A/N: Happy birthday, Dan! Son-of-rome over there on that tumblr website thingy-do is having a birthday, so Hannah (ananbeth on tumblr) and I decided to give him just what he deserves - Jasper with lots of angst! Happy birthday, kiddo! Hannah wrote all of Jason's POVs and I wrote Piper's. This is all based off of my Pacific Rim/PJO headcanons that I created a while ago (you can find that on my tumblr as well at flyingcrowbar). Hannah and I loved writing this so much, we may even do a long fic for Percabeth.

Enjoy!

He sees flashing lights, feels the great machine around him dying as his copilot shouts his name over and over and Jason feels pain scream through him. It's burning down his left side, a blur he can't pinpoint but it feels like he's being torn apart.

Percy's voice sounds far away, it is disrupted as the Jaeger crashes around like a rag doll thrown by a bored child. He is tossed with it, inside of it, uselessly hurled forwards, backwards, sideways, down - so fast and hard that he can't breathe. He tries to gulp in air desperately as panic flares through his veins, and he latches onto his co-pilot's voice.

Jason makes out only a few of the words Percy is shouting around his name.

"Bronco Thunder at twelve percent capacity… unresponsive…. Captain… can't ... myself."

The reply through the intercom is far fuzzier than Jason has ever heard it. "...Been dispatched ... Coming for you…"

"Jason?" Percy's voice is sharp and desperate.

He tries to speak, but the world wrenches off course and he's thrown inside the Jaeger. He slips, through blinding pain and the grips of fear take him away from the sounds of a dying Jaeger with it's sole pilot.

...

The next time he wakes Jason is suddenly and acutely aware of the pain again - along his left arm, his ribcage, legs, back. Sharp, shocking, dragging him under some unknown surface until he can't breathe, pain. His bones scream agony and he screams with them, begging for this to end - whatever it is. He feels like he's being crushed by a thousand tons of rock and dust, the dust which fills what space there is left in his lungs and makes it difficult for him to breathe.

He's still inside the Jaeger. That much he knows from the nature of the lights around him and the metallic way his cries echo back to him. And the relentless crashing, grinding, tearing has faded. Their Jaeger is no longer being pummelled into the earth by a monstrous beast, it has gone. Stillness settles over him and he can hear the distant sounds of the city being torn apart, now that its defender is lying useless on the ground.

"Hang on, buddy." Percy's voice is close, followed by banging and grunting and a sharply inhaled breath which lets Jason know he's not the only one who's been injured.

"Perce," he mutters, barely hearing his own voice over the grinding of machinery.

"It's fine," Percy replies quickly. I'm fine, he doesn't say out loud.

The neural link has disconnected but Jason doesn't need it to know that his copilot is lying.

What's happening? he wants to ask, he thinks his lips move to form the words but they don't come out.

"We're down," Percy says, still moving around. Perhaps Jason did ask the question out loud, or perhaps Percy is just speaking to the silence to keep himself going. "The girls are out there."

"Piper?" he forces the name out through gritted teeth.

There's a weight on his shoulder as Percy reassures him, "She and Hazel can take care of themselves." But his voice betrays him with the concern he feels, the frustration at being able to do nothing because they are trapped in a dead body.

Jason feels himself slipping again. He reaches his right arm out blindly and finds the hard shell of Percy's armour.

"Hey, buddy. Stay with me," Percy says, voice tinged with panic.

But he is already gone.

...

There's a different light around him. White light in strips along the ceiling which blink in and out of his vision as he moves along. But he is not moving, he is being moved. Arms, legs, body, head strapped down as he rushes some place - is rushed there by others. Others who talk over him and around him and where is Percy? His copilot. Where is the Jaeger? and the Kaiju which had destroyed their defenses, tearing out the left side of the Jaeger - Jason's side - as though it had been made of putty?

They had never been defeated. Two years he's been fighting alongside his best friend. Twenty seven drops, twenty seven kills. Undefeated. Until they were.

Defeated.

Piper is running.

She didn't even let the crew take the armor off of her when she came down from Full Metal Belle because she doesn't have time. She's gasping as she sprints down the hallway, helmet in hand as her arms swing her forward. The hospital smells like ammonia and it's accompanied by quiet, the only quiet that means that too many doctors are in one place - the one place that's important to her.

Even the waiting areas are empty. The civilians who are smart enough will still be in the shelters, waiting for the all clear signal now that the Kaiju is in the dirt. It's only a matter of time before this place is filled like a can of sardines with the wounded and scared.

Piper just barely manages to catch a glimpse of the television in one of the rooms she runs past. Scrolling text in Japanese moves across the bottom of the screen as the news replays Bronco Thunder's final fight. She is thankful she's moving too fast to see it, or rather see it again. The memory isn't one she thinks she can ever forget. Not the way Knifehead stabbed Bronco Thunder in the chest, tearing up her insides like paper; not the way Piper's stomach turned to sludge when they got the call to move in, back-up on the move yet not close enough; not the way Hazel that looked at her, reading her thoughts through the drift, knowing that Jason and Percy were… But Hazel pushed that thought from Piper's mind and helped Piper see. The Kaiju was right in front of them. Letting the monster get inside Piper's head would be suicide.

For Belle's first fight, it was historic. A battle against a Category 4 on the first drop. Now that was something news-worthy. But instead they replay Bronco's fall, the building crumbling underneath the tangle of Kaiju and Jaeger alike, crumbling like toy building blocks assembled by a toddler. The dust rising up as a cloak, unable to see the damage, imagining the worst. The sound is mute, but the roar rumbles in her ears, left over from hearing it miles away. She can feel it in her belly, feel it in her chest. And Piper keeps running.

The media has latched onto the worst possible moment, playing it over and over again, diminishing the panic, desensitizing the public, glorifying the destruction. A "terrible tragedy" they would say, knowing of Jason and Percy only through talk shows and commercials and gossip magazines, and not caring that Jason likes two sugars in his coffee or that Percy likes his Pop Tarts smashed to crumbs so he can eat it with a spoon, or what makes both of them laugh, or what they dream about at night because none of that is important enough - not to everyone else. But it's important to Piper. And that's why she runs.

She hears the bustle, hears orders being barked, but she doesn't understand a word of it. This part of the hospital is alive, so that means… they must be alive. A nurse stops her before she can carry on down the hall toward the flock of doctors running in and out of an operation room. The nurse's hand on her chest is firm, and he's telling her something in Japanese but she's pushing against him and screaming something, only she thinks she is because it doesn't sound like her voice - words coated in dirt and sweat, coming out grimey and thick. "Jason!" she shouts over and over again, not caring if he can't hear her because she just needs to say his name.

"Please," the nurse says, in English, and escorts her to the observation suite. He closes the door when he leaves, making her the only occupant to watch the scene unfold in front of her. The room she's in is dark, especially compared to the blinding white of the operation room on the other side - a whole different world that's muted to her. She's panting as she watches, her breath misting on the thick glass each time she exhales, and she can't catch it because she sees a body on the table, and machines are hooked up and beeping and hoses are pumping, and doctors are pointing and she is so useless. She can't move, she can't speak, she can't even cry. She's so far removed from reality, it's like she's looking through a telescope. This can't be real. It just can't.

She sees the splatter of blond hair upon the pillow lying on the table and a cold metal hand takes hold of her heart and clenches. Her fingers relax and her helmet clacks to the floor, refusing to be unbroken, refusing to give her the satisfaction, and she puts her hand up to the glass.

"Piper."

She whips around. That accent is impossible to mistake, there's only one person in the program from Australia. She thought she was the only one watching, she is wrong.

Percy is alive - oh god, he's alive - and slumped against the wall in the far corner of the room. A cracked and dried river of blood remains on his face, his hair crusty and still damp. He's sallow, and small, even though he would tower over her in the mess hall and rest his elbow on her shoulder like she was made solely for him to lean on. His armor is gone. All he's wearing is a hospital gown and he's swimming in it. Without his armor, without his swagger, he looks naked. When he stands upright, he winces and Piper notices the sheen on his cheeks. The noble thing for her to do is ignore the fact that he's been crying. She can't imagine what he's been through.

He's like an entirely different person, a person who doesn't smile, a person who forgot how to smile in the seemingly infinite amount of time it took him to get to this point. It may have only been twenty minutes, but for him… she doesn't want to think about it.

In two strides, she steps forward and pulls him into her arms. He wheezes when she holds on tight and he stiffens when the pain is too much. She holds him at arm's length and tries to hold his gaze, but his eyes look past her and into the operating room. They're so dark, despite the pinprick of light reflecting off the white walls on the other side of the window. It was like he was staring for miles.

"Percy," she says. "What happened?"

It takes him a moment to look at her but when he does, Piper's heart shatters. He still doesn't say anything.

"What happened?" she asks again.

"We -" he starts, but can't seem to finish. He's blinking too fast, as a shutter would on a camera capturing moments. His voice is robotic. "We thought it was dead - We had it handled - It was down - It was -"

For a team that had killed the most Kaiju to date, everyone thought Bronco Thunder was unstoppable. Everyone.

"Percy, I know, we thought you killed it too, but what happened?"

"The walls came crashing in and we fell and… and I felt it Piper."

Piper's stomach plunges.

"He's in bad shape," Percy says, his voice just on the edge of a cliff. "Pipes, I felt him break. Like it was me. Like I was him. And I -" He can't bring himself to complete the memory, but he does, for her sake. "His back…"

Piper turns and watches Jason through the glass. The doctors are working. They will be through the night. She just knows it, knows Jason's not through the dark yet, but she has to think that he'll make it through. He always has.

But it's never been this bad.

The door to the observation room opens and, silhouetted in the light from the hallway, is First Lieutenant Annabeth Chase. For a moment, Piper is relieved it's not a doctor coming to tell her the worst, coming to tell her that Jason is beyond saving. Then again, if Annabeth is here, Piper knows it's serious. And Annabeth is always serious.

Her eyes are cast in shadow as she locks onto the both of them. She's wearing her dress blues, complete with the dozens of medals above her heart. Her cap is tucked under her arm and she stands like a rod has been shoved up the back of her jacket.

Piper knows what this uniform is for. What it's supposed to mean. It's the kind of uniform she would wear on someone's doorstep whose loved one has fallen while in service of his country.

Piper holds her breath.

Annabeth adjusts her jacket and steps inside as she looks at Jason in the other room. She stares, to Piper's eyes they seem doll-like, and doesn't say anything until Percy makes her.

"What have they told you?" he asks. He doesn't want what her uniform means to be true, Piper doesn't need to be in the drift to read his mind for that. But his tone has an edge to it. He finally has someone he can focus his fears on.

"Nothing. There's a press conference gathering outside. I need to look professional."

That means that she's not delivering bad news just yet. Piper can finally exhale.

"Well don't just stand there!" Percy shouts. "Do something! Talk to someone! A doctor! A nurse! Get some answers!"

"They're doing they best they can. The most helpful thing we can do right now is let them work."

Percy is crossing a line. He's speaking to a superior officer, but his emotions are flowing out of him like a broken dam. She can feel his frustration, his panic, his helplessness thrumming in the air. Piper instinctively puts her hand on his shoulder but he shrugs it off.

"That's your friend in there!" Percy steps right up to her, almost in Annabeth's face, and points at Jason's body. "Jason is dying and you're doing nothing! Do you even care? Is this all part of your plan? Sitting in your high tower watching your pawns get destroyed is a game to you, is it?"

Annabeth's eyes flash when she glances at Percy. Piper has seen that look before. It's like a gun being locked, loaded and aimed.

She barely speaks above a whisper, but it has weight. "Don't mistake composure for apathy."

Piper doesn't expect to see the silver lining around Annabeth's eyes, and neither does Percy as he exhales loudly through his nose but goes quiet. He's simmering, ready to boil over, but Piper can't blame him. All he can do is stand by and watch as his best friend dies in front of him.

Annabeth turns on her heel so she meets his eyes, her lips barely moving as she says, "Fourteen million."

"What?"

"The population of Tokyo is fourteen million. Fourteen million saved. At the cost of one, Mister Jackson."

"So Jason is just a statis-"

"Jason is a fighter, and this is a different battlefield. He helped save fourteen million lives today. The only thing we can do right now is believe that he can win this fight too."

"So what are we supposed to do? Just sit here and wait? I can't do that. I won't do that."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Well then what do you want me to do? Be more like you? Like a robot?"

Annabeth's anger burrows in her brow.

Percy just doesn't know when to quit. "You don't care about anyone else but yourself. You don't feel what I feel. You're a machine."

Piper knows that was a low blow and she turns her gaze downward, not wanting to see what would happen next. In any other situation, Percy would have been punched. Piper's seen it many times for far less. But Annabeth has mercy on him. "Would you rather I run through the halls, hysterical? Would that make you happy?"

Percy's jaw clenches. "No."

"Then I will act appropriately when needed, Mister Jackson, thank you."

Annabeth glances at Piper and Piper feels like she's under a spotlight, but she doesn't say anything. Piper is grateful. She doesn't want to witness the fury of Annabeth Chase firsthand.

"If you'll excuse me, I'm needed in the courtyard." Annabeth clicks her heels and turns toward the exit. But she pauses just before leaving, her head lowered in and her knuckles white on the doorknob. "I sent you out there, I made the calls. His fate is on my shoulders. I may not understand what it's like to be in the drift, but it's my pain too. So don't you dare tell me how I feel."

Percy is stunned into silence. Piper lets Annabeth go without stopping her. She has a job to do. As mission control, Annabeth is supposed to have all the answers. Piper would hate to be in her shoes. If a mission went south as it did today, it is Annabeth's fault. All eyes are upon her.

She must have overheard their conversation earlier, about Percy feeling Jason's pain as his own. But feeling it from miles away, unable to stop it, responsible for all of it… Annabeth and Percy share something after all.

Piper and Percy stay in the observation room a little while longer, keeping each other in quiet company as they watch. It's only after a nurse calls Percy out of the room to get his chest X-rayed does he leave, and even then he's reluctant to do it. He's determined to stay by Jason until he's better. But Piper promises him that she will tell him first if anything happens.

"But it won't," she says. "He's going to make it."

And through the night she stays, resting in one of the chairs as hours passed, and Jason's status remains unchanged. Exhaustion takes hold and Piper falls asleep in the chair, her helmet on the floor at her feet, and her dreams a flurry of unease.

His bike is cherry red. A gift from his older sister who runs alongside him as he pedals, pedals, pedals. His is laugh carefree as only a young child's can be. The sun beats down from above, bathing him in warmth and he can hear the ocean lapping gently at the shore like deep breaths. In and out, in and out.

Thalia laughs with him, sharing his glee and he turns to look at her, watches her expression turn to panic as he loses balance and flies from the bike onto the hard concrete. His arms burn with grazes and he starts to cry before she reaches him and immediately scoops him into her arms, eyes frantically searching his face and body for damage. Her face pales as her gaze falls to his legs.

"Oh god, Jason, your legs."

"What?" he cries, voice high and panicked because he can't see them. He can't follow his sister's horrified gaze and he can't understand why. "What's wrong with them?"

But she just stares, holding him tightly to her chest and turning paler and paler until she is gone. Everything is gone.

The sound of the sea is replaced by a clinical beeping. Still steady and slow but far less comforting. It makes Jason feel cold, distant from this world, from the scratchy bedsheets around him and the slow beep, beep, beep which tethers him to life. He feels heavy. Not like the weight of the world is on his shoulders but that he is that weight. It drags him deeper into the foreign bed, binding him there, paralysing him and he wants to cry out. He wants to scream and run from this place but he can't. He can't even open his eyes.

He feels sluggish, heavy, tired. He just wants to sleep.

Jason slides into another memory, one that doesn't belong to him but to his co-pilot. One filled with another ocean, another life away, another worried voice calling for caution as he runs freely to the shore. He turns, laughing still, and feels the waves lap at his heels as he watches his parents stroll after him. Their hands are linked loosely. Their dark hair blows in the soft breeze and his mother is suddenly there, scooping him into her arms and Percy feels the boom of his father's laugh. He feels home.

Home. Blue chocolate chip cookies and the wooden decking beneath his feet, the sound of the sea lulling him to sleep, the burning heat in the summertime softened by ice creams and his mother rubbing sun lotion into his skin, holding him still as he squirms, desperate to run and play. But Jason knows these memories don't belong to him, he has shared them, felt them like he lived them but he has not. They are not his.

His home is Thalia. His black-haired, sharp-tongued, fun-loving sister who ruffles his hair and makes his breakfast and takes him to the emergency room when she finds him trying to eat a stapler. Who brings him up in a house full of chaos until… until she can't any longer.

He's dragged from one place to another and brought into a sharper memory, one filled with panic. He's thirteen, running through the corridors of his school, carried by the crowds of panicked students because this is too soon. The last Kaiju attack was only two months ago in Portland, they usually have more time. More time to recover, to build back up what semblance of a defence the coast has.

It's been five years since the first attack in San Francisco. Eleven Kaijus have attacked various cities on the Pacific coasts since then, and still the only defense humans have are fighter jets and tanks far too small to tackle such a beast. His sister is always saying that they will resort to nuclear attacks soon; from what Jason has studied about Hiroshima, he doesn't like the idea of that much. He's heard and seen about the robot project as they've petitioned on news programs to get more funding for the failing inventions. Apparently they are frying people's brains in an attempt to create a man-operated machine big enough to take down a Kaiju. As the roof of the bunker shakes with another explosion, Jason sits and hopes and prays that his sister is not one of those fighting out there. But in his heart, he knows she will be.

Thalia graduated high school two years ago and immediately joined the army. She requested to be based at Santa Ana so that she can still be close to Jason. He knows what she really wants to do is move away from Orange County. Staying in one place is not her nature, but she won't leave him, not with their parents as chaotic as they are.

Jason remembers sitting for hours in that bunker, wondering the fate of his sister as dust fell around them and the younger children cried and cried. He remembers this, every detail of it, but in his mind the heavy door is suddenly opening and he's released from the bunker. He'd run away from the warning calls of his teachers and into the depths of the city. In his memory, all that flashes before him is fragments of light through the mangled corpse of his city as he runs - he wasn't sure where to. The army base is too far away so he tried to find home, thinking in blind naiivity that Thalia would be there waiting for him, safe.

He runs miles that day, under the baking sun through rubble and ruin to find her, but his house is empty when he reaches it. It's hours later that Jason hears from the mouth of a soldier that his sister died defending their city, swatted from the sky like a fly. But now he sits on the road outside his home and prays for her to return; silently at first, and then out loud until he is screaming his sister's name and drawing blood with the nails he digs into his palm. He sits, rocking back and forth as he cries his sister's name over and over again and he is a small child running.

Running through a city which quakes and his father is gone. He is eight years old, his legs burn with exhaustion, cheeks raw from tears, lungs gasping too sharply. Percy cries out for his dad, not understanding where he has gone, why he has left him. He just needs to find him, then everything will be okay, all of this will just - stop. The world shakes, throwing Percy off balance so that he stumbles forward, landing hard on his knees and the heels of his hands. He sits up, choking tears as he looks down at his torn skin. It burns like someone is holding a flame against him and he presses his hands against his stomach, trying to stop it hurting but it doesn't work. The enormous crashes are getting closer and closer and all Percy can do is stare up at the buildings around him as too big shadows block the sun from the sky. It's right there, the Kaiju, all big limbs and armoured skin and Percy can't move. The creature crashes through a building, throwing rubble everywhere and getting closer and closer but Percy is motionless on the sidewalk. He stares up at the monster bearing down on him and he can't move, can't move, can't move.

Jason wakes slowly, breathing in, out, and feels his surroundings bear in on him. It's the monitor first; the steady beep, beep, beep. Then the sheets, scratchy on his skin. Then the white light of the room, pale behind his eyelids. And then the warm hand covering his, not tightly grasping, but loosely holding.

He still feels sluggish as he drags his eyes open and stares at the white ceiling, stripped with long bars of light. Jason blinks, his eyes slowly adjusting to the light, and looks down the bed where his body lies motionless under the white sheets and thin grey blanket. His bed is the only one in the relatively small, rectangular room. The wall he faces is made of glass through which he can see the empty nurse's station barely illuminated. He can just make out the long desk of the station - most of the glass reflects his own room back at him. Before he can linger too long on the purple bruises smattering his face, his attention is diverted to the figure leaning on the edge of his bed.

Her face is turned towards him, next to the hand she holds, her hair in disarray, dark circles painted below her closed eyes and Jason's heart actually skips a beat at the sight of her. He hears the disruption on the machine next to him and involuntary squeezes her hand. Piper stirs, blinking and frowning all at once as she looks up at him.

"Jason!" she exclaims, sitting bolt upright and pushing hair out of her face. She's wearing jeans and a soft, pink sweater; so different from the dark body armour or the combat pants and tank top he's accustomed to seeing her in.

"Hey," he croaks, wiping sleep from his eyes and wincing as he agitates the bruised skin there. He coughs to clear his throat and tries not to show his pain.

"Oh my god, you're awake. I'll just get the nurse. How are you feeling?" She's standing up now, her hands fluttering over him like moths wings.

Jason reaches for her hand, causing her to stop and look down at him. "How long have I been out?"

Piper worries her lip between her teeth as she takes a seat on the uncomfortable looking plastic chair again. "Since the surgery, three days."

The breath goes out of him, the monitor voices his racing heart. "What? Oh god, where's Percy? Is he okay?"

Piper nods quickly, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles. "He's fine. Nothing more than a few broken ribs. He's been here more than I have but I made him go and sleep."

Jason relaxes into the pillows, nodding.

Piper squeezes his hand. "I'm gonna get the nurse."

The nurse looks happy when he comes in and presses a few buttons on the machines next to Jason's bed. He leans over Jason, peering at him intently and Jason shrinks away a little.

"How are you feeling?" the nurse asks, his accent strong.

"Pretty sluggish. I can't really move, is that normal?" He was slowly discovering this and trying not to let the panic seep into his voice.

"That's the drugs," the nurse reassures him but there's just a flicker of something - shock? concern? - on his face before it settles into that calm demeanour again. "We've had you on a high dosage but I expect the doctor will want to reduce it. I will get her now."

He leaves and Jason is left alone with Piper again, who moves away from the glass wall she'd been leaning against to stand next to the bed. Jason reaches for her hand without processing the movement. It just feels natural to do so, even though he's never really done it before. Sure, he'd thought about it plenty, but actually acting on his thoughts? Jason can climb into a giant armoured robot to fight outer-world monsters without a second thought, but the idea of holding Piper McLean's hand, brushing her choppy, brown hair behind her ear, pulling her bitten lip from between her teeth with his thumb and kissing her mouth… that was something else. Something he had yet to build up the courage to do.

Jason is still watching her - blaming the drugs completely for the likely dopey expression on his face - when the nurse returns with the doctor.

"Jason," the nurse says, "this is Doctor Mikasi, she's the surgeon who operated on you. Her English isn't very strong so I will translate if that's okay with you?"

Jason nods, looking at the doctor; a five foot nothing woman in her mid-forties with lines around her mouth and sharp, dark eyes which are focused on him with some intensity. He immediately feels like he can trust her. But he already has, he realises suddenly, she brought him back from whatever brink he had been on.

She doesn't smile as she approaches the bed, ushering Piper out of the way. Her gaze is sharp, clinical. Her hands are cold on his skin as she places them on either side of his neck and slowly moves his head from one side to the other. Jason lets her do this, feeling no resistance or pain, and reassuring the nurse of this when he asks. The doctor moves slowly down his body, pulling the sheets away bit by bit and revealing the blue striped gown he wears over his bruised skin.

The doctor's cold fingers prod his shoulders, arms, chest, waist, hips… and then she stops. Jason lifts his head to see why. But she hasn't - she hasn't stopped. Her hands are on his left thigh, thumbs pushing lightly into the muscle - he can see the pressure through the gown but… nothing. He can't feel anything.

She's looking up at him when he says, "I can't feel that. Is that the drugs? Why can't I feel that?"

Her composure doesn't slip as she continues to move down his left leg, and then his right. And he can't feel a thing. Not his thighs or knees or calves or feet. Nothing. Jason feels panic rise in him as her face remains passive. He tries to pull himself up in the bed, dragging his upper body with his elbows but his legs won't respond. It must be the drugs, he tells himself, that's why she's so calm. She knows this will wear off and he will feel them again, he'll be able to move them again.

She says something then, in the language Jason has become so used to hearing over the past few months they've been positioned in Tokyo but still has no understanding of. He looks to the nurse desperately for understanding, whose composure has not remained so intact as the doctor's. He looks down at Jason with pity, his voice gentle as he speaks.

"When the Kaiju attacked your Jaeger, you were plugged in-"

"Of course I was," he says, irritated. "Tell me what's wrong now."

The nurse stays patient with him. "Jason, the left side of the Jaeger was destroyed - your side - you're lucky to be alive. But there was substantial damage."

"My legs were on fire," he says, remembering, voice a raspy whisper. "My back…"

He's unable to finish the thought. Piper comes to stand next to him, gripping his shoulder tightly in her small hand. He can feel her strength as though it is seeping into him, but it does little to calm him.

The nurse exchanges a look with Mikasi who nods slightly. He looks at Jason again and takes a breath.

"Your spine was broken. Doctor Mikasi tried to salvage your spinal cord in the surgery but there was too much damage to the lower part of your back. She couldn't be sure how much effect it had until you woke up and…"

"And what?" Piper asks because Jason doesn't. He is staring at his immobile legs as if they do not belong to him.

"Jason, you're paralysed from the waist down."

He expects the words to summon some sort of response from himself, but it doesn't. He just stares at his legs as Piper yells at the nurse, at the doctor, at anyone who will listen to fix him, they have to be able to fix him. They have to do something. He's a pilot, a fighter, has been since he was eighteen years old and joined the army. It's all he's known for so long that the idea of it being taken from him seems laughable.

But here he lies, trapped in a body that can no longer carry him into battle and all he feels is numb.

His favourite thing about piloting a jaeger is not the adrenaline, or the fame, or even fighting alongside his best friend, it's the feeling that he is unstoppable. Climbing into that beast of a machine makes Jason feel like he can do absolutely anything, all boundaries are gone. Walls turn to dust at his feet, oceans are mere puddles to step across, unbeatable monsters become equals in battle.

But now he is in a cage.

He already feels the restraints as he lies in bed and Piper screams at the nurse to help him. He looks up only when a cold hand touches his arm, and finds the stern face of the doctor.

"Strength comes from within," she says slowly, the words unfamiliar on her tongue.

And then she leaves, beckoning the nurse with her, and Piper sinks into the chair in defeat. Jason looks up at her, and she has never felt so distant from him. He has never felt more alone.

"Alignment one hundred percent. Good job, ladies."

Piper blinks, clearing her eyes of the flashbulb memory of Hazel playing tag in the schoolyard, and looks over at the real Hazel. In a ten second timeframe, Piper has lived Hazel's whole life. It's exhilarating, and Piper feels like she's plugged into something greater. The first seconds of the drift are always rough, making her brain feel like it's imploding, but the afterwards - a kind of shared high - is what makes it worth it. Better than a cup of coffee at three in the morning.

Hazel has her hand on the comm button. "Thank you, sir. Initializing startup sequence."

Full Metal Belle revs and groans as she comes to life, both Piper and Hazel pound their fists together, ensuring that Belle is ready for a fight.

"Kaiju signature detected twenty-three miles off the coast of Okinawa," Leo says, his voice in Piper's ear. "Minimal civilian casualties likely, but keep that son of a bitch off land."

Piper and Hazel say, in unison, "Got it."

In the time it takes for Belle to be heli-vacced to the drop zone, Hazel asks the one question she already has the answer to but wants to hear Piper say. "How's Jason?"

Hazel can probably feel him all over Piper's thoughts. She can't help but think about him all the time, She worries that he'll try to get out of bed again and fall, that he'll keep refusing his pain pills because of some deluded determination to suffer, that he'll sleep all day and night and keep asking "What's the point anymore?" It shatters Piper in two, but she sews herself back up .

"Come on, Hazel, don't make me say it."

"I just need to know because I need you. Jason needs you back there, but I need you right here. Are you here?"

Piper closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, in and out. She nods. "I'm here."

Hazel's features soften. Piper gets an itch in her mind, one about Frank, but Piper doesn't scratch it. It's obvious enough without the drift the way Hazel feels about him - their long walks together after dinner, their secrets whispered into each others ears, their innocent kisses and innocent touches. It's sweet. Hazel would probably feel the same way Piper does about Jason if it had happened to Frank.

"I just…" Piper begins. Hazel waits to let her finish. "I can't do anything about it. I can't fix it. I can't make time rewind. I feel like I'm -"

Hazel knows where it's going. "You want to do something for Jason? Do this." She points to the holographic projection of the outside world, zooming over lush trees and sandy beaches. It would be the perfect vacation spot if everything wasn't so shit. Piper wishes maybe one day she could visit without having to fight a Kaiju first.

"If we're not in the way, the Kaiju are taking over this planet," Hazel says. "Jason needs you in more ways than one."

"You're right. I'm here," she says. And again, mostly to herself, "I'm here."

This is the one thing she can do. And it just so happens to be the one thing she's good at.

The cables release and Belle drops. She lands in the soft silt of the ocean floor, the sea up to her waist, and they walk.

"Kaiju spotted, dead ahead," Piper says, picking up the pace.

Category 4. Codename: Silverback. A roaring monster, slamming its hulking claws into the water, furious that they dare intercept. Its scream echoes through Belle's metal skull. Piper bares her teeth. She's going to enjoy this.

"Come on, Piper!" Hazel shouts, revving her own engines.

They run, Hazel activates the hologram, and Piper yells.

Where Bronco Thunder's specialty was physical force, Full Metal Belle relies on something special.

The Kaiju falters, confused, because Belle has multiplied. Where there was one, now there is three. Equal illusions, all charging forward at full speed. The Kaiju scans between them all as it tries to find the original and its hesitation is its downfall.

The real Belle slams into the Kaiju and Piper takes out all of her frustration on its face.

...

Piper finds Jason in his room, but he's not alone. A handful of nurses and are standing around his bed, one of them is holding onto the handles of a wheelchair. Jason's voice carries because he's shouting. Piper lingers at his door, out of view from Jason's bed, and she holds the cups of coffee she brought to share with him closer to her chest.

"I won't do it!" Jason says, over and over again. She can hear desperation there. "This is not going to happen! You're can't make me!"

"Mister Grace," the nurse says, his voice level. "A wheelchair can provide the mobility -"

"I told you, I'm not doing it! I'm not! Get out!"

No one moves.

"I said get out!"

There's a clatter of something hitting the floor and Piper bites her lip. She presses herself up against the open door as the nurses file out, shaking their heads and muttering in Japanese. Piper takes a breath.

It's been six months since Jason's accident. Six months of sitting in bed. Six months of watching her fight Kaiju after Kaiju - and winning - from the sterile white walls of his hospital room. Six months of thinking and overthinking and thinking some more. Six months without the ability to go anywhere without a doctor constantly looking over his condition and checking once again.

It's like he's in a prison cell. His temper flares, his anger gets the best of him, because she knows all he wants to do is go home. He wants to get back up with Bronco Thunder and do what he's always done, brush himself off and keep on going.

Piper steels herself and steps into his room. On the floor is his lunch tray, with his sandwich lying in pieces on the tile, an apple wedged under the wheels of his bed, and Jell-o cup unopened near her feet and still perfectly good. Jason is wearing his glasses as he watches the small television in the corner of his private room, his thumb hovering over the button on the remote to change the channel but he doesn't because he's watching Full Metal Belle's latest victory.

She sets the coffee cups down on the bedside table and stoops low to pick up his Jell-o. When she stands back up, Jason is looking at her. His brow soothes when their eyes meet and his face reddens.

"Did you hear all of that?" he asks.

Piper doesn't reply. She takes a napkin from his table, wraps the base of the cup in it, opens the top, and stabs a spoon through it.

"Cherry's the best," she says, handing the cup to him.

He takes it and stiffens his lip. She goes about picking up the rest of his lunch and throws them all away in the trash. Near the door is his wheelchair, left behind when the nurses walked out. She glances at it and then takes a seat near his bed. Jason idly picks at the Jell-o with his spoon.

Piper leans back in her chair and watches the segment with him. It's nothing she hasn't seen before. Last night was a tough battle. Her bicep is still sore after the hell it went through. She massages it absently and takes a sip of her coffee.

Together they sit in quiet as the newscaster's voice fills the room. She's professional and formal - and though Piper doesn't understand what she's saying - she's excited to announce Belle's latest toy line. They show reels of children lining up at stores buying their own models and holding them up to the camera with wide-eyed joy.

Jason's eyes flick up and stay on the screen. He must remember when Bronco Thunder had a pair of sneakers modeled after her design. Too bad none would be like it anymore. The Jaeger had been too badly damaged and got scrapped. His eyes fall back down again to his Jell-o but he still doesn't eat it.

"I'm sorry," he says. "About the mess…"

She doesn't call him out on his behavior. He knows what he did, who he should really be apologizing to. All she does is nod and sip her coffee once more.

"Let's watch something a little more interesting, hm?" She steals the remote from his hand and scrolls through the channels until she finds some cartoons. She can feel Jason's eyes on her but she doesn't make any mind. All she wants to do is move forward.

...

Weeks go by, it's raining. Piper, on her daily visit, opens the blinds to his window and looks out at the soaked Tokyo metropolis. A sea of umbrellas continue marching down sidewalks and cars are seemingly parked in a never-ending traffic jam.

Percy is here. He had stopped by earlier in the morning and hasn't left since. Granted, neither has Piper, but the rain has delayed a lot of the training exercises. Percy's still grounded. He hasn't found another co-pilot yet. Part of Piper thinks that he doesn't want one.

Jason watches Percy play around in his wheelchair, like Percy is a child with nothing else to do - which is more accurate than it should be. For the first time in a while, Jason is smiling.

"Ooh, watch," Percy says. "I can pop a wheelie." He does, balancing on the rear wheels and teetering dangerously.

"You're gonna fall, bro," Jason says.

"Nah. I'm a master already."

Percy, being Percy, overcompensates and nearly falls backwards if not for Annabeth standing right behind him. She catches him just before it's too late and rights him back up onto four wheels. Immediately, Percy stands, flushed and shocked. There's a hint of a smile on Annabeth's lips that Piper almost misses before it's gone. It's strange seeing her in civilian clothes, like seeing a teacher outside of school.

"How are you feeling?" Annabeth asks of Jason. He must be sick and tired of answering the question. But he's a pro, and he answers as he always does.

"Fine," he says.

"The doctor tells me you're still refusing your wheelchair."

Jason doesn't meet her eyes. It's hard to look at her straight on, even under normal circumstances. "I don't want it."

Annabeth glances at Piper and sighs. The look says everything. Piper subtly nods. Annabeth and Jason had enrolled in the military at the same time, went through the same training, graduated side-by-side. While Jason was attracted to piloting, Annabeth was drawn to command. Even though Annabeth might have known Jason the longest, Annabeth understands that there are some things he doesn't want to admit, even to her. That's why she trusts Piper. As a commander, she notices the details.

"Well," Annabeth says. "I guess there's not much else we can do then. If you don't want it, you don't want it."

Jason is staring at his legs, his lips pressed into a thin, white line. He has too much pride for his own good.

Annabeth clears her throat and heads toward the door. "Percy, I think everyone could use a cup of coffee. Can you help me?"

"Yeah, sure," Percy says, knitting his brow in confusion and glancing back at Jason and Piper. He follows Annabeth out and leaves the door open.

Piper waits a few more seconds, listening to Annabeth and Percy's footsteps carry on down the hall before she approaches Jason's bed and sits down in the chair beside it. He won't even look at her. The rain is tapping on the window while they share silence.

"If you don't tell them, at least tell me," she murmurs. "Why don't you want the wheelchair?"

Jason shakes his head, sucking in his bottom lip, and he turns from her, but in order to do that, he has to look toward the wheelchair. His eyes fall on it and he settles with staring at the ceiling. He still refuses to speak, so Piper does the speaking for him.

"If I were you, I guess I would understand, but I'm not, and I'm not a mind reader, so you have to talk to me."

Jason lets out a breath of exasperation and shakes his head. "Please, don't."

"What? Don't what?

"I don't want to be…" Jason trails off, avoiding the question, his eyes growing misty as the words don't want to be said.

"It's okay," she says, taking his hand. His fingers are cold.

Jason holds his breath, readies himself. Whatever he's going to say, he's going to mean. "I don't want to be looked down on. Literally, looked down on. I'm going to spend the rest of my life in that chair. People are going to treat me different, treat me like I'm weak, and I'm not. I don't want to be."

"You're not weak and you won't ever be. The wheelchair isn't what defines you."

"Everything is going to be different. I'm going to have to move, find a place to live that's wide enough for me to get through doorways, with a sink low enough for me to use, with a toilet that's…" Jason pinches the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses and takes a shuddering breath.

Piper hopes he won't start crying. If he does, she most certainly will. She wants to be strong with him. But her heart is in pieces and lying on the floor of her chest. He has been there since Piper's beginning. He was the one who trained her, pushed her limits, picked her for the Jaeger program because he saw something in her that no one else did. He was two years older than she, two years more experienced. But he was always there.

"I don't want to lose hope that one day I'm going to walk again," he says, his voice an empty shell.

Piper's eyes burn. She reaches out and strokes down the short hairs near Jason's temple, smoothing out the ones that have gone astray. She's never done anything like that, anything that close, but she feels like he needs assurance that someone is there.

"It's healthy to have hope," she says, "but you don't have to give that up when you sit in that chair. You know what isn't healthy? Staying in this bed."

"Piper, I can't," he says, holding onto her hand that's near his face. "I'm embarrassed. People will stare, will wonder what happened to me and feel sorry for me. And treat me like I'm someone that's… sad. A has-been. A nobody."

Piper cradles his jaw in her palm and makes Jason look at her.

"Not to me," she says.

Jason closes his eyes and leans into her palm. His cheek is warm and soft, but Piper is there. She always wants to be there.

It's strange, how quickly he can get into a routine. But once he gets his ass out of that bed, Jason pushes himself into this new life with a determination second to none. It's hard, harder than anything he's ever done before. And still - nine months after breaking his spine - he wakes up some days wanting to simply lie there and give up. Some days, it's close to impossible to drag himself out of bed and into the wheelchair, but he still does it. He still pulls himself up and pushes himself because he has to.

Jason wakes up on a Tuesday morning exactly two months after he first sat in a wheelchair in his room at the Jaeger base in San Francisco. He leans over and hits his alarm clock to get it to quit yelling at him and lies on his back again, staring up at the low, grey ceiling. Her remembers what it's like to sit up and place his feet on the floor, feeling the cold metal bite his skin and curling his toes in response. He remembers standing, stretching his arms above his head and feeling the satisfying clicks of his joints as he drew himself to full height.

Now, the first thing he does is reach for his chair, making sure it is lined up next to the bed so that he can pull himself into it. It's a smaller model than the first one he'd sat in; lighter, with a lower back and bigger wheels. It gives him more agility and ease of movement, but it had taken him a few weeks to get used to. Still, his arms ache by lunchtime and he's in the gym with Percy most days, doing bench presses. Percy stands there, spotting him and being all psyched about how Jason is lifting almost twice his old weight now.

Percy still hasn't found a co-pilot, something Jason feels equal relief and guilt over. Percy has always fought like he was born to do so, each movement in their Jaeger had been so natural, unthinking. And sitting back and watching his friends go into battle is killing him. Jason wants to see Percy in his element again, he doesn't want Percy to be bound to the sidelines with him. But at the same time, the idea of Percy fighting with someone else, being drift compatible with someone else… the little green monster crawls onto Jason's shoulder and whispers in his ear that it is wrong, all wrong. But Percy has to go back into a Jaeger, he doesn't belong on this side of the war they are fighting.

Jason adjusts himself in his chair and rolls himself into the adjacent bathroom, stopping in front of the low sink and splashing water into his face. The icy water does a good job of waking him up and he immediately feels more equipped to face the day. Moving around his room to get himself washed and dressed takes far more time than it did when he could walk, but far less time than it had when he first started using the chair. In the beginning, he was assisted by a nurse for everything, it had been humiliating. That acted as a good motivator to get himself living independently again.

With his move out of the hospital just over a month ago, the whole team had been shipped back to the West coast of the U.S. More specifically, San Francisco. Jason had been equally nervous and excited to return to his first base. The move had been made easier with his modified room which allows him to move around in a wheelchair with far more ease than the small hospital room had.

He dresses into camo pants, which cover the way his legs have rapidly lost muscle mass, and a t-shirt under a blue hoodie with the Bronco Thunder logo on the back. Jason pulls the hoodie straight when a knock sounds at the door, reverberating loudly on the metal.

"Come in," he calls.

The door cranks open and standing there, in black pants and a purple vest top, is Piper McLean, mercifully carrying two cups of coffee. She smiles tiredly at him and blinks slowly - as if she contemplates not opening her eyes again each time. Jason chuckles softly at the sight of her; all sleepy and beautiful.

"Morning," he says.

"Mm," she grunts in response. "I have coffee."

Jason wheels himself towards her. "I can see that. I'm meeting the new recruits in the Shatterdome, want a lift?"

Piper rubs her nose with the back of her hand and stares down at him. "Really?"

He shrugs, pushing on his wheels so that he rolls back and forth in front of her. "There's got to be some perks of having a boyfriend in a wheelchair."

She stiffens just a bit at his words and frowns. "Jason-"

He sighs, reaching a hand up to tug on her arm. "I'm kidding, Pipes. I have been known to do that sometimes. Come on, sit on my lap."

That cracks a small smile out of her but she still bites her lip, looking at him with apprehension, like she's about to commit some form of abuse. "Okay," she says eventually, with an enormous sigh.

Jason grins as she settles onto his lap and he pulls her more firmly onto him when she fidgets and looks like she's about to fall off. "See," he says, rolling them out of the room. "This isn't so bad, huh?"

Piper reaches over his shoulder to push the door shut behind them and leans into his chest as they move down the corridor. She is cradling the cups of coffee still, her cheeks painted pink with a blush and Jason wants to kiss her right there and then.

"I think I've found my new mode of transport," she replies, kissing his cheek.

"No distracting the pilot, m'am."

Piper snorts. "Dork."

"Hey," he says. "You knew what you were getting yourself into."

Jason thinks back to those weeks and months he had bound himself to that hospital bed, drowning in self-pity and depression. Piper had kept him afloat during that time, so had Percy, and Annabeth, in her own way. Jason had looked to Piper with a feeling of disbelief every time she stepped through the door to his room because he had not been able to understand why, why she kept coming back to him everyday when he had given her nothing in return.

And when he'd first sat in that wheelchair, she had grinned at him like he'd just hung the moon and bent down to kiss him, hard, on the lips.

"Why?" he'd ask her afterwards. "Why would you want to be with me when I'm stuck like this? I can't- Piper, you deserve-"

"Shut up." Her face had been set with a determination Jason had rarely seen before and he'd done as he was told, staring at her as she knelt to his height. "Don't tell me what I deserve, Jason, because if we're playing that game then you deserve a spine that works; Percy deserves a co-pilot who can walk. We all deserve a whole lot better than we get but this is what we've been dealt. And, Jason, I don't care if you're in a wheelchair or not, it doesn't make a difference to me because I want to be with you. I have since I first laid eyes on you."

But I'm not good enough, he wanted to tell her. What if I never get out of this thing? Do you really want to live with this like I have to?

The look of determination on her face had silenced him and he'd found himself reaching for her, his hand curving to the shape of her jaw as she leaned up to him, fitting her lips against his, more gently this time. And right there, Jason had known there was no way back for them.

"You alright, daydreamer?" Piper asks him now, still sitting sideways across his immobile legs.

Jason stops as they enter the shatterdome to let a truck cross their path. He looks up at her, her face still drawn with sleep but no less beautiful for it, and he smiles. "I'm great," he says. And for the first time in such a long time, he really feels it.

A whistle sounds across the enormous room. Piper pulls away and they both look up to see Percy strolling towards them, leading a group of about twenty young men and women in army combats. They all have the composure of a trained soldier but Jason can see the stilted awe in their expressions - wide eyes sweeping the room, the way they swallow when they see Full-Metal Belle standing in the middle of the room. He remembers when he first walked into the Shatterdome - this very one. Two years in the army had not prepared him for the sight of a Jaeger. It had seemed too big to conceive, towering above him like a building made of immovable stone, not a machine destined to move and run and fight with agility.

As Percy approaches them with the new recruits, Piper climbs off Jason's lap, handing him a coffee cup and placing her free hand on his shoulder. She squeezes gently, a sign of support, as Jason throws her a grateful smile.

"I'll see you later," she says. "You'll do great."

It's not like these are the first new recruits he has trained, but Jason has never been in a wheelchair to do it before.

Percy nods at her before she leaves. Then he grins at Jason and sweeps an arm over the new recruits who stand in an awkward group, looking very much like they would like to be yelled at to stand up straight in a line.

"Here are your victims," Percy says. "Do with them as you please."

Jason rolls his eyes. "Thanks, buddy."

Instead of leaving, Percy looks past Jason and nods to someone. A moment later, Frank is standing next to his wheelchair, panting.

"Wanted to meet the new recruits," Frank says as a greeting.

Jason smiles at him before turning to the group still standing silently in front of them.

"Good morning," he says, gaining every person's attention. "Welcome to the Shatterdome. You have been selected for this program based on your military records, your behaviours, and the sharp eye of a few experienced pilots." The group watch him intently as he speaks and Jason finds that he has drawn himself higher in his chair out of habit, his hands holding the rubber treads of his wheels as opposed to being clasped behind his back like they used to be. "I will be training you while you are here, preparing you to pilot a Jaeger. Frank," Jason says, gesturing to him, "will take over for the physical aspect of your training as obviously I won't be much good in that area."

He smiles as he says it and earns a few surprised chuckles in response.

He continues, "This training will be the hardest of your life, and the most rewarding. It will challenge you mentally, physically and emotionally. You will be pushed to your limits and then pushed some more. A lot of people think that brute force will win a fight, but a smart woman told me once that strength comes from within. And those words got me through the most difficult time of my life."

They are all staring at him with something he hopes is awe. Jaeger pilots are treated a bit like celebrities and the downfall of Bronco Thunder had been widely televised so Jason is sure they know what he's referring to.

He turns his wheelchair around, catching Percy's grin and returning it only for a moment before smoothing his expression into professionalism again. He pushes himself forward, not looking over his shoulder as he says,

"Now, if you'll follow me."