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Sasha spent her free time in the most public places of the Shatterdome: the kwoon, the mess hall, the jaeger bays. Places where the shape of Mako’s body and the flow of her movements were free and shared, woven into the pattern of dozens or hundreds of other bodies. Her wide, unconscious arcs around Chuck, the jerk of her shoulders when she laughed with Hu, the wide smile when Sasha beckoned her to a nearby seat at lunch. She and Mako and Alexis ate silently, watching each other’s faces as they listened to the conversations of the technicians and pilots and operators around them.
That was what Sasha allowed herself, and it made her happy.
She had once seen Mako in a private moment with Marshall Pentecost, in the corner of a quiet hallway. They spoke in words too low to hear, but Mako’s voice was bright and happy. Pentecost had reached out a hand and gently gripped her shoulder. Mako had stood up straighter and taken a step closer. Sasha had immediately looked away and silently apologized for the intrusion as she walked past and left them behind.
She had once seen Mako alone in the jaeger bay. Sasha was leaning against the balcony, watching her across the way. Mako was circling Lady Danger on scaffolding about halfway up, making notes on the restoration progress. The jaeger’s arm was bare – stripped away to the bones and sinew – and she’d seen Mako stop taking notes, gently put down her pad, and reach out to press her palm to a cable that was almost as big around as she was. In the silence of the empty bay Sasha had heard her sigh, or imagined it. She did not look away for a very long time.
"She’s beautiful," she’d once told her husband, and that was all she’d needed to say because he’d seen the full definition in the Drift. "Beautiful" was shorthand for thoughts she could not put into words.
"She is," he agreed. "And very young."
She hugged his arm and sighed, because “young” was also shorthand.
~ ~ ~
For a long time, Mako thought it was because Sasha was a jaeger pilot: her fascination with Sasha, and the satisfaction of being near her. Look at her gesturing, at the way that she leans. She favors the right side of her body; she is the right-side pilot of Cherno Alpha. At lunch, when they listened but did not talk, and at other times, when Mako listened and Sasha did not know she was there, Mako still felt engaged. This strong presence: is it because of the Drift? Or is it the other way around? And she realized she wanted to Drift with Sasha. For someone who had never Drifted it was very hard to imagine what it might be like, but even so her fantasy never progressed passed the neural handshake to deployment, to the battle, to revenge. She imagined their initial connection, and–
Mako’s room was lined with schematics, and spare parts, and swords, and it made her happy when people associated these things with her. It made her light up inside, the idea that in some way she was her passions. But there were also cat figurines, and patches that had not yet been sewn onto jackets or bags and probably never would be, and there was a section of her shelf devoted to books on architecture. She’d only read one or two of them; they were “someday” books, “after this is over” books. She’d taken a very long walk around the Shatterdome on the day she’d realized that nobody associated her with architecture.
How to touch someone’s cheek and brush their lips with a kiss was something she’d learned long before Jaeger Academy. To press in against Sasha and feel the curve of her hips, to hold her hand and feel the rings on her fingers (the wedding ring among them) was a distant idea. It was there. It didn’t quite fit. She had to at least learn how to Drift first.
But when she saw Sasha in the kwoon one day, when Sasha lingered after the training had ended, Mako approached her. She held her staff out on both hands before her. “I have never seen you train here.”
Sasha remained leaning, her right shoulder against the wall. “I train. Not here.” She was staring at Mako’s hands. “Not my style.”
Mako nodded, and returned the staff to its rack, and left.