Archive of Our Own

She falls in love once.

It is one of the bases before Hong Kong. She is fifteen. The boy is everything fifteen-year-old love affairs require: tall, blonde, statuesque; he smiles at her; he tells jokes; he laughs at hers; sometimes, he sets his hand on her arm and she feels the slow pulse of her heart race into her head, splintering into a million voices all saying his name.

The noise of his boots against the grating starts to sound like the thunder of her own heart.

But every dream requires waking, and hers comes on a Tuesday: she is waiting with her arms full of books, awaiting him for their sparring sessions -- she is learning, she is training, and so what if she also gets to see him bare-chested and sweating? -- when he rounds the corner from the opposite hallway, his arm resting loosely around the small of some other girl's back.

He turns to her, smiles, and turns back to the other girl to lean down and kiss her; the scrape of the coarse paper against the inside of her arm will feel like more. Like deep blade cuts and wet blood.

The rhythm of her heart changes. Slows to a drum beat, a war march. Hard thuds that rattle the ribcage.

He sees her, says hello, asks about her, and in a history book, she remembers reading of armies that sowed salt in the fields of those they defeated.

Her voice trembles a response.

(And a long ago dream of slivers of pig heart in warm broth, and your mother feeding you from her own chopsticks; heart to make your own strong, and the heavy iron taste in your mouth, the way it gristles as you chew, the chalky taste of it clinging to the backs of your teeth -

and is your heart strong?

And is your heart?)

That night, when the Marshal slips into her room to press a kiss to her forehead and brush his large hand across the top of her head to reassure her into sleep (the same way they have always done, the way it has always been since she was found, since they found each other), the question slips out.

and does it hurt like this? and is it supposed to…?

He clears his throat, sitting on the edge of her bed, and shifts, the slope of his shoulders changing angles, as it does whenever the Marshal is uncomfortable. "Mako," he says.

She blinks at him once, her eyes large and bright.

The lesson, of course: love is falling; sometimes you scrape a knee and bleed a little, and sometimes the ground meets your feet just fine.

There's a moment when she wakes in the infirmary, when she forgets that the Marshal is dead, when it takes her a second before the truth of it slams into her, makes her feel like the room spins. She jerks too suddenly, and the IV rattles against its stand; across the room, Raleigh kicks in his sleep and jerks awake.

The blue of his eyes seems sharp in the sterile light.

The fluorescents buzz once, twice, and something squeezes in her chest. Sometimes the ground comes up to meet you; sometimes you snap a bone in fragments and wonder how you can possibly put it back together again. How you can ever muster the will to try to jump again.

He calls to her. Crawls out of his bed, his hospital gown riding high on his thighs, and leads himself with small stumbling steps towards her bed.

"What are you doing?" she asks, and he rattles the side rail. It pushes down a little further, and he clambers onto the bed to sit on the edge.

There's a silent question on the tip of his tongue. His arm slips around the curve of her waist, his hand warm against her back. Tapping small cadences against her skin over the gown.

"He was everything," she says, and he clears his throat. Nods once. Says nothing.

"You know," he says, "I'm here."

She sags against him for a moment. Allows herself the space of that weakness. Straightens her posture, sits up and forward, peers at the opposite wall.

Her heart is loud in her chest. Calls for his, and knows no answer will come.

(And when she cries, when she presses her face against the thin pillow and tries to quiet the noise of it, when it feels like something is clawing out of her and tearing her apart from the inside out, the taste of blood will linger in her throat and in her mouth, stronger than anything else, stronger than the salt slick of her tears against her lips, and she will think of him, in dark blue pressed suits and gray stars, will remember this is war, will remember a ticking clock.)

Everyone sees the pictures. Everyone talks. Everyone expects.

They're splashed on the cover of every reputable and disreputable news source from here to the eastern coasts of North America, and the base is alive with chatter. One of the few intact Jaeger pilot teams left, and the prestige hangs on them entirely. Weighs them down.

The post-drift hangovers don't make anything easier. She spends most of the day wondering if this day will be different, if this time, she will be strong enough to lie in her own bed and not feel the emptiness in her head like an absence, like another grief to be borne. Each night ending the same way. Each night ending with her crawling out of her own bed at 0300, slipping across the hallway and into his. Pushing his body towards the edge of the wall so she can force them to fit.

The beds are only built for single person occupancy, but she wills it to work. Squeezes them to fit. Two souls in a single body. His long legs poking out past the edge of the bed, his head sometimes pressed against her chest, her body wrapped around his.

He starts to leave his door open.

He starts to expect her. Or, perhaps, his body does; in sleep, his body will roll onto its side, will turn and press itself back against the wall and leave a space open for her body, for his arm to sling over her hip, over the curve of her waist, and brush his hand over her ribcage, her stomach.

And her head will feel fuller, her head will sing fragments of songs into her head, will feel unburdened, and she wonders if this will ever be something she can recover from. How long does an after-drift hangover last? How long will the ghosts chase her ankles, and lead her here? Into his bed?

(Every morning, she wakes up before he does. Dresses herself, crosses the distance back into her own room and waits until breakfast to greet him casually in the mess. As if nothing had changed. As if she hadn't seen him hours ago. As if they still lived their lives with these boundaries.)

He says, "Mako, we have to talk about this."

There are stacks of reports in her hands. New sketches for the Mach VIs that they're talking about developing, old data on the aftereffects of the drift (for her own records), old accounting statements, Tendo's estimates and reports on property damage sustained in Hong Kong from the most recent attack. There are other things to concern herself with than personal questions. Other things that demand her attention. Her complete attention.

"About what?"

He wrinkles his forehead, and she knows. Can hear his voice booming across the expanse of space between his mind and hers, can see it the way she remembers seeing his memory of meeting her for the first time. And knows that he knows that she knows.

"We never got a chance to talk about it," he says. "What it means. The drift."

She lifts the stack of reports in her arms. "I have the reports here. The data collected by the research psychologists from the past few years."

He shakes his head. "That isn't what I mean."

"I know," she answers. Of course she knows. He is in her head; he has seen inside her head; has seen every image, every dream - flickers of her imagining the feel of his scars underneath her hands, of kissing him, of piloting together for the rest of however long they have - and still, he is here; he asks of her (what? what is he asking?) nothing.

"You can't let the drift control you like this," he says. "If you don't define it, then…"

"I let nothing control me," she snaps, and he tenses.

"The drift isn't an answer; it's a riddle. Either you tell it what it is, or it tells you what you are."

"And what were you?"

He rolls his shoulders, looks up at the ceiling. "With Yancy? I was… a giant. Bigger than life."

"And with me?"

He meets her gaze. "That depends on what your answer is."

She sniffs.

The Hong Kong Shatterdome is permitted a sliver of their original allotment of funding. Given two months to downsize their personnel to fifteen percent of their current operational standing. Mako stays; the scientists stay; Herc stays. In the mess, Raleigh stacks up the extra chairs and folds away the tables and wonders what the hell he's still doing here.

Mako spends most of her days with Newt and Hermann, Tendo and the rest of the development team, talking schematics and prototyping and other scientific terms that Raleigh's lost since his last class at the Academy. It should be bigger than this, he thinks. Even now, with the word victory hanging high in the air and printed in large bold on every newspaper cover, there's no knowing for sure. And the kaiju always seem to come when they're most vulnerable.

There are other reasons, too. There is the space carved out in his bed that belongs to her; there is the feeling of her warmth beside him; there is the fact that no matter how many different ways he approaches it, no matter how he thinks about it, he ends up at the same conclusion about his relationship with Mako. (In his head, Yancy laughs. In his head, Yancy's all smug, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders and muscles flexing as he lounges against a vertical beam, grinning. c'mon, little bro, he says, is it really that hard to figure out? it ain't rocket science. But Yancy's always been a natural.

He's always had to fight for the things that he gets to keep, and sometimes it fails. He keeps little.)

And there are other questions. He hasn't left Hong Kong in months, and the old city's starting to work its way into his life. Nothing cold, nothing disconnected like Alaska - too many people, too much noise, all the problems that come with too many people in too small a space. And there's Tendo and Herc, and the little bubble of people that know him now, that see him in the mornings and greet him and ask him to get dinner. People that are part of his life now. That rely on him.

Herc hands him a stack of files outside his bunk one morning - here, he grumbles, seems right you get a share of the shit - and he sifts through the personnel files. Reads too many of the background bios, finds he doesn't know who he can cut and who can stay.

Fifteen percent of current operating capacity, and do they need him?

There's a line about leopard and spots. He runs.

Manila first, then Kathmandu; Ankara, Tunis, Lisbon, New England.

New England is his longest stay. Gets a house by the shore and spends days peering out at the rolling tides of the sea, tasting the salt in the air and the cold breeze that rattles through the boughs of trees, peering at the crisp water that lacks the warm hues of the other ocean he's seen.

The water here is colder, harsher. He stands with his feet in the sand every morning, lets the tide drag him in and out, in and out, like breathing.

(The night he decides not to stay, he sits up on the edge of his bed and watches her pick through data reports, her hair pulled back, a pencil between her teeth; she sits cross-legged on the floor, and he thinks about running his hands across her shoulders, about leaning down and touching her.

She shudders then, and tosses a file across the floor.

what is it?, he asks, and she shakes her head, her hand working at the knots in her neck.

nothing, she answers, but he can see it in the hard line of her posture. The stiffness of her joints.

have you been sleeping?

She turns to reach for another stack of reports, and the joints in her back click. She sighs, nearly a groan, and he reaches out to knead the muscles along her shoulder.

raleigh, she says, and he isn't sure what the intent behind it is but a hundred thoughts jump into the forefront of his brain, none of them appropriate to share.

He digs his thumb into a particularly tight knot, and she groans again, a soft grunt that becomes a longer sigh, and he can't think of anything else to say. what are we is always the question that sits on his tongue, but her head lolls against his arm to give him more access and he forgets it. Forgets word and language except for the line of her body.

She flushes with warmth and it creeps up her neck, colors the apples of her cheeks, and he thinks about kissing her. Doesn't.

She turns then, shifting out of his grasp, setting her hands on either side of her on the floor. "I've read the reports," she says. "I know…"

And he shakes his head. "You think you know, but the reports don't cover what it's like. Not really. They used to hook us up to machines after, try to figure out what it was - the hangover? But…"

She clears her throat. Clicks her tongue. "The reports are clear. The drift is what it is. It links us, but nothing more."

"It doesn't just do that. There's residual…"

"…neural imprinting, yes, I know, but we can deal with that, you know. The post-drift hangover can be dealt with, it just takes a measure of…"

"…control?" he finishes.

She grunts, nods her head decisively.

"You think it's all in our head."

"The reports are clear," she repeats.

"What about all the times you've…"

She flushes. "It's an effect of the drift. The brain compensating for the lack of presence from the other. There are notes from a Dr. Sandra--" she pauses, rooting in the stack for the report when he leans forward, cups her neck with his palm, and draws her towards him.

It's contact more than a kiss, his mouth stumbling awkwardly over hers from too much momentum, but after that follows what he's used to: her mouth, soft and pliant, beneath his, her hand scrabbling for purchase against the collar of his t-shirt, the noise of her groan caught somewhere in the space between her mouth and his.

When he pulls away, her eyes are closed, her lips still pursed.

She opens her eyes and meets his gaze. "And what does that prove?" she asks.

"Whatever it needs to," he answers. "The drift isn't just something you can explain. It's more than that. It's - "

Her eyes flit to his mouth briefly.

"And you think…?"

"Well," he says, "I need you."

And she exhales, leans back, clasping her arms around her knees. Containing herself.

"And…" she begins.

and what now

and how

He brushes his hand across his mouth. "It's more complicated than you'd think.")

He writes her. Sends a postcard to the base at each stop he makes along the way. Writes her name carefully, practices his Japanese, hears the lilting tones of her laugh across an ocean.

The last postcard, a picture of a lighthouse, its beacon lighting up the surface of miles of ocean:

眞子 -

don't lose sight of the light.

here when you need me.

r.

The first few weeks of his absence are the worst. Cleaves her in pieces she didn't anticipate. Wakes in the middle of the night with a chill, despite the humid climate; feels the phantom of his body clinging to hers in the bed only to find him absent; catches his voice in the lab once or twice.

(Called for him once, too, by accident, only to have Dr. Gottlieb turn to her, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and correct her.)

She refuses to let it serve as a setback. She and Marshal Hansen have other concerns to worry about. The design schematics of the first Mach VI are taking far too long (made worse by their lack of personnel and Tendo's continued lack of sleep) and their funding is constantly on the edge of being severed altogether. The only thing saving the neck of the Jaeger program at the moment remains her ability to hold to deadlines. No matter what happens.

So when he leaves, it isn't a concern she can deal with immediately. It isn't something she has the time or the space to consider, not when the Jaeger program - the program the Marshal had fought to preserve most of his life - is in danger of being eliminated permanently.

But she isn't strong enough. The memories of him - the unexpected ones, like how he smells after a sparring session, or the half-finished words that he murmurs in his sleep - follow her through the corridors, search for her, call her name.

She does her own research. Scans the medical reports from as far back as she can find, post-drift observations, neurological studies; tries to find evidence that this is something she can address, something she can fix. Tendo has his own anecdotal data, stories of Jaeger pilots that had eventually ended up living together, married, or, at least, sleeping together on a regular basis. Had to find new ways to orient living situations to cope with existing spouses, or other connections.

"No escaping it," Tendo says, crunching a piece of celery between his teeth. "It was just one of those things they had to deal with."

"And no one discussed further options?"

"Except for the medical staff?" he says, with a quiet laugh. "There were other things that demanded our attention."

She takes another mouthful of rice, chews thoughtfully.

"If you miss him," Tendo starts, and she grunts.

"It isn't that."

"Forget I said anything."

She dreams of him. It's someone's apartment - his, maybe? - and they're sitting in the kitchen; the light casts his shadow against the archway of the doorjamb, and her hands are lying flat on the table. It's a fold-out cheap thing, and the chairs are rigid and uncomfortable. Linoleum floors.

He walks in, away from the dark, leads her by the hand into the narrow hallway. Presses her up against the wall, pinning her with his body as he kisses her. Her hands move into his hair, nails scratching along his scalp, legs shifting to allow him space.

She groans into the space of his mouth, and his tongue knocks against the edges of her teeth.

He pulls away, his forehead resting against hers, and pants. "Hey," he says, and she laughs - she giggles - because she has missed him. Missed the awkward remarks, the low timbre of his voice, the bob of his throat when he pants. "What's so funny?" His lips skim her throat. "Huh?"

"You," she answers.

"You want to see what I've done with the place?" he says, and his eyes are bluer than the ocean in the light. "I built furniture. I mean, it came in a box with instructions and everything, but…"

She laughs, presses her face against the crook of his neck. "What furniture?"

"Well," he says, "There's a bed, and some bookshelves, a dresser."

"Doesn't sound like a long tour."

He flashes a grin. "Well, some of it might take longer to show you than others."

She mirrors his expression, howling with laughter as he picks her up in his arms, and heads towards the bedroom.

In his bed, he strips her of her clothes, kisses her until her lips ache, drags his mouth down her neck, over her breasts, the jut of her hip, along her inner thighs. Her breathing grows ragged, even to her own ears, and he opens her with his fingers, leans in to kiss her there, to lick shapes against her; she buries her hand in his hair, digs her nails in, pulls, moans and listens to his quiet laugh against her skin.

His hand is a steady anchor against her hips when she comes, when her eyes roll back into her head and she loses the ability to focus on anything but this. On his mouth, on the contour of his name as she calls him. On him.

He lifts himself up onto his elbows, wipes at his mouth, looks at her. She laughs, a stuttering breathless noise, and looks back. "What?" she asks.

"Nothing," he says. "You're…"

"What? I'm what?"

He grins, knocks his head against her bare hip. "I love you," he whispers. And she sits up a little further, meets his gaze.

"What?"

He repeats it. Doesn't look away.

Her voice sticks in her throat, but he presses a kiss to her hip and says, "You don't have to say anything."

(This is where she wakes up.

Something uncurls in her chest, and she bites into her arm. The sobs push their way out of her, and now there is no escaping it; so much of her body comprised of absence, of empty space, and trying to fill it with something else. Data and reports, numbers, and the numbing ambition of vengeance. And as much as she had wanted to pilot a Jaeger, had she done all her research? Truly thought about what it would have required of her, as sensei had asked? Had she rushed in in disregard of all the consequences?

After all, Raleigh had said that, hadn't he? i love you, and yes, a dream, yes, she had been sleeping and he is oceans away, but there are reports, there are previously collected instances of the drift influencing dreams, of dreams serving as a place of meeting for minds, or is that only her desperation to find an answer? To justify her feeling? Reports and reports, evidence to support her arguments and counter-evidence to refute it, and there has been nothing close to consistency.

It's need; she understands that now as her cries grow louder, as she buries her face into the crook of her own arm and tries to find solace, but that doesn't change facts. He is away, and she is here; she is still fighting; she is still trying to find a place for the thing that built her, the thing that saved her; she refuses to let it die silently and he has run away somewhere in search of something he does not care to articulate. That doesn't change the circumstances. There are reports; this is typical of the drift; this is typical of the post-drift, and so, now that they are here, now that she needs the Marshal, where is he?

Piloting was supposed to draw lines into clarity. Was supposed to isolate new parts of the world that she hadn't yet seen, hadn't yet experienced. And now she is here, hearing his voice in her head - all i have to do is fall; anyone can fall - with the memory of the taste of his mouth and the feel of his fingers against her bare skin, and she can't isolate the truth of it.

Is it love? Is that something she can call it? Or is it only a phantom of the drift? And isn't she supposed to be wise enough to tell the difference?)

He wakes at 0400, cracks open the windows to let freezing air into his small cottage. In his sleep, he had heard her crying, had felt the grief that lingered in her chest; it's enough to set him to destruction. He heads into the kitchen for a glass of water. Breaks the glass.

The shards scatter across the counter, one scratching itself along the butt of his palm.

The war has ended, and things are supposed to be easier now; isn't that how it goes? Or had they just all been kidding themselves about what it was really like?

And every morning, when he heads into town to get his share of food for the day and picks up a newspaper, looking for any news of her, is that punishment?

It's a Monday when he finally comes up with something. The paper runs a wire story about the continued efforts and protests to preserve the Hong Kong Shatterdome and keep it functional, if only to serve as a memorial to the men and women that risked and lost their lives to save the world.

Her photo is crammed into a small corner of page B8, back behind the second parts of columns in the finance section.

He tears it out, creases it carefully, pockets it.

Sends another postcard. Orange-leafed trees from one of the nearby public woods.

眞子 -

going off path

here if you need me

r.

He returns from the post office, the cottage feeling small and claustrophobic. She sits on the edge of his bed. Looks up at him when the door opens.

thought you'd left

And he ducks his head. An accusation, even if she doesn't mean it. "Just mailed you your postcard."

She smiles, turning her head, her hair falling to cover the movement. why haven't you been back to see them

"Who?"

tendo, marshal hansen, the jaegers?

"Did they finish the Mach VIs?"

you were supposed to be my co-pilot The line of her shoulder cast in shadow. When he leans forward, his fingers graze the air of her skin, feel nothing but dust.

"You understand, I had to…"

i understand, she echoes, and he hears the accusation there for what it is.

"I miss you." And is that an admission?

She cranes her neck to peer out the window. then come back

The phone rings.

He snatches it up, nearly drops the receiver. Can't help himself, "Mako?"

A laugh on the other end of the line. "Sounds like someone's got it bad," Tendo chimes, and Raleigh scrubs his hand over his eyes.

"It's late over there, isn't it?"

"Don't worry, my man, this talk is all business."

"What's going on?"

"The Mach VI. It's up."

He takes the first flight back to Hong Kong.

The Shatterdome is how he remembers it. Quieter, the lights a little dimmer, but still the frantic noise of activity, of stress and anxiety, of too much work to be done in too small a window by too few people. When he walks through the doors, he sees the shadow of it, standing in the center of the hangar.

Tall and gleaming with new metal, new polish, and the noise of sparking acetylene torches in the background.

She stands in front of it, a clipboard clasped to her chest - a child inspecting a giant.

He says her name.

She turns; the clipboard slips out of her grasp, nearly falls to the ground.

He says her name, and her mouth falls open.

He crosses the distance. Walks, sprints. Wraps his arms around her, presses her body against his.

i missed you

"I missed you," he says, and her fingers curl against his shoulderblade.

They eat dinner together in the hangar that night, and catch up. He talks near nonstop, running on about the landscape of New England, the picture of a sunset on the water, how much he think she'd enjoy seeing herself there, the rocky shore and the crisp water.

She listens with a small smile on her face, picking at his potatoes instead of her spinach.

He says, "And what about you?"

She thinks of the riddles of lab reports, thinks of throwing herself into studies and other people's experiences to make sense of her own. "Not much to tell," she says, instead. The Mark VI looks down at them, its eyes dark and shuttered - sleeping, she thinks, though soon they'll wake it up. "Working."

He looks up at the machine and glows with pride. "She's beautiful." And reaching over, he takes her hand in his own, slips his fingers between hers. "I did miss you, you know."

"Yes," she says. "You keep saying."

She looks over at his face and there's something thoughtful - assessing - in his glance, in the way he returns her look. His thoughts are so close, close enough to be loud, and she has to shake her head to regain her bearings. They aren't one body; they aren't one person, no matter what the drift makes them think. They're two - supposed to have separate desires, separate thoughts; after all, how can anyone be so connected to someone else all of the time?

He leans in close, whispers her name.

It isn't fair. She should be better at this. Should know which parts are her, which parts are him, which parts are the drift.

"Did you figure it out?" he asks.

"What?" she whispers, and his lips skim hers. A soft, gentle kiss. He pulls away, meets her gaze. The question: was that okay?

can i?

"Our drift," he says. "What is it?"

She shakes her head.

"No answer?" He leans in to kiss her again. "Thought you had all of them."

She nuzzles her nose against his with a quiet laugh. No, she doesn't have an answer for this. For the way it seems to make her mind and body feel connected to something greater, the way they say Jaegers used to move in the middle of the night with no pilots; she turns her head and sees the way he looks at her and thinks of herself as something more than whatever she is; he sees her; he watches her; he loves her.

And what does she think? What has she decided?

"I dreamed about you," she says, "Once. When you first left."

He closes the distance again, bumps one of the meal trays with his knee as he readjusts. She makes a soft noise in the back of her throat and laughs against his mouth - not here, not in the hangar - and he smiles back, grins against her skin, and pushes her up against the railing.

"Yeah?" he asks. She nods. "So what happened?"

She blushes in response, ducking her head, and he laughs.

"Don't want to tell me?"

"Raleigh," she says, with a slight roll of the eyes.

He leans in, licks a swath along her neck. Follows with his teeth, gently biting, and she sighs. Works his way up to her ear, along her jawline. "I seem to remember," he says, pausing to nip at the hollow of her throat, "you coming to visit me in my apartment. I showed you my craftsmanship skills." Here, his voice drops. "Showed you other things too."

"Like what?"

He nips at her bottom lip with a soft hum.

"How do I know if you won't tell me?"

"Well," he says, his voice low, "you taste incredible."

The color travels from her face down her neck to her collarbone. He traces the path with the tip of his finger.

"That was…"

He shakes his head. "It was the drift." His mouth floats over her pulse point then, his tongue flicking against the spot, and she gasps. "You know, I have a bunk here too."

She snorts, tucks her chin against her chest, shaking with laughter. "Did you build furniture here too?"

He grins. "No, but I could still take you to see it."

She leans in for another kiss.

(They take the meal trays back, and walk a roundabout path back to his old bunk. The room is empty, save his luggage, which is yet to be unpacked, and the bed is covered with a set of sheets, a thin blanket folded neatly sitting at the foot.

It is just how she remembers - the feel of his mouth, the rough pads of his fingers, the way it feels when he murmurs her name against her skin.

They spend the night, and she wonders how she could have confused the drift with this at all, how the drift could be anything like the rush of blood in her veins, the feel of his hair between her fingers -- his thoughts are loud and she hears her own whimpers, feels his desperation and his desire -- and after that, there's little thinking at all.

And later, when she is hazy on the edge of falling asleep, when he sits up in bed and combs his fingers through her hair in slow strokes, she'll feel that openness again. The feeling that there could be no other place like this. No other time.

"I love you," he'll say, or maybe she dreams, brushing his mouth against her temple as she falls asleep.

and your heart,

when was the last time you listened to it?)

"You haven't said that to very many people," she says over a private breakfast in the hangar. Her notes are scattered around her, a little cloud to keep him distant.

He looks up from runny eggs. "What?"

"There was Sharon," she says, ticking it off on her fingers, "and that girl in the flight academy…"

He huffs a laugh. "You can't use that against me. Jaeger pilot rules."

She grins, and jots down another quick note on a schematic.

"So, what?" he asks. "You're wondering?"

Her eyes go soft, then, become unreadable. "How do you know?" she asks.

He considers. Leans back on his hands, looks up at the ceiling, at the Jaeger standing in the shadows. It's the same way he feels when he stands at the top of something immense and peers down at the ground below; it's the way his palms sweat and the way his body reacts, the rapid pulse of his blood in his veins; it's like the feeling that this justifies why he is alive, what life is supposed to be; both the scope of how small things are below as they are huge overhead. It's stars, he thinks, and how he used to give names to things that could never hold them, that were larger than anything in his imagining.

He looks to her, and thinks stars, thinks sprawl, thinks about that window - that ten second span of time - when you fall and everything is gravity and weight against your ribs and your heart pressed to your back, and flight, however temporary.

Instead, he laughs, quiet and small, and tucks his chin the way he has seen her do a thousand times before. Her eyes get wider, her fingers busy with flicking a pencil. Anxious, maybe, for whatever he says.

"It's like…"

"Yes?"

It's the old movies again, imperfect sentiment and the wrong words, and he's never been good at saying things. Only at showing them. But for her?

"Flight."

She tilts her head, and the pencil drums against her skin as she keeps flicking. A small, erratic beat, and the only noise in the room apart from the droning hum of idling machinery.

"And the ground?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "Doesn't matter." Her eyes narrow. "For that minute, that second - however long you're airborne - the ground doesn't matter."

That night, in the space of his bed and sheets crushed underneath their bodies:

are you leaving again?

On the wall, his postcards. Taped. In order of date received, with lines drawn between points on an adjacent map. Pushpins marking where he's stopped.

His hand traces shapes on the small of her back. Can't stop touching her skin.

i didn't think about it

when were you going to decide?

i don't know

when…?

He smiles into her shoulder. guess i always thought you'd make that decision for me, one way or another

She lifts her head, cranes her neck, tries to look at him. She shifts in the bed, but his hand finds her hip, keeps her still.

what are you…

you lead me

And that's all he can think to say. All that he thinks needs to be said.

And when she was sixteen, and when she had told her father that she loved him before they drove in towards the city, on their way to the hospital, and when she had told sensei for the last time…

And when she had held him against her body on the shell of an escape pod, when they were floating in the water like wreckage from another disaster…

She's never been one for blurred lines. Prefers her boundaries solid, with thickly drawn lines. Easily delineated, easily followed. And here, where is the path? And here, where is her guide? Instead, she fumbles through where other people have tread, tries to find something to mark her place. What if she loses herself; what if she can't find her way out of whatever place she has walked into?

There are undeniable facts: she looks at him and feels something; and when he is absent, she feels that absence even greater, holds it to herself like a weight that pins her in place; and when she dreams of him, there is joy among all the other strange griefs and sadnesses; when she dreams of him, there are the two of them and there is laughter spilling over from empty room to empty room; when she dreams of him, they are two but always one.

It's a problem of the Jaegers. That was the theory of the first psychologists to study the post-drift hangover.

It's a problem of the pilots - another theory.

And now that it has been days and weeks, now that he has been sleeping beside her in bed and holding her, now that they have been getting even deeper into their own heads, part of her can't help questioning if it is a problem. If it is something she needs to solve, or an oddity to continue to observe. To track its change as it grows older, becomes more familiar.

and does the ground meet your feet

and how do you know

And what had sensei said? Had he said anything? Or, had it been a shrug of the shoulders, a quick peck on the top of the head and the imprecise explanation that it is something you know when you know; that there are no definite times, no definite places; that when you fall, you can only know that you are falling and find the rest of it difficult to describe.

He packs a bag.

Just in case.

(only ever a boy running scared, only ever a boy running after a bigger, stronger brother, only ever a boy who fell and couldn't learn fast enough

no, this is where you pick yourself up and say enough

this is where you stumble to your knees into the ocean

this is where you scream into the sea and know that you have lost something irretrievable

and her? … and her?

what if she is only something to lose? again, when you have built yourself into believing that flying is forever, that loss is something that can be fixed with the open head and open heart of someone else, someone better?

surrounded by warriors, and somehow, you keep surviving; and what if you kill her? what if you were always the curse?)

They run simulation upon simulation in preparation for the date of the trial run. They aren't ready yet. He knows it, and she keeps thinking it.

And glimpsing into her head, thinking what she's thinking, there's other bits of insecurity and impatience, other things he doesn't remember noticing the first few times they had done this.

Their sim scores are passable, but not as excellent as she aims for. "Is there something wrong with the configurations for the Mach VI readings?" she says to the control room.

There are responses, other suggested issues.

"Maybe we have to recalibrate," she says.

He looks to her, still feels her presence - warm and full - inside his head. you don't have to say anything back

She bristles, jots another note against her tablet. "Try changing the connector at the T4 line." Tendo's confirmation crackles back over the radio.

maybe after this, i'll go back to new england

She doesn't turn to look at him. Stares resolutely forward.

"You're going to have to come out and take a look at this," Tendo says. "The adjustment you want to make is going to throw the secondary circuit…"

She jostles in the suit. "Hold on," she says, disengaging herself from the machine. "I'm coming."

He waits for her in her room that evening. Waits for her to stumble back from the lab near dawn, the dark circles under her eyes even more pronounced, with a nearly empty cup of coffee in hand. On nights like these, it's all he can do to keep from putting her to bed himself, from checking on her every so often to know that she's actually resting.

She breezes in a few minutes later, pulling her hair free to fall loose around her shoulders. He likes the growing length, how it frames her face.

"Hey," he says, and she starts.

"I didn't know you were waiting," she says. "If I knew…"

"I know," he says. "I wanted to see you."

She smiles, a tired thing, and moves to sit in his lap. Buries her head in the crook of his neck. "Is that all?" She presses a kiss to his mouth, grips the back of his neck with her fingers and licks at his lip. He opens his mouth to her, kisses her back, smiles against her mouth. He'd never tire of this. Never.

And maybe she catches the edge of the thought, smiles back against him. Adjusts her position to wrap her legs around his waist. "Hey," he says, "we don't have to if you're feeling tired."

She grins, slips her hands underneath his shirt, pulling it over his head and tossing it behind her. Strips her own off and throws it to the floor.

His hands float over her ribcage, his thumbs running along the undersides of her breasts.

She kisses him, pins his back against the mattress with her weight, can't stop kissing him. His mouth is warm and wet under hers, the lips slightly chapped, and he makes these noises when he kisses her - these soft groans, the occasional whimper - that echo through her, that make her entire body shudder.

He's hard underneath her, and she grinds her hips against him. Hard. Watches the bob of his throat, the flutter of his eyelashes. He licks his lips, unclasps her bra and waits for her to shrug out of it, to add it to their growing pile of shed clothing on the floor. She rocks against him as he takes her breasts in his hands, as he leans forward and presses kisses to her ribcage, her sternum.

She pushes him down again, rougher this time, listens to the way the air knocks out of him. Leans down, her breasts brushing against his bare chest, scratches her teeth along his adam's apple, presses a kiss to the line of his jaw.

He says, "You're going to kill me."

She snakes a hand down to unbutton his pants, slips a hand in to grasp his cock, watching the set of his mouth as she strokes him. He pants, his hips pushing up against her hand, against the weight of her body, and she grins.

She leans down, kisses him. His hands grasp for her hair, kisses her until she can't catch her breath.

"Don't go anywhere," she says, pulling her hand free to unbutton her own pants. He kicks his own off and looks at her, eyes dark and expectant.

They're too impatient tonight, and he rolls her over onto her back, tests her with his fingers, circles her clit with his thumb before he enters her, fills her in a way she still hasn't quite become accustomed to. It's a little bit the same way she feels in a Jaeger - like she could never be anything this whole ever again, like she's finally comfortable in her own head.

He rocks her hips against her, setting a quick pace, and she hooks her leg around him, digs her heel into him, grips his hips with her hands.

"Mako," he groans, and she wants to keep that, keep her name just for him, just for moments like these in the space of her bedroom or his where he can whisper it like discovering a new word, a new phrase.

He leans down, kisses the side of her neck, her face, before finally meeting her mouth. It's sloppy, a little crooked, but she couldn't care less. He grinds his hips then, changes the angle, goes a little deeper and she cries out, her nails digging into his shoulder.

"Yes," she hisses, "Right there, yes…"

She tilts her face up towards him, kisses him as his hands press into the bed on either side of her, as he pulls away and buries his head against her neck, against her hair.

He grunts, and she can tell how close he is. Reaches down between them to touch herself, keeps her eyes directed at his face. He slams into her hard and comes, and she speeds the rhythm of her hand against herself, and follows.

Like the other nights, they stay like that for a few moments with him still inside her. He brushes the hair away from her face, leans his forehead down against hers. Lets his weight rest against her.

"You want me to get off?" he asks, each time, as if the answer ever changes.

"No," she says. "Stay."

It's quiet then, the two of them trying to adjust to being in their own heads again. To hearing only one voice and the echo of the other, instead of two.

She reaches for his hand, and repeats the word. Tilts his face up towards her, looks at his eyes when she says it again.

"Stay."

This is how it happens:

It's breakfast the morning of the test run, and they're eating in the hangar, looking at the Jaeger, asleep for the last few moments. Already there are techs running around, checking connections, checking circuits and wiring, making sure that the unexpected doesn't happen.

(Raleigh always thought preparing for the unexpected was a little stupid - there's always something you don't plan for - but Mako's insistent on it. Tracks all the little jobs with her notebooks and tablets, double- and triple-checks everyone's work.)

He watches her eat (or, really, push her food around on her tray), and tries to joke with her. Tries to keep the mood light. But whatever happens today decides how long the Jaeger program is going to live, if it lives at all. He doesn't have to be in her head to know how much this means to her.

"Hey," he says. "Whatever happens today… you did a good job."

She tilts her head. Hums.

"I mean it. No one could have done this like you did. No one could have done better."

She takes another small bite of oatmeal.

"It'll be fine," he says. "I love you."

She looks to the Jaeger and smiles. "I love you," she echoes, and he stills.

"Mako."

She leans back onto her hands, mirrors his stance. Her smile grows larger, and he can see her struggle to keep her face even. "I love you," she repeats. Shrugs her shoulders. "It's the truth."

He coughs a laugh, and it echoes through the nearly empty chamber. "I believe you."

"Good. You should."

(and how does she know to trust this over the other feelings? over the other thoughts?

lessons in falling from the drift; lessons in gravity -

sometimes it is enough to take the first step and find there's nothing underneath your feet; when the ground comes up to meet you, it will hurt or it will catch you, but falling is not about the meeting;

falling is about the space between the leaving and the meeting again, about the space between one and the other when there is no answer;

falling is about finding no boundaries.

and he had said once: anyone can fall and been half right; but falling is difficult, falling is tricking the body into opening itself to vulnerability, into acting against its own self interest;

falling is telling the body to trust itself and not the mind,

to believe.

the answer is easy enough:

she believes. maybe only the once, but once may be enough.

and if she meets the ground, she will bleed, scrape a knee or break a bone. she has suffered worse; she has lived through, has fought, will survive another.

somewhere her mother sings songs, somewhere her mother says and is your heart strong

and is your heart

her heart is strong; her heart sings; her heart finds another heart and grows.)

They're in the Conn-Pod and preparing to drop. Tendo's voice crackles through on the speaker, same as always.

"Ready to get inside my head?" he says, smirking, and she wrinkles her nose, shakes her head.

"Other people can hear you."

"Yes, we can," Tendo chimes, and Raleigh fumbles for the button to switch it off.

"You ready?"

She takes a deep breath, looks out into the hangar from their position hundreds of feet up in the air.

"Let's do this," she says, speaking with his voice.

He grins, jabs at the speaker again.

"Tendo, you heard the lady."

(The Mach VI - affectionately dubbed Indigo Rampage by Tendo - opens its eyes, all light and the whir of new machinery to an audience packed half-full in the hangar.

He moves his hand, and finds it's hers; drifts through the memory of meeting her, of kissing her, of her and everything that comes with knowing her.

Indigo Rampage online, Tendo chirps, and there's the heavy creak of metal as they take their first steps.)

and did you solve the riddle?

she answers, she says, yes, songs and rivers, and wholes that are also parts and parts that are greater than themselves

She is a giant, walks with a giant's footsteps, walks as a giant with her mind connected to his, with her movements connected to his.

The steps beat a steady cadence against the metal floor like an overloud heartbeat. He turns to her in the Conn-Pod and grins. An excited child on Christmas morning.

They take another few steps, turn around and return to the docking station.

Her heart is loud; her heart is a giant's heart;

her heart, strong.