Chapter Text
Anchorage, Alaska
“I don’t like you ambushing him, Jack,” said Alana over the lashing rain, the hum of the car engine and the steady thwick thwick of the windshield wipers.
Jack Crawford gripped the wheel tighter, as if that could smooth the gravel road they’d turned onto. Or smooth the inevitable explosion to come.
“I need him, Alana.”
Alana pressed her lips tight.
“If...if you convince him, by some miracle, to come back to the program, how long do you think he’ll last?” Alana said quietly. “Are you really willing to drag him back into a Jaeger after what happened four years ago? Losing a co-pilot is a serious trauma, Jack. You should know.”
Jack scowled, his face like thunder.
“I know,” he murmured, barely audible over the torrential spring rain hammering on the car. “But Will Graham didn’t lose his co-pilot, Alana. And no one can do what he does. I need you in my court.”
Alana worked her coat button over in her fingers. Ethics of her graduate and postgraduate days seemed less and less important in this new world-torn world. If the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps and Marshal Jack Crawford needed a Ranger, even if that Ranger was a traumatized veteran better left to an isolated life as a mechanic on decommissioned Jaegers, they’d stop at nothing to get that Ranger.
It didn’t help that the Ranger in question was Will Graham.
“I failed his psych eval four years ago,” Alana said, staring out at the dark pines illuminated by the headlights along the gravel drive.
She had the fleeting fear of meeting a bear or a moose out in the woods here. Alaska didn’t sit right with her. Too wild.
“We have better tech. Better doctors. He’s had four years of quiet, maybe he’s not the same man you remember,” Jack said.
“Maybe,” said Alana.
Finally, a pinprick of light flickered through the trees. As the drive curved, the light resolved into the warm glow of a small log cabin. She could just make out an old pickup truck parked in front of a barn behind the house. In the cabin window, a dark shape flashed.
“Neither of us knows what we’re going to find in there,” Alana warned as Jack parked the car behind Will Graham’s truck. “Be delicate.”
Over the deafening pattern of rain, a door slammed.
“Oh, shit,” Alana gasped.
Out on the covered porch, Will Graham stood with a shotgun pointed right at them. He looked wilder and rougher than she remembered. When she’d met him half a decade ago, plucked out of Homicide in New Orleans, he’d had neatly brushed, boyish hair and a devastatingly sharp jaw with the occasional five o-clock shadow. He’d been gorgeous and dangerous and she’d wanted him to the point where she couldn’t stand to be in the same room alone with him.
This was Will Graham, unmoored. His hair curled wildly over his forehead, not any longer than before but no longer smoothed down. He sported a close-trimmed beard, a thick flannel, and a canvas coat over it. If she didn’t know for a fact that they were meeting Will Graham, she might have failed to connect this back country man with the one who’d worn tight crewnecks and slim military cargo pants and combat boots, looking like a soldier.
Her pulse thrummed.
Jack steadied her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “It’s not pointed at us. Just a warning. For show. But just in case, stay in the car until I bring you out.”
Alana nodded jerkily.
“Careful,” she breathed.
Jack huffed. “Always am.”
Jack wasn’t careful, he was pathologically self-assured. He shut the engine off, plunging the barn and trees ahead back into darkness. Will Graham’s porch light weakly glinted off the slick shapes until rain smothered her sightline through the windshield. Jack got out of the car, unfurling his enormous golf umbrella to shield his nice camel trench coat and fedora from the worst of the rain. The thick scent of rain and pine trees and something more animalic rushed in with the deafening roar of rain. Vaguely, she could make out a chorus of dogs barking.
“Marshal Crawford,” Will Graham called from the porch.
The light glowed around his wild curls like a halo. His electric stare pierced the dark and held Jack there like a butterfly pinned in a display case. Like one of Hannibal’s little curios in his old office at Hopkins.
“Will Graham,” said Jack, tipping his head in a somber greeting. “Can we come in?”
“We?” Will said, lifting his gun an inch, peering through the rain for a sign of life in the car.
Alana tensed. Jack swung around the other side of the car, though why he thought it was safe or sane for her to get out with a gun pointed at her head, she’d never understand. The rain soaked the bottom hem of her trousers instantly. Mud squelched under her heeled boots. Why’d Alaska have to be so damn cold? She missed the warmth of Hong Kong.
“I trust you’ve met Dr. Bloom, Mr. Graham,” said Crawford. “I think she’d like to get out of the rain.”
With a heavy exhale, Will lowered the gun. He jerked his head for them to follow and slipped back inside to the agitated dogs. Alana and Jack followed, both eying the dogs warily. Mingled scents of gun or engine oil, coffee, and a masculine aftershave hung over the fainter scent of dogs.
“Tch,” Will commanded. “Stay.”
The dogs fell absolutely silent upon the strangers entering the cabin. Alana counted seven of mostly the same sleek, sporty build she saw around these parts. Their eyes tracked them as Will pointed her and Jack to two chairs by a crackling wood-burner.
Alana and Jack wiped their feet on the doormat to keep the mud out. The cabin screamed comfortable, eternal bachelorhood. Living, dining, and small kitchen in one. Rustic. A complete mishmash of furniture. Shockingly, she spotted a bed on the other side of the living room with a dresser. Did he sleep in there?
“Hope you aren’t allergic,” Will said, shrugging off his coat.
“Nope,” said Jack.
Alana shook her head. “Me neither.”
“Good.”
The dogs didn’t move, even as Alana took a low-slung mid-century lounger in mustard bouclé and Jack settled in a wooden captain’s chair. It groaned under his weight. The cheery fire chased away the chill that found her between the car and the cabin and Alana melted into its halo of heat.
While Will — gun still in hand — milled around the dogs, disbursing treats of some sort to settle them down, Alana glanced around the main space. There were hallmarks of backcountry living, including a mounted fish, a vertical rack of fishing rods, and a desk with a magnifying glass and a little feathered object under it. She spotted two shotgun racks, and with a small sense of unease saw them both empty. Some kind of disassembled motor lay right next to her chair.
Despite the overall effect of general clutter in Will’s cabin, on second look, the place was spotless. Neither her chair nor the loveseat cutting the fireplace area off from the rest of room had any dog hair on it. No dust. No clothes strewn around. No books forgotten except a copy of The Oresteia with a single dog-ear on the loveseat. Even Will’s bed in the middle of the room had hospital corners on the blanket. Order and chaos and order again.
Consumed by the details of the space and everything they said about Will Graham, Alana startled when Will collapsed on the loveseat, legs spread, shotgun over his lap. His body belied no tension while his eyes, dark as the roiling Pacific, sent a wild current down her spine as they focused on her. Dangerous, some primal part of her brain supplied. Attraction and fear swirled like a miasma.
“Nice to see ya, Dr. Bloom,” Will said, wry smile on his lips.
She remembered Will’s eerie perceptiveness, and wondered if and when he’d clocked her attraction. If he was taunting her with it. Unkind, Alana, she chastised herself. Most people didn’t treat human interactions like some grand game of chess. Will was traumatized. A survivor.
“How are you, Will?” she asked.
The smile faded into a quick huff of air through the nose.
“As well as I can be,” he said. He unfolded from the loveseat with silent grace, setting his shotgun aside. “Drink?”
He arched his brow at Jack and Alana in turn in question, poised by the side table littered in bottles of amber liquid in various states of consumption.
“One finger, I’m driving,” Jack agreed.
Alana shook her head. “I’m more of a beer girl.”
At that, Will grinned. Deep lines carved his cheeks, transforming his face from all sweeping angles to something brilliantly boyish.
“I got a brown ale in the fridge if you like. It’s really for —” He abruptly stopped. “I can get you some water, if not.”
“Ale’s fine,” she said.
Will nodded and poured two glasses of some unfamiliar bottle of whiskey that had a green circle on the label. One small serving, which he handed to Jack, and a generous half-glass for himself, which he left on the liquor table while he rifled in the fridge for her beer.
She found herself unwinding, eased by Jack, Will’s gentle hospitality, and the lack of gun in his hands. Maybe Jack had been right. Maybe the withdrawn, nervous, and unstable Will Graham who never looked anyone in the eye didn’t exist anymore.
Her eyes trailed over his book collection which, except for the texts on cooking seafood or boat motors, fit better with the eclectic, elevated tastes of her old mentor than a blue-collar veteran Ranger with too many dogs. Will came back with the bottle and a bottle opener and popped it open in front of her. The gesture eased her again and the beer was smooth and cold and oaky. Nice to sip while the fire flushed her face pink, leaving her skin hot and tight.
“Sorry about the gun, Dr. Bloom. Black government car comes up to my house in the night with no warning...doesn’t put a man at ease,” he said.
“Understandable,” said Jack. “Whiskey’s good. Smooth.”
Alana didn’t like that Jack had answered for her, though he was right. It was understandable, especially for a man like Will Graham, hounded by reporters. Will’s sharp glance Jack’s way suggested he wasn’t any more pleased by Jack speaking for Alana than Alana was.
“Well, if a man has a vice it might as well cost enough to keep him honest,” Will said, a little of his drawl creeping through.
He settled back into the loveseat with his glass. Alana watched the shift of muscle with hopefully clinical detachment. Pilot. Ranger. He has to be in good shape.
“Amen to that,” Jack said.
Will grinned again. With two clicks of his tongue the previously still dogs scrambled to life. A small brown and white terrier immediately leapt into Will’s lap. Will pet him absently with one hand while he downed whiskey sip by steady sip with the other. Both hands were bare, even four years later.
A sleek black dog sniffed around Alana’s knees, while another sniffed at her shoes. A big black and tan dog with blue eyes milled around Jack. Two more dogs of the same husky-esque size and build sniffed around, though they were all rather coarsely short-coated. Unmoving on the other side of the room sat a lovely, fluffy brindled chestnut mutt.
“These all yours?” Alana asked.
“I adopt some out when the right people come by. Most of these guys are newly retired sled dogs. This is is Buster,” Will said, pointing to terrier in his lap. “Kodiak, Leila, Gellert, Hawk, Trouble and then Winston over there.”
“They’re well trained,” she said.
Will’s lip twitched as he pet Buster, now more settled. “They’re alright. Trouble’s new and a shaky little demon and Buster runs after rabbits, but I can’t blame ‘em for their instincts.”
Alana smiled, but itched to get to the point of the conversation. Will beat her to it.
“What brings you and Dr. Bloom all the way out of Hong Kong to my house in the middle of damn nowhere, Alaska, unannounced, at nine on a Tuesday?” said Will conversationally. “Gut tells me nothing good.”
Jack didn’t approach Will’s inquiry directly.
“It’s been a while, Mr. Graham,” said Jack. “How’s Alaska treating you?”
“Two years since we spoke. You took issue with my proposal,” Will frowned. “As for Alaska, me and the dogs both like the quiet. And though I have a few guesses, I want to know what kind of business you have disrupting my quiet.”
“We’re here on PPDC business,” Alana said.
“We have a new influx out by Hong Kong,” Jack said. “I expect we’ll have a leak sooner or later to the press —” Will distinctly muttered Freddie under his breath — “but for now it’s under wraps.”
“How bad?”
“Two Category Threes in six days,” Jack said.
Will let out a low whistle.
“You moving teams out there? Jaegers?” Will asked. “You got enough?”
“We have enough Jaegers.”
Will’s expression shuttered.
“You low on pilots?” he asked, low and dark.
“Thanks to your brush with fame —” Will scoffed — “we have a surplus of unpaired rookies. And thanks to the last hit six months ago, a surplus of unpaired veterans.”
“Jesus, Marshal,” Will breathed. He knocked back the rest of his whiskey and restless, dislodged Buster to pour himself an even larger glass. “How many?”
“More than thirty total,” Jack said.
“A bunch of trumped up cocky rookies with no drift partners and a bag of washed up vets who’ve lost half of themselves,” Will ground out. He drank. Barked a harsh, dark, laugh, and drank again. “I told you two years ago to focus on loosening the drift requirements. Spend time making it so that the copilot bond wasn’t so deep, so...obliterating. So that when you lose your partner, because we lose partners all the time, it doesn’t cut you in half.”
“We’ve tried, Mr. Graham —”
“It’s Will,” he snapped.
“—Will. We’ve tried. I know we had our disagreements but I respect your opinion and after Miriam, I tried.”
Will’s smile despaired.
“Whatever we’ve tried, the Jaeger’s operate best with extremely high drift compatibility,” Alana butted in. “You’re the only one — the only pilot in the whole program — who can do that with anyone.”
Will stared at her, then Jack. He looked haunted. Alana imagined something like, don’t you think I know that? on the tip of his tongue.
“You know that’s not drifting,” Will said, voice gone rough.
Alana blinked, taken aback. Will never spoke about whatever made him able to pilot with just about anyone. “What would you call it?”
He opened his mouth as if to answer, but seemed to think better of it.
“What do you need from me, Marshal?” he said, the words caught on an exhale.
“I need to borrow your mind for a while,” Jack said.
“Just my mind?” Will sneered. “For what, matching up pilots? You have a whole team of shrinks — sorry Dr. Bloom — perfectly qualified to do that.”
“Dr. Bloom and our other psychologists and psychiatrists can read the evaluations and the reports, sure,” Jack conceded. “But only you can connect.”
Will’s jaw twitched in displeasure.
“Jack,” Alana warned.
Will crossed his arms over his chest, staring at Jack unblinking.
“Drift’s bad for me,” Will said. “You know what happened last time.”
“I won’t put you in anything long term, not like Hobbs. We have tons of candidates you can choose yourself. All on rotation, so you don’t get in too deep. Hell, maybe you can figure out how to pair them off and spare yourself,” said Jack.
Will sucked in a sharp breath and flinched away from them both, rubbing his face in his hands as if to clear the sticky ooze of their presence in his home as it clung to him like coagulating blood.
“Will, I need you. The PPDC needs you. Damn, the whole world needs you. You’re a damn fine Ranger and you’ve got a first-rate mind. I won’t let it crack,” said Crawford.
Will ran his hands across his face.
“I know I’m one of the best veterans you got but I’m still a veteran. Whole rabble of issues. Left arm’s shot. There’s a reason I only do mechanics now,” Will barked, avoiding Alana and Crawford’s eyes in a way he hadn’t done since they arrived.
It jolted Alana’s memory of the mercurial young Ranger Graham, all shy smiles and strange steeliness. Too rough and too soft all at once. She pulled a long draught of beer, absently petting a black-haired dog whose name she couldn’t quite remember. Kodiak, maybe?
“We can make sure you’ve got counseling in addition to the regular brain scans and physicals,” Alana said.
“And get another person digging around in my brain?” Will snapped.
“I know you don’t like therapy, but it could really help you if you let it.”
“Therapy doesn’t work on me, Dr. Bloom,” he said.
“You can bring a dog,” Jack said.
That brought Will up short.
“Fuckin’ hell.”
He downed the last of his second drink, looking as sober as he had before the first one. High tolerance. Regular drinker. Not an alcoholic. Not yet, and if he has anything to say about it, not ever. Will rubbed his face and beard and neck again before titling his head to the beamed ceiling and letting his eyes flutter shut.
“We’re moving Shrike on Thursday,” Jack said.
And just like that, Jack had hooked Will Graham. No, not hooked. No hook, no line, no sinker for this slippery fish. Just scooped him out of the water with no care as to what came up with the net. Dog, Jaeger. That was all it took to push Will Graham out of retirement.
“She’s not operational,” Will protested.
“She will be,” Jack said. “We have a dedicated team for conn-pod repairs in addition to the larger upgrades. Alana and I are leaving tomorrow. We hope you’ll be on that flight with us.”
Will’s expression shuttered.
“I won’t be on that flight, Marshal,” Will said, and that was the end of that.
Alana frowned. They’d had him. She’d eaten her words to Jack. She’d been sure.
“Will, please,” she started.
“I’d thank you for coming out here if I meant it,” he said. “It was nice seeing you, Dr. Bloom, but I think it’s best you and the Marshal be leaving now.”
“Will you think about it?” Alana asked, smoothing her coat as she stood.
Will took her half-empty bottle, smiling wry and dispirited. He took Jack’s glass and his own in his other hand, pinched together between two fingers. His jaw worked silently as he poured out Alana’s beer and rinsed out the glasses in the kitchen sink.
“With you two coming here?” Will said, funereal. “I’ll be thinking about whether I want to or not.”
“You’re needed, Will,” Jack said. The dogs milled around in a swirl of fur and wet noses brushing against hands. “It’s not the same scale of people you saved on the police force. It’s the whole damn world.”
Will’s expression stormy and unreadable, he took Jack’s offered hand by the front door and shook it. He shook Alana’s too, though he gave her a small smile. His warm, rough palm sent a jolt of heat up her arm. She wondered if, like Hannibal Lecter, he was just throwing her off her guard with flirtation in some grand game of chess she wasn’t quite privy to.
“I hope I see you again, Will,” she said, smiling back with her head tilted slightly.
“Bye Dr. Bloom, bye Marshal Crawford,” was all Will said before leaving them to the cold downpour outside.
The door closing sounded like a shotgun blast.
“He’s coming,” Alana said when she settled in the car and buckled her seatbelt. Her coat and pants were wet again. “He just wants us to think it was his idea in the first place.”
Jack chuckled. “He can think what he wants, as long as he’s in a Jaeger. You did good in there. No shouting.”
“No, you did good,” Alana said. As Jack started the car and it rumbled onto the water-logged road, she felt something cold settle in her. “Oh. I was your bait.”
Jack didn’t say anything.
“It wasn’t me, Jack. It was Requiem Shrike,” Alana said.