AN: This fic was written for Amaggiepie, who requested some Alec/Clary lovin'. And some plot. So here is a lot of plot with some Alec/Clary lovin'. lol. Thanks go out to superfan24 for doing the beta work!
Setting: This is set in an Alternative Universe where Clary, a blind Shadowhunter, is raised alongside Jonathon.
Warnings: sexual content
Compulsory Butterflies: Part I
The house is quiet now. In the early hours of the morning, when the sun was still shy behind the mountains, there had been a flurry of activity. The sound of impatient footsteps drew Clary from sleep, and she had lied in bed contemplating the terse voices and slamming doors. The desperate pounding that went unheeded for fifteen minutes.
But now sunlight warms her face, and there is stillness. She moves out of bed and gets dressed.
\/
There is a door down the hall from hers that she has never bothered to enter. It is a guestroom, and like all the guestrooms in the manor, it's never been put to use. Except today is different. As Clary stands outside the door, she hears movement on the other side. Creaking floorboards, even breaths, a steady heartbeat.
There is a locking rune on the wood.
Clary knocks quietly. "Hello?"
The pacing stops.
She knocks again but the person makes no move to respond. Sighing, she draws out her stele and traces open.
\/
It's a man, a stranger, and Clary feels flushed with eagerness. His voice is low and demanding, edged with a threat.
"Who are you?"
"My name's Clary. Who are you?"
"Release me."
"What?"
There's a noisy rattling sound, the scrape of metal knocking against metal. Something heavy drags across the floor as he approaches her. A chain.
When he speaks again, his voice is scant inches from her face. "Release me."
\/
Clary skirts around him, and when he does not pursue her, she knows that he has run out of slack. His bindings will allow him no nearer. "Why have they brought you here?"
"I don't know," he says bitterly.
"Are you blind?"
"What?"
Clary stops in front of the window. She can feel the sun on her back, a silent reassurance of the outside world just through the glass. "That's why they keep me here. Because true Shadowhunters can't be blind, and my father can't have a daughter who's not a true Shadowhunter."
"Your father—"
"Valentine. That's his name."
There is silence, and Clary can almost hear her father's name sliding down and settling like a lead weight in his gut. So she is not the only one who feels this way.
The man's angry. "Where are we? What is this place?"
"Home."
\/
Clary is aware of her brother's presence in the room long before he speaks. "Oh good. So the two of you have already met."
"Sebastian." The man spits the name like a curse.
Her brother's humorless laugh is loud in the small space. "That's right. You still think I'm that push-over Verlac fool. You really were in that godforsaken dungeon for a long time, weren't you? I had almost forgotten you were down there myself."
"Jonathon,"—Clary steps forward—"what's going on?"
Jonathon crosses to her, his steps noiseless. He takes her hand and brushes his lips across the tops of her knuckles in a familiar gesture of intimacy that she's learned not to flinch away from. "Little sister," he says, "I've brought you some company."
"What do you mean?"
"I thought of you being alone here all of the time while Father and I are gone, and I knew that you must get lonely. So I had him brought here for you."
Clary stays cautiously silent. He hasn't finished.
"You're not a girl anymore, and you need the appropriate companions. Of course I didn't bring you just anyone. He's a Lightwood. An old Shadowhunter family from respectable stock. Good blood. Not as desirable as a Morgenstern, of course, but the closest I could get. In case your meetings prove…fertile."
Realization hits like a slap in the face, and she jerks her hand from his grip. "You mean you brought him here to…" She can't bring herself to finish the sentence. Her face burns. "That's disgusting," she hisses.
Jonathon's voice turns coldly snide. "I thought I was being thoughtful. Don't you want to be made a woman, Clary? You think anyone would want to lie with a defected Shadowhunter?"
She bites her tongue until she tastes blood.
His mouth brushes the curve of her ear. "You may be a poor excuse of a Nephilim, but you're a Morgenstern, and some day you will do your duty to make sure that that name is revered for generations."
She barely hears him over the pounding of her heart.
His attention turns toward the man, who has said nothing. "If you do anything to harm her, I'll drag that little brother of yours out of his cell and have him chopped into pieces as fuel for your fireplace."
He kisses the side of Clary's head, slips a key into her hand, and then leaves the room.
\/
Her pride and mortification keep her away for three days. But on the fourth morning, her curiosity gets the better of her and she is back down the hall. She did not lock the door when she last left, so after a brief warning knock, she enters the room. The man must have been sitting on the bed because she hears the chain jostle as he gets to his feet.
"I'm not sleeping with you," he says.
"I'm glad we have that understanding."
"What do you want?"
"Have you been fed?" She already knows the answer. She'd heard Anna—the housekeeper—bring him a tray of food three times a day. But Clary doesn't want him to know that she's been listening.
"Yes," he answers reluctantly.
"And you've been eating."
"I'll get weak if I don't."
"What's your name?"
"Alec."
"How old are you?"
"Eighteen." He sits back down on the bed. "Maybe nineteen."
"You don't know?"
"What's the date?"
"June 21st."
"Then I'm nineteen."
"I'm sixteen," she says, even though he doesn't ask. "I'll be seventeen in a couple of months."
He says nothing.
"Why does Jonathon have you and your brother?"
Clary may be blind, but she can tell when someone is staring at her, and right now she's feels Alec's piercing gaze like the prick of a needle against her skin. "For the same reason he's captured and killed a hundred other Shadowhunters."
Dull nails bite into her palms. The room feels colder. She has to swallow back the lump in her throat in order to force her voice through. "And why's that?"
He moves his arms, causing the chain to rattle. "You really have no idea, do you?"
"Tell me."
\/
She doesn't believe him. Not everything he says, anyway.
She can believe that her father would say those things, that he would even want those things—to create a more perfect Shadowhunter race by weeding out the weak and claiming what he believed to be the rightful power of every Nephilim. Everything he has ever taught her speaks to that very ideology. His hatred for the Clave and their corruption underlies nearly everything he does.
But stealing the Mortal Instruments? Using demons and dark magic to slaughter Shadowhunters by the dozens? Killing children? Her father is a cold man but he is not needlessly cruel—he is not Jonathon. She cannot believe that the man who tucked her into bed as a child and spent long hours teaching her to read fairytales in Braille could kill so heartlessly.
Clary rolls over in the grass. She weaves her hands through the soft blades—which she's been told are 'green'—and mindlessly pulls up clumps to toss aside.
Over the last year, her father has spent less and less time at home. He did not come home once last July or August, and now there are usually weeks between his visits. Jonathon, too, is gone more often than he is here. Something changed. She knows that.
But she refuses to believe that her nightmares are coming to life.
\/
"Tell me more."
She holds out the key that Jonathon gave her. There had been no conditions on using it, and Jonathon left home the same day he arrived, so there is no one to stop her.
The man—Alec—takes the key quickly, afraid she will change her mind. A few moments later a shackle hits the wooden floor. He kicks it across the room.
"I want to know more about what's happening," she says.
"Fine. But only if you answer my questions first."
Clary hesitates. "Fine."
"The place where they were keeping me and where they're keeping my brother. Where is it?"
"I don't know."
"You live here?"
"Yes."
"And Jonathon lives here."
"Sometimes."
That causes Alec to pause. "He's not here now?"
"No."
"And Valentine?"
"He hasn't been home in a couple of weeks."
"So it's just you and the housekeeper."
"And the cook and the gardener. I know what you're thinking, and it won't work. There are wards and—"
"Have you ever left?"
Clary bites the inside of her lip and schools her voice into a tone of indifference. "No."
She does not like the silence that follows. He is contemplating her and her situation, imagining that he can see her life for what it is just from that single fact. He is placing her in a box the way her father has placed her in this house and the way Jonathon has placed him in this room.
Talking with a stranger is not what she thought it would be.
\/
There are no chairs. She sits on the bed several feet from him, and as the mattress shifts beneath her weight, she is stiff with tension.
"Why would I lie to you?" he asks.
"Because you're part of the Clave."
He sighs in frustration. "So are you. All Shadowhunters are. It's the Covenant."
She shakes her head. "I've sworn no loyalty to the Clave."
"Valentine's wrong about us, you know." He moves, turning toward her. "The Clave isn't perfect, but it's not evil. We want to do good."
"You're wrong."
"How do you know? I'm the first Shadowhunter you've met who's not Valentine or Jonathon."
"Because the Clave killed my mother."
"What?"
"They're the reason that she died. She—"
"You mean Jocelyn?"
Clary shoots to her feet. "How do you know her name?"
"Because she isn't dead."
\/
Slamming the door behind her, Clary drops to her knees beside her bed. Beneath it is a heavy chest that she drags out into the open and unlocks with trembling fingers. She has memorized its contents and does not have to dig for the rigid square of paper tucked down one of the sides. Clasping it, she falls back onto her haunches.
It is a photograph of her mother. A picture. An image. Something that Clary can only understand in the most abstract of terms. Somehow the essence of her mother is contained here on this glossy sheet, preserved for an eternity. More than once Clary has held it, traced her fingers over the smooth surface and conjured up what Jocelyn would be like if she were more than a photo. Kind, patient, someone who could make her father smile—the woman who gave birth to her and then died less than a month later during a raid carried out by the Clave.
Or so Clary had been told.
"Jocelyn is alive. Valentine is keeping her somewhere. She escaped with the Mortal Cup after you were born, but he found her again about a year ago…"
Escaped. Left. Ran away. Abandoned.
Clary's mother did not die. Clary does not have a mother.
She tears the photograph until the pieces are too small to hold onto.
\/
"These are the gardens."
She's not sure why she's brought him here. She doesn't particularly like the gardens, although she enjoys being outside where the world feels bigger. Usually she's quite capable of navigating the grounds on her own (she's had 16 years to memorize every hill, step, and creek), but she's never had to lead someone before, so she brings her long cane with her. She hates using it, but she'd rather not risk walking into a tree because she's distracted by Alec.
He is the one who requested that they go outside. He wanted to stretch his legs, and after being cooped up in a bedroom for two weeks and a prison cell for however long before that, she can understand his desire get out, to at least pretend he is free to move about as he pleases. She purposely ignores any ulterior motives he may have.
"They're nice," he says grudgingly, and Clary knows that they are more than nice. She's been told they're the most beautifully designed gardens in Idris. They smell nice enough.
"Let's find shade."
\/
There is a big tree with drooping branches by the lake. They stop here and sit where the ground is cool. After fifteen minutes of listening to the wind shake the leaves and the insects buzz around the water, Clary finds she cannot pretend she is alone.
"What's New York like?"
At first he doesn't say anything, and she thinks that he won't answer. But just as she's resigned herself to an afternoon of repressed curiosity, she hears him mumble, "Big. Noisy. Full of Mundanes."
"Sounds exciting." It sounds like the opposite of here.
"There's always something to kill," he says as if quoting something or someone famous.
"We don't get many demons. Or Mundanes." She regrets saying this because it makes her feel even less like a Shadowhunter than before. Nephilim were created to protect ordinary humans from demons, and she's never even seen a Mundane, and the closest she's ever come to a demon was hearing the screams of one that Jonathon tortured for three days straight.
Clary stands and steps out of her sandals. When she undoes the snap of her shorts, Alec's voice rises with something akin to alarm. "What are you doing?"
"Going swimming."
She slides her shorts down to her ankles and then kicks them away. Her tank top quickly joins them in the grass. It is seven steps to the water's edge, and Clary takes them carefully to avoid any surprises. Physically, Alec does not follow her, but his presence is there with her in the water, something that keeps her back straight and her toes curled. She hums and he does not leave.
\/
It's a dreary day, but the tapping of rain against the library windows and the scratch of Alec's pencil across paper is soothing. She sits beside him with her book so that she can hear it better. She's not sure what he's writing, only that he's already torn up two of his previous attempts.
A few minutes pass and he sets the pencil down. There is no sound of shredding paper, so Clary assumes that this time he is satisfied with what he produces.
Clary closes her book. "Who's your parabatai?"
"What makes you think I have one?"
"You have the rune." She lifts a hand to his right shoulder, and even through the thin cotton of his shirt, she can sense the presence of the powerful Mark, feel the texture of its lines as if they were raised on his skin.
"How—"
"I've always had an affinity for runes. Seeing them, drawing them, creating them. My father says it's a gift from the Angel."
"You can create runes?" he asks, incredulous.
"Maybe 'create' isn't the right word," she muses. "I draw runes that no one has ever drawn before."
"Like what?"
One comes easily to the forefront of her mind like a bubble rising to the surface of water. It's the same rune that's been quietly asserting itself ever since that first day she and Alec met. Its persistence, she thinks, must mean something.
Having drawn out her stele, Clary slides her hand from his shoulder to the hollow of his elbow, holding his arm still against the table. There's a brief, surprised silence when Alec doesn't pull away. Clearing her throat she gently presses the tip of the stele to the skin of his forearm and allows the Mark to unfold. It sweeps down, lifts, strikes across in a bold line, and curls into a circle cradled by two curves. When it feels complete, she pulls back, satisfied that it was successful.
"What does it mean?"
"Fearless."
\/
"You love him. Jace."
"He's a brother to me."
"But you love him more than that. I can hear it in your voice."
"I…I used to think that I did."
"And now?"
"And now I'm not sure what love really is."
He touches the Mark on his arm.
"I guess it works."
\/
When Clary wakes up, she dresses in the clothes that have been laid out for her the night before. She brushes her hair, braids it, and ties it off with a band from the top drawer of her dresser. She brushes her teeth, washes her face, steps into her shoes. But when she goes to pick up her stele from the nightstand, her fingers close around air.
Frowning, Clary bends down and checks the floor in case it had fallen off during the night. After coming up empty, she runs her hands over the entirety of the bedside table until she find her stele placed on the far edge, several inches from where she set it down and handle facing the wrong direction.
Snatching up the stele, Clary leaves her room and strides angrily down the hall. Not pausing to knock, she throws open Alec's door and marches inside amidst his sound of protest. "How dare you?" she seethes.
"What—"
"You snuck into my room while I was sleeping and took my stele!"
"I—"
"You think I'm stupid? Because I can't see? Because I can't fight like you, or my father, or my brother? Well, I'm not. You wrote a fire message yesterday and sent it last night using my stele, which you stole from my room."
"What did you expect, Clary?" Alec retorts, just as heated and just as indignant. "I'm your prisoner, and if you think I'm just going to sit tight in this dressed-up cell and entertain you while my family—"
"News flash, Alec!" She steps close enough to feel the heat rising off his body. "I'm not the one keeping you here. If you want to leave, I'm not going to stop you. Go ahead and give it a shot. Don't let the wards burn your ass on the way out."
Clary leaves, slamming the door shut behind her.
\/
Knocking wakes Clary up in the middle of the night. Anna, the housekeeper, is at her door sounding very worried and slightly hysterical. She explains that Alec tried leaving the property and got caught in the wards. He is injured badly, and Anna is worried that the treatment she can give him will not be sufficient. Perhaps Clary's runes will help if she is so inclined to come and offer assistance.
All of this Clary takes in with her dreams still lingering around the edges of her consciousness. What she does process is that Alec might be fatally injured and she is the only person capable of drawing an iratze. Stele in hand, she steps out into the hallway and follows Anna to Alec's door. By the time she enters the room, her lethargy is beginning to fade, and her mind sharpens to the point that she is able to recall the events of yesterday, the hostility he showed her and the resentment she felt.
But all burgeoning anger vanishes as the odor of burnt flesh overwhelms her. The gardener, who is standing somewhere off to the right, quickly takes his leave now that Anna and Clary are here to handle the situation. He mumbles something about 'accounting for stupidity' on his way out the door.
Sighing, Clary crosses the bed and delicately sits on the edge so as to not to upset any of Alec's injuries. His breathing is labored and raspy, but he doesn't say anything, and she thinks he might be unconscious. "What wrong with him?"
"The burns mostly," Anna supplies quickly. "A couple of broken bones from getting knocked about, but I stitched up the wound on his head. It's stopped bleeding."
His body puts off heat like a furnace as Clary leans over him. "Show me where I can place a rune."
\/
Anna brings a padded, high back chair into Alec's room, and Clary falls asleep there, listening to the older woman tut and mutter under her breath while applying salve to Alec's burns. When she wakes up, Anna is gone and birds are singing outside. Clary's body aches from sleeping in such an unnatural position.
But Alec is alive. His breathing is deep and even. The sedation rune—one of several Marks that she gave him—has not yet worn off. It's good that he is sleeping. The pain would be terrible if he weren't.
She applies a fresh iratze and cooling rune to soothe the burns.
It will be a while before he is healed.
\/
Two days later, Jonathon returns home. He's in a good mood, and Clary remembers what Alec told her about him and their father. Is this what killing does for him? Bring him satisfaction and peace of mind?
He stands over Alec's sick bed and chuckles. "I imagine he won't be trying that again."
"He almost died."
"Almost." He sounds equally parts amused and disappointed.
"You've been killing Shadowhunters. You and Father."
"We've been killing traitors," he corrects her. "Those who have turned against their own kind." Her disapproval must show, but the next moment he is at her side, hand cupping her cheek and raising her face toward his. "You wouldn't understand, Clary. You've lived such a sheltered life. You have no idea what kind of evil there is in the world."
She tries moving away, but his grip on her only tightens.
"Still just a girl?" he asks.
"Go to hell."
He laughs and releases her. "If he can't do the job, I'll find someone who can."
\/
"How long have I been out?"
"Three days."
"It still hurts."
"I warned you."
"Yeah. You did. I think…I think I'm going back to sleep…"
\/
The burns have finally begun to fade. Due to the multitude of his injuries, the broken leg and wrist are taking longer to heal than usual, even though Clary draws a fresh iratze every morning and every night. He's been weaned off the anesthesia so he's fully alert and coherent when he's awake.
He sleeps a lot. But on the occasions that he's awake when Clary checks in, they don't speak aside from the necessary exchanges about his wellbeing.
How do you feel?
Better.
Do you need more salve?
No.
Does this hurt?
A little.
Do you need anything?
No.
I'll be back later.
Thank you.
His responses are brief but not dismissive. He is quiet in a way that suggests contemplation. He's disappeared inside his head the way she so often disappears into hers. Some thought—or some tangle of thoughts— is being worked out, and anything else happening around him is just a distraction.
Clary always leaves the room frowning.
\/
"It's nice out today."
The quiet comment startles Clary into stubbing her toe against the leg of the chair. She swears under her breath. "Is it?"
"Yeah."
Foot still smarting, she half-hobbles to the window, unlocks it, and pushes it open. Immediately, a mild gust of air blows back her hair. Sun warms the skin of her forearms. "It is," she agrees.
Tempted by his unprecedented verbosity and the pleasant breeze, Clary asks if he would mind her staying here to read by the open window. "There won't be any sunlight in my room."
"Sure."
She leaves and returns with the book that she started the day before. It's a love story, the sort of "unproductive nonsense" her father only barely tolerates as an indulgence. Having dragged the armchair as close as to the window as she can get, Clary climbs into it and finds the bookmarked page in her novel. The words are familiar beneath her fingers—she's read this one at least half a dozen times—and she's able to fall into them so completely that she forgets she's not alone.
"What are you reading?
Her fingers still. "It's a romance. About an old woman whose lost all her memories, and her husband who spends every day retelling her the story of how they fell in love. Very sappy."
"But you like it."
"Yes. There's something beautiful about the single mindedness with which they pursue their feelings. It must be nice to feel that way about someone. Or anything. It gives you a sort of purpose."
"You don't think you have a purpose?"
She closes the book. "Is the sky very blue today?"
"Yes."
\/
"And what color is this flower?"
"Bluish purple."
"Like a bruise?"
"No. Like a flower."
Clary rolls her eyes but has to hide a smile. He's been a good sport. Mostly.
"And this one?"
"Yellow."
She rubs the silky petal between her thumb and forefinger. Warm-colored like the sun.
"And what about this—"
"I thought you were going to read."
"I am." She turns away from the flowers to sit facing him on the grass. She pulls the book—which somehow ended up beneath his crutches—onto her lap. "Which part were we at?"
"They were about to…have sex in that old house."
"Oh, right." Of course, she knew exactly where they had left off, but she's become fond of how squeamish Alec can be about little things. "The sex. Let's get to it."
\/
There is only a small selection of Braille books in the library. Sometimes when her father comes home after being away for a long time, he will have a new one for Clary to read. But nothing new has been added in months, and there are hundreds of print books that Clary has never been able to read on her own. So when she finishes reading aloud the romance novel, Alec agrees to read her something she hasn't heard before.
He picks something safe, a history on the Silent Brothers, but an hour in they're both close to falling asleep. Clary asks Alec to tell her about his life instead.
At first he's hesitant. "There's not much to tell." But slowly bits and pieces of information work their way free, and once he gets going, the words spill forward like water breaking through a damn. She already knew he was from the New York Institute, but he tells about the others who lived there with him—his family, his parabatai, his tutor. He paints such a distinct picture of Jace that she can imagine him being there in the room with them.
"You miss your family," Clary says after he peters out and they're sitting in reflective silence.
"Of course I do."
"You'll see them again." She doesn't know why she says it; it's reflex more than anything. Later she'll look back and realize that she was trying to comfort him. But now the words hang in the air like a glass ball held high above the ground.
After a brief silence, Alec says, "I could. If you helped me find a way around the wards."
"I…"
"I haven't seen any warlocks around here, so something is keeping them in place, something that can be disabled. Like the way Jonathon disabled the ones surrounding Alicante."
He's right, of course. She once heard her father say something about it to Jonathon when neither of them thought she could hear. With some investigating, she could probably find out more. So it would be possible…
Clary hesitates. "If you got out, would you try to kill him? Jonathon. And my father?"
"Yes," he says without hesitation. "If I encountered them, I would do my duty as a Shadowhunter to protect this world."
She sags back into the seat. "Then I can't help you."
"Why would you want to protect them?" Alec's voice is frustrated and closer than it had been a moment ago. "Jonathon's evil. He's trying to force you, his own sister, into sleeping with someone just to prove that he can. How can you not hate him?"
She shakes her head. "Just because you hate someone doesn't mean that you want them dead. He's my brother. Would you kill Max or Jace?"
"They would never murder innocent people."
"Well, before you got here, I never thought my father and brother would either. I'm sorry, but I can't help you."
As she stands, Alec's hand catches her wrist. It's the first time he's ever touched her. "You don't think that they need to be stopped?"
"Yes." She knows that what her family is doing is wrong, and that they can't be allowed to destroy an entire race and break the Covenant. "But not by me. They're all I have."
\/
Clary hands Alec the scissors. "What do you want them for?"
"To cut my hair. It's never been this long."
"I think it looks fine."
He smiles. She can tell.
\/
Despite their many differences, Alec and her brother have very similar hands. Wide palms with calluses across the top. Long, slender fingers with bony knuckles. Warm, scarred skin. A firm grip.
That morning Alec told her there is something he wants to show her. He leads her from the house through the grass. They weave around the small grove of trees and cross the creek that runs through the east end of the property. She counts until she can no longer hear the water, and then they are climbing a small hill. This is where Alec stops.
She knows exactly where they are. Although she doesn't come this way often, she's explored every crevice of this land. So she knows that just in front of them is a steep rock incline formed by natural boulders. She does not know how high it reaches, although when she was little, she imagined it must touch the sky.
"Is this it?" she asks.
She can feel him hesitate. Even his grip on her hand slackens. "No. We need to climb up. There's a narrow path worn through rock so we can practically walk for most of it. But I'll have to help you."
"How high?"
"About fifty feet to the top."
Fifty feet. Clary was a few inches over five feet tall. Her father, who often seemed like a giant, wasn't even six and half feet. The distance from her bedroom window to the ground was about 35 feet. When she had been a curious child, Valentine told her that if she were to climb out of that window, the fall would kill her.
She steps forward and presses her hand to the stone. It feels swollen with the heat of the sun. Alec's skin is cool and damp in comparison. "Okay. Show me."
\/
The going is slow, and Clary experiences more frustration than she's accustomed to as Alec directs her where to place her feet and, sometimes, her hands. This is a bit of land unconquered by man, and the grooves that water has whittled into the stone are not easily navigated. More than once, a miscalculated step sends her swaying backwards but Alec pays close enough attention to steady her in time.
By the time they reach the summit, Clary is so relieved to feel the ground even out, that she strides carelessly forward until Alec grabs her arm.
"Careful," he says anxiously. Clary goes still. "There's not much space to move around."
He draws her back even as the realization begins to settle over her. They are very high off the ground in small area—a precipice—with no walls or fences to keep them from falling. Slowly, a smile curls Clary's lips, and she raises her arms straight out on either side. She tilts her face back, baring it to the brunt of the sunlight. The wind whipping around her feels dangerous.
"I've never been up here before," she says.
"That's what I guessed. Here,"—Alec gently turns her in a different direction—"I want to show you something."
One of his hands presses against her hip as he steps behind her. His chest pressed against her back brings his heart close to her ear, so that she can easily hear the slow, even beat of it. He takes her right hand in his and folds her fingers down one by one until just the index finger remains, pointing upwards. He guides her hand forward, directing it toward something in front of them.
"There," he says, "is Alicante."
"What do you mean?"
"It's there in the distance. Against the horizon. It's miles away, but you can just see the glass spires catching the light."
She feels breathless. "It can't be. It can't be right there."
Alicante has always been something of a mythic place to Clary. Of course she knew that it was real—her father trained there as a boy—but it has always been some unattainable place a world away, as lost to her as Atlantis or the Garden of Eden. To think that this entire time it's been here, that if she had the sense of sight, she could be a witness to the Glass City right now.
Her arm is too heavy. When Alec releases her, it falls limply to her side. "What color is it?"
He lowers his head so say something, and his lips brush her ear. The touch is as light as a butterfly landing and completely accidental, but she feels it all the same. The wind picks up. She cannot hear him.
\/
She did not use to be such a light sleeper. But something about having another person in the house has made her more sensitive to the sounds of night.
Clary pads down the hall barefooted and stops outside Alec's door. She listens until she hears the low moan that pulled her from her sleep. If it weren't for her heightened hearing rune—one of the many permanent runes she had taken the liberty to draw herself—she would not have heard his distress from her own room. The walls of the house are old and thick. But Clary hears many things that others do not, and this is not the first time it's put her in the position to do something she wouldn't have done otherwise.
Clary stands indecisive for several moments before opening the door and poking her head inside.
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"Alec?"
He does not respond, but continues tossing and turning on the bed. He mumbles something incoherent and makes that pained sound again.
"Alec."
The springs of the mattress creak in distress. Clary enters the room and stops just shy of the bed. She reaches out to touch him but has to search the sheets for his arm. He's rolled to the far the side.
"Alec—"
When she touches him, his entire body jerks and Clary cries out in surprise when he shoots up, seizing her shoulders. "Who—"
"It's me. It's Clary."
He's trembling but let's her go immediately. "Sorry."
"It's okay. I surprised you." She sits on the edge of the bed. "You were having a bad dream. I could hear you."
He slides back to sit against the headboard. "Yeah," he says quietly.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No. I don't think I do."
"Then we can talk about something else."
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"No way."
"It's true."
"No one is that bad at cooking."
"Isabelle is."
"Did the cat die?"
"No. Church is still around. He's always been around, actually."
Clary shakes her head. She's crossed her legs beneath her to help keep her bare feet warm, and she's stolen one of the blankets to wrap around her shoulders. Listening to Alec speak about his family has become one of her favorite things to do. She likes how animated his voice gets. "Why does she cook if she's so bad at it?"
"Isabelle," Alec says her name in a fond way Jonathon has never said Clary's, "always feels the need to impress. From the way she dresses to the way she fights. Cooking is one of her few failed attempts."
"Is she beautiful?"
There's a brief pause that Clary has learned to interpret as a shrug. "Yeah, I guess she is. Enough people seem to think so."
"How do you decide whether something is beautiful?"
"Physically, you mean?" He sounds puzzled.
"Yes. How do you tell?"
"You just…know. It's different for each person. Not everyone finds the same things beautiful."
"Is it a feeling you get?"
"It's more than a feeling." He sighs. "It's like a fact. It's like noticing that something is small, or oddly-shaped, or well-made. Something can be beautiful even if you're the only one who thinks so."
"Am I beautiful?"
Too late, Clary realizes she probably shouldn't have asked. There are several moments of silence until—
"Yes," he says finally.
Clary feels warm. Suddenly she is very curious about how Alec perceives her, even though she knows she will not fully comprehend what he tells her. Questions she's never really cared to have answered before unexpectedly overwhelm her. "What color are my eyes?"
"Green."
Green. Grass is green. Things that grow are green. Gardens. Nature. Life.
"My hair?"
"Red."
Fire. Lips. Blood. Passion.
Clary imagines how a person with eyes of leaves and hair of flames must look, and she is left with a euphoric sense of vitality that makes her hands restless. She caresses her face, half-expecting to feel blades of grass hot as coals. But it is only her, the same skin she's always worn. She fingers a lock of her hair and thinks, Red.
"And those are good colors?"
"For you, yes."
Unthinkingly, Clary rises onto her knees and reaches out until the tips of her fingers touch the cotton of his shirt. She finds the collar and then traces his neck to his face, resting her thumbs right beneath either of his eyes. "What color are yours?"
His breath climbs her wrists. "Blue."
"Like the sky?"
"Darker."
The night is dark. Eyes like the night sky. "What color is your hair?"
It's thick and soft between her fingers as they comb through it, the strands so much shorter than her own. Alec makes a sound she barely catches.
"What was that?"
"Dark brown," he says louder.
He is cool earth, the kind deep below the surface that's rich and allows things to grow. Dark earth on a dark night.
She smiles. "I can see you."
And he is the first person she has ever seen. For once, colors are more than that one thing she will never understand. When she thinks about Alec's eyes being deep blue, it means something—they are patches of sky she actually has a chance of reaching. And when he looks at her, sky meets soft fire, burning trees that never die. This is a painless heat.
She has been touching him for too long.
But as she moves to sit back on her heels, he deftly catches her wrists. Clary freezes, keenly aware of how close they are. In the silence, she can hear his heart beating faster and realizes with a start that hers has quickened as well. She's caught leaning partially toward him and unwilling to pull away. The blanket slides from her shoulders to the bed.
Slowly, he draws her in.
First it is their noses that touch, followed by their foreheads, and then a chin to cheek. When their lips finally find their way to each other, it as if they have met like this before. She eases forward into the kiss, and Alec guides her with gentle caresses until she is straddling his legs and they're chest-to-chest, her arms having nowhere to go but around his neck. She likes this crowded feeling, their bodies pack tightly together, thighs wedged around hips and lips tucked beneath teeth because this is the only good space.
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Her hands smooth over his broad, naked shoulders Marked with black.
Balance. Strength. Parabatai.
His chest is contoured with muscle and more curving lines.
Speed. Soundlessness. Keen Sight.
His hands take the hem of her shirt up over her head, and soon he is finding all of their runes that match. He traces them distractedly, his attention frayed by the heat of her mouth on his neck. When she breaks skin, he groans and rolls them over until Clary is on her back beneath him.
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Alec's thumb brushes over her nipple until it is stiff. "Pink," he says, and Clary absently touches her mouth, which is also pink. And swollen, now. Soft and raw.
Those lips part suddenly when a tongue strikes out against that taught nipple. It's followed closely by the insistent tug of Alec's own lips, and this joining of like things is good, good, good in a way that has Clary making sounds she's not heard before—senseless, breathless things that are not entirely absent of meaning.
His hand slides down over her belly and her runes and then lower still. He is touching, deep hidden parts of her. "Pink."
Clary likes the color pink.
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There are tears—two of them—but they are colorless, and Clary quickly forgets them. They haven't dried on the pillow before something more significant is happening. She can feel Alec inside of her. As his fingers stroke her hip, the rest of him is moving in a much more novel way. He recedes and then presses forward as deep as her body will take him in. Clary keeps still because it doesn't feel good yet, but it's getting better, and she doesn't want to mess this up.
As she relaxes, Alec's hesitant movements smooth out into something more consistent, a timed rocking that she meets with lifted hips. Palms flat on the backs of his shoulder blades, Clary records every shallow breath, every quickening of the heart, the moment when he stops breathing completely, and the accompanying shudder that draws his back taught like the string of a hunting bow.
And then the pinks, and the reds, and the bright whites seep away, and Alec drops down beside her, searching for breath and pulling her towards him. She lies in his dark earth colors, lets their coolness wash over her like something soothing.
She knows she is smiling, and that he can see, but she presses it to his skin anyway.
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"Will we both fit?"
Alec makes an indelicate noise like a snort. "Four of us would fit in here."
"Are you suggesting that we invite the cook and housekeeper to join us?"
"I've seen the housekeeper. Take my word for it that we're better off alone."
Holding his arm for support, Clary steps after him into the tub. The tap is still running, stirring the hot water around her calves. Alec sits and then helps guide her down to sit between his legs. She brushes her hair to one side, and he takes it as an invitation to drop a kiss on her exposed shoulder. It's strange being like this with someone, but she likes it and relaxes back against him.
"The housekeeper…She'll tell Jonathon about the blood on the sheets."
He shakes his head. "This had nothing to do with him."
"I know," she said quickly, "but he won't see it that way."
"I don't care how he sees it."
"I do," she says after a long silence. "I don't want to give him the satisfaction of thinking I've…submitted to him. I don't want him to think it was his choice."
"I don't think he wanted it to happen this way." He reaches for a cup, fills it with water, and tells her to close her eyes. Warm water soaks her hair and trickles down behind her ears. "He wanted to humiliate us. He wanted us both to feel used and degraded."
"But, you see, that could be even worse. If he knew that I'd done it willingly and that I care about you, he won't let us stay like this. To love is to destroy," she recites and then blushes when she realized what that might imply. "Having…feelings…is a weakness, and he'll use that against us. He might even lock you back up again."
Alec pours of a cupful of water over his own head, and Clary lathers her hands with the bottle of shampoo he gives her. Reaching back, she works her fingers through his hair, drawing her nails in circles against his scalp. Alec shivers. "Then we'll leave."
"Hm?"
"We'll get out of here before he comes back."
"Alec…"
"You agreed that that there has to be a way around the wards."
"Yes." She remembers the discussion from weeks ago, when she told him that she wouldn't help him get out. She had been so certain then. But now she thinks about her brother and father coming home to find her actually enjoying the company of someone who hates them and everything they stand for. How long would it be before they realize she has begun thinking the way Alec has? They would not let him stay.
Would they even let him live?
The thought makes her stomach clench. If they have killed other Shadowhunter who have stood against him, what would they do to Alec when he is no longer "useful"?
Alec's soapy hands start on her hair. "Just think—"
"I can get you out," she says. "I have an idea of what keeps the wards in place. And there have to be plans for them somewhere around here."
"You mean 'us,'" he says. "We'll both get out."
"I can't come with you."
His fingers still on the base of her neck. "Yes, you can. They'll know you helped me escape."
"They won't hurt me," she says but doesn't completely believe it.
"I'm not leaving without you."
"Your family needs you."
His hands drop into the water. There's shampoo in Clary's eye, and she rubs it away. Finding the discarded cup, she fills it and rinses her hair until it's heavy and slick against her back.
Alec's fingers catch her chin and turn her face back toward him. "Come with me."
When she doesn't say anything, he kisses her softly. It's more imploring than any of the other kisses he's given her tonight.
"You can meet them." He says without pulling back. "You can go to Alicante, and New York, and anywhere else you've ever wanted to go. You don't have to help us fight if you don't want to."
Clary feels that the bathwater has gone very still and that Alec's words are the only thing moving. "I don't know how."
"I'll help you."
"Why?"
His hands find her hers beneath the water and link with them, palm against palm. He brings their joined right hands to his mouth, kisses her rune—the one Mark all Shadowhunters bear—and draws her firmly against him. They lie like this until the water has gone cold, and then together they emerge.
AN: Thank you for reading. And I hope you don't regret taking a chance on rare!pair. :)
Maggie, if you don't like it, lie to me and say that you do. lol.