So this is a oneshot of the missing phone conversation between Mark and Helen in Lady Midnight. Remember? Page 260?
Warning: Spoilers for TDA: LM.
Paint The Sea In Blackthorn Blue
Mark swallowed down a welling of emotions in his throat as the phone in his hand vibrated with the dial tone. His heart ached at the fate of his full-blooded sister as he tried not to despise the Clave for its merciless, so called justice.
The view beneath him was stunning, the sea pushing up the wet sand as its frothy white and green waves spread out against the amber grains of its surface, the emerald and sapphire shimmering in the silvery glow of the moon.
He did have quite a view from the roof of the huge, towering Los Angeles Institute, and if he concentrated hard enough, he could imagine himself looking down from the highest tree, the wind singing in his ears. He would be with the Wild Hunt, riding through the clouds and tasting the blood of the wind, tearing open the sky in his wake.
Mark shuddered as the thought of the band came to his mind. The pressure of choosing was getting to him, and, like so many times since he came to the Institute with the faerie convoy, he didn't know whom to believe.
There was a click as the call connected, and the phone was picked up.
"Hello?" Helen's voice was groggy and strangely vulnerable as she spoke.
Mark swallowed again, swallowed the nostalgia, the pain, the tears. "Helen?"
Her voice sounded surprised and a little cautious. "Julian? Is that you?"
The blond boy hesitated, wondering if he really sounded like his brother, before responding. "No, my sister. It is I…Mark."
The line went silent, thick with awkwardness and hesitation. When Helen spoke, her voice was thick too, but with rage and fire.
"How dare you? First you steal from me my brothers and sisters, exile me to a wasteland, mock me by giving me the work of studying for the very people who heartlessly wrenched from me my life. And now you mock me again, with my brother's voice, when I well know he might as well be no more?"
He closed his eyes and tipped his face skyward, letting the pain wash over him like waves breaking on a sea shore. He exhaled through his teeth as he gripped the cell even more tightly in his hands, feeling the cold metal cut into his palm. "I do not lie. Living with faeries has robbed me of that; the way they could sniff out my untruths is the way hellhounds smell blood."
On the other end, his sister barked out a crazed laugh. "So it is a faerie then. I didn't know the Fair Folk would prank call a fellow victim of the Cold Peace."
The icy wind nipped at Mark's exposed collarbone. The only way he could convince her now was by sharing common knowledge.
"Emma and Julian are parabatai." He said softly. "Tiberius wants to go to the Scholomance, but Livia wishes to go through the same bonding ceremony with her twin. Drusilla…Dru loves ghosts and gore. And Tavvy," a smile ghosted his lips. "Tavvy is seven, not as innocent now as he was the last time I saw him. His memory is now tainted with blood."
There was another pause as he listened to Helen's unsteady breathing. He could imagine the air, the warm air leaving her lips in puffs of vapor, and maybe misting on some cold glass window, as she processed his words. "Mark?"
He smiled now. He smiled at the familiar soft tone the children of Lady Nerissa used with each other, a sympathizing and loving tone as she spoke again. "But the fey do not give back what they take…"
Mark remembered Julian's words from what seemed so long ago. "No. But sometimes they give you back what belongs to you."
He cloud almost sense Helen's worry all the way through the phone. "…I'm not so sure, Mark. How…?"
The half faerie boy felt traces of the smile falling from his face. "I would rather not say, Helen. The less people involved in this political mess, the better it is." He hated keeping secrets from his sister, nonetheless, but the situation called for unopened locks as the wind called for his wild heart. "I do not wish you to be more pressurized than you are by time, fair sister."
There was another pause, the tension almost palpable between the once close siblings. Mark wondered, not so much as idly, if it was better to just have told the dangerous truth, or spun some faerie-like, fantastic lie. He doubted admitting to half truth was helping either one of them.
Helen's crackling telephonic voice spoke, laced with wistfulness, and a little sad. "You speak like them, who live under the hill, ride among the stars and whose speech is beyond what we can understand."
The boy blinked, assessing whether his way of speaking was being admired or dismissed. "Do you wish for me to speak so? Or does this cut your Shadowhunter heart with an elf bolt of pain?" he said, bitterly.
"I don't know what to think anymore." Her voice was shaky and soft.
Mark bit the inside of his cheek, wondering what could be worse than this, conversing with your long lost sibling over a device through which you could receive only speech. Though he didn't know on whose behalf he was hurt, his, or Helen's. "It is not so that we can talk of much but painful memory, Helen."
There was sniffling on the line, and he could imagine her blinking rapidly to hold back tears, some already having escaped. "We can."
"Of what?" He asked sadly. "Shadowhunters? The Cold Peace? Mundane terms I do not know of? We cannot just get apart of lost years between us with no effort, sister."
Helen audibly swallowed. "Then let us talk about now."
"You do realize you wish to talk of the present," he paused. "When we have all but forgotten the past and know nothing of the future, know nothing of what will come?"
She was quiet for some time. "Tell me about Julian." She said. "Tell me how they are getting along, my-our—brothers and sisters, and Jules's Emma."
He couldn't help flinching from the thought of them, who he might leave, whose hearts he held in the palm of his hands, which he could break with a word. "What of them?"
"He never tells me anything." Her voice is barely above a whisper. "Anything but that they're fine; he's fine."
Mark thinks back to the weariness in Julian's eyes, the way his shoulders curl with the responsibility which wasn't there before. How Emma's knuckles are criss-crossed with scars, how there's a fiery, determined pain that wasn't there when he left. How Tavvy has so many more nightmares than he used to; how Dru is quieter, sadder than she used to be. How Ty and Livvy are closer now, older than ever.
Something tells him that telling Helen all this would do more harm than good.
"Tavvy is sweet as berries," he whispers, finally. "Dru is more curious than ever, Livvy is still the fierce warrior she used to be, and Ty…Ty is wise, clever in a way that I have never seen before. Emma pushes herself beyond her limits, and I think none have ever wielded Cortana better. And Julian…"
He gently touched his elf bolt, wondering what to say.
"Julian paints." He smiled, a little pained, a little sad. "He paints the beach in amber and sunlight in gold. His sky is blue, evening bringing hues of violet and rose and cobalt. And the sea…" He breathed in, remembering the painting. "But in all of them, the sea is most enthralling.
"It is deep as a Shadowhunter heart, mysterious as a maze. He paints it in emerald, sister. He paints it in shimmering emerald and steel gray and Blackthorn blue. He dips his brush in the glass and paints it in Blackthorn blue, Helen. And I swear upon all the gods of the Ancient Greece, never have I ever seen something as beautiful."
There was a short silence, and he could picture the content smile on his sister's face.
"I wish I could see him now." She said at last.
Mark nodded, before remembering that she couldn't see him. "I understand. I wish so too, upon every star that emerges first in the ink like night, upon every streak of flame I see in the sky."
"I wish I could see you now." Helen whispered.
Her voice was filled with such sorrow his chest felt constricted; loneliness clouding his thoughts. "I am so sorry, Helen." He whispered.
He noticed Cristina at the door, hovering uncertainly. With a moment of hesitation, he gestured for her to remain, and turned his attention back to the call.
"No matter what happens, Mark, I want—I just—I want you to know that…" Helen's voice broke. "I want you to know that I love you. I love you, brother."
He could almost hear his heart breaking into a thousand pieces, like an empty glass bottle of wine smashed against the wall.
"And I, you, my sister." The call disconnected and Mark lowered the phone, slipping the phone into his pocket. He sighed, and for the first time since he woke up in his old room, he blinked back his tears.
He wondered, if the black of the night was any match for the black mourning in his heart.
He wondered, if he would ever see the Blackthorn blue in his sister's eyes again.
And…CUT! Hope you guys liked it.
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