Chapter Text
You stumbled towards an empty platform on the flights of stairs over-looking the Jaegers being repaired. Your arms shook as you attempted to keep a clutch on your lunch tray, despite your right forearm burning.
"Shit." You hissed as you slumped onto the rusty metal grill, swinging your legs off of the edge.
Wisps of drift memories flashed across your vision. You had to act quickly before it became out of hand. Your hands shook uncontrollably as they attempted to weave your belt out of the loops on your pants. You folded the piece of leather in half hastily before shoving it between your teeth. You reached your good arm to blindly retrieve a taser-looking object no bigger than a flashlight from your back pocket. Once your fingers found purchase on it, you immediately aligned the head of the device with a circular burn mark on your arm, then brought the cold metal of the device down on your skin. You took a shaky breath through your nose before pressing down the trigger, which caused blue sparks to follow the pattern of the electricity burn scars surrounding your circular burn.
You screamed out, your voice drowned out by the sound of construction, as the drift memories hit you hard. At first, happy childhood memories came flooding back, birthday parties, sleepovers, swimming at the beach, and then they changed abruptly. Memories from the first Kaiju attack you witnessed flickered across your vision, screams of humans and Kaijus filled your head. The memories continued to grow more dreadful and realistic until the final memory flashed in your head. Your worst Jaeger mission. You felt your body flail helplessly as your Jaeger was launched into a building by a type five Kaiju. You felt your arms pop painfully out of their shoulder sockets as your robot collided harshly with the glass skyscraper. You could so distinctly see the ball of energy forming in the atmosphere around the Kaiju and then time slowed as the ball exploded. You felt the burn crawl it's way across your skin, and then you felt the Jaeger hull collapse on top of you. Your last fleeting memory before your vision goes black is the sight of your dead Jaeger co-pilot, your best friend.
Your eyes open properly, greeting you with the sight of the Gypsy Danger in repair. You release your finger from the trigger, spit out the belt and notice your throat is sore, probably from screaming you think. A sob falls from your mouth and you can't stop the tears now. You just let them pour freely down your face as you reach blindly for the aloe vera gel you brought to soothe the burn. Your hand falls on a small cup-shaped container and you bring it up over your forearm. You're about to pour it on your skin when you hear a tired voice interject behind you.
"I think you meant to get the aloe vera, you're holding the Jell-o."
You let out a sad chuckle as you say between hiccups "Thanks, that would've been a headache to deal with." You put down the container of Jell-o and reach blindly again for the aloe vera gel, and come across another small cup-shaped container and pick it up.
"Nope, that's the canned tuna!" You hear the voice correct you, followed by heavy footsteps that come behind you. Then you hear the shuffle of someone sitting beside you.
You let go of the container and attempt to wipe the tears blurring your vision, and you make out the blurry blob of a blond man. He reaches down to get a container from the lunch tray between you, and finally, the tears stop falling and you can see him clearly. He looks tired, everyone does around here, but he looks distinctly tired. Maybe it's the redness around his watery blue eyes or the shadows cast on his stubbled face.
"Here, give me your arm."
"No, that's alright, I can do it myself."
"I don't think I trust you after that act you pulled back there." He chuckles.
"Fine, just be careful." You extend your shaking arm out towards his awaiting hand.
He whistles "Shit, that's one hell of a scar you've got going on here."
"You should see the other guy." You joke bitterly as he pours the gel onto your skin. You hiss as the cold shocks you. When he finishes pouring the aloe vera over your scars you promptly retract your arm, reaching for a cold compress.
"I'm sorry you had to see that, I didn't think anyone was here." You muttered, laying the compress over your arm.
"It's fine, I've seen worse. I didn't think anyone came here either. I've been here since 7 am after they sent me off on sick leave."
"Sick leave?" You laugh "No one gets a sick leave unless they do some bad shit. What'd you do?" You ask reaching for the bandage on your tray.
"Oh, I may have been the one to trash Pentecost's study this morning."
"That was you?!" You exclaim wrapping the bandage tightly around your arm.
"Yeah, I kinda went on a rampage." He watched you struggle to fasten the end down with one hand.
"Here, lemme help you with that."
"Thanks." You reply when he's done.
"Are you a new Jaeger pilot? 'Cause I haven't seen you around."
"Yeah, I just came in from the Los Angeles shatterdome. We took quite a hit, but they didn't wanna waste pilots so they relocated us here. How'd you know I was a pilot?" You asked.
"Scars those bad can only come from Jaeger accidents, I should know." He proceeded to pull his sweater up to reveal an expanse of patterned scars littering his left shoulder.
You immediately recognized his wounds. The ones everyone spread rumors about across all the shatterdomes on the planet, Raleigh Becket, the greatest Jaeger pilot to have ever lived, the one that saved the world.
"You're Raleigh Becket!" You stuttered out.
"The one, the only." He said with a frown.
"You saved my life!"
"So, you're one of those fans huh?"
"No, I mean, if you hadn't gone in there and closed the breach at the exact moment you did, I actually would not have made it." He looked at you confused. "When you closed the barrier, you weakened the Kaijus up here, and this type five we were dealing with would have blown again, and my Jaeger already took so many hits, I would've died if I had been exposed to another energy surge."
"Oh, well, the pleasure is mine." He frowned again and you could see the pain behind his eyes, he was still mourning.
"Did you lose someone in the last fight?"
"Yeah, too many friends, and uh, my girl, she was my co-pilot..." He trailed off "...she- she didn't wanna stay here. She said it hurt too much to stay here, 'cause she lost her father, Pentecost, and we had to split." He took a breath "That's why I rampaged this morning, I just- I had lost so much y'know? And- and I was just done, so done, I just...I dunno...burst." He let out a shaky breath and gave a nervous laugh. "I haven't told anyone that. I don't even know why I'm telling you this, I'm so sorry to burden you with all this."
"Hey" You took his hand with your good one "People like us gotta rely on each other to get through this kinda bad shit, there ain't no other way. Welcome to the sob club, my friend." You gave him a small smile and he returned it.
"Enough about me, what about you? How are you even qualified to drive a Jaeger still, with those memories? I mean if they're that bad all the time...?" He asked, trying to divert the conversation.
"Oh, well, I wanted to stay a Jaeger pilot, to fight for all those innocent people who lost their lives to the Kaijus so I went through extensive therapy to try and control my memories. I only get them this bad as an annual thing and this contraption helps me out a lot." You lift it up towards him. "It speeds up the whole drift memories and flashbacks stuff. If I didn't use it, I'd be in a "drift trance"." You explain, raising your hands up to make air quotes. "It's like that whole thing you saw but it would last 24 hours, maybe more."
"Well shit, here I thought I had problems."
"It ain't that bad. You get used to it." You stared at your untouched food. "Have you had lunch yet?"
He shook his head no.
"Wanna share a tuna sandwich? Reliving those drift memories kinda takes away my appetite."
He shrugged "Sure, why not."
You both took pieces of bread and spread the canned tuna onto them. You raised your sandwiches and toasted them together in the air "To the sob club!" You say.
"To the sob club."