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ajremixObnoxiously long fic about characters no one but me cares about, sorry. Also apologizing because there is a lot more Korean in there than I had intended which is even worse because my Korean still isn't that good (and then i add someone that's supposed to speak with a busan dialect which you'll just have pretend is there because i don't even know enough about standard dialect to start messing with it hahaha what has my life become). There will be mentions of death, so be prepared for that. Also I don't have access to any of the supplementary materials so I apologize if this isn't completely canon compliant.
Title: Morning Calm, Midnight Fall
Fandom: Pacific Rim (courier faction au)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2731
Characters: Sterling, Ryland, Jackson
Summary: As a kid Sterling never imagined himself fighting in a giant robot, not even when he was older and his little brother decided to become a Jaeger pilot. This is the story of how he came to die in one anyway.
August 9th, Jackson called to tell his sons he wouldn't be coming home that night and they could use the emergency funds to order a pizza and to be in bed by midnight, summer vacation or not. With two pizzas sitting on the table, the Raleigh brothers passed out close to three in the morning playing Dirt 3 on the 360. When they woke up, San Francisco was burning.
Jackson came back toward the evening on the 10th to grab some things for an overnight bag and Ryland met him at the door with eyes filled with tears, asking in a tiny voice, "What's happening?"
He pulled the boy into a quick, crushing hug. "I don't know. We're trying to figure it out." When he went into the front room, Sterling was on the couch, just staring at the streaming news.
He was pale, eyes wide and unblinking, breath just short of hyperventilating and Jackson clicked the television off. He turned, slowly, to the man who became their father, looking nothing like a recent high school graduate and everything like a child helpless and scared out of his mind.
Jackson dropped to his knees, hands cupping Sterling's cheeks. "Stile, listen to me- listen. Don't think about this, okay? This will not touch you. You and Ryland are safe. Do you understand? You will be safe."
Slowly, Sterling nodded against his palms.
"Good. They're sending me out to NCTAMS PAC for a few days. If you need anything before I get back, call Evran. Keep Ryland out of trouble, okay?"
He nodded again.
Jackson smiled, half rueful, half worried, and kissed Sterling's hair. "괜찮아 배민. 약속해."
It got a smile out of Sterling, though, however tiny it was. "네. 안영하가새요 아빠."
---
"괜찮아 배민. 약속해." - "It's okay, Bae Min (Sterling's Korean name). I promise."
"네. 안영하가새요 아빠." - "Yeah. Goodbye (lit. 'go peacefully'), Dad."
---
~*~*~*~
For three days the giant monster ravaged the Bay Area. For three days Sterling streamed multiple news sources, trawled social media sites and combed through any new piece of information on every internet capable device in the house. He rarely ate, slept in short fits of unconsciousness, couldn't even go to the bathroom without bringing his phone to obsessively check for some sort of answer, some sense of safety.
By day four, Ryland grabbed at Sterling's sleeve. "형." He said, tugging at it until Sterling looked at him. "형, I'm scared."
Sometimes it was easy to forget that Ryland was still in middle school, that his maturity wasn't so much through experience as it was emulation of the older brother he respected so much. Sterling reached out with his other hand, squeezing Ryland's wrist. "It's okay. We'll be okay. 아빠 wouldn't have left us alone if he thought we were in danger."
"I know that. It's not that thing I'm scared of. I'm scared of what's happening to you."
Sterling could do nothing but stare at him.
"You're so afraid of this thing it's taken over your mind. You're trying to figure it out to make yourself feel better, but anything new you find out just makes it worse." Ryland's jaw quivered. "Because it's not getting better. It might never get better. That's why 아빠 is at NCTAMS. If they didn't think that, he'd be here with us."
Tears were starting to slip down Ryland's cheeks and there was no way Sterling could let that pass. He spun his chair around completely so he could hold his brother with both hands. "It's going to be alright. It will get better."
"How do you know?" Ryland sniffed miserably.
"Because we'll make it better."
"What if there's more?"
"Then we'll find a way to stop them."
"But those people... all those people..."
Suddenly angry at himself, Sterling shut off his monitor and speakers, his tablet, his phone. Trying to figure anything out now was pointless when nothing but speculation and misinformation clogged the internet and taking care of Ryland took precedent over trying to comb for the truth or witness people in the danger zone trying to find safety for themselves or others. "C'mon." He grabbed his keys, pulling Ryland into a one-armed hold as he took them to the door. "Let's go to Evran's and make him buy us frozen yogurt."
Ryland nodded, face buried against Sterling's side.
---
형 - older brother (used by males to address an older brother or close, older male friend)
아빠 - Dad
---
~*~*~*~
When Jackson was called to work on his day off, nearly seven months after the events of San Francisco, Sterling instinctively knew it was because another attack was coming. He couldn't explain why he thought it, he just did and sure enough, after a night filled with terror that Kaua'i would be wiped off the map, Manila was the new target. His compulsion for trawling for information wasn't as great as before, but he kept his phone constantly in reach, news feeds automatically updating in his hand. Jackson came home two days later, with the creature still raising hell, and Sterling made him sit down and tell the boys what they wanted- needed -to know.
"It's the same thing as the first one, isn't it?" Sterling demanded pointblank.
Too weary to attempt to evade the question, knowing full well the brothers could out-persist him if they truly wanted to, Jackson said bluntly, "Yes."
"You knew they were coming."
"We're designed to be able to track space ships to submarines and everything in between, all at the same time. It's not difficult for us to figure out something's moving that's not supposed to be." He grinned something self-depreciating. "Even if, on the record, we don't have the capabilities of tracking something so far away."
"Did they come from the same place?"
"We picked up both from off the coast of Guam. We don't have an exact location, but we doubt it's a coincidence."
Sterling's hand clenched tight, throat knotting as a map flashed through his head. "So the reason why the first one hit San Francisco instead of us..."
Jackson shrugged, lines etched deep in his face. "Blind luck, I guess."
For the first time, Ryland piped up, "Does that mean there could be more of them?"
"I don't know."
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Right now? All we can do is keep track of these things and warn where the next might hit. We sent word to DC. I don't know if they didn't believe us, or if they contacted the Filipino government and they didn't believe us. Either way..." broad hands clenched tight together, face pinched in grief. Barking Sands seemed to be the only early warning system they had, but if no one listened, no lives would be saved.
~*~*~*~
Soon after the death of the Manila creature, it and its predecessor were given a name: kaiju. Scant days after that, several nations proposed a joint international organization to defend against and fight any future kaiju, known as the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. Over a dozen other nations joined in the first month alone and Jackson was tapped to be part of the US intelligence team to present to the PPDC. He sent the boys to live with their aunt and cousins in Montana while he went to Hong Kong for some sort of conference.
The conference was still going on when Mexico was attacked. Then Australia. When airlines started limiting their flights to Pacific coastal cities, Jackson asked for the boys to fly to Hong Kong and despite the conditions, they were ecstatic- it was the first time they'd been to the Far East in almost ten years. While Jackson spent long hours trying to fight through bureaucracy, Ryland went to school with the children of other PPDC members and Sterling picked up classes at a local college, a mishmash of media, communications and engineering.
After the fifth kaiju attack, another PPDC conference was held, this time in Korea to discuss how to fight back. Even if it was the start of a new school year, Jackson took the boys with him. It was their first time back in their birth country, the same country where their parents had died in a simple car accident. They stayed at the American Embassy, but during his off-hours, Jackson took the boys to Yongsan Army Garrison, to Itaewon and Hannam to see what they remembered. Ryland didn't recall much, too young for the memories to last, but he said when he closed his eyes, the sounds felt familiar. Almost comforting. For Sterling it was something like deja vu, almost ten when they'd left and things not quite being in the places he remembered.
While Jackson was off being a responsible adult, the boys would take the Seoul Metro to random stops, seeing if there was anything of interest, trying new foods, realizing how rusty their Korean was next to native speakers. They went to Lotte World once, then twice when Jackson was free. It was on one of those trips that they sat next to the ice skating rink, eating hoddeok almost too warm to the tongue, that Jackson said, "They've decided on a plan."
Sterling licked at a drip of filling before it could burn the knuckle of his thumb. "Do you think it'll work."
"It's ambitious," he said simply and in two weeks they were flying back to Hong Kong.
Half a year later, after many false starts and setbacks, the first kaiju was killed with zero human casualties. Sterling grinned at a pic of Brawler Yukon standing triumphant against the Vancouver skyline, the first official public appearance of the Jaeger Program. "Yeah," he told Jackson, "that really is ambitious."
"That's humanity for you. Push comes to shove, we don't do things halfway."
~*~*~*~
A booklet was sitting on the table when Sterling came in from back from class, a smudge of engine grease along the corner of his jaw, and he almost mistook it for just another magazine because of Coyote Tango gleaming on the cover. The type, however, was minimal and reduced to two lines stretched boldly over the PPDC logo: Jaeger Academy. He picked it up, flipping it over to find a mailing address with Ryland as its recipient. He couldn't help a snort of amusement, wondering what the point sending this in the mail was when they lived in PPDC headquarters. Ryland could've just taken a lift up four levels and picked up the booklet from the main office. He snapped a picture with his phone and sent it with a text to Jackson: 'He tell you about this?'
After a shower, a reply was waiting for him: 'No. But a booklet doesn't a decision make.'
Back out in the living room, the booklet had gone and Ryland's door was closed. Sterling debated if this was something he should bring up, or wait until it was brought to him. He didn't profess a particularly strong Big Brother Instinct, but there were still some worrying gaps of information on Jaegers and no studies on what possible long-term affects the pilots might have, leaving him not entirely comfortable with the idea of his brother getting into one. And that was without getting into the whole 'fighting monsters' thing.
He knocked on Ryland's door. "라이리야."
" 네 형?"
"About that booklet you got..."
" 네?"
"Aren't you a little young to be thinking about it? You're only 16."
The door opened and Ryland looked up at his brother with calm eyes. "People have gone to war at 16."
"One, that's because they're usually hurting for bodies which we are not. Two, this isn't technically a war. Three, even if it was, that's a terrible justification."
"That's not why I want to go."
"Then what is?"
"Because it's important."
For a long moment, Sterling just stared at him. "Lots of things are important, not just this."
"If they don't get the right people for the job, the rest of it won't matter for long."
"진짜? Pretty much the only thing anybody talks about any more are Jaegers. The recruiting lines wrap 'round entire blocks. They have more than enough people to be picky about who gets the job."
The line of Ryland's mouth was flat and unimpressed. "So I should give up on what's important to me just because of an excess of people?"
"I didn't-" he paused, mulling back over his words, "okay, I can see where you got that impression. But that wasn't what I meant."
"What did you mean?"
"I meant that there are other things just as important as being a pilot that's being ignored because everyone wants to be in the spotlight or thinks being in a giant robot would be awesome."
"It would be."
"I'm not arguing that point."
"Well, I don't want to do it because it's cool or to be famous. I want to do it because Jaegers are important to a lot of people."
"What do you mean?"
"Why did 아빠 send us to Montana? And don't tell me because he didn't know how long he'd be in Hong Kong. Evran took care of us when he did six months in Iraq, he could've taken care of us then, too."
"He did it so he'd know we'd be safe."
"And now we live here," Ryland reached out and slapped his palm against the wall where it gave a deep, metallic hum. "In one of the most protected shelters in the world, theoretically speaking. But not everyone can do that. All the rich people are heading inland and shoving the poor to the coast- the only reason why Aunt Loraine doesn't have to move is because she owns a farm. Sure, there's public shelters up all over the place, but there are billions on billions of people along the coasts that can't go anywhere else. Everyone's depending on the Jaegers to protect them, but no one depends on them more than the people on the shore. I want to be a pilot so I can protect the people that don't have the kind of security we do."
That was Ryland in a nutshell: practical, confident and a bleeding heart a mile wide. Sterling breathed deeply through his nose and knew his little brother's mind was made up. Not even Jackson- if he even dared to consider it -would be able to talk him out of applying. Then, almost shyly, Ryland dropped his gaze, then peered up through his lashes. "If you want, I'd like you to come with me."
His lips quirked up in surprise. "What- are you telling me you're shy about going?"
"I'd be on my own for the first time. It'd be nice having a familiar face around."
The half-smile fell from Sterling's face and his expression was unreadable and almost cold. "Getting in a Jaeger is practically signing up for an early death. We haven't lost one yet, but that doesn't mean we never will. Every single fight, a kaiju is as likely to kill you as you might kill them."
"I know. That's why I need you to push me. To make sure I'm prepared for it."
Another long, unreadable stare, then Sterling turned and went back to his own room.
---
라이리야 - Riley-ya, '-ya' is particle used to denote speaking especially to that person (sort of like 'hey you')
"네 형?" - "Yeah, Brother?"
" 네?" - "Yes?"
"진짜?" - "Really?"
아빠 - Dad
---
~*~*~*~
In the end, the only stipulation Jackson put on Ryland's application to the Jaeger Academy was to graduate high school first to which Ryland responded by finding out what it took to graduate early and applying for the accredited college courses by himself. "There's no trying to tell him no," Jackson told Sterling while Ryland was bent over a smattering of books and furiously scribbling notes for a report. "Not when he's this motivated about it."
Jackson had the choice of forbidding it, of course, but he wouldn't be able to live with the consequences of it. So instead he prepared a training regime. Nothing too ambitious, he said, just to make sure that Ryland's stamina and base strength was up to snuff. Which, of course, didn't keep Ryland from going back to the gym or taking advantage of the free training courses made available in the Shatterdome. It was actually almost sickening at how seriously he was treating all of it.
Sterling went up to the two as they were preparing for their morning run, giving Ryland's shoulder a little shove. "Alright," he announced in an exaggeratedly annoyance. "I guess I'll join you."
Ryland looked at him, at the sweats and laced running shoes, at the quite pride in his brother's eyes, and his smile was electric.
Title: Morning Calm, Midnight Fall
Fandom: Pacific Rim (courier faction au)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2731
Characters: Sterling, Ryland, Jackson
Summary: As a kid Sterling never imagined himself fighting in a giant robot, not even when he was older and his little brother decided to become a Jaeger pilot. This is the story of how he came to die in one anyway.
August 9th, Jackson called to tell his sons he wouldn't be coming home that night and they could use the emergency funds to order a pizza and to be in bed by midnight, summer vacation or not. With two pizzas sitting on the table, the Raleigh brothers passed out close to three in the morning playing Dirt 3 on the 360. When they woke up, San Francisco was burning.
Jackson came back toward the evening on the 10th to grab some things for an overnight bag and Ryland met him at the door with eyes filled with tears, asking in a tiny voice, "What's happening?"
He pulled the boy into a quick, crushing hug. "I don't know. We're trying to figure it out." When he went into the front room, Sterling was on the couch, just staring at the streaming news.
He was pale, eyes wide and unblinking, breath just short of hyperventilating and Jackson clicked the television off. He turned, slowly, to the man who became their father, looking nothing like a recent high school graduate and everything like a child helpless and scared out of his mind.
Jackson dropped to his knees, hands cupping Sterling's cheeks. "Stile, listen to me- listen. Don't think about this, okay? This will not touch you. You and Ryland are safe. Do you understand? You will be safe."
Slowly, Sterling nodded against his palms.
"Good. They're sending me out to NCTAMS PAC for a few days. If you need anything before I get back, call Evran. Keep Ryland out of trouble, okay?"
He nodded again.
Jackson smiled, half rueful, half worried, and kissed Sterling's hair. "괜찮아 배민. 약속해."
It got a smile out of Sterling, though, however tiny it was. "네. 안영하가새요 아빠."
---
"괜찮아 배민. 약속해." - "It's okay, Bae Min (Sterling's Korean name). I promise."
"네. 안영하가새요 아빠." - "Yeah. Goodbye (lit. 'go peacefully'), Dad."
---
~*~*~*~
For three days the giant monster ravaged the Bay Area. For three days Sterling streamed multiple news sources, trawled social media sites and combed through any new piece of information on every internet capable device in the house. He rarely ate, slept in short fits of unconsciousness, couldn't even go to the bathroom without bringing his phone to obsessively check for some sort of answer, some sense of safety.
By day four, Ryland grabbed at Sterling's sleeve. "형." He said, tugging at it until Sterling looked at him. "형, I'm scared."
Sometimes it was easy to forget that Ryland was still in middle school, that his maturity wasn't so much through experience as it was emulation of the older brother he respected so much. Sterling reached out with his other hand, squeezing Ryland's wrist. "It's okay. We'll be okay. 아빠 wouldn't have left us alone if he thought we were in danger."
"I know that. It's not that thing I'm scared of. I'm scared of what's happening to you."
Sterling could do nothing but stare at him.
"You're so afraid of this thing it's taken over your mind. You're trying to figure it out to make yourself feel better, but anything new you find out just makes it worse." Ryland's jaw quivered. "Because it's not getting better. It might never get better. That's why 아빠 is at NCTAMS. If they didn't think that, he'd be here with us."
Tears were starting to slip down Ryland's cheeks and there was no way Sterling could let that pass. He spun his chair around completely so he could hold his brother with both hands. "It's going to be alright. It will get better."
"How do you know?" Ryland sniffed miserably.
"Because we'll make it better."
"What if there's more?"
"Then we'll find a way to stop them."
"But those people... all those people..."
Suddenly angry at himself, Sterling shut off his monitor and speakers, his tablet, his phone. Trying to figure anything out now was pointless when nothing but speculation and misinformation clogged the internet and taking care of Ryland took precedent over trying to comb for the truth or witness people in the danger zone trying to find safety for themselves or others. "C'mon." He grabbed his keys, pulling Ryland into a one-armed hold as he took them to the door. "Let's go to Evran's and make him buy us frozen yogurt."
Ryland nodded, face buried against Sterling's side.
---
형 - older brother (used by males to address an older brother or close, older male friend)
아빠 - Dad
---
~*~*~*~
When Jackson was called to work on his day off, nearly seven months after the events of San Francisco, Sterling instinctively knew it was because another attack was coming. He couldn't explain why he thought it, he just did and sure enough, after a night filled with terror that Kaua'i would be wiped off the map, Manila was the new target. His compulsion for trawling for information wasn't as great as before, but he kept his phone constantly in reach, news feeds automatically updating in his hand. Jackson came home two days later, with the creature still raising hell, and Sterling made him sit down and tell the boys what they wanted- needed -to know.
"It's the same thing as the first one, isn't it?" Sterling demanded pointblank.
Too weary to attempt to evade the question, knowing full well the brothers could out-persist him if they truly wanted to, Jackson said bluntly, "Yes."
"You knew they were coming."
"We're designed to be able to track space ships to submarines and everything in between, all at the same time. It's not difficult for us to figure out something's moving that's not supposed to be." He grinned something self-depreciating. "Even if, on the record, we don't have the capabilities of tracking something so far away."
"Did they come from the same place?"
"We picked up both from off the coast of Guam. We don't have an exact location, but we doubt it's a coincidence."
Sterling's hand clenched tight, throat knotting as a map flashed through his head. "So the reason why the first one hit San Francisco instead of us..."
Jackson shrugged, lines etched deep in his face. "Blind luck, I guess."
For the first time, Ryland piped up, "Does that mean there could be more of them?"
"I don't know."
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Right now? All we can do is keep track of these things and warn where the next might hit. We sent word to DC. I don't know if they didn't believe us, or if they contacted the Filipino government and they didn't believe us. Either way..." broad hands clenched tight together, face pinched in grief. Barking Sands seemed to be the only early warning system they had, but if no one listened, no lives would be saved.
~*~*~*~
Soon after the death of the Manila creature, it and its predecessor were given a name: kaiju. Scant days after that, several nations proposed a joint international organization to defend against and fight any future kaiju, known as the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. Over a dozen other nations joined in the first month alone and Jackson was tapped to be part of the US intelligence team to present to the PPDC. He sent the boys to live with their aunt and cousins in Montana while he went to Hong Kong for some sort of conference.
The conference was still going on when Mexico was attacked. Then Australia. When airlines started limiting their flights to Pacific coastal cities, Jackson asked for the boys to fly to Hong Kong and despite the conditions, they were ecstatic- it was the first time they'd been to the Far East in almost ten years. While Jackson spent long hours trying to fight through bureaucracy, Ryland went to school with the children of other PPDC members and Sterling picked up classes at a local college, a mishmash of media, communications and engineering.
After the fifth kaiju attack, another PPDC conference was held, this time in Korea to discuss how to fight back. Even if it was the start of a new school year, Jackson took the boys with him. It was their first time back in their birth country, the same country where their parents had died in a simple car accident. They stayed at the American Embassy, but during his off-hours, Jackson took the boys to Yongsan Army Garrison, to Itaewon and Hannam to see what they remembered. Ryland didn't recall much, too young for the memories to last, but he said when he closed his eyes, the sounds felt familiar. Almost comforting. For Sterling it was something like deja vu, almost ten when they'd left and things not quite being in the places he remembered.
While Jackson was off being a responsible adult, the boys would take the Seoul Metro to random stops, seeing if there was anything of interest, trying new foods, realizing how rusty their Korean was next to native speakers. They went to Lotte World once, then twice when Jackson was free. It was on one of those trips that they sat next to the ice skating rink, eating hoddeok almost too warm to the tongue, that Jackson said, "They've decided on a plan."
Sterling licked at a drip of filling before it could burn the knuckle of his thumb. "Do you think it'll work."
"It's ambitious," he said simply and in two weeks they were flying back to Hong Kong.
Half a year later, after many false starts and setbacks, the first kaiju was killed with zero human casualties. Sterling grinned at a pic of Brawler Yukon standing triumphant against the Vancouver skyline, the first official public appearance of the Jaeger Program. "Yeah," he told Jackson, "that really is ambitious."
"That's humanity for you. Push comes to shove, we don't do things halfway."
~*~*~*~
A booklet was sitting on the table when Sterling came in from back from class, a smudge of engine grease along the corner of his jaw, and he almost mistook it for just another magazine because of Coyote Tango gleaming on the cover. The type, however, was minimal and reduced to two lines stretched boldly over the PPDC logo: Jaeger Academy. He picked it up, flipping it over to find a mailing address with Ryland as its recipient. He couldn't help a snort of amusement, wondering what the point sending this in the mail was when they lived in PPDC headquarters. Ryland could've just taken a lift up four levels and picked up the booklet from the main office. He snapped a picture with his phone and sent it with a text to Jackson: 'He tell you about this?'
After a shower, a reply was waiting for him: 'No. But a booklet doesn't a decision make.'
Back out in the living room, the booklet had gone and Ryland's door was closed. Sterling debated if this was something he should bring up, or wait until it was brought to him. He didn't profess a particularly strong Big Brother Instinct, but there were still some worrying gaps of information on Jaegers and no studies on what possible long-term affects the pilots might have, leaving him not entirely comfortable with the idea of his brother getting into one. And that was without getting into the whole 'fighting monsters' thing.
He knocked on Ryland's door. "라이리야."
" 네 형?"
"About that booklet you got..."
" 네?"
"Aren't you a little young to be thinking about it? You're only 16."
The door opened and Ryland looked up at his brother with calm eyes. "People have gone to war at 16."
"One, that's because they're usually hurting for bodies which we are not. Two, this isn't technically a war. Three, even if it was, that's a terrible justification."
"That's not why I want to go."
"Then what is?"
"Because it's important."
For a long moment, Sterling just stared at him. "Lots of things are important, not just this."
"If they don't get the right people for the job, the rest of it won't matter for long."
"진짜? Pretty much the only thing anybody talks about any more are Jaegers. The recruiting lines wrap 'round entire blocks. They have more than enough people to be picky about who gets the job."
The line of Ryland's mouth was flat and unimpressed. "So I should give up on what's important to me just because of an excess of people?"
"I didn't-" he paused, mulling back over his words, "okay, I can see where you got that impression. But that wasn't what I meant."
"What did you mean?"
"I meant that there are other things just as important as being a pilot that's being ignored because everyone wants to be in the spotlight or thinks being in a giant robot would be awesome."
"It would be."
"I'm not arguing that point."
"Well, I don't want to do it because it's cool or to be famous. I want to do it because Jaegers are important to a lot of people."
"What do you mean?"
"Why did 아빠 send us to Montana? And don't tell me because he didn't know how long he'd be in Hong Kong. Evran took care of us when he did six months in Iraq, he could've taken care of us then, too."
"He did it so he'd know we'd be safe."
"And now we live here," Ryland reached out and slapped his palm against the wall where it gave a deep, metallic hum. "In one of the most protected shelters in the world, theoretically speaking. But not everyone can do that. All the rich people are heading inland and shoving the poor to the coast- the only reason why Aunt Loraine doesn't have to move is because she owns a farm. Sure, there's public shelters up all over the place, but there are billions on billions of people along the coasts that can't go anywhere else. Everyone's depending on the Jaegers to protect them, but no one depends on them more than the people on the shore. I want to be a pilot so I can protect the people that don't have the kind of security we do."
That was Ryland in a nutshell: practical, confident and a bleeding heart a mile wide. Sterling breathed deeply through his nose and knew his little brother's mind was made up. Not even Jackson- if he even dared to consider it -would be able to talk him out of applying. Then, almost shyly, Ryland dropped his gaze, then peered up through his lashes. "If you want, I'd like you to come with me."
His lips quirked up in surprise. "What- are you telling me you're shy about going?"
"I'd be on my own for the first time. It'd be nice having a familiar face around."
The half-smile fell from Sterling's face and his expression was unreadable and almost cold. "Getting in a Jaeger is practically signing up for an early death. We haven't lost one yet, but that doesn't mean we never will. Every single fight, a kaiju is as likely to kill you as you might kill them."
"I know. That's why I need you to push me. To make sure I'm prepared for it."
Another long, unreadable stare, then Sterling turned and went back to his own room.
---
라이리야 - Riley-ya, '-ya' is particle used to denote speaking especially to that person (sort of like 'hey you')
"네 형?" - "Yeah, Brother?"
" 네?" - "Yes?"
"진짜?" - "Really?"
아빠 - Dad
---
~*~*~*~
In the end, the only stipulation Jackson put on Ryland's application to the Jaeger Academy was to graduate high school first to which Ryland responded by finding out what it took to graduate early and applying for the accredited college courses by himself. "There's no trying to tell him no," Jackson told Sterling while Ryland was bent over a smattering of books and furiously scribbling notes for a report. "Not when he's this motivated about it."
Jackson had the choice of forbidding it, of course, but he wouldn't be able to live with the consequences of it. So instead he prepared a training regime. Nothing too ambitious, he said, just to make sure that Ryland's stamina and base strength was up to snuff. Which, of course, didn't keep Ryland from going back to the gym or taking advantage of the free training courses made available in the Shatterdome. It was actually almost sickening at how seriously he was treating all of it.
Sterling went up to the two as they were preparing for their morning run, giving Ryland's shoulder a little shove. "Alright," he announced in an exaggeratedly annoyance. "I guess I'll join you."
Ryland looked at him, at the sweats and laced running shoes, at the quite pride in his brother's eyes, and his smile was electric.
