ok, so
sherlock’s first co-pilot was irene, and before her he hadn’t even considered sneezing on a jager, much less climbing in one; he can’t connect with others, ever, and he’d rather cry blood and die of radiation sickness than let someone crawl around in his skull.
but irene is, as always, different, and the way she talks about the methodical stripping and pounding of the monsters back where they came from is its own kind of profane art, and before he knows it he’s letting her inside and they’re on the most exciting london adventure either of them could ever have imagined. (he thinks) he’s inside her head, and all he sees is blinding beauty.
when the kaiju rips her out with them still handshake-mind-soul-locked, it destroys him more completely than the ensuing 20-foot fall into the freezing ocean. he doesn’t waste away on the wall of life, after; he finds everything he can swallow or inject, nearly dies a dozen times and wishes it had worked; hates the kaiju with every fiber of his being but is utterly helpless against them, until, of course:
