"Mark?" Julian entered his room after a soft knock and Mark's whispered permission for entry.
The elder Blackthorn could imagine thousands of nights, five years of moments like this, his gentle brother - not so gentle anymore, he thought ruefully - and his four children, the darkness and Julian's voice comforting or amusing or simply his quiet presenche. Julian as all that stood between Drusilla-and-Livia-and-Tiberius-and-Tavvy and peril or fear or imagined terrors. Now Julian was the oldest, Mark thought, the shadows under his eyes, the voice of his that was so like their father's, the dangerous secrets he kept all attesting to that. Or had he always been like this, the responsible one, the ruthless one, the one who did what had to be done without complaint or argument?
"Yes, Julian?" His voice was anticipation itself, on an edge waiting to break or fall, not knowing which would hurt more.
"I'm sorry." An apology? This simple statement jarred Mark out of his drowsiness, sounded ridiculous echoing in his mind - suddenly guilty of a thousand things, undeserving of any of his brother's apologies.
"Whatever for?" Mark sat up slowly, thinking about the whip marks on Julian's back and Emma's, and that no amount of apologies, empty pointless words could take back the lashes. "Julian, there is nothing you need to be sorry for - "
"Yes, Mark. There is." The rustling sound of the coverlet, Julian moving closer to him, like he was hoping to be hurt, hoping for recompense to his guilt. "I left you. The day Jonathan Morgenstern came to the Institute, the Portal was open. Emma was worried about you. She wanted to go back for you. The Portal was only going to hold for a few minutes, I thought for a moment that maybe there was enough time to get you - and I would have, if it was only me. But it was Emma. I wasn't going to leave her. I was selfish; I didn't want to go through if she didn't; I didn't want her to go back for you if that meant she didn't make it to Idris." A pause, a quiet sob. "I should have gone back for you."
"Julian. My gentle brother." The darkness gave him time. Everything was slower in it, as if words took more time, in the dark, to find their destination, to travel through ears into minds and hearts. He had time to think, about what words would heal his brother. "You did what you had to. You have always done what has to be done. What if you had gone back for me? Jonathan Morgenstern would have turned you and Emma both, two Shadowhunters down and one left to the Hunt. It is I who should be sorry, brother. For when I returned... I know you were not expecting me to be as I was. You had hoped, if not expected, me to be capable of caring for you, capable of doing what you have done so well these past five years. And I was..." He smiled, then, a sad and bitter expression, hidden in the night. "I was not. I was only one more burden for you to shoulder."
"Mark." Julian's tone was admonishing, and once again, Mark saw a glimpse of Andrew Blackthorn in his younger brother, recalling Octavian looking at Julian the way Mark had Andrew: in awe, seeking approval, praise. "Mark, don't you ever call yourself a burden. You're family. We love you. Tavvy, Dru, Livvy, Ty... Raziel, Ty loves you so much. And Emma, too, obviously." Mark thought he detected a strange emotion in Julian's voice... jealousy? "I love you."
"I love you as well."
With those words, he thought back to the last person he'd spoken them to: Kieran.
:::
"You love me?" Kieran looked at him in disbelief. Faeries rarely showed such emotion, hardly ever wore their hearts on their sleeves - sometimes, before he had met Kieran, he'd wondered if they had hearts.
Mark looked back at him, trying to display as much honesty, pour out as much love as he could in his steady gaze. "I have never lied to you, have I?"
Kieran smiled at him, a smile that did not hold the cold, bittersweet magic of Faerie, but a human smile. Sad and hopeful, all at once. "How faerie-like it is for you to answer a question with a question."
"I am half-faerie, after all." Half of me is you, he thought, but what is my other half? "Whatever would cause you to become unconvinced of my love for you?"
"The Shadowhunter girl," he replied. "Not Emma - your princess. The one you thought would not want you, would not love you - as if such a thing were possible!"
"I have wanted her," Mark admitted. "But you have my heart, and she does not want a body without a heart."
"It is not only her," Kieran said. "The distance between us - you are mortal, and I am not. I am fey, and you do not seem to have embraced your faerie nature. This I could accept, if we were in the Hunt, if we were close, if I felt at all like you were tied to me. Like we used to be. Only now - now it feels as though - "
"As though the bond between us has broken?" Mark moved suddenly, gracefully, putting a leg over Kieran's hip, so that he was straddling him. He leaned in close, so that their lips nearly brushed. "Do not say that again, Kieran. We are not broken. We have not finished. I will never be finished, not with you - I do not see how I could be."
"I have said it before, but I will say it again." Kieran looked up at him, eyes black and silver, the night sky and its stars. "I love you, Mark Blackthorn."
"I love you, as well."
And as he looked into the divided eyes of the boy he loved, his heart felt the same: torn between two insurmountable points, the two halves irreconcilable.
Cristina.
:::
"Love you," Tavvy said drowsily, as Julian carried him to bed and tucked him in. His Blackthorn eyes glowed in the faint moonlight, his small face round and innocent. Julian's heart clenched at the memory of how close he'd come to losing his brother.
He leaned in, kissing his brother's forehead. "Love you, too. Good night, Tavs."
"Night," murmured Octavian with a yawn. Julian moved to the door, watching him curl up on the beds closing his eyes as he settled comfortably beneath the blankets. He stayed in the doorway until soon enough, Octavian's breathing evened out, slow and heavy, steady as the tide outside his window.
Closing the door behind him, he turned, startled, to face Emma.
"What are you doing here, Em?" He asked quietly, taking her arm and steering her further down the hallway, away from the children, Mark, and Cristina's rooms.
"I miss you. I wanted to see you." A streak of moonlight illuminated the hallway, turned Emma's eyes from brown to liquid gold, her hair to a faint, washed-out platinum that still glowed in the starlight. "It isn't very healthy for parabatai to be separated, you know. Sure, there aren't any Laws against it or something, which I would for once be less than happy to break, but - "
"Why?" The question fell out of him the same way, gave him the same feeling he'd had when they kissed: in a way that took away free will, gave him tunnel vision, unable to focus on anything but the current moment. Julian was an excellent liar; he lied for survival, so he had to be good at it. Needed to be. And so this... This was abnormal behaviour for him. He was controlled, reserved. He didn't blurt out desperate queries that belonged in the scripts of romantic comedies.
Emma looked up at him quizzically. "Why what? Why aren't there any Laws against it? I mean, I'll be the first to admit I've never really thought about why there aren't Laws about something, but my guess is..."
She continued on, but Julian was lost in his own thoughts. It hurt to be around her, and it shouldn't have. Her presence was creating a pounding headache, which throbbed in his skull; instead of feeling less fatigued, instead of the doubling magic of parabatai healing his wounds and soothing his body, Julian felt weak. Dizzy.
He was still holding onto Emma's wrist, he realized. Julian looked down at it, at the curve of her palm and the blue veins showing faintly through her tan skin, at her strong, calloused fingers moulded to wield Cortana, but still capable of tenderness, of love. The urge to kiss her was unbearable, the fact that she didn't love him the way he loved her even more so. Longing, wanting pulled at his body, his heart, but his will was stronger.
Desire was human. Desire was human, but Julian couldn't be. He had children, a family to hold together. He couldn't afford desire, and he certainly couldn't be in love with his parabatai.
So Julian smiled down at Emma as she finished her explanation. "That was an awfully long guess for someone whose motto is 'Quip fast, die young'."
"Well, you know." She grinned back. "I like to keep things interesting."
They walked down the hallway to Emma's room in the other wing, speaking in hushed voices. This was a path they had walked thousands of times, but this time it felt longer than usual, more physically draining. Each step made his feet feel more and more leaden, like he was walking through slowly hardening molasses. It must have been the dread he thought. Dread of how the night would end.
Julian knew exactly how the night would end. He would follow Emma to her room, and she would ask him to stay. He would stay, and he would crawl into bed with her, and act as if nothing had changed. He would lie beside her, the distance between them only that of childhood, of five years ago, of the memory of stacked books between them - the distance between them as it should be, as close as parabatai could ever be, which was achingly far.