There's some flailing beside him, the red-hot glow of a burst of flames, and Raju is...
Raju is distracted, in the sort of way that Francis Crozier has been distracted his entire life. There's a great swell of gravity sudden bearing down upon his friend, but between the dead-weight in his limbs and the pain in his chest there's little more he can do for him other than stare in silent worry.
He's barely blinked at the sudden fire started by Raju's hand. Once you've seen a man's soul devoured, a burst of flame by a man's hand seems so much smaller a miracle than it should be.
Glowing embers start to die and Raju turns his attention back on him. He smiles, a frail thing, and picks up a heavy hand to attempt to grasp his friend's arm in return. He fails, but hopefully the gesture was clear. He's here, he's trying for his friend's sake.
"No, no," he whispers fiercely. "I'm not dead. I survived. Don't you see, Raju? Don't you see that survival is my penance?"
If only he could die.
He continues to ramble on, pained but mind clear and sharp.
"Thomas Jopson, Edward Little, Harry Goodsir, William Gibson, and the man who calls himself Cornelius Hickey all perished some time ago in the Arctic Circle. Some of them apparently know of their deaths, and some were taken days or even weeks before. What most of them don't know is I was the only one who survived." He tries to swallow a painful lump in his throat. "129 men set sail from England to find a northwest passage to China, and 128 men died. I don't know why they're here now, Raju, I don't understand it -- I saw their corpses, I held their bodies, I ate --
He ate from them.
"The Aurora chose them and then chose me, and I can't make heads or tails of it. And worse...worse is the horror of it happening all over again."
cw: mentions of suicide, cannibalism (also never apologize for writing a lot!!! <3)
Raju is distracted, in the sort of way that Francis Crozier has been distracted his entire life. There's a great swell of gravity sudden bearing down upon his friend, but between the dead-weight in his limbs and the pain in his chest there's little more he can do for him other than stare in silent worry.
He's barely blinked at the sudden fire started by Raju's hand. Once you've seen a man's soul devoured, a burst of flame by a man's hand seems so much smaller a miracle than it should be.
Glowing embers start to die and Raju turns his attention back on him. He smiles, a frail thing, and picks up a heavy hand to attempt to grasp his friend's arm in return. He fails, but hopefully the gesture was clear. He's here, he's trying for his friend's sake.
"No, no," he whispers fiercely. "I'm not dead. I survived. Don't you see, Raju? Don't you see that survival is my penance?"
If only he could die.
He continues to ramble on, pained but mind clear and sharp.
"Thomas Jopson, Edward Little, Harry Goodsir, William Gibson, and the man who calls himself Cornelius Hickey all perished some time ago in the Arctic Circle. Some of them apparently know of their deaths, and some were taken days or even weeks before. What most of them don't know is I was the only one who survived." He tries to swallow a painful lump in his throat. "129 men set sail from England to find a northwest passage to China, and 128 men died. I don't know why they're here now, Raju, I don't understand it -- I saw their corpses, I held their bodies, I ate --
He ate from them.
"The Aurora chose them and then chose me, and I can't make heads or tails of it. And worse...worse is the horror of it happening all over again."