The formula explodes for the fifteenth time, and she starts to cry. It's her second year at SFIT, and people still think that she's dumb, that she's useless. She can almost hear their voices, and she cries imagining what they will say. Then, Tadashi wanders in and sees her, head in hands, muffling small sobs.
"Honey, what happened?"
Silence. The small sobs persist.
"Honey Lemon."
She still doesn't say anything.
"Aiko Miyazaki, what happened?"
No one ever uses her full name. Honey Lemon looks up and reveals a face lightly covered with red powder, remnants of her failed experiment.
"I can't get it to work, OK? These stupid chemicals are worthless. I'm worthless."
"You are not."
"How can you say that and sound so sure? How can you know?" Honey Lemon looks at Tadashi, and for a moment she is hopeless, because everything is futile and she feels utterly, completely worthless.
Tadashi answers.
"I don't know how. I just do. I guess nobody is worthless because we all matter to somebody. Even the worst person in the world has someone out there who cares for him. Some people feel like they're all alone, but they're not, because people care about them, and that makes them worth something. Like you, for example. You matter to Gogo, and Fred, and Wasabi. And me." Tadashi smiles at her. Honey can't help it; she smiles back.
She finds Hiro in Tadashi's - no, Hiro's - lab. It's already been four weeks since they stopped Callaghan; she shouldn't think of this lab as Tadashi's anymore, but she still does. Honey shakes her head, as if to stop the thoughts, and looks back to Hiro. Sorrow rushes through her, sorrow and grief and the horrible feeling that comes with watching someone in pain and knowing there is nothing you can do. Hiro is on his knees, crying over one of Tadashi's little robots. Tadashi built them for fun, when he wasn't working on Baymax. The robots are still scattered all over the lab; no one's had the heart to move them. Honey Lemon falls to her knees, holding Hiro as he sobs.
"Hiro." she breathes.
She would give anything, anything to take away his pain. He's only fourteen, after all, and he's done nothing to deserve this suffering. Sometimes she wonders why Tadashi had to be so stupidly selfless, why he had to go and run into a burning building when anyone else would run out. But that's the past, and no matter how much it still hurts, right now, all that matters is the crying boy in front of her. Hiro looks up, and her heart breaks.
"I should have saved him," he whispers, "I should have run after him. I should have held on. But I didn't. I couldn't. I couldn't even save my brother."
Hiro curls into himself again and Honey just holds him closer, because there is too much and nothing to say all at once. She thinks that, for all its words, the English language is strangely inadequate far too often. Then, Hiro mutters something and he thinks Honey doesn't hear it. She does.
"I'm worthless."
Honey flashes back to a time before the fire, when Tadashi was still alive, when she was new at SFIT, when she'd failed fifteen times and she thought she was worthless.
"No," she says, "No, don't think that, Hiro, you're not worthless. "
"How can you say that and sound so sure? How can you know?"
Fire blazes in his eyes. It reminds Honey of the way he looked when he turned Baymax into something that wasn't Baymax at all. But she also realizes that Hiro has just said exactly what she asked Tadashi when she had the same question, and she remembers what Tadashi told her.
"Hiro?"
He glares at her.
"A guy once told me that nobody is worthless because we all matter to somebody."
She's nearly quoting Tadashi now, and she feels unbidden tears pricking at the edges of her eyes. She wipes them away.
"You matter to me and Gogo. You matter to Wasabi, to Fred, even to Baymax. You're not worthless because you matter to us, and that makes you worth something."
The flame in Hiro's eyes burns out, and he suddenly looks barely five years old and so, so vulnerable.
"Really?" he asks.
"Really." Honey tells him.
They stay like that for a while, Hiro looking at the robot, Honey kneeling next to him, comforting him. Honey looks at Hiro and thinks that, since Tadashi isn't here to protect Hiro anymore, they have to. Wasabi, Gogo, Fred, Baymax, and her - they will.
Honey leaves flowers on Tadashi's grave every first Sunday of every month. But she's going to a science conference this Sunday, so she won't be able to come, and that is why she finds herself standing in a graveyard on Saturday, clutching white orchids and crimson roses. She's making her way to his grave when she hears Hiro's voice and realizes Hiro must be here. She's standing on the outskirts of a grove of trees, far from where Tadashi is buried, but sound carries well in all the open space.
"You know, Honey told me something a couple days ago. I think you would have liked it. She said that a guy once told her nobody is worthless because everybody matters to somebody. It sounds just like the type of cheesy motivational thing you would say."
Hiro pauses, and then he sees it. He facepalms and laughs, as if it was so obvious that he overlooked it.
"Oh, wait. That was you, wasn't it? You're the guy who told her that."
He laughs again, but it's bittersweet this time, carrying months of guilt and sadness and pain with it.
"Bye, nii-chan. Watashi wa, anata o aishiteimasu."
Honey knows enough Japanese to understand what he's saying.
Bye, brother. I love you.
Honey swears, in that moment, she can feel Tadashi smiling.
AN: I probably butchered the Japanese. I'm really sorry. Anyway, this is my first fanfic. Please review! Reviews are life for writers (and they let me know at least someone reads the stuff I write).