His knees ache a little from the awkward angle of his arm, and he finds himself leaning slightly into him to relieve the pressure. He figures if he burns then at least he'll burn with his arm around someone, holding them close.
It's impossible to ignore the pause between 'you deserve to know what of kind of...' and 'what you've been sleeping next to all this time'. There's something unspoken in that heavy pause. He wonders if he knows, if the rest of that initial sentence had been, 'you deserve to know what kind of man you've fallen in love with.' He's been found out; that's why he's so angry, trying to push him away.
He takes his own deep breath, still smelling smoke in the air. He chastises himself; this isn't about him and his silly feelings. Raju is two seconds from bursting into flames and here he is thinking about frivolous things like rejection and embarrassments, things that don't matter in the least up against this. He pushes himself down the other path and considers Raju's answer carefully.
"No," he answers simply. That isn't quite it. Why he crosses those lines, what is he fighting so hard to do? What is it that drives him to do the things that others shy away? He wants to know those things, his actual why.
"No," he says again, hand still on his back. He rubs in slow circles now, silently reminding him that he isn't going anywhere, at least in part because answer isn't satisfying, although he does believes him. He believes that he's the man to get things done when others can't stomach it. He knows that he'll cross lines and give his entire self, good or bad, to get something done. "I know what kind of man you are. Why did you enlist, Raju? What happened with your father?"
It's as plain as he's ever put his questions to him. No dancing around it this time, he wants to know why he's the one who took on this burden. Just why did he torture that man? Why would he do it again? What's waiting for him on the other side of all this?
He can see the pendant on his wrist, a little reminder of the love at home. He's a sentimental man. Cruelty and sentiment don't mix.
Francis leans into him so Raju can feel the pressure of his arm, and Raju doesn’t understand. That part is familiar, too. He remembers now that he’d told Francis about the torture, at first, expecting it to drive him away. But this is different, surely. What’s past could be mistakes, but what’s future is a choice.
The heavy hand starts rubbing slow, comforting circles over his back and Raju shivers again, a helpless, pleading noise stuck in his throat. His skin is hot under his hands, and under Francis’ hand—
Raju shoves his hands against the ground, closing his eyes. The lines of his face are hard for a moment, stubborn, and he thinks about the sharp sting of the ground against his palms instead, only that, and the heat in his skin begins to collect there.
Flames lick against the ground nearby as the snow sizzles. Smoke starts to rise into the air over it, hard to see against the sky, the dark. Francis’ questions circle in Raju’s mind like Francis’ hand over his back. He hadn’t expected this today. He hadn’t expected it at all. But if Francis is ever going to really understand, if Raju is ever going to know what he thinks at all, which way Raju really scores in his friend’s lofty moral tally, then Raju has to tell him now. He certainly isn’t going to say any of it when he feels better.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been quiet. His mouth is open. His breaths are deep. His hands are hot and the long unending night is cold, and he can feel Francis close and solid behind him. He can feel his body moving back and forth a little, loose and unresisting, under the pressure and motion of Francis’ hand. How long has it been since anyone else has rubbed his back this way? How long will it be, once Francis realises what Raju is?
Put the thought away. Francis needs an answer now. It doesn’t matter how Raju feels about any of it. It can’t matter if he wants to say it at all, so there’s no point thinking about anything more than he needs to.
He begins where he can. He watches the place in the snow in front of him, now mostly smoke, and answers with a voice that’s quiet and matter of fact, emptied of anything else. “I’ve only talked about it to Seetha. I was thirteen. I don’t remember what I said. She was there for… half of it. She was… they carried her away when they ran. So she knew most of it already. But I remember she asked questions. You can ask questions. Small ones. Small scale, I mean. I don’t…”
He frowns a little, and for a moment the frown holds there. He should be able to do this, to just say it. It bothers him, faintly, to have to say this instead.
“I can’t tell it without help. I tried… before. To you, but nothing came out. I don’t know… how to. It happened, that’s all. I don’t really think about it.”
Raju is drawing a map for Crozier. He can't answer things directly, it's too painful or too difficult or a sorry combination of both, but maybe if he asks the right questions he'll find the answers he needs.
Small questions. He can start small.
Raju killed his father. They carried Seetha away when the they ran, she only saw half of whatever it was. Something set off this chain of events. Crozier draws himself up, brows knitting together as he watches Raju struggle with his hands in the snow.
"You were thirteen," he says quietly, starting with what he knows. "Were you forced to kill your father?"
Raju’s chest heaves once, then does it again. Something freezes inside his chest, in his limbs, he feels cold and brittle and then hot and flames grow out of the smoke in one sudden burst of movement, spreading out from near his knees and his hands and growing brightly around him from there. Moving toward Francis. Raju lets his head hang, gasps for air, flattens anything happening inside him until the fire is a thin and trembling thing, trembling as Raju does. It thins and it shrinks, and the smoke starts building again, hanging very thick in the air now. Raju can’t really help that. It’s better than hurting Francis or killing him just because he…
He has to hold the thought away from him. Everything has to be very distant, now. To let any of it close is to risk what he refuses to. Just because Francis surprised him. Think of it that way.
“Forced?” he repeats the end of Francis’ question, trying to follow Francis’ direction. Francis is going to lead him through it. “Forced to…”
His breaths are deep and fast, and quiet. He shakes his head, slowly at first and then faster. “No. No. He— No. When did—“
The smoke shivers in a breeze that isn’t there. Raju shivers, cold washing over him, and the flames start trying to grow again. He tries to flatten his mind and his voice again, and doesn’t manage as well as he wants to. It’s hard. That isn’t any excuse, but it’s hard.
“How long?” He smells the smoke. He smells the smoke and the snow and he feels hot, he can feel sweat at the back of his neck. The snow is melted away under his hands, his palms don’t feel cold anymore. “How long have you… you know that I— All this time? Or, or…”
Raju couldn’t bear it, if he’d known all this time, all along known what Raju— but he can’t understand what Raju is, what he’s become, or Raju wouldn’t have to explain. He closes his eyes. Francis has questions so Raju has to answer them. That’s all. That’s all. That’s all he needs to think about now.
Being forced to pry himself part was not in his plan, but the heat from the flames licked a little too closely at his face for comfort. It knocks something loose inside of him, some far-away memory he’d ignored all this time.
Doctor Stanley’s painted face. He’d been a clown that night, hadn’t he? The ruffles soaking as he poured the liquor over himself, the burst of flames as he touched the torch to his body. The low, shaking moan of agony…
Crozier shakes his head and sits back, kicking a low trench in the snow between himself and Raju. He’s not leaving him now or ever. “I’d suspected,” he tells him with a grunt, side of his boot stomping into the ground. “I didn’t know for certain. The things you’ve said…your contrition that night.”
He finishes his retaining wall with a low sigh. “I’ve only just put the pieces together. Raju…tell me what happened.”
Raju breathes. He’s still hot and cold by turns, but the reality is setting in now that Francis has spoken it: Raju killed his own father. That’s what he did.
“I’ve never… heard it out loud. Before that. What I did.” Cold again, and he realises that the weight of Francis’ hand is gone. Of course it is. Raju is dangerous. The one good thing these damn flames have done, shown the stubborn man behind him what’s true when he doesn’t want to respond to that truth in the way he should.
Raju’s quiet for a moment. The moment stretches in his mind, then he realises he should speak. “That… my contrition. That night. It wasn’t for killing him.” Hot now, and the flames try to grow, and mostly fail.
“It was for giving up,” he says, voice tight, while Francis does whatever it is he’s doing behind him. “I promised him. I made him a promise, and I might have— I almost let myself break it. That’s why I was sorry.”
He doesn’t know what to say next. His throat hurts. He tries to think of what needs saying and there’s nothing there, but Francis had a question, before. The one that had surprised him.
He swallows. He swallows again. The flames tremble. He hasn’t eaten much today, but what’s there needs to stay down until Francis understands everything he wants to. For a moment Raju breathes, and tries to move his mind further toward it, to force the words into a shape in his mouth.
“He didn’t force me to. He had— he wore— I never knew. Explosives under his shirt. There was one—“
Raju’s voice cuts out. It doesn’t tremble to a stop, it only stops, and refuses to go any more.
He tries to put the words back in their place in his mouth, but they feel impossible there. They have to come out. He pushes them out, and once they meet the air they come out casually, and calm. The words are impossible words, and so no tone at all needs to come with them. “There was one bullet,” he says.
They feel just as impossible to hear as they do to say, the sharp contrast to everything around him so stark with it that all of that feels, now, impossible too. The snow is a clever prop scattered over a stage, soft and white and its cold far away. The heat isn’t coming from the flames; it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, because the warmth doesn’t touch him. The colour of the flames starts to drain until they’re paler, their movement underwater slow, and stuttering. He can tell the smoke is tickling and itching in his throat, that that’s going to get in the way once he answers more, but there’s no reason to try to clear it.
“I’m a good shot. I was always—“ The easy, absent tone is cut with a cough, so Raju starts the sentence again. It doesn’t mean anything, or connect to anything. It’s an answer, and it’s true. “I was always a good shot.”
God. God, he feels like he's starting to understand now. A son carrying on the father's fight, the quick condemnation of treating all children as though they aren't capable of violence, the argument against his moral line -
He was thirteen, and his father had gotten himself into some sort of situation. A stand off, a fight, arrested - it could have been anything, his father needed to meet his end right then and there. There had only been one bullet. Raju did what he had to do, what no other person would do, and he took aim and fired.
He was just thirteen, the age Crozier had been when his father put him on a carriage with a stranger and sent him off to London, never to return home. He'd been so innocent and naive then, a good little boy who did what he was told. Undoubtedly Raju's childhood was filled with a lot more strife than his, more violence, more sorrow, but he'd still only been a child.
"You did what had to be done," he repeats, breathing in the smoke and holding back a cough. His eyes are starting to tear up, but he can't risk moving any further away. "What was the promise?"
"The promise." Raju considers the question. Thinking is slow; it would be very useful, feeling this way, if it wasn't for that. These kinds of discussions with Francis would certainly go more smoothly. The fire wouldn't be as much of a problem that way. Or would it? The crackling he's hearing, that probably means it's still going. The noise sounds as strange and slow as he feels, as everything else feels. He turns his right hand away from the ground so he can see its palm, rubs its fingers slowly together. There's a burn there. He knows that it hurts to touch it. It doesn't matter. Something about the gesture helps him remember.
"He took my hand. I remember... there's a particular way it feels when someone squeezes your hand without all their fingers. I haven't felt it since. And the blood was wet. Give every person a weapon. A gun in every hand. The ones we had were wooden. All but his. Perfectly balanced, perfect replicas. I suppose the carpenter he recruited must have done very careful work. I never thought about it at the time."
He pauses to cough, and then doesn't start speaking again. He frowns at the ground. The smoke is making his eyes sting. He thinks he hasn't explained everything Francis needs to know, but he can't think where to go after that.
"When I helped you aim properly," he says at the ground, throat starting to rasp with the smoke but very calm, following the path of his thoughts wherever they might lead. "Do you remember that? That was a real rifle too, but I suppose I wasn't touching it. I was touching you. I thought that might be why. I liked that better. Oh, you wanted to know why I enlisted. That was my uncle. My father sent him into the police, to keep an eye on things. It wasn't the police that came in the end, but he knew what I needed to. So I suppose it worked out. They appoint certain officers as Special Officers, to do... a lot of things. Weapon shipments. Ammunition shipments. My uncle wasn't suited for it. He's a better friend to the other men than he is an officer. I'm a very good officer. I never stopped... ah... I don't know how to say it. But I never stopped. That's why I'm not like you."
He has to pause again, half-coughing, half reflexively trying to clear his throat. The smoke isn't connected to the flames. He notices that, now that the two have been in front of him for a while. That should be strange, shouldn't it? But no more than everything else. There's an odd tension in his chest and his stomach, and at the base of his throat. There's an odd tension in his muscles, as if he wants to move them, but he doesn't. He wonders if he's shaking, at least a little, if that's why all his limbs and his back feel that way. He doesn't feel cold. It doesn't matter as much as the distant knowledge that Francis is somewhere behind him, needing to know the things Raju couldn't ever tell, if he didn't feel this way.
"Is that all of it?" he asks, not demanding or needing it to be, only sounding curious, checking for anything that he's forgot. "Do you understand everything now?"
The promise - it all fits into place so nicely now. He would have never made Special Officer without pushing, without going far beyond what was expected. He had to become what he hated; he had to hurt and subjugate in order to fit in and then eventually rise above. He had to be more than the British men around him, he had to be crueler, adhere closer to the rules, enforce with an iron fist. He had to be better than them, or else nothing would succeed.
The promise. What a goddamn thing to have to promise to a dying father, the father that you yourself had to shoot. What a thing to do to a thirteen-year-old. He’s inherently horrified by it, disgusted by himself for such a harsh judgement made so quickly.
But he was just a boy.
Another aspect of Raju’s personality becomes clear. If Raju is here, then he can’t fulfill that promise to his father, his village, Seetha. No wonder…no wonder he feels as he feels. No wonder he keeps it all so bottled up that it erupts from him in literal flames.
Crozier’s throat feels thick, a lump forming right behind his vocal cords. He sits back, heavy with the weight of everything he’d just learned about this man he’d been living with for months. With this man that he…
How could Raju possibly feel anything in return for someone who never understood his sacrifices? Some Irishman who wanted to rise in the ranks and be one of them, marry into them, be seen as English more than anything in the world even though he’d never be equal to them in their eyes.
He looks down at himself, his reddened hand and the mangled stump, and blinks very slowly.
“I understand,” he tells him softly. “I understand everything now.”
Raju's silent for a moment. The flames crackle, very slowly. He realises he's half expecting the film to stop, the whole thing done. But it doesn't, and there's more yet left to do. There has to be. There always is.
"I was going to leave," he remembers. "There was something I wanted to know. I should have just asked." Emotion, now, faint but present in his voice: disgust. There's always more left to do better, too. "I didn't want to, but I didn't want to say any of that either, I think. I remember I didn't want to. But I did it anyway. You asked me to stay, once. But you thought I was... a different man then, I think. The kind of man who's going to fight to keep his humanity, like you. But you know better now. You can't count on me for that. I could go to that other house, the one we've been fixing. Or you could. It has running water. But all your things are here."
His heart is beating hard. He doesn't understand why. Francis is a... a distant concept, right now. A concept he would know well whether it was here or some place else, and that he and the good man somewhere behind him are different that way is something they've agreed on. The smoke is moving very slowly, lazily, and he finds himself blinking, trying to keep it out of his eyes. He could reach up and rub the feeling away; he doesn't, and the thought moves into the distance again.
"You'll still need someone you really can respect watching your back, but I don't know who I'd trust with you. I'll find someone."
Seconds tick by before Crozier realizes just what Raju means by that long, sort of rambling reply. He wants to leave him now. He's asking how best to separate them now, who would get what, who would live where - it's complete insanity.
"What the hell are you talking about?" he asks softly, incredulously. He reaches out to grab a handful of snow, almost absently, and starts sprinkling it onto the flames. "Do you think any of that would make me stop -"
He pauses to choose his words, rubbing his now empty palm onto his sealskin trousers. "Do you think any of it would make me renounce you? I don't...I don't see you any differently, Raju. We don't measure our deeds in a ledger; if we did I don't think I'd be in the black."
If he could see Raju's face now it might make the words come easier. He can't though for all the smoke and his own bafflement at how quickly everything had seemed to collapse. But he knows one thing for certain, one thing that never wavered, and it's belief in his friend's valiancy and courage. To do all that and still feel like he hasn't done enough - he'd laugh if he wasn't so afraid of crying, they're just so similar.
"Holding onto my morals hasn't done me an ounce of good," he admits softly. "I should have let Mr. Morfin die. He was begging for it, tormented by the lead rotting his brain, but I was so determined to bring them all home I couldn't see the suffering. I should have...I should have let the men eat Fitzjames. It's what he'd wanted, but I couldn't bear to see him carved up after putting him out of his misery. I'm not...my morals have done nothing but harm the ones around me. I used to think I need to hold onto that optimism when all was disintegrating around me, but where has that lead me, Raju?
"You...please don't go. Please."
He looks down to the ground, forlorn. "You have no idea how much you've made life worth living."
What the hell are you talking about? Francis says and Raju can feel himself frown. He hasn’t thought this through well enough. He’s gotten some of it wrong. It is hard to think this way, isn’t it?
Francis goes on after that, and the more he does the more obvious it becomes to Raju: this is important. It’s important that Francis is feeling whatever it is that he’s feeling now and it’s important that Raju should feel it with him, should feel how important hearing this is instead of only distantly knowing it. Convenient this might be, this separation and distance that makes it possible to voice unthinkable thoughts and its close cousin that he’d felt so often at home makes it possible to do unthinkable things but when Raju wants to have this moment for himself, to push through the fog and smoke between his thoughts and the rest of him to feel the impact of Francis’ confession and to care, he can’t find the way out.
He does feel something, a hint of it. Frustration, or maybe disgust again. Anger is easier. Anger isn’t the thing Francis needs now.
He breathes hard as he tries to push through it and gets a bout of coughing for his trouble. Please don’t go and You’ve made life worth living should mean something, and the blank thing holding himself apart from the rest of him is stealing it.
That odd, out of place tension in his limbs is there still. At home he would use it on a sandbag or weights, to feel something against his hands and in his muscles, to push and push against something until he felt almost right again. There’s none of that here.
The hand sprinkling snow over the flames, that had been Francis’ hand. The hint of a body nearby is enough to remind Raju that Francis’ body is there too, not only his voice, and Raju turns to meet it. Moving is easier than it feels like it should be. But the distant, unreal world doesn’t fall away, and Francis is there.
Frowning, he studies Francis’ face through the smoke, the way his friend is looking at the ground instead of looking up in the way most people would plead. He reaches out to rub the collar of Francis’ shirt between his fingers while he talks, hoping feeling it there will help. His other hand clenches its fingers into the muddy slush next to him, then relaxes so it can dig its fingers into the ground again. It should be cold, and he knows that it is. Feel something.
“I didn’t want to go.” It’s a fact. Facts are what he has. “I thought you would want me to. There are people who agree with you about whoever it is in that forest, about their children. Any of them should be grateful to live with you instead of me.”
He isn’t arguing for or against it. He says it in a voice that’s not arguing, or asking for anything at all. A voice that isn’t doing what it should, to say words that aren’t the words it should. Francis needs something now, and he needs Raju to feel so Raju can figure that something out.
“But I didn’t want to,” he tries again, in lieu of that. His gaze is fixed, now, on his fingers moving back and forth on Francis’ collar. His brows are pulling together in a faint frown, trying to focus hard. Maybe that small feeling in the tips of his fingers there, the bigger one around his other hand, will be enough to start with and bring him back to something else.
It's simple enough, isn't it? If he doesn't want to go, then he shouldn't go. He's certainly not asking him to leave him.
"Don't go. I'm not asking that of you," he says softly, shifting a little closer. "I don't think you're any less of a good man now than I did this morning." That's what he's trying to say in all of this. None of this changes anything, except how Raju feels about himself. It's out in the open now, that display of self-loathing and fears of inadequacy.
And morality. That question of morality, that Crozier should live with people who agree with him. What he needs is the opposite of that, someone to challenge him. That's how Ross had been, how Fitzjames had been, Sophia. He doesn't need someone like himself, what good would that do him? And he's already established how little that morality actually means when confronted with a difficult choice.
Things he will or won't do - he's held onto these things for years in the vague hopes that he'll somehow make it up to the people he's failed. He's terrified of a repeat occurrence, that's all this is, he's afraid. Having some kind of hard line makes him less afraid, makes him feel more in control. Of course he isn't, none of them are, but it's a coping mechanism as well as anything else is.
"I apologize for not seeing things through your eyes, Raju," he adds, looking up at him now. "I couldn't understand. I...don't think I'll ever fully understand just how much you've had to do to keep your promise. But please see my sincerity when I say this, you are a good man who has been dealt a very difficult hand. Most would crumble under the pressures you've been under."
Francis is looking up at him so Raju looks up too, his frown carrying a hint of irritation now. “What on Earth are you apologizing for?”
But Francis was being kind. If Raju was… himself, he wouldn’t be irritated that Francis was being kind. Irritation hasn’t ever been the wrong thing before. To superior officers it could be turned into impatience to act, which is forgivable, and the inferior officers had always deserved it.
Raju squeezes his eyes closed, raising the heel of his hand— not that hand, that hand is dirty now, he’ll have to let go of Francis instead. There. —to rub it hard over his brow, as if that will clear anything up at all. But he doesn’t have to act as an officer should, or as a husband should, or anything else with Francis, does he? He doesn’t have to find a way to make it happen, he can just say it, and Francis will help.
“We can talk later. I can talk to you later. I can’t, I can’t, ah… I feel…” But there isn’t a way to explain it, is there?
“I feel strange,” he says, voice very quiet, a little defeated. He only realises it when he reaches for them, he doesn’t have the words. The hand that’d been digging into the mud clenches, the nails pressing into his palm not quite as good as the cold had been over his fingers, then relaxes his fist so he can clench it again. “I can’t talk to you like this. I want to do it right. You deserve more than this, but I can’t… I can’t think yet.”
He’s still combative, he can see it in his muscles. He’s still feeling like Crozier had earlier, like he wanted to flip the goddamned table, he’d been so frustrated. He didn’t feel like himself until he saw Raju burst into flames and stalk out, and even then it’d been a slow come down of sorts.
…but of course. Of course it could have something to do with the consistent, almost never ending fog in the air. The Darkwalker’s breath lingering in the air, seemingly having no other presence than to blot out the light, would actually be responsible for everyone’s short tempers.
Crozier sighs and hauls himself up to his feet. “I’ve said what I needed to say. I’m going inside,” he tells him. He holds his hand out, considering placing it onto his shoulder in some meager attempt to comfort him, but aborts the gesture at the last second.
“Until later, mn?”
Raju just needs time, and Crozier…well, he probably needs a little time to process too. Get his head back on straight. He considers him once more, kneeling there in the snow in anguish, and reluctantly turns away from him and walks back inside to sit by himself at the table.
He didn’t do it right. He still didn’t do it right. Raju presses the heels of both hands into his eyes, remembers about the mud too late and doesn’t care, lets out a frustrated noise with his breath. Francis is gone now and Raju got it wrong, but he’s never been any good at giving up anyway. He stands up in one sudden movement, takes long, quick strides to the door, but then pauses there, looking back.
He won’t bring the smoke in with him, will he? It doesn’t feel like it’s attached to him now, any of it. So maybe it will stay there.
He closes the door behind himself, watching Francis. He walks halfway to the table and stops. He doesn’t know what expression is on his face. Probably nothing, feeling strange like this. But strange in a more familiar way; everything in front of him is distant, but not so distant as it was. It all feels a little unreal, but not like a film isn’t real. Only separate from him. He thinks the irritation might have helped. Or maybe being close to Francis had helped. One of those is going to help Francis, at least, more than the other, so he knows what route he’ll be going with.
“The last time I felt…” He isn’t sure what word to use. He wants to be closer to Francis, so he walks the rest of the distance there. Francis’ hand is just there, so Raju wraps his own around it. “…off, like this. Almost like this. You washed my hair. I think that would help this time, too. I want to tell you… everything I should have, a moment ago, but I want to do it right. At home I’d train for a while, that helps, but when you—“
He stops, frowning at his hand. When he pulls it away from Francis’ it leaves mud behind. “The wrong hand…” he mutters to himself. His hand darts toward his trousers and stops, the instinct not to dirty them for something like this strong even when he’s been kneeling in the dirt already. His hand moves toward the blanket wrapped around him, but the same thing stops him. His hand hovers uncertainly in the air. There’s mud on his knees and on his face, and on his hand still, and on Francis’ hand now, damn it.
“I’m sorry, I’m still not… thinking, I should have…”
He frowns softly as he Raju trails behind him. That wasn't nearly long enough to gather himself, and it's proven when Raju starts trying to speak. He's all over the place, trailing off and getting mud on his face and then on Crozier's hand.
All he'd meant to do was give him space. If that's not what he wants, then fine. He can do that too, even if he muddles his thoughts.
Without a word he rises. There's no trace of that earlier anger on his face or in his movements, just a quiet little look of empathy and patience as he reaches for the blanket wrapped around him like a large comforter. He undoes the makeshift coat and unwraps it from Raju's shoulders, hanging it over one of the benches and then circling around him to fetch the meltwater by the fireplace.
He gestures for him to sit as he sets up the makeshift vanity, a clean cloth, a hairbrush, some soap fetched from their lavatory to do the job properly.
Crozier washes his hand, then holds it out to take up Raju's muddied fingers in his, sitting down across from him to scrub gently at his fingernails and over the back of his knuckles. He's almost afraid to break the peace, worried that he'll further agitate him if he tries to speak. Hopefully Raju will settle for his quiet nod, and understand that he's waiting for him to talk first again.
As Francis unwraps the blanket from him, sets up the things he needs all at hand and organised, rubs a cloth over his fingers, his fingernails, his knuckles, the ramrod line of Raju's back and shoulders starts, minutely, to curve. His attention on Francis' hand moving over his is very close, intent on the sight and the feeling there as if it's the centre of the world. After a few minutes, when Francis isn't working on one particular finger or another Raju wiggles it, hoping if he draws more attention in himself to the way that the cold hurts, it will start to matter more.
Francis is here, and cleaning off his hand. Things are better than they were. Maybe Raju won't get it wrong this time.
"You said... most would crumble under the, ah... the pressures. But I— when it's... hard. I..." Raju's eyebrows pull closer together. There's still mud under his nails. Francis needs to know, where no one else ever has. Uncle's guessed some of this, he thinks. But he's never asked. It hurts Uncle to watch it, Raju thinks, when he allows himself to. What Uncle sees of it hurts him, and he doesn't want to know the rest. It won't hurt Francis, not in the same way. Not away from everything the way they are. There must be a way to say it somewhere. "...Maybe I do. I've never thought about it. I'm not myself. Maybe it really is humanity I'm losing when I... become whatever I am, when I feel that way. Maybe that's what it is. But I don't feel like the man you know. It's easier to follow orders that way, and to... talk about things. Like my father."
His father, and other things. If he's going to say any of those other things before he's thinking clearly enough to hurt with it, now would be the time. The next few sentences almost trip over each other coming out, and then he settles into explaining again. "I had a mother. And a brother. A little brother, before. That wasn't— that was the soldiers. I want you to know everything, but I don't think about it. So if I tell you I have to stop thinking, and stop feeling. But then you said those... those beautiful things..."
Raju pauses, frowning again, wondering over the word. It feels like the right word, now, and so it'll have to do.
"I want... I want to feel. For that. For you. That's what I meant. But you must have thought I wanted you to leave."
Crozier moves on to the mud marring Raju's handsome face, tucking his thumb and forefinger under his chin and tilting his gaze up towards his own. He studies him.
Beautiful things.
"I thought I'd overwhelmed you," he says quietly. He leaves him just like that, cleaning the flannel in the warm water before he even considers touching it to his face. "I maybe said too much, or didn't sound sincere."
And the last thing he'd wanted was to sound insincere. It was never his intent to placate or dismiss, or try and smooth over difficult feelings when Raju had every right in the world to feel them. He'd just needed to say something - anything, and god, it'd been so difficult to find the words. Raju's past is unthinkable, which makes him all the more remarkable.
"Or perhaps you needed time to consider everything."
Crozier drags the flannel underneath Raju's eye, careful with the delicate skin there, and down over the elegant line of his nose. He inhales softly. "God. I never knew, Raju. I feel like a fool. I'm not sure...were I in your shoes, I wouldn't know how to keep going. I don't mean to sound flippant - I just wouldn't..."
He trails off, frowning softly to himself as he flicks a droplet of water off his cheek. "It's all of you, Raju. It's all the pieces of yourself trying to reconcile a terrible burden and a tremendous loss. It's all you, and you've never had your humanity taken from you."
It's Francis' fingers under his chin, tilting his head up. He can feel them there. He holds his chin up that way, the way Francis wants it, and breathes out very slowly, and as Raju watches the flannel dipping into the water the line of his shoulders and the tension in the rest of him drains out a little more. The flannel moves under Raju's eye and seems very close to him, close in a way the careful cleaning of his hand couldn't quite be, and his alert expression begins to relax in another slow breath out of him and half-lidded eyes. His fingers start to curl over his legs. But then—
It's all of you. It's all you. Him. Raju's eyes are still relaxed but his eyebrows pull in toward each other, frown faint but troubled. Only him, who did those terrible things. Not only his body but his mind, his self, who's capable of all of that. Those safer, better parts of him the monster, too. His chest moves fast with his breath for one breath, two, his heart beating faster, and his eyes slide off of Francis' face. He lets his heart beat too fast, lets his breaths come a little fast, while he stops thinking about the cause of it, his mind sliding onto safer paths and trying to leave that one behind. Francis had said other things too, things Raju had wanted to answer properly. His hands are frozen on his legs, half-curled. He makes his fingers stretch flat again. He feels his trousers against the skin of his palms, tries to track where Francis' hand is now. He breathes slowly in, and out again. He thinks back over the other things Francis had to say, his beautiful things. Things that had mattered, that Raju had wanted to feel. He can feel, can't he, now.
"You were sincere. I never thought you weren't." He realises he's looking up at the ceiling somewhere behind Francis, and moves his gaze back to the blue of his friend's eyes. He can't think why he'd want to look anywhere else. "You're a good man too, you know. Your morals, your decency, your kindness. Remember when you made those mittens for me? I didn't tell you how much it hurt, the cold. It was still new, then. I couldn't stand it, having to lose my mind on my own inside or go out into the damn cold so long that it hurt, and it always hurt. But you sewed them, for a man you barely even knew. With one hand. I almost wept right there when you gave them to me, you must have noticed. And you're always that way. Your morals, your decency. I've always admired it, even when we were... arguing. That's why I was, I was..."
He tries to figure out what he'd been, what he'd been thinking during that strange interval between coming home and going back out of it again, and snorts softly, giving up on figuring it out. "...so angry. The way you were talking about the children and the people who didn't agree with you were so different."
He had to learn how to be decent. It’s not something he wants to bring up now - Raju would take it the wrong way, assume that he needs to be taught how to be decent, when that wouldn’t be his point at all. The point would be - it’s not innate for him. It was work. Something he had to figure out, and he failed, time and time again.
Raju’s met him at a very strange time in his life, when all of that pride and envy had been sapped out of him entirely. What would he have thought if he’d met him when he was younger? How would it have been only a few years ago?
He frowns a little. He couldn’t remember his tone, but he doesn’t doubt he’d sounded harsh. It had riled him unlike anything else thus far, which is…strange. Very strange.
“I understand now,” he says quietly. “You held that act of kindness in such high regard, my decency. And considering me that decent soul, to hear me openly berate…you, without knowing, it must have felt like a betrayal of the worst kind.”
He exhales softly, a little huff of annoyance at himself for being so blind to it. He gives Raju’s cheek one more gentle swipe with the cloth and sits back. He holds out his palm in a somewhat frustrated shrug.
“That isn’t…my views on the subject aren’t so typically black and white. And I dug in my heels, even when I saw you were distressed. We’ve disagreed before, haven’t we? It’s never gotten this bad.”
Raju's gaze moves to the flannel as Francis. He lets out a slow breath, noticing himself relaxing, missing the hand against his face already. His thumbs move against his fingers and the material of the trousers under his hands, some feeling to focus on now that his face is clean and the gentle care against it is done. But Francis' words make it into Raju's mind a moment later and he moves his gaze back to look at him, frowning as he tries to think. It's possible to do that now, even if he feels oddly balanced somewhere inside him, and slow.
"You just cared, I thought." He's feeling out the words as he says them, trying to make his way through it to wherever Francis is going. "About peace. You're a peaceful man. But... Maybe we haven't. Not like that. And it's come up plenty of times before. When we noticed them in Lakeside, everyone was arguing about what to do then, and your position was... the same, mostly. I never minded it before."
He frowns, going on in the tone of someone who's remembering something surprising. "It seemed like you knew the right way to handle it better than I did." He pulls at his fingers in the habitual gesture to warm them up, trying to use the gesture to focus, and noticing only once he does it that his fingers aren't cold anymore. "It must be all this dark. I've been trying to sleep at the... the 'night', when I should, but it's hard. Maybe it's getting to me more than I thought."
Typically he is a man that cares about peace, but more importantly, he believes in second chances. That's why he'd been so quick to bite back at Raju; it almost seemed like a silly little dream, giving people an opportunity to do better, that he was living in some fantasy world instead of a practical one. He used to be that man, the stubbornly practical, but it hurts him now to think of all the damage he did by being inflexible.
He thinks about that earlier anger, and how it had only subsided once he saw his friend literally on fire. The shock had been enough to shake him free from that hold the argument seemed to have on him. It's not a great sign, if someone has to endanger themselves in order to prevent further escalation.
"In our trips into town...have you noticed other people have been quick to snap at each other? Everyone's in a terrible mood. I thought it was the lack of sunlight as well, the scarcity of game perhaps, lingering illnesses, but that fog's stayed. That green haze."
The Darkwalker's breath, as he likes to think of it. The thought had occurred to him before, but it makes all the more sense to him now.
He looks out through the curtained window and licks his lips in thought. It hasn't been the same since the Darkwalker took Hilbert. That fog's never left them like it usually does. It's as though the Darkwalker's still hovering over them. "It's getting to all of us," he decides. Not just him, not just Raju, all of them.
Raju sighs. Francis is watching the window, and Raju is watching Francis. He doesn’t quite trust his own mind yet, and he isn’t comfortable enough with the impossibilities of this place to make many assumptions about it and be sure. But he trusts Francis’ judgement, and it does make sense.
“It wouldn’t be the first time odd fog was a sign of something terrible.”
There’s nothing he can do about the fog, or his own mind. But he can start a fire in the fireplace and warm up, now that he’s starting to care about the cold again. He stands with another sigh, quieter, and walking around Francis to get to where he’d put Raju’s blanket gives him the excuse to trail his hand over Francis’ shoulders as he passes behind. It won’t be enough when he’s feeling like this, but it’s something.
“But those other times only lasted so long,” he points out, digging in the pocket where he keeps stone and steel and tinder and pulling it out. “How long did they, would you say? And how long has it been? It’s hard to keep track of the time like this.”
He pulls his gaze away from the window at the touch, silently willing Raju to step back and brush his hand along his shoulders again. He fixes his face before Raju’s able to see the blatant look of longing there, focusing on the question at hand.
“Weeks, some,” he says, running his fingers through his beard as he mulls. “The fog that burned lingered for weeks, then the plague from the miasma, now this. I’d say another week or so until it dissipates or is replaced by something else, but Christ knows.”
He just wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a correlation at this point; this place doesn’t seem big on coincidences. But the intensity of things has been increasing, getting worse and worse. Who can say for certain when the green fog will lift?
Raju’s busy keeping busy with the fire, but Crozier’s not quite ready to be done caring for him. He frowns softly. “I thought you needed your hair washed.”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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His knees ache a little from the awkward angle of his arm, and he finds himself leaning slightly into him to relieve the pressure. He figures if he burns then at least he'll burn with his arm around someone, holding them close.
It's impossible to ignore the pause between 'you deserve to know what of kind of...' and 'what you've been sleeping next to all this time'. There's something unspoken in that heavy pause. He wonders if he knows, if the rest of that initial sentence had been, 'you deserve to know what kind of man you've fallen in love with.' He's been found out; that's why he's so angry, trying to push him away.
He takes his own deep breath, still smelling smoke in the air. He chastises himself; this isn't about him and his silly feelings. Raju is two seconds from bursting into flames and here he is thinking about frivolous things like rejection and embarrassments, things that don't matter in the least up against this. He pushes himself down the other path and considers Raju's answer carefully.
"No," he answers simply. That isn't quite it. Why he crosses those lines, what is he fighting so hard to do? What is it that drives him to do the things that others shy away? He wants to know those things, his actual why.
"No," he says again, hand still on his back. He rubs in slow circles now, silently reminding him that he isn't going anywhere, at least in part because answer isn't satisfying, although he does believes him. He believes that he's the man to get things done when others can't stomach it. He knows that he'll cross lines and give his entire self, good or bad, to get something done. "I know what kind of man you are. Why did you enlist, Raju? What happened with your father?"
It's as plain as he's ever put his questions to him. No dancing around it this time, he wants to know why he's the one who took on this burden. Just why did he torture that man? Why would he do it again? What's waiting for him on the other side of all this?
He can see the pendant on his wrist, a little reminder of the love at home. He's a sentimental man. Cruelty and sentiment don't mix.
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The heavy hand starts rubbing slow, comforting circles over his back and Raju shivers again, a helpless, pleading noise stuck in his throat. His skin is hot under his hands, and under Francis’ hand—
Raju shoves his hands against the ground, closing his eyes. The lines of his face are hard for a moment, stubborn, and he thinks about the sharp sting of the ground against his palms instead, only that, and the heat in his skin begins to collect there.
Flames lick against the ground nearby as the snow sizzles. Smoke starts to rise into the air over it, hard to see against the sky, the dark. Francis’ questions circle in Raju’s mind like Francis’ hand over his back. He hadn’t expected this today. He hadn’t expected it at all. But if Francis is ever going to really understand, if Raju is ever going to know what he thinks at all, which way Raju really scores in his friend’s lofty moral tally, then Raju has to tell him now. He certainly isn’t going to say any of it when he feels better.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been quiet. His mouth is open. His breaths are deep. His hands are hot and the long unending night is cold, and he can feel Francis close and solid behind him. He can feel his body moving back and forth a little, loose and unresisting, under the pressure and motion of Francis’ hand. How long has it been since anyone else has rubbed his back this way? How long will it be, once Francis realises what Raju is?
Put the thought away. Francis needs an answer now. It doesn’t matter how Raju feels about any of it. It can’t matter if he wants to say it at all, so there’s no point thinking about anything more than he needs to.
He begins where he can. He watches the place in the snow in front of him, now mostly smoke, and answers with a voice that’s quiet and matter of fact, emptied of anything else. “I’ve only talked about it to Seetha. I was thirteen. I don’t remember what I said. She was there for… half of it. She was… they carried her away when they ran. So she knew most of it already. But I remember she asked questions. You can ask questions. Small ones. Small scale, I mean. I don’t…”
He frowns a little, and for a moment the frown holds there. He should be able to do this, to just say it. It bothers him, faintly, to have to say this instead.
“I can’t tell it without help. I tried… before. To you, but nothing came out. I don’t know… how to. It happened, that’s all. I don’t really think about it.”
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Raju is drawing a map for Crozier. He can't answer things directly, it's too painful or too difficult or a sorry combination of both, but maybe if he asks the right questions he'll find the answers he needs.
Small questions. He can start small.
Raju killed his father. They carried Seetha away when the they ran, she only saw half of whatever it was. Something set off this chain of events. Crozier draws himself up, brows knitting together as he watches Raju struggle with his hands in the snow.
"You were thirteen," he says quietly, starting with what he knows. "Were you forced to kill your father?"
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He has to hold the thought away from him. Everything has to be very distant, now. To let any of it close is to risk what he refuses to. Just because Francis surprised him. Think of it that way.
“Forced?” he repeats the end of Francis’ question, trying to follow Francis’ direction. Francis is going to lead him through it. “Forced to…”
His breaths are deep and fast, and quiet. He shakes his head, slowly at first and then faster. “No. No. He— No. When did—“
The smoke shivers in a breeze that isn’t there. Raju shivers, cold washing over him, and the flames start trying to grow again. He tries to flatten his mind and his voice again, and doesn’t manage as well as he wants to. It’s hard. That isn’t any excuse, but it’s hard.
“How long?” He smells the smoke. He smells the smoke and the snow and he feels hot, he can feel sweat at the back of his neck. The snow is melted away under his hands, his palms don’t feel cold anymore. “How long have you… you know that I— All this time? Or, or…”
Raju couldn’t bear it, if he’d known all this time, all along known what Raju— but he can’t understand what Raju is, what he’s become, or Raju wouldn’t have to explain. He closes his eyes. Francis has questions so Raju has to answer them. That’s all. That’s all. That’s all he needs to think about now.
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Fuck.
Being forced to pry himself part was not in his plan, but the heat from the flames licked a little too closely at his face for comfort. It knocks something loose inside of him, some far-away memory he’d ignored all this time.
Doctor Stanley’s painted face. He’d been a clown that night, hadn’t he? The ruffles soaking as he poured the liquor over himself, the burst of flames as he touched the torch to his body. The low, shaking moan of agony…
Crozier shakes his head and sits back, kicking a low trench in the snow between himself and Raju. He’s not leaving him now or ever. “I’d suspected,” he tells him with a grunt, side of his boot stomping into the ground. “I didn’t know for certain. The things you’ve said…your contrition that night.”
He finishes his retaining wall with a low sigh. “I’ve only just put the pieces together. Raju…tell me what happened.”
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“I’ve never… heard it out loud. Before that. What I did.” Cold again, and he realises that the weight of Francis’ hand is gone. Of course it is. Raju is dangerous. The one good thing these damn flames have done, shown the stubborn man behind him what’s true when he doesn’t want to respond to that truth in the way he should.
Raju’s quiet for a moment. The moment stretches in his mind, then he realises he should speak. “That… my contrition. That night. It wasn’t for killing him.” Hot now, and the flames try to grow, and mostly fail.
“It was for giving up,” he says, voice tight, while Francis does whatever it is he’s doing behind him. “I promised him. I made him a promise, and I might have— I almost let myself break it. That’s why I was sorry.”
He doesn’t know what to say next. His throat hurts. He tries to think of what needs saying and there’s nothing there, but Francis had a question, before. The one that had surprised him.
He swallows. He swallows again. The flames tremble. He hasn’t eaten much today, but what’s there needs to stay down until Francis understands everything he wants to. For a moment Raju breathes, and tries to move his mind further toward it, to force the words into a shape in his mouth.
“He didn’t force me to. He had— he wore— I never knew. Explosives under his shirt. There was one—“
Raju’s voice cuts out. It doesn’t tremble to a stop, it only stops, and refuses to go any more.
He tries to put the words back in their place in his mouth, but they feel impossible there. They have to come out. He pushes them out, and once they meet the air they come out casually, and calm. The words are impossible words, and so no tone at all needs to come with them. “There was one bullet,” he says.
They feel just as impossible to hear as they do to say, the sharp contrast to everything around him so stark with it that all of that feels, now, impossible too. The snow is a clever prop scattered over a stage, soft and white and its cold far away. The heat isn’t coming from the flames; it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, because the warmth doesn’t touch him. The colour of the flames starts to drain until they’re paler, their movement underwater slow, and stuttering. He can tell the smoke is tickling and itching in his throat, that that’s going to get in the way once he answers more, but there’s no reason to try to clear it.
“I’m a good shot. I was always—“ The easy, absent tone is cut with a cough, so Raju starts the sentence again. It doesn’t mean anything, or connect to anything. It’s an answer, and it’s true. “I was always a good shot.”
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"And you were thirteen."
God. God, he feels like he's starting to understand now. A son carrying on the father's fight, the quick condemnation of treating all children as though they aren't capable of violence, the argument against his moral line -
He was thirteen, and his father had gotten himself into some sort of situation. A stand off, a fight, arrested - it could have been anything, his father needed to meet his end right then and there. There had only been one bullet. Raju did what he had to do, what no other person would do, and he took aim and fired.
He was just thirteen, the age Crozier had been when his father put him on a carriage with a stranger and sent him off to London, never to return home. He'd been so innocent and naive then, a good little boy who did what he was told. Undoubtedly Raju's childhood was filled with a lot more strife than his, more violence, more sorrow, but he'd still only been a child.
"You did what had to be done," he repeats, breathing in the smoke and holding back a cough. His eyes are starting to tear up, but he can't risk moving any further away. "What was the promise?"
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"He took my hand. I remember... there's a particular way it feels when someone squeezes your hand without all their fingers. I haven't felt it since. And the blood was wet. Give every person a weapon. A gun in every hand. The ones we had were wooden. All but his. Perfectly balanced, perfect replicas. I suppose the carpenter he recruited must have done very careful work. I never thought about it at the time."
He pauses to cough, and then doesn't start speaking again. He frowns at the ground. The smoke is making his eyes sting. He thinks he hasn't explained everything Francis needs to know, but he can't think where to go after that.
"When I helped you aim properly," he says at the ground, throat starting to rasp with the smoke but very calm, following the path of his thoughts wherever they might lead. "Do you remember that? That was a real rifle too, but I suppose I wasn't touching it. I was touching you. I thought that might be why. I liked that better. Oh, you wanted to know why I enlisted. That was my uncle. My father sent him into the police, to keep an eye on things. It wasn't the police that came in the end, but he knew what I needed to. So I suppose it worked out. They appoint certain officers as Special Officers, to do... a lot of things. Weapon shipments. Ammunition shipments. My uncle wasn't suited for it. He's a better friend to the other men than he is an officer. I'm a very good officer. I never stopped... ah... I don't know how to say it. But I never stopped. That's why I'm not like you."
He has to pause again, half-coughing, half reflexively trying to clear his throat. The smoke isn't connected to the flames. He notices that, now that the two have been in front of him for a while. That should be strange, shouldn't it? But no more than everything else. There's an odd tension in his chest and his stomach, and at the base of his throat. There's an odd tension in his muscles, as if he wants to move them, but he doesn't. He wonders if he's shaking, at least a little, if that's why all his limbs and his back feel that way. He doesn't feel cold. It doesn't matter as much as the distant knowledge that Francis is somewhere behind him, needing to know the things Raju couldn't ever tell, if he didn't feel this way.
"Is that all of it?" he asks, not demanding or needing it to be, only sounding curious, checking for anything that he's forgot. "Do you understand everything now?"
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The promise - it all fits into place so nicely now. He would have never made Special Officer without pushing, without going far beyond what was expected. He had to become what he hated; he had to hurt and subjugate in order to fit in and then eventually rise above. He had to be more than the British men around him, he had to be crueler, adhere closer to the rules, enforce with an iron fist. He had to be better than them, or else nothing would succeed.
The promise. What a goddamn thing to have to promise to a dying father, the father that you yourself had to shoot. What a thing to do to a thirteen-year-old. He’s inherently horrified by it, disgusted by himself for such a harsh judgement made so quickly.
But he was just a boy.
Another aspect of Raju’s personality becomes clear. If Raju is here, then he can’t fulfill that promise to his father, his village, Seetha. No wonder…no wonder he feels as he feels. No wonder he keeps it all so bottled up that it erupts from him in literal flames.
Crozier’s throat feels thick, a lump forming right behind his vocal cords. He sits back, heavy with the weight of everything he’d just learned about this man he’d been living with for months. With this man that he…
How could Raju possibly feel anything in return for someone who never understood his sacrifices? Some Irishman who wanted to rise in the ranks and be one of them, marry into them, be seen as English more than anything in the world even though he’d never be equal to them in their eyes.
He looks down at himself, his reddened hand and the mangled stump, and blinks very slowly.
“I understand,” he tells him softly. “I understand everything now.”
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Raju's silent for a moment. The flames crackle, very slowly. He realises he's half expecting the film to stop, the whole thing done. But it doesn't, and there's more yet left to do. There has to be. There always is.
"I was going to leave," he remembers. "There was something I wanted to know. I should have just asked." Emotion, now, faint but present in his voice: disgust. There's always more left to do better, too. "I didn't want to, but I didn't want to say any of that either, I think. I remember I didn't want to. But I did it anyway. You asked me to stay, once. But you thought I was... a different man then, I think. The kind of man who's going to fight to keep his humanity, like you. But you know better now. You can't count on me for that. I could go to that other house, the one we've been fixing. Or you could. It has running water. But all your things are here."
His heart is beating hard. He doesn't understand why. Francis is a... a distant concept, right now. A concept he would know well whether it was here or some place else, and that he and the good man somewhere behind him are different that way is something they've agreed on. The smoke is moving very slowly, lazily, and he finds himself blinking, trying to keep it out of his eyes. He could reach up and rub the feeling away; he doesn't, and the thought moves into the distance again.
"You'll still need someone you really can respect watching your back, but I don't know who I'd trust with you. I'll find someone."
cw: cannibalismmmmm
Seconds tick by before Crozier realizes just what Raju means by that long, sort of rambling reply. He wants to leave him now. He's asking how best to separate them now, who would get what, who would live where - it's complete insanity.
"What the hell are you talking about?" he asks softly, incredulously. He reaches out to grab a handful of snow, almost absently, and starts sprinkling it onto the flames. "Do you think any of that would make me stop -"
He pauses to choose his words, rubbing his now empty palm onto his sealskin trousers. "Do you think any of it would make me renounce you? I don't...I don't see you any differently, Raju. We don't measure our deeds in a ledger; if we did I don't think I'd be in the black."
If he could see Raju's face now it might make the words come easier. He can't though for all the smoke and his own bafflement at how quickly everything had seemed to collapse. But he knows one thing for certain, one thing that never wavered, and it's belief in his friend's valiancy and courage. To do all that and still feel like he hasn't done enough - he'd laugh if he wasn't so afraid of crying, they're just so similar.
"Holding onto my morals hasn't done me an ounce of good," he admits softly. "I should have let Mr. Morfin die. He was begging for it, tormented by the lead rotting his brain, but I was so determined to bring them all home I couldn't see the suffering. I should have...I should have let the men eat Fitzjames. It's what he'd wanted, but I couldn't bear to see him carved up after putting him out of his misery. I'm not...my morals have done nothing but harm the ones around me. I used to think I need to hold onto that optimism when all was disintegrating around me, but where has that lead me, Raju?
"You...please don't go. Please."
He looks down to the ground, forlorn. "You have no idea how much you've made life worth living."
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Francis goes on after that, and the more he does the more obvious it becomes to Raju: this is important. It’s important that Francis is feeling whatever it is that he’s feeling now and it’s important that Raju should feel it with him, should feel how important hearing this is instead of only distantly knowing it. Convenient this might be, this separation and distance that makes it possible to voice unthinkable thoughts and its close cousin that he’d felt so often at home makes it possible to do unthinkable things but when Raju wants to have this moment for himself, to push through the fog and smoke between his thoughts and the rest of him to feel the impact of Francis’ confession and to care, he can’t find the way out.
He does feel something, a hint of it. Frustration, or maybe disgust again. Anger is easier. Anger isn’t the thing Francis needs now.
He breathes hard as he tries to push through it and gets a bout of coughing for his trouble. Please don’t go and You’ve made life worth living should mean something, and the blank thing holding himself apart from the rest of him is stealing it.
That odd, out of place tension in his limbs is there still. At home he would use it on a sandbag or weights, to feel something against his hands and in his muscles, to push and push against something until he felt almost right again. There’s none of that here.
The hand sprinkling snow over the flames, that had been Francis’ hand. The hint of a body nearby is enough to remind Raju that Francis’ body is there too, not only his voice, and Raju turns to meet it. Moving is easier than it feels like it should be. But the distant, unreal world doesn’t fall away, and Francis is there.
Frowning, he studies Francis’ face through the smoke, the way his friend is looking at the ground instead of looking up in the way most people would plead. He reaches out to rub the collar of Francis’ shirt between his fingers while he talks, hoping feeling it there will help. His other hand clenches its fingers into the muddy slush next to him, then relaxes so it can dig its fingers into the ground again. It should be cold, and he knows that it is. Feel something.
“I didn’t want to go.” It’s a fact. Facts are what he has. “I thought you would want me to. There are people who agree with you about whoever it is in that forest, about their children. Any of them should be grateful to live with you instead of me.”
He isn’t arguing for or against it. He says it in a voice that’s not arguing, or asking for anything at all. A voice that isn’t doing what it should, to say words that aren’t the words it should. Francis needs something now, and he needs Raju to feel so Raju can figure that something out.
“But I didn’t want to,” he tries again, in lieu of that. His gaze is fixed, now, on his fingers moving back and forth on Francis’ collar. His brows are pulling together in a faint frown, trying to focus hard. Maybe that small feeling in the tips of his fingers there, the bigger one around his other hand, will be enough to start with and bring him back to something else.
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"Then don't."
It's simple enough, isn't it? If he doesn't want to go, then he shouldn't go. He's certainly not asking him to leave him.
"Don't go. I'm not asking that of you," he says softly, shifting a little closer. "I don't think you're any less of a good man now than I did this morning." That's what he's trying to say in all of this. None of this changes anything, except how Raju feels about himself. It's out in the open now, that display of self-loathing and fears of inadequacy.
And morality. That question of morality, that Crozier should live with people who agree with him. What he needs is the opposite of that, someone to challenge him. That's how Ross had been, how Fitzjames had been, Sophia. He doesn't need someone like himself, what good would that do him? And he's already established how little that morality actually means when confronted with a difficult choice.
Things he will or won't do - he's held onto these things for years in the vague hopes that he'll somehow make it up to the people he's failed. He's terrified of a repeat occurrence, that's all this is, he's afraid. Having some kind of hard line makes him less afraid, makes him feel more in control. Of course he isn't, none of them are, but it's a coping mechanism as well as anything else is.
"I apologize for not seeing things through your eyes, Raju," he adds, looking up at him now. "I couldn't understand. I...don't think I'll ever fully understand just how much you've had to do to keep your promise. But please see my sincerity when I say this, you are a good man who has been dealt a very difficult hand. Most would crumble under the pressures you've been under."
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But Francis was being kind. If Raju was… himself, he wouldn’t be irritated that Francis was being kind. Irritation hasn’t ever been the wrong thing before. To superior officers it could be turned into impatience to act, which is forgivable, and the inferior officers had always deserved it.
Raju squeezes his eyes closed, raising the heel of his hand— not that hand, that hand is dirty now, he’ll have to let go of Francis instead. There. —to rub it hard over his brow, as if that will clear anything up at all. But he doesn’t have to act as an officer should, or as a husband should, or anything else with Francis, does he? He doesn’t have to find a way to make it happen, he can just say it, and Francis will help.
“We can talk later. I can talk to you later. I can’t, I can’t, ah… I feel…” But there isn’t a way to explain it, is there?
“I feel strange,” he says, voice very quiet, a little defeated. He only realises it when he reaches for them, he doesn’t have the words. The hand that’d been digging into the mud clenches, the nails pressing into his palm not quite as good as the cold had been over his fingers, then relaxes his fist so he can clench it again. “I can’t talk to you like this. I want to do it right. You deserve more than this, but I can’t… I can’t think yet.”
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He’s still combative, he can see it in his muscles. He’s still feeling like Crozier had earlier, like he wanted to flip the goddamned table, he’d been so frustrated. He didn’t feel like himself until he saw Raju burst into flames and stalk out, and even then it’d been a slow come down of sorts.
…but of course. Of course it could have something to do with the consistent, almost never ending fog in the air. The Darkwalker’s breath lingering in the air, seemingly having no other presence than to blot out the light, would actually be responsible for everyone’s short tempers.
Crozier sighs and hauls himself up to his feet. “I’ve said what I needed to say. I’m going inside,” he tells him. He holds his hand out, considering placing it onto his shoulder in some meager attempt to comfort him, but aborts the gesture at the last second.
“Until later, mn?”
Raju just needs time, and Crozier…well, he probably needs a little time to process too. Get his head back on straight. He considers him once more, kneeling there in the snow in anguish, and reluctantly turns away from him and walks back inside to sit by himself at the table.
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He won’t bring the smoke in with him, will he? It doesn’t feel like it’s attached to him now, any of it. So maybe it will stay there.
He closes the door behind himself, watching Francis. He walks halfway to the table and stops. He doesn’t know what expression is on his face. Probably nothing, feeling strange like this. But strange in a more familiar way; everything in front of him is distant, but not so distant as it was. It all feels a little unreal, but not like a film isn’t real. Only separate from him. He thinks the irritation might have helped. Or maybe being close to Francis had helped. One of those is going to help Francis, at least, more than the other, so he knows what route he’ll be going with.
“The last time I felt…” He isn’t sure what word to use. He wants to be closer to Francis, so he walks the rest of the distance there. Francis’ hand is just there, so Raju wraps his own around it. “…off, like this. Almost like this. You washed my hair. I think that would help this time, too. I want to tell you… everything I should have, a moment ago, but I want to do it right. At home I’d train for a while, that helps, but when you—“
He stops, frowning at his hand. When he pulls it away from Francis’ it leaves mud behind. “The wrong hand…” he mutters to himself. His hand darts toward his trousers and stops, the instinct not to dirty them for something like this strong even when he’s been kneeling in the dirt already. His hand moves toward the blanket wrapped around him, but the same thing stops him. His hand hovers uncertainly in the air. There’s mud on his knees and on his face, and on his hand still, and on Francis’ hand now, damn it.
“I’m sorry, I’m still not… thinking, I should have…”
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He frowns softly as he Raju trails behind him. That wasn't nearly long enough to gather himself, and it's proven when Raju starts trying to speak. He's all over the place, trailing off and getting mud on his face and then on Crozier's hand.
All he'd meant to do was give him space. If that's not what he wants, then fine. He can do that too, even if he muddles his thoughts.
Without a word he rises. There's no trace of that earlier anger on his face or in his movements, just a quiet little look of empathy and patience as he reaches for the blanket wrapped around him like a large comforter. He undoes the makeshift coat and unwraps it from Raju's shoulders, hanging it over one of the benches and then circling around him to fetch the meltwater by the fireplace.
He gestures for him to sit as he sets up the makeshift vanity, a clean cloth, a hairbrush, some soap fetched from their lavatory to do the job properly.
Crozier washes his hand, then holds it out to take up Raju's muddied fingers in his, sitting down across from him to scrub gently at his fingernails and over the back of his knuckles. He's almost afraid to break the peace, worried that he'll further agitate him if he tries to speak. Hopefully Raju will settle for his quiet nod, and understand that he's waiting for him to talk first again.
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Francis is here, and cleaning off his hand. Things are better than they were. Maybe Raju won't get it wrong this time.
"You said... most would crumble under the, ah... the pressures. But I— when it's... hard. I..." Raju's eyebrows pull closer together. There's still mud under his nails. Francis needs to know, where no one else ever has. Uncle's guessed some of this, he thinks. But he's never asked. It hurts Uncle to watch it, Raju thinks, when he allows himself to. What Uncle sees of it hurts him, and he doesn't want to know the rest. It won't hurt Francis, not in the same way. Not away from everything the way they are. There must be a way to say it somewhere. "...Maybe I do. I've never thought about it. I'm not myself. Maybe it really is humanity I'm losing when I... become whatever I am, when I feel that way. Maybe that's what it is. But I don't feel like the man you know. It's easier to follow orders that way, and to... talk about things. Like my father."
His father, and other things. If he's going to say any of those other things before he's thinking clearly enough to hurt with it, now would be the time. The next few sentences almost trip over each other coming out, and then he settles into explaining again. "I had a mother. And a brother. A little brother, before. That wasn't— that was the soldiers. I want you to know everything, but I don't think about it. So if I tell you I have to stop thinking, and stop feeling. But then you said those... those beautiful things..."
Raju pauses, frowning again, wondering over the word. It feels like the right word, now, and so it'll have to do.
"I want... I want to feel. For that. For you. That's what I meant. But you must have thought I wanted you to leave."
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Crozier moves on to the mud marring Raju's handsome face, tucking his thumb and forefinger under his chin and tilting his gaze up towards his own. He studies him.
Beautiful things.
"I thought I'd overwhelmed you," he says quietly. He leaves him just like that, cleaning the flannel in the warm water before he even considers touching it to his face. "I maybe said too much, or didn't sound sincere."
And the last thing he'd wanted was to sound insincere. It was never his intent to placate or dismiss, or try and smooth over difficult feelings when Raju had every right in the world to feel them. He'd just needed to say something - anything, and god, it'd been so difficult to find the words. Raju's past is unthinkable, which makes him all the more remarkable.
"Or perhaps you needed time to consider everything."
Crozier drags the flannel underneath Raju's eye, careful with the delicate skin there, and down over the elegant line of his nose. He inhales softly. "God. I never knew, Raju. I feel like a fool. I'm not sure...were I in your shoes, I wouldn't know how to keep going. I don't mean to sound flippant - I just wouldn't..."
He trails off, frowning softly to himself as he flicks a droplet of water off his cheek. "It's all of you, Raju. It's all the pieces of yourself trying to reconcile a terrible burden and a tremendous loss. It's all you, and you've never had your humanity taken from you."
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It's all of you. It's all you. Him. Raju's eyes are still relaxed but his eyebrows pull in toward each other, frown faint but troubled. Only him, who did those terrible things. Not only his body but his mind, his self, who's capable of all of that. Those safer, better parts of him the monster, too. His chest moves fast with his breath for one breath, two, his heart beating faster, and his eyes slide off of Francis' face. He lets his heart beat too fast, lets his breaths come a little fast, while he stops thinking about the cause of it, his mind sliding onto safer paths and trying to leave that one behind. Francis had said other things too, things Raju had wanted to answer properly. His hands are frozen on his legs, half-curled. He makes his fingers stretch flat again. He feels his trousers against the skin of his palms, tries to track where Francis' hand is now. He breathes slowly in, and out again. He thinks back over the other things Francis had to say, his beautiful things. Things that had mattered, that Raju had wanted to feel. He can feel, can't he, now.
"You were sincere. I never thought you weren't." He realises he's looking up at the ceiling somewhere behind Francis, and moves his gaze back to the blue of his friend's eyes. He can't think why he'd want to look anywhere else. "You're a good man too, you know. Your morals, your decency, your kindness. Remember when you made those mittens for me? I didn't tell you how much it hurt, the cold. It was still new, then. I couldn't stand it, having to lose my mind on my own inside or go out into the damn cold so long that it hurt, and it always hurt. But you sewed them, for a man you barely even knew. With one hand. I almost wept right there when you gave them to me, you must have noticed. And you're always that way. Your morals, your decency. I've always admired it, even when we were... arguing. That's why I was, I was..."
He tries to figure out what he'd been, what he'd been thinking during that strange interval between coming home and going back out of it again, and snorts softly, giving up on figuring it out. "...so angry. The way you were talking about the children and the people who didn't agree with you were so different."
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He had to learn how to be decent. It’s not something he wants to bring up now - Raju would take it the wrong way, assume that he needs to be taught how to be decent, when that wouldn’t be his point at all. The point would be - it’s not innate for him. It was work. Something he had to figure out, and he failed, time and time again.
Raju’s met him at a very strange time in his life, when all of that pride and envy had been sapped out of him entirely. What would he have thought if he’d met him when he was younger? How would it have been only a few years ago?
He frowns a little. He couldn’t remember his tone, but he doesn’t doubt he’d sounded harsh. It had riled him unlike anything else thus far, which is…strange. Very strange.
“I understand now,” he says quietly. “You held that act of kindness in such high regard, my decency. And considering me that decent soul, to hear me openly berate…you, without knowing, it must have felt like a betrayal of the worst kind.”
He exhales softly, a little huff of annoyance at himself for being so blind to it. He gives Raju’s cheek one more gentle swipe with the cloth and sits back. He holds out his palm in a somewhat frustrated shrug.
“That isn’t…my views on the subject aren’t so typically black and white. And I dug in my heels, even when I saw you were distressed. We’ve disagreed before, haven’t we? It’s never gotten this bad.”
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"You just cared, I thought." He's feeling out the words as he says them, trying to make his way through it to wherever Francis is going. "About peace. You're a peaceful man. But... Maybe we haven't. Not like that. And it's come up plenty of times before. When we noticed them in Lakeside, everyone was arguing about what to do then, and your position was... the same, mostly. I never minded it before."
He frowns, going on in the tone of someone who's remembering something surprising. "It seemed like you knew the right way to handle it better than I did." He pulls at his fingers in the habitual gesture to warm them up, trying to use the gesture to focus, and noticing only once he does it that his fingers aren't cold anymore. "It must be all this dark. I've been trying to sleep at the... the 'night', when I should, but it's hard. Maybe it's getting to me more than I thought."
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Typically he is a man that cares about peace, but more importantly, he believes in second chances. That's why he'd been so quick to bite back at Raju; it almost seemed like a silly little dream, giving people an opportunity to do better, that he was living in some fantasy world instead of a practical one. He used to be that man, the stubbornly practical, but it hurts him now to think of all the damage he did by being inflexible.
He thinks about that earlier anger, and how it had only subsided once he saw his friend literally on fire. The shock had been enough to shake him free from that hold the argument seemed to have on him. It's not a great sign, if someone has to endanger themselves in order to prevent further escalation.
"In our trips into town...have you noticed other people have been quick to snap at each other? Everyone's in a terrible mood. I thought it was the lack of sunlight as well, the scarcity of game perhaps, lingering illnesses, but that fog's stayed. That green haze."
The Darkwalker's breath, as he likes to think of it. The thought had occurred to him before, but it makes all the more sense to him now.
He looks out through the curtained window and licks his lips in thought. It hasn't been the same since the Darkwalker took Hilbert. That fog's never left them like it usually does. It's as though the Darkwalker's still hovering over them. "It's getting to all of us," he decides. Not just him, not just Raju, all of them.
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“It wouldn’t be the first time odd fog was a sign of something terrible.”
There’s nothing he can do about the fog, or his own mind. But he can start a fire in the fireplace and warm up, now that he’s starting to care about the cold again. He stands with another sigh, quieter, and walking around Francis to get to where he’d put Raju’s blanket gives him the excuse to trail his hand over Francis’ shoulders as he passes behind. It won’t be enough when he’s feeling like this, but it’s something.
“But those other times only lasted so long,” he points out, digging in the pocket where he keeps stone and steel and tinder and pulling it out. “How long did they, would you say? And how long has it been? It’s hard to keep track of the time like this.”
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He pulls his gaze away from the window at the touch, silently willing Raju to step back and brush his hand along his shoulders again. He fixes his face before Raju’s able to see the blatant look of longing there, focusing on the question at hand.
“Weeks, some,” he says, running his fingers through his beard as he mulls. “The fog that burned lingered for weeks, then the plague from the miasma, now this. I’d say another week or so until it dissipates or is replaced by something else, but Christ knows.”
He just wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a correlation at this point; this place doesn’t seem big on coincidences. But the intensity of things has been increasing, getting worse and worse. Who can say for certain when the green fog will lift?
Raju’s busy keeping busy with the fire, but Crozier’s not quite ready to be done caring for him. He frowns softly. “I thought you needed your hair washed.”
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