Jude
Thread by thread, I come apart
If brokenness is a work of art, this must be my masterpiece
He doesn’t remember Hadama being quite so…large. Even Jude isn’t sure if the surprise surrounds the man’s stature or his presence; as quiet and unassuming as the king is as he joins Jude at the table, he certainly still emits a presence that feels larger than life. Not exactly helpful for the meekness Jude wears like a shroud but it’s too late to back out now. If brokenness is a work of art, this must be my masterpiece
Though, as if reading Jude as one might a star map, Hadama joins the conversation with a sentiment so disarming that it slithers past Jude’s defenses to hook into his ribs like the barb of a fishing hook. It could very well be a lie, but Jude is so raw from the tumult of the last few days - Noe’s infection, reuniting with Lyra, facing his father’s ghost for the first time since the man’s death - that he crumbles in the face of the implication that someone might still care for him enough to remember him. Miss him.
His chin wobbles traitorously, bottom lip turning pale in the corner of his mouth where he bites the inside of it. “Really?” It slips out before he can tie it down and swallow it back, and the blatant note of desperation in his own voice makes color rise in hues of shame-pink up his throat and into his cheeks. “I mean - I didn’t think I was really that…” Jude’s gaze slides away to the tabletop, suddenly aware that the words that jump to his mind to finish that sentence are embarrassingly self-deprecating. Even at his lowest (which, depressingly, isn’t where he’s at currently despite everything) Jude isn’t hungry enough for connection to fish for compliments or comfort.
Luckily, Hadama provides him with a perfect escape route. Out of the frying pan and into the fire with the transition into talking about his father, but Jude can handle that better than facing his own inadequacies. His hands peel away from his thighs to clasp on top of the table as he meets Hadama’s steady gaze again. “He’s dead, that’s all there is to say.” A shield of ice for how transparent and fragile the defense is, but he manages to deliver it with a straight face. “But I’m…planning on some um. Adventures, I guess? And I was hoping that maybe he left something for me. Something I can use.” And though a tiny voice whispers its desire for more than soulless material items, he stifles it by squeezing his hands tighter together until the knuckles go pale. Jude doesn’t want to know if his father had any last words to share. If he’d had the chance to write them. What would it have meant if he had? If he hadn’t? Jude isn’t sure what he’d do with that kind of knowledge.
