#falling is easy

Raleigh won't stop screaming, can't stop screaming. He sounds too young now. 

The ocean starts rushing up to meet Yancy. He feels like he's falling in slow-motion - he's flown so high, he's touched the sun and now the wax on his wings are melting.

Rals I'm here I'm here I'm here shhh it's okay Rals I'm here can you hear me can you hear me Rals 

Raleigh can't hear him - either it's not mutual, the Drift, anymore, or he can't hear him above his own voice. Yancy oh god oh god no 

It surprises Yancy how quickly he's starting to come to terms with this. He's still terrified, he's still not ready to die, but he doesn't want Raleigh to know that. God, he's just his younger brother. He doesn't need to know he's not ready to die.

Raleigh Raleigh shh it's okay kid it's okay just listen to me okay stop screaming I need to tell you something please listen to me

Oh god please Yancy no no no no no

Okay I know you can't hear me and that's okay that's alright I just need to talk to you you don't have to hear me 

The ocean is starting to rush up to meet him. Yancy feels a trembling in his gut as wind and water slice past his face. He knows it's not vertigo.

I'm sorry Rals I'm sorry we got into the mess I'm sorry for all those fights we ever had I'm sorry for making you and Jas angry I'm sorry for everything and I don't know why I'm saying sorry I just am 

The angry waves seem to reach into the air and claw at the man that tumbles through the air.

You're up there alone man god I'm so fucking proud of you I know you can kill it I know you can I'm so proud of you Rals I love you 

Something twitches in the corner of Yancy's mind. 

Yancy? 

And then Yancy Becket plummets into the water that swirls so angrily with the maelstrom above.  

Yancy no don't go don't go don't leave me Yancy don't 

Raleigh makes his way to his quarters, a content smile playing at his lips as he enters his room. He's about to tug his woolen sweater off when something bright blue on his bed catches his eye.

It's a package, wrapped neatly with a nice little bow stuck on the corner. Puzzlement crossing his features, Raleigh picks up the package and gives it an experimental shake. It's a bag of some sorts, and he can feel small objects rolling around in it. Finding no card or label attached, he gingerly tears open the wrapping paper.

It's a bag full of wrapped candies, round and bright and adorned with cutesy designs. The bag has labels in Japanese, and the words and the blue wrapping paper bring a smile to Raleigh's face.

He ducks his head out of his quarters just in time to see Mako making her way down the hall and to her own room, having disappeared after drinking eggnog with him and Tendo earlier. "Hey," he calls out, and she stops in her tracks, looking up at him with a knowing smile as he holds up the candies.

Watching Mako march up the steps to her door, Raleigh says, "How'd you get into my room?"

Mako gives him a glance as she opens her door. With another smile, soft yet bright, she nods and replies, "Goodnight, Raleigh."

When Knifehead drives Gipsy back against the ice shelf, he knows nothing. Raleigh calibrates Gipsy’s control to his right arm with a sharp roll of his shoulder and through the shower of sparks above him and the cracked visor of Gipsy he stares down the Kaiju. He unleashes another blast from the plasmacaster and cries out as he does so, as if his roar could make the blast ten times more powerful.  

                                          “Only listen to me—”

“I am,” Raleigh groans to himself an hour later as he drags his left foot forward to put it in front of his right.  He doesn’t know where he was going – the blast that had finally killed the Kaiju had short-circuited his coms and visual instruments – only that he has to keep walking. “I am…”

But why did he have to keep walking? Yancy was dead, there was a good chance he’d die from the neural load before he made land…so why didn’t he just lay down in the sea now and let the water rush into the Conn Pod and take him?

“Because you can’t, kiddo,” A voice in the back of his mind pricks at the tears behind his eyes and it sounds so much like Yancy that Raleigh puts his right foot in front of his left foot once more. He can’t feel his left arm but he can feel the drag of the seawater on Gipsy’s legs.

Right. Left. Right. Left. Right…Right…Right…

                                        “Only listen to me—”

Raleigh’s lost track of time already when the neural load starts to make him hallucinate. He sees Yancy at his side again, reminding him patiently not to get cocky. He wants to reply with, “I’m not. I never will be again, not while you’re not with me” but he can’t unclench his jaw to talk. Then there’s Jasmine, riding around in the Conn Pod on her bike. Pink streamers flutter from her handlebars and her training wheels squeaking. “Raleigh can you oil Jasmine’s bike?” He hears his Dad’s voice and tries to turn his head but then the harness is sparking again and sending pricks of pain down his spine.

Somewhere in the back of Gipsy Stacker is yelling at him to follow orders…and then Naomi is in his ear, her breath tickling the side of his neck as she whispers, “That subconjunctival hemorrage looks hot, Jaeger-boy.” Raleigh is two seconds from asking what she means when there’s a flash behind his left eye and he can see in the cracked visor of his helmet the red ring of a burst blood vessel around his blue iris.

It’s then that he finds himself falling. Gipsy’s foot catches on something and he stumbles in the harness, too weak to right himself. He crashes to one knee and then the other. Raleigh’s right hand goes out to stop his fall – purely on instinct – and all he can see through Gipsy’s cracked cranial viewport is white.

Now Raleigh wasn’t religious – the first and last time he’d been to church was when he was 11 and that was to throw flour at the priest with Yancy in the middle of the service – but everyone knew about at the light at the end of the tunnel. All the bullshit about not walking towards the light runs through Raleigh’s mind in less than a second and he really can’t care less. He’s going to see Yancy again.

                                         “Only listen to me—”

Raleigh doesn’t know whether to be disappointed or not when instead of the sweet release from his pain he just gets a blast of cold snow and dirt in his face. He is grateful for the built in disengage of his harness when he falls into Gipsy’s visor, his whole body reverberating with the impact.

As he crawls –actually fucking crawls – Gipsy groans and Raleigh understands on all levels the pain that she’s in. When he reaches the shattered edge of her visor, the usually incredibly strong material breaking off under his fingers, he pulls himself to his feet. Raleigh half slides, half trips from the wreckage of his Jaeger (his beloved Gipsy Danger) and hits the snow at a stumble.

“Oh Yancy,” he murmurs, finding his feet and staggering forward. His breath comes in sharp gasps, the cold air driving daggers into his lungs and the burning wound on his left shoulder.

Raleigh turns on the spot, tripping back over his feet and muttering Yancy’s name under his breath again and again. He doesn’t notice the old man in the ridiculous beanie and earmuffs at first. It’s not until he does and follows the man’s horrified gaze that he finds the torso of his drive suit slick and red with dried blood. To be honest he doesn’t know if it belongs to him because his body has gone numb. It’s probably Yancy’s, he realizes as his fingers fumble at the blood and that makes it all the more worse.