There are exactly two times a year Herc Hansen lets himself get so drunk he can't even remember what exactly his own name is. And neither of these dates is Christmas.
He never used to do this when he had been a pilot. Maybe he'd felt some sort of fatherly obligation to his son, that no matter how foreign their relationship became he wouldn't add to it by bringing splitting headaches and uncontrolled avalanches of messy emotions into the Drift. Maybe he'd remembered how it felt to wade through the mind of his fuckass brother who couldn't do anything right but make the people who loved him cry.
Mostly he thinks he just didn't want his egotistical jerk of a son, his little boy, to have all his fears justified. To step into Herc's head and conclude, yeah, my fucking old man only saved me 'cause I was ten fucking minutes closer.
But every September fifth starting in 2025, Herc nurses a killer hangover with every ounce of his dignity as a soldier and husband and father and beats himself up for making an impossible choice.
It's January of 2027 now, and sometimes Herc still dreams about circuits and a metallic tang and memories that aren't his. But most of the time he only thinks about the idiots of the PPDC and how they just won't cooperate with him. The Jaeger Program, even in its dying years, even in the first months of its slow and painful dismemberment, employed over 1500 people. That's 1500 technicians, engineers, service people who are about to be out of a job, and the PPDC has decided to maroon them. Again.
He complains to Tendo about all this – about the damn politicians and cowards and ingrate jackasses – at the annual Hong Kong shatterdome "Cancelin' the Apocalypse" party because he's a loud drunk, just like Scott. Except unlike his good-for-nothing brother, he doesn't know if he'd been a loud drunk before or only after they'd mashed their brains together into an ugly pile of a thousand and one different personal issues. After all, he'd only started abusing his liver like this two years ago, when the white-hot lights had torn the ocean asunder and two – only two – life pods had surfaced in the lonely Pacific blue.
Either way it's too late and he doesn't care.
"I've been talking with some of the old places I used to work at," Tendo shouts over the echoing music. Ukrainian hard house or something. "And they're willing to take in about a hundred or so people with engineering skills. Saving the world, even indirectly, looks pretty good on a résumé."
"Thanks, Tendo," Herc slurs, a bit weary after his tirade. "Really 'ppreciate it, since those imbeciles in charge seem to think that once we've saved the entire goddamn world we can do everything by ourselves without any money at all."
"You know, you can take a break sometimes, Marshal" Tendo says, only half-convincingly because it's a well-established fact that Herc Hansen never delegates his work. Never had, never will. "You haven't been looking too great lately."
"We're at a crucial stage in the transitioning. Too many important things going on to take a vacation," he grunts. He's getting too tired for this train of thought, unable to fish out all the right words and all the right feelings to articulate precisely what kinds of stress January 12, 2027 is.
"Hey, Tendo my man, how've you been?" Raleigh's sunny voice cuts Tendo off from whatever he'd been trying to say to Herc to lighten up the mood. Herc looks up, bleary-eyed, from his beer – the sixth glass tonight – to see Mako and Raleigh push through the crowd to their lonely table in the corner.
"Wonderful, not counting my imminent unemployment of course," Tendo greets with a broad grin. "Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori, come back from your fancy interviews to hang out with your old pal?"
"We barely escaped the reporters," Mako says with her soft laugh. "They all want us to talk about the mission. 'How do you feel on the second anniversary, Miss Mori? What was it like to pilot again, Mr. Becket?' I don't know how you were able to handle it for so many years, Marshal."
"You get better at telling them to bugger off in nicer terms," Herc replies more gruffly than he means to. And you learn not to step outside during these times, he leaves unsaid. He gestures at the empty chairs across from him and Tendo, and they accept his invitation to sit.
"Oh, Marshal, I almost forgot," Raleigh says, reaching into his scruffy old bag. Herc is almost certain it's the same one he brought with him to the shatterdome two years ago. "When we were in Sydney, some guy came up to us and asked me to give this to you. Wouldn't tell me his name or anything, just said it was important you got this ASAP."
He places a flat, rectangular box in the space between them. The edges are a bit scuffed, but otherwise it looks almost new, a single strip of packing tape holding the flaps down. Herc stares at it with bloodshot, untrusting eyes before turning his gaze back to Raleigh. He catches something in the younger man's expression. Something he used to see in Chuck's, something he sees every day in the mirror.
Guilt.
His stomach twists itself into knots.
"Not bottled-up Kaiju blood or whatever poison they're trying to get us with these days, is it?" he asks with forced humor, picking it up and turning it around critically. It's about the size of a large hardcover book but weighs less than he thought it would. Something rustles inside. Raleigh smiles again, but it doesn't reach his eyes, doesn't erase the guilt.
"Nah. They wouldn't let me take it anywhere without running a million different tests on it first. That's why it took so long for it to get here. Nice to see they're at least taking the threats of the Kaiju cultists seriously."
"I'm not surprised, seeing what some of them mailed to you," Herc remarks too casually, the incident that had almost sent Raleigh and Mako to the hospital still fresh in his mind. Why on earth people would hate them for getting rid of the behemoth hostile aliens hell-bent on destroying all of mankind is a complete mystery to him. Talk about ungrateful. Them and all the other cretins at the PPDC.
"Well, it's a good thing Newt was lecturing with us that day," Raleigh says, again with the fake humor. "Guess that's a lesson to always keep the resident Kaiju specialist with you at all times."
They lapse into an uncomfortable silence, filled only with the pounding beat that's making Herc's head hurt far more than it should. He puts the box down to the side unopened. The guilt at the table is palpable, even though they all know there's nothing they could possibly apologize for, and he's drowning in it, helpless.
"Why don't we make a toast?" Mako finally asks after a few minutes. She looks at Herc and raises her glass. "To all the brave heroes who g – gave their lives so we might live."
She understands, he thinks, and he gratefully seizes the opportunity to throw down the last of his beer and excuse himself to grab another pint, the package tucked under his arm. The one that had been broken. He doesn't let that chain of memories rise to the surface.
He pushes and shoves his way through the mess hall, giving half-coherent responses to the greetings and condolences offered to him. He doesn't want their greetings and condolences. Doesn't need their greetings and condolences, the way Stacker never had either. He is the fixed point now, but he's sinking and his systems are losing their bearings, and he doesn't need anyone else to see that.
Finally, he stumbles out of the doors, through the grid of hallways, and sinks into a pile outside his former quarters. This section of the shatterdome hasn't been in use for a while now, what with Mako and Raleigh constantly traveling for one much-demanded appearance or another and every other ranger from '25 being dead. A fine layer of dust rises from the floor and settles on his clothes. He stares ahead.
From here, the only thing he sees is the door to Chuck's old room.
They'd cleaned it out already, of course. Packed everything his son had ever owned into a few crates they'd given to Herc to decide what to do with. He'd gone through everything and taken out a small, plush toy dog – Chuck's first dog and threadbare from a decade and a half of love – and ordered them to bury everything else with the empty coffin. It wasn't much, but it was still more than he's been able to do for Angela.
With shaky hands, he peels off the tape holding the package in his hands shut. They'd tried their best after the scans and tests to put it back together again, he can tell, but it's clearly been opened before. He doesn't know whether the wave of boiling emotions crashing over him is anger or bitterness or regret.
Or guilt.
The first thing he sees is a piece of lined paper, folded once haphazardly down the center and laid neatly to cover whatever's beneath it. He sets the box down by his feet, closing his eyes when he picks up the note so he doesn't see what it comes with because there's already a lump in his throat and he'd promised himself he wouldn't cry this year.
Herc,
Remember that beach we always used to go to? This washed up there a few days ago. Some fucking idiot tourist tried to take it, so I punched him good in the face for you.
You always called me a fuckass who didn't know anything. But I've been in your head, and I know that the people you love, deep down, you'd rather they not be heroes if it meant they could be alive. I know what family and duty mean to you, even if you think I'm nothing but a fucking disgrace to the Hansen name.
Forgive yourself. He was a good kid, and good kids don't make their parents cry.
– S
He lets the letter fall to the ground and slowly picks up the piece of twisted metal from the nest of tissue paper in the package. Scorch marks mar the surface, but he can pick out the faded green paint and the edge of what was once a decal of a torpedo and a dog who'd been so much better at communicating for them than they'd ever been.
He squeezes the metal in his hands until blood starts to flow and lets himself cry, hunched in front of his door, across from Chuck's and on the other side of the gulf that had always existed between them and had now turned into a yawning abyss. On the other side of the multitude of things he'd never said to Chuck, the things that had passed between them only in the Drift: that he'd always loved his son, loved him from the day he took his first breath, loved him even before then; that he didn't save him only because he was ten fucking minutes closer, that he'd never regretting saving Chuck, that the only thing he regretted was being unable to save both of them.
That family – in the end, he'd been unable to save any of them.
A/N: For anyone not familiar with the Hansen family history, Scott is Herc's delinquent younger brother who co-piloted with him before fucking up real bad and getting dismissed. Canon says Scissure's breach date was September 2, 2014, and it was taken down by a nuke on the third day (so September 4, even though the novel says September 2, but then again the novel got Chuck's age at the attack wrong so). The people in downtown Sydney were given an hour to evacuate before the bomb was dropped, and Herc (who was on duty in the RAAF) only had enough time to reach either Angela (his wife) or Chuck.
Chuck pretty much hates him forever because of that.