Chapter Text
Chapter One: Faithful Guide
dark dark dark cold, so cold, and yet right. weightless suspension, the ocean floor below him soaring past as if he were flying. everything was so small, or maybe he was immense, powerful, fea r ed--
No, no, this wasn’t right. The crushing pressure surrounded him, water flowing in his gaping mouth and filling his lungs and dark so dark this was n t r ight
Let m e go-- jaws opening wide, a roar tearing from his throat, his teeth ripping metal, the screech of death and destruction echoing beneath his feet as-- let me go, wake up wake up wake
“--safe. Newton, wake up.” Newton shuddered awake with a choked scream, the feeling of death and drowning clawing at his throat. There was a hand pressed against his shoulder holding him down, and it took all his self control in his nightmare-addled brain not to lash out against it. He panted, and realized his eyes were already open, but only now was he seeing, “you’re safe, shh, c’mon.”
Newt blinked blurrily, breath still heavy and his chest still constricted as if someone was sitting on him. It was Hermann, looking tired and annoyed and slightly bemused. Dr Hermann Gottlieb, his coworker for nearly ten years and possibly the smartest man on earth, excluding himself, sitting on the side of his bed. He was dressed in his old man pyjamas--really, as if Hermann would wear age-appropriate undies--a rueful smile on his face, and his hand resting firmly against Newt’s shoulder. Newt shuddered again, feeling the touch in double vision. It had been nearly six months since the end of the world, since he drifted with his lab partner, and yet he was still experiencing Drift Hangover. Feeling emotions that weren’t his, sharing experiences he wasn’t present for, and the awkwardness of subconsciously being always in sync...the phenomenon happened with Jaeger pilots, but only for a few days at most. He had his theories of why they were still Ghost Drifting, and he assumed his Pons system made of scrap metal had a whole lot to do with it. Of course, out of anybody, he would rather have shared his mind with the great Dr Gottlieb. He worried he was still ghost drifting with his other drift partner, as well.
“F-fuck, I’m a-awake--” His room was dark, the only light coming from his alarm clock, blinking 4:15 am in acidic green. He groaned, relaxing back, hands pressed against the hollows of his eyes. It had been six months since the breach was closed, and Hermann Gottlieb was still acting as his personal babysitter every night. Newton had been plagued with nightmares since he drifted with a less than human partner. He’s visited by the kaiju every night. And every night, Hermann would wake him and sit. Sometimes he brought tea, and they would talk. Other nights they sat silently together.
“Good to have you back in the waking world with the rest of us,” Hermann said, handing him his glasses off the side table. Newt blinked blearily, sitting up and pushing his glasses on, a hand still against his forehead. He could feel his pulse in his veins against his palm and his shirt was wet with sweat.
“Glad to be back,” he huffed tiredly, looking up at Hermann in the darkness, “thanks.”
“I’ve told you it’s no problem,” Hermann said, standing slowly. Newt could hear his joints cracking as he did so--sometimes, he swore Hermann was made of glass. Other times, it was more likely he was made of steel. The man tapped his temple, “I was awake anyways.”
“Shit, sorry,” Newt often forgot his nightmares were not just his anymore. Ever since they had drifted together, it was as if his mind was a radio, constantly broadcasting just to Hermann. It happened less during the day; there were only a few times when they’d be in the lab and Hermann would turn to look at him sourly, and Newton would have to apologize for an errant thought meant just for himself. It was getting hard to keep secrets, especially since Hermann seemed to be more attuned to Newt than the other way around. But during the nights, Hermann would say it was as if Newt was a loudspeaker, constantly blaring every time Mutavore or Otachi decided to visit.
Newt could hear Hermann too, sometimes; though, if he were being honest, it wasn't so much as hearing, but more so understanding. Feeling. He could feel the creak and ache in Hermann’s leg. He could feel the numbers rushing past his mind like cars speeding down a highway. He sometimes caught the tug of a memory--the smile of an unknown family member, the feeling of hands on his--but rarely was Hermann as open as Newton seemed to be. They had never once actually tested it, or really spoken about it openly. Newton was still unsure if it was real, or just a heightened sense of predictability. Either way, Hermann was good at knowing just what he was thinking, and it bothered him a little.
“The usual, again? Being chased?” Hermann asked quietly. He was already in the tiny joint kitchen, flipping on the kettle and rummaging through Newton’s mostly-empty cupboards for the box of tea. Newt sighed, pushing himself out of bed and shook his head.
“Nah, it was...drowning,” and I was a kaiju, he thought, but bit his tongue, glancing sidelong at Gottlieb. The other man didn’t seem to catch the thought; or if he had, he was doing a good job of ignoring it. Newt shuffled into the kitchenette, flopping down on one of the less-than-sturdy plastic chairs with a sigh, “when...when will this stop? The apocalypse is over, we won, we get to keep on living, and yet here I am waking up every night shaking--” It was so tiring, and he wasn't just effecting himself anymore. Every night when Hermann showed up at his bedside to comfort him he felt a pang of guilt. Newton and Hermann had always been roomed next to each other; it was easier to have the K-sci team all in one sector, and unsurprisingly there was no scientist on the team between Geiszler and Gottlieb. Their quarters were side-by-side, at the end of a hallway, and they shared the tiny kitchenette where they now sat huddled around two cups of tea.
Before all of this, before they had drifted and before the breach had closed and before the dead bonds of a monster wreaked havoc on Newt's brain at night, it wasn't surprising to find Newt and Hermann up late squabbling. They used to fight like a pair of old nannies, Tendo would say. Newt had always found some sense of pleasure in getting a rise out of the other man, and Hermann had always been too proud to be proven wrong about anything. Newt remembered one night coming home drunk from the bar, waking up Hermann while taking down some pots to make some Mr.Noodles 'because someone who doesn't like Mr.Noodles while drunk is probably the antichrist'. He had stumbled and sent all of their pots and pans flying across the tiny counter and floor, and it might as well have been a cat-four Kaiju rolling through the Shatterdome with how pissed off Hermann had been. That had been a long night, and Stacker himself had come down the next morning to issue them a noise violation warning.
Newt would live that a hundred times over just to have some peace of mind again.
“Oh, tut, self-deprecating isn’t going to help you,” Hermann huffed, placing a mug of tea on the table in front of Newt and sitting opposite to him, sipping his own cup, “you've experienced an immense trauma, you'll need time to heal."
"I thought you were a physicist, not a psychologist. In fact, I know way more about the brain than you do," Newton grumbled, but he knew deep down Hermann was right, which was not something Newton admitted often aloud, "I just...I just want one night of normal sleep again." He took a swig of his tea--oolong with honey--and sighed haughtily, "do you...do you see what I'm dreaming?"
"Glimpses, small bits of vision and sound," He replied, taking a slow sip, "but more often it is the feeling that wakes me. I was always a light sleeper."
"Feeling? What's it feel like?" Newt tried to look curious, as if he wasn't expecting the answer. Hermann eyed him warily before replying quietly.
"Suffocation, fear...I can feel your panic and pain," he looked at Newton over his mug, the heat of the tea fogging up his slipping glasses. Newt looked between Hermann and the floor. He could feel Hermann’s pain too; the twinge in his knee, the feeling of people looking at him like he was less...
"You can tell me," Hermann said after a minute of shared silence, "you know I won't force you to talk, however I..."
"I just don't want you to look at me differently," Newton murmured quietly, avoiding the look Hermann was giving him. He didn't like seeing Hermann worried and looking at him; he was so used to seeing the other man look like he had bitten into a lemon, or even looking at Newt as if he astonished someone as dumb as a pebble had made it through six doctorates. But worry...worry was worse. It hurt.
His dreams were leaking. In the beginning when the terror came it was just at night; every night, but only when he slept.
But recently, Newt would wake up from a nightmare already standing. He was having them during the day, while he was already fully awake and functional. The first time had been minutes after waking up in the morning; he had been up that night with a nightmare, but had slumped back into bed and fallen back asleep around 5:00am. In the morning he had begrudgingly gotten up, near-crawling to the bathroom--he wasn't exactly a morning person, and nightmares every night was unsurprisingly not very restful. Newt remembered pulling his toothbrush out of it's cup by the sink, and squeezing an ample amount of toothpaste onto the bristles but then---
d ark dar k cold fear
destroy them, make them suffer, feel the scream of metal crunching in my jaws and the cracking of the earth beneath me as the insects flee and hid e but no one can hide fro m d eat h
--he was in the kitchen, leaning heavily against the counter, his knuckles white. The room was spinning and he could feel something wet dripping down his lips and knew his nose was bleeding.
Hermann had been in the lab already on that day, and Newton opted not to tell him that he had experienced a sudden collapse of his mental faculties for what had to have been at least ten minutes, while still functioning outwardly.
And since then, they had been becoming more and more frequent, and Newton found himself somewhere he didn't remember going to almost once a week, then once every few days. The helipad, overlooking the shore, the lab window, looking out into the ocean, in the cafeteria, staring into soup he didn't remember buying...The latest had happened earlier the previous day, in the lab. One moment he had been dissecting a throat tissue sample on his side of the room, the next moment he had been on Hermann's side, still holding the scalpel in hand. Hermann had been right there, too, looking up from his dusty old chalkboard to look at Newton with a worried curiosity.
It was getting hard to hide.
He had the sinking feeling that Herman knew, but if the other half of the brain behind saving the world had done anything to let on that he knew, Newt missed it.
Hermann was reaching across the dingey table, placing a hand over Newt’s in a move that was way too sentimental for either of their tastes. Newton barely kept in a snort, but didn’t move his hand.
“I do not fathom it’s possible for me to look at you any worse,” he said dryly, and the laugh that Newt had been holding back finally bubbled forward. Hermann’s thin lips quirked upwards at the side, and he bowed his head, “I’m serious, I thought you were aware of my opinion that you are immature, unclean, egotistical, and make decisions with less thought to them than a halfwit. However you are also brilliant, passionate, and a revolutionary mind. A little emotional trauma won’t change my opinion of you.”
“God, just say you’re in love with me already,” Newt snorted, taking back his hand and balancing his chair on two legs, “what if...what if the drift changed that revolutionary mind you’re lusting after--”
“I am not lusting after--”
“Oh shut up, you literally just told me you’re in love with me,” Newt gave Hermann his patented shit-eating grin, but that faded pretty quickly, “I’m serious, though...what if I’m losing it? Every day, I feel like I’m a little less in touch, my grip on reality getting a little looser--”
cold cold dark co ld water cascading off my back as i breach through the surface. find kill destroy find the one who calls us and de str oy him. the air is cold and the people run from me, but he cannot he cann ot h ide
“--right, man? Mein gott, Newton!!” There was someone touching his elbow, and a hand grasped firmly on his shoulder as if he were about to fall over. He shoved it off, unthinking, and was surprised when he did fall over, landing on his ass before he even understood what was happening.
He wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. In fact, he wasn’t even in his room anymore,but out in the hallway, crumpled in a pile about twenty feet from his open door. Newton blinked, confused, disconnected. When had he...? He wiped the itch under his nose and almost laughed when he saw red blood effectively smeared up his arm. He felt a hovering presence above him and looked up; Hermann was indeed hovering worriedly, face ashen.
Well, fuck.