The Book, Whole and Entire

by Kayt

You cannot judge a book by its cover. Even a single panel, by itself, may be trite or absurd, but the whole book? That has power. Mako has learned that it's not the words, even the actions, of her comrades that matter. There's a special something to drift compatibility, and that will save the world.

The first time Sensei says "You can't judge a book by its cover," she giggles. It's a common idiom, he tells her, but it's such a strange one. Certainly, the beautiful full-color covers of her favorite books, each detail inked by an artist who, often as not, hasn't worked on the inside, are different than the rest of the story. But they're rich with detail so that one can judge, at a glance, what lies within. How else can they catch the eye on the big racks lining the stands that are still full of new and beautiful creations, her homeland's defiant refusal to let art fall by the wayside in this time of war?

The meaning is clearer when she has come to know Aleksis Kaidanovsky. Her eyes, mouth, clothes, even her hair is hard. Mako is afraid of her, as she is meant to be. It's seven months before she sneaks into the rafters to follow a beautiful sound and sees the Lieutenant leaping, twirling, impossibly light, every inch of her hard body become a line of soft poetry. Lt. Kaidanovsky spots her, of course; she sees everything. But she winks, continues her graceful movements until the last strains of music fade away. Later, she comes by Mako's quarters with a cup of chocolate pudding and tells her that she had been chosen to be a ballerina when she was very small, that it had made her ready for the work that she's been doing with Cherno Alpha for these long years. Two weeks later, a smiling Sasha guided Mako to a practice room, his large hand gentle on her elbow, to watch their exercises, so different from the strikes of the stick-fight and yet so much the same.

She thinks of this saying often; she has cause to. Dr. Gottlieb's frail form tells nothing of the bravery that drives a man half-crushed by a falling building to place himself so close to ground zero again and again and again despite the pleading messages that fill his mailbox. Dr. Geizler, a gorgeous, defiant manga of a man, refuses painkillers when he goes under the needle to mark each and every failure to seize the monsters and stop them with the power of his quicksilver mind, something he will not or cannot explain to the many who level hard looks at drawings of the enemy writ bold on his skin. Their sharp words and raised voices hide their fierce comradeship from even Sensei. Sometimes she fears it is hidden from themselves. Their words do not, cannot, tell their story.

In her time in the Shatterdomes, Mako has learned that the Rangers have this in common; they are not, as a rule, an eloquent bunch. Even those whose native tongue is English struggle to put the right words together. Their jokes fall flat. Their bodies, in public, also do not speak the truth. Their jackets, their posture, their aggressive games are an armor that works to hide a truth they all know; even hidden inside the most formidable defenses humanity can build for them, they are vulnerable. Two by two, most succumb.

Mako has seen the statistics. The best candidates have IQ scores in the middle of the distribution, some even lower. There is something else, something no one can measure, that makes a pilot. It is in the fond clasp of a shoulder, the poetry of a perfect three-point jump-shot on the courts late at night, the way Chuck Hansen's eyes fall closed when the wailing guitars blend at the bridge of "Highway to Hell."

She has cause to feel this thing that she knows when she meets Raleigh Beckett. He is a beautiful man. His eyes are terrible and tired. He has known her for hours only when first he rises to defend her with clumsy words.

Stacker can feel it, this thing that she feels, this thing that has no name. He is too much of a soldier to set it aside even after the disaster that she has almost caused from inside Gipsy Danger. She tried, after, to put it into words for him, but her tongue is clumsy. There is no language, not English, not Japanese, that can convey what she has felt and what she knows - that Raleigh Beckett is driven by loss and danger and a fierce, wordless determination that no one should share the loss he's felt, that each and every person lost to the kaiju left a hole shaped like his brother and it's too much, far too much to bear and so he will bear more than he can, for humanity's sake.

They perch on the rafters, share Jell-o, the same awful blood-blue that stains her hair. He tries, because he is brave, to put his comfort in to words. They are not the right ones, but she does not need them. She cannot judge a book by its cover, nor the words written in it. A single panel, on its own, can be trite, even absurd. It is the book, whole and entire, that has power.