Mako. He goes down, I go down. There's no way around that. What the hell were you even thinking?
[And that's actually not why Raleigh is so loyal. He can talk about her double crossing him and sending him to prison for the rest of his life but that doesn't mean anything, it's not the fear of being arrested that's driving him.
It's that Hannibal Chau has a way of knowing things about people that no one else does and of taking care of his own. It's how he could have had Raleigh killed but didn't, decided to bring him into the club, how he took Raleigh aside one day and said he knew about the accident, knew who the other driver was, and knew where to find him.
God help him but he went there, and of course that drunk driver was a member of a rival club and there was no walking from any of this, no way to pretend like he wasn't involved if he killed that guy. It was like his final exam, kill him, avenge his brother, start a war between the clubs, be Chau's right hand man, and Raleigh passed that test with flying colors.
He doesn't love the things that they do sometimes, doesn't relish in the drugs and murder, but it gives him a purpose, and if he has to tell himself that he's here because of Yancy, for Yancy, then that's just how life is.]
I'm not a rat. That's how this works. I've got their backs and they've got mine.
[That's not the answer she probably wants but he's not telling her that he started because he needed a purpose and stayed because the club helped him get some closure for Yancy and that he's still here because he's so fucking loyal to something, that if he says he'll do it, he'll do it.]
You're not going anywhere. [ Mako says simply, because of course she's considered it, that Raleigh won't be spared if Chau goes down -- he's too far involved in the club's activities to plead innocent, and even if he did no one would believe him anyway.
But she knows, too, that he has an entire lifetime ahead of him, that his talent, his gifts, he is wasted in a life like this, mired in murder and drugs and she knows, too, that he doesn't like it -- Mako's always observed, always knew. He's staying in this club for an entirely different reason that she doesn't know about, and there's more he isn't telling her, but it really isn't like she's in any position to demand, not when this is happening between them.
In the face of impending failure of her mission (which must, under any circumstances, not happen), and the potentially devastating effects of his rejection of her, Mako is honest. Raleigh might not be a rat but it won't mean that the circumstances won't chance, that she won't do her best to help get him out of it.
She stubs out what remains of the cigarette on a nearby ashtray, and finally meets his eyes. ] I went to Pentecost to broker a deal about you today. When Chau goes down, no charge against you stands. [ She'd worked a long time on Pentecost about it, taken a huge gamble because if it turns out that she doesn't know him as well as she thinks she does, she'd be the latest statistic in the club's climbing body count rate. ]
You might consider them your brothers, Raleigh, but you don't belong inside here. You never did. I see it whenever you disagree with the things they do, when you break the rules on your own because you didn't think what they did was right.
[He really just. Doesn't know how to take what she's saying because she's telling him that she made a deal for him, so that he'd be able to walk. Walk totally clean if he wanted to and obviously, it's not that simple. The FBI wouldn't just grant him immunity because he's her lover and her favorite, Pentecost especially doesn't work like that, he's going to have to give them something.
And-- just no. No they were not talking about his potential and shit like that. He's just stopping that right here because she doesn't know shit about his potential or what he should be doing with his life. He doesn't know what he should be doing with his life.]
So you thanked me by making me a rat too? Fucking-- fuck, Mako. I'm not signing any deal. You've got to be fucking kidding me.
[ Of course he wouldn't walk without giving up something in turn, but it's something Mako knows she has to talk him into -- Raleigh, Raleigh, listen. She doesn't know what he should be doing with his life, but she's seen enough of the look on his face to know that it's not this, it's not what he wants; don't think she hasn't noticed it.
She's in too deep now, and this is the time to lay it all out for him. He has to sign the deal, he must. This case hangs in the balance, and so does her life. ] I thanked you by hoping that I could give you a way out. I had it all planned out, but what I hadn't counted on was falling in love with you.
[ She smiles briefly, tightly, and goes to him, then, the coffee table set between the both of them, and sets her revolver on the glass. Her heart is pounding, because a man betrayed is a dangerous thing. ]
That I would kill for you. And now, here's your choice, because we both know letting me go isn't an option. They will find me, and they will kill me themselves.
[ She turns it around so that the barrel of it faces her, and her gaze on him is steady, unwavering. ] ]
The sense of betrayal and innate urge to do the opposite of what he's told to do, to rebel for the sake of rebelling because that's what he does. He breaks rules and he doesn't follow orders and he bucks at command and all of that shows on his face as he stares at her.
If she loved him, then why hasn't she told him any of this herself instead of sneaking around until he discovered it himself? If she loved him, then she'd know that he doesn't want to leave the club because it's the first place he'd felt something like comfortable since Yancy, he doesn't love it but it's something. If she loved him, she wouldn't be giving him the ultimatum to choose between the club and her.
But no, she's right. He lets her walk and it really just doesn't end there.]
Walk from your side of it then. Actually fall from grace.
[ She had thought of it, in the nights when they were curled up together and he sleeps, and she rests her head on his chest to listen to his heartbeat. He's unwilling, and she knows it, stubborn and rebellious because that's how he is, that's why she loves him.
Did he really think things would change if she told him this herself? What was he going to do if she confessed this to him out of the blue, help her? She thinks of Stacker, her father, the man who had single-handedly brought her up and loved her like his own; and more than anything she didn't want to let him down. ]
[Things might not have been different but he wouldn't have felt so used if she had told him herself instead of him finding out by mistake. Because that would mean that she trusted him like he trusted her.]
[ She's come to trust him, in the most warped way imaginable -- despite his allegiance she knows him, and she feels guilty because despite all the lies between them she loves him; that in all of this, he's essentially become collateral damage.
Mako is silent for a moment, aware that she owes him an explanation, and far more aware of the fact that she's giving him leverage (of sorts) when she says. ]
Stacker Pentecost saved me, when my parents were killed by gangsters. I owe him everything.
If Raleigh looks pissed, it's really not entirely her fault. She's a good portion of why but that's just how his face looks when he's upset. Like he's literally smelling shit right now.]
[ Mako pauses at that -- she never knew, because they rarely talk about Yancy; it's always been a sensitive subject and she never pried. But it adds a whole new spin to things now, the reason why Raleigh stays. She hesitates, only for a moment. ]
[No one knows besides Chau, really. Since the guy Raleigh put a bullet in was the only other person who was aware of his involvement in that drunk hit and run that night, and he's not going to do any talking. Raleigh still has no idea how Chau found the proof, but he did and what tiny measure of revenge that Raleigh has managed to get hasn't put Yancy's ghost to rest in his head, didn't really make Raleigh feel better at the end of the day if he's being honest, but it tied him to the club and he doesn't know how to walk from that.
None of this brings his brother back, the club or the deal that she's waving in front of his face. So what does any of it matter? What does it really matter, when it's all said and done, where he's at. Here, prison, witness protection, in the ground, none of it actually matters without Yancy.]
I might have. But I wouldn't want to say anything to incriminate myself with a Fed.
[ To her credit, Mako doesn't flinch, even if those words are a slap in the face. It doesn't come as a surprise; he's furious with her, and he has every right to be, because to him, Mako's essentially lied since the moment they first met. He'd taken her into his arms, into his bed and his heart and she regrets that this is how she repays him.
Mako is tangled up with duty and guilt, and the look on Raleigh's face is like nothing she's ever seen before. Not quite like this -- he's shut down from her, and even if she knows that he most likely pulled the trigger, it doesn't change a thing, and it doesn't matter. ]
I'm sorry. [ Cheap words, but heartfelt. ] ...Raleigh, I can't sit back and watch it continue. The drugs, the firearms, the deaths -- [ Her laugh is bitter, short. ] -- God knows I've already contributed a good chunk of that myself.
[Fuck, Mako, it's not like, Raleigh loves those things either, but it's just-- life. It's part of the club. It's not like he's sitting around doing drugs and he tries not to kill when he can help it--
--and the excuses sound pretty weak to him too.
But the simple fact remains that when he was totally lost, when he had nothing to live for at all, the club was there to give him something to get out of bed for. The club brought her to him. And he can't easily turn off his loyalty to that.]
I'm asking you to turn on your brothers. [ Mako lays it all out for him, point-blank, because if she doesn't, he would anyway. Those excuses don't sound very good now, do they? But they were important to him, she knows this. They are important to him, even if he hates some facets of it. This is his home, and Mako wishes, she wishes it wasn't.
She sees what it does to him, when this MC becomes more and more about vengeance, violence and exploitation, when it blurs the lines despite best intentions and they both know it. ]
I'm asking you to leave your home and the life you know, for me. [ It's a gamble, but it's a risk she's willing to take. All that she loses, after all, is her life -- the only way out of this MC is a deal, or a bullet through the temple. ] Raleigh. I'm asking you to stop. [ Then, even more quietly. ] I'm asking you to help me.
[Raleigh turns away from her slightly, can't really look at her right now. Of course she knows exactly what she's asking from him. Of course she's thought this all out. And of course she knows just what buttons to push.
He can't-- think. He needs space, he needs her to not be here, he needs to hit something, he needs a shot, he wants his brother back so much because Yancy, Yance what do I do?
He runs a hand over his jaw, feeling the day old stubble there and focusing on the fact that he needs to shave is so much better than the rest of it. He should kill her. He should take her by the hand and never let go.]
[ Mako doesn't stop him. She's aware of his habits, of what he does when he needs room to breathe, and she gives him to him without comment, her gaze trailing over to the gun on the coffee table. Would he come out after his shower and kill her, or would he tell her yes?
It could go either way, to be perfectly honest. She relaxes, the tension bleeding into exhaustion; she's tired of being mired in both sides at once -- Raleigh's become someone she cannot lose, someone she would fight to hang on to, and she knows, at the same time, if he knew about it he would fight, too, to keep her on his side of the fence, and that would never do. ]
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no subject
[And that's actually not why Raleigh is so loyal. He can talk about her double crossing him and sending him to prison for the rest of his life but that doesn't mean anything, it's not the fear of being arrested that's driving him.
It's that Hannibal Chau has a way of knowing things about people that no one else does and of taking care of his own. It's how he could have had Raleigh killed but didn't, decided to bring him into the club, how he took Raleigh aside one day and said he knew about the accident, knew who the other driver was, and knew where to find him.
God help him but he went there, and of course that drunk driver was a member of a rival club and there was no walking from any of this, no way to pretend like he wasn't involved if he killed that guy. It was like his final exam, kill him, avenge his brother, start a war between the clubs, be Chau's right hand man, and Raleigh passed that test with flying colors.
He doesn't love the things that they do sometimes, doesn't relish in the drugs and murder, but it gives him a purpose, and if he has to tell himself that he's here because of Yancy, for Yancy, then that's just how life is.]
I'm not a rat. That's how this works. I've got their backs and they've got mine.
[That's not the answer she probably wants but he's not telling her that he started because he needed a purpose and stayed because the club helped him get some closure for Yancy and that he's still here because he's so fucking loyal to something, that if he says he'll do it, he'll do it.]
no subject
But she knows, too, that he has an entire lifetime ahead of him, that his talent, his gifts, he is wasted in a life like this, mired in murder and drugs and she knows, too, that he doesn't like it -- Mako's always observed, always knew. He's staying in this club for an entirely different reason that she doesn't know about, and there's more he isn't telling her, but it really isn't like she's in any position to demand, not when this is happening between them.
In the face of impending failure of her mission (which must, under any circumstances, not happen), and the potentially devastating effects of his rejection of her, Mako is honest. Raleigh might not be a rat but it won't mean that the circumstances won't chance, that she won't do her best to help get him out of it.
She stubs out what remains of the cigarette on a nearby ashtray, and finally meets his eyes. ] I went to Pentecost to broker a deal about you today. When Chau goes down, no charge against you stands. [ She'd worked a long time on Pentecost about it, taken a huge gamble because if it turns out that she doesn't know him as well as she thinks she does, she'd be the latest statistic in the club's climbing body count rate. ]
You might consider them your brothers, Raleigh, but you don't belong inside here. You never did. I see it whenever you disagree with the things they do, when you break the rules on your own because you didn't think what they did was right.
[ A pause. ] You broke the rules for me.
no subject
And-- just no. No they were not talking about his potential and shit like that. He's just stopping that right here because she doesn't know shit about his potential or what he should be doing with his life. He doesn't know what he should be doing with his life.]
So you thanked me by making me a rat too? Fucking-- fuck, Mako. I'm not signing any deal. You've got to be fucking kidding me.
seriously this game of chicken
She's in too deep now, and this is the time to lay it all out for him. He has to sign the deal, he must. This case hangs in the balance, and so does her life. ] I thanked you by hoping that I could give you a way out. I had it all planned out, but what I hadn't counted on was falling in love with you.
[ She smiles briefly, tightly, and goes to him, then, the coffee table set between the both of them, and sets her revolver on the glass. Her heart is pounding, because a man betrayed is a dangerous thing. ]
That I would kill for you. And now, here's your choice, because we both know letting me go isn't an option. They will find me, and they will kill me themselves.
[ She turns it around so that the barrel of it faces her, and her gaze on him is steady, unwavering. ] ]
So you either kill me yourself, or come with me.
you will be my prison bitch
The sense of betrayal and innate urge to do the opposite of what he's told to do, to rebel for the sake of rebelling because that's what he does. He breaks rules and he doesn't follow orders and he bucks at command and all of that shows on his face as he stares at her.
If she loved him, then why hasn't she told him any of this herself instead of sneaking around until he discovered it himself? If she loved him, then she'd know that he doesn't want to leave the club because it's the first place he'd felt something like comfortable since Yancy, he doesn't love it but it's something. If she loved him, she wouldn't be giving him the ultimatum to choose between the club and her.
But no, she's right. He lets her walk and it really just doesn't end there.]
Walk from your side of it then. Actually fall from grace.
i hate you
[ She had thought of it, in the nights when they were curled up together and he sleeps, and she rests her head on his chest to listen to his heartbeat. He's unwilling, and she knows it, stubborn and rebellious because that's how he is, that's why she loves him.
Did he really think things would change if she told him this herself? What was he going to do if she confessed this to him out of the blue, help her? She thinks of Stacker, her father, the man who had single-handedly brought her up and loved her like his own; and more than anything she didn't want to let him down. ]
I can't.
no you don't
[Things might not have been different but he wouldn't have felt so used if she had told him herself instead of him finding out by mistake. Because that would mean that she trusted him like he trusted her.]
I MIGHT
[ She's come to trust him, in the most warped way imaginable -- despite his allegiance she knows him, and she feels guilty because despite all the lies between them she loves him; that in all of this, he's essentially become collateral damage.
Mako is silent for a moment, aware that she owes him an explanation, and far more aware of the fact that she's giving him leverage (of sorts) when she says. ]
Stacker Pentecost saved me, when my parents were killed by gangsters. I owe him everything.
that's it thats the whole tag
If Raleigh looks pissed, it's really not entirely her fault. She's a good portion of why but that's just how his face looks when he's upset. Like he's literally smelling shit right now.]
Chau helped me find Yancy's killer.
lmaoaskdhf ILU
...And you killed him.
dont laugh i hit enter too soon :C :C
None of this brings his brother back, the club or the deal that she's waving in front of his face. So what does any of it matter? What does it really matter, when it's all said and done, where he's at. Here, prison, witness protection, in the ground, none of it actually matters without Yancy.]
I might have. But I wouldn't want to say anything to incriminate myself with a Fed.
jakshdjhf ilu
Mako is tangled up with duty and guilt, and the look on Raleigh's face is like nothing she's ever seen before. Not quite like this -- he's shut down from her, and even if she knows that he most likely pulled the trigger, it doesn't change a thing, and it doesn't matter. ]
I'm sorry. [ Cheap words, but heartfelt. ] ...Raleigh, I can't sit back and watch it continue. The drugs, the firearms, the deaths -- [ Her laugh is bitter, short. ] -- God knows I've already contributed a good chunk of that myself.
no subject
--and the excuses sound pretty weak to him too.
But the simple fact remains that when he was totally lost, when he had nothing to live for at all, the club was there to give him something to get out of bed for. The club brought her to him. And he can't easily turn off his loyalty to that.]
Do you know what you're really asking from me?
no subject
She sees what it does to him, when this MC becomes more and more about vengeance, violence and exploitation, when it blurs the lines despite best intentions and they both know it. ]
I'm asking you to leave your home and the life you know, for me. [ It's a gamble, but it's a risk she's willing to take. All that she loses, after all, is her life -- the only way out of this MC is a deal, or a bullet through the temple. ] Raleigh. I'm asking you to stop. [ Then, even more quietly. ] I'm asking you to help me.
no subject
He can't-- think. He needs space, he needs her to not be here, he needs to hit something, he needs a shot, he wants his brother back so much because Yancy, Yance what do I do?
He runs a hand over his jaw, feeling the day old stubble there and focusing on the fact that he needs to shave is so much better than the rest of it. He should kill her. He should take her by the hand and never let go.]
I'm going to take a shower.
no subject
It could go either way, to be perfectly honest. She relaxes, the tension bleeding into exhaustion; she's tired of being mired in both sides at once -- Raleigh's become someone she cannot lose, someone she would fight to hang on to, and she knows, at the same time, if he knew about it he would fight, too, to keep her on his side of the fence, and that would never do. ]