A/N: I think this chapter's kinda weird and I don't know whether or not I like it. But, eh. xD Well, then, you know the drill! R&R PLEASE! REVIEWS MAKE ME HAPPY! (=
"Open the door. Please, open the door."
At the sound of her voice, hearing the desperation evident in it, Valentine's eyes shot wide open. He could feel his heart racing within his rib cage. Despite its beating rivaling that of a hummingbird's wings, Valentine felt a sharp pain with every beat that his heart made. It was as if it was trying to kick its way out of his chest, leaving a bloody mess in its place.
He felt tired. The sort of tired that made one want to simply collapse into his bed and never wake up. Ever. Reluctantly, as if it would pain him very much to do so, the Shadowhunter let another sigh breathe through his lips. After what had been one of the most terrible nights he's ever needed to endure in his life, he had finally been able to fall asleep in a rather uncomfortable chair, much to his already fatigued body's chagrin. Still, sleep was sleep and he was grateful for the peaceful one he had managed to snag last night.
But then that voice had broken through the deep, thick serenity of his sleep and had forced him awake, the fear laced in every word making his whole body contract, wanting, needing to get away from it. Last night, when he'd decided to obtain some rest not in the Sanctuary, but in the library, he had been too tired and too bitter with himself to question his actions, why he hadn't opened the door. But that was last night. Right now, his side of the world had slipped into morning, effectively bringing him into tomorrow and there was no getting away from it. His mind reeled with the thousand and one questions that seemed to arrive incessantly, one right after the other. Rather like how that girl had banged on the door.
Oh, for God's sake, Valentine, he thought harshly. Was it not enough that his questioning thoughts were trying their damnedest to force guilt unto him—not that it actually needed much forcing. He felt terrible already—now his memories were participating in the efforts as well?
Valentine looked down at his hand, at how his fingers were so tightly wound around the armrest of the chair. He released them one by one, noting how they ached as he stretched them out like a starfish. They had probably been that way all night. Perhaps his sleep hadn't been as peaceful as his mind would delude him into thinking. Perhaps he'd had a dream and had simply forgotten about it. Besides, if he'd truly had fallen into such deep slumber, unaware of the world around him, he wouldn't be this tired.
He gripped the armrest a little too tightly for his liking as he braced all his weight upon them and pushed himself out of the chair, his eyes scanning the two gigantic bookcases on either side of him. It was made of dark wood, quite possibly mahogany, but the dark, almost-black colouring of it made Valentine think that it had been painted over. There were many pure mahogany shelves in his home—and tables and chairs and beds. His bed, to be precise—and he'd seen them enough times to know that none of them were even close to being black. The rug underneath his bare feet was soft and had the most intricate floral patterns on them. Something about the flowers jumped out at him, as if they were something he'd seen long ago as a child, but he pushed the thought away upon further inspection. The flowers looked nothing like what he'd ever seen. He'd never even encountered them in books before. Perhaps the maker of the rug had wanted to create a new species of hybrid flowers and had taken his creativity out on the rug.
"Open the door."
Valentine's head snapped up the moment he heard the sentence being uttered. He backed up, shock taking over his entire body, sending him crashing into a small table. All the training he'd received for nearly a decade now did nothing to help make the fall less painful. He'd been taught the proper positions to adjust his body to when falling was inevitable, but it seemed that the many instructions his teachers had screamed at him had disappeared.
At the very last minute, his arms shot out behind him, his palms facing outward towards the marble floor, prepared to support the weight of him crashing down onto the floor. Except they weren't prepared in the least bit and when he felt the cold marble against his skin and his body falling gracelessly onto it, pain exploded from his wrists, coursing through both his arms until he was left with no other choice but to bite back a cry. He tasted the distinct metallic taste that blood held and had to bite back a curse this time as he realised that he'd bitten into his lower lip.
From outside, he heard someone slamming something—most likely their own person—against the door and the force of it was so strong, that Valentine thought the doors were actually going to give out under the pressure and burst open. Or break into two. And then an angry voice, one that sounded nothing like the one he'd heard last night, came through the solid material as loudly and as clearly as if the person doing the talking was in the library itself, close to Valentine, not separated from him by a thick—oak?—door. "Monsieur Morgenstern, open this door right this instant. I will not have you pulling this disappearing act any longer. I know you're in there." The voice was tinged with an unmistakable French accent and Valentine felt relief wash through his entire body. He remembered the voice he'd heard last night perfectly and he knew for a fact that it did not belong to anyone remotely French. "Open this door. RIGHT. NOW." A kick to the door accompanied this last sentence that made Valentine get up from his position on the floor, a dull throbbing in his wrists screaming at him not to use his hands.
But the door had handles and he had to open the door lest he risk angering Madame Lambert even further. He placed his hand on the silver door handles, reveling in the temporary numbness the cold of the steel provided his aching hands, and pushed down on them as hard and as quick as he could. Once he heard the doors click, he retracted his hand with such speed that one would've thought the handles were burning.
And through the doors, walked in a woman who looked nothing like his mother. Madame Lambert was tall and she had a broadness about her shoulders that suggested she spent much time training and exercising. The Angel's children consisted of both men and women, but the Shadowhunting world was predominantly run by the male of their kind and it wasn't easy being a woman in that world. Obviously, she's spent a lot of her time proving that the women were just as good as the men, if not better. His mother's walk, the soft, soundless steps that she took even when running and in battle, had been committed to his memory and it was familiar. But the way Madame Lambert walked…there was power in her stride, a sense of pride that made her seem almost pompous. Her eyes were a striking shade of green with an edge of hardness to it that made it painfully clear to him that this woman had endured much in her life, had seen much. And her thick, dark brown hair was never released from the tight bun that it was trapped in. Valentine vaguely wondered if she slept with her hair swept up in that manner as well. If she did, it couldn't have been comfortable.
Madame Lambert marched right up to him, her back ramrod straight, her posture as rigid as ever. And it became even more rigid when she caught sight of the wreckage behind him, namely the overturned table and broken lamp that had accompanied him during his earlier fall. Her eyes narrowed to slits and she shot murderous glares at him. Valentine had the feeling that she wanted to throttle him, to throw him out of the Institute—which she ran—and kick him all the way back to Alicante. And he didn't doubt that she would do it, too, if he provoked her overmuch.
"I have spoken to Fairchild," she said, her heavy French accent sending his brain spiraling into a headache as it worked over time to figure out what she was saying. "She says that you came back here last night, to my Institute, bleeding and 'torn up', as she had put it." Valentine simply stared at her as she looked at him, expecting an answer or a defense, but he said nothing. "Your school and your parents allowed you to come here so that you may gain more experience. If you are that dumb, Mr Morgenstern, it means that you are only to hunt in the presence of other, more experienced Shadowhunters, not go stalking off on your own."
His young blood boiled at the insult. No one had ever called him stupid in his life. "Moreover, you refused to get an iratze, preferring instead to let it heal naturally to show off, presumably. Well, here's news for you, young man. People don't take to characters like you, always thinking their better than everyone else."
This was probably not the best time to inform her of his injured wrists, he decided. She'd probably be able to think up more insults faster than he could say 'Die'. "And then you disappear in the middle of the night, not to be found by any of your friends." Friends. Hah! He didn't have any friends. "You, boy, have sent us on a manhunt in this Institute, wasting my energy and that of others and frankly, I am very tired of you. To top it all off, you lock me out of my own library and then damage an antique table. Well, you can forget about breakfast, Mr Morgenstern, and any other meal for the day."
"Well, that's fine with me," he snapped. "I do not feel the pangs of hunger in my stomach and I most certainly will not eat anymore snail." He hadn't been able to contain himself any longer, anger boiling away inside him, threatening to implode into a full-fledged storm. No one had ever spoken in that fashion to him in his life and he most definitely would not tolerate it from this…this…this fascist. "Who in the world eats snail anyway?"
And with that, he walked past Madame Lambert, doing his best impression of arrogance. His back was straight, his shoulders pulled back, his chin up, holding his head high and he made sure that every step he took, he took with purpose, as if he was doing someone a favour just by walking. When he reached the door, he turned around to look at the back of Madame Lambert's head. "And you can go ahead and report this to my mother. Do tell her of her son's atrocious behaviour, how rude he is. I don't care." He then spun on his heels and walked with as much dignity as he could muster along the length of the hallway, putting a distance of at least six feet between him and the library—and the woman in there—in less than two minutes.
Then he broke into a run.
He didn't stop running until he came face to face with the door of the guest room he'd been sleeping in for the past few days. He'd only been a here a short while and thus could not tell apart the uncannily similar doors, but for today, he knew exactly which door was his because Lucian and Jocelyn would not loiter about someone else's room. They looked up when they heard footsteps getting closer. The two younger Shadowhunters looked at him in silence as he strode past them towards the door and shoved it open. They scrambled in without bothering to first seek his permission, and promptly made themselves at home with Jocelyn flopping down onto the bed and Lucian collapsing into it as if he owned it.
Valentine looked at them through the mirror on one of the closet's doors and he could see the question in their eyes. Where had he been? What happened to make him disappear like that? But instead, Lucian said, "So I take it Lambert wanted to bite your head off?"
A rueful smile passed fleetingly through his lips, but he said nothing in response. Of course Madame Lambert had wanted to murder him. Or at the very least maim him. He suspected that the only things keeping her from doing so was knowledge that she could be killed in a worse fashion for the murder of a Shadowhunter, and the fact that he was a Morgenstern.
Lucian, always so understanding, seemed to realize that whatever it was that had transpired last night, Valentine had no wish to talk about it. So he rid himself of the questions that he'd been mulling over again and again as he waited for Valentine to show up. Jocelyn, however, was not content. She had seen how he was last night first hand, experienced how short his temper was, noticed the way he was so completely out of character. And she burned to know what was happening to him. She hoped that her eyes were able to deliver the message.
Unfortunately, Valentine was not looking at her. He was looking at his reflection in the mirror, his mouth set in a grim line, his brow furrowed as he studied himself. He was different. He'd changed when his father died, but he hadn't changed this much. He felt like he was missing something, that there was something he wasn't seeing. And things that he hadn't thought of the night before. His memory of the encounter with the demon was much more than a filthy back alley and blood. There was something else, something he'd missed.
Like what the demon was doing there in the first place and how he'd noticed it.
He ran his hand through his hair once more, his whole body seething with frustration not just because of the demon, but also because of Madame Lambert and her ridiculous tirade. And that girl who'd come by last night. Why didn't he open the door? He had heard with his own ears how terrified she'd been, but he hadn't opened the door. What would he see, he wondered now, if he went downstairs and threw the doors open the way he should have done the night before? Would he see the stiff, dead body of a scared girl?
"That is it," he spat at himself, noticing how the two Shadowhunters behind him reacted to the vehemence in his words. "I am never coming back to Paris."