Out of Many Scattered Things: Crystal Lake

“I can’t believe it,” everyone says, in voices that are not surprised.

Chapter warnings: Realistic depictions of neurological, physical, and bureaucratic trauma. War. Grief. Death. Mental illness. Regular illness.

Text iteration: Witching hour.

Additional notes: None.

Crystal Lake

Dr. Lightcap dies on a day without kaiju, in a room walled away from the ocean. 

“I can’t believe it,” everyone says, in voices that are not surprised. 

Mako decides she should go to the gym twice a day. The day after the funeral she gets up and she does it. She eats breakfast at oh four hundred, before even the Marshal is awake and she goes to the gym. There are three others there and they look dubiously at the small Japanese girl who has entered their space. Mako doesn’t care. Mako tips her chin up and starts doing push-ups. More push-ups than they can do, probably. 

After her workout, she showers in the empty women’s locker room. She goes to school, she comes home, she goes back to the gym, she frowns through her karate lesson, and then she does her personal routine for the second time that day. When she comes home, the Marshal is sitting at their small, shared metal table. She thinks that he has been waiting for her, because he is sitting, not doing anything, when she enters the apartment.

He watches her as she slips off her shoes at the door, walks forward, and gives him a short, respectful bow. 

He nods his head at her.

The silence seems to demand something to fill itself with and so Mako says, “It’s my turn to make dinner,” even though it is not her turn. “What do you think of oyakodon?”

He makes a face that looks like he stepped on a nail and like he also knows that it isn’t her turn to make dinner. A terrible understanding rises in the back of her throat. When she was eleven, she had hated the many small ways that people tried to show her the pity they had for her, like little glass flowers under handkerchiefs. She understands now that it was not always pity. That, sometimes, empathy looks the same. That, sometimes, it hurts when it is unwanted.

She is not sure what to do. She hovers on the threshold of the kitchen and does watch while the Marshal masters his own expression.

“Mako,” he says finally, and he looks at the chair opposite him in a way that means ‘please sit.’

Mako comes to the table and sits. 

The Marshal says nothing. He is looking at his hands. 

“She was your friend,” Mako says, her voice high and tight and full of regard. 

“Yes,” the Marshal whispers, low and tight and full of sadness.

Mako nods, trying to think what would be good to do. 

Their apartment is very quiet.

Dr. Lightcap would have thought this was stupid. This quiet sadness. This pause in work. The slower pace in the halls. The way no one will go in her office. Use her rigs. The week-long leave that Tendo took. The flowers on the Shatterdome floor. The flowers in the mess. The way that J-tech had painted Brawler Yukon black sometime in the night. And Newt. She would think Newt was the stupidest of all.

“Mako,” the Marshal says. “Tonight—there’s going to be a wake. Have you ever been to a wake?”

Mako shakes her head. 

“It’s a time for people to come together after a funeral and remember the person who has died. Usually it’s—a celebration. Of the life a person has lived.”

Mako nods once, then points her chin up, clamping her jaw so she can continue to watch him speak to her.

“But sometimes,” the Marshal says with increasing difficulty, “when a young person dies—sometimes it’s not a celebration.”

Mako has never thought of Dr. Lightcap as ‘young.’  Mako had never thought of Dr. Lightcap as ‘young.’  But neither was she old.

“Or sometimes,” Mako says, her voice wavering too much before she swallows and makes it still, “if only one person can do a thing. A thing that other people need. And then that person dies and no one is left who can do it. And the people left behind wonder what will happen to them. That, also, it is hard to celebrate.”

The Marshal looks away from her, his lips pressed together very hard. He nods.

Mako twists her mouth into a tight frown and then relaxes her face. Tears that aren’t tears go back into her eyes without falling.

“It’s up to you,” he says quietly, “whether or not you want to go.”

“When does it start?” she asks.

“Two hours,” the Marshal says. “At her house. Her family will be there. Her parents. Captain D’onofrio’s parents. And his brother. Most of J-tech.” 

“Would you like me to go with you?” she asks him. “Would it be easier for you or harder for you if I am there also?”

He smiles at her. Just a very little smile. “I want you to decide,” is all he says. 

“I wish to think about it,” Mako says. “May I be excused?  I’ll be back very soon.”  

He nods at her.

Mako goes to the door, puts on her shoes, and leaves the apartment. She jogs through halls, small and unnoticed along the sides of the corridors, turning left, then right, then left again, circling around behind the black bulk of Brawler Yukon until she is standing in a little doorway next to the huge doorway that leads out to the deployment dock.

She looks outside.

The clouds are low over the open ocean. The rain pours down, thick and fast, bouncing off the cement of the deployment dock. Like the clouds, the sea is gray. Newt is leaning against the railing, far out, toward the end of the dock. 

Mako turns around and goes back inside. 

Mako turns around and goes back to the doorway.

He doesn’t understand what you wanted, Mako thinks at Dr. Lightcap. That is because he is stupid. Stupid and annoying. He was the only one who didn’t understand you. Is that why you liked him best?  Second best, after Captain D’onofrio?  I understood. I understood always. I could be like you. You said I could be like you. You said it and you never said anything to me that wasn’t true.

She steps slowly out into the rain. There is no point in hurrying. Fast or slow, she will be wet.

I hate you, she thinks at Newt. I hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you so much sometimes.

She treads doggedly through pools of water, over wet cement. After only a few steps, her hair starts to cling to her face.

There once was a warrior princess named Mako, Dr. Lightcap whispers in her thoughts. And she lived beside a giant lake. It was an enchanted lake and so mysterious things came out of it. No, not kaiju, baby, shh. Giant crystals. Huge, beautiful crystals that would crash through the surface of the water and freeze there into huge, multicolored projections that looked like towers. And they were tall. As tall as Coyote Tango. Warrior Princess Mako called it Crystal Lake and she went sailing there every day, even though it was risky because what if a crystal came up out of the water right where she was sailing?  What then?  It would wreck her boat!

Mako feels the rain soak through her shirt, leech through little holes in little shoes.

That didn’t matter to Mako though, Dr. Lightcap continues, because she loved Crystal Lake. It was worth it to her to take the risk. To sail around among the colored crystal towers, looking up at the sun reflecting off of them. She sailed on the lake so much that the Kingdom of Fishpeople took note of her. Most of the time they just paid attention to their own kingdom. They didn’t like to go out in the daylight. Their kingdom was dark and full of seaweed and glittering shells. It was beautiful too, but much different from Mako’s kingdom. The more she sailed on Crystal Lake, the more the Fishpeople talked about her with her little boat and her pretty dark hair and her serious eyes. She spent so much time sailing through the crystals, they thought she might be making them grow. But of course, she wasn’t, because correlation (Mako sailing through the crystals) does not equal causation (Mako making the crystals grow). Remember that, baby, it’s very important.

The sea birds aren’t calling today. Somewhere, out over the water, a ship blasts a foghorn. Once. Twice. Mako shivers. The rain soaks up her pants at the ankles, where they drag through water. It falls hard and fast on her thighs each time she takes a step.

They thought that because she was so beautiful and so good with handling her little boat, and so brave to sail amongst the crystals that might crash through the water at any moment, that she must have special powers. So they asked their king to go and talk to this mysterious sorceress and ask for her help. Because they had a problem. A terrible terrible problem. Can you guess what it was?  No?  You want a hint?  It has something to do with the crystals.

Mako frowns wiping rain out of her eyes, remembering how she had looked from Dr. Lightcap to Newt. How he had tapped his glass of icewater, and then shoved an ice cube beneath its surface. How she had shouted, ‘too many crystals below the lake!’ like a baby. Like a little kid. Like a stupid little girl who didn’t remember her real family and how she hoped they had been crushed to death by a falling building instead of eaten while they were still alive and afraid of how they were dying. 

Yes!  Dr. Lightcap had said. The whole underwater kingdom was full of crystals. The Fishpeople had to move out of their homes and into the homes of their friends. There was less and less space for them, and they had to stay under the water because they couldn’t breathe the air. They needed someone to stop the crystals from growing beneath the lake. And they thought that maybe Warrior Princess Mako could figure out a solution for them. Now it just so happens that the King Salamander of the Fishpeople was a pretty inventive little bastard. Er, guy. An inventive little guy. He’d have to be, if he wanted to make friends with a Warrior Princess who breathed the air, right?

Mako stands behind Newt on the deployment dock and stares right at his back, glares right at the center of his shoulders, and says, “I’ll never be like you,” silently, beneath the sound of the rain on the dock.

So he made a magical force field, which he called a Countercurrent Exchange Field that he could put over his gills, and one day, while Mako was sailing through the crystals, he burst out of the water and climbed into her boat!  Mako wasn’t having any of this nonsense. So she picked up her oar and hit him with it, knocking him down before he could say anything. You might think this seems a little harsh, but in Mako’s kingdom, people ask politely before they climb into boats. Fortunately, King Salamander wasn’t really the type of guy to take a subtle or even a really glaringly obvious hint, and so being hit with an oar didn’t offend him. He held up his hands and he said, “I surrender! I surrender!  I hope I’m doing this right!  I’m not even from around here, gosh!”  And then Mako realized that he was a Fishperson from beneath the lake. So she put down her oar and helped him sit, and she apologized for attacking him. It had been hundreds of years since any of the Fishpeople had talked to any of the Landpeople, and they had a lot of catching up to do. Talking about wars and storms and what bands were popular under the water these days.

The rain comes down.

Mako stands there and stands there, getting wet. Getting wet all the way. 

She doesn’t want to be here, but she can’t not be here either. So she tries tearing a little part of herself away from the whole she’s trying to make herself into. She tries to make herself into that little torn away piece, just for right now, just for a little while, so that she can do something for someone else. To do what she wants to do, she has to be a person that she’s not anymore. A person she hasn’t been for months. A person she doesn’t want to be. A person that, after today, maybe she’ll never be again.

It works. It works too well. 

They talk for hours and hours, Dr. Lightcap says, and they become good friends. She says, ‘call me Maks.’  And he says, ‘call me Newt.’ And he tells her all about his problem with the crystals. How they look completely different under the water. Less beautiful. Darker. Scarier.

Mako crosses the last distance that separates them, her steps hurrying, her shoes splashing in the water of the dock. She calls his name, loud over the sound of the rain. He turns around and she can’t see his face, really, because his glasses are streaked with water. But she runs forward and when she gets to him, he opens his arms and he hugs her. She hugs him back, her arms around his neck. As tight as she can. She can tell he’s crying. That he’s probably been crying this whole time. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe, this one time, it’s okay if she cries too. He won’t tell. Newt has never told any of her secrets.

And at first, Dr. Lightcap whispers, Mako doesn’t see how it’s possible. The crystals are so beautiful. The way the sun glitters off them like colored ice. She tries to show him. She says, ‘spend a day with me in my boat, and then you’ll understand.’  And he says, ‘okay, Maks, but after we spend a day in your boat looking at the crystals in the air, you have to come down with me, under the water, and look at them there.’  And Warrior Princess Mako agrees to his deal, even though she has a bad feeling about it. 

“I should have come before,” she says into his neck because she should have held his hand when he’d gone into the room to fix the rig. Because she’d done it before, seen pictures of parts of things that weren’t her parents and she’d said, ‘yes, those are my parents,’ and the Marshal had held her hand and so Mako knows how to do it, and Newt doesn’t know how to do it at all. She can’t imagine Dr. Lightcap dead and Newt alive but also there, in the same place at the same time.

He can’t say anything, but she feels him shake his head. 

“Do you know what a wake is,” she whispers. 

He tries to let her go, but she doesn’t let him, and again she says, “do you know about wakes?”

“Yeah,” he says, finally. “I know about them, Maks.”

“I think don’t go,” she says, right in his ear.

And so Princess Mako spends a day showing King Salamander the surface of the crystal lake. It’s the prettiest at sunset, when the colors are the brightest and the sky is the darkest. And at the end of it, he agrees that it’s probably the most beautiful lake in the world. 

“Why not?” Newt says. 

“Because,” Mako says, her eyes hot and her throat tight and her face all wrong. “Because.”  

The next day, King Salamander makes Warrior Princess Mako her own special force field so that she can breathe underwater and he shows her his kingdom. How dark and green it is. The forests of kelp. The banks and banks of coral. The schools of fish that the Fishpeople herd like sheep. It’s beautiful and alive. Everything is alive. Except for the places where the crystals shoot up out of the silvery sand. 

“Stay here,” Mako says. “Here is where she is, anyway. Not with flowers. Not at a wake. Here. In what she made. That’s where she is. She said to Captain D’onofrio one time at night, at our apartment, when the Marshal couldn’t hear, she said, ‘promise me Serge, that we’ll die on the same day’, and he promised her, Newt. He promised.”

But this does not make Newt feel better. He cries more, and so Mako, too, cries more.

‘So now you see my problem,’ says King Salamander to Princess Mako. And Mako does see it. And she knows what she has to do. So even though it’s hard, and it makes her sad, she returns to the surface, and climbs into her boat. 

Dr. Lightcap should have died fighting kaiju like everyone thought that she would, not in a lab during an experiment. That is the only thing that is sad. That everyone has to die and not everyone can die killing kaiju but that nothing less should have killed Dr. Lightcap. That is why Mako is crying. Mako isn’t crying because she’ll miss Dr. Lightcap. Because how could she miss anyone more than she misses her own family?  The islands of Kagoshima Prefecture?  Sakurajima, dark slopes above blue water?  The ferry from the mainland to Tanegashima?  She never could. Newt is crying because Newt is just Newt and he never understands anything in the right way.

And she takes the oar of her little boat. It’s a big, heavy oar, but Mako is very strong.

“So it is all right,” Mako says, the rain running down under her collar. “She was doing what she wanted. She was never sad. You,” Mako continues, swallowing, “you were the one who was sad for her. She never was for herself. She never was.”  So stop it, she does not say. Stop it.

Newt lets her go and turns to face the ocean, flat and gray and jagged with rain. “Get out of here Maks,” he says, sounding choked. “Thanks for coming. But get out of here.”

Mako steps forward to stand next to him, bringing her hands up to rest on the rail. “Are you going to the wake?” she whispers. 

“No,” he says wiping his face. “Tell me how it is. Pour some ginger ale on the floor for me.”

“I am not going either,” she says. “I am going to watch Blue Planet in your lab. You may come if you like.”

“Aw,” Newt says. “I don’t know if I’m going to make it, kiddo.”  

“I will tell Dr. Gottlieb that you’re out here,” Mako says.

“Please don’t do that,” Newt whispers, so pained that Mako is sorry she said anything. 

“Okay,” Mako replies. 

And she breaks all the crystals, right down to their roots, Dr. Lightcap says, making her hands into fists and then bursting them open right in Mako’s face. Every single one. So that she can save the Fishpeople’s underwater kingdom. She gives the reefs and the kelp forests the space to grow. She smashes them all into tiny, tiny pieces that turn to dust and glitter in the air.

Newt will never understand things the way that Mako understands them. But that is not his fault. He is a different person than she is. At the beginning, he seemed the same as her. Knowing how to speak without pity, showing her new things, walking away from sadness into not-sad places and looking for interesting fish there.  All those things are fine. But he can’t be serious in the way that he should be. He couldn’t let Dr. Lightcap go, and so she’d dragged him through things he wasn’t suited for and could not understand. He doesn’t know how to talk to people, how to accomplish what he wants to accomplish, how to be respectful, how to be polite to people who have power over him, how to keep what he thinks to himself. Mako should not drag him with her, to the places she will go. It would be cruel to him and it would hurt both of them. 

And so Mako, again, leaves her old self behind her. She straightens her back and grips the rail, looking out over the ocean. As if he can feel her change, Newt looks over at her. 

She cannot quite bury the urge to clamp her hands around the jacket he is ruining and tell him that he must come inside. That she needs him to watch Blue Planet with her and that she does not want to spend the night alone while half the Shatterdome is across town at a wake. That she will stitch together the ends of everything that is unraveling if only later, in four years, when she goes to the Jaeger Academy he will say, ‘I’m proud of you, Maks; I’m happy that you got what you wanted,’ even if he is not really happy. But he will never, never say that. He hated Dr. Lightcap’s choices, but he will hate hers more. Every moment they spend together will make her final choice more painful for both of them. Because he will feel that he failed if she goes, and she will feel that she failed if she doesn’t.

So she should leave him alone, on Dr. Lightcap’s dock. On the dock that will always be Dr. Lightcap’s, no matter who and how many come after her.

“You should go,” Newt says, again, not knowing the truth of his own words. 

Mako should go.

And so she will.

In a little while, she will.