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Before the Kaiju War, there had been time to invest in things as frivolous as horoscopes. They were often worded so vaguely as to mean very little. No advice that was more than prudent, only ‘This month will be one of opportunity’, or ‘Expect a period of emotional upheaval soon’.
The first time they met was in a period of emotional upheaval.
Her voice was already hoarse from crying, feet tired and blistered from walking on broken pavement with a single shoe. Her parents were gone, lost in the clamor and destruction of the Kaiju attack.
She didn’t know what to do. Sobs and cries did nothing as she crawled over rubble and stumbled through streets. Everyone had fled the Kaiju, and she was alone. Not a soul to help her, to tell her to hide when the Kaiju came her way. Sadness turned to terror, and she raised a small hand to hold off the assault she knew was about to come.
The dark abyss of death never came. Confused and frightened, she walked out to meet her savior.
He saved her in more ways than one.
The first time they met was the calm in the storm.
She had expected something different. More rugged, more heroic. More like her father than this sad man that seemed all jaded exhaustion. She was Mako Mori, the best and brightest of the program. She had more than restored Gipsy Danger, she had rebuilt and improved upon it. That this man, the only other one living to have ever piloted a Jaeger alone could lack heroism… Mako did not allow her disappointment to show for long. After all, he had done amazing things in the past. Perhaps he just needed coaxing to show those skills once more.
That man shared her fear, her anger and her sadness. He watched her lose everything, as he had once lost it all.
He saved her in more ways than one.
Before the Kaiju War, there was all the time in the world to learn and to grow. Learning experiences came only as they were sought out, or delivered by rote. When fighting the Kaiju, however, one had to learn every moment, or be overcome.
Wooden sticks clicked together, following a rhythm set by their experience and their skill. Mako knew it was not enough. He had promised her that one day she would have the experience to pilot a Jaeger, but the slight frown on his lips concerned her. Was she dishonoring him by not learning quickly enough? She would be better, faster.
She did not expect him to stop her when she pressed harder. He reminded her that this exercise was not a fight. The goal was not to win, but to show compatibility in mental faculties.
From then on, Mako saved her competitive spirit for fencing and engineering. As much as she could. Both she and her father knew that she could work well above and beyond those she practiced ‘dialogue’ with.
In the end, he taught her.
They had to learn, or they would die.
Mako had not expected that she would need to learn so very much. She was already their best, their brightest. Raleigh had picked her out, and her father had acquiesced, allowed her into Gipsy Danger. When he had felt that spark, that hint of loss, however, Mako had followed it into her own anguish. She had not anticipated that difficulty, not realized that she would have to learn to move past it. They had gone into the Drift, and Mako had never really understood what that cooperation would be like, the new neural pathways that would have to be learned and trained.
They were not ready, but there was no other choice. It was learn, or die. Allow the pilots, the city, this last sanctuary to die, or go out on a limb and learn as she always had. There was no time for extensive training. She knew how to fight, she knew how to cooperate. Now it was time to learn how to act as one in the present.
In the end, he had to teach her those last few minutia.
The Kaiju War had changed everything. Some said there was no longer time for love, only time to work hard and protect what was left. Others said that deep bonds could only be forged in a time of immense stress, such as this. However right either side was, they loved each other.
Mako remembered crying at Tamsin’s funeral. She remembered sharing her father’s grief over the partner that he had lost. There had been a tenderness between them that she did not understand. There was clearly some form of love there, however, and Mako was fortunate enough to participate in it.
Later, when all that was lost, Mako expressed her love in the ways she knew how. She trained, pushing herself to become something that her father could not help but take pride in. She showed him deference, respect, as any child should.
It was clearly love that drove him to protect her, just as it was love that finally allowed him to fulfill his promise to her. Their last words to each other were an expression of love – the kind that lives forever, long past both of their deaths.
A bond was forged, and within it a peculiar love for each other.
Raleigh experienced Mako’s last farewell to her father, and she felt him wish that he had been given an opportunity to bid such a farewell to his brother. Their pain echoed through the Drift. This pain was a necessary evil to end this war with the Kaiju, the pain of lost love.
They understood this pain, knew precisely how the other felt. Nothing was hidden from them in the drift. Not the anguish, nor the yearning for reality where this sacrifice would not be necessary. When at last he awoke from unconsciousness, relief flooded through both of them, as if they were still within the drift.
They had each other to understand that pain, that horror. They were not alone, and never would be. Not even in death.