i was rereading lady midnight, and the amount of times julian had to deconstruct everything he has ever known breaks my heart
i’m so used to know him as this little soldier he is now, i never think of pre-tmi julian. but he was a third child, and one much younger than his siblings. he grew up in a family where four people loved him, and cuddled him and took care of him. painting with his mom, and having his hair cut by his sister, and playing with his older brother, that’s a child that knows he can let himself fall cause there’s an adult by his side. but as soon as helen’s gone, he is left completely alone in a world that is not what his family prepared him for. adults around him, arthur, diana, the whole clave, fail him again and again. what i’m saying is that he had to be left down time after time before realising it was all in his hands, because in his reality adults are steady figures to be trusted. and while now he has become that parenting figure you look up to, for his siblings, he doesn’t have one - even though he was no less a child than ty and livvy -. we can’t act all surprised and call him a “morally gray” character, when he’d trust himself more than anyone else to solve his own problems
he was starting to feel different about emma. that warm and delicate feeling one reserves to the first love of one’s life. he seems pretty conscious of why he wouldn’t want her as his parabatai, but once again his little 12 years old brain has to rewire quickly, because he loves her as part of his family and himself, and cannot let her go. won’t let his romantic feelings get in the way, and that’s another thing he has to bury.
when mark comes back he just hopes he’ll be able to let go, because that is what he had known before, that is how it had worked when mark was there in the beginning and what his presence meant in his life. but that is not the case anymore, and he has even more grief to go through silently, because even his memories are failing him in this present. there is no one that’ll be able to get this burden off his shoulders, and this is even rougher cause he trusted mark. help from arthur and diana was a brief hope and both of them quickly revealed themselves insufficient to his needs, but mark was part of that system that brought him up in the first place. having his older brother back was a five years long daydream, that ended up in yet another burden.
that’s it, i’m writing a pre-tmi tiny julian solo fic where he just runs around, and discovers rocks, and chases butterflies and eats sand, bye bye
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