More of these tiny drabbles than stories. I'm quite tired but I wanted to spit something out.

Blake

If he wanted, he could run back to the Unseelie. They had grown forgiving to his past sins, his lust for Nephilim company, and he thought it might have been because the Unseelie was in a moment of weakness. That now they needed more fighters to ensure their might. He had more than proven the lengths he would go, with varied success, but his ability to follow through with their orders was what they had looked at. Spilled blood was enough.

He lingered by one of the gates, one he knew led close to the edge of the Unseelie territory.

Did he want to go back? To reunite with a territory that he knew inside and out? By hell, it was a thought that could make him salivate, forget his pining for the forbidden company of Shadowhunters, the seduction of the messiness of the mundane world, and the urge to fall back into some whirlwind romance with the mortal world. The thought struck him that they wanted to use him as collateral, probably. As some sort of pawn. He was too convenient and accessible and wanton for his old faction. They would give him a job and he'd be one of them again, but he took a step back and started back to the Towns. Now that they wanted him back, he would not be so easy to lure.

Rose

she doesn't really feel like herself, but it's okay because she'll fix it. if she can't hold a boyfriend, it must be because she isn't pretty enough. makeup will help that, and she thinks it does because she still gets compliments on it. it must be her natural glow coming from within. maybe he didn't like that she didn't kiss him or do other things that maybe someone like savannah might have done. she can fix that too, need be. it's so convenient how easy it is to change!

sometimes she thinks her thoughts are not quite as bright as they used to be, but it's no worries. there's a detox for that now, and she'll follow it religiously. shed those negative thoughts along with the circumference of her waist because skinny thoughts don't have enough energy for negativity. when someone points it out, it's all the more gratifying. her fingers are sore from taking in all of her dresses, a stray needle somewhere on her dresser. it's a sign of progress and moving on. that's what she'll do to prove she doesn't need anyone. this is the best she's ever been.

Zen

Seelie-allowing, Zen would have liked to be more liked. Not in the popular sort of way, with festivities being held in his name and people clinking their glass with his as they passed by, but in the quiet manner. He would have liked people to sit by as he played, instead to take such a thing for granted, especially when his fingers grew tired and his back sore from sitting for so long. If someone could indulge him for just a moment of this dream that he constructed, he would have been infinitely satisfied. While he did not think he had many deep ponderings, he did have multitudes of fleeting thoughts.

If someone had just been fascinated with the things he could create, the one thing that kept him from disappearing into the background like so many of the forgotten lower faeries, it could have been enough. Recognition was null to him, but one only had to cherish his music, the music, the things he could create, his work, the one thing that granted him any value in the Court of purity and wings. If no one appreciated it, loved it as much as he did, then he did not think there would be anything to remember him by. A 'legacy' was too grand for someone like him, but the thought that someone might keep him in a fond memory was comforting. That someone might carry his tune long after he ended his song.

Cole

The files linger on his desk, and he cannot help but feel strange and some sort of dull emotion he can't put his finger on. For the longest time, he did not think he had belonged to anything nor had anything belonged to him, besides the shortsword that Steff now has and the rest of his family's money. Now, he has proof that he isn't just some fuckup materialized. Not just some error created out of nothing used to mess with lives. He thinks he might be a person with substance rather than some loose canon, firing at will because there's nothing else to do and nothing to lose because he didn't have much to himself to begin with. Shadowhunting was something to do, but now he understands that his ties to it go deeper than obligation, and while he doesn't regret his current Lycan state, he thinks he might finally understand.

It isn't to say he feels bad. He thinks he's past feeling much of anything, though he does feel this twinge now and again and he can't tell if it's from all the stuff he's on or from something else rotting inside the empty cavern inside him.

The thought that someone out there might say he's the spitting image of his father, or that he has his mother's eyes is foreign to him. Someone might clap him on the shoulder and say, "Ah, I knew the Malacai family, but I didn't know they had a son." He's lived life a stranger to his own name, and it unsettles him that someone may know him more than he does. These thoughts buzz, but he says nothing. It changes nothing.

This is only the loud silence he lives in.

Ethos

His wish had not been answered.

If anything, he was being punished for his imprudence. For the audacity of thinking that he would ever be worthy in the eyes of some higher power to receive something selfish. Instead, it seemed that destruction had been caused, of both lives and any mutual unspoken friendship he thought might have come out of being assigned to Kellan. Though he would have strongly denied it in his current situation, there was no doubt he would have tried to befriend him had Kellan been part of the Seelie, and his blood had not been utterly royal.

It was unsettling, knowing his life belonged to someone he did not share loyalty with. If Kellan had demanded it, he would have fallen to his knees and laid down his life for him. By the Faerie, he loved the Queen as one loves their god, and any kin of hers would have his hand, his sword, and his undying devotion. If the Queen had required him to leave his position to join the Hunt and defend her son, he would not have questioned it. It would have torn him to pieces, leaving a faction he so desperately cared for, but his life was not his own. He left it up to the devices of the wind, and he did not know where it would blow him next. Only that he would have to follow.

Steff

The light is nothing but Parisian clichés. My hair bouffants from raw weather. An idyllist's dream, perhaps. I'm no Holly, though, and breakfast at Tiffany's is only a movie fantasy. You know that. Perhaps years of romance novels have done me well – would you have laughed at that? Is this some sort of rose-coloured lens? Things do not seem to flow; time cascades. This place has, admittedly, done me some wrong. In pious rape, this town has taken me and now in some Stockholm romance, I am unsure if I want to leave.

Steff pulls her hand back, an unruly spot of ink blotting through the corner of the paper where it drips. Her elbow nearly jostles her teacup when she straightens up and her hair threatens to come undone from her messy job of a bun. She does not seem to notice. Instead, she's focused on this letter to no one. Though it will see no light of day, it gives her some solace to write down her thoughts. Chewing her lip, she shakes presses her pen to paper and starts to write again.

I am taken by pretty things, you know. I have been ensnared by pretty things time and time again. In London, skies seldom winked with sunshine, and I fear my captivation of such mundane phenomenons has left me weak to temptation. Even so, I am not so soft nor pliant as I once was, I believe. I have to believe that if I'm to know I've changed. It's this sort of transformation that seduces my hand into purple prose. You'll have to excuse me, for my novels have greatly influenced my pen. I see they aren't always right, but they have given me many things to hope for. I hope I am not tethered to a circular track, bound to repeat history.

I feel I enter this story through the same door every time.