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“Hey Kari, you hungry?”
The tiny body clinging to his back hums thoughtfully, unconcerned, her arms wrapped around his neck. “No,” she states, voice small and decisive.
“Then you don’t actually want this mac and cheese you asked me to make?” he says with a bemused laugh.
There’s a gasp of mild horror and then another thoughtful hum – she always has been an incredibly expressive child, even before she could string sentences together – before she comes to a decision. “No. Wait for mommy.”
“All right, sounds good.” He turns the heat off before turning away from the stove, leaving the boiling water to cool. She is basically only holding on to him around the neck, but he knows exactly how strong she is. If she slips, he’ll catch her. It becomes a game they play – he walks around the apartment and cooks and does a little work at his desk and does laps around their tiny garden and she just clings to him like a monkey, giggling quietly because she feels like she’s pulling a fast one on him.
Raleigh never would have called being a dad. Being a good dad seemed like an even bigger impossibility. But when the world finally released the breath it had been holding and humanity began to rebuild, a lot of things suddenly seemed possible.
His daughter laughs softly in his ears, and the sound makes him smile even though his neck’s getting tired. “Kiddo, you mind getting down? Your old man isn’t a Jaeger.” Not anymore, at least.
“Jaeger,” she repeats, her eyes widening just slightly as he slides her to the floor. The word is cloaked in awe – she knows that Jaegers are special. Sometimes she sees her parents on the news – just flashes, mentions of anniversaries or commemorations – and will turn to look at them with dark, pondering eyes that seem far more intelligent than her age should allow. But based on who her mother is, Raleigh isn’t surprised.
+
They didn’t talk about having a kid for years. For so long they could barely managing walking in straight lines, figuring out who they were together without the drift. Without a battle to prepare for.
The world demanded that Mako be a part of the rebuild, and she set her jaw and answered. First Manila, then Tokyo, then down to Sydney and across to Los Angeles. She is a strategist, a planner, and when she speaks people listen.
Raleigh had followed her, a little aimless and in her shadow, but he didn’t mind. Each night she collapsed into bed beside him and had talked through her day. They mulled problems over together, and after many weeks Mako had picked up his hand, staring at the calouses and the scars and pressed her lips gently to a knuckle. “You are so good at reading people, Raleigh,” she had sighed – he can still feel the breath on his hand. “Much better than me."
“That’s not true,” he had replied. “You had me pegged before you even saw me.”
She shifted, tilting her face up at him, a wry smile on her face. “No, I made assumptions based on what had been written about you. It took me longer to understand you. You understood me right away.”
Feeling a little dazed by her words – she was the special one, after all – he had reached up and absently swept her bangs back from her forehead. “I don’t know…”
It turns out she’s right, as usual. He’s not book smart, but he invests in people. After a few discussions with Herc, he had found himself consulting for military personnel offices all over the world, seeing strengths and weaknesses and assembling teams that, together, perform their best work. He sees the connections between people. Strangely, it suits him. He likes it. (“I told you so,” Mako says smugly, and he pretends to ignore her.)
+
They settle in Tokyo, because it’s important to her and he will build his life anywhere so long as it’s around her.
Years go by. Years, filled with her making his coffee the way he likes it without him ever having told her, and him working from home and cooking her favorite meal as she walks through the door and, frankly, earth-shattering sex. Like, a lot of it.
It isn’t until Tendo has a kid - Tendo. A freaking kid. – that Raleigh starts turning the idea over in his head. It seems a crime that the world not benefit from the furthering of Mako’s genes, and the thought of her holding his kid, their kid, in her arms makes something do a slow roll deep inside of him. Suddenly, he wants that version of the future so much it nearly steals the breath from his lungs.
“Do you…” he trails off, suddenly uncertain. She shuts off the screen where they’ve been video chatting with Tendo and his boisterous son, and looks at him with strangely luminous eyes. “Do you ever think about it?”
She knows, of course, what he is talking about even without him saying it. There is a slow smile that lives in the corners of her mouth that makes his chest tighten. The warmth in her eyes makes him giddy, and she nods. “Yeah?” he asks, beaming. “Yes,” she echoes.
+
When their daughter comes, she is nearly a month early and he should have guessed at all that the women in his life will never cease to surprise him. It’s not an easy birth, but Mako is nothing if not resolute, and Raleigh is pretty sure she shifts heaven and earth to bring their child into the world.
Then she’s there, and she is theirs. Raleigh is floored, seeing her tiny, scrunched face peeking out from the blankets in which she is swaddled. Mako looks up at him, sweaty and beyond exhausted, her eyes full of unshed tears. When he leans down and presses his forehead gently to hers, there air seems to bend around them and for an instant it’s like being back in the Drift.
“What do we call her?” Raleigh asks, and he can already feel the answer rising between them.
“Hikari,” Mako breathes. Light.
+
“Kid, where’d you get to?” he calls from his seat in front of the computer, knocking out a few emails before Mako gets back. Somewhere behind him, he can hear Kari crawling around behind some furniture, making indistinct commentary as she battles imaginary monsters.
Quickly, she crawls and pops up beside him. “Here.”
There’s a lot of him in her face – his nose and mouth (though the little curl at the corners is all Mako) and his eyes with a little bit of Mako’s slant. The hair framing her adorably round face is thick, dark and wavy, and they keep it cut at her shoulders for simplicity’s sake.
Raleigh opens his arms as she clambers into his lap and they look at his email together. She studies the screen with intense concentration, though she can’t read the words yet. Just like Mako, Kari gets a tiny frown on her face when she’s thinking hard, a crinkle between her eyebrows. Raleigh is thankful every day that their daughter has the same curiosity, the same fierce sense of purpose, as her mother. “You want to show that puzzle you did earlier to mom when she gets home?”
“Yeah!” Kari tells him, face lighting up with excitement. It had terrified him at first that he would be spending so much time alone with her, working mostly from home and playing with her and helping her learn, but the thrill he gets from each new thing she discovers is a feeling he wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.
Before he can blink, she is clambering out of his arms and running towards the door where, a moment later, he hears the lock turning. With a wry chuckle, he stands.
Mako breezes through the door and immediately leans down to pick up her daughter, who is bouncing up and down and yelling something unintelligible. Slowly, Raleigh approaches them, his chest full. Complete, his mind tells him without being prompted.
“Hikari,” Mako breathes, smiling contentedly. “Kari, Kari, Kari.” She doesn’t say I love you or use pet names, but Raleigh can feel the love rolling off of her in waves, and he knows Kari can too. She’s perceptive, their kid. And right now she is clinging to her mother like she never intends to let go, murmuring something into Mako’s ear in Japanese.
After giving them another moment, Raleigh steps up a touches Mako’s back. “Hey, you.”
Lifting her face from Kari’s hair, Mako beams at him. “Hey, you.” Slipping an arm around her shoulders, he brings her close and presses a kiss to her lips that’s chaste but meaningful. His heart turns over in his chest.
“How was Singapore?” he asks when they pull apart, Kari giggling in Mako’s arms.
She sets Kari down and rolls her suitcase the rest of the way through the door, which he closes behind her. “Good. Long, but good. The walls the city built to keep out sea level rise are deteriorating, and I think we managed to convince them to do something more comprehensive than simply building a taller wall.”
“Walls never seem to do the job,” he answers simply, heading back into the kitchen to start up the stove again. “At least not by themselves.” She touches his wrist, feather light.
“Mommy!” Kari announces with spectacular gravity. “I have something to show you.” Shooting Raleigh an amused glance, Mako follows her into the living room, where Raleigh can hear them discussing the puzzle Kari put together earlier that day. It was a hard one, but he had just watched as her tiny hands had flown across the pieces, fitting them together with shocking ease.
It had been hard, at first, for Mako. Raleigh had the uncanny ability to understand what Kari was feeling and respond with a touch, a hug, some physically affectionate thing to make her happy. Even though Mako had learned to be physical with him – there were only so many ways to try and replicate the Drift, and touching was the best one – she was uncertain at first with Kari. It had seemed so much easier for Raleigh. But as soon as Kari began to learn to speak, she and her mother had found the same wavelength to communicate on. Listening to them chat in the other room makes him smile.
That night Mako stays in Kari’s room longer than usual, the both of them curled up in bed together with a book balanced between them that Mako reads aloud and Kari watches. Occasionally Kari can pick out a word, and each time she does, Mako’s eyebrows raise a little.
When she has finally made sure their daughter is asleep – legitimately asleep, because Kari has been known to fake it and then go on pretend-fighting monsters all over their apartment at odd hours of the night – Mako comments, “She is so smart. So smart.”
They’re standing side by side in the bathroom, brushing their teeth, and Raleigh bumps her hip with his. “What else did you expect, with you for a mom?” Mako just sends him a flat look for disregarding himself, but he holds no resentment at the statement. He knows just how extraordinary she is. A few minutes later, she crawls in bed beside him and kisses him, long and soft, her mouth minty and tingly. Their bodies slide together with ease, twining together like they do each night.
“Mmmmm, I missed you,” Raleigh murmurs against her lips, the ache in his chest easing as they settle together. In the semi-dark, he can see the smile on her face, the soft curve of her cheekbones.
“I missed you, too,” she whispers in return. “Both of you.”
After long minutes of slow, aimless kissing, he can feel sleep taking hold of her body and pulls back with a soft laugh. “All right, all right. Go to sleep.”
“No,” she complains drowsily, rising to his lips again like she can’t breathe without him near her.
He presses one more kiss to her lips before saying, “You’re exhausted. I can feel it. You need to sleep.” She pouts at him, which is something he finds kind of hard to handle, but gives in, stealing one more quick kiss from him before turning over so her back is to his chest. He can feel her entire body relax, and tucks his face between her neck and shoulder. “Welcome home,” he says, and she’s smiling as she falls asleep.