I have a head canon that Raleigh didn't just go straight to working on the Wall after he left the Jaegers, so I decided to play around with an idea of what his past might have been like in that five-year period we know almost nothing about.
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Raleigh is sleeping under a bridge now. Or more accurately, curled up shivering and thinking if he falls asleep he may wake up with frozen fingers, toes, or nose. Or not wake up at all. The second option is acceptable. The first will just make his life worse.
The good things about his day so far have been finding a good spot to get discarded food behind a grocery store, and meeting a homeless guy willing to give Raleigh a perfectly good coat he found in the trash in exchange for fixing the guy's old radio. The thing is an antique, if the guy was smart he'd pawn it, but maybe it's got some sentimental value to him. Raleigh was never one for sentimental, didn't understand it, until Yancy died. Then he kept the old sweaters, the photos, even a pair of socks for a while, anything that made his brother feel a little bit less gone. In any case, the guy seemed pretty happy about Raleigh's repair, because he gave him the coat and a scarf on top of that.
The good thing about homeless people is that a lot of them tend to look out for each other. Most people think they're a bunch of crazies or drug addicts who are dangerous, sly loners, but Raleigh knows better. He learned fast that first winter in Anchorage, when he didn't have the motivation to drag himself to stand in a frigid line for Wall construction ration cards all day, only to be turned down because the guy just three people ahead of him filled the last spot.
For a little while, Raleigh had tried surviving on his own. He turned down anyone who asked if he wanted help, worried they were only trying to help themselves, but when someone caught him asleep and threatened him at knifepoint for the three dollars and some spare change in his wallet, and when he was disappointed, took his anger out on Raleigh (his arms are still scarred, those are higher than the others, but it was the first time he realized the pain could make him forget), he was forced to find someone else he could trust.
He met a woman and two kids who'd lost their home, their father, and their oldest son to a Kaiju attack, and the woman, Bekka, did a decent job patching up his arms and taught him how to avoid being found at night. She had to be smart to have been on the streets with those kids for, she'd told him, three years then. He wonders what happened to her. She had friends who looked out for her, Jerry, a drug dealer who had a decent code of ethics that at the very least meant he protected the women on the streets in his territory and made sure no one but him brought in anything to sell. And there was Ruben, the former schoolteacher who lost his job and his home after he came out as gay, and the school decided he couldn't be trusted with the children anymore, and had one of the kids fake a sexual harassment charge. In spite of how badly people had treated him, Rube had been a kind guy, whose only mean bone in his body was the knuckles in his impressive right hook. Bekka made sure they looked out for Raleigh too, and it was the closest thing he had to family until the cops caught Jerry; and Raleigh, after deciding fighting anyone who tried to take over for him was only going to get him killed, finally went back to the Wall and actually got a job.
Another good thing about homeless people is that they tend to be too busy surviving to worry about who you are or who you were. Bekka knew he used to be a pilot, because she saw the drivesuit scars on his arms when she was cleaning up the knife injuries, but she never asked why he wasn't still in a Jaeger. On the streets, everyone has a painful past and they know not to bring it up unless the other person trusts them enough to share it.
The not so good things about today have been the Kaiju coming back, Mako leaving, and the way Raleigh feels like he might be getting sick. He also knows from experience that on the streets that can be deadly. Bekka's daughter Grace almost died from a simple cold, because the weather was bad and it turned into bronchitis. She lived because they were able to take her to a public hospital and someone from a local church heard about it and footed the bill. Raleigh can't go to a hospital unless he wants them to drag him down to LA where he'll have to watch helplessly while Mako goes off to war again without him beside her.
"Hey man, you alright?" Someone is shaking Raleigh's bad shoulder. He didn't feel them there, and when they speak up he reacts with a reflex, grabbing the person's arm and slamming them to the ground.
"Whoa sorry man. I'm not stealin' anything." The person is currently laying on the ground, panting. The first thing Raleigh notices is that this person is small, smaller than Mako even. The next thing is all the color.
A knit blue beanie has fallen off of fluorescent teal and purple hair, they're wearing a jean jacket with all sorts of small sew-on patches (all of them Jaegers or Kaiju, and he thinks he saw Gipsy's nuclear core on the right shoulder) that is mostly hiding a green shirt with some sort of band logo on it, maybe the "Breach Beasts" (Raleigh only knows they're a metal band that started after 2020, he didn't have much time to listen to music working on the Wall, but he's sure they're popular with the younger generation). Red and grey tennis shoes and a pair of jeans with what look like Kaiju drawn on with Sharpie marker.
The kid could be the love child of Newt Geisler and a package of Skittles. Ok. That was too weird. Raleigh shakes his head. I must be worse off than I thought if that's what's floating around in my head.
"What are you, some kinda ninja?" The kid bounces back on their feet, grinning. "That was awesome. Can you show me how to do it?"
"Not right now. I think I might freeze solid before I even got up."
"If you need a place to stay I know a guy. He's got a house he lets people stay at when they get kicked out by their families or stuff. As long as you're not like a murderer or a rapist or something he'll be chill with you staying."
"What the hell kid?" Raleigh is having trouble processing, with how fast the kid's talking. And Mako said he has too much energy.
"It's gonna get bad tonight and you looked like you didn't have anywhere to go. I just thought I'd try and help." The kid looks kind of crushed. "And I really want you to show me that move. I could use that."
Raleigh stands stiffly, shivering even more when he loses what little warmth huddling was giving him. How the hell is the kid out here in just that jacket? "Thanks for stopping. But you probably shouldn't have trusted me not to hurt you, you know." Kid's gonna die on the streets fast if they don't know to be at least a little more cautious.
"I got this, I'm fine." The kid pulls a ridiculously large knife out of their boot. Raleigh shakes his head; they'd have been dead before they even could reach the handle, but the confidence is kind of catching.
"Let's go see this friend of yours before we both turn into popsicles, huh?" The kid nods, and then reaches out a hand to him, pulling off a grimy winter glove.
"By the way, I'm Kenzie."
"Ray."