dedgulung "vexed italicizing trouble magnet" black (regulus) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-07-21 22:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1979-07] july, julianne wilkes, regulus black |
RP Log: Regulus & Julianne
who → Regulus Black & Julianne Wilkes.
what → Reg goes to visit Julianne, and they grieve their respective losses and stuff. :(
when → Monday, 21 July 1979; 7:15pm.
where → Georgina's old flat in Foxglove Flats.
warnings → None.
status → Complete.
Apparating to Foxglove Flats in Diagon Alley, Regulus steeled himself to pay Julianne Wilkes a visit. The past few months -- the year of 1979, nearly as a whole, had felt like one failure or tragedy after another. With each success seemed to come a downfall, and this time it was at the cost of Julianne's sister and his own father (followed just a month after the loss of his uncle). His birthday was the next day, and the funeral for his father the day after that, but it was the latter that dominated his thoughts. Far more than he wished, the deaths were in his thoughts, and despite his determined attempts at detachment, it made him feel ill that his family was being killed over this. It truly wasn't fair, but his mother was wise. He was to remain dignified and poised at all costs. He could not afford to grieve like a child or one of their ladies among them -- he was the male heir, and he needed to remain strong. He had not visited Georgina often, but he knew where she had lived, and it stung a little bit to think of how Julianne likely felt. He could remember the pain of losing his own brother, though in a very different way, and he feared he would have clung to Sirius's room for ages had the situation been one in which there wasn't scandalous, hate-inducing blood treachery involved. The memory of Sirius's leaving (which took place just a week after his sixteenth birthday) coupled with the murder of his father just days before hit quite wretchedly close to home. Even so, he knew he could not dwell upon it if he wished to keep a tight harness over his thoughts, so for the moment, he pushed to clear his mind and that which might bring about emotions. When he arrived in front of the door to the flat, Regulus lifted his hand and gave three swift knocks to announce his presence. Unlike Regulus, Julianne wasn't strong enough to refrain from tears, to hold back her hurt. Things like this weren't supposed to happen to them, bad things didn't happen to her loved ones. The false sense of security that her status, the Death Eaters, and the supporters that had once given her had disappeared all together with Georgina's death. For the past week, Julianne had barricaded herself in Georgie's room at Diagon Alley, much to her mother's dismay. However, her mind was set, and no one was allowed in or out. Everyone deals with loss in their own way. Juli's method was not dealing with it at all. Instead, she surrounded herself with Georgie's perfume, in her clothes, under her blanket. Once, she had even dressed up like Georgie and put on her make up, looking in the mirror to look at the similarities.. that they were still related, that they were still sisters. Death could take the Wilkes heir away, but it couldn't take their blood bond. Upon looking at her Georgina-Julianne reflection, her face and body sickly thin, she threw Georgie's soap holder into the mirror; the pieces still remained shattered on the floor. When Juls found out about Orion's death, at first, she tried not to even think about it. She could hardly deal with her sister's death.. but now Regulus' father? How could she possibly comfort him when she felt like she was broken into pieces? All Julianne did the first three days from Georgie's death was cry before eventually entering a state of apathy. The past two days, Juli had just laid in Georgie's bed, eyes shut tightly like all the blinds in the room. She finally came to grips, trying to at least put aside her own pain to help a friend. Regulus was more than a mere friend, they had known each other forever and she knew that he would have on that face.. The face that he had on when things were wrong but he was pretending like they weren't. Three knocks on the heavy wooden door announced Regulus' arrival and Juls dragged herself out of bed, pausing for a moment as her head spun. She opened the door slowly, managing a small smile as she saw a familiar face. Immediately she pulled him into a small hug burying her face into his shoulder. Despite his general aversion to physical contact, a rare exception was made as Regulus was pulled into the hug; while he could not help the slight rigidness to his composure (when was his stance not somewhat stony?), he did not cringe, nor did he push away. It was rather instantaneous, his notice of her shaken appearance, and he could not decided if he felt envious of those who were permitted to grieve. Such freedom was one never allowed to him, keeping him tightly wound and carefully monitored, but to feel pain so acutely and noticeably was frightening in itself. To allow people to be the slightest bit privy to the inner workings of his mind was an unappealing plan of action, so he supposed it was a fitting expectation, all the same. Wishing to avoid the both of them stuck on the doorstep, standing quite fairly out in the open, Regulus shut the door with his foot as the corners of his mouth pulled down. "How are you?" he asked, though he supposed it was an unnecessary question. He was not particularly talented at comforting and making those necessary connections needed to soothe, but that would not stop him from at least trying when she was so upset, and with reason. Quite frankly, Julianne should've focused on either venting everything out or putting all of her effort in seeing if Regulus was okay. This put Juls in a slightly awkward position, she was the one that wasn't dealing with the problem, yet she was also trying to be the one to comfort Regulus. Perhaps staying indoors for too long had affected the way she was thinking.. "I'm.." Juls adjusted her gaze over to the floor, her brows furrowing slightly. "Managing," she finished, as she looked back up to him with the same smile she had greeted him with. She showed him over to the couches in the living room. On one of them was a plush burgundy throw blanket that Juls took and wrapped around herself, despite the average room temperature. Sitting down at one edge of the couch, she put her back against the low armrest, pulling her knees against her. "What about you?" she asked genuinely, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "I, too, am managing," Regulus replied with a grim little smile as he sat a polite distance from her on the sofa. Although she was one of the few people he trusted, and one of the few females in his life he felt fairly comfortable with (comparatively speaking), propriety still called for a safe distance, especially considering they were alone in the flat. Their recent losses might very well mean nothing, after all – or perhaps his imagination was over-reactive. How difficult it was to make the determination, sometimes… "The funeral will be on Wednesday…I am to give the eulogy." Lingering in his mind was the conversation with Sirius – telling him how he did not need to…how he did not have to give the eulogy if he did not want to, but just as he had reasoned then, there was no true choice to it. The compartmentalisation of his feelings on the murder of his father was carefully thumbed through in his mind during preparations, and although he dreaded it horribly (he did not like speaking in front of people, especially not about his dead father), but he had to find a way to manage it, and by telling people, it bound him even further to his obligation to follow through. Juls nodded once. That's how everyone seemed to be doing, or at least that's how it appeared when she had taken a glance at her journal after a week. Death only takes a few minutes perhaps, for some, several hours, others would consider it a whole lifetime, but for Julianne, it only took a second for her world to come tumbling down. Georgina was the strong one, the heir. The family name was mostly her birthright and Juls had just gotten comfortable with that. Once everything was 'settled,' whatever that meant, where did this all leave the family? Where did this leave Julianne? The next 'technical' heir was her, did this change things? Looking up at the word 'funeral,' she frowned slightly without necessarily meaning to. Julianne knew how big of an influence Orion was in Regulus' life but no son deserved to bury his father at such a young age. "Are you ready?" she asked him gently, resting her chin on her knees. With a subtle, one-shouldered shrug, Regulus furrowed his eyebrows and proceeded to find the pattern on a stray blanket quite worthy of attention. "As ready as one can be, I suppose. It is my responsibility, and I shall see to it accordingly." As his father would wish. Or perhaps more demanding of attention, how his mother presently did wish. "I am ready for the losses to stop," he added quietly, keeping his voice perfectly even as he weeded out most emotion that might be attached to such a statement. Letting let out a sigh before nodding. "If anything, that's one thing I'm definitely ready for.." Almost immediately, Julianne felt a wave of apathy wash over her. Perhaps it was because she had company. She closed her eyes for a moment and, surprisingly, saw nothing horrifying when she did. The past few days had left her with images of Georgina, good memories or false bad ones, but for the time being, she saw nothing. Yet another defense mechanism since she was with another person, she assumed. "It's enough that you lost your father.. You don't need anymore pressure Reg.." Her voice was quiet, yet audible in the silent room. "I am well-suited and capable of handling it," he replied with an equal softness. In reality, the thought was quite staggering, and he did not feel all that prepared to take on the daunting task, but there was nothing to gain in letting on about such a thing. It was not a thing to bother others with, much less the girls, and even more so, not someone who was going through the pain of loss, as well. This was his life, and there was nothing to be changed about it. "It is not a terrible amount of pressure…" Julianne didn't press on, despite her desire to do so. Instead, she pulled at a stray thread of her blanket. "Merlin, Regulus.. How did we get here?" If her body was capable of producing any more tears, her eyes would've been brimmed with them. This was all getting out of hand, yet something told her that this wasn't even the beginning. She let out an uneven sigh before finally pulling out a thread and discarding it onto the floor. A bright red thread standing out among the light creme coloured floor. "The hypocrisy of our enemies." A twinge of bitterness crept into his voice, peaking out from the stony demeanor. Thinking about the Prewetts brought about a flicker of fury within the calm, and more and more it became easy to find the deaths of the vigilantes and the Ministry to be deserved, wizard or not. It felt as though they were targeting his family – trying to attack them by any means necessary, and he did not know how to deal with this… "And the fact that we must fight this war at all. It is necessary that the Muggles be put in their place, and I feel our Cause is noble as opposed to the self-righteousness of those who oppose us…but I do wish it would cease affecting us in addition to those who might hurt us." Her complete attention was on Regulus as he spoke, yet, to Julianne, her voice seemed to be fading into the background. While she could've easily attributed it to her weakened state, she knew that no matter how tired she was, this happened fairly often when Regulus went into Heir Speak Mode. She remained silent for a while, unsure how to approach the topic before deciding not to reply to it all together. She leaned over to the side, resting her head on the cushion of the couch. She didn't know what to think about the Cause any more.. For all she knew, the only thing that it did for her was cause her, and her loved ones, pain. The silence that met him was enough to cool the bubbling anger and the biting edge from his voice. Once again the clammed rigidness returned, and he furrowed his eyebrows. Calm. Apathetic. Stoic. His emotions were under check and control once again, so he allowed the silence to thicken in the room for a moment before adding, "I wish leaving and finishing school had brought about a more pleasant experience, as it was meant to, and that yours was met instantly with tragedy is a particularly unfortunate case. How is your family coping?" Perhaps it did not do any particular good, shifting horizontal to a related tragedy rather than moving on, but he could not help but be concerned, considering, even just financially, they had lost Georgina's salary -- not that it was something he felt was proper to openly point out, especially with the raw pain of the loss still lingering. Oh, how she had been looking forward to the summer! No more worrying about essays and NEWTS, her plush bed as opposed to the tiny one provided at Hogwarts, events with her fellow socialites, spending time with her family.. Julianne let out a dry laugh. How things had changed within the matter of a month. She buried her face back into her knees, closing her eyes once more. To be honest, she felt slightly out of place, being so emotional, experiencing bitterness, and in front of someone else. Girls like her didn't crumble at such tragedies.. They cried, grieved, and moved on quickly. It wasn't in their best interest to hide in a room, or a flat in her circumstance, with poofy eyes and a beyond thin figure. Letting out a soft sigh, she rested her chin on her knees once more, her eyes beginning to blur with tears. 'Not again..' she thought. "I haven't really spoken to them." Juls wasn't sure if she really should tell him that her father basically always stayed in his study, that her mother was heard wailing throughout their home at random hours, and that Jacqueline was hurting just like she was. But she wasn't lying either when she stated that she hadn't spoken to them. Her mother had demanded that she return home which she easily ignored. She wasn't about to leave Georgie's flat, she wasn't ready.. "Understandable," he said quietly, falling silent again. He had scarcely left his own bedroom since Saturday night, preferring to avoid interaction with other people -- while he had been forced to speak to his mother, seeing as they were alone in the house now and had funeral arrangements to attend to, it would not have bothered him in the least to simply disappear. He could quickly tell that the question had not been a particularly tactful one, based on the response, but he hadn't a clue how to successfully handle the act of comforting. With a mild awkwardness to him, he briefly patted the back of her shoulder with a frown before pulling his hand back again. Whether to acknowledge her distress or look away out of respect and privacy, he was uncertain, but as it was among the many things he could not ask, he settled to stare down at the carpet and wait for a cue of what seemed the best thing to do. But what sort of cue? He hadn't any idea, but he did not feel up for chance-taking as far as offending versus comforting -- he was not certain he was creating a good track record. This was rather unlike Julianne. She usually had plenty of things to say, and even if she didn't, she would dip her hand into the Proper Things To Say Jar and pick out a question. The weirder thing was that Juls was usually more than comfortable around Regulus to not run out of things to say. But, if anything, neither of them were exactly the venting type, or, at least, Regulus wasn't and that's who it was mainly about at the moment. The death of Orion Black was why Julianne had invited Regulus over, to speak to him. But in their silence, Juls came to the realization that perhaps it was just the fact that they in each other's presence, one that was not judging and both had suffered deep losses, that was just.. enough. |