Julian Blackthorn (nottoleavethee) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2020-02-04 15:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, !completed gdoc, !log, ~2020 february, ~~julian blackthorn (nottoleavethee), ~~usagi tsukino (moon_tiara) |
WHO: Julian Blackthorn and Usagi Tsukino
WHAT: Tutoring
WHEN: After school today
WHERE: Usagi's place
WARNINGS: Nah
STATUS: Closed/Completed Gdoc
While Julian was a miracle worker when it came to helping Usagi with her studies, it only lasted for so long and she fell back into old habits. There was a while where she was doing good in math and science. No, she wasn't getting any A's anytime soon, but she had been passing. But eventually, she started getting distracted by, well, everything - namely video games and tv.
She failed her last few quizzes and tests and figured she should probably call Julian for help. She hadn't seen him in awhile and figured it'd also be nice to catch up. Plus, she kind of wanted to know if anything changed regarding the whole Emma situation.
So she called him and invited him over. Once she heard a knock on the door, she went to answer it and smiled when she saw her friend. "Hi!" she greeted him. "Thanks for coming over to help again." It wasn't the first time and wouldn't be the last until she graduated. "You want anything to drink? Setsuna just made some tea."
***
“I’ll have some tea, sure.”
Julian was glad to have been called over by Usagi. He was glad for anything that would take his mind off of whatever was happening to Emma, and his search for answers. Except school, and when people called him to tutor or spar, that was pretty much the only thing on his mind. To save Emma. Nothing else really mattered to him on a personal level. Which wasn’t that strange, really, since he considered her the love of his life.
“You were doing pretty well when we last met,” he said, looking over the books. “Did you get behind, or did it get harder?”
The words weren’t judgmental, they were just important for him if he was going to figure out how to do this.
***
"Coming right up!"
Usagi headed into the kitchen and began preparing the tea. Hopefully he'll like it, though she had no doubt he would. Setsuna always made the best tea. She got out two cups for both of them, pouring tea into each. She also got out the sugar and milk in case he wanted to add some into his.
"More so I got behind," she told him sheepishly as she added a couple spoons of sugar to her own tea. It really shouldn't be a surprise. Usagi had a pretty bad attention span and could never focus on something for awhile. Unless it was cute, she just didn't care. "I got caught up in new videogames and forgot to study, so..."
She trailed off, shrugging, figuring he know how that ended.
***
Yes, he knew how that ended. He’d seen it with his siblings, and even with Emma once in a while. He wasn’t going to berate her for it - he knew from experience that didn’t work. They just had to catch up again, which could take some time but it definitely wasn’t an insurmountable problem.
“Alright,” he said. “So, what we’re going to do is sit down here and you can show me the last thing you definitely understood. Then we can go from there.”
It felt good to have something he could do to take his mind off of things with Emma. And he liked Usagi, which made things even better.
***
Unlike her teachers and almost everyone else, Julian never yelled at her for getting behind or distracted. She was always told she needed to focus more, to be less lazy, and a slew of other things. But he never did. He was understanding and that was probably a huge reason why his tutoring actually worked for her.
"Okay," she nodded. "I'll go grab my books." She quickly went upstairs to her bedroom and grabbed her backpack, which she hadn't opened since she had left school. She hardly did her homework, especially on the weekends. Once she had what she needed, she went back down, sitting in her seat again and setting her books on the table.
She opened the textbook. "Okay, so this is where I got a bit stuck..." she said, showing him where she had trouble.
***
So for the next hour or so, Julien patiently and calmly explained the math to her. It was nice to have his mind stuck in the math - it gave him an escape from the terrible things that had been filling his life on a daily basis. For this one hour, he didn’t have to think about Emma, and that was a great thing.
“So,” he said, as they started getting through the first few sections. “Is that making more sense, or do you want to do some more problems?”
***
Usagi nodded along as he explained things to her. She was a little lost for the most part but eventually, she started to understand it a little bit better. She'd never completely get math and she accepted that, but at least she could work on it enough to graduate at least.
"A little," she replied. "I think I should practice a bit more."
***
“Sure, no problem,” he nodded. He grabbed a pencil and paper and filled out some problems of differing difficulty for her to work out. He watched as she did, gently helping her if she made a mistake, and showing her how to do the parts she missed.. He felt almost like he was helping his siblings with their homework, which was a very good feeling.
He would stay there and help her as long as she wanted him to. It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to be.
“Are you going to college after high school?”
***
Usagi smiled, glad she invited him over now. Sure, they were doing math and she'd rather play video games or do anything else. But she felt like she was being responsible for once and she was kind of proud of herself for taking the initiative. She hoped Setsuna would be proud too. Plus, she was graduating in June and she figured she should get things done so she could say goodbye to school forever.
So she made a face and shook her head at his question. "Ugh, no way! I don't think I could handle more school than I already have." She really had no plans after, other than to get married. Though she didn't seem to have much luck with that just yet.
"What about you?" she asked. "Are you going to college?"
***
“Just because you’re not good at math doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be good at other things.” Math was one study of many, and many people were quite successful without mastering any more than what was necessary for passing tests.
“I don’t know if I will. I had my career kind of mapped out for me back home, but none of that is here. So I guess I could go to college, although I don’t know what I’d study. I’ve never thought of it before.”
***
"I would like to get better at cooking and baking." Because what kind of wife would she be if she couldn't cook meals? Not a very good one probably. "But still, that's something I can just ask Setsuna to help me with. No need to go to school for that." And she didn't need to go to college to be a bride either, which was her main dream.
"What sort of career were you gonna do back home?" she asked curiously. "Maybe you can study to become a teacher or a tutor?" she suggested. "I mean, if you can teach me math, you can teach anyone anything." And sure, she wasn't going to get straight A's but the fact that she was passing as a miracle in itself.
***
“I was going to be a Shadowhunter,” he said. “My dream was to be in charge of the Los Angeles institute. Me and Emma, of course.” But then everything had fallen apart back home, and he’d been sent here. And then everything here had become a total mess.
“I never really thought about teaching. I mean, I’ve done quite a bit of it, helping my siblings with their homework, but I’ve never thought of it as a career. I think it’s something I’d rather do when I want to. You know, like now.”
He liked helping Usagi. She was sweet and definitely not stupid - she just needed to put the effort in and not be distracted.
***
"I think you mentioned that before, though I can't quite remember what a Shadowhunter does exactly." She had listened at the time, but it was just her memory that was a bit shoddy at best.
"You would be good at it. But I'm sure there's other things you could do for a career. You're smart, I'm sure you'll figure it out." Really, the sky was the limit for someone like Julian. She had every faith that he could do anything he set his mind to. Too bad he couldn't do his original plans with Emma, but she knew he'd figure something out.
Speaking of which. "So how are things with Emma?" she asked, a bit tentatively since she knew it was a sore subject for him. "Any changes?"
***
“We protect Mundanes - regular people - from the Shadow World,” he said simply. He’d told lots of people this here, so he kind of had it down pat. “You know, Demons, Werewolves, Vampires, Warlocks, the Fae...we make sure everything stays calm and peaceful with them so that regular people aren’t bothered by them. It’s a tradition - we’re trained pretty much from birth and we’ve got the blood of the Angel in our veins, so it lets us use runes and stuff to help fight them. We don’t have magic, but at least we have that.”
He shrugged. “It’s been in my family for generations, since the Angel came to us, probably. I never thought I wouldn’t be doing it.”
***
She nodded as she continued to attempt doing a few more math problems, though to be honest, she was kind of listening to him more. She also noted he didn't answer her question about Emma and figured maybe he didn't really want to talk about it, so she dropped it for now.
"That's right, I remember now. It's kind of like what my friends and I did back home. Protect people from bad things. Not vampires and werewolves and all that, but evil beings from other planets and far away galaxies."
***
“Yeah, pretty much,” he said with a nod. “Protecting innocent people from evil. That’s us.” He had heard the question about Emma, and he had been ignoring it. But he sighed, and finally decided to talk about that too.
“I’ve got a couple of leads, but Emma’s still the same as ever. Messed up. Not herself.”
***
"Too bad it's not something we can exactly do here. At least we can help in other ways." Like helping someone cross the street or help carry things for them. Things like that. It wasn't as exciting as back home, but they could still help in other ways.
"I'm sorry to hear," she frowned. "But I do hope one of those leads can help."
***
“Yeah. Well. We all do what I can, at least.” He’d been pretty happy here, actually, before Emma had been...changed. But he was doing everything he could to fix that, and he supposed they’d figure it out when they could. Hopefully.
“Alright,” he said, smiling at her. “Enough stalling. Let’s get back to these problems.”
***
Usagi nodded. They couldn't protect people from monsters like back home, but they could at least help in other ways.
"Ugh, okay," she groaned. She would never like math, would always think it's boring even if she understood it a bit better. But still, she grabbed her pencil and resumed working on the problems in front of her.