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He notices her after he comes back from the dead, so to say.
Chuck doesn’t pay much attention to anyone who either isn’t a pilot or one of Striker’s techs, because they’re all hundreds of different people moving in different directions, he can’t be bothered to remember all of their faces.
But after coming out of full anesthesia and giving his physical therapist hell, he feels like the shatterdome feels more full. As if the hugely free space has somehow gotten smaller. It feels as though more people have flooded the dome, but that can’t be, people are leaving.
But he doesn’t notice her until he sees her twice, three times, hanging around in the corner of the mess hall. It’s the bright ass pink hair that gives him pause, and while he’s reminded of Mako’s highlights, this is somewhat different. This isn’t done for remembrance. This is a statement.
The bright pink hair is also a splash of color in a dank and metallic place like the shatterdome, however, and after that first time he begins to notice her everywhere. Usually she’s talking to a man whose back is always turned to him, wearing a faded bomber jacket that Chuck swears he’s seen before. He’s never seen the guy’s face, however, so he still has no idea who either of them are. They’re definitely not local. After he sees them speaking that one time, he begins to catch hints of the guy; never a good look at him but a glance around a corner here and there.
Enough where he realizes that he has no idea who they are, what they’re doing here, and that they don’t belong to any of the tech teams on any of the jaeger’s.
It takes him a good two weeks of spying them hanging around the Jaeger hangar, the mess hall, and on one occasion, LOCCENT, every so often to realize what the common factor is.
Chuck doesn’t know where he stands with Raleigh Becket.
He doesn’t say they’re close; Becket had been in the hospital bed next to him, not bedridden too badly but he’d still had some bruised ribs and various other injuries. They’d… bonded, maybe, stuck watching movies on netflix and whatever Tendo and Herc had been able to wrangle up at the time for three weeks. They still had to go through physical therapy together and Raleigh had extra problems because he’d never completed his first round of PT for his left arm five years previous, something Chuck figured he wasn’t going to let slide if he could. If he had to go through PT, they both had to.
So they… can talk. Sometimes, without getting into an argument. Chuck can’t claim that they’re friends but it’s hard to be pissy at someone after an argument when you can’t stomp off and are still chained to your hospital bed. Oh, he’d tried, but Raleigh had somehow always managed to worm himself back into his good graces (by annoying him until Chuck stopped petulantly ignoring him) each time.
And if his heart jumps (it does not flutter, he’s not 15 years old again) every time Raleigh smiles at him, or how once in a while during lunch or dinner Raleigh’s hand will find his own and Chuck responds with a firm grip, well, he doesn’t have much to say there.
It’s like they don’t exist.
Chuck doesn’t want to say he’s stalking them, because he’s fucking not, he’s just curious. There’s nothing overtly special about them, except the woman’s pink hair and the man’s familiar bomber jacket. But he’s seen people with dyed hair before, and it’s not like bomber jackets are so unique that no one else has one.
He does learn one new thing, however.
Mystery Man’s bomber jacket has a faded Gipsy Danger logo on it, but there’s no one on the now gone Jaeger’s team that matches his description. If he says “Blond, probably american, Gipsy Danger decal on his jacket”, the confused techs relay that only two people ever had jackets like those specifically (the rest of them had flight suits with the decal), and blond and american weren’t exactly very specific either; one belongs to the face that smiles softly at Chuck each morning at breakfast, and the other has been dead for five years.
It takes another week of him and Raleigh dancing around one another (if Mako gives him one more sly look when he asks if the other man would like to spar, he’s going to explode) before Chuck figures it out.
After Raleigh hands him ass in the Kwoon (not that he’d ever admit it), Chuck finds himself alone, grabbing the rest of his things before planning on heading out and meeting with Raleigh and Mako in the mess hall.
There’s a giggle, to his right.
He looks up, and the girl with the dyed hair is leaning against one of the far walls, her arms crossed while her eyes twinkle in amusement. He scowls; she was probably laughing at his inability to take Raleigh down.
Which is apparently something quite a few people find funny.
“You think that’s funny, then? I’m sure watching Becket kick my arse is just fine entertainment for you.” He says noncommittally; there’s no one else in the Kwoon but the two of them, and part of him is curious, and another part irritated, because the last thing he wants is the peanut gallery making idiotic comments.
Better than them making unwanted comments about their relationship, he thinks.
Her laughter immediately subsides, an odd expression crossing her face. She’s staring at him openly now, her brows furrowed in confusion. Chuck suddenly feels very annoyed, standing up and taking a few steps towards her. It’s the first time he’s seen her up close, instead of just always spying her from far away. She’s got fair features, with a straight nose and pale blue eyes. He feels like he’s seen her somewhere before, that she’s inherently familiar, but he can’t place it.
“What, not so funny anymore?”
“You’re talking to me?” She sounds utterly gobsmacked, as if she can’t believe him. American, he thinks, definitely american.
“S’not like there’s a whole lot of people to choose from.” He makes a grand sweeping motion with his arm, spanning the empty room. “Of course I’m talking to you, sweetheart.” There’s a frown on his face as the air remains charged between them.
“That… That’s interesting.” She’s says, tilting her head and seeming to have regained her bearing. There’s suddenly a wide grin on her face, one that doesn’t make him feel very comfortable.
“What.” He says flatly, giving her an odd look. The smile on her face turns downright impish now.
“It looks like your eyes,” She stretches out the word, leaning back into the wall, “Have been opened a little wider.”
Leaning into the wall. Literally. Chuck blinks his eyes once, twice, three times, but no, the image remains the same; her fucking hands are through the wall. She’s like a hologram projected onto an angled surface, not fully seen and half immersed into the wall.
“Catch you later, Mr. Hansen.”
And she vanishes into the wall, the temperature dropping.
Chuck stands there, silent, staring at the wall, unsure of what to say or do.
He catches sight of her several times over the next week, and he finds himself sputtering once or twice while speaking to Raleigh, seeing her over in the distance, smirking at him.
At first, it was creepy, seeing her continuously disappear into walls, and, on one memorable occasion, through a poor j-tech who simply freezes in their tracks, before looking around in confusion. It’s painfully obvious that no one else sees her, especially not when she’s obviously taunting him.
Now he’s just pissed off, because whatever she is, she’s obviously only doing these things to piss him off.
It gets him a worried look, but he waves it off before biting out a “I… I’ll be back in a bit.”, before taking off. He tries not to let the worried look on the other man’s face stay in his mind for too long.
He finds her at the end of an empty hallway, whistling something to herself, before her eyes catch sight of him and light up like a christmas tree.
“Hansen.” She says happily, as if they’re old fucking friends.
“What the hell is your problem?” She seems almost thrown off for a second, before recovering.
“That’s not the expected response,” her smile comes across as almost shark like, but Chuck is not deterred.
“What, you want me to cry and scream and just blubber like an idiot?” Chuck has faced down monsters from the deep, has seen horrors from the world untold. He stepped into the abyss and came back alive.
A lady who disappears into walls is nothing.
“Actually, you’re doing pretty admirably for a guy who just met a dead person.” He starts at that, eyes widening.
“Dead…? So you’re…” He trails off, and the glint in her eyes turns dangerous.
“Yeah, dead. Deceased, defunct, bereft of life. I have shuffled off my mortal coil, and now I find myself here. Whatever you want to call it.” She says flippantly.
“So you’re a ghost.” He says flatly.
Quite frankly, Chuck is a little impressed with himself and how nonchalant he’s being over the revelation, but, then again, Kaiju.
“Wow, no wonder you graduated the Jaeger academy when you were 16.” She snarks back at him.
Chuck would like to think he recovers admirably quickly, “And no one else can see you?”
She looks at him, studies him, her eyes running up and down the length of him as if analyzing him, and she quirks a brow in amusement. When she pokes her tongue out Chuck notices the barbel imbedded in it.
“Not no one. So you can see me. Big fuckin’ deal.” The temerity with which she speaks is somewhat galling, because normally he’s the one who’s being less than polite.
“I’d figure that’s gotta be a bit out of the ordinary.” He crosses his arms, suddenly feeling rather foolish that he’s somehow remaining so casual with this. Then again, it’s not as if his brain isn’t doing a huge mental circus right now, trying to catalogue all the moments he’d seen her before.
“The people who can see are usually…” and she waves her finger around in a clockwise motion, “They don’t usually see themselves as all there, if you get my drift.” Her smile turns a tad cruel. “Where does that leave you, I wonder? Did coming back from the dead shake your noggin loose enough to see us?” He scowls at her for the parting shot, because he hadn’t spent weeks in Medical to get harangued by a fucking ghost.
Ghost. Jesus christ. It’s a strange thought to get caught up over, because the kaiju happened, that was a real thing, but the idea of ghosts is something that he’s still having trouble wrapping his head around.
“Wait a minute, us? There are more of you?” She looks at him like she’s talking to an infant, as if, yes, duh, you moron.
“People die all the time, babe. It’s their choice if they wanna stick around here though; not a lot of personal happy memories in this place for a lot of people, I imagine. They might have gone home, wherever that is.” She points off in some random direction, waving her fingers around.
“Ahd where’s home for you, then? You’ve been floating around for who knows how long, and no one in our records matches you.” Admitting that is probably not the best action he could take, because that would admit he’d been interested enough into doing so.
“I wouldn’t be in the records,” She says, flatly. It’s probably the most terse she’s been with him, the rest of her speech peppered with amusement.
“So this haunting bit, what exactly can you do?” He says, trying to keep her from losing interest and disappearing.
She gives him a weird look.
“You’re a ghost. You… haunt, I suppose.” He supplies, suddenly feeling like a fucking moron.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not like there’s a fuckin’ wikipedia article on All about ghosts and everything you need to know about them. Myths get some of that shit right, but not all of it. We’re not here to haunt anyone, most of us here don’t really have unfinished business.” She looks away for a moment, pondering something, “Well, maybe most of us. I haven’t really spoken to too many other spirits, so that’s probably a wildly incorrect exaggeration.”
“Why are you even here then?”
“We’re attached to people. Part of it is us, I guess, unable to let go of certain people, but at the same time, just as much of it is on the person we’re haunting,” she makes air quotes with her fingers at this, “Sometimes they can’t let go of us.”
“As long as there’s someone out there who remembers us, we exist. We’re drawn to them, and I don’t think I’d need to explain why.”
“Don’t you think that’s just a little fucked up, that you’re basically… trapped here?”
“I wouldn’t consider it trapped. I mean, sure, I miss loads of things; I miss Whiskey and poptarts, but you get over that pretty quickly. I wouldn’t call it paradise or anything, though.” She pauses for a moment.
“I had some pretty bad moments though, when I first… got this way. I played the vengeful, spiteful spirit role for a bit before I realized what an ass I was being. Terrorized my little brother for a little while, probably didn’t add to his perceived craziness.” She mutters, trailing off near the end. He wants to ask but he also doesn’t want to try to hunt her down again if she decides to disappear.
A thought strikes him.
“The Marshall…” And the Kaidonovskys, and the triplets, he thinks, his thoughts suddenly somber. There’s no recognition on her face for a moment, before realization blooms.
“Oh! That guy. Yeah, he was here for a week or so. I didn’t really know the guy; little too stern for my tastes.”
“And he’s… gone now?” She smiles, and for once it’s not a horribly snarky thing that makes Chuck feel like he’s said something stupid, god forbid the fucking ghost thinks he’s a git. He wants to ask more, but he figures that can wait.
“He wanted to check on his little girl. He didn’t call her that, but we could tell.” There’s something in her eyes that borders on admiration, maybe. “He really loved her.”
Chuck learned that much through the drift.
So, Chuck thinks, she’s not just a psychotic spirit with no sense of empathy. He also notes the use of we. So maybe there’s more than just her.
“Sometimes we can just move on if we’re at peace with ourselves. You saw that when you drifted with him, didn’t you?” Chuck doesn’t want to admit how little the Marshall had brought into the drift with him, how little he’d actually learned from it.
“So why don’t you go?” He asks, suddenly feeling subdued. It seems to catch her off guard, that he’s not being so aggressive, and she answers in kind, her voice quiet.
“I don’t want to go yet. I feel like there are things I still need to see.” She looks away from him then, and Chuck suddenly feels like an asshole, good job, you made the ghost feel bad about being dead.
“You’re being awfully open with me about all of this.” Enough that it makes him suspicious. Her eyes stare off at a wall for a moment, before turning back to him.
They’re a pale, frosty blue, horribly familiar, and there’s something deep in them that Chuck doesn’t want to dissect, because he’s suddenly reminded that this woman is dead, that she died, and that something is keeping her here in the dome.
“If you only had one person to talk to for years, and you were suddenly given the chance to talk to someone else, don’t you think you’d have a lot to say?” She says, voice suddenly serious. He tries to imagine such a thing, only conversing with his old man for that long, and a shudder racks his spine.
Idly, he wonders who she’s been talking to.
“Plus, who the hell are you gonna tell? Hey, old man, I just met this ghost the other day, it’s bloody ridiculous!” She puts on an absolutely awful approximation of an australian accent while she says it, her expression back to the same shit eating grin she’s been tossing at him from before.
“Has anyone ever told you that you are fantastically obnoxious?” He grinds out.
“Being dead sort of leaves that thing unchecked.” She says, a dreamy look on her face. He holds her gaze for a moment longer, before sighing.
“So you ever gonna tell me who your mark is?”
“My mark?” She looks confused for a moment, before realization blooms on her face, and she laughs.
“No way. That’s for you to figure out.” She turns to leave and Chuck almost reaches out to grab her arm, before remembering how poorly that turned out the last time.
“At least tell me your name.”
“Why, so you can tear through old records and try to figure it out? I already told you, I won’t be in them.” The look on his face tells her that he was definitely planning to do that, and she cocks her head slightly.
“Well, you probably won’t find anything too damaging, I guess.”
The way she smiles, this time not mirthful but pleasant, Chuck realizes, is infuriatingly familiar.
“Jaz.”
And she’s gone, vanished into a steel wall.
“So is jonesing for golden boy’s dick your game?” Jaz suddenly pops out of the wall behind him and peeks over his shoulder, as his eyes follow Raleigh leaving.
“Jesus christ!” A passing tech gives him an odd look as he tries to desperately not have a heart attack.
“Careful, people might think you’re going crazy if you talk to yourself too much.” The way she stretches out the word makes Chuck feel like he’s missing something, but he doesn’t pursue that train of thought. He’s too busy trying to keep his heart from bursting out of his chest in sheer shock. It takes a moment or two for him to calm down, whipping his head around to make sure no one can see him talking to thin air before furiously whispering back at her.
“First off, you are a bitch, second, I am not after Raleigh's dick.” Her eyebrows just raise at this, and he wonders if she knows how hard he's trying not to think about Raleigh's dick. Fuck.
“So you’ve just got completely platonic affections of wanting to get into his pants, right?”
It seems that the revelation that he can now see dead people has kicked off her quest into annoying him as much as humanly possible.
He really hopes she doesn’t think they’re friends.
“Where do you even get off saying this shite?”
“Well, I haven’t really gotten off in about three years so-”
“Please stop, you are actually terrible.” The cheshire grin he gets in response really doesn’t make him feel any better, before what she said catches up to him. Three years. So he’s got a bare frame of reference for that, at least.
“Anyway, I’m not gonna cockblock you there. I think it’s cute.”
“I do not-”
“Babe, you’re arguing with a dead person over whether or not you want to hit that. I’d say, if you want to tap that hot piece of ass, go for it.” He’s blushing. Yeah, he’s definitely fucking blushing. There’s an odd look on Jaz’s face, then, however.
“Unless… you don’t want to tap that…? Wait, oh my god-” The confusion turns to a childish sort of glee.
“Don’t even say it-”
“You actually like him. You totally want to cook him breakfast and have him knit one of those tacky sweaters for you so you two can match like an old married couple. Oh, goodness, that’s adorable.” The glee in her voice is so perceptible that it hurts.
“Well, that changes up the game plan a little bit.” She pulls herself out of the wall, a sight Chuck still finds completely mind boggling, and claps her hands together like a five year old who just got a puppy.
“You’ve got your work cut out for you, baby boy.”
“And why is that? Because I don’t want to date him.” He doesn't even bite back at the nickname, too resigned to it at this point.
“Well, you’re gonna have quite the roadblock ahead of you, and I’m not just talking about those tacky knit sweaters of his.” She disappears with a wide, sinister grin on her face as her laughter echoes in his head, and Chuck feels a shiver run down his spine.
Jaz, he decides, is a terrible, cackling witch. Chuck can hear her laughter every time he stutters around Raleigh, their hands just barely grazing one another when they walk next to each other, just a hair’s breath too close. She seems to take great joy in poking him over it, enough where Chuck wonders just what she did before he came along for her to harass.
Raleigh seems to notice how on edge he’s been, and if Chuck weren’t so busy swatting Jaz’s lewd laughter away, he’d be touched.
He gets his answer on a Tuesday.
“I think you should just stop with this nonsense.” A male voice echoes from around a corner, down the hall from Chuck’s room.
“Come on, where’s the fun in that? Don’t tell me being dead shriveled up your sense of humor.” Jaz’s more familiar tone follows, amusement plain in her speech. There’s a loud sigh that Chuck can hear in response to that, and he can just imagine
“I don’t really see the humor in this, Jaz, and it’s not something I think you should encourage. He’s not-” Chuck doesn’t hear the end of that sentence, curiosity getting the best of him, rounding a corner and finding Jaz and the other man that he’d nearly forgotten about. The other man isn’t facing him, and over his shoulder, Jaz spies him, her mouth suddenly breaking into a wide grin.
“Ah, speak of the devil!”
Then the other guy turns to face him, and whatever snarky response Chuck was thinking up dies in his throat, because he knows that fucking face, he’s seen countless interviews and youtube videos, he knows who this is.
“Yancy Becket?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Raleigh’s here.” He says, curtly, and, oh, that makes sense. Yancy Becket, Chuck remembers, was always more quiet than Raleigh, who was a straight up puppy dog in interviews, more solemn and reasonable it seemed, but right now he’s looking at Chuck like he’s a kaiju skin louse.
“It’s why we’re both here.” That makes less sense, and before Chuck can even ask, Jaz throws an arm around Yancy’s shoulders, giving him a firm shake, seemingly know what he’s going to ask.
“I suppose you can’t see the family resemblance too much; Raleigh’s the one who’s like my opposite gendered clone.” She says, grin wide after Yancy tolerantly shrugs her off, and it takes a moment, but then it all clicks into place.
Oh.
There are a million things Chuck wants to say then, Yancy Becket is your brother? Then that means…, but the only thing that comes out of his mouth is:
“You called your brother a hot piece of ass?!” He probably could have said something more pertinent and wise than that, but, well. Yancy, Yancy fucking Becket, makes a grimace at this, throwing Jaz a sharp glance, who only smiles back, completely unapologetic.
“Hey man, there’s nothing wrong with saying that. I’m proud of him for growing up so handsome. Unlike sleeping beauty over here.” She arches her thumb over in Yancy’s direction, and the look he gives her is one of long suffering.
“Jazmine.” Yancy intones, a pained look on his face. She shoots him back an unimpressed look.
“Yancy’s mad because you want to bake Raleigh cookies and have him knit sweaters for you.” She says tonelessly, as if that fucking explains anything, crossing her arms. Chuck sputters while Yancy just sighs again.
“That is not it, Jaz, and you know it.” He steels himself, before meeting Chuck’s gaze and holding it.
“I don’t think you should get into a relationship with Raleigh.” He states with no preamble, and it throws Chuck off guard long enough for him to finish, “I don’t think you and him would… work.”
“You have a problem with me?” He says incredulously, and Yancy just crosses his arms. Chuck doesn’t even realize that he’s past the point of denying that he wants a relationship with Raleigh, and wonders for a moment if Jaz has finally broken him.
“Raleigh… he’s got a type, and that type usually leaves him worse for wear.” And Yancy just shoots a look at him that tells him flat out that he considers him to be Raleigh’s type, something that Chuck can’t stop a tiny giddy spark of glee in his soul at, before realizing that Yancy is definitely meaning it negatively.
“He’s made… bad decisions before, when it comes to relationships.” Next to him, Chuck notices Jaz just roll her eyes.
“He’s a grown ass man, I think he can make his own decisions.” Chuck retorts, suddenly feeling like he has to defend his own integrity.
“You weren’t exactly very welcoming when he first came here.” The older man throws back at him, and Chuck knows, he knows he was a right git when Raleigh came to the Shatterdome, and part of him, maybe, still feels a little guilty over it.
“If anything, you were the downright opposite. Am I supposed to believe that’s completely changed by now?”
Okay, maybe very guilty.
“Look, Becket, I’m not gonna pretend I’m a perfect bloke, but I think Raleigh can do as he pleases without you meddling.” What he says next is a low blow, he knows, but he’s too angry to care.
“It isn’t as if you can do anything anyway.” It’s meant to be a direct dig at Raleigh not being able to see them, but Yancy stiffens, the look on his face positively stormy.
“We’ll see about that, Chuck.” Behind him, Jaz has a slightly worried look on her face, as if she’s not sure who to cheer on. Part of it, Chuck knows, has to be the protective big brother complex, but right now it’s just fucking annoying. They saved the fucking world, he figures that he should get a free pass.
“You don’t have any say in his life anymore, Yancy.” Chuck adds hotly, trying not to feel too sympathetic to the stricken look on the older man’s face, before turning on his heel and walking away from them. Momentarily, he feels smug about having the last word, before a niggling doubt in the back of his mind makes him feel like he’s just made a grand mistake.
He’s right.
The shitty thing about pissing off a ghost who is also the protective older brother of your crush is that he’s a fucking ghost, and he’s not bound the to rules of the physical world like regular lowly mortals. Also, he’s an asshole.
Point being, after their shouting match, Chuck finds that a water pipe burst in his room. Right over his bed. When he’d just fallen asleep.
“FUCKING HELL.” He’s pretty sure he’s woken half of the damn hall as he stomps out of his room, soaking wet while glaring back into the now flooding room. He’s fucking freezing now, and he finds himself meeting Raleigh and Mako’s confused gazes as they peek out of their respective closet sized quarters. He’s suddenly thankful Max is with his dad for the night, because he alone looks like a sopping wet animal anyway.
“P-pipe burst.” He answers, shrugging it off as it were a random occurrence, which is something Chuck resolutely refuses to believe. Mako quirks a brow, before making a motion to some random tech passing by for a requisition form; they’ll get it fixed soon enough. Raleigh, however, looks slightly more sympathetic, and Chuck’s heart stutters slightly at the worried look on his face as he takes in Chuck’s pathetic shivering.
“Come on, I’ve got a change of clothes you can borrow. Seems like yours are all wet.” The offer is innocent enough, but Chuck can’t hide the blush forming on his face as Raleigh beckons him into his room.
“If… if you need to, you can take the bed, since your room seems a bit…” They look back in the direction of Chuck’s room, and a gush of water bubbles out onto the floor.
“...Flooded,” Raleigh finishes sheepishly.
“N-no, that’s okay, I don’t mind the floor.” Chuck doesn't fucking stutter, but even he can admit that he's maybe feeling a little flustered right now. And freezing, because it's fucking cold.
“Come on, the floor is like, solid concrete. If you don’t mind squeezing in, we can… share the bed.” The offer hangs in the air for a moment, Chuck’s face heating up while Raleigh looks abashed suddenly.
As Chuck gives a jerky, suddenly timid nod, accepting Raleigh’s spare change of clothes, he swears he can hear a masculine voice curse loudly from down the hall, followed by a woman’s cackling laugh. The knowledge that whatever Yancy did backfired so spectacularly has him flipping the bird down the hallway when Raleigh turns, a smug look on his face.
He does notice, however, how Raleigh’s spine goes rigid, just slightly, when the sounds echo down the hall, and that, Chuck thinks, smug mood instantly evaporated, is interesting.
He doesn’t know why he does it, when they both crawl into Raleigh’s small bed together, Raleigh facing the wall, but he reaches out to the other man, a hesitant hand over his side. Raleigh stiffens further, but after a moment, he relaxes, and Chuck feels a hand grasp his own, grip firm.
There’s barely any space between them anyway, but Chuck huddles forward, suddenly feeling courageous (or stupid) enough to do so, just enough to lay a soft, dry kiss to the back of Raleigh’s neck, and he can feel the other man melt right there, a contented sigh escaping him.
For now, Chuck can forget about the ghosts harassing him, can forget about Yancy forbidding this like Raleigh’s a fucking child who can’t take care of himself, and lets himself drift off into slumber, Raleigh’s evened out breathing a soothing lullaby to his ears.