A/N: Another 'Godzilla' Monsterverse one-shot from me, this time inspired by Tumblr asking, 'What if Ghidorah had eaten Mark instead of Vivienne in Antarctica'. Basically, I started explaining my own interpretation of how I think the submarine scene would've played out (especially since I honestly like to think when watching 'KOTM' that Vivienne's death was a big influence on Serizawa volunteering himself in the way that he did), and I thought, 'Wait, why aren't I using this as a brief writing exercise?' And voila.
Because of how and why this one-shot was written, it mainly just focuses on the submarine scene rather than events that happen before or after. If anyone wants to hear what might happen afterwards or how some of the earlier scenes with Mark might've played out differently with Vivienne alive instead, I suggest looking at Hrodvitnon's interpretation at the original two posts, here and here (remove the spaces): hrodvitnon .tumblr post / 190261364064 and /post / 187556723434.
Saraba
Vivienne Graham's heart soared in her chest as the jagged shadows of dorsal spines loomed into view on the monitors.
"It's him." Her voice was shaky, hands together lifting towards her face. Not two seconds later, the monitors lost contact with the drone, prompting a bitter mutter from Rick Stanton at the console.
"Pull up the last frame," Dr. Serizawa said quickly, and Rick promptly did so. The static cut to a freeze-frame image of the god-beast which Vivienne and her mentor held in their hearts and had thought gone to them.
"There." Serizawa pointed to the visible streaks like bending light-waves which surrounded Godzilla's silhouetted dorsal plates. "The source of the radiation." Subdued as her reaction was (not least in the end-of-the-bloody-world circumstances they were under), Vivienne's mind began to spin, and Ilene took the words out of her mouth.
"That's why he returned here. He's feeding. Regenerating."
"This is his home," Serizawa murmured, wide-eyed as Vivienne glanced over at him, and he turned from the monitors to consult his notebook at the red-and-blue-lit room's table. Vivienne herself was speechless as she stared at the screen, muscles in her hands shifting and flexing in front of her chin in a personal tic.
"So, dude's got this covered, right?" Rick questioned. "H-He just needs a little nap."
"No," Ilene countered gravely. "This process could take years." And the Devil wasn't giving the world years while he tore apart the skies and made it rain fire.
"We have to proceed," Vivienne added.
"Hang on," Rick all but interjected, turning in his seat to face the other three Monarch operatives. "We're gonna launch a nuclear torpedo in order to revive a giant monster. Okay, this is- this is not like we're just jump-starting a car!"
"We have another complication," Commander Crane reported grimly, turning all four heads to him. "Our weapons systems were damaged during the crash. We can't launch."
"Can it be repaired?" Serizawa questioned. Crane shook his head, front of his navy cap hiding his eyes.
"I'm afraid not." No-one was pleased with the news.
"Okay," Ilene sighed audibly. "What if we go in, set a timer, and blow the warhead manually?"
"No way," Rick responded without missing a beat, tone deadpan. "If the heat doesn't fry you, the radiation will." Ilene turned her head and sighed. The four operatives and the submarine's staff stood in terse silence for several seconds. What started as a sense of frustrated despair turned after the first several seconds to silent glances which all of them exchanged with each-other at their respective stations, communicating it with their eyes but not one daring to admit to it, no-one wanting to expect such a thing of one of their colleagues and friends.
"I'll go," one of the submarine crew volunteered, stepping forward behind Crane – the man who'd spoken wasn't looking forward to it, his voice flat, knowing what he was offering himself up for, but he was promptly turned down by Crane, though Vivienne knew not why. In the shorter-feeling silence that resumed, Vivienne glanced sideways towards Serizawa, who was looking at something invisible on the table. Her sensei's brown eyes were distant yet far from blank or dull, and an unpleasant feeling began welling in Vivienne from seeing that look in his face, making her nerves stop jangling. She could almost see it shifting to come out of him, like the MUTO at Janjira ready to burst from its cocoon.
"I'll go."
Every head turned to Vivienne. She found herself slipping into a detached state.
Serizawa was staring as if she'd just sold her soul to the Devil, and the quiet rasp he spoke in made Vivienne's insides twist from hearing him so hurt. "No."
"There must be another way," Ilene said pleadingly.
"We don't have time to debate," Vivienne suddenly replied, shaking her head and meeting sensei's eyes directly as she knew she only had a few chances left to see them again. "I'll go."
A pause passed, and Commander Crane's eyes were shifting rapidly to assess each of the Monarch operatives, reading their body language. He nodded his head, then turned and began marching away, presumably to get things prepared. Vivienne found herself pleasantly able to avoid thinking too much about it. Serizawa, backing (almost shuffling) away from the table looked like he'd witnessed the Janjira containment breach all over again. Vivienne wanted to reach out to him – but she'd lose the strength if she did. So she only looked regretfully at her sensei, at the man she'd call father without hesitation, as Serizawa turned and quietly departed without a word to anyone. Neither Ilene nor Rick tried to stop him.
Less than fifteen minutes later, Vivienne was in one of the submarine's two locker rooms, finishing getting the last of the black navy gear on herself. Somehow this all didn't feel quite real, knowing she was walking towards her death, it was like she was an animatronic going on automatic. It seemed like a cruel antithesis to the way Mark, Hendricks and those other soldiers had died in Antarctica. Mark's death particularly had been sticking strongly in her mind in the twenty-four or less hours since it had occurred, not least because she thought about how poor Maddie must be doing since hearing the news. Vivienne remembered the house-sized jaws lunging so fast she could only yell out, followed by a thunderous impact metres behind her back which vibrated through her whole skeleton. She remembered the way Ghidorah's attacking middle head had crushed the ice Mark had been standing on in its jaws, the right head chomping the falling pieces like a dog seizing scraps, while the left head was the first to turn its infernal scarlet gaze back on Vivienne and Vivienne alone like a cat regarding a vole, promptly followed by the middle head whose gaze bore incomprehensible malice. Vivienne remembered those awful sleepless nights when she'd last been in Antarctica before the night Ghidorah got free, the persistent sense of eldritch wrongness the frozen monster had emitted.
Rick and Ilene arrived at the doorway to the gear area which near-perfect timing as Vivienne was getting the last of the suit on.
Rick began explaining as he held out an air tank for Vivienne, probably hoping that them getting this done as quick as possible would ease the passage for her; "First contact, you're gonna start losing your long-range vision. When you surface, motor skills are gonna start to fade, but I put a helioxed mixture in the tank, which… should help you stay stable a little longer."
"I bet you make that every weekend?" Vivienne tried cracking a joke with Rick as she glanced and forced a small smile. Rick managed to laugh, but it was so short it was only a single sound, whereas Ilene was visibly close to tears. Vivienne didn't know where sensei was – the submarine was not that small. Serizawa was not a weak man by any stretch of the imagination, but it made Vivienne's heart feel like a mix of jelly and expired meat; that seeing her one last time before she knowingly went to her death was one of the only things he couldn't bring himself to face.
Vivienne stood up – stood up to face the end of her book – with an air mask under one arm. It felt somehow dramatic, standing up like this, meaningful, and she briefly thought of the Apollo astronauts, or of John Coffey before he walked the Green Mile. As if that were a cue, Ilene wrapped Vivienne in a hug. It made Vivienne's heart bleed, and she had to cut it shorter than Ilene would've made it – she had to stay detached and able, she couldn't afford to crumble.
Vivienne marched through the submarine, led by Bowman, with Rick and Ilene practically stuck to her waist. They were headed down the last, red-bathed and narrow, piping-surrounded corridor to the dock where the mini-sub and the nuclear warhead were waiting, and the door began sliding shut electronically with a buzz – in half-a-second, Bowman lunged forward to stop it too late.
"What the hell?"
"What's going on?" Vivienne, Ilene and Rick moved forward to be right behind Bowman's back as he began trying with quick fingers and joints to get the door opened. With how the three Monarch operatives' heads were positioned on their side of the thick steel door's glass porthole, there was a clear line of sight between Vivienne's face and the room.
It was Serizawa at the unattended mini-sub inside the sealed dock – he was dressed below the neckline in the same black gear as Vivienne, with the same air mask and an air tank under one arm, and he was getting into the mini-sub's driver seat. Inaudible to the docking room through the soundproofed door and glass, Vivienne pushed past Bowman in the door's porthole as her internal bone structure felt like weakened glass. Her mouth was moving furiously, the palms of her hands banging frantically on the steel door, only the most muffled thumps getting through to the other side. By now, Serizawa was positioned in the mini-sub's driver seat, and he turned his head to glance straight over, at the porthole that held Vivienne's desperately, silently yelling and crying face. They held each-other's gazes for a long, meaningful moment – Vivienne Graham and the man who meant so much to her, who meant practically everything to her. Serizawa didn't break eye contact as he hit a control button on the mini-sub's dashboard, and a light on its front came on and it began sinking. The mini-sub's glass hatch was lowering as it sunk. He maintained contact with her as he got his mask on, as his mouth and nose went below sight, then the rest of him and the mini-sub.
Vivienne could only stare in front of the door's porthole, shell-shocked like a distressed little girl as she couldn't take her gaze off of where sensei had just disappeared to his death. She barely felt through her suit's clothing Ilene holding both her shoulders in an attempt to comfort her, nor did she hear the voices of those around her. They began pulling her away and she let their arms guide her down the narrow, red-bathed corridor, regaining independent control of her numb legs as her brain made them move on automatic.
They soon arrived at the submarine's control room and were strapping into their chairs to brace for impact as the sub was guided in a beeline away from the ruins. Almost as soon as Vivienne was strapped in, a crewman said her name and held something out between his hands for her. It was sensei's notebook, with a large scrap of paper sandwiched between the book's cover and his fob watch on top. The crewman said they'd found it at the other end of the sub.
Vivienne took the offered objects off the crewman. She was vaguely aware of Rick and Ilene looking over at her sadly from their seats but they gave her space as she opened the letter and started reading. It wasn't long – of course it wouldn't be, with the short time he must've had to write it. Vivienne could almost herself see Serizawa's mini-sub swimming through that vast ancient city, passing beyond the gates of the underworld, could almost picture him ascending the temple glimpsed on the monitors in that radioactive air pocket, could picture him coming face-to-face with Godzilla before he died…
"For Vivienne Graham.
"Thank you, for the spirit that you gave to me for these years. I never told you. Should have done it sooner, I suppose.
"You understood me in a way no other I have ever met did. You understood my work. With you, I've felt we strived toward the same thing. My work, my life. The days that you were in it lightened the weight.
"There was never one like you before. Not even Ren, dear as I hold him and much as I respect him. There will never be another like you again.
At the bottom of the letter were two Japanese words – the last word Serizawa apparently had struggled to settle on, as there were several different words scribbled out, before he'd settle on the letter's final letter, the last word he ever said to Vivienne Graham.
"Saraba… musume."
Tick. Tick. Tick. Bleep.
When the explosion rocketed the submarine with turbulence, about halfway through, Vivienne was howling as one with the nuclear fireball's roar.
A/N: Sooooo, did I pull any hearts out of the ribcages? What do you think of my characterisation of Vivienne and Serizawa, do you agree or disagree?
Also, if anyone is familiar with it and spotted it; yes, that little reference to a fanfiction by someone else was deliberate. ;)