A week after getting released from the medical ward, Chuck was on his own two, human feet again.
Looking into the mirror he saw a too pale, too thin face with dark circles under his eyes. He had nasty burn scars that he had to keep wrapped, but he was a quick healer, like wolves usually were in matters of skin. His broken bones had mended enough that he didn't need a cast, but his arm was still strapped to his chest and his wrist was tightly bandaged. Yes, wolves were good healers by nature, but even they needed extensive recovery time after such damage. And there was no guarantee that he would come out of this without scars to show.
He had refused to have visitors while he healed, doped up on heavy painkillers, looking like a roasted piece of koala bacon.
Not even Mako.
Herc was accepted and needed, the doctors were a necessary evil, but anyone else was unwanted.
Especially Raleigh.
Who had asked about him, his father had mentioned briefly.
That it gave him a little thrill, that it had him feel strangely warm inside, had been viciously ignored.
At night he dreamed of things he couldn't really grasp.
Colorful worlds, alien and strange, glowing in a light that reminded him of the Breach.
He dreamed of a wolf running, of being torn apart.
XOXOXO
Twice he woke up in his third shape, the shoulder brace torn, all bandages falling off. Cranky, sharp talons clenched into the bedspread, tears showing in his pillow, he needed a moment to gather his thoughts.
He really needed to get a sturdier pillow.
Once he had pillow stuffing between his teeth.
Herc didn't comment.
He barely even raised his eyebrows more than once.
Fuck you, Chuck's expression always said as he ambled off into the bathroom to calm down, unwind; change back.
He was reaching for Raleigh, running head-first into the shields.
The bond… the damned bond!
XOXOXO
It was also the time the headaches started. Small ones at first. He blamed the injuries and maybe a slight concussion, but they didn't get better. For twenty-four hours, Chuck fought against the ever-rising ache, then it had developed into a migraine and he was almost completely out for the following hours.
Herc turned down the light that hurt his sensitive eyes and he gave him a pain reliever that managed to kick his thought processes back into order.
Still, the headaches came and went with almost regular clarity. Throughout it all, he had this unmistakable sense that someone was just outside his door, waiting, but no one ever came in.
He would have probably bitten that person's head off anyway.
XOXOXO
"Son…"
"Leave it, old man!" he snapped and tried to pull away.
The need to curl up in a dark corner was overpowering. He felt the first ripples of a shift and bit his teeth.
"Chuck…"
"I said leave it!" he roared, batting Herc's hand away.
Eyes flashing golden, the alpha glared at his beta and Chuck cringed a little.
"You want to break the bond, is that it?" Herc asked, voice so very level, even with the gravelly touch, it was almost painful.
Chuck froze. "I…" he managed, then shook his head. He chewed on his lower lip. "I… don't know. I don't know," he repeated.
And he really didn't. There was a twisting conflict inside him. On one side he really didn't want it; he was self-sufficient. His parents had never needed it. On the other side he had been around the Kaidanovskys a long time and he had seen how close they were. The trust and ease between them, the unspoken understanding.
Then again: Raleigh Becket.
Not that the man wasn't attractive. Chuck had had his sexual epiphany around the time he had become a Jaeger pilot. With Raleigh he would have to be blind, too. He felt the pull and it wasn't because of the bond. Attraction didn't work like that.
It was simply that they had gotten off on the completely wrong foot and hadn't been able to reconcile in any way. If at all, it had gotten a lot worse.
And Raleigh didn't want him. He had made it clear right away and he pushed the attempts to let the connection happen away. He didn't even allow a secondary one. This was a nascent bond and despite the stress it was under, Becket shielded and pushed.
Herc watched him, eyes still those of the wolf, tense, ready to act. "You hate him," he stated. "You don't want what the connection offers, what could be."
"He doesn't want it either!"
And now he sounded like a petulant child. Pouting. Angry that the other one didn't acknowledge what Chuck felt, even if Raleigh would simply fling it back into his face.
But there was nothing.
Well, there had been a little. Those intense moments when they watched each other, when Raleigh hesitated a fraction of a second, but then it had been gone again. Like a figment of his imagination.
Could a soulmate with an alpha level connection looming over them be so cold and distant?
The answer was yes.
His own uncle…
Chuck felt a moment of revulsion, of nausea, and he veered away from those memories.
Raleigh didn't react to him, though Chuck could feel him. He felt something the other man… didn't?
"Have you ever wondered why?" Herc asked, his level voice cutting through Chuck's thoughts.
"What?"
The golden eyes were intense, like his alpha knew something or suspected something, and expected his beta to find out by himself.
"Give it a thought, Chuck," Herc only said. "About why bond stress might not affect Raleigh the way it should."
XOXOXO
He did.
It took him a while, wandering around, mostly in his koala shape and through air vents where no one would ever find him. It was something he had done in the past ten years, exploring the Shatterdomes his dad had been stationed at over the years in a new way.
It had driven his alpha insane at times.
It was why Chuck had always done it again.
His bones healed, his skin knitted together.
XOXOXO
And sometimes he slept in his father's quarters, both men Shifted, the pack bond strong and unbreakable between them. It buffered the stress coming in over the other connection that was still trying to form.
Herc didn't comment on his son curling up and almost purring, always as a koala, always clenching sharp claws in the thick, ginger fur.
Chuck didn't comment on his father licking over his fur and nuzzling him.
XOXOXO
All the while he thought about it, the situation, the whole fucked up mess his life had become ever since Raleigh Becket had stepped into the Hong Kong Shatterdome. He looked at himself, at Becket, at them as individuals and as a whole.
Raleigh was completely messed up, just like Chuck. Though for different reasons.
His family pack was gone. Like Chuck's and not like Chuck's. Chuck had lost his mother to the Kaijus, but he still had his alpha.
Raleigh had been a total basket case who had fled after Yancy's death and he had left the PPDC. Chuck had thought him to be a coward and later a liability to the mission.
Maybe he was broken beyond repair.
Maybe Chuck had no idea how to repair that.
Maybe they were mates, but neither was truly capable of becoming more than acquaintances because of their scars.
It was a lot of deep thinking he did, sitting in the vents, on the Shatterdome roof, in the scaffolding that had once been Striker Eureka's.
Herc left him to it. He gave him the room as he himself was busy with what the world had become. Chuck got a few ideas what the new Marshall had to handle, but right now he was too busy with his own life. As pack beta he should be more of a help, but Mako had taken over the deputy position in the Shatterdome's hierarchy, for which Chuck was grateful. He didn't think he was deputy material.
XOXOXO
"I don't hate him," Chuck said over lunch four days later.
They were in Herc's office, the Marshall's office, and Chuck had brought sandwiches.
Like a peace offering.
Now he sounded almost thoughtful, like it was a revelation to him, and maybe it was.
The kid's twenty-one, Herc reminded himself. Soon twenty-two. He's so young and has the experience of several life-times. Jaded before his time, grown up too fast, never had the time.
"Not that it's showing," he simply said.
He winced. "Dad…"
Herc was the alpha. It was his job to work as an arbitrator in his pack, to remain objective, to help his pack – just his beta – see the truth. Right now, no coddling.
"You made sure to show him what you thought of him, Chuck. You keep pushing. You don't want the connection, then terminate it. Don't wait until Raleigh finally realizes that he doesn't feel echoes of Yancy, that it's a living being, not a dead pack mate."
Realization visibly hit his beta like a blow to the guts. The last puzzle piece slid painfully into place and it was quite visible.
Herc could read his only child like an open book and always had. The Drift had added a new layer to it, but Chuck wore his emotions openly. For all his thinking, he hadn't really come to the correct conclusions.
So Herc had pushed a little more to get him there, in the right direction.
Chuck's hands clenched and unclenched. He got up and paced the length of the office, face too pale. For a moment his face was almost violently expressionless, then he suddenly whirled around and buried his fist in the wall.
Herc winced.
Chuck hissed and flexed his hand. He snarled softly under his breath.
"Chuck."
One word. An order. The voice even deeper than its normal timbre.
"He's… he can't be my mate!" the younger man exploded, so many emotions mixing into the exclamation. "He doesn't even like me!"
"Mates are not a carbon copy of you, son. It's also not an instant eternal love."
"How would you know?" he yelled. "You never had a mate!"
Herc rocked back, baring teeth that looked decidedly sharper, then control was back. "No, I never had a mate. Your mother was human. I loved her. I loved her more than life. A bond isn't necessary to be happy. A bond doesn't mean eternal happiness. It simply tells you that the other person fits you."
"Not Becket!" Chuck made an inarticulate noise of rage and pain. "You never needed your mate! Uncle Scott…" He stopped, face white, swallowing hard. "He didn't need his either."
Herc's own features were frozen, eyes those of the wolf, bright and lethal at the reminder of what his younger brother had done, what he, the alpha, had been unable to prevent. He had lost a part of his pack that day, part of himself when he had turned his back on a man he couldn't believe he had ever known – and not known at all.
"Doesn't mean you have to push away yours, kid," he said, voice rough.
Chuck suddenly slid down the wall, burying his hands in his hair, pulling at the ginger strands.
"I never wanted this!"
Herc was silent.
"All I wanted was to Drift, to be a Jaeger pilot. Your beta. Now there's him and he doesn't fit into this!"
"He does, Chuck," Herc said softly.
Seamlessly. Like the missing piece that neither knew was out there.
Green eyes, filled with the horror of realization met his. Green eyes he had seen full of tears and emotions that were rarely ever spoken about. Herc felt himself flash back to watching his son walk into the Conn-Pod with Pentecost.
It had been a final good-bye back then.
Chuck hadn't thought he would survive.
Neither had Herc.
He would have lost his last pack member and he knew he wouldn't have come back from that. But that was the past and he had his son. He had pack.
"He can't feel me," Chuck groaned. "'Cause that was torn out of him, right? This is so fucked up! How is this my life?!"
Herc waited a moment, then crouched down beside his beta. He wrapped an arm around the broad shoulders and rested his forehead against Chuck's temple. Fine tremors ran through the other, then finally he quieted down. The heady presence of his alpha calming him down, evening out the waves.
"Raleigh isn't numb or immune. He can feel the bond in a way, Chuck."
"W-what?"
"Mako. The Drift. She knows. We talked. He's aware of you, kid. He doesn't know what to do with it, though. You push him away."
Jealousy flared at the mention of Mako, then flowed into despair.
"There is no right or wrong," Herc murmured. "There is only what you feel. If you don't want him, reject him completely. Don't let this fester and grow."
His son sighed deeply and finally raised his head. Herc moved back a little, but he kept in close contact.
"I don't hate him. Like that. To do that."
It would mean breaking what was there. Unless Raleigh let his shields go, the bond was one-way. Chuck could break it and Raleigh might never know what had happened.
"I know."
Chuck huffed a little laugh. "You want me to say I love him?"
"Wouldn't go that far. But you like him, don't you? You're attracted to him."
Sensitive nose. Instinct. Alpha.
Take a pick.
Chuck leaned his head against the wall. "Kinda. He's not bad. If we had met any other way… we might have just clicked. Just…"
"He rubs you wrong. Came at the worst possible time in your life."
"Yeah."
They were having a lot of ups and downs, like a rollercoaster ride, and it was making them dizzy.
Herc squeezed one shoulder. "Talk to him. Just talk. Let your instincts guide you. Raleigh has to learn to trust his instincts just like you."
"I've got shit instincts," Chuck replied darkly. "Look at how I handled it so far. And talkin's got me my ass handed to me." He gave a weak laugh.
Pressure. Too much pressure, the end of the world looming over them, the loss of so many Jaegers and crews. He had been desperate and it had translated through the pack bond and the Drift. Chuck had been furious that Pentecost had recalled Raleigh, had actively sought out the lone wolf and dragged him back.
As support.
Chuck had been insulted. And he had growled and snapped at anyone who mentioned Becket that the man was a danger. He hadn't driven a Jaeger in five years. He was a relic, a has-been.
But Raleigh had stepped right back in, had brought himself and Mako back. He had handled himself like the professional Ranger he was.
"Give it a chance," Herc said softly, almost to himself.
Chuck didn't reply. His thoughts whirled between 'don't need or want him' and 'he doesn't understand what it is and never rejected me'. Herc felt it through the family pack connection, let it happen without the alpha's interference.
He hoped this was a first step on the long road he knew lay ahead of them.
This wasn't going to be easy. It was an alpha bond, strong and powerful. If Raleigh gave in, there would be no stopping things.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Raleigh kept running every night.
Living on little sleep and waking to nightmares about the Anteverse, about broken bonds, about loss and pain and the cold, serrated edges of darkness.
The Ghost Drift was painfully present again. Not to Mako. They hadn't Drifted enough to feel those neural echoes.
It was Yancy.
That part that had remained inside Raleigh's brain and would probably forever be there. The part that had started to come alive after they had stepped out of the neural handshake.
The Ghost.
Now it was there, whispers of a dead man, and Raleigh dreamed.
XOXOXO
He met them on one of his runs around the endless seeming Shatterdome.
Pale eyes in pale gray faces, a dark gray back, thickly furred. They were huge, muscular, awe-inspiring, a sight to behold. He had a thicker ruff, larger paws, about a hand taller at the shoulder than her, and his back was almost black in color. The sides were a slate gray, the belly as light as his face. She was slender but still more powerfully built than Raleigh, her color scheme almost the same, though more gray where he was black.
Raleigh stayed where he was, respectful.
They watched him.
Then Sasha approached him, calm and without aggression. Aleksis followed. They weren't his pack, but he felt a faint connection. They were Jaeger pilots, they were under Herc Hansen's command, following him as an alpha and as a Marshall.
So in a way they were with him.
Sasha looked at him; the invitation was clear.
Raleigh took it.
Running with a small pack was balm for his soul. It was like a memory of Anchorage, with his brother and sister, with his parents and his uncle.
For those hours he didn't feel the pressure of memories on his mind.
tbc...