never mine to lose - pacific rim - unrequited chuck x mako
love is a strong word, but so is hope.
i have seen the movie twice, but haven't read the novelization, so please forgive any discrepancies.
The first time he sees her, she's following Pentecost with a pad of paper through the Shatterdome. Scribbling things down and nodding demurely, black hair catching the glow of the sparks cascading from the metal giants. The glow from the blowtorches outlines the curve of her cheekbones, the delicate sweep of her neck; the most graceful thing in the entire hangar.
She floats behind the Marshall like a dream, then a passing worker fumbles a coupling that she catches with too quick reflexes and places into an open panel with a practiced hand.
Not many things make Chuck Hansen stop dead in his tracks, but this girl does. So there you go.
Chuck spends the next day in the command room pestering Choi to tell him what he has to do to get an assistant like that.
Choi never does tell him how to get an assistant, but he does tell Chuck that her name is Mako Mori and that she is "off limits" and "no assistant, kid."
He's not giving this conversation near enough attention for Chuck's liking though, considering the way his fingers keeps hammering away at the keyboard. But Choi's always trying to look important, so there you go. Chuck leans on the technician's workspace with as much menacing presence as he can muster.
"Well, if she's not an assistant, what does she do? She's not like his girlfriend or anything because that pretty damn gross. I mean, he's approximately, what, seventy-seven years old?"
"Nothing like that," his fingers pause for a moment over the keyboard. "Look, let's just say that he cares for the girl. And that you should never ever ever say any of those things around Pentecost if you value your ass, kid."
"Whatever that means." Chuck rolls his eyes and jabs the escape button, closing out the window Choi is working in for spite.
"What the hell, Hansen? I'm working here."
"Don't lie," Chuck says, pushing off the desk. "You've been trying to get Space Invaders to run on that computer for the last two weeks."
"You're messin' with my stress relief!"
"Don't call me kid," Chuck drawls, sauntering out the room to the soundtrack of Choi's newly invigorated typing.
Yeah, his old man says that if you see a shot, you take it, but Chuck doesn't know how to take 'shots' with girls. It's only in hindsight that he sees it.
When she drops her juice box in the cafeteria, he could pick it up for her.
When she keeps making adorably annoyed sounds at her failing pen, he could bring her a new one.
When she asks if she can pet Max, he could ask if she'd like to take a walk with them.
But he doesn't.
The thing about growing up in a jaeger, growing up in the drift, is that you never really learn how to express yourself. How to use words to convey what you're feeling. You get used to just knowing other people's thoughts. Them just knowing your thoughts. You take it for granted. It stunts you, in a sense, but, you know… there you go.
Raleigh Becket rubs Chuck wrong in more than a few ways.
He's literally a banner of failure. Got his brother killed with his damn bleeding heart and his mediocre piloting skills. Weak. And not only did Pentecoste expect Chuck to be okay with this American loser running defense on the most important day in Earth's history, but the jackass had his eyes on Mako.
The guy follows her around like a damn puppy. Makes eyes at her in the cafeteria. Parades around their corridor without a shirt, the scars of his failures on proud display. He even goes up to her door every once and a while, like he's about to knock before he pusses out. It's pathetic.
It's not like Chuck only sees this because he's thinking about doing the same thing.
So after their poor, poor attempt at a test run, Chuck decides he needs to give this Becket a real piece of his mind, but then he starts talking and he can't make the words stop and everything that's going on in his brain just kind of falls out and he says it. He can't really remember it, honestly. It's all a little fuzzy. But judging by how Becket busts Chuck's eyebrow open with a killer roundhouse, it's something about Mako and it's something out of line.
He can't tell what is worse: the way his old man lays into him afterward, the way his lip throbs from Raleigh's surprisingly adept fists, or the look of hatred in Mako's eyes.
Or the fact that he was the one who put it there.
He and Max find her alone, sitting on the bridge under the command room after she storms out of Pentecost's office. It's obviously that she's grounded, but she did almost blow the Shatterdome into smithereens during the worst drift meltdown Chuck's ever seen, so there you go.
She's not really crying, but the tense shoulders and red eyes make it a clear possibility. Max waddles right up to her, his claws tapping out a welcome distraction on the metal floors. She doesn't notice either of them for a few seconds, then she looks up at him with beautiful eyes that are laden with the weight of the world.
Then it just kind of clicks, you know. The only person that can truly make someone feel like that is a father.
"You know," he starts, crouching down and giving Max an absentminded scratch between the ears. A nervous habit. "The first time I drifted, I wasn't prepared for it either. I, uh, you know my old man told me what it would be like, told me I might see a few things… but I still wasn't ready to see her face. I guess, probably because I had honestly forgotten what my mum looked like. It had been so long and then there she was in her wedding dress, on the beach, making my lunch in the morning before I went to school-"
He breaks off then, staring at the floor, angry at the tears thickening his voice and straining his tongue.
"She was beautiful," he whispers, looking into back Mako's eye's as she returns his gaze. "Just like you." Mako smiles and it's shy and quiet and full of light and really, he didn't expect anything else. He'd say anything to have her smile like that at him just once more.
"Lucky for me, I had the old man. When I started slipping out alignment, he was able to straighten me out right quick like. It wasn't your fault Mako, Becket's just too weak-"
Mako's face hardens in an instant, the light in her smile melts into a harsh scowl, teeth bared.
"Weakness is what makes him strong. He knows that he must be stronger to overcome it. You're too perfect," she spits. "Everything comes too easy. You will never understand and that is why you will never be as formidable or inspiring as Raleigh. You will only ever be perfect."
Numb. Her words make him feel numb. He sniffs and stands up in one motion, taking to the stairs and leaving Max behind. A few strides away, he hears a tiny sob lose itself in the bustling hangar and he turns in time to see Max crawl into her lap.
In a few moments, her shoulders stop shaking and she lifts her head, petting Max serenely as she stares off into the distance. He guesses that leaving that dog there was the one good thing he's done all day. And it wasn't even on purpose.
Then he hears Becket's rolling gate crashing down the corridor and he calls Max back before hurrying away. Not really anywhere in particular. Just away.
There are so many words and so many languages and it would take forever and half to learn them, but even if he did, even if he knew every word in the universe, he would still have no idea how to talk to her.
Love is a strong word, but so is hope. He doesn't love her, but he hopes that he could. It would be easier if he just loved her and that was the end of it. No, it was the hope that maybe he could love her. The hope that she could be that person.
Everything goes to shit and surprisingly enough, it's not Becket's fault. The world is as the world does and the world is just shit. So there you go.
Pentecost isn't kidding when he said that he brings nothing into the drift. He brings nothing and he feels nothing and he betrays nothing. How he does that is anyone's guess.
Chuck knows that Pentecost now knows about the one thing that Chuck had dared to want, the one thing thing that didn't come easy, just like he knows that Pentecost thinks she's better off without the egotistical jerk who suffers from daddy issues. Chuck agrees.
His father always said if you have a shot, you take it. And in the end, he Pentecost have their shot and they have to take it.
They'll take the hit and let Gypsy Danger have the chance to live on. The chance to redeem themselves and save the world. A world where Chuck Hansen never gets to tell Mako Mori that she reminds him of the Desert Rose, lovely and flourishing in a desolate landscape. A world where he'll never tell her about the sparks in her hair. A world where he'll never get to touch her hand or taste her lips.
And she'll be better for it. And the world'll be better for it. So there you go.
There you go.
There they go.
Gone.