[ chuck doesn't take his time, but he doesn't rush either. there's a deliberate quality to the way he moves that insists he has all the time he needs, but that he can't be bothered for an interruption. the walk to her quarters is short, one he counts without intention and one he makes with a rigid spine and squared shoulders. it isn't the gait of a man going to war, but there's a resignation in the air all the same. chuck knows better than most that there are some things you just can't undo. wherever this is supposed to go, whatever they're supposed to glean from it, will become part of their shared history for however long they're meant to be here- and for whatever end they're headed to.
it's barely past the four minute mark when he reaches her quarters, and the rap of his knuckles on her door is sharp without the cushion his drivesuit has always provided. ]
[ Four minutes is more than enough time for Mako to find her center and quell whatever odd apprehension she might be feeling in her stomach. When she'd faced the kaiju her hand hadn't so much as shaken and yet now she found herself bothered and restless. She'd been the one who'd asked to talk in the first place but what did she have to say really that needed to be said (that could be said, given the history that bound them together).
When she answers the door her posture is a mirror image of his, her hand lingering on the doorknob, the lines of her face giving away nothing but her eyes betraying some deeper sentiment. Mako looks at Chuck for a long moment as he stands out in the hallway. He's not wearing his armor anymore and neither is she but their defenses are up and they stand like soldiers nevertheless. For some reason she imagined he would look larger, the way memories often fail to measure up to real life. Mako's eyes move back and forth across his face like she's searching for something but they stop abruptly just as she catches herself.
She tries not to think of him as Chuck and instead tells herself: this is the man who kept sensei's last stand; this is the man who cleared a path.
It makes it easier to bow to him (a bend at the waist, an incline of her shoulders). Not the short tic of her chin she might give someone else, but the bow offered to someone greater than.
(A sign of respect. Deference. Chuck had earned as much in those last moments.) ]
[ his expression has shuttered to a close by the time she reaches the door, a physical battening down of the hatches as if chuck is anything like a ship at sea. as if he's a boy again, standing on shore and watching the horizon for the first shadow to come heading towards land. he isn't afraid of mako, and there are times chuck imagines he could argue that he isn't afraid of anything anymore- but he's spent his life pouring himself into armor and planting his feet.
it's the last thing he's expecting when she holds his gaze- when she watches him, watches him- then bows in absolute silence.
it leaves something sick and warm turning over in his stomach and chuck's features fracture. he knows what this is, he knows what it means and his feet move on impulse. where every inch of his body wants to take a step backward, chuck only steps forward. ]
[ The don't catches Mako off-guard and while Chuck steps forward, she steps back, the two of them shifting in odd synchronization with one another (as if they were moving together as opposed to moving apart). It's not too large of a shift, just enough to bring Chuck inside and out of the doorway. Mako catches herself mid-motion (again, a lack of compatibility) her eyes largening as he presses into her personal space (not the first time and certainly not the last, but with a decided lack of his usual barking aggression).
There's a seam in Chuck's facade and Mako, who has spent the last ten years of her life staring into that face, trying to understand its angry topographies, sees it for what it is and nearly regrets her decision. (Nearly. There are certain things you cannot take back.) ]
Why not? [ she asks quickly, almost accusingly, her eyes not stern but searching again, searching. (—you can always find me in the Drift her father had said and without the Pons, without Gipsy and without the neural bridge, this, Chuck, was as close to Pentecost as she could get until he joined them here—) ]
[ there's a defensiveness to her tone, and chuck doesn't hold it against her because the same creases line his face, telegraph the weight to his shoulders and the curl of his fingers. their collective history has been nothing but the systematic destruction of whatever they might have been as children- scraping friendship and need and dependence down, and carrying them away brick by goddamn brick. he's not sure who started it (chuck imagines it must have been him, it's always been him) but they've come so far and it's gone on so long (he's dead now, there isn't any going back) that it doesn't matter.
she's gauging it. gauging him.
chuck knows this from experience, knows it like he knows his first name, and some part of him goes still. he's not the kind of man anyone needed to bow to. he's no hero (soldiers aren't, never have been) and his sacrifice (that thing he's still resolutely not thinking about, not remembering not feeling) isn't a sacrifice at all. it's just doing his job and finishing the mission and he doesn't need a goddamn medal or the bow from the deep part of her spine to tell him that. chuck doesn't want to be whatever it is her respect is going to turn him into. ]
I know.
[ turns out to be the only thing that comes out, and his mouth feels dry. he pulls himself together in a way that looks like shifting metal- plates over what's molten, and his gaze moves away on the inhale. this part he can do. there's a clip to his tone that speaks volumes to the amount of distance he wants between himself and detonation. ] Didn't come here for that.
[ At the end of the day, they're not so different. (They are and they aren't; there's the rub.) The same things that had inspired them to temper themselves to steel were the same things that ultimately drove them apart. Chuck and his anger, his hardness, his drive; Mako and her control, her respect and her bent spine. They had both been looking for the same thing: resolution for wrongs done when they were still children. And though their paths had lead them together and then apart, then careening towards Challenger Deep, in the end it had been the same payload that had delivered the closure they'd wanted (just on terms they hadn't been expecting).
Though it's hard to imagine it knowing Chuck now, he was once just an angry boy crying into the curve of Mako's shoulder. An adolescent that looked at her and thought partner instead of not good enough. That vulnerability (that camaraderie), on his part, is gone. Or maybe it's like hers — swallowed down so deep that it's impossible to discern but still undissolved. A flaw that keeps her from utter perfection and yet the tether that grounds her to the people she loves.
(Chuck was always the better soldier between them — maybe not the better person, but the better soldier. As hard as it may be to admit to everything else to herself, Mako has never shied away from admitting that.)
Mako inhales just as Chuck exhales, her own look becoming guarded, her reservedness returning. At her sides her hands hang in loosely curled fists, not ready for a fight but perhaps preempting whatever emotional body blow he might deliver next. ]
Then what did you come for? [ Her voice is more even now, its tone steady. If there'd been expectation before, she quells it, makes it spartan and matter-of-fact. ]
[ that she stops at all frees up something in his bones. his adrenaline is still pumping, and his heart is a bellow in his ears that tells him he's dodged a bullet, gotten out of the way of an oncoming train- not that he's stopped a girl from following through on some signal of respect.
chuck has always been greedy. once it was about recognition, about his rightful place. he's not sure what changed. it'd be too easy to dismiss it as the impact of real world experience. of getting a taste of life on the front lines, of holding the line in a jaeger of his own. it isn't. chuck and mako both have had a different brand of understanding about the program and it's rangers- for whatever good or bad that might be. they stand before one another as relative strangers- stilted by formality and too much intimacy (too much understanding) from a lifetime that no longer matters, by what's done being done and whatever they've been left with now.
you tell me he says, and chuck leaves the rest. you called, i answered. ]
[ You didn't have to say yes, is on the tip of her tongue — sharp but not angry, not a weapon she intends to wield against him. Mako knows it could have been just as easy to tell her no or tell her nothing (—that would be the status quo, wouldn't it—) but he hadn't, he'd as good as said he was ready by being here. (He has nothing to prove to her, not anymore, but maybe accepting that wouldn't come nearly as easily.)
Mako shifts her weight uncomfortably in the moment that follows, but it's not Chuck that makes her uncomfortable, it's herself. If she were to answer truthfully (Mako isn't one to lie) that would take digging deep, into soil she knows they'd rather both leave untouched, earth that hasn't been disturbed for years and years and which is probably better off forgotten.
But if Raleigh and Sitka and five years on the Wall (—she remembers—) has taught Mako anything, it's this: that life is for living and it's lived in the moment that holds you and all the moments that follow after. What came before had its time; now belonged to the present and to the future. The fact that Chuck is alive now doesn't undo what he'd done, doesn't erase the impact of it and doesn't change the fact that without him the Breach would have never been destroyed. But what lies before him (before all of them) is a chance for a different future. A chance for something beyond the war.
To be honest the possibility frightens her, but she can practically hear Raleigh in her head, can see the crooked smile he'd give her if he was in front of her, witnessing that fear in her eyes. About time one of us got our timing down right, don't you think?
Mako blinks at Chuck and blunts the blade of her tongue. ]
and it's not because chuck isn't angry. there's a fuse in him that's always lit. a fire that never goes out because it's burned hot and bright since scissure made land and because chuck doesn't know what to do if he lets it go out- doesn't know who he'll be the day he throws water of the thing and leaves it. it's instead that mako just keeps looking at him, and doesn't expect anything. or maybe if she does, it's played close enough to the chest that chuck can't sort it out. it's been years since either one of them tried for something like understanding, and maybe it's been for the best.
his gaze sweeps her once, from head to toe.
he doesn't know what he's looking for, but concludes that she seems to be in one piece. nothing broken. nothing missing. nothing burned up. maybe it means she's lived through pitfall. maybe it doesn't. chuck has only a smattering of bruises and a torqued knee for the end he'd met. sort that out.
their eyes meet and chuck doesn't sway. ]
He isn't here. [ he offers instead. because it's the only thing he knows how to work with. the only thing he can think of to do. ]
[ Chuck doesn't mean it like an accusation but part of it still feels that way to Mako. If that ulterior motive had existed, it's one that she hadn't come to terms yet within herself so to hear it offered up by Chuck so plainly hits hard like a blunt blow to the sternum, winding her. Catching her breath, she swallows whatever noise might follow and squares her weight between her feet in an attempt to steady herself.
He isn't here. Such a simple sentence, just three words; but in those words, the silent weight of finality. It through the armor of Mako's reserve and threaten to reopen the wounds she'd sutured closed the moment she'd awoken on the platform. They prickle at the back of her eyes like the threat of tears but she doesn't allow them, she beats them back like a ship beating back the hurricane that would otherwise threaten to drown it.
Briefly, very briefly, her eyes flash something vulnerable and raw but it's gone the moment Mako blinks and she steps forward, closer to Chuck, forcing her neck to crane a little further in order to keep his gaze. ]
I wanted— [ Mako repeats, her breath forcing her to pause mid-sentence. ] —to see you.
[ No matter how far gone they might be, how different they'd become from the children they once were, Mako knows that has to mean something to Chuck. Even if he refuses to acknowledges it, it still has to. ]
[ it does mean something to chuck. but what that something is, he can't name. it's a sudden weight in his hands, an entire universe that he has to make sense of yes- but also one he needs to make a place for. he's at an abject loss, and it's written all over his face.
chuck knows how to identify needs and how to meet them. there's a certain degree of clarity involved in moving point a to point b. there are definitions, a pass/fail designation. this- this is something else entirely. he can work with mako standing in the doorway, looking into his face and trying to find some trace of stacker pentecost in his features. some cue to follow, some hint that she can unearth and move towards.
chuck can work with being someone else's ghost because he's done it his whole life.
but she follows up with i wanted to see you and bears down on that last syllable. he'd call bullshit if he had anything to go on. he knows he doesn't. mako probably has a reason, she's the type. her targets are measured, to make every shot count. it's one of the (many) reasons they were never going to be drift compatible. chuck will empty his clip given half the chance, and mako waits it out. checks twice.
he's supposed to say something to this, of that much he's fairly sure. but whatever that something is supposed to be, chuck keeps coming up empty. his weight rolls (subtle, uncomfortable, uncertain) from right to left, and he keeps his silence. ]
[ Chuck isn't a ghost to Mako — or at least, he hasn't always been. For the longest time they were the only things the other would allow themselves to hold onto and it had anchored them and focused them, creating a tiny eye of calm amidst storms so much larger than them both. But that, like most things, had its time and then passed. And in that passing, they both became shadows of their former selves, living reminders of what the other had lost and what they had set aside to become better soldiers.
If Mako feels the impulse to move forward and embrace Chuck — to take his shoulders in her arms and tighten just to feel the tangibility of him — that's the parts of Raleigh in her talking and not her. Those kinds of expressions are lost on her now, foreign. Part of a language she no longer speaks, except in the sacred, silent tongues shared between copilots.
Just like with compatibility, it takes trust to be close to someone. And it's not that Chuck doesn't trust her — he'd stood beside Mako without complaint as they'd strode down into Challenger Deep together — but trusting someone with your life isn't the same thing as trusting them with your heart. (She's fairly certain Chuck would say he didn't have a heart anyway. But that look on his face, how lost he seems in the wake of knowing she's here for him and no one else — it tells Mako otherwise. This isn't the sort of mission either of them were ever trained for.)
Shifting forward her weight, her hands uncurl at her sides and reach for him uncertainly. In the end all she manages is a half-aborted squeeze of Chuck's forearm as she looks at him and then glances away. ]
[ her hand comes down onto his arm, and it isn't anything like electricity. but it's the first time someone's touched him since he got here, since he suited up to head into the breach, and it does something to his nerve endings. chuck doesn't short circuit. but part of him sinks. comes out of the air and seeps back into his bones. returns him to his body.
his gaze drops on reflex, moves to the single point that defines the be-all-end-all of their connection, like he just needs to see it to be sure. like burning the image into his memory will mean something. here, or now. whatever those words were supposed to count for. when chuck finally looks back at her it's impossible to define the difference. there's no loss of tension, no absence of mangled identities and half-formed ideas about who and why and what they are. but chuck nods, and something- some small, translucent piece between them, slots into place. ]
[ He doesn't look any different and neither does she (he doesn't stand taller, his eyes aren't softer; their gaze they share is still lined with things left unsaid and swallowed) but there's a sense that something has come into realignment, like a part of themselves that had been thrown out of kilter the moment Chuck woke in this place to air in his lungs and blood pumping through his veins. Even without a word Mako knows it because she feels that same piece shift inside her as well. Like a lens racking forward only to finally find focus, indistinct lines sharpening again, gravity pulling once more on their feet. When they were children they used to speak this way for hours, but simply looking at one another and knowing without having to ask. (It's what had convinced them, once upon a time, that they would be copilots, that there wasn't anyone else in the whole wide world who could possibly understand themselves they way they understood one another.)
It's not exactly a comfortable sensation (they're different people now and had put that aside for a reason) but it's there and makes manifest in the moment that follows, in the way that Mako mouth forms a slightly bowed shape and she turns, stepping back to let Chuck in a little further into her room. ]
You're not in your suit, [ she observes. (The moment lingers but Mako refuses to talk about it. That wasn't her way and it wasn't theirs either.) ]
[ he's always been crap with small talk. it's the kind of thing he's heard comes to you with practice. with enough time and energy and rehearsal. chuck's always preferred to spend his time pushing himself into exhaustion and making something collapse under the weight of his (anger) fists.
but here they are, how many years later and how long after the fast- moving around each other and working through their paces. like this is the kwoon. something the could still learn. still master.
chuck follows her lead, steps inside, and while he isn't outright wary- there's certainly a caution of his movement. something about the way his weight moves that betrays his awareness to his surroundings, to her. ]
Even as children, they spent the majority of what time they had together knotted up in an intent and sometimes furious silence — two kids who had stopped being kids far too early and who had nothing but their training and one another to teach them what to become instead. Conversation, chit-chat, talk about the weather (—how's the family—), those were skills that normal people cultivated in the day-to-day. Things that, as adults, neither Mako or Chuck have much practice in or much use for.
Still, an attempt is made — albeit a stilted one. Mako comments on the state of Chuck's suit and his response doesn't have a clear line for her to follow from one thought to the next. Her brow puckers in obvious (still silent) confusion as she looks at him for a long moment.
Was he calling her a persistent girl for asking? Or had some young, tenacious female help him out of his drivesuit?
The pucker to Mako's brow furrows deeper at that second possibility. Then it shifts and changes shape to resemble something closer to: you didn't, did you. ]
[ mako is different now. different than the girl she was before and maybe it's age and yeah maybe part of it's experience- the difference between standing in the walls of the shatterdome and suiting up to become part of a jaeger. but if chuck is going to take it apart- if he's going to hold it up to the light and be sure, then he knows it isn't the jaeger and knows it wasn't stacker, knows it wasn't him.
mako's different because of becket.
once, he thought he could see the distance between them in feet and inches. now they stand opposite by miles. ]
[ For the longest time they stood opposite one another, comparable in the eyes of others in almost every way. A sliver of age separated Mako from Chuck, but they were both orphaned children with widowed fathers, kids who grew up in the military because that's what their dads knew and they were destined to be made in their fathers' images. As children they were peers, as cadets they were rivals, and for each step or leap or bound that Chuck took Mako pushed herself to keep the pace, to match his stride (and sometimes excel); to not fall behind.
That changed following graduation, when Chuck was assigned to copilot Striker with his father and Mako's drift stability fell into question again and again. After that, Mako found herself lagging behind while Chuck continued to leap ahead: into the conn-pod and onto the evening news. (—that's Striker Eureka's tenth kill to date—) Two paths that ran in tandem then diverged, one to the neural bridge and one to the engineering bay, but even then their past held them together, a tautly held thread constantly threatening to snap.
Now, however, Mako's not too sure. Becoming one of Gipsy's pilots had brought her and Chuck side by side again after a long absence, but something (maybe it's her, maybe it's Chuck, maybe it's death) seems to have thrown that into imbalance once more. (It's Raleigh, she'll realize the next time she looks at her copilot, her gaze tracing his brow to the slope of his nose and down to his mouth and away again.)
Mako doesn't roll her eyes (she hasn't since she was a child) but maybe the desire is there. ] I had help.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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it's barely past the four minute mark when he reaches her quarters, and the rap of his knuckles on her door is sharp without the cushion his drivesuit has always provided. ]
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When she answers the door her posture is a mirror image of his, her hand lingering on the doorknob, the lines of her face giving away nothing but her eyes betraying some deeper sentiment. Mako looks at Chuck for a long moment as he stands out in the hallway. He's not wearing his armor anymore and neither is she but their defenses are up and they stand like soldiers nevertheless. For some reason she imagined he would look larger, the way memories often fail to measure up to real life. Mako's eyes move back and forth across his face like she's searching for something but they stop abruptly just as she catches herself.
She tries not to think of him as Chuck and instead tells herself: this is the man who kept sensei's last stand; this is the man who cleared a path.
It makes it easier to bow to him (a bend at the waist, an incline of her shoulders). Not the short tic of her chin she might give someone else, but the bow offered to someone greater than.
(A sign of respect. Deference. Chuck had earned as much in those last moments.) ]
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it's the last thing he's expecting when she holds his gaze- when she watches him, watches him- then bows in absolute silence.
it leaves something sick and warm turning over in his stomach and chuck's features fracture. he knows what this is, he knows what it means and his feet move on impulse. where every inch of his body wants to take a step backward, chuck only steps forward. ]
-Don't.
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There's a seam in Chuck's facade and Mako, who has spent the last ten years of her life staring into that face, trying to understand its angry topographies, sees it for what it is and nearly regrets her decision. (Nearly. There are certain things you cannot take back.) ]
Why not? [ she asks quickly, almost accusingly, her eyes not stern but searching again, searching. (—you can always find me in the Drift her father had said and without the Pons, without Gipsy and without the neural bridge, this, Chuck, was as close to Pentecost as she could get until he joined them here—) ]
It's true.
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she's gauging it. gauging him.
chuck knows this from experience, knows it like he knows his first name, and some part of him goes still. he's not the kind of man anyone needed to bow to. he's no hero (soldiers aren't, never have been) and his sacrifice (that thing he's still resolutely not thinking about, not remembering not feeling) isn't a sacrifice at all. it's just doing his job and finishing the mission and he doesn't need a goddamn medal or the bow from the deep part of her spine to tell him that. chuck doesn't want to be whatever it is her respect is going to turn him into. ]
I know.
[ turns out to be the only thing that comes out, and his mouth feels dry. he pulls himself together in a way that looks like shifting metal- plates over what's molten, and his gaze moves away on the inhale. this part he can do. there's a clip to his tone that speaks volumes to the amount of distance he wants between himself and detonation. ] Didn't come here for that.
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Though it's hard to imagine it knowing Chuck now, he was once just an angry boy crying into the curve of Mako's shoulder. An adolescent that looked at her and thought partner instead of not good enough. That vulnerability (that camaraderie), on his part, is gone. Or maybe it's like hers — swallowed down so deep that it's impossible to discern but still undissolved. A flaw that keeps her from utter perfection and yet the tether that grounds her to the people she loves.
(Chuck was always the better soldier between them — maybe not the better person, but the better soldier. As hard as it may be to admit to everything else to herself, Mako has never shied away from admitting that.)
Mako inhales just as Chuck exhales, her own look becoming guarded, her reservedness returning. At her sides her hands hang in loosely curled fists, not ready for a fight but perhaps preempting whatever emotional body blow he might deliver next. ]
Then what did you come for? [ Her voice is more even now, its tone steady. If there'd been expectation before, she quells it, makes it spartan and matter-of-fact. ]
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[ that she stops at all frees up something in his bones. his adrenaline is still pumping, and his heart is a bellow in his ears that tells him he's dodged a bullet, gotten out of the way of an oncoming train- not that he's stopped a girl from following through on some signal of respect.
chuck has always been greedy. once it was about recognition, about his rightful place. he's not sure what changed. it'd be too easy to dismiss it as the impact of real world experience. of getting a taste of life on the front lines, of holding the line in a jaeger of his own. it isn't. chuck and mako both have had a different brand of understanding about the program and it's rangers- for whatever good or bad that might be. they stand before one another as relative strangers- stilted by formality and too much intimacy (too much understanding) from a lifetime that no longer matters, by what's done being done and whatever they've been left with now.
you tell me he says, and chuck leaves the rest. you called, i answered. ]
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Mako shifts her weight uncomfortably in the moment that follows, but it's not Chuck that makes her uncomfortable, it's herself. If she were to answer truthfully (Mako isn't one to lie) that would take digging deep, into soil she knows they'd rather both leave untouched, earth that hasn't been disturbed for years and years and which is probably better off forgotten.
But if Raleigh and Sitka and five years on the Wall (—she remembers—) has taught Mako anything, it's this: that life is for living and it's lived in the moment that holds you and all the moments that follow after. What came before had its time; now belonged to the present and to the future. The fact that Chuck is alive now doesn't undo what he'd done, doesn't erase the impact of it and doesn't change the fact that without him the Breach would have never been destroyed. But what lies before him (before all of them) is a chance for a different future. A chance for something beyond the war.
To be honest the possibility frightens her, but she can practically hear Raleigh in her head, can see the crooked smile he'd give her if he was in front of her, witnessing that fear in her eyes. About time one of us got our timing down right, don't you think?
Mako blinks at Chuck and blunts the blade of her tongue. ]
I wanted to see you, [ she admits. ]
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and it's not because chuck isn't angry. there's a fuse in him that's always lit. a fire that never goes out because it's burned hot and bright since scissure made land and because chuck doesn't know what to do if he lets it go out- doesn't know who he'll be the day he throws water of the thing and leaves it. it's instead that mako just keeps looking at him, and doesn't expect anything. or maybe if she does, it's played close enough to the chest that chuck can't sort it out. it's been years since either one of them tried for something like understanding, and maybe it's been for the best.
his gaze sweeps her once, from head to toe.
he doesn't know what he's looking for, but concludes that she seems to be in one piece. nothing broken. nothing missing. nothing burned up. maybe it means she's lived through pitfall. maybe it doesn't. chuck has only a smattering of bruises and a torqued knee for the end he'd met. sort that out.
their eyes meet and chuck doesn't sway. ]
He isn't here. [ he offers instead. because it's the only thing he knows how to work with. the only thing he can think of to do. ]
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He isn't here. Such a simple sentence, just three words; but in those words, the silent weight of finality. It through the armor of Mako's reserve and threaten to reopen the wounds she'd sutured closed the moment she'd awoken on the platform. They prickle at the back of her eyes like the threat of tears but she doesn't allow them, she beats them back like a ship beating back the hurricane that would otherwise threaten to drown it.
Briefly, very briefly, her eyes flash something vulnerable and raw but it's gone the moment Mako blinks and she steps forward, closer to Chuck, forcing her neck to crane a little further in order to keep his gaze. ]
I wanted— [ Mako repeats, her breath forcing her to pause mid-sentence. ] —to see you.
[ No matter how far gone they might be, how different they'd become from the children they once were, Mako knows that has to mean something to Chuck. Even if he refuses to acknowledges it, it still has to. ]
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chuck knows how to identify needs and how to meet them. there's a certain degree of clarity involved in moving point a to point b. there are definitions, a pass/fail designation. this- this is something else entirely. he can work with mako standing in the doorway, looking into his face and trying to find some trace of stacker pentecost in his features. some cue to follow, some hint that she can unearth and move towards.
chuck can work with being someone else's ghost because he's done it his whole life.
but she follows up with i wanted to see you and bears down on that last syllable. he'd call bullshit if he had anything to go on. he knows he doesn't. mako probably has a reason, she's the type. her targets are measured, to make every shot count. it's one of the (many) reasons they were never going to be drift compatible. chuck will empty his clip given half the chance, and mako waits it out. checks twice.
he's supposed to say something to this, of that much he's fairly sure. but whatever that something is supposed to be, chuck keeps coming up empty. his weight rolls (subtle, uncomfortable, uncertain) from right to left, and he keeps his silence. ]
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If Mako feels the impulse to move forward and embrace Chuck — to take his shoulders in her arms and tighten just to feel the tangibility of him — that's the parts of Raleigh in her talking and not her. Those kinds of expressions are lost on her now, foreign. Part of a language she no longer speaks, except in the sacred, silent tongues shared between copilots.
Just like with compatibility, it takes trust to be close to someone. And it's not that Chuck doesn't trust her — he'd stood beside Mako without complaint as they'd strode down into Challenger Deep together — but trusting someone with your life isn't the same thing as trusting them with your heart. (She's fairly certain Chuck would say he didn't have a heart anyway. But that look on his face, how lost he seems in the wake of knowing she's here for him and no one else — it tells Mako otherwise. This isn't the sort of mission either of them were ever trained for.)
Shifting forward her weight, her hands uncurl at her sides and reach for him uncertainly. In the end all she manages is a half-aborted squeeze of Chuck's forearm as she looks at him and then glances away. ]
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his gaze drops on reflex, moves to the single point that defines the be-all-end-all of their connection, like he just needs to see it to be sure. like burning the image into his memory will mean something. here, or now. whatever those words were supposed to count for. when chuck finally looks back at her it's impossible to define the difference. there's no loss of tension, no absence of mangled identities and half-formed ideas about who and why and what they are. but chuck nods, and something- some small, translucent piece between them, slots into place. ]
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It's not exactly a comfortable sensation (they're different people now and had put that aside for a reason) but it's there and makes manifest in the moment that follows, in the way that Mako mouth forms a slightly bowed shape and she turns, stepping back to let Chuck in a little further into her room. ]
You're not in your suit, [ she observes. (The moment lingers but Mako refuses to talk about it. That wasn't her way and it wasn't theirs either.) ]
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but here they are, how many years later and how long after the fast- moving around each other and working through their paces. like this is the kwoon. something the could still learn. still master.
chuck follows her lead, steps inside, and while he isn't outright wary- there's certainly a caution of his movement. something about the way his weight moves that betrays his awareness to his surroundings, to her. ]
Persistent girl.
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Even as children, they spent the majority of what time they had together knotted up in an intent and sometimes furious silence — two kids who had stopped being kids far too early and who had nothing but their training and one another to teach them what to become instead. Conversation, chit-chat, talk about the weather (—how's the family—), those were skills that normal people cultivated in the day-to-day. Things that, as adults, neither Mako or Chuck have much practice in or much use for.
Still, an attempt is made — albeit a stilted one. Mako comments on the state of Chuck's suit and his response doesn't have a clear line for her to follow from one thought to the next. Her brow puckers in obvious (still silent) confusion as she looks at him for a long moment.
Was he calling her a persistent girl for asking? Or had some young, tenacious female help him out of his drivesuit?
The pucker to Mako's brow furrows deeper at that second possibility. Then it shifts and changes shape to resemble something closer to: you didn't, did you. ]
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mako's different because of becket.
once, he thought he could see the distance between them in feet and inches. now they stand opposite by miles. ]
Y'aren't wearing yours either.
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That changed following graduation, when Chuck was assigned to copilot Striker with his father and Mako's drift stability fell into question again and again. After that, Mako found herself lagging behind while Chuck continued to leap ahead: into the conn-pod and onto the evening news. (—that's Striker Eureka's tenth kill to date—) Two paths that ran in tandem then diverged, one to the neural bridge and one to the engineering bay, but even then their past held them together, a tautly held thread constantly threatening to snap.
Now, however, Mako's not too sure. Becoming one of Gipsy's pilots had brought her and Chuck side by side again after a long absence, but something (maybe it's her, maybe it's Chuck, maybe it's death) seems to have thrown that into imbalance once more. (It's Raleigh, she'll realize the next time she looks at her copilot, her gaze tracing his brow to the slope of his nose and down to his mouth and away again.)
Mako doesn't roll her eyes (she hasn't since she was a child) but maybe the desire is there. ] I had help.
[ Who was yours? ]