Based on a prompt from the kink meme: Cooking, sudoku, encyclopedic knowledge of Cretaceous plant life, I do not care. I refuse to believe this kid has no hobbies that could make him a legitimately interesting human being outside of a Conn-pod.
It was supposed to be a drabble, but then this happened and I just don't know. Enjoy! :D
Click.
Snap.
Those sounds are deeply embedded in the memories of his childhood. Even before the Kaiju, his father was often away from home – being in the military did that – and his mother made sure to document nearly every single moment they had together.
And then the Kaiju come and Sydney happens.
All the photos his mother had so lovingly taken disappear with his city and home, but the memory of those sounds never do.
His father takes him to the Shatterdome, and even through his grief and heartbreak, all Chuck can think of was how his mother would have loved to photograph the place.
Herc Hansen can fight and kill monsters to get his revenge, but Chuck is still too young (and oh, how he hated those words) to get into a Jaeger. So he finds a little shop that still sells cameras in the middle of a destroyed city, and teaches himself to bring pictures to life.
He still has years to go before he can take his revenge. And if he cannot avenge her death, he promises himself that he will honour his mother's life.
There are pictures of every Shatterdome in a little book he carries around the world.
The Icebox is the first his father takes him to, unable to resist his son's desperate pleas when he hears that the man will be going to meet the pilots of Gipsy Danger.
It's more ice than anything else, the nickname extremely accurate, but Chuck gains a picture of himself with the Beckett brothers standing at his sides, their Jaeger looming over them protectively, and he never really notices the cold.
Lima is next, filled with colours and a life that Chuck never expected to see in the inside of a building built solely for war. The Jaegers are just as colourful as their surrounds, and Chuck never forgets the way its inhabitants remained happy and cheerful, even as the world seemed to crumble around them.
Panama City is a hive of activity like Chuck has never seen before. It houses both Jaeger personnel and regular military, and the fact that the Panama Canal is in its backyard means that the Shatterdome never seems to rest.
There's always something to be done there, a ship to protect or goods to transfer.
Chuck's pictures never seem to lack human activity.
Los Angeles is filled with Americans.
Really, that's the first thing Chuck notices. By the time he makes it there, he's not the little boy who looked up to a pair of superstar brothers anymore. He's got his own Jaeger, and he's finally getting his own revenge.
But he doesn't forget the camera, and even though he's slightly resentful of the sheer number of Americans – each and every one of them seem to represent Yancy and Raleigh and fallen heroes – he still takes his photographs.
He's getting his revenge, but that that doesn't mean he's about to forget the moments when his mother was still alive.
Tokyo, Osaka and Busan are all visited in quick succession. He doesn't spend enough time in either to get to know them well, but he still takes pictures.
The Shatterdomes of the Americas and Sydney are hubs of research. But these three – these three and Lima are hubs of life, people going in and out every second and laughter ringing through the corridors. As much as the Los Angeles or Alaska might give Rangers new weapons, Tokyo and Busan and Osaka remind him why they fight.
He goes to Vladivostok just months before it is decommissioned.
The Kaidonovskys are the only ones left. Nova Hyperion was destroyed in the last Kaiju attack, and though So-Yi and Yuna made it out alive, they no longer have a Jaeger to pilot.
In the middle of all the worry and confusion over the future of the PPDC, Chuck manages to click a photo of the Cherno Alpha crew in what is becoming an increasingly rare moment of levity.
Hong Kong is the last one, taken in the midst of the preparations for humanity's last stand.
Unlike the others, it doesn't really have anything to do with Jaegers or tech. There is no state-of-the-art machinery looming in the background.
It's a simple picture of a crowded mess hall, one table in stark relief to everyone else. The faces are familiar to everyone in the world – the Jaeger pilots who have survived and still have a machine to pilot and fight in.
Sasha and Alexsis Kaidonovsky, Raleigh Backett, the Wei triplets, Herc Hansen. Mako and the Marshall complete the gathering.
He never knows why that's the image he chooses to immortalise. He doesn't even like Raleigh Beckett anymore – the fact that an image of him makes it into his photograph should make it impossible for him to like. But it doesn't, and before gets into Striker for what he's sure will be the last time, he takes a moment to look at it.
He's taken photographs for half his life as a way of honouring his mother's life. as much as he wants to survive this war, he knows that there's no better way to honour the most important woman in his life than to honour the lives of everyone in the picture.
He's 21, and definitely not ready to die. But if it means that they don't have to, he's more than willing to do it.
He survives.
It's all a blur to him, after he passes out in the middle of Striker's suicide run, but when he wakes, it's in the middle of the Shatterdome hospital with a dog slobbering all over him and a washed-up pilot asleep on the sofa near his bed. That's when he knows he's alive – Raleigh Beckett is definitely not the first thing he'd see if he were in heaven.
He survives, but he's quickly told that he's nowhere near ready to walk out of the hospital and live just yet. There are days and weeks and months between him waking up and him being allowed out into freedom, and his minds translates that to no photographs.
He cant's take pictures if he's stuck in a hospital bed.
But Raleigh seems determined to stick by his side and prove him wrong, and he brings over an old Polaroid camera and a couple of rolls of film that he had managed to scrounge up from heaven only knows where.
After that, it becomes a game, finding ways for him to take photos while staying in bed like he has to.
Being stuck in bed, Chuck finds, does wonders for his creativity. He can experiment with subjects and colours and lights. It's the first time he photographs for the simple fun of it, instead of making it a way to remember his past.
People become an important aspect of his pictures. He's photographed Jaegers and Shatterdomes, but people have always been a rarity in the images he captures. But now that he has virtually no other choice, they dominate the photos.
Herc is captured in a rare moment of unrestrained laughter, Tendo as he looks longingly at Herc. (And Chuck refuses to think of the two of them together, but he still encourages the technician to make a move on a father he knows is not unwilling.)
Hermann and Newt visit, but they can't stop arguing even when meeting an injured sort-of friend, and that's how they appear in Chuck's photos, screaming their lungs out at each other in the middle of the starkly white hospital.
Mako appears bent over the Japanese translation of the newest novel in some Jaeger pilot book series. Chuck has no idea what they're about, only that the protagonist is a Jaeger pilot, but Mako assures him they're quite gripping. She refuses to read the book in English, though. It's a way for her to keep her language skills sharp, she says. Make sure she doesn't lose knowledge of her mother tongue in the diversity of languages that call a Shatterdome home.
But of all his photographs of the people of the Shatterdome, it's Raleigh he clicks the most of. The older man seems to be a permanent fixture in his room, and it's rare for Chuck to have a moment away from him.
To his surprise, he doesn't really mind as much as he thought he would have.
He's got images of Raleigh in every possible pose he can think of while still being stuck in the hospital. Laughing, smiling, hitting Newt, they're all there, immortalised in film.
Somewhere along the line, Chuck finds himself falling in love. Photographs tell him so much more than human interaction can, and it's in his pictures that he starts to see the true Raleigh Beckett.
In the weeks that follow, Chuck only finds himself falling even more for his childhood hero. He has no clue how he'll actually tell the man (he survived the apocalypse, there's no way that he's going to shy away from letting Railey know how he feels) but knows he's going to.
Only he's discharged before he ever manages to, and he starts to wonder if he's ever going to see Raleigh the same way again. Because he's not stuck in the hospital any more, and there's no reason for the American to hang around him.
He might have just missed the greatest opportunity of his life.
He's prepared to wallow in self-pity in his room with Max by his side, he really is. And then-
"You really need to pull your head out of your backside, Hansen," a smartass American voice says from the doorway to his room. "You're going to miss lunch if you insist on sulking like this."
Chuck cannot stop himself from grinning at the sight of the man. Usually, he'd have something to remark back to Railey, but he's just too happy to see him standing there.
He kisses the man a week later.
A year from now, Chuck's pictures will be part of what will be billed as the 'Greatest Jaeger Exhibition Ever' held in the British Museum, but that's the last thing on his mind at the moment.
Raleigh is looking at him with a hint of amusement in his eyes, but Chuck doesn't care as long as he continues to humour him. "How long will this take?" Raleigh asks, "There's something else I'd rather be doing."
Chuck flashes him a bright smile and a reproachful look, and murmurs, "Just a minute, Beckett. Stop being so impatient."
Thankfully, he stops talking after that, allowing Chuck to do what he wants to.
Click.
Snap.
When it's developed, it will be a black and white candid photograph of Raleigh lying on their bed, heart in his eyes and a million watt smile. It'll be the one photo that Chuck will never share with anyone apart from its subject.
For now, Chuck just puts his camera down and joins Raleigh in bed. He's spent a great part of his life looking at the world through the lens of a camera – it's time for him to start looking at it through his own eyes for a change.
I have no idea how Raleigh and Chuck's voices came out, but I'm actually really pleased with it...
Anyhow, please don't forget to drop a review on your way out :)