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Sasha hated Aleksis the moment she met him. He was too calm, too serious. He had no passions, no feeling. As far as she could tell; didn’t care about battling the Kaiju at all.
His silence bothered her as well, but she couldn’t begrudge him that.
Aleksis cared as much for Sasha as she did for him. Too brash, too fierce. Her tendency towards recklessness and quickness to anger made her a danger to anyone she would attempt to drift with.
Both of them were furious when they found they had been matched to test as copilots.
“So."
Aleksis knew Sasha had been standing at his elbow for some time, but didn’t look up until she spoke.
Sasha had a habit of trying to intimidate her fellow Privates, and Aleksis refused to allow her that privilege. If that was her intention, she would soon leave with no reaction on his part.
“We are to test together."
Aleksis nodded once, meeting her crisp grey eyes evenly.
She seemed nettled by his lack of further response.
“Don’t ruin it for me."
Aleksis wanted to tell her that if either of them was the cause of difficulty, it would be her.
He didn’t.
If being matched together was insulting to their pride; their dislike of one another; the fact that they were so drift compatible was only more so.
Aleksis’s steadiness dampened Sasha’ volatile heart, making it manageable. And her fire sparked his warrior spirit, brought it out into a tool rather than where it usually sat near dormant, deep in his bones.
She could think clearly without the haze of anger, and he had the burst of energy that made him that much more tenacious.
Together, they were fearsome.
All at the base said that the team of Cherno Alpha was one of humanities’ brightest hopes.
They still hated each other. As much pride as they had, they were able to put it away for battle. When things really mattered, they were unstoppable.
Outside of the jaegar, nothing had changed.
After the drift, Aleksis now understood that Sasha’ tendency to come on strong and bold; to overflow with emotion; was due to a lifetime of being overlooked. She had to fight for her place as much as he did.
Sasha saw that Aleksis’s quiet resolve was built from being unable to fight back the ridicule, storing it inside himself as he was unable to speak, to defend himself.
In the jaegar, he spoke as clearly as anyone else. Sasha learned to recognize his voice in her head, and once was momentarily confused when another pilot referred to her partner as the mute.
She was also momentarily offended on his behalf, and then berated herself for having done so.
Just because they were partners — had become tangled minds that fit together through a coupling of science and hard steel — did not mean they had to like each other.
But they understood one another.
Once, as Sasha was walking through the halls of the base, another soldier whispered something in her wake.
Shlyuka; whore.
Being one of the few women on site, she was used to such things. Before, it had angered her immensely. Since drifting with Aleksis, she had learned to ignore it.
The commotion that started just after was a little harder to ignore.
Were he able to speak, Sasha was sure that Aleksis would be spitting threats and curses when four other soldiers were finally able to pull him off what she assumed was her slanderer.
Unable to continue his assault, the big man spat on the floor near his target before finally shaking off the hands on him and stalking away. Sasha caught his arm.
“Aleksis!"
He turned, and his eyes were hard.
“That was stupid. I can fight my own battles. If he was worth it, I would have."
Under his dark beard, Sasha could see Aleksis’s jaw clenching.
“I’ve been called worse."
It was strange to her that she seemed to be trying to reassure him, soothe his raised hackles.
Sasha had to concentrate hard on what he was saying in the language of handsigns he used when communication was necessary though he went slower than usual for her convenience.
‘Not anymore.’
“He thinks I’m weak."
“He thinks you’re worth fighting for."
“It wouldn’t have bothered him if he didn’t think it was true. I can’t work with someone who thinks I’m a whore."
“Maybe he got angry because he knew it was wrong."
“Sir—"
“You work too well together for us to be able to afford losing you. Your request is denied."
Sasha was somewhat vexed when they next drifted; knowing he would know what she had thought of him and not knowing why that bothered her.
As always, he said nothing.
Each time their minds interlocked, their frustration with each other lessened.
Aleksis learned not to let what he had previously thought of as her overbearing personality get to him.
Sasha no longer thought him bland and listless.
They were near perfect in their teamwork until a day when Aleksis went out of synch, took too much control and about cost them their lives.
Sasha was screaming at him the moment they got out of the cockpit, seething rage. The fact that he just walked away from her did nothing to alleviate her mood.
“Get back here! I’m talking to you!"
Her hand on his shoulder likely had nothing to do with how he turned to meet her eyes, impassive as he looked down. His lack of a reaction was possibly the worst annoyance for her. And yet she didn’t want to hear his excuses for such a failure, and slapped his hands away when he brought them up to make some sort of reply under her onslaught of criticism.
When she finally finished, the irritation over his inevitable silence resurfaced.
"Say something!"
His eyes blazed, features tight.
He didn’t say anything.
He kissed her.
She told herself she wanted to push him away, but realized that would be like pushing away a part of herself.
Aleksis was just as mad as she was; she could feel it in his bruising grip on her hips. But he was also apologetic — and, surprisingly, afraid. Afraid of losing her. Had they not been in the drift so recently, she wouldn’t have felt his tendrils of emotion the way she did. Wouldn’t have realized that she was furious with him because his actions had nearly cost him his life.
That she could have lost the man she had been knotted with so completely that she was unsure whether she now could live without him.
Sasha still didn’t like him. But recognized now that she needed him, whether she wanted to or not.
She grabbed him by the tight material of his suit and dragged him backward into her rooms.
It didn’t magically solve their differences. Both of them hated the fact that they were so reliant on one another, and there was no love in the way he fucked her against the wall, her legs tight around his waist and hissing curses into his ear.
They fell into each other’s arms — beds — after particularly harrowing missions.
Most of them were.
It’s like a second form of the drift, and they learn things they never had, when locked within Cherno Alpha.
She doesn’t realize she loves him until one day Aleksis looks at her, absolutely puzzled, from through his visor as they fell within each other’s thoughts. Sasha looks back, questioning. He can speak, now. But says nothing. She searched through the swarm and realized what he must have seen, heard.
Sasha is motionless, merely meeting surprisingly soft gaze.
It is only another moment before he has ripped off his visor and has her up against his chest. The embrace was nothing like anything they have done before, and it took them both a minute to catch their bearings, settle into the feeling.
Aleksis only sighs, but she knows what he is saying.
"We’re reading you out of synch, is there a problem?…Aleksis, Sasha, is everything alright?…"
“We’re fine." Sasha says, and sneaks a glance over at her partner. He grins at her in a way she didn’t know he could, and is surprised to find a smile of her own curling her lips wide.
“Everything’s okay."