singillatim | Being born again into the sweet morning fog

Crozier enjoys a quite moment of prodding at the fire and not thinking about the way he'd felt when Raju held him by his shoulders and stared at him with such genuinely kind eyes. He doesn't know what on earth's gotten into him, why he's allowed himself to be so vulnerable after hiding himself away for so long.

He raises his head and takes a quick stock of his supplies. "Let's assume water will work to put out the fires. I've enough containers to hold a decent amount of meltwater, but it'd be better if we had an excess."

He stands quickly and goes to fetch his boots from where he's laid them out to dry, pulling them onto his feet and stomping down his heel to make up for the lack of a second hand. "How far is your cabin? If I head out now I can stop into town and make a trade for more buckets."

Raju makes a surprised noise and stands, glancing down at his feet — it feels strange standing on them after an entire day of not, but they feel alright — and then looking around for his things. Shoes there, and after washing the soot off his proper clothes and needing the room to sleep in front of the fire he'd put them over there to finish drying. But he hasn't washed the ones he's wearing now, but he needs to put the clean ones over them anyway because in this damn place he needs the layers—

"Give me a minute and I can show you. It isn't far. I just have to get everything..." He trails off, looking around as he starts toward the other clothes. That damn blanket is somewhere. "We should see what we can find in that cabin first. There must be other things worth trading for."

As soon as Raju hops to his feet all of Crozier’s focus is lost. He rushes to him, grasping his arms and looking down at his gait and the way he’s holding himself as he stands.

“What are you doing? Are you ready to be on your feet like this?”

Raju looks alarmed at Francis’ alarm and then confusion replaces it, and a placating smile makes room for itself alongside the confusion.

“Well, I’m not going to spend two days not even standing up,” he says, voice making it clear the idea’s a ridiculous one, setting a hand overtop Francis’ on him. “I feel fine. I’ll even put on shoes to go out this time. You don’t see anything to worry about, do you?”

It doesn’t even hurt enough that he can’t ignore it, walk normally, stand normally. Raju doesn’t know much about frostbite, but that’s always meant he’s close enough to healed for everything else.

He's seen plenty worth worrying over, but if Raju's going to insist that he can walk unaided then he decides he won't push back on this. He's lost most of his leverage and will to argue in the struggle to keep Raju in the cabin with him.

"No," he says, relenting with a soft sagging of his shoulders. He shakes his head. "No, no. If you insist you can walk, then I won't stop you. You'll tell me if we need to turn back though, yes?"

"Of course," he says easily, nodding, expression creasing up with his pleased smile. Now that he's going out to do something, at least get some kind of supplies, that wound-up feeling inside of him is more bearable.

He gives Francis' hand a squeeze and moves away, picking up his trousers and shaking them out, frowning at what he sees — what he'd do for a working iron, but at least Francis wouldn't have allowed him any ironing when he'd been off his feet yesterday so they would have looked like this anyway, not so wrinkled but not neat either — and stepping into them.

Shoving clothes overtop the ones he's already wearing is frustrating. He'd wear layers like this all the time if it wasn't so uncomfortable, it's always cold in this damned place even inside, even with a fire, but even as the warmth is a relief over his legs he's frowning and shoving at the layer underneath, trying to get it to fit under the trousers more evenly. Layering might be warmer, but it always makes everything feel so tight and crowded.

"I'll need more clothes too if I'm going to stay here," he says as he does it. That's something he hadn't really had when sleeping in the Community Hall, more than one or two sets of clothes. It'd been the one good thing about leaving there, having room for more of his own things again, once he'd managed to scavenge things that he could actually wear. "I've already worn these damn things and this stupid shirt too long. There were some in that cabin that fit. And my shaving and sewing kits, too. And my notebook. And anything else in the place that might be useful, there could be something good left in the kitchen. Do you have anything to put it all in to carry it back?"

Well, at least he seems to be moving around easily enough. He watches him for a beat or two as he fiddles with his clothes, quite possibly worrying about tears or unwanted creases or some such nonsense, knowing Raju. Turmoil on the outside needn’t show on the out — he’d get along well with Jopson.

It makes his heart give a little leap in his chest at the thought of moving Raju’s things into his cabin. It seems so permanent; he still can’t quite believe he’d coerced Raju into staying through sheer pity alone.

“There’s a pack in the back room. That should suffice.”

He rolls his shoulders out softly and reaches for his parka. “Your cabin first, then if you’re still feeling up to it we’ll head into town for supplies.”

Raju hums, acknowledging it, leaves the trousers unbuttoned to help tuck the shirt in while he puts it on over the inner one, reaches up the sleeves, tugs the inner sleeves back down. The outer shirt is bigger than he’d used to wear to account for the layering but he’s still a little bit annoyed at how smooth the process isn’t, and eager to get going.

Once all that’s done and all tugged as straight and neat as he’s going to be able to get it he goes into the back room and glances into the pack there.

“Do you think one of those furs will be warm enough to get me, um… I don’t know, ten minutes that way?” he asks, walking toward Francis again. “That damn blanket I’ve been wearing is still inside there, too. Even if it isn’t I’m sure I could manage it at a run…”

He trails off, gaze distant and fingers running back and forth over the bag absently as he thinks over it. The problem of this kind of cold and what it needs and how far he can push against it is something he hasn’t figured out quite yet. Francis will know.

He probably shouldn’t stare as Raju puts all his various layers on - it’s a little backwards, not the usual reason a person might watch another person, but he does allow himself a curious glance or two.

“Wear my parka,” he offers, holding it out to him. His tunic works just fine for his purposes. It’s getting warmer out, after all, just about balmy compared to what he’s used to. He imagines Raju is freezing on a daily basis, and will continue to do so until the height of summer.

Raju looks surprised and then he frowns, looking from Francis holding it out back to the man himself. "We can't both wear it at once," he says, turning the frown into a try at humour in his tone and a smile. "One of us will still have to take those furs, and I've spent long enough wrapping blankets around me anyway. I don't mind. If I take both of them, I'm sure it'll be warm enough."

Warmer than that blanket he's used to wearing had been, maybe. But going out in it had been a fight every time, especially before he started trying thicker layers for his clothes, and there's something about the idea of fighting against the cold now that, suddenly, seems...

His smile doesn't feel very convinced any more, which probably doesn't look very convincing, and he tries to shore it up. If he wants to be on his feet and preparing for the aurora or the dreams, whichever's coming first, he's going to have to fight the cold to do it, and he's gotten used to that a long time ago. He's only tired, even after all that sleeping yesterday, the kind of tired that lingers in the back of your mind for a while and makes every problem feel bigger than it is. It must be a side effect of being the source of all those flames the way he had been that night, and eventually it will pass and he'll feel more steady again.

But in the meantime: "There's no point in you freezing yourself. It must have been cold enough without it the— the other night."

The other night, which doesn't really bear thinking about. Not without a good reason. The other night, when Francis' parka set over Raju while he hadn't been looking had been very soft, and very warm. He isn't sure which of those thoughts is the one that made him hesitate.

Crozier responds with a sardonic smile. “You haven’t seen teeth explode in a man’s head before, now that’s cold. This is nothing. This is downright balmy.” He holds out the parka a little more insistently. “Take it, Raju. I’ll be fine.”

More than fine, he’ll start to overheat if he wears the parka out for too long this late in the spring. And Raju - well, it’s been rough on him, and he’d rather not have to worry about him freezing out on their short walk as well as exacerbating any injuries to his feet.

He’ll need to find Raju a proper coat. Perhaps if he can find another couple of pelts he might be able to commission someone in town to sew a coat. Jopson’s a fine tailor, though it might be a stretch to craft an entire garment. No harm in asking though.

That stops Raju's protests in their tracks. He looks surprised, and then confused, and his hands take the coat almost on their own while he's still working that image and idea over in his mind. He focuses on Francis' face, lips parted to say something, and stops. He goes over to the place his clothes had been drying, to his socks, and sits on the bench to put them on. Layering, again. Half of him is focusing on keeping his expression even — the skin of his feet isn't as sensitive as it had been yesterday, it's alright, but Francis had been worried enough — but before he's finished the other half of his mind is coming out with, "Exploded? Because of the cold?"

That can't happen. That doesn't happen. He's never spent this much time with someone who knows so much about a topic on which Raju himself knows so little, but he's seeing the problem with it now: Francis could say anything about cold or ice or his experiences at the ends of the world and Raju wouldn't know enough about any of it to dispute it.

Crozier chuckles a little darkly and moves the kindling around in the fireplace to prepare for leaving it unattended. “Truth be told I’ve never witnessed it myself, but I’ve heard the stories. Massive pressure in a molar for days, then - pop! It explodes.”

He fetches the pack and empties a few trinkets and various tins - as much as he loathes them - to make room for Raju’s things.

Raju realises he's staring, looking a little horrified, and that his hands have gone still over his socks. He puts his attention toward them again, tugging on the second layer and then the first one to make sure it all lies straight.

"Just the one tooth?" he frowns, mind still trying to wrap itself around it. "Why only the one, if it was just the cold? How cold was it? Worse than this, you said?"

"Worse," he laughs, "so much worse. Cold enough your eyes can freeze. I think the teeth in question were already in poor shape though, before you start worrying about your own molars."

He was using it as an example, he doesn't want Raju actually worrying that his teeth are going to explode in the next storm.

Raju's expression scrunches up in half-disbelief and half-distaste as he tugs his trousers further down over his ankles.

"Your eyes too?" he asks and then looks around, remembering that, for obvious reasons, he doesn't have the shoes for going out in, either. The face he pulls is all distaste this time, the humour to it mostly in his voice. "If I ask if you've got any spare shoes you aren't going to give me yours and go out barefoot, are you?"

"The cornea, but yes. You can burn your eyes too when there's too much snow, but being out it a forest tends to lessen the chances of snow blindness." He glances at Raju's feet briefly and then nods towards the back room. "There's a pair of boots I found in the back of the cabin. They should fit."

He's fairly certain there aren't any holes in the soles.

Raju makes a pleased noise and goes to look. They're a little stained and an odd bright red colour, but they're only a little tight and when he walks back in and toward the door he's wearing them and starting to pull the parka on. "What did you want to trade for in town? It seems a ways to go without your coat for only spare buckets."

“Grains,” he admits. “Dry goods, rice if we can find it. Beans perhaps. I haven’t the time to fish, but maybe someone else will trade for some of the roots and herbs I’ve gathered.”

Basically anything other than gnawing on fried arrowroot and wild carrot, though he’s tried to make them taste halfway decent.

He pauses at the door to look at Raju in his parka and the boots. They’ll be suitable for now, but he’s sure Raju’s eager for his own clothes.

As Raju steps out he's running a hand over his hair trying to neaten it, but then the cold air hits his face. He grimaces, pulls the hood up and the coat tighter, and sighs very quietly as a little of the tension melts out of his posture. This is much better, of course, at keeping out the cold than what Raju's been going around in, not quite as much of a fight just to be outside as he'd been expecting and, like his gathered food, is something Francis had to give up before Raju could have. He'd tried to gather something himself for Francis' stores while he'd been gone, and found only a little. If he'd known that Francis would be feeding him, too, when he came back, Raju might have tried fishing instead.

"I can go back down to one of those huts soon," he says, trying to fit his hands up inside the parka's sleeves and pinch their ends shut, holding his arms close against himself. "I just have to find bait first. It doesn't have to be old fish like last time, I... I don't think. You showed me how to do everything else."

He thinks it’s a fine idea, and gives Raju an encouraging smile in return. Lord knows Raju’d be better suited for it anyway.

“Which way is your cabin?” he asks upon the initial crunch of the snow underfoot. He steals a glance at his friend to check for discomfort, but so far it seems like he’s more concerned with the initial hit of cold than the ache in his feet.

"That way," Raju nods, setting off easily on the path he'd walked here and back every day for all of a week or so. The feeling of the socks against the odd, sensitive soles of his feet is almost worse than the feeling of putting weight on it, and the way the not-quite-too-small shoes pinch make it easier to ignore even that, and think about the pinching instead. The other cabin isn't far, anyway, and discomfort doesn't matter. Especially when it isn't bad enough that it has to show. He's confident that getting there won't be a problem. "We should take everything we want from it in the next few days if we can. It'll be obvious by then I'm not going back, to anyone looking for a spare one."

Not that he hasn't spent more time away from it than he has inside, even while Francis was gone. Strange, how eager he'd been to go to even an empty cabin that belonged to someone else. More eager than he'd ever been to go back to the Community Hall at the end of a long, useless, frozen day, and that had always had other people living inside. Strange how eager he is now to start spending nights in Francis' cabin too, even though the idea is anything but safe. Still, if he can trust anyone to wake up to a face full of flames a few times a week and react in time, every time, to keep himself safe, it's a man like Francis. Not a fighter, not in terms of combat in the way that Raju is familiar with, but a captain, with years of experience dealing with crises. Likely a competent, capable man, for all that their first night in the room behind them, the dark around them and pale eyes shining too bright below in the shifting light of the dim fire, had left Raju with the lingering urge to protect the man from something. He isn't exactly certain what, now that he's thinking about it.

A wind blows around him and he hunches his shoulders against it, wrapping his arms around his chest. The posture's a lot warmer in Francis' fur coat than it is when Raju usually does it. "This coat is wonderful. I don't know how you ever take it off. You're certain you're alright without?"

He doesn’t see Raju falter in his step, but that doesn’t stop him from walker more closely beside him, brushing shoulder up against shoulder as they steadily trudge towards said cabin. “Just fine,” he reassures him, smile quiet and warm enough despite the lack of coat. “Live long enough in the snow and ice and you start to sense the subtle changes in temperature.”

As he walks he glances down at his sleeve, spotting the charred smear where he’d used it to smother the fire. It might be time to actually get himself some new clothes. Imagine that. He probably wouldn’t hear the end of it from Raju, in a friendly teasing sort of way.

“How much did you bring with you to the cabin?”

"Mm, not much," Raju says, feeling their shoulders brushing together as Francis walks closer to him. This couldn't be more different from the usual time after a nightmare, before those rooms in Delhi. He'd learned to let it sharpen him, harden the lines of his face under the always present gaze of the rest of the barracks, and push himself through until noon when he could eat and keep it down, and feel steadier. Then in those rooms laying still afterward with the sun on his face and thinking of nothing and doing nothing, surrounded by nothing but his own things, clothes, piles of his own books, that had felt like an indulgence even as it made it harder not to think of Seetha. And then this place had been somewhere in between, until he'd had to deal with the damn fire. And now this. That sobbing drifting out from the lights in the night sky will be bad when it comes and it's strange to be doing this too, knowing that and feeling this at the same time.

"Not the clothes. I found most of those after. I've been trying to find more now that I've got the room for it, but everything in this place is so strange. You saw what I had to wear underneath. I'm sure everything that's not was taken by everyone who got here before me already. I can't even find a proper iron, I think the ones here were all built for electricity." The thought makes him frown — it seems like such a strange, stupid choice — and then look curious as he looks over at Francis. Electricity was after his time, wasn't it? Or was it? Some time when Charles Darwin was young. Raju isn't sure whether he wants to ask about it. Curiosity wars with the knowledge of what else it means, how long dead the man beside him would be once Raju makes it home. Maybe better not to think about it.

The Netsilik had been generous enough to provide him an ice hut in the winter, a caribou tent in the summer. But he had been alone, always alone. They let him watch the children, join the men on the hunts and long waits by the breathing holes, sit by the women and help them scrape the hides, but at night he always went to sleep alone.

He slept alone in Terror, he slept alone in his rooms at the boarding homes, he slept alone when staying with Ross. Alone, alone, alone. Alone, save for these last few nights with Raju, and even with fear of fires he’s been…

He doesn’t know how he’s been, other than the warmth he feels in his chest as he gently bumps his shoulder against Raju’s. That feels real, as does his amusement at his need for an iron.

“An iron! You’re lucky you’ve got clothes without any holes in them!” He starts to laugh, softly and with his signature slight wheeze.

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