"Questioning?" Raju says, incredulously. Francis' words sound so reasonable. Acting so reasonable, as if the flaw between all those kind, idealistic human arguments isn't bright as day there, when you try to put them together. "Or are you telling? You're very clear what a man becomes when he doesn't live by those ideals. How long does a child have before he becomes a monster, in your eyes? When should he have stopped? Thirteen? Sixteen? Twenty is too old by far. How many men dead, until then, before he stops being vulnerable? One? Ten? More than that? What point was it that—"
He has to try to pull in air. His breaths are shallow now, it must have happened while he was speaking, and it doesn't matter, his question, because Raju is too far gone already for that kind of grace, by Francis' rules. His rules, Little's rules, men who survived isolation and starvation and mutiny and come out the other side of it like that. It's one thing to suspect what you are but keep pushing forward and it's another to stop, failing and stuck here with the thing that was supposed to make it all worth it this far away with men in front of him who should know exactly what survival costs but who know something different instead, something better and who, if they only looked on Raju clearly—
He thinks he's about to throw up at first until the fire burns away the centre of his shirt. He reaches up toward the little spot of it but his palms, his finger, the index finger, the right one, near the tip where the trigger sits. It feels like a long moment, while Raju stares, but it probably isn't. It's only that it seems so natural to see flames eating at those places just now, near his heart and on his finger just there.
It's the need to get away from Francis' eyes that pushes him to turn as much as some shadow of good sense asserting itself, to hurry toward the door and reach out with a hand that's going to heat the doorhandle, and stumble out into the snow.
cw accidental supernatural self harm
He has to try to pull in air. His breaths are shallow now, it must have happened while he was speaking, and it doesn't matter, his question, because Raju is too far gone already for that kind of grace, by Francis' rules. His rules, Little's rules, men who survived isolation and starvation and mutiny and come out the other side of it like that. It's one thing to suspect what you are but keep pushing forward and it's another to stop, failing and stuck here with the thing that was supposed to make it all worth it this far away with men in front of him who should know exactly what survival costs but who know something different instead, something better and who, if they only looked on Raju clearly—
He thinks he's about to throw up at first until the fire burns away the centre of his shirt. He reaches up toward the little spot of it but his palms, his finger, the index finger, the right one, near the tip where the trigger sits. It feels like a long moment, while Raju stares, but it probably isn't. It's only that it seems so natural to see flames eating at those places just now, near his heart and on his finger just there.
It's the need to get away from Francis' eyes that pushes him to turn as much as some shadow of good sense asserting itself, to hurry toward the door and reach out with a hand that's going to heat the doorhandle, and stumble out into the snow.