savetheearth | [Closed] Fly, pigeon fly, cross your windblown sky

"It has doorknobs." He's been there, he remembers. Julien has had so much trouble with doorknobs. Scales slide off them, feathers can't grip them well. It won't be any better now.

"Anyway if I go to Locke it won't be the middle of nowhere, and that's a shitty place to hide when you turn into a- a giant- this." Somehow he can't bring himself to say anything more specific just now.

Edited 2015-02-27 03:39 (UTC)

"As if you couldn't work around that if you put your mind to it," Aaron says, mildly challenging.

"But I won't deny that Locke is a terrible place to hide." In the TV show that is this game, there is a dramatic beat there, and the audience will wonder what's up with that heavy-handed foreshadowing.

"I won't tell you where to go. But you can come to me, if you need it. That hasn't changed."

Julien does not want to fight, not really. He's tired of all this. His wings come out of their tight fold to droop, the tips of his primaries touching straw.

"I do know a place," he mutters. "It's not good for me in the long term, but that's incentive to leave, isn't it. I wouldn't be a strain on the owner."

Because if he goes with Aaron, he will be a strain. Julien knows how small that house is, how big he is now, how much he eats, and Aaron will want to help him, when he's putting plenty of himself into work as it is.

He looks at Julien for a moment -- it's that look, the Striderstare, the piercing one -- and then relents. He nods, satisfied.

"All right. Pack up whatever you've got here and we'll go."

He looks back, eyes huge and round and blue. Minuscule adjustments in the sizes of his pupils, drawn small now with effort, are all that make him look less opaque than a trapped animal. It's a hell of a poker face, or it could be if weariness and hurt and defeat hadn't made themselves far too clear by now.

"Just the cloak. I can't fly wearing it." He'd had a pin that he was pretty sure he'd taken from Aaron, but it had vanished days ago, and even Julien's ridiculous eyesight, expanded even farther now that his eyes are so enormous, hadn't helped him to find it. Anyway even with the pin, the cloak had flapped like a flag in a high wind and got unmanageable.

Julien turns his head - with his neck held coiled like this the motion looks almost owl-like - to face away. "I hate you," he says, and in the same breath, "I missed you."

....

Aaron takes a breath, closes his eyes, and sighs it out.

"I know," he says, resigned. "I could have made last year easier for you, and I didn't. I'm sorry."

He offers no excuses. Aaron recognizes that some of it was not his fault -- that losing his Echoes was out of his control. However, that doesn't change how it made Julien feel.

He bends down, picks up the cloak, and shakes it out. He begins to fold it.

At last Julien shifts on his feet, taking a couple of steps. He's so painfully aware, here, of how he's forced to move his legs, crouched and wide, almost waddling. The center of his gravity is around his knees instead of having much to do with his hips. Ponderously he swings the keel of his chest through a turn.

And mushes the crown of his head against the back of Aaron's coat, between the shoulderblades, pressing hard enough to splay out his feathers, to feel through the layers. "I," he says, and stops, breathing slowly.

He hadn't meant to hurt Aaron. -well, yes. He had. Julien was so, so endlessly good at picking himself up and dusting himself off and carrying on like everything was fine. People expected it. Give him time and he was always okay, like it came automatically and had no cost, like backsliding was never an issue. They all hung above him, uncomprehending. He wanted...

So, okay, he had meant to hurt Aaron. But having done it didn't make him feel any better. Julien presses against him with the crown of his head, and his operculum, and the point of his beak. "You need to hug me," he says.

He stops moving when he feels the pressure against his back.

Aaron stoops, a moment later, and sets the cloak down.

He turns, and looks down at Julien. He is sad, but not out of hurt to himself. Aaron knows he's the one who always leaves -- his pulses are notoriously unstable, and it's upset Julien before. This is the worst of them all. Protesting how unfair it is will do no good, but it is. All Julien has said is already forgiven.

Arms wrap around Julien's neck.

Julien shifts so he can lean the side of his head against Aaron's chest. His wings open, part of the way. Can he even really be held like this, not just around the neck?

He pulls back a little so he can rear up, and it's stupid he can feel how his legs should be able to work, he should be able to stand, all he can do is fold his calves tight against his thighs and extend his ankles. Even then his body will not become upright, and he can feel the weight of all the muscle attached to his keel trying to drag him back down.

Julien rests that on Aaron - try not to stagger - and lowers his head over the man's shoulder, hooking over it. Then he can, gradually, move one wing to circle him. His wings don't quite move like arms anymore. Some motions aren't as free.

[Totally this.]

He can take the weight -- he's stronger than he looks -- and keeps one arm around Julien's neck. The other goes as far around as it can. His hold tightens, and he makes no move to pull back.

It's been a while.

Another deep, deep sigh. Okay, Julien can't be held close, sheltered. He's just too big. And sensation is more distant through feathers, spread out and insulated to a remove; he feels them pressed down, not the kind of heat and texture he'd taken for granted once. Still. It's something.

"Okay," he mutters down Aaron's back. "I don't hate you. Just..." He turns his head, rubbing his face, the velvety shape of his operculum, against the jacket, and closes his eyes.

"...my God. My God."

"I know." It's murmured. There is meaning to it -- it's not just repeated because he can't think of what to say. Aaron knows Julien doesn't hate him, and he knows that what has happened to Julien is frankly beyond words. His hand moves over the feathers on the back of Julien's neck -- left and right, like rubbing someone's back. It, too, cannot be mistaken for a pet.

Gradually the way the feathers on his head and neck are raised shifts, making it easier to sink through them.

"I need to stop falling apart." The only control he's had here, all along, has been in how he's reacted and what he's done with what was handed to him. It's had a cost and is so much harder than anyone knows, but it's his. "I need to - pull myself together."

Nothing will be the same again. Nothing will be how he wants it. Telling someone, even Aaron, changes nothing. He hates to pretend he's okay, now, but it's the only thing he can think to do.

"Everyone falls apart," Aaron tells him, getting his fingers in the feathers. His head is turned in, leaning against the side of Julien's neck. He's not shying away. "You've done a remarkable job controlling when and how for the past two years. It's okay if putting yourself back together takes a little time."

He sighs out a breath. This is a situation he's never handled before, and what he's telling Julien is -- well, uncalculated. There are times Aaron Strider will tell someone what they want to hear, or what they need to hear, or what he needs them to hear. With this, though, he's got so little reference, so little grounding, that he's got no choice but complete honesty.

"I didn't come here to hurry you."

Julien hadn't quite realized before how touchstarved he was, how much he wanted human contact. With a kind of distant disgust he thinks it's like he's engulfing Aaron in feathers, covering him; he thinks he'd let Aaron lay on his back if it just means continuing, staying there. It makes him want to start tearing feathers out, like he'd done in March.

He doesn't think of it this way but he is incredibly resilient. A few words and some time to collect himself is usually enough that he can work to adjust.

This time, he had not been on the verge of coming back on his own. This time he could probably have stayed out for a long time. "Okay, I'll play," he mumbles. "Why did you come out here? Besides 'I know you'."

"Because I should have come the other times," he says. Aaron hasn't forgotten Julien's first words to him. Without his Echoes, Aaron had always guessed that Julien would be fine, and that Julien had others to rely on, and that if Julien had needed him enough, Julien would have let on, somehow. He had been wrong. "I let you down again -- for a year this time. Probably the year I could have done the most good. I know I can't make up for all the times I was wrong, but I can start doing things right."

A breath.

"I won't tell you how to deal with this. But whatever you decide, you don't have to do it entirely by yourself."

Now, at last, Julien pulls back with his wings furled. He's holding his head up more, despite not making himself tall.

"You don't owe me anything," he says with a sigh. "You, or anyone. This bullshit is mine, all of it. You can't shoulder it for me. There's only so much help anyone can give."

Aaron shakes his head -- I'm not trying to shoulder it, this isn't a matter of owing. "But any help is better than none, and better still than having no one there to offer it."

"You're just going to break your heart, Aaron." There are several reasons Julien's had for keeping quiet, on a lot of subjects. One is that there is nothing to be done for most of what bothers him. Telling anyone would spread unhappiness without diminishing it. It's so tiring to think of picking his way through his life and only sharing what isn't too upsetting.

"I'll decide what to do with my heart, thank you," says Aaron, unwavering, "and what it can take before it breaks. It wouldn't be what it is if it weren't for you, anyway." A breath in, calm, resolved. "Julien, tell me what you need, and if I can give it to you, I will. Even if all I can do is listen without judgment, I will do that, and nothing you say will break me."

It is an offer, not a request. If Julien does not want to talk -- if he truly believes it will leave him feeling no better -- Aaron will not ask him to. But, he says, if Julien does, he can.

"And if I cannot listen, then I will just be here, and remind you when I must that you need only be alone when you choose to be."

"You already know anything I could tell you." Anything he's willing to say. This is horrifying and hard, he's mourning who he was and what he's lost, he's afraid he won't be able to present the personality that suits anymore.

He just wants to hear it. "Okay. One more time. Why did you come out here? There's so much else you could be doing with your time. Why put this much into me?"

"You still don't know?" says Strider softly. "I don't think you understand what you mean to me, Julien." He steps forward and puts a hand on the side of Julien's feathery bird-face. "I came because I love you. I have loved you since the day you walked into my clinic, looking for work. Now, years later, I love you still." His eyes are warm, earnest, and affectionate, tempered with the slightest fear of rejection -- what if this comes between them? Julien has Isabela, after all, and this kind of confession coming at the end of a year-long rift in their friendship must be sudden.

"Perhaps I should have told you before you turned into a bird. However, my feelings have not changed."

"You... you can't mean that." His voice is shaking. He should pull away. "You can't love me. Not when I'm like this. Don't tease me like that!"

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Julien looks up at him with unreadable round eyes. "There's nothing else I can tell you." There's nothing else he's willing to say. This is horrifying and hard, he's mourning who he was and what he's lost, he's afraid he won't be able to present the personality that suits anymore; that's plenty.

"Okay. One more time. Why did you come out here? There's so much else you could do with your time, effort... You left the clinic. Why?" He just wants to hear it.

"Because you, Julien Sakazaki, are very important to me. More important than the clinic, certainly, and perhaps more important to me than any other individual in Locke City. I've done a terrible job of showing it, and that is a mistake I regret."

Aaron doesn't know in truth how much he will be able to help Julien, but he thinks that saying this out loud might not be a bad first step.