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What a lot of people seem to forget is that Stacker’s been young once too.
He’s been brash, he’s set a nightclub on fire when he is twelve years old, angry and grieving still when he attacks the owner that is standing at three times his size and four times his age. He’s seen the club go up in smokes, the fire set by his hands alone. He’s been young, he’s been brash, and he’s felt satisfaction settling in his bones like lead.
He’s also been a Ranger, a co-pilot, half of the neural load of a death trap the world’s built to save itself.
Simple is not bad.
A simple puzzle is still a puzzle that needs to be solved.
Simple is—
Stacker Pentecost has never been in Charles Hansen’s head.
But he can establish a drift.
And standing there, at the end of the hallway leading towards Striker’s Conn-Pod, what Stacker means when he tells Chuck that he brings nothing into the drift is not that he is a blank slate but that he has made peace with his past. No memories that will spring into the forefront of their minds. No fear that spirals into the deepest recess of a man’s head. No rank because co-pilots are equals when they are settling into their harnesses with Stacker taking Herc’s place.
What Stacker promises Chuck is acceptance.
When a perfect neural-handshake reads out across the screens of LOCCENT, well, only Hercules Hansen is not surprised. And the reassurance is sure when it slips out between the smile faint over his lips.
“Atta, boy.”
For a kid who’s never known anything but this, Stacker is willing to bet that he shares something with Chuck. Drift compatibility is hard to come by and if there is a recipe, they are not the ideal pair.
They make do.
And they make do with Herc as the shared drift memory that grounds their own.
Their Angela Hansen, their Luna Pentecost being cast in flashes of blue just out of reach.
When Stacker carves a space out of his head to fit Chuck’s, there’s an adjustment. A shift where an exchange takes place, a give and take that Chuck mirrors like a block to his swing, a tap to his side to even the score.
Stacker believes in overcommunication.
It’s a tactic Stacker has insisted on for all of his Rangers when he’s made Marshal.
Being in someone else’s head gives you something to work with but it never gives you everything. That, you have to work for. That, you have to ask for, like everything else.
And if they’ve been in the Kwoon, instead of the mouth of the Breach, Chuck would have his bō tucked close to his side when he bows with a simple dip of his head. It’s nothing like Mako’s, it doesn’t have to be when Stacker returns it with an incline of his own.
What a lot of people tend to forget is that Chuck’s been with the PPDC since he’s twelve years old. Raised in the shadows Lucky casts across the Shatterdome floor, more by the machinery and Sydney’s crew, and less by a father and an uncle living on borrowed time.
Chuck Hansen’s not much older now. Both the anger and the grief still fuel every insult said with his teeth bared, and then every punch thrown with a clench of his fists and a clench of his jaw.
But he’s also wanted to be a Ranger for just as long.
Stacker never asks Chuck this: where would you rather die?
He doesn’t have to.
Here or in a—
Half of Striker’s system is offline and there is water leaking in from the compromised hull. Chuck overrides the system, and just as they detonate the bomb, Chuck also reminds him that he knows this machine better than anyone else in the world.
When Stacker comes to, it is Chuck Hansen sitting by his bedside with a PPDC-issued tablet in hand. Chuck is still pretty banged up himself, his entire left leg in a cast, propped up horizontal on a stool opposite to his wheel chair, his stitches itch beneath the bandages, and there is just enough meds in his system to keep him from feeling the rest.
“Mako had to step out so I took over.” Chuck tells him without looking up, and there would be a shrug too if one of his arms isn't in a sling.
“…You don’t have to.” Stacker rasps out.
“I know.”
But Chuck doesn’t leave, and Stacker drifts off once more.
The second time he opens his eyes, it is to Mako with her head resting against the edge of his bed, her hand gently placed in his.
He squeezes.
She startles awake and tries not to cry.
Easy is not bad.
Easy is—
Stacker sees Chuck again when he is out of his cast and a menace struggling around the medical ward in crutches. It is not until the doctors move Chuck into the same room that something settles like a solid weight.
Herc sits with them for most of the day. In a chair situated between both of their beds, he sifts through an armful of documents with Stacker’s occasional inputs and Chuck’s constant commentary. And sometimes if he wakes up remembering fire and smoke that isn’t always a nightclub burning in the night but Sydney instead, he can live with that too.
He has to, Chuck’s lived with it for all of his.
Stacker Pentecost is not a man that brings anything into the drift.
What he brings, well, that’s a little harder to put into words.
“So, did you really do it?”
Chuck just likes that when he asks, Stacker gives him answers.
“I was thinking motolov cocktails at first.”
As Stacker’s heard a young, brash Jaeger pilot once put it.
This is his life, it’s easy and simple, and he quite likes it this way.
XXX Kuro