Title: what a smile means
Series: Pacific Rim
Character/Pairing: Mako Mori, Stacker Pentecost, Tamsin Sevier. Mako Mori & Stacker Pentecost
Genre: Gen, family
Rating: G
Spoilers/Warnings: Covers through to the end of the first movie
Wordcount: 976
Author's Notes: This fic was mostly inspired by a BTS photo of Idris Elba and Kikuchi Rinko and was finally posted by all the "Imagine Pacific Rim characters sending selfies and snapchats" posts I had been seeing on my Tumblr dashboard.
Stacker had been just a bit too old and angling too long for a commission to embrace selfies before K-day. Luna and Tamsin had, sending him ones of them grinning together, blurry background crowded out by their smiling faces.
After then, liasing and then joining the PPDC takes up all his time. Tamsin still does, but training alongside him means there is no one to send them to that she isn't able to drag into frame. He asks her why she keeps taking them and gets the reply, "We all need to smile Stacks, despite the kaiju, despite all the death they've caused".
So he does his best to smile in the photo when he leaves to oversee Coyote Tango's construction.
It's an actual grin by the time Tamsin finally flies in to Japan and they take a selfie on the airstrip together.
Onibaba's attack and Tamsin's diagnosis shortly after that squashes any desire Stacker has to document any happiness he has left. He smiles a little more after he adopts Mako, but it's tough looking after her, and there's little desire to pick up his phone and snap a shot, especially with how Tamsin advised him to move on.
Mako however, never having had one of her own before, is enamoured with her new phone, a gift from Stacker, and uses it when neither of them can quite remember the right words. She takes photos sometimes, not selfies, but ones of Stacker she asks him to pose for. He always obliges, happy to see her smile as she directs him into place.
Her psychologist recommends a game for her; one where she can defeat kaiju by tapping and swiping across the screen in faint mimicry of jaeger battles. It makes Mako even more interested in piloting and, a few months after he accepts the position at the Jaeger Academy, they visit Tamsin in Hawaii.
Stacker and Mako stay for a week, and sometime during that period Tamsin persuades Mako to show her all the pictures she's taken of Stacker. Or at least that's what he assumes when he finds Mako curled up next to Tamsin, both of them giggling over Mako's phone.
They both look better with smiles on their faces though, so it doesn't take that much persuading to make him come over and crouch down for Tamsin to take a picture of the three of them.
It matches the one she took years ago, when Luna was still alive.
They return to Alaska, and Mako enters the Academy, with Tamsin's number and a new photo app on her phone.
There isn't much free time in the program for students and Stacker oversees almost all of her training, but Mako sends him pictures of herself with her test results from engineering and K-science and eventually the results of PONS training and drop simulations.
The day that Mako completes her course, she asks Stacker to take a picture of the two of them.
"Please sensei? You have longer arms."
He acquiesces, because it is an event that should be remembered and commemorated. They're both smiling as he holds Mako's phone above their heads to take the picture.
There's a message waiting for him later. It's from Tamsin, saying she's proud of Mako as well and hoping her assignment will go well.
It doesn't, or at least Mako doesn't get assigned as a Jaeger pilot, not even rostered on second-shift or placed in candidate pool A. Mako still requests that he take a picture of them with her holding up her engineering section patch.
She continues requesting that he to take a photo of them each time she gets a new assignment, finishes one or gets an extra pip. Stacker asks Mako, when she is assigned as head of the Mark III restoration project, just like he asked Tamsin so long ago, why she requests for him to take the pictures so often.
"It's not a reminder to be happy, like it is for Tamsin-sensei, but a small victory each time. It's another battle won against the kaiju, another triumph dedicated to all of my family." Mako still punctuates her sentences with small bobs of her head but she stays still for the final part of her explanation.
"That's what the pictures are for. They're for you and Tamsin-sensei and haha-ue and chichi-ue."
He remembers that conversation days later, grief welling up and causing a dull ache in his chest that competes with the pain from the cancer when he informs Mako of Tamsin's death. That same pain rises up again when he stands in front of the UN as it announces its decision to defund the Jaeger program.
The last picture Mako takes with Stacker, the last one they take together, is when the Mark III restoration project is complete, the day he comes back from Alaska. She hands him the phone while Beckett is wandering around Danger's feet behind them and they smile up at the camera, Stacker proud of his girl and Mako triumphant in her accomplishment.
There's no time during Beckett's compatibility trials, no time after the Double Event, no time in the lead up to Operation Pitfall for him to take another picture with Mako.
After, there is no Stacker, no sensei for Mako to ask to take a photo of their last victory.
All that remains are the survivors, the victors, and empty hangar bays.
The Shatterdome is steadily emptying, the news crews and photographers having finished their last rounds of interviews, so Mako asks Raleigh, Tendo and Marshall Hansen to stand next to her for a moment.
They oblige, Raleigh even holding his hand out in a silent offer, but she shakes her head and all four of them crowd together.
Mako holds her phone up above their heads, their faces reflected back at them on the small screen, and taps.