Time is important, still, but for a moment Raju doesn't do anything but look at him, the frown starting in his eyebrows and shifting to his mouth, confusion fading into worry. The pain surely hasn't gone, but there hadn't been a noise. And now this.
But he can worry while doing what Francis needs him to. He moves himself over to the quartz and steel, picks them up to hold them over the fireplace, tries to strike one against the other and scowls at his shaking hands.
He glances over at Francis, needing to split his focus to something other than his failure, needing to check on him, to know:
"Francis," he tries. It's not as if he couldn't guess it, that there's some kind of shadow in this man's past. Irishman sailing with the British navy, but living long enough in a frozen place where nothing grows that he'd need to learn from the people living there. And he must have spent years living in close quarters on those ships, but wouldn't stay in the Hall during that storm, the Hall where the majority of the food and firewood and preparation was going into, and wouldn't say why. There was always something there. It was never Raju's main worry the times that they'd talked, and wasn't any of his business. Is Francis telling him now, for some reason? Or has he forgotten it isn't happening? "Do you know where you are?"
no subject
But he can worry while doing what Francis needs him to. He moves himself over to the quartz and steel, picks them up to hold them over the fireplace, tries to strike one against the other and scowls at his shaking hands.
He glances over at Francis, needing to split his focus to something other than his failure, needing to check on him, to know:
"Francis," he tries. It's not as if he couldn't guess it, that there's some kind of shadow in this man's past. Irishman sailing with the British navy, but living long enough in a frozen place where nothing grows that he'd need to learn from the people living there. And he must have spent years living in close quarters on those ships, but wouldn't stay in the Hall during that storm, the Hall where the majority of the food and firewood and preparation was going into, and wouldn't say why. There was always something there. It was never Raju's main worry the times that they'd talked, and wasn't any of his business. Is Francis telling him now, for some reason? Or has he forgotten it isn't happening? "Do you know where you are?"