Chapter Text
The problem with endings, thought Hermine, is that they’re not. The film doesn’t stop, the credits don’t roll. As much as this seemed like the medal-bestowing scene at the end of A New Hope (Newt had forced her to watch it years ago, before the not-end, but not after their own hope had begun to die), there wasn’t going to be a pat little group shot, everyone smiling, followed by darkness in the theater as those characters were simply turned off, blinking into nothing until recalled for a sequel. No, in real life there would be a pat little group shot followed by everyone’s smiles slowly slipping as they realize that now that the camera is gone, they have to keep going.
Hermine smoothed the front of her blazer and brushed her pleated skirt with a trembling hand, and next to her in the semi-darkness Newt snorted.
“Yeah, sharpen up there Hermine, you’ve really let yourself slip since V-Day.”
Hermine rolled her eyes spectacularly, but her retort was cut off by another storm of applause and cheers. Newt peeked around the curtain, her vague shape suddenly outlined by the harsh stage lights – her wild hair feathering up, the clean lines of her best (only) leather jacket. Hermine squinted peevishly at the back of her head.
“Come back from there, we’re almost on,” she hissed. She caught a glimpse of a raised eyebrow and a grin as Newt turned back and let the curtain fall.
“Aw, are you nervous? You’ll take on drifting with a kaiju and me, but human beings still scare you?”
“My apologies for never wanting to be a rock star,” Hermine said archly. “That’s more your forte.” She heard Newt chuckle next to her.
“Yeah, well-“
“…and, finally, in recognition of their valor in going above and beyond the call of duty,” Herc’s voice reverberated through the mic as the applause for Mako and Raleigh finally died down, “…risking their lives in the name of science and the survival of humanity, and providing critical intelligence acquired at grave risk to themselves, we present these special awards to Doctor Hermine Gottlieb and Doctor Newton Geiszler.”
Newt grinned at her as they stepped on stage into the lights, the cameras, the sea of applause from delegates and politicians and the military higher-ups that had all come scampering back to show how they supported the PPDC all along, really. “- you’re a rock star now.”
-
It was only afterwards, when everyone was milling around, drinking and coming up again and again to shake the hands of the heroes of the hour, that Hermine noticed anything. She looked sidelong at Newt as they accepted the congratulations of a group of Chinese delegates. She shook their hands with gusto, one eyebrow raised, obviously relishing the glances she knew they were stealing at the tattoos now visible past her rolled-up sleeves. But as soon as the group moved on, something in her dimmed. Newt’s smile slipped and her eyes seemed unfocused behind her thick-framed glasses. Something about that gaze, something intangible, tugged at Hermine, the ghost of their drift – as though she and Newt now stood in a single river current, and she could feel the whispering shift in any change of the flow against her skin.
She sidled over to Newt, apologetically and graciously separating herself from the latest round of (was it Russian this time?) officials.
“I thought you’d be basking in this, rock star,” she jibed, without malice.
“Hm?” Newt snapped to attention, startled out of her momentary reverie.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Hermine asked.
“What?” Newt laughed. “I’m basking! Look at me bask!” She spread her arms and grinned. “Tendo!” she bellowed, catching him as he passed in the crowd. “I’m awesome, right? Saved the world?”
“Got it in one, doc,” he confirmed and raised his drink before the press of people carried him away.
“See?” Newt turned back to Hermine with a smirk. “I’m great! We’re heroes, Herm. What could I possibly not want about this?”
Hermine just hemmed and cast a disbelieving look, but still, despite herself, smiled at Newt’s infectious, aggressive cheer. It was something that used to annoy her to no end, but somehow, now, after the drift, it had become a comforting familiarity in that strange current around them. That strange eddy didn’t change though, that restless little tug beneath the surface, and the next time she looked, Newt was gone.
-
In the month after the cameras stopped, when the relief was over and the falseness of the end began to solidify into a tangible morass of paperwork and realizations of their collective homelessness, Herc managed to throw a lifeline to his K-Science division.
“We’ve found investors for Drift research,” Herc said and tapped a fat stack of documents on the desk between them. “The Jaeger program has a lot of potential to expand into other useful fields, and some heavy hitters are willing to bet on it.” He looked exhausted and a little lost, as he always seemed to these days, but he managed a smile. “You’ll be able to continue your work.”
Though she’d tried to remain imperturbable, Hermine felt a wave of relief. The K-science program hadn’t officially been axed, but the PPDC was hanging on by a thread now that its sole purpose had been achieved, and they all knew it was only a matter of time before they were all cut loose. She glanced sidelong to see Newt, uncharacteristically silent, her brow furrowed behind her glasses. When Newt said nothing, Hermine cleared her throat and focused back on Herc.
“I take it this offer is for both of us?” she prompted.
“Oh! Yeah,” Herc said with obvious relief, “Yeah, there’s spots for both of you, of course. They’ve got plenty of funding to start off with, and they’d be happy to have the heroes of the hour on board,” he smiled.
Newt’s expression barely changed, but her eyes seemed to harden and refocus from whatever distant, invisible point she’d been staring into. “Yeah? They need a xenobiologist for that Drift research?”
Hermine could almost palpably sense Herc tacking from puzzlement to panic. She had had a feeling this was coming and cut across his halting attempt to catch the situation. “For heaven’s sake, Newton. You’d be valuable as a neurobiologist and you’re well aware of the fact.”
“Yeah, well neurobiology isn’t my work,” Newt said, almost managing to sound nonchalant if it weren’t for the tension in her hands, the sudden flint in her gaze. Hermine felt a sharp tug in that current that flowed around them these days, and for a moment couldn’t tell if the pang of anger was her own exasperation or Newt’s whiplash rage. Suddenly unsettled by the echoed emotion, Hermine hesitated just too long.
“Thanks for the offer, Herc, but consider, maybe, that you might actually want the world’s foremost expert on the subject helping with the massive, unfinished analysis of the aliens that attacked our planet.” Newt stood and her chair screeched back, metal on metal.
“Newt-“ Hermine started, not quick enough.
“I’ll be in the lab,” Newt snapped, and was gone.
-
Hermine had packed up.
They’d moved plenty of times during the heyday of the PPDC (though logic fought it she could feel herself and the world around her already romanticizing the past, the war), but it had always been part of a continuous operation. They’d never looked back, there had been no time for nostalgia, or no desire for it. Now, she stood leaning on her cane, shrugging her shoulders a bit against the naked chill of her empty half of the lab. The chalkboards had been packed away, her books and reams of notes similarly spirited into cases now tucked into the darkened underbelly of some plane waiting on the runway. With everything gone, sound suddenly echoed strangely in the too-large space. Hermine could faintly hear the tinny sound of music (more a racket than music, that against her will she recognized as a Swedish metal band, knowledge from the drift seeping in) playing too loudly through headphones.
She glanced back. Newt was turned away, buried in a delicate dissection, white latex gloves flashing against the unnatural neons of kaiju viscera. Her half of the lab was still crowded with tanks and tables, stacked with libraries of tissue samples and scattered with loose papers covered in scrawled comparative anatomy diagrams. Splatters of blue blood from a carelessly severed vein splashed droplets across the white of Newt’s shirt, and the cord of her headphones snaked down her back to the pocket of her jeans. She was working in time to the music, bouncing a bit on her toes, an occasional jerk of her head on a downbeat, muttering. Lyrics, or notes about the kaiju organs, or both.
This should be goodbye, Hermine thought. But even as she stepped hesitantly forward, there was that current, and this time it flowed over her in a roil of feelings that sent her tripping back, flooded with unintelligible focus-pride-loss-love-rage-focus-hurt- a scrambled transmission through a faulty connection. She caught herself on her cane in time and stood, trembling on her former side of the lab, with her back to Newt. Her head buzzed from the momentary overwhelming static. She could still hear the tinny music (Newt’s eardrums must be taking a beating, she’d be deaf by forty) as she stayed frozen, waiting for the shaking to subside. Her eyes wandered back, but something stopped her gaze from turning fully.
A moment more, and she limped out the door for the last time, not looking back, besting Orpheus, that her Eurydice, headphoned and blood-spattered, would never vanish.
-
Back in the lab, Newt hesitated. The reaching current she’d felt (Hermine) thinned and dimmed, fading to a faint note in the crowd already in her head. She blinked and got back to work, and tried not to get acidic viscera on her face when she scrubbed angrily at the tears welling behind her glasses. She twitched the volume on her music up and buried her arms in guts and worked as though the war had never ended.
-
Because this was no end, Hermine knew, stumping down the echoing empty hall, collecting her coat. This was an aftermath. This was the fester.