The air is warmer in the café than it is outside and Stacker Pentecost mentally tells himself that this small fact coupled with the hot coffee mug he holds in his hands is the reason why he feels flushed. It has nothing to do with the smiling little girl in an old faded Sailor Senshi shirt and pink leggings sitting in from of him, he tells himself.
Of course, it's a lie.
The first time he truly met Mako, introductions and all, was when he had been released from the hospital and he had gone to visit her in the children's home. He had expected to just stop by, say hello and accept her gratitude and maybe a drawing or two, and then leave. He hadn't expected to see her face light up the way it did when she saw him or feel the deep tug on his heart when she smiled up at him. Afterwards, after everyone involved with the little girl learned that her remaining family was not taking her in; he had thought of his sister Luna and made a decision.
She is not bad luck, he had thought when her case worker told him she wasn't going back to Tanegashima with her dumb superstitious uncle. "I want her. I'll take her in," he had said.
As it turns out, international adoption is a long, arduous, and damn near maddening process. It's meeting after meeting, paperwork upon paperwork, evaluation after evaluation; but he looks at Mako's tiny face and thinks that it's worth it if it means having her with him.
The second time he had met her was when he had come to tell her that he had put in the paperwork to formerly adopt her. He remembers how her eyes had gone wide and tear-filled and how she had lost her usual restraint and thrown herself at him with her tiny arms open wide. He had held her close and felt as though he would burst by her sheer force. The third and last time they met they had spent their time coloring and drawing. He drew simple flowers and circles he claimed were dogs or cats while she drew nothing but Jaegers and asked a never ending stream of questions about the mecha. She had listened intently to his answers and he thought of how much she would love to live in a Shatterdome instead of a distant boarding school like he had originally planned.
This is their fourth meeting and the adoption is slowly being finalized as they sip coffee and hot chocolate. Although it's not the first time they've met, it feels to Stacker as though it is the one that really counts because the truth is they hadn't ever really talked about anything other than Jaegers before now. Her case worker had asked to meet at the café and told him that she would be sitting a few tables away so he and Mako could talk freely on their "little date". Looking at Mako's sad but still bright eyes and rosy smile and telling by the odd fluttering in his stomach, he thinks this has to be the most nerve-racking first date he has ever had.
"So, tell me, Mako, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
"Before," there is no need to explain 'before' what. "Before, I wanted to be a sword maker like my father, but now I want to be a Jaeger pilot. Like you."
He thinks about the dozens of crayon born Jaegers taped to the wall beside her bed, each of them loaded with a blade, and thinks that she could be both and hopes she never gets the chance.
He decorates Mako's room in Anchorage.
Or, at least, he has someone in Anchorage decorate it for her before they get there.
It had taken him a while to determine her tastes since all she seemed to want to talk about were Jaegers.
"I like Sailor Senshi," she had said after a long pause, as if she had to make an effort to recall her life before Onibaba, "Totoro, Hello Kitty, Princess Mononoke, and Shibuya-kei; especially Aira Mitsuki."
When they arrive in Alaska he is more nervous about her room than almost anything else. He wants it to be perfect for her. He wants it to be a childhood refuge for a girl he knows he will have to follow him to battle station after battle station. He wants it to be a bright spot in the war that, up until now, has been his life. He wants it to make her just a little happier than she is now.
Stacker Pentecost knows how to command presence and earn the respect of those stationed beneath him, he has manned giant metallic monsters, gone head to head with leviathans, and risen to one of the highest positions in the PPDC; and yet, the opinion of a ten year old girl holds more weight than that of the entire Pan Pacific Defense Corp. Funny that.
Luckily for him Mako loves her room, reverently touching the Sailor Senshi bed sheets when she first walks in to it and clutching her stuffed Totoro tightly as she sleeps; although poor Totoro tends to get tossed aside in favor of her Sensei's arms after nightmares. It's all right, though, because Sensei doesn't mind and eventually she begins to manage her fear on her own. When they arrive the concrete walls of the room are bare save for a Hello Kitty calendar on the door, but they are soon, not surprisingly, covered in pictures of Jaegers. Most are portraits of existing Jaegers in action, some feature modifications such as lasers and Mako's signature sword; but there are also some original designs that make Stacker stop and take note. For the first few days the Jaeger she draws the most is Coyote Tango, but that changes the moment she meets Hydra Corinthian.
Almost a week after arriving in Anchorage he finally takes her to the hanger while the crew is having lunch in the mess hall. It is uncharacteristically quiet and the hanger seems larger than usual to him, which means that to Mako it seems unreal. With her tiny hand in his he leads her right up to Hydra's platform and they crane their necks to look up up up at the mecha, Mako practically bending over backwards in an attempt to see as much of it as she can. Stacker tells her Hydra's specs, knowing she knows exactly what each one means in relation to the Jaeger, and when he's done he looks down at her he finds her trembling, tears pooling in her dark eyes and a level of fear and panic he has never felt before suddenly and dreadfully floods him.
"Mako!" He gasps, dropping to his knees in front of her, his hands engulfing her little waist, ready to pick her up and take her to the infirmary in record time. "What is it, Mako? What's wrong?"
"She's so beautiful," she reverently sighs.
Relief washes over him like a clean, fresh spring and bubbles out in laughter as he leans his dark head against her still soft belly. His voice and her name swims through her ears as she absentmindedly pats his head, her eyes never leaving the machine towering over them both. It's the safest she has felt since Tokyo.
"Do you think I'll be good Jaeger pilot?" she asks.
"I think you will be a great Jaeger pilot," he answers.
He thinks it's a half-lie.
Mako grows up strong. She grows into a soldier despite his best efforts.
She gets up with him, runs drills with him, corners him and demands that he train her to be the pilot she was born to be. In the beginning, when she was still small enough to carry on his shoulders, he would placate her demands with Someday, Mako. I promise you, someday. and distract her with books on robotics and engineering. He tells her that anger and vengeance are crutches and not pillars. He tells her that those who build and repair Jaegers are also fighting kaiju; that all of those who are part of the program, in a way, go out to battle with them.
Mako sees right through him and nods her head to placate him. She dies blue streaks into her hair and Herc tells him it's a healthy form of rebellion so he lets them be.
Someday comes a month before her fifteenth birthday when he wakes up with a bloodstain on his pillow. He says nothing when she applies for the Academy and solemnly watches her dance when her acceptance letter comes through the mail. She is the youngest to ever be accepted and will be the youngest to ever graduate and although his heart bursts with pride over this small fact, he does not show it.
"When you begin your training, you cannot call me Sensei. You will have to call me Marshall."
Mako is as solemn as he is when he tells her this. She understands. She is growing up and calling him Marshall is as much a sign of it as the tampons in her bathroom.
The night before she is to leave for the Academy he tucks her in like he did when she belonged to just him and not the program.
"Recruits aren't tucked in by their Marshalls, Sir," she tells him from her place beneath her PPDC commissioned covers, Sailor Senshi having been donated long ago.
Stacker smiles and strokes her short hair. "No, but you are not a recruit yet. Not until tomorrow. Tonight you are still my little girl, you are still my Mako."
"Sensei, I will always be your Mako," she says.
He feels the weight of the case of metronidazole in his pocket and thinks he will never hear her call him Sensei again.
The next day, watching her walk in to the Academy building, Stacker Pentecost decides that Mako Mori will never see combat; as if he has any real choice in the matter.
The Suits announce their shutting down the Jaeger program and Mako feels a sense of claustrophobia she has never experienced before. Walls and time are closing in on her and now she has just a few months to convince the Marshall, a few months to climb into a Jaeger and kill the monsters from her nightmares and make her dreams real. The Marshall promises her she will pilot a Jaeger and sends her out to find one.
She goes to Oblivion Bay, to the Jaeger Graveyard, and walks among the ghosts and empty metal. She turns a corner, around what used to be Romeo Blue, and sees her. Gipsy Danger. She's sitting, leaning against a pile of metal limbs, her legs stretched out in front of her. Her nose art is chipped and sun-bleached, her head is cut in two, her right arm is gone, and, looking at her, Mako trembles and weeps the way she did when she first saw Hydra Corinthian as a little girl.
Gipsy is beautiful and Mako is in love.
Raleigh Becket is the only surviving Mark-3 Jaeger pilot and, after reviewing his profile, Mako decides that she doesn't like him for the mission which, in turn, makes Stacker hope it will deter her from wanting to be his co-pilot.
Of course, it doesn't.
Fatherhood has made him into a liar.
Mako is angry and heartbroken when he takes her name off the candidate list, but she is not surprised and he almost doesn't care. When it is all said and done, if this Hail Mary pass actually follows through, then a year from now he will be dead and gone along with the kaiju and she will be alive in a reborn world and that is all that matters.
Raleigh is quieter and more subdued than Stacker remembers him being. He is cracked, if not broken; but, all things considered, that is to be expected. He is not what Mako expected in any way. She was expecting someone who was more abrasive and rude, someone who was bigger all around because he had let himself go just a little if not completely. She was expecting a jaded American version of Chuck and got kind blue eyes and respectful words instead.
She was also expecting him to be uglier for some strange reason and when she first sees him in person she thinks she may be just a little too relieved to find that he isn't.
Although he may be charming and handsome, Mako still doesn't like him for the mission and Stacker hopes that this one fact will keep her from fighting too hard to be his co-pilot. But then Raleigh asks for Mako's chance in the kwoon and when Stacker sees the grey clouds shift away from Raleigh's face as Mako knocks him down, watches them sync up and fall into the drift right in front of him, all he can think is Fuck.
He knows that no other candidate fits Raleigh better than Mako and that means that he will have to climb into Gipsy in her stead.
The punch to the gut her heartbroken eyes give doesn't hurt nearly as much as Raleigh looking at her like she set the sun on fire or hearing her ask him to honor the Marshall's decision and her respect for him.
Later, his body betrays him and in a drop of blood he is reminded that he is older than he was when he was a little girl's shinning knight, that he is weaker and more tired than he will ever let on. Mako is a survivor, a sword maker's daughter with quiet and precise violence in her heart; he raised her to be a soldier because it is what she demanded of him. She is strong and good and braver than most. Fatherhood has made him into a liar and his Mako deserves better than that.
She makes him regret ever letting her climb into a conn-pod.
And then she makes him prouder than he ever thought he could be.
At the end of it all they walk to the edge of the end of the world and both get what they want – Mako gets to pilot a Jaeger and kill kaiju and Stacker gets to die on his own terms. This is a good death, he thinks. He knows Raleigh will make sure she gets out in time and they'll look after each other. When she calls him Sensei again for the first time in years, for the last time, for a brief moment, he feels eternal.
Raleigh doesn't say anything as he sits on the Marshall's bed and watches Mako sort through his belongings. He watches her sort through things that seem familiar to him only through the drift; remembers while watching her remember.
What neither of them remember is Stacker Pentecost being a sentimental bastard and both are surprised to find that the man had kept a number of Mako's childhood mementos – her blue coat, a red shoe, her academy acceptance letter, every drawing she ever drew for him. For Mako it's a painful and bittersweet task, but it's made bearable with space and time and Raleigh.
It's easy going through his wardrobe of basics and suits and military dress until she finds a white box tucked away in a bottom dresser drawer. They don't need to open it to know what's inside, to know that the delicate silk will still be as soft as the day her mother married her father, as the day she showed it to her daughter and said Someday, Mako. I promise you, someday.
The weight of the box in her hands doesn't feel heavy but it makes her arms ache all the same and Mako thinks that she has never been so aware of an object in her whole life.
Stacker's note, the one Raleigh found waiting for him in his quarters when he was finally released from the infirmary, burns the same sentiment through his breast pocket and into his heart, the message echoing in his mind.
Make her happy.