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Tadashi Stark-Rogers is young but for someone who’d just finished filling up college application forms, he’d seen a lot of pain and hurt over the years.
The first time it happened, he was eight and didn’t fully understand. Hiro was just a baby, he couldn’t talk yet and only cried to made incoherent baby noises, and Tadashi was in the nursery playing with Hiro’s big ABC blocks to spell out his name when he heard shouting but it was normal to him now, his parents were always yelling. At the time, he didn’t realize it shouldn’t have been normal.
That was the last time he’d ever seen his father and a few days later, he changed his name to Hamada. It was hard to learn spelling the new name but he realized a while after that it was faster and easier to spell than Takachiho. He didn’t know he’d just erased his father from life then.
The second time it happened, he understood it. Their mother was taking them out, they hadn’t gone out in a while since she was busy with work but she managed to get a day off to spend it with her children. They went out for happy meals and ice cream, Hiro making a big mess from the ice cream. Before returning home, they went to buy groceries and his mother promised to make meatballs for dinner but Tadashi was skeptical about that since Hiro liked to treat meatballs like snowballs and it wasn’t pretty.
Their mother took care in carrying most of the bags to the car and all Tadashi had to do was carry Hiro. They were already by the car, ready to leave when she realized she’d left one more bag inside. Tadashi waited with Hiro in the car, waiting for their mother to return from the grocery but there was a loud crash that startled Hiro, making him cry and as Tadashi attended to his brother, there was a loud bang that shook the ground and burnt the grocery store.
He never saw his mother again, but this time he knew she died in the fire—later he’d find out it wasn’t a normal fire, it was planned, staged and Captain America had been there chasing a high-profile pyromaniac with an obsession for blowing up family stores. While he busy tending to his brother, his mother burned only some meters away from him. The incident left him too afraid of loud noises and fires, afraid of ever losing his only family left.
He had to change his name again but this time, instead of just losing a person, he gained a new family. But his name was long and complicated, it took some time to get used to but his new older brother (and that was strange being a younger brother) was nice and helped him through it. His new parents—and he couldn’t believe his luck, how the fates played this, it was a bittersweet life—had him take some therapy with Hiro, but he stayed longer than his younger brother.
At first, he’d thought with how strong and invincible Tony Stark was, amazing as Iron Man and cool as a Dad, he wouldn’t have to face that dread of losing a parent. He was wrong and with Peter, they would huddle in a corner of their room whenever their Dad was out fighting crime, would he come home and give them hugs and kisses or would the last time be the last?
It was worse when he’d found out their Pops was Captain America since now he’d had to worry about both his dads. Now, they also added would they still have pancakes in the morning to their worries.
It was during those worry-filled nights where Peter told him his story—his own biological parents had left him with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May. And Tadashi was amazed at how Peter could remember when he’d been so young but Peter would tell him it was the pain that made him remember. He never knew what happened to his parents, but Uncle Ben and Aunt May were killed in a mugging incident gone wrong and Peter had nowhere else left to go, forced into the system for a year until he’d found himself in a private elevator within Stark Tower.
Through their pain, they bonded like brothers but they didn’t deal with it the same way: by their second year of high school, Peter became Spiderman—not that anyone knew until Hiro was digging through everyone’s laundry and found the suit in Peter’s. It was a sore topic which led the older brothers into an argument that lasted for quite some time before it was resolved—and only because Hiro was pushing them to shake hands.
Tadashi wasn’t much of a fighter, he had self-defense lessons when he’d been younger but he didn’t use it unless he’d needed to. He didn’t fight crime like Peter or his parents, he didn’t want to give Hiro one more reason to stay up at night with worry (it didn’t help that their beloved aunts and uncles were crime fighters—the only solace they had was in Uncle Thor because gods don’t die and Uncle Bruce because he was the Hulk).
Turning back to his modified Stark laptop (he wasn’t sure if his Dad would kill him for running on self-made homebrew or be proud), on the screen was a YouTube sewing tutorial video he’d been trying to get the gist of for the past few days—he’d tried sewing but with his luck, he’d probably have a faster time making a robot that could sew for him.
“Young master Tadashi, your order for 500 meters of vinyl has arrived, sir,” JARVIS announced and with a grin, Tadashi remembered how their virtual butler used to freak him out as a child especially when he was in the toilet.
“Thanks, JARVIS,” Tadashi answered and got up from his bed with a grin, placing his laptop on the bed.
“Phase one for Baymax commencing.”