Pushing Through

Hiro thought she didn't know he wasn't sleeping.

Truth be told, she wasn't sleeping much herself.

Oh, she went through the motions all right; she put forth her cheerful customer-service demeanor at the cafe, she went about normal Aunt Cass business with a normal Aunt Cass smile plastered on her face, she sent Hiro to bed at eleven as she had for several years, and they both pretended he was actually going to sleep as they had for years, and once she was done with the day's accounting she made a clattering try-to-be-quiet show of going to bed herself.

Most night she cried until either sleep came or she was too tired for sleep or tears; sometimes - less often than she would have thought - she heard Hiro do the same. The first few times she'd gotten up and gone to him, but her tears only seemed to upset him more; a few nights of this and she instead tried for the Normal Aunt Cass facade.

She didn't want to worry him, and he cried less, but he slept less too.

It had been so much easier when he was a toddler and didn't understand his parents were gone for good, and she found herself struggling to remember how she'd handled Tadashi back then.

Tadashi.

She bit her cheek at the memory of his somber eyes when he first came to live with her - it was easier to remember him as a child somehow - bit down until she tasted blood, and when she turned and saw Hiro scurrying for the front door she gulped and beamed and pulled up her happy persona for him.

Hiro was going out, Hiro was going to school, Hiro was going to pull forward - and for Hiro and Tadashi, she could too.

That night, her happy facade wasn't such a facade. They were going to be okay.

Silent darkness still brought tears, but the pain wasn't so sharp.

They were going to be okay.

***

A few nights later she was finally sleeping until a soft wail from the next room woke her.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry--"

The sound was muffled then - Hiro was trying to stifle himself for her sake, she realized as she rose and shrugged into her bathrobe.

As she reached Hiro's door another voice drifted from the boy's room, low soft tones murmuring gently.

"It is all right, Hiro."

A friend from school, she decided. A counselor or a professor or a fellow student Hiro had called to talk to.

Well, that was something, and whoever it was seemed eager to assure Hiro they weren't upset over such a late call.

"I just-- I wasn't thinking-- I...." Hiro's next words were muffled again, but the slightly distorted voice was still audible and reassuring.

Cass leaned lightly against the door, taking in the soothing tones herself; before long it sounded like Hiro had managed to fall asleep, and she returned to her own room.

He was brighter the next morning, aglow with determination as he ate his breakfast (when had he last eaten like that?), and she was heartened to learn he intended to head out with Tadashi's friends.

Hiro was getting his sparkle back, his gestures and tone so much like Tadashi she found herself biting her cheek again as she spotted him running across the street.

It was tempting to call after him and hold him close, to keep him there forever.

She settled for an early closure and one of Tadashi's favorite movies instead, and to her own surprise she found herself smiling at the memory of his reactions even as tears welled.

***

Hiro was despondent the next day, and days after that.

Cass was angry.

Callaghan's arrest and involvement in the fire was big news, inescapable in news feeds and television and radio and the conversations of her customers, though at least most had enough grace to keep it to a minimum around her.

Even with all of that turned off and customers gone for the day it boiled in her. Her baby had trusted that man, had looked up to him, had talked endlessly about him over the dinner table and now he was gone at the hands of his idol, one of her babies was dead and the other had his hard work turned into both the motivation for his brother's murder and a tool of destruction. For days after her smile was brittle as she served customers, hands trembling as she wrote out her acounts or stacked dishes, shaken at the reopened wound and biting her cheeks raw.

Hiro at least stayed close now instead of holed up in his room; he no longer broke down further or retreated into a glassy-eyed shell, and his oddly peaceful smile through his own grayness conjured up memories of Tadashi in ways that soothed as much as they stung. It was easier to lean on each other, and that made everything easier, and by the time he started classes and spent most of the day out of reach she was ready for it despite the empty upstairs that shouldn't have been so vacant.

He came bouncing in after classes with Tadashi's friends - his friends now, and she was forever grateful to them - and their lively chatter bolstered her along with quiet nights on the couch with Hiro.

Nights were still the most difficult, but she persevered.

She found her equilibrium again, enough that she could handle it when he spent several nights staying at school to work; she remembered Tadashi doing the same, and this time she smiled instead of biting her cheek.

And when he appeared a few days later with the large, puffy robot she'd spotted in the cafe once or twice - Tadashi's last creation according to Hiro - she watched the robot's recording and then held onto both Hiro and the robot with a wistful, watery smile until Hiro pulled away to run upstairs.

"Are you satisfied with your care?" the robot asked as Hiro vanished into his room; she recognized the voice from so many nights ago and started to ask, but instead nodded once.

"Yeah. Just keep taking care of him."

The robot nodded as if this was never in question, and when Hiro returned they spent the night piled on the couch with another of Tadashi's movies.