Title: Ruin of Concept
Category: Pacific Rim
Characters: Luna Pentecost; Stacker Pentecost; Tamsin Sevier
Summary: "Luna was expected to handle things differently than her brother. The unspoken rule was she had to be strong. She could never let anyone see her crack." A Luna Lives One Shot.
Disclaimer: Pacific Rim and all things related are property of Warner Bros. and Guillermo del Toro.

(1): Ruin

Pentecost knows the price life. Or rather, she knows the cost once it's lost. The futility of attacking a monster that could swat her fellow pilots out of the sky, and tear through swaths of homes and families like they were nothing, did something to a person's outlook. Made their efforts feel useless. Luna was struggling against a net and the monster was the one wrangling her down into the depths.

Death and the smell of the city burning twisted everything to a point of meaninglessness. Far, far away from California she sits in a corner and cries, helmet hanging from the hand that isn't pressed against her face. "Lulu?" Tamsin's voice isn't strong enough to stop the tears, square her shoulders and pretend nothing was wrong. Tamsin never commanded a voice that could stop the world. Tamsin dropped her helmet and was at her side in an instant. Luna doesn't fight her embrace when Tamsin wrapped her arms around her. She leaned into her and tried forget what she saw.

Luna was expected to handle things differently than her brother. The unspoken rule was she had to be strong. She could never let anyone see her crack. Neither of she nor Stacker had really been afforded the choice of being brats, not with the shit their parents had to put up with. Strength as it was defined by her family had one definition, but as she grew up the word would attach itself to a varying degree of resilience through the people she'd come to know.

They weren't allowed to go home for at least two months. In that way, Stacker found his way to them. She and Luna waited for him in Portland where they were relocated by the army. He seemed to appear from the crowd like a ghost, his long coat sweeping majestically behind him. He didn't have to say anything once they came face to face, he and Luna. Stacker wasn't any more composed than herself, what he never said in words he said with his eyes. She remained sturdy enough that she could get her bearings back with a simple hug.

Luna spent the next six months recounting everything she could to her superiors. If it wasn't about fact checking, it was how she chose to engage the animal. Sidewinders in the mouth did nothing to it except made it bleed and its blood as it turned out, was just as deadly as the wounded animal. They couldn't hold her accountable for what none of them knew, but that didn't mean they couldn't give her an earful about her recklessness.

The world seemed just as slow to respond to the monster's brethren rising up from the waters and causing, perhaps in retrospect, less damage than the weapons used to kill them. To say she's frustrated would be polite. Throwing herself against the metaphorical walls of a helicopter would be less painful than watching politicians delegate over what to do in the middle of South Korea.

They'll listen to her brother, though. He's not someone they were going to can ignore, even if they wanted to.

(2): Concept

Tamsin stood next to her with an expression that does most of the emoting for them both, but Luna finds her eyebrows rise regardless. They wanted solutions, but the idea was a ridiculous as their present situation.

"You actually think this'll work?" Luna looks over the blueprint of the machine and back over at the arm suspended above the workers hard at work on the other components in the factory. Stacker follows her gaze, but there isn't a hint of doubt in his eyes when he does. "I do, Lulu," He replied. "It has no other choice but to work."

"Or we're all dead," Tamsin voiced. That went without saying, Luna thought as she stared down at the misshapen creature destined to become the best defense against the enemy.

(FIN)