Chapter Text
Halloween was Cass’s kind of holiday.
Actually to be fair just about every holiday was Cass’s kind of holiday but Halloween was fun because you could cut loose and you still had plenty of energy to make candy and other treats seriously whoever decided to stack four holidays right at the end of the year was either totally bonkers or had way too much stamina. Like, seriously, scoot Halloween and Thanksgiving earlier in their prospective months so they had time to breathe and if she saw another Christmas commercial try to sneak onto the TV before November at the earliest she was throwing a pan at the television—
Forgive me you know the aggravation is at the commercialism, she aimed skywards, wincing a little. Boy sometimes she missed being a kid Christmas used to take forever in getting here back then.
But in focusing on the here and now, she did have some kids who helped to keep the holidays in their prospective order.
Back when the boys had first come to live with her, she had almost forgotten about Hiro’s allergy, had him hyped up about Halloween and trick-or-treating to help him get his mind off of...literally everything...ended up being tugged aside by Tadashi a while later.
“You know Hiro’s allergic to peanuts, right?” he had asked, way too serious for a ten-year-old. “Those are in like...every candy they hand out.”
Which was when she had the issue pointedly driven home that it wouldn’t be fair to send Hiro out for candy that he couldn’t eat any of; had made Tadashi promise to make sure he didn’t eat any until he got home, eventually came up with the Aunt Tax on Mischief Night—that being that Hiro and Tadashi had to let her go through everything and take out a share. “It’s like regular taxes in April,” she explained.
Tadashi seemed politely baffled by that explanation, Hiro being perfectly unconcerned—went without a fuss when Dr. Zingiber came over with her son Wayan to collect Tadashi and Hiro for trick-or-treating (an arrangement had been made during the boys’ dentist appointments).
“Thanks again for doing this,” Cass gushed, hands clasped. “Kind of thought you’d be, you know, against this sort of thing.”
“Oh honey this is one of my favorite seasons,” Dr. Zingiber assured her. “All that candy and nobody remembering to brush their teeth afterwards? This holiday’s paid for Christmas ever since my husband and I started working.”
“That’s fair,” Cass conceded.
Still couldn’t help but fret even as she handed out candy at the take-out window, she had told Dr. Zingiber about Hiro’s allergy too but what if he snuck something when no one was looking she was so not ready to be a parent she had barely been ready to be an aunt—
Just about sagged in relief when they came home with bags loaded down with swag.
“Can we do this again tomorrow?” Hiro asked eagerly.
“Sorry, honey, this is a once-a-year thing,” Cass told him, bringing a plastic cauldron over. “In the meantime, tax season.”
Hiro and Tadashi sat up watching Halloween specials while Cass sorted through everything, Hiro keeping one eye on her progress and looking increasingly aghast at how much she was taking. Tadashi was right, there was a lot of wrappers that either outright stated the contents had peanuts or hinted that it may contain nuts. Dangit this had to be Kaijo’s fault there weren’t any allergies on her side of the family.
“Okay,” she announced finally. “Finished.”
“But that’s not fair!” Hiro wailed, looking at the few lonely bits of candy left—Tootsie rolls, gummi worms, peppermint candy, a few licorice pieces.
“That’s what I tell the tax guy every year,” Cass sighed, hauling the cauldron over to the counter; grabbed a tray and came back. “Fortunately, you get your return faster.”
Hiro’s dismay was quickly forgotten at the tray laden with all the Halloween treats she had spent the week making, all of them studiously lacking in peanuts.
And thus, her new Halloween tradition was born. The boys took the Aunt Tax in stride, Hiro in particular eagerly looking forward to trading in stuff he couldn’t eat for ghost cakes and pumpkin pastries and cat candy and pretty much everything she could possibly think of.
Although this year she had a third boy to deal with.
“Oh LOOK at you guys you look so good let me take a picture,” she gushed, grabbing a camera. “C’mon guys nice pose for the camera nice smile.” Gave Obake a pointed look, got a forced smile that better resembled a grimace in response. “You know what I’ll take it. Say cheese!”
“Cheese!” Hiro all-but hollered—having watched Arcane with the boys, she had to say he had gotten Jinx’s manic energy down. And hopefully the blue would wash out of his hair.
“You kids look great,” she assured them. “And you’ve even got Baymax dressed up!”
“I have added: trick-or-treating, to my matrix on: Halloween, which is part of my broader matrix on: holidays,” Baymax announced.
“Well so long as you have fun,” Cass said; looked over when the rest of Tadashi’s friends came in. Wasabi nee Wayan was a usual staple, but over the years the group had grown to include Fred, Honey Lemon, and Gogo as well.
“Okay first thing in the bags,” Wasabi said, adding several baggies that looked full of dental hygiene equipment in everyone’s trick-or-treat bags. “Courtesy of my parents, Mom says hi,” he told Cass.
“Tell her hi back and that I need to add a kid to the appointment book.”
“Do not,” Obake said flatly.
“Sorry, dental hygiene takes priority. Group photo!”
Obake was marching off as soon as the flash faded. “This was fun, bye.”
“Hey no,” Hiro said, catching him and dragging him the other way. “We’ve got candy to harvest! Come on before the adults change their minds!”
“Remind me again what you’re allergic to?”
“Oh wait real quick,” Cass said, leading Obake away a little. “You don’t have any allergies, do you? Because if you do there’s an Aunt Tax.”
“There’s a what?”
“It’s a thing. Well?”
“None that concern you, since most people throw out food once it grows mold. Most. People,” he added, narrowing his eyes at Fred.
“Is this about the taco?” Fred asked. “Because if you wanted it—”
“Fred no one wanted that taco,” Wasabi scolded. “It had fuzz growing an inch thick and you ate it.”
“The fuzz definitely added a weird texture, not gonna lie.”
“Ew,” Cass noised, grimacing. Looked at Obake. “Mold?”
“Obake is allergic to: penicillin,” Baymax offered.
“Okay yeah that’s not going into the candy.” Hug him tight, noting the stiffness, the way he had been eyeing everything as of late—“It’s okay. He’s not going to get out and bother you, you’re allowed to have fun with your friends.”
Obake looked like he really didn’t know how to process this—didn’t look at anyone as she gave Tadashi and Hiro last hugs, allowed himself to be dragged out the door by Hiro in a daze.
“Have fun, kids!” she hollered, leaning out the take-out window and waving. “And be careful,” she added—every year she worried about them getting into trouble, was thrilled when they came back safe and sound...and then Obake....
Well, at least he’d have a good Halloween for once.
In other news, Obake was regretting not letting the city get nuked.
Mostly because if he had let nature take its course he wouldn’t be here, dressed up as a character from a cartoon, being dragged along by Hiro and going door to door ‘harvesting candy.’ At least he and Silco shared the same energy, so he didn’t have to do much else except make sure he didn’t trip when Hiro tugged him somewhere.
“Think we should see about some party or haunted house?” Tadashi asked as they crossed neighborhoods.
“No way,” Hiro said. “We have pillowcases to fill you are so not cutting into my trick-or-treating.”
“Refresh my memory, aren’t you incapable of eating about ninety percent of that?” Obake asked him.
“Yeah—Aunt Cass gets it and I get actual edible stuff for my tax return, but this is still fun.”
“Ooh! Right there!” Honey Lemon said, pointing out a house. “They’re giving away glowsticks too, that counts towards the trick-or-treating.”
Obake almost rolled his eyes at that—instead stiffened as he recognized the house; some aspects, such as the name, were different, it wasn’t being used to lure a silly hero team into wearing remote-control contacts that showed them their worst fear, but that was the house, the one he had later lured Hiro to with the dead brother, tormenting the boy as he himself snuck into the garage and added a little something to make the robot more percussive.
Except now it was just a normal haunted house, the dead brother eagerly agreeing as the robot waddled behind, Hiro not eyeing him suspiciously before recoiling but instead dragging him ahead—
Looked when Obake dug his heels in. “Not this house,” he said, not looking at Hiro.
Hiro blinked, confused; waved the others off. “Give us a minute.” Shuffled around so he was in Obake’s line of sight. “What is it?”
Oi he didn’t want to touch this raw wound. “You remember what we discussed last week.”
“Ah. Oh,” he muttered, a glower settling on his face as he recalled that whole countdown to catastrophe, the bit where Obake had to explain that the man who had broken into the lab and tried to destroy the city was himself, that the version standing here now and looking as a teen was due to some—some impossibility—he should be dead twice over, from the same fate he had resigned himself to when Hiro and company had bested him to begin with—
Hiro looked at the house for a moment, looked back at Obake with narrow eyes and a raised eyebrow. “Seriously? I’m supposed to believe you bugged us with a haunted house? I thought you were a supervillain.”
Despite everything, irked managed to surface and prompt him to return Hiro’s expression. “The term is obake yashiki—I saw a thematic opportunity and I seized it.”
“Uh-huh. Are you sure I should be getting my nemesis training from you? Because that was lame.”
“You certainly didn’t think it at the time.”
“Yeah well alternate-universe me is dumb and he doesn’t exist now so come on,” Hiro said, tugging Obake along. Looked back again when Obake didn’t follow, glance away for a beat before looking back at him. “Look, it...it didn’t happen, okay? You stopped it—you’re better now. You can’t...you can’t let this sort of thing stop you from living, you know?” Tug him again. “Come on—if you don’t look it’s always going to bug you. If you do look, then you get to see that it didn’t happen, that all it is was a bad memory. It’s not...well it’s not real now.”
Deep sigh, still not looking at Hiro...did finally take a step, let Hiro lead him up the walk to the porch. “I blame Fred for this.”
“What’d I do?” Fred asked, looking up from his new glowing wristband.
“What didn’t you do,” Gogo said.
“Timey-wimey stuff,” Hiro said, eagerly accepting a glowing wristband as well before poking Obake into accepting one.
“Ooh yeah—my dude, to be fair you did ask,” Fred said as they filed in.
“I still blame you,” Obake told him.
“For stuff that technically didn’t happen now,” Hiro told him.
“Technically if you consult stuff like Back to the Future it did happen in an alternate timeline,” Fred said, gesturing. “Because see, going back in time and changing something results in a branching reality—”
“Fred,” Wasabi said, hands folded together. “I want you to think really hard about the conversation we had on the car ride over.”
“Don’t worry dude, I promise to brush my teeth after eating my candy.”
Tadashi started laughing, had that change to a shriek when a zombie popped out at them.
Hiro was right; it was entirely different, mapped out as a sort of labyrinth for them to navigate through, populated by various monsters. Probably the only ones who didn’t react to the various scares were himself, Gogo, and of course Baymax, although Tadashi had to keep dragging him away from the confused actors when the robot tried to tell them how to address their various injuries.
“Baymax, chill—they’re costumes, like what we’re wearing,” Tadashi explained.
Baymax blinked at him. “If this is so, then why do you keep reacting as if they are not?”
“It’s part of the fun—being scared in a controlled environment is...we like the thrill of it but we don’t want the danger, and this is part of that. Am I explaining it right?”
“Part of Halloween is scary fun,” Honey Lemon told Baymax. “We like being scared like this because we know it’s pretend, and playing along is part of it.”
Baymax blinked. “I am a robot; I cannot be scared.”
“That’s okay, we like you being with us, and that’s fun.”
“You could react to some of this,” Hiro said, elbowing Obake.
“I’m not scared of makeup,” Obake told him. No, instead what he had was a lingering unease, the knowledge of how this place had been compared to how it was now. It was the sort of feeling he was growing used to, knowing that the world he had left...was it only this past spring? Or another week from now, technically, if he was thinking of exactly when it happened. Knowing that it was gone, or possibly operating in some alternate universe he’d never see again, and he was left in this strange echo instead.
Look down at the squeeze to his hand, up at Hiro barely illuminated in the gloomy lighting; perhaps what he had left was the echo, the Hiro of the here and now was much more vibrant, allowed to be a child still, never having to endure the ache of losing his brother, the event that had made him mature quickly into hardened steel. Even now, he regretted having to involve him in that whole countdown to catastrophe, to even get him close to that sort of thing.
And yet he could still see the echoes of the other Hiro in him, the empathy that made him reach out to others, to people who didn’t deserve it. Obake was still feeling wretched, still unsteady on his feet thanks to the events of the year...and yet Hiro was willing to help anchor him, despite what he had done. Managed a weak smile in return—
Glanced behind him. “By the way, that portrait’s eyes just moved.”
Hiro’s eyes went wide, whipped his head around to look—“Made you look,” Obake teased at the back of his head.
“Oh—jerk!” Hiro said, socking him in the arm.
“Ow.”
“I was alerted to the need for medical assistance—”
“TADASHI.”
They managed to escape the haunted house, got T-shirts with I survived O’Hara’s Haunted House for their trouble, went back to trick-or-treating with fervor, eventually finding a party with the intent to get hydrated for the final push.
“All that screaming definitely works up a thirst,” Fred confirmed. “Oh nice dudes we’re in time for Thriller! Come on, we must dance.”
“Seriously?” Obake noised, arching an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Tadashi jeered. “Baymax, dance mode, show these plebs how to do the Thriller dance.”
“Don’t. Even—Tadashi—”
Obake did manage to extricate himself and retreat from the dance floor, made his way over to where Gogo was sampling the punch. “Well?”
“They haven’t spiked it yet,” she said, checking her watch. “These guys are slacking, the punch should be compromised by nine at the latest.”
“Of course Tadashi would pick out the squeaky-clean one,” Obake commiserated, watching the group fool around. Some things never changed, he reflected, remembering getting dragged around to parties such as this when he actually was this age, watching Trevor Trengrove and Wendy Wower try this dance as well.
Perhaps he could finally identify this peculiar feeling by holding it up to the past proper; memories of a time gone by, an experience that he had had that he could look back on but not relive. The only difference was, it was memories for him and him alone; he could ask Wendy (or, Heaven forbid, Trevor) if they remembered that particular Halloween, but no one else would ever recall the last Halloween he had experienced.
Perhaps that was for the best.
The music cycled to a different Michael Jackson song, “Blood on the Dance Floor”—probably some dance remix, he didn’t remember it being this fast. Some woman dressed like Jack Skellington with a black Fedora hollered “Switchblade!” and ran onto the dancefloor, had Fred and Tadashi trying to imitate her after the first chorus cycled through, her calling out steps and turns for them to follow when she realized what they were doing.
The duo was exhausted when they staggered over to the punch.
“I want whatever she had,” Tadashi announced when they were close enough.
“The punch isn’t spiked,” Gogo told him.
“I’ll still have a cup.”
“Okay but then we go back to trick-or-treating,” Hiro said, holding his bag up. “There’s still empty space in here, Tadashi.”
Obake resigned himself to being dragged around for the rest of the night—okay fine he kept late hours and was on his feet a lot in his lair but that was by personal choice and he was honestly really hoping someone would drop a coffee in his bag towards the end. Although the park was interesting for the various people dressed up and acting like the characters they were dressed up as—the group got into it, which allowed him to sit and lurk and be intimidating for a while. He could do that with ease.
Was very grateful when the Lucky Cat Cafe appeared at the end of the night, had eyes mostly for the expresso machine once he was inside.
“Hey guys! Have fun?” Cass asked—took the big mug he had grabbed away and handed him a small cup. “Sneak up on the heart event, okay?”
“If I must,” he sighed.
“So there was a bunch of guys role-playing in the park,” Hiro said.
“We had to keep Hiro from going overboard, he shouldn’t have been playing Jinx,” Tadashi supplied, putting their bags on the table. “Shoutout to the guy dressed as Beetlejuice going up against the Sanderson sisters—wasn’t sure if he was channeling the movie or the cartoon version but they were all doing pretty good bouncing off each other.”
“Oh I’m sorry I missed that,” Cass said.
“Don’t worry, Baymax got footage.”
“Nice—well then!” she announced, picking up a tray of cider. “To the living room, it’s tax season!”
“It definitely felt like I was out there until April,” Obake groused.
“Did you have fun, at least?” she asked him quietly.
He didn’t get the chance to answer her, Hiro dragged him to the living room, bouncing off the walls like he had already mainlined candy, Tadashi and Baymax dumping the bags out on a big blanket laid out on the floor as Cass brought the drinks in. Baymax played some of the clips from the park on the TV for a while before they switched to Halloween specials, Obake doing his best to keep the comments to a minimum; the Wishbone one was fairly good, but he had questions about the two Scary Godmother ones.
“It’s a Halloween staple,” Hiro insisted.
“Terrible animation is a Halloween staple?” Obake asked.
“Yes,” Tadashi said, not missing a beat. “It’s the scary part.”
“Okay!” Cass announced, swinging a heavy bag over her shoulder—the pile of candy was much abbreviated, he noticed. “Thank you for participating in the tax services, you’ll be getting your return shortly.”
Obake barely had time to wonder what that meant before she came back with a tray loaded down with various sugary goods. “Ta-da! Return season!”
“Yes!” Hiro cheered, bouncing up and down on the couch.
“Unrealistic, it should take at least a month,” Obake said.
“Fortunately we’re not as annoying as the IRS,” Cass told him. “Dig in, not too much otherwise you’ll be seeing the sunrise. Again.”
“I don’t get to see it otherwise and it’s pretty,” Hiro argued.
Despite these claims, Hiro was out cold by the end of the Garfield Halloween special; watched as Tadashi hauled him upstairs, moved to follow...hesitated before looking at Cass. “Yes.”
She blinked, stunned into confusion halfway through taking the cups to the dishwasher. “Yes what?”
“Yes, I had fun,” he admitted. “Don’t tell Tadashi, I’d never live it down.”
She smiled, wrapped him in a one-armed hug. “It’ll be our little secret.” Kissed him on the side of the head. “Happy Halloween.”
It would be yet another one rattling around in his head, he reflected as he stared at the glowing stars and softly-illuminated pictures in his half-a-tent. But, in straightening those thoughts out, holding this one against the others...it might be the newness, it might be the changes in himself, but he found he enjoyed this one much better.
Hopefully, this would be a trend, and there would be many more to come.