(no subject)

[col_dain]

Who: Dain, Maggie, and Davey
When: The evening Maggie & Davey arrive
Where: An empty classroom
Warnings/Rating: PG for possible language; no warnings
What: Dain is deeply displeased by his childrens' decision to enter the program. The twins attempt to dissuade him.


Dain had made a concentrated effort not to drink this evening.

He'd realized that Maggie and Davey were in Alaska only after they'd already arrived, a nugget of information which had sparked a thirty minute screaming match with Dinah, his ex-wife and their mother. She'd attempted to be rational, which had only angered him more, and the temptation to dig into his private stash was overwhelming. But Dain, being a self-aware kind of guy in general, was cognizant of the fact that Maggie at least believed he had a drinking problem, and so he'd exercised a little self-control and left the bottle alone.

Consequently, he was not in the best of moods when his wayward children straggled into the classroom that he'd appointed for their little Come To Jesus meeting. He was sitting on the instructor's desk, a not entirely accidental placement, which Maggie noticed immediately. Her chin rose stubbornly. Her eyes flashed. Davey, at least, had the grace to look ashamed of himself.

Comments

[drmaggs]

Maggie'd had every intention of hugging her father when she walked in. Her arms had even lifted a little, out of habit. She loved him more than anything, but the non-too-subtle image of him sitting on the teacher's desk hit her the wrong way and, right off the bat, her defenses shot up.

"Colonel," she began, her lips pursed, arms folded. She neglected to sit in one of the chairs.

[col_dain]

So that was how it was going to go. She wanted a colonel, he would give her one. His mouth thinned, his eyes narrowed. Davey sat in one of the chairs, chagrined and clearly wanting nothing to do with the brewing battle between his father and his sister.

"Margaret," he answered coldly. He didn't continue. Let her start the conversation.

[drmaggs]

Maggie drew in a deep breath, narrowing her eyes in a little mirror reflection of her father, putting her hands on her hips. And then the dam broke.

"I know this isn't what you want," she began, eyes flashing. That, she got from her mother. "But this is the right thing to do! And how dare you ban us from something you have dedicated your entire life to! I know that this is dangerous, it's really dangerous, but if something doesn't stand in the way of the monsters, it's going to be dangerous for everyone else!"

She spoke until she ran out of air, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright. "We're not children anymore, Daddy, and I won't be treated like one!"

[col_dain]

"You are children!" Dain exploded, standing up. He wasn't a big man, but when he was angry, he towered. His voice was a full roar, the voice he'd terrorized cadets with back in his instructor pilot days. He'd never before used it on his children, but he'd never before been so angry with them either.

"You're my children! And I didn't just forbid you to come up here for my fucking health, Margaret! If you want to work in the science division, fine! If you want to cut up kaiju parts until you croak, fine, I won't stop you!" He slammed his hand on the desk for emphasis. Davey flinched every time. "But you are not getting in a fucking Jaeger and that is final!"

[drmaggs]

Davey may have flinched, but Maggie sure as hell did not. She took a step forward, even shorter than her father, but she looked up at him nonetheless. The tears in her eyes betrayed her, however, and her voice cracked a little.

"I don't need a permission slip from you to do this," she replied, balling her fists up at her hips. "I don't care how much you yell at me, daddy. You taught me that if I have a duty, it's my place to do it. And besides, someone has to make sure Davey doesn't fall out of the conn-pod."

[col_dain]

"Davey shouldn't be in a conn-pod any more than you should!" Dain shouted. His hands balled into fists and he uncurled them slowly; it was hard to remember how to keep his temper with his kids. He'd spent so much time in Shatterdomes, drunk and surrounded by his fellow hopeless flotsam. He didn't want his kids to turn out like them, like him for God's sake. There was a lot of hope in a Shatterdome, a lot of courage and camaraderie, but there was also a lot of death and injury and sorrow and loss.

He didn't want his Maggie to turn out the way his Andi had, but he didn't know how to tell her that, didn't know how to make her understand.

He pressed a hand to his forehead, forced himself to calm down. "Maggie," he said, in a more normal voice, "I don't want you or your brother in a Jaeger. There are other things you can do to help. You don't have to risk your lives."

[drmaggs]

"Dad..." Maggie lowered her eyes, taking a step back and sitting on the desk next to Davey, taking his hand up in hers.

"We might not get that far. We probably won't. There are a hundred cadets here, and they're all just as promising as us. But Daddy, please..."

She looked up at him, smiling a little. "Besides, someone has to be out there, watching your back! I may as well do it in a Jaeger."

[col_dain]

"My back doesn't need watching, sweetheart," Dain said, smiling a little back at her. "I've been doing this longer than you've been alive. I just..."

He drew a deep breath, looked away. Concealing emotion had been drilled into him since he was a child; he couldn't just chuck it all now. So he didn't look either of them in the eyes, but he said what he needed to say.

"I can't lose either of you to this, all right? I don't want you getting in a Jaeger. It's too damn dangerous, and if I think that, you know it's crazy..."

[drmaggs]

Maggie's voice caught in her throat and she managed to keep it from becoming a squeak, instead pushing herself away from the desk and into her father's arms, wrapping her's around the trunk of his torso and burying her face in the side of his neck.

"Daddy," she mumbled, her words muffled in his shirt. "You're not going to lose us. You'll just...you'll just have to hope that we scrub out at the drift level."

[col_dain]

After a moment's hesitation, Dain returned the hug, bringing her close against him and kissing the top of her head. She was a good kid. Too stubborn most of the time, but a good kid. With his free arm, he gestured for Davey to join the family, and he - lanky and tall like his mother's side of the family - wrapped his long arms around the both of them.

"You're not going to scrub out," Dain muttered, tired all of a sudden. "You're going to do great, Maggie, because that's what you do." There was a stone of cold fear in the pit of his belly. He was going to have to drown it.

[hamiltwin]

"Maybe I'll screw it up for both of us," Davey suggested. Now that they weren't yelling at each other, he was happy to join the conversation. He'd just learned through long experience not to get in the middle of Dad and Maggie when they were having one of their blow-ups. No matter how hard he tried to calm everyone down, he would end up sucked in, and Davey despised losing his temper.

"I mean," he continued, "I don't even really know how to fight."