Disclaimer: All of the characters belong to Cassandra Claire, anything you don't recognize is mine [ie. the plot, for the most part].
A/N Part 1: This is for a contest on the page 'Why can't I be a Half-blooded Divergent Avian Shadowhunter Wizard Victor?' of Facebook.
A/N Part 2: My apologies to anyone waiting for updates on any of my other stories. It seems I have lots of plot bunnies and such, but little to no muse for much past one-shots. Sorry for keeping everyone waiting, I'll try soon! Most everything will have to be redone first [probably] so it will be a bit of a wait. But that's Junior year and no-musiness getting n the way, for you. Sorry, once again.
A/N Part 3: Please, please, please review, I'd love to have some constructive criticism. Tell me what you liked and didn't like specifically. It's nice to know that you like it, but I'd also love to know exactly what you liked about it!
Now, here it is, without further ado!
When one pictures war they don't picture twelve year olds huddled together in a corner mourning their shared losses. They don't think of the fact that these children – and so many others – are left orphans minutes after battle begins. Sometimes even before that. The tragedies of fighting back, fighting for hope left their scars, deeply imbedded in everyone. However it affected some more than others.
The young Emma Carstairs clung to her best friends and future parabatai, a young boy by the name Julian Blackthorn, a boy that clung to her just as tight. The remnants of dirt shadowed their thin faces, as well as a light smattering of scratches that fell across their bodies. They had not yet seen way. Hadn't even begun to see the terror, pain stretched across faces older, and perceivably stronger than themselves. They had not seen the horrifying wounds left by an attack that managed to find its mark somehow in the confusion of the battlefield. They were sheltered, tucked away to be sent for supplies when they ran low. Their work came too frequently for anyone's taste.
They were simply too rather awkward, run of the mill Shadowhunter children; their arms and legs a bit too gangly at the moment, managing to get in the way whilst they were accomplishing the simplest of tasks. They were the innocence of the world, it seemed; stuck at the point between receiving their first runes and going out demon hunting for the first time. They knew not the full complications of the world yet, no matter the fact that they had been – were being – trained in its ways even at this point in time. The full brunt of the facts of life would hit soon enough, even if they had arrived already, if only somewhat.
Their life was now in peril, a peril that only war brought in its clenched fist. The young girl and boy simply held faith, if only a vague one, unknowing at its core, that all would be well and their lives would return back to normal following whatever new catastrophe this was. A belief that all the children huddled within the institute held, in some value, in their ever impending innocence. No matter the fact that they would grow up to hunt demons for a living. Slay them to protect an oblivious world. One could not prevent a child of any beliefs that everything would be fine at the end of the day. Mother and father would tuck them happily into bed, kiss their forehead and everything would return to normal.
As the case with the young, deceased, Maxwell Lightwood, that was not always the case. Sometimes, in this new war against its new foe, things were not guaranteed to turn out well. The smile and hugs at the end of the day were fated to end, and the shadows of clouds would reign overhead.
And, as the young Julian held his best friend close, arms wrapped comfortingly around her with a consoling hand stroking her back, the situation was arguably the same. It may not have been a child that had died much too young, but it was nearly one in the same with the loss of her parents. A keening pain that young Emma Carstairs felt deeply in her heart at the loss of the parents that had raised her helped her up when she fell, and laughed alongside her. The father that had guided her hand when she had pulled back her bow for the very first time, after learning all of the 'theory,' and fired her first arrow. The mother that had taught her how to paint; who had also gifted Emma with her own inherited sense of humor somewhere along from the young girl's birth and their shared mother-daughter jokes over the twelve years of Emma's life.
Now, as she sobbed softly into Jules's scratchy wool sweater it all seemed to be a world away. As if this morning, when her parents had promised to be back by daybreak, had happened weeks ago instead of only hours. The fact that they would never return home to share a family joke or to even kiss her goodnight just once more rattled about in her head ominously. It wasn't a fate that the young girl had even considered when she had awakened that morning. Of course, mommy and papa would return home, she had simply thought. When hadn't they? It was foreign, to think that they had been simply Shadowhunters, nothing more, no matter how Emma tried to comprehend it. They had seemed as if together they were unstoppable. And she hadn't doubted it for a moment, disregarding any lessons that might have previously caused her worry.
At this point in time, though, young Emma Carstairs began to shed her youthful innocence. Such things like this that she had held near and dear were the last strike of the match as it fell into the pile of kindling and logs. She would no longer hold out simple hope as she had as the day had dawned. Hope was too winsome, too dependent on too many variables. She would have to accomplish things herself, she thought, as her tears gradually dried, leaving only a stray sniffle behind.
Vaguely she heard the call of Julian's name, felt him shift and stand, dropping a kiss on her forehead as he left to fetch more supplies. She was simply too absorbed in her planning to bear acknowledgement to the outside world.
She would get her revenge for her parents. May it arrive sooner or later, that time would come, and she would prepare herself for the day that it would finally arrive. She would avenge their deaths; make sure whoever had caused her this pain felt twice as much pain as she did at the loss of her dearly beloved parents. Emma Carstairs nodded shakily to herself, surrounded by the tang of blood in the air and the scarce shouts of pain; tears of worry and shouts of joy.
"I will avenge them. I will."