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After ten years of Precursor control, Newt knew he had… hardened as a person. That in the first years he was still himself - loud, obnoxious maybe, a genius definitely, but mostly hopeful. Someone who wouldn’t be caught dead working in a corporate hell hole.
But towards the end, there are times when the Precursors didn’t have to take control. Sometimes it’s Newt working for Liwen Shao and firing engineers and caring about the bottom line. Sometimes it’s Newt who is scowling at Hermann’s number when it appears again on his phone because he doesn’t have time for this.
Because it’s been ten years. Ten years of expecting the PPDC to figure it out, to bust down the door and stop the bad guys and rescue him, the guy who literally put his life and his brain on the line to help save the world. He was one of them, one of the good guys.
But people vanish and people die and most of all after the Breach closed people changed. Sure, the Newt they knew would never work for an arms dealer making Jaegers to fight people, but did anyone really know Newt before the war? Who was to say he even changed and not that he, like everyone else, just went back to being someone different, someone even Hermann never met, because their letters didn’t start until after Trespasser made landfall?
And honestly? Part of Newt can never forgive them for that. He loves them, of course, even if sometimes he hates them. He definitely doesn’t want the world to end. But sometimes a job is just a fucking job and he’s been working for Shao longer than he ever worked for the PPDC, and only a few years less than he spent studying Kaiju. It’s as much his life at this point as being a hero ever was, maybe it’s more his life. Maybe this was always going to happen and Hermann was right, stare long enough into the abyss, blahblahblah…
He doesn’t like the person he’s becoming. In fact, he kinda hates his guts. He barely recognizes himself sometimes. But he’s just human at the end of the day, just a mammal, and he adapts. He survives, and stuff gets lost along the way.
Sometimes when Dr. Geiszler, Head of Shao Industries R&D cuts off Hermann, or dismisses him, or rolls his eyes, it’s not the Precursors. How did I ever think this guy was so smart? he wonders when Hermann calls him to talk about his theories or some project he’s working which desperately requires Newt’s advice, and sometimes about nothing at all. If Newt didn’t know better, he’d think Hermann just called to hear his voice. But he’s also thinking, How did I ever think this guy was a genius? How did we ever Drift without our brains frying?
Because of all the people who should have known, who should have seen, is Newt totally crazy in thinking Hermann’s the one who should have spotted it first? His own Drift partner? And it hardens him. It makes him angry. So angry that when the breaches are opening like boils across the Pacific it’s not all the Precursors, not entirely, who let that coldness seep into Newt’s voice.
He didn’t want to be like that. He wanted to be soft, he wanted to care when the plan starts coming together and his friends start getting hurt, start dying. And he does care. But he’s cared so much for so long that he had to stop caring or there wouldn’t be anything left of him to fight.
But he’s soft at the end. He’s crying at the end, he hasn’t cried in so long, but Hermann’s throat is soft under his hands, and it’s too much, he can’t take it, not this. He’s crying and it almost feels good just to know he can after so long, that he can’t breathe any more than Hermann can, that he can still feel things even if it’s just the worst possible thing in the world.