Raju wakes up certain he's going to see fire somewhere.
Not as common as it was; it'd been a few nights a week when Francis had first asked him to stay here. But he wakes up expecting--
But the only thing his half-turn away from the warmth of Francis' body, half-sitting up, head emerging from under the blanket and arm now thrown outside it finds him is cold air. He frowns, realising it. No fire. So, no nightmare. He'd been dreaming of...
He reaches for it, the memory still fresh and lingering inside his chest somewhere. And reaching he finds Seetha, at home, framed by trees and sky and houses he hasn't seen in...
Well.
Raju shivers, starting to draw his arm under the blanket again, and stops before it makes the journey the rest of the way inside. His hand. His finger, and on it: a darker red than he's used to, as if darkened with age, or as if stained with something. Thick; frayed. Leading to something he hasn't followed it back to in... would it be five years, now?
The memory of the dream, faded but real, tells him there's a slender body in the bed somewhere, certainly nearby, moving to press trusting and asleep against the front of him. The one he feels behind him, soft and sturdy and putting off heat like a coal rolled out from a fire, the way he always does once Raju is close enough to tell, would wake up if Raju moved away. If Francis isn't awake already. The feeling rising up into his chest, thick and sour and heavy, isn't bad enough that Raju needs to go anywhere, and the air is so damned cold here at night, and under the blankets with Francis it's warm...
Raju sits half-sitting up, watching his outstretched hand, and doesn't know what to do with himself. He isn't quite as ill, yet, as it feels after a nightmare. If he stays here he'll have to try and think of something else.
He doesn’t wake immediately, body used to having another person in the bed with him now. It had taken some time, but since he’d lost the muscle memory of a lopsided deck or rolling waves underneath his feet there hasn’t been a reason to jump out of bed at any little disturbance.
But he is sensitive to restlessness in his partner, and when Ram sits up it shifts the mattress enough that Crozier’s aware aware of the movement he turns over.
There are so many strings attached to him for one reason or another, but none feels as important as the red string tied around his finger. Crozier feels immediate distress, and also a number of additional emotions too complicate to parse through.
He blinks, feeling like he’s swimming in molasses, and draws his hand over his face.
Raju’s head turns, attention drawn away from his one hand long enough to set his other briefly on the shoulder of the body next to his. “Go back to sleep,” he says, habit, saying the familiar words in the familiarly sleep-roughened voice with the familiar gesture from his dream, but the shoulder under his hand is strong instead of slender, the sound of his name deeper.
Francis won’t do it so easily, will he? He’s got more reason than Seetha, here, to think there’s good reason to wake up when Raju does. “There’s no fire. I’m alright.”
It feels true. There isn’t any fire. The weight churning uneasily in his stomach is familiar, the sour feeling rising from there to his chest and throat a familiar rope inside him, tying a familiar knot. He’s woken up this way plenty of times; it probably doesn’t feel too bad. He lies nearly back but not completely, swallowing and taking deeper, careful breaths. The thread, he catches sight of it again. It’s s stained, frayed, waiting for cleaning and repair that’s refusing to come—
He sits up so quickly that for an instant he’s nearly dizzy with it, socked feet on the floor. He shudders in the sudden chill, without half his usual layers between him and the air. He turns to pull the blanket up around Francis where his movement tugged it away and stops, starting at the two red threads next to one another. The one connected to Francis is short just now, with no distance to cross, and bright, and strong. Raju closes his eyes, pushing the sight of the both of them away from his mind just as he pushes at everything stirred up by it. His breaths only shake a little, strictly measured and deep. A moment. He only needs to take a moment. He’s being ridiculous. He’s making it harder for Francis to sleep.
He’s tempted to go right back to sleep once he’s reassured there’s no flood or fire or any need to jump into action, but obviously something’s bothering Rama. He doesn’t need a string to tell him that. He’s up and not covered and obviously agitated by something.
Crozier turns over and pushes the blankets aside, trying to look up at Rama, who’s sat himself up like he’s about to jump straight out of the bed and into the cold. He’s stiff, trying to breathe maybe to calm down an impending fit, and all the sleepiness falls away from Crozier in an instant. He sits up, quite obviously alarmed, and puts his hand into Ram’s shoulder.
Raju feels Francis moving but it’s the hand on his shoulder that prompts him to open his eyes. It’s alarm that he sees there, something about Raju now is doing more than wake Francis up, and the pinching at Raju’s brow deepens for a moment before he tries a smile. It comes with a tired look around the eyes and a flare of shame that tightens his throat and prompts him to cover Francis’ hand with his, the squeeze and smile meant to be reassuring.
It’s the hand with the strings he’d used, thoughtlessly; Raju’s smile tightens as his gaze flickers toward it, but he tries focusing on Francis’ face instead. Everything he feels when he looks at that dear, familiar face — a warm rush of gratitude, responsibility and determination, a soft, powerful thing that wants to wrap around the man in front of him and keep itself between Francis and the world’s cruelties — is more worth thinking about than old guilts and failures, scabbed over and rotting in his stomach. Those, only action and enough time to take it is ever going to wash out. In the meantime, they’ll probably fade enough with a walk around the cabin.
“Nothing’s on fire,” Raju repeats, smile a little tight, voice steady and soft. “You can go to sleep. I was just about to get up.” That last isn’t true, exactly. He doesn’t want to leave the bed, and everything for him inside it. But he’s already broken up Francis’ rest, so he’s going to leave the room until he can calm himself anyway, so he may as well make out like that had been his plan all along if Francis is going to stop worrying enough to settle down again.
‘Nothing’s on fire’ his arse. He knows that look, that far-away glance and the smile that doesn’t quite reach the rest of his face. Rama just doesn’t get up in the middle of the night for any reason but an emergency and to use the lavatory - and even then, it’s a bit of a struggle to get him to leave the blankets.
“Then I’ll join you,” he says, already moving past Ram to get out of bed and pull on a second pair of socks. “I’m already up.”
Might as well stoke the fire in the room or start one in the stove. Even at Ram’s insistence he couldn’t return to bed. Something’s wrong, and how is he supposed to find a moment’s peace if Ram’s pacing about the cabin feeling cold and plainly bothered. Even if he refuses to speak about whatever’s wrong - which he just may. He knows Ram likes to pretend his feelings are a locked fortress inside of himself, impenetrable and hidden, instead of written so plainly in his body language and expressions.
Raju stares at him, expression faded into surprise. That wasn’t how this was supposed to go. But Francis has outmanoeuvred him very neatly; Raju can’t very well tell him No, you would rather be comfortable. So he nods, swallowing and looking away, standing up to put on layers of his own. The set of his shoulders is high, posture curled against the cold, but he doesn’t grimace and complain about it the way he usually might. His gaze doesn’t know where to sit as he does it. Usually he would watch Francis, or his hands.
“Is it morning, then?” he mutters, restless gaze landing for a moment on a curtained window he can see through the doorway. He wouldn’t see any sun behind it even if the curtain was opened up, and that wouldn’t say anything about just what time it is. “Can’t tell.”
"No, I think it's too early to be morning." His internal clock is still sluggish; he'd wake up with lighter limbs and a clearer head if it was actually morning. Lifelong routine is the only thing that keeps him from succumbing to the polar night.
They stand up and raise their arms over their head in a slow stretch. It's odd, but it feels like there's another person in the room with them. A ghost perhaps, a shadow hanging over the cabin of some other time and place. Crozier's eyes dart around the room, absently searching for whatever it is that's so oppressively present.
His eyes fall on the bright, red string on his finger, and he realizes that's what the problem must be. Not his own string, not the strong thread that binds him and Ram together, but a string tied to Ram's finger that he can't quite see. That something that's haunting the room is in Rama's head.
Seetha had usually been quick to get up in the morning. If she hadn’t woken up with bad dreams already, she knew she had to be quick if she wanted to catch Raju before he left for whatever needed to be done. Would she linger instead in the cold, the way that Raju does? He doesn’t know. He knows what the dream had told him: she’d gotten up with a smile, and gone in that direction. Where their stove had been. She’d opened the shutters before she lit it, as much for the air as the bright sunlight; it was already warm enough without a fire.
The question pulls his focus to Francis again. He must be worried, or he wouldn’t have gotten up — he’s just said it’s too early for that. But Raju can’t see his face to tell. It’s going to be dim like this all day.
“No.” His answer is simple and efficient, words not quite clipped. He doesn’t know if Francis’ night vision is better than his, so he tries a smile that comes out quick and tight. “I had a good dream.”
Then he moves into the sitting room, finding tinder and his tools to strike a spark and kneeling in front of the fireplace. He should give Francis more than that, shouldn’t he? He doesn’t know. Speaking to one of… well, to the one about the other feels… cruel. Francis must know some day Raju will have to—
A bit of wood catches fire and Raju grimaces at it, shifting to hopefully block it from view and trying to strike a spark even more quickly for some real fire to disguise it.
Anyway, Francis must know… the state of things. The way things will have to be, some day. It seems cruel to say anything about the part of him that feels that time should come even sooner.
Raju takes a deep, slow breath that doesn’t clear much of anything churning inside of him but is at least something to focus on, on clear air and the work of his hands and on trying to think of something he can stand to offer Francis instead.
There’s a swirling, black cloud lingering in the bedroom and then on into their parlor. Neither of them are familiar this fresh round of nonsense given to them by the Aurora, or the Darkwalker, or whatever supernatural created had decided to toy with them this week, but surely Rama knows that he can’t hide what he’s feeling from Crozier. And even if they weren’t connected, Crozier knows him well enough to see when the man he loves is overburdened by something.
He follows him into the sitting room and lights a few of the lanterns, bringing one over to the fireplace to help Ram with the stoking of the flames.
“What was the dream?” he presses, careful with his tone. Almost innocent in his ask, worried he might frighten Ram away like a skittish deer.
There’s something troubling him, something heavy and ever-present like a shadow. Something that even if Rama were to talk about it there may not be any catharsis, but he can’t pretend he doesn’t see it.
Raju frowns at the fireplace. His hands hesitate, then work at striking a spark more quickly. The casual tone is reassuring; the words aren’t. Is there any way to answer him without sounding as if he’s telling a man who’s been as loyal and attentive and generous as any wife has ever been, as steady and reassuring as any husband, this lonely, wonderful man that Raju wants to leave him to go back?
“Even if I did… leave this place,” Raju starts, skipping ahead of answering to try and push through the knot of grief and guilt in his chest and get ahead of the problem, “I wouldn’t go home. Go south, I mean. I was further north before. I imagine that’s where I’d be if I was there again . But I never dreamed about being home. Before. After the first year, I think. By the time that was out. I stopped.”
He only realises as he’s finishing saying it that the guilt’s caught up to him then too, that he’s been feeling it crawling up his throat. He swallows and bends further down, blowing on the spark he’s made for a moment of calm, of empty mind, a wall between himself and it. The tiny, more unnatural fire that’s already lit itself flickers, and Raju ignores it. Francis will ignore it too, Raju knows, or at least he’ll be kind enough not to mention it out loud. But Raju isn’t sure what he’s going to want to know. For all it’d be easier if Francis had just gone back to sleep, though, Raju realises he doesn’t mind too much — at least, in theory — if he does have to talk more about it if it means he gets to feel Francis at his shoulder too, careful and kind and looking at him. Is that selfish, considering what a real explanation might entail? Francis has already lost everything once. Raju doesn’t know. It’s beyond him just now to figure it out.
Crozier idly checks for sparks elsewhere as he leans in closer, readying a woolen sock to stomp out stray bits of failed restraint. The emotions he’s feeling are complicated, full of guilt and dread and sadness. Maybe it was a good dream, but it didn’t bring many good emotions along with it.
“Do you dream often of being home now?”
He wonders if home - his village - seems further away there than it does here. If the obstacles in his path are too solid and real to be ignored, unlike the ones facing him here. What’s the old adage, so close, yet so far away?
Is that what Francis is asking? Or is he asking Do you want to go home? Francis usually says exactly what he means. But anyone might try to ask a question like that without really saying it, wouldn’t they, so they don’t have to hear the words. Raju knows what he’d be answering, anyway, and he shakes his head quickly, jaw tight. The fire is mostly growing on its own now, and all Raju has to do is leave it alone. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
He reaches for the stump of Francis’ arm, looking at it instead of Francis’ face, pulling it closer to him as he leans to touch their shoulders together. I want to be here, he thinks, directing the idea at Francis on instinct, insistent but hardly knowing that he’s doing it, or that he’s sending it atop a wave of oily guilt and nausea.
“I have nightmares about home,” he says down at Francis’ arm. “I don’t remember the rest.” Then, in a grasping try at making this conversation something other than it is, he asks, “Do you dream about home? Ireland?”
It’s not a question that Rama wants to be there with him. It’s not something he’s ever doubted - but there was always a caveat. An unspoken caveat, but one that had always been understood and shared by almost every soul in Milton now.
He feels that caveat now. Even as he slips his arm around Rama to hold him closer to his body, he feels that desire to be any place but here.
“At times,” he answers, willing to be guided a little way away from his path. He’ll not be swayed though. “I dream of green.”
But he never longs for home, that’s the difference.
“Rama. I can feel…this string between us is heavy.”
When Francis slips his arm around Raju and pulls him even closer Raju looks over at him, surprised. Francis says I l dream of green and somehow Raju knows that what he actually means is No, not like you do. Raju can’t imagine that, not feeling that connection to the place he came from, the pull of its need. But Francis’ work is done, isn’t it, for better or worse. Maybe that’s the difference.
Francis goes on and Raju looks away from him, chewing at the inside of his lip. He watches the way the strings move as one hand picks restlessly under the nail of the other, that heaviness Francis must be feeling too pressing against the inside of him. “I’m sorry, Francis. I didn’t mean for you to…”
To feel… what? Raju would have to look at the roiling mass of it more closely to figure out the words. Instead he shrugs, feeling Francis’ chest against his shoulder as it moves. Francis knows what Raju means anyway, doesn’t he? He doesn’t need to say it.
“I know,” he tells him. No, Rama doesn’t need to apologize or explain, they’re both in this one together. Neither of them are trying hurt the other.
“Would talking lessen any of it?”
It. The pain and guilt. The inner turmoil. The pull of unfinished business at home and the complicated feelings he has towards Seetha and his village. Because Crozier feels all of it, shares these complicated emotions with him, but there are certain things he cannot name yet.
And some of these things he needs to hear from Rama’s own lips. It doesn’t feel right that they should invade each others’ brains to learn these things.
The question sees Raju frowning down at his hands, not in disagreement, but because he’s realising he can’t remember if it ever has. He can’t remember a time that he’s tried, for any of this.
Well, why would he have?
But talking to this man about leaving, even indirectly— But Francis already seems to know about that, or at leas doesn’t seem to feel the dread and wrongness of it cutting through him in the way that Raju does. So maybe it’s alright. Is it?
Simpler to just explain, instead of deciding if he should. He can do that with Francis in a way he couldn’t have with Seetha.
He tries to brush a thumb against the ragged, more faded thread on his finger, thinking of her. Of course his thumb goes right through. “There’s a thread here. It… it’s not… in good shape. I remember the day I left. She cried. I didn’t… I didn’t think anything of it.”
He remembers leaving, thinking it at Francis: the little boat under his feet, the movement of the river carrying him where he needed to be. Everyone he’d ever known, really known, on the bank all shouting with one voice, led by Seetha. His remembered pride in her, his eagerness and pride in himself, all painted over with the stain of each time he’s thought back on it since with bitter self-recriminations in his heart.
“I…” he tries to go on, but can’t sticks at the base of his throat. He shouldn’t ever be thinking can’t. Not about this. There’s more important things at stake than can’t.
It sneaks itself out anyway, though, written in the threads of the image Raju sends him after: Francis standing in the doorway of the little home they’ve made, looking very small at some long distance, alone there and looking out. Raju leans forward, elbows against his knees, and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes with his face twisted up. Before he’d closed his eyes against all of it he’d seen the more unnatural part of that fire escaping here and there over the edge of the brick, and he ignores it. It won’t grow without him, not the way a real one would, and if there’s any problem beyond that he has to trust Francis to take care of it. He can’t manage anything else.
The flames lick around the brickwork but stay contained, even as Crozier’s own thoughts become more uneven.
Rama doesn’t spend his days here hoping for a goodbye, but he doesn’t nor wish it either. Everything about the vision hurts - that poor woman, this poor, poor man, this unfortunate line of events, and Crozier allows for Ram’s guilt and sorrow and sickness with himself to fill his heart.
But he feels for himself too. How could he not? He doesn’t want to say goodbye to Ram anymore than Ram does, and the thought of more isolation and loneliness…
Crozier leans into Ram, his head resting on top of his. He replays the vision of Rama growing distant from his own point of view, that stiff upper lip he’d keep on his face as he stood in the doorway and watched him leave his life forever.
It’s terrible, and he can’t stop the thoughts of an empty sea of ice, legs strapped together as he waits by a breathing hole for a seal to emerge. He thinks of the long trek over uneven terrain, the sounds of men one by one falling dead in their tracks behind him, then eventually silence. The fluttering of papers and canvas, the sight of a circle of people dressed in furs, caring for him despite how ‘othered’ he is.
He doesn’t want Rama to have these thoughts, and he tries to bring himself back to a place of support. He’ll go on, as he always does. He hugs him tighter, as if he might disappear right then and there.
“There is no choice,” he tells him hoarsely. “There should be no hesitation. You know I understand.”
If Francis had seemed unaffected by the idea before, he doesn’t any longer. Like Raju, he only must have been trying not to think about it, and telling him was a cruel thing after all—
But Raju doesn’t have anything in him that can finish the thought, not when he’s seeing — knowing — Raju leaving, the way it would feel, the way the isolation felt for Francis before, the men dying behind him. Being left behind, separate even from the people who find him after. Francis has lost enough already, Raju knew that, but in this moment he knows it and a whine pushes itself out from his throat. Francis understands, of course he does, the way Seetha had understood. Seetha had a whole village behind her and Francis only has what he’s trying not to think of now — what Raju can feel him trying to bury long enough to support Raju, to help him. Francis’ head is resting on Raju’s, Francis’ arm is around him, Francis would let a life he’s built back up in himself fall to ruin a second time without a fight only because Raju needed him to and Raju can cut that whining noise off now because he’s angry and he straightens, half-turning in Francis’ tight hold toward him to grip his shirt, breath shaky but expression fierce. It isn’t Francis the heat of this anger is turned toward, it’s— it’s—
Promise me— A large hand closing around his, slick with blood—
It isn’t anyone. He isn’t angry at anyone. He only is, at the pain, the necessity, the pointless cruelty of needing to and no choice and no hesitation. “I—“
He what? Won’t. Unimaginable. Even now he can’t bear to connect the word to anything. Can’t. Not true. He knows very well what he can do. Can’t bear to. But it hurts less to feel anger burning at the edges of the wound.
“You should have better than that,” he demands instead over the noise and heat of the fireplace behind him, voice low and rough and fierce. “You understand that too, don’t you?”
He’s witnessed the intensity of Rama’s anger plenty of times. Sometimes it’s a slow smolder, an inner seething that burns him up from the inside out, and sometimes it’s fierce enough to set fire to half a forest. But it turns on him now, and even though it’s not directed at him, he feels like it’s about to set him aflame.
“Yes.”
No.
No, of course he doesn’t! This happiness has all been a miracle, a stroke of luck, nothing that he’d ever expected to come across here, let alone dream of duplicating. Even if he’d wanted to. Even if he could.
Rama takes hold of his shirt his calm expression is betrayed by his inner melancholy. No, he’d mourn him, of course he would, mourn his loss and treasure all those moments he’d gotten to live again thanks to him.
“It’s okay, Ram,” he tells him quietly, trying to meet the fire with a little water. “It’s okay.”
“No it isn’t.” Raju’s answer is low and quick, instant on the heels of Francis’ quiet, mournful acceptance. Some part of him knows that Francis must be right to accept it, that Raju should keep accepting it too, but all of it hurts too much to bear being calm about it. “It isn’t!” he goes on, shaking at the fabric in his hands as if shaking the man himself. “You should have better than this! How is it right that I, I have to—“
Raju stares at him, jaw set stubbornly and brow drawn, but dread creeping into the look in his eyes. He has the sense of teetering on some ledge, outstretched arms and wobbling balance the only thing keeping him from finishing the thought out loud. Or from having it at all. How is it right, that I have to—
He feels Francis’ shirt wound in his fists. He feels the fire fierce and hot behind him. He sees the room behind Francis, the light and dark there shifting with the flames. He sees the face of the man he’s built a life with, a strong and handsome face, thin shapely lips and long sloping nose and high forehead, golden hair and blue eyes dark in the room’s deep shadows, and feels his lungs filling quickly with his quick breaths, and doesn’t think about anything else.
“You do,” he insists, still angrily but a little weakly too, now. But it’s safer ground, this part. It’s natural for a man to want to give his— who he’s made his home in every gift that he can think to, whether or not he can actually do it. “You deserve everything. You don’t understand that? The way that I see you?”
Still soft, still gentle, his hand rising to cover Ram’s still gripping his shirt so hard that he worries he’s going to burst into flames.
He sees how he loves him. He sees it, he understands it. It isn’t fair, and all things aren’t equal. He’s at the end, Ram’s still near the beginning.
“But you have to live.”
That’s the crux of it; Rama has to live. He has love still waiting for him, a mission, duty, a life that could be lived just as fully. Crozier left those things and chose his isolation. There’s nothing for him after this, and that’s by choice. That’s how it must be.
If you go back tomorrow, I will have been happy. Gratitude among the sorrow, sweet nostalgia paired with loneliness. Both things can be exist inside a man’s brain.
Raju’s gaze dart here and there over Francis’ face, eyes narrowed, thinking. “I told you,” he decides, “that I… I knew what it was to want… to die. And I told you how I beat a man— I tortured him. He wasn’t the first. But this time, there weren’t any guards. Only me. When I stepped out he managed to capture a snake. I don’t know how. It bit me, and he said… he said I had an hour, and then I would die. And I was… I…”
But he’s already danced closer to the edge than this, hasn’t he, just in the last minute? Maybe that’s why he’s hesitating. It would have meant something different spoken on its own, without that damning How is it right that came before. He says it anyway, feeling his way through to the right word.
“I was… grateful. Relieved… Happy. I was happy, for the first time in… I don’t know. Years. Maybe longer. But here, I’m happy to live. I want to live. Because I’m here.” He’s shaking at Francis’ shirt again, or trying to with Francis’ hand over his, but even as intent as he is on convincing Francis to… on convincing him, a part of Raju is already asking what could happen after that. Francis agrees with him, says it isn’t… fair — a safer word than right, it could be right and still not fair — that all of this isn’t fair, and then… what?
Raju keeps pushing anyway, for agreement, or maybe for something more than that, no matter how impossible it might be. He can’t bear to do anything else.
“Here, where it doesn’t hurt. With you.” His gaze is darting over Francis’ face again but this time urgently, looking for something. Understanding, or agreement, or anything other than that mournful, loving acceptance that Raju can feel from him now. For Francis to fight. If Francis agrees Raju should fight this then, then… then something. Something he could put into words if only it was right to do it, if only the thought of it didn’t make all the heavy sludge and inward pointed knives and everything he feels on looking at that thread out to his home try to crawl back up his throat.
It doesn’t hurt with him. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard a compliment so beautiful or so profound - when they’re together it doesn’t hurt to live.
He inhales sharply and answers Ram’s searching glance by tugging him forward, right into his arms. He tugs him tightly right there on the floor, afraid for him, afraid for them both, and sad that things couldn’t be less complicated.
Rama has to go back if given the opportunity. It’s the right thing to do, even if it means facing all those things that can slowly kill a man’s soul. He doesn’t want that life for this man, this person that lightens his own burdens and makes him feel human, not like a shadow or a ghost. His loss would haunt him just as keenly as any other loss, if not more so. He’d be losing a part of himself this time.
He can’t argue it. He can’t, and it pains him to not be able to fix this.
Raju’s tugged against Francis’ chest. His arms are bent against it, hands still fisted in Francis’ shirt, and his face falls naturally against the crook of Francis’ neck. Francis’ arms are tight around him, smothering Raju’s desperate need to hear—
—something Francis could never give him, Raju realises, not wanting to know it but unable to help it held against the gentle warmth of him, the fire sounding faint behind the echo of Raju’s gasping breaths against Francis’ skin. You never would have asked, would you? He isn’t sure how much of the message makes it through — the thoughts he gets seem to be more impressions than words and his own now, as much as any idea can be, is quiet — but it isn’t something Raju could admit to out loud, the desperate, selfish shame of what he had been looking for. You’d sacrifice everything to help someone else, even people you’ll never meet. Asking for what you need instead never even occurred to you, did it? It never could have been different; that’s why I love you, after all.
His breath shudders in the small, damp space between his face and Francis’ neck, and his eyes burn. He can’t tell if the wetness on his cheeks is his own sweat or if it’s tears. He closes his eyes, and doesn’t try to figure it out.
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Singillatim, 2025 January event (strings)
Not as common as it was; it'd been a few nights a week when Francis had first asked him to stay here. But he wakes up expecting--
But the only thing his half-turn away from the warmth of Francis' body, half-sitting up, head emerging from under the blanket and arm now thrown outside it finds him is cold air. He frowns, realising it. No fire. So, no nightmare. He'd been dreaming of...
He reaches for it, the memory still fresh and lingering inside his chest somewhere. And reaching he finds Seetha, at home, framed by trees and sky and houses he hasn't seen in...
Well.
Raju shivers, starting to draw his arm under the blanket again, and stops before it makes the journey the rest of the way inside. His hand. His finger, and on it: a darker red than he's used to, as if darkened with age, or as if stained with something. Thick; frayed. Leading to something he hasn't followed it back to in... would it be five years, now?
The memory of the dream, faded but real, tells him there's a slender body in the bed somewhere, certainly nearby, moving to press trusting and asleep against the front of him. The one he feels behind him, soft and sturdy and putting off heat like a coal rolled out from a fire, the way he always does once Raju is close enough to tell, would wake up if Raju moved away. If Francis isn't awake already. The feeling rising up into his chest, thick and sour and heavy, isn't bad enough that Raju needs to go anywhere, and the air is so damned cold here at night, and under the blankets with Francis it's warm...
Raju sits half-sitting up, watching his outstretched hand, and doesn't know what to do with himself. He isn't quite as ill, yet, as it feels after a nightmare. If he stays here he'll have to try and think of something else.
no subject
He doesn’t wake immediately, body used to having another person in the bed with him now. It had taken some time, but since he’d lost the muscle memory of a lopsided deck or rolling waves underneath his feet there hasn’t been a reason to jump out of bed at any little disturbance.
But he is sensitive to restlessness in his partner, and when Ram sits up it shifts the mattress enough that Crozier’s aware aware of the movement he turns over.
There are so many strings attached to him for one reason or another, but none feels as important as the red string tied around his finger. Crozier feels immediate distress, and also a number of additional emotions too complicate to parse through.
He blinks, feeling like he’s swimming in molasses, and draws his hand over his face.
“Ram?”
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Francis won’t do it so easily, will he? He’s got more reason than Seetha, here, to think there’s good reason to wake up when Raju does. “There’s no fire. I’m alright.”
It feels true. There isn’t any fire. The weight churning uneasily in his stomach is familiar, the sour feeling rising from there to his chest and throat a familiar rope inside him, tying a familiar knot. He’s woken up this way plenty of times; it probably doesn’t feel too bad. He lies nearly back but not completely, swallowing and taking deeper, careful breaths. The thread, he catches sight of it again. It’s s stained, frayed, waiting for cleaning and repair that’s refusing to come—
He sits up so quickly that for an instant he’s nearly dizzy with it, socked feet on the floor. He shudders in the sudden chill, without half his usual layers between him and the air. He turns to pull the blanket up around Francis where his movement tugged it away and stops, starting at the two red threads next to one another. The one connected to Francis is short just now, with no distance to cross, and bright, and strong. Raju closes his eyes, pushing the sight of the both of them away from his mind just as he pushes at everything stirred up by it. His breaths only shake a little, strictly measured and deep. A moment. He only needs to take a moment. He’s being ridiculous. He’s making it harder for Francis to sleep.
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He’s tempted to go right back to sleep once he’s reassured there’s no flood or fire or any need to jump into action, but obviously something’s bothering Rama. He doesn’t need a string to tell him that. He’s up and not covered and obviously agitated by something.
Crozier turns over and pushes the blankets aside, trying to look up at Rama, who’s sat himself up like he’s about to jump straight out of the bed and into the cold. He’s stiff, trying to breathe maybe to calm down an impending fit, and all the sleepiness falls away from Crozier in an instant. He sits up, quite obviously alarmed, and puts his hand into Ram’s shoulder.
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It’s the hand with the strings he’d used, thoughtlessly; Raju’s smile tightens as his gaze flickers toward it, but he tries focusing on Francis’ face instead. Everything he feels when he looks at that dear, familiar face — a warm rush of gratitude, responsibility and determination, a soft, powerful thing that wants to wrap around the man in front of him and keep itself between Francis and the world’s cruelties — is more worth thinking about than old guilts and failures, scabbed over and rotting in his stomach. Those, only action and enough time to take it is ever going to wash out. In the meantime, they’ll probably fade enough with a walk around the cabin.
“Nothing’s on fire,” Raju repeats, smile a little tight, voice steady and soft. “You can go to sleep. I was just about to get up.” That last isn’t true, exactly. He doesn’t want to leave the bed, and everything for him inside it. But he’s already broken up Francis’ rest, so he’s going to leave the room until he can calm himself anyway, so he may as well make out like that had been his plan all along if Francis is going to stop worrying enough to settle down again.
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‘Nothing’s on fire’ his arse. He knows that look, that far-away glance and the smile that doesn’t quite reach the rest of his face. Rama just doesn’t get up in the middle of the night for any reason but an emergency and to use the lavatory - and even then, it’s a bit of a struggle to get him to leave the blankets.
“Then I’ll join you,” he says, already moving past Ram to get out of bed and pull on a second pair of socks. “I’m already up.”
Might as well stoke the fire in the room or start one in the stove. Even at Ram’s insistence he couldn’t return to bed. Something’s wrong, and how is he supposed to find a moment’s peace if Ram’s pacing about the cabin feeling cold and plainly bothered. Even if he refuses to speak about whatever’s wrong - which he just may. He knows Ram likes to pretend his feelings are a locked fortress inside of himself, impenetrable and hidden, instead of written so plainly in his body language and expressions.
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“Is it morning, then?” he mutters, restless gaze landing for a moment on a curtained window he can see through the doorway. He wouldn’t see any sun behind it even if the curtain was opened up, and that wouldn’t say anything about just what time it is. “Can’t tell.”
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"No, I think it's too early to be morning." His internal clock is still sluggish; he'd wake up with lighter limbs and a clearer head if it was actually morning. Lifelong routine is the only thing that keeps him from succumbing to the polar night.
They stand up and raise their arms over their head in a slow stretch. It's odd, but it feels like there's another person in the room with them. A ghost perhaps, a shadow hanging over the cabin of some other time and place. Crozier's eyes dart around the room, absently searching for whatever it is that's so oppressively present.
His eyes fall on the bright, red string on his finger, and he realizes that's what the problem must be. Not his own string, not the strong thread that binds him and Ram together, but a string tied to Ram's finger that he can't quite see. That something that's haunting the room is in Rama's head.
"Did you have a nightmare?"
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The question pulls his focus to Francis again. He must be worried, or he wouldn’t have gotten up — he’s just said it’s too early for that. But Raju can’t see his face to tell. It’s going to be dim like this all day.
“No.” His answer is simple and efficient, words not quite clipped. He doesn’t know if Francis’ night vision is better than his, so he tries a smile that comes out quick and tight. “I had a good dream.”
Then he moves into the sitting room, finding tinder and his tools to strike a spark and kneeling in front of the fireplace. He should give Francis more than that, shouldn’t he? He doesn’t know. Speaking to one of… well, to the one about the other feels… cruel. Francis must know some day Raju will have to—
A bit of wood catches fire and Raju grimaces at it, shifting to hopefully block it from view and trying to strike a spark even more quickly for some real fire to disguise it.
Anyway, Francis must know… the state of things. The way things will have to be, some day. It seems cruel to say anything about the part of him that feels that time should come even sooner.
Raju takes a deep, slow breath that doesn’t clear much of anything churning inside of him but is at least something to focus on, on clear air and the work of his hands and on trying to think of something he can stand to offer Francis instead.
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There’s a swirling, black cloud lingering in the bedroom and then on into their parlor. Neither of them are familiar this fresh round of nonsense given to them by the Aurora, or the Darkwalker, or whatever supernatural created had decided to toy with them this week, but surely Rama knows that he can’t hide what he’s feeling from Crozier. And even if they weren’t connected, Crozier knows him well enough to see when the man he loves is overburdened by something.
He follows him into the sitting room and lights a few of the lanterns, bringing one over to the fireplace to help Ram with the stoking of the flames.
“What was the dream?” he presses, careful with his tone. Almost innocent in his ask, worried he might frighten Ram away like a skittish deer.
There’s something troubling him, something heavy and ever-present like a shadow. Something that even if Rama were to talk about it there may not be any catharsis, but he can’t pretend he doesn’t see it.
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“Even if I did… leave this place,” Raju starts, skipping ahead of answering to try and push through the knot of grief and guilt in his chest and get ahead of the problem, “I wouldn’t go home. Go south, I mean. I was further north before. I imagine that’s where I’d be if I was there again . But I never dreamed about being home. Before. After the first year, I think. By the time that was out. I stopped.”
He only realises as he’s finishing saying it that the guilt’s caught up to him then too, that he’s been feeling it crawling up his throat. He swallows and bends further down, blowing on the spark he’s made for a moment of calm, of empty mind, a wall between himself and it. The tiny, more unnatural fire that’s already lit itself flickers, and Raju ignores it. Francis will ignore it too, Raju knows, or at least he’ll be kind enough not to mention it out loud. But Raju isn’t sure what he’s going to want to know. For all it’d be easier if Francis had just gone back to sleep, though, Raju realises he doesn’t mind too much — at least, in theory — if he does have to talk more about it if it means he gets to feel Francis at his shoulder too, careful and kind and looking at him. Is that selfish, considering what a real explanation might entail? Francis has already lost everything once. Raju doesn’t know. It’s beyond him just now to figure it out.
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Ah, a dream of home.
Crozier idly checks for sparks elsewhere as he leans in closer, readying a woolen sock to stomp out stray bits of failed restraint. The emotions he’s feeling are complicated, full of guilt and dread and sadness. Maybe it was a good dream, but it didn’t bring many good emotions along with it.
“Do you dream often of being home now?”
He wonders if home - his village - seems further away there than it does here. If the obstacles in his path are too solid and real to be ignored, unlike the ones facing him here. What’s the old adage, so close, yet so far away?
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He reaches for the stump of Francis’ arm, looking at it instead of Francis’ face, pulling it closer to him as he leans to touch their shoulders together. I want to be here, he thinks, directing the idea at Francis on instinct, insistent but hardly knowing that he’s doing it, or that he’s sending it atop a wave of oily guilt and nausea.
“I have nightmares about home,” he says down at Francis’ arm. “I don’t remember the rest.” Then, in a grasping try at making this conversation something other than it is, he asks, “Do you dream about home? Ireland?”
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It’s not a question that Rama wants to be there with him. It’s not something he’s ever doubted - but there was always a caveat. An unspoken caveat, but one that had always been understood and shared by almost every soul in Milton now.
He feels that caveat now. Even as he slips his arm around Rama to hold him closer to his body, he feels that desire to be any place but here.
“At times,” he answers, willing to be guided a little way away from his path. He’ll not be swayed though. “I dream of green.”
But he never longs for home, that’s the difference.
“Rama. I can feel…this string between us is heavy.”
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Francis goes on and Raju looks away from him, chewing at the inside of his lip. He watches the way the strings move as one hand picks restlessly under the nail of the other, that heaviness Francis must be feeling too pressing against the inside of him. “I’m sorry, Francis. I didn’t mean for you to…”
To feel… what? Raju would have to look at the roiling mass of it more closely to figure out the words. Instead he shrugs, feeling Francis’ chest against his shoulder as it moves. Francis knows what Raju means anyway, doesn’t he? He doesn’t need to say it.
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“I know,” he tells him. No, Rama doesn’t need to apologize or explain, they’re both in this one together. Neither of them are trying hurt the other.
“Would talking lessen any of it?”
It. The pain and guilt. The inner turmoil. The pull of unfinished business at home and the complicated feelings he has towards Seetha and his village. Because Crozier feels all of it, shares these complicated emotions with him, but there are certain things he cannot name yet.
And some of these things he needs to hear from Rama’s own lips. It doesn’t feel right that they should invade each others’ brains to learn these things.
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Well, why would he have?
But talking to this man about leaving, even indirectly— But Francis already seems to know about that, or at leas doesn’t seem to feel the dread and wrongness of it cutting through him in the way that Raju does. So maybe it’s alright. Is it?
Simpler to just explain, instead of deciding if he should. He can do that with Francis in a way he couldn’t have with Seetha.
He tries to brush a thumb against the ragged, more faded thread on his finger, thinking of her. Of course his thumb goes right through. “There’s a thread here. It… it’s not… in good shape. I remember the day I left. She cried. I didn’t… I didn’t think anything of it.”
He remembers leaving, thinking it at Francis: the little boat under his feet, the movement of the river carrying him where he needed to be. Everyone he’d ever known, really known, on the bank all shouting with one voice, led by Seetha. His remembered pride in her, his eagerness and pride in himself, all painted over with the stain of each time he’s thought back on it since with bitter self-recriminations in his heart.
“I…” he tries to go on, but can’t sticks at the base of his throat. He shouldn’t ever be thinking can’t. Not about this. There’s more important things at stake than can’t.
It sneaks itself out anyway, though, written in the threads of the image Raju sends him after: Francis standing in the doorway of the little home they’ve made, looking very small at some long distance, alone there and looking out. Raju leans forward, elbows against his knees, and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes with his face twisted up. Before he’d closed his eyes against all of it he’d seen the more unnatural part of that fire escaping here and there over the edge of the brick, and he ignores it. It won’t grow without him, not the way a real one would, and if there’s any problem beyond that he has to trust Francis to take care of it. He can’t manage anything else.
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The flames lick around the brickwork but stay contained, even as Crozier’s own thoughts become more uneven.
Rama doesn’t spend his days here hoping for a goodbye, but he doesn’t nor wish it either. Everything about the vision hurts - that poor woman, this poor, poor man, this unfortunate line of events, and Crozier allows for Ram’s guilt and sorrow and sickness with himself to fill his heart.
But he feels for himself too. How could he not? He doesn’t want to say goodbye to Ram anymore than Ram does, and the thought of more isolation and loneliness…
Crozier leans into Ram, his head resting on top of his. He replays the vision of Rama growing distant from his own point of view, that stiff upper lip he’d keep on his face as he stood in the doorway and watched him leave his life forever.
It’s terrible, and he can’t stop the thoughts of an empty sea of ice, legs strapped together as he waits by a breathing hole for a seal to emerge. He thinks of the long trek over uneven terrain, the sounds of men one by one falling dead in their tracks behind him, then eventually silence. The fluttering of papers and canvas, the sight of a circle of people dressed in furs, caring for him despite how ‘othered’ he is.
He doesn’t want Rama to have these thoughts, and he tries to bring himself back to a place of support. He’ll go on, as he always does. He hugs him tighter, as if he might disappear right then and there.
“There is no choice,” he tells him hoarsely. “There should be no hesitation. You know I understand.”
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But Raju doesn’t have anything in him that can finish the thought, not when he’s seeing — knowing — Raju leaving, the way it would feel, the way the isolation felt for Francis before, the men dying behind him. Being left behind, separate even from the people who find him after. Francis has lost enough already, Raju knew that, but in this moment he knows it and a whine pushes itself out from his throat. Francis understands, of course he does, the way Seetha had understood. Seetha had a whole village behind her and Francis only has what he’s trying not to think of now — what Raju can feel him trying to bury long enough to support Raju, to help him. Francis’ head is resting on Raju’s, Francis’ arm is around him, Francis would let a life he’s built back up in himself fall to ruin a second time without a fight only because Raju needed him to and Raju can cut that whining noise off now because he’s angry and he straightens, half-turning in Francis’ tight hold toward him to grip his shirt, breath shaky but expression fierce. It isn’t Francis the heat of this anger is turned toward, it’s— it’s—
Promise me— A large hand closing around his, slick with blood—
It isn’t anyone. He isn’t angry at anyone. He only is, at the pain, the necessity, the pointless cruelty of needing to and no choice and no hesitation. “I—“
He what? Won’t. Unimaginable. Even now he can’t bear to connect the word to anything. Can’t. Not true. He knows very well what he can do. Can’t bear to. But it hurts less to feel anger burning at the edges of the wound.
“You should have better than that,” he demands instead over the noise and heat of the fireplace behind him, voice low and rough and fierce. “You understand that too, don’t you?”
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He’s witnessed the intensity of Rama’s anger plenty of times. Sometimes it’s a slow smolder, an inner seething that burns him up from the inside out, and sometimes it’s fierce enough to set fire to half a forest. But it turns on him now, and even though it’s not directed at him, he feels like it’s about to set him aflame.
“Yes.”
No.
No, of course he doesn’t! This happiness has all been a miracle, a stroke of luck, nothing that he’d ever expected to come across here, let alone dream of duplicating. Even if he’d wanted to. Even if he could.
Rama takes hold of his shirt his calm expression is betrayed by his inner melancholy. No, he’d mourn him, of course he would, mourn his loss and treasure all those moments he’d gotten to live again thanks to him.
“It’s okay, Ram,” he tells him quietly, trying to meet the fire with a little water. “It’s okay.”
It’s just life. Nothing stays forever.
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Raju stares at him, jaw set stubbornly and brow drawn, but dread creeping into the look in his eyes. He has the sense of teetering on some ledge, outstretched arms and wobbling balance the only thing keeping him from finishing the thought out loud. Or from having it at all. How is it right, that I have to—
He feels Francis’ shirt wound in his fists. He feels the fire fierce and hot behind him. He sees the room behind Francis, the light and dark there shifting with the flames. He sees the face of the man he’s built a life with, a strong and handsome face, thin shapely lips and long sloping nose and high forehead, golden hair and blue eyes dark in the room’s deep shadows, and feels his lungs filling quickly with his quick breaths, and doesn’t think about anything else.
“You do,” he insists, still angrily but a little weakly too, now. But it’s safer ground, this part. It’s natural for a man to want to give his— who he’s made his home in every gift that he can think to, whether or not he can actually do it. “You deserve everything. You don’t understand that? The way that I see you?”
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“Of course I see it, of course.”
Still soft, still gentle, his hand rising to cover Ram’s still gripping his shirt so hard that he worries he’s going to burst into flames.
He sees how he loves him. He sees it, he understands it. It isn’t fair, and all things aren’t equal. He’s at the end, Ram’s still near the beginning.
“But you have to live.”
That’s the crux of it; Rama has to live. He has love still waiting for him, a mission, duty, a life that could be lived just as fully. Crozier left those things and chose his isolation. There’s nothing for him after this, and that’s by choice. That’s how it must be.
If you go back tomorrow, I will have been happy. Gratitude among the sorrow, sweet nostalgia paired with loneliness. Both things can be exist inside a man’s brain.
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But he’s already danced closer to the edge than this, hasn’t he, just in the last minute? Maybe that’s why he’s hesitating. It would have meant something different spoken on its own, without that damning How is it right that came before. He says it anyway, feeling his way through to the right word.
“I was… grateful. Relieved… Happy. I was happy, for the first time in… I don’t know. Years. Maybe longer. But here, I’m happy to live. I want to live. Because I’m here.” He’s shaking at Francis’ shirt again, or trying to with Francis’ hand over his, but even as intent as he is on convincing Francis to… on convincing him, a part of Raju is already asking what could happen after that. Francis agrees with him, says it isn’t… fair — a safer word than right, it could be right and still not fair — that all of this isn’t fair, and then… what?
Raju keeps pushing anyway, for agreement, or maybe for something more than that, no matter how impossible it might be. He can’t bear to do anything else.
“Here, where it doesn’t hurt. With you.” His gaze is darting over Francis’ face again but this time urgently, looking for something. Understanding, or agreement, or anything other than that mournful, loving acceptance that Raju can feel from him now. For Francis to fight. If Francis agrees Raju should fight this then, then… then something. Something he could put into words if only it was right to do it, if only the thought of it didn’t make all the heavy sludge and inward pointed knives and everything he feels on looking at that thread out to his home try to crawl back up his throat.
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It doesn’t hurt with him. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard a compliment so beautiful or so profound - when they’re together it doesn’t hurt to live.
He inhales sharply and answers Ram’s searching glance by tugging him forward, right into his arms. He tugs him tightly right there on the floor, afraid for him, afraid for them both, and sad that things couldn’t be less complicated.
Rama has to go back if given the opportunity. It’s the right thing to do, even if it means facing all those things that can slowly kill a man’s soul. He doesn’t want that life for this man, this person that lightens his own burdens and makes him feel human, not like a shadow or a ghost. His loss would haunt him just as keenly as any other loss, if not more so. He’d be losing a part of himself this time.
He can’t argue it. He can’t, and it pains him to not be able to fix this.
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—something Francis could never give him, Raju realises, not wanting to know it but unable to help it held against the gentle warmth of him, the fire sounding faint behind the echo of Raju’s gasping breaths against Francis’ skin. You never would have asked, would you? He isn’t sure how much of the message makes it through — the thoughts he gets seem to be more impressions than words and his own now, as much as any idea can be, is quiet — but it isn’t something Raju could admit to out loud, the desperate, selfish shame of what he had been looking for. You’d sacrifice everything to help someone else, even people you’ll never meet. Asking for what you need instead never even occurred to you, did it? It never could have been different; that’s why I love you, after all.
His breath shudders in the small, damp space between his face and Francis’ neck, and his eyes burn. He can’t tell if the wetness on his cheeks is his own sweat or if it’s tears. He closes his eyes, and doesn’t try to figure it out.
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