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Chapter Text

Alastair had told Cordelia that he’d learned to fill his father’s bottles when he was ten, but in reality, it wasn’t that simple.

He hadn’t just woken up one morning with the dawning understanding that this was something he should do. He learned slowly, not all at once.

It was interesting, really, the flashes that he had of his father when he was very small. A warm and dry hand holding his, sticky masghati still sweet in his mouth as Elias held him walking through the Persian markets of Tehran. His smile as he’d seen Alastair hold Cordelia for the first time, her red hair soft against her small head. A quiet lullaby with Alastair on his knee, his voice deep and full. A loud, joyful laugh.

There had been nothing dark in Elias Carstairs, then.

But those days were long past. Because something broke in him before Alastair could even notice it.

The first thing he noticed was the clunkiness. He was around eight, then, and walked to his mother to inquire about it. “Why is father walking so loud?” He’d asked, and Sona had shushed him. He thought later that he must have looked sad, because she wove him a story of their family in a parallel world, stumbling through recesses of darkness, on some emboldening tale of adventure and action. And Alastair drank in every word, held his mother’s fantasies in his mind.

Subconsciously, maybe he knew that he would one day need them.

So for years, Alastair did nothing but watch Elias Carstairs stumble about. He had a keen eye, and he was a fast thinker. He knew that his father was a drunk, but it never seemed a problem to him; he was just unsteady.

And if Elias snapped at him or acted like an overgrown child… well, of course, there was always a way to excuse him. To rationalize. Alastair was very rational.

Cordelia noticed nothing, of course. Alastair reasoned that she must be too young to remember his hands warm and dry.

Alastair held onto those memories, desperately, because he hadn’t had his father in what seemed like years. What seemed to him like his whole life.

And then, like a surprise coup in the night, he got him back.

No matter how much time passed, Alastair could always hear Elias’ voice in his mind. “Esfandiyār,” he said. “Come here.”

Alastair did. He loved his Persian name, and he loved that Elias used it. He'd loved hearing his father read to him from the Shameneh as a boy, loved the comfort of his voice as he once remembered it. “Sit by me,” Elias told him.

His voice was low and somehow sharp. The razor edge of Cortana rather than the mercy blade’s dull veneer. “Do you know what the problem is here?”

Alastair didn’t understand why the sharpness in his tone was also wobbly, but that was beside the point. “No,” he replied simply. “What is the problem, baba?”

“The problem is that I can never have enough.”

Even without ever having spoken of his drunkenness, Elias seemed to understand that Alastair required no further explanation. It was clear what he was talking about. “Sorry,” Alastair said, hoping that he sounded sympathetic. It was a challenge; he mostly was wondering why Elias had decided to make their open secret into common knowledge.

“Don’t be sorry,” Elias said. “Help me.”

“With what?”

Elias glanced over at Alastair out of the side of a blue eye. Alastair didn’t know many things, but he was never jealous of those eyes. They didn’t have the depth that his mothers’ dark ones did, a depth that both he and Cordelia had inherited from her. And now, they looked even more shallow. Cold, like a glacier that would never and could never melt. “Your mother,” he said simply.

“Mādar?”

“Yes.” He closed his eyes, apparently pained by the light, and moved to hold his head. “She mustn’t know how much I… she is unhappy with me, you see. She checks… the bottles.”

“Oh,” Alastair said. There seemed to be nothing else he could say.

Elias nodded, still looking terrible. “Can you fill them?”

“Fill them?”

When Elias spoke again, his voice was loud and sharper than it had ever been. “The gin bottles,” he snapped.

And something inside Alastair broke.

His bāba had never used that tone with him before; no one ever had. And it was angry and his heart beat faster and “okay,” he said. “Just this once.”

“That’s my boy,” Elias said, and ruffled Alastair’s hair before immediately passing out.

-

Alastair refilled the gin bottles that night, and everything seemed normal the next day. Well, normal save the fact that Elias didn’t emerge from his bedroom that morning, though Alastair was beginning to understand that this was likely going to be a repeat event.

“Is bāba okay?” Cordelia asked. “I was wondering because…” She mimed Elias’s stomping. It would have been funny in any other situation, Alastair decided, as his eight-year-old sister put her arms out to her sides and purposely walked as clumsily as possible.

“He’s finally turned into a giant parsnip, as all sane and rational people knew he one day would.”

Cordelia glared.

“I think he’s fine, now,” Alastair said, the ghost of a smile passing over his face. “Don’t trip over your skirts, Layla. Think how awkward it would be to have your fat muddy footprint on the hem.”

“But why do you think he’s like that?” Cordelia asked. “No one else I have met walks like that.”

Alastair shrugged. “Perhaps he’s possessed.”

“Oh, do you think so? How horrible.” Cordelia shuddered.

Amused, Alastair chuckled. “You’d best train your hardest when you get your Marks so you don’t get possessed, too.”

-

A week later at Cirenworth, Elias approached Alastair again. “You haven’t been filling my bottles up,” he accused. “You said you would, and you haven’t been. And now your mother is mad at me.”

Alastair scratched his head, confused. “I did fill them.”

“You’re a liar,” Elias snapped, and Alastair felt his heart drop to his stomach. “You lied to me. You said you’d help me, but you didn’t help me. Why did you say that?”

“I filled the bottles up when you asked me to.” Alastair’s voice was quiet.

Elias looked at Alastair with glazed eyes, but something was different than it had been a week ago. Something had changed, because Elias wasn’t tired now. The headache was gone, and rage had been left in its wake. “Esfandiyār,” he said, his tone filled with something he couldn’t identify. “You have to know better than that. You’re not as stupid as you look. You must know better than that.”

“Than what?” Alastair heard his own voice crack. He would be embarrassed if his heart weren’t beating wildly, painfully, as though it were about to leap out of his throat. He stuffed his fist into his pants pocket and clenched it tightly, as though that alone would keep his internal organs intact. His hand shook hard, and he was powerless to stop it, and he had never felt so small before. “What must I know better than?”

“Did you really think this was a one-time thing?” Elias exploded, and Alastair took a step back. “Did you really think that ‘just the once’ would be good enough?” His voice rose, obviously to mock Alastair’s, and he took another step back. “Why are you moving away? Damn it, Esfandiyār. Stop moving!”

Suddenly, and with no warning, he grabbed the glass on the desk in front of him and threw it at the ground. It shattered right in front of Alastair’s socked feet, the shards barely missing him.

Alastair stopped moving and assessed Elias and the jagged, broken glass, confused and feeling something like grief.

“There you go,” Elias said. “So, here’s what’s going to happen. Every night, and I mean every night, you’re going to go to the kitchen, and you’re going to make the bottles even. No one will ever notice. Do you understand? Your mother, she will never know. Katayoun, she will never know, because if she does…” his voice trailed off. And Alastair understood: Cordelia could not know.

Because if she knew, there would always be the threat of that glass.

Years later, when Alastair remembered that night, he realized that it had been a methodically-orchestrated turning point in his life. Alastair’s heart shattered along with the glass, leaving him as sharp and broken and useless as the shards he’d swept up long after his father had gone to bed.

From then on, he always filled up the bottles, no questions asked.

He couldn’t forget, because the looming mental image of Cordelia’s skirt filled with those razor-sharp pieces.

-

Alastair grew wary of Elias, but Cordelia only seemed to love him more than ever before. Which, Alastair realized, made sense. He was nothing but loving to her, a gallant gentleman carrying her on his big shoulders. If his stride was uneven, Alastair only noticed because he had trained himself to; after a few months, it was second nature to identify how drunk Elias was.

(There was never a question of if he was inebriated; the only question was by how much.)

He took Cordelia out to the field to pick the blackberries that Alastair so loved; he went out into town with her regardless of what city they lived in. In the course of just one year they had gone from Tehran to Paris to Toronto and back to Constantinople. And then they had gone to Cirenworth, a safe haven in Elias’s native British countryside.

Cordelia loved Elias, and Elias loved her.

Which, Alastair reminded himself, was as it should be.

He was glad that she never saw him as Alastair did. Cordelia didn’t need the mental image of Elias throwing things angrily in the middle of the night for Alastair to pick up after his tantrum had finished and he’d fallen asleep.

Alastair hated those nights, but he never cried. Because if he did, he would never have time to stop before the next crisis.

So cleaning became methodical, second nature.

He wished so much that he could be someone else, someone more cutting, someone with the grit to stand up and say that enough was enough.

But even though he knew everything, he was still only eleven.

And there was nothing he could do.

-

The nights when Elias went out were always the best, until they were always the worst.

By the time he got his first Marks, Alastair knew the routine. Cordelia would come to Alastair to say good night; they would squabble good-naturedly. Alastair would call her a menace and put her to bed before steeling his shoulders and going back out to the couch. If Elias were still there, he would go back to his perfectly-tidy room, the one thing he had control over. He would sit there reading a book, or the mundane newspapers that his idol Charles Fairchild so admired. And he’d glance over at his most prized possession whenever he liked, a dagger that he had hung on the wall. The inscription read, I wanted so much to have a gleaming dagger, that each of my ribs became a dagger.

Alastair hoped that his ribs would turn to daggers, because if he were called, he would have to go battle. Not demons; never demons. Only Elias and his terrible routine shouting and stomping and throwing and wall-kicking.

But on the nights that Elias was gone, Alastair wouldn’t need to live with that worry. He could sit on the couch with his philosophy books and take up as much space as he wanted. He could make it through the night without having to touch the gin bottles that made him sick to just look at. And Elias would come home at midnight, and Alastair could go to bed, no problem.

But one hot summer night, Elias didn’t come home.

At 1 AM, Alastair realized that something was wrong.

His mother couldn’t well leave; even if it were safe for her, a woman would never be allowed into a bar in England. Especially not a woman wearing a roosari and speaking in accented English. And, besides, being left alone without an adult might scare Cordelia if she woke up, so Alastair had no choice.

He drew his jacket around himself and set out to the bar that he knew Elias preferred.

-

When he arrived, Alastair found that the bar was nothing like he had imagined. He’d thought that everyone would have fallen asleep, walking around clunkily but harmlessly like Elias had in the early days. That didn’t describe most people’s reality. Most of the patrons sat around, chatting and chipper but harmless. Some even had food. But Elias…

Alastair spotted him sitting at the bar, a glass in his hand. He was still, so still, as he looked down at the gin he was holding.

A man at a nearby table had turned to stare at Alastair, and his friend gawped right with him. Alastair scowled at them, resolving to snap his teeth in their direction if it continued. But they looked away, so he strode up toward his father and tapped him on the shoulder.

His stomach was tight, so tight, and his heart was fast. “Bāba? Are you alright?”

Elias jumped and whirled on Alastair. “Esfandiyār? What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to see that you were alright.” Alastair made his voice light and airy, as though he were trying to comfort a scared animal. “You never returned, so I-”

“Bloody right I never returned,” Elias said loudly, obviously very drunk. People were turning to stare again, and this time Alastair felt that they were unfortunately right to do so. “I never came back because there’s nothing to come back to.” Elias enunciated each word, biting them out cruelly. “Layla’s asleep. Your mother just natters on and on about my personal choices, and you.”

“I what?”

“You worthless little fool. You think I want to come see you?”

Alastair ignored the pressure behind his eyes, but it didn’t go away. It hurt, when your parent called you worthless. “I didn’t want you to be dead,” he snapped. “I thought something had happened to you, that you were passed out in a gutter or dead on the streets of Soho, and I was worried, and-”

The next moment stretched out for what felt like a lifetime, worse than the moment that Elias had thrown Alastair’s heart to the ground when he was ten and watched it shatter. Because this time, something blunt hit the side of his face hard, and he felt his skull rattle around in his head as his hand shot instinctively to his cheek.

It was tender.

He stood, staring at Elias, whose open hand still was still floating mid-air, his palm facing away from the cheek that he had not hit.

All the other patrons were staring, but no one did anything.

Alastair wiped his eyes. “Let’s go home.” His voice was steady, practiced, forced.

Elias sneered. “Fine.”

And they went.

-

Alastair hadn’t realized that he’d forgotten to put on an iratze until the next day.

“What happened to your face?” Cordelia asked Alastair then. “It looks like you must have fallen very hard.”

Alastair ruffled her hair. “That’s right,” he said. “Only makes me worry for you, though, seeing as you’re far clumsier than I could ever be.”

“Did you trip over a tree root?” Cordelia looked very concerned.

“No,” Alastair said. “I’m a fully-Marked Shadowhunter. I fought a demon.” He paused. “Though it wasn't quite a wild little thing like you.”

She stuck out her tongue at him.

Alastair never would lie to Cordelia, besides the one big lie that her father was a horrid drunk.

He hated that what he’d said was true.

After all, some demons wore human faces.

And he was glad that Cordelia had stopped her line of questioning before her curiosity overtook her naivete, but he couldn’t help but hold his breath whenever he remembered the close call.

He never forgot to put on an iratze again.

-

Alastair didn’t think that Elias remembered hitting him that first time, but it didn’t stop him from doing it again the next time he’d tried to get him to slow down.

Even when Elias didn’t strike him, he couldn’t count the number of nights that he had dragged his father back to a carriage in the middle of the night. Sometimes he would yell and scream obscenities, creating an embarrassing scene. Those were the nights that made Alastair feel wild and mad, prepared to catch a hand midair. Other times, he’d be blacked-out deadweight that Alastair needed three strength runes to carry. Two iratzes would come later to calm his aching muscles.

Both modes of Elias Carstairs had their benefits and downsides.

Alastair had to tell himself that his father didn’t enjoy the violence. He just deemed it necessary, since Alastair was keeping him away from the thing that he loved the most: the bottle in his hand.

It wasn’t like he ever set out to smack him unprompted. He’d read about boys whose fathers beat them for fun. What was one measly blow every few weeks in the face of that? Was being shoved away all that bad, even if Alastair found bruises on his shoulders the next day?

No, he reasoned, in that rational way that he liked to. It wasn’t that bad. And it was for Cordelia, so she could have the happy childhood that Alastair wished he had lived. But he was an adult now, a tired, jaded grown man in a twelve-year-old body that always ached somewhere no matter how many healing runes he used.

Still, that didn’t stop him from feeling what Alastair would only name to himself in that place between sleep and wakefulness as ‘terrified.’

-

“Esfandiyār,” Elias called one night, and Alastair came. He’d grown to hate it, his Persian name, because no one but Elias ever used it. Even as he loved his mother tongue, the Ghazals that he sang to himself, and the Persian songs on the piano that he played when Elias wasn’t around to complain of a headache.

He still hated that ‘Esfandiyār’ even more than he hated the dark features his reflection that people so often turned to stare at.

“What?” Alastair asked. His once-gentle voice had a razor edge to it now.

Each of my ribs became a dagger.

“You’re going to school in one week,” he said.

“School?”

“Yes.” Elias’s voice was final. “To Shadowhunter Academy in Idris.”

Alastair stood there dumbly. His voice simply would not come.

“You can go now,” Elias said.

Alastair didn’t need to be told twice.

-

He left one week later, hoping that Elias loved Cordelia enough to be kind to her.

He left one week later, a sigh of relief on his lips because finally. It was over.

-

Unfortunately, nothing was over. Because cruelty wasn’t a secret language that no one besides Elias Carstairs spoke. It was an omnipresent force, a blade hanging over Alastair’s head, ready to fall and impale him at any moment.

Alastair had gotten to the Academy by carriage, ready for his first day of school. He had a long, warm jacket that hung to his knees and a matching green hat that he was determined not to let get carried away by the wind. Hope clung to every part of his being; he’d never known boys his own age before. He’d never had even one friend. It had always been Alastair and Cordelia, Cordelia and Alastair. No one else would fit.

But now everything was about to change.

He got out of the carriage that Elias had hired to take him to Idris, and he glanced around. His hope turned to suspicion. All around him were boys his age, boys like him. Shadowhunter boys. But there were also their fathers, talking, catching up, laughing together, their undoubtedly annoying brats in tow as they moved through the schoolyard.

Alastair wove through the crowd alone, looking for a place to put his bag. No one would hold it for him, and he wanted to say his hellos to his new classmates.

But he was stopped mid-step by a much-larger boy, one he didn’t recognize. “Wow,” he said, his blue eyes gleaming. He was big; not just muscular, but also rather portly for a Shadowhunter. “Are you the Carstairs boy?”

Alastair raised an eyebrow. “Yes?” His voice was sharper than he’d intended. Maybe that was just the way he spoke now.

The boy let out a little chuckle. “Carstairs. You know Elias Carstairs, I presume?”

Alastair frowned. “Pardon, but who are you?”

Another student walked up to the first boy and clapped him on the arm. He was tall, too, and Alastair realized for the first time how small he was, how that even if he were grown inside, his body hadn’t grown to match yet. “Oh, Angel, Augustus,” the new boy said. “What are you doing here with this one?”

“He’s Elias Carstairs’ son,” the boy- Augustus- said. As though that explained everything. As though that’s all that Alastair ever was. “Genuinely cannot believe that he came here, Thoby.”

“Well, this has been quite the meeting,” Alastair said, “but I do believe I need to escort my bags to the dorms now. So if you two are quite all right on your own, I’ll be headed off.”

Thoby laughed. “Sorry, are you barking orders at us, now?”

Alastair said nothing, but rolled his eyes.

“Why aren’t you replying? Don’t you speak English?” Augustus asked, as though Alastair hadn’t just talked to him.

“I don’t speak whatever droll, mindless nonsense you’re spouting,” he said instead.

“Oh! The dove has teeth,” said Thoby. He turned to two more boys next to him, ones that Alastair recognized as his own age. “Tell me,” he said, gesturing to them. “Have you heard of the Carstairs?”

“Oh,” said one boy- Clive, Alastair thought that his name was. “I’ve only heard of the drunk. Oh, and I know of Cortana, their family sword.”

“Oh,” said the other boy next to him. “You know, I also know that the drunk has a son. Rosamund- that’s my sister- she says that the boy goes to fetch him from bars sometimes. Passed out in a gutter, with a thirteen-year-old dragging him round. Embarrassing, that.”

“I’d die of shame, if I had to be a Carstairs,” Clive agreed, and the other boy nodded.

“Useless lot. Besides Cortana, of course. I hear that its blade can cut through anything,” he said in a hushed tone.

“Anything but stupidity of this impressive magnitude,” Alastair mumbled, still trying to push by.

Clive raised an eyebrow and looked at Alastair, recognition flashing through his eyes. And, in that moment, Alastair knew that the Academy would be no place of belonging. It would be a second home, one of horrors and hate that Elias Carstairs would well approve of. “You’re the Carstairs boy,” he said. “Alastair?”

“Alastair Carstairs.” Augustus said the name like a curse. “Do tell me, did your father not love you well enough to name you more than once?”

“I think that’s just how other cultures name children,” said Clive, and Augustus laughed. Thoby clapped him on the hand and laughed.

Clive shoved Alastair then, hard. It hurt a bit, probably lightly bruised. The pain was nothing; it was only a humiliating reminder that he was nothing here.

In that moment, Alastair remembered the day that his father had thrown that glass by his feet, the way that he’d thought that his heart had been shattered so badly that he no longer had one to break. But the way that these boys were looking at him, and the way that his father’s name was on the lips of everyone in the courtyard, made him remember that there was still more of himself to lose.

“Still better than Clive,” Alastair bit out before successfully pushing past Augustus and speeding away.

-

Alastair had no idea where he would be staying while at the Academy, but he was unwilling to spend another second with Augustus and his friends. So he found a man he presumed must be a teacher.

He felt awkward as he spoke, though his voice was clear. “Um, where are the dormitories?”

The teacher rolled his eyes. “These are the dormitories.”

Alastair, feeling stupid, nodded. “Thank you.” He paused. “Where is my room?”

“How would I possibly know the answer to that question?”

Alastair thought that this was a reasonable response. So he wandered until he found an alcove where he could sit on his luggage and think.

Of course his father’s reputation preceded him; of course that miserable bastard’s legacy would follow Alastair wherever he went. Embarrassed, he covered his face with his hands. Fat lot of good trying to be nice did him. Fat lot of good having hope did for him.

What was there to hope for, anyway? Home? It was such an ugly word; it always had been such an ugly word. Because a ‘home’ was a trick, a lie that people told themselves to feel that they belonged somewhere.

-

Later, Alastair learned that he would be sharing a room with Piers Wentworth, and life did not improve.

“Don’t be a bother to me,” Alastair told him with a bite in his voice, “and I won’t trouble you.”

“You are troubling me already,” Piers said. “Why must you speak in that manner?”

“What manner?” Alastair glared daggers into his new roommate.

“As though you’re sucking on lemons more sour than any I’ve ever tasted.”

“Perhaps the sweetness of your company is lacking,” Alastair said in an even surlier tone.

He began to unpack his things. He perfectly folded his suits before placing them neatly in the wardrobe and brushed the dust off his drawers. Clearly, someone had forgotten to clean up the room, possibly for many decades. Alastair could stand nothing less than untidiness, that lack of control.

He removed his shoes from the bottom of his bag and placed them, along with his socks, in one of the drawers. His spare stele went onto the table alongside a small chain of daisies that Cordelia had given to him, crying as she confessed that she would miss him when he went away.

And he pulled out his book of written ghazals, placed it on his desk nightstand on top of his copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince, and sat down on the hard bed. Alastair assessed the space, then, and decided a deep cleaning would be necessary as soon as the deadweight was done messily shoving clothes into his closet.

By the Angel, he took forever.

But Alastair, determined to try to at least not make enemies with Piers, said nothing.

-

Alastair ate dinner alone that night. No one would speak with him. But he heard them whispering about Elias, and that was all he needed to hear.

How would he survive here?

-

Only a few days passed before Piers, who had barely spoken to Alastair since they had moved in, brought his friends over. Augustus and Thoby entered the dorm room, followed by Clive, as Alastair sat on his bed with a mundane newspaper. He’d heard once that Charles Fairchild, the future Consul, liked them, and now he read them for traces of demonic activity.

“What are you doing?” Clive asked, looking at Alastair. He’d been especially cruel, perhaps even more so than Augustus and Thoby. Alastair thought that it might have been his snide comment about his name. But he couldn’t regret that, not when- “Angel, are you reading a mundie paper?” He crossed his arms. “Are you not a Nephilim? That would explain several things.”

“The lack of observational skills you have is baffling,” Alastair said, holding up his right hand. He tapped the Voyance rune there with one finger, not meeting Clive’s eye as to show him how little he cared for the conversation.

“Lack of… Angel, this gets better and better.” He crossed over the room to Alastair’s desk and grabbed at something. Belatedly, Alastair recognized it as his ghazal book. “What is this?” He opened it in the wrong direction, clearly trying to read it left-to-right. It took everything in Alastair not to roll his eyes again. “What language is this?”

Alastair refused to dignify anything that Clive said with a response.

“He asked you a question, you know,” Augustus said too loudly.

“Color me surprised,” Alastair said. “I clearly am unable to hear your extraordinarily quiet voices.”

“Don’t be an arse,” Piers sneered, which Alastair thought was rich coming from any of these boys. “It’s a valid question.”

“It’s Persian,” Alastair said.

“What’s that?”

Alastair raised an eyebrow. He knew that he was quite good at raising eyebrows. “A language,” he said, deciding to treat Piers as the simpleton that he was. “Do you know of languages?”

“I do,” Thoby bragged. “I speak two. English and a few words of French.”

“Wow, tu sais clairement tout,” Alastair mumbled.

“Is that the Persian?” Thoby sounded suspicious.

“It’s French, you idiot,” Augustus told him good-naturedly.

Alastair rolled his eyes and went back to his newspaper.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, where are you from?” Thoby’s voice was still suspicious. “Is it Persia?”

“I live in Cirenworth,” Alastair said. “In England.” He paused. “You know this.”

“Yes, we do, because we see your father there. But then, might I follow up-”

“No,” Alastair snapped.

-

That night, he tucked his book of ghazals in the back of his desk drawer. He didn’t need more things that set him apart.

-

But despite his best efforts, he found himself unable to befriend anyone. Augustus seemed to be the king of the school; its emperor, even. It made sense, Alastair thought, considering that he was one of the largest, most boorish people Alastair had ever met.

Alastair was far from the only one that they mocked, but he was certainly the one that they mocked the most. Whether it was because he was an easy target, or because they didn’t like the Carstairs, or because they were jealous of the ever-illustrious Cortana, he didn’t know. It was probably a combination of the three, and the simple and devastating fact that he looked like none of the other boys here.

His only saving grace was that he was smart. He was quick-witted, and he was crafty, and he didn’t mind defending himself a bit. But the more that he snapped back, the angrier they got.

And one day, after a horrid winter break spent pushing Cordelia away for her own good, he went too far.

He’d commented on Clive’s stupidity, then, and expected that their acquaintance might end for the day. But instead, Clive had walked up to Alastair and tried to strike him.

Alastair was lucky that he’d had some practice with self-defense, then. Maybe that was something to thank Elias for, after all.

He blocked him, but Clive grabbed at his arm, hard. He dug his nails into the skin there and stared into Alastair’s eyes uncomfortably. There was something wrong with them, Alastair thought, as though his soul was so dark he was nothing more than a dead-hearted man walking.

He refused to pull his gaze away. Even if it was uncomfortable, he wasn’t going to let Clive win.

Eventually, once it was obvious that he had left a bruise, Clive let go of Alastair’s arm. He threw it down with great force, and rolled his eyes. “Stupid boy,” he said. “Don’t insult my high levels of intelligence. I am gifted.”

“A bit harsh of you, Clive,” said Augustus, and Alastair felt heat rush to his face. He had been so wrapped up in that terror he refused to name that he hadn’t noticed that he’d had an audience. “Consider that he may not have had the same opportunities as us, what with his father.”

Clive sighed. “You’re right, he agreed. “What a worthless little fool.”

Those words, Elias’s words from all those years ago.

“You worthless little fool. You think I want to come see you?”

The other boys all walked away, leaving Alastair alone in his bed. He wanted to bite something out back at them, but his voice didn’t come; his gaze wouldn’t even focus. So he sat there, dumb and numb as the group left him.

-

It only got worse from there. It was a downward spiral.

They’d learned that Alastair’s tongue was more cutting than theirs, his mind cleverer, so they’d decided to turn to force. Clive, apparently, had decided that his little trick had worked, and the other boys collectively found out that knocking Alastair about was the most effective way to break him.

He told himself that he’d never let his spirit be broken as his heart was. That he was Alastair Carstairs, that he would one day bear the sword Cortana, that he was bright and sharp and gleaming.

I wanted so much to have a gleaming dagger.

But in practice, it was harder. He was lucky that he had practice being sore, practice coping with brutish individuals that he was horrified to breathe the same air as. He was lucky to have iratzes; a mundane wouldn’t be able to handle it, he thought.

They found out what his ghazals were, and they tore up the book. That was okay; he didn’t care for them anymore, anyway.

And over a year of fighting, of anger, of beatings and tongue-lashings and bruises to remind him that he was a worthless little fool, he felt his spirit break.

Each of my ribs became a dagger.

-

There was another boy at the Academy that Alastair would periodically exchange knowing glances with. He was a mundane candidate for Ascension, and while Alastair didn’t know him well, he understood that they were alike in their station at school. The other boy didn’t have a clever tongue; he wasn’t particularly quick, and was in fact a bit slow. Alastair was fairly sure that words had been enough to break him, but he still felt sympathetic about it.

There were, after all, only two kinds of people at the Academy.

The bullies, and those that they bullied.

But sympathy was nothing. Not in the face of the steely, resigned rage pooled in Alastair’s gut.

“Care to speak a little louder?” Augustus was saying one day. “I can never understand what you’re saying. Like an annoying buzzing little fly, but… well, oversized.”

“He has sort of insectlike eyes, too,” Piers was saying. He shook his head sadly. “Fool.”

The boy in question said nothing, but his face was beet red.

Alastair hated himself so much as he walked up to Augustus and Piers.

If he was going to do this, he had to do it right.

He had to be irredeemable. Hopeless.

“What’s the point in mockery, Piers, when he’s almost certainly going to be as dead as his good old pet rat in a year? Only the worthy survive the Mortal Cup, you know, and if you think that this is a useful endeavor…” He trailed off. “We must define ‘worthy’ very differently.”

Augustus looked at Alastair open-mouthed. Alastair wanted to tell him that he looked like a bloated corpse, but that was not the game he was playing. Piers began to laugh hysterically, and Thoby followed. Clive Cartwright gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder. “There, now,” he said. “Finally, you’ve learned how to train your sharp tongue in the right direction.”

Alastair felt tears press against the backs of his eyes; he refused to cry. He would never, never cry.

It wasn’t worth it.

There were only two kinds of people at the Academy.

And Alastair could survive this, even if it meant losing himself.

-

The mundane boy dropped out of school the next week.

-

School ended shortly after that, and Alastair went ‘home.’ Elias orchestrated a scenario in which Alastair believed himself for a moment to be worthy of Cortana; he was not. And it was the worst moment, the one where he realized that he was not only a worthless little fool, but one who had failed to protect his sister. Because now that she held Cortana in her hand, Alastair realized that not another day would go by when Cordelia was not in danger.

-

Sometimes, at least, he felt a bit himself when he was with Charles Fairchild.

They had met briefly that winter. He was twenty to Alastair’s fourteen, fully grown and fully beautiful.

He was dangerous, and he was sharp, and Alastair had idolized him for years.

And he was everything that Alastair always knew he would be, in even more handsome packaging.

One day, Charles Fairchild kissed Alastair Carstairs desperately.

He was unsurprised to learn that he liked it. That he was one of the men that loved men.

-

Alastair wished that school’s restarting had been some kind of relief, but it wasn’t.

He had friends now, the friends that he had so naively wished for on his first day.

But those friends made every day a battle, left him fighting with his own conscience as he tried and failed to fall asleep on his hard Academy bed.

He said so many things.

-

“Careful, Thoby, you’ll step on the runt.”

-

“Lord, your spectacles are awful, aren’t they? And they clearly don’t work, since you’re too blind to understand that you’ve no power here.”

-

“Well, you know what they say about the Crosskills; they’re no better than their names in the end.”

-

“You worthless little fool.”

-

And the year went by in the blink of an eye, because it wasn’t Alastair saying those things.

It was someone else, wearing the skin and bone that Alastair had once worn and hated and discarded in favor of survival.

And sometimes, when his eyes snapped open in the middle of the night, he felt a little bit himself again. But if he wanted his Layla, and he wanted to sing, and he loved the piano, and he wished to admire his beautiful weapons, the yearning went away the second he closed his eyes.

Because Alastair Carstairs was gone, likely forever, and a monster was left in his place.

-

He stayed with Augustus that summer after he had graduated. With his hair dyed blond, Augustus seemed to have forgotten that he had ever hated Alastair, ever made fun of him.

Alastair tried to forget, too.

But it would never quite go away.

-

On the first day of his third year in school, Alastair Carstairs knew that he was a broken thing.

The world was black and white. His heart beat steadily. That pounding was reminder that he was alive, but his heart itself was a cold, grey thing still shattered across the floor at Cirenworth.

But then, for the first time, he saw color.

He saw Thomas Lightwood.

Chapter Text

Thomas Lightwood had always known that he wasn’t going to live to be six years old.

He didn’t think that he was supposed to know that; he was actually fairly certain that he wasn’t. But as he slipped in and out of consciousness frequently, and because he was so small, adults failed to hold their tongues around him.

He’d sometimes hear his father, Gideon, speaking to Silent Brothers in low, hushed tones after a visit. “My son is three,” he would say. Thomas suspected that Gideon thought his voice was low enough that he couldn’t hear him speak; maybe, since Thomas was three and small and sickly, Gideon simply thought he couldn’t understand. “You cannot give up on him. Not you too, Jem. You can’t.”

Thomas heard no response. Maybe he’d slipped into sleep and delirium again. Maybe the Brother simply was not projecting his internal voice into Thomas’s mind; maybe he thought it would be too cruel.

But before he could even understand what was wrong with him, why he was trapped in a sickbed with nothing but bone broth and water that he coughed up for company, he understood that this wasn’t cruelty.

This wasn’t anything.

This was an accident of birth.

Sophie, his mother, had said as much, crying in Gideon’s arms as they stood by an unconscious Thomas. “What am I to do without him?” Sophie would sob, her voice shaking and her breath coming out in gasps shorter than Thomas’s labored breaths. “Why must I lose him, so soon?”

“You mustn’t give up hope,” Gideon would say. Sophie would cry as though she didn’t hear him.

But Thomas, somewhere in between sleep and wakefulness, heard.

In those moments, when he wasn’t quite conscious yet, he knew in an instant that he was terrified. He didn’t want to die; he didn’t want to cause grief for Sophie and Gideon, or his sisters. So he had to hold onto Gideon’s declaration.

He mustn’t give up hope.

-

Sometimes, Thomas would be lucid.

In the beginning, those moments were few and far between. But when they came, he made the most of them. He was naturally quiet, but keenly observant. Even at four, he thought that he must notice more than most people because of the constant hushed whispers around him. If he wished for information pertinent to his illness, he must discern it for himself.

Because when Thomas was lucid, the world was too chipper.

“Thomas is awake,” his sister Barbara would declare, and Eugenia, Sophie, and Gideon would all come to his bedside. They lived in Idris, then, but the others visited London sometimes and came back with adventurous tales that they would let Thomas live vicariously through. They would talk with him about anything and everything, except for the terrible fact that their family was fleeting.

That Thomas only had a few months left.

When the fever crept back as Eugenia adjusted the pillows under his head, Sophie and Gideon would be sitting in the armchair beside his bedroom window. Thomas knew that this was am ephemeral moment of peace for his parents, that he should not inconvenience them with such a trivial thing as his routine face-flush and shaking legs.

But after a while, someone would always notice, and they would be back to the beginning.

With Thomas, delirious and determined not to scream, asking questions that no one in his nursery years should need to consider.

What kind of life would he miss out on? What would his parents feel, when he was gone? He hoped that they would forget him sooner rather than later. He comforted himself with the idea that they might. After all, death was simply part of the Shadowhunting life, even if crying that your eyes were falling out of your head at four was not.

But survival wasn't everything.

They could forget him. They would. Thomas forced himself to believe that. To have hope not for himself, but for his family.

That one day, they would be okay.

-

The days and nights blended together. Sometimes, he would hear his father frantically speaking to Uncle Will of a family curse. Thomas’s grandfather’s legacy. Thomas didn’t fully understand what a ‘legacy’ was, or what sort his grandfather might have left behind. He’d never even met the man.

But this was a topic that did not offer hope, so when Thomas was well enough to sit up and eat, he refused to inquire about it.

Eventually, those days became more and more frequent. He liked that. Perhaps he would get to at least live half a life before he had to go to the Angel.

-

Sometimes, when he was well enough, Thomas would grieve.

He refused to feel sorry for himself; after all, an accident of birth was not cruelty. But he would wonder what he might miss out on when he did leave. He would never be friends with his cousin James; his cousin and best friend, Christopher, would grow old without him. Christopher came to talk to Thomas sometimes, and tell him about some device or another that he was tinkering with. It was always the highlight of Thomas's week, month, year.

He would never get to go out to the markets with his father like Uncle Gabriel took Kit to do.

When he was truly in the depths of grief, he would look over at his parents.

He would put a pillow over his head so they couldn’t see him, and he would cry, because that’s what one did when they were grieving and terrified.

He would never see them grow old; they would never be more of a family than they were here, in this little sickroom that was at least much nicer than an Institute infirmary.

And he would never have a gentle love like theirs, he realized, watching Gideon’s gentle hand stroke Sophie’s hair. He looked out the window, his expression as pained and aggrieved as Thomas felt.

And that hurt very, very much.

-

But his sixth birthday came and went, and he did not die.

He stayed, by willpower alone or force of spirit, who was to say.

His mother liked to say that Thomas had a quiet sort of fortitude. When he’d asked what it meant, she had smiled. “It’s strength,” she said, “and determination. Two of the most important things for someone to have.” She would sit him on her lap, then, and speak. “When I was young, I grew up in the mundane world. You know that. Seeing what other people could not required a lot of determination, and I…” Thomas noticed her hand involuntarily shoot to her scarred cheek before she dropped it. “I was strong. But you are far stronger than I have ever been. Stronger than your father, stronger even than your Aunt Tessa. I want you to remember that, Tom. You are the strongest person I have ever met.”

Thomas thought that this was quite a pretty lie; he was weak. That’s what the Silent Brothers said; that’s what all their family said. But in that moment, with Sophie smiling down at him, Thomas chose to believe it.

Because sometimes, you had to believe a pretty lie to get by in this world.

-

Thomas had obviously left his home before, to take trips to the markets in Idris for food or strolls around the gardens outdoors. Fresh air was, after all, good for the constitution. Much like beef broth or chicken stock, probably. Thomas drank a lot of that.

But when he was six months past his sixth birthday, Thomas was taken on a grand outing with his mother and Aunt Tessa. “We’re going to a fair in London,” Sophie had said, smiling. “You haven’t been ill for a good few weeks, Tom. We think you’re well enough to go through the Portal and come with us. Would you like to accompany us and Cousin Jamie?”

Thomas, who found this development nearly unthinkable, agreed.

He had gone once to the Christmas market at Oxford Street with his father and Uncle Will. He and James had grabbed at snowflakes before walking through the streets, catching them in their open mouths. But that had been a fleeting day, one of his good ones, one of the best ones he would probably ever live through.

This would be yet another.

They went to the fair, and they saw the most peculiar of animals. Jamie pet the blackest of the sheep while Thomas put his hand too close to a snapping turtle in an enclosure. He didn’t mind it, wasn’t scared. The turtle must be terrified, though, he reasoned, so if he did bite him, Thomas had no one to blame but himself.

He didn’t get bitten.

They wandered through the streets, playing games like the ring toss and watching magic tricks. Aunt Tessa bought both Thomas and Jamie roasted corn.

And everything was great, and life was a gift, and Thomas didn’t want to lose it.

-

He grew feverish again, and began to see objects that were not there.

He was going to lose it. How had he ever thought otherwise?

-

But he didn’t. And the illness that had plagued him began to loosen its grip over time. He would be bedridden five days a week, and a few months later down to three. Eventually, he would only spend one day in bed at a time.

And, though his parents and sisters continued to fuss over him every time he so much as coughed, Thomas got better.

It was a miracle. It was proof that the world was not inherently cruel.

Thomas had experienced a poor accident of birth, drawn a short straw. But he was allowed to go, and he was allowed to live.

-

He was allowed to get his first Marks at twelve as a Shadowhunter should. Uncle Jem- the only Silent Brother that his parents would let Mark him- watched him carefully, but that was to be expected. After all, the Marks were what killed his cousin Jesse.

He was told that he was to be held back from going to Shadowhunter Academy for a year because he needed time to train. To get his strength up. Thomas knew better; he knew that he was being closely monitored.

But oh, did Thomas want to go to Shadowhunter Academy. With Christopher, of course, his cousin, his best friend under the stars. And with Jamie, who he wanted to get to know better, and Matthew Fairchild, a friend who was always laughing and always wild and always shining as brightly as the sun.

He trained hard. He made sure to compensate for his size, because he was small even if he was healthy.

(His mother said he’d spring up like a tree one day, but that blatant lie only made Thomas laugh.)

And after one year of purgatory, he had the strength to get into a carriage with Gideon and be carted off to Idris on his newest adventure.

-

An adventure that brought him here, to the courtyard of Shadowhunter Academy with Christopher, Matthew, and a somewhat reluctant James.

He had been dimly aware that Matthew was prattling on about Oscar Wilde, as he was wont to do. But his eyes had been trained on the boy behind him, the one that was now standing behind a talkative Matthew. As he’d approached, Thomas had tried his hardest not to stare, but it proved an impossible task. His dark skin was radiant, glowing brightly under the sunlight.

And something in his brain shouted, unbidden.

You’re going to love him so much, someday.

Which was ridiculous, because one’s brain said and did stupid things when allowed to wander. He stared at Alastair with open-mouthed panic as Matthew moved to tap him on the shoulder, proclaiming that he was so happy to be at the Academy where they would try to squeeze his mind down until it was almost as narrow as Alastair’s.

James met his eye with a panicked golden gaze, and while Thomas knew that they were not experiencing the same phenomenon, they were on the same page.

Matthew was a menace.

Only, apparently, Alastair Carstairs was a worse one, because he turned and glared at James.

And oh, his dark, dark eyes. Black and shining, like the night sky. They held so much depth.

SHUT UP, THOMAS, he told himself. That was not a legitimate reaction to what was happening. Especially now, when Alastair was laughing so bitterly that he may as well be cursing. “I was only trying to give you young ones a little guidance on the way we do things at the Academy. If you’re too stupid to take heed, that is not my fault.” He gestured to James, still addressing Matthew. “At least you have a tongue in your head, unlike this one.” James gaped. “Yes, you,” Alastair continued, undeterred. “The one with the peculiar eyes. What are you gawping at?”

And then the dark truth hit Thomas.

Alastair Carstairs was no prince. The thought that he and his beautiful black eyes shared some deep soul-connection with Thomas was a trick his mind played on him. He wasn’t even sure where it came from. Why would he think such things about someone he had literally never met before in his entire life?

He knew better than that; he was smarter than that.

And, as Alastair told James that his eyes were goatlike, as he spread the name Goatface Herondale through the crowd with that grimly bitter laugh of his, Thomas realized:

Alastair Carstairs was just rotten, mean.

Cruel.

-

But, sadly, that did not stop his face from being the bane of Thomas’s existence.

There was something about his eyes, the way that they were broken and honest about it, that made Thomas’s stupid brain ring. He knew that he recognized the sadness that the held from somewhere. There was a telltale sign between his snapping blinks and glared daggers that they held grief, they held sadness, they held intelligence that had long been beaten down into a new shape.

Later, Thomas would realize that he recognized that look from his old reflection. The one that grieved for a life that he would never live.

-

His friends clearly did not notice this.

“Alastair Carstairs is literally the single most awful human being I have ever met,” Matthew told Thomas one day. “If you can call him that. Jamie may not wish to befriend me, and I must come to grips with it. But I’ll be damned if I let Alastair beat him down, too.”

“Beat him down, too?”

Matthew paused, looking downward at his hands. “I dislike what he said to me, on that first day,” he told Thomas. “About Wilde being arrested for indecency, about his being a criminal.”

Thomas, who did not remember Alastair saying that because he had been enraptured by his beautiful features, simply patted Matthew on the shoulder. “I know he is your icon,” Thomas said. “I understand your reaction, truly.”

“Do you?” Thomas noticed that Matthew’s hands were shaking, and oddly. “Tom, do you know why Wilde was ‘indecent?’”

“I… no?”

Matthew mumbled something quietly under his breath.

“What was that?” Thomas asked.

Matthew’s gaze darted around the room, and he finally heard his voice. It was a mumble, but it was unmistakable. “It was for being like me.”

Thomas, unable to find words, gawped.

“I do believe that I am one of them, the men who love men,” he said quietly. “As well as women, for me.”

“Oh,” Thomas said, not sure of what else to say. He’d believed this to be common knowledge, what with the green carnations and all. “Well, you are one of my closest friends. That’s quite alright. Probably doubles your shot at meeting someone, so I’m glad for you.”

“I know that, thank you,” Matthew said, and his bright face went sour again. “So, when Carstairs, that arsehole, said that, it was personally offensive. Demeaning, even. I cannot stand the look of him, now. That loathsome wretch.”

Thomas felt that ‘loathsome wretch’ was a bit excessive, as Alastair was only fifteen. Still, Matthew’s hurt made sense. “And then, the things he said about Jamie, Tom. Unacceptable.”

“I know,” Thomas said, his heart clenching.

-

Alastair Carstairs was truly terrible.

So why did Thomas feel so much when he looked at him?

-

And Alastair’s words, while cruel, were often… well, funny.

For a boy so mean, he was truly terrible at being a bully.

Even when the barbs were directed at Thomas, it took everything in him not to laugh. “Wee little Thomas,” he would call him, or sometimes “pipsqueak.”

The remarks didn’t get much more original than that, when it came to him.

Perhaps, Thomas realized, Alastair was somehow toning down the vileness around Thomas.

But why would he do that? Why be a bully if you didn’t want to be?

Alastair Carstairs made no sense. He was a rather frustrating puzzle, but one that Thomas was determined to sort out. All he would need to do is observe and think.

And those were two of the things that Thomas, after a lifetime of bedridden thoughts, was best at.

So he followed Alastair about, telling himself that it had nothing to do with the perfect hook of his nose, the radiance of his skin, the clever tongue in scowling mouth that served to espouse sharp wit onto everyone other than Thomas. No, it was about the puzzle, and the solution that he thought must be right before his eyes.

An odd part of the puzzle was also that Alastair never called him in for the trailing round after him.

Sometimes, he would make a remark about it that he certainly thought was clever, but only privately.

“Angel, why do I have a loyal lapdog,” he would say, “when cats so much better suit my disposition?” Or, “for a shadow, you sure are stout. I’d best watch myself then, to make sure I’m not shrinking down to be only slightly taller than you.”

The remarks were perfunctory. There was no joy in them, not at first.

But after a while, and after Thomas realized that he was never publicly singled out, they became something of a joke for Thomas to laugh at.

He wondered if Alastair realized this.

-

It was interesting, too, how Thomas was always able to stop Alastair from being foul. He would mock James as relentlessly as his friends did, but at one word from Thomas, he would simply stop, roll his eyes, and train his expression into its usual perpetual bitterness.

He wondered why that was. Especially when anyone else who insisted Alastair desist got a tongue-lashing ten times more targeted than whatever Alastair had originally been going on about.

-

About halfway through Thomas’s first year at the Academy, Alastair’s friend Clive Cartwright was brutally murdered by a demon. One that he had planted himself alongside Piers Wentworth and, unfortunately, Alastair.

James had been blamed and expelled for it. Which was, of course, terrible, and Thomas was furious about it.

But he was mostly glad that the broken, bleeding body that they had found dead in the woods wasn’t Alastair’s. He’d felt a moment of panic when he’d heard that one of the mean boys had been found dead, and for a terrible second he thought, I have lost him. Which was foolish, of course, as Alastair was not, and never would be, Thomas’s to lose.

But when he glanced around and saw Alastair standing there with Piers, his face paler than he’d ever seen it, Thomas felt himself breathe again. He hadn’t realized that he still had it in him, to be terrified of death. After all, he’d touched it once and made it through.

And yet, it was okay. Everything was okay. Because Thomas followed Alastair to the library, and while he walked there sadly, he was very much moving and alive and breathing and human.

Alastair went to stand by a window, the breeze running through his dyed-blond hair while his fingers tapped against its sill. Thomas went to stand at his shoulder, hoping that Alastair would find the presence comforting even if he chose to snipe at Thomas. He knew that he was putting himself in the way of a dagger, but found that he would gladly do it. For the dagger that was Alastair Carstairs gleamed brightly under the sunlight, his point dulled into a practice blade that would never harm someone who had danced with death.

“Are you terribly sad, Alastair?” He didn’t seem it, but grief worked in strange ways.

“Stop bothering me, pipsqueak.” Alastair’s voice was flat, but not unkind. Thomas supposed that was something.

Suddenly, Matthew Fairchild’s voice rang through the room. “You heard the low, snaky serpent,” he said. “Come away, Tom.”

Thomas felt his face warm.

“Ah, Mother Hen Fairchild,” Alastair drawled. “What a lovely wife you will make for somebody one of these fine days.”

Thomas did his best not to laugh at Alastair’s mad comments. He did well, he thought, but he did fear a little bit of a smirk might have slipped out.

“I wish I could say the same for you.” Matthew’s voice was cold. “Has no kind soul thought to inform you that your hairstyle is, to use the gentlest words available to me, ill-advised? A friend? Your papa?” Thomas thought that he saw the already-dim light in Alastair’s lovely eyes go out at that, but perhaps he was imagining things. “Does nobody care enough to prevent you from making a spectacle of yourself? Or are you simply too busy perpetrating acts of evil upon the innocent to bother about your unfortunate appearance?”

Alastair went pale at that, completely. He glanced down as briefly as he could at his hands before looking up to Matthew, and Thomas couldn’t hold back any longer. “Matthew! His friend died.”

Matthew rolled his eyes, but of course, he was kind. He wouldn’t want to distress one of his closest friends. “Oh, very well. Let us go.” His green eyes shot daggers into Alastair. “Though I cannot help but wonder whose idea their nasty little trick was.”

Thomas couldn’t, either, but he knew, somehow, that it had been either Clive or Piers. Alastair was one of them; there was no denying that. Alastair had done a great wrong, and it had had terrible consequences. But in some way, Thomas simply knew that Alastair, the bully who seemed not to wish to be unkind, was not the primary person to blame.

Alastair sneered before speaking to Matthew. “Wait a moment, Fairchild. You can go ahead, Lightwood.”

Thomas shot a worried glance at Matthew, unsure of whether leaving them alone together was a good idea. Perhaps it would come to blows, and where would they be, then?

But Matthew nodded, so Thomas left the room, unwilling or unable to hear Alastair’s deep and somehow-melodic voice behind him as he went.

-

Matthew bolted from the room after a few minutes, tears in his wide, fast-moving eyes as he bolted past Thomas. He was cradling one hand in the other and glancing around maniacally. “Thomas,” he said in a sort of monotone, “do not follow me. I am serious.”

“Are you quite all right?”

“Yes, I shall… I shall be fine. Do not go near the South Wing. Don’t let anybody near the South Wing, alright? Not even that ghastly piece of shite.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out who Matthew was talking about. “Don’t follow me,” he said again, and there was something bordering on insanity in his tone.

Thomas listened to him and stood back.

When Alastair Carstairs came out of the room, Thomas was still leaning against the wall. “What are you still doing here, half-pint?” He asked, and Thomas noticed a bruise on his cheek. That would explain the hand Matthew was holding, he thought, wondering what had happened between them. Had Alastair swung first? Had he said something so terribly cruel that Matthew could not hold himself back?

What had happened?

Alastair blanched as met Thomas’s eye, and Thomas realized that he was staring directly at the blow.

“Are you going to laugh, now? The ghastly piece of shite, brought low?”

“No,” Thomas said. “I actually wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine. It truly isn’t your job to be my nursemaid, Lightwood. Just because you still need to be looked after like the toddlers much larger than you does not mean that I need your attentions.”

Thomas silently counted to five, reminding himself that Alastair had just seen his friend’s lifeless corpse being pulled from the woods. “Fine. But at least use an iratze for your face.”

“As always, I will.” Alastair’s voice was pinched, as though he were speaking through a tight throat. “You know, I really thought…”

“Thought what?” Thomas wanted to know Alastair’s thoughts, all of them.

“Nothing,” Alastair spat out as though he were throwing the word like a knife. “It’s not important.”

“Well,” Thomas said, “alright, then.”

“Alright.” And Alastair sped off, leaving Thomas to wonder.

-

Thomas found Matthew again, eventually. He asked him to ensure that Christopher was removed from the South Wing of the Academy quickly once he had "finished his mission." Thomas did not know what the mission was, but Kit emerged from the South Wing on his own to join Thomas outside. Kit started to ramble about the properties of slow-acting explosives as they walked back toward the courtyard. Thomas felt was quite normal for Christopher. He thought nothing of it.

-

James, Matthew, and Christopher were all expelled from the Academy. James, for being an unholy abomination upon this Earth, which Thomas thought unfair. Matthew and Christopher were chucked out for planting explosives in the South Wing, which he supposed actually was fair even if he disliked it.

The school determined that their break would begin early as a result of the chaos, and Gideon showed up to bring Thomas home.

Thomas looked around the courtyard. All the boys- and the few girls that had been allowed to attend the Academy, were starting to get into their parents’ carriages, walk across the courtyard with their families.

All but one. Alastair Carstairs sat alone on the steps of one of the buildings, holding a few sheets of torn paper in his hands. It looked as though they had belonged to a book, once upon a time. Thomas tried to make out what they were with a recently-applied vision enhancement rune; they appeared to be written in Persian, some sort of poetry. All of his other things had apparently been in the South Wing when it blew up. Thomas was not entirely sure that this was an accident.

And as he was helplessly towed away by Gideon, Thomas couldn’t help but look back at Alastair sitting there alone. His eyes looked unfocused, and his entire body was slumped over. He still held his cheek despite the fact that the bruise was gone.

No one came for Alastair, and Thomas was willing to bet that no one would.

And he hurt for him in ways that he knew that he shouldn’t, because Thomas had never known what it was like to want for love.

-

“Do you wish to go back to the Academy?” Gideon asked as soon as they Portaled home. “There’s no need, if your interest has waned. You could train with your friends at the Institute. I’m sure their expulsion won’t impact their ability to fight demons.”

Thomas gave him a slight smile. “I might as well finish out the year, mightn’t I?” He paused. “Just the year, though.”

Gideon ruffled his hair and hummed his approval. “Perfect.”

-

When Thomas got back to the Academy, things looked very different than they once had. For one thing, Thomas was truly alone. He got on well with the other students, sure, but he was shy and socializing was a challenge.

But he was also largely left alone, because Alastair Carstairs and Piers Wentworth were remarkably tame without their third.

So he sat by himself at lunch, did training exercises alone. Without Christopher, he didn’t even have a roommate, so he just took up as much space as he liked and went with the flow. He only needed to stay a few more months, anyway. Thomas was used to occupying himself; he was sure he could do it again.

Oddly, though, something had changed with Alastair. He would smile at Thomas sometimes now, not in a mocking way but in an odd little way that Thomas really did find extremely peculiar and confusing. He couldn’t complain; Alastair’s smile was scarce and hard to come by, but it could light up even the darkest of nights with a flamelike warmth that Thomas wanted to bask in.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he wondered what it might be like to be allowed to make Alastair smile like that whenever he wished to. He considered the impossible notion that one day someone else might do just that, wake up and fall asleep beside Alastair each night and be greeted with that smile that sucked all bitterness from the room.

He hated imagining that for reasons that he couldn’t really identify.

Alastair wasn’t such a puzzle to him anymore; perhaps he never had been. He was just a person, like him, who made mistakes, as he did.

There was a word for this feeling: sonder. The idea that everyone you met had a life as rich and vibrant as your own.

But there was also another word: solidarity. Because, when Thomas got one of those much-coveted little smirks, there wasn’t much he thought he wouldn’t do for Alastair Carstairs.

-

Two months after Thomas had been left alone at the Academy, Piers Wentworth took a sick day. “Walk with me, Lightwood,” Alastair’s deep voice said from behind him as he was eating his sandwich.

Thomas stood up, still holding his lunch. “Okay.”

Alastair walked beside him, steadily but silently.

Unable to stand whatever tension was between them, Thomas spoke. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes.” Alastair paused before leaning against a wall in the corridor awkwardly. “I just wanted to… see how you were.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow.

“You seem so alone here now, without your droll little friends. I just wanted to make sure that you were getting by with minimal hardship.”

You were always the cause of my hardship, Thomas wanted to say, but that would be punishing kindness. So instead, he just responded, “I’m well, thank you for asking.”

Alastair didn’t meet Thomas’s eye. “What courses are your favorites?”

Surprised, Thomas felt his eyes widen. “All the language courses, I suppose.”

“Hmm.” Alastair looked contemplative. “Do you know many languages?”

“I do, a couple,” Thomas said good-naturedly. “Well, five.” Not counting demon languages.

“Five?”

“Yes. English, of course, and Spanish. Welsh. A little French, bit of Japanese, and… um…”

“What? Has something got your tongue?”

“I’ve been learning Persian,” Thomas said. He didn’t know why he sounded guilty; it wasn’t like he was learning for Alastair.

The corner of Alastair’s mouth quirked upward slightly. When he spoke, it was in Persian. “And how are you liking the other of my mother tongues?”

The words were positively melodic in his deep baritone. Thomas felt his face warm. WHY?

“I do like it,” he said back, still speaking Persian. “It is a beautiful language, and a beautiful culture.”

Alastair ran a hand through his blond hair as he continued to look out the window. “I like languages too,” he said in English. He knocked his fist twice against the bottom of the windowsill. “Well, that will be all then, if you’re well. See you around, Tiny Little Tom.”

He waved slightly and walked away, leaving Thomas to wonder what that was all about.

-

Thomas and Alastair didn’t speak again until their last day at the Academy. Before school let out and everyone’s parents came to tow them back to wherever they came from, Alastair tapped Thomas on the shoulder. He spun around, the place where Alastair had touched him burning like a brand in the best possible way. “Oh,” he said. “Hello.”

“Hello, Lightwood,” he said, his face oddly relaxed. The sun had come out once the winter months passed, and Alastair’s complexion had darkened into its best possible form. Thomas truly did enjoy the way he looked, and if he would just lose the hideous hair dye…

SHUT UP, THOMAS.

“Um…” Thomas stuttered. “I…”

“I was just coming to give you the chance to congratulate me on my graduation,” he said. “Here’s to another stage of life down. Onward to face the rest of our cruel existence.” His voice was mocking, playful.

“Is our existence truly so cruel?” Thomas asked, hoping that he didn’t sound more serious than Alastair intended him to be.

Alastair smiled slightly. “People can be cruel; existence is what we make of it, I suppose. But cruelty… never mind,” Alastair said, and Thomas took the hint.

“Congratulations,” he said instead of pressing.

Alastair nodded once and, without saying anything, walked away.

And in that moment, Thomas simply hoped that his receding form wasn’t walking out of his life forever.

Chapter Text

In two years, there was Paris. Boldly calligraphic, a city of art and light and life.

Thomas and Alastair got lost in it, in its exhilarating beauty and a world that the two of them created alone.

By the Angel, Lightwood, you’ve become gigantic spurred what Thomas would one day reflect on as among his happiest memories.

For those days, they had been all that there was in the world.

Thomas felt the ghost of Alastair’s warm fingertips on his forearm for months, even when the tattoo kiss should have been the predominant sensation.

It was beautiful.

It was always Alastair,

his fingers deft and his voice cutting and his mind witty

and his rare smile bright enough to light up a city.

And then there was Alastair in London, his London.

All the Carstairs were coming, all of them besides Elias Carstairs, and that meant

Alastair.

He’d been as beautiful as ever before, though Thomas still wished he would lose the hair dye.

-

Charles Fairchild was in London, Alastair told himself, trying to get excited for his excursion into his new home. Cordelia had the architecture; Alastair had Charles. But it was difficult to muster up a the challenge of a smile, because he had to enter into the real world,

with Thomas.

He saw him, tall as a tree, gigantic as he remembered from Paris.

They sat together on a settee in the party, exchanging pleasantries.

They did not speak of Paris.

Because Paris was a world of its own,

frozen under frosted glass.

It was untouchable.

But weeks later, when everything was changing, Alastair had asked to see Thomas’s tattoo after a battle,

and he had complied.

Alastair remembered running his rough, calloused fingers over the skin there,

and he hoped that Thomas’s arm still didn’t burn with the memory of his cursed touch.

-

They saved London together, Thomas and Alastair, in Henry’s laboratory,

and Alastair had left Charles Fairchild.

He had to.

He would not be ashamed anymore of the way that he felt for men,

the way that he felt for Thomas Lightwood,

who saw the person Alastair wished he had become when he looked at the Alastair he was now.

He would not be ashamed of the fact that there was someone out there who cared about the truth of him,

ready to love every piece of stuffing that spilled from his fraying edges.

But then Matthew Fairchild came,

and he spoke the truth,

and Alastair lost the comfort of that future.

Thomas was gone,

and Alastair was once again a broken thing

trapped with Elias Carstairs.

-

For the first time he could remember, Alastair let himself cry

in a carriage, because

he had lost Thomas forever.

-

Thomas knew Alastair’s father was back, and while he didn’t know the truth of that situation, he suspected that it probably wasn’t ideal.

Elias seemed angry at Jamie’s wedding, and his hand seemed strong,

and the way he had brought it to the floor and shouted was violent enough to make Thomas jump.

But when he died…

all Thomas could think of was Alastair, the pain and grief that must be spilling from his belly and aching in his chest.

He went to see him, then, and they spoke,

and Thomas left with a trace of that grief, too.

-

And he behaved recklessly, dangerously, and Alastair knew:

he had to be one step ahead of Thomas.

So he followed him on solo Patrols, making sure that the man who would never be his came to no harm.

Because no matter who Thomas chose to be with, he would always

always

always

be part of Alastair’s very being.

-

He got to tell him that, in the Sanctuary, and Thomas had told him,

you were always my secret.

Alastair normally wouldn’t like that, because it sounded too much like something cruel Charles would say to him while he was thoroughly debauched.

But on Thomas’s lips, a secret did not sound so bad,

because the intention was not to hurt or humiliate

but instead to open the door to screaming, swooping possibilities.

In that moment it was everything, and their lips had met,

and Thomas had fit against him perfectly.

And they talked, and Alastair told him of the Academy, what he had faced before Thomas had gotten there.

And he was seen.

For once, he was seen, and that was enough.

-

But it couldn’t be.

Because Thomas was amazing,

he was kind and he was vibrant,

and he was passionate and he was loving,

and he loved languages and history and culture and he had a laugh like a summer breeze and

a voice like the songs Alastair pretended not to love.

But Alastair was none of those things. He was

a broken thing, torn apart and beaten down

bruised and scarred and scared and

nothing.

He was worthless, a worthless little fool, and Thomas was everything.

-

And, for a while, that was all that mattered to Alastair.

But to Thomas, Alastair was so much

with a wit that could cut through more than Cortana could, and

intelligence that blinked through his clever eyes, and

a biting sense of humor that somehow felt like joy, and

a melodic baritone that Thomas hoped he would one day hear sing.

So, he sent Alastair a fire-message, and it went through garbled but that was okay because Alastair came to him. And they talked, and Thomas drank in his laugh.

They had an easier rapport, then.

Friends.

Thomas accidentally gave Alastair a fruit basket, and they not-so-accidentally hid Cortana,

its location a secret that only they two shared.

And Thomas had told Matthew for the first time what he had known for years to be true: he was in love with Alastair Carstairs.

He was in. love. with. Alastair. Carstairs.

-

There was a phrase in Japanese that Thomas liked: koi no yokan.

Not love at first sight, but still a strike like lightning

to let you know that you would, one day, love them more than anything.

Thomas lay awake in bed that night, remembering the first time he saw Alastair.

You’re going to love him so much someday.

That was

Koi no yokan.

-

Alastair helped Matthew with his drinking, and Thomas watched the whole time.

Because Alastair was kind, yes, even when he wasn’t traditionally ‘nice.’

He was a good person.

And it was becoming clear that the ‘noted handler of drunks’ (as Matthew put it)

knew exactly what he was doing.

Thomas remembered Alastair saying in the sanctuary, saying that he had the bruises to remind him

should he ever forget his place in the hierarchy of Shadowhunter Academy.

And he had to wonder whether there were also bruises to remind him of other things.

-

Thomas resolved that if anyone ever hit Alastair again,

anyone,

ever,

he would strike them all the way down to Edom.

-

They kissed in a carriage, Thomas and Alastair,

And Alastair thought that perhaps their friendship was something more now.

Perhaps it was as it should have been, since Paris,

since they had become so much to each other.

-

And they were together, then

in the worst of times

because Thomas lost his brother.

Half his soul.

But Alastair kissed his eyelids and

for a split second

there was a flicker of hope in a world so wrong that Thomas could not imagine living in it.

-

Thomas landed in the infirmary, later. And Alastair read to him.

And when Thomas woke up,

if their lips met and their bodies pressed,

the world would never need to know of what passed there.

-

And they survived the great war.

-

If Alastair Carstairs was a broken thing,

which he was beginning to suspect he might not be,

he was one that Thomas Lightwood

Gentle Thomas

Kindhearted Thomas

Forgiving Thomas

loved.

And anything that Thomas loved must be good.

But there was more to it than that.

Thomas reminded Alastair of the good that did exist inside of him,

to help a sister,

to sacrifice everything,

to bear the unbearable because the alternative was unthinkable.

-

Thomas Lightwood loved Alastair Carstairs.

And Alastair Carstairs loved Thomas Lightwood.

They would spend the rest of their lives together, they decided, and Thomas told everyone.

They moved in together,

and for the first time,

neither of them had to worry about something as trivial as survival.

They could live.                                                                                                                                      

Chapter Text

Thomas had taken a long time to get used to the size of Cirenworth, but it was much easier once he had spent time there. The home was large- too large, if you asked either him or Alastair- but there was also something intimate about it.

Alastair had grown up there, Thomas knew, for a large part of his childhood. When his family wasn’t moving from place to place, he would go to the living area and sit in a plush chair, picking up one of his favorite books and devouring it in a night.

Alastair told him in a whisper about the way that he and Cordelia used to make block castles on the floor, inspired by the Carstairs family symbol, about the way that Sona used to come and admire their work. They had stared up at their bedroom ceiling, hands intertwined in the dark, while he told Thomas about the way that Cordelia would build randomly-shaped structures while Alastair would organize them into neat geometric formations.

And he told Thomas about other things, too. About the way that Elias Carstairs had shattered his heart like glass on the floor, about the ways that the fortress felt too much like a prison to be a true escape.

But now, a new child lived there, and he was someone that Alastair loved very much.

He would sing him Persian lullabies that his parents had once sung to him, tucking him into bed and kissing his forehead gently. Thomas would watch from the doorway with a flutter in his chest as Alastair stroked Zachary’s small head, as though the black fuzz there were the most precious thing in the world.

And perhaps it was.

Some days, Alastair and Thomas would take Zachary to the London markets. Even though he was still an infant, he loved to look around. His wide, dark eyes were innocent and curious, and they had the same depth as Alastair’s had he glanced around to take everything in. Alastair would spin him about, talking to him in Persian and in English about the trees and the leaves and the people passing by.

There were so many people. They did so many things.

And none were half as striking as Alastair Carstairs.

Thomas would hold Zachary too, then, no longer scared that the baby would break in his big arms. Zachary seemed to love his chest, to find him something of a safe place. When Thomas joked about this to Alastair, he only smiled. “That’s what I feel for you, too,” he said. “You’re so gigantic it’s ridiculous, but in the best possible way. A protective, gentle giant that is truly off-puttingly large.”

“Well, thank you,” Thomas had said, his voice half-sarcastic, and they had continued on.

One day when Zachary was bigger, Thomas and Alastair would let him walk between them, each giving him a dry hand to hold as he splashed in puddles and crunched on leaves. One day they would give him sticky Persian masghati and Alastair would tell him all about Tehran, the city he had recently taken Thomas to. He’d loved it, there, but not as much as he loved seeing Alastair sing Zachary lullabies, his voice deep and full. In private, Thomas would ask him to sing them to him as well, and Alastair would comply with a loud, joyful laugh that Thomas once thought could not possibly exist.

One day, maybe Zachary would learn all their words.

But those days were in the future, and for now, the present would have to do.

And the present was a day for remembering the past, because one year ago on this day, Elias Carstairs had died.

Sona had insisted that she was fine, that there was no reason for Thomas and Alastair to come to Cirenworth. Dimly, Thomas knew that she must be aware that it wasn’t a place that held many good memories for Alastair. But when he’d expressed this to Alastair in their Cornwall Gardens home, he shrugged. “I hope that Zachary can enjoy it in a way I could not,” he said. “I do wish to give him an idyllic childhood, you know. Iced cakes, digging for worms in the back gardens. Nonsense like that.”

Thomas did know. It was the same sentiment that Alastair had for Cordelia, and he felt that he had failed her when in truth he had done nothing but succeed. That fear, that loss, would propel Alastair from their bed at 3 AM some nights to get fresh balcony air. “So I can breathe,” Alastair would say. And then, with a small, not-quite-earnest smirk at Thomas, “if that’s quite alright with you.”

Thomas would go stand beside him, then, and hold him for warmth and comfort while they gazed out into London’s chilly nighttime air.

But now…

“Thomas joon,” Sona was saying. “It’s so nice to have you here.”

“It’s nice to be here,” Thomas said mildly, handing her a small fruit basket. It was something of a joke inside the family, now, and Alastair would constantly mock him for it. “How are you doing?”

“I’m very well,” Sona said. “Though since Zachary has recently learned to crawl, it is simply one horror after the next, I am afraid.”

“Is that why an entire section of this room is under blockade?” Thomas indicated an enclosed area surrounded by heavy wooden crates. Inside was an organ and a few glass pieces that must have been Carstairs family heirlooms.

“Oh, yes,” Sona said. “He’s a little hellion, much like his dadash.”

At this, Alastair looked up from his place on the floor, where he was playing with small animal puppets to amuse the baby. “I’m the hellion?” Alastair asked. “You watched Layla stomp through the house once with muddy boots and a dress full of brambles, and I, the one carrying the blackberries for the jam you made, am the hellion?”

Sona gave him a little smile. “I do seem to remember you spilling those berries. And trampling upon them until they had made their home in the rug. It left quite a nasty stain.”

Thomas gave Sona a mild smile. He loved watching Alastair with his mother. They had similar senses of humor, when one got to know them.

Alastair mumbled something in Persian and went back to making a sheep talk to a tiger.

-

There was something unique about the way that Alastair played with Zachary. Thomas was fairly sure that he was the only one that noticed it.

He was almost a year old, now, old enough to crawl and say a few words. Thomas was surprised that he had learned so early; surely, he thought, children should not be saying more than a syllable or so until they were six. Thomas could speak at under a year, but he felt that perhaps his learning had been accelerated by terror and the seeming lack of a future. Like Alastair, he was a child of pain and fear; like Alastair, he needed to move past those preconceived ideas of childhood.

With Alastair, though, it was a little bit different.

He would place shredded paper in a bucket and let Zachary sit in it, throwing the white scraps into Alastair’s dark hair. He would hand him rings and other objects to throw on the floor before picking them up and handing them back, only to repeat the process again several dozen times. They would sort items by color; they would play with blocks. And Alastair was so engaged.

And Thomas knew: these were all the things that Alastair only barely got.

The things that Zachary would have, because not having a childhood was not an option.

-

That night, when they Portaled back to the London Institute and got back to Cornwall Gardens, Alastair shrugged off his suit jacket quickly. He moved to sit on the couch, his elbows on his knees. He placed his head on his hands, supported it with woven fingers facing the ground as Thomas sat down in the chair opposite him.

“Do you ever feel just so very tired?” Alastair said quietly. He could hear his own voice crack slightly. It was likely a stark contrast from earlier for Thomas, who may still be recalling the sunshine on his face as he had counted Zachary’s fingers and laughed. “Do you ever just feel so bone tired, Tom?”

Alastair did. Sona did not feel anything for Elias; Zachary never would know him. But Alastair remembered his father, the truth of him, better than anyone else did. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the pair of cufflinks he’d slipped in earlier at Cirenworth, one of Elias’s favorite gold sets. They had small rubies in their centers, and Alastair had liked them until he had fished one out of a sewer when Elias had collapsed into it. The stench had been godawful in a way that Alastair could still remember, in a way that exhausted him countless years later.

Sometimes he would still smell things like that, physically and viscerally. Often, those scents would come without warning, when he saw a man with a shock of blond hair like Elias’s or a bottle of his favorite gin or shards of broken glass. Usually, he would just smell Elias’s strong gin-and-brandy-and-cologne odor. He wondered why.

“I think it must be similar to how I always hear every movement around me,” Thomas had said once when Alastair had expressed this. “Perhaps we were wired in certain ways over time, and now we will always be as we are.”

Alastair had snorted. “I will always be the shamed son of a drunk. How lovely.”

Now, he turned the cufflinks over in his hands as Thomas sat across from him. “These were my father’s,” Alastair said, his voice coming out softer than he’d intended. “I recall liking them, once.” He paused. “I recall liking him, once.”

Thomas stood up and moved to sit beside Alastair. Secretly, he was glad. Thomas’s warmth was a comfort, though Alastair was still too proud and too stubborn to ask for consolation on his own. It was good, then, that Thomas sensed the need. He wove his arm through Alastair’s and let him rest his head against his shoulder. Alastair liked feeling his muscle under his cheek, remembering that Thomas was solid and real and not about to leave him. “I understand,” Thomas said.

Alastair believed him, but… “Why can’t I grieve?”

Thomas leaned his cheek against Alastair’s head. “What?”

“My father has been gone a year,” he explained. “Surely I should have felt something by now.”

At this, Thomas lightly rubbed the back of Alastair’s hand with his thumb. “It makes sense, I think,” Thomas said. “You were scared for so long. Even if you are sad for your family…”

“The terror is over. The nightmare is ended,” Alastair said with a breathy laugh. “Yes, that’s what I thought. Perhaps I truly am the monster I once pretended to be.”

“You’re not a monster,” Thomas said gently. “You’re just a person, who has suffered something unimaginable. You’ve survived it; you’re allowed your feelings, because you are just a person.”

“Most people cry when their fathers die,” Alastair argued. He carefully considered his next words. “Do you know, when I was told that Zachary would grow up without a father, I said… I said, ‘good?’” He paused. “I didn’t mean that it would be good for him to have been neglected, of course. Only that… Tom, I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on another child. It would be like reliving the ordeal, only even worse because it would be a baby. And I would still have been powerless.”

Thomas hummed; Alastair subtly put a finger to Thomas’s wrist. His pulse was strong, his heartbeat a comforting melody. “That’s no fault in you,” Thomas said. “In fact, I would argue the opposite. That it is selfless.”

“How so?”

“Well,” Thomas said, “you would rather the child thrive, even at the expense of ever building a relationship with a father. That’s something.”

Alastair tried to laugh, but he was too exhausted. He could feel his eyelids drooping. “I… suppose. Though I wouldn’t have wanted to know him, anyway.”

A short silence passed before Thomas spoke again. “I’ve always admired you, you know,” Thomas said, and surprise sparked in Alastair’s chest. “Everything you’ve done, everything you’ve gone through, it was for Cordelia and your mother. It was for your family.” He paused. “You sacrificed for Cordelia so she could have the childhood that you did not, and she did. And so will Zachary,” he added. “You once told me that I keep you human, but I do not. You keep yourself human. You keep yourself human each day.”

Alastair did chuckle at that, though the sound was faint. “You admire me,” he said flatly. “That’s rich.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the strong one. The one who did everything for your family.” He paused. “One night, you told me of the way that you grit your teeth and bore your illness so your parents and sisters would not worry. I remember you at the Academy – Tom, you were the size of a coin.”

“Ah, yes. Wee Little Thomas.”

Alastair smirked a bit. “Shut up, Pipsqueak,” he said in a high voice, clearly attempting an impression of his past self. Thomas let out a low laugh, clearly amused. “But in any case,” Alastair continued, “you were so small, and I imagine you were even smaller when you were at your sickest. And I think it was incredibly brave of you to smile, to brace up and bear it, even when you must have been… well.”

Terrified. Alastair didn’t want to say it; it was a horrible shame that he would never put on Thomas. When he remembered how scared he had once been, curled up in his bed with the covers over his ears, he felt all the heat rush to his face still. He wouldn’t subject the love of his life to such pain.

But Thomas didn’t hesitate to name the feeling. “Dreadfully frightened? Yes, I suppose,” he said. “But…”

“Family first,” Alastair said. “We’re alike in that way.”

“Yes.” Thomas leaned into Alastair and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Family first.”

Alastair understood; you are my family now. He closed his eyes and focused on the feeling of Thomas against him, on the fact that he was not alone.

And on the fact that Thomas was just good. Good in a way that most people, especially Alastair, could not dream of being.

“I always saw the good in everyone,” Thomas continued, echoing Alastair’s thoughts. “Even when I was dying, I held onto a flicker of hope, because I knew that my parents were wonderful, and my sisters, and… and Kit. I believed in goodness because I had to. Because that was all the desperate hope I could have.”

“I admire that,” Alastair said, sitting upright, snapping his eyes open. “But…”

“But what?”

“It’s ridiculous. Foolish.”

“Well, perhaps, but I’d like to hear it anyway,” Thomas told him.

Alastair glared daggers at him, but when he spoke, he made sure that his voice was gentle. “I envy it, I suppose. I’m glad you were able to hold onto the idea of goodness, but I’d it knocked out of me long before I met you.”

“No one knocked the goodness out of you, Alastair. You’re evidence of goodness itself.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Alastair said, and Thomas smiled slightly as though thinking, there you are. “I didn’t mean that all good was lost and I’d turned into an angry scarecrow. I meant that the hope was knocked out of me. I truly did believe that there was nothing but… but fear, and grief, and unimaginable horror.” Thomas had named the feeling, frightened. Alastair could too. There was no shame, he reminded himself, not in the space between himself and Thomas. But still, Alastair felt the blood rush to his cheeks as he confessed. “Tom, I was terrified.”

“And that’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Thomas said, drawing him in closer with an arm around his shoulder. “I don’t suppose I’d much like being slapped about, either. It was only by sheer luck of the draw that I was not, I reckon.” He paused. “Did you know that’s how I got myself through my illness? Thinking that there was no cruelty in it, that it was simply an untargeted accident of birth?”

“That is at least true,” Alastair said grimly. And then… “It makes sense.”

“What makes sense?”

Alastair felt himself grimace. “That it was you,” he said.

Thomas looked confused. “What was me?”

Alastair looked down at his hands – Thomas let go of them, easily, when Alastair had moved to free himself from his grasp. “I remember the entire world was so… so dark. Black and white and horrid, and when I first saw you and the rest of your Merry Morons… your face, it had color to it. Like a single perfect measure in an otherwise drab concerto. It was odd, to say the least.”

“There’s a Japanese term for that,” Thomas told him, and Alastair raised an eyebrow. Thomas reached out to smooth it, touching his forehead lightly as he did. “It’s koi no yokan. Not love, not even close to it, but the deep and complete knowledge that the person you’ll look at is the one you will one day love more than anything. Koi no yokan.” He headbutted Alastair’s shoulder. “I had it too, for you.”

Alastair considered this. “That’s part of it, I suppose,” he said, “but not all. When I got to know you, when I spoke with you, every time… it made me believe in goodness again, just for a moment. It gave me back some of the hope that I’d thought had broken along with me.”

Something flickered in Thomas’s eyes. Alastair met them for a split second before averting his gaze. “I… helped you to have hope?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “It was dreadful. I had fallen into my avenging devil persona so well, and you had to come round and threaten it with your silly little panicked face.”

“I don’t have a panicked face,” Thomas said mildly.

Alastair did a perfect impression of what Thomas looked like the first time he’d seen him. Thomas laughed.

“I rest my case,” Alastair said, and Thomas rolled his eyes.

“To be fair,” Thomas said, “you were an awful pill, even when you were threatened by someone whose head barely even came up to your shoulder.”

“But you saw through it,” Alastair said. “You saw me.”

“Yes,” Thomas agreed. “I suppose I did.”

“I had lost all hope of good in the world, and you gave it back. That’s what I meant when I said that you kept me human,” he told him. “That’s the whole of it.”

“Well, in that case,” Thomas said, “you keep me human, too. By forcing me to see the truth of things. By being solid, and being real, and being…”

“Being what?”

“Well, being you, I suppose, really.” Thomas’s voice was mild.

Alastair rested his head on Thomas’s lap and sprawled out across the sofa. His feet hung off the edge, but it was comfortable, and he fit. “I love you, you know. So very much. So much that it scares me, sometimes.”

“I feel the same,” Thomas agreed. “But… we just fit together, don’t we?” He looked thoughtful to Alastair, who looked up at him through one open eye. “We are each exactly what the other needs.”

“Yes,” Alastair agreed. “We are.”

And they laid there for hours, Thomas stroking Alastair’s hair as he told him about Elias Carstairs, the whole truth of him. Some good, most bad, all ugly and broken and raw and real.

And while they couldn’t save each other, while they couldn’t cure each other, they helped each other heal.

And that was more than enough.