Raleigh is freezing, drowning. The icy water is all around him and the rain is so heavy he can barely tell when his head breaks the surface other than that the taste of the water in his throat is fresh instead of salty and isn't tainted with Kaiju Blue. He can't stay afloat, not with his useless left arm.
Behind him, he can hear metal creaking, groaning. A wave spins him around and he sees Gipsy sinking below the surface, her core glowing even as she drops down, down, down. The water's surface is streaked with Kaiju blood.
Raleigh knows exactly where he is, but it doesn't make sense. He just killed Knifehead. He should be inside Gipsy, getting her back to shore…that's the real memory, right…or is this it? Getting thrown from the torn conn-pod into the ocean to freeze and drown? It doesn't seem right, because he's not even wearing his Drivesuit, just a beat-up sweater and jeans. The Drivesuits were made to work like a wetsuit to keep a pilot warm if they had to evacuate the Jaeger…or got thrown out. But these clothes aren't doing anything but dragging him down.
He gasps for a breath and gets a lungful of burning, Blue-filled water. The shock of it makes him flail and he starts going under again. Just when he's about to give up and hope drowning isn't really as painful as he's heard it's supposed to be, something catches the collar of his sweater and yanks him back to the surface. Whoever it is pulls him up onto a low shelf of rock, and when Raleigh rolls over, choking, he's face to face with Yancy. He tries to gasp out his brother's name, but all he succeeds in doing is throwing up half a bucket of seawater.
Yance smacks him on the back, hard. "Just breathe, Rals, breathe." He does, finally, and chokes out a lungful of salty, Blue tainted water. He's gonna be in the hospital with K-pneumonia for weeks after this. Yance helps him sit up, back against the cold, iced-over stone. In the distance, the Saltchuck is pitching in wave troughs, and he can just see a bit of Gipsy's trashed conn-pod sticking up out of the water. In between the flashes of lightning, the sea is a black, icy monster, snapping at his feet and trying to drag him back in. It seems angry he escaped.
Raleigh hugs his knees to his chest, shivering, teeth chattering so badly he can barely talk. Yance, for once, seems completely unaffected. Usually he was the one complaining about the weather. "Why aren't you cold?"
"I'm dead, Rals." It's so matter-of-fact that Raleigh almost misses it.
He wants to say I'm sorry, it's my fault, I messed everything up, it should have been me, not you but what comes out instead is,"That's not fair. Fuck you." Yance grins and casually gives him the middle finger. I missed this. Pretending to hate you. He never even thought anything mean about Yance after he was dead, except maybe the one or two times he screamed at nothingness "Why did you leave?" It felt wrong to be angry at the dead, even in humor.
"Raleigh, what have you done to yourself?" Yance sounds sadly parental. I knew he was going to bring that up. Raleigh honestly didn't think it was as bad as it could be. His arms don't have any really fresh scars, and his clothes aren't that bad-well, they weren't until he fell in a freaking Kaiju Blue spill. The beard, okay, he can see that being an issue. No one seems fond of it, even though he kind of likes it, himself.
"I'm sorry. I couldn't deal with it." He doesn't feel like lying to Yance. If he even could. His brother's never not been in his head. Even in all those years of silence he told Mako about, he could still hear Yance sometimes. Usually when he was dangerously close to giving up.
He's expecting Yance to get mad, to say he should have talked to someone, told someone, gotten help before it came to him slashing his arms open and drinking himself into oblivion and sleeping under bridges. But he doesn't. He just leans over and pulls Raleigh into a hug. And that's too much. Raleigh starts crying, and not the confused, uncertain way it's been this whole time, where he's not even sure what he's crying for. He needs his brother and damn it, Yance is so lost the only place Raleigh can still find him is here in another person's head.
Yance doesn't let go for a long time. Even after Raleigh's stopped crying, he can feel his brother shaking from silent sobs. Yance pulls Raleigh as close as he can and runs his fingers through his hair, like he used to whenever Raleigh had nightmares. "Rals, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't there."
"It's not your fault." Raleigh doesn't think he's ever said that. Everyone's told him it's not his fault, but then that means it must have been Yance's, because there has to be someone to blame. And he wanted it to be him, not Yance. So he never listened when they told him he wasn't the reason his brother was gone. Here, in the middle of the storm, it feels different. Like maybe it's no one's fault. They fought the hurricane and this time it won, just a little. An act of God. And neither he nor his brother had anything to do with it.
They sit there for what feels like hours, holding onto each other like they'll never let go. There are no words between them, or if there are, Raleigh forgets them a second after he says them. It's enough that they're together again.