down to the deep (3/3)
down to the deep
krystal/kai/L/sulli/jessica (+others)
pacific rim au
<<<<<
2022, October 22. Incheon Shatterdome.
It takes her three weeks to work up the nerve to knock on his door. She thinks she might be better off without him, and Crash Nebula can keep defending the area while she continues to rot away in this reinforced concrete cage, but Jonghyun keeps asking her how the trust exercises are going and Minhyuk keeps glowering at her whenever she turns up to the Kwoon alone and the final nail in the coffin is when Victoria beckons to her and tells her to stop behaving like a spoilt brat, she didn’t spend hours convincing the UN to get Artemis Fury back just to have her mope around her room because she couldn’t get along with her co-pilot.
Soojung can’t take the hounding anymore, which is why she is here knocking on his door with no intention of apologizing whatsoever.
He opens the door after exactly 10 knocks. “What the hell do you want?” he asks brusquely. He looks like he’s just woken up, his hair sticking up one side and his eyes bleary, dressed in just a tank top and regulation pants. Soojung tries to keep her eyes focused on his face and not his arms. “It’s 2 in the morning for god’s sakes; do you not have a concept of bedtime?”
She ignores the jab and brushes him aside. “We still have some trust exercises to do and we’ve wasted too much time. Are you going to let me in?”
Jongin stares at her, looking completely bewildered. “You’re completely nuts, you know that?” But he stands aside for her anyway, letting her in. His room is almost identical to hers, except instead of an empty desk he has paper strewn everywhere and where her walls are bare he has several posters. He catches her looking at a particularly worn one with curling edges, and huffs. “Having fun there?” he flops onto his bed. Soojung tears herself away from the Jaeger on the propaganda poster - her Jaeger - and the dates of the Ranger recruitment drive - May 2021, Myungsoo was still alive then - and looks at him. He looks back.
“Atticon wasn’t that long ago, was it?” she asks quietly. Jongin’s expression loosens slightly.
“Almost 2 years ago,” he replies without the slightest hesitation, and she wonders how long he’s been counting the days between the death that changed him and this very second. She wonders how long it has been between the death that changed her and this very second. She stopped counting after the third. “There’s nothing left of Taemin by now.”
She rifles through some of the paper on his desk. Kaiju dossiers, the fighting styles of the more well-known Jaegers. She chances on a sheet with Sehun’s face on it. Jongin is still watching her warily. She covers the sheet back up. She feels something bubbling up in her chest, something she desperately wants to get out before it consumes her. “There was nothing left of Jinri the moment Atticon crashed her out of the sky,” she starts before she can stop herself. “And the fish have probably pecked Myungsoo’s bones clean by now. Don’t you think that’s a somewhat peaceful way to go?” She looks up. “We were still connected when he drowned, you know.”
Jongin sits up. “I know.”
“Do you think he felt the fish nibbling at him? Do you think he was happy that he wasn’t torn apart by sharks?” Soojung takes a piece of paper and a pencil and sits on the floor, facing Jongin. “I tell him I’m sorry everyday. If I had just listened to him instead of trying to drown that Kaiju he’d still be here, wouldn’t he?”
“Yeah, he would,” Jongin says quietly. “But I wouldn’t.”
They stare at each other for a few minutes before Jongin looks away. He gets up and walks past Soojung, and she stares down at the paper in her lap. His room smells like him. “Do you think you’d forgive me if I ever let you die?” she asks.
Jongin sits down behind her with a thump. There’s a second where she feels nothing, and then he leans back against her, his head resting on her shoulder. His hair tickles her jaw, and she’s slightly surprised by how soft it is. It feels slightly damp too, as if he’s just washed it. “I would if I knew that you had fought for me,” he says. She can feel his heartbeat through his tank top and her jumper and she can feel her own, as if she has two hearts inside her instead of none. She can feel the shift in pressure on her back every time he inhales and exhales. She closes her eyes.
“Trust exercise number 3,” she finally manages. “Shared visualisation. Tell me what to draw without telling me what it is.” She waits a few seconds before the slow, even breath ruffling her hair tells her that he’s fallen asleep.
It’s Amber who spots her when she exits Jongin’s room that morning, her own hair mussed and her body aching from falling asleep on the floor. She can still feel the warmth of Jongin’s back lingering on her own and somewhere in the middle of the night he had actually dragged the blanket down over the both of them (The idiot, she thinks. He could have dragged them up to the bed instead). She’s still thinking about how soft Jongin’s hair is when she finds her path blocked. She looks up. Amber’s grin is Cheshire Cat-like.
“Soooo, what were we doing coming out of our resident co-pilot’s room at 8 in the morning, hmmmmm?” she announces a little too loudly, and Soojung tries hard to keep her nostrils from flaring.
“Nothing,” she says. “I just went in, okay?” She fixes her ex co-pilot with a squint. “Don’t you try and insinuate anything, Amber Liu.”
Amber laughs, showing even white teeth. “Mussed hair, dishevelled clothes, bleary eyes. That is not the sign of someone who woke up in their own room, Jung Soojung. You’d better not let the Marshall find out,” she winks.
“I said nothing happened,” Soojung snaps. “Don’t you have some simulation training to do?”
Amber doesn’t stop grinning even as she walks away. “Nice to hear you yelling at me again, Soojung!” she yells down the corridor, then waves and disappears. Soojung goes into her own room, inspects her red cheeks in her mirror, then bangs her forehead against it.
“I can let him in, can’t I?” she asks her reflection.
iv. brittle bones and bruised skin
2019, February 23. Incheon Shatterdome.
Soojung shows up at the Shatterdome a week after the funeral, and nobody believes it.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jinri catches her arm as she exits the helicopter, leading her into the building. “You’re supposed to be at home! You’re not supposed to be here!”
“This is my home,” Soojung tells her. But one glance at the familiar concrete sends a stab through her heart, makes her want to burst into tears and feel her sister’s arms around her one last time.
“Go back, Soojung,” Jinri gives her a push. “This isn’t right. You need time to heal. There’s no way you can work like this.” Soojung ignores her and marches right into mission control, where Marshall Song turns around, mild surprise written on her face. Behind her, Yixing looks downright dumbfounded.
“Miss Jung?” Victoria steps towards her. She sounds the same as always, but her eyes are kind. Soojung doesn’t really want to see it. “What are you doing here? Your leave isn’t up until the end of this month, is there something -.”
“Marshall,” Soojung bows. “Please find me a new co-pilot. I’m ready to get back to work.”
A shocked silence falls over the room. Soojung remains bent over.
“I don’t think that’s a wise move, Ranger,” Victoria starts, and Soojung raises her head. “You’ve just lost someone close to you, I don’t blame you if you want more time to compose yourself. I will not let you back into that cockpit until you are cleared by the Psych Analyst as fit for work. Until then, please rest.” She clasps her hands behind her back and turns away slightly.
“Marshall!” Soojung cries out, and Jinri jumps. Victoria turns back, looking taken aback. “I’m ready. I know I’m ready. I’m not going to waste any more time mourning, I’ve had 10 months to do that! Please let me back into Artemis!”
“Soojung…” Yixing starts.
“I promised my sister I’ll live,” Soojung grits her teeth, clenches her hands into fists. “I promised her I would stand up and live, and that is exactly what I’m going to do.”
Victoria observes her silently for a few seconds before pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes. “Alright,” she says heavily. “I will start the preparations. Just don’t make me regret this, Soojung,” she fixes her with a steely look before turning back around. Yixing shoots her a thumbs up and a special smile at Jinri before turning around as well.
“Hey, she called you Soojung,” Jinri whispers in her ear as Soojung watches the Marshall’s back, relief flooding through her. “She must really like you.”
Later when Soojung is back in the room she used to share with her sister, a fine layer of dust scattered over all their possessions and the ghost of Sooyeon still hanging in the air, she sinks down on to the floor and weeps like she’s lost something all over again.
2022, October 28. Incheon Shatterdome mess hall.
“Can I talk to you?” she asks Yixing a few days later when she spots him in the mess hall. He looks up in the middle of his jjajangmyun (she indicates that he has sauce in the corner of his mouth), and beckons to the seat opposite him. She sets her tray down, and spots Jongin watching her some tables away. He nods. She looks away.
(“Step 2 in the healing process,” Jonghyun announces, tapping his pen against the table. “Acceptance.”
“But I’ve already accepted Myungsoo’s death,” she protests. She’d accepted it the second she felt him die, when she knew he wasn’t coming back. She knew that.
“This isn’t about Myungsoo,” Jonghyun adjusts his glasses and coughs. “It’s about Jinri.”)
“What’s up?” Yixing takes a drag of water. “If you’re wanting the recipe to my bubble tea you’re not getting it. That secret will go down to the grave with me.” He smiles lightly.
“It’s my fault Jinri died,” she blurts out. His smile drops. “If I… if me and Myungsoo… if we hadn’t been so careless she wouldn’t have been in that position, she wouldn’t have tried to help us…” Yixing doesn’t say anything, his back straight and his elbows resting on the table, but his silence is stifling. “It was my fault,” she manages. “And you know that. So why are you always so nice to me?”
Minutes pass. Finally, Yixing toys with his chopsticks, lining them up perfectly on top of his bowl. “I’m nice to you because it wasn’t all your fault,” he says quietly. “Sure, you guys were careless. But Jinri was careless too. She wasn’t supposed to be there, you know. She disobeyed orders and she knew better than to stay when Atticon got back up. But she stayed. She stayed to help you.” He folds his arms on the table and leans forward. “She was a PPDC fighter pilot. That was her job. They kept screaming at her to get out of there but she absolutely refused. I’m proud of what she did that day, Soojung. I’m so proud.”
Soojung doesn’t know what to say. There is no trace of shame or anger in Yixing’s eyes “But you told me to look out for her,” she mumbles. “And I didn’t.”
“I was an idiot for thinking anyone could look out for Choi Jinri,” he smiles. “She was always the one who looked out for everyone. And she was true to herself to the very end. That was what I loved most about her, I think. She gave up her life to save yours and a million others.”
“But you declared me unstable,” Soojung whispers. “You told me to stand down. Weren’t you angry?”
“That was Myungsoo’s decision,” Yixing replies. “He was the one who decided you were too unstable to keep fighting, and the readings backed it up. I called the final shot, but I wasn’t mad. I couldn’t feel anything. You know what it’s like, don’t you, to have your heart ripped right out of your chest? You stop feeling and just go into autopilot. That’s what I was like.”
She knows very well what it feels like.
“I don’t blame you, Soojung. I’ve never really blamed you.”
“Yixing, I… thank you.” she stares down at her bowl. Relief doesn’t cut it, but something in her chest feels lighter. Like a burden she didn’t know she was carrying has lifted from her shoulders, and she can breathe a little easier. “Jinri loved you, you know,” she tells him.
He picks up his chopsticks. “I know,” he says simply. “Now hurry up and eat, your food’s gone cold.”
“So how did it go?” Jongin asks later in the safety of the meditation room. “Did he let it all out? He looked pretty intense.”
Soojung thinks it over. “I feel a lot lighter now,” she admits.
Jongin nods. “Acceptance,” he says. “Not for you, but for Yixing. For you it was forgiveness.”
“From Yixing?” Soojung sets the paper and pen down.
“No,” he shakes his head. “From yourself.”
2019, February 7. Seoul National University Hospital, room 506.
Sooyeon runs the highest fever that night, and her skin burns Soojung’s hand when she grasps her wrist. Soojung yells for doctors, is about to press the call button beside Sooyeon’s bed when her sister grabs at her with her other hand.
“No,” she commands. Her tone is strong, firm, despite her hoarse voice. Soojung freezes. Sooyeon hasn’t spoken for a month. One month. She feels a dam burst in her chest. Has it already been one month? “No, don’t... call them.”
“You need help,” Soojung insists.
“No, don’t,” Sooyeon’s grip on her is strong, so strong, and she pulls Soojung to sit on the bed beside her. “Don’t let them give me anymore drugs. I don’t want them. I don’t want them anymore.”
Soojung’s heart is breaking and she can’t keep her eyes from misting up as Sooyeon puts one hand behind her head and pulls her into her chest. She can feel nothing but bones beneath Sooyeon’s blanket and her thin pyjamas, but more than anything she can feel Sooyeon’s battered heart beating fast and hard through her bruised ribcage, can feel the tubes snaking out of her sister’s broken body into plastic IV drips hanging on stands. She buries her head in her sister’s chest, closes her eyes. Tries to memorize the rhythm of Sooyeon’s pulse.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” Sooyeon whispers into her hair. Her voice is already fading, already a shadow of what it had been just a few moments before. Soojung feels her own skin burning with her heat, but she clings on tighter. Sooyeon strokes her head, just like she used to do when they were younger, before they knew what sadness felt like, before a Kaiju stormed into Seoul and destroyed everything they knew. “I know this was never what you wanted. I’m sorry that I got you caught up in a dream that was really only meant for me.”
Soojung shakes her head, burrowing harder into her, but doesn’t say anything. What can you say when everything your dying sister is saying is utterly and completely true?
“Don’t go,” she whispers. Her voice breaks.
“You’re strong,” Sooyeon’s breath is shallower now, more breathy. Soojung clings on tighter. “I’m going to have to ask you to do one more thing for me, Soojung.” Don’t go.
“I love you,” Soojung weeps.
“Live.” Sooyeon puts her arms around her. “Stand up and live.” Don’t go.
“Unnie,” she says. Sooyeon’s heartbeat is fainter. She straightens up, looks down at her sister. She looks back with a clarity she hasn’t seen in 10 months, since the doctors sat them down and explained what was happening while Soojung burst into tears.
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” she sobs.
“Just remember,” Sooyeon lifts a hand and strokes her cheek. “You will always find me in the Drift.” And she pulls her back down into her and hugs her so hard that Soojung is afraid her sister’s bones will break. “I love you,” Sooyeon whispers.
Soojung closes her eyes and counts Sooyeon’s pulse for the last time.
2020, November 6. Anchorage Shatterdome.
Artemis Fury report to Bay 3, level A-43.
Soojung turns to stare at Jongin as the sirens being wailing. They’d arrived in Anchorage with Artemis Fury to oversee some upgrades to their Jaeger just a few days ago, and this is the last thing she wants to hear when they’re in unfamiliar territory without their usual team to back them up. She’s especially unsure about this mission when she and Jongin still don’t trust each other 100%. Sure, they’re getting a lot more comfortable around each other, but the niggling doubt she has at the back of her head never seems to go away.
Jongin puts down his ping pong paddle. “Crunch time,” he says. He doesn’t smile. They run.
“Coyote Tango has been destroyed,” Tendo Choi, Anchorage’s Chief LOCCENT Officer tells them as they’re airlifted out of the Shatterdome. “We’re sending you out to St Lawrence Island to finish it off. You guys are the only ones available here right now, sorry for the short notice.”
“It’s no problem,” Jongin replies. Soojung wants to ask about Beowulf Luna, Sehun’s Jaeger, then realizes that she hasn’t seen Sehun since arriving and decides not to say anything. “His accent is kinda weird, huh?” Jongin asks in Korean when they cut the connection.
“I could say the same about yours,” Soojung smirks.
Jongin rolls his eyes. “I speak another language so that already makes me somewhat of a genius.”
“If you’re a genius Amber must be Einstein then.”
“Haha,” Jongin says without laughing. They lapse back into silence, watching the land roll out beneath their feet. “Hey Soojung,” he says suddenly. She looks at him. “Promise you won’t let me fall.”
Soojung feels all the breath leave her lungs. “I promise.”
2019, January 4. Seoul National University Hospital.
“Her condition’s deteriorating. I’m sorry to tell you this, Miss Jung, but there is a strong chance that she might not make it through this.”
Soojung tells herself that she knew this was coming. She thinks she’s ready. “How long.”
“Miss Jung, I can assure you that we’re going to try every -.”
“How long.”
The doctor checks herself. Soojung’s gaze is dead. “One month.”
One month. Soojung sits on a plastic chair just beside the receptionist’s desk and stares at nothing. She isn’t ready.
Sooyeon can barely ask for water anymore. She lifts a weak hand and waves it limply for a few seconds before letting it fall back against her blanket. Soojung knows what she means anyway, and pours a glass. She and Sooyeon have always known what the other was thinking, mind melded or not. One month. And then who will save her bibimbap when she’s too busy working out to get it herself? Who will tell her off when she isn’t taking things seriously?
Sooyeon lost all her hair 5 months into chemo. She always had beautiful hair, soft and silky and thick where Soojung’s was thin and limp. Her sister looks like a different person now, but Soojung can still see Sooyeon’s smile in her protruding cheekbones, can still see her strength in her sunken eyes. Soojung never had that strength; she’d always just rode on the coattails of Sooyeon’s.
Sooyeon first started getting nose bleeds back in March. In April she collapsed during a simulation. By May she was admitted into the cancer department of SNUH, and Soojung went with her. She was there when Sooyeon spent the night retching after her first dose of chemo, and she was there when Sooyeon woke up screaming in the middle of the night from nightmares in the form of a giant monster stomping past their apartment window and finding their parent’s mangled bodies in the street the very next day.
Radiation sickness. Chronic myeloid leukemia. Soojung let them take her stem cells. She let them take bone marrow. She let them take blood. She let them take anything from her body if it meant compensating for Sooyeon’s weak one. If it meant keeping her sister alive for a while longer.
For a while prospects looked good, and then Sooyeon relapsed. The leukemia had morphed into stomach cancer, then liver. She lost half her stomach and had to be fed through a tube. Soojung asked if they had kimchi flavoured liquid. The nurses looked at her like she was crazy.
Jinri still drops by on her off days to sit beside Soojung and tell hilarious and inappropriate stories to both her and her sister, and Soojung appreciates having someone around to lighten the mood, that there is someone that can still make Sooyeon laugh even though it hurts.
Sooyeon never tells her it hurts, but she sees it every time her sister’s eyebrows crease just a little bit in the middle whenever she moves. Creased eyebrows mean pain. A wrinkled nose mean amusement. Soojung knows what every little change in Sooyeon’s face means. There was a reason they had 4 solo kills in the short 2 years they fought side by side.
Jonghyun comes as well, always with a fresh bouquet of flowers that brightens up the room. Soojung excuses herself every time. She’s always found it a little weird to see Jonghyun outside of the Shatterdome, and she’s never liked the thought of having to share Sooyeon with someone else, even if they get along relatively well. She sits in the plastic chair beside the receptionist and stares at the wall. She tells herself that this is practice for what it would feel like when Sooyeon finally leaves her.
2020, November 6. St Lawrence Island.
Crunch time.
She can see the remains of Coyote Tango floating just out beyond the miracle mile. She doesn’t know why it looks so strange until she realizes that it is headless. Jongin reminds her to clear her mind and focus, and she stops looking. She can’t do anything to save the Tunari brothers anymore, but she can helps avenge their deaths for them.
“That’s the right attitude,” Jongin encourages. “Now where the hell is that bastard.”
It jumps them at the 10 mile mark, with barely a dent in it. It has a hard protective armor on its back, almost like a turtle, and Soojung sidesteps it before it can lunge at them again.
“We should go full throttle!” Jongin yells as the Kaiju punches them in the middle and sends them flying. “It has full blown defense so we should hit it with everything we’ve got!”
“We’re too close to the island!” Soojung argues as they pick themselves up. “We can’t risk it!”
The Kaiju disappears into the water and slams into their legs so hard that they fall back in. It pounds on their head, shaking them violently inside. “Then get the sword!” Jongin looks up at the small crack on the hull, and Soojung remembers what happened the last time that hull cracked, when she lost another boy with eyes like the sun.
“Artemis, you’ve hit the 8 mile mark!” Tendo relays. “Don’t let it get any closer!”
She and Jongin send an uppercut to the Kaiju’s chin as it pounds down on them again, managing to push it off them and send it flying backwards into the ocean. “You can’t be scared anymore, Soojung!” Jongin cries out. “Your fear only made you weak! Your fear was the reason you lost so many people after Sooyeon! Don’t let it control you!”
She remembers Myungsoo yelling at her for the sword, and her refusal. How it got him killed. How her second-too-late decision to use the cannon got Jinri killed. Jongin is right. She won’t let anyone else die because of her insecurity.
“Okay!” she yells as the Kaiju jumps on them and digs its claws into their face, causing the crack to split open into a hole. Plasma cannon loading. “Just hold on, Jongin!” she yells. The Kaiju suddenly smacks at them like swatting at a fly, and something in their arm shifts.
Plasma cannon disconnected, says the AI. Jongin swears, and they throw the Kaiju off them. Soojung unsheathes the sword as they brace themselves.
“I thought those bloody technicians fixed it up,” Jongin growls. “I’m going to go check the circuits, don’t engage in a fight,” he tells her, stepping out of his harness before she can stop it.
“Wait, Jongin, don’t disengage!” she yells, and then the Kaiju slams into them. Jongin flies into the side of the Conn Pod, and she can see blood on the side of his head as he hits the floor. The Kaiju punches them in the side of the face again, and she hears his yell before he disappears through the hole in the hull.
“JONGIN!” she screams. He’s still there, managed to latch himself on to Artemis’ shoulder. They’re still connected. The neural bridge is still strong and holding. She feels a renewed strength flow through her. “You won’t take another one from me!” she cries out as the Kaiju runs at her.
And that’s when she feels Jongin fall.
She sees the churning water, sees nothing but inky darkness. She’s seen this scene so many times in her nightmares, in her dreams. Promise you won’t let me fall, Soojung. “I promised!” she yells. “And that’s exactly what I’m going to do!” She spies Artemis’ right leg through Jongin’s eyes, and she knows exactly where he is. His suit’s homing device is still blinking on her screen. She punches the Kaiju in the face, then bends over and cups her hand.
She sees the broken hull of the Jaeger looking at her, feels the cold metal under her skin before Jongin passes out on her hand. She has him. Relief floods through her. She has him.
Live, says Sooyeon.
Kick its ass! yells Jinri.
You can do this, Myungsoo smiles.
The Kaiju rears up and charges at her, and with Jongin in one hand and a sword in the other, she braces herself. As it takes a running jump and throws itself at her, its own momentum drives the sword straight through its heart.
The Kaiju screams, a terrible shrill scream that echoes into the night, and then it slumps against her. She’s won.
Sooyeon is stroking her hair. Jinri is jumping up and down around her, laughing. Myungsoo is holding her hand. Maybe she’s hallucinating, she thinks, as blood spatters her suit. The Drift doesn’t create new memories. But she feels them all the same, the memories of the people she loves imprinting themselves into her skin forever.
She still doesn’t have a reason to do this, to pilot a Jaeger that killed her sister, to face demons of the deep that killed her best friend and her lover. But she feels at peace with herself as she makes it to the island and manages to lower Jongin on to the beach before collapsing.
v. let's go save the world
2016, February 28. Seoul, South Korea.
Soojung comes homes to find Sooyeon packing. “Where are you going?” she cries out as Sooyeon rushes around in a frenzy, grabbing items at random, looking at them, tossing them to one side. “What’s happening? Sooyeon!” She jumps at her, throws her on to the bed and sits on her stomach, anchoring her wrists to the bed so she won’t escape. “What the hell are you doing?!”
“Remember what I said that day when we lost mum and dad?” Sooyeon stares back at her, chest heaving. Soojung sees the stone cold determination in her eyes, that same determination that gave her sister so little friends when she was still in school, that earned her the nickname of Ice Princess.
“You said you’d never let anything happen to me,” Soojung mumbles. She tries hard not to relive that day two months ago, the day Imugi emerged from the East China Sea and destroyed everything she had ever known.
“Remember what I said about the Shatterdome in Hong Kong? That the Jaeger Academies are open?”
Soojung recalls hazy details of the Jaeger that took down Imugi, slashed its head right off its shoulders where it landed solidly in the middle of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza and leaked Kaiju Blue out of its neck for days. Some people never recovered. Soojung sometimes thinks out loud that it was the Jaeger that killed them. Sooyeon counters her every time. “Shatterdomes,” she mumbles instead. “That place where they breed murderers.”
Sooyeon eyes her fixedly. “If it weren’t for the Jaeger Program, Seoul wouldn’t even be here anymore and we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” she says firmly. “But that’s not the point. I said I’d protect you and I will. I’m going to America. I’m joining the academy. I’m going to be a Jaeger pilot.”
The shock is enough for Soojung to relax her grip on her sister, whereupon Sooyeon promptly flips her over and leaps lithely off the bed. Soojung lies where she’s been pushed, a million thoughts swirling through her brain.
“But,” starts Soojung, still lying on the bed as Sooyeon starts tearing around the room again.
“No buts,” Sooyeon holds up a finger. “I’ve made up my mind.”
“Sooyeon…”
“I said I’ve made up my mind.”
“But -,” Soojung sits up.
“Soojung, I said -.”
“You can’t protect me if you’re not here!” Soojung yells, squeezing her eyes shut and pounding her fist into the pillow. The bed springs squeak. Sooyeon pauses, puts down the picture frame she’s holding. Soojung watches her purse her lips, watches her run her tongue over her teeth. Her sister’s habits are second nature to her now, and she can read meaning into every little movement Sooyeon makes. She knows her sister enough to know this: she’s terrified.
“I can protect you if I’m in a Jaeger,” Sooyeon finally breaks the silence. “You and a hundred thousand other people. What threat am I to a Kaiju that can squish me like a bug under its feet when I can look it in the eye and have skin made of steel and bones that won’t break?” Her voice is disjointed, like she’s already gone.
“Take me with you,” Soojung says. “I’m old enough. I know I am. Take me with you. Besides,” she adds quickly as Sooyeon opens her mouth to say something. “Wouldn’t you feel better knowing you could be a Jaeger pilot and still be able to keep an eye on your beloved younger sister?”
Sooyeon closes her mouth, looks pensive for a moment, sighs, then grins slightly. “When you put it like that…” She scratches her eyebrow, shakes her head. “I really wasn’t going to ask you to come along, but… if you insist…” She puts her hand in her jacket pocket and waves two slips at Soojung, grinning like a Cheshire Cat. “Pack your things. Our flight is in 6 hours.”
And when Soojung stares dumbfoundedly at her, her sister only laughs and walks back to the bed, her hands on her hips as she looks down at her. They share a look, and then Sooyeon reaches out and ruffles Soojung’s hair before stepping away and extending a hand towards her.
“Come on,” she says gently. “Let’s go save the world.”
Soojung takes it.
2022, November 7. Incheon Shatterdome infirmary.
Jongin wakes up in a hospital bed with a splitting headache and the memory of Myungsoo, Jinri and Sooyeon’s faces swirling through his mind. Soojung is sitting next to him in a chair, head bowed and face covered with long, dark hair. She’s still in her drivesuit, there’s still blood on her temple. Jongin tries to move: everything comes flooding back.
“Soojung,” he manages in a hoarse whisper. It’s enough. She stirs, lifts her head, looks at him. Her eyebags are more pronounced than ever and she looks positively exhausted, but after battling 2 Kaiju in the span of just 2 months, Jongin thinks she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on.
“Hey,” she whispers, and she smiles. His heart aches more than his head.
Jongin pushes himself up in bed, and she gets up to bend over him. “Hey,” he manages back, then puts his hand in her hair, pulls her down to him and presses his forehead against hers. She doesn’t push away. Her own fingers are pressed to his chest, tangled in his torn and tattered circuitry suit. They breathe together, slowly, silently, reminding each other that they’re alive. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he manages a grin when he pulls away despite the bruises on his bones, the sutures on his skin.
Her gaze is softer now when she extends a hand towards him, open palmed. She’s still smiling. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go save the world.”
Jongin takes it.
end.
krystal/kai/L/sulli/jessica (+others)
pacific rim au
<<<<<
2022, October 22. Incheon Shatterdome.
It takes her three weeks to work up the nerve to knock on his door. She thinks she might be better off without him, and Crash Nebula can keep defending the area while she continues to rot away in this reinforced concrete cage, but Jonghyun keeps asking her how the trust exercises are going and Minhyuk keeps glowering at her whenever she turns up to the Kwoon alone and the final nail in the coffin is when Victoria beckons to her and tells her to stop behaving like a spoilt brat, she didn’t spend hours convincing the UN to get Artemis Fury back just to have her mope around her room because she couldn’t get along with her co-pilot.
Soojung can’t take the hounding anymore, which is why she is here knocking on his door with no intention of apologizing whatsoever.
He opens the door after exactly 10 knocks. “What the hell do you want?” he asks brusquely. He looks like he’s just woken up, his hair sticking up one side and his eyes bleary, dressed in just a tank top and regulation pants. Soojung tries to keep her eyes focused on his face and not his arms. “It’s 2 in the morning for god’s sakes; do you not have a concept of bedtime?”
She ignores the jab and brushes him aside. “We still have some trust exercises to do and we’ve wasted too much time. Are you going to let me in?”
Jongin stares at her, looking completely bewildered. “You’re completely nuts, you know that?” But he stands aside for her anyway, letting her in. His room is almost identical to hers, except instead of an empty desk he has paper strewn everywhere and where her walls are bare he has several posters. He catches her looking at a particularly worn one with curling edges, and huffs. “Having fun there?” he flops onto his bed. Soojung tears herself away from the Jaeger on the propaganda poster - her Jaeger - and the dates of the Ranger recruitment drive - May 2021, Myungsoo was still alive then - and looks at him. He looks back.
“Atticon wasn’t that long ago, was it?” she asks quietly. Jongin’s expression loosens slightly.
“Almost 2 years ago,” he replies without the slightest hesitation, and she wonders how long he’s been counting the days between the death that changed him and this very second. She wonders how long it has been between the death that changed her and this very second. She stopped counting after the third. “There’s nothing left of Taemin by now.”
She rifles through some of the paper on his desk. Kaiju dossiers, the fighting styles of the more well-known Jaegers. She chances on a sheet with Sehun’s face on it. Jongin is still watching her warily. She covers the sheet back up. She feels something bubbling up in her chest, something she desperately wants to get out before it consumes her. “There was nothing left of Jinri the moment Atticon crashed her out of the sky,” she starts before she can stop herself. “And the fish have probably pecked Myungsoo’s bones clean by now. Don’t you think that’s a somewhat peaceful way to go?” She looks up. “We were still connected when he drowned, you know.”
Jongin sits up. “I know.”
“Do you think he felt the fish nibbling at him? Do you think he was happy that he wasn’t torn apart by sharks?” Soojung takes a piece of paper and a pencil and sits on the floor, facing Jongin. “I tell him I’m sorry everyday. If I had just listened to him instead of trying to drown that Kaiju he’d still be here, wouldn’t he?”
“Yeah, he would,” Jongin says quietly. “But I wouldn’t.”
They stare at each other for a few minutes before Jongin looks away. He gets up and walks past Soojung, and she stares down at the paper in her lap. His room smells like him. “Do you think you’d forgive me if I ever let you die?” she asks.
Jongin sits down behind her with a thump. There’s a second where she feels nothing, and then he leans back against her, his head resting on her shoulder. His hair tickles her jaw, and she’s slightly surprised by how soft it is. It feels slightly damp too, as if he’s just washed it. “I would if I knew that you had fought for me,” he says. She can feel his heartbeat through his tank top and her jumper and she can feel her own, as if she has two hearts inside her instead of none. She can feel the shift in pressure on her back every time he inhales and exhales. She closes her eyes.
“Trust exercise number 3,” she finally manages. “Shared visualisation. Tell me what to draw without telling me what it is.” She waits a few seconds before the slow, even breath ruffling her hair tells her that he’s fallen asleep.
It’s Amber who spots her when she exits Jongin’s room that morning, her own hair mussed and her body aching from falling asleep on the floor. She can still feel the warmth of Jongin’s back lingering on her own and somewhere in the middle of the night he had actually dragged the blanket down over the both of them (The idiot, she thinks. He could have dragged them up to the bed instead). She’s still thinking about how soft Jongin’s hair is when she finds her path blocked. She looks up. Amber’s grin is Cheshire Cat-like.
“Soooo, what were we doing coming out of our resident co-pilot’s room at 8 in the morning, hmmmmm?” she announces a little too loudly, and Soojung tries hard to keep her nostrils from flaring.
“Nothing,” she says. “I just went in, okay?” She fixes her ex co-pilot with a squint. “Don’t you try and insinuate anything, Amber Liu.”
Amber laughs, showing even white teeth. “Mussed hair, dishevelled clothes, bleary eyes. That is not the sign of someone who woke up in their own room, Jung Soojung. You’d better not let the Marshall find out,” she winks.
“I said nothing happened,” Soojung snaps. “Don’t you have some simulation training to do?”
Amber doesn’t stop grinning even as she walks away. “Nice to hear you yelling at me again, Soojung!” she yells down the corridor, then waves and disappears. Soojung goes into her own room, inspects her red cheeks in her mirror, then bangs her forehead against it.
“I can let him in, can’t I?” she asks her reflection.
iv. brittle bones and bruised skin
2019, February 23. Incheon Shatterdome.
Soojung shows up at the Shatterdome a week after the funeral, and nobody believes it.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jinri catches her arm as she exits the helicopter, leading her into the building. “You’re supposed to be at home! You’re not supposed to be here!”
“This is my home,” Soojung tells her. But one glance at the familiar concrete sends a stab through her heart, makes her want to burst into tears and feel her sister’s arms around her one last time.
“Go back, Soojung,” Jinri gives her a push. “This isn’t right. You need time to heal. There’s no way you can work like this.” Soojung ignores her and marches right into mission control, where Marshall Song turns around, mild surprise written on her face. Behind her, Yixing looks downright dumbfounded.
“Miss Jung?” Victoria steps towards her. She sounds the same as always, but her eyes are kind. Soojung doesn’t really want to see it. “What are you doing here? Your leave isn’t up until the end of this month, is there something -.”
“Marshall,” Soojung bows. “Please find me a new co-pilot. I’m ready to get back to work.”
A shocked silence falls over the room. Soojung remains bent over.
“I don’t think that’s a wise move, Ranger,” Victoria starts, and Soojung raises her head. “You’ve just lost someone close to you, I don’t blame you if you want more time to compose yourself. I will not let you back into that cockpit until you are cleared by the Psych Analyst as fit for work. Until then, please rest.” She clasps her hands behind her back and turns away slightly.
“Marshall!” Soojung cries out, and Jinri jumps. Victoria turns back, looking taken aback. “I’m ready. I know I’m ready. I’m not going to waste any more time mourning, I’ve had 10 months to do that! Please let me back into Artemis!”
“Soojung…” Yixing starts.
“I promised my sister I’ll live,” Soojung grits her teeth, clenches her hands into fists. “I promised her I would stand up and live, and that is exactly what I’m going to do.”
Victoria observes her silently for a few seconds before pinching the bridge of her nose and closing her eyes. “Alright,” she says heavily. “I will start the preparations. Just don’t make me regret this, Soojung,” she fixes her with a steely look before turning back around. Yixing shoots her a thumbs up and a special smile at Jinri before turning around as well.
“Hey, she called you Soojung,” Jinri whispers in her ear as Soojung watches the Marshall’s back, relief flooding through her. “She must really like you.”
Later when Soojung is back in the room she used to share with her sister, a fine layer of dust scattered over all their possessions and the ghost of Sooyeon still hanging in the air, she sinks down on to the floor and weeps like she’s lost something all over again.
2022, October 28. Incheon Shatterdome mess hall.
“Can I talk to you?” she asks Yixing a few days later when she spots him in the mess hall. He looks up in the middle of his jjajangmyun (she indicates that he has sauce in the corner of his mouth), and beckons to the seat opposite him. She sets her tray down, and spots Jongin watching her some tables away. He nods. She looks away.
(“Step 2 in the healing process,” Jonghyun announces, tapping his pen against the table. “Acceptance.”
“But I’ve already accepted Myungsoo’s death,” she protests. She’d accepted it the second she felt him die, when she knew he wasn’t coming back. She knew that.
“This isn’t about Myungsoo,” Jonghyun adjusts his glasses and coughs. “It’s about Jinri.”)
“What’s up?” Yixing takes a drag of water. “If you’re wanting the recipe to my bubble tea you’re not getting it. That secret will go down to the grave with me.” He smiles lightly.
“It’s my fault Jinri died,” she blurts out. His smile drops. “If I… if me and Myungsoo… if we hadn’t been so careless she wouldn’t have been in that position, she wouldn’t have tried to help us…” Yixing doesn’t say anything, his back straight and his elbows resting on the table, but his silence is stifling. “It was my fault,” she manages. “And you know that. So why are you always so nice to me?”
Minutes pass. Finally, Yixing toys with his chopsticks, lining them up perfectly on top of his bowl. “I’m nice to you because it wasn’t all your fault,” he says quietly. “Sure, you guys were careless. But Jinri was careless too. She wasn’t supposed to be there, you know. She disobeyed orders and she knew better than to stay when Atticon got back up. But she stayed. She stayed to help you.” He folds his arms on the table and leans forward. “She was a PPDC fighter pilot. That was her job. They kept screaming at her to get out of there but she absolutely refused. I’m proud of what she did that day, Soojung. I’m so proud.”
Soojung doesn’t know what to say. There is no trace of shame or anger in Yixing’s eyes “But you told me to look out for her,” she mumbles. “And I didn’t.”
“I was an idiot for thinking anyone could look out for Choi Jinri,” he smiles. “She was always the one who looked out for everyone. And she was true to herself to the very end. That was what I loved most about her, I think. She gave up her life to save yours and a million others.”
“But you declared me unstable,” Soojung whispers. “You told me to stand down. Weren’t you angry?”
“That was Myungsoo’s decision,” Yixing replies. “He was the one who decided you were too unstable to keep fighting, and the readings backed it up. I called the final shot, but I wasn’t mad. I couldn’t feel anything. You know what it’s like, don’t you, to have your heart ripped right out of your chest? You stop feeling and just go into autopilot. That’s what I was like.”
She knows very well what it feels like.
“I don’t blame you, Soojung. I’ve never really blamed you.”
“Yixing, I… thank you.” she stares down at her bowl. Relief doesn’t cut it, but something in her chest feels lighter. Like a burden she didn’t know she was carrying has lifted from her shoulders, and she can breathe a little easier. “Jinri loved you, you know,” she tells him.
He picks up his chopsticks. “I know,” he says simply. “Now hurry up and eat, your food’s gone cold.”
“So how did it go?” Jongin asks later in the safety of the meditation room. “Did he let it all out? He looked pretty intense.”
Soojung thinks it over. “I feel a lot lighter now,” she admits.
Jongin nods. “Acceptance,” he says. “Not for you, but for Yixing. For you it was forgiveness.”
“From Yixing?” Soojung sets the paper and pen down.
“No,” he shakes his head. “From yourself.”
2019, February 7. Seoul National University Hospital, room 506.
Sooyeon runs the highest fever that night, and her skin burns Soojung’s hand when she grasps her wrist. Soojung yells for doctors, is about to press the call button beside Sooyeon’s bed when her sister grabs at her with her other hand.
“No,” she commands. Her tone is strong, firm, despite her hoarse voice. Soojung freezes. Sooyeon hasn’t spoken for a month. One month. She feels a dam burst in her chest. Has it already been one month? “No, don’t... call them.”
“You need help,” Soojung insists.
“No, don’t,” Sooyeon’s grip on her is strong, so strong, and she pulls Soojung to sit on the bed beside her. “Don’t let them give me anymore drugs. I don’t want them. I don’t want them anymore.”
Soojung’s heart is breaking and she can’t keep her eyes from misting up as Sooyeon puts one hand behind her head and pulls her into her chest. She can feel nothing but bones beneath Sooyeon’s blanket and her thin pyjamas, but more than anything she can feel Sooyeon’s battered heart beating fast and hard through her bruised ribcage, can feel the tubes snaking out of her sister’s broken body into plastic IV drips hanging on stands. She buries her head in her sister’s chest, closes her eyes. Tries to memorize the rhythm of Sooyeon’s pulse.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” Sooyeon whispers into her hair. Her voice is already fading, already a shadow of what it had been just a few moments before. Soojung feels her own skin burning with her heat, but she clings on tighter. Sooyeon strokes her head, just like she used to do when they were younger, before they knew what sadness felt like, before a Kaiju stormed into Seoul and destroyed everything they knew. “I know this was never what you wanted. I’m sorry that I got you caught up in a dream that was really only meant for me.”
Soojung shakes her head, burrowing harder into her, but doesn’t say anything. What can you say when everything your dying sister is saying is utterly and completely true?
“Don’t go,” she whispers. Her voice breaks.
“You’re strong,” Sooyeon’s breath is shallower now, more breathy. Soojung clings on tighter. “I’m going to have to ask you to do one more thing for me, Soojung.” Don’t go.
“I love you,” Soojung weeps.
“Live.” Sooyeon puts her arms around her. “Stand up and live.” Don’t go.
“Unnie,” she says. Sooyeon’s heartbeat is fainter. She straightens up, looks down at her sister. She looks back with a clarity she hasn’t seen in 10 months, since the doctors sat them down and explained what was happening while Soojung burst into tears.
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” she sobs.
“Just remember,” Sooyeon lifts a hand and strokes her cheek. “You will always find me in the Drift.” And she pulls her back down into her and hugs her so hard that Soojung is afraid her sister’s bones will break. “I love you,” Sooyeon whispers.
Soojung closes her eyes and counts Sooyeon’s pulse for the last time.
2020, November 6. Anchorage Shatterdome.
Artemis Fury report to Bay 3, level A-43.
Soojung turns to stare at Jongin as the sirens being wailing. They’d arrived in Anchorage with Artemis Fury to oversee some upgrades to their Jaeger just a few days ago, and this is the last thing she wants to hear when they’re in unfamiliar territory without their usual team to back them up. She’s especially unsure about this mission when she and Jongin still don’t trust each other 100%. Sure, they’re getting a lot more comfortable around each other, but the niggling doubt she has at the back of her head never seems to go away.
Jongin puts down his ping pong paddle. “Crunch time,” he says. He doesn’t smile. They run.
“Coyote Tango has been destroyed,” Tendo Choi, Anchorage’s Chief LOCCENT Officer tells them as they’re airlifted out of the Shatterdome. “We’re sending you out to St Lawrence Island to finish it off. You guys are the only ones available here right now, sorry for the short notice.”
“It’s no problem,” Jongin replies. Soojung wants to ask about Beowulf Luna, Sehun’s Jaeger, then realizes that she hasn’t seen Sehun since arriving and decides not to say anything. “His accent is kinda weird, huh?” Jongin asks in Korean when they cut the connection.
“I could say the same about yours,” Soojung smirks.
Jongin rolls his eyes. “I speak another language so that already makes me somewhat of a genius.”
“If you’re a genius Amber must be Einstein then.”
“Haha,” Jongin says without laughing. They lapse back into silence, watching the land roll out beneath their feet. “Hey Soojung,” he says suddenly. She looks at him. “Promise you won’t let me fall.”
Soojung feels all the breath leave her lungs. “I promise.”
2019, January 4. Seoul National University Hospital.
“Her condition’s deteriorating. I’m sorry to tell you this, Miss Jung, but there is a strong chance that she might not make it through this.”
Soojung tells herself that she knew this was coming. She thinks she’s ready. “How long.”
“Miss Jung, I can assure you that we’re going to try every -.”
“How long.”
The doctor checks herself. Soojung’s gaze is dead. “One month.”
One month. Soojung sits on a plastic chair just beside the receptionist’s desk and stares at nothing. She isn’t ready.
Sooyeon can barely ask for water anymore. She lifts a weak hand and waves it limply for a few seconds before letting it fall back against her blanket. Soojung knows what she means anyway, and pours a glass. She and Sooyeon have always known what the other was thinking, mind melded or not. One month. And then who will save her bibimbap when she’s too busy working out to get it herself? Who will tell her off when she isn’t taking things seriously?
Sooyeon lost all her hair 5 months into chemo. She always had beautiful hair, soft and silky and thick where Soojung’s was thin and limp. Her sister looks like a different person now, but Soojung can still see Sooyeon’s smile in her protruding cheekbones, can still see her strength in her sunken eyes. Soojung never had that strength; she’d always just rode on the coattails of Sooyeon’s.
Sooyeon first started getting nose bleeds back in March. In April she collapsed during a simulation. By May she was admitted into the cancer department of SNUH, and Soojung went with her. She was there when Sooyeon spent the night retching after her first dose of chemo, and she was there when Sooyeon woke up screaming in the middle of the night from nightmares in the form of a giant monster stomping past their apartment window and finding their parent’s mangled bodies in the street the very next day.
Radiation sickness. Chronic myeloid leukemia. Soojung let them take her stem cells. She let them take bone marrow. She let them take blood. She let them take anything from her body if it meant compensating for Sooyeon’s weak one. If it meant keeping her sister alive for a while longer.
For a while prospects looked good, and then Sooyeon relapsed. The leukemia had morphed into stomach cancer, then liver. She lost half her stomach and had to be fed through a tube. Soojung asked if they had kimchi flavoured liquid. The nurses looked at her like she was crazy.
Jinri still drops by on her off days to sit beside Soojung and tell hilarious and inappropriate stories to both her and her sister, and Soojung appreciates having someone around to lighten the mood, that there is someone that can still make Sooyeon laugh even though it hurts.
Sooyeon never tells her it hurts, but she sees it every time her sister’s eyebrows crease just a little bit in the middle whenever she moves. Creased eyebrows mean pain. A wrinkled nose mean amusement. Soojung knows what every little change in Sooyeon’s face means. There was a reason they had 4 solo kills in the short 2 years they fought side by side.
Jonghyun comes as well, always with a fresh bouquet of flowers that brightens up the room. Soojung excuses herself every time. She’s always found it a little weird to see Jonghyun outside of the Shatterdome, and she’s never liked the thought of having to share Sooyeon with someone else, even if they get along relatively well. She sits in the plastic chair beside the receptionist and stares at the wall. She tells herself that this is practice for what it would feel like when Sooyeon finally leaves her.
2020, November 6. St Lawrence Island.
Crunch time.
She can see the remains of Coyote Tango floating just out beyond the miracle mile. She doesn’t know why it looks so strange until she realizes that it is headless. Jongin reminds her to clear her mind and focus, and she stops looking. She can’t do anything to save the Tunari brothers anymore, but she can helps avenge their deaths for them.
“That’s the right attitude,” Jongin encourages. “Now where the hell is that bastard.”
It jumps them at the 10 mile mark, with barely a dent in it. It has a hard protective armor on its back, almost like a turtle, and Soojung sidesteps it before it can lunge at them again.
“We should go full throttle!” Jongin yells as the Kaiju punches them in the middle and sends them flying. “It has full blown defense so we should hit it with everything we’ve got!”
“We’re too close to the island!” Soojung argues as they pick themselves up. “We can’t risk it!”
The Kaiju disappears into the water and slams into their legs so hard that they fall back in. It pounds on their head, shaking them violently inside. “Then get the sword!” Jongin looks up at the small crack on the hull, and Soojung remembers what happened the last time that hull cracked, when she lost another boy with eyes like the sun.
“Artemis, you’ve hit the 8 mile mark!” Tendo relays. “Don’t let it get any closer!”
She and Jongin send an uppercut to the Kaiju’s chin as it pounds down on them again, managing to push it off them and send it flying backwards into the ocean. “You can’t be scared anymore, Soojung!” Jongin cries out. “Your fear only made you weak! Your fear was the reason you lost so many people after Sooyeon! Don’t let it control you!”
She remembers Myungsoo yelling at her for the sword, and her refusal. How it got him killed. How her second-too-late decision to use the cannon got Jinri killed. Jongin is right. She won’t let anyone else die because of her insecurity.
“Okay!” she yells as the Kaiju jumps on them and digs its claws into their face, causing the crack to split open into a hole. Plasma cannon loading. “Just hold on, Jongin!” she yells. The Kaiju suddenly smacks at them like swatting at a fly, and something in their arm shifts.
Plasma cannon disconnected, says the AI. Jongin swears, and they throw the Kaiju off them. Soojung unsheathes the sword as they brace themselves.
“I thought those bloody technicians fixed it up,” Jongin growls. “I’m going to go check the circuits, don’t engage in a fight,” he tells her, stepping out of his harness before she can stop it.
“Wait, Jongin, don’t disengage!” she yells, and then the Kaiju slams into them. Jongin flies into the side of the Conn Pod, and she can see blood on the side of his head as he hits the floor. The Kaiju punches them in the side of the face again, and she hears his yell before he disappears through the hole in the hull.
“JONGIN!” she screams. He’s still there, managed to latch himself on to Artemis’ shoulder. They’re still connected. The neural bridge is still strong and holding. She feels a renewed strength flow through her. “You won’t take another one from me!” she cries out as the Kaiju runs at her.
And that’s when she feels Jongin fall.
She sees the churning water, sees nothing but inky darkness. She’s seen this scene so many times in her nightmares, in her dreams. Promise you won’t let me fall, Soojung. “I promised!” she yells. “And that’s exactly what I’m going to do!” She spies Artemis’ right leg through Jongin’s eyes, and she knows exactly where he is. His suit’s homing device is still blinking on her screen. She punches the Kaiju in the face, then bends over and cups her hand.
She sees the broken hull of the Jaeger looking at her, feels the cold metal under her skin before Jongin passes out on her hand. She has him. Relief floods through her. She has him.
Live, says Sooyeon.
Kick its ass! yells Jinri.
You can do this, Myungsoo smiles.
The Kaiju rears up and charges at her, and with Jongin in one hand and a sword in the other, she braces herself. As it takes a running jump and throws itself at her, its own momentum drives the sword straight through its heart.
The Kaiju screams, a terrible shrill scream that echoes into the night, and then it slumps against her. She’s won.
Sooyeon is stroking her hair. Jinri is jumping up and down around her, laughing. Myungsoo is holding her hand. Maybe she’s hallucinating, she thinks, as blood spatters her suit. The Drift doesn’t create new memories. But she feels them all the same, the memories of the people she loves imprinting themselves into her skin forever.
She still doesn’t have a reason to do this, to pilot a Jaeger that killed her sister, to face demons of the deep that killed her best friend and her lover. But she feels at peace with herself as she makes it to the island and manages to lower Jongin on to the beach before collapsing.
v. let's go save the world
2016, February 28. Seoul, South Korea.
Soojung comes homes to find Sooyeon packing. “Where are you going?” she cries out as Sooyeon rushes around in a frenzy, grabbing items at random, looking at them, tossing them to one side. “What’s happening? Sooyeon!” She jumps at her, throws her on to the bed and sits on her stomach, anchoring her wrists to the bed so she won’t escape. “What the hell are you doing?!”
“Remember what I said that day when we lost mum and dad?” Sooyeon stares back at her, chest heaving. Soojung sees the stone cold determination in her eyes, that same determination that gave her sister so little friends when she was still in school, that earned her the nickname of Ice Princess.
“You said you’d never let anything happen to me,” Soojung mumbles. She tries hard not to relive that day two months ago, the day Imugi emerged from the East China Sea and destroyed everything she had ever known.
“Remember what I said about the Shatterdome in Hong Kong? That the Jaeger Academies are open?”
Soojung recalls hazy details of the Jaeger that took down Imugi, slashed its head right off its shoulders where it landed solidly in the middle of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza and leaked Kaiju Blue out of its neck for days. Some people never recovered. Soojung sometimes thinks out loud that it was the Jaeger that killed them. Sooyeon counters her every time. “Shatterdomes,” she mumbles instead. “That place where they breed murderers.”
Sooyeon eyes her fixedly. “If it weren’t for the Jaeger Program, Seoul wouldn’t even be here anymore and we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” she says firmly. “But that’s not the point. I said I’d protect you and I will. I’m going to America. I’m joining the academy. I’m going to be a Jaeger pilot.”
The shock is enough for Soojung to relax her grip on her sister, whereupon Sooyeon promptly flips her over and leaps lithely off the bed. Soojung lies where she’s been pushed, a million thoughts swirling through her brain.
“But,” starts Soojung, still lying on the bed as Sooyeon starts tearing around the room again.
“No buts,” Sooyeon holds up a finger. “I’ve made up my mind.”
“Sooyeon…”
“I said I’ve made up my mind.”
“But -,” Soojung sits up.
“Soojung, I said -.”
“You can’t protect me if you’re not here!” Soojung yells, squeezing her eyes shut and pounding her fist into the pillow. The bed springs squeak. Sooyeon pauses, puts down the picture frame she’s holding. Soojung watches her purse her lips, watches her run her tongue over her teeth. Her sister’s habits are second nature to her now, and she can read meaning into every little movement Sooyeon makes. She knows her sister enough to know this: she’s terrified.
“I can protect you if I’m in a Jaeger,” Sooyeon finally breaks the silence. “You and a hundred thousand other people. What threat am I to a Kaiju that can squish me like a bug under its feet when I can look it in the eye and have skin made of steel and bones that won’t break?” Her voice is disjointed, like she’s already gone.
“Take me with you,” Soojung says. “I’m old enough. I know I am. Take me with you. Besides,” she adds quickly as Sooyeon opens her mouth to say something. “Wouldn’t you feel better knowing you could be a Jaeger pilot and still be able to keep an eye on your beloved younger sister?”
Sooyeon closes her mouth, looks pensive for a moment, sighs, then grins slightly. “When you put it like that…” She scratches her eyebrow, shakes her head. “I really wasn’t going to ask you to come along, but… if you insist…” She puts her hand in her jacket pocket and waves two slips at Soojung, grinning like a Cheshire Cat. “Pack your things. Our flight is in 6 hours.”
And when Soojung stares dumbfoundedly at her, her sister only laughs and walks back to the bed, her hands on her hips as she looks down at her. They share a look, and then Sooyeon reaches out and ruffles Soojung’s hair before stepping away and extending a hand towards her.
“Come on,” she says gently. “Let’s go save the world.”
Soojung takes it.
2022, November 7. Incheon Shatterdome infirmary.
Jongin wakes up in a hospital bed with a splitting headache and the memory of Myungsoo, Jinri and Sooyeon’s faces swirling through his mind. Soojung is sitting next to him in a chair, head bowed and face covered with long, dark hair. She’s still in her drivesuit, there’s still blood on her temple. Jongin tries to move: everything comes flooding back.
“Soojung,” he manages in a hoarse whisper. It’s enough. She stirs, lifts her head, looks at him. Her eyebags are more pronounced than ever and she looks positively exhausted, but after battling 2 Kaiju in the span of just 2 months, Jongin thinks she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on.
“Hey,” she whispers, and she smiles. His heart aches more than his head.
Jongin pushes himself up in bed, and she gets up to bend over him. “Hey,” he manages back, then puts his hand in her hair, pulls her down to him and presses his forehead against hers. She doesn’t push away. Her own fingers are pressed to his chest, tangled in his torn and tattered circuitry suit. They breathe together, slowly, silently, reminding each other that they’re alive. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he manages a grin when he pulls away despite the bruises on his bones, the sutures on his skin.
Her gaze is softer now when she extends a hand towards him, open palmed. She’s still smiling. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go save the world.”
Jongin takes it.
end.