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[esp_dragon]

Fandom: Pacific Rim
Summary: Raleigh came back different from the Anteverse.
Rating: G
Notes: Spoilers for the movie.
Overuse of italics again. Orz
Thanks to Key for helping me with this! :D
Genre: General
Word count: 1,502
Status: Complete



It's strange, you know? You spend years fighting for humanity, defending it from giant monsters from a portal underneath the sea, so that when you finally win, there's this moment where you don't know what to do anymore.

But everyone else does, because they had to, they had to keep on living while you were waiting for the monsters to come. (And what you had done when you weren't fighting, because you still had to do something to protect humanity, and if you couldn't step back into a jeager, then you would help build a wall.)

So we started rebuilding again. Rebuilding what had been destroyed, going around the kaiju carcases like we always did. But this time? This time it was different, because this time we had hope. The light at the end of the tunnel had been getting dimmer and dimmer with every passing year but we finally emerged on the other side, weary, but alive.

We had cancelled the apocalypse.

Except, just like the one-pilot system, when you do things for the first time, you don't realise what the consequences are until it's too late.

* * *
"Raleigh?" Mako said, the corners of her lips turned downward, and there was a crease between her eyebrows. She also currently had her staff at his throat, his own staff batted from his hands a few seconds earlier. "What's wrong?"

"I think I'm coming down with something," Raleigh admitted as she pulled him to his feet. "My head's been feeling…" Empty, he almost said. There would always be the hole Yancy had left, the cluster of memories that was theirs, not his or Yancy's alone, but this…was something new, like there was something chipping away at his brain, leaving an almost ache in there because it was supposed to be filled with something but it wasn't-

Raleigh sucked in a breath when he felt Mako's hand on his arms. "Then maybe you should rest." But her eyes were flicking to someone behind him, checking who else was listening and Raleigh let out a loose chuckle as he looped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a little squeeze.

"Yeah." Of course he couldn't hide anything from her.

* * *
"Hey, Mako," Raleigh said three days later as he looked over his pictures on the wall, "I think the other hole in my head's finally stopped growing." Unless it had eaten away at whatever he used to feel its presence. There had been no point going to the doctor's – only one other person had gone to the Anteverse with him and if Mako wasn't experiencing the same thing… And what could the doctors do anyway? Tell him what he already knew.

"Do you want to check?" she asked.

He smiled at her and nodded.

It didn't take them long to reach the sparring room, and as they faced each other, staff in hand, Raleigh couldn't help his grin; sparring with Mako, with anyone you were drift compatible with, was like dancing, except you knew where the other was going to move anyway.

The spar started normally, give and take, but then there was a flash of…something, gone too fast for Raleigh to identify, but for a second, Raleigh had wanted to throw away his useless staff and use his (claws) hands, his (fangs) teeth.

He halted, his heart hammering in his chest far harder than it should be, ice in his stomach, because it suddenly felt like he was missing something at his sides, something that had never existed. The feeling lingered longer than the…instincts, and Raleigh became aware that there should be something at the end of the – the appendages. Fingers. Three of them. Tipped with claws longer than the fingers themselves. He knew exactly what it should feel like to control six limbs and no. No. What was going on?

He was taking in air in sharp, painful shallow gasps but he couldn't stop because he couldn't be turning into a kaiju. After everything that had happened, was he going to be the next thing that endangered humanity?

Raleigh could see Mako's mouth moving, and her voice was reaching his ears but he couldn't make sense of it.

The hole in his head sang and filled, flickering with information, almost like a drift but Raleigh knew what Yancy felt like inside and out, and it wasn't Mako either. This was two more minds, connected with each other, closed off to everyone else, but then all three of them were open to each other, trust or no.

The world shifted, changed, but Raleigh didn't black out like he'd expected to, Mako staring at him, her eyes wide.

…Why was he suddenly seeing Hermann?

* * *
"-and then we can-" Newt blinked, turning his head to the left. "Hey, did you hear that?"

"If you mean your pointless drivel, then yes, I-"

"Shh-sh-sh!" Newt cut Hermann off, waving a hand for added emphasis. Or habit. It was something anyway, but that didn't matter because there it was again! "Did you hear that?"

"Wonderful," Hermann muttered, his shoulders saying if he had been anyone else, he would have crossed his arms by now. "You've started to repeat yourself."

"I am not-!" Okay, so maybe he was, and Newt more felt Hermann roll his eyes than see it (because Hermann would never actually roll his eyes where people could see him do it, oh no) and-

And-

"Wait, who's that? Is that a-" 'third person?' he sent down the link he and Hermann had found themselves with after drifting together with the kaiju brain. It only encompassed him and Hermann when the throat between worlds had collapsed, but if they were suddenly finding themselves connected with another-

Oh no.

Newt's eyes widened, and he felt Hermann's dawning horror as well.

Had another breach been opened?

'No!'

Huh? Newt blinked and sent a mental poke at the second presence in his head. That seemed rather…human.

A swat and Newt retreated. No poking. Got it. 'That's because I am human. (And I hope I stay that.)'

That voice was familiar. Who…?

'Mister Becket,' Hermann greeted and – oh! Oh! Of course! That made so much sense! Raleigh and Mako were the only people who actually physically went into the Anteverse, so they must have been exposed to something that changed them on a biological level, making them more receptive to a hive mind.

…Huh, queasiness.

'Oops, sorry,' Newt said, sending sheepishness for good measure as well.

'No, it's (not all right) good to know… (But what about the rest of me?)'

'Mister Becket,' Hermann said, weight behind his words, 'it would appear you have six limbs.'

"What?" Newt yelped, turning his attention back to Raleigh and wow, he really did have four arms. How come he wasn't freaking out more?

A brittle chuckle. 'You're distracting me. And…I don't actually have them.'

"Raleigh." And, uh, Newt was pretty sure he was looking at things cross-eyed because he could see Mako in his mind's eye, reaching towards her face. "Your eyes…"

"What about them?"

"They're turning blue. All of it."

Oh boy. Newt and Hermann braced himself for the sick horror a second before it hit, but it still felt like his stomach twisted, wanting to reject everything in it.

Mako stepped up to them/Raleigh and said quietly, "You need to leave."

Raleigh swallowed.

"If the others discovered what's happening to you-"

A little late for that, Newt couldn't help but think, panic starting to flood his system. He wasn't sure exactly who it was from, if it was his own or Raleigh's or maybe even Hermann's, but it was starting to loop around then like a snake-

"Newt." Hermann glared at him.

Right. No panicking or feeding it.

"-have to kill you."

"I'm surprised you're not the first in line…" Raleigh trailed off but Mako smiled.

"I've been inside your head, Raleigh," she said. "I know whatever happens, you will fight this, fight to stay yourself."

And Raleigh's worry eased. He smiled back at her. "You're right. I will." He let out a breath. "But now I have to get out of here…"

Newt shared a look with Hermann, but he had already nodded, sending affirmation down their link.

'Huh? You two'll…?'

"Sure," Newt said, giving a small shrug. "Who's going to suspect a pair of scientists, right?" And both he and Hermann knew their link wasn't a full hivemind, not like the ones the kaiju had – other people believing them on the other hand… That would take a little more time than they had.

"Thanks."

The link faded, but Newt could still feel Raleigh – it was like a closed door, shutting out things, but not completely locked either.

"Well then, Hermann," Newt said, turning to him. "You ready for this?"

"Hmph, you're going to need all the help you can get." But Newt didn't need the link to know Hermann was doing that for appearances sake (and habit) and they left the lab together.

_______________________________
For Dogmatix's prompt, 'A few days after closing the breach, Raleigh falls ill. Because he was in the Anteverse, he was either affected by something non-physical or something infectious came back with him but only affected him.
Raleigh is turning into a kaiju (or human-kaiju hybrid), and Newton and Hermann, because of their drift with the baby kaiju, are hive-minded with each other, and now Raleigh.
Mako, Newt, and Hermann smuggle Raleigh out of the Shatterdome so that he won't be secreted away to a lab somewhere and dissected.'

YEAH. GIVE ME A XENO PROMPT AND WATCH ME SPEW WORDS.

Oh my god, did I have fun with Newt's voice. 8D