#his leisure is having fun by playing with children and annoying traveler his work is mass murder

[irascible-iridescent]

I fucking hate people try to make Childe (from genshin) into some misunderstood hero. Do you really think that if character likes kids it means he is a good person? Let him be a unhinged villain. He literally joined fatui bc he likes to kill. This is why he is interesting, stop making him into some kind of saint that got into harbingers by mistake, bc he is soooo nice.

[puckish-saint]

Helix Paragon

Reader Insert Pacific Rim AU Part 3

While Lechuza Renegade tears up kaiju like steak along the LA coastline, Helix Paragon gathers dust in Anchorage. Jack keeps trying to find a partner so far without success. His friends and colleagues empathise with him, pity him even. They know it’s not his fault, that he’s the victim of bad luck, their golden boy in a bad situation.

He wishes they were right.

Another candidate returns chagrined to the folds, leaves Jack on the training mats, staring at his bruised knuckles. For a second he allows himself to feel disappointed, to play with the thought that he's simply not meant to pilot a Jaeger anymore. They won't wait much longer. They keep Helix on ice for him but they can't really afford to let a Jaeger stay inactive this long. Sooner or later she'll have new pilots. With every passing hour it seems less likely to be him.

He spends his lunch in her company, hidden from the world by one of her massive legs while he watches the bustle of activity deep below. He can just about spot the other Jaegers in their bays, all newer than Helix. She's the only Mk 1 in Anchorage, one of only half a dozen still in service. Over the years she's been upgraded, retrofitted and modified to keep her competitive, to keep the symbol alive. That's all she is to the brass, a symbol they need for the public. For Jack she's so much more than that. Every scratch she ever sustained he felt like his own, every time her knee bent it was his own buckling in defeat and when he straightened up it was him and her facing down impossible odds.

She's a part of him and if he ever steps into a Jaeger again it will be her.

If.

“There you are.”

He looks up, finds you standing above him, your shadow mixing with Helix’. He smiles. Here's the only reason he didn't go mad in this whole mess. Years ago when talk popped up about decommissioning Helix Paragon and replacing her with a better model, you had his back arguing against her retirement. He doesn't know what she is to you, if she represents for you the same resilience he sees in this old Jaeger. He never asked and sometimes, feeling your eyes lingering on him a bit too long, he fears the answer. Helix lives up to every expectation. He does so only in her shadow.

“Got a new list?” he asks while you walk through the base at the leisurely pace of two rangers without a copilot. Yours was found dead in a ditch half a click from the base, two empty bottles of booze nearby. Your career stalled before it began and ever since you've been handling coordination between the Shatterdomes.

“We had a couple fly in from Russia," you say, flipping through the latest list of candidates eager to get into the most famous Jaeger ever built. To pilot Helix has been a childhood dream for half the rangers in the program. "The Marshall picked up a couple of Canadians you haven't tried yet. They must have lived in a tunnel under Toronto to evade you this long.”

He makes a non committal noise, smiles shyly when you pat his arm.

“Don't worry, we'll find you someone to fly with. Speaking of, there’s someone special who wants to shake hands with you.”

Fareeha has grown into a woman since last he saw her. Last time she was still a teenager, all gangly limbs and full of hero worship. Now she strides up to him like she belongs in this uniform and hugs him with the familiarity of an old friend. He and Gabriel let her spend her thirteenth birthday in Helix’ cockpit when Ana couldn't make it. He still has the pictures, taped on the wall in his quarters and saved in Helix' database. If he dies on a mission, those are the last images the VI will flash into the drift.

“It's good to see you, Jack.” she says. “Gabe sends his regards.”

He doubts he did but appreciates her words nonetheless. She trained with him in LA but if he was afraid she'd take Gabriel's side in the conflict he needn't have worried.

They catch up, enjoy this little family reunion and make plans for a bigger one. Nothing will ever come of it, the world needs them too much to allow all the top pilots time off at the same time, but it's fun to think about nonetheless. She's befriended some kid over in LA, talks about him at length until Jack can't keep his curiosity in check anymore and asks if she's crushing on him.

“On Jesse?” She laughs. “He's like an annoying big brother. Besides, I think he already has someone. He and his copilot get along well. Which brings me to why I came here.”

She stops and so does Jack, pulled in by her momentum but woefully slow on the uptake.

“Ever since I was a child I wanted to pilot your Jaeger." His Jaeger, he notes absently. Most mechs have had teams of pilots come and go, but Helix has always been his and Gabriel's alone. A PR stunt, some said, but Jack knows how effective they were with her. He couldn't have done half the things he did in another Jaeger. Fareeha continues, an intensity in her eyes that reminds him of her mother. "I know I'm inexperienced, and you and mom could never drift so the chances of this working are low, but I'm not my mother. I want to try.”

His first instinct is to say no. But then he’d have to come up with a reason why and he can’t give her that, either. Dread creeps up his spine as he thinks about drifting with Fareeha, the things that could happen, the things she might see.

But he has no excuse, not in the face of her eagerness and your scrutiny, and so he says weakly: “Alright.”

Helix Paragon welcomes him into her cockpit with the warmth of visiting a childhood home, well lived in and full of memories. He spent birthdays and anniversaries in here, partied until the J-tech crews threw them out, slept in a corner when his own bunks were too cold. Over there Gabriel threw up before their first mission, nerves getting the better of him but fading in the drift where they supported each other. On the bulkhead to his left he carved the name of every kaiju Helix took down. There's a nursery rhyme about it, he's heard it sung once by a class of school children during a charity event. Gabriel had been humming the song for days, casting it back and forth in the drift. An ear worm was a hell of a thing to have travelling between two brains. Sometimes, when attempting to drift with potential candidates, he swears he can hear it, like a memory Helix Paragon brings in herself.

She's his, has only ever been his. Where other Jaegers have two or three crews on rotation, Helix and Jack have only ever been deployed together. She kept his secrets, his insecurities and hid them underneath tons of cold hard steel.

While he adjusts the settings for a new pilot he listens to Fareeha’s excited chatter just outside. She'll be heartbroken when they can't drift.

If, Jack reminds himself, if they can't drift. He owes it to her to at least try. But a small traitorous part in him insists she's her mother's daughter and he could never drift with Ana.

They go through pre flight checks, Fareeha with eager precision, Jack with well worn routine.

“Initiating neural handshake in 3 … 2 … 1 …”

He's thrown into the drift, their shared memories rushing past as the connection gets stronger. Her first day of school, her college graduation, he sees everything through his and her eyes at the same time. She watches a TV show on Jaegers, makes fun of his face while he sits just behind her, but they're both struck breathless when they show the parade of Jaegers along the coastlines. With every shared memory, a whole life spent raising her like his own daughter, strengthens the link.

They're doing it, he realises, they're drifting.

The memories flicker past, none strong enough to trap him. Then, his first time in the Jaeger. The sour smell of sick and something else, something sharper -

“-don't try to stop me-”

“idiot if you think-”

-a puddle around his feet, he can't let Fareeha see this.

“Neural handshake failed. Would you like to try again?”

Jack dry heaves, drags himself out of the cockpit while Fareeha asks confused what happened. She doesn't get an answer from him. He runs until he no longer hears her voice, until the rumbling engines of Helix mix with the constant background noise.

He has no idea where he ends up, maybe somewhere near the Mk 5s in construction at the far end of the Shatterdome. He's well and truly lost his way.

You find him anyway and stand by his side while he pulls himself together. You're quiet, for which he is grateful, and piercing him with your eyes, for which he is not. You're trying to figure him out, to solve the riddle why he broke a stable link, his first chance in ages to become once again Helix' pilot. After that disaster with the drug addict you assumed he'd jump at the chance of getting to drift with someone dependable. Someone who would actually remember their mission after its completion.

It turns out that's exactly the problem.

“Who's next on the list?” he asks after a while, a weak attempt at changing the subject. You don't buy it.

“There's no list, Jack. You almost drifted with Fareeha, what the hell happened?”

He shakes his head, drags his hands through his hair drenched in sweat.

“I can’t … I-”

“Be straight with me, you owe me that much.” you say. "For months I worked my ass off searching for rangers who by some miracle weren't paired off yet and now I find out you weren't all that hot on actually trying. How many others were compatible? How many did you throw out because of some idiotic reason I can't begin to guess?"

Your words sting and much more when he realises he has to explain himself. Once again he feels your eyes on him, lingering like you're actually giving a damn about him. He doesn't want to lose your respect, but lying only got him so far.

The air changes, your anger seeps away. You lay a hand on his arm, note how he shivers under the touch. “What happened?”

On their first mission Gabriel threw up in the cockpit, but Jack was the one more scared. When they drifted Gabriel’s fear swept away with the excitement, made way for the cocky recklessness that would accompany him for the next decade. Jack never stopped being scared. From the second he stepped foot into the cockpit to the kaiju rising from the deep, seemingly inches from his face -

“I wet myself.” He says so softly you barely understand. “I pissed my pants and no one ever found out because the cockpit flooded during the fight. I was so scared, so terrified, I couldn’t - Gabriel was the only one who knew. After the mission I wanted to leave. He stopped me.”

He remembers their argument well, because he sees it everytime he goes into the drift. Him outside the compound, Gabriel pulling him back and almost tearing his shoulders out of its socket with the force.

“I’m not Jaeger material,” he said then. “Don’t try to stop me.” “We belong together,” Gabriel shot back, just as temperamental as he is today, “you’re an idiot if you think I’m going to let you desert.”

“I couldn’t let Fareeha see that. She thinks I’m a hero.”

He hides his face from you, shakes off your hand on his shoulder. He wants to pilot Helix so badly it hurts, but if the price is destroying the hope the world built around their infallible hero it’s too high. They need a symbol, not a coward pissing himself at the first sign of trouble. Your words pull him out of his self-pity and the rug from under his feet. “Let’s drift.” Before he can argue you continue. “What have you got to lose? Worst case scenario, we’re not compatible and you have to talk to Fareeha, but there’s nothing I won’t find out that I don’t already know. You just told me, and I don’t think less of you. Let’s drift.”

After everything he just told you the last thing he expected to hear out of your mouth is a request to fight at his side.

"I was scared. I still am." he says like by some coincidence you might not have understood. "So what?"

So what, indeed. The kaiju Storm hits the coast of LA with a vengeance. One Jaeger has already been taken out of commission, the two remaining in the field are hanging on their last thread.

“Repeat, we need support, now!” Gabriel shouts into the comm and they barely manage to get Storm away from Whiskey Deadeye, sacrificing a prime flanking opportunity. They’re on the defensive, pushed back under the constant onslaught of attacks. They didn’t count on this tactic. Kaiju behave like animals, retreating at least for a while when they get hurt, but this beast is relentless. Whiskey’s systems come back online but they don’t get a chance to use them.

Helix Paragon drops from the sky like sunshine, hull gleaming golden in the light. You and Jack dive into the fight, take the heat off Lechuza and Whiskey. Before long they move into a counterattack, regain enough breath to crack jokes.

“Figures they’d send an old sardine can as support.” Gabriel says as he and his copilot empty a volley of shells into the kaiju’s belly.

“Better watch that mouth, Reyes, because that sardine can is going to save your ass.” And it does.