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

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

Comments

[fidior]

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.

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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."

[fidior]

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?"

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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?"