Not sure if it's just me, but I'm in love love with how Julian begins to behave when nearing his Reversed Ending. How he gets so notably protective, I know it's the bad ending but I was actually kicking my feet the whole time
Like dude knows you died once, and something about the way he's absolutely unwilling to let you die again? Fuck YES. I live for that kinda shit. It also plays into one of my favorite tropes OAT: not a villain who'd burn the world for you, but a HERO. And being on the receiving end of it? It was actually really, really nice. Just experiencing him willing to do ANYTHING to keep me safe and sound? Yeah, still makes me giggle like a school girl
Tho mind you, it's absolutely NOT one-sided for my apprentice and him. Astrid is just willing to go to the same lengths, and she did
See, my version of Julian's Reversed Ending is quite different. Astrid loses the tarot deck, so Scout refuses to help her find Julian. And at that time, she's both pregnant and not in a good headspace. Not to mention she's absolutely seething
So, for the briefest context, Astrid gains her old memories back (it's a long story of how and why)
Anyways, the loss of Julian and the pain that comes with it becomes anger. Seething white-hot anger. And she needs to take it out on someone, she needs to make someone pay. So she goes a rampage, traveling South to hunt down the courtiers and Lucio due to their involvement in the scheme that led to Ilya being taken from her. She manages to kill most of them, only leaving two left (Lucio and Valdemir)
But turns out being repeatedly covered in demon blood has side effects. It starts slowly morphing her, gnawing away at her humanity bit by bit. She doesn't turn into a full demon, as that'd require her to kill to her Ilya, but she becomes something not exactly human. My best descriptor would be a demi-raptor (and not the bird of prey kind) plus some underbite fangs, black sclera, slightly pointed ears, and blackened nails with talon finger nails
But during this time, her pain doesn't once lighten. In the corner of her eye, she'll catch glimpses of him--a flash of his flame hair, something that looks like his silhouette, something sounding something almost like his laugh---but every time she turns to look, there'll be nothing there
The loneliness gets to her at several points, leading to mental breakdowns and moments of dubious sanity. And the toll his absence takes in her is immense, leading to moments of intense grief where she'll spend time essentially wasting away, and her brown hair even beginning to gray. Half of her nights are either sleepless or riddled with nightmares of him and selling his own soul. She's lost her will to live at this point, she's hanging in by a thread at this point, and her only reason to keep going is her children and the knowledge that Ilya's still alive and waiting for her somewhere
And then, she has twins, both resemble her beloved some, so she named them both after him: Elijah (variant of Ilya) and Juliet (the resemblance is obvious). She hoped that perhaps it'd make it feel as though some part of him was with them right in a way, to lighten the weight the lack of him had caused. Sometimes, it did. Sometimes, his likeness in them haunts her horribly
But after 11 whole years, she finally finds him. And when she does, she clings to him and she clings to him hard. She can hardly stand to ever let him go again. She knows that if she ever loses him again, she wouldn't be able to survive the heartache all over again
But I digress--Im just obsessed with how damn protective Julian gets over you when you're on the path of the Reversed Ending
