We Drift Inside Each Other
a series of Pacific Rim shorts
A/N: These are all stories based on my observations from the movie, Pacific Rim, and what I envision as the character's backgrounds. I did check the Pacific Rim Wikia to double check some characters age's and spellings of things but the rest is me.
She Always Was (Chuck/Mako)
She was one of a kind. Chuck remembered the first time she entered the Shatterdome. Always two steps behind Pentecost. Her blunt black hair falling like a curtain around her face, which was almost always cast down in deference. But there was a moment. When Max ran up to her and threw threw back her head, smiling as he licked her face enthusiastically. Max had that effect of the ladies.
To say she was the best in their class would be an understatement. Mako Mori redefined the class. She was passionate about fighting and equally passionate about the jaegers. Unlike him, Mako saw them as individuals. And sometimes when he talked to her, he saw them that way too.
She graduated the Academy a year before he did and through the grapevine, he heard that she had yet to find a co-pilot. It was a sign. She was waiting for him. Their fathers were the oldest of friends and if anyone was going to be drift compatible with Mako, it would be him.
Since she wasn't piloting yet, Mako focused on the jaegers. Designing and increasing their functionality. She loved the Mark III's and Stacker indulged her interest with blueprints and design modules. That was where he found her, hunched over screens and old-school blueprints.
"Hey, Max!" she said when he entered the room. She always greeted the dog first.
"Hey, Mako," he said. He looked over at the blueprints on her desk. "Gipsy Danger?" he asked. Even though Mako was far from an open book, they'd developed a kind of shorthand with each other. It wasn't like him and his father. Sometimes he thought that he and his father only communicated through Max but with Mako it was different. Though they didn't say a lot, he felt like they knew what the other was thinking.
"She's beautiful," Mako replied and he knew when she looked at the jaeger, she didn't see the pilots inside, she saw Gipsy as her own person.
"She's piloted by the Becket brothers, right? How many kills?"
"Just two so far." Mako finally stopped petting Max long enough to look up at him. "How's the Academy?"
"I'm going to break your simulator record Mako," Chuck teased. "Just wait."
She turned back to her blueprints. "You can try."
"Soon, I'll be done with my training and then we can take one of these jaegers out for real. Show them what a jaeger can really do."
"How do you know we would even make a good team, Chuck?"
He moved closer to her and Mako breath hitched for a second when she looked up at him. "I know it, sweetheart. You're the best and I'm the best and that's all that matters." He flipped his cap on to his head. "Come on Max!" he called and the dog followed obediently.
"Chuck!" He stopped for a second as Mako called after him. "We'll see."
A year later, Chuck burst angrily through the doors of the Marshall's quarters. "It's wrong!" Chuck said waving the stack of paper in front of Stacker's face.
"Excuse me ranger?" Stacker replied in that quietly cold way that he was inclined to talk to all his subordinates.
"The test, it says that Mako and I aren't drift compatible. It. Is. Wrong."
"Why is that, son?"
"Because we're the best."
"That's where you're wrong. She's the best. You are just a cocky ranger riding her coattails."
"No you're wrong. You can't keep sabotaging her Stacker. We're the two best rangers to come out of the Academy and we deserve to be a team."
"You don't deserve anything, Hansen. You don't deserve her because you can run faster than some other guys or because you've known her longer. You don't deserve anything you haven't earned. And until you've stepped foot in an actual jaeger and not just a simulator, you don't deserve my time. Now if you'll excuse me, you can close the door behind you."
Chuck knew the matter was closed but he wasn't his father and he wasn't going to just fall back because Stacker Pentecost said so. "I'm going to show you. And her."
As Chuck began to pilot with his father, he let that moment fuel him. He and his father took out kaiju after kaiju but being together in the drift didn't improve their relationship. Sometimes he thought being in each other's heads made it even worse. Mako couldn't find a co-pilot and he watched as she continued to sit on the sidelines waiting for her chance. And he felt her drifting farther away. Deeper into herself. He felt like the tenuous connection they'd forged was breaking. And every time he beat a kaiju, he thought now; now he could be what she deserved. But he wasn't. She was one of a kind. She always was.