Homecoming [Julius & Julia]
@bloodofheim sent : 👗An attic full of musty clothes and antiques belonging to someone long-dead
It was hard to believe he was dead. The letter that had arrived stating such - handwritten and carefully penned, each letter deliberate and slow (to still a trembling hand, perhaps) - was at first dismissed for a joke. A horrible one, but Julius had learned one thing during his time in Manfroy’s hovel, and that was that some people had a terrible sense of humor. The message was surreal. Arvis was dead. It made no sense, and the sentences swam and jumbled as they did in his hazy waking-dreams, but he had been sober for a month, and the letter was very much real.
He had hoped that when at last he could return to his childhood home, it would be for a happy occasion. He could mend the bridges with his family that he had so abruptly burned, and offer the apology to his father that had gone five years overdue. But he had waited too long to begin the arduous repairing of his own life, and now his father was gone forever. He should have learned by now that the mistakes of his past would allow him no respite, no luxury of time; he had to keep running, or the darkness would drag him back again.
The house’s facade had hardly changed, and Julius stood on the sidewalk looking up at it for some time. At the window’s that belonged to his and his sister’s rooms, the wooden shutters with the paint still peeling, the holly bushes that remained only waist-high - but in his parents’ bedroom, the drapes were drawn and the window was dark. The flowerbed that his mother had tended, too, was full of weeds and brown, withered flowers. An apology came to his lips, but there it stopped and died.
He fished for his keys and fumbled through his keyring for the one that had gone unused for so long, but the front door was already unlocked and an emptied, echoing foyer met him as he crossed the threshold. Devoid of half of its furniture, the high ceilings and spacious rooms were suddenly cold and unfriendly.
The sound of life and a quiet voice led him up the stairs and to the attic, where the thin layer of dust over the plastic tarps showed which of his parents’ belongings had yet to be touched. He took to the ladder carefully, afraid of who he would meet at the top, or what he would say. He had grown so thin and his hair so long and messy; the past five years still sat in his sunken cheeks and in the rings beneath his eyes.
In the light thrown by the single window of the attic stood his sister, and the weight of shame and dread plunged deep into his stomach.
“Julia,” he said quietly, and the apology from before tried once more to escape, but could not.
