The Throne of Flame: Chapter Fifteen
Skipper spent a long time in the tree explaining the details of the situation to Clover, who nodded and took all the information with rapt interest. When he finally finished, the party was drawing to a close, and he excused himself so that he could escort Julien to his private quarters. She and Maurice allowed him to part with gentle smiles, and Skipper began to feel far more optimistic about the entirety of the mission than he had prior.
It wasn't that he'd doubted his or his men's abilities to protect Julien, but only then did he sincerely feel as though the case itself would be coming to a close soon. Finally, someone on his level to aid him! Clover was a great addition, and although Skipper was still partially bitter about Maurice having underestimated him to begin with, he was at least thankful for the introduction to Clover.
Upon leaving the tree, Skipper discovered Julien waiting for him on the branch. The lemur was seated with his legs crossed, hands playing with his tail delicately as his sunburnt eyes focused happily on the distance. When he saw that Skipper had joined him, a dainty smile curled at his lips and he rose to an elegant stand.
"I see you have met Clover." Julien's dignified voice greeted to him, only a strain above a suave whisper.
Skipper nodded, struggling to maintain his cool composure over Julien's outstanding aura. The notion was exhausting on top of the weariness Skipper found flooding his system; he hadn't slept the entire way there. "Yeah. Nice girl. She's going to help me keep you safe…"
His voice faded to silence when Julien stepped a bit closer, and his paw grazed at Skipper's wing. "Care to take me to my bedchambers?"
Skipper found himself walking beside the polished king in a haze. Julien was so unapologetically distracting, even in his mere existence; the way he so much as walked garnered mental praise from his penguin counterpart. By the time they arrived to what must have been Julien's home, he was struggling to keep his eyes wandering and not solely focused on the royal beauty. His rising drowsiness did not help his focus.
"Skipper," Julien interrupted his admiration when they reached the opening to what must have been his bedroom. "I… Am not feeling safe sleeping by myself tonight."
It took him an extra moment to process exactly what he was asking. His eyes widened as he took in Julien, leaning against the frame of the doorway that led into his tree with an alarming amount of demure. He was surprised, to say the least, and perhaps even a bit aroused by the decidedly bashful atmosphere Julien had taken, but he also understood. Skipper made him feel safe, a thought that occurred to the penguin with a slight growl in his throat that he softened with a nod.
Julien smiled, coquettish, and spun around to waltz into his room. He tossed a gaze over his shoulder and Skipper was following, reminding himself feverishly that he would have to hold back from making any inappropriate advances towards the king. Julien was… Well, he was a mammal for one, and to add insult to injury, he was supposed to be under the protection of Skipper. To pursue him in a carnal manner would be highly unprofessional, even for someone of Skipper's caliber. He'd always found danger to be passionate, but he knew that he really had to stay on edge if he wanted to keep Julien alive and well.
The only question was - where was he supposed to sleep?
"Come, silly penguin," Julien laughed quietly when he noted how Skipper looked around the room uncomfortably. "We can be sharing my bed. I do not mind."
Skipper stared at the large mattress, covered in exotic silk no doubt imported from a crashed plane. Julien situated himself directly in the middle, and peeled open the sheets invitingly. A brow rose as his expression seemed to become only more provocative, his teeth exposed with a soft glint. Skipper swallowed thickly.
He was exhausted, he needed his rest if he wanted to stay on his toes - he had to set aside his attraction to the king for that moment if he wanted to keep him safe. He nodded wordlessly and crawled into bed with the enticing lemur, who twirled his tail over the surface of the bed in a ravishing way. Skipper rested beside him, stiff as a board, and trying to resist his urges when Julien chuckled breathily.
As they lay together, the only light from the faint stars glimmering through the cracks of the tree, Skipper began to doze off. Before he fell asleep, however, he finally began to understand why everyone was so easily charmed by King Julien. There was the carnal passion Julien managed to draw up from the deepest parts of Skipper's desire, certainly, but it wasn't that the penguin was looking through rose tinted glasses.
It was a universal courtly love that anyone who'd met Julien could feel towards him, if he so wanted them to feel that way (and sometimes, most likely, even if he didn't). He was charismatic and conventionally fun, but he was also intensely alluring in a mysteriously sensual way. Part of Skipper felt idiotic for falling trap to his graces, but then he smugly reminded himself that he was the one sharing Julien's bed - even if in a platonic manner - and he passed out with that in mind.
Unfortunately, he did not wake to the shine of the sun, nor the morning jungle sounds. Instead, when Skipper stirred into consciousness, it was to the broken melody of Julien's tears.
It took him an extra moment to register what he was hearing, but when he did, his eyes snapped open and he turned onto his side to see Julien having a fit in his sleep. He was breathing hard, sweat beading at his fur, and small, heart wrenching sobs wracked his quivering frame. It was another night terror, similar to the one Skipper had seen Julien face back in New York, but this time it was with much more intensity. Skipper sat up in horror as Julien writhed in what seemed like agony on the bed, and began to shake the king awake.
It took an extra moment, but Julien eventually opened his wide, hurt eyes and snatched his arm away from Skipper's flippers. He stared up at the penguin at first in mortification, before his visage seemed to calm exponentially and he slowly regained control of his respiratory system. Julien sat up and raked a hand over his fur, attempting to smooth it out after having tossed and turned within the sheets. He did not look as though he felt inclined to start a conversation, so Skipper took the initiative.
"Was it a nightmare?" He questioned quietly, though the answer was obvious from the beginning.
Julien only nodded, staring down at his legs in melancholy humiliation.
Skipper thought to himself for a moment, before it came to him, and he understood what Julien must have been dreaming about. With a sympathetic nod, he rested a flipper on Julien's shoulder. "It's okay, Julien. You've had a stressful past few days… It's understandable for you to be traumatized by someone trying to kill you."
Julien's eyes widened, and then turned livid as he yanked his body away from Skipper in rage. "How dare you! You think that this is about that? Don't be so assumptious!" He snarled.
Skipper was taken back to a point where he legitimately jumped at Julien's outburst. "Wh… What?"
Julien turned away once more, his eyes calmer but more bitter than ever as he explained his lament through grit teeth. "You think you know everything. Everyone thinks they know everything, but no one does, and I am so sick of it."
A beat of silence in which Skipper could not conjure words, and then Julien continued.
"Let me tell you a story," the bitter words tore themselves from his throat. "Hundreds of years ago, Madagascar was an empty place. The only ones that lived here were us, the lemurs, the wandering spirits. But one day, two brothers… Well, they did not agree on something. They went their separate ways - one remained, the indri, and the other left and became a human. Humans, well, they are the biggest reasonings for our land to be dying. They set fire to it, so much of the times. The last king - my uncle - started what he called the 'babakoto purge'. He killed almost all of the indri. They only live to this day because I became king before he could kill all of thems."
Skipper's eyes widened in horror throughout the entirety of this story. He wasn't sure about what meaning it was intended to have, but after a moment or so he realized that Julien was elaborating on the horrors he'd seen. When Julien apparently did not feel as though this was enough, his eyes narrowed and he turned away to stare at the wall.
"Years ago, when I was just a little lemur, I happened to be outside during a fossa raid… Usually the royal family stays in the high trees and has the ringtail guard to protect them, but I had been playing with some other lemurs at the time. My friends. They were the lower class, but they were fun, and I liked them... When the fossa came, they massacred them. I watched as they ripped off the limbs of my friends and my friends' parents. Everything in sight. Their skulls crushed, blood pouring from everything. I saw their guts, hung in the trees like vines. The fossa howled as they ate my best friend's legs, not caring that she watched and screamed and screamed and screamed."
The king's voice cracked as he stared into the distance, reliving the experience. Skipper was speechless when he continued on.
"The ringtail guard - they came for me, but they didn't save… They didn't save anyone else. They were willing to let the jungle burn to the ground before they let me get hurt, but they… They didn't care about the lives of the other lemurs. I wondered, why is my life so much more important than theirs? Newborn children who have yet to take their first steps? Families who have done nothing wrong? That - that was the year that there was no more offspring, because the fossa destroyed everything in their path, and the ringtail guard didn't even care. And when… When the jungle really did catch on fire..."
He trailed off, eyes glazed over with tears. Julien hung his head in his hands, covering his face. Skipper stared at him with his beak wide open. He hadn't known, couldn't have imagined that Julien had gone through this sort of thing. He had seen his fair share of horrors in his life, but he hadn't been exposed to cruelties like genocide, grand-scale infanticide and malicious, brutal dismemberment. He hadn't seen innocents that he'd been close to, had known personally, mowed down by merciless predators. Especially not when he was a child.
He never would have guessed that Julien was hiding this, of all things. He had grown used to the idea of Julien having secrets, but never nothing so intense and scarring. Skipper had been subjected to torture, warfare, and military training of an extreme caliber. And yet, somehow, his experiences seemed to fade when contrasted to Julien's version of hell.
"Julien…" Skipper whispered, his voice tense and disquieted as he tried to discern some method of comfort for the distraught lemur.
Julien's hands slowly slid away from his face, and when it was revealed once more, he was smiling. It wasn't a happy smile, but a sardonic one, and even with the tears it was frightening how quickly Julien could recover what must have been his mask. He inched closer to Skipper and then simply patted the bird on the head.
"That is only the short version of what happened." Julien murmured huskily, his smirk thin but masterful.
Skipper was at a loss for words. There was more? It got even worse? Was Julien so wrapped up in his life of mistrust that he could never reveal the full truth, not even in his moment of freedom?
All he wanted at that moment was to hold Julien close, to never expose him to the dangers of the world. And he did - without thinking further on it, he brought Julien close and embraced him, holding the lemur to his body in an effort to comfort the both of them. Julien's strength wavered in his grasp, a faint shudder as he was taken seriously in what must have been a long time. Skipper only felt Julien's fake smile stretch against his neck and hot tears were hitting his feathers within no time.
They remained like that, for how long Skipper wasn't sure. All he knew was that by the time they released each other, Julien's expression had faded into something more real, something more genuine. He laid back down and brought the penguin with him.
"Let us rest. We have a long day tomorrow." He mumbled, brittle.
And, in making sure that Julien was close to his body, he followed through with the king's order and together they slept. As he drifted off, Skipper could only wonder one thing.
Had he ever truly known King Julien?
The indri are the largest lemurs still alive to this day, but they are critically endangered. The myth Julien talks about is a prominently believed legend in Madagascar (lemurs are also suspected to be some of humans' closest ancestors). Within the realm of this story the indri genocide is mentioned a few more times but it's primary significance is to show the horror and desensitized culture that the lemurs live in. If you want to liken it to anything in human history, it's very strongly based off of the Holocaust, which is yet another reason I mention it more than quite a few of the other horrors Julien will delve into, being that my family members were Holocaust survivors.
