"Julius," Deirdre is quiet as she approaches her son in the med tent. She imagines he will not be too happy to see her but she needs to know that he is alright. Perhaps it is a selfish indulgence but she has always insisted upon overseeing his care, even when he was just a child. "Have you had enough healing? Do you need more blankets or juice? You know I will do whatever I can to help you."
“I’m not a child,” Julius snaps, turning sharply to face Deirdre. Ever since that Valentian knight made it his duty to “reunite” them and prove that his mother was indeed still alive, he had been uneasy around the monastery. The freedom he had previously enjoyed, even with the arrival of Seliph, Julia, and a number of others hailing from Jugdral, had become stale and stifled, and he was forced once more to check the other side of walls before turning corners. Glimpsing just one silvery hair would send him back the way he had come or, more often, down into the darkness of Abyss. His ghosts knew where he lived though, and so he was haunted everywhere he went.
The Battle of the Eagle and Lion was one of the few joys he had managed to retain over the last few years and the fact that his mother had never been much of a fighter had been enough to relax his guard for a little while. Of course peace would not last, and that tenuous security came crashing down around him the moment she caught his name between her lips.
He stares her down warily, shoulders tense, feet planted as if on the cusp of a new battle.
“I’m not your child,” he repeats - corrects - more subdued than the first. “Besides, you should worry about yourself before you worry about me.” His eyes narrow with false scrutiny, then he crosses his arms and turns away. “You look like a wreck.”
