author's note;
04/11/2015 — Write cute BH6 fanfiction, I told myself. You can write cute Hamada bros, I said... And then I wrote 4k words of suffering. Oops.

I left the ending ambiguous on purpose, so feel free to interpret it however you want.

It happens four days after the showcase.

( while carthage burns. )

Hiro wakes up smackdab in the middle of the night, short of breath and so disorientated he thinks he might throw up. His head hurts, his limbs are stiff, and his lungs feel like they're on fire—which is strange, because he's not on fire. He's not burning. He knows what a charred corpse looks like, so he knows he's okay.

(Or, well. He tries to convince himself he is, in any case.)

When he manages to coax his body into cooperating with his brain, he awkwardly pushes himself up into a sitting position and squints at the other side of the room. He shouldn't expect to see Tadashi there anymore, snoring the night away in an ungraceful mess of limbs and sheets, but he finds himself looking for his brother's familiar figure anyway. Part of him, he thinks, still hopes this is all a nightmare he'll soon wake up from. Even though he knows it's impossible, he keeps hoping that he's going to wake up and find his brother alive and well like he should be. Tadashi didn't deserve to die. Tadashi deserves a lot more than cursory apologies and a closed casket, because there wasn't even enough of him left to bury.

His mouth suddenly feels uncomfortably sticky and dry, a lump forming in his throat. He needs water.

Rubbing his eyes in a halfhearted attempt to get the sleep gunk out of his eyes, he swings his legs over the edge of his bed and throws a glance towards the staircase leading downstairs. He notices, for the first time since waking up, that there's someone standing there.

He then proceeds to notice that someone is no one other than Tadashi, staring at him with blisters on his skin and blood oozing from every pore in his body.

Funny.

Hiro doesn't even realize he's screaming until his aunt Cass rushes into the room, scooping him up in her arms and asking what's wrong.

Nothing is wrong, he says, absolutely hysterical. Nothing is wrong, if you ignore the smell of smoke and fire squeezing his lungs and his dead brother standing next to the stairs. There is a small pool of blood forming at his big brother's feet and he's pretty sure some of those blisters are infected, but Hiro can't stop staring back at him. He doesn't stop staring at him until Aunt Cass forces him downstairs and convinces him to guzzle down two teaspoons of a clear, flowery liquid that's supposed to calm him down. By the time he manages to stop screaming, his throat is raw and he's nothing but an incoherent mess.

It doesn't take a genius to know none of this is normal.

Aunt Cass can't see Tadashi. Mochi can't see Tadashi. Nobody can see Tadashi. His big brother might as well not be there, for all intents and purposes.

But he is. There is no way that he isn't, because every night Hiro wakes up to his brother's blister covered face and blister covered body. Their room permanently smells like burning flesh and collapsed buildings, and it's obvious to see that Tadashi is the source of all of this. Every single inch of Hiro's being is convinced that his brother is back from the dead to haunt him—maybe because he didn't stop him from running into that death trap.

Well, no. Make that every inch of Hiro's being except, of course, his mind.

He knows that he can't tell anyone about this, even when his gag reflex activates and he feels inclined to vomit. Nobody will believe him.

It's kind of a lose-lose situation when you see people who should be definitely dead. There is nothing healthy in turning around and finding yourself stalked by someone who, as the local newspaper can attest to, burned until nothing but the rare charred piece of bone was left. Best case scenario, Hiro has developed psychic abilities and can now see his dead brother's ghost. Worst case scenario—no. He's not going crazy.

Mum's the word. If he ignores it and keeps all of this to himself, then nobody can consider him crazy.

It's a good, solid plan.

It's not actually that solid a plan, but it does get easier as the weeks drag on.

Tadashi gets more talkative; looks a little less like a walking corpse and more like the all-too-caring big brother he used to (still does) love. It's very hard to ignore him when all Hiro wants is his big brother back.

"Come on, bonehead," said older brother tells him, sitting on the desk chair in Hiro's side of the room and smiling his usual smile. "You're not going to do a whole lot if you just sit there. What happened with going to college?"

Hiro stares pointedly at the ceiling, his throat feeling a little tight and his chest feeling a little constricted, but he's fine. He loves his beanbag; his beanbag is comfortable, soft, and a nice place to avoid his obviously less than stable mental health. "I," he begins, short and clipped, "I'm doing enough."

Which is true. He's doing enough by breathing and existing and not dissolving particle by particle, like he desperately wishes he could. It's a great service to society, he's sure.

"Hiro," Tadashi responds, even though Hiro doesn't really want him to. "What's wrong?"

That question would be easier to answer, if Tadashi had instead asked what isn't wrong. That list, at least, is incredibly short and to the point. The other one—not so much. Hiro can go on for days, listing all the things that are wrong right now, if he actually cared to do so.

But he doesn't, which is exactly why he shrugs and closes his eyes instead of providing an honest answer. "I'm fine, Tadashi."

The walls have ears and eyes, and he's talking to an apparition. He wonders if Aunt Cass has access to the cameras that were set up in his room a thousand years ago. Probably not, but if she does, he can only imagine what this must look like.

Teen genius: Graduates high school at 13 and goes completely and utterly bonkers. Hah — that news report would look nice on his journal. He can place it right next to the clipping detailing his brother's death.

His brother might have hit his head a little too hard when he died, though, because he seems to have forgotten the meaning of I'm fine. He presses his lips into a fine line, eyebrows furrowing together in that all-too-familiar look, and Hiro has lost count of how many times Tadashi has used that expression on him. He grew up with it, after all. He's starting to think he's going to grow old seeing it, too, at this rate. Which is, uh, all kinds of crazy, because—

("—Someone has to help!")

Tadashi really shouldn't have any look on his face, anymore. Tadashi shouldn't even have a face.

"Yeah?" Tadashi tells him anyway, tone laced with obvious incredulity and even more obvious concern. Hiro is aware that he's not good at lying to his family; he knows his current appearance isn't helping, either. He can't remember the last time he stepped outside or opened the shutter blinds on the window.

"Yeah," Hiro repeats, eyes still closed in an attempt to drive his brother way. Part of him, however small it may be, just wants to move past this. He knows that's the healthy thing to do.

"Rule #36, genius," he hears his brother say, now from somewhere behind him, beyond the partition that divides the room they used to share. "Hamada brothers don't lie to each other."

"Rule #37," he counters, exhausted. "Hamada brothers get to keep their secrets."

He never hears Tadashi's reply.

When he opens his eyes, he finds that he fell asleep and a couple of hours have passed already. He's alone in his room. There is nobody on the other side of the partition at all.

He wishes this could be considered the silent treatment.

"I brought you breakfast," Aunt Cass tells him, her voice as stable as a castle made out of wet cardboard and sand. Hiro pretends he doesn't notice the way her breath hitches when she spots last night's dinner still intact, and ignores how she bites her lip before continuing. "I made you pancakes. They don't have gummy bears in them, but..."

"Thanks, Aunt Cass," he cuts in, not even bothering to make an attempt to actually sound grateful. It's not like he's going to eat anything, after all.

But Aunt Cass doesn't seem to notice (or maybe she pretends not to notice), because she says nothing as she places the dish down and picks up last night's dinner. It seems like there's something she wants to add, her eyes momentarily glancing at the acceptance letter on his desk, but she refrains from saying it—which is great, because he might spontaneously combust if he hears another word about SFIT. After a moment, she gives him a weak smile. "Hey, honey..." she says, gently. "How about we watch a movie together after closing time?"

"Yeah," Tadashi takes the opportunity to pipe up. "You need to get out of this room. It's starting to stink."

If it stinks of anything, it's of a rotting corpse. Hiro bites his tongue before he can mention anything like that in front of his aunt, though, and mumbles something appropriate in response. It sounds suspiciously like an I guess, which is kind of wishy washy, but it does the job for now.

His aunt gives him a tight smile, before heading downstairs to help the only employee they got to keep after paying for Tadashi's funeral expenses. She never notices her oldest nephew standing right next to her.

"—it would be the ability to crawl through this camera and give you a big hug."

Unceremoniously, he closes the window showing the video Tadashi's friends recorded and focuses on his browser. Bot fights are much more interesting than whatever sentimental drivel they want to feed him. Much more mindless, too. Bot fights won't offer him empty words of reassurance that do little to avoid further grief, but do a whole lot to cause it.

He ignores the way his stomach churns and the way bile threatens to come up his throat. He is fine. He's more than fine. He just needs to figure out what bot fight is happening tonight, so he can get Megabot ready for it.

"You didn't hear what Go Go had to say."

—Okay. Megabot. Need to get him ready. He's not listening to this. He's not listening to his very deceased older brother. Tadashi is not allowed to scold him when he's dead.

He's insistent, though.

"Hey," his dead brother says, just a tad bit exasperated, and Hiro can see him leaning against the desk from the corner of his eyes. "Look at me."

He can't. He won't. He feels like his grip on reality is going to go straight to hell if he does.

"Shut up," he hisses, careful to keep his voice low enough so that their aunt won't hear him. The café is busy enough at this hour that he's sure she won't come back up until dinnertime, but he can't risk it. His aunt has enough things to worry about without adding his mental health to that list.

"Unbelievable," Tadashi responds, a little too loudly for comfort. "First you ignore me, and now you this? Is that any way to treat your elders, knucklehead?"

He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and runs a hand through his hair, inhaling and exhaling through his nose. When he opens his eyes again, he moves his computer mouse and clicks on the schedule link near the top of the page. "You're not my elder anymore," he quietly says, "You're dead, Tadashi. Do you get that? Dead."

"But I'm not dead, Hiro," his brother insists, sounding oddly offended by the notion. "I'm here."

Except, he's not here. He's not anywhere anymore.

Refusing to answer, he scans the website, minimizes the browser window and pushes himself away from his desk. Tadashi is still there, of course, leaning against the edge and all but hovering over him—but Hiro makes an effort to ignore him, even as his big brother frowns at him with a worried look his face. He stands up from his chair, the floor just a little cold against his bare feet, and picks up Megabot from its place next to his computer screen.

The bottom half of his fighting bot falls off.

It misses his foot by a mere inch.

He stares at the piece on the floor for far too long, as if something incomprehensible has just happened, before shaking his head. It's okay. Now isn't the time to space out. He can fix it. Nothing to it, really.

When he picks it up, Tadashi is no longer leaning against the desk. He's not on his side of the room, either.

(There's something red and familiar next to Tadashi's bed, but Hiro doesn't pay attention to it.

He tries not to pay attention to many things, these days.)

For the first time in nearly two months, Hiro steps outside.

He goes to a bot fight.

And then a second one.

And a couple more, after that. Like, ten more—give or take a few.

He comes out relatively unscathed from most of them, but, sometimes, he isn't quite as lucky or quite as fast to get away. Punches are exchanged, bruises are formed, and there is no angry big brother coming out of the woodworks to rescue him. He's a single child now, after all, no matter what his mind and eyes and ears would like to believe these days.

Occasionally, he sees Tadashi there, sticking close to him and hissing warnings about what a bad idea this is. You can do so much better, his brother sometimes insists. Stay home, little brother, he adds every now and then. Other nights, he's quiet and sad, and the dark alleyways smell a little like someone just set up a giant bonfire here. Tonight is one of those nights.

But it might just be the awful beating he's just received.

His vision is blurry and blotchy and he is nearly a hundred percent sure those stars dancing across his eyes should be a cause for concern, but everything hurts so he's not particularly worried about what he's seeing. One of the bettors waits until the people who beat him up disperse, and then slowly and carefully asks where he lives and if he needs medical attention. Or—that's what Hiro thinks they say. He's not entirely sure. Things are a little funny right now.

So he laughs, and it comes out just the teeniest bit garbled and weird thanks to the blood slowly dribbling down his throat. He's not entirely sure when he bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to break skin, but, whatever. It doesn't matter. In a half-delirious and probably mostly-concussed daze, he smiles a lopsided smile at the stranger trying to help him out, and says—

"Ask m'... brother."

Well. Slurs, really.

He doesn't blame the person for being confused. He'd be confused right now, if he wasn't seconds away from slipping into unconsciousness. Who's your brother?, he thinks they say. It's a very silly question. Hiro only has (had) one brother. Said brother is standing next to this person right now.

"Tadash... Tadashi," he says, pathetically, all while making a vague hand gesture in Tadashi's direction.

Which is a great response and all, but the person still doesn't get it. They make that much clear.

"Nn... Next..." he begins to clarify, " Next to you."

There's nobody there.

He doesn't remember much after that.

As it turns out, he is mildly concussed. The doctors tell him as much when he wakes up, and his aunt repeats it when she comes see him in the hospital, mildly hysteric and seconds away from an aneurysm. Nobody says anything about who brought him here, or about the fact he mentioned Tadashi while talking to a stranger. His mysterious helper apparently chose to drop him off anonymously, not willing to admit they were participating in an illegal bot fight.

The obligatory questions come first, though, after his aunt is done holding his hand and touching his face in obvious concern. She asks him if he's okay—and the answer should be kind of obvious to anyone with eyes.

He lies, anyway, nodding when it's appropriate to do so. He's fine. He's more than fine. She shouldn't worry about him at all; the tears gathering in the corner of her eyes are totally uncalled for.

Predictably, hissing and ear-pulling comes next, as her cold hands settle on his face and she asks him what was he thinking. He wishes he could answer, but he's trying not to remember the last time his aunt scolded him like this, back when Tadashi was still alive. That seems like a thousand years ago now.

In the end, a shrug is all he can offer her.

(The hospital room smells nice and crisp; recently waxed linoleum flooring and sanitary hand wash all around. He wishes his room could smell more like this.

Tadashi stands near the door, saying absolutely nothing and looking at absolutely nothing.

There are blisters on his big brother's face, and when they get home, Aunt Cass steps on Tadashi's foot without apologizing and kisses Hiro goodnight. "Don't forget to call me if you need anything," she gently reminds him, seconds before she exits the attic-turned-bedroom through the stairs.

"Huh," Tadashi finally speaks up, just as Hiro settles into his bed. "Aunt Cass never talks to me anymore. Wonder why?"

"Goodnight," Hiro responds, completely ignoring his question, and doesn't actually fall asleep.)

Blisters start forming on his hands, after a particularly careless welding accident.

He stares at them for hours at a time, poking and prodding and never saying ow despite the pain he's causing himself as he does. Tadashi keeps telling him to stop doing it, of course, but Hiro doesn't listen to dead people and much less to dead people that are only there as figments of his imagination. Instead, he compares his blisters with the ones littering his brother's body, wonders if they will ever smell like fire and soot and decay, and has one too many accidents for them to be purely accidental.

I lost my gloves, he tells his aunt the next time the welder slips out of his hands. She believes him.

After that, the excuses pile up. The soldering iron slips out of his hand, he forgets to pull his protective goggles back on, the string of his dust mask has a frayed end—and so forth.

His blisters still look nothing like Tadashi's, though. Sparks and tools can only go so far.

He makes a point to wear sleeves long enough to cover the palm of his hands before his aunt can get too suspicious.

"You need to take care of yourself," Tadashi tells him, so very quietly.

He doesn't want to. It's too much effort. He's tired and listless, and then blisters on his hands are starting to ooze pus thanks to his rudimentary first aid skills. Tadashi would have done a better job at patching them up.

He sleeps more and more these days, slipping outside only during nighttime and only to participate in bot fights. There are no additional concussions, but there sure as hell are a lot more bruises as he slips away, more often than not tripping over his own two feet and gaining a couple of scrapes in the process. He has more money than he can spend, so he keeps it to himself and sees to it that Cass never finds out about his nocturnal excursions.

She's done enough crying to last her a lifetime, after all.

"Tadashi," he absentmindedly begins one morning, when his brother sits next to him in bed and runs a hand through his hair, leaving sticky trails of pus that Hiro feels but never sees when he looks in the mirror.

His big brother stops momentarily, tilting his head and causing a particularly dry piece of skin on his neck to split. "What is it?"

That's a good question. A very good question, in fact. Hiro's unsure of what he wants to say for a moment or two, but then he remembers.

"What's it like?" he asks, voice quiet and soft. "You know — being dead and all?"

Tadashi doesn't have an answer for that. Maybe it's because Hiro doesn't have an answer for that, himself.

Somehow, Tadashi's friends don't give up on trying to contact him.

The stream of supportive and encouraging videos never dies down, even though Hiro wishes it would. It's way too late for him to register for classes now, but they still talk about seeing him in SFIT sooner or later. Next semester, they tell him every other video, kind smiles plastered on their faces as they record whatever sappy message they've thought up that day.

Sometimes, it's not even all of them. Honey Lemon is especially profilitic with her heavily filtered 10 second videos, but the others don't really fall behind. Wasabi shares meditating tips, Go Go gives kind but harsh advice on facing his problems head on, and Fred more than once compares Hiro's plight with that of a classic comic protagonist. Together, they more or less send one singular message: they're waiting for him. They want him to make a full recovery and join them, just like Tadashi would want him to.

"They're not giving up on you, you know," Tadashi unhelpfully points out, as Hiro deletes the most recent video off his computer and feels his stomach trash and turn and do so many unpleasant things.

"They should," he replies, lacking the energy to even properly enunciate his words.

He just wants to be left alone. That shouldn't be so hard to understand—but people just don't get it.

In the end, people should have just given up on him from day one.

Tadashi should have never placed his faith on him. His brother should have never pushed him to do great things, encouraging him to apply to SFIT so they could go to college together and do whatever else that kind of life would have implied. If Tadashi had never believed in him, then he wouldn't be dead.

A lot of people wouldn't be dead if everyone had just given up on Hiro from the get-go, in fact. Alistair Krei is one of them.

An incident at the new Krei Tech facilities, the news report says, bold letters scrolling by on the bottom on the screen as the reporter drones on in a professional tone. Hiro should be halfway out the door by now, Megabot carefully tucked underneath his jacket, but one glimpse at the TV screen is all it takes to stop him in his tracks.

Even with that blurry image, no doubt taken by someone who had been documenting the inauguration of the new building before things went downhill, Hiro would have to be incredibly stupid not to recognize his own invention. It doesn't even matter if some strangely dressed man in a kabuki mask was wielding them, turning his microbots into sharp and unrefined weapons, nothing like the helpful tools he had originally intended them to be. An inventor always knows their creations.

Aunt Cass is grabbing him and asking him what's wrong, obviously having missed that short clip Hiro had the misfortune of seeing, but it doesn't matter. He won't answer her. He can't. His mind is running at a thousand miles per hour, and he's jumping to all the (wrong) right conclusions, pale faced and shaking.

The man in the kabuki mask must have started the fire. The man in the kabuki mask is responsible for his brother burning to death. The man in the kabuki set the fire and stole his invention, and then killed Alistair Krei.

He sucks in a breath, the world swaying and flashing in topsy-turvy colors and shapes. Hiro would assume he's suffering a heat stroke if it weren't 6:30 PM and he weren't inside a building with air conditioning.

"It's not your fault," Tadashi suddenly says from right beside him, and Hiro almost empties the contents of his stomach then and there.

(There are blisters on Tadashi's face and he's burning and dying because someone thought Hiro's invention was worth getting their hands dirty for.)

He jerks away from his aunt's grasp and bolts right out of the café.

He doesn't stop running until he reaches the docks, his heart slamming itself against his ribcage and his lungs begging for air.

"Don't," his hallucination of Tadashi begs him, desperate and bordering on hysterics. "Hiro, you don't have to do this."

"It's my fault you died," Hiro says, as well as, "I messed up, Tadashi."

And then he says nothing at all.

(It doesn't smell like fire anymore.)