IV.
Three days ago the breach was closed, and Mako and Raleigh emerged from the ocean to herald the end of an era. For three days, the shatterdome has both celebrated the victory and mourned the loss of those who gave their lives in the final Kaiju assault. The war clock, reset to zero for the last time, no longer counts the seconds of humanity's greatest war - the only war where the enemy was not themselves.
The shatterdome is strange in its quietude. The tension that buzzed through the air like electricity has dissipated, and the nervous anticipation of waiting for the next attack no longer propels them headlong into the future. There are things to be done, but there is no rush; for the first time in twelve years, there is space and time to breathe.
Three days ago Hermann drifted with Newton Geiszler, and for three days Hermann has been plagued with the strange side effects (whether normal consequences of drifting or unfortunate by-products of Newt's jerry-rigged Pons, Hermann isn't sure). In the lab he finds himself continually distracted by phantom thoughts that are not his own. The edge of a memory will come to him, or a fact that he had not previously been aware of, and he goes to chase the rabbit, as it were, only to find that the thought was not his to begin with, belonging instead to a certain tattooed biologist. It's distracting at best, embarrassing at worst (he had not wanted to know, for example, that one of the Jaeger techs he passed in the hallway that morning gives incredible blow jobs when drunk).
At night it's worse. Since the drift, Hermann has found sleep to be all but unattainable. In the strange, defenseless time before sleep comes, a twisting sense of emptiness settles in the pit of his stomach. It feels as though some familiar and vital part of him is missing. And though that part of him existed for only thirty seconds at most, he still feels lost without it. In the darkness his mind keeps searching for something that isn't there.
This night is no different from the ones preceding, and when an hour passes without sleep coming any closer, Hermann abandons the attempt. He sits on the edge of his bed in agonized defeat, watching the digital face of the clock at his bedside flicker with the passing minutes. The floor is cold against his feet. For a man who solves complex problems as a profession, solutions to this particular quandary are annoyingly elusive.
With no respite from his sleeplessness in sight, Hermann slips his feet into a pair of slippers and reaches for his cane. He puts on a plaid patterned robe (even though his sleepwear is entirely decent) and he leaves his room for the abandoned shatterdome hallways, trying to walk his way further into exhaustion that will make sleep easier to come by. At this odd hour of the night he passes no one else in the hall, so the embarrassment is lessened when he realizes that his feet have led him to the door of his lab mate's quarters.
He pauses in the hallway and huffs in exasperation, but he quickly gives in to the inevitability of the situation and raps three times on the metal doorframe. Newt opens the door so quickly that Hermann wonders if Newt had been expecting someone.
There is no surprise on Newt's face when he sees that it is Hermann standing outside his door.
"So you couldn't sleep either, huh?" Newt yawns.
"Regrettably, no," Hermann says, then adding in the way of an explanation that wasn't asked for, "I was curious to see if you were suffering the same. I've never heard of the drift affecting the jaeger pilots this way."
Newt rubs his hands against his face as he steps aside to let Hermann in, "Yeah, well, their neural relay was never propagated by a Pons hobbled together with parts from the shatterdome's junk bin."
The light in the room is dim: Newt has a desk lamp switched on in lieu of the fluorescent overheads. The flexible neck is twisted so that the lamp's spotlight burns a yellow ellipse onto the concrete wall behind it. Newt looks as fatigued as Hermann feels: his eyes are red, his hair disheveled (more so than normal), and Hermann is almost positive the Newt's white t-shirt is on backwards.
"How long is this going to last?" Hermann asks, his exhaustion tinging his tone.
Newt shrugs, "I don't know, man, but for now I guess we've just gotta try to manage it."
Just as Hermann is about to ask how they are to do that, Newt, without any preamble, gets into his bed, pushes down the sheets on the other side, and says,
"Come on, Hermann, get in."
Hermann looks properly horrified and sputters wordlessly while searching for a response to such an absurd suggestion.
Newt rolls his eyes so far back into his head it looks like he's trying to examine his own frontal lobe.
"Jesus christ, dude, you're the one that came knocking at my door in the middle of the night, not me. Listen, I'm not trying to jump your stuffy grandpa bones here. I can't sleep. You can't sleep. And I'm pretty sure we both know that if you don't get into this goddamned bed, tomorrow is going to be an absolute nightmare for both of us."
And although Hermann had recoiled from the idea instinctively, he knows, logically, that Newt's suggestion is not completely unfounded. Being in close proximity to the mind that his subconscious feels it has lost from the drift may allow them both to settle into sleep.
"Do try to stay on one side of the bed, Newton," Hermann sniffs.
"Want me to get the masking tape?" Newt grins, and a memory of Hermann on his knees, demarking a line of separation between them on the lab floor, flashes in Hermann's mind.
Without deigning Newt with a response, Hermann sheds his slippers and robe like extra skin and, with as much dignity as he can muster, slides into bed next to Newt. He leans his cane against the wall next to him, and Newt flicks off the lamp from the other side of the bed.
They lie in awkward silence, Hermann on his back and Newt on his side facing away from Hermann. The close physical proximity is strange – Hermann can't remember the last time he's shared a bed with another person – but he finds that, for the first time in three days, his mind is quiet, and the emptiness in the pit of his stomach does not gnaw at him. The odd sleeping arrangements are a small price to pay for the calming of his mind and a gateway into sleep.
Beside him, Newt is breathing evenly, and Hermann latches onto the metronomic sound of his exhalations. He closes his eyes, matching his breathing with Newt's. They descend into sleep in tandem, the lingering connection of the drift made stronger with their closeness. Each breath, each beat of their hearts line up as they fall, finally, into much needed sleep.
V.
In five days Hermann and Newt will be walking out of the shatterdome for the last time. The facility is being shut down, maintained by only a handful of essential workers. In the future, it may be used again as a military base or training facility, but it will never again be fully revived to its glory days. Most of the lab is packed up, paperwork filed away in boxes and Kaiju specimens frozen or suspended in glass enclosures waiting to be transported to various bio labs around the globe for continued study.
There hasn't been anything substantial to do for days. The breach is sealed; their job is done. Now it's just filling out report after report and making sure everything is in order as the PPDC prepares to shut its doors forever. The dull days roll into quieter nights.
In the darkness of his quarters, Hermann finds once again that he cannot sleep.
He is lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, when the door to his room opens and closes silently. The light from the hall briefly cuts a thin band of luminescence into the room, and Hermann sees Newt outlined in the light. Without a word of introduction, because by now he doesn't need one, Newt climbs into bed with Hermann, who has moved over to make room.
At first it had just been about being able to sleep at night, combating the strange side effects of the drift. Since that first night in Newt's quarters, they have spent nearly every night sharing a bed: sometimes Newt's, sometimes Hermann's. They don't talk about it, just silently make room for one another on the mattress. The invisible line is still there, and both keep to their own side of the bed even though the space is small and cramped. Hermann insists on it because this defined separateness is the only thing that makes this arrangement acceptable in his mind, and Newt complies because Hermann insists.
The sleeplessness brought on by the drift has long since faded, yet they still find themselves making the nighttime walk to each other's quarters. The phantom loss of the drift has been replaced with loss of another kind: their way of life for the past ten years is ending; their research, which had been their lives, is done, suddenly unneeded. They are both, privately, silently, learning to cope with the slow return of normal life.
Tonight, with their departures so imminent, grief sinks deeper in their chests.
Next to Hermann, Newt is unusually tense, clenching his hands against the mattress and twisting his fingers into the sheets. So close to him in the small bed, Hermann can feel the distress consuming Newt in overwhelming waves. Something choked emerges from the back of Newt's throat.
Hermann turns his head to look at him: Newt's face is contorted with emotion, his eyes squeezed shut and his lips trembling. Normally, Hermann would be inclined to simply turn away, to remain silent in a pantomime of granting privacy rather than attempting to navigate the emotions of others. But in the darkness, in this shared space and at this time, when they are both vulnerable and hurting, he finds a voice.
". . . Newton?" Hermann ventures, the name intoned with concern.
Newt doesn't respond at first. His thoughts gather like storm clouds in the room, coalescing around them. Without turning his head to look at Hermann, Newt lets out a shuddering breath and begins to speak.
"The Kaiju were my life, Hermann," he says; his voice is strained and tight in trying to hold back the flood of his emotions. "I don't know what to do now that they're gone. They were everything to me . . . When I first saw Trespasser on K-Day, it was like - it was like I found myself."
Then the levees break, and it all comes spilling out, Newt's words punctuated with choked gasps and watery sniffles.
"I had nothing before that. Six doctorates and nothing to live for . . . They saved me. And now they're gone. I mean, yeah, we saved the world, but - but it's . . . I ended up destroyed the only thing that ever really mattered."
There is so much more that Newt doesn't say - that he can't say because he doesn't know how to.
"I've spent ten years of my life studying them, learning to understand them. And - and I've drifted with them - I do understand them. And now they're just gone."
Before now, Hermann has never stopped to think that Newt would be mourning the loss of the Kaiju. For Newt, the closing of the breach was much more than the neutralizing of a threat. It was the sealing off of a portion of the world that had made life worth living. And while the whole shatterdome has mourned for Pentecost and Chuck, the Kaidonovskys and the Wei siblings, Newt has been alone in bearing the pain of the Kaiju.
Newt untangles his hands from the sheets and covers his face with them. He sucks in a breath of air from between his fingers and holds it, his throat constricting painfully before a sob pushes its way through his lips.
"Shit, Hermann, I'm sorry."
Words line up on the edge of Hermann's tongue: 'There's no need to apologize,' 'It's going to be okay,' 'You will find other things to live for'. But he can't bring himself to say any of them. They feel misshapen and out of place when his lips try to form the syllables. Instead, he reaches across the line that defines their relationship and places a hand, slowly, cautiously, on Newt's arm. Newt goes quiet, and Hermann squeezes his arm gently. A memory stirs.
Newt swallows hard and wipes at his eyes. Slowly, he turns on his side, moves closer to Hermann so that his chest is pressed against Hermann's arm, his knees bumping against Hermann's thigh. His movements are cautious, questioning, slow enough to allow Hermann to stop him before his actions become too intrusive. They are both unsure if this is acceptable - if this is the kind of thing that their relationship allows. But Hermann doesn't stop him, and Newt curls himself against the line of Hermann's body, his face pressed into Hermann's shoulder, one hand resting against Hermann's chest. Newt is shaking, and Hermann wraps his arms around him to still him.
Hermann has little to offer in ways of comfort. He doesn't run his hand calmingly along Newt's back or card his fingers soothingly through Newt's hair. He doesn't whisper reassuring words against his skin or lace his fingers with the ones curled against his chest. He simply holds him, and even this is more than Hermann would have ever thought he was capable of offering. But it seems enough. He holds Newt until Newt stops shaking, until the trickle of moisture on his shoulder runs dry and Newt's stuttering breathing becomes slow and even, until Newt falls into dreamless sleep.
For Hermann, this is new: to be an anchor for someone, to be a source of comfort in a time of grief. And yet it does not feel awkward or forced. Newt fits in his arms as natural as chalk in his fingers. The feeling of impending loss once again twists deep in Hermann's chest as he desperately tries not to name the warmth that blossoms where his skin touches Newt's. Twelve years is a long time to know someone, but to arrive at the culmination of all those years with only five days left to live it: life is sometimes unforgivably cruel.
Hermann falls asleep with Newt still curled in his arms.