If you read my other stories, I don't know that I'll ever update again. I don't know if I'll ever write another fan fiction again, if I'm honest. Some people on Archive of Our Own made me feel like shit and I've been too stressed out about everything to be happy and write at the same time. So, until I get better, this is our goodbye. This is our goodbye... funny how it rhymes with 'I want to die.' I hope you enjoy yourself.

Alec smiled faintly, looking through the glass as it soaked with drops of rain, wishing that he wasn't alone in the dark of the night. He knew that he shouldn't have been there, sneaking, following John to the back of an apartment complex that wasn't theirs. With the lights off, and darkness creeping through his car, he had watched John meet and exchange kisses with an unknown, scantily clad woman that Alec's boyfriend held far too comfortably for far too long.

He had known it was coming, he really had, and he supposed it was his fault again. They had discussed so long ago monogamy, and decided on it, and Alec had hoped that John would at least tell him if there was someone else. But who would, really, tell their partner they were cheating? Alec was foolish.

It wasn't the first time that this had happened either, not by far. It was the sixth, or so, Alec was losing count. Every time Alec forgave him, let it happen again, with some other man or woman. Alec had to be doing something wrong, not giving John enough, and sometimes he tried to be more loving, but every time he looked at John, in their own apartment, he just saw all those other faces and he became dull and dead to the world, to himself.

There was something haunting about the way John looked at him, and Alec couldn't quite place it sometimes. Sometimes it was abundantly clear, with hate brimming in his eyes and fists filled with directed rage, but there were other times when Alec had to wonder. If caught at the right moment, sometimes, Alec would call it love. Then he'd berate himself because if John really loved him he wouldn't cheat, wouldn't hit him and he'd stop when Alec said no, not that he bothered anymore. He wouldn't use Alec's body as a sheath for his weapons, Alec wouldn't have been hospitalized 14 times since they'd been together. They'd been together for 8 years, since just before Alec's father had died. Alec didn't know what to do without John, so he never left. He went to a shitty job and did shitty things and went home and didn't want to wake up in the morning if he had slept at all.

Alec sighed, about to turn the key in the ignition when there was a knock on the window. He turned his head, just in time to see it smash and a solid fist landed a blow on his head. He was out cold, the world blurring then spitting to a stop as his eyes shut.

"Do you think he'll do, Mag?"

"Shit, Jace, I hope so. We have to get someone good tonight or there's no going back."

"Yeah. Fuck, I hope they'll take him."

Alec moaned, turning his head to the side as he groggily tried to lift his hand to his aching head. He made it halfway there before it stopped by a pull on his wrists. Slowly, he opened his eyes to see some darkly-clad figures standing over him, and he was out again, leaving his head spiraling into another world of pain.

There was no escape, Alec knew, feeling his heart pound in his chest. He ran and ran and ran, his legs extending, his ears roaring with the rush of blood. His hair caught on his damp face, he was crying? There was darkness all around him, clowns with faces like John's, smiling and appearing from the darkness only to dissipate again. He couldn't get away, he saw the faces of John's other lovers, he heard screaming, his own, and his head was flooded with the memory of the first time John attacked him. The rush of betrayal, pain, absolute anguish rushed over him and he wanted it gone.

He didn't scream, he never screamed. He had screamed the first time, had asked it to stop but then he knew it was pointless. He just had to keep running and maybe it would go away, despite the blood trickling down his legs and the ache of old broken bones and new bruises, new scabs and scars. He ran and ran and ran but he still couldn't get away. He was trapped. There was no escaping John, no escaping himself because in the end he was trapped behind iron bars and plunged into his own frantic, racing and manic mind.

Alec woke to someone slapping him rather roughly on the face. He was sitting, restrained to a chair in the middle of a large room, he noticed immediately, his heart's beats taking off to their own unrestrained pattern. There were people surrounding him, in dark clothes, looking at him expectantly. There was a blond man leaning down, standing in between his legs, who gave him a nervous smile as he rose up to the height of the others. Alec couldn't see them very well.

Trying to grasp the situation, Alec, looked around. He was the only person in the circular stone room in a chair. He was the only one bound, and it looked like something was expected of him. Alec looked out of the present for a moment as he flashed back to the first time John had brought some of his 'friends' over for a visit before the memory wasted.

He swallowed, his mouth dry, as he continued to survey the room. There were nearly twenty figures that he could see, and there were more behind him, milling, perhaps, he didn't know. The room he was in appeared older, built up with grey rock, not bricks or plywood. It was cold, and damp, almost like a cave—Alec had no idea where he was.

After what seemed to be stretching minutes but was likely only ticking seconds, an older face appeared before him. His features were slightly sunken-in, his eyes crooked and turning glossy and yellow. His hair was grey, and he was clad in what seemed to be a dark robe, like a stereotypical evil villain from a child's comic book.

When he spoke, his voice was rich and deep, holding an authority that made Alec instinctively want to obey. "What's your name, human child?"

Alec didn't want to answer, the way that he never wanted to do anything with John, but he did, anyway. It was what he'd grown used to. "Alexander."

"How old are you, Alexander?"

Alec frowned; he had to think about it. His birthday hadn't been celebrated in years. "I'm… Twenty three." He knew he probably shouldn't have given away that information so easily, but it was beyond him as he imagined what the people would do to him. Maybe, they'd kill him.

"How do you feel about murder?"

The question might have startled him, if he was in that mood. But he'd calmed. The single thought of dying at these unknown hands had somehow soothed him, and he knew it was wrong, twisted, but he was beginning to wait for it, to try to count down to an unknown but impending time. At least it wouldnt be John doing the honors.

Alec thought about his father and John when he answered. "It can be deserved."

The old man before him gave him a small smile, before continuing. "Do you serve any loyalties to other clans?"

Alec didn't know what he was talking about, though, so he just shook his head. It pounded, unused to the movement and still clearing up.

"Then, welcome. You're ours, now." the man stepped away, and snapped his fingers.

Not a minute later Alec found his shirt being pulled up from arms behind his chair and an older woman with obnoxiously bright orange hair and an even brighter heated metal branding iron was approaching him. He might have tried to fight, but he probably didn't, he could never remember-then a searing pain was flooding his nerves from his already battered chest. It wasn't the worst pain he'd ever felt, not by far (those faces flashed through his mind), and he didn't yell out. It was half welcome, he probably deserved it. He wouldn't be going back to John, it seemed. He wouldn't be going back to that… He passed out again, a cloth being pressed over his face. He was certain that he didn't try to fight it.

When Alec woke up for the second time, he was alone in a small locked room. There was fresh gauze over a burned cursive 'v' on his chest, taped there. John wasn't there, though, and he had only fresh wounds on his wrists from cuffs he'd lostin his sleep and his chest from the branding iron. There was probably a head wound, too, but he was still groggy and his head clouded-filled with cotton.

He got up, somehow, and knocked on the door once, maybe twice, before he went back to the bed and went to sleep. He could hear the faint echo of celebration from the halls outside, and the aroma of good time was flowing. It bounced off of him, though, and he went back to sleep. If they were going to kill him, he might as well be rested. He didn't have John to worry about.

"Should we wake him up?"

"He has training. Why wouldn't we?"

"I don't know. He looks kind of...cute. Peaceful."

*Snort.* "You just want to fuck him."

"Maybe."

"Just wait in the hall."

"Hey, newbie, wake up."

Alec woke to a harsh pat on the shoulder and the voice of someone who, he'd find when he opened his eyes, was seemingly made of gold. His hair was a golden, almost honey blond, and his skin tanned to nearly match. He leaned up, tall, and Alec wondered vaguely if he'd ever been told he looked like a Nazi poster child.

"You have training. Get up." The Gold Man commanded.

Alec made no noise as he lifted up his body, nearly tumbling out of the sheetless bed that he'd been provided. He shifted his long-sleeves a bit before giving the man a long, empty stare. this was how he dealt with the unknown.

"Well, I'm Jace. I go on missions for the order, Sicarius class, same as what you'll be. I'll be your superior until you get assigned, then your senior. I'm going to teach you how to fight today then Magnus is going to teach you about the order. We're in charge of you until you're ready."

Alec doesn't say anything, just continued to look at the strange man speaking in tongues. He was just glad that the man, Jace, didn't touch him.

"Right," Jace said, as the silence dragged on. "Magnus is out in the hall."

He went to the door and opened it, leading Alec out and into a musty corridor. Another man was leaning against one of the doors with his eyes closed. He opened them slowly, looking up just as Alec stepped into the hall.

He had Asian curves, Alec noted, and dark hair with colour laced into it. He was tall, taller than Alec, which was saying a lot, and he was dressed up as if he weren't going to be shooting the shit all day. He was prepared for a fashion show, almost. Tight, and not the tight that Jace wore, which allowed for movement. Constricting. Alec hated feeling constricted, something that happened too often.

"Surprised you're not freaking out on us," the man, Magnus, commented. "Some people wouldn't be as relaxed as you are."

Alec shrugged. "I wasn't exactly in a good place before now. More curious than anything."

It was almost a lie.

"Hm," Magnus commented. "Then let's get started."

It didn't take Alec long to get used to the way that the order worked. There were people in different classes, like Jace in Sicarius, or Magnus, who was a Veneficus. They all had specific tasks to do in order to keep the place running. The Opes kept things running inside the group, there weren't many, and Alec never saw them-they were near the top. Of what affected Alec, he learned that the Veneficus were higher ranked than the Sicarius, but only because the Sicarius never really lasted long enough to become high ranking in the miniature community.

Alec learned that Sicarius were the most disposable of the active members in the group-they had to be. They were killed the most, caught by the police and dead at their own hands by morning. They risked the most, and were usually recruited unwillingly. Jace was one of the higher ranking Sicarius, having survived for 9 years.

Magnus had been there longer than Jace. He'd lived through more deaths than Jace, he knew what it meant to lose people. He kept everyone at arm's length, and Alec didn't wonder why. He was just learning then, lessons from Jace and the Veneficus. Soon the real game would begin.

Alec didn't go alone for his first job. Or game, as they called it. There was a language to it all, he discovered, a new vocabulary, a horrible harshness in the way that people in his class talked to mask that they knew they were weak, soft. Going to die soon. Some of them were acting and their dead friends were simply stepping off of stage.

Alec had experience, much of it, with feeling like he was about to die. The vocabulary they used made him frown, sometimes, because he spoke in the opposite way, using soft words, like game, to conceal the harsher truths, like murder.

Jace was with him the first time he killed for the Venantium Order. The first time he murdered. It was easier than he thought it would be, but his nerves were on fire for the entire thing. He was nervous. He didn't want to get caught, not really, and he almost tripped twice. But he didn't, he carried on and there was a knife that was quickly dulled by a middle-aged man's throat. A temporary sheath of sorts, and he was done. He disappeared back to the order, with Jace, and learned how to get back to the Order when he went alone for his next job.

He was working his way through it all, one day at a time.

But that was all a lie, one day at a time, because he began to live for the kill.

Alec was not, by far, the best hunter in the Order. He wasn't the fastest, the most agile, nor the best looking-hell, he wasn't even the most eager for the kill. He'd accepted his place in an order that had kidnapped him away to another world. It was fun, he got to spend time with Jace and Magnus and he was alone at night. He was his own. He didn't ask questions, but he didn't care to. He just did as he was told, and lived half a life. Even when Magnus pushed him up against a wall he was sort of happy, because even if he was being forcibly kissed it was something he was okay with. He wasn't thinking of other hands or what would happen next.

He just lived half a life, something that might have been growing, and he began to experience liking someone, really liking them for the first time in as long as he could have remembered.

It was, really, a nice feeling.

Not to mention being liked back.

Alec liked seeing Magnus.

He liked hearing Magnus talk about Jace and his secrets, about himself, complaining about the order, anything. He liked kissing him. He liked not talking about John- He liked Magnus not knowing even who John was. He liked not being treated as fragile by someone that really cared for him. Whenever he went to see his sister, when he was with John, she treated him like glass because she knew what was happening behind closed (and sometimes open) doors.

He didn't like when Magnus tried to get his pants off. He didn't like it when his hands become too demanding. But it had only happened once, and he'd frozen, and Magnus had stopped. It hadn't seemed too weird, Alec imagined. But he didn't know. He just continued his work, seeing Magnus when the Veneficus was free, which was less often than Alec. People were killed only so often, and there were four Sicarius. Veneficus were in charge of the logistics of everything else and there were only three of them. They covered everything up, did the research. They were the magic, so to say. So Alec was alone a lot, and sometimes invisible hands of the past came back to haunt him. Sometimes he just found himself feeling dead inside and just remembering that he was someone else's property.

He hated it, belonging to someone else.

But, he found himself wanting to belong to Magnus.

Alec and Magnus were in Alec's smaller room, lying on the bed. Magnus was on top of Alec, his forearms on either side of Alec's head as his lips assaulted the slightly shorter man's mouth. His lips moved down, onto the Sicarius's neck,and pulled up his shirt and moved to his chest. He worked himself lower and lower, and pulled at fading blue jeans. Quick, nimble fingers worked open a button and as his zipper was pushed down Alec went limp.

He could hear laughing, taunting voices all around him. Kicking him down, laughing, pulling down his pants. They prepared him a little bit, just enough to get themselves in. It wasn't enough, and Alec was screaming.

"What is it?" Magnus questioned, quick, his head popping up to Alec's eye level. "Are you okay?"

Alec looked around, making sure he was in the present. Making sure he was safe, still a killer, not a boy drowning in a fake relationship and falsified love.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm fine."
Magnus looked at him for a minute, as if uncertain, and Alec just gave him a little smile. He would, he knew, be fine in the end.

The names were in a manilla folder, they always were. Alec had been doing really well, he'd been working up everything with Magnus and he didn't mind doing chores and playing the 'games.' He was doing fine, his life half full, when in a manilla folder there was a picture of a man who once claimed to love him and he'd been (accidentally) saved from months ago.

He was going to kill John.

He didn't tell anyone he knew John. After he got his manilla folder, he waited a day and went out for the kill. The game, but it wasn't a game that time. It was the real life, for Alec. It was his turn to deliver to John all of his inflicted insecurities, the blocks he had.

He must have been acting odd in the time he had to wait for the next day to come. It was on a Saturday, a day John had always stayed at home with the cuffs and possibly a few buddies after a trip to the bar. He'd likely be home around one, and it was something Alec was betting on. But, it wasn't like he didn't have more than one chance.

John wasn't at their old home when Alec got there. It was a bit more of a wreck than when Alec had left, but that was because Alec hadn't been there to pick up the pieces. Alec walked around his old home, trying not to put stories to parts of the house. It was hard, but Alec went to John's usual chair and sat down. He waited.

John came home, as Alec predicted, with the stench of alcohol on his breath and in his stride. Alec waited for him to notice he was there, and when the look of recognition passed through John's eyes he hit, he hit hard. There was blood all over his old carpet. Alec was crying. He was happy, but he'd killed everything that represented love for so many years of his life.

He was done with John.

He could move on.

Alec went back to the order that night and slept with Magnus for the first time. He slept in his bed, wrapped up in older arms. Wrapped up in blankets and what might have been love. He was too nervous to tell. But he was happy, in a dampened sort of way. He was ready to face the next day. He thought that maybe it wouldn't be too bad from then on.

Alec hadn't seen Jace in four days when Magnus disappeared. He was given orders, though, to find Jace in the city and to kill him. It took him a week to find Jace, wrapped up in a redhead with no intention of returning, and his world came tumbling down then. Jace had decided to quit the order, which was something that one didn't just do. There would be consequences.

Alec didn't know what those consequences would be-not really. Alec had a note for him from Magnus, but when Jace read the note-something Alec never got to see until it was too late-and just shook his head with a small smile, Alec's entire life crumpled away. Alec had orders and with the redhead in tow Jace didn't really stand a chance. Their blood was stained through their not-discreet-enough hotel room.

When Alec got back, Magnus's coated the Order's halls.

Jace,

It's okay to let me take this one.

M.

Alec read the note he'd tucked away after he made his report. His heart started to thud because Jace had only been close to one person in the order other than Alec would suffer, if he'd payed proper attention to the way the Order operated. Jace was gone, then, and there was no reason to keep Magnus alive. He ran to the Veneficus's room, only to find the door off of its hinges and blood running to the hallway floor. There were bits and pieces scattered around- a style he recognized from one of his fellow Sicarius. It was the one with the twitchy eye, eager hands, and Alec knew where he slept.

Alec first went to the weapons room, cold, calm, indifferent. He gathered everything that he could carry and shot the man who had killed his Magnus. He shot him again and again. He shot him until there were other members of the order fighting him. He made his way down the hallways, running out of bullets and using blades. He walked to the leader's room, the man who inducted him, and died of a bullet to the back as that man watched his life flash before his eyes. When Alec his the ground, there was nothing left. No reel of the past. It was all just done. They couldn't kill him because he was already dead.

They should have all seen it coming.