singillatim | (closed)

“I’ve had plenty of solitude, enough for a lifetime. I have plenty of time to myself with all the walking we have to do to get from one place to another. Too much time to mull and morb, in fact.”

There’s still no avoiding solitude where it happens, but why fight companionship? Why fight the friendship? He enjoys having Raju around, very much so.

"We can't have that." Particularly not just now, with Francis' men going off into unknown dangers where he can't follow. No matter how well talking with them and arranging matters went, now probably doesn't seem like a good time for Francis to leave too much time for thinking. "It's too bad fishing is better for supplies than going for a run. Much better than walking at taking your mind off things."

"But fishing can be so damn boring, Raju," he laughs. "So, so damn boring! At least with walking the scenery changes."

There's a crate that's also in the corner of the little ice shack, and Crozier grabs it and hauls it next to the hole in the ice. "You might as well start the wait."

"Oh, well if it's going to be as exciting as that," Raju grins, picking up the fishing pole again. It'd taken a while to cut through the ice; he starts tugging at the line to try and make it long enough to drop the distance he remembers drilling through. This, he's at least mostly sure, is the way he's seen people doing it. The pole looks different from the ones he knows, though. If it's wrong, Francis will correct him. "You do your mulling and morbing in here too, then, usually? All day?"

He chuckles and pulls yet another makeshift seat, this time an overturned plastic bucket, to sit across from Raju. “That’s just the thing, I’m nearly always mulling and morbing. I’m a generally unpleasant person, haven’t you figured that out by now?”

“Hm.” Raju tries to catch Francis’ gaze with a pleased, knowing smile, then looks back to his hands. Pulling at the line like this isn’t as smooth with the mittens on; as he speaks he tugs them off again. One more part of his body cold for another minute won’t make much difference, and somehow it’s easy to feel cheerful anyway. “Another thing you’re terrible at, then. You should play more to your strengths, hasn’t anyone ever told you?”

"You sound like James," he grunts, watching him try and get used to the line. "He used to say that all the time. And I do. That's why I've convinced my friend to do most of the manual labor in this fishing endeavor."

Raju's knowing smile widens — convinced, of course — and then he looks away and leans forward, deciding to move the pole and find out whether he's made the line long enough. He uses the moment to go through his memory. Obviously, particularly after Francis' request to keep all of his confession from the men themselves, Raju hadn't written down anything Francis had told him that night. But he thinks he remembers a James. The one whose grave was disturbed.

Not something to mention now, of course. But Francis mentioning him at all probably means Raju can ask after the man himself.

"Oh?" he asks, trying to look down the hole as he feels the weight of the hook lessen in a way that probably means it's hit water. "What did he say it about? Your abysmal try at being unpleasant company?"

“Oh, I was miserable in those early days.” He’ll readily admit that now. “I’m certain the sentiment was I’d be less of a twat in general and more like the heroic sailor of those Antarctic stories.”

He would have never measured up to those stories, he just wasn’t that sort of man. He was never flashy, always quiet, humble. The very opposite of James Fitzjames.

“Tell me when you feel a tug on the line.”

Raju grunts and looks back over to the fishing line, reminded to pay attention to it. He isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do with it while he waits; he gives the pole a couple jiggles, waits a moment, and when nothing happens he turns his attention to Francis again.

There’s a balance in whatever Raju is going to ask about today. He’ll back away from anything it seems like Francis doesn’t want to talk about, try to learn what he can without reminding Francis of anything he doesn’t need in his mind just now. He’s curious of course, and eager with it, but if he meeds to he can put that curiosity away.

“What stories? Ones about other explorers or about you?”

Crozier’s happy to sit back and let Raju figure out the nuances of fishing. When there is a tug he doesn’t intend on stepping in to help, better to figure it out through trial and error.

Plus he thinks it might be amusing.

“Mn?” He raises his head, momentarily distracted and needing to think on the question. Who? “Oh. Me. My stories.”

Raju’s eyes light up, eager, though he’s trying to keep at least some of that emotion off of the rest of his face. Francis only just told him about another man who expected the wrong things out of the fame that Francis apparently had, back home. And a man who’s done the things Francis has said that he’s done, well, why wouldn’t he?

Maybe Raju could have read about it when he was young, if he’d ever decided knowing about the English navy would have been useful. Maybe he could have when he’d been older, in that apartment in Delhi, if he’d ever found more time. Maybe something about the man in front of him had been there, buried in one of the piles of books spread out around the place and over the floor.

Anything that had been clearly isn’t something Francis is as excited about. Not the heroic side of it, anyway. Raju thinks that he can work with that.

“So they weren’t real then, the stories?” He grins. “Were you more of a twat then too?”

He huffs in slight amusement at the thought - and at hearing Raju just repeat the word 'twat', of course. "I imagine I was less of one then." He was certainly happier then, captain of his own ship, adventuring to the ends of the earth with his other half, exploring unseen lands and making discoveries that would make the expedition famous.

"The stories were real," he relents, finally smiling quite genuinely. "It was all real. Wilder, in fact, that what had been initially reported. We brought penguins aboard the ships and had dances in the ice. I sailed Terror blind through a wall of icebergs, and stayed on my feet for an entire week to see us through storms."

Raju sets a forearm on his thigh and leans over it toward Francis, Francis' expression warming Raju's grin into a smile. The pole is an afterthought again, sitting idly in his other hand. "Well, I can't ask about all of it at once. People at home didn't believe that you'd done all those things, at first? Did they think you were lying about parts of it, or just exaggerating?"

“Oh,” he laughs, “they believed it plenty! I had a man like Ross telling the stories, and he’s the darling of the Admiralty. No, there were diaries, letters, sketches, specimens. All the things to back up some of the more unbelievable pieces of the expedition.”

And he never bragged, of course, not once. It used to drive Ross mad, his reasons being if Crozier talked himself up more he’d win his bride and command and accolades.

He finds himself smiling across the ice at Raju, feeling just a little bashful and hot around the ears. He still doesn’t like to boast, but the way his friend is staring makes him want to tell him all about the marvelous sights he’s been fortunate to see.

“And all that went into… Hm. The more sensational stories would have gone into the newspapers, wouldn’t they? And the discoveries would have gone into papers? Research papers somewhere?”

Half of him’s still thinking about that set of rooms that, for a while, he’d been foolish enough to think of as his. How he might collect it if he was there or once he goes back, evidence, something he can read and hold in his hands. The rest of him is wondering at the idea that service to the crown could ever look that way, discovery and adventure and celebration over all you’ve accomplished once you make it back.

It’s a strange thought, the side of that service Raju was never going to see. But Francis looks so pleased and the tips of his ears are red, and it’s charming and impossible to mind.

“I’m not surprised they were impressed.” Raju watches him, looking a little pleased himself, and means it, wanting to see Francis excited about those past journeys again.

"Memoirs. I'd been trying to get Ross to write them for years, but he'd married and started having children -- it's distracting business, or so I've been told."

Once upon a time he'd been so eager to meet those children. Uncle Frank. He would have loved to have been Uncle Frank to James Clark Ross' myriad of children, but it's best not to think about it for too long. He can't break his own heart if he chose not to go back with Ross when he'd finally come for them all.

"Scientific publications before that," he adds, deciding to keep going. Raju seems interested, so he's happy enough to keep talking about it all. "Plenty of news in the papers about our discoveries. It was difficult avoid us for a number of years after we'd returned."

"Were you there on shore for all those years? I've never thought about it before, how often does a navy man go out to sea? Strange to think you might be let to sit all that time without your duties."

He shoves the pole underneath his thigh absently, reaching into his pocket for the mittens. Much as the fire helps in the small space it's still cold, and being without them is starting to hurt his fingers. He watches Francis as he talks, thinking out loud and trying to rub his fingers against his palms inside the mittens for a little friction. "It must be a while, or Ross wouldn't have had time to marry. But it can't be years."

“I never went too long between commissions,” he explains, holding his hand out for the fishing pole. Raju’s hands are clearly needing a break. “But Ross retired when we returned from Antarctica, so he had plenty of time to marry and father some children.”

Time in between expeditions always passed achingly slow. He’s a typical sailor, always longing for the sea and looking towards the horizon. Yes, he’d missed land when he was away, but he knew where he belonged.

“I had a few years between that expedition and the last one.”

Raju raises his eyebrows at the gesture, for a moment not following what it means and for a moment more obviously debating whether he wants to insist that he can keep doing it himself. But it’s probably less a statement about whether Raju can with his fingers less used to the cold than Francis’ and more an offer to share the work, which is the entire reason that they’re both here in the first place.

“Not too long usually,” he starts, pulling the pole out from under him and handing it over, “but a few years that time? Were you thinking about retiring too?”

He means to just do his share, and holds the pole with it slightly propped up against his side.

“No,” he answers, but that isn’t necessarily true. If Sophia had agreed to his proposal sooner he might have left the sea for the altar, but he hadn’t been good enough for her then. Or ever. “No, I was waiting. Expeditions of that magnitude take some years to put together. I traveled to the continent in the meantime, tried to rest my weary bones some.”

He frowns softly. “Do you have a sweetheart at home, Raju?”

Raju's thinking about travelled to the continent said so casually, about asking after it, and isn't expecting the question. For a moment he only looks surprised. Then his lips twitch into a faint, perfunctory smile and he looks down at his arm laid out over his thigh.

As precious a gift as the mittens still are, he's never quite gotten used to not being able to use his hands. He's resisting the urge to try and touch it. But the cord sits against the mitten's edge, pendant sitting over the fur.

"A very patient one," he murmurs, watching it sitting there. Then he looks back up at Francis and tries to figure out where the seeming subject change came from. Marriage and retirement, marriage and time away from home. Maybe Francis is still thinking about Ross. "Did your friend want to retire because he planned to marry? Or did he want to marry only after he retired? A navy man's intended must wait for him a long time if he asks her and then goes to sea."

His mind also briefly thinks on the sight of Raju holding fast to a pendant, but he’d been so addled from the crush of his own ice hut that it might have a hallucination. There’s no telling, even though he’d felt so certain he’d asked after it.

A very patient one. Did he have a wife at home? Is it possible he’s married? When it comes down to he he knows so little about Raju, his secretive friend with an obvious past.

“The former,” he answers. “He proposed before leaving for the expedition. It was going to solidify his career - and it did. It’s no easy life for the family of a navy man. We’re gone for years at a time, and there are inherent dangers to exploration, even if most come back perfectly safe and sound. Anne was anxious for Ross to return, bless her. He put her through hell with all that waiting.”

Raju's gaze casts itself down again and he takes a bracing breath, lets it out in a slow, resigned sigh. He nods, accepting the fact of it. He hadn't thought about it that way at first. Only looking forward, until the weight of what was behind became heavy enough to start tugging at him anyway. He wonders if Francis' friend had felt that way.

Probably not. He knew what he was coming back to, didn't he?

"And you said he earned a knighthood, after? Is that always what he wanted when you were sailing together?"

He tries to read the other man’s expression, but it’s difficult to parse through the nature of the sigh and the look in his very deep brown eyes.

“He didn’t care about any of that,” he says quietly, looking down at the fishing hole and adjusting his grip. “He wanted the adventure above all else. ‘Frank, old boy, what’s the point of simply looking at an iceberg? Let’s climb the damned thing!’ And then off he’d cart me, hauling my sorry arse behind him to follow in whatever daring scheme he had in mind.”

God, did he ever love that man. He tries to keep the truer feelings of sentiment out of his voice; let it all be nostalgia and bemusement.

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