might be your wound (but they're my sutures)

AN: yes, this is in fact another tadashi lives fic. you're welcome. i have been cooking this up since i saw the movie because as long as the fandom lives tadashi can be resurrected. inspired by this: [ mossmallow-art. tumblr post / 102586972219 / to-make-up-for-the-pain-i-caused-with-this-pic ]

"Tadashi!" Hiro's eyes are wide with fear, flames reflected in the watery gloss from the cinders stinging his eyes; the hand grasping his own is warm, tethering him to safety and home and family and brother. "No! You'll die if you go in there!"

The elder brother hesitates for just a moment. Hiro is genuinely terrified. His baby brother should never have to be terrified. Tadashi stands poised on the edge of motion, torn between the urgent need to save and the ever-burning need in his heart to protect his family (they're all he has left) and how can he do that if his body is dust?

But his professor is in the building and if he does not go then the man who has taught him all he knows will die. So Tadashi steels himself and speaks.

His voice is rough. "Professor Callaghan is trapped in there. Someone has to do something."

His brother's fingers go slack, and Tadashi runs.

Hiro watches him go with dread in his heart and feet frozen in place; watches him run, sneakers pounding on the stone floor as he dashes into the flames -

-a split-second: a sound like thunder rattling in his bones and through his flesh and incandescence blazing, white-bright through the flimsy membrane of his eyelids, white-hot searing through his fragile flesh eating through his legs and arms and face and-

-Tadashi has a split-second to scream before the merciful clutches of the void overtake him, leaving him with nothing more than vague, fleeting dreams and the sensation of burning.

o-o

unconsciousness is the void; he has no memory of his arrival here but the indistinct sense of wrongness is pervasive; shadows eat away at the edges of his mind, his big brother's howl of pain echo in the silence and he can only float in the darkness

Hiro comes to, face pressed against the ground.

There is the heaviness of ashes in his lungs, flecks of remnants of burnt things suspended in the air, reduced to dust. His ears ring still, but he can faintly hear the crackle and roar of flames, and the distant noise of sirens and screams. The earth beneath his body is hot, like firing up the bunsen burner in the science lab, or standing in the midst of a rush hour crowd on a summer noon in the market. His skin feels caked with soot and cinders, suffocating; his tongue tastes dust and ashes and -

-the distinct, repulsive scent of burnt human flesh is wafting through the air.

He scrambles to sit up, twisting his body around to look upon the destruction, and sees, just to his right, the limp form of a young adult man, lying crushed under what had once been part of the building's metal skeleton.

Hiro screams.

He rushes to his brother's side and tries to lift the rubble off him, and never before has he cursed his skinny noodle nerd arms more because it's so freaking heavy; Tadashi's face is blistered and weeping and streaked with red and he sobs as he heaves, heaves, heaves -

-the chunk of steel topples over onto the floor with an earth-shuddering clang and Hiro registers nothing else but the weight of his brother's bloodstained unconscious form in his lap, tears of relief streaming down his ash-strewn cheeks and the shallow, steady puffs of breath coming from Tadashi's slack mouth.

Everything after that is a blur to him: he dimly notes the flurry of action around him as the sirens close in and the emergency response team bursts onto the scene; people clad in black and yellow fireproof suits rushing into the burning skeleton of a building; paramedics in white and green with clean gloved hands lifting the broken form of his brother onto a stretcher as he clings close, barely feeling the hands that check him for injury; being moved into the same ambulance as his brother, the sterile white vehicle shaking around him as he clutches his brother's intact hand like a lifeline; and finally, arriving at the hospital, standing frozen behind the glass of the operating room as surgeons armed with scalpels and needles rush to save his brother's life.

He sits by his brother's bedside as he lays his palms flat on the glassy outer membrane of the stasis pod.

Tadashi floats serenely, comatose, suspended in the transparent greenish liquid as glinting sharp needles feed clear IV drips into his skin; the medfluid works to sterilize his wounds, soothe his blistered charred skin and get his body stabilized. The steady beep of the heart monitor is a comforting sound in the quiet of the hospital room. An oxygen mask covers his nose and mouth, with a respirator hooked up into his nose, leading out of the stasis pod and into a large metal canister full of clean, hazard-free air. His brother is half-naked, the tattered remains of his clothing stripped off him for efficiency and cleanliness, leaving him in his underwear. Hiro can see the shallow rise and fall of his brother's chest and all of the fresh, raw wounds and stitches that cover it. It's like the explosion nearly ate him alive, ripping away chunks of his brother's flesh, swallowing them whole into the gaping maw of the flames, and crushing the right side of his body under steel jaws.

They had to amputate his right arm and everything past his right knee; the bones were so mangled and the flesh so scorched that they were beyond saving even with the current level of medical technology. Half of Tadashi's face is an angry red wound, and most of his messy black hair has been burnt to nothing, leaving the tender wounded skin of his scalp bare, black stitches stark against his skin where they had to cut open his scalp to fix the fracture in his skull. Hiro can only curse himself for not stopping him for long enough, and thank the gods that he didn't go in any further.

"Are you okay?"

Hiro barely realises he's been crying until one of the doctors lays a hand on his shoulder and asks him in a low, Japanese-accented voice. He suddenly becomes conscious of the fact that his eyes are red and dripping, his throat tight and choked up, and also he's been trembling and quietly sobbing great big fat tears onto the surface of the stasis pod.

The white-clad woman takes him gently aside and squeezes cool soothing drops of liquid into his irritated eyes, applies burn lotion to a few patches of angry red skin, cleans and dabs antibiotic cream to a stinging, clotting red scrape on his knee.

His throat unclenches slowly. Hiro's voice is hoarse and tired. "H-how long will it be before he wakes up?"

The doctor looks sympathetic. "Hard to tell. He suffered a closed, depressed skull fracture, in addition to choking on smoke and excessive physical trauma. He could wake up tomorrow, or it might take weeks. Or months. Sometimes even years. Comas are tricky like that." The young inventor feels his heart sink with each word. "The best thing you can do right now is wait and leave it to us to look after him."

She pats his shoulder. "I know how you're feeling. My daughter was in a coma for a long time before she woke up, and even after that she was never quite the same. Coma patients fall into comas because of brain damage, and when your neurons die off there can be serious lasting consequences. Ayano-chan still has trouble walking, or even talking sometimes. When your brother wakes up, he'll have to go through an awful lot of therapy to get back on his feet. But," she continues, voice a little lighter now, "his condition's stable, so hopefully once he heals up enough he'll come to. So cheer up, kid," she smooths a piece of gauze over his knee and tapes it tight, "as long as he's still breathing, he has a fighting chance."

He cracks a weak smile at that, and speaks quietly. "Thanks. And m' name's not kid, doc, it's Hiro."

The doctor laughs, red eyes bright. "Then, you can call me Ayaka-san. It's nice to meet you, Hiro-kun. Need a drink?"

The boy feels the soreness of his throat, and nods a definite yes.

She squirts liquid sanitizer into his hands, deems him otherwise physically sound, and passes him a bottle of water before she goes off to attend to the next victim.

He's numbly squeezing it to alleviate the tension in the tight cords of his hands when there's a commotion down the hallway and a voice that sounds suspiciously like an irate and agitated aunt. The part of Hiro's mind that's not consumed with worry wonders amusedly which nurse had the unfortunate pleasure of impeding his aunt on the warpath.

Footsteps on stone echo down the walls to him. Aunt Cass comes rushing into the room, Gogo and Wasabi and Honey and Fred all hot on her heels as she bolts towards him, her arms around him, asking him what happened, there was an explosion, are you okay?

His lips are lead, his tongue too weighed down with dust and ashes and burnt things to function effectively. "M'fine. But T-Tadashi," he gestures to the limp form of his brother in the stasis pod, doesn't listen to the gasps and quiet murmurs of Tadashi's labmates as they gather around his sleeping form, doesn't look at his aunt's anguished face; he trips over his words like his voice has twisted its ankle, limping along agonisingly, "h-he's - he was c-caught in the-th-th-the-" His voice stutters and he has to stop for the hiccups that break free from his treacherous throat.

He looks his mother figure straight in her searching eyes and feels lost, like a storm just blew through the house of his mind (or a fire just burned it all down, again). Aunt Cass meets his gaze and pulls him into an embrace, Gogo and Honey Lemon and Wasabi and Fred all coming forward together to join the group hug.

The boy sniffles, mumbling. "D-don't even know w-why 'm c-cryin', he's a-ali-ve-" He hiccups and feels miserable and tries his best to hide his wet face from the world. His chest aches, he feels useless and childish and guilty, and it gnaws at his heart and pushes a lump up into his throat. "Could've s-stopped him from going in-n, could've-ve prev-vented this e-entire situation-!"

Honey Lemon squeezes his arm. "We don't blame you for this, Hiro."

Fred nods in agreement. "Yeah, it's not your fault that your brother has a serious hero complex sometimes." Gogo elbows him in the side, and he winces.

Aunt Cass squeezes him tighter. "Oh, Hiro, honey," she murmurs, "it's okay to cry sometimes. It's not your fault."

Hiro buries his face in his aunt's shoulder and sobs. Tadashi, his brother, guardian and father figure and best friend all wrapped up in one, nearly died, could still die, and he can do nothing but wait and watch.

He collapses when they reach home, too drained and hollow to resist the alluring pull of sleep. His dreams are restless and filled with images of his brother: choking on smoke and fire, drowning on dry land, his body eaten up by the flames until only charred ashes are left; crushed to death by twenty tonnes of steel, his fragile human skull shattered and ground into pieces; quietly succumbing to trauma in the ambulance, the stuttering sound of his heart slowing and flatlining.

Hiro Hamada wakes up crying, and for the first time in years, he pads to Aunt Cass's bedroom. Clings to her solid, not dead, healthy, alive body; lets her wrap him in a tight embrace as they stand in her doorway and sobs and weeps and wails helplessly until his tears have run dry.

AN: Some notes on stuff in this chapter:

MEDFLUID & STASIS PODS:

-only a TEMPORARY solution; used to contain crisis patients and coma patients, but once crisis is lessened or coma broken the patients are moved to normal hospital beds.
-contains genetically-engineered bacteria which consume pathogens and cleanse infected wounds.
-temp differs depending on patient's condition: 32-34 degrees Celsius is the norm. This helps to lessen inflammation and lower fevers.
-keeps the patient floating, which prevents bedsores and allows for movement.
-invented by Dr Ayaka Asahina, in response to her comatose daughter. Dr Asahina noted how her daughter constantly had to be moved to prevent bedsores, and developed the fluid as a means to ease the workload of the doctors, in addition to keeping her safe from infection and pathogens, and preventing her from hurting herself when she moved restlessly or had seizures in her sleep.

RED-EYED DOCTOR:

That would be Ms. Asahina herself! Guess where I got her from and you get a cookie.

NEXT CHAPTER: THE PLOT IS CHANGED. But not by much.