[ the tightening never really goes away. chuck knows this through lived experience, and through experience he shouldn't have lived through at all. becket swears on the opposite end of the feed and while it sure as hell isn't a reassuring hand on his shoulder (not that chuck would know what to do with that either) its something. ]
That's what I'd like t'know. [ its as close to an accusation as anything, and in the background there's a clatter of metal that follows. with another muttered swear. ]
They're vacuums, [ he responds deadpan, as though to say it's the least of my concerns - and they are. Mako is somewhere he can't go to until their respective sectors are sorted out, Chuck has no back-up, and Herc is possibly going to die — air pockets are the least of his worries right now.
He can't get to his people fast enough. ] Can you get to him?
[ those words aren't nearly enough. they don't say i'm listening to my goddamn father slowly die. they don't say i lost track of how many human fucking bodies i've had to take apart in here. they don't say i can't. chuck has to say it because he has to draw a line. because duty and obligation and responsibility, the job has always been what mattered most to his old man, and it's what chuck pulled into himself to fill every nook and cranny that could possibly have been a hole until he decided he was complete.
they can't reach one another and he doesn't know how much time his old man has because herc doesn't tell him. all he smells is blood and the only part of him that's able to exist outside this room is this feed with becket.
[ he doesn't understand what chuck means when he says we have our orders, but even if he did, raleigh thinks he'll do what he's always done when given an order he doesn't believe in — wholesale disregard, made solid by sheer force of will, and it's definitely cost him more than an armful of nerve damage and a brain half-mushed, but he wasn't going to change that any time soon.
he wasn't going to change that part of him - the part that, to this day, he reminds himself had cost him yancy - especially not when the alternative would be someone else's family becoming the cost.
raleigh's done with that. a hundred times over done with that. ]
Talk me through it, [ he asks, because there's a power to words that raleigh knows of, how just saying things make them more real, more founded. talk me through it, it might help. ]
chuck and raleigh have been a hell of a lot of things in their collective history thus far, but there's never been symmetry. it's nothing to grieve over, not when the only person he has that could ever come close to friendship is his father- not when they have nothing but the drift. he knows what becket's saying without the words to articulate it. it's a punch to the gut, one that flattens his diaphragm and takes a rib with it and leaves him winded. angry.
becket tells him to ignore it and go on anyway. but that isn't a call chuck has ever made on his own, isn't the kind of call any good ranger makes when he's in the field. he couldn't make it in the bay of hong kong. and he can't make it now.
there are some things he won't be able to undo. chuck remembers getting word when gipsy danger had gone down. when yancy becket had been lost and his copilot fucked off to lands unknown. chuck wants nothing more than to go after his old man- it hammers in his lungs and drums in his ears. ]
Nothin' to talk about.
[ but his dad gave the order. and what he needs is for chuck to do his job. ]
The thing is, Raleigh doesn't know Chuck. He doesn't know what makes him tick, what makes him angry, what makes him want to swing his fists or sit down and listen or plug into a Jaeger and kick kaiju ass; what Raleigh only truly knows about Chuck is that he's got a mean right hook and that he's arguably the best pilot to come out of the PPDC, barring Mako, and that's partly his bias talking when says that. Chuck isn't like Raleigh, doesn't have the same streak of casual insubordination in his veins, doesn't have the ache of a kaiju-free life to shadow most of his motivations in life.
When he thinks about it, Chuck has more in common with Mako than anyone else he knows. He knows this. So what is he doing asking Chuck questions he has no business asking him to?
(Because you care, despite better judgment. The words sound like Yancy.) ]
[ there's a change to the tonal quality, and maybe it's one becket started and maybe it isn't something either party is ready (willing) to define- but chuck echoes it the way he echoes everything else. there are rules to every universe, and of the equation for action to reaction- chuck has always known which of the two he represents. maybe the other pilot is trying to talk him through it, for both their sakes, but it isn't a motive he wants to take apart. it isn't something he wants to understand when it's so much easier to just be and do. chuck's mouth opens on reflex, to do as he's told-
but the syllable breaks off for a cacophony of sound. the wet splatter of flesh on steel and the ricochet of metal on metal. whatever chuck had been prepared to say is lost in what is undeniably an attack- punctuated by a sharp ] Son of a- [ before the feed cuts out ]
[ it's a stretch of several hours before the feed reconnects, and when it does- the relative silence in the background speaks to some semblance of safety. however momentary. chuck's voice is quieter, though whether the rough, weathered quality of his tone is from vocal rubbed raw or faded with disuse is anyone's guess. ]
[ For his part, there's some noise of activity going on in the background. He'd managed to hook up with some of the others from his residence floor, and the beeps and pneumatic clicks of the hologram voice-overs bounce around behind him.
The easy part is done. Now they have to clear out a chamber full of ugly assholes that Raleigh doesn't have the patience for. ]
You're alive. [ Raleigh answers with audible relief, though that amounts to only the smallest uptick in enthusiasm far as a guy like Raleigh would sound like to anyone else. Not for the first time, Raleigh wonders if they've all been brought back together, as a crew, just so they could get ripped apart piece by piece all over again. This whole space adventure certainly felt like the start of it, with hope motivating the downward spin into red-edged fear and paranoia. ] I got worried.
[ there's too much to chuck's response that's wry. if asked, the answer would be as blunt as it would be quick- if he'd outlived the breach, if he's here after delivering an ocean-clearing payload in the bottom of the pacific, he sure as hell isn't going out because of a few goddamn reanimated corpses.
something in his head has made the leap, turned the necromorphs into other because chuck can't look at them and know they were once people. because he's spent days taking them apart limb by limb. because he'd listened to alayne whisper into her communicator like she was as good as damned found already. because his old man and mori and becket are still out there somewhere when they should be together, a unit. ]
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(v : d 1 | perma-audio) --> later that day
That's what I'd like t'know. [ its as close to an accusation as anything, and in the background there's a clatter of metal that follows. with another muttered swear. ]
How're the damn vacuums.
(v : d 1 | perma-audio) --> later that day
He can't get to his people fast enough. ] Can you get to him?
(v : d 1 | perma-audio) --> later that day
[ those words aren't nearly enough. they don't say i'm listening to my goddamn father slowly die. they don't say i lost track of how many human fucking bodies i've had to take apart in here. they don't say i can't. chuck has to say it because he has to draw a line. because duty and obligation and responsibility, the job has always been what mattered most to his old man, and it's what chuck pulled into himself to fill every nook and cranny that could possibly have been a hole until he decided he was complete.
they can't reach one another and he doesn't know how much time his old man has because herc doesn't tell him. all he smells is blood and the only part of him that's able to exist outside this room is this feed with becket.
and that's just the way it has to be. ]
(v : d 1 | perma-audio) --> later that day
[ he doesn't understand what chuck means when he says we have our orders, but even if he did, raleigh thinks he'll do what he's always done when given an order he doesn't believe in — wholesale disregard, made solid by sheer force of will, and it's definitely cost him more than an armful of nerve damage and a brain half-mushed, but he wasn't going to change that any time soon.
he wasn't going to change that part of him - the part that, to this day, he reminds himself had cost him yancy - especially not when the alternative would be someone else's family becoming the cost.
raleigh's done with that. a hundred times over done with that. ]
Talk me through it, [ he asks, because there's a power to words that raleigh knows of, how just saying things make them more real, more founded. talk me through it, it might help. ]
(v : d 1 | perma-audio) --> later that day
chuck and raleigh have been a hell of a lot of things in their collective history thus far, but there's never been symmetry. it's nothing to grieve over, not when the only person he has that could ever come close to friendship is his father- not when they have nothing but the drift. he knows what becket's saying without the words to articulate it. it's a punch to the gut, one that flattens his diaphragm and takes a rib with it and leaves him winded. angry.
becket tells him to ignore it and go on anyway. but that isn't a call chuck has ever made on his own, isn't the kind of call any good ranger makes when he's in the field. he couldn't make it in the bay of hong kong. and he can't make it now.
there are some things he won't be able to undo. chuck remembers getting word when gipsy danger had gone down. when yancy becket had been lost and his copilot fucked off to lands unknown. chuck wants nothing more than to go after his old man- it hammers in his lungs and drums in his ears. ]
Nothin' to talk about.
[ but his dad gave the order. and what he needs is for chuck to do his job. ]
(v : d 1 | perma-audio) --> later that day
Asks? Pleads? What is he doing?
The thing is, Raleigh doesn't know Chuck. He doesn't know what makes him tick, what makes him angry, what makes him want to swing his fists or sit down and listen or plug into a Jaeger and kick kaiju ass; what Raleigh only truly knows about Chuck is that he's got a mean right hook and that he's arguably the best pilot to come out of the PPDC, barring Mako, and that's partly his bias talking when says that. Chuck isn't like Raleigh, doesn't have the same streak of casual insubordination in his veins, doesn't have the ache of a kaiju-free life to shadow most of his motivations in life.
When he thinks about it, Chuck has more in common with Mako than anyone else he knows. He knows this. So what is he doing asking Chuck questions he has no business asking him to?
(Because you care, despite better judgment. The words sound like Yancy.) ]
Or don't, your call.
(v : d 1 | perma-audio) --> later that day
[ there's a change to the tonal quality, and maybe it's one becket started and maybe it isn't something either party is ready (willing) to define- but chuck echoes it the way he echoes everything else. there are rules to every universe, and of the equation for action to reaction- chuck has always known which of the two he represents. maybe the other pilot is trying to talk him through it, for both their sakes, but it isn't a motive he wants to take apart. it isn't something he wants to understand when it's so much easier to just be and do. chuck's mouth opens on reflex, to do as he's told-
but the syllable breaks off for a cacophony of sound. the wet splatter of flesh on steel and the ricochet of metal on metal. whatever chuck had been prepared to say is lost in what is undeniably an attack- punctuated by a sharp ] Son of a- [ before the feed cuts out ]
(v : d 2 | perma-audio)
Broke the comm.
(v : d 2 | perma-audio)
The easy part is done. Now they have to clear out a chamber full of ugly assholes that Raleigh doesn't have the patience for. ]
You're alive. [ Raleigh answers with audible relief, though that amounts to only the smallest uptick in enthusiasm far as a guy like Raleigh would sound like to anyone else. Not for the first time, Raleigh wonders if they've all been brought back together, as a crew, just so they could get ripped apart piece by piece all over again. This whole space adventure certainly felt like the start of it, with hope motivating the downward spin into red-edged fear and paranoia. ] I got worried.
(v : d 2 | perma-audio)
[ there's too much to chuck's response that's wry. if asked, the answer would be as blunt as it would be quick- if he'd outlived the breach, if he's here after delivering an ocean-clearing payload in the bottom of the pacific, he sure as hell isn't going out because of a few goddamn reanimated corpses.
something in his head has made the leap, turned the necromorphs into other because chuck can't look at them and know they were once people. because he's spent days taking them apart limb by limb. because he'd listened to alayne whisper into her communicator like she was as good as damned found already. because his old man and mori and becket are still out there somewhere when they should be together, a unit. ]
Mori's all green last check.