In shadows of greater men

Jude

Thread by thread, I come apart
If brokenness is a work of art, this must be my masterpiece

After his visit with Lyra, Jude returns to Stormbreak to see Noe instead of sending a letter. He hopes it will buy him more time, yes, but he also does it because when he’d decided to bite the bullet and call up Hadama next he’d been told Hadama was actually in Stormbreak. And what better place to face your fears than on your own territory?

It’s easy to get a message to someone in the thick of a floating city. Less easy to find a place to meet that isn’t painfully public. The best Jude could arrange on short notice was a wrought iron, decorative table in an otherwise unassuming pagoda in the park. Nothing glamorous enough to tempt people there for picnics or tea. Just enough scattered leaves and scuffed paint to ensure a modicum of propriety and poise without inviting prying eyes. 

Jude picks at the peeling paint on the metal lattice of the table until the very moment the Tidebreaker sits down opposite of him, then he lays both hands flat and drags them slowly toward himself until they can drop off the edge to rub sweat into his jeans. Lifting his gaze feels impossible. The spring air on his damp neck makes the temperature seem cooler than he remembers it being five minutes ago. He isn’t sure what he feels, but it’s a typhoon he isn’t ready to face. Still he must. For Noe. 

“Hi,” he offers meekly. It feels inappropriate to launch right into things, even if his heart could handle it, but what does that leave? Jude assumes he’s burned every bridge and modicum of respect this man might have held for him. He would be right to. But Jude had always told him he was nothing special, hadn’t he? To not expect anything of worth from the discarded starboy? Hadama should have believed him. Maybe - hopefully - he had. If so, this will be painful in a different way, but altogether easier. “I um. I wanted to ask you something. And I wanted to apologize for not telling you I as leaving. Um…personally, I guess.” He winces immediately after at his own self-importance but at least manages to not drop his gaze. Jude owes the man at least that much.

The message had been... unexpected. His presence in Stormbreak was hardly a secret; his height and tattooed scars made it difficult to be circumspect, and so he made only enough effort at it so that he was not flaunting his visit to the floating city. Long sleeves that covered his arms, braid tucked into the back of his shirt and hair obscured by a warm cap so that it didn't catch the light with its Mer-tinted metallic shine, and the greatest indignity of all: boots upon his feet. But still, to be sought out in the heart of a Void-held region by a young man he had not seen in seasons might have seemed suspicious to a more paranoid man.

And perhaps it was suspicious to Hadama. But that did not stop him from coming to the appointed place at the time Jude had requested.

He approached slowly, his steps unhurried but instinctively light as he walked through the park towards the little pagoda, eyes taking in the returning greenery and the lingering litter of last year's leaves, studying the area for hints of violet hidden in its shadows. But as he neared the table and the lonely, lanky form hunched over it he turned his full attention to studying what had become of Jude since their last meeting.

He pulled out his chair with care not to scrape it jarringly over the cement before gingerly settling himself into it. It was too small for a man of his size, but the latticed metal creaked once in protest and then decided to hold, and Hadama relaxed. He folded his hands on the table in front of him while he sat straight and tall in his chair, regarding Jude with quiet concern as the other man slid his hands down to his legs, head still bowed.

And he listened, as the words dropped between them, pebbles into the still pond of the Tidebreaker's heart that sent ripples across the surface and stirred memories from deeper within. He inclined his head in acceptance of the apology first, finally drawing breath to speak in his quiet, deep rumble. "I was worried, when you disappeared. And...I have missed you." An admission made without pride as he sought for some indication that Jude had changed since their last meeting. But in the end he was Harper's son, and the year that he had been silent was something that the Tidebreaker could only accept and move forward with.

"Are you ready to speak of your father?"

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. 

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.

For all his meekness, Jude had his pride. His anger. And his youth. The questioning note, the flush of embarrassment, were reminders of just how young he still was. And how much he had lost. Not just in Harper's death, but in the disappearances of Phoebe and Maeve and Edmund. There had been little enough stability in his life that Hadama knew of, and that was before he had prayed to rush past his childhood. "Yes." A single word, but it held a certainty as deep and unshakeable as the roots of the Cordillera. The table was between them and Jude had pulled his hands back to himself so the Tidebreaker could not reach out to him, but he could at least pick up the pieces of a sentence that had dropped and now lay cracked and gleaming on the table between them. "You are my friend, Jude." An affirmation spoken quietly. Gently. But again with that simple sincerity.

And he was the son of another of Hadama's friends. One who would not be sending letters or meeting with him again without divine intervention. Although one letter still remained undelivered.

And for a brief moment, he was left to consider whether it would remain that way. Jude had not forgiven his father, it seemed, and Hadama considered the small items in the bag at his side. Whether or not they would be welcome as mementos of a father who had been largely absent in the latter years of his son's life. But--

"Adventures?" Hadama tilted his head curiously, and worried eyes warmed. "There was something, yes..." Several somethings, in fact, but the most important one was delivered first as he leaned back to reach into his bag. The letter was withdrawn and then slid across the table carefully. It was in an envelope that held two smaller items as well as a father's last words - a ring and pendant - and Jude's name written on it in Hadama's sharp script. "There is more. But I did not want those getting lost." Not as small as they were.

Jude

Thread by thread, I come apart
If brokenness is a work of art, this must be my masterpiece

Friends usually implies some level of shared interest, each party receiving something from the other, but Jude isn’t sure he has anything to offer Hadama that would make him worthy of the title. “I’m not very good at being a friend,” he admits quietly, ashamed of it but not shying away from the reality. “But I’m trying to figure out how.” Be patient with me. He wants to ask it of the man, but there’s so much he has left to request that it feels like crossing the line into asking too much.

“Of a sort,” he evades, cagey. Hadama seems the type to try and dissuade him from the reckless mission he has set before himself, and Jude can’t afford to doubt.

Which is why he does not open the letter as it is pushed across the table. He stares at the handwriting - distinctly not his father’s - that denotes his name. The vague shapes that outline something more than parchment encased within. He slowly lifts a hand from beneath the table to gently lift one corner with his fingertips. The paper trembles. It must be the wind through the pagoda. That would also explain why he feels cold.

He slips it into his own bag without opening it. Stares for a long moment at the edge of it peeking out from the shadows of its new container before returning his eyes to Hadama. “I’ll make sure it stays in my bag until I can find a safer place for whatever’s inside.” He feels oddly like a schoolboy promising to return their homework on time. Jude isn’t sure when he’ll finally start feeling like a proper, independent adult at this rate. “You said there was something else?”

"Then you may practice on me." Hadama's words were also quiet, but there was a calmness to them, and a subtle, gentle warmth in his eyes as he spoke. It did not matter that Jude did not speak the words aloud; the former Mer had a great deal of patience, and he was glad to extend it to the young man across from him.

Even - or perhaps especially - when details were less than forthcoming. Rather than pry, Hadama simply tilted his head in acceptance of the young man's privacy, and reached into his pouch for the letter. He had not broken the seal on the parchment meant for Jude's hands, the one whose handwriting he would recognize as soon as he saw it, and so the rings and the letter had been placed in his own envelope to keep them together and protected. And if the envelope trembled in the light Flowerbirth breeze, Hadama did not mention it, nor did he protest when the envelope was tucked away, unopened.

The last moment between father and son was not meant to be shared. This, he understood implicitly. And he only tilted his head in acknowledgment of Jude's promise, however unnecessary.

The reminder that he carried another weight that would no longer be his comfort and his grief was met initially with silence, and then a slow nod. "Harper helped slay the Kingmaker during the War. When it attacked Torchline. He wanted you to have its teeth. And his staff, for protection." Slowly he shrugged out of the pack that had rested against his back while he traveled, withdrawing from it a smaller bag that held a collection of heavy objects that clicked together as he set them gently on the table. A two-piece staff was set reverently beside them, starlight gleaming faintly from within it.

Then he sat back and bowed his head, his final promise to his friend now fulfilled yet somehow weighing even more heavily upon his shoulders without the physical representation of it to bear.

Jude

Thread by thread, I come apart
If brokenness is a work of art, this must be my masterpiece

Jude lingers in the quiet that follows Hadama's certainty, soaking up the feeling that stirs in his chest. It feels a little like hope. Or at least he thinks it does - it's not an emotion he's used to feeling. "Thank you." What else was there to say in the face of such patient kindness?

Hope makes way for grief and dread as Hadama shrugs out of his pack. Whatever is next is rather large. Bulky. Yet they hold far less weight on his heart in comparison to the featherlight letter hiding in the envelope in his bag. This is a weight he can carry - a physical thing instead of the crushing burden of a heart. 

He hadn't wanted to talk about Harper this entire time. When he'd opened up to Lyra, it had been different. Vitriol, despair, regret, doubt. It feels impossible to lay those notions at Hadama's feet of all people - the one man his father had held above all others. It inspires him to bravery he isn't sure he's capable of. Vulnerability even deeper than what Lyra had pried out of him. Jude brings his hands above the table to place the very edges of his fingertips on the gleaming star on the staff. A sign of faith and alignment that had been passed onto Jude.

"I miss him," he whispers, voice raw and eyes beginning to burn. The hardest thing he's had to say on the matter, and an admission he'd refused himself this entire time.

It was enough for him that Jude was willing to try. Hadama inclined his head in acceptance of the young man's gratitude but he did not linger on the emotional weight of their own friendship. He had no wish to make things more awkward for his friend. And he had more gifts from a father who would not return to see the man his son would become. Weapons. Means of protection, of himself and others, to carry Jude through the seasons and the conflicts to come.

It was too much to hope that he might remain aloof from the battles that their world descended into forever. He had grown, become too big to protect and hide away from the dangers of Caido. But this much, at least, this last task, was something that Hadama could do for Harper. To give his son a fighting chance.

Jude's words, a whisper in the silence, hooked into the heart of a man who had likewise kept his mourning private. Who proudly bore the scars upon his skin and hid the scars on his heart behind stoic serenity and quiet patience. But those three words sank deep below the surface, piercing Hadama to the core, and there was a quiet hitch to his breath. An unfamiliar prickle of saltwater at the corners of his eyes, here on dry land where the ocean would not simply carry it away. "As do I."

But then he fell silent, lifting his gaze to rest emerald eyes on the lost son across from him, not hiding the unshed tears in them as he sat quietly to listen to what - if anything - Jude might need to say in this tenuous moment of vulnerability for them both. They spoke quietly in the shadows of the pagoda, mourning what had been lost. But, perhaps, finding some quantum of solace in each other's company.

~Fin