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When Stacker Pentecost detonates the payload attached to Striker Eureka’s back, everyone in the LOCCENT releases a mournful breath. Herc—now Marshal Hansen—bends to scratch Max’s ears, his now only living reminder of his son, Chuck. Tendo Choi keeps his eyes on the console, trying to keep focused on the mission, when he notices something he didn’t expect.
“Marshal, there—there’s something—there’s an escape pod heading to the surface.” Herc doesn’t acknowledge him for a split second, he hasn’t quite processed the fact that he’s the acting PPDC Marshal now that Pentecost is gone. It takes Tendo two more tries to get Herc’s attention, to make him stand and peer over Tendo’s shoulder at the screen.
“What the—?” Herc squints, staring in disbelief at the green dot now blinking on the main console. “That’s one of Striker’s escape pods,” he murmurs in disbelief. “That—that’s Chuck.”
He immediately gives the order to send choppers to his son’s location, about to curse Stacker Pentecost in his head but deciding better of it, deciding not to curse the deceased. He steps back from the console to collect himself. His thoughts are blurred, hazy; before they’d gone out against Otachi and Leatherback, he’d been preparing himself to die. But then he'd broken his collarbone, sidelining him from Operation Pitfall. Before Chuck had gotten into Striker without Herc for the first time--and presumably for the last time--Herc accepted he would never see his son again.
The escape pod breaches the surface, the cover propelling itself off and tracking dye shooting into the water. As Chuck pulls himself on top of the pod, reeling from what just happened, he briefly considers the possibility that a kaiju could follow him to the surface and swallow him whole, and he almost curses Pentecost for trying to save him only to send him to his death; he thinks about it and curses the tracking dye instead.
He hears Tendo’s voice over the conn, still communicating with Gipsy Danger, with Raleigh and Mako taking over the mission. Tendo addresses Chuck briefly, informing him that a Sikorsky is on the way to his coordinates; other than that there’s silence. All Chuck can do is sit atop his pod, adrift in the Pacific, listening to Gipsy Danger finish the mission, finish his mission, and wait helplessly for the recovery team. Still, he can’t stop himself from cheering, fist pumping to no one when they announce the Breach has closed and his father yells triumphantly, “Stop the clock!”
The chopper picks him up shortly after, the searchlights blinding him in the early morning light. He grabs the rung of the ladder that drops, barely acknowledging the medic holding on just above him, waving her off when she asks if he’s all right. Pentecost’s voice still echoes in his head, their final exchange replaying over and over again.
Pentecost had reached up to activate the payload, but his finger twitched over to deploy Chuck’s escape pod.
What the hell are you doing, Pentecost? Chuck had thought, glancing around in confusion as he was tilted onto his back, the pod enclosing around him.
Giving you another chance, was the curt reply. Now it reverberates around his brain, echoes endlessly in his ears.
In the chopper, Chuck sits with his head in his hands, unsure of what to do next. The medic is still fussing, and he lets her do her job. As long as she doesn’t expect him to respond to her, they won’t have a problem; he’s got his own mess to deal with. He knew Operation Pitfall was a kamikaze mission from day one; he knew Pentecost could feel his distress in the Drift over his last conversation with his father, but he hadn’t expected him to do anything about it. Come to think of it, surviving this was just about the last thing Chuck wanted.
He tries to look on the bright side; the war is over, he’s still alive. But what the hell does he do next? He puzzles over it, running through and rejecting scenarios in his head for the entire ride back to the Shatterdome.
Meanwhile, back in LOCCENT, Herc paces in front of the monitors. Max sits a few feet away, panting without a care in the world. Herc eyes the dog; weren’t they supposed to have some sort of sixth sense about things? Couldn’t he tell what was going on? Maybe he just didn’t care; maybe the bloody beast was just happy Chuck was coming back. Herc didn’t think the bulldog, who’d become the logo of their fallen Jaeger, liked him much anyway; not as much as he liked Chuck.
When the helicopter touches down at the Shatterdome, Chuck climbs out shakily, pausing briefly to regain his composure, then letting his feet carry him inside. His father intercepts him in the center of the dome, and they face each other squarely, both of them unprepared for this reunion. Max runs to Chuck immediately, his leash coming loose from Herc’s hand and slobber dripping on Chuck’s scuffed boot. He bends to scratch behind the dog’s ears, kissing the top of his head.
“You missed me, eh? I missed you too, buddy,” he says quietly. Herc observes in silence, his emotions choked at the back of his throat. They’d never been good at this, he and Chuck; everything was easier in the Drift, but he figures they wouldn’t have a chance to Drift again, and he hopes they would never have to.
When Chuck straightens, he stares his father in the face. They stand there, each knowing what the other is feeling: the loss of their commander, the void left by Striker Eureka's destruction, and the euphoria over the closure of the Breach. Max plops down on the floor, his front paws draping over Chuck’s foot, which goes ignored by both of the bulldog’s owners.
“Guess I should call you Marshal now, eh, old man?” Chuck jokes, fiddling with his helmet nervously. He knows Herc hates being called “old man,” but he’s not supposed to care about that; he doesn’t care about that. He’ll call the old man whatever he damn well pleases. As expected, Herc groans at the epithet, and his son laughs drily at him.
“I’ll let it go this time,” Herc warns. “My son just saved the world.” Chuck nudges Max off of his foot, closing the distance between himself and his father and pulling him into an awkward but crushing one-armed hug. They’re careful; Chuck’s broken a lot of bones, but never his collarbone, and he’s never broken anything twice, so he can’t imagine the pain his father feels. They hold on to each other like Herc held on to Chuck when he picked him up from school the day Scissure hit Sydney, when Chuck realized his mom was gone and wasn’t coming back.
You can cry when the war’s won, Herc always said. One of his superiors in the Air Force had told him that once, and he’d passed it on to his son when the kaiju attacked, when he entered the Jaeger Academy. Those words ran through his head after exhaustive days of training, after failed simulations, after grueling deployments when Striker sustained massive damage and it felt like Chuck’s entire body was numb but still aching.
Those words were why he felt no guilt for the tears that rolled down his cheeks, his grip tightening on his dad’s back. Mako and Raleigh return, barely giving their fellow pilots a second look as they pass, leaving them to their moment. Herc claps Chuck on the back, prompts him to pull away; the moment's not done, but duty calls. Marshal Hansen follows in the footsteps of his predecessor--which means reports, reports, reports.
Following his father back to LOCCENT, Chuck turns and looks longingly at Striker's vacant bay, smiling fondly. He congratulates Mako and Raleigh on their completion of the mission, and Mako assures him it couldn't have been done without his assistance. Raleigh concurs, sticking out a hand.
Chuck stares at it a moment before grasping it, shaking it firmly. He figures Raleigh's proven himself with the whole saving-the-world business; and in the dawn of a new era, he figures he should take the second chance Marshal Pentecost threw at him.