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Julien’s muscles are tight beneath his leathers, the weight of his silver pauldron and gauntlet heavier than usual though he refuses to disrobe; even within the safety of Castle Torch. He will rest, as he has every night since fleeing House Royce, with his back against the wall, facing a point of exit, rapier within arms reach. A selfish part of him envies the young Tachonis’ inability to sleep…perhaps then he would be free of visions of his family being slaughtered, of watching his father’s skull wrenched from his flesh.
A vision of white and the spray of red as his father’s spine snapped free of his skeleton sours the wine in Julien’s stomach. He has to squeeze his eyes shut to stand fast against the wave of nausea that crashes over him. His lips press into a tight grimace before curling into a snarl as he hurls the glass of wine in his hand against the wall. His chest heaves as his anger mounts, but he forces himself to still and bury that anger deep inside himself. With his ungloved hand, he pushes his curls back over his shoulder and breathes deeply. He cannot lose himself in this anger, not when there are so many questions left unanswered. He breathes in again, thinking of Lady Aranessa and the promise he swore to her before she departed. He cannot lose himself and jeopardize his tactical abilities. To fight from a place of emotional distress is to welcome your opponent to finish you off. Mistakes are made when fighting comes from the heart and not the head. This, he learned early on.
For a moment he watches the wine stain seep into the bricks and drip down onto the floorboards. With a grunt of resignation, his gauntlet clad fingers curl around the neck of the wine bottle as he kicks back from his place at the simple writing desk in the quarters he’d been granted access to and moves to stand before the illuminated hearth. He stretches his other arm overhead and places his forearm against the frame to steady himself as he drinks deeply from the bottle and stares into the flames as shadows dance about his face.
A soft knock rattles against the door and without taking his eyes off of the fire he utters a curt, “Enter.”
The door creaks open slowly. “Are you alright? I heard—” Thaisha starts and stops as she steps into the room, noticing the broken glass and wine staining the far wall. She turns her attention to the man at the hearth, the rigidity in his posture as he stands, fully ready to run at a moment’s notice. She doesn’t blame him, not with what they’ve been through lately. Still, the deepening circles beneath his eyes betray the exhaustion she can see so clearly written on his face.
“I don’t think I need to remind you of the hour,” she says, pulling the dressing gown she’d been given tighter around her body. As a previous guest of the Sundered Houses, Aranessa had had a number of chests and closets filled with clothes tucked away in private chambers reserved for visiting lords and ladies. Unfortunately, her other outfits would not serve well on wherever this journey next led them, but to have something soft and fine to sleep in was a small luxury Thaisa would indulge before venturing out into the Eternal Night.
“Then why are you?” Julien responds, not looking up from the fire.
Thaisha closes the door behind her before moving to join Julien by the fire. She gazes into the flames and then at the shadows stretching up as they shift and curl around the sharp lines of Julien’s face. “Whatever answers you’re looking for, I don’t think they’re in this fire.”
The corner of Julien’s lip twitches, the very beginnings of a smile. It vanishes as quickly as it comes as he steps back from the hearth, throwing his cape over his shoulder.
“What is it, Thaisha? The hour is late, this we know. I should be asleep. You should be asleep. Yet, here we are.” He pulls deeply from the wine bottle still in hand and then offers it to her. “I can offer you wine or sordid companionship, the latter of which would bring a blush back to even the cheeks of the Young Tachonis.”
Thaisha’s brow arches as she presses her lips together, weighing his words and the amount of wine which may be lacing them. Without answering, she closes the distance between them. She takes the bottle of wine from his hand, which he easily relinquishes, and places it on the mantle. With a gentle hand, she wraps her fingers around his arm and gently pulls him away from the hearth, guiding him to the edge of the bed where she sits and tugs him down to join her.
His eyes widen as Thaisha reaches forward to undo the fasteners holding his pauldron in place and Julian blusters, “I have to admit I am surprised, but I would be happy to indulge in you.”
Thaisha dodges his mouth as he leans in for a kiss, catching his pauldron as it falls from his shoulder. She places it on the bed beside her before looking into the greens of his irises.
“I don’t understand,” he says, a scarlet heat climbing up his neck; a combination of embarrassment and wine on an empty stomach. His mouth dries and he feels a sudden vulnerability. As far back as he can recall, he’d never had someone reject him.
“If and when I seek out your—” she pauses as her lips quirk up at the corners, “companionship, it won’t be a means to forget.” Laughter tumbles from her lips as the fire light glints off of one of her sharp fangs. “That, Sir Julien, would be a night you wish to remember.”
Julien’s lips part as if to speak, but then he presses them shut to form a tight line. The line between his brow deepens, betraying his confusion in this moment. “Then why did you come?”
Thaisha’s smile fades as her heart aches with pain for the hardened knight. Without words, she pulls his gauntlet-clad hand into her lap and works the fasteners there. Julien bristles, but doesn’t fight her as she slides the gauntlet off of his hand and places it on the bed to rest beside his pauldron. Taking his cool palm in hers, she doesn’t miss the way his posture stiffens beneath her gentle touch. “Is the concept of friendship so foreign to you that you don't recognize when someone is asking after how you’re faring?”
Julien’s mouth twitches. “Friendship?”
Thaisha nods. “Someone who cares about you and your wellbeing. A person that honors the good and bad parts of you. Someone that knows you, I mean really knows you; not just another soldier or person you’re contractually obligated to train or serve.”
Visions of faces flash in Julien’s eyes; those of superiors in the guard and soldiers he’d trained, men and women he’d bed and never seen again, of the members of House Royce. By Thaisha’s definition, surely Lady Aranessa could be considered his friend, right? Being a soldier is all he’d known since he was a young man, no, a boy. 13 years of age. Surely, he’d made a friend or two along the way…yet no faces come to him.
“What do you know about friendship?” he bites, burying the weight of this revelation. “You’ve known me only a matter of days. You don’t know me.”
Thaisha inclines her chin, her eyes wide with an emotion he couldn’t name. “But I’d like to,” she says softly. “We’ve all been through more than enough pain and suffering in these last few days than most see in a lifetime.” She reaches forward and brushes a thumb over the scar cutting through his lip.
Julien catches her wrist in his hand but she doesn’t recoil. His eyes are closed, brow pinched. Julien doesn’t drop her wrist as she curves her fingers to hold his face in her hand. It’s soft and warm and his eyes burn with unshed tears as he tries and fails to recall the last time he’d felt a gentle touch like this.
Surely his mother had held him once? His father? Or was he only tended to by nursemaids until he’d been old enough to hold a sword and learn to be a man? Why can’t he remember?
His lip trembles and he sucks it into his mouth, biting down hard enough to draw blood. He tastes iron on his tongue and again that spray of red splashes across his mind’s eye as his father falls to the ground.
His father.
That’s my son!
A mountain of man felled by such a small gesture of the hand.
Held aloft on his shoulder. A toothless grin.
His life, a torch snuffed out.
I had this made for you.
Amends that would never be made.
Julien leaps to his feet and quickly stumbles to the open window where he violently retches the wine in his stomach onto the cobbles below.
Thaisha sweeps across the room and pulls his curls back, holding his hair as he heaves until his lungs ache. The images of his father swirl together; collapsing of his flesh as the frame of his skeleton is wrenched free from his body, him barging in through the doors of his chambers on him and his whores, the way he cheered for him when he won his first tournament. Julien doesn’t feel Thaisha’s hold on his arm as he feels along the wall trying to steady himself. His vision blurs as thick, hot tears well in his eyes and he collapses onto the floor, never minding the pain that sears through his knees as they hit the concrete.
A sob tears free of his throat as a pain so deep lacerates his heart, slicing through flesh and bone to destroy the muscle slamming against his ribcage.
He barely registers Thaisha pulling him into her arms. He weeps, gasping for breath as sounds of raw agony expel from his mouth. He cries for a childhood he cannot remember, a father he never truly knew, for the warmth of a gentle hand, and for the version of himself that never got to be; a version of himself that didn’t need a drink or a high or nameless fuck to come close to feeling something, anything.
Julien clings to Thaisha, his fingers digging into the muscle of her shoulder as his body wracks with each sobbing breath. She rocks him gently, stroking a hand over his hair as she whispers soothing words in Druidic.
She doesn’t attempt to talk him down or ask him what he needs. She only murmurs soft nothings as she continues to let him cry and cry, rocking him in her arms like she’d done for her own babies so many years ago. Who knows how long it had been since the vassal knight had last shed tears? Would he remember? She imagines that showing his emotions would not have gone over well as a young squire and a sharp pang only a mother knows squeezes her heart thinking of the punishment a young Julien would’ve endured over crying and sharing his pain with others.
No wonder he buried it all down and escaped into strangers’ beds and bottles of wine. On the road to Tanessar there would be nowhere to hide, no one and nothing to run to. All of the pain and anguish, confusion and frustration, every unpleasant emotion he’d experienced since witnessing Thjazi’s execution and his father’s murder…it’s a miracle he’d held it together this long. Every man breaks eventually.
Julien’s harsh sobs quiet to sustained crying and eventually, only soft sniffs and whimpers emanate from the face pressed into her shoulder. His tears soak through the dressing gown, cooling Thaisha’s skin beneath the fabric.
When Julien shifts against her, Thaisha allows one hand to still, cradling his neck in her palm as her other hand moves to hold his tear stained cheek. Julien’s brow twitches as his puffy and bloodshot eyes briefly dart between her and the wall.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, voice cracking and barely audible.
“Hey,” Thaisha replies, stroking a thumb beneath his eyes to wipe away the tears. She makes pointed eye contact with him. “Don’t ever apologize for letting yourself feel, Julien.”
His lip starts to curl and then falls as though he doesn’t have enough energy to continue putting himself down. “Feelings get you killed,” he says, voice devoid of emotion, almost like he’s repeating a phrase that had been beaten into him rather than something he truly believes.
“You see me hiding my feelings?” She counters as she swipes the tears from beneath his other eye. “I’m not dead.”
Julien releases something between a scoff and a laugh. “You are a mother, Thaisha. If a man is smart, they will know never to cross theirs or anyone else’s. You are the best and bravest amongst us all.”
She smirks as she smoothes his hair back from his face. “Is that a compliment?”
“Yes, well,” Julien takes a deep breath and scrubs a hand across his face. “We may not agree on everything, most things really, but I do admire your tenacity and frankly I am quite jealous.”
Her features shift, puzzled by the sentiment.
Julien continues. “You are not afraid to share your feelings. In these few short days together I have seen your pride and joy in who and what bring the young Tachonis back to this plane and command the attention of the druids. Your sadness and anger do not blind you, but guide you. I am jealous because I cannot recall a time where I allowed myself to feel anything lest I spiral and lose myself entirely. I’m not sure I know how to feel anymore so I find it is simplest to just shut it off, to drown myself in a bottle of wine, to give my body over to a stranger for the night, or to catch a broken bone in a tournament. It’s easier and far less painful to continue hurting myself in this way than to face myself.”
“What are you afraid you’ll see if you do?” Thaisha asks. “Face yourself, I mean.”
Julien’s brow arches as he answers, “A failure.” He drops his gaze to his hands sitting limply in his lap. “It is pathetic, I know.”
Thaisha reaches forward and squeezes one of his hands. “I find it to be quite the opposite. One of the bravest things we can do is shatter into a million pieces.”
She shifts onto her knees and begins to rise, offering her other hand to Julien as she does so. Wordlessly, he takes it and allows her to help pull him to his feet. His head spins and he has to squeeze his eyes shut before the world rights itself again.
“And what becomes of those pieces?” he asks bitterly. “Most would give up on fixing them and throw them away.”
Thaisha smiles. “All it takes is one person to start to put them back together again and by my count, you’re traveling with three people who might be willing to pick up a few of those pieces.”
Julien huffs out a breath of air. “Yes, I’m sure the young Tachonis would love to carry pieces of my fragmented body around in his pocket. I’m sure he’s got a number of spells to toss me into.”
Thaisha’s lip curves into a smile as the image paints across her mind’s eye. “A wizard’s components can be used in many ways. Pin could use a tiny porcelain sidekick I think.”
“Are you kidding?” Julien quips. “Pin is the sidekick.”
Their eyes meet and they both share a quiet laugh. The sensation feels strange as it rises from his chest and rolls off his tongue. It feels nice to share something so simple yet so genuine with another.
“Well,” Thaisha says, tugging the dressing gown tighter around herself. The cool air against the wet spot on her shoulder brings goosebumps to her flesh. “We have a long road ahead of us tomorrow. Get some rest.”
Julien nods in her direction as she sweeps gracefully across the room. She pauses in the threshold just as she’s about to shut the door.
“Thank you,” she says.
Julien’s brow furrows. “For what?”
She smiles and again, the flames of the dimming fire glint off of her fangs.
“For letting me in. I can be a friend if you let me.”
He nods. “Friends are hard to find in these times.”
She nods, a soft smile on her lips that turns suddenly to a glower as she points a long nail in his direction. “If I ever hear you’ve done anything with my son, though!”
“Oh for gods’ sake,” Julien groans.
Thaisha smiles and winks. “We can be friends, but I will kill you.” She closes the door and behind it, a cheery, “Goodnight,” echoes down the hall.
He smiles and shakes his head. “Goodnight, Thaisha.”
He moves to stand in front of the fire once more, flexing his palms to warm them in the dying glow of the flames. Minutes go by and the warmth Thaisha brought with her fades with the waning embers. Soon, the chamber is nothing more than shadows and night and the ghosts of his past carry haunted memories once more to the forefront of his mind. Moonlight shines through the open window, the silver shaft of light reflecting off of the wine bottle he’d abandoned on the mantle.
His fingers twitch against his palm. He hesitates only a moment before reaching for the bottle and drinks deeply as he collapses into bed where his gauntlet presses against his thigh. As the wine warms his heart and head, he falls into the pillows where visions of his mutilated father swim and fade from view.
Maybe tomorrow will be different.
Maybe tomorrow he'll choose friendship.
Tonight he chooses the bottle.