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Raleigh Becket disappeared from the Anchorage Shatterdome, one month after Knifehead, and barely two days after he rose from his coma. They find his bed empty, heart monitor unplugged and the bloody tubes draped messily over the sheets. His room had been cleaned out almost completely, the photographs ripped off the wall, the dressers still half open, and only a few piles of paper still spread haphazardly over the desk. Raleigh’’s bomber jacket, which had spent the past four weeks hanging stiffly in the closet, was folded neatly on the bottom bunk.He’d taken Yancy’s jacket with him.… Raleigh doesn’t remember much about his first awake day in the hospital. It’s all blurry flashes, the stinging smell of antiseptic, and Tendo telling him in a painfully soft voice that he’d been in a coma for a bloody month after somehow piloting Gipsy Danger to shore. Alone.He remembers the second day with an almost painful clarity.Flashes of the battle had haunted his dreams. A swirling blurred mix of the storm, the ship, the waves crashing into Gipsy’s legs, the Kaiju blue staining the ocean, the screech of metal as Gipsy’s left arm was ripped off, the searing pain that followed, Knifehead rising from the deep, a talon tearing through the conn pod, falling fast towards the ocean, and Yancy, Yancy, YANCY! He was ripped from sleep at ten past two in the morning. A nurse shook him awake with Yancy’s name still tearing itself halfway out of his throat as the heart monitor went wild. He could barely breathe and he shook violently, his vision blurred and behind a wall of static he could barely hear the nurse talking to him.“Y-Yancy…” He croaked, staring blankly ahead. Tears tracked down his cheeks. “Yancy, Yancy.” The nurse started talking again, only not to him. He thought there may have been another nurse standing in the doorway. Maybe it was a doctor. He doesn’t remember what she said because he didn’t hear it, shaking so much it hurt and struggling to breath. He vaguely remembered the words unresponsive and panic attack. “Yancy…” He said again. Yancy had always come when he called didn’t he? When they were kids with the monsters under the bed, and when they’d grown up and the monsters had migrated to the ocean. Yancy was always there for him, a rock for him to lean on and, more recently, a steady flame always flickering in the back of his brain where the ghost drift lingered between missions. Yancy had always come when he called, but maybe he just couldn’t hear him. “YANCY!”A doctor leaned down next to his bed and in front of the IV stand. He didn’t remember her entering the room. She placed one hand on the railing of the bed, “Raleigh ,” She said, voice calm, “Can you hear me?”“Yancy.” He told her, forcibly jerking his head over in her direction. It’s not a question, but a demand. It’s like he’s three years old again, sitting on the ground, and reaching his hands up for his older brother. Where is Yancy. Bring him to me. Barely a second passed before he insisted again, “Yancy.” “Raleigh ,” The doctor said, taking his jolted movements as affirmation, “Everything is alright. You’re safe.”
“Yancy.”
“I need you to breath with me, alright? Breath in…” The doctor sucked a breath of air in and held it for a moment. Blinking fast, Raleigh watched her, almost transfixed. She hadn’t answered him. “And breath out…”He shook his head with a violent jerk. He couldn’t stop shaking. Where was Yancy? Why couldn’t Yancy hear him? He raised one of his hands to his face and sloppily tried to wipe the tear tracks away. God, he really still was the three-year old kid crying for his older brother wasn’t he?The nurse who had been trying to talk to him initially came back into the room (although Raleigh wasn’t sure when she’d left). He barely registered her walking over to the doctor, instead turned his gaze back to the wall and tried to clamp his hands down on his arms in an attempt to steady himself. He couldn’t get a steady grip, and the vicious shaking made the needles in his arms ache painfully. He thought he saw her reach for his IV tubes.“Yancy…” He mumbled, tripping over the name. Where was he? Raleigh didn’t know. The doctors and nurses clearly didn’t know. Tendo would know wouldn’t he? “I’m sorry Becket Boy.” Tendo had folded his hands in his lap and looked at Raleigh with tears in his eyes, “Yancy’s…” He swallowed once, glancing at the ground before looking up to meet his eyes again, “We lost him to Knifehead.”“No!” He grabbed his head with both hands, palmed pressed flat against his temples. He convulsed violently, hunching over into himself, “No, NO, NO!” Pressure built in his chest, “ YANCY!” The nurse fiddled with his IV tubes. It wasn’t denial that shock his hands and sent a steady stream of tears dripping down his face as he struggled to take a breath. It was unadulterated terror that sent the heart monitor screaming and made the blood roar in his ears, because Yancy had always been there for him, whether it be growing up or, more recently, in the back of his brain brushing against his consciousness, and now he wasn’t and Raleigh didn’t know what to do, oh God, he didn’t know what to do. He reached, almost instinctively, to the Ghost Drift. It had been there, ever present, for the past three years, lingering at the fuzzy corners of his mind and connecting him to his brother in the moments between their deployments. He’d expected to grasp at strings, to find only the cold lingering connection to Gipsy Danger, and the raw fear and hopelessness of Yancy’s last moments.
“Raleigh, listen to me—”
Pain flared sharply in his left eye, hot and white and throbbing across his temples and dripping down his cheeks into the back of his throat. Raleigh let out a wordless shout, folding over himself and grasping the side of his face with two shaking hands as his pulse pounded. He vaguely heard the doctor bark orders at the nurse, and then there was a rush of cold in his veins that sent goosebumps trailing along his arms.The left side of his face burned so much it had gone numb, and as his vision swam he watched, almost intrigued, as drops of blood fell from his nose and landed in spots on his gown.
Raleigh, breath!
Raleigh sucked in a breath immediately at the words, sharp and painful. It caught in his chest and left him coughing violently over his lap. The world had begun to look fuzzy at the edges; his vision, the pain, all of it began to fade. His muscles forcibly relaxed and the shaking was replaced with a bone tired exhaustion. Someone gently straighten him out and pushed him back until his head hit the pillow. In the background his heart monitor had begun to slow.His eyes had begun to drift shut, and for a moment, as he slowly blinked at the wall in his last moments of consciousness, he heard a sigh of relief in the back of his head. There you go, kid. Yancy soothed, Now just go back to sleep. …Raleigh woke up six hours later. He was groggy at first, a mixture of exhaustion and drugs, and his left eye ached even before he opened it. His entire body was sore, and he reached a heavy hand up to itch at the bandages that swathed his left shoulder. He’d stiffened, suddenly remembering where he was, and more importantly why. Raleigh sat up immediately, and he couldn’t tell if the nausea came from the sudden jolt in position, the flare of pain along his side, or the horror at the sudden remembrance of Knifehead. It might’ve been all three. He didn’t care.A jolt of pain shot through his eye again. The steady beep of the heart monitor started to turn erratic. A steady presence suddenly pressed up against the part of his brain that had grown faded without the drift, turning it and the headspace into something sharp again, something real.
Breathe, kid. I thought we went over this last night.
His breath hitched, but the heart monitor had already began to calm. “Y-Yancy?” In the flesh, kiddo. Or well, your flesh. Amusement tingled in the back of his head, it flowed freely into their shared headspace and gave Raleigh the impression that Yancy was smirking at his own joke.“Yancy?” He repeated, disbelief etched into the word. “Yancy?” What are you, three again? Don’t you know any other words besides my name? Or have you regressed to being a toddler, Rals. He heard the laughter on the edge of Yancy’s words, but more importantly he felt the familiar pulse of memories alongside them. (He knows his first proper word was his brother’s name, because how could Yancy ever let him forget it? But he doesn’t remember it, or it’s fuzzy edges and warm feelings, or his brother’s cry of Mommy, Mommy Raleigh said my name! Yancy does.)“Yancy?” He said again, voice hoarse and throat raw. He absently realized he hadn't said anything but his brother’s name since he’d woken up yesterday. “How are you—I mean—where are you—are you even… alive?” I have no clue, kiddo. I just… Yancy hesitated, I just sort of… woke up, I guess? Same time you did, only in your body. And you couldn’t hear me last night until… I don’t know, you activated the drift? “The drift?” Raleigh reached up a hand to rub at his eye, and for a moment felt a phantom stab of sharp pain. His shoulders stiffened. “Does that make you a ghost?” Oh my god, I think that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said! Yancy laughed, loud and clear, sending warmth spiraling across the bond until it sat comfortably in Raleigh’s chest. I’m not dead, kiddo. If I was I wouldn’t be here, would I? The reassurance was so simple, so Yancy, that Raleigh couldn’t help but smile slightly into his lap. “Yeah…Sorry… ” He trailed, “Yeah, you’re right.” But he still remembered the screech of metal and the shower of sparks as the Kaiju claw tore through the conn pod. The way Yancy had only been able to half turn toward him, cut off as the Kaiju ripped him out, leaving the only torn straps of the harness hanging and the drift bursting with desperation and terror until it finally cut off with a snap so painful it had left him stumbling inside Gipsy. Of course I’m right. Yancy said smugly, as if they were back in their room in the Shatterdome, lying on their respective bunk beds and Yancy had just won another dumb argument about another dumb thing. As if Raleigh hadn’t spent the past month comatose in the hospital after overdoing his neural load. I’m the oldest, aren’t I? “If you’re so right all the time then what even happened?” Raleigh snapped, squeezing his eyes shut so hard it hurt, “We were supposed to save the boat, beat the Kaiju, and get back to the Dome in time for breakfast. Fifth notch on the belt, man! But instead I’m in a hospital covered in circuitry burns that I got because I piloted Gipsy back to shore on my own. Because you died , Yance.”
Raleigh—
“And now you’re stuck in my head because of the drift. And we don’t know why. And you won’t take it seriously, Yancy. And I just, I can’t — ” Raleigh sucked in a breath, then pressed the palm of his hand hard against his chest, “You were gone.”I… yeah. You’re right, kiddo. I was. And I don’t know how I’m even alive, but Rals, I am. Yancy’s voice was strained, and Raleigh was suddenly vividly reminded of when his brother broke the news of their mother’s cancer, of Dad’s abandonment, of Jaz’s death. He’d already lost one sibling to the Kaiju. He didn’t think he could stand to lose another. And it’s terrifying. I gave you that nightmare last night. I was the one who couldn’t get Knifehead out of my head. I stepped into your head a month ago, Raleigh, and for some fucking reason even death couldn’t get me to step back out. So we have to live with this, kid. Yancy sighed heavily, and Raleigh heard every inch of exhaustion in his words, But at least we’re gonna live. …Raleigh spent the majority of his second day awake in the hospital pacing the space between his bed and the bathroom door. Well, limping. You should sit down, Raleigh. Yancy chided, Your legs are shaking. Besides, that’s a new record. Raleigh rolled his eyes, but he could feel the burn in the back of his calves and the sharp stabbing of pain all along the muscle. He sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed, letting go of his tight grip on the IV stand. “Twenty minutes this time.” He mumbled, glancing up at the clock. “That’s pathetic.”
Cut yourself some slack, kid. Your left side is covered in scabs from circuitry burns and you just woke up from a month long nap. Did you expect to be able to run a marathon?
“No, but I expected to be able to walk!” Raleigh scrubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “I’m a jaeger pilot for fuck’s sake. Or I was…” What did I tell you about getting cocky, Rals? Yancy had always been able to illicit a perfect eye roll over the drift. We’ve been at this for like two hours, you’re not suddenly gonna magically recover your stamina. We have time, kiddo. And physical therapy, probably. “Yeah, right…” Raleigh fell backwards on the bed, head flopping onto the pillows, “Time.”
Okay, I’ll bite. What’s with the attitude?
“What attitude?” That attitude, kid. Yancy’s exasperation flooded across the link before settling, thick and dense, in their shared headspace, Everytime I mention the future, or whatever you get all weird. “Well, yeah.” Raleigh turned his head to the side, switching his gaze from the ceiling to the plain white walls with his cheek pressed against the pillow. “We have no fucking idea what’s gonna happen. Tendo said the Marshall was in Australia, but when he comes back I’m either getting discharged because disobeyed orders going after that boat or he’s gonna shove me back into a Jaeger.” Raleigh pinched his eyes closed at the thought, breath hitched in his chest. “And even if I can drift with someone, they’re gonna see that you’re in my head, and then they’re either gonna lock us up for being lunatics or they’re going to try and get you out, which means you’re gonna die again Yancy, and I can’t—” Slow down kid, come on, take a few deep breaths and stop spiraling for a moment. “I’m breathing already, Yancy!”
Well you’re not doing it well. Come on, now, breath with me, kiddo.
“What —how?” Breath in, two, three, four. Breath out, two, three four. Yancy’s voice was achingly gentle, and some of his calm seeped into the bond, flowing warmly into Raleigh ’s chest. On his brother’s next repeat, Raleigh attempted to breath along with the count. Breath in, two, three four—Good job, Rals—breath out, two, three, four. Raleigh hadn’t had a panic in years. Not when a poorly timed Kaiju attack on Anchorage claimed Jazmine, not when Mom finally succumbed to the cancer tugging at the last dredges of her life barely a week later, or not even when Dad, before Mom had even been put in the ground, had abandoned him and Yancy in his grief. His last panic had been when he was fifteen, watching as Trespasser tore through the the Golden Gate Bridge and every cheesy horror movie he’d ever watched with Jaz came to life. Yancy had talked him down from that one too, holding his hands so tightly they turned whiter with each minute. By the time Raleigh had calmed down his hands were painfully numb, but as soon as he’d caught his breath for good Yancy had engulfed him in a hug. His head had been pressed against Yancy’s chest, and he still remembered how fast his brother’s pulse had raced. He could still hear it in his memories and in it found a form of relief. It was a reminder that Yancy was still alive, even if he didn’t have his own body, his own heartbeat , anymore. Look at that! Raleigh could feel Yancy’s grin as his breathing evened out, Seems like someone remembered how breathing works. “Yancy…” Raleigh croaked, suddenly aware of how heavy his body felt and the ache in all of his limbs, “What are we going to do?” There’s not much we can do right now but wait, Rals. Yancy told him, and sent a vague feeling reminiscent of a half-shrug across the bond, Tendo said the Marshall would be back in a couple of days. But honestly? I don’t think you’ll get discharged. You were pretty out of it yesterday, but they took brain scans. You can still drift kiddo, even with me in your head, For a moment, Raleigh couldn’t tell whether the news was good or bad. Then dread sunk in his stomach and fear stuttered in his chest. “Fuck.” Raleigh, you love being a Jaegar pilot. Tendo says that they’ve already started repairs on Gipsy. Just because I’m in your head, doesn’t mean you have to stop. Yancy had meant it kindly, a reassurance that just because his life had been turned upside down didn’t mean it had completely fallen apart. But it was just a painful reminder that something he loved—being a ranger and piloting Gipsy—would never, could never be the same. Raleigh loved fighting in Gipsy Danger, but only half of her was him. The other half was Yancy.His older brother and the better pilot, who would never step into Gipsy’s conn pod with his own two feet again.Raleigh shook his head roughly, ignoring the sharp stab of pain in his temples, “That’s not it Yancy,” He held his hand up in front of his eyes for a moment and watched it shake, “I won’t have someone else inside my head. I can’t. ”
Kid—
“I can’t stay here.” Raleigh realized, pushing himself up, “I have to leave before the Marshall comes back.” …At ten o’clock that night, Raleigh made his move. Around noon he’d convinced the on duty nurse to unplug him from the heart monitor through use of pity and a well-placed smile, which meant that he could safely detach himself from all the needles plugged into his aching arms without the half the hospital staff bursting into his room thinking that he’d somehow flatlined in the middle of the night. It was a slow and painful process that left his fingertips stained red, blood crusted underneath his fingernails, and a dozen small cuts on both of his arms. And of course, it would be undue to not mention that Yancy had spent the entire day attempting to convince him that escaping from the Icebox was a horrible idea from almost every standpoint. It might’ve worked too, if Raleigh hadn’t already known that. Raleigh you can’t just escape from the Icebox. There are nurses on shift, you’re plugged into half the machines in the medical wing, and everyone here knows your face. Just calm down for a moment we can figure this out.
You don’t have to jockey again, kid. It’s not like they can force you into a jaeger. But running away when you’re still injured is a terrible idea and I know you know that because I’m in your head. Please don’t be an idiot.
When I said you were plugged into half the machines in the medical wing I meant that as a deterrent, you know. Not as an encouragement to convince the nurse to unhook you from the heart monitor.
Do you even know how to take those out? Oh my god there’s blood everywhere Raleigh —Rals stop it, please, kid—action movies were WRONG Rals, you have to take the needle out slowly, by god if you’re going to try to escape the medical wing at least do it right—
But by the end he came around. Or, rather, stopped trying to convince him otherwise, and started trying to convince him to be more sensible in his getaway. It was Yancy’s idea, loath as he was to admit helping any part in their escape ( You’re going to get caught, you know this right?) to leave exactly at ten, two hours after the lights were turned off, and thirty minutes after the first nurse check in of the night. ( I might not want you to ditch the PPDC, Yancy had said, exasperated, but I would be a piss poor excuse for an older brother if I just let you crash and burn. Leaving half an hour after the first check in gives you a little over an hour to get out of the Shatterdome. Don’t dilly-dally, kiddo.) Which meant that moments after dropping the last of the bloody tubes on his hospital bedding, and using the roll of bandages he found in the bedside drawer to cover the cuts, Raleigh had slipped through the medical wing, past the nurses station, and into the hall of the Shatterdome with ridiculous ease. Kid, Raleigh pressed his back against the wall for a moment, catching his breath and listening to the roar of blood in his ears, You have no idea how lucky you are that the nurse on duty has a serious Clash of Clans addiction. And also, Yancy told him, as Raleigh snorted, then pushed himself off the wall and started to lumber down the corridor, that our room is in the same hall as the medical wing. “That’s me,” Raleigh mumbled, trailing his hand against the paneling, “Lucky, lucky, Raleigh Becket.” God, reckless, headstrong, and depressing, Yancy sighed, but Raleigh could feel the smile’s edge in his voice, This is gonna be high school all over again, isn’t it? Raleigh dignified him with an eye roll and not much else. It took him less than thirty seconds to walk down the corridor, which was a relief, and he took a moment to be grateful that the rangers in the Anchorage Shatterdome were all assigned to the same hall as the medical wing. It meant that at half past ten on a night when the Gages were almost certainly out on patrol in Romeo Blue, there was nobody to accidentally bump into Raleigh as he’d stumbled down the hall in a hospital gown. It made sneaking out that much easier.It also meant that no one was around to hear the obnoxious shriek of their room’s door when Raleigh twisted it open. Jesus Christ, Yancy complained, as Raleigh winced and stepped into their room, I can’t believe I forgot how obnoxious that was. Raleigh closed the door as quietly as he could behind him, before he’d turned to survey the room he’d shared with his brother since the opening of the Icebox three years ago. Alright kid. Yancy told him, after a few seconds of staring, You have an hour to get packed and get out. Our duffle bags are still in the closet. Chop, chop. It took less than fifteen minutes for Raleigh to pack his and Yancy’s room—their life for three years —into two duffle bags. It was kind of depressing. The bags were mostly clothes, taken from both Becket’s dressers, and shoved in haphazardly. He fished through jackets and desk drawers for wallets and loose cash to stuff in the pockets of his winter coat. He carefully peeled photographs off the wall and tied them together with loose straps of twine before tucking them on top of old t-shirts and ratty sweaters, Jazmine’s face, framed by bright pink hair, beamed up at him from the top of the stack. He almost smiled back. He left the bomber jackets for last. Someone, probably Tendo, had brought them back in the aftermath of Knifehead, and had left them hanging side-by-side in the closet. They were practically identical, two halves of a matching set, but Raleigh could tell which one was his and which one was his brother’s. He took his out first, felt the cool leather underneath his fingers, and left it folded neatly on his bottom bunk without a second thought. He’d stared at his brother’s for a while, running his fingers across the fifth white Kaiju head that had been added, before gently folding it over his arm and placing in the duffle bag.Yancy didn’t say a word.Raleigh zipped up his coat, tugged his boots on, and slung the duffle bags across his chest, ignoring the painful itch from the scabs snaking their way around his shoulder as the straps tugged on them. He gave one last cursory glance around the barracks that had been his and Yancy’s home for the past three years, and flinched slightly as he caught sight of his reflection in the bathroom mirror.It hadn’t been the grey pallor of his face, or how it was stretched gauntly across his face, but his left eye, which had spent the entire day flaring up in sharp pulses of hot agony. It was bloody, with veins popping out and the iris rimmed in bright red. He ducked his head instantly, cutting off Yancy before he could say something about the obvious hemorrhage. He flicked off the lights, stepped out into the hall, and tugged his hood up. He didn’t bother to pulled the door closed behind him. Before the hour was up they’d realize he was gone. Alright, kid, Yancy said, Last chance. You sure about this? “Yeah,” He said, voice flat but sure, “I am.Within ten minutes he’d slipped out of the Anchorage Shatterdome through a side entrance. Within thirty he’d been off PPDC property entirely. By the time his bed had been discovered empty and his room cleared out an hour later, he was sitting in the back of a cab headed for Wasilla, cheek pressed against the cool glass as he watched the scenery fly by.Raleigh hadn’t once looked back.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Yancy Becket had gotten used to measuring his life in befores and afters. When he was a child, it was more mundane: life before Raleigh, life after Raleigh; life before Jazmine, life after Jazmine. As a teenager, he marked his life with school milestones: before starting high school, after starting high school; before joining the track team, after joining the track team; before getting into college, after getting into college; before graduating high school and after graduating high school.
That’s when things started to pick up. Measuring his life in befores and afters took a drastic turn and suddenly Yancy had a jagged line splitting his life in half: before K-day, before
the start of the apocalypse,
and after. Everything seemed to get worse from there. Barely a week after and his mom had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Yancy had dropped out from college before he even started to help take care of her, and took out a part time job on the side to help with the bills. For a while, with the Jaeger program surfacing, things almost seemed to look better. But it was still
after
the start of the apocalypse and three years later his Mom still died, his baby sister was killed in a Kaiju attack, and his coward of a Father couldn’t handle it and ran away. Leaving him and Raleigh, alone.
There was still the dividing line, before K-day and after. But now there was another one, less detrimental and obvious, but still large enough that he could split his life into two: before his family fell apart, leaving only him and his brother standing, and after. It was followed soon by before the academy, after the academy; before becoming a ranger, after becoming a ranger; before Gipsy Danger, after Gipsy danger; before Yamarashi, after Yamarashi. And Yancy, foolishly, had thought that was it. His life would forever be divided by before K-day and after, and maybe, hopefully, one day it would be divided by before humanity closed the drift and after.
And then came Knifehead.
…
Raleigh was flipping through television channels one afternoon, about a week after they had escaped from the Anchorage Shatterdome, when the PPDC dropped their official statement on his desertion. Yancy had allowed his presence to go fuzzy in the back of his brother’s head, zoned out as news channels and children’s cartoons flashed by in a boring monotone, but as soon as he caught the flash of the PPDC logo and the snippet of his brother’s name, Yancy pushed himself to the front of Raleigh’s mind until their consciousnesses were brushed comfortably against each other.
“—Ranger Raleigh Becket awoke at last from his month long coma last week after Gipsy Danger’s encounter with Knifehead, and the Shatterdome medical staff has now thankfully concluded that he shall have no lasting injuries.”
This close to the forefront of Raleigh’s mind, Yancy could feel the ache in his brother’s left shoulder where the electrical burns were the worst. Along the length of his arm most of the burns had healed, had turned into snaking scars that twisted thin and white. But on the shoulder, where Knifehead had used his horn to sever Gipsy’s arm from her socket, the burns were thick and deep. Raleigh had torn most of them open with the straps of his duffle during the escape, and as a result had spent most of their week in Wasilla cleaning them in the motel bathroom and rewrapping with the bandages he’d nicked from the Shatterdome. The PPDC public relations claimed no lasting injuries—that they were aware of, but Yancy knew the signs of nerve damage well, and recognized them in sharp twinges of pain and waves of numbness that ran down his brother’s arm.
“As the public knows, Gipsy Danger’s right hemisphere pilot, Ranger Yancy Becket, was killed in the confrontation with the level III Kaiju, Knifehead.” And wasn’t that weird to hear, that he was dead, Yancy thought, and felt the barely-there flickers of his brother’s agreement.
“The Becket brothers were two of the program’s best and brightest, and have led the world in most Kaiju kills since 2018. Although their individual skills certainly played a part in this success, it was mostly due to their high drift compatibility: 94.5%, a baseline record that no two potential pilots have ever surpassed. It is out of respect for their drift compatibility, their service to humanity, and Ranger Becket’s own wishes in the wake of his loss, that we must unfortunately announce to the public that as of today, Ranger Raleigh Becket has been honorably discharged from the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. We all thank him for his service.”
Raleigh turned the TV off before anything else could be said. He stared at the black screen, and then, after a moment, let out a long, shuddering breath, and sunk down until he was lying flat on the bed. A few minutes passed in silence before he spoke, “Honorably discharged.” He repeated in disbelief, “It’s better than I expected.”
Yancy hummed in agreement, because it was. Raleigh’s theories had ranged from a dishonorable discharge at best, and the PPDC declaring him a criminal for desertion while simultaneously starting a manhunt in order to drag their missing ranger kicking and screaming back to the Anchorage Shatterdome all the way at worst. His brother might’ve been a cocky little brat, but he was a pessimist at heart, and as a big brother it had been his job ever since they were kids to convince Raleigh that the worst case scenario wasn’t always the most likely one.
Well,
Yancy said wryly,
I hope this means you’re no longer afraid of using the ATM.
“Oh, shut up.” A flash of irritation appeared in the Drift, and suddenly Yancy knew as surely as he knew his own name that in that moment, if he’d had a body, Raleigh would’ve taken a pillow and attempted to smother him. “They’re a UN funded organization, Yance, they’re totally capable of tracking me by my bank account.”
You’re a lost cause,
Yancy said mournfully. They fell into silence. Yancy went back to floating in the back of his brother’s mind, a comfortable half-state between sleep and consciousness that he’d rarely gotten to enjoy since joining up with the PPDC. Raleigh stared blankly at the ceiling, watching the blades of the fan spin, and listening to the white noise for so long Yancy was convinced they’d both fall asleep before the hour was up.
“Y’know, bro… that might be it.” Raleigh broke the silence, shamelessly tugging at Yancy’s consciousness through the bond and forcefully yanking him out of his half-sleep the way he’d done since they discovered the Ghost Drift. The way he’d done the night they went out to face Knifehead. No—Yancy shrugged the thought off before it could bleed across the Drift to his brother, and instead a vague sense of confusion spiraling across until Raleigh opened his mouth to elaborate. “Our drift compatibility. Why you, y’know.” Raleigh waved vaguely around his head. “You get it?”
Yancy thought on it. Although every pair of Rangers who were hooked up to a Jaeger held their neural handshakes at a perfect hundred, baseline compatibility—what could determine whether or not you could actually
Drift
with your partner, the skeletal structure to the actual bond—tended to be more finicky. It could change, of course, and tended to inch higher the longer two people drifted, but it was more stagnant, and wasn’t something that could be easily changed just by spending more time together. It was kind of like IQ, not demonstrative of all the talents they had brought to the academy, or even an indicator of whether they’d succeed, but it proved they had potential to be one of the best. To be
the
best.
“The deeper you drift, the better you fight.” Raleigh was fond of saying, usually with a grin and a quick punch to Yancy’s shoulder after a deployment, “Makes sense we’re the best of both, huh?”
“Oh shut up,” Yancy would always shoot back with a roll of his eyes, but smiling nonetheless, “Just don’t get too cocky, ‘kay kid?”
Their Ghost Drift was strong too, it was damn near telepathy, and made a decent party trick when people tied scarves around Raleigh’s eyes and he still guessed how many fingers Yancy was holding up right every time. Once or twice Yancy had woken up in the med wing after deployment, head still so stuffed with his brother’s memories and emotions, that he’d forgotten who’s head he was in.
“Yeah,” Yancy didn’t say a word, but Raleigh still responded; tipping his head back into the sheets and closing his eyes the way he always did when he sank deeper into the Ghost Drift, letting the edges between his thoughts and Yancy’s blur. For Yancy the Ghost Drift was all instinct, vague emotions and feelings, but Raleigh knew his way around it so well he was practically a mind reader. “You get it.”
…
They stayed at the motel in Wasilla for two more weeks. Yancy had quietly suggested it the night after the announcement, as Raleigh went through the motions of cleaning and rewrapping circuitry burns, to stay until the scabs finished healing over. His brother had agreed without an argument, or even a protest, and while Yancy knew it was technically a victory, the dull sheen of his brother’s eyes in the mirror as he nodded in acquise felt more like a loss.
The feeling was only further amplified by how Raleigh, his ever-energetic brother who somehow always had more pep in five hours of sleep than Yancy ever did twelve, spent those two weeks staring out the windows blankly sitting in a hard chair, and when he couldn’t manage to get out of bed he counted the cracks in the plaster or watched the ceiling fan spin.
All of the adrenaline—from Knifehead, the desertion, the anxiety of his stance with the PPDC—had faded, and left in its place a shell of his baby brother.
And Yancy, stuck in the back of his head, could barely do a thing to help him. But he was the older brother, and it had always been his job to push through the shitty times, to pick Raleigh up when he fell down, and to keep the two of them going even when all Yancy wanted to do was sleep, and Raleigh wanted to spend the rest of his days staring at wall with glazed over eyes.
They’ve almost healed over,
Yancy pointed out, rather lamely, one night as his brother was pulling a shirt over his head, noticing the lack of stiffness in his shoulder. Raleigh, who hadn’t had to wrap the wounds in a few days, nodded loosely in assent.
So where do you want to go next, then?
“I dunno,” Raleigh tugged his shirt down, and fell backward onto the bed, “Juneau, maybe?”
The train doesn’t run from Wasilla to Juneau,
Yancy informed him, although Raleigh already knew,
You gonna try and hitchhike or something?
“Mm.” Raleigh turned on his side, “I was thinking about renting a car, actually.”
Two weeks ago, Raleigh had been buzzing with paranoia. He’d gotten into a fight with Yancy over withdrawing money from his bank account because he was terrified the PPDC could track him through it and used what couple hundred dollars he had to check them into the cheapest motel he could find. Now he was thinking of renting a car to drive from Wasilla to Juneau, and didn’t even care that the PPDC was probably still keeping tabs on him, despite the fact that he was discharged. It was both a terrifying show of apathy on his brother’s behalf, and also a brilliant
fuck you
.
But it was a plan, and it was honestly more than Yancy thought his brother would have, so he merely shoved a vague confirmation across the Ghost Drift and said,
Yeah, okay. Leave day after tomorrow?
“Sure.” Raleigh turned again, so he was once more sprawling across the bed on his back. He tucked both hands behind his head and went back to watching the blades of the fan spin, “Doesn't really matter to me”
Yeah, kid,
Yancy thought to himself, worry spiralling tight and contained in his conscious,
That’s what I’m worried about.
…
The first year after Knifehead was painfully numb. It bleed over the Drift from Raleigh and grasped at the edges of Yancy’s conscious, and he had to fight constantly against the cold apathy that had sunken it’s claws deep into his brother.
They stayed in Juneau the entire time. Raleigh couldn’t be bothered to go anywhere else, and spent most of his time inside the apartment he rented. It has almost no furniture, just a mattress, a chair, and a lamp that Raleigh only turned on when the light of the moon wasn’t enough to see by at night.
His brother spent his days staring out the window at the edges of the ocean that weren’t hidden by buildings and greenery. He forgot to get dressed unless Yancy reminded him, and almost always he ended up in the same soft pants and sweater, with Yancy’s bomber jacket draped over his shoulders.
Raleigh barely slept anymore. The insomnia that plagued him their entire lives amped up to the point where he could barely get eight hours of sleep in a week. When he did manage to drift off, his sleep was always restless and uneasy, filled with nightmares of memories that belong to both of them.
He barely ta;led either. Just nodded when he bought groceries and sent vague tendrils of half-emotions swirling across the Ghost Drift whenever Yancy asked him a question that required more than a simple nod or shake of the head.
It’s partially guilt, he knew, because while Yancy was, for all intents and purposes,
alive
, his body wasn’t. It was crushed beneath the waves and dissolved painfully in Kaiju blue after Yancy was yanked forcefully out of the conn pod and his own head.
It’s weird to admit it, but Yancy knew Raleigh was worse than he was after death had taken Jaz and Mom the same way cowardice had taken their Dad. Yancy’s not sure if it’s because his death was the last straw, or because Raleigh didn’t have the goals of graduation and theJ Jaeger academy pushing him forward anymore, or because, technically, Yancy had died while they were Drifting and the
snap
of the connection that haunted his brother’s dreams left Raleigh so traumatized that he couldn’t bare to do anything but sit and stare out the window. It was… probably all three, now that Yancy thought about it.
It doesn’t help that people still recognized Raleigh in the streets. They pulled him to the side, thanked him and offered their condolences, and depending on how much of a jaeger fly they were, they walked away either pissed or confused when Raleigh just stared at them blankly, refusing to respond. They ripped open wounds that haven’t even healed and Yancy
would
suggest that Raleigh stop wearing his bomber jacket wherever he went, because the worn leather stamped with Kaiju heads and Gipsy’s logo was basically a glaring beacon to the world that
Raleigh Becket Is Here
, but he knew that it grounded his brother in a way he couldn’t when he’s barely more than a consciousness, and can’t do anything to comfort Raleigh besides words and the warmth of the Drift.
So Raleigh kept the jacket, got recognized in the streets, and Yancy wondered how to get his brother to be more than a shell of himself.
The days when it rained were the hardest. Yancy can’t coerce Raleigh to leave the shabby apartment and the hard chair behind to go walk outside, so his brother was stuck staring more
at
the window than
out
, watching as drops of water raced down the glass with glazed eyes and a weight so heavy on his chest that Yancy could feel the full force of it without trying.
And all of that excluded, of course, Raleigh’s arm. The scabs healed over into a swirl of thick white scars, but the nerves don’t. On good days, Raleigh barely has more than a tingle in his fingertips and can hold glass without fear of a sudden
twitch
sending it falling to the ground. On bad days, the numbness was so bad that Raleigh once mentioned it felt like he had a useless sack hanging from his shoulder instead of an arm. On worst days, too often when it rained, Raleigh’s shoulder burned in sharp stabs of pain that were eerily reminiscent to an electric shock. It left him bedridden, more often than not, unwilling and unable to get up.
Six months in and it seemed almost hopeless, his brother still spiralling out of control and as he’s all but given up fighting wave after wave of painful apathy twisted together with constant guilt. But Yancy, unlike his brother, was a realist. Raleigh might’ve condemn himself to an endless cycle because he didn’t have the strength to pull himself out of it yet, but Yancy knew better, and he may not have a foot or a leg or even a body, but he still planned on kicking Raleigh’s ass into gear with all the strength he could muster.
That’s what older brother’s were for, after all.
Get dressed,
He told Raleigh the next morning, as his brother blinks blearily at the ceiling,
We’re going out.
Irritation swirls across the Drift, flecked with sarcasm. At this point Yancy wasn’t sure if it’s him or the Drift translating, but he caught Raleigh’s meaning anyways:
Well, good morning to you too.
And then, a question, tightly spiralled and wrapped in apprehension:
Where
?
Job hunting,
He declared with false cheer, enjoying the way surprise spiked on Raleigh’s end of the bond,
I’m sick of the view outside the window, so we’re gonna find something more interesting to do, and get paid for it.
His tone was light, but left no room for argument, and these days Raleigh didn’t have any energy to argue regardless. His brother got dressed, not nearly in record time, but fast enough. When they left the apartment, it was within the hour and Raleigh’s dressed in one of Yancy’s worn sweaters instead of the bomber jacket. It’s not great, it’s barely good but it still lightened something in Yancy anyways.
It’s progress.
Raleigh ended up becoming a day laborer at several construction sites scattered around Juneau. Most nights he’s too exhausted to dream, and when the insomnia hit he still stared out the window and watched the edges of the ocean with a glazed and wary look in his eyes. But Raleigh left the apartment, and for now, at least, that was enough for Yancy.
(Around month eight of year one, flyers began to appear by the construction site Raleigh worked at. They’re stamped in military standard font, all black and white, and just like the flyers that had appeared in Anchorage almost six years ago when the PPDC first started recruiting for pilots.
LABORERS WANTED,
they read,
HELP BUILD THE UNBREAKABLE LAST DEFENSE AGAINST THE KAIJU: THE WALL OF LIFE.)
…
Yancy wasn’t sure who’s more surprised, him or his brother, when Raleigh started taking shifts on the Wall a few months into Year Two.
Yancy had known Raleigh was eyeing the recruitment posters, but he had figured it was more out of morbid curiosity than anything. After all, barely a year after their combined failure with Knifehead and suddenly the PPDC was moving on from Jaegers to blockades to guard the coastline. But, when Raleigh had finally torn one of the posters down and folded it into his jacket pocket on their walk home, Yancy had realized Raleigh wasn’t eyeing the posters out of a sense of morbid curiosity, but rather a sense of guilt-warped
duty.
It was the same way Raleigh had been looking at the Jaeger recruitment posters after Jasmine died, now that he thought about it.
He’d asked Raleigh about it, when his brother had spent two hours blankly holding the poster in his hands. Raleigh had blinked, shaken his head a few times in an effort to clear it, then said, “The job I have. Work ends in a few weeks. And the Wall—” Raleigh had given up halfway through the sentence and let his words trail into empty air.
After a moment Raleigh exhaled loudly and instead sent a series of spiralling emotions across the drift: Obligation, duty, and a desire to help in whatever way he could were at the forefront of it, but Yancy could pick out the strands of guilt that bound them all together.
Ah,
Yancy had responded with,
Well, at least you’re taking initiative in getting out of the house.
Nothing; no laughter, no snort, no slight smile that tugged at his brother’s mouth. Another joke fallen flat. Yancy had gotten used to it. He sighed as much as one could without a body, and moved on.
Just be careful, kid,
Yancy had continued,
Now tell me—when do you start?
The work was dangerous and gruelling, and the whole Wall was covered in an air of desperation so thick that it was practically smog. Raleigh took more shifts on the Wall than he ever did at his old construction gig, but Yancy wasn’t quite sure that the extra time spent out of the apartment was payoff for the danger it put him in.
Raleigh took more shifts on the top than he should’ve, and they both knew it. They’re hard, long, treacherous, and Yancy thanks every god he can think of each time his brother came back from one safe.
Yancy was starting to feel like their Mom, before she got bad. Maybe a little more like himself when she was. He’d pestered Raleigh into wearing more layers on the Wall, layering three sweaters instead of two, and chastised him into a fourth when the skies cried and stabs of lightning chased through his brother’s shoulder.
Raleigh had been starting to act like himself when Mom was bad too. He’d held it together, of course, because middle child or
not
Raleigh was an older brother same as Yancy. Jasmine had been bright and cruel and kind; a little sister in all aspects of how she crushed both of them in racing games and cried when they raced around the backyard without her.
So Yancy had focused his grief
—
and it was very much grief, it couldn’t be anything else, could it? Not when Mom had still been lighting cigarettes during chemo
—
into taking care of Raleigh and Jasmine the way their Dad never could, even though Yancy had been barely an adult at the time, still coming to terms with the end of the world and still not quite finished with puberty, and Yancy does that now, too. He focused his sudden fear of the Ocean, his sudden fear of
falling
, and the terror of feeling death’s cold fingers dip into his chest— because he couldn’t change that, he couldn’t
fix
that, he could only live with it, and make sure his brother could too. Make sure Yancy took
care
of him the way the oldest sibling was supposed to do. But Raleigh.
But Raleigh had shoved his grief aside, balled it up in a tangled mess and shoved it so far into the back of his head that even after years of drifting it still took
effort
for Yancy to catch more than a wisp of it floating through his meta-physical fingers.
But Raleigh’s insomnia had
flared
, enough that his brother had bruises under each eye so dark that Jasmine had asked, often and amused, who the hell had he picked a fight with?
(Himself, of course, Yancy knew, the answer was always himself.)
Years later, and now his brother is raring for a rematch, dukes up and eyes open all night, and despite being permanently stuck in the ring, Yancy still struggled to break up the fight, struggled to cut through the thick clouds of
guiltgriefnumb
to get to Raleigh underneath before he drowned in it.
He finally does; six months in, a year and a half after Knifehead. It’s a victory, a triumph, a
conquest
on behalf of his brother, on behalf of
himself
because all he has is Raleigh and he won’t loose him to the torrent waves of depression and trauma even as Yancy struggled to keep his head above the waters of his own.
Yancy grasped a win within his fingers and caught his brother just as he was about to slip through.
Literally.
They were atop of the wall, and Raleigh was half-submerged in the fog from the low-laying clouds after the storm the previous night, and the subsequent insomnia resulting from the shooting pain up his shoulder. His limbs were halfway to leaden, his vision had started to fuzz at the corners, and with every dreaded blink Yancy thought his brother took a stumbling step closer to falling asleep.
And the wall was still slick with rain. It took a split second: Raleigh stood up, his vision blurred, he
stumbled
, his foot caught, squeaked,
slipped.
A talon tearing into the conn pod—
It was too fast for either of them to think and Raleigh had been numb with shock, limbs heavy, and eyes dry and wide as his heart clenched in his chest. It was a brief moment of fear, of terror, of
realization
and
resignation
that Yancy recognized.
Falling fast into the ocean—
His brother could not die, his brother would not die, and even if Raleigh’s reflexes had been blurred and muddled by insomnia, Yancy’s weren’t, and there was a reason Jaeger pilots fought in teams of two, and the Ghost Drift sang in the back of both their minds, and for a split, shining second in the middle of all the terror Yancy had forgotten that they were not in Gipsy’s conn pod grappling with a Kaiju. Raleigh’s consciousness was muddled, dreary, depressed and Yancy was always the right hemisphere for a reason and it’s so, so easy to slip past his brother and into the lead again because it’s Gipsy Danger, right? It was Raleigh on the left and Yancy on the right, and it’s them, equals, against Yamarashi and Clawhook and—Knifehead. Fuck, Yancy had thought, felt euphemetically, because this was not Gipsy this was Raleigh, this was his little brother’s body and Yancy was just hanging on for the ride, his consciousness connected by the thin thread of the Drift, and Raleigh was falling, falling, falling—
Raleigh’s left hand shot out, and fingers sleek with rain wrapped around a steady pole as both brothers sucked in a heavy breath. Raleigh blinked, and Yancy pressed his brother’s left hand flat against Raleigh’s chest. His brother’s heart raced.
“Yancy?” Raleigh croaked.
“I don’t
—
” Yancy answered, and they were both stunned into silence when the words tumbled past Raleigh’s lips instead of confusion tightly spiralled and flared through the drift. Raleigh’s left side tingled, fuzzy like TV static, like a hand, arm, leg fallen asleep and just waking up. He tightened his brother’s hand around the scaffolding and felt a jolt of surprise when Raleigh’s fingers desperately clasped the cold metal.
Raleigh lifted his right hand and fingers messily yanked up welding goggles before they brushed delicately around his left eye, as if remembering the bloody, veiny,
mess
it had turned into for the week after Knifehead, as it had throbbed in tune with Raleigh’s heartbeat and sent sharp pulsating pain through his head.
It hadn’t occurred to either of them at the time
—
Raleigh high on a cocktail of desperation, adrenaline, and half-baked guilt until the PPDC announcement, while Yancy had been fuzzily floating in the Drift, attempting to ground himself amidst the swirl of his own emotions while keeping his brother upright and alive
—
but it had been the
left
eye, hadn’t it? And Yancy had been Gipsy’s right hemisphere, controlled her right side for three years, but
that wasn’t how it worked for people.
Right controlled left and left controlled right and when Yancy reached out in the Drift that kept him tangled against his brother’s mind it was Raleigh’s left hand that shot out, Raleigh’s left hand that tightened around the scaffolding, and Raleigh’s left eye that throbbed with phantom pain from the hemorrhage almost two years ago.
But those had been thoughts for later, when his brother wasn’t standing dizzy and confused on the top of the Wall and when Yancy couldn’t feel the bite of the cold against Raleigh’s left cheek like it was his own skin. It was almost like Gipsy, the way they moved to brace Raleigh’s feet against the scaffolding and carefully slid down the stories, only Raleigh controlled the right while Yancy worked the left. Raleigh’s feet hit the ground with a
smack
, sent another shock of static up the left leg, and they stumbled, almost tripped, and waved off the shift supervisor with a loose hand as they dropped off the welding pack with half-slurred excuses about a stomach bug.
They moved back to the apartment, static flared up Raleigh’s limbs and spots floated in front of his eyes. It was like an old television that couldn’t seem to catch the signal long enough to hold a single channel, and Raleigh’s right leg had swapped from Raleigh to Yancy and back to Raleigh twice on the walk back to the apartment.
It had taken Raleigh three tries before he could fit the keys into the door’s lock, his hands fumbled and his fingers shook. He’d collapsed onto the mattress pressed against one wall of the studio, and neither of them had wanted to attempt to kick of Raleigh’s shoes or remove his layers.
Raleigh curled into himself, left side pressed into the matress and arms wrapped around his chest. The pressure helped stabilize the pins and needles pressing into Raleigh’s nerves, and Yancy had found himself slipping back out of alignment and into the warmth of the ghost drift. His brother sighed, and closed his eyes.
Just like Gipsy,
Yancy hummed, and then,
Hey, kid, how do you feel about being the world’s smallest Jaegar?
“Still taller than you, old man,” Raleigh retorted, mouth curled upwards.
And normally. Normally, before Knifehead, Yancy would’ve shot back
barely an inch, Rals,
and his brother would’ve said
whatever makes you feel better, Yance,
because they’d had this conversation two dozen times lying in their bunks when Raleigh was too amped up to sleep and his energy bleed over the bond.
But this wasn’t normal.
(This wasn’t before Knifehead anymore. This was
after.)
Although, when Raleigh let out a tired chuckle, a true smile tugging at his cheeks when Yancy sent a grumbling concession swirling over, he had to admit: it was good enough.
It was progress.