Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

To the outside eye, Cooper handles BT’s death well. Better than everyone expected. Actually, remarkably well. They’re already working on another Vanguard titan for him to pilot. This time, it’ll be with a new data core. FS-1041.

…Cooper doesn’t know how to tell them that he doesn’t think he’s ready. He’s been given time to mourn. He’s sulked in his room for days. He keeps waking up with tears pouring down his face, some force far behind his eyes raging against what feels like a cage, heartbroken and screaming at an absence that he doesn’t know how to put into words.

There’s multiple cases of a Vanguard pilot losing their titan. But there’s no cases of the titan’s end being as abrupt, as violent as BT’s was. There’s not a single case of the pilot’s titan having been their mentor’s titan. So while yes, there’s cases to study and use data from as a basis of how to help Cooper move through his grief of BT, and while yes, they think that wiping the neural link will fix things, Cooper knows it won’t. He can't explain why. He just knows it won't fix anything.

He didn’t just lose BT that day. He lost what he had left of Lastimosa, too.

Briggs knows something is off. She was the one to watch him collapse to the floor of the dropship as they watched the Fold Weapon malfunction thanks to BT’s sacrifice, she was the one to sit with him on the floor as they made their way back to the Malta to go back to Harmony, that held him while he cried so hard he couldn’t make a sound, feeling like a chunk of his heart, half of his body, had been ripped away.

Cooper doesn’t think he’s ever felt such a devastating sensation of loss before. It hurts so much it makes his head spin. It feels like there’s a jagged cut down the back half of his consciousness, and someone ripped that half out and replaced it with something static-like but not like static at all. It’s too sharp and loud but also too quiet and peaceful to be static all at once. He feels dizzy, and remembers the dropship whirling around him when he stands up to leave it with Briggs.

He doesn’t remember hitting the ground.

“He’s in shock, probably because of losing BT. Going from watching his mentor die, to being linked to his titan, and then losing that titan all within the span of less than a day did a number on his psyche.”

His eyes half blink open, before shutting again. Too bright…

“When can you wipe the neural link?”

“Commander Briggs, with all due respect, if we wipe the link right now, we risk causing more shock and excess psychological trauma. He’s already stressed and hasn’t come back from the physical effects of being in shock, much less the mental ones. It’s best he’s given time to rest and decide when he’s ready to wipe the link, himself.”

“We don’t have that kind of t-”

“Would you rather lose a pilot all together or be missing one for a month at most?”

The medic, whoever they are, is met with silence. Cooper’s so dazed, he’s still struggling to process that Briggs was already asking about his neural link getting wiped.

“Call me when he’s awake.”

“I’ll call you when he’s coherent.”

“Fine.”

There’s a few moments of silence, fabric rustling and some soft clinking to his left, he realizes belatedly, over the sound of footsteps and a door swooshing open and shut, the two panes of the metal doors to the medbay making a dull thud as they connect.

The medic sighs over him, and a hand rests on his shoulder, delicately.

“I know you’re awake, Cooper. Is it too bright for you to open your eyes?”

It takes him a few moments to respond, tears beading under his eyelashes, and he nods weakly. Footsteps retreat, and he can sense the lights being turned off from behind his eyelids before the footsteps return. He opens them, and looks up at the medic. Straight black hair pulled back into a bun, dark skin, sympathetic eyes, red-painted lips. He swallows, and blinks, a single tear rolling down his cheek.

“Anything hurting?”

Cooper opens his mouth, lips feeling sticky and mouth feeling full of fuzz. The words come out roughly, like they were scooped out one syllable at a time.

“Ev- ever- y- thing.”

His eyes dart to the nametag on the medic’s chest.

Hanes. She/her.

She looks at him, sympathetic, and reaches up to his iv, checking the bag. He watches her movements, too tired to resist or question what she’s doing, before she leans down, picks up a remote alongside his cot, and slides her thumb up a scale. The cot he’s laying on moves, sitting him up gently.

“I’m going to get you some water. I’ll be back, yeah? Press the red button if you need me.”

It takes a few moments of Hanes being gone for Cooper to realize that the sympathetic stare was probably because he’s crying. Tears dripping down his face, slow, maybe because he’s thirsty and that means he’s already dehydrated, and he doubts he has much water left in his body to cry, even if the iv is helping.

Hanes returns, and Cooper lifts his eyes, feeling heavy and weak, so stupid and miserable, and she’s pushing a small tray, with some medical shit Cooper’s eyes gloss over, before he sees the small container of two cups with straws and four smaller ones, filled with what looks like jelly. He wonders if that’s what he’s going to be confined to eating for now - soft foods. Would make sense, he thinks. He certainly feels sick enough for that to be warranted.

She stops the tray by his cot, picks up one of the cups with straws in it, helps him hold it steady.

“I didn’t see any food allergies on your file, but I hope you don’t mind the taste of lemon. This should help soothe your stomach, I’d imagine you’re nauseous.”

He vaguely wonders how she knew that, before placing his mouth on the straw, and drinking the lemon water.

Hanes helps him eat the jelly after he drinks the water, explaining that each one has a different vitamin in it, before she injects a liquid into his iv bag. Somewhere vaguely in the back of his mind, near where the static makes his head buzz uncomfortably, he thinks they might be painkillers.

“How- h- ow long wa-s I o-ut for?” He chokes out once he swallows, blinking and scrunching his nose. Speech really shouldn’t be that hard, should it?

“Less than a day,” Hanes reassures him, stacking the emptied cups of jelly and water neatly, then moving around to his other side, checking the screen displaying his vitals. He faintly recalls that the average resting heartrate of a human is between sixty and a hundred. If he remembers how to read that screen right, his is at sixty-two. Lower side of the scale, but still within what’s considered the average, or normal, range. “But long enough that we’ll need to keep you for a while longer to make sure there’s no lasting physical damage, especially to your head.”

“D-id I giv-e myself a- ano-ther con- conc- concuss-” He staggers over the word, face scrunching up with effort. Hanes chuckles at him.

“No concussion. Helmet protected your head when you fainted.”

Cooper nods slowly. His eyes burn. He wants to go back to sleep. He wants to go back to being unconscious. He misses BT. 

In his delirious state, he forgets that BT is gone. I’ll visit him once I’m cleared to leave, he thinks, and blinks himself back awake. Hanes sighs gently, and reaches into his cot, picking up the remote and reclining the cot.

“Go back to sleep, Cooper. Call me when you wake up.”

Cooper wakes up harshly, head jolting as he snaps awake, heartrate leaping from its resting point to something that makes a loud, violent beeping noise on the monitor. Mind spinning, reaching out in a panic to nothing but static, he almost doesn’t notice Hanes rushing back to him from a different room, before she starts speaking to him.

“Cooper? Cooper, talk to me. Are you okay?”

His head snaps up, tears filling his eyes and making his vision swim, and all he can croak out is-

“BT’s gone?”

“Oh, Cooper…” Hanes sits down on the side of his cot, his face in her hands as she makes sure he holds his head steady. Her eyes flit from one eye to the other, Cooper vaguely wonders if she’s checking him for a concussion again. “He’s gone, yes. I’m sorry, there was nothing you could’ve done. When it comes to titans, protocols are protocols.”

He sniffles, hiccups, and the tears start to fall. Hanes sits with him, holds his hands and rubs his knuckles, speaking to him - soft and reassuring.

They end up talking, once he calms down more, once his crying eases.

She’s got a wife, and they have two kids and a dog. Cooper’s always wanted a dog, and he tells her that. She chuckles, and tells him to live long enough to retire so he can get one. It makes him smile. He tells her about his twin sister, about his parents, about his childhood home on Harmony. She tells him about her service as a field medic and some of the ridiculous ways she’s seen soldiers get injured.

A silence comes to them, and Cooper doesn’t mind it. It’s not a happy silence, but it isn’t one that makes his body ache more. So he’s fine with it. He sniffles, tears refilling his eyes, and speaks softly.

“So Briggs is going to make me wipe the link to - to -”

“She has to.” Hanes tells him, soft and sad. He looks up at her. She’s frowning, and looks sympathetic. But not pitying, sympathetic. “I’ve worked with many pilots who lost their titans, Cooper. The ones who had a neural link always have it worse in recovery. I’ve only ever been a medic, I told you that - but I’ve seen this happen so many times.”

Her hands squeeze his, and he stares at where she’s holding his hands, both soft and rough all at once. The contact almost seems to quiet the static filling up his brain.

“You’re experiencing what we call a post-link shock, or PLS.”

He looks back up at her. She offers a small, sad smile. Now that feels like pity. Cooper hates it.

“It’s when a pilot with a neural link goes into shock after losing their titan. Considering the extreme circumstances in which you lost BT, you’re taking it pretty hard.” She pauses, and tilts her head. She’s expressive, it makes Cooper feel better about how emotional he’s being. “Are you okay with me asking questions about what you’re experiencing?”

Cooper swallows, and quietly asks for more water, first. She pats his arm, and tells him she’ll be right back.

She comes back with Briggs, and Cooper’s stomach plummets. He doesn’t want to hear it. Hanes gently asks if he thinks he can hold the water himself. He looks at his hands, and decides the tremors, minor as they are, will be fine. He nods, and listens in while Briggs gets filled in, quietly. Quiet enough that it’s clear Hanes doesn’t intend for him to hear them talking.

“He’s having an extremely emotional response to the loss of his link. More than most others I’ve seen. His file notes that he’s very laid back and easygoing, so either he struggles with loss more than most soldiers, or the link was somehow deeper than our expectations for it being less than even a day old. He’s struggling. Don’t bring up wiping the link, I want to get a gauge on how deep it ran first so we can approximate his recovery.”

Cooper speaks up, ignoring the information he just overheard.

“What’s normal for a linked pilot losing their titan?” Both the women look at him. Cooper looks up at them, feeling so, so exhausted, but determined to know. Hanes looks at Briggs, and then back at him. Briggs doesn’t look away from Cooper’s eyes.

“Depends on the depth of the link. Considering your link with BT lasted less than a day, we would expect it to be extremely shallow. But your combat effectiveness with him suggests that’s not the case.” Briggs states, blunt, and Cooper’s eyes water at the mention of BT. He stubbornly blinks it back.

Hanes sighs softly. “I was gonna ask about that, actually. I wanted to see how deep your link with BT might have been. Still think you’re okay for some questioning?”

Cooper nods, still ever determined. Hanes sits down on the stool by his cot, clipboard and pen in hand.

“Alright. Then, can you describe to me what his side of the link feels like?”

“...static?” Cooper’s face scrunches. “Well, no, it’s not static. Where - where he should be is static, but it’s not… really static.”

“Can you elaborate on that?” Cooper’s eyes slide to Briggs. Her arms are crossed, and she’s frowning, looking thoughtful and yet confused. He’s never seen that kind of look on her before.

“It’s… it’s a lot like static, in that it feels like electricity, I guess? Or if you hear static, how you think the sound it makes should feel, if that makes more sense?” Briggs nods. Cooper continues. “But it doesn’t feel like static, it only feels similar. It’s… sharper, than that. Noisier, but it doesn’t make any sound. It’s like a constant presence that I can’t shake. It’s - hard, to ignore. Every time I wake up from being asleep it feels like it slaps me in the face. But also it’s so quiet at the same time - I can’t get a good understanding of it, focusing on it too hard or for too long makes my head hurt.”

Briggs and Hanes share a look. Cooper doesn’t know what it means, but Hanes writes something down, pen scribbling on her clipboard. He thinks it's a little funny, that with all their technological advancements, she’s still using pen and paper. Maybe she’s just a little old fashioned in that way. It’s a nice thought to his exhausted brain, that some people still do little things like that.

“Okay…” Hanes stops writing, and looks up at Cooper. “Can you differentiate between your side of the link and where his side begins?”

He thinks, focusing. The divide feels sharp but smooth, like a gradient with a line down the middle? No, no, that’s not right. But it’s not a solid line, either, because BT is all over the place on Cooper’s side, too. He can’t tell where he ends and where BT begins. Frowning, he shakes his head slowly, ignoring the tears that prick his eyes. His head hurts.

Hanes’ pen scratches against paper more. Cooper wishes it would stop. He wants to go back to BT. He feels homesick.

“Does any part of your body hurt when you think about BT, or focus on the link, other than your head?”

“Yes,” Cooper responds immediately, already knowing the answer to that. “All over the place - my chest, my stomach, my hands, my wrists and elbows, everywhere hurts when I think about him. It feels like it’s in my bones.”

He’s met with a few seconds of silence as he says that, tears welling up more. It hurts. It hurts so much. He misses BT. He almost swears he can feel the phantom feeling of BT’s sturdy hand around him. But it’s not there. 

“You can still feel him, can’t you?” Cooper’s eyes shoot up, and Briggs is watching him, thoughtful. “You wrapped your arms around yourself. You can still feel him picking you up when you embark.”

Cooper’s eyes drop. He didn’t even notice he started hugging himself, but he did. It doesn’t help, so he puts hands back where they were, still holding the cup, which now has minimal amounts of water in it. He feels too sick to drink the rest.

“Yeah,” He manages weakly, voice hoarse and on the verge of cracking. He hopes it won’t. He’s already embarrassed that he cried in front of Briggs as it is. “I can feel him. Even though I know he-”

Silence. He swallows, a tear breaking off his lashline, dripping down his cheek. “Even though I know he’s not… here.”

Briggs exhales heavily, and Hanes looks at her. They share a silent glance. This isn’t a fault with Cooper being emotional, that link ran deeper than they thought it did. Hanes looks down at the notes she’s written down.

Titan half of link described as similar to static, with conflicting sensory details. Causes pain to think about (undescribed, head).

Pilot cannot establish a distinguishing line between himself and his titan within the link.

Bodily pain when thinking about titan or focusing on the link reported. Torso (stomach, chest) and joints (hands, wrists, elbows) named.

Heart sinking, she writes down two more notes.

Pilot is experiencing phantom sensation of physical contact with titan partner.

Neural link deeper than expected. Psychological scarring expected. Run tests before wiping neural link for safety.

“That’s all I needed to know.” Hanes says, voice soft, and stares down at her notes. Such a deep link, formed within such a short amount of time - an anomaly to be sure. And yet, all she can feel is sympathy for Cooper. This must be awful. He was never prepared or trained to deal with this sort of pain, either. Poor thing… 

“Briggs - Commander, and- and Hanes,” The two women turn to Cooper, holding his water cup in one hand, looking between them with red, teary eyes, shadows heavy under them. Hanes’ stomach sinks further in sympathy. “This isn’t normal, is it?”

They glance to each other. Hanes looks down at her clipboard and sighs, then nods to Briggs and quietly leaves.

“No,” Briggs murmurs. “It’s not. The signs you’re reporting are typical of a pilot losing a titan after years of serving together. These are likely the symptoms Lastimosa would have experienced if he lost BT.”

Cooper swallows, throat feeling clogged up and tight. “Oh.”

“Rest up, Coop.” Briggs turns, and begins to leave. “You need it.”

He doesn’t fight that, and sets the cup on the table by his bed, and then lets himself pass out, and return to sleep.

When he finally gets discharged, he's allowed to keep the gloves and helmet from Lastimosa’s jumpkit. They hand them to him, his hands still shaking with faint tremors. They've been cleaned, and the techs tell him that they ran a scan of everything in his helmet. 

"It's all working like a charm," One tells him, with a strange look on their face. Cooper nods quietly, brushing off how the technician looks at his helmet with visible confusion. He's too tired to deal with all of that, at this point. 

"Thanks." He says in a blank, hollow voice, before he's allowed to return to his new room - a new dormitory in the 6-4 unit's wing. Davis walks him there, talking his ear off about how the 6-4 functions, unspoken rules, their training schedules, but Cooper isn’t really listening, half hugging the helmet to his chest.

“Davis,” He finally mumbles, voice quiet and a little hoarse. “Can we talk about this later? I’m tired.”

Davis’ voice falters, and he turns to look at Cooper with a sympathetic frown. “Yeah, of course. Here, your room is just down this hall. Fourth door on the left. Holler if you need me, yeah?”

“I will.”

He won’t.

The techs want him back a few days later. They want to run some tests with the helmet on his head, make sure everything’s functional. A test run. Cooper is dreading it, feeling sick at the idea of putting on the helmet, but also, the idea of putting it down - he’s just sitting in his room with it on his lap, what is wrong with him? - makes him feel nauseous.

He sighs heavily, and stands up. He tucks the helmet under his arm, and makes the short trek to the tech department, less than fifteen minutes away from the dormitory wing. He’s greeted with four technicians, one of them being the one who handed his helmet back the day he was discharged from the medical wing.

“Ready, Cooper?” One asks once they sit him down in a chair, a few sensors attached to the helmet. Cooper nods, and has to suck in a deep breath before he pulls it over his head.

Nothing could’ve prepared him for what he saw.

Receiving encrypted message.

Cooper froze, hands still on either side of the helmet, heart leaping in his chest. What the fuck?

“Cooper?”

“You- you guys aren’t,”

Decoding . . . 

“You guys aren’t sending a message to my helmet, are you?”

“No?”

BT-727

The text doesn’t get to finish forming as Cooper rips the helmet off his head, eyes wide, tears stinging them. The techs stare at him, one of them breaking their gaze away to pour over the screens. 

“...Cooper, what happened?”

Cooper swallows, forcing down his tears, and stands up, half tossing the helmet onto the chair. “It’s busted. It- it’s just busted. Can I have a new helmet? I-”

Blue light flashes from the chair. Cooper’s head snaps to it, and one of the techs whispers something off to the side to one of their buddies. The one who originally handed the helmet back to him.

It flashes again, repeatedly, from the small scanner light to the left of the visor screen. Cooper feels sick. What the fuck.

The light flashes, and Cooper is left scrambling to keep up.

.--- .- -.-. -.- ..--..

Jack?

“ What?” Cooper’s voice cracks, tears threatening to spill. He turns to the technicians, heart beating irregularly in his chest. “Is- did- did it just-”

“Yeah.” The technician says, staring at the helmet with a strange expression on their face. Cooper can’t even find it in himself to rip his eyes away to check the nametag on their coveralls. “It said your name. It was doing this earlier, too. It said pilot , and then when we probed it, we found nothing. We detached the sensors, and turned our back, and it started up again. Jackson there-”

Cooper follows the hand gesture. It’s the technician pouring over the holoscreen, a concentrated look on the young face.

“Knows more about Morse than the rest of us. We had him run diagnostics and keep track of it. Every single thing the helmet said was something you could be called.”

Somewhere, from the depths of his mind, Cooper can feel something nagging at him. There’s something fishy here, and in a sudden moment of clarity as he touches the helmet, he realizes.

The static is almost silent. He can feel it, like a grainy, prickly texture lurking over his consciousness, but it's quieter. He can’t hear it anymore, even if it never made a sound to begin with. Something is off here.

“...can you guys step away for a second? I need to review some footage from when I was on Typhon. It might help me get a better idea of what’s going on, but,” Cooper’s voice trails off, swallowing hard to keep himself calm.

“It’s above our pay grade?” Jackson offers, smiling at him awkwardly. Cooper shrugs.

“I don’t want to get you four in trouble with Sarah.”

“Break time it is.” The technician by Jackson declares, and grabs Jackson’s shoulder, spinning the kid around and marching him away. Cooper exhales a shaky laugh. The head technician nods at him, and then guides the other one away as well.

Cooper stares down at the helmet. Thinking. This is crazy, it’s stupid. 

He sits down in the chair, and pulls the helmet over his head, closing his eyes and forcing himself to breathe.

An open mind is one with room to work, he reminds himself, an old phrase his father used to tell him. He sits, taking a few deep breaths, thinking. There’s an anticipation whirling around him, like it’s buzzing around his head in a circle, separate from himself. 

“Access helmet data logs from Planet Typhon. Authorization, Pilot Jack Cooper.”

A list of files pops up after a soft ping of confirmation as Cooper opens his eyes. He knows what he’s looking for. 

“Search, key words, Anderson rally point.” The helmet scans, a progress bar of its scanning popping up in his HUD. He stares at it, watches as it increases, before coming up with a list of two rows of different files. They’re audio files with the matching video files. Based on the preview image alone, he knows which one to select. 

He reads the file name, and stops to think. How does he phrase this… hm, well,

“Play Planet Typhon helmet data log, starting at the point of origin of search result Anderson Rally Point zero six.” To his surprise, it works, and he watches himself stand up and start walking through a ruined facility. He projects the screen out of the helmet, uses his hands to interact with it, scrubbing through the footage. Searching. Searching for two specific things that BT said to him in those few hours of being at the facility.

And he finds them. Right as he finishes sectioning them off into separated clips, the door of the tech bay opens, and he hears his name be called by a voice he knows all too well.

"Cooper."

"Commander Briggs." He stands up, turns to face her. "I think you're gonna want to hear about this."

The team of four technicians come back around, gather at their places while Cooper quietly speaks to Briggs. 

"Ma'am, permission to tell them about a rough outline of the Fold Weapon so they understand what I'm going to be telling you?"

She squints at him a little. 

"Permission granted."

Cooper inhales, and turns to face the team. "Tell Briggs about the Morse code, please?"

Jackson stands straighter. 

"Ma'am, when we were running diagnostics on Cooper's helmet, the sensor light began to flash in Morse code. We thought it was a fluke, but it was consistent. I got a video of it to try and figure out later, but I haven't been able to-"

"What was the helmet saying?" Briggs is frowning. She has no idea where this is going, but she can tell it's going to be easier to just get right to the point. 

Jackson pauses. Swallows anxiously. "Well - well it started as it saying pilot, but by the time I had translated that, it started saying Cooper. It kept going silent for periods of time, but we couldn't find any anomaly in the helmet's hard or software. When we finished scans and repairs, it said Jack."

There's silence. Cooper is the next one to speak. 

"When they had me put the helmet on to check functions while it was in use, it said I was receiving an encoded message." All eyes turn to him. Cooper's arms are crossed, and he's staring down at his feet. "When it started to decode it, it began to display BT's serial number."

"That's impossib-" 

"No it's not."

Briggs' head snaps to him. Cooper meets her stare, level, and begins to speak. 

"It said my name again, with me in the room. Jack. As a question. Jackson can attest to that." Cooper doesn't stop there, and turns to the technicians. "On planet Typhon, BT was transferred to me by Captain Tai Lastimosa after he sustained fatal injuries. He had no other choice. We were to rendezvous with Major Anderson at an IMC research facility. Upon arrival, I found Anderson KIA. As such, my job became to investigate the facility."

"We found what we now call the Fold Weapon. A weapon of unknown origin that can bend time within a radius of itself. The facility had been destroyed by a small-scale test of the weapon. While I was there, I experienced time distortions." 

"Get to the point, Cooper." 

Cooper sent Briggs a glare under his helmet, and pulled up the two clips, projecting them and hitting play on the first one, BT's voice playing from the hologram. 

"Strange. I am picking up traces of my own data signature within this area. The distortions must be affecting my scans." 

Briggs opened her mouth. Cooper hit play on the second one. 

"Pilot Cooper, I have transferred some of my AI functions into your helmet in order to permit communication across time shifts."

Silence met that one. Briggs stared at the holoscreens, and so did the technician team. So, Cooper spoke. 

"This is crazy." Briggs looked to him, as did the technicians. "It's stupid. There's no way it should be possible. But my helmet has been saying my name, and I received an encoded message that started with BT's designation. He sacrificed himself, Commander."

Cooper’s voice wavers, nearly cracks, at the mention of his titan bring lost, but the static is more like a pleasant buzzing hum, and he feels confident and strong and whole, even if he doesn’t quite realize it.

"He flew himself into the full size Fold Weapon to save us all. But he left a trace of his AI in my helmet so he could talk to me. When I got the energy scan of the Ark, do you know what I saw?"

"Cooper-"

"Everything was frozen in time. Everyone but me, and I had the wrist mounted device Anderson had to help him be kept safe from the time distortions."

"Cooper."

"I'm saying it's worth looking at, Commander. It's fucking weird, you have to admit that much."

Silence. Briggs and Cooper are face to face, Commander and Pilot, and Cooper can almost taste the tension in the room. 

"I can pull up the footage of me getting the Ark's signature reading." It's an offer. One that Cooper is praying that Briggs will take.

She takes it.

Weeks later, and Cooper is being given proper pilot training, now. He's already beyond proficient with his jump kit, beating Briggs' gauntlet record within his first few tries of the course. His instructor laughs, and tells him that they're going to tell her about that later. It makes him smile, just a little bit. 

He's still not linked to a different titan - FS-1041's new chassis isn't completed yet, and his neural link hasn't been wiped. Briggs hasn't tried to push it. The medics and technicians that work with neural links haven't either. He appreciates it.

He trains with the 6-4 a lot, while they're still with the Militia. They're freelancers, but have their own place on HQ. Cooper thinks it's weird, but so is the 6-4 as a whole. 

"Say, Cooper." Bear comments as they walk through the titan hangar bay. Cooper snaps out of his thoughts, making a soft humming sound in confirmation he heard Bear. Bear glances over at him, and Cooper can almost taste the smile in his voice when he speaks. "You know how to rodeo a titan?"

Cooper blinks. "Rodeo?"

Davis and Gates look at him, before sharing a glance and laughing. Davis claps him on the shoulder.

"Man, you're gonna have a blast at practice today, man. I tell you!"

Davis turns out to be very, very correct about that.

"Ye-ahh!"

"Ride 'em, space cowboy!"

Cooper is laughing, and uses his jumpkit to swing himself around, avoiding the Legion's arm as he reattaches to the titan’s back, before launching himself back up into the air as the Legion swings its chassis around. Bear and Droz are cheering him on somewhere behind him, Davis yelling something incomprehensible from the cockpit, laughter in the sound of his shouting. 

Bear whoops appreciatively as Cooper grabs the Legion's arm, swinging off it and pushing himself into the air, before using the extra jump to push himself right back towards the Legion, landing solidly on its shoulder, but getting flung off before he can properly get a grip. 

He groans amidst the sound of laughter, Davis bringing his titan over before hopping out, laughing and helping pull Cooper to his feet. The landing wasn't light, but his jump kit took the brunt of it, and the ground isn't made of concrete or metal for a reason. 

"You gave me a hell of a time! If only other Militia pilots were as good as you!" He compliments, and gives Cooper a boost up onto his titan's shoulder, before re-embarking. 

Cooper exhales heavily, grinning and still buzzing with adrenaline, before he leaps off of the mechanical shoulder, half tripping over himself when he lands beside Bear, who catches him. Gates laughs from where she's watching, a short distance away, and pushes herself off the wall to stand.

Bear's arm still around his waist, Cooper rights himself, glancing over at her to make a joke, only to feel the words die in his throat when the training arena's doors slide open and Briggs walks in. 

The rest of the 6-4 goes quiet too, because just looking at Briggs makes it clear that she means business. 

Cooper's mouth runs dry, heart freezing in his chest. Davis, still in the Legion's cockpit, glances to him. Bear's hand on his waist tightens. 

The 6-4 may not know exactly what Cooper and Briggs talked about, but they know things are a little tense between the two, and they know that Cooper is still battling with the loss of his titan. So to see Briggs suddenly walk in, and look right at Cooper, there's definitely an edge in the air. 

"Cooper. Come with me. I need to talk to you." 

Bear inhales softly, tense, and gives Cooper a short squeeze, distangling them from each other. 

"Good luck, Cooper." Gates offers softly, and Davis nods as Cooper passes him and his Legion. He doesn't hear or see Droz's reaction, but he hears Davis speak to Droz behind him as he leaves, right on Briggs' heels.

The door slides shut behind them, and Cooper feels nauseous. Because Briggs told him the next time she'd come find him, would be when she has news on potential plans to find BT. To search for his titan . He feels like he's going to be sick. 

They walk through the halls of the base, pilots and soldiers alike watching them pass. They know his name. They all know his name. He's the one that saved Harmony. He's their hero. 

Cooper just thinks that he's nothing at all. He's not a hero. Not without BT by his side.

Briggs pulls him into the technical wing, brings him to a room he doesn't recognize, with six other people there waiting. He recognizes three. Hanes, Jackson, and the head of Jackson's team - the one that had handed his helmet back to him. He reads the nametags this time. 

Jackson. He/they. 

Hudson. He/him. 

He offers them a short smile, helmet now tucked under his arm. They both return the sentiment, Hudson nodding at him and Jackson giving him a smile. Hanes offers the tiniest wave, without really moving her hands, and a smile.

"Everyone's here. Hudson, Jackson. Report your findings. Give us the context."

Hudson stands up straighter. 

"Yes ma'am." He projects a mess of windows and displays and video feed and frequency waves on the wall across from them all, to Cooper's right. Ah, he finally realizes. This is a conference room.

"On the planet Typhon, there was a weapon of unknown origin the IMC got their hands on. We call it the Fold Weapon." Cooper watches as Hudson shows footage from his helmet feed from the time distortions, watching the intact miniature scale of the Fold Weapon. He watches as Hudson shows everyone everything, explaining as he goes. 

The Fold Weapon's effects. Time and the space it distorts. The audio recordings of BT's voice reporting traces of his own signature, his AI being put into Cooper's helmet so they can talk across the time distortions. Anderson. The Ark. The frozen explosion. Neural links being separate from the jumpkit helmets - as the links come from the neural chips that every member of the Militia gets as a form of identification if their dog tags become lost. 

There's so much information. 

BT's sacrifice. The medical report from Hanes about the severity of his side effects from losing his titan. How they're abnormally powerful for someone who was linked for less than a day, how his phantom sensations and hallucinations of BT should have gone within a week but were still persisting, how his case doesn't match that of any other Vanguard pilot who lost their titan. The Morse code. 

Hudson plays the video, and Cooper watches, heart aching, the static buzzing at the back of his mind unpleasantly for a moment. His face scrunches up involuntarily, and when he opens his eyes, everyone is looking at him. 

"...what?"

"Your helmet just flashed again." Jackson reported. Cooper's eyes snap to them.

"What did it say?"

“A - r - k. Ark.”

Cooper swallows, feeling sick again. He is silent for a second, then turns his head to Briggs.

“Commander, request permission to try and talk to BT through my helmet?”

He hears someone mutter something about him being crazy, about how this is a stupid idea. Briggs exhales heavily.

“Worse case scenario, we don’t get a response. Permission granted, Cooper.”

The helmet pops over his head without a second thought, Cooper closing his eyes as he focuses. He remembers when he reached out before, on Typhon, how it felt clear and how sometimes, visualizing BT right there with him helped make it clearer, made communication easier. So he focuses, and pretends he's walking up to the static, both noisy and dull, like a roaring machine in a soundproofed room. He inhales, and speaks.

“Pilot Cooper to BT-7274, if you read I need a clear indicator you can hear me. I saw the flashes, I know there’s some AI left in my helmet.” He pauses, and speaks again, voice softer this time, even as he tries not to let it be. “Talk to me, BT.”

Silence. He hears someone start to speak, but they’re quickly shushed. 

…still, nothing. His heart aches, and he quietly relents, going to pull the helmet off, before-

“It’s flashing! Hold still, Cooper!”

He freezes, and waits, hearing muttering sweep through the room, opening his eyes and -

What the fuck?

LC: P:TYPH. ARK. 0G, BYOND ATMOS. POWER: N/A. SYSTEM STATUS: N/A.

SERIAL NUMBER: BT-7274. PILOT IDENTIFICATION: JACK COOPER; 291314727. 

Cooper’s mouth runs dry as he scans the lines of text that are smack in the middle of his HUD. A lot of it doesn’t make sense to him, but the last line is clear as water. He can hear it rattling in his head, clear as day, in BT’s voice, and he could’ve sworn it punched the air clean out of his lungs.

JACK, HELP ME.

He wants to scream. He wants to cry. He knows he’s shaking, and he silently projects his HUD onto the conference room screen. The room goes silent, the white noise he didn’t realize was building going silent.

“What does that… mean? The first line, it’s all… gibberish?” Jackson mutters. Briggs speaks up.

“It’s not gibberish. He’s telling us where he is. Location, planet Typhon. Ark. Zero G’s, beyond atmosphere. Power and system status not available. His and his pilot’s identification. And…”

A pause.

“Good god…” 

Cooper’s voice wavers as he speaks up. “What was the Morse code saying?”

A short pause ensues, Jackson watching the recording he got back. He looks up, face pale, and were it not for the wall behind him, Cooper would have collapsed when Jackson speaks.

“Final transmission.”

The base roars into gear. There’s the potential to recover a Vanguard class titan - to say that this is a big fucking event is an understatement. Cooper undergoes a psychiatric assessment from Hanes as soon as he’s calmed down from what could be nearly classified as a nervous breakdown. 6-4 demands a place on the recovery team, and Briggs doesn’t know how to deny them. Not when she saw how they interacted with Cooper, how they treat him like he really is one of their own.

His old ground team is all over helping, Captain Cole personally requesting that his team gets to help escort Cooper to BT’s location. It’s like every old friend and acquaintance Cooper ever made leaps at the chance to back him up.

Cooper can’t stand to be away from his helmet. 

Final transmission, he loops in his head, over and over, the tears never fully leaving his eyes while Hanes checks his vitals, even amidst his steady breathing. Final transmission.

What does that even mean? Does it mean BT’s conserving his power now? Or is he already out of it? Is he going to be lost forever? Will Cooper arrive to an empty chassis, if he even gets approved to go on the mission?

He admits these fears to Davis after his exam, shaking with tears finally beginning to fall, and Davis almost tackles him in a hug, holds him tight while the rest of the 6-4 gathers around to reassure him and hold him close. 

Bear was linked to a Vanguard titan once, and upon losing that titan, had refused to link to a new one, now piloting an Ion class titan instead. He knows how distressing losing a neural link can be, so it’s not a surprise to any of them when Bear pushes Cooper’s helmet closer to his chest, and then envelops him in a crushing hug that lives up to his name, with Gates and Droz close behind him.

They convince him to take a nap, and bring him out to their titan hangar, where they build what may as well be a nest in the middle of it, in the center of four titans, with all four of them being activated. They may not have the full personality capabilities of a Vanguard class titan, but the rumble of displeasure Bear’s Ion let out when they were told about BT says more than enough for the rest of them. 

Cooper sleeps fitfully, anxious and stressed, and the 6-4 refuses to leave his side, talking quietly over him, with their titans watching the five of them. The titans rumble and creak back and forth, silently sending encoded messages that only their pilots’ helmets can see. Worry for the pilot their humans have gotten so attached to.

When Briggs comes to fetch them and Cooper, she’s met with four titans glaring her down from the moment the hangar doors open. She silently counts them. Davis’ Legion, Bear’s Ion, Gates’ Scorch, and Droz’s Ronin. She nods to each of them, and walks up to the pile of bodies on the floor, noting silently that Cooper has his helmet on, and one hand fisted into Droz’s shirt. Briggs neglects to comment on it, and quietly asks Bear, who has Cooper’s head in his lap, to wake him up.

“Cooper,” She says softly, watching the pilot stir. It takes him a few seconds, before he sits up quickly, maybe a little too quickly as he wavers and Davis and Droz quickly go to support him.

“‘M, yeah, Commander? ‘M I cleared to go with?”

Briggs pauses. She has half the mind to doubt Hanes’ judgment, but when Bear turns to her, and she looks into the face of someone else who lost a Vanguard titan, that doubt vanishes.

“You all have one hour to get ready. Move it.”

“I know it’s soon for you, and I don’t doubt this will feel wrong with your link to BT still intact, but you’re gonna need a titan to pilot if you want to stay alive out there.” Briggs says, leading Cooper down the hangar of unpiloted titans. He hates it. Passing the construction site for FS-1041 fills him with a sickening, boiling feeling of disgust. That’s not his titan. That will never be his titan. “When we pulled the video feed from your helmet of your time in BT on Typhon, we saw you used the Tone class kit to take down Viper. I figure you might as well take a class you know how to operate with you to get BT back, since FS-1041 isn’t finished yet.”

Cooper stops with Briggs in front of a titan. Tone class. Painted dark blue and black with red detailing. Briggs turns to look at him. He doesn’t meet her eyes.

“You have to take a titan with you. Just for safety measures.”

“What’s her name?”

Briggs sighs. Cooper wonders if it's out of relief. His eyes don’t leave the Tone class in front of him.

“XF-7104.”

“Alright. Register me so we can go get BT.”

“Listen up!” Briggs’ voice is loud. Cooper sits in the tone’s cockpit, silent, uncomfortable, but dead set on getting his titan back, no matter the cost. A MARVN finishes its diagnostic check of his temporary titan partner, and gives him a thumbs up. He doesn’t return it. “Our mission is to retrieve Vanguard titan BT-7274’s datacore, and make sure the Fold Weapon is truly inoperable so the IMC can’t try and pull what it did last time. You all know your orders.”

The briefing runs through Cooper’s head.

“Cooper, myself, the 6-4, rifleman teams S-7 and S-6 will be pushing towards where we tracked the Ark’s data signature. We do this as fast as we can, and we do this quietly. Cooper has a remake prototype of something we recovered from a previous mission that should protect him from the time distortions around the Ark and Fold Weapon fragments. The rest of us are his backline, and will be making sure no IMC get to Cooper. Cooper will be piloting a tone class titan in the meantime. Serial number XF-7104. Watch your fire out there, don’t hit him.”

An alarm sounds, warning everyone to get to their titans. They’re going in hot. Briggs looks up, and makes eye contact with Cooper through his helmet. A beat passes between them. Cooper nods shortly. Briggs speaks, turning to get to her titan.

“Standby for titanfall.”

Chapter Text

The drop into Typhon’s destroyed atmosphere is sickening. Cooper hates every second of it. A ping appears on his HUD, labeled Approx. Ark Location . Huh. How considerate of Briggs.

Cooper hardly processes anything that happens. Piloting XF feels awkward and broken and he hates it, but she serves him well as he pushes onward with the 6-4 at his back and two riflemen hanging onto XF, one sitting on her shoulder and scoping down, the other hanging off their back. He doesn’t remember their names.

He doesn’t remember anything, actually, it’s all just a blur. The static in his mind grows louder and louder as they get closer, until it turns into a droning buzz that drowns everything else. All that matters is BT. He’s the only thing that matters at all. 

As they press further into the higher parts of the atmosphere, Gates stays behind with the rifle teams where there’s enough atmosphere to breathe on the broken chunks of rock, while the rest of the 6-4, Briggs, and Cooper press on.

Exactly who’s taking out what little IMC resistance they find, him or XF, he doesn’t know, because it all blends together. He was meant to push on past them anyway, it was in the plans for Cooper to lead the way, and faintly, he wonders if it’s because Briggs knew what was left of BT and their link would take over on an instinctual level, and he would tune everything out as his mind focused wholly on the goal, on getting to BT. Getting back to his titan.

They have to use their titan’s momentums to leap from broken chunk of planet, to broken chunk of planet. One after the other, after the other. All on their way to the Ark, and as they get closer, there’s a sensation that Cooper recognizes. Especially once they get to a cluster of smaller loose chunks. He stops, and he can feel XF hum to him questioningly.

“Let me out.”

XF lets him out. Briggs meets him there as he walks further onto the chunk of rock he’s on, gravity barely enough to keep his feet on the ground.

“This is the place where you take off on foot, is it?” 

He turns to her, caught between the overwhelming static and underlying chanting in his mind of close, close, close, close, that tells him that he’s almost there , and the fact that he’s afraid to find something that he can’t take back with him. He doesn’t know how to respond, and offers a weak, vague gesture in response. Briggs reaches out, pats his arm.

“XF will follow you if you tell her to. Her systems will keep her from following you if she could get destroyed. Go ahead. We’ll stay here and keep an eye out for you.”

Cooper swallows, and manages a weak whisper of okay in response, before turning, and silently calculating a jump to the next platform. Something in his brain is nagging at him, so he looks down at his left hand, and looks back up. He flicks that wrist, clenching his hand, and -

…and it works. He freezes, stuck in a paralyzed sort of shock as he sees. He sees-

It’s… it’s the Ark injector. He freezes, feeling like he’s going to be sick, and he staggers. Slone’s Ion titan is there. Crumpled where it was, a hole shredded right through the middle of the chassis. Cooper crumbles, sitting there in shock, breathing jagged and shallow. Fuck. Fuck.

He staggers to his feet, mentally noting the exact spot he stood on, and stumbling through the wreckage, towards the injector. Getting to it makes him realize how huge it is, how small it had looked was because BT was just so big, and-

Feet dragging, he turns towards the view, and looks out.

The Fold Weapon is moving. He doesn’t have much time.

“Cooper!”

That’s Davis’ voice, and he catches him as he nearly collapses as soon as he flicks back to the present, breaths short and shallow.

“Fuck,” Bear mutters, and is kneeling at his side in a heartbeat. XF lumbers over, looks down at him. “You okay? C’mon, Coops. Talk to us here.”

“I- I need. Up, get me up. I need to embark.” Cooper manages, voice shaking as he struggles to his feet with Davis and Bear helping him. XF offers her hand, and Cooper half collapses into her palm, sitting on the metal and letting her pull him into her cockpit. He needs to go. Now.

“Where to, Pilot Cooper?” She asks him, and he exhales shakily.

“Get me to a place where the ground is curved. The- the Fold Weapon, it was set on a curved ground, I-”

“You need to get to a place where you can access the Ark.”

Cooper nods, forgetting she can’t see him. So he pauses, then responds verbally. “Yes.”

“Bring me across the time stream. I will find a way to get you there.”

She walks away from the others, and Cooper flicks his left hand. He barely gets a second to recover from the wooziness that washes over him, the static that he’s come to realize isn’t BT’s side of the link, but is rather BT himself, borderline screaming every time he enters this time stream. He feels like he’s losing his damn mind, but XF doesn’t hesitate, not for a second.

Her chassis surges forward as she gets to the Ark injector, peers down it, there’s less than a three second pause as a file suddenly leaps onto Cooper’s screen.

…it’s the time explosion from the smaller scale. He knows. Suddenly, he knows, and everything clicks into place. And just then-

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

He squeezes his eyes shut against the sound of his comms accidentally connecting to the ones happening right then. He can remember, remember the feeling of BT’s hand around his waist, ripping him from the cockpit, he remembers the panic, the horror at the idea of losing BT,

“Wait,” He tells XF, voice breaking as he listens to the sound of himself screaming, fighting against BT, feels the waging war over their link from weeks ago of don’t do this, BT don’t do this, please, don’t, let me go with you - don’t make me lose you, please- and can feel the static surging and yelling silently, trying to overpower the struggle from the past,

“Go, now!”

And his horrified scream for BT echoing over comms, and-

The Ark injector sends them hurtling towards the Ark, and Cooper kicks the cockpit door, demanding that he be let out far more aggressively than he means to, but he flicks his left wrist twice - out, get them closer, in, get back there in time for the explosion - and then-

Everything is frozen. The cockpit door is half open. XF doesn’t respond to him calling out to her. It worked. It fucking worked.

Cooper launches himself forward, squirms out of the cockpit, and leaps up to the top of her head. He can see a figure, outlined in the light of the Ark mid-explosion, and the sob rips out of him before he can stop it. 

“BT!” He screams, and uses his jumpkit to launch right for him, pushing himself up and forward because he needs to make this he needs to get there he needs to get to his titan, more than anything, he needs BT.

He lands hard, and scrambles up BT’s chassis, the static now eerily silent, BT stuck in a split second of time. He hauls himself up, up to where the SERE kit is, and stares down at the datacore. What does he do, here? How does he get it out?

Anxious, shaking violently, he reaches down, and anxiously touches the datacore, fingers fitting around it. He pulls the barest bit, and sobs, jerking as tears start to pour uncontrollably as it comes easily. Lifts itself from the socket, fits right into his hands, and he’s sobbing. He’s crying, and he crumples onto BT’s chassis, overwhelmed. He’s holding BT. He has BT in his hands. BT is there, it’s okay, all of this is okay now! He’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. He has his titan. It’s okay.

Shaking, sobbing, he stumbles up to the top of his BT’s head, and stares down at it for a second, hand resting on the SERE kit. He wishes he could take the whole kit, wishes he could take Lastimosa’s knife and pistol with him, but he knows he can’t. So he sniffles, another sob wrenching out of his chest, and forces himself to stand on shaky legs. Last time, he got out of this because his helmet overloaded when he was trying to take a reading of the Ark.

Unsure of what to do, the prototype remake of the time gauntlet fizzling pathetically on his wrist, he turns around, and jumps onto the Ark, only to… pass through it?

He doesn’t get time to register that before he falls unconscious. 

He comes around to the swaying, rocking motion of being embarked on a titan as they walk. He hiccups feebly, half tuning in, half tuning out of the conversation over comms, vaguely recognizing Briggs’ voice.

“-per is unconscious, but he has the datacore! We’re coming back!”

Cooper sniffles, another soft, broken sob wrenching out of him as he realizes BT is still cradled against his chest, and he feels a buzz and a burst, like a dot of something solid amidst the static over their link, and he can feel it. It’s solid. It’s there. It’s okay. He’s crying, cradling the datacore to his chest.

“Commander Briggs,” XF reports softly around him over comms. “Cooper is awake, but I believe he is not in a state to handle piloting my chassis. I will continue to follow you and the 6-4.”

“Got it. Welcome back Cooper, don’t worry. We’re getting you and BT back.”

The only thing Cooper can muster in response is another broken sob while he curls harder around BT’s datacore.

He wants to go home. He wants BT to have a proper chassis again. He wants to curl up in that cockpit again and he wants to lay there and cry until he can’t, and he wants to just be safe and in BT’s presence again. 

He wants to be safe.

At some point, dazed and overwhelmed by everything, he slips back into unconsciousness.

Cooper wakes up again to the titans loading into a ship to take them back. He sniffles, forcing himself to sit up properly, holding the datacore to his chest, breathing in a shaky breath. The comms are full of chatter that’s distant and faint, he wonders if XF removed him from the channel so he could rest for a little while. 

The datacore hums softly against his chest, and he pulls his helmet off to wipe his face, mopping up tears and snot as he sniffles. His head hurts. He probably just needs water, actually.

One by one, the titans fit themselves into the spaces made for them in the hangar, and the walkways are extended for pilots to leave. Cooper watches, silently, mind blank with exhaustion, head leaning to the side, against the curve of his seat in XF’s cockpit, before he sighs and tugs his helmet back on over his head, sniffling against the congestion that accumulated from his sobbing.

“Pilot Cooper,” XF says to him softly, and he mumbles a vague response as he adjusts his helmet, making sure it’s on comfortably, before picking BT up again and cradling the datacore to his chest. “Would you like to stay embarked, or would you like to leave? The 6-4 is offering to have you join them.”

He pauses, thinking. Thinks about the 6-4, how they did their best to assist him while he fought Viper. How they helped him take over the Malta. Training with them, how they let him curl up and sleep in the middle of them all before they left base for this mission. He thinks - what would BT and Lastimosa tell him to do?

“Let me out, please.”

XF lets him out. He hops out, and lands a little hard, but is quick to right himself, stepping back to let two MARVN bots pass and a pilot he doesn’t recognize. Droz is waiting for him, and he offers a weak smile that Droz can’t see anyway, before following after him as Droz leads the way to the 6-4 wing. Cooper doesn’t even think, continuing to hold BT’s datacore to his chest.

They make it a short distance, before Cooper starts, in a big wave, to feels overwhelmed by the lights and sound and chaos of the base, and his world spins around him. Is he really gonna pass out again?

“Droz,” He starts, voice cracking. “I-”

He’s nearly to the floor by the time Droz manages to turn around.

Cooper’s first thought when he wakes up is of BT. He jerks a little in panic, head pounding, and is met with hands gently pushing him back down, eyes adjusting to the bright lights of the medical bay as Hanes pushes him back to lay down.

“Hey, hey, Cooper, it’s okay. You’re okay. Breathe.” She reminds him, though not unkindly, while he breathes jaggedly, Briggs’ voice sounding from behind Hanes.

“BT’s in your hand, Cooper. It’s okay. Bear told us you’d probably want to keep him with you for when you woke up. The technicians are just running scans on it to make sure there’s no internal damage.” It takes Cooper a few seconds to process what she said, breathing jagged and messy, but once he does, he lifts his head and looks down to his left hand. And there’s the datacore, pressed into his palm, fingers curled around it. BT .

With a shaky exhale, relief rolling over him like a wave, Cooper melts back down against the cot, and promptly passes right back out.

After multiple tests on Cooper while he was both conscious or not, Briggs received the report.

Due to the complication of BT having been stuck in time, essentially caught in a stasis due to the Fold Weapon, and Cooper having to breach that time to get his titan back, the neural link was in disarray. Going from BT having been completely gone at first, to BT only existing inside his helmet, to suddenly recovering him, Cooper’s physical condition was suffering from the psychological strain.

They were lucky that he hadn’t gone into a proper coma due to the strain and how much his brain was struggling to keep up with everything that was happening, especially due to BT’s datacore being so unstable, the link was struggling to stay consistent.

The medics closely monitored Cooper’s condition, watched him slide in and out of REM, watched him wake up briefly, and never for more than ten minutes. As he laid there, struggling for days, the datacore never left his side, other than when it had to be taken for a proper hardware check, before being returned to Cooper’s side. The nurses noticed, in awe, that Cooper was fitful the whole time the datacore was gone, but settled down peacefully as soon as it was returned to his side.

It would take multiple days for Cooper to wake up properly. And when he does, he’s dazed and his vision fades in and out as he slowly comes around.

Much to his displeasure, once he’s properly awake and stable as such, he’s bombarded with tests to check his vitals, how he’s handling being awake, how his neural link is doing - all with BT’s datacore settled comfortably in his lap. Cooper does his best not to whine or complain about it, and mentally cheers in delight when he’s allowed to rest and finally eat. Granted, it’s just mashed potatoes, fruit juice, and water, but it’s food nonetheless, and he’s more than pleased about that.

The 6-4 comes to visit him as soon as he’s properly up and cleared. Droz sits on the end of his bed, Davis in the chair by the cot. Bear sits at his hip, and Gates watches them with a smile from the side. They fill him in on everything he’s missed, and Cooper feels fantastic by the time they leave, if not absolutely exhausted by the socializing.

He’s confined to the medbay for another three days, in which he does his best not to whine or complain about, because he misses his own bed and he knows they have to do tests and checks on the datacore to make sure they can properly make BT a new chassis, but he’s too anxious to let the datacore out of his sight. He sleeps a little fitfully at first, the days beginning the blur together as he waits, and waits, and waits. His waking hours are a blur of tests and scans and bland food and seeing the 6-4 and more tests and more and more and he's so tired of it. But it's for BT, so he finds himself powering through anyway. 

There's a few moments that stand out to him clearly. Someone trying to take BT from his hands because they were a technician and saw him trying to enter the mess hall with the datacore in his hands, Briggs physically dragging Cooper backwards so he wouldn't knock the kid flat. Someone actually grabbing BT when he set the datacore down briefly, and Cooper once again having to be held back and restrained so he wouldn’t knock them out, while Davis smacked them over the head and snatched the datacore back, before handing him to Cooper. The technicians letting Cooper hold BT so they could clean him and run tests without having to separate them.

And then, the dreaded moment arrives.

“Jack Cooper?” He turns around from where he’s sitting in a common area, and is met with a young woman offering him a small smile. She’s holding a clipboard and a metal case and his heart plummets immediately, recognizing that case for what it is. “Can I talk to you about the datacore?”

“You need to take it.” He accuses her, feeling nauseous at the notion of parting from BT. She offers a sheepish grin, and shuffles her weight.

“Afraid so. We have the rest of the SERE kit assembled for BT-7274’s new chassis. All we need now is its datacore.” 

Internally, Cooper seethes that BT was called an it, but he bites down his anger, and forces a deep breath instead, looking at where the datacore sits in his lap, before returning his eyes to the technician.

“Where will you be taking it?” A pause, before he grits out an extra sentiment. “If I’m allowed to ask.”

She sits down next to him, and muses a soft umm, scanning over her clipboard. Cooper narrows his eyes.

“Let’s see… it’ll be first in the titan technician’s lab, where we make sure everything in the SERE kit is functional and the datacore is compatible with the technology. If not, then we’ll have to update what we can, while keeping the core hardware intact so it’s the same titan you linked with, which will avoid any unsavory side effects in the link. Then it’ll be transported to the chassis manufacturing site, where the SERE kit will be safely stored until it’s ready to be inserted into the chassis. Which, given the testing of the datacore itself and construction process, will be in about… four days!” 

She looks up from the clipboard, and offers him a bright smile. Cooper wants to punch her. Four days is far too many, but he knows that everything she listed is necessary for getting his titan back. So, heart heavy and nauseous, he relents, muttering a quiet “fine”.

In his opinion, this chick is far too cheery as she hums happily and opens the transport case for the datacore. “Please insert the datacore, then!”

Cooper pauses, picks up the datacore, and forces a deep breath. He mumbles, somewhere in his mind, to the static that’s not quite static but is still yet static, see you soon, BT.

Watching the technician uniform walk away has never been so gutwrenching before, and Cooper chews skin off his lip until it bleeds in an attempt to keep the tears at bay.

The days pass by in a blur, peace only coming at night when he sleeps, sinking into blackness and wrapped up in blankets and warmth. His helmet perches near his head, and a few times, when he needed a nap or at night, he had to put it on to listen to the faint hum of its electronics to fall asleep.

The 6-4 is unbelievably patient with him, even if Bear and Droz are practically buzzing with excitement about the fact that Cooper is getting BT back soon. But to Cooper, despite their enthusiasm and playfully rough encouragement, the days can’t seem to stop dragging along painfully slow. When Gates lightly, warmly comments on the fact that Cooper’s holding up well, he silently decides to neglect telling her that he threw up that morning so hard he had to sit on the bathroom floor for over ten minutes because of how dizzy he was. (Not counting the fact that the dizziness made him vomit up even more bile and stomach acid.)

His dreams wrap him up at night, and he can’t tell if it helps or make him feel worse. Even on the night before he’ll get to see BT again - and he had been told that was the case, they were almost done with diagnostics and then the SERE kit would be installed and his titan initialized - Cooper dreads going to sleep. He pulls his helmet on, just for the comfort of it, and buries himself in his blankets, closing his eyes and sighing.

Sleep takes him easily, that night.

“You’ve come a long way, Jack.” 

Cooper wheels around in shock, and in a sickening turn, he finds a familiar jumpkit and pilot helmet staring him down. He knows that voice. He knows that voice, so well.

“Lastimosa?” His voice cracks a little, and Lastimosa stands up, walking over towards him, and tugs Cooper into a hug.

“You did great out there. I knew you’d be great.”

Tears fill Cooper’s eyes, and he sniffles, hugging Lastimosa back as tight as he can, trembling.

“This ‘s stupid,” He mumbles, hiccuping over his tears. “You’re dead. This isn’t real.”

“Yeah,” Lastimosa says, and pulls back, hands on Cooper’s biceps. Cooper tries, and fails, to choke back more tears, unable to keep his eyes off Lastimosa. The little head tilt, the swaying gait, everything about him is exactly how he remembers. “It isn’t. But you are. Your link with BT is.”

Cooper is silent for a few moments. This isn’t real. It’s a dream, and he’s vaguely aware of that. Moreso, aware that this isn’t real, the word dream not quite occurring to him yet. He looks away from the ground, up to Lastimosa.

“Am I… doing okay?”

“As a Pilot, or as BT’s Pilot?” Cooper knows, if the helmet was off, Lastimosa would be raising one eyebrow at him. Probably his left.

“...both? I don’t know? In general, I guess.” He shrugs, knocks his helmet half-off to wipe his eyes. Lastimosa is silent for a second, watching him wipe his tears away.

“You are.” Cooper looks up, and Lastimosa seems to glitch away. It’s then, that Cooper realizes, this is a false version of the simulation. He follows, and listens to Lastimosa talk as he leads them through the simulation arena, one that Cooper’s became all the more intimately familiar with as he was finally, properly trained as a pilot. “You’re doing great as both. You saved Harmony, our home. You saved thousands of lives. You stopped the same mercs that took me out. And as for being BT’s pilot…”

Lastimosa turns, leans on the wall. Cooper smiles, tears rimming his eyes. He’s waiting, right where he always stood when Cooper ran the gauntlet. The sound of water falling accompanies the soft echo of the space. Cooper turns, and heads for the weapon wall. He can hear Lastimosa chuckle behind him.

“Give it a little more time, and you’ll be better than I ever was. Run the gauntlet when you’re ready.”

Cooper grins, and readies himself at the start. He turns to Lastimosa, peering around the corner to watch him, and they pause. Cooper can tell they’re making eye contact, by gut instinct alone.

“Should I tell him you said hello?”

Lastimosa chuckles.

“No need, he already knows.”

The scoreboard rings a new record for Cooper as he wakes up.

00:35.44

Chapter Text

Cooper wakes up to everything feeling eerily quiet. Blinking, almost uncomfortable by the silence he can’t place, he sits up and wrenches the helmet off his head. He rubs his face, scrubbing away dried tear tracks from where he cried in his sleep. Pausing, he sits and listens.

There’s voices out in the hallway. Gates and Bear. They’re laughing, talking about yesterday’s training and the hard trip Bear had because he got distracted by Davis yelling something incoherent as he jumped at a wall to run along it. Cooper listens, silently takes in the sound of Bear’s laughter and Gates’ poor mimicking of Davis’ incoherent shout.

He sniffles. Stands up, stretches his shoulders and back and cracks his neck, frowning as he pads around his room, checking everything to make sure everything is still in place. And it is - everything in his room is exactly where it always has been. Down to the top of the shelf he keeps forgetting to dust off, too scrambled with everything happening to remember to properly clean his space.

…this is weird.

Nothing has changed, and yet the world, or maybe just his room, feels completely still. 

Quietly and light on his feet, Cooper makes his way to his room’s window, perches on the windowsill, stares out at the nature this room overlooks. He’s lucky to return to a base that’s actually on Harmony instead of in its orbit, but it’s easier to make titans down here instead of in a pressurized container in space.

Either way, he’s still a little bothered. It’s silent. Too silent, and he hates it, but also it’s… almost nice. He pulls his knees to his chest, looks down at his home planet. The silence, while unsettling, is still somehow comfortable to him. He sighs, and rested his head on the glass, listening to Gates and Bear in the hallway, now planning the day’s events out for the 6-4. 

After a few moments of thought, Cooper decides to shower and then get himself breakfast. So he does just that, cleans his hair, lets the warm water relax his muscles. Scrubs sweat and dirt away. Dries himself, changes into clean clothes. Sits on the floor of his room and stretches, passively comfortable in the silence that is beginning to feel like safety.

He slips boots on, pulls on a jacket to fight off the cooler temperatures of the base, and steps out of his room. 

“Morning, Cooper! Any news about BT yet?” It’s Droz. Cooper shakes his head, helmet under his arm. He feels better with it at his side.

“Nothing yet, no, but… I don’t know. Is it a me-thing that the base feels really quiet, today?” 

Droz’s eyebrows raise. “Definitely a you thing, Coop. It’s been busy as ever. There was even a fight over in the rifleman barracks a few hours ago. A new pilot apparently gave themselves a concussion trying to jump out of the simpod earlier, too. I just came from my scheduled runtime.”

Cooper frowns, suspicious. How strange. “Weird… well, thanks Droz. There any food left in the mess hall?”

“Yeah, sure is. Keep us updated, will you? Our titans have been itching to properly train with you and BT since he got recovered.”

“Sure.” Cooper offers a weak smile, and quietly saw himself to the mess hall. 

Cooper takes his time, moving around. Some pilots greet him, and even he sees Jackson and Hudson in a corner of the hall, laughing, pouring over holoscreens. He eats alone, quietly, watching everyone mill around him, helmet sitting silently on the table by his tray. Everything felt… clear. Precise. It was almost unnerving.

Almost as soon as Cooper steps outside of the mess hall, he’s stopped by Briggs, standing tall with a look on her face that made something kick Cooper’s heart into an unsteady beat as things started to click.

He had more energy than he’d had in days. He didn’t feel like he was moving through fog anymore. He didn’t feel drained and sluggish. His head didn’t hurt.

There was a pause, the two of them staring at each other, seeing as Cooper had stumbled back, nearly crashing right into her, before the final piece clicked into place.

The static was gone.

BT.

Cooper was practically vibrating, heart beating out of his chest with excitement as Briggs led him down to the hangar bay. A few people darted out of their way, one person even grinning and winking at Cooper. This was a new hangar bay. He was being taken to the one where Briggs’ titan was. Somehow, simultaneously, Cooper’s thoughts had become him acutely recognizing everything going around him, and a constant loop of BT, BT, BT.

As soon as Cooper’s eyes hit the hangar doors, he feels a little ping, somewhere deep in his brain, and is immediately met with a presence, absolutely looming over him, breathing beginning to quicken in anticipation as the doors slide open, with Briggs standing at his side.

“-etecting that my pilot’s neural link has sustained significant damage. Will we need to undergo a new linking attempt?” 

“BT,” Cooper whispers, breathless, and Briggs chuckles next to him, nudging him forward and guiding him over.

BT’s new chassis is green. Just like he remembers it. A foresty, desaturated green, with slightly yellowed orange highlights on access panels and as detailing, off-white strips and extra details. His serial number is written along the hinge for the cockpit, and there’s a decal on the front. Cooper is beaming, and BT’s datacore swivels to him as soon as he enters the field of view.

“Commander Briggs.”

She nods to the technician who spoke to her, before asking about the neural links.

The sound fades into the back of Cooper’s mind, and he steps up, closer to BT, and watches BT squint, and then tilt the SERE kit at him, like a puppy tilts its head at an object of interest. Cooper bites back a laugh, and smiles up at him.

“Hey, BT.”

“Pilot.” There’s a wave of warmth that washes over Cooper, and he can tell it's from their link, just like he can tell that he's breathing. BT reaches a hand towards him, and Cooper steps onto his hand immediately, without hesitation.

“Wait-” The technician starts, but is quickly silenced by a glare from Briggs as BT scoops Cooper up carefully, lifts him to sit on his shoulder. Cooper beams, and transfers over carefully, settling down on BT’s shoulder, legs crossed and helmet on his lap. 

There’s a brief pause, and Briggs watches as Cooper lowers his head to rest on his arms, BT seeming to blink slowly while Cooper remains there. She can practically see the tension melting out of Cooper’s worn body, and she can’t help but smile at the sight. She was definitely wrong to doubt their bond - there’s no hiding how comfortable Cooper was just in BT’s presence.

“How would re-linking work?” Cooper asks, eyes still shut, head resting against the crook of his elbow, leaning on the helmet in his lap. He’s comfortable, feels no need to move, the low hum of BT’s chassis running under him like a background noise he’s lived with his whole life. It’s familiar. Soothing.

“We’d have to wipe what remains of your link, and then re-establish a new one. But we need to check the status of your neural link integrity, before we decide if that’s necessary or not.” The technician reports, looking up at Cooper with wide eyes. Cooper hums, uncrossing his legs and sitting up straight. He sets his helmet to the side, pats BT’s head.

BT rumbles at him, just quiet enough for Cooper to hear, and then catches him as he jumps down. Everything feels smooth, like they were never apart, and Cooper lands on the ground effortlessly.

“Let’s do that, then.”

As it turns out, they’re able to check Cooper’s link right there, so he sits cross legged on the floor in front of BT, feeling that brilliant blue eye piercing right through him, watching him intensely while he gets the neural link scanned, checked over.

The technician stares at the holoscreen, watching in awe as the neural link seems to mend itself in real time - integrity increasing, Cooper’s very brainwaves starting to shift slowly as the link repairs itself. There’s never been anything like this documented before - ever . He glances up, and stares for a moment. The pilot sits in front of him, rocking slightly side to side (which, according to Briggs, is a normal behavior for him), eyes shut, looking peaceful and calm. The technician’s eyes move up, and find BT staring down at his pilot, watching over him protectively, but with the same sense of calm.

“Your uh…” Cooper’s eyes open as the technician’s eyes return to the holoscreen. “I’ve never seen this before, but the neural link is repairing itself. There might be a few gaps yet as Cooper’s brain adjusts to the link being back, but other than that… it’s technically in the same condition as it was before the Fold Weapon went off.”

“Fascinating…” Briggs murmurs, looking over the technician’s shoulder.

Deep in the back of his mind, Cooper can feel what’s almost a purr of pride, and he has to fight back a smile at how pleased BT is that their bond was strong enough to repair itself. The technician gently removes the sensors from Cooper’s head and takes off the finger clip checking his heartrate, before beginning to pack everything up. And, as if annoyed by his amusement, BT suddenly picks him up, Cooper giving a startled squeal as before laughing as he’s deposited on the titan’s shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah.” He teases quietly, and pats BT’s head, earning a reaction he can only describe as a playful ugh over the link. 

“Might be a good idea to take him out for a run. Make sure everything works smoothly between you two. What do you say, Coop? You i-”

“Yes.” Cooper’s already pulling his helmet on, voice betraying his excitement. Briggs laughs out loud, and BT sends a wave of amusement that would’ve nearly knocked Cooper off his feet, were it not for the fact he was already sliding off BT’s shoulder, dropping into the waiting hand that held him so gently, before carrying him to BT’s cockpit. He settles into the space comfortably, sitting up straight and already reaching for the controls on his left.

“BT?”

Cooper bites back a laugh of sheer joy, excitement crackling through their bond like a live wire, unable to tell who is who as his titan’s voice reverberates around him, bone deep, voicing their mutual thoughts.

“I am ready.”

“Jack,” BT rumbles to Cooper, while Cooper helps guide them out of the hangar bay, out into the open space of his home planet. “Would you like to maintain controls?”

“Nah,” Cooper’s thoughts settled easily on his wants, and BT has begun moving, already understanding, before he even had to voice them. “Bring us somewhere and then I’ll take them.”

“Copy that, pilot.”

BT brings them somewhere Cooper doesn’t recognize. Through a path on the trees, up high, over a hill, up a steep embankment, before -

There’s a pause as BT settles them down atop the rocky outcrop, before his voice echoes through the cockpit, Cooper’s helmet, his head.

“Captain Tai Lastimosa used to pilot me to here when he wanted to be away from the base. He mentioned you may have liked it, a time.”

“Did he really?” Cooper muses, staring forward, at the landscape before them. It’s wild. A forest, stretching far out ahead of him, and far to either side. He can only sigh in appreciation, leaning his head against his seat, as if leaning his head against BT. He can feel BT brush back against him through the link, and he smiles at it. He missed feeling BT crowd against his space, too.

“He did.” 

Cooper hums, thinking about his dream. He crosses his arms, relaxing, and watches the wind rustle the leaves of the trees, sending a rippling wave over the crown of the forest below. 

“He was right.” He decides, and shifts his weight forward. BT doesn’t need to ask, allowing Cooper to disembark, hopping out onto BT’s hand, and then the ground, before looping back around to sit by BT’s side. “It’s really nice. He was definitely right.”

BT’s gaze shifts to him, and Cooper doesn’t find himself minding, despite the fact he normally hates being stared at.

“Something is on your mind, pilot. Your heartrate elevated at the mention of Lastimosa.”

Cooper shrugs, finding himself smiling awkwardly. “Just… strange to hear you mention him when I had a dream about him last night.”

“Some humans find comfort in dreams about those who they have lost. Others believe that dreams are messages from things greater than themselves, or a warning of what is to come. Do either of these apply to your beliefs, Jack?” 

He has to think about it, for a second, knocking his boots together while he thinks, head tilting to the side. Truth be told, he isn’t sure. It felt a little eerie, that the first time he had a dream with Lastimosa in it, all these weeks later, is right before he saw BT again. He also finds it a little odd that it happened in the landscape of the simpods, and that he ran the gauntlet in the dream. But none of that seemed to fit, no.

“I’unno,” He finally decides, shifting to lay flat on his back, gazing up at the sky above them. Light clouds. He can see a few battle clusters if he squints - black dots in a blue sky. “I don’t know if it had any special meaning, or anything, but it was nice, to see him. Even if it wasn’t real.”

BT is silent, seeming to process his answer for a few seconds, before he speaks again. “You want to talk about it.”

Not a question, a statement. Cooper himself is silent for a second, and then he grins, turning to look at BT.

“I beat his gauntlet record in the dream.”

If BT could laugh, Cooper thinks that burst of amusement over their link would’ve been just that. A laugh.

They waste the rest of the day up there, Cooper lounging in the sunlight, climbing up to sit on BT’s head, letting BT walk him around the area, watching, and talking controls for a good half hour before he found BT’s silence unnerving, and gave them back. BT probably could tell that he didn’t like the silence, but also didn’t comment on it, allowing Cooper to climb around his chassis, before ending up sprawled on top of his head. 

When BT remarks it’s likely a good idea to start heading back, as the sun begins to set, Cooper whines at him in complaint, wanting to watch the sunset. BT practically cuffs Cooper over the head, exasperated, but relents, and allows Cooper to sit up on his shoulder, watching the sun brush, then sink below the horizon, before suddenly standing, jolting Cooper awake from his half-doze.

“Jack, I will not permit you falling asleep on my chassis in open air. Even close to the base, it is still possible for you to become hypothermic, or-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cooper cuts him off, yawning. “Lemme in, then. Let’s go back.”

BT catches his human as he slides off the metal shoulder, tucks Cooper safely into his cockpit, and then walks them back to base, Cooper curled up happily in the pilot’s seat, smiling and closing his eyes for a moment.

Even if BT was once Lastimosa’s titan, this is a new chassis. A new one, just for him - for the two of them, to build their own legacy together, as a pilot and a titan. He sighs happily, stretching as best he can in the cramped space.

It’s nice to have his titan back.