[Training] Bound by noisy heartbeats

Jude

I'll still be here when the world slows down
And the sunbeams fade away

Jude's knuckles ache slightly at the glimpse of connection he gets to Ronin's jaw, and he immediately makes the 'time out' sign thereafter, taking the cuff to the head with a wheezing laugh that belies his dwindling stamina. "If we're gonna talk then we can't fight, or I'll puke a lung," he chortles, breathing hard between nose and mouth. His mother would cuff him in the back of the head in the exact same way for his loosely-mannered wording, and it makes his chest pang painfully.

Running a hand through his hair, Jude bites his lip, hesitant. It lasts all of a moment before the lonely urge for parental guidance breaks through like a tidal wave. "I don't know if you know her personally but um. Sohalia Lumaris and I broke up. I'd left on a break because she was hiding things from me. Things like...liking other people." His tongue spasms into silence because he had liked Koa too. It had come after, but it still hurts, still makes him question his own blame in the situation when he hadn't in the moment. "Then I ended up gone for longer than planned because people attacked my brother and I and he had to kill them and -" Jude's breaths and words alike come faster, tumbling over each other like stampeding animals, the memory of the viscera and blood choking him, "- well she was mad at me for not replying to her letters, but I was having the worst days of my life. So um. Even though we talked about it, we broke up." He winces, hating that part of this advice comes down to love advice which is unequivocally the worst to be asked to give.

Staring down at the sand between his feet, Jude regurgitates the rest in one big breath lest he lose his nerve. "Then I came home that day and my dad was no longer king and had moved my stuff out of my childhood home into an apartment and vanished. Sohalia only visited after seeing my dad before I did, said she was 'concerned'. And I...I was so angry, I was awful to her. And I don't think I was wrong, but I still feel so bad that it feels sick, and yet I'm still mad." Gulping down a harsh breath, Jude hesitantly looks up at Ronin, raw lips finding their way mercilessly between his teeth yet again. "Um. Sorry." Smooth moves, Judes.

Keeping time by a pendulum
as the fabric starts to fray