goodbye, childhood.

[synchronised]

❝ We were born without equal. ❞
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( dinner with the children of war. )

[rageful]

[When Chuck thinks about his childhood, he is unable to recall much about it at all except a sad jumble of objects: the scuffed sneakers he wore year-round; comics from old newspapers and a box of wrenches; his dad's knackered old bomber jacket; little of interest, less of beauty. Because, let's be honest here: Chuck Hansen was pretty much raised in a cockpit. And, in reality, he cannot remember much else about those years except a certain mood that permeated everything he did: a distinctly restless, melancholy feeling that he associates with spending weekends alone with the dog, consumed by an ever mounting, general sense of dread and of imprisonment within the strict context of military training, circumstances which, to him (in his preteen years) at least, presented sound empirical argument for gloom and a poor temper. He felt that his existence was tainted, somehow, in a subtle and angry way.

It was no surprise, then, that Chuck had considerable trouble reconciling his life and his consequent behavior to anyone else around him (especially anyone who did not have the same background). This attitude made him...difficult to deal with; it seemed as if there was always something sheeted about him, some forced obliqueness that made him frustrating to grasp and understand (and hard to forgive, too).

Right now, it is 6:20 in the evening and his temper is, unsurprisingly, worse for wear. It is a weekend and his civilian clothing hangs off of him like something borrowed; he looks displaced in them. He croushes down onto his haunches and is re-lacing his boots near the door of the mess hall, his fingers moving in a mean-spirited way, determined and distant. Tug, loop, tug. Rudimentary, but he is impatient.

(And ugh, damn if he's not just barkin' right about now. He really shouldn't have skipped lunch --)

When he stands back up, he does it too fast and he almost shoulders her in the face.] Oi. [He voice curls out of him with an acidic sting, but the violence of the sound fails to reach his eyes.] Watch it, Mori. [A pause.] What's the rush? 'fraid they're gonna run outta that blue jelly you like so much? [The tease is apparent in the uptick of his lips.]

[synchronised]

[ Raleigh Becket's helicopter arrives right on time — a fact which both surprises and annoys Mako, for reasons she doesn't understand until later. She spends their first forty five minutes together eyeing him from under the sharp cut of her bangs, constantly assessing and reassessing her work as she couches behind the paperwork barricade of her clipboard. The mental image that she'd spent the past few years perfecting in her mind has turned out to be anything but. She isn't wrong though (wrong is too solid a word, too hard and immoveable, while the situation is fluid); rather, she's been mistaken.

Where she'd expected someone brash and impetuous she'd been met instead by a man who was more even tempered. Older; playful but respectful. The kind of man who would come after a loss like Anchorage, a shadow of the jaeger jockey he'd once been evident in the crook of his smile (but nowhere to be found in his eyes). She watches him as introductions are made — to the other jaegers, to their pilots, to Gipsy reborn. While each holds her scrutiny only the last demands her fascination and while they stand at the railing together, watching Gipsy Danger be bathed by a shower of golden sparks, Mako thinks for the first time she can understand something about Raleigh Becket. Not in a studied, academic way but in a way that relies on personal experience. (He loves that jaeger. They both do.)

Again, more curiosity. Again, more irritation. (Her mind isn't changed about Becket, but the wind just seems to be blowing in a slightly different direction.) Mako's still thinking about it when she makes her way to the mess hall and almost collides bodily with someone she hasn't seen in a few months.

Though they'd eyed each other from afar in the ready bay, Mako had paid twice as much attention to Chuck's dog than to Chuck himself. But now having him this close, the first thing she notices is that he's overdue for a haircut. He's also gotten new silencers for his dog tags, which wink mutedly in the warehouse lighting from above. She wonders if the noise of them jangling inside of his shirt had finally, finally started to get to him.

These are thoughts she keeps to herself of course, though the possibility of them flashes briefly across her expression before she presses her mouth down to a flat line. This is how so many of their exchanges go: one of them being more than their fair of being amused, the other unimpressed by the effort. By now, it's practically rote. ]

Ranger Hansen. [ Where so often her clipboard could come up between herself and the person she's speaking to, Mako allows it to fall to her side, the edge of it gripped loosely by her fingers. It's an old habit from when they were both young and would grandstand at one another; Mako's unspoken way of telling Chuck she wasn't afraid of him. ]

You should have come earlier. [ Her tone is matter-of-fact, like she's ticking off a box on a list. ] There was youtiao with lunch.

[rageful]

Mori. [He overemphasizes the name the way a child would, blithe and unselfconscious. He rounds on her like a surge, moving as if something wild is inside of him and he is forcibly holding the beast at bay, every muscle tense and wound tight as a bunch of corkscrews. Those who don't know him any better would think he is about to throw a punch (or worse).

...actually, he's just happy to see her.

See, there's a lot that he likes about Mako, even if he doesn’t seem to admit that he does (and frankly, he's shit at showing it too). Side by side, they were actually very much alike, in similarity less of lineament than of manner and bearing, a correspondence of gesture which bounced and echoed between them so that a blink seemed to reverberate, moments later, in a twitch of the other's eyelid. It was a likeness hinged on circumstance: a shared background. But past is past, right? Things are...different now. And more often than not, he passes by her in a rush, these days, his gaze looking somewhere far beyond her shoulders. He turns from her without a hint of acknowledgement, playing as a mere hallucination, a harsh figment of the imagination stalking down the hallway as heedless of her as angry ghosts, in their shadowy rounds, are said to be heedless of the living.

Yes, harsh. If there was one sure thing about Chuck Hansen, it would be that he was, in everything, undoubtedly harsh.

When he finds it in himself to speak again, his voice was garrulous, as if he suddenly came down with a bad case of westie lockjaw. A high-strung timbre winds its way through his teeth.]

Yeah? [He asks in a completely noncommittal way and there is something striking about the way he speaks with extreme brevity and a speedy, careless, go-to-hell tonality.] I knew I smelled them during brekkie. Too bad debriefing ran longer than I thought. Somebody wouldn't shut his goddamn gob. [There is only one person in the world who Chuck would ever refer to in such a wholeheartedly rude manner: his father. But if there is more to the story, he does not elaborate.]