tifa ₊ ⊹

summary: julian is someone who built himself into something acceptable after growing up being treated like a problem, so now everything about him is controlled, calculated, and shaped around being useful rather than being real. he comes off as polite, reliable, and easy to trust, but it’s all a performance he maintains to avoid ever being seen as weak or disposable again. underneath that, he’s detached, quietly resentful, and unable to form genuine connections because he sees relationships as conditional and temporary.

his past still leaks through in moments of anger he can’t fully suppress, especially around whitney, who knew him before he changed and constantly pushes at the cracks in his image. their relationship is tense and unresolved, caught between hostility and familiarity, because whitney represents everything julian tried to leave behind while also being one of the only people who actually knows who he was.