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dayque · 3 months

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The night before Robert's funeral, Alec enters and rushes to the bathroom to wash off the blood before the children notice it. Magnus tells them what happened as sensitively as possible, but the children were too young to understand and Maryse and Isabelle were trying to stay stable so that Rafa and Max wouldn't see them devastated. Once Alec came out of the bath, he sat on the couch, his children were playing with Tavvy in front of the fireplace as if nothing had happened, Isabelle, who was crying in the kitchen with Simon, came out to the living room to hug him as hard as she could.

Alec had not cried since he returned home, his sister needed him, his mother needed him, his children needed him, and although he felt his sister's tears soak his shirt and his eyes burned from having cried in the Gard and seeing the fire without blinking he doesn't cry.

A few hours later Mark and Hellen appeared at the door, everything seemed to be happening very slowly, as if it were a dream, the children came out to say goodbye to Tavvy, but Alec didn't pay much attention. He was sitting there touching Izzy's hair, telling her that he was still with her and would never leave, like the days when their father would leave for weeks and she would be devastated waiting for him, until one of those times she lost faith that he was. came back. Surely he would now never return...

It's time to sleep, Magnus has Max on his chest, they both sleep on the couch, and Alec takes Rafa in his arms to take him to take a bath and get into bed. With his pajamas on, Rafa is watching Alec come and go, confused, as if something had been lost, first he couldn't find the hairbrush, then the storybook and now he is looking in the suitcase for the stuffed rabbit that Rafa usually sleeps with. He can't stand his curiosity any longer and asks "Daddy, why is everyone crying except you and bapa? Even uncle Simon was crying."

Alec sighed, took the rabbit from the suitcase, and sat on the bed next to Rafa where he had made a space for him. Without much desire he told him "When I was little, maybe your age, adults told me many times that children couldn't cry, and now no matter how much it hurts I don't know how to do it," Rafa was silent, he looked at him with his big black eyes and told him "if you want I'll teach you" hugging his stuffed rabbit tightly as an explanation he told him "first, you have to hug something you love very very tightly and then you have to sigh loudly taking out a lot, a lot of air through your mouth."

So Alec took his little son in his arms and hugged him tightly, enough so that his scent stuck to his pajamas and to his memory. He didn't know if he was doing well as a father and he was horribly afraid of looking like his dad, most of his childhood had been spent in fear and his entire adolescence was a complete martyrdom, his father became the cruelest judge and at the same time In the person he loved most in the world, he really wanted to please him and he had the impression that now he would never achieve it. The last years with him had undoubtedly been the best, and it was unfair that when his father finally loved him back, they had taken him away from him without giving him time to show him that he was a great son and everything he was able to do.

So he cried, on behalf of little Alec who needed a dad to hug him, on behalf of the teenager who he could never cry even though he was terrified and in pain, and on behalf of the adult who had lost a father today. He snuggled his sobbing son, he didn't seem to care that he was taking up much of his bed, and promised him with a kiss on the forehead that he would continue practicing how to cry so he could be a better dad.

"I'm proud of you, daddy", Rafa said in a murmur before falling asleep.

I hurt my own feelings with this scenario in my head and now I want to cry in company

Sorry for my grammar and spelling, have a nice day:3

#shadowhunters #the shadowhunter chronicles #cassandra clare #cazadores de sombras #magnus bane #alec lightwood #malec #max lightwood bane #rafe lightwood bane #incorrect shadowhunters quotes #rafael lightwood bane #malec fanfic #fanfics #malec headcanons #headcanon #robert lightwood

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rhiannons-bird · 5 months

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tsc is actually just about fighting evil old men (most of whom are also terrible fathers)

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layla-carstairs · 4 months

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just realised both Max and Robert die around Alec's birthday 😐

#not both of them dying in September #Cassandra Clare when I catch you....#the way it's around their birthdays too bc max's is in august & robert's is in september as well #alec lightwood #alec lightwood bane #max lightwood #robert lightwood #the mortal instruments #tmi #the dark artifices #tda #the shadowhunter chronicles #tsc #bella talks

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ghoulie-67-baby · 4 months

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Try and stop me Part 2 - Shadowhunters.

Summary: You seek some comfort for you newly festering wound.

Warnings: Changing clothes, pet names, angst, crying, heartbreak.

Pairing: Lightwood family x Adopted!reader.

Word count: 1,370.

Note: This may be a little angsty projection from me so I apologise profusely.

I hadn't thought through this as much as I should have considering it was pouncing down with rain and I was wearing Jeans, black boots and a thin jumper. Most people would have grabbed a coat but I was so angry and aching to leave that I hadn't thought about it. So as I stomped through the streets, drenched and freezing I cursed myself thoroughly.

I had told Jace, Alec and Izzy they would know where to find me but I didn't even know where I was going. I let my mind zone out and wander, my feet carrying me wherever they felt like. Puddles splattered up my calves soaking me to the bone as I just walked and walked. All I could think of was how Robert was lucky I didn't reveal what I knew but my Mom didn't deserve the heartache of that so I had kept his filthy secret though every fibre of my being screamed against it.

The already dark skies blackened as the evening turned to night and I was violently shivering as I walked down the streets, ignoring the looks I was getting off Mundanes. My aching feet carried me down street after street, alley after alley until they carried me to an apartment I didn't care to pay attention to. Icy hands clenched as they knocked painfully against the wooden door that stood before me. I felt like my eyes had sunk into their sockets, long dried up from tears, and my lips were chapped from the cold and me biting them. I waited patiently as my head throbbed and pounded before knocking on much louder this time. A voice behind the door sounded extremely annoyed at the disturbance and the locks on the door jiggled and clicked open after a few moments.

"So help me if this isn't important then I will turn you into a hamster and keep you in a cage!" The door swung open and I lifted my head wearily to meet the gaze of the person, who was dressed in silk pyjamas. "Y/N? What on earth happened to you?" Magnus' voice softened considerably at my state and I just glanced down at Chairman Meow who wound himself between the Warlock's legs. My eyes welled up, much to my surprise, at the softness of his voice.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, it's just, that I'm not welcome at the institute at the moment." I could barely speak above a scratchy whisper. "I just let my feet carry me and they brought me here. I was kind of hoping you would know what to do." My eyebrows furrowed as I spoke, confusing myself with what I wanted from him. Magnus' hand reached up and tucked a dripping straggle of hair behind my ear as I trailed off.

"Come in Cupcake, let's get you warmed up." Gentle hands guided me into the apartment and I stood silently as he wandered around getting towels and clothes for me. My mind was foggy until he stood in front of me and lifted my chin with his finger. My lip trembled as I stared into his eyes, willing myself not to cry anymore.

"He doesn't want me Mags, he never did." A look of confusion took over his features. "Robert doesn't want me. I'm not good enough. I tried to be, but I'm not." The warlock shook his head gently.

"Let's get you comfortable and then we'll talk. You'll get ill if you stay in these any longer. You're too fragile for magic at the moment so by hand will have to do." I was almost catatonic as he took me to the bathroom to change but I just stood in the middle of the room, not being able to move as my head was overloaded with thoughts. Eventually, he gave up and got me stripped out of the sodden wet clothes, incredibly respectfully, before slipping me into a pair of his grey bed joggers and a long-sleeved t-shirt. His warm hands then guided me back into the living room and onto the cloud-like cushions of the sofa. Within moments I had a hot cup of tea on the coffee table, a hot water bottle on my lap, a blanket around my shoulders and a very concerned-looking Magnus who had sat himself beside me giving me his full attention.

"We were having dinner as a family and he asked me why I hadn't been training so I explained how I'd fallen behind on the books and he started to tell me how I should have caught up because I'd had four years to get it done and that I'm lazy and don't work hard enough." My voice was hoarse and tired. "He never wanted me, Magnus, from the moment Maryse took me in he's looked through me like I'm a ghost. He told me I've never really been a Lightwood, that I take advantage of them." I clenched my fingers together as I spat out his words. "He wishes he hadn't let Mom take me in."

"Don't say that Pumpkin, of course, he wants you, you're his daughter too." I laughed bitterly as the first lot of tears slipped out.

"No, that's the thing. He said it, out loud, in from of Mom, Jace, Alec and Izzy. He said they didn't have to take me in and he was starting to wish they hadn't." I watched as his eyes widened in horror and his thumb brushed my knuckles softly. My lip trembled like a child's whilst my chest heaved.

"I just wanted him to see me. I wanted him to be proud of me and to love me like he loves them. I just wanted him to notice how hard I was trying, wanted him to see how everything I did was to make him happy." My voice broke and my vision blurred with tears. "I just wanted a dad. I've never asked them for anything. But I just wanted him to be my dad." Instantly I broke and my barriers released. My face streamed and I fell forward, letting Magnus catch me against his chest holding me as close as he could. My sobs and wails filled the room as my heart ached in my chest though it threatened to jump out.

The pain that I felt was nothing like I had felt before. Not even like what I felt after my parents abandoned me because this time I had lost someone that I actually loved. Lighting strikes of anguish struck me over and over, doubling me over to the point where I struggled to breathe from my crying. As my body shook, the force of it made Magnus' body shake too though he didn't mind. The Warlock held me, a hand on my back and the other cradling my head as his own tears dripped into my hair. I could hear myself saying the same words as I sobbed; He doesn't want me, it was like venom to my system, taking over and shutting it down, breaking me down by the second until I lay boneless in the arms of the Downworlder.

I didn't have the energy to cry anymore, didn't have the words to make myself feel better, didn't have the frame of mind to think clearly or the motivation to try and deal with this properly. My sobs had stopped and silent tears ran down my reddened cheeks and onto Magnus' already-soaked pyjama shirt as Chairman Meow nuzzled into my hands, providing his own comfort which I gladly accepted.

"Get some rest Pumpkin, we'll talk about this when you've got a little more energy." Magnus swung my legs up on the sofa and settled so I was lying with my head on his chest as he wrapped me up in a mountain of blankets. My skin was still cold to touch and I burrowed against his warm skin with a tired sigh as I closed my eyes and willed sleep to come. Eventually, I managed to drift off to the sound of the Warlock's heartbeat, his soft humming of an unfamiliar song and the gentle purrs of the cat that was curled up on his chest beside me.

#shadowhunters imagine #shadowhunters imagines #shadowhunters #the mortal instruments imagines #the mortal instruments #lightwood siblings #alexander lightwood #izzy lightwood #alec lightwood #isabelle lightwood #jace herondale #jace wayland #maryse lightwood #robert lightwood #magnus bane x reader #magnus bane

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culiehua · 13 days

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tmi verse x onion headlines

part 1 — part 2 — part 3 — part 4 —

part 5 (jem!edition) — part 6

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aleswiftgron · 2 months

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I'm back bitches, only to say

I know a Lightwood always dies in every saga, let's change that in TWP!

Thank you

#the wicked powers #the dark artifices #tlh #the last hours #twp #tda #tmi #tid #the infernal devices #alec lightwood #isabelle lightwood #max lightwood bane #raphael lightwood bane #christopher lightwood #anna lightwood #gabriel lightwood #gideon lightwood #robert lightwood #benedict lightwood

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faejilly · 9 months

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it can be a fic or meta, but if you're feeling inclined i would love to know more about your opinions for how alec's family gifts in your headcanon would present with even more eldritch elements to it?

oh, I have so many feelings, thank you lovely. Pls enjoy my version of bb!Alec (who is still much too old for his age because he's Alec)

Alec hasn’t even been Marked, still technically a fledgling rather than a Shadowhunter, when he learns that most nephilim can’t hear their weapons sing.

There’s a man come to see his parents, an important man, a dangerous man. But not just in the way nephilim are supposed to be dangerous, though the rhythm of his steps make it clear he can fight as well as any other Shadowhunter Alec knows. There’s something else though, something beyond his skill, something that’s not explained away by the way everyone in the Institute all bow their heads to his titles, Consul and Warrior and Sir.

Alec can hear him, something humming under the man's skin almost like a seraph blade dreaming in its hilt but off-key, a discordant whine that makes Alec want to cover his ears but he knows that wouldn't help; the noise isn’t really a noise, he can feel it in his blood, between his bones, not in his ears at all.

He doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t know what he should say, or to who, but he can’t let it go, it pushes in the back of his throat and it has to be let out.

He thinks if he tries to speak and it doesn’t work, the pushing will get worse, will hurt, will perhaps not let him stop, not ever again.

If that’s true, (it is true, he doesn’t know why or how, but it is, he knows, knowledge deeper even than the laws and runes he’s memorized from the Grey Book, the ones that make the power under his skin flicker and flare, waiting for the first Mark to settle it), he can’t do what his father would prefer, and tell his parents in private. He can't risk them choosing not to listen.

If he can’t be discreet, he has to go far enough the other way that he’s inevitable.

Luckily, the hum from the man is just enough that his seraph blade doesn’t like it either, hissing to itself in the hilt when it ought to be asleep, and Alec knows he can tell them about that. He’s worked with the Weapons Master, with his father, his favorite chore is tending to the adamas in the Institute's care.

So he waits outside the armory, plants himself in the middle of the hall when the man and his parents approach, makes sure the door to the armory is cracked so Master Amira will hear him too, might even come out and back Alec up, if he’s lucky.

He waits, and he doesn’t step back against the wall, and his mother is lifting a brow and his father’s mouth is too tight, neither of them impressed that he’s just there in the way like a mundane too stupid to move.

Before either of them can do anything, Alec falls forward, prostrating himself before the man, arms spread and forehead pressed to the tile, because there’s no way to say what he’s going to say without it being an insult, and this is the only way he’ll get the whole thing out before he’s in too much trouble to be allowed to continue.

The man’s footsteps don’t slow, and Alec realizes he’s going to just walk right past him, and he’s offended enough his chest burns, and he almost can’t feel the pressure in his throat anymore.

How dare he ignore a sign of supplication like that? He’s got worse manners than Izzy and no excuse for them at all.

“Consul.” He hears his mother’s voice, low but steady, and the footsteps stop.

She’s as offended as he is, Alec can tell, he can taste it in her voice, but no one else can ever taste her moods like he can, so he’s sure no one else knows. Yet.

But he does, and it’s enough. If she knew what he knew, she’d speak, and they’d listen, they’d have to.

So he’ll have to do as well as she would.

“Begging your forgiveness, sir.” Alec projects his voice as well as he can, for all he’s talking to the floor. He can’t raise his head, not even an inch.

The Consul doesn’t say anything, but neither does he move.

“Why do you not care for your blade, sir?”

There’s a shocked silence, and Alec can hear the weapons in the armory startle awake as his father reaches, and he can feel Master Amira’s axe-blades as she joins them in the hallway.

“What seems to be the trouble, sirs?” Master Amira’s voice is smooth and clean and Alec reminds himself to breathe.

“The Lightwoods are about to lose their heir,” the Consul answers, his voice tight and the hum beneath his skin twisting down a half a pitch, sharp and unpleasant, “unless they explain his behavior very quickly, and very well.”

“I do not think so.” His mother’s voice rises, as pure a tone as any Alec has ever heard from adamas and he realizes he has lifted his head to look at her, that everyone is looking at her, the pair of clerks who follow the Consul everywhere, someone in every doorway down the hall, a silhouette behind Master Amira he can’t quite identify; even in the glimpse he can get of the corner of Ops behind his parents, everyone has turned toward the sound of her voice. “You should answer him, Consul.”

The Consul’s eyes widen, and his shoulders go back, and that feeling of danger rises, rises, and then it’s cut off, a sharp clean silence as Alec’s father takes one, single, step, letting the heel of his boot hit the tile just so. “My son is a Lightwood.”

“Recognized and sworn before an Iron Sister, sir.” Amira adds, and Alec blinks, aware now of what the odd visit last year had meant, the woman in white who had laughed as if she wasn’t dressed for mourning, who had shown him her throwing daggers and grinned when he’d hit the target with them, and given him two pure slivers of adamas to keep, one for each boot.

The Consul has gone still, and his expression is unimpressed, but the hum changes pitch again, and his clerks look nervous, eyes moving too quickly for all they’ve kept their bodies still.

“Sir.” Robert speaks into the silence, and his voice is like nothing Alec has heard from him before. He’s still quiet, still deferential and polite in tone, but it’s sharp somehow, the glint of a knife as it is slowly pulled from a sheath, the light of a seraph blade the instant before it materializes. He’s not really asking a question. “Your answer.”

“My blade has been cared for by four generations of the Dieudonné line, his question is an insult to my bloodline that has earned no answer beyond contempt.”

“Then why is it crying?” Alec doesn’t lower his head this time, for all his neck aches from the angle required to look up at the adults surrounding him. “It is awake, sir, and in pain, and you are not soothing it.”

Master Amira makes an odd choked-off noise he’s never heard before, but the rest of the hall is silent, and the silence grows, deeper and thicker, until Alec realizes he’s looking at his mother again, that they’re all looking at his mother again.

“His words are True.” Maryse’s voice is a hiss, barely louder than the blade, yet it carries. Her voice fills the hallway, perhaps through to Ops as well, perhaps beyond; it feels to Alec like the whole Institute can hear it, this one soft note of revelation whispering between them all. Her voice still rings like a bell against something inside him, something he has no name for but recognizes as the weight behind that pressure in his throat, the balance in his blood that hears better than his ears. “You will answer, or you will be foresworn.”

“You cannot-” one of the clerks attempts to speak, but Master Amira snorts and they give up.

“My parents were very traditional.” His mother’s voice sounds normal now, calm and conversational. But it still tastes like copper to Alec, like blood, and the tension in the hallway doesn’t ease. He eases himself back and up until he’s kneeling. Until he’s ready. “When my brother was forsaken, they dedicated me to the Mortal Sword as the new Trueblood heir.” Maryse smiles, and Alec can feel everyone except his father move back, trying to get away from it. “I absolutely can.”

The Consul looks contrite, bows his head in apology, enough that Alec can feel the other adults relax, just a little.

But the hum beneath Dieudonné’s skin has turned into a scream, his seraph blade wails in grief and fury, and Alec is moving before he realizes it, one hand in each boot, a flick of each wrist, and two slivers of adamas go through the Consul’s throat before he can speak.

Shock holds them all still, the scream rises into a shriek, twists and throbs and fades, at last, though Alec can’t hold in the shudder while it lingers. The Consul’s eyes are still open, but darker than they were, than they should be, and blood is dripping from them as well as his throat, and his ears, and his nose.

He stays standing for too long, still and stiff, and then a drop of blood hits the floor, one, then another, and finally he sways, and falls. His mouth opens as he hits the ground, and a dark cloud rises from it, smelling of sulfur and steel and something green that Alec will recognize five years later the first time he handles angelbane.

The former Consul jerks, his joints moving wrong in his death-throws, something too sharp to each convulsion, something other.

“Fuck,” someone Alec doesn’t know breaks the silence two long heartbeats after the body stops moving. It’s only then that he sees the rune that has now appeared, a Circle just like Hodge’s, broken by twin spears of adamas piercing through it, one on each side.

No one moves for yet another heartbeat, and Alec can’t look away from the man on the ground, the man who clearly wasn’t just a nephilim, not anymore, not like the rest of them. The man he’d killed. He’d killed the Consul of the Clave, in front of witnesses, in the middle of the Institute, before his parents…

He can feel a shared look over his head more than he can see it, and then his mother’s hand is on his shoulder and his father is calling out orders and she’s leading him away and his footsteps are running to Ops and an alert alarm is sounding, one Alec can’t hear properly through the blood rushing through his ears, and he’s relieved when his mother takes them both to his room, and tucks him into bed, and shields his door with her personal rune as well as every warding rune he’s ever seen. He smiles at her in thanks, and lets himself go.

She’s there again when he wakes, and at first he can’t remember anything. He starts to move, and feels the tug of an IV, the rattle of the stand next to his bed shifting with his movement. He blinks, and his mother sighs. It sounds like relief, and he blinks again even as she moves close, reaches out and brushes his hair off his forehead.

“It’s been a long time since an heir manifested two blood gifts at once, especially before receiving his first Mark.”

Alec had opened his mouth to… he wasn’t sure, probably apologize for being lazy after committing murder and then not even cleaning the ensuing mess up himself, but that stops him. He shuts his mouth, swallows, blinks for a third time, trying to get his thoughts to line up into something more coherent than what?

“Is that what I did?”

His mother smiles, and it’s as far as possible from her expression in the hallway, warm and soothing and grateful. “That’s what you did.”

“Oh.”

He lets that sink in, lets the implications and conclusions and possibilities trickle their way through his thoughts. “Does that mean I’m not gonna be buried at a crossroads for killing the Consul?”

His mother winces, leans forward until her forehead rests against his, and he feels dizzy and lightheaded with something almost like joy as he recognizes what she’s doing as comforting, for both of them. “Oh baby, no.”

He closes his eyes and lets himself feel the weight of his mother being his mother before anything and everything else, and doesn’t even fight it when he feels his eyes getting wet and his skin flushing with relief and confusion and love and who knows what else.

“You will never be in trouble for what you did to Malachi.” That chime was back in his mother’s voice as she whispered against his skin, and it soothed him in a way nothing else could, resonating against his worries until they faded. “You saved the entire Clave from whatever he would have done in the Circle’s name, whatever he could have done to our Institute with the Curse Valentine had put in him when he was discovered. The Inquisitor is going through the entire Council, soul by soul, to make sure she finds them all, and it’s only because of you that she has the power to do it.”

Oh.

Eventually she lifts her head, and her eyes are damp too, he can see it when she blinks. “But you will have to go to the City of Bones and meet a Silent Brother and the Soul-Sword.” Her smile quirks, and he realizes there’s pride there in her expression, on top of a complex mix of emotions that don’t make any more sense than his own. “Though that might be less scary for you than it was for me at your age, if you can hear the Soul-Sword as well as you hear seraph blades.”

“I can hear all the weapons in the armory.” Alec corrects before he can think about it. “You can’t?”

His mother laughs, short and damp and beautiful. “Even your father can’t, and he’s the only Lightwood left who can call his weapons to him. You’ve got a stronger Blood-Gift than he does.”

“I do?”

His mother nods. “Your father asked me to tell you he’s sorry he didn’t tell you so earlier. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, either.”

What.

This entire conversation is so far outside of anything he’s ever felt before, and his bones feel too light-weight under his skin and he doesn’t understand. “Why?”

“Did you consider telling me or your father about what you heard from Malachi’s blade?”

Alec frowns, and his mother lifts a hand, palm facing him, stopping him before he can protest the change of topic. “I promise I’m answering your question, please.”

His parents apologized, and his mother said please to him, like she meant it.

He shook his head from side-to-side. “I knew you’d want me to, but.” He stops. He doesn’t know how to explain that feeling, that pressure that he still suspected would have broken him if he’d tried to speak the truth and been told to keep quiet. His mother’s fingers brush against the line of his throat, and his eyes widen as he stares up at her, as he sees a tear overflow and slowly slide down her cheek as she nods, just a little, and he realizes she knows exactly what he’s not saying.

“We taught you we couldn’t be trusted, so you had to act alone.” There’s that chime again, and another tear falling. “But that’s all going to change now.”

It’s a promise, he knows, he can feel it. “What is that?”

“That is the Trueblood gift. My father could make any vow magically binding just by witnessing it, and his father could tell when someone stated something untrue, even if they believed it themselves.” Her mouth quirked. “He called it tasting lies.”

“Can you do that?”

“No.” She closes her eyes, too slowly to be just a blink, and this time when she sighs he can feel the weight behind it. “I can hear Truth sometimes, ride it, verify it, make sure everyone else believes it.”

She opens her eyes, and there’s guilt now, and grief, dark and deep and endless. “Valentine recruited your father and I personally, and I believed everything he told me about what he was doing, and why, and because I believed him, because there was a Trueblood supporting him, a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise have let him be… let him get away with, well. Everything.”

Alec goes still. He can tell she’s telling the Truth still, and he doesn’t want to know that, doesn’t want to feel it, but he can, he does, and he’s never ever going to be able to forget what this feels like, this truth that turned his whole life into a lie that he’d never known he was telling.

He swallows down the nausea, the outrage, and waits.

“But when your father told me what he learned about what Valentine was really like, I couldn’t believe the lies any more. We turned ourselves into the Clave, and they only let us back because I rode the Truth when I vowed that we would be loyal to the Council, when I vowed on my bloodline, back to my parents and.” Her voice drops, lower and softer. “And down to my son, who is a Trueblood too.”

“And then you lied to me about it.”

“The Council forbid anyone from talking about the Circle.”

He gives her the look that line deserves.

She’s almost trembling, her hands held too tightly by her sides. “We didn’t want you to have to bear the weight of our mistakes.”

“But I do.” He looks at her, really looks at her, in the same way he looks at the weapons in the armory, and the hilts strapped to the side of visiting nephilim, and the way he’d listened to Malachi and heard Valentine’s Curse in his blood.

Alec can almost see the pattern of the fragile scaffolding of his mother’s emotions, suppressed down under her skin, forced to only exist between the fine lines of her plans, of her will and desire and ambition and pain, all constraining her gift into something so much smaller than it could have been. The foundation of that scaffolding seems shaken, it feels fragile. But it hasn’t moved, hasn’t fallen. She regrets how he feels, sincerely means to change, but she hasn’t, not yet. It’s all still there.

“Every single one of them has been put on my shoulders, and because you hid them from me I thought all that weight was mine, was me, that I deserved every harsh word and mistrustful look, and every single one of them was about you.”

Maryse rears back, but they both hear the Truth in his voice, the sound that resonates between his bones, that builds and forces its way out, that refuses to be silenced. That he is never ever going to try and silence. “You can go.”

She opens her mouth. He lifts his chin, and she concedes. “Amira will take my place with you until the next medic visit.”

He almost frowns, wondering what she means. “You burned through almost all your angelic energy.” She tilts her chin and he glances sideways at the IV bag, half full of something that isn’t just saline, judging by the color of the label. “And you’ve been asleep for almost three days.”

Three? he mouths, more to himself than her, but she sees it, understands it, nods.

There are circles under her eyes, and he can hear the exhaustion she'd been trying to hide when she speaks again. “Let us try and take care of you this time.”

He nods, accepting her peace offering for what it is, and she leaves.

He settles, waits until the door opens again to let Master Amira in.

Only then does he close his eyes, knowing he’s safe, knowing she’s there for him. He knows he’ll forgive his parents when they come back, knows that if they try at all he’ll let them be his parents again. But he’s not sure if they’ll ever earn back his trust.

But he can trust Master Amira, and he’ll make sure to tell Izzy the truth, make sure she knows exactly which consequences are hers, and which are not. He’ll do the same for Max once he’s old enough to talk, and they’ll never have to bear the weight of their parents’ mistakes the way he did, never be expected to fix everything the Clave and Circle broke just because they were offered the mercy of living.

He smiles to himself, pleased with that decision. He can hear Master Amira settling down into the chair next to his desk as he lets himself relax, can hear the soft sweet chime of his adamas slivers being returned, can feel the familiar low rhythm of her axes. He’s always thought they seem like contented cats, purring as they rest against their chosen partner, but today it’s like they’re purring for him, too, soothing him back to sleep.

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