Mike has at least been kind enough not to tell anyone else who Raleigh is, and Kenzie promised to do the same, after some argument and coercing on Mike's part. So when they showed up to the house, Raleigh was introduced to the four teenagers and one mother with a three-year-old eating chili at a slightly too small kitchen table as simply "Ray". He figures he'll make taking a second helping of food (which Mike insisted on) up to the guy by fixing the broken stove burner Mike was fussing with first thing in the morning.

The house isn't huge, but it's big enough that all the kids have their own rooms except Kenzie, who is voluntarily sharing with a girl named Rae. He's struggling to remember anyone else's names, but that could be because he feels like he's going to fall asleep right there at the table. Some of the younger kids are talking about staying up to play a game of Kaiju and Jaeger themed Risk, and Raleigh thinks about how differently kids take bad news than adults, but Mike shakes his head at them. "Ray's gonna be sleeping on the couch, and I think he'd appreciate it if you didn't." Raleigh appreciates that he says nothing remotely connected to his past, and that he's trying to save Raleigh having to overhear anything that might send him into a memory again. The kids groan, especially Kenzie, but they grab the game and head up the stairs.

"They'll be up half the night, and I'll have to go up there and tell them to go to sleep," Mike grumbles, but he's smiling. Raleigh helps him clear the table and wash dishes, and Mike tells him a few things about the house and the kids. After his wife and two sons died in the Kaiju war back in 2017 while they were in California visiting relatives, Mike was going through heavy depression. He decided the problem was his empty house, and instead of moving decided to open it to people who needed a place to stay. He found he connected well with the kids on the streets, with their feelings of loss and hopelessness. Raleigh gets the feeling Mike is trying to tell him it gets better. He appreciates it, in a way, but he and Mike are fundamentally different when it comes to people. Mike found healing in them, but all Raleigh ever finds is more pain.

Even with the broken spring jabbing at his leg and the musty smell like a few too many cookies and dirty socks have fallen between the cushions, the couch is a thousand times better than the alleys or bridges. Mike comes out from a back room with a stack of blankets folded over his arm, and hands over three immediately. Raleigh's about to tell him he doesn't need that many when he realizes his hands are shaking and he can barely feel his feet.

Mike sits down next to him and glances at the dining room. Anna, the young mother, is just going upstairs with her son…Jim, was it? Mike lowers his voice a little.

"You doing okay?"

"Yeah. What happened before, that isn't…normal for me. It's just been a hell of a day."

Mike nods. "Just wanted to be sure."

"I'm fine."

"Listen, man, I respect that you've got the stoic front going for you, but no one here is gonna judge you for anything. If you need help, you let us know and we'll give it, no questions asked."

Raleigh shrugs. "Don't need it. Been doing fine on my own." He doesn't want to owe Mike something he can't repay, because the kind of help he needs is way more than a meal and a bed. He doesn't think Mike needs to be some messed-up pilot's therapist. He doesn't want to be in Raleigh's head.

"They weren't joking when they called you the Becket Boys." The man shakes his head. "My God, when I saw the age of the kids they put in those Jaegers I felt sick. Watched you and your brother after Yamarashi; you were all laughs and cocky grins, but you, you looked like nothing more than a kid playing "Kaiju and Jaegers". You were so damn young." I was eighteen. Yance was twenty-one. After it was over he went and bought us both beers. He said if I was old enough to die I was old enough to drink. Mike sits down, shaking his head. "They sent a boy off to war, and now they don't want to do anything about the consequences."

Raleigh realizes Mike thinks the PPDC cut him loose, and then wonders if maybe they have and he just hasn't heard about it yet. They should, after all this. He was only still in because it wasn't good PR to kick half the team that saved the world out of your program. Now there's not really much time to worry about what people think. It's time for the PPDC to go back to war mode. Which means cutting off anything useless. Like him.

"Most of the kids who come through here, they've got some messed up childhoods. But you, yours is one of a kind." Raleigh doesn't feel like these kids, but really, he isn't much different. He never got to have a normal life. He bounced from the Academy at seventeen to the Jaegers, to the Wall, to the Resistance, to being someone's poster child. He doesn't have a life in the normal world. He has nothing but war. And now he doesn't even have that.

"I don't know where to go from here." He doesn't know why he's admitting this to a total stranger, but Mike seems like a decent person and he reminds Raleigh of Mako. "I'm a halfway decent welder with one good arm, and the only thing I ever knew how to do was fight."

Mike puts his hand on Raleigh's shoulder, the good one. "Don't tell yourself that, Ray. You were someone before the war started, and you had something you wanted to do. I know it's been a long time, but there's something of that old you still there. You're more than a soldier."

"The old me had a brother." Raleigh knows how bitter it sounds, but he's done caring about whether he's hurt people's feelings. "I had Yance and I could do anything, because he told me I could. But he's gone, and the only thing I want to do is get him back, and I can't." He catches himself, because his voice is getting louder and the last thing he wants is for the whole house to find out who he is because he's having a breakdown in the living room.

"Maybe he's not as far gone as you think." That's the problem. He's right here, inside my head, and he's disappointed. But I'm not good enough for anything else, not anymore. I got my brother killed. Wasn't even a good soldier. Raleigh doesn't notice what Mike says after that, but he does realize his face is wet and his eyes are scratchy from silent crying. He rolls over and buries himself in the blankets and for once, sleep isn't a long time coming. He doesn't even hear Mike get up and walk away.