neverbelievedintheend | (no subject)

(no subject)

There was a time when Stacker Pentecost had access to enough aircraft to make Hugh Trenchard jealous. This is not that time; it hasn't been that time for nearly a year now. When the PPDC's funding was pulled and diverted to the Wall-building efforts, personnel transports were dropped from the list of things Pentecost felt it was necessary to find funding for almost immediately. he had priorities. He's always had priorities.

The helicopter he's in now isn't much by anyone's standards, a small single-rotor Sikorsky, but that's all it has to be. It just has to make it to Sitka.

Not his favorite part of Alaska by any means, but he doesn't plan on being there very long.

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Nobody plans on staying in Alaska long. Being on the move is the best way to stay fed.

Raleigh doesn't exactly call what he just ate food -- and he doesn't call the helicopter that just landed on the scrap of open field next to the west-end construction scaffolding a normal, everyday occurrence.

Oh here we go.

The weather's a mess. What isn't coming down from the sky is being blown up from the ground by the wind of the Sikorsky's rotors. Pentecost has to squint to make out the onlookers through it all, but not for long-

"Mr. Becket," he says, stepping forward just as if they'd set up this meeting in the first place.

"Marshal." Because even without the stars on his collar, he is always military. "Looking sharp."

All angles, all business. The soft navy of the coat he's wearing against the cold doesn't ease that one bit.

It might be a smile, or it might not; on Pentecost it's always hard to tell. He holds out a hand for the shaking, the last thing he intends to do under the prop wash from the helicopter's rotors. There are better places for what he has to discuss than this.

Raleigh takes it, shakes, then walks back towards the vague semblance of shelter the scaffolding provides.

Some of the other workers are starting to stare. At Pentecost; at Raleigh.

Pentecost ignores them. They aren't what he came here for.

As they approach the scaffolding he notes, "It's been a long time."

"Five years, four months." It's easy to be exact. (Raleigh leaves off the hours and minutes to be concise.)

( "We're very worried. He doesn't even blink-" )

"Seems like longer."

Raleigh's head shakes just slightly. "Five years, four months."

He nods.

(When you live every day with a counter in the back of your head, the numbers flipping by as they count down without ceasing, you don't argue about perceptions of time.)

"May I have a word?" he says as the semi-shelter of Wall-building equipment and worker barracks finally begins to cut the Sitka wind.

Raleigh doesn't actually have to explain any of this to Pentecost.

Just like Marshal doesn't need to ask to speak with him (since they already were speaking). He nods anyway.

They built Jaegers not far from here, once- Romeo Blue, Delta Tasmania. They're gone now. Not to the Jaeger graveyard at Oblivion Bay, though. They were Mark Is, and they were melted down for pins and girders and fed into the Wall.

Some would say they're still helping. Pentecost knows better.

"It took me a while to find you," he says as he walks. "Anchorage, Sheldon Point, Nome..."

"Man in my position travels with the Wall. I have to keep traveling, catch shifts to make a living."

Pentecost's mouth twitches.

"I've spent the past six months activating everything I can get my hands on," he says. "There's an old Jaeger I'm getting back online. A Mark III."

He glances sidelong at Beckett.

"I need a pilot."

...He is fucking serious, Raleigh's brain formulates eventually, gaze narrowing.

"Didn't you have me grounded for insubordination?"

It's the first thing that occurs to him to say after the What the hell came and went.

Edited 2013-12-09 00:31 (UTC)

He's always serious.

Even when he says, "I did. But I'm a great believer in second chances, Mr. Becket. Aren't you?"

None of this makes sense.

"I'm guessing I wasn't your first choice."

Seeing as how the Marshal looks like he's running himself ragged more days than not.

"You were," says Pentecost. He knew this would be coming. "All of the other Mark III pilots are dead."

Of course they are.

Yancy was still there. All the time, just inside his own personal Conn-Pod of hell and Kaiju.

"I don't need anyone else in my head again." Can't. "I'm not a pilot. Not anymore. Without Yancy I have no business being one."

Raleigh is done with this conversation all of a sudden, so he turns to go.

Damn it, they don't have time for this-

"Haven't you heard, Mr. Becket?" Pentecost calls, raising his voice above the wind. "The world's ending. This is your last chance. Where would you rather die- here, or in a Jaeger?"

Raleigh doesn't respond right then.

But when he comes back, he is ready to leave. Very quickly.

But he's also very surprised to see the helicopter hasn't even taken off yet.

The door slides open. Pentecost leans out a little ways, enough to make his inquiry of "Change of heart?" audible over the sounds of the Sikorsky's engines.

"I lost my job!" Raleigh yells over the chopper noise. "Why did you wait?"

"It's been five years and four months," says Pentecost, and smiles properly for the first time in a very long time. "Another five minutes wouldn't hurt."

Becket climbs aboard the chopper, and with one upward lift --

Raleigh Becket was a Jaegar pilot again.

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