This fic was a gift for my lovely roommate. She converted me one night this semester to the Pacific Rim fandom and I haven't looked back.

"Haven't you heard, Mr. Becket? The world is coming to an end."

It still rose the next morning. The sun did. Outside the Shatterdome, everything was bathed in a milky gold light as the sun's rays danced with the thin layers of fog embracing everything. Water lapped calmly back and forth, slapping lazily against the sides of the Shatterdome's exterior. It too mixed with the gold light of the sun, shimmering patterns danced in the waves.

Atop a platform that faced the water on the lower exterior of the Shatterdome sat a man dangling his feet off the edge of the platform and arms bracing a little behind his body. He rested most of his weight on his right arm, shoulders tipped slightly that direction. Every so often, his head would drop just for a moment and then he would jolt it upright one more. Facing him, one would see that his eyelids continually drooped from fractions of time and his jaw would fall slack for moments until he was jogged back into reality.

Another figure moved onto the platform and deftly slid down to seated next to the half-asleep man. As the man has fallen asleep for a moment yet again, he did not realize someone else was there with him until he jolted awake once more and turned his head from the now semi-blinding morning light to face a pair of concerned eyes and pursed lips belonging to Mako Mori.

"You should go and get some sleep, Raleigh," she said to him.

Raleigh sighed and turned back to face the water again. "No—no, I'm fine here right now."

Just to screw with him, it seemed, a yawn suddenly gripped his being and he could not suppress opening his mouth wide and stretching his arms out above his head. He arched his back and lifted his face to the sky. His back cracked satisfyingly and then he settled back down. Raleigh let his left hand slide close to Mako's and slowly felt the light weight of cold fingers rest on top of his.

Raleigh squinted his eyes as the sun revealed its whole body for the first time that morning and Mako raised her left hand over her eyes to look at it as well. He could tell that she wanted to say something, just felt the words and wondered if they were thinking back to the same memory. To her memory.

"I was hoping the same thing," he finally said.

Mako did not respond.

Raleigh kept going, suddenly finding himself unable to keep from saying everything that had been running in his head from the moment he realized tomorrow was actually coming.

"Part of me thought maybe the sun would just stop rising. Maybe if we had failed, everything would have just stopped with us and, after us, nobody else would have to suffer. It would all just stop. But then we didn't fail and now the sun is up again and we don't get to just stop and the world hasn't ended."

Raleigh paused.

"And then I realized that the world had ended. He was right. And it's like the sun is rising now just to fucking mess with us."

Sure, the bridge had collapsed and the Kaijus were defeated. And the water was still lapping and the sun was still rising and the cold morning air was still cold morning air just like the day before. But now everything was different. Now life did not surround when the next Kaiju attack would take place. Now there was time to think about other things and Raleigh was not sure he liked thinking about other things just yet.

His mind felt lonely. Lonely because there was so much empty space to be filled up in it now and what was filling it was much stronger than previous thoughts of Kaijus and Jaegers.

How were they supposed to put a broken world back together into something that actually worked and made sense?

How were they supposed to go back into life and pretend that they could integrate?

What could any of them do?

The sun's light had begun to embrace Raleigh and Mako, but Raleigh still shivered. There was barely any wind and the fog had nearly dissipated but he felt the cold, gripping feeling under his breastbone emanating into the rest of him.

The PPDC. The world. What world? Life. Continue. Rise. Live. Live for what?

Raleigh sank further into his melancholia. Everything around him had fallen away. His thoughts pressed against him, jostling him as they all shouted: loud voices coming out of nothing. The voices of people who can't speak anymore.

Live.

Fall.

World.

End.

Change.

Build.

Rise.

He wanted to scream back at them, but had no voice. As loudly as he could, in his mind Raleigh shouted out for an answer.

HOW?

And then the voices blended together into one voice telling him what to do next and then—

"Raleigh!"

He could hear the water again. There was light again and his eyelids let in the reddish-orange color, like when someone turned on the light when you were still sleeping, instead of the black as before.

Opening his eyes, Raleigh let all the other colors flood back into his vision and, for a second, it was overwhelming and he wanted to close his eyes again but he squinted and the world around him came into a bearable focus. The blurry face so close to his became clear and Mako was outlined in the golden light of the now fully risen sun.

Only then did Raleigh become aware that he was lying down. His sweater was uncomfortably stretched at the top and all bunched up towards the bottom. He was quite a few feet back from the edge of the platform.

"I told you to go and get some sleep," Mako said, moving from kneeling over-top him to sitting next to him.

Raleigh rubbed his eyes a couple of times and then propped himself up on his elbows. He stared out across the horizon, trying to avoid eye contact with Mako. She had something to say again, he could feel her mind working. She was looking at the ground, rolling a pebble around.

"You were talking—while you slept, you were talking," she said, "What did you mean when you said 'how?'"

It was a long moment of lapping water sounds before he answered.

"I was listening to a lot of people telling me what to do and I wanted to know how to do it," he stopped, choosing his next words carefully, "Because… because I don't think I know the next step in life anymore. I don't know what to do about—about anything."

Mako turned to face him and shrugged. She took his hand in her own.

"Nobody does," she said. A small smile graced her lips for a moment.

She stood up and pulled him up with her. They started inside together, and the sun embraced the two of them once again. Raleigh felt warm.

Reviews are welcome and very much appreciated!