(closed)

[load_aim_shoot]

Who: A. Rama Raju, Edward Little, Francis Crozier, William Gibson
What: experiencing/dealing with the horrors
When: after the recent Darkwalker attack, around the time of the town meeting, and after one of the aurora nights
Where: one outside the Community Hall, the other on the outskirts

Content Warnings: Ned's fire trauma, little mention of Raju's trauma that I'll CW for on the comment title. If anything else comes up I'll add! 

Comments

for Edward Little (CW hint at child soldier stuff)

[load_aim_shoot]

The creature came for someone that Raju knew, this time. That shouldn't make a difference, but it does. Hadn't known him well, hadn't even known his name, but he'd known the man's temper. It seems like the bruises have only just healed. Or maybe it's that the victims were four at once this time, and inside a building. Or maybe it's only that fear.

He's never reacted to fear that way. It never pins him in place, makes him take cover and stay there, a prisoner to the feeling holding fast inside him, unmoving and terrified. After the first time he'd guessed that wasn't natural, wasn't coming from him, and this time had confirmed it. That had to be how it kills its victims, too, because Raju can't imagine the man he barely knew going down so frightened, with not a single wound at all, without signs of a fight. He would have fought. It's the one thing Raju knew about him. But he hadn't. Maybe he couldn't.

It was stupid, on reflection, to try to sleep.

The rifle is too heavy, too large, familiar in his hand. He's already taking aim. The creature is somewhere but he can't see, somewhere with its darkness and its skulls and its green light creeping over the ground at the corners of his vision but he can't look away from the cloud of debris that he can't see through yet, the one that hides everything in the moments after the gun went off, in the instant after the bullet found its target. He has to shoot to make it happen. The voice doesn't make a noise in Raju's ears but the sound of it is clear, shoot and so he needs to shoot, the last order anyone ever had a right to give him and there's no question of doing what's necessary but the fear is shocking his mind and closing his throat and freezing his hand. He needs to shoot, damn himself and shoot, he needs to fight and he can't, Seetha had run and the ones who survived had run and he can't look away, and he can't look behind him, and the green light is sinking back and he knows exactly which direction it's going, knows once all of the dust clears again he'll only find more corpses back the way they ran if he doesn't fight but the fear is freezing him, this awful frigid afterlife is freezing him in place and he can't even fight, the pain is the bruising on his shoulder from last night, recoil against a body too small yet to bear it, but bruising doesn't feel this way and the blanket is on fire.

He beats it out, half asleep but knowing that he has to keep his hand in working order, the trigger finger at least, but moving to do it shifts the blanket, which shifts the fire — he's wearing it isn't he, couldn't find a coat he wouldn't have to steal so he made do with a blanket, this is a small, terrible town somewhere in Canada and Raju is awake and his thoughtless movement trying to shed a blanket that's draped over him spread the fire to a messy bed nearby, its own blanket hanging off the edge and trailing over the floor. He tries to tear the one blanket off him while he rolls off his bed toward the other, manages to beat it out just in time but the fire in the fireplace is roaring now, he remembers that, he knows exactly what it means. He'd only managed to calm himself last time after he left but the blanket in his hand smells like it's burning because it hasn't gone out yet and there are people sleeping here this time, and he doesn't know how to stop it so he throws the blanket over the fire on the ground, and someone is waking so he gestures them toward it, and then he leaves, stumbling in nothing more than socks and trousers and thin shirt into the snow.

He stumbles against the closest building, watching the Community Hall and panting. His eyes are wide and then his jaw clenches, his hands clench into fists. After everything, everything, this too, one more thing he can't control, can't understand, one more useless, awful thing that he can't grab onto, can't use, can't do a single thing but watch while everything is made more hopeless and worse because he can't do a damned thing—

His palms burn and he jumps back, the icy air already a set of shivering, frozen knives inside his throat, looking horrified and then angry as the wood that had been under his hands begins to pop and crack and burn.

cw: mention of suicidal ideation / fire-related trauma will also be all up in this thread!

[fidior]

It's strange, to see it all play out over time. Every dread he's had, every looming fear, coming to light. It almost isn't surprising, and that's the true horror of it. More people are killed grotesquely in the night by something supernatural. The frayed edges of the rope barely holding things together amongst the little group of men from his ships has finally snapped, and there's physical fighting and horrible truths brought out into the open, and now is terrified that Cornelius Hickey will once again stalk and kill people he loves.

Everything is repeating. Every single thing. And once again, Edward has been helpless to keep anyone safe.

He's a solitary figure moving in the crisp white sterility of the town. Everything is so quiet and calm and clean-looking, the way it had been out on the ice, but the red of blood keeps flashing behind his eyes. He tries to keep his mind steady; there are things to take care of. Never mind that a mere couple of weeks ago he was sitting on the edge of a bed with his shotgun in arm's length, mind numb, thinking that it had always been the ending that would come for him. Never mind that he's a thrum of living insects now, nerves prickling under his skin hot and sharp, panic never too far away. He leaves Kate Marsh safely locked in his cabin, and he doesn't want to be apart from the girl for too long (she would be Hickey's first target, he thinks, after what had happened).

But there are things to take care of. The Community Center is the hub of almost everything here, and he's heading that way, and then all of a sudden he's blinking widely at the sight of someone stumbling forwards, and he's rushing that way without thinking about it first; the person looks like they're in trouble, maybe injured (possibly drunk, with that swaying movement). Either way, it's his responsibility to—

—and then he's freezing in his tracks, and he doesn't have to think about that, either. He smells it seconds before he notices the flame, familiar and distinctive; nothing else smells that way. Nothing. Sharp and rich and smokey. (And in his mind, something else too: the sizzle of human flesh, the char of blackened skin, and what's left once looked like a person, but it's not breathing anymore. The men are screaming. There are flames everywhere, and they can't get out. He can't get out.)

Little's standing there a few feet away, staring at the sight of Raju and the flames staring to burn the wood of a nearby structure, and he doesn't understand any of it, certainly not that the flames seemed to come from... nowhere (but they had to come from somewhere, didn't they.) His throat is dry, and he feels like someone else is watching the display. It's not even an inferno, not like what it was back then, but it's the quickness. How it spreads, eats everything beneath it. He stares as if transfixed, but it's a horror that debilitates him.

He tries, at least, to speak.

"Mr. Raju—" But nothing else comes, his own words cut off with the name, and he only stares.

[load_aim_shoot]

The frozen feeling is still inside his limbs somewhere. Not fear, he’s too angry for fear, but he feels the memory of it, of the way it froze his trigger finger in the dream and the way that it froze him before, the night that those four men were killed. Trapped somewhere inside himself in the same way that he’s trapped now, watching this thing inside him eating up the wood underneath it, consuming something useful, uncontrolled and giving nothing back.

He’s useless here, everything he’s supposed to use is useless, and the anger is still twisting up his face when he looks over.

Lieutenant Little. The man who placed such value on self control and decency, standing here and seeing this.

But Little’s expression… The anger on Raju’s face flickers into confusion, then back into anger again as the wood gives a sharp, loud crack and he looks back toward the flames.

So close to the Community Hall, the first priority is making sure the fire doesn’t spread. But who knows what supplies are in the shed itself, close enough to the Hall to make for easy storage, and supplies are so dear in this place.

He looks around for something, snow-laden branches he could use to put out the fire, any way to get to them, anything. Any loss of the supplies there will be Raju’s fault. The fault of his incompetence, his lack of control. He picks up a handful of snow and throws it at the damn fire, and the fit of temper only seems to make it burn louder and grow.

“Lieutenant! Do something!” It’s an order, and it sounds frustrated. He waves his arm, gesturing the man backward. “Do something or get out of the way, damn it!”

[fidior]

He hears that split, and it could be wood, but in his mind it could be something else cracking instead — bone, some of the men were crushed in the chaos of the fire swelling around them. People become almost inhuman when they're desperate enough, afraid enough. Emotions like mercy and empathy and compassion seem to fizzle away so abruptly. They'll step on the man right in front of them, even if he's screaming and pleading for help. The fire wasn't the only thing that claimed lives that night.

Dimly, he's aware of the other man's movements. Tossing snow onto the flames, which is the rational thing to do, and at this point they're not even that dangerous yet; they could probably easily be snuffed out. But Little stands there staring, mind a thick bog that he can't quite trudge through, stays stuck in the middle of. There was a house here in Milton that burned too, and he couldn't move. Wynonna Earp had to pull him through it. If she hadn't, he would have died.

'Lieutenant!'

The word is so familiar that it's what catches hold of him more than the instructions themselves. Little blinks widely, eyes like saucers as he stares at that arm waving at him, and his mouth parts to release a strangely violent, shuddering gasp, as though to release some ghost pent-up inside of him. He staggers forwards towards the other officer, and— is it just his rotted, mutilated memory, or have the flames gotten bigger even after Raju threw snow at them?

Numbly, but at least still functional, Edward stoops down and starts scooping snow up into his gloved palms, throwing it at the crackling fire. His mind is a static buzz, but the flames aren't surrounding him, and so he can... he can do this. He has to do this. His heart is pounding so hard he thinks it might burst.

"What's caused this? Is there a source? Oil, or...!" Perhaps something was spilled?

[load_aim_shoot]

Raju looks over at the man — terrified, the way he's moving, the way that his face looks, a quieter part of Raju confirms what it'd thought last time, that Little isn't safe or predictable to have around in a crisis, but he's helping, isn't he — and then he looks to the fire, that question running through him. For a moment he only scowls at the fire and watches it burning, not moving to stop it, takes a breath that smells of burned wet wood and smoke.

He hadn't admitted it when that boy had wanted him to, had he? He doesn't remember. When it had first... happened. But smaller. Easier to smother it and forget about. Levi had insisted on magic again, on not... Raju doesn't remember. He hadn't written it down. Whatever it had been, it hadn't made sense. Raju had smothered the flames. And then he had left the Hall, and once he'd calmed down by the next morning he had come back. Stupid. He'd been stupid. If he had only admitted it then, maybe he would have stayed away sooner.

"Me!" he says savagely, angry, leans to pick up more snow without looking and ends up with old, broken pieces of wood in his hand. "The damn thing is coming from me!"

With the last word he hurls whatever he's got, broken wood and a half-handful of snow, and the fire crackles as it eats it up, and grows.

[fidior]

The inferno that had erupted in Milton House was.... not real. He knows that now — it was a memory. The house itself was a ghost, re-playing its occupants' final moments on repeat. No matter how real the flames and smoke felt, it was more or less another trick of this place.

This... could be another trick, he supposes, but Edward's in no position to analyse such things right now. No, that panic he hovers just on the cusp of triggers him into freeze mode, but he forces himself out of it into something that's more fight mode, even if every ounce of him wants to run away (flight mode....) But this is... not as bad as anything he's known before, this isn't a raging fire that's trapped people inside of a space they can't get out of. It's certainly imperative they stop it before it can spread, but... there's no danger of death. Of pain.

Still, his body remains tense and frightened as he scoops snow at the flames, wide eyes looking over at Raju as the other man goes still for a moment. Then comes the answer, and it's— it doesn't make any sense, and Little's staring at him. What...?

"What... do you mean?" His heart skips odd beats as he realises the flames are growing, and none of this should be happening. Raju doesn't have anything on his person that could be increasing this. Edward looks at him, stunned, unsure, eyes still too wide, head still spinning with numb dissociation. It all still feels like it's happening to someone else.

"You aren't doing this."

[load_aim_shoot]

Little still looks terrified. He shouldn’t be here. In Milton. He should be living a quiet life somewhere — in the wake of even what little Francis had shared about the fate of his crew, somewhere safely inland — and he shouldn’t be here specifically, where the only thing that Raju has to say will hurt him, the way the truths living inside Raju had hurt him before. But he’s here and Raju is here and so is the thing inside him eating at the side of that shed, and there’s no shielding even a man like Lieutenant Little from something true.

“There was a dream.” There’s too much inside him that wants to come out. He can’t explain this and stand still. He turns on his heel and starts to pace, hating the cold on his skin and the feeling of snow on his socks, much thicker than his own and scavenged from somewhere but growing damp now, hates the way that what should be little inconveniences become painful and dangerous here, and hating this terrible place that takes a pile of fanciful bullshit and makes him say it like it’s something true. He spits the words out of his mouth, not wanting to taste them. “Another one of those damned dreams. When that voice was talking to us during those auroras. She said something about helping, and then I… I… dreamed I was…”

He huffs out a breath, shakes his head, flings out a hand in a disgusted gesture toward the fire. It doesn’t exactly describe what he’d dreamt that night but he can’t, it’s too strange, it’s too much, and the effect it’s producing now probably gets the point across.

He feels a stinging on his heel, moves away from it with a grimace and a noise that’s as much startlement as pain, and sees fire behind him, tracing the path of his footsteps from inches away from the place he’s standing now to near to Little, where Raju had been pacing. At least now there’s something to warm his damned feet.

He grimaces, disgusted, up at the sky, huffs out a breath that billows in a frozen cloud around his face almost like smoke, gestures toward the new impossible thing. “Then where did that come from? Where did it come from when that happened inside just the other day?”

The other day, when Raju had insisted it must have been a stray ember, something caught on him from the fireplace. He’d been a damned idiot.

“Who the hell is doing all of it, then?” he demands, voice raised even louder over the sound of the flames. “Tell me.”

[fidior]

A dream. Little keeps staring at him — eyes cutting back to the flames back and forth a few times, but eventually settling on Raju as he listens; this is still... an emergency, but not as much of one as worse things. No one is being hurt. No one will die. He is not in pain (apart from the relentless thudding of his own heart, a trapped beast in a cage, spasming with painful beats that have him giving sharp exhales of breath. He tries to calm it down as he stands there and listens, mouth slightly agape.)

A dream. He's known such dreams, here, the way they all have — seen things, heard things, in those dreams. He knows something... unnatural is at work in this place, even if he cannot explain it. It's killed people here; it will continue killing them. Just as the creature out on the ice has. He's helpless to do anything to stop it— but he forces his thoughts away from that, from the fresh loss of those poor four men, and to what Raju is saying to him now.

He means to say that this is connected to one of those dreams? That he can do this as a result? Little's mouth opens and then closes again, and once again, everything in him wants to flinch back from the rise of this man's anger as his voice progressively rises, but now his wide eyes are staring down at the fire that had startled him, a line of it where he'd just been standing... following him.

There's a soft gasp, another painful hitch of breath, and he doesn't understand, but it's happening.

"Please, it's going to be all right—" He's holding up a hand, and maybe it's meant to placate, or maybe it's some attempt at reassurance. A mixture of both, but he addresses the man directly, and it helps pull him out of his own dizzy haze, into the reality of this situation. This man is in.. distress, and he has to help. Help him, help this situation; he has to.

"You're... you're right. I see it now. The flames... they seem connected to you. This place must be.... affecting you."

He's been victim to that before, hasn't he? The Voice that whispered in his ear for weeks and weeks... the shadowed twin that followed him around.

"It's all right," he says again, even if he doesn't think that any of it is. "We'll figure this out. There must be a reason why it's happened to you. And a way to stop it."

[load_aim_shoot]

A way to stop it. For a moment there's something vulnerable in Raju's eyes, in a twitching at the corners of his mouth, and as he breathes out the set of his jaw hardens, expression not quite hardening with it. It's in the way Little is breathing. The fear, the obvious fear. The effort it takes him to push out the words. Raju's seen it this whole time and been too angry for it, too steeped in failure and lack of control, and still he gets an offer to help him and please and it's going to be all right.

"Why are you so—" His voice is sharp, and sharply cut off. He covers his face, his eyes, for a moment and turns away, paces a couple steps, turns and paces back with his hands dragging down to cover his mouth. Raju needs to take care of this so that this man and his fear don't have to be involved. Do something for him. If he isn't going to do something human and kind for this man's fear, he can do something useful. Raju's the one who created this problem anyway, when he could have admitted that it was a problem and stayed in the Community Hall close to everyone else instead.

His hands fall to curl back into fists at his sides. "Wait for that and I'm going to burn all the damn supplies in there because I can't control a damned thing about it. It could have been worse! This could have been inside there!"

He flings a hand toward the doors of the Hall. It did happen in there. Not this badly. But it could have, and that would have been his fault, too. His breath in smells like smoke. "There's enough time before the fire gets to the door. I'll get everything out. You can go, I'll... take a walk or something, I don't know. I'll leave. You don't have to..."

He shakes his head, frustrated with all of it, waves a hand in the air to wave whatever words that he should use for Little's fear and his kindness away. "Any of this," he says and starts striding forward, toward the shed. Take care of it. If he can't control himself at all, at least do what else needs doing.

for Francis Crozier

[load_aim_shoot]

Life in Milton, as it tends to, vacillates wildly between infuriatingly pointless, dead boring, and damned awful. The nightmare wouldn't have mattered, but finding somewhere else to sleep afterward had put him in some kind of mood that the town meeting the day after hadn't done anything to rid him of. They're all of them still stuck in place here, waiting, unable to fight a goddamned thing.

Sewing isn't enough. Writing isn't enough. Finding firewood isn't enough. He's wary of spending too much time indoors feeling this way, wary of the fire that should only mean a welcome warmth but which does nothing but make life in this place worse. He doesn't know what to do about anything. But there is one thing Raju could do, if he finds the man he's looking for at home.

No one's gone through Francis' collapsed ice hut yet. What must be his things are still sitting underneath. Raju should have done it earlier. He can't carry everything, so he prioritises what might be needed most: a few of the furs, the knife. A little of the meat. It still smells edible, which must be thanks to the cold, but he trusts Francis to know if it isn't.

Francis will still be staying, probably, in the cabin that they'd run to the night the hut had collapsed. Raju stops in front of it, considering the armful occupying his hands for a moment. Then he knocks with his elbow. Doing something actually useful, that's what he needs. And it would be good to see how Francis is doing, considering the... similarities. A creature that can't be explained, hunting. He'd seemed alright at that meeting, so that's something. If nothing else, Francis will probably need the furs.

[goingtobeunwell]

Oddly enough, Crozier’s thoughts had been straying to Raju often as of late, and not just because he’d made some good points at the town hall. The feeling of unburdening himself that quiet evening lingers, the relief and then the open grief.

When he is in the cabin - he’s been busy as of late given…everything - his focus has been on patching the holes in the walls and cleaning out the years of dust and dirt and cobwebs. There are buckets of meltwater by the fire, old rags that have clearly already been put to use hanging out to dry, a makeshift system for tidiness that would likely make Jopson want to tear his hair out.

He’s in the midst of a repair when there’s a knock, and he figured it’s either Raju or someone who had stumbled over this new location completely by accident. He answers the door with a nail between his lips and a small hammer in his hand.

“Ah, Raju! Come in, come in!”

[load_aim_shoot]

Raju's smile is small, but it's real. He looks over the nail, the hammer, looks over the cabin as he follows Francis inside. It's a little different from what he remembers seeing in the sunlight that morning, after the long night of only looking over the place with a torch. It still wouldn't pass inspection back at the barracks, but the rooms Raju had been renting all that time ago back in Delhi wouldn't have either and the cabin is cleaner than it was, with rags drying by the fire, buckets of snow melting. It's clear Francis has settled in here, instead of moving from one abandoned cabin to the other like Raju thinks he himself is going to keep doing. But that ice hut was close by, wasn't it? Francis is likely used to living alone.

"These are from your, ah..." What to call it? Calling it an icebox seems rude, given Francis must have liked it well enough to sleep there. "That last house, under the ice. I should have gone back for your things sooner, I can go back for the rest in a moment. Should I put these...?"

He turns, looking around for a likely place. Furs by the fire, maybe; it seems like the most sensible place to sleep.

[goingtobeunwell]

Crozier’s expression softens; Raju actually dug through the remains of his home to retrieve his very limited possessions. Granted, it was probably just busywork, he understands the need to keep oneself occupied, but it was a thoughtful thing to do nonetheless. His fingers must be freezing though.

He plucks the nail from between his lips and sets it down along with the hammer. “Near the fireplace, but avoid the brickwork. I don’t feel like setting a fire today.” He adds with a little grin, “it’s called an iglu, by the way.”

[load_aim_shoot]

"Mm? Oh." Raju looks back from where he's started toward the fireplace, his smile in response again a small one, this time more polite. Another day maybe he'd ask after that, the evidence of Francis' travels, things he's seen that Raju never will and everything that he'd learned there. Today, Raju doesn't quite have the heart for it. He'd rather pay attention to the friend alive and well in front of him than anything impossible to reach and far away. "Your iglu, then. You're looking very well today; your ribs are healing up alright?"

That is, he's looking cheerful. Raju watches him for a moment more and then kneels, setting the furs down a couple feet away from the fire and setting the knife over to one side, picking out the meat. The gesture reveals the newer burned spots over the blanket Raju's wearing as he sets down what had been in front of them, but he isn't quite thinking about it. Then again, he's thinking, the last time we saw one another Francis hadn't had much worth being cheerful about, had he? Today, apparently, he does. Just now it's hard to imagine why anyone would, but still, it's nice to see.

[goingtobeunwell]

The cheer is from being semi-mobile and having gotten a halfway decent conversation from the most of the people from Milton. It's very small consolation for the hell that they've been having to live. And his friend's company, of course. A friend's company makes all the difference in mood.

Crozier shuts and bolts the cabin door out of an abundance of caution, then very gingerly lowers himself onto the floor beside the furs to look for his amulet. "Healing, but tender still. Harry set me in plaster to keep me from overdoing it." He gives a little knock to the lower portion of his chest, a soft 'thump' heard underneath his tunic.

His fingers brush against the amulet, carefully secreted away in the lining of his parka, and he reaches for the knife to retrieve it. The burns on his friend's blanket are new, he would know from all those hours he spent wearing it, almost like he stayed too close to a hearth.

"Thank you for digging out my things. I trust you didn't let your fingers freeze."

[load_aim_shoot]

Harry. It's a wonder that Francis can speak about him so casually. Raju can't imagine it, but it isn't something that he's ever going to ask. The surgeon helped, is the important thing; Raju watches Francis knock at his chest with a little satisfaction, then watches him take a knife to the coat that Raju's just retrieved with curiosity.

"No, your mittens are just as warm as you said they would be," Raju says, the ghost of a smile drifting across his face at the memory as he leans over, tilting his head to try and get a better view of what Francis' hands are up to. One of his hands, reminded, rises to rub itself over his other hand's fingers. "If I forget to put them on again after picking up something, that's my own fault. What is it you're doing there?"

[goingtobeunwell]

“Don’t lose your fingers due to forgetfulness,” he warns, almost friendly in the gentle chastising despite the knife in his hand. He rips at the lining and finds the little amulet in the shape of a ship’s hull, sitting back with a satisfied nod.

“The Netsilik cover themselves in protective talismans. A dear friend carved this one for me; I just wanted to lay eyes on it.”

for Billy

[load_aim_shoot]

The destruction he'd left behind after the night of that aurora is practically fresh, at least in places. The bushes and trees are still charred all over, the ones still standing, but the ground that had been slush and water and scorched earth is all covered now in new, fresh snow. The things that had been growing, at least, are a good reminder.

He paces back and forth over his own footsteps. His hands are bare, for fear of burning the valuable mittens by accident, and he rubs his palms over and around one another. He's scowling. At least the scorch marks on the blanket he's remembered to wear this time match parts of the landscape, here.

Focus. He's by himself out here in the middle of all this for a reason. He has to figure it out. He talks a little to himself, jaw tight, frustrated: "There has to be a way."

[notarat]

It's not really as if he expects to find anyone out here. It's likely that Billy was just going a little out of the way to gather firewood today, especially when there's less of it near the village itself with their growing numbers. If he expected to run into anything, it'd be a wild animal, not...

.. well, this. He hears Raju before he spots the man, but since he recognizes the voice, Billy does start to head in the direction of its source, wondering why Raju would be saying something like that out here.

He blinks in surprise when he spots the scene. The scorch marks and all the other signs of fire are very recognizable to someone who has had to deal with the same thing a lot lately, making some puzzle pieces click into place in Billy's mind very quickly here.

"Mr. Raju?" His voice isn't too loud. It's calm, neutral, the way Billy is used to speaking - though he's doing it purposefully right now, not wanting to startle the other man if he is potentially already worked up. Even Raju's precious blanket has the scorchmarks on it.. "Are you alright?"

[load_aim_shoot]

Raju’s smile is tight, polite. His eyes flicker over William, assessing as he thinks of the things that Francis has told him since he’s last talked to this man — mostly about himself, but enough about the rest of that last voyage to outline the shape of his crew’s horror.

He turns away as if to look over the landscape again before his glance tries to linger, tucking his hands into the crooks of his elbows. The question of whether or not he’s talking to a dead man is too much on top of the destruction in front of him and the problem of how to contain it, and it’s a topic he and William have already covered when Raju’d been trying harder not to wonder about the nature of this impossible place, and he’s promised Francis that he won’t tell what he’s learned from him anyway. He needs to focus on the problems in front of him. Anything else looming behind the illusion of a quiet, bizarre little town in Canada can wait until it jumps out and bites him.

“William. I’m alright. Just—“ He stops to sigh and in that pause something else occurs to him. He looks back toward William, interrupting himself. Focusing on the right problem is one thing, but addressing someone properly is another. “Is it William? Or Mr. Gibson? Did I ever ask?”

[notarat]

The surprise definitely remains on his face when that question comes up. It's not really anyone here really asked him, most people just assuming one way or another. It makes a little more sense when Billy places it within the context of Raju having been surprisingly friendly before, at least.

".. Either is fine," he decides on after a moment of thought. Sure, he isn't really used to being on a first name basis with most people, but something about it being William rather than Billy makes it feel easier. The intimacy of using a first name feels much more embedded within the latter, considering it's what Cornelius uses with him. "I understand that we are dealing with many cultural differences due to the nature of this place. I'm fine with whichever you feel more comfortable with, Mr. Raju."

And, hey, it helps that Billy kind of likes Raju. With someone who's ruder he definitely would have asked for more formality.

"We have to adapt to the places we find ourselves in."

[load_aim_shoot]

Raju huffs out a soft breath, smiles a little. "William. You should just call me Raju, then," he says, the smile starting to fade as Raju looks away again, heavy thoughts weighing other considerations down already. "You..."

He might as well say it to someone, if he's going to start admitting it. That he can do these things— that he should be able to do these things but is done unto instead, because it isn't under his control. But William is... normal. A normal man, who used to live a normal life. The abnormal is harder to speak about, set against that.

"You've seen... burn marks around the town, haven't you? Odd ones, odd placement, odd patterns. I have, here and there. Not just these." He makes a quick gesture at the remains of trees and bushes at which he's been staring and then looks back at William, frowning. He has seen a few that must have come from other people, too, so it isn't even a lie. That will be enough to start with, won't it? Ease into things.

[notarat]

There's a moment of quiet. It's always hard to tell what exactly Billy is thinking about when his default facial expression is so withdrawn and neutral. It could be that he's thinking about the other offering a more familiar form of address, one he'll have to get used to when Billy is so used to hiding himself behind the veil of formality. It could be that he's thinking about how many of the burn marks he's seen across town.

.. or maybe it's all that, and also something else entirely, namely--

"You can create fire," he says. So calmly. Like he's right there, one step ahead of Raju in this conversation.

Granted, the only reason it's possible for him to reach that conclusion is since the sight of all this is so familiar to him, and it also explains what Raju must have been doing out here, surrounded by all these obvious signs of fire. Signs that are even visible on that blanket.

"I understand, Mis--" Okay. Yeah. He definitely has to get used to that. The man looks vaguely shy or embarrassed as he corrects himself, the name almost awkward out of his mouth without the title attached to it. ".. Raju."

There, he did it...

"I have found myself able to do the same thing."

[load_aim_shoot]

William guesses it right away, and Raju's eyes widen. It isn't the first time he's found himself off balance with this man, expecting to have to push through and build a case only to have agreement set easily just like that in front of him. It seems like a bigger leap to make this time, creating fire out of nowhere being a little further of a reach than knowing whether or not you yourself are dead, until—

It almost sounds odd in how odd it doesn't sound. Almost casual, in the way William puts almost more effort into leaving the honorific off of Raju's name than saying the impossible thing that he does after. Raju realises he hasn't replied yet when he realises that his mouth is open to, when he feels the air sharp and cold inside his throat, and moves to tug the part of the blanket around his neck so it's farther up over the bottom of his face before tucking his hands tightly under his arms again. He doesn't know exactly what it would take to make what had happened to his feet, kneeling just over there barefoot for so long under the aurora, to happen to his face too, but he doesn't really want to find out. Then he takes a slow breath, pushes it out quickly, and meets William's eyes.

"You..." Ask. Just ask, damn it. It's important, no matter the mistakes Raju has to admit to to do it, or the things he has to learn. The questions come out sharp and quick with how much he needs to know them. "How does it happen? You haven't lost control of it yet?"

cw: description of a wound/scar

[notarat]

He shakes his head.

The next moment he sticks out his hand. It's open, with the palm of his hand turned upwards. There's a ring on his finger, but that's not what he's drawing attention towards. It's likely that he means to show off the odd scar on the palm of his hand. It's less grotesque than it was right after it appeared, but it's still visibly there - something akin to a cut right across the palm of Billy's hand, but seemingly seared close by a burn that still partially remains on the skin.

"This happened outside of my control," he says. He's speaking a little bit more slowly than the usual. Mostly because he can see that Raju is emotional, that he's only barely holding some stuff back, and Billy knows what happens when you can't hold back your emotions anymore when you have their power.

He has to assume it works the same way for Raju as it does for him, anyway. So it's even more important that Billy stays calm here, that he can hopefully drag the other along into the same mood that way if he just keeps it up well enough.

"That is how I discovered it. I got hurt, I panicked over it, and.. that was when the flames first appeared."

It's not the best news, though, and it's why he withdraws his hand, looking to Raju's face to instead direct his attention upward. "But that is also how I figured out how to gain at least some control over it."