Archive of Our Own

'The breach – it's shifting!' Tendo gasped out, his voice hoarse from barking commands for the last – how many hours? He'd lost count. The electromagnetic signature issuing from the dimensional bridge pulsed violently and without warning, as if yet another kaiju was crawling its way through. Whatever it was, they were out of options, and Tendo felt the stinging certainty of failure prickling along every inch of his skin. Hong Kong had barely survived the last onslaught, and that was with four Jaegers protecting the Miracle Mile. He shivered, and ran his fingers along the beads perpetually encircling his left wrist. Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God he begged, running down the entire litany in the back of his mind.

Choi came back to himself as the crowd of techs surrounding his station jostled his chair, shaking his head rapidly to clear his thoughts. He pushed down the fear and hopelessness that drowned out his mental calculations, relying on eight years of service with the PPDC to kick in and drown out the crushing panic he felt just looking at the information crowding his screens.

His mind more or less back in order, Tendo peered more closely at the display and sat back from his desk, stunned. A thorough examination of the available data revealed that no, nothing was coming through – just the opposite in fact. The energy signature from the Breach intensified off the charts before the throat unraveled like a failed knitting project, collapsing in on itself. The force proved enough to actually shift the plates along the Challenger Deep by several millimeters, and Tendo made a mental note to have the K-Science team monitor the situation for potential instabilities. A tsunami might be less destructive than a kaiju, but it would certainly be no picnic for those in its path.

He whirled around in his chair and made his announcement with a grin that split his face wide open. A great shout issued from the back of the room, quickly becoming a contagious roar. LOCCENT vibrated with the force of triumphant exultation, but Choi refocused, reaching out to trace the pattern on his screen where the Breach had loomed for as long as he could remember. Drs. Geiszler and Gottlieb hovered around Tendo's desk, shoving at one another for the best view and threatening his claustrophobic tendencies. They were both still soaked through from the rain or something worse, something that made Tendo want to pin his nose shut with a clothespin. He considered relinquishing his focus on the terminals to glare at them until they moved away, but Tendo unfortunately knew from experience that it wouldn't do any good.

Newton gaped open mouthed at the readout on the screens, while Gottlieb's cane tapped out a staccato cadence against the floor. Newt turned slightly to meet Gottlieb's eyes, wet and shivering like a disgruntled cat, his chest heaving beneath a ruined oxford. It was real. This wasn't some fever dream or wishful thinking on the edge of sleep – their plan had worked. Twelve crippling, blood-soaked years behind them, and they had finally won.

Newton's fingers moved restlessly at his sides, counting out a pattern no one else could hear. Overwhelmed by the events of the past twenty-four hours, he pinched himself to make certain he was awake. Hermann made an annoyed sound, and rubbed absently at a patch of skin on his arm. Newt stifled an apology, and tapping his foot in time with Hermann's cane instead, glancing down at the vivid red patch against his skin. He wasn't asleep. He wasn't daydreaming. The war was over, and without his hard-won intel (and Hermann's help, Newt admitted somewhat grudgingly) their world would have been just another victim of the kaiju scorched earth campaign.

A flush of pride flooded his cheeks with a radiant heat, and Newton knew with a powerful certainty that it hadn't originated in his prefrontal cortex. It was Hermann, standing close enough to touch, staring at him with a strange mixture of annoyance and admiration. We did it, Newt felt from somewhere in the very back of his mind, ricocheting like a rubber ball from a cheap vending machine.

You and I, the unspoken contact continued, and Newt scratched at the back of his head, as if he could feel out the words that sounded like shapes, tasted like colors drifting just beneath the surface of his thoughts. Even when he'd Drifted with the partial kaiju brain, the effects hadn't lingered like this. That Drift had been mediocre at best, the connection weak, and all right, sometimes he still felt like he should have an extra pair of limbs curled away somewhere, or caught himself leaning backward in an attempt to balance on a non-existent tail, but this time – this time, he couldn't shake it off. It was like an extra space carved out in his brain, an unlocked cupboard that might as well lead to Narnia. Newt wondered if that door would ever close, and came to the nearly instantaneous decision that he didn't care.

Newton let go of the metal desk he'd been clutching for dear life and threw his arms around Hermann without thinking. He needed the contact, needed desperately to offload the electricity flooding his veins like sparking, live wires. Newt let out a long, shuddering breath, feeling the heat of another body radiating against his own. It soothed his frayed nerves, and he could feel Hermann's relief and quiet exultation seeping deep below his skin from every point of contact.

Newt remained there for a moment, unexpectedly safe and warm, so warm, before realizing what he'd done. He'd never dared initiate that level of physical contact with his co-worker, chilly and standoffish at the best of times. Newt waited for Hermann to let loose a string of indignant curses and shove him back to a safe distance, but curiously enough, Hermann made no move to push Newt away. Of course, he thought; Hermann had probably known the hug was coming before he did. Instead, his arms wormed their way around Newt's waist a bit stiffly, and held on tight, his face pressing against Newt's cheek.

The officers and technicians surrounding them were still exchanging high-fives and shouts of excitement, tempered by a stunned sense of relief. Newt drew back from the embrace with a sudden flush of embarrassment, sliding his hands down to rest along Hermann's elbows. He glanced about the control center, watching the monitors for any sign of life. The Breach might have collapsed precisely in line with Hermann's theory, but surely – surely, there was a chance that at least one of Gipsy Danger's pilots had survived.

Newt glanced past the monitors and watched asHerc Hansen knelt down beside Max, stroking his fur in mindless repetition. There was no need for him to watch the scanners; Chuck was gone, and there was no coming back. The bulldog lifted his crinkled face and jumped up with a whine, bracing his paws on Herc's chest to lick at his chin. The two of them seemed to form an island of isolation in the midst of the crowded control room, and no one seemed eager to cross that invisible line. Words of comfort would only slide meaninglessly off his back, placebos against the pain.

Watching the two of them, Newt felt the heavy weight of loss plummet down and collide with his stomach, as if he'd swallowed a land mine. His hands began to shake and clench, closing his eyes to the naked anguish on Hanson's face. He'd never known what to say in the face of tragedy. He blinked, feeling Hermann's hand come to rest in the small of his back, and Newt steadfastly refused to turn and face him. Just because he'd felt it an instant before it landed there didn't make it any easier to handle, synapses firing rapidly in all directions and drawing precisely the wrong sort of conclusion from the gesture. It was creature comfort, Newt told himself. It was what humans fell back on when they didn't know what else to do. Maybe Hermann never knew what to say to the grieving, either.

Still observing the newly promoted Marshal, Newt saw Herc's shoulders slump as he bowed his head, spreading his fingers against the glass. He stared out into the empty bays below, a blank expression reflected back in the window. It was too much for Newt, feeling his own pent up survivor's guilt and the double helping of barely contained grief echoing through his mind. His muscles seized up with an unfamiliar pain, his lungs closing down as the adrenaline from the Drift and the hurried flight back to the Shatterdome began to ebb. His left hip ached and felt stiff, and he couldn't help but feel as though he deserved it.

An insistent pressure in the back of his mind insisted that there was nothing more he could have done; subconsciously, Newt knew that it was true. He was certain in the same way that he knew he sucked at basketball, that he couldn't cook worth a damn, and to the dismay of his former coworkers at the Jaeger Institute, he couldn't carry a tune to save his life. He also knew that he had done absolutely everything in his power to gain the knowledge that allowed the Breach to be destroyed, even if it had nearly cost him his life. And Hermann -

'They all knew what this mission meant,' Hermann said quietly, his face still inches away from Newt's own.

'I know,' Newt replied around a lump in his throat, nodding slightly. 'I know that.'

'It would all have been for naught without your ridiculous – and - and incredibly foolhardy idea,' Herman stammered, reaching out to clasp Newt's quivering hands. A flood of color and sound accompanied the gesture, and Newt's head spun with the force of it. 'The both of us could have died out there,' Hermann reminded Newt, staring fixedly at the floor.

'Yeah,' Newt asserted with a rising hint of euphoria in his tone. He glanced back at Hermann and risked squeezing his hands. 'But we didn't. We're rock stars, Hermann,' Newt grinned. 'Admit it.'

Newt's vision blurred and he rubbed at his left eye, blaming the bloodshot ring around his cornea. A hesitant flow of warmth engulfed his left cortex, apparently and unexpectedly emanating from Dr. Gottlieb's side of the phantom neural connection. The Drift-induced sync seemed to hover about them like a spectre. Newt still couldn't quite tell where his frantic, lightning fast thoughts and ideas stopped and Dr. Gottlieb's patiently spooled cycles of information began.

It should have been disconcerting, Newt thought, having Hermann Gottlieb poking around in the inner recesses of his brain. I mean, a lot of that stuff was private, all right? Still, from what he'd observed, the neural handshake only served to strengthen the Jaeger pilots' bonds outside the machines, be it familial, friendly, or something else. In the case of the Kaidonovsky's, it seemed to be the happiest marriage left in the world. Well, Newt corrected himself as a stab of ice landed in his gut, it had been. He couldn't think about them right now. Couldn't think anymore about what had been lost, or he'd fall right off the edge of the mental cliff he was currently walking like a tightrope.

Their Drift – his and Hermann's - hadn't exactly been by the book. In fact, Newt was pretty sure their experiment picked up the rule book and broke the spine, tearing out pages and tossing them to the wind. What he'd seen – no, he corrected himself, what they'd seen on the other side was enough to provide nightmare fuel for decades. He couldn't understand how Hermann was handling it all so calmly.

'Do we have the pods?' Herc asked, interrupting Newt's thoughts and rising to his feet to rest his hands on the back of Tendo's chair.

'Registering one beacon, rising to the surface, sir,' Tendo answered, throwing the visual up on the wide display. A single oblong shape rose rapidly through the depths, nearing the surface.

'Send the choppers,' Herc rasped, and turned away, moving to exit the command center. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, letting him pass, Max trailing steadily behind. Tendo issued the command to the waiting helicopters on the pad, sending two Super Sikorskys to the location of the first beacon. 'Just in case,' he muttered aloud, rubbing the thumb of his right hand over the loops of beads around his left. Just in case.

Newt and Hermann crowded in behind him, eyes flickering across the radar screen in perfect tandem. Which pilot had made it out? Could anyone still be alive in there? Newton felt his questions echoed back in his eras, despite never having voiced them aloud. God, this was disorienting.

'I have confirmed vital signs on the first pod,' Tendo announced in disbelief to the appreciative crowd, which continued to cheer and roar. It was Mako, alive and resting above the waves. Newton felt Hermann's hand grip his shoulder, and knew was smiling without having to look. Moments later a second pod burst to the surface, but Tendo's readings were coming up blank. 'No vitals incoming from the second pod,' he said more quietly, his words slow and evenly spaced.

The chatter in the room died down, watching the readout on Choi's screen, and the camera feed from the helicopters as they circled the area. They stared as Mako stood up from her emergency pod and dove into the ocean, swimming over to the second oval supported by a ring of floats. She opened the hatch and pulled Raleigh's motionless form out of its casing, while the entire room held in a collective breath.

A rush of green numbers flooded Tendo's screens and he punched the air, announcing a second survivor. Mori and Becket embraced unreservedly, like children, and for a moment the atmosphere in the room threatened to burst through the ceiling. The overwhelming weight of loss was still palpable, like a chain wound about their necks, but for this one instant in time, they could be grateful. They could cheer, and celebrate the precious lives that were left, the lives that had, in Pentecost's words, canceled the impending apocalypse. Mako and Raleigh helped one another climb up into the choppers and the great black machines swung back toward Hong Kong.

It was too much for Newt, already in sensory overload; the pounding of fists and loud hurrahs echoed through the room and resounded in his skull until the room merged into a giant milieu of garbled color. Red faced, he pushed through the crowd with difficulty, shoving and aiming with sharp elbows when the sea of officers and technicians refused to part. Hermann watched him go, feeling a strange numbness in his palms, and followed after him a bit more slowly. He retrieved his cane from the desk where it had been braced, and swept it before him, clearing a path. His heart beat too quickly, nearly pounding its way out of his chest, and he didn't have to guess the source. Hermann followed the invisible tether without thinking, letting it pull him out into the hallway beyond in search of his copilot.

No, his mind corrected through a haze of confusion, that wasn't exactly right. His coworker. His – his partner in research. Newton Geiszler never would have been his first choice to experience a shared mental interface, but there it was, gleaming white hot and jumbled in his brain. Every time Hermann reached out to it, he felt an electric shock shudder through him, as if he were still plugged into the makeshift squid helmet Still bleeding from his ears and nose, uncertain as to where the world began and ended, unsure of his own identity.

He found Newt on a balcony overlooking the Shatterdome proper, gazing back and forth between the empty hangar bays. 'It's all gone,' he said, his voice barely audible but the sentiment loud and clear in Hermann's mind. 'The Jaegers, most of our pilots – everything we built from the ground up. Just gone.' He glanced up at Hermann, who stood with one hand braced against the railing.

'It's the emptiness, isn't it?' Hermann asked, considering, strangely out of breath. Newt nodded rapidly. He knew there was a chance Hermann wasn't just talking about the dockyard below, and clutched at it with shaking fingers.

His face was flushed, droplets of sweat sliding down beneath his collar as he struggled to take a deep breath. 'I could still feel them, you know?' Newt offered, lips shaking. 'Until – until, like, thirty seconds ago, they were still there, in my head, all pulsing energy and heartbeats that didn't make sense and this terrible -' he stopped for a moment, scrubbing his hands across his face.

'My god, Hermann, that focus. It knew us, better than we knew them, and it was so certain it was going to win.' Newt stopped, sinking down, his back to the thick metal bars. His entire frame shook as a series of constricted gasps rattled up and down his throat. He knew what this was; it was nothing new. He just didn't know how to stop it.

'The – the Precursors -' Newt began, then left off, shaking his head as his throat tightened around the words. 'They saw me, Hermann, they knew I was there. I could hear them, hell, I could feel them, vibrating down to my bones. Like being in the front row next to the amps and feeling the bass in your chest – eh, nevermind,' he trailed off out of habit. It didn't occur to him that Hermann now knew exactly what that felt like, even if he'd never attended a concert in his life.

'One of them -' Newt continued, holding up a single finger. 'It was just so furious, like - like it wanted to tear me apart.' His hands balled into fists, jammed down by his sides. 'I've never felt anything like it, that kind of pure, unrestrained hate. Not even when the kids at school used to jam my head down the toilets. Not even - even when I Drifted the first time.' He wiped at his nose and drawing back, saw his fingers stained with blood. Hermann wordlessly offered him a handkerchief, and Newton tilted his head back, holding the cloth in place.

They remained in exhausted but companionable silence for a few moments until the bleed subsided, and Newt started in again. 'Now it's just, they're just gone,' he said, snapping his fingers. 'Poof, bam, no more kaiju. There's this blank space in my head where something's supposed to be and – you know, I've spent most of my life studying them and taking them apart and telling the pilots how to aim for the lowest blow possible and now there's this – just this emptiness, and I don't know how to -' Newt gestured uselessly with his hands, struggling to communicate where words didn't exist.

'I know,' Hermann acknowledged quietly, his hands gripping the railing with white knuckled pressure. 'I was there, remember?' He chastised gently. 'I saw their world, just as you did.' He stared off into the middle distance, his eyes losing their focus. Newt could almost see his flashback writ large in the air between them, a faint purple and blue afterimage hovering before his eyes.

'Great cities grown from muscle and bone. Mammoth non-linear structures with hearts and brains of their own, pumping in that terrifying rhythm, and worse -' Hermann cut off, a tremor in his voice, but Newt could still see what he remembered. Their memories tangled together until Newt didn't know which visions came from his own mind and which belonged to Hermann. The hot, wet folds of membranous tissue dividing space at incomprehensible boundaries. The spawning pits, like some sort of unnatural assembly line, pumping out worse creations than they had ever had the bad luck to observe up close and personal. The great, hovering amphitheaters where the Precursors fought their children to the death, the victor winning an all expenses paid trip through the Breach. The memories tasted like ozone and smelled like roasting flesh and Newt wanted to scrub his brain with bleach.

It took Hermann a moment of indecision before hooking his cane over the rail and shuffling down to sit beside Newt with a muted grunt of pain. Newton felt a muscle twinge in his left thigh and squeezed his eyes shut against the shared sensation. Their shoulders brushed against one another, and the pain grew sharper, a stinging blue flame in the proximity.

'As much as I'd rather not admit it,' Herman said, his lips twisting down into a moderated version of his usual scowl. 'You were right after all.' He schooled his features into a mask of nonchalance, but he didn't fool Newton for a second.

Newt looked up in surprise, trying to calm his shuddering breaths. 'About what?' he asked, his mind too scrambled to take the compliment. Then, just as suddenly, he knew. The clones, he felt over Hermann's frequency, a cold whisper washing over Newt's thoughts. Soldiers, bred to clear away the vermin before the real invasion began.

'Is that -' Newt began, then bit his lower lip in confusion. 'Is this supposed to still be happening?' he asked, gesturing between the two of them. 'Are we still in each other's heads?'

You tell me, the answer wavered back through his neural cortex as Hermann held his gaze, spilling out bitter, licorice-flavored anxieties to mix with his own.

'Shit,' Newt spat out eloquently, covering his face with his hands. 'I'm sorry, Hermann. God, I'm so, so sorry. No one wants to be in my brain, even me, most days. I never meant for you to see all that, to still be seeing -'

'The Jaeger pilots claim the lingering confusion lasts only for a few moments after the disconnect,' Hermann interrupted, his voice taking on a lecturer's tone. 'In some cases, the Kaidonovsky's for example, it likely continued for a few hours, gradually decreasing in intensity.' Hermann attempted to reassure Newt with a quivering palm on his shoulder, a dim, purple-red ache surrounding the Russians' names and spilling out into the air. 'I'm sure this will all wear off in time,' he finished, aiming for a hopeful tone but winding up somewhere closer to fretful.

'Even the Russians never had the balls to Drift with a kaiju brain,' Newt countered, his mind still refusing to accept that Aleksis and Sasha were dead. He closed his mind to the thought, telling himself he would process the grief later, knowing that 'later' usually meant 'never.' Hermann's thoughts were far clearer on the subject, to his dismay. They shared the weight of that terrible knowledge, Newt listing slightly against Hermann in response. Pentecost, Chuck, Jin, Hu and Cheung; they were all gone, lost beneath the Pacific depths.

'No,' Herman finally acknowledged his statement with a hint of aggravation that Newt felt as a slight tickle across his skin. 'You've been the only one foolish enough to even consider such a reckless enterprise.'

'Hey,' Newt fired back. 'You came with me. You were right there, man. I was in your head, and so were they. What if –' Newt hypothesized to keep his grief from boiling over. 'What if it never goes away? You saw it; they're all linked together, like some kind of insect hive mind.' He paused to take in as deep a breath as he could before continuing, his words increasing in speed and volume.

'Leatherback was hunting me through the Bone Slums, after I Drifted with a nearly dead fragment of a partial brain. You and I Drifted with an entire brain. Underdeveloped, sure, but its heart only stopped a few minutes before I hooked us in.' Newt's eyes grew wide at the thought of the consequences they might have brought upon themselves. 'The pilots bond with each other and their Jaegers, but we linked up to an entire civilization.' Newton ran his hands through his hair, and Hermann could feel his distress building like nails on a chalkboard.

'How are we even still alive? And worse, what if the Breach reforms? One year, ten, fifty – it doesn't matter, they're still going to be looking for us.'

'Don't be so melodramatic, Newton,' Hermann advised, his partner's comments about the Drift spurring uncomfortable thoughts in his own mind. He glanced down at the concrete for a long moment, finally mustering up the courage to consider what Newton might have seen during their connection. It was pointless to regret it now, he supposed, but a sharp spike of embarrassment lodged itself deep in his stomach.

His entire life had been on display; his parents' poverty, the shame of wearing frayed and faded uniforms to school. Reasonable scores in everything except maths and the hard sciences, in which he excelled so dramatically he was permanently branded the teacher's pet. Years of relentless bullying by angry or jealous classmates until he learned to shut himself away from all human contact, leaning on the perfection and security of numbers like an anchor in a storm.

Worse, he'd visited the Sydney Shatterdome in 2014, still in the early construction stages when Scissure tore through the city. Trapped beneath the constantly shifting rubble for nearly a full day, Hermann's efforts at survival had shattered his hip and grievously twisted his knee. After two surgeries, months of humiliating physical therapy and combative arguments with doctors and therapists alike, he'd made only miniscule improvements. The ornate cane he'd purchased served as one last 'fuck you' to the medical community and his detractors in the PPDC, who would have seen his tenure with the project terminated.

All of this and more suddenly flashed through Newton's head like rapid fire shots from an old-fashioned camera, shocking him out of his panicked thoughts and reinforcing the glimpses he'd caught during the Drift. 'I'm sorry about Vanessa,' Newt blurted out, realizing belatedly as Hermann's head snapped up that he should have kept his stupid mouth shut.

Hermann's eyes narrowed, his mouth drawn in a thin line before gradually relaxing. 'That's in the past,' he murmured.

'Fuck, Hermann, I'm sorry.' Newt wrapped his arms around his knees, trying to stop at least one part of his body from shaking. He could remember the arguments between Gottlieb and his ex-wife as if he'd been in the room, watched them escalate from venomous spats to full on shouting matches until he wanted to cover his ears. Vanessa had always wanted more from the relationship than Hermann could give, his research dominating every waking moment and frequently, his dreams as well. He didn't sleep, usually forgot to eat, and Vanessa had grown tired of spending her evenings alone. It hadn't taken long for their happy marriage to crumble, and sometimes, Newt realized with a wince, Hermann was thankful that they'd never had children.

Vanessa was a brilliant scientist in her own right, highly valued by the PPDC's neural interface unit. When they found themselves stationed at opposite ends of the world, Hermann at the Alaska Jaeger Academy and Vanessa in London, logic ran its course. Newt saw Hermann receiving the documents in the mail, watched him sign his name with a bitterness that cut straight to his core. Felt Hermann resign himself to the loneliness of his life before meeting Vanessa with a stubborn and fatalistic drive.

It felt wrong for Newt to see such private memories, tinted with the faint scents of lavender, fresh linens and ashes. It felt just as wrong to watch Hermann take mandatory courses on the basics of a system he and Vanessa had helped design, and then turn around and teach that operating system to fresh, young pilots, only half-listening, too eager to get behind the controls of a Jaeger and wreak some havoc. Disrespected, pushed to the corners of the program, ostracized from his fellow researchers as one by one, they left him behind for greener pastures. Newt could see the memos to PPDC command, recommending his termination on the grounds of his persistent hostility and dangerous obsession with his work. And yet, Newt thought, here they both were, at the end of the world, together.

Newton tamped down hard on the stream of memories, trying to push away the taste of chalk in his mouth before he could embarrass himself further. At least the air on the balcony made it fractionally easier to breathe, even if his lungs weren't cooperating. He'd had panic attacks since sixth grade at least, about the time the cadre of gargantuan bullies started shoving him into empty lockers and sealing him in the janitor's closet before class. Hermann had walked through those memories like open doors, and though the connection had been hours ago, it felt like only a matter of moments. He saw Trespasser hit San Francisco just as Newt's father passed away in Northwestern Memorial, the unfortunate confluence of events knocking the floor completely out from beneath him.

From the time he'd seen the first news broadcasts in the hospital lounge, Newt had latched onto the coverage like a lifeline. It was on every channel, no matter where he turned, broadcasting identical images of the raw devastation that imprinted against his mind with a singular clarity, delivering the roars and impact tremors in overwhelming surround sound. No one knew what it was or even what to do about it, the military scrambling to take it down and failing, time and time again. The entire country remained both riveted and completely at a loss for six terrifying (and utterly fascinating) days until the beast was finally brought down. Then a new wave of horror began as its rotting carcass poisoned the land and the local water supply, taking the lives of thousands more who escaped the initial attack.

This monstrous thing, an interloper from the depths of the ocean was utterly new, a completely unknown biological entity, something beyond even the imaginings of the worn sci-fi paperbacks he usually stuffed in his back pocket. These 'kaiju,' if you listened to the reports out of Japan (and he did) were a subject he could dive into without looking back, bury himself in researching every available detail, and never once look back at the grief he left behind in the Midwest. At 23, Newton was one of the youngest professors at MIT, and he came back from personal leave with a new and terrifying focus.

Two years of fighting with the Academic Advisory Board later, he'd left Massachusetts behind with no regrets and signed on with the PPDC. Abrasive and forceful, no longer the freshest face in the room but certainly the most memorable with his growing collection of vivid inkwork, Newt was still rarely listened to, and still the outcast. Hermann remembered all too well what he'd thought of Newton and his research at the time; neither of them needed the Drift to remind them of those harsh words.

Turning away from that particular branch of memories, Hermann peered in through the doorway of a university clinic instead, hearing a blank-faced doctor Newton refused to remember diagnose him with a Borderline Manic Personality. Only a hairsbreadth away from Bipolar I, the doctor warned and Newton didn't care, it was just another label, just another excuse for name-calling. Even when Newt forgot his medication (accidentally, on purpose), he'd always been able to reign himself in by focusing on his studies, and later his experiments, his hypotheses about the giant creatures destroying more and more of the world with each emergence. Open books spread across every inch of his lab, where he slept more often than not, his constant dictations keeping reality that much farther at bay. Hermann felt the spark of lightning ricocheting across the memories, and held out for the answering thunder.

If Newton's mind functioned better without the meds, well, that was just something he would have to keep to himself (too late). Hermann saw why Newt might think that there was no viable replacement for the rapid fire impulses in his brain, the connections he could make that no one had even thought of before he scavenged what was left and learned the monsters from the inside out. The longer he stayed awake, the more he could accomplish. Newt was fascinated; he was a little bit in love. He wore his tattoos like a weapon, a dare taunting anyone to speak up, to call him a traitor. They always took the bait, wherever he was stationed, and he always fought back. Small and scrappy, Newt discovered he could just as easily lose himself in the rhythm of fists colliding with soft, bloodied skin, the snapping of small bones, the lingering pain of bruises he wore like badges of honor.

All these things Hermann Gottlieb knew as if he had experienced them himself, mixing in his mind with the coppery tang of blood. He began to feel the creeping fire along his nerves as some of Newton's thought processes melded with his own. He felt keenly the early years of isolation that came with neuroatypical development alongside unprecedented academic achievement, saw how they shaped Newton into the brilliant and insufferable man he eventually knew. Thirty-five years washed over him in waves during the neural handshake and remained in scattered remnants, like patterns in the sand at low tide. It didn't matter when Newt's band played to nearly empty venues, because the strings beneath his fingers made him feel like a god. It didn't matter when his mother was too busy to attend his graduation, because they'd never been on the best of terms to begin with. It wasn't relevant that his master's thesis was nearly laughed right off the panel, because his advisers were wrong.

It mattered when he landed a job with the PPDC's K-Science Division, but the personal opinions of his fellow researchers concerning him were simply below his notice. His experiments, the knowledge he was gaining with each new sample mattered more than anything, and he shrugged off crushing disappointment when the funding was cut because he knew he'd survive. Newt had always been resourceful, and he would find what he needed, come hell or high water.

It didn't matter that Newt shared an office with an infuriatingly attractive mathematical genius who unfortunately spoke German better than he did, rendering his usual store of insults moot. It didn't matter how often their verbal sparring matches seemed more like foreplay than malicious attempts to drive the other away. Hermann couldn't help but note afterword that seeing himself through his colleague’s appreciative eyes had to be the strangest and most disconcerting experience of his life – even more jolting than the Drift itself. He recognized his own cologne filtering through the recent memories, and let out a swift rush of breath.

Hermann had always been perplexed by Newton's indifference in the face of the Marshal's flippant disregard for his research, but now it made sense; Newton knew he was right, knew his drive and the unusual focus of his efforts were utterly irreplaceable and that one day, one perfect day, his entire life's work would be vindicated.

He just hadn't expected it would turn out like this.

Hermann felt the weight of Newton's guilt over bleeding too heavily into the Drift, the sour sting of being found out riding its coattails. He'd never meant to drag Hermann into his own failures and coping mechanisms. If anything, he'd tried so hard to maintain his swaggering, over the top demeanor so that no one would ever think to question his curious mood swings. Social interaction within the scientific community had taught him that if he played the part of the man scientist well enough, know one would ever know when something was actually wrong. Everyone would give him a wide birth, even on his good days, and that was precisely the way he wanted it.

But here it was at last, his entire life story out in the open, and there was no going back. Hermann felt a sudden panic gripping them both tight, squeezing his throat and pushing down against his chest like a millstone about his neck. It occurred to Hermann for the first time that fear could actually kill a man.

'Newton,' Hermann forced out with a sudden intensity, gripping his partner's jaw in a shaky hold. 'Look at me. Look at me. Stop hiding. And for god's sakes, stop apologizing, it feels like someone shoveling dirt in the back of my throat.'

Newt glanced up in obvious trepidation and met Hermann's eyes, falling back into himself at the electric shock of contact. 'If you hadn't been bold enough to proceed with your experiments despite all arguments to the contrary, including my own - if you hadn't been willing to risk your own death to face down a live kaiju and live to tell about it, we would have failed utterly in our task. Four Jaegers would still be lost, along with their crews. We'd be overrun and out of options. There would be no help left for this world, and it's down to you that we all might just survive after all.'

'You really think what we did was that important?' Newt breathed, head head rolling back and forth against the metal bars after Hermann released him.

'Indubitably,' Hermann replied, sounding a bit offended by Newton's semi-conscious suggestion. 'If we hadn't taken that gamble and discovered the DNA coding in the Breach, we'd be right back where we started 12 years ago, out of funding and effectively dead in the water.'

Hermann paused for a moment before asking the question that hijacked his mind and refused to slink back into the depths of his subconscious. It seemed inappropriate, but thanks to Newton Geiszler, Hermann had long ago lost the ability to discern the line between safety and danger. 'Is it always like this for you?' Hermann asked Newt curiously, studying his face.

'Always like what?' Newton replied, his eyes narrowing.

'The slightest sound like a thunderclap,' Hermann explained, a true sense of wonder in his tone. 'Sudden noises and changes in the light like a punch straight to the gut. Colors so bright you almost have to cover your eyes, colors you can smell and taste. Electricity in your blood, keeping you moving for days at a time.' Hermann stopped, realizing he even sounded a bit like Newton. 'Does it ever let you rest?'

Newton favored him with a wry smile. 'I'm guessing it's not like that for you, huh?' Hermann shook his head. 'No, I, ah –' Newt stumbled, scratching his head. 'That's pretty much it how it goes, you know? It doesn't change much, even when you do remind me to take my meds.' Hermann looked at him for a long moment, understanding dawning in his face, before suddenly turning back to look down at the empty hangar below.

A ruckus issued up from the milling crowd gathered at the launching area as rescue crews ushered Becket and Mori in from the landing pad. Cheers erupted around them, and the pilots looked around warily, as if shell shocked. Newt supposed they probably were. They'd just faced down two Category IV kaiju, three if you counted Otachi several hours before, and experienced the death of seven comerades in close proximity. That didn't even begin to cover their fight against Slattern and their subsequent plummet through the Breach. He heard an unintelligible shout from LOCCENT overhead and the great clock across the room flipped panel after panel until it read 0:00:00 - then stopped.

'We did it,' Newton said in disbelief. 'We did it!' he shouted, rising to his feet and reaching out a hand to steady Hermann as he clambered up beside him, pulling him in close enough to sling a companionable arm around his shoulders. 'Fucking rock stars, Hermann,' he grinned. 'That's what we are, and no one can tell us any different.' Someone fired up a speaker system below and laud, raucous music filtered up to their balcony. Champagne bottles popped, corks flying across the room, and giant metal kegs appeared as if from nowhere.

'They're really gone,' Newt mumbled quietly to himself, his words obscured by the thrumming bass beat. Hermann felt the words skate across his skin, and he knew that Newton wasn't talking about their lost crewmen. 'I mean -' Newt broke off with a frustrated sigh. 'Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we took out the Breach. We can start to rebuild, kids can grow up without wondering if their city is next, if they're going to die before they ever fall in love, or get kissed, or win the Nobel Prize.'

'And yet?' Hermann asked, already knowing the answer.

'I've spent my entire life with these guys,' Newt answered, glancing down at the tattoos that swirled around his arms. 'And now they're just ghosts. Bedtime stories. I don't know what else I'm good for,' he finished, turning away.

'Rubbish,' Hermann countered. 'You're a brilliant bioengineer, any Research and Development Team would be lucky to have you.'

'Yeah right,' Newt answered, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. 'Maybe I can take over the black market business, as long as it lasts.'

'Short term goals do not become you,' Hermann replied, 'particularly of the dangerous and illegal variety.'

'Aw,' Newton deflected. 'Dr. Gottlieb, are you actually worried about me?' He smirked, favoring Hermann with a salacious wink.

'Don't be ridiculous,' Herman answered, turning his gaze back to the chaos downstairs.

'Hey,' Newt asked, elbowing Hermann in the ribs. 'What do you say we go join the party?' He kept his voice carefully neutral, as if in apology for his previous comments. 'It's not every day guys like us pull the world back from the brink of total annihilation.'

Hermann stared straight ahead, cautiously reaching out his right hand to brush against Newton's fingers. Newt wound his fingers through Hermann's without hesitation and turned slightly to face him, a small smile lighting his partner's face, though he glanced down as if to hide it. From Hermann, that might as well have been a full on grin, and Newton's lips curled up to match. He couldn't explain what this was; just residual effects from the Drift, he supposed. It was easier than hoping it might be something that had been there all along, shoved beneath lab tables and hidden behind chalk boards, waiting for the chance to see the light of day. Newton convinced himself that right now, he really didn't give a shit.

'You're sure you're all right to be in the middle of – of all that?' Hermann questioned, his skin still crawling with borrowed electricity.

'Fuck yes,' Newt countered with his usual enthusiasm. 'Baby, I was born for this.'

Newt hastily returned to his quarters and after several minutes of fumbling around, half blind, he found his spare set of glasses to replace the one with the cracked lens. He changed out of his clothes, wet with god only knows what and spackled with blobs of bluish goo. He felt Hermann take the freight elevator down to the main level, and bounded down the steps to meet him.

He offered his arm with a smirk, and Herman scoffed, shaking his head. 'You're not my knight, Newton,' he snapped, but took his proffered arm anyway.

'I was never the knightly type anyway,' Newt confessed. 'I always played a halfling rogue. Much more fun.'

'I beg your pardon?' Herman asked, thoroughly confused.

'D&D?' Newt questioned. 'Don't tell me you never played, that's bullshit. You had to.'

'I'm afraid I never had the dubious privilege,' Herman replied. Newt felt a rush of memories flicker through his skull; Hermann, ten years old, sitting on the floor beside his bunk at a boarding school? An orphanage? Newton couldn't tell, but his legs were pulled up to his chest, his face buried in his folded arms. He heard the sounds of other children shouting outside, roughhousing, playing the sort of games that Herman was never invited to join in. It was cold, and musty, and every sort of awful.

'Yeah, well,' Newt added, something stuck in his throat. 'It's awesome. You get to pretend to be someone with superpowers and slay giant monsters.'

'I can't imagine why you'd enjoy that,' Herman answered with a sly smile, and got an elbow to the ribs for his trouble.

The music was loud, several different songs layered on top of one another and Newton stopped for a moment, letting his senses adjust. He considered putting his hands over his ears, but that would have meant letting go of Hermann. They waded out into the crowd, both grabbing offered drinks, and Newton downed his before Hermann had even taken a few sips. It was strong, and frankly awful, but he supposed you had to take what you could get, these days. He also suspected some of the techs ran a distillery somewhere in the labyrinthine tunnels that connected the dome to the rest of the underground facility, and that would explain why his cocktail tasted a bit like battery acid with a midori chaser.

He downed a second to a rousing cheer from the Kaidonovsky's tech crew, his vision beginning to blur. Newt sighed as the alcohol burned through his bloodstream, having the effect he relied upon to settle his nerves and calm his crazier impulses. That's when he saw them; Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket, surrounded by giddy admirers, firing questions at top volume. He made his way defiantly through the crowd, slowing his pace to keep Hermann by his side. When they finally reached the heroes of the day, the crowd parted a bit to let them through. Hermann dropped his arm, suddenly self-conscious, and hung back, nursing his drink.

'Miss Mori,' Newt gushed. 'Raleigh. I can't believe – That was just awesome, I mean – really, really fantastic.' He gestured wildly with his arms, eyes threatening to pop out of their sockets.

'I believe what my colleague is trying to say is 'Thank you,'' Hermann translated, and Raleigh gave a small laugh.

Mako smiled, and bowed before him. He returned the bow as a gesture of respect, and she spoke up in a quiet, even tone. 'Arigatou gozaimasu, Geiszler-san. Without your work, we would not have been able to succeed.' Her smile widened, and she wrapped him up in a tight hug.

Newt was speechless, and Raleigh clasped him on the shoulder. 'Job well done,' he added with a nod.

'Thank Hermann here, too,' Newt piped up, looking around for his friend to no avail. 'Wherever he's gotten off to, I couldn't have done it without him.'

'I will be sure to thank him as well,' Mako added.

'I -' Newt hesitated, unsure, before plowing ahead anyway. 'I'm sorry, about Marshal Pentecost. He – he led us through the best and the worst, and he's going to be sorely missed.' Mako tried to smile, but failed, her eyes already rimmed with red. She nodded, and stepped closer to Raleigh, entwining her hand with his.

Newt bowed his head and took that as his cue to leave. The crowd surged forward once again, lifting a protesting Mako and Raleigh off their feet with cheers and applause from every corner. She began to giggle a bit hysterically, and glanced over at her co-pilot, sharing something warm and intimate that Newt wished he understood.

He turned to see where Gottlieb had vanished, eventually closing his eyes and feeling for him rather than looking. It was a strange sensation, but one Newt was pretty sure he wouldn't mind going both ways. He'd downed the rest of his second drink by the time he followed the hint of chalk dust and wool, finding Hermann sitting on a platform at the opening of Crimson Typhoon's empty bay. His cane rested to one side, his drink held up in his right hand. He downed the rest of it as he saw Newt heading for him, and Newt tried not to think about what that meant.

Newt made his way across the floor, being jostled and tossed about by the crowd. He did his best to jostle back, but his efforts didn't make much of a dent. He'd almost reached Hermann when a large tech slammed into him from behind and he sprawled forward, landing squarely on the shelf and nearly knocking Hermann to the ground. His empty cup rolled away across the floor and Newton cursed rapidly and thoroughly in German at his own clumsiness.

Hermann couldn't bite back the gasp of pain as the air fled his lungs from the impact. Newt hurriedly steadied himself, his hands roving over Hermann in a futile attempt to make certain he was all right. He felt a fiery rush of pain rocket through his hip and down his left leg, and knew he must be feeling the effects of what he had just done.

'Shit, dude, I'm so sorry, this guy just shoved me and there was nothing to hold onto and then – please just don't hit me with your cane, all right?' He winced at his choice of words, readying himself for whatever comeback Hermann deemed suitable.

Herman's mouth twitched up in a sly smile, and toyed with the cane at his side. 'Whatever would make you think I'd do that?' he asked, a hint of a challenge in his tone. Newt's imagination ran with the idea before he could stop it, and he could feel his face transition through at least five different shades of red.

Hermann raised an eyebrow and Newt cursed his own brain. Several moments ticked by as slow as Christmas before he responded. 'It's all right, Newton,' Hermann reassured him at last, his voice taut with pain. 'It will pass on its own, it always does.'

'I'm still sorry,' Newton apologized, his face twisted up with worry. 'I was there, you know? In Sydney? Through the Drift, I mean.' His words spilled out faster than he could stop his mouth from moving. 'I saw you pinned under that building like - like it was me. I felt it, god, it was terrible, it was – I can't think of a word that's awful enough.' He could smell the crumbling cement, the rusted iron of spiked rebar shooting up at odd angles and far beyond it, a salt hint of the sea. 'I thought I was dying. I don't know how in the flying fuck you managed to survive, much less recover. If it had been me – actually me, I mean, not Drift-me, I don't think I could have done it.'

'Of course you could have,' Hermann answered, fixing Newton with a grim stare. 'What other choice was there? Neither of us is the type to simply lay down and die. We wouldn't be here, otherwise.'

Newton blinked, staring at Hermann's damaged left iris as he breathed heavily through the pain. 'I just wish -'

'I know what you're going to say, Newton,' Hermann chastised him, letting out a deep slow breath. 'And you already are. Somehow,' he stopped, choosing his next words carefully. 'Sharing this connection, it - I can't explain it properly.' Hermann looked away as if embarrassed. 'You're now unintentionally carrying part of my load, just as I imagine I might be able to pull you back from – if – if you wanted that. From me.' He looked up, catching Newt's gaze and holding it. 'I do wish I could spare you the more painful aspects, but -'

'No way,' Newton said firmly. 'Not if you have to deal with the clusterfuck in my head. You can give me all of it, I can handle it.'

Hermann leaned back against the large metal wall and tilted his head. 'You are a most curious thing, Dr. Geiszler.'

'How many times do I have to tell you to call me Newt?' he asked, shuffling his way forward and settling down on the platform next to Hermann. They were both aware of the chaos surging around them like a typhoon, and yet somehow set apart from it. Newt felt the foundations of that barrier flowing between them, warm and welcoming like a cocoon, shutting away as much of the world as they needed.

The realization he'd been avoiding suddenly staggered Newton with its undeniable force. This wasn't just the after effects of the Drift; it had always been there, through arguments and shouting matches and the times he'd purposefully thrown kaiju entrails over Hermann's side of the line just to get a rise out of him. He liked the arguments, because at least then Hermann was paying attention to him. It was childish, and seven different kinds of hopeless, but right now, seated close together, their arms and thighs brushing companionably, it suddenly didn't seem so impossible.

Hermann glanced up at the ceiling, high above their heads and obscured in darkness. It was a struggle to hear his own thoughts over Newton's pounding heart. 'How did we work together all these years without ever really knowing one another?' he asked, genuine curiosity reading blue and yellow as it flowed through Newton's mind. Newt didn't have an answer for that, thoughts coalescing into the same shade of green as Hermann's sweater vest as he turned slightly to one side. His face landed closer to Hermann's than he'd expected, and he felt an answering pull, not unlike the residual echo of waves across his skin long after he'd left the water.

Newt leaned in until his his forehead rested softly against Hermann's, and met no resistance. 'Is this all right?' he whispered, or at least he thought he did. Newt couldn't be certain the words actually left his mouth, but the response burning golden through his neurons was an unequivocal yes. He slid his left hand up to rest against Hermann's cheek and pressed their lips together. It was slow and experimental at first, a tingle racing through his entire body as their lips moved through simple iterations with answering solutions. Newt opened his mouth and Herman nipped at his lower lip, startling a surprised noise from his partner. Hermann's hands moved to his waist, pulling him in closer and Newt complied, wrapping his other hand around the back of Hermann's neck.

He deepened the kiss, allowing Hermann to explore the inside of his mouth, and Newt had always thought it would be the other way around – well, when he'd let himself think about it, which admittedly hadn't been very often. He hadn't seen the point. Hermann was currently doing his best to prove that hypothesis utterly invalid, his tongue sliding against Newt's and flicking against his teeth. Newt knew he was making noises, but their corner was far enough away from the party that he wasn't worried about being heard or teased or even interrupted.

He kissed back with an intensity that he hadn't felt in years, not since his last hot mess of a girlfriend, and right now he couldn't even remember her name. She'd been a fan, following his band around in undergrad, and he'd ended up dating her older brother after she unceremoniously ditched him for the bass player. Not that he'd stuck around much longer. Newton Geiszler just didn't do relationships very well. People got tired of him, angry with him, and eventually fed up enough to leave.

He'd known Hermann for years, but now Hermann really knew him. Newt could feel it in the way Hermann licked the corner of his mouth, brushed his lips across Newt's cheeks and gently kissed his eyelids, one by one. He left Newt shaking, his head pounding for an entirely different reason as he felt his blood rise.

Hermann pulled back, only a few inches, sliding his hands up Newt's sides. 'I'm afraid we have responsibilities to prepare for,' he said, disappointment riding his tone like a series of digits he refused to truncate. 'There will be speeches, press conferences, not to mention clearing out the lab before anyone realizes we're not actually operating under any government authority. That could get … tricky.'

'You want to start that now?' Newton complained, his voice thick and hazy.

'Well,' Hermann allowed upon reflection, the corners of his mouth turning up in a real, honest-to-god smile. 'Perhaps not tonight.'

'Good,' Newt answered, pressing a hot, wet kiss against Hermann's throat and steadfastly not thinking about where the next few months might take them, now that they were both out of a job. 'Because I have a much better idea.'

'I do rather fancy your ideas,' Herman admitted with a shy upward glance, and Newton grinned.