NOTES: Beware the Ides Of Tumblr. Or, you know, any day that someone posts an AU gifset or makes an AU suggestions that might fit into my character headcanon.

what we were meant to be

By the end of the first month, Nita wonders how her instructors can possibly fit anything else into her head. Jaeger tech, Kwoon techniques, LOCCENT strategies, Kaiju weaknesses - learning, learning, learning, all the day and all the night.

People wash out, of course. Enemies. Strangers. Joanne and her cabal are gone within the first week. Faces become routine and familiar. Nita even knows some of their names, but she's not friends with any of them.

She's already decided she's not here to pilot a Jaeger, she's going into Drift technology. The interface between human and machine intrigues her: is it a dialogue between different kinds of sentience, or just humanity imposing its will on the machines they've created?

"A good question," Ranger Swale says when she brings it up during one of the lessons on the finer points of Jaeger interfacing. "And one that most people don't ask. The pilots will tell you their machines are alive - and the techs talk about Jaegers that move even when their pilots aren't interfaced with them. So which is it?"

Nobody has an answer, so he sends them along to the next class which is Kwoon training.

"Today," says the Kwoonmaster, "we're going to pair you up and face you off against each other. You'll work through the movements with your partner and get a feel for each other's psycholinguistic patterns. Remember, kids, this isn't about winning a fight against your partner, it's about finding someone who matches you - someone you can Drift with."

Nita's paired up with a dark boy who either didn't hear the Kwoonmaster's instruction or doesn't care. When she defends herself against his aggressive attacks, he nearly knocks himself out on the end of her defensive hanbo. "Oh, yeah," she mutters as she bends over his groaning form. "We Drift together real well."

"Ah, Mr. Coburn," says the Kwoonmaster mildly, his hand on the shoulder of a boy whose nose is bleeding copiously. "I see you weren't listening when I said it's not a fight. Take Mr. Lai and go on up to infirmary, get yourself checked out. Miss. Callahan, seeing as you and Mr. Rodriguez are without partners, how about you two train against each other?"

Nita doesn't particularly want to - the chances of Drift compatibility with a stranger are tiny and it's not as though she wants to be a pilot anyway...

The boy leaning on his hanbo is slender and dark, with a smile that's almost a wince. "I didn't mean to hit him so hard. He was just...there."

She sighs. 'He was just...there' is not a hopeful statement so far as surviving this training session goes. "Okay, let's do this."

They take up starting stances, watching each other with careful concentration. Nita figures she should make the first move, and goes for a mid-stance blow. He blocks it, taps her away, attacks back. She deflects him with a move she'd forgotten she knew, angling him away to the side, then stepping back to watch for his next move.

He comes at her, overhand, and she lifts the hanbo to block him hard and high, but he's left his legs open for attack and she slaps at them - if it hits, it'll hurt like the devil - but it doesn't hit him, he jumps over her hanbo and lashes out and somehow she knows to duck and-

This is what Drifting feels like, Nita thinks, dizzy with the sudden rightness of it. Knowing what he's about to do because it's exactly what she'd do in the same circumstances.

The blast of the whistle jerks them out of the little bubble they've been existing in since this bout began, and they step back to discover they've got an audience. Everyone from the Kwoonmaster to the Becket Boys are staring at them. Raleigh Becket even gives her a big thumbs-up, grinning from ear to ear.

"And that," says Kwoonmaster Romeo quietly, "is what you're striving for, ladies and gentlemen. Well done, Miss Callahan, Mr. Rodriguez."

Slightly stunned by what she's just experienced, Nita barely registers whatever else Kwoonmaster Romeo says before he sends the other students off to the showers. She's staring at the boy whose name she doesn't even know.

"It's Kit," he says quietly as the others file out of the room, offering her his hand. "Kit Rodriguez."

"Nita Callahan."

The jolt of physical connection - of physical compatibility - is like everything good in the universe compressed into a single touch.

In Nita's mind, it's a kind of magic whose entirety is beyond her limited comprehension but which can be experienced in an infinitely small fragment - a mere shard that is still enough to fill her full beyond all measure.

–

a broad green lawn filled with stone statues the moon sailing high overhead with a silvery light dairine what have you done fire and boiling sea I've loved the Red Star too fondly to be fearful of the night I can't do this I can't leave Dad to manage Dairine alone CARMELA I'M GOING TO KILL YOU is this you or me?

This is us, Kit says from across the Conn-Pod, and Nita hears him with her soul and her heart - in the Drift and in her head - as they crack their Jaeger's knuckles together. Right hemisphere, left hemisphere. We're going to do what we were meant to do.

The LOCCENT crackles in their headsets.

"Neural Bridge for Winged Defender active and holding steady. You are good to go."

Okay, Nita says to Kit in the Drift. So let's do this.

And they stride off into the ocean, ready to save the world.

fin