The number of chapters I have put up in the last couple years would not represent this, but I genuinely have so much stuff that I've written that I simply have lost all motivation to finish. I don't wanna cop out and put up another graveyard fic compilation but also I literally have an au chapter of like 4k words from 2019 that I might never finish hahaha and that's just ONE of the unfinished AU documents I have ...

Anyway, here's a small chapter that I whipped up as compensation...

"...Vanesa?"

There was a long pause of contemplation, enough to inspire some awkwardness as a few people passed by on the street with brief glances at the odd boy at the payphone.

"Isaac? Is that you?"

The voice was familiar and comforting in a strange sort of way, mostly because he had scarcely latched onto people, of all things, to serve as some form of emotional reassurance. He had developed a professional relationship with most of the Shadowhunters he had worked with at his last Institute, but the oddness of making friends or anything else stuck out to him. Familiarity meant sterile conversations with brisk deadlines; it was rare that anything surpassed that expectation.

"Sorry for calling out of the blue like this," he started, his usual distant, analytical tone not far from his voice. He tapped each fingertip against the tip of his thumb on his free hand in a nervous gesture, counting in his head (one, two, three) and trying to have some semblance of the casual normalcy that seemed so out of reach.

"...Isaac? Are you still there?"

"Sorry...Yeah, I am." Maybe he should have asked her how she was, how she'd been doing since he last saw her, or if she was up to anything new, but those were questions that were too strange to come from him. A few taxis passed by him, curving over to the side of the street to pick up various pedestrians in need of rides. Four, one, two. Again he'd lost track of the conversation, distracted by a hundred other compulsions and invasive thoughts.

"Are you calling me from a payphone?" Her voice came again, pleasantly accented and with that slightly nagging tone he'd once grown used to. "You have a phone, you know. It would've been nicer to talk without all that traffic in the background."

She was right, and he was entirely aware of how silly it felt, but he just gave a sigh. "I misplaced it somewhere. I hardly use it." It was a bad half-lie; he wasn't sure if she would have picked up if she'd seen the caller ID, knowing how spited she often felt by his presence. It was another thing that inspired some hesitation - perhaps it was best that he didn't make friends. Three, four, one. Then they started expecting things past shallow politeness or quick greetings.

"Did you memorize my number?"

"It was easy enough to." That was true. It'd only taken him a few passes to have it engrained to memory, a skill he'd quickly picked up by working in Alicante. "...I didn't mean to inconvenience you with the whole Clave ordeal. I owe you a favour."

"They had me write up a whole character witness, you realize. I know you're not the type to do what they said she'd accused you of, but not everyone knows how stingy you are."

He could hear her on the verge of another comment, but it seemed she had enough resolve to bite it back. "It's dealt with now, though. I don't care about my reputation."

"You never have."

What was that supposed to mean? That was perhaps another thing about having friends or trying to learn people's mannerisms that frustrated him, poor at picking up on the exact silent meanings in their remarks. He'd always found himself blunt, sharp, and honest, (two, three, four) if anything, and the idea of saying things and expecting someone else to extrapolate an entirely different subtext was a foreign concept.

"Do you want to have dinner sometime?" he asked finally, staring off into the street. "I don't mind portalling out there."

There was a heavy, disappointed exhale from the other side of the phone. "Isaac..." She didn't say anything for a minute. "You're a few years too late to finally be asking me stuff like that. I have a boyfriend now, you realize."

"I didn't mean it in that way," he replied quickly, though he couldn't say that he was entirely sure how he'd meant the question. One...Three? Where was he? He'd lost count, pushing his hand into his coat pocket instead. "I just meant to...catch up."

"You know how he'll see it, considering..." A soft clearing of her throat was audible from the other side. "It was nice of you to call, though. I hope you've been doing well otherwise."

"Just work. I should get back to it, then," Isaac said finally, trying to end the conversation before it could extend the undeniable feeling of discomfort for any longer. There was an unmistakeable loneliness that pressed at the back of his thoughts, undoubtedly a symptom of his own curt, unlikeable nature, but it seemed that there was no way around that inherent fact of life.

"I-...Take care of yourself. Don't work too hard."

"I never do." Sorry to bother. He hung up the phone before she had time to answer and before he had more time to embarrass himself, assimilating swiftly into the flow of pedestrians to return back to the Institute. Even within strangers, he'd always felt like the odd one out, teetering on the edge of what was forgettable and strange. Sometimes he felt that his own mannerisms were more to blame than his blood for his isolation, but he would always blame the latter regardless.

The crackling fire was easy to get lost in.

Maar's watch had long since ended, but he'd slept well enough before then that he was still wide awake. The comfort of the village around him made it easy to fend off any feelings of apprehension, trusting the residents there to be vigilant and trusting his own group to be on careful watch when it was their turn to survey the shadows of the forest. It had been long enough since the loss of a group member for him to forget the sting of any negligence, and they had all grown close enough to feel comfortable with their lives in the hands of each other. Life in the Seelie lands was not so tenuous, he knew, but neither did it offer the freedom he so desperately sought for. Most outside of his group would never understand his endless pursuit for the wild.

A tug on his cloak needed no glance. He instinctively adjusted how he sat to compensate for the small figure that crept underneath the safety of his cloak, feeling the weight of a head being rested on his thigh with gold hair that spilled over his knee. Delicate hands moved the edge of his cloak so it no longer covered the tired eyes of the creature that rested by him, the fabric tucked under the chin of the little nymph.

What do you see in the fire? That familiar, soundless voice crept into his mind, permeating whatever thoughts had previously occupied it. Or perhaps, what do you hope to see?

"Light. Warmth. It's just fire," he answered unceremoniously, though he shifted his hand to let it rest against her bare shoulder. "It would be...smarter if you took shelter inside. The Unseelie has been brave with how much they've been antagonizing our groups."

And will stone walls and wooden slats stop the dark warriors? She was usually stubborn with getting her way, and she just shut her eyes, her face tilted towards the glow of the fire. Your group is one fewer. Has she stayed within the territory of the Court?

He didn't answer for some time, but he could feel her pining for his response, her fingers plucking bits of grass before pressing the clippings between her fingertips. "She has a child to look after. Such a thing is important to her."

A sharp crackle from the fire caused some of the wood to shift, sending a few bright embers into the air where they drifted into the nearby grass and soon fizzled out. I have missed children. It is rare to meet something so delicate and naive.

Her words were hushed, even in his head. She had always carried herself with some childlike naïveté, though he knew better than most about the world of wisdom she concealed that rivaled even his own. "Your groups do not carry out the practice of changelings anymore, so it is...no wonder children are so scarce."

The world outside of the Faerie has stopped believing in us. They do not welcome us anymore with offerings and kind prayers.

"And the Seelie has adapted to their hostility. That is...all we can do," he said, casting his gaze aside to the cold, dark night. "That is just the way things are for our kind."

He waited for her next comment, but his thoughts remained undisturbed. When he finally looked down at her again, her eyelashes were dark and damp with silent tears though she hadn't yet opened her eyes. It was best if he didn't bother her, knowing better than to pester little nymphs for answers and knowing better than to press her in particular for her private thoughts. He caught the eye of one of his guards that was mulling around, who quickly looked away as if to refrain from interrupting.

He didn't mind sitting there even if it meant his back ached and grew sore from his inability to shift, only slowly lifting his hand from her shoulder so he could better position the cloak over her frame. The fire was warm against his face, but he let himself stare into the impossibly bright core for the duration of the cold night. Nothing he hoped to see appeared; he had only ever seen flames.

Steff,

(Insert some funny quip here or imagine I made some sort of funny remark to save myself from having to actually think of something witty to say).

I finally got back from being somewhere other than Idris, which isn't saying much considering where I was, but it was better than having to mull around Alicante and being contractually forced to go to every meeting. It was a short trip, though, and I don't dislike Alicante at all, but staring at old archival papers isn't how I really imagined my Shadowhunting career. I guess I should be grateful about the lack of anything interesting...Mostly means we aren't on the verge of calamity and whatnot. Not that I would entrust any duties regarding that to myself anyway. I get a bit of a break, so I might swing by New York (unless you're in the mood to come out to Alicante sometime?) and maybe even visit my parents (if I'm in a particularly masochistic mood). Contrary to how I might sound about them, they're not bad people, but I think they're a lethal combo of low tolerance and high expectations.

Anyway, how have you been? Keeping people in line, maybe, in your own type of way. Or maybe keeping yourself in line? Who knows what type of mischief you get up to..? No one would really expect that of you, anyway, so I say you'd probably have a free pass at this point. Definitely use it for good, though. Like signing up Mason for a few incriminating news subscriptions (Scientology, maybe? I doubt they'd even ship to the Institute, unfortunately).

Here's the obligatory sappy and sentimental paragraph: By the way, I don't mean to keep you at some sort of awkward arm's length. Sorry about that, honestly. I guess you're right that it's easier to write this than say it out loud but I've thought about you as just a friend for so long that it's a little hard to imagine things any other way. Or I worry that the Scholomance has made me cynical, plain, and disagreeable. Well, I have always been a little disagreeable... Or maybe that was my brother. You were the source of some of our arguments, you realize. Xaxaxa - they were stupid arguments, no worries, and I can't really remember the reason for all of them, but I'm partly certain that we were over-invested in your life and the drama surrounding it. Maybe an apology is overdue about the trouble we were...

It's selfish and wrong to say this because I know that was all a bad time for you and later for us, but sometimes I miss the people we were back then. I don't think we're the same anymore either, which I don't expect after all these years. I'm glad you're in my life regardless.

Best,
Connor