I really really wanted to add to this, so thanks to you, AlwaysTardy, and your encouraging review, I'm posting the rest of the chapters I have written right now. I plan on this being a fifteen to twenty chapter fic, maybe longer, and I hope to update at least once a week!
I'm playing fast and loose with canon here, setting the sequel only two years after the events of the movie.
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Mako wakes up to her phone's ringtone, or more specifically the annoyingly loud theme to Bill Nye the Science Guy that Raleigh, after stealing her phone password in the Drift (really, he can be such a child sometimes, with all the little ridiculous things he does), set up for when Newt Geisler calls her. She wonders what bizarre thing he's had a breakthrough on now that he felt the need to call at three-thirty in the morning. They're even in the same time zone as him, with his lab at the Jaeger construction facility in LA now, so she can't even assume he forgot there's such a thing as time differences (case in point that ridiculous call at two in the morning when she and Raleigh were in London). More likely he's forgotten there is such a thing as time.
Maybe he's finally figured out the upgrade to the Drift helmets. Mako's work on the new generation of Jaegers has been praised as the most outstanding engineering feat since the construction of the originals, but the real crowning glory will be the new wire-free Drift system.
Now that they're no longer at war, Mako has been free to design the best Jaegers ever made. There's no more pressure to make them easy to quickly assemble, or to create them as minimalistically as possible. Her new Jaegers are still incredibly devoted to function over form, but she's added her own flair after years of watching so many generations of them. She knows what worked and what did not. Her work restoring Gipsy gave her some ideas, and watching even Cherno Alpha in action taught her there are some things you should never try to improve upon.
If Newt's had a breakthrough, that tech is going straight into the flagship Jaeger of her new twelve-machine project. Gipsy Avenger is like her child. She's put the absolute best of her namesake into this one, and all the things she wished they'd had. She's never been more proud.
But when she answers the phone Newt isn't his bubbly, wildly enthusiastic self. There's fear behind his few words. "Mako, the buoys found something."
"What? That's impossible." Mako feels a cold chill drift down her spine. Newt inisisted on setting buoys around the Breach site, simply as a precaution. After all, no one wanted a spot where there had already been one tear in reality to be left unwatched.
"It's nothing too impressive, but there's some sort of activity. Disturbances." Newt is being disturbingly noncommittal. Usually when he's in science mode he's using tons of terms that go over Mako's head, sometimes because Newt invented them. Gottlieb swears the man's going to write the definitive K-Science dictionary someday. So to hear him saying things as vague as "activity" or "disturbance" is far more frightening than if he were spouting off nine-syllable words. Mako has learned this too well. She knows that when people use big words, they have big plans, they have things they can do, and they know what they are talking about. She heard so many of them those first years, waiting for sensei in uncomfortable hospital chairs, while the doctors talked about what was happening to his body. Then, they used words like "radiation-activated leukemia" and "treatment options". When they started saying "cancer", she knew it was over. Most people are afraid of big, complicated words. Mako is afraid of small ones.
"Let me know when you know more." She hangs up, because if she's on the phone any longer she thinks Newt is going to start trying to reassure her, and she doesn't want him lying to her.
She needs to tell Raleigh, because chances are even if Newt is trying to call him right now, he's got his phone on silent. He doesn't sleep well and he hates to be disturbed when he does manage to get a few hours in.
She's reaching for her slippers when she knows, as clearly as if she went and looked in the room itself, that Raleigh isn't there. He didn't come back tonight. She shivers again, and then becomes aware that the cold isn't the chilly room (because the heater is on full), or fear because of what Newt said (her fear is always hot and breathless, like running down a burning city street). Wherever Raleigh is right now, he is cold and alone. She tries to reach out through the Drift, but the connection is faint and getting fainter, like watching Kaiju Blue fade out into the water.
It was a Shatterdome urban legend that co-pilots could locate the other person anywhere in the complex, just by their connection. She and Chuck had decided to test it, because what else do you do growing up as kids in Shatterdomes? Their plan was to wait until a pair separated (which was rare in itself) and ask one person where their partner was, and then text the co-pilot to check for accuracy. They did it to all the pilots, except the Kaidanovskys, for obvious reasons. In the few times they'd managed to find a separated Drift team willing to make the experiment, the prediction had been spot-on. Although that might have had something to do with the fact that most of those separations had been medically imposed, so being told the partner was in the infirmary really wasn't all that big a shock.
Maybe the connection only works over short distances, or maybe three Drifts, one of them failed and one cut off mid-battle, isn't exactly enough to work with. In any case, all she gets through it are cold, biting sleety rain, and a few thoughts. Deadweight. "Disappear, it's the only thing you're good at." Has-been. Better off alone. Can't hurt anyone else.
"Raleigh!" She screams his name out loud, like somehow that will get through. Maybe he can feel her, just a little, because the thoughts change before they become so dim all she feels is cold. I'm sorry. Please don't worry. Just let me go.
She can't imagine what's happened. Is he injured, somewhere out there in the city? Was there a car accident? Has he been mugged? She wonders about Kaiju Cultists. Stacker used to warn her to be careful because of them, that they would try to kill her for surviving Onibaba, and then later for training to be a Jaeger pilot. They've all but disappeared after the closing, but there might be some die-hards who want to use Raleigh to make a statement.
Has he done something…Mako is no one's fool. She knows about the cuts on his arms, the Google searches for how many of those sleeping pills he takes will be enough to make sure he never wakes up. Raleigh isn't a quitter, and she knows that, but maybe he's reached the breaking point. I should have said something. I was trying to be careful, to avoid pushing him farther. Maybe I made a mistake. If he dies because I didn't try to help him cope, that's on me. The thought galvanizes her into action. She wanted him to prove he trusted her, and was this what that was going to end with?
She's exchanging the slippers for a pair of boots when the phone rings again. It's "Great Southern Land," so Herc. How much time did Raleigh have on his hands that day? When she finds him, and she will, he's going to hear how she feels about this joke. As soon as she's made sure he isn't in imminent danger of dying.
She answers the phone and tucks it against her shoulder, jamming her foot into a boot. "Yes Herc?"
"Mako. I'm so sorry…" Her first thought is that somehow he's heard what happened to Raleigh before she did. Maybe someone found his PPDC ID? But he has a paper with her name and number on itas emergency contact, like she has his. Maybe Kaiju cultists did take him, and they're making it public. Oh God. If they have him...she's heard stories Sensei tried to keep from her, the things that were done to a pair of pilots on leave who got drunk and let their guard down...She realizes she faded out when Herc asks her again, "Mako, are you still with me?"
"What did you say?"
"They're saying the breach is opening and we're going back to war. Wanted you to hear it from me before McTavish." She guesses it's a pretty accurate gauge of how messed up her life is now that hearing that is almost a relief. She knows in a couple seconds the reality will set in and she'll realize everything has gone to hell again, but for the moment all she can feel is grateful that Raleigh isn't being tortured by those twisted fanatics, who would broadcast their work to the whole world.
"Mako, they're probably going to call you back in." Herc is no longer Marshal. He didn't want to stay there, in the Shatterdomes, with the memories. She doesn't blame him. She also doesn't have time to think about the full implications of this before the phone buzzes, with McTavish's number.
"Herc, I have to take this."
McTavish isn't young, but he's not a combat officer, and she misses Herc's gruffness and casual leadership. This is all crisp and official and impersonal. Even her name. "Ranger Mori, we're moving up the schedule of deploying your Jaeger team. Are they prepared?"
"What?"
"Ranger, are the Jaegers ready?"
"They're still in finalization. I have to install Drift systems in one, and calibrate all of them. They're still a week from deployment at minimum." In the War days, it would be a matter of hours, not days, but that's how Drift flaws got skipped and pilots got killed. She isn't risking the lives of any of her twenty-four trainees. Now she knows how sensei must have felt, watching her get into a Drift harness with someone whose brother died in a Jaeger.
"Geisler's buoys are reporting Breach activity. There's sizable readings and they're getting larger. We have to be ready to deploy at any minute. We're sending a helo to Seattle to pick you and Becket up and get you to LA."
He won't beat around the bushes, so neither will she. She isn't leaving until she fixes the first problem she has on her hands. The world may be ending (again), but her first loyalty is to her co-pilot. It doesn't matter if the world burns or not if she loses him. "Marshal, Becket's missing."
"He's what?"
"He never came back this evening. I'm about to head out to find him. I think he's in trouble. I was getting some things in the ghost drift. Give me two hours…"
"We can't wait. The helo touches down in ten and I need you on that thing ASAP. Notify the Seattle police to be looking for Becket, and get down here and get working on your Jaegers."
She wants to tell them they can set the damn things up themselves. They have all the techs she trained, familiar enough with the processes to no longer need guidance from a combat-experienced veteran. But she has her pilots to worry about, because she knows them better than anyone and she has to make sure everything is just right. She knows what Raleigh would say. He'd tell her twenty four lives were a lot more important than one. She knows that's what the Marshal is thinking. If it were her missing, he'd order Raleigh to find her as soon as he could. But the Marshal doesn't need Raleigh to get his war machines ready. He only needs Mako. Raleigh is always the one they can afford to leave behind, to everyone who has worked with him since he came back, except Mako. It's no wonder he's begun to believe it. And now she's about to abandon him too. Even though she knows he'd tell her to go, she feels guilty.
She stops at Raleigh's room before running downstairs to catch the car to the airport. Each of them has an extra key to the other's room. It's probably useless to hope he'll come back here, but she leaves him a note in case, and she calls his phone to leave a message, even though if he doesn't want to be found the first thing he'll do is throw it away somewhere.
She still feels achingly cold through the ghost Drift, and as she's preparing to leave she sees one of Raleigh's sweaters, the old brown one with the hole in the shoulder he refused to let her fix, folded on the chair in the corner. She picks it up and shrugs it on, feeling like she's disappearing in it. She takes two more of his sweaters from his suitcase and shoves them in her own bag. It's silly, but they smell like him and he once joked that he'd like to see her in one. She wants him to come back so she can show him she's wearing one and yes, she does look like an idiot in it. She doesn't care. They're the only connection she has left to him once the helicopter takes off and carries her away from Seattle.