January 3rd 2025

12:00pm

They were in their room waiting for the clock to tell Raleigh it was time to leave for his test run with the new and improved Gipsy. She was on the bed lying beside their son, running her hands through his hair as he slept. Raleigh turns, looking at a photo on the wall of himself and Yancy. Beside it is a picture of her and Raleigh holding Ezra. Over the Com system she hears that the trial run is to begin in twenty minutes and Raleigh sits on the bed beside her.

"Good luck, love." She says leaning up to peck him on the lips.

"I'll see you afterwards." He tells her, placing a longing kiss on her forehead before he leaves their room for his neural test. She lays back on the bed, closing her eyes. Five years ago if someone had asked her where she thought she would be married with a child in the future she would have laughed in their face. However, she couldn't see her life happening any other way. Being at the shatterdome made her realize that she was apart of something more, like she had always wanted to be. When she was younger she had wished to enter into the Jaeger academy but those dreams had been crushed while she had been moving back from Canada on her own. Certain events had left her unfit for combat. She realized now that she didn't have to be in a Jaeger to save people. All she had to do was make sure her husband stayed alive and many lives would be spared.

A sudden knock on the door pulled her from her thoughts and she carefully stood from the bed. She made sure Ezra hadn't woken up before grabbing the door handle and twisting it. She pulled the door open and was surprised to see Pentecost standing there.

"May I come in, Ana?" the man asks, giving her a slight bow.

"Oh, um...sure. Ezra is just napping...as usual. I swear that kid sleeps more than his father and I do combined." She mutters under her breath, earning a chuckle from the Marshall.

"I want to apologize for yesterday. I was planning to stick to the books but after some thought I realized why he insisted it be you as his co-pilot." he explains.

"What are you saying?" She asks, giving him a weird look.

"You may want to dress a little lighter. What you're wearing won't fit under the armor." He tells her and her heart rate picks up in speed.

"You're allowing me to be his co-pilot?" She asks with wide eyes. She couldn't believe what he was hearing. He shook his head and once again she looked at him confused.

"I'm allowing you to go through the neural handshake. I want to see how well you can handle it. If you pass, then yes you will be his co-pilot, if not I have a back up."

"He will appreciate this more than you know." She smiles at him gratefully, as he heads for the open door.

"Be quick." He hums, before stepping out of the room to allow her to get changed. She is quick to pull off her shirt and replace her normal bra with a sports bra, remembering the rubber like suit that she had cut Raleigh out of the day he crashed. Next come a pair of leggings and some black knee high socks. Once she is dressed she throws on one of Raleigh's sweatshirts and gently picks up Ezra. She runs out the door and over to Mako's room, quickly exchanging words before handing the still sleeping boy to her newest friend. She places a kiss on his head and turns back around to follow Pentecost to the preparation room. On the way there he debriefs her about the Jaegers and how things work. She listens intently and she finds that there isn't much that she didn't already know from Raleigh. Her knowledge on the topic seems to impress the Marshall and when they reached preparation room she is shocked to hear him give her a good luck.

The room is like a co-ed locker room. She sees a set of armor laid out on one of the benches and she ventures over to it. She stands there for a moment staring at it like it's going to hurt her. The undersuit was easy enough to get on but when she went to put the other parts of the armor on she looked at it hoping that some machines would come out of nowhere and help her into it. Unfortunately for her nothing happened, electronically at least. From the doorway of the locker room she saw Herc Hansen standing there with an amused smile on his face.

"That is the exact same look I gave my suit the first time the academy ever showed it to us." Herc chuckles.

"Raleigh told me about everything else but his old armor was so beat up that there was no way to show me how to get into it. I know how to take it off though. I had to figure that out the hard way when we found him." She explains with an airy laugh.

"Well, my first advice is put your hair up. I've heard from female pilots that having hair caught in any of the mechanics is quite painful." She does as she's instructed and for the next ten minutes does as she is told and soon enough she finds herself standing in front of a floor length mirror starting at herself. She had to admit she looked like a badass and she couldn't wait to see Raleigh in his suit.

"Thank you for the help, Herc." She turns around as she speaks.

"Anytime. Let me know if you ever need anything." He gives her a fatherly smile. "Now, let's go find your husband. I'm sure he is anxious to find out who his new co-pilot is." He beckons her to follow him and she falls in step with him. He leads her down a few hallways and soon she can hear machinery whirring and powering up.

"You'll find him at the end of this hall. I'll be in the control room with everyone else. Good luck." She just nods in response, as her nerves begin to bubble up in her stomach. She walks down the hall and the closer she get the more she can hear and she smiles when she hears her husbands voice coming from the cockpit.

"Setting neural for task mode. Waiting for second pilot." She hears Raleigh say loudly a she approaches the cockpit. She takes in a deep breath and stretches her neck out a bit before entering. The inside is just as she had imagined. Two harnesses hanging from the ceiling with enough room for them to move about freely. She sees him almost immediately, or at least his back. He's in matching armor standing next to the right hemisphere harness. "I'm gonna take this side, if you don't mind. My left arm's kind of shot."

"I kind of figured you would say that." She spoke up as she took her side by the left hemisphere harness. Raleigh's head whips in her direction and she smirks at him as he shamelessly checks her out. His eyes reach hers and he grins like an idiot. "What are you thinking over there Leigh?"

"No point in telling you, in five minutes you're gonna be inside my head. You look damn good, honey." He saunters over to her in three strides and plants a heated kiss on her mouth. He pulls away and she can't help but smile at him.

"I like this look on you." She says biting her lip, just to tease him. "And before you ask Ezra is with Mako."

They don't say anything more, as they get harnessed in. The feeling of being locked in place scares her for a moment and she suddenly feels claustrophobic.

"Okay. We're not on a simulator, Ana. This is for real." He begins to explain as he flipped switches on his side. "I know you haven't done this before but once you're in my head I'll be able to guide you. Just whatever you do don't chase the RABIT. Random, brain impulse trigger memories. Just let them flow, don't latch on. Tune them out, stay in the drift, the drift is silence. Just close your eyes and find me in the drift, sweetheart." Raleigh tells her and she just nods her head in response, not knowing what else to say. She looks straight ahead, following his lead and closes her eyes. Suddenly her life flashes before her eyes; her childhood, the first wave of attacks, her family dying, living in Alaska, her time with Raleigh, everything went by in the blink of an eye and the next thing she knew she was being jerked back into reality. Out of her memories she can feel Raleigh in her head, hear his thoughts, feel all of his pain and suffering. They had always had a strong bond but this was something else. It was as if their souls had combined into one person. If she had a choice she would never leave this. Being this close to Raleigh, this intimate wasn't something she had ever experienced and she now understood him in ways that she never knew were possible.

She can feel Raleigh urging her to lift her arms in a fighting stance so she allows him to guide her through the motions. It was as if they were back in Alaska and he was teaching her proper technique. He would stand behind her and position her where she was supposed to be before let her go. This is very similar but instead of guiding her body physically he was doing it mentally.

"Right hemisphere calibrated. Left hemisphere calibrated. Ready to activate the Jaeger." She heard Gipsy's AI say. "Calibration completed."

They look at each other and in that moment a flashback hits Raleigh. Suddenly they were in the beat up white armor that she had pulled him out of the day she met him. It was the moment when he brother was ripped from the Jaeger. His brother Yancy was yelling at him when he suddenly disappeared. Seeing Yancy getting pulled from the Jaeger was like getting pulled from the drift and suddenly they were both out of alignment, and she could feel the memories she had suppressed for so long surfacing. She fought, hard to keep them down, but she had lost control and the drift was like vacuum, sucking up all the memories and throwing them all into one place.

"Gipsy! Gipsy! You are out of alignment. You are both out of alignment!" She vaguely hears Tendo yelling into their headsets, but her hearing is beginning to fade as she's pulled into her worst nightmare.

"I'm okay. Let me control it." Raleigh replies to Tendo.

"You're stabilizing, but Analia is way out." The engineer yells, panic in his voice.

"Ana? Baby, stay with me." She hears Raleigh plead. She wants to reach out and reply to him but she can't. It's like she's stuck.

"Ana, sweetheart, don't get stuck in a memory. Stay with me, stay in the now... Analia! Ana, listen to me. Ana?" Raleigh starts yelling but she can't hear any longer. Suddenly she standing at the opening of an alleyway she never wanted to return to. She gasps, seeing a familiar man, standing over a younger version of herself. The younger version of herself is sobbing and pleading to the man not to hurt her. She watches helpless as the man turns the girl around so her face is pressed into the alley wall, groping her every curve. Suddenly she is no longer just watching the experience, she finds herself sucked into her younger self, just as the man rips her pants off and begin touching her in places he shouldn't. She fights back, pushing off the wall, only to have her head slammed into the bricks, dazing her.

Back in reality her actions had caused the Plasma cannon to start up, causing the entire control center to buzz with life. Herc and Tendo watched in horror as, Raleigh continued to yell for his wife. They could see that she was fighting the memory but the hold it had on her was stronger. Inside Gipsy, Raleigh was panicking. He didn't know what to do, didn't know how to get out of the horrifying memory that he was witnessing. She had never spoken of this before and he honestly couldn't blame her. She had buried this memory deep within her subconscious to the point where she had nearly forgotten about it. He felt absolutely horrible that she had to relive this memory and he was doing his damndest to get her out of it.

As Analia's memory continues, the man's hands travel down to his pants and tears his belt from his jeans. Then he does the unspeakable thing and all Raleigh could do was stand there and watch. Raleigh could hear the men in the control room scrambling to get them offline but it seemed to be of no use, the drift was too strong. The memory begins to finish and he sees the man finish his sin, zip his jeans and replace the belt before spitting on her. Raleigh approaches the sobbing teenage version of Analia and he can see that there is blood coming from between her legs and where the man had slammed her forehead into the bricks her face was scraped and bruised. The memory ripples, showing her in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub crying into her hand as she holds a positive pregnancy test in the other hand.

"Weapons disengaged." Raleigh is relieved to feel that Gipsy was shutting down. The harnesses began to let the go and Raleigh took the opportunity to rip his helmet off and rush to Analia's side. Her knees gave out from under her as her eyes glazed over in shock.

"Analia!" He cries out, pulling her helmet off. He cradles her on the floor as she begins to look around. Tears are freely streaming down her cheeks. "It's alright, sweetheart. It's okay. Oh baby its ok. I'm so sorry." He whispers to her, holding her tight and kissing the top of her head as his own tears fall into her hair.

"It's not your fault." She murmurs under her breath and he barely hears it.

They were in big trouble and it was all her fault. Now she knew why Pentecost was so hesitant to let her into the cockpit. The pilots needed serious control over their thoughts and memories. She thought her control was strong enough but she had been wrong. She had been oh so wrong. The trial run had been disastrous. Currently they were outside of Pentecost's office waiting. She sat on the floor with her head in her hands as Raleigh paced back and forth in front of her. It had been thirty minutes since they had disconnected and Raleigh hadn't said anything to her. She wished she knew what was going through his head. But in that moment she didn't know and that scared her. The way he walked suggested he was angry but was he angry with her? Her emotions were running on high and she couldn't stop the tears from cascading down her cheeks.

"She can't control her dreams and he went out in phase three..." She heard Chuck yelling furiously.

"We all know what happened." His father snaps.

"We can't afford mistakes, the Kaiju is evolving. They keep kicking our asses! He's a has-been, she's a rookie. I don't want them protecting my bomb run!" She sniffs loudly and looked up at Raleigh who had stopped in front of her. He looked down at her and gave her a sympathetic look just as the door to Pentecost's office swung open.

"You need to watch your tone, Mr. Hansen." Pentecost yells as Chuck stormed out of the office.

"Hey, stay there. Give me a moment." His father yells at him, before closing the door giving Chuck the opportunity to turn on them.

"You two are a Goddamn disgrace! You're gonna get us all killed, and here's the thing, Raleigh. I want to come back from this mission, cause I quite like my life. So why don't you just do us all a favor and disappear? It's the only thing you're good at." Chuck spit in Raleigh's face, jabbing a finger into in chest.

"Hey! You think he doesn't want to come back from this mission? He has a family to come home too. Both of us do!" She shoots up from her spot on the floor and gets in his face all of a sudden not bothering to wipe the tears from her face. She goes to step even closer to him but Raleigh raises his hand to stop her from arguing further with Chuck.

"Yeah, that's right. You just hold back your little wife. One of you bitches needs a leash." Chuck spits and she snaps. Without thinking her fist flew forward over Raleigh's shoulder, hitting Chuck square in the face. Chuck stumbles back and stares at her in shock. She steps around Raleigh and takes her stance. Chuck swings at her and she ducks quickly throwing a couple jabs to his ribs before hitting him with a strong left hook. He looks at her like she's crazy.

"Apologize you coward." She hisses at him shaking her hand out.

"Screw you bitch." He snaps back, spitting blood on the floor. She goes to take another hit to him but Raleigh beats her to it. Her husband surges forward and knocks Chuck into the wall busting the piping in the wall.

"Apologize to her." Raleigh growls out, livid with the way he had been speaking about his wife. Chuck ignores his demand and attacks Raleigh but Raleigh easily knocks him down, twisting his arm just as, Herc and Pentecost exited the office.

"What's going on? On your feet, both of you!" Herc yells rushing out of the office. Raleigh is quick to get to his feet as Herc pulls his son up from the ground.

"Becket...s...into my office." Pentecost orders. Raleigh gently grabbed her hand and walked into the office as Herc continued to calm his son down. Pentecost joined them and closed the door. An awkward silence envelops them and she fidgeted in her seat. The tears had finally stop but she knew her face was red and her eyes were puffy.

"I went out of phase first, it was my mistake." Raleigh says breaking the silence first.

"No. It was my mistake. I should have never let you two in the same machine." Pentecost replies, calmly but she could see past his demeanor. He was beyond furious with them.

"So what, you're grounding us?" Raleigh asks.

"Not you." Pentecost says, looking over to her. She understands his meaning and stands from her seat. Tears looking in her eyes once again.

"I think I will take my leave. Thank you for giving me the chance sir." She says, as she cast her gaze downwards and leaves the room ignoring Raleigh's calls for her to come back. She didn't know what to do to rid herself of these memories so she did the only thing she could think to do. Find Mako. Find her son. Right now that was what she needed, her baby. She ran through the halls and quickly found Mako in her room, playing with Ezra.

"Mako?" She knocks on the open door, effectively catching the attention of the two people in the room.

"Mommy!" Ezra exclaims running towards her. She bent down and scoops him up into her arms, holding him close.

"How are you?" Mako asks her standing up.

"I'm alright. The first drift was really rough." She explains kissing her boys head.

"It always is. I heard Chuck and Herc arguing earlier down the hall." Mako tells her.

"Yea he isn't too happy with Raleigh and I at the moment. I may have punched him in the face." She smirks remembering the look of shock in his face.

"I'm sure he deserved it. I've been wanting to do for a while now." Mako laughs.

"Thank you so much for watching him." She says, giving Mako a grateful smile. "There is just one more thing I have to do before I take this little guy to dinner. I will catch you later." She walks towards the door.

"Of course. He is a sweetheart. I'd be happy to watch him again for you." Mako returns the smile as she steps out of the small room. With their farewells made she began her walk down the hall towards her destination praying that everything was ok.