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"You don't remember me because your attention wasn't on me."
Azune looks at Julien patiently, everything but malice held in his gaze. There's an ache that threatens to rise from deep within his chest by continuously looking into Julien's hard stare—something that yearns to protect. Behind those long lashes where Julien's eyes flutter and blink; beyond that deep olive coloring of his iris; through the hard set line of his lips, Azune sees sorrow, loss. Julien is pained.
Julien shakes his head, avoiding Azune's burning sunset. His arms are crossed, and he's standing painfully still. His brows are creased in thought. Yet Azune waits silently, ever patient as Julien finds his words.
After a while of Julien's silence, it's obvious that the man has nothing to say, so Azune continues. To even his own ears, it's a whole lot of drabble—words spilling out of his mouth as though he were chastising a simple child rather than the only standing member left of the Davinos Family. However, Azune finds that he must, or else forbid he fails to give this man a chance to open up.
"I want you to give the people in there a chance, 'cause we're all twisted in this fucked up thing together," Azune says, then he tilts his head as Julien finally looks back at him, "and we're going to need each other."
Azune holds his hand out towards Julien, staring past the look of contempt that Julien returns. He doesn't show it outwardly, but Azune feels it as a pang of hurt in his chest, just barely there. Julien has lost so much. He's vulnerable where he currently stands, and yet, his demeanor has not faltered from when Azune has seen him before: cold and sturdy, like an immovable object.
Julien sneers, but then he's finally talking back. "Congratulations after all these years to see my family brought low. I hope it's everything that you—Thjazi would've wanted." He spits with words full of vitriol and disdain. And of course he brings up Thjazi, because that's just who Julien is.
Azune makes a sound between a laugh and scoff. "No, you misunderstand me."
Julien turns his heel and Azune knows he means to walk back into the Lloyd Estate, but Azune stops him with a hand on his shoulder, his grip firm but not unrelenting; Julien could truly walk back if he wanted to. "Trust them. Even despite their connections to and your less-than-ideal relationship with Thjazi, I think we both know that, between everything that's gone to shit, we can all find some common ground here."
Julien's brows raise just the slightest bit, and he turns back to face Azune directly. "You're making quite the case here," Julien says defiantly, "I don't know you, and you don't know me. All that is strung between us is the fact that we have a common enemy of the Tachonis, and there is a Tachonis right in there, who I saw be brought back to life." Julien stops for a moment, catching his breath. Azune sees flares go off in the man's composure, but he stands still, ready for whatever comes next as Julien continues. "He is no miracle that everyone believes him to be, is he? Tell me what I am supposed to believe—what I am supposed to make out of this situation."
Azune shakes his head. "That Tachonis you speak of—Occtis Tachonis—is not who you should be directing your anger towards. The poor boy had his heart ripped straight out of him. We aren't trying to antagonize you. I understand how you feel—"
"No you don't." Julien sharply interrupts.
"—when everything in your life has gone up in flames and it seems like you're the only one who understands yourself. Trust me, I've been there before." Azune lets his face relax, giving Julien a small but sympathetic smile. "I was barely a teen when I fought my first battle at Thjazi's side. It was my first time seeing such a sight: my friends and foes, their blood and faces indistinguishable from each other in the grime they had been covered in, yet there was a light that I was following, and…" Azune consciously stops himself before he loses himself staring at Julien. "When you were in that room with Primus Tachonis, I think I know plenty well how you possibly felt."
Julien looks at him, crossed. "Why are you telling me this?"
Azune takes one step closer, his hand dragging down Julien's shoulder to his forearm. "I'm telling you because," and he makes a dramatic pause, "I think you deserve to know—I think… you deserve to know that you're not alone. Especially not right now."
Azune feels the breeze come in from behind him. He almost laughs at the timing of it: how perfectly comedic it is that it decides to softly drift past his ears, musing his hair and making his earlobes slightly colder while he's making an attempt at a earning a newfound connection with someone he previously thought to have a less-than-savory persona. Previously, because Azune's seen and heard what Julien has done to protect himself and whoever else he could against Primus Tachonis. Brave decision, and yet idiotic. Heroic. It's admirable.
Azune knows he would've done the same, were he in Julien's shoes.
Julien takes a shaking breath in. His mouth opens, then closes again, then he looks up at Azune properly to the sight of Azune's sunset and the sky's own sunrise behind him. And reluctantly, Julien raises his own hand to grab Azune's wrist.
Then—and perhaps by his own subconscious—Julien also starts caressing the thick leather of his gloves and the silver rim of his gauntlet.
Azune smiles a bit wider.
"Well. Thank you. This converstion was… enlightening." Julien says simply, delivered in the same deadpan, slightly passive-aggressive tone he always uses, but Azune believes there's some warmth to be found in there: he sees it in the slightest bit of mirth found in Julien's eyes and the teasing of a grin.
Only then does Azune allow Julien to walk back into the building, catching up with the others.
He feels as though a spark was lit deep within his chest; one that had been lit previously only by Thjazi, back during the Falconer's Rebellion. When he was young and idiotic and still new to the whole fighting-for-what-one-believed-in thing. Thjazi was his light. His hero.
Julien could be a hero. Never Thjazi, but he could make a name of his own. A son of the new age.
The others are talking, sometimes over each other, seemingly unable to come to an agreement. Azune has tuned most of it out, his eyes focused on Julien and then occasionally Occtis and Vaelus. Even now, Julien's attention is still directed elsewhere instead of him. Azune makes a humored noise at the thought.
"You never told me your name." Julien calls out to Azune, which startles him at first before he quickly composes himself.
"Azune." He responds with a smile. He recognizes a small glint of recognition in Julien's eyes. "And yours?"
Julien tilts his head back, almost as though he were challenging Azune to a duel. It gives off an impression of a cocky young-master-of-House-Davinos that Azune had initially thought of him. Before everything went to shit. Then Julien smiles, the rise of his lips a promise. It's a deliberate call to Azune, luring him in like a siren to a sailor.
"We shall see when we return, eh?"
He'd always been a little competitive, and Azune was never one to back down from a challenge, especially one such as this. So when Julien backs away with the horses and the rest of his party, he doesn't try to convince himself that the wink Julien threw over his shoulder was a trick of the shadows.
Azune does, however, look down to make sure he's not carrying a hard-on before turning back to Hal and the others.
He sucks in a breath. Fuck. It's going to be difficult, isn't it?