The Ghost of You

Chapter One: Raleigh

Yancy Becket appeared for the first ten minutes and had barely a dozen lines, and somehow, still, I managed to get attached enough to him and his relationship with Raleigh that I wrote this rewrite. It was supposed to be a 5k oneshot, max, and now it has five fully planned parts and is looking to be around 20k of self-indulgent Becket Brother nonsense.

Shoutout to Sabrina and Jaz who have been listening to me yell about the Becket Brothers for over a month.

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Raleigh Becket disappeared from the Anchorage Shatterdome, one month after Knifehead, and barely two days after he rose from his coma. They find his bed empty, heart monitor unplugged and the bloody tubes draped messily over the sheets. His room had been cleaned out almost completely, the photographs ripped off the wall, the dressers still half open, and only a few piles of paper still spread haphazardly over the desk. Raleigh''s bomber jacket, which had spent the past four weeks hanging stiffly in the closet, was folded neatly on the bottom bunk.

He'd taken Yancy's jacket with him.

...

Raleigh doesn't remember much about his first awake day in the hospital. It's all blurry flashes, the stinging smell of antiseptic, and Tendo telling him in a painfully soft voice that he'd been in a coma for a bloody month after somehow piloting Gipsy Danger to shore. Alone.

He remembers the second day with an almost painful clarity.

Flashes of the battle had haunted his dreams. A swirling blurred mix of the storm, the ship, the waves crashing into Gipsy's legs, the Kaiju blue staining the ocean, the screech of metal as Gypsy's left arm was ripped off, the searing pain that followed, Knifehead rising from the deep, a talon tearing through the conn pod, falling fast towards the ocean, and Yancy, Yancy, YANCY!

He was ripped from sleep at ten past two in the morning. A nurse shook him awake with Yancy's name still tearing itself halfway out of his throat as the heart monitor went wild. He could barely breathe and he shook violently, his vision blurred and behind a wall of static he could barely hear the nurse talking to him.

"Y-Yancy..." He croaked, staring blankly ahead. Tears tracked down his cheeks. "Yancy, Yancy."

The nurse started talking again, only not to him. He thought there may have been another nurse standing in the doorway. Maybe it was a doctor. He doesn't remember what she said because he didn't hear it, shaking so much it hurt and struggling to breath. He vaguely remembered the words unresponsive and panic attack.

"Yancy..." He said again. Yancy had always come when he called didn't he? When they were kids with the monsters under the bed, and when they'd grown up and the monsters had migrated to the ocean. Yancy was always there for him, a rock for him to lean on and, more recently, a steady flame always flickering in the back of his brain where the ghost drift lingered between missions. Yancy had always come when he called, but maybe he just couldn't hear him. "YANCY!"

A doctor leaned down next to his bed and in front of the IV stand. He didn't remember her entering the room. She placed one hand on the railing of the bed, "Raleigh ," She said, voice calm, "Can you hear me?"

"Yancy." He told her, forcibly jerking his head over in her direction. It's not a question, but a demand. It's like he's three years old again, sitting on the ground, and reaching his hands up for his older brother. Where is Yancy. Bring him to me. Barely a second passed before he insisted again, "Yancy."

"Raleigh ," The doctor said, taking his jolted movements as affirmation, "Everything is alright. You're safe."

"Yancy."