A. Rama Raju ([personal profile] load_aim_shoot) wrote in [personal profile] goingtobeunwell 2024-06-07 11:29 pm (UTC)

Raju’s stops himself from glancing over at Francis as his head’s already turning to do it. He focuses fiercely on the fire instead, tilts it toward the ground, walks forward.

He tries to mine his dreams first, the ones he’s had in the past about that thing coming, lying on the dirt with his finger over the trigger frozen, because the thing is coming, knowing the people counting on him are exactly who it’s come for, knowing that it’s here. He tries to mine the memory of when it’d come this morning. He remembers the man he… the man he tortured, what feels like a very long time ago. He remembers other things. Standing in uniform feeling nothing but a pressure somewhere deep inside him, and following orders.

It’s hard to hold onto, all of it, oddly difficult to keep any of it at the front of his mind and the light dims periodically, more thick smoke and tight pressure inside him than fire until it reignites with one particularly pointed thought or another so he keeps jumping from thought to thought, his feet moving over the tracks, fire large enough to illuminate a great deal of the bridge around both their feet when it’s bright, large enough at least to be aimed in front of Francis whenever it starts dimming.

It’s easy to think that the thoughts aren’t doing much. It feels like they’re not doing much. But he realises there’s land beside the tracks now, that they’ve finished crossing the bridge, and then realises that his eyes are stinging, that despite the gap for his sight he’d left in the blanket over his face that it’s been hard to see the tracks for a while, they’ve been blurring in front of him, realises that his eyelashes are wet. He realises that he’s breathing faster, that his heart is beating hard. The fire is more smoke now with flames which keep trying to grow and keep failing all compressed in on themselves somewhere underneath it but the can is hot even through the fabric over his palm, is hurting his bare fingers. The metal is thin, discoloured, growing holes near the bottom where the fire’s coming through, that none of it’s reached his hand yet but it’s been hurting to hold it. Raju stops walking. He keeps staring at it. He keeps breathing, becoming aware of the distant, scattered details of his body and trying to think whether he’s supposed to he putting the can and its fire down yet.

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