Work Text:
Remember Me?
After their first meeting, Herc and Stacker wondered if Chuck and Mako might prove to be drift compatible. At thirteen and fourteen when they met, they didn't seem likely to take to each other. Both were shy, and Chuck was moody and sullen as a bonus.
Scott had persuaded Herc to bring Chuck along during a publicity tour in the South Pacific, hoping the kid would benefit from scenery more appealing than the Sydney Shatterdome. Stacker and Tamsin had applied the same reasoning in bringing Mako with them.
As luck would have it, the weather for every stop on the itinerary was blinding rain, and Mako and Chuck wound up being the only kids on the tour.
They mumbled greetings during introductions, and Herc and Stacker reluctantly consigned them to some underlings to find a room for them to hang out in while the conferences went on. "It's not quite what we were hoping for, but Mako has her e-reader. She'll manage," said Tamsin.
"Scott's getting Max off the plane for Chuck. We managed to get permission to bring him along," said Herc.
Tamsin perked up. "That little bulldog of his? Wonderful. Mako loves animals, but hardly gets a chance to see them. Ask Chuck to introduce them."
Mako didn't have very high hopes for getting to know Ranger Hansen's son. It was hard to talk to strangers, especially boys close to her age, even on the subject of Jaegers. Chuck Hansen didn't seem to be very talkative, but settled himself in the corner of an empty embassy conference room and pulled out a tablet.
Mako was resigned to do the same until Scott Hansen entered with a leashed bulldog.
Chuck's entire demeanor changed. "Hey, Max, there you are! You have a good flight, mate?"
"Quartermaster says one of the airmen tried to smuggle him onto their truck. They took him for a walk after they deplaned, so he shouldn't need one again for a few hours." Scott gave Mako a little wave. "You kids relax. We'll come get you for sight-seeing after this dog and pony show is done."
Chuck took the flannel that Scott handed him and began toweling the dog from head to toe. "You got a walk in the rain, huh? No wonder you smell."
"He does not!" Mako blurted without thinking. Chuck looked at her in surprise, as if he'd forgotten she was there, and she was instantly mortified. She even less often was confrontational with people, let alone a strange boy who was the son of respected Rangers! "I-I'm sorry."
Before she could pick up her e-reader and slink into the darkest corner she could find, however, Chuck Hansen broke into a downright wicked grin. "Don't think so? Okay - Max, go say hi to Miss Mori!"
The dog rolled free of the towel and came galumphing over to Mako, nudging her with his nose for attention, licking at her shoes. It never occurred to her to be alarmed, and when she held out her arms to full-body wrestle him the way his master had, she found that Chuck was right: the bulldog was quite damp, and it wasn't all drool. She had only heard the smell of 'wet dog" described, but this had to be what it was.
Chuck laughed as she wrinkled her nose. "Told you!"
With the ice broken, Mako felt a little better about asking him what she'd been wondering. "Why did Max come on a plane instead of with you on the jumphawk?"
"He's not allowed on helicopters. It used to be I couldn't bring him anywhere with me at all, so I just stayed home. Our new Quartermaster likes him, so he started bringing him for me on the personnel planes." He considered Mako's enthusiastic wrestling of Max. "You should get one, if you like dogs. It makes life less boring in a Shatterdome."
"Lima Shatterdome isn't a good place for a dog. Sensei and Tamsin looked into it," Mako told him sadly. "It's not like Sydney. There is only one road in or out, or the helicopters. There would be nowhere safe to walk him or play with him. It would be unkind to keep a dog there, and in a few years I will go to the Jaeger Academy and have no time for a dog."
Chuck dropped his eyes, looking troubled. "I'm gonna go to the Academy too, when I'm old enough. The crew and Scott promised they'll take care of Max until I get back." He scratched Max's head and murmured, "I just hope he doesn't forget about me if I'm gone awhile."
"I'm sure he won't," said Mako. “We remember everyone who was good to us.”
Chuck considered that, then a slow smile crossed his face – a smile for Mako herself, not just by extension of the good mood his Max had given him. Mako was surprised by how good it made her feel in turn, to know that she had reassured him.
Max gave a full-body shake, maybe in protest that they’d stopped petting him, and they both wrinkled their noses as another whiff of wet dog filled the room. “You really do need a bath,” Chuck informed him. “You’re gonna stink up the whole embassy!”
Herc, Scott, Stacker, and Tamsin never got an entirely clear explanation for how the events of that day played out. The first part was simple enough: Max had been a bit damp after the transfer personnel took him for a walk in the rain after the flight, and he’d been drenched when the kids walked him again later in the day. Wet dog was not a pleasant smell to have all over the embassy.
Nobody was certain whose idea it had been for Chuck and Mako to give Max a bath – let alone where someone (perhaps an intern?) had got their hands on dog shampoo in a bloody embassy!
There were several quite elegant guest suites in the building, including full bathrooms with large tubs, and somehow the kids had wound up in one of them with aforementioned dog shampoo and the notion of making Max presentable again…
…and their various guardians and supervisors had found out when a suds-and-bubbles-covered bulldog came barreling into a full dress uniform conference with dignitaries from half the Southern Hemisphere, dodging between feet, upsetting camera tripods, and knocking electronic equipment into the puddles he was leaving behind.
“MAX! MAX!” Behind the bulldog came two frenzied and waterlogged tweens, creating still more chaos as they focused single-mindedly on their goal to recapture Max – meaning they plowed headlong into at least one ambassador, one general’s wife, and upset a table of hors d'oeuvres, then continued on their mad sprint after the runaway canine without even slowing down. The kids disappeared out the French doors of the conference room onto the rain-lashed lawn (blasting the hapless bystanders with wind and rain as they went), leaving a stunned retinue of military and civilian personnel reeling and trying not to slip and fall in the puddles on the marble floor.
In the stunned silence that descended, it was an American journalist who finally found words. “The Running of the Interns has nothing on those two.”
Tamsin broke first, clapping both hands over her mouth in a desperate effort to hold in her reaction, but all she succeeded in doing was making helpless squeaking noises. Herc and Scott were always a little embarrassed afterward… that Stacker Pentecost, the most uptight Brit in the business, started snickering before they did. The poor Marshal turned to start making profuse apologies to the stunned Polynesian woman whose expensive and elegant suit was now stained and half-soaked, and one of her four-inch heels broken from being tripped over by Stacker’s sprinting daughter – and both Marshal and dignitary broke in unison. Well, at least there were no hard feelings.
Dr. Newton Geiszler was next, completely deadpan: “They just don’t do ‘Take Your Kid To Work Day’ like they used to, do they?” Hermann Gottlieb, of all people, dissolved at that point, and had to steady himself on Geiszler’s shoulder to keep from doubling over.
Hardly anyone in the building could keep a straight face for the rest of the day. The four current and former Rangers in attendance were eventually deployed to corral their teenaged terrors (and dog) and haul them to stand shamefaced before the conference hosts to make abject apologies.
Everyone had to take turns keeping Chuck and Mako’s attention so neither of them would notice their respective guardians cracking up.
After their adventure, (even the mortifying public scolding that resulted) Mako and Chuck stayed in touch over email, and she privately hoped that she and Chuck might attend the Jaeger Academy together and prove to be drift compatible. But Chuck was more than a year older than her, and after Lucky Seven was destroyed, he received a special dispensation to attend Academy at age sixteen, as potential replacement partner for his father.
Sensei and Tamsin gently but firmly told her that fifteen was far too young to be training as a pilot, and once Chuck and Hercules Hansen were partnered, she knew that hope was dashed.
She and Chuck were in touch less and less from then on, even when she attended the Academy and emerged with a fast track into J-Tech Engineering. She saw a great deal of Chuck, of course – the whole world did. Despite how busy her own life became, she couldn’t help noticing how hard and bitter he seemed, even as he rose to be among the most acclaimed pilots in the world. When they met in person, they talked only of work. Chuck was usually at a very temporary posting, and didn’t ever have Max in him. Mako kept reminding herself to ask after him, but in the rush of safety checks and refit reviews, she always seemed to forget.
The next time she saw the bulldog was in the Hong Kong Shatterdome, the day Sensei brought Raleigh Becket to join in Operation Pitfall. Max was remarkably spry for ten years of age, and eagerly lavished Mako with drooly adoration. “Remember me?” she asked him.
The evidence was inconclusive. Herc didn’t mention it, nor did Sensei (not that he would these days), and it was possible that Max simply threw himself at every friendly person available.
His owner, on the other hand, just scowled as he watched, and called Max back at the first opportunity. It was as if no one, not Sensei, not Herc Hansen, nor Chuck, even recalled that absurd, embarrassing, but so hilarious day at the embassy.
She forgot it herself in the corridor after her disastrous first drift with Raleigh, and might have taught Chuck a lesson in respect herself if her new American partner hadn’t done so. Chuck refused to apologize, even though whatever the source of his rancor for Raleigh, it shouldn’t have extended to her. Apparently, it didn’t matter. In her bitter, hopeless musings during the long hours that followed, she supposed there was no reason why the happy memories she’d once shared with Chuck Hansen should matter. The world was ending, after all. What did anything from their childhood matter?
Forty-eight hours later, however, she and Raleigh returned to the Shatterdome with Otachi and Leatherback nothing but filthy carcasses behind them. And when Herc told them that both he and Chuck were grateful, Mako saw the faint smile that Chuck cast on them as he nodded in agreement.
A few hours later, she and Raleigh emerged from the infirmary after getting their post-engagement examination, expecting nothing more than some badly-needed sleep. Barking rang through the corridor, and Max came galumphing to Mako’s feet, slobbering all over her boots. Raleigh laughed as Mako knelt to give the dog a scratch. “He seems to like you.”
Before she could answer, she sensed someone watching them, and looked up. Chuck was standing in the opposite doorway, Max’s leash in his hand. Apparently the bulldog had given him the slip. He gave Mako that small, sheepish smile again, with what she knew to be, in Chuck Hansen’s own way, an apology: “We remember you.”
~Fin~