Atlas' Burden
Disclaimer: I do not own Pacific Rim, only my OC's.
Summary: When Yancy dies, Raleigh can't bring himself to abandon Gipsy. Recovering from the fight with Knifehead, he begins looking for a copilot, only to find that there's no one even close to what he needs. Marshal Pentecost gives him the option to try piloting solo. Does he rise to the occasion, or is the neural strain too much?
NOTE: My main criticism in the past (and thank you for those) has been chapter length, so I'm going to try to make my chapters longer. Please be sure to let me know how you like them!
The Becket brothers – RaleighandYancy – had blasted the kaiju twice with the Plasma Cannon and watched it sink into the waves, smiling as they cheered because they'd killed their fifth kaiju in the three years since their jaeger, Gipsy Danger, had first been launched. Each one gave them a rush like nothing else, and the Becket Boys grinned fiercely in tandem, high on adrenaline and strong in the Drift.
"Gipsy, what the hell is going on?" Marshal Pentecost's growl demanded over the comms. They had deviated from their patrol, disobeying their orders to protect a fishing boat struggling to return to shore before the kaiju surfaced.
"Job's done, sir. Lit it up twice. Bagged our fifth kill," Raleigh boasted, hand raised to press the comm button as he smirked at Yancy. He was doing his best to regulate his breathing, despite the strain on his muscles and the quick beating of his heart.
The Marshal snarled back, "You disobeyed a direct order!"
"Respectfully, sir, we intercepted a kaiju and saved everyone on that boat," Yancy said, using arrogance to hide their true thoughts. Why should sticking to their patrol matter when they would face the kaiju by the end of the night? Their job was to minimize the loss of human life, and the Marshal had wanted them to ignore a boat full of men because the PPDC thought they were 'inconvenient'.
"Get back to your post. Now!" Pentecost barked.
"Yes, sir," Raleigh said, the tiniest trace of steel determination underneath the affirmative. They weren't going to abandon the people in order to face the kaiju at a more convenient time – they were real lives, real people, and they mattered, despite the PPDC's dismissal.
The Marshal would chew them out again, but the Beckett Boys knew that he wasn't really mad. He had been ordered by his superiors to discard the boat as a lost cause, and reluctantly but dutifully given them their patrol schedule. The Marshal would fight the PPDC for the Rangers he sent out and defend their decisions to his last breath, especially when their risks had saved lives. He knew what it was like, he was a retired Ranger himself. Jaeger pilots respected him far more for his missions in Coyote Tango than they did for any damn badges or stars on his dress blues.
Gipsy began to turn, but the brothers paused when the Marshal's voice crackled over the comms, all frustration gone in his urgency as he alerted them, "Gipsy! We're still getting a signature! That kaiju is still alive! Grab the boat and get out of there. You copy? Grab the boat and get out of there now!"
As LOCCENT came back on the comms and Marshal Pentecost was warning them that it wasn't dead, they were frantically searching the dark waves for any sign of the creature's glowing patterned hide. They ignored the Marshal's orders – there was no way they could retreat to a better position until they knew the monster's location, especially not with something in Gipsy's grip. Gipsy's searchlights shone on the white crest of each wave, but within the blue-gray waters, they couldn't spot any kaiju blue. The leviathan lunged from the water, deceptively fast for its gargantuan size and blindsided them, swiping at Gipsy's helm with its curved black talons.
Yancy shouted, "Take it, Raleigh!" as they were slammed sideways in the Conn-Pod, gears and shocks working overtime to protect the pilots being thrown about in their rigs. Automatic klaxons began blaring over the noise of the battle, alerting the Rangers about what was broken or stressed. Their right arm had automatically snapped up to catch the creature's jaw, forcing it away from the Conn-Pod.
The kaiju before them was a sprawling behemoth with a large bony horn on his head emblazoned with bioluminescent patterns on each side. It roared at them aggressively, displaying a bright ghostly blue maw. They called him Knifehead. The Becket Boys had made fun of the name only that morning. They weren't making fun now.
"I got this!" the younger Becket said with a cocky grin, high on adrenaline, loading the Plasma Cannon with a confident smirk as the crackle of electricity grew louder. Gipsy's Cannon began to spark and glow with energy. Their Plasma Cannons could chew straight into one side of a kaiju and out the other, they were so strong.
As he readied to fire the shot, Knifehead deftly batted his arm aside and drove its bladed crown through Gipsy's left arm like a hot knife through butter. They heard the shriek of tearing metal, shorn wires, and snapping cables that almost sounded like Gipsy herself screaming. Raleigh matched her guttural scream with one of his own, gripping his left bicep with his right hand as the suit transmitted Gipsy's pain to his own body.
Yancy felt the white-hot flare of agony while connected to Raleigh, but his own suit's circuits didn't spark. He wasn't controlling the left arm. Eyes wide and flashing with concern for his brother, Yancy yelled with a twinge of fear into the comms over Raleigh's pained cries, "LOCCENT we're hit!"
The kaiju continued his assault, shoving his crest further into Gipsy's left arm, forcing her back and prying the metal appendage clean off. It let loose a deafening roar over the crashing waves and pounding rain. They heard the sparking of the severed plasma cannon and the heavy splash of the arm sinking into the surf as Raleigh screamed in agony once more, fighting to remain conscious. In their head and in their ears, Gipsy was shrieking too, all sparking wires and broken circuits and warped metal pounding on the insides of their skulls.
Knifehead attacked with its talons, slicing with deceptive ease into the right side of the hull – breaking Gipsy's yellow visor to the tinkling sound of shattered glass. The Becket Boys looked at the large claws curling towards their vulnerable bodies and felt the cold stinging of the torrential rain now that Gipsy's hull had been breached. Yancy saw the kaiju claws above him before Raleigh did, covered as they were by rain and darkness and the strobe flashes of snapped wires.
"The hull! It went through the hull!" Raleigh yelled, shoving the pain to the back of their minds, frantic at the thought of Yancy being hurt. Disbelief and panic clouded his thoughts. How could this have happened so fast? How could they have been celebrating another win, only to be torn apart moments later?
He felt Yancy's fear, and dread, and helplessness, and acceptance, as his big brother turned and said, "Raleigh, listen to me! You need to –" His brother's rig was ripped away, cutting him off, but Raleigh felt the end of his last words in the Drift. Raleigh, listen to me! You need to survive! You can't follow me this time, you hear? Not for a long while.
And Raleigh screamed as he felt Yancy's death, but he couldn't be dead because Raleigh was still alive and jaeger pilots died together – it was a sacred rule, that if you were lost in battle, at least you'd be lost together. Why would Yancy ask him to forget their unspoken promise? It was a promise all Rangers made to one another the moment they Drifted: if we die in the cockpit of a jaeger, we'll die together, two bodies and two hearts and two minds, but one soul.
The rig crushed his lower body, there was overwhelming pain through the Drift as metal and debris ripped through his chest, then the sharp crack of bone in Yancy's neck and – screaming; his own, Gipsy's, the kaiju's, the fishermen's even, but not Yancy's. And it was too quiet. Sparking wires and shrieking metal and torrential rain and the crash of monster and metal and waves but there was no noise from Yancy. There were no thoughts, no feelings, no flashes of pain or love, or twinges in muscles as they struggled to move tons of metal with nothing but willpower and each other.
There was nothing but a frightened young man shouting for his big brother with his whole world crumbling down around him and a wounded jaeger bleeding her lifeblood into the waves, but she was crying too. But now it was just Raleigh left. Just Raleigh left in Gipsy's Conn-Pod and just Raleigh left holding up a wounded jaeger, and just Raleigh left to deal with the doubled mental strain of piloting solo and the quadrupled pain of electricity coursing through his body, searing patterns into his skin now. Just Raleigh left to kill the damn kaiju. Just Raleigh and Gipsy left to avenge Yancy.
"No!" Raleigh wailed, railing against the universe for taking away the only person that really mattered, "No!"
A guttural groan was dragged from him as the electricity coursing through his rig forced his back to arch. He struggled to switch his control disk to his right hand with all his muscles quivering and seizing due to the continued electric shocks but managed with a pained grunt. There were urgent warning lights appearing and flickering crimson all over what was left of Gipsy's visor screen, but they didn't matter. Nothing mattered but killing the kaiju that had hurt them and taken Yancy.
Knifehead bore down on Gipsy again with a roar, shoving her backwards with its weight. It shook the jaeger by the sparking stump of her left arm and Raleigh was thrown backwards violently in the Conn-Pod once again, pieces of scrap flying with him. It drove its sharp crest torturously slow into Gipsy's left side once again, where her heart would be if she were flesh and blood and not metal and wires and nuclear core. Gipsy's head was thrown back in agony to match his own, hovering over the dark waves, stopped from collapsing into the surf only by the kaiju's own claws.
The circuits transmitting Gipsy's pain sparked again, burning into his chest and upper back as he groaned and doubled over. He forced himself to straighten, head lolling and trailing his left arm like it was useless, twitching uncontrollably. Breathing heavily, with gritted teeth, he swung his right arm in the sequence to charge the right arm's Plasma Cannon. He screamed again as the kaiju bit down into Gipsy's left shoulder ripping away massive monster-bite-sized chunks of her arm and chest and tossing them over its shoulder.
"Loading," a computerized voice said calmly over the noise, even as warning red light flashed on what was left of the shattered screen that used to be Gipsy's visor. He aimed the crackling and whirring Plasma Cannon right at the kaiju's vulnerable torso. He gave one last agonized cry, voicing all his pain and rage and grief that Yancy had been ripped from him. He cried for his injuries and his stupid prideful arrogant self that had gotten his brother killed.
He took the shot and the world flashed white in a blaze of lightning.
Once the kaiju was gone, its smoking corpse sinking into the waves after Gipsy's arm and Yancy – oh god Yancy – and his adrenaline seeped away, he wanted to collapse to his knees and sink into the surf with Gipsy to join his brother. Two halves whole once more.
But Yancy had asked with his dying breath that Raleigh not follow him in death as he always had in life, despite the sacred promise between all Rangers. So, he did his best to bear a weight never meant for one man, unwilling to fail his brother again. Besides, he didn't think he and Gipsy were done yet. There was a weak croon of confirmation in the back of his mind, but he was stuck in a haze of pain and stress and couldn't respond.
His left arm was dead, throbbing and twitching, still occasionally shocked by his scuffed white drive suit, as though he needed another reminder that RaleighandYancy's beautiful jaeger was less than whole, just like RaleighandYancy were now just Raleigh. Shrapnel had been driven into his abdomen and throbbed with his every step, and on the right side of his neck, the crook of his arm, and from his rib cage down to his right hip, acidic blue blood burned into his skin.
He was too lost in grief and pain and the struggle of moving Gipsy alone to even think of trying the comms. The thought of lifting one of his arms to that panel of switches just above his head seemed impossible. LOCCENT couldn't help him out here. He shook, forcing himself to lift tons of metal alone, setting it back down with a crash. One step. One step out of hundreds needed to make the seven-mile trip back to the coast.
He settled into a pained haze; the strain was so great that he was unable to continue a complete train of thought about something other than moving one impossibly heavy appendage after another. Considering that night's events, he was almost grateful for his incoherence, almost grateful that merely surviving while carrying his beautiful lady alone took up so much of his concentration. But he couldn't rest, couldn't slow down. If he did, he'd never start again, no matter what Yancy had said. Oh god, Yancy…
Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot.
He almost didn't notice when the water level sank from Gipsy's waist to her shins, and then to her ankles, but he felt keenly the lack of resistance created by thousands of gallons of sea water. He trudged those last few steps out of the shallows and let himself collapse bonelessly in the rig like a puppet with its strings cut. He felt the impact first in his left knee, then his right knee, and he caught Gipsy's fall with his right arm as she gave one last human-like groan and fell to the ground in a shower of ice and debris.
Raleigh yanked himself from his Conn-Pod and crawled out of her shattered visor on his elbows, dragging his sore legs behind him. His shoulder was bleeding and smoking from the burns – and the smell of burnt skin would have turned his stomach if the sour acidic smell of kaiju blood searing through his own flesh hadn't already had it rolling and heaving.
The world seemed to speed up and blur around him as he no longer supported the weight of a jaeger. He staggered to his feet still placing one heavy foot in front of the other. It was like he could still feel the weight of his jaeger and couldn't stop because if he stopped, he'd never start again and Yancy told him not to follow him, oh god Yancy.
His ears were ringing, and he couldn't quite force himself to answer the shocked stranger's concerned questions echoing in his ears, warping in his pounding head, jumbling together until it all just sounded like white noise, blending in with the waves crashing on the snowy shore. He turned to stare at Gipsy's torn hull – the place where his brother had died – and then at the sky, because that's where mom said that heaven and the angels were when she swept his hair off his forehead as a little boy.
He was whispering, over and over, almost like a prayer, "Yancy. Yancy."
Raleigh's jerky repetitive movements slowed, his body comprehending that he was no longer carrying the weight of tons of metal and his legs finally gave out. He collapsed in the snow beside his beautiful broken jaeger – she looked as bad as he felt. He didn't feel the impact – or at least the pain was nothing compared to the pain of losing his brother, of the bloody burns along his arm, of the shrapnel in his abdomen and the toxic blue blood burning into his side.
Raleigh's eyelids fluttered shut and he knew no more.
The first time they woke up, the lights blinded them, and their breaths caught painfully in their chest. They could feel the pain of their torn arm, and the limp weight of their dead right side – Yancy's side – and the burning in their abdomen, but it was a low, sluggish pain, like Gipsy's slow gait through Alaskan seas before crashing on the shoor. They were unconscious again before the doctors were even aware they were awake.
The second time they woke up already swinging, fighting with the doctors in the med bay, but constantly scanning for the kaiju they knew was there. The white lights reminded them of Plasma Cannons and searchlights on dark water, and the smell of antiseptic like the acrid smell of kaiju blood in their nose. God, they hated that hospital smell, they grew up knowing it meant hopeless situations and wasting away until you were a ghost of what you once were. They felt reflections and echoes of their brother's fear and pain, coupled with their own agony, and screamed, "Yancy! Yancy!"
Were they Raleigh, or were they Yancy? They didn't feel like Raleigh, all bravery and wildness and arrogance and 'I got this!', but they must have been, they supposed, because Yancy was crushed legs and torn chest and broken neck and crumpled rig and pain and fear and gone forever and ever and ever.
They could feel Gipsy creaking and groaning as she struggled to move in sync with them from wherever they had her laid up in the Shatterdome. Her pain and grief and metallic groans sounded off in time with their own pitiful lost cries. She wanted their better half too. Yancy was ripped violently from their heads – stolen, crushed, destroyed by massive claws, and pointed crests and animalistic roars as it tore into Gipsy's stump – and they wanted him back.
They were still screaming Yancy's name when they were sedated and fell asleep with a left arm that shouldn't be there and a right side that shouldn't work because their right half was dead and blue blood burning into their side. Oh god Yancy why'd he asked them not to follow when they had promised, promised one another that they'd go out together?
Marshal Stacker Pentecost hadn't felt so old in a long while, until he saw the footage of Ranger Becket, barely conscious and screaming blindly for his fallen partner. He remembered doing that, when his own had collapsed inside her rig – and Tamsin hadn't even been dead, just unconscious. He couldn't imagine feeling the death of his partner through the Drift, and shuddered, something he felt many an experienced Ranger would imitate when they heard of Raleigh Becket's fate.
"Talk to me, Mr. Choi," Marshal Pentecost ordered sternly, hiding his exhaustion, passing the somber yet alert J-Techs and K-Scientists with barely a glance as he approached the short man. The Marshall recalled that Choi had been rather close with the young pilots, and that they'd been the cause of many a complaint when they'd gotten bored. He'd never separated them though, because he'd heard how brilliantly they worked together when they were focused and seen the evidence in the reports.
Tendo Choi's normally put-together appearance of a white button down, bow tie and suspenders, with slicked back hair, was in disarray. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, his suspenders hanging down by his legs, the bow tie had been ripped off entirely and stuffed in a pocket and his hair was in tangled snarls like he'd been gripping it in his fists.
"It's Gipsy, sir. We had her shipped back here and Raleigh woke as soon as she was dropped by the choppers. He's drugged to the gills, sir, it's only been two days since… since Yancy died," he said, running his shaking fingers through his dark hair, mussing it further, "It shouldn't even be possible for him to be awake, but they were already ghost-Drifting when he sat up."
"Have we made contact with Dr. Lightcap?" Pentecost asked, hiding his exhaustion and apprehension. Dr. Lightcap was the world's leading researcher in neuroscience in relation to Drift technology – she'd created it, after all.
"Yes, sir, and she doesn't have a clue either, though she did look at the Becket Boys' Drift charts. She pointed out that Raleigh's always been more prone to ghost-Drifting than anyone else and that there's never been a case where one Ranger has been killed while Drifting with his partner. We're swimming in uncharted waters here, sir," Tendo said nervously.
"Keep me updated and do your best to keep Gipsy and Ranger Beckett from coming to further harm. I want that Ranger on Suicide Watch until I say otherwise," he ordered, looking around to make sure the closest men and women had heard him and would spread the word. They stared back at him with determination and concern lined in their faces.
The Shatterdome would watch over their charges.
They – RaleighandYancy – Raleigh, they'd said he was Raleigh – staggered away from the med bay. Their – his – right side was slow and their – his – left twitched and shook. Their – his – left arm and chest covered in bandages from their – his – fingertips to their – his, dammit – neck, pectoral, and shoulder blade, and stitches pulled the angry red gash in their – his – stomach together. There are patches of something sticky and numbing covered by bandages over the acidic burns on the right side of their – his – neck, the crook of their – his – right arm, and splashed across their – his – ribs and hip.
This was the third time in the week since Knifehead that they'd – he'd, it was he'd because there was only one Becket Boy now and there would only ever be one Becket Boy now – escaped, but this time they were – he was – gonna make it. Gipsy needed them – him – dammit.
Three hours later, and it was Stacker Pentecost himself who found their missing battered Ranger. Of course, he was the one who found Raleigh. He was the only other Ranger in this facility right now other than Chrome Brutus's pilots, though Raleigh was sure another was being reassigned even as they spoke.
Pilots were a rare, dying breed of people that could look death in its beady glowing eyes and snarl back, even when their brother was dead and they kind of wished were too, but Yancy asked them not to, so they didn't. Even when their mind was crushed while Drifting and remolded from the tattered remains of their leftover ghost Drift, bits and pieces of both merged Becket Boys caged together in one broken body.
The Marshal understood like no one else would the feeling of circuits instead of nerves and how kaiju blood felt staining your chrome knuckles and how Gipsy – or Coyote Tango in his case – became a person in the eyes of her pilots. He still heard Gipsy scream at night – all warping metal and shattering glass and 'the hull, it went through the hull' – all the way in the med bay and had to see if she was alright. She wasn't.
They were both broken. Stuck in a never-ending ghost Drift with a ghost. Raleigh and Gipsy both had a Yancy-shaped hole in their heads, though only Gipsy's was physical. They kept reaching out for that connection, for that instant comfort and light and love that is Yancy. For his support and steadiness and caution, for his more laid-back nature and his dry wit and his soft smile and calloused hands ruffling his hair. Raleigh had been annoyed the last time Yancy had done that, but now he'd give anything for his brother to mess up his hair and make a stupid joke and groan at how early it was before a patrol.
Raleigh was curled up as small as he could make himself next to Yancy's rig, just outside of a smear of crusty dried blood that he knew was his brother's. Together Raleigh and Gipsy screamed silently for Yancy, searching for him in a never-ending ghost Drift because they were connected when he died. Raleigh knew what it felt like to snap his neck and die only, he wasn't dead was he, why wasn't he dead, why did Yancy ask him not to follow, oh god Yancy, Yancy, Yancy.
His head was cold and desolate and empty like a cold Alaskan shore and there was so much silence. That was the worst part. When someone's been inside your head, the hardest thing to deal with was the suffocating, all-consuming silence that remained after they'd gone. Nobody had told him that during his time in the Academy. Perhaps no one knew.
He was the first, he reminded himself. The first to survive alone in the Conn-Pod. No other Ranger knew what it was like. Even Pentecost – though he'd piloted solo – had never felt his copilot die mid-Drift. Raleigh was alone in this. Alone as he had never been because he had always had Yancy. Always.
He clenched his eyes shut and cupped his hands over his ears and he and Gipsy screamed for their better half inside his head – the better son, the better brother, the better Ranger – only there was no return, just an echo that got louder and louder until his ears were ringing and where was he and oh god Yancy.
There was something wet on his cheek – was it human blood, was it kaiju blood, was it ocean spray, was it snow from an empty Alaskan beach – no, he brushed it away with bandaged fingers and recognized it with a puzzled frown. He was crying. His shoulders shook and Gipsy's matched the movement, and they sobbed together because Raleigh was the only one who could shed tears, so he supposed it was his duty to cry for Gipsy too.
A soft deep voice that sounded so so so far away murmured, "Mr. Becket."
Raleigh opened his eyes and stared into the understanding dark eyes of Stacker Pentecost, who was probably the only one who might understand really, despite their differences, though even he couldn't possibly know the full truth. The man did know what it was like to pilot a jaeger alone, feeling like his brain was on fire and his nerves were screaming and every muscle shook. He knew how it felt to carry his Gipsy – his Coyote – alone, but not because Yancy had been ripped from his head and he had to kill the kaiju that did it.
The Marshal even knew what it was like to watch the person who shared your every thought and memory, the person whose soul matched your own, die in front of him – Tamsin Sevier, his copilot. But she had died of terminal cancer, they hadn't been ripped from a beautifully singing Drift full of love and laughter and loyalty and thrown broken into cold Alaskan waters with a snapped neck while their brother still screamed their name.
Raleigh slowly, deliberately, clenched his right fist, and Gipsy did too, and there, in the Conn-Pod, he saw just when Marshal Pentecost realized that they were still connected, and that they had been since Knifehead. Everyone forgot that it wasn't just the pilots in the Drift – it was the jaeger too. Gipsy had lost Yancy as well, tightening her hold on her last Ranger until her desperation was burned into his skin. His dark eyes took in the continuous creaks and groans of Raleigh's beautiful broken lady with a new light, and the low tremble of the metal that matched the shaking of the last Becket's shoulders.
"You can't send her to Oblivion Bay, sir, please," the once-arrogant Becket Boy – yes only one now – would beg on his knees for Gipsy. He shivered at the thought of beautiful deadly scrappy Gipsy Danger being sent where jaegers went to die, and their pilots were nothing but smears of blood and shards of bone on the side of their Conn-Pod. He'd thought of running, just disappearing, and not coming back, but Gipsy needed him, and he couldn't allow that to happen to RaleighandYancy's beautiful lady. He and Gipsy weren't done yet. Yancy was a broken neck and pain and death, but Raleigh was still here. He and Gipsy weren't done yet!
"Alright, Becket," the Marshal soothed, placing one hand on his unburnt right shoulder. He yanked it back with an apologetic frown when Raleigh cried out with a cracked, broken groan as pressure was placed on the kaiju blue burns seared into his shoulder. The man continued, "I can't make promises, but I'll do my best."
They couldn't afford to lose any more good pilots, Raleigh knew that. The kaijus were just getting bigger and better and smarter, and Raleigh had already heard whispers of shutting down the Jaeger Program for a new project: The Wall of Life. But this Ranger still had fight left in him. He and Gipsy weren't done yet.
They had retrieved Yancy's body and Raleigh had him buried next to their mother and sister. Raleigh made a small metal charm of their symbol to remember him by – a star inside a shield, surrounded by wings – of scrap he'd pulled off Gipsy's tattered arm with a kiss of thanks to his beautiful Gipsy's metal plating. She tasted like salt and rain. She crooned back, a song of plucked cables and creaking metal and the pitter patter of broken glass.
He limped to Yancy's funeral with his jaw set stubbornly, insisting that he wouldn't miss it despite the way his head ached, and he barely moved his arms if he could help it – one bandaged from his fingertips to his torso and resting in a sling, the other coated in something soothing and sticky and wrapped in bandages, hanging limply at his side because a brace put too much pressure on the burns. Instead of speaking, he ran a knuckle gently down the closed casket marked with Gipsy's winged symbol. There were really no words left to be said when you'd been in each other's heads.
He stared at the upturned earth long after everyone else was gone.
Three graves in a row. Three Beckets dead and buried. Dominique Lapierre-Becket, Jazmine Becket, Yancy Becket. Only Raleigh and his piece of shit father left – wherever the man was. He placed a rose on the crest of his mother's grave, a daisy on his sister's, and a gladiolus flower on Yancy's. They were Yancy's favorite, though his brother would have never admitted it, but Raleigh knew. He knew because he'd been in his brother's head and loved him anyway even when he'd been ripped away and told Raleigh not to follow.
He had overheard one of the fishermen tasked with the retrieval of his brother's body say that if Yancy hadn't been pasted against the rig by Knifehead, there wouldn't have been enough left to find, much less bury. Raleigh had to hide in his room until he could control the twitching of his left hand because it couldn't decide if it had been ripped off or electrocuted or both, and mask how slow and dead his right arm still felt. He had trouble with it sometimes because hadn't his right side died oh no wait that was just Yancy – oh god Yancy why'd you ask me to stay Yancy.
He had wanted to find the man and knock his teeth out when he could control his breathing again. He learned the next day that one of Gipsy's crew had broken his nose and snapped at him to show some respect. Raleigh had felt a satisfied smirk pass across his lips for a second before it faded beneath his cold exterior. That was the old Raleigh's anger – though it no longer burned hot like whiskey and fire and a nuclear core, but cold, an icy rage like Alaskan waters and pelting rain and frost in metal joints.
