He'll Be Okay (A FoT/Baby Hiro One-Shot)

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"Miss Kato wants to talk to you."

The words, spoken nonchalantly by the fluffy-haired four-year-old as he waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the classroom, seemed innocuous enough, but they caused his older brother's heart to sink.

What had Hiro done this time? Last week he had taken apart the taps and caused a minor flood in the boy's room. The week before he had picked the lock of the safe in the principal's office--how he even got in there was beyond them all. Despite himself, images of doors ripped from their hinges and out-of-control Big Wheels rose in Tadashi's mind.

But he braced himself for whatever new devilment Hiro had gotten up to this week, attempting to put himself in a polite, responsible, parental state of mind. In January he had come to blows with a teacher over the fact that Hiro was teaching his friends the periodic table. (What did it matter if it wasn't in the curriculum--ah, never mind. It hadn't been pretty.)

An anxious smile on his face, Tadashi deposited Hiro on the playground. "Play nice, okay?" His little brother was tiny, but he could be a feisty one. The last thing he needed was to come back to a group of screaming kids.

"Mmkay." Hiro didn't look up, bent on overturning a big beetle he had found, as Tadashi steeled himself and walked into the classroom building.

~~~

"Mr. Hamada." The teacher was a nice lady, small-built, refined, but her eyes were serious and something in her tone unsettled Tadashi. "Please, take a seat."

"Yes ma'am," he answered, feeling gangly and enormous next to her, and not quite sure what to do with his hands and feet. In the cozy room lined with childish drawings, he could hear his heart thumping away, and for a moment he imagined himself in grade school again. He could pick out Hiro's work--the one with the dark, heavy lines, the surprisingly accurate shading, and the robot casually picking another machine's innards apart. "What's the problem this time? I promise, if he did any damage, I'll pay for--"

She cut him off, smile lines surrounding her eyes. "No, it's nothing like that this time," she reassured, smoothing her skirt down as she sat across from him. "As you know, Tadashi, your brother is a rather exceptional child."

"Yeah, I know." Whether she meant that as a compliment or not Tadashi wasn't sure, but he couldn't help the corner of his mouth tugging up into a proud half-smile. Hiro truly was extraordinary. A troublemaker, but extraordinary.

"Well," Miss Kato continued, resting her elbows on the table, "he seems to be far beyond his peers academically." She glanced down at the papers spread out in front of her. "Actually, that's an understatement. He's reading at a second or third grade level, has a remarkable knowledge of science, especially--to put it simply, he isn't being challenged enough in preschool."

Tadashi blinked, once, twice. Of course he wasn't. No four-year-old read about Isaac Asimov in his spare time. And Tadashi knew that, of course, he'd talked about it with Aunt Cass before the accident, but he'd been so caught up with funeral things and school and day care and just barely making ends meet that he hadn't seen this coming.

He would have smacked himself in the forehead except for the need to stay professional. Instead he asked, "So what do you suggest, ma'am? Extra tuition, maybe?" Logistically it might be tough. They'd work something out, though--

"No," she said, shaking her head slightly, lips pursed. "I think he should skip a grade. One, at least, but two would be optimum. Do you think he's ready for that?"

Tadashi looked down at the table, absently noticing an irregularity in the grain of wood, brow furrowed. 

He didn't know.

Academically of course Hiro was, but otherwise? Sometimes Tadashi felt that Hiro's emotional maturity was somewhat...lacking. Already he often came back with bruises and black eyes from playground fights; the four-year-old had an amazing propensity to get into trouble. His peers towered over him. How would he hold his own against older kids?

He'd been silent for a long time, and Miss Kato spoke, her tone warm and reassuring. "I know it's worrying, Mr. Hamada, but I've talked to a few of his other teachers and we all think it'll be the best thing for Hiro. If you're concerned about him getting along with his classmates and making friends, I promise I'll speak to the kindergarten teachers to watch out for him." 

"Yeah, um, thanks--" Tadashi's head was spinning. Too many things to consider. He didn't know, didn't feel equipped to make this decision--how he wished Aunt Cass was here to make it for him. 

The teacher must have seen the confusion in his face, because she gave him a soothing smile, probably the one she used on high-strung toddlers. "You don't have to decide now, Mr. Hamada. I just thought we would let you know."

"Okay," Tadashi said, nodding firmly, trying to seem in control of the situation. "Um, thank you, Miss Kato. I'll talk to Hiro, see what he thinks, get back to you...whenever..." He was rambling, and he knew it, forcing himself to stop. "Yeah."

"You're very welcome," Miss Kato answered, kindly. "Take your time, dear."

And so Tadashi stood, stumbling over his chair, and left the room, scooping his little brother up on the way with uncertainty creased into his face.

~~~

They got home, as usual, and Tadashi poured Hiro a glass of milk, as usual, while the four-year-old spread out his homework onto the table, as usual. Frankly Tadashi had been surprised to learn that the preschoolers even had homework, but Hiro had explained with an expression almost disdainful that it mostly involved counting clowns and colouring.

"I don't like clowns," Hiro muttered under his breath as he covered the unfortunate mime's face with crayon scribbles.

"Drink your milk," Tadashi reminded his brother. "You want to grow up big, don't you?" He laughed, ruffling the diminutive child's hair and coming over to the other side of the counter to take a look at his work.  "Why is his face grey?"

"It's a robot clown," Hiro answered, as if that were a perfectly clear explanation.

Again, Tadashi laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. "Okay, buddy." He'd long learned not to question Hiro's logic. He watched his little brother colour for a while more, the toddler painstakingly adding weld lines and screws to the clown's hands. The picture was far more terrifying than a normal clown, but there was no understanding Hiro sometimes. Then he bit his lip, remembering the decision he had to make. Soon.

He might as well ask his brother. It was Hiro's life, after all.

"Hey, Hiro."

"Yeah?" Hiro didn't look up from his work, his brow wrinkled in concentration.

"Do you like school?" Sometimes Tadashi wondered. Some days Hiro came back full of chatter, others he came back listless or grumpy. He'd thought that was normal for a four-year-old, but really, what did he know about four-year-olds?

"It's okay, I guess." Hiro frowned, and then brightened. "Miss Kato's nice. Sometimes we do fun stuff, like volcanoes. But some of the kids are stupid."

"Hiro!"

Deliberately ignoring his brother's reproach, Hiro went on. "They say math is boring, but they can't do it themselves." He shrugged a little. "School's okay. I like being home more, though."

Not surprising, considering yesterday they'd done the screaming jelly baby experiment and the day before they'd made a model of the solar system--not quite to scale, but as close as they could get. (They'd lost the Earth peppercorn, though.)

Tadashi leaned forward so he could see Hiro's face through his thick dark bangs. "What would you say about going to school with the big kids, Hiro?"

"The kindergarten?" Hiro looked up, his tiny mouth forming into a puzzled pout.

"Yeah."

"Okay!"

Taken aback, Tadashi blinked. Well, that was unexpectedly fast. Then again, Hiro wasn't exactly one to think things through.

Hiro elaborated, seeing that Tadashi had yet to respond. "They do cool stuff. I see them through the window. Some of it is the same but some of it is cool. The kids aren't as stupid, either."

The teenager couldn't find it in himself to admonish Hiro for using the banned word right then, knowing full well that those same kids were the ones who liked to take the opportunity in playtime to pound his brother's face into the ground. But if he went to kindergarten, the kids would be bigger. More brutal. He couldn't take the risk, could he? He couldn't let Hiro get hurt.

As had been happening increasingly frequently, he found himself unsure what to do.

"Or," Hiro mused, tipping his head to the side, "I could go to college with you. That would be awesome."

Though still tense, Tadashi chuckled. "Not for now, goofball. But you really want to go to kindergarten?"

"Mm-hm!" Nodding emphatically, Hiro picked up his crayon again and bent his head over the colouring page. "I really wanna. Can I?"

Tadashi cast his eyes downward, still hesitant. He decided on a safe and truthful answer. "Maybe, buddy. Maybe."

~~~

That night, Tadashi sat by Hiro's bedside until the toddler fell asleep, as he always did. It had taken a while--Hiro had been particularly fidgety and had demanded the same song multiple times--but now he was tangled up in his blankets, sleeping contentedly despite the awkward way in which his foot hung off the bed. Tadashi breathed a sigh of relief. Hiro might wake up again later. The nightmares still plagued him. For now, though, the four-year-old was fine, and everything seemed halfway perfect, except Tadashi still didn't know what to do.

He'd promised to keep Hiro safe, ever since he first laid eyes on his little brother, a newborn curled up in the crook of his mother's arm, eyes closed fast the way they were now. And when his parents died, and his aunt after them, that promise had become more important than ever before.

Would Hiro be okay in a higher grade? Tadashi knew that Hiro didn't have the best social skills. He had an alarming tendency to get on the bad side of those bigger and stronger than he. If Hiro somehow messed things up with the kindergarten kids, he would get hurt, and Tadashi would have failed him, would have failed all of them. The boy's head sank into his hands. He couldn't let Hiro do this. It was too much, he already had too much on his plate to worry about Hiro getting bullied in school, he couldn't do this, not right now.

And yet--

He'd promised to keep Hiro safe, but he'd also promised to help Hiro forward.

Tadashi remembered watching in awe once as a two-year-old Hiro attempted to help him with his robotics project. Of course the toddler had hindered more than he helped, at first, but he'd figured out the functions of each part with surprising ease, and then had casually offered a suggestion that solved a problem Tadashi had been working on for half an hour. His father had come up behind him and put a hand on his older son's shoulder, his deep brown eyes warm and proud.

"He's going to go places, that one," Tomeo had said, as Hiro snapped together two parts from the robotics kit. "We'd better make sure we help him get there."

And the Hamada parents had kept their word, and Tadashi had kept it with them, buying countless science kits, taking Hiro to robotics conventions where he was the youngest person in the room, constantly supplying a stream of stimulating new ideas to the toddler who drank it all up like a man dying of thirst. 

Even when they passed away, and the boys went to live with a woman who knew more about muffins than MINDSTORMS, their aunt had done everything within her ability to make sure Hiro got the education he deserved.

And now it was just the two of them, and the chance for Hiro to move forward was right in front of them, shining with a brilliant but unfamiliar light, and Tadashi just needed to reach out and take it for him. If only he wasn't so scared!

He spoke to the empty air, a whisper. "If you were here, what would you do?"

He didn't know. He wasn't ready to make this decision for his brother. He wasn't ready to make any of these decisions--he was only nineteen.

Tadashi stood up, tired and ready for bed, hoping to leave the decision for another day, when he caught from the corner of his eye Hiro's scratched plastic folder, thrown carelessly at the foot of the bed. Shaking his head, he bent to pick it up, dusting off the cover, when he noticed the corner of a piece of lined paper sticking out of it, signed with a familiar handwriting, "Tadashi Hamada."

Frowning, he pulled it out. It was a sheet of his homework from SFIT. He'd thought he'd lost it, and had redone the entire problem--what was it doing in Hiro's things?

But that wasn't the strangest part. The strangest part was that Hiro had done the problem. Tadashi's frown grew deeper as he scanned the page. He had to strain to make out Hiro's childish scrawl, but, from the look of things, Hiro had done the problem and he'd got it right.

Stunned, Tadashi put the paper back and sat down again.

He'd known Hiro was good--but he didn't know he was this good.

And now he knew what he had to do. In his indecision, he wasn't protecting Hiro, he was holding him back.

Then he remembered something else.

Hiro had been a sickly baby. Born prematurely, he'd lain in an incubator for days while the doctors argued over whether he would live or not. Nurses had attempted, not-so-subtly, to prepare the Hamadas for the worst.

But his father had disagreed, and his mother had spoken up, fire in their words and eyes.

"He's a Hamada. He'll live, and he will be extraordinary."

The words had stuck with the teenage boy, and he recalled them now, smiling at the memory, smiling at how his mother's prediction had come true. 

Hiro was a Hamada. He had the Hamada courage, the Hamada determination, the same spirit that had helped his mother fight her way up from poverty to graduate from medical school, the same spirit that had forced his father to keep going when he put a new idea on the market that twenty firms had turned down. 

He'd be okay.

~~~

So Tadashi filled in all the necessary forms, made all the necessary arrangements, and found himself strangely nervous on the fateful day. More so than Hiro, who was bouncing up and down as he walked alongside Tadashi, holding on to his older brother's hand and looking around with lively interest.

The older boy glanced down fondly at his little brother, at the still-unruly hair despite earlier efforts to tame it, at the lunchbox clutched tightly in one tiny fist, and hoped that Hiro would still be smiling when he came back.

(Well, if he wasn't, Tadashi had emergency backup of Phineas and Ferb reruns and chocolate chip cookies at home.)

They were nearing the school. Outside the gate, Tadashi crouched down so Hiro's eyes were on a level with his, and put a warm, solid hand on his brother's shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye he saw kids running about on the playground.

They were huge, or as huge as kindergarteners could get, in comparison to Hiro, and Tadashi gulped, attempting to put his fears out of his mind for Hiro's sake.

"Remember what I told you just now?"

Hiro nodded, shuffling his feet, eager to go in. "Be nice, don't show off, and keep moving forward."

"No matter what happens, keep moving forward." Tadashi forced his smile not to waver, a pang in his chest--was this what parents felt when they sent a child to school for the first time? It was silly, perhaps, but he felt Hiro slowly slipping out of his grasp, into the world.

And then Hiro moved forward, wrapping slender arms around his brother's neck in an unexpected hug. "Don't worry, 'Dashi," he said. "I'll be okay. I'm going in now."

"You'll be okay," Tadashi echoed, as much for himself as for Hiro, and he stood up, taking his hands off Hiro's shoulders, and let his little brother go.

Authorly Notes:
1. You might have noticed that I made a change to my version of this AU. Both the Hamada parents and Aunt Cass die.