Raju sighs, gaze going distant as he thinks about it. 'No one' means him too, he knows. Francis and his men speaking of starvation always reminds a part of him of his father, the things his father had made sure that he knew, but starving here would be different from starving at home; here the little food left isn't taken and sold and shipped away, it doesn't grow at all, and what does belongs only to the first person to find and take it. The rest of them had made it very clear that it's every man for himself here. Only for men like Francis is this a land of plenty, though even he can't feed everyone. But if Francis feels some responsibility, still, to try...
Raju sighs.
"You want to start giving them food again." He doesn't sound like he's about to start arguing against it, even if he doesn't sound thrilled by the idea either. "Or is there something else to be worrying about? The cold?"
Got it on the first guess. Crozier nods very softly; yes, he wants to start giving them food again. "I always worry about the cold." But people have shelters and firewood and clothing; there'll be a more pressing need soon.
He shakes his head slightly. "I should teach them how to survive, like I was taught. Being incapacitated as I was..." He'd stopped providing for the people living in Milton, stopping helping with trade and assisting the vulnerable in the community center. But what if he'd died? What if that help had been completely cut off from them?
"People suffered without my assistance. I can't think otherwise."
"I think they made their bed there, too." Raju looks troubled after he says it, distant. He looks at Francis' face, studying it a moment, and then frowns down at the floor again. Here, again, is another revelation about himself beginning to dawn over a horizon Raju hadn't known to look for, and again one he could feel sick about if he thought on it too long. But Francis just there saying those things earnestly makes the comparison impossible to avoid.
"It's easy for you." He asks it like a statement, studying Francis' expression again. "Worrying about all the rest of them. Still."
“It’s not for you,” he replies, inflection lifting like a question.
It isn’t as though he can’t recall the trees going up in flames, the rage that Ram had only just managed to keep from consuming an entire forest. He’d been so disappointed and so enraged by the almost flippant dismissal of their concerns that he’s convinced he would have cut them off completely if it had been a viable option.
They’re two very different men sometimes, even if they both are steadfast in their convictions.
“Still,” he echoes. He understands what that ‘still’ signifies - Rama had to cart his sorry self into town, had to listen to people call him a hypocrite, had to play nice despite knowing Hickey threatened to kill his friend on more than one occasion. ‘Still’ Crozier worries for them, ‘still’, even after they wouldn’t hear reason.
It's not for you? Raju looks down, crossed arms pressing down harder over his chest. It's not, for you?
At home, the people waiting for him at home, caring for them had been easy. Well. It had been hard. But that difficulty had been his world, and pushing himself through all the needs and the duties and the trials of it had always come to him like breathing. Then he thinks of the people living not so far away in the building he'd spent so much time sleeping in, a place full of people sleeping, eating, living next to one another who never spoke. It'd been like the barracks that way, familiar. The barracks had always been that way, not for others, but for him. He thinks of the people living there, and in the town, and in the houses scattered around it. Scattered like the people themselves, their lives sitting loose and separate instead of woven tightly together, any rule — such as it is — decided on based on what was more comfortable, instead of on which of them needed it. Raju thinks, and he compares, and he realises.
It is easy. Only if those people are his. He hadn't thought it of himself, in any moment before this one: it's easy for me, only if.
"No." He's too used to being open, with Francis: he realises only afterward that the word's come out with pain obvious in it.
"No," he murmurs, voice harder now to press the other emotion out. "It's not."
It's not for you? he hears in his mind again, jaw tight, and has to know. "Does that surprise you?"
Does that surprise him? There are many things about Rama that surprises him, but that wouldn’t be one of them. Crozier’s heart was made for being broken and betrayed; he can be as angry as he wants in the moment, but he’ll mend and forgive. Ram’s protected his heart with a fine layer of steel - he’s had to. If something penetrates that protective layer it won’t heal so easily, but Crozier knows his heart is sincere and big and beautiful.
But he can’t tell how Ram feels about his own answer, if he’s reluctant to admit that he doesn’t worry about the others, that it will take some effort to earn his trust again. If it that’s even possible anymore.
“No,” he tells him quietly. “No, I saw the fires.”
Raju takes a slow, bracing breath through his nose, aware that the leaning posture that'd looked casual a minute or so ago looks less so now, with his shoulders hunched forward and his gaze fixing itself on the floor the way it has.
There are still times he isn't used to it, to the inside of him being so visible. It isn't as if Francis wouldn't have known how angry Raju was without it, but something about Francis seeing it because Raju couldn't keep it in, eyecatching and unavoidable— Well, Francis did see it, and if he isn't surprised now then he saw more than just the fire itself. Maybe more than Raju had, at the time.
"If you'd died—" He has to pause, lips parted, while he waits for the thought to pass. "They would have voted the same way. No matter who was hurt. Or worse. So long as they could pat themselves on the back for their good Christian mercy afterward. You don't— still? That doesn't stop you? It doesn't change anything?"
And he couldn’t stop caring for them. No - that’s not right, he had stopped and it proved disastrous. There is part of him, that harsh voice that reminded him all throughout his recuperation that no one cares what his rank is here. They’d openly chastised him for bringing up the past, and wanted everyone to move on with a clean slate despite the very real baggage they brought with them to this place.
It shouldn’t be so easy for him to start caring about them again. They’d actively spurned him, and Ram’s point still stands - if he’d died nothing would have be done differently.
Crozier frowns to himself, his own body language looking a little resigned. “I still feel…responsible.”
Francis doesn't sound happy about it. He doesn't sound insistent or stubborn. He's strange that way. He always has been, at least as long as Raju has known him; maybe the man he says he used to be would have pushed here, or pushed about anything at all. Maybe that man would be insisting now. Francis only says it, in that way he has. Gentle is the word that comes to mind. Maybe it's the right one.
"How?" Raju looks up from the floor again, at Francis. "You tried to warn them of a danger and they as good as spat on you and turned their back. But..."
He takes a slow breath, lets it out in a hard sigh, and makes an effort to sound less frustrated and confused as he goes on, more curious. "And it's easy for you, still. To feel they're still yours to help. That they deserve it. How?"
The word ‘deserve’ hits his ears wrong, as though survival is something to needs to be earned, but it’s apt in the way Rama uses it. He feels that whatever goodwill they’ve earned should have been revoked when they refused to listen to him at the town hall, and Crozier can see why. He follows the logic. It’s sound. It makes sense, and perhaps how he feels now doesn’t.
“Maybe…” he starts, thinking of the men boiling boots in Rescue Camp. “I’m too….”
Maybe he’s too haunted to do otherwise. He doesn’t have the words for that though, to express those echos properly without sounding like the broken wretch he knows he is.
“I can’t do it again,” he admits, voice low. “I can’t watch it again. I can’t be the voice that says, ‘I told you this would happen’, and then keeps its distance to watch it all unfold. I-I can’t, Ram, I can’t.”
The pain that stutters into Francis' voice sees Raju's expression shifting, drawn eyebrows lifting, gaze that'd been focused inward even as he'd been looking at Francis now sharper and focused on him properly. Raju straightens, arms and defensive posture unfolding as he moves closer and puts a hand on each side of Francis' face, thumbs resting over Francis' cheeks. "You won't," he promises, confident. "Then you won't. I just..."
He leans to touch their foreheads together. It allows him to be closer, to comfort with his heat and his touch and his breath, but it allows Raju to close his eyes, too. If he's led Francis to thinking Raju's going to leave him to repeat the horrors of his past, even a little, he owes Francis an explanation, but he can't imagine looking even Francis in the eyes while he says it. "I... I just thought...
"I thought I was a man like you," he whispers, rasping. "But..."
No. Maybe he can't say it out loud after all. He moves on: more composed, still hushed. "I just wanted to understand. That's all."
The pain that he hadn’t realized had been so close to the surface spills over as Rama brings their foreheads together. He grimaces, swallowing a soft keening noise that threatens to escape his throat, tears making his sight blur. He closes them - problem solved.
“Is it a weakness?” he whispers. Rama doesn’t understand, and he can’t blame him. If he wasn’t him, if he didn’t have all those memories and that heavy sense of failure, would he sounds like an absolute madman?
“I don’t….you don’t want to be like me.” There’s nothing here to admire or want to imitate. There’s no part of him, pathetic and stuck in the past as he is, that should be respected.
For all the moments Raju's had to face the idea he doesn't know this man so well as he feels he should, the moments he's taken Raju by surprise, in this moment Francis is clear. In this way Francis has always been clear. In the face of Francis’ shame, his own disappears. It’s easy to act, at least, when a man he loves needs him to.
“You failed.” Too close to see properly, but Raju opens his eyes. He’s murmuring, words hushed but matter of fact, so that Francis will know what he understands. “It was yours to protect your men and now—“
There’s matter of fact and then there’s cruel. The end of the sentence sits where he left it. “But you still want to fight,” he goes on. “People need you, and it still matters. You failed, but you didn’t forget that you can do more — more than the others and more than you are — and so you should. No matter who they are or what they’ve done. Or what you’ve done. All that matters to you is that someone needs you. If I—“
For all saying it is easier when Francis needs him to Raju’s throat stops his words here, and his voice loses some of the volume that it’d gained. His thumbs start moving in a steady rhythm back and forth over Francis’ skin. It helps, and he goes on.
“If I… knew I’d be that way. Afterward. After I… That I’d be like you. Maybe then I wouldn’t be…”
It’s a long pause, then. To figure it out and then to force it into the open air, where it will harden and become real.
But it’s Francis, who’s lived through all those things. Francis, who’s in front of him feeling this way. There’s no one anywhere he could have said this to, except the one he hopes will hear him now.
“…afraid. Of… failing, the way you did. If I knew I was more like you. Maybe I wouldn't be so afraid. Why wouldn’t I want it? How could I want anything else?”
Afraid. Rama is afraid. It seems like such an impossible thing for this man, who sometimes has more courage than sense.
He was afraid all the time then, and he’s still frightened now. It’s that fear that pushes him to care about the men and women in Milton, to consider offering help and even guidance, even if he wants nothing more in the world than to just keep to himself. He’s duty-bound even when no one’s asked or even wanted him.
He takes a sharp breath and his hand comes to rest on Rama’s waist. “I didn’t know I was going to fail,” he finally says. “When I kept pushing, I didn’t know that was going to be the outcome. I could have never guessed. And even now…even now I know as little as everyone else in this damn place.
“It doesn’t feel like it should be admired. And you…I wish….” He pulls his head back, eyes opening again, watery and a little bloodshot. He wishes Rama could fulfill his mission, and that there wasn’t so much left up in the air. “I wish there wasn’t so much left undone.”
Raju watches Francis as Francis pulls far back enough to see. He doesn’t know what to do with Francis’ wish; it seems impossible that there’s ever going to be an after when the undone things are behind him, when failure isn’t the demon nipping at his heels as he fights to somehow outrun it.
“Always more work left to do,” he murmurs, dismissing it as he tilts his head forward, focusing on Francis again, the more important work of making him see. He starts his thumbs moving over Francis’ cheeks again. “Why shouldn’t I admire you, Francis? You haven’t forgotten your duty to help, no matter who, even when it’s not easy. I’m… I’m not. That way.”
He huffs out a breath, gives a brief, tight smile that fades into something more intent as he focuses on Francis’ face. “So what should I be feeling instead? Not admiration? Something else?”
He doesn’t want to dismiss this very big knife dangling over Rama’s head, not after he was so vulnerable with him. But he gets what he gets in fits and starts when it comes to Ram sometimes, and he takes the admission and holds it close.
He doesn’t want to talk about himself. He started this conversation to begin with, but he wants to leave it all in the past and not have to listen to words of admiration. It’s upsetting, being admired for being so pathetic.
“You should pity me,” he grumbles, stepping back from him. “Sometimes I doubt that I’m duty-bound out of any sense of moral decency or compassion, but because when I close my eyes—“
When he closes his eyes he sees the outlines of the chains on Little’s face, or Goodsir’s carved-up thighs and buttocks. He shakes his head and turns away, back to his basin of water to wash his arms and face.
“You should see the ghosts hovering around my shoulders. I care because if one more person dies on my watch I’m going to lose my goddamned mind.”
Raju watches Francis’ back. He wants to step close to Francis again and run his hand down it. But that’s a difference, Raju supposes, in loving a woman and a man; Seetha might move away but she would always move back again eventually, into his arms, and he would comfort her then. But a man sometimes needs to face his pain alone.
Or at least, a foot or two away.
“What would most men would become, in your place? Callous? Cruel? Selfish?” He pauses and then goes on dryly: “Save their care only for the few who matter most, and damn the rest?”
It isn’t as if Francis’ need couldn’t be a weakness too, easily, but that isn’t what Francis needs to—
But here’s another difference too, isn’t it? Should Raju draw Francis’ attention away from the harder truths, or would that be coddling? Francis hasn’t spared Raju for the sake of a nicer truth before. Raju doesn’t have to be, here, the husband he would have been to Seetha. He can say the whole of it. Francis will be thinking it too, anyway, and will want the thing named and dealt with.
Raju doesn’t move closer but he does shift his weight toward Francis, intent, hands half-curling toward fists at his sides. “We will lose people here. And you might not be strong enough to bear it. Not any more. But you won’t stop caring. It’s only driven you to act. I won’t pity that. We should all hope to still be half the man that you are after suffering half of what you’ve lost.”
Maybe in asking to be pitied he’s really just allowing himself to wallow. Maybe it’s the arguing that makes him sounds petulant and pathetic, or as though he’s trying to find someone to pat him on the back for continuing to push on even though it’s certifiably insane to keep caring. Maybe that’s what he wants, to keep being punished for all the things he didn’t do.
He can hear the insistence in Ram’s voice, can see him in his own mind even though his back is turned, that intense stare and curled fists. He exhales softly, his own hand finding the rough table and spreading his palm out to support himself in a lean. He falls silent, thinking over their gentle disagreement, Rama’s annoyance at the others and his own inability to detach himself despite the harm it’ll inevitably cause.
“It’s easy for me to keep caring,” he finally relents, circling back to the phrase that started this whole thing. “It hasn’t always been like that. I’ve taken myself out of the equation, Rama. There’s no Francis Crozier when it comes to others. You…this between us, is the only thing I’ve allowed myself.”
Raju frowns, quiet a moment as he thinks that through. This doesn’t sound exactly like what Francis said he’d been doing when they’d met, but then the idea of separating himself from the people it was his to care about and help is something Raju—
Well. Maybe he has done a great deal of it. But the reasoning was very different, wasn’t it? The emotion running through them fills in each of them entirely different spaces; Raju throws himself forward where Francis needs to be nudged, and Francis moves with his steady, patient steps through places Raju hadn’t even thought to cross. The shame in Francis had been easy to see, but this part of it is different.
“I don’t understand.” It’s hard, still, to keep this foot or so between their bodies and not touch him. But maybe it’s easier for Francis to speak on it this way, not looking so a part of him might pretend no one else is listening. “I know you keep a distance from the others that you don’t with me. What does that have to do with… this? With wanting to help?”
It doesn’t feel convoluted, but he realizes he’s saying things without a filter. He runs his palm over the rough-hewn tabletop, trying to walk the line between being honest and over sharing.
It’s easier to give your entire self when you hold yourself away from the crowd. It’s easier to give when you expect nothing from it, no self-satisfaction, no happiness. He looks back at Ram finally; he knows how that feels. He knows he does, what it’s like to choose loneliness out of a sense of duty.
But he chose life and happiness this time around. He chose Ram, and this little cabin, and their silly collection of books, and all the quiet moments spent in front of the fire finally feeling alive.
“Selflessness to the point of one’s own detriment is a new habit of a mine, but a habit nonetheless. It’s the trouble with caring too easily. I didn’t care for my own wellbeing, because my own wellbeing matters little.” A pause. “Or it did. Talking about this…questioning why I forgive and help still…I don’t think I would have ever considered why if not for you. It didn’t matter before.”
Raju looks down for a moment over his smile. “I wouldn’t have either, if I was at home. I guess there’s not much reason there to ask questions. Or anyone whose answers I wouldn’t know already.”
He looks up again, searching Francis’ face now that Francis is looking at him and he can properly see it. “But I want to know everything about you. And I admire you, Francis. I always have. I think…”
Raju watches Francis earnestly. He likely won’t like hearing any more, at least not anything too close to praise. Raju’s thumbs start circling over his fingers, and he shoves his hands into his pockets to keep them still. “There’s a great deal I could learn from you, if I try.”
He finds it difficult not to smile. As much as he doesn’t want to hear the praise - running from it instead of seeking it will forever not be strange - coming from the man he loves, knowing it’s wholly sincere, makes a kind of satisfied warmth bloom in his chest. He admires Rama too, his unwavering loyalty and bravery, his self-sacrifice and the way he loves so truly and with all of himself. It’s a good compliment, one he might even be able to accept.
He takes that step forward, towards Rama and his hands stuffed into his pockets to keep that physical tic still, stopping when he’s close enough to touch. He doesn’t think he’s able to speak; he tries, opening his mouth to say something, anything, but he quickly falters.
What could he possibly say to that? How could he even begin to express how grateful he is to him, the depths of his own admiration and love for the kind of patience and understanding Rama gives to him daily? He can’t, but he can pull him back into his arms for a tight embrace.
As Francis comes nearer Raju keeps himself still, but watches closely; this odd position of theirs where Francis wants a course of action but doesn’t respect it, or doesn’t respect the parts in him that are driving it, while Raju doesn’t want it exactly but respects it a great deal, make it important to say what he’s said, but whether Francis will accept it isn’t certain yet. If he couldn’t, that wouldn’t be anything to hold against him; responsibility is heavy and the loss of it is even heavier, sitting like lead in Francis’ heart and outweighing anything else.
But Francis opens his mouth and nothing makes it out — it meant something to him, then. Then he hugs Raju suddenly, still silent, arms tight, and Raju’s arms move up around him too, squeezing with gentle, steady pressure while he presses the side of his face against Francis’ head.
He could say something else now, something to comfort, or to drive the message home. But it couldn’t be clearer that the words had hit exactly the place Raju had hoped they would, and no more are necessary just now. Raju rubs Francis’ back instead in slow, long strokes, and lets a hard breath out against Francis’ hair, ready to hold him there as long as Francis needs.
He couldn’t say how long he needs to be held, not knowing he needed this in the first place. But he did need it, the pressure of his hold and the feeling of Rama’s head tucked against his, and slowly he feels every muscle in his body begin to unravel. He leans forward slightly and exhales; Rama’s breath against his hair is comforting in ways that he couldn’t possibly explain.
He holds onto him for a long while. It’s indulgent and not something he would have ever allowed himself, except with this man right here. It helps, it all helps.
“You’ll help me up when I ultimately fall,” he says, and it’s not a question. When disappointment and bitter sadness overwhelms him once more he knows he’ll have Rama there to help steady him.
There’s a sudden fear that he’ll lose him too, but he won’t entertain it. He can’t.
The certainty in his voice, once his voice comes, makes Raju smile against Francis' hair. "I'll sit you in front of a fire," he confirms. He doesn't need to argue that Francis won't need it; they both know he likely will. "A blanket around your shoulders. I'll make your dinner, and read to you if you want it, and sit with you if you don't. I'll wash your hair and your feet until you can stand to do it yourself again. Anything you need. I'll help you up."
Raju presses a kiss to the side of Francis' head, lips half-catching an ear. The solidity of Francis' chest, his sides, his back, all feels wonderful under Raju's arms. It feels wonderful to touch him now, to be allowed to comfort where he'd been standing back before. "You know," he murmurs, "I admire you more for all this. It might be easy to want, but that doesn't make it easy."
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Raju sighs.
"You want to start giving them food again." He doesn't sound like he's about to start arguing against it, even if he doesn't sound thrilled by the idea either. "Or is there something else to be worrying about? The cold?"
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Got it on the first guess. Crozier nods very softly; yes, he wants to start giving them food again. "I always worry about the cold." But people have shelters and firewood and clothing; there'll be a more pressing need soon.
He shakes his head slightly. "I should teach them how to survive, like I was taught. Being incapacitated as I was..." He'd stopped providing for the people living in Milton, stopping helping with trade and assisting the vulnerable in the community center. But what if he'd died? What if that help had been completely cut off from them?
"People suffered without my assistance. I can't think otherwise."
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"It's easy for you." He asks it like a statement, studying Francis' expression again. "Worrying about all the rest of them. Still."
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“It’s not for you,” he replies, inflection lifting like a question.
It isn’t as though he can’t recall the trees going up in flames, the rage that Ram had only just managed to keep from consuming an entire forest. He’d been so disappointed and so enraged by the almost flippant dismissal of their concerns that he’s convinced he would have cut them off completely if it had been a viable option.
They’re two very different men sometimes, even if they both are steadfast in their convictions.
“Still,” he echoes. He understands what that ‘still’ signifies - Rama had to cart his sorry self into town, had to listen to people call him a hypocrite, had to play nice despite knowing Hickey threatened to kill his friend on more than one occasion. ‘Still’ Crozier worries for them, ‘still’, even after they wouldn’t hear reason.
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At home, the people waiting for him at home, caring for them had been easy. Well. It had been hard. But that difficulty had been his world, and pushing himself through all the needs and the duties and the trials of it had always come to him like breathing. Then he thinks of the people living not so far away in the building he'd spent so much time sleeping in, a place full of people sleeping, eating, living next to one another who never spoke. It'd been like the barracks that way, familiar. The barracks had always been that way, not for others, but for him. He thinks of the people living there, and in the town, and in the houses scattered around it. Scattered like the people themselves, their lives sitting loose and separate instead of woven tightly together, any rule — such as it is — decided on based on what was more comfortable, instead of on which of them needed it. Raju thinks, and he compares, and he realises.
It is easy. Only if those people are his. He hadn't thought it of himself, in any moment before this one: it's easy for me, only if.
"No." He's too used to being open, with Francis: he realises only afterward that the word's come out with pain obvious in it.
"No," he murmurs, voice harder now to press the other emotion out. "It's not."
It's not for you? he hears in his mind again, jaw tight, and has to know. "Does that surprise you?"
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Does that surprise him? There are many things about Rama that surprises him, but that wouldn’t be one of them. Crozier’s heart was made for being broken and betrayed; he can be as angry as he wants in the moment, but he’ll mend and forgive. Ram’s protected his heart with a fine layer of steel - he’s had to. If something penetrates that protective layer it won’t heal so easily, but Crozier knows his heart is sincere and big and beautiful.
But he can’t tell how Ram feels about his own answer, if he’s reluctant to admit that he doesn’t worry about the others, that it will take some effort to earn his trust again. If it that’s even possible anymore.
“No,” he tells him quietly. “No, I saw the fires.”
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There are still times he isn't used to it, to the inside of him being so visible. It isn't as if Francis wouldn't have known how angry Raju was without it, but something about Francis seeing it because Raju couldn't keep it in, eyecatching and unavoidable— Well, Francis did see it, and if he isn't surprised now then he saw more than just the fire itself. Maybe more than Raju had, at the time.
"If you'd died—" He has to pause, lips parted, while he waits for the thought to pass. "They would have voted the same way. No matter who was hurt. Or worse. So long as they could pat themselves on the back for their good Christian mercy afterward. You don't— still? That doesn't stop you? It doesn't change anything?"
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“People have let me down before.”
And he couldn’t stop caring for them. No - that’s not right, he had stopped and it proved disastrous. There is part of him, that harsh voice that reminded him all throughout his recuperation that no one cares what his rank is here. They’d openly chastised him for bringing up the past, and wanted everyone to move on with a clean slate despite the very real baggage they brought with them to this place.
It shouldn’t be so easy for him to start caring about them again. They’d actively spurned him, and Ram’s point still stands - if he’d died nothing would have be done differently.
Crozier frowns to himself, his own body language looking a little resigned. “I still feel…responsible.”
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"How?" Raju looks up from the floor again, at Francis. "You tried to warn them of a danger and they as good as spat on you and turned their back. But..."
He takes a slow breath, lets it out in a hard sigh, and makes an effort to sound less frustrated and confused as he goes on, more curious. "And it's easy for you, still. To feel they're still yours to help. That they deserve it. How?"
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The word ‘deserve’ hits his ears wrong, as though survival is something to needs to be earned, but it’s apt in the way Rama uses it. He feels that whatever goodwill they’ve earned should have been revoked when they refused to listen to him at the town hall, and Crozier can see why. He follows the logic. It’s sound. It makes sense, and perhaps how he feels now doesn’t.
“Maybe…” he starts, thinking of the men boiling boots in Rescue Camp. “I’m too….”
Maybe he’s too haunted to do otherwise. He doesn’t have the words for that though, to express those echos properly without sounding like the broken wretch he knows he is.
“I can’t do it again,” he admits, voice low. “I can’t watch it again. I can’t be the voice that says, ‘I told you this would happen’, and then keeps its distance to watch it all unfold. I-I can’t, Ram, I can’t.”
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He leans to touch their foreheads together. It allows him to be closer, to comfort with his heat and his touch and his breath, but it allows Raju to close his eyes, too. If he's led Francis to thinking Raju's going to leave him to repeat the horrors of his past, even a little, he owes Francis an explanation, but he can't imagine looking even Francis in the eyes while he says it. "I... I just thought...
"I thought I was a man like you," he whispers, rasping. "But..."
No. Maybe he can't say it out loud after all. He moves on: more composed, still hushed. "I just wanted to understand. That's all."
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The pain that he hadn’t realized had been so close to the surface spills over as Rama brings their foreheads together. He grimaces, swallowing a soft keening noise that threatens to escape his throat, tears making his sight blur. He closes them - problem solved.
“Is it a weakness?” he whispers. Rama doesn’t understand, and he can’t blame him. If he wasn’t him, if he didn’t have all those memories and that heavy sense of failure, would he sounds like an absolute madman?
“I don’t….you don’t want to be like me.” There’s nothing here to admire or want to imitate. There’s no part of him, pathetic and stuck in the past as he is, that should be respected.
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“You failed.” Too close to see properly, but Raju opens his eyes. He’s murmuring, words hushed but matter of fact, so that Francis will know what he understands. “It was yours to protect your men and now—“
There’s matter of fact and then there’s cruel. The end of the sentence sits where he left it. “But you still want to fight,” he goes on. “People need you, and it still matters. You failed, but you didn’t forget that you can do more — more than the others and more than you are — and so you should. No matter who they are or what they’ve done. Or what you’ve done. All that matters to you is that someone needs you. If I—“
For all saying it is easier when Francis needs him to Raju’s throat stops his words here, and his voice loses some of the volume that it’d gained. His thumbs start moving in a steady rhythm back and forth over Francis’ skin. It helps, and he goes on.
“If I… knew I’d be that way. Afterward. After I… That I’d be like you. Maybe then I wouldn’t be…”
It’s a long pause, then. To figure it out and then to force it into the open air, where it will harden and become real.
But it’s Francis, who’s lived through all those things. Francis, who’s in front of him feeling this way. There’s no one anywhere he could have said this to, except the one he hopes will hear him now.
“…afraid. Of… failing, the way you did. If I knew I was more like you. Maybe I wouldn't be so afraid. Why wouldn’t I want it? How could I want anything else?”
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Afraid. Rama is afraid. It seems like such an impossible thing for this man, who sometimes has more courage than sense.
He was afraid all the time then, and he’s still frightened now. It’s that fear that pushes him to care about the men and women in Milton, to consider offering help and even guidance, even if he wants nothing more in the world than to just keep to himself. He’s duty-bound even when no one’s asked or even wanted him.
He takes a sharp breath and his hand comes to rest on Rama’s waist. “I didn’t know I was going to fail,” he finally says. “When I kept pushing, I didn’t know that was going to be the outcome. I could have never guessed. And even now…even now I know as little as everyone else in this damn place.
“It doesn’t feel like it should be admired. And you…I wish….” He pulls his head back, eyes opening again, watery and a little bloodshot. He wishes Rama could fulfill his mission, and that there wasn’t so much left up in the air. “I wish there wasn’t so much left undone.”
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“Always more work left to do,” he murmurs, dismissing it as he tilts his head forward, focusing on Francis again, the more important work of making him see. He starts his thumbs moving over Francis’ cheeks again. “Why shouldn’t I admire you, Francis? You haven’t forgotten your duty to help, no matter who, even when it’s not easy. I’m… I’m not. That way.”
He huffs out a breath, gives a brief, tight smile that fades into something more intent as he focuses on Francis’ face. “So what should I be feeling instead? Not admiration? Something else?”
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He doesn’t want to dismiss this very big knife dangling over Rama’s head, not after he was so vulnerable with him. But he gets what he gets in fits and starts when it comes to Ram sometimes, and he takes the admission and holds it close.
He doesn’t want to talk about himself. He started this conversation to begin with, but he wants to leave it all in the past and not have to listen to words of admiration. It’s upsetting, being admired for being so pathetic.
“You should pity me,” he grumbles, stepping back from him. “Sometimes I doubt that I’m duty-bound out of any sense of moral decency or compassion, but because when I close my eyes—“
When he closes his eyes he sees the outlines of the chains on Little’s face, or Goodsir’s carved-up thighs and buttocks. He shakes his head and turns away, back to his basin of water to wash his arms and face.
“You should see the ghosts hovering around my shoulders. I care because if one more person dies on my watch I’m going to lose my goddamned mind.”
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Or at least, a foot or two away.
“What would most men would become, in your place? Callous? Cruel? Selfish?” He pauses and then goes on dryly: “Save their care only for the few who matter most, and damn the rest?”
It isn’t as if Francis’ need couldn’t be a weakness too, easily, but that isn’t what Francis needs to—
But here’s another difference too, isn’t it? Should Raju draw Francis’ attention away from the harder truths, or would that be coddling? Francis hasn’t spared Raju for the sake of a nicer truth before. Raju doesn’t have to be, here, the husband he would have been to Seetha. He can say the whole of it. Francis will be thinking it too, anyway, and will want the thing named and dealt with.
Raju doesn’t move closer but he does shift his weight toward Francis, intent, hands half-curling toward fists at his sides. “We will lose people here. And you might not be strong enough to bear it. Not any more. But you won’t stop caring. It’s only driven you to act. I won’t pity that. We should all hope to still be half the man that you are after suffering half of what you’ve lost.”
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Maybe in asking to be pitied he’s really just allowing himself to wallow. Maybe it’s the arguing that makes him sounds petulant and pathetic, or as though he’s trying to find someone to pat him on the back for continuing to push on even though it’s certifiably insane to keep caring. Maybe that’s what he wants, to keep being punished for all the things he didn’t do.
He can hear the insistence in Ram’s voice, can see him in his own mind even though his back is turned, that intense stare and curled fists. He exhales softly, his own hand finding the rough table and spreading his palm out to support himself in a lean. He falls silent, thinking over their gentle disagreement, Rama’s annoyance at the others and his own inability to detach himself despite the harm it’ll inevitably cause.
“It’s easy for me to keep caring,” he finally relents, circling back to the phrase that started this whole thing. “It hasn’t always been like that. I’ve taken myself out of the equation, Rama. There’s no Francis Crozier when it comes to others. You…this between us, is the only thing I’ve allowed myself.”
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Well. Maybe he has done a great deal of it. But the reasoning was very different, wasn’t it? The emotion running through them fills in each of them entirely different spaces; Raju throws himself forward where Francis needs to be nudged, and Francis moves with his steady, patient steps through places Raju hadn’t even thought to cross. The shame in Francis had been easy to see, but this part of it is different.
“I don’t understand.” It’s hard, still, to keep this foot or so between their bodies and not touch him. But maybe it’s easier for Francis to speak on it this way, not looking so a part of him might pretend no one else is listening. “I know you keep a distance from the others that you don’t with me. What does that have to do with… this? With wanting to help?”
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“It means…”
It doesn’t feel convoluted, but he realizes he’s saying things without a filter. He runs his palm over the rough-hewn tabletop, trying to walk the line between being honest and over sharing.
It’s easier to give your entire self when you hold yourself away from the crowd. It’s easier to give when you expect nothing from it, no self-satisfaction, no happiness. He looks back at Ram finally; he knows how that feels. He knows he does, what it’s like to choose loneliness out of a sense of duty.
But he chose life and happiness this time around. He chose Ram, and this little cabin, and their silly collection of books, and all the quiet moments spent in front of the fire finally feeling alive.
“Selflessness to the point of one’s own detriment is a new habit of a mine, but a habit nonetheless. It’s the trouble with caring too easily. I didn’t care for my own wellbeing, because my own wellbeing matters little.” A pause. “Or it did. Talking about this…questioning why I forgive and help still…I don’t think I would have ever considered why if not for you. It didn’t matter before.”
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He looks up again, searching Francis’ face now that Francis is looking at him and he can properly see it. “But I want to know everything about you. And I admire you, Francis. I always have. I think…”
Raju watches Francis earnestly. He likely won’t like hearing any more, at least not anything too close to praise. Raju’s thumbs start circling over his fingers, and he shoves his hands into his pockets to keep them still. “There’s a great deal I could learn from you, if I try.”
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He finds it difficult not to smile. As much as he doesn’t want to hear the praise - running from it instead of seeking it will forever not be strange - coming from the man he loves, knowing it’s wholly sincere, makes a kind of satisfied warmth bloom in his chest. He admires Rama too, his unwavering loyalty and bravery, his self-sacrifice and the way he loves so truly and with all of himself. It’s a good compliment, one he might even be able to accept.
He takes that step forward, towards Rama and his hands stuffed into his pockets to keep that physical tic still, stopping when he’s close enough to touch. He doesn’t think he’s able to speak; he tries, opening his mouth to say something, anything, but he quickly falters.
What could he possibly say to that? How could he even begin to express how grateful he is to him, the depths of his own admiration and love for the kind of patience and understanding Rama gives to him daily? He can’t, but he can pull him back into his arms for a tight embrace.
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But Francis opens his mouth and nothing makes it out — it meant something to him, then. Then he hugs Raju suddenly, still silent, arms tight, and Raju’s arms move up around him too, squeezing with gentle, steady pressure while he presses the side of his face against Francis’ head.
He could say something else now, something to comfort, or to drive the message home. But it couldn’t be clearer that the words had hit exactly the place Raju had hoped they would, and no more are necessary just now. Raju rubs Francis’ back instead in slow, long strokes, and lets a hard breath out against Francis’ hair, ready to hold him there as long as Francis needs.
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He couldn’t say how long he needs to be held, not knowing he needed this in the first place. But he did need it, the pressure of his hold and the feeling of Rama’s head tucked against his, and slowly he feels every muscle in his body begin to unravel. He leans forward slightly and exhales; Rama’s breath against his hair is comforting in ways that he couldn’t possibly explain.
He holds onto him for a long while. It’s indulgent and not something he would have ever allowed himself, except with this man right here. It helps, it all helps.
“You’ll help me up when I ultimately fall,” he says, and it’s not a question. When disappointment and bitter sadness overwhelms him once more he knows he’ll have Rama there to help steady him.
There’s a sudden fear that he’ll lose him too, but he won’t entertain it. He can’t.
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Raju presses a kiss to the side of Francis' head, lips half-catching an ear. The solidity of Francis' chest, his sides, his back, all feels wonderful under Raju's arms. It feels wonderful to touch him now, to be allowed to comfort where he'd been standing back before. "You know," he murmurs, "I admire you more for all this. It might be easy to want, but that doesn't make it easy."
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