lastdaysofwar

[lastdaysofwar]

Ten years ago today, Brawler Yukon defeated the kaiju Karloff in Vancouver, marking the first defeat of a kaiju by a Jaeger.

It also happens to be Mako Mori's birthday!

[lastdaysofwar]

Jägermeister

Chapter Twenty-Two: Promises

“Newton, stop!”

Hermann told him to stop an average of 14.9 times per day, but usually without so much desperation in his voice, unless Newt was taking apart the laboratory microwave again.

Newt stopped. He was about four steps from the edge of the Shatterdome helipad. Hermann was standing several meters behind him, one arm still outstretched. 

Hermann liked Newt.

At least, Hermann had said that he liked Newt. They hadn't spoken much since then, what with Newt's jampacked sleep schedule. Then Newt expanded into sleepwalking, which didn’t leave a lot of time for small talk, which was the only kind of talking they did these days. Hermann kept his questions limited to, “How are you feeling?” and, “What do you need?” and, “Why are you taking apart the hospital bed?” 

Newt still felt affection through their ghost drift, especially without a hive mind to block the signal, but that didn’t make sense. Newt wasn’t exactly a reliable narrator these days.

Death to the ego.

Death to the author?

Definitely death to something.

Anyway, most of what he felt from Hermann was relief, which did make sense. Newt was also relieved he hadn’t destroyed the world. That would have been a pretty big bummer for everyone who just busted ass to save it. 

Hermann might have said some things and returned some kisses, but he had obviously done so in order to collapse the Breach about to open in Newt's corpus callosum. It was just like their first drift, in that sense. Hermann didn't really have a choice.

Not to mention all the manual strangulation, which was kind of a deal breaker for most people. 

Some things were just too good to be true. At least Newt got to taste it for a moment, like a dog with late-stage cancer, allowed to eat a Hershey’s bar before its final vet appointment.

“Newton,” Hermann said again, one arm still outstretched, as if he was afraid to come any closer.

He probably was. 

“I didn't come up here on purpose,” said Newt. “I was sleepwalking again."

He swiped a hand across his upper lip. A little more stubble than normal, but no blood. So he probably hadn’t been on his way to reopen the Breach.

The Precursors were gone. The clicking was gone. The clock had stopped.

Sometimes, Newt could still feel them in the back of his mind. His neural pathways were all halls of mirrors, them looking at him, looking at them, looking at him. Then, just when Newt was about two seconds away from attempting auto-lobotomy, Hermann would remind him that the ghost drift was a thing. As if Newt didn’t get to relive it all enough with nightmares alone.

The doctors pinky-swore that he was getting better. His fever had finally gone down, and he had been taken off antibiotics. The encephalitis was in complete remission. The nightmares were still pretty Kaska-esque, but the doctors insisted that was a symptom of garden-variety PTSD, which did add up. Listening to all that opera was bound to be traumatic.

This wasn’t the first time Newt had gone for a little late-night sleepwalk. He was always so fucking scared, after waking up cold, or wet, or bleeding, that he had done something unforgivable, but every time he asked Tendo to pull the footage, it turned out he had just wandered into Pentecost’s old office and fallen into the basins again. 

Eddie usually caught Newt before he could get that far, although he was now out on what he called paternity leave but Tendo said was just regular accrued vacation.

Lou and Dierdre had also been approved for vacation time. Newt was relieved of his security detail, now that the threat had apparently passed, and he wasn't about to argue. Newt may have ended up with more enemies than he would have ever expected, even during his Paranoid Phase, but he was still the one with the best access. 

The PPDC was continuing operation on a trial basis as a Breach research facility, with renewed emphasis on funding for K-Science and education initiatives in both xenobiology and Breach physics. They were calling it the Pan Pacific Defense College. Newt was already having flashbacks.

Hermann tried to spend all his nights in the Medical Bay, but sometimes his hip simply wouldn't allow it.

It was a lot harder to be self-sacrificing when your drift partner could feel it too. 

“Please come here, Newton.”

Newt started across the icy helipad towards Hermann. Somehow, it was still January. Hail had fallen during the night, and then melted into something that looked like an amphibious egg mass. 

“Careful!” Hermann grasped Newt by the elbow once he was in range. “Your ribs are still broken. If you slipped, you could puncture a lung. It was a miracle you didn’t do so already with all that seizing.”

Hermann pulled off his parka and wrapped it around Newt. He had been doing that a lot lately. Newt wasn’t complaining, especially not when his pajamas consisted of spare scrubs and a pair of those omnidirectionally-grippy hospital socks. 

“You look unwell,” said Hermann, as he began leading them back towards the Medical Bay. 

“Just unwell-rested.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Like we- I-” Newt cut himself off. Hermann had definitely noticed his newfound difficulty with singular pronouns, but he hadn’t said anything about it, because that wouldn’t be small talk.

Ontologically speaking, Newt was a bit of a dumpster fire. 

Epistemological analysis ameliorated matters, but teleological analysis did the exact opposite. Newt’s greatest purpose these days was trying to decide if the risk of repossession outweighed the benefit of continued operation.

He tried not to think about it too hard in case Hermann was eavesdropping. An intervention was just a surprise party where the surprise was it wasn’t a party, and Newt needed that like he needed another Breach in his head. 

“Like you what?” Hermann asked encouragingly. 

“Like I went another round with Aleksis. You know, I think he had a strange kind of respect for me after that. He definitely had a greater respect for Fenway Franks.”

“Try wariness.” Hermann scoffed. “I believe you managed to scare even the Kaidonovskys.”

“Yeah, right.” Newt scoffed right back. “I couldn’t scare a kaiju skin mite.”

“You scare me.” There was a pause as pregnant as Eddie’s gecko, before Hermann punctured it with a grumble. “Speaking of which, I thought Tendo was supposed to watch you tonight?”

“Come on, dude. We don’t need a babysitter.” Newt winced. “I mean I. Don’t worry. The Evil Think Tank is definitely over. There's just a little collateral brain damage.”

It was Hermann’s turn to wince, but all he said was, “You told Tendo to leave, didn’t you?”

“It’s their anniversary!” whined Newt. “I made them a card that said, ‘Throuple the love.’”

Hermann winced some more, but now it was his normal, math-related wincing. 

When they were together, it was a little like being stuck in a sensory feedback loop. Not like a hall of mirrors. More like… trying to take a pulse with your own heartbeat pounding in your ears. Overwhelming, but never unfamiliar.

Even when it was an objectively negative sensation on loop, it still felt better than being alone. That was the problem. Newt wanted to be around Hermann all the fucking time, and Hermann didn’t deserve that. 

It was still hard for Newt to think of himself as drift compatible with anyone, let alone Hermann, but they hadn’t even considered compatibility before initiating their first drift. 

Newt had briefly considered compatibility before initiating his drift with Mutavore, though it turned out to be a non-issue. You had to be compatible to drift with another human being. The hive mind got you with sheer numbers.

The hive mind was hard to describe in human terms, of any language, schadenfreude included. They were a species without empathy, sympathy, or compassion. They were pure, personified self-interest with the means to make it reality. Newt had despaired of humanity more times than probably even Hermann could count, but the Precursors actually made people look good.

They made it back to Newt's room in the Medical Bay, and Hermann helped him get settled into bed. Newt was about to say goodnight when Hermann pulled up his usual chair. 

“You don’t have to stay.”

“Someone has to keep you from sleepwalking into the Hong Kong Bay.”

Newt wouldn’t have gone into the bay, because the roof of the Shatterdome’s lower level was immediately below the helipads, but it was immediately below them by about twenty meters, so he knew better than to mention that.

“Just strap me to the bed again, dude.”

“If you keep suggesting that, I’m going to think you have a kink,” said Hermann. 

When Newt had finished coughing, he croaked, “Well, it's either that or sharing the bed with me….” 

“I don’t think it’s large enough, darling.”

Newt started coughing again. Hermann picked up the cup of water on his overbed table and handed it to him. It was a plastic travel cup with a lid and a straw, so it wouldn’t spill, even when Newt’s hands shook so much it looked like he was trying to recreate Hermann's attempt at a high five. This was karma for threatening to make it their secret handshake. 

The tremors were still bad enough that Newt had to use a special spoon so he wouldn't spill applesauce all over his government-subsidized sheets. Going to the bathroom required a lot more concentration. Secretly, Newt was relieved he couldn't get a good grip on anything. 

“I’m sorry.”

“You can hardly be blamed for your somnambulant perambulations,” said Hermann. “Really, I blame the medical st-”

“For choking you.” 

The feedback loop echoed with cracking hearts, and Newt wondered how he could score a psychic connection to his crush and still always say the wrong thing. 

It wasn’t Murphy’s Law or even the British Gas Formula. It was just Occam's razor: The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions was most often correct, and the explanation requiring the fewest assumptions was most often that Newt had fucked up.  

“You can hardly be blamed for that either,” said Hermann. 

“We- They were still terraforming me,” Newt tried to explain. “My brain is kind of an inhospitable environment, and they hadn’t acclimated yet. They were so accustomed to the hive that they couldn't even conceive of autonomy. They've never gone into anything without backup, let alone a fight with two rangers, five nurses, and a repressed German mathematician. Also, they really hate you. Almost as much as they hate me.” 

“Snitches get stitches,” Hermann recited. 

“And end up in ditches,” finished Newt. “You shouldn’t have done it.”

Hermann frowned. He was going to get so many wrinkles. Newt reached out and smoothed down the Wall of Life between his eyes. 

“Drifted with the kaiju?”

“Drifted with me,” said Newt. “You did it even after you knew I'd been… fucking infected or whatever. They could have gotten you too.”

“I had to try.”

“You didn't!” Newt wasn’t sure how his apology had turned into an argument, but at least it was familiar. At least it wasn’t small talk. “You shouldn't have! It was stupid and- and dangerous! It’s still- I’m still dangerous.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Newton. You're not going to suddenly grow a bile sac or something.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Hermann. That would be cool as hell,” said Newt, “and you know what? You don’t know anything. That’s the point. No one does. This is a whole new field of study. Anything could happen.”

“Newton-”

“They could come back.”

“They could come back,” Hermann agreed. “The Breach could reopen. Sometimes, we must live with uncertainty.”

“You musn’t- needn't must- Man, I hate how much I care about grammar now.” 

“What are you trying to say, Newton?”

“The war is over. The clock stopped. I’m not your problem anymore.” 

Hermann sighed. It wasn’t his usual sigh, exasperated and loud enough for Newt to hear from across the lab, so he would know it was entirely his fault. It was a small, soft expression of pure exhaustion. 

“I have seen other worlds,” he said, “but I cannot conceive of one in which you would not be my problem. Nor would I wish to inhabit such a world.” Hermann hesitated, but only for a moment. “Before we drifted, you asked me if I would do that for you.”

“With me,” Newt corrected, more out of habit than anything. 

“I would do anything for you,” said Hermann. “I love you, Newton. I know you’re having trouble accepting that. You can take your time. We have time. For now, I just need you to do one thing for me: I need you to believe that it’s true. I promise you it is.”

Newt licked his lips and tasted salt but told himself it was just another nosebleed. “I thought promises were lies.” 

“Not between drift partners.”

“Politics and poetry?”

“Still lies,” said Hermann. "Especially politics.”

He had filled Newt in on the finer details of what happened during his abduction(s). Newt wasn't particularly surprised. The military industrial complex was really quite simple. At least Secretary Krieger had sold out Trump. 

"I don't actually mind some of your poetry," added Hermann.

"Those are rock songs."

"Of course, dear."

“I love you,” said Newt. He still couldn’t bring himself to add ‘too,’ even though he believed Hermann. Of course he did; Hermann had been the voice of reason in Newt’s head since long before their drift. 

“May I take you out?”

“Like a hitman, or like-”

“Oh, hush, darling.” Hermann entangled Newt’s unbroken fingers in his own. “Perhaps we can even take a trip once you’re well enough. We’re both long overdue for a vacation. We can go anywhere you like. Even that ridiculous Godzilla theme park.”

“That sounds expensive.”

“I’ve recently come into some money.” Hermann’s smile turned secretive, even though Newt knew all his secrets now. It turned out most of them were about him. 

Newt felt like his fever was coming back, but he was pretty sure it was just a full-body blush. “Well, if you insist…”

“May I kiss you?”

Newt nodded, unable to trust his voice anymore. Hermann moved from his chair to the edge of Newt’s bed. He curled one hand around the back of Newt’s neck and drew him in for a kiss that was somehow both gentle and very thorough. Newt made a noise, relegated to the back of his throat, since his mouth was otherwise occupied. It must have sounded a little bit too desperate, because Hermann moved his attention to Newt’s jaw. 

When Newt had caught his breath, he said, “I think the bed’s big enough.”

Hermann huffed a laugh against Newt’s throat, but he still toed off his shoes. Newt made room, fluffing up the pillows that were stacked three high to help him breathe easier. 

Hermann lay on his right side, in order to take the pressure off his bad leg. Newt lay on his left side, in order to take the pressure off the worst of his ribs. This left them facing each other, and suddenly the bed seemed much smaller. Then Hermann kissed him again, and the bed couldn't be small enough.

When the kiss ended, Newt slid a leg between Hermann's knees in place of his usual orthopedic pillow. He had to shuffle down the bed a little bit to avoid any contact that might be considered an HR violation, and his head ended up tucked under Hermann's chin. Newt could smell the mixture of mothballs and lavender from the cardigan Hermann had on over his pajamas. 

Maybe it was just the lavender, but Newt felt himself starting to drift away almost immediately. 

“Thank you, Newton,” Hermann murmured into his hair. 

Newt shivered at the sensation, coming back from the brink long enough to ask, “What for? You were the rockstar. I just sat there and drooled on myself.”

“You survived,” said Hermann, in that voice-of-reason of his, and Newt had always known that it took more courage to live than it did to die, but for once, he felt like he might have enough. After all, he would do anything for Hermann too.

...

@lastdaysofwar

[lastdaysofwar]

Jägermeister

Chapter Twenty-One: Jacket

Hermann returned to the medical bay. 

In truth, he had been there the whole time. Jaegers could not be piloted if the drift was all-consuming. However, over the years of ‘co-labitation,’ as Newton insisted on referring to it, Hermann had developed a near impervious state of hyperfocus out of sheer necessity. He had been only vaguely aware of their physical location until Newton’s hand slipped from his own.

He was seizing again.

Seizures could occur while someone was in a comatose state, but their sole manifestation was abnormal patterns of neural activity registered by the electroencephalogram. Newton’s EEG did spike and dip dramatically, but it moved in time with his body, as if mapping its spasms. 

Hermann sat, helpless, as the doctors administered intravenous benzodiazepine and nifedipine  Newton’s absence seizure had not required an anticonvulsant, but the doctors at the Four Seasons had administered nifedipine to prevent hypoxia. Deficient cerebral oxygenation was less common with absence seizures than tonic-clonic ones, but if it occurred for even a moment, let alone three hours, it could cause permanent brain damage. That would be devastating for anyone. For someone like Newton…

Hermann felt his own mind go blank when the EEG suddenly registered suppression of all neural activity.

Lou flicked his ear. 

“Postictal phase,” they said. “It’s almost over. My old man may not be on dialysis yet, but his kidneys have taken him for a couple of these rides.”

They were correct. The EEG normalized. The muscular contractions decreased in frequency and then amplitude. 

When Newton’s body finally stilled, it was wheeled away for more imaging. The CAT, MRI, and PET scans that it took to convince Dr. Lightcap only confirmed what Hermann already knew: The swelling in Newton’s brain had finally gone down. 

He didn’t even have a nosebleed.

The Precursors were gone. 

Their sudden absence was almost as idiopathic as their initial presence, but whether they had actually been defeated by the power of love, or simply cried uncle at too much PDA, the truth was palpable. Hermann could feel the difference. 

He could feel Newton. 

Even in a comatose state, Newton was being terrorized by his own mind, reality merging with nightmares. Hermann poured more care and comfort than he would have ever considered himself capable of through their bond, and it flowed as if by Bernoulli’s principle, all high speed and low pressure. It felt almost as if they had their own little hive mind of two.

Hermann had originally been disappointed, but unsurprised when his ghost drift with Newton was little more than a wisp. After all, they had only drifted once, and the presence of the hive mind had been an unprecedented impediment. 

What Hermann had not realized until now was that the hive mind could continue to impede their drift even after it was over. 

Except it had never really been over for Newton. He had been in some sort of continuity with the hive mind, ostensibly since his first drift. The subsequent drifts may have expedited the process, but with enough time, the hive mind would have invariably taken control. Newton had been so terribly outnumbered. 

They would have commandeered his body, but not until after they had acclimated to it, which would have most likely facilitated the process of assimilation. In theory, Hermann might not have even noticed as Newton turned into something else.

Dr. Lightcap insisted on waiting another twenty-four hours to monitor the encephalitis before removing Newton from his medically-induced coma. Hermann passed those hours in the chair by his bedside, hip be damned.

He wanted to initiate another drift, if only to assure himself Newton was finally free of the hive mind, but Hermann knew that wish was a selfish one. 

What Newton needed now more than anything was rest. He was suffering from extreme exhaustion, malnourishment, and an ever increasing collection of injuries. In addition to his ribs, which had been upgraded from cracked to fractured, Newton had a concussion, a fractured intermediate phalange, and severe lacerations on both wrists, one of which was still sprained from when he hit the car. 

Security was on standby when Newton awoke, just in case. Lou and Dierdre flanked Hermann’s chair, which was still placed beside the bed to prevent any potential symptoms of drift withdrawal. Mako, Raleigh, Tendo, and Marshal Hansen stood further back, allowing the medical personnel room to work. 

When the anesthesia in Newton’s system had ebbed enough to no longer inhibit respiration, his intubation tube was removed. Hermann gagged in sympathy as he felt its foreign slide through the ghost drift.

At long last, Newton opened his eyes, still red around the sclera. 

He immediately burst into tears. 

Hermann moved without thinking. He sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped his arms around Newton’s body, mindful of his fractured ribs. He held Newton as if he was handling fine china or the rarest of specimens. 

Newton hid his face in the crook of Hermann's neck. He began to make an almost animalistic keening noise, but cut himself off so abruptly that Hermann was momentarily concerned for his tongue. 

He could feel the rawness of Newton’s nerves, like exposed wires, each spark uniquely charged. Fear. Confusion. Pain. Even misplaced guilt over the bruising on Hermann's neck that had already faded to green. 

Hermann tried to ground him, but after what seemed like mere seconds, the doctors had swarmed the bed, and he was removed from Newton’s side with clinical precision. 

He returned to his chair while they measured pupil dilation and asked simple questions. When they got to the one about the current U.S. President, Newton’s answer consisted entirely of curse words, which was accepted as confutation of any significant brain damage. 

Eventually, the doctors retreated to input data and pat each other on the back. Newton had stopped crying, but he was still shaking slightly, a fine tremor running through his body like an aftershock of the seizure. 

Hermann removed his parka and draped it around Newton’s shoulders before resuming his seat on the edge of the bed. 

“Are you alright?” asked Mako. 

“Ze- Zettai daijōbu dayo, Mako-chan,” said Newton, in a voice like a cat being put down a garbage disposal unit. 

“Oh, no, he’s still possessed,” said Tendo. “He’s speaking in tongues.”

Mako elbowed him. 

“Are you okay, Lou?” asked Newton. “After the crash, you- did you need surgery?”

Lou shot Hermann a look before replying. “Oh, that? I just realized life was short and I should finally get that bottom surgery I always wanted: Smooth, like Barbie.”

“They’re lyin’,” said Eddie the medic, from somewhere near the back of the small crowd now gathered around Newton’s bed. “They just needed some glass tweezed out of their arm. That’s only, like, nominally surgical.”

Hermann could feel Newton’s limited energy reserves already start to flag. He wanted to tell the others to leave, to let Newton get the rest he so desperately required, but he could also feel the nascent thrum of relief their presence provided. He would allow them a moment more. 

“Only I get to know what’s going on in Lou’s pants,” Dierdre was saying. “Although we were thinking about inviting Allison from munitions.”

“Hey,” said Tendo. “What about me and Paul?”

Deirdre shrugged. “You can come along. We’ll turn the Shatterdome into the world’s biggest, most dysfunctional polycule before it gets shut down. Really go out with a bang.”

“I think Newt might have us beat when  it comes to dysfunctional polycules,” said Tendo. “No? Too soon?”

“Too soon,” Hermann confirmed. 

“Hey, Tendo?” 

“Yeah, Newt?” Tendo dropped a hand onto his shoulder, and Newton only flinched a little.

“What happened to your eyebrows?”

“...Too soon, brother.”

...

@lastdaysofwar

[lastdaysofwar]

Jägermeister

Chapter Twenty: Making an Exit

“Newt Oji-chan is fighting the hive mind with the power of love?” asked Mako, after Hermann had succinctly summarized the drift, if one did not count all the stuttering. 

He knew what Mako was thinking about. He had joined her and Newton for a couple of those magical girl cartoons, out of pure scientific curiosity, of course.  

Hermann preferred Revolutionary Girl Utena, himself. 

“So it would seem.” 

Marshal Hansen crossed his arms. “So the logical next step would be…”

“Drift sex,” said Tendo. 

“...Not what I was going to suggest.”

“No?” Tendo’s eyebrows performed a theatrical leap. “Darn. I've always been curious about that. My theory? It's over super quick. I'm talking: One Mississippi. Anyway, I guess that only leaves one option.”

“Oh?” managed Hermann. 

“It's time to win your bet, brother.”

“Oh.”

Mako-chan had the gall to grin at him. “Once more unto the breach, Hermann Oji-chan.”

A number of respected medical and scientific professionals were gathered in the Hong Kong Shatterdome's Medical Bay to watch Hermann confess his feelings. 

Hermann had lived most of his life by the rules of propriety, having been taught them at a young age and with little opportunity for independent experimentation. His difficulty replicating and reading social cues had left him feeling deficient in some way, until he met Newton, who could read dense scientific treatises, but could not read a room. 

Newton must have been a terrible influence on him, for Hermann could not bring himself to give a fuck about the crowd gathered around them. 

Hermann was seated in a chair next to Newton’s bed. A medic placed the squid cap on his head, and he resisted the urge to adjust it. Instead, he took Newton’s hand in his own. 

Dr. Lightcap clipped her hair back, its gold now shot with streaks of silver, and the room went silent. 

She counted them down. “Three… two… one.”

Hermann heard it simultaneously in Cantonese, like a bad bootleg dub. Then he was drifting with the hive mind once again, which was so overwhelming that it took him a moment to remember Newton was meant to be there too. 

The reel of memories was jerky and awkwardly spliced together this time. Newton, getting his first tattoo, surprised by how little it hurt. Newton, using cold water to clean the blood out of his shirt because hot water would denature the proteins and make it adhere to the fabric. Newton, taking a scalpel to his own wrists.

Bugs wasn’t around. Instead, there was a nightmarish rabbit with twisted ears that Hermann could glean just enough from the drift to know was named Frank. 

“Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?" asked Frank.

Hermann said nothing and followed the music until he was back in the theater. Monica Schwartz ignored him once more as he made his way backstage and on to the Hermann Cave. 

Newton was curled into a ball on the floor, but he looked up when Hermann barged in, huffing and puffing out of pure expectation. 

“You sure are getting around, Ghost Hermann.”

“This isn’t the ghost drift, Newton,” said Hermann, as soon as he had caught his psychosomatic breath. “I am actively drifting with you. I was doing so the last time as well.”

Newton froze so completely that, for a moment, Hermann thought he was being pulled from the drift again.  

Then Newton’s mouth fell open, but for the first time in their not insignificant shared history, he seemed to be at a complete loss for words.

Hermann powered through the silence. “I truly am here to save you, though I do not know quite how to do it.”

Newton let out an unexpected burst of laughter. “Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?”

“Stop it.”

“Come on,” said Newton. “We saved the world. You win some; you lose some.”

“Not you,” Hermann did not so much say as intone. 

That seemed to stump him.

Hermann was not faring much better. This was infinitely harder than infinitesimal calculus. “Newton, you must be aware of my feelings for you?”

“… Irritation?” 

“You bloody idiot,” said Hermann. “Surely you felt it in the drift? I certainly felt your affection, although I did not perhaps understand the ah, extent of it until rather recently.”

Newton winced, but that might have been due to the rising tempo of the hive mind’s tumult. 

Hermann tried to find somewhere to look that wasn’t Newton or a wall covered with pictures of his own face. 

Oh, or the ceiling.

Hermann settled on his knees.

“Your feelings are reciprocated, if that’s what you’re concerned about,” he told his knees. “I've been in love with you for most of my life.”

At first, Newton did not move, and Hermann once again grew concerned that they were falling out of alignment. 

Then he started crying. 

Hermann wondered if he could have possibly misinterpreted the Hermann Cave. 

“Newt-”

“Okay, Boomer,” said Newton, and it was such a staple of their arguments that Hermann felt a sudden surge of Schrödinger’s nostalgia for something that was not yet necessarily lost. 

“Don't call me that,” he recited. “I am only one year older than you, for heaven's-” 

“Enough Tomfuckery.” Newton was still talking. “We- I admire your ambition, Allegedly Real Hermann, but it's not going to work.”

“Are you questioning my feelings?” Hermann interrupted Newton this time, perversely delighted to be arguing with him again. “Because regardless of your, no doubt compensatory, number of doctorates, I assure you I am the leading expert when it comes to my own mind. Now, you had bloody well better believe me, foremost because I am telling you the truth, but also because it is the only weapon we have to wield against the Precursors. I do not care how many worlds they have conquered. I will not allow them to take mine.”

Newton grabbed Hermann by the lapels as though he was going to throw him out of his own cave. 

Instead, he went up on his toes and kissed Hermann directly on the mouth. It was chaste and very short, but despite the absence of cliched electricity, it still managed to completely rewire Hermann's brain. 

When Newton attempted to pull away, Hermann reeled him back in by his ridiculously thin necktie and kissed him once more. 

Newton froze again, and Hermann wondered if perhaps it had been a little too soon for tongue. 

“Dear?”

“Oh,” said Newton, and then Hermann could feel it too.

The Precursors truly did hate love. He had never felt such roiling fury, not even in the wake of Operation Pitfall. Somehow, to the hive mind, this was personal. 

“Oh.”

...

@lastdaysofwar

[lastdaysofwar]

@lastdaysofwar, Day 30: Last Man Standing (Mako Mori, Raleigh Becket, Hermann Gottlieb/Newton Geiszler)

Raleigh is alive. Alive and breathing, and so is the rest of the world. The world has survived. They’ve saved it.

Mako can hardly process the truth of this, when so many people she cares for are gone. People who have become her family, these last few years. And others she could have loved if she’d had the chance to know them better.

She’s left orphaned—fatherless—for the second time in her life. And she nearly breaks down at the thought that, if Jake had finished his training and become a ranger, she almost certainly would have lost her brother, too. For the first time, she’s happy to think of him bumming around somewhere in California, a petty criminal who won’t take her calls.

She’ll have to find a way to tell him that his father is gone.

But for now, Raleigh is here, almost a tangible presence in her mind, as good as telling her he isn’t going anywhere. And when the medics insist on loading him onto a stretcher and wheeling him down to medical, she goes right along with him, because no one here would dream of separating drift partners at a time like this.

He’s a little out of it just now, giddy with the thrill of a victory no one was sure they could pull off. Mako is not much better, herself. Nothing around her feels quite real, and she has the strangest feeling she’s going to wake up in her bunk any minute now, and that she’ll still be a J-tech supervisor with a refurbishment project she’s scrambling to finish before the next opening of the breach. Not a ranger. Not one of the last surviving rangers, surely.

“Newton Geiszler, if you would only just once listen to me—!” Dr. Gottlieb’s voice rings out as the medical entourage nears their destination. That much feels real; Dr. Gottlieb is always shouting, and usually at Newt, but there’s something odd about it now. Every other word comes out muffled, like something keeps pressing over his face.

As they wheel the stretcher through the door, Mako sees why. Her two dear scientist friends are pressed up against the wall, waiting to be seen by a doctor, if their appearance is any indication. They both look every bit as battered as Mako feels, and she doubts either one of them would be standing if they weren’t supporting each other. They are also simultaneously arguing and furiously—there is no other word for it—snogging.

“Oh!” Raleigh yelps. “They’re eating each other’s faces!”

Mako smiles. It’s about time.

“Shut up, Herm-mmmmm…” Newt becomes unintelligible for a moment before he pulls back enough to say, “I’m not doing jack shit unless you come with me!”

“You nearly died, you vile man! If anything happens to you now, I’ll never forgive you!”

“You drifted, too!” Newt yells. Then he notices the group rolling by, and pokes Hermann in the shoulder to get his attention.

“Oh! Mako, dear girl, magnificent work out there,” Hermann says, beaming.

“Yeah, great job, Mako,” Newt agrees. “You’re a hero! And you too, Guy.” He turns his attention back to Hermann. “You are going in there with me, you’re getting checked out, you’re getting taken care of, and then you’re going to…” The rest of what he wants to say is lost as Hermann kisses him again.

“It’s like walking in on your parents,” Raleigh says faintly as they leave the scientists behind.

“You don’t even know them,” Mako points out.

“I don’t, you do. It’s like walking in on your parents. Somehow, that’s even worse.”

Mako takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. He’ll have to get to know her scientists before much longer. They are not like parents to her, but they are family, and now Raleigh is, too. They’re in this together, no matter what.

Raleigh squeezes her hand too, giving back what she’s giving him: the unspoken promise that neither of them will ever be alone again.

The world goes on, and this is the beginning of the rest of their lives. And they’ll see it through together.

[lastdaysofwar]

@lastdaysofwar, Day 29: Chances (Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb)

I’m. Still. Going.

[lastdaysofwar]

And that's a wrap!

A tremendous thank you to everyone who participated in the event this January, it's been amazing to see how you all interpreted the prompt calendar and the works you created from it.

As a general note, the collection on Ao3 will remain open and this blog will continue to be monitored, so if you planned on participating this month and couldn't find the time, or if you're finding this for the first time, you can still feel free to use the prompts and post them to the collection/tag the blog!

There's a short post-event survey that just has some questions regarding your experience with the event/if you'd do something similar again (which you can fill out even if you didn't participate!)

As usual, here's a link to the event discord. Come and chat!

Now, some navigation!

The Prompt Calendar

The Ao3 Collection

All posts are tagged in the style "[type of submission], [event name], [day of prompt], [characters], [ships]", so if you search for any of those tags, you'll get all the posts for that tag. But for quick searching:

Event writing

Event art

Newmann <- given a place here because it was by far the most popular

Jägermeister by theinternetisaweboflies <- a longer fic that got given its own tag for easy searching

Off the top of the mod's head (so some may have been missed), here are the most popular tags by character:

Anything with Mako

Anything with Raleigh

Anything with Newt

Anything with Hermann

[lastdaysofwar]

@lastdaysofwar, Day 28: Politics (Hermann Gottlieb/Newton Geiszler)

The thrilling conclusion to Groundhog Day and Commitment. It technically fits the prompt!

“Okay, but seriously,” Newton says, once they’re both completely sated and could not possibly move another muscle if the building was falling down around them. “Do you want to take my name?”

“Mmm, yes, darling, I love your name. It’s a wonderful name. Stop trying to bait me.” Hermann is very nearly asleep now, tucked under his fiancé’s arm, head on his shoulder, quite warm and comfortable. He does not want any unpleasant arguments to intrude upon his peace. No pleasant arguments, either. No arguments.

“I’m not baiting you, dude. I mean, unless—”

“No smutty jokes.”

“Okayyyyyy,” Newton groans. “I just really like the idea of making you a Geiszler, you know? And it would make my dad happy, and your dad would be so pissed off. It would be a real slap in the face, disassociating yourself from him like that. He couldn’t take credit for your amazingness if you weren’t even a Gottlieb anymore.”

“Mm-hmm…” Hermann nuzzles closer, to feel the vibrations through Newton’s chest as he speaks.

“Of course, changing your name might cause you some problems in academia, like, nothing insurmountable, but it would be annoying. You deserve not to be inconvenienced, by anything. Besides, everyone associates the name Gottlieb with you now. You could live your life as a reminder of his continued irrelevance.”

“Mm, yes.” Very satisfying. Lars Gottlieb could be remembered in all the history books as the father of noted physicist Hermann Gottlieb. He rather likes that.

“Hey, and? Imagine if I took your name and then the other most famous Gottlieb on earth was a biologist. Ooh, he’d hate that!”

“You’re giving my father a lot of consideration here.”

“Yeah, well, he’s given you a lot of grief.” Newton runs his fingers through Hermann’s hair, humming softly to himself for a moment or two before he gets back to chattering—and how he has the energy to talk so much, Hermann will never know. “If we did decide to hyphenate, and I know you’re not sold on it but if we did, we’d kinda have the best of both worlds, you know? Or if we wanted to get really nontraditional we could mash them up. Geiszlieb? Gottszler? What do you think?”

“Perfect,” Hermann murmurs sleepily.

“Dude, you’re not even listening to me.”

“I am. M’enjoying the sound of your voice.”

“Ha! Liar, why would you?” Newton scoffs.

Hermann could quite honestly say that he has never heard another voice like Newton’s, and that its unusual timbre makes it stick in the mind, or that his utter lack of control over his pitch and volume are signifiers of the passion Hermann so admires in him, or even that, musically speaking, a perceived discordance may still be aesthetically pleasing in the right circumstances. But he’s really very tired, so he simply gives the truest reason of all.

“Because it’s yours.” And how could he not love anything of Newt’s?

“You—dork!” Newton squeaks. “I love you.”

“Mm. Love you, too. Keep talking.” He closes his eyes. If Newton doesn’t expect any intelligible responses, his running commentary will be enough to lull Hermann to sleep, and at the moment, he can’t think of anything nicer.

“Okay, babe. I’ll take that bullet. But only for you,” Newton says. His fingers stray through Hermann’s hair again. “You know what we could do? We could hyphenate, but we could each have it in a different order so we wouldn’t have to argue about which comes first. And then I could run for president. I’m old enough now, and I’m totally famous, so, weirder things have happened. I’ll make you my running mate, and then we can run on a Geiszler-Gottlieb-Gottlieb-Geiszler ticket. You think we’d take the popular vote?”

“Of course…”

“Damn, I should wear you out more often! I can say whatever I want and you just agree with me? Hey, sleepy guy, is it okay if I bring a couple of tiny little experiments home from work? You’ll hardly even notice them.”

“Don’t push it,” Hermann says.

“That’s, ‘Don’t push it, Mr. President.’”

“Mm-hmm…” He could argue, and he certainly will if any biological specimens make their way into their apartment. But for now, he is simply too blissfully content to make the effort. All he can do is lie there, drifting off with his future husband’s voice in his ears.

[lastdaysofwar]

@lastdaysofwar, Day 27: Chasing the RABIT

They may never drift again, but if they did, Raleigh knows what he would see.

[lastdaysofwar]

hope you're alright now!! and thank you so much for doing this!! ❤️

You're most welcome!! I'm glad that you're all enjoying this little passion project of mine.

The loss of power and internet was as bad as things got, fortunately. Unless you're the fence outside my house, which was the only casualty we had. RIP fence, you gave two decades of dedicated service.

[lastdaysofwar]

Apologies for the few days of delay in getting the recent posts reblogged! I've only just regained power and internet after a storm took them out. Back on track now.

[lastdaysofwar]

@lastdaysofwar, Day 26: Footprints (Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb)

[lastdaysofwar]

Jägermeister

Chapter Nineteen: Rivalry

“That was not Newt Oji-chan.”

“Of course it wasn't,” said Hermann. His voice was rough, but not from being choked. Newton had barely started to squeeze before he was restrained by medical staff. “He didn't speak.”

They were on the flight back to the Hong Kong Shatterdome, Newton sedated and restrained to a gurney only a meter away. 

By the time they reached the Shatterdome, the Four Seasons Hangzhou had forwarded the results of Newton’s MRI. All those top-dollar doctors, and all they were able to discern conclusively was that the swelling in his brain had become so severe that it was pressing up against his skull. 

Newton was placed in a medically-induced coma until the encephalitis could regress. The doctors administered anesthesia, monitoring his brain activity via EEG until it reached the target level. The anesthetic suppressed his respiratory drive, so he also had to be intubated.

They all took shifts watching over him, even though he had a dedicated medic with him at all times. Marshal Hansen himself took the first shift, after ordering them all to take naps, or at least showers. Hermann took the second shift after doing neither. Tendo supplied the coffee. 

A day passed, and the swelling did not go down.

Eddie the medic attempted to distract them all with photographs of his gravid gecko in her nesting box. He had decorated it with a miniature banner that read, “It’s a gecko!”

Another day passed, and the swelling did not go down. 

Dr. Lightcap came out of retirement to consult, and while Hermann had once been accused of going ‘full fangirl’ by Newton when they heard her speak at a conference in 2021, he now found himself unjustly frustrated with her for not having any answers either. 

Another day passed, and the swelling did not go down. 

Dr. Lightcap recommended a controlled drift. 

It was theoretically possible to establish a neural link despite the anesthesia, though it had never been attempted before. Many medically-induced coma patients reported vivid dreams, interpreting their surroundings through a surreal filter. Some believed they were taking part in the conversations carried on over their head. Others experienced the application of ice packs as nightmares about going down with the Titanic. 

At first, Hermann was vehemently opposed to Dr. Lightcap’s recommended treatment. It seemed too much like what had been done to Newton in captivity, but he knew that was not entirely accurate. They would not be forcing Newton to drift with a kaiju. They would be forcing him to drift with Hermann. 

It was with some trepidation that Hermann donned the squid cap and listened to Dr. Lightcap count down from three. 

The hive mind felt almost omnipresent. Everything shone with the heat shimmer of an orange sun, dark at the center, like the theoretical ‘dark star’ of Newtonian mechanics. Everything echoed with their clicking, like a million ticking War Clocks. Everything hissed. 

Newton’s presence in his own mind was little more than a whisper, but Hermann followed that whisper as though it was played by Pied Piper. 

He saw more of Newton’s memories. Getting all As. Getting a few Bs on purpose to fit in better. Getting nearly waterboarded, by several boys significantly his senior, in an MIT toilet stall, if the graffiti on the door was anything to go by. Hermann hadn’t even known ‘swirlies’ existed in real life, let alone at a private institute of higher learning, even if it was American. 

Then he saw a rabbit.

Hermann did not see a Random Access Brain Impulse Trigger. 

He saw Bugs Bunny.

“What’s up, Doc?” asked Bugs, a carrot sticking out of his mouth like it was a stogie. 

“I beg your pardon?” asked Hermann, more out of habit than anything else. 

Bugs Bunny suddenly cocked his head to the side, one ear perfectly erect. 

Hermann could hear something too, just the barest strains of music rising over all the clicking and hissing. It was Wagner. A piece from Die Walküre.

Bugs Bunny turned and started to follow the music.

So Hermann followed the rabbit. 

Bugs ducked into a bulkhead style corridor that twisted, turned, and forked before letting out into a theater. It was a gorgeous auditorium, with a proscenium stage, red velvet curtains, and a grand chandelier. The seats were all empty, but a woman was performing onstage. 

Hermann recognized her as Newton’s mother, Monica Schwartz. Her photograph had been easier to come by than Newton’s own when their correspondence first started. She looked too beautiful to be fully real, and Hermann knew that was because Newton remembered her primarily from photographs as well. 

Her voice was equally beautiful, but there was a very insistent part of Hermann that hated it with an intense and fiery passion. 

Bugs Bunny began applauding loudly even though the piece was nowhere near completion. When Hermann turned to look at him, Bugs shrugged and said, "Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?"

Then he played dead, performing a teetering twirl on the spot before falling over in full rictus. When Hermann continued to stare at him, Bugs cracked open one eye, and pointed an ear towards the stage. “I think Brünnhilde is up there. Watch out for the flames though. This whole place is burning.”

Even Hermann could follow a cue so overt. He climbed the steps onto the stage, where he was thoroughly ignored by Monica Schwartz. The backstage led to another bulkhead passage, this time with only one egress. 

Hermann emerged in a small room. It was sparsely furnished, but heavily decorated. The walls were covered with photographs, documents, and handwritten notes, all connected by red string tied around push pins like some sort of particularly intricate spider’s web. 

The photographs were all of Hermann. The documents were his academic papers. The handwritten notes were unmistakably his correspondence with Newton.

Newton was in the middle of it all, standing on both a chair and the tips of his toes to add more string. A row of pushpins was held between his pursed lips and he was humming, more or less along with the Wagner, but at twice its actual tempo. 

“Newton!” 

He startled, spitting pins and nearly falling off his chair. 

“Christ on a cock, Hermann! What are you doing here?”

“I'm here to save you,” said Hermann, like  a complete prat.

Newton rolled his eyes, which were not shot with blood the way they were in the real world. Hermann wondered if he even knew how badly he had been hurt.

“That's…. great. The NPCs have developed free will, and I have apparently developed a damsel-in-distress complex. I appreciate the initiative, Ghost Hermann. I really do, but I don't think you can do anything I can do better. I'm supposed to be in charge here, at least if you listen to the Existentialists. Although I don't think either one of us likes them.”

Hermann had tuned out, more or less on instinct, after ‘NPC,’ but he got the gist. Newton thought he was a figment of his imagination. Hermann might have corrected this misapprehension if he wasn’t so distracted by the decor.

“What is this place?”

Newton winced. “Wow, this is just as humiliating as I always imagined, even though neither of us is a real boy. Still, I guess it beats talking to myself. I do a pretty good Hermann, if I don't mind me saying so.”

“So, this is…” Hermann knew there were more important topics of conversation, but it was difficult to focus on anything else when he was looking at a photograph of himself offering Mako-chan his fifth attempt at omurice, complete with a crooked ketchup smile drawn on top to match his own. 

Hermann was reasonably certain  no such photograph existed in the real world. Newton had attempted to take one, but Hermann had confiscated his phone in protest. Apparently, he had captured it in his memory instead. 

Newton  referred to his memory as ‘semi-eidetic,’ but Hermann had always argued that ‘selectively-eidetic’ would be more apt. 

Apparently, he had selected Hermann. 

Repeatedly. 

There were photographs of Hermann writing on his chalkboards, drinking Jägermeister, arguing. There was a photograph of the day they met, before it all went wrong. There was another one of the day they drifted, before it all went wrong again. 

“This is the Hermann Cave! The real you wouldn't get that, so pretend you don't, for authenticity’s sake.”

Hermann didn't have to pretend. 

“I made this room to hide from the Precursors. I mean, sure, technically they know exactly where to find me, but they don't like coming here. It’s not even because of Mom— She’s just the perimeter guard. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they hate opera, but it turns out there's something they hate even more.”

“Oh?” 

“Love,” said Newton. “They hate love! They’re not even homophobic. They hate all love equally. See I've got sections for Dad, Uncle Illia, Mako-chan, and the Frog Formerly Known as Prince, may he rest in peace. So sure, Hermann Cave is technically a misnomer, but it’s also hilarious.”

Surely enough, the pictures on the wall did seem to include several photos of Mako by herself, Jacob and Illia Geiszler, and an African Dwarf Frog. 

“They really hate the romantic kind though,” Newton was saying, “and they really, really hate the sappy, song-writing, decades-of-pining kind I've got for you. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly why love is such an anathema for the Precursors. My working hypothesis is that they can’t comprehend sacrifice for something that’s not a part of themselves. Don’t quote me on that though. It might just be like Kryptonite.”

“Oh,” said Hermann. “Oh.”

Before he could say anything else, he was forcibly ejected from the drift. Everything seemed to freeze, like a lagging computer, and then he was back in the Medical Bay of the Hong Kong Shatterdome, surrounded by anxious faces. 

“Your heart-rate spiked,” said Tendo. “Like, a lot.”

It took Hermann a moment to catch his breath, and even then, all he could manage to say was, “Yes, I imagine it did.”

...

@lastdaysofwar

[lastdaysofwar]

@lastdaysofwar, Day 25: Hurricane

"Raleigh dreams of stormy seas, but he doesn't find his brother there. Sometimes he wonders if he still has it in him to fight the hurricane."

(I didn't write my fic for today, but I did watch an episode of The Joy of Painting. Did you know that making art...can be fun?? Thanks, Bob Ross!)

[lastdaysofwar]

@lastdaysofwar, Day 23: Heart (Hermann Gottlieb, Mako Mori, Jake Pentecost)

A day late and only kind of loosely inspired by the prompt, woo!

The first time Hermann Gottlieb meets Mako Mori, he’s just lost his temper and is bellowing in the most undignified manner imaginable at the lab assistant whose clumsiness has just erased two weeks’ worth of calculations.

Hermann does not normally behave this way—he is a very reasonable person! He has always kept careful control over his temper! But the stress is getting to him, and his assistant’s mistake is unforgivable when lives are on the line.

But when he turns from berating young Mr. Connor to find a little girl in the doorway, looking absolutely terrified that he might turn his anger on her next, he does regret having allowed himself to lose control to such a degree.

“You’re going to find a way to avoid mistakes like this in the future,” Hermann tells his assistant, making an extreme effort to speak calmly.

“Yes, sir! I’m sorry, Dr. Gottlieb, it won’t happen again,” Connor babbles, but Hermann has already turned his attention to the child.

“Hello,” he says.

The girl’s eyes grow quite large, but she makes no other response. Hermann hopes she speaks English. With the Shatterdome’s multinational population, he shouldn’t have any trouble finding someone to translate if necessary, but he would prefer to speak to her himself, despite his lack of experience with children. He deeply regrets having frightened her.

“Do you need help, young lady?” Hermann asks as he makes his way toward her. He supposes he ought to crouch down to put himself at eye level, but that’s rather difficult, so he merely hopes to appear as nonthreatening as possible.

“I…l-lost…” the girl whispers breathlessly. Hermann tentatively identifies her accent as Japanese, a language he can’t speak beyond a few pleasantries—hello, thank you, excuse me. Nothing useful here.

“Are you lost?” he asks as gently as he can.

“No—I lost my brother!”

“Ah, that is a dilemma.” He glances behind him; his colleagues scurry to look busy at the first sign of his attention. They’ll be all right without him for a few minutes. In fact, they might benefit from a chance to calm down. “May I help you find him?” Hermann offers. The girl brightens.

“Would you help, really? Thank you so much!”

“Of course I will, my dear.” He finds himself completely unable to resist her smile. “I do apologize for all the shouting. I’m Dr. Gottlieb, of the K-science division. Are you new here?”

“Yes, Doctor. My name is Mako Mori. I am very pleased to meet you.” She speaks carefully, but without too much difficulty. He’s relieved to decide that he won’t be needing a translator after all.

“All right, Miss Mori. Why don’t you tell me all about your brother, and we’ll try to retrace his steps.”

*

As they poke through various corridors, Hermann learns that Mako’s brother’s name is Jake, he’s seven years old, and he’s somewhat more familiar with the Shatterdome than she is, having visited their father here the previous year. They’ve quarreled, as siblings tend to do, and now he’s most likely gone off somewhere to sulk and hide from her.

“But something might have happened to him,” Mako says fretfully.

“Possible, but not very likely,” Hermann says. “No one here would do him any harm.” There are places in the building that would be dangerous for a small child to wander into unattended, but if anyone saw him there, they would be sure to remove him, and probably return him to his father, whoever that may be. Hermann is not familiar with anyone by the name of Mori, but then, he hasn’t interacted with anyone outside of the physics lab in quite some time.

“I was supposed to be watching him. If he gets into trouble, it will be my fault,” Mako says. She looks so glum, trotting along at Hermann’s side. Poor thing.

“When I was seven, my older brother lost me at the supermarket,” Hermann says, offhand. “And look how I turned out.” He waits until she’s looking up at him before he bares his teeth in the most monstrous grimace his face can manage. “Awful!”

Mako giggles, then slaps a hand over her mouth.

“I think you grew up to be a very nice man,” she insists.

“Nonsense. It’s common knowledge that I’m a heartless wretch who cares for nothing but mathematics. And all because Dietrich allowed me to wander off alone.” He smiles at the girl, entirely unaccustomed to teasing anyone this way, but rather enjoying it nonetheless. She seems to be cheered up by it, anyway, so he must be doing it right.

“If you had no heart, you would not be helping me now.”

“Well, I can’t fault your logic,” Hermann says thoughtfully. “Then, if I turned out all right in the end, I suppose that means Jake will, too.”

“But how did your family find you?” Mako asks.

Ah, yes, that is the question, isn’t it? He tries to think back to what happened that day. His mother had been quite busy with Bastien, which was why she’d turned Hermann over to Dietrich’s care. And Dietrich had only had eyes for a certain very pretty teenaged cashier who was far too old for him. Hermann never would have wandered away if he’d been with Karla, but she’d been home with the flu that day. Oh, yes! And he’d gone off in search of something to lift her spirits.

“As I recall, they found me in the bakery, stuffing myself with lemon tarts. The people who worked there thought bribery would be an effective method of finding out where I’d come from.” They look at each other, and reach the same conclusion simultaneously. “I don’t suppose Jake is partial to sweets?” But of course he is. What seven-year-old child isn’t?

*

They find young Jake in a supply room attached to the kitchen, curled around an empty ice cream container with a terrible stomachache. It’s only then that Hermann realizes the child he’s been helping to find is not Jake Mori, but Jake Pentecost, which means the girl Hermann has befriended is none other than Marshal Pentecost’s adopted daughter, who no one in Anchorage has yet had the chance to meet. Hermann is terribly embarrassed to return the children to their father’s care, receiving his commander’s sincere thanks in return. The marshal has never so much as said hello to him outside a staff meeting before this.

Hermann returns to the lab, where young Mr. Connor, looking petrified, announces that he’s found a way to restore a significant percentage of Hermann’s lost work, and he’s very sorry that he couldn’t get it all, but he’ll do his best to reconstruct the remainder if Hermann could just check his work to make sure there are no more mistakes—

“Well done, Mr. Connor,” Hermann says. “Very well done indeed.”

Connor nearly faints at the praise.

*

Mr. Connor becomes Dr. Connor over the course of their time together, and remains a part of Hermann’s steadily dwindling staff through transfers to Vladivostok and then Hong Kong. But he doesn’t last forever. Dr. Connor has just become another victim of the latest round of layoffs on the day Jake Pentecost quits the jaeger program.

Miss Mori, now quite the promising young engineer, has remained a friend, and she comes straight to him, bypassing the biology team’s half of the lab in spite of Dr. Geiszler’s squeaks of indignation.

“How can I help you, Miss Mori?” Hermann asks, resisting the urge to do something childish like stick his tongue out at Dr. Geiszler because the young lady has come to see him and not Newt.

“I lost my brother again,” Mako says.

“Oh, dear. This is becoming a habit.” He leads her over to the designated break area, where he can make her a cup of tea while she tells him all her troubles.

“Jake is the most stubborn person I have ever met,” Mako says. “He can’t help fighting back against everything. And you know the marshal does not respond well to people who choose not to listen.”

Yes, indeed. Hermann would never dream of criticizing his superior officer, but the man can be somewhat temperamental when pushed past the limits of his patience. And no one pushes quite like a teenager. Jake is a decade older than when Hermann first met him, nearly grown and on track to be piloting the next generation of jaegers, but he has not yet attained his sister’s emotional maturity.

“I take it they’ve had a significant disagreement?” Hermann asks.

“Jake walked out of the program. Or was thrown out, I’m not sure.”

Oh, that is serious.

“Now I have no idea where he is or what he’s doing. He won’t answer my phone calls. I just want him to let me know he’s okay.”

Hermann could share with her the wisdom of his own past once again. If anyone understands cutting contact with one’s father, and losing out on sibling relationships as a result, it’s him. But he doubts that’s what she needs to hear this time.

“He was training in Los Angeles, wasn’t he?” Hermann asks. With all the cuts to the program’s funding in recent years, the dedicated facility in Alaska is no longer feasible, so the cadets are being taught as best they can in whatever Shatterdomes remain open. Los Angeles may be the next to close, but it remains in service for now.

“LA is a big city. He could be anywhere. There’s no telling what kind of trouble he could get into.”

“Miss Mori,” Hermann says gently. “Your brother is lucky to have someone who cares for him as much as you do, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept that certain things that young man does are simply not your responsibility.”

“He’s a stupid boy who decided to run away from home because he didn’t get his way!”

“He’s a resourceful young man who is quite capable of taking care of himself,” Hermann corrects. “In part, because of the things you’ve taught him, may I remind you. You are a good sister, and I’ve no doubt he’ll find himself turning to you for help when he really needs it, but I doubt he’s looking for your protection just now.”

“So I should just let him run away? He’s so irresponsible,” Mako grumbles.

“And who isn’t, at that age? Excepting you and I, of course.”

“Of course.” They do have a certain kinship there. Both of them were made to grow up faster than their peers, he because of parental expectations, she because her entire life was upended and her childhood torn away from her when Onibaba struck Tokyo. Jake has been shielded from the worst of that sort of thing, despite the ongoing apocalypse and his drive to become a ranger. He’s experiencing normal growing pains, and like most young people, he’ll find his own path.

“Drink your tea, Miss Mori,” Hermann says. “I’m afraid there’s very little we can do from here. But Dr. Connor will be passing through Los Angeles on his way home. I could ask him to make a few inquiries. There must be someone who knows where your brother’s gone. Even if the boy doesn’t wish to speak to you just now, you’ll know where he is, and he’ll know you’re looking.”

“Thank you, Dr. Gottlieb.” Then she smiles and shakes her head. “Dr. Connor? He’s terrified of you.”

“Of course he is. I’m a heartless old crank, remember?”

That makes her giggle, as it always has. Mako persists in believing that he’s a kind, generous, all-around decent human being whose bark is far worse than his bite. She’s done terrible things to his reputation. None of his colleagues are afraid of him anymore, and certainly not Dr. Connor, with whom he came to an accord years ago.

He glances across the lab at Dr. Geiszler, who is attempting to be covert in his observation of the two of them. Now that’s a person who could stand to be a bit more intimidated by Hermann’s sharp tongue.

He returns his attention to Mako, dismissing the biologist as beneath his attention. He’ll find a way to keep Miss Mori in contact with her wayward brother. And he won’t even throw it in Newton’s face that he’s the one she’s come to for help. Even though it clearly signifies that he’s her favorite.

Well. Maybe he’ll throw it in Newton’s face a little.

[lastdaysofwar]

@lastdaysofwar, Day 24: Commitment (Hermann Gottlieb/Newton Geiszler)

Continued from Day 13 (Aftermath/Groundhog Day/Flowers)

“So, I have some questions about the logistics,” Newton says, holding the ring just out of reach of Hermann’s outstretched hand. Hermann frowns.

“What d’you mean, what logistics? You’ve proposed. I’ve accepted. You know what happens next.” He stretches out until his fingertip just touches the ring that rests so tantalizingly in Newton’s hand. Newton does not oblige.

“What do we put on the invitations?” he asks, staring off into the empty space over Hermann’s shoulder. “Do we do invitations? Do we have to invite people?”

“Newton.”

“Do you want a religious ceremony? Is it okay for you to marry an atheist?”

With a sigh, Hermann drops his hand. He won’t be getting that ring any time soon.

“Are we inviting your family?”

“No,” Hermann says under his breath. It doesn’t matter what he says. Newton isn’t listening.

Hermann settles on the couch and makes a start on eating their romantic, two-person dessert while Newton continues to bombard him with questions.

He had been excited to treat his partner to an anniversary dinner at one of the finest restaurants in Hong Kong. Trust Newton to throw off his romantic plans by being even more romantic, and then to throw that off, as well. The suggestion of takeaway and a night in, managing the proposal with all the trappings but without an audience—that’s perfect. It would have been perfect, if only Newton could allow his own momentum to carry him through

“You have to put the parents’ names on the invites, right?” Newton babbles, still waving the engagement ring aloft. “That’s what Tendo and Allison did, remember? ‘The parents of Allison Marie De Cora invite you to celebrate her marriage to—’ Hermann, which one of us is the bride?”

“We’re both the groom,” Hermann reminds him, mildly concerned that his new fiancé is doing something so out of character as to worry about heteronormative gender roles for an event that, frankly, they both consider a mostly ceremonial indicator of a commitment that already exists. “Newton, this doesn’t change anything, you know. Not about us, who we are.”

“Doesn’t it?” Newton asks wildly. Hermann sets down his spoon with a jolt of surprise.

“Darling, are you nervous?”

“Yeah, of course, why shouldn’t I be? I’m marrying you.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Hermann asks, with the slightest edge of frost in his tone.

“Your standards are, like, ridiculously high. It’s a lot to live up to, okay?”

“Oh, Newton.” Dear Newton. As if Hermann could ever truly be disappointed in him. Exasperated, certainly. Driven to distraction, often. But never disappointed.

“Look, I’m just saying, I want to do right by you, okay? Don’t laugh, I just care about you so much, and I want to be a good husband, and I don’t know how to do that, I barely know how to be a person—what if I fuck it up—what if you start to hate me—what if we get divorced—”

“Newton!” Hermann says sharply.

Newt falls silent. Hermann points at the couch cushion beside him.

“Sit.”

Newton sits.

“Newton, I have known you for well over a decade,” Hermann says severely. “I have seen the very worst you have to offer. And I can tell you, with perfect sincerity, that you are no longer capable of surprising me with your bad behavior.”

“Oh my god, you hate me and you think I’m boring!”

“I adore you, you git,” Hermann snaps. “I’ve seen you at your worst and your best, I know you inside and out, you’re the only man I’ll ever love, and there is nothing in this world that could ever entice me to leave you! If anyone is divorcing anyone around here, it’ll be you divorcing me!”

“What, are you on crack?” Newton screeches. “I would never!”

“Then why don’t you prove it? Put the ring on my damn finger and make it official!”

“Fine!” He jams the ring on hard enough to take off a layer of skin at the knuckle. Hermann curls his hand into a fist. It stings, but he has his engagement ring now and it will not be coming off.

“Thank you, Newton!” With that done, Hermann shoves his fiancé back to lie flat on the couch.

“Hot,” Newton says. “But seriously, the logistics? Am I taking your name, are you taking mine, are we hyphenating? You seem like too much of a traditionalist to want two last names.”

“We can talk about this later! For now, I want to put your mouth to better use.” He hesitates a moment. “You’re right, I don’t want to hyphenate.”

“I love y—” Newton begins, but he doesn’t get his sentence out before Hermann tackles him, and keeps him entirely too busy to talk.

TBC…

[lastdaysofwar]

@lastdaysofwar, Day 22: Promises/Regrets/Life and Death (Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb, Monica Schwartz)

Mental health warning. Newt is not doing okay.

The book referenced is Hailstones and Halibut Bones. (The original 1961 edition.)

Blue is the color of the sky without a cloud, cool, distant, beautiful and proud.

There’s a book at Mom’s house. It’s the only one Newt can find that’s in English, so that’s the one he chooses, because he can read English perfectly but German is hard. He wants to show off that he already knows how to read. She’ll be impressed by that. She’ll be proud. She won’t be proud of him if he tries to read German and gets it wrong. He has to make her love him.

He reads the first poem in the book out loud to her, and she seems impressed, so he keeps going. He reads, and she tells him three times that he can stop, but she doesn’t say he has to stop, so he keeps going, he reads it from cover to cover, and he gives what he will much, much later come to recognize as his first Performance, throwing all his heart and soul into the description of hot, wild, screaming, blistering blue!

She’s very polite, and then when she gives him back to Dad she says, “He never calms down, does he?”

“He’s excited to meet his mother,” Dad says quietly.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Jacob, he’s seen me before.”

They go home. Newt plans to read for her again the next time he sees her, but he doesn’t understand yet how long that will be. Of course the whole Atlantic Ocean is too far to cross just for a visit. He won’t go back unless it’s for something important. She won’t come to him at all.

*

Sometime later, for Newt’s birthday, Uncle Illia gives him a big box full of books from the used bookstore downtown. One of them is the book of children’s poetry he read to his mom that time he visited. He hugs it to his chest and runs into his room to read it again.

He understands the words better this time, but something about them hurts, and he doesn’t understand why, because the poems are nice, even when they’re sad or angry it’s in a way that’s kind of gentle, and all the illustrations are beautiful too, but it makes him think of something he’s lost, something that disappeared so long ago he doesn’t have a name for it. And he doesn’t understand, until he comes to pink is a new baby.

There’s a picture of a mother holding her baby, smiling at him, cuddling him to her chest. The drawing is simple, but he can see love in that mother’s face, because that’s what mothers do. Mothers love their babies. Mothers hold their babies, and want them, and keep them, and love them, if the babies are worth loving, if there isn’t something wrong with the babies that makes the mothers want to throw them away.

And maybe mothers also love their sons when they grow out of being babies, and call and tell them happy birthday, and maybe when they say goodbye it isn’t easy, maybe they don’t want to say goodbye, and maybe they don’t forget. But that’s too much to think of, and Newt’s feelings are too big for him, and too hard, and he hates the mother in this book, because she isn’t real.

He loves this book, but he hurts and he doesn’t understand it, and he can’t think of anything worse than defacing his present from his Uncle Illia who loves him, who really loves him, not just for pretend like a picture but for real—but the crayon is already in his hand and he hates her, he hates her…

Jagged black lines cover over the smiling mother, and he hates her because she’s a lie, he removes her from the page because she doesn’t exist, mothers love their babies but that can’t be true because she doesn’t love him.

And Newt starts to cry now because he’s gotten rid of her, he’s covered her over and he can’t bring her back, and even if she wasn’t real at least it was nice to pretend. But there is no mother now, only a lonely baby held by a thick black blob, and he’s going to get in so much trouble for ruining his book, and if anyone ever tries to read it they’ll know, they’ll know he’s so bad and so broken he doesn’t even love his own mother.

Because it has to be his fault, really. It must be him. It can’t be her. Mothers love their babies. If they’re good enough to love.

Still crying, he colors over the baby, too.

*

Newt grows up, and he forgets about children’s poetry, and he doesn’t think much about Monica. And then one day a monster comes out of the Pacific Ocean and it’s equal parts awesome and terrifying. And he never tells anyone about the day he spends hiding in his bathroom, too frozen with fear to come out and do anything even though it’s so many hundreds of miles away there’s no way it can ever touch him. He’s okay, later, with being seen as the freak who loves monsters. The fear is a secret he keeps to himself.

When the second one comes, he has nightmares for days, but he also knows he has to study these things. He wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life. So he goes to a tattoo artist one of his students recommends, and he’s not consciously thinking of black crayons and children’s books, but he begins the process of coloring over the man who is too scared and too helpless and doesn’t know how to step up. Maybe in the end there will be nothing left but the kaiju on his skin, but that’s better than a jagged void.

*

He writes letters to the most fascinating, the most incredible, the most devastatingly brilliant genius he’s ever heard of, the first person in two and a half decades that Newt has ever even considered calling his friend. Hermann gets him, Hermann supports his wild theories and never calls him crazy like everyone else, Hermann calls him “my dear Dr. Geiszler,” and Newt loves Hermann the only way he knows how, a headfirst dive into shallow water.

When they meet in person, Newt has to give the performance of a lifetime, he needs to impress his friend (has to make Hermann love him, has to be good enough, has to make Hermann see that he deserves his attention)—

He doesn’t see the signs, the way Hermann keeps trying to retreat, unprepared for Newt’s head-on assault. He won’t see until years later that Hermann is overwhelmed and anxious, that he needs Newt’s approval as bad as Newt needs his, that he’s never had a real friend either and he doesn’t know what to do, that he’ll spend an aching eternity wondering what he did to make Newt hate him so much before he even opened his mouth.

All Newt sees in the moment is Hermann not impressed, Hermann screwing his face up in anger, Hermann yelling at him, for absolutely no reason, “Don’t you ever shut up?!”

(He never calms down, does he?)

So it happens again (only, he doesn’t even know what he means by “again”), Newt gets it wrong, he’s too much, he’s not good, he’ll never be what anyone else wants him to be, and Newt’s not stupid, he knows he did this to himself, but it hurts so much, he wants, he wants—

Newt can’t think of anything worse to do to himself than to erase the tangible reminder that Hermann Gottlieb used to like him, so when he’s alone he takes a letter and he lights a match, and he watches my dear Dr. Geiszler go up in firecracker, fire-engine, fire-flicker red, and all that beautiful possibility turns to ashes in his hand.

His sleeve catches fire, too. And then, a couple years later, he gets assigned to Hong Kong and he and Hermann have to share a lab.

This is the worst his life could ever get.

*

(It isn’t.)

*

The time comes to drift with a kaiju brain, and he’s trying to save the world, he really is. It’s not about hating himself. It’s not about scratching out his own existence, leaving a void in place of the man who’s still scared, still helpless, who still can’t get it right, who’s just a joke and everybody knows it. (The man who can’t save anyone he loves. Who can’t even make them love him back).

He doesn’t want to be covered over, gone without a trace. But if it happens, he’ll go out saving the day. He’ll be doing good.

He’ll be good.

He’ll finally be good enough.

*

But he’s not. He’s not good. He gets it wrong again. It doesn’t work, it’s not working, it’s killing him, alien minds tearing at his own, and he won’t leave a void behind him when he goes. There’ll be nothing left but kaiju after all. Hermann will be so happy to say I told you so. But he’ll have no one to say it to.

Hermann’s going to be so mad at him.

Hermann—

Hermann pulls him out of it before the hivemind blots him out.

Hermann holds him, on the floor, like saying goodbye would be the hardest thing in the world.

“I’m sorry,” Newt says, and Hermann talks over him: “Why would you do this to yourself, Newton, my dear Newton, you could have been killed! I—we nearly lost you.”

But he couldn’t have said that, not really, because Newt is not his dear anything, and he’s so out of it, it’s easy to decide he must have imagined things.

*

It’s harder to think he’s imagining things when Hermann finds him in the rubble and says, “I’ll go with you.”

*

The drift

is

blue.

What is blue?

It’s kaiju blood and the sky of Earth, and the ocean he loves in spite of it all.

What is white?

It’s distant clouds and letters not written, and the answers to everything scrawled out in chalk.

What is black?

Ink and crayon and a jagged blob, the finality of night closing in.

What is brown?

Early morning coffee and midmorning tea, sweater vests and warmth, and eyes he meets from across the room.

What is red?

Every emotion too big to feel, the flush of humiliation and the flush of anger and the softest tinge of love.

What is blue?

Blue is regret, and blue is relentlessness, and blue is everything, all around them.

What is -?/-?-?/?-:?

The cracks in the precursors’ sky and the heart of the breach and the key, the key to it all. To victory.

*

Newt is not scratched off the page. The humans survive.

Like, collectively. Humanity survives.

A new day dawns in the bluest sky he’s ever seen.

*

Hermann gives Newt a book for his birthday. A book of children’s poetry about the emotional resonance of colors. He opens it, expecting the mother of the little pink baby to leap from the page and shout, “J’accuse!”

It’s the 1989 edition. The pictures are all different. There is no mother anywhere.

“You have always taken my side against my father,” Hermann says. “I…hope you understand that I would do the same for you.”

“I never doubted you.”

“And, you—you know that I—” Hermann squirms and clears his throat and won’t look Newt in the eye, and the red that colors his face is nothing like anger for once, and not quite embarrassment either.

“Me, too,” says Newt. “Like, big time.”

He still doesn’t have the right words for what he’s feeling, but Hermann is no better at talking it out than he is, and somehow that’s fine. Somehow, they fit.

There’s a letter tucked between the last pages of the book, a letter to my dear Dr. Geiszler, a near verbatim reproduction of the one he burned, give or take the vagaries of memory. And one more folded into that one, brand new, written to my dearest Newt. A return to what they had before, and a continuation of what they’ve built since then. And an unspoken promise that Hermann Gottlieb has no intention of letting himself be erased from Newt’s life.

Poetry and promises. What a birthday, huh?