Okay though Max wasn't a big character I really liked him, maybe because he reminded me a lot of myself? (Even though I'm not a boy). I was pretty much crying when he died and I always wondered what he was thinking, if he was scared. So here it is.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this.
Max sat on the windowsill reading his manga book using the light from outside to do so. It was growing late and his eyes were becoming heavy, so the nine year old closed his comic, set it aside, and stretched. Then he rubbed at his grey eyes under his crooked, to-big glasses.
He looked up out the window at the towers, marveling in their beauty, how they all sparkled and glowed in the scarlet sunset. Then Max's eyes caught a bit of movement and they widened in surprise.
A person was climbing up one of the nearest towers! If it had been daytime instead of twilight Max would be able to see exactly who it was but now all he could make out was dark hair, a lithe muscular teenaged male body, and dark clothes. Then the figure reached the top and disappeared.
Max sucked in a deep breath, that person was familiar. He was sure he knew them.
The boy hurried back to his room to calm down. It was nothing, Max told himself sternly. Just go to bed. And he did, he pulled on the first pair of pajamas he could find, gray ones, put his comic on the bedside table, took off his glasses, and quickly fell asleep.
After a strangely dreamless sleep Max woke up, disoriented. He didn't know what time it was or what had woken him up but he knew he should still be asleep, it was still so dark out. Nothing seemed wrong, except . . . what were those noises from the hill? And where did his comic go?
Max scrambled out of bad and hurried down the stairs not caring he was still in his pajamas with his brown hair going every way possible. The first thing he heard was Sebastian's voice, which sent a chill through his body. He didn't like Sebastian and when he had told Izzy that, she had laughed at him.
"Is it just that he hates me personally? Because I don't know what it is I ever-"
When spotting his books in the creeps hands he cut across him. "That's my book." Max moved down the stairs, aware that his brother, sister, Aline, and Sebastian were know all looking at him, but he didn't care. He just glared at Sebastian reproachfully.
After an argument with the teen Max got his book back-and a scolding from Izzy. When she said he should be in bed the boy got defensive, "There were noises up on the hill. They woke me up." He squinted around the room just then figuring out he had forgotten his glasses upstairs. He remembered earlier that day-the person on the towers. Should he tell them? "Isabelle . . ."
His sister turned to him her black hair whipping around. "What?"
"Do people ever climb the demon towers? Like, for any reason?"
Aline really annoyed him when she answered with that annoying laugh of hers. "No . . ." She said more but a no was all Max had needed so he zoned out. Then why did I see someone climbing them, just this afternoon?
He snapped back into focus when everything went wrong. Aline disappeared taken by a demon, Isabelle grabbed her whip and ran after them, Sebastian ran to go grab weapons for him and Alec, while Alec himself wrapped his arms around Max as the boy struggled and dragged him from the room.
The few minutes before Izzy came back seemed like hours as Alec calmed down the little boy and had him sit on the stairs as he ran to find Isabelle. Max pulled his knees to his chest and stared about in confusion and terror. Sebastian came into the room with an armful of wood and nails, and was holding a hammer. He began to nail the boards over the hole in the window and was just finishing up as Alec and Isabelle ran back in.
Izzy immediately went over to Max and stroked his hair comfortingly. "Are you alright?"
He stared at her. "No. I tried to look out the windows but Sebastian told me to stay down."
Izzy hugged him. "Sebastian was right. There were demons out on the streets."
"Are they still there?" Max seemed horrified at the very idea of demons here.
"No. But there are still some out in the city. We have to think about what we're going to do next." The last part was directed at the two other, older boys. Max leaned into his big sister and let them work that out by themselves. Alec went since he was the oldest leaving Izzy to watch Max. Terror spasmed in his stomach, he didn't want his big brother to go out there all alone, but Alec still did. Breathing raggedly Max randomly noticed Izzy was bleeding.
"Isabelle. Your wrist is bleeding." Max's voice seemed small and hallow, even to himself. She just seemed to notice and went upstairs to get bandages and weapons. Max almost told her not to go, not to leave him. He didn't want to be left alone with Sebastian, the boy scared him and Max was sure now that he had been the one climbing the demon towers. But he held himself back, biting his tongue and watching as his sixteen year old sister climbed to the attic and disappeared, leaving him behind like always.
Maybe he would have called out to her if he knew that was the last time he would ever see her.
"Max." A voice whispered behind him, silky and emotionless. The boy wanted desperately to flee out into the street wanting to face demons instead of this strange boy. But he couldn't because Sebastian was standing between him and the door.
Max slowly turned around and faced the teen who stared back down at him. Sebastian held his hammer up in the air slightly, his eyes were pure, blank black, and through the black hair dye Max could see some platinum blond hair.
"You aren't Sebastian Verlac are you? You're the boy I saw climbing the demon towers. You let the demons in." The last to sentences weren't questions, just statements. Sebastian took a few steps forward. A cruel grin twisted on his lips.
"No, I'm not Sebastian. And yes to the last two. You're a smart little boy. You'd be a nice Shadowhunter. To bad I have to kill you now." Max's small hand gripped his little wooden toy soldier, Jace had given it to him when he was little and it was still his most priced possession.
When he was small and afraid of the dark he would hold it and close his eyes, feeling safe because it was always next to him. It wasn't going to protect him now.
"Kill me?" he questioned in a strangled whisper.
Sebastian-no not Sebastian-nodded. "You know too much, you could mess up my father's plans." He took another step, raising the hammer higher. "Don't worry you'll be a small loss compared to all the people dying out there now."
With that he raised the hammer and brought it down on the boys head as hard as he could. Max didn't let out a sound; he didn't even close his eyes. He just held onto his toy soldier, hoping it would lead him to heaven and stood there, brave and-not tall he was always so little for his age-but he was brave. And hopefully people would remember him for that.
The small form of the child who hadn't lived through one whole decade crumpled in the dark, hit by that hammer, dead before he hit the ground because he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had seen something he shouldn't have. Killed by a man only he had been smart enough not to trust. Still clinging to his wooden soldier.
Jonathan had been right; he had been a small loss that night. Not to Clary though who would never get to talk about manga with him again and take him to Forbidden Planet like she had promised. Not to Isabelle who would never forgive herself for leaving him alone, to die. Not to Alec who never got to admit to the little boy who looked up to him who he really was. Not Jace who Max would never be able to tell how much of a hero he was to him, and how much that toy soldier he had given Max helped in the end. Not to his parents who would never go one day of their lived afterwards without grieving for the small son they hadn't been there to save.
He would always be the biggest loss to them.