so give me your half-life crisis \ areto & julian / day 4
Jul 23, 2021 20:11:04 GMT -5
Post by napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ. on Jul 23, 2021 20:11:04 GMT -5
julian le roux
This dream isn't feeling sweet
We're reeling through the midnight streets
And I've never felt more alone
It feels so scary getting old
We're reeling through the midnight streets
And I've never felt more alone
It feels so scary getting old
The haze cast over his world by the slaughter of Six O’Malley is like a rippling white fog. He could see Love, Waverly, and everything else within a five-foot radius, but the rest of the world appeared ghostly, indistinct, and as frail as a dandelion in the summer wind.
And yet, it was no summer here. Truth be told, summer was a memory now, a charm he’d often finger to know it still was in his pocket and take him back to his childhood, to bright golden days at the Le Roux manor. He remembered the apples trees, their branches laden with ruby-red fruits, and his siblings’ chortling as they played in the piles of fallen leaves. He remembered laughter, youth, and that brilliant air of innocence he hadn’t known they all possessed until it was stolen from him. How young they all been once, how doe-eyed and ambitious. The world was golden and encased in amber back then.
In the arena, he’d only ever known the storm and its thunderous wrath. And a bone-clattering thunderclap jolted him out of his memories with a start, taking away some of the dazed look from his eyes. He shot Love a glance, said what he needed to say through it, and rose to his feet, slipping away into the damp forest.
He walked for seconds or minutes. It didn't matter until he came across someone in his, or rather their, lost path.
He studied Areto boldly. The last time he saw her, she was the paragon of the storm above, thunderous and wrathful, but even the arena whittled away at the brave amazon in ways he could see and couldn’t see, leaving her looking as wild and weary as he felt. It still suits her, he mused numbly. She looked like a world-weary heroine from the songs and stories, bruised yet still alive, battered yet still here. And wasn’t that enough?
Julian hadn’t even thought that the other could have killed him until she raised her hands in a gesture of peace, a fruitless one at that because the real gesture was that she hadn’t attacked him at first sight. “What a lofty concept,” he chuckles dryly, his hand dropping from the hilt of his machete, his head shaking softly. “Not peace. Armistice, maybe. For the time being.” Even when dazed, he would not let himself be fooled by something as foolish and imaginary as peace here.
A small brook wound its way between them, but it felt more like a river, or even a sea. On one side was Julian, born in between champagne parties and tennis matches, having grown up in a place where every meal came on silver platters and was served with a gold-embroidered handkerchief on his lap. On the other side, sat Areto, wild and whimsical, born in a world he could only imagine to be as ancient as she was, full of wondrous buildings, beautiful open seas, and a small, faint magic he would never feel.
So what mystery was it then, that they couldn't understand each other?
“Aspen said that killing Emerson was her idea,” she said, her words carrying across. At the back of his head, Julian jotted down another name next to Reece’s. But even the thought of vengeance had worn him down to the point where, instead of growling or doing what was expected of him, he chose the alternative and let his knees buckle to the damp ground.
“And so who’s really to blame?” he asked, releasing a bitter laugh. “The murderer or the puppeteer? Or,” Julian cocks his head, raising a brow, “perhaps even both?”
He didn’t know what to believe as well.
For a moment, only rain pitter-pattered between them.
And then - “Tell me, Areto, do you know if Emerson would have loved the place you came from?”
He smiled, and it felt out of place on his lips because it was soft, genuine, and having all the innocence remaining in him. “I can’t stop wondering who she would have grown up into if she wasn’t a lion,” he confessed, and in that same breath, he wondered: who would I have grown up into if I wasn’t a lion?
“I read about where you came,” he said. Julian smiled again, this time a boy’s smile. “It sounds magical.”
For a moment, the trees around them rustled, and the wind through them smelled like a summer wind, heady with moss and damp, and he, or rather, they were both children again. But as the wind died, so did summer, and childhood as well.
This dream isn't feeling sweet
We're reeling through the midnight streets
And I've never felt more alone
It feels so scary getting old
Lyrics: Ribs by Lorde
We're reeling through the midnight streets
And I've never felt more alone
It feels so scary getting old
Lyrics: Ribs by Lorde