Chapter Text
February, 2020
Tendo sat alone in the furthest corner of the galley he could find, smoking a cigarette. The place was usually packed no matter what time it was but there were only a few scattered people sitting around eating. He took a long drag on his cigarette and held it until his lungs began to burn, then slowly let it out in a noxious cloud. He had been trying to quit for years. Wore the patch, chewed the gum, sometimes squeezed a stress ball until his fingernails bit into the soft rubber and his hand ached – but there were bad times when Tendo decided he simply didn’t care, and lit up one of his few hoarded cigarettes and breathed nothing but smoke.
The taste was acrid on his tongue and dried out his throat. Tendo coughed in-between drags but didn’t think to put the thing out, instead determined to smoke it down to the filter and then light up another.
Yancy’s last scream wouldn’t get out of his head.
He tried to ignore it. Tried to push it away. To hide behind his sense of detachment – and God forgive him but that sense had gotten stronger the past few years, hadn’t it? – but nothing worked. He could hear it as though it had been burned into his brain, determined to loop until he wanted to scream right back just to drown it out.
The realization of what had happened hadn’t even hurt at first. It hadn’t fazed Tendo at all. Knifehead had faked them out and risen from the water again, ripped Gipsy open, killed Yancy, and then Raleigh had killed Knifehead. A simple, clear chain of events from start to finish. It was when Tendo really sat back and looked at the readings on Yancy’s drivesuit monitor staying stubbornly flat-lined and Gipsy’s energy signatures offline that it hit him. Yancy was dead. Gipsy Danger had been demolished. Raleigh…Raleigh, lying in a hospital in Anchorage in shock, wounded and edging death from piloting the Jaeger solo, half his body cooked and burned with patterns of circuitry.
Tendo tried to light a fresh cigarette and gave a hacking cough. He’d smoked three in a row already. Even in full swing with his cigarette addiction he’d never had the stamina to be a chain smoker. Now all he wanted was to slowly suffocate in the smoke, taste ash and tar and the feel the burn in his lungs. He flicked his lighter but the damned thing wouldn’t catch; he gave it another five flicks before an irrational spurt of anger made him throw it, and it soared across the galley to hit the far wall. No one who heard the clatter of plastic shattering against concrete questioned why he’d done it. They took one look at him and then turned away as though apologizing for noticing him at all.
Leaning forward on his elbows and chewing on the cigarette’s filter, Tendo rested his head in his hands and tried to shake Yancy’s scream loose. He coughed again and it was rough on his dried-out throat.
It wasn’t just the scream, he realized. It was Knifehead’s roars, Gipsy’s bellowing horn, the blasts of the plasma cannon…all wound together into one awful sound. Tendo coughed again, wetly, and there was the catch of a sob in it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. You forgot to, in a job like this. People came and went, victories and losses. You felt good when things went right and you felt numb when they failed.
Tendo coughed again. Tears slid tentatively down his face as though they didn’t belong there, dropping onto the tabletop in tiny splatters. Why had he hid out in the galley, of all places? Crying like a child in public in front of people he worked with, people who he’d come to direct and command as a senior officer. He’d climbed to the top of the ladder in LOCCENT and it was his home, but now here he was giving into the grief that threatened to crush him like he didn’t know how to detach.
He stood abruptly, brushing ash off his uniform and marching out of the galley. Raleigh had been refusing all visitors that he had the power to turn away, though Pentecost had been to see him. The news of Raleigh’s resignation hadn’t been a surprise, but Jesus have mercy, it hurt. Where would Raleigh go now, Tendo wondered. Where else was there for him?
Tendo pushed open the heavy, vault-like door to his quarters and shut it slowly behind him, leaning against it as though pinning it shut against the world. In the perfect silence the noise began again in his head and he put his hands to his ears, body shaking with the effort to keep it inside and pushed back. It began to crackle through him like electricity and Tendo gave one last hard cough before it escaped him. He slid down to sit on the floor, his arms covering his head and legs drawn up to his chest, the sobs wracking him. Yancy was gone and Tendo had heard him die. Gipsy Danger was gone and Tendo had been the one to process the order to send her to Oblivion Bay. Raleigh was gone and he wanted nothing to do with the Corps anymore.
Tendo sat on the floor until the sobs passed and there were no tears left to him, feeling hollow…and very, very alone.
--
Five years later
“So that’s it, then? It’s over?”
Pentecost gave Tendo a passing look, his expression stony.
“We don’t need ‘em.”
Tendo watched Pentecost walk out of LOCCENT with Herc Hansen right beside him, heads ducked down and already talking and planning. He looked around the closed-down room with a heavy sigh, wandering around with his fingers lightly touching familiar chairs and consoles as though to commit them to his memory. He scratched at his neck in vague irritation; his uniform was starched and stiffly pressed, and it itched like hell. Eight months. What the hell were they supposed to be able to do in eight months? All the funding that should have been going to repairing Jaegers, shoring up defenses…wasted on constructing walls?
He looked back at the blank screens and wished the United Nations committee was still online so he could give them a piece of his mind. The attacks were getting more frequent, more violent, costing more with each effort to drive the kaiju back. Hiding behind walls meant letting the monsters run loose and unhindered.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, ladies and gentlemen of the UN,” he said stiffly. “But aren’t the walls made of metal and concrete? Ten years of experience seems to show that kaiju can rip through that kind of pretty fuckin’ easily.”
There was no reply, the screens greyed out and dormant. Tendo sighed and rubbed at his temples as though trying to stave off a headache.
“Eight months. Sure. Not like we weren’t working on a high-pressure timetable before. This should work out great.”
He turned away from the screens and went to his old console, running his hand over the plastic sheeting that covered his keyboard. The Jaeger bay stood empty and abandoned outside LOCCENT, the lights dimmed. Tendo left the room slowly, brushing his hand against the light switch and turning them off for the last time.
--
January, 2025
“I can’t believe she’s up and running again…”
Mako stood a little straighter, hugging her clipboard to her chest and glancing over at Tendo. She worked hard to keep her expression cool but Tendo could see the spark of pride in her eyes to have her efforts noticed. Tendo had stood in stunned awe for nearly half an hour at the LOCCENT window as Gipsy Danger was brought online after five years lying dead in Oblivion Bay. Her heart burned the same, just as Tendo remembered it - a fiery, vivid star.
“You did this,” he said to Mako. “You restored her.”
Mako nodded briefly.
“There have been many improvements and upgrades to bring her up to speed with modern technology. She will be able to reenter active service as soon as we assign her a Ranger team.”
“You’re gonna be one of them, aren’t you? Use all that Academy training?”
Mako looked back towards Gipsy for a long moment.
“That is the ideal plan, yes.”
“But who else is there to pilot? I mean, all the other Mark Three pilots are…”
“That’s where you come in, Officer Choi.”
Tendo looked around to Pentecost in genuine bewilderment, pointing to himself and then the Jaeger.
“I’m sorry…I’m sorry, what?”
Pentecost allowed himself the barest hint of a smile before shaking his head. Mako pressed her lips together tightly to repress her own amusement, bowing to Pentecost and taking her leave.
“Not to pilot her yourself, Officer. Need you to pull some records, track a man down for me.”
Tendo nodded, glancing back at Gipsy again.
“Shouldn’t be too hard. Who am I looking for?”
Pentecost pushed a thin folder into his hands and started to walk off again. Tendo stared at the name on it in shock.
“An old friend. Get to it, Officer Choi…time’s a-wasting.”
--
It wasn’t hard to find Raleigh. He’d stuck around in Alaska the past five years, lingering on the Anchorage Wall of Life and keeping his head down. Tendo had forwarded the most recent address he’d been able to dig up to Pentecost, and the Marshall had headed out on a flight back to the States that evening. Tendo sat in the Hong Kong LOCCENT at his console, slouching into his chair and staring out the window to the bay floor. Gipsy Danger was standing at stiff attention in the bay alongside two other Jaegers; Tendo had never thought to see Cherno Alpha up close and in person, let alone Crimson Typhoon.
Tendo swiveled in his chair absently as he stared out the window. This was the last move to make on the board. If Operation Pitfall failed…Tendo shook the thought off. He couldn’t afford to let himself think about how narrow their chances of success were or how quickly the war clock was ticking away the seconds before the next kaiju event. If he gave into that train of thinking, he knew he would never pull himself free of it. Tendo sat up straighter in his chair and activated his console, pulling up his usual array of screens and looking to Gipsy one more time.
It was good to see the Jaeger again. Even if this was the last march into battle before the monsters closed in and took them out for once and for all, it was comforting to have that last bit of hope to go out on.
Tendo smiled faintly and let himself hang on to the idea of hope, looking down to his console and getting back to work.