Hey guys! It's been, what nearly 4 months? Sorry about that. I've got a lot on my plate right now, and I get very little time to myself. But, anyway, thanks for tuning in!
Some of this is lifted directly from COLS, and I', sorry for that but now the plot is reaching past the 2 week interlude between books 4 and 5. I hope I didn't butcher it too bad, and to those who read my oneshot which i stated that I was going to quit writing I'm sorry. The reviews for that gave me the strength to keep writing. I'm going to try to keep going.
I hope you all enjoy this little fucking monster.
"All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you'll be quite a lot!" Dr. Seuss
BLIND Chapter 6: Encapsulate
Alec vaguely tried to keep some semblance of normalcy. He would have thought he was past that, so far gone, but he found himself clinging to it. Normalcy. It was all he was wishing for, the idea that was circulating his head and drowning him. He was getting dragged down by the waters, the whispers that said that he should get over it and be a big brother. Go to the Clave meeting as Isabelle insisted. He could pull himself together to do that, scraps arranged and shell smeared on backwards in some places, leaving jagged patches of his well-being stapled to his outside.
He was having trouble walking, a limp, but the burning of his insides were out of mind. Out of sight, buried inside him, hidden. Forgotten, he was just going to exist, nevermind the fall in his step, a spy for his sister and the meeting she craved for whatever reason. Alec didn't know what it was about, despite being so proud of being able to attend, but that seemed like it had been years ago. A life time, a time, perhaps, when he'd been alive. It had been a month, maybe. How the cards had been stacked was not in his favor, but that had never really been much of a doubt.
Alec walked back to the Institute. He let his legs rub against the pavement of New York, his hands uncertainly straying into other people's' lives as he passed them on the didn't look to the sky, his eyes didn't wander from straight ahead. Straight ahead, looking at nothing. He wasn't really sure if he was thinking, though that idea of thought never occurred to him. He was just moving, and there was a buzz in the back of his head, a white noise that was to thick for anything else but too thin to be of worth. Something was scurrying around his brain but he wasn't chasing it, there weren't any games left to be played.
The Institute looked bigger than it ever had when he approached it. He had glanced, at first, but then stopped to let it ease into his head. The tallness, the grandiosity, were all a part of his home. It briefly struck him as odd, but he went in anyway. He went in for other people because he was no longer governing.
The room was large, and already filled with shadowhunters and some downworlders, when Alec entered. He slipped in with Jia Penhallow addressing the group from what had been made into the front of the room. She was in the middle of something, and he could tell he'd been late. Her dark hair was scraped back and pinned, and he could tell she had some sort of passion for what she was talking about. Clary, he heard her name, and listened closer.
"...and while what the girl has done is horrific, she has nothing wrong by the name of the law. She has broken no rules except the expectations we set. She is not guilty of anything more than being a foolish girl in love." Penhallow finished. There was a mutter of dissent from the crowd, but no one stood up to objectify. Alec understood why Isabelle wanted a spy, then. For Clary, Alec was doing this for Clary, not for Isabelle. It didn't really seem to matter, though their faces could never blur together.
"But there are more important things to discuss." Another Clave member continued as Jia stepped back into the crowd. "There is a more urgent threat. We received word from the Moscow Institute this morning that the wardings over Wrangel Island have been smashed through." There was a surprised shuffle among the audience, nearly a gasp. A panic spreading through dying bodies. It meant even more demons, they were realizing. "We are still not completely sure what has happened. But as the investigation continues it is clear that our defenses need to be strengthened, and there is a need for more focus on this problem. The search for Jonathan Morgenstern and Jonathan Wayland have turned up fruitless, despite the best efforts of the Clave. With unsuccessful tracking charms, our leads have all turned up dead. It is in our best interest to prioritize the Wrangel Island wards by taking away man-power from the manhunt for the boys."
"Hold on a second," Jia Penhallow said, stepping back up to protest. "It is important that you find those boys! As they are, there is a great risk involved with..."
"We will keep up the search, but for now, there are better things to focus on. More pressing matters."
"But..."
Stopping Jace and Se...Jonathan, he was definitely Jonathan, was no longer a priority. Finding the people responsible for his shattering life wasn't important to them. Maybe it really wasn't at all...
There was a shift in the crowd, and Alec's eyes found Magnus across the room. The warlock was looking directly at him, and the shadowhunter startled. The cat eyes weren't intense, staring at him, but they were observant. They were gauging, observing the pose, the eye contact that Alec broke. He turned away because in that moment it seemed like there was no air for him to breathe. He was surrounded by poison and his lungs were burning, shriveling and collapsing all at once. No, he couldn't do it.
He left the room, and found the nearest toilet, relieved that he knew the Institute well. He emptied up his stomach but all that went to the toilet's waters was tinted white globs of his insides, then they were pink and he could taste the blood in his mouth. He coughed, again, but it was done.
He fell back from the toilet seat, old and decrepit. He breathed, slouched there. He filled up his lungs, let them grow before pushing them down again. He was probably alive in that moment, but then came dark edges around his sight. His heart rate picked up. Something was coming for him. He could hear it, steps outside in the halls. Slow, meticulous. They were coming for him, whoever they were. They knew that he'd been lying, all of his secrets. They knew that he'd lost his everything the night before, that whatever honor he'd ever managed to claim had been shredded up in a fucking moving basement. He tried to stop breathing, hoping that they wouldn't be able to find him. Find the coward hiding in the bathroom.
But the steps kept on walking, past him, and Alec realized that it was just someone else at the meeting who'd gone out for air. He began breathing again, his lungs swelling with the air he'd tried to starve them of. He stood up, slowly, using the rough brick wall for support as he tried to ignore the broken bones and bits of his body. He took a deep breath, trying not to shudder, back against the wall. He counted to ten, trying to recover his senses. He drew an iratze on his ribs, trying his hardest not to look at his parabatai rune and the strange rune visible to only him.
He felt the pain in his body lessen, but it wasn't enough. His eyes were stinging. He didn't want to feel anything. He wished, then, that there was a rune for apathy. For nothingness. A rune that would make him numb, but the best that there was was courage. He didn't want to be brave.
Alec steadied himself against the wall and opened the door he'd been hiding behind. The meeting was over, he saw as he walked back to the hall. People were talking to each other, muttering their concerns and complaints, grim looks were scattered across faces. Across the room Alec could see Magnus, talking unhappily to a fellow downworlder. He was picking at a pocket, an anxious habit. Alec ducked out of the room before he could be spotted, off to go deliver to his sister.
Isabelle's room was, plainly, crusted in pink and glitter. Alec could see how one would be uncomfortable stepping into the glitz, the showy piles of clothes and the abominable amount of space dedicated to make up. It was similar to Magnus, kind of, but a pain hit Alec's chest as he registered that. In the middle of the room, braving the storm of Izzy's living quarters, Clary sat, nervously watching him for news from the meeting. His sister, next to her, held her nerves much better.
"How did it go?" Isabelle asked quietly, watching. "What's the verdict?"
Alec sat down in a chair that was much too small for him, wincing, facing the girls. "Jia Penhallow cleared Clary. She didn't break any laws."
Alec watched Izzy exhale in relief, and Clary slack a little, but his own frown did not change. He watched Clary's mouth unharden and her hand go for her phone, pulling into her grasp. He might as well give her the bad news, then, before she called anyone to tell them the good news.
"Wait. It wasn't your verdict that kept the council. There was more to go over." Alec watched, trying to refocus from the pain of all of the tears inside him. He kept his gaze on her, serious, because what he was going to say was going to be important to her. It would also give him something to focus on.
The beginnings of good news in her face disappeared. She knew what it would be about. "Jace?"
He almost wished. "Not exactly. There was a report, this morning. From Moscow. The wardings over Wrangel Island have been smashed through. There's a repair team enroute, but those were strong wards. A council priority."
She still wasn't getting it. She didn't understand what was happening. Looking at Isabelle, Alec could already see the frown of realization forming.
"Well, that's bad," Clary started, "But I don't see what it has to do with-"
"The Clave has its priorities," Alec interrupted, annoyed at her ignorance. "Searching for Jace and Sebastian is no longer one of them."
"They're giving up?" Clary proclaimed, her voice rising.
"No, they're not giving up, just-"
"Alec," Isabelle nearly hissed.
Alec let his face fall into his hands, ignoring the burning sensation that accompanied moving. "It's just a waiting game, for now," Alec resurfaced, locking eyes with the redhead who he was not holding responsible for everything. "Sebastian will make the next move," he already had, "so it's not a priority. They expect us to go back to normal life." He could remember the last time he'd heard the term 'normal life.'
"That's what they told us after Max died," Izzy said, eyes burning, words bringing both of their mental spaces together for a second. "It's supposed to help us get over the grief faster."
Alec wondered, for a moment, if going back to normal life would get him out of his predicament. Probably not, he knew. But maybe one day he'd be able to go back to it... A family. But it would be without Jace, and at the rate they were going, without Alec himself. "It's supposed to be good advice." He wanted to laugh.
Clary looked at Alec, hard. Her features were stiff, and Alec could nearly see her heart stitched onto her sleeve. "Alec," she said. "Don't you feel anything?"
He couldn't believe she was asking him that. He'd known Jace for longer than her, they were fucking parabatai after all. He wanted to kill Jace and save him at the same time, of course he felt. He wasn't emotionless, as much as he wished.
"I know you're upset, Clary, but if you're suggesting that I care less about Jace than you do-" You might be right, he whispered to himself, I might hate him. But she cut him off.
"I'm not," Clary said, quickly. "Your rune. Your parabatai connection. Does it... You can sense if he's still alive, I mean. It says so in the Codex... Right?"
"He's alive," Alec says. He can't say he knows it because of the rune, though. He was face to face with Jonathan and Jace just hours ago, doing things that he can't think about for fear of panicking. "But there's something wrong with him." He's fundamentally fucked.
"CouldJonathan be holding him prisoner? That that's what's wrong with him?" Clary asks. Alec really, honestly, wish for that. An explanation.
"Maybe. I just know that he's alive and there's something very wrong." Because Jace would never, ever do what he had done to Alec of his own volition.
"Then screw the Council. We'll find him ourselves," Clary said, practically burning up with passion in her words. Alec almost felt hope at this, because if they found Jace, everything that was happening to him would stop. He could be free, only having his own head to escape.
"Clary, don't you think we would have done this before if it were possible?" Isabelle asked, then added: "I suppose there are other ways."
'Ways that break the Law, you mean." Alec interjected, fighting himself to be a good big brother. Whatever was left of his brotherness.
"The Seelie queen offered me a favor," Clary spoke. "At the fireworks party in Idris. And a way to contact her."
"The Queen of the Fair Folk gives nothing for free." The words might have hung in the air with all of their fears if Clary hadn't chosen to charge ahead.
"I know that. It'll be my responsibility. I just... I want one of you to come with me. I'm not very good with faerie-speak. I'd like to limit the damage as much as possible. But if there's anything she can do to-"
"I'll come with you," Isabelle interjected.
"The Council already questioned them extensively. And they can't lie." Alec wasn't sure why he was fighting it so much. They'd do it, with or without his consent.
"Maybe the Council didn't ask the right questions," Isabelle finished, closing the topic for discussion. They were doing it.
"The potential danger is great, but if I can't dissuade you I'll accompany you. If Jace knew I'd let you go alone..."
"He'd do it for me. Tell me he wouldn't. If I were missing-"
"I don't doubt that, Clary," Alec said, eyes dropping. "I really don't. You'll just have to give Luke and Jocelyn an excuse."
"Yeah. They're probably downstairs with everyone else. You should tell Magnus, too."
"No." Alec said, too quickly. Clary dropped it, already heading out of the room, but Isabelle gave him a sideways glance as she picked up a pair of iron-laced boots and an umbrella.
"Trouble?" Isabelle asked, giving him a long look.
"I don't want to talk about it."
It was raining when they stepped outside. Simon was there, protected from the weather by an overhang of Institute rock. Clary went to him, Isabelle and Alec staying behind a few paces as they greeted each other. Naturally, Simon ended up a part of the plan to see the Seelie Queen. Clary would likely drag the whole world under with her if she could.
They opened their umbrellas and made their way to the park, where they rung the silver bell that the Queen had gifted Clary with. They held hands, as if they were really facing the threat together.
They first encountered Meliorn, the faerie knight that had had a 'thing' with his sister, when they got to the other side. He led them to the Queen's chambers, Alec and Isabelle both silent at his presence.
The chambers looked a lot different than they had the last time Alec had been there, but it didn't really surprise him. If Magnus changed up their living arrangements at least twice a month, it figured that the Seelie Queen, in her grandeur, would too. A great black and white checkerboard of a floor stretched before them, leading their eyes up to strings of deadly thorns ensnaring usually luminous will-o'-the-wisps smothered by the choking hold.
The Queen herself was beautiful as ever, unchanging, in a gold and silver dress.
"I want you to find Jace Wayland." Clary said to her, face set in its stubbornness.
The Seelie Queen did not speak for a long moment. "You must think us powerful indeed if you believe the Fair Folk can succeed where the Clave has failed."
"You predicted this would happen. No one else knew, but you sent me the bell because you were sure that I would need your help. You knew." Clary responded.
"Perhaps I did," said the Queen, looking down to admire her toenails in an infuriatingly careless way.
"I've noticed that the Fair Folk use 'perhaps' a lot. Keeps you from having to give a straight answer."
"Perhaps so," the Queen said, smiling.
"Perchance is good word," Isabelle suggested.
Simon shrugged. "I see nothing wrong with just using 'maybe.' A little modern, I suppose, but it gets the idea across."
The Queen ignored their interjections though, brushing them away to address Clary. "I do not trust you, Valentine's daughter. There was a time when I wanted favor from you, but that time is over. We have place on the council. There is little more you can offer."
"If you thought that, you wouldn't have given me the bell." Clary said, the same, determined look still in her eyes.
There was another moment of silence, as if a battle of wills, before the Queen again spoke. "Very well. But I will require recompense."
"Shocker," Simon muttered, eyes filled with loathing towards the Queen.
Alec couldn't help but laugh at the utter absurdity of their fucked up situation. The Queen's eyes flashed towards him, and he felt thorns springing up to chain him to the floor, pulling him down, immobile. Useless, just like whenever Jonathan got ahold of him.
"Do not think, worm, that I do not know of the secrets that body has been touched by. I could save you,"
Alec's breathing became heavier, images that weren't there spinning in front of him. Jonathan, coming towards him, Jace just behind... He heard his sister shrieking, then talking and he was released. He struggled to let his breathing go back to normal, but he'd nearly lost it, there, in front of everyone.
Isabelle was looking at him, concerned, and Alec tried to tune into Clary's words with the Queen.
"...They allow us to speak to each other, mind to mind, as your Silent Brothers do. At present I have it on good authority that these rings are on display in the Institute. " The Queen requested.
"I remember something like that," Isabelle said slowly, looking up from her pale brother. "In a glass case on the second floor of the library."
"You want us to steal from the Institute?" Clary asked.
"It is not theft to return something to its rightful owners."
"And then you'll find Jace for us? And don't say 'perhaps.' What will you do exactly?"
"I will assist you in finding him. I give you my word," said the Queen. "I will tell you, for example, why the tracking spells have been unsuccessful and what cities you are likely to find him in."
"But the Clave questioned you. How did you lie to them?" Simon asked.
"They did not ask the correct questions," the Queen smiled.
"But why lie?" Isabelle asked.
"Jonathan Morganstern could be a powerful ally if I do not make him an enemy," the Queen allowed. "The Fair Folk do not make hasty decisions but first wait to see what direction the wind blows. Return to me with the rings and we will speak again."
Clary turned to them. "Is this okay? Stealing from the Institute?"
"Whatever it takes to find Jace," Isabelle answered.
Clary turned back to the Queen. "Then, I think we have ourselves a bargain."
The Queen smiled. "A word of warning, though you have done nothing to deserve it. He may not be the same as when you lost him."
You can say that again, Alec thought. You can definitely say that again.
They left the Queen to her courts, braving the path back to New York.
"Come to Taki's with us?" Isabelle asked. She was looking at her brother almost as if he might break.
"No, I think I'll go back to the Institute." Alec shook his head.
"Not to Magnus?" Isabelle asked, quietly.
Alec felt the pulse of a burn on his chest. "Just drop it, Iz."
"Maybe if you just talked about it-"
"I don't want to talk about it," Alec interrupted. Another burn hit his chest, and he began to wonder what it was. It almost seemed like it was calling, pulling him away from everyone. Another wave of the burning swept over him.
"We don't have to talk about it. Just come and eat something with us. You're pretty pale."
"No," Alec said. His feet were moving away, of their own accord. He was walking in the opposite direction of his sister, and he could see her anger if he turned around. His heart beat picked up. He knew where he was going next. He knew what was coming. He was walking himself into an alley, into a place where Jonathan could sweep him up to 'play.' That rune, carved by Jonathan. It was pulling him to an untimely end, to whatever tortures would lie beyond in a hellish basement.
Alec didn't want to go; he knew, that when they were done 'playing,' he was eventually going to die. It wouldn't be at the edge of a blade, either. It would be painful, he knew. It would break him again but in the end it wouldn't matter because he would be dead.
Maybe then he'd be free.