A. Rama Raju ([personal profile] load_aim_shoot) wrote in [personal profile] goingtobeunwell 2024-06-03 10:14 pm (UTC)

There’s a weight against the back of his neck, a spot of warmth in all the cold; Francis’ face, his breath against Raju’s skin. It firms up something at the core of Raju, something that’d started shaking lose with all his trembling. The trembling doesn’t stop, but Raju feels just a little more anchored underneath it.

He needs that anchor, a moment later. A howl cuts through the night, a sound that moves through the mind as much as it does the ears, a noise no mortal throat could make. Then a long, low groan. Not here, not here yet, but somewhere. The thought of fighting, weak as it was, looses its footing and washes away for good in the sound.

I’m going to die, the fear tells him. And the good man who’s counting on me afterward, when I fail. All that fighting for all those years is coming to nothing after all, second chance in this place or not. Everyone who matters is going to die in front of me. It’s going to happen again.

He knows how it’s going to look when it happens, the way Francis face will be when it hits the dirt, everything that used to light the blue eyes empty. He knows it. The breaths that he’s shoving out through his tight throat are starting to sound more like sobs. But Raju stays the way he is, fingers pulling at the fabric of Francis’ shirt when his fists tighten, arms tightening their protective cage around the man behind him in a shield for as long as he can be one. He feels breath precious and alive on the back of his neck and the empty air at the front of him, feels the yawning gap of nothing between himself and the door, and feels his body, feels all of him held with everything sharp and coiled inside him as if he really could fight the thing anyway. He doesn’t know how to do anything else.

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