don't mind me, just writing another alive!tadashi au fic to cope with my feelings.

"Tadashi!"

There was the distant sound of something crackling, crumbling, collapsing. He coughed again.

"TADASHI!"

The screams were becoming hoarser and hoarser as they tore from a throat constantly breathing in acrid smoke and ash. His ears rung with a high-pitched squeal that had been there since he picked himself up from the brick walkway. It was so loud it almost drowned out the roar of the blaze and the blood singing in his head, but not quite. His vision blurred, smearing shades of red and orange. If he'd been thinking clearly, he would've realized that these things probably added up to a head injury, but he wasn't thinking about anything except whether or not to dive into that building.

So despite his better judgment, he moved closer to the flames lapping up the school and everything inside. They reflected brightly in his wide, wet eyes and he cursed himself for doing nothing but watching them. Ash drifted down from the sky like snowflakes, settled in his hair and on his shoulders. He'd been standing there for so long he must've been covered with it at that point.

"Ta—dashi!" His brother's name came out as a series of coughs, rough and raw and desperate even though his voice was weak from damaged lungs. If he'd been any more in his right mind, he might've moved away from the billowing smoke, but he couldn't risk missing any figures that might appear through the blaze.

Any moment now, he'd see Tadashi materialize from the heat and haze and they could go home.

But it already felt like an eternity had passed and the doorway was burning. Soon it would be consumed entirely, and no one had come out of it yet. Nausea rose in his throat again, clogging it along with the smoke, and he had to double over to gag. He was shaking and retching and weeping and there were so many reasons why.

Another type of squealing pierced through the ringing in his ears, this one much more familiar. He distantly recognized it as the wail of a siren. Probably several of them. Good.

Good.

They would get Tadashi out of there. They had to get Tadashi out of there.

He tried to turn and run to the firefighters to scream that his brother was still in there, you have to get him out right now—

But when he looked down, he realized he'd dropped to his knees and couldn't make his legs move. His eyes were stinging viciously with fumes and heat and tears were cascading down his cheeks and his legs were rubber and he felt so sick. So small.

So abandoned.

His brother was burning.

"Hiro!"

The sound of his name was distant and muffled. Answering it didn't occur to him. He just stared at the fire, wondering if it might take him too.

Tadashi, no!

He told him not to do it. He told him not to go in there.

Someone has to help!

Why does it have to be you? Why did he always want to play the hero? It had always gotten on Hiro's nerves. Why couldn't he have listened? He was usually a good listener. But…

But all Hiro could see was his back as he disappeared into the inferno.

Leaving him.

A sob hitched in his aching throat. His fingers closed around the brim of the baseball cap and he clutched it to his chest tightly.

"Hiro! Oh my God!"

The voice was much closer this time. Suddenly a pair of familiar arms encircled him, and the physical contact was what finally broke through the fog in his head. He leaned into his aunt's shoulder and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Her fingers combed through his hair and wiped the soot from his face and she kept asking if he was okay, but he couldn't respond. He was choking, gagging, fighting back bile. Not okay at all.

"Where's Tadashi?" Cass whispered, though her voice made it clear enough that she had already guessed the answer and was desperately hoping she was wrong. "Hiro? Where's Tadashi? What happened?"

And then he couldn't fight it any longer. He pushed himself away from her and emptied the contents of his stomach onto the ground. Cass yelled for the paramedics, keeping one hand on his back and the other on his head to hold back his hair.

When he was done, he sucked in a painful, rasping breath. "Tadashi—Tadashi ran in t'help Callaghan," he slurred. "I told 'im not to, Aunt Cass, I told him—!" He couldn't finish before voice disappeared into a bout of half-coughing and half-sobbing.

His brother was burning.

Cass closed her eyes as the sharp pressure of tears built up behind them. Of course Tadashi had gone into help; what else could be expected of him? Why else would Hiro be reduced to such a mess? She'd known from the minute she'd seen him crumpled in front of the burning school what had happened, but, God, she never would've been so glad to be mistaken. Her throat was tight and swollen, but she didn't let herself cry openly. Not yet. Not until she knew for sure she had a reason to.

Not until she was hidden from Hiro's eyes.

On the inside, she was panicking. Her mind was a whirlwind and her emotions had yet to catch up with it, and she didn't know whether to tell herself that they would all be fine or to start preparing for the worst. So she did neither.

For the moment, the only thing she did was focus on comforting Hiro as best she could. She held the small boy firmly against her shoulder as he shuddered and cried, shushing him, and rocked both of them back and forth gently. Not thinking about anything else, because she couldn't. The world careened around them in a maelstrom of barely controlled chaos as firefighters and policemen and paramedics dashed about to gain control over the panicking crowd and the raging fire. Sirens wailed, lights flashed red and blue, people shouted, TV crews herded around the barriers of the scene, and officials ran in every direction barking orders at the onlookers. Cass and Hiro were the only ones that stayed completely still in the midst of it all, clinging to each other like they could drown out everything else.

That was how the paramedics found them moments later. A man gently pried Hiro from Cass's arms and carried him to the back of an ambulance a safe distance away from the smoke. The fourteen-year-old didn't put up any fight against being prodded by strangers, which was odd. The vacancy and lack of focus in his eyes worried Cass.

It didn't come as a shock when, one brief examination later, he was pronounced mildly concussed.

"We want to take him in an ambulance and have him checked out at the hospital just to be safe," a medic told Cass detachedly. "He should be fine, but we want to make sure there isn't any lasting damage from smoke inhalation."

As if on cue, Hiro coughed again and Cass winced. Chewing at her bottom lip, she turned to the man and nodded. "Of course, I—"

"I'm not going to the hospital."

The two adults stopped, surprised by the interruption and the small, forceful voice. Both heads snapped to the boy huddled in the back of the vehicle. The dazed, listless expression was gone from his sooty features and was replaced by a look of firm resolve. And maybe a touch of anger.

Cass stepped toward him. "Hiro, sweetie, the doctors need to take a look at y—"

"I'm not going," he repeated, his chin quivering. "Not until they get Tadashi out."

The woman's heart dropped to her stomach. "Hiro, we don't know if—" a shaky inhale, "—when they'll be able to do that. It might be a while and you need to rest."

Hiro crossed his arms over his chest, a stubbornness Cass was all too familiar with crossing his countenance. "I'm not leaving until they get Tadashi out."

Uncertain of what to do, Cass shot a glance at the medic. He had his hands planted on his hips, face impassive. When he caught Cass's gaze, he tipped his head back to indicate he'd like to talk to her in private.

They moved well out of Hiro's earshot before he leaned in close to speak to her. She was startled by the urgency suddenly present in his eyes. "You know one of the people still trapped in the building?"

She pursed her lips, ignoring the constriction in her chest. "Yes, my nephew—Hiro's older brother. He ran in to help after the fire started and hasn't come back out." Her eyes quickly roamed over the man's face, searching for some kind of answer there. "Do you know what's going on? Are they getting him out?"

Her heartbeat spiked painfully when the medic's carefully calm expression faltered a bit. He reached up to rub the back of his neck and said, "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. The firemen are doing all they can to get the fire put out and a team went in to retrieve the, uh, civilians still inside. Your nephew—Hiro?—doesn't seem to need any immediate treatment, so letting him stay isn't really the problem.

"…However, I'm not sure that letting him stick around to see what they pull out of there is a good idea. People are reporting an explosion from the building and it looks like a good bit of the structure has already collapsed. The chance that anybody trapped in there actually survived is…very slim. Any bodies that have been in there this long won't be in good condition, alive or not." Somewhere during the spiel, his voice had lost its cool detachedness. Now he sounded softer and even a bit sympathetic. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but I thought you ought to consider it before making a decision."

Cass's hands wandered up the sides of her arms. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she once again refused to let them fall. Instead, she raised her gaze to look the medic in the eye. "Thank you, but I already figured that out on my own. I'm going to stay here with him until they get my nephew out."

The man nodded as if he'd been expecting that response. "Suit yourself."

She rejoined Hiro after that, taking a seat beside him in the back of the ambulance. She wrapped an arm tightly around his shoulders and he leaned into the embrace the slightest bit.

"Is he dead, Aunt Cass?"

The question was little more than a broken, defeated whisper and Cass felt her heart break again. Her fingers brushed through his dark, tousled locks of hair. "I don't know, honey. We'll have to wait and see."

But she knew they were both thinking the same thing: Tadashi was most likely dead.

Staring up at the monstrous flames engulfing the school, it was hard to believe that anyone could be alive inside them. Even from that distance, Cass could feel the searing heat radiating on her cheeks. To think that Tadashi was in the heart of it…

Despite her best efforts, moisture pooled in her eyes and spilled down her face. What was she going to do if Tadashi was gone? What was Hiro going to do? Tadashi often served as the glue that held their small family unit together. There were times he displayed a level of maturity that Cass wasn't sure she possessed herself, and he had a knack for keeping a calm, level head when she had a tendency to overreact. When she didn't know how to handle Hiro's attitude and irresponsibility, Tadashi knew exactly what to do. He'd been more of a parent to his younger brother than Cass ever had and probably ever would.

And she saw how much Hiro looked up to and admired him. The bond the two brothers shared was strong and deep, forged over years of adversity and sharing one another's burdens.

Cass was certain that severing that bond would be detrimental to Hiro.

Looking down at him, she wasn't entirely sure it wasn't too late. His eyes were red and dull as they stared off into space, and tears had cut clear tracks through the ash and grime on his face. His brother's hat was still clutched loosely in one small fist. In a word, Hiro already looked lost.

She wished she could say something comforting to the small boy, but any words that came to mind seemed empty and untrue. She couldn't tell him everything would be all right, because it was painfully obvious that it wouldn't be. She couldn't even assure him that they would get Tadashi out, because with every passing minute, that possibility looked grimmer and grimmer. Hope was fading quickly for both of them, and pretending otherwise would be more harmful than helpful.

So they sat in silence and watched the building burn together.

After a while, Cass noticed a small group of kids tentatively approaching them from the side. One glance and she instantly recognized them as Tadashi's school friends. They all bore the same expression of worry and fear and uncertainty as they stared at her and Hiro, probably wondering if it was all right to approach.

Cass smiled sadly at them and gestured for them to come over.

Unsurprisingly, Honey Lemon was the first to walk up and sit down beside Hiro. She reached out hesitantly and touched Hiro's hair, concern shining in wide green eyes. When the gesture was met with no protest, she continued to smooth locks away from his forehead. "Are you all right, Hiro?"

His only response was to clutch the blanket around his thin frame tighter and turn his face away into his aunt's shoulder. A few hoarse coughs shook his back.

Honey tossed a quizzical gaze to Cass, and Cass merely shook her head. "Hiro has a bit of a concussion," she explained, thinking, not for the first time, of how she still didn't know how he'd managed to hit his head. But in the midst of the chaos it didn't seem surprising. She didn't have the heart to ask him about it just yet.

GoGo cleared her throat. "Tadashi…?"

Cass cringed when she felt Hiro tense beneath her arm. The group must have already heard that their friend was still trapped inside the school. She shook her head again. "We don't know. They're still trying to get him out."

The kids sobered even more, all eight eyes simultaneously drawn to the mass of flames where they'd attended classes.

That was when the shouting broke out.

At first it was hard to tell what had brought on the sudden commotion. A horde of policemen and medics began to swarm toward the front of the building—which wasn't much of a building anymore—yelling and organizing themselves into a practiced formation for maximum efficiency, radios squawking and buzzing, sirens still screaming.

Hiro immediately straightened, the blanket falling from his shoulders. Before Cass could protest, he'd hopped from the back of the ambulance and was sprinting across the asphalt towards the core of activity. He didn't get far before an officer stopped him, telling him to stay back, but he wasn't listening at all.

Because, in the flurry of people amassed by the burning structure, he caught a glimpse of a body cradled in the arms of a fireman.

A body that looked a lot like his brother.

"Tadashi!" he shouted hoarsely, the exclamation feeling like murder to his damaged throat. He struggled against the arm holding him back. "Tadashi!"

"Whoa, kid," the policeman said sternly. "You can't go back there. Just calm down."

Hiro squirmed and thrashed, trying to free himself from the man's hold with everything he had in him. And for a scrawny kid weakened by a concussion and smoke inhalation, he put up a fair fight. The policeman resolved to using both arms to restrain him. "That's my brother! That's my brother!"

"Hiro!"

Footsteps on the pavement, a gentle hand on his arm, and Hiro still didn't calm down. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the cluster of men in dirty yellow coats as they huddled in a tight circle. Even covered in their bulky gear, the urgency and intensity in their body language was unmistakable. Paramedics soon made up half of the group, crisp white uniforms stark and pristine against the grime and soot smudged over the firefighters like charcoal. Another team rushed over a gurney and an oxygen machine, both of which instantly disappeared into the mass of bodies.

Hiro squirmed, soles scraping over the asphalt in another desperate attempt to get closer to the scene. He knew he'd seen a flash of black hair and a ruined blazer. "Tadashi!"

"Hiro, slow down!" Cass stepped in front of him, hands coming to rest somewhat forcefully on his shoulders. Her face obstructed his view and wide green eyes were suddenly filling up his vision. They looked almost as pained as Hiro felt. "Breathe."

He instinctively sucked in a breath and his irritated lungs protested in a bout of coughing. Cass's hand rubbed circles on his back until it had passed, and then she took him into her arms again.

"What's going on, Aunt Cass?" Hiro rasped once he had breath enough to do it. "Is he alive?"

Her answer was the most wonderful thing he'd ever heard in his life.

"He's alive."

The two words were a soft whisper, as if she was trying to convince herself of their truth even as she spoke them. Her arms tightened around Hiro and she buried her face in his hair, chest heaving with quick breaths. "He's alive."

Hiro closed his eyes. He was scared to believe it because, right up until that moment, he'd been trying to come to grips with the fact that he'd lost his brother. He'd witnessed the explosion; the blast should've killed Tadashi. But it hadn't.

It hadn't.

Not yet, anyway. There was no telling what kind of condition Tadashi was in now. What if he had to be put on life support or was brain dead or something awful like that? He could still die. It was too soon to feel relief just yet.

But at the same time, Tadashi was alive. And for now, that was enough.