[ When Mako was very, very small, she used to slip outside of her family’s small abode and race into the fields in the dead of the night, giggling and picking her way through the grass and freshly plowed land to find her secret place, the place where she’d go and stare at the stars and watch, wonder, hope. Out there, she thinks, is beauty beyond her wildest dreams – places that she can only think of in her imagination, that only come to life when she closes her eyes and wills them to be so.
Perhaps out there, it is not so difficult. Out there, it is perfect, she thinks, and as she spreads the blanket and settles her body down on her back, legs splayed and eyes wide, she imagines her paradise and what it must be like.
***
Now that she is older, Mako does not have time for such childish fantasies. There is a war, there is death and decay all around, there is fear and uncertainty and despair. She fights because she must, because she is driven, because there is no other option. She fights for her family, for the future of humanity, for life. She spends all of her time with Gipsy Danger, cooing at the giant mech and putting her lifeblood into the restoration project and her training.
She does not have time for the stars anymore.
***
The war is over and monotony has settled in; she goes on numerous press tours with Raleigh Becket, smiling and waving to the people though it is a hollow thing, because a piece of her died that day in the breach. She gives interviews, talks limitedly about her experiences, and leans on her co-pilot when the weight becomes to much to bear.
She stays in Hong Kong, pushing for the Academy to be reopened, for the Jaeger program to be reinstated and she fights for it in Stacker’s name, advising that everything may not be as it seems. They came once, they could come again. There is no harm in being ready, in being prepared.
It is exhausting and late one night she goes to the very, very top of the Shatterdome, climbs through the hatch and sits there, staring out into the abyss of the Pacific before turning her eyes back up to the stars, taking note of their existence for the first time since she was a little girl. ]
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Perhaps out there, it is not so difficult. Out there, it is perfect, she thinks, and as she spreads the blanket and settles her body down on her back, legs splayed and eyes wide, she imagines her paradise and what it must be like.
Now that she is older, Mako does not have time for such childish fantasies. There is a war, there is death and decay all around, there is fear and uncertainty and despair. She fights because she must, because she is driven, because there is no other option. She fights for her family, for the future of humanity, for life. She spends all of her time with Gipsy Danger, cooing at the giant mech and putting her lifeblood into the restoration project and her training.
She does not have time for the stars anymore.
The war is over and monotony has settled in; she goes on numerous press tours with Raleigh Becket, smiling and waving to the people though it is a hollow thing, because a piece of her died that day in the breach. She gives interviews, talks limitedly about her experiences, and leans on her co-pilot when the weight becomes to much to bear.
She stays in Hong Kong, pushing for the Academy to be reopened, for the Jaeger program to be reinstated and she fights for it in Stacker’s name, advising that everything may not be as it seems. They came once, they could come again. There is no harm in being ready, in being prepared.
It is exhausting and late one night she goes to the very, very top of the Shatterdome, climbs through the hatch and sits there, staring out into the abyss of the Pacific before turning her eyes back up to the stars, taking note of their existence for the first time since she was a little girl. ]