Chuck shifted uncomfortably, looking sideways. "I didn't have much of a childhood, alright?"
"Who has never seen Mary Poppins?!"
"Probably a lot of people by now."
"No." Raleigh stood, swiping a hand down in a chopping motion. "No! We are watching Mary Poppins!"
"Raleigh, we have better things t' do than-"
"WE ARE WATCHING MARY POPPINS!!"
Chuck huffed, kicking his booted feet up onto the coffee table and folding his arms.
"What's going on?" his Dad asked, pausing in the hallway, a grocery bag tucked in one arm.
"Raleigh's making me watch some shitty-"
Raleigh seemed to pop up out of nowhere - though really Chuck had just lost track of him as he'd gone hunting for the remote - and pointed a finger at Herc. "I am educating your son!"
"What'd he do now?"
"All I said was, 'You know, like Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.' And he...gave me THAT look. HERCULES HANSEN!"
Chuck looked to his dad, then back at Raleigh. "This is some Yank thing, isn't it?"
"Yancy, give me strength," Raleigh mumbled, rubbing at his brow. "Put the bag down. Put the bag down now, and sit down."
Herc disappeared into the kitchen and came back fairly quickly, so Chuck figured there wasn't much by way of perishables in it. His dad flopped down onto the couch, leaving space for the blond who stepped over his boyfriend's extended legs with practiced ease and slumped into the space between them. He snuggled back into it - a habit of his that never went unacknowledged; Herc's arm extending across the back of the couch so Raleigh could fold into the welcome curve of his body and drape his legs in Chuck's lap (Chuck's own arms closing comfortably about them) - arm outstretched so he could press play.
"Fair warning," he said once he'd successfully pinned them both to the spot. "There's singing."
Raleigh sat up quickly, only avoided bashing his head on the upper bunk because they were in France again. "What do you mean, dead?"
"Demised. No more. Ceased to be. Expired and gone to meet your maker. Bereft of life. You... are an ex-Raleigh."
Raleigh covered his eyes and groaned. "Fine, fine—I believe you. We don't have to do the whole dead parrot skit, do we?"
"It's good to see you again, kid." Yancy grinned when Raleigh looked at him again, and reached out to ruffle Raleigh's hair. "Even given the circumstances."
"Mm." Raleigh pushed himself from the bed (thankfully still in France—the shifts were making him dizzy) and eyed Yancy. "Where are we? This can't be Heaven if you're here."
"Oh, har har." Yancy punched Raleigh's shoulder, then wound an arm around Raleigh and drew him toward the door of the small bedroom. "It is what you make of it. Maybe I'm not here. Maybe I'm just a figment of your imagination, given shape to ease your trauma. Either way, though, you're still dead, so you might as well enjoy what you've got."
Raleigh glanced at Yancy—had he always looked so young?—and then they stepped through the door and into the halls of the Hong Kong Shatterdome. Not expecting them, Raleigh nearly tumbled down the few steps leading to his quarters, but Yancy caught him with a chuckle.
"It takes some getting used to, I know." He squeezed his arm around Raleigh, reassuring whether he was real or not. "We shape this place with our memories; we see what we expect to see, but we don't always see each other's shapes." Yancy glanced around with interest. "Is this Hong Kong or Sydney?"
"Hong Kong." Yet even as he said it, it shifted—the hallways, always so cramped in Hong Kong, were widened to the more accessible design of Sydney, the exposed pipes melted into smooth walls and the hatches gave way to proper doors. "Does it always do this?"
Yancy laughed. "You'll get used to it. It'll settle down eventually, once you stop trying to imprint everything at the same time." He tugged, guided Raleigh down the broad hallway that usually led to LOCCENT, though Raleigh wasn't willing to lay money on that being their destination. "There are some people who're interested in seeing you."
"People?"
"You'll see," Yancy said as the doors at the end of the hall slid open to reveal—well, a LOCCENT. They'd returned to the Icebox, apparently, but that was forgotten when the chair at the far end of the room spun.
"Well, well—if it isn't the missing Becket boy. You're late."
Raleigh's delighted utterance of Tendo's name was lost when they caught each other in a tight hug. Tendo briefly appeared as he had the last time Raleigh saw him—stooped and balding, creaky bones and tired eyes—but then that was gone, replaced by Tendo as he'd always thought of him: straight and strong, bow tie and suspenders and slicked-back hair. "It's good to see you, buddy."
Tendo laughed as they broke apart, shoved at Raleigh's shoulder. "Wish I could say the same. Look at you, all wrinkles and liver spots. You used to have more hair, too."
Bewildered, Raleigh looked down at his own hands, held them out in front of him, but they appeared as they always had: strong, capable, rough from years of working the Wall. He looked at Yancy, who watched him as a smirk played around his lips. "Is he shitting me?"
"Probably." Yancy traded smirks with Tendo, then slung his arm around Raleigh's shoulders again. "Remember what I said, about giving shapes to things? We shape each other, too. You'll always be a kid to me, but someone who didn't meet you until you were older would see what they remembered instead. Come on, we're not done yet."
This time, the door opened to the Wall as Raleigh had last seen it, with ribs of I-bars stretching into the sky. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Tendo gawking at the scenery through the door, but he didn't have time to question it before he spotted another figure, settled as though on a throne where Raleigh had made a decision so long ago.
"Looking good, Marshal," he said as he closed the distance between them to stop where their positions were reversed from his recollection.
"Ranger Becket." Marshal Pentecost rose with an ease that Raleigh had never seen in him, even before he'd known of his illness. "I'm given to understand that it took you long enough. Your brother was quite impatient."
"Marshal—" Yancy began, but Pentecost continued as though he'd never interrupted.
"You're looking well. To be expected, I suppose." He paused, then tipped his head down. It took Raleigh a moment to recognize it as a bow. "I must ask..."
Raleigh tilted his head, then grinned; he should have known what the Marshal's interest would be. "She's fine—a proud obaasan now, and still consulting. I don't think you'll see her again for a while."
Pentecost nodded, his expression satisfied. "That is good to hear. Thank you, Ranger Becket." He settled on the half-constructed throne again and made a vague shooing motion. "I won't keep you."
"There are still some other people who are waiting to see you—though I can't imagine why."
Raleigh turned to find Yancy at the door that should have been showing a construction site through a swirl of snow, but which instead gave way to a broad field—France again, then. "Shut up, old man," he said, and damn but the reflexive answer sounded amazing, something he hadn't heard himself say in almost 70 years. "You know you missed me."
"Yeah. I did." Yancy didn't wait for him, instead waded through the grass with such purpose that Raleigh had to hustle to catch up.
They walked for what seemed like hours—the Wall had long since disappeared behind them, and only grass stretched to the horizon in every direction Raleigh could see. Occasionally, he thought he'd caught snatches of things—a playful argument in Cantonese, a lecture on statistical probabilities, a softly-accented lullaby—but when he tried to hold onto them, they slipped away. "Is it just us here?" he finally asked.
Yancy looked at him with surprise, then laughed so hard he doubled over to rest his hands on his knees. He ignored Raleigh's kick to his ankle, and laughed until he was breathless and red in the face, wiped his eyes when he finally straightened.
"I didn't realize it was so funny."
"You always were full of yourself," Yancy said. Raleigh tried to be annoyed by Yancy's blithe avoidance of his question, but he couldn't deny that Yancy had a point. "Give it time. If you saw everything now, wouldn't that be overwhelming? Better to be eased in, isn't it?" He ruffled Raleigh's hair. "Trust your big brother."
Raleigh sighed and ducked away from Yancy's hand, reached up to straighten out his hair. "I... Yance, is everyone here?"
"Anyone and everyone," Yancy said with a grin that implied that he knew exactly why Raleigh was asking. "Why? You have someone in mind?"
"Yeah." For a moment, Raleigh felt old again, rickety and tired—so very tired. "There's someone I've been wanting to see for a long time."
Yancy stared at him consideringly for so long that Raleigh had to fight the urge to squirm, only to finally nod sharply. "Alright," he said, "I suppose we can skip to the main course." He bumped his shoulder against Raleigh's. "I see how I rate. Not much market for chopped liver."
"You know you'll always be my brother, Yance." He looked up at Yancy, grinned at Yancy's gap-toothed smile, then blinked and they were of a height again, Yancy's face once again that of a young man and not a boy. "But, really, you can wait, can't you?"
Yancy laughed and shoved Raleigh through a door that hadn't been there a moment ago, and Raleigh stumbled into a bright, sunlit room. A breeze blew enticingly through an open window, and Raleigh remembered how it had felt against his bare skin as he'd lazed in that large bed. The stack of books on the stand next to the bed was as he remembered, as was the pile of laundry in the corner—neither of them had been great at housekeeping. Soft music drifted from somewhere... else, an old rock ballad that had made Raleigh groan every time it played.
All that was missing was—
"Herc?" he called softly.
"What kept you?"
Raleigh barely had time to turn before arms slid around his waist and drew him against the broadly-muscled body he knew as well as—if not better than—his own. Herc's mouth was firm against his, the kiss full of the promises that they'd not been able to keep before, not when Herc's strength was sapped away by the illness that had separated them. He shoved the memories away, lost himself in the remembered heat.
"Sorry I wasn't here sooner," he said when they finally broke apart. He traced his fingers over the curve of Herc's smile, leaned in for another quick peck, nuzzled against Herc's ear. "I didn't mean to take so long."
"S'okay." Herc's mouth was a drug, but Raleigh wasn't going to be complaining any time soon. When they broke apart again, Herc caught Raleigh's hand, pressed kisses to each fingertip. "You're here now. I didn't mind waiting."
Raleigh hummed and drew his hand away to steal yet another kiss. "Promise you won't leave again."
"I promise," Herc said, and Raleigh didn't care if he was the real thing or a construct of Raleigh's own mind: this time, he wasn't letting go.
Memories are not all sweet, nor do they remain neatly in the past—Raleigh knows this well. After the closure of the Breach, Raleigh discovers that there's nothing wrong with leaning on someone, any more than there is with letting them lean on you.There was something magical about storms.
Easy solutions are an elusive quarry. What seems the easiest may prove far from it—sometimes, all you can do is keep trying. Herc never was very good at giving up. It was three weeks of drinking himself to blackout before Herc admitted that it wasn't helping.
Raleigh is a brat who doesn't know not to mess with a man's beer. Fortunately, he also knows how to make up for it. Herc didn't spit out his beer, but it was a near thing.
