"You should have seen them," Chung Wei said as he slurped his noodles into his mouth.
"It was quite beautiful," his brother Jin continued. "Like a dance."
"Totally drift compatible," Hu finished.
All three triplets nodded in unison.
Sasha scoffed and crushed her soda can in one fist. "She has no experience."
"We all have to start somewhere," Jin said.
"Not now. It's too late. The end of the world is no time for a rookie to jump in the deep end," Sasha replied.
"You were young once, lyubimaya," Aleksis placed a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.
"But not anymore. We are old souls, and we know what we are doing. We've been doing it for eight years and never failed once. We've seen pilots who were practically children perish before us because they hesitated at the wrong moment," Sasha swallowed the lump in her throat. "They had so much more to give yet it was stripped away by those monsters."
"There's nothing else we could have done," Hu said. "Every time we fight we give it our all. Sometimes it just isn't enough to save everyone."
"This time it has to be enough," Aleksis said. "How many more kaiju do you think we can outlast?"
"Not many," Sasha said. "Which is why we can't afford for this child to hesitate. If she does, she dooms us all."
"Pentecost struck her down anyway," Chung mumbled through a mouth full of food. "No way is he going to let his precious daughter drift with that handsome sad sack."
He continued to shovel noodles in his mouth, oblivious to the looks of disgust on his companions' faces as chilli sauce dribbled down his chin.
"Are you sure you're eating fast enough?" Hu remarked drily. "Quick, your dumplings might run away if you don't hurry."
Chung wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and then on Jin's sleeve. His brother exclaimed in revulsion and slid away from him.
"Why do you always do this, Chung?" Jin yelled. "Xi niu! Don't touch my things! You always ruin them!"
"Because I'm trying to do you a favour, you anal-retentive nerd," he replied. "Relax for once in your life."
Hu snorted with laughter and Jin turned on him. "Stop encouraging him! You won't think it's so funny next time he decides to wind you up."
"He never gets as wound up as you," Chung said. "If I wanted to get on Hu's nerves I'd just read one of his poems to Mako."
Hu's face immediately darkened. "You wouldn't."
"But it would be so fun," Chung smiled.
"I'll kill you," Hu threatened.
"Good luck piloting Crimson Typhoon with only captain neurosis over here," Chung nodded at Jin.
"Screw you," Jin stormed off towards the bathrooms to rinse chilli sauce out of his shirt.
"It's not even real, anyway," Hu said, blushing. "It's only really the idea of her that I like. What can I say, I'm a romantic."
"Never going to happen, brother," Chung said. "She's got gooey eyes for the hun dan blonde."
"I know, okay? Wo de tian a! Qing wa cao de liu mang!" Hu snapped, also leaving the table
Chung looked back to the Kaidonovskys and shrugged. "Brothers, right?"
Sasha gave a curt nod and collected her tray. She did not, in fact, understand what it was like to have siblings. She had grown up as an only child in a village outside of Moscow. She was a small and scrappy girl who did not get along with other children and had never known a sense of belonging until she was recruited to the Solntsevskaya Bratva by her boyfriend when she was sixteen. Over the next couple of years she ran drugs and supplies to various members in prison, pretending to be their girlfriend or wife. But too many of them wanted her to be their girlfriend or wife once they got out, and her superiors found an easier alternative; she would become a prison guard.
She met him on her first day. A former army lieutenant who was dishonourably discharged for beating a man nearly to death. She had heard about him from the other guards, but nothing could have prepared her for seven feet of pure muscle gripping her hand and introducing himself as Aleksis. She fell in love instantly. From that point on, he was the home that she'd never had.
"What was she even doing in Gipsy Danger in the first place?" Sasha growled as she stormed down the hall of the Shatterdome. "I thought Pentecost had said she wasn't going to pilot!"
"Becket didn't want to drift with anyone else," Aleksis replied gruffly. "The neural handshake would never had lasted long enough for them to get off the ground."
They turned the corner to see Raleigh Becket throw Chuck Hansen against a wall, breaking a steam pipe. A bespectacled man with arm sleeve tattoos leaned over and whispered to a man leaning on a cane, "oh man, this is gonna be good."
"I said, apologize to her!" Raleigh demanded.
Chuck lashed out but Raleigh blocked his punches, before twisting his arm and flipping him over, pinning him to the floor. Herc Hansen emerged from Marshall Stacker Pentecost's office and broke the two apart. Raleigh and Mako Mori disappeared into the Marshall's office while Chuck wrenched free of his father's grasp.
"They're going to get us killed!" he yelled at Herc, turning on his heel and flouncing towards the Kaidonovskys. "Am I wrong? He's washed-up and she's no good!"
"She's too inexperienced," Sasha agreed.
"Typical nepotism. Why couldn't she just stick to her computer and let one of the boys be a real pilot," Chuck said.
"You think women cannot be real pilots?" Aleksis asked, his voice low.
Chuck glanced at Sasha nervously. "Of course not! Just… you know. She's not right for it. She's only here because of Pentecost."
"And you? You think you would be in the Corps if your daddy wasn't Hercules Hansen?" Sasha couldn't hide the disdain from her voice.
"I've been a pilot for years," Chuck snapped.
"You should keep walking if you want to live for many more years," Aleksis said.
Chuck glared at the couple before pushing between them and stamping around the corner, screaming at some unsuspecting engineers to get out of his way.
"He is just as irresponsible as the girl. They don't think, they only run on vengeance, and their fathers never kept them in check. A Shatterdome is no place for a child to grow up," Sasha said, turning to her husband.
The lines around the edge of his mouth hardened. "I know."
She reached up, standing on her tiptoes to cup his face in her hand. "We must wait until it's over. I will not bring a baby into a world where kaiju reign."
He took her hand in both of his and presses his lips to her palm. "I understand, lyubimaya. But I should not be the only thing in your life that you love. It is too much for you to lose."
"I don't want anything but you, Aleksis," Sasha said. "I will never lose you. If Cherno Alpha ever forsakes us, we will perish together. We will always be connected in the drift."
At that moment, Mako left the Marshall's office in tears and vanished down the other end of the corridor, while Raleigh and Stacker continued to argue. Sasha kissed her husband's hands and followed her.
"Mori," she called out as she got closer. "Wait."
"Lieutenant, hello," Mako wiped her cheeks quickly. "What is it?"
"Be sure you don't get in a jaeger again," Sasha said sharply.
"I won't," Mako sighed. "The Marshall has ordered that I will not pilot again."
"Well, good," Sasha said. "The program has no more time for a washout and his schoolgirl crush."
"Excuse me?" Mako looked taken aback. "Raleigh is the best pilot there is! I'm the one who let him down!"
Sasha laughed coldly. "You think he is the best pilot? Aleksis and I once shared a neural handshake for eighteen hours. No Kaiju ever breached the Siberian wall in the six years we were there. You think your boy could have done all that? No. He's a renegade and you're too blinded by your attraction to him to know better."
"You don't know him," Mako said, her voice shaking. "I do."
"One drift and you think you understand him? Trust me, it takes more than that to truly know a person. But it must have been enough to make him jealous of the Hansen kid."
"He wasn't jealous! Chuck was being nasty. He stood up for me," Mako raised her chin defiantly, proud of the respect he had shown for her.
Sasha crossed her arms. "And that's why you shouldn't be a pilot. Not only do you have no experience, but you can't even stand up for yourself."
"Yes, I can!" Mako retorted.
"No! Your boyfriend shouldn't have to defend your honour. If you had any honour you would fight for it yourself!"
Mako stepped towards her, and Sasha matched her up. They stood nearly chest to chest, glaring fiercely at each other, fists clenched.
"You don't want to fight me," Sasha hissed.
"No. I don't need to fight to prove my worth to anyone, especially not you," Mako replied. "I know who I am. I'm a jaeger pilot."
"You are a reckless little girl who has no business piloting a jaeger."
"Hey! Don't talk to her like that!" Raleigh appeared at the end of the hall, followed by Aleksis.
"What are you going to do about it, has-been?" Sasha said spitefully.
Mako's face twisted in rage and she shoved Sasha by the shoulders. Sasha raised a hand to slap her but Aleksis caught her wrist before the blow fell. Raleigh had Mako around the waist and was pulling her away as she kicked her legs and shrieked rapid Japanese curses at the Kaidonovskys.
"You shouldn't fight, lyubimaya," Aleksis said to his wife. "The kaiju inflict enough pain on the human race already without us doing it to each other."
Mako fell silent upon hearing this, and Raleigh put her back on the ground. The air was thick with silence. Raleigh opened his mouth, then closed it, looking at Mako and giving her a small smile. Her face lit up in return, and she turned towards the Russians.
"We have just as much right to be here as anyone else. We all want the same thing – to stop the kaiju and close the breach. If we have the skills and faith to make a difference, why shouldn't we be allowed to help?" she said.
Sasha and Aleksis exchanged glances, but before they could reply, Tendo Choi's voice crackled over the speaker system as warning sirens blared. "It's a double attack. Two Category Fours. Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha report."
Sasha gasped awake as an unbearable tightness in her chest made her heart feel like it was being crushed from the inside. Stacker Pentecost was sitting by her side with a look on his face that made her want to vomit.
"Sasha, I…"
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no. Why am I alive?"
"Aleksis activated your emergency escape pods after Cherno Alpha started taking on water. Only yours," Stacker said.
"No," Sasha moaned, clawing at the tubes that were feeding oxygen into her nose and fluid into her veins. She could feel the emptiness in her mind where her husband had been before Leatherback had crushed him in their Conn Pod. Her body still shook with the fear and pain and love that he was feeling as his life was extinguished.
"Hong Kong is safe, and the mission is going ahead early. I just wanted let you know that he did not die in vain. I will not let any of this be for nought," Stacker said, leaning forward earnestly. "Sasha, I'm so sorry."
She took a deep breath and screamed. The nurse in the room looked at Stacker in alarm, and he waved her out. She screamed as though all the air in her body was trying to claw its way out of her, so that she could no longer breathe, no longer live, so she could join her love in the once place where he wouldn't let her follow.
Once her throat was raw, she turned back to the Marshall, a never-ending stream of tears overflowing from her eyes. "Let me go. Let me pilot. I'll take your daughter's place. I'll destroy them all."
"Mako is Raleigh's co-pilot," Stacker said. "They're drift compatible. They have a bond. You know what that's like. I can't break it. They're too good together."
"She's just a rookie. He's just a washout," Sasha protests weakly.
"And together they just took down two category fours. Alone. They've proved their worth. They're going on this mission," Stacker said. "And so am I."
Sasha frowned in confusion, before more grief gripped her insides. "Oh no. Herc?"
"He's alive," Stacker said. "But injured. He can't pilot Striker Eureka, so I'm going to drift with Chuck."
"No," Sasha said. "You're going to drift with me."
"Don't be ridiculous," Stacker tried to stop her as she sat up and started pulling sensors off her body, causing her heart monitor to deteriorate into shrill beeping.
"Why not? You're going to die anyway, and I have nothing to live for," she said.
"Sasha, please," Stacker pleaded, but she was already out of bed.
"I'm going, Pentecost," she opened the door to find Mako loitering in front of it, chewing her fingernails, while Herc cradled his broken arm as he leaned against the wall.
"You're alive!" Herc straightened up. "Sasha, I'm so…"
"Save it," she said brusquely, in no mood to accept anyone's sympathies. "I want to pilot your jaeger with Stacker."
"What?" Herc looked confused. "Why? What about Chuck?"
Sasha took a deep breath and put her hand on his shoulder. "I have never known what it is to love a child. Now I will never get the chance. But I know what it's like to have a family and love them more than you love yourself, and I know how it feels to lose them. I will not let you feel as I do right now, Herc. It's a pain you should not have to endure if I can help it."
Herc's eyes misted over. "He's all I've got. My son."
"He's all you have still," Sasha said. "Let me go."
Herc pinched the bride of his nose between his forefinger and thumb, nodding.
"Good," Sasha turned towards Mako, who was in quiet conversation with her father.
"Mori," she said. "I hear we're going to be working together. Let's go and get these Drivesuits on."
Mako looked at Stacker, who kissed her forehead.
"Go," he said. "See you before the end of the world."
Together Mako and Sasha made their way to the engineering wing in relative silence. As they entered the elevator, Mako took a deep breath.
"I shouldn't have pushed you. It was unnecessary. I'm sorry," she said.
"Thank you," Sasha replied. "I'm sorry for saying you shouldn't be a pilot. I hear you and Becket are the heroes of the hour."
"You could say that," Mako ducked her head modestly.
"If we get through this, expect huge things. Mako Mori will be a household name. You'll be famous."
Mako frowned. "I don't think I want that."
"It's too late. You've already saved the lives of millions of people. I can practically hear the endorsement agents on the phone right now, demanding to know who you are and if they can put your name on their next product," Sasha said.
"Is that what happened to you?" Mako asked.
"Yes and no," Sasha ignored the twinge in her stomach. "Aleksis said if anyone called the house wanting us to sell something, I should tell them he would crush their skulls with his bare hands if they ever contacted us again. It was quite a convincing deterrent."
The elevator doors swooshed open and Mako took Sasha's hand, squeezing it lightly before letting it go.
"He was a good man," Mako said. "I'm very sorry that he died."
"Me too, kiddo, me too," Sasha sighed. "I didn't really deserve him. I never did. When we met I was a mafia rat, and I had heard all these dangerous things about him. I thought he was a mad man, a cold-blooded killer in the making. But he'd only ever hurt one man in his life; a violent, evil creature who had attacked his sister in the foulest of ways and driven her to suicide. Aleksis was not a warrior, but he loved deeply and he loved widely. He wanted to save us all."
"You did deserve him," Mako said, wrapping her arm around Sasha's shoulders. "Everybody deserves to love and be loved. We can never choose who we love, and how much, or for how long. Sometimes you just look at someone and all you know is he's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your life."
Sasha choked on a sob and leaned in to rest her head against Mako's. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I saw him and I knew. I knew I was meant to love him."
A young engineer approached the two women nervously. "Uh, sorry to interrupt. Your Drivesuits are ready."
Mako and Sasha made their way over to the platform as the engineers started assembling their suits. Sasha winced as her chestplate was screwed into place.
"Wo de tian a!" she exclaimed.
Mako looked at her in surprise.
"Just something I picked up from the Wei triplets," she said sadly.
With their suits complete and their helmets synced, they made their way to the command center. When Raleigh saw Mako, his whole demeanour lifted, and he grinned in admiration.
"That boy acts as though the sun shines out of your rear end," Sasha said to Mako, and she giggled.
"It's special, what you two have," Sasha continued. "You don't come across many friends like that in a lifetime. It's obvious that he thinks the world of you, and no kaiju can ever take that away. Good luck to you, Mako Mori."
"And good luck to you, Sasha Kaidonovsky," Mako replied as Marshall Pentecost took the stage.
"Today, today… at the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we've chosen not only to believe in ourselves but in each other. Today, there's not a man nor woman in here that shall stand alone. Not today. Today we face the monsters that are at our door and bring the fight to them! Today, we are cancelling the apocalypse!"
doot doot hey it's me again
this was an idea from gingerhaze on tumblr but I loved it so much. pacific rim is da bomb but it would have been nice to see the two female characters actually interact. hope i did it justice!
p.s. the wei triplets used chinese curses from Firefly-verse in case you were wondering