Scar Tissue
Part One: drift incompatible
On paper, it should work. The calculations are impeccable, the percentages speak for themselves.
However, as Dr. Geizsler points out drolly, reality is a language the syntax and structure of which no simulation has ever perfectly comprehended.
Gottlieb says Geizsler is talking hogwash. Geizsler says he only speaks the truth and the truth is that Gottlieb can't see beyond his numbers. The conflict escalates and expands, until it fills the corridors and the mess hall. In the end, Vanessa Gottlieb requests leave for both men and drags them off...somewhere. Nobody knows where. Nobody asks where.
It's generally acknowledged that Gottlieb, Geizsler, and Gottlieb are a law unto themselves. Most of the rest of the Shatterdome is quite content not to be intimate with every clause and sub-paragraph involved in such a relationship.
The absence of the Kaiju Science Department is not mentioned in front of Stacker Pentecost during the Monday morning Shatterdome meeting. Given the conflict of the last week, it does not need to be noted. In some things, Stacker is quite content to be an ostrich.
In others, he cannot afford to stick his head in the sand and ignore the facts.
The facts are that the numbers are wrong, reality refuses to give way before them, and he has a restored Mark III that is fast reaching completion and lacks the pilot pairing to operate it.
Professionally, as Marshal Pentecost of the PPDC, Stacker's annoyed.
Privately, as Mako's adopted father, Stacker thanks every deity in the universe – including whatever things the kaiju worship – that Mako Mori isn't Drift-compatible with Yancy Becket.
–
The fishermen they saved dragged him from the sea, a dead man whose mouth gushed water and who gasped like one of their fish when they pulled the broken armour from his body and thumped the life back into him.
Death failed to hold claim to Yancy Becket that night.
Sometimes Yancy wishes it had.
"I apologise," Mako says yet again as she tests and re-tests the programming connections through the Jaeger's left arm.
"You have nothing to apologise for, Mako," he tells her with all the emphasis he can. She's too young for the burdens she carries. "It just turns out that they're wrong and we're not Drift-compatible after all."
There's a part of Yancy that's relieved. He's not the young man who walked into the Academy with his brother on a lark and a laugh and discovered that piloting a Jaeger was something they could do. Now he knows the cost of it, the price of piloting a Jaeger in body and in soul, and he wouldn't wish that on Mako.
And there's a part of him that's disappointed, because he likes Mako – bright and energetic and beautiful – and she'd make a helluva co-pilot.
But if the numbers say aye, the Drift itself says nay.
They tried. Tried to match minds, to balance the neural load, but all he could think of was Raleigh: the cry torn from both their minds, the agony of their broken minds trying to piece together what they'd had as their broken bodies healed. He relived the jagged edges of pain and memory taking over the Drift, the silences that grew more bitter with every failed attempt, and the last and greatest betrayal – the desertion.
I can't do this anymore.
As it turns out, neither can Yancy – at least, not with Mako.
Yancy saw Pentecost's expression when he received the list of compatible candidates according to the pilot profiles submitted by the Jaeger Psyche Analysts and the Kwoonmasters: bitter acceptance. He didn't see Pentecost's expression when the test connection failed and the neural handshake fell through, but he can guess at the older man's relief.
Now, watching Mako pouring herself into a Jaeger she'll never get to pilot, Yancy wishes they'd turned out to be Drift compatible – mostly for her sake, although perhaps a little for his.
Maybe it would have made a difference if he'd said something to her about the tender twist that's been pulling at his insides for the last six months as she worked on the Jaeger that used to be his and his brother's. Then again, maybe not. Mako has no time for boys or men. Her passion and purpose burns inside Gipsy Danger's metal frame, and there's no room for anyone else in that flame.
So Pentecost has gone to find Raleigh, wherever he is. He thinks that four years might have dulled the jagged edges, healed the raw wounds they couldn't hide.
He might be right.
Yancy and Raleigh haven't spoken in four years, dying to each other as completely as if Yancy's broken body hadn't been fished out of the water that night. And Yancy doesn't dream of his brother anymore, but he does know Raleigh's not dead.
Assuming they can Drift again, it seems the Becket Boys – the Becket Brothers – will ride again.
–
With the umbrella shielding her from the worst of the downpour, Mako resolves to be polite to Raleigh Becket. He is sensei's choice, even if he is not hers, and he is the brother who is spoken of with tenderness by Yancy even if the pain of silence and separation remains.
That the choice has come to this only after her failure will make gracious acceptance difficult, but she will not falter. There is a war on. Operation Pitfall and the closing of the Breach matter.
The personal feelings of Mako Mori do not.
So she watches the Sikorsky's blades cut through the waves of rain as people dash to and fro among the raindrops, and she holds position – as the Becket Boys did not that long ago night in Anchorage – and waits.
Sensei emerges first, moving through the rain as though it doesn't touch him. Little does these days. She glimpses the tow-headed figure emerging from behind him, but her attention is caught by the look on sensei's face.
Hope.
It hurts – were her efforts not good enough for him, then? But Mako pushes that thought away – polite graciousness, remember? Sensei has opened the umbrella and handed it to Raleigh Becket, and beneath the dark oval of its cover, his eyes are smoky blue and somehow familiar.
He stares at her staring at him, as though she is not what he anticipated either – although he cannot have anticipated her at all. His gaze slides to sensei as the introductions are made. Mako barely registers the compliment – one of our brightest – her thoughts are too confused.
Older than the last photos, harder, worn by time and trial and hardship. Not a boy anymore, not a hero or a rock star, but a man. And both like and unlike Yancy, neither copy nor reflection, but each entirely their own.
Mako blurts what first comes into her head. In Japanese rather than English, which is a small comfort.
"I imagined him differently."
Sensei smiles. So does Mr. Becket.
"Better? Or worse?"
And it seems that he is also a man who understands Japanese and speaks it with reasonable facility.
Heat and humiliation rush through her, astonishment at his understanding, embarrassment at her gaffe.
"I apologise, Mr. Becket. I have heard a great deal about you."
Somewhat to her surprise, he doesn't ask exactly what she was told, nor who she heard it from. Instead, he simply nods in forgiveness, his eyes holding hers as he smiles. Mature acceptance of her apology, no demand or sneer or sulk.
The unexpectedness of his demeanour confuses her and her thoughts are scattered and disjointed as they walk into the Shatterdome.
The following hour only exacerbates her confusion.
This is not the Raleigh Becket she envisioned walking away from his brother, leaving them both wounded and heartsore, running away from his responsibilities as a Ranger of the PPDC and as a Jaeger pilot. This is a man whose burdens are visible in the lines of his face and the tiredness of his eyes, in the rough of his hands and the humor of his voice.
This is a man with forgiveness in him for a stranger's blunt impudence, with the patience to deal with Dr Geizsler's obsession kindly, with the courtesy to question the wisdom of sensei's plan without challenging sensei's authority.
He is a far cry from the boy who swaggered through the glory days of the Jaeger program.
If Mako was asked, she would say that Raleigh Becket has grown up.
And what that will do to the Drift with his brother, Mako does not know.
–
It's been a day of shocks.
First the introduction to Mako Mori, which jolted something in him like the starter spark for an engine – attraction, recognition, connection, it didn't matter. It was more than he'd felt in too long, stirring emotions up from the depths which he hadn't let himself feel as he worked on the Wall and kept to himself.
Then Pentecost's plan – a mission to close the Breach. If they find him a co-pilot, if this Jaeger Miss Mori has repaired—
But there Raleigh Becket's thoughts stutter, because the Jaeger isn't just any Mark III; it's his Jaeger. Blue and gold and beautiful beyond measure, and looking at her standing there aches in his gut so badly that he only just registers Miss Mori's statement about the double-core nuclear reactor.
"She's one of a kind now."
He glances at her, awed by the gift she's given him and a little curious at the reverent note in her voice. "She always was."
"Brings back the memories, doesn't it, Rals?"
He whirls, shock searing through him like lightning. He can't breathe, can't think of anything but how they last parted four years ago: anger and frustration and emptiness and despair... "Yance—"
Yancy looks like he doesn't quite know what to do or say, either. It's weird, because they never had to think about this stuff before.
"You never write," he blurts.
Yancy snorts. "And you never call."
It's the right thing to say, even if it's completely wrong for them. Then they're hugging each other, arms solid and strong, laughing and choking and holding tight, warm and living and healed and whole – well, mostly. As much as they can be after the trauma of the broken Drift, after Yancy's injury, after Raleigh left.
How long has it been since he had his arms around his brother? God, too long.
"Jesus, Yance, it's...it's good to see you again."
"It's good to see you too, Rals." They let go a little – enough that Yancy can get Raleigh's head between his hands to study him with a faint frown. After a moment, it transforms into a smirk. "You're still butt-ugly, kiddo."
"Still prettier and younger than you, old man!"
"Hey, Mako tells me I'm mature," Yancy says with an open fondness. Raleigh follows his gaze and turns to see Miss Mori – Mako – standing in the corner of the balcony, hugging her tablet, watching them with a pensive expression. "You gonna say she's a liar?"
"I'm gonna suggest she's being nice."
There's a moment when Raleigh feels like those four years have never happened. They're still the Becket Boys, exchanging quips, rubbing shoulders the way they used to back when they Drifted together–
Only it's not the same at all.
Because they're standing here touching, grinning, in tune, with Gipsy Danger behind them – but there's no connection. They're reunited, but there's no awareness anymore. The sense of other that they carried with them through four years of Drifting – that they couldn't find after Knifehead tore Yancy out of the Conn-Pod and tossed him into an icy sea, that they were tearing themselves apart to find, to have, to regain – is gone.
And, watching his brother smile at Miss Mori, it hits Raleigh that whatever the Becket brothers were back in the day, that was then.
This is now and Raleigh can already tell: they're no longer Drift-compatible.
tbc?