Chapter Text
He stands, waist-deep, in a field of poppies.
The sensation of soft petals brushing his fingertips is a familiar one, as he reaches out around him. It’s only late May, but summer is already in the air; a breeze rolls through and cools the thin layer of sweat on his skin from standing under the sun. The light, citrus scent of poppies mingles with the warm, sugary aroma of his mother’s homemade apple pie, wafting from the open door of the little cottage sitting perhaps fifty yards away. Dad's barbeque-ing in the back yard; black tendrils of smoke invades the tiny circle of sky above him as he lies down.
Footsteps on the front porch. “Dinner’s ready!” He can imagine his harried-looking mother standing there with flour on her hands and arms and blending into her blonde hair.
“Ok!” He yells back, his nine year old voice ringing high and clear through the air. Only when he hears the screen door slam shut does he relax back into the grass, his field of vision lined on all sides by green and red.
The smell of flowers lulls him into a kind of trance, so he almost misses it—his ears barely register the whirring noise above, growing louder by the second, before three black shapes whiz by his little patch of blue. He shrugs and closes his eyes, focusing on the poppies filling his nose again; it’s probably just reinforcements, for California or something.
Vaguely, he hears something break inside, then shoes running against hardwood floors; his mother evidently doesn’t share his calm.
He frowns in annoyance as she runs into the field, her voice frantic. “Sweetheart, come inside! Honey, where are you?!”
He opens her mouth to tell her to relax, he’d be there in a minute, and the big scary planes didn’t do anything to him-
“Abigail!”
His eyes shoot open.
It’s 5:26pm, and he is in Cloquet Valley, Minnesota. His name is Will Graham.
Except it’s not 5:26pm, and he doesn’t really know where he is.
The skin that rests against the grass isn’t his. He doesn’t know who those people are.
And this is not his memory.
The poppies and the cottage and the sky all fade into a white mist full of white noise, and all he hears before the roar of voices drowns everything out is the mother(not his), voice tense with desperation. “Abigail! Abigail!!”
Abigail…!
“How many of you have seen a real live Kaiju?”
Will Graham straightens his glasses as about a quarter of the class before him raise their hands. Not an overabundance of first-hand experience.
“How many of you have lost someone because of a Kaiju?” The rest of the hands tentatively creep up to the join ones already in the air. A class of sentimental people who can’t move on, then. The man in the second row fiddles absentmindedly with his wedding ring, thinking about the wife he’d likely lost in an attack. The woman sitting behind him is furiously scribbling in her notebook even though he’s said a grand total of about twenty words. This is ok. He can handle this. He’s not teaching them to become pilots.
Will clicks a button on the remote in his hands, and as the lights in the classroom dim, an image of a Kaiju is projected onto the wall behind him. “Who can tell me what this creature is called and where it landed?”
Several eager hands shoot into the air. He squints through the darkness while his eyes adjust and ends up picking a figure at random. “Category two, code name Saber Tooth, Lima 2023.” A tense woman’s voice answers.
“And what made this attack special?”
“Saber aimed directly for Serenity Smoke’s plasma ray, which had killed several other Kaijus over the months before. It was one of the first times a Kaiju showed evidence of learning from past battles with Jaegers; the only evidence before this,” a short but pregnant pause, “was the incident in Shanghai the previous year.”
When he can see the young woman’s sharp brown eyes, Will nods approvingly at her. “Very good. After this attack, we started to realize that the Kaiju were following more than just natural instincts.” With his fingers he clicks through more slides, photos of increasingly menacing-looking Kaijus, “They were smart; or, at least, the ones who controlled them were. The Kaiju began to change, develop weapons targeted at the Jaegers with repeat victories. A custom evolution to bring humanity down.”
“What about Shanghai? If there was evidence of Kaiju learning, why didn’t people realize it then?” Someone at the back asks.
Will clears his throat. “You’ll have to refer to the text for details on that.”
“But you were there, weren’t you, Professor Graham?” He spots him, then, a young man with white blond hair sitting at the far left corner of the room. “Can’t you tell us what happened?”
He’s suddenly very glad for the darkness; otherwise seventy people would be able to see the expression that question put on his face. When he blinks he can see snowflakes behind his eyelids, drifting through the open conn-pod. The calm woman’s voice barely registering over the incessantly blaring alarm in his ears: ‘Warning. Rocket jammed. Rocket jammed.’
“You,” He points to the young man, who is visibly startled to be addressed directly. “Why are you in this class?”
After the brief moment of shock passes, the student straightens in his chair and brushes back hair from his eyes. “The Shanghai attack killed my entire family, sir; I’d like to-” He pauses, frowning.
“Avenge them?” Will tilts his head down to scrutinize him through the top of his glasses; he knows this makes him seem older and more intimidating. “I’m afraid that’s going to be quite impossible.” The young man deflates a little in his seat as he turns to address the rest of his class, “As for the rest of you, my classroom is not a place for closure. If you’re expecting to hear long, inspiring tales of war that will fill you with retribution, please do all of us a favour and get out.”
Naturally, no one leaves their seat, but Will suspects he will likely lose half of the class throughout the semester. Many take this course because they remember seeing his name on the news, only to drop out when they realize he won’t thrill them with stories from his pilot days.
“This is not a combat course. My aim is not to arm you against the Kaiju, but to help you understand them. To place you inside their hive mentality, and see what makes them tick.” He flips back to the original image of Saber Tooth. “This is the moment we started to really pay attention to the Kaiju’s patterns of action, and this is where the behavioural science comes in. If you’ll kindly open your textbooks to page 394, you’ll see the most comprehensive behaviour chart for the Kaiju known to humankind, sorted by category and sex…”
The rest of the lecture passes by with no more interruptions, though Will can see in the slightly reproachful eyes of some of the students that they will not be returning. He’s gathering loose notes into his messenger bag as the classroom empties when he hears hesitant footsteps approach.
“Professor Graham?” It’s the frantic note-taker.
Will acknowledges her with a nod, but goes back to packing up. “Yes?”
“I just…I was there, in Shanghai in ‘22.” She must see him stiffen, because she lets out a gasp and raises her hands. “Oh no, I don’t want to pry at all! I know how difficult it must have been for you, with what happened with your Jaeger and all.”
He looks up at her eyes, large and nervous on her face. “Thank you, miss…?”
“Kimball.” She smiles warmly, “You probably don’t remember me, but you saved my son and I that day at the pier. You’re the reason I decided to take this class.”
Will tries to smile back, but what ends up on his face feels like a grimace. “Well, I hope you’ll find it educational. Please don’t hesitate to come to me for help.”
“Thank you so much.” She shakes his hand with a strength that surprises him, and walks away while Will fastens the clasp on his bag. Before she reaches the doorway, however, he hears the sound of bodies colliding. “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there!”
“Not at all, it was my fault entirely.” The deep voice that replies makes Will freeze in his tracks. He keeps his head firmly down on the table as the owner of said voice walks toward him, clad in the military-issue dress shoes Will had always hated. “Hello, Will.”
He doesn’t reply, simply raises his eyes to level a stare at the other man.
“A teaching post, huh? I thought you’d have left the field altogether.”
“I’m just talking at them about behavioural science, not teaching them to pilot Jaegers.”
The man lets out a hum of appreciation and comes closer. “And how are you, Will? You lost touch after Shanghai; you won’t believe the strings I had to pull to find you here.”
“I guess it has been a while.” Will realizes he’s gripping the strap of his bag too tight, and lets go, feeling the tingle spread through his fingers. “How’s-” He stops himself a moment too late, wincing at the awkward silence that follows.
“You were about to ask about Bella?”
“I apologize, I know it must be a tough subject for you.”
“We had it coming for a while.” Now that he really looks at him, Jack Crawford seems to have gotten much older during the eight years in which they hadn’t spoken. He’s lost weight, there’s more white in his hair than otherwise, and the pallor of the grey sallow skin perpetually under his eyes has crept over the rest of his body. “It was… she went peacefully, in the end. We weren’t hoping for any more than that.”
“I really am sorry, Jack.”
“I know, Will. Thank you.” With a quick cough he dismisses the subject and comes forward. Will finds himself backing up automatically. “You never answered my question. How are you?”
He chuckles. “Oh, you know. Keeping sane. Moulding the bright young minds of the future, and all that.” He has a gnawing suspicion about why the other man was really here, that suspicion growing increasingly likely as the seconds pass. Will sighs and takes off his glasses. “What do you want from me, Marshal?”
“There’s no need to be so defensive; I’m only asking how my old friend is doing these days.” He says, a little smile on his face. “This job pay well? Are you living comfortably?”
Will finds himself in no mood for all this roundabout bureaucratic nonsense, but he supposes he can’t really blame a man like Jack for something that’s all but become the man’s second nature. “You’re asking if I’m stable enough to pilot.” Jack doesn’t look surprised to have been seen through.
“What would you say if I was?”
“I’d tell you to go through your address book again, Jack.” He picks up the bag from the table and starts toward the exit. “If you’re looking for a demonstration for another one of your museums, there are plenty of other ex-pilots available.” As he passes Jack, Will catches a glimpse of the other man’s eyes; there’s an intensity there that almost makes him pause.
“This isn’t for a demonstration, Will.”
He stops with his hand on the door handle, taking a deep breath in and out before turning around. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying-”
“What do you think I’m saying?” Jack’s calm is getting infuriating.
His heart is starting to pound in his chest, and he wills it to slow down. “Check your calendar, Jack; the war’s over. There hasn’t been a Kaiju sighted since ’25.”
Jack pulls a file from the inside pocket of his jacket and hands it to Will. “After we nuked the Breach, the United Nations pulled together money to place radiation probes around the site, just in case. Three days ago, we got a report from Manila.” He opens the file, and Jack points to the graph of spectral signatures. “This is what they detected. And this,” he flips the page and points to another graph. “is a signature they picked up off of Yamarashi in Los Angeles in 2017.”
“They’re the same.”
Neither of them speak for a very long time.
“Where is it now?” Will finally asks, his mouth suddenly dry.
“Roaming the sea floor, mostly. It’s been wandering, but goes back through the Breach once in a while.”
“It’s scouting,” Will says, “What we did to the Breach five years ago must have been pretty devastating to their population. Now they’re cautious; they want to check the area for threats before moving back in.” He frowns at Jack. “And the reason you’re sneaking around like this is because the higher-ups want to keep things quiet?”
“We’re not making a public statement until we can figure out what this thing wants.”
Will feels his anger rising. “What it wants is revenge. And you do realize by the time you people have ‘figured this out’ it’ll be a little hard to keep from the public?”
Jack rubs the corners of his tired eyes, sighing. “It’s been five years, Will. People have moved on with their lives. If I go out there right now and tell them the Kaiju are coming back, there’ll be mass hysteria.”
Will hands back the file, “Why do you want me for this, anyway? You’ve got the Vergers in Alaska, Bloom and Katz in San Francisco; they’re all excellent pilots.”
“But you have a special skill set, don’t you Will?” Jack presses, “Your empathic abilities make you a very unique candidate for drift compatibility.”
“It’s not so much a skill set as it is an overactive imagination.”
Jack smiles, and in that moment Will knows he won’t leave without the answer he wants. “Your overactive imagination allows you to drift with practically anyone. That’s nothing to scoff at.” The other man manoeuvres to place himself between Will and the door. “And you are an excellent pilot; top of your class at the academy, and certainly one of the best in the field.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, Jack.” He tries to walk around, but Jack moves to block his way continuously.
“Look, do you really think I’d come here out of anything short of necessity?” Jack still holds the file in his hands, and he points it at Will. “I’ve been running around for the last three days gathering up all the pilots still out there. If you can drift with one of them, that’s one more team we’ll have at our disposal. This is all hands on deck.” The other man raises his hands in a gesture of surrender, “I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but I’ve never known you to turn your back on the people who need you. And we need you, Will.”
“Come on, Will, I need you here!”
It’s 9:07am, he is in Duluth, Minnesota. And the scene playing out in front of him is not real.
Blood, warm and slippery on his skin, slips through his fingers as he desperately tries to keep a grip. Her glassy eyes look up at him, but she is not here. She is not bleeding out on the kitchen floor of her house from a slit on the side of her neck.
He looks to his left, where the man lies slumped against the cabinets, bullet holes like buttons lined neatly down his torso. His vision is blocked by spots of red staining his glasses.
“You see?”
“Will, stay with me!” He turns his attention back down as she gasps, and she is not here.
“Will!”
It’s 3:12pm, he is in Quantico, Virginia. And his name is most assuredly Will Graham.
Jack is looking at him expectantly. He wants a decision. With a resigned sigh he takes the file from him again and flips through the pages he hasn’t gotten to. There are data compilations, pilot profiles with grainy photos, and notes on the basic layout of a battle station.
“We’ve set up a base in Guam,” Jack says, “A lot of the civilian population cleared out after the attack in ’14, and it’s close to the Breach.”
“How many do you have?”
“Jaegers? Twenty. More if I want them.” The other man pauses, giving Will a significant look. “It’s pilots I’m short on.”
“This guy you’re hitching me to,” He goes through pages of unfamiliar faces, trying to find the one. “I assume we’ll be operating his machine?”
Jack shakes his head. “His jaeger was damaged in battle just before it was decommissioned; they never got around to fixing it. I’m told his old partner was injured and is now retired. You and he will be piloting the Mongoose.”
“It’ll be good to see her again.” Will looks up at him with the beginnings of a smile, and Jack returns it. “So who am I riding with, then? Who’s my co-pilot?”
There’s a triumphant set to Jack’s mouth as he speaks. “What do you know about a man named Hannibal Lecter?”