#LET POX AND DAK FUCK UP A KAIJU

[waveridden]

FIC: we were meant to stay afloat

They have a jaeger downstairs that’s waiting for them. They can smash the kaiju into pieces. It’s not going to fix the wall, but it’s going to make Pox feel a hell of a lot better. (Neoscum Pacific Rim AU, 1.3k, gen)

AUcember || read on Ao3

#

The wall is falling down.

It’s a crisis, and Pox knows that. She can feel the adrenaline of a crisis singing through her blood. It’s the kind of thing that requires action.

And still, she’s frozen, staring at the broadcast, trying to make sense of it. The wall was supposed to keep people safe - she never really believed that, certainly, she wouldn’t be here if she thought the wall would actually work - and now it’s falling. Now there’s a kaiju smashing through it.

“Pox,” Dak’s voice says, and she can tell distantly that he’s standing behind her, that his hand is hovering near her shoulder. “Pox, c’mon, it’s game time, we gotta go.”

“Pandora,” Pox says, barely a whisper.

“I know,” Dak says, and his hand settles on her shoulder. “I know, but Pox, we have to go.”

They have a jaeger downstairs that’s waiting for them. They can smash the kaiju into pieces. It’s not going to fix the wall, but it’s going to make Pox feel a hell of a lot better.

“Okay,” Pox breathes out, and Dak squeezes her shoulder. “Let’s go kill a fucking monster.”

  #

  Dak Rambo is a legendary jaeger pilot, and he hates it. Pox is one of the only people who knows how much he hates it - she’s the only person who knows a lot of Dak’s secrets, that kind of comes with the territory here. But Dak doesn’t want to be a legend. Dak wants a lot of things, and most of them involve picket fences and Shirley Guzman and two-point-five kids.

Pox aches for him, especially on days like this. She knows Dak has a few kids, and that one of them works with Z downstairs in J-science. She knows that Dak feels immeasurably guilty about not being there, that he tries to send gifts but he’s afraid that they make things worse. He didn’t ask for any of this, not for the fame or the pressure.

Her job is to take off some of the pressure.

“Wait,” Pox says, before they get to the jaeger bay. Dak looks at her, and she latches both hands around his wrist and yanks him into a kwoon room. “Hit me.”

“Pox-”

“Three minutes.”

“We don’t have-”

“You’re going to chase the RABIT,” she says, as calmly as possible. Her heart is pounding in her chest; she’s ended up in more than a few of Dak’s memories when he looked like this. When his fingers are flexing by his sides because he can’t hold the energy in, when he’s trying to look anywhere but at her. “That’s going to lose us a lot more than three minutes.”

Dak scowls at her. Pox barely has time to shift into a ready stance before Dak lets out a shout and lunges at her. She sidesteps him neatly and folds her arms. “Actual fighting.”

“Quit being smug at me,” Dak says, and lunges in again. This time it’s more controlled, and she can see him breathing along with his moments. An inhale and a step back, an exhale and a move in. It’s the kind of thing that makes sense again, so Pox knows that it’s working.

This time, when Dak swings a fist towards her, she blocks him, a quick, sharp move. She knows how Dak fights, so this isn’t a fight so much as a dance. He’s not aiming to hurt her, and she’s not about to hit him when he’s frenetic like this.

They come to a stalemate, then two, and then Pox steps back. “Can you do this?”

“I don’t have a choice,” Dak says.

“I’m not asking the jaeger pilot,” she snaps. “I’m asking my friend. Can you do this?”

Dak swallows and pushes his sweaty hair out of his face. He meets Pox’s gaze, and his eyes are bright and angry, but they’re clear. “Yes,” he bites out.”

“Good.” She grabs his hand again and tugs him out of the room. “Then let’s go.”

  #

  Zenith doesn’t say anything when they both show up to the bay sweaty and out of breath. He just raises an eyebrow and says, “Ready?”

“Ready,” Pox says. They’re both suited up already; her arm is hooked through Dak’s. “Are you?”

He waves a hand at them. “I’m not the one who has to be ready.”

“Wow, Z,” Dak says breezily, and if Pox didn’t know better she would think that everything is fine. “How’s my girl?”

Z rolls his eyes. “Ready and waiting, o captain my captain.”

Xanadu is ready and fired up in the bay. She’s had a dozen other names, all of which have changed along with her pilots. Dak has had a handful of other copilots before Pox. Some of them quit, some of them died, some of them moved to different branches. Pox knows every one of them with an intimacy she can’t put words to, an intimacy two steps removed because it comes from Dak. All of them were his, in some way, just like she is now.

The two of them are quiet as they make their way inside Xanadu. Max looks quickly between the two of them and makes his way out of the cockpit, leaving them in silence.

“Is your sister going to be okay?” Dak asks.

Pox doesn’t bother hiding her flinch. “It’s impossible to say,” she says. “Probably not. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Dak says. “I do. That fight wasn’t just for me.”

“Of course not.”

“If you needed to hit something, you could’ve said.”

“I did hit something.” She smiles at him sharply. “Even if it was just your arm. Let’s go be big damn heroes.”

  #

  Tech in K-Science asked her once what the drift felt like.

“It feels like drifting,” Pox had said, and he’d wrinkled his nose, and she said, “I mean that. It feels like… like being adrift.”

There is a split second in the drift where Pox is Dak. It happens every time, so she’s used to it, but it’s still a shock. There’s an instant where she is someone else. She’s tall, and strong, and tired and anxious and loud, and she’s full to bursting with love. She’s reckless and bold and so sick of being lauded for it. She’s the savior of thousands of lives and she hates that, and she hates that she hates it.

And because this is the drift, that second is elastic. She closes her eyes and sees Max, sees Z, sees Tech, sees Shirley. She closes her eyes and sees Xanadu as a work in progress, sees her the first time she got wrecked by a kaiju, sees the fifth rebuild and the eighth. She closes her eyes and sees herself, and she knows that it’s Dak, that he’s seeing Pandora and her father and a basement and a wall and a wall and a wall.

Pox takes in a breath. “Good?”

“Terrific,” Dak says, and then they snap back into themselves with electric, startling clarity. Dak breathes in and Pox’s lungs fill; she lifts a hand and his fingers move. “Z, how’re we looking?”

“Everything looks clear to me,” Z says over the intercom. “Drift is 100% synced, all that jazz. How’re you feeling?”

Pox looks at Dak. He looks back at her. They’re thinking of Max and Pandora, of walls and oceans and monsters. They’re thinking of what comes next.

“Good,” Pox says slowly. “Are we good to get moving?”

“We’re god. Tech sent over a dossier about what we can tell based on news footage, so keep that in mind for fighting strats. I’ll upload it while you’re in transit to the drop.” Zenith pauses. “Careful out there, okay?”

“Never,” Pox says, at the same time Dak says “Always.” She turns to grin at him, and he grins back, manic and angry and ready.

“Great,” Z sighs. “Perfect. Off we go.”