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.
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."
There's thread in the bag and Raju's pulling it out as Francis finishes talking, inspecting it as he replies. He hasn't said any of this to Francis yet; maybe that's why Francis doesn't understand. If he's going to be safe, he needs to understand. "Children follow the path their parents lay in front of them. So who knows what they're learning in there. No one's arguing for going after the children first, but if it does come down to a fight, who knows what any of them are going to do? Adults or not."
There's something sour sitting in his stomach, and it tries to crawl up his throat. Raju swallows, pauses, takes a slow breath to wash the feeling away. That isn't what he's saying. Not like— "Neither of us is going to go after someone who isn't holding a weapon," he says, face looking a little sick, tone sounding a little desperate, only for a moment. "That isn't who we are."
But his memories tell him to be cautious, too.
"But if it does come down to a fight and you overlook someone who is, thinking they're innocent, you're going to get yourself killed. And other people, too." Raju's hand is still, holding the thread, and his expression is tight as he keeps looking down at it. "If the worst happens, you're going to need to know that."
Crozier’s expression hardens. It feels personal somehow, as thought Raju expects Crozier will be the one to get someone killed with that line of thinking. It leaves an unpleasant taste in his mouth, and it battles with the part of his brain that knows Raju would never jump to attack him, least of all without reason. He can’t help but perceive it that way, and he feels that negative cloud inside of him multiply with every passing second.
“I’m not naive,” he snaps, palm hitting the table with a little more force than intended. Here’s his chance to be apologetic, but the anger twists the perceived dagger further. “I know what’s at stake, and I know a threat from something benign.
“But I won’t lose my humanity. I refuse to live that way. Children are never the enemy.”
When Francis hits the table Raju looks up sharply, tight expression snapped into a frown. It’s a more aggressive version, suddenly, of what Lieutenant Little had said all those months ago. Francis believes the same, doesn’t he?Maybe Little even took what he’d said from Francis, his captain, who must believe it too, ideals and humanity above all else, at any cost, and what that means for the men for whom that cost is too high, who go out and fight in the ways that they have to. That’s what Francis is saying. That’s what he thinks. That’s what he’s thought of Raju this whole time, he just doesn’t know it.
The sour thing in Raju’s stomach reaches up into his sternum and starts squeezing. His grip is tight over the thread, and his other hand is a fist on the table as he leans over it. His expression is stricken but his voice is hard, demanding:
“What do you think those children are doing while their fathers are stealing and shooting and killing? A father’s fight is the son’s. That starts early. There’s no time in his life he doesn’t know it. You don’t get to make them innocent just because you want them to be; they aren’t going to lay down and thank you just so you get to keep your hands clean.”
There’s an itch at the back of his mind, a little whisper of a thought, that tells him to stop, stop, stop, stop all this, for the love of god, just stop! It’s there one moment and then it’s not, the swell of anger crashing over him again. He feels a judging stare and rankles; it’s always the judgement. He could be the expert in his field and still pushed aside, treated as though he were some kind of madman for saying what no one wanted to hear.
“You think I’m being sanctimonious,” he says coolly. “A child is vulnerable, even if they’re fighting someone else’s war. Even a child with a goddamn gun is still vulnerable. If that makes me a fool to believe then fine, you and the others can slaughter the lot of them, I don’t want be a part of it.”
Crozier stands again, still fuming. Hot, even, thinking of all the ship’s boys who were sold into the navy, of the lost childhood of that poor little Inuit girl. His tunic is too warm for him, so in his haze he goes searching for something to replace it.
“I don’t want them to thank me,” he grumbles. “I don’t want for a goddamn thing other than to stop seeing blood on the snow.”
It should be easy to sympathize, to feel for him. Francis is a kind man, a peaceful man, and he’s seen more suffering than anyone like him should have to live with. But Raju knows what Francis thinks of him now, of men like him, and needs to hear it out loud, and need pushes him away from the table to follow Francis, fists clenched tight, demanding.
“And if they aren’t as vulnerable or innocent the way you want? Keeping your humanity is so important, so you have to pretend they all still have theirs because they’re young? Not everyone gets to keep those ideals you all cling onto. They become what they need to be. What happens when you see what that really means? When an ‘innocent’ shoots the man next to you between the eyes, when he wants to do it again, is he still human like you? What is he, once he’s not pure and perfect anymore like you wanted him to be?”
The tight near-pain in Raju’s chest is a part of him and so is the heat inside his fists, over the inside of his fingers and over his palms, the hot feeling gathering over his chest somewhere, under his shirt. His breathing is fast. He stares at Francis, leaning toward him, gaze as demanding as the rest of him. He needs to hear it, out loud from his friend’s mouth, in the same voice that’d told him the things he’d done weren’t Francis’ to judge, that had sounded like it meant it.
Crozier rounds on him, incensed that Raju keeps fighting this battle. Humanity was the only thing that mattered in the end when things were at its bleakest, how can he not understand that? Hasn't he made himself clear?
"Of course they're still human!" he yells, throwing his hand and not-hand up in exasperation. "Have they lost their worth? Forget pure and perfect, why are you so eager to condemn a child!"
He doesn't give Raju a chance to respond, seeing a wall of red now. "What do you want me to say here, goddammit? That when push comes to shove I should jump at the chance to kill someone? You know I'll do what I have to, but I don't want to, and I don't think it's wrong to question the morality of killing vulnerable people indiscriminately."
"Questioning?" Raju says, incredulously. Francis' words sound so reasonable. Acting so reasonable, as if the flaw between all those kind, idealistic human arguments isn't bright as day there, when you try to put them together. "Or are you telling? You're very clear what a man becomes when he doesn't live by those ideals. How long does a child have before he becomes a monster, in your eyes? When should he have stopped? Thirteen? Sixteen? Twenty is too old by far. How many men dead, until then, before he stops being vulnerable? One? Ten? More than that? What point was it that—"
He has to try to pull in air. His breaths are shallow now, it must have happened while he was speaking, and it doesn't matter, his question, because Raju is too far gone already for that kind of grace, by Francis' rules. His rules, Little's rules, men who survived isolation and starvation and mutiny and come out the other side of it like that. It's one thing to suspect what you are but keep pushing forward and it's another to stop, failing and stuck here with the thing that was supposed to make it all worth it this far away with men in front of him who should know exactly what survival costs but who know something different instead, something better and who, if they only looked on Raju clearly—
He thinks he's about to throw up at first until the fire burns away the centre of his shirt. He reaches up toward the little spot of it but his palms, his finger, the index finger, the right one, near the tip where the trigger sits. It feels like a long moment, while Raju stares, but it probably isn't. It's only that it seems so natural to see flames eating at those places just now, near his heart and on his finger just there.
It's the need to get away from Francis' eyes that pushes him to turn as much as some shadow of good sense asserting itself, to hurry toward the door and reach out with a hand that's going to heat the doorhandle, and stumble out into the snow.
This doesn't feel like a hypothetical argument anymore, but fight based on some truths he hasn't been told - no, a fight based on truths he hasn't been allowed to know. He walks around like an open book now with his sorrow and guilt. There's nowhere for him to hide here, even if he wanted to. He wears his values on his sleeves, stitched into his skin from life experiences that left him visibly scarred.
His hope and optimism was born out of being callous to the point of harmful. He's admitted that openly to him. He was a frail, sick man that made a lot of mistakes that lead to the deaths of a lot of good people. It hangs on him, and he can't hide it.
He can't hide, but Raju can and has. It's just a lot less obvious now that he bursts into literal flames every time his emotions become too heighted, like they are right at this very moment. Whatever argument he wants to bite back dies on his lips as he catches the tendrils of smoke rising off of Raju's chest. He stumbles away distractedly and Crozier stands still, struck dumb by how quickly everything had escalated and how intense it had become between them.
Raju leaves and Crozier stares after him, looking at the empty doorway with his breath still rising and falling quickly in his chest. That adrenaline still remains, but it's taken on a more frightened and concerned edge. He hurries forward to follow, lingering in the threshold as he searches for Raju in the snow.
It should have never been like that. They weren't listening to each other, but rather talking at one another in an increasingly disrespectful tone that frankly will confound Crozier later when he tries to recollect why they'd been so angry to begin with. They're friends, they care for one another - when did they start viewing the other as the enemy?
He's on his knees, and the snow is cold. He tries shaking it off his hands and letting it slide down his chest, but the fire comes back so he holds more snow against his chest with both hands and shivers hard. He hates this, hates the unrelenting grim sky and the cold he can never, never get away from, cold that hurts inside his throat and against his skin, and hates everything that drove him out here, being so messily out of control that he couldn't put the flames out himself and looking it in front of a man he respects, hates that that man will have to know... other things about him, now. The past maybe, but the future, too. The essential truth of Raju that it somehow hadn't occurred to him to tell: what he is, the things he'll do.
He'd tried to tell Francis the things he'd done, managed what he'd done to that man in that abandoned room and been told it wasn't Francis' to judge, but he'd forgotten the part that matters more. The part where he'd do it again. Because of what he is. Of course Francis hadn't known that. He wants to leave but he can't bear to go. Footsteps from the doorway mean Francis is close enough to see him but Raju keeps looking down at himself instead, feeling the cold and the burns and the sour clenching of his stomach that'd nearly disguised the feeling of the fire gathering there until it became impossible to ignore it. He tries to ignore Francis there looking, and tries to steady his breath, and shivers again. It can't last forever, this particular state of things, but he wants it to. He doesn't want to explain, or leave. The skin on his chest and hands feels hot. Things were better when he'd been able to forget, somehow, the kind of man he is and neither of them had a single clue what Francis didn't know.
Whatever resentment still within Crozier drains when it becomes clear that Raju's trying to smother the little fires - ones he'd helped create - by pressing handfuls of snow to his own chest. It's gut-wrenching; he feels like an absolute monster.
Slowly he steps through the door and down the crooked stairs, letting the creak of the weakened wood give away his position, and crosses snowy footprints with loud crunching noises until he's standing just behind where he's crouched on the ground. He hesitates. What if Raju's still angry with him? What if getting near makes it worse? Then Raju shivers, arms still holding snow to himself, and he knows what must be done.
Crozier drops to his knees beside him and brings his hand to Raju's back. He lets it rest heavily on him, so he knows his intent, where he stands, where they stand together. Raju is not his enemy, and this fight is not like them at all. But things are difficult, and sometimes two people can become overly passionate or riddled with so much pressure and anxiety that it all just explodes out of them. He's almost certain that's what this is, and not a change in how they feel about each other.
His feelings for Raju may be complicated, but altogether they're affectionate and adoring and admiring. If Raju wants to speak he'll listen, truly listen this time, instead of talking over him or trying to win some sort of perceived argument. He's level-headed now, he can take his own personal feelings out of it for a spell.
The hand on his back is heavy and kind, reassuring in a way that sets Raju's insides twisting up again. He shivers, and doesn't know if it's from the cold. Francis is a kind man, still, even after the things Raju said. Because he thinks Raju is the kind of man who deserves it. Not looking at Francis could only delay the moment so far, and the moment is here, and Francis deserves to know. Raju needs to tell him.
"I, I'm—" Raju's voice is tense and tight when need pushes it out of his throat, then falters after trying the first word. He doesn't know where to start. He's never had to explain this before.
Has he? He'd tried. Hadn't he tried? But he'd explained it the wrong way, the first time, when Francis had just taken him in. Start at that lack, and fill it in. "I told you. What I'd done. One of the things I'd done. To that man. I beat him. But I—"
He doesn't know how to say this. He can feel his breath unsteady and sharp with the cold in his throat, can hear his heartbeat in his ears. He doesn't want to know how to say it. So he pushes it out anyway. Francis' hand is impossible to ignore, as steady and still as his back and shoulders aren't, heavy and reassuring and terrible. The awful, persistent feeling of it pushes the confession out of him in a way a pen and empty sheet of paper hadn't, years ago, the day he'd stopped writing home. "I forgot. I think I forgot, here. It's easy to forget when I'm not there, so I didn't tell you. When I go back I'll do it again. I'll do worse. I'd do worse here, too. To anyone that I have to. It doesn't ever matter who. I'm not like you."
The snow under his hands is melting. He watches it dripping between his fingers, and can't think of any reason to reach down and scoop up more.
He's going to immolate himself at this point, but Raju's trying, and it's absolutely killing him, and so he needs to try as well.
He doesn't smile, but his hand stays exactly where he's placed it on his back. He wants to hear what haunts Raju, why he was so damn upset when they were discussing the fight of the father and the child, why he can't seem to sleep at night, why he cried for his father to forgive him --
The pieces are there. He's clever, he could make assumptions, put all together without hearing it from Raju himself. He's an officer in an establishment that abused and subjugated his people, someone loyal to a fault and with streaks of heroism, but also filled with so much guilt that he starts and stops when he's trying to be authentic about his purpose and reason. He could weave a tapestry of his life, but he doesn't know, and he certainly doesn't fully understand. It wouldn't be fair to assume.
"Tell me why."
Calm, clear, concise. Tell him why he'll do worse. Tell him why he has to, when it's clear it torments him. He wants to hear why he thinks he's not like him.
A frown twitches over Raju's face and he twists to look back at Francis reflexively, looking confused, before he turns back, frowning down at the snow. It's a broad question, and Raju tries thinking its iterations through. Why isn't he like Francis? Because Francis has lines that he won't cross, and Raju doesn't. Like Raju's just said, so Francis must already know that much, for all he's still trying to understand the rest of it. Why won't Raju draw those lines for himself too, and stay behind them? That's a fairly broad question, too. And an obvious one. Maybe it isn't obvious to Francis.
If Francis wants to hear it, then Raju will say it out loud. A concept he knows is true, but which says something about him anyway. Something Francis needs to understand. So maybe that's alright, no matter how saying it feels. "Someone has to. Someone has to do the things no one else can bear to. Not men like my uncle, or Lieutenant Little, or you, but like me. I can do it. You don't want to believe your lines might have to be crossed. But I know what it feels like. So I can do it again. So I should, so you don't have to, none of you. So I will. I will. I should have explained that, before. You deserved to know what kind of..."
He pauses, taking deep, hard breaths. He feels hot, and can't tell how much of it's the fire, and whether that means it's going to get worse. Snow's still melting out of his hands. Feeling like this and kneeling this way in the cold, with Francis just there, this is familiar. At least he has his shoes on this time.
The last thought gives him just enough distance from the rest to get his breath back, and try and get his thoughts together. "...What you've been sleeping next to all this time. You must understand it now. Is that what you wanted to know? The why?"
His knees ache a little from the awkward angle of his arm, and he finds himself leaning slightly into him to relieve the pressure. He figures if he burns then at least he'll burn with his arm around someone, holding them close.
It's impossible to ignore the pause between 'you deserve to know what of kind of...' and 'what you've been sleeping next to all this time'. There's something unspoken in that heavy pause. He wonders if he knows, if the rest of that initial sentence had been, 'you deserve to know what kind of man you've fallen in love with.' He's been found out; that's why he's so angry, trying to push him away.
He takes his own deep breath, still smelling smoke in the air. He chastises himself; this isn't about him and his silly feelings. Raju is two seconds from bursting into flames and here he is thinking about frivolous things like rejection and embarrassments, things that don't matter in the least up against this. He pushes himself down the other path and considers Raju's answer carefully.
"No," he answers simply. That isn't quite it. Why he crosses those lines, what is he fighting so hard to do? What is it that drives him to do the things that others shy away? He wants to know those things, his actual why.
"No," he says again, hand still on his back. He rubs in slow circles now, silently reminding him that he isn't going anywhere, at least in part because answer isn't satisfying, although he does believes him. He believes that he's the man to get things done when others can't stomach it. He knows that he'll cross lines and give his entire self, good or bad, to get something done. "I know what kind of man you are. Why did you enlist, Raju? What happened with your father?"
It's as plain as he's ever put his questions to him. No dancing around it this time, he wants to know why he's the one who took on this burden. Just why did he torture that man? Why would he do it again? What's waiting for him on the other side of all this?
He can see the pendant on his wrist, a little reminder of the love at home. He's a sentimental man. Cruelty and sentiment don't mix.
Francis leans into him so Raju can feel the pressure of his arm, and Raju doesn’t understand. That part is familiar, too. He remembers now that he’d told Francis about the torture, at first, expecting it to drive him away. But this is different, surely. What’s past could be mistakes, but what’s future is a choice.
The heavy hand starts rubbing slow, comforting circles over his back and Raju shivers again, a helpless, pleading noise stuck in his throat. His skin is hot under his hands, and under Francis’ hand—
Raju shoves his hands against the ground, closing his eyes. The lines of his face are hard for a moment, stubborn, and he thinks about the sharp sting of the ground against his palms instead, only that, and the heat in his skin begins to collect there.
Flames lick against the ground nearby as the snow sizzles. Smoke starts to rise into the air over it, hard to see against the sky, the dark. Francis’ questions circle in Raju’s mind like Francis’ hand over his back. He hadn’t expected this today. He hadn’t expected it at all. But if Francis is ever going to really understand, if Raju is ever going to know what he thinks at all, which way Raju really scores in his friend’s lofty moral tally, then Raju has to tell him now. He certainly isn’t going to say any of it when he feels better.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been quiet. His mouth is open. His breaths are deep. His hands are hot and the long unending night is cold, and he can feel Francis close and solid behind him. He can feel his body moving back and forth a little, loose and unresisting, under the pressure and motion of Francis’ hand. How long has it been since anyone else has rubbed his back this way? How long will it be, once Francis realises what Raju is?
Put the thought away. Francis needs an answer now. It doesn’t matter how Raju feels about any of it. It can’t matter if he wants to say it at all, so there’s no point thinking about anything more than he needs to.
He begins where he can. He watches the place in the snow in front of him, now mostly smoke, and answers with a voice that’s quiet and matter of fact, emptied of anything else. “I’ve only talked about it to Seetha. I was thirteen. I don’t remember what I said. She was there for… half of it. She was… they carried her away when they ran. So she knew most of it already. But I remember she asked questions. You can ask questions. Small ones. Small scale, I mean. I don’t…”
He frowns a little, and for a moment the frown holds there. He should be able to do this, to just say it. It bothers him, faintly, to have to say this instead.
“I can’t tell it without help. I tried… before. To you, but nothing came out. I don’t know… how to. It happened, that’s all. I don’t really think about it.”
Raju is drawing a map for Crozier. He can't answer things directly, it's too painful or too difficult or a sorry combination of both, but maybe if he asks the right questions he'll find the answers he needs.
Small questions. He can start small.
Raju killed his father. They carried Seetha away when the they ran, she only saw half of whatever it was. Something set off this chain of events. Crozier draws himself up, brows knitting together as he watches Raju struggle with his hands in the snow.
"You were thirteen," he says quietly, starting with what he knows. "Were you forced to kill your father?"
Raju’s chest heaves once, then does it again. Something freezes inside his chest, in his limbs, he feels cold and brittle and then hot and flames grow out of the smoke in one sudden burst of movement, spreading out from near his knees and his hands and growing brightly around him from there. Moving toward Francis. Raju lets his head hang, gasps for air, flattens anything happening inside him until the fire is a thin and trembling thing, trembling as Raju does. It thins and it shrinks, and the smoke starts building again, hanging very thick in the air now. Raju can’t really help that. It’s better than hurting Francis or killing him just because he…
He has to hold the thought away from him. Everything has to be very distant, now. To let any of it close is to risk what he refuses to. Just because Francis surprised him. Think of it that way.
“Forced?” he repeats the end of Francis’ question, trying to follow Francis’ direction. Francis is going to lead him through it. “Forced to…”
His breaths are deep and fast, and quiet. He shakes his head, slowly at first and then faster. “No. No. He— No. When did—“
The smoke shivers in a breeze that isn’t there. Raju shivers, cold washing over him, and the flames start trying to grow again. He tries to flatten his mind and his voice again, and doesn’t manage as well as he wants to. It’s hard. That isn’t any excuse, but it’s hard.
“How long?” He smells the smoke. He smells the smoke and the snow and he feels hot, he can feel sweat at the back of his neck. The snow is melted away under his hands, his palms don’t feel cold anymore. “How long have you… you know that I— All this time? Or, or…”
Raju couldn’t bear it, if he’d known all this time, all along known what Raju— but he can’t understand what Raju is, what he’s become, or Raju wouldn’t have to explain. He closes his eyes. Francis has questions so Raju has to answer them. That’s all. That’s all. That’s all he needs to think about now.
Being forced to pry himself part was not in his plan, but the heat from the flames licked a little too closely at his face for comfort. It knocks something loose inside of him, some far-away memory he’d ignored all this time.
Doctor Stanley’s painted face. He’d been a clown that night, hadn’t he? The ruffles soaking as he poured the liquor over himself, the burst of flames as he touched the torch to his body. The low, shaking moan of agony…
Crozier shakes his head and sits back, kicking a low trench in the snow between himself and Raju. He’s not leaving him now or ever. “I’d suspected,” he tells him with a grunt, side of his boot stomping into the ground. “I didn’t know for certain. The things you’ve said…your contrition that night.”
He finishes his retaining wall with a low sigh. “I’ve only just put the pieces together. Raju…tell me what happened.”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2024-06-09 04:01 pm (UTC)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.”
no subject
Date: 2024-06-09 05:04 pm (UTC)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."
no subject
Date: 2024-06-09 06:45 pm (UTC)“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.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-09 08:02 pm (UTC)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.
Time Skip - a week or so after the Darkwalker attack
Date: 2024-06-09 11:11 pm (UTC)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!”
no subject
Date: 2024-06-10 02:05 am (UTC)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."
no subject
Date: 2024-06-10 03:57 am (UTC)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."
no subject
Date: 2024-06-10 12:13 pm (UTC)There's something sour sitting in his stomach, and it tries to crawl up his throat. Raju swallows, pauses, takes a slow breath to wash the feeling away. That isn't what he's saying. Not like— "Neither of us is going to go after someone who isn't holding a weapon," he says, face looking a little sick, tone sounding a little desperate, only for a moment. "That isn't who we are."
But his memories tell him to be cautious, too.
"But if it does come down to a fight and you overlook someone who is, thinking they're innocent, you're going to get yourself killed. And other people, too." Raju's hand is still, holding the thread, and his expression is tight as he keeps looking down at it. "If the worst happens, you're going to need to know that."
no subject
Date: 2024-06-10 05:18 pm (UTC)Crozier’s expression hardens. It feels personal somehow, as thought Raju expects Crozier will be the one to get someone killed with that line of thinking. It leaves an unpleasant taste in his mouth, and it battles with the part of his brain that knows Raju would never jump to attack him, least of all without reason. He can’t help but perceive it that way, and he feels that negative cloud inside of him multiply with every passing second.
“I’m not naive,” he snaps, palm hitting the table with a little more force than intended. Here’s his chance to be apologetic, but the anger twists the perceived dagger further. “I know what’s at stake, and I know a threat from something benign.
“But I won’t lose my humanity. I refuse to live that way. Children are never the enemy.”
no subject
Date: 2024-06-10 07:50 pm (UTC)The sour thing in Raju’s stomach reaches up into his sternum and starts squeezing. His grip is tight over the thread, and his other hand is a fist on the table as he leans over it. His expression is stricken but his voice is hard, demanding:
“What do you think those children are doing while their fathers are stealing and shooting and killing? A father’s fight is the son’s. That starts early. There’s no time in his life he doesn’t know it. You don’t get to make them innocent just because you want them to be; they aren’t going to lay down and thank you just so you get to keep your hands clean.”
no subject
Date: 2024-06-10 10:29 pm (UTC)There’s an itch at the back of his mind, a little whisper of a thought, that tells him to stop, stop, stop, stop all this, for the love of god, just stop! It’s there one moment and then it’s not, the swell of anger crashing over him again. He feels a judging stare and rankles; it’s always the judgement. He could be the expert in his field and still pushed aside, treated as though he were some kind of madman for saying what no one wanted to hear.
“You think I’m being sanctimonious,” he says coolly. “A child is vulnerable, even if they’re fighting someone else’s war. Even a child with a goddamn gun is still vulnerable. If that makes me a fool to believe then fine, you and the others can slaughter the lot of them, I don’t want be a part of it.”
Crozier stands again, still fuming. Hot, even, thinking of all the ship’s boys who were sold into the navy, of the lost childhood of that poor little Inuit girl. His tunic is too warm for him, so in his haze he goes searching for something to replace it.
“I don’t want them to thank me,” he grumbles. “I don’t want for a goddamn thing other than to stop seeing blood on the snow.”
no subject
Date: 2024-06-10 11:40 pm (UTC)“And if they aren’t as vulnerable or innocent the way you want? Keeping your humanity is so important, so you have to pretend they all still have theirs because they’re young? Not everyone gets to keep those ideals you all cling onto. They become what they need to be. What happens when you see what that really means? When an ‘innocent’ shoots the man next to you between the eyes, when he wants to do it again, is he still human like you? What is he, once he’s not pure and perfect anymore like you wanted him to be?”
The tight near-pain in Raju’s chest is a part of him and so is the heat inside his fists, over the inside of his fingers and over his palms, the hot feeling gathering over his chest somewhere, under his shirt. His breathing is fast. He stares at Francis, leaning toward him, gaze as demanding as the rest of him. He needs to hear it, out loud from his friend’s mouth, in the same voice that’d told him the things he’d done weren’t Francis’ to judge, that had sounded like it meant it.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 12:20 am (UTC)Crozier rounds on him, incensed that Raju keeps fighting this battle. Humanity was the only thing that mattered in the end when things were at its bleakest, how can he not understand that? Hasn't he made himself clear?
"Of course they're still human!" he yells, throwing his hand and not-hand up in exasperation. "Have they lost their worth? Forget pure and perfect, why are you so eager to condemn a child!"
He doesn't give Raju a chance to respond, seeing a wall of red now. "What do you want me to say here, goddammit? That when push comes to shove I should jump at the chance to kill someone? You know I'll do what I have to, but I don't want to, and I don't think it's wrong to question the morality of killing vulnerable people indiscriminately."
cw accidental supernatural self harm
Date: 2024-06-11 03:11 am (UTC)He has to try to pull in air. His breaths are shallow now, it must have happened while he was speaking, and it doesn't matter, his question, because Raju is too far gone already for that kind of grace, by Francis' rules. His rules, Little's rules, men who survived isolation and starvation and mutiny and come out the other side of it like that. It's one thing to suspect what you are but keep pushing forward and it's another to stop, failing and stuck here with the thing that was supposed to make it all worth it this far away with men in front of him who should know exactly what survival costs but who know something different instead, something better and who, if they only looked on Raju clearly—
He thinks he's about to throw up at first until the fire burns away the centre of his shirt. He reaches up toward the little spot of it but his palms, his finger, the index finger, the right one, near the tip where the trigger sits. It feels like a long moment, while Raju stares, but it probably isn't. It's only that it seems so natural to see flames eating at those places just now, near his heart and on his finger just there.
It's the need to get away from Francis' eyes that pushes him to turn as much as some shadow of good sense asserting itself, to hurry toward the door and reach out with a hand that's going to heat the doorhandle, and stumble out into the snow.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 04:33 am (UTC)This doesn't feel like a hypothetical argument anymore, but fight based on some truths he hasn't been told - no, a fight based on truths he hasn't been allowed to know. He walks around like an open book now with his sorrow and guilt. There's nowhere for him to hide here, even if he wanted to. He wears his values on his sleeves, stitched into his skin from life experiences that left him visibly scarred.
His hope and optimism was born out of being callous to the point of harmful. He's admitted that openly to him. He was a frail, sick man that made a lot of mistakes that lead to the deaths of a lot of good people. It hangs on him, and he can't hide it.
He can't hide, but Raju can and has. It's just a lot less obvious now that he bursts into literal flames every time his emotions become too heighted, like they are right at this very moment. Whatever argument he wants to bite back dies on his lips as he catches the tendrils of smoke rising off of Raju's chest. He stumbles away distractedly and Crozier stands still, struck dumb by how quickly everything had escalated and how intense it had become between them.
Raju leaves and Crozier stares after him, looking at the empty doorway with his breath still rising and falling quickly in his chest. That adrenaline still remains, but it's taken on a more frightened and concerned edge. He hurries forward to follow, lingering in the threshold as he searches for Raju in the snow.
It should have never been like that. They weren't listening to each other, but rather talking at one another in an increasingly disrespectful tone that frankly will confound Crozier later when he tries to recollect why they'd been so angry to begin with. They're friends, they care for one another - when did they start viewing the other as the enemy?
no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 11:27 am (UTC)He'd tried to tell Francis the things he'd done, managed what he'd done to that man in that abandoned room and been told it wasn't Francis' to judge, but he'd forgotten the part that matters more. The part where he'd do it again. Because of what he is. Of course Francis hadn't known that. He wants to leave but he can't bear to go. Footsteps from the doorway mean Francis is close enough to see him but Raju keeps looking down at himself instead, feeling the cold and the burns and the sour clenching of his stomach that'd nearly disguised the feeling of the fire gathering there until it became impossible to ignore it. He tries to ignore Francis there looking, and tries to steady his breath, and shivers again. It can't last forever, this particular state of things, but he wants it to. He doesn't want to explain, or leave. The skin on his chest and hands feels hot. Things were better when he'd been able to forget, somehow, the kind of man he is and neither of them had a single clue what Francis didn't know.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 12:52 pm (UTC)Whatever resentment still within Crozier drains when it becomes clear that Raju's trying to smother the little fires - ones he'd helped create - by pressing handfuls of snow to his own chest. It's gut-wrenching; he feels like an absolute monster.
Slowly he steps through the door and down the crooked stairs, letting the creak of the weakened wood give away his position, and crosses snowy footprints with loud crunching noises until he's standing just behind where he's crouched on the ground. He hesitates. What if Raju's still angry with him? What if getting near makes it worse? Then Raju shivers, arms still holding snow to himself, and he knows what must be done.
Crozier drops to his knees beside him and brings his hand to Raju's back. He lets it rest heavily on him, so he knows his intent, where he stands, where they stand together. Raju is not his enemy, and this fight is not like them at all. But things are difficult, and sometimes two people can become overly passionate or riddled with so much pressure and anxiety that it all just explodes out of them. He's almost certain that's what this is, and not a change in how they feel about each other.
His feelings for Raju may be complicated, but altogether they're affectionate and adoring and admiring. If Raju wants to speak he'll listen, truly listen this time, instead of talking over him or trying to win some sort of perceived argument. He's level-headed now, he can take his own personal feelings out of it for a spell.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 01:39 pm (UTC)"I, I'm—" Raju's voice is tense and tight when need pushes it out of his throat, then falters after trying the first word. He doesn't know where to start. He's never had to explain this before.
Has he? He'd tried. Hadn't he tried? But he'd explained it the wrong way, the first time, when Francis had just taken him in. Start at that lack, and fill it in. "I told you. What I'd done. One of the things I'd done. To that man. I beat him. But I—"
He doesn't know how to say this. He can feel his breath unsteady and sharp with the cold in his throat, can hear his heartbeat in his ears. He doesn't want to know how to say it. So he pushes it out anyway. Francis' hand is impossible to ignore, as steady and still as his back and shoulders aren't, heavy and reassuring and terrible. The awful, persistent feeling of it pushes the confession out of him in a way a pen and empty sheet of paper hadn't, years ago, the day he'd stopped writing home. "I forgot. I think I forgot, here. It's easy to forget when I'm not there, so I didn't tell you. When I go back I'll do it again. I'll do worse. I'd do worse here, too. To anyone that I have to. It doesn't ever matter who. I'm not like you."
The snow under his hands is melting. He watches it dripping between his fingers, and can't think of any reason to reach down and scoop up more.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 02:03 pm (UTC)He's going to immolate himself at this point, but Raju's trying, and it's absolutely killing him, and so he needs to try as well.
He doesn't smile, but his hand stays exactly where he's placed it on his back. He wants to hear what haunts Raju, why he was so damn upset when they were discussing the fight of the father and the child, why he can't seem to sleep at night, why he cried for his father to forgive him --
The pieces are there. He's clever, he could make assumptions, put all together without hearing it from Raju himself. He's an officer in an establishment that abused and subjugated his people, someone loyal to a fault and with streaks of heroism, but also filled with so much guilt that he starts and stops when he's trying to be authentic about his purpose and reason. He could weave a tapestry of his life, but he doesn't know, and he certainly doesn't fully understand. It wouldn't be fair to assume.
"Tell me why."
Calm, clear, concise. Tell him why he'll do worse. Tell him why he has to, when it's clear it torments him. He wants to hear why he thinks he's not like him.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 03:11 pm (UTC)If Francis wants to hear it, then Raju will say it out loud. A concept he knows is true, but which says something about him anyway. Something Francis needs to understand. So maybe that's alright, no matter how saying it feels. "Someone has to. Someone has to do the things no one else can bear to. Not men like my uncle, or Lieutenant Little, or you, but like me. I can do it. You don't want to believe your lines might have to be crossed. But I know what it feels like. So I can do it again. So I should, so you don't have to, none of you. So I will. I will. I should have explained that, before. You deserved to know what kind of..."
He pauses, taking deep, hard breaths. He feels hot, and can't tell how much of it's the fire, and whether that means it's going to get worse. Snow's still melting out of his hands. Feeling like this and kneeling this way in the cold, with Francis just there, this is familiar. At least he has his shoes on this time.
The last thought gives him just enough distance from the rest to get his breath back, and try and get his thoughts together. "...What you've been sleeping next to all this time. You must understand it now. Is that what you wanted to know? The why?"
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Date: 2024-06-11 03:37 pm (UTC)His knees ache a little from the awkward angle of his arm, and he finds himself leaning slightly into him to relieve the pressure. He figures if he burns then at least he'll burn with his arm around someone, holding them close.
It's impossible to ignore the pause between 'you deserve to know what of kind of...' and 'what you've been sleeping next to all this time'. There's something unspoken in that heavy pause. He wonders if he knows, if the rest of that initial sentence had been, 'you deserve to know what kind of man you've fallen in love with.' He's been found out; that's why he's so angry, trying to push him away.
He takes his own deep breath, still smelling smoke in the air. He chastises himself; this isn't about him and his silly feelings. Raju is two seconds from bursting into flames and here he is thinking about frivolous things like rejection and embarrassments, things that don't matter in the least up against this. He pushes himself down the other path and considers Raju's answer carefully.
"No," he answers simply. That isn't quite it. Why he crosses those lines, what is he fighting so hard to do? What is it that drives him to do the things that others shy away? He wants to know those things, his actual why.
"No," he says again, hand still on his back. He rubs in slow circles now, silently reminding him that he isn't going anywhere, at least in part because answer isn't satisfying, although he does believes him. He believes that he's the man to get things done when others can't stomach it. He knows that he'll cross lines and give his entire self, good or bad, to get something done. "I know what kind of man you are. Why did you enlist, Raju? What happened with your father?"
It's as plain as he's ever put his questions to him. No dancing around it this time, he wants to know why he's the one who took on this burden. Just why did he torture that man? Why would he do it again? What's waiting for him on the other side of all this?
He can see the pendant on his wrist, a little reminder of the love at home. He's a sentimental man. Cruelty and sentiment don't mix.
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Date: 2024-06-11 07:36 pm (UTC)The heavy hand starts rubbing slow, comforting circles over his back and Raju shivers again, a helpless, pleading noise stuck in his throat. His skin is hot under his hands, and under Francis’ hand—
Raju shoves his hands against the ground, closing his eyes. The lines of his face are hard for a moment, stubborn, and he thinks about the sharp sting of the ground against his palms instead, only that, and the heat in his skin begins to collect there.
Flames lick against the ground nearby as the snow sizzles. Smoke starts to rise into the air over it, hard to see against the sky, the dark. Francis’ questions circle in Raju’s mind like Francis’ hand over his back. He hadn’t expected this today. He hadn’t expected it at all. But if Francis is ever going to really understand, if Raju is ever going to know what he thinks at all, which way Raju really scores in his friend’s lofty moral tally, then Raju has to tell him now. He certainly isn’t going to say any of it when he feels better.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been quiet. His mouth is open. His breaths are deep. His hands are hot and the long unending night is cold, and he can feel Francis close and solid behind him. He can feel his body moving back and forth a little, loose and unresisting, under the pressure and motion of Francis’ hand. How long has it been since anyone else has rubbed his back this way? How long will it be, once Francis realises what Raju is?
Put the thought away. Francis needs an answer now. It doesn’t matter how Raju feels about any of it. It can’t matter if he wants to say it at all, so there’s no point thinking about anything more than he needs to.
He begins where he can. He watches the place in the snow in front of him, now mostly smoke, and answers with a voice that’s quiet and matter of fact, emptied of anything else. “I’ve only talked about it to Seetha. I was thirteen. I don’t remember what I said. She was there for… half of it. She was… they carried her away when they ran. So she knew most of it already. But I remember she asked questions. You can ask questions. Small ones. Small scale, I mean. I don’t…”
He frowns a little, and for a moment the frown holds there. He should be able to do this, to just say it. It bothers him, faintly, to have to say this instead.
“I can’t tell it without help. I tried… before. To you, but nothing came out. I don’t know… how to. It happened, that’s all. I don’t really think about it.”
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Date: 2024-06-11 08:45 pm (UTC)Raju is drawing a map for Crozier. He can't answer things directly, it's too painful or too difficult or a sorry combination of both, but maybe if he asks the right questions he'll find the answers he needs.
Small questions. He can start small.
Raju killed his father. They carried Seetha away when the they ran, she only saw half of whatever it was. Something set off this chain of events. Crozier draws himself up, brows knitting together as he watches Raju struggle with his hands in the snow.
"You were thirteen," he says quietly, starting with what he knows. "Were you forced to kill your father?"
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Date: 2024-06-11 10:17 pm (UTC)He has to hold the thought away from him. Everything has to be very distant, now. To let any of it close is to risk what he refuses to. Just because Francis surprised him. Think of it that way.
“Forced?” he repeats the end of Francis’ question, trying to follow Francis’ direction. Francis is going to lead him through it. “Forced to…”
His breaths are deep and fast, and quiet. He shakes his head, slowly at first and then faster. “No. No. He— No. When did—“
The smoke shivers in a breeze that isn’t there. Raju shivers, cold washing over him, and the flames start trying to grow again. He tries to flatten his mind and his voice again, and doesn’t manage as well as he wants to. It’s hard. That isn’t any excuse, but it’s hard.
“How long?” He smells the smoke. He smells the smoke and the snow and he feels hot, he can feel sweat at the back of his neck. The snow is melted away under his hands, his palms don’t feel cold anymore. “How long have you… you know that I— All this time? Or, or…”
Raju couldn’t bear it, if he’d known all this time, all along known what Raju— but he can’t understand what Raju is, what he’s become, or Raju wouldn’t have to explain. He closes his eyes. Francis has questions so Raju has to answer them. That’s all. That’s all. That’s all he needs to think about now.
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Date: 2024-06-11 11:15 pm (UTC)Fuck.
Being forced to pry himself part was not in his plan, but the heat from the flames licked a little too closely at his face for comfort. It knocks something loose inside of him, some far-away memory he’d ignored all this time.
Doctor Stanley’s painted face. He’d been a clown that night, hadn’t he? The ruffles soaking as he poured the liquor over himself, the burst of flames as he touched the torch to his body. The low, shaking moan of agony…
Crozier shakes his head and sits back, kicking a low trench in the snow between himself and Raju. He’s not leaving him now or ever. “I’d suspected,” he tells him with a grunt, side of his boot stomping into the ground. “I didn’t know for certain. The things you’ve said…your contrition that night.”
He finishes his retaining wall with a low sigh. “I’ve only just put the pieces together. Raju…tell me what happened.”
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