Title: Young Legends (Die all the Time)
Rating: K+
Word Count: 717
Character Dynamics: Raleigh Becket, Mako Mori
Summary: Post movie. She's been in his head, submerged in his past, yet some pictures don't make sense to her.
His walls are lined with photographs and she's not sure what some of them mean. With the careful way Raleigh takes them down one at a time, pinching the bottom corners of the photo paper and studying the captured moments as he slowly peels their adhesive ribbon from the wall, she knows that each image bears a heavy significance. Though a slight, melancholy smile is invoked by each motion, his internal pain is nearly palpable to Mako as his lips contort into a grimace. His movements resemble that of peeling off a well wrapped bandaid from a festering burn.
She's been in his head, submerged in his past, yet some pictures don't make sense to her. The question of where he's traveled, of what all he's seen, vacillates on the tip of her tongue. Silence rivals pink parted lips and the formation of the mere utterance of a word, and it ultimately wins. It seems like a trivial thing to ask a man who has roamed seas and coastlines in their robotic warrior.
As Raleigh discards the photos one by one into an ever growing pile, her gaze lingers on a particular picture that he seems to be avoiding. Distanced from what remains of the posted memories, already relieved from the ones that had framed it, is Raleigh and Yancy clinging side-by-side in a brotherly embrace.
She knows that must have been taken years ago, yet the rich sense of youth that encompasses him takes her aback. Raleigh seems less like a man who carries burdens in this still— dwarfed by his brother's wiser demeanor, Raleigh's naïve shortcomings of the time nearly bleeds in colored ink.
"Do you still hear… nothing?"
Breaking the surface of his reverie with a start, Raleigh withdraws his hands from the pile and turns towards Mako. She's perched at the foot of his bed just as she had been when he began packing.
When he realizes she's not looking at him, he follows her line of sight. Something is his chest clenches at her question. He rests his eyes on Yancy and he tries to remember what his voice sounded like when he wasn't shouting over the inner workings of Gipsy. "He was ripped away from me while we were still connected."
Turning back around, he walks over towards Mako and seats himself next to her, letting the burden of his memories and scarred flesh sink into the cushioned springs. "It was like everything about him was still echoing in my head, but I knew that was it. I was never going to be that strongly connected to him again."
"I felt it," she tells him, finally tearing her gaze away from the lone photo and meeting his own head on. The tension in his chest unwinds with that single look. "I felt his presence."
"In the drift," he states, sinking back on his elbows with the exhaustion of the past few day's events. "The drift is silence, but I always feel him there."
She nods at this as her eyebrows knit together in her pensiveness. Death was hard to grieve when you could still acknowledge a dead man's existence.
After many moments spent that way in the hum of the pipelines and circuits connecting through his chamber, Raleigh began to doze. As celebrated war heroes, he and Mako had returned to the Shatterdome, unable to find a wink of sleep for hours afterwards. The public, their comrades, Mako's nightmares, and the ongoings of the station had demanded too much of them.
When Mako spoke again, he was on his back in an attempt to put his weariness to rest. "I'm going to finish packing," she tells him while rising to her feet. Sitting up, Raleigh is about to offer his help until she cuts him off. "You should, too. Then," leaning down, she slips her hand in the callous ones resting in his lap, interlocking her warmth with his before giving a squeeze, "I want to start thinking about the future."
Before he can give her a squeeze in return or say anything intelligent in reply, she's already heading out the door. He casts a tender look her way and, with his bright eyes chasing after her, hopes it's enough for now. She, he's starting to realize, has much better timing than him.