As the painkillers do their work and Ricky Owens drifts in and out of consciousness, he reflects on the events of the last two days.
Burns and bruises and broken bones notwithstanding, it could have been much worse.
The Crystal Nibiru prototype could have been reduced to unworkable shrapnel, instead of merely taking heavy damage.
Crystal Cove could have been destroyed. It isn't a big town, and it wouldn't have taken much to crush it, burn it, melt it down into another gravestone in the cemetery that the world had slowly become.
Cassidy could have been killed.
The unforgivable thought comes back again and again, cutting through the haze. She could have been killed, and it would have been his fault. His fault for letting her pull him into their unfinished private-owned Jaeger, his fault for not reacting quickly enough, his fault for filling the drift with his terror, his fault for not securing the tools and boxes that flew around the cockpit, bruising and slicing at her skin. She'd married him, of all people, and he'd nearly gotten her killed.
(He could have been killed, comes the thought, but his brain can't muster any leftover fear. He doesn't matter, and he never has.)
(You matter to Cassidy, whispers another thought, treacherous. He holds onto it for an instant, until he remembers that nothing might have ever mattered to her again and it was his fault)
Maybe if there'd been more warning. Really, though, who would have ever thought that a kaiju would bother to attack Crystal Cove? It's by the sea, sure, but kaiju had almost exclusively touched down in major cities, with millions of people packed in too close to escape when the time came.
But attack Crystal Cove it had, and Crystal Nibiru had been the only halfway-functioning Jaeger anywhere close enough to fight it.
The harnesses were too tight and they chafed and burned and the heat of the wiring was uncomfortable and he felt awful because how many times had he insisted that comfort came after practicality and now he was seeing, feeling,seeing his wife's jaw clench as her skin rubbed raw and burnt.
It's okay, honey, she murmured, it's fine, important things first.
And he stilled his guilt and his fear, punched them back and pressed them down and did his best to keep up, because he may not have been a fighter but damn could his angel throw a punch.
They fought for what felt like hours, kicking and punching and ripping away tentacles, drawing the kaiju away from the city, and the whole time he felt Cassidy's every break and burn and cut and tried not to think about them (and failed).
And then, finally, they saw their opening (saw it as one, not a team anymore but a whole) and they'd gone for it. The deafening, unholy shrieking rose louder and higher as metallic hands pried the kaiju's mouth open, farther, farther, until it ripped and cracked and fell silent, and fell.
They'd barely made it back to the loading zone, both bleeding heavily from nose and ears and mouth. Cassidy had passed out almost immediately, and he rushed to get out of his harness (the awful, hot, restrictive, painful harness) and disentangle her from hers.
Ricky's fingers fumbled at the straps for nearly a minute before he saw that not all of the blood was hers, and understood that he was in fact also badly injured.
When the next deep breath pressed his lungs against broken ribs, the pain assaulted him all at once, and he blacked out.
He woke up in a hospital bed, covered with various bandages and hooked up to an IV. He turned his head to look around the room—drab, dreary, medical equipment and mint-green walls and bare white tile—and saw her in the next bed over, and his heart nearly stopped.
She, too, was covered in bandages. Angry red burns and dark bruises and big jagged cuts and little sharp scratches crisscrossed her body beneath the hospital gown and the bandages and the casts.
She was asleep.
She was beautiful.
She was hurt.
She was alive.
With the unthinkable kept at bay for a bit longer, he closed his eyes, and he slept.
And now Ricky is awake again, and there are slender fingers playing with his hair, and his vision is still blurry because he left his glasses behind and no one has brought them to him, and the smooth voice that he loves so much is humming softly over him.
He squints up at Cassidy. There's a bandage wrapped around her forehead and her other arm is in a cast, and he can see a crutch propped against the back of her chair. Her face is ashen, but relieved; he can feel the tension go out of her.
All he can think to say is a slurred "Dammit, you're up first again."
That gets a laugh out of her. "Good morning to you, too, beautiful."
Silence, warm and comfortable.
A horrible thought occurs to him. "Are you, are you, did you—" he mumbles, staring at the crutch, dread curling in his stomach.
She shakes her head. "I'll be fine, honey. So will you. That's what they're saying, anyway," she says, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb (presumably aimed at the staff in general).
Relief is quickly replaced by guilt. "M'sorry about the Jaeger. The harnesses."
He can tell by the way her muscles tense that she's just started to shrug, and thought better of it as her injuries object. "We couldn't have known we were going to have to pilot that thing so soon. It's not your fault." She grins. "Might make you more inclined to listen in the future."
"Maybe." He tries to focus. His eyes are starting to close again, and he feels like there's something more still to say. "Thanks for being okay."
A smile, a quick one, to hide the look on her face as she gently touches a bruise on his. "You're welcome."
He curls his hand over hers as he starts to fall asleep again. "Thanks for marrying me, angel," he murmurs, and then he slips back into darkness.
Cassidy stays there, holding her husband's hand, watching him breathe, feeling almost numb with relief that he's still here.
Who knows what's in store for the future (although the world's leading scientists can hazard a guess, and it isn't optimistic). For now, they're both still here, living, mattering.
For now, that's all that she can find it in herself to care about.
"I love you too," she says, eventually, and settles into her chair for the night.