sixthiterationlogs | the fog comes on little cat feet

WHO: Raleigh Becket
WHERE: The Corydon #36, The Inn
WHEN: 7 September
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: Open

Raleigh had actually gotten the cat a week or so earlier but it had taken him a little while to settle on the name if only because the torrents of rain had distracted him from such trivial things as cat naming and driven him to spend most of his time catching rainwater and trying to keep from drowning. Once it had lightened up, though, he'd been able to do a little more venturing out and the snow-white cat had been called Yuki on more than one occasion and it'd just stuck.

Yuki, luckily, fends for herself. She comes back filthy at the end of the day and she usually brings him presents he doesn't want but she damn sure earns her keep. Right now, she's whining at him as he's making his way along the banks of the swollen river, checking his fishing lines and whining for a bit of the catch.

"You're supposed to feed yourself. Careful, you. Don't know how well you swim." He doesn't know what breed she is but Yuki seems to know what she's about because she carefully bats at the water and backs up when the current's too swift for her liking. Once he gets the fish up and out of the river, he heads up to the inn to clean it with Yuki following, ever hopeful that her master is going to give her something for her troubles.

Raleigh settles to work close to the fire, trying to dry out, and Yuki takes advantage of the warmth to clean herself and let her fur dry out. She sprawls on her back and lets out a long, anguished sigh.

"You're not getting this. You hunt for your food, you know that."

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"Sometimes it gets bearable, you know? You go a day or two, you don't think about them...then it hits you in the gut. That's how it is with me and Yancy even though it's been five years."

Ten years, fifteen years - Raleigh doesn't think it's going to change. He thinks losing Yancy is always going to feel like losing a part of him, like losing an arm or a leg. He doesn't think it's ever going to truly heal.

"I lost my brother eight years ago, I understand." She doesn't want to talk about Steve, because apparently Steve hadn't been dead. And yet, two years without him had been brutally painful in a way that made the ache inside her twist her up and close off to all possibilities until Daniel had chipped his way through and Angie had levered in and so had Jarvis. All that time she had spent trying to protect her heart and people had still found a way in.

"Will you tell me about him?" Peggy suggests. "If it's not too painful."

"Yancy had always been my best friend," Raleigh says, giving her a little bit of a smile as he remembered him. It's been a while since he's talked about him but he never forgets, not even one detail. Yancy's every thought and memory and experience is burned on him through the Drift and Raleigh's never going to forget that as long as he lives.

"Older brother, confidant, competition. He was the one who always drove me to be my best. I fought best when he was on my right."

It sounds so, so terribly familiar, to the point that Peggy has to swallow down her pain. "You're lucky to have had the chance to fight with him." How many times has Peggy wondered whether she might have saved Michael if only she had listened to him and seen her potential earlier, rather than conform to what society expected of her.

"And no one's been able to fill that gap? Not all of it, I know that's impossible, but some of it?" she prods.

"Different, I think. We were close," Raleigh says. It's hard to explain what it means to share the Drift with someone and he doesn't know if he will ever be able to explain it to someone who hasn't been in the Drift.

"We fought together so often, side by side...we were in perfect sync. I've never found anyone else that can fill that place. It feels like a part of me died too."

"Does it still feel like that here?" She's been wondering, a little, if maybe this place isn't supposed to somehow be a mend on people's feelings and emotions. After all, it seems that everyone has some trauma, doesn't it? It had even been a point at one of those meetings.

"Even after all this time?"

"Sometimes," Raleigh admits. "Sometimes it's not so hard. I'll go days or weeks and not think about Yancy, you know? And then I'll see something or hear something that reminds me of him and all of a sudden it's like it happened yesterday."

Raleigh doesn't think it will ever go away entirely, no, but it has gotten easier to put one step in front of the other five years later and he thinks, with time, it will get easier still.

"Grief is awful like that," Peggy says, absently tugging at the stitch at her trousers as she tries to figure out how to say this next part without being overtly hopeful. "I thought I had lost someone, too, but he's here. He arrived out of the fountain the same as the rest of us did."

"Perhaps your brother might arrive," she says, trying to be matter-of-fact rather than endlessly hopeful.

"Been a long time since I've seen him but I hope we would be able to still get along. Has it been working for you? The person who came from the fountain that you thought you lost?"

It's the first Raleigh's heard of someone coming through that may or may not be dead in the real world and it makes him wonder if he's dead. It's possible. Him going up against the breach was a last-ditch effort to save the world, after all, and there's no confirmation it worked.

Peggy opens her mouth and then closes it, not sure how to even describe her tense relationship with Steve. "It's complicated," is all she has to say on the subject, seeing as once upon a time it would have been simple, but those days are unfortunately long gone. More's the pity for her.

"I'll still take complicated over not having him at all," she's quick to clarify, seeing as she's missed Steve that much.

"I would take complicated over not having Yancy," Raleigh agrees, giving her a soft, understanding smile.

"I'm glad he's here, Peggy. That's good, that you get a chance to see him again even if it's hard. You get a chance to say things you didn't get to say. I think about that a lot."

"One day," she says, and she hopes that it's not a lie, "maybe he won't come, but maybe someone else will and they'll fill that void for you in a way that no one has yet," she says. "It took me two years, but I was starting to find that at home. Now, with Steve, the only thing I keep thinking about..." She feels silly talking like this, but she also thinks it's important.

"He owed me a dance. Still does. I intend to collect," she vows.

"Well, you seem like a woman who gets what she wants. I wouldn't want to get in the way of that," Raleigh says, chuckling lightly. "I figure you probably are going to collect that dance one way or the other."

He likes that spirit, though, and Peggy's a good friend. He's glad she's getting a chance to see someone from home that she thought she'd lost.

the fog comes on little cat feet

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