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.”
Raju breathes. He’s still hot and cold by turns, but the reality is setting in now that Francis has spoken it: Raju killed his own father. That’s what he did.
“I’ve never… heard it out loud. Before that. What I did.” Cold again, and he realises that the weight of Francis’ hand is gone. Of course it is. Raju is dangerous. The one good thing these damn flames have done, shown the stubborn man behind him what’s true when he doesn’t want to respond to that truth in the way he should.
Raju’s quiet for a moment. The moment stretches in his mind, then he realises he should speak. “That… my contrition. That night. It wasn’t for killing him.” Hot now, and the flames try to grow, and mostly fail.
“It was for giving up,” he says, voice tight, while Francis does whatever it is he’s doing behind him. “I promised him. I made him a promise, and I might have— I almost let myself break it. That’s why I was sorry.”
He doesn’t know what to say next. His throat hurts. He tries to think of what needs saying and there’s nothing there, but Francis had a question, before. The one that had surprised him.
He swallows. He swallows again. The flames tremble. He hasn’t eaten much today, but what’s there needs to stay down until Francis understands everything he wants to. For a moment Raju breathes, and tries to move his mind further toward it, to force the words into a shape in his mouth.
“He didn’t force me to. He had— he wore— I never knew. Explosives under his shirt. There was one—“
Raju’s voice cuts out. It doesn’t tremble to a stop, it only stops, and refuses to go any more.
He tries to put the words back in their place in his mouth, but they feel impossible there. They have to come out. He pushes them out, and once they meet the air they come out casually, and calm. The words are impossible words, and so no tone at all needs to come with them. “There was one bullet,” he says.
They feel just as impossible to hear as they do to say, the sharp contrast to everything around him so stark with it that all of that feels, now, impossible too. The snow is a clever prop scattered over a stage, soft and white and its cold far away. The heat isn’t coming from the flames; it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, because the warmth doesn’t touch him. The colour of the flames starts to drain until they’re paler, their movement underwater slow, and stuttering. He can tell the smoke is tickling and itching in his throat, that that’s going to get in the way once he answers more, but there’s no reason to try to clear it.
“I’m a good shot. I was always—“ The easy, absent tone is cut with a cough, so Raju starts the sentence again. It doesn’t mean anything, or connect to anything. It’s an answer, and it’s true. “I was always a good shot.”
God. God, he feels like he's starting to understand now. A son carrying on the father's fight, the quick condemnation of treating all children as though they aren't capable of violence, the argument against his moral line -
He was thirteen, and his father had gotten himself into some sort of situation. A stand off, a fight, arrested - it could have been anything, his father needed to meet his end right then and there. There had only been one bullet. Raju did what he had to do, what no other person would do, and he took aim and fired.
He was just thirteen, the age Crozier had been when his father put him on a carriage with a stranger and sent him off to London, never to return home. He'd been so innocent and naive then, a good little boy who did what he was told. Undoubtedly Raju's childhood was filled with a lot more strife than his, more violence, more sorrow, but he'd still only been a child.
"You did what had to be done," he repeats, breathing in the smoke and holding back a cough. His eyes are starting to tear up, but he can't risk moving any further away. "What was the promise?"
"The promise." Raju considers the question. Thinking is slow; it would be very useful, feeling this way, if it wasn't for that. These kinds of discussions with Francis would certainly go more smoothly. The fire wouldn't be as much of a problem that way. Or would it? The crackling he's hearing, that probably means it's still going. The noise sounds as strange and slow as he feels, as everything else feels. He turns his right hand away from the ground so he can see its palm, rubs its fingers slowly together. There's a burn there. He knows that it hurts to touch it. It doesn't matter. Something about the gesture helps him remember.
"He took my hand. I remember... there's a particular way it feels when someone squeezes your hand without all their fingers. I haven't felt it since. And the blood was wet. Give every person a weapon. A gun in every hand. The ones we had were wooden. All but his. Perfectly balanced, perfect replicas. I suppose the carpenter he recruited must have done very careful work. I never thought about it at the time."
He pauses to cough, and then doesn't start speaking again. He frowns at the ground. The smoke is making his eyes sting. He thinks he hasn't explained everything Francis needs to know, but he can't think where to go after that.
"When I helped you aim properly," he says at the ground, throat starting to rasp with the smoke but very calm, following the path of his thoughts wherever they might lead. "Do you remember that? That was a real rifle too, but I suppose I wasn't touching it. I was touching you. I thought that might be why. I liked that better. Oh, you wanted to know why I enlisted. That was my uncle. My father sent him into the police, to keep an eye on things. It wasn't the police that came in the end, but he knew what I needed to. So I suppose it worked out. They appoint certain officers as Special Officers, to do... a lot of things. Weapon shipments. Ammunition shipments. My uncle wasn't suited for it. He's a better friend to the other men than he is an officer. I'm a very good officer. I never stopped... ah... I don't know how to say it. But I never stopped. That's why I'm not like you."
He has to pause again, half-coughing, half reflexively trying to clear his throat. The smoke isn't connected to the flames. He notices that, now that the two have been in front of him for a while. That should be strange, shouldn't it? But no more than everything else. There's an odd tension in his chest and his stomach, and at the base of his throat. There's an odd tension in his muscles, as if he wants to move them, but he doesn't. He wonders if he's shaking, at least a little, if that's why all his limbs and his back feel that way. He doesn't feel cold. It doesn't matter as much as the distant knowledge that Francis is somewhere behind him, needing to know the things Raju couldn't ever tell, if he didn't feel this way.
"Is that all of it?" he asks, not demanding or needing it to be, only sounding curious, checking for anything that he's forgot. "Do you understand everything now?"
The promise - it all fits into place so nicely now. He would have never made Special Officer without pushing, without going far beyond what was expected. He had to become what he hated; he had to hurt and subjugate in order to fit in and then eventually rise above. He had to be more than the British men around him, he had to be crueler, adhere closer to the rules, enforce with an iron fist. He had to be better than them, or else nothing would succeed.
The promise. What a goddamn thing to have to promise to a dying father, the father that you yourself had to shoot. What a thing to do to a thirteen-year-old. He’s inherently horrified by it, disgusted by himself for such a harsh judgement made so quickly.
But he was just a boy.
Another aspect of Raju’s personality becomes clear. If Raju is here, then he can’t fulfill that promise to his father, his village, Seetha. No wonder…no wonder he feels as he feels. No wonder he keeps it all so bottled up that it erupts from him in literal flames.
Crozier’s throat feels thick, a lump forming right behind his vocal cords. He sits back, heavy with the weight of everything he’d just learned about this man he’d been living with for months. With this man that he…
How could Raju possibly feel anything in return for someone who never understood his sacrifices? Some Irishman who wanted to rise in the ranks and be one of them, marry into them, be seen as English more than anything in the world even though he’d never be equal to them in their eyes.
He looks down at himself, his reddened hand and the mangled stump, and blinks very slowly.
“I understand,” he tells him softly. “I understand everything now.”
Raju's silent for a moment. The flames crackle, very slowly. He realises he's half expecting the film to stop, the whole thing done. But it doesn't, and there's more yet left to do. There has to be. There always is.
"I was going to leave," he remembers. "There was something I wanted to know. I should have just asked." Emotion, now, faint but present in his voice: disgust. There's always more left to do better, too. "I didn't want to, but I didn't want to say any of that either, I think. I remember I didn't want to. But I did it anyway. You asked me to stay, once. But you thought I was... a different man then, I think. The kind of man who's going to fight to keep his humanity, like you. But you know better now. You can't count on me for that. I could go to that other house, the one we've been fixing. Or you could. It has running water. But all your things are here."
His heart is beating hard. He doesn't understand why. Francis is a... a distant concept, right now. A concept he would know well whether it was here or some place else, and that he and the good man somewhere behind him are different that way is something they've agreed on. The smoke is moving very slowly, lazily, and he finds himself blinking, trying to keep it out of his eyes. He could reach up and rub the feeling away; he doesn't, and the thought moves into the distance again.
"You'll still need someone you really can respect watching your back, but I don't know who I'd trust with you. I'll find someone."
Seconds tick by before Crozier realizes just what Raju means by that long, sort of rambling reply. He wants to leave him now. He's asking how best to separate them now, who would get what, who would live where - it's complete insanity.
"What the hell are you talking about?" he asks softly, incredulously. He reaches out to grab a handful of snow, almost absently, and starts sprinkling it onto the flames. "Do you think any of that would make me stop -"
He pauses to choose his words, rubbing his now empty palm onto his sealskin trousers. "Do you think any of it would make me renounce you? I don't...I don't see you any differently, Raju. We don't measure our deeds in a ledger; if we did I don't think I'd be in the black."
If he could see Raju's face now it might make the words come easier. He can't though for all the smoke and his own bafflement at how quickly everything had seemed to collapse. But he knows one thing for certain, one thing that never wavered, and it's belief in his friend's valiancy and courage. To do all that and still feel like he hasn't done enough - he'd laugh if he wasn't so afraid of crying, they're just so similar.
"Holding onto my morals hasn't done me an ounce of good," he admits softly. "I should have let Mr. Morfin die. He was begging for it, tormented by the lead rotting his brain, but I was so determined to bring them all home I couldn't see the suffering. I should have...I should have let the men eat Fitzjames. It's what he'd wanted, but I couldn't bear to see him carved up after putting him out of his misery. I'm not...my morals have done nothing but harm the ones around me. I used to think I need to hold onto that optimism when all was disintegrating around me, but where has that lead me, Raju?
"You...please don't go. Please."
He looks down to the ground, forlorn. "You have no idea how much you've made life worth living."
What the hell are you talking about? Francis says and Raju can feel himself frown. He hasn’t thought this through well enough. He’s gotten some of it wrong. It is hard to think this way, isn’t it?
Francis goes on after that, and the more he does the more obvious it becomes to Raju: this is important. It’s important that Francis is feeling whatever it is that he’s feeling now and it’s important that Raju should feel it with him, should feel how important hearing this is instead of only distantly knowing it. Convenient this might be, this separation and distance that makes it possible to voice unthinkable thoughts and its close cousin that he’d felt so often at home makes it possible to do unthinkable things but when Raju wants to have this moment for himself, to push through the fog and smoke between his thoughts and the rest of him to feel the impact of Francis’ confession and to care, he can’t find the way out.
He does feel something, a hint of it. Frustration, or maybe disgust again. Anger is easier. Anger isn’t the thing Francis needs now.
He breathes hard as he tries to push through it and gets a bout of coughing for his trouble. Please don’t go and You’ve made life worth living should mean something, and the blank thing holding himself apart from the rest of him is stealing it.
That odd, out of place tension in his limbs is there still. At home he would use it on a sandbag or weights, to feel something against his hands and in his muscles, to push and push against something until he felt almost right again. There’s none of that here.
The hand sprinkling snow over the flames, that had been Francis’ hand. The hint of a body nearby is enough to remind Raju that Francis’ body is there too, not only his voice, and Raju turns to meet it. Moving is easier than it feels like it should be. But the distant, unreal world doesn’t fall away, and Francis is there.
Frowning, he studies Francis’ face through the smoke, the way his friend is looking at the ground instead of looking up in the way most people would plead. He reaches out to rub the collar of Francis’ shirt between his fingers while he talks, hoping feeling it there will help. His other hand clenches its fingers into the muddy slush next to him, then relaxes so it can dig its fingers into the ground again. It should be cold, and he knows that it is. Feel something.
“I didn’t want to go.” It’s a fact. Facts are what he has. “I thought you would want me to. There are people who agree with you about whoever it is in that forest, about their children. Any of them should be grateful to live with you instead of me.”
He isn’t arguing for or against it. He says it in a voice that’s not arguing, or asking for anything at all. A voice that isn’t doing what it should, to say words that aren’t the words it should. Francis needs something now, and he needs Raju to feel so Raju can figure that something out.
“But I didn’t want to,” he tries again, in lieu of that. His gaze is fixed, now, on his fingers moving back and forth on Francis’ collar. His brows are pulling together in a faint frown, trying to focus hard. Maybe that small feeling in the tips of his fingers there, the bigger one around his other hand, will be enough to start with and bring him back to something else.
It's simple enough, isn't it? If he doesn't want to go, then he shouldn't go. He's certainly not asking him to leave him.
"Don't go. I'm not asking that of you," he says softly, shifting a little closer. "I don't think you're any less of a good man now than I did this morning." That's what he's trying to say in all of this. None of this changes anything, except how Raju feels about himself. It's out in the open now, that display of self-loathing and fears of inadequacy.
And morality. That question of morality, that Crozier should live with people who agree with him. What he needs is the opposite of that, someone to challenge him. That's how Ross had been, how Fitzjames had been, Sophia. He doesn't need someone like himself, what good would that do him? And he's already established how little that morality actually means when confronted with a difficult choice.
Things he will or won't do - he's held onto these things for years in the vague hopes that he'll somehow make it up to the people he's failed. He's terrified of a repeat occurrence, that's all this is, he's afraid. Having some kind of hard line makes him less afraid, makes him feel more in control. Of course he isn't, none of them are, but it's a coping mechanism as well as anything else is.
"I apologize for not seeing things through your eyes, Raju," he adds, looking up at him now. "I couldn't understand. I...don't think I'll ever fully understand just how much you've had to do to keep your promise. But please see my sincerity when I say this, you are a good man who has been dealt a very difficult hand. Most would crumble under the pressures you've been under."
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timeasmymeasure
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
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.”
no subject
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
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.”
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 02:27 am (UTC)“I’ve never… heard it out loud. Before that. What I did.” Cold again, and he realises that the weight of Francis’ hand is gone. Of course it is. Raju is dangerous. The one good thing these damn flames have done, shown the stubborn man behind him what’s true when he doesn’t want to respond to that truth in the way he should.
Raju’s quiet for a moment. The moment stretches in his mind, then he realises he should speak. “That… my contrition. That night. It wasn’t for killing him.” Hot now, and the flames try to grow, and mostly fail.
“It was for giving up,” he says, voice tight, while Francis does whatever it is he’s doing behind him. “I promised him. I made him a promise, and I might have— I almost let myself break it. That’s why I was sorry.”
He doesn’t know what to say next. His throat hurts. He tries to think of what needs saying and there’s nothing there, but Francis had a question, before. The one that had surprised him.
He swallows. He swallows again. The flames tremble. He hasn’t eaten much today, but what’s there needs to stay down until Francis understands everything he wants to. For a moment Raju breathes, and tries to move his mind further toward it, to force the words into a shape in his mouth.
“He didn’t force me to. He had— he wore— I never knew. Explosives under his shirt. There was one—“
Raju’s voice cuts out. It doesn’t tremble to a stop, it only stops, and refuses to go any more.
He tries to put the words back in their place in his mouth, but they feel impossible there. They have to come out. He pushes them out, and once they meet the air they come out casually, and calm. The words are impossible words, and so no tone at all needs to come with them. “There was one bullet,” he says.
They feel just as impossible to hear as they do to say, the sharp contrast to everything around him so stark with it that all of that feels, now, impossible too. The snow is a clever prop scattered over a stage, soft and white and its cold far away. The heat isn’t coming from the flames; it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, because the warmth doesn’t touch him. The colour of the flames starts to drain until they’re paler, their movement underwater slow, and stuttering. He can tell the smoke is tickling and itching in his throat, that that’s going to get in the way once he answers more, but there’s no reason to try to clear it.
“I’m a good shot. I was always—“ The easy, absent tone is cut with a cough, so Raju starts the sentence again. It doesn’t mean anything, or connect to anything. It’s an answer, and it’s true. “I was always a good shot.”
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 02:57 am (UTC)"And you were thirteen."
God. God, he feels like he's starting to understand now. A son carrying on the father's fight, the quick condemnation of treating all children as though they aren't capable of violence, the argument against his moral line -
He was thirteen, and his father had gotten himself into some sort of situation. A stand off, a fight, arrested - it could have been anything, his father needed to meet his end right then and there. There had only been one bullet. Raju did what he had to do, what no other person would do, and he took aim and fired.
He was just thirteen, the age Crozier had been when his father put him on a carriage with a stranger and sent him off to London, never to return home. He'd been so innocent and naive then, a good little boy who did what he was told. Undoubtedly Raju's childhood was filled with a lot more strife than his, more violence, more sorrow, but he'd still only been a child.
"You did what had to be done," he repeats, breathing in the smoke and holding back a cough. His eyes are starting to tear up, but he can't risk moving any further away. "What was the promise?"
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 11:37 am (UTC)"He took my hand. I remember... there's a particular way it feels when someone squeezes your hand without all their fingers. I haven't felt it since. And the blood was wet. Give every person a weapon. A gun in every hand. The ones we had were wooden. All but his. Perfectly balanced, perfect replicas. I suppose the carpenter he recruited must have done very careful work. I never thought about it at the time."
He pauses to cough, and then doesn't start speaking again. He frowns at the ground. The smoke is making his eyes sting. He thinks he hasn't explained everything Francis needs to know, but he can't think where to go after that.
"When I helped you aim properly," he says at the ground, throat starting to rasp with the smoke but very calm, following the path of his thoughts wherever they might lead. "Do you remember that? That was a real rifle too, but I suppose I wasn't touching it. I was touching you. I thought that might be why. I liked that better. Oh, you wanted to know why I enlisted. That was my uncle. My father sent him into the police, to keep an eye on things. It wasn't the police that came in the end, but he knew what I needed to. So I suppose it worked out. They appoint certain officers as Special Officers, to do... a lot of things. Weapon shipments. Ammunition shipments. My uncle wasn't suited for it. He's a better friend to the other men than he is an officer. I'm a very good officer. I never stopped... ah... I don't know how to say it. But I never stopped. That's why I'm not like you."
He has to pause again, half-coughing, half reflexively trying to clear his throat. The smoke isn't connected to the flames. He notices that, now that the two have been in front of him for a while. That should be strange, shouldn't it? But no more than everything else. There's an odd tension in his chest and his stomach, and at the base of his throat. There's an odd tension in his muscles, as if he wants to move them, but he doesn't. He wonders if he's shaking, at least a little, if that's why all his limbs and his back feel that way. He doesn't feel cold. It doesn't matter as much as the distant knowledge that Francis is somewhere behind him, needing to know the things Raju couldn't ever tell, if he didn't feel this way.
"Is that all of it?" he asks, not demanding or needing it to be, only sounding curious, checking for anything that he's forgot. "Do you understand everything now?"
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Date: 2024-06-12 01:45 pm (UTC)The promise - it all fits into place so nicely now. He would have never made Special Officer without pushing, without going far beyond what was expected. He had to become what he hated; he had to hurt and subjugate in order to fit in and then eventually rise above. He had to be more than the British men around him, he had to be crueler, adhere closer to the rules, enforce with an iron fist. He had to be better than them, or else nothing would succeed.
The promise. What a goddamn thing to have to promise to a dying father, the father that you yourself had to shoot. What a thing to do to a thirteen-year-old. He’s inherently horrified by it, disgusted by himself for such a harsh judgement made so quickly.
But he was just a boy.
Another aspect of Raju’s personality becomes clear. If Raju is here, then he can’t fulfill that promise to his father, his village, Seetha. No wonder…no wonder he feels as he feels. No wonder he keeps it all so bottled up that it erupts from him in literal flames.
Crozier’s throat feels thick, a lump forming right behind his vocal cords. He sits back, heavy with the weight of everything he’d just learned about this man he’d been living with for months. With this man that he…
How could Raju possibly feel anything in return for someone who never understood his sacrifices? Some Irishman who wanted to rise in the ranks and be one of them, marry into them, be seen as English more than anything in the world even though he’d never be equal to them in their eyes.
He looks down at himself, his reddened hand and the mangled stump, and blinks very slowly.
“I understand,” he tells him softly. “I understand everything now.”
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 02:57 pm (UTC)Raju's silent for a moment. The flames crackle, very slowly. He realises he's half expecting the film to stop, the whole thing done. But it doesn't, and there's more yet left to do. There has to be. There always is.
"I was going to leave," he remembers. "There was something I wanted to know. I should have just asked." Emotion, now, faint but present in his voice: disgust. There's always more left to do better, too. "I didn't want to, but I didn't want to say any of that either, I think. I remember I didn't want to. But I did it anyway. You asked me to stay, once. But you thought I was... a different man then, I think. The kind of man who's going to fight to keep his humanity, like you. But you know better now. You can't count on me for that. I could go to that other house, the one we've been fixing. Or you could. It has running water. But all your things are here."
His heart is beating hard. He doesn't understand why. Francis is a... a distant concept, right now. A concept he would know well whether it was here or some place else, and that he and the good man somewhere behind him are different that way is something they've agreed on. The smoke is moving very slowly, lazily, and he finds himself blinking, trying to keep it out of his eyes. He could reach up and rub the feeling away; he doesn't, and the thought moves into the distance again.
"You'll still need someone you really can respect watching your back, but I don't know who I'd trust with you. I'll find someone."
cw: cannibalismmmmm
Date: 2024-06-12 03:41 pm (UTC)Seconds tick by before Crozier realizes just what Raju means by that long, sort of rambling reply. He wants to leave him now. He's asking how best to separate them now, who would get what, who would live where - it's complete insanity.
"What the hell are you talking about?" he asks softly, incredulously. He reaches out to grab a handful of snow, almost absently, and starts sprinkling it onto the flames. "Do you think any of that would make me stop -"
He pauses to choose his words, rubbing his now empty palm onto his sealskin trousers. "Do you think any of it would make me renounce you? I don't...I don't see you any differently, Raju. We don't measure our deeds in a ledger; if we did I don't think I'd be in the black."
If he could see Raju's face now it might make the words come easier. He can't though for all the smoke and his own bafflement at how quickly everything had seemed to collapse. But he knows one thing for certain, one thing that never wavered, and it's belief in his friend's valiancy and courage. To do all that and still feel like he hasn't done enough - he'd laugh if he wasn't so afraid of crying, they're just so similar.
"Holding onto my morals hasn't done me an ounce of good," he admits softly. "I should have let Mr. Morfin die. He was begging for it, tormented by the lead rotting his brain, but I was so determined to bring them all home I couldn't see the suffering. I should have...I should have let the men eat Fitzjames. It's what he'd wanted, but I couldn't bear to see him carved up after putting him out of his misery. I'm not...my morals have done nothing but harm the ones around me. I used to think I need to hold onto that optimism when all was disintegrating around me, but where has that lead me, Raju?
"You...please don't go. Please."
He looks down to the ground, forlorn. "You have no idea how much you've made life worth living."
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 07:49 pm (UTC)Francis goes on after that, and the more he does the more obvious it becomes to Raju: this is important. It’s important that Francis is feeling whatever it is that he’s feeling now and it’s important that Raju should feel it with him, should feel how important hearing this is instead of only distantly knowing it. Convenient this might be, this separation and distance that makes it possible to voice unthinkable thoughts and its close cousin that he’d felt so often at home makes it possible to do unthinkable things but when Raju wants to have this moment for himself, to push through the fog and smoke between his thoughts and the rest of him to feel the impact of Francis’ confession and to care, he can’t find the way out.
He does feel something, a hint of it. Frustration, or maybe disgust again. Anger is easier. Anger isn’t the thing Francis needs now.
He breathes hard as he tries to push through it and gets a bout of coughing for his trouble. Please don’t go and You’ve made life worth living should mean something, and the blank thing holding himself apart from the rest of him is stealing it.
That odd, out of place tension in his limbs is there still. At home he would use it on a sandbag or weights, to feel something against his hands and in his muscles, to push and push against something until he felt almost right again. There’s none of that here.
The hand sprinkling snow over the flames, that had been Francis’ hand. The hint of a body nearby is enough to remind Raju that Francis’ body is there too, not only his voice, and Raju turns to meet it. Moving is easier than it feels like it should be. But the distant, unreal world doesn’t fall away, and Francis is there.
Frowning, he studies Francis’ face through the smoke, the way his friend is looking at the ground instead of looking up in the way most people would plead. He reaches out to rub the collar of Francis’ shirt between his fingers while he talks, hoping feeling it there will help. His other hand clenches its fingers into the muddy slush next to him, then relaxes so it can dig its fingers into the ground again. It should be cold, and he knows that it is. Feel something.
“I didn’t want to go.” It’s a fact. Facts are what he has. “I thought you would want me to. There are people who agree with you about whoever it is in that forest, about their children. Any of them should be grateful to live with you instead of me.”
He isn’t arguing for or against it. He says it in a voice that’s not arguing, or asking for anything at all. A voice that isn’t doing what it should, to say words that aren’t the words it should. Francis needs something now, and he needs Raju to feel so Raju can figure that something out.
“But I didn’t want to,” he tries again, in lieu of that. His gaze is fixed, now, on his fingers moving back and forth on Francis’ collar. His brows are pulling together in a faint frown, trying to focus hard. Maybe that small feeling in the tips of his fingers there, the bigger one around his other hand, will be enough to start with and bring him back to something else.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 08:21 pm (UTC)"Then don't."
It's simple enough, isn't it? If he doesn't want to go, then he shouldn't go. He's certainly not asking him to leave him.
"Don't go. I'm not asking that of you," he says softly, shifting a little closer. "I don't think you're any less of a good man now than I did this morning." That's what he's trying to say in all of this. None of this changes anything, except how Raju feels about himself. It's out in the open now, that display of self-loathing and fears of inadequacy.
And morality. That question of morality, that Crozier should live with people who agree with him. What he needs is the opposite of that, someone to challenge him. That's how Ross had been, how Fitzjames had been, Sophia. He doesn't need someone like himself, what good would that do him? And he's already established how little that morality actually means when confronted with a difficult choice.
Things he will or won't do - he's held onto these things for years in the vague hopes that he'll somehow make it up to the people he's failed. He's terrified of a repeat occurrence, that's all this is, he's afraid. Having some kind of hard line makes him less afraid, makes him feel more in control. Of course he isn't, none of them are, but it's a coping mechanism as well as anything else is.
"I apologize for not seeing things through your eyes, Raju," he adds, looking up at him now. "I couldn't understand. I...don't think I'll ever fully understand just how much you've had to do to keep your promise. But please see my sincerity when I say this, you are a good man who has been dealt a very difficult hand. Most would crumble under the pressures you've been under."
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