Chapter Text
A great uprush of passionate, fiery light swept across the horizon, and without warning, dawn descended upon the island. The once gigantic moon, having said its glorious valediction, was all but swallowed up by the vitreous sea. To Lawrence who stood at the prison gates, the night suddenly seemed surreal and intangible. A guard - the same man who had taken him to Hara's cell earlier - asked if he wished to see the body, but Lawrence turned away with a new-found determination: He could trust few people with the events of the preceding evening, so it was up to him to preserve the final moments of a troubled individual. This he knew for sure, but he could not shake the feeling that some ancient power was looking down in pity at the grave defeat of a prudent man’s reason against his deep, instinctive, natural self.
The ride back to Batavia was a blur. He paid no attention to the road and thought about everything and nothing all at once. A golden grin that once belonged underneath archaic, luminous, child-of-a-sun-goddess’s eyes was on his mind, and he could not stop thinking about a small wooden box that would be delivered to unwitting hands in Kurashiyama in a month's time. This too, had been foreordained. In that instant, England and the pretence of life he had left there were far away and beyond recall. It was as if neither he nor Hara had ever left that sordid prison and were now eternally chained to the grim long years of their past.
He found himself a bottle in a dingy spot that could scarcely pass for a bar, and he stayed there until the skies had grown dark and bearable again. Once or twice a messenger from the Allied commander stationed in Java came to look for him, but in the end he was left quietly humming old hymns to himself in the corner. He was no trouble, and the 'official business' he had come for was over. It was ten to midnight when the slight, middle-aged native owner of the establishment finally took pity on him and called a patrolling soldier to escort him back to his room. He had no idea who the man was, but he addressed Lawrence by the rank on his uniform and accompanied him with polite deference. He was certainly too young to have seen action in the Dutch East Indies during the war, but nevertheless, in his sluggish, drunken state, Lawrence imagined he saw a familiar disgust in this stranger's face. A reminder of the look of betrayal that Hicksley-Ellis had given him on the day of Hara's trial. He understood now that he was forever outcast among his people, whether they knew it or not. Not that he had much choice in the matter. After all, what chance did one lonely, inexperienced heart stand against a man who had been kinder to him than any of his own people?
He was more or less sober by the time they made it back to the barracks, and didn’t need the young soldier’s help getting up the three flights of stairs to his room. For once he found the familiar twinge of pain in his shins comforting - a reminder of the Christmas that left his legs mangled but his spirit crystal clear. It became clear to him that he no longer owed his allegiance to a flag or a king, but to an ideal and the ghost behind it. His borrowed room was exactly as he had left it, but Lawrence was looking at it with brand new eyes. Looking, but not really seeing. After one last night spent in a hut on the edge of the ever-rumbling sea, he was a changed man. Back when he was kept apart from the other prisoners, he had grown accustomed to the sound as he had to the nightly tortures. Eventually, he stopped hearing it altogether. Now it permeated his head, even when he was not there. He almost wished to be whisked back to his foul cell, just to be cradled once more by the water’s rhythmic push and pull. Drowning in its all-encompassing mercy, Lawrence collapsed onto the bed and closed his eyes.
“Please don’t fall asleep.”
Clear as a temple bell over the unyielding waves, a distant voice called out to him.
That’s quite a request for a man who hasn’t been horizontal in over thirty hours. He replied hazily in his head.
“Come on, Rōrensu. Don’t sleep!”
But the sonorous voice returned, more insistent this time, not pleading but commanding. The familiar way he was addressed pierced through the fog in his mind. Lawrence jerked upright in bed to find what could only be described as a human-shaped cluster of light staring back at him from beside the window. It was blurry at the edges, though - not in the sense that a foggy day is blurry, or that a lens is out of focus, but easy to overlook, like a tropical lizard that blends in with its surroundings. But now that he concentrated on it, there was no doubt that it looked and sounded like Hara.
“Can you… see me? Hear me?”
It spoke to him in soft, cautious English. In the light of the moon outside, now cold and ordinary again, its shaved head glittered. In every way, it looked exactly like the Hara who gave him his last blessing just a day ago. Even its eyes were compassionate, still filled with the serenity of a man who was ready to face the end that had been written for him. Lawrence opened his mouth to speak, but only a whisper came out.
“Hara-san?”
Immediately surprise and what might have been joy lit up that round, anthropoid face. It had never occurred to him before, but for an unburdened moment, those harsh features were so transformed by a simple smile that this apparition resembled more an innocent child than the weathered soldier he had known.
“Yes, it is Hara.” Came the ready answer.
“Good lord, what happened?”
Then the apparition looked almost bashful. A sight he had sometimes seen when Yonoi had told Hara off for some trivial mistake. What an odd pair they were, Lawrence thought to himself absently, and how oddly they both went in the end. One half of him, the reasonable half, was not yet ready to accept this spectre as more than a product of his liquor-addled mind. The other half of him thanked the ancient gods for even a sliver of hope or a pocketful of time, suspended and preserved in the syrupy air of Javan summer. The night was still, and the magic that had roused in him the boldness that had made him turn back the night before was returning in great waves.
“I think I am dead.” It spoke slowly, but not at all confused or hesitant. “I remember a rope around my neck. Then I woke up by the sea, on the beach in front of hut. Like this.”
“How did you find me?”
“I walked many hours to Batavia. No one can see me, so I went to the army office. The commander was sending soldiers to find you, I think, so I waited and checked the rooms.” Just hearing its voice, the steady consonants of Hara’s English, left Lawrence breathless. His lungs seized up as if they were full of liquid. Perhaps, in reality, he had already drowned in that bottle, and this was merely a hallucination before his end. “Then I hear you come up the stairs. You were singing!”
“I was drunk.”
“I have never seen you drunk before.” It flashed a toothy grin, as if letting him in on a secret. “Now we are even.” It took him a few moments to realise what it meant. He had seen Hara drunk once, on that Christmas evening years ago. Strange as it was, their roles were reversed now, and it was up to the prisoner to do the gaoler a favour. His brain tried desperately to keep up, but his head weighed a thousand pounds and he couldn’t suppress a yawn.
“You should sleep.” The apparition said, not without concern. Lawrence recognised the tone as that of an elder sibling's advice rather than the rigid command he was so used to, even though he had more years between them. A subtle sort of happiness bubbled beneath his skin. “Sleep. I will watch.”