Herc Hansen (stoptheclock) wrote in the100, @ 2015-12-16 11:38:00 |
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Herc couldn’t say he’d stopped hoping to see his son again, but he was trying. It was better for him if he expected the opposite and then Chuck showed up, rather than hoping for an outcome he’d never see. He’d still told the medical and intake staff to let him know if anyone by the name of Chuck Hansen showed up, and left a description. Just in case, he’d told himself as he walked away. He wouldn’t want Chuck to think he was alone in a place like this. Not that Chuck needed his protection now. Not that he ever really had. He thought of his son often, particularly with Christmas around the corner, and the anniversary of Chuck’s death not long after that. Chuck had become something almost abstract now. It felt like an entire lifetime had passed since he’d died. Herc felt like an entirely different person now. He didn’t expect to hear that his son had arrived. It shouldn’t have even been possible. Chuck. Herc’s chest tightened, and a lump grew in his throat as he hurried through the hallways to medical. Was it true? Was his son really here? A dark-haired nurse pointed him in the direction of his son, and then Herc’s feet stopped. There he was. For a good long moment, all he could do was stare, wide-eyed. Chuck Hansen had often imagined what death would be like. Had wondered -- would everything flash white, or would the light trickle away in a painful ooze until nothing remained but darkness? Would he see his laughably short life in quickfire snapshots and would replaying those scenes as his nerves fired one last time fill him with regret? Would it hurt? Or would he feel nothing at all? A nuclear detonation didn’t allow the body any time to process anything, surely. He would just end. He’d often imagined what death would be like, but never once did the scenarios played out in his mind take the form of what was most definitely a medical bay. There was something about the sparseness of it that was immediately familiar -- perhaps not exactly military, but certainly something approaching end-of-line grimness, like how the staff did not exactly react with surprise when he, overwhelmed by panic, kicked out and demanded to know -- is it over why am I alive did it pay off did the kaiju win --. He also didn’t expect to see his old man in an afterlife that looked like this, but perhaps this apparition that stood by the foot of his bed was all part of the haze of the sedative’s residual effects. Dad. “Did we win?” was followed closely by a, “What’re you staring at?” Chuck’s voice snapped Herc out of his daze, and he blinked a few times. His son looked the same as he had when they'd said good bye. He wondered how different he looked now. Older? Grayer? He felt more tired now than he had as an active pilot. Worn down to his bones, like his soul was tired. In a way, he supposed it was. “You,” Herc answered with an apologetic and weak smile. It took everything he had to keep his emotions in check. “It's been months…” How did he tell his son that he and Stacker really didn't come back? Did he know? He swallowed. “We won. The portal was destroyed.” “Did we..?” With a crease of his brow and a cough that rattled dryly in the back of his throat, Chuck cut himself off in favour of sitting up. Or, rather, attempting to sit up, managing it with little of his brutish ease, muscles made weak by whatever they'd given him and… months? of inactivity. His hands curled into the sheets as he fixed a stare on his father, trying to get a gauge on him. It was a surprise, clearly, for Herc to see him there. And if they'd won, then it was a surprise for Chuck himself to be alive to ask these questions. “So how the hell am I here?” A beat. “Wherever here is. Where's Max?” Did we..? Even after months of silence in his head, Herc could have finished Chuck’s sentence without a second thought, like they were drifting again. He could see Chuck trying to work it out, but he couldn’t keep eye contact once Chuck looked at him. Herc clenched his jaw as he averted his gaze, unable to say the words just yet. Just like with every other important thing, he didn’t know how to say it. The other questions were easier. “Mount Weather. It’s an old military base, in what used to be Virginia, United States. They say it’s the year 2150.” Someone should have covered that part, but it might be easier to believe coming from a face Chuck knew. “We’re not sure how anyone gets here, except we arrive in pods outside of the mountain, and we bring whoever’s inside back here. Max…” Herc took a deep breath and shook his head. Max, who hadn’t left his side since Chuck died, was still nowhere to be found. “He hasn’t shown up. He wasn’t with me.” “-- he isn’t with you,” was bitten off in stiff counter-note at the same time as his father uttered the verdict about his beloved companion. Not here. He’s not here. The acute pain of it was strangely easier -- more acceptable in this moment -- than undergoing the acceptance of what had already been said to him by the medical staff. 2150. 2150. Herc was avoiding his eye -- not unusual, not new, but Chuck desperately needed him to not look away. His smile was crooked and brittle. “2150. You sure the kaiju didn’t kill me and shit me out again and this is the afterlife, old man?” Herc's eyes flicked back to meet Chuck's. There was a flash of frustration in them, and then they were wet with unshed tears, much like when they'd last spoken in the hallway, before Chuck and Stacker left. "Don't --" His voice trembled, despite himself. It was possible, he thought. Maybe his heart had given out in his sleep. "If this is the afterlife, then I only lasted half a year without you. The worst goddamn half year of my life." Losing Angela had ripped his heart in half, but losing Chuck was like losing a piece of himself. His heart would mend, in time, but nothing would fix the hole where Chuck was supposed to be. "So maybe that's what happened. I don't know." Chuck knew how to deal with Herc’s anger and frustration. But his grief? It had been the knell for their relationship back when he was a boy, and it had been unbearable to witness (to be the cause of) in their last moment before he deployed with Pentecost. It was here, now, plain across the older man’s face, but something was different. The sparse words -- they were still words. Herc wasn’t good at those (but then, that could be said to be a Hansen family trait). And he’d been gone for half a year. Chuck was suddenly filled with a ridiculous sense of needing to apologise, for being so goddamn good at his job that he’d left his father with a bleeding, gaping wound. “Okay,” was initially soft, cheek going hollow as he sunk his teeth in. Then, with a grimace as he rubbed his hand over the drip they’d inserted into his opposite arm -- “Get me out of here. I’m not sick.” A kick with his foot did away with the sheet that covered him. There was so much he wanted to say. Herc had thought about it constantly in the weeks after Chuck's memorial. He imagined what he would have said if they'd had more time, what he should have said during those last few moments. He wished he hadn't been such a coward. He wished he'd told his son how much he loved him. Now, he hesitated in the same way he had so many months ago. This time, he could hear Peggy's voice in the back of his head, telling him to stop holding back. No more regrets, Herc told himself. Follow your heart. "I can give you a tour of the place if you want," he suggested. "Maybe we can get a drink and talk. I… I missed you." If saying such things did not come easily to Herc, hearing them and responding appropriately was equally tricky for Chuck. A bare foot hit the floor as he looked up and across at his father, his frown less the usual scowling leer, more an expression of uncertainty and, yes, longing, a thing he had little experience dealing with head-on. He missed Herc too, and as far as Chuck was concerned, he’d only been gone a few hours (a lifetime). “Yeah.” The frown became a fleeting grimace as he ripped the cannula out of his vein, clear fluid dripping to the floor and blood being staunched by the hard jab of his thumb; then, a grin. “Sure. Least I’m not bare-assed.” He swung his other leg over; in non-descript grey trousers and an equally plain t-shirt, he was a far cry from an invalid in an open-backed hospital tunic. “Shoes would be good though.” The few seconds between Herc’s admission and Chuck speaking up again seemed to drag on, until Chuck broke the ice with a joke. Seeing Chuck’s grin brought a smile to Herc’s face again, even as it stabbed him in the heart, too. He never thought he’d see that smile again. He never thought he’d hear Chuck’s voice again. “I’ll get you some. Stay put.” Herc looked concerned for a moment, like if he left, Chuck might disappear again, but he managed to pull himself away to find someone who could help track down shoes. Chuck would need a winter jacket, too, but they could pick that up later. When he came back, he held out a pair of boots, new socks tucked inside. He wondered what Chuck had been thinking about, if he’d gotten anywhere processing all of the information. Herc hadn’t accepted that it was actually real right away. “We’ll get you some winter clothes after we get out of here. It’s December.” A snorted “okay” said much -- hinted, perhaps, that Chuck suspected this was a joke of the highest order, and that on walking out of the medical bay, they would find themselves in the Shatterdome, Max waiting nearby and shaking with excitement. A miraculous survival through the success of his last mission was more plausible than it being 2150. Virginia, United States. Who the hell wanted to be there? Why? Kaijus hadn’t been a problem there. He did, however, take the boots with a grateful nod, fishing out the balled up socks and tugging them on before busying himself with the laces. “What about Gipsy? And Pentecost?” A dark look passed over Herc’s face again, and he shook his head. “Raleigh blew Gipsy from the other side of the portal, after the bomb got jammed in Striker. Ejected Mako first, then he followed. They survived.” But Stacker… Stacker hadn’t just been Herc’s commander: he’d been Herc’s best friend. In the span of a few seconds, Herc had lost both of them. It was a blessing that many of the Shatterdome staff knew about how close they’d gotten over the years, because they could sympathize in a way that the public couldn’t. The public just saw the loss of the only other Mark I pilot left, and not the man he was behind the scenes. Stacker’s office was his now, but it still felt so much like Stacker’s. “You and Stacker paved the way for Gipsy to close the portal. You blew the bomb.” It was true, and it was succinct, and any bluntness was overrided by the way Herc’s voice wavered slightly. Humanity’s continued survival wouldn’t have been possible without their sacrifice. “I’m Marshal now. Or I was, before I got here. Even though we don’t have any jaegers left.” Bloody Raleigh -- and Mako. What a team. Chuck’s brow contracted, a frown clear across his expression as he straightened up to his feet and met his father’s gaze. His father. Marshal Hansen? Sounded strange. It wasn’t that he’d never thought about it, just that a world without Stacker Pentecost had been unimaginable until this moment. But then, so much was unimaginable. 2150. “Let’s grab that drink.” |