This is what happens when the same movie is on TV for a week straight – my beta and I can't help but spitball our headcanons and alternate theories. This story grew out of one such long, LONG discussion while we had the movie paused in the background.

It's not a fandom I thought I'd really fall into, but here I am. Here is my offering for a movie that always, ALWAYS makes me cry. No, seriously, it does.

I'm just trying to set one little piece of it right.

Enjoy!

"Thank you for agreeing to see me."

Fred wiggled in the metal chair and glanced around. "Well, y'know, it isn't everyday a criminal who tried to kill me invites me to his, uh…" He was trying to figure out a heroic way to say 'high-security prison' and settled on "...interrogation room?"

Robert Callaghan shook his head. His hands were folded on the metal table, and the thin chains he wore rattled against it every time he shifted. It was one of countless indignities and discomforts he had slowly learned to ignore in his month of incarceration after his attack.

But the man who now faced Fred was not the same man who had lost his way and tried to kill the goofball mascot and his friends. Seeing Abigail alive and awake had banished Callaghan's rage forever and replaced it with remorse, profound and relentless.

"I realize you have little reason to trust me now, Fred," Callaghan said gently.

Fred rolled his eyes and flopped against the chair. "As a wise man once said, 'Duh.'"

"But you have to believe me that I only want to make things right."

Fred's slump didn't shift at all, not an inch, not a twitch, and yet suddenly there was something keen and aware in his eyes. "You killed Tadashi. Nothing will ever make that right, Prof."

Callaghan swallowed thickly. "I...I know that. Believe me. I can't...close my eyes without seeing his face. It used to be Abigail who haunted me. But...Hiro gave her back."

He sighed and the chains rattled a cold sound. "I can't give Tadashi back, Fred."

"I repeat – duh."

"But I can give you Baymax."

Fred sat up straight, eyes wide. "Seriously?" Then his gaze narrowed. "Is this some kinda trick? Like you scratch my back, I smuggle in a jail-breaking kit in a cake? 'Cause I'm not doin' it. I can't cook and I look terrible in orange."

Callaghan glanced at his own jumpsuit and shook his head. "No. I won't ask anything in return. You...well, Hiro and Baymax...they gave me what I lost. The best I can do is return the favor."

Fred leaned forward. "Okay, scary-robot-man. Lay it on me."

"As Tadashi's advisor on the Baymax project, I had access to all his research and his programming. How much do you know about Baymax's external backup?"

Fred blinked. "Uh, nothing?"

Callaghan sat back and fell into the familiar cadence of lecturing.

"Tadashi programmed Baymax's original chip card with all the medical knowledge and the essential personality traits he intended to test. Baymax was still in the beta phase when Tadashi...when Hiro teamed up with him. But Tadashi knew that Baymax would need to accumulate a lot more knowledge than the basics he provided, not to mention learning to apply a human context to the contents of his initial parameters."

Fred blinked slowly. "Tadashi figured Baymax would learn?" he asked tentatively.

"I see you did gain something from spending all that time with my students," Callaghan said. "Yes. The chip card also allowed Baymax to communicate with a backup cloud database to store additional information besides the programming that was encoded directly."

"So...all of Baymax's memories are in a cloud somewhere?"

"Yes. Along with his full schematics. But in the interest of medical privacy, Tadashi kept the cloud database's details a secret even from me. He wanted to be certain that he could ensure the integrity of a patient's information while testing Baymax."

Fred's forehead furrowed. "Then how does this help me, exactly?"

Callaghan leaned forward. "Tadashi knew that any number of things could happen in the testing phase. So he made a backup chip card identical to the original in every way. It has the cloud account's details."

Fred's eyes looked glazed. "Uh…"

Callaghan sighed. "In my office is a copy of Baymax's chip card. Give it to Hiro and he will be able to rebuild Baymax completely, including restoring all memories up to the point the pair of them entered the portal and lost the uplink to the cloud."

Fred jumped to his feet. "Baymax is alive!" He started to do a little dance in place. "He's alive! Big squishy Marshmallow Guy is alive!"

Across the table, Callaghan smiled tiredly. "He will be. But only if you give the chip to Hiro."

Fred froze. "Wait a minute. Why me? Why didn't you ask Hiro to come and tell him about it?"

"After what I've done, do you think he would actually come?" Callaghan shot back.

"Hmm." Fred tipped his head to the side so far his whole body leaned. "I think...you're trying to play the role of the Stealth Mentor and you want me to be your temporary henchman to do your dirty work."

Callaghan blinked. Considered the words. Failed to comprehend. "I'm sorry. What?"

Fred struck a dramatic pose and pointed a finger at Callaghan. "Now that your evil plan has been foiled and you have completed your one-eighty...uh...three-sixty...how many degrees is a double heel-face turn?"

"I have no idea."

"Anyway!" Fred doubled-down on the pose and added a foot up on the seat of his abandoned chair. "Now that you have been turned back to the Light Side, you want to play the role of the helpful but mysterious mentor who can guide the hero from afar!"

"I'm not certain I would put it that way."

"But I would! And for this to work, you need a secret inside man, a minion, a mook, a right-hand-Fred!"

Fred actually stepped all the way onto the chair and waved his arms.

"In order to reforge our superhero team, we need our Team Leader's confidence restored, and he needs his Loyal and Stalwart Companion! Which means we have to help him rebuild Baymax!"

He jumped and landed astride the chair, both hands palm-down on the table, leaning so close he was almost nose-to-nose with Callaghan.

"You're going to help us initiate a Return to Adventure!"

Callaghan tried not to flinch at the proximity of Fred's whole face. "If you'll help me get the chip card to Hiro. I'm sure, if he's anything like his brother, he'll figure out the rest on his own."

Abruptly Fred moved back, his hands behind his back almost as if he were standing at attention. "He shouldn't have to. Tadashi should still be here. He's not, and it's your fault."

Callaghan flinched.

"But," Fred said with almost a smile, "this goes a long way to starting your own Redemption Story. So don't you worry, Prof. I'll find the card and I'll get it to Hiro and he'll never know you helped so he can get back on his Hero's Journey and we can go back to kicking butt in the name of goodness!"

Fred spun to leave, singing "Fred's Angels, uh uh uuuuuh uh…"

Callaghan half-rose from his chair, as far as the chains would allow. "Wait! You don't know where I put it!"

But Fred was gone.

Callaghan sighed. "If what he did to my lab is any indication, I'm sure he'll find it...if only because he'll tear everything apart until he does."

-==OOO==-

Fred heaved a sigh.

"Okay. If I were a seemingly nice guy with all the best tech who was one lost daughter away from going totally bananas and sucking people into vortexes…"

"Vortices."

"Thank you. Vortices...wait. Huh?"

Fred turned to see Honey Lemon standing in the doorway. "What are you doing in here?"

Fred bounced and immediately began shuffling papers into a pile. "Uh, see, I was following this, uh, bird and it got in here and I think it wanted to make a nest so I thought if I could find out if there was any string in here I could help it after I caught it and got it back outside."

"Dude," Wasabi appeared behind Honey Lemon. "That is your worst story yet, and I speak from experience."

"Come clean," GoGo shoved her way past both of them. "What are you doing in Callaghan's old office?"

Fred was just about to launch into another story but GoGo poked him in the ribs. He knew that poke. That poke meant bad things if he didn't do what she said.

Fred never wanted her gum stuck there ever again.

"Okay. It's like this. Callaghan asked me to go see him in prison and I did and he was all 'I'm really sorry I killed Tadashi' and I was all 'you better be sorry because he was our friend and you're just a jerk even though it wasn't totally your fault because you lost your daughter and I get it, grief does weird things to people, I mean, I ate veggies when Tadashi died because he was always telling me that Fruity Ring Cereal wasn't really fruit and-'"

"You saw Callaghan? In prison?" Wasabi stepped into the room. "Seriously? Why?"

"Short version, please," GoGo said.

But it was Honey Lemon who stepped up and looked at him with huge, worried eyes. "What's really going on, Freddy?"

He took a deep breath. "Callaghan said that Tadashi left behind another Baymax card and he hid it in here and if we can find it we can give it to Hiro and then he'll rebuild Baymax and we can be a superhero team again!"

He was met with silence and three stares.

And then GoGo abruptly pushed him aside and started tearing books out of the shelves behind what had once been Callaghan's stately desk and was now indistinguishable from the rest of the piles of paper and parts and maybe about a third of an airplane scattered around.

"We can't tell Hiro where we got it," Honey Lemon said even as she moved to one side to look under an area rug. "He has to decide for himself if he's ready."

"Hey, I don't even know if I'm ready!" Wasabi said. But he was hauling a chair over to stand up on it and look up at the high molding around the tall windows.

"But he deserves the choice," GoGo said, sending a huge reference book crashing onto Fred's existing pile. "And if there's any way to bring back Baymax…"

Fred blinked at them all and then leaped into the air with a shout. "We're gonna be superheroes again! You guys totally rock! I'm gonna get my dad to buy us our own island. Or maybe one for each of us since you rock so much. Islands for everybody!"

And he dove into the hunt beside them.

Fred was absolutely, completely certain that they would find it. That Hiro would rebuild Baymax and they would defend their city once more.

Theirs was a hero's journey and the journey wasn't over yet!

-==OOO==-

So when Hiro went home for movie night with his Aunt Cass, it was Fred who carefully pried open the box that held Baymax's rocket-fist and nestled the green card into it.

He patted the hand once he had the card concealed.

"You really are going to be watching over us, huh Tadashi? Just...promise me that if anybody's going to have a near-death experience and you'll appear with some weird riddle that will turn out to be really important before we go after our next Big Bad, that it's me, okay?"

Fred glanced up, but no one was around – the others had agreed to let him hide it and had given him some privacy.

Fred rarely cared about privacy, but right now he was glad of it.

"'Cause, first of all, nobody else should be having near-death experiences. Hiro scared us once and that's more than enough. And second of all...I know Hiro wants to see you again, 'cause duh, but I think you'll find another way to help him out and remind him you're still here...other than Baymax's totally tear-jerking home movies. Anyway, it better be me because I am not waiting until I get to that big Monster Island in the sky to talk to you again. 'Kay?"

And when he left and closed the door behind him, Fred didn't bother to disguise the rather noisy snort he made to suck back all the tears and snot that still came when he thought about their friend who was gone. But GoGo and Honey Lemon and Wasabi were there and they gathered around him to support him.

As they had supported each other. As they had supported Hiro.

As Tadashi had always supported them all.

Fred wiped at his eyes and then smiled at his friends. "My next suit needs to have airbags. And maybe some acid I can spit. And I am definitely gonna need more signs on fire!"

Honey Lemon shook her head and smiled with wetness in her eyes. "No acid. No way. You're enough trouble with fire. Leave the acids to me."

"Okay. What about a laser hand whip? Like a laser hand, but a whip?" he looked pleadingly at Wasabi.

"Not a chance."

"I'll lend you some wheels if you want," GoGo offered.

"Really?"

"Yeah," and she smirked. "If you think you can hack 'em."

"Oh, I am Fredzilla and I can hack anything you can throw at me! Except...uh...never mind. Don't throw those things at me. Seriously. They're way sharp. I don't even run with scissors."

"Hey," Wasabi said. "Hiro said that Aunt Cass was cooking tonight. Anybody hungry?"

"So hungry!" Fred cheered.

GoGo shrugged. "I could eat."

"Come on," Honey Lemon started towards the door. "Let's go grab some stuff and pick up a few movies. We'll make a whole night of it."

Wasabi and GoGo immediately entered into an argument about which movie to watch and Honey Lemon called ahead to see if they should pick up extra food, but Fred wandered along at the back, smiling.

He glanced once over his shoulder at the shut door. Tomorrow, everything could change again.

Or, rather, go back the way it was supposed to be.

"Once a hero, always a hero. Especially if you've got a Hiro," Fred sang to himself. "And you can take the Baymax out of the Hiro but you can't take the Tadashi out of the Baymax. No, wait, that's not right. You can….uh…something something we're gonna be a team again! Forever and ever!"

"You're probably right."

Fred froze. He turned slowly, but the hallway was empty. The lights were bright and the building was mostly deserted. No doors were open. Nothing had moved.

But that voice had come from somewhere. And it had come from someone.

Fred started to giggle. "Good one, Tadashi. See you around, okay?"

And he bounced ahead to join the others.