A/N: So I got a prompt on tumblr that was for a Pacific Rim Whouffaldi AU and it was as though the Heavens opened up and I received manna directly from the Lord Himself and I pounced on that. That being said, I will be knowingly fudging a couple things for the sake of story and staying clear of any Uprising references because I know I'm one of only fifteen people who enjoyed it and no one needs that.

Just See Me (in the Drift)

The alarm clock in the center of the room buzzed loudly and woke four men, one in each corner, with harsh aplomb. It was cold as they all forced themselves from their beds—colder than normal—making them realize that the heat was out… again. All sorts of expletives were used as they got ready for the day, peppered amongst wonderings and ponderings of why any of them signed up for such a terrible job.

Basil was silent, however, as per usual. No one questioned why a man in his early-fifties was out there on the Wall all alone, barely speaking a handful of words all week, staying to himself to the point where people forgot he was Scottish, let alone the fact his name wasn't pronounced BAY-sulh. There were plenty of people on the Wall who were sending money back home, who wanted to simply work alone, who were there because it was helping, and no one got in each other's business if it was clear they were lone wolves.

Yes, lone wolves were for the Alaskan Wall. So many could've gone to Los Angeles, or Lima, or Gold Coast, or even Dalian, but instead they were in Alaska—chilly and unforgiving Alaska. Sure, they could've gone to Sakhalin or Kamchatka, yet there they were.

Breakfast in the dining hall and the men and women from the boarding house all went out to work with the residents of all the other boarding houses that had hastily popped up in the area. The Wall itself was an imposing figure, looking like a decayed husk with its partially-exposed rebar and steelworks unprotected against the mercurial, slow thaw of Spring. Soon, as with other parts of the Wall, the hollow pillars being built mid-wall would be filled with concrete and reinforced and the surrounding spaces not dedicated to maintenance tunnels braced and filled in as well until they had the ultimate wall. It was to last longer than any had before and any would in the future, all while protecting as many people as they could from the creatures from the Breach.

Kaiju.

Since the first time one of the behemoths emerged from the interdimensional rift on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean only twelve years before, the kaiju had seeped into the global populace's collective culture. Ageing, Soviet-inspired posters of them were everywhere, a visual reminder of why many of them had been there for nearly five whole years. Like something out of an allegorical fantasy, they rose from the deep and destroyed coastal cities with large populations, drawn to the many dense concentrations of people surrounding the Pacific Ocean. There was already so much death and destruction that it did not take long to find someone working the Wall who hadn't lost someone, and it would've been likely more had the Wall not been preceded by the other spectres shown on posters and billboards and artwork displayed everywhere:

Jaegers.

It was appropriate, Basil knew, that the large, humanoid weapons were literally called hunters—what best to hunt monsters with, after all? Piloted by two people via a revolutionary mind-sharing technology, their design, creation, and upkeep were becoming too costly for the Trans-Pacific Partnership as time wore on, ultimately resulting in the creation of the Wall. The man-made marvels were monstrous themselves—legendary, even—and the piloting of them saved millions of lives at great cost to those who took them on. Death in battle was merciful compared to brain hemorrhages, cancers, and other long, horrific ailments that had befallen many.

'At least she didn't suffer,' he'd think as he passed by the deliveries supervisor. The woman's naturally-tight blonde curls would remind him of days gone by, of why he was there, and every day he'd see her was another day he accepted the stark realization that his life was just a shell waiting to collapse.

Most days, helicopters could come in from Anchorage bringing new stores of supplies and occasionally fresh workers, utilizing a nearby former big-box store's parking lot as a landing pad. Basil idly crunched on some potato chips he snuck from the dining hall as he sat on his break that morning and watched as a new sort of helicopter touched down. He saw some coworkers take notice of the strange aircraft and decided to ignore them—there was only one reason as to why a helicopter like that was around and it was a waste of time.

"Doctor Basil Song?"

He didn't need to look up from the bag to know it was Kate Stewart, one of the most senior non-military members of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps and an old acquaintance. No, he lifted his gaze to look at his old friend, as he didn't have many of those left anymore.

"Smith—I'm going by Smith again," he corrected.

"Well then, Basil Smith, you know why I'm here." She watched as he glanced around her and saw not only the soldiers standing guard, but his fellow builders looking on in confusion. "I need a pilot."

"Those days are behind me," he reminded her. "I'm not going back to Sydney."

"Hong Kong." It was now her turn to do the correcting. "Idris needs a pilot and I know this place is slowly killing you."

"It was kind of the point," he shot back. "I'm a washed-up old wreck… I'm better off here."

"Call it my final favor, my father's final favor, that I'm cashing in right now, because we need you one last time."

He considered it, silently feeling as though he was to regret what he was about to do.

Thirty-six hours later and Basil found himself on a different helicopter coming out of Hong Kong International, touching down near the Shatterdome. People were milling about, hauling equipment, kaiju parts, and spare bits and bobs to go onto Jaegers whether they belonged there or not. They were in salvaging mode, which did not surprise him in the slightest. Much longer and there would be nothing left to scrape together.

"You're going to have to forgive our system at the moment—we do not have nearly the same crew we had four years ago, let alone from this time last year," Kate said as they walked through to the bays. There they saw three Jaegers sitting, waiting, being gone over by techs on girders and ropes. The one in the middle Basil didn't recognize—must've been the Mark V built before the Jaeger Program got scrapped—but the one on the left was Paternoster Glory and the one to his right was her… his Jaeger… their Jaeger… Idris Vortex.

Basil could barely believe his eyes when he saw Idris; last time he had seen her, she was missing half of her upper body and Conn-Pod. Now she was whole again, as though nothing had ever happened. It was such a shock that he almost let go of the duffle bag slung over his shoulder.

"She's like new," he marveled aloud.

"Even better, if I do say so myself," a new voice said confidently. He glanced in Kate's direction and saw a young woman standing there next to her. The stranger was disastrously short, even in her heels, with the largest brown eyes he had ever seen. Her brown hair was mostly pulled back in a ponytail, save for her bangs—they were the same blue as kaiju blood… the same blue as Idris's paint job. She stuck out her hand, which he shook. "Clara Oswald; I've been overseeing Idris Vortex's restoration while finishing up Ranger training. It's good to finally meet you, Doctor."

"I thought they shuttered the Academy," he noted.

"Clara would have been top of her class had things not been cut short," Kate explained. "She, along with the rest of the remaining potential pilots, train under Paternoster's crew when they can."

"Are Jenny, Vastra, and Strax all still terrorizing the fish with that thing?" he asked. Kate nodded. "That's six Brits between them and us, and I know I heard some similar accents on the helicopter over. Does the Mainland know about this?"

"Mainland China is tolerating us, for the time being," Kate said. She frowned uncomfortably, suggesting that her words were more than a bit sarcastic. "One of my Mark V pilots is a local man, and one of my main remaining scientists was born and grew up here despite being ethnically English, having been from one of the few families to stay after the handover. I don't know what they'd do if we didn't have at least them, which is frankly out of our hands at this point in the game. That doesn't even mention all the local Hong Kongers that we regularly employ on a normal basis… take away the Shatterdome and all these jobs are lost."

"After seeing the economic collapse in Anchorage post-Shatterdome, you can easily guess why we are the benefactors of more than one willfully-blind eye," Clara said. "Doctor, if you will follow me, I can show you to your quarters."

Basil bid Kate goodbye for the time being and followed Clara. Though he could only stutter a couple phrases in Cantonese (which she did not need to know whether he could or not), the pictograms on all the signs were still the same standardized ones from when he last stepped inside a Shatterdome and all he really followed her for was to figure out which room was his. Even that wasn't that big a mystery, as it was the same number he last had.

"You have an appointment tomorrow with our suit-techs to get you refitted, though after dinner tonight we have preliminary sparring to figure out who is to pilot Idris Vortex with you…"

"I'm not replacing River," he cut in. "Kate doesn't know it, but I'm only here to observe and coach. My pilot days are behind me." He began to make his way inside his room, only for her to touch his upper arm, getting him to stop.

"I read about what happened," she said. "No one is replacing River—no one can replace her because no human is replaceable—but we are at war. Kate said you're a good man, that you're one of the best. We need all the good men and women we can get."

"Pity, because I'm not a good man."

"I think you'd be surprised," she replied. Clara smiled gently before turning to walk away, leaving Basil half in the corridor. He watched her for a moment before shaking his head and going into his sparse room.

Never again.

It was the middle of the night when the alarm went off. He and River woke at the first peal, crammed together in the tiny bottom bunk in their quarters. Hitting his head on the above bed, he got off to a cranky start, which seemed to be more frequent an occurrence as of late.

"Don't be so cross, sweetie," River said, patting his backside as he stepped into his trousers. "Save your temper for the kaiju; it looks like a big one."

Basil glanced towards the screen by their door giving a readout of the kaiju specs. It was huge, and headed straight for them.

Everything continued as normal once they left their room and made their way through the Sydney Shatterdome. They suited up and went towards the Jaeger bays—with the others in the middle of upgrades and repairs, they were the only team available. Soon as they jammed their helmets on, a voice came over their commlink.

"This might be deemed a new category level by the time you return," Kate warned them. Basil knew she was up in the control room, watching over the entire operation. "If you need backup, you need to let me know immediately and we can get someone in from Hong Kong."

"We won't need backup," River smirked. She and Basil entered the Conn-Pod and were linked up, performing the neural handshake with ease. Memories and emotions flowed between them easily—her being doted on by her adoring parents, him being one of the least-loved of his many brothers, meeting in postgrad, their first time, their wedding, when they found out that they couldn't…

Basil woke up in a sweat and looked at the clock. It was nearly time for dinner, which meant that he had slept through the entire afternoon. He changed his clothes and went down to the mess hall, where dinner had just begun for most in the room. Taking that as reason enough to get a pile of rice noodles and chicken covered in mystery-sauce (as, again, his Cantonese was rusty), he sat down at the empty end of a spare table and only got a few bites in before he heard a voice he never expected to experience again.

"Now there is a sight for sore eyes." Basil nearly choked on a piece of chicken and looked to his left, seeing that his fear had come true. Although she was a Jaeger pilot just as he had been, Missy was standing there in her impractical skirt-suit and perfectly-curled hair tucked underneath a pinned hat.

"Is that wool… in monsoon season…?"

"See? I told you he was a delight, Chang." Just behind Missy there was a man in a suit and glasses, who Basil noticed was looking at him curiously. Well, now he knew who the pilots for the Mark V were. He didn't have time to tell them off, however, as Missy sat down next to him and attempted to lean seductively against the table.

"Didn't think I'd see you until we had to gather up mourners for when the potato-head commits suicide-by-kaiju by going to fight one in a rowboat."

"I don't want to hear it," Basil scowled.

"What I'm saying is that it's been a long time."

"Should've been longer."

"What cheek—I don't know how River could stand it."

At that, Basil stood quickly, grabbing Missy by the shoulder of her coat. Neither she nor Suit reacted with anything other than a grin, though others nearby noticed and immediately tensed.

"Smith! McMaster! Stop this instant!" They looked across the mess hall and saw Kate approaching them. Basil let go and the tips of his ears burned red—shit. "What do the two of you think you're doing?!"

"Getting reacquainted—there been more than a few years of arguing to catch up on," Missy smirked.

"Stop instigating and be glad I'm not tossing you out on the street just yet," Kate warned. She then turned towards Basil, face still in the sternest glare she could muster. "Take your food and come with me—we've got recruits to screen and only a couple hours to do it."

Taking it as a clear opportunity to leave the situation with his hands clean, Basil took his tray and followed Kate out of the mess hall. He could feel Missy's line of sight on them all the way to the door, afterwards she was fully excised from his consciousness.

"Thanks," he mumbled.

"Thank me once we've gotten you a new copilot," she replied tersely. "Osgood thinks we're in for a new event sooner rather than later."

"Osgood…?"

"Our new numbers whiz, after Alzarius got the sack for going from being a teenaged boy with no self-filter to a twenty-something boy with no self-filter; says it's down to less than a week."

"This Osgood found a pattern?"

"I don't know what she found, but whatever it is, we are going to be prepared for it."

They entered the training room and stood off to the side, watching the recruits as Basil quickly finished his meal. Most of them looked picked up from right outside in Tsing Yi, even some showing potential promise for strong neural handshakes as they sparred, yet his eyes were drawn towards deep inside the room where he saw the familiar faces of Paternoster Glory demonstrating for some of the recruits, including the woman whom he had met before. Clara? Yes, Clara.

"I'd say that you have an excellent pool of candidates," he mentioned between noodle slurps. "Idris will have her new pilots before your 'event' arrives, no problem."

"I don't want her to have two new pilots—I need you in there," Kate insisted. "I need a stable veteran leading this charge, and we both know that Vastra and Jenny are too busy handling Strax to do anything close to leading… not leading as they'd like, anyhow… and McMaster can't lead to save her life, let alone anyone else's. You? They all listen to you."

"They listen to no one—don't fool yourself." He put down his now-empty bowl, shed his hooded sweatshirt and shoes, and grabbed a spare bō staff leaning against the wall. "Who do I need to fight to convince you I don't belong here anymore?"

"I don't think you need to fight anybody," a nearby recruit said. Basil glanced over and saw the young man, cocky and clearly one who believed himself the most important person in the room. "You're a grey stick of an old man—what's Stewart got you here for?"

It took only a moment and the end of Basil's staff connected with the recruit's face. The young man cursed loudly, causing the entire room to halt activity and stare at the scene.

"That's why," Basil said loudly. Once he was certain he had everyone's attention, he continued. "Director Stewart believes that my new copilot's in this room and I, for many reasons, don't believe her. Here's a hint: just see me. Once you do, that's when you'll be able to meet me in the Drift."

"What an entrance, Doctor!" Strax beamed. Basil saw him make his way through the throng of stunned recruits as everyone else got back to work. "You seem as irritable as ever!"

"You're the only person from whom that's a compliment," Basil chuckled weakly. He looked towards where Jenny and Vastra still were, and winced when he could see the latter's glare. "They a bit sore at me?"

"You left the PPDC without word or warning or checking in; there is debate as to whether your disappearance is understandable given the circumstances, or overdramatic and selfish."

That hit Basil hard. "What about you? What do you think?"

"You found honor and glory on the battlefield, Doctor, but you also found sorrow and pain. Those who find such things need time to adjust themselves, so that they may understand the thrill of war once again."

"How… disturbingly insightful."

"Miss Jenny has me reading texts about empathy. I understand the concept, though I suspect that there is a further point that requires investigating."

"There may not be one," Basil replied. He took a deep breath and decided to go talk to the pair of his old friends still across the room. Strax he could talk to once every five years or every five minutes and their relationship would not change, yet Vastra and Jenny… he owed them much more.

…or, he would have, had one Clara Oswald not get flung into his path, landing on her backside right before him. He looked in the direction she came from and saw a tall, youthful man who seemed much smugger than anyone should've been following such a match.

"That's not how you do it," Basil frowned. He held out his hand towards Clara and she took it, using his leverage as a boost up.

"I was winning," the man replied. "I won."

"If you're concerned with winning against another human, then this might not be your calling," Basil scolded.

"Why don't we show Seb how it's done, then?" Clara offered. Basil glanced at her, noticing that the smile she wore was infectious.

"Sounds like a plan."

The two of them stood near one another, staffs crossed, looking like the biggest pair of idiots Basil could have imagined. There they were—he an aging, out of shape, too-skinny Scotsman and she the young Englishwoman who was laughably short in her bare feet and looking as though she could overpower no one. The bōs disconnected and they each took two steps back, planning their next move.

Lunging towards one another, Clara and Basil were able to land a few blows and parries on their staffs before he was able to trip her. "See? What you want to do is figure out how long you can keep in sync. This exercise is about probing for compatibility, not winning. Physicality is not what makes a good set of Jaeger pilots, but synchronicity."

"That's what I keep trying to tell him, Doctor, but he won't listen," Clara interjected. He helped her up again and they crossed staffs again.

"He's clearly got a brain made of low-grade pudding—don't mind him."

They separated and immediately went into action. The sparring went on longer this time, before Clara was able to hit Basil on the forearm for a point.

"You're not bad," she complimented.

"Tell me that again after match is called." He grinned, which only served to egg her on. They began their bout again, sparring and dodging and mirroring one another blow-for-blow until Kate's voice ground them to a halt.

"ENOUGH!" she shouted. Basil and Clara stopped and looked around—not only had they been the only ones fighting, but everyone else had cleared room in order to stare at them. Kate stormed up to them, Strax not far behind. "Smith, Oswald, to my office, now, or there is going to be trouble." The two watched as she walked away, leaving Strax to take their staffs.

"Excellent show," he nodded excitedly. "That was nearly eleven whole minutes straight!"

"Wait, what…?" Basil said. "That was thirty seconds, a minute at the most."

"Run along, or you'll make the boss-lady angry," Seb said. Clara flipped him two fingers as they grabbed their sweatshirts and shoes and left, walking down the corridor together.

"Strong neural handshakes start at three minutes of sparring," she noted. "If Strax is telling the truth—"

"—which he is; fibbing is not in his vocabulary—"

"—then we have the potential for one of the strongest handshakes ever recorded."

Basil let that sink in while they made the rest of the way to Kate's office. She was waiting there patiently for them, leaning on her desk with her arms folded across her chest.

"Ten minutes, fifty-six seconds," she said. It felt like a scolding, if a scolding could be proud. "I stopped you at ten minutes, fifty-six seconds, and who knows how long you would've gone otherwise. This is undeniably some of the highest compatibility I've ever seen… the only reason it isn't higher because Paternoster Glory have had almost a decade to work on theirs."

"Kate, I can't, you know that," Basil insisted.

"Basil Smith, this is the strongest potential Drift compatibility any of us have ever seen and you are going to use it to pilot Idris Vortex, do you understand? I don't make the rules, but I sure as hell am going to enforce them for the good of this planet."

Instead of dignifying her words with a response, Basil spun on his heel and angrily stormed out of the room, leaving the two women alone.

"I wouldn't be forcing the issue if it weren't for the fact I believed in it down to my soul," Kate mentioned. "You won't be held back because someone got their knickers in a bunch."

"I know," Clara nodded. "I've never lasted that long in a match—there's not enough time to search for a connection that strong in someone else."

"There likely isn't one out there." Kate sighed and shook her head. "I wish it hadn't come to this…"

"I don't care. I came here to save the world; don't know about the rest of you, but that's the only thing that matters right now." She folded her arms and stared into the bit of air in front of her, thinking. "I should talk to him."

"What makes you think that you'll be able to get through when I cannot? He barely knows you."

"He's my copilot," Clara stated. She then bowed her head slightly before turning to leave, stopping only when she heard Kate clear her throat once she was at the door.

"Cadet Oswald…"

Clara turned around, saluted sarcastically, and grinned before leaving the office.

As if either of them really cared about that.

When she found him, he was sitting amongst a pile of scrap tech, soldering away at something she did not recognize other than being a motherboard, goggles strapped to his head and his sweatshirt off to the side. She sat down next to him, watching as he worked. Silence passed between them and the only noise was that of tinkering and far-off Jaeger maintenance.

"Pass me that," he requested, holding his hand out. Clara took a piece of wiring and placed it in Basil's hand. He went to use it and stopped, staring at it as though it brought him someplace far away.

"Was it the right thing?" she asked.

"Precisely."

"Then what's the matter?" He went back to his work and she frowned. "Basil, why are you being so stubborn about this? Don't you breathe the same air as everyone else? Drink our water? Walk our lands? Don't you want to defend that?"

"I thought you seemed more than willing to let me be advisory."

"That was before I saw our Handshake potential; this sort of shot doesn't come very often. It's not physical prowess or agility that makes for good Jaeger pilots, but solid neural compatibility. What are you afraid of? That I'll be too much like you?"

Basil exhaled heavily and ran his hands over his face; might as well.

"I can't do it," he admitted, the words heavy. "I can't let someone in my head like that again." He looked at her and saw that she was silently waiting for him to say his piece—she wasn't going anywhere. "Instead of requesting backup, River and I went in alone. The kaiju we were fighting, it had a secondary brain that we didn't know about at the time, and as we were leaving, what we thought was a corpse rose up and ambushed us."

He kept his gaze on the circuitry before him and attempted to not shudder at her touch—her hand on his forearm, letting him know she was listening. "I didn't just lose my wife that day. Losing my wife would have meant that the Conn-Pod went down and our Handshake went out of alignment before the attack. We were still fully connected when the kaiju ripped her out in one bite. Have you performed a neural handshake yet?"

"Practice ones, yes."

"In the Drift, your consciousness is so full and free, so intertwined with the other mind that there's nothing to make it feel as though there's actually two of you. That was ripped out, violently, quickly, maliciously. The part of her that had become a part of me was suddenly gone, and that's something that Kate can't understand… that you can't understand… that I wish I didn't understand as well as I do."

"You're not the only one to have lost relatives to kaiju," she mentioned. "Yeah, not like that, but I was on holiday with my parents and fiancé when a Category Three hit. Dad and I watched Mum and Danny get eaten… do you really think that I was about ready to just let that happen?"

He continued working on the circuit board and frowned in thought. "No."

"Then don't hold me back; we can be stronger than any team has been before, and that is not something I'm going to give up on just because you're afraid."

"I am not."

"Yes you are; you're too emotional."

"How am I the emotional one?"

"…because, try as you might, you care a whole hell of a lot more than you let on."

He went quiet at that, turning his attention back to his work. Not about to let him get off that easily, Clara stayed seated, smiling to herself when he held out his hand again. She placed another tool in it and he continued working, not missing a beat.

It was definitely a start.