singillatim | (closed)

Invaded their home, murdered their people. He'll likely never have all the pieces that make the complete picture of this captain's last, doomed journey, but this is another. The picture is a terrible one, but it makes sense. It's a tale of consequences.

He's thinking it as he takes the talisman. Consequences, and a life after. Enough of a life to have a dear friend in it, anyway, who would make something like this. "They gave it to you before they left, then?" Raju revises his guess, rubbing his thumb slowly along the same ridges that Francis had. "Then why hide it? Was it not proper for you to have it? For pure sentiment I'd expect you to be wearing it, unless there was a reason not to."

"She," he says softly. "Silna."

He sits back to sort through the rest of the furs, work always having a kind of steadying effect when it comes to tearing his own heart out.

"She saved me. She brought me to her people, knowing she would be turned away for losing something precious to them."

He's still livid about Silna's fate. It wasn't her fault two ships full of white sailors killed the creature, but he couldn't argue with the Netsilik. It was their way. She lost the tuunbaq, he'd lost his men, they both lived in exile.

"Pure sentiment. All we ever did was take and take and take from the Netsilik, and all I ever did was cause harm, and yet she was still so kind and selfish." He pauses briefly and then continues sorting through the semi-thawing meat. "Have you ever known someone like that?"

Raju opens his mouth to say yes, but— people aren't, not in the way that Francis is asking. Even the most doting grandmother he remembers back at home is, somewhere in her, angry. Even Akhtar had sometimes gotten this... this expression on his face, only for a split second, whenever they'd crossed a checkpoint and had to present themselves to the guards. Something like betrayal, or disgust, or rage. It's the only time he'd ever seen the soft, friendly face looking that way. No one had ever saluted Raju after that first time, he'd done what he could to take care of that problem, but it'd been something that he'd thought about every time. Whether it would be better to leave once his work was finished in the city proper and never come back than to see that expression turned on him, once his friend knew.

"Not from anyone who took from them like that." He looks down at the talisman in his hand. Francis' hands are still busy, and he doesn't seem ready to take it back yet; Raju can keep it safe until then. "Maybe she didn't see you that way."

"Maybe she was better than me. Maybe she wasn't, but didn't choose to act on those nagging little demons that the rest of us acquiesce to and beg to leave us be." Maybe she was just more patient and better at hiding her disdain.

"What happened to your blanket? Sit too close to a fire?"

Raju's thinking about a woman he never knew, living in a place that he'll never be, and the question takes him by surprise. He looks down, makes a bit of a face. He hadn't been able to wrap the thing well enough to hide the burns, and doesn't care for being reminded; he'd used to be so well put together, before. Every part of him neat and clean and well made. It hadn't been easy, but it'd been important.

And the burns invite questions.

But if anyone would be safe enough to talk to about it... Raju looks over Francis, expression considering with an edge of worry. Francis won't react like the boy, Levi, calling him to task for not acknowledging it the moment it'd happened. And there'd been that part of Francis' story, the creature he couldn't explain, admitted that he couldn't explain, without trying to. A man like that, surely, won't say something like magic and expect Raju to accept it.

Raju's thumb starts a quick tapping. He realises what it's tapping is the talisman he's been handed, too valuable to let restless hands all over it, and holds it back out for Francis to take with a quick, strained smile. Then he looks down at the floor again and takes a slow breath, fingers curling slowly inward into his palms, rubbing against his thumbs.

"We— there was a dream all of us had. Not the one where we spoke after. I think these weren't all the same, or maybe not everyone had one. I haven't asked. I know I should have. There was that woman's voice, when I was awake, and then the dream. The boy I talked to dreamt of becoming a deer. I—"

The heels of his hands press into his legs as he rubs them down his thighs and back again, takes a breath. He doesn't want to say it out loud. But he can admit to himself, in this moment sitting in front of this man, that the fear only means that he needs to do it anyway. That he should have before this, somehow.

"Do you remember the night we found this cabin?" Raju asks, still looking at the floor. "My knife. My dream was a dream of fire. Then when I woke the other night, my bed was on fire. And some of the floor. I put it out."

His jaw clenches. He doesn't know what to do after that. Maybe he should have said yes, I sat too close to a fire, and kept not talking about it. It's hard to know what to do about any of this.

Keeping things at arm's length only works so well when you're trapped in an isolated location with no chance of escape. He knows about the dreams, the odd manifestations and sudden changes to people's...usual capabilities. He knows that Hickey's got some kind of frightening speed, and Miss Marsh seems to be able to push her thoughts into the minds of others. It wouldn't surprise him to hear that others were suddenly given skills of the supernatural sort.

Raju is visibly uncomfortable, but he doesn't regret prying. A man can't live if he doesn't feel safe in his own skin; it's half the reason he found the bottle.

"I remember," he says quietly. He sets down his snow knife and reaches for the bucket of melt water to rinse his hand of the meat and fur. "I remember the fire seemed alive that night. I imagined the next day that I'd been hallucinating, but then I remembered the smell of burning fur."

He brings his hand to the fire to let it dry a moment, then reaches out to one of Raju's hands and stills it gently.

Edited 2024-03-08 03:28 (UTC)

For a moment Raju does go still, gaze moving to Francis' hand. There's a vulnerable look in his eyes, and the muscles of his jaw tense and then relax. Francis is probably only trying to remind him to be still. He remembers how he'd worked to do it, when he'd first entered into the Empire's service. Francis was probably trained the same way, or near to. He doesn't know what they do in the navy.

"Sorry." His smile is small and tense, polite. His other hand tries to rub its fingers against themselves and he tightens it into not quite a fist, fingertips pressing into his palm. "I have, ah—" He nods at the bucket. "Something like that close when I sleep. And I don't sleep near anyone now. It won't be a problem. But I don't know where it comes from. That woman's voice said..."

He grimaces a little, trying to remember, and the hand under Francis' tries tapping its thumb again. "I wrote it down," he says, frustrated. "But I don't carry my notebook with me. I think someone at that meeting said it comes from the aurora. As if that makes any more sense.

"But you weren't in any danger," he realises he should say, gaze intent and focusing on Francis' face again. "That night. The fire might have seemed... active. But I stayed awake."

“It hadn’t occurred to me to be worried,” he says, plain but sincere. Out of all the things to fear in this desolate place, his friend would never be counted among them. It doesn’t matter if they are still in that newer friendship stage of discovery and careful companionship; places like this lend themselves to unexpected intimacy.

And he certainly doesn’t remove his hand from his.

“Others have been similarly altered. When you sleep…what happens? Do you generate the fire, or have some sort of influence on what’s already there?”

Edited (Heh hand holding ) 2024-03-08 22:47 (UTC)

It hadn't occurred to me to be worried, Francis says, and Raju's gaze stays intent on his face for a moment more, and then relaxes just a little. Then as Francis goes on Raju's eyes unfocus, and the skin between his eyebrows creases. He hasn't put this into words before, not the way that he has everything else, thinking all this place's oddities through as he decides how to write it down. This, though, is... different. It shouldn't be. He shouldn't let it be. But he hasn't written about any of it. But if he's being asked, and being asked in this thoughtful way, with words that try to analyse and understand and pin down— he can do it, just now. The thumb tapping underneath Francis' hand slows, still moving, but more bouncing against Francis' skin idly than trying to escape.

"Both, I think. I've woken up and it's... near. But last night, I know I put the fireplace out properly before I slept. But it, ah—"

Raju's attention moves to the fireplace, the thoughtful attitude to his frown changing into something tight and troubled. Is the pattern of the flames there just a little stranger, a little more unnatural than it should be? It's harder to tell, these days.

He looks away from it to Francis' hand. Put there to remind him to keep still, he'd thought. But watching his thumb moving now he realises that he hasn't been, and that Francis hasn't insisted on it. It reminds him of Akhtar. Maybe only because it'd been years before him that anyone would have tried a gesture like this at all. For those years Raju'd been sleeping next to more or less the same group of men, and a hint of any of those acting in sympathy or fellow feeling for him had always made Raju petty and mean, and they had always kept their distance. But then had come Akhtar, and Raju had remembered: fellow feeling can feel like something else. Something different from what it had meant surrounded by the other officers, before. He turns his hand over, palm-up so he can wrap his fingers around Francis'.

"It isn't always... when I sleep," he admits. Nothing Francis doesn't already know — he remembers the night they came here, he's already said — but it comes out like Raju's admitting it anyway. "Only most of the time. I think... Emotion. Anger. Once I found out I was trying to be calm, and it shrank."

There had been a certain irony to their unwavering belief that their ships had become home-away-from-home; fortresses and vessels and places of residence all wrapped up in crooked hulls and rows of canvas and barrels of salted pork. If they stayed in the hold and waited long enough for the ice to melt then one day they’d get to back to England, and they could keep English rule and order on the ships, a little piece of Civilization whilst they stared at a portrait of the Queen as they got their toes clipped off and ate contaminated food. Just like home.

The truth was Terror and Erebus had been prisons, and they were only truly free once they left them behind. Sure, they’d carried England with them. The China and the books and the instruments and embossed silverware and cabinets — frivolous things they’d packed out of desperation and fear, things that eventually fell away piece by piece as they wandered further and further away from England.

They’d been free then. Crozier thinks of the way the steward, Bridgens, had cradled the fallen captain of the foretop, Peglard, with nary a whisper from his peers, or the gentle touch of Fitzjames’ hand in his as they both waited for the poison to finally consume him. So intimate, out in the open for all to see. They’d wept for each other and cared for the ill with such tenderness that it would be difficult to believe they were the same men as left Greenhithe all those years ago.

When the ships had fallen away, the crush of society off of their shoulders, they’d been allowed to live. Crozier knows he’ll never go back to the starched collars and petty squabbles of upper English society, and thank Christ for that. He wants to be sentimental, craves touch and affection, enjoys being himself without worry of the opinion of the Admiralty or future in-laws. It was a horrible way to find clarity, but clarity it remains.

“With anger you lose control, when your temper is in check so is the fire,” he remarks, mostly thinking out loud. “A little on the nose, isn’t it?”

A touch of good-humor, for Raju’s sake. It’s bewildering beyond belief, these very sudden and very powerful change but denial has the potential to be devastating.

He looks down at their clasped hands and the softest of smiles tugs at the corner of his mouth. He hopes this is helping him, he really does. He lifts Raju’s hand and drops it gently, gesturing to help with his focus as he asks, “have you tried calling on it?”

He won’t blame him if he hasn’t. It’s terrifying and new, and it seems like he’s been trying to study the anomaly without experimenting too much.

The surprised twitch in Raju's expression, the way that for a moment he only looks at Francis instead of answering, probably answers on its own that the idea isn't something Raju's thought about doing for a second. But the man's thoughtful, calmly curious manner, the support in clasping Francis' hand and the way Francis had looked for a moment looking down at it, it all does its magic again: Raju doesn't respond with the immediate refusal, of course not, that a part of him wants to. It's a question, that's all. This is all miles from anything actually scientific, at least properly, but a useful, scientific kind of understanding needs all sorts of questions.

Raju opens his mouth and then closes it, frowning and slowly shaking his head. "I've had enough on my plate trying to get it to go away." His lips twitch into a tense little smile. One of his hands rubs its fingers together but more gently and more slowly than before, some of the sharp, restless energy behind it gone when Francis' hand had. "I wouldn't try it here, anyway. You've already had to move house once; I don't know if your ribs should take a second round."

It isn't his most convincing joke. Sounding more worried than amused doesn't give the humour anything solid to land on. But he doesn't have to be convincing, here. It might be better if he isn't; Francis might hear that it's a real risk, that way.

"Oh, my ribs certainly won't take a second round," he replies, gruff but good-humored. He looks down once more at their hands and then carefully unwinds them, reassured enough that whatever fears or anxieties Raju had his friend didn't judge.

"But we're surrounded by ice and snow. If it ever crossed your mind to try, outdoors may suit your purpose."

But he keeps the suggestion light in recognition of Raju's obvious discomfort. No pushing, just a recommendation in case he chooses not to ignore it. But it brings up a worrying point -- if Raju is this afraid of inadvertently hurting someone, is he no longer living with others?

"Are you still in the Community Center?"

Outdoors. Of course Francis is right, damn it. His smile twitches a little wider, fades as he gives a quick nod. That's the way to do it, of course. Some place away from the forest, stand there in the snow and let go of whatever control he might have over any of it.

There's no reason to try that yet. Learning to stop it is more important. He can keep focusing on that first.

Raju lifts his chin and his eyebrows, the question bringing his attention back. "Oh, not now, no," he says, voice easier as they move back to more reassuring ground. "I do know it would be too much of a risk, even if I only slept during the day. There are still plenty of cabins sitting empty, maybe I'll settle if I can find one with a good stone floor."

His smile, too, is easier, small but fits more naturally onto his face than the other one had. Cookpots full of meltwater, a place to sleep with less risk of catching if the water isn't enough, those are things that he can do. Control the circumstances, if he can't control the thing itself. It might be... an adjustment, but it's a necessary step, and one that he can take. Much better than standing outdoors some place and just letting go.

"Once I do I'll tell you where. If there were more just made of stone, like back in the city... I'll find something. I'm not sure what would be best yet. Not all of us know how to build a, um... an iglu?"

Crozier chuckles softly. “Mn, an iglu, yes. If you can be patient I’d gladly build you an ice hut of your very own, my friend. It just may be a few weeks before I’m out there cutting ice.”

But in all seriousness, he would help Raju find a place to stay if he was allowed.

“In the meantime, if you need somewhere to rest your head…”

He trails off without finishing the rest, realizing that he may have overstepped with his offer. He exhales a short laugh through his nose. “Or if you’d ever like to keep an old man company. I’d been fooling myself in believing I was better off being alone and lonely.”

Raju looks surprised, and then touched; a navy man would know better than most the pitfalls of living so close by other people and so he'd be ready, here, to take on its advantages; but so far as Raju could tell, Francis hadn't. Raju had never known where the man went to outside the couple brief times Francis had stepped into the Community Hall, not until he'd seen the crumbling iglu and heard the familiar accent coming from inside it. And Francis makes it sound now as if that had been on purpose.

And now this. Something blooms inside Raju's chest, a warmth and pressure, and the flames in the fireplace nearby flicker suddenly, flaring up a little. Raju's eyes move over to it. He takes a breath and lets it out, slow and regretful. His smile is gentle. "You wouldn't be safe," he murmurs. "I won't risk it. You've had enough rude awakenings in the middle of the night already. But, um..."

The wood in the fireplace pops, then shifts as one of the logs on the bottom crumbles. Raju watches it, then looks down at the floor, and then looks at Francis again, quiet pleasure on his face. "I won't mind the company when I'm awake, if you don't."

He could do that, couldn't he? Day in one place, night in another. He'd practically done it back at the Hall, spending as many hours as the sun allowed out and doing anything that wasn't inside. Come here only once his mind's had time to settle from the night. He could make that work.

"You make it sound like you were living apart on purpose," Raju goes on, wanting to know what he's guessing for certain. "What changed your mind?"

It surprises him that a man as astute as Raju hadn’t realized his isolation had been a choice. He goes from pleased at the thought of Raju spending time with him - all the manners of things he could teach someone so eager to learn, the thought of actually having something to look forward to instead of the grim day-to-day - to taken aback and a bit more tinged with sorrow.

He just barely stops himself from laughing, amused that he seemed to have cultivated a sort of ‘strange-man-in-furs’ persona rather than a deliberate attempt to safeguard his heart.

It’s a difficult thing to explain, the exile and the reason he hates the thought of being anyone’s captain. Difficult and humiliating and a reminder of just how much time he should be spending loathing himself instead of making friends.

He struggles for another beat, measuring his response with a tilt of his head and a glance away from Raju and the fire, both somehow connected to each other. “I’m a miserable person by nature,” he answers, “or at least I should be.” He so badly wants to care for them all.

“If I hide away and refuse leadership, live with my ghosts away from everyone else, I don’t have to watch another hundred men die.”

No more tearful embraces with a best friend or killing a man he’d come to love so well because he’d begged. No more frozen corpses reaching towards the horizon, no more half-starved, half-crazed last words from someone barely in their 30s. He had enough.

While Francis struggles to answer, Raju waits. He'd feel badly about asking a question that's hit a target he wasn't expecting, usually. In the months before this place there had been Akhtar, but before that Raju's friendliest conversations had been the false ones, filled with charm and niceties and the stilted, restrained thing the English upper crust called warmth. In those, seeing real emotion this way would mean that Raju needed to give some excuse to turn the conversation away to something else. But after that long night in this very room that'd ended with Francis sleeping soundly under Raju's hands and Raju feeling... everything he'd felt looking down at the man then, and after the... the strange relief of talking about the impossible things that had driven Raju out of his bed at the Community Hall, he doesn't regret hitting that sore spot, doesn't turn the subject away and knows Francis wouldn't expect him to.

"And now?" he murmurs as he watches Francis intently, leaning forward, looking curious and a little proud. Francis had said otherwise, hadn't he, not a moment ago, that he'd been fooling himself. The man who believes he should keep hiding wouldn't have invited Raju to live with him; the man who doesn't believe it is still trying, and Raju is proud of it. "Not better off that way after all?"

Such a simple question. Such a simple and yet complex and difficult question to answers. A frown tugs at his mouth and he considers the struggle between loneliness and self-preservation.

"I'm the oldest person here, Raju. I have experience in worse conditions than this, can hunt seal and caribou, fish and construct weirs, tell the poisoned herbs from the medicinal ones, track ice and magnetism, and I'm a complete waste of a man sitting out in the wilderness keeping to myself."

He's been selfish, and it had taken an outright fight to get him to see that he was doing more harm than good forcing himself into his isolation.

"No one's better off, even if more die."

Raju takes a slow breath. The pride in his face has deepened, etched into his expression with eagerness, and something in him is... relieved, energised, that hadn't been certain before. It's hearing the reason that's done it, hearing Francis listing all the things he can do that no one else can, that he's going to do it now because it's needed. Raju had seen it in more than just Francis' words, the terrible pain and fear and tiredness when he'd said he was afraid of all of it happening again, and here he is, saying these things too, meaning them. He can keep fighting after long, unendurable pain, after enduring it, after giving up, so—

So it's important. Having tried to shed the load, stepping forward and picking it back up again. It's important that they both can still fight. The fire starts shivering as if caught up in a breeze and Raju's fingers curl, eyes darting over Francis' face. Then one of his hands grasps tightly just above Francis' elbow, and the other cups the back of his neck.

He can't tell someone that much older that he's proud. Not in so many words.

"I'm glad to know you, Francis." He says it emphatically and then smiles, expression sunny and relieved. "We'll be better off now. For you being here."

Oh, it's much, much too intimate, the words, the grasp of his friend's hands on his elbow and neck. Much too intimate, like that night Raju saved him from his own crippling lonel--

Ah, right. Right, it makes all the sense in the world. Raju saved him from the tomb of his own making, of course everything after that was going to feel far too personal.

"I'm glad you'll humor an old man," he replies, trying to match the brightness of Raju's smile. And it is brilliant, and sincere. Hell, if only he could be as helpful and patient with Raju's problems as Raju's been with his. He's listened to his sorry story, dragged his sorry arse out of a pile of ice, kept him company when he'd asked, even visited to check in on him after.

"But words like that will go to my head," he adds with a laugh. "I'll do my best to serve, as I should have done when I first arrived."

Raju opens his mouth in an instinct from those old, more polite conversations to relieve that should have, and then doesn't. All his conversations with this man have been honest, and telling him the responsibility hadn't existed when he'd first arrived wouldn't be. Responsibility is heavy, unchanging; reasons won't shift it, either good ones or bad.

But, "You're facing it anyway," he says, still smiling. His voice rasps just a little, and he realises his throat is tight. "Even though it hurts." His hands on Francis give a squeeze and Raju looks proud, leans back, and lets his hands slip down to the floor behind him to prop him up. The fire is larger now, probably large enough to eat up more firewood than Francis had planned on, over the course of the day. Raju can bring more. If that's his price for staying here, it's a fair one.

Raju watches him, smiling, for a moment. "When I got here you had a nail in your mouth," he remembers. "What were you doing?"

Even though it hurts. Truer words were never spoken, it’s painful to be known and possibly relied on once more. Failure a second time would destroy what little remained of Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier.

When Raju sits back so does he, and he takes full advantage of the offered segue to point out a few of the large holes in the walls. “Doing some very basic mending.”

It’s gone…so-so. He’s had to figure out how to nail something one-handed, which for him meant propping the nail up somehow so he could make the initial strike. The floor’s littered by all his failed attempts.

“I could use your help.”

"I'd like that." Pleasure creases Raju's face. It feels strange, a little, to smile so much. But he feels better. He pushes himself easily to his feet, moving over to the nearest wall and crouching to start picking up the nails scattered there. It's easy to guess what part of it Francis needs Raju's help with; Raju doesn't know much of anything about home repair, but he's sure he can hold a nail.

"You're lucky you have so many of these," Raju teases, grinning over his shoulder at Francis. "Do you know much about mending like this? I've never done any of it myself; I'm sure I was lucky the place I lived before was too sturdy to need it."

“I know enough to nail a piece of wood to another piece of wood.” And he’s lucky enough to have a second room to raid for things like said nails and wood.

“And I know enough that if I cover a hole then I won’t feel the breeze on my arse as I sleep at night.”

Raju breathes out a sudden, surprised laugh. For all Raju's learned about the man he's looking forward to spending the days with, he doesn't know his sense of humour yet.

"No repairs needed in that iglu either, then?" he asks, standing to set the handful of nails on an end table and unwinding the blanket from around him. It'll be chilly without it, because chilly is as warm as it ever gets here, but he'd rather be able to move. "Then I hope you've practised your aim with that hammer."

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