A Summons To All
by imp

A Summons To All

imp

Summary

The world hasn't ended, and Raleigh's pretty sure he's glad. That doesn't mean he's happy about the PPDC wanting them back.

Notes

None

Chapter One

The world's not over. Raleigh thinks he likes that it's still going, after all the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps has done. People are rebuilding, rather than working on the wall, and he's famous, but not so much that people won't leave him alone. The cult of celebrity isn't what it used to be, if he's being honest, and he's happy with that.

Raleigh, well, Raleigh hasn't lived anywhere but in some big organization's mass housing since he was eighteen, and he's not sure he wants to change that now. He stays with the PPDC, which is more the Pan-Pacific Rebuilding Corps now; not that Raleigh minds. He was born in Anchorage, and while there's not a Boneslum there, there is in Vancouver, and Tokyo, and Los Angeles, and Lima, and Manila, and Sydney. They're needed for the cleanup and rebuilding, and so Raleigh figures he'll stay there for awhile. The war's over, but the trouble's not.

He's heard about the monuments: huge, imposing faux Jaegers, designs being sketched out and slowly pushed through the UN. He thinks it's nice, but it wasn't the Jaegers that guarded them, not really. It was their pilots, and most of those people are dead now, killed by either kaiju or cancer.

Raleigh doesn't think cancer's going to get him, but if it does, he'd rather die doing something. So he goes to Vancouver and starts working in relative anonymity.

He doesn't ask Mako what she'll do - not as they're being rescued, and not days later when he says goodbye. He knows she needs time to mourn, and she's younger than he is; she probably doesn't even really remember much of a time before the kaiju. He knows her well enough to know she'll need time to figure it out, and he doesn't want to be that guy, so he just kisses her forehead and leaves.

Some of the guys - both genders - that he talks to later think he's being really cool about it. He doesn't let them know that he wakes up in a cold sweat, desperately aching to be able to see her again, a phantom ache that's sharp and newer than the ever-present absence of Yancy in the back of his head.

He misses her, and it hurts, but Raleigh's used to hurting. To rebuild Vancouver and everywhere else, it's okay if he's hurting. He just needs to be able to use his arms, lace up his work boots, walk to the construction site from the barracks every day.

(Technically, they're not barracks. Technically they're 'PPDC community housing'. But Raleigh looks at them and sees Yancy flickering in the corners of his vision, and so he calls them barracks, because that at least makes sense to him.)

Sometimes he wonders, sending the question up to the sky and down into the ocean, if he'll be happy again. It's a lofty goal, and the best he can ever think is: maybe.

At least the PPDC is letting him be anonymous. Or at least, they are until he reports for duty one day and the foreman, Briggs, says, "We're gonna need you in my office."

"Sir?" Raleigh says, blinking.

"Get a move on," Briggs says.

He snaps it almost militarily, and Raleigh reacts without thinking, walking towards Briggs' office. He stops dead when he gets into it, though, because sitting on the dingy chair in front of Briggs' desk is Herc.

"No."

"You gonna hear me out?" Herc says.

"No."

"Well, you always were a stubborn son-of-a, but as it happens, it's not actually your choice. You're still enlisted." Herc nods to the other chair. "Have a seat, son."

Briggs closes the door, not coming in. Raleigh sits down heavily. "What are you doing?" he manages to say.

"Someone told me you haven't been speaking with Mako."

"I've been busy. She's been…busy," Raleigh says lamely. "We weren't really connected long enough to ghost, so -"

"What am I, a rookie? I know it was - let's call it fleeting. But a very good connection, and we need both of you."

"For what?"

"The UN'd have egg on its face if they continued allowing all the dangerous work of removing kaiju bone to be done by workmen with leather gloves and equipment barely suited for an oil spill." Herc shrugs. "They're hooking some compatible people up to mini-Jaegers. It looks good and all. But they also need people for research, real pilots. They want you and Mako."

"I want to do something," Raleigh says. "I don't want to be a lab rat."

Herc eyes him. Raleigh does his best not to shift uncomfortably in his seat. Sure, he's wearing hard-beaten leather and canvas, but he was a construction worker for a long time. He's comfortable like this.

"I told command you'd be hard to get, and they told me to drag you by your ear," Herc says. "I think they thought Miss Mori would be a good enough carrot."

Raleigh frowns.

Herc looks calm, but his curiosity is really, really obvious. "You don't miss her? At all?"

Raleigh has to look away, then. "We only Drifted a couple times."

"You swim through someone's thoughts and know their soul, it doesn't take long to get attached."

"Souls," Raleigh says, snorting.

"Allow an old Ranger his romanticisms. You know what I mean."

"What kind of research?"

"Fine motor skills. The Drift for surgery rooms. AIs. You name it. Fancy facilities, only the best accommodations, physical and mental care. All you have to do is pilot whatever machinery they come up with."

"And let people stick me with needles and put those probe pad things on me everywhere."

"This is science, not science fiction. You won't be chained up in a lab. Now, are you in, or do I have to call someone to drag you there?"

Raleigh's glad Herc's not pretending he has a choice. It makes it easier to say, "Yeah, I'm in."

"Excellent," Herc says. "Pack your things, if you have them."

Raleigh does, and then gets on the plane Herc's brought with him, all the time thinking: Mako, Mako, Mako.

The PPDC is a worldwide effort headed by the UN, so there are research centers all over. They end up in South Korea, home of cutting-edge Jaeger-neuroscience technology. Or at least, that's what the English-language pamphlet in Raleigh's room says. He's reading about cellular technology and neural interfaces with the Internet when there's a knock on his door.

Figuring it's Herc or, who knows, whatever scientists are working on this whole project, he goes to open it. But it's Mako standing there, the streaks in her hair now dark red.

"You dyed your hair," he says unthinkingly.

She touches the strands to her left, tugging them lightly like she'd forgotten she did it. "I did. You look tired."

"I am," Raleigh says. Always, he thinks, but he says, "Jet lag."

Mako says in a rush, "They want us to Drift again."

"Is that okay?" he says. He can't tell by how she's looking at him, and he's not sure if that's his problem, or if she's really changed.

"Yes. If you think it is. We're compatible, and we have experience."

Raleigh doesn't think either of them is at a place where he can make a crack about her still being a rookie. "Right."

She blinks at him once, twice, then says, "I will leave you," before bowing briefly and walking away.

Raleigh thinks he should improve his Japanese. He should ask her about Pentecost. He should apologize for leaving.

Then again, he thinks as he closes the door and goes back to his desk, it's not like she tried to stop him.

He doesn't see Mako again before his 3:30 appointment with the head of the program. He's wondering if they've decided to brief them separately when Mako comes in, sitting across from him in the meeting room.

"Hey," he says. He starts to smile, then remembers that he's not sure if that's okay. "Um. How are you?"

"Curious," she says. "They told me to come here, but not who we are meeting."

"And you didn't ask questions?"

"I'm a member of the PPDC," Mako says. "I ask questions when I need to. I assume we will find out."

"That's the theory," Raleigh says. "Been keeping in shape?"

There's that look of mild annoyance he remembers. "I don't need to be carrying kaiju bone fragments all day to remain physically capable of operating a Jaeger."

"They won't give us a Jaeger." Raleigh thinks of Gipsy Danger and winces. "Hell, they might not give us the Drift. Who knows?"

"You will, if you shut your yap long enough for a briefing," Herc says, coming in. "May I introduce Dr. Kang. Dr Kang, this is Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket. You've seen their faces in the papers, I'd say."

Mako stands and bows her head. "Very nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you," Raleigh says. He doesn't stand; he's feeling a little on edge. "Mind telling us what this is all about?"

Dr. Kang's not ruffled. "Absolutely." She sits down and opens the leather portfolio she's caring, passing them each a sheet of paper. "This is the official release for the UN's Post-kaiju Research and Investigation Corps. Obviously, we'll be going into the details at a much greater depth, but what you need to know is that I'm head of the Drift Robotics Division, and you two have been assigned to me, as promising research subjects."

"What's he doing here?" Raleigh stabs a finger at Herc.

"Head of Military Operations for the DRD," Herc says. "Meaning, I keep your asses in line and ensure combat readiness of the Rangers or former Rangers or, hell, Drift-compatible bums off the street who end up participating in this research."

"We're recruiting people who have already Drifted," Dr. Kang says. "That means there's a natural bias towards Rangers, but you two are really the crowning jewel."

"Bureaucracy," Raleigh mutters.

"Life-saving," Mako says, like she was expecting him to say something. Maybe she was. She's read her file, even if he's never read hers.

"Sure," Raleigh says. "So, what, are we just gonna be strapped onto experimentation tables all day?"

"Officially, you're on standby," Dr. Kang says. "We'll have machinery for you to pilot fairly quickly, but the UN is concerned about a return of the Breach."

"I've told them -"

"That the Precursors are destroyed. Yes, I've read your file."

"Who hasn't?"

"No one," Herc says. "It's a prerequisite for dealing with you. Dr. Kang is trying to get it through your head that the UN doesn't want to give up on its combat ready Rangers just yet."

"What about you?"

"I'm not combat ready," Herc says, his expression prohibiting further questioning. "Do you and Mako consent to be in this program, or not?"

"I do," Mako says, and sends him this look. Raleigh's never felt that threatened, except - well, by Pentecost. That makes sense.

"Sure," he says. "I'm still enlisted, right? I go where the PPDC sends me."

"It's the PRIC now," Dr. Kang says. "And yes, I did point out the unfortunate acronym. You two should eat some food, get some sleep. You need to report to Hall A at 0700 for preliminary Drift testing."

That sounds ominous. "Thanks, Doc," Raleigh says, and stands. He's the first out the door.

He dreams about Yancy that night. The quality of memories in the Drift have never been this sharp - Yancy teasing him, Yancy stealing his girl, Yancy blocking a hit from a kaiju and returning one. Yancy being pulled away from him, the Drift dying between them. Raleigh wakes up at 3 AM, his arm aching and his head hurting.

He still gets headaches sometimes, a side effect of walking Gipsy Danger ten miles to the Alaskan shore. The phantom shoulder ache is all the dream, though, and when he flips on the light in the bathroom to get some water, he sees that his hands are shaking.

But he's no stranger to needing rest, so he forces himself to fall back asleep once he's had some water. When he wakes up at 0630, the pain in his shoulder has faded, and his head is almost normal again. He eats a quick breakfast in the mess hall - well, this is a research facility, maybe they don't call it that. But he eats, carefully not looking for Mako, and then reports to Hall A.

She's standing there in her old pants and a tank top, dog tags hanging from her neck, looking perfectly calm.

After looking over at him, she says, "Sleep well?"

"You know I didn't, or you wouldn't be asking."

She nods infinitesimally. "I thought it was polite to ask."

And something about that just - really bothers Raleigh. "I dreamed about Yancy. What'd you dream about?"

She presses her lips together and looks away.

"Good morning," Dr. Kang says. "I'll be handling most of the research directly pertaining to the two of you, so you should know, I'm a licensed Pons technician, among other things."

"Glad to know we're not being controlled by an amateur."

"Your file says you think you control the Drift," Dr. Kang says with a slight smile. "Let's begin, shall we?"

"Try to hold on," Raleigh says as they're hooked up to the Pons. The apparatus is slicker than he's used to, and not connected to any moving parts, really.

"You should try to hold on," Mako says. "I wasn't the one who ran away."

If Dr. Kang is surprised by how pissed they are, she doesn't say anything. She does say, "I'll be counting down from five," and then start the countdown, before swiping the tablet she's carrying.

And just like that, the Drift is initiated.

It's like riding a bike. Raleigh braces himself through the initial impact of Mako's memories, trying not to notice how many of them are of Pentecost, tinged with pain so bad he can't think of it as anything but heartbreak. And then his awareness jolts back, and he's staring into the space of Hall A - but in Mako's head.

She doesn't speak out loud, but he hears her all the same. "I worried about you. You're an idiot."

"Look who's talking," he replies, also only mentally. "Locking down and throwing yourself into lobbying the UN. Did you even take a day to mourn?"

"Everyone has people they mourn."

"Yeah, and they give themselves time."

"You don't."

"I'm not a role model!"

"Raleigh," Dr. Kang says. "Mako. I have a series of images on the holo-projection. If you can, I'd like to test how you track them when linked. The holo will pick up your eye movement."

Raleigh pulls himself out of the storm of Mako's emotions and focuses on the projection in front of them. It's the kind of thing you see at Ranger training or, hell, at the eye doctor: dots on a white background. "Follow the moving red dot, if you will," Dr. Kang says.

Raleigh does, and Mako does with him. He can feel how on the edge she is, how much she wants to continue the fight. She talks a good game of being professional and composed, but before she was powered almost completely by revenge, and now she's just trying not to fall apart. Raleigh knows how it feels to feel like there's nothing left for you, and that's how Mako is, that's what she's doing, he can feel it and -

"Focus," Mako says, so loudly that he's not sure if she's said it out loud or not.

He focuses. They follow a black dot, then a red one on a green background, then a blinking dot that hops between stationary dots. Raleigh's half expecting her to pull out numbers on different-colored dotted backgrounds when she says, "Very good," and turns the holo-projector off.

They're still in the Drift, which is how Raleigh gets sidetracked again. He's not sure if the intense feeling of having missed this is coming from him or Mako, but he feels it when he raises his right hand and connects with Mako's left.

She jerks it away like she's been burned, and he can feel her withdraw in both their minds.

"I'm sorry," he says mentally. "Come on, Mako, we can do this."

"Don't make it something it's not," Mako says. Then she says out loud, "We're ready for the next test - evaluation."

"I'd like to stress it's not a test," Dr. Kang says. She produces a tennis ball. "If you could, I'd like you to play catch."

The Pons apparatus can be moved easily enough; the cables between them are long enough to allow for a game of catch. Raleigh tosses Mako the ball, feeling like the Wei Tang twins are ghosting over them, the dribble of their basketball echoing in Mako's - Raleigh's - mind.

Mako throws it back, hard. It stings Raleigh's palm as he catches it, and the sting reverberates through the connection, along with Mako's satisfaction. It's an interesting combination, so Raleigh throws back, aiming for her head.

More throwing, dodging, and stinging palms, and now they're moving quickly, careful not to tangle the Pons equipment but not even trying not to hurt each other. A tennis ball hits Raleigh's kneecap and bounces off, and even as they're both wincing, Mako grabs the ball and aims it for Raleigh's nuts, laughing mentally when he catches it at the last second and lobs it back to her.

It's like their first sparring match, like the Drift, only - they are Drifting, and so all Raleigh can think is that it's like sex. Like the Kaidanovskys, like so many other pilots who never really talked about it, but he clung to each other through the aftershocks of the Drift. It hits him as the tennis ball is careening towards his face that he might not lose her, and then it's just a matter of ducking the tennis ball and falling to his knees, reeling.

"Is he okay?" Dr. Kang asks. He feels Mako nod, and she says, "We're thinking."

We. Jesus.

"Get up," Mako says internally. "We have games to play."

Raleigh pushes aside the shock - the unreasonable, painful shock - and stands.

Next up, she asks them to repair a mechanical arm. Raleigh's mechanical engineering is weak, but Mako knows the Jaeger arms in and out, and this is just that in miniature. She guides his hands, not touching him but handing him the tools he needs, and his vision is flickering with her remembered blueprints when Dr. Kang says, "I think that's enough for today. Initiating Drift shutdown sequence."

Raleigh's about to protest that it hasn't been much time at all when Mako's gaze flickers to the clock. Four hours have passed. The connection breaks, and Raleigh shudders, his awareness constricting back into his own head.

He wants to touch her, but he's still angry, and confused, and - just because she can't die, doesn't mean this is a sure thing. So instead he clenches his hands in fists and then lets them out again, saying, "So, how'd we do?"

"Your results will be sent to your rooms later today," Dr. Kang says, "but suffice it to say, your abilities to communicate and execute tasks effectively are not being called into question."

"Thank you," Mako says. She bows and says, "Raleigh. We should not leave each other."

"The Drift -"

"Raleigh," she says, and holds his gaze when he makes the mistake of looking at her.

She's right, God damn it. "Yeah, okay," he says. "Where do you want to go?"

They go to a small lounge that Mako probably knows about because she's actually been exploring, rather than just staying her room. Raleigh settles on the small couch, and Mako sits next to him, moving easily when she puts an arm around his shoulders.

The feeling of her in his head is still reverberating when she says, "I have lost people who are important to me too, you know."

"No one you've Drifted with."

"Isolating yourself doesn't help with that."

"Do you have any idea what it's like, feeling another consciousness die? How it feels to just be - alone?"

Mako's silent for a minute. Then she cups her hand around his shoulder and says, "I know what it feels like to be alone."

He can't tell her she doesn't, not really. She's been in his head; she knows how fucked up he is over Yancy. And he knows how much the loss of Pentecost eats away at her, how as much as he pulls away from people, she throws herself into fiddly bureaucratic work, just to have something to distract her from her loneliness.

Raleigh laughs a little, leaning against her. "We're the best they have."

"We are," she says, with such conviction that Raleigh almost wants to believe her.

Instead, he sits leaning into her, occasionally reaching out and squeezing her hand, as his mind slowly gets used to being alone again.

Raleigh thinks maybe they're done for the day, but around 1400, Herc finds them.

"What, did you think I'd let you sit on your asses? Get into the gym. This is a physical and mental assessment."

Raleigh might've known Herc from back in the day, but he never knew him well enough to realize the man is a goddamn machine. He has them lift weights, run with sensors attached to monitor respiration, kill themselves on the stationary bikes, and then react to tennis balls being thrown at them. Again the tennis balls, Raleigh thinks. He's gasping and sweating rivers by the time he's done. Mako's not in much better shape, although she looks like she wants to murder Herc a lot less.

"Jesus," Raleigh says. "Tell me we're done."

"We're done," Herc says. "Good to know you haven't spent the last six months sitting on your asses."

Raleigh thinks about combat readiness and all the fears hardly anyone is voicing. He destroyed the Precursors and it still haunts him, even with all his certainty that they've been blown to bits. "Thanks, man," he says. "I'm going to…go."

Mako's already making her exit, which Raleigh guesses is why Herc feels free to snag him by one arm.

"I'm not saying anything," Herc says, "but there's a chapel, a temple, near Hall D if you want it."

He lets Raleigh's arm go. Raleigh blinks and nods, retreating into autopilot. "Thanks," he says, and beats a quick retreat.

He has just enough time to shower before going to the mess hall for dinner. It's basic fare, potatoes and some meat, some stringy green beans that Raleigh knows he needs to eat. He finds Mako easily, his mind zooming in on her before his eyes even register her. Part of him wants to go anywhere else, but most of him is just - rolling over for Mako, easy as he did when they first met, like they don't have six months of silence between them.

So he goes over to her.

"What did Herc tell you?" Mako says.

"Huh?"

"I noticed he kept you back. What did he say?"

"Nothing," Raleigh says. "Just condolences."

"He offered me condolences as well." Mako rips her roll apart viciously, like that's the worst thing someone could do to her. Maybe it is, Raleigh thinks.

"Well," Raleigh says. "Eventually -"

He's not sure where he's going with that; eventually what? Eventually it'll get better? It did with Yancy, a bit, only the dreams are still there, and the headaches, and the emptiness chasing the edges of his vision every day. Mako Drifted with Pentecost, at least a few times. She'll feel it too.

"Raleigh," Mako says in a patient tone that tells Raleigh she's said it more than a few times.

"Sorry," he says. "Eventually it'll get better, that's all."

She nods and goes back to her food.

Raleigh can almost see all the things they didn't say piled up. He's not sure if Mako's mad at him for leaving, or not saying goodbye, or what. He's not sure why he's angry, only that he is, almost every day. Not even at Mako, exactly, just - at everything.

After dinner, he sits in his room for a few hours, reading the dossier Dr. Kang sent over about the PRIC. It's such a terrible name, and the dossier is kind of…rambling, like they're not sure what they're doing or why. Raleigh remembers the tense research before the rollout of the Jaeger program, how everyone in the world was confused and terrified. This is kind of like the aftermath of that, and after ten years of war with a purpose, Raleigh doesn't know what to think.

When it becomes obvious to him that he's not going to sleep for awhile, Raleigh gets up and goes to the chapel. He very carefully doesn't think about what he's doing until he's sitting on a mat and staring at the abstract painted mural at the front of the room.

In Anchorage, when Raleigh was growing up, his parents took him to church - a Christian church, not a place like this. Raleigh's never been much for God, but he knows why Herc told him about this place. It's somewhere to be quiet, where he won't have to deal with the echoes of his dreams.

He hears Mako before he sees her; he doesn't question how he knows that it's her. He says, "Can't sleep?"

"I can always sleep," Mako says. She comes to sit beside him, sitting more neatly than his sprawl. "But then I wake up."

"Good dreams, or bad?"

"Dreams of being happy at the Shatterdome."

Raleigh's going to interpret that as 'bad'. "They're building monuments."

"To the Jaegers."

Raleigh wants to ask if she doesn't believe it, then, the whispered myth that when they created the Jaeger-pilot interfaces, that they might've created something other than a dumb machine. But he doesn't. Instead, he says, "No one wants to think about what we lost."

"Each other. Rangers, and the coasts. So many people."

"Think they'll come back?"

"You swore they wouldn't."

"You trust me? I was running on 1% oxygen."

"Because you're impulsive and an idiot," Mako says. She taps the mat lightly. "But I believe you."

"That's something," Raleigh says, and means it.

After a while, Mako stands and leaves. Raleigh wants to follow her, he wants, but instead he sits in the temple for a while longer, taking deep breaths and trying to steady himself. He doesn't get back to bed until late, but it's worth it, because he sleeps without dreaming.

The next day, Dr. Kang says, "I want to investigate the difference between experienced memories, and memories from the Drift."

Raleigh snorts. That's one of the oldest questions the Rangers are asked. "Good luck with that."

"Thank you," Dr. Kang says. "I'm getting the impression you think that's an unlikely quest."

"It is."

"Understanding the construction of memories in the Drift would indicate an extraordinary amount of progress in the world of neuroscience."

"What do you want us to do?" Mako says before Raleigh can keep being an asshole.

"I'd like for you to share a memory - I've been in the Drift and I'm aware of the difficulty, but we'll be capturing your brain's sensory imagery directly, and we'd like to see how that matches up with your partner's description of the memory."

"I will describe first," Mako says.

"Excellent," Dr. Kang says. "Initiating Drift in ten…nine…"

Raleigh rides the rush of memories and then says mentally to Mako, "What do you want to see?"

"I don't think that is the point of the exercise."

"Teacher's pet."

"A memory, please."

Raleigh sends her the first thing he thinks of, which is sparring with her, sparks flying between them. He felt so much for her, wanted to reach out to her when he'd pulled away from everyone for five years, and she was so good and the feeling of finding a partner again was impossible. It felt like flying.

"Another memory," Mako says quietly. He can't decipher the emotion in her mental voice.

So she clarifies for him. "I don't want to share that."

He does. Even now that it's not as - clear, not as simple, he wants to share it. But instead he says, "Okay," and sends her a memory of building a snowman in Anchorage with Yancy, and Yancy dumping snow down his back.

Mako describes it perfectly, lingering on Raleigh's emotions and the sharp physical sensations of the snow, the bitter cold, even the lumpy carrot as they tried to stick it in the snowman's face. Dr. Kang records them and takes notes, then checks the computer with Raleigh's brain imaging or whatever it is on it. "Excellent," she says, sounding pleased. "Now you, Mako."

She sends him a memory of dinner with Pentecost, eating noodles and laughing when he slurps them to amuse her. After, he quizzes her on her mathematics tutoring and helps her tie her hair back for bed. The memory fades after he sends her to bed; Raleigh describes feeling warm and safe, tucked into a bed in the Shatterdome, and then blinks, trying to anchor himself in the Drift again.

"I'm here," Mako tells him. Her mouth doesn't move, so that must be the Drift.

"You were happy."

"I will be happy again," Mako says.

Raleigh wants to ask how she can be so certain, but he doesn't. Instead he says, "So we're done with this part, right, Doctor?"

"For now," Dr. Kang says. "I'll have some Jaeger machinery in here for you tomorrow. Smaller than what you're used to. We'll see how you control it."

That sounds trivial to Raleigh, so he says, "Thanks," and stands through the Pons being shut down.

Mako walks with him out of Hall A. When she slips a hand into his elbow, he doesn't argue. He's surprised when she stops dead in the hallway, though, putting her hands up to bracket his face.

"What?" he says, uncomfortably aware of how close they are.

"You hurt so much," she says. Her eyes search his, and her fingers tighten a little. "Our grief, it magnifies one another's. Are you sure this is the right thing to do?"

Raleigh knows what she's asking, really - what about the ghosting, what about the aftershocks of the Drift? It's something he wonders. He's a little scared to think of how much he wouldn't mind it, how much he'd like being that close to her.

She's close enough to kiss, but he banishes that thought as quickly as it came up. It's not even close to the first time he's had to do that with Mako. "Let's go to lunch," he says instead.

She searches his eyes, and Raleigh looks back, unsure if she'll find what she's looking for but unwilling to push her away again. Finally, Mako nods and goes back to holding his elbow, leading them to the mess hall.

Herc puts them through their paces again, with fewer sensors this time around. They're exhausted again at the end, though, enough so that Raleigh's gasping when he asks, "Seriously, Herc, what are we training for?"

"I ought to make you use my title," Herc says. "And for now, readiness. You're our only experienced, surviving, combat-ready Rangers, as I told you before. So, you're going to have to be ready."

Ready, ready, ready. Raleigh wants to ask "ready for what" and make Herc really say it. Instead he says, "Fine."

"Who isn't combat-ready?" Mako says.

Herc blinks. "Excuse me?"

"Experienced, surviving, I understand those," Mako says. "But who is alive but not combat-ready?"

Herc looks incredibly uncomfortable, and suddenly Raleigh's really interested in the answer. "Yeah, Herc. Who?"

Heavily, Herc says, "Sasha Kaidanovsky and two of the Wei Tang brothers, Yong and Jié. Sasha is still in critical condition; the Tang brothers are in heavy therapy. No one's ever survived a breaking Drift as deep in as those two were. We fished 'em out of the ocean and both of them tried to go back in. But they're alive, all three of them, and expected to recover."

"You didn't tell us we're not alone," Mako says. "For months."

"It wasn't a sure thing." Herc looks at them steadily. "This was a military decision."

Raleigh's never been a very good soldier, but he can understand, mostly. He's surprised when Mako says, "You should have told us," and executes a heel-turn, walking away quickly.

"It wasn't my choice," Herc says. "When she's thinking more clearly, she'll realize that."

"Oh, I think she's thinking clearly," Raleigh says. "But eventually she'll remember the military are a bunch of manipulating jackasses."

"You're a good man, Raleigh."

"Thanks," Raleigh says. "I'm gonna go shower. I'll see you at dinner." He leaves.

He didn't know the Tang brothers very well, or the Kaidanovskys. He's glad they're alive - some of them - because there's something kind of morbid about him and Mako being the only two active Rangers left, but hearing about the brothers trying to kill themselves…he's not nearly as confident as Herc that they'll make a full recovery. Raleigh and Yancy were never that close, and Raleigh all but buried himself with grief.

At least they're getting counseling, he thinks as he scrubs himself down.

He doesn't know where Mako's room is, but he realizes as he wanders the complex that he's come to it anyway. Her door is closed, but he can feel her presence, and he knows she'll be able to feel him too. So he knocks.

"Come in," she calls.

He's kind of surprised, but he goes in quickly, before she changes her mind.

"I was never very close to them," Mako says when he closes the door. "They were only close to each other."

"Why?"

She shrugs. "They defended Hong Kong. Their parents died in the first attack. Their concern was their city, and I was the Marshal's favorite, not a Ranger."

Personally, Raleigh thinks that makes them sound like kind of dicks. But they're sharing with one another for the first time since, well, since Raleigh left six months ago, so he keeps the conversation going. "And Aleksis?"

"He and Sasha were kind, in their way. But also withdrawn."

The loneliness Raleigh feels from Mako in the Drift suddenly makes a lot more sense. "But they're your last connection to how things were before."

Mako nods. "Even you, I only heard of. But I ate with them, sometimes, and helped design programs for simulators they used. To find out they're alive -" She shakes her head and takes a deep breath, shoulders held stiff.

"And it's fucking you up to think about the brothers trying to kill themselves."

"I never said that."

"You didn't," Raleigh says. "But it's fucking me up, so I kind of figured I wasn't alone."

She sits down on the corner of her bed and motions Raleigh to the chair in the corner. "I don't know what to do," she says when he settles down. "I don't know what my purpose is. This research - where is it going? Dr. Kang is a nice woman, but I don't want to play at a Drift that doesn't matter all day."

"They've got a plan for us. They have to, right? There's no way they're testing us just to test us." Raleigh thinks. "Unless they want to send us to the triplets' therapist."

He doesn't know if he can still call them the triplets, but it feels disrespectful not to. Mako apparently agrees, because she says, "I don't need a therapist. I need to do something."

"If you figure something out, I'm at your back," Raleigh says. "Through and through, I swear."

She eyes him warily. "But you're still angry."

"Well, yeah," Raleigh says. "I kind of am. But not at you. It was never really at you."

"I would have liked to know that six months ago."

Raleigh winces. "I know, I just -"

"I know," Mako says. She glances at him, then looks away. "I was mourning too."

Raleigh wants to reach out more than he's ever wanted anything; and she has to have caught some of that, right? They're not ghosting, not exactly, but Raleigh can almost feel Gipsy Danger still, and Mako's a much stronger presence than that. He wants her to ask him, wants to hold her and kiss her and stay in her room. But he can't - won't, really, unless she asks him to. So when the silence gets awkward, he leaves.

They meet again in Hall A the next day. They both show up early - out of eagerness to operate something mechanical, at least for Raleigh's part. He smiles at her. "Good night?"

"Better than previously," Mako says. "Are you ready to try this?" There's an arm laid out on the table attached to a complicated mount point, looking almost exactly like a Jaeger arm in miniature.

"Pfft, I have plenty of experience," Raleigh says. "Are you ready, rookie?"

"Experience, but not knowledge. I'm ready."

"Fascinating," Dr. Kang says behind them.

They whirl around in tandem. "What's fascinating?" Raleigh says.

"Are you aware that you were speaking a mixture of Japanese and English just now?"

Raleigh blinks. "I speak Japanese."

"Evidently," Dr. Kang says. She has a tablet, and she taps it. Raleigh's pretty sure this conversation is being recorded. "But the mix was fascinating. Fluent, on both your parts. And you didn't even notice?"

"We were talking," Mako says. "You're saying it's a side effect of the Drift."

"I am," Dr. Kang says.

"Then we should start the research, shouldn't we?"

Dr. Kang laughs while Raleigh shoots Mako an impressed look. Mako makes kind of a weird face and shrugs, like even she wasn't expecting that level of annoyance to come from her. "Let's begin," Dr. Kang says, and waves a hand at the Pons apparatus.

Raleigh gets strapped in, watching Mako do the same. Today, though, Dr. Kang also hooks them into a thin, almost fragile-looking construction along their right arms. She lays a radio with the back off on the table, well within reach of the disembodied arm.

"I don't expect this to go perfectly," she says. "But I'm guessing you both have the technological knowledge to repair an analog radio?"

"Mako more than me," Raleigh says.

"You do too," Mako says.

"Excellent. Initiating Drift in five, four…"

In the Drift he catches a brief glimpse of Mako kissing someone. It's there and gone again like it never happened, and Raleigh shoves down the jealousy with equal parts habit and instinct. "You with me, Mako?"

"Here," she replies in his head.

"I hope you can fix this thing. I was lying, a little."

"We have to move the arm first," she says, and they move in unison, clenching their right fists.

It's not like piloting a Jaeger because nothing is like piloting a Jaeger; Raleigh never understood car people until his first time in that armor. But Mako guides their hand and Raleigh follows, picking up the screwdriver and -

Dropping it.

"This arm is not engineered for this," Mako says scornfully.

Raleigh can't help but think that maybe the Drift isn't strong enough.

"No." The force of Mako's answer causes some blowback in his mind. "It's this apparatus, and the arm. Their robotics are not developed enough. Our minds and bodies are asking for things this arm can't do."

They have to give up after awhile. Dr. Kang shuts down the Drift and says, "Tell me what you learned, if you will."

"Mako here thinks your mechanical engineers are shitty," Raleigh says.

Mako stiffens. "I think our agility was negatively affected by the -"

"Shitty arm and setup," Raleigh says.

Mako glares at him.

But Dr. Kang is unruffled. "Good. You were meant to be frustrated. What we at the PRIC are actually developing is considerably more complex than this, but we wanted to test your ability to operate on a small scale. Now we know."

"Is everything a test?" Mako says.

Raleigh's filled with admiration. She sounds like she's asking a question she's only mildly interested in.

"To start with," Dr. Kang says. "Tomorrow we'll be scaling things up. You two won't be useless."

Raleigh can't help but think that Mako could never be useless. Mako glances at him, then says, "What will we do tomorrow, then?"

"I should have some more exciting tech by then." Dr. Kang waves her tablet at them. "Go. Let Herc beat up on you a bit. You'll have more to do tomorrow."

Raleigh gets the feeling he's going to get really, really tired of people telling him that. "Thanks, Doc," he says. For once, Mako doesn't reprimand him for his sarcasm, verbally or otherwise.

It's not until they're walking down the hallway that she says, "Even in the academy, they did not treat students like this."

Raleigh knows exactly what she means. "The coddling's annoying, right? I guess they're glad they can do it, now that it's no longer wartime."

"I'm glad we are not at war," Mako says. "But I hate this."

Raleigh switches into Japanese on purpose, so he doesn't do it unconsciously. "I do too, but I didn't expect you to say it."

"No one here but you and Herc have proven you can be trusted with command."

"That's almost sweet."

Mako glances at him from the corner of her eye. "It's accurate, that's all."

"I'm touched," Raleigh says. He drops it, though.

They stay mostly quiet through Herc's training. After, Herc pulls him aside and says, "Is Mako okay?"

"You've seen her more than I have." Raleigh can say that without wincing, even though he knows it's his fault.

"But I haven't been in her head."

There's no answer he can give that wouldn't be too simplistic. He settles on saying, "Yeah, she's fine."

"You'll let me know if something's wrong."

"Of course," Raleigh lies.

Herc surveys him suspiciously. "You're on her side more than anyone else's these days."

"I'm a loyal member of the PPDC," Raleigh says. "I came back, didn't I?"

"And you stayed because you have another partner," Herc says. "I'm old, not an idiot. But I trust you." He nods at Raleigh. "Now get out of here."

He goes back to his room. He can feel Mako in the back of his head, but he's not particularly inclined to seek her out. He wants some time on his own.

Or maybe he's not ready to admit how much he doesn't want to be alone.

He reads his pamphlets and sits alone until dinner. As he's walking down the hall to the cafeteria, he seems Mako. She doesn't look at him, but does adjust her gait to his, and follows him to the line for food.

The food is getting better, Raleigh's pretty sure. These might be actual mashed potatoes, rather than reconstituted dried potatoes, and actual, fresh vegetables. Raleigh closes his eyes at he eats, letting himself get lost in the taste.

"It's good," Mako says. She kicks Raleigh lightly under the table. "After dinner, let's spar."

"We did earlier," Raleigh says.

"So?" Mako gives him that edgy look of hers, the one that means she's challenging him and knows he's up for it. "Are you scared?"

"Of course not."

"Then we should go."

They're almost alone at the table, so Raleigh's not afraid to kick her back and grin. "You're on."

The practice rooms are decked out. Back in the old days, when the PPDC was still the way of the future and the kaiju could still be beat, Raleigh remembers the equipment seeming permanently scuffed and almost shabby. Their rock star status was increased, almost, by the signs of hard work around the Shatterdome. But now, in this room, everything's shiny and new. There are mirrors along the wall and bright red mats on the floor, and the lighting is top of the line.

Raleigh doesn't care about that, though, nearly as much as he cares about the way Mako hangs her coat up and takes a staff from the wall.

"Be ready," she says as he copies her, kicking off his shoes next to hers.

"Oh, I am," he says. He turns back to her. "Are you?"

"You know I am," she says, and spins the staff.

It's not like being back in Hong Kong. There's no one watching them here, and he knows her now - not, maybe, as well as he will. He hopes not as well as he will. But he's been in her head, and they've both grieved, in more of a similar way than Raleigh thought at first.

So it's a dialogue again, but this time, one between old friends. She gets the first touch, and he returns, moving just quickly enough that she can't predict his moves and counter. But she's quick, too, getting two touches on him in the time it takes him to draw a breath.

"Keep up," she says, smiling at him.

He smiles back - and something about that makes her draw back a little. "Focus," she says, and then mounts an attack again.

In just a few minutes, Raleigh's nerves are singing with the movement, following Mako until it almost feels like they're dancing. They're closer in now, their faces inches apart, and when Mako meets his blow with her staff, he realizes how much he wants to kiss her.

They stand, breathing hard, staring at each other. Raleigh's want is rushing through him, and he's maybe two minutes away from being hard.

He steps back and bows. "Good fight."

"Dialogue," she says, and bows to him.

They don't talk as they go to the showers. They're separated by gender anyway, so Raleigh can stand under the spray, eyes closed, trying to get himself back under control.

This isn't a problem, or at least it won't be if he doesn't let it turn into one. He knows himself. He's been into plenty of girls, women, and it's faded after a while, because the thing Raleigh was born to do is Drift and fight in a Jaeger.

Only there aren't Jaegers to fight in anymore, and the person he's Drifting with is Mako.

She's waiting for him when he gets out of the showers. "Um, are you going to stand here while I dress?" Raleigh says. She's already wearing clothes, military issue. They look good on her. She looks good, constantly.

Mako flushes and turns around. "I wanted to talk with you about Dr. Kang," she says to the wall.

Raleigh's never gotten dressed faster. "I'm good," he says, and she turns back around. He sits down on one of the benches in locker room. "What about Dr. Kang?"

"We're being tested more than we think." She sits down across from him. "I think she wants us to push to Drift with a real machine."

"You think they've been building something?"

"The mechanics of a robot, a mecha - how difficult can it be to design something smaller than a Jaeger?"

A Jaeger, which Mako supervised the restoration of. Raleigh blinks. "That's a good point."

"Dr. Kang is studying everything about the Drift, but also its effects on people," Mako says. "If we're happy to Drift without anything to pilot…"

"That shows we care more about the Drift than being a pilot," Raleigh says. "Good point."

"I don't want to be studied."

She says it with a fierceness Raleigh knows she has, but one she rarely displays. It surprises him. "Agreed. So we'll talk to her tomorrow."

"Good." But Mako doesn't move.

Raleigh wants her again, a pin prick in his skin that won't go away. The idea of touching her, of being close to her - he and Yancy would sometimes sit together, Yancy's arm around Raleigh, riding out the aftereffects of the Drift. This is that, but it's also something else; it's just Raleigh seeing someone incredible, and wanting to be with her.

Or fuck her, if Raleigh's being honest with himself.

"I have chess in my room," Mako says.

Raleigh snorts. "Do I look like the kind of guy who plays chess?"

"Maybe it's time you learned."

He can actually remember some of the rules, knowledge that he knows isn't his floating around in his head. So he finds himself saying, "Sure."

Mako found a stool somewhere, and has put the stool and chair on opposite sides of a low table. The chess set is already out, which makes Raleigh wonder if she planned it, or if she's just been waiting for someone to play with. It hasn't occurred to Raleigh, really, that she'd be lonely; and as soon as he thinks of it, he feels ashamed. Of course she'd be lonely. She was friends with the Kaidanovskys and the Wei Tang brothers, and probably also with the scientists who left as the program was chipped away at. And now there's just him, and they don't even know each other that well yet.

In that context, he feels vaguely ashamed; so he sits down and says, "You'll have to teach me."

"I'll beat you," she says. "That will teach you to be better."

He smiles, because he thinks that's a little of both their swagger in her voice. She catches herself and glances at him, the corners of her lips turning up as she returns the pieces to their original positions.

She does beat him. They don't really talk - there's an undercurrent to everything they're doing, but not really any actual talking. When she beats him, she smiles, a narrow and satisfied expression.

Raleigh - Raleigh loses his mind very briefly, and thinks about kissing her, leaning forward and pulling her in. It's a terrible idea, and he leans back sharply instead, pushing his stool out and standing up.

"I'll see you later," he says, and leaves before she can object.

It bothers him that night, how clean and nice his room is.

The PPDC - they constructed it to keep pilots on their toes. Command's rooms were luxurious, but the pilots shared small rooms, the better to foster a fellow feeling and keep them in the practice rooms, drilling instead of staying in their rooms. It was never the strictest military environment, but it was, technically, military. Raleigh hasn't had a room this big and nice since he was a kid.

And even then, that was in Alaska, not Seoul.

He falls asleep after too long awake, tossing and turning and praying he doesn't dream of her. But he does; she's standing there, in his room in Hong Kong, looking at him.

"You shouldn't be here," he tells her. His voice echoes, like his own brain is mocking him for having this conversation in a dream.

She frowns slightly. "You don't want to do your duty."

"It's not that." It is, kind of. Raleigh doesn't believe in duty. Or at least, he didn't used to. "It's you."

"Me?"

"No." He shakes his head. That's not right. "It's me."

"I don't understand."

"I do," Raleigh says. "Here, at least." He does what he wanted to do earlier, because this is just a dream. He steps forward and touches her shoulder, skims his hand up to her neck.

"God, you're gorgeous," he says, and kisses her.

She reacts with precision, in control even here, in his fantasy. She angles the kiss and slides a hand up his shirt, hungry, and he thinks - he could just let her take. It would be good, like this, her leading the way. There's something vaguely pathetic about this being his fantasy, but that doesn't stop him from leaning back and pulling her on top of him, watching as she pulls his shirt off.

She looks at him like she's not sure what she wants, and God, but that's good for him. He props his hands behind his head and says, "Look all you want."

"I will," she shoots back. She splays a hand on his chest, her hand trailing down his abs.

Time gets a little hazy after that. She strips him and undresses herself; her underwear's plain and black, but it has a little bow on it, and that's what Raleigh focuses on before she pulls it off entirely, standing naked before him.

He feels helpless and dizzy with it, but he also feels safe, and in the end that's what does him in; she rides him and he drowns in her, the force of her personality enveloping him and finally, finally making him feel safe from the world.

He wakes up hard and aching, in a cold bed. The soft blue of the room's night light illuminates the high ceiling.

"Damn it," he says. The words echo strangely in the room.

He's not sure what he's expecting to see the next day. It's definitely not an exoskeleton, much less two.

"What's this?" he says. It looks like a Pons, only - not.

"The next test," Dr. Kang says.

"Another test?" It sounds sharp when Mako says it.

"Yes." Dr. Kang sits at the narrow desk holding her test materials. She gestures to the two chairs in front of it, neither of which Raleigh or Mako has taken advantage of yet. "But first, please, sit."

Raleigh is prickling with wariness as he sits down, but Mako sits easily, like she was expecting this. Mako says, "I look forward to your explanation," hands tight on the armrests of her chair.

Raleigh has to bite back a grin he's pretty sure won't get them anywhere. Dr. Kang raises an eyebrow coolly. "I'm sure you do," she says. She turns to Raleigh. "Your file says you've never flown commercially."

"Grew up in Anchorage," Raleigh says. "Got a job in the Shatterdome. I never really had a reason to."

"A job," Mako says, a little mockingly.

Raleigh rolls his eyes at her. "Yeah, okay, I was a pilot. What's your point?"

"We've both put work into the PPDC."

"And you don't want to be shoved aside," Dr. Kang says. "Believe me, I understand that."

"Do you?"

"Better than you know," she tells Mako. She sighs and shuffles some papers. "There's no way to ease you into this information. The PPDC wants to open another Breach."

There's a long silence, and then Raleigh says it for both of them: "Are you fucking crazy?"

"I'm fairly certain I'm not," Dr. Kang says. "Then again, this wasn't my idea."

"Are they aware of the potential consequences? With an open door - can they control where it goes?"

Raleigh can all but hear all the questions Mako's not asking. He's reminded, again, that she's studied it all - the Jaegers, the Breach. All of it. Not enough to rattle off the physics of it, he's sure, but she sure as hell knows more about it than he does.

A small part of him is glad for this distraction from the Drift, because he's not sure he can hide last night's dream from Mako yet. "So, another Breach," he says. "Why?"

"The thinking is that with our universe being the opening point, we can control who comes through," Dr. Kang says. "NASA was the only true collaborative, international effort prior to the PPDC. We've lost millions of people to the kaiju, and the UN wants to ensure that the trillions of dollars put into the program aren't for nothing."

"How much energy to open another breach?" Mako says.

"Three million terajoules," Dr. Kang says.

"That sounds like a lot," Raleigh says, to cover for how Mako has gone very still next to him.

"How do they plan to accomplish this?" she says finally. Her voice is quiet. Dangerously so. "Radiation -"

"No, nothing like that," Dr. Kang says. "Not a bomb. A controlled antimatter reaction, in the sky above the Pacific."

"That could tear a hole in the world," Mako says.

"We're all a bit used to risk, don't you think?" Dr. Kang says. "And there's no reason for the publicity literature to mention that."

Mako shakes her head. "Fine. Another Breach. What do you need us for?"

"We need someone to deliver the payload."

"The UN has pilots."

"We also need a line of defense." Dr. Kang takes a deep breath. "And exploration."

Raleigh thinks of going through the breach. He thinks of what he told Mako: All I have to do is fall. Anyone can fall.

He feels sick.

"No," Mako says immediately. He can feel her concern for him, a tightness at the pit of his - or her - stomach.

"We will, of course, provide you extensive counseling," Dr. Kang says.

"I said no," Mako says, more insistently this time.

"The Wei Tang brothers and Sasha Kaidanovsky will join you."

"What?" Raleigh says.

Mako goes quiet.

"The defense of the new Breach will, of course, be a time-consuming job," Dr. Kang says. "We'll be finding a new Drift partner for Sasha Kaidanovsky, and the brothers will accompany you on your explorations."

"But we're just going to be shot into space?" Raleigh says. He's hyper-aware of Mako at his side, so still she's barely breathing.

"No," Dr. Kang says. "In theory, you'll have considerably more control over your exploration than that."

"With others," Mako says in a tight voice.

"With others," Dr. Kang confirms.

Raleigh can feel how much Mako wants to pull back, and how resolutely she's not doing it; Mako's bolder than even she gives herself credit for. Raleigh waits for her, and finally she says, "We accept the mission."

"I thought you would," Dr. Kang says. "Now, these exoskeletons will be crucial to flight. How about we try them out?"

Raleigh hides his dream in the Drift. He thinks he does. Mako's hiding things too, bits of Pentecost and feelings Raleigh doesn't understand. They're not all in anymore; after months apart, they both learned cautiousness in their own way. Or re-learned, maybe, new grief layered over past trauma.

After, Raleigh feels shaky and uncertain of his own limbs. The exoskeletons are hooked up to machinery they can't see, which makes sense from a space travel standpoint, but exhausts him. Mako grabs his hand when Dr. Kang tells them they won't be seeing Herc that day, and Raleigh leaves Hall A with overwhelming relief.

Since yesterday, Mako's put a single picture of Pentecost up above her desk. He expects them to sit across from one another again, but instead Mako lies down on her double bed and pulls Raleigh down with her.

"Um," Raleigh says.

"We have to do this," Mako says. "You know we do."

Raleigh took all the classes at the academy. "Yeah," he says. He puts an arm around her, and she turns into him.

"The brothers," Raleigh says. "Wow."

"They're making Sasha Drift again."

"Maybe she wants to."

"Did you? After Yancy?"

Raleigh can't answer that. He wanted the Drift and he was terrified of it, terrified of seeing his brother in it again. Yancy still follows him like a ghost.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly.

"It's fine." He strokes her shoulder, feeling the aftershocks of the Drift slowly subside. "We've all lost people."

"Anyone can fall."

He knows - they're still connected enough for him to know - that she's echoing his earlier thought, which was more than strong enough that she would've felt it in the Drift. And of course she was there - dying, but there - when he made his final decision.

Wanting to live had made it easier to go to his death. He's glad he's alive now, but that feeling lives with him as sure as Yancy's ghost does.

"I felt it," she says quietly. "I never told you, but I did."

"Felt what?"

"Our compatibility." He feels her shrug. "You and I…the moment I saw you, I knew. I told myself it was only because I had studied you, to put the list together. But I felt it."

Lying with her like this, Raleigh can almost forget his dream, and the longing that came with it. At least she felt it, even if she doesn't feel - other things. Things they're still too close for him to think about. "Good," he says finally. "That whole plane ride across the Pacific, all I could think was that I wasn't ready." And then seeing her had been a revelation. He'd never wanted anything as strongly as he wanted to get into a pod with her.

He and Yancy had joined up on a whim, last time. With Mako, he knew all the risks, how much it could hurt him. He'd wanted it anyway.

Mako sighs and shifts a little. "They tried to die."

He knows who she's talking about. "You want to die," he says carefully. "When that kind of thing happens, it seems like an option. A good one."

"You didn't try, even working on the wall."

He'd thought about it more times than he could count, until it was just a worn-out idea that he turned over in his head sometimes, as familiar as the palm of his hand. He looked down from dizzying heights and thought about unclipping his belt and falling, letting the ocean take him like the kaiju took Yancy. Nothing stopped him, really; nothing saved him. He never had a moment of revelation or a sudden conviction strong enough to pull him back from the cliff. He thought about dying and then didn't do it, over and over, and eventually it became like eating or sleeping. The business of not dying was folded into the business of living, until he almost forgot there was a time when the thought had never occurred to him.

He doesn't tell Mako any of this, mostly because he's not sure he could get his point across, not really. But he thinks Mako picks up on some of it, in the shadowy impressions of the just-Drifted, because her arm tightens around him.

"I want so much," Raleigh says. "I didn't used to want anything."

"That's a good change," Mako says. "Did you never see the psychologist? She would have told you."

"They made me. You know that."

"You didn't listen."

Raleigh smiles a little. "I never listen."

"Maybe you should."

She doesn't add, I don't want to lose you, but he hears it anyway.

They lie together for so long that Raleigh starts to drowse. He's never been the impatient type, never needed a lot of stimulation to keep him happy - but Mako's an information junkie, and eventually she starts twitching impatiently. Raleigh smiles at that, feeling sleepy and fond. "You can get your tablet," he says. "I don't mind."

She gets up, and he props himself up on his elbows, dogtags falling to one side. "I can go," he adds. It seems rude to just lie in her bed.

She glances at him, and then looks away quickly. "I don't mind." She picks up her tablet and snaps a keyboard into it, turning it on. "It's probably better for us, like this."

Raleigh's not going to disagree with that; for one, he knows it's true. He does say, "You can kick me out if you want."

"Of course I can," she says, and waves a hand at him. He takes the cue and flops back onto the mattress, going back to his half-nap.

The next day, the Wei Tang brothers are standing in Hall A.

"Yong, Jié," Mako says. "You know Raleigh Becket."

They both nod, but neither of them says anything. Raleigh thinks of the synchronicity of their movements in the Shatterdome, the smooth passing of the basketball, the way they walked together. They defended Hong Kong eight times, and to Raleigh's knowledge, they never really left the Drift - maybe that's why they worked so well together. Now there are only two of them, and one clasps his hands while the other taps fingers against his legs. "It's nice to meet you," Raleigh finally says. "Formally."

Yong says, "You destroyed the kaiju?"

"Um, technically the Precursors," Raleigh says. "The kaiju were just - cannon fodder, basically. They were supposed to wipe us out for the other guys."

"And you destroyed them."

"I think so."

"Good," Jié says.

Raleigh wants to say so much - I lost a brother too, maybe, or It's good to see you alive. Instead he stands there awkwardly until Mako says, "This time, we get to fly."

"Not us," Yong says. "Not yet."

"We're unstable," Jié says. He laughs sharply. "And we don't know how to Drift with just the two of us."

"We'll learn." Yong glances over at his brother. "We have to. We can't pilot with anyone else. We were in the Drift too long."

"We'll help you," Mako says. She reaches out and squeezes Yong's shoulder. "You're standing here. That means something."

"Only that we've been saved," Jié says. "For what?"

"Exploration. Rebuilding." Mako takes her hand off Yong's shoulder and gestures around the hall. "The kaiju are gone, and now we rebuild. It's our job."

She doesn't say that their loved ones died for this, but Raleigh's pretty sure he's not the only one who hears the implication.

Yong smiles very slightly. "Rebuild, or explore? Dr. Kang has briefed us."

"You'll get your chance," Mako says.

"But first you'll have to sit through a million boring tests," Raleigh adds.

They all look at him the way the Marshal used to, like he's bad at being military. Maybe that's true, but he's just saying what they're all thinking.

"We'll pass them," Jié says.

For all that they spent forever in the Drift, it's easy to tell the difference between them - physically, but also in how they act. Jié looks angry, which considering what Raleigh knows of their time since their brother died, makes sense. Yong looks steadily determined, more like Mako than Raleigh himself. Raleigh wants to get a beer with them. They look like they understand even better than Mako does.

Instead he says, "Of course you will," and sits down in one of the ubiquitous chairs to wait for Dr. Kang.

Dr. Kang has a partner today, a younger guy she identifies as Dr. Min. Dr. Min takes the triplets over to a Pons with seats; it doesn't take a lot of effort for Raleigh to imagine it being in a plane. Raleigh and Mako go into the exoskeletons, but today there's a robot in front of them, like a mini-Jaeger.

"This is, obviously, an approximation of what you'll be doing in the field," Dr. Kang says. "We'll have an aircraft carrier for day-to-day operations, with barracks for the Rangers. But once you go through, it's possible you'll need to carry out remote repairs, so consider this practice for that."

She counts down to the Drift, and Raleigh feels the warmth of Mako's mind connecting with his. Just as she has for the past week, she shies away from memories of Pentecost. Raleigh does his best to lock down his own memories of Yancy, but he thinks they probably bleed through, easily as much as Mako's memories of Pentecost do. She might not've Drifted as much as he has, but she's a quick study, and Raleigh's a little...expansive.

"Exuberant," Mako tell him internally.

"All for you," he replies.

"Now," Dr. Kang says. "I'd like you to try to make the Mach I walk."

"This isn't a Jaeger Mach I."

"No," Dr. Kang says. "This is a Descubridor Mach I. And I'd like you to make it walk."

"Discoverer," Raleigh tells Mako mentally.

"I know that," she replies.

He's not even sure if they're speaking Japanese or English. Or if they're using language at all. The Drift mixes things up that way. Out loud, he says, "Right foot first?"

"Engaging," Mako says.

Together, they lift their foot. The robot walks.

Raleigh wants to touch Mako. No, that's not right; he wants to fuck Mako, and he wants Mako to fuck him. Every time she touches him, he feels so desperate that he's worried about keeping up appearances. She knows; she has to know. But she's shy in a way Raleigh's not sure how to deal with, and he doesn't want to be the guy who pushes her.

But he dreams. He can't help that. He tries not to, but every night he kisses her, eats her out, fucks her. And when he wakes up, hard and wanting, he jerks himself off until he comes harder than he ever did before he met her.

He tries to keep the thoughts out of the Drift, and he thinks he succeeds, mostly. He's just finished showering after a punishing session with Herc when Mako knocks on his door.

As much as he's overthinking everything, currently, he doesn't think to put a shirt on before he opens the door. He's still a little wet, and her eyes flicker over him as she makes this noise - and he panics and closes the door in her face.

He thinks it's proof he did the right thing when he hears her leave, feels her pull away in his head.

The next day, though, Jié sets his tray down next to Raleigh's at breakfast. "What did you do?"

Raleigh shoves a spoonful of oatmeal in his face, but waiting for him to chew doesn't deter Jié. He just stares at Raleigh, expression hard, until Raleigh swallows and says, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Mako's weird and twitchy," he says. "You know, we've all been very patient with your issues - as if we don't have our own."

"You do, though," Raleigh says. "Like, a lot." They're still trying to stabilize their Drift, after two weeks of trying.

"Mako's our friend. Mine and Yong's. So before you jerk her around -"

"I'm not," Raleigh says, suddenly furious.

Jié doesn't back down, which is probably why he's the one arguing with Raleigh about this. "You are, even if you think you're not. You don't see me or Yong rushing into a relationship, do you?"

"You're not Drifting with anyone but each other."

Jié nods. "But Mako's lost people too. You know she has."

"Not - that's not it." He piloted Gipsy Danger with Yancy's ghost echoing in his head. He doesn't know how to express how scared he is, or how much he doesn't want to expose Mako to that. What if they open another Breach, and whatever comes through kills him? Yeah, okay, he'd mind that now, which is something he's dealing with. But it terrifies him to think of Mako losing what he lost when Yancy died.

"I know," Jié says. Raleigh wants to protest that he hasn't said anything, but Jié is looking at him steadily, and Raleigh can hear the echo of the basketball in his mind. He thinks maybe they took advantage of people's intimidation, back in the day. Herc and Chuck were insulated from the effects of a long Drift by their issues, but the triplets moved well together, and Raleigh's pretty sure they knew it discouraged people from talking to them.

"But that's not an excuse for jerking Mako around," Jié says. Raleigh remembers that they were having a conversation.

"Yeah. I'm not. I'm allowed to be scared." He sounds kind of dumb and defensive, but that's how he feels, so it's appropriate.

"Sure, but someone needs to tell you to hoist your nuts up and do something." Jié takes a bite of his rice and adds, "Mako won't wait for you forever. She's not that type. You know it."

Raleigh does, and as scared as that makes him, he's a little more scared of the fact that Mako is waiting for him, and that maybe he's not just uselessly pining after someone on a pedestal.

Like Mako would stay on a pedestal, he thinks, and smiles a little.

After that, he and Jié eat in companionable silence. Raleigh nods at him as he stands up to put his tray in the dishes bin, and then goes back to his room. It's their day off, and he thinks he should do something with it - go for a run around the facility, or maybe find Dr. Kang and bug her about them finally getting a bird to fly. So what if it's only been two weeks? Raleigh might not be ready outside the Drift, but in it, he's never been better.

But Jié's warning is echoing in his mind, and Raleigh's kind of tired of hiding. He's made up his mind and is ready to leave his room to find Mako and - that part's a little fuzzy, but he's going to do something. Mako beats him to the punch, though, by knocking on his door.

"I'm afraid of many things," Mako says when he opens the door. "I don't like deep ocean diving, or eating anything with tentacles. And I'm afraid of losing someone else, like I lost the Marshal."

"Okay," Raleigh says. He leans against the door frame. He's not doing anything on purpose, but Mako's eyes flicker over him, and he feels her want, like a wave rushing over him. Oh. "Oh," he says out loud, stupidly.

"I'm not afraid of you," Mako says. "But you're afraid of me."

"I'm not," Raleigh says. But he is, and it's obvious Mako knows it, because her jaw tightens and she raps his chest.

"Don't lie to me."

"You've been in my head, Mako. You know what I'm afraid of."

"And I know what you should let yourself have," she says. She leans up and kisses him, one hand curling against his neck, knuckles pressing against the knob of his spine.

It kind of hurts, but in a distant way, because Raleigh's falling into the ghost of the Drift and Mako's lips are on his and he's terrified in a way that clenches his chest up, but he's not going to stop. Not now.

They stumble into Raleigh's room, Mako directing all of his movements. She's doing it physically, but also mentally - what she wants from him fills his mind, and he obeys unquestioningly, taking off his shirt and sitting on the bed. She straddles his lap, pushing against him until he pushes back to keep from falling over. She kisses him hard, all guts and so little experience - but she's driving, here, grabbing his wrists in a steel grip and catching his lower lip between her teeth.

Raleigh would like to tell himself he hasn't been thinking about this forever, but Mako knows he has, so there's no sense in pretending. He wants to go down on her. He flops back on the bed and she follows, letting him pull her shirt up, her dog tags falling coolly against his chest. He spreads his hand on her back and says, "If you - do you want -"

She nods and rolls off him, wiggling out of her pants. She's gorgeous - he's staring at her, and she smiles at him, sharp and knowing as she spreads her legs.

He's gone down on plenty of girls, but none of them were Mako. He takes advantage of their connection shamelessly, making her writhe and gasp, until she's moaning and coming against his tongue. He fucks her after, slowly enough to make them both dizzy. When they come down from it, he curls up next to her, resting his head in her lap.

"You're smiling," Mako says. She tugs his hair lightly, then goes back to running her fingers through it.

"I'm happy."

"You'd be okay if I left, you know."

He stiffens briefly, but she's projecting waves of calm, so he relaxes again. He wants to deny it; it seems more romantic to deny it. But he's not so sure anymore.

"That's a good thing," she says.

"It's not good that if you died -"

"We go on," Mako says. "I went on, after Tokyo."

"You were a kid."

"We're both strong." Mako strokes his cheek. "That only makes it better."

Raleigh closes his eyes. He's not going to think about if she's right. Not right now, anyway. Maybe he'll think about it later.

The next day, Dr. Kang says, "I'd like for you two to run defensive maneuvers with the Wei Tang brothers."

"Not much room for that in here," Raleigh says. "Especially if you're gonna put us in planes."

"We can run simulators for now," Dr. Kang says. "Remember, your primary goals are defense and exploration."

"Unless your scientists open the Breach in a bad spot," Mako says.

Raleigh's proud: that borders on insubordination. "She's right."

"I'm aware you two agree." Dr. Kang sounds so dry she's a one-woman desert. "For now, we'll be running simulator tests. You'll get your chances in a plane."

Raleigh knows that this isn't really about them. They could be stuck in a plane and perform just fine; they're still heroes from their time in Gipsy Danger, and their compatibility is off the charts. This is about testing the Wei Tang brothers. And, thinking back to Jié's encouragement, Raleigh's more than willing to help them out. Rangers sticking together, and all that.

"Bring it on," he says.

Dr. Kang nods. "The brothers will meet us in Hall B," she says, and leads the way out.

"Creative naming," Raleigh mutters for Mako's sake. Mako smiles as they walk out.

The simulation engine is huge, bigger than the ones in the Shatterdomes by half. The outside is slick brushed metal, curving in a an oval shape to brush the ceiling of Hall B. There's a small door at the foot of it, and it's there that Raleigh and Mako walk, Raleigh swallowing his consternation.

The Wei Tang brothers are already in, standing next to one of two Pons devices. Modified, Raleigh knows, for the simulator - wires and power cores twist in controlled chaos up to the roof of the simulator. It's both fancy and not, the mechanics of the Pons exposed, since no one but Rangers and scientists will see inside this. There's no need for pretence.

Raleigh and Mako step up to their own Pons. There are opaque helmets, perfect for the simulator, and a full exoskeleton. Raleigh pretty much expected all of this, so he slants Yong and Jié a grin. "Ready for this?"

"More than," Yong says with a steady smile.

"If you could step into the Pons," Dr. Kang tells them.

Raleigh and Mako step up and the mechanisms lock around them, the helmets lowering. Raleigh's run simulations before, and he knows Mako's killed it in them, so he feels perfectly calm. It is a bit of a surprise, though, when the simulator hums and kicks back, laying them flat.

Raleigh hears Jié laugh. "Here we go!" he yells, and Dr. Kang begins the countdown.

They're thrown into the simulation, and the first thing that Raleigh can think is, this is it, this is it. He and Mako are flying, their plane next to the Wei Tangs', and Raleigh forgets to narrate out loud for Dr. Kang, because their minds are the plane and it's the most freedom Raleigh's ever experienced.

In front of them looms the Breach, a huge rip in the sky. But nothing's coming out of it. Raleigh feels a kind of peace as he looks at it, and he's not sure if that comes from him or Mako.

"Okay," he says. "Let's see what this thing can do."

"You want to?" Mako says in his mind.

"Sure," he tells her. "If Dr. Kang didn't want us to, she would've said, right?" Out loud, he adds, "Take our flank!"

"We've got you," Jié says. "Go get 'em."

The Americanism makes Raleigh grin, and then he and Mako are flying the plane - the slick, amazing plane - into the Breach.

Space. Vast and nothing, and for a split second Raleigh falls into his own thoughts, pulls Mako with him, the blackness and horrible malignance of the Precursors - but then Mako's saying, "Raleigh, come," and he's back in the simulation, sitting in the cockpit of a plane and looking out at the stars.

"Guess we'd better go exploring," he says. But Dr. Kang's voice cuts through the simulation, coming into their ears as though they're wearing comms. "Pull back. Exploration Phase One complete."

Raleigh's never been a fan of following orders, but he has Mako's steel-strong willingness to follow the military hierarchy in his head, so they obediently fall back. As much as he pushes Mako to rebel, she pushes him to honor his commitment to the military. Raleigh's grinning as the simulation ends - and his smile widens when the helmet comes off and he sees the Wei Tang brothers, still strapped into the Pons, but looking stunned and exhilarated.

Mako's smiling, too, and Raleigh feels the strongest fellow feeling he's ever experienced. They're Rangers; this is what they're made for. This is what the world they grew up in prepared them for.

They all eat together that night - him, Mako, and the triplets. Twins. Raleigh's never saying that out loud, because he knows he'd fuck it up, and he doubts they want that reminder. Or need it, really. But he doesn't think about that much, because they're all flushed with the victory of the first simulation.

"We should ask Dr. Kang when we'll have actual prototypes to work with," Jié says.

That makes Mako laugh, the kind of open laugh Raleigh's only heard echoing in her memories. It sets Yong off, of all people, and Jié and Raleigh just sit there, smiling kind of bemusedly.

It's a good day. Things don't get weird until that night, when Mako follows Raleigh back to his room.

When he opens the door, not sure if they're going to - do anything, really; he doesn't have expectations. But he opens the door, and Mako says, "You should follow me next time. My room is nicer."

Raleigh blinks. "Um, we could go there now?"

"No, this is fine." She curls an arm in his, and leads him over to his bed.

Raleigh can't think of it like getting lucky; it's not like the old days, when him and Yancy'd go out to bars and chat up girls. It's not innocent, either, because Mako pulls him down and over her, and kisses him, which honestly feels kind of dirty.

But also good. Really good.

Mako's rough with him that night, scratching him up and using her legs to flip him, riding him like they're going to run out of time. It's all Raleigh can do to hold on, so he does, clinging to her as she brings him over the edge, and burying his face in her neck once it's over. When Mako leaves, he curls around his pillow, feeling her in the back of his head.

Yong knocks on his door at 0430, long before they're due to report to Hall B. "What's going on?"

Raleigh's rubbing his eyes, so he doesn't see Yong's expression when he says, "It's Jié. He's - he's having trouble."

"Where?"

"The sparring rooms."

Raleigh could say a lot of things, like "why didn't you get Mako", or "isn't this a job for the PRIC psychologists." Instead he says, "Take me there."

They go to the exercise room. Jié's beating the shit out of a punching bag, eyes intense, hands wrapped. Even with them wrapped, though, he's going to do some serious damage if he keeps it up. Raleigh doesn't bother asking why Yong doesn't stop him. With a Drift like theirs, Raleigh figures it's all Yong can do to keep from breaking out into rage himself.

"Hey, Jié," Raleigh says.

"No," Jié spits out the word. "Don't come to me with your talk about Yancy and surviving. You and Yancy were never like this, you never felt the emptiness, you never -" He breaks off and goes back to punching the bag.

Raleigh hopes Mako picks up on his disturbance and gets here; he thinks they're ghosting enough for that, even if she did leave his room after - well. "But you still have Yong," Raleigh says. "And the Drift gets easier."

"We're missing him."

"Sure." Raleigh shrugs. "What do you want me to say? That you'll want to die? You know that, same as I do."

"Then what's the point?"

"Exploring space." Raleigh thinks about it. "Being in the Drift, having memories of him. I don't know, eating ice cream? The point is living. You know how that works."

"We were trained to fight the kaiju," Jié says. His punching slows marginally, but he's still whaling away at it. "Eight kills over six years. We grew up in the shadow of a Boneslum, and now, what, we're going to fly in a plane, guard a Drift with no monsters?"

"Something like that," Raleigh says. Yong's swaying on his feet a little and, Jesus, how bad is their Drift? "Come on, man. Let's go play Xbox in the common room or something."

Jié sneers. "What makes you think I like Xbox?"

"Everyone likes Xbox," Raleigh says. "Come on."

For a second, judging by the tense line of Jié's shoulders, Raleigh thinks he's not going to go anywhere. But then he slumps, nods, and says, "Let's go then."

"Great," Raleigh says, relieved. They're turning to leave the sparring room when Mako enters.

"Jié" she says. She's obviously relieved - so obviously that Raleigh kind of wants to ask her to knock it off. But she flicks a glance at him and then corrects her attitude, instantly moving to a more relaxed stance. "It's good to see you up."

"Oh?" Yong says.

She nods, smiling narrowly. "I couldn't sleep. Memories."

The weight of Pentecost hangs over them, and for once, Raleigh's overwhelmingly grateful. "We were going to play Xbox," he says. "You in?"

"Of course."

That's how they all end up in the rec room at five in the morning, scrunched onto the same couch. Yong's got a corner, and so does Mako, so Raleigh's squished between Mako and Jié. They're all playing Hot Wheels, and Raleigh's not nearly as good at it as he remembers from when he was a kid - but when he crashes for what feels like the millionth time, Jié laughs. As far as Raleigh's concerned, that's worth the price of admission.

They see Newt and Hermann early the next day.

Newt's previous line of work has dried up, obviously; there aren't really any kaiju left to dissect. "Of course," he says as soon as Raleigh asks, "I could have taught, there were positions anywhere I wanted, but you know what they say about those who can't do."

"What he's trying to say," Hermann says, "is that he's been working with Professor Lightcap on the computer science aspect of reopening the Breach. Communications in the void, and such. Recordings."

"The hacker generation reigns supreme, my friend," Newt says.

"So what progress have you made?"

"There are briefs in your rooms," Dr. Kang says, coming into Hall B. "Today we'll be doing a flight test."

"Over Seoul?"

"Over the ocean," Dr. Kang says. "We have an aircraft carrier with two flight-ready planes - courtesy of your government." She nods to Raleigh. "We'll be heading down to the dock momentarily. We should be flight-ready within a couple hours."

"Guess no time with Herc," Raleigh says to Mako.

Dr. Kang picks up on it, because of course she does. "Not today."

"Isn't it a little early?" Yong says. "How do you know we're stable?"

"Dr. Lightcap is of the opinion that this project needs to demonstrate results sooner, rather than later." Dr. Kang raises a hand in a kind of half-shrug. "Of course, her urgency reflects the urgency with which the Jaeger program was originally developed - and we don't want to give anyone cancer. But working prototypes, at the very least, will ensure the UN cooperates with the energy needed to open another Breach."

Every time someone says any variation of 'open another Breach', Raleigh gets chills. But if he's going to be Drifting with Mako, he needs to not dwell on his memories of falling; so he says, "Awesome. Let's go, then."

No one really talks on the ride down to the dock. A motorboat takes them out to the aircraft carrier, which is just a mile off the shore of Seoul. That doesn't seem like much, Raleigh thinks - but they can control an aircraft as easily as a Jaeger. If it's rushed, well. Raleigh's kind of thankful to Dr. Lightcap for that. He needs to do something.

They get into flight suits and are strapped into the Pons on the plane. Like in the simulator, they're horizontal. Dr. Kang's voice comes over the comm. "I'll be directing you for now," she says. "When the Breach is opened, you'll have Marshal Hansen in your ear. These planes are prototypes - exploratory, so not outfitted with weapons, and not space-ready. Keep that in mind as you fly."

Like they'd try to break atmosphere, or something.

"Understood," Mako says.

"Excellent. Initiating neural bridge in five...four..."

Mako's mind is, by now, a comforting and familiar place. Raleigh falls into it and regains awareness easily, starting up the plane with her as he says, "All systems are go."

"What a cliché," Mako tells him internally. He grins at her. "We're ready for takeoff."

"And we are as well." This is maybe the least formal Raleigh's ever heard Yong be. "Engaged and prepared."

"You should see flight maps," Dr. Kang says. "We're just doing a simple circuit today. Don't get ahead of yourselves."

Raleigh can't help but feel like that's a directive meant for him specifically. "Aye-aye," he says.

"Take 'em away," Dr. Kang says.

Raleigh and Mako begin to take off. It's not like being in a Jaeger at all - they don't have arms or legs here, but they're part of the plane all the same.

"Altitude achieved," he says. "Orders?"

"Follow the map," Dr Kang says.

He can hear her dry amusement, which tells him she doesn't get it, not really. Raleigh's used to asking for orders, because he's used to fighting kaiju in an ever-changing environment. But this is simple. They're about fifty meters from the twins, and they complete the circuit in less than fifteen minutes. From here, Raleigh can't see the water - only the blue sky and the information on the 360 radar. He'll need to remember to ask for camera interfaces. Only being able to see one angle isn't exactly ideal for space exploration.

When they land, Dr Kang comes out to meet them. "Congratulations," she says.

Raleigh's got an arm around Mako without really thinking about it, and she's leaning into his touch. The triplets - twins - the brothers are holding onto each other, hip to shoulder, and they're shaking.

"I'd call this a success, wouldn't you?" she says when none of them answer. "Now come inside. We're doing lunch, and then it's back to the lab. Marshal Hansen has some work for you."

Raleigh can feel Mako's relief that they'll have some physical activity after all this. He echoes it and follows her inside.

"I know what you're feeling right now," Herc says, surveying them.

"No, you don't," Jié says. His hands are curled into fists; Yong's hand is looped around his left wrist.

"I lost a son," Herc says. "And I haven't Drifted since. We're all lost in one way or another. And tomorrow, Sasha and her partner will begin training."

That surprises Raleigh. "Sir -"

"They're ready," Herc says without looking at him, "And Explorer I will need more than one flanking plane if something bad comes through the second breach."

Raleigh thinks that's a great argument for not attempting to open a second breach at all, but he doesn't say so. Instead, he nods and says, "Good idea."

"Explorer I?" Mako says.

"A stand-in name," Herc says. "We'll let you know when we've got a real one."

Both pairs of rangers had given their feedback already. Raleigh might've been a little effusive about needing a full range of vision, but he does. "Yeah, how's that going? The breach."

"They're not going to call it that," Herc says. "And that's enough yapping for one session. Mori, I want you with Yong. Raleigh, you've got Jié."

Raleigh thinks this might be the opposite of a good idea, but he faces off against Jié. Herc takes them through a series of poses ganked from all kinds of martial arts, and then they're sparring.

It's - jarring, to do this without Mako. Without his partner. Jié might feel the same, but he reacts by snarling and attacking Raleigh for real. Herc doesn't say a thing, so Raleigh meets him blow for blow, neither of them doing that much damage, but also not giving an inch.

He's totally wiped by the time they're done. They all shower, and Mako finds him as he's walking down the hallway toward his room. "You were good with Jié."

"You know him better than me. Think he'll get any better?"

Mako's silent for a long time. Then she says, "My room."

Raleigh's not going to press if she's not ready to give an answer. He follows her to her room, and gets on the bed when Mako motions it. He's not sure where this is going to end, but he craves the contact. He wonders if there have been studies done on the Drift being addictive. He can't imagine the type of brain that doesn't need it, once it's gotten a taste.

"I think he will," Mako says. "Of course, when, I don't know. He's so angry."

"You were angry." Raleigh's gotten that from her memories, from her thoughts in the Drift. "What are you now?"

"Learning," Mako says. "Every day I wake up and release my anger. The enemy is dead."

But the anger lives on, if she's releasing it. Raleigh says, "Yeah, I don't think Jié's there yet."

"But he can Drift."

"He can." Raleigh thinks of losing Mako, and his arm around her tightens. "Mako…"

"Shh," she says, and pushes him down on his back.

Sasha is with them the next day, alongside her new partner, a man Herc identifies as Trey.

Raleigh doesn't recoil from the sight of her, but it's a near thing. Her face is heavily scarred, with long, thick lines criss-crossing one another. Raleigh has no idea how the injuries missed her eyes.

"Cherno had no escape pod," Sasha says. Her voice has changed, and Raleigh glances down to see a scar on her throat. "We clawed our way out."

"To come back to this world?" Jié says.

"Aleksis died on our way to shore," she says. "And now, I fly."

Raleigh'd half expected to feel a fellow feeling with them, but if anything, they hold themselves apart. For the next two weeks, they do test runs - with rapidly changing, advancing planes - and train with Herc. Raleigh's been beaten up by Sasha and her new partner and doesn't feel any closer to understanding them. Yong stays quiet, and Jié stays angry. Mako - Raleigh loved her from the beginning, wanted to be with her and recognized instantly how hard she must've worked and how brilliant she must've been to restore Gipsy. But now, on top of that, he's got memories of her skin against his, and her bright eyes as she makes him come his brains out. Mako's a big tangle in his head, and the only time it smooths out is in the Drift.

He knows she knows, and by mutual agreement, they're not doing anything about it. Raleigh thinks he might feel something similar from her, sometimes, but it's honestly hard to tell.

Then, one day, Dr Kang says, "Pack a bag. We're sailing to the Gateway."

"On an aircraft carrier?"

"You thought it would be a yacht?" Jié says.

Raleigh snorts. "I'm surprised you're not pissed it's not."

Jié looks startled for a second, then grins. There we go, Raleigh thinks, feeling weirdly proud.

The ocean is open and bluer than the ocean in Raleigh's mind, the one lapping at the shores up in Alaska. They're at sea for almost two weeks, moving slowly thanks to the tech on board, before they finally reach the aquatic UN base.

The first thing Raleigh does is look up, but of course the Gateway's not there yet. The planes have to be armed before they attempt that kind of thing.

Dr Kang takes them on a tour of the facilities, including the supergenerators that will produce the energy needed to open the Breach - Gateway, Raleigh reminds himself. It's kind of terrifying, especially since Yong says, quietly, "And if something goes wrong?"

"There are failsafes," Dr Kang says. "But if enough goes wrong, this will be Earth's last dead zone."

Not comforting.

He and Mako fuck that night, long and slow, with her on top, pinning his wrists down. She looks at him with intensity that's mirrored in the ghosting, and Raleigh thinks maybe this isn't so bad, this bond, even if he is about to have it ripped away. Human beings might not've been meant to have this kind of closeness, but now that they do -

Raleigh's glad it's with Mako, is all.

The next morning, they report to the hangar. Their planes are there, modded all to hell. Raleigh looks at them: the Wei Tangs, Sasha and Trey, and him and Mako. They're the odd pairing, Raleigh thinks with pride. They're the ones who will be going into the Gateway.

"If we're right, there will be no concussive blowback," Dr Kang says. "Enormous energy is required, but it's not like detonating a bomb. You won't feel anything, but we need you to be ready."

They all nod.

Dr Kang smiles. "It's been an honor. And now, I'll turn you over to the Marshal."

Herc says, "Suit up, Rangers."

There's no panic this time, no frisson of fear that they're going to die - or excitement, really. Just a tense anticipation. Raleigh and Mako get strapped into the Pons, and then Herc's counting down to the Drift, and then they're out in open space, flying up to the sky.

They stop, hovering, a hundred meters from where the Gateway will open. "Get ready, Rangers," Herc says.

Raleigh has a second to think of falling, of dying and taking an entire civilization with him. But he's not afraid of his own impulses this time. Anyone can fall, he told Mako, but now - it couldn't all be like the Precursors. There have to be people out there, people who might not look human, but who want to work with Earth. Who want to learn.

And him and Mako are going to find them.

"Not everyone can explore," Mako tells him in the Drift.

Her feelings rolled over him; love for him, fear for him, anger and longing for Pentecost and her family. So much loss, and yet here they are, in UN-funded planes. The world's chosen exploration.

"Anyone can fall," Mako says. "But not everyone can go forward."

He gets it. "Thanks," he says.

The sky opens.