Archive of Our Own ^beta

It starts with a tiny star in royal blue on the inside of Mako's wrist. Raleigh notices it when they're sparring one day, a flash of color that distracts him just long enough for her to get the advantage and knock him onto his back on the mats.

He grins up at her and gives her a salute to acknowledge the victory. She doesn't smile, though, just gives him a tight-lipped look of disapproval that says, You can do better than that. Still, she reaches a hand down to help him to his feet.

He accept the hand, and the help. And when he's standing, he turns her hand over to reveal her wrist, and the fresh tattoo inked there, still a little red and puffy as it heals. "What's that for?"

She doesn't answer, just pulls her hand from his and says, "Lunch should be ready in the mess hall."

So they walk together to get their trays, and they sit where they always do, on the scaffolding looking over Gipsy Danger, and they don't talk about it.

#

He figures it out when she gets a cluster of three stars in crimson and gold. She's added to the design since then, and he supposes it should have been obvious weeks ago. Royal blue for Marshall Pentecost, steel grey for Chuck Hansen and Striker Eureka, two stars in shades of gold and brown for Sasha and Aleksis, the cluster of three for the Wei brothers. It's the list of their dead, marching up the inside of her forearm with military precision, and he feels the weight of each life as he runs his fingers up the line.

He wishes they could Drift again, so he could understand. So she could, that he carried Yancy with him for too long and it ate a hole in him that she's only recently filled. He'd warn her if he could, about the dangers of holding your dead too close to your heart. But they still don't talk, not about this, and there's no need to Drift any longer, with the Breach closed and the kaiju gone and the Jaeger Program still trying to figure out what it's going to make of itself, now that its enemy is defeated. So all he can do is guess.

#

"It's not because they're dead," she says, out of the blue one day as he's picking through a side of wilted salad trying to find at least a few bites that are palatable. "It's because they're important."

"You're important," he says without thinking, and watches a blinking, startled smile begin to spread across her face. "Gipsy Danger's important."

"Yes," she says.

"We should get something to commemorate that. To honor our survivors, as much as our losses." The idea comes on him suddenly, and takes him by surprise, but he knows it's right as soon as he says it.

Mako's smile is blinding. "Yes," she says, and grips his hand tight.

#

They get Tendo to sketch up the design and Newt to get them an appointment with his tattoo artist. And on a day with no particular significance whatsoever, they go together to the tattoo studio and sit together, waiting for their turn.

Mako rubs her fingers over the outside of her forearm, and Raleigh doesn't need the Drift to know where she's going to tell the artist to put it. She doesn't flinch as the tattoo gun starts buzzing and the artist sets to work. Her gaze on on her skin, on the art coming to life beneath the needles. When the artist tries to make conversation, to pass the time, she tells him about her family, about how they're all dead, about how she got into the Jaeger Program to avenge them and now she's done so.

The place she chose for the design makes it look like a shield, but Raleigh knows better than that, knows that it's her strength, inked there on the same arm that carries the list of her dead, the same one that controlled her half of Gipsy Danger and earned her vengeance. It's the strongest part of her.

When it's Raleigh's turn, the tattoo artist doesn't even have to ask. He climbs into the chair and unbuttons his shirt, pulls the plackets apart and bares the flat stretch of skin above his heart. "Right here," he says, and settles back to get comfortable as the artist swaps out his needles for a sterile set.

It's the strongest part of him, too.

He watches Mako as the gun hums and the burn settles into his skin. And she's watching him, too, and she smiles as lines of stark, inky black are inscribed upon his skin, forming wings, and a shield at its center with a star in the middle. This one's for Gipsy Danger, for the family that lives instead of the family that's died. And it's for Mako, too, standing there with him, her eyes shining with satisfaction as she runs her fingers over the bandage that covers her own.

#

It spreads, slow at first, but then faster. Raleigh first notices it inked small on the inside of an engineer's wrist in the middle of the mess hall. Newt works it into the design of his sleeve, subtle but distinctive, once you know to look for it.

Not everyone gets it inked into their skin, because not everyone's that sort. But it spreads all the same, to jewelry worn around the neck like a talisman, to patches on coats, to little doodles in the margins of someone's notes.

It's theirs. It means they survived, and that they remember. And it's not a weight like he feared, it's not even an anchor, holding them steady and fixing them to one spot. It's just a reflection of the marks that they've already left upon each other, made manifest. It means they're family. It means they're important.