Song of inspiration: Jenny Was A Friend of Mine, The Killers

Note. This takes place before CoLS, and it goes into the book eventually. It is a multi-chapter, so be sure to tune in for more.

Ah, Beta'd by TechnicolorZebra!

WARNINGS: Sexual Content, Non-con, torture of various themes. Not for someone who triggers easily.

"Hope is a waking dream," -Aristotle

The first time it happened caught Alec completely off guard. He was exhausted, his eyes heavy and content to move like his lids were made of sandpaper, but still two or three hours away from finishing his patrol for the day.

He had hardly even gotten used to the idea that Jace was missing, much less that he was devoting all of his time to looking for the shadowhunter. He had been missing for just two days, gone with Sebastian's body, and his workload had increased sevenfold because of it. Two days filled with worry and so much patrolling Alec would worry about the state of his abused feet if he wasn't so damn tired all the time since it had happened. His stride was slightly hopeful, but otherwise empty as he made his way past the windows and streets of New York he had known for nearly all of his life. He had this sense of purpose, a tether to keep him to the gum-speckled cement, but it was fading to a tired hollowing of his body and heart that always followed the utter exhaustion he'd been experiencing for the last day.

Looking back, it wasn't actually all that bad, the first time. It was like a sample, a test, simple, not too extravagant, but it was still among one of the worst times due to the helpless feeling of not knowing. It was a moment he would loathe for the rest of his existence, whatever that ultimately amounted to. It was the beginning of all of this stupidity, this nonsense, the lying, the reawakening of the self hate that had been quietly festering inside of him. It had started with an unknown hand on his shoulder, pulling him back into a blur of motion his starched eyes could barely track and into a dim place he didn't recognize, his bow clacking to the ground outside of the place Alec would soon find to be more than slightly unpleasant.

But recognition wasn't overly important as he thrashed out, confused and uncertain and threatened, only to find himself pinned under Sebastian-no, Jonathan- immobile for a dazed moment. He remained frozen for a quick second as his slow and fried brain tried to process, before doubling his efforts towards maiming that fucker, escape be damned. This shit had killed his brother.

The small struggle, if the futile attempts could even be called that, ended with Alec winded on the cold cement floor, a small, but no less efficient, blade just inches from the underside of his chin. He was completely overtaken, breathless and dominated, at Jonathan's mercy-or lack thereof.

As his chest began to accept air once again, he gasped out, his mouth flopping for air like a fish dying from being out of water for too long. He managed to ask in a strained voice why he was there. Then, where Jace was. As he regained his breath, still stuck underneath Jonathan, he asked questions like he'd never done before. But Jace had never been missing before-well, not like this. So his mouth took on its own life because he just had to know if his brother was safe.

Where were they? What the hell had the demon-blooded shadowhunter abomination done with Alec's Parabatai? What was he going to do to Alec? What was happening, angel damn it?

He was met with a smile and a spat 'call me Sebastian,' which Alec met with firm opposition and was smacked for. But he didn't want to disgrace the dead shadowhunter, Verlac, though it might have been an odd thing for his mind to strike up at the time.

It took less than a minute, however, for Alec to realize he might need those stray thoughts, to keep his mind away, as if it would ever do that. He was a shadowhunter; he wasn't supposed to flee. The smack wasn't the only pain he'd be receiving, which took some time to understand. When firm hands hauled him up off the cold floor he gratefully couldn't feel too much through his gear, and shoved him against a slightly inclined wall, his wrists quickly being bound into frigid metal cuffs of a type he wasn't familiar with, that in itself making him weary as fear sickened his stomach with thoughts that he'd never get away, thoughts that he'd never get away from, that would be stuck in this torture endlessly with him and Jonathan, he wanted to run.

He was afraid of the screams he had managed to keep in control as a blade slicked across his skin, digging in and parting the seas of flesh as if it were the Red Sea. His breathing was erratic as Jonathan cut into his pale skin, the demon-blooded creature smiling in satisfaction as he left very real tracing of the runes Alec already had on the boy's arms, dark red and slick with seeping blood. It was all Alec could do not to scream, and sometimes he couldn't help but let a yell rip from his lips, as dirty of a taste as it left on his tongue.

Angel-descended blood ran down the dark grey wall, though in the dim light its drying form looked as hellish as Jonathan's undoubtedly was. When it got too thick, and Alec's vision had begun to blur as the lines cut deeper, bleeding more, Jonathan roughly wiped away some of the mess from Alec's arm so that the fading runes were less difficult to see. Alec listened, though clenched teeth and a fogging mind, focusing on the horrible words instead of his own body and its pains, trying to forget the useless thing, his pitifully begging eyes pleading with the demonic creature as the tale of why he was even here was told. What good exactly did he do the man whose hair used to be dyed dark, but was now reverted to its natural platinum, what was he worth?

Nothing, almost nothing, it seemed. Jonathan told Alec, in the way that villains often do, just how bitter the world had made him and what he had planned, more or less, to exact his own private revenge. Alec was a sort of prize, though the shadowhunter didn't quite know what he meant at the time. He was a taunt to dangle in front of the Clave, a silent unnoticed one-up for Jonathan's own distorted pleasure and Alec's expense. Jonathan promised to do things to the angel-blooded male that would never be forgotten. It's not like they'll really care about the fag if they find out, the rogue had smirked. And Alec found himself, looking back, agreeing, no matter how much it twisted his heart. They wouldn't care. He wouldn't be reproducing for them, and was nearly useless. Not even as good a shadowhunter as his younger sister, let alone Jace.

Alec didn't fully get it at the time, with his head in disarray from all the thoughts that cotton was shoving its way in front of to block out all ideas and the cool blade against his skin.

Those two hours felt like an eternity, too long to be simply what they were, too real to be a dream but too horrific to even be one of his nightmares. He hadn't been getting enough sleep to even have a nightmare. His runes were carved in, carefully, all up both of his arms. No new scars if he didn't bleed out, which had seemed likely and not entirely unwelcome at the time.

Then Jonathan lifted up his tight dark shirt with slight padding, and Alec began to panic-not more, please, not more-, praying to every angel he knew the name of that it would all just end there. That he'd be done, in one way or another. A stele flicked upwards in Jonathan's calloused hand, then connecting with his skin, just over his left ribs, and he could feel the hot burn of a rune being drawn against him in the chilling room.

Even as his shirt was let go of and flopped down, he could still feel a slight heat coming from the rune as it hid behind his gear. But it didn't concern him as much as it should have, especially not with that much blood dripping out of him in vast quantities. The stele then found its way to blood-slicked skin, and Jonathan marked an iratze on each arm to stop the flowing blood. It healed over the scar that had formed, lending Alec only the memory of having his skin ripped into like an artist going at their canvas and the cold feeling of losing blood.

It left a singe, a terror, in his mind, but nowhere else as anything that could resemble a scar faded into the ones left by previous runes drawn on used shadowhunter skin. Alec then found himself uncuffed, and before he could recover and fucking kill Jonathan he was pushed, stumbling, back into the street he'd been patrolling what seemed like lifetimes ago, his bow on the stretch of ground in front of him, where it had been left.

He was confused, panicking and more than a little scared. He hadn't gotten enough answers. He'd hardly gotten any at all. All that he learned was that Jonathan was fucked in the head, not that it wasn't already a given, and could appear out of nowhere-something he needed to tell the Clave. He'd found Jonathan, maybe that was worth something, even if he couldn't find Valentine's son again.

Working his way through roundabout city streets and back to the institute, Alec ran off adrenaline, irritably waiting for Church to slowly lead him to Maryse. She was the only adult Clave member at the institute right now, not patrolling, besides himself. She needed to know. They all did. The cat did, eventually, get him to his mother, much to Alec's relief.

The desk Maryse sat behind seemed to separate them too much as Alec scooted closer, his thankfully still functioning body seeking out her warmth. He needed to tell her. He needed to tell her now. They were all in such danger, really, it was ridiculous. If Jonathan could just appear... What if he'd taken Izzy? Or Magnus? Dare Alec, think it, Clary? He really needed to tell her, so that everyone would know and they could figure out how to protect themselves.

But when he opened his mouth to tell her, he found himself babbling about the weather and meaning it, getting sidetracked and talking around the subject, everything he wanted to say replaced by a comment on how grey it was that day or how he wished it were just a little bit warmer. Small talk, nothing of any value to him or her. He found her becoming less and less amused, not that she had been to begin with, but soon she was yelling at him to get out, you still have another hour of looking for your brother, and nothing he was trying to say was being said. Just useless things about cumulus clouds. Exasperated, with exhaustion creeping up on him, Alec pulled up his shirt and just hoped that it would work.

She couldn't see it, the thick black swirling lines drawn over his left ribs that he couldn't quite identify. But as it clicked into place, he realized, of course she couldn't see it. The rune itself was probably forbidden, old and mostly forgotten.

She couldn't see it, and he couldn't talk about it.

It was all he could do to stop himself from doubting his sanity with a curse like that etched into his skin. With a rune only he could see, a tale he could never speak, was what made it an illusion and yet so opaque. Everything about it was only real to him. It was a rune of silence, condemning him to secrecy. This was his, his curse to handle alone and unspoken of. He was so, so screwed.

It made him so uncertain. He pulled his shirt back on and left the Institute, as Maryse demanded, and he found himself struggling over the city, his dead nerves set aflame post-mortem, desperately trying, but faltering too often to connect to reality. All he could feel was hopelessness and fear as he dragged his phone out of one of the pouches on his belt, and took a moment to call Isabelle before he picked back up on his patrol route, a glance over his shoulder as he made sure there wasn't a Jonathan there to leap out and dig blades and horrible runes into his skin.

It was just him, his glamour and stragglers in the darkening night illuminated by the sick glow of city lights neglected once too many. He grew, steadily, with the occasional roar of desperation, more worried as her phone rang out with no reply, no pick-up. What if she was tied to the strange cement room that could appear out of nowhere, in the same position Alec had been in less than a half hour ago? She must have been scared out of her wits, at the mercy of the man she couldn't stop from killing her youngest brother. She must have-

"Alec? Why are you calling me? Did you find him?" The eagerness was plain in her voice, though it was muddled with tiredness, even if she'd only been on her shift for seven hours at that point. She didn't sound like she'd been hurt in any way, besides maybe the usual patrol thing that Alec trusted her to handle, even if it made him worry a little bit. No Jonathan. She was safe, at least for the time being.

Alec could feel some of the tension leave his stiff body as he explained that no, Jace hadn't been found, he was just checking in because it was nearing the end of his shift. He felt the overwhelming urge to see her, just to make sure, to check, but he held it back, settling for an essentially useless conversation to her, but one that meant the whole shattering world to him at the time. He would come to miss little conversations like this.

As he kept on his designated streets, which was basically half of New York City, he passed men and women with tin cans and rags for clothing, hopeful and sometimes sunken eyes, but his mind wandered to Magnus. Not in any relation to the beggars who would just shoot his money up their arms, but because he was worried and he needed to think about something other than what had happened, and that maybe, just maybe, he was going nuts, and he liked thinking about Magnus. It was... settling. And after the... Jonathan thing, as he decided to call it in his head, he wasn't sure he wanted to go back to the Institute where Maryse would be at the end of her rope for him. Besides, he wanted to be with Magnus, have himself wrapped up in his warlock, a warm and loving body holding him tight. Maybe Magnus would be able to see the rune, though he doubted it. Angel, he just wished he could tell someone. How dangerous it all was.

Jace and Jonathan weren't necessarily together, at least not that he'd seen, unless Jace had hidden away in the shadows or was off somewhere else, locked up behind partying metal bars dancing to different beats. Which was possible, not that he'd like to think about it. So he thought about the good times with Magnus, as they were less about shadowhunting than the rest of the good memories with his family. The warlock had done so much for him, and was back at his flat, trying to decipher a lost language and just help, free of charge. He thought about how awkward their first kiss was, how scared he'd been. He thought about their first public date and how nervous he was. He thought about idly watching television with the warlock, trying to conjure up the best of times. It worked, mostly.

Despite the institute being his home for nearly his whole life and his entire shadowhunting career, when he was finally done with his sixteen hours of patrols, exhausted in every disgustingly pathetic meaning of the word, he found his weary feet leading him to the flat he had only recently gotten a key to. Back to the man who introduced him to, and kept him interested, in a love more than merely platonic or built upon the foundations of the most carefully reckless measure. He found himself back with the warlock, who couldn't see the rune, who was nearly as tired from his research as Alec was, but still fucked the shadowhunter's strained body when he begged for it because the blue-eyed man needed, in one of his too-often moments of weakness, to be sure that something was tangible, real, before falling asleep for his allotted seven hours, then he had to get up for yet another grueling patrol that had just started whistling a new, more dangerous, tune.

The warlock raised an eyebrow as Alec began to talk about the weather on accident while trying to explain about Jonathan, likely assuming it was the lack of rest. Alec wished that Magnus had gotten it, or known something was majorly off, but he couldn't resent the man he loved for it. Alec surely wouldn't have gotten it, and it hurt, stupidly, that everyone was so ignorant when it wasn't even a one-way game of blame.

In the morning after, he was gone again with a shower and a kiss to go with the anxiety that was curling up like a bundle of hateful nerves in his chest, telling Magnus to be careful in a tone that the taller of the two didn't quite understand. But that was okay, as long as Magnus promised, and he did, after a slight hesitation. So Alec took off to his patrol of the Big Apple alone, Isabelle going with Clary as the red head was questioned by the Clave, something Alec couldn't envy her for.

They'd be going over what he'd already heard at their first interrogation, her recollection of what really happened at the lake in Idris, and he doubted it was untrue. Especially not with the Mortal Sword coiled in her grasp and the entire Clave bearing down on her with harsh eyes and lashing criticism that he was nearly familiar with after the past few weeks. Though she probably wouldn't have as much of a problem with it, not with all the attention she always got. Not that Alec wanted that attention to fall on him.

He was on edge throughout that entire day, his bow held tightly in his clenched fist as his knuckles turned white, and an arrow easily accessible at all times. He couldn't frighten away the downworlders who would see him though the day by having his bow ready at all times, but the apprehension clear on his face and arrow-happy twitching fingers probably still succeeded in that aspect. He nearly shot a cat as it crawled through an alleyway, surprising him, only managing to divert his aim at the last second, the head of the marked metal leaving a burn on the green dumpster it hit.

Jonathan didn't come back for him, not that day, letting him stew in his own consuming paranoia. When Alec collapsed into bed with Magnus, after calling his mother to say he wouldn't be coming back for the night, he began to wonder with his overworked brain if maybe he was safe. Maybe he had imagined it all. The only evidence was a rune that only he could see, and a story that he couldn't tell.

He had begun to think that, curled up with his warlock, nothing could touch him. That they'd find Jace and everything would be fine, that it was all just a bad dream that he wouldn't have to relive again. He was so stupid about it, too. He was almost relaxed, as much as he could get while patrolling, when he was once again pulled backwards into hell.

He wasn't fast enough with his bow, stupid, and it clattered to the ground as Jonathan smashed it away from his too-loose grip, the Lightwood only briefly grateful that the fugitive hadn't snapped the instrument in two. Though it was no easy feat, Alec didn't doubt that Jonathan could have done it, leaving him without his preferred long-range weapon.

Then he was cuffed to the wall again, kicking and hitting as much as he could but mostly just serving to make Jonathan more violent. But it was harder to breathe, harder to see than the last time, as the room clogged up with smoke. There was a sparking fire, just smaller than one of the old school desks they had had at the institute, stuffing up the room and burning away the dreary coloring of the cement floor. It was hotter than last time, but not in a good way, as it plucked at Alec's lungs, jeering at them and laughing as his breathing became shallower as he adjusted to the room.

The dark haze blurred the air, thickening it, but it didn't accumulate, leading Alec to believe that it was escaping to somewhere he couldn't quite locate. He had enough air, though just barely, and Jonathan's grin made his stomach begin to ache with unpleasantness that was more than physical as his mind tried to devour itself, conjuring up all of the worst possibilities and ideas that Alec had never known he could even think of. He really wished this wasn't happening.

Alec was shocked as Jonathan's hands went to his belt, but as soon as he kicked out he found himself dizzy and trying to remember exactly what was going on over the pounding in his head. When he finally figured it out, he watched his belt skid across the floor from Jonathan's hand, gone with all of the weapons and possible life lines he wouldn't be able to use with the cuffs anyway. He was stuck, so fucking stuck and trapped in as the traitor pulled his dark pants down to bunch around his ankles, and for a nerve-crumbling moment he feared that his underwear and complete dignity would be following them, along with any pride he still had left.

But to Alec's relief, Jonathan turned away from him, smirking as he walked away from the New Yorker's bare legs, nearing the toxic fire and pulling on what appeared to be a thick grey glove. The platinum-haired boy leaned down to the fire, reaching around the base for something that made Alec's eyes widen in horror as he recognized the orange-red heat that clung to the metal surface that had previously been engulfed in the fire. It was something he had wanted no part of.

Oh Angel, he had thought, hoping it wasn't true. His skin crawled in a futile effort to get away from the heat, from the impending contact that he knew was inevitable with the vengeful madman holding a blazing stick of metal in his hand. Jonathan walked back to him, gaze settled on pale legs that shifted and flexed in an effort to get as far from the scorching heat as they could. Nonononononononono- "It'll leave a mark," came his desperate voice, or worse yet, "Please, don't, please," he had begged. Maybe then they'd finally see the truth? The Clave. Maryse. Magnus. See what Jonathan was doing, what he was capable of. Or assume it was always there. Wasn't there something, anything, that could stop it all?

It came nearer to his recoiling flesh, nononononononononono, his useless pleas shoving out every other thought, filtering away anything not related to the pain he was expecting to experience in his buzzing brain, and suddenly his mind went blank as he gasped for air, tears he refused to shed leaping to the corners of his eyes. He'd accidentally set his arm on fire, once, in one of Isabelle's kitchen experiences gone horribly wrong, but that had been quick, a flash of shitshitshitshitshit and then it was over, leaving only a bit of pink skin after an iratze had been drawn over the scabbing wound. It had gone away not too long after, though it always left Alec with a memory of acute pain and a reminder to stay away from the kitchen when Izzy was around. This, though, was nothing like that. It didn't make him think that that pain had been nothing, but Alec's previous scale of pain began to crack, something that would eventually shatter completely.

It didn't go away as he tried to pull away, it didn't stop, just left him gasping for barely-there polluted air as his back arched in an explosion of shocks that lit his head on fire, sending adrenaline through him at twice the useless speed, whiting out his vision.

He would like to have said that he kept quiet, that he didn't scream, but he honestly couldn't remember. He didn't know. He might have been crying out, flailing from his restraints and being a pathetic excuse for a shadowhunter. but he couldn't remember. He went blank, at some point, everything blurring, and let his body shut off his mind with one last whiff of burned flesh and the blazing bar pressed to the inside of his knee, singing the skin, obliterating muscles as it dug into his calf. How could he have thought, for a second, that this wasn't real? When it was literally burning itself into his body? How could his sense of reality become so warped?

Though, as his mind wrapped itself away in some far corner of the Earth, he wondered if he'd wake up. This was a dream, wasn't it? It had to be. The entire idea was ludicrous. It just... couldn't be real. He wasn't this weak. Jonathan wouldn't be focusing on him, the wallflower, like this.

An iratze brought him back to himself, and he realized that Jonathan had let him burn out while the fire was extinguished, only then pushing the rune on him. Then he found himself sitting on the cold, hard ground of a New York alleyway exactly where he'd been picked up. He let his eyes slip closed, only for a moment, with his bow lying next to him and his belt scattered a dumpster away.

He woke up five hours later as his phone buzzed with Magnus's connection. He picked it up and groggily explained that he was late because he got side tracked, or something, but all the warlock really wanted to know was if Alec was safe. It had been another long day, for the both of them, and Alec was relieved to hear the warlock's voice. To know that he cared, even if he didn't know everything, even if Alec couldn't tell them. But then, Magnus had always kept his own secrets under lock and key.

So he made his way up, and eventually got to Magnus's apartment after picking up his battered things. They were both exhausted, and the air was cold but Alec couldn't bring himself to sleep under the warm covers. Instead he put on thicker pajamas, noting that there were hardly marks from the poker. He'd lied to Jonathan, and it hadn't helped.

The memory dug into his mind, and every time he got just a little bit heated his head would spin into a panic with a difficult return to manage unnoticed. He almost wished Magnus would notice, say something, but how was his boyfriend to know? They both had a lot going on, and Magnus was working so hard, unpaid, because Alec had asked him to. So Alec slept, more or less, on Magnus, separated by the covers but Magnus's arm still wrapped around him just enough for comfort.

It was that arm that woke him four hours later so his screaming wouldn't wake the neighbors.

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