#falling is easy

[forgotn1]

I'd give it all if I thought you wanted it.

[zohnvxl]

Should I defy gravity?

Or should I keep falling?

[justhiitit]

“There are many, many angles at which one can fall but only one angle at which one can stand straight.”

G.K Chesterton

[r-becket]

give up; raleigh & stacker

“What are you doing, Ranger?”

At the edge of the islands lesser-known docks, with his pants rolled to his knees and his legs dangling in the surf below, it looks like Raleigh doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. “Enjoying the view,” the not-yet-a-pilot offers weakly and leans forward on his elbows, bracing them against the crumpled pants of his academy jump suit. In the afternoon sun he’s stripped down the top half of the suit and tied it around his waist. All he had on now was a singlet and his shoulders – shoulders that had yet to be weighted by the service and scarred by deployments – are bare and, Stacker notices, a little sunburnt.

     (He really ought to rethink the weekend volleyball matches)

The Marshall steps up to the teenager’s side. He doesn’t make a move to lower himself to the boy’s height, or drop his feet into the surf with him. “You know what I mean, Mr. Becket.”

Raleigh sighs and it’s with a great heaving of his shoulders that he sits back. He braces his hands behind him on the wooden dock and looks up at Stacker. “I don’t know, sir,” he admits and flicks his gaze back to the ocean. He may be one of the more cocky cadets but he’d be damned if he could ever hold his Marshall’s gaze for more than a second.

He’d grow out of it, Stacker muses lightly as he follows the boy’s gaze across the water. “You know you can’t let this get between you and your brother,” he prompts.

“I know.”

Stacker can’t help it; he arches a brow, “Do you? Really? Because your display back there says otherwise.”

Raleigh scowls but doesn’t say anything.

He’s just a boy, Stacker wants to remind himself, He’s only eighteen; too young for this war.

But then another voice reminds him that this young man (the correction comes hard and sharp in Stacker’s mind) has one of the best compatibility scores with his brother that the PPDC has ever seen. They need him.

“Miss Sokolov is a distraction,” Stacker straightens out his suit lapels with a deft brush of his hands, “You and your brother have something special, something that you won’t find with anyone else—”

     (Oh how fates would laugh at him in seven years. Stacker boy it turns out you were wrong…he does find someone else and you can’t deny that together they are everything you hoped for)

“—so don’t compromise it.”

“I’m not,” the words come out clipped and sharp and petulant. A teenager’s answer.

“You are,” Stacker corrects him, not looking down. “You’re thinking about giving up because your brother slept with the girl you like. You’re being childish, Ranger.”

A beat. “I’m not a Ranger yet.”

“But you still answer to it…”

Raleigh stills and Stacker thins his lips. He’s made his point. 

“You have another simulation tomorrow at 0600,” he turns on his heel, “Do not be late, Raleigh.”

[r-becket]

today you were far away

Yancy can hear Raleigh's screams of anguish and terror as he flies through the air. But he can't hear anything but the furious storm, the waves crashing against Gipsy and the Kaiju, and the electric crackling of his Drivesuit and the pieces of the Motion Rig still attached to him.

But he can hear him, and his voice tears through his mind and screams with him. 

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 

His voice fades out. Yancy clings to those words as water rushes into his lungs, and soon everything blurs away until the only thing left is the brother that sinks ever so slow, like he is drifting off to sleep.

[r-becket]

Season's Greetings

Christmas Day in the Shatterdome, and the festive mood feels strange to Raleigh. Usually the place is all about the hustle-bustle and hurrying to and fro for work, but now he can see people laughing and talking in groups, wearing cheap Santa hats or elf ears. Some halls have snakes of tinsel, others have fake wreaths, and small little Christmas trees could be seen at random corners. 

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."

And he watches her close her door before he ducks his head back in and shuts his own, making up his mind to get her a gift later on.

[r-becket]

i'm listening, old man || self para

Y’know, you go through the Academy, training to be a pilot and learning the Drift and you’re always with someone else. It’s a partnership. You’re told to not even dream about piloting on your own because the first guy that did it went and died.  (Ruined it for everyone, frankly, Raleigh had joked once after a few beers and a pretty girl’s number on his hand.) It was serious business when you were co-pilots; you had to put your trust in someone to help you do something that you weren’t physically capable of completing on your own. You had to be willing to help and get help in return.   

                                       “Only listen to me—”

Raleigh’s scream is a piss poor substitute for the answer he should have given Yancy. “I’m listening, old man,” he should have said. Should. The pain that lances through him as Gipsy’s operating system compensates for the lack of a co-pilot is excruciating and all he knows is that Knifehead is still coming at him and he can still feel the flutter of Yancy at the back of his mind.

It stays there – Yancy’s fluttering – until Raleigh manages to transfer the control of Gipsy to his right hand. (Later, with a hand wrapped around a beer he would realize that Yancy had lived past the initial crushing grip of the Kaiju, hence the extended presence in his mind.) He grunts and through the burning numbness of his left arm yells at Gipsy. It’s nothing discernable of course, just a meaningless sound born from frustration and pain and loss but goddammit why was Yancy gone?

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.

Raleigh is thinking about how he used to consider his brother immortal when his knees finally give way and he falls back in the snow. “I'm listening, old man,” he mutters through bloodied lips and stares up at the sky that’s as white as the snow and the cold seeping into his bones.

[lordsewage]

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The Afternoons- Falling is Easy