Author's Notes: This is the last of it. Thanks so much for sticking with me!

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate. I'm thankful, among other things, for the folks who took the time to read and let me know what the think. You're all awesome. o/

Goodbyes - Chapter 3

Hiro is sixteen years old on the day he graduates from San Fransokyo IT, a lanky, narrow boy with an unruly mop of black hair.

He sits with his friends in Aunt Cass' café and eats the special lunch she's prepared to celebrate: pulled pork sandwiches and imagawayaki stuffed with custard. Hiro's loud and lively – proud when he admits that six different schools are courting him for their master's programs. He knows already, though, that he'll stay on at SFIT.

When Honey Lemon snaps a group picture, he grins gap-toothed and wide, then leans in to see the result. The screen is full of laughing faces, crowded with the white bulk of Baymax in the background. "Hey, send it to me?" Hiro asks, and an instant later his phone buzzes, telling him that she has.

Later, when everyone's gone home and the dishes are clean, Hiro tells Baymax, "Keep an eye on Aunt Cass for me, kay?"

Then he climbs the stairs back up to his room and puts his navy blue graduation gown on over his clothes – retrieves the diploma from where it sits rolled on his desk.

Hiro collects other things, too: newspaper clippings and data chips; old pictures and his dissertation on Kirchoff's Laws; the spaceship-racing sim he programmed at 2 am on a weeknight and a sample of the reinforced plating for Baymax's wing tips. He packs the last of the pulled-pork sandwiches in plain butcher paper and fills a travel mug with lemonade, then stuffs everything into his backpack.

"I won't be back for dinner," Hiro reminds Aunt Cass, and gives her a one-armed hug on his way out the door. His other hand is full; it's holding his graduation cap.

She smiles at him, a fond look that crinkles the corners of her eyes. "You better be back by nine. Gamera versus Megalodon is on."

And Hiro laughs, and says, "You know me. Would I miss that?"

He catches the train to the suburbs outside the city limits, where the skyscrapers are backdrops against the rolling California mountains. He finds his way with the help of an app, walks through unfamiliar streets lined with trim houses and bare-trunked eucalyptus, their graceful white limbs rising toward the sky.

The grass in the cemetery is as plush and fresh as the day they put Tadashi in the ground, and there's a spray of flowers by his brother's headstone, yellow and white. They're from Aunt Cass, Hiro knows. She still comes here once a month.

"Hey," says Hiro, and slings his backpack down from his shoulders. "Guess who's a BS in mechanical engineering?" He rubs at the back of his neck, suddenly self-conscious. "Been pretty busy, I guess."

He clears his throat, awkward, and bends to unzip the bag. "I meant to make it out here sooner. I've been saving up, though." Inside the backpack, the newspaper clippings are on top, a clump of crumpled paper bound together with a rubber band. Hiro takes them out, then sits down cross-legged in the dew-soaked grass by his brother's grave. He puts his graduation cap on the ground beside him.

Then he unrolls the first article and starts to read.

He reads about the Tadashi Hamada building, with its sleek lines and energy-efficient design, dubbed SFIT's new robotics wing. He reads about six mysterious new tech-inclined heroes, who helped rescue the crew of a fishing boat last year when it capsized in the harbor. He reads about the Lucky Cat Café, declared last week by a notoriously harsh critic to have "the best pastries in San Fransokyo."

There are thirteen articles, and Hiro reads them all. He pauses between each, to fill in details they didn't include: the band that had played at the building's opening ceremony, and the sky over the harbor that afternoon, and Aunt Cass' victory dance when she'd first seen the review.

When he's finished the last of them, he pulls out the data chips, a spray of color in a plastic bag, and lines them up side by side on his knee.

Hiro talks his way through everything in the backpack. He talks until the sun dips down over the silhouette of the city – until his throat is dry and his cheeks are wet. Then he stops and unwraps the last pulled-pork sandwich. He eats it there in the cemetery, and he drinks the lemonade, and then he goes right onto the new plating for Baymax's wings.

The sun's gone down by the time he's finally finished. The chill in the air off the bay makes him glad he brought a hoodie, and he pulls it on now, on top of his graduation gown, before he starts to repack the bag.

"Well," Hiro says, as he scrubs at his eyes. "Aunt Cass wants me back by nine, so I better get moving."

He stands and stretches out the stiffness in his legs. "I just wanted to say, though. I meant it, that night." Hiro swallows. "Thanks."

He picks his graduation cap up off the ground: navy, with a tassel in gold. San Fransokyo IT's colors. He combs the tassel to one side, the proper side, because he's sure that it would matter to Tadashi.

Then he sets it down on his brother's grave, next to Aunt Cass' flowers. "Wish you could've been there," he admits, very quietly, into the stillness of the graveyard.

And with that, he turns to start the trip back home – a small, dark figure under a sky filled with stars.