FIC: Sydney's Sons - 2/2, Pacific Rim, PG, Herc/Angela, het/gen
Title: Sydney's Sons
Author: Jo (jo@fadedink.com)
Fandom: Pacific Rim
Series: Twins 'verse
Pairing: Herc Hansen/Angela Hansen
Characters: Herc Hansen, Angela Hansen, Chuck Hansen, Scott Hansen
Rating: PG
Word count: 11802
Warnings: character death, implied underage sex
Summary: Two days after his nineteenth birthday, Hercules Hansen meets Angela Davis. She is twenty-four and wearing a sunshine yellow bikini; he is young and dumb with freshly shorn hair and sunburned shoulders. He's just enlisted in the RAAF and she's two years into a nursing career.
~or~
The one where Herc & Angela Hansen actually have two sons - identical twins, Charlie and Scott.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. I'm merely borrowing them for a while. Love and eternal devotion to Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham for creating this universe.
Author's Notes: Massive thanks to azewewish, ishyko, and roguepythia for beta work. It involved hand-holding, listening to me whine, and pointing out exactly why and where it needed more Angela. Any remaining mistakes or problems are entirely my fault.
This idea was originally spawned during a late night Tumblr session between myself, driftingwithchuckhansen, ohhaiguise, and phoenix-angel-suyari. They let me take the idea and run with it and it wouldn't exist without them egging me on every step of the way. So much thanks to them for everything. And a shout out to everyone who provided me with list after list of prank ideas for the boys. Rest assured, those ideas will show up in the next two fics. :D
The artwork featured in the fic was created by the amazing and talented lokefanart. This is the second time we've collaborated and I can't praise her talent enough. Go over and give her some love, because she is an absolute goddess.
My entry for the PacRim MiniBang 2014.
Four days before the twins' tenth birthday, the world changes.
An enormous beast roars out of the depths of the Pacific Ocean and tears its way through San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento. The combined might of the American and British military forces fail to bring the creature down.
Herc's small family watches the telly in horror as the order is given and nuclear missiles kill the thing six days and thirty-five miles after it destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge. Tens of thousands of people are dead.
That night, Charlie and Scott wake from a nightmare and crawl into Herc and Angie's bed. Herc just slides over and gives them room to curl up together.
The world believes that the Trespasser is an isolated event.
The world is wrong.
Six months later, Hundun crawls from the ocean to attack Manila. Four months after that, Kaiceph emerges and lays waste to Cabo San Lucas.
Once again, nuclear weapons are the only things that stop the creatures.
The twins have more nightmares, waking in tears each time. They no longer play with their dinosaur toys.
Angie finds them all stuffed in three shoe boxes and shoved far beneath their bed.
Their grades suffer, and their normal sunny dispositions disappear. Finally, Herc has enough. He sits down with them after dinner one night - Charlie on his right leg and Scott on his left - and gives them all his attention.
What if one of those monsters comes to Sydney? What will happen to them? What if he has to go out and fight it like they've seen on the telly?
Herc doesn't lie to them. He's never lied to them. As Angie sits quietly at his feet and holds their hands, he tells the boys that if one of those big ugly beasts dares to show its face around these parts, he and his squad mates will go out and show it what for. But really, surely something that big and ugly isn't stupid enough to want to tangle with a bunch of angry Aussies.
That night, they don't even try to put the boys in their own bed.
Instead, Angie gathers their blankets and pillows and makes a pallet for the four of them on the living room floor. Herc watches over them as they sleep: his boys facing each other, Charlie's right hand clasping Scott's left, and Angie curled around them both.
That night, after the twins are asleep, Herc and Angie have a whispered conversation over their heads.
None of the creatures have come close to Sydney, but that's not to say they never will. And Herc wants to have a plan of some sort.
Angie agrees, because it's smart and logical and it helps to ease her nerves. But when Herc says he'll come get her and they'll go get the boys if anything happens, she is quick to shake her head and say no.
Charlie and Scott are to be retrieved first. She's an adult and so is Herc. They can find their own way to an agreed upon meeting place. The boys can't.
She can see that Herc wants to argue, but he just nods and says she's right.
There comes a night when Herc's cellphone wakes him in the wee hours.
As he listens, he closes his eyes and says a silent prayer. Then, quietly, he wakes Angie and tells her that there's an emergency. He has to head to the base.
She's still mostly asleep so she just smiles and kisses him goodbye.
Before he leaves, Herc stops in the boys' room and presses a soft kiss to their foreheads before whispering a quiet "I love you" as he pulls the blanket back up over their shoulders.
The morning of September 2, 2014, dawns bright and clear and just a little cool.
Charlie and Scott eat toaster waffles for breakfast and kick their feet against their chairs as they jabber at each other while Angie finishes getting dressed. She washes their faces, grabs their backpacks, and bundles them into the car.
They don't ask where Herc is. Ten years of being military brats have made them understand that sometimes Dad has odd hours.
At school, Angie gives them each a kiss and a hug and tells them she loves them. They wave as she drives away.
The second Angie steps into the hospital, she learns the exact nature of Herc's 'emergency'. Her heart skips a beat as she thinks of her boys - Charlie and Scott at school on the other side of the city and Herc at the base or God only knows where.
She wants to leave, to collect all three of them and get the hell out of Sydney. But she's a nurse and she has a job. And the utmost faith in the military to protect them all from the kaiju that is off Australia's coast.
They name the monster Scissure and engage it on a string of islands off the coast. The Air Force and the Army throw everything they have at it.
The nuclear missile they launch just shakes the kaiju.
Back on base, Herc gets the warning. They failed to stop it and now Scissure is rampaging through downtown Sydney. The Army is attempting to lure it to Garigal National Park. There will be more nukes.
Barking orders at his men, Herc pulls out his phone and calls Angie. He gets her voicemail.
Commandeering a Bell Kiowa helicopter - and he sees that he isn't the only one - he makes the one decision he's prayed for ten years that he'd never have to make.
Herc has less than an hour. He can't make it to both places.
So he flies out and he prays that Angie gets the hell out of there.
The school is in chaos when Herc sets the chopper down on the playground.
It takes him precious minutes to cut through the crowd. The noise drops to absolute silence when he bellows his sons' names. He almost collapses in relief when he hears the startled "Dad" from near the buses.
He drops to his knees in front of them, running anxious hands over their bodies and worried eyes over their pale faces. They know.
Once again, he doesn't lie.
After he helps shepherd children onto the nearby buses, he carries Charlie and Scott to the chopper. When they ask where Mum is, he tells them that she should be on her way to the base. It's been their emergency plan for months, so it's not a lie.
Herc just doesn't know if she's going to stick to it.
Three days later, Herc has to tell his sons that their mother is gone. They scream at him that it's not true, he's lying, where's Mum, why isn't she here.
Herc just holds their small bodies tight and lets them scream themselves hoarse.
The official story is that the kaiju destroyed the hospital before anyone could get out of the building. But Herc knows it could just as easily have been the nuclear strike that took out an entire quadrant of the city.
He doesn't tell Charlie and Scott that.
By December, the world has a new word to add to all of its languages.
Jaeger.
Adam Casey, Jasper Schoenfeld, Sergio D'onofrio, and Caitlin Lightcap become headline names. There are new phrases like neural handshake and Drift compatibility. The Pan Pacific Defense Corps forms and starts recruiting people all over the world.
Herc makes his decision. If there's a chance to make the bastards pay, he's going to take it.
Charlie and Scott sit on the edge of the sofa and listen in silence. They've been sullen and withdrawn since Angie's death, and Herc can't blame them.
He can't blame them, but he misses their smiles and their laughter and the way they'd chase each other through the house as Angie yelled at them to take it outside. He misses his wife with every breath and mourns his sons' lost innocence the same.
When he tells them that they're moving to Alaska for a while so he can go to school and become a Jaeger pilot, Charlie tilts his head. A few seconds later, Scott does the same.
When they nod and say okay, Herc breathes a quiet sigh of relief.
The Jaeger Academy on Kodiak Island is hard. Harder than boot camp. It's six months of pure hell.
But the sight of his sons tucked in their bed each night with a photo of Angie on their nightstand reminds Herc why he's doing this. Over the next few months, more photos of Angie join that first one.
The twins put them up all over their quarters - photos of Angie, of Herc and Angie, of Angie with the boys, of all four of them. They touch those photos often, until the gloss is smudged by small fingerprints.
Herc finds himself touching the photos as well as fresh pain over her loss rips through him.
And when his sons wake in the middle of the night from another nightmare of their mother dying, Herc holds them as they cry.
He wants to tell them that it will be okay, but he doesn't really believe that himself.
Herc graduates in June. Charlie and Scott stand at attention and salute him. They look so much like their mother with their solemn faces and more-green-than-blue eyes that Herc can't breathe.
He salutes back.
One of the last Mark I Jaegers is his. Lucky Seven. Turns out he's Drift compatible with Malaya, a young woman from Manila. She lost her entire family to Hundun.
Herc understands her pain.
They're assigned to the soon-to-be opened Hong Kong Shatterdome, with assurances that Sydney will have its own Shatterdome in a few years.
Location doesn't matter to Herc. All he wants is a chance to kick some kaiju arse.
In Hong Kong, Herc and the boys meet Stacker Pentecost and Tamsin Sevier, pilots of Coyote Tango.
Stacker is black and so very British and towers over Herc. Tamsin is petite and a ginger with one side of her head shaved and earrings running the length of both ears. The boys watch her in silent awe.
It's been almost ten months since Scissure and his sons still haven't found their smiles.
But as they stare at this tiny Welsh woman with a spirit of fire like Angie's, Herc starts a mental countdown to when one of them shaves the side of the other's head. He makes it to eleven days before he comes back to their quarters after training to find them both with only half a head of hair.
He just rubs the back of his neck and tells them to clean up the mess in the bathroom. The wide grins that blossom on their faces make up for the ridiculousness of their new hair style.
Tamsin claps in delight when she sees them at dinner.
Herc and Malaya's first deployment comes a month later. It's the middle of the night when the alarms go off, and Herc knows the boys are awake the second his feet hit the floor.
He can hear it in the silence coming from their side of the room.
On the way to suit up, he runs into Tendo Choi, one of the new J-Tech officers, and he offers to keep an eye on Charlie and Scott. They wear identical pleading looks when they turn their faces up to Herc.
Sitting in LOCCENT with Tendo means they'll watch every second of the battle unfold. It's not exactly an ideal situation as far as Herc is concerned. Even though Lucky is to hold the Miracle Mile and back up Tacit Ronin, Herc knows there's always a chance that he and Malaya will see action.
Still, it's better than having them huddled in their quarters with no news at all.
Hours later, when they return, battered and exhausted after having to wade into the actual battle, the first thing Herc sees are his boys' faces.
The pride in their wide grins, so like their mothers, makes the moments of terror experienced out there all worth it.
An assignment to Lima follows Hong Kong, and Tokyo follows that. Herc and Malaya are never assigned stints at Vladivostok - the Kaidanovskys have their situation well in hand - or Anchorage. For that, Herc is grateful.
He's heard stories of the Gage twins and the newly graduated darlings (and terrors) of the PPDC, the Becket brothers.
The Sydney Shatterdome opens in May 2017 and Herc takes his boys home.
It's the first time they've set foot on Australian soil in almost three years.
Before they report to the Shatterdome, the twins demand to see the memorial. Herc only stops so they can pick out flowers.
He watches as their fingers trace Angie's name after they place the flowers by the pillar. And when he wraps his arms around their shoulders, they lean into him and make no effort to wipe away their tears.
They can finally talk about Angie without crying, but it's not easy. It will never be easy.
Herc misses her with every breath he takes. He misses her smile and her warmth, the way her hair smelled, and the sound of her laugh. He misses her every time he looks at their sons and sees the ghost of her face in the lines of theirs.
And he knows there are nights they still cry themselves to sleep. So he does his best to make sure he's in their quarters at bedtime to see that they get their showers and brush their teeth and don't stay up too late reading or following the many Jaeger pilot blogs online.
It doesn't always work like he wants and there are arguments, but the argument always disappears as soon as one of them says "but Mum always -"
Even now, Angie's role in their life is still a gaping hole raw around the edges.
Charlie and Scott are fourteen and they're taller and bigger than most kids their age, thanks to hours spent working themselves into exhaustion in the gym. Herc isn't the only one who wants a measure of revenge.
There are tutors now, the subjects and people changing from Dome to Dome, but they still excel at everything they put their minds to. And the biggest of those things is Lucky Seven.
They know their dad's Jaeger inside and out and spend hours and hours crawling over and inside her. If there's a glitch in the system, they can often diagnose it before the crew chief does. It makes them the darlings of the Shatterdome. Even if more than one tech curses them out for the various upgrades that they seem determined to try (and Herc hears all about those in the daily briefings).
And if the sight of them in harnesses eighty meters in the air scrambling across Lucky's chassis gives Herc more than a few grey hairs, he keeps it to himself.
In no time at all, Herc becomes the de facto leader of the Shatterdome. It's not a position he wants, but it's one he seems stuck with regardless.
Marshal Eversmann just shrugs when Herc complains about it. The man's not terribly concerned about the chain of command as long as the Dome runs smoothly.
And for the most part it does just that.
Sure there's the time where every surface in the Mess ends up covered in aluminum foil and duct tape - there isn't a single witness to the incident, but given the fact that Charlie and Scott had slept until almost noon the next morning, Herc has his suspicions - and they're still trying to find the alarm that goes off in the Marshal's office every six hours. But there's a lot of down time between kaiju and everyone gets bored.
There's only so much training they can do.
But Herc should have known better than to let Charlie and Scott hang out in LOCCENT for any amount of time. The first morning that "Highway to Hell" blares through the Shatterdome speakers at full volume at 6:00 a.m., they don't even try to look innocent.
That one earns them a few creative names (and they're creative even for a bunch of Australians) yelled out from various rooms, and Herc hears all about that, too.
And every time that LOCCENT Chief Swofford tries to page someone, they have to sit through the chorus of Crowded House's "Weather With You" before he can actually make the announcement. The twins are particularly smug about that one.
Most of their pranks are harmless and fun.
That's what Herc tells himself after three days when he realizes that they set his watch forward by an hour so he'd think he was late for everything. They look suitably chastened when he yells at them, but he knows that twinkle in their eyes.
A week later, he wakes up strapped to his bunk by two dozen bungee cords.
Charlie and Scott return that afternoon to find everything in their room zip-tied - their clothes are zip-tied to the hangers, their drawers are zip-tied shut, their blankets and pillows are zipped so tightly to their bunk that they can't wiggle them free. Even their shoes are zip-tied together in a single line.
In the middle of the floor is a pair of scissors. There's a zip-tie around the handles.
Herc flashes a wide grin and waggles his eyebrows when they show up for supper that night with blisters on their fingertips.
The next four months are open prank warfare throughout the Dome. At one time or another, every single member of the Jaeger crews - and there are two now that Echo Saber has joined them - get dragged into the pranks.
Some of them are elaborate, like the time they had managed to plaster anti-kaiju propaganda posters to Echo's back. But usually it's little things that are more annoying than anything.
Like the time they managed to change the pass codes on all the doors of the living quarters. Herc still doesn't know which one actually did it and neither one of them confesses, so he grounds them both.
He comes back four nights in a row to find one creature or another in his bed.
Herc retaliates by having housekeeping dye all of their boxers pink.
Most of the time, it's Charlie and Scott against Herc. The boys are clever, but their old man is devious. And he reckons it's worth the hassle to see them laughing again. But there are times the boys quarrel, and then it's no holds barred.
Herc will never forget the morning that Charlie had fidgeted in his seat all through breakfast because he'd pissed off Scott the night before, so Scott had coated their toilet seat with Icy Hot. He'd made sure that Charlie had his bathroom time first.
Charlie's revenge for that is to mix some Orajel with Scott's toothpaste. He howls with laughter as Scott drools on himself for the next hour.
Herc catches them the first time a week shy of their fifteenth birthday.
Their family has always had an open door policy - barring the few years when they were little and Herc had really wanted some privacy with Angie - and Herc doesn't think twice before opening their door. To say he gets an eyeful is an understatement.
The last time he saw his boys that naked, they were six and rebelling against the new pool rules. The young woman between them is not quite seventeen and the daughter of Echo's chief tech.
He can't say he's surprised because they are his sons.
Without saying a word, Herc backs out of their room, closes the door, and leans against the wall. He doesn't have to wait long. Less than five minutes later, the door opens and the young woman slips out and hurries past him.
She never raises her gaze from the floor.
Charlie and Scott are half-dressed - and Herc thanks God for that small favor - and look torn between embarrassment and anger. They're both so red they're practically glowing.
They're expecting a lecture.
Instead, Herc holds onto his temper by the thinnest of threads and asks them when and how often and is she the only one. Their answers are several weeks, not often, and no.
He doesn't press them to elaborate on the last one, but he wants to because they're not even fifteen yet for crying out loud. Instead, he just drags a chair over, sits down, and gives them The Talk.
By the end of it, they're both squirming and whining at him to just stop already, please, fuck's sake, Dad. Herc is just as uncomfortable, but he does a better job of hiding it. But it takes everything in him to keep from smiling at their identical looks of disgust when he asks if they've ever touched each other.
And if he takes great delight in handing them each a box of rubbers in front of Lucky's entire crew the next day, well, it serves the little arseholes right.
The next time Herc catches them, there's another boy bent over between them. He doesn't say a word. He just includes a bottle of slick with the next box of rubbers.
There's a Shatterdome-wide party on their fifteenth birthday.
Charlie and Scott have a great time. There are presents and cake and general silliness, and Herc allows them each one beer. If Angie were there, she'd give him hell for it.
That night, they knock on his door and tell him that they want to go to the Jaeger Academy.
Herc waits a beat too long to answer because his brain has stopped working. Just the idea of the two of them crawling into a Conn-Pod and going out there fills him with a soul deep fear like he's never known.
He tells them that they're too young and they get that stubborn Hansen expression on their faces.
So he tells them that this isn't the life he wants for them, that he wants them to actually have a life and not just be another cog in the war machine. He tells them that this isn't what their mum would have wanted. They just look at him for a long moment, their faces giving away nothing.
Then they turn as one and walk away.
They don't say a single word to him for two weeks. And they avoid him for another two after that.
It's only when he corners them coming out of their room one morning that they even look at him. The entire hallway bears witness to the screaming fight that follows as they tell him that Angie might have been his wife, but she was their mother and they deserve the chance to make those sons of bitches pay.
It's the first time that Herc realizes just how much like him his boys are.
Marshal Eversmann shows Herc their evaluations and grades. They've earned near-perfect marks in every subject the tutor has set in front of them. They know the Jaegers and the technology.
They might be too young, but Eversmann will sign off on it if Herc agrees.
But all Herc can do is look at their Kwoon evaluation - and how they managed to take down Echo's pilots in a two-on-two match with a score of four to two each. Leilani and Peeta are twice the twins' age and graduated in Herc's class. He knows how well they work together.
But the match had lasted less than fifteen minutes and all witnesses agree that Charlie and Scott moved in total synchronization.
Christmas is a quiet, strained affair for the Hansen men.
They don't talk much and they exchange gifts with few words. But Herc doesn't miss the fact that they slip into twinspeak a few times during the day. He doesn't say anything, just watches them with tired eyes and wonders how he ever thought this could turn out any differently.
They're his sons after all. And they're just as much their mothers'.
That night, he knocks on their bedroom door and silently hands them the last present he has for each of them. He'd struggled with giving it to them all day and had decided against it more than once.
But their faces when they open the boxes and see dog tags and two sets of cadet uniforms tell him that he made the right decision.
Two days later, the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald shows two photographs.
The first is of Herc and the twins at the memorial pillar. Herc knows exactly when and where it happened. He just doesn't remember seeing the photographer.
The other is far more recent. Charlie and Scott stand in front of the memorial, both clearly in tears and angry. Scott has his hand cupped over Angie's name on the pillar while Chuck looks seemingly right at the photographer.
The expression in their eyes shatters Herc's heart.
The headline reads "Sydney's Sons to Become Jaeger Pilots" and Charlie and Scott stare at it in silence. The article talks about them, about how they lost their mother to Scissure and how their father became a PPDC Ranger. It tells how they moved from Shatterdome to Shatterdome before finally landing in Sydney, and how they - along with a young girl from Tokyo - have become the true faces of the Kaiju War. It talks about how the boys and Herc still grieve for Angie.
And it speculates about what their mother would think of them becoming child soldiers.
Charlie growls that they had no right while Scott gets up and silently punches the wall before Herc can grab him.
No one in the Dome has any idea how the vultures found out about their enlistment or any of the other private details, but it's all water under the bridge. The city knows about them now and, soon enough, so will the entire world.
Herc isn't sure how he feels about that.
Vulcan Specter arrives on New Year's Eve, and Herc takes a week's leave.
It's a long flight from Sydney to Alaska, but Herc is going to see his sons settled into their quarters at the Academy. They're the youngest ever admitted and, if they make both cuts and graduate, they'll be the youngest pilots ever produced. That's going to leave them open to a lot of bullying from their older classmates.
And Herc can't protect them from that, but he can make damn sure that they get there safely.
Though, as he watches the two of them interact, he almost pities the first seppo that tries to bully them. He can still remember their fights in school and how the two of them had never hesitated to band together to take down a bigger opponent.
The week passes faster than Herc wants. He spends every minute of it with Charlie and Scott.
Most of the instructors are still the same, and Tamsin is Kwoon Master now. She refused to let them retire her after she seized in the harness in Tokyo, so the PPDC sent her to the Academy along with Stacker, who is now in charge of Ranger training. The entire staff seems pleased that the twins are there, and Tamsin is delighted to see them.
Herc can't help but wonder if everyone will feel the same once the prank wars begin.
Herc stands on the tarmac, jacket collar flipped up against the Alaskan cold and waits for the chopper that will carry him to Anchorage and the flight back to Sydney. Charlie and Scott stand with him, clad in their cadet's uniforms, chins held high as they squint into the wind.
The chopper lands and it's too soon. Far too soon.
Without a word, Herc turns to face them and pulls himself up straight. When he salutes them, they salute back and their forms are perfect.
He expects no less.
And then they break, first Charlie and then Scott. Both boys wrap him in their arms, and Herc can feel their tears on his skin as he enfolds them in a tight hug.
When they finally separate and sort themselves out, their faces are pale and tear-stained and they look so damn young that Herc wants to bundle them onto the chopper and take them back home. But he can't.
They're not his little boys anymore, even though all he can see is the two tiny sprogs that wrapped his heart around their little fingers with their first breaths. Between one blink and the next, Herc sees them as children and the young lads that they are and the men they're going to become.
He's going to be proud of them.
He's already proud of them. And when he tells them so, their smiles rival the winter sun high overhead.
It's only six months. And they have Skype and phones and orders to contact him at least once a week. Only six months, but they will be some of the longest months of Herc's life.
His last sight of them as the chopper lifts away from the tarmac is Charlie with his arm around Scott's shoulders as the two of them wave until he's out of sight.
Herc settles back, closes his eyes, and starts the mental countdown until his next flight back to Alaska.
Author: Jo (jo@fadedink.com)
Fandom: Pacific Rim
Series: Twins 'verse
Pairing: Herc Hansen/Angela Hansen
Characters: Herc Hansen, Angela Hansen, Chuck Hansen, Scott Hansen
Rating: PG
Word count: 11802
Warnings: character death, implied underage sex
Summary: Two days after his nineteenth birthday, Hercules Hansen meets Angela Davis. She is twenty-four and wearing a sunshine yellow bikini; he is young and dumb with freshly shorn hair and sunburned shoulders. He's just enlisted in the RAAF and she's two years into a nursing career.
~or~
The one where Herc & Angela Hansen actually have two sons - identical twins, Charlie and Scott.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. I'm merely borrowing them for a while. Love and eternal devotion to Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham for creating this universe.
Author's Notes: Massive thanks to azewewish, ishyko, and roguepythia for beta work. It involved hand-holding, listening to me whine, and pointing out exactly why and where it needed more Angela. Any remaining mistakes or problems are entirely my fault.
This idea was originally spawned during a late night Tumblr session between myself, driftingwithchuckhansen, ohhaiguise, and phoenix-angel-suyari. They let me take the idea and run with it and it wouldn't exist without them egging me on every step of the way. So much thanks to them for everything. And a shout out to everyone who provided me with list after list of prank ideas for the boys. Rest assured, those ideas will show up in the next two fics. :D
The artwork featured in the fic was created by the amazing and talented lokefanart. This is the second time we've collaborated and I can't praise her talent enough. Go over and give her some love, because she is an absolute goddess.
My entry for the PacRim MiniBang 2014.
Four days before the twins' tenth birthday, the world changes.
An enormous beast roars out of the depths of the Pacific Ocean and tears its way through San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento. The combined might of the American and British military forces fail to bring the creature down.
Herc's small family watches the telly in horror as the order is given and nuclear missiles kill the thing six days and thirty-five miles after it destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge. Tens of thousands of people are dead.
That night, Charlie and Scott wake from a nightmare and crawl into Herc and Angie's bed. Herc just slides over and gives them room to curl up together.
The world believes that the Trespasser is an isolated event.
The world is wrong.
Six months later, Hundun crawls from the ocean to attack Manila. Four months after that, Kaiceph emerges and lays waste to Cabo San Lucas.
Once again, nuclear weapons are the only things that stop the creatures.
The twins have more nightmares, waking in tears each time. They no longer play with their dinosaur toys.
Angie finds them all stuffed in three shoe boxes and shoved far beneath their bed.
Their grades suffer, and their normal sunny dispositions disappear. Finally, Herc has enough. He sits down with them after dinner one night - Charlie on his right leg and Scott on his left - and gives them all his attention.
What if one of those monsters comes to Sydney? What will happen to them? What if he has to go out and fight it like they've seen on the telly?
Herc doesn't lie to them. He's never lied to them. As Angie sits quietly at his feet and holds their hands, he tells the boys that if one of those big ugly beasts dares to show its face around these parts, he and his squad mates will go out and show it what for. But really, surely something that big and ugly isn't stupid enough to want to tangle with a bunch of angry Aussies.
That night, they don't even try to put the boys in their own bed.
Instead, Angie gathers their blankets and pillows and makes a pallet for the four of them on the living room floor. Herc watches over them as they sleep: his boys facing each other, Charlie's right hand clasping Scott's left, and Angie curled around them both.
That night, after the twins are asleep, Herc and Angie have a whispered conversation over their heads.
None of the creatures have come close to Sydney, but that's not to say they never will. And Herc wants to have a plan of some sort.
Angie agrees, because it's smart and logical and it helps to ease her nerves. But when Herc says he'll come get her and they'll go get the boys if anything happens, she is quick to shake her head and say no.
Charlie and Scott are to be retrieved first. She's an adult and so is Herc. They can find their own way to an agreed upon meeting place. The boys can't.
She can see that Herc wants to argue, but he just nods and says she's right.
There comes a night when Herc's cellphone wakes him in the wee hours.
As he listens, he closes his eyes and says a silent prayer. Then, quietly, he wakes Angie and tells her that there's an emergency. He has to head to the base.
She's still mostly asleep so she just smiles and kisses him goodbye.
Before he leaves, Herc stops in the boys' room and presses a soft kiss to their foreheads before whispering a quiet "I love you" as he pulls the blanket back up over their shoulders.
The morning of September 2, 2014, dawns bright and clear and just a little cool.
Charlie and Scott eat toaster waffles for breakfast and kick their feet against their chairs as they jabber at each other while Angie finishes getting dressed. She washes their faces, grabs their backpacks, and bundles them into the car.
They don't ask where Herc is. Ten years of being military brats have made them understand that sometimes Dad has odd hours.
At school, Angie gives them each a kiss and a hug and tells them she loves them. They wave as she drives away.
The second Angie steps into the hospital, she learns the exact nature of Herc's 'emergency'. Her heart skips a beat as she thinks of her boys - Charlie and Scott at school on the other side of the city and Herc at the base or God only knows where.
She wants to leave, to collect all three of them and get the hell out of Sydney. But she's a nurse and she has a job. And the utmost faith in the military to protect them all from the kaiju that is off Australia's coast.
They name the monster Scissure and engage it on a string of islands off the coast. The Air Force and the Army throw everything they have at it.
The nuclear missile they launch just shakes the kaiju.
Back on base, Herc gets the warning. They failed to stop it and now Scissure is rampaging through downtown Sydney. The Army is attempting to lure it to Garigal National Park. There will be more nukes.
Barking orders at his men, Herc pulls out his phone and calls Angie. He gets her voicemail.
Commandeering a Bell Kiowa helicopter - and he sees that he isn't the only one - he makes the one decision he's prayed for ten years that he'd never have to make.
Herc has less than an hour. He can't make it to both places.
So he flies out and he prays that Angie gets the hell out of there.
The school is in chaos when Herc sets the chopper down on the playground.
It takes him precious minutes to cut through the crowd. The noise drops to absolute silence when he bellows his sons' names. He almost collapses in relief when he hears the startled "Dad" from near the buses.
He drops to his knees in front of them, running anxious hands over their bodies and worried eyes over their pale faces. They know.
Once again, he doesn't lie.
After he helps shepherd children onto the nearby buses, he carries Charlie and Scott to the chopper. When they ask where Mum is, he tells them that she should be on her way to the base. It's been their emergency plan for months, so it's not a lie.
Herc just doesn't know if she's going to stick to it.
Three days later, Herc has to tell his sons that their mother is gone. They scream at him that it's not true, he's lying, where's Mum, why isn't she here.
Herc just holds their small bodies tight and lets them scream themselves hoarse.
The official story is that the kaiju destroyed the hospital before anyone could get out of the building. But Herc knows it could just as easily have been the nuclear strike that took out an entire quadrant of the city.
He doesn't tell Charlie and Scott that.
By December, the world has a new word to add to all of its languages.
Jaeger.
Adam Casey, Jasper Schoenfeld, Sergio D'onofrio, and Caitlin Lightcap become headline names. There are new phrases like neural handshake and Drift compatibility. The Pan Pacific Defense Corps forms and starts recruiting people all over the world.
Herc makes his decision. If there's a chance to make the bastards pay, he's going to take it.
Charlie and Scott sit on the edge of the sofa and listen in silence. They've been sullen and withdrawn since Angie's death, and Herc can't blame them.
He can't blame them, but he misses their smiles and their laughter and the way they'd chase each other through the house as Angie yelled at them to take it outside. He misses his wife with every breath and mourns his sons' lost innocence the same.
When he tells them that they're moving to Alaska for a while so he can go to school and become a Jaeger pilot, Charlie tilts his head. A few seconds later, Scott does the same.
When they nod and say okay, Herc breathes a quiet sigh of relief.
The Jaeger Academy on Kodiak Island is hard. Harder than boot camp. It's six months of pure hell.
But the sight of his sons tucked in their bed each night with a photo of Angie on their nightstand reminds Herc why he's doing this. Over the next few months, more photos of Angie join that first one.
The twins put them up all over their quarters - photos of Angie, of Herc and Angie, of Angie with the boys, of all four of them. They touch those photos often, until the gloss is smudged by small fingerprints.
Herc finds himself touching the photos as well as fresh pain over her loss rips through him.
And when his sons wake in the middle of the night from another nightmare of their mother dying, Herc holds them as they cry.
He wants to tell them that it will be okay, but he doesn't really believe that himself.
Herc graduates in June. Charlie and Scott stand at attention and salute him. They look so much like their mother with their solemn faces and more-green-than-blue eyes that Herc can't breathe.
He salutes back.
One of the last Mark I Jaegers is his. Lucky Seven. Turns out he's Drift compatible with Malaya, a young woman from Manila. She lost her entire family to Hundun.
Herc understands her pain.
They're assigned to the soon-to-be opened Hong Kong Shatterdome, with assurances that Sydney will have its own Shatterdome in a few years.
Location doesn't matter to Herc. All he wants is a chance to kick some kaiju arse.
In Hong Kong, Herc and the boys meet Stacker Pentecost and Tamsin Sevier, pilots of Coyote Tango.
Stacker is black and so very British and towers over Herc. Tamsin is petite and a ginger with one side of her head shaved and earrings running the length of both ears. The boys watch her in silent awe.
It's been almost ten months since Scissure and his sons still haven't found their smiles.
But as they stare at this tiny Welsh woman with a spirit of fire like Angie's, Herc starts a mental countdown to when one of them shaves the side of the other's head. He makes it to eleven days before he comes back to their quarters after training to find them both with only half a head of hair.
He just rubs the back of his neck and tells them to clean up the mess in the bathroom. The wide grins that blossom on their faces make up for the ridiculousness of their new hair style.
Tamsin claps in delight when she sees them at dinner.
Herc and Malaya's first deployment comes a month later. It's the middle of the night when the alarms go off, and Herc knows the boys are awake the second his feet hit the floor.
He can hear it in the silence coming from their side of the room.
On the way to suit up, he runs into Tendo Choi, one of the new J-Tech officers, and he offers to keep an eye on Charlie and Scott. They wear identical pleading looks when they turn their faces up to Herc.
Sitting in LOCCENT with Tendo means they'll watch every second of the battle unfold. It's not exactly an ideal situation as far as Herc is concerned. Even though Lucky is to hold the Miracle Mile and back up Tacit Ronin, Herc knows there's always a chance that he and Malaya will see action.
Still, it's better than having them huddled in their quarters with no news at all.
Hours later, when they return, battered and exhausted after having to wade into the actual battle, the first thing Herc sees are his boys' faces.
The pride in their wide grins, so like their mothers, makes the moments of terror experienced out there all worth it.
An assignment to Lima follows Hong Kong, and Tokyo follows that. Herc and Malaya are never assigned stints at Vladivostok - the Kaidanovskys have their situation well in hand - or Anchorage. For that, Herc is grateful.
He's heard stories of the Gage twins and the newly graduated darlings (and terrors) of the PPDC, the Becket brothers.
The Sydney Shatterdome opens in May 2017 and Herc takes his boys home.
It's the first time they've set foot on Australian soil in almost three years.
Before they report to the Shatterdome, the twins demand to see the memorial. Herc only stops so they can pick out flowers.
He watches as their fingers trace Angie's name after they place the flowers by the pillar. And when he wraps his arms around their shoulders, they lean into him and make no effort to wipe away their tears.
They can finally talk about Angie without crying, but it's not easy. It will never be easy.
Herc misses her with every breath he takes. He misses her smile and her warmth, the way her hair smelled, and the sound of her laugh. He misses her every time he looks at their sons and sees the ghost of her face in the lines of theirs.
And he knows there are nights they still cry themselves to sleep. So he does his best to make sure he's in their quarters at bedtime to see that they get their showers and brush their teeth and don't stay up too late reading or following the many Jaeger pilot blogs online.
It doesn't always work like he wants and there are arguments, but the argument always disappears as soon as one of them says "but Mum always -"
Even now, Angie's role in their life is still a gaping hole raw around the edges.
Charlie and Scott are fourteen and they're taller and bigger than most kids their age, thanks to hours spent working themselves into exhaustion in the gym. Herc isn't the only one who wants a measure of revenge.
There are tutors now, the subjects and people changing from Dome to Dome, but they still excel at everything they put their minds to. And the biggest of those things is Lucky Seven.
They know their dad's Jaeger inside and out and spend hours and hours crawling over and inside her. If there's a glitch in the system, they can often diagnose it before the crew chief does. It makes them the darlings of the Shatterdome. Even if more than one tech curses them out for the various upgrades that they seem determined to try (and Herc hears all about those in the daily briefings).
And if the sight of them in harnesses eighty meters in the air scrambling across Lucky's chassis gives Herc more than a few grey hairs, he keeps it to himself.
In no time at all, Herc becomes the de facto leader of the Shatterdome. It's not a position he wants, but it's one he seems stuck with regardless.
Marshal Eversmann just shrugs when Herc complains about it. The man's not terribly concerned about the chain of command as long as the Dome runs smoothly.
And for the most part it does just that.
Sure there's the time where every surface in the Mess ends up covered in aluminum foil and duct tape - there isn't a single witness to the incident, but given the fact that Charlie and Scott had slept until almost noon the next morning, Herc has his suspicions - and they're still trying to find the alarm that goes off in the Marshal's office every six hours. But there's a lot of down time between kaiju and everyone gets bored.
There's only so much training they can do.
But Herc should have known better than to let Charlie and Scott hang out in LOCCENT for any amount of time. The first morning that "Highway to Hell" blares through the Shatterdome speakers at full volume at 6:00 a.m., they don't even try to look innocent.
That one earns them a few creative names (and they're creative even for a bunch of Australians) yelled out from various rooms, and Herc hears all about that, too.
And every time that LOCCENT Chief Swofford tries to page someone, they have to sit through the chorus of Crowded House's "Weather With You" before he can actually make the announcement. The twins are particularly smug about that one.
Most of their pranks are harmless and fun.
That's what Herc tells himself after three days when he realizes that they set his watch forward by an hour so he'd think he was late for everything. They look suitably chastened when he yells at them, but he knows that twinkle in their eyes.
A week later, he wakes up strapped to his bunk by two dozen bungee cords.
Charlie and Scott return that afternoon to find everything in their room zip-tied - their clothes are zip-tied to the hangers, their drawers are zip-tied shut, their blankets and pillows are zipped so tightly to their bunk that they can't wiggle them free. Even their shoes are zip-tied together in a single line.
In the middle of the floor is a pair of scissors. There's a zip-tie around the handles.
Herc flashes a wide grin and waggles his eyebrows when they show up for supper that night with blisters on their fingertips.
The next four months are open prank warfare throughout the Dome. At one time or another, every single member of the Jaeger crews - and there are two now that Echo Saber has joined them - get dragged into the pranks.
Some of them are elaborate, like the time they had managed to plaster anti-kaiju propaganda posters to Echo's back. But usually it's little things that are more annoying than anything.
Like the time they managed to change the pass codes on all the doors of the living quarters. Herc still doesn't know which one actually did it and neither one of them confesses, so he grounds them both.
He comes back four nights in a row to find one creature or another in his bed.
Herc retaliates by having housekeeping dye all of their boxers pink.
Most of the time, it's Charlie and Scott against Herc. The boys are clever, but their old man is devious. And he reckons it's worth the hassle to see them laughing again. But there are times the boys quarrel, and then it's no holds barred.
Herc will never forget the morning that Charlie had fidgeted in his seat all through breakfast because he'd pissed off Scott the night before, so Scott had coated their toilet seat with Icy Hot. He'd made sure that Charlie had his bathroom time first.
Charlie's revenge for that is to mix some Orajel with Scott's toothpaste. He howls with laughter as Scott drools on himself for the next hour.
Herc catches them the first time a week shy of their fifteenth birthday.
Their family has always had an open door policy - barring the few years when they were little and Herc had really wanted some privacy with Angie - and Herc doesn't think twice before opening their door. To say he gets an eyeful is an understatement.
The last time he saw his boys that naked, they were six and rebelling against the new pool rules. The young woman between them is not quite seventeen and the daughter of Echo's chief tech.
He can't say he's surprised because they are his sons.
Without saying a word, Herc backs out of their room, closes the door, and leans against the wall. He doesn't have to wait long. Less than five minutes later, the door opens and the young woman slips out and hurries past him.
She never raises her gaze from the floor.
Charlie and Scott are half-dressed - and Herc thanks God for that small favor - and look torn between embarrassment and anger. They're both so red they're practically glowing.
They're expecting a lecture.
Instead, Herc holds onto his temper by the thinnest of threads and asks them when and how often and is she the only one. Their answers are several weeks, not often, and no.
He doesn't press them to elaborate on the last one, but he wants to because they're not even fifteen yet for crying out loud. Instead, he just drags a chair over, sits down, and gives them The Talk.
By the end of it, they're both squirming and whining at him to just stop already, please, fuck's sake, Dad. Herc is just as uncomfortable, but he does a better job of hiding it. But it takes everything in him to keep from smiling at their identical looks of disgust when he asks if they've ever touched each other.
And if he takes great delight in handing them each a box of rubbers in front of Lucky's entire crew the next day, well, it serves the little arseholes right.
The next time Herc catches them, there's another boy bent over between them. He doesn't say a word. He just includes a bottle of slick with the next box of rubbers.
There's a Shatterdome-wide party on their fifteenth birthday.
Charlie and Scott have a great time. There are presents and cake and general silliness, and Herc allows them each one beer. If Angie were there, she'd give him hell for it.
That night, they knock on his door and tell him that they want to go to the Jaeger Academy.
Herc waits a beat too long to answer because his brain has stopped working. Just the idea of the two of them crawling into a Conn-Pod and going out there fills him with a soul deep fear like he's never known.
He tells them that they're too young and they get that stubborn Hansen expression on their faces.
So he tells them that this isn't the life he wants for them, that he wants them to actually have a life and not just be another cog in the war machine. He tells them that this isn't what their mum would have wanted. They just look at him for a long moment, their faces giving away nothing.
Then they turn as one and walk away.
They don't say a single word to him for two weeks. And they avoid him for another two after that.
It's only when he corners them coming out of their room one morning that they even look at him. The entire hallway bears witness to the screaming fight that follows as they tell him that Angie might have been his wife, but she was their mother and they deserve the chance to make those sons of bitches pay.
It's the first time that Herc realizes just how much like him his boys are.
Marshal Eversmann shows Herc their evaluations and grades. They've earned near-perfect marks in every subject the tutor has set in front of them. They know the Jaegers and the technology.
They might be too young, but Eversmann will sign off on it if Herc agrees.
But all Herc can do is look at their Kwoon evaluation - and how they managed to take down Echo's pilots in a two-on-two match with a score of four to two each. Leilani and Peeta are twice the twins' age and graduated in Herc's class. He knows how well they work together.
But the match had lasted less than fifteen minutes and all witnesses agree that Charlie and Scott moved in total synchronization.
Christmas is a quiet, strained affair for the Hansen men.
They don't talk much and they exchange gifts with few words. But Herc doesn't miss the fact that they slip into twinspeak a few times during the day. He doesn't say anything, just watches them with tired eyes and wonders how he ever thought this could turn out any differently.
They're his sons after all. And they're just as much their mothers'.
That night, he knocks on their bedroom door and silently hands them the last present he has for each of them. He'd struggled with giving it to them all day and had decided against it more than once.
But their faces when they open the boxes and see dog tags and two sets of cadet uniforms tell him that he made the right decision.
Two days later, the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald shows two photographs.
The first is of Herc and the twins at the memorial pillar. Herc knows exactly when and where it happened. He just doesn't remember seeing the photographer.
The other is far more recent. Charlie and Scott stand in front of the memorial, both clearly in tears and angry. Scott has his hand cupped over Angie's name on the pillar while Chuck looks seemingly right at the photographer.
The expression in their eyes shatters Herc's heart.
The headline reads "Sydney's Sons to Become Jaeger Pilots" and Charlie and Scott stare at it in silence. The article talks about them, about how they lost their mother to Scissure and how their father became a PPDC Ranger. It tells how they moved from Shatterdome to Shatterdome before finally landing in Sydney, and how they - along with a young girl from Tokyo - have become the true faces of the Kaiju War. It talks about how the boys and Herc still grieve for Angie.
And it speculates about what their mother would think of them becoming child soldiers.
Charlie growls that they had no right while Scott gets up and silently punches the wall before Herc can grab him.
No one in the Dome has any idea how the vultures found out about their enlistment or any of the other private details, but it's all water under the bridge. The city knows about them now and, soon enough, so will the entire world.
Herc isn't sure how he feels about that.
Vulcan Specter arrives on New Year's Eve, and Herc takes a week's leave.
It's a long flight from Sydney to Alaska, but Herc is going to see his sons settled into their quarters at the Academy. They're the youngest ever admitted and, if they make both cuts and graduate, they'll be the youngest pilots ever produced. That's going to leave them open to a lot of bullying from their older classmates.
And Herc can't protect them from that, but he can make damn sure that they get there safely.
Though, as he watches the two of them interact, he almost pities the first seppo that tries to bully them. He can still remember their fights in school and how the two of them had never hesitated to band together to take down a bigger opponent.
The week passes faster than Herc wants. He spends every minute of it with Charlie and Scott.
Most of the instructors are still the same, and Tamsin is Kwoon Master now. She refused to let them retire her after she seized in the harness in Tokyo, so the PPDC sent her to the Academy along with Stacker, who is now in charge of Ranger training. The entire staff seems pleased that the twins are there, and Tamsin is delighted to see them.
Herc can't help but wonder if everyone will feel the same once the prank wars begin.
Herc stands on the tarmac, jacket collar flipped up against the Alaskan cold and waits for the chopper that will carry him to Anchorage and the flight back to Sydney. Charlie and Scott stand with him, clad in their cadet's uniforms, chins held high as they squint into the wind.
The chopper lands and it's too soon. Far too soon.
Without a word, Herc turns to face them and pulls himself up straight. When he salutes them, they salute back and their forms are perfect.
He expects no less.
And then they break, first Charlie and then Scott. Both boys wrap him in their arms, and Herc can feel their tears on his skin as he enfolds them in a tight hug.
When they finally separate and sort themselves out, their faces are pale and tear-stained and they look so damn young that Herc wants to bundle them onto the chopper and take them back home. But he can't.
They're not his little boys anymore, even though all he can see is the two tiny sprogs that wrapped his heart around their little fingers with their first breaths. Between one blink and the next, Herc sees them as children and the young lads that they are and the men they're going to become.
He's going to be proud of them.
He's already proud of them. And when he tells them so, their smiles rival the winter sun high overhead.
It's only six months. And they have Skype and phones and orders to contact him at least once a week. Only six months, but they will be some of the longest months of Herc's life.
His last sight of them as the chopper lifts away from the tarmac is Charlie with his arm around Scott's shoulders as the two of them wave until he's out of sight.
Herc settles back, closes his eyes, and starts the mental countdown until his next flight back to Alaska.