goingtobeunwell

The snow sizzles and the flames pop, light from the tin shivering in short shadows against the ground as the fire starts to go out. Raju’s relinquished control; there’s no more need to linger in whatever he’s managed to dredge up from his memories. Not that he’ll automatically snap back into someone less lost, but Raju always seems more comfortable when he’s in full control of himself.

Crozier keeps his fingers on his wrist for just a beat or two longer than strictly necessary, lowering his arm as he feels that rigidity in his body start to loosen. When it seems enough he takes his hand back and passes Raju the parka which he so sorely needs, even if he doesn’t feel the full effect of the cold air just yet. He will soon, and then that’ll be yet another issue that he doesn’t need Raju to suffer through on his behalf.

He fills his lungs with the acrid smell of smoke, with narrowed eyes scouts the dimly-lit path up ahead. His gaze eventually falls back on Raju, and he makes a decision.

“We’ll make camp just up ahead.” He gestures to the soft sloping hill in front of them and stoops down to unceremoniously retrieve the tin can from the snow. Never good to waste a resource here.

“If I recall correctly there are some empty box cars not too far from here.” Good source of kindling and, joy of joys, a roof over their heads.

He looks back at Raju again and nods, guiding him into taking that first step forward. They can walk side-by-side here, Raju can press shoulder against his if he likes, lean on him a bit just like Crozier’s been metaphorically leaning on him this entire journey. He doesn’t know what he would do without him - and he really doesn’t want to think of what it would be like if that were the case.

Wearing fur had always seemed like a matter of vanity before, superiority. A pointed gesture, at home, and tasteless on top of it. He watches his fingers bury themselves in the dense fur of the coat. The parka, that's what Francis calls it. It hurts, a little, against the fingertips that'd been holding that can. He buries his fingers a little deeper, realising he's doing it because it's soft. He thinks it might be softer than anything he's ever felt. And warmer. He remembers opening his eyes after a long and terrible night and seeing what's in his hands resting over him, and watching Francis' back as he walked away.

Francis is saying something. He's been saying something. Raju looks up.

Whatever it was, it'd been something about box cars. If that's where Francis wants to go, that's where they'll go. Then Francis nods him forward, so Raju walks. Unthinkingly, he settles his stride close enough to Francis to press their arms together, looking at the fur in his hands and then over at Francis' hand, at the tin can in it.

"I'll need that," he says, after a moment of looking at it. His voice is brisk and efficient, matter of fact and flat. "There's no sense in ruining anything else."

“You didn’t ruin anything.” He’s warm and supportive, a stark contrast to Raju’s own somewhat bland tone. “You found a new purpose for something.”

He smiles and steps closer to him, guiding him in the right direction with a few well-placed bumps and pushes with his arm. He’s navigating by landmarks alone - curve of the path and the crossing of the tracks, that one tree that’s hunched over like an old woman, a large cliff of boulders or twin pines. Thankfully their destination isn’t too far, and soon the derailed box cars, some tipped onto their sides and twisted, quickly make an appearance in the tree line.

Crozier selects the best box car of the bunch - and look, there’s already a barrel for a fire - and has the two of them start to make camp. He gives Raju a few simple but direct orders, mostly collecting the firewood and spreading out the bedrolls, to keep his body occupied while his mind continues to be trapped in those bad thoughts. He focuses on the kindling and the cooking, setting out bowls of warm, fish stew and water once they’re sufficiently settled in for the night.

But once the work is over, the stillness returns. He sits close to Raju, keeping the quiet if that’s what’s needed, or idly chatting if a distraction seems called for.

Raju frowns down at the stew in his bowl. It's warm between his hands, and warm inside him — he hasn't wanted to risk the parka by wearing it yet, and he's hunched into the blanket wrapped around him— but it isn't sitting well enough to have any more. He hadn't expected it to. A tiny flame lights up one of the bits of fish as he watches, flaring out of nowhere before the fish sinks down under the surface again and the flame goes out with a little hiss. Raju grimaces, irritated, and pushes the bowl to one side, picking up the remains of the tin can to hold between his hands instead. Smoke curls lazily out of the holes burnt in its side, floating up from nowhere. He doesn't fidget with it. His fingers don't tap at its sides, his hands don't roll the metal between them. He's still. It's easy to be still, this way.

"I should keep watch for a while. After you sleep." He looks over at Francis and then pauses, surprised, by how close they are. Had he moved himself this close to Francis while he hadn't been paying attention? It's alright, of course, because it's Francis. But he hadn't expected it.

After a moment he goes on. "There's no telling what's going to be out there, on a night like this. Or, a day like—" It hasn't been a full day since they woke up this morning, has it? Raju sighs, looking back down at the stillness of his hands and giving up on the right word, and shakes his head. He got across what he needed to. The right word doesn't matter.

Crozier smiles, a touch of sadness in it. It’s as though Raju hasn’t even realized he’s been kept company this entire time.

Raju won’t sleep, and if he does he’ll have nightmares. There’s no doubt in his mind this is why he’s offering to take first watch. If he can avoid sleep for as long as physically possible then he can keep control of the flames in the tin.

Crozier places his hand on Raju’s shoulder. “When you’re tired come to bed.” No reinforcing the quiet explanations, just a simple statement. When he’s ready Crozier will be expecting him.

He nods softly and shifts away, ready to rest his bones a while. He’s also plagued by dreams, horrible ones, but he knows his will never leave him so long as he keeps breathing. Living with them is the only way to move forward, but lord, are they exhausting sometimes. They’re abstract now - large soup pots with human-like limbs simmering away inside of them, scattered papers fluttering away across a barren landscape, rusty chains cutting into disintegrating limbs.

He falls asleep trying to think about more pleasant things. Glittering stars, gently-rolling waves, a book of pretty poetry, the man behind him. He doesn’t tend to wake from his nightmares, even when he is in the throes of it, whimpering or moaning or listing an old muster roll in his delirium. He won’t wake from it tonight, though it’s particularly severe, a large beast with three heads crushing skulls underfoot like dead leaves, pausing only long enough for the next human in line to scream.

Raju sits by the slightly-opened door of the boxcar so the smoke can drift out. It isn't thick enough to give them away if any of those odd people are around somewhere watching, particularly not in this dark. He watches the smoke, wondering at how long it's taking to go away while Francis sleeps behind him.

There was a room, he'd set one up in his rooms in the city too, where he could go to move, to feel leather against his fists, to work something out of his body when he needed to. He hasn't needed it in quite this way since he'd ended up in this bizarre place. The fire flares a few times as the world grows sharp. He smells the snow outside, and the musty smell of the rusted metal and dirt inside of the boxcar, and he feels the cold. He pushes up his sleeve to see gooseflesh there, notices his foot tapping. He remembers that he'd been afraid before they'd crossed the bridge — he remembers that he'd said so — and tries to decide whether the fear, or wariness, or whatever it had been had been justified or not. His mind feels uncomfortable, too full.

He breathes. Slow breaths, bringing the bite of the cold into himself, warming it inside his body, pushing it slowly out of his mouth. He tries to think only of that, tries to let everything else inside him flow around it. He starts to look down at the tin to see whether it's working — the smoke would be starting to thin — and Francis whimpers behind him. Raju turns to look at his friend instead, shadows of the real fire inside its barrel lighting up the soft, strong curves of his face.

It's easy to know what's happening, easy to assume. Seetha had had nightmares, too, and old habit has Raju, unthinking just now, setting down the tin and easing over. He studies Francis' expression, raises a hand to smooth it over one side of Francis' brow and into his hair to smooth away the tension there. Habit tells him to touch carefully and gently, to ease into something more firm if the touch goes well, or doesn't seem to do anything at all. He'll have to watch Francis to see. But the touch isn't what it should be; Raju frowns at his hand and then tugs at the fingerless gloves impatiently, pulling the useless things off and tossing them some place behind him, and then smoothing his hand from Francis' brow to his hairline again.

There. The wellbeing that spreads out from Francis' skin to his, like liquid warmth. That's more like touching him should be. Satisfied, Raju settles on his knees, his hand light over Francis' hair, to watch him.

As the dream continues the Darkwalker’s green breath curls from its three heads, sinking low and spreading across the forest floor, withering everything it touches. Plants curl and decay, animals wither away, and people - vague amalgamations of his men, the Netsilik families who cared for him, the people here - begin to rot from the inside out. Their teeth start to fall from their heads and their foreheads trickle blood like Christ’s crown of thorns. They reach for him, claw at him, mouths gaping wide as mandibles loosen and then fall away completely.

Crozier’s distress increases, brow furrowing as sweat pools on his brow. It’s still mild discomfort at the most, until something particularly horrific twists his face into a grimace and he exhales a soft, shuddering sob.

Raju frowns, setting his hand along the side of Francis' face. His touch is still careful, and when he raises his other hand toward Francis' shoulder it stops before it gets there. Seetha hadn't liked too much touch at once, those nights; she'd been grabbed that day, carried away from them to safety, and more of that before she was even awake to realise what the touch was for hadn't ever helped. But he doesn't know the first thing about Francis' nightmares.

He's aware of an emotion now, clear and simple: frustration. He doesn't know enough about Francis yet, and it surprises him as if it's new, every time he finds himself needing to be familiar and realising over again that he's not. But he's going to do something.

"Francis," he murmurs, free hand settling for a light touch against the man's upper arm. "Francis," he says again, still quiet but more firmly: "Wake up now."

Crozier is typically easy to rouse by virtue of that naval structure and routine, but he’s been caught mid-dream and is slow to fully come back to himself. He grunts quietly and attempts to turn away, stuck in the in-between for a half a minute longer before it finally registers that he’s being woken.

Awareness sets in. He’s asleep in a box car, they’re out in the wilderness, vulnerable to all the insanity that lingers out this way. He bolts upright. “Raju,” he gasps, suddenly on high alert. “What‘s the matter?”

Raju's touch on him is light enough that Raju's hands fall away easily when Francis bolts up that way. Francis is sitting up, he is awake, and Raju takes him in; Francis doesn't know why Raju woke him up. Raju's gaze goes to the floor for a moment as the hint of a grimace moves onto his face. He sighs quietly.

"Nothing. You were dreaming," he says as he looks back up at Francis. He realises the hand that'd been on Francis' face is still hovering like it wants to reach again and he curls its fingers instead, rubbing his thumb into his fingertips to keep them busy. The grimace shifts into a similarly subtle wry smile that waits in the background of his expression, in the set of his eyebrows and at the corners of his lips. It feels wrong to just ask — he should have this figured out already — but he has to ask, doesn't he? So he does, even though his expression says he's already anticipating the answer being yes and he's preparing himself to apologise, preemptively. "Should I have let you get more sleep?"

Crozier presses the heel of his palm into his eyes and exhales. Here 'dreaming' implies that whatever sort of resting he was doing had been noisy and quite possibly disruptive. Frankly he's just surprised it hasn't woken or bothered Raju before.

"It's fine," he mutters, picking his head back up. His hand drops heavily onto his blankets and he looks at the fire, at the doorway, at the warped planks that serve as the floor - anywhere but Raju himself. "Talking in my sleep, was it? Maybe tossing and turning - whatever it was I'm sorry if it disturbed you."

He finally looks at the space beside him, realizing that Raju hasn't come to bed yet. Maybe it hasn't been too long since he'd fallen asleep, but he doubts it.

The reaction Raju gets isn't the ease he'd been expecting, which would have been something to apologise for. A man at peace with his nightmares would have been one Raju should have left alone. Instead Raju gets... shame? Raju's expression is clear and sharp, and focused on Francis as he decides what he's seeing. It's easy to think now, for this, and he doesn't entirely mind what he finds: Francis' reaction might be unfamiliar too, but the shame of a strong, good man whose compassion's led Raju through things it would have eaten through him for anyone else to see, that's something Raju can handle.

While Francis looks down beside him Raju uncurls his hand and sets it around the back of Francis' neck. "You didn't disturb me," he murmurs, ducking his head enough to try to find Francis' gaze, ready to meet it whenever Francis looks back up. "Did you want to keep sleeping? I should, ah— You said we're still learning each other, so I should know. I can wake you next time too, if, ah... if I'm awake for it. If you want me to."

At least he didn't wake him. That's the bright side in all of this, and it makes it easier for him to lift his head up and meet that intense gaze he knows is waiting for him.

Ah, yes, there it is, furrowed brow and dark eyes, long lashes framing the whole visage as though he's more baby fawn than grown man. He attempts to sit back, but he's weak in spirit and reluctant to pull away from Raju's hand on the back of his neck. "If I woke every time I had an unpleasant dream, I'd never sleep," he admits.

It's an unsatisfactory answer, and he knows it. He should give him something. "If I start talking in my sleep, then by all means, please wake me. As for the rest...I can manage." It's unpleasant, but he doesn't start fires when he's distressed by them.

Raju nods, focused, watching Francis and filing it away into the growing files he's building of what he knows about his friend. Nightmares more the rule than the exception. Raju takes that in solemnly, but it doesn't surprise him. For all the two of them don't understand about one another yet, there are some things they do. He feels a faint, sharp pull at the fact he hadn't known that already, sleeps too deeply to have noticed— but he learned that about himself a long time ago, and there's no point in thinking too much on it now. If Francis talks in his sleep he does want Raju to wake him, and that's more worth noticing.

And if this happens again, his friend dreaming badly but not speaking, Raju doesn't have to just sit there and watch it. Putting his hand on Francis' face hadn't woken him just now, had it? So maybe there's something he can do.

Another night. For now, Francis is awake already. Raju's grip squeezes very gently over the muscles of Francis' neck. "Do you think you could go back to sleep? We aren't done walking yet, and we woke up early. I... think. The rest of it will go easier with more rest."

The initial jolt of adrenaline has long-since disappeared. His exhaustion is tenfold now, being pulled mid REM-cycle destroying what little there was to gain from his short sleep. He nods tired. "Oh, yes," he says quietly. "I most certainly can go back to sleep."

But more rest goes for both of them, not just himself. Raju needs a reset, a fresh start; he needs to rest his body and at least attempt to let his mind drift away from his troubles.

"Do you think you could sleep now?"

Crozier can't bat his eyelashes. He wishes he could, and look alluring and sweet in his pleading, instead of just kind of odd, but he must play with the cards he's been dealt. He smiles, tries a little head tilt, inviting him to join him so they both won't be so miserable tonight.

Raju huffs out a breath, the invitation making him smile a little, wearily. The gesture is an inviting one, a tempting one, but—

—but what? Raju frowns a little, reaching for an answer and finding nothing where he expects something to be. There's no work to do. He's stuck here in Canada, and there's no work anyone needs him to do. They've already gathered all the supplies they're going to need for the trip, thanks mostly to Francis' work catching and drying their food, and despite what Raju had thought of as keeping watch, two people isn't enough to set a watch, not unless things are desperate enough to go without half a night's sleep. The question and the gesture is tempting, and there's no reason not to say yes to it.

Raju's smile widens, the alert lines of his posture starting to relax. He nods, pleased, and crawls around behind Francis to the free space in his blankets instead of toward the door and slipping his legs underneath. He keeps sitting up, watching Francis to see how he settles in, and so how Raju should settle in, but the extra layer over the lower half of him is a relief. It's warm underneath with Francis' body heat, and Raju had known that he was cold, but he hadn't known it, not until a little part of that cold started threatening to go away. He shivers a little as the hint of warmth tries seeping into him.

"I could try. It's hard without... I don't know. Being more tired. But we've been walking for hours. Maybe that will be enough."

Thank god, no further argument necessary. It was definitely the head tilt and the smile that did it too, not the softness or heat that awaits his chilly friend if he crawls into the blankets.

Crozier sinks down slowly, twisting onto his side facing inwards. It’s warmer this way. That’s what he’ll tell himself. It’s not because he wants him close enough to keep an eye on him, or because he is still a little rattled by the Darkwalker and his subsequent nightmare.

One of those horrified faces awaiting the Darkwalker had been Raju’s. If he just wants to keep his within arm’s reach for a while, who could possibly blame him?

“Lie down,” he murmurs, looking up at him one final time and then closing his eyes. “I’ll tell you the story of when I met the last survivor of the HMS Bounty mutiny and all their descendants.”

Eagerness lights up Raju's face. It's a good thing Francis already has his eyes closed, though, because: "You should be sleeping," he says as he slides further down into the comforting promise of warmth under the blankets, trying to mirror Francis' pose. Most certainly means he's probably closer to it than Raju's I'll try, and the longer until Francis is able to look for sleep, the harder it'll be to find it. Raju pulls the blanket over his chest and shivers once, then again, and lets out a quiet huff at himself, embarrassed that that's only happening now, as if the cold is only trying to fight him now on its way out. He focuses on rolling the end of the blanket up to lay under his head instead. "I already woke you up once. You can tell me the story tomorrow, while we're walking."

Crozier raises his arm - his left, the one without the hand - and lays it over Raju in response to his shivering.

He should be sleeping, but he won’t until Raju’s comfortable and stops his shivering. He’ll tell him about someplace warm and tropical, and perhaps it’ll transport them both for a little while.

“It’s best to begin with the story of the Bounty,” he says, voice low and relaxed, blatantly ignoring Raju’s suggestion. “You must know it. A famously cruel captain and a crew that’s finally suffered all the abuses it can stand. It didn’t begin that way though, as the sailors who lived through it would recount later. Bligh, the captain, and Christian, the head mutineer, were initially on good, even friendly terms.”

Crozier continues, describing the day-to-day of the crew of the Bounty with details only a sailor could know. He tells the story of the drunken surgeon, and floggings that eventually became more and more frequent in the journey. All was well in the initial stretch of the voyage though, a typically strict time at sea under the usual Royal Navy guidance, structured watches and calisthenics, horrible food, boredom. But then there was Tahiti, and the crew got their first taste of freedom.

The story gets a little bawdy, and Crozier even chuckles quietly when he describes the check for venereal diseases when they left port some months later. The crew was sorry to say goodbye to the bonny lasses and fresh food of the island, and things only got worse from there.

“Well, as you know Fletcher Christian reached the end of his rope with the paranoid Captain Bligh. They set upon the Captain in the middle of the night. Under threat of murder they bodily placed him, a very sad amount of supplies, and the remaining crew loyal to Bligh on a jolly boat and cut him adrift. The mutineers kept the Bounty for themselves of course, and turned her back around to Tahiti.”

From here Crozier speaks a little more softly, a little quieter. From there the story becomes one of Bligh’s treacherous open-boat journey on the sea, the Royal Navy hunting down and trying the mutineers, and the legacy left behind by the mutineers and their Tahitian families. When he reaches the point that it’s clear he’ll enter the story next he pauses.

“And tomorrow I’ll tell you the rest.”

The arm over Raju surprises, then pleases him, and the story pleases him, and he laughs a little when Francis starts telling it without even deigning to say no to Raju telling him to sleep. He tugs the blanket higher over himself and moves closer to Francis and it feels natural to be there, makes it easier for Francis' arm to lay over him and brings him closer to the source of all the warmth that's gathered under here. At first he shivers now and then, his body not used to the warmth, but the story and Francis' attention to it, instead of pointing out anything Raju's doing, makes the embarrassment easier to let go as Raju's attention follows where Francis is leading it.

And once he's started to settle in the arm that isn't pressed against the blanket under him needs a place to go, doesn't it? It feels natural to mirror Francis' posture here too and set his arm over Francis' side and, gradually, paying more attention to the story while the comfort and the warmth spread slowly inside of him, move closer as he listens, and closer, until his knuckles are brushing blanket on the floor beneath Francis' head and the tips of his fingers have started brushing fondly against the back of Francis' neck.

And tomorrow I'll tell you the rest, Francis says and Raju smiles, gaze alert and clear and fixed on the familiar face, the pitted, soft-looking plains of his cheek, the graceful swoop of his nose, the curve of his upper lip as he murmurs the end of the tale. The end of it for tonight. His voice — suited, Raju thinks, for stories, for listening to hours at a time without ever growing tired of the sound — is quieter now, either in deference to some perceived tiredness in Raju or quiet with his own. The latter, Raju hopes; a story before bed had never worked the way it was supposed to when he was a boy, either. If anything, it's only ever woken him up, and at least one of them should be about to get some sleep. But Raju feels good, he feels—

He doesn't know how to describe it. Light and sharp and, and something. Something he could feel spreading with the weight of the arm over his side while Francis spoke and spoke, that can feel now humming in every part of him. He feels it in the skin of his fingertips barely touching the skin at the back of Francis' neck. "Tomorrow," he murmurs, voice as warm as the rest of him, deeper than he realises it's going to be before he hears it coming out. "Thank you, Francis. It really is time for you to sleep, now."

“I’ll sleep,” he says, one corner of his lips lifting in a soft smirk. “I’ll sleep.”

As tired as he is, he doesn’t know how he’ll manage with Raju’s warm breath tickling his face and neck and his fingertips gently caressing to the back of his neck. It’s a pleasant dream to have while still awake.

He shifts in place one more time, eyes opening briefly to guide his arm underneath Raju’s head in lieu of a pillow. Of course, it gives him one more lovely thing to admire before he does drift off for the night, Raju’s expression soft and rather sweet. It makes his chest ache, but at least it’s a beautiful agony, one he hopes will show up again in his dreams.

He locks eyes with his and smiles again, quiet and contentedly, and then closes his eyes again with a little chuckle.

He’ll drift off again in good time, knowing that even if Raju doesn’t fall asleep at least he’s not sitting at the door of the car brooding all night.

When Francis puts his arm under Raju's head Raju lets out a surprised huff, smile widening, then softening at Francis' expression, the way he looks contented and happy. That Francis can look that way on a day like this one was makes the humming thing inside him shine a little brighter. The way that Francis had sobbed in his sleep, that noise that he'd made, that couldn't seem more different from the way that he looks now, satisfied, with his eyes closed.

Having Francis' arm under his head, Francis thinking of the slightly awkward angle of their necks laying this way and looking to solve it, it feels like being cared for, like when Francis cooks for him. It's a shame, Raju realises, that he hadn't been able to finish what Francis made for him earlier. He'll have to finish it tomorrow. He moves his own arm next to the floor slowly, not wanting to disturb Francis too much, and eases it under Francis' head, too, and then he lays that way, eyes still not moving from Francis' face.

It's rare, to be able to look this way. He works hard enough to drop, when he can manage it, and on those nights tends to fall asleep first. And laying further apart in their cabin, where it's warm enough to afford the distance, means there he's closing his eyes and trying to find his way to sleep on his own. He doesn't usually get to look like this. He'd gotten to look all through Francis' story, though, watching his expression shifting with the rising and falling of the tale and its moods, and he gets to look now.

The story drifts through the back of his mind, moving harmless and fascinating in the place the rest of the day's thoughts had been. The sight in front of him takes up the rest of the space, the feeling in him, whatever it is that's pulling at the edges of his lips and filling him up. It's just on the edge of too much but it's impossible to mind it, not when Francis is relaxed and happy and drifting toward sleep. Raju won't notice it when his own conscious attention dissolves into barely conscious thought, into feeling, and then into sleep, but it happens in time. If any nightmares try to take hold of him after that they lose their grip before long under the warmth and the wellbeing and the weight safe over his side and Raju sleeps heavily, once he manages to get there, and won't remember his dreams when he wakes up.

He wants to jump out of his own skin. He wants to pull his skeleton out of his body, tear his hair out, grind his teeth down to stubs. He’s uncomfortable, immensely so, snapping internally at every little inconvenience, feeling himself bubble with those old familiar thoughts of wringing a neck or punching a wall, even though in his heyday his wrath was mostly guided at himself and apathy towards everyone and everything else.

He doesn’t know why this is happening. These feelings of discomfort and agitation at every little thing comes right after waking with Raju in his arms, that lovely little glow he’d felt despite of the horror and the suffering. They’d been on their way to look for a death - he shouldn’t have been happy, and he wasn’t completely, but he’d felt like the crush of the world wasn’t so heavy. And by all accounts he should have kept feeling that contentment, but it comes and goes and he finds himself even wanting to lash out at Raju.

The situation with the madmen in the forest is still the big debate in town, with someone once more suggesting they kidnap one of their numbers. Crozier brings his vexation home, dropping his goods from town onto the table with a grunt.

“They’re going to start a goddamned war, one we’re not prepared for. There are children among their numbers, for Christ’s sake!”

The first few days of darkness and sick green sky are almost easy to take as an abnormally long night. But after a while it's more difficult: more difficult to pretend he knows when a day has passed at all, more difficult to pretend to sleep. Before this place, before going out at night meant being so cold he couldn't bear it, so cold it hurt inside and out just to stand outside in the wind and the dark, there'd been days when he could go out and do whatever was needed whenever he could. When sleep didn't always mean that it was night, sleep only meant that Raju couldn't keep going any more. It'd happened when he'd been a young man, and then once away from the structure of the barracks living in the city proper, with no one to report to but himself, and now it's happening here. He's trying to keep to Francis' schedule but it's harder, harder to stay inside, harder to stay still.

A couple times he's woken up convinced he's set Francis on fire by accident while he slept but he hasn't insisted on sleeping apart yet, and the tension that failure winds tight inside his chest has made him a little shorter with Francis, those mornings, than he wants to be. They'd been perfectly alright sleeping apart before, and it isn't cold in their cabin here the way that it had been on the walk to and from Lakeside, and in the broken down places there that were empty enough to sleep in. They could sleep apart again now and it would be alright. But Raju feels...

It feels better, still, to touch him. The certainty that something is about to come, something he needs to be prepared for, something he isn't remotely prepared for, with his arm over the warm and solid line of his friend's side, feeling his body just there even when Raju's eyes are closed, that certainty moves back a little.

Raju's thinking about that when they make it back, even knowing how on edge Francis is after going into the town, such as it is, and the conversations they'd had there. People there are saying whoever it is in the forest is going to try something now, that they already have and that's why all this is happening, or just that everyone here can't let this new thing distract them from the threat and they need to be proactive, to act. He knows it's bothering Francis, but he's lost all sense of when Francis does and doesn't want to sleep, and when he himself will sleep, and whether Francis is going to want to soon now that they're home, and he knows he needs to separate himself more once they both do, and he knows that he won't.

It's a ridiculous thing to be so focused on. But it's important. Something is going to happen, and keeping Francis safe is something he can do. Something he should be able to do.

"There's children everywhere," Raju says distractedly, moving over to the table himself and opening the bag Francis had put everything in. "It doesn't mean they aren't dangerous. We already know they're not afraid to kill."

He doesn't understand. No - it's not that he doesn't understand, it's that he doesn't understand why Raju, of all people, would be on the side of potentially letting harm come to children. This is Raju, yes? Not some sort of creature just wearing his face.

Crozier sits down at the table slowly, pulling off his glove with his teeth and setting it aside. If he wasn't so quick to anger then he might have sat there and tried to see some other way around his friend's reply - some kind of rationale or reason that would justify his response. He isn't that man today though, and he feels his face start to set into a bewildered grimace.

"That doesn't justify killing innocents. Surely you can see that."

Surely a man as practical and intelligent as Raju can separate children in a situation not of their choosing from someone making an actual choice to endanger other people. Can't he see that? He's trying not to let the bile rise, but the more he dwells on how absurd it would be the more frustrated he becomes.

"They don't deserve to pay for the sins of their parents."

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cw: body horror

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Time Skip - a week or so after the Darkwalker attack

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