singillatim | Being born again into the sweet morning fog

Crozier used to believe Polar Night was more mentally devastating a natural phenomenon than the Midnight Sun, but being part of a collective of starving men slowly trekking across sharp rocks without even a night to offer reprieve from their miserable journey has convinced him otherwise. The Midnight Sun can be as cruel, if not worse, than never ending darkness, and side from madness there's also the worry about what a thaw might bring. What might be out there waiting to be unearthed?

But there's no point in sitting about and waiting for something to happen. Crozier does what he's been typically doing for most of his life: taking precise mathematical measurements. He stands at the porch of his cabin each morning to write down the time and location of the sunrise, then makes notes wherever he happens to be in the evening when the sun finally disappears over the horizon.

If asked he's happy to explain what he's doing and why -- and if there's someone who looks seemingly more interested than average, he might even teach them how to take the measurements themselves. Why not have help collecting the data that he needs?

There's something of a routine that begins to take shape as Crozier continues to tend to his friend after he had an Aurora-influenced breakdown some days prior. It's more 'caring for said stubborn friend' than the typical chores of gathering firewood or foraging for food, but it's a routine nonetheless. He's actually finding enjoyable considering how often he's chosen to remain alone, this quietly nagging after someone's health business knowing that they're actually healing and not...doing the opposite.

He's forgotten how comforting it is not to live completely isolated. Loneliness doesn't need to be his typical state of being.

Raju doesn't think that he's been stubborn. It's only that waiting has always been the least bearable part of anything. All those nights under those unnatural lights, hearing that sobbing, thinking about... And what it'd grown into, by the time Francis had found him. He'd been able to bear it on the nights that had led up to that, but now that the worst has come of it once, he doesn't know how far he'll be able to push it down when it all happens again.

If it happens. The strange things that those strange lights cause seems to sometimes change. Raju isn't counting on that, even as a quiet little impulse inside would like him to. Irresponsible not to prepare for the worst.

It's only that when Francis insists he sit long enough to give his feet a chance to heal, Raju can't prepare for anything. He can't even help with chores.

Considering how little he's done, somehow he's still very tired. Somehow, still, he sleeps.

The awful lights waver up in the sky underneath the cabin roof. The sobbing is a distant memory and a present danger and a knife digging its sharpened tip into what lives beneath the scar tissue and scabs and he reaches out with the force put inside him to stop it and his father rocks forward with the impact for a split second that lasts the rest of his life and then bursts into too many pieces to identify all of them, later, and Raju is stuck here with the promise he gave up on keeping and the poison moving inside of him and the man who still won't leave, who'd said we'll weather it together if the time comes and used the only hand he has to hold Raju's until they'd fallen asleep and they'd woken again and the time must have come now, and it hurts, the sobbing lights the poison in his veins on fire the way it had out there in the snow, it hurts, just the way he knew it would when it came back. Francis hadn't cared what lives inside Raju but he should have, he should have left.

The venom must be weighing down his limbs in the way it had before because it takes an enormous effort to shift everything away and roll himself with it toward the wall, the effort pushing a wordless animal noise out of him. The aurora must have come back, that sobbing must have come back, he can't quite hear it now under the crackle of the flames but he knew that it would hurt this way, knew that Francis would be here when it did. The thought isn't a comfort any more. He'll feel chunks of what used to be people under his hands if he moves away, but he has to move away, he can hear that damn fire and he can smell it, and Francis can't be here.

Despite the great discipline Crozier knows Raju’s possesses, he hasn’t been able to keep his fears under wraps since being found in the snow. He’s not a sound sleeper, not in any way that looks peaceful or at all restful, as though his worries followed him into slumber. His brow furrows and his lips contort, his body straightens and holds itself so tensely Crozier thinks he might be having some sort of fit - and those are just the moments he’s been able to witness.

So it comes to no surprise when Raju wakes himself up with some kind of spark, and not in a pleasant sense. Crozier’s roused by the smell of smoke - burnt hair, the fur blankets - and sits up quickly thinking that the fire from the hearth has spread until he realizes the source. There’s a line of flame along the floorboards and cutting into the furs, separating himself and Raju like a low, symbolically on-the-nose wall.

Between dreaming and being awake, there used to be a line. One one side the heat of the sun, the rifle heavy and hot in his hand, the tears on his cheeks, the ringing silence after everything. On the other the natural quiet of birds and insects and natural, quiet noises to break it, the sound of men shuffling and turning in their beds, someone talking some place outside, someone somewhere waking up.

Not so, in Milton. Of course. Of course everything has to be worse here. But there's no— no... debris, underneath him. Not the kind he'd thought he'd feel. That means— it's hard to think clearly enough, in the moment after, to follow up the thought the way he needs to, not with the noise of the fire before and after, the smell of it in his nose then and now.

Francis. Then and now, the worry for him, but there Raju can actually do something. Try to do something. He rolls to his stomach, pushes himself up, looks stricken at the flames next to him and at Francis through them, over their flickering edges. His eyes are wide. He remembers what he'd done before and squeezes his eyes shut but it hadn't happened fast and he needs it to, needs to make everything safe.

"Francis." His voice is rough with sleep. It's shaking, and so is his breath. He keeps his eyes closed anyway, pressing his forehead against his arm and hoping that the calm will come. "You're alright. Are you? Are you alright?"

Crozier breaks from the slog of sleep quickly to turn his full and unwavering attention on the fire in his home. He needs a heavy cloth, not the furs or the bits of rags he’s washed and re-washed so often they’re littered with holes and pilling. His hand touches the fabric of his own shirt, heavy and smooth and watertight, and a little spark of genius strikes him. He shimmies out of the sealskin tunic and starts using it to beat and smother the fire into submission.

He sits back, softly panting, when the fire’s been reduced to bits of char on the wooden floor. It’s only then he remembers Raju asked him something in his panic - something about the fire?

“Are you hurt?” he asks, almost echoing him without realizing it.

The only answer Raju gets is an odd noise, a noise of something soft hitting something solid over and over very quickly, and he turns his eyes to see—

—the man he's so worried about already taking action, bare and shockingly pale from the waist upward, beating something against the awful thing inside of Raju that can't be understood or contained or controlled, that shouldn't be at all, as if it's any natural fire. As if it's just something normal, explicable, something natural that can be contained that way. As if Raju's continued failure to conquer his own... As if that isn't the monster it obviously is.

Raju's breaths keep coming shaking and fast, not calming and steady like they're supposed to be, but Raju keeps his eyes open anyway. Something about it, watching it, is soothing the tightness at the centre of his chest. Francis goes at the problem like it's any other, physical and conquerable, and the racing of Raju's heart begins to calm. He only realises it had been beating so fast once he begins to feel the relief.

And then the fire is out. Raju keeps laying there with his head braced against his forearm watching for a breath, and then another few, before he realises that his breathing is steadier now. It's been a long time, he realises absently, since those days back home when a man might take off his shirt only to try and cool himself off. His eyes take careful time to follow the strong line of his friend's side, his chest, and then up over the scars. His eyebrows pull together. He realises he's still clumsy with sleep when the side of his hand collides harder than he'd meant it to against his face, and he rubs it over his eyes. Then he drops his hand heavily to the ground and spends a moment frowning at Francis again.

"Where did your shirt go?" he finds himself asking. Harder to answer than Francis' question. Raju smells the char of a fire, still. The tightness and weight around his ribcage isn't gone, just faint enough now to easily ignore. This isn't how he'd expected any part of the next morning to go. Except for the aurora, which... isn't actually happening yet. He thinks it isn't happening. It can't be, there's light coming in through the windows. The reality in front of him contrasts so strongly with the one inside that he isn't sure what to do about any of it yet.

Crozier looks down at his slightly-blackened sealskin shirt, realizing that in his quick thinking he might have accidentally burned some holes in his precious Netsilik-made garb. He sets it onto the floor to inspect later, when the floor's not still smoking and his friend isn't looking as though the entire world's been pulled out from underneath him.

"It was warm," he says dryly. The floor's still smoking slightly and warm to the touch. He inspects it as he moves closer to where Raju is attempting to rouse himself. "Raju, did you...?"

He clearly didn't realize he'd set the fire, but he also notices that the Aurora isn't to blame. Something else then? "Did something startle you? A noise, or a bad dream?"

All is still well, even with the small fire. He doesn't want his friend to see this incident as his concerns manifesting themselves. He didn't hurt Crozier or burn down the cabin; it was just one more bump in the road and nothing more.

"A dream," Raju says shortly, looking away from Francis again. Everything feels different when his body's first woken up but the rest of him hasn't yet followed. Sensations are bigger, or maybe just take up more space with nothing else in there to think about. He thinks about his forearm against his forehead, the warmth of his own skin. He thinks about the smell of the old wood and fur beneath his nose, underneath the smell of smoke. He feels the heaviness of his body against the floor. He sees the darkness between his eyes and the blanket under him as the angle of his head blocks out the light. "I told you that's what happens. I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier, but I must have been too tired. They're a damned pain now. Isn't enough to just wake up."

He takes a deep breath, smelling old wood and fur and smoke, feeling the pressure of his ribs against the floor as his ribcage expands, feels the air inside his lungs. He swallows. He breathes carefully out. Then he pushes himself up, slowly onto his side, and his gaze darts over the floor between them. "If we'd been sleeping closer, like the other night..."

“Then I would have woken up a hell of a lot faster,” supplies Crozier, not letting Raju finish that particular thought. If they had been sleeping closer he can almost guarantee that Raju wouldn’t have succumbed to the nightmares.

“Are you burned?” he wonders, shuffling beyond the line of black in the floorboards. “It didn’t touch you at all, mn?”

Raju shakes his head, still studying the floor even though Francis has moved in front of the marks on it now, his expression twisting in shame. He doesn't know why. Then it's clear: The danger is coming from him, but not to him. Francis would have woken up a hell of a lot faster, but Raju would have been alright. "It does over the blankets sometimes. And, um—"

He turns his right hand over, checking its palm and index finger. "Sometimes here." His thumb moves over the underside of his finger. The skin is red, shiny, hurts a little when he touches it, but that's all. Nothing worse than a second of touching a hot pan. "It must not have for long."

Raju turns his inspection to Francis. Up his stomach and chest again, over his shoulders and arms and hand. His attention settles on the hand. "You're alright? I didn't...

"Is that why you've lost your shirt?" Raju's frown deepens, attention moving back to all that pale skin. Not red at all, not the way it would be if it were burned. To be sure he puts a hand on Francis' stomach, moves it upward.

"I didn't burn you," he breathes out, quiet with relief. "I don't think."

Crozier feels his heart leap into his throat as Raju touches his stomach. He shakes his head quickly, reaches out to clasp Raju’s wrist gently but insistently with his hand, and pulls him back with what he hopes is a reassuring expression and not one that looks horribly flustered.

“I took the shirt off to smother the fire,” he tells him. Raju’s brain is more awake now, he can handle an explanation. “A benefit of sealskin I didn’t think I’d have to consider.”

Raju’s hand still grasped in his, he turns it over to see the burned patch on his finger for himself. “So this doesn’t happen every time. Interesting.”

Raju's gaze follows Francis' to his hand. "I think—" It's habit already to at least try to tell Francis everything. There's something about the hand around his and the curious tone in Francis' voice that makes it easier. Easier, but still not easy. Once he wakes up, there's no point in thinking about it; it feels strange to make the idea real enough to say it out loud. "It has to do with what I'm dreaming about."

It would be even stranger if he lingered over the idea, so he doesn't. He's leaning toward Francis as he's saying it, attention somewhere behind him, and then leaning over Francis' side, shirt against skin as Raju's arm reaches behind and past him to grab what Raju's realised, now, was the shirt that he'd been wearing. It would be a terrible idea to try to explain the dreams any more than that and Raju's voice sounds absent, words quick and businesslike, and then he leans back again, crossing his legs and sitting up so he can inspect the shirt for any burns. "Sealskin can't deal with fire that well."

It's habit, too — this time a much older one — to say things like that as if he knows about them. He'd never felt sealskin before touching Francis in it. He doesn't know anything about seals. But it can't, surely. Raju wants to know how much he's damaged.

There isn't much that can be done with the fog except to muscle through it. There's too much to be done to wait out a bit of bad weather, even if said bad weather feels like a vice on the chest. The damp is a pain in the arse as well, but at least as sailors they're used to be constantly a little wet from the salt spray. This seems to be less destructive than the salt, but just as unpleasant.

"We need to invent another herbal concoction for tea. I'm tired of the mixes we've been using," he gripes quietly to his companion. "Everything's too weak or too bitter."

Thomas holds up the little hatchet and swings again, felling a small tree to restock the firewood bin. The fog makes wet wood, and wet wood is a pain in the ass to dry, especially when there's so much else to be done.

"Ah, yes. I should order that for you at once sir," he says with a hint of a laugh, pushing the tree the rest of the way from the trunk with a booted foot.

No, it can't deal with fire that well, but it doesn't matter. In the grand scheme of things a tunic is a trifle, something missed but ultimately easily replaced by something else. A human's life isn't replaceable, their health and well-being something so much more precious than a damn shirt.

He doesn't take the tunic back from Raju, letting him inspect it as closely as he pleases if it'll make him feel better.

"It doesn't matter," he tells him quietly, sitting himself beside him on the floor with his knee touching his. "The tunic doesn't matter. But...it must have been one hell of a dream."

"Smartarse," he mutters, automatically setting about to help Jopson strip the tree from its smaller branches. "But if you could get on that order, Jopson I'd like it before the start of the next month. Fortnum & Masons, if you'd please, and get it right this time. Last time it went to Erebus."

"That was hardly my fault, Captain," he laughs, leaning down and using the small hatchet to get off the thicker branches. "But consider it done."

He steps back and surveys their work, leaving the hatchet in the trunk so he can roll up his sleeves. It's not so bitterly cold with more sun.

"The sugar I don't particularly miss," he says, echoing his old letters to James Clark Ross, "but the tea..."

He wonders now if James Fitzjames had enjoyed the extra tea and sugar in his stores. He doesn't remember the extra supplies ever coming up over dinner with the other officers, but to be fair, he'd been exceedingly drunk most of the time.

"Well, let's get out the ropes and haul it back."

"Not really," Raju says, easy and dismissive. Then his frown deepens for a moment. Talking to someone else about it isn't like talking to Seetha; Francis won't know what to expect.

And he should, shouldn't he? Easy to say it doesn't matter when it hadn't happened yet, or when it's only going to happen the once. And this is Francis' home. He should understand what he's invited into it.

Before the 'gift' of the damn fire, given like it'd been meant to help, Raju could have woken up quietly and it wouldn't have mattered at all. He sighs a little and looks at Francis this time to answer him, voice more serious. "It's always going to look that way. A— I don't know, a few times a week?"

Then he looks down at the shirt again, running his hand over the burns over it. "More when I'm worse at keeping busy. But it's harder to tire yourself out in a place like this. And you only have so many warm clothes to lose."

He sighs, squinting at the window and the daylight coming through it. He feels Francis' knee against his, and Francis understands things no one else has. It feels natural to keep going. "I hope those blasted lights in the sky don't become another feature, though. Already see the damn things too much when I'm awake."

He looks back down at the shirt quickly, though. He could swear he hasn't blushed for years, but he feels his cheeks heating up. It's that last afterthought at the end: it shouldn't seem like much, but he hasn't talked about those kinds of dreams that casually since he was younger, years before he'd left home. He hasn't talked about them at all, let alone that way.

"But I think my feet will be healed soon," he adds, instead of thinking more about the rest of it. "If they aren't already. Maybe I'll be out from under you before the next one."

Thomas lets out a huff and nods, taking the ropes they brought and setting to tying up the small tree. It will last a while, as long as the fog doesn't get to them.

"You were tired of tea not two weeks ago," he reminds him. "I do recall - "

Thomas pauses, standing up to peer into the creeping fog. The fog that has taken on a decidedly different hue.

Not really. That tells him all he needs to know and then some. Raju is secretive about his life, even with a man who’s seen more of him than most in this place; if he experiences haunting dreams regularly that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“What do you mean?” he asks, trying to sound more gentle than incredulous. “There’s no hurry to send you on your way.”

It frankly unlocks a piece of himself that he’d been trying to keep buried; he doesn’t want Raju to go. He doesn’t want to be alone. He’s gotten used to his company, and genuinely enjoys waking up beside him and cooking for him each morning. It’s been good for him, having someone else there to talk to and take some of those heavier burdens off his shoulders, if only for a moment.

He doesn’t know what else to say to it though. It seems…desperate, pathetic to be asking him not to leave when he’s ready. All he can do is make the offer.

Raju's frowning when he looks back up, and he moves the sealskin a little to draw Francis' attention to it. "This won't be the worst of it. I could lose you more irreplaceable things, I could hurt you. And even if I wouldn't, do you want to wake up to that every morning? Every other morning?"

He motions with the shirt in his hand toward the black mark over the floor. "I'll cover your house with burns that won't come out, and you won't sleep."

Raju watches his thumb rub slowly over one of the burns over Francis' shirt, looking unhappy and frustrated. But he can't keep sleeping next to the man when he's going to do things like this, can he? When he's going to do this and not control it. "It's happened more often after I stopped sleeping at the Community Hall. Like something's reminding me why I can't. Sleeping will be safer for you if I spend my nights somewhere else."

"Boiled bark and pine needles isn't tea," he replies. Not half a beat later he also notices the off-colored fog beginning to roll in, the sickly green color reminding him of when the stench of the Thames would roll into the center of the city. That heavy miasma now a literal green cloud slowly drifting their way.

Green, like the poison rolling from the mouths of the darkwalker.

"Leave it," he says sharply, letting go of his side of the rope. "Leave it and run, Thomas!"

"Safer it may be, but it won't assuage my worries," he tells him plainly. He takes the tunic from him with a frown, holding it out to Raju as though he hadn't been pouring over the cloth for flaws. "This is precisely the reason you shouldn't be sleeping alone. One day you might set a fire and then not wake. You could burn a house down around you and perish inside of it."

It'd be a nightmare to lose him in that way. "They aren't constant, these fires. It seems rash to me to decide to isolate yourself forever for a maybe."

Being born again into the sweet morning fog

Open! Early April, taking astronomical measurements

Closed: Crozier and Raju

cw for gore imagery

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Closed: Crozier and Jopson

Re: Closed: Crozier and Jopson

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