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All of you get medals in the aftermath. You accept yours with the same hard, blank look you had five years ago and you stand solid for Mako. She gets two, one for herself and one accepted on behalf of Pentecost. It’s the first you’d heard of him adopting her.
Nobody mentions the slight tremble in Herc’s hands when he’s handed the medal meant for his son. Nobody blinks at the way Mako stalks out of the hall, shoulders squared and angry. Later she requests a sparring match. You indulge her and you’re amazed at how well she still manages to fight even with how hard she’s crying.
The two of you nurse matching black eyes and pints of ice cream while you watch the shittiest action flicks you can find.
xxx
In the end, you opt to stay with your copilot. No one’s surprised, even though you’re the only pair to survive long enough to have a life outside of Jagers.
The only pair to survive the war.
You settle into a traditional Japanese house on the outskirts of Tokyo, one of the few pre-Kaiju structures still there. Even five years of Alaskan weather did not prepare you for winter spent in an uninsulated house.
Mako smirks at all your bitching, wrapped in her housecoat, snarking, “You get used to it,” and she laughs at how you moan in pleasure the first time she shoves you under the kotatsu.
xxx
She’s not surprised to find you up in the middle of the night. You’re not surprised she’s awake either. You can read the remains of her nightmares in the line of her shoulders as easy as you’re sure she can read yours.
You don’t talk about it. You let her move her futon into the room with yours, and you still don’t talk about it.
It helps though.
xxx
Baseball and beer are the two things you think never changed all throughout the war. The sport still show scars -- a half collapsed stadium roof in Nagoya, games played in a roughed out field in Osaka, games shadowed by mammoth bones in Sapparo -- but as a whole, still the same.
Mako is a strident fan of the Yomiuri Giants and she punches you in the shoulder hard enough to slosh beer all down your front when you jokingly mistake them for the San Francisco Giants. She laughs though, and it’s worth having to wait to change your pants ‘til the end of the inning.
xxx
Herc asks if you’re going to get married. You laugh a bewildered, “What?” You’re not even seeing anyone.
He means married to Mako. The idea is so completely absurd that it had never even occurred to you.
“We drifted together,” you say by way of explanation.
“And that’s the most intimate thing you can do with someone,” he shoots back without missing a beat.
He has a point but -- “I drifted with my brother. You drifted with your son. None of that ended in marriage.”
The line of his jaw hardens and he looks away. You do the same, muttering an apology. You’ve had years to mourn, but he’s had only months and you know how hard it is to lose someone you’ve drifted with.
xxx
The exact nature of your relationship with Mako stays at the front of your mind, a constant question that you have no answer for. You love her, you’d do anything for her. You know each other inside and out and you couldn’t bare to not have her in your life.
You ask her on a date and it’s just like every other time the two of you go out to eat. You go to kiss her and your lips end up brushing her forehead instead. She leans into your side as you walk home, your arm around her shoulders and hers around your waist, and it’s so close to the way you and your brother would stumble back after a night of drinking.
You collapse into your paired futons. She says, “You’d make a shitty boyfriend,” and then she cackles when you try to kick her under the covers.