Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s silly. Hiro knows that.

He pinches paper, brings the crane’s slim neck up, gives it a beak, so that it can peer at its surroundings. (Not much to see. Not here.) He folds down its wings. Straightens them out. Balances it on the palm of his hand, delicately perched, caught in the process of taking flight. 

He dumps it on the floor with the others. 

Innumerable origami cranes litter the beanbag chair and the circle of floor surrounding it. Hiro hasn’t moved from this seat for days—he gets up to use the bathroom, and that’s about it. Aunt Cass smiles sadly when she brings him food. She sets it amongst the cranes, and comes back to take it away, untouched, hours later. 

(She’d been happy about the cranes, at first. Hiro isn’t sure she knows what to make of them now.)

He should be counting. He should be counting, he knows, but around the two hundred mark, he lost track. It doesn’t really matter. He makes more. He’ll make enough. Eventually. 

It’s silly. A thousand paper cranes aren’t going to bring Tadashi back.

Hiro unpeels another sticky note to fold anyway.

Tadashi sat at the kitchen counter, his legs not yet long enough to touch the floor. He kicked them against the leg of his stool, softly, and sighed at the squares of paper in front of him. The book’s instructions were so confusing. He was determined to figure it out regardless.

“Whatcha up to?” 

Tadashi startled at Aunt Cass’ voice—she’d managed to sneak up on him as he was lost in thought. She leaned against the wall beside him with her arms crossed, smiling at his efforts. She already knew.

“I’m just trying to figure out this origami. I get swans and butterflies, but cranes…?” Tadashi blew air past his lip. He held a sheet of paper in his hands and worried the corner with his thumb absentmindedly.

Aunt Cass’ eyes crinkled. “I was about your age when I learned this, you know.” She pulled up a stool of her own and sat. Reaching forward, she took the sheet from Tadashi’s hands. Tadashi, always eager to learn, retrieved a different sheet of his own.

“The books are always weird. Like, wha-a-at? Too many arrows. It’s hard to capture motion in a still picture like that,” Aunt Cass mused. 

“Totally!” Tadashi agreed with vigor. “And I normally get instructions!” He ducked his head. This paper was getting dog-ears, too.

Aunt Cass huffed sympathetically and ruffled Tadashi’s hair. “Psh, you’re a smart kid, Tadashi. Smart people need help, too. Plus, these books are ancient, they’re the ones I had when I was little! Probably a bit outdated.” 

Tadashi, already fixing his hair, smiled. “Thanks, Aunt Cass.” 

“It’s what aunts are for,” she said warmly. “Now, follow my movements…”

Hiro’s never going to run out of sticky notes. Back when he was prepping for the expo, Tadashi went out and bought the biggest set Hiro had ever seen. He didn’t know they packaged that many sticky notes as a single unit. The little paper bricks are in a precarious stack to the side of the beanbag, some spilling onto the floor along with the cranes. All the world’s origami supply at his literal fingertips. 

He’d thought it was ridiculous even then. “Tadashi, when on earth am I going to need this many sticky notes? Am I gonna make the microbots out of these?”

“Hey, with the amount of paper you ball up every day, I figured it’s better safe than sorry. They’re useful. Get those ideas out of your big head, write them down!” 

They were useful. Hiro used those sticky notes the entire summer and hardly made a dent in them.

They don’t have much use anymore. He’s not inventing. He has no ideas. He has no need for school supplies, since he’s not going to school. 

All origami requires is a square sheet. Sticky notes are squares. Annoying to deal with the, well, stickiness, but it works.

He finishes this crane and drops it. 

He hopes the cranes that get squashed or crushed still count towards one thousand. Hiro peels a broken crane from his legs and tosses it unceremoniously to the floor. Their room is a sea of pale yellow birds. It reminds him of bins of microbots—tiny parts coalescing. 

It’s not bins of microbots. Microbots worked together. Microbots had a goal. The birds are scattered, aimless, limp—never leaving where they fall. 

And it’s not their room. It’s Hiro’s room. 

Hiro chewed his thumb, playing with the gap in his front teeth. He was so bored. He’d finished his homework, and Aunt Cass said dinner wasn’t ready yet, and Tadashi was still working on his homework. They were sitting at the counter together, Tadashi working and Hiro pestering him while he worked because he was so bored, Tadashi. 

Hiro pushed himself up on the bar between the stool’s legs to lean over the counter, lolling his head from side to side. The countertop was cool and smooth against his face. From his horizontal vantage point, he watched Tadashi furrow his brow over a math problem and peel a sticky note from his stack to cover up scratch-work he’d done wrong. 

Hiro wanted to do the problem himself, but Tadashi said no, and that they have to do their own work. Instead Hiro settled on taking the sticky note pad and fiddling with it.

“Hiro, can I have my sticky notes back?” Tadashi extended his hand. Hiro avoided it.

“No,” he said simply. 

Tadashi sighed. “Why not?”

“‘Cause I’m bored.” 

Tadashi leaned back on his stool and stretched. He looked at Hiro with the sticky notes for a moment, thinking. Then, “Okay, Hiro. I’ll take a break. I needed to anyway. Do you wanna do something that’s not boring?”

Hiro shot upright and had to brace himself against the counter to keep his balance. “Yes, yes, yes!” 

“Calm down, you’re gonna fall!” Tadashi laughed. “Sit down, knucklehead, I’ll teach you how to make origami.” 

“What’s origami?” Hiro sat back down and rocked back and forth eagerly. 

“It’s when you fold stuff out of paper. The trick is to figure out how to change its shape to make something out of it, and you can’t use scissors.” 

“Oh. Like a puzzle?” 

“Sort of. You’ll see. Here, take a sticky note and give me one. We’ll use those for now.”

Hiro obediently passed Tadashi a sticky note and started fidgeting with his own.

Tadashi placed his sticky note flat on the counter. “Start off sticky-side up, with the bar of adhesive near the top. Orient it like a diamond.” Hiro quickly copied.

“Fold the diamond into a triangle so that the adhesive sticks down. To get it to fold without wrinkling, crease the center of the triangle’s hypotenuse and flatten it on either side from here. Use your fingers like this,” Tadashi demonstrated. By the time he looked up, Hiro was waiting for the next step.

“Now fold it over itself to make another triangle. And we’re going to do a squash fold here, so it’ll look like a diamond again. Kinda cool, right?” 

“Mhhmn,” Hiro murmured, studying Tadashi’s hand movements and replicating them. 

“Flip it over and repeat the same steps on that side. You’ll have to unstick it, so be careful so it doesn’t rip.” 

“Okay.”

“You see that crease running down the middle of the diamond? We’re gonna fold these flaps inwards to lie flush with that crease. Make sure you’re only folding the top flap inwards. It should look like a kite.”

“What’s next?” Hiro stuck out his tongue in concentration. 

“Look, the top forms a triangle again—we’re folding that triangle down over the flaps. Good, you got it. Now unfold those flaps and watch, we’re unsticking it, and using those creases we just made to do a squash fold. Use your thumbnail to make sure the edges are crisp.” 

Hiro’s squash fold was a little clumsy with his stubby kid fingers, but he managed it, eyes trained on Tadashi’s confident motions. 

“Yeah, like that! Okay, flip it over and let’s repeat the same steps on the other side.”

Hiro looked up from where he was working. “This good?” 

“Yup! I told you there’d be a lot of triangles and diamonds with this. See, it’s shaped like a long diamond now.” Tadashi ran a finger against the geometric edge of his in-progress origami.

“Pointy,” Hiro noted.

“Not pointy enough to give you a papercut, unless you have a hidden talent for getting papercuts. Notice how it splits into two forks? We’re folding the flaps of those inwards, too. Same motion you did earlier.”

“What are we even making? Like, what’s it supposed to be?” Hiro asked, speeding through the steps. 

“You’ll see! We’re close to it actually looking like something. Repeat those steps on the other—oh, you already are.” 

“Kinda predictable.” Hiro arched an eyebrow.

“For you, genius. It’s all about patterns, though, so you’re right. We’re getting into the last steps here. We still have those two forks, right? We’re gonna fold those upwards. You have to be slow with this, watch.” Tadashi tapped two fingers against Hiro’s arm to get his attention. 

“Okay, now crease it. The flaps should be able to fold inwards against each other—good. Now we’re gonna do the other fork, but before you crease it, fold the top portion of it down into a triangle. Uh-huh, like that.” 

“Wait, is this a bird?” Hiro blurted in realization, turning the origami around in his hands. 

“Sure is. It’s a crane, actually. A type of water bird.” Tadashi flicked his bird-to-be between his fingers. “We still have to fold its wings down!”

“Show me, show me!” 

“So impatient.” Tadashi grinned. 

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re sooo slow!” Hiro whined.

“What, would you rather I have sped through the instruction for your first time folding origami?” Tadashi tsked. “Alright, crease these wings down like this, and then you can tug them apart a bit to give the crane more volume. Be gentle.” 

Hiro nodded, focused on the bird. 

“Adjust the bottom so that it can stand, and…”

“Done!” Hiro cried in triumph. He waved his crane in the air and bounced in his seat. 

“You did it!” Tadashi cheered. “Now, that wasn’t boring, was it?” 

“Hmmm,” Hiro said, teasingly, “only a little bit.” 

Tadashi flicked his crane at Hiro’s head to be caught in his unruly hair. “Hey!”

“I’ve read if you fold a thousand cranes, you get one wish answered.” Tadashi flipped through the stack of sticky notes thoughtfully.

Hiro snorted. “You believe in that?” He plucked the crane out of his hair and set it on the countertop next to his own. 

“For someone who hasn’t hit double digits yet, you’re surprisingly cynical,” Tadashi remarked. “Jaded already, mister can’t-reach-the-bottom-shelf?” 

Hiro, incredibly jadedly, blew a raspberry at him. 

“Well, what would your wish be, if you did decide you were good enough to fold a thousand cranes?” Tadashi asked, amused.

“I dunno.” Hiro made for another sticky note. “Wishes are dumb.” 

Tadashi leaned forward to give Hiro a noogie, ruffling his hair. “Right. You’re too smart for wishes.”

The steps never change. That’s one thing about origami: it never changes. Over and over and over Hiro can fold birds and it’s the same way every time. Each step consecutively produces the same result with little variation. Straightforward. Uncomplicated. Predictable.

It’s a pattern. Diamonds and triangles. Triangles and diamonds. The light thrown onto the wooden floor of his bedroom shifts but he does not face the window. He’d move to close the curtains, except it’d be a futile attempt, since Aunt Cass would just open them again on her next trip to carry away wasted food.

Hiro wonders how many cranes he’s folded by now. There’s no possible way he can count them all. He’d feel bad about not being able to verify whether he’d made enough if he could muster up the energy to do so. As is, he just folds another. 

He sinks back into the musty fabric of the beanbag and feels paper crinkle beneath him. Something pokes the nape of his neck. Hiro draws his hand back to hook out a disheveled crane. It’s not the only one pinned between his head and the cushion. Rising again irritably, he swats away misshapen paper, runs a hand through unwashed hair—there’s a crane stuck in the tangles.

After teasing it out of his hair, he pauses. 

He never did ask what Tadashi would wish for. 

What would Tadashi wish for? For Hiro to get his life together and go to college? For Aunt Cass to win the lottery? His friends to lead successful careers? To have his parents back? 

Never anything for himself. It was always for someone else. To help.

‘He died as he lived.’ The epitaph sounds hollow, fake, canned. It’s still true. He died as he lived. Tadashi died trying to help someone else. 

Hiro straightens the crane’s bent neck. This was never for Tadashi, was it?

He moves his leg, dislodging a weak shower of yellow birds. Red indents are left in his skin from pressing against them.

A thousand cranes won’t bring Tadashi back. Nothing will bring Tadashi back. Hiro knows this. He’s always known. So why is he here, slumped on a beanbag that used to be his brother’s, folding crane after crane? He hasn’t eaten. He hasn’t showered. He’s slept, made origami, and slept again.

Tadashi didn’t die for this.

Tadashi didn’t die for anything. He didn’t save anyone. 

He just died.

Hiro gingerly cups the crane in his hands. 

Did Tadashi do this, too? Hiro was only three when their parents died. He’d never mourned them the way Tadashi must have. Pre-teen Tadashi, bent over a pile of cranes. Was that ever him?

Hiro’s eyes sweep over the pools of origami at his feet. Attentive, self-sacrificial Tadashi. Tadashi, who was orphaned. Tadashi, who had a baby brother to look after. Tadashi, who could never get his parents back.

Hiro looks up at the ceiling. There’s scuff marks there from their past inventions gone awry. How did he do it? How did he deal with this? 

He could never be Tadashi. 

Hiro stands, shakily, from the beanbag. More paper cranes fall. Still cupping the one in his hands, he crosses to Tadashi’s side of the room, feet numb. It’s exactly as he left it: bed made, textbooks shelved neatly, a pen askew on his desk. 

He stays at the side of Tadashi’s bed for a long time, staring at the pristine covers. 

Hiro scribbled on a sticky note, attention flicking from the monitor in front of him to the pencil in his hand. A bin of microbots was open near the office chair he sat in. He and Tadashi had been in the garage all day, working. 

Tadashi watched him over his shoulder. Hiro could tell he had something to say by the way he was hovering, fingers drumming on the back of the chair, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. He waited for Tadashi to start. 

Tadashi rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, brim of his hat tipping downwards. Hiro’s impatience got the better of him. “What’s up?” he asked, and swiveled the chair a degree to meet Tadashi’s eyes.

Tadashi looked… nostalgic. He exhaled.

“Mom and Dad would be so proud of you.” 

Hiro’s pencil stalled in the air. He flicked the edge of the sticky note pad and peeled one off on muscle memory. “...Y’think so?” 

Tadashi shifted his weight to rest on the back of the chair. “Yeah. I do.” 

Hiro didn’t know how to respond. He went through the motions of a crane, triangles and diamonds and squash folds. 

“I’m proud of you too, Hiro. You’re working really hard.” Tadashi smiled. It was a bittersweet smile. 

“...Thanks, Tadashi.” Hiro creased what would become the crane’s wings. “I owe you.”

“Correct! You owe me the pizza I was saving that you ate! Now we have to order another,” Tadashi joked, playfully knocking Hiro’s head to the side. 

“Oh, the horror,” Hiro drawled with a grin. “Pepperoni?” He finished the crane and fiddled with its beak.

“You know me so well.” Tadashi put a hand to his heart. “I’ll inform Aunt Cass of our dinner pick.”

Before Tadashi could leave, Hiro took his chance to hastily press the origami crane into his hand. “I, uh, know you meant that I don’t owe you, but,” Hiro breathed in, “thank you, Tadashi. I mean it.” 

Tadashi ran a thumb over the crane’s wing. His eyes softened. “I appreciate that, Hiro.” His fingers closed around the crane with care so as not to disturb it. 

Hiro nodded once and turned back to the monitor as Tadashi left the garage.

Tadashi kept the crane on his desk. It lights on top of one of his notebooks, as if it’s surveying his work. About to take off. A smile ghosts Hiro’s lips.

He—carefully, so carefully—sets the crane he is holding now on top of Tadashi’s neat comforter, where his pillow would be. Its color looks childish among everything else. 

“Thank you, Tadashi,” Hiro whispers. Tadashi can’t hear him. Tadashi won’t be coming back. He isn’t sure what this will accomplish. He does it anyway.

“I want to make you proud.” His voice cracks. 

It feels like there’s paper trapped in his throat. Some bird trying to fly away. Hiro swallows. 

“You, uh, you can’t hear this. You’re dead. But, um, I know you wouldn’t want… all this. So,” he sucks in a breath, eyes starting to sting, “I’ll stop.” 

He tugs at the bottom of his shirt like he’s a little kid again. “I don’t—I don’t know if I’ve made a thousand cranes, or if it even matters if I did, but… that’s not going to change anything. No more cranes. No more of this.” 

The bird on Tadashi’s bed neither encourages nor discourages him.

“I wish you were here.” 

His face is wet. He scrubs at his cheek with one arm, greasy and teary and snotty. He sniffles. The crane remains where he left it.

“I wish you were here, Tadashi,” Hiro sobs.

He hasn’t touched Tadashi’s side of the room since the fire. Somehow, he thinks if he does, he’ll ruin it. Like he’s trying to preserve the last things Tadashi touched. Like if he doesn’t touch it, Tadashi will still be there. Like Tadashi will come home someday to his tidy bedsheets and stacked books and waiting desk.

He isn’t coming home. 

Hiro flops onto Tadashi’s bed and cries. He stains the comforter. He grips the sheets in both of his fists and tugs it towards him, helplessly, needily, hugging it to his chest. Hiro bawls.

He crawls beneath the comforter, saving the origami crane, fingers curled around it.

He cries until he doesn’t have any more tears.

Hiro doesn’t need to see the origami crane in his hand to know exactly what it looks like. He feels it with his fingers—each sharp point, each straight line, each curve of the paper. The thin sheet below him is soft. He counts his breaths, every exhale damp against Tadashi’s pillow.

A crane preparing to fly. 

Hiro feels lighter. 

The steps to origami never change. Every fold is the same. But origami is the art of changing—making something where there was only a blank sheet. A square of paper becomes a bird.

Hiro isn’t going to stay where he falls forever. His cranes aren’t, either.

Tonight, he will cry. Tonight, he will drift off with a yellow bird in his palm. Tonight, he will sleep in Tadashi’s bed.

Tomorrow, he will wake up. Tomorrow, he will greet Aunt Cass.

Tomorrow, he will give his cranes away.

Chapter Text

It’s not easy. 

A garbage bag slumps beside the beanbag, half full of origami, cheerful paper jutting incongruously from shiny black folds. Hiro wasn’t even sure where to start at first—there were so many cranes, and it was such a mess, and even if he’d never know if he’d made a thousand there are still far too many. He wades through a flock of birds to shake open the garbage bag’s maw. 

Aunt Cass is helping. She’d been the one to patiently suggest collecting all the origami in a bag, to get them off the floor before deciding what to do with them. She’s holding her own garbage bag, humming something upbeat and only slightly off-key, scooping cranes from their resting places. 

Mochi is helping, too, or at least trying to; he bats folded birds around with the enthusiasm of if they were live ones. He chases a crane across the floor, swishing his tail and purring, purring, purring. Hiro laughs, a weak, cracking laugh, but it’s a laugh. How long has it been since he’s laughed? He kicks a crane towards Mochi, who excitedly includes it in his play. 

The windows are open. Hiro’s room is bright and well-lit. It’s early in the day, so the light has a youthful quality to it, bathing the wood floor and turning the cranes a fresh gold. Hiro can hear the noise of the street. The chirp of real birdsong. The chime of the Lucky Cat’s bell as customers enter the café.

A breeze stirs some of the cranes on the floor, lifting them if only for a moment. With their wings flared, they really are designed to fly.

Hiro moves more cranes into the garbage bag. Little by little, the floor is being cleared. 

“I’m proud of you, Hiro.” He looks up and Aunt Cass is smiling at him—for the first time in a long time, her smile is not sad. Her eyes may be misty but he recognizes it as happy tears. A happy smile. 

Hiro drops another crane into his bag, hitching it up and feeling the smooth plastic. “...Thanks, Aunt Cass.” He cards a hand through his hair. He should shower soon. 

Aunt Cass crosses over to him and draws him into a hug. She rests her chin on top of Hiro’s head and rocks them gently back and forth, and for once Hiro doesn’t complain about being babied. He lets his garbage bag hang loosely from one hand, leaning into the hug. 

“Tadashi would be so proud of you right now,” she says. 

Hiro hugs Aunt Cass tighter. His eyes are shut against the familiar smell of her shampoo, the warm fabric of her shirt. Her arms are steady and firm and kind. “I hope so,” he mumbles.

“Hiro, I know so. Your brother was so proud of you. So proud.” Still she rocks them both. “He always was. I promise he still would be.” 

Hiro sniffs. He can’t help it. He feels like he’s five. “How can you promise that?”

Aunt Cass just hums. “Because I knew my nephew.” 

Hiro doesn’t argue that. He can’t argue that. She was there for everything. She helped Tadashi through the grief of losing his parents. She adjusted to suddenly being the sole caretaker of two kids. She raised them. She was there for every dinner, every birthday, every school project and late night and summer job Tadashi had after their parents died. Aunt Cass knew her nephew. 

“I love you, Aunt Cass,” Hiro says into her shoulder.

“I love you too, Hiro.” 

Gradually, Hiro pulls away from the hug. He rubs his own wet eyes and holds his garbage bag full of cranes now with both hands. Aunt Cass looks at him with quiet pride.

He looks down into his bag. Cranes upon shifting cranes, one indecipherable from the next. So many and yet only a portion of the total sum of birds. “What am I even going to do with these?” he asks, overwhelmed.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Aunt Cass soothes. “We’ll figure it out together. Let’s just take this one step at a time, okay, Hiro? You’re doing so well.”

Hiro lets out a shuddering sigh. “Okay, Aunt Cass.”

Aunt Cass kneels on the floor of Hiro’s room and collects origami cranes, depositing them in her garbage bag. A little at a time. A load lightening. Hiro joins her, and together they pick up cranes as Mochi ‘helps’. 

It’s not easy. But it’s worth it.

With two full bags of origami cranes, Hiro decides what to do with them.

It was simpler than he thought it would be. He just asked himself: what would Tadashi do? What would Tadashi wish?

And Tadashi always gave back.

Hiro distributes the cranes to his friends. To Tadashi’s best friends.

Honey Lemon accepts them graciously. She calls Hiro an artist. She says Tadashi used to give them origami, just like this—made from sticky notes, when they were studying. Later, she texts Hiro a photo of origami cranes strung together and hung in a bedroom with fairy lights. They dangled from the ceiling, suspended in the air, finally flying.

Go Go is more subdued. She holds one up, inspecting it with her analytical eye, remarking how streamlined it is. How Hiro manages to capture a crane’s grace, its poise. How it could leave at any moment. She’d know, she says, as a birdwatcher. She takes as many cranes as Hiro loads into her arms. She likes yellow, Go Go assures. 

Fred almost immediately starts acting out epic scenes with the cranes as his actors—and actresses!, Fred informs, detailing the vivid and storied life of Birdilia Crane and her heroic alter-ego, the Feathered Fatale. He imitates a bird call that certainly never came from a crane—cacaw!—and thanks Hiro for supplying him with so many amazing Birdilia clones. Setting his imagination aside, Fred tells Hiro how glad he is that he’s reaching out to them. 

Wasabi, as it turns out, understands more than Hiro had known. He recounts how he can get wrapped up in spirals himself, and while he folds to calm down he can get into states where it becomes obsessive. That there’s been occasions where he’s had to be rescued from drowning in origami cranes. He holds a crane Hiro gave him with care that reminds Hiro achingly of Tadashi. Wasabi tells him that if he ever needs to talk to anyone, he will always be there. They all will be.

Hiro gives the rest of the cranes to Aunt Cass. It feels wrong to throw them away, and Aunt Cass is grateful to decorate the Lucky Cat with them. Cranes settle next to the tip jar. Cranes usher customers to the pastry display. Cranes accompany patrons at window seats. Regulars and newcomers alike love them—Aunt Cass hands away a crane with every order, now, so they have someplace to go. Hiro sees people coo over their complementary origami and his chest swells.

Thousand or no, the cranes disperse, finding their new places. 

Hiro looks forward to finding his.