"I imagined him different."
Mako told her sensei, hiding her impertinence behind a language the pilot could hardly know. Until he surprised her, responding in kind with an amused, "Better or worse?" which informed her just how different this man was from the Raleigh Becket seen in the news clips.
She had expected another Chuck Hansen. A man young, handsome, and full of piss and vigor. What she got instead was a dulled down man. A face beat by cold and sun, marked by flying sparks, but still attractive, in that American way. All cowboys and Indians and dirt washed faces.
It was the sweater that got her, thick, warn, overlarge, the neck swaddling, the sleeves and body too long, too loose, like it was made for a much larger man, and probably had been. It worked hard to cover the man underneath, to erase him completely.
He didn't move like he once had, the mannerisms, the quirks he displayed when he piloted disappeared. There was no more puppy dog gallivanting, the big proud smiles gone, along with the adrenalin fuelled fingers dashing through his hair, or across his eyebrow.
Instead when walking his hands found his belt, fingers sliding behind and around the worn leather, forming a latch.
This was a new habit, Mako knew, having never seen the aborted motion in interviews of old, where a young Raleigh would have instinctively moved to the security of the belt before realizing he still wore a Drift Suit, and let his hands fall away.
No, this was a new habit, one made by a man without a partner. A man who no longer had the reminder of another person's hand at their side, a quick brush of knuckles promising, "I am here," and "It'll all be okay."
It was then she realized, as the Marshal walked them toward Herc Hansen, that the Raleigh she expected did exist; only he had been part of a package deal, Raleigh and Yancy. Yancy and Raleigh, The Becket Brothers. The man she expected was a thing of the past and little could change that. What she had now was the Raleigh of the future.
(and he would do just fine.)