Destruction and Creation
a Dark Artifices/Mortal Instruments story
by EmilyHelene
Emma threw the knife with equal parts carefully calculated precision and incredible agility, puncturing the target, creating a neat hole in its surface. The next three knives landed in the same general vicinity, tearing the target up until it looked more like a post-war flag than a piece of training equipment. When she had exhausted her arsenal, the small circle had been completely destroyed and was nearly unrecognizable.
She took a deep breath before going to retrieve the blades and gritted her teeth. She had made a mess, it was what she was best at. She'd been a pouty child, angry that her parents wouldn't take her along with them on their routine check that fateful day, and they had wound up dead. She trained for hours until the day came where she could finally have her revenge. She wrecked targets, weapons, and occasionally injured herself or (more often) Julian who, as her sparring partner, usually got the brunt of her frustration. She would wipe her parents' murderers from this dimension and any other if given the chance, but she often wondered if even that would quell the numbness in her chest. Everything she did ended in devastation.
All she ever did was destroy.
Why couldn't she be more like him? In times of distress and desolation, he turned to his canvas. Instead of throwing weapons, he would throw paint and it was almost always beautiful and expressive and new. In the face of everything, he would create. She didn't think he was capable of destruction. Not really.
She envied him immensely; more than even he had picked up on in their lifelong friendship. She needed him, even if he didn't think so. He kept her grounded and she knew that no matter what she did, or what situation she had thrown the both of them into, he would never hold anything against her. Instead, he would paint her image, pouring more beauty into her features than she ever saw looking in a mirror. His goodness balanced the fires of rage within her; the bubbling instinct to question the Clave and the law, to challenge what couldn't be changed only faded when she was with him.
Without him, all hope of creating was lost.
Without him, all she knew how to do was destroy.
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Happy Writing,
EmilyHelene