For a kink meme prompt: Raleigh wears that big old cable knit sweater all the time because HE KNITTED IT HIMSELF. Raleigh is a passionate knitter. Maybe he even knits presents for someone he likes?
It's the first memory he has of his mother.
The sound of knitting needles as she prepared to swaddle Yancy, Jaz and him in soft wool to get ready for the Alaskan winter.
Years later, when she's long gone (taken from him by a disease that ate through her slowly), his father's disappeared (he never was the same after his mother's death), his sister refuses to talk to him (because she'd rather lose him voluntarily than watch his death on the television) and Yancy is dead (he cannot think about that), the sound of knitting needles is the only thing that can warm him.
It's a stupid form a therapy – he doesn't need Yancy to tell him that. Talking to actual living, breathing humans would probably help.
But it was a memory of better times, the times when he was actually happy and alive instead of simply walking through life and trying to survive. It's the memory of snow days, the way his mother smelled, and the laughter of three children who had no idea what awaited them.
He had no clue how he managed to learn how to knit. But he learns, and he spends some of his free time knitting himself sweaters.
They remind him of home. At least, what was once his home.
(And he cannot deny the warmth they provide when he's building a wall that can never protect them from Kaiju helps.)
Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to knit for someone else apart from himself, but this is the existence that fate has damned him to. (Besides, it's not like he's got anyone he can complain about it to.)
(And what did he ever do to deserve this? All he had ever wanted to do was help save the world, and it had cost him the two family members he still had left.)
And then Stacker Pentecost comes to bring him back into the PPDC's fold. He argues, he resists, but-
It's what Yancy would have wanted him to do.
(And there's a part of him that wonders if there are people in Hong Kong who he can knit for.)
So he packs a duffle bag, and walks out to face the apocalypse head-on.
(But there are still a couple of balls of yarn and a pair of knitting needles hidden deep within the bag.)
The first time he gets a chance to knit in Hong Kong is after the Breach is closed. He's gone from having no one to knit for to having what feels like an entire family, and there's a part of him that wonders who should be the first.
But in a way, that answer is simple.
Mako receives a blue sweater to go with her hair. She's become the sister he lost so long ago, the first member of his new family who he really accepted into his heart.
And even though Chuck is still being coddled by what seems like all the doctors and nurses in the world, he somehow manages to slip a sweater into the hospital. It's emerald green – the kid wears too many dull colours for Raleigh to resist trying to amend that fact – and made of the softest wool he could get his hands on.
Chuck has become something more – so much more – to Raleigh, and he, along with Mako, is the person Raleigh cares most about in the Shatterdome.
There are still more items for him to knit, still more people to gift them with. But as he sees the doctor place the green sweater by Chuck's bedside, Raleigh takes a moment to smile.
He's glad he listened to Yancy's voice in his head this one time.
He lost his family a long time ago, but there's nothing stopping him from building a new one.
Meh. I'm not really too sure about how i worded the ending. Might change it sometime soon.
I hope you guys liked it regardless! Please don't forget to drop a review on your way out :)
