriced Christmas lights."
Hiro watches them, and Hiro already knows what they're talking about, even though Abigail is colorful in her language and Wasabi is needle precise in removing staples. Tadashi showed him how, when Hiro was 10 and Tadashi was prepping him for all the manly things people did in high school. It's just hard to replicate Tadashi's strength in Hiro's noodle arms and quiet aching bleeding heart
no he's not like his brother at all, isn't he
but then Gogo takes the blinking lights and drapes them over Hiro's shoulders, and Honey goes wild and strings them all up like Las Vegas snow girls. Fred starts a trip-drag snowball fight and Hiro is caught in the illuminated chaos, brought to laughter by Wasabi's shrieks and Honey's war cries, and nearly brought to tears by how good this feels.
No, he didn't know that Fred's voice can hit falsetto when snow is shoved down the back of his shirt, Hiro thanks his friends for teaching him that.
but then it pops up with random problems he hadn't thought of before
Hiro wrinkles his nose when he looks down at the mess of knotted cables hooked into his desktop. This is why he wasn't into computer science, he can't even keep his headphones in order, how did this dumb computer science breadth requirement course expect him to keep track of whichever USB cable and Baymax scanner cord and homework linkups that decided to turn into a Gordian knot?
How did he even get it so tangled together in the first place? Hiro tugged on a cord and ended up tightening it, and rolled his eyes, "Tadashi, come and—"
Oh yeah. He bit his lip, remembering how Tadashi taught him to tie his shoelaces, and more importantly how to untie the thick knots Hiro would make with clumsy toddler fingers. Tadashi's hands were always bigger than Hiro's, Hiro was always looking up at Tadashi from the crib to the schoolyard to now because his shadow stretches just as far as his memory does.
Abigail says that Hiro might one day hit his growth spurt and edge up to Tadashi's height, maybe even more, and Hiro imagines looking down on Tadashi looking down on those hands holding Hiro up guiding him forward pushing him back from the flames, looking down at an urn being lowered into fresh soil
Hiro shoves the mass of cables onto the floor and flips through a comic book he stole from Fred, counting dialogue boxes and refusing to fall apart.
If Baymax comes into the room and stands by silently, hand servos vibrating and soft voice sounding off to help soothe away the panichurtburningloss, then it still doesn't count, because eventually Aunt Cass picks through the knot and the problem is solved.
and then it's metaphysics that no one has perfect answers for
Hiro doesn't know how to react when Marys Iosama bumps into him during their shared study period and makes his stomach clench, like Hiro's riding Baymax into a portal to somewhere new and exciting and dangerous. Hiro doesn't know how Marys's brown hair looks so much nicer than the other brunettes at SFIT, or why her hazel eyes define a new shade of green for him, or why her hurried hellogoodbye made him want to blow his secret identity.
He asks Abigail why and she owes Honey 20 bucks because apparently she'd pegged him as never getting a crush until he's 17. A crush? Like, one of those gooey romance sicknesses that infected all the dopey freshmen back in high school?
Wasabi says that it's part of growing up, and Baymax agrees, and Hiro wants Tadashi's opinion on this. Tadashi had a girlfriend or two in high school, and certainly never shut up about "Mariluz"/Honey in his first year of college, so he should know how to handle this.
Fred tells him that girls like stuffed dinosaurs and reading cheesy manga. Gogo tells him that girls like free food, free sweaters and being appreciated for their intelligence. Hiro ties his tongue in a knot when he sees Marys next because this is great advice but it's not processing correctly and
and somehow she laughs anyway, blushes this really pretty shade of sakura, and they agree to get shaved ice after her rocket propulsion seminar is over
and Hiro hangs out with her for five hours, comes home with an empty wallet and a promise of another day spent with the most interesting girl in the world. She built the rockets that sent the newest space station into orbit, she's working on glasses that are actually functional with the internet, she's a little shy and high strung but she's honest and ambitious and cheerful and so pretty.
Aunt Cass hugs Hiro and says that she can't wait to meet her, and Hiro goes to bed staring at Tadashi's side of the room. "What should I do?" he asks to the silent altar, "How would you do this?"
And Hiro can't remember how Tadashi dated, or how Tadashi crushed, and he can't ask for opinions and help now because as amazing as Abigail and Wasabi and Fred and Gogo and Honey are, they aren't Tadashi, and Tadashi is dead remember?
He remembers, and he watches another Tadashi video through Baymax. He presses his hand to the vinyl and catches a dry sob in his throat, one two three, and he's not his brother at all, he's going to have to figure this out for himself.
still, he grows
Hiro shields his eyes from the glare of the fire, and the little boy crying into his shoulder tightens skinny arms around Hiro's neck. Baymax is evacuating the bulk of the apartment building while the others pick off survivors and put out the flames, and he's here with this mop headed little boy with a gap in his front teeth and cheeks stained with freckles and tears.
The boy's name is Koji, and Hiro hushes as Koji cries harder, "I'm going to get you out, ok? Do you have an okaasan and otousan?"
Hiro ducks under a falling beam and kicks his way through drywall; the flames lick at his feet and Koji whispers, "Oneesan, my neesan."
His voice is tiny like how Hiro's wasiswas and Hiro asks, "Do you know where she is?"
"Away," Koji hides his face into Hiro's neck, and Hiro hikes him up higher onto his hip. Koji's only four or so but he's a heavy weight, an entire world perched on chicken legs and noodle arms and gap teeth, and how did Tadashi ever carry Hiro like he weighed like so much cotton candy dreams? The drywall gives and Hiro dashes down the hall, ignoring how every harsh turn away from flames made Koji cry "Neesan!"
Tadashi used to sing to Hiro when their parents were alive and for a while after, and Hiro doesn't remember the words but he knows the rhythm and makes it up as he goes. He makes it a game with Koji, stomping to the stanza markers and clapping to the upbeats and dodging hellfire like running after a mother's skirts. Koji laughs and the heat sears against Hiro's throat, because Koji is heavy and his arms burn and there's no way he could ever let him go.
The building shakes and someone, maybe Fred, blasts a gaping white escape route. Hiro runs for it, choking on ash and humming into Koji's hair and it's hot hot hot is this how Tadashi felt before he died oh please no
Hiro and Koji escape just as the building collapses, and they are swallowed into the sea of survivors. No deaths, only some smoke inhalation from those too close to the epicenter, and Hiro shies away from all the cheers because there's something raw and bloody exposed on his chest. Koji coughs and Hiro rounds on Baymax, "Scan him!"
"Scan complete," Baymax offers Koji a lollipop, "The patient is unharmed, save minor exposure to smoke. May I suggest locating his guardians?"
"Neesan," Hiro looks around for someone who looks like Koji, but has to keep starting over because his eyes seek out a tall black haired man, not a woman—
"KOJI!"
"Neesan!" and it's a short pink haired girl pushing her way through the crowd, holding out her arms in a big wide Tadashi hug, throwing Koji into the air like he weighed like so much cotton candy dreams. Koji's cheers of "Neesan, oneesan!" heals the raw and bleeding something on Hiro's chest, and maybe Tadashi wasn't here to fix this but Hiro was and Koji will never even have to say goodbye to his neesan, not as long as Hiro is alive.
Hiro smiles and leaves with his team, still humming his song and considering the easy weight of all the little brothers and sisters in San Fransokyo.
and that is all anyone can ask for
Hiro doesn't know what triggered him—one second he's getting read the riot act by Abigail for completely screwing up his study session (date no session oh god it was a date Tadashi would kill him for screw this up so badly) with Marys, and the next he's got his hands over his mouth to hold in hyperventilated screams. Abigail's hands steady his shoulders as he slides down the wall and he's a bonehead, an idiot, a waste, a worthless excuse for a brother who just let Tadashi run into an inferno to fix a problem that didn't need solving
he doesn't want to cry, he doesn't but he hiccups and shudders and clutches onto Abigail's shirt, one two three dry sobs and the pain is mostly passed. "Shh," she whispers into his ear as her nails trail corkscrew shivers up and down his neck, "it's alright, I'm here."
"You are," he forces out, "everyone is but Tadashi and why is that still hurting so bad?"
She sighs, "It hasn't even been a year, not even half a year—Hiro," she sits next to him and he leans against her because she's warm despite the frozen ozone clinging to her ankles. Abigail takes a moment to run a thumb across his cheek and she asks, "Did you expect all of this to be "fixed" so quickly?"
"It has to be," he says and his voice is quiet but oh so loud in its desperation, "everything's still broken and I need to fix it so I can get good As and help Aunt Cass in the café and make sure nobody dies in any more fires."
Abigail is quiet and Hiro doesn't know why she's looking at him with heartbreak, but then she hugs him close and begins, "Three years ago my best friend Taylor died in a car accident, and to this day it still hurts, even though I wasn't there, and she wasn't my sister, and it wasn't a murder."
Hiro opens his mouth but there's nothing to say to help. Abigail smiles, "She was my sister in a way though, we knew each other all our lives, and planned to stay that way until we were crazy old cat ladies harassing young lovers in the park. We were even each other's emergency contacts, which is how I found out…my point is, Mr. Hiro, is that things change," her voice is thick and Hiro curls up in her arms as she exhales, "and we can't fix what is meant to be broken apart and remade."
His chest hitches one two three times, and she kisses his forehead, and she's not Tadashi and he's not Taylor and there's no way to fix those hurts in the span of an afternoon. But that's alright, because he's going to try anyway, and he gives her a tight shaking Koji hug against the fire and the technicolor smoke and things left unsaid.
It helps; she relaxes and his own hurt goes away. They stay there for a while, then go hang out at her flat, pigging out on takeout from Tommy Kazan's and working on his nanobot ideas and not fixing but still fixing all the shrapnel wounds in their chests.
Abigail laughs, light glinting off shiny white teeth, and Hiro exhales, promising his brother that he won't ever stop trying.
Tadashi doesn't answer, but Hiro doesn't feel alone.
Idk where this even came from, I literally sat down and tried to write intentionally sad drabbles because guiltyhipster is evil and brought up Hiro's first Christmas without his brother. Then I thought about all the things that Tadashi did that now Hiro must do alone, and all the things that Tadashi is gonna miss.
Like Hiro crushing on Marys Iosama, Hiro's love interest in the BH6 comics. She's going to have a role in a few more drabble chapters; she and Nene are a part of something interesting, if I say so myself.