Inspired by Take Me To My Fragile Dreams. Again. I swear if I keep stalking someday I'm going to have a rather large collection of fics they inspired. this makes three, I think. It's late, and right now I'm sad, so good night, unless I write another one-shot, which I doubt.

A Star

Alec sat on the hard dirt ground, his legs hanging down below him with the steep drop, his hands pressed to the edge as he looked down to the ocean. He'd been sitting there for a while, and he would probably start getting stiff soon.

The ocean wasn't churning, in fact, the only melodramatic thing about the scene was that the boy was leaning over the face of a cliff to see waves crash, rather softly, against the hard surface he sat on. His expression might have counted as startling, too, but if you didn't know what to look for it might have only seemed slightly unnatural. Alec was never very open about things, anyway.

He was... Content wasn't the right word, but unhappy or uncomfortable didn't fit either. He was just watching blue water turn green, churn, blend together and reflect the sand underneath or the sun on the surface. The way it moved, just flowed, caught his attention, and he didn't have the will to move away. It was pretty, he supposed, not something he would particularly like to be pulled away from. It wasn't really as interesting as he made it out to be, either. Just like him, it simply was.

He felt his hair sway in the slight breeze, tickling at his ears, but he didn't much care. He just blinked, slowly, his gaze still focused on the water. He was relaxed. He could get lost in his head here, he decided. He could lose a lot here. He'd already lost enough, though. He was content for a while, though content was never the right word. Someday he'd find the right word, but it was so hard to describe, what he felt.

He was letting everything glide him by, with the impression of good will but none of it actually there. Hardly any will at all. There were emotions raging in him, right then, but he couldn't feel them. He knew what he was upset about, but a line had been drawn between his head and how much he wanted to just jump right then.

He hadn't meant for anything to happen, he hadn't meant to accidentally send his world tumbling in such an oddly calm way. Maybe he'd overloaded or something. It didn't really matter, though. He was probably shouldn't have smoked that tar before he left. Too late, though. He was tired, and warm, and everything was pacing itself differently than it usually was. If he were to sigh, the wind would swallow it up.

If he were to cry, the ocean would eat him up. But he wouldn't cry, because he wasn't weak like that. He would go on with his life as if he hadn't grown used to benzodiazepines and hurting because of things people said. He wasn't supposed to hurt, though, so he did it as little as possible. It was all okay, or it would be, someday. Or it wouldn't, but Alec didn't particularly care. He could see himself, if he unfocused for a couple of seconds, with a shard of glass sticking out of his wrist and blood swelling around the wound.

But he was so detached, if he cared he might have found it pathetic. Jace said he was pathetic. That's why he'd done it this time, wasn't it? Because of something Jace had said. Sometimes it was other people, too, that guilted him into what some might consider a problem. For Alec, it was just a solution.

"Alec!" He heard his name being called, and turned his head slowly, his heart skipping a beat just because it could before he fought with his eyes and will to look away from the ocean towards the teen who had called his name. He finally turned, and grinned. Magnus. He liked Magnus, a lot. Magnus liked him a lot, too, but that could be figured once they'd claimed each other as boyfriends. Well. Magnus had claimed Alec more than anything, leading to this mess... But it wasn't Magnus's fault. Alec loved Magnus.

Alec got up, intent on greeting the green-eyed teen. But he slipped, his weight falling forwards then too far back as he struggled to regain his footing. Then he was feeling the air whistle in his ears and the shocked look on Magnus's face was the last thing he saw before the sky took over, then a bath of red.

He'd never find that word.