Mistakes of the Past

When she looked at Isabelle, she saw herself. How passionate she had been, how idealistic.

And naive.

What an incredibly dangerous combination.

A young woman, no, a girl who thought she knew best. Who thought she could change the world. That the rules of the Clave did not apply to her.

Oh, what a fool she had been, being swayed by the promising words of a charismatic man. And what those promises he had talked of had been! How eagerly she had soaked in those words that had tasted like an expensive, but oh so addictive wine that she had failed to notice that the sweetness of those promises had only ever served to mask a poison that she feared her body and mind would never get rid of.

Oh, Valentine surely had a way with words, spinning a web of a future so appealing to their little group of Shadowhunters, that when they had finally noticed that they were not the words of a brilliant man, a visionary, but those of a madman, it had already been too late and their hands covered in the blood of innocents.

Pride comes before a fall, they say. And how far they had fallen. The Lightwood name tarnished in the eyes of the Clave and the future she had dreamed of, a better future for her family, for her children, far out of her reach.

I'm sorry, she thought when she looked at them struggling to make her and Robert proud. I'm so sorry, Isabelle, that it is you and Max and Alec who have to pay for Robert's and my mistakes.

I'm sorry that it is you who has no other choice but to accept the hand we were dealt with, no matter how bad it is.

I'm sorry that you cannot be who you want to be. That I make you feel you are not enough, that you feel forced to change. To deny who you truly are.

"The Law is hard", she whispered and closed her eyes, burning the image of her children into her mind, trying to twist themselves into what they think, no, what she, Maryse, made them feel they have to be. "But it is the Law."

She knew it was the only way for her family, the only way to redeem the Lightwood name in the eyes of the Clave.

I don't want you to make the same mistakes.

It's the only choice we have.

But why did those words have to leave this bitter taste that she feared she could never get rid of?

And why did it feel like her family was falling apart right in front of her eyes?