Alec is alone the first time it happens.

He knows he should be expecting it, because he can tell blues and purples and pinks apart now. He can feel an ache in him, like there's something not quite right about his loneliness.

He's studying a book Magnus bought him about accepting the death of a loved one (Max, the name saturates his brain. His little brother, Max), a mug of chamomile in his grip. Suddenly, the yellow-tinted liquid is overturned and the books are soaking in the sweet scent and water. The words of the book are distorting in front of him.

Alec looks at his hand, and he panics. It's faded, not quite opaque, as if a shadow is pulling him out of the universe, atom by atom. He's not ready.

But he doesn't tell anyone. He doesn't want them to know. He doesn't want to have to face what it means.

Before Alec had realized the repercussions of being gay, he had really liked the idea of soul bonding. One person whom he could count on to try and help. One person whom would depend on him, and someone whom he could depend on. He had always thought that having a soulmate would complete him, would help him make strong children like the Clave wanted. He could return his family name to honor.

But when a visiting boy, Desmond Highwright, just a little older than him, had leaned in close to explain demonic history, and all Alec could do was stare at his lips… The whole thing became a little poisoned. He knew then that his soulmate would be a boy, and that he would let down the Clave. He would let down his parents, Isabelle, and the little baby growing inside his mother.

So, when he was ten he decided he'd never go looking for his soulmate. He never went out to meet people like Isabelle did, or like Jace (even if he wouldn't admit it). The parties just lacked the appeal when he knew it wouldn't matter even if he found his soulmate. They would never be together.

Magnus's apartment is full of people the fourth time it happens. It has been happening too often, when he's showering or training by himself, but never so publicly.

Alec is playing bouncer as a group of vampires becomes too rowdy, trying to mediate the situation before it can get out of hand. The Children of the Night have already overstayed their welcome, and Alec is trying to get them out before they truly become a problem. He doesn't want to have to act on behalf of the Clave at one of Magnus's parties.

He reaches out to put his hand on the jacket of a dark haired vampire, but his hand falls right through the material. It passes through skin, through bone and muscle. He knows what it means, and tries not to panic as he extracts his hand, only to see it flicker for a moment as if it's a shadow.

"Oh, drama," one of the vampires, who had been about to start a fight says; grin slipping onto his wormy face.

The dark haired vampire smirks, gliding closer to him. "Looks like the shadowhunter has a soulmate and it isn't Magnus Bane."

"No," Alec says, eyes wide. "No. Please don't tell him."

"That's a lot of favors to owe," another vampire speaks out.

Alec takes a shaky breath. "Then so be it."

He would rather owe a hundred favors to rowdy vampires than face the truth of his soul-bond.

Another vampire calls out. "Nah, he'll be dead in the month. Not worth it."

Some of the others laugh, and Alec can't help it. He can't face Magnus with this looming over him. He runs out of the party and disappears into Brooklyn.

Alec knows Magnus isn't his soulmate. His vision didn't slide from greys to vibrant blues and pinks when he met the warlock, and he doesn't care. He doesn't need a soulmate. He likes spending time with Magnus, he likes having sex with Magnus. He likes loving Magnus.

He knows Magnus has a soulmate, that he's found her. She's a warlock too, and they've been friends for centuries, neither of them ever wanting more than that out of their bond. It just gives them a person they can always go back to, that they can rant about life to. Magnus loves Catarina as a friend and Alec tries not to be jealous. Alec's going to be bonded to someone else, so he has no right. He will not love Magnus forever, though he will always be a let down to the Clave.

The seventh time Alec notices himself fading out of existence is when he's sparring with Jace. Clary and Isabelle are practicing throwing knives on the other side of the training room, but they're too far away to overhear casual conversation.

He and Jace have been at it a while. His muscles are burning, and he feels alive instead of muted like the unrecognized soulbond has been making him feel. It's the sound of knives clunking into their wooden targets across the room, the heavy breathing of his parabatai as he gets ready to tackle Alec. He loves training with Jace, the rush of adrenaline it always brings, and now that he's not in love with the boy it's so much better.

He gets lost in these thoughts for a moment too long, and when Jace charges at him he's too lost in thought move. Only, where his chest should meet Jace's hard flesh, he melts into the shade of a person being ripped from the universe. Jace runs right through him.

Jace stumbles through his parabatai, falling to the ground as his momentum is thrown off by Alec's lack of physical presence.

Alec turns to him, his eyes wide. He's blown, and Jace, who's looking up at Alec with wide eyes has put the pieces together; Alec has met his soulmate but they've been separated. Jace's expression is of anger and hurt and confusion.

"Alec," he says, his voice nearly a yell. "You're dying."

Alec fights the urge to run, to hide himself. He can see Izzy and Clary looking at them in his peripheral vision, the thumping of their target practice halting.

Alec bites his lip. "I know."

"And it's… It's not Magnus." Jace says slowly.

Alec shakes his head. "It never was."

"Why aren't you with him, then? Your soulmate? You'll both die if you're not together," Jace asks, his face full of concern.

Alec knows this. "I said I didn't want to talk about it, Jace."

"Alec," he says, his expression filled with no laughter or mocking. "This is serious."

"So am I," Alec says, his jaw clenched. "I would rather die with him than spend a minute in his presence."

Dipping into his drama quota in for the next six months, he leaves the institute abruptly. He runs all the way to Central Park, trying to forget the look on Jace's face when he realized Alec was going to die. He avoids thinking about the concern in his voice, the way Isabelle called after him as he left the training room.

He's just some kid taking a run on Manhattan Island. He's no one special, and he'll be dead before the month is out, anyway. It's not unheard of, even in modern America. He doesn't really consider that he'll be kidnapped, but nonetheless, he's pulled from the streets on New York City and to somewhere entirely unfamiliar.

Alec was shocked when his vision turned from grays, blacks and whites into a kaleidoscope of color, a sure sign that he'd met his soulmate, all over a boy he'd known when he was younger. He had thought that, no matter the age, the colors would appear the first time one met their soulmate. Maybe he had thought wrong.

He probably would have been suspicious if he hadn't spent the majority of Hodge's lectures on soul bonds drooling on his desk instead of listening. He hadn't bothered to pay attention since he'd sworn off the idea.

While he felt a bit as if something were wrong when they connected, because he'd met this boy before, every nerve in his body was telling him that this boy was probably going to be with him for the rest of his life. He ignored it, and pretended not to feel crushed when the teen met his colorful gaze and looked away.

He wondered if the teen could feel it too. He wondered if he was wrong, if the damn thing was defective.

Then he found out that the boy had killed his brother and nearly done the same to his sister. The boy had unleashed demons into Alicante and killed Alec's former tutor and second father figure, Hodge. Alec had never cried so hard in his life once the battle was over, for what he'd lost, and for what he'd never have. He cried because he didn't want to be bonded to a monster. He had never before hoped so much to be defective.

He'd just wanted to love Magnus, and he had confessed that in front of the entire Clave. He wanted to be with someone because he loved them, not because it would physically kill him to be apart from them. So he decided it would be a secret, one he would take to the grave. No one needed to know that his soulmate was Jonathan Morgenstern, a teenage murderer.

Valentine, Jonathan's father, was dead, and the Clave thought Jonathan was, too. Alec wasn't going to say otherwise, though he could feel the life flowing in Jonathan. It would lead to too many questions. It would be better if only Alec knew the truth.

It was much less complicated if he continued loving Magnus.

Alec fights against his captor, kicking out and connecting with something hard. Then he is pushed against the floor, his chest against tile while someone holds his hands together behind his back, their heat seeping through his sweat-soaked training shirt.

"Careful, now," a familiar and taunting voice says from just behind his ear. "Wouldn't want to kill your soulmate, and subsequently, yourself."

"You killed my brother," Alec hisses, his teeth grinding. "I would love to kill you."

"Oh?" Jonathan purrs. "It's a good thing I like them feisty, then. A bit of a struggle. Good for the whole family!" He laughs. "Didn't you pay attention to your soul-bond syllabus? You'd better stop struggling. Until we have a stable relationship if I die, you die too. "

"And unless we're close to each other, the universe will start tearing us out of this existence. I'm not a moron." Alec sneers, though his face is pressed into the cold tile floor, where Jonathan can't see it.

"And here I thought you were ignoring me," Jonathan says. "When you were really just trying to kill us both."

Alec wants to argue that he couldn't have found Jonathan, a dead man, even if he'd tried, but he doesn't get the opportunity. His soulmate (however disgusted he is by that fact) is pressing something hard against his lower back, and a kiss to the back of the neck.

"Don't," Alec yells, his breath picking up. He doesn't want to be touched like this by Jonathan, even if he's attractive and his soulmate. He still has Magnus, and he hates the thought of Jonathan on top of him.

"Promise you won't leave? Try to kill me, or yourself?" Jonathan asks.

Alec feels his insides swirl with hate and disgust for the man on top of him. He grits out the promise anyway, his jaw brushing the tiled floor.

"Good," Jonathan says, seeming pleased. He climbs off Alec's back, standing next to him. He's got a blade in his hand, and he's looking at Alec impatiently. Expectant.

Alec closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before rolling onto his back and looking up at the white ceiling. He can see wood cabinets and counters and a stove and Sebastian, all towering above him. Resigning himself to his fate, Alec rolls into a sitting position and stands up, his entire body tense.

"Where am I?" He asks. The windows give him a view of a city that is not anything like New York. It looks cleaner, less packed. More organized. The characters scrawled across the bill boards he can see aren't roman.

Jonathan shrugs, cleaning out the undersides of his nails with his blade, eyes still trained on Alec. "It moves us around, so I couldn't say the city. Other than that, you're in my house. Well. It was my dad's before your parabatai killed him." He sounds bitter, but not as bitter as Alec still is over Max.

"What are you planning on doing with me?" Alec asks, eyes burning with the anger he feels toward Jonathan for kidnapping him, for killing his brother. For making his sister feel so guilty she refused to talk to him.

Jonathan leans close to him, despite the look in his eyes. "Honestly? I want to fuck you until I'm the only person you'll ever want. But I can wait, for now."

The shivers up Alec's spine are from both disgust and a slight arousal. He doesn't want to have sex with anyone but Magnus, and definitely not someone as awful as Jonathan. As much as he likes the thought of someone bending him over and taking what they want, he doesn't want it from filth like Jonathan.

"That's not going to happen," Alec snaps. Much to his annoyance, Jonathan just shrugs, moving on.

"This is the kitchen," Jonathan explains. "I don't suppose you're any better at cooking than your sister?"

"Don't talk about Isabelle like that," Alec demands, his entire mood further darkening. "She's got lots of talents."

Jonathan 's lips tilt up into a patronizing smile. "From what I hear, cooking isn't one of them. You any better?"

Alec shakes his head; he wants nothing more than to spit on Jonathan for his mere existence, not talk about cooking. There's a reason Taki's is so popular at the New York Institute.

"That's what I thought. I'll teach you some recipes."

"You know how to cook?" Alec asks, not hiding his surprise.

Jonathan laughs, and it doesn't sound malicious, if slightly unhinged. "Does your precious Jace not know how to cook? Did father not take the time to teach his precious 'son' how to prepare food?" Jonathan shoves his blade into a holster on his belt. "I guess he always did spend more time over there, cooking and such."

There's a lot of bitterness in his voice, but Alec doesn't care. If it wouldn't kill Alec in the process, he'd be planning ways to destroy Jonathan from the as they speak.

Alec is silent, so Jonathan leads him through the house. The coloring is soft, but faded, as if the house has been in use, though there are few personal objects. It's not too small a house, with several rooms and two floors, but it's so empty it feels daunting. It's definitely a different place than the Institute.

"You'll be staying in here with me," Jonathan explains as they reach a large bedroom on the second story of the house, its walls a faded cinnamon color. "We'll need as much contact as possible, and even if you won't let me fuck you, sleeping in the same bed will keep it so we're not both tugged out of the fabric of reality."

Alec wants to argue, but he doesn't know enough about the soul bond to really make a point. Sleeping in close proximity really might be crucial to their survival. He really should have paid attention to those lectures. If he had, he wouldn't be stuck in a situation that lent him only uncertainty, frustration and anger. "What about my siblings? Magnus?"

Jonathan shrugs. "They'll just have to deal."

"That's it? They're just going to think I'm missing? Possibly dead?" Alec asks, voice taught with irritation. He wants to bash Jonathan's face in.

Jonathan shrugs. "Jace will know you're alive. Aren't you Parabatai? That should be enough."

Alec bites his anger back into a frown. He'll have to plot and plan to see them again, and without a fight, he resigns himself to it. He'll get back to them as soon as he can.

"I also got you something," Jonathan says, and it sounds flippant. Like he's practiced. As if he's afraid to admit he might be nervous about something. It takes all of Alec's restraint to believe it's fake, to keep himself from ripping into the insecurity he's picking up. It would be so easy. It's probably fake, a trap. Jonathan spent days lying to Alec, to the Penhallow family. Why would he be hesitant now?

Jonathan walks over to a deep brown set of chested drawers in the corner, pulling open one of the shelves to reveal a folded mix of older and newer sweaters in various shades of black. "You wore a lot of them in Alicante, so I just thought they might make you feel more at ease."

Jonathan is trying to be nice to him. There are a lot of sweaters in the drawer that Alec would love to wear, that look comfortable and lived in. And though he hates this man, hates what he's done to Alec's life, he knows when to nod his thanks.

"These look comfortable, Jonathan" Alec says softly, trying not to flinch at the name. He pulls out one of the more faded sweatshirts running his thumb over the soft fabric. He feels a little more at ease with wool and cotton between his fingers, like a child listening to a lullaby. It feels warm and familiar.

"In return for these sweaters," Jonathan says, and any sincerity drains out of Alec at the prospect of a bargain. "You will stop calling me Jonathan. I'm Sebastian now. Jonathan is the name my father used to make me a monster."

Alec pauses. "Okay. Sebastian." Maybe Sebastian is different from Jonathan. They seem different to him, his voice sharp as he runs over the syllables in Jonathan. Sebastian is easier, reminds him less of Jace and Valentine, though it is a stronger reminder of their time together in Alicante. But whichever one he is, he has Lightwood blood on his hands.

Jona-Sebastian smiles, and it's a bit less twisted than it has been every other time he's looked at Alec. "Let me show you the library. I imagine you'll be spending a lot of time there."

Alec spends a lot of his first day looking for ways out of the house. The windows are all bolted, (my father was afraid, when he finally caught my mother, she'd try to escape him, Jonathan explained when he caught Alec looking), and the doors are locked with a keypad (mundane technology has its uses, Sebastian had smirked, knowing Alec would never find a way past it). Sebastian seems to be able to appear into any part of the house through a special key, though Alec doesn't have any weapons and probably wouldn't be able to steal it.

He won't be leaving any time soon. Not to mention the fact that he's not even in New York anymore, and doesn't know where the Institutes of different cities are located. He would be lost if he tried to escape the house and find one, especially is they happened to be in a city too small to have a proper Insititute.

So he spends the day trying not to panic, and sitting in the library pretending to read. He hasn't even turned ten pages, his mind transfixed on getting back to his siblings. They must be wondering where he is by now.

The way he sees it, he has a couple of options. He can try to sneak out, then find the local Institute and catch a portal back to New York. He might be able to strong-arm Sebastian into taking him back, but he doubts it. Sebastian is more powerful than him, and is probably extremely prepared to keep Alec in the house.

Or, maybe, he could start out small. Write a note to his siblings, to Magnus, and ask if he can send them. Maybe Sebastian would let him send letters, telling them not to worry and that he'll be fine. Sebastian will let him lie to his siblings, surely. It's not like they can track a moving house, right?

He brings it up that night while Sebastian is showing him how to make spaghetti sauce by hand, having him dice mushrooms and tomatoes. Sebastian believes in not putting things off, in seizing the moment, much to Alec's chagrin. He didn't really want to learn how to cook.

"Can I send them letters, at least?" Alec asks while Sebastian pours the ingredients into a pot on the stove.

"Who?" Sebastian asks, though the glint in his eyes says he knows. He just wants to be able to refuse Alec once he's made the full request, Alec assumes. He can't forget that the last time he saw that glint Max died. His stomach clenches.

"My siblings. Magnus," Alec says, fists clenched.

Sebastian stalks towards him, never breaking eye contact. It's daunting, like he's trying to intimidate Alec, but this man killed Alec's brother and hurt his sister and that rage allows Alec to defiantly maintain eye-contact.

Sebastian crowds Alec back against the counter, putting his arms on either side of Alec's waist. There's a glint in his eyes that Alec doesn't like, but Alec does not like Sebastian.

The blond-haired teen leans closer, and whispers, "When you've earned it."

Then Sebastian's mouth is on his, and Alec is being kissed with nothing holding Sebastian back. It isn't a nice kiss. Sebastian is taking, holding the back of Alec's neck so he can't move away. His tongue is as violent as it's owner, and Alec knows his mouth is going to be uncomfortably sore for the next day or two. It's almost as if Sebastian is trying to drown him, because his cheek is pressed over Alec's nose so he can't breathe.

Alec shoves his hands at Sebastian's shoulders, pushing him off. He gulps in air, glaring at the teen pressed to his front. "You don't get to do that," Alec says, voice ragged from the lack of oxygen.

"But you look so pretty with swollen lips," Sebastian says, a hand snaking up to press his fingers against Alec's lips.

Alec pushes his hands forward again, and this time Sebastian moves back, looking slightly hurt. Alec snarls, "No. You don't get to do that. I still hate you. And if you don't start learning the meaning of consent, you're not going to be alive much longer."

Sebastian takes a step back, a look of surprise in his eyes. He breaks eye contact with Alec, turning back to the stove. "Okay," he says. Then, "I think the fusilli is almost done."

Alec wonders if maybe there's hope for Sebastian yet.