Chapter Text
San Francisco burned. Survivors sluggishly climbed through wreckage, smeared in blood and dirt. First responders listened for those still alive who were too trapped to save themselves. In frantic tones, people cried out for their missing friends and family members.
Somewhere among the smoke, Mark and Emma Russell tripped over themselves in search of one of their children, shouting themselves hoarse with each minute that passed with no returning call.
Twelve-year-old Andrew Russell clung to his mother. The only true clean spots on his face were the tracks left behind by his tears.
Mark turned to look at his wife, his chest heaving, eyes pinched, blood seeping down his cheek from a cut at his temple. There was no sign of their daughter, and there was no way to know if they were even close to where she’d been lost. The destruction all looked the same in the darkness.
When do you give up? When do you walk away and try to remember how to live? When do you admit there will be one less heartbeat in your home?
There were people still searching, people who hadn’t been caught in the worst of it, people who didn’t feel the weight of near-death down to their bones. People who didn’t have an injured son in need of medical attention.
The first responders were left with one more name to shout for, when the Russells finally allowed themselves to be escorted to safety. Left to search for one more child who wouldn’t answer.
San Fransisco buzzed through the rest of the night into the next day, until evening once again descended on the broken city. The cycle repeated. Any vehicles that could be used to ship people out and away ran until there was no one left to carry. Emergency medical tents were slowly packed up as the streets emptied. Less survivors were dug out of the wreckage with each passing hour; the number of calls to retrieve the dead increased.
Through it all, Godzilla, bloody victor that he was, slept. He was largely left alone, though wary eyes found it hard to look away from his scaled body. For better or worse, they knew he wasn’t dead. His chest heaved with labored breaths and every now and then, a twitch of his tail or clawed fingers sent the nearby humans’ hearts racing. They could only figure he would leave when he was ready.
• • •
When Godzilla finally awoke on the second night after the battle, there was no one there to see it. He grumbled to himself as he rose up, surveying the desolate cityscape around him. The fight had been rough, and his struggle against the MUTOs was carved into the planet in possibly-irreparable damage.
For the first time in forever, it was silent in San Francisco. Even with the MUTOs dead, power was fickle at best and entirely lost at worst. There was no one crawling through the wreckage at that time of night—humans, for all their determination and tenacity, still needed to sleep. They could only hope that anyone still alive had been found before relief efforts had begun to slowly pull back.
Godzilla slowly waded through the buildings, those still standing and those which had collapsed. His body ached and exhaustion had settled over him like a blanket. Perhaps contrary to what most humans might have believed, the sight of such destruction weighed heavy on his heart. Regardless of him having emerged victorious in the end, so much was lost before he could put an end to the MUTOs.
Humans might not have been the kindest to him in the past, but he was meant to protect the earth and those who called it home—and that meant the tiny little creatures who always stared up at him in fear.
No worthy King took pleasure in seeing his kingdom leveled and his people left for dead.
Maybe that was why his sharp senses picked out the faint rustling noise between his thundering footsteps, and why his eyes so easily zeroed in on the especially tiny figure wriggling helplessly beneath a mangled car.
A child, weak and tired and alone, futilely pushed against the metal trapping their body within a crack in the concrete. They would’ve been dead, crushed without mercy, had the street not opened up just enough to swallow the kid and take the weight of the heavy debris. A nearby building had partially fallen in such a way so as to make it impossible to see the pinned child from any vantage point other than straight up.
Godzilla slowly reached down, wary of frightening the human into hurting themself, and lifted the car. The human, as soon as his claws entered their sight, froze in their determined struggle and didn’t make so much as a sound as they were freed.
He bent down to get a closer look at the motionless child. Despite the dirty smears on their face, the rips in their clothes, and the bitter scent of blood, he determined the human to be a very young girl.
She stared back at him for a long moment, perhaps taking his measure as he took hers, before croaking out, “Thanks.”
Without even trying, Godzilla could sense the child’s weakness. If she’d been trapped since the battle, then she’d been injured and alone down there without food or water for at least two days. An adult might handle such an ordeal well enough, but a human as young as her size implied would not. Even as he thought this, she tried to leave the crack only to collapse before making it to her feet. Her tiny fingers folded into shaking fists and Godzilla could taste the salt of her tears even through the acrid smoke still lingering over the city.
She was frustrated with herself.
He watched her try again, only to cut her palms on shattered glass when her legs failed to hold her weight. A little huff escaped her, catching at the end in a sob. She looked back up at him, her face pale and drawn.
And Godzilla found himself considering his options. To leave the child there was unthinkable. Too many had already died from his failure to kill the MUTOs quickly to even contemplate walking away from this little human. Because she would die if he left—he knew with absolute certainty that she would not survive another night in her state.
There was no one left in San Francisco to take her to. The silence stretched a great distance. It was likely evacuations had taken away even those farther from the true battlegrounds. He had no idea how far inland the nearest humans were, and trying to track them down would only result in more ruin. Even then, though he had no pups of his own, parental logic demanded that he not leave the girl with untrustworthy strangers.
Later, Godzilla wouldn’t entirely be able to explain, even to himself, what made him make the choice he did. He could claim the exhaustion—he’d hardly been of sound mind at the time, after the beating he’d taken before he could end his opponents. He could claim pity for the abandoned child—though that did a disservice to her, to the little one who hadn’t just given up and died when escape initially proved impossible.
Or maybe he saw the death and destruction around him—much of it caused by him, however unintentionally—and felt the desperate need to save just one person from the tragedy of battle. To know with complete confidence that one person didn’t simply survive, but could find reason enough to smile again, could exist without nightmares haunting their waking moments and memories poisoning their dreams.
Whatever the reason, Godzilla carefully reached down again and scooped the tiny human up, more heedful of his claws than he’d ever been before. The child, drooping from exhaustion much like him, didn’t scream or struggle away. She merely sagged against the wall of his cupped palm and drifted off. He’d never seen such a show of trust.
For better or worse, in that moment, Godzilla knew he wouldn’t let her go. In times long past, his fellow Titans—Mothra most of all—had teased him over the protective instincts they all knew he had. Towards his own kind was expected. Towards humanity was obligation. But the ones they’d poked fun at were the ones he’d never had cause to show.
Yes, for better or worse, Godzilla had willing accepted—put upon himself, in fact—responsibility for a child.
When he stole away from the remains of San Francisco that night, he wasn’t thinking about what raising a human would be like, much less the problems that would likely arise over time. He wasn’t thinking about the other Titans’ reactions, should they ever wake up and find out. He wasn’t even thinking about whether or not it was a good idea.
Fresh from a taxing battle, covered in wounds that would scar, the Titan could only think about how completely and utterly unafraid of him the child had been, and how nice it might be to not be alone.