Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Only a few weeks out, and the Hong Kong Shatterdome has all but been converted into an airport. Most of the remaining rangers have already left; Danny was on the first plane out to Mexico with his newly official boyfriend. The skeleton staff left has been cleaning things up, archiving things and gearing up for the next steps.

Recovery. After fighting monsters for a decade and a half, Jimmy can hardly believe it. His job over the past few weeks has been more recycling than war strategizing. Assessing their remaining jaegers for construction and cleanup, rather than war.

The next generation of jaeger pilots won’t need to be battle hardened. A good thing, since by and large the remaining rangers declined the offer to continue piloting, instead opting for well earned retirements.

He and Timmy talked about it, but neither of them were particularly interested in becoming robotic construction workers. But Jimmy doubts retirement is in the cards for either of them.

Jimmy is in the jaeger bay when his copilot sets down a bag a few feet away, and leans on the railing with him. From here they can see out through the launch bay doors, where several passenger planes are assembled on the tarmac.

“So, figured out what you’re doing yet?” Timmy asks.

“A few weeks back in Texas,” Jimmy says. “I made it clear I wanted at least that much. Cindy understands. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten to visit my parents.”

Timmy smirks. “But I take it Cindy has your dance card punched for after that.”

Jimmy shrugs. “She wants me working on the restoration council. I might get to do field work, but it seems more likely they’ll want to ship me to DC.”

“I hear it’s nice there. No kaiju carcasses.”

Jimmy smirks. “How about you?”

“Back to sunny, kaiju carcass littered California.” Timmy is smiling. “There’s a lot of demand for J-Techs to help with the cleanup effort. Cosmo and Wanda just closed the deal on a workshop for jaeger repair and restoration. Government funded, but we’ll get to name it and run it ourselves.”

“Oh, so you’re part of it too? Not just tagging along?”

Timmy reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a card. “Fresh off the laminator. I’m a real J-Tech now.”

Jimmy smiles, looking at the card with ‘Class A Jaeger Technician’ emblazoned on the top. He doesn’t miss the rubber stamped signature of Marshal Cynthia Vortex at the bottom. “It’s always been more of a clerical error that you weren’t an official J-Tech. I’m glad it’s been rectified.”

Timmy shrugs. “Besides, it’s not a lot of J-Techs that have real drift experience. I can give people pointers when they come to our shop.”

“Sounds lovely.”

Timmy frowns, looking down at their hands, almost but not quite touching on the railing. “You know, we could always use a heady guy like you out there. It’s not as glamorous as DC, but y’know…”

“I know.”

It’s a nice thought. Jimmy can almost imagine throwing caution to the wind, jumping on the plane with Timmy without a single piece of luggage, trust falling into a new life. But Jimmy’s never been anything other than straight laced and practical, for better or worse.

“But you’re gonna join that restoration council,” Timmy says. It’s not a question, nor is he really sad. A statement of fact.

“Probably,” Jimmy says.

“You should.” When Jimmy looks up, Timmy is beaming at him. “They need someone like you there. Keep them in line.”

Jimmy smiles sadly. He knows Timmy is right. But part of him still wishes…

Timmy slides his hand over Jimmy’s. “California will still be there when you’re done. If you want to…”

Jimmy turns, disentangling his hand from Timmy’s to cup his face, and kiss him. Long and slow, savoring the way they fit together.

“I’d love that,” Jimmy whispers into his lips.

Timmy wraps his arms around him, and Jimmy savors the feeling of being held as they kiss again.

A wolf whistle pulls them back to reality.

“Come on, lover boy!” Cosmo shouts. “Plane’s leaving soon!”

Timmy backs away, clearly reluctant.

“Send me your address when you get settled,” Jimmy says. “I’ll write you.”

“You’ll write? What are you, a Victorian duke?”

“Fine, I’ll email you love letters like a lifeless rube.”

Timmy leans back in, stealing one more kiss. “I can deal with being romanced by a Victorian duke.”

Jimmy laughs. “We can still just email.”

“Oh, thank god!”

“Timmy! Did you order some parts from Canada?”

Timmy slides out from under the torso of the jaeger currently in the repair bay. They’ve been receiving so many partial-builds and potential refurbs from the PPDC that it’s hard to keep up with what tech is coming and going from where. His current project is a pre-Mark I prototype that Cindy had hooked them up with; smaller than the monster fighters that jaegers would become, but might be useful for more economical for clean-up crews and construction if he could clean up the slapdash radiation shielding and add some of the other features conducive to surviving piloting that the old engineers didn’t have time to put in.

“Uh, I don’t think so. Maybe?” Timmy calls back down to Wanda, grabbing some shop rags to wipe away the grease on his hands.

The old jaeger R&D yards are up in British Columbia, Timmy knows, and with all the assets that Marshal Vortex is unearthing, it’s very likely she had found something else to ship off to him. He starts down the ladder, two rungs at a time until he’s down far enough to slide the rest of the way. He slips through to the loading dock where Wanda’s chatting with the delivery man over a crate that’s at least four feet tall and maybe six feet wide.

Timmy whistles. “Well, it’s not a jaeger, but it’s not nothing, huh?”

“The shipping manifest needs your signature,” Wanda says, handing him the clipboard. Timmy raises an eyebrow, looking over the manifest. It’s pretty vague, just stating that the contents are ‘jaeger related materials’. Flipping back through the paperwork, he also realizes the origin address isn’t actually the PPDC Jaeger R&D yards, though it’s still from somewhere in British Columbia. No sender name. Perhaps strangest of all though, it’s explicitly asking for his signature, addressed ‘to the care of: Timothy Tiberius Turner.’ The stuff Cindy sends over normally is just addressed to their business name so that whoever is around could sign for it.

Timmy shrugs and signs it, handing the clipboard back to the delivery guy. He takes the signature page and leaves them with the mysteriously vague manifest. As soon as he leaves, Cosmo joins the group, staring at the unexpected crate.

“Well, should we open it?” Cosmo asks.

“I suppose that’s up to Timmy,” Wanda says with a shrug.

“Oh sure, let your son open the mystery danger box,” Timmy huffs. He’s already grabbing a crowbar though, not one to let mysteries lay untouched. Cosmo helps him with another corner, and together all three of them pry the top open.

The contents of the box are obscured under a drop cloth and straw padding to keep it all settled during transit, but there’s a scrap of paper pinned to the sheet, with “For Timmy” written in truly horrific rushed chicken-scratch, but encased in a red sharpie heart. Timmy looks at each of his parents, as if to confirm that he isn’t imagining it, before reaching out and ripping it off the pin to read it.

“Timmy,” the letter reads, and he can already hear it in Jimmy’s voice. “I had a chance to stop by my old lab by the old jaeger R&D yards before heading over to Texas. I’ll need to come back when I have more time to figure out what to do with the rest of my equipment and machinery, but I came across an old friend of mine. I thought about bringing him with me to my parents, but I thought all things considered, he might have more room to roam in your shop. Take care of him for me. I’ll want to come visit him from time to time. - Jimmy”

Timmy squints, trying to figure out what the hell Jimmy could possibly be talking about. He feels both his parents leaning around either side of him to read the letter, but they seem equally bewildered.

Suddenly, a memory clicks into place, one not quite his own.

“Wait… is it…”

Timmy starts digging at the straw, trying not to make too much of a mess as he pulls out enough padding to lift up the sheet. Underneath, what he exposes is a boxy metal corner, looking like a composite of many metal scraps welded together. Timmy runs a hand over the side, feeling around for something he’s only marginally sure exists. Sure enough, he finds a small depression in the metal and presses down on it, hard enough to feel the click when the button underneath is engaged.

Cosmo and Wanda jump when the mysterious piece of machinery starts moving. Cosmo screams. Timmy’s face lights up as the figure rises up, turns around, and shakes like a wet dog to get the rest of the packaging off of itself.

“Goddard!”

Soft yellow headlight eyes blink at him, along with a very synthetic sounding bark. The metal dog is roughly the size of a pony, but acts like a terrier as it wags a stubby metal tail and jumps forward to lick Timmy with a cold, metallic tongue.

“Uh, Timmy,” Cosmo says. Timmy turns to see his parents still clinging to each other. “What is that?”

“This is Goddard,” Timmy says, taking the dog’s head in both hands with a fond pat. “Jimmy told me about him. And well, I saw memories of him too. He was Jimmy’s, uh… pet project. Literally. From before the Kaiju War even. It’s what got him scouted for the PPDC to begin with.”

“Why is it… so big?” Wanda asks.

“Oh, apparently he used to be dog sized, but then he was refitted to jaeger size for testing early jaeger tech prototype tech, and now he’s… a little in between. He has so many gadgets and sensors and all sorts of things that are helpful for working on jaegers, oh my god, this is going to be so cool!”

Timmy looks back to his parents, smiling sheepishly. Goddard rests his head on Timmy’s shoulder, as if trying to look cute for the new people.