Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Series:
Part 1 of Pacific Rim AU
Stats:
Published:
2016-09-02
Words:
2,241
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
8
Kudos:
10
Bookmarks:
1
Hits:
299

Sea Glass

Summary:

Seeking solitude after a long day, Cynthia runs into an almost-stranger atop the Shatterdome roof and stumbles into a conversation about the nature of monsters.

Notes:

Outtake from an unwritten Pacific Rim fusion in which jeager pilots/warriors are Kaiju-human hybrids and Cynthia is a K-scientist from the Mainland. Takes place in the Claymore world, not ours.

Work Text:

You're tired.

That's an understatement. You're dead on your feet by the end of your shift. It's been a long day with nothing much to show for it at the end but a headache and a lab report, and even after decontamination and showering, you can almost feel the kaiju blue clinging to you. You wonder sometimes if it's obvious to everyone else the way it is to you, that ammoniac scent lingering beneath your perfume, but that's a worry for another day. You throw on some loose civilian clothes, shrug off Yuma's invitation to grab a snack in the mess hall, and head for the maintenance elevators by the fastest available route.

A pair of jaeger pilots jog past you on their way to medical, relaxed and in no particular hurry. Probably routine, then. You wave to them as they pass, and they return the greeting easily and informally. One of them gives you a sharp grin in the most literal sense, but it doesn't faze you, and you're not sure it was meant to. You're used to pilot humor by now.

Obvious to them, you think, but they give no sign of it, and soon enough they're gone.

The pilots fascinate you. You like to watch them coming through the hangar doors after an attack, the odd tandem rhythm of their footsteps and both of them still almost breathing in synchrony, and you see them off-duty, moving through each other's space like it's their own, sometimes catching each other's spilled drinks or dropped cutlery. You can't help wondering what it must be like to be so linked to each other, and so different – in mind, in inclinations, in physiology – from everyone else.

It's part of your job – alongside dissecting and studying the kaiju themselves – to work with the pilots. You're responsible for administering post-mission and medical checks, monitoring biosigns for any hint of trouble, and using their data to design improvements to the hybridization process: greater stability, stronger drift capacity and what the pilots themselves have taken to calling yoki after what you've heard is an old island fairy tale about a different breed of half-human protectors. They're the ones who fight, but you and your team are the ones who give them the tools, and you and Command agree that the real war is one of knowledge. And the problem with that is... well. The problem with that is you're losing.

I don't know how the kaiju work, you had told your mentor back on the mainland once in a moment of despair. I don't know where they come from, I don't know what they are, I don't know what they want, and in reply the old man had laid a hand on your shoulder, not unsympathetic, and said, try.

So you try. You spend your days in the labs, bent over samples or running through jaeger-recorded data, beating your head against the wall of alien biology in search of some kind of breakthrough. And when you can't try any longer, you take the elevator all the way up to the top of the shatterdome, where the wind is high and carries the smell of ocean, and you just sit and think of nothing at all.

This time, you're not alone. You realize it as soon as you step outside. Long familiarity lets you pick up on the slight chill that always accompanies a jaeger pilot's presence, the hair-raising frisson of unnatural energy that makes even some humans uneasy. Then you see her – a lean, wiry figure sitting close to the edge of the roof with her back to you, watching the birds or watching the ocean.

Jean, this one's name is, transferred here from a decommissioned mainland shatterdome. You've seen her sitting in a quiet corner of the mess hall drinking cup after cup of terrible black coffee, sometimes alone and sometimes with her drift partner, never with anyone else. She's not someone you've worked with yet, though you've read her file front to back: high-ranking but not the best of the best, atypical levels of discipline and – you think, noting the slicked-back hair and the artfully placed rips in her denim jacket, made to look like the work of claws – an equally unusual sense of style. And an unprecedented anomaly in her history, classified and scarcely credible, that leaves you wondering with uneasy curiosity about the possibility of aftereffects still undocumented. But she did smile at you once, the flash of white teeth in a pale face before she vanished down the corridor after her partner, and despite the challenge in her eyes you don't think that there had been anything unfriendly in it.

The first thing you notice about her now, besides the fact that she looks stronger up close, more dangerous, is that she's holding another cup of coffee in her gloved hands, leaning over it and breathing in the steam. You're not sure you've ever seen her drink anything that isn't coffee. You're also not sure how she sleeps with that level of caffeine intake, but you suppose pilots are a little like doctors that way. Disaster doesn't happen on a fixed schedule, and judging from the dark, bruised shadows beneath her eyes, she doesn't look like she's had a good night's rest in a long damn time.

“Doctor,” she says, and her voice is quieter than you'd expected, maybe a little rougher.

“I'm off-duty now,” you say. “I'd say you're allowed to call me Cynthia.”

“Cynthia, then,” she says. And there's that smile again, a little shy this time, and the second thing you notice is that you're not the only one on uncertain footing here. It's a startling thought, that this woman who faces down nightmares without flinching, half a nightmare herself, is nervous talking to you.

“What brings you out here?” you ask.

“It's quiet,” she says.

“Oh. I can leave, if you – ”

“Don't,” she says. “Stay.”

You almost don't. You're not so easily intimidated by pilots as most folk, but you came up here looking for solitude, and quiet as Jean tends to be, the force of any pilot's presence is the opposite of being alone. But you don't want to head back inside, into the bustle of techs and support staff and pilots speculating about the next attack. You want the ocean and the wind, and you know she wants the same, and for a moment that's enough to make you feel more kin to this stranger than your own distant family. So you sit beside her on the sea-damp concrete, leaning back on your elbows and looking up at the sky. The wind is blowing seaward, and seagulls call overhead, looping and wheeling, white against pale blue. You watch the waves crash against the bulwark of the shatterdome below and remember the days when there had been boats on the waters, chasing the wind for no reason other than the pleasure of sailing. The ocean is empty of tourists these days, though fishermen still venture out beyond safe waters, and likely will until the seas have been poisoned beyond repair.

“I've seen you before,” Jean says, looking sidelong in your direction. “You do K-Science, don't you? You study them.”

“Yeah,” you say.

You, you think. I study you. You wonder if that's how she sees it.

“You know what the difference is? Between a man and a monster?”

“What?” you ask. You're not sure what she's getting at, but some of the pilots are weird about K-Sci, like they can't help wondering where your loyalties lie, or whether you might be inclined to slice them open and poke at their insides given half the opportunity. Ironic, that, considering what you and only a few others know about the nature of kaiju hybrids – but that's unfair. You're all fighting on the side of humanity here.

“Monsters are innocent,” she says.

It's not what you were expecting, and you look over at her to see if you're being mocked, or maybe tested, but she isn't looking at you. Her eyes are fixed on the horizon, or something beyond it.

“Those beasts out there, they can't help what they do. We can. That's the difference.”

“But you hate them.”

“No,” she says. “Clare hates them. I just kill them.”

You don't know what to say to that, so you just shrug and let it go. It's not your business, who feels empathy for the enemy or why.

“Do you hate them?” Jean asks.

You think about that for a moment. You fear them, certainly. You'd give anything to stop them. But –

“I'm not sure you can hate anything you really want to understand,” you say. “Not without giving up any chance of understanding it.”

It's not something you would have confessed to anyone who wasn't a pilot, and probably not to most of them. It seems impolite, in this ravaged land, to express too much fascination with the enemy. But Jean just asks, without judgment, “Do you understand them?”

“I don't think anyone does,” you say. “Maybe they do. I don't know.”

“I don't either,” Jean says, “and I'm glad of that.” She shivers slightly, and for all her equanimity, you can't help but wonder if that anomaly in her file bothers her more than her psych profile suggests. You look again at the decorative claw-marks in her jacket, remembering the jewelry you've seen her wear sometimes in her off-duty hours – brilliant blue and silver, kaiju bone carved into the shape of a monster's teeth – and you think you might understand her a bit better.

“Maybe there's nothing to understand,” you say. “Maybe they're just... random. Completely meaningless.” Somehow, that thought bothers you more than any other possibility you can bring to mind. Things have reasons – not simple ones, not always predictable, but if you believe in anything, it's that network of cause and consequence stretching all the way back to the point of origin, tangling the universe up in its strings. Anything that exists can be understood. But there's a gaping hole at the bottom of the ocean that keeps spitting out monsters, and you don't know why.

You feel the weight of a hand on your arm, and when you turn she's close, looking down at you with almost frightening intensity. You register the heightened heat of a hybrid's skin, the pale silver of her eyes, and for all your training and all your familiarity, there's a brief moment when it's an effort not to freeze. But her touch is reassuring, her smile sharp in only the metaphorical sense, and despite the looming ocean and everything it holds, adrenaline fades and you don't feel anything but safe.

“Don't stop fighting,” she says. “We can't, and you can't either.”

“I know,” you say. Jean nods and gives your arm a brief squeeze before drawing back into her own space.

I won't, you promise. Maybe you weren't born here, but this is your island now, no less than hers – your planet. Your home. You will fight for it however you can, and if it's a war of knowledge, you'll find a way to win. You have to.

“I dream of them sometimes, out there in the deep,” Jean says quietly. You can feel her eyes on you, searching for something that only she knows. After a moment's consideration, she rolls back her sleeve and draws off a beaded bracelet the color of sea and sand. She gestures for you to hold out your arm, then lays it carefully against your wrist and fastens it with a click. This one too is bone and glass, still warm from her skin, and you know without asking what kind of creature the bone is from.

“Might be you'll dream of them too,” she says. “Maybe it'll help.”

You're not sure it will. You can't hold a drift and you don't have yoki simmering in your veins, even if you can feel Jean's presence prickling the back of your neck. But you don't think it will hurt, and it was kindly meant.

Before you can say a word of thanks, she stands and walks away, leaving you with the cries of seabirds and the solitude you'd been seeking. You stay where you are until long after the sun is down and the air grows bitingly cold, carrying the unfamiliar weight of jewelry around your wrist, wondering what it's like to dream the dreams of monsters. When you finally head inside, shivering and scoured by wind, your first thought is sleep and your second is going back to the labs for a late night work session, but neither seems right. Instead, you grab two cups of coffee, and go to see if you can't find Yuma for a game of cards.

The ocean is there in the back of your mind, dark and waiting, but it's not so close tonight as the warmth and noise that surround you. Soldiers and scientists curse and joke and jostle each other, complain about the food, make bets and count their losses and their wins. You see Jean at her corner table, and her copilot with her. They smile and you smile back, and that's all, but it's all you need to remember that you're in this together. The glass beads of your bracelet catch the light as you move, and that's another reminder: there's beauty in the dark places too.

Maybe you'll dream tonight. Might be it'll help.

Series this work belongs to: