His eyes were open.

His eyes were open and Alec Lightwood knew it, could feel his eyelashes flickering and flittering against his skin as he blinked once, twice, thrice. And yet...

And yet he couldn't actually see.

All of his other senses seemed to be working just fine — not that he'd had much time to properly test them, of course, but he was a shadowhunter and he could just tell that they were okay — which made it all the more disconcerting. It would have been fine (well, not fine, but...) if nothing was working properly, if his body was simply shutting down all at once, but this— this meant that something was wrong with his vision. And that was...

Horrifying. And that was horrifying. Especially, he reasoned, since not being able to see meant that he wouldn't be able to decide which men had bodies worthy of being inviegled; enticed via flattery, that is— the best form of persuasion since, well, ever, actually. After all, if he couldn't use his eyes to figure out whose abs were painted on and whose weren't, he was done for.

Alec, after all, had a reputation to maintain.

Except no, he didn't, seeing as everyone he knew just assumed that he was heterosexual.

Well, not everyone. Isabelle, his (younger, thank you very much!) sister, had decided that he was gay almost immediately after they had met Jace Wayland, his parabatai slash long-term crush; she was constantly making comments about how they'd look fabulous together whenever Jace wasn't around to hear her, which was annoying if only because it was never going to happen. And then there was Magnus Bane, who...

Well, he was very attractive.

But Magnus was a warlock — a powerful one, too, and aeonian; everlasting, eternal, whatever you wanted to call it, he simply could not die — and he himself a shadowhunter, so it would never work out. Which of course meant that, despite Isabelle's vehement objection, there was really no point in trying to decipher whether or not Magnus was at all interested in him (even if he was fairly sure that he was, because honestly, he looked right at him after declaring that Michelangelo was good in bed— and that had nothing to do with his sudden appreciation of the man's art, okay?).

And being a shadowhunter was an issue all in itself— how was he supposed to continue fighting monsters if he couldn't see them? Alec could only hope — could only pray to a deity he had never, and would never, believe in — that it was simply much too dark, that there wasn't anything to see.

Alec shifted slightly, or rather, he tried to. Wherever he was, it was... uncomfortable to the point of pain; he had never particularly liked small spaces, see, and this was quite literally the definition of a small space. His shoulders, although not particularly broad, were squished between the two sides of whatever box he was trapped in, feet pressed against one end and the top of his head against the other. Alec couldn't even move. (And something was resting just by his elbow, uncomfortably pressing into his skin, and he couldn't figure out what).

And even worse? He was fairly sure that he was currently in a coffin.

Six feet under ground.

Which was not, of course, something that shadowhunters were trained for. They were never supposed to get into this predicament in the first place — and oh god, what if the Clave found out? — and while there were runes that would be able to help, he didn't have a stele with him. Unless...

Unless the object pushing against his arm was, in fact, a stele.

But why would he have been buried with one? And, for that matter, how the hell did he even get six feet under? Alec hadn't been off killing demons — although, if he had been, they certainly wouldn't have been able to one-up him — but instead had been at the goddamn institute.

...Which meant that this was some sort of test.

But what had he done wrong, apart from— oh. He had broken the circle, had let the memory demon escape. And the girl had to save him; had to save Jace and Isabelle, his friends, his family. That being said, he didn't believe for a second that Magnus couldn't have killed it himself, if he had really wanted to. He was a warlock, after all, and was obviously far more powerful than that thing, and—

And far more skilled than Valentine's daughter, who hadn't even known about their world for more than, what, a few days?

(Why Jace was catering to her every whim and, in the process, putting them all in danger, he didn't know, but he was not pleased).

Alec shuffled himself over to the left, giving him just enough room to pull his arm upwards and grab the maybe-stele. The second he touched it — the moment his fingers landed on it — he knew.

This really was a test. And if he didn't manage to get out, if he couldn't remember the runes...

Alec was going to die.

And that was so like the institute, wasn't it? One mistake — and that's what it was: a mistake — and you're fucked unless you manage to survive something that nobody got trained for.

He wondered if Jace knew. Alec wouldn't have been surprised.

But Isabelle? No. He knew that she hadn't. They were, after all, bonded by blood, and that was so much stronger than any other bond.

Than a parabatai bond, too.

Alec took a deep breath, twisting the stele in his hand. He wouldn't be able to see what he was doing, if he was engraving the necessary runes properly— and if he messed up, who knew what would happen?

But he had to try. Alec, after all, didn't want to die— or at least not without knowing whether or not Jace had actually betrayed him.

Tightening his grasp, he pressed the stele into his left arm and began to carve. There were many runes he needed to burn into his flesh if he wanted to survive, especially since he had a sneaking suspicion that someone would have hardened the dirt over his grave to make things harder. The first two he decided he would need to use were endurance and fortitude runes, followed by speed and courage to insure that he'd be able to get out before his entire oxygen supply — which was rather limited to begin with — was gone.

It was, to say the least, painful.

The amount of times he wanted to just stop already was ridiculous, but he was unable to do so— an obvious downside of not being able to fucking see. But, finally, he finished, and the pain dulled to a faint buzz.

Taking a deep breath, Alec smashed his fist into the top of the coffin. Dirt rapidly poured down on him, but he paid it no mind; instead, Alec punched around the hole he had made, making it larger and larger until the entire roof of the coffin was in little pieces. He forced himself into a sitting position — which was rather difficult, considering all of the dirt — and, slowly, eventually, managed to stand up.

Alec wondered how he was supposed to climb when there was nothing to climb.

But somehow — likely due to the runes, really — he was able to get past the dirt and reach the surface.

The moment he got his fist through the last of the ground, Alec let himself relax. Finally — finally — he could breathe again.

After a second he attempted to punch at the surface again, but it was like the runes had stopped working all at once; he was exhausted, not even capable of moving another inch.

But then he heard someone calling his name.

"Alec," shouted Isabelle, racing over to where his hand was visible, "Oh my god, Alec, here— I'll help."

"Isabelle," Jace said, warningly, "you know that you can't do that."

"Oh shove off, Jace," she said, sounding angry. "He's my brother."

"There are rules—"

"—rules that you've never cared about before—"

"— that have to be followed," Jace concluded.

Isabelle frowned. "He reached the surface, Jace. That's all he had to do. It never says we can't help him after he's completed his task."

"But we're not supposed—"

"—I don't care," she said, and with a furious glower, drew a rune into the ground that immediately softened it. Her hand latched onto her brother's, and when Jace didn't object, Isabelle pulled him up.

"Thank you," Alec murmured, shaking the dirt from his hair before he pulled her in for a hug.

"Okay, you can let go now," Isabelle said after a few seconds, grinning all the while.

He turned to Jace. "Did you know?"

"Yes."

Alec was still for a moment, staring at him in something akin to shock. But it wasn't shock, not by a long shot; nothing the blonde did seemed to really surprise him anymore, hadn't since he'd practically dismissed their bond to protect the honor of that stupid little girl.

His gaze trailed over the shadowhunter's shoulder and landed on Magnus. He was off to the side, almost like he didn't think that Alec's reunion with those he cared about should have included him. Almost. It was more like... like he didn't want to greet him when Jace was there.

He wondered, then, if his parabatai had said something to him; had warned him away, told him to stop flirting, or god forbid, actually said that he wasn't interested.

Alec hoped not.

Mostly because he totally was.

It took him a second to realize Jace was still talking. In fact, he was in the process of calling him irresponsible, of saying he deserved the punishment, which come on; the shadowhunter was supposed to be his parabatai, not his mother. Still, Alec forced himself to look away from the warlock and pay attention to his so-called-friend's rant. (It was harder than he thought it would be, tearing his eyes away).

"Do you know what aposiopesis means, Jace?" he wondered, efficiently cutting his spiel off.

He thought about it. "No."

"Well, it's basically a sudden breaking off in the midst of a sentence due to either an inability or unwillingness to proceed," Alec explained, "And by my cutting you off — thus making you unable to continue — aposiopesis occurred."

Jace frowned. "Why should I care?" he inquired, "That has absolutely nothing to do with your—"

"I'm willing to bet," he continued, "that, were you Magnus, you would have known the answer."

"Well, probably," he agreed, "He's a warlock, remember? And like, a billion years old. Probably knows lots of weird words like that one."

"What about feminism?" persisted the shadowhunter, "Do you know what feminists are?"

"Aren't those the crazy women who are all anti-men and stuff?" he guessed.

"Feminism is— well, it's all about gender equality," he corrected, "How did you not know that?"

"Well, isn't that meninism?"

Alec fell silent. He wasn't sure why all of a sudden it mattered to him; the lack of knowledge harbored inside of Jace's head. But it did.

He wondered if this was what it felt like to no longer give a shit.

"But anyways, I don't know what you were thinking, breaking the—"

And Alec walked past him without another word, slamming his shoulder into the other shadowhunter's as he did so. Something inside of him fractured at the movement, broke off and turned into dust. He imagined that it was their bond; their parabatai bond. (Normally, such a severance could only happen if one of them died, were exiled, or became a downworlder, but— in that moment, Jace was dead to Alec, and wasn't that the same thing?)

It was painful, more than painful, but... he didn't so much as blink.

"Pretty boy," greeted the warlock once he got close enough.

He came to a stop. "Did you know?" The rest of the sentence rang in his ears — did you know like Jace did — but he refused to say it aloud, refused to acknowledge his betrayal. (But subconsciously he had already acknowledged it, hadn't he? Their bond was gone, and most likely irreparable; his tattoo fading rapidly).

"Not a shadowhunter," he pointed out, "Why would I have known?"

Alec accepted that immediately, believing him without a second thought. It was logical, after all, and— well, he had a feeling that Magnus would have gotten him out, had he known. "Michelangelo," he said, "Was he actually good in bed?"

"Excellent," corrected Magnus. He glanced him over, before slyly adding, "But I think you'd be better."

Alec tensed up. It was a subconscious response, a result of hiding his sexuality for far too long. But then, as he stared back into the warlock's unrelenting gaze, he relaxed, and said, "Probably."

"Definitely," Magnus smirked.

And Alec smiled back.

It was an actual smile — his first in what seemed like forever, perhaps since his parabatai bond originally formed — instead of just his typical grimace; the sort of smile that covered his entire face, pulling on all of his unused facial muscles and tugging.

It was a nice change.

Magnus seemed to agree, although he couldn't actually ask to make sure as the warlock was— well, both of their mouth's, to say the least, were currently indisposed. Alec had no objections, even though he was distinctly aware of Isabelle and Jace staring at them.

He simply didn't care.

(His eyes, after all, were not open).

I know that, canonically, something like this would never happen (even if Jace was a total ass to Alec in episode five) but this is not canon. And, in this realm of not!canon, where the Clave is way more psychotic then they normally are and Jace is a little shit, this is totally plausible.

It would also make his reaction to breaking the circle — when he walked off and was visibly upset — make a little bit more sense (even though that was a totally logical response to being outed against your will).