The Mortal Instruments and anything related belongs to Cassandra Clare.
As Christiana walked into the flat she shared with her father, she heard silence. To most people, this wouldn't be alarming. But to her it was. To her, the sound of silence meant death. Ever since Alec had died, Magnus had either kept the radio or the TV on, trying to make up for the silence left behind by his late partner. When Christiana came home to silence, it meant that Magnus was having a bad day. And every time she came home to silence, she was afraid that he was gone too, having succumbed to the despair lingering right under the surface of his skin, so obvious that not many people could stand to look at him.
Christiana slowly made her way to her father's bedroom, and when she could see through the doorway, she breathed a sigh of relief. No, her father was not all right. Christiana doubted he ever would be again. But he was alive, and these days, that was the best she could hope for.
Magnus was lying on Alec's side of the bed, staring at a picture of Alec with empty eyes. Most nights he slept on Alec's side, head buried in his dead lover's pillow, trying to catch a lingering scent of smoke and love and Alec. But even though he was slowly taking over that side, the right side of the King sized bed would always belong to the man he had loved and lost.
As Christiana stared at her father, she noticed how lonely he looked. She had always noticed the crushing despair that plagued him since his lover's death nearly three months ago, but she looked at him now, in the enormous bed too big for one person alone, and noticed how alone he was, how he looked like he needed someone, anyone, to relieve him of the hurt he was feeling, even if it could never fill the void Alec had left in his heart.
As she thought, the seventeen-year-old girl let her gaze wander to the photo on the bedside table. It had always been her favourite, ranking in even above the ones of the whole family together, Magnus and Alec and their beautiful blond girl, Christiana. In the picture, Alec was laughing, his face lit up like the sun, so bright it was almost painful to look at. His eyes sparkled with mirth, and there was something suggesting sheer happiness in every line of his face, something that screamed I am at the place in my life where everything is perfect.
Christiana stepped forward, wanting to comfort her father, but as the hardwood floor squeaked beneath her, she saw Magnus flinch, and remembered how, when she was little and wanted her fathers to get up at o'dark- thirty in the morning and she would jump on their bed to wake them up, Alec had taught her that the squeaking board right outside the doorway of his and Magnus' room was the doorbell. When you want to come into the room, he would say, you ring the doorbell first, and we'll tell you when you can come in. See, he would look at her then, eyes shinig with pride, demonstrating by stepping on the board, just like a doorbell.
Chirstiana stepped over the board and proceeded into her father's room, rethinking her plan of trying to talk, and reached for the blanket at the foot of the bed, tucking Magnus in and sitting down next to him. She started humming the tune Alec would use to sing her to sleep, even when she had decided that she was too old to be tucked into bed. He would stand outside her door and sing until she fell asleep. Now she hummed it for her other father, having noticed that, instead of causing him pain, like most reminders of Alec, he took comfort in it, relaxing enough to actually go to sleep, instead of staying awake all night, haunted by Alec's memory. As she hummed, she mourned the fact that she could not remember the words, only knowing enough to know that there was something about walking over the rainbow, and leaving painful memories behind to make room for a bright future. Maybe someday, if he was up to it, she would ask Magnus what the words were.
As Magnus fell asleep, the blond girl realized that she needed to get out. Most days she was fine, but every once in a while, Alec's memory would become too much, too much, too much, and she had to get out, out of the house, or she would drown in the stifling feeling of a house and a family ripped apart, sown back together only to have the seams ripped away again, of knowing there were only two people living in a house where there were supposed to be three, three, and that it wasn't fair, that it just wasn't fair that Alec was gone, and Magnus was slowly dying on the inside a little more every day, and that Christiana was supposed to go to school and get good grades and keep in touch with her friends when she felt like she just couldn't do it anymore, not without Alec. So she called Gray and asked him to meet her at the fountain by the park, knowing that whatever the hour, he would always be there for her, always be ready to come when she called, for the simple reason that she needed a friend. He was like that before Alec died, and he had told her that he wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.
Christiana sat on the fountain, staring at the crystal water pouring out of the white marble dolphin mouth, the park quiet as a grave. She felt like she was drowning, being held under that clear water, held down and unable to come up for air. The past coming back to haunt her, the present tearing her apart, the future a black gaping hole of nothing. Alec gone, Magnus going, no one waiting on her.
Just as the ugly visions were coming up, ready to consume her, she felt an arm around her shoulders, and she realized she wasn't really alone. Gray was always there, always ready to support her, no matter how awful her world at any given time. He wasn't going to leave. He was the rock in her life, the one certainty, because no matter how much she loved Magnus, and he loved her, she had to admit he was slipping through her fingers a little more every day. But Gray wasn't going anywhere.
"Thanks," she whispered. She didn't have to elaborate. She never did. He always knew exactly what she was thinking.
Gray squeezed her shoulder in silent support, and she realized that she would pull through this. She would keep going, and, in time, she would be happy, if not whole. And, dammit, she would pull her father through this if it killed her. What would Alec think, she berated herself, if I let Magnus wither away and die? It's not an option.
And so the world will keep turning, with one less happy soul to occupy it.