singillatim | (closed)

“Young—” Raju starts, eyebrows rising, amusement caught in his throat and fading as he thinks what he was about to say the rest of the way through. Francis really isn’t that old, and far too many years off from there for a joke about it to work anyway, even if Francis had made a habit before now of claiming fame through impossible acts and people he could never have met. Darwin had been old when his father was young.

It isn’t as if he hasn’t wondered about Francis’ expeditions, about discovering the antarctic — confirming its existence, he’d first said. It isn’t a topic Raju’s read extensively about, not enough to remember discoveries and expeditions and dates and be very sure at all, but after that conversation, he’d—

He hadn’t known enough to think about it. He hadn’t wanted to think about it. He doesn’t want to think about it now. He sits back in his chair and looks down at the food shared with him in Francis’ bowl, then over at the man himself. He smiles so he can remember the afternoon and the conversation and not his thoughts, and kicks gently out at Francis’ foot and then leaves his own foot there, to remember that the other man is solid and real.

“And all of them had men to take care of their faces and outfits and meals for them too, didn’t they?” he asks, instead of asking to hear about anyone else Francis might have met there whose age would be impossible to ignore. Much better to tease; that feels real. Watching a friend who’s being teased feels real. “Your friend and you and the rest of them? The life of a gentleman?”

He returns the kick absently. He has to think about all the men he'd been fortunate enough to meet during his time in the society, all of them brilliant, most of them privileged in some ways. But not all. Not all were gentlemen who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, some had scraped and toiled to get to that point in their lives.

"Most, yes," he replies, stirring his bent fork into the stew, "Ross was guilty of it. Christ -- if you saw his family home, Raju. He has his own lake. A massive estate! And me? I was one of thirteen in a home with five bedrooms and an attic."

Raju's eyes widen at the news about the lake. It's almost enough to distract him from the... offputting revelation of a moment ago. Everything that Francis has revealed to him, accidentally or not, about the nature of this place should make it just as offputting to be around him too, and might, if it wasn't for everything else about the man.

But offputting isn't the right word is it? Not exactly. Realising that even if, when, he does make it back home, this man will be—

It's more of a pressure in his chest, a tightening in his throat. But even now, a part of Raju's mind is still eagerly collecting facts about him the moment that he gives them out. Twelve siblings, five bedroom home. Raju's smile is a little tense, and then he covers it with a quiet, wry amusement. He leans on his forearm, taps his foot against Francis'. Still solid, still here.

"Five bedrooms that could have fit inside that lake with room to spare, I can imagine. So you were two, three to a bedroom?"

Crozier snorts softly. “Mn. The nursery held the littlest children, then a room for the older children, the boys were in the attic and my older sisters were in the last room. My father kept an office for his law firm.”

The ages between them all had been the Crozier saving grace. His elder sisters raised him and the other babies, and the boys went off to start families of their own when they were of age. Of course there were cousins…nieces…nephews…

“Holidays were chaos,” he smiles, aware of the tapping and endeared by the quirk. Raju could be incredibly tense at times, but he’s finding that it’s because he feels just too damn much all the time. “Any siblings?”

“Mm,” Raju says, a meaningless, acknowledging noise to make time so he can make the usual decision about how to answer. Not quite so usual as it would have been back home; with Francis he wants to share something, at least, so instead of figuring out the polite way to seem open it’s a matter of figuring out how he actually can.

“Not so many as that.” He shakes his head, heel resting comfortably next to Francis’. “I always wondered what it would have been like. Well— after spending time in the closest city anyway, seeing the way other people lived. Was it everyone else too, living nearby? Aunties and grandfathers and everyone? Or only you all and your parents?”

Purposely vague, but that doesn't surprise him. More questions to deliberately shift the focus back off of him. Crozier nods with a soft laugh.

"Mhm. Very similar. Ireland isn't particularly large, but my family didn't move far even when they did leave town. Too many Croziers at the holiday gatherings." Far, far too many Croziers in Ireland, and then he went and left, and for all intents and purposes, died in the Arctic.

"But my mother and father were both old when I was born. I was raised by my older sisters, Sarah and Rachel."

The discomfort of that realisation is still sitting inside him but Raju finds that he's smiling, and that this time the smile is coming to him, instead of him going to it; there's something about imagining a holiday that way, chaotic with family, most of the family running around in one direction or another and looking in Raju's mind something like Francis, only with some of them younger or in dresses. The image gets his foot moving, rolling on its heel from one side to the other to start tapping out a cheerful rhythm against Francis' again.

"How much older? They're the eldest daughters?"

“Jane was already out of the house when I was born and had a wean of her own on the way. Sarah…hm. Must have been 17, 18? Rachel wasn’t much younger.”

They’d cared for him, and in turn when he was grown he cared for them. He hoped the meager pension and insurance after his ‘death’ was keeping them well.

“I was the eleventh child, the fifth son. All my elder brothers were lawyers, like my father, or went into the church as ministers.”

“But not you.” Raju leans forward again a little bit, fascinated, food completely forgotten now. Francis seems remarkably comfortable sharing that part of his life, the place he had been raised in, the people that he’d loved. It’s always been different for Raju, the kinds of questions that he’s asking now more of a challenge to put the right pieces together so that he can try to seem that way while sharing nothing that’s too dangerous to think of out loud. But to all appearances, Francis really is. It’s a lucky thing, too; if he wasn’t Raju would keep himself from asking but he’d still want to know everything, and he’s happy to take the opportunity now. “Why not? Were you the only son who didn’t, no younger ones following in your footsteps?”

"No, no. I was always destined for something else. My name alone --"

He frowns softly. "Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, fifth child of George Crozier, named after the 2nd Earl of Moira and Marquess of Hastings. My father was desperate for recognition, so he named me after an aristocrat and sent me to sea at thirteen."

It could have been worse, he could have been younger than that. He met boys who were ten, eleven when he first went to sea.

"When I disappeared I assume no one else went to sea, but I suppose I won't ever know for certain."

Raju doesn't look away from Francis' face, one hand curling into a loose fist on the table while the other taps its thumb against his leg. It's remarkable, the way Francis lets Raju look into his life and Raju sees— Well, it isn't the same. It can't be. But it's so close. More than once now, it's been so close.

It isn't that Raju's looking for similarities. They're already there.

"Why you?" he asks, intent. "Was there something about you, something different that he saw, or..."

Raju shakes his head, frowning with focus. He can't think of an or. There's no reason to send only one son away to sea when the rest were lawyers or priests unless he was more suited for it than anyone else. But he doesn't know much about the navy. Maybe he is looking too much for similarities and it was really something else. But the outline of it, of the life and the destiny, is still there.

Why him? It’s a good question, but not one he’s ever been given a satisfying answer to, even after careful probing of older, drunken relatives. His father was offended by the question - it was an honor to serve! And look, look how far he’d climbed in the Navy!

“I used to think I was just expendable,” he says, shrugging very gently. He doesn’t want to sound flippant, but it had been true for a number of years. “I think he wanted me to measure up to my name.”

Edited 2024-03-23 03:16 (UTC)

"If you were expendable, he wouldn't expect so much." Raju's tone is just a little bit softer, steadier in sympathy. Every father's reasons aren't as clear as— well, they aren't always clear. It speaks well of Francis that he'd been so dedicated even when the purpose behind the duty was so difficult to see, and if seen, so impossible to be sure. Francis wouldn't be saying I think now if he'd ever gotten a certain reason for it. "Were your other brothers told to go where they ended up, too? Or did they all go into law and the church on their own?"

He used to believe that was true even with his father’s high expectations of him; none of the others had to leave, none of the others were pulled from the family when they’d just turned thirteen. George Crozier could have just been hedging his bets.

“Oh, no. My father always assumed at least one boy would take over his practice, but the others could do as they pleased so long as they were educated.” And Crozier, who’d adored school and listening to lectures and learning, had been taken out of school and shipped off to sea. They were at war then too.

“Fathers,” he adds with a soft shrug. “Who knows why they do anything?”

Raju huffs out a soft breath, looks down with a polite smile. Picking up the spoon gives him something to focus on, because every answer he has would only invite questions he can't answer.

He gives himself time enough to take a bite, and chew it this time. "You kept at it, though. Even when you didn't know why you were sent into it. You wouldn't have gotten promotions if you hadn't."

"I kept at it because I wound up falling in love," he laughs. "The sea first, of course, the most demanding mistress, then sailing itself, and then the ice. Oh, I adored the ice. I loved the unknown, I was hungry for it. Out on the ice one feels so small and the world is so big and wide, and I just want to know it all."

There's something in his expression, something genuinely happy when he speaks about this part of his life. Yes, the ice is harsh and frightening, it can warp metal and sink battleships, but he loves it all the same.

"It was all luck, of course. I might never have known I enjoyed sailing had it not been for my father."

Raju nods, gaze held by the look on Francis' face. Raju is smiling too, faintly, fascinated. He'd seen this the first time they'd met, the way this man can talk about these things. Before Raju had known anything about Francis' last voyage, seen the damage it did to even the man who survived. There's something even more powerful about it now in the wake of that, seeing the damage with his own eyes and listening to the tone of Francis' voice now, still alive with passion for the thing which did so much damage to him. There's something powerful in Francis' expression. Raju doesn't want to look away from it.

"I've read that. That sights like that can make a man feel small that way. I can't imagine it."

Crozier isn't a man naturally gifted for speaking. He knows he can be clipped and unimpressive at times, especially when others have built him up as something more in their minds. But every once in a while, every once in a long while, he finds some eloquence hidden deep down by all those years of cynicism.

"The damage the ice does...there's nothing quite like it. If we didn't find a place to carefully over-winter our ships would become stuck in it, the frozen sea. You can walk right over it, the sky above so clear and so filled with stars. Then the ice moves, it crashes into itself, pushes itself into high pressure ridges and seracs. The smooth sea becomes a maze of ice taller than the ship itself, and it groans and screams as it crushes into itself. It's haunting."

The more Francis describes it the more Raju's smile grows, slowly and delighted. These are the kinds of things he'd been wanting to hear back when they'd first met, too. Maybe if he'd known a little more about exploring the ocean he might have tracked someone down back home to ask for stories. Sailing the river there is as much about the river itself and the destination; the ocean and the poles sound like something else again, dangerous and unconquerable in a way he might not otherwise have thought this quiet, practical man so hungry for.

Maybe he's glad, a little, that he hasn't asked anyone else before.

"Taller than the ship? How can you tell where it's going to be so your whole ship isn't crushed?"

"You can't," he says, still sounding delighted. It's a horrible, terrifying thing to experience firsthand, but he can't deny that it's absolutely incredible. There's no taming something like that, even if the Empire was so confident that all its technology and reinforced hulls would stand a chance.

"The ice does what it wants, and when you're in it there's no getting out until the next thaw. It'll either drive the ship under and sink it, or it'll push it up like the crest of a wave."

"That's mad," Raju grins, leaning forward and reflecting Francis's mood completely. His hand is curled thoughtlessly around the spoon like it's a weapon; remains of stew drips down onto the table. "You can't tell me the crown sends its ships into that on purpose. There must be some way to avoid it, or survive it. You don't just sit there and hope that the ship makes it through?"

“Oh, it’s barmy, but the Admiralty’s been throwing men at the Northwest Passage for nearly a century at this point. We’ve figured out a few tricks, only lost a few ships here and there. The way to do it is fine a safe harbor to make berth during the winter months. The ships will still freeze in, but the crush won’t be as great.”

Which he’d recommended time and time again to Sir John when they’d spotted pack ice, but…well. There’s no going backwards, is there?

Raju nods, fascinated. "And the land keeps the worst of it away? What do you do while you're frozen in like that, sit there and wait for the whole winter?"

That idea he really can't imagine. At least here there are things that need to be done, even if none of them make a difference to anything but day to day matters like comfort and warmth. He can go outside, even if here he hates the outside air, and all of it hates him back. He can search for old dry wood and something edible, even on days when he can't actually find any. It's something. At least it doesn't always feel like waiting.

"And what do you even do on a ship that can't sail?" he asks as it occurs to him. "Try to go fishing? Sit there and braid rope?"

He laughs loudly, his own meal completely forgotten. “Oh, I’m not sure you’ll believe me if I tell you…”

Crozier sits back slightly and reaches for some water. “We teach the men to read and write, draw, paint, climb, hunt, but there’s a very noble tradition of dressing up and putting on plays or having galas. The further away from home the more ridiculous things seem to become.”

"You're right. I don't believe you," Raju says in a tone that might say the opposite, or that even if he didn't believe him, he's enjoying it enough not to mind. He studies Francis for a moment, smiling, then: "What plays? Tell me about one. I want to be convinced."

It would be a joke if it wasn't true. This is another picture painting itself vividly in Raju's mind, and the one that he'd least expected to be there. "Did you ever play a part? Your officers?"

He can only imagine how the men in the barracks would have liked that, seeing the superior officers that way. It never would have happened, of course. But things might well be very different, so isolated with each other out at sea.

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