Work Text:
The Shatterdome echoes every small sound. At night it’s almost like being outside, a vast, cold expanse of a city that smells of metal and occasional sparks like distant stars. It hums, a different hum from the heart of a jaeger.
There’s not much to say about what happened, there never really was, once the victorious afterglow had faded. Relief, and exhaustion, and long nights out drinking in the Bone Slums, but Mako comes back out here and walks through the emptiness. Finally, lets herself really feel it.
Here are all of the steps they had walked together, and in a week or two to never be retraced by anyone again. Hong Kong will be, at last, the final Shatterdome to switch off, an empty carcass left after all the work they had done and all of the other places that had gone before. They’ll all be provided housing, of course, and a stipend for basic living expenses - at minimum. They joke about living by the ocean and Mako downs another Spinejackal.
She scolds herself for not knowing what he wanted - something permanent, a grave somewhere in Hawaii, cremation? He and Tamsin must have talked about it. He must have thought about it. But it was something Mako didn’t want to know enough that she didn’t push. There had been plenty of things like that, with Stacker.
Once, a long time ago, Mako had thought of a family as a chain of memory. It stretched far into the past and far into the future, unbreaking in both directions. But it was different now. There wouldn’t be another Pentecost, or Sevier. She doubted there would be another Mori or Beckett. It was almost laughable, the things she thought before before she knew how quickly monsters swallow everything, even when you had the power to fight them. Even when you won.
Years ago, she thought that would be different, too.
They still train together every day even though there’s nowhere to go with it. It’s become kind of a spectacle for the remaining crew, who watch from the decks above, alternately cheering for one or the other, bribing the current favorite with inane prizes.
It clears Mako’s mind in a way nothing else ever will. Pushing her muscles until they begin to scream, and a bright, clean burn washes everything else from her mind but knock-hit-dodge-flip-avoid-hit again. They’ve become so in-tune ‘a dance’ has long stopped being a metaphor.
It’s after one of these sessions, on a Tuesday, when she just doesn’t go back to her room. She showered, toweling her hair dry, and could hear the faint sound of the world news playing from Raleigh’s room. He switched it on, then off, then on again. The words ‘a truly inspiring show of heroics and sacrifi—‘“ got cut off with a ‘fuck this’ and then she just shrugged to herself and sat down on his bed.
“You need to find something better to watch. A really long anime.”
He grinned at her, but it was half-hearted. “We could crack into Newt’s vintage board games.”
She lay down, tucking her head against his shoulder. Aware, suddenly, of just how tired they are. “I’m going to sleep here tonight, okay?”
“Yeah,” Raleigh said. He sounded relieved. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
There’s a piece of urban lore that pilots can dream each other’s dreams, that Caitlin D’onofrio and her husband were the first. Mako would never think to ask about it. There was no way to, without digging too deep into anyone else’s life. Maybe it is true, for some people, sometimes. Curled against each other like children, if they are children together in dreams she’s forgotten as soon as she wakes up.
So of course he finds her, one night, when she has left, but it still surprises her - nobody has ever known where she would be if she were to vanish. It’s been almost a point of pride. There were no school friends to chase after her. When Mako ran away from home some short time after Tamsin got sick again, and Stacker had ended up calling the police. They eventually found her in an obscure corner of the park zoo.
He had been frantic, his facade totally broken, the first time she had realized in a visceral way how much she truly meant to him. And then the guilt had nearly been too much.
Raleigh slides in next to Mako on the landing, their feet dangling down into the emptiness beneath. She wants to fall against him. She considers the notion, but doesn’t.
Their silence is so familiar that talking for long periods of time sometimes seems strange. Now in the broken quiet Mako finds she wants to talk more than she ever has, but it’s Raleigh who speaks first, in Japanese.
“I got out a map, and a threw a dart at it.”
Mako raises her eyebrows. “Where did it land?”
“Greenland.”
“Hmm,” Mako says. “You’re going to live in Greenland? It’s very cold. We’ve both done that, already.”
“Well, I threw it again. Istanbul, Beijing, Bogotá.”
“Have you made your decision?”
His hair is sticking up in funny places and there's tape around his knuckles. He’s wearing the same thick, woolen sweater that looks like all of his other sweaters. She remembers the files, endless files of flight stats and kaiju kills, of ‘Beckett, Raleigh’ printed in severe black font on thousands of pieces of paper and screens. His warm fingers lace through hers.
She thinks about him letting her float, up to the surface while he fell, and says, “Because I think I should get the final say.”
“Sounds fair,” Raleigh says. "Have your decision on my desk in forty eight hours, Ranger."
Despite herself, she smiles.
The space where Danger stood looms gigantic and empty and full of ghosts as the manicured lawns of the military graveyard, the ruins of old Tokyo, of Tanegashima. Mako closes her eyes and tries to let them go. When she opens them, Raleigh is still there, the steel beneath them is sturdy. She’ll try again, keep trying, wherever is next.