singillatim | (closed)

Entry tags:

(closed)

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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

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.

Edited 2024-03-18 20:02 (UTC)

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!”

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?

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.

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."

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.”

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."

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.

Men are frightening when they're frightened. Little's seen it too many times to ever forget now; it's a concept burned into him. Men pushed to their limits, men in pain, men starving, desperate, terrified. They can become something that doesn't feel very much like men anymore, but rather something animal-like.

It's a strange, horrifying, unnatural thing to witness, and he has. A human with human eyes, and an animal's desperation. Raju is... maybe close to that now, maybe tipping closer and closer to it, or at least towards Little's memory of it, and maybe it's foolish of him to stay with this man who is frightened and confused and angry and the cause of literal fire, destruction. But maybe this time he can actually help stop this. Do for him what couldn't be done for John Morfin, suffering from the torment of scurvy and poisoning, begging for death. Do what couldn't be done for any of those men.

Help him.

Even as listening to that flurry of heated words makes him want to shrink back. Little does, but not physically, not taking any step backwards — it's only his eyes that flinch. And only at first, because the more that Raju spills, the more that anger exhausts into something that's frustration, and.... he's offering to get everything out himself, telling Little he should go, that he'll take a walk after, handle it on his own. He's worried about hurting people. 'It could have been worse, this could have been inside there'

"Officer, please— wait." The title is a way to try and find him, reach him — it works for Little, sometimes when nothing else can. That, and the step forwards that he takes towards Raju, closing more of that distance despite the frightened thudding of his own heart. Not all of it is for himself now, he realises, because the mental image of Raju engulfed in flame and screaming suddenly won't leave his head.

"Being inside of an enclosed space... you, most especially, could be harmed by it." The flames had erupted at his own feet. What if they catch onto him in there? Little's words pick up in pace, rushed, nodding quickly. There isn't any time to waste.

And for a moment, some of that other part of himself comes out. A lift of volume and a shift of tone, the richness of his voice shaped into a command — not meant to dominate, but to guide. And there's a hardening to his eyes, a resolve; he won't easily back down against any protests.

"Let me go in! I'll start throwing supplies out. You keep trying to extinguish the flames with snow."

Raju lets out a harsh breath, shakes his head. "You're not any less flammable than I am," he points out, not going toward the shed any more but sounding frustrated, looking impatient. His weight shifts, wanting to go solve the problem even if he can't solve it, even if the problem isn't coming from a place that he can take a hold of with his hands and do something about. He'd tried throwing snow. They both had. It hadn't helped at all.

Raju clenches his fists, feeling the cold of the air against one side of him and the warmth of the flames pushing against the other. His gaze moves over to them, jaw tight. They aren't growing. He doesn't know why. What matters is that he doesn't have the control to kill them completely, a failure that Raju doesn't know how to solve, but it gives them time to argue this out. He can see it in Little now, that he's determined to argue about it. Damned inconvenient.

"And I'm the one who started this. I can't stop it. But I can do something. You don't need to be here. You don't even want to be here. Do you?" It's a demand, and Raju's voice hardens as he asks it. "Can you tell me that you do?"

Little, ever-aware of those flames, has also noticed that they don't seem to be growing anymore. He can only think (hope) that perhaps there's a lull in their spread, that they haven't as much material to catch onto and feed off of. It might not last; he needs to head in, now.

But Raju argues with the idea, and Little looks at him, stares. The question snags him like a hook, wrenching him painfully. This man has forced him to look at such difficult questions before; he is no stranger to it.

"What I want does not matter. Clearly, this is something horrific which has been done to you, and I will not leave you to suffer it alone."

He can't lie, can't claim that he wants to be there — no, not when everything in him wants to run away. But he won't, not now, not this time. His fingers curl into palms, fists balling, not aggressively, only tense. It's a frustration he fiercely internalises, as always, but it shows in his eyes — just as hard as the other man's, dark and unflinching. His jaw tightens, muscles tense.

"The flames don't seem to be spreading. Now is my chance." Little's eyes flit to the shed before snapping back to Raju's, and they don't let go. There's a desperation there through everything else, just as hard and pressing. "Please."

Refusing to leave — frustrating just now, the compassion, an unearned thing that does nothing but hurt the man offering it — along with the one piece of reasoning that he's certain they both understand only coming up now, just in time to make Little prioritise that unearned compassion over himself, all of that is one thing. But being asked to let someone else take a risk for him, a risk that has nothing to do with them, to solve a problem Raju caused—

Little's eyes lock onto his, desperate, and the look in Raju's own eyes hardens even more. He blows out a stubborn breath and the flames flicker and grow a little for a moment with it and he doesn't notice. "Your chance? Why? Why do you need to do this? You didn't have anything to do with it!"

Raju may not notice it, but Little does — and his body flinches, a jolt that he can't control in the sudden shift of that flame, the flickering swell of it as though something has breathed a burst of fresh life upon it. His eyes widen again and snap over to the shed, staring, tensing, the other man's heated words lingering in the air between them —

....Could it possibly be? It would be impossible, but.... what about any of this isn't? He said the fire was coming from himself, that he was making it happen, and Little saw evidence of that for himself; could it be that.....

"Sir— Wait!" He holds up a hand to Raju, eyes not leaving the shed, his breathing heavy.

"Your.... voice, might it be connected to it?" He quickly turns his head to Raju again as the volume of his own voice lowers, something forcibly calmed, though there's still a frantic edge to it as he looks to the other man. Maybe not his voice itself, but—

"Your demeanour...! You must calm!"

The flinch and the direction the lieutenant's gaze snaps to makes Raju frown and look in that direction too but he doesn't see anything new, the same damn thing, his own damn fault, his lack of control. He frowns at Little when Little goes on.

"My voice?" Raju's voice is disbelieving, frustrated, his first impulse now to think this man is too afraid, he's wasting time. "I wasn't saying anything when this started, I was inside there, I was sleeping—"

The hand he's flung out toward the Community Hall drops, slowly. His mouth doesn't quite close. His eyes widen.

"I was..." he goes on after a moment, sounding more halting and stricken but saying this too out loud anyway for the benefit of Little, who figured it out before him, so who might be thinking more clearly. "I was dreaming."

His father. And the creature. Everyone he grew up with, loved, the ones who hadn't died running away and counting on them to do something, counting on his father, and his father counting on him but the feeling of the trigger against a finger that wouldn't move, and the way the creature had frozen him, had frozen everyone else inside the Hall around him inside their own fear while outside those men were dying. Raju's demeanour.

Raju's breath shakes, and the flames behind him quiver with it. He's looking toward the Hall still, thinking about the bed inside it where he'd been asleep.

"How did you know?" he demands, gaze snapping to Little again. "What—"

He falters. He breathes hard once, twice. He has to know. He has to understand. "My voice. What was it about my voice?"

Edward watches the other man work through something, wrapped in thoughts, memories — dreaming, he says.

It happened when he was dreaming. It's a... frightful thought, to be sure, that such a thing could occur outside of his control, when he's asleep, unaware. It could be an enormous danger, this hazardous, unknown thing.

(Edward thinks of Kieren Walker, a young man no older than the ship's boys, young and wide-eyed and fresh to so many things. There's something wrong with him, some dark thing that can make him lose control. Edward's never seen it for himself, not like this, but he's seen Kieren plead to be chained like a beast and guarded through the night, terrified to hurt anyone.)

It isn't his fault, as this isn't Raju's fault. And no man deserves to be treated like an animal. So Little doesn't, maintains the dignity of speaking to him like a fellow man, holding eye contact when Raju's gaze jolts back to him, even if his own heart shudders.

"Angry. When you were angry. Your voice— loud, upset. It grew."

What is he implying, in these words? That it's connected to his... spirit? His behaviour? His feelings? Edward swallows, words flowing in more of a rush.

"Perhaps it's connected to— to you. Perhaps— Try to control it...! Try to make it soften. With your voice. With your heart."

Little seems just as disturbed as Raju is, his words even more halting and difficult, pushed out of him. It doesn't seem right, that he shouldn't just walk away. But why would he, with the fire still alive behind them? Raju is dangerous now, and not to himself. Dangerous in who he is, if Little's idea is right.

And it is. Raju knows that, hearing it now out loud. He knows it in the same way he knows the heat of the flames behind him.

Raju's never met a problem that can't be beaten, that he can't meet head-on and push through. Softening for it is never something it's occurred to him to do. It would have been stupid, giving up, giving in, to do anything but the opposite. And the only way to meet this one and make the people around him safe is to soften himself, now. Raju stares at Little, looking dismayed, helpless.

He looks toward the fire again, eyes wide. He paces with long, quick steps in one direction, then the other. He stops and takes a deep, harsh breath, hands at his sides curling into fists and uncurling and curling up again. He takes another breath, deep, and holds it. A piece of wood crumbles underneath the fire and drops, heavy and charred, onto the snow. Raju's gaze snaps to it, his held breath making it out of him in a gust that flutters the edges of the flames and then he looks at Little, mouth open to say—

Nothing. He can't say it. Can't say I can't like he's giving up on it. He has to do it. He can't say help because it has to be him who does it, he has to figure it out. And the man in front of him is afraid, already afraid, and counting on Raju to do what has to be done to make that fear go away. The fire behind him grows a few inches larger in every direction over the wood. He stares, eyes wide, at the man in front of him. He has to figure it out.

There was a time, not truly so long ago now, that Edward sat across from this man and spoke of his concerns, of knowing what it is like when men become desperate. What they can be capable of.

To see the wild, lost horror of a desperate (and dangerous) man makes everything within Edward Little frightened, and yet — when Raju casts those eyes once more to him as though at a loss, something of them catches hold of the first lieutenant and refuses to let go. Or perhaps it's more that he couldn't look away even if he actively tried.

Perhaps it's that he doesn't want to actively try. Perhaps it's that he has been that desperate man — once, then twice, then more times than he can actually count now. He has been.... terrified, and angry, and confused, and lost. He has felt as though everything around him is crumbling inwards, that nothing he says or does can help the upset surging through his veins. Helpless. It's helplessness, which is perhaps worse than anything.

"Raju." No title now. Only him. Edward steps closer, close enough that he could reach out and touch the other man. He doesn't, not just yet — not wanting to risk spooking him, but he stays close. It mattered, when he could see nothing else but his own horror in the face of the rising flames of Milton House, and Wynonna Earp stayed close to him.

"It's all right. You're going to be all right. All you must do is breathe — like I am now." And then it was Kate Marsh showing him how to breathe when he had just come in from the storm and was close to panicking, realising he couldn't feel his fingers and toes, terrified that parts of him would have to be cut off. She'd placed her hand to his chest, she'd helped him.

Edward places one of his palms to his own chest now, so that the slow movements of his lungs can be seen, a rise and fall. Certainly, his own heart is pounding, but he wills himself as much as the other man. Eyes wide, not leaving Raju's equally wide pair, he keeps breathing, slow, deliberate. In, breath held for several long moments (ignoring, as obstinately as he can, the sharp crackle and pop of flames so close by) and then out. Maybe this will do nothing to stop the flames, but it will help him calm. Help him not to feel so helpless.

And maybe Raju has to be the one to figure it out, but Little will stay with him through it.

Raju's eyes dart to Little's hand, back and forth over the movement of it like even his gaze can't stand to stay still, then back up to Little's face. Raju's jaw tightens. A part of him wants to be insulted, or frustrated, at the simplicity of being told to focus on breathing. He knows how to breathe. And he knows how to breathe to calm himself down.

But he isn't doing it, is he? He tried to do it and then didn't. Couldn't, on his own. And now this man is doing it instead. Afraid, obviously afraid, but staying and doing what Raju can't anyway. His hands curl up into fists again, and he keeps them that way for the sensation of the tips of his fingers pressing hard against his palm. Watching Little's hand moving and trying to time his breaths is something, too, something else to focus on that isn't his own mind. The inside of him would burn away any calming rhythm that tried to grow there, but coming from outside him makes it easier to follow.

He forces his gaze to stay still where it is. His breaths are harsh in his nose, and when he lets the air out of his mouth the warmth of the breath frozen in the air gusts out from his lips like smoke and he has to close his mouth again, close his eyes and then force them back open, focus on the tight pressure of his hands, his fingers pressing into his palms, the movement of Little's hand over his own chest. Raju's breaths aren't steady enough, not slow enough, but he keeps his focus narrowed to that part of him anyway. The flames are crackling over the wood behind him. The cold is like little knives over the backs of his hands and over his face and soaking into his socks and he hates it, almost more than he hates the uncontrolled heat of the flames pressing against the other side of him, and he isn't focusing on breathing properly anymore.

His jaw tightens. He focuses. He stands with his posture tight as a bowstring about to let its arrow loose and allows himself to think of nothing but the movement of the hand on the chest in front of him and the way the air feels inside his nose, his throat, his lungs, and eventually his breaths are steady in the way that they're supposed to be, if just a little too quick. When Raju realises that, he realises the noise of the flames is quieter, too, and glances back to see—

—quiet, but not gone. When he looks back at Little his eyes are wide again. "It isn't working," he demands. "Not well enough."

But saying that at Little isn't right, is it? Raju lets his breath out, closes his eyes, pulls breath in again and opens them. "I'm sorry, it isn't— It's not your—"

He looks away from the movement of the other man's hand to look at the flames again, smaller, taking up less area over the charred wood, but not gone yet. His breaths are heavy in his chest and he watches the flames with anger flickering over his face, dismay, anger again. "I can do better than this."

It seems to do— something, and it's both amazing and unnerving to witness for himself; even if the flame doesn't die, it quiets, even if only a little. It truly is connected to this man. It's a horrible thought, to be tethered to something so brutal and unrelenting as fire (it isn't only horrible, and some part of him must know that — fire, a source of warmth, of life, an essential part of survival in this cold place — but the memory of how sizzling black flesh smells and the wailing screams of his men are still too fresh for him to be able to see this inferno as anything other than a terror.)

But Raju is, somehow. Truly connected to this event.

He stares to the shed as he continues to breathe slowly and with intention, and then he's staring to Raju as the other man's wide eyes find him. 'It isn't working. Not well enough.'

But he's trying, and it's doing something, and the flashes of dread and horror and adrenaline that keep licking at Little like the flames themselves fizzle towards something that's once again encouraging instead; he shakes his head.

"It's all right. You've done something. Perhaps I can finish it now—"

Quickly, stooping for more handfuls of snow, he returns to the task before of trying to snuff out the flame, and trying to ignore the way getting closer makes his heart pump too hot, too fast. Before, it was an impossible attempt, working against what he didn't realise was Raju's own anger, or upset, fueling it all. But now.... Assuming that Raju doesn't fall to those biting emotions again, at least.... Little's eyes snap back to the other man as he works, nodding again.

"You've done well to ease it as much as you have. You should take a moment to rest now, gather your strength. I'll finish this."

He doubts Raju will relent so easily, but it's worth a try... And then, as he continues working, finds a question.

"Does it... cause you any physical pain? This... connection?"

You've done well seems strange, a bizarre mismatch with reality. It isn't done well, it isn't done.

Optimism isn't the word, exactly, for Raju's outlook. He doesn't believe fate has bound everything in his life to always go awfully, he believes deep down inside him and always has that things are, eventually, going to start going well, that any event that he's a part of will eventually be made to turn his way. But it's an optimism centred not around some kind of friendly, naturally helpful universe, but around himself. Things will get better than they are, because Raju will refuse to stop until they have. There are people who need him to believe that that's true, that to push and push and push will see him coming out the other side with the world in the shape those people all counting on him so badly need it to be, and so he believes it. But here's there's this thing coming from him, this destructive thing, and the frightened, determinedly brave man in front of him is declaring that he can control it, can put it away where Raju can't, where Raju should have been able to, and failed to, is failing to—

The wood pops under the fire and Raju squeezes his eyes shut again with a thick noise making it out from the base of his throat, he tightens his fists, he focuses fiercely on the awful, cold air freezing the inside of his nose, the way it feels moving down his throat, on the feeling of his chest moving, his lungs inflating, and then pushing the air back out. The air is cold and painful when it comes inside him, and almost warm as it moves out. For a moment that's all there is. It's all he'll allow the world to be.

Some moments of that and the sharp edge of tension inside him eases. The tight line of his shoulders eases with it, and his fists loosen. His breaths come a little more slowly again. He leaves his eyes closed, trying not to think about the sound of the flames or the sound of whatever Little is doing with them while Raju stands useless here, while there's nothing he can do but stand useless in case even looking at the damn thing makes it worse, trying to think only about the question.

"I..." His brow furrows. It's hard to tell. There's never been much point in peering inside himself this way, and the muscles for reaching in that direction aren't developed enough for very precise work. Does this hurt? "I don't... think so. I feel..."

There's his failure, which it doesn't do to think about. Push it aside and keep going. Look past it. There's another man here, strong willed enough to overcome his own fear and failings, stepping forward where Raju can't. It's a breath of cool air winding itself around the heat raging in the rest of him. Rest now, gather your strength. I'll finish this. There's something about that, when Raju tries to figure out how he feels. Something. He can't find the words to say just what.

"Angry? I don't know. There's no pain." He opens his eyes, pulls his gaze away from the fire before he can do more than glance at it. He pulls his gaze down, and it lands on his feet.

"Except from this bloody snow," he mutters, sounding almost embarrassed, and it is embarrassing to be complaining about something like that now. But it's focusing on this or focusing on the thing that he's failing to control, and it does hurt, damn it, being cold this way. He'd run outside only thinking of keeping the flames from spreading inside where the people were sleeping, and he'd forgotten his shoes.

"And the cold," he goes on, shifting his weight while he focuses on the sharp, stinging cold under his feet, murmuring while the heat within and without him begins to dim. "It's worse like this, in the dark. Why are you out in it to be helping at all?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(closed)

for Edward Little (CW hint at child soldier stuff)

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

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