A/N: What am i doing to myself but yes basically this was the fic idea i had all through the movie and now i actually can't watch it without thinking that SOME telepathic conversations are going on between those two cuties?

(also by glitched drift I'm referring to is the one in the movie where they shut off all the power on Mako and Raleigh's first drift. Honestly their minds were still connected what do you expect will happen)

Burnt Blue

Summary: Mako had no real basis for comparison for something like that, for something like him. A glitched drift makes things easier in the same way it complicates absolutely everything she almost thought she knew about one Raleigh Becket.

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Whatever the reporters dogged her about or therapists asked her to quantify, Mako Mori never referred to the Onibaba Incident that had neatly destroyed her life as a dark one.

If anything, it was full of light.

The light white of the ash or snowflakes falling, the halo surrounding Pendecost as he stood triumphant in the wake of her slowly wasting existence, the shine of her bright red shoe as the morning light reflected off it perfectly.

Mori didn't quite understand why people couldn't believe how truly harsh light could be. It burnt. It burnt and it shined and it didn't allow you a moment's rest until you covered it with promises and regrets and one-day-I-wills. It kindled and shook and tore through you as it screamed; vengeance and illumination, hope and depravity. The Kaichu had been the brightest of all, the morning star that had simply grown tired of being in the distance and decided to remedy it by approaching so fast, so fast it left ice and death in its wake. It chased her through the ravaged streets so fast, so fast as she cried like only a child could, hard and hiccupping and because she didn't actually know how to stop.

It always chased, burning and searing its way through the land not because it wanted to catch her but because it couldn't let her stop. So she wouldn't.

She carried the light dyed in her hair, so that her reflection was a promise, a reminder, a slap in the face that knocked away any thoughts of falling back into darkness she did not belong in. She had to hold it, cup it in her hands no matter how they bled and blistered, because if she faltered it would fall and no one would be there to pick it up. The light was her burden.

All of this flashed through Mori's mind as she stood before Pendecost and his new-old, old-new trainee co-pilot. Bitterly cold rain poured down on her dark umbrella, protecting her dark clothes, all hiding the splendid, cruel light she felt rolling in her chest. Raleigh Becket was nothing like she had imagined.

Her boots sloshed in the reflective pools of water on the deck as she made her way towards them. The sky above her was hidden by the clouds.

Mori was expected an old, tired young man, beaten down from life again and again and bent so far he may as well be broken. Not this. He had stubble and premature wrinkles and all kinds of dirt smeared all over his face, but his eyes found hers and held them.

They were burning in their sockets.

(The Kaichu's eyes had been so bright and so blue. Like this.)

She shivered, but not from the freezing rain.

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Fighting with him was a relief different from what she'd expected.

Points added up, taken and stolen and given so very freely, and oh, Mori felt her heart race with each one. He had seemed so cocky and headstrong, but here, in between the sure limbs and strikes, he was calm and poised and softly smiling like he'd planned for her to take the bait. There was something so assured in his movements, in the warm glint of blue eyes that were supposed to be ice and sharp and pained.

It was so easy to forget herself, so fast, so fast, in the wake of everything that was him. He took, engulfed and spat back out with a dare to do better next time, showing each and every other prospective co-pilot exactly why they were not fit. She had known, just from the slight stiffness in his stance that he could do better. He would do better. She could make him do better. She may not trust him, but something in her screamed to fix what he faulted.

Another point.

Her lips fell into a snarl and she dogged his every step, felling him as easily as he did her. Her chest burned from looking at him. Even wincing, his eyes taunted her with memory and regret alike, daring to juxtapose her trauma with the kindness that they freely gave. Mori felt the petty urge to rip into him, screw the dialogue, beat him into the ground until his eyes shut and she could claw out the life in him that taunted her so—

Another point.

Her mind snapped back and her eyes grew wide for the second it took to assess her slowly degenerating thoughts. Where had those impulses come from?

Dimly, she heard Pendecost call for them to separate. She did, bowing quickly and waiting for him to dismiss her like all the times before.

She didn't expect the touch from Raleigh, his warm hand grazing fleetingly on the small of her back as he declared through heavy pants that she was his.

Mori couldn't help but break her gaze from her father to stare at this strange man, her eyes drifting to his as if she was staring down a monster. Was that what so consumed her, what made her think that she recognized this unfamiliarity, this strangeness, this tall man with eyes like the devil that shone so, so softly?

Peripherally, she recognized the bare and sweaty arm that she'd gotten so good a look at before, this one untouched by the searing metal from the failed mission. It was instead everything she hadn't expected from Raleigh Becket after all those years of inaction, muscular and brimming with a sort of strength that spoke of hard-earned meals and harder-earned safety.

The sweat-slickened skin on her back where his hand fell burned.

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There was something to be said of security. Mako Mori could count on one hand exactly how many times in her life she had felt truly safe, starting from the moment when Stacker Pendecost had stepped out from that Jaeger alone to when she'd realized that safety itself was an illusion that should be preemptively shattered before something could tear it apart themselves.

And still, as she stood in the hallway outside her door, she felt it broken again. Mako heard the approaching sound of his voice, booming and loud and twisting through her like she'd just been sprayed with blue blood and she couldn't help but back up, retreat. Raleigh demanded to know why she couldn't be his co-pilot, but words failed her at that moment. She felt small, so small, stumbling back with each step he took, her eyes wide as she took him in.

He was such a large presence now, when he forgot himself, a large presence she wasn't accustomed to, overwhelmingly male and alive and at odds with everything in his file. Paper didn't shine this bright. Mako felt the need to flee as instinctual as her heartbeat, crashing through her ribs as she struggled to open the door to her quarters. Every movement he made seemed to press her back, make her secede another part of herself to him that he would in turn take over with thoughts of his smile and arms and bright, devil-eyes. She needed get away. She needed to seclude herself before it became too much. She needed to—

Raleigh informed her, amusedly, that it was his room.

Mako fought down an uncharacteristic flush and ran past him to her room, trying hard not to think about the symbolism behind her attempting to hide from him in a place that was already all his own.

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Mako knew herself well enough to understand that it was her own fault Raleigh affected her so.

Friends had seemed superfluous during her years of training under Pendecost, their presence something that would only serve as a distraction. Something else to lose one day.

The day when she'd found that Jaegers could only be piloted by two people had felt like a strike to the gut, a rejection of all her dreams of standing tall in the face of the light shining behind her like Pendecost once had. It had been too late at that point, of course, her entire being too closed off and wary to risk letting anyone in. Like she would even know how.

And sex?

A question she had never thought much about answering. Even one-night stands seemed too much work, especially when the local bars were all crowded with off-duty engineers from the shatterdome. Romance was an even lesser concern, despite several attempts at first from Chuck to talk to her when he had first come to base. He'd backed off soon after she'd sent him flying to the mat several times in a row during training.

Pentecost had also served as an unplanned deterrent. Mako could never have guessed how truly cruel he could be when it concerned her protection. A new electrical worker that had stupidly thought to catcall at her had soon been removed, his record blackened, and shipped to the very coast of the pacific on wall duty that Mako knew had been an area Hermann forecasted the next Kaiju attack to come from.

All the other men on base usually had wives, or long term girlfriends, or were simply too terrified of attaching themselves to the Marshall's daughter. She had been fine with the turn of events. In truth, she had never really cared about having people get that close too her.

And then Raleigh had come, blazing a trail through the building and staring her down with eyes that dared her to come right at him. Mako knew from his past that he had been likely to be a hardened man, one supposed to be as closed off as she was, nothing like the smiling giant that asked 'better or worse' with amusement written into every corner of his lips. He was handsome in a way he had no right being, no right affecting her with after she'd spent so many years being dismissive.

Mako had no real basis for comparison for something like that, for something like him.

She didn't understand why she was staring through the eyehole of her door watching him leave his quarters. She may have been doing that a little lately. A lot, maybe. When he stopped in his tracks and began to walk towards her door, she flew away and arranged herself on the bed, her heart thumping wildly in what had to be surprise. He was going to see her again, beg her to be his again. His co-pilot, of course.

A knock.

Mako brushed herself off, feeling strange bright jitters swooping in waves from her stomach to the very tips of her fingers. The thought of seeing him again excited her, the thought of having him in her room doing even more. Dimly, she realized she was smiling. From nerves. She opened the door quickly and—

Pentecost.

Her smile fell quickly, her back straightened, and for the first time in a long time Mako felt something other than relief that her father had been there.

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No amount of training could have prepared her for this.

Never mind the healthy fear she'd anticipated at finally being able to live out her dreams, at finally taking charge of her own future. Gipsy Danger was enormous, despite it being one of the smaller Jaegers compared to the new lines, and it dwarfed her easily in a way it didn't seem to affect Raleigh. If anything, from the moment he'd caught sight of his old Jaeger's form his bright eyes had softened like he was greeting an old friend, an old lover.

He fit somewhere in the metal plating and welded screws, a core other than the nuclear.

Mako knew she was a stranger. To this. To everything. All the simulations in the world couldn't prepare you for stepping into the Conn-Pod. Her boots clunk with every step. She managed to keep her face straight, but inside she trembled so hard it was a miracle she didn't shake the spinal clamp right off. As it was, she almost forgot not to breathe in the relay gel.

Then after the initial prep was through it was time for her to drift, with him. Mako would never admit it, but she was equally anxious and terrified of the outcome. After hearing all those stories from Pentecost about what it really meant to link minds with someone, she had both built up and brushed aside the concept. Years of training ensured that her hands were steady during the neural handshake at least, but Mako could feel her stomach twisting itself in circles as the meld was initiated and then started and—

Oh.

Oh.

Memories and feeling both hers and yet not surged through her mind, his mind, the place in between where they lingered and joined. So bright. It was laughter and tears and smiles that blinded her, pain and muted curses and dark nights under sheets that were not hers and a sweating, aching body that was not her but it was, really, it was.

She, he, didn't exist anymore, didn't want to exist anymore, knew something better that didn't burn but roared with triumph, a warm heat that soothed. Like balm to the senses, Mako felt herself lost and wanting nothing more than never to return to the husk she really was. She, he felt alive here.

And then everything exploded into madness as she saw her brother ripped away from her.

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Blue light—

Burning—

Run run run run run—

Everything shook everything shook—

Momma momma where are you momma I'm scared—

Light so fierce so fierce please leave me alone I don't want this—

What did I do wrong—

Shaking shaking shaking turn off the light—

What did I—

"Snap out of it!"

No I can't the light the light I have to run away before it—

Momma why aren't you—

What did I do wrong—

My feet hurt momma my feet hurt where—

Where did my shoe go tell me where to find it—

Tell me where—

Tell me—

"Mako, please, it's not real, fuck, you're drifting!"

Turn off the light please if you're here—

"Just please, stop chasing the rabbit!"

Not a rabbit rabbits don't look like that—

Not eyes like that—

And I'm running away not chasing light so bright—

What do I do what do I do please don't find me I'm hiding now—

Procedure dictates in event of Kaiju level three or above you may activate the plas—

Do that do that do that blow away the light with more light—

"NO!"

What—

Why—

I'm hiding I'm hiding stop finding me STOP FINDING ME—

"Mako…please…I'm sorry…"

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Eyes flickering open, Mako awoke to a world turned upside down, the sky turned ground.

There were people screaming all around her. She could heard it through the comms. She was on the cold floor, but it was warm, everywhere.

His arm was around her, his chest solid behind her, his chin nestled on the top of her head as he held her and kept her safe. Mako was so dizzy it almost hurt. And she absolutely did not want to move.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry please be okay please shit please be okay"

There was a voice, so loud, so bright, screaming at her. She nestled back into the hard curve of his shoulder, trying to ignore it until it went away. It was hard to breath even as it was without dealing with the noise. When it got too much to push away, she said suddenly, "I am fine and you are bothering me."

It was silent for a moment. She could heard the footsteps of the technicians rushing for the Conn-Pod. She still didn't want to move, the stubborn urge so engrained that she was rather sure she'd fight the poor man who tried to do it for her. As she opened her mouth to tell the first technician who burst in exactly that, she licked her dry, chapped lips and realized something.

Mako froze cold in the warm arms encasing her. Slowly, she looked up at Raleigh, finally seeing the muted distress shining in his bright devil-eyes. "Hello," she thought tentatively, simply focusing on that one word and hoping the truly dumb idea that was passing through her mind wasn't true.

There was no answer and she began to relax. And then—

"Well, fuck."