Author's Notes: Basically, I was re-watching Pacific Rim for the third time with my dad and started thinking about Chuck. I love the kid, but he's pretty much a douchenozzle. And then I started to wonder how people would view Chuck's character if the gender were switched up. I feel like people would have hated Chuck's character, would have called her a complete bitch, and I would have loved it. So this is really just me playing around. I've never done a genderbend fic before so it's almost like an exercise in writing. It's been fun!
Disclaimer: I own nothing, sad to say.
monsters of our own making
chapter one: a heroine's journey
She was too young when her mother was taken from her.
It burns her that she does not know what her mother's last moments were like. She imagines them all to be awful, pictures violent scenarios that no child should think of, but she can't stop herself. It's like a disease. When she goes to sleep, she dreams of her mother dying alone in their little house, curled under the bed, crying, pleading with anything to just let her daughter live, please let my daughter be alive and safe, Herc save her please not me not me only her—
And then she snaps awake, blinks the nightmare away, and casts a glance over at her father's sleeping form. He's solid and still, breathing so gently that it looks as if he's not breathing at all; and while they haven't spoken properly for a long while, his presence is enough to calm her down.
She'll never tell him that, though she knows that she should. Her father has soaked in a certain amount of guilt at not saving his wife, her mother; and she's never given him the benefit of letting him know that she doesn't blame him.
(Screams of, "I hate you!" and "I wish mum were still alive and not you!" and "You don't understand; you'll never bloody understand!" echo in her head as she looks at her father and she never says a damn thing before turning her eyes away from him.)
Looking at her father now, her father the Ranger, the Jaegar pilot, she knows that she will follow in his footsteps, but she'll be more. She'll be better. Instead of having to choose who to save, the daughter or the mother, she'll save everyone. She'll be a hero.
Hiding under her desk, clutching her backpack to her chest, she listens to the other kids in her class screaming and crying out, the teacher trying to calm them down despite being terrified herself, and the crunching of buildings and concrete and roars of the kaiju outside. Her eyes are wide, chest heaving in large gulps of air, and she looks out from underneath the desk out the window.
Then they're running down the halls, trying to reach the basement, and she's pushed into the wall hard by the mob of panicking children and adults. She slips into the boys' toilet and hides in a stall, hands pressed against her ears. It's easier this way.
Her father finds her like this. Somehow he finds her. He's in uniform, looking like he abandoned his post for her. The first thing she realizes is his hands on her arms, calloused and rough but familiar. When she raises her head, he's got a strangely soft look on his face. There is screaming and crying and roaring and crashing in the background, but her father gives her the same look he gave her when he showed up last minute in the back row for her first dance recital. It's just enough to get her to open up and hold out her arms to him.
She's small for a nine year-old yet prouder than most as well, but with a monster knocking on their doorstep, she doesn't care if anyone sees her father carrying her like a baby.
He lifts her up easily, holding her close to his body. She wraps her arms around his neck and buries her face into his shirt, grasping him like she's never going to let go as he runs through the halls, runs out the building, and runs runs runs until there's fire in his lungs and legs.
"A Shatterdome is no place for a little girl," is something a man tells her father one night.
Before her father can say anything, she jumps to her feet and forces the man to look her in the eyes. "I'm not a little girl," she states matter-of-factly. "I'm going to be a Ranger."
"Is that so?" the man asks.
"It is," she says. "I'm going to be the best there ever is."
She catches a glimpse of her father, just a brief one, but it's enough to see the small smile on his face, the way he hides it from everyone in the room, including his own daughter. She sees it though. She sees it and bites her lip and looks the other man straight in the face.
"You've got a damn bold kid there, Herc," the man finally says, a laugh in his voice.
"She got it from her mother," her father replies.
(It's the first time he's mentioned her mother since the funeral. It's almost enough to make her falter. Almost.)
People underestimate how much time she spends just watching them. She's like a ghost in the Shatterdome, wandering around when her father and uncle are busy training with the other recruits. She takes in the way the other rangers fight, soaks in all the information she can about Drifting and neural handshakes, listens to her father more than she'll ever admit.
One day, when she's old enough, it will be her turn and she will take it and she will fight and she will avenge her mother's death and take away her father's guilt and they'll be a family again. One day.
She wakes up to fingers in her hair, careful and hesitant, as if they are unfamiliar with the person they are touching. As she opens her eyes and looks around in the dark, the fingers freeze, caught in the act. "Dad?"
"I'm here," her father whispers back.
She closes her eyes, silently telling him that he can continue, and he does, stroking her dirty blond hair. Most of the time, she keeps her distance from him, even when they're alone, a million unspoken words pushing them apart, but there are times when she craves his attention more than anything in the world and at night she's more apt to allow him to pretend that she's five years-old and loves him the most.
"I'm being deployed."
Try as she might, she cannot stop herself from opening her eyes again. When she looks at her father's figure in the dark, she sees that he's wearing part of his uniform. It looks as if he was getting ready for battle and then realized halfway through that he hadn't bothered to say goodbye to his child.
He looks remarkably vulnerable, his face scruffy, his eyes tired, his hand limp.
"What category?" she asks.
"Three."
"Nothing you can't handle then."
He shakes his head. "No, nothing I can't handle."
"Remember, if you beat it in record time, I have to do laundry for a month."
This time, her father smiles and lets her see it. "And if I don't, I have to get you a puppy. I know, I know." He stops suddenly, his palm flat on her head, and just looks at her, like he's seeing her for the last time. "Catherine, you know I…"
"It's Chuck. I told you to call me Chuck." She rolls onto her back. "None of the boys take me seriously if you call me Catherine."
She sees a thousand things in her father's eyes, things that he wants to say, things that maybe one day she'll know if they ever drift together, but he can't get them out and she won't force him. Boys are easy, she can hear her father telling another one of the rangers. Her mother knew exactly what to say to her.
But he's wrong. She has always been her father's girl, stubborn to the core and absurdly proud and sometimes too damn difficult to deal with. Her mother would just shake her head, mutter something like, "She's just like you, Herc," and then smile fondly. Her mother knew exactly what to say to her because she knew exactly what to say to him. Neither of them knows what to say to anyone.
"You should go," she tells him. "Uncle Scott is probably getting antsy waiting for you." She turns away from him. "I'll be up in a minute to watch the neural handshake."
"No, no, go back to sleep." Her father leans down for a second, like he's going to kiss her on the head, but then he stops and stands up, walks out of the room without another word. She pulls the blanket over her head and recounts her father's drop simulation score in her head, remembers how strong Lucky Seven has held. Everything will be fine.
Her father and uncle kill the kaiju in record time.
Two days later, a bulldog puppy appears on her bed with a red bow on his head anyways.
She names him Max and unabashedly shows him all the love she cannot show her father.