I may be without internet for a great while, and this is something for you in case I don't get to update BLIND before I leave. Sorry. I've got to go, guys.

I didn't think that they really understood. They didn't grasp the concept, but they were trying so hard. Like fish hung up on a line out of water, desperate to stay alive. They just couldn't understand and it made me happy. They'd never really get it.

I didn't tell them it was me in some sort of grand swooping gesture, but I was sure they were figuring it out. I was the one who had come back to the institute covered in bruises and blood (and bite marks), telling them that a den of demons had been discovered. Not too many, just enough for the three of them to kill. I told them there were only three or four, but they'd been too powerful for me to win. According to my story, I was lucky to be alive and injured much worse than I actually was, unable to return to the field immediately, even with an iratze.

When they got there, they'd realize that there were more demons than my claim, that Sebastian was waiting for them in a way he'd promised to never wait for me. He was waiting to kill them. Jace and Clary deserved it, they wanted nothing more than the part-demon's death. Isabelle was more of an unfortunate loss, but Sebastian cared little for Shadowhunter lives anyway. It was the way he'd grown up. I had seen how cruel the self-proclaimed Holy Race could be, and I had to think that maybe they, as a group, did deserve to be massacred. I understood it. But then, I loved Sebastian. I'd always try to understand.

I'd let him kill my parabatai, my brother. He'd kill my sister, and his sister. I'd given him everything I could. I loved him. I really did.

I packed a bag full of clothes and filled a duffel bag full of weapons. Mom asked where I was going. Magnus is letting me move in, I told her. She never even knew we broke up. She hugged me, and told me I was still expected 'home' at the institute often. I knew I wouldn't be returning. But still, I lied.

I'd gotten so used to lying, my head was swirling with all of the words that I couldn't remember the reality of. My head was strange. It was like a party mix; when you stuck your hand in, tried your luck, you could never really predict what you would get and in what quantities. But that was okay, that was how I liked it. It made me unpredictable; it made me a madman. It made it easier to be cruel. But remorse had been in short supply for a while, as if I'd run out. There was an empty room somewhere in my mind filled with empty boxes of the stuff. My ability to care was lacking somewhat.

So I left the Institute for what was probably the last time (while alive anyway) with a smile on my face. I found the hole in the wall, the secret, that Sebastian had told me about what seemed like ages ago. I climbed through it, to the house that I'd been gradually been moving into. It wasn't too big, but it wasn't small, either. There was a kitchen and a dining room, a large bedroom, a training room, and two offices, one Sebastian used for the extermination of Shadowhunters and one he used for... well, for me. When I did something wrong. I kept away from that room when I could, because bad things happened there. Things I didn't like.

I went to the bedroom, leaving my bag of clothes on the slightly ruffled bed. I went to the training room, and put the weapons away in an order I knew Sebastian kept. He liked it when things like this were logical, made sense. After, I practiced with my bow. It gave me an opportunity to think about hunting, about the shadowhunters I'd strike down and the events happening with Sebastian. I wondered if he'd killed them yet. I hoped he didn't get any injuries. I didn't like seeing him hurt.

He only hit me and cut me today because he had to, for it to be convincing. He hurt me so much that an iratze would take a few minutes to heal me up and I could fake the rest. He had to, that's why he did it. I understood that. I loved him.

That's all I knew, even when he sent me back to the institute. He knew I'd die, that they'd kill me. I knew it, too. But it was okay. I watched my mother cry as the light drained from my eyes. I was in the middle of a Clave meeting, he'd had me walk right in. In a moment, after a lapse in which they forgot I was a traitor, I had too many weapons pointed at me. But the only one that mattered was the one I held, the knife he'd given me. I was a demonstration, with a blade sunk into my stomach. This was what he could do to shadowhunters. He hated using me for this, he loved me, but he had to. I would stir them the most, he said. I was perfect for it. He loved me, and that was all that mattered.

To be loved; it was all I'd ever wanted. He gave it to me with the knowledge that he'd someday be a great leader in such a dark world. In a world where no one understood, he'd lead them out of the dark.