Breaking Me Softly Chapter 1, a James Bond + Pacific Rim Crossover fanfic

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This was supposed to be a little ficlet about the science bros. It got away from me. Very, very quickly. VERY!

Profuse apology in advance:

I only saw the movie once. And not even in the original version. I failed to catch the OV before it disappeared out of theaters, so I might not really hit the voices right.

I still keep my fingers crossed.

And I really didn't want to wait till December 31st when the DVD comes out to post this puppy.

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Since this is part 2 of the Synergy 'verse it's a partial Skyfall crossover again. The characters appear throughout the story. Chuck lived, so it's a fix-it. His relationship with Raleigh happens in the background. As does Bond's with Q. Events from Momentum are mentioned, sometimes a bit more elaborately than in Momentum.

Synergy Series:

1. Momentum

2. Breaking Me Softly

He didn't really give it a thought. Not much of a thought. Not at first anyway.

The aftermath of closing the Breach had been filled with trying to find the escape pods, find survivors from the Jaegers sent down into the deep to destroy the Throat, and whooping in joy when they were located.

It took a bit longer to confirm that not only had Raleigh and Mako made it back, Skyfall Prime's command crew was also alive. Not really kicking, but alive.

And they had a third pilot on board.

He had never seen a man so relieved, so close to tears, his world shattered, torn apart, and then, with one sentence, fixed again, than Hercules Hansen.

Chuck had made it out of the deep. He was injured, but he was alive.

No, Newton Geiszler, six doctorates, genius Kaiju expert, didn't give it much thought when he found himself always in company of his reluctant lab partner and constant bickering pain-in-the-ass. Dr. Hermann Gottlieb. Colleague of too many years to count.

They had been around each other for too long for this closeness to feel forced or awkward. Ten years this year. He'd have to scrounge up the date, make it their anniversary, maybe get a cake. And lots of alcohol. Celebrations all around.

Maybe he should have given it a thought or two when Herc ushered them into medical to get checked out and they were in the same examination room.

Then again, with so many pilots coming in, the five survivors of the final, all-deciding battle, room was sparse and Chuck was currently the worst off, so they needed space to work on him. Newton had seen a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and he prayed that Chuck would come out of this with all his limbs and organs.

Newton felt strangely relaxed in the presence of his colleague of endless shouting and yelling, teasing, bantering, bitching and snarking. Now there was a calmness between them, the echoes of the Drift.

It was something Newton had never felt before, this keen awareness of another mind with him, like a blanket around his own, keeping his chaos in order.

Chaos. Order.

He almost laughed. Right hemisphere, left hemisphere. Yeah, they had Drifted and they had saved the world.

Rockstars, baby!

Hermann's scowl told him that the other man had picked up on it. They were still in the Ghost-Drift, as to be expected.

It would pass.

It always did.

The things he had seen and felt in those seconds in the Drift wouldn't.

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The doctors found very little seriously wrong with them – aside from questioning Newton's sanity to attempt a Drift with a Kaiju. And it hadn't been an attempt, he informed them. He had done it. Twice!

That was Hermann's cue for bitching about unscientific methods and rash decision making that wasn't based on trials.

"You offered to do this with me, Hermann!"

"Because you would have done it anyway. This way, at least, there were two minds to share the neural load. God knows what you did to your brain that first time, Geiszler!"

"It worked! I was right!"

"And you nearly killed yourself in the process!"

"But I was badass!"

"You were a reckless idiot!"

"I love you, too, Hermann. Now shut up!"

The nurses ignored them as best as possible, but Newton couldn't ignore the softly wafting emotions between them. He didn't think they were faint echoes of before; this was more real. Like something happening right now. He felt worry, a headache and a persistent ache from his leg that wasn't his, exhaustion and exhilaration, and he felt affection and distress.

It was all he felt, too, but not his own emotions. Mirrored? Wow…

Hermann looked at him, eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything anymore.

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He had a few bloody scrapes in his face, which were cleaned and a bandage put over the one on his forehead, and a myriad of bruises all over his body. Hermann's leg had been examined, poked and prodded like everything of them, and Newton had seen him wince a little.

He felt with him. Literally.

"You should keep off that leg for as much as possible, Dr. Gottlieb."

It got the doctor a scathing look. Of course Hermann knew that. And Newton knew it. He had seen it in the Drift. Sometimes the muscles would lock up if he walked too much on it, if he ran. If he knelt down, all of which he had done in the past forty-eight hours.

To save the world.

Newton gave Hermann an encouraging smile when the doctor pushed pain pills into his colleague's hands, which Gottlieb regarded like they were Kaiju excrement he was supposed to swallow.

"Be nice, Herm. Say 'Thank you, doctor' to the nice man. You know: human interaction. We had that chapter last week."

The scathing look was now on him. Newton gave him a brilliant smile.

Both were told to get some rest, to come back tomorrow, that they would need a complete brain scan to determine how much damage the Drift had really done, but Hermann had just scoffed at that.

"I can very well scan my own brain," he had muttered, limping off.

"Want an assist?" Newt offered, bouncing along.

Well, not really bouncing. He felt tired to the bone. His brain was rattling around his cranium in a rather frightening manner. His thoughts were still chasing each other and some, well, a lot, were not his own.

They had been told that they had both suffered from exhaustion, showed stress-related symptoms, and that they could count themselves lucky to be alive.

Newton didn't call it luck. It was cunning and science, all wrapped up in this handsome package. He had known that it would work.

And. It. Had!

"I don't need your assistance," Gottlieb told him dismissively. "Knowing your methods, it would fry my synapses."

"Didn't when we Drifted."

The scowl was now directed at him, full force. "Not for the lack of trying on your part. You created a Drift mechanism out of spare parts!"

"Because I'm a genius. It worked," he said cheekily.

"Yes," Hermann said slowly. "Yes, it did. A small miracle."

Oh, that sounded like praise, a compliment out of the mouth of Dr. Hermann Gottlieb himself. He would have to frame that in his mind for the generations to come.

Hermann shot him a baleful look.

Newton wasn't deterred and when both of them ended up in the lab again, neither gave it much thought. Still, they stood in the room with a rather lost expression, neither man really knowing what to do.

The Breach was closed.

The war was over.

And Kaiju parts littered every available surface in Newton's half of the lab. And partially spilled over into Gottlieb's. Hermann kicked at the entrails with a look of disgust, but his heart really wasn't in it.

"We should start documenting," Newton started. "Of what happened, what we saw. I mean, I want that baby Kaiju in my lab asap, but we were in its brain, dude! Its brain! How cool was that?"

"Less than you would think," was the even reply.

Hermann limped over to his side and sat down. There was a brief wince, then some of the lines in his face smoothed a little. Taking weight of the leg, the pain medication working, Newton realized. His colleague had really done a number on his bad leg and he was paying for that now. Gottlieb started shuffling papers.

"Was this amazing, Herm? It was the greatest thing since… since the Drift itself! We were part of an alien mind!"

"It's not Herm. My name is Hermann Gottlieb." Hermann looked pinched. "And I am glad it's over. Everything is over, Dr. Geiszler."

"It's only just beginning!" Newton contradicted, adrenaline still firing through him. His brain had switched into rambling mode. "Do you realize what we did? We are the first humans to Drift with a Kaiju! We saw everything about them! We were the Kaijus!"

"An experience I regret."

"No, you don't," he declared cheerfully, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. "And you like me! You really, really like me!"

Hermann just turned around and ignored him.

But Newton felt the echoes, the Ghosts, and they told him something different. He listened to the memories and emotions and feelings. He caught faint surges of something, close by, undefined, like clouds passing through his fingers.

Insubstantial. Still real. So amazingly soft in their origin, cool against his mind.

It had been amazing shit and he would do it again in a heartbeat.

With Hermann.

Only with Hermann.

And Hermann liked him!

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Maybe it should have been a clue-by-four that they left the lab together not much later, as if that was exactly what they had intended to do all along.

As if dropping by had been to check if anything was on fire. Or missing. Or just… whatever.

Maybe Newton should have noticed that they stayed close together as they walked, his own pace adjusting to Hermann's tired limp.

That when they finally made it to their rooms, Newton felt like a part of him had just been cut off. Like he had gone blind in one eye, deaf on one ear.

"Shit," he muttered, scrubbing a hand through his hair.

Dirt, sweat, blood, grime… he needed a shower. Really. Very badly.

The shower was okay, revived him long enough to feel the aches and pains that had been pushed into the back of his mind by too much adrenaline. He grimaced when he looked into the mirror, saw the blood-shot eye, the abrasions. He looked like something a Kaiju had chewed up and spit out. And probably stomped on a few times for good measure.

Newton walked around his quarters, a little at a loss as to what to do.

What really gave him a clue was that he didn't fall asleep. He was tired, exhausted, down to his very soul, and he felt the weariness in every cell of his body, but he couldn't sleep.

He felt… cold.

And his brain kept rattling with everything he had seen and felt and heard. Everything that was Hermann and the Kaijus and the hive and the Anteverse. Everything that had rushed through them when the baby's brain had Drifted with them.

Everything.

Newton sat up, glasses on his nose, bleary eyes on the bedside clock.

Ass-o'clock in the morning.

And his nose was bleeding.

Shit.

Newton grabbed a towel and pressed it against his nose. A glance into the mirror told him that the blood-shot eye didn't really help with the image of someone who had gone through hell and might not really have come out with his faculties intact.

He saw a world swimming in front of his eyes where he had never been. It excited him because this was where the Kaijus had come from. This was their home planet. Home dimension. Whatever.

He had been there.

All of them. He had been with all of them.

And it didn't stop. Newton kept seeing the flashes, together with more human memories, but they were drowned out by the alien mind that was struggling to make a home in his.

Alone.

He was alone.

A hissing sound. Metal Jaeger claws sinking into his chest. Pain… ripping him apart…

Alone.

He suffered alone.

Newton felt his heart hammering in his chest and for a brief second he was dizzy and disoriented, drawn between being the Kaiju and then the human again and then… both.

Burying his fingers in his hair he groaned. The worst the Kaiju remembered wasn't pain, the mutilation at the hands of the Jaegers. It was being alone in this, for it, alien world. Sent to destroy the enemy, but always alone.

Until two had been sent through.

Then three.

And when one died, then another, the pain was the loneliness.

One mind with him. Small. His mind. Not an offspring, just another self. A clone inside it, a new way for the masters to breed their weapons.

Not a baby.

Just another self.

Born and ready to fight right away.

By now, everything was one blazing migraine and the world was a tiny pin prick of existence in Newton's mind. He wanted to scream in pain, but his whole body was betraying him.

... pulling sensation…

… cells being ripped…

… torn apart…

And then they were gone, leaving nothing but a hole.

Newton drew a harsh breath, tried to steady his feelings.

"Shit," he whispered.

He threw the bloodstained towel into a corner.

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An hour later it wasn't any better. He was bouncing around his room like a rubber ball on steroids. His brain was a fuzzy mess.

He was a mess.

Total wreck.

His mind was in complete disarray, looking for something, reaching for something, and it wasn't there.

The neural connection was no more. The hive mind wasn't his; he was human, damnit! Human!

Newton was close to banging his head against the wall. Okay, scratch that. He was already banging his head against the wall.

Not that it helped.

The chaos was still there and it wasn't getting any less. His very human brain was trying to adjust to something that had never been meant for it. It did it in a way that had Newton scaling his cranial walls: it wanted company. It needed the other half of the hive.

"Shitshitshit," he whispered roughly.

His breathing sped up, and he was close to hyperventilating.

Newton had no idea how much time passed before his overtaxed mind finally quieted down. It was a relief how much the agony faded, left only the sharp throb of each heartbeat and the frantic pants for breath.

Humans had never been meant to Drift with alien minds.

He blinked his eyes open, his vision blurry.

He was on the floor of his quarters.

Getting up was a master piece of coordination and trying not to throw up. Newton managed both, but it was a close call on the vomiting part. At least until he stumbled to the bathroom door. He lost the battle. He just about made it inside his body heaving painfully.

Again, an unknown amount of time passed. He sat next to the toilet, trembling, fighting the echoes of what he had gone through.

Something teased at the edge of his mind.

Newton leaned his head against the wall, close to sobbing as the Kaiju's memories came back; all their memories - teasing, taunting, too much to bear. Everything narrowed down to those alien instincts.

His head started to ache and his vision was swimming. His very brain was on fire, each breath hurting, each heartbeat a million times louder than before. His whole body seemed to throb with the pulse. He was so tempted to give in to the darkness, but then something seemed to intervene.

Cool and logical, serene and very much in control. It interlocked with Newton's mind in a way he hadn't thought possible, clicked into place, and he couldn't really fight it.

It helped.

He almost cried again when the hive was finally nothing but an afterimage, a threatening but harmless thunderstorm that now passed by and disappeared.

Newton drew great gulps of air, clinging to his safety net, the control he missed.

He felt like he had run a marathon.

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Still he couldn't sleep.

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So he found himself wandering the corridors.

Alone.

Heading nowhere in particular.

But he ended up in the lab and he wasn't really surprised to find Hermann there.

Hermann Gottlieb, who looked just as bad as him. Paler than usual, his thin lips almost bloodless, the hair in wild disarray, and dressed in what Newton would have called a hilariously old-fashioned pajamas and a grandfather robe.

Right now he didn't feel like teasing.

And maybe it was his imagination, but there were flecks of dried blood under Hermann's nose.

Nose bleed. Him, too. The doctors had told them that it was a possibility. It should abate soon. Right now their bodies were still under too much stress, not to mention their brains.

Something inside of him unfurled when he saw the other man, something relaxed and breathed a sigh of relief, and he felt the echoes between them.

Ghost-Drift, the pilots called it.

This one was with a twist. This one kept shivering across a connection established through a Kaiju brain and the resonance was… awesome.

"It's not," Gottlieb said, startling him. "It's keeping me awake."

Newt was pretty sure he hadn't said a thing, but he didn't bring it up. He was coming down from a high that left him weak and breathless, like a rush of adrenaline that had finally worn off.

"Couldn't sleep," he simply said. "Too much going on. Loud parties. Yeah. Parties."

Hermann's expression called him a liar; loudly.

But Newton didn't care.

He also didn't care that he fell asleep in the lab, on the ratty old couch, because it was sleep.

And it was good.

And he felt at home.

tbc...