singillatim | bad luck, old sport

It isn't too terribly cold inside the cabin, and he's weary enough that he thinks sleep won't allude him for very long. Sleep. To die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream.

Oof. Quoting Hamlet in his own brain, a sure sign that he's too overwrought for any clear thinking.

"It isn't mutiny that worries me," he tells him quietly, a thoughtful pause interrupted by the howling of a wolf somewhere off in the hills. He lets the echo wash over them both, hissing softly under his breath as he attempts to move himself.

"Someone dear gave you that." The pendant. Raju clutches it so tightly Crozier fears it may turn into a diamond.

Raju frowns at Francis for a second and then blinks down at his hand, looking a little surprised as the motion of his thumb slows to a stop. He hadn't realised he'd been holding it this tightly, still rubbing at its surface like this, not in any conscious way. "Ah, yes. Sort of. I think I might have— I think it might be burnt, but I can't see."

Then he glances away from it, notices Francis trying to move and makes a quiet, surprised noise, moving himself closer and more out of the way of the fire to put a hand high on Francis' back. The other hovers, still holding the pendant, unsure where to put itself that pushing Francis even gently in any direction wouldn't make the pain in his ribs worse. He settles on a shoulder.

"Here, closer to the fire. It'll be warmer soon. And don't think I didn't realise you're trying to distract me. What is it that worries you, if not mutiny? You should know something like it worries your Lieutenant a great deal, at least if his manner over the food supply during that storm is any clue. People becoming... agitated, I think, was the word he used."

Sort of. A scorched pendant gripped so hard that it might as well be a piece of him.

"Am I that transparent?" he says, hissing as he feels one of the broken shards inside his delicate innards shifting around. "No, I'm trying to ground us, Raju. I'm trying --"

He's not the only one feeling helpless here.

He shakes his head gently and lets Raju position him a little closer to the fire. "Mutiny implies authority, a collective. There's nothing like that here. There's nothing to mutiny against."

"Exactly." Raju sits on his knees to look Francis over once he's moved, unsatisfied. Nothing even to put his head on, nothing between Francis and the ground except the blanket, Raju's coat, wrapped around him, and without stripping himself naked that's the only thing that Raju has to give. He'll have to look for something Francis can lay on when he looks for something to tear apart to wrap his ribs, but he hasn't gotten to the bottom of this yet. It should be enough, maybe, that Francis is willing to put aside the idea of this being a place which, along with everything else, houses dead men, but it hadn't been enough for Francis, though he'd been willing to pretend. And a pretence isn't enough for Raju, not here and now. Raju had been... distracted by personal matters, memories, thoughts that shouldn't have effected his judgement the way that they had. Of course those men can't be dead, if they're still living here. So he should have been able to listen.

"There's no authority to rebel against, no ship to get lost on." The hand still resting on Francis' shoulder gives a gentle squeeze, and Raju smiles. He should have responded this way earlier; it might be too late now to really settle Francis' mind. But now that Raju himself is thinking more clearly again he can try to reassure, can succeed at it this time. "So what is it you think is happening again?"

The pain dulls to an ache once he settles, though his hand travels down to rest gently, protectively against his ribs.

He shouldn’t have let his mind wander. He said too much, unburdened himself too soon. “How uncomfortable are you with the supernatural? Did you believe in anything before you came? Ghosts, monsters, gods on earth?”

Crozier used to be terrified of banshees as a young boy, but other than that little Irish myth God and religion had always been such a far-away concept. And then he’d met Silna and the creature.

Raju’s eyes are on Francis’ hand when he asks the question, on his ribs. The hopefully-reassuring smile is still on his face while he’s thinking frustrated thoughts about gauze and what to wrap those ribs with instead, and having to walk away to do it, and when Francis asks about the supernatural Raju’s smile doesn’t change. It’s a short walk from hale and healthy dead men to ghosts, monsters, gods walking on earth in living flesh. If he hesitates, it’s only to decide on the right way to answer.

Honestly, he decides. As close as he can come to honesty without making Francis put away whatever it is that’s eating at him, without putting those tears in the man’s eyes again. Making a man cry who’s older, who’s in pain, who’s been kinder to Raju than he needed to be, Raju will lie if he has to to avoid that. But at this point it probably wouldn’t be convincing if he tried it.

“I believe in what I see,” Raju says, the closest he can get to a truth which applies both at home and here, in this awful, impossible place. Then a hint at a frown comes over his face, a thoughtful one, because he can’t help but try to put pieces together even when he’s mostly certain the puzzle will be full of hallucinations and nonsense, can’t help but murmur it out loud: “Hickey mentioned gods, too. I think he said he’d seen them.”

Crozier doesn’t keep the disgust from his face at the mention of Hickey. Hickey has a head start; he was been spreading his poison months before he’d been pulled to Milton to draw out the venom.

“I was the same. Skeptical, cautious. Not prone to hysterics or superstition - uncommon for a sailor, but I was too numb for faith and bitter towards the intangible. Providence means little when your ship’s frozen in and your supplies are dwindling.”

He pauses to catch his breath, hand gripping the sealskin tunic a little tighter as he struggles.

“I don’t know if what we saw was a god,” he says, gaze distant. “What it wasn’t isn’t enough to tell us what it was. They called it tuunbaq, and it was as clever as a man in the shape of a bear. It had an human face. It walked on two legs. It…took the souls of my men, devoured them.”

It hurts to say it out loud, it hurts knowing the list of the dead exists in his head alone. And Raju…he can’t account for how this level-headed man will react now to his ghost story.

“There are a great many things to fear in this world. Mutiny, Hickey, gods and monsters —- but more plainly, the cold, the sickness, the madness. I fear the madness.”

The disgust on Francis' face puts confusion on Raju's, for a moment. But it's not as if his topic doesn't match; disgust at having been so skeptical, maybe, or sharing that remembered bitterness of a ship full of men whose wellbeing was his to care for with no way in his power to care for them at all. That would be enough to put disgust on anyone's face, no matter how long it's been.

Francis' hand grips the shirt over his ribs more tightly and Raju's hand over Francis' shoulder tightens a little in sympathy. It stays that way as Francis goes on.

If this had been before, if he'd met this man in Delhi, or at home, that would have been easy to dismiss. Hardship can do strange things to even a strong and structured mind. But here, here and now, what Raju has heard has to go into that in-between place inside his mind where everything that he's observed and written down and struggled to make sense of has to go, the place which says wait, you have to wait to understand it and you don't have the full picture yet, you have to wait.

And Raju is still, now, prepared for a strange story. It's only the way that Francis says it, the thought, the possibility there that he's carved out for something else. Hickey had said gods and been sure, and it had been easy to disbelieve. Francis had said he couldn't tell enough to know, and that's... that's more difficult to turn away from. Devouring souls is impossible, easy to place as a desperate mind's explanation for the unexplainable, for whatever it was that had killed at least most of Francis' men. But what exactly had done it, what it is that those dead men had seen— Francis leaves more room for the unknown there, and something about that makes it worse.

Raju's frown is troubled now. But he'd said, if only to himself, that he could listen to whatever impossibilities he hears now, for the sake of a good man carrying this unknown burden, and he can. Raju doesn't have to believe it, or even understand it. Not right now. It takes him a moment to remind himself, and then put the questions in the thing away.

What he does have to do is get to the centre of this, to what pains Francis this way. Raju can't do much, ultimately, for the man's ribs, but maybe he can do a little for his heart, or his mind.

"Madness," Raju decides as he looks solemnly down at Francis, voice quiet in respect for the weight of the story, no matter what some unknown parts of him might be thinking about its contents. "You don't mean the kind which drives men to see the unexplainable, do you. You're afraid of something else."

“Madness,” repeats Crozier. “I mean the kind that causes men to beg for death. The sort of madness that drives a man to set himself and a tent of people alight in the name of mercy. Madness leads to splintering and acting on desperation.”

Another piece of the story out in the open, another misfortune to fit into the sequence of events. He’d been certain of their doom at that point, but as a man reborn he’d become the quietly resolute captain they’d needed. It was never realistic though, his optimism and hope. It was just what was needed at the time.

“Our ships were trapped in a frozen sea, our stores were poisoned, and we were being hunted by a creature I still don’t completely understand. We were worse off than this, but it doesn’t take much before the mind goes.”

He glances up into Raju’s face, meeting intense eyes with soft, blue ones that seem tired from the inside-out.

Raju's expression is tight, held still with something troubled underneath it, pinching at its edges; Francis' expression is mostly tired. And no wonder.

He can't reassure Francis, can he, that all of that won't happen again. In his own strength of will, Raju's always had an unmoving faith. He can't afford to make room for anything else. But he can't answer for everyone living here, or everyone who will be, or what other impossible, terrible things might happen here, or what any of those unknown people here might be driven to. He can control himself. And that's all.

To the centre. Raju isn't certain that they've reached it yet. He isn't certain, either, if they should. Going forward might — will — hurt Francis, but stopping had hurt him, too.

Forward, then. A little of the tension in Raju's face smooths out. Digging far enough to hurt is something he knows how to do.

"'Survival is my penance,'" Raju quotes, still quiet, hand still on Francis' shoulder, looking down at Francis' pain and his tired eyes. "That's what you said. Is it your madness that you're afraid of, Francis? You must have been desperate, too."

Christ, it's as though he sees right through him. If he weren't so hurt or so cold it wouldn't be as difficult as it is to hold back a whimper. The Netsilik never asked him about it directly; they didn't need to, they knew what became of them all, the scattered artifacts and bleaching, corpses with carved-up legs and arms. They didn't know how they fell so far, but they didn't need to know.

"I was only mad once," he admits softly. "Desperate for the bottle. Nearly died because of it while others were dreaming of roasted meats and carrots. I purged it from myself, emerged clean -- a better man, a better captain. I stayed sane while others lost their minds, I remained healthy while everyone else became ill."

He'd pickled himself, is what he did. Scurvy couldn't touch him because his liver was already struggling with all goddamn else.

"I was desperate for them to live. I pushed them beyond their limits and kept my belief even as they were walking corpses that I could somehow bring them to salvation."

He turns now, ignoring the sharp pain, grasping for Raju's wrist and holding so fast he can feel the faint thrum of his pulse under his thumb. "I outlived every single one of them, Raju. I found their corpses and encampments after -- after I escaped Hickey's captivity. Little was the last to die, and he did so in my arms."

Raju frowns down at Francis’ face, aware of the grip on his wrist, the pressure. Hickey’s captivity, a detail noted and put to one side. More important just now, cutting a little deeper: Francis certainly thinks it was Little who died then, the man Raju can remember meeting, walking down the steps and seeing him, a man troubled and guilty and frightened and entirely alive. But Raju was prepared for this, and is determined not to trip over it more than the once. He only keeps frowning for a moment, gauging Francis’ expression, then lets his gaze slip away. Keep going, even when it will cut deeper. Forward. He isn’t going to back away from whatever’s still waiting in the dark, not now.

“Strong enough to shed your vices, desperate only that the men who depended on you might live. You were noble.” They’re facts and Raju recites them that way as he looks at his wrist, clutched in the doomed captain’s remaining hand. They aren’t compliments. What Raju goes on with might make it obvious why. “So what is your penance for? You don’t owe anything for strength, or health, or luck. Is that all you were so anxious to tell me earlier? That when faced with horrors you conducted yourself with nothing but nobility and decency?”

If it is then Raju will have to find a way to apologise, find some words that will walk back the disdain hinted in the cold tone of his voice. But instinct says that there’s more here, something Francis needs to say. Something that he wants to say even if he’ll writhe this way and that to avoid it, even if he needs someone else to dig it out. Soft reassurances and admiring words won’t do it, even if they would be right, even if one hundred others would have given up before leading men through half of what Francis has told him. There could be guilt in only surviving too, if that guilt couldn’t be turned toward something else, but Raju doesn’t think that’s all he’s seen. The guilt that’d been trying to come out of Francis needs a sharper edge.

It's a testament to that transformation he underwent that he takes the disdain with a quiet, humbled little nod. What else does he have to lose? What respect does a fallen captain deserve?

He's going to make him say it. God damn the man.

"They ate each other."

Frank and matter-of-fact, they ate each other. The ultimate taboo, horrifying to the so-called civilized peoples of the world, but out in the wastes of King William Island he'd had his second beg for him to use his body to feed the men.

"Some devoured the fallen, others like Hickey chose to kill and eat. My second, James Fitzjames, had his --" He trips on this point; it's painful, the wound clearly still raw and open. "Grave disturbed. They robbed his body and then I assume ate what was left. Tom Hartnell took a bullet and the mutineers fought me for his body. Harry Goodsir..."

Is there anything left in him? Any bit of selflessness or charity that remains after what he had to do and what he witnessed?

"Harry Goodsir saved me, but in turn I had to eat from his body. There's no nobility in that, and there's no nobility in surviving when I couldn't spare a single goddamned person from pain or suffering or death. I was the selfish, drunken captain who ignored my men, and by the time I got my head out of my own arse we were already headed for disaster. I ate Harry Goodsir, Raju."

Hickey, again. The detail is almost lost in the litany of horrors. Raju realises his breath is coming faster and harder, and so is his heartbeat. Both his hands are on Francis' shoulders, the other one having moved itself when Raju's mind had been taken up with grotesque tragedy.

I held their bodies, I ate --

This is what Francis had been trying to tell him. The centre of the guilt that Raju had seen there, dug up like Raju had been aiming to. As usual, this kind of success is...

But there's nothing usual about this, is there? This is a man he... he might be able to call a friend, a friend he's only just made, now a captain whose vice and inattention — if Francis is right — sent men who counted on him to lead into something worse than hell, and who's paying for it like a figure from some old story, like a man cursed with immortality only so he can remember. Something Raju could read easily, if with distaste, but which is right here beneath him, alive because this man is alive, looking up at him with human eyes, a man who started travelling the world young and painstakingly sewed mittens to keep Raju warm and who's done horrible things, crossed a line Raju hadn't even remembered was there.

The other hand on Francis' other shoulder moves down, still far enough up to keep away from his ribs, trying to press flat over his heart. Raju isn't sure why. Still human in there, even after everything. Or maybe just to hold him down, as if the horrors inside him are still about to leap out. As if they haven't already.

And this isn't usual, either, in what happens afterward. The confession and then his part is done, the consequences left to other hands than his, and to the deeper parts of Raju's mind. But there was no one else to hear, and this confession isn't being held up against law to decide on some punishment after. Raju's hit with a rush of gratitude, over everything else, gratitude that the cabin is lonely and dark, that there's no sun peering in the windows to shed light on any of this, that the only container for this particular confession is Raju, and no one else. No consequences but the act, no punishment except the one inside Francis' mind and heart.

Raju opens his mouth, draws a breath to say...

He lets the breath out again, shoulders slumping. His lips press together, and he swallows. Raju's hand is tight on Francis' shoulder, and his eyes are still too wide. The flames flicker in unnatural, jerking fits and starts, the way they had on the night Raju had realised this fire inside him in the first place. I ate Harry Goodsir, Raju. A confession dug out, the centre of what the man had been trying to say. Raju doesn't know what comes after that. He doesn't know what to do with judgement.

Crozier craves outside consequences, punishment beyond this inner torment and the crippling weight of guilt on his shoulders. The Netsilik were gentle and patient, welcoming in spite of the horrors his men had brought to their land. If he was hated, oh, it would be horrible, but then at least it would match the loathing in his own heart. But no, Crozier would never find absolution with them.

He watches Raju, waits for the hand over his heart to become violent. If he did punch through his chest and rip out his heart he'd find nothing there, just an empty man who grieves with every breath.

He waits another beat and his gaze falls away to the flickering fire. It seems alive.

"Doctor Goodsir will tell you it was part of his plan. He poisoned himself and then took his life, spoiling his corpse without the mutineers knowing. They carved him up, and to keep the ruse I had to eat from him." He blinks slowly.

Willingly or not, ruse or not, he still partook. That changes a man. This story changes a man, hearing it alone, learning of such cruelty and horror.

If this were one of those old stories there would be something after, something Francis could have done to erase or offset the weight of it on his soul, the horrible work he took to carry out the doctor's brave and clever plan. But it isn't. For all the impossibilities Raju has seen, for all of them Francis says took place around the horror of the rest of it, the two of them are only men who live in the world, the real world, where the consequences of what's needed are inside of them to stay.

Raju's next breath out is long and shaking. The fingers over Francis' heart curl a little, trying to grip onto something. The grip on Francis' shoulder loosens and that hand reaches out toward Francis' face, or his neck, drops before it gets there and curls its fingers into itself. He doesn't know where to put it. He wants to do something. But what they have is the real world, and what Francis has is something Raju knows:

"And then you were alone." Raju's voice is a rasp, the sound of something heavy dragging over rough and empty ground, and he swallows again. The mutineers poisoned, the doctor after his plan... gone, and the camps Francis had said he'd found after, and what it is he'd found there. Swallowing, if anything, only made the sound of Raju's voice rougher, but he goes on anyway. He has to. "In a field of corpses."

“And then I was alone. One-handed, wearing the clothes of my dead men, stumbling over their corpses to try to find someone left alive.”

Little with the chains in his face, the metal pulling on frozen yet still-delicate skin, dying in his arms. The leg in the pot. The men huddled in the tent. The sick left at Rescue Camp, Thomas Jopson’s corpse on the ground clawing desperately towards the path in front of him. Magnus Manson, devoured, John Diggle, mauled, Solomon Tozer, devoured, George Hodgson, devoured, Cornelius Hickey, torn apart after cutting out his own tongue. Harry Goodsir butchered and eaten, Thomas Hartnell shot, Thomas Blanky —-

The most macabre of muster rolls, the fate of each man.

“Thomas Jopson, William Gibson, and Harry Goodsir are aware that they’ll die,” he adds gruffly. His eyes are bright again, but he blinks the tears back because whatever he has left in him to cry is done when alone. “Edward Little and Cornelius Hickey don’t. I…don’t have any right to ask you favors, but please…”

He trails off, fighting with himself over what he wants to ask.

“Please don’t tell any of the others. How they lived and how they died are their stories to tell.”

"You have the right," Raju insists roughly and his hand finally decides where to be, settling decisively next to Francis' head. Its curled fingers rest their backs against the side of Francis' face, barely touching. "I promise, they won't find any of it out from me."

Francis' eyes are bright again, the way that Raju knew they would be after he kept pushing. Exposing a wound to open air might not do anything to make it heal. There are times that the wound is like this one. But he doesn't regret doing it. There's nothing good about seeing what Raju recognizes here, his throat is tight, it hurts, and Francis' eyes aren't the only ones that aren't dry. But he sees what Francis has exposed now and there's a kind of need in Raju that's eager, relieved to see it. He couldn't explain what he's thinking to Francis if he tried to. He hadn't spoken about it after it happened anyway, except to Seetha, once. Not any time after. It wouldn't be the right time for it now, anyway.

"You were strong," he rasps. "At the end. And before. I tried to sound like it didn't matter. That was just to get you talking."

It's important that Francis knows that. Raju doesn't explain these things. What needs doing is what is done, and that's all. But there's a need here, that Francis should know.

Crozier’s head tips to one side, coming to rest against Raju’s fingers. He’s warm, it feels pleasant up against the ache and the frost. A little light of recognition sparks in his mind.

“You’ve saved me twice now, both times from myself,” he mumbles. “I should shoulder this burden alone, Raju. What right did I have to lay this at your feet?”

There’s nothing to forgive, no reason for explanation. He let too much slip and had to fill in the gaps for the sake of this heroic-hearted man, who obviously saw the agony wasn’t just in his damned ribs.

“Thank you.”

"I wanted you to." His voice is still coming out painful and thick. He clears his throat. "I wanted to hear it." It's the closest he can come to explaining the way it feels to hear that a man strong enough to try, to fight, had to be strong enough, too, to weigh himself down with an unforgivable thing. Had to destroy something precious that isn't coming back and to, as the dust was settling, find himself alone. If Raju tried to explain he might sound like he was glad about it. He can't be. He isn't sure what it is he's feeling. Protective, but there'd been the roof collapsed, and the wolves, and Francis' ribs, now, so of course he would be.

"Besides, I had to fight you for it." He doesn't have the right voice yet to lighten the mood, and maybe that isn't what he's doing; a moment ago Francis moved his face closer to Raju's fingers, and in return now Raju presses them a little closer against his cold cheek. "It hardly counts as laying if you tried not to give it to me."

He waits a beat or two, wondering still why on earth anyone would care, and how someone can still feign to sit with him and offer comfort knowing the truth. Raju just might be a different sort of person.

No. Not might. He is a different sort of person.

“Do you often have accusations of stubbornness or hard-headedness thrown at you?”

He attempts the smallest of smiles. The exhaustion’s beginning to win out, beginning to drag him into something between sleeping and losing consciousness.

Raju lets out a soft breath, surprised amusement. Odd, to feel his eyes stinging and his throat hurting and his lips still moving into a smile and to feel what's behind all of it genuinely, and all at once. "I've heard it once or twice."

Not from Seetha, unless she was in a mood to throw the same words at Raju that he could throw right back. She always could be just as stubborn as Raju, in her way. But for Uncle, and for Akhtar, and even for some of his commanding officers, and for various people at various times in his life, there have been plenty of opportunities. Raju's heard it many times. Some smilingly, and some with rage. Some with hurt. Various kinds of accusations. And Francis is nearly smiling now, and he had thanked Raju. But still, Raju had pushed, and still, it had hurt Francis, unearthing it.

"Do you mind it?" Raju finds himself asking, sounding a little more honest than he would have expected to, if he'd been expecting to hear it at all. It isn't a useful question to ask. Actions are actions, and a good portion of the time the answer doesn't matter anyway. Raju keeps looking down at the pale and tired face, and doesn't take the question back.

Hurting Francis Crozier for his own good happens to be the best way to get through to Francis Crozier, unfortunately. He recognizes that now, and he's laugh if it wasn't so damned hard to take a breath.

"No," he answers, looking back up like it's the silliest question he's ever been asked. "Not at all. Every man I've ever called a friend has been as stubborn as a bloody mule."

Being with the likes of James Clark Ross and James Fitzjames is a tiring affairs! But he's also been a stubborn, inflexible mess at times, and it hasn't always been to his complete detriment.

"No," he says again, shaking his head oh-so-gently, whiskers inadvertently brushing across Raju's hand. "Ah. I hope you're in control of that fire, old boy, because I'm losing the fight to stay awake."

The smile that had spread over Raju's face at the first part of Francis' answer, relieved and deeper, more pleased, than Raju really has an explanation for, only fades a little at the second. He looks over at the fire as Francis mentions it, uncertain, remembering the blade of his knife, and the small black marks on the Community Hall's floor. But Francis needs it.

"I can be." At one point Raju had been too concerned to let Francis sleep. But now he's warm and next to a fire, and the confusion after his collapse has changed into as much coherence as it's possible to get in this place, and he's as safe as he's going to be. Everything else that needs to be done — wrapping those ribs up with something, inspecting the rest of this cabin, maybe finding something inside of it to eat — is something that Francis can do later, or that Raju can handle first.

"And we'll see about the rest in the morning." Raju looks away from the fire and at the man beneath him again, the hand over Francis' heart smoothing the fabric there. "I'll take care of it. Rest, Francis."

It’s far easier to rest by a fire and in good company than by oneself in an ice hut, but more than that, the kindness and physical touch to a man that’s starved in more ways than one fulfills a need Crozier hadn’t realized he’s been missing. He nods gently and positions himself with back against the floor, the warmth of the fire serving as a blanket.

There’s a beat, Crozier’s eyes closed and his breath beginning to even out - though with some struggling at the exhales - before he grunts, “I need to find a new bloody house.”

Almost said with a smile. Almost, except he falls asleep promptly after.

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load_aim_shoot - 2024-03-03 03:45 (UTC) - Expand

bad luck, old sport

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CW self immolation

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cw awh yeah cannibalism time

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cw just more cannibalism from here on out

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cw: suicide

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