Chapter Text
The coastal wall is an exercise in futility. Kaijus aren’t deterred by constructs of concrete and steel beams; if anything, the giant monsters seem drawn to them. The moment they emerge from the sea, they walk unerringly towards the place with the most buildings, the most traffic, the most people. Yor knows this. She understands, better than most, what it is that can actually stop a kaiju.
But she cannot do that anymore, and so she builds the wall.
It’s not easy work. It’s grimy and unglamorous and often dangerous, but she’s strong and light on her feet and able to weld for hours at a time. Today sees her on top of the site again. It’s the most hazardous placement—three people died yesterday, so tired that they had fallen asleep and toppled over—but she needs the money.
“Briar! Someone’s here for you!” the foreman calls. Yor peers down, staring at that very someone. A man, dressed neatly in a way that makes him immediately out of place at this construction site. Someone from the school, maybe?
She grips the edges of the beam in both hands and slides down, gloves scraping against steel until her feet meet the ground. The man stands with one hand in his pocket, watching her descent impassively. He’s tall and rather good-looking, sandy-brown hair and icy blue eyes, his suit immaculately pressed and a briefcase by his side.
And on his lapel, he wears the badge of the Arctic Breach Defense Force.
“Can I help you?” Yor asks cautiously.
The man smiles. It’s pleasant enough, but lacks any kind of warmth. “Ms. Briar. A pleasure.” He extends his hand. She shakes it, and he doesn’t flinch at the grime and dust. “I’m Loid Forger, aide for Marshal Sylvia Sherwood.”
“Nice to meet you,” Yor replies. “But I’m still not sure why you’re here.”
The smile doesn’t waver. It only makes his next words more jarring. “You have heard, of course, that the jaeger program is being cut.”
The jaeger program. Humanity’s answer to the kaijus’ assault. Human-piloted mech suits as tall as the monsters themselves, designed to launch a preemptive defense. Yor is familiar with it, intimately so. Seven years ago, she and Yuri had been one of the best jaeger pilots in the world. They would together meld their minds into the machine, becoming more than they were on their own, becoming the jaeger itself. They won, time after time.
Until they didn’t.
“I’m afraid I cannot help you,” she says quietly. “I’m not a pilot anymore.”
Loid Forger stares at her long and hard, as if she was a question to which he doesn’t know the answer. “I’m aware,” he eventually says. “However, Marshal Sherwood is planning one last initiative before the program is shut down for good, and she insisted that you were the right person for the job.”
And finally, Yor understands. The stiffness of his manners, the cold disapproving gaze. “Do you disagree with her?”
He lowers his gaze. “I’m sorry. I must’ve appeared impolite.”
“You were being rude, yes,” says a different voice. A voice Yor knows well.
Marshal Sylvia Sherwood strides towards them in full dress uniform, all ribbons and medals. People turn to stare at her; Yor can’t blame them. The marshal cuts a very striking figure, always has. She’s a little bit older than Yor remembers, but her eyes are sharp as ever and her posture continues to be beyond reproach.
“Forger,” the marshal says, nodding at her aide. “I should put you on latrine duty for this.”
Forger nods. “If you think that’s the best use of my time,” he says mildly.
“I told you I would speak to Ms. Briar personally.”
“Your schedule is packed, marshal. I was taking initiative,” he replies, his expression winsome at the face of the marshal’s obvious irritation.
Yor tries to suppress her smile, failing miserably. “Long time no see, marshal.”
“Ms. Briar. We looked for you everywhere, and here you have been all along.”
“Well,” Yor says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She’s beginning to feel underdressed in her work overalls, heavy boots and tattered gloves, even though these two people came to her workplace and not the other way around. “Ostania is my home, even after everything.”
“Then it’s a good thing our facility is only an hour away.”
“I already told Mr. Forger here,” Yor says, hand clutching her own wrist. The scar on her side throbs, as it always does in winter, but she doesn’t feel cold. Her body is warm all over, her chest tight. “I’m not a pilot anymore.”
The marshal’s eyes soften a little around the edges. “I understand,” she says gently. “And I am sorry to have to ask you this. However, there’s no one better suited for the job. We’re not spoiled for choice. One of the three jaegers we have left is a refurbished Mark 3; you’re the last living Mark 3 pilot in the world.”
“You cannot train new ones?” she asks, but she knows the answer to that question. There’s a vast difference between what a pair of new pilots can do and what she can do. Still… “I—I cannot have anyone else in my head. When Yuri died—I—”
She swallows. Her mouth is dry.
“I can’t,” she finishes.
“When the jaeger program ends, the world ends,” Forger says. He doesn’t say it cruelly or gently, simply matter-of-fact. “You understand that, I’m sure. You know these walls are useless.”
“I thought you disapprove of me,” she says.
At this, he looks a little abashed. Shy, even. “You’re simply… a little different than I thought you would be. But the marshal calls the shots, and there’s no denying that you have infinitely better odds of stopping a kaiju in a jaeger than here, welding steel beams together.”
“Will you cower here, living from one meal ticket to the next?” the marshal asks, and for the first time today, she sounds every inch the Fullmetal Lady that Yor remembers. “Or will you fight?”
And the thing is, it isn’t that Yor is less terrified. Even now, she’s still gripped by the vivid memory of her brother, ripped away from her, that abrupt, frayed emptiness where before his mind was entwined with hers. She had killed the kaiju that did it, heaved her whole mind into the neural connection and moved the too-big machine on her own, but it was no victory. It was simply what she had to do.
It was like a door had closed behind her, and she couldn’t go back; only forward, step after painful step.
It is the same now. Even through the ache of seven years past, she knows she can only go forward into the path that has been laid out for her.
She has only one question, before she does: “My daughter—Anya—can she come with me?”