Phoenix Rising
Heat…
Glowing embers…
And flickering flames…
He was trapped, surrounded by dancing demons that crept ever closer with each ragged breath he took.
Pain…
Shards of glass sliding down his throat…
Tearing…
Cutting…
Shredding the fragile skin within to settle deep within his lungs, robbing him of the very air he needed to survive. His lungs were burning, the burn a sharp icy contradiction to the heat that threatened to use his skin as fuel, rejoicing at the chance to devour him.
"… hiss… crackle… zzzzz… ro….. crackle.. Hi…. Hiss… ro!... re… there?" Snippets of Gogo's conversation made their way through to him, her panic and fear clearly audible even through the broken communications. She was looking for him, desperate to find him. She was planning to rescue him but there was nothing she could do.
He was trapped, locked in a burning building with no way out and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.
"Gogo…" He whispered. The words tore the wounds in his throat even further open fighting past ash, dust and heat to escape all not no avail. They were barely audible as they escaped his parched lips and were all too soon swallowed by the crackle of the hungry flames that had come to claim his life.
Dots…
Darkness flickered before his eyes…
Heavy pressure upon his chest...
He was suffocating, his body deprived of life giving air despite the heavy pants that shook his slim form. He was dying. He knew he was dying. The fire was hungrily consuming his precious oxygen and replacing it with carbon dioxide and even though he intimately understood the chemical reaction that was fueling it, there was nothing he could do to stop it.
He was dying… That much was certain. It was as inescapable as the fire that had taken his brother from him two and a half years ago. What hadn't been determined yet was whether he would he succumb to the toxic gases permeating the air before the angry flames consumed him whole.
"Hiro!... where… crackle… you!" Gogo was still looking for him… "Hiss…swer…hiss… damnit…"
"Gogo…" He tried one last time, the ragged whisper echoing softly in his own ears… He was alone, lost in a sea of pain and confusion, his mind fighting to make sense of things that had made sense mere moments before. "Tell Aunt Cass…" He licked dry lips. He was so very thirsty… Why was he so very thirsty? Had he forgotten to drink something? "Tell Aunt Cass…" Why would he have forgotten something so basic? "…I love her." He should be smarter than that… right?
Pain…
Scorching heat began to eat away at his skin… tearing him apart…
The fire was claiming him before the toxic gases could, breaking his mind even as the dancing flames consumed his flesh… tearing an agonized scream from his throat…
"Hi… hiss… Hi… crackle… snap… ro… Hi… ro… Hiro! Come on Hiro! Snap out of it!" An all too familiar voice came sharply into focus, the familiar scent of soldered circuits, greased metal and baked goods replacing the all too recent scent of burning fabrics, scorched skin and toxic fumes. Did he just teleport? But that wasn't possible. Project silent sparrow was the closest anyone had ever gotten to transporting anything instantaneously across space and everyone knew how that had ended.
"Come on Hiro! This isn't funny!" A hint of panic crept into the all too familiar voice, firing receptors in Hiro's brain that hadn't been fired in far too long. It simply didn't make sense. He was supposed to be dead. They both were.
"Hiro! You're starting to scare me!" The level of panic directed him increased, reminding him of the panic he could hear in Gogo's voice as she desperately searched for him in the fire. Ghostly aches and pains coursed through his nerves, briefly flaring them to life, his mind struggling to separate two very different realities. In one… he was dying, agony coursing through every fiber of his being and in the other… in the other he was…
"Aunt Cass! Get the car!" He was floating, cradled in all too familiar arms, a comforting scent he'd all but forgotten permeating the air around him urging him to burrow into the familiar warmth that had once been his place of comfort.
"Tadashi… what going on?" Aunt Cass's voice drifted up from the café, concern apparent in her tone.
"We need to go to the hospital!" Tadashi called back down, the familiar rumble of his deep voice, reverberating through Hiro's bones, chasing away the last memories of the hell he'd just endured. "I can't get Hiro to wake up!"
Aunt Cass released a worried gasp and rushed away. The sound of rustling keys was followed by the sound of café door bell, shuffling feet and whispered apologies. Aunt Cass was apologizing to clients as she asked them to leave, telling each that she unfortunately had to close the café early. Wait… Aunt Cass was closing the café?! Why was she doing that?
Rewind.
She was worried… about him…
Rewind some more.
Because Tadashi has told her he can't wake Hiro up.
Hiro's eyes flew open and the world came crashing in. Bright familiar colour swirled around from high above moving past him even though logically he shouldn't be moving. Not under his own power anyway. The sound of car horns, bicycle bells and chattering pedestrians drew ever closer, confirming the message his eyes had already communicated and through it all his mind continued to race, seeking, attempting to gather information, even going so far as to grasp at straws in an attempt to explain that which could not be explained.
"Ta… Tada-nii?!" The shocked exclamation slipped past his lips before he could even attempt to reconsider his course of action, escaping the inner turmoil of his mind to make its presence known to the outside world and with it to draw his brother's full attention back to him.
"Well, good morning, bonehead." Tadashi greeted him softly, his entire posture softening in relief even as he continued to watch his brother in concern. "You seriously had me worried there." Tadashi leaned down to rest his forehead on Hiro's, the casual familiarity of the gesture a sharp stab to Hiro's heart. Tadashi was taking Hiro's temperature, calmly measuring it against his own even as he continued to carry Hiro down into the café.
And Hiro… Hiro's mind had encountered a fatal error and was in the process of rebooting. Impossible. The scene playing out before him was impossible to comprehend. All of the facts that lay before him simply did not compute and he had no decent logic to fall back on. Except for… "Am I dead?"
It would appear that his mind to mouth filter had failed him yet again, revealing more than he intended under the circumstances before him. He really shouldn't be revealing his own state of mind before he had fully evaluated the situation he found himself in. His tendency to blurt out everything that came to mind was a bad habit that used to get him into a lot of trouble way back when… before Tadashi died. He thought he'd managed to reign in the tendency somewhat… managed to mature past it… apparently he was mistaken.
Tadashi raised his head and frowned down at him, concern and worry still clearly visible in his dark brown eyes. "No, bonehead. You're not dead just yet though you do seem to be running a high fever." The café doorbell rang one more time as Tadashi stepped out into the sunlight, still cradling Hiro in his arms.
So here were the facts that Hiro's mind could confirm:
1) If Tadashi was to be believed, Hiro was not dead
2) Tadashi probably wasn't the best source of that kind of information since Tadashi was dead
3) Hiro was back at the café even though the last clear memories he had before he'd been consumed by pain were of a warehouse he and the team had been investigating. The building had exploded shortly after he'd entered it, separating him from the rest of the team and trapping him inside. Entering an abandoned mess of a building that has been marked for demolition had probably not been his brightest decision to date
4) Hiro should be dead. The memories of the flames consuming his flesh and the intense agony that had coursed through him were still fresh in his mind and the heat of it all was still present in his veins… Or was that perhaps the fever Tadashi was referring to?
5) He was in Tadashi's arms, surrounded by his all too familiar strength and dependability. The sheer enormity of the situation was too ridiculous to comprehend let alone make sense of yet there was no denying that it was fact
6) Tadashi was carrying him to Aunt Cass' car which she'd pulled out because Tadashi had told her they needed to take Hiro to the hospital. Wait… What?!
"No!" Hiro burst into motion, suddenly desperate to escape his brother's arms and stand on his own two feet. "We can't! No hospital!"
"Hiro, stop it!" Tadashi cried out, instinctively shifting his grip in reaction to the suddenly squirming boy. "You're going to make me drop you."
"I'm not going to hospital!" Hiro insisted, attempting to shove Tadashi away in order to force his brother to let him go. Something was wrong… Something was very wrong with this entire situation and there was no way he could explain it to himself, let alone a bunch of strangers whose highlight of their day would be to stick things into him, part him of life giving fluid and fire a bunch of awkward questions at him all in the name of medical science. Unfortunately for him, his efforts were in vein. The fire in his veins flared up, rushed to his head and caused his world to spin, leaving Hiro to cling to the lapel of Tadashi's cardigan in a desperate bid to ground himself once more.
"It's ok, bonehead." Tadashi whispered, cradling Hiro close once more. Carefully shifting his body, he slid into Aunt Cass' car and settled Hiro on his lap. "I won't let anyone hurt you." The passage door closed with a soft click and the car slid smoothly into motion. "I'll be there every step of the way. I'll always protect you. I promise."
Tadashi's whispered promise broke Hiro's heart for he knew… He knew it was a promise Tadashi wouldn't be able to keep.
- BH6 - BH6 - BH6 -
A/N: The flow of this piece turned out to be very different to what I imagined it would be while playing around with this story in my head and I must say, I kind of like it. This is an idea I have been playing around with for about a week now. It's a bit different to my other story and I am not sure how frequent updates will be at this stage as this idea is still in its infancy but I wanted to post it to see if anyone liked it. What do you guys think?