dust.
In which its two o'clock in the morning and everyone has the same thing on their minds.
Its two o'clock in the morning and Stacker Pentecost can't get ducks off his mind. He looks at the ceiling, stands up and begins pacing the room. Little ducklings, anatidae with soft sunflower hair and tiny waddling limbs fill the spice in his mind usually occupied by gigantic sea monsters with hardened scales and poisonous oozing blood. The break should be a welcome relief, but he just can't fathom why ducks.
Stacker rubs the bridge of his nose. There had been a recent news report on ducks. The populations were dwindling, a strange side effect of the toxic effect of Kaiju Blue. Hearing the news, Mako's lips had pressed together and her gaze lingered on the screen a moment too long. She'd always liked ducks. They'd fed the ducks once, a couple of months after he'd first met her. Gone down to the park on a day when the sun filled in the sky and the breeze was only light enough to tickle your hair. She'd held his hand, it was small, with delicate fine bones and neat, if slightly bitten, fingernails. When it came time to throw some bread into the water, she'd looked up at him with marginally more expressive eyes than she wore now. It was a question, and his answer was a nod and a smile.
The bread chunk landed in the water, creating ripples throughout the small pond. It didn't stay intact for long. Mallards swam toward it, scoffing it down, making sure to consume every last bite. Such is the nature of some things. Mako had thrown all the bread, and laughed in the open way you lose very quickly, it had slipped away from her so very quickly.
Its two o'clock in the morning and Stacker realises he would be sad if all the ducks disappeared.
**#
In a small room located elsewhere in the Shatterdome, Mako lies awake, staring at the dust motes illuminated by her lamp. She, too, is thinking about ducks. Her cheeks are dusted with a smattering of pink, she is glad no one can read her mind at this time. It's not often she feels like crying, but when she saw the news report, the compulsion swept across her like the drawing back of the tide.
She reaches out and tries capturing the dust. It slips through her fingers and into the air. For a minute all she could see was a world in which there were no ducks. Stories like The Ugly Duckling would be lost. Children, not knowing, what animal made a quaking noise, or worse. It was a world where everything slipped like dust. If only she were allowed to suit up, her hands could trap and reveal one more dead Kaiju. It twists, somewhere between her throat and stomach. She drops her empty hand. Mako blinks rapidly and turns out the light.
**#
Across the corridor, Raleigh strides back and forth in a room heavy with a ghostly weight. As he walks he imagines small water born creatures, yellows and browns and blues. They used to make plastic ducks to float in bathtubs, now it was common to find a scaled down plastic Kaiju to do battle with in the safe haven of a warm bath instead.
He rubs his shoulder absently and stops. Before he could swim, he'd fallen into the river because he was a show off. Water filled his ears, amplifying the screechy squawking coming from the ducks nearby. The ripples disturbed the creature's home, the dreadful noise continued. His mind blanked and his heart dropped into his stomach. His screams were trapped in his throat. His body thrashed like mad, hands gripping the water as if somehow it'd solidify to lift him to safety. Suddenly hands were around his chest pulling him out, back to the bank.
"Rals, you idiot." Yancy said, pushing wet hair off his forehead. Instead of responding, Raleigh burst into tears, and instead of taking the micky, his brother hugged him.
"Don't worry, brother, I won't let you drown." And he knew that, but he didn't tell his brother for years afterwards about his fear of ducks. Yancy ended up finding out anyways, and though he would mercilessly tease him about it. Yancy never let him drown, even when the ducks were replaced with otherworldly sea aliens, even when he was gone and Raleigh collapsed on the ice, even when he hammered away at the top of a vertigo inducing wall, even when he'd been drafted back to a different Shatterdome and Yancy was but a voice in his head, he never let him drown. It didn't matter that he was dead; Raleigh Becket would always have a brother. Yancy would never let him down.
**#
Chuck Hanson is thinking of ducks and he's frowning. The damn ducks were disappearing and it had made the news. If it wasn't the government trying to reassure people their mistake of a wall would work, it was cut with smaller 'human' stories. Not that ducks were human, though. They'd show a little clip of a 'vanishing sight' – a mamma duck with a line of baby ducklings trailing behind.
Chuck is still frowning when he leans forward. He's sitting on a platform on the shoulder of Striker Eureka, he leans until his chin touches the cold metal banister. He looks out across the mostly empty hall, remembering how a couple of years ago, he'd seen her for the first time in a hall like this. Stacker Pentecost was striding, and she followed behind him, Mako Mori, a clip board held to her chest like a breastplate, having to skip ever other step to keep in line behind the Marshall. At the time he couldn't think of a way to describe it, just wondered what the girl was doing following Pentacost around, but now the perfect metaphor emerged.
Staring out across a hall of tempered metal instead of blue sky and polished floors instead of green grass, Chuck is aware, somewhere, that his thinking of Mori is because he would rather not draw a parallel, rather not recall any memories of toddling after the long white skirt and yellow sandals of a mother he no longer had.
**#
It's two AM and in the morning everything will look slightly different.
AN/ Ah, this had been sitting around on my laptop for like a year -_- Written in a flash of inspiration whilst having a bath, aha. It was beta'd by a lovely, lovely lady whom I can't remember the username of