It was difficult to interact with them. It was hard to read their guarded expressions, to interpret their closed off personas. It was hard to reacclimate to life with them.
It was hard to sleep when trapped inside four walls. It was hard to rest when everything felt foreign, and dangerous. It was impossible to relax after years strung out on adrenaline, and fearing the possibilities of an attack. It was horrible that those feelings of insecurity were amplified in what was supposed to be home.
But it did not feel like home. Those walls encasing him were no longer familiar. The faces of the others were no longer comforting, they had changed and grown distant. The building was more of a prison to him than his former prison had ever been. The place where his family lived, where he had grown, was not his home. And it was hard for him to remember when the large building had every felt like a home to him.
But it must have once. At some point the building, in all its vastness and museum-like qualities, must have held the same comforts to him as he had felt lying beneath the stars, or riding his mount through the sky. That place must have once felt safe and secure, otherwise he would not have been so determined to return to it.
It must have been important to him. It needed to be again, because that was where they were. They, with the guarded expressions, the closed off personas, and their own way of life, where his family. And he had missed them, missed them so much that he had driven himself toward the brink of insanity in an attempt to remember all he could about them.
But they were not the same. They used the same names, but their faces were different. Their personalities were different. At their core, they might have been the same, but what he could see of them was foreign. They were no longer his siblings, they were no longer the children he remembered and cared for.
But they were. And he hated that he could not see them as such. He hated that he could only see them as the small children he had known before. He hated that he had missed so much time with them. And for what? What had he been subjected to that made him miss them?
What had he missed by not being there?
Compared to what he had gained, what were those years? Compared to what he had seen, what was the loss of time? Looking at the two lives side-by-side, it seemed he had lost more in returning. Looking at the life he had had, and then at the life he was trying to regain, it seemed he had chosen poorly.
This place was not his home. And though the others shared his blood, they were not his family. Not the family he remembered.
This life was not the life he wanted now. This place was not the place he felt he belonged. Everything was wrong, he could feel it. He could feel their judgement on him.
He could feel their resentment, having avoided the responsibilities that would have been his; though they knew deep down that it had never been a decision he was free to make. He could feel their wariness, he had been gone so long and knew nothing of their secrets; though he could accurately guess at some of them. He could feel their ire, they had all suffered and been through so much; but he had not suffered with them.
No, he had not suffered as they had. His torment had been different, though they would never know the full extent of what he had endured. Of what he had endured for them.
They would never know of what he had lived through simply because of their father, and the angel blood running through his veins. They had no clue of his sentence away from them. All they knew what was he told them, and he kept the details to himself. He was the elder brother, it was his duty to spare them such things. But it wore him down to do so.
He was tired of trying to act how they expected. He was exhausted by the façade he was attempting. He longed for a simpler time, when the Institute was home and his siblings were not strangers. He longed for the freedom he had once felt living inside those walls, and bound by the rule of the Clave. He longed for a time that he recalled more as a distant dream than a cherished memory.
He could still remember the warmth the Institute had offered. He could sense the familiarity of the building, like the sting of a blade after it had cut through flesh. He could still feel his old self, bound within the walls, not knowing what it was to truly be free.
But he could still taste the morning. He could still feel the wind tangling his hair as he rode through the dawn. He could still remember the silent companionship of the constant stars, both in Faerie and in the Mortal world. He could still smell the earth and taste the seasons on his lips. He could still remember freedom.
Not the freedom of the Clave. Not the freedom of his family, with his family. But real freedom.
Or, at least the supposed freedom the Hunt had granted him. When he was still bound by the law of the Hunt, though it had been different than the Law of the Clave. The Hunt was more lenient on some matters, yet more rigid in others. And though it was a banishment sentence, a life sentence in exile, it felt more like freedom.
It was difficult to interact with them. It was difficult to know when to make a joke, or to understand the references they teased. It was difficult to know when a line was crossed, to know where to draw the lines between them. It was difficult to understand the world they lived in, and the roles they played in it.
It was hard to read their guarded expressions. It was hard to know what they thought when they never showed their hearts. It was hard to know them, when the insisted on retaining their distance. He had not been there, and he could go again. They were not willing to open themselves up to that pain a second time. And he could not blame them.
It was impossible to interpret their closed off personas. It was impossible to know them, as he had once, when he had missed so much. It was not for him to know them now, it was not for him to assume he would. They were different, ravaged by war, calloused by time, and cautious with people. They had to be, and so they were to him by default.
They did not know him, and he did not know them. Which was why it was so hard to reacclimate himself to this lifestyle. He was a stranger to them, as mysterious as the Fey with whom he had spent so much time. But he would change that.
His blood, his family, there was nothing he would not do for family. Regardless of the toll it took on him. Despite the ridicule it would cause them with the Clave.
And they would do the same. Because there was nothing they would not do for family. It was not in them to turn away family. It was not in them to turn the blind eye, like so many others in the Clave.
Mark was drained by the façade he was living. Which was why he so desperately wanted to make it a truth. He wanted his family back, and there was no easy way to do it. He would join them, in their vast, hallowed Institute, and he would stay. Because losing them, to him, was a fate worse than death.