Chapter Text
Hiro is aware that usually whatever he’s forgotten comes back to bite like a punch to the face, but he didn’t expect it to actually hurt.
Emotionally. Physically, he could deal.
But it stung, because she was the last normal thing he had to cling to, and even she was far too invested in hunting him and his team down.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to Gotham?! Do you have any idea how many lists I could’ve made of people I need some reports on for my blog??”
“First you tried to weaponize my ex-bot-fighter thing, now this?” Hiro grumbles, inching subtly towards the kitchen, and that had been its own disaster and a half when he’d slipped that out a while back. On purpose. As part of a wider scheme to throw Megan off the trail of their identities, but that might have been a bad move considering how she had overblown his contact network since. Well, Hiro’s contact network.
Megan huffed, arms crossed in mock anger but it was plain in her body language–shifting foot, pulled corner of mouth, anxiously tapping finger against the phone tucked into the crook of her elbow–she was worried about him. And upset. And trying, poorly, to hide it, if she’d been trying at all.
“Look, just–be safe, okay? I know you’ve got your genius kid thing and all, but that brain’s not going to be of much use blown into bits.” Megan repeats the classic concerned speech at him, which is so normal Hiro wants to cry.
…It had probably been a bad idea to stay up instead of sleeping when he realized he forgot Iris’ boots. Like updating them. To have more hidden knives. Aunt Cass had plenty.
The moment his foot slips over the kitchen line, the sound of flats thudding up the stairs begins. Hiro desperately grabs the hot water but there are no coffee bags in sight damn it–
“Hiro Hamada. Drop it.”
Megan makes a choked laugh.
“Don’t make me repeat it twice. I have two customers downstairs waiting on a mocha latte and a cappuccino.”
“Please? I’ll sleep on the plane?” Hiro pleads, as he mentally calculates the best use of his time on the plane and comes to the intelligent conclusion that sleeping is overrated.
“Now.”
Hiro reluctantly sets the hot water down and Aunt Cass makes the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture at him. She glances at Megan. “Watch him for me?”
“Sure, no problem.” Megan smiles, and politely doesn’t comment as Aunt Cass repeats the gesture before ramming into the staircase. She looks down as she makes her way down the stairs, thankfully, because it means she doesn’t fall and get injured and inflate Baymax, who is the beloved medical terror for the both of them.
Hiro groans, scrubs his eyes, and makes for the stairs.
“Are you done packing?” Megan asks, and Hiro deadpans back, complete with an authentic blush, “No. I have to do underwear.”
That manages to stop her from continuing on to identity incriminating territory, at the very least, although Hiro takes a moment to notice as he stumbles slightly when his next foot meets air/landing and not stair. That comment would stop Karmi, but probably not some kind of biotracker that checks my blood caffeination level. The world oscillates abruptly for an incidental moment on its tilted axis further before Hiro recalculates and stares down the suitcases open and closed on his bedroom floor.
And stares some more.
He’s practiced in the art of not blinking. Blinking is like mini sleep, anyway.
This is just as bad as the time they tried to track him for protection.
“Ow.”
The suitcase matches the others perfectly. Aerosol-painted by Hiro and sleek black with silver highlights. Cheap, time-wasting paint job he’s proud of.
It doesn’t open.
“Oof, ouch, owie.”
Still nothing.
Hiro gives up and taps the case. “Baymax, I know it’s you.”
And hopefully not the other time that you didn’t react to me at all.
The case opens, and Baymax inflates until he’s towering over Hiro once more. “I am going to Gotham with you.”
Hiro doesn’t roll his eyes. Or twitch. Mostly because he already knows he’ll win this and he needs to save the energy for Krei. “No, you are not.”
“I am going to Gotham with you.” He sounds insistent. How did Tadashi build a robot that could sound so stupid insistent?
“You’re conspicuous.”
“I will be in my case.”
“You’re a giant fluffy marshmallow.”
“I will be in my case.”
“Gotham has a million patients at any given time, and you’ll inflate for a skinned knee.”
“Tadashi programmed me to-”
“HIRO! ARE YOU FINISHED PACKING?! YOU LEAVE FOR THE AIRPORT IN TWO HOURS!”
Mostly. Aunt Cass knows him so well. Hiro has not.
He rubs a hand over his eyes tiredly. His vision is starting to blur again. Probably was that last blink. Hopefully he’ll grab some coffee at the airport.
He has sacrificed so much for this trip. For starters, he’s gone with sugarless plain black life juice in the last 24 hours. He is never going to take plain black coffee again once this is all over.
(That is a total lie. He tortures himself with plain black any time he has to cram.)
“Look, again–how would I even get you through security?”
“The same method that you are using to conceal your vigilante equipment.”
Hiro doesn’t sit on the bed, because he’d be tempted. He scrubs at the space between his eyes.
“But after airport security? How long are you going to stay in Gotham?”
“Your safety is my priority.”
Screw this. Enough squishy, energy-draining uselessly inconvenient emotions. Hiro scrubs his face harder. “I’m not the only remnant of Tadashi. I can’t want to protect you?”
Baymax tilts his head. “If necessary, you could extract my memory card from my central port. In that case, my ‘identity’ would be suitably preserved.”
“Maybe then. But not now. Baymax, that’d be a complete reset now. Everything you’ve learned, everything that the card doesn’t remember–look, Baymax, this time, I stand to lose you you.” Hiro tastes Fe2 on his tongue and saltwater in his memories. “The you you’ve made. The you that learnt about art, not just remembered learning about art. The you that can lie now. The you that’s learnt to reprogram himself without needing me.”
“The foundation of personality is memories, all of which I would retain in such an emergency circumstance.”
Hiro has always cursed the expression Tadashi’s stuck on Baymax. It’s reassuring to patients. It’s freakishly calm. It’s always completely detached from the situation occurring and Hiro loves that when they need to beat a villain and hates it when the fight’s done.
“But it still wouldn’t be you anymore. I don’t want to have to experience losing someone again. I won’t let the portal happen again.” Hiro still doesn’t blink. More than his sleep resistance relies on it now.
“...And if you were lost?”
Hiro smiles as sharp and as thinly stretched as he feels, a graphene knife tilted to show its edge.
“I won’t. Trust me. Please. Honor my wishes.”
Hiro had once toyed around with actual emoted expressions. In the end, when he’d finally offered, Baymax had refused them.
Because he’d thought they weren’t necessary. And Hiro respected that even though he felt like they were.
“Do you still have the contingency remote-operated armour you piloted against El Fuego?”
“No, it was badly damaged and I never got around to fixing it up.”
…So he’d need to fit in some arson before the airport. No biggie.
“Then it would place you in more danger if I was to travel with you.”
“Risk outweighs reward.”
Baymax doesn’t blink, yet it feels as though there’s more being calculated behind his eyes that Hiro can’t see. He knows there is. He knows the benefits of the healthcare and protection is being weighed against the conflicts of conspicuousness in an environment where stealth is necessary, a place where muggings are like grocery trips, the plan Hiro’s laid out that clearly states the team positioning needed to finally cement their alibis at last.
He knows he’s won.
He always had.
///
His eyelids feel like that one truck he once lifted with his Nano-Dex. Naturally, he brute forces them up with strength he’s never really had.
“You have lectures.”
“Just me, actually,” Gogo states, which Hiro would be aware of if he summoned up his intellectual recall of their timetables.
He left his suitcases open on purpose. It was definitely a calculated move. He had definitely not closed his eyes too long and woken up to find his friends in his room and Baymax packing actual clothes and not tech into his suitcase by accident. It was all calculated so Wasabi could engage his anxiety productively by ensuring Hiro had more backup emergency sets of clothing in full than he could actually wear.
“Go back to sleep,” Honey states, inspecting one of the slapdash chemicals Hiro’s mixed up that’s good but not excellent in the way Honey’s are the best. She’s already depowered the illusionary hologram on her purse that lets her carry it publicly and is toying with the periodic table buttons.
“Yeah! We’ve got this handled–come on, it passes the sniff test–”
“That shirt is going in the laundry,” Wasabi dismisses as he rolls up another shirt meticulously, without a single crease, as Fred sighs and tosses it.
Hiro sighs and glances up. Gogo’s hair streak is slightly brighter since she redyed it a week back. It’s safe to fixate on. “Well?” Let’s get this over with.
Gogo sits on the foot of the bed and crosses her arms.
Hiro doesn’t blink.
“This is still going to blow up in your face.”
“Anything new?”
“It’s not healthy. You’re spiraling again.”
“It’s puberty.”
Gogo makes a frustrated noise. Hiro is excellent at eking out those from anyone. “If you do this, you won’t be able to convince yourself that you can let go, ever again. You’re making a new identity. You operate like Indigo and forget about Hiro enough as it is. There’s a kid with a future underneath that vigilante who’s about to run, and I didn’t sign up to watch that kid die.”
“He died–”
“He didn’t die in that fire. If he had, then he wouldn’t have dropped bot fighting again for good. You do this, and you won’t live.”
“Does it matter if I don’t?”
Wasabi’s hand dropped onto his shoulder. Fred came up to grip the other one. Honey got up from his desk chair to step forward to squeeze his arm.
“It does,” says Gogo firmly, “and we trust and rely on you. You can fall back on us. You always can.”
Hiro sees the Baymax hug coming, as Wasabi gets too close to Fred and screeches about a smell, and Honey giggles light and airy, and he lets himself blink.
“If you trust me, then trust I can pull this off.”
“That was never the question, Hiro. It was always if you’d be able to keep yourself in the process.” Honey states, pleasant and warm and smelling of chemicals Hiro has never picked up, only aerosol paint. Hiro blinks again.
“Gotham’s more wicked dangerous than you realize, little man,” Wasabi mutters, fondly ruffling his hair. “And you’re not accepting help from us.”
Hiro’s shoulders hike up. I don’t need any is there. Right on the tip of his tongue. Waiting to be spit.
His shoulders relax back, just faintly. Hiro schools his expression despite the lack of caffeine and takes a deep breath.
“Disc, you’re second-in-command as always. Watch the radios and organize patrols based on your judgement. Flameleon, I might need some insurance to back up threats in Gotham, so keep an eye out for calls, please. Chemic, Slash, Scarlet, support and stay sharp. And update your access to the Zetas in Gotham. If necessary, say you’re clearing up trash you didn’t realize escaped.”
“Go to sleep and take back the trash part later.” Hiro isn’t exactly sure who shoves the thermos at him for the airport, but he manages to relax his eyelids long enough at last with the promise of coffee as insurance.