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i. we always had each other
The Buckley siblings were the rockstars of the post-apocalyptic Kaiju hellscape world. They were the brother-sister duo who rose from Pennsylvanian obscurity and neglectful parenting and led the charge against the monstrous, massive invaders of the Breach.
Buck always knew there was something wrong, though. He would never say so at interviews or during psych evaluations – but he always knew Maddie was never fully in the drift.
She was never there.
The drift was the bond, the bridge between minds. Buck gave all of himself to it, let everything wash over him and away; he gave Maddie his past and his future, his secrets and his hopes, and yet Maddie’s drift was blank, a void.
He reached out towards it, prodded at it, poked. At night, when he slept in her head, there was still a vast white space where her soul should be.
Then there was Ragnarok: a Category II with six axe-head arms and an orange, bioluminescent glow. The beating was hard, harsh, and it was as they were thrown a mile inland, off the coast of LA, their skulls rattling in their helmets, did Maddie’s resolve break.
Her walls came down and the drift flooded in. Every little secret, every major secret, every whisper and tear and hidden third sibling came rushing into Buck all at once. He tried to let it pass through, tried not to latch on, but there was too much, and it was all too loud.
He drowned in the drift.
Daniel, Maddie’s voice said in a sob, echoing between his ears. The sibling he was born to save but never could.
Their jaeger may have gotten back up, but Evan Buckley sure didn’t.
ii. first chances
There was something special about drifting with your soulmate, about being in the head of the person you loved most in this world. Bobby and Marcy Nash, a duo for the decade. The drift was full of love, adoration and distinct worry for the other’s wellbeing.
It was why it destroyed Bobby so thoroughly when Marcy died in his head. When she was ripped out of their conn-pod by Yamarashi off the coast of Alaska.
He felt her die.
He felt her fear, her pain, her agony.
They were still connected even when she was in Yamarashi’s mouth, even when its two rows of teeth clamped down on her, threw her in the air, eviscerated her before swallowing the body whole.
Bobby felt it all.
He felt her goodbye, too. Her echoed I love you in the drift.
It was three years later, after disappearing to work on the wall: an anonymous job for an anonymous man that paid enough to feed his drinking habit, that Marshal Grant came to find him, to bring him back into the fold.
He agreed to come with her, but refused to ever climb inside a jaeger again.
He just wanted to see his children, the ones he left alone in an enormous Shatterdome: dead mother, absent father, a thousand mistakes to correct and absolve for.
He refused to let anyone else inside his head.
iii. my best friend
Henrietta Wilson loved Chimney Han, but their drift was always a mess. Best friends as cadets, a tenuous drift that they clung onto with both hands holding tight.
Out on the battlefield, however, they were something to behold.
(“Let’s get this done fast,” Hen would say, loading up the plasma weapon. “It’s date night tonight.”
Chimney’s laugh rolled through her ears and head at once, lilting across the drift. “Of course,” he agreed. “I don’t wanna keep Maddie waiting.”)
iv. the that bomb went off
It was a tragedy that the strongest drift in the Kaiju War’s history came to a collapsing end with their marriage. After nineteen years, Michael and Athena Grant broke, and the drift broke with them.
It was an even bigger tragedy that Michael’s drift dam came crashing down in the midst of a Category III battle; that the pent-up secret he’d been clutching close to his chest (I’m gay, I’m gay, I’m gay) flooded through Athena in a rush of mixed relief and despair.
It was that moment of distraction that cost them their jaeger’s right arm, the splintering pain shooting through them both at once, burning across their skin in tandem.
They left alive, because Michael and Athena weren’t the dying type – but they never piloted a jaeger together again.
v. you can have my back any day
“I don’t want a new partner,” Buck said at the base of the Alaska wall, with five years of Maddie’s death echoing around his mind. “I don’t need anyone else in my head.”
“Are you sure?” Marshal Nash (Robert, Bobby, Pops) replied. “I think you’ll like him.”
(Buck did like Eddie Diaz – he liked his smile and his heart and his eight-year-old son. He liked his confidence and his care and his stretch-out, wide-open palms.
He liked the way he kissed, how he felt tangled up in his arms in the dead of night, the way his voice sounded in the drift; fond, adoring, like he’d seen all the worst parts of Buck and decided to love him anyway.
He made his peace with having Eddie in his head.
Over time, he started to enjoy keeping him there.)
vi. the family we chose
Hen didn’t know how she went from pararescue to ranger, but the day she drifted with Athena, the journey began to make sense.
They all needed someone to have their back, and Hen wouldn’t have wanted anyone else.
(“You ready to show them how it’s done?” Athena asked, standing beside Hen at the miracle mile, a sword drawn for their giant, towering jaeger.
“I like your confidence,” Hen replied, feeling Athena’s glowing pride through the drift.
She liked her friend, too. She liked that they were going to take on the world together.)
vii. I have no brother
Albert Han wasn’t Chimney’s brother, but he was the only cadet at the Hong Kong Shatterdome who Chimney could drift with. Sure, they shared a father and a biological apathy towards dairy, but they weren’t brothers.
Their drift was filled with it: cold interactions with Father and you’re not my brother; two, doting, loving mothers and you’re not my brother; a man loving only one of his two sons and you’re not my brother.
After the battle with Knifehead, Chimney piloted the jaeger for six seconds alone: long enough to give him a nosebleed and a short trip to the ICU after his brain couldn’t handle the strain. When he finally visited his brother in his hospital bed, burnt and bloodied and destroyed, head to toe, he regretted every little thing he sent into the drift.
(“I don’t know when it went from a biological fact to an emotional reality for me,” he said, grasping Albert’s hand, “but you’re my brother and I need you to open your eyes. Please. Open your eyes, Albert.”)
viii. second chances
You might think that when jaeger partners fall out of sync, their drifts irreparably closed to each other, that their careers of saving the world would be over. But not Bobby Nash and Athena Grant.
After Marcy’s and his children’s deaths, Bobby drank for weeks until all the feelings went away and he was left with a distant, vague numbness. And after Michael’s coming out and subsequent divorce, Athena swore she’d never pilot again, never trust again. No one was stepping into her head, into her vulnerability – not while she was still standing.
But Ranger Nash and Ranger Grant were never the type to stop doing what was right. And when an old, busted jaeger was restored and in need of two new pilots, they were the first in line to sign up.
Their drift was strong and steady, and they would be too, as long as they had each other.
ix. your heart outside your body
He’d already lost two children to the Kaiju and he desperately didn’t want to lose a third.
That’s why he pushed Buck away; that’s why he refused to pilot a jaeger with him. Bobby couldn’t bear the thought of walking Buck to his death, of feeling his death on constant repeat in his own mind.
But Evan Buckley was not the type to sit down and do nothing. He was the type who had to help, who had to do right by other people, so Bobby couldn’t say no when Buck pleaded with him to get back in that jaeger, to fight by his side once again when the Category IV emerged from the Breach.
They were the only thing standing in its way. They had to do this.
(In the drift, Bobby clung onto his son, silently begging him to be careful.
Aloud, in the conn-pod of their jaeger, Buck replied, “It’s alright, Pops. You’ve got me. Besides, you can always find me in the drift.”)