Summary: Actual Angel Alec who was born to the Lightwoods to get them back on the right path as well as the Clave. He's sad at how the Lightwoods have always treated him and his siblings who he has become quite attached to even though that is something that he is not meant to do.
He still loves Magnus even though he isn't supposed to feel that type of love towards a 'lesser being'.
Alec doesn't actually think of them as Lesser, it's just how he's always heard non-celestiels being refered as.
Alec had always known that he wasn't right, that he was different from his family and the rest of his people. He had not understood when he was younger that Nephilim could not heal small cuts and bruises with a touch or a small kiss as he had always done for his sister, who would always come to him asking him to kiss it better.
As he had grown he had learned that this was not something his parents could do, that only Warlocks, demon children could heal with a touch and, usually, a whispered word.
When he was eight he learned why he could.
It was supposed to be just routine patrol, that was what his father had said, it was why his mother had allowed him to go, and Alec had been so excited.
And then the Demons had arrived, Alec had been frightened but had fought with his father and his partner and then he'd been hurt and had stumbled and his father's partner had died screaming and Alec had been caught under another Demon and struggling to reach his blade to kill the Demon.
Alec remembered his father gathering him into his arms, body numb and his vision blurring as his father ran through the streets of New York and as his vision faded further his father faded away until there was only light in a human like shape.
Alec remembered that light, the first time he saw that light. A person's inner light, their soul.
His father's had been a dark orange, he later looked it up and his father's inner light was burnt orange.
Alec remembered being scared as his vision faded into darkness, his father screaming for a medic as he burst through the doors of the Institute.
He had been in and out for three days and during those days he saw nothing but lights in the shape of people and heard only loud booming voices that echoed with the sounds of thunder and rockslides.
They whispered in their screaming voices that he'd been chosen, that he'd chosen to come here, chosen to save them when they would rather begin anew and Alec had seen hope for them where none other had looked and begged to be sent among them to guide them back to the path they had strayed from so long ago.
In a moment of weakness Raziel had agreed and had sent him to Earth to be born to a Nephilim couple who had lost their way in a large way and Alec had been born with nary a tear in his eye or a scream bursting forth from his throat.
Alec remembered those quiet, booming voices for days after he had woken for real and he remembered that they had called him by another name, not his own.
When he had finally gathered the courage to look up the name he had been surprised that it was real and somehow the Angel fit with what the voices had said he'd done.
They had called him Phanuel and as Alec had stared at the name, tracing over the styalized letters carefully he knew why he was so different than the rest of his people, why when he had looked in his mirror the inner light that had looked back at him was pure white and bright, brighter than any other he had ever seen but for a newborn baby he had glanced at.
It had taken him weeks to control when he saw a person's inner light, to let it fade into the background until he saw their human features rather than their souls.
Sometimes he noticed that the lights dimmed due to their owner's moods or darkened with their deeds, some even brightened after they did something good.
Alec particularly loved looking at his sister's inner light, a beautiful and bright yellow that reminded him of sunshine and if he had called her that for those two weeks it had taken to control seeing Souls then Alec had brushed it off as nearly dying.
His mother's inner light made Alec sad to see it, once it might have been a bright happy green but now it was dark and sickly and the first time he had seen it Alec had burst into tears and hadn't calmed until hours after he had fallen aleep held in his mother's arms.
Jace's light when he had arrived was a muted and dull red glow that flickered in and out and it had taken Alec several months to figure out why that was and Alec would never forget the way his breath had caught in his throat as he watched Jace slide the Sereph blade across his thigh until blood weld up and spilled from his skin before he had torn the blade from Jace's grip and begged him to let him help him and promised to protect him.
Jace had cried and begged Alec not to tell. Alec had agreed as long as Jace never did it again, promised Alec that when he wanted to he'd come find Alec instead.
Max, when Alec had first held that tiny little child had glowed a bright white, the pure white that all babies had and as the little boy grew older Alec couldn't help but wonder why he never got a color.
Alec had known that Downworlders had inner lights as well as everyone else but he had never bothered to actively look, it was not something that would advance anything, advance his mission, so it came as a surprise when he looked over at the Warlock he had aided and saw nothing but blue with bright golden sparks dancing through it.
Alec was so intranced with following one of the golden sparks as it danced it's way through the bright, engulfing blue that he hardly heard the question he was asked stuttering his name before finding an excuse to run away from the blue soul, trying to make it fade into the background so he could see the human forn of the Warlock that had taken Clary's memories.
Every time he flirted with Alec the blue pulsed out and the sparks multiplied and Alec kept finding himself distracted and tongue-tied, but by the time they left without Clary's memories he'd made the glow fade enough so that he could see the form the the light surrounded and hide from him before.
Alec wondered if he'd been this way when he was still an Angel of Heaven or if this want that filled him as he gazed at the Warlock was a flaw in his human form, either way they could never be, Angels did not love Demons, and Nephilim did not love Warlocks, but as Alec walked away from Magnus Bane that night for the first time after meeting him Alec felt his own Inner light streatch and reach back behind him and when he dared look back, only once he saw Magnus' blue and gold reaching for his own pure white.