Chapter Text
stretch my arms into the sky
When he wakes, there’s a long moment where he is whole, don’tgetcockykidlet’sgokillsomekaijuofcourseIknowwhatyou’rethinkingfuckyeah, and a vague smile tugs at his lips. Yancy, he thinks, and almost automatically his mind stretches out in search of another.
There’s nothing there.
No warm presence in the back of his head, no lingering awareness of where his brother is even when they aren’t Drifting, no more laughter and smiles and love. All he can find is a gaping hole where their Drift should be, torn and jagged and bloody in his mind, and that’s when it all comes back.
Knifehead. Yancy. Gipsy Danger screaming. His arm surging with pain. The Conn-Pod being ripped open. Yancy shouting at him. Flashing white teeth filing the sky. Feeling his brother’s pain, fear, love—feeling him die. Pushing all his energy into taking down the monster that had taken his brother. Staggering back to shore. Crashing on the beach. Yancy.
Fuck.
Raleigh heaves for breath as he snaps back to consciousness, gasping. There’s something hard in his throat, and bandages wrapped thick and tight across his chest. His left arm is numb. Somewhere, machines go haywire, alarms screaming in his ears, but it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter, because Yancy’s dead.
Yancy’s dead, and Gipsy’s dead, and Raleigh—
Raleigh isn’t.
Why am I still here? he wonders, staring up at the ceiling, nearly panicking, struggling to draw breath around the steel bands that have suddenly wrapped themselves around his chest and the object in his mouth. Why didn’t I die with them?
A nurse runs into the room before he can find an answer, and gradually Raleigh manages to follow her instructions enough to calm down, relax, let the machines breathe for him until she tugs the tube up out of his throat. Gives him an ice chip to suck on. “Where’s my brother?” he pants, demands, as soon as he can, right hand lashing out to grasp her wrists to force an answer.
It hurts, moving like that, not least because his left arm is in a sling and he can still feel the ache and sting of the burns from the circuit-suit on his ribs, side, shoulder—fuck, pretty much everywhere, actually—and the world tilts dizzily for a long moment until he releases her to lie back down.
A hesitant look crosses her face. And oh, he understands that look, knows that Yancy’s body hasn’t been recovered. She’s worried about how much he remembers, but the truth is that Raleigh remembers everything.
“Your brother is dead, Mr. Becket,” the nurse says quietly.
It hurts even worse, suddenly, because for all that he knows there’s no way Yancy survived, for all that he felt him die, hearing it aloud is ten times worse. A quiet sob escapes him, the only noise he’ll allow himself to make until he’s alone.
(So alone, his mind whispers, still searching the yawning gap for something that isn’t there.)
After a while, she leaves, and Raleigh curls up in the narrow hospital bed as much as he is able. His ribs scream at him with every movement, and he’s still got a curiously deadened feeling in his left arm that would worry him a whole hell of a lot more if it wasn’t nearly drowned out by the emptiness in his head.
He cries himself back to sleep, barely able to stomach the idea of being awake in a world without his brother.
The doctor entering his room wakes Raleigh up, some indeterminable time later. He’s tall, and balding, probably an Anchorage native. His nametag reads ‘Dr. Blake.’ Raleigh doesn’t want to see him, doesn’t want to see anyone but Yancy.
“Good evening, Raleigh,” Dr. Blake says, gentle as he can. He studies the chart at the end of the bed for a minute, then looks up with raised eyebrows when Raleigh just grunts in response. “How are you feeling?”
Raleigh considers not replying for a minute, then some distant memory of Yancy smacking him for lying to doctors flashes across his mind and he flinches. “Tired. Hurts. Want my brother.”
“That’s to be expected,” Dr. Blake answers. “You took a lot of damage in that fight. Piloting a Jaeger by yourself, on top of all the structural damage—it almost killed you.”
He bites back the retort, the I wish it had that rises up out of his throat.
“We’ve kept you in a medical coma for five weeks now, to let your brain and body start to heal. When you were first brought in, your EKG readings were off the charts—alarmingly so. We wanted to make sure they would level out on their own before we let you try anything strenuous.” Something in the curve of the doctor’s smile, the slant of his shoulders, says he knows just how difficult a patient Raleigh can be. It leaves a funny burning in the pit of Raleigh’s stomach.
He ignores it, though. “And have they?”
Dr. Blake nods, putting the chart back at the end of Raleigh’s bed. “For the most part. We’ve still got you on a drug cocktail to help with the hormone imbalances, but really this is all very new to us. No one has ever lost a co-pilot in the Drift before, so we’re still unsure of what exactly to expect. So far, though, you’re looking good.”
“And my arm?” Raleigh asks, because for the past five minutes he’s been absently playing with the dog tags still around his neck—a nervous tick that Yancy had teased him incessantly for—and it’s only when he looks down that he realizes his hand isn’t actually moving at all. Not even when he focuses on it, on moving his fingers, and they don’t give even the slightest of twitches.
Dr. Blake sighs, clasping his hands in front of him. “From what the PPDC damage reports and recordings of the fight have told us, Gipsy Danger lost her left arm in the fight.”
Raleigh nods, because duh, he knows, he felt her arm get ripped away.
“Because the Drift is designed specifically to merge two pilots with their Jaeger, there is a highly neurological component to piloting. It…” The doctor hesitates, a flash of sadness shining in his eyes before he pulls it back behind the professional mask again. “When Gipsy Danger’s arm was removed, the neural connection fed the loss through into your brain.”
“Wh-what does that mean?” he asks, because the doctor is giving a very long explanation but he can’t be saying what Raleigh thinks he’s saying, he just can’t.
“I’m sorry, Raleigh,” Dr. Blake says. “The neural pathways to your left arm were severely damaged in the battle. We can’t tell yet if it’ll heal on its own, but injuries of this kind are often permanent.”
Raleigh stares at him incredulously for a minute, breath stuttering in his chest, before something in his mind screams NO and he turns on his side, away from the doctor, curling up and closing his eyes. He’s not ready to hear this, to hear that on top of everything else he’s lost his arm. It’s right there, he can see it in front of him, reach out and touch it, so it can’t be gone. Can’t be.
The doctor murmurs another apology and, when it becomes clear that Raleigh isn’t going to turn back around he leaves the room as silently as he entered.
His dreams that night are dark, full of Yancy shouting, his arm being ripped away, his brother dying through the residual haze of the Drift, over and over again. He ends up only getting a couple hours of sleep, and spends the rest of the time staring at the ceiling, shaking and silent, aching with the emptiness in his head.
He’s almost glad when he wakes a day and a half later and there’s a familiar figure sprawled in a chair at the foot of his bed—if only for the fact that he won’t have to think about Yancy, about his dead arm, about what it all means for the future, for a couple of hours. He’s been floating in and out of awareness, letting his thoughts drift over the gaping loss of Yancy until the hole in his mind is almost as numb as his arm.
“Tendo,” Raleigh says, and his voice is hoarse with the tears he’d shed in his sleep, his endless calls for a brother who can no longer answer.
The LOCCENT Chief’s head jerks upright, and Tendo stares at him with something suspiciously like relief in his eyes. “Hey, kid,” he whispers, leaning forward and wrapping long fingers around Raleigh’s free hand. “How you feeling?”
Raleigh shrugs. “They got me on the good drugs. Burns don’t hurt so much.” Drugs can’t do anything about the hole in his head, or his arm, but at least he’s not in a lot of physical pain.
Tendo nods. “Good. Glad to see you awake, man. We were all pretty worried for a while, there.”
“Yeah, the doc said they had me sedated for a couple weeks?” he asks, dredging up the moments of yesterday’s conversation that don’t hurt quite so bad. “What happened to Gipsy?”
“Ah,” Tendo says.
Raleigh’s eyes narrow almost on their own, feeling more awake than he has in the past two days.
Tendo runs a shaky hand through his hair, messing up the normally immaculate locks. “Gipsy—she’s gone, man. Done for. The crew doesn’t think it’d be worth it to repair her, not unless we had a guarantee that someone would be piloting her again.” He slants a glance at Raleigh, but there’s no real expectation in his eyes. Tendo, he thinks, understands what it would cost Raleigh to climb back into Gipsy’s Conn-Pod again, even if his arm wasn’t fucked all to hell.
And speaking of…
Raleigh takes a deep breath, tries not to stutter over his brother’s name. “Yeah, no. Not again. I was still connected to Y-Yancy when—I felt him die, Tendo. I can’t have anyone in my head again, not after that.”
Tendo nods, knowing he’d been right. “That’s what I thought, man. No hard feelings, we’ll give her a funeral, treat her with the respect she deserves. Find you something else to do around base.”
“I—“ Raleigh overlooks the assumption that he’ll be sticking around, because he doesn’t know if he can, if he’ll be allowed to stay after he disobeyed orders and cost the PPDC a good Jaeger, a good pilot. He also doesn’t know what he can do, instead of piloting, because being in a Jaeger had been all he wanted to do for the past five years, and he doesn’t exactly have many other skills. He’s good with his hands, good at building things and tearing them back down, but how can he do anything like that with only one arm?
Tendo looks curious. “Yeah?”
“Can you keep a secret?” Raleigh asks, feeling ridiculous as he does it. Tendo’s the master of LOCCENT for a reason—even if he is an incorrigible flirt, a gossip monger and a shameless busybody, he knows when a story is too personal to get spread to the rest of the ‘Dome. In the almost three years Tendo’s been directing their drops, been a friend to him and Yancy, none of their secrets had gotten around base. At least, not because of Tendo.
Tendo just raises an eyebrow at him.
Raleigh takes a deep breath. It feels big, to admit this aloud, like he’s acknowledging the truth of the situation. Like once the words leave his lips they’ll be suddenly, infinitely, more real, and he won’t be able to take them back. The words stick in his throat, so he changes directions. “What are they saying about me? On the base?”
“That you’re amazing, a hero,” Tendo answers softly. Raleigh can barely meet his eyes. “For getting Gipsy back to shore on your own, for taking Knifehead down, for saving everyone on that boat. That your brain’s all screwy from the neural load, that you took a lot of damage in the fight.” He nods to Raleigh’s left arm, numb in its bright white sling across his chest, but there’s no knowing sympathy in his eyes. Not like Dr. Blake, or the nurses who bustle in and out of his room.
He doesn’t know.
Raleigh exhales softly, realizes that he doesn’t want it spread around the base. Tendo can keep it a secret, deserves to know, but no one else. Except the Marshal, probably. (It’s nearly impossible to keep secrets from Stacker Pentecost, and Raleigh’s pretty sure he’s been getting updates since he was admitted to the base hospital, nearly incoherent and convinced he was going out of his mind.
“My arm—the docs say my brain caught the feedback when Gipsy lost her arm in the fight,” he says softly.
Tendo gasps, eyes flicking down to stare at the arm across Raleigh’s chest. “So you’re…”
“Can’t feel much of anything,” Raleigh admits. Quirks a grin that doesn’t feel half as forced as he thinks it should. Probably the pain meds, he thinks—the nurses have something truly spectacular flowing through his IV. “Well, that’s not true. It’s a little like ghost Drifting—Yancy and I, we could always feel each other, no matter where we were on base or how long it’d been since we Drifted. It’s a little like that.”
“Shit, man,” Tendo says emphatically.
Raleigh shrugs as best he can, suddenly uncomfortable. “Brain still thinks it’s there, just can’t feel or move it. It’s weird as hell, actually.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“Yeah, well…” He coughs, running his good hand through his hair. They’ve gotten him off of most of the machines now, thankfully, and the only ones he’s still hooked up to are the heart and brain monitors and an IV. It’s much easier trying to maneuver in the bed now that he doesn’t have to worry about tugging half a dozen wires out. “Don’t need everyone on the base knowin’ I’m even more fucked up than they already think I am,” he says quietly, and Tendo’s entire body tightens.
“They don’t think you’re fucked up, man. They’re worried about you. Shit, do you even know how long I had to argue with the doctors to get in to see you? Pentecost’s got your room locked down tighter than the Tokyo ‘Dome! We just wanna make sure you’re okay!”
Raleigh says nothing, looks away from his friend’s earnest gaze.
After a long moment, Tendo relents, nodding. “Yeah, alright. I won’t say anything. But I want you to come to me when you need help, y’hear? Anything, day or night. Long as I’m not caught up in a drop, I’ll be there.” He takes a deep breath, leans forward to squeeze Raleigh’s hand as he stands. “Speaking of, I gotta get back to work. But I’ll be back in a couple days, yeah?”
Raleigh nods, feeling tired. He’s been sleeping a lot the past few days, but nothing longer than a couple hours at a time. His dreams, sometimes memories, sometimes nightmares, inevitably wake him up before he can feel truly rested. Hell, considering he’s still having trouble figuring out if the memories he’s replaying are his or Yancy’s, he thinks it’s going to be a long time before he gets a good night’s sleep, if it ever comes.
Tendo waves as he backs out of Raleigh’s hospital room. “Good to see you, my man! You’ll be outta here in no time, and then we’ll go get a drink in Yancy’s name, yeah?”
Raleigh’s body suddenly locks up, steel bands snapping closed on his chest and heart rate skyrocketing. He can’t breathe, can’t think, at the mention of his brother’s name. But Tendo’s gone, out the door before he realizes that something’s wrong, and Raleigh can’t help but be grateful that there’s no one to watch as tears start leaking down his face.
He cries, turning over to let out a muffled scream into his pillow, tears pouring hot and sticky down his face. Raleigh cries for all that he’s lost—his arm, his brother, his Jaeger, his world—and eventually slips back off to sleep, exhausted and emotionally drained.
The doctors flutter in and out of Raleigh’s room, taking him for x-rays and MRIs and CAT scans and all sorts of other neurological tests that are supposed to tell them if Raleigh’s brain is stable. They also put him through a whole range of treatments, muscle relaxants and drug cocktails and physical exercises designed to help stimulate his nerves and prevent muscular atrophy. He’s compliant for most of it, drowsing in between the nurses coming to fetch him, feed him or change his IV. There’s just no point in fighting to get out of there, no reason to want to leave—and hell, Raleigh doesn’t even know if there’s going to be somewhere for him to go when the doctors finally release him, because he’s useless now, isn’t he? He can’t fight, can’t pilot a Jaeger, and he can’t really do repair work with only one arm. And he never learned how to do anything else.
Stacker Pentecost comes to see him two days after Tendo’s visit, looking grim and professional and oh-so-reserved in his usual formal military dress. Raleigh’s in the middle of some mindless television program that one of the nurses had turned on for him, but he’s not actually paying all that much attention so he’s glad to mute the volume and turn his focus on the man he wants, more than anything, to blame for his brother’s death.
He can’t, though, because the blame sits squarely on his own shoulders. Raleigh was the one who disobeyed orders, the one who said ‘let’s go kill some kaiju,’ and look where it got him.
He can’t quite look Pentecost in the eyes.
“Ranger Becket,” Pentecost says, voice booming deep and sturdy through Raleigh’s bones. While he’s normally an unyielding force, a pillar of strength for everyone else to draw from in times of crisis, now it just feels like he’s come to give Raleigh all the recriminations he can feel in his soul. “It’s good to see you awake.”
Raleigh swallows, tries to shove himself upright on his pillows and fails miserably because he can only use one arm. “Good to be awake, sir,” he replies respectfully, probably the most respectful he’s ever been with the man. Playing nice for the brass had always been more Yancy’s thing.
“The doctors have been keeping me updated with your progress. They say that your hormone levels are leveling out, and most of your brain scans are normal. You can probably be released from medical by the end of the week,” Pentecost tells him, stepping further into the room and drawing the door closed behind him.
Raleigh nods uncertainly. “And then what, sir?”
There’s a furrow to Pentecost’s brow that he doesn’t like, that speaks of things Raleigh is going to object to on a deep, emotional level. “We want you to do a publicity tour. Show the world that just because one of their beloved Jaegers was destroyed doesn’t mean we can’t still win this war. Show them that we are still capable, still willing, to fight back. If we don’t, public support is going to drop. Already, there are talks about how effective the Jaeger program really is. They want to divert funding to the Wall of Life—”
“The Wall?” Raleigh scowls. “That’s a load of bullshit, sir, and you know it.”
Pentecost sighs heavily. “Yes, well, the UN seems to think it will be a more effective use of resources.”
“All due respect, sir, just because a few Jaegers went down doesn’t mean more of them will. We’ve been holding the kaiju at bay for five years now, and if the public isn’t going to trust that we will continue to protect them then no goddamned publicity tour is going to change their minds,” Raleigh says defensively, crossing his arms over his chest and belatedly remembering that only one of them actually moves.
Pentecost stares at him, eyes dark and unfathomable. When he speaks, it’s with that authoritative rumble that would’ve had Raleigh itching to disobey him just because only weeks earlier. Now, however, he shrinks back into the narrow hospital bed. “Ranger Becket, this isn’t about the public. This is about getting one of my Rangers back on his feet. And since we can’t put you back in a Jaeger,” Pentecost flicks his eyes over Raleigh’s left arm, trussed up in its sling and stubbornly immobile, “then we need to give you something else to do.”
For a second, Raleigh’s stunned, and then he’s so seething mad that he can’t even see straight. “Fuck you, sir,” he hisses, glaring at the blank-faced Marshal in his room. “Just fuck you. This isn’t about me, no matter what you say. You wanna show the world how tough your Rangers are? Find some other way to do it, because no way are you dragging Y-Yancy and Gipsy out there for them to tear apart like wolves! What happened that night is my business, and the world has no right to it!”
“Raleigh,” Pentecost sighs, like Raleigh’s nothing more than an errant child and his feelings don’t even matter. “You have a week to get back on your feet once Medical releases you, and then you’re being flown out to New York to start your press circuit.”
He stares for a second, trying to think past the rage splitting his head open, mentally screaming how dare you come in here and tell me I have to share Yancy with the rest of the world! Haven’t we given enough for you, for them? Isn’t it enough that he died for you? Can’t I just keep what little bit of him I have left to myself? Is that too fucking much to ask? Then he remembers how to speak, and says very calmly, his voice perfectly level, “I think I’d like you to leave now, sir.”
“Very well, Ranger Becket.” Pentecost turns sharply on his heel, giving Raleigh one last disappointed look over his shoulder before the door clicks shut and Raleigh is alone again.
He takes one, two shaky breaths, trying to calm his racing heart, and turns the volume on the shitty mindless television show up as high as it’ll go, trying to lose himself in something with no meaning so he won’t break down crying at the thought of sharing what little precious bits of Yancy he has left with a world of strangers.
The doctors release him from Medical at the end of the week, just like Pentecost said, and Raleigh relishes the ability to wear real clothes even if he has to have one of the nurses help him tug his deadened arm through the shirt sleeve. Tendo is there to greet him just as they’re bullying him into the wheelchair—Raleigh is stubbornly resisting this, he is not an invalid no matter how bad his injuries are, he can walk out of the ‘Dome’s medical center without looking like he just barely won a fight with a kaiju, thank you very much—and laughs when Raleigh whines for him to explain to the nurses why he doesn’t need it.
Unsurprisingly, nobody listens to him. Tendo wheels Raleigh out of there once he’s finally settled in the chair, though he manages to convince the LOCCENT tech to ditch it two hallways later. He stubbornly walks the rest of the way back to the room he’d shared with Yancy, refusing all help but Tendo’s comforting hand on his good arm, and nearly chokes with grief when the door swings open and it’s untouched, exactly as they’d left it so long ago.
Yancy, he thinks, and his knees give out. He collapses in the doorway, staring at his brother’s unmade bed, at the array of clothing still scattered across their room—hey, they were two guys, cleanliness wasn’t exactly high on their list of priorities—and the jug of orange juice still sitting on the counter, half drank. It’s spoiled by now, probably halfway to some truly awful cider that he wouldn’t drink if his life depended on it, but the memory still makes him sob.
Fuck.
How am I supposed to do this? Live here, in our room, like nothing’s changed?
“Raleigh?” Tendo asks carefully, kneeling down and wrapping a comforting arm around his shoulders. He’s warm, Raleigh realizes—or maybe it’s just that Raleigh’s so goddamned cold, trembling on the threshold of his old room, his old life.
I am not that person anymore, he thinks, dazed, his mind aching with emptiness.
Somehow, he manages to pull himself together long enough to climb off of the floor and onto his bed, sprawling out over fresh sheets—someone’s been in to change them, but it’s one of the only things that’ve been touched in the room—with little regard for Tendo’s worried hovering. “M’good,” he mumbles into his pillow. And fuck, it smells like Yancy, like the shampoo they’d shared because it was pointless to buy two different bottles, like his aftershave. Raleigh buries the sob that rises in his throat.
He’s going to wait to break down until he’s alone.
And eventually, Tendo gets the message. Leaves Raleigh’s room, shuts the door softly behind him. “I’ll be around when you need me, man,” he whispers softly, and then he’s gone and Raleigh is alone with the ghost of his brother.
He doesn’t sleep that night, mind too busy replaying all the memories that’d gotten jumbled around in the Drift, tangled and caught up until he can’t tell which ones are his and which ones are Yancy’s, shoved through in the last minutes of his brother’s life. He physically aches with Yancy’s loss, a pain entirely different to the circuit-suit burns or the odd disconnect of his arm, and contemplates for a long moment just ending it all.
He wants his brother, is the thing. Wants Yancy’s warm hugs and unquestioning love, the smiles shared and inside jokes, his warm presence at the back of Raleigh’s mind like a blanket. He wants to be whole again, to be on top of the world and undefeatable, a hero, a god, capable of punching the devil’s monsters in the face and walking away. He wants to turn back the clock, but more than anything Raleigh just wants the pain to end.
No you don’t, little brother, a faint voice whispers in the back of his mind. You gotta keep living. Not for me—for you. You’re so young, there’s so much in the world you haven’t seen yet. I’ll always be here, waiting for you, but there’s stuff you gotta do first.
Yancy, Raleigh sobs into his pillow, screams into the echoing emptiness of his mind.
There’s no response.
Raleigh floats through the next three days in something of a blank haze, mindlessly following the doctors’ demands and showing up for all his appointments. It’s almost like he hasn’t left Medical at all, he’s there so often. The nurses say that they just want to make sure he’s okay, that they don’t know what’s going on with his arm but want to make sure he has the best care possible, want to make sure he knows all his options. Dr. Blake wants to know the second Raleigh regains any motor control, wants to be involved in the process if he starts to get his arm back.
They give him muscle exercises to do, physical therapy and more drugs, trying what seems like everything under the sun to fix him. Raleigh doesn’t feel like telling them he doesn’t see the point—he’s broken, there’s no way to fix him. No way to get back what he’s lost.
At least, that’s what he thinks.
On the fourth day he’s back in his quarters, Raleigh wakes up and his fingers give a little twitch. Not much, and nothing voluntary, but it’s more than he’s had since he woke up from the medical coma. It might be a little spiteful, maybe even childish, but Raleigh doesn’t tell anyone. This is his business, and his alone, and he doesn’t need some hotshot doctor writing a revolutionary paper on Raleigh Becket’s Neurological Trauma. If he’s not going to share it with the world, why should he share it with anyone? This is his cross to bear.
Tendo keeps his word, and if Pentecost is saying anything about his injuries then it doesn’t carry to Raleigh. He can’t help but be grateful—the last thing he wants right now is to be stared at, pitied, analyzed. The last thing his fellow pilots need is to worry if they’ll suffer similar injuries the next time they climb in a Jaeger.
He cries himself to sleep every night, wrapped in a pile of Yancy’s old sheets and pillows, and tosses and turns for a few hours until giving up and staring miserably at the photographs that line the walls of their room. He thinks about killing himself twice more, but ultimately decides that he survived for a reason, and he would be remiss to end it before he found out what that was.
He puts on a good front for the rest of the Icebox, Raleigh thinks, stable. Collected. Not about to go fry his brain going into a Drift Simulator solo. And it’s good, that he can pretend for the ‘Dome, for the world. But inside, he’s falling apart, and only getting worse.
He sees flashes of Yancy’s echo everywhere he goes in the ‘Dome—in the mess hall, along random stretches of hallway, in the Jaeger bays and all the other places they’d frequent together. His memory is imprinted in Raleigh’s consciousness, and the slightest glimpse of familiarity is enough to trigger a flashback. By the time his Marshal-given week of recovery is up, Raleigh’s had enough.
“I can’t do this,” he says bluntly, striding into Pentecost’s office as he’s bid. “I can’t stay here and see my brother in all the places he’s supposed to be but isn’t.”
Pentecost stares at him for a minute, frowning, before he goes back to filling out the paperwork on his desk. “It’s a good thing you’re leaving tomorrow for New York, then, isn’t it?”
“I’m not going to New York. All due respect, sir, but I’m not gonna go out there and tell the world I’m fine, because I’m not,” Raleigh argues.
There’s an odd twist to Pentecost’s mouth, but for the life of him Raleigh can’t think why. “You’re not fine, and I’m sorry to ask you to pretend to be. But you’re a Ranger, and you have a duty to the PPDC, to your country. You’re already disobeyed a direct order once, Ranger Becket. Don’t do it again.”
Raleigh can’t quite hide his flinch. He stands there in Pentecost’s office for a long moment, gaping, trying to find a response that isn’t screaming his soul’s anguish in the Marshal’s face.
Pentecost nods, still not looking up from his paperwork. “Your chopper leaves at 0900 tomorrow. I suggest packing tonight. Don’t be late.”
“I—” Raleigh wets his lips. Takes a deep breath, strives for Yancy-like levels of cold formality. He doesn’t know how well he succeeds, but something in his tone makes Pentecost straighten in his chair, eyes sharp and narrow. “They told us in the Academy that if your copilot dies, it feels like you’ve lost a limb. Well I’ve lost both, sir, and I can tell you right now that they sure as hell weren’t lying. It’s worse. That being said—my brother’s death, my injuries, are not for public consumption, and if you try to make them so I swear to God I will disappear.”
“You have a duty—“ Pentecost snaps, but Raleigh cuts him off.
“I had a duty, sir!” He’s almost growling, panting with rage, and the fingertips of his left hand are suddenly burning. “To Y-Yancy! To Gipsy! But they’re both dead and gone, and nothing you or anyone says is gonna bring them back! So at least give them the honor of a respectful death, don’t make it into one of your publicity events!”
Pentecost rises from his chair slowly, something in the clench of his fists and the slant of his shoulders warning Raleigh to back off.
But he doesn’t, can’t, he’s too far gone already to stop now. “Just leave us alone!” he almost screams, and is mortified to feel tears gathering at the corners of his eyes.
“RANGER BECKET!” Pentecost thunders, but Raleigh’s done.
So done.
He turns and practically flees the room, running down the hallways as fast as he can with his deadened arm in a sling, careening around corners and nearly crashing into several startled techs. They dodge out of the way, though, well used to pilots running to make their deployments, and no one reacts beyond a few “You okay, Raleigh?” echoing behind him.
When Raleigh makes it back to his room, Tendo’s waiting at the door, a worried frown on his face and his throat uncharacteristically bare of a colorful bowtie. Raleigh slows to a walk, stomps past him and tries to shut the door in his face, but Tendo’s smarter than that.
He sticks his boot in the doorframe, refuses to move it until Raleigh lets him in.
“Fine,” Raleigh growls, letting the steel panel swing free and awkwardly shoving all the clothes he can fit into a worn duffel. He doesn’t know who it originally belonged to, but it’s worn and well loved. He gets a couple pairs of worn pants, boxers, and three white wife beaters before he starts piling Yancy’s beloved sweaters in the bag, and those take up the rest of the room he has. They’re lumpy and worn, and too big in the shoulder for Raleigh, but he doesn’t care—they’re a piece of his brother, one of the last pieces he has left, and besides that they’re comfortable as fuck. They’re coming with him.
Tendo watches him pack with gentle eyes. “You’re gonna take care of yourself, right?”
“That’s the plan,” Raleigh grunts, turning and peeling their neat lines of photos from the wall one by one. He’s gentler with these than his temper would usually allow him to be, but Raleigh is taking no chances of them ripping. He pins the stack to his chest with the sling so he can wrap a rubber band around them with his good hand. It works surprisingly better than he thought it would.
Tendo hums, shoving an extra bottle of painkillers in the duffel. “Cause I wouldn’t wanna turn on the news one day and hear that you’d died in a ditch, or something.”
He can’t quite muffle the snort at the image that brings, though it hurts his still-healing burns to laugh. “I’m not gonna die in a ditch, Tendo.”
“Well, good. That’d just be stupid.” Tendo zips the duffel closed, clapping Raleigh on the shoulder before settling it so he can carry it comfortably. All his worldly possessions, everything that matters to him, all in one bag. The thought doesn’t hurt as much as it probably should—the Becket brothers have never been known for being particularly attached to material objects. Instead, it just makes it easier for him to make his grand escape. “I’ll talk to Pentecost, do what I can to mitigate the damage. You just get that head of yours sorted out.”
“I think that might take a while,” Raleigh mutters, grabbing his brother’s bomber jacket emblazoned with Gipsy’s wings. Just like the sweaters, it’s too big across the shoulders, but it’s thick and warm and smells like his brother so Raleigh doesn’t really give a fuck. Maybe he’ll grow into it. Maybe if he keeps enough of his brother’s things around, he won’t be quite so alone.
Tendo nods, accompanying him out of the room and leading him down a series of mostly-vacant hallways. “I know. Not expecting much, man, but stay in touch? A phone call once in a while, an email, just so I know you’re still alive and kicking?”
Raleigh hesitates for a long moment, letting them walk in silence until they get outside the Shatterdome. He shivers in the wind, wishing he’d thought to put on Yancy’s jacket beforehand, and finally nods. “Yeah, alright.” He starts walking away, but then a thought occurs to him and he turns back around. “Hey Tendo?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re a good friend.” Raleigh gives what feels like his first honest smile since he woke up and his world ended, relishing the delighted grin that spreads across Tendo’s face in response. “So good luck with Allison, man, and stay out of trouble.”
“You stay out of trouble,” Tendo snarks back, but he’s relaxed a bit from his protective father persona.
When Raleigh waves and turns to keep walking, all he can feel is an overwhelming relief at being away. Free, he thinks, and pretends he’s not imagining the familiar low throaty chuckle that floats to his ears. He keeps walking until he hits a bus stop, and then rides the line all the way to the end. Gets a room at a shitty motel, using a little of the outrageous amounts of money the PPDC pays its Rangers, and collapses on a mattress that is actually worse than the one he’d had in the Shatterdome to get whatever sleep he can before nightmares and memories inevitably decide to ruin his night.