((So I got to thinking about what a terrible Jaeger pilot Sidoni would be...
This is a tie-in drabble-esque piece to lightandwinged's Capital Stallion Pacific Rim AU; I've used all her headcanon here!))
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We’re drift-compatible, yes, but we’re not Jaeger compatible. “Sidoni’s the problem, Ranger,” Pentecost tells me later, “Too volatile. Undisciplined. She’s a danger to everyone. We would like to find you another partner,” to which I say absolutely not, unless I can have Mori. He shoots me a look so sharp it pokes right through his cold English exterior because he loves that kid more than he loves humanity, and also probably because he doesn’t want her to see all the perverted shit in my head.
Sid seems less upset by the whole thing than I am. “S’fine,” she says, “I ain’t really wanted to be gettin’ in full-body armour an’ latched into a giant robot an’ swinging swords and chainsaws and shit at a freak sea monster anyway. I’m plenty happy here, holdin’ my dick and raisin’ our kid,” and when I tell her this is the very definition of sour grapes, she reminds me that grapes make her sick and claims that she doesn’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.
Overnight, Capital Stallion is deployed. The sirens ringing through the barracks to call pilots to attention are quiet at this distance, but I hear them. I’ll always hear them, I think. I wake up and lie in the darkness with Sid peaceful and sleeping at my side, our child curled up on her bed on the opposite side of the room, and I wonder if my cousin will be coming back (she does, they do, with another recorded kill). I wonder if she ever looks over at her co-pilot and misses me. I hope she doesn’t just as much as I hope she does. It’s a selfish feeling. I recognise this.
And thank God I have my wife to slap the selfishness out of me, which she does the following morning when I tell her what Pentecost said. She’s not angry at being judged, because Sid knows her flaws and takes a surprising amount of pride in them -- she’s pissed off that I’d use wanting to be with her as an excuse to hold myself back. She thinks I’m daft (and a lot of other, less kindly words, some of which have recruits giggling behind their hands as they listen in). She’s right to be angry. And she’s lucky we aren’t ever going to drift together again so she won’t realise how fucking angry I am, too.
I noticed it the first time I heard those words, in that crisp voice, Initializing neural handshake.
My cousin, Llew--my partner in crime and co-pilot--smiled at me when we heard those words and mouthed, "This is it," at me. We'd been through weeks of testing, we'd gone over all the risks, and now we were ready to drift for the first time.
I heard those words and then there was no more I. No more me. Only we. Images and memories that weren't mine flickered across my mind, not seen but felt and known just the same, and in the background, I heard it: a low, quiet hum. I wanted, at first, to ask what it was--and Llew wanted the same, because we wanted the same things now--but I didn't want to risk interrupting the process. If we could manage this, if we could work together in this way, we could help. We could join the fight, and we could save the world.
Oddly enough, the hum wasn't unfamiliar. It wasn't new; I had just noticed it for the first time. Llew was curious; he didn't speak aloud, but he wondered, 'Do you always hear that, babygirl?' and I said yes. I'd always heard it, but I didn't recognize it as something besides background noise until just then.
Afterwards, we both nursed nosebleeds, and our doctor checked our pupil dilation, our reflexes. I could still hear--well. Not really hear. I could feel the hum pulsing against the back of my mind, and the doctor asked me if everything was alright.
"Is it normal to... well, I don't really hear it, but sense some sort of humming during the Drift?" I asked.
"It's not normal, no, but it's not abnormal," the doctor said. "It just means that you're more sensitive to the general processes of the mind, the background noise. Which is probably why your nose has already stopped bleeding."
My nose had stopped bleeding; Llew still had to change out the tissues in his nostrils every few minutes, but he gave me a thumbs-up and grinned maniacally when the doctor said that we'd performed marvelously, that we'd practice again the following day.
And we did practice the following day, and the day after, and the day after that, and by the time we first piloted a Jaeger, the hum was a constant and reassuring presence, a comforting tinnitus, reminding me of my partner nearby.
. . .
I ran away from home with Llew when I was fifteen, three years before the Kaiju came. Everyone--but especially my poor, sainted, widowed mother--thought I was a freak for what I'd called my sixth sense, my ability to pick up on what people were thinking and feeling before they said anything. I lived in a world of constant chatter, and that was bad enough, but being called a freak for it just made things worse.
Llew didn't think I was a freak, even when I acted like one, and he hated how people treated me. One night, when I was twelve, he said, "I'm gonna get you out of here someday, babygirl," and I knew he would. Then, when I was fifteen, he tapped on my bedroom window. I slipped outside and ran with him, and we never looked back.
We didn't have much money between us, but Llew knew some folks the circus and carnival circuit, and we joined up with them. It wasn't quite the old school type of carnival freak show, with strong men and alligator girls, but Llew and I always drew a decent audience as acrobats and mind readers (he learned to pick up cues from me, and we got great tips).
When it wasn't carnival season--because it can't be carnival season all year 'round, especially in the winter--we settled down in Northern California, close enough to the border of Oregon that we couldn't really tell the difference. We were near the coast, in something that could barely be called a house, with just a kitchen and living area, a bedroom big enough for maybe two people if those two people were small and acrobatic, and a bathroom, and in the bathroom, when you sat on the toilet, your feet were in the shower. It was cramped, and it leaked, and we always talked about making it big someday--maybe with Cirque du Soleil or something like that--and getting out of there.
We did get out of there, just not the way we expected. Three years on, San Francisco was destroyed by a Kaiju, but that didn't matter much to us. It was the on-season, and we were on tour, and we watched the whole thing happen with the other carnies on a fuzzy little TV in the back of our van. Llew said, "Shit, I hope our house is still there," and I said, "I don't know why it wouldn't be." And that was that.
We kept up with the news, sort of, but another couple of years passed, and it was the off-season again, and we were low on money. Like every other time we were low with money, Llew was racking up a high tab at the nearest bar, and I was home, or more specifically, I was on the beach. Our beach hadn't been touched by the Kaiju, not even by the last dregs of their acid. I was on the beach, and I was sparring with an invisible partner, when I heard Llew calling.
"Senkha!" he said. He sounded like he had been drinking for hours or maybe even longer, and I turned, and he had a woman with him--compact, buxom, uniformed, her red hair blowing in front of her face.
This, I soon learned, was Sid.
Sid greeted me with a smirk and a handshake. "Your cousin," she said, "is a horrible kisser when he's drunk, but I've never seen anyone else fight like that, at least not until I saw you down on the beach." She had a thick accent, New York or maybe Boston, I guessed. "I'm Sid, and I want to talk to you about the PPDC."
I didn't know what had happened, and I didn't want to know. If Llew played true to form, I'd be sleeping on the couch that night, covering my ears with a pillow while Sid moaned and screamed in her New-York-or-Boston accent and then making them both a pot of strong coffee in the morning. I smiled anyway. "The, uh... you mean with the Jaegers, right?" I asked, winded from climbing up the bluff to where they stood.
Sid nodded, her grin widening. "Why don't we talk about this inside?"
So we talked inside, and Sid didn't stay the night like I'd expected, leaving us instead with her business card and her hopes that she'd see us again, that we'd be Jaeger pilots. Of course, we'd have to train and test first, but she thought we had potential. When Llew said, as she was leaving, that he'd have to show her how good a kisser he was when he was sober, she just rolled her eyes and said it was nice to meet us, and then she drove away, in a red sports car that I couldn't have identified if I tried.
We didn't sleep that night, up talking it over until sunrise, and then in the morning, we bummed rides down to Los Angeles, where Sid said she worked. The Shatterdome there was new, the academy was new, and our lives there were new, too.
. . .
Our Jaeger was a beauty to start, grey and blue and smelling like a new car. She moved with a fluid swiftness that made both of us catch our breath the first time we took her out. She was called the Capital Stallion.
I laughed the first time I heard the name. "Capital Stallion?" I said. "Really? That's her name?"
We were looking at her from the outside, Llew and I, and he laughed. "Can you think of a better name?" he asked.
I hesitated and shook my head. "I just really hate horses," I said. "But I guess it'll do."
We gained a lot of notoriety, Llew and I, because we fought like we were still in the circus. We were acrobats, and so was the Stallion. The Kaiju were her partners, her props. People loved seeing us fight, and in two years, we'd killed three Kaiju and made names for ourselves. The little shack up by the border of Oregon was a thing of the past; we lived in the barracks, but we lived like royalty there.
We had lives outside of each other, too. I made fast friends with a lot of people in the program--technicians and doctors especially. I thought I might want to be a doctor someday, when the war was over. I didn't feel like a freak anymore, especially when people told me that my empathy, my ability to understand motives and thoughts was a blessing.
As for Llew, he and Sid started dating about a week after he and I first piloted the Stallion. It made for a lot of awkward neural handshakes, full of memories of stolen moments up against a wall somewhere, but he was happier than I'd ever seen him, and I liked Sid. It was impossible not to like her, even without the Drift, and having these people--Sid, the doctors, the technicians--loving and depending on us made the fights that much easier to win.
. . .
Today, it's a Cat II, code name "Fathead." Llew's been laughing about the name since the alarms went off, but there's something subdued in his laughter that I doubt anyone else would hear.
"Fathead," he mutters, as we're suiting up. His hands clench and unclench in a nervous gesture I haven't seen in years. "Who the fuck names these things?"
I shake my head and roll my eyes. "Who cares what it's named, anyway?" I ask, stretching my arms to get used to the feeling of my armor. "We just need to tear it into pieces. That's all that matters."
"Right," Llew answers, his eyes on the armor rather than on me. I want to ask what's wrong, but I'll know soon enough, and I brace myself.
The hum in the back of my mind grows louder, more noticeable, and that crisp voice speaks: Initializing neural handshake. And then I know.
"There's never going to be a good time to say this. I mean, hell, those alarms could go off at any minute. But you need to know, Llew: I'm pregnant."
Sid stands, strong and calm, her jaw set in determination. She looks happy. She looks unafraid. Llew feels his heart drop to his stomach, then rise, then drop again. "You are?" he asks. It takes him a long time to form the words, and he feels like an ass saying them. That's not what you're supposed to say when the girl you love tells you she's pregnant. You're supposed to tell her that you love her, that you're so happy, but he's so afraid. The world isn't right for this. Their lives aren't right for this. He wants to cry and laugh and scream all at the same time.
All she says in response is, "I am."
He scrambles for a better response. "How long?" he manages.
"Only just found out last week, the doctor says I'm about six weeks along," Sid answers. She takes a shaky breath and exhales. "I want this baby, and I'm going to have this baby, whether you're part of her life or not."
"Her? It's a girl?"
"Or a boy. The point is, I'm having the baby."
"Oh."
When the gel drains from our helmets, I'm staring at Llew. I can't do anything but stare. I don't know how to react or feel, but he does: regret, defensiveness, excitement, fear. "Babygirl," he says, after a long moment, and I shake my head.
"Let's kill this motherfucker," I tell him, and he smiles.
It's only moments later that we're in a churning ocean that reaches the Jaeger's waist, and the hum is louder than ever. We see the Kaiju straight ahead, and that becomes our focus. Forget what we just remembered. Forget what we have to talk about later. Look at right now, the beast before us and the fight we must win.
Its head is enormous, but wide, and Llew says, "Oh. Fathead. Got it." And then we're laughing as we leap above the creature and come down hard on its back, eliciting a roar of pain from it and a cheer in our headsets.
For the next several minutes, we have nothing but each other and the fight, and we are fluid, breaking the beast into pieces that will wash up on the beaches of Southern California and be picked clean by scavengers, both human and non-human. We dig into its flesh with our fingers and scream in primal fury as we tear the thing limb from limb. We break bones and laugh as we do it. At one point, the Kaiju slams its fat head against the cockpit of the Stallion, and the instruments go haywire for a beat before we deliver the killing blow, a series of searing rockets from our wrists that sever the beast's head and send it careening into the ocean.
We're both breathing hard and shaking, but it's from adrenaline--mostly. A little dizziness from the blow to the cockpit, but we walk it off quickly. Llew wants to see Sid, needs to see her, and because of that, we're staggering back to the Shatterdome faster than we usually would, and he decides to cut off the Drift so abruptly that I get a nosebleed for the first time in years. The hum diminishes as I watch him run through the crowd, lift Sid high in the air, and kiss her.
That's when I know this was our last run.
. . .
A week later, Llew and I sit on the beach, far from where we can see the scavengers picking at the remains of Fathead. It's a gloriously golden sunset, the sky vibrant with pinks and purples and greens. I have a beer. Llew has a beer. We haven't spoken yet.
Llew breaks the silence. "I asked Sid to marry me," he says, and I smile. I'm focusing on the hum, which has grown quieter and quieter over the past few days. I know it's not long until it's gone forever. I don't want it to go.
"I know. And she said yes." Llew shrugs sheepishly. "Llew, the entire Shatterdome heard her say yes. I'm pretty sure Anchorage heard her say yes."
Llew laughs, but he won't look at me. "I never imagined this," he admits. "I never imagined being a hero, falling in love, having a family. I had you, and you've grown up beautifully, and that's been enough, but..."
"Llew, it's alright," I say. I'm looking at him, begging him to meet my eyes, but he doesn't. "You love her. I love her. She makes you so happy, and you deserve that. It's okay to want more."
"Yeah." Now we're coming to it. I can hear it in the silence behind his voice. "I, uh. I'm also retiring. As a pilot."
Even though I expected it, it winds me, and I sound breathless as I answer, "I know."
Llew is full of justifications. "I wouldn't feel right, leaving Sid and the baby without a husband and father, if something were to happen. I wouldn't feel right, knowing that they were behind and I was in the Stallion, maybe dying, maybe not coming back. I got a new position, it'll be official next week. I'll be a trainer now. It's good money... maybe not as glamorous, but..." He trails off, his voice choking.
I don't know what to say. I realize that my eyes are full of tears, and I blink them away and swallow. And finally, I say, "What are you going to call the baby?"
"...well, don't laugh. But we were thinking of Absinthe, and maybe we could call her Abby or Sin."
"Sin Wheaton," I say, trying the nickname with Llew's last name, and then I'm laughing and crying at the same time. "You're begging for trouble with a name like that, but... I like it. I like it a lot."
"I do too." Llew laughs softly and finally--finally--looks up at me. "You're alright, then? You'll be alright?"
I lean my head against his shoulder, not responding for a minute or two, and he wraps an arm around my waist. Above us, the stars begin to come out. "I don't know what I'll do if I'm not in the circus or piloting the Stallion," I finally admit.
The hum is almost gone, nothing more than the memory of a whisper. Llew rests his cheek against the top of my head, and I feel him smile. "You can still be a pilot, if you want," he says. "I think I've found you a decent co-pilot, out of Anchorage."
Anchorage. My mind races to remember the names of the teams up there, but all I can come up with is Gipsy Danger and the Becketts--both of whom I'd happily fuck, but neither of whom I'd let near the Stallion. "Who is he?" I ask, and as I speak the words, the hum is gone, a deafening silence in its place.
Llew doesn't seem to notice. "He'll be flying down next week, just in time for the wedding. His name's Oliver MacGlynn."
Senkha dreamed of the circus often. In those dreams, she was usually the tightrope walker or the girl on the flying trapeze, but sometimes, in the best dreams, she was an acrobat, one half of the Wild Wheatons, tumbling and performing death-defying acts of balance and gymnastics with Llew.
She dreamed of being an acrobat on the nights that followed the worst days, the ones where her mother made her feel the smallest. The dreams made her smile after she’d cried herself to sleep, but the best part about them was when she woke up, because somehow, whenever she woke from those dreams, Llew was always right there beside her.
1) I'll never forget when dad was teaching me how to fly a kite, and every time it nose-dived, he would angle it towards mom. The one time he actually hit her (or maybe she just intentionally didn't move out of the way, I never know with that woman), she came charging up to him with a bloodied arm and literally tackled him down into the sand.
2) Sleeping on summer nights with the sound of the waves beating against the shore and the scent of salt air wrapped around us.
3) The first time mom and all of us girls sang "The Littlest Birds" to dad. He got all teary-eyed and even pulled the classic dad line that he just had somethin' in his eye.
4) Building elabourate cities in the sand with my brother, moats and bridges and buildings and all, for mole crabs to explore.
5) When Whiskey got ahold of some, ah... herbs... and we were smoking out behind the shed, dad caught us. He got real angry looking, all puffed up and grumbly, took the joint from my fingers, took the bag from Whiskey, and glaaared at us as he took a drag. I thought we were in so much trouble that I was already planning my funeral. And then he just said, "Kids, I thought we raised you to share," and passed it back to me.
Come to think of it, he pocketed the bag. I don't remember that being shared.
