Days After the Wall

Raleigh leaned into Chuck's side, arms brushing as they walked Max through the local park. It felt like things were finally going their way for an extended period of time. Chuck had finishes his degree and gotten a low key job that he loved, working with people who forgot he was a war hero in favor of debating mechanical engineering with him on a weekly basis. Raleigh taught martial arts at the kwoon Mako had opened once the PPDC converted to a world emergency response unit. He enjoyed working with the kids and determined adults that showed up, but it still left him time to cook, and keep track of the small handful of hobbies he'd finally picked up after nearly getting arrested. He loved this, spending time with Chuck when they were both having good days. It was peaceful and precious. Something he'd never thought he'd have.

A ball rolls across the path quite a ways ahead of them and Raleigh watches it go, until he's distracted by the shrieking toddler chasing after it, and the father after him. The kid picks the ball up when it hits a tree and the dad swoops in and picks the laughing kid up swinging him in a practiced way around in the air until he sitting on his shoulders, bopping the ball on the dad's head and laughing up a storm.

Raleigh gets that weird twist in his gut he's been getting when he looks at kids and finds himself looking for the mom. She's stretched out on a picnic blanket watching as the dad approaches victoriously with their baby on his shoulders and Raleigh's hit with a rush of how much he wants that. He wants to be able to grin at Chuck while Chuck carries their kid.

The Quarter Quell fifty years since District 13's end and the beginning of the Hunger Games. They're taking two tributes from every district. Raleigh and Yancy's names are in the bowl two many times between trying to have enough food to keep their mom alive and their sister fed. No one volunteers to save the Becket Brothers.

They're unstoppable and so dedicated to each other. They make no alliances. Instead, they pick off the careers one by one as the careers kill everyone else. The Capital is on the edge of its seat. They're dreading the end fight nearing. They don't want to see brother vs. brother, not with these brother's they've come to love, but at the same time....They're salivating for it. They don't know the brothers have a plan, a pact to kill each other. Neither one of them had ever intended to leave the arena. Their goal was to make a point.

Knifehead, a career from District One, the last tribute besides them left, ruins it. He kills Yancy, and Raleigh wrestles him to the ground before emptying the rare gun clip in his chest. Raleigh Becket of District Four wins the Fifty Hunger Games.

Becket lets Stacker keep mentoring for Four while he seemingly fucks off to the Capital permanently becoming its golden boy.In reality, he's collecting favors and secrets. Trading the pieces of the soul he doesn't think he has left for whatever Stacker asks him for without asking questions.

He does, against the odds (ha, ha), make a few true friends in the Capital. Tendo Choi, a brilliant engineer working his way through gaming ranks. The Wei Triplets, consecutive Victors from the three years before the Fiftieth. They're careers from one, but they actually still have their hearts and their district loves them. Aleksis and Sasha, slightly older victors, married, and quiet, but with more connections than Raleigh could hope to make in a lifetime. And Herc Hansen, one of Stacker's contemporaries whose tragic life resembled Raleigh's own in parts. The man had lost his brother to the games after his victory when he couldn't volunteer, and his wife to a cause Raleigh didn't know when their son was just shy of Reaping age.

Raleigh was just over fifteen when he won his games and lost Yancy whose eighteenth birthday had been just past the cut off date for reaping. He's seventeen and a splash where ever he goes in the Capital when Herc's son, Chuck, just barely thirteen is called. He's a Legacy, and Herc's a well-respected Victor who hasn't been able to fade into anonymity, so his reaping gets a lot of attention.

Raleigh's at a party for the viewing when he sees it. Chuck walks with pride and head held high, but watching the screen Raleigh thinks the kid probably wants to piss himself. He's smart enough, according to Herc, to know he already has a target on his back. The matching pride and terror in Herc's face makes Raleigh slip away from the viewing party of the Reaping and throw up with no help from chemicals. He doesn't have to stick around to see if there's going to be a volunteer. The Hansens are from an outer district-Seven, Raleigh's pretty sure. Out there no one volunteers, and they wouldn't dare take a legacy from the Capital anyway.

Chuck isn't Yancy, Herc, or Raleigh, and he's younger than all of them when he goes in, so he doesn't play the games like they would have, or like they think they should have in retrospect. He seems to pick and choose which part of his father's mentoring advice he listens to and teams up with the careers, cuts a swath through the other tributes with them. It makes Raleigh sick, but everything about the games makes him sick and he can't stop thinking about Herc having to mentor his last living family and send him off to die. So, Raleigh does everything he can to help Herc keep Chuck alive. Especially since District Four's tributes disregard Stacker (those fucking idiots) completely and get themselves killed on the cornucopia. Chuck wins, the Hansens go down in games history, and Chuck joins the ranks of the Victors. Between Herc and Raleigh, they keep him from harm and the Capital's attention off the young teen.

Mako Mori of Raleigh's home district changes everything. She offers berries and suicide to the other finalist tribute,a bristling girl from District Five and Raleigh can't tear his eyes away from her. His mind is filled with Yancy. It's only when the games are over and they have two victors that Raleigh looks at Stacker and sees hope reflected in the deep pools of his eyes. He'd been the only one to know of Raleigh and Yancy's plan to die together, and now in Mako Mori's hands he'd turned it into a weapon.

Tendo gets promoted to Headgamemaker and Raleigh can feel the gears turning beneath his feet. The Capital always wants a bigger game with higher stakes. What higher stakes than the lives of their beloved Victors?

Mako is the only female tribute from their district. She's the target this time, clear as day. When Stacker's name is drawn and panic flickers over Miss Mori's face, Raleigh volunteers without hesitation. For all his accrued favors and sacrifices, he knows Stacker's more useful on the outside than he is.

Raleigh can't get his head on straight. He's reeling from experiencing Yancy's death all over again, Mako's own trauma, and the confrontation with the Marhsall afterwards. He's off kilter, can hardly see the dome around him for the mess that's going on in his brain. He retreats back to his room feeling sick and overwhelmed. He's got to get himself together if he's ever going to figure out a way to get Pentecost to let Mako back into Gipsy with him. It was his fault, he was surprised and off guard. She would never have chased the RABIT without that.

He lays face down on the bed wondering if he could smother the mess in his mind.


{{cont. from: http://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/1351973.html?thread=784644389#cmt784644389 }}

Ideas for Suicidemission:

1) Co-pilots
2) Dragon!Raleigh
3) Werewolf Chuck
4) Retriever Raleigh
5) Harry Potter AU! (though idk how this would work)