Giant Robots: Sturm und Drang
Sep. 15th, 2013 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeSturm und Drang
Prompt: 'rebellion' for Hurt/Comfort Bingo; 'storm' for Stuff100
Word Count: 1058
Summary: The PPDC sees M.D. as a mascot or an embarrassment. She fights both. This story takes place in the Giant Robots verse, which is an Infinity Smashed/Pacific Rim crossover.
Nobody ever says so, but M.D. knows that she is an object of pity and embarrassment for the PPDC. She can see it in the hastily averted glances in her direction, hear it in the way most people automatically address Biff instead of her, even if they're responding to something she says. (Biff refuses to play along. Still, they once held an entire conversation with an engineer addressing Biff, who never himself spoke a word.)
To them, she is an albatross around their neck, a walking, talking symbol of just how they got their precious Pons System. If not for her and Biff being locked up in the basement of some unscrupulous government agency nobody had ever heard of, there would be no giant robots meshing with the human mind, no Rangers, no PPDC. Sure, none of the PPDC had known... but none of them had looked very hard either. None of them had wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Too bad for them. Now they've got her clacking around their facility, a seizure-ridden berserker with metal in her head and strapped to her arms, a scrawny, scarred-up scarecrow among their rock star Rangers, and they have to pay for her medical care for as long as she can pilot a Jaeger. And oh, she will always pilot a Jaeger. She will do anything Marshal Pentecost asks of her, instantly and without question, because he expects nothing less. He never once looks at her with an ounce of pity. In his eyes, she is a Ranger.
She can only imagine the amount of fury he engendered hiring her.
The first time she enters the dojo on her crutches, she sees the awkward glances, the muffled confusion, because what on earth would someone like her be doing there? One of the Australians snorts openly. But Marshal Pentecost only looks at her and says, “Next.”
M.D. has spent the past ten years in a cell fighting with Biff. While he looks on, arms crossed over his chest and a smirk on his face, she proves once and for all that even if she's not the best fighter, she still deserves to be there. When she send the Australian to the mat, Biff even gives a sarcastic slow clap. She mimes a cursty.
The Rangers stop treating her like a mascot after that. Instead, they try to ignore her. But M.D. has never let people ignore her. She doesn't have the Day-Glo wardrobe she used to, but she paints flames up and down her crutches and isn't afraid to send lightning through them if she needs someone's attention. She rolls up the sleeves of her thermal to her elbows, eschews hats, and she never returns to her adolescent affectation of gloves. Let them see the scars. Let them ponder why. Let them see the metal sockets embedded in her skull, and let them know exactly what they're for, and how they got there. Let them know that she is the reason the Rangers exist.
Let them stare. Let them.
Biff lets her. But as time goes on, and people studiously avoid looking at them, and no invitations come for the open-bar parties (the Rangers work hard, and play harder), he gets more shifty. One day, he turns to her and she sees the look in his eyes even before he opens his mouth and asks whether she wants him to make her look normal.
He realizes his mistake the moment he says it, and when she comes at him like a storm of fury and lightning, he doesn't even put up his hands. His lack of resistance only makes her angrier, and it takes two burly Russians to drag her off him.
Marshal Pentecost chews her out in his office in a voice of iron and ice. He reminds her that if she fries her copilot's nervous system, she ruins his ability to mesh with the Jaeger. And if he can't mesh with a Jaeger, her own career as a Ranger is finished, and the best she can hope for with the PPDC is to mop floors and collate paper for the rest of her life. M.D. takes the evisceration in silence, staring at the floor. There is nothing for her to say. They both know she deserves every word of it, and she leaves his office when he orders her to, tail tucked between her legs.
She's not the only one. When she comes home, she finds Biff sitting on her bunk, lips split and swollen, looking uncharacteristically subdued. He won't look her in the eye.
“Sorry,” he says.
He speaks rarely, apologizes less, and the last clouds fade from M.D.'s soul. She sighs, comes and sits next to him, puts her hand on his arm to reinforce her words: “it's okay.”
It doesn't help much. Biff's mind is a conflicted swirl of shame and guilt. It's not just over the fight. No, what he feels bad over is being 'the normal one.' The one people look directly at and speak directly to, the one who gets ribbed for being short but never faces the question over whether he deserves to be here. Everyone assumes that he's the handler, the ordinary counterweight to her insanity.
He could probably deal with it, if it were true. But it's not. He just hides his differences better—binds his chest and lowers his voice, wears the right clothes and performs the right behaviors. He hides his vanish acts, doesn't volunteer information. M.D. has never asked to see him without his vanish, but she suspects the face she sees is both more masculine and whiter than the one he wears.
Next to her raggedy scarecrow self, he looks normal. But he works at it, wants to be it, and in this moment, he feels shame. The words don't come, but she feels him wonder, the inchoate question.
She rests her head on his shoulder, squeezes her arm, and says, “it's okay, it's okay,” over and over. It's not his fault. He doesn't have the strength to be a freak, she doesn't have the strength for anything else, and that's just the way it goes sometimes.
And that's okay. As long as he stays, and as long as he's a man in her eyes and she's a Ranger in his, it's okay.
Prompt: 'rebellion' for Hurt/Comfort Bingo; 'storm' for Stuff100
Word Count: 1058
Summary: The PPDC sees M.D. as a mascot or an embarrassment. She fights both. This story takes place in the Giant Robots verse, which is an Infinity Smashed/Pacific Rim crossover.
Nobody ever says so, but M.D. knows that she is an object of pity and embarrassment for the PPDC. She can see it in the hastily averted glances in her direction, hear it in the way most people automatically address Biff instead of her, even if they're responding to something she says. (Biff refuses to play along. Still, they once held an entire conversation with an engineer addressing Biff, who never himself spoke a word.)
To them, she is an albatross around their neck, a walking, talking symbol of just how they got their precious Pons System. If not for her and Biff being locked up in the basement of some unscrupulous government agency nobody had ever heard of, there would be no giant robots meshing with the human mind, no Rangers, no PPDC. Sure, none of the PPDC had known... but none of them had looked very hard either. None of them had wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Too bad for them. Now they've got her clacking around their facility, a seizure-ridden berserker with metal in her head and strapped to her arms, a scrawny, scarred-up scarecrow among their rock star Rangers, and they have to pay for her medical care for as long as she can pilot a Jaeger. And oh, she will always pilot a Jaeger. She will do anything Marshal Pentecost asks of her, instantly and without question, because he expects nothing less. He never once looks at her with an ounce of pity. In his eyes, she is a Ranger.
She can only imagine the amount of fury he engendered hiring her.
The first time she enters the dojo on her crutches, she sees the awkward glances, the muffled confusion, because what on earth would someone like her be doing there? One of the Australians snorts openly. But Marshal Pentecost only looks at her and says, “Next.”
M.D. has spent the past ten years in a cell fighting with Biff. While he looks on, arms crossed over his chest and a smirk on his face, she proves once and for all that even if she's not the best fighter, she still deserves to be there. When she send the Australian to the mat, Biff even gives a sarcastic slow clap. She mimes a cursty.
The Rangers stop treating her like a mascot after that. Instead, they try to ignore her. But M.D. has never let people ignore her. She doesn't have the Day-Glo wardrobe she used to, but she paints flames up and down her crutches and isn't afraid to send lightning through them if she needs someone's attention. She rolls up the sleeves of her thermal to her elbows, eschews hats, and she never returns to her adolescent affectation of gloves. Let them see the scars. Let them ponder why. Let them see the metal sockets embedded in her skull, and let them know exactly what they're for, and how they got there. Let them know that she is the reason the Rangers exist.
Let them stare. Let them.
Biff lets her. But as time goes on, and people studiously avoid looking at them, and no invitations come for the open-bar parties (the Rangers work hard, and play harder), he gets more shifty. One day, he turns to her and she sees the look in his eyes even before he opens his mouth and asks whether she wants him to make her look normal.
He realizes his mistake the moment he says it, and when she comes at him like a storm of fury and lightning, he doesn't even put up his hands. His lack of resistance only makes her angrier, and it takes two burly Russians to drag her off him.
Marshal Pentecost chews her out in his office in a voice of iron and ice. He reminds her that if she fries her copilot's nervous system, she ruins his ability to mesh with the Jaeger. And if he can't mesh with a Jaeger, her own career as a Ranger is finished, and the best she can hope for with the PPDC is to mop floors and collate paper for the rest of her life. M.D. takes the evisceration in silence, staring at the floor. There is nothing for her to say. They both know she deserves every word of it, and she leaves his office when he orders her to, tail tucked between her legs.
She's not the only one. When she comes home, she finds Biff sitting on her bunk, lips split and swollen, looking uncharacteristically subdued. He won't look her in the eye.
“Sorry,” he says.
He speaks rarely, apologizes less, and the last clouds fade from M.D.'s soul. She sighs, comes and sits next to him, puts her hand on his arm to reinforce her words: “it's okay.”
It doesn't help much. Biff's mind is a conflicted swirl of shame and guilt. It's not just over the fight. No, what he feels bad over is being 'the normal one.' The one people look directly at and speak directly to, the one who gets ribbed for being short but never faces the question over whether he deserves to be here. Everyone assumes that he's the handler, the ordinary counterweight to her insanity.
He could probably deal with it, if it were true. But it's not. He just hides his differences better—binds his chest and lowers his voice, wears the right clothes and performs the right behaviors. He hides his vanish acts, doesn't volunteer information. M.D. has never asked to see him without his vanish, but she suspects the face she sees is both more masculine and whiter than the one he wears.
Next to her raggedy scarecrow self, he looks normal. But he works at it, wants to be it, and in this moment, he feels shame. The words don't come, but she feels him wonder, the inchoate question.
She rests her head on his shoulder, squeezes her arm, and says, “it's okay, it's okay,” over and over. It's not his fault. He doesn't have the strength to be a freak, she doesn't have the strength for anything else, and that's just the way it goes sometimes.
And that's okay. As long as he stays, and as long as he's a man in her eyes and she's a Ranger in his, it's okay.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-16 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-16 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-16 03:54 am (UTC)My reaction is an all-too-familiar mashup of equal parts Oh boy! and Oh shit!, which I can expand as "Oh hell, I am going to LOVE to read this but I'm way out of spoons already!!!!"
no subject
Date: 2013-09-17 03:08 am (UTC)--Rogan
no subject
Date: 2013-09-18 12:02 pm (UTC)Which I do knot no* at all...
*Two-Lit'll sleep.
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Date: 2013-09-20 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-21 10:10 pm (UTC)