Hello. I am Baymax. And… congratulations.🎊
Warning: mentions of pregnancy, unplanned pregnancy, character death (Tadashi Hamada), grief and loss, mourning, emotional hurt/comfort, single parenthood, childbirth mention (non-graphic), canon-typical tragedy, healing after loss, reunion, soft angst with a hopeful ending, found family, Baymax being precious, Big Hero 6 canon-compliant (as much I as I could), established relationship, bittersweet tone, mentions of intimacy (non-explicit), emotional vulnerability, comfort and closure (I guess), gentle domestic moments, protective Aunt Cass, Hiro being a good uncle, legacy of love and invention
🎪✨Ringmaster’s Emotional Breakdown Under the Big Top✨🎪
Confession time, my dear audience this piece was actually written a while ago. I didn’t post it then because, truthfully, your Ringmaster was drowning in a cloud of glittered gloom. But alas, the time has come to set it free before it festers in the dusty corners of my notes forever. Now, before we begin let it be known: TADASHI IS ALIVE. I say this with my whole chest as they drag me kicking and screaming toward the nearest mental institute. He’s alive, I tell you! They’re lying to us! Also… I must apologise if you were expecting fluff and sunshine this fine morning/evening. Instead, I’ve brought angst and emotional devastation wrapped in sparkly paper. I couldn’t hold this one back any longer if I’m going to suffer from my own ideas, then by the power of the circus, we’re all crying together. So grab a tissue, take a seat, and let’s spiral gracefully. Signed between sobs, sparkles, and slight delusion, your Ringmaster 🎭🖤
WARNING SAD AND POSSIBLY TRIGGERING AHEAD (please swipe off if you feel triggered, I mean well).
The lab’s fluorescents hummed with their usual, cozy headache while the white vinyl of Tadashi’s test corner squeaked under sneakers. Every camera he’d gaffer-taped to the corners of his workspace blinked their little red recording lights there had to be six by now because if there was anything Tadashi Hamada loved as much as building, it was archiving every stumble on the way to perfect.
And in the background of almost all those archives was her.
In one clip, YN leaned into frame with a gloved hand and a screw between her teeth, hair tied into a high, practical ponytail and when she glanced up, her eyes caught the overhead light it made her eyes shine in a way that always made Tadashi blink like he was seeing galaxies. She wore a fitted lab tee under a navy shop coat, the belt cinched at her waist before it flared over her hips. Every time he muttered, “Okay, Baymax… version… uh, I lost count,” she giggled from off-screen or waggled her fingers at whatever cam he’d forgotten to turn off.
That afternoon, the giggles turned into a breathless little gasp.
“Okay,” Tadashi said, stepping back and snapping his fingers with a grin that made his eyes fold. “Okay he’s ready. I think he’s actually ready.” He crouched, pressing his fingers to the charging bay. “Baymax?”
The vinyl inflated with a friendly whoomp. The soft white shape unfolded, smiled with those dot eyes and line mouth, and pitched forward with the minimal grace of a balloon discovering knees.
“Hello,” Baymax intoned. “I am Baymax, your personal healthcare companion.”
YN clapped, cheeks warm. “He did the voice! He did the voice.”
Tadashi threw her a look that was half triumph, half terror. “Scan?”
Baymax’s eyes brightened faintly. “Scanning.” A cool breeze feeling, the hum of diagnostics YN had helped route half of those subroutines when the diagnostic graphing would hang on system load. She knew what the sweep felt like. Still, it made her stand a little straighter, hands folded under her chest.
”Your neurotransmitter levels are within expected ranges,” Baymax reported. “Respiration normal. Heart rate elevated, likely due to excitement.” His head ticked toward YN. “Hydration adequate. Musculoskeletal markers… normal.”
“Normal is good,” Tadashi said, choked. He laced his fingers with YN’s for exactly one squeeze that made a promise and a prayer out of cartilage and skin.
Baymax’s optics clicked a fraction. “Early prenatal indicators detected.”
Silence swallowed the lab’s hum.
“Wait…what?” Tadashi said, voice up a full octave.
Baymax looked from one to the other, helpful as ever. “My scan suggests the presence of an embryo. You are healthy,” he told YN, “and I recommend folate-rich foods and gentle exercise. Would you like a list of recipes appropriate for the early stages of pregnancy?”
YN’s mouth fell open. She was sure her eyes went all dazed at once. “I—um—” She laughed, a bewildered, breathy sound, and then her free hand flew to her flat stomach like it belonged there already. “Did he—? Bay, c-could you… scan me again? Just in case?”
“Affirmative.” Another pass, a softer hum. “Confirmed. Estimated gestational age: approximately three weeks.”
Three weeks. Her brain immediately hopped back across a calendar sticky notes, the little star Tadashi had drawn on their dorm whiteboard the night they’d eaten anniversary cake with plastic forks at 2 a.m., the way they’d both been too giddy and too in love to be as careful as usual. Her cheeks burned. She peeked sideways.
Tadashi was staring like someone had unsoldered all his joints. Then he inhaled deep, steady and when he looked at her again it was with that careful, gentle steadiness that had coaxed Baymax to life one patient adjustment at a time.
“Hey,” he said, fingers finding hers again, grounding. “Are you okay?”
“I…” She tried to find words around the fizzing in her chest. Her lips curved, tremulous. “Yeah. I think so. Are… you?”
He nodded too many times, then laughed, helpless. “I don’t know. I mean—I—yes. I…” His eyes went wet and bright. “We’re okay. You’re healthy. That’s….That’s the important part.”
Baymax tilted his head. “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your emotional overwhelm?”
“Eleven,” they said together, and the laughter that tangled out of them eased something taut and shining between their ribs.
That evening, long after the lab lights dimmed to their sleepy night mode, they sat shoulder to shoulder on the cold floor, backs against the charging cabinet, legs stretched out. Baymax powered down inside with a polite bing, like they were all just roommates agreeing on quiet hours.
“Baby’s a bit early,” YN said softly, palm spread over her still-flat belly.
“Yeah,” Tadashi said, forehead tipping to hers. He thumbed away a tear she hadn’t noticed. “I was going to marry you anyway.” It came out neat, unadorned, like a fact he’d measured and triple-checked. “Kids were on the whiteboard. Just… later. But later can move. It’s okay. I’m in. We’ll tell Cass and Hiro after the showcase. We’ll tell everyone. We’ll make it work.”
She held his face, kissed his smile, kissed the future they were suddenly holding. “Don’t you dare run from me,” she murmured against his mouth.
“Never,” he said, and she believed him.
The night of the SFIT showcase smelled like ozone and there was a shine to everything: fresh banners, extravagant prototypes, a thousand futures on plinths. YN had her hair half-up,
waves clipped back with a slender tortoiseshell comb, a swipe of liner, a soft pink lip that matched exactly the natural hue he teased her about when she forgot makeup in the lab. The fitted black dress she wore under her smart blazer hugged her slight bump that wasn’t a bump yet, just a secret warming beneath her hand.
Hiro’s microbots stole the night. YN whooped so loud Tadashi laughed and pretended to be embarrassed, arm slung around her waist like he couldn’t help it. Then came fire wrong, hungry, fast. Sirens. Smoke. Panic. The sound of a city choking.
They managed to get out the building until…
“Professor Callaghan’s still in there!” someone yelled.
Tadashi’s arm went tense. YN grabbed his sleeve, fingers hard. “Tadashi—”
“Professor Callaghan’s in there,” he said, eyes gone razor sharp.
“Let the firefighters—” She stepped in front of him. The building coughed smoke. The crowd turned into a wave with no shoreline. “Tadashi, please.”
He exhaled once, like pulling an arrow to his cheek. “I’ll be right back.”
He kissed her short, fierce, forever. “I’ll be right back,” he promised.
She went after him, got as far as the police tape, the heat slapping her skin. A firefighter hauled her backward and by the time she screamed his name, the doors belched flame and the world came apart at the seams.
(somebody sedate me… but this is the end of the traumatic scene)
The funeral was all muted colors and too many chairs. Aunt Cass moved like someone holding a tray piled high with everything and determined not to spill. Hiro’s eyes were burnt down to embers. Honey Lemon, Go Go, Wasabi, and Fred stood as if a wind had blown through their rib cages and left banners there instead of lungs.
YN wore black and a little veil because she needed something between her and the world for a few hours. She held her own hands because she needed something to hold. When it was over when the casseroles had been covered and the guests had said the same kind words in ten different voices she found Cass by the café’s sink, sleeves rolled up, wrists slick with soap.
“Aunt Cass,” YN said, the honorific catching on grief.
Cass turned, saw her, and didn’t pretend. She dried hastily and wrapped YN up, chin tucked into her hair, hand rubbing circles between her shoulder blades like she could make sense out of a body that wouldn’t stop shaking. “Sweetie.”
“We were gonna tell you,” YN whispered into the cotton of Cass’s cardigan. “After the showcase. We were going to tell you and Hiro.” She pulled back enough to press a trembling palm to her belly. “I’m pregnant.”
Cass’s mouth shaped a word and then she just held her again, harder. “Oh, honey.”
“It hurts too much to be here,” YN confessed. “Every corner—every mug—everything is him.” She forced the words out like stones from her throat. “I think I have to go away for a while. I don’t know where yet. Just… away.”
Cass nodded, eyes bright but steady. “Wherever you go, you always have a place here. Do you hear me? Always.” She cupped YN’s face. “We’ll tell Hiro when… when I can get him to… when he can hear it. I’ll protect him with it until then.”
“Thank you,” YN said, and meant for the permission to flee, for the hold, for loving her like she was already family.
There are ways grief rearranges a life you thought you’d measured perfectly. YN found a small sublet with a window that watched the ocean beat itself against rocks and listened to the rhythm until sleep remembered her name. She had a midwife with warm hands and a clinic that didn’t ask questions she couldn’t answer without tasting smoke. She tuned the world out until the world grew under her palm, kicking, announcing.
When her daughter was born, the hospital room filled with sound a newborn’s righteous complaint, and YN’s small, shocked laugh that turned into a sob halfway through. The nurse laid the baby on YN’s chest, and for a second everything Tadashi had been folded itself back into existence the shape of the eyebrows, the dimple that threatened when she frowned, the exact curl of hair at the crown that would not lie flat.
“Hi,” YN whispered, voice shredded with joy. “Hi, baby.” She kissed a damp, furious forehead. The baby blinked up, unfocused, mouth rooting for the world, and YN felt her heart attach itself to something outside her body and call it home.
She named her Akari light because Tadashi had always been her north star, and because Cass deserved a syllable in the middle that sounded like “care.” When the nurse asked for a last name, YN’s fingers trembled and then steadied. “Hamada,” she said. “She is Tadashi’s.”
At night, YN sang softly the silly lab songs Tadashi made up to keep his hands moving, the lullabies Cass had hummed when they crashed on the café couch after too many study nights, her own nonsense words. She knitted a tiny beanie in charcoal yarn with a red stripe because of course she did. Akari slept with one fist clenched and one opened like she was catching moonbeams.
Two months past since the birth of Akari and on the news, far away, the world kept heating and cooling. A masked figure on a tidal wave of microbots. Factory explosions. Bridges bending. YN turned the volume down and pressed her nose to Akari’s hair until the smell of baby and shampoo filled every empty place in her lungs. She drafted messages to Hiro and didn’t send them. She wrote letters and tucked them into a shoebox Your brother would tell you to look for the good. I see him every time she yawns. I see him in your stubbornness, too. Eat, please.
Akari learned to smile first with her eyes and then with her entire body, the dimple making a cameo in every grin. The first time she rolled over, YN whooped into the quiet apartment and cried into a dish towel because victory and grief can fit in a single small moment and still feel unbearable.
(It get better from here I promise)
It was not a headline that brought YN back. It wasn’t even the masked villain’s arrest or the explosion of press about SFIT’s alumni saving the city. It was a silence.
There was a night months later the sky over San Fransokyo clear as glass, the bridge lights making a necklace across the water when YN dreamed of Tadashi on the lab floor again. Only this time, when Baymax chirped awake, he reached not for Tadashi but for the small, solemn baby watching with wide eyes from her stroller. He said, Hello, I am Baymax, and Akari grinned until her cheeks rounded like mochi.
YN woke with her decision already made it was time to go home.
She braided her hair into a long (or as how you want your hair), sleek rope that lay down her back a practical traveler’s choice. Her makeup was quite a line at her lash, soft pink at her lips. She wore a fitted cream sweater tucked into dark high-waisted trousers that hugged her waist and eased over her hips, and a wool coat the color of fog. Akari, nine months and queen of all expressions, wore her tiny beanie with the red stripe and a quilted jacket that made her look like a very fashionable dumpling.
They took an early flight, then the streetcar, then, with her heart punching her ribs like a fist, the short walk up to the Lucky Cat Café. The bell over the door gave its jaunty jingle. The smell coffee, sugar, warmed cinnamon hit her like a memory given shape.
Aunt Cass straightened from a tray of muffins, blinked at the stroller, blinked again, and then her face did a wonderful, complicated thing shock opening into joy, joy drowning in grief, grief alchemising into welcome. “Oh—oh my gosh.” She rushed around the counter, wiped her hands on her apron without looking, and pulled YN into a hug that made the world stop shaking.
“You kept her safe,” Cass said into YN’s hair. “You kept her so safe.”
“I’m sorry I left,” YN said, voice small. “I had to learn how to breathe without him.”
Cass nodded against her temple. “You came back. That’s what matters.”
Akari made a small, extremely important noise. Cass bent to the stroller and then froze. “Tadashi,” she whispered, hand to her mouth. Akari blinked at her, solemn for exactly one heartbeat, and then giggled so hard her whole body bounced. Cass laughed and cried at the same time. “Hi, little light.”
They were in the middle of that stunned, soft chaos when the front door jangled again. Hiro stepped in with a duffel slung over his shoulder and Baymax squeezed in behind him, followed by Go Go, Wasabi, Honey Lemon, and Fred in a loose cluster that looked like a team that had been to war, won, and still remembered exactly how it had felt. Their scuffed sneakers, the sticky strip of medical tape on Hiro’s forearm, the spark burns on Honey’s sleeve it all said after.
“Cass, we—” Hiro started, then saw YN. He stopped. He looked smaller and older at once. His gaze slid, pulled as if by a magnet, to the stroller.
“Hi,” YN said, suddenly shy, which she had never been in front of this kid. “I’m sorry I didn’t—It was too hard.” She swallowed. “This is… Akari.”
“Akari,” Hiro repeated, like the taste of the word came with salt. He hesitated but stepped closer, slow, as if a sudden move might make reality change its mind. Akari peered up at him from under her stripey beanie, evaluated this new human with severe, nine-month-old gravity, and then reached out a hand—small, soft, determined.
Hiro’s breath hitched. He offered her a finger. Akari closed her fist around it and refused to relinquish.
Something cracked open in Hiro’s face. The grief didn’t vanish, but it shifted, made room. “Hi, kid,” he said, voice rough. “I’m—um. I’m your uncle Hiro.” He glanced at YN, helpless. “She looks like him.”
“I know,” YN said, and then they were both laughing a little because the alternative was sobbing into the pastry case.
A warm presence rounded the group. “New patient detected,” Baymax said, kneeling with a whir of servos until his round eyes were level with Akari’s. “Hello. I am Baymax, your personal healthcare companion.”
Akari squealed, a full-body flail of delight, and kicked her quilted dumpling legs. YN laughed, hand flying to her mouth. Cass wiped at her cheeks in wonder.
“May I scan the infant?” Baymax asked, hands hovering like marshmallows in a snow globe.
“Scanning.” A gentle hum. “Temperature: normal. Heart rate: normal. Growth metrics: within expected ranges. She is healthy. I can provide a list of age-appropriate foods to support cognitive development.”
Fred slapped both hands to his cheeks. “I am weeping,” he announced. “Look at this small Hamada! She is, like, the deluxe collector’s edition Tadashi now with drool!”
“Fred,” Go Go said without heat, though the corner of her mouth ticked upward. She leaned over, the black of her bob shining like lacquer. “Hey, mini-Dashi.”
Wasabi hovered at exactly the distance of a man who wanted to help but feared knocking into the entire pastry rack. “Do we—uh—baby-proof the lab? We should baby-proof the lab. There are blades. There are lasers, you guys.”
Honey Lemon clasped her hands and vibrated at a molecular level. “She is so precious. YN, you look beautiful. I mean, you always do, but like glowy? Do you want oat milk? Do you want three oat milks?” She was already behind the counter, making drinks and labeling them in bubble letters as if her body had decided the appropriate response to emotion was beverages.
Hiro still hadn’t let go of Akari’s hand. He swallowed, eyes fixed on her tiny knuckles. “Why didn’t you…?” He trailed off, regret carving valleys through his words before they could be mean.
“Because every street looked like him,” YN said softly. “Every cup. Every doorknob. I wanted to keep breathing for her.” She reached, brushed a curl off Hiro’s forehead the way she’d done before midterms and messes. “I wrote you a hundred letters I didn’t send. Do you want them?”
He nodded, quick. “Yeah.”
Baymax’s head turned, studying Hiro. “Hiro,” he said. “Your cortisol is elevated. Your heart rate is elevated. Would you like a lollipop?”
“Yes,” Hiro said, earnest as a kid, and Baymax produced a lollipop from some improbable compartment. Cass laughed, the sound more whole than it had been in a year.
They crowded around a café table that had been the site of a thousand plans and a hundred disasters. Honey slid mugs in, Go Go shoved napkins at anyone who looked like they might cry, Fred narrated Akari’s every blink as if she were an Oscar campaign. Wasabi relocated three knives to a shelf six inches higher and looked much better.
YN sat with Akari on her lap, the baby facing outward to survey her kingdom. YN’s eyes met Go Go’s glance, the quiet understanding there as loud as any speech. When she caught Wasabi’s fretful eye, she smiled and said, “We’ll put caps on the table corners.” To Honey, she said, “Two oat milks is perfect.” To Fred, she deadpanned, “Collector’s edition comes with a built-in spit-up feature.”
Akari discovered the wonder that was Baymax’s vinyl and patted him reverently. Baymax obligingly extended a finger. The baby latched onto it and considered the properties of the polymer with extreme scientific focus.
“May I suggest that the infant not chew on microbot residuals?” Baymax added, swiveling politely to fix Hiro with a patient stare.
“Got it,” Hiro said, then looked at YN. “We—uh. We kind of saved the city.”
“I heard,” YN said, pride and terror twining. “I’m proud of you.” She looked at Baymax, at the redistribution of Tadashi in all their faces. “He’d be proud.”
Silence, gentle and heavy. Then Fred sniffed. “He’d also say: wash your suits. We smell like victory and sea monster.”
Go Go smirked. “He’d say ‘Dinner. Then tinkering.’ In that order.”
“He’d say, ‘I love you, knucklehead,’” Cass added, voice wobbling one last time into a smile.
Baymax’s eyes glowed faintly, as if some memory in his chip warmed along with them. “Tadashi Hamada programmed me to care,” he said simply. “I will care for you and for Akari.”
YN’s throat tightened. “Thank you, Bay.”
Hiro looked up, eyes bright, some new constellation forming. “Do you—Are you staying? Here?”
“If you’ll have me,” YN said. She didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath until his answering nod let it out.
“Then… yeah,” he said. “Please. We—um. We’re a team.” He glanced at his friends. “Right?”
Wasabi straightened, solemn. “Absolutely.”
Honey Lemon made a heart with her hands so enthusiastically that it almost became a full-body gesture. “Family!”
Go Go flicked her gum into the trash and leaned back in her chair like she would die before being earnest on purpose. “Don’t make me say it,” she said, which was her way of saying it.
Fred spread his arms. “Big Hero Six… and a half!” he declared. “Tiny hero. Tiny but ferocious.”
Akari blew a spit bubble that could have felled armies.
They ate. They laughed. They made a list: baby-proof the lab, find a crib that fit in YN’s little room upstairs, make space on the photo wall. Cass dug out a frame and asked if YN had a picture to put inside. YN slid a worn photo across: Tadashi on the floor of the lab, back against the charging cabinet, smiling up at the camera with a screwdriver in his teeth; her in his hoodie, hair a tumble over her shoulder, kissing his temple Baymax in the background mid-inflate, arms half out like he hadn’t decided whether to hug yet.
They hung the photo beside the register. The bell over the door jingled for customers. The city outside kept glittering, traffic threading the streets like beads on wire. Inside, the team’s laughter and the baby’s squeals knitted themselves through the café’s steam and clatter, a new pattern working itself into the old weave.
Later, when the rush died, YN took Akari upstairs. She set the baby on the bed and half-let down her braid. Akari, unsatisfied with the day’s level of chaos, rolled her way to the edge and thumped a fist into YN’s thigh like a tiny judge calling court to order. YN scooped her up and swayed, humming one of Tadashi’s nonsense melodies, eyes on the window that looked out into a city they’d both learn again.
There would be time to figure out how to finish degrees and change diapers, to solder in snatches while Akari napped, to help Hiro in the lab and remember to put outlet covers on everything Wasabi looked at with dread. There would be anniversaries they kept differently. There would be nights where grief arrived like a weather front and mornings where Baymax handed out lollipops for cortisol spikes and Akari tried to put them all in her mouth.
For now: this. A baby snuffling against her collarbone. A family’s footsteps below. A picture on the wall that said we were and we are in the same breath.
Downstairs, the bell rang again. Somewhere in the city, a siren rose and fell and rose. And when it did, six friends and one small girl who’d always known the cadence of bravery would learn together how to answer it.
🎪 Ringmaster’s Warning: No Copycats in This Tent 🎪
