Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Being a Lightwood is hard.

Harder then it was to just be a shadowhunter.

He had learned that much at a very young age.

there was an expectation, for the old familys, and expectation for the children of the old family's, it seemed the older the family the higher the expectation.

the same was true from the lightwoods.

there was expectation, put up on the lightwood children- by both their parents and the clave, to not only do well in training, excel in their study's and be compleatly perfect in maters of diplomacy.

there was this expectation, this pressure to be abseloutely perfect.

For all of the lightwood children, but Alec espesseally/

Being a child in the lightwood family was hard, but being the eldest lightwood, heir to the family name was even harder.

Everything was expected of him, perfection and more still.

He needed top marks in every class, he had the be proficient in things he didn't even study otherwise he was slow, stupid.

but when he didaccomplish those things, it wasn't some great feat, it was the bare minimum, there was no celibration, to nothing, it was be the best or you were automatically a discrase.

And most of all, on top of the fact that he needed to be better then anyone, to have the intelect of an adult and the cool, level head of a trained soldier.

But he also needed to know his place.

He could do things for his parents, things that were out of his job description as a student, but only as long as it was making their life easyer.

He wasn't allowed to have opinions though, because he was just a child, and he was too young to know how the world works.

It pissed him off to no end.

How was he meant to be a leader but not allowed to have opinions.

It made his skin crawl and his blood boil.

And for that he was called emotional.

And to be fair, he was, to and extent. i mean,

throughout the years Alec has had a lot of emotions, so, yes, but so did other people, hell, Isabelle still threw tantrums for heavens sake.

And yes, in the beginning he didn't know how to handle his emotions, but that was years ago, when he was 3 and 4 and he would have tantrums, like any kid his age, but all his mom would do is yell, scream at him, tell him to stop, that no one perseeve him as strong, as a leader if he cried in front of them and broke down.

It didn't matter that he didn't want to calm down, it didn't matter that the only reason he was throwing the tantrums was because he wanted his mom to just, notice him, talk to him for reasons other then to lecture him on his failure to do perfectly on his schoolwork and his downfalls with his weapons training.
He'd cry, he'd cried a lot as a kid, he'd cry and tell her that he didn't want to calm down. He didn't want to do this, he didn't want to do that.

But, his mother would never fail to take or create an opertunity to express her authority over him.

'It's not about what you would like to do, it is about what must be done'

That's what she would say, followed by a firm tap on the cheek.

"It's not about what you would like to do, it is about what must be done' "

Those words were a constant in early childhood.

Who was he kidding, they had continued to be a constant far into adulthood aswell.

He was always falling short, always just out of reach of greatness, witch never made any sense because his siblings were doing great, exselling in their respective fields, they were his parents pride and joy.

But if you looked back on the reports. On their grades, Alec always scored higher then them,

He haddnt gotten less then 100% on a test sense he was 8 years old, sometimes going as far as seeking out extra credit, bumping his scores up to 101 or 103.

He was better, objectively speaking.

He had higher grades, he had honors and degrees in public speaking and politics.

He had quite literally invented the class on descalation tactics.

A class that is now a requirement for every shadowhunter to attend at least once a year.

He had been barely 14 and running an entire instetute from the shadows.

He had been crowned the best archer in the United States, 3rd best in the entire world by the time he was 17.

He could do things that no one had done In hundreds of years, he was on track to be the youngest head of instetute in history. And he was already the youngest commanding officer in new york sense the 17 hundreds.

He had gone above and beyond then further still, and he still wasn't good enough.

No.

It was always:

"why can't you be more like Jace, you know he just surpassed his combat instructer"

Never mind that Alec had done the exsact same thing when he was just a year older then Jace.

And

"Why can't you be book smart like issabelle, you know she's been given license to give a lecture on the differences between shadowhunter and mundane crime scenes, she's also writing a book on indroduction to biology"

Never mind that Alec had written and presented more lectures then he could even count. Written and rewritten rules and procedures, sifted through and typed up official clave documents.

And yes, his siblings were better at some aspects of their studies.

Jace is better at hand to hand combat. He's virtually unmatched with a blade and he's probably the fiercest warrior sence Johnathan shadowhunter himself.

And Izzy would forever be smarter then him in terms of her knowlage of phorensics and biology.

But it wasn't enough for Maryse Lightwood, it was never enough for her.

But the thing that his mother and his father always seemed to forget was that he was not studieing those things, he was an archer, and he was a politician, he was studying different things, and if you were to quiz Alec, Jace and izzy on somthign random, that none of them specialized in, Alec would garentee that he'd get the highest score.

But it dosnt matter, because his younger siblings would be forever better then him in every way, because that's just the way things were.

It didn't matter that Alec had accomplished more then any shadowhunter in the whole of New york, including his parents.

No, it didn't matter.

Because he was Alec lightwood.

Which meant that nothing he ever did would ever be good enough.

It didn't matter how hard he worked or how much extra slack he picked up.

It didn't matter that his siblings slacked off, I mean one look at their attendance record and you could tell.

No.

It didn't matter, nothing seemed to matter to his mother except for the knowolage that he's not good enough.

That he'd never be good enough.

So he turned to training, sure he was an archer but if his mom wanted him to be as good as Jace in hand to hand then he would sure as he'll try to be.

And thus started his pattern of overtraining.

Working his body until he was broken and bloody and brused, he would spar with his superiors for hours, he trained more then he slept, and then he would go out on patrol.

But him mom didn't notice, didn't care.

And so he stopped using the Irazi to heal the dammage he did to his knuckles, stopped mending the split skin, he let them heal and scar and fade.

So that hopfuly, she would notice, she would see how hard he had been pushing himself to be better, pushing himself to be what she wanted him to be.

The constant training had payed off, his hand to hand had improved, that's for sure, he could take on most of the instetute with his eyes closed and a hand tied behind his back.

But nomatter how hard he pushed himself.

He still couldn't hold a candle to Jace.

And it turned out that the scars on his knuckles had the oposite effect the he had intended.

Instead of his mother recognizing his efforts, she condemned him for being so reckless and neglectful of his body, the weapon he had been gifted by the angels.

Becaus how was he to fight if he ruined his hands.

An archer with broken hands isn't worth anything afterall.

But, her warnings had also backfired.

Instead of listening to her he fell deaper into training, it was near never that his hands were fully healed and unscathed.

But, he had it under controll, he really did.

Or at least he used to.

And then he started thinking about Jace In a way he wasn't suposed to, then Clary came along and Jace started acting like an asshole.

And it kinda fucked up his whole rythem.

Alecs... issues got worse, but Jace didn't care, he was too busy with Clary.

And it broke alec.

It fucking destroyed him.

-----

It had gotten the worst after he had agreed to marry Lydia.

He was so mad at himself, the pain that he felt. It was so powerful that it was a phisical feeling.

He had stormed into his room that night, broken and angry and hating himself, drawn a hasty soundless rune on the door and he had screamed his throat horse, cried until his whole face ached, and punched his -very, very much brick- wall until both of his wrists broke.

He had collapsed against the wall, leaning his head against the blood stained brick, and he had cried himself to sleep.

He had walked out of his room the next morning as if nothing had happened.

No one mentioned the fresh blood on his wall, and no one mentioned the iratzis on either wrist.

Not even Jace, who must have felt his pain.

He had to have.

Alec felt like he was falling apart at the seams, and everyone knew but no one cared to help him.

Not even his own parabatai, no, Jace was far too busy trying to get into the redheads pants.

And that was more important then Alec's issues, because there was always something more important then alecs issues.

He tried to pretend that it was fine, like he wasn't hurt by it, but he couldn't help it.

It got worse leading up to the wedding.

But it didn't seem to get any better when it was canceled- er, crashed.

Yes, he was with Magnus now, and he was elated everytime he got the chance to kiss the man, but, no mater how much he tried to push it down, there was still somthing, fundamentally broken in Alec.

And no one cared.

But it was fine, he was fine, he was Alec lightwood, so it was fine.

I mean, why did he care so much about it now.

No one had ever shown concern for him before, why would they now?

It's fine, because he's Alec, he dosnt need anyone's help.

It dosnt bother him that no one cares.

Because, it's Alec, why would anyone care.

Afterall.

He's worthless.

I mean.

In the end, what use is an archer with wounded hands.

Chapter Text

Magnus was great, he was everything, to put it simply.

He was everything Alec has ever needed, everything he'd dreamed about when he was young and lonely.

he was that, perfect prince, Alec had read about in the story books he used to sneak into the instetute, the one who just, swept you off your feet, compleat with magic and true loves kiss.

He was the one person, the only person, Alec had ever met that actually seemed to respect him as a person, to respect his choices, and opinions, to -even when he didn't agree- sit down and have a calm conversation about their thoughts.

And, whenever things, did get heated, they were always able to take a step back, come back later and then have an adult conversation about it, then, Consider the matter resolved.

Alec had never had that before.

Never in his life, yes, his siblings valued his opinions, that cared. But there was a difference between that and actually respecting him as a human being enough to not scream at him and then disrespect his authority because he said you shouldn't go out drinking cus you have an early patrol tomorrow.

He had never felt, valued in this way before.

And now that he had, is almost feels like the disrespect that he had become so accustomed to hurt more then it did before.

Like now he had tasted respect all he could do was thirst for more.

It made him subconsciously compare all the interactions he had to the ones he had had with Magnus, what Magnus would have done differently, how Magnus would never have spoken to him like that.

It made him, stricter, with his people, or at least it felt like it did, he felt like he was snapping at his shadowhunters and even more, his family left, right and center.

And yes some times it was small things, like failing to put weapons away in their correct spot, and then subsequently the entire weapons room falling into disarray.

But sometimes, sometimes Alec found himself thinking he should send them back to Idris to go over the basics with all of the 7, 8 and 9 year olds.

It was completely mind boggling, It was like he couldn't even go half a day before one of his people was doing something completely devoid of common sense and all, normal logic.

And, today, that person, the one doing the stupid things against his -in this case, direct- orders, was Jace.

It had been a relatively good day so far, calm, quite, which, in hindsight is probably the thing that should have tipped him off in the first place, the calm before the storm and all that.

He hadn't yet been in his office that day, too busy with classes and lectures and general management of the institute.

He had brought his lunch, hoping he could go over the next few weeks schedules while he ate, and maybe, if he was quick enough he would have time for a few more papers before his next meeting.

Only, when he sat down, placed his lunchbox in front of him and actually looked through the schedule, then, right then is when he realized that, today, truly wouldn't be as calm as he had hoped.

In short, the schedules were wrong.

Not misspelled, not unfinished, nor smudged or damaged, wrong.

They were just wrong, the dates were right but that seemed to have been the only thing right about the whole stack of paper.
Everyone's names were switched around, people's days off changed. Even people moved from different areas and chores doing things that were just outside of they're job descriptions.

It was decidedly not how he had left it 2 days ago.

But, most notably, Jace and izzys names had been taken off of iqor duties for the week, and had 2 Less patrols then they should have had, each.

Poor Jason Hearthwood and Ylana Yellowstone were both scheduled to cover for them, and extra 2 patrols for the both of them.

Which Alec had not done, he would never, have done unless someone explicitly asked for extra patrols, it was institute policy, that if you needed the time off on short notice that you were responsible in finding someone to swap with you, key word being swap.

It wasn't a thing to pawn off shifts, shadowhunters considered that slacking, lazy, the only times one would be allowed to skip a shift would be if you were in medical, physically unable to work. And often times one would make it up to their shift mates after the fact, picking up a couple of their most disliked chores for a day or 2.

To put it simply, shadowhunters couldn't handle working more then they do, they're sqeduals are packed tight, they just don't have enough time to work more and train, eat, sleep, relax and do all the other things that they needed to survive, it wasn't sustainable, witch is why the policy is to swap shifts, not cover them.

Bottom line, someone had messed up his schedule, and he was pissed off at them for it.

And judging by who was on the chart and who was not, it could have only been one of 2 people.

Izzy. Or Jace.

And seeing as Jace is more the type to do sometime bold like this, that's who he sends the first fire message to, asking his to come to his office- or, not asking, rather, telling him to.

It was a summons, rather then a request, now, normally, Alec was pretty lenient with his brother, but he had hit his breaking point, after all that bulshit with Clary, the unsantioned missions, and everything, he thougth that him and Jace had finally come to some sort of understanding, but no, aparently they haddnt.

Jace knew how alec had been feeling, he knew it, hell, they shared their emotions, jace had felt it too, he had felt all the frustration and hurt, and he had still done this, still.

So, no, Alec was done, if Jace was gonna be an asshole then Alec would be an even bigger one.

------

It took longer then Alec would have liked for Jace to actually come to alecs office.

But he couldn't tell if it had actually been a long time or if he was just being impatient. He wasn't sure.

But either way he was even more annoyed by the time Jace finally dawned his doorstep.
He didn't know before he came in, instead just opening the door and stepping through, an unbothered look on his face.

And if Alec wasn't pissed before he certainly was now.

He stalked into the room and took a quick look around, his eyes settling in on the sqedual sitting halfway in alecs hands, and half ways on his desk.

Staying there for just a moment, a feeling of recognition coming through the bond, quicker then a blink, before Jace looked up at him, meeting his eyes without so much as a flinch.

"What's up?" He asked, as if he didn't know exsactly what this was about, as if he couldn't feel the hurt and the rage boiling inside of alec.

He was playing dumb.

And for some reason it just irked Alec, to no end.

But he steeled himself, he couldn't stop jace from feeling his emotions but he could damn well stop himself from reacting to them.

And so he did.

And with the calmest voice he could mannage, he spoke.

"I'm gonna ask you this once, and one time only, and if you even start to bullshit me I swear to the angels you will regret it." He gasped in air, trying to keep calm, but still failing, if only slightly.

"What. The fuck. Did you do to my sqeduals?"

There was a beat of silance between them. Filled with nothing but an empty void of emotions.

"Alec, com-" he started, obvously trying to brush this off, trying to brush alec off, but alec didn't let him finish.

"No, no I can't, I am sick and tired of this- of all of this, you're suposed to be my parabatai, the person who is one in the same as me, your suposed to respect me and my decisions, but you dont, you never have."

He took in a big breath, this was hard, and thinking about it had been hard, but actually doing is proving to be much, much harder.

"So," he let the air out of his lungs

"I'm benching you." He said with a finality he was sure would stop jace in his tracks, even just momentarily.

"No, wait, Ale-" Jace tried to reason, tried to justify, but alec was past the point of listening, past the point of caring.

He held up his palm, cutting Jace off

"Get out."

He could tell that stunned jace more then anything else.

"What?"

"I said, get. Out." He looked at him dead in the eye as he said so.

He stepped forward.

"If I can't trust you to respect and support my decisions, then i simply wont give you a change to disrespect me." He paused, standing up streight, stretching his spine to its full length, and spoke yet again.

"So, I'm not going to explain myself, or my reasoning, I'm not going to talk you through it, or cater to you. Get out, you're benched until i figure out what to do with you."

And with that Alec turned. Facing the window at the back of his office, not only dismissing Jace but belittling him by showing him Alec dosnt see him as a threat, not that it was uncommen, afterall, they wouldn't be parabatai if they saw each other as dangerous to their general well being, but this time, it was different, it wasn't a sign of trust. No. It was a blatant show of power.

It was basically the shadowhunter equivalent to pulling rank, though they did flat out pull rank as well.

He didn't move from his spot until he heard Jace huff, turn, walk out the door and slam it behind him.

And then, and only then, is when he finally broke.

Letting his tears fall and his heart cry, he felt, everything in that little office.

Everything.

----------

He went home early after that, not wanting to deal with his people and his siblings anymore.

The door to Magnus's loft opened for him, as always, when he stepped within a foot of it.

He didn't bother calling out to Magnus as he walked in.

Instead he just trudged through the apartment. Taking his shoes off at the door, and hanging his jacket on the coat rack.

He stuffed his hand in his pokets as he walked into magnus's apothecary. Staying as silant as he could, not wanting to disturb the man, just wanting to watch.

And he did, he watched as he grabbed and chopped and ground and boiled, watched plooms of smoke and mist burst out of different bottles and pots.

Listening to Magnus hum along to whatever song was playing in his head at the moment.

It was truly Alecs heaven.

All the tension had left his body before he had even noticed.

And he was leaning boneless against the wall. Watching magnus work.

He sighed. Content.

Sadly though, Magnus had heard his sigh, perking up he turned towards Alec. A smile streatching across his face when he recognized alec as his boyfriend,

He quickly set down whatever he had been holding and stalked his way towards Alec.

Wraping his arms arounf his neck and pulling him in for a kiss, he smiled.

"Hmm, how long have you been home?" He asked, eyes closed as he swayed gently side to side. Basking in the taller mans presence.

"Mm, not long, an hour, maybe half"

Magnus chuckled "you could have said something, I would have paused this whole mess" He gestured veaugly to the general room that was his apothecary.

"No, no, i like watching you work" he admitted "plus, I didn't want to take you away from whatever you were working on, it looked important."

Magnus just looked up at him through his lashes "I assure you dear. That if it had been that important i would have told you about it before hand, you know how much i like to complain about my reaponsibility " he joked, his smile growing wider as he watched one spread across alecs face.

"Well, whatever it is, don't mind me, ill be as quite as a church mouse, you just do what you do"

It took a few more reasurences after that, but eventually magnus went back to making his potion, occasionally making comments or brushing against Alec in a teasing mannor.

Alec just laughed along, still brooding against the doorframe, but enjoying his boyfriends company non the less.

It was a few minutes later thatMagnus looked up from the potion he was working on.

"What's wrong my love?" He asked suddenly, it was clear that it was a question of what rather then if somthing was wrong.

"Hmm?" Alec asked looking up from where he had been staring at the floor.

Magnus just glared playfully at him "darling, I can feel you sulking from over here."

Alec was silant for a moment, his face scrunched as eh contemplated his answer.

"Yea, I don't know" he surprised himself by how devistated he sounded to his own ears.

Magnus gave him a look "I think you do know" He said gently.

Alec breathed in, then gave a short breath out.

And told magnus everything, from when he walked into work today to when he stormed out after his conversation with Jace.

And Magnus listened, Really, truly listened.

He sat there and he held alec until he was done, didn't interupt, didn't get angry and rush off to give jace a piece of his mind, just listened.

And, Alec haddnt known it at the time but it had been exsactly what he needed.

They went to bed pretty quickly after that, both too tired to stay up too much longer.

The bed was soft and silky as alec remembered pure bliss in the form of those golden silk sheets.

Sadly though. Their peaceful night was interupted at the ungodly hour of 3 am by alecs phone ringing.

"What?" Alec answered gruffly, not even bothering to try and sound less tired then he is.

Unexpectedly, it was Underhills voice that came through.

"Sir" He greated formally "you're gonna wanna get to the instetute"

Alec sighed "What's going on?"

----

As hard as he had tried to not wake Magnus he was unable to avoid the warlock following him to the instetute.

Alec didn't even bother to get ready before stalking through the portal Magnus had made and into the instetute, still in his plain black cotton tee, plad pajama pants and long gray cotton robe, the one Magnus had gotten him 'so they could match'

He knew he looked like he'd just rolled out of bed, and that was because he had.

He didn't care, and it wasn't like anyone in the instetute would care either.

And if they did, well, they could fuck off, they're the ones who fucked up badly enough to need him to come in at 4 am on his one day off a week, he'd send them to wrangle Island for that alone, they were lucky he wasn't on that severe of a warpath, yet.

He needed to find out what the fuck was going on first.

And seeing as andrew was the one to call him he seemed like the person who wound know the most, so thats who alec was going to talk to first.

He stalked into the ops room, his steps quick, loud and steady. A scowl plastered openly on his face, he was very obveously not happy to be there, he walked straight towards the middle of the room, Magnus trailing closely behind him.

stopping in the center of the computers he scanned the room, not seeing underhill at all, so he walked to the next best person, lakewall, tanya lakewall, who was just a few steps to his right.

he walked up to her.

"do you know where i could find underhill?" he asked her, not bothering with plesentrys, he was tired, and it wasn't like it was too rude, shadowhunters didn't do well to dilly dally while on the clock.

she looked up from her tablet imideatly.

"he's in the infermery." with that she looked back down at the tablet in her hands.

Alec sighed, and resisted the urge to rubb a hand across his face.

"thank you." he said quickly as he turned on his heal and stalked off in the direction of the infermery.

Stepping through the infermery doors quickly and without care for the nose he was likly producing he stopped in the doorway, leaning on it for a moment, scanning around the room for andrew.

He spotted him on a bed to the far left, along with winston greenlaw in the bed next to him, seemingly unconcheous.

He pushed himself off of the wall in one swift motion. and started on his way to andrews bedside, he notted as he got to his destination that magnus had stayed behind at the door.

underhill looks up at him as he stops at the edge of the bed "Alec" he says in agnolagment.

"Andrew." Alec replied "what happend?" alec got streight to the point, because he was really, really tired, and he needed this over as soon as possible so he could go the fuck back to bed.

"well-"

turns out, jace had been out with underhill, greenlaw, and Clary, and Clary had fucked off to try and save the day with one of her heroicly stupid plans that disregard everyone else's safety and expert opinions.

after hearing that he phisically wasn't able to restrain himself from rubbing a hands across his face tiredly.

Why the fuck would she do that, why was she out on patrol in the first place, never mind the fact that she wasn't qualifyed for missions yet, nevermind the fact that she's not even supposed to be out of the instetute at these hours, nevermind all the fucking commen sense in the world.

he was so tired of clary, so tired of Jace enabling clary to do whatever the fuck she wanted.

Tired of not being able to trust his own parabatai.

Just tired.

Alec walked out of the infermery, now on to find his idiot brother and his idiot girlfriend.

It was too early -too late?- for this shit.

He was supposed to be catching up on sleep, having a relaxing night with his husband and letting all the worrys that come with the instetute slip out of his mind. }

But no, jace and clary have to fuck everything up for him.

He nearly forgets that Magnus is there as he walks all the way to the lockers, hoping to find clary and Jace after they're done with their respective showers.

luckily enough, they were just finishing getting dressed when Alec found them.

and holy fuck, just seeing them really solidifyed the fact that he didn't want to fucking deal with this, deal with them

----

As usual, he was getting, fucking nowhere, nowhere at all.

He really, really loves his brother, his parabatai, but sometimes he was such a huge asshole.

He pinched his brow. "Why was she even in the field jace? She's not supposed to be on the roster!" he asked, but it wasn't a question, not really, it was an acusation, one that alec didn't bother waithing for a replay too.

Instead he barreled on, taking a stepp towards his parabatai "you almost got greenlaw and Underhill killed because of your recklessness"

"and I do mean your recklesssness" he emphasized.

"because, even though it was Clary responsible for most of this, it was you, who should have known better then to let her out on in the field, you, Jace, are the one with 10 years of experence in the field, you are her superior, Jace. she's a child, in all the ways that count, she didn't grow up in our world, and I'm not saying that to be mean, or belittle her, the fact is, that she dosn't know how to fight, or how to work in a team, to be completely honest I would feel more comfortable with max watching my back then her" he through his arms outwards as if to say 'see?' before letting them fall agaisnt his sides and rest on hips in a stance that made him feel like an overtired mother scolding her toddler.

sometimes he really did feel like he was dealing with children.

he sighed again when he didn't get a response.

"did you even take her to get checked out at the infermery?"

he took the silence as answer enough.
"fray go to the infermery." he commanded, there was no trace of anything softer in his voice, it was simply that, a command.

"but-" she tried to argue, but Alec cut her off, holding up a hand and speaking over her, voice cold as ice.

"go. to. the. infermery. fray." he didn't even look at her, his eyes still firmly fixed on Jace.

she made a face at him that told Alec she was going to make life hell for him later, but he couldn't bring himself to think about it at the moment, as soon after that she hung her head and headed out of the room.

presumably to the infermery, hopefully to the infermery, though you couldn't never be sure with that girl.

but he couldn't focus on her at the moment, that was medicals job today, and Alec would be lying if he said he wasn't ecstatic to pass her off to them.

but right now his focus was on Jace, and Jace alone, as his deputy, he was supposed to not only support alecs disisions, but make good ones himself, he was not doing that at the moemnt.

Alec looked impossibly harder at Jace, trying his best to push his emotions through the bond, to get jace to understand that Alec just couldn't do this anymore, that he couldn't take it.

Jace remained unmooveing, stared into Alecs soul, not even flinching as the hurt and the pain jumped over to is side of the bond.

Alec made a sound somewhere between a sob and a sigh.

"I cant do this right now, Jace, go to medical, get yourself checked out- and don't even try to sneak not going because I'm going to check with Martha and Kyle down in medical and make sure you were seen, I'll deal with you tomorrow."

And with that he turned on his heal and stomped out of the room, hand on his aching hip, where the parabatai rune was located, he walked right past magnus, barely even registering that he was there.

after all, he had things to do, and he would rather get them done quickly so that he can go the fuck to bed.

-----

Magnus watched as Alexander stormed his way out of the room, not even sparing a glance to either Magnus nor Jace, he was sure his shadowhunter had a lot on his mind at the moment, not to mention the things he would probably have to do before they could go home, so he wasn't offended by it, no, just, worried, about his love.

There was simply no way that he wasn't massively stressed at the moment, and as much as Alec hated to admit it he didn't usually handle stress all that well.

And as much as he wants to whisk his shadowhunter away and never let him come back, he knows that really wouldn't help much at all.

So he does the next best thing and steps forward into the room.

Now, normally he wouldn't interfere with Alexander and his siblings relationship, but at the moment it seemed appropriate to butt in.

So he took yet another step forward and he spoke, directly to Alexanders parabatai.

"You don't understand how much Alexander has sacrificed for you, do you?"

"What?"
Magnus stepped forward, getting into Jace's space, though just slightly.

"you don't understand" he repeats " just how much Alec has sacrificed for you, how much of your shit he puts up with on a daily basis, do you?" it was formulated as a question but it wasn't really one, not even close.

if anything it was an accusation, an epiphany on Magnus's part.

"you're simply so self centered, so lost in yours and Clarys own little world to notice the stress you've put him through, again, and again and again." Magnus says it so matter of fact that Jace hardly registers that its an insult.
"the stress that you're still putting him through." Magnus amends.

Magnus continued after that, but the words both of them spoke sort of melded together.

but, who knows what good would really come of it.

Maybe Jace would change, maybe he wouldn't.

Maybe he knew the way he was behaving was unacceptable and maybe he didn't, but Magnus didn't only tell him what he needed to hear in that moment, he also told him things that Alexander would have been too shy to.

He hopes, to Edom, to lilith and even to the angels, that Jace gets his act together, that he realizes just how much damage hes done to Alec through not only his behavior but also his ignoring of Alecs feelings, Jace is his parabatai, he shouldn't need to be told that Alec is having a bad day.

Magnus really hopes that Jace gets his act together, not because he wants Alexander to give his brother another chance, but because he wants Alexander to actually have a parabatai and not just a selfish, twidderpaded child attached to his soul.

And with any luck, Jace would someday become just that.

A parabatai.