Dialogs in italics mean that they are talking in Spanish.

Text in italics (whole paragraphs) are memories, like usual.

Enjoy!

CHAPTER 12

Alec PoV

Coffee.

It had been an important part of my life for as long as I could remember. It had been what made my mother smile even when she was too weak to do it properly; it had been part of my first real job.

It had made Magnus notice me.

Now, now I couldn't even look at a cup of it…well, not unless I was alone and able to cry like a child while I drank it. Like right now.

I took the steaming cup between my hands, feeling its heat warm my fingertips while my insides began to feel cold. I felt the familiar lump in my throat begin to form as my eyes watered just from the mere memory of what coffee had brought into my life.

"Shit" I whispered letting go of the cup and cleaning the tears that had made their way out. It was becoming harder each day, so fucking much. At the beginning I only felt bad, only felt a hole in my chest every time I drank some, but it had gone worse with time, to the point where I felt nauseous just by looking at it. I still loved the smell, the flavor, but it was too painful. It was too much.

"Alex? Are you there?" I heard Lola ask from the other side of the door.

"Yes, I'll be out in a minute!" I told her standing up and going to change my clothes trying not to look at the abandoned cup. After I was done I walked outside finding the small woman that had welcomed me in her home and treated me life family for the good part of the last six months. "Sorry, the bed didn't want me to get up." I lied giving her a sheepish smile.

"I know it was the coffee mijo, I can smell it from here." She gave me a maternal look before patting my cheek and starting to walk down the stairs. "Come on Mr. Alex, your students are waiting for you!" I grinned at the name, she loved to make fun of how the kids called me because, for her, I was still a kid myself and being called 'Mr.' was weird. And of course being in Mexico meant that no one liked to call me Alec, because Alex was the short for Alexander…I kind of like it, it was something else to make me feel better about things, like it was a new beginning.

I looked at my hands. They were shaking. They hadn't stopped shaking in a long time…I knew that I was not sick, the health studies had shown that other than the beating I had, I was perfectly healthy. It could be that the shaking was all the turmoil of emotions that revolved inside of me, eager to go out the second I let my guard down.

The trial was in less than ten minutes.

My lawyer was confident. She said that with my story I could easily pledge to a self-defense murder. After all, he had been about to kill me more than once. The jury had already seen my testimony, they had seen that God awful video that had made everything go crazy…the same that my siblings had seen, the same that had…

That had…

A wrecked sob escaped my mouth when I thought about Magnus. I had not seen him ever since the police had found me at the mansion and that was tearing my insides apart. I had been right, he didn't want a whore to be with him; he had had enough of me and had finally decided to ditch me. I took a deep breath trying to calm down before I stood up and looked through the window. Even if everybody thought that this trial was already won, I couldn't help to think that with my luck, things could fuck up at the last minute and I could end up in jail for the rest of my life.

Or we could win the trial and then…and then what? I had no idea of what to do, I just knew that I couldn't stay in New York, not while Magnus lived there and didn't want me in his life. I couldn't do that again.

"It's time." One of the guards said before opening the door and letting me through the wooden doors.

I grinned at the ladies at the local church. Some of them waved back while the others pushed their daughters towards me…if only they knew that I was not interested at all. I chuckled to myself as I kept peddling my bike to the town's school, I could bet that Izzy and Jace would get a laugh when I told them about that, it was so awkward when girls would come up to me, I always felt self-conscious andbad for not giving back their attentions.

"Mr. Alex!" Yelled Maria before running to meet me at the entrance of the school.

"Hey there! How are you?" I asked her as I got down the bike and pushed it the rest of the way. "Did you do your homework?"

"Yes! I found out that my grandparents were from Spain!"

"That's amazing!" I chuckled. I had asked them to draw their family tree and investigate a little of their family history.

"Where does your family come from?" I turned seeing more of the kids making their way towards us with their eyes filled with innocent curiosity.

"England." I told them before pointing to the classroom. "Come on, time to class!"

I twisted my bag between my hands. They were mad; they were looking at me accusingly and hurt. I couldn't blame them; after all, I wanted to abandon them again.

"No! We just got you back! And now you want to leave again! Why?" Isabelle demanded to know while she glared at me with misty eyes. "After this whole month of trials and not knowing what would happen to you, you are finally free and now you want to leave us!"

"That's exactly why." I spoke in a soft voice before taking a breath and looking at both of them. "I'm free…I might not be happy but I feel calm…or at least some part of me does. I want to see the world, I want to go wherever I want because now I'm not afraid that some ghost from the past will come for me…I need this Izzy and I know it breaks your heart and it's not fair, but for once I want to be selfish and do things for me." I failed to say that I was running away from the hurt and all the bittersweet memories it had.

"Go." Was the only thing Jace said before going to hug me. "You deserve it, you go and find whatever you need to find and then come back to us. But I'm warning you, I want an e-mail, text, letter, ANYTHING each week at least! And if you don't I will hunt you down and kick you in the balls, okay?" I smiled at him and nodded.

For the last months I had kept my promise.

I has sent them photos of the grand canyon and the rocky mountains. I had told them about how I felt crossing to Mexico, of going to another country for the first time in my life. I described them the huge mayan pyramids and and sent them drawings of the colonial buildings I visited, and the people I met.

Not once I asked about Magnus and they never brought him up.

After months of wandering around the country I ended up in a small colonial town and started giving clases. Art and english. How had that happened? Well it was still a little confusing, I just knew that I has started helping the housekeeper's son and before I knew it I had 20 kids around asking for my help.

I couldn't love it more.

All the energy and inocence they brought into my life was what kept me going, what gave me some sort of peace after everything that had happened in my life; because for them I was just Mr. Alex, a backpacker that made pretty drawings. And that was all that they needed to know.

"So, what didyou do on the weekend? Remember, you have to use english!" I asked the kids once they were all in their seats. The local church had been kind enough to give us a small classroom every afternoon, it wasn't much but I had taken the time to draw a landscape in the walls and, with the help of the kids and their parents, it had become the second most perfect place in the wolrd.

I couldn't even think of the most perfect place without breaking in tears.

"I went to the city!"

"I played futball!"

"I went to the movies!"

"I met a...a...Harry Potter!" I chuckled hearing Rodrigo speak, he was the youngest of them all and it was a tornado trapped in a six year old body.

"You meet Harry Potter?" I raised my eyebrow.

"No...I meet someone like him a..."He furrowed his brows thinking hard trying to find that elusive word.

"Magician...wizard...warlock...?"

"Yes! He said he was a war-lock! He had cat eyes, and he shined and he was wearing a lot of colors! He's staying at the hotel and I talked to him! He was trying to get a room and I helped my mom translate because he didn't know spanish! He made a coin appear from my ear!" That earned him a collective wow while I watched him fondly, he had been my first student and now knew the language as good as he knew spanish, he must've really helped that guy out.

"Okay! who else?" A bunch of hands shot up.

Magnus PoV

I was lost.

Damn, how hard could it be to find a fucking church! They were supposed to be pointy and big and...right in front of me. Well done Bane.

"Hello...do you speako english?" I asked a man that was walking outside the temple.

"A little." He smiled and I let out a breath; yesterday had been hell. I didn't know a peep of spanish and those people couldn't undertand english, I had been about to give up when I was saved by a six year old! The brat knew the language well enough to have me finally settled in the hotel and had been kind enough to giveme the directions of his english school. If his teacher could help me I was sure that I could find Alec a lot sooner. "How can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Mr. Alex,the english teacher."

"Oh, he's in class right now. Come on. I'm father Enrique by the way, nice to meet you." He gave me his hand.

"Nice to meet you too, I'm Magnus Bane."

"That is a strange name." The man said.

"I rather think of it as unique." I smiled as I began to follow the man behind the church.

"Our church is our comunity center, we built some rooms for meetings and comunity bonding. Alex helped us decorate them, he really is a good kid, he teaches english to the kids and charges practically nothing. He also gives art clases every saturday. I really hope we had more young man like him." My frown deepened every time he said a word...I was terribly suspicious of whom this Alex really was."Ah, there he is."

I turned to look inside the classroom and felt my breath hitch...yes, there he was.

I looked at chairman raising an eyebrow. He simply kept ignoring me while he licked his paws. Damn cat. I glared at it from my spot in my couch until I heard my doorbell ring.

"Comming!" I yelled before standing up not caring that it was four o'clock and I was still in my pajamas. I opened the door andfroze finding a very furious looking Isabelle.

This was not good.

"What happened?"Was the first thing that came out of my mouth. She blinked taken back.

"Nothing...I came to tell you that you're a complete fucking idiot! Stupid asshole!" Her eyes began to tear and I had to look away.

"Izzy..."

"Don't speak tome!" She pushed me. "You are not allowed to talk to any of us! How could you abandon him like that? It's been eight fucking months! He went to hell for us and you left him! And you know what has he said about you? Nothing! Because he swears that it's mad for someone like you to love someone like him! He has forbbiden us to say a peep to you because he wants to respect your choice! I just came to bring you this!" She thew an envelope at me before stomping away. I took the envelope with shaky hands and opened it only needing to read some words to know what it said.

Divorce.

"Isabelle!" I yelled running after her knowing that I couldn't let that happen.

His hair was longer, his skin had a nice tan and he looked like he had gained a few pounds. He was laughing and joking with the kids. He looked happy. I was tempted to turn around and leave, letting him start a whole new life, forget the hell he went through.

But then, his eyes found mine.

I looked at the Lightwood siblings trying not to show how desperate I was...or maybe I should and see if that helped.

"Please...I need to find him."

"And why now and not six months ago? Why fucking wait this long?" Jace told me. "I saw him cry when I told him that you left, I was with him through the whole trial process and each day I saw how much he missed you! The day they set him free I saw him try to mask his sadness because he couldn'tcelebrate with you! He fucking ran away the very next day because it was hell to be in the same city as you! So give me a very good reason to tell you how to reach him because I wont let you hurt him anymore."

"I can't...I can only tell you that I love him and that I'm prepared to beg for his forgiveness."

He froze.

He spoke something in Spanish –when the hell had he even learned the language?- before all the kids started moving around and cleaning their things. When they left and we were the only ones left I stepped inside the room. It was gorgeous, all the walls had different paintings of the town and even if the father hadn't told me that Alec had done it, I would've known that it was his art. His stile was printed in every single line.

"H-how did you find me?" I closed my eyes. He sounded so vulnerable and small, like he had been the one that had screwed up…and maybe he had but not as much as me.

"Jace and Izzy." I turned to look at him and felt like someone had punched me in the gut. He was standing against the wall with his arms around himself, like he was trying to hold himself against the inevitable punch that was coming his way, all of this while his eyes stayed frozen in the ground.

"Was something wrong with...with the...the papers?"His voice had lowered gradually, like it was so hard to speak that his voice refused to come out and say it.

"Yes..." He flinched...he fucking flinched! "They existed, that was the only wrong thing about them."

Next chapter will be the last one! oww I will miss this story so much!

So, what do you guys think? like it? Hate it? Review!

Okay! if you already saw the movie you can tell me what you thought about it through PM! I'll just say for now that it delivered, it was enough to keep me interested xP for more rants I'll wait to your comments!