He drifts in and out of consciousness; for how long, he doesn't know.

"Don't you… leave…"

"Is…"

"How do we know?"

"Malnutrition… lotta folks get like that, when they're on the streets too long."

"Positive identification… not easy…"

"Declared dead… You're sure?"

"Exhaustion, both physical and…"

"He looks so…"

"I can't believe…. didn't see it."

"Callaghan… drop the manslaughter charge?... years off his sentence."

"Needs time… heal. His body…"

"Wake up, bonehead…"

"Alive?"

He sleeps.

The snapping whine of a fluorescent bulb is finally what wakes him. It's persistent enough that he can't quite go back to sleep. He opens his eyes to stare at a white-tiled ceiling.

He's warm, he thinks, warm all over, with soft clean sheets that don't rub at his skin. No wonder he's been sleeping. He could sleep forever in a bed like this.

He thinks for a long moment, then puts his hand to his shoulder. Thickly bandaged; the skin beneath feels kind of damp, and very sore when he moves the arm. There are patches of bandage on his hands as well. He moves the hand to his face. What little facial hair he had is gone, and his cheek feels less bony than he remembers. The scar on his forehead is still there.

He sits up, checks himself over. No IVs, but there's a sore place in the crook of his elbow where one has been recently. His throat is sore - feeding tube. But there is still an oxygenation monitor on his finger. He pauses, thinking about what that means. He's had breathing problems. But out of danger. Expected to wake up today.

He scoots to the end of the bed, and grabs his chart.

Right on all counts. Though he's surprised to find his malnutrition listed as severe; that explains the feeding tube. He finds his admission date, on the day of the fire, but that would only tell him anything if he knew today's date too. He reads through the charts, flips the page, before something strikes him. He goes back to the first page. Reads the name.

Tadashi Hamada.

Hamada? Like the building?

He's interrupted before he can read further. A nurse rolls a cart in, and catches sight of him. "Mr. Hamada?" she says. He just stares, and she tries again. "...Doc?"

"...Yeah?"

"You're awake," she says softly. "He's awake!" she calls to the hallway.

There's a rush, then, of doctors and nurses; questions about what he remembers, a battery of mental tests. Some worried whispering about his continued amnesia. He asks a few questions of his own.

Where am I? San Fransokyo General. How long have I been here? A few days. The fire, is everyone alright? No casualties, only two major cases, lots of smoke inhalation. The shelter? Salvageable. But won't reopen this year.

"My chart has a name on it."

An uncomfortable silence, then. A doctor puts a hand to his arm. "It does."

"Am I really…" He swallows. "...Tadashi Hamada?"

"We think so," the doctor says. "Your hands were still a little burned when we did the fingerprints. But as far as anyone can tell… Yeah."

"They said I looked like him," he says softly.

"You really do," says a nurse. "Especially once we got some food in you."

"It's pretty conclusive, all together," says the doctor. "You've got a lot of people who want to say hello."

"Who?"

Nobody has a chance to answer. There's a commotion in the hall, a nurse admonishing someone to get back here and the lopsided footsteps of someone really not listening. The doctor moves to the door to hold someone back.

"Is he awake?" the kid - Hiro - asks.

"You need to rest that leg," the doctor says.

"Is he awake?" Hiro repeats.

In a softer voice: "Yes. But..."

"Tadashi is suffering from memory loss," says Baymax. "It is best not to overwhelm him." A pause, a shuffling sound, and a stifled squawk of indignation. Then, "There. The leg is rested."

"Put me down, Baymax!"

"Your care is my first priority."

"Unbelievable."

"Is that…" he says. "Hiro?"

Silence on the floor. Then, the robot shuffles its way in, a skinny teen cradled in its huge arms. There's a cast on the top half of his leg. They stare at each other for a moment. Hiro speaks first.

"Do you… remember me?"

He swallows hard. "I…" A shared room. A garage workshop. Unbelievable. Years and years of scattered Christmases and birthdays. A graduation. His eyes, his hands, running a comb through untamable hair… A floodgate opens in the deeper part of his mind. "I…"

"Exposure to familiar persons and settings is the primary treatment for total amnesia," says Baymax brightly.

Riding a moped through a dark alley, his brother clinging to his back. His brother. A funeral, a small hand in his own. A cafe with a cat statue. Laughter. Pastries. Yelling, wrestling, Aunt Cass! Tadashi's being a bonehead. A weight atop his chest after I had a nightmare. A cat in rocket boots.

Months, years, at his brother's side.

"Your heart rate is increasing," Baymax observes. "Perhaps we should…"

"Hiro," he says breathlessly. "I remember you."

Everyone is watching.

"You're my brother."

"Tadashi," says Hiro softly. He nearly falls out of Baymax's arms. Then the robot totters over, past the doctors and nurses, and sets Hiro down on the bed.

"Hugging is an appropriate…" he starts.

Neither one of them cares what he says next.

"Crying is also an appropriate response," Baymax says after a few moments. "It is alright to cry."

A nurse drags Baymax out of the room.

It doesn't end that simply. There's loads of paperwork to be done, red tape strung all around legally dead to fight through. He doesn't remember everything yet, and he won't for a long time; every few hours he finds something new that he knows, every few days he's practically knocked over by sheer force of the memories.

Aunt Cass visits, and spends half an hour bawling into his shoulder, hugging him so hard that he begins to worry about his lungs. He's alive, he's alive, she thought she'd lost him. Her visit overlaps with a mealtime, and she makes him eat everything, then promises to bring some of her eclairs, which, she assures him, he loves.

Everyone has to hear what happened, and he tells the story to a familiar group, who are all skipping their first classes of the semester to come visit. Honey Lemon wonders what happened to Buddy and Roger. Hiro's fists clench when he talks about the swarm, about the man in the mask. Fred laughs when he tells him what he said, concussed out of his right mind, and sings Fredzilla's theme song. Wasabi winces at the description of the camps. Gogo talks about when she and Honey Lemon ran into the mob, giving him the details that the rumors never did.

It's not like he never left. It's like he's come back.

"Sorry, man, didn't mean to make so much trouble for you."

"You lived in a bot fighting place?"

"Did Professor Callaghan hurt any of your friends?"

"Homeless people are calling me a neat freak now?"

"If you go anywhere near a burning building, ever again, I will end you."

They all agree on that.

He looks in the mirror, after they're gone. His face isn't quite the one from the mirror in his memories, and he doubts it'll ever be quite the same. The scar might fade eventually, the doctors say. The experiences won't.

Both he and Hiro are released, with a strict admonition to eat well and get lots of rest. Baymax impressed the doctors, and they say he's welcome back. The robot promises, in his own way, to make sure they follow orders. Aunt Cass closes the cafe to welcome them home. The eclairs are just as good as she said they were. He helps Hiro up the stairs. His half of the room is the same as he remembers. Cleaner, maybe.

He goes to the old shelter one day, once Hiro has been persuaded to go back to classes. Everyone recognizes him, congratulates him, and he ends up treating a couple sprains and a nasty scrape. He promises to bring Baymax next time.

They finally drag him to SFIT. The Tadashi Hamada Memorial Building is huge and gorgeous and entirely inappropriate, and he can't look at the huge portrait of him hanging in the lobby without feeling like he's going to spontaneously combust.

The labs are better. There are memories waiting to ambush him in every room, so they give him time. He sits alone in the workspace that used to be his, stares out the window, looks down to where Baymax's charger used to sit. There's a giant red fist on one shelf, and he wants to hear the story behind that.

Hiro thinks maybe he could go here again.

Maybe he could.

And Tadashi smiles.