fifteen ways to make it out alive
Raleigh- the gap years. Remix of Daphne Gottlieb's fifteen ways to stay alive.
Fic a day 6

1. Lie. Your name is not Raleigh and you never had a brother. Repeat until you believe it, you never had a brother. You cannot miss what you never had.

2. You cannot miss what you never had, so pretend you never had a brother, never been one-half of a whole. You have never drifted, never fought a hurricane. The scars on your body come from an accident on the wall and never let any one close enough to ask about the lines down your back, conn pod scars. Let your coworkers wonder about you. Let them ask. Then lie.

3. You made it out of the Jaeger program alive. Count it as a victory, and bind your wounds. They will scar. You only offered them your back, your shoulders. You never offered them your throat. Count it as a victory.

4. Keep your feet on the ground. The higher you go the closer you are to Jaeger's height. The higher you go the more you miss your brother. Only take jobs on the top of the wall when you're desperate.

5. Remember to watch your right side. There is an empty space in the shape of everything you need. Give it a name that doesn't start with a 'y' and then cut it out of you. You need nothing. The world is still ending.

6. Practice smiling without showing your teeth. Practicing laughing until the men you drink with believe it. Practice finishing your sentences without a voice in stereo. Remember to answer people who talk to you. Remember you no longer have someone watching your back. You never had someone to watch your back. Remember you never had a brother.

7. Use that smile on jaegerflys who ask aren't you Raleigh, aren't you a pilot, aren't you a Becket? Wonder if they hung up posters of you on their walls to recognize you now. Remember that isn't you.

8. Tell them they must be mistaken. Watch the interest fall away. Let them leave you alone to your drink. It should taste like rubbing alcohol and motor oil. You don't have the money for beer.

9. Use that smile on kaiju groupies, drunks, anyone who talks to you. You have nothing to say to them.

10. Don't trade your ration cards for scraps of information about the Jaeger program. You have no reason to starve for them. Don't think about how long it will take the wall to fall. You have no reason to believe that it will. Don't wince with every crushed Jaeger. You have no reason to do so. Don't mourn their pilots as if you knew them. You have no reason to believe in Jaegers.

11. Realize that the world is ending. Say nothing of this to the people you work with. You have to die of something. Realize you can't make it out alive

12. When the Marshall asks where you'd rather die, don't say I'd rather not die at all. You are not that young. Instead say yes.

13. Remember you speak Japanese. Use it to embarrass your future copilot.

14. Take the right conn pod. To your left there is an empty space in the shape of everything you need. Name it Mako, when she steps into the bridge. Lift your head and offer her your throat, your jugular. Trust her to do the same. Step into the drift. Remember you had a brother.

15. Drift.