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The day was overcast, a slight chill in the morning air despite it being late May. The grass was still wet with the last drops of the morning dew, dotted with the yellow dandelions that hadn’t been ripped out or poisoned with pesticides by the groundskeepers yet. This bastion of manicured green grass in the concrete jungle that was San Fransokyo, protected by iron fences and rules to not go in at night, was not a happy place. Dotted amongst the grass like the corpses of dandelions, were tombstones. One of which held no body underneath.
It was that tombstone that Hiro Hamada was making his way to. A single flower was loosely held in his hand, one of the daffodils that were blooming now. It was fitting that he had ripped it up so it would die on the headstone, as if its soon-to-be rotting organic material would replace the lack of a body six feet under the granite.
He was here alone. It had to be this way. It had to be him, and his brother. Nobody else would really understand how much it hurt to lose him. Nobody else could really understand the things he wanted to talk about. And anyway, he didn’t want his friends- their friends- to see him cry.
He reached the stone- a flat marker, engraved with the name, Tadashi Hamada. It wasn’t in Tadashi’s handwriting. The neat lettering in the granite didn’t match his brother’s chicken scratch. But still, he knelt down next to it, tracing every letter of his name with his finger.
“I.. I brought you a flower. You still love spring, right?”
The stone didn’t answer. Hiro wasn’t stupid, he knew it wouldn’t. He continued talking all the same. Tadashi had loved cherry blossom season with all his heart, he had loved buying bouquets of flowers and giving them to all of his friends- even Gogo, who had always begrudgingly accepted them just to be nice.
“Honey Lemon misses your flowers. Gogo had to buy them instead.” Hiro said flatly.
“They miss you. We all miss you.”
He looked at his own reflection in the polished stone. He couldn’t bear to think of the fact that one day he would grow up and look like Tadashi, and Tadashi would never grow up at all. He would stay 20 forever.
“I just.. I wish I’d been better. To you. That I wasn’t such an asshole to you.. going out botfighting every other night, making you bail me out of jail or get in fights to protect me…”
Tadashi would always be the shining older brother, who would never get to grow up and be his own person. He should have walked across the stage with his friends to get his diploma last week, but Hiro had to do it for him. The crowd had been crying instead of clapping.
“Callaghan’s in jail. Where he belongs. We put him there.”
He could almost hear Tadashi facepalming, saying “unbelievable” at the notion of his 14-year-old baby brother suiting up and stopping a supervillain.
“I know.. you’d call me stupid. But.. I had to. I couldn’t let him get away with taking you away from me. From all of us.
And Hiro hadn’t even stopped there. Once he had gotten a taste of the adrenaline, he kept going. Night patrol was as much of a part of his daily routine as SFIT was.
“I.. I didn’t stop there, either. I had to keep helping.”
Tadashi would have done the same thing. That was what kept Hiro going. He always thought to himself, in any situation- what would Tadashi do?
“You understand, right? You’d do it too, right?”
He took a deep breath.
“After Callaghan… it’s a long story. We stopped a lot of bad people, you’d be proud.”
Really, not all the villains were that bad. High Voltage just wanted attention, and they were getting plenty as a non-criminal dancing duo now. Juniper was even going to attend SFAI in the fall. Hiro didn’t even know where Steamer had gotten off to. Momakase was Momakase, and Hiro was certain that he’d never know exactly where she fit on the evil scale. But some of them were pure evil.
“I… I did some stupid things, too, but I made it right.”
The amplifier still haunted him. He took solace in knowing it was locked in Granville’s safe, and she wasn’t stupid enough to write down its combination like Krei.
“I made a really dangerous project… it worked, but then someone used it to try and destroy everything.”
He stared down at the tombstone, imagining his brother facepalming again.
“But I stopped him. He’s dead now, you don’t need to worry. He hurt all of us.. but he won’t hurt anyone again. I made sure.”
“I didn’t kill him. To be clear. I just made sure he was dead.”
Obake wasn’t the only one who had tried to kill everyone- but he was the one who haunted Hiro the most. Maybe it was because of how obsessed he was with him- or how scarily similar he was to Hiro. The fact that one failed amplifier would have sent him down the same path didn’t sit well with him. It was all the better that Granville had the thing in her safe, where Hiro could never touch it again.
“And then.. you know Liv Amara? The biotech girl? She.. she had an evil clone, and that clone tried to kill everyone too. Uh, the clone’s in jail now, I’m pretty sure Liv retired. Liv would really like Baymax, I think. I’m sad I can’t show him to her.. you’d like Liv too.”
Liv really was sweet, when Hiro had seen her wake up. She hadn’t wanted any of it. Hiro couldn’t help but feel something for her- even in her desperation, she hadn’t wanted anyone to get hurt just to save her.
“And then the first guy had a robot daughter, and she tried to kill everyone too, and I stopped her by putting your chip into all of her bots. So really, it’s like you stopped her.”
Thinking about Trina made him conflicted more than anything. He hadn’t even heard about her- the police hadn’t said anything, she wasn’t in any jails, and she hadn’t been released either. He had a sinking feeling that she was just discarded. She didn’t deserve it either. It wasn’t her fault her creator was a psychopath any more than it was Liv’s fault her clone went crazy.
“I.. I don’t know what happened to her. I don’t think it was good.”
Hiro sat down on the grass, no longer caring about the damp or the grass stains.
“Please.. just tell me I’m doing it right. That I’m not ruining your memory for this.”
He just needed his brother again.
He just needed him back, needed him to just tell him if he was doing the right thing, if he was helping in the way Tadashi would have wanted him to.
“I’ve fucked up so many times, Tadashi, I need you!”
He buried his face into his hands as he started to cry, knowing Tadashi couldn’t hear him, Tadashi was gone, obliterated, there wasn’t even a body under that gravestone. He hadn’t even gotten to have the closure of a wake, of seeing his body, of seeing that he was gone and accepting it in his heart. They had to bury an empty coffin filled with flowers he could never hold, even with dead and lifeless hands.
“We all need you.” He choked.
Tears dripped onto the stone, a sacrifice to the brother he hadn’t appreciated enough while he was still alive to receive that appreciation.
“Aunt Cass still cries, Mochi still sleeps in your bed..”
Hiro still slept in Tadashi’s empty bed, too, when the hole inside him felt bigger than it usually was. He had slept there for a week straight, after Callaghan, and later, after the star. The sheets and blankets had long since lost Tadashi’s scent, but it was really just the memory of him that made him feel a little better. After Sycorax, he had stayed at Fred’s for two days straight, even being alone in a room was too much after all the horrors of that night
“The first time I ever made a friend my age, she got turned into a monster by her boss, and now she’s been sent away and I can’t even say goodbye! I was awful to her for all of last semester, and now I can’t even apologize, I can’t even hug her!”
And there was Megan too, and she was still around, but she didn’t understand like Karmi did, she didn’t know what it was like to live this kind of life, being so ahead of everyone else that it was near-impossible to be true friends with anyone who wasn’t on your level, a level that was unattainable for all but the minuscule few. That, Obake had gotten right, as much as Hiro didn’t want to admit it.
“And my other friend, she knows I’m doing superhero stuff, but it’s just.. it’s just so hard to care about anything she’s doing. She tries, she really tries- and I try to understand her too, but she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be in college when everyone else is a sophomore. Not like you did.” He said, trying to fight off more tears.
“She keeps trying to invite me to stuff when I need to study and take classes, and I feel so bad telling her no because she doesn’t have anyone but me, the rest of her friends are all assholes using her to do their ELA homework, but I can’t just throw away my grades for her… and now that I’m free to do stuff with her, she has to study for her own tests and then do summer school ‘cause she failed math and science..”
He really did like Megan, even though he was annoyed with Aunt Cass for trying to set them up- she was so nice, and she really did try to understand him, as much as he tried to understand her.
“I need your advice. I wish you were still here, I know I never listened to you before but I know how important it is now, and now it doesn’t matter because you’re not here! Now that I’m smart enough to listen to you, you’re not here!”
He let out a sob, fighting off tears was impossible now.
“I need you, and he fucking killed you! For no reason! You trusted him, and he threw you away!” He sobbed, tears streaming down his face.
He didn’t know how long he had spent at Tadashi’s side, crying until his eyes ran out of tears. He was jolted out of it by his phone buzzing. It was Aunt Cass, asking him where he was. He lied, texting that he was out for a walk and that he’d be back soon. He didn’t want to make her come out here and see him like this.
He found the energy to stand up again, looking down at the name etched into the stone.
“I love you, Tadashi… I miss you. And.. I hope you know how many people’s lives you changed, how many people you’ve saved… I hope you know that you saved me.”
He looked down at the flowers he left at the graveside.
“I wish I could’ve saved you.”
He said before he turned, walking away.