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Chapter Text

Ava

*****

She is startled awake by the blaring of wailing sirens. What do the sirens mean in California? Is it like in Minnesota, where they go off every Wednesday afternoon at 1pm sharp, as a test for the tornado warning system?

She and her family had moved to California about 3 weeks ago, and had just finished unpacking. At the very mature and grown-up age of 6, Ava was excited for beaches and a new school with new friends.

But right now, she is very much not excited to be woken up from her nap by loud, angry sirens. She buries her face further into her soft warm pillow. Hopefully the sirens turn off soon. Ava feels the ground start to vibrate.

Her door swings open as her dad suddenly bursts into her room, looking flustered. “Ava, get up pumpkin. We have to go, now” he says, with a tone Ava had never heard before. It scares her. “Daddy, what is going on?” she asks with sleep in her voice. He doesn’t answer. Ava is scooped up into her father’s arms as she hears her mom shout from outside “I pulled the car out, hurry!”.

The next 5 minutes are a blur. She remembers her parents looking frantic.

She is hurriedly strapped into her car seat, and then her door is slammed shut. Her dad hops into the passenger side of the front seat, and without waiting for him to buckle in, her mom throws the car into reverse. The tires squeal as their car peels out of the driveway.

Ava looks out of the car window, and scrunches her brows in confusion. Was there a fire?  The city of Santa Cruz, close to her new home, has pillars of thick, black smoke coiling towards the sky.

“Piper, the city” her dad says, solemnly.

“I know” her mom replies, unease in her voice.

They share a look.

That’s when Ava hears it.

The loudest noise she has ever heard.

It easily drowns out the sirens. The best Ava can describe it is a roar, but not quite like the lions she has seen at the zoo. The roar is followed by a cacophony of other sounds Ava can’t identify. Crunching, screeching, screams. She feels a tight coil in her chest, and her lip starts to wobble. She can feel her eyes burn as big glops of tears start to fall down her face. She doesn’t keep in her fear and starts to cry. “Shhhh honey it’ll be ok” her dad says, turning around in his seat.

The vibrating ground makes it difficult for her mom to keep the car on the right side of the road. Suddenly, fighter jets blaze overhead, their rumbling zoom briefly adding to the shaking of their car. The sleek planes make a V shape, Ava can see. Like the ducks in Minnesota, she thinks. The jets fly straight towards the smoke columns and the ocean. Four more V shaped fighter jet formations follow in quick succession, as Ava watches with interest in the afternoon light.

Her dad turns on the car radio. A robotic pre-recorded message says “This is an emergency broadcast. There is an imminent threat to the Santa Cruz coastline. Seek shelter immediately.”

 Her dad changes the station, and a man’s voice crackles across the speakers. “The California National Guard has been activated. Military members, please report to your primary rally point in your combat uniform as soon as possible for further deployment. Civilian citizens in Santa Cruz, take shelter immediately. Civilian citizens in or east of Scotts Valley are required to evacuate inland as soon as possible. Officials recommend leaving all possessions behind, as speed is of the utmost importance. The National Guard will be coordinating and setting up bus stations throughout the city to facilitate evacuation for those who do not have vehicles. Please stay tuned for further information. First responders are currently engaged in emergency response.”

Her mom shuts off the radio.

Ava looks back out the window. A huge wall of water is headed towards the coastline, several miles away. She lets out a high-pitched shout in alarm. Her dad whips his head to look, and his eyes go wide.

He turns to his wife, “Amor, take 17 towards San Jose.”

“Won’t 17 be packed? Do you think we will get through?” her mom’s voice wavers.

Ava tunes out. She isn’t sure what they are saying and is more interested in looking out the window.

Ava isn’t sure how long they drive, but she eventually starts to see another city full of noise. Not the siren, or the roaring and screaming noises she heard earlier today, but city noise nonetheless.

Her mom stops the car at a stoplight.

The light turns green.

Their car starts forward.

Ava is jolted sideways suddenly. Something hit our car.

Ava’s body continues to be rocked in her car seat, her head and neck whipping to the side. Her small head hits against the head supports of her car seat as her body strains against the buckles. Her stomach swoops.

Noise is the last thing she remembers.

Her dad yelling.

Crunching, squealing, scraping.

Glass shattering.

She blinks and hears a dripping noise. It looks red? She tries to look around. A paramedic peers at her through the window, but the paramedic is upside down?

She blinks again. She is in the back of an ambulance.

Blink. Beeping noises as she looks around an unfamiliar room. A nurse in scrubs walks past the door.

Blink.

Chapter Text

20 years later

*****

Thwap. Lilith’s staff cracks against Crimson’s in the training room. The two trade aggressive blows back and forth, sweating and out of breath, until Lilith sweeps a leg out after a parry and brings Crimson to one knee. Lilith quickly swings her staff around to gently rest against the side of Crimson’s neck, the latter’s weapon now useless in her right hand.  Match to Lilith. Again!” shouts Captain Shannon, who is on the mats overseeing the match. Crimson stands, her face now accurately representing her name, and the two rivals return to their starting positions.

Beatrice and the rest of the senior cadets watch from the stands, also dressed for their upcoming sparring in their matching black cotton t-shirts and olive-green joggers. For combat training, they are barefoot. Beatrice doesn’t mind, but Camila complains about her cold feet on a normal, shoes-on day. Beatrice smiles a small smile to herself when she hears her curly haired friend huff and mumble about her “icebox toes.”

The room is lit with fluorescent lights, much like the rest of Fort Simon, Washington. The walls are bare metal with peeling green paint, while dark blue mats pad the floor and (supposedly) provide cushioning. The room isn’t particularly, large, maybe 40 feet by 40 feet (12 m by 12 m, for the non-Americans). Opposite the bleachers currently occupied by senior cadets, there is a wall with various weapons racks leaning against it. There are two doors to Beatrice’s right, one larger door leading to the main hallway and one to the locker room.

“Begin!” Beatrice focuses back on the match as the fights starts anew. She feels Camila tense next to her. Crimson and Lilith again furiously attack and block in quick succession. This time, Crimson takes control of the fight, with Lilith struggling to block her powerful strikes. Powerful, but predictable thinks Beatrice. The fight continues for several more minutes, until Crimson whips her staff around and a crack is heard throughout the room.

Not the typical wood-on-wood crack, either.

Crimson, with full force, had swung her wooden weapon into Lilith’s side. The crack was one of wood on rib. Beatrice could see Lilith stagger, her face scrunched in pain.

Crimson, true to her reputation, doesn’t stop. She follows her strike with a backhand aimed at Lilith’s head. Beatrice can feel Camila begin to rise, when Capt Shannon grabs Crimson’s wrist and expertly flips her onto the mats. “That’s enough for today” she says, voice hard. “Crimson, benches, now. Camila, take Lilith to the infirmary.”

Camila was already slipping under Lilith’s arm on her non-inured side. Beatrice internally snorts. I forgot how fast she is. Shannon didn’t need to order Camila to take care of her friend. If anything, she would have had to use her full authority to STOP her.

In any case, Lilith and Camila exit through the door to the hallway. As it clangs shut behind them, Shannon turns around and makes eye contact with Beatrice. “Beatrice, Todd, you’re up. No weapons.” Shannon gives Beatrice a look that says don’t completely destroy him and they take their starting positions.

Todd gives her a half smile.

Beatrice returns with an unreadable, but not unfriendly, look.

Todd gulps. “Begin.”

Beatrice starts with what, for her, is a slowed down succession of palm strikes to Todd’s face and torso. His hands and forearms are up as he attempts to bob and weave out of her fist’s unrelenting assault.

He attempts a few attacking punches of his own, and Beatrice lets him, dodging every one. Not many people land a hit on Beatrice, and certainly not Todd.

They continue their back and forth, Todd panting for breath while Beatrice maintains her calm composure. She decides to add in some low kicks, try to challenge him a bit more. He blocks the first with his thigh and knee raised, but isn’t prepared for the strike that follows as Beatrice steps into his space. The strike lands on his jaw, and Beatrice quickly grabs his right arm, pivots, and flips him over her shoulder. With his footing unstable from the block and dazed from the hit, he is easily thrown.

He lands on his back with a thud and an “oompf” as the breath leaves his lungs. “Yield,” he manages to cough out.

The door clangs open once more.

She doesn’t look, and instead offers her hand to Todd. He smiles up at her ruefully, and they grasp forearms. Todd stumbles to his feet, gasping and bent over.

Beatrice hears Mary’s voice ring out “alright cadets, the new recruits are here. They will be joining you for strategy and tactics this afternoon before they begin their own training schedule.”

Beatrice sees a group of about 15 file in behind Mary. Shannon claps and says “ok seniors, hit the showers and grab some chow.”

Chapter Text

Ava, same day

****

Ava is buzzing with barely contained excitement. Two hours ago, she boarded a massive grey plane with 14 other people, bound for Fort Simon. They were allowed one black backpack of toiletries and undergarments.

“Everything else will be issued to you” the gravely voice of the loadmaster instructed.

Now here she was, in the back cargo area of said airplane, thousands of feet in the air, sitting in the most un-fucking-comfortable seat the world has ever invented. In what stupid military world does two metal bars with cargo net between them constitute a seat. She leaned back against the interior wall of the plane and looked around.

She and the other recruits had just finished preliminary training and were selected to the Jaeger pilot program. Holy fucknuggets I am going to be a pilot! Her best friend Diego, who she met in prelim, chuckles next to her.

“Yea dude, that is kinda the point of pilot training” he laughs out.

“…I said that out loud didn’t I”

“Yep” he continues to laugh. This is why she liked Diego. He was easygoing and laid back. And honestly, never tried to be anything more than her friend. Big fan of this guy. It doesn’t hurt that he is almost as short as she is.

As she continues to look around, she notices her classmates are mostly awake. Some were still trying to doze, although with the temperature variability back here, Ava isn’t quite sure how they were doing it. Now THAT is a skill to master – sleeping whenever, wherever, we’re meant to be together, I’ll be here and you’ll be – god damn it. That fucking song has been stuck in her head for 4 fucking hours thanks to Diego. I take it back. I’m the opposite of a big fan.

She turns her head back and glares at him. He just hums with that boyish grin on his stupid face.   

Ava’s ears feel the change in pressure and angle as the plane starts to descend. The noise seems to get louder, and she is jostled in her seat. The angle grows steeper, and Zori and Randall look queasy. Diego and Ava share a grin and grip their chest straps.

The plane lands fairly smoothly, and the recruits are told to disembark out the back ramp of the plane. They descend, bags on their backs, into the chilly grey climate. The air smells like it had just rained, the concrete tarmac was wet and some residual moisture lingered in the air. The loadmaster begins to give them directions on where to check in, when Zori giggles and Ava hears her call the loadmaster “the plane’s butthole cleaner” to Sally and Chad. The dumbass trio laughs obnoxiously.

“What exactly is funny?” a stern, unamused voice interrupts from behind them.

Chad, the class douchecanoe, immediately says “nothin, not your business little lady” and waves dismissively. He is a legacy into the program; his dad was one of the original program leaders. Not pilot though, despite what he likes to let people assume. Arrogant asshat.

The recruits turn to look at the speaker, and Ava and Diego cringe. Unlike some of their classmates, the pair had at least 3 braincells between the two of them.

The new recruits had been interrupted by an intimidating looking dark skinned woman. She had a black cotton t-shirt on and a flight suit. She had removed the top half of the flight suit by unzipping it from the top and using the arms of it to tie around her waist. Since the top part wasn’t really visible, her rank and name tag weren’t either.

But even if Ava didn’t know who she was, she wouldn’t cross her. Not with that look on her face. She carried an air of authority mixed with don’t-test-me that even Ava didn’t want to poke right now. Maybe after lunch. Her prelim instructors didn’t call her little shit for nothing, after all.

As it was, she did know who had addressed them. Mary, decorated Captain and Pilot. Callsign “Shotgun”. Co-pilot to Shannon, also decorated Captain and Pilot, callsign “Saber”. Together, they piloted Cruciform, one of the newer Jaegers that ran off divinium instead of nuclear power, after their first Jaeger was essentially destroyed defending Portland two years ago. That battle is what got them their decorations. The pair were the most highly decorated pilots in the fleet that were still active.

“Oh, I think it might be my business” that somehow even more stern voice replies. Her face hadn’t changed. Yikes.

“GET YOUR ASSES INTO A FUCKING SINGLE FILE LINE BEFORE I CUT YOU FROM THIS PROGRAM AND SEND YOU RIGHT BACK ON THAT PLANE YOU CAME IN ON” she barked out.

Ava and most of her classmates jumped then scrambled into a line. Not Chad though. He lazily meandered, looking unaffected by the threats with a bored expression on his face. “Who died and made you queen? Who even are you? Do you know who I am?” he fired off.

Now Mary’s face darkened. She stepped up into his personal space, her nose 1 inch from his. There was a contained rage in her posture, not unlike that of a panther before pouncing for a kill. “A lot of people died. My good friends included. And not queen, Captain. I don’t give two flying shits who you are, you sniveling pompous rat sack. This isn’t a game, and you aren’t here on vacation.”

She turned to look at the loadmaster. “Sergeant Sully, would you and your crew be so kind as to escort this civilian back to wherever the fuck he just came from?”

Sergeant Sully nodded, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, grabbed Chad by the upper arm, and hauled him back to the plane.

Chad started to whine “wait what?! No no no no, I am not going with you you trashpile shitdick” as he tried to pull his arm away from the iron grip. “Unhand me, do you know who my father is?” Sergeant Sully just continued to drag him away, back to the plane, as his protests faded into the background.

“Now. Follow me. No speaking.” Mary said. She turned on her heel and began walking towards a large metal building. “My name is Captain Mary. You can call me Captain Mary or Shotgun Mary. I am a pilot, and will be your primary instructor for the first part of your training.” She continued to walk and talk, pointing at buildings and saying what they were. She led them to the barracks first. “Drop your bags here. We will work out room assignments tomorrow. For now, you will stay in this main area on a cot tonight. Rooms are subject to change based on drift compatibility, so don’t get too comfortable until you find your drift partner.”

After they dropped their bags, Mary led them to the training room in a double file line.

When they got to the room, Mary gestured for them to pile in behind her.

Ava watched as a dark haired woman bent down to help someone up. My guy looks like he had his ass handed to him. She got a weird feeling down her spine; almost a tingle but not quite. A shiver maybe. Whatever it was, although foreign, it was… pleasant?

Ava didn’t get a chance to look at her face, as Mary abruptly called out to the room “alright cadets, the new recruits are here. They will be joining you for strategy and tactics this afternoon before they begin their own training schedule.”

Ava looked around the room to the senior cadets, and elbowed Diego. “Dude. DUDE.” she whisper yelled.

“I know!” he whispered back gleefully “that is Saber Shannon!” He turned his head to look at Ava with a look of excited awe on his face.

Shannon clapped, startling them back to facing front, and addressed the room. “Ok seniors, hit the showers and grab some chow.”

Chapter Text

Mary, the kind gentle amazing wonderful soul that she is, leads Ava and the others to the dining hall next. The dining hall is similar to the training room, except it has metal tables and long metal benches in neat rows, with the serving line and tray return area at the back.

“Ok, this is just like middle school. Follow me and grab a tray, get in line, get the food, sit down and eat. I will call for you in about 45 minutes for the afternoon session.”

And with that, Mary snags a beige lunch tray from the stack and steps up to the serving line.

The junior cadets quickly follow her lead, and soon Ava and Diego have their trays full of mashed potatoes, corn, and chicken. They look out to the room, and Diego strides to the same table row as Mary. He sits a ways down from Mary and out of earshot, while Ava drops down next to him.

“Dude. I am left-handed, remember? Sit on the other side, my elbow needs its space” Diego says good naturedly with that same smile that never seems to leave his face.

Ava just crowds in closer and purposely bumps their elbows as Diego brings a bite of mashed potato towards his mouth. The white mush plops off his fork and back onto his tray.

“Oh you dick” he laughs at her, jostling her back. They laugh together and dig in.

Soon, their other classmates have all settled, and the gentle hum of conversation fills the air of the hall. Ava is too busy inhaling her food like a thirsty woman in a desert to join in with her usual puns and jokes.

The dining hall doors open once again as the senior cadets begin to filter in. Ava sees a short curly haired girl come in, followed by who she will now call tall-dark-and-cheekbones and holy crap speaking of thirsty. Why are all the seniors fucking gorgeous? Is that a requirement or something? What is in these mashed potats?

Ava continues to stare at the newcomer. She looks familiar, which doesn’t make sense since I just got here like a couple hours ago. Get it together Ava. But she can’t help it. It finally clicks after Ava gets that little zing up her spine again. This is the badass who helped that guy up. Speaking of, she sees the tall guy walk in next. She hears the short curly haired one call him Todd, and he responds calling her Camila.

The seniors get their food, while Ava both shovels her food in her mouth and keeps staring.

“Bruh. Quit being weird, you are like, aggressively staring.” Diego says in her ear. She jumps and wacks him on the arm.

“What if I were swallowing at that exact second!”

He grins wider. “Then you’d choke, and thank me because one of those seniors you are eyeballing would come and give you mouth to mouth”

“Mouth to mouth isn’t for choking dumbass!”

“Whatever, you’d still thank me, they’d end up near you. Then you could swoon and faint like a Disney princess and stop making that face”

Ava wacks him again. They bicker and half-fight for a few more minutes, then settle when the seniors walk past.

A group of the older cadets sit down at the end of their table with Mary, including Camila, Todd, tall-dark-and-cheekbones, and her.

Two other guys Ava hadn’t noticed in the training room sit down between her group and theirs. One is in the same outfit as the seniors, black shirt and olive green joggers. He has short blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. The other is dressed in a grey flight suit with a white cotton t-shirt underneath. He looks opposite of the senior cadet, with brown hair, brown eyes, and darker skin. Seriously, what is with this place and attractive people. Soon enough, a few more people in grey flight suits join them, and the whole dining hall is packed.

Ava loses sight of her, shrugs, and continues to eat.

She and Diego finish and go to put their trays away. As she is returning her tray, she makes eye contact with another group of senior cadets. One of them is wearing a black bandana on her head and is giving Ava the most withering glare her face could possibly muster. What the hell.

Before Ava could do or say anything, a whistle shrieks across the din of the hall. Shannon is standing at the door with Mary, who shouts “all cadets, let’s go. Time for afternoon session. Juniors, follow Captain Shannon and the seniors. I will pick you up after.”

Chapter Text

Beatrice follows her classmates and Shannon to Areala Lecture Hall, where strategy and tactics instruction is held. It was similar in setup to her lecture halls at Cambridge, without the dusty smell of wood and time.

The back wall is completely made up of a smart screen. In front of it, a stage holds a large oval hologram table. The stage and table take up the front third of the room. The stadium style of tiered, semicircular long tables forms rows that take up the rest of the large room. Chairs are placed at regular intervals, and in front of each chair there is a large touch screen. The hall could have easily held up to 50 people without being cramped.

As it was, it only needed to hold about 25 right now. The lights were dimmed as the seniors filed into their spots. Each touch screen displayed the cadet’s name on it; senior cadets took up the first 2 rows and half of the third row. The juniors filled in behind them and began to sit down.

Beatrice watched with amusement as the juniors realized there was assigned seating.

She notices a shorter brunette, with sparkling eyes and a radiant smile. Wait, what? Get it together Beatrice. Her fingertips tingle. She frowns, shakes her hands out, and continues to watch the junior cadet.

The girl is sitting next to a shorter boy. The boy is sporting an amused laugh as the girl realizes she is in the wrong spot.

The junior cadets continue to shuffle around for a few minutes, with the girl still not able to find her spot. She ends up being the last one standing, literally, as Shannon finally walks in to begin the instruction.

“Ava, sit down. We are about to start.” Shannon says, with fond exasperation in her voice.

“Ok, I hear ya, BUT”

the girl’s, Ava’s, singsong voice reaches Beatrice’s ears. Camila, who is next to her, shoots her a weird look as Beatrice sharply inhales.

“not to SEAT around the bush”

the boy Beatrice had seen her talking to earlier groans and shakes his head

“But I don’t have a spot.” Ava finishes, with an innocent grin on her face. Beatrice withholds both an eyeroll and a chuckle. That pun was atrocious at best.

“You are in row 3, seat 8. Next to Lilith.”

“Okie doke”

Ava moves towards Beatrice. Wait why is she coming over here?! Beatrice starts to feel… anxious? What?

Beatrice watches with building nervousness as Ava makes her way towards her. They make eye contact. Ava honest to god winks at Beatrice, then says in a low voice, “as my mother would say, ‘Ope I’m just gonna sneak right on by ya here’” Ava imitates a Minnesota accent as she slides behind Beatrice’s chair, her hand brushing Beatrice’s shoulder and across her upper back.

Ava squeezes  behind Camila and Lilith, and settles on the other side of Lilith. Oh right. I am the aisle seat. Beatrice mentally face palms.

Once Ava is settled, Beatrice can see out of the corner of her vision that Lilith gives Ava a wilting glare. Ava sticks her tongue out in response to Lilith, then turns to face the front.

“Ok, since we have juniors with us, today will be primarily a review session of basic material. They will begin their own tactics course tomorrow.”

Beatrice snaps her attention back to the front, where Shannon has started.

“Jaegers range from 76 meters (250 feet) tall to 61 meters (200 feet) tall. Pilots operate them in the conn pod, or for those more literal learners”

she levels a look at Ava

“the head of the Jaeger. As you already know, Jaegers are housed and deployed from Shatterdomes like this one. In our Shatterdome, there are 4 active Jaeger bays with 18 active Jaegers. This is a relatively small Shatterdome, but we house some of the newer Marks, or models. Previous Marks were nuclear powered, but Dr. Salvius has recently begun to utilize Divinium successfully to power the Jaegers.” Beatrice tunes out a little while Shannon continues to explain what should be review for all of them, including the juniors. After a few minutes, she hears

“For those who aren’t aware, Colonel Vincent is our base commander while Colonel Superion is our deputy commander.” Finally, the end to this review.

“Now, lets talk about weaponry on various different Jaegers. Beatrice, can you please give us a 30 second rundown?” Shannon asks, with what Beatrice knows is a little evil glint in her eyes. Beatrice sighs at her childhood best friend, pauses, and starts

“Jaeger weapons depend on the pilots. Different pilots are more proficient or suited to different types of weaponry. Some pilots use ranged weapons that fire projectiles, while some use more close range weapons, such as swords. Consideration is also given to what is complimentary to the co-pilot drift partner.” Beatrice states matter-of-factly.

Shannon continues with her lecture, and Beatrice feels eyes on her. Her fingertips tingle again. She looks to her left and makes eye contact with Ava. Ava seems to shiver, but it was so fast Beatrice thinks she might have imagined it. She has beautiful expressive eyes.

Camila nudges her with her foot, and Beatrice refocuses (sort of) on the lecture. She can still feel Ava’s gaze burning the side of her head.

***

Hours later, Beatrice, Camila, and Lilith finally leave the lecture hall for dinner. Lilith is ranting about the juniors, and Beatrice’s ears prick at Ava’s voice.

“See ya later new bestie!” Ava rings out, as she skips past them and turns around to walk bouncedly in front of Lilith. She waves, grins, and turns back around, walking with that same boy from earlier. Diego, I think his name was.

“She is the most obnoxious, annoying, self-centered idiot I have ever met!” Lilith rants.

Camila watches her with fond amusement. Even Beatrice smiles a little; Lilith clearly actually likes Ava, not that she’d ever admit it.

Diego and Ava are joined by Dora, another junior with arms that could crush a Jaeger’s foot. The three of them keep talking and laughing as Beatrice observes, not listening to Camila and Lilith.

“Hello” Camila’s hand waves in front of her face, “earth to Bea” she says.

“Hmm? Sorry. What were you saying?”

Lilith snorts.

Just then Beatrice runs into an off balance, solid body. Ava. Her arms instinctively come up as Ava’s right shoulder and side thumps into Beatrice’s chest. Beatrice’s left arm curls around Ava’s back and grips her bicep, while her right arm wraps in front and grips Ava’s left hip, to stop Ava from falling further.

“ohmygodI’msosorry” the girl quickly rambles out. Diego and Dora are still laughing, but this time, facing the seniors.

“Dude you’re clumsy as hell sometimes, who trips over a flat surface and falls sideways backwards?” Diego laughs out. Even Camila and Lilith join in.

Beatrice can see the side of Ava’s face turn bright red. It looks good on her. Ava gets her feet back under her, and turns to face Beatrice. It is then Beatrice realizes she hasn’t let go yet.

She quickly releases Ava, fighting her own blush.

“Thanks for catching me. Sorry again!” she says, softer this time.

“No need to apologize. Just be careful next time.” Beatrice replies, stiff. Ava beams at her and jogs back up to rejoin her friends.

Beatrice’s whole body burns where Ava had run into her.

Chapter Text

“Saber, please report to the deputy’s office immediately. I say again, Saber, please report to Colonel Superion’s office immediately. Thank you.” A male voice crackles over the intercom system.

“Ooooh you’re in trouble Shan, getting called to the principal’s office by the big voice” Mary teases.

Shannon laughs and gently bumps Mary’s shoulder with her own. They are walking behind the gaggle of junior and senior cadets, having just released them for dinner following what, in Shannon’s opinion, was a boring lecture. And she had been the one to give it.

Mary and Shannon walk side by side down the hall, half watching (and making fun of) their friends and cadets, half chatting about nothing at all. That’s the way it has always been with them, ever since they met in prelim all those years ago. Easy conversation and laughs that flow freely. A complementary pair; where Mary is rough, Shannon is gentle. Where Shannon is rigid, Mary is flexible. It can be seen even in their fighting style, where Shannon is conventional, and Mary is… not. It’s what makes them such a successful pilot pair.

“I am sure Superion just wants a training update. It is almost time for the monthly match day. You’re coming with me, yea?” Shannon asks, eyes starting to take on a pleading, puppy-dog quality.

“Yea yea yea, fine, I’m comin too.”

As if she would do anything else. Where Shannon goes, Mary isn’t far behind.

They turn right, down a different hallway, as the cadets continue to the dining hall. As they make their way to the command and operations center, they pass by their maintenance crew. Must be headed to dinner too. Their crew waves and greets them, but doesn’t stop to chat. Mary nods her head, while Shannon smiles and says “hey guys” back.

They pass a lot of other people in the hall. Civil engineers, logisticians, the janitorial staff pushing their carts full of supplies, the support staff (Mary likes them, they gave her an extra blanket when she came as a cadet. She’ll never admit she gets cold. Something about “I’m a badass Shan.”)

Mary almost bumps into part of the Research and Development Division, but dodges out of their way. Normally, she wouldn’t get out of anyone’s way. As Mary has said before, “they can stay on their side of the hallway thank you very much”. BUT… the R&D nerds don’t always have the best… situational awareness. They tend to not even notice if they run into something. And are sometimes carrying something gross. Shannon knows Mary doesn’t want to risk it after they saw Daisy get covered in orange liquid last year. Still no idea what the hell that was.

After about a 15-minute walk, they come to a nicer area of the Shatterdome. The office spaces for the command staff. Still metal walls, but these don’t have rust showing or peeling paint. There are two guards standing in front of double glass doors, that lead to a carpeted area. Mary and Shannon don’t need to show their badges. The guards nod, and the pilots open the glass doors to walk in.

The enter into the foyer, where there are four secretaries at their four large wooden desks. The desks are situated strategically in front of the four heavy wooden doors. Two doors have the insignia of a Colonel on the door, one has the insignia of a Lieutenant Colonel, and one has the stripes of a Chief.  Two secretaries are on the phone but look up and smile briefly at the pilots. One is typing at his computer, glances up, and keeps typing.

The fourth though, that is the one they need to talk to. The fourth secretary is scribbling furiously on a sticky note, and also looks up as Mary and Shannon enter. He frowns.

“Hey Sergeant Mendoza. I was paged?” Shannon says to the wary man, with a small smile. He is still uptight and on edge, as Mary would say.

“Captain, yes, she is expecting you.” He turns to look at Mary. “Ma’am, Colonel Superion only paged Captain Masters. Please exit the command staff area.” He says politely, but firmly to Mary.

Mary is about to protest, but then the voice of Superion wafts out of the open office door behind Sgt Mendoza. “Pete let them both in, its fine, thank you.”

Sergeant Mendoza glares at Mary, but nods his head. “Captains, please enter. The Colonel will see you now.”

“Yea no shit, we all just heard her” Mary mumbles under her breath, so only Shannon hears. Shannon represses a laugh.

Shannon and Mary come into Superion’s office, stop in front of her desk, come to attention, and in unison say “Ma’am, Saber and Shotgun reporting as ordered.”

Superion waves her hand. “At ease, as you were.” The two relax back into their normal standing postures. “Have a seat, both of you. We have several things to discuss.”

They sit in the plush chairs in front of her desk, Mary slouching a little more than appropriate, as Superion says “First of all, Shannon how is training going with the seniors?”

Shannon gives a brief rundown of their progress.

“And how is our favorite golden child Mary?” Superion asks, a little frustration creeping into her voice. Not many people could pick up on it, but Shannon has been working for Superion for years now.

Mary replies “Ava is settling in well. Vinc- Colonel Vincent, I mean, hasn’t stopped by for his visit yet.”

Vincent usually stops by in the first day or two of junior cadets’ arrival, to give them the ol’ rah-rah pep talk speech.

“I will let you know how she does.” Superion nods.

“Listen, Cradle.” Mary continues, sighing. Superion raises her eyebrows at the use of her callsign. A sign of respect and informality among pilots.

“I know we just met Ava, but I can tell she is a good one. I don’t care that Vincent has taken a special interest. I got a feeling in my jellies, she is going to be a great pilot.”

Then Mary glares at both of them. “If you so much as breathe a word of this to her, so help you I will make your lives-”

“Okkkk Mary we get it, you are badass, have to keep your street cred. Yes yes.” Shannon interrupts what she is sure would have been a semi-insulting definitely-unprofessional rant.

Jellies, what the hell are jellies Mary? She’d ask later.

Then Shannon smiles at Mary. Apparently Mary picked up on Superion’s tone too. She is such a softie.

Mary has never liked it when people judge others before getting to know them. Very much a “judge them on their own merits” type of gal. So it makes sense that she is a little defensive about Ava; she doesn’t want Superion to judge her just because Vincent hand-picked Ava to come here (something he has never done before). It’s not like Ava had a choice, or hell, even knows.

This particular trait is just one in a long list that Shannon has always appreciated about Mary. My fairness loving, deceivingly perceptive, goober. 

Superion clears her throat and changes the subject, and Shannon’s attention comes back to the office.

“Match day is at the end of this week, correct?” Mary and Shannon nod.

“Very well. I want Lilith to participate. I don’t care who her mother is; her siblings have not made it to Jaeger pilot training in time, and she needs a drift partner. She has too much potential talent to waste.” Superion says firmly. “I will call the ambassador personally if I have to. We are training pilots, not playing some political game. Her mother will just have to deal with Lilith drifting with a peasant. Try Beatrice, she is the only one Lilith’s mother might openly tolerate.” She continues, with some humor in her voice. Shannon voices her agreement.

“Mary, I want the juniors to participate next month in the match. The seniors are getting close to finalizing their training, and I don’t want either group to miss out on a partner. Start an extra morning training session with the juniors, before combining with the seniors in the morning session.”

Mary nods, but Shannon can read her face like an open book. She imagines Mary’s thoughts are something along the lines of Goddammit, that means WE have to get up extra early to train. Why did Shannon agree to this job. Shannon smiles at her.

“Now that that’s settled. Two more important things. First, we have a distinguished visitor coming next month. Dr. Jillian Salvius and her team will be coming here to see how the divinium Jaegers are doing and collect data. The protocol office will take care of everything, but I wanted to let the two of you know, as you will be put on her schedule quite a bit. Protocol will give you details. Daisy and Hank will take over training for that week for you.”

Daisy and Hank, both callsigns for their fellow Jaeger pilots. Daisy is a little… crazy, frankly, but Hank is as mellow as Daisy is hyperactive. They balance out well.

Now that Shannon thinks about it, she isn’t actually sure what their real names are. Nobody ever calls them anything but their callsign. Huh.

“On that note,” Superion interrupts Shannon’s thoughts “as you know, we haven’t had a Kaiju attack in some time. R&D predicts we will have a Category 2 or 3 in the next 3 months. You two will be joining in the on-call deployment schedule after Dr. Salvius’ visit. Hank and Daisy will cover you while you are on call.”

Mary and Shannon nod.

“That is all I have for you today. Do you have anything that I need to be read in on?”

Both shake their heads no.

“Ok, you are dismissed. Go get some chow before they close.”

Shannon and Mary stand and start to walk towards the door.

“Oh and ladies” Superion calls out. They stop in the doorway and turn to face her.

“Train them well. We are going to need them soon.” She says, voice grim.

The pilot duo turn and continue out the door, out the command section, and back into the hallway.

“Well that was a lot” Mary half laughs. “Cradle be droppin’ bombs on us like she is still a damn pilot”

Shannon joins in the laughter, as the two of them make their way to the dining hall.

Chapter Text

Ava, Diego, and Dora walk into the dining hall together, the other cadets trailing behind them. Dora grabs her tray, then Diego, and finally Ava. She expects Lilith or Camila to be right behind her, but is surprised when she hears a male voice.

She half turns to see who had spoken. It was the senior guy she had seen earlier at lunch, with the blonde hair and blue eyes.

“Hey, I’m Michael. You’re Ava, right?” He says, friendly. “Don’t go for the carrots, they are a little sus.”

Ava laughs “oh shit, I definitely thought they were sweet potato chunks, good call. Thanks. Don’t tell the kitchen staff though. They’re my new buddies. They promised to sneak me some of that non-alcoholic sparkling juice for the morale day this month. They’re playing the first Lord of the Rings movie!”

Michael chuckles. “Wow they must really like you, they even told you what the morale event is. Damn girl. Okay, I see you, get your charm on” he flirts.

Diego pipes in from ahead of her “She is like a frickin golden retriever in human form. Befriends everyone”. Ava just laughs and agrees.

As they move down the line, Ava tries to keep her smile on as the orange *carrots* are scooped onto her plate. “Thanks Tanya!” she says, beaming at the kitchen staff. Tanya smiles back, then her face returns to its normal scowl. I can’t tell if the RBF is on purpose or just her default. Ava thinks to herself.

“Whoa. I don’t think I have ever seen Tammy smile” the guy behind Michael says. Tanya just glares at him.

Ok, on purpose for good reason.

Ava follows Dora and Diego to the same spot they sat at for lunch. Michael follows them too, and sits down next to Ava, across from Dora. The guy behind him in line, who Ava recognizes sat with Michael at lunch earlier, joins them and drops in next to Dora. He is wearing the grey flight suit and white shirt.

“Hey guys. I’m JC. I really-” he is interrupted by another person who sits next to him. The interrupter is a girl in the same grey and white. She wears hers like Mary, with the arms tied around her waist. Her blonde hair is pulled into a ponytail, and she somehow makes the whole ensemble look like she just stepped off a runway. Minus the smudges of grease on her white shirt.

“Hey party people. I haven’t met the juniors yet, who are you guys?”

Apparently everyone knows who we are.

Diego raises his eyebrow. “How do you know we are the junior cadets?”

The glamorous woman just smiles and says “sweetie, you are the only ones in those clothes.” They look around and realize she is right. The juniors, having landed today and not gone through clothing issue, are still in their tan shirt, black cargo pant combo from prelim.

“Don’t worry. Clothing is working on getting your bundles ready. They didn’t know if anyone was going to scrub out, so they always wait until the morning the baby rangers arrive. That way, they don’t waste work and get all the sizes together for nothing.” She explains. “I bet you’ll get them after dinner.”

JC looks at her with disbelief, and asks “Chanel, how would you know?”

“I am friends with one of the clothing guys, don’t be jealous” she replies, a sly smile on her face.

“Well, that’s good to know. Although I think I will miss the practicality of the pockets” Dora says. Ava and Diego startle. Dora isn’t exactly known for her chattiness.  

Diego picks up the conversation, introducing himself and Ava. “Where do you guys work?” he asks.

“Oh, Chanel and I are on the maintenance crew. We haven’t been assigned a Jaeger yet, so we are just floats.” JC tells them.

“Why would they put maintenance in grey and white? So you can immediately see how dirty you get?” Ava jokes.

Michael laughs, maybe a bit too loudly and fully at the joke. “Well, probably the same logic as doctors in white coats. Which is, no logic.” He says.

“Funny enough, R&D are the ones in the stereotypical maintenance blue” Chanel says. “Everyone else just wears their normal military camo.”

The conversation continues to flow between Diego, Chanel, JC, and Michael. Michael continues to try to flirt with Ava, but her attention is pulled down their table, towards where Beatrice, Camila, and tall-dark-and-cheekbones, who Ava now knows is Lilith, sit. Her spine zings again.

The three seniors are joined by Mary and Shannon, who have just walked in.

Michael tries to get Ava’s attention with a flirty comment. Unbeknownst to her, he is smiling at her and scootches closer on the bench.

Beatrice turns to look at Ava, and when she does her smile turns into a frown. Ok I just ran into her the one time, and I apologized. Why the frown? Does she not like me?

Ava feels oddly… bummed, about the thought of Beatrice not liking her. She usually makes friends easily.

At that moment, Michael throws his arm around Ava’s shoulders, jostling her into some song the table was laughing about and poorly singing. Ava’s attention is pulled back to the group briefly, and when she looks again, Beatrice’s frown has deepened, and she turns away from Ava to rejoin her group’s conversation.

Ava shrugs off Michael’s arm, and does the same.

**

After dinner, Mary takes them to clothing issue, where they receive their olive green joggers, black socks, and black shirts. Chanel was right, and the clothing all fits much better than the clothes from prelim.

Ava and the other juniors roll their steamtrunks, now full of uniforms and bedding, to the temporary barracks. They each choose a cot, Diego and Dora on either side of her, and park their trunks at the foot of the cots. Ava drops her black backpack she came with on top of her new navy blue trunk.

Mary shows them where the shared bathrooms are, with individual shower and toilet stalls.

The whole process takes a few hours, and by the time they are all settled, taps is about to play, signaling bedtime for the base.

As everyone is settled or seated into their cots, Mary announces “oh also, we have a morning training session that begins at 530am sharp. We will then combine with the seniors at 7am until lunch.”

The room lets out a collective groan.

Mary grins wickedly. “See you at the asscrack of dawn” she says, exiting the barracks, turning off the lights and closing the door behind her; abandoning them for her shared officer’s quarters with Shannon.

Ava turns to Diego and says “wait, we don’t have any kind of alarm. How are we going to wake up on time?!”

It’s Dora who answers. “I am pretty sure Shotgun will make sure we are on time.” And with that, she lays down.

Ava shrugs in the darkness, and does the same. Tomorrow will be a new interesting day, that is for sure.  

Chapter Text

Ava awakens to bright fluorescent lights and a foghorn going off, manages to say “what the fu-” before promptly falling out of her cot. (It’s narrow ok.) Beside her, Dora sits up, back ramrod straight with the best posture Ava has ever seen, blinking slowly. Diego, meanwhile, takes his pillow and puts it on top of his head, groaning.

Mary, in all her morning person glory, stands just inside the now open barracks door with a satisfied smirk. Ava hates her.

“Be ready in 5 minutes for combat training!” She shouts cheerfully.

Who the fuck shouts at 530 in the morning?

**

After quickly getting ready, Ava stands with her friends in their new black t-shirt and olive green joggers, her hair in a slicked back pony tail.

Mary, again too cheerfully and too loudly, says “follow me!” Ava trudges behind the group, wiping her eyes and yawning.

They arrive at the training room, and Mary enters first and clicks on the lights. Ava watches as they flicker to life, illuminating the room.

Holy shit it is freezing. Next time I am grabbing that sweater they gave us, damn.

“Everyone to the bleachers” Mary instructs.

As they make their way, she continues “take off your boots and socks, and leave them where you can find them. Remember where they are, you won’t get another pair. You can leave your water bottles here too.”

Ava groans, and hears Diego say “it’s already freezing in here” under his breath. Breath they thankfully cannot see. At least it isn’t that cold.

“Now, today, we will start to go over 9 sequences of attacks and defenses. You will be partnered up, and practice these until the seniors join us. These 9 sequences are your bread-and-butter fighting, the foundation upon which more advanced and individualized fighting styles are built. Learn them well.” Mary says.

“I will demonstrate them one by one, and then you will repeat them with your partner until I say so. The first five are without weapons, and the last 4 are with a staff. We will start with number one.”

Mary then pairs everyone up according to height, and they spread out on the mats. (Barefoot, much to Ava’s chagrin.) Ava and Diego, much like in prelim, end up paired together based on size.

“Alright. Zori, come here” Mary instructs. Zori tentatively walks towards her. “You will be my partner for this demonstration. As a quick note, we are NOT actually striking each other. You will stop all hits before making contact, should the hit not be blocked or your partner mess up the sequence. We are not trying to hurt each other, we are trying to learn muscle memory for now.”

“Lets go through it slow” Mary says. “First, starting positions. Hands up and loose. Knuckles should be around your eyebrows. Keep your elbows and arms in close. Feet shoulder width apart, either one foot slightly in front of the other or equal to each other. Whatever is most comfortable.” She demonstrates, and has the class stay in that position for the rest of the demonstration.

“First part of sequence 1, palm strike with right hand towards your partners face. Aim for the nose.”

She explains that punching is also an option, but “no punching today. Punching can break your hand much easier than a palm strike. If you have an option, palm strike does less damage to you.” She then demonstrates how to hold a fist, with the thumb on the outside. She also goes through how to palm strike, using the heel of the hand, extending the arm and rotating with the core for maximum force.

“Partners, use your whole upper body to dodge to the left.” Again, she demonstrates.

Mary continues going through sequence 1, saying “for anyone who has taken boxing or kickboxing, this sequence is fairly similar.” After slowly walking through the demonstration, Mary has everyone partner up while she calls out the moves of the sequence, slowly.

After a few minutes, she says “each partner, go through the attacking portion of sequence one 5 times”, and then begins to pace around the room, offering instruction and corrections.

***

An hour later, and they have made it through sequence 5.

Ava is *dying*. Actively.

Each sequence is based in different martial arts or fighting styles, the last two they just did being jiu jitsu and aikido.

“Water break!” Mary calls. Ava, panting, red faced, with sweat dripping everywhere

seriously, since when do my ass crack and boobs sweat

slowly shuffles over to the bleachers, where they had left their water bottles with their shoes. She gasps out to an only slightly disheveled-looking Dora, “dude how are you not dead?”

Dora gives her an amused look, “some of us workout Ava” she retorts.

“oh that’s colder than this room”

Ava dramatically flops onto the bleacher lengthwise, chest down with the side of her face blissfully resting against the cold metal.

“I think I might be dying. How are we going to do this for another four hour and a half hours??”

Mary calls out “ok, water break is over. Let’s get through sequence 6 before the seniors join”

Ava thinks she might cry. In fact, she feels a tear start to fall right now.

“Diego, my best friend, I bequeath unto you all of my worldly possessions in the face of what is, surely, my impending doom this day” Ava starts, dramatically and with a bad British accent. “Remember me fondly.”

Diego and a couple nearby classmates laugh, and he tries to pull her up by the shoulder. “Let’s go, drama queen” he says.

Ava rolls onto her back, (falling off the bleacher in the process because she once again forgot how narrow something is), and groans “leave me here to dieeeeee”

Diego, still laughing, gets a hold of her arm, and pulls her up.

He is pretty strong for a small scrawny guy.

The class makes their way down to Mary waiting on the mats, who watches with a half annoyed, half amused smirk.

**

20 minutes later, and Ava wasn’t sure she could get any more tired than she already was.

Mary finally releases them, and gives them 10 minutes to recover before the seniors are required to arrive at 7am. The juniors take full advantage to catch their breath, get some water, laugh, and talk.

Ava is greedily gulping both air and water at the same time. (Naturally, she chokes a little, and Dora thumps her back while she coughs.)

As Ava catches her breath and stops sounding like a dying walrus, a few of the seniors start to trickle in early. Shannon also arrives, and goes to stand next to Mary, giving her a quick side-hug. The two chat and laugh while everyone arrives and sits scattered on the bleachers.

Those two are peas in a pod. Two peas in a conn pod. Ava laughs out loud to herself.

Diego gives her a weird look, and Ava shares her joke. “Not your best pun, but decent” he critiques, laughing. “Yea, but it got us to laugh, so that’s a win in my book” Ava replies. The two chat and bicker like siblings for another few minutes.

Eventually, Shannon and Mary step to the front of the bleachers.  Shannon projects her voice over the group of 25 future Jaeger Rangers, and says “ok listen up everyone. Before we begin, a couple of announcements. First, seniors, your monthly match day is in two days. All will be participating.”

She levels a firm look at someone behind Ava. Ava turns around, and sees Lilith with an unsettled look on her face. Ava’s attention is drawn back to the front as Shannon continues,

“Seniors, we will be pairing you up over the next two days both in afternoon tactics and in morning combat, to help judge drift compatibility. On match day, you will either have an official sparring match, or will go to the drift sim with whoever we assign.”

Shannon looks around at all of the seniors with a serious expression.

 “As this is your first time in the drift simulator, I’d like to remind you all that it is drift only, without being attached to a Jaeger. This is simply to test if you could co-pilot with each other. Our operations techs will be there to assist and give a pre-drift safety brief.”

At that, Mary speaks up next to her.

“Juniors, you will not be participating in this match day, but you will be in the next one. You may, however, be asked to spar with the seniors over the next couple days as well.”

Ava is unsettled by that thought, considering they just learned barely half of the sequences *today*.

“Seniors, remember what it was like to be a junior. Remember it is a spar, not a fight. Compatibility should almost feel more like a dance than anything else.” Mary continues, oblivious to Ava’s mild internal panic.

“Finally,  we will-”

A polite “ah-hem” cough behind Mary interrupts her. She turns around, sees who interrupted her, and says “Oh good sir, you are here right on time”. She turns back around to face the bleachers,  

“As I was about to say, we will be hosting Colonel Vincent this morning for a few minutes. Be on your best behavior.” She levels a glare at them.

“Thank you Captain, for that succinct introduction” Colonel Vincent says, a twinkle of humor in his eyes.

He pulls a picture out of his pocket. It’s a picture of a guy in camo on a horse.

“I won’t bore you with an introduction of myself, or give you the party line. I decided that my speeches to you all, future leaders and rangers, should be… different. So bear with me as I talk with you for a few minutes this morning.”

He smiles at them, and continues, holding up the picture.

“This picture was taken in Afghanistan 2002.  It's an Air Force Master Sergeant named Bart Decker who's now retired.  He's an Air Force Combat Controller and he went into Afghanistan with the First Army Special Forces teams to work with the Northern Alliance and fight the Taliban.”

Ava, and the rest of the room, are intrigued, and wonder where he is going with this. 

“As warfare has changed, technology has taken over.  We’ve all heard that, right?  Bart Decker is a new age kind of guy.  He understands technology and he’s got a boatload of it on that horse.  But the most sophisticated piece of war fighting equipment in this picture is Bart Decker, and he really hasn’t changed that much since the days of the Roman legion.”

“Politics are going to change.  Technology is going to change. The enemy will change… but they won’t.  You know, our world gives us its sons and daughters, and it commits us to defending, and it expects us to be successful. These are the people who do that. Your job will be to lead them. That’s what you signed up for. Are you ready?”

Oh shit thinks Ava, he is giving us THE SPEECH.

He continues he speech for several more minutes. He goes on to give examples of other members in the PDCC, in various jobs, who are making a difference, big or small. Not just Rangers. Officers and enlisted alike.

As Col Vincent begins the end of his speech, there isn’t an eye that isn’t on him.

“Let me leave you with these words. Leadership is a gift. It’s given by those who follow, but you have to be worthy of it. The people that you’re going to be responsible for are the greatest people in the planet. You better be getting ready to lead them. If you’re not, rededicate yourself to the effort. If you fail, learn and move on, try again.”

He pauses, and looks around to the future leaders and pilots.

“If you’re sitting to yourself thinking ‘this place sucks’, leave. We don’t need you. We don’t want you.  We don’t have time for you. Because when you leave this place and I put you in command and supervision of people like Bart Decker, if you let them down, I will track you down, and I will hurt you. And that’s going to be really embarrassing considering how old I am.”

The room lets out a collective chuckle at that last sentence.

“I hope to see you all at graduation and watch as you take your first steps in a Jaeger as pilots. I look forward to seeing you all progress.”

He makes eye contact with Ava at that sentence.

“Thank you for allowing me to interrupt your training this morning. See you around the halls!” He finishes cheerfully.

Then, he leaves. Just like that. Ava and her fellow cadets sit, somewhat dumbfounded, after having listened to the greatest speech they have ever heard in their lives.

Ava hears the seniors behind her, “wow, he didn’t give us that speech as juniors. What gives?”

Other similar mumbles float through the room, before Shannon and Mary shake themselves off.

Shannon is the first to speak, saying “alright settle down. Let’s get going with training. Today’s pairs are…” she checks a note in her pocket.

“Beatrice and Lilith, Camila and Todd…” she continues to list off the names of the seniors, in pairs.

 Mary follows her, saying “juniors, for today continue with your partner from earlier, and go through sequence 2. We will switch partners in an hour or so.”

With that, the cadets make their way to the mats as conversation picks back up.

**

Two hours later finds Ava paired with Camila. The powers that be, meaning Shannon and Mary, decided to intermingle the juniors and seniors. She was hoping to be paired with Beatrice, but watched with disappointment as Beatrice was paired with Zori instead.

Ava did admittedly breathe a sigh of relief that she wasn’t paired with Lilith. She *may* have antagonized Lilith yesterday a bit. A bit.

Camila bounces over and says “you’re Ava, right?”. Thank god. She seems nice.

**

An hour later, Ava thinks that was maybe those were famous last thoughts. Camila is indeed, a sweetheart. She is also fucking brutally efficient at kicking Ava’s ass from here to Saturn.

As Ava looks up at the ceiling of the room, panting and in pain while laying on her back after a particularly effective throw, Camila’s smile pops into her field of vision.

“That was better! You are doing pretty good. Ready for another round?”

Ava groans. “If I say no, will you leave me here to lay and die in peace?”

Camila laughs, and offers her hand. Ava begrudgingly takes it. As she stands, she sees the girl from yesterday with the black bandana punch her classmate Sally right in the solarplexes, and thinks, maybe Camila isn’t so bad after all.

Camila follows her gaze, and says “ouch, Crimson went a little hard” with a frown.

Ava hears a whistle, and Shannon’s voice again. “Ok seniors, you are off to the showers. You have battle simulations for the final hour of the morning.”

Mary chimes in, saying “Juniors we are going to start sequence 7. Go grab a staff and pair up.” Ava looks at her classmates and almost laughs. They fared about as well as she did.

Camila looks at her with a smile and says “see you around, keep practicing Ava!”

Ava smiles back and says “so you’re saying I should stick with it?” and waggles her eyebrows.

Camila lets out a delighted chuckle “oooh I love a good pun! Have fun with staff training, see you at lunch!” and practically skips away.

Ava watches the seniors leave.

Well, one particular senior, who moves so fluidly she basically walks like a dancer.

As Beatrice disappears from view, Ava sighs, grabs a staff from the rack, partners up with Randall, and they begin the sequence. After another hour of drills, Mary releases them for shower and lunch.

Chapter Text

Beatrice is disappointed that the juniors’ lunch doesn’t overlap with theirs today. She wants to pretend she doesn’t know *why* she is disappointed, but if she is being honest with herself, she wants to see Ava. She feels both calmer and like a live wire when Ava is around. There is this pull towards the girl, almost like the electricity Beatrice feels is generating a magnetic force between them.

Wow, being both nerdy and poetic today I see her helpful brain provides as an afterthought.

She shakes off her thoughts and takes her tray to her usual spot, with Camila and Lilith. Mary must still be with the juniors. The two other seniors are talking about the upcoming match day. Lilith, seeing Beatrice joining them, says immediately

“Bea, you know I love you. But you didn’t feel the flow either right? We spar, and it’s fine. You are a great opponent. No dance though, correct?”

Beatrice looks at her old friend with amusement and hums thoughtfully as she brings her fork to her mouth. She chews slowly, thinking.

“Yea, but it makes sense that Shannon would try to pair you two first. You have known each other since what, 5^th grade? You are basically siblings in all but blood relation. Siblings DO tend to drift well together.” Camila argues.

“3^rd grade” Lilith mumbles back. Camila shoots her a look that says not the point.

Having finished her bite, Beatrice adds “She is right Lil. I would have tried us first too. Honestly, we probably are drift compatible, even without feeling the flow.”

Shannon sits down with them as Beatrice continues, looking at Shannon now.

“I just hypothesize that the two of us would be more drift compatible with another partner. Our mind meld wouldn’t be as deep, and therefore, our headspace wouldn’t be as efficient and effective as it could be with a different co-pilot.” Beatrice finishes.

Lilith gestures with her hand and says “see, you get it” and looks at Camila. Camila rolls her eyes and keeps eating.

“I agree. But let’s see how this afternoon goes with the two of you Bea. If only to fully appease Lil’s mom.” Shannon says, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“Well if *someone* hadn’t drifted so god damn well with Mary, I could have tried to drift with my other basically-sibling. My mom actually likes you 30% of the time Shan. Which is 28% more than anyone else. You’re her favorite by far.” Lilith replies, shooting a mock glare at Shannon.

“Oh she does not” Shannon protests.

Beatrice shakes her head in disagreement. “Lil is right, that is true Shan. Remember when you decided to go to Oia for spring break that one year, and we rented those four wheelers?”

Shannon covers her face with her hands, “oh come on Bea, I was 21, that was years ago-”

Lilith, grinningly like a cat who not only caught the canary, but just finished eating it, interrupts “And then someone was all ‘follow me guys, I know a shortcut to the black sand beach’, so we did, and then what did the shortcut turn out to be, Shan?”

Shannon just groans through her fingers, ears bright red. Camila bounces excitedly in her seat, beaming at the story. “What?!” She asks, taking too much pleasure from Shannon’s embarrassment.

“If I recall Lil, it was a sidewalk alley, without any road. And I believe Shannon here, our intrepid leader, took out three tables, shouted ‘sorry’ over her shoulder, and just kept driving. We ended up at a lighthouse instead of the black sand beach. With three broken four-wheelers.” Beatrice finishes.

Lilith, cackling now, says “yea, and since they were rented under my name, which I am still bitter about, who had to call her mom with this news?” Lilith doesn’t wait for Shannon to answer, “ME!”

Shannon finally uncovers her face and says “You may have called her, but you shoved the phone in my hand as soon as you heard ‘hello’!”

“It was your fault they were broken!” Lilith defends. “Besides, did she even yell at you?”

“…no. She just asked how much the damage was.”

“Yea, exactly my point Shan. She once grounded me for a month in high school for hitting a curb with the car and scratching the hub. The hub, Shan. I got ripped a new one.” Lilith deadpans.

The table soon dissolves into laughter, with Camila even letting out a small snort. Tears streamed down their faces as the friends good naturedly return to the topic of drifting. “Either way, I am going to pair you with Beatrice the rest of the day” Shannon says.

“I think you should try her and Camila” Beatrice says, now calm. “She and Todd don’t flow either.”

Camila’s face turns pink, and Lilith looks down at her food and pokes it with her fork.

Shannon chews thoughtfully. “That actually isn’t the worst idea I have ever heard Bea. Better than my idea of her and Crimson next.”

Lilith looks up at her at that, an affronted expression on her face. “Excuse you?” she grinds out.

“That better be in response to the Crimson part of her statement” Camila says, looking at Lilith.

Lilith chokes on her next bite of food a little, and wheezes out an anxious “what no- of course it was- I wasn’t reacting to- it wasn’t you Camila.”

Camila smiles innocently and chuckles at her, and they all resume eating.

She has a little Sin in the Cinnamon Roll of her personality Beatrice thinks fondly.

***

The rest of the day passes in a blur. The seniors are worked to the bone, rotating partners so Shannon can see who might be compatible. Shannon, it seems, has decided to take Beatrice’s advice, and pairs Lilith and Camila all day. Beatrice smiles to herself.

Beatrice’s last partner of the day is Michael. Ugh, why.

Wait, why don’t I like him? I didn’t dislike him last month…

She shrugs off the thought. That was last month. Today is today, and she doesn’t like him. He is too… arrogant. He is pretty and he knows it. He also thinks he is God’s gift to Jaegers, and that his fighting is the best the school has ever seen.

Beatrice smirks to herself. Yea right.

***

An hour later, and Beatrice is unsurprised that Shannon concludes they are not in any way compatible.

***

Dinner time. Finally. Beatrice sits with her friends, as always, at the end of the table row. Back straight, posture impeccable, even with as tiring a day as she has had.

It takes a lot of mental energy to work with someone you actively dislike, turns out.

As they get to their seats, Camila waves at someone. She turns to see, and her fingertips tingle. A petite brunette with a smile so big it scrunches the corners of her eyes waves back. Ava.

Ava makes her way over to them, and Camila invites her to sit. “Hey guys, you have met Ava. She is a junior, obviously. We sparred today, and I promised her my chocolate pudding” Camila says with a smile.

Ava plops down on the bench next to Beatrice, looking across her to talk to Camila. “As reparations for kicking my ass all morning” Ava snorts with a smile.

“Language”

Ava just turns her grin to Beatrice and winks. Beatrice clenches and unclenches her hands.  

Lilith, across from Camila at the end of the table, shoots Ava a small glare. Its effect is somewhat lessened by the threat of a smile just underneath the surface of her expression, however. Next to her, across from Beatrice, Shannon laughs and says

“Beatrice, I just heard you call your partner a dipshit not an hour ago”

“Allegedly.” She replies. Traitor.

She is surprised when Ava comes to her defense, snickering and saying “You have no proof. Slander your honor.”

The table laughs as they are joined by the scrawny boy and muscled girl Beatrice has seen Ava hang out with. They introduce themselves as Diego and Dora, sitting across the table from Ava.

Beatrice’s posture stiffens as another body sits down next to Ava. A body she, as of a couple hours ago, decidedly does not like. Blonde haired blue eyed cocky dipshit. He sits, grinning, a little too close to Ava.

Ava must think so too, as she shifts slightly further into Beatrice’s space. Beatrice didn’t realize how close they already were, as Ava’s side presses against hers. The tingling in her hands is replaced by the warmth at her side.

“Hey guys!” He cheerfully greets. Everyone, except Beatrice and Lilith, say hi back. He is soon joined by his usually group of friends, Chanel and JC. Even Todd ends up sitting with them.

Well I guess the gang is all here. At least Crimson and her cronies didn’t join too, only so many people can fit on this table. Although, between Crimson and Michael… I might pick Crimson Beatrice muses.

The table talks happily and loudly for most of dinner. Beatrice learns that Ava is *touchy*. I don’t think she even realizes she is doing it. Beatrice’s heart stuttered in her chest the first time Ava excitedly tapped Beatrice’s forearm with her hand - tap tap tap in quick succession - looking at her with that big smile and shining eyes full of mirth, practically bouncing in her seat.  

Beatrice just blinked back with wide eyes, before she quickly regained her composure and released the breath she didn’t realize she had held. She can feel her pulse thudding in her chest, with a pleasant warmth behind her sternum. Hopefully nobody can see my carotid jumping.

Beatrice joins in the conversation occasionally, heart soaring when she hears Ava laugh at one of her jokes.

Diego chimes in with “Ay, Dios mío” when Ava tells a particularly bad pun, face palming. Beatrice replies back in Spanish, and Diego turns to her, excited. His eager face brightens as the two chat animatedly back and forth. After a couple minutes, they return back to the larger group, and Beatrice feels eyes on her profile. She turns to look at Ava, who is staring at her with her mouth slightly open in an O shape. Her cheeks and the tips of her ears are a little pink as she looks at Beatrice with wonder.

“You speak Spanish?” she blurts.

“I speak five languages. Spanish, French, Latin, German, and English. I am working on Portuguese at the moment.” Beatrice replies with an eyebrow raised, amusement playing at her features.

“Five?” Ava says, voice a little higher and scratchier than normal. “And you are learning Portuguese while in Ranger school?” She continues, voice cracking a little. Her blush grows a darker shade of red as Camila, Lilith, Shannon, and Diego all level looks of amusement at her.

“Holy shit” Ava breathes, her gaze dropping back to her tray. Camila takes pity on her, “Ava, you still want this pudding?”

The girl immediately brightens. “Camila you are an angel, nay, a goddess, amongst peasants” she swoons jokingly, while taking the offered pudding.

This time, it is JC who ruins Beatrice’s mood instead of Michael. “Well I must be in Heaven then, because *you* are definitely an angel” He says to Ava in a low voice. He probably thinks that is sexy.  

Ava visibly cringes, then “dude, that was bad, I can’t tell if you are being serious or not” and chortles, assuming it was a joke. Beatrice sees his face fall a little as the rest of the table continues conversing. She feels oddly smug about Ava rejecting him.

The topic turns to drifting and the match day coming up. JC and Chanel leave, citing both boredom at the topic and work. Todd goes with them. Michael stays, unfortunately. As the group chatters about potential matches and predictions about match day, Michael says confidently “Saber, I think Ava and I should spar tomorrow. I bet we have some compatibility.” He smiles at Ava.

Ava shrugs, and Beatrice notes she isn’t really smiling. Not frowning, but not smiling either. She focuses back on what Ava is saying, “the more people we spar with, the more we can all get a feel for potential matches” as she turns, makes eye contact with Beatrice, then looks at Shannon. “Can’t hurt to try I suppose.”

She keeps looking around the table. “Camila, no offense, but I think I have already crossed you off the list.” Ava giggles. “Lilith, you too.”

Lilith looks offended “Wh-” she cuts herself off, looking contemplative, “actually, no. As much as I hate to admit it, you have a point.” The table laughs.

Lilith then gets a wicked glint in her eye. The same one that has gotten Beatrice into (and admittedly out of) trouble many times in her life. Uh oh. “Maybe after Ava and Michael spar, Ava, you can spar with Beatrice. You’ll have to keep trying to find your drift partner after all.” She says.

Beatrice both appreciated the dig to Michael and hated Lilith.

“Actually, we probably won’t have any serious sparring tomorrow. Too close to the match day, and the juniors don’t have enough training to get a good read. We may have some seniors teach the juniors, if we don’t see an obvious match for them within the senior class. But I doubt we’d be able to see any compatibility between anyone this soon.” Shannon says.

God bless that woman, her ancestors, and her firstborn dog.

Ava’s face falls just a little. Beatrice notices that Michael’s face, behind her, does as well. She smirks. Ava bumps her shoulder into her, and when Beatrice looks back at her face, Ava is raising one eyebrow and smirking right back. Beatrice’s cheeks turn pink.

The conversation is interrupted by Mary, who just arrived at the dining hall.

“Ok juniors, let’s go. I have your room assignments, so let’s get you off those cots and onto a bed. You are lucky, looks like single rooms!”

Beatrice smiles to herself. Mary says that every time, but Beatrice knows that the support staff in charge of lodging for the base give pilots and cadets their own rooms. Mostly because of scheduling, she assumes, and because of the frequent room moves as people find drift partners or get sent to another base.

Shannon, she notes, already has a to-go container full of food for Mary, seeing as how she missed dinner. Those two work like two well-oiled cogs in this PPDC machine.

The juniors grab their trays and get up, as does Michael. Ava swings one leg around so she is facing Beatrice and stands up, leaning ever so slightly forward. As she reaches to grab her tray, her chest gently brushes against Beatrice’s shoulder.

Beatrice stops breathing and freezes. Her mouth draws into a thin line, as her eyes dart anywhere but Ava.

The moment is over as soon as it begins, and Ava is bouncing off to tray return, and then with her classmates and Mary to her new room.

Camila pokes her in the side, and she lets out a big whoosh of air. Camila, Lilith, and Shannon all fall into a fit of giggles at her as her face turns red.

“Oh baby girl, you are a mess” Shannon says.

Beatrice mumbles “shut up” under her breath, which just makes everyone even more amused. “Like you can talk, since when do you say ‘baby girl’?”

“Since Mary and I ghost drift, obviously” Shannon says, as she gets up to leave. The three just look after her with shock on their faces. “What?” she says innocently. “Come on, let’s go. The dining hall is going to close soon.”

***

When Beatrice returns to her quarters, someone is moving in across the hall. She can hear the familiar sounds of a trunk rolling around. She also knows that the room was unoccupied this morning, so she puts two and two together, and assumes a junior has moved in.

Then her fingertips tingle.

About two seconds later, Ava bounds out of the doorway, trips a little, and almost collides right with Beatrice in the hallway. After getting her footing and sticking out her lower lip to blow her hair out of her eyes, Ava beams up at Beatrice and says “hey neighbor!” cheerfully.

Of course.

Ava continues her peppy journey down the hallway, likely to get the rest of her things. At the end of the hall, Beatrice sees Mary and Shannon sticking their heads out of their shared room, watching. They both smile the same amused smirk at her, and pop their heads back into their rooms and out of sight.

Using their ghost drifting powers for evil, I see…. Remind me to thank them later.

Chapter Text

The next day, Ava is thankfully woken up by a normal alarm clock instead of Mary, fluorescent lights, and a foghorn. Still way too fucking early though. She stumbles out of her room and sees Beatrice’s door is open and the lights are on. Beatrice is just stepping out of her room as well, looking much more put together than Ava feels.

What the hell is she doing up so early?

Beatrice sees her in the hallway, bleary eyed and half awake, and smiles at her. They wordlessly start down the hallway, in the same direction. After a couple minutes of comfortable silence, Ava shivers (from the cold this time, not the zing at the top of her spine).

Fuck, I forgot how cold it is. I am going to freeze in the training room.

She quickly goes through the mental calculation of whether she has time to go back to her room, find her issued navy blue sweater, grab it, and make it in time for training. Then she mentally calculates the likelihood of murder by Mary if she is late. She decides that this morning, it’s not worth it. Mary has too much power in the morning, and Ava still has achy sore muscles from the lactic acid of yesterday.

Just as she comes to this conclusion and sighs, accepting her fate, warm fabric is pushed into her hands. Navy blue warm fabric, attached to delicate yet strong looking hands with slender, long fingers. The hands are attached to wiry muscled, slightly tanned forearms with a scattering of freckles. Ava continues to bring her gaze up a toned bicep, t-shirt covered shoulder, elegant neck, beautiful jawline, across freckled cheeks and meets Beatrice’s amused gaze.

“You look cold. And you definitely do not have time to go get yours. I am going for a run anyways; I don’t need it.”

God I love her accent.

And with that, Beatrice turns right towards the indoor track. Ava stops at the intersection, watching her walk away.

Nice view. Her 14-year-old-boy-brain helpfully supplies.

Ava smiles and puts the sweater on, going the opposite direction.

It smells good. Like fresh laundry and eucalyptus and lavender.

She may or may not bury her nose in the neck of the sweater for the rest of her walk to the training room.

 ***

After another morning of grueling, hour and a half of training (without the sweater on, she stashed it by her water bottle), Ava is once again, dying. Although it may be worse today, because she is still sore from yesterday. She also now has bonus bruises from staff-related accidents.

Mary led them through the rest of the sequences, and then had them review them all. Ava is glad they have at least gone through each sequence a couple times, but still does not feel in any way prepared to use them in a spar.

The juniors are catching their breath and getting water when the seniors start to trickle in. Ava notices Mary half turns towards the door, and seconds later, Shannon walks in. Mary turns back towards the cadets, arms still folded. Shannon comes up behind her, hands on her shoulders, and gives her a quick peck on the shoulder before standing next to her.  

Fucking cute.

Ava also notices Beatrice walking in, not at all looking like she went for a run. And without wet hair, meaning no shower either.

Everyone here is actually a robot. It’s the only explanation. Also…. that’s kinda hot.

Ava shakes her head and drinks more water. After everyone filters in, Mary and Shannon pair people up. Camila and Lilith are paired, as are a few of the other seniors. Meanwhile, Todd is paired with Diego, Ava is paired with Beatrice, and Michael and Crimson are paired with other juniors. Some of the pairs have staffs, but Ava and Beatrice are part of the group that is going hand-to-hand.

Ava beams at Beatrice on the bleachers. Beatrice, however, is glowering at Shannon, who is sporting a shit-eating grin. Then Beatrice turns to look at Ava, whose face has fallen somewhat, and offers a genuine, but small, smile. Ava’s grows in return.

They get onto the mats, and the room around her fades to a background buzz. Her sole focus is on the beautiful woman in front of her, who is looking at her with intense, dark eyes. Ava starts to feel her heart pound harder in her chest, and the zing down her spine is still pleasant, but stronger and constant.

Beatrice starts to move towards her, but to Ava it looks like she is moving in slow (albeit graceful) motion. Ava dodges, parries. Beatrice blocks, then grabs her arm. Ava counters Beatrice’s hold and spins away. This back and forth continues for a while, Ava isn’t sure how long, and frankly doesn’t care. She is actually having fun. Her breath comes out in pants now, sweat beading at her brow. Beatrice’s face is relaxed, but her mouth is also open as Ava hears the whooshing of her breath. The difference between them, however, is that Beatrice hasn’t broken a sweat yet.

That’s hot. Stamina.

It’s Ava’s distraction that finally does her in. Beatrice expertly takes advantage of her lack of attention (to the spar anyways) and flips her to the floor. Ava lands on her back, stunned. Beatrice quickly follows Ava to the ground and positions herself on top of Ava, knees bracketing her hips, while she goes for an Americana shoulder lock. Ava, feeling the strain in her shoulder, taps twice. If the tap happens to be on Beatrice’s ass, sue her.

Beatrice releases the arm lock and sits up, still straddling Ava. Both of them are breathing hard. As Beatrice looks down on her, Ava swears she can see her pupils dilate a little. Her breath catches, and she can feel Beatrice tense her knees together where they rest at the side of Ava’s hips. Beatrice sways forward for half a second, and Ava can see her swallow. Ava realizes her hand is still resting on Beatrice’s ass, where she had tapped. She feels the warmth behind her sternum migrate lower as her stomach swoops.

Mary claps, and it snaps them back into the present. Where there are other people in the room. Beatrice seems to snap out of it as well, shakes her head, and gets up. She offers Ava a hand up with a small smile, and pulls her up. Ava stands and realizes how close they are. So close she can feel the little puffs of her breaths on her cheek.

Beatrice’s smile fades, and then Ava feels a grip on her wrist.

The fuck?

She turns to see it is Michael.

“Beatrice, Mary said seniors should rotate in a counter-clockwise manner to their next partner” he says, eyes hard. Then he looks back at Ava, who is now scowling at him. He flashes a smile. “Hey Ava, looks like we are partn-”

He is cut off by Beatrice, who grips his wrist and pries it off Ava. Her eyes flash with anger, and her body posture screams dangerous. Ava puts her hand on Beatrice’s shoulder, and Beatrice’s eyes snap to hers. Beatrice looks at her for a beat, then releases Michael. Mary, apparently having seen the whole exchange, has walked over.

“Michael, with Dora. Ava, grab a water. Beatrice, Shannon and I need to speak with you.”

Ava watches with amusement as Dora cracks her knuckles as Michael walks towards her. She is gonna own his ass.

Ava is thankful for the water break, but is curious as to what they are saying to Beatrice. I hope I didn’t get her in trouble.

She watches from the bleachers as the rest of the room resumes its sparring, while Shannon, Mary, and Beatrice form a small circle and start talking. Beatrice frowns. Mary and Shannon have serious looks on their faces. Ava wishes she knew what was going on.

After a few minutes, she sees Beatrice nod, then head to the locker room door. Mary calls to her, and Ava looks her way. “Ava, partner with Trent. Go through the sequences until we say otherwise.” Ava, confusion written all over her face, walks up to Mary.

“What just happened? She isn’t in trouble, is she? She didn’t do anything wrong, I don’t think” Ava starts to ramble.

“Ok little, calm down. She isn’t in trouble and neither are you. Just go spar and practice, we will explain later.”

Ava sighs, and walks towards her classmate. She is a bit distracted for the rest of the morning, but manages to get some practice in.

A little while later, Shannon tells the seniors to go hit the showers for battle simulations before lunch. Then, Mary calls Ava over.

“Ava, go hit the showers too. We want to see how you do in battle sim today.” She says.

Ava, confused, replies “wait, what? Isn’t that a senior class? Why am I going to that?”

Mary smirks. “We have a hunch. Now get your ass movin baby girl. You can go back to your room for showers, since you have one now, or you can shower in the locker room. Dealer’s choice. Just be in Areala in 30 minutes.”

Ava, sensing defeat, shrugs and goes to gather her shoes, water bottle, and new favorite sweater she has no intention of returning any time soon.

Chapter Text

Beatrice sits in her seat in Areala Lecture Hall contemplative, waiting for battle simulations to begin. With Ava as her partner.

Beatrice knew. She knew it from the first move she made this morning in their spar. Mary’s explanation of “a dance” finally clicked. She gets it now.

Beatrice knows what it looks like, from the outside looking in. She has seen the easy flow between Mary and Shannon when they spar. She even saw it earlier, with Camila and Lilith. But never felt it.

Mary and Shannon had clearly seen it too. They pulled her aside and told her as much. (They also asked if she felt it, as that is arguable more important.) The duo had then asked if she wanted to try to co-pilot with Ava, wait until Ava had had more training, or continue to “shop around” (as Mary had said) for another co-pilot she was drift compatible with. Beatrice had a surprisingly strong (negative) reaction to that particular question.

 So now here she was. Battle sim with Ava. Which is going to be tricky, seeing as how she has had what, two days of pilot-specific training? Beatrice still hadn’t decided if she wanted to ask Superior for an exception and have Ava join the seniors in their match day tomorrow, or wait for Ava to get further into her training.

Let’s just see how the rest of the day goes.

As she is mulling this over, her attention is pulled by the now familiar feel of tingling fingers. She looks to the door just as Ava skips in. Ava spots, her, waves, and starts heading towards Beatrice and her assigned seat next to Lilith.

However. The room is in a slightly different configuration, with the chairs (and their respective touch screens) being paired up. The names are also displayed in pairs, and since it is only the seniors, groups have more space between them.

The seniors are not in the same spot as they are for tactics. (Battle sim seating is much more fluid.)

Ava must quickly realize this, because her steps falter and confusion flashes across her face upon seeing Beatrice on the opposite side of the room and down a row.

“Ava, over here” she calls out to the girl. Her and Ava’s names were splashed across the screen in front of Beatrice.

Ava looks at her with relief and continues towards her. Her face is so expressive.

 And she is still wearing my sweater.

A little thrill hums through Beatrice seeing Ava in her clothes.

She looks cute.

The sweater is just slightly too big on Ava, who had pushed the sleeves up to her mid-forearm. Beatrice’s gaze wandered to the exposed hollow of Ava’s throat before the girl slid in behind her to her seat.

Beatrice may or may not have purposefully chose the seat closest to the aisle, so Ava would have to brush behind her to get to her chair.

Ava spins in her chair to face Beatrice, pointing finger guns at her and winking. “Hey partner” she says cheerfully, in a western accent as she mimes firing the finger guns. Beatrice laughs. “Hello Ava. Ready for this afternoon?”

“Ummmm no” Ava pouts, still rocking side to side in the spinning chair, but facing Beatrice. “I am so frickin hungry. How do they expect us to wait another hour until lunch??? Also, why the hell is there no breakfast? Isn’t that the most important meal of the day or something? Also also, where the fuck is the coffee?” she rants, not stopping for a breath.  

Beatrice can’t stop the amused smile that breaks out on her face. “You do know that the dining hall is open for breakfast from 5am to 8am, right?”

Ava’s eyes widen in a semi-horrified expression as she puts her feet on the ground to stop her spinning.  “No I absolutely did NOT know that” she says, affronted. Then, “wait you knew there was food this whole time and you didn’t tell me?”

“The food schedule is posted on the inside of your door in your room.” Beatrice replies straight-faced, one eyebrow quirked up and mischief dancing in her dark eyes. “But I apologize” she starts, very clearly not meaning it, “for unintentionally withholding mission critical information.” She sucks her lips into her mouth to prevent the smile threatening to break out and leans forward a little, into Ava’s space. “I know training is egghausting.”

Ava’s mouth drops open in adorable surprise as a little squeak comes out from the back of her throat. Ava’s hand comes up and clutches her chest, like an 80-year-old clutching her pearl necklace in a church. A smile grows, exposing her teeth, and Ava’s whole face lights up in delight as she says, a little scandalized, “Cadet Beatrice, did you just make a breakfast pun in my hour of need?”

Beatrice grins innocently at her and sits back in her chair, back straight. She swivels her chair to face the front of the lecture hall as Shannon walks in. “I have no idea what you mean ma’am” she says playfully, being purposefully obtuse.

She can feel Ava staring at her profile. “Alright sister sasspants, it’s on.”

“Ok everyone, let’s get started.” Shannon starts. “Today’s simulation will be against the AI computer. You and your partner need to plan and execute a 2-Jaeger attack on a category 4 Kaiju. As always, you have 40 minutes to prepare and 20 minutes to execute. For this exercise, you create your own two Jaegers, meaning you choose Marks and models of Jaegers you would like to use, as well as weaponry they are outfitted with. The interception of the Kaiju must occur no closer than miracle mile, 10 miles off the coastline. Each partner will operate one Jaeger in the simulation execution phase. Remember, these scores do impact your class ranking. Your time starts in 1 minute.” She pauses.

“Oh, and winners get a morning off of sparring practice next week.” Shannon grins wolfishly.

Beatrice hears some whoops from her classmates. She would be excited too, but she actually enjoys the physical training. It helps keep her grounded and head clear. It’s why she runs every morning. The light thudding of her sneakers on the pavement, the burn in her lungs, the pounding of her heart, the stretch in her muscles. It’s just her and the run and the music, everything else is zoned out.

She hears the timer countdown and looks at her and Ava’s shared screens. Her screen suddenly switches from the timer to the control center page, where she and Ava will design their Jaegers. Ava’s screen depicts what they know about their Kaiju and has the 40 minute countdown timer.

“Ok, since this is your first battle sim, I am assuming you do not know how to run the program or push the buttons, correct?”

Ava nods, her brows pinched together just slightly in concentration and face serious. Her eyes flick to Beatrice, then back to the screens.

Beatrice continues. “I will give you a quick rundown, but it is actually fairly user friendly.” She proceeds to tell her how to use the touch screen and is happy and unsurprised to find Ava picks it up quickly. After about 2 minutes, Ava has gotten the gist and knows enough to get through operating it in this sim.

Beatrice notices their heads have drifted closer, over the screens. Their chairs have also rolled closer. “So, two jaegers, one category 4 Kaiju. What do we know about the Kaiju?” Beatrice asks.

Ava reads off her screen. “Codename: Frances.” Ava pauses, then giggles. “Seriously, Frances?” She shakes her head slightly, takes a deep breath that makes her entire chest wall rise, blows it all out of her nose in a sigh, and then keeps reading.

“Category 4 Kaiju. Approximately 310-ft (94.5 m) tall. Analysis indicates that it is heavily armored along its back and head. Its armor-plated, clubbed, spiked tail can likely pierce the armor of a Jaeger. Hexapedal.” Ava pauses and tilts her head. “Wait. What does hexapedal mean?”

“Six legs. Hex for six, pedal for foot in Latin” Beatrice informs her, matter-of-factly. Ava rotates her chair slightly to look at Beatrice. She can hear Ava, with an almost strangled voice, say “ah, yes. Of course. Latin.” She turns her head to look at Ava, who has a faraway, dazed look on her face. Beatrice gently knocks their knees together. Ava blinks, looks at Beatrice, then looks back at the Kaiju as a pretty pink blush spreads across her cheeks.

“Ok so six footed big lady. Honestly Bea she kinda looks like a cross between a horned lizard and an ankylosaurus. But with longer legs.”

Beatrice can feel her body tense at the nickname. Usually, only close friends call her that. But it sounds better when Ava says it.

“I bet it is vulnerable on its belly” Ava continues, oblivious to Beatrice’s moment of gay panic. Beatrice lets out her breath in a small sigh. She regains her composure just as Ava turns to look at her. “What do you think?” Ava asks her.

Actually, Ava has a very good point. It probably is more vulnerable on the underside. That is likely how they will be able to take it down. “I agree.” Ava watches her, listening intently. “But since Frances” Ava giggles again, so Beatrice pauses, shooting a smile at Ava. “Since she is hexapedal and lower to the ground, our Jaegers will need to somehow leverage her high enough to attack the weaker area.”

The two continue to plan, with Beatrice doing most of the strategizing and Ava throwing in random ideas that are so out of the box, Beatrice probably would not have come up with them on her own. Beatrice enjoys Ava’s wild suggestions; Ava is a good complement to her precision, but not so against structure like Michael that it hinders them as a team. Likewise, Beatrice isn’t inflexible, and listens and incorporates Ava’s ideas.

By the end of he 40 minutes, they have a plan. Ava will take the shorter, stockier Jaeger to maneuver close, while Beatrice uses a taller, leaner Jaeger to distract the Kaiju. The idea is that Ava will get under the Jaeger, dodging the deadly tail, and lift it up high enough for Beatrice to use her two short swords and stab it multiple times. Ava’s Jaeger will have a plasma cannon, so if she is able to grip it under the neck, she has a weapon to utilize. Ava also has plasma knuckles in her off hand, for more impactful hits.

“Ok teams, time is up. Time for execution. Deploy your Jaegers!” Shannon calls out from the front.

Ava and Beatrice, with the other pairs, start their 20-minute simulated deployment.

It goes fairly well, all things considered. Ava, still getting the hang of the simulator controls, doesn’t execute her plan as flawlessly as they had hoped, and her Jaeger sustained some pretty heavy damage to the torso. Were it real life, the Jaeger would be out of commission for a month at least. But, they both “lived”, and the Kaiju was destroyed before making landfall. Which is another part the two forgot to factor in; that they would be fighting in water, not on land.

All in all, of the pairs, they ended up being ranked in the top quarter.

The seniors and Ava are released for lunch and head to the dining hall.

***

After lunch, where Ava, Diego, and Dora once again join Camila, Lilith, and Beatrice (Shannon and Mary nowhere to be found, and thankfully Michael sat down the bench this time), Ava starts heading with the juniors to their afternoon tactics in the neighboring, identical (but slightly smaller) Melanie Lecture Hall.

Beatrice tries (and fails) to not be disappointed.

***

By the time dinner rolls around, juniors and seniors alike are buzzing with barely contained energy. A combination of nervous and excited, with match day less than 12 hours away.

The groups once again join for the meal, and Beatrice’s heart thumps hard once, twice, in her chest when Ava slides down the bench, bumps their hips, and smiles at her before returning to the good-natured arguments over compatibility pairings.

“Todd and Michael, I ship it” Ava chimes in. Diego gives her a surprised look. “Really? I was shipping Todd with Santo and Frankie with Crimson.”

“What the hell is a ship” Lilith interrupts, frowning. Ava and Diego just stare at her for a beat, laugh and ignore the question, while the rest of the table follows their lead.  

“Seriously though Cam, what is it” she hears Lilith quietly ask. She smiles to herself.

***

Beatrice is in her room, reading A Grief Observed, getting ready to turn in for the night, when she hears knocking. Not on her own door though. She throws the blanket off her lap and wraps it around her shoulders like a shall

What am I, 70? Standing on the porch, looking out forlornly across the meadow waiting for my love to return from the war?

She pads over to the door in her thick warm socks and blue sweatpants, and peeks through the peep hole. She sees Shannon at Ava’s door, just before Mary’s eyeball appears and takes up the whole peep hole.

She rolls her eyes, leans back, and opens the door, just as Mary was raising her fist to knock. Mary grins at her. “Sup Bea” she greets as she steps back into the hall, next to Shannon. Beatrice follows her into the hall, leaving her door ajar and standing next to Ava, facing the co-pilots. Ava is looking at her with a soft and wanting? expression.

Beatrice soon finds out what, exactly, the wanting was about when Ava boldly pulls Beatrice’s folded arms apart, steps around her now outstretched arm, and tucks herself underneath said arm, grabbing the blanket and pulling it around her shoulders. She grins innocently up at Beatrice, as if to say ‘what?’, daring her to object. Then Ava’s attention focuses back on Shannon.

Beatrice is happy to report she doesn’t turn into a frozen statue this time at Ava’s tactile nature. She lets Ava keep that side of the blanket and drops her arm from around Ava’s shoulders. But she takes a tiny step in closer to soften what she hopes Ava doesn’t take as a rejection.

Ava must not, because she leans sideways into Beatrice, and her pinky catches Beatrice’s. Beatrice will not be held responsible if she doesn’t remember a single thing about this conversation, as her brain has temporarily shut down. Please try again in 1-2 business days.

Shannon says, to both of them “Hey guys, we wanted to talk about today.” She starts. “To be blunt, we think you are drift compatible. We talked to Beatrice about it earlier today, but Ava, we didn’t want you to be out of the loop.”

Mary then continues with “I went to go talk to Superion today, to get her thoughts on you two sim drifting tomorrow. She said no. Ava, you aren’t ready and need a bit more training. However, you two will be doing as much training as schedules allow, together. You will be partners as often as we can pair you up.”

“As long as you are both ok with that and agree?” Shannon adds, questioningly.

Beatrice can feel Ava nod. She nods her head as well, saying “yes, that is fine with me.”

“Great. We will leave you two to enjoy… whatever” Mary says, waggling her eyebrows at them. Shannon smacks her on the arm, tugging her down the hallway. “See you at 530am still though, Ava!” Mary calls.

Ava groans, letting her head thump onto Beatrice’s shoulder.

Chapter Text

As Mary and Shannon make their way down the hall back to their room, Ava realizes just how tired she is. And the thought of waking up early to get breakfast and coffee just is NOT appealing, in any manner of the word. This training schedule of 530am to 530pm, with an hour for lunch, is grueling to say the least. Three days in, and she swears her limbs have become lead. Hey, at least I can move them though she thinks optimistically.

She loves it, she does. This is her dream. But that doesn’t mean she won’t complain about it.

The schedule, she understands, is preparation. Her mind and body need to be prepared to go into a Kaiju fight, if she wants said mind and body to come back alive from the fight. And she very much does. She is a big fan of her mind and body thanks. She knows her body will adapt to this new schedule and it will get easier. But until then…

I am so exhausted.

She feels her eyes start to burn, the way they do when she is really tired. I bet they are bloodshot too. That is one of her tells, she knows. With adrenaline and staying on the move, she can keep pushing herself to stay awake. She did it for 48 hours in prelim during survival training. But her eyes, as always, give her away.

Now that she isn’t training or having a conversation with Mary and Shannon, her whole body feels like all of the energy it contained drained onto the floor. Which is fitting really, that it feels like a puddle of mush. After all, she is also still currently leaning her head on Bea’s shoulder. Beatrice, who shared her blanket with her.

Ava smiles, the zing in her spine becoming a pleasant warmth.

Like icy hot, but without the aggressive smell

 Ava rotates a little so she is facing Beatrice more, instead of side-by-side. If she nuzzles her head in a little closer to Bea’s neck, she blames it on the exhaustion.

I will not be held responsible for swooning.

I could just stay here and fall asleep like this honestly. It’s comfy, she smells good, I am warm. Badabing, sleep time.

Beatrice must feel her sagging just a little, because she releases their pinkies. Before Ava can feel the loss, however, Beatrice entwines their hands fully, and tugs.

With soft fondness, Beatrice says “Come on, Ava” and starts moving in the direction of Ava’s room.

Actually, I am not that tired anymore. Ava tries to convince herself. She doesn’t want to go back to her room alone.

Ok no not like that

…ok yes a little like that but not my point

She just wants to stay next to Beatrice for a while, with her warm blanket and soft smile and comforting scent. Truthfully, she is just cozy and doesn’t want to un-cozy. You know?

But, with a sigh, she shuffles behind Beatrice as she follows. Beatrice must sense her hesitancy, because she says, with a tone that brokers no argument, “Ava, it is 830pm. It is time for bed.” Beatrice looks back at her, smiles, and pulls her close with their joined hands. Ava’s breath catches as the momentum carries her towards Beatrice.

Except then Beatrice has her in her arms like a dancer, swings her, ends up behind her, and gives her a little encouraging push into the doorway.

Fuck that was smooth. I am not even mad about it.

**

Match Day. Not that it really impacts the start to Ava’s morning all that much. Wakes up way too fucking early, stumbles out of bed, changes into her training uniform, throws her hair into a pony tail, quick toothbrush and facewash, puts on Bea’s sweater that Ava strategically left by the door, and out the door she goes. Bleary eyed, blinking slowly, with a small stumble and with a big yawn, Ava says “haaauuuuu eeaaauuuuu”.

Beatrice laughs “What?”

“I said, Hey Bea” Ava grins

The two turn down the hallway, just like yesterday.

“Wait, were you waiting for me?”

“Only for a minute. You are surprisingly consistent”

“Why didn’t you sleep in? Isn’t it Match Day?”

Beatrice levels an amused look at her. “Ava, you are my co-pilot. I don’t really need to participate in Match Day today. I am just going to support Camila and Lilith. Besides, I like to run.”

“Oh. Right.”

Ava yawns again.

They reach the intersection, and Beatrice says “see you in a bit,” waves, and turns right. Ava watches her walk down the hallway.

Ava isn’t ashamed to admit that she appreciates the view. Again.

Doesn’t help that now you’ve touched the butt.

Ok nemo

She giggles to herself and turns down her own hallway.

**

After an hour and 15 minutes of training with her class, Ava and Diego are sitting on the benches waiting for the seniors. Well, Diego is sitting. Ava is laying, red faced and trying to breathe at a normal rate as she stares at the ceiling contemplating her life choices.

“Wait, are the seniors even coming here today? How does match day work?” Diego questions. At least someone’s brain still works, because Ava’s is only working at 40% capacity after that workout.

“They are coming, yes. There will be a warm- up period, and then matches all day. You all will probably just watch the matches.” A familiar voice says from around Ava’s feet.

Ava feels a zing in her back, smiles, and sits up, swinging her legs around. As soon as she does though,

“Beatrice, what is in your hands” Ava says slowly, suspicious.  

“Oh, um, a coffee and breakfast burrito” Beatrice turns pink, and looks to Diego. “Sorry, I didn’t grab you any” she apologizes, somewhat embarrassed.

With a dramatic gasp, “Bea, how dare!” Ava exclaims in a scandalized tone.  She grins and continues with fake indignance, “why are you apologizing to Diego and not me! We JUST talked about mission critical information!”

Diego, replying to Beatrice, says, “no worries, I get breakfast around 515am, before the morning training session anyways,” smiling politely.

“Oh, good” Beatrice says, her smile looking a bit more like relief.

“Wait what?! You knew about breakfast too and you didn’t tell me?!”

Diego just laughs and says “Ava, some of us actually listened when Shotgun was giving the tour. And you know the dining hall hours are posted inside our barrack doors, right?”

Ava huffs (with a little bit of real indignance this time), giving some serious side-eyed shade to Diego. Her friend, unaffected, ignores her.

Beatrice then turns to Ava. “I gabbed you some breakfast to go. Since I was there. After my run I mean. Because my run is only an hour and I go to the dining hall after. And I know you didn’t get food, because I saw you come out of your room this morning. Or at least, I assumed that you didn’t.” Beatrice says, in short choppy sentences, looking almost… flustered?

Beatrice sits down on the bleacher next to Ava, looking out across the mats, and holds the items out towards her. She still has a little pink dusting her cheeks.

If this were any other friend, Ava would immediately blurt her undying love and adoration for them. But it’s Beatrice, and it feels… not right, to say that. So she settles with a soft “thank you” instead, taking the offering.

**

The day passes in a blur. The juniors and Beatrice watch the seniors go spar, one by one. Not all the seniors spar, however. Which everyone knows means, they either don’t have a potential partner identified today, their partner is a junior, or they are going to sim drift. For Camila and Lilith, it’s the latter of those options.

Right before lunch, Shannon, Mary, Ava, Diego, Dora, and Beatrice walk the pair down the hallway to the sim prep room, where they are stopped by a technician just outside the door. She introduces herself as Yasmin, “I am the lead for Jaeger launches” she says excitedly. “Both sim and real life. If there is a real life launch, I will have to run out and another tech will step in to my place. Nice to meet you all!” Her friendly demeanor then goes to business mode.

“Camila, Lilith, let’s have you two step into the sim prep room so you can get dressed and I can give the safety brief.”

Mary gives Lilith’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, while Shannon gives Camila a hug.

“See you on the other side. Don’t chase the RABIT.” Mary says, in the way that people do when they know something don’t. “You will be fine” Shannon says, soothingly.

There isn’t enough room in the sim prep room, conn pod, or control center. So the two go in alone, with only the technicians. The rest of the group heads back to lunch.

**

 Their drift sim is successful, to nobody’s surprise. Superion is waiting for them after, handing them the signed official documents that say they are co-pilots together upon graduation. She also gives them the option of having a joined room, which they elect to do. They end up across the hall from Shannon and Mary.

Diego ended up being right in one of his ships, when Frankie and Crimson end up drift compatible too.

**

For the next three weeks, Beatrice and Ava find a routine and a rhythm.

Ava stumbles awake, they walk down the hall together, Ava dies at morning training while Beatrice runs, Beatrice brings her a burrito and coffee.

They spar and train for the morning session. Occasionally, they are split up to spar with others to further advance their styles and have a different challenge.

Camila still destroys Ava in spars, in the like, sweetest way possible. Lilith has also joined in that fun. In the not sweetest way possible. Mary has taken to calling Ava “little” instead of her name. When Ava asks, Mary tells her it is short for “little shit or little pain in my ass, I haven’t decided.”

Ava finds out that apparently, Battle Sim is only for the week leading up to the Match Day. Which she is a little disappointed about, seeing as it means less one-on-one time with Beatrice. But, she does get to see her in the training room, so she doesn’t mope for too long.

Then lunch, then Ava and Beatrice splits up for their tactics classes in the afternoon. They meet back up for dinner with their friends, and everyone goes off for their own thing after.

Beatrice and Ava have started hanging out in Beatrice’s room. It has now become their routine; after dinner, they go and sit on Beatrice’s bed, backs propped against the wall.  Beatrice reads or learns Portuguese, because of course she does, while Ava does what she does best. Fucks around, mostly. She sometimes studies, sometimes reads, sometimes watches TV or movies, and at least 60% of the time just talks to Beatrice.

Beatrice never seems to mind though. She usually just puts her book down, smiling, and they talk for a while. On occasion, Ava has gotten Beatrice to try Mario Cart, which is something Ava learns Beatrice is NOT good at, much to Beatrice’s displeasure.

Ava roped Camila and Lilith into bi-weekly game night, (and no, she didn’t choose that timeframe because she would put the bi in bi-weekly….although she thinks she definitely should have). So twice a week, the four get together and play games.

Whatever Ava and Beatrice end up doing, eventually, Beatrice states it is time for bed, and walks Ava to her door. Ava sometimes whines and complains, but mostly just uses it as an excuse to be a little extra clingy. What can she say, touch is her love language after all.

Like tonight, Ava had been reading The Valkyrie’s Daughter (she’s a sucker for gay-Norse mythology based-YA fiction ok, don’t judge, its her not-guilty-at-all pleasure) while Beatrice is reading something in German. Beatrice glances at the clock, which shows 845pm. She hears Beatrice sigh quietly, and then shut her book.

“Noooooooo one more chapter Bea” Ava whines, looking up from her book with her best pout and puppy dog eyes.

Beatrice laughs. “Ava, you know if we don’t go to bed we will both be extremely tired in the morning” she reasons back. “Besides, I know you are excited to see Dr. Salvius tomorrow.”

Ava looks at her, eyebrows raised and surprise on her face. “Wait, how do you know that? I haven’t mentioned anything. I don’t think.” She scrunches her brows in confusion, trying to remember.

“You have all 6 of her books Ava. They make up half of the books you own. And one of them is basically a book on physics and astronautical engineering.” Beatrice replies evenly. Ava didn’t realize Beatrice had noticed.

Awwwww her brain coos without her permission. She flushes, and prays Beatrice can’t see it.

“Oh. Well. Yea. I mean, I guess.” Ava starts, a little embarrassed. “Her innovations are just so cool though” she starts to ramble, “I mean, she started with medical breakthroughs that changed lives like mine and then she just pivoted into engineering Jaegers. She’s like, a genius Bea.”

Beatrice looks at her with a questioning gaze for a few seconds. She blinks, and the question in her eyes is replaced by amusement. “And do you want to meet this genius so tired you can’t focus on what she is saying?”

“Ok no, but I think my brain could rally for her” Ava argues. “Come onnnnnn Bea, just one more chapter. One more. I promise, scout’s honor.” She holds up two fingers, still pouting. Beatrice takes a deep breath and looks at the ceiling as if praying for strength. Then she lets it out in a whoosh, her posture relaxes, and she says “Fine. Fine. One more chapter, that’s it.”

Ava whoops, wriggling in her seat in a little happy dance.

Then she decides she wants to change positions. My butt feels like it is going to go numb.

So she rotates 90 degree, scooches down the bed a bit, and lays on her back. She positions her head to rest on Beatrice’s lap. Beatrice, looking startled, lifts her book slightly to make room. Ava grins up at her, then lifts her book so she can read it without getting into Beatrice’s way.

After a page or two, she feels Beatrice shifting, grabbing the pillow next to her that Ava had been leaning her back against. She taps Ava’s shoulder. “Lift your head up” she says lowly, her voice a little gravely. Ava suppresses a shiver, and lifts her head up as requested. Beatrice quickly slips the pillow under Ava’s head, muttering “more comfortable for your head”, before returning to her book.

Ava can feel the heat in her cheeks, her ears, her neck, and her chest. The now constant warm thrum of her upper back sends a little zing down her spine. She tries to focus on the book, but her eyes keep wandering to trace the contours of Beatrice’s neck and jaw. Her eyes grow droopy as she settles in, more comfortable that she has ever been, she thinks.

Focus Ava. Read a chapter. But like, slowly.

She blinks a couple times, rapidly, to clear her head.

She wakes up to fingers running through her hair and lightly scratching her scalp. She didn’t even realize she had fallen asleep. Her eyes flutter open and she sees Beatrice looking down at her tenderly. “How long was I asleep?” she asks, voice scratchy.

“Only about a half an hour. I didn’t want to wake you up, but now we really need to go to bed.” Beatrice replies with a sincere smile.

“Technically Bea, we are in bed together right now” Ava replies with a wicked grin. She likes to watch Beatrice blush, and is not disappointed. Beatrice’s face goes red almost immediately.

“Sleep Ava, I meant we need to sleep. As in, our eyes close, our postural muscles relax, brain activity is altered, and there is a decreased level of consciousness in order to promote rest and healing.”  Beatrice recites robotically, body tense.

Ava laughs. Her… friend… is so expressive, but in a way that is different from Ava. Beatrice is expressive in her stillness and silence.

Ava takes pity on her and sits up. She waves her hand, “yea yea ok ok, I am up.” She closes her book, sets it on Beatrice’s bedside stand, and starts shuffling to the door. She can feel Beatrice following behind her. The thought gives her more peace than she’d expected.

As Ava crosses the hallway and reaches her own door, she turns around. As she expected, Beatrice is right behind her, a soft smile on her face. “Goodnight Ava” she says.

Ava can’t help it. Beatrice is just being so… so… friggin cute. She steps into Beatrice’s space and nuzzles her nose into the crook of Beatrice’s neck, where it meets her shoulder. Her arms slip under Beatrice’s to grip her upper back.

Beatrice freezes for a moment, surprised, but then melts into the hug. Her arm comes around Ava’s shoulders while her other arm cradles the back of Ava’s head. Ava squeezes a little harder and breathes in laundry, lavender, and eucalyptus. She revels in the comforting feeling, sinking into the embrace and leaning against Beatrice’s steady frame.

They stand there for a minute, until Ava says “goodnight Bea,” breaks the hug, and quickly turns around to head into her room. Before shutting her door she turns back around, and looking at a dazed Beatrice, says “see you in the morning.”

**

24 hours later

--

It’s a little funny that when things go to shit, it’s always at the most inconvenient time Ava thinks, bitterly. And why is it, that when things inevitably DO go to shit, it’s never an isolated event? There’s always a pile of shit, not a single turd.

Ava looks next to her, her eyes landing on Beatrice’s tear-streaked, crumpled face. She’s hunched over, posture broken in a way Ava had yet to see. Her shoulders are shaking slightly as sobs silently wrack her body. Ava aches in sadness for her in a way she can’t describe. She takes her hand and threads it through Beatrice’s fingers, giving it a gentle squeeze.

Then her eyes flick down to the hospital bed in front of them. Mary is laying there, on her back. Cuts and bruises distorting her face. Her torso was currently covered with a hospital blanket, but Ava knew what damage was hidden underneath.

At least Mary is breathing on her own. She’s here. She made it back. She’s here. She’s alive.

Ava can feel the tears stinging her own eyes. Her throat burns and tightens. She can’t swallow. Her chest feels like there is an elephant sitting on it, like there is a vice grip tightening in a band around her chest. Around her heart. It makes it hard to breathe.

She drops her head into her other free hand, elbow resting on her knees. She clenches her eyes shut as tight as she can. Clenches her jaw so tight it almost hurts. She can feel her teeth squeak with the pressure. She wants to scream. She wants to hide. She wants to sleep. She wants to breakdown and wail. Her shoulders feel tight. She feels like she might throw up, or like she had just gotten punched in the middle of her gut.  

God I hope Shannon makes it.

Chapter Text

Earlier

**

The day started how it has normally been starting for weeks now. Beatrice wakes up, gets ready, waits for Ava. Ava stumbles out, sleepy and adorable, in Beatrice’s sweater, and they walk down the hall. Beatrice goes for her run. Goes to breakfast, grabs a burrito. Makes coffee the way she now knows Ava likes. (Full of sugar and syrups.)

Morning training is where it starts to change, though.

Which honestly, makes sense. Dr. Jillian Salvius, the genius behind the Jaegers and the piloting neural interface, is visiting today.

 Without her, the Jaegers would have never existed, and the world would have fallen to Kaiju or nuclear fallout. She is a symbol of unity and ingenuity, widely respected and highly regarded. Her innovations have kept the Jaeger program one step ahead, or at least not behind, the Kaiju attacks.

To be blunt, she is a big deal.

Mary and Shannon are assigned as Dr. Salvius’ escorts for the day (for the week really), so Hank and Daisy have taken over this week. Around 1030am, Daisy and Hank release the cadets to shower and get into their “fancies,” as Ava calls them. Technically speaking, they are called the dress uniform, or class A’s.

Black boots, black slacks, grey belt with a silver buckle. Their top half is a quarter zip, full sleeve jacket with a mock collar that stands up about an inch. The color of the collar denotes them as cadets, powder blue. (Fully fledged Rangers wear a royal blue collar with gold accents.) There is a horizontal stripe on their chests, just about where Beatrice’s sports bra line is, in silver. Near the end of the sleeves, a single circumferential stripe encircles their wrists, also in silver.

Beatrice, fully dressed, pulls her hair into a low bun at the base of her neck. The cadets and pilots are meeting with Dr. Salvius for lunch around 1130am as a large group, before she continues her tour. Beatrice opens her door, feels her fingertips tingle, and then Ava steps out of her room as well. She is dressed similarly, except Ava’s now-shoulder length hair is pulled into a half-pony.

Beatrice’s lips part slightly, and she knows she is staring. She forgets to blink. Doesn’t want to blink. Thankfully, Ava seems to be in the same predicament. Neither are particularly ashamed of their gawking. Beatrice is slightly embarrassed that she full on elevator eyed Ava just now, but heaven help her. The uniform looks good on Ava.

The big voice interrupts Beatrice’s thoughts, “all cadets and pilots please report to the dining facility, I say again, all cadets and pilots to the dining facility, thank you.”

Ava tugs the bottom of her jacket, looks at Beatrice again, smiles, and says “well, I guess we better go.” She turns, and Beatrice joins her. Ava loops her arm in Beatrice’s, and they walk in step down the hallway while Beatrice listens contentedly to Ava fangirl about her professional crush. Beatrice can’t even find it in her to be jealous.

She looks to the girl on her arm and smiles softly at her, enamored and endeared. Ava doesn't see the smile, too busy waving her other arm around and excitedly explaining one of Dr. Salvius' medical innovations.

That is when the alarms go off.

Loud, and kind of like a buzzer at a basketball game.

There is a red light flashing above each speaker.

The Kaiju alarm.

Ava looks at Beatrice, worry on her face. Her brows are pinched together, and her arm squeezes Beatrice’s tighter. Her face asks plainly, Bea, what do we do?

Beatrice turns around and says simply, “follow me!” and takes off back the way they came. Beatrice skids around the hallway, running back towards her room. It seems the entire base is now running in every different direction.

At some point, she had grabbed Ava’s hand, and tugs her behind her. After some jostling, they make it back to their rooms. Beatrice lets go of Ava’s hand, then says hurriedly, “change into your training gear” and disappears into her own room to do the same. Neither party bothers to close their door, so Beatrice catches a glimpse of her in a sports bra. She sees a large scar on Ava’s back, but then Ava shifts out of frame.

Not the time, Beatrice she chastises herself. She can think about the expanse of skin she saw another day. Right now, there is a protocol to follow.

Beatrice finishes changing before Ava, steps out, and shuts her door behind her. She sees Camila and Lilith come careening around the corner and straight into their room. When she looks back, Ava is stepping out of her door and also shutting it behind her. She jogs down to Camila and Lilith’s room, Ava following close behind. She calmly shouts into the room “Lil, Cam, let’s go we have to move. We have to get the juniors.”

Camila and Lilith change quickly and come into the hallway, looking a little disheveled. Beatrice tells Camila and Lilith the plan. The three of them will split up, round up all the juniors they can find, and meet at the refuge room for cadets in 10 minutes.

Ava grabs Beatrice’s hand again, and follows her. They hear the Jaeger bay doors opening and the helicopter blades whirring.

The 10 minutes pass quickly. They manage to find all but 3 of the juniors, but their time is up and they need to get into the refuge. Hopefully the juniors listened during Mary’s introductory tour… although if Ava’s face was anything to go by, they likely didn’t. Beatrice just hopes they at least stay in their rooms.

Ava, Beatrice, and the pack of other cadets behind them skid to a halt as they see two pilots calmly walking down the hall. Swaggering, is maybe a better term. They are in their drift outfits, skintight black suits with white armor on top. Their head coverings up, helmets under their arms. Ava whispers “they look like nuns with coifs” and laughs lightly. Beatrice can’t help but smile back. They kinda do. If nuns were ass-kicking warriors. Everyone moves out of their way as they head for the drop zone. They must be the standby unit.

After they pass, the group finally ends up in the refuge room, which is honestly more lounge mixed with a locker room. There are spare drift suits hanging in open lockers, which takes up one wall of the room.

The seats and couches are facing five giant TVs. One of the seniors must have turned on two of the TVs, because one is playing the live news coverage and one is showing the live feed from the active conn pod. The TV is muted, but the conn pod is not.

The primary on-call Jaeger team has already deployed and is just being dropped by the transport helicopters onto miracle mile. The cadets watch, quiet overtaking the room.

Beatrice sits on a couch, pulling Ava next to her on her left. She can feel how tense Ava is as the girl's gaze focuses on the screens. Beatrice takes a second to look at her future co-pilot's profile and admire it, before returning her attention to the screens as well. She notices out of the corner of her eye that Lilith and Camila are on a loveseat next to them.

They hear the pilots say “Command, Hyperion Prophet in position on miracle mile. Beacon is on.” and see the transport helicopters flying away on the news.

“Copy Hyperion” Yasmin’s voice filters over the speakers.

Then, after a minute or so of tense waiting, the Kaiju emerges. From looking at it, Beatrice guesses it is a large Category 3. Hyperion engages the Kaiju, and the battle is on.

The cadets watch in silence, holding their collective breath, eyes wide.

After several minutes, Hyperion seems to have the upper hand. The cadets cheer, loudly clapping, as if their enthusiasm might reach Hyperion and spur them on.

Beatrice hears the doors of the Jaeger bay open again, and the whirring of helicopters. She feels a pit of dread in her stomach.

 A voice comes over the speakers, fighting the din of the pilots yelling and Kaiju shrieking. “Hyperion, we have movement in the breach. I repeat, we have movement in the breach. Hyperion do you copy.”

Beatrice hears the pilots reply, yelling and out of breath, “Copy command, what is it”

“There is a second signature, double event. Dilation indicates another category 3.”

The pilots of Hyperion Prophet swear. “Fucking hell command, we need backup immediately. We have sustained damage, I don’t think we can take out a sec-” They are cut off by the scrunching of metal.

The cadets watch in the live stream as the pilots are thrown around in the conn pod. On the news, they see that the first Kaiju has been joined by a second. The second knocked the Jaeger off it’s feet.

It’s two on one, and Hyperion is losing.

Lilith grabs the remote, and turns on the other 3 TVs. One flickers to life, showing a second Jaeger conn pod.

This is why we always have one Jaeger deployed, and one on standby with neural handshake intact and ready to go. Rapid backup deployment. Beatrice, ever the planner and strategist, thinks to herself.

The cadets watch in awe as, over the second Jaeger comms, they hear “Corinthian Rogue, this is command. Second signature indicates a second category 3 Kaiju, Codename: Azazel. Hyperion is under duress at the miracle mile.”

“Copy command, Corinthian reaching target zone. Disengaging transport.”

The news shows Corinthian dropping into the water.

“Corinthian in position, engaging”

They watch with rapt attention as Corinthian goes to peel one of the Kaiju off Hyperion. As Corinthian does, Hyperion pilots in unison say “deploy spinners!” and Beatrice watches as one of Hyperion’s arms is replaced with a spinning razer blade, not unlike the round blade of a table saw. Hyperion manages to grab the first Kaiju by the jaw, and use the spinners to cut across it’s throat. Blue blood spills onto the Jaeger and into the sea as the Kaiju’s flesh is cut.

But just as the Jaeger makes the cut, one of the junior cadets yells at the TV “Hyperion watch out!”

They watch helplessly as the Kaiju’s tail swings up and over the Jaeger, and crushes the conn pod. Completely. The conn pod screen goes black.

The despair in the room is palpable. They just lost one of their own. In a small community like Jaeger pilots, any loss is felt by all. Whether you knew the pilots well or not.

“Hyperion come in”

“Hyperion do you copy”

Then

“Corinthian, Hyperion is down. No vital signs and unresponsive. We are still getting two Kaiju signatures. Looks like the first Kaiju, Belial, isn’t completely taken out”

“Copy command” Corinthian crackles out, clearly straining against the Kaiju they had just peeled off Hyperion.

It’s then that Beatrice hears the voice of Superion. “Corinthian, this is Cradle. We have movement in the breach.”

“Command can you say again”

The cadets watch as Corinthian continues to struggle against Azazel.

Ava’s knee starts bouncing.

“No” Camila breathes out, horror in her face and her voice.

Ava makes a choked noise that cuts off in the back of her throat as they watch the first Kaiju, Belial, rise from the ocean.

“Fuck” Lilith says, quietly. Beatrice agrees.

The room is still. Tense. The air doesn’t move, as if the collective group has taken a breath and held it.

“Corinthian do you copy” Superion’s voice comes out again.

But Corinthian is too busy trying to fight off two Category 3 Kaiju. They are faring better than Hyperion, but that is only probably because the first Kaiju is injured. Corinthian is certainly in no position to fight three Kaiju.

“Corinthian, it is a triple event. I repeat, Corinthian, it is a triple event.”

All Beatrice can hear are the grunts and shouts of Corinthian's pilots as they fight.

Beatrice hears the Jaeger bay doors open again, and the blades of the helicopters.

But they can’t power up that fast.

It’s Ava who solves the riddle. She turns and says “Bea…. It’s Shannon and Mary.” Beatrice turns to look at her. Ava's expression is one of certainty and unease. “They have one of three Divinium powered Jaegers. Divinium powers up fastest. And the other two crews are on vacation right now. There's nobody else it could be.”

Superion confirms it when she says “Cruciform Defender, this is command. Do you copy”

They hear Shannon’s voice reply. “Command this is Cruciform, we copy.”

“Cruciform, this is a triple event. Dilation indicates a third Category 3 Kaiju. Codename: Tarask. We are still detecting the first two Kaiju signatures. There are three Category 3 Kaiju near miracle mile.”

Superion pauses.

“Saber, Shotgun, you're it. If you don’t slow them down or stop them, we are sitting ducks. The other Jaegers need at least a 17 minutes to power up.”

She pauses again.

“Hold the mile.”

Shannon replies “Copy that Cradle. We will hold it.” with determination in her voice. Their live conn pod screen flickers to life on the 4th TV screen, and the cadets can see the determination in the set of her and Mary’s faces.

Then, from Corinthian’s screen, they hear a strangled scream, and watch as the top of the conn pod is ripped off. Their screen shows water spraying into Corinthian's conn pod.

“Corinthian, come in”

“Command, we have sustained critical damage. Hull and conn pod compromised.”

“Corinthian, Cruciform is headed to you. Hold on as long as you can.” Superion says, voice tense.

They can only sit and watch. Corinthian manages to keep the two Kaiju at bay. Even manages to fire the plasma cannon into the shoulder of the first Kaiju. But even with a ravaged shoulder and cut neck, it still doesn’t go down.

Then the third Kaiju emerges from the water, jaws wide. It lands on Corinthian’s back, and bites the conn pod, crushing it and ripping it off, just as the second Kaiju rips through Corinthian’s center, removing the central power core.

Corinthian’s screen goes black.

“Corinthian come in”

“Corinthian”

“God dammit Tater, Gecko, come in” Superion’s voice crackles out.

It’s Yasmin’s voice next. “Cruciform, Corinthian is down.”

“Copy command” is all they reply with. There isn’t anything else to say.

Beatrice feels like someone just dumped a bucket of ice over her. Camila looks at Beatrice with wide eyes, tears starting to gather. Lilith puts her arm around Camila, hugging her. She looks over at Beatrice too, fear evident in her expression. Fear for their friends, for their sisters.

Beatrice blinks, rapidly, trying to clear her own tears. On her left, Ava squeezes her hand, then releases it. Ava moves her right hand to rub soothing circles on Beatrice’s mid-back, her left hand coming to rest on Beatrice’s left knee. Beatrice grips Ava’s left hand in her own.

They all turn back to the screens. Only the news and Cruciform's are left. 

“Command, this is Cruciform. Dropping a mile early, disengaging transport.”

“Copy Cruciform.”

They all watch as, for the third time that day, a Jaeger drops into the sea with a splash as transport helicopters fly away.

“Cruciform in position, holding miracle mile. Beacon is on. Engaging”

And with that, Shannon and Mary run forward.

They are amazing to watch in action. Perfectly in sync. Motions fluid. Fast and agile, with powerful hits. Mary has a plasma cannon on her side, while Shannon has a sword on hers. They fight like poetry.

First, they attack and finish off the first Kaiju, the one that is already injured. Thankfully, they are able to get in close before the other two Kaiju can intercept them, and Shannon cuts off it’s head. The large chunk of flesh goes sailing through the air, trailing bright blue blood, before splashing into the ocean some distance off. The rest of the Kaiju sinks into the ocean.

Cruciform has already turned around, facing the second and third Kaiju, who have arrived. One Kaiju jumps on their back, digging claws in. The second attacks from the front. Cruciform holds the front Kaiju away from their Jaeger, with difficulty.

Beatrice knows people are talking, but she can’t hear them. It sounds like everything is underwater. Like the cartoon teacher in Charlie Brown, where everything just sounds like “wah wah wah”. Her ears ring as she watches her sisters, heart in her throat.

Cruciform retracts the sword, punches the Kaiju in the gut, and redeploys the sword. It cuts through the underbelly of the front Kaiju. It’s not enough to fatally wound it, however.

The back Kaiju has scratched and scraped through the Jaeger armor, and has started to pull off the arm on Shannon’s side.

Cruciform manages to rip the sword up to the neck, gutting the front Kaiju, before the arm is ripped off by the back Kaiju.

As it goes down, the front Kaiju gets a final swing, digging in a deep scratch to the conn pod on Shannon’s side and the middle. Beatrice can see via the video that it went deep enough to compromise hull integrity.

But Cruciform doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The one arm remaining reaches behind, over their shoulder, while the Jaeger bends forward, throwing the Kaiju on its back over Cruciform's head and in front of them.

Beatrice can see the back of the Jaeger is shredded.

All they have left is the plasma cannon, with a damaged conn pod. Water sprays into the conn pod on Shannon and Mary, as they are rocked side to side with each hit they sustain from the final Kaiju.

Tarask clasps it’s front hands together in a fist, raises its fists above its head, and then slam it down on the conn pod. The compromised pod crumples.

Thankfully, not the entire conn pod. Cruciform had seen the hit coming, and managed to lean back, so only the front of the conn pod is crushed. Beatrice can see Mary and Shannon, barely conscious and standing (but alive) in their nearly destroyed conn pod.

If they don’t finish this soon, they will die.

With Tarask’s hands up, it has exposed its underbelly. Cruciform takes quick advantage, and use their remaining arm’s plasma cannon. They empty the clip into the body of the final Kaiju.

As its dead body falls to the ocean, its arms drag down Cruciform’s head.

Beatrice didn’t know when she stood, but she takes a step closer to the screen as she shouts in horror.

The claws scrape the interior of the conn pod.

The claws scrape Shannon, and catch Mary on the side.

Shannon goes limp and still, red blood oozing from her front. Mary, one eye closed, turns to look at her, her own blood mixing with Shannon's on the floor of the conn pod.

Ava is talking to her. She turns to Ava, and all the sound around her rushes back. “What?” she breathes, in disbelief.

“They won Bea. They got them.”

Beatrice turns back to the screens, as she hears Mary, in a wet and garbled voice, say “Command, disengaging from Cruciform. We need a pickup, now”

She watches on the news as Cruciform powers down and goes dark. It stands there unmoving, a sentinel in the water.

Chapter Text

It’s been 3 days.

The families of the killed pilots have been notified, even though they already know. That’s the downside of being a pilot. Your loved ones watch in real time as you get injured. As you die.

Beatrice thinks the official notification is necessary, though. It provides confirmation. Closure. And it shows respect to the families.

In any case, the funerals for the crews of Hyperion Prophet and Corinthian Rogue were yesterday. They all dressed in their class As, and even Ava didn’t crack a joke calling them fancies this time.

Just as in pilot funerals of the past, 4 fighter jets thundered overhead in the missing man formation. Seeing it almost caused Beatrice to break down then and there. When taps played, she couldn’t hold back the tears. She felt them streak down her face.

After the funerals yesterday, she, Ava, Lilith, Camila, Diego, and Dora all piled into Lilith and Camila’s room. After about 5 minutes, Ava had gotten up and left, saying only “I’ll be right back.” Beatrice, seeing the determined look on her face, just nodded. She trusts Ava.

The rest of the group spread out around the room, and someone turned on a movie for low background noise. Nobody seemed quite sure what do to with themselves. All they knew is that they want to be alone, together. Their little family.

Soon enough, Ava returned with Yasmin in tow. She must have gone to find her. Beatrice can tell that Yasmin has been crying. Diego patted the seat next to him with a wobbly smile directed at Yasmin. She sat between him and Dora, leaning her head on the taller of the two (Dora.)

Ava returned to sit next to Beatrice, threading their hands together. Beatrice let her head rest on Ava’s shoulder, and felt Ava’s head gently rest on top of hers.

She isn’t sure how long they stayed like that.

Eventually, she ended up in Ava’s room. She fell asleep on Ava’s lap, feeling hands pulling out her bun and carding softly through her hair as Ava hummed an unknown tune.

**

Beatrice is woken up by Ava, who gently shakes her shoulder. “Bea. Bea, wake up. Bea.” She says quietly. Beatrice blinks her eyes open to see Ava standing next to the bed, bending down a little, and beaming at her. The biggest smile she’s seen on the girl’s face in days.  

“Hmmm?” Beatrice blinks groggily.

“Shannon is awake.”

Beatrice sits up so fast she almost knocks their heads together. Ava, laughing, had thankfully stood up in anticipation.

Beatrice throws the blanket off her and stands, quickly changing from her sleep shorts to sweatpants. As she pulls her shorts down around her thighs, out of the corner of her eye she sees Ava quickly turn around and stare at the door, waiting for her by the entryway. Beatrice smiles, endeared at the girl’s consideration. Especially because Ava has a tendency to just, shamelessly start changing without notice. Ava has taken off her shirt mid-conversation with Beatrice so many times Beatrice has lost count.

Despite Beatrice’s more shy and modest side… I wouldn’t mind if she did look, though.

And I certainly don’t mind that particular trait of hers.

Beatrice pulls on socks and shoes, and then reaches around Ava to open the door, her front brushing Ava’s back. She pauses for half a second, enjoying the closeness, and then twists the door open. They both step into the hallway. Just as they do, Beatrice sees Lilith, pajama clad and serious looking with shark slippers? on her feet, push past a Sergeant at her door. Camila follows closely behind, giving the Sergeant an apologetic smile and saying “thank you!” cheerfully. Camila has matching shark slippers on her feet.

The Sergeant, after informing Beatrice’s co-pilot (future co-pilot, whatever, semantics), must have headed down the hall to inform Lilith next. Beatrice and Lilith were listed with Shannon’s parents and Mary as next-of-kin.

The pairs join together and head towards the medical bay, walking with fast strides.

**

After visiting Shannon and Mary, the latter of which is up and walking around (albeit with a limp), Beatrice feels lighter than she has in days. Shannon is alive. Mary is alive. She could cry in relief. (She may have shed a few tears on seeing Shannon smile at them all as they crowded into the hospital room, with a tired “hey team”)

Shannon, now that she is awake and doing better, is going to be transferred to a civilian hospital in Denver, so she can see some type of specialist. Mary is going with her. They are leaving tomorrow morning.

Beatrice spends as much time as she can with the duo. She and Lilith tried playing cards while Shannon and Mary slept, but they both can be… competitive. Mary ended up cracking one eye open and grumbling “Lilith, make your upper lip and lower lip come together and stay that way.” Lilith protested it wasn’t just her, but Mary just closed her eye and went back to sleep.

So, they read instead.

Ava and Camila bring them food and a couple other books. Mostly, the two stay in the room as well, the four of them sitting in comfortable silence.

Well. Maybe not Ava. Sitting in silence isn’t really her forte, but she is only minimally fidgeting and playing on an iPad. Close enough. Beatrice smiles.

**

Eventually, the medical bay announces “Visiting hours are ending in 10 minutes. Visitors may return tomorrow morning at 8am.”

One of the young doctors taking care of Mary sees the group in the room about 8 minutes later, smiles conspiratorially, winks, and closes the curtain and door. The doctor comes back after 30 minutes with 8 heated up hospital blankets, and leaves without saying a word. Beatrice and the group end up sleeping in Mary and Shannon’s hospital room. Training classes have been postponed for 5 days, so Beatrice has tomorrow off anyways.

**

Tomorrow comes too quickly for Beatrice’s liking. She knows Shannon needs to see this specialist, but… she is going to miss her. It’s a bittersweet goodbye. Beatrice is so relieved Mary and Shannon are ok, and lets that relief overpower her other feelings at the pair’s leaving. She doesn’t want to ruin their last few minutes together with negativity. So she focuses on the positive -she will get to see the duo again, soon.

She is joined on the tarmac by Ava of course, as well as Superion, Lilith and Camila, Diego, Dora, Yasmin, and Shannon and Mary’s maintenance crew. Even Dr. Salvius, JC, Chanel, Michael, and Todd come to send them off.

I wonder where Vincent is she wonders to herself. It is a little odd that he isn’t here, sending off the literal heroes. He is the base commander after all. Weird. She gets an uneasy feeling in her stomach. Or jellies, as Mary would say.

Mary and Shannon are engulfed in a hug by their maintenance crew. Superion nods at them, a small smile dancing on her features. Dr. Salvius shakes their hands. The others say their goodbyes as well, until it’s just Lilith, Camila, Ava, and herself.

“Beatrice, keep these ones out of trouble will ya?” Shannon says. Mary continues, “especially Little. And keep explosives away from Cam. And don’t let Yasmin drive anything.” The group laughs. They all hug one last time and exchange tearful goodbyes, with Mary gruffly mumbling “we are going to Denver, not the 4^th circle of hell, calm down drama queens” with tear filled eyes, blinking rapidly. Shannon just smiles fondly at her.

Mary clears her throat, then looks behind the group of 4 cadets. “Sergeant Sully. I didn’t think I would be seeing you again this soon. How is my favorite loadmaster?” Mary says to the man walking up to her and Shannon.

“I am doing better than you ma’am” he grins back, “at least my ass isn’t being pushed around in a wheelchair like the pair of you. You both look like someone threw you in a blender and pushed puree”

“Ohhhh Sergeant Sully got jokes today” Mary rolls her eyes, smiling at the good-natured joking.

Shannon chimes in with “Watch it Sully, or I will sick Beatrice on you. Be nice to my co-pilot.”

The three continue to trade barbs as Shannon and Mary are pushed up the ramp and into the plane.

Beatrice can’t help but smile at her friends. She hears the plane engines turn on, and the groundcrew wave the goodbye party away. They all retreat behind the red line on the tarmac, and watch as the plane gets ready for takeoff. Everyone else turns to go back inside, but Beatrice stays. She wants to watch the takeoff, and she needs a minute to breathe without everyone around her. It’s been an emotional few days.

She feels her fingertips tingle, and smiles as Ava comes up behind her. Ava’s front presses into Beatrice’s back as her arms wrap around Beatrice’s waist. She feels Ava’s forehead rest against the space between her shoulder blades. Beatrice places her hands on top of Ava’s and sighs contentedly. Ava picks up her head, stands on her tip toes (leaning against Beatrice a little), and says quietly into Beatrice’s ear, “I’ll meet you in the dining hall, okay Bea?”

Beatrice feels a small, almost imperceptible shudder when Ava’s hot breath dances across her ear.

She nods, and Ava drops back down onto her heels. Beatrice’s breath hitches when Ava places a small kiss to the back of her shoulder, over her t-shirt. She squeezes Ava’s hands, runs her own up Ava’s forearms and back down, then releases them.

Ava lets her hands fall, steps back from Beatrice, and turns to go inside with the others.

Beatrice misses the warmth and comfort, but appreciates Ava’s ability to read and understand her need for space, without making Beatrice feel bad about it.

Beatrice smiles to herself and watches as Mary and Shannon’s plane lifts off the ground, headed for Denver.

**

Ava had somehow convinced the dining hall to let them in while closed. She sees Ava hugging a stern looking woman, saying “Thanks Tanya, I owe ya.” Tanya waves her hand and scoffs, but her demeanor belies the obvious affection and sympathy she has for Ava.

**

In the dining hall about an hour or so after Shannon and Mary leave, Beatrice is sitting with Ava, Lilith, Camila, Diego, Dora, and Yasmin. It feels empty without the veteran pilot pair. The group is chatting when they hear a commotion in the hallway. The give each other puzzled looks and go to see what the cause is.

When they open the doors to look, they see an older man in class As, with a red collar and five red stripes on the wrist part of his uniform. He also has a shiny gold star on his left breast with a wreath around it.

The man is surrounded by four other people, also in class As with red, but with only three red stripes on the wrists.

Around that group, there are about 20 people in camo, decked out with bulletproof vests, carrying M-16s with a handgun strapped to one thigh. They look dangerous.

The guards Beatrice’s brain helpfully supplies.

“Umm… guys, is that who I think it is” Ava questions.

Everyone nods.

“Marshall Duretti” someone says.

Chapter Text

Colonel Superion sighs deeply, sitting in her office. She absentmindedly rubs her aching knee as she looks around her comfortable, large office. She sits behind a large wooden desk, in a rolling office chair that cost way too much money. Her cane rests against the desk.

She is dressed in her class As. Black mostly, with a royal blue collar and gold accents. She also has a gold star with two lightning bolt shapes coming off of it. The pin is situated on her left upper chest. She has two gold stripes near her wrists on her uniform.

She doesn’t wear the normal red of command, instead, she is one of a few commanders who wear the royal blue of a pilot. A Jaeger pilot, to be specific. She is also the only one alive today to have the lightning bolts of an ace on her chest, signifying 15 confirmed Kaiju kills. (She had 18.) Well, for now, anyways. Shannon and Mary had just joined her exclusive club with those last 3 Kaiju kills.

As she shifts in her seat, the four medals hanging on her right chest clink gently. Anyone in the PPDC would recognize them, as they are all combat medals of valor.

She scratches her neck and tugs the collar. I would much rather be in my flight suit.

This is the second time in as many days that she has donned her dress uniform. The first day, it was for a funeral. As Vincent was nowhere to be found, she was the notifier and officiator. It is a burden of command, one that she is honored to bear. But it is still a burden, and it does take its emotional toll on her. Those were her pilots. Those people were under her command.

She doesn’t pretend that their deaths are her fault. She knows they weren’t, and thinking so would insult their sacrifice and courage. Those people defended with everything they had, and she knows they’d choose it again.

She is glad Shannon made it. She didn’t have a co-pilot in her days; back then, they were single pilots (before realizing two were needed.) So she couldn’t imagine what Mary was going through. When Mary requested to go with Shannon to Denver, it was the easiest paperwork she had ever signed off on.

She has an extra soft spot for those two. They were piloting her Jaeger (re-engineered). When she piloted it, the Jaeger was Cruciform Menace.  

Today, she is in her dress uniform again because Marshall Duretti called her personally and told her he will be arriving today.

Where in the flying hells is Vincent.

“Pete” she calls out to her secretary. He immediately pops his head into her office.

“Yes ma’am?”

“Please page Lieutenant Yasmin immediately. Tell her to report to my office right now, I want her here 5 minutes ago with an update on her investigation.”

He salutes. “Yes ma’am” and disappears back into the command main reception area.

She sighs again and goes back to working on her computer. She needs to finalize this after-action report for submission before Duretti arrives. She also needs to work out the new Jaeger deployment rotation schedule, and find permanent replacements for training the cadets. The maintenance crews need to be reassigned. Cruciform was recovered from the ocean, but it is in heavy need of fixing.

I will assign all three crews to fixing Cruciform, then reassign them after.

That should buy her a little more time to workout where to place them. The maintenance teams had worked together for years, it will be difficult to split them up. They are well-oiled machines themselves at this point. Hopefully higher headquarters will replace the two Jaegers they lost, and she can just reassign them to those.

Shit, I forgot. I need to talk to R&D.

What she *needs* is to find out why R&D’s predictions were so off, when they haven’t been in the past. Why did three Kaiju come from the breach. And why didn’t they come all at once; they came perfectly spaced apart to wreak the most possible damage to their Jaegers. Was it just bad luck? Coincidence?

Superion doesn’t believe in coincidences. Hence, talking to R&D.

“Pete, schedule a meeting with R&D tomorrow morning” she calls out her office door. She hears him immediately start typing, with a “yes ma’am” thrown back. She smiles. Sergeant Mendoza is a good secretary. Calm, professional, and extremely organized. Without him, she knows she wouldn’t be able to function as a commander at all. He runs her schedule to the minute.

She focuses back on the after-action report.

Then remembers another thing.

Dr. Salvius is still here. I need to figure out what to do with her. Especially with Duretti enroute.

That is a problem for later. She writes it down on her ever growing to-do list.

 She tries one more time to focus on the after-action report.

**

Some 10 minutes later, she hears an out of breath Yasmin come into the command area. She can hear her talking to Pete. 30 seconds later, Pete knocks politely on her open office door and pops his head in. “Ma’am, Lieutenant Yasmin is here. Should I send her in?”

“Yes, thank you”

A red faced, somewhat sweaty hot mess comes into her office. Yasmin snaps to attention, salutes, and says “Lieutenant Yasmin reporting as ordered.”

Despite her initial impression of Yasmin last year, and her current state, the girl is remarkably talented. She has a lot of potential, and Superion has every intention of nurturing it and coaxing it out. Right now though, Yasmin’s main quality she appreciates is trustworthiness. She trusts Yasmin is loyal to her and the PPDC.

“Sit down Yasmin, at ease”

As Yasmin situates herself, Superion continues, “have you found out where our missing commander is?”

“Not yet. I tried to retrace his steps prior to the Kaiju attack, in hopes of picking up a lead. I had his secretary give me his schedule of the past week. Apparently, he visited R&D quite a bit, and not just over the past week. Over the past month. When I spoke Sophie, my friend in R&D, they told me he asked about Kaiju physiology and behavior patterns. It looks like a day before the most recent Kaiju attack, he went to the Seattle Bone Slums. It is suspected he went to the Vancouver Bone Slums next. I am not sure why, however, or if he is still there.” Yasmin concludes.

Superion tapped her finger on the desk, thinking. Physiology and behavior? Why? And why the bone slums? None of this makes sense. Was he abducted? Blackmailed somehow? Forced?

“Have we found anything to suggest he was abducted, or is not moving around of his own free will?”

“So far, there is no sign of overt foul play. We have not checked his personal quarters, obviously.”

“As acting base commander, I will issue you a warrant to search his quarters. This investigation is of the utmost importance and urgency. He may be under duress.” Superion muses.

“Thank you ma’am.”

Superion pulls up her computer, and quickly types. As she types, she asks, “is the police force being cooperative and receptive to you leading the investigation? I told them your investigation takes priority and you have full authority.”

“No ma’am, they have been great.”

She prints off the simple warrant at her desk printer, signs it, and hands it to Yasmin. “This warrant allows you to utilize other officers at your discretion for execution of the search as well.”

Yasmin nods her understanding.

“Thank you for the update Yasmin. I will need another one tomorrow, particularly since our distinguished guest is arriving today.” Superion says. “Marshall Duretti should be here within the hour. I suspect your investigation will be dragged into the spotlight, so take extra care to do everything by the book.”

Superion pauses.

“That is all I had for you today. You are dismissed.”

Yasmin stands, salutes, and leaves the office.

**

47 minutes later, Colonel Superion stands at attention in front of her own desk, staring at the wall behind Marshall Duretti.

“Colonel Superion, where in the 7 hells is Colonel Vincent? Why am I just now finding out about his disappearance?” Marshall Duretti isn’t yelling, but he isn’t talking quietly either.

“Sir, we are investigating his disappearance with the full force of the police. I sent my report up the chain of command the evening after the Kaiju attacks. I am not sure why it didn’t make it to you, perhaps it wasn’t deemed important to your level.”

Duretti side eyes the lower ranking generals in his entourage.

Superion pauses, considers, and then says evenly,

“Also sir, with all due respect, we have been a bit busy around here planning funerals.”

All of the bluster seems to leave Duretti at that. He blows out a breath, then says “sit down Cradle, at ease” as he also makes himself comfortable in her chair.

I hate it when he calls me Cradle. This man has never been a pilot. He probably hasn’t ever seen combat, just a politician in a military uniform. She internally rolls her eyes.

She sits in one of the two chairs in front of her desk. Duretti waves at the people behind her, saying “leave us.” Then it is just the two of them.

“Superion, what happened?” he asks, part anger, part concern, and part resignation.

“Sir, I genuinely am not sure. We were only saved by Shotgun and Saber, and only because they have a Divinium Jaeger. If it weren’t for them, the base would have been overrun.” She reports. “And they almost died doing it, taking out three Kaiju. I just finished my after-action report and sent it up. Do you want a copy sent straight to you?”

“Yes, do that.” Duretti replies.

They both sit there, thinking for a minute. Then,

“Cradle, your senior cadets are the closest to graduation. We lost three crews in this one attack. We lost four others in the past month. I don’t have any spare pilots, or Jaegers. And if another event like this one occurs, we will be in dire straits.”

She eyes him with suspicion. He better not graduate them early.

“Graduate your seniors early.”

God damn it.

“Sir, that is doing them a disservice. They need to finish their training. If we send them out early, we put them at risk. More risk than normal. They put their trust in us, we need to do right by them and finish their training.” She argues. “Besides, only half of them have even drifted before, and none have piloted. Some of them don’t even have drift candidates.”

He considers her for a moment. “Fine. You have one more month. I suggest you get them drifting, and fast. Increase your drifting simulations. Use one of your Jaegers as a training Jaeger, to get them pilot experience.”

She breathes a small sigh of relief.

“But I want Crimson and Frankie graduated, along with Noah and Lilith, and Lucas and Benjamin.”

“Sir, they aren’t ready. Crimson, Noah, and Benjamin almost scrubbed out just a month ago. They are the least ready of the seniors. And Lilith’s drift partner is Camila; she and Noah haven’t drifted together ever.”

Jesus help me, this man and his playing favorites and politics she silently fumes. You know what, no. No more silent fuming.

“Marshall Duretti. They. Are. Not. Ready. And I will not stand by and send them to fight Kaiju untrained. I would rather leave my post than be party to that.”

He stares at her, eyes hard. She stares right back, unblinking.

“Colonel Superion, you are on thin ice as it is. You lost your commander and you lost three Jaeger crews, two of which are dead. Now you are borderline insubordinate. It is only because of my respect for your years of service that I am not taking command from you right now.” Duretti says, voice hard.

Yea right you holier-than-thou posturing buffoon.

Then, softer, he says “Fine. For today, fine. I will accept your recommendations” he levels a look at her, as if to say and that’s all they are, recommendations, I am in charge, “and allow one month for all seniors and their drift partners.”

Superion knows it’s the best she is going to get.

I am going to have to step up the juniors training; some of them are drift partners to the seniors.

Duretti stands up. “And Superion” he says, “You are going to personally train them.”

How in the hell am I going to train them AND run the base?

She stands as well.

“Now, I will retire to my quarters. I assume your visitor quarters have computers? There are matters I must attend.”

Superion nods.

“I will return to discuss other logistics later today. I expect I will need to leave tomorrow morning.” Duretti says.

“Yes sir. I will have Chief show you around and escort you as needed.”

They both make their way to her office door. He opens it, and she sees a good portion of his entourage waiting. The rest of the guards wait in the hallway outside the double glass doors.

“Chief” she calls.

He pops his head out of his office, sees who all is there, straightens, and steps out.

“Yes ma’am?” he questions.

“Make sure Marshall Duretti and his entourage get settled and are properly accommodated. Please escort them around.”

“Of cour-”

He is cut off as the alarms go off.

Loud, and kind of like a buzzer at a basketball game.

There is a red light flashing above each speaker.

The Kaiju alarm.

“What the actual fucking fuck” Superion exclaims. Everyone looks at her in surprise. She isn’t exactly known for her swearing. “What” she says, glaring, “do you think this doesn’t warrant my unladylike cursing?” she questions angrily.

To everyone in the room, she announces “I am heading to the command center.” in a don’t-fuck-with-me tone.

“Chief, get Marshall Duretti and company to the visitor refuge now. Get Salvius and her team too” she orders. The Chief starts moving, telling the Marshall to follow. As they open the double glass doors to leave the area, Superion yells “LIEUTENANT COLONEL STRAND”

Strand steps out of her office. “Rally the pilots and prepare the base. Execute Operation Sierra immediately.” Strand salutes and takes off running into the hallway, behind the Marshall and Chief.

Operation Sierra, or OS, was so named (by Mary, of all people, who had helped develop the plan) because it also stands for “oh shit”. It is an evacuation of the nearby city of Seattle, and a distress signal to the nearest Shatterdomes, putting them on high alert for backup.

**

Superion arrives at the command center before Yasmin.

“What do we have” she asks the room. She sees the seismic graph on the papers spilling out of the scanner, and steps closer to the person sitting in the secondary technician chair.

“Ma’am” the technician acknowledges her. “Movement in the breach. Dilation indicates a category 4 Kaiju.”

What the fuck.

She leans over his shoulder to get a better look.

“Kaiju vector intersects directly with Shatterdome Fort Simon.” He reports.

She gives out crisp orders. “Prepare for rapid deployment of both primary and stand-by Jaeger. Begin powering up three more. Operation Sierra has been initiated.”

I am not losing 3 Jaegers again today. I am not losing a single god damn Jaeger today.

“Yes ma’am” the technician says.

She stands back up straight, and, cane swinging, turns around to go to her raised platform in the center of the room. “Alright people. Let’s send these Kaiju back to the hell they crawled out of.”

Then,

“Eyes up” she says, as the command screens come to life.

Chapter Text

“Is that normal?” Ava asked Beatrice. “Two Kaiju attacks less than a week apart?”

There’s no way that’s normal.

They had just gotten back from the refuge after being given the all-clear. Ava enjoys her friends’ company, she really does, but even she needed some space to breathe. The group had spent quite a lot of time together in the past week, with emotions all over the place.

What I need is a vacation. To the beach. With lots of sun and food and Beatrice.

Maybe a non-Pacific Ocean beach though.

She’s sitting next to Beatrice on Beatrice’s bed. Neither of them seem ready to go to sleep after today’s events -even with the late hour, and the fact that training will resume tomorrow as scheduled.

Ava’s book that she left is still on the nightstand, neatly stacked on top of Beatrice’s most recent tome. While Ava is leaning against the wall, legs dangling over the edge of the bed, Beatrice is sitting crossed legged and back straight, with her elbows resting on her knees and hands clasped. Her hair is in its usual tidy bun.

Ava drops her head back to rest it against the wall as well, half staring at the metal ceiling.

Beatrice frowns, looking across her room deep in thought. “No” she answered slowly “it’s quite unusual.”

Obsidian Striker and Eureka Tango had taken on the category four Kaiju and won. That was this afternoon sometime. However, both Jaegers had sustained some damage (not nearly as extensive as Cruciform, which will need to be re-outfitted.) But during dinner, which was a little later than usual, they spoke to JC and Chanel briefly. The two were taking their meals to-go, as the maintenance crews were working overtime. The two maintainers quickly told them, while chewing on a granola bar and walking, that Obsidian and Eureka would still be out of commission for at least two weeks though.

After a fairly silent dinner, Ava and her friends split up and went their separate ways. Ava and Beatrice went to their respective rooms to shower and change into comfortable clothing. Which, to Ava, meant sweatpants, fuzzy socks, and Beatrice’s sweater. She didn’t bother to put on a bra or t-shirt; she likes the soft fuzzy interior of the sweater.

Although, I may need to give it back to Beatrice. It has definitely started to lose its good smell… needs a recharge. I wonder if she has another one I can swap it out with.

She starts to *subtly* look around the room for her next target of theft.

Ava’s attention is pulled back when Beatrice sighs tiredly, rubbing her eyes. Ava lets out a big yawn. Then Beatrice does.

“Sorry” Ava giggles, causing Beatrice to smile through her yawn, “contagious.”

“We should probably get to sleep” Beatrice says, choosing her words carefully this time. Ava shoots her a playful, knowing smile. Beatrice uncrosses her legs and goes to stand. She steps in front of Ava, bends down slightly, grabs her hands, and tugs gently. Ava allows herself to be pulled up (with minimal groaning, she is proud to say,) and just like in the training room when they sparred for the first time, Ava ends up standing a little closer than strictly necessary.

This time, there isn’t a rudely clapping Mary to snap them out of the moment, however. Ava lets her gaze wander from Beatrice’s deep brown eyes, across her nose, dancing over the freckles scattered on her sun-kissed cheeks. Her eyes drop lower, and take in the little groove above Beatrice’s top lip, then her gaze is briefly brought lower still as Beatrice’s tongue darts out to wet her lips. Ava’s eyes wander back up to meet Beatrice’s, the latter of which seems to be holding her breath.

Their fronts are almost brushing, but not quite. Ava realizes they are still holding hands and lets go of one, bringing her right hand up. She gently pushes a stray piece of hair that had escaped Beatrice’s bun back behind her ear, her fingertips gently grazing the shell of Beatrice’s ear while her thumb, with a mind of its own, does the same to Beatrice’s now-pink cheekbone.

And then Beatrice’s mouth and jaw seem to… clench? And her neck strains. Beatrice’s lips part slightly with a small inhale.

“Bea. Did you just try to hold in a yawn.”

“No. Yes… may-bbbaaaaeeeuuuu” the yawn decided to try again, and manages to escape this time, despite Beatrice’s best attempts at subduing it.  

Ava just lets out an airy chuckle, her hand leaving Beatrice’s ear and cupping her soft, pink cheek. “Go to bed sleepy head” Ava says fondly, her thumb now stroking Beatrice’s cheek gently. If Ava’s cheeks are also pink now, no they aren’t.

Beatrice closes her eyes and leans into Ava’s hand a little. Beatrice blows out a breath, “ok, lets go”

Ava quirks an eyebrow, a smirk playing at her lips.

Beatrice immediately opens her eyes wide, saying “I meant I will walk you over” quickly and a little breathy.

Ava laughs softly, and, still holding Beatrice’s hand and cheek, raises up onto her tip-toes and leans in, their faces close. Ava can practically hear her heart thumping. She would be surprised if Beatrice didn’t hear it, or at least see it thumping in her chest.

And I know she totally wants to look at my chest

Smirking to herself, Ava turns her head slightly, altering her trajectory, her light breath fanning over the other girl’s unoccupied cheek. Her lips gently press against the soft, warm skin of Beatrice’s cheek. She lingers for a breath, then drops back down onto her heels and drops her hand from Beatrice’s face. Ava steps around the beautiful, still girl who seems to be stuck in place. She smiles at Beatrice’s wide eyes and slightly parted lips.

Beatrice blinks as Ava coos “Ever the gentlewoman”, winks, and walks backwards, heading towards the door, bouncing a little. Beatrice turns her body as their entwined hands tug, so she is facing Ava. She doesn’t let go, and her face maintains its cute little stunned expression. Her pretty pink blush has deepened to a red that crawls down her neck and disappears into her collar. As Ava gets farther away, their hands come up until eventually, Ava lets go and says “thanks Bea, but you’re exhausted. I can walk across the hall by myself this time.”

Ava turns around to open Beatrice’s door, then as she steps into the hallway, turns back around to see Beatrice’s hand dropping from the cheek Ava had kissed. She still has the stunned look on her face, with a small smile crinkling her eyes now.

“Goodnight Bea, see you tomorrow,” and with that, Ava closes Beatrice’s door for her and skips to hers.

**

The training day starts a little differently than it had in the past. Mostly because yesterday evening, the juniors were informed that the seniors will be joining their early morning training now.

She wakes up and stumbles out her room per usual. This time, however, Beatrice meets her in her training gear, instead of running attire. Holding the dark hot ambrosia of life formerly known as sugary coffee, and a to-go burrito.

God bless her. Ava smirks to herself, looking at Beatrice, then Well. He definitely already did.

She groans internally at the bad line.

Doesn’t make it any less true.

They start to walk to the training room together.

**

They arrive and are seated on the bleachers. Ava isn’t sure who will be training them since Shannon and Mary are in Denver.

Probably Hank and Daisy?

She is about to turn to ask Beatrice if she knew, when she hears rhythmic clicks on the floor. She looks to the open training room door, and sees

Colonel Superion??

She is dressed in a black long sleeve shirt and loose black pants. Her hair is tucked into a black bandana.

Really leaning into the black today huh

Ok she looks badass though with that cane and scars and black and swagger

“Cadets” Superion greets. “Good morning. Due to the recent Kaiju attacks, your training officers are not available to finish your training. I have spoken with Marshall Duretti, and I will personally oversee the rest of your training. Seniors, you will graduate early, in one month. Juniors who have been identified as co-pilots to the seniors will also graduate early with the seniors.”

This announcement is met with a general buzz of excitement from the seniors, and wariness from the juniors. Beatrice, sitting next to her, looks at her with worry creasing the space between her eyebrows and in the set of her mouth.

“This means” Superion continues, drawing their attention back to the front, “that seniors can expect to have early morning training sessions with the juniors from now until graduation. It also means lunch will be eaten during combined junior-senior battle simulations, and that training will continue after dinner. You will have 10 minutes to get lunch, and 45 minutes for dinner. Weekends are now for training only, all leave has been revoked. You will get Monday afternoons off to attend personal matters and rest.”

That statement drew out semi-quiet groans and protests. Superion speaks over the noise, saying

“Finally, we will be increasing drift sims. They will take up the last hour of morning training before lunch, for those who have identified partners. For those who have already drifted with their co-pilots, you will begin piloting a training Jaeger after dinner as well.”

That statement drew attention, and the excitement was almost palpable. They would get to pilot Jaegers. This week.

Holy shitballs

Ava can feel Beatrice tense beside her.

“Quiet down” Superion commands. The chatter dies away as she says “This will occur on a rotating basis, as we only have one training Jaeger. When you are not piloting, you will be sim drifting. For those without partners, you will continue to spar and we will attempt different matches. Consider every day a match day from here on out for you.”

Superion pauses, looking at the cadets on the bleachers critically.

“This has never been a game. And it certainly is not one now. I expect you to take this seriously. Do not think you are immune to being scrubbed from this program, nobody is. I have no problems scrubbing you.” She sends a sharp, pointed look to Crimson and Frankie, sitting next to each other, Lilith and Camila, a couple of boys in the middle of the bleachers, and… Ava.

Dude what did I do? I don’t think I antagonized her…

Did Ava happen to change the official photo of the base commander (which is in like, every common area) to Nicholas Cage? Maybe. But that was one time and like a month and a half ago.

Besides it was only the one in the dining facility. And how would Superion know it was me? Tanya wouldn’t snitch on me. Maybe she’d snitch on Lilith, but she totally loves me. Basically adopted.

“Now. To the mats. Co-pilots pair up. Everyone else, by height”

**

Holy Jesus Joseph Mary AND the sheep, I am going to be sore until I die Ava thinks as she half-limps half shuffles to her room to shower after morning training.

Then,

Ohmygod I am drifting with Beatrice in like 20 minutes

Chapter Text

Beatrice clenches and unclenches her hands. They’re tingling again. She is standing, freshly showered, in the hallway outside the drift simulation room. Ava is meeting her here. This time, Beatrice wanted to walk alone. To think. To gather herself. To calm herself.

She’s nervous. She can feel it in the shakiness of her hands, the clamminess of her palms. She can feel it in the ball of electricity that seems to have taken root in her sternum. Her heart rate has increased. She can feel heat on her cheeks. She feels… jittery. The opposite of her normal calm demeanor.

She forces herself to be still.

She takes a deep breath in through her nose. Her lungs expand, her chest rises, her neck muscles tighten as her chin lifts to the ceiling slightly. She holds the air in her lungs for a heartbeat. Then she releases it. Slowly. Controlled. Through her nose. 

She hears the door to the drift sim entrance start to open at the same time she hears footsteps at the end of the hallway. Fast footsteps, as if the person is running. Sure enough, as she turns to look, she sees a semi-ruffled looking, smiling Ava jogging towards her and the drift sim door.

The door has opened now, and Yasmin steps out. A few steps later, and Ava is next to her.

The tingling in her fingertips becomes a buzz. Like she touched a live wire, but not as painful.

“Sup Bea” Ava says, smiling at her, then looking to Yasmin. “Hey Yas. You our tech for this?”

“Hello Ava, Beatrice. Yes, I will be your drift tech for today.” Yasmin smiles back, and then her face changes to a more serious expression. “As a reminder, if there is a real-world Kaiju threat, I will have to step out and another tech will take my place. The drift will obviously end as early as safely allowable.”

Beatrice nods her understanding.

“Let’s get you two suited up and going, shall we?”

“Sounds good boss lady, lead the way!” Ava replies, excited, in a higher octave voice than normal.

She and Ava follow Yasmin into what looks like a small locker room, containing a single bench in front of 6 lightly colored wooden lockers without doors on them. “Drift suits are hanging in the lockers. Since you aren’t pilots yet, they aren’t custom sized. You will just have to try on different sizes to find the one that fits best.”

Beatrice looks at the hanging grey suits and nods. Ava eyes her curiously, then refocuses on Yasmin as she continues,

“Remember, it should be skintight but not too tight. These are circuitry suits without the secondary battle armor layer. The suits are designed to interface with your nervous system. The synaptic processor mesh is designed to read the electrical impulses of your body. We aren’t trying to cut off circulation; we just want the circuits in the suit have contact with your skin.”

“Understood” Beatrice finally speaks, her voice steady.

“Okay. I just had them cleaned, so they shouldn’t be too bad!” Yasmin says, chipper. “You can leave your underwear on.” She says, blushing slightly. “That’s a common question…” she trails off. “Anyways, the door to the hallway is locked from the inside. I will be waiting beyond this door” she gestures “prepping the sim. Come in when you are ready.” Yasmin makes her way to a door on the opposite side of the room from the one they just entered. She opens it, and Beatrice gets a peak at a sleek looking white room before the door closes behind Yasmin.

Then it is just her and Ava.

Ava makes her way towards the wall of lockers, sheds her shirt, props a foot on the bench, and bends over to start untying her boots. Because of course she does.

She has done this countless times before in your room, and in her room. Why would this be any different?

Beatrice reasons to herself.

This time, however, Beatrice lets herself look at the expanse of Ava’s back. At the circular scar at the top of her back. She wonders what it’s from.

Not like you need to ask, seeing as how you’re going to know soon.

Still, she wanted Ava to tell her first, instead of finding out through the drift. Even though Ava is consenting to drifting with her, she wants to give Ava the chance, if she wants it.

Ava has finished removing her boots and socks and is starting to look at the drift suits in the lockers.

“Ava?” Beatrice says quietly. Ava, still in her bra, stops looking through the suits and turns to face her.

Eyes on her face Beatrice, keep your eyes on her face she chants to herself.

“Yea?” she replies with a tiny pinch of her brows, a question in her eyes. Ava takes a half step closer.

“I saw the scar on your back, when you were changing just now.” Beatrice says, softly. Ava’s mouth twists a little bit, frowning. Her eyes lose their normal shine of happy-go-lucky, and darken into something more painful. She suddenly looks a bit older. Sadder. Like she is carrying a weight that Beatrice is only now really seeing.

“I was wondering if you wanted to tell me about it before we drift.” Beatrice continues gently. “You of course do not have any obligation to. I just wanted to give you the chance. If not, that is ok too,” Beatrice continues, still gently but also a little nervously. 

Ava stares at her with that pained expression. Then her expression shifts, minutely, as her frown lightens and her mouth gives a bit of a quirk, as if it wants to return to smiling but can’t quite manage it. Her eyes soften, although the pain behind them doesn’t lessen. Ava’s shoulders droop as she drops onto the bench. She pats the spot next to her, on her left.

Beatrice takes the hint and makes her way to sit next to Ava.

Ava starts to speak, voice low. “When I was 6, I was living around Santa Cruz. My mom, dad, and I moved from Minnesota. A few weeks after we moved was when the first Kaiju attacked.”

Beatrice sucks in a sharp breath. She knows how close Santa Cruz is to San Francisco; only about 60 miles separate them. She knows how much damage the opening of the breach caused in flooding alone.

Ava nods to Beatrice’s reaction, looking across the room. “Yea.” She laughs humorlessly.

“Funny enough, it wasn’t flooding or a Kaiju or anything that got us. It was your regular ol’ car accident.” Ava continues, bitterness creeping into her voice. “I don’t remember a ton. I remember the car being hit. I remember flipping around as the car did.” Ava pauses, taking a deep breath. “A paramedic got me out and took me to the hospital. I woke up in the hospital and couldn’t move my arms or legs.”

Ava takes another big, shuddering breath in and releases it in a whoosh. “I called out for my mom and dad, and a nurse came in. She put some kind of sedative into my IV, and I fell asleep again. The next time I woke up was the same. That must have happened a few times.” Beatrice can see her throat bob as Ava swallows.

“Eventually, a social worker came in and told me.” She says thickly.  “My dad died. My mom was in the hospital too, but died the day after the crash.” She clenches her jaw and blinks rapidly. Beatrice can see her red-rimmed, glassy eyes shining with unshed tears. Ava chokes a little, a tear having escaped her eye now and tracking down her cheek.

Beatrice gently wipes it with her right thumb, then rests her right hand on Ava’s left shoulder supportively. Ava takes another breath, then with a gravelly voice says “I remember feeling so helpless. I wanted to stand. I wanted to walk to her room to see. I remember wanting to throw something, anything, and being so frustrated and mad and terrified that I couldn’t.”

Ava clears her throat. “Anyways. Fast forward a few weeks I ended up in a clinical trial of Dr. Salvius’ and her team, dealing with neuroregeneration of traumatic spinal cord injuries. Clearly, the trial worked wonders” she says, gesturing to herself with a sad ironic smile.

Beatrice pauses, to see if Ava wants to say anything more. Then, “Ava, I am so sorry. I know those words aren’t nearly enough, they never are.” Beatrice says, gingerly and with as much compassion as she can put into her voice. Her hand squeezes Ava’s shoulder where it still rests. “Do you want to tell me about your parents?” Beatrice asks.

Ava turns her head and shoots her a small genuine smile at that. “How about I just show you instead?” Ava says, with a little less sadness. Beatrice smiles back and nods. “Okay. Do you want to finish getting dressed?” Beatrice asks.

Ava cracks a bigger smile at that. “Why, don’t appreciate me without a shirt?” she teases, sniffling a little. “I even took off my socks Bea. Some people might really like my feet you know. There’s a whole foot kink on the internet. I bet I could make a killing with a foot only-fans.”

She is about to find out exactly how much I appreciate her without a shirt.

 Beatrice can feel heat rise to her cheeks and rolls her eyes. “Ava, I do not have a foot fetish or kink.”

“Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.”

Beatrice just laughs, stands, and faces the lockers, accepting Ava's closing of the conversation and humor deflection. 

Beatrice crosses her arms and reaches for the bottom hem of her shirt, pulling it off in one smooth motion that doesn’t even ruffle her bun. She neatly folds her shirt, placing on the bench now behind her. She looks at Ava as she sets the shirt down.

Ava’s mouth is comically open, her eyes wide and unblinking. Ava hasn’t moved from her spot on the bench. At all. She looks gobsmacked. Beatrice smirks. “Come on Ava. Get changed, we have places to be.” She says in a firm voice. Ava mumbles something under her breath that Beatrice doesn’t catch. 

Beatrice turns to prop her foot up and remove her boots and socks. She nudges Ava with her knee, mischief dancing in her eyes.

Ava shakes her head and stands with a determined look on her face. A little bit of a dangerous look, if Beatrice is being honest. Beatrice lets her eyes rake over Ava’s form. From her collar bones, to her pectoralis muscles, down the swell of her breasts, across her ribs, over her lightly muscled abdomen. Her eyes snap back up to Ava’s, who is watching her.

Then she makes eye contact with Beatrice, challenging, as she reaches for the button on her pants. The effect is diminished somewhat as she fumbles with the button a little. Beatrice just smiles with faux innocence, and in a honey sweet voice says “need some help with that?” as she pops the button on her own pants easily.

Ava shoots her a playful glare, but as her eyes follow the movement of Beatrice’s hand dragging her zipper down, Ava’s look quickly morphs into an unreadable expression Beatrice hasn’t seen before. If Beatrice didn't know better, she would say Ava looked at her...no, no way.

Beatrice stops undressing. “What?” she asks, unsure.

Ava shakes her head, smiles, and looks down. “Nothing.” Ava lets out a breathy laugh then returns her focus to her pant button. Beatrice, still skeptical, quirks an eyebrow.

Ava manages to pop the button and quickly pulls the zipper down. She then turns around, so her back is to Beatrice, as her hands grip the sides of her waistband. She pushes the pants down as she does a little shimmy.

Beatrice isn’t sure what her face is doing, but she could guess. She stands there, frozen. She can feel heat bloom on her face and ears as it spreads down her neck and upper chest. She blinks slowly. If she had thought about it, she might have looked up to the ceiling or turned around. But she didn’t, so Beatrice just stares at the curve of Ava’s ass as her co-pilot bends slightly to finish pushing the pants down to her ankles, now in her bikini cut black underwear.

Ava steps out of her pants with a little sideways stumble and a laugh. She turns back around to face Beatrice, and seeing her frozen there (still staring…I should blink again), Ava’s eyes get a little glint in them. Her face lights up with a cocky grin. She plants her hands on her hips as she says innocently “let’s go Beatrice, I though you said you were coming,” cocking her head to the side.

Then she turns back to the drift suits, pulling one from the hangar.

She knew exactly what she was doing with that double entendre.

Beatrice coughs and refocuses. She quickly strips to her underwear as well and picks a suit. They work like a wetsuit, with the zipper in the front middle. As she steps into the suit, Ava is already zipping hers up. She can practically hear Ava’s joke already about them looking like nuns with their suit hoods up and on their head.

Beatrice quickly zips her suit up, folds her pants and places it on her shirt, and steps around the bench. Ava is waiting for her by the door Yasmin had left through.

As Beatrice steps to Ava’s side, Ava wordless takes her hand, squeezes it, drops it, and turns to open the door. They step through to the drift sim room.

**

The drift sim room isn’t one Beatrice had been to before. The room is close to the command staff area and locked at all times with biometrics, so that curious new recruits wouldn’t go sneaking off to try to drift without supervision and get their brains fried, or worse, get themselves killed.

The room itself is brightly lit, with the majority of it being shiny white. The room is circular and larger than the locker room they were just in. Beatrice can hear a soft hum of machinery. Thankfully, the room isn’t too cold.

Directly in front of them, there is a white circular central command center, with space to stand inside and a small gap to get in and out. Yasmin standing in the middle of it. She is surrounded by five screens, with buttons and lights below them and other controls floating holographically above them. One of the screens is on.

Around the room there are five pods evenly spaced. Four of them have space for two pilots, while one is for trio pilots. Most pods are sealed with translucent glass doors.

Probably to keep an eye on the occupants during the drift.

One of the pods, however, has its doors open. Inside there are two clear spots for pilots, outlining where their bodies should be positioned.

All in all, this is the safest environment to drift in. No pressure of running a Jaeger, just you and your co-pilot, drifting. Theoretically.

Yasmin must hear them enter, because she turns around, smiles, and says “Ah! Glad you found some that fit ok. You guys can head to the open pod, facing me.” Then she turns back around to keep fiddling with the controls.

Beatrice, steeling herself, walks around the podium towards the open pod. She can feel Ava following behind her. They get in, turn their backs to the body-shaped cushioning, and take a step back until their backs bump against the pod.

After a few seconds, Yasmin looks up at them and then the pod doors hiss, close, and seal shut. The lights dim. Beatrice can see her and Ava’s vital signs backwards on the glass doors in front of them, around mid-abdomen height.

She hears Yasmin’s voice over a speaker. “Ok ladies, quick safety brief. I will be monitoring you the entire time. If I feel the drift is becoming unsafe, I will pull you, ok? In the drift, your minds will create a shared headspace. You may see memories of your own or of your partners. You will likely share thoughts. Don’t chase the RABIT, or Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers. This primarily occurs when one or both pilots latch onto a memory. Just let the memories float by.”

Yasmin pauses. “You are standing upright right now, but the pods will tip back and you will be reclining slightly at about a 45 degree incline, to take pressure off of your legs.”

Another pause. “Ready?”

Beatrice nods, and assumes Ava does the same.

“Engaging pilot to pilot protocol”

Beatrice breathes in and out slowly, calming her mind and trying not to latch onto any of the thoughts that pop up. She tries to remain still and relaxed, keeping her pulse rate low. She closes her eyes.

She feels her body reclining, faintly hears Yasmin saying “engaging neural synchronization” and then, she’s drifting.

**

Beatrice’s mind feels… vast and too open. Vulnerable. She doesn’t allow her mind to close off, however. It’s just Ava she reassures herself. The thought gives her peace.

She holds the link open and instead, casts out for Ava. She’s floating, unmoored, searching. She feels a brush of something and reaches for it. She feels the other something doing the same, but can sense a desperation and building panic coming from it.

She knows the presence is Ava. It is so uniquely her, there isn’t even a question. Beatrice isn’t quite sure how she knows, but she does.

So, Beatrice does what she would do in real life. She comforts Ava. Gently takes hold, softly guides her presence in. The touch is, at first, startling. Not unlike the tingling of her hands whenever Ava is around. Not unpleasant, but different. She worries for a split second that Ava will recoil, but she doesn’t. Ava glides in, fully trusting.

Their minds don’t smash together painfully. Instead, they intertwine, like dancers embracing in a twirl orbiting around each other. Beatrice can feel Ava’s harried presence transform into relaxed. Soothed. At peace.

Beatrice allows her consciousness to expand, gently feeling around for the borders, the mental limits. Investigating but not overpowering. She had heard others describe (a non-compatible) partner as suffocating, with their consciousness taking over. She doesn’t want that, would never want that. 

She can feel Ava tentatively do the same, and the tingling sensation turns into a pleasant warm buzz that almost burns. Beatrice revels in the feeling.

Huh. So this is what drifting with a genius is like? Not really what I expected. Maybe better though.

Hello, Ava

WHO THE WHAT FUCK??!?!?

Beatrice can feel Ava recoil, just slightly, and follows her, keeping their connection.

Ava, it’s me. Beatrice?

Beatrice can literally feel the amusement radiating across the bond directed at her. It is strongly tinted with affection, however, which lessens the sting.

Oh, sup Bea. Beatrice pictures Ava beaming at her, which apparently also can cross their neural bridge. Yea, that would about be my face if you could see it. It’s interesting that you think in both words and pictures Ava muses, curious. I wonder if everyone does, or some people only do words, or only pictures? What do you think Bea?

Beatrice laughs across their bond. Before she has a chance to even think of a response, Ava is continuing.

Wait, aren’t we drifting? How are we communicating? Aren’t we supposed to be one mind? A Disney reference briefly flashes in and out of Ava’s consciousness, too quick for Beatrice to process.

This is the in-between. In real life, this is mere seconds. In here though, we have time. This is where minds meet for the first time, if they’re open to it. We can communicate telepathically because we are in overlapping space, just not necessarily the same space completely. If we weren’t drift compatible, this is where our minds would reject each other and snap the connection.

So like, our brains are doing the thing dogs do where they sniff each other’s butts to figure out if they’re friends?

Gross Ava, but yes.

So…. We aren’t drifting?

Not quite yet. Drifting is when our minds are completely in sync. We won’t need to think-talk to each other; we will know the thought as soon as it exists. Every thought, memory, and emotion.

That sounds incredibly revealing? Invasive?

I suppose it will be, yes.

Is that why you can’t hear every thought I have right now?

Yes. In order to fully drift, we will need to completely merge consciousness.

Ok. Well. We should probably try to do that.

Ok. Some of her nervousness must have filtered over to Ava, because she says,

I trust you, Bea. It’ll be ok. It’s just me. An image of Ava smiling softly at her flows over their bond.

Beatrice feels the gentle tendrils of Ava pulling ever closer. Tingly and burning and pleasant and soothing. It feels like a tight hug from Ava. Which makes sense, really.

It feels strange, yes, but not as scary as she thought to have Ava in her most sacred place. She relaxes and lets Ava in further.

She feels the core of Ava’s mind touch hers, and their minds melt together completely in a burst of memories and emotions.

****

The memories float by, and she (and simultaneously Ava) remembers Yasmin’s warning to not cling to them. The memories overlap and jump in no particular order or sequence.

Beatrice is glad Ava had told her the story about her back scar before they drifted, or she might have been tempted to chase the RABIT as she sees and feels fast flashes of what Ava had described. Some of Beatrice’s own memories float by. Ava slows their combined memories down, to examine them. Beatrice lets her, helps her. Not slowed long enough to fall too far, but so that they go from blurred images to clear scenes.

Beatrice’s hometown, cobblestone streets.

Ava’s fear of being abandoned by people she loves; the reason she was feeling desperate in the beginning of the drift.

Beatrice’s childhood bedroom, with trophies on the dresser.

Beatrice on her childhood bed, kissing a girl from school during a study session. Her mother opening the white bedroom door while talking, walking in on this scene. The coldness Beatrice felt, radiating off her mother, who had abruptly cut herself off. The disapproving angry look on her mother’s face. Beatrice being terrified.

Beatrice at a younger age, presenting her mother with a trophy from some sport, and her mother being disinterested and unimpressed.

Beatrice feeling worthless and unloved.

Ava looking out the window of a car, bored, while her mom and dad sang Justin Bieber’s “Baby” at her to make her laugh.

Ava in a foster home with floral pale green wallpaper and a stale smell.

Beatrice in boarding school, older now. Learning to cook. A feeling as though she had to be good at everything she tried. Feelings of sadness, like she wasn’t worthy of anyone’s love.

Ava in high school, playing soccer, feeling unbridled joy at the ability to run.

Beatrice a child again, with Shannon and Lilith. Feelings of deep affection and love for her sisters.

Shannon and Mary in college with Beatrice, trying to break down her guard, brick by brick.

Ava’s mom making her dinosaur chicken nuggets.

Ava’s dad carrying her on his shoulders.

Ava playing catch with her parents.

Although various memories and feelings from adulthood have floated in and out, the next one that pops up is… more adult. Ava straddling a boy’s lap, sweaty and topless, while they make out. The memory flashes by quickly, as if hurried on by Ava, for which Beatrice is glad.  

Ava shows her a few more memories of her parents, then the jumbled mess of memories and feelings continue to float by. The orphanage, the medical trial, learning to walk again. Beatrice sees it all, while her own continue to float by as well.

And then, the memory that brings it all crashing down.

****

You’d think that it would be the memory of her mom walking in on her and a girl kissing in middle school that would make Beatrice pull back. But no.

It wasn’t even her own…graphic… memories of later relationships. Although awkward to see each other naked for the first time via drift, those memories flashed by rapidly. 

No. It was when a memory of one of their normal evening nights popped up.

Ava was reading, and Beatrice was staring. In the memory, her eyes slowly strayed across Ava’s face and down her neck.

That part, in and of itself, wasn’t particularly embarrassing.

It was that now, Ava knows what she was *thinking* while that occurred. And Beatrice was thinking, daydreaming, of kissing, sucking, and licking her way down the column of Ava’s throat, across her collarbones, and down her chest…

****

Beatrice’s eyes fly open with a gasp. She hears distant beeping and small alarms as her heartrate, blood pressure, and core temperature increase. She sees in front of her, both her and Ava’s vitals signs are now displayed in red and are blinking.

“Beatrice! What happened? Are you ok?” Yasmin frantically calls out, while she does something with the drift controls. Yasmin continues to speak, but Beatrice tunes her out as she notices her ears painfully ringing.

Seconds later, Ava’s eyes open and she gasps too. Her breaths are heavy and ragged, more so than Beatrice had ever seen from her. She can see Ava looking around frantically, gulping down air, before her eyes meet Beatrice’s. Ava briefly squeezes her eyes closed, and Beatrice can see her make a conscious effort to calm down.

She herself had been trying to do the same.

The pod door hisses open, and Beatrice pushes herself up and stumbles out. She ignores Yasmin telling her to go to the med bay from the control center, and instead clumsily staggers towards the locker room. Yasmin makes it to Ava before she can do the same and follow Beatrice.

Beatrice doesn’t turn to look, just goes towards the locker room with single minded focus.

Her vision blurs and becomes hazy. Her ears continue to ring. She makes it to sit on the bench in the locker room, and begins stripping her suit with fingers that feel like lead. She isn’t quite sure how she manages, but she pulls her shirt and pants on, and heads out the door.

By some miracle, she doesn’t run into anyone in the hallway, and, leaning against the walls as she goes, she lurches in the direction of her room.

When she arrives at her hallway some time later, her vision is spotty, her head feels like it is splitting open, and she is so dizzy she can barely stand. She feels like she just ran an ultra-marathon as she gasps for air. Her entire body feels as though it is on fire, and her lips go numb. She feels like she might vomit.  

She manages to make it down the hall a few steps, and trips near her door. She falls to the ground, and at the same time falls blessedly into unconsciousness just outside the door to her room.

****

Which is how Lilith finds her later in the hallway - barefoot, shirt on inside-out, pants unbuttoned, and hair akimbo. All of which would have been clear indicators that Beatrice is not okay… but her sweaty, pale, blue-lipped, unconscious body, laying on the floor face down, shaking, is what truly scares Lilith.

“Fuck” she swears loudly as she runs towards her friend.

Chapter Text

Yasmine is stressed. Which may be, no, definitely is, an understatement. Not only is she in charge of the neural interface during real-world Kaiju events, of which there seem to be a lot of lately, but she also is leading the investigation to find their base commander. Who is missing.

And on top of THAT, she is the lead for sim-drifting cadets, which has increased too. AND.

AND.

These frickin pilot-to-be idiots. Looking at you Beatrice.

Let’s just say, she is feeling the pressure.

“Ava, you’re fine, deep breaths, that’s it, good” she coaches. She had hit the button to call medical to the drift sim, and they should arrive shortly. Hopefully. Ava looks pale, sweaty, and is breathing hard and fast. Yasmine isn’t a doctor, but she knows heart rates aren’t supposed to hang out at 180. Ava’s vitals continue to blink red on the pod door.

Yasmine holds Ava in place as she tries to follow Beatrice. Crap. I can’t leave Ava, but I can’t just let Beatrice go either. Crap. What do I do. Crap. Crap.

After some mild internal panic, Yasmine decides to help the one she is with, and tell the medics Beatrice is wandering around and hope they find her. Then she has an idea. “Computer, send a message to Lilith, Camila, Diego, Dora, and Michael”

A robotic voice answers. “What would you like to say?”

“Guys, Beatrice broke the drift sim early and is now wandering around the halls somewhere. I have Ava and am waiting for medical, but can you start to look for her please?”

The robotic voice confirms the voice message has been sent to the group’s personal devices. She thinks about sending a message to JC and Chanel, but she doesn’t really know them all that well and besides, they are on the mechanical crews, who are working non-stop. She decides against it, and goes back to keeping Ava calm.  

What feels like hours later, but is only minutes, the medical crew comes in and takes over. They put an oxygen mask on Ava, hoist her into a gurney, and roll off.

Yasmine lets out the biggest breath and feels her shoulders slump. She feels wetness on her cheeks and realizes she is crying. She holds her hands out a little, and sure enough, they are shaking a bit. The adrenaline crash always does this to her.

Yasmine wipes her face, steels herself, and leaves the drift sim to head for her nearby office. It isn’t nearly as big or cool as Superion’s, but she is just a Lieutenant. The fact that she has an office at all is something, right?

She collapses on her rolling chair in front of her desk with a huff, and stares at the ceiling, mind reeling. What the heck had happened in there? They were drifting just fine. They were compatible, there is no question there. So why did Beatrice break the sim? She knows the usual reason is that people don’t want to share something personal, or get embarrassed. Whatever it is, Beatrice and Ava need to figure it out, fast.

As she is thinking, her device pings with a message. She plays it. “Yasmine, I found Beatrice. She wasn’t looking good. Medics are taking her to the med bay now” Lilith’s matter-of-fact voice floats out from the tinny speakers. Yasmine sighs in relief, but knows they aren’t out of the woods yet. It can be very dangerous to break the drift like that. Obviously there are rumors of people dying from drift sims gone awry, but the only stories she has heard were cadets who snuck in without a drift tech like her.

However, she HAS heard a story from a few years ago about someone who broke the drift while on an official sim and was never able to do it again, because it had somehow damaged their nervous system. She isn’t sure if the story is true or a myth, but hopes myth. Really really hopes myth.

She sighs. There is no way she can focus on anything right now, after watching her two friends go through that and all these thoughts bouncing around in her head. It is a little past lunch time, but she isn’t hungry, so doesn’t even consider going down to the kitchens to try to convince someone to give her a to-go meal. Instead, she opens sudoku on her computer, and puts on some Lizzo.

***

That same day, in a different part of the base, Sophie sits at their desk, chewing their lunch slowly and thinking.

They started in R&D around 6 years ago. They aren't in charge of the department, but they do have a knack for knowing what’s going on. They aren't a gossip, just keep their ears open. Information is power, after all.

Which is why Lt. Amunet came to them to ask about Colonel Vincent a few days ago, they presume.

Speaking of which. Something just isn’t adding up.

Since you have to use a badge and a code to get into R&D, and back out, Sophie was able to pull the records of when and how long Col Vincent was in R&D over the past month. Sophie and Yasmine were both surprised to see he had visited 19 times, and not just during normal awake hours either.

Sophie had only seen him a handful of times, and each time, he seemed innocently curious about Kaiju physiology and behavior. They thought it was a little weird that the base commander didn’t have better things to do, or couldn’t get a report of the information sent to him, but shrugged it off.

After Yasmine had left with this information, Sophie didn’t really think more of it, and focused back on their work. Which was busy, considering three Cat 3 and one Cat 4 Kaiju had just come out of the breach, way out of any predicted schedule.

Today, however, Sophie overheard something that brought it all back up to the surface of their mind. Two cops were walking around the halls outside R&D, just as they were leaving to go pick up lunch.

“…the Seattle Bone Slums was a bust. Nobody would talk. I doubt Vancouver would be any different. Why would he even be there? It’s only been a few days and…” their voices faded out.

Who the hell had gone to the Bone Slums, and why? They knew the commander was missing, but he wasn’t at the Bone Slums, right?

The more they thought, the more suspicious things their brain came up with.

They always thought it was weird that he was only seen in a long-sleeved uniform, even in summer.

They swear they once saw a blue glow on his forearm skin when he reached for something in their lab, but they were tired at the time and brushed it off as a trick of the light. There was glowing blue Kaiju blood all over their lab, anyways. Even if it wasn’t a trick of the light, maybe he got splattered. Under his long sleeves?

And they know Superion and Yasmine are on it, but they can’t help but wonder,

How and why did the Kaiju breach like that? Usually if there are two, they come at the same time. But those three came in a row, spaced out just enough to take out two Jaegers completely. We were only saved because of the Divinium Jaeger and pure dumb luck. It’s almost like they knew how we would respond.

Oh shit. They knew how we would respond. But how did they know that? Yes, humans have been fighting them for years, but why NOW? What changed? Are the Kaiju surveilling us somehow?

Do the Kaiju parts in my lab somehow report back? I do have brains in there, maybe they are connected like a hive mind or something? Are there scouts we aren't detecting coming through? Are they simply learning and we are unlucky?

Their mind whirred with possible theories. There were just too many unknowns to form a solid hypothesis. But the fact remained, the Kaiju somehow knew exactly how to space out their attacks to do the most damage. And it was just at Fort Simon. They hadn’t heard any chatter from other bases about similar patterns of behavior.

Then, their helpful brain thought of one other tidbit they had forgotten. The attacks came just as Dr. Salvius was visiting, then again when the Marshall was here.

They chomped on their crunchy salad.

Weird.

***

In yet another part of the base that day, Michael and Todd are joined by JC and Chanel for lunch. Michael had convinced the two overworked engineers to sit and eat, “for 15 minutes.” Which felt like a lifetime with all the work that needed to get done.

Colonel Superion had assigned JC and Chanel to the crew fixing Cruciform. There was a rumor going around that because she was being almost completely re-engineered due to the amount of damage, she would get christened with a new moniker. It had happened before.

She was Cruciform Menace before she was Cruciform Defender, I suppose, Michael thought.

I wonder what happened to Ava and Beatrice during their drift he muses to himself, after listening to Yasmine’s message not too long ago. He kept an eye out for Beatrice, but didn’t go actively searching for her. I am not her babysitter, she is a grown woman, he reasoned to himself.

He shrugs, and continues to eat while listening to JC and Chanel.

“So now, we only have 13 active Jaegers, 2 of which are Divinium powered. They couldn’t recover Hyperion Prophet, and we don’t have the manpower or parts to fix both Corinthian and Cruciform, so Corinthian was shipped off to Fort Katerina." Chanel rants, "and honestly, we don’t even have the pilots to man Obsidian Striker and Eureka Tango, even if we did get them fixed!"

JC soon joins in, “and I heard that one of the Divinium Jaegers is being reallocated to another nearby base” he says frustrated.

“Well that kind of makes sense though” Michael interrupts the conversation, arguing. “We had 3 of the 6 Divinium Jaegers in the fleet. Probably because before the past couple of weeks, we had a lower amount of Kaiju attacks AND new cadets. Only what, two bases train cadets? The other one is in Japan, who have the other 3. They aren’t prototypes, but they are still pretty new. It makes sense that now they would want to spread the DJs out, in case another event like ours happens. DJs saved our asses, we’d all be toast without them.”

“Did you just call Divinium Jaegers DJs, bro?” JC asks. He is interrupted by Todd, who is looking at Michael and smirking. “Well look who was actually paying attention in class” he says, “doesn’t have anything to do with a small, pretty junior whose names rhymes with Cave-ah”.

Chanel snorts. “Cave-ah? Way to be suble. That isn’t even a word dude. Anyways,” she shovels one more bite into her mouth, chews delicately, swallows, and continues “we gotta get going. 15 minutes is up, and I still need to calibrate the conn pod controls of the left side to the neural….”

Michael tunes out, not understanding the engineer at all. After a minute, Chanel and JC stand with their trays, heading towards tray return. Michael and Todd wave at them as they leave the dining hall.

Michael’s device pings with a message from Lilith in response to the group message Yasmine had sent. He doesn’t listen, but assumes she must have found the annoying, uptight brunette. Good.

Is it bad that I kind of hope they aren’t drift compatible and that’s why the drift sim failed? Maybe Beatrice will be hobbled up, and I can talk to Ava a bit.

***

Miles away, later that night in the Vancouver Bone Slums, Colonel Vincent, callsign “Vader”, walks to his meeting.

The pilots thought the callsign was funny, a play on “Luke, I am your Father”. Vincent was less amused to have the callsign of a villain, but the unspoken rules of callsigns is that you can’t choose or change your own callsign. It has to be given. Nobody uses his callsign anyways. He didn’t earn it. The only reason he has one at all is because he is a base commander of a Shatterdome, and he knows it. He doesn’t have their respect, not like Superion, he thinks bitterly.

Even though he has led the Shatterdome to victory more than once, and has had a distinguished career, he is unappreciated. Does that make him angry and frustrated? Yes, of course. He is only human. Mostly. But he still wants to protect the people, including those on the base under his command. He isn’t a villain.

As he continues his walk, his face hidden both with the darkness of the evening and with the hood up on his black hoodie, he slouches so as to not draw attention to himself.

He comes to his destination, knocks on the door in a specific pattern, and is let in by a large muscular woman he doesn’t recognize. Vincent throws his hood back and steps further in. He is greeted by an opulent, well-lit, circular room with a balcony looking down on them.

A door opens on the ground floor, the same level he is on, and a man walks out. The sleeves of his button up white shirt are rolled to his elbows, displaying his two glowing blue tattoos, one on either forearm.

“Vincent, glad you could make it. We have much to discuss” Kristian Schaefer greets him with a fake-looking smile.

Chapter Text

Beatrice opens her eyes slowly, wincing as light floods in. Blinding. Too bright. She squeezes them back shut. Still groggy and half conscious, she lets her head flop to the right as her hand comes up to rub her face. Something tugs on her forearm. She grimaces and opens her eyes again, squinting. It’s not as bright as last time.

Looking at her arm, she sees attached to it is small, clear tubing. She follows the tube with her eyes as awareness slowly returns to her. Saline bag. A cuff on her other bicep makes a mechanical noise and starts to constrict. Blood pressure cuff. She looks at her vital signs displayed on a screen. Normal.

My tongue hurts. She does a quick inventory of her body. I can wiggle my toes, that’s good. She still has a headache, but not too bad. Her ears also ring, but it is ignorable and manageable. Her body is generally sore, but overall, there isn’t any severe pain that she can tell.

She blinks, turning her head back to look at the ceiling. She is slightly propped up by the bed, so instead sees the room in front of her. And the… hair? near the foot of the bed, by her knees.

She tries to focus her foggy brain.

Someone has pulled up a chair facing her bed and has their head resting on their arms. She can see the top of their head, (and thus, hair) and slim forearms. Sleeping maybe?

Beatrice shifts a little, stretching out her legs, testing. The movement must alert the person in the chair, because suddenly the head pops up, and Beatrice is greeted with the face of a tired-looking Ava Silva. Whose face looks decidedly less tired the second she meets Beatrice’s eyes, realizing she is awake.

Beatrice watches as Ava’s eyes quickly widen and her mouth drops open in a small o. Still staring at Ava’s mouth, Beatrice is startled when Ava stands abruptly, the chair making a screech noise as it slides over the concrete floor. Beatrice blinks slowly, still processing,

why is Ava in a hospital gown?

All of a sudden (it seems to Beatrice), Ava is right in front of her, looking at her with an unreadable expression for a split second before half collapsing across Beatrice in an awkwardly positioned hug. Ava’s nose finds the crook of Beatrice’s neck, where it meets her shoulder, and she can feel Ava take a big, shaky breath in, letting it out with a whoosh of air that pleasantly tickles.

“You’re awake” Ava breathes into her neck, voice a little deeper and scratchier than normal.

The tickle causes Beatrice to shift again, blowing air out of her nose in lieu of a laugh. She can feel the corners of her mouth tug upwards. Ava must have felt Beatrice moving, because just as Beatrice is bringing her arms up to hug Ava back, Ava suddenly pulls back to look at her, hands on her arms and concern etched in her face.

Then Beatrice’s hint of a smile drops as she sees Ava’s face go from concerned to… Beatrice isn’t sure. Angry, maybe? Not happy, whatever it is.

“Are you laughing at me right now?” Ava demands. Definitely closer to angry than happy.

Beatrice shakes her head no and opens her mouth to speak, throat scratchy. She manages to croak out an “Ava, no” before coughing. She turns her head away from her copilot and pulls her arm out of Ava’s grasp to cover her cough.

Ava stands fully up, releasing Beatrice. “I’ll go get the doctors and tell them you’re awake” she says in an unreadable tone as she turns around and heads for the door. Beatrice frantically turns back to face Ava. No don’t leave, I want you to stay. Stay. Wait. Come back.

Without realizing it, her arm closest to Ava lifts off the bed as if to reach out and grab her. “Wait” Beatrice squawks, pleading. It induces another cough.

Thankfully, Ava stops in her tracks, and turns back around. Beatrice can see her eyes shining with unshed tears. Not being able to say much else (why is my throat so scratchy and sore?) Beatrice does the only thing she can think of. She makes a grabby motion with her hand. Silly, yes. Uncharacteristic, yes. Works?

Also yes.

Ava lets out a frustrated huff close to a laugh, smile almost poking through, and returns to Beatrice’s hospital bed. Ava sits on the edge of the bed, taking the grabby hand in both of hers.

Looking at their hands, Ava quietly says “It’s nice to hear your voice,” she pauses, “even a word or two. The doctors said you would wake up and be fine, but…” she trails off.

Beatrice squeezes Ava’s hand. She sees, and hears, Ava heave a slow sigh. So she squeezes again, then lifts up their hands and tugs a little.

Ava must not understand what she is trying to convey, looks up from their hands with confusion.

You are barely perched on the edge.

I want to sit how we always sit in our rooms.

Too far away, you’re too far away.

Beatrice is, thankfully, still too groggy to be self-conscious. So she tugs again, and tries to scootch her torso and butt over to the side. It’s awkward, the hand Ava has is the arm she needs to get leverage to scoot, so it’s more of a wriggle that doesn’t really get her anywhere.

Ava lets go of her hand, and Beatrice uses the opportunity to scootch more fully over to the side of the admittedly narrow bed.

Ava just watches her curiously, until Beatrice plucks the back of her t-shirt and tugs it.

“Come here” Beatrice scratches out of her sore throat.

Ava’s face lights up with understanding, and she swings her legs so she is on the bed too, positioning herself so she is lying on her side face Beatrice, but not touching her. Which, given the size of the bed, is actually impressive.

Beatrice, still on her back, turns her head to look at Ava and smiles.

She is so close.

“Hi” Beatrice says quietly. Her throat is still sore, but it is getting easier to talk.

Ava just stares at her, with that same not-quite-angry expression on her face.

“You scared the shit out of us Bea. You scared the shit out of me.” Ava eventually replies, her hands finding Beatrice’s again.

Beatrice can practically hear Ava’s brain whirring with thoughts. She watches closely as Ava seems to get lost in thought. After a pause, Ava sighs, seeming to have decided something. “We don’t have to talk about it right now. I just want you to get better.” She nods to herself.

“What happened” Beatrice rasps out, then pauses to swallow and give her throat a break. “After the sim?” she finishes, wincing with the effort… and a little for the sim.

Ava squeezes her hand, sighs, and scoots closer, resting her head on Beatrice’s shoulder.

“Is this okay?” she whispers. Beatrice nods.

 “Yasmine wouldn’t let me follow you, the paramedics came to get me” Ava starts.

She then tells her the whole story; how Ava had been wheeled on a gurney to the med bay, where they currently are. Ava’s vitals were not great, but doctors were able to control the side effects of breaking the drift like that, so Ava did not progress to any neurological symptoms and did not lose consciousness.

After she was declared stable and was just being held for observation, everyone had come to visit, even the engineers for a few minutes.

Mostly though, it was Diego who stayed with Ava and distracted her. After visiting hours were up, Diego had to leave, and Ava was required to “stay in the med bay for at least 24 hours” Ava said, using air quotes.

“They never said where in the med bay, so I sorta… snuck to your room?” Ava says.

“How long have I been unconscious?” Beatrice asks.

“About…” Ava pauses, thinking, “probably 12 hours or so.”

Ava continues her story, relaying how Lilith had found Beatrice in the hallway outside their rooms, seizing, and had called for medics. Beatrice was also wheeled to the med bay, but because she hadn’t gotten care as quickly, her symptoms were worse. And because of the seizure, unconsciousness, and unstable vital signs, Beatrice had been intubated for 6 of the 12 hours.

“You apparently woke up briefly, for 15 minutes or so, about 6 hours ago. That’s when they took out the breathing tube” Ava fills her in.

Explains why my throat is so sore and scratchy.

“I overheard the nurses when I was going to get a snack from the patient pantry and had to see you.” She pauses, taking a shaky breath before continuing.

“So I just wandered around looking for your room. If anyone asked, I just said I was looking for the snacks.” Ava says, sheepishly, turning to hide her face in Beatrice’s neck a little.

Thankfully it is a small med bay, not a hospital, or she’d be walking for days.

Beatrice laughs quietly to herself, picturing Ava in an open-back hospital gown, baring her naked ass for the world to see as she traipsed around looking for Beatrice’s room.

Ava, who seems lighter now than when Beatrice first woke up, smiles into her neck. “What?” she asks, tone curiously teasing. Beatrice, still chuckling, haltingly relays her mental image, forcing the words out through her sore throat.

“I am glad to see that even with neurological injury, you still picture me naked” Ava jokes.

That sobered Beatrice up real fast.

Ava must have felt her tense, because she grips Beatrice’s hand and arm harder, as if afraid she will run away again.

**

Ava clears her throat, “anyways” she continues, trying to power through… whatever that was. “I bet you are pretty tired. Want to take a nap?”

She feels Beatrice nod.

Ava’s mind starts to swirl with rapid fire thoughts.

Why did she tense with that joke?

Wait. That is about when she broke the drift. I wonder if it has something to do with me.

Did I do something wrong?

Misunderstand everything?

I thought we were good, on the same page

Is it my fault she broke the drift?

It is my fault the drift broke?

Am I a bad copilot?

What did I do?

Did I make her uncomfortable in the drift?

What if we are not compatible?

What if she isn’t okay with me?

What if she isn’t okay because of me?

What did I do?

My fault

Shit

My fault

I shouldn’t have been so naïve, of course she wouldn’t want to drift with me

Ava sits up. “Actually, we should probably tell your Doctors you are awake first, huh?” She smiles, but it’s forced.

Beatrice eyes her carefully and nods her head. “Yea” she scratches out.

Ava turns away from her, unable to look her in the eyes. She rolls to plant her feet on the ground, butt on the edge of the bed.

She is about to stand up and find… someone. In scrubs. Who looks authoritative. Before she does, Beatrice catches her hand, frowning. She tugs it back towards herself.

“No, wait”

“Bea, we just said that we gotta tell your doctors you are awake. I have to go find them” Ava tries for levity, forcing a laugh. Still not looking at Beatrice.

“….please?” Beatrice implores, voice small.

Really giving some mixed signals there babe

Ava sighs, for what feels like the 30^th time that night.

I can’t say no to her on a normal day, let alone on a… I don’t even know what this is day

So she doesn’t stand up. She sits there, at the edge of the bed.

Beatrice squeezes her hand and says “see?”

Ava turns her head to look,

As she does, Beatrice gives her a small smile and pushes the nurse call button on the side of the bedrail by her head.

“Oh. Yea. That makes more sense. Good call.”

Of course, that’s why. Ava thinks she must have imagined the pleading tone.

Maybe I imagined everything. Wishful thinking, projecting my feelings onto her and misinterpreting everything.

Hopefully not. Maybe not?

There is no way I am making this up in my head though, right? Some of what has happened between us…

Fuck. I don’t know.

**

After sitting in uncomfortable silence for what feels like hours, but is only minute, a nurse comes in, doctor following behind him. The doctor does an exam and says Beatrice is recovering nicely, and gives her permission to shuffle walk to the bathroom. The nurse helps Beatrice use the restroom, and when she comes back, Ava is back in the chair.

The nurse raises one eyebrow, then sends Ava small secret smile and doesn’t say anything about Ava not being in her own room. Ava returns the smile, mouthing “thank you” to the nurse. Beatrice smiles to herself at the exchange.

Ava can charm literally anyone into doing her bidding. It’s an exhilarating and dangerous power, she muses.

After Beatrice is re-situated, she drinks a little water. The nurse gives her a lozenge for her throat to suck on, and then leaves her with Ava.

Beatrice glances at the clock on the wall across from her, seeing it is now nearly 6am. She and Ava will both be kept today for observation, Beatrice probably a little bit longer.

She suspects Ava didn’t get much sleep in that chair.

“Ava.” She said, determinedly.

Just power through the awkward Beatrice. You can do this. You have to do this.

Ava looks up at her from her chair with droopy eyes and a sleepy expression.

“Get up here” she… sort of commands. Accidentally.

Maybe too much Beatrice.

Ava’s eyebrows raise almost into her hairline. “Damn, bossy today” she retorts with a smirk.

Beatrice rolls her eyes, both at herself and Ava, and says “just… please come up here so we can both sleep?”

Not caring enough to think about what that implies.

They did just drift, it makes sense that she would want to be physically close to Ava afterwards, especially the first time.

It definitely isn’t because she sleeps better when Ava is nearby, or feels more calm and comfortable and safe.

Then why did you break the drift you moron she berates herself briefly. She stuffs that voice back deep down into the recesses of her mind. She can think about it later.

Ava doesn’t answer, just crawls back up into her position from earlier, head on Beatrice’s shoulder as the pair drift into sleep.

**

Elsewhere on the base, 6am means Col Superion is already up and dressed for the day, walking around the sparring room with the cadets who *aren’t* in the med bay. She sighs internally.

It seems almost everyone is distracted. Either by Ava’s absence, Beatrice’s, or both. It is a small cohort, and those two seem to be at the center of it. Beatrice is looked up to and respected by her peers and the junior cadets, while Ava is universally liked and seems to be the focal point of teamwork between cadets.

What a pair those two make.

What a leadership pair they make Superion muses to herself. If they ever figure out the drift, they will be formidable, and not just in the Jaeger.  

**

After a semi-productive morning sparring session, Superion heads to lunch. One of Duretti’s attachés intercepts her, saying the Marshall requires her to meet him at her office.

She holds in a sigh, it cannot be healthy to hold in this many sighs, and makes the walk to her office, lunch in hand.

When she arrives, Duretti simply waves her in, staving off any formal reporting in or saluting. “Sit, Superion” he says as she closes the door behind her.

“After reviewing the candidates you put forth” he says, side eyeing her, “that I did not request... but appreciate nonetheless” he continues, “I agree that Hank and Daisy are best suited to take over the role of training the cadets. I cannot have you unavailable for 80% of the day. Starting immediately, ensure those two are pulled from rotation and made full-time instructors.”

Thank fuck

“Understood sir” she replies, gratitude in her voice.

“But I still want you to oversee the day-to-day much more closely than you normally would. Give some of your commander duties to Lieutenant Colonel Strand.”

She nods. “Yes sir”.

“Good. Now. Has there been any update on the location of your base commander?”

“I do not know, sir” she replies easily. “I was in training all morning with the cadets.” She states matter of factly. “I will have an update for you by the end of the day.”

The Marshall appears frustrated by this answer, but refrains from voicing it. “Very well. Keep me updated.”

And with that, he stands abruptly and leaves her office.

Shortest visit in Marshall history, wow.

**

“Sergeant Mendoza?” She walks out of her office after finishing her lunch.

Her secretary looks up, smiling at her. “Yes ma’am?” he replies.

“Please inform Lt. Amunet to report to my office before 3pm. And tell Major Kearney I want a maintenance update ASAP. Send Strand into my office as well.”

Good lord in heaven I have so much to catch up on.

She hopes the Jaeger repairs are going well and are on schedule. Especially since one of the Divinium Jaegers was transferred, and one is being used for cadet simulations now.

“Oh and tell Dr. Salvius I would like to speak with her in the next day or two. I’d like to touch base and see how she is holding up following the Kaiju attacks, and ensure she is receiving everything she needs from our staff.”

Sgt Mendoza is already typing at a frenzied pace that she admires. He then runs down her schedule for the afternoon. Mostly staff meetings and updates.

“Ma’am, as a reminder, later this week you have that conference call with the other base commanders in the region for a status update with the Marshall.”

“Ah yes, thank you for the reminder Pete. I am going to head back in and get some work done, let me know when people are here” she tells him, heading back into her office.

I should check in on Mary and Shannon too.

That seems like the least daunting thing she has to do today, so she starts with that. Picking up the phone, she dials the Denver hospital the two are at.