Rhapsody in Kaiju Blue Part I
Title: Rhapsody in Kaiju Blue (I)
Fandom: Pacific Rim
Rating: G - M (depending on part)
Disclaimer: If I made any money off of this I'd actually have some money.
Notes: Bingo fills written for Jaegercon 2013, a ficlet per square.
Summary: Moments from the apocalypse.
Jaeger Legends
They whispered the stories around the shatterdome, tales of hauntings, of missing tools and missing techs, people driven away by what they saw deep in the beating of a jaeger's heart. Everyone knew that jaegers twitched while their pilots slept, breathed and lived through the depths of the night. But some connections went deeper than dreams, than nightmares, than the drift itself.
The stories were passed around in the hallways and cafeterias, behind closed doors and cupped hands. They told of Rio Oro, the hefty Chilean Mark II that had continued fighting after his pilots died, killed his third kaiju and sunk below the waves. How in Hong Kong, at the end of days, the techs learned the hard way that you didn't touch Cherno Alpha without a Kaidonovsky nearby, that there were worse things than shocked fingers and burned faces, that repairs unaccompanied by the right music might as well not have happened at all.
They said that Coyote Tango never moved again after Tokyo, her heart empty with her pilots incapacitated and gone. They said that Striker Eureka triggered the bomb himself, milliseconds before Chuck Hansen flipped the switch, eager to finish the job.
And then there was Gipsy Danger who carried her pilot home when he couldn't go another step, who died and then rose again, stronger and sleeker and reformed, who never would have fought again without Mako Mori, never walked without Raleigh Beckett. That Gipsy Danger stood beyond the Breach, sentinel against the kaiju and their masters. She waited there to one day rise again.
The Kwoon
Mako Mori/Raleigh Beckett
They found each other in the Kwoon. It was dark and late and their war was over. The base was nearly empty and they floated around it like ghosts, uncertain of the brave new world whose price had been the people they loved.
They didn't speak. They didn't have to. Everything they had to say had already been said. Even days later they were still lost in the Drift.
They blinked and Raleigh was pressed back against the wall, his hands wrapped around Mako's hips. She surged up and pinned him, hands on shoulders, lips on lips, a kiss that was a battle that she would win.
She always won, even when winning meant losing everything else.
She didn't hold back because she knew that he understood what it was like to win the battle and lose your entire world. He could take it, take everything she was, everything she had to give, every blow that she could strike. He wouldn't break and he wouldn't let her fall.
They blinked again and they were naked, clothes a dark heap in the dim, empty room. Raleigh laid sprawled across the padding, chest heaving, coated in sweat. He pulled Mako down on top of him, hands gentle, both remembering that it wasn't a war, it was a dance, it was them, Mako and Raleigh and their war had never been with each other.
She reached down and grasped his cock where it lay leaking between them. Her grip was soft but firm, the perfect pressure because she knew him, all of him. He moaned and arched, writhing as he came undone.
She shifted and rose, using her grip to guide herself down around him. She sunk and he whined, losing himself in her, in the two of them together. Their connection snapped into place and they were deep inside of each other, feeling what the other felt, knowing what the other knew. Raleigh felt full to bursting, an intrusion that wasn't an invasion but shivery pleasure and joy; Mako knew the need to take, to give, to drive forward again and again until the ledge came and she could fly.
They rose and fell together, one body, one mind, connected even in their dreams.
It was Raleigh's voice that bounced off of the walls in pleas and curses, his shout that echoed around them as they came down, but the same joy and desperation were written across Mako's face, sculpted into the lines of her body. They had each other and in that brief glowing moment they didn't need anyone else.
They laid, wrapped around each other, their beating hearts a lifeline and lullaby. They stayed there where there was no future or past or present, nothing to celebrate or mourn, only Raleigh and Mako and what they had done together.
It hadn't been farewell. Rangers never said goodbye.
Dreams
Newt Geizsler
Dreams of fire and darkness and death haunt Newt's nights. He closes his eyes to sleep and he sees through kaiju eyes. His rational mind knows that the breach is closed, the pathway shut, that other dimension severed from their own. But in sleep it's there, searing across his flesh, icy cold tentacles rifling through his memories like cards in a deck. The aliens know him and he knows them, knows that there's no escape.
Newt is spread out, examined, under the Precursor's heavy gaze. They haven't forgotten him.
Some days the memories, the dreams, follow him into the day. Malevolent eyes follow him as he walks, eats, plays his music and works his magic. The weight is heavy on the back of his neck, the gaze alien and patient, infinitely patient. They wait and they watch and when the time comes they will return.
Newt tells himself that it's paranoia, brain damage, neurosis. He's fucked himself up, connected himself bare to an alien mind using slapdash tech. He tells himself not to be afraid.
But night comes and they wait there, behind his eyes, gazing from the shadows. They watch and they wait and they never forget.
Family
Mako Mori & Stacker Pentecost, pre-movie
They drove for an hour outside of the city in search of a lonely corner of the river, a space just for them. The drive was quiet, Mako a silent figure in the seat to Stacker's left. She stared out the window at the passing countryside and he let her be. For months she had been under his car and he'd finally started to learn when to pry and when to let her be. He knew too well that sometimes silence was the only balm.
He parked by the side of the dirt road and they hiked a meter or more through brush and around thick gum tree trunks until the river flowed in front of them, gray water reflecting the sky above. Dusk gathered around them as they listened to the moving water and the birds cawing in the trees, both hearing the whispers of the ghosts that drifted around them.
The sun fell and e handed her a lantern, specially made for this day, and lit his own. They knelt down and set their lights onto the river. They watched, knees damp, as the water carried the lanterns away, flickering brightness in the growing dark.
Memories hung thick around them; the kindness of a mother's smile, the steel-forged strength of a father's hug, the fierce laughter of a sister's eyes. They remembered the people they had lost, the lives the kaiju had ripped away.
But through all of the pain, all of the sacrifice and the struggle, they still soldiered on. Somehow, in spite of it all, they had found each other. Together they would finish what the kaiju had started.
Jaeger Crew
OFC
“If you listen close,” Myra's first PPDC officer, brash and American, had told her, “every jaeger has a story to tell.” He had been wrong about a great many things-the war's duration, the coffee in the mess, her desire to share his bed-but about the jaegers he had been absolutely right. In order to repair a jaeger she first had to learn how to speak to them.
Her earliest memories were lodged in her papi's shop, watching him bang away at old tractors and turista's giant plastic cars, listening to him mutter and curse. “No le digas a tú mami, mija,” he would say after a particularly colorful curse flew through the air, a secret between the two of them. He taught her engines and circuits and the joy that came puzzling out a machine's deepest secrets. He taught her how to bring the dead back to life.
Later, much later, after kaiju blue stained the beaches and her papi was buried under the waves, she brought what he had taught her to the greatest machines of all. She learned each jaeger's language, the secret sound that beat in their hearts, their voices and rhythms. She learned how to recognize their screams and repair their deepest wounds. They were her monsters and she loved them all.
Sometimes, on quiet nights, when the shatterdome was dark and the oceans were silent, no kaiju in sight, she would stand and watch her jaegers dream. Some nights she would dream with them.
comments at http://liptonrm-fic.dreamwidth.org/18314.html.
Fandom: Pacific Rim
Rating: G - M (depending on part)
Disclaimer: If I made any money off of this I'd actually have some money.
Notes: Bingo fills written for Jaegercon 2013, a ficlet per square.
Summary: Moments from the apocalypse.
Jaeger Legends
They whispered the stories around the shatterdome, tales of hauntings, of missing tools and missing techs, people driven away by what they saw deep in the beating of a jaeger's heart. Everyone knew that jaegers twitched while their pilots slept, breathed and lived through the depths of the night. But some connections went deeper than dreams, than nightmares, than the drift itself.
The stories were passed around in the hallways and cafeterias, behind closed doors and cupped hands. They told of Rio Oro, the hefty Chilean Mark II that had continued fighting after his pilots died, killed his third kaiju and sunk below the waves. How in Hong Kong, at the end of days, the techs learned the hard way that you didn't touch Cherno Alpha without a Kaidonovsky nearby, that there were worse things than shocked fingers and burned faces, that repairs unaccompanied by the right music might as well not have happened at all.
They said that Coyote Tango never moved again after Tokyo, her heart empty with her pilots incapacitated and gone. They said that Striker Eureka triggered the bomb himself, milliseconds before Chuck Hansen flipped the switch, eager to finish the job.
And then there was Gipsy Danger who carried her pilot home when he couldn't go another step, who died and then rose again, stronger and sleeker and reformed, who never would have fought again without Mako Mori, never walked without Raleigh Beckett. That Gipsy Danger stood beyond the Breach, sentinel against the kaiju and their masters. She waited there to one day rise again.
The Kwoon
Mako Mori/Raleigh Beckett
They found each other in the Kwoon. It was dark and late and their war was over. The base was nearly empty and they floated around it like ghosts, uncertain of the brave new world whose price had been the people they loved.
They didn't speak. They didn't have to. Everything they had to say had already been said. Even days later they were still lost in the Drift.
They blinked and Raleigh was pressed back against the wall, his hands wrapped around Mako's hips. She surged up and pinned him, hands on shoulders, lips on lips, a kiss that was a battle that she would win.
She always won, even when winning meant losing everything else.
She didn't hold back because she knew that he understood what it was like to win the battle and lose your entire world. He could take it, take everything she was, everything she had to give, every blow that she could strike. He wouldn't break and he wouldn't let her fall.
They blinked again and they were naked, clothes a dark heap in the dim, empty room. Raleigh laid sprawled across the padding, chest heaving, coated in sweat. He pulled Mako down on top of him, hands gentle, both remembering that it wasn't a war, it was a dance, it was them, Mako and Raleigh and their war had never been with each other.
She reached down and grasped his cock where it lay leaking between them. Her grip was soft but firm, the perfect pressure because she knew him, all of him. He moaned and arched, writhing as he came undone.
She shifted and rose, using her grip to guide herself down around him. She sunk and he whined, losing himself in her, in the two of them together. Their connection snapped into place and they were deep inside of each other, feeling what the other felt, knowing what the other knew. Raleigh felt full to bursting, an intrusion that wasn't an invasion but shivery pleasure and joy; Mako knew the need to take, to give, to drive forward again and again until the ledge came and she could fly.
They rose and fell together, one body, one mind, connected even in their dreams.
It was Raleigh's voice that bounced off of the walls in pleas and curses, his shout that echoed around them as they came down, but the same joy and desperation were written across Mako's face, sculpted into the lines of her body. They had each other and in that brief glowing moment they didn't need anyone else.
They laid, wrapped around each other, their beating hearts a lifeline and lullaby. They stayed there where there was no future or past or present, nothing to celebrate or mourn, only Raleigh and Mako and what they had done together.
It hadn't been farewell. Rangers never said goodbye.
Dreams
Newt Geizsler
Dreams of fire and darkness and death haunt Newt's nights. He closes his eyes to sleep and he sees through kaiju eyes. His rational mind knows that the breach is closed, the pathway shut, that other dimension severed from their own. But in sleep it's there, searing across his flesh, icy cold tentacles rifling through his memories like cards in a deck. The aliens know him and he knows them, knows that there's no escape.
Newt is spread out, examined, under the Precursor's heavy gaze. They haven't forgotten him.
Some days the memories, the dreams, follow him into the day. Malevolent eyes follow him as he walks, eats, plays his music and works his magic. The weight is heavy on the back of his neck, the gaze alien and patient, infinitely patient. They wait and they watch and when the time comes they will return.
Newt tells himself that it's paranoia, brain damage, neurosis. He's fucked himself up, connected himself bare to an alien mind using slapdash tech. He tells himself not to be afraid.
But night comes and they wait there, behind his eyes, gazing from the shadows. They watch and they wait and they never forget.
Family
Mako Mori & Stacker Pentecost, pre-movie
They drove for an hour outside of the city in search of a lonely corner of the river, a space just for them. The drive was quiet, Mako a silent figure in the seat to Stacker's left. She stared out the window at the passing countryside and he let her be. For months she had been under his car and he'd finally started to learn when to pry and when to let her be. He knew too well that sometimes silence was the only balm.
He parked by the side of the dirt road and they hiked a meter or more through brush and around thick gum tree trunks until the river flowed in front of them, gray water reflecting the sky above. Dusk gathered around them as they listened to the moving water and the birds cawing in the trees, both hearing the whispers of the ghosts that drifted around them.
The sun fell and e handed her a lantern, specially made for this day, and lit his own. They knelt down and set their lights onto the river. They watched, knees damp, as the water carried the lanterns away, flickering brightness in the growing dark.
Memories hung thick around them; the kindness of a mother's smile, the steel-forged strength of a father's hug, the fierce laughter of a sister's eyes. They remembered the people they had lost, the lives the kaiju had ripped away.
But through all of the pain, all of the sacrifice and the struggle, they still soldiered on. Somehow, in spite of it all, they had found each other. Together they would finish what the kaiju had started.
Jaeger Crew
OFC
“If you listen close,” Myra's first PPDC officer, brash and American, had told her, “every jaeger has a story to tell.” He had been wrong about a great many things-the war's duration, the coffee in the mess, her desire to share his bed-but about the jaegers he had been absolutely right. In order to repair a jaeger she first had to learn how to speak to them.
Her earliest memories were lodged in her papi's shop, watching him bang away at old tractors and turista's giant plastic cars, listening to him mutter and curse. “No le digas a tú mami, mija,” he would say after a particularly colorful curse flew through the air, a secret between the two of them. He taught her engines and circuits and the joy that came puzzling out a machine's deepest secrets. He taught her how to bring the dead back to life.
Later, much later, after kaiju blue stained the beaches and her papi was buried under the waves, she brought what he had taught her to the greatest machines of all. She learned each jaeger's language, the secret sound that beat in their hearts, their voices and rhythms. She learned how to recognize their screams and repair their deepest wounds. They were her monsters and she loved them all.
Sometimes, on quiet nights, when the shatterdome was dark and the oceans were silent, no kaiju in sight, she would stand and watch her jaegers dream. Some nights she would dream with them.
comments at http://liptonrm-fic.dreamwidth.org/18314.html.