Raju watches Francis’ back. He wants to step close to Francis again and run his hand down it. But that’s a difference, Raju supposes, in loving a woman and a man; Seetha might move away but she would always move back again eventually, into his arms, and he would comfort her then. But a man sometimes needs to face his pain alone.

Or at least, a foot or two away.

“What would most men would become, in your place? Callous? Cruel? Selfish?” He pauses and then goes on dryly: “Save their care only for the few who matter most, and damn the rest?”

It isn’t as if Francis’ need couldn’t be a weakness too, easily, but that isn’t what Francis needs to—

But here’s another difference too, isn’t it? Should Raju draw Francis’ attention away from the harder truths, or would that be coddling? Francis hasn’t spared Raju for the sake of a nicer truth before. Raju doesn’t have to be, here, the husband he would have been to Seetha. He can say the whole of it. Francis will be thinking it too, anyway, and will want the thing named and dealt with.

Raju doesn’t move closer but he does shift his weight toward Francis, intent, hands half-curling toward fists at his sides. “We will lose people here. And you might not be strong enough to bear it. Not any more. But you won’t stop caring. It’s only driven you to act. I won’t pity that. We should all hope to still be half the man that you are after suffering half of what you’ve lost.”