It’s the fourth year since he became a pilot. Everything is awful. Unlike those who joined before him, Chuck never really got to experience the glory days. From the moment Knifehead decommissioned Gipsy, everything changed. The world’s faith in the Jaeger programme is hanging by a thread. So many pilots and Jaegers lost. And Chuck can feel his connection with Herc slowly weakening. There is nothing they can change, there is nothing they can say, there is nothing they can fix. Everything unsaid is in the drift, but that doesn’t mean either of them knows how to deal with it. Chuck is young. He might be a seasoned soldier, but he is young. And never got the chance to properly grow up in the ways that matter the most. He’s lived a soldier’s life, and that’s the only life he knows. Because nothing else matters. Not when you are weighing one child’s mental health and emotional needs against the survival of human race. Anger is all Chuck has. Anger is something he can use. Anger is something that makes sense. Fear, pain, heartbreak, grief, despair, these are things Chuck cannot afford. But anger, anger is his friend. It washes away the bitter feelings of disappointment, frustration, and resentment. Chuck can be angry at anything he doesn’t know how to deal with, and when you’re the best fighter in a losing war, anger can always be justified. Of course he knows it’s no good for the bond, but that’s just another thing to be angry about. He has been on this earth for twenty years, and Kaiju for the last ten. He doesn’t remember a life before, and he doesn’t imagine a life after. Time has lost its meaning because there is no future. Yet he is living by numbers, every second passed counted. No one can know how he feels, no one wants to know.