singillatim | (closed)

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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!

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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.

Life in Milton, as it tends to, vacillates wildly between infuriatingly pointless, dead boring, and damned awful. The nightmare wouldn't have mattered, but finding somewhere else to sleep afterward had put him in some kind of mood that the town meeting the day after hadn't done anything to rid him of. They're all of them still stuck in place here, waiting, unable to fight a goddamned thing.

Sewing isn't enough. Writing isn't enough. Finding firewood isn't enough. He's wary of spending too much time indoors feeling this way, wary of the fire that should only mean a welcome warmth but which does nothing but make life in this place worse. He doesn't know what to do about anything. But there is one thing Raju could do, if he finds the man he's looking for at home.

No one's gone through Francis' collapsed ice hut yet. What must be his things are still sitting underneath. Raju should have done it earlier. He can't carry everything, so he prioritises what might be needed most: a few of the furs, the knife. A little of the meat. It still smells edible, which must be thanks to the cold, but he trusts Francis to know if it isn't.

Francis will still be staying, probably, in the cabin that they'd run to the night the hut had collapsed. Raju stops in front of it, considering the armful occupying his hands for a moment. Then he knocks with his elbow. Doing something actually useful, that's what he needs. And it would be good to see how Francis is doing, considering the... similarities. A creature that can't be explained, hunting. He'd seemed alright at that meeting, so that's something. If nothing else, Francis will probably need the furs.

Oddly enough, Crozier’s thoughts had been straying to Raju often as of late, and not just because he’d made some good points at the town hall. The feeling of unburdening himself that quiet evening lingers, the relief and then the open grief.

When he is in the cabin - he’s been busy as of late given…everything - his focus has been on patching the holes in the walls and cleaning out the years of dust and dirt and cobwebs. There are buckets of meltwater by the fire, old rags that have clearly already been put to use hanging out to dry, a makeshift system for tidiness that would likely make Jopson want to tear his hair out.

He’s in the midst of a repair when there’s a knock, and he figured it’s either Raju or someone who had stumbled over this new location completely by accident. He answers the door with a nail between his lips and a small hammer in his hand.

“Ah, Raju! Come in, come in!”

Raju's smile is small, but it's real. He looks over the nail, the hammer, looks over the cabin as he follows Francis inside. It's a little different from what he remembers seeing in the sunlight that morning, after the long night of only looking over the place with a torch. It still wouldn't pass inspection back at the barracks, but the rooms Raju had been renting all that time ago back in Delhi wouldn't have either and the cabin is cleaner than it was, with rags drying by the fire, buckets of snow melting. It's clear Francis has settled in here, instead of moving from one abandoned cabin to the other like Raju thinks he himself is going to keep doing. But that ice hut was close by, wasn't it? Francis is likely used to living alone.

"These are from your, ah..." What to call it? Calling it an icebox seems rude, given Francis must have liked it well enough to sleep there. "That last house, under the ice. I should have gone back for your things sooner, I can go back for the rest in a moment. Should I put these...?"

He turns, looking around for a likely place. Furs by the fire, maybe; it seems like the most sensible place to sleep.

Crozier’s expression softens; Raju actually dug through the remains of his home to retrieve his very limited possessions. Granted, it was probably just busywork, he understands the need to keep oneself occupied, but it was a thoughtful thing to do nonetheless. His fingers must be freezing though.

He plucks the nail from between his lips and sets it down along with the hammer. “Near the fireplace, but avoid the brickwork. I don’t feel like setting a fire today.” He adds with a little grin, “it’s called an iglu, by the way.”

"Mm? Oh." Raju looks back from where he's started toward the fireplace, his smile in response again a small one, this time more polite. Another day maybe he'd ask after that, the evidence of Francis' travels, things he's seen that Raju never will and everything that he'd learned there. Today, Raju doesn't quite have the heart for it. He'd rather pay attention to the friend alive and well in front of him than anything impossible to reach and far away. "Your iglu, then. You're looking very well today; your ribs are healing up alright?"

That is, he's looking cheerful. Raju watches him for a moment more and then kneels, setting the furs down a couple feet away from the fire and setting the knife over to one side, picking out the meat. The gesture reveals the newer burned spots over the blanket Raju's wearing as he sets down what had been in front of them, but he isn't quite thinking about it. Then again, he's thinking, the last time we saw one another Francis hadn't had much worth being cheerful about, had he? Today, apparently, he does. Just now it's hard to imagine why anyone would, but still, it's nice to see.

Edited (remembered to mention an appearance change) 2024-03-04 00:56 (UTC)

The cheer is from being semi-mobile and having gotten a halfway decent conversation from the most of the people from Milton. It's very small consolation for the hell that they've been having to live. And his friend's company, of course. A friend's company makes all the difference in mood.

Crozier shuts and bolts the cabin door out of an abundance of caution, then very gingerly lowers himself onto the floor beside the furs to look for his amulet. "Healing, but tender still. Harry set me in plaster to keep me from overdoing it." He gives a little knock to the lower portion of his chest, a soft 'thump' heard underneath his tunic.

His fingers brush against the amulet, carefully secreted away in the lining of his parka, and he reaches for the knife to retrieve it. The burns on his friend's blanket are new, he would know from all those hours he spent wearing it, almost like he stayed too close to a hearth.

"Thank you for digging out my things. I trust you didn't let your fingers freeze."

Harry. It's a wonder that Francis can speak about him so casually. Raju can't imagine it, but it isn't something that he's ever going to ask. The surgeon helped, is the important thing; Raju watches Francis knock at his chest with a little satisfaction, then watches him take a knife to the coat that Raju's just retrieved with curiosity.

"No, your mittens are just as warm as you said they would be," Raju says, the ghost of a smile drifting across his face at the memory as he leans over, tilting his head to try and get a better view of what Francis' hands are up to. One of his hands, reminded, rises to rub itself over his other hand's fingers. "If I forget to put them on again after picking up something, that's my own fault. What is it you're doing there?"

“Don’t lose your fingers due to forgetfulness,” he warns, almost friendly in the gentle chastising despite the knife in his hand. He rips at the lining and finds the little amulet in the shape of a ship’s hull, sitting back with a satisfied nod.

“The Netsilik cover themselves in protective talismans. A dear friend carved this one for me; I just wanted to lay eyes on it.”

If anyone has the right to warn Raju about something like that, it would be the man with one hand; still, of all the awful realities of this place that are eating at him now, Raju isn't worried about that one. If he hasn't seen frostbite yet, he's sure he's figured out enough to avoid it.

He looks the talisman over, then studies Francis. A dear friend. Bare facts Raju might not have the heart to ask about, but fond memories are something else. Thinking about whoever it is might make Francis smile. Maybe that would help.

Or it might take Francis back to times it would hurt to revisit; men like them have plenty of those hiding behind innocent questions. He realises all at once that being in the presence of a man like that is helpful by itself. Still, he wants to know more anyway.

"You must have been close to them. The Netsilik. They taught you all those things, wanted to keep you safe." He nods toward the talisman Francis has just cut out of his coat; that's the only reason to hide something like that, for safety instead of only sentiment, whether or not Raju believes superstitions like that do what they're supposed to. He thinks, briefly, about that town meeting, the talismans that'd been mentioned there. He doesn't know if he believes it. He doesn't want to know, right now.

"It's the kind of thing you give someone who's leaving," he guesses, to distract himself. "Or did you wear more of them yourself, when you were living with them?"

He’d often wondered why the Netsilik had gone out of their way to protect him when his people had brought nothing but misery to their land. Did he confuse generosity with pity? He hadn’t done enough to stand out in those early expeditions to be remembered in any kind of way; he’d never flatter himself with any kind of importance. No, they saw his bedraggled appearance and the dead white men he scattered across their island and found no threat. It was sympathy, through and through.

“It was made by someone who left,” he says quietly, thumb running along the ridge of the hull. “I would have died were it not for them. They cared for me despite the terrible things we did to them - invaded their home, murdered their people.” Killed their god.

“I wore whatever they gave me. This.” He passes the amulet for Raju to hold, if he wishes. “Is pure sentiment.”

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.”

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for Edward Little (CW hint at child soldier stuff)

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