In Japanese mythology red-crowned cranes symbolize everlasting love/life/happiness and grant wishes. Headcanon/AU where Mama Hamada catches crane as a girl in Japan, but frees it after seeing it scared. In return, she gets a wish via crane feather. She uses it to revive stillborn-Tadashi years later. (that's why he's so skinny like a crane. Plus Baymax has white-black-red color scheme.) When Tadashi dies he's reincarnated as a crane & regularly visits Hiro's room. (Feel free to write if u want!)
(GAH THIS IS SO FREAKING LATE I’M SO SORRY AAAAAAH)
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Hiro perked up at the soft sound of tapping against the glass of his bedroom window, a smile already growing on his face at the familiar sound. He immediately tossed the homework he’d been working on aside and dashed towards the window, pulling the blinds up with a flourish. Sure enough, sitting patiently waiting on the other side was a beautiful white crane, its glittering brown eyes looking up at him.
“Hey buddy!” Hiro greeted the bird, his fingers already fumbling with the latch on the window. “Just a sec, the lock is jammed.” He grunted as his fingers slipped on the metal of the latch. “Stupid, old...”
“Uh, Hiro?” a voice suddenly called out, and Hiro froze mid-motion. Oh god, he’d forgotten GoGo was over. The two of them had been working together on a joint assignment, but they’d split up the tasks about an hour ago and hadn’t really spoken since. He’d forgotten she was even in the room.
She was staring at him from where she was seated at his desk, raising an eyebrow at the crane outside the window. “Is that a bird?”
“Uh...yes,” Hiro admitted carefully.
GoGo only looked more confused. “Why is it tapping at your window? Were you just going to let it in?”
“...yes?” Hiro told her, though it was more of a question than an answer. Then, with a huff, he turned back to the window. The crane was watching GoGo now, and he was a bit worried it might get scared off and leave. “Hang on, GoGo, I’ll explain in a sec.”
With a grunt of effort, he finally managed to open the latch on the window and shove it open. The old wooden frame creaked and groaned as it was raised, chipping paint coming off it in little flecks, but it moved much more smoothly than the first time Hiro had opened it. Once it was wide enough for the sleek bird to crawl through, the crane darted inside. It landed on two long legs, standing in the middle of Hiro’s bedroom. It shook itself off, and then wandered over towards Hiro’s bed, staring at GoGo the whole time. GoGo stared back.
“GoGo, this is...well, he’s a friend,” Hiro quickly introduced her.
“It’s a bird,” she pointed out flatly, glancing over at him for a moment before turning back to the crane. “What the heck is it doing here?”
“Well...” Hiro shrugged and then flopped down on his stomach on his bed with a sigh. “It’s a bit of a long story.”
GoGo let out an irritated growl. "Hiro, if you don’t explain in the next five seconds,” she threatened, “I will - ”
“Okay, okay!” Hiro raised his hands defensively. Then, he stretched one out, reaching towards the crane. The crane immediately abandoned its staring contest with GoGo to approach him, extending its long elegant neck to nuzzle its head under Hiro’s palm.
“It started about a month ago,” Hiro began with a wistful expression. “It was late, maybe a Friday? All I know was that I was tired and lonely and I’d had a bad day. You know how I get sometimes. It was just a bad day though, you know? But I didn’t want to bother any of you guys because I knew you were all writing finals that week.”
“Hiro,” GoGo interrupted with a sigh, “you know we wouldn’t have cared.”
“Yeah, which was why I didn’t call you,” Hiro told her cheekily, sticking his tongue out at her. “You guys would have dropped everything and just listen to me whine, and they you’d all be tired and stressed the next day. Honey Lemon was already getting that weird twitch under her eye, and I do not want to deal with you when you’re cranky.”
She snorted and threw a pencil from off of his desk at him. It went wide, but Hiro still gasped and ducked dramatically.
“So, yeah. Late night, I was...down,” Hiro continued, his hand still absently stroking the smooth feathers on the crane’s head. “And then, all of the sudden I hear this tapping noise on the window. At first I thought it was the wind or something, then I thought it might be Fred throwing rocks again, trying to sneak me out of the house.”
“He’s done that?” GoGo asked incredulously, and then shook her head. “Wait, no. Of course he has. Go on.”
“So I go over to the window, and there’s this crane!” Hiro gestured towards the bird in question with a flick of his free hand. The crane immediately puffed up its feathers proudly, as if it knew it was being talked about, and crooned softly. “I thought it was weird, but I figured if I ignored it, it would eventually go away. Only it didn’t. It just kept tapping.”
Hiro sighed and shifted on the bed so he was on his back now, looking up at the ceiling. Detecting a change in his mood, GoGo immediately leaned closer, concern growing inside her.
“Hiro?” she called out softly when the teen didn’t immediately start talking again.
“My mom loved cranes,” Hiro said softly and absently, so quietly she almost didn’t hear him. GoGo blinked at the strange non-sequitur, but didn’t comment. “Or at least, that’s what Tadashi told me. I obviously never knew her. But he said she loved cranes. And he told me that certain cranes are supposed to bring long life and happiness, and maybe even grant wishes. I guess I just...when I saw this bird, and it wouldn’t go away, I just...I kept thinking about the wishes. And I knew it was stupid, but I was low, and I missed him...”
He trailed off and fell silent again, but GoGo understood. She herself had spent many nights after the showcase fire lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling, going over ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’. She understood completely.
“So the bird wouldn’t go away,” she gently prompted, hoping to get Hiro’s mind off of darker thoughts.
Thankfully it worked, Hiro perking up and looking over at her by hanging his head over the side of the bed. It made his already wild hair even wilder as it hung suspended by gravity, and for a moment GoGo wished she was a bit more like Honey Lemon with her phone camera always at the ready. The others would have cracked up at the picture Hiro made right then, hanging upside-down off of the bed with his hair in disarray, the crane standing dutifully at his side like it was some kind of pet. She jerked her head towards it to remind Hiro he was in the middle of a story.
“Oh, yeah!” Hiro grinned at her. “So it wouldn’t go away. So I figured, I’d open the window, and, I dunno, scare it off? Catch it? Maybe get a wish granted? I wasn’t really thinking beyond ‘open the window’ to be honest. And oh man, that window hasn’t been opened in years, so it took me way too much effort to get it unstuck. I was sweating by the time I got it up like a foot. But I did it, and by then it was big enough for this guy to sneak through, and that’s exactly what he did.”
Hiro pet the crane on the head again, and the crane made another soft crooning sound. It also somehow looked incredibly pleased with itself, but GoGo knew that was impossible. It was just a bird. Birds couldn’t be proud.
“So now I’ve got this weird bird in my room, right? And I figured it would realize it was trapped soon and start freaking out. Only it didn’t. It just kinda started poking around and looking at stuff, and then eventually just...came over. And just...stayed with me. Just sat down next to me on the floor and put its head on my lap and just sat there.”
“And you didn’t think that was weird?”
Hiro just shrugged. “I wasn’t complaining. It was kind of cool.”
“Hmmm, fair.”
“So it just kind of hung out with me for a while, maybe a couple of hours, and then it eventually just got up and left. Went out the window and was gone.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” GoGo asked, curious.
“I mean, come on. Would you have believed me? I was half-convinced I’d dreamed it,” Hiro admitted sheepishly. “Plus, you know, the whole finals thing. I figured you guys were pretty distracted.”
“I still can’t believe you lucked out and finished all of your finals so early,” she grumbled with a shake of her head, muttering something about lucky little brats under her breath. “So then what happened? Clearly this happened more than once.”
Hiro shrugged again. “It came back a couple nights later, same as the first time, and then again, and then again. This guy comes by about two or three times a week now, just to hang out. I don’t know why, but I’m not complaining.”
GoGo shook her head and smiled. “Only you, Hiro. It’s not enough that you’re a teen genius in college who also happens to be a superhero, you also have to be some kind of bird-whisperer too.”
Hiro snorted loudly, startling the crane a bit and making it flare out its wings. “Oops, sorry man. Yeah, no,” he turned back to GoGo. “Not a bird-whisperer, I still hate seagulls. Maybe this guy’s just a Hiro-whisperer.”
That was enough to make GoGo laugh, slumping down in her chair a bit to get more comfortable. “Well, good,” she joked, “we could use the help keeping an eye on you.”
But to her surprise, Hiro suddenly sobered up, looking towards the crane. The crane looked solemnly back, its eyes glittering in the dim light of the bedroom.
“Honestly? I don’t think you’re that far off,” Hiro said quietly, his eyes still trained on the crane. “Sometimes I look at him, and I fee like...maybe Tadashi isn’t gone after all. Not really. You know? Actually, no,” Hiro shook his head and closed his eyes. “You know what, nevermind. I’m going crazy.”
GoGo was about to respond, maybe to make a joke or comment, but then suddenly the crane looked her dead in the eye and her voice died in her throat. She hadn’t really been paying attention before, but now that she was she noticed that the crane had the loveliest deep amber eyes. The longer she looked into them, somehow the more she felt they looked strangely familiar to her. Her breath caught in her chest and she felt her heart thump wildly once, and for a moment, she found herself wondering...
But then she quickly shook her head, clearing the strange thoughts. It was just a bird. A really weird bird. Still, she somehow suddenly knew where Hiro was coming from.
“Hiro, you willingly gave Fred the ability to breathe fire. You were already crazy,” she said flatly, making Hiro laugh and breaking the somber mood. It was time to move on to other topics, she decided. This crane stuff was getting too heavy, reminding her of things she’d rather not think about right now. She could reflect on her feelings later, when she was alone. For now, they needed to get back to work.
“Now, if your pet bird isn’t going to suddenly go nuts and attack us, I think we’ve wasted enough time. This assignment isn’t going to finish itself.”
Hiro groaned, but finally rolled over and sat up properly on the bed. With a grumble, he scooped up his own notebook and plopped it grumpily into his lap. When he couldn’t immediately find his pencil, GoGo threw another pen at him. This one hit him dead on, bouncing off of his face to land in his lap. Hiro yelped, GoGo laughed, and the crane let out a whooping noise that almost sounded like laughter too.
After that, the two students settled back into their work, completely at ease with their new guest. The crane settled itself down on the carpet between the two of them, tucking its legs down under its body, and watched them quietly as they worked.
Occasionally GoGo would glance up from her notes to look at the crane, and she would always catch it looking back. And somehow, looking into its warm, brown eyes so impossibly familiar to her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was proud of her.
She refused to say anything to Hiro, but she felt warmth in her heart for the rest of the night.
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(Oh god this is so late I’m so sorry, but I saw this prompt and just neeeeeded to write for it, so I hung on to it for like FOREVER because I couldn’t find the time to just sit down and write, but I finally found time and HERE IT IS OH GOD I HOPE IT WAS WORTH THE WAIT.
I’m not sure if I managed to do this AU justice, because it’s just such a beautiful AU, but this scene immediately popped into my head when I read the prompt, so very vividly, so I just went for it. I hope you like it!)