Emma Carstairs (alsoflexible) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2020-01-29 23:27:00 |
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With both Clary and Jace gone, Emma’s pool of people to train with had drastically shrunk. She was all right with that, though. Julian was still here, and Julian was her parabatai. If there was anyone she should be training with, it was him. The only reason why she’d turned to Clary was because he’d made it awkward with his insistence that there was something wrong with her. Now that she had agreed to see whoever he came up with, he had calmed down a little. But there was still that desperate longing in him that Emma couldn’t understand. Not that she had to understand it. Julian was often a cipher to her, for all that he was her parabatai, and Emma had come to see that there was so much he had hidden from her. This was just another thing. For now, the only thing she needed to understand from him was what he was going to do next as they circled each other, trying to find an opening. Past Emma would’ve struck by now, to force him into action. Now, she was the patient one, waiting for him to move so she could take advantage of it. *** Julian knew Emma better than he knew anyone on the planet, or at least he thought he did. These past few months, she’d changed so much that he hardly recognized her. Of course, he still felt their bond, but it was weaker than it had been before. Shallower. To the point that he was having trouble guessing her moves. There’d been a time when he never would have felt so distant from her, but that time was long past. He wasn’t used to her being so patient - that was usually his place. And it had him off guard. Why wasn’t she doing anything? Why wasn’t she making a move? Finally, it got to him and he made the first move, frustrated by this whole situation with her. *** There it was. Emma’s patience had paid off, and in Julian’s attack, she saw an opening on his right side. She let him get close - close enough for her to grab his arm and give him a quick, hard jab into the soft underside of his jaw with her elbow. *** “Ow!” He cried out, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. She’d hit him harder before. He turned from her and whirled around, trying to catch her off guard and give her a good kick in the shin. *** Emma hopped back, but not quick enough to escape his kick entirely. His foot skimmed her leg with enough force to unbalance her; but Emma had trained fo years for this kind of situation. She caught herself and rebounded on the energy, using it to launch a spinning roundhouse at his face. *** And her kick hit him full force. He collapsed to the ground, blood streaming not just from his nose, but from his busted lip. His jaw was also badly bruised and he was going to have a black eye. He looked up at her with a combination of hurt and anger. “What the hell was that? You could have broken my jaw.” *** Emma felt his pain through the bond, though it was muted. Frowning, she dropped to his side and ran a clinical eye through his injuries. There was a lot of blood now, but she hadn’t broken anything. He’d be fine in a few days. Although...why wasn’t she in more pain? From what she remembered of the bond, she should be feeling more of what he was feeling, rather than this dull ache. She felt wetness on her upper lip and wiped at it. Blood. Her nose was bleeding too. “I thought you’d avoid it,” she explained. Her brow was furrowed in confusion. Why hadn’t he avoided it? And why wasn’t it affecting her as usual? The questions would have to wait. For now, she had to tend to his injury. “Stay here, I’ll get a towel.” *** He glared at her, all of his anger and frustration coming out now that he was hurt and in pain. “What the hell is wrong with you? I didn’t avoid it because I couldn’t feel it. Okay? I couldn’t feel you. I don’t think there’s anything in there to feel.” Maybe that was mean, but he didn’t care. He was so tired of all of this, so tired of this empty shell of his best friend and the girl that he loved. *** Maybe it was mean, but Emma didn’t feel its sting. She merely saw it as him lashing out due to hurt and frustration. So she went to fetch a towel and some ice, and handed it over to him. “It’s weird,” she said, after he’d had a chance to clean himself up. “Other than this -” She pointed to her nose, which had stopped bleeding now “-I didn’t feel it either. Usually I’d feel it if you got hurt.” *** “Because something’s wrong with you!” he cried out, wiping the blood from his nose again. “You’re not right. We don’t have the connection we used to have. Can’t you at least tell that?” Emma wasn’t stupid. Maybe this could show to her that something twasn’t as it should have been. Maybe with this staring her in the face, she wouldn’t be able to deny it. *** Emma was silent for a moment. She didn’t think anything was wrong with her, but Julian had been saying there was, for a long time. And while she felt just fine, she couldn’t deny that her lack of reaction to her own parabatai being so injured was odd. After a moment, she sat down beside him. “I said I’d go see whoever you found to look me over. Did you get anyone?” *** “I”m still looking for someone I can trust,” he said with a frown. “But you believing there’s actually something wrong would make a big difference, you know. If you go into this open minded it’ll just be...better.” He sighed, and looked at her for a long while. “You don’t love me anymore, do you?” *** Emma returned his gaze steadily, with no emotion. “No,” she admitted. She wasn’t sure if she ever really did love him; she certainly couldn’t remember feeling such intense emotions. Maybe she’d only been infatuated, and she had finally gotten over it. But saying so would probably only make things worse at this point. “I’m sorry, Julian. But just because I feel the way a parabatai is supposed to feel doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with me. But I’m willing to go into this with an open mind, or at least figure out why our bond is weaker. Maybe that’s what you’re sensing. Maybe it’s the bond, not me.” *** Julian had expected that answer, and had also expected it to hurt. He just wasn’t sure that he’d expected it to hurt as much as it did - like a dagger to the heart. He actually sucked in a sharp breath and struggled to keep his eyes from filling with tears. He knew she’d loved him once. It was just...whatever had happened to her had messed things up. The Emma who loved him had to still exist somewhere. He wouldn’t accept otherwise. He shook his head. He wasn’t going to give her the benefit of the doubht on this. “You loved me once. And our bond was so strong. Stronger than anyone’s. We were two halves of the same whole. Then the part of you that loved me - that I loved - disappeared. And we need to find her and get her back.” *** He kept insisting on this, and maybe there was an element of truth to it...but Emma just couldn’t feel it. It didn’t mean that she didn’t believe him, she just couldn’t understand this grand passion he said she’d once had for him. It seemed so dim and far away. Still, she was willing to keep an open mind, as he’d requested. Which meant they had to work this out. “When did this happen? Or when did you start noticing me not...being what you remember?” *** “After Chris’s spell.” He was sure that was it. He was sure that something had gone wrong with the spell somehow, even though he completely believed that Chris had always had the best of intentions. “After that you were never the same. You turned...cold. Like you are now. No feeling. No love. The exact opposite of the Emma I grew up with.” *** It seemed to Emma that the change in her was just due to her growing up, but she decided against saying so. There was no point in arguing with him about this; Julian was stuck on the idea that there was something wrong with her, and the only way to move past it was to go along with this idea until it was either proven or disproven. “Have you talked to Chris about what might’ve gone wrong, or how it can be reversed?” *** “I’ve talked to him, yeah,” he said. “But he doesn’t have any more idea than I do. It should have worked. Everything should have worked, but it didn’t.” He looked at her curiously, as if looking at someone he’d just met. “Don’t you remember? The reason that we wanted to do that spell in the first place was to break the curse because we were so deeply in love.” *** She remembered why they’d gone to Chris, although now she couldn’t remember being so desperately in love that she needed magically intervention. The cool logic she’d gained in the past few months kicked in, and she turned this over in her head. “Maybe it did work,” she said slowly. “But in a different way than expected.” After all, she was no longer in love. So in theory, the spell was a rousing success on her. *** “It didn’t work,” he said, firmly. He knew that for a fact. It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. It was supposed to break the curse, allow them to be parabatai and in love at the same time. Instead it took the Emma he knew away forever. “It wasn’t supposed to...hollow you out. You know? You weren’t supposed to be so cold and empty.” *** “I don’t feel cold and empty,” Emma said, despite her desire not to argue. She just didn’t like to hear herself described as something…less than the Emma he remembered. “Anyway, maybe Chris doesn’t know what happened, but maybe he or his aunts might know how to undo the spell. Then at least we’ll be back to where we started.” *** “I”ve talked to them,” he said. “But I guess we could talk to them again.” Maybe they’d remember something new, although he doubted it. It seemed like they’d done down that path before. “Wherever you want to start...I’ll go with it.” *** Honestly, Emma didn’t feel any urgent need to start, but given that it would help Julian to know that she was cooperating on this, she was willing to do this for her parabatai. “Yeah, let’s start with Chris,” she said, as she pushed herself up. She held out a hand to him to help him up as well. “We’ll go from there.” ****** Julian reluctantly accepted her hand and stood with her. “Alright. So it’s a deal. We’re going to figure this out, because even you realize something’s wrong now.” He wiped some dried blood from his nose. “And I need to get some more ice for this nose. This is melting.” *** “You sit.” She directed him to a chair and took the towel and ice pack from him. “I’ll refill.” It was, after all, what a good parabatai would do, even if she didn’t love him. |