13. shilly-shallying
[Drift spam for Mal]
[She's nervous, of course she's nervous, climbing back into the connpod after all the time she's spent trying to forget the last time she was in here. Good practice, she tells herself firmly, blood pounding in her ears, doesn't think of the rough-edged gaps in her memory or the things she remembers too clearly, doesn't think about anything at all, definitely doesn't think about how eagerly she would run right back to the gutter if not for Mal's sharp dark gaze pinning her in place better than the pneumatic hiss of the cables connecting to her drift suit, of a piece with the weight of the pons apparatus settling on her face like a spider poised to eat out her eyes. She itches everywhere under the armored jumpsuit, which makes her hard-shelled and shiny, insectoid, the better to be a spider's prey.
No. No. She needs not to think like that, because soon it'll power up and Mal will see - (everything) - nothing, nothing at all, white flat salt nothing, calm as a wide horizon, calm as a good high, calm as dead things when Plogviezhe makes them dead.
You have to own a jaeger. You have to be one, skyscraper-tall and shatterproof. (She isn't shatterproof.) And this one is her, is them, she knows the bladed edges and ammunitions of this machine better than she knows her own hands, wrapped into the arm controls. One of the techs is asking her, the second time, for confirmation. Her mouth is too dry to speak, but she is not afraid, she does not let herself think of anything at all. She catches the tech's eye for half a second, nods, and feels the first brush of the drift, Mal's sheer determination bleeding in, ready for this, wading into it, and good fucking god Mira missed her even as she's terrified by the closeness, by everything that could be seen if she doesn't - keep ahold of herself - but it's too late to back out now, for all her attempts, it was too late a year ago.]
[Open shatterdome spam before the attacks]
[Mira skulks about, approaches no one. She can't stand to stay cooped up in her quarters but she hates venturing out, too, scuttles from place to place, looks away if anyone meets her eyes, looks away before then if she sees anyone who knew her before. She feels like she must have a sign on her forehead, disgraced, AWOL, broken. She wants to hide but she needs space, and the Shatterdome is sort on both privacy and emptiness. She finds odd places, defunct half-flooded corridors painted in aquatic moss and barnacles, the sheer bustle of the medical wing where no one has the energy to notice a spare girl with wild hair picking up a batch of laundry to disinfect, climbs scaffolding in the hangar bay and watches people hurry by like a sloth, like a bat, in nervous suspension.]
[She's nervous, of course she's nervous, climbing back into the connpod after all the time she's spent trying to forget the last time she was in here. Good practice, she tells herself firmly, blood pounding in her ears, doesn't think of the rough-edged gaps in her memory or the things she remembers too clearly, doesn't think about anything at all, definitely doesn't think about how eagerly she would run right back to the gutter if not for Mal's sharp dark gaze pinning her in place better than the pneumatic hiss of the cables connecting to her drift suit, of a piece with the weight of the pons apparatus settling on her face like a spider poised to eat out her eyes. She itches everywhere under the armored jumpsuit, which makes her hard-shelled and shiny, insectoid, the better to be a spider's prey.
No. No. She needs not to think like that, because soon it'll power up and Mal will see - (everything) - nothing, nothing at all, white flat salt nothing, calm as a wide horizon, calm as a good high, calm as dead things when Plogviezhe makes them dead.
You have to own a jaeger. You have to be one, skyscraper-tall and shatterproof. (She isn't shatterproof.) And this one is her, is them, she knows the bladed edges and ammunitions of this machine better than she knows her own hands, wrapped into the arm controls. One of the techs is asking her, the second time, for confirmation. Her mouth is too dry to speak, but she is not afraid, she does not let herself think of anything at all. She catches the tech's eye for half a second, nods, and feels the first brush of the drift, Mal's sheer determination bleeding in, ready for this, wading into it, and good fucking god Mira missed her even as she's terrified by the closeness, by everything that could be seen if she doesn't - keep ahold of herself - but it's too late to back out now, for all her attempts, it was too late a year ago.]
[Open shatterdome spam before the attacks]
[Mira skulks about, approaches no one. She can't stand to stay cooped up in her quarters but she hates venturing out, too, scuttles from place to place, looks away if anyone meets her eyes, looks away before then if she sees anyone who knew her before. She feels like she must have a sign on her forehead, disgraced, AWOL, broken. She wants to hide but she needs space, and the Shatterdome is sort on both privacy and emptiness. She finds odd places, defunct half-flooded corridors painted in aquatic moss and barnacles, the sheer bustle of the medical wing where no one has the energy to notice a spare girl with wild hair picking up a batch of laundry to disinfect, climbs scaffolding in the hangar bay and watches people hurry by like a sloth, like a bat, in nervous suspension.]
no subject
[Though she doesn't want to pin her down, keep her. Far from it. She wants to hold her loosely, let her fly. But not too far away. Not so far that Mal can't see.]
[From behind her helmet there is a fierce grin as the drift engages. She grins - she grins - she grins - and then she laughs, a white-loud uproarious sound, as they connect.]
[Perfectly.]
[She knew it would be perfect.]
no subject
They weren't sure they could do this again, but they can, they can, they are feeling all the buoyant ebullience of that together, ragged scraps of fear and stubbornness itching and shedding like strips of stags' velvet. They want to ram something. They are eager.
Theytheythey. They love it, they always do, the seamless togetherness, except for the part of her that twists and winces, she, white-knuckled, ripples of bitter guilt and salt wriggling uncertainty, white knuckled, empty stomach twisting. How can Mira take care of her sister if she doesn't know where the line is between them - there isn't supposed to be a line between them. There isn't and there is. How much do you bring into the drift. She isn't steady, and she needs to be steady. She needs to leave - last time - behind, and it tickles at the edges of their shared awareness, laps like shallow foamy waves at their ankles, so small, and yet so deep.]
no subject
[All she knows is she's looking sideways at Mira and seeing her sister, her magnificent sister, locked in beside her, and she is ready, and she's excited, and they will never be ready for this, and they're terrified, and they're going to do it anyway.]
[She cracks the knuckles on her right hand. Plogviehze responds, great metal tendons snapping in a way that has the techs scurrying and scolding. Mal doesn't care. This is how it has to be.]
[ Spam ]
She won't say she doesn't still have to work around some disappointment when she catches sight of Mira around now that she's back, but it doesn't make her dismiss her fellow pilot. Letty is also aware of the ways in which people can be broken in less obvious ways, knows that showing it - that acting on it - is not the greatest crime that can be committed.
So she straddles the line, ignores her when she's busy herself or when Mira is especially self-effacing, doesn't beg for her attention, doesn't chase after her. But when she chooses to sit in the scaffolding around Letty's Ten Second Devil? When Letty herself is sick of climbing in and out of the guts of her jaeger to retrieve tools?]
Hidalgo. Climb down here and hand me that number two torch, would you?