She's been over the reports, the transcripts, the news clippings, even the rare videos. Anything on the internet and everything up to (and over) her clearance level. Of course, there are only select things out of her range, but the marshal doesn't bat an eye. They've discussed this already. He won't let her pilot, but he wouldn't impede her research.
Raleigh Becket, all the same, catches her by surprise. She had noted the variations in his strategy, his impracticality, his impulsiveness, his outright mistakes. She had seen videos, interviews, and photographs. But those were of him before (before his solo run), and she notes the changes time has given him. He's aged in a rough sort of way. Gracefully, but wearily. He's not the fresh-faced pilot with the charming, wholesome smile. He's not waving next to his brother anymore.
Instead, he's wrinkled from the trip and what life had given him in the past five years. He doesn't smile immediately when he meets her and she catches the briefest of the wariest of squints. And it catches her off guard that he is fluent enough in Japanese to understand her. Off guard, perhaps slightly embarrassed, but it is more useful to know this earlier on rather than later.
And, a tiny part of her mind cries, he will understand you all the time.
Mako quashes that part and shows him to his room.
-.-.-
She had thought about the drift before. Once, she had thought about what it would be like to pilot an old Mark I, with a very specific older co-pilot in mind, but she threw the daydreams away with guilt heavy in her stomach. It would kill him. They may or may not be compatible, though he tells her he cannot drift in the same way other pilots do, and even if it would work, even if it wouldn't kill him, even if he allowed it, even if even if—it simply wouldn't work. They could not fight the kaiju together. They would worry about each other, their experience is too mismatched, and if she really thinks about it, the thought of seeing his memories from that time frightens her.
She knows family units work well together. Why shouldn't they? They've already shared memories and experiences before and sometimes knowledge can outweigh sheer compatibility. Mako wants to ask Hercules if it's different being with his son than others, but of course he would reply that it was. What else could she expect out of the man? And she has no idea how to approach Chuck for that sort of topic any more, so she doesn't.
Once and only once, she asks the triplets how the drift feels. Two of them look at each other and share a small grin, and Cheung gives her a meandering, incredibly vague explanation with a lot of gestures that didn't tell her any more than old interviews had.
One day she'll experience it for herself, not just an explanation or a simulation. She knows this for fact; he promised her so, after all.
-.-.-
Mako very quickly must separate out old Raleigh with current Raleigh in her mind. Data can only carry her so far and the second he gets the smallest hint that she may be compatible with him, it's like a switch is flipped. He is fierce in standing up for her. Hope burns furiously in her chest, in spite of the marshal's words, buoyed by the man who may become her co-pilot.
But her excitement is drowned out by his. When she first enters into the cockpit he doesn't even acknowledge her. She's practically vibrating so she has to get the first word in, make him turn around and see her and realize that they won, and he does, but the way he breaks into a smile makes her breath catch a bit. This is not the eager young pilot with Yancy, this is not the half-sullen veteran with the marshal, this was something new and the smile was genuine and not large by any means but it was for her, for this.
He's still smiling while they prep for the neural handshake, and in the first milliseconds before the memories wash over them both, she can feel his smile as her own. But then the floor drops out from beneath her as she watches Raleigh sign Yancy's arm cast at seven, and she remembers that birthday because the cake had been exceptionally poor but Stacker had tried making it all on his own for her so the memory is fond, and then their childhoods crash together in a mess of giggles and bubbles and dogs and everything feels too light.
Everything still feels too light when Mako comes out of it, and she can feel Gipsy Danger all along her arms and down her spine and into her boots. It's a stunning sensation and the suit that had felt too heavy before feels lighter than a feather, and she herself feels even more so. Her mind is racing and memories and thoughts and impressions lap at the edges like a warm sea.
And then Raleigh turns and looks at her, that smile from before even wider and brighter.
It feels like something physical (she doesn't notice them both jerk) and she's suddenly pressed up against the wall of the cockpit, watching in terror as claws rip into the hull overhead. Then the terror (her terror) vanishes as the kaiju lifts Yancy—no one had told her how young they both looked, how raw his voice had been as he tried to warn his brother—and it's all replaced with a gut-churning sense of utter helplessness.
Raleigh fights over to the hole in the hull and calls after his brother and Mako mirrors the movement, looking up at the giant monster.
Next thing she knows, she's clutching her red shoe and running from her own.
-.-.-
Mortified doesn't quite cover it. Only a small part of herself is angry (and only at herself). It's a complicated feeling and she loathes it. But at dinner that night, Raleigh still asks her to eat with him with a smile. A small one, and maybe an apologetic one. She didn't ask him to start that fight for her.
And for the first time, he talks to her. She knows that he must have talked to her in the drift, but it hadn't processed. And they have talked before, but that was before all of that. Now, when she's most curious and yet most understanding, he talks and she doesn't need him to. She finds herself saying "I know" far too frequently, but he talks all the same. He has to talk. He's been with the silence for too long, and that bit she really understands (now that she is alone in her brain once more).
Mako lets him talk to her. Or at her. She doesn't mind the difference because she sees why he wants to, and she would rather not offer any of her own words if she could help it. Some things are too precarious to talk about like this.
And he opens up to her, although she already knows these things, he has to say them out loud anyway. It's a curious situation and she finds welcome distraction in it. It's nice, though. He's nice. She lets herself smile for him when she feels strong enough to.
-.-.-
Against Leatherback and Otachi, Mako is once again caught off guard.
Combat simulations were surprisingly (and pleasantly) apt at preparing her for the actual mechanics of the battle. She knows what to do. And what simulations and kneejerk reflexes do not do for her, Raleigh is there for. And that is how the Jaeger pilots work, isn't it? She may rely on him as he relies on her. That part, she was prepared for.
But what she was not prepared for was the talking (again, and for her).
Transcripts of his past missions with his brother showed he could be prone to chatter, but on a more conversational side of things. This was not conversation, this was direction. Direction she did not need, because they were linked, because she was skilled, because she understood.
"Empty the clip!" She found this action unnecessary but his excitement was contagious, yet again. He had an infectious personality, she was realizing too late. It's wasteful, and redundant, and they could have beaten it a minute and forty seconds ago if they had been able to duck and swing as she had hoped to—
But it's her first kaiju kill as a pilot and Raleigh is full-out grinning now. He's going over the top for her. She can tell he has missed this, however, the adrenaline, the triumph, and, thanks to a flash of Yancy's whoop, she can tell he has missed the link.
"We had better check if it still has a pulse," Raleigh says with a guilty pleasure that is burning in the back of her brain. She feels it, as her own, or it is now. And that adds fuel to his fire. The carcass jerks and sprays acidic blue blood everywhere, and, well, it's no more alive now than it was two shots ago. "No pulse."
He's cheesy and too excited but Mako enjoys it, for his sake. He's doing this for her sake and she'll do it for his in turn. They don't have to talk but he is and maybe if she had spent more time around the pilots she would have realized sooner what that meant.
English and Japanese, words were walls anyway, she thinks and what he's saying stutters out into a garbled mash of the two languages. Raleigh pauses and his arm drops and Mako turns to him, amused. "Sono fune—no, ship. Uh, yeah, that one," he stammers and after she catches him clicking his tongue a couple times as if to scold it.
"I'll get it," she says aloud though it's obvious since she's already pulling them forward and reaching for it. And maybe there's something to that talking thing.
-.-.-
She's drifting in and out of consciousness and it sort of feels like the drift itself (now isn't that a funny thing). Stacker comes and goes and all she can think of, cling to, is finding him there. She hears Raleigh's voice and reaches for him but her arm is heavy, heavier than it should be when they're in Gipsy Danger.
She has the sensation of being lifted upward and then she finds Stacker.
-.-.-
Raleigh Becket is a surprising man. Neither of them were supposed to come back alive, and when she had woken up above the surface with Hercules and Newton chattering in her ear about how it was a success, the breach was collapsed, they had done it, all she could hear was the utter silence in her mind. She dimly remembers him talking in amidst all of the beeping and it's obvious what he's done. What he shouldn't have done.
But the second pod bobs up out of the water and that's the greatest surprise of her life. It was a sacrifice, but he surprised them all by tossing Mako out and somehow, some way, making it out himself. She doesn't even mind that right now. The ocean water feels deliciously cold and real.
There's something about no vitals when she clambers onto his pod, and when she sees how still he looks through the window, the cold water on her skin no longer feels so nice. It's like hearing that bomb go off and watching a shouting Yancy get pulled through the roof and running through the ashen streets sobbing all at once, and yet completely different because of the silence. He's not talking to her any more. Right now, when she actually needs it, he's not talking to her.
She's not even sure what language she's using (it should be English but he knows Japanese so it will be okay either way) but she's asking for help and reporting his lack of pulse. Let it go on the transcript. Just like everything else she had to read about him. He looks so pale and through her gloves she can't tell if he's cold or warm or dead. She presses her cheek against his and he's cool but not cold and that gives her the strength to pull him up and out of the pod.
Mako tries again for a pulse, propping him up against her, but still she feels nothing. No heartbeat, just silence. The quietness of the solo fight in Alaska echoes in her mind and she can not repeat that so she does the last thing she can think of: she pulls him against her and simply asks.
She talks to him. She asks him to come back to her. She tells him not to leave her behind, not like this, not like everyone else.
And he talks back.
They don't have to talk, they have little to talk about, but Mako treasures it so much because in that moment, she's learned what it means when co-pilots talk. She can't help but laugh and lean her forehead against his, seeing that smile of his from the old interviews in person. Not the surprised one, not the excited one, but the truly happy one. She feels like they're still linked because she can feel the same sort of smile on her face too.
They're alive. They're together. They have won. The helicopters are lowering ladders for them to climb, and he's so relieved he's laughing and he can't stop. She pulls him up the ladder, nearly scared to let go of his hand, and he collapses against her in a fit of joy once inside.
"We did it, we did it," he's chanting, and maybe there are streaks cutting through the grime on his cheeks, but she can hardly blame him. There's another new Raleigh to contend with, but maybe there will be a new Mako there, too.
Either way, they can talk about it.