[ open ] i just want a good night

[princessvegas]

Who: Julie Lawry
When: early July-ish
Where: Horizon, Cadens
What: resurrection. and also croissants.
Warnings: language, others marked

Comments

[itookashot]

[ Jesper walks over to her and leans against the door frame next to her. Not in the way if she ends up turning the knob and leaving, but he's at least visible to her, a presence that she can look at if she wants. He wants her to have the freedom to decide what she wants to do here, while still knowing he's nearby. It's a fine line to walk, he knows that. ]

They haven't taken everything from us, Julie. Because you and me, we're still right here. If I end up the last Summoned, sitting in this empty inn, I'll be sad, but no one can take any of you away from me. Not from my heart.

[ The only thing that can take them away from him is sending him home, but that's out of his hands, and it seems like he won't even know it if he does. Jesper doesn't like that he won't know what's happened here, the people he's loved, but it also means he won't realize the loss at the same time. He doesn't linger too long on all the ways this is unfair or miserable because it's not in his nature. Life's hard but it's beautiful too, from his point of view. ]

There's plenty here that hasn't been taken. There are people who love you who are still here with you now. I don't reset, love, I adapt.

[princessvegas]

[ Julie can see Jesper in her peripheral vision, but she doesn't turn her head to look at him. She fears that, if she does, she won't be able to fight her instinct to put the front back up, or else to run and hide. It feels too vulnerable, too dangerous.

And she also fears that if she does meet his eye and manage to conquer the urge to shield herself, she will be putting a crack in a dam that is holding back a tidal wave of things she cannot afford to let loose. She thinks she'll drown if it breaks. ]

Jesper, you don't know what it is to be the last one. [ She doesn't say it with any vitriol — if anything, saying it seems to pain her, with her eyes squeezing tightly shut for a second. Her knuckles are white around the doorknob as she takes a shuddering breath. ] They take everything. Even when you die, they take that from you too, so you can never rest. You tell yourself it was 'cause you're special, 'cause it was meant to be, but then they snatch that from you too. First your life, then your death, then the only thing that ever made you feel...

[ Something crumbles. Her head falls forward, pressed to the door, and her eyes close again. Tears spill over the line of her lashes, down her cheeks. There's a moment where she struggles to breathe, her nose growing stuffy and choked when she tries to inhale.

Her voice comes out as nothing more than a quavering whisper. ] I was happy. I was happy there. I didn't... it was all gone, it didn't hurt anymore.

[itookashot]

I don't, you're right. I'm listening, I'm right here.

[ Jesper gently reaches out to put a hand on her back. He lets her talk but also doesn't want her to feel alone so some kind of contact feels the right thing to do. He's careful about it though, like he's afraid one wrong move will make her bolt. She's already at the door but he's got her here for now. He wants to hold her while she cries, it hurts him not to be able to fold her into his arms and make it all go away. Tears spring into his own eyes in empathy. Julie's been by his side since he first got here, he's been able to take care of her before. ]

I was happy too. Coming back to reality has been fucking terrible.

[ Maybe that's something that will help her, that he's unhappy too. That he acknowledges that coming back to humanity and all the stressful fucked up aspects of it has not been easy or wonderful or comfortable. Jesper's good at hiding it just as she usually is, behind his smiles and his laughter, but he was a god of love. All he felt was good and none of his foibles or struggles existed. No addiction, no trauma, no fear. ]

Please let me hug you, Julie. I'm not going to force you but all you have to do is turn to me and I'll take you into my arms and I won't make everything all better, I can't do that, but I can be your Jesper.

[princessvegas]

[ She flinches involuntarily when he touches her, although it's more because she has her eyes closed than because she's shying away. The knobs of her vertebrae jut sharply up into her skin, bracketed by the palpable lines of her shoulder blades; her frame shakes in time with her labored breaths. She doesn't jerk away after the initial start.

Julie can't bring herself to start elucidating on what being the last one left is really like. It's almost impossible to impart the desperation, the fear, the feeling of slowly losing your sanity while being all too aware that you're losing it. A little over a month — such a tiny fraction of her life, yet she's still trying to outrun the effects years later. The pain, the anger. Loneliness so deep that it still aches in her bones at this very moment.

She hadn't remembered any of it. Not the plague, not the bodies, not the isolation or the walk. Her parents no longer laid dead in their bed, swollen with mucus and rotting in the summer heat while she sobbed on the kitchen floor because they were too heavy for her to drag to the grave she'd dug in the yard. Flagg no longer lurked in shadows and mirrors and the corners of her eyes, forever threatening to steal her back again, to slither back into her head. She didn't wake with the burn of static and scent of ether on her skin.

There had only been Abraxas.

For a moment, her lips move like she has something to say, but nothing comes out except a panted squeak, obviously unintentionally. It's another long beat of struggled breathing before she can make her body move at all, and when she does, it's more of a drag of her head along the wall, until she has to turn with the curve of her own neck. She doesn't look up at him — she doesn't even open her eyes — and when she collapses face-first into Jesper's chest with a muffled sob, it's almost as if her body has simply given out on her, leaving her boneless. ]

[itookashot]

[ Jesper has heard from Nadine and Julie the realities of what they went through back home and how horrible it was, but that doesn't mean he can understand the details. His world was very alive. He had his struggles and dangers and fears, but there was nothing gruesome like what she's described. Ketterdam is filled with energy and packed full of people, he's never experienced loss to that extent.

He is ready and he catches her when she collapses onto him. Jesper is strong and she is a small woman at the end of the day, so he swoops her up into his arms without any trouble. He carries her back into the room and onto the living room couch where he sits and holds her closely to his chest. She can probably hear his heart beating with how tight he has her against him and he caresses fingers in her hair. ]

I love you, Julie. Just stay with me a little while, okay? You can cry or let me hold you, and I can't fix all of your pain, but I can give you someone to hold onto for a little while.

[princessvegas]

[ While Julie can't attest to how Nadine tells it, she personally has a habit of glossing over many of the worst elements of Captain Trips and the aftermath. It's partially to protect her own psyche from the trauma rearing its head, but she has also found that almost no one can really wrap their heads around her specific apocalypse. Nearly eight billion lives snuffed out in horrific suffering, all over within weeks. How the world went from light to dark almost instantaneously — all methods of contact were cut off, either willfully by the government or else practically due to the lack of people left to carry messages. The power went out in the early phases of the plague; all of the lights extinguished when the sun set, unimaginable darkness because she was the only one left to even try and light a fire.

It was the most stars she'd ever seen in the sky before.

There's no resistance when he lifts her, moves her, settles her. She does not have the energy or the willpower to do anything more than curl in on herself. Her body doesn't feel like her own, doesn't feel attached to her brain. Alien. She can barely even tell he's stroking her hair, feeling the movement more than the touch.

Julie has never been much of a crier. Crying is a tool more than anything to her. It manipulates people, helps her get what she wants. She occasionally is furious to the point of a tear, but she often blinks them away without issue. And even when she does cry, she specifically pushes herself to "cry pretty" — tears cutting smooth through her makeup, small sniffles, nothing louder than a gasp. Like a Hollywood starlet in a movie. She has practiced in a mirror before. When she does need to blubber, she does so in rooms spelled to be soundproof, doors not just locked but warded on to it. She doesn't wail in front of others.

She certainly does not bawl in front of them, howling and coughing. Only once in has she done so, in front of Geralt, and it was technically some sort of dream, so it's easy enough to rationalize away as not counting.

But now she weeps into Jesper's shirt, choking and gasping for air, face hot and wet. Her blood roars in her own ears, and the blob's bruit in her mind, deafening her. At a certain point, her cries become raspy from the dryness of her throat and mouth; her chest squeezes so tightly that she thinks she might die.

When she finally quiets, reduced to nothing but hiccups that feel sharp in her lungs, it is out of exhaustion. Her head feels floaty, light. Every muscle cramps and throbs and shudders. Her face is turned only enough to breathe, accompanied by deep sniffles. ]

If we can wrap on this, he'll just hold her as long as she needs!

[itookashot]

We'll get through this, love. We will.

[ Jesper holds her through her tears and pets her hair as soothingly as he can. Sometimes people just need a good cry. He's been there himself, for one reason or another, and he knows the value in letting it out rather than bottling it up. As an expert at bottling up emotions, he knows the value. She's gone through a lot but at least she knows she can come here and get it out of her system, he'll be that for her as long as she needs it.

The point is that she's not as alone as she fears, it isn't like it was back in her world. They might not be a perfect group of people, all with their own faults, but they do have each other, and that's how he looks at it. He'll hold her as long as it feels right and she can stay in the attic like she used to live in. Kaz isn't around and won't be for awhile. No one will interrupt them until she's ready. ]

I love you.[ He says again, hoping she believes him, and stays with her. ]