Chapter Text
Catia Monteverde was a short woman, with long grey hair, a soulful gaze and a tendency to smell like chamomile tea. Despite her frail appearance, and not to mention her growing age, Catia was a feisty individual with a will too strong for her own good.
She had never enjoyed the company of her granddaughter and had always been incredibly vocal about it (not that she had seen Maryse much in the last decade), so when she glanced absent-mindedly out of her front window that overlooked the early dawn and saw Maryse with a bloodlessly pale, black-haired boy - really, he couldn’t have been more than twelve - walking up to her front door, she wasn’t too eager to open it.
She did though if only for the sake of the child Maryse kept pressed close to her side.
“Maryse,” she muttered coldly, opening her ornate front door before Maryse could reach up to knock it, revelling in the dark look on her granddaughter’s face. “And..?”
“This is Alexander. My son,” Maryse replied, setting her shoulders back in a way that caused the plain black dress she wore to pull taut across her toned muscles. “He needs your assistance.”
“So,” Catia said conversationally, leaning nonchalantly against the stonework leading into her hallway, “you ignore me and my kind for decades, and then when you need help, you come begging to me like a dog-”
Maryse glared up at her, murderous. “You’d turn him away just because of your resentment to me?”
“I have no resentment towards you, Maryse. You’re my own flesh and blood. But as far as I’m concerned, I’m not helping my great-grandson; I’m just helping you.” Catia set her mindful gaze upon the young boy who had gravitated slowly away from his mother and further towards the other woman. It was natural for him to want to be close to another valkyrie, after all -Catia had known that Maryse would give birth to another eventually, and the tugging in her chest proved that this boy was the newest of his kind.
“You want me to help him conceal his true form, don’t you?” Catia guessed, sickly pleased when Maryse paled and nodded sharply. She sighed. “Let me take him in-” she paused Maryse’s progress into her threshold with a palm against her tense shoulders.
“No, not you. You’re a racist, bigoted Shadowhunter who wants nothing more than to uphold her family name, no matter the trouble it causes your family. Don’t interrupt me!” she snarled, eyes narrowing when Maryse flushed in anger at her words and opened her mouth to protest.
“Alexander,” she murmured, voice softer as she bent her knees to get on the same level as the small Fallen beneath her. His eyes were glistening with admiration. Catia smiled gently - just because Alec was raised in a disgusting society that despised any being with demon blood, such as himself, he still had a fire in him that was something to commend.
“Will you come inside with me?”
The young Downworlder licked his lips nervously, head snapping up to look at his mother for a moment before he swung back around to meet Catia’s gaze. The bustle of the city behind Catia’s townhouse drowned out his quiet whisper of ‘yes’, but she could see his tiny nod.
Catia looked up at Maryse with a less than savoury look. “There’s a mundane coffee shop around the corner. I’m sure you haven’t taught him much, so we’ll be a while.” Maryse pursed her lips, biting one in between her shockingly white teeth.
“I see. Catia,” she nodded at the valkyrie and then her son. “I’ll see you in two hours.”
With that, she turned on her heel, pulling her stele from her pocket and activating a rune on her forearm. Alec and Catia watched for a few more seconds as she strolled out onto the street ahead that was becoming increasingly busier. It could have been the crowd of people or the rune she had activated, but neither of the two Downworlders could see her anymore.
“Come in,” Catia smiled invitingly, pushing her front door open more. “My name is Catia Monteverde. I’m your great-grandmother.”
“I didn’t know I had one,” Alec breathed, staring in wonder at the grandeur of Catia’s home. The majority of the paintings lining her walls depicted delicate Japanese flowers, dark oak frames balanced upon creamy walls. The carpet was a deep crimson, with even darker fern details. Nothing was lacklustre, and having lived in the plain fours walls of the Institute his entire life, it was a pleasant change.
“I didn’t know I had a great-grandson. Your mother isn’t close enough to me to get all the latest family gossip,” Catia quipped lightly, leading Alec with a gentle hand against his back to her living room.
Bookcases full of gorgeous leather bound volumes lined the walls, vases littering the tops of them. They looked expensive and old - a way for Catia to show her age and wealth. The Fallen grinned at Alec’s awestruck expression, throwing herself gracelessly on the plush velvet sofa overlooking a large window.
“Sit down, sweetheart. No need for the straight spine pose, you’re not a warrior here. You’re just Alexander with me.”
Alec swallowed thickly, letting his arms fall to his sides. In a moment, his shoulders were loose and his once rigid back was relaxed. “You’ve been waiting for that, haven’t you?” Alec nodded - it was clear that he wasn’t usually allowed to let his guard down. The pull that valkyries felt between each other was most likely what offered the comfort Alec already felt with Catia.
Once Alexander was settled, practically drowning in the velvet of the sofa, Catia began her interrogation. She’d been careful not to mention the name of their species when talking to Maryse, not even sure if Alec had been told that.
“Tell me, Alexander - how much do you know? Could you tell me why Maryse wants you here?” Of course, Catia knew to some degree what Maryse desired, but she also knew that Alec didn’t deserve just to be taught how to conceal himself.
The young boy sighed deeply; Catia thought that he was just thinking or steeling himself for his own words, but a moment later, a fine gold mist pooled at the air above his head, dripping down like paint and thickening into the shape of two incredible wings. They darkened from shimmering, unreal golden wings to midnight feathers.
They were large for Alec’s age and pointed at the tips. The transformation was quick and seamless - it was truly beautiful, the control that Alexander had already over his valkyrian form.
“My mother...she, er, she wasn’t happy when I starting exhibiting traits like this. I woke up about three weeks ago and they were just there,” Alec mumbled, voice choked as he thought back on the memory. It obviously wasn’t a nice one. “It felt so good to have them there, so natural…”
“That’s good, my lovely. That’s how it’s meant to feel. It’s how it felt for me,” Catia reassured the young Fallen. Alec furrowed his brow, shaking his head in an almost subconscious gesture. A drawn out sob rose in his throat, but no tears filled his eyes. He’d been taught to conceal more than just his wings, it seemed.
“My mother came into my room the first time it happened. It was as if she just knew.” There was a long pause. “She sat in the corner of my room and watched me on the bed and told me that my siblings would hate me if they saw me like that, that my peers would never respect me. It hurt so bad, but the first time that I concealed my wings, it hurt so much more.”
Catia sighed, breath shuddering as she pulled Alec into a tight embrace. The first time she had hidden her wings was dreadful, but it seemed that it had been ten times worse for her great grandson. It could have been because of the pressure Maryse must have put on her son to shift his wings back into his body.
The fabric of her shirt was wet with tears, grey darkened into black where Alec had rested his head. She didn’t mind, only watching carefully as Alec raised his head again, eyes slightly glazed with tears. There was a high flush on his cheekbones.
“Valkyries naturally feel comfortable with each other,” Catia explained quietly, noting Alec’s embarrassment. “There’s an almost gravitational pull between us all. It’s even stronger for us because we have the same demon blood.”
“Why is there a pull, though?” Alec asked, rubbing at the raw skin around his eyes. His wings twitched slightly under Catia’s gaze.
“Because,” Catia sighed, “valkyries, or Fallens as they are often called, are some of the most feared Downworlders. Arguably, warlocks are some of the only half-demons that don’t battle with their demon blood. Vampires have a thirst for blood, Seelies are naturally manipulative despite not being able to lie, but valkyries go through an entire process of overcoming their demonic side.
“A large amount of us were wiped out by wars from between ourselves. Battles for power, mainly. And then, when we finally came together as a concise group, we became even stronger. We wanted the world and that was terrifying for every other member of the Shadow-world. They wanted to wipe us all out....and they almost did, actually.
“After they finished hunting us, only about a hundred of us were left surviving. It grew this natural need to be near each, to protect each other. We dispersed across the entire globe, but there was still something inside us that craved the contact of other Fallens. I feel it every single day.”
Alec sat, dumbfounded for a moment. He was tempted to feel the same anger his mother must do at his race for being so hellish to have warred against themselves, to have almost wiped themselves out, but he resisted it. It would have been easy to feel hatred, and he knew that he couldn’t judge an entire species for their past misgivings.
Catia then stood, elegantly, strolling to the bookcase in the corner of her room, where the oldest of her books resided. One stood out in particular to her, it’s bejewelled, ornate cover calling to Catia, drawing her in.
“Do you know how to draw a Glamour rune?” she asked her great-grandson, glancing behind her, pleased to see Alec hadn’t even moved. He nodded silently, then asked ‘you can’t draw one yourself?’
“I’m not a Shadowhunter, my dear,” Catia smiled brightly, “my rather large age is thanks to being a Fallen. Pure valkyries could live for thousands of years, if they could be bothered to continue to replenish their natural magic every few months - otherwise we’d just live the same amount of time as sickly mundanes.”
“Do valkyries not have angel blood? Can’t they draw runes?” he asked curiously, readjusting himself on the plush sofa so that he was leaning over the coffee table, where Catia had placed her beloved tome. From there, he could really plainly see the care that had been put into making the leather supple and the jewels shine.
“Dragonskin, not leather,” Catia murmured, seeming to read Alec’s mind. “And yes, we do, but steles reject us because we also have demon blood. You’ll have noticed by now, I assume, that it hurts a lot more than it should to apply or activate runes. Now, that’s for the same reason. You’ll get better at dealing with it, I assure you.”
Alec pulled his stele - it was dark, steely grey and subtly curved in a way that suggested he had gripped it too hard when drawing runes had caused much more pain than it ought to - out of his pocket, poising it over the book and applying a Glamour rune with some clumsiness.
A moment later, the cells of the book shifted and changed into a smaller, simply bound notebook. Alec arched his brow in confusion, reaching out tentatively to open the cover. The pages inside were all blank.
“I know your mother isn’t all that glad that she passed her valkyrian gene onto you, so the book - an encyclopedia, almost, of valkyries - can be glamoured into something simple and inconspicuous. You just scratch out the rune and the book shifts back into it’s natural form. Like valkyrian shifting,” Catia explained, sitting back down besides Alec.
“Why does she hate valkyries so much? My mother, I mean. Wasn’t her mother a valkyrie too?” It would have made sense to Alec for his Maryse to have been a Fallen as well, but considering her increasingly cold nature towards him after his wings had came out, it might not have been so.
“I’m a pure-blooded valkyrie, as you know. Completely equal levels of demon blood to angel blood - Shadowhunters have slightly more mundane blood than angel blood. It’s the fact their sides don’t have to war with each other that makes Shadowhunters more stable. But, I did end up having a child with a Shadowhunter. Her name was Phoebe.”
“So, she was part demon, part angel, part mundane?” Alec guessed, folding his wings tentatively so that he could sit more comfortably. Catia nodded with a small smile.
“Just like you and your mother,” she added. “But, the thing is, the valkyrian gene tends to skip a generation. Phoebe was part valkyrie because I was a pure walkyrie. But, she also ended up having a child with a Shadowhunter, meaning Maryse was always much more likely to have more angel and mundane blood than demon.”
“Why was I a Fallen then?” Alec asked, forehead creasing in puzzlement.
“You’re an anomaly in every sense of the word, Alexander,” Catia mumbled, increasingly aware that Alec was a very young individual, who mustn’t have known until very recently that he was a Downworlder. “Most valkyries don’t Unfurl so young. Most aren’t male - actually, I’ve only heard of one other male Fallen. And most valkyries don’t have so much control over their shifts so early on.”
Alec winced, uncomfortable under Catia’s scrutiny. He didn’t want to be reminded of what Maryse had said and done during his first shift.
“Look, Alexander,” Catia said, taking a mental note of Alec’s growing displeasure, “it’s not the most kosher thing to assist a young valkyrie throughout their transitioning phase, but you need this. You need help. And Maryse isn’t prepared to give you that.
“We’ve talked a lot,” she sighed, “and I think you need some time to process everything. You take this book - it’ll tell you everything you need to know when you feel ready to read it.”
Catia stood, encouraging Alec to match. His face twisted in discomfort as his wings begun to shed its feathers, the small plume curling into gold that disappeared by the time it reached the floor. A pair of skeletal wings were left behind, bones cracking and pushing back into the meat of Alec’s back.
It was an impressive show of power, but it had obviously caused Alec pain. “I...thanks, Catia. For everything.”
“Now, now,” Catia admonished playfully, “don’t act like we’re never going to see each other again. You can come visit whenever you want to, if only just to talk.”
“I don’t know if my mother would like that,” Alec said almost silently, not meeting Catia’s probing gaze.
“Then just come in secret. I’m sure someone with your talents could manage that,” Catia smiled genuinely, flinching when the doorbell rang, echoing throughout the large living room. Catia grunted. “Maryse is just in time. Shall we?”
She held a hand out to Alec, pleased when the young boy took it without hesitation. It was surely the start of a beautiful relationship.
“So, Odin doesn’t have anything to do with us?”
Alec was sitting, cross-legged on the floor of Catia’s dining room, chewing idly on a piece of peppermint. Papers of various sizes and quantities of text lay in a circle around him. The one in his slightly sweaty, tiny hands had a large picture of a classic valkyrie from Norse mythology.
“No. It’s a common misconception about modern day valkyries; some pure blood Fallens from the very beginning came directly from Odin, but it isn’t common any more. Not at all, actually,” Catia replied, sipping her tea from her own place across from Alec.
The young boy’s brow furrowed, lips twisting awkwardly around his mouthful of mint leaf. “Okay...what about the wings? Every source that I could find in the mundane library said that the wings were the only physical change.”
Catia huffed out a small laugh. “It depends, really, on the Fallen. The standard change is a pair of, usually black, wings. Some valkyries have a spread of gold, like the mist that appears when you Unfurl your wings, from their fingertips to their elbows, at least when your form matures. There are other aspects of the valkyrian form, of course, but you’ll learn about that in time.”
“When’s that?”
Unfolding her legs, Catia stood with a grace that was surprising for someone with such age. She set her mug aside on the marble counter across from her, stretching out the kinks in her back and then reaching back down to help Alec scramble up.
“You’re very different for a valkyrie, Alec,” Catia sighed, “I have no idea when your form will mature. And even then, you might not have the standard changes. Your natural magic could be stronger or weaker than the usual Fallen has.”
Alec rolled his eyes. “So, the same answer to any other question about me I’ve asked you,” he muttered under his breath. Catia was kind enough not to mention it.
“Come on, you,” she chuckled, leading Alec away from the mess in her dining room. “It’s getting late and your siblings can only cover for you for so long. What was the excuse you used again?”
“Oh, that I was meeting some girl. Jessica Hawkblue, I called her,” Alec said vaguely, smiling as Catia laughed bright and loud.
It was three o’clock on a Sunday morning when Catia next opened her door to her great-grandson.
The sky was dark, storm clouds dancing overhead, a surprisingly idle pitter patter of rain falling and dripping from the plant leaves decorating Catia’s pristine garden. Alec stood, barely upright, on her front doorstep. His cheeks were tear-stained and blotchy red and his tiny, fragile chest shuddered with every heaving breath - Catia wasn’t entirely sure if it was because of exhaustion or because of his panic.
“I-I ra-ran here,” he choked out, falling into Catia’s awaiting arms. So; a mixture of weariness and frenzied alarm. Catia hated the idea of her young ward having ran the eight miles to her townhouse in Brooklyn.
“Oh, my sweet boy,” Catia whispered against the slick hair of her great-grandson’s head. His shoulder convulsed as he buried his head against Catia’s neck, quiet and constricted whimpers getting lost in the soft fabric of her night-dress.
“What happened, my darling? What happened?”
Alec only shook his head, hands tightening uncontrollably in Catia’s dress. The older valkyrie felt tears welling up in her own eyes, heart jumping in her chest as the skinny thirteen year old in her grasp sobbed sharply, the sound wrenching from the very pit of his soul.
“Come inside, my lovely. Stay here tonight. Tell me what’s upsetting you so much,” she reasoned, a deep sigh of relief when Alec nodded once after a long moment of deliberation, it seemed. She edged the young boy inside, only letting go of him long enough to close the door behind him.
He collapsed as soon as they reached the living room, legs wobbling and toppling from beneath him. It should have been humiliating for someone raised to be a strong warrior - and a Lightwood, at that, too - but Alec didn’t even seem bothered, utterly enamoured by Catia in such a way that he could set aside the personality Maryse had drilled into him.
“It’s Jace,” Alec gasped out without any warning, “I don’t know what happened. We were sparring a-and he just got so angry all of a sudden. And he started hitting me over and over and over and I didn’t want to hurt him so I just-” his breath trembled, a loud sniffing noise coming from his flushed nose, “-I just let him. I just felt like he had the power, like he was better than me for some re-reason.”
“But he isn’t, you understand that, don’t you?”
Alec didn’t say anything, only rubbing roughly at his eyes with his knuckles. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot and glistening. Catia’s face twisted in an anxious grimace at the look on Alexander’s face, but considering the tired lines of his twitching shoulders, she didn’t want to push him any more.
“Alright, love,” she mumbled, lips pressing together in a thin white line. “There’s a spare room across from my bedroom. We can go there right now or we can stay down here for a little while.”
“I…” Alec’s eyes drifted closed. “I’m tired. I’m sorry.” It was an automatic response, apparently, to apologise for his weaknesses. “Can we just go to sleep?”
“Yes, of course, darling. You don’t have to apologise for wanting to sleep. You must be exhausted,” Catia said, gently encouraging him to his feet. He was unsteady, bones aching and numb. It took some time for the young Fallen to follow Catia up the two flights of stairs to the bedrooms she had set up and spare.
The one that Catia lead Alexander into had deep, midnight blue walls, a black, filled to the brim bookcase and a large bed with shimmering gold sheets. The windows protruded from the rest of the room, with velvet sofas overlooking the intricacy of Catia’s back garden.
“I re-decorated it a few days ago thinking of you.”
As much as Alec would have enjoyed to test out the plush armchairs in front of the fireplace besides the bookcases, or take the time to dissect the patterns and gorgeous details of the large rug beneath him, but he only stumbled to the bed, collapsing forwards on to it.
The duvet was silky and the mattress beneath him felt like a cloud. His great-grandmother chuckled quietly, moving forward to tuck Alec into bed. It wasn’t as if Maryse would have done it too often as he grew up.
“Catia,” he muttered, syllables dragging slowly from his lips. He was already half asleep but Catia didn’t leave until his quiet little snores filled the room.
“Goodnight, Alexander,” Catia sighed.
Alec stayed with Catia for six weeks until his mother came to drag him back to the Institute.
In that short time, he’d taken to calling Catia’s townhouse home. They went out every morning, after Alec had settled in, to a coffee shop a few blocks away. It was a hole in the wall and the sign was so decrepit and uninviting that the majority of mundanes - other than a few hipsters here and there, who only came to photograph their coffees - missed it, but it was practically a designated ‘hang’ for Downworlders.
It was a perfect place for Alec to meet others at least similar to him. There was a young vampire, changed when she was only eleven - Alec seemed horrified that she would stay that age for the rest of eternity, but Adelita, as that was her name, was gleeful that she could throw herself into the thick of the fray and her enemies wouldn’t suspect anything to come from the skinny preteen girl.
“-and then I’d bite their heads clean off!” she cried, imitating the movement with her sharp fangs. Alec laughed, flinching away when Adelita came nearer just to make the youngster feel better.
“But, don’t you miss being mundane? Don’t you miss just being normal? Your friends and family?” Alec asked one day, about three weeks after meeting Adelita. The girl fell silent, grin fading, and her minder, a quick-witted, intelligent vamp hissed warningly at Alec.
“My parents were abusive. They used to burn me with the ends of their cigarettes and lock me up in my room without food for days. They weren’t my family, but the clan is. They protect me, have down ever since I was turned. I’ve never been happier than the few months I’ve spent with them,” she murmured, smiling to try and lighten the mood when she noticed the glisten in Alec’s eyes. “And besides, being a vampire is so cool! I can do this thing with my teeth now, here, I’ll show you…”
And then there was Jamie, too. A short, rather stout, young werewolf, with just enough fat on him to seem healthy and really quite adorable. He was probably around fourteen, just a year older than Alec, and the valkyrie was smitten immediately.
“-his smile is so nice, Catia, and his hair! It’s just perfect, all the time, it’s almost aggravating how amazing he looks-”
They kissed for the first time, a werewolf and a valkyrie, behind the coffee shop, in amongst the rubbish left behind in the back alley. It was childish and unpracticed and the setting wasn’t exactly fitting, but Alec still babbled excitedly about it - and Adelita’s newest trick and Rory (the owner’s son, and a half-Seelie), who was seemingly his second crush of the week - to Catia on their way home.
Catia taught him about mundane life too, of course. Alec seemed a lot less excited about those studies, but he tackled them with ease and was soon watching Friends re-runs with Catia. Her living room, now adorned with a television and much cosier sofas, felt much more a part of her home now that Alec had stapled it as his own.
The talk about Alec’s sexuality - which seemed rather unchangeably gay, but Catia knew that attraction was deeper than what it seemed at first - came in the fifth week, a few days after the kiss with Jamie.
“I never did like girls. I mean, there aren’t really many my age at the Institute, but whenever I was out or when we go to Ewanson's -” (their coffee shop) “- I never notice the pretty girls. I never wanted to kiss Adelita, but I really like Jamie and Rory. Not that I think my mother would approve-”
The one habit Catia hadn’t been able to make Alec kick was the reliance he had on his mother’s opinion. “It doesn’t matter what your mom thinks. She’s not here right now, is she? Alec,” Catia sighed softly, “if being with boys makes you happy and if you do like boys the way that you think you should like girls, that’s okay. That’s great! As long as you’re happy with kissing Jamie and crushing on Rory, then I think that you’re right.”
Alec blushed. “Okay,” he muttered, and then skittered up to his room, ready to collapse by the fireplace and finish reading the book on Fae that Catia had given him.
Peace broke soon after. Alec’s mother arrived at six a.m on a Tuesday morning. Her face was drawn and pale with fury. Her and Catia’s shouting match must have been heard in the next few houses, and it sounded deafening to Alec. Power bubbled at his fingertips, his natural magic, usually dormant, fighting to get out, to protect the host.
Apparently, Maryse hadn’t bothered to come collect her son earlier because she had been told by Jace that he was dead. A shadowhunter had spotted him and Catia at Ewanson's and reported it to her. She wanted Catia imprisoned with the Silent Brothers, under account of breaking the Accords.
“I did nothing against your petty laws! I took care of a depressed, frantic child for a few weeks because you couldn’t be bothered to fact-check,” Catia snarled, celestial outline of her wings twitching in the air. Usually, she could cover her true form with incredible ease - in fact, she had never once let her glamour slip in the year that Alec had known her.
“You kidnapped my son!”
“I protected your son! From you!” Catia bit back, gold dripping down the barely-thereness of her wings. She had vowed not to reveal her wings again unless she was in dire need of them, and she wasn’t about to break that vow now for Maryse Lightwood.
“I don’t think that Alexander should return to the Institute,” she said slowly, teeth gritted. Maryse laughed bitterly.
“It isn’t your decision. You have no rights to him. According to all our files, you don’t exist anymore. You’re dead - dead people can’t take care of young boys, now can they?”
“Neither can you, apparently. I-” Catia began, but then spotted Alec peering around the corner of the doorframe. “Alec, maybe you should wait upstairs.”
“No. Alec, get your things. We’re leaving,” Maryse ordered. She wasn’t expecting Alec to protest sharply, voice high-pitched, reedy and frantic. “I said, we’re leaving!”
Reluctantly, Alec nodded. He and Catia shared a knowing look, that space in their chest panging at the thought of losing another one of their kind.
It was decided, though without the needs of words; Alec would be coming back.
The next time Alec did come home - to where Catia lived, that is - it wasn’t under the nicest of circumstances. And...a year had passed.
Not to say that Alec and Catia hadn’t seen each other in that year. No, the first week of Alec being back at the Institute, he attempted escape nine times. It was an impressive feat, but would have been more impressive had he actually managed it to Catia. At around the fifth time of trying, he figured he should run to Ewanson's, rather than Catia’s home. It was, after all, closer.
He made it there once, before a Shadowhunter called Sam pulled him away, threw him over his meaty shoulder and glamoured them for the trek back to the Institute. Through the coffee shop window, Alec could make out Adelita’s tiny frame, Rory behind the counter, along with his father, Ewanson, and Catia, in all her aging glory, about to leave out of the front door. She could see Alec too.
A wordless cry escaped her lips and she bolted forwards, desperate to see her great-grandson. Nothing could have prepared her for the sheer emptiness she felt when Alec had left her with his mother. She wanted Alec back.
Sam ran off with Alec before Catia even stepped out of Ewanson's.
At around month two, the attempts to find Catia dwindled. The older valkyrie had seen Alec once or twice, and they had both been frantic to get to each other, but Alec was always whisked away at the last moment. Maryse was really doing her all to keep Catia and Alec apart.
At month six, Catia hadn’t seen Alec for at least seventeen weeks, probably more. He’d been in a mundane library, of all places, with a large, leather-bound volume (probably on Latin or Greek) on the desk in front of him and a beefy Shadowhunter minder grasping his forearm tightly. Alec didn’t even seem like he was noticing the pain.
Catia hadn’t tried to show herself to her boy. He was left blissfully unaware as she watched, natural magic casting a shadow over her form, to protect her from unwanted eyes. Her magic wasn’t something she could control, like warlocks could, nor did it appear as often for Catia to utilise. But, as it had with Alec, it emerged during times of need, adapting to their host’s subconscious desires.
Month fourteen- Alec was nearing the age of fifteen now. The fat of childhood had melted away from his stomach, leaving crisp lines of muscle. His hair was still a mass of black on the top of his head, like Catia remembered, but his face was drawn and eyes dull.
He was unconscious when Catia found him, crumpled in an alleyway near Ewanson's - which seemed to be thriving even more with Downworlders now that Alec was gone, along with the threat of Shadowhunters finding them and accusing them of breaking the Accords for one reason or another. Obviously, Alec had been delirious when he stumbled to the quaint coffee shop, instinct taking over. He had felt protected at Ewanson's, and he had loved the people there. (Adelita often said, when Catia saw her, that she’d snap the necks of any Shadowhunter that had tried to keep them all away from Alec.)
When Alec awoke, it was with a deep groan. Catia fussed above him, pushing his hair away from his fluttering eyelids.
“Monteverde,” he stated, cold and toneless when he recognised who was above him. Catia went pale.
“Alexander-”
“Don’t call me that. Where am I?” Again, that icy monotone. There was a lifelessness in Alec’s gaze that Catia couldn’t trust. He most definitely wasn’t himself.
“You’re at my home. Don’t you recognise it?” Catia asked quietly, gentle with her phrasing. Alec’s eyes narrowed.
“I’ll be leaving, then,” he said, lifting himself with a graceful strength from his old bed, swinging his legs to dangle down, brushing the floor. It was as if he didn’t even know where he was, despite it being his own room.
The sharp gash down his side, the entire reason he was here, had practically cleared up. Catia would have liked to think it was his valkyrian healing, shielding and fixing his Shadowhunter body, but it was unlikely his valkyrie side had been allowed to flourish for a very long time.
“Don’t you feel it, though, Alec? Valkyries are like pack animals, we need to be together. This is what’s right for both of us!”
Alec laughed, humorlessly and dark. It reminded Catia of the way Maryse used to laugh. “Pack animals. That’s exactly what you are, though, all of you Downworlder scum - animals. And this?” He turned to face Catia for the first time in at least a year. His face was emotionless despite the anger in his words. “This isn’t right for me, you selfish bitch. You’re just doing this for your own sake.”
Catia was speechless as Alec stood on unwavering feet.
“I never want to see you again, Catia Monteverde. Don’t come anywhere near me.”
“Alec, what’s happened? What’s wrong with you?!” Catia cried, finally finding her voice. And, there, a flicker in Alec’s gaze, truth fighting with tooth and claw to get out.
“Nothing is wrong with me. Nothing at all.”
And with that, he gathered his shirt from the foot of the bed and whisked away, leaving a cold emptiness in the pit of Catia’s stomach.
Izzy knew that something was up with her brother.
It was easy enough to see, really, just from the stilted way he spoke and his past clumsiness when he walked gone. He was a smoothed down, toned, perfect warrior - and he wasn’t Alec.
Izzy was eight when she began to notice changes with her big brother; the original changes, she would call them, now that she had bore witness to his new attributes. When Alec was eleven, he would begin to disappear for hours on end, and then not have any clue what he had been doing during that time. Izzy had followed him once, when he was dazed and confused, but she could only watch for a few moments as her brother writhed on his bed, screaming at his mother holding him down.
Her memory was wiped after Maryse realised she was there. She didn’t remember the incident, obviously, but afterwards she held an unfounded resentment to her mother.
So, then, when her brother began disappearing again, even away from the Institute after he turned twelve, the familiar feeling of dread washed over Isabelle. She was naturally very protective of her brother, especially after the stuck-up newcomer Jace had arrived.
She tried to follow them, but only made it to the doors of the Institute before Sam was pulling her back. After a while, when Alec started smiling more and laughing more, Iz decided that whoever this Jessica Hawkblue girl was, she was good for Alec.
But then Alec went missing, presumed dead by Jace, for six weeks. He came home and he was disorientated and lost. Completely unfocused on everything. It took six months, of his darting off without his minder to the Angel know’s where, before he finally settled in again.
And now, Alec was a brooding, emotionless teenager, with no interest in girls (or as Izzy had suspected, given how much time he used to spend around Sybil, a poorly-named Shadowhunter who had transferred after his fourteenth birthday from the London Institute, no interest in boys). Iz was concerned. Of course she was!
It was perhaps that mixture of desperation to help her brother and the thirst for knowledge that had her, at a skinny twelve years old, sneaking into her mother’s office for some paper - young Shadowhunters weren’t allowed to have it, in case security was breached due to a loosely worded Fire Message - and scribing a message to the High Warlock of Brooklyn. Magnus Bane.
He agreed, after months of Izzy begging, to meet both sister and brother in Central Park at noon on the dot, the next day. Despite the warlock seemingly morbidly interested in Alec’s situation and despite Izzy being taught that they were a distasteful and untrustworthy breed, she cajoled her practically unresponsive brother into following her there.
Magnus wasn’t exactly what she was expecting. An old, decrepit man with a black robe and scaly bat wings, maybe, but Magnus was as hip as a warlock could get. Deep, wine red shirt - and no, it was not burgundy, Izzy knew her shirt colours - with an open neck, a black blazer and tight black jeans. Gold necklaces dangled on his gold chest and his hair was artfully mussed up.
“Isabelle Lightwood - not exactly what I was expecting,” Bane smiled, seeming completely unsurprised. He spoke as much with his hands as he did his mouth. Izzy noticed as he tilted his head that his eyelids were painted rose pink.
“Magnus Bane - you’ve already exceeded my expectations,” Izzy replied. Perhaps compliments were the way to go for this warlock. She glanced at her brother for his input but he was only staring ahead, face blank and listless.
“Why have you brought me to this scum?” he asked, voice toneless. Izzy coughed, hoping Magnus wouldn’t take offence - by the Angel, Alec had just called him scum, why wouldn’t he take offence?
“Oh...oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t think Maryse and Robert would choose this for their eldest son. Isn’t he supposed to be the favourite?” Magnus asked. He took Alec’s remark with a flippancy Izzy admired.
“Quite the opposite. Our parents seem to hate him,” Izzy muttered, watching a mundane who was creeping closer to them out of the corner of her eye. A silent breeze rustled the autumn leaves on the ground. Central Park was busy enough at noon that Magnus could escape from Izzy and Alec easily, but not so busy that they couldn’t have a private conversation. Izzy almost laughed - what High Warlock would be afraid of two underage Shadowhunters?
“What do you think they’ve done to him?” she asked instead.
Magnus’ eyes narrowed. “An enchantment of some sort, most definitely. No outside force is controlling him actively, as far as I’m aware, but I think he’s been made not to feel anything Maryse and Robert don’t want him to.” Izzy made an aborted, concerned sound at Magnus’ diagnosis. “Don’t worry, it’s an easy fix. I just need to place a protective spell on his mind for a few years and then he should have recovered enough to shield himself from any other warlock’s magic.”
“I don’t need to be changed. This is who I am,” Alec stated sharply, his words seeming as if he were reading from a script. Magnus huffed impatiently.
“I refuse to let such a young, innocent man go without helping him. Whoever this warlock is, their magic could be burning Alec’s mind out,” Magnus muttered under his breath. Then, louder, “This won’t take long.”
And it didn’t. A few seconds later, a burst of brilliant blue magic flew from Magnus’ outstretched palms and tapped against Alec’s skull, seeping inside. His skin soaked up the magic like it was his life support and Izzy glanced from where she was standing a safe distance away, to Magnus. When he saw her looking, he schooled his features from gleeful surprise to a faux-concentrated look.
“There,” he said after a few moments, his magic retreating back to his body. “It’s likely he won’t remember the events of the last few months, possibly longer. He won’t remember this little outing of yours either, so I suggest if you want him back to your petty Institute before he collects himself, you’d better move fast.”
Smiling, Magnus turned briskly on his heel, conjured a portal with a flick of his fingers and then disappeared without even a goodbye.
Izzy glanced towards her brother, watching as his face turned gradually more like what she remembered the clumsy teen to be. His eyebrows furrowed for a split second and then his eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled brightly. “Iz?”
“Alec…?” Izzy asked, huffing out a desperately relieved laugh as Alec brought her into a tight hug. He smelled different, even, less like stone and metal and more like crisp magic and oak. “I missed you so much,” she sighed into his neck, hugging him tighter.
“What happened, Izzy? I can’t remember anything...what day is it?”
“Sunday. November 12th,” Izzy told him, concern flickering through her when Alec swore loudly. “What? What is it?”
Izzy knew that Magnus had told her Alec wouldn’t remember anything after his initial enchantment, which she had no idea when happened, but he seemed more terrified than what she was expecting. His face was pale and pinched - admittedly she hadn’t had her memory wiped and personality erased before, but… well, no, that actually sounded fucking terrible.
“I...Izzy, I’ve got to go somewhere, I have to check up on someone-”
“No, Alec! Wait-” Izzy’s voice cut off as Alec tugged away from his little sister, stumbling at the force of her attempts to keep him by her side. She felt tears prickling at her eyes, deeply hurt as Alec put as much distance between them as possible.
“Why can’t you just be my brother, Alec? Why can’t you just love me?”
Alec sobbed harshly, chest dry heaving as he collapsed forwards again, dragging Izzy into his arms. She fell to the soft grass with him, crying as Alec cupped the back of her head, stroking her hair calmingly. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Izzy nodded quickly, burrowing her head into his shirt front. It was turning from faded charcoal to wet black. Alec didn’t seem like he minded.
They stayed there for hours, just talking to one another, arms wrapped tight around each other. Only after the autumn sunlight had begun to wane did they even think about leaving. Alec looked liked he had forgotten about whoever he had been so frantic to see - perhaps ‘Jessica Hawkblue’, or perhaps not.
Maryse was pissed when they returned so late - she was incomprehensibly enraged, though, when she realised what Izzy had helped Alec to do. He laid it all on himself, of course, claiming that he had no idea what had happened. Maryse must have assumed that the enchantment on Alec had just slipped, because she brought a warlock - a stocky, horned, European man - into the Institute. His attempts to magick Alec into submission didn’t work.
After a few days, Maryse just stopped trying to bring Alec back to his stoic self. He was professional and respectful with everyone, practically ignored the family favourite, Jace (which didn’t corrupt him, as Maryse had worried might happen if the boys grew too close. You could never tell with those with demon blood), and he followed every order to a point.
She wasn’t happy, of course, to leave Alec as an aware valkyrie, but she could do nothing to stop him. At the very least, Izzy still didn’t know Alec’s true nature - she had assumed that Maryse had hired a warlock to try and force away Alec’s sexuality, which just made her resent Maryse more.
Five days after the initial incident, Magnus contacted Izzy via Fire Message. He seemed strangely interested in Alec for some reason - Izzy was sure it wasn’t a sexual thing, which she was very much aware of, thank you very much - but it was unnerving and Iz didn’t want to put her brother in danger.
She was twelve years old going on twenty-five because she was a warrior and a diplomat. Arguably, she was the most intelligent Shadowhunter of her age and it showed. She knew how to manipulate her words to make it seem like Magnus was getting the information he wanted, but not actually revealing anything.
After she fire messaged him back, there was quiet for a long while. Magnus didn’t message her back after she assured him that Alec wasn’t showing and signs of mental fracturing. Maryse had stopped bothering them both. Everything seemed to be working out.
And then, Alec left again. But, this time, it wasn’t for long.
Valkyries almost had an official way to mourn. It was called Furling - it came from the belief that the original valkyries would furl up their wings around their entire bodies in vigil after one of their kind died.
In the modern day shadow-world, valkyries went into mourning very rarely - so few of their kind died, so there was no need - and it usually just consisted of their natural magic creating a black hole-like shield around their abode, protecting them from the outside world for what could be years.
Catia didn’t have the luxury of utilising years to grieve. None of her kind had actually died. No, it was more because she had lost Alec. The remnants of his natural magic had finally left her houser. Despite keeping his room pristine and practically unchanged, his magic had faded from the pages of the books he had left on the armchair and from the velvet smooth bedsheets.
Once she had realised it and finally rationalised that she might not see her great-grandson again, she collapsed in her hallway and didn’t move for three days. Catia finally dragged herself to her room and stayed there for the next six days.
The aging valkyrie dipped in and out of consciousness for what seemed like forever, only staying awake long enough to register her bedroom walls burning with stains from her natural magic as it screamed from within her.
When Catia next woke up fully, her Unfurling arguably beginning, it was to a gentle hand carding through her hair. She sighed heavily, pressing into the contact with a delirious smile before she opened her eyes.
“Alexander?”
The boy grinned, hand stilling in Catia’s greying hair. The elder Fallen was afraid for a moment that she was just hallucinating her great-grandson, but she verified his existence in her home with a pinch to her wrinkled but muscled upper arm.
“Hey, don’t do that! I’m not a dream, I promise,” Alec reprimanded, tugging Catia’s nails away from the skin of her bicep.
“Oh, you are most definitely a dream, my boy,” Catia laughed gently, both to compliment Alec, because she loved his smile, and also because she still wasn’t convinced the Fallen was real. The last time that they’d met, Alec had told her that he didn’t ever want to see her again. Alec didn’t have any reason to come back. Did he?
“My mother hired a warlock to enchant me. Made me stoic and emotionless and a follower of every order. The entire point was to try and force my memory of my own valkyrie side away. To make me hate myself. And,” he cut into Catia’s cry of anger, “before you go off threatening her...she told me that she’d punish Isabelle instead of me if I told anyone about what Maryse did.”
“So, what - you’re just going to lie down and take it?”
“No. Not at all. I’m just going to choose the right moment to strike back at her,” Alec murmured under his breath, almost too quiet for Catia to hear in her weakened state. Alec’s presence besides her had already begun to help her to heal. “”I have to get going soon, Catia.”
The elder valkyrie made a pained noise in the back of her throat when Alec moved away from her for a moment. “My sister and I reconciled quite a bit over the past weeks. I can’t let her down again - I’ve already been here for four days,” Alec said, soothing Catia’s nerves with the intimacy of his confession. Despite having missed a year of his life, they were still as close as they had been.
“I’ll stay for a few hours more, but I didn’t tell anyone where I was going and I need to get back to Izzy. I’m sorry, Catia.” Alec really did sound heartbroken to leave his great-grandmother alone in such a time. But Catia understood completely.
“It’s hard to lead a double life, I should know,” she whispered, burrowing into the blankets beneath here. “Go, Alec. I’m not upset.” And she wasn’t. She’d been forced to lead a double life when she married a Shadowhunter and she couldn’t imagine trying to hide the fact that her demon blood made it impossible to draw certain runes.
“Thank you, Catia. I love you.”
Despite Catia giving him permission, it almost seemed bittersweet that Alec had left just after saying ‘I love you’ for the very first time.
The first time Alec met Simon, he was nineteen.
Four years had passed since he had had his memory wiped of his mother’s control and he had turned into, under Catia’s loving guidance, an intelligent man, along with the pure muscle Maryse had trained into him.
With his runes always on display, even if he wasn’t glamoured, it was safe to say that he was a rather intimidating man. It was probably why, when walking in the mundane library he’d been so taken by, he hadn’t expected a slightly younger boy with a mess of brown curls and broken glasses to poke his head up from behind the book he was reading with a grin so bright it could block out the sun.
“Er...hello?”
“Hi,” the other boy said, voice tremoring with excitement, “I’m Simon. You’re reading my favourite book.” Alec arched his eyebrow in confusion.
“What, your favourite book is Don Quixote?” he asked incredulously. The thick novel in his hands quivered with his shuddering laughter. Simon blushed, looking a bit like a suffocating owl with his wide-rimmed glasses and red face.
“Well...not exactly. My bubbie tried to make me read it a few years ago but I could never get into it, so whilst she was reading other things, I would hide my comic book in the middle of it and read that - she’s practically blind to things that are far away, just like me, so she didn’t see it. Not that I wanted to lie to her, but…”
Alec drowned out the noise of Simon’s rambling by concentrating on other noises around him. He hummed politely every so often, surprisingly happy with himself when Simon giggled and babbled on, sounding even more excited.
His attention was caught by something just over Simon’s shoulder about five minutes later. It was a dark-haired woman with angled eyes and fluorescent lips. As Alec watched her, a balding man brushed past her and the woman shifted into him - it was like seeing someone who was there but he couldn’t quite focus on them.
“Simon...I’m afraid I’ve got to go. You have fun, yeah?” Alec muttered, throwing his bag over his shoulder and leaving his book on the library table. Simon seemed bitterly disappointed.
“Oh...alright. Bye,” there was a pause. “Wait, what’s your name?!”
Alec was already too far away for the valkyrie to hear, but he probably wouldn’t have bothered to answer anyways, not wanting to give his identity away to someone he just met (despite the fact he was really quite adorable, as well as slightly aggravating) nor to the demon who was stalking away from him and leading him away from the library.
He finished it off on his own with some difficulty with his seraph dagger, but Izzy fissed enough over his superficial scratches for him to not mind. Plus, the jealously that rose from waves from Jace for having defeated his own demon was tangible. They always worked as a group whenever in the field,
and Alec had adapted to Iz and Jace’s fighting styles, but he was labelled as the coward that always wanted to stay away from danger. Fighting an adult demon and winning on his own...well, it was impressive as hell.
The next time that Alec saw Simon was in Ewanson's.
He was with Adelita, braiding her hair as she drew a strangely abstract piece of work in the sketchbook Alec had gotten her for her birthday. She would have been sixteen that week, but being a vampire, she hadn’t aged at all. A mundane studying in the corner of the shop was looking at them strangely, but Alec figured they looked related enough for it to be acceptable for an almost-twenty year old to be so close to an incredibly young looking girl.
Ewanson was just coming over with their coffees when Simon dropped down on the chair across from there, wincing when his back hit the broken fixture on the back of his chair that regulars had long since learnt to be wary of.
“Okay, so, I promise I’m not stalking you, but I saw you in Ewanson's and I just remembered that I never got your name- oh, are you Ewanson, then?”
Ewanson didn’t seem amused by Simon’s babbling, his bushy black eyebrows furrowing. “This lad troublin’ yer, Alec?” he asked in a thick accent. His grip on the coffee mugs in his grasp was tight and his expression waspish.
“Don’t worry, Hamish. This is Simon, I met him in a mundie library the other day,” Alec muttered, the slang term for mundane slipping out before he could stop himself. Adelita, who had been drawing and listening intently to the conversation, paused the motion of her pencil. Ewanson bristled, disturbed by the quiet.
“What? What does mundie mean?” The words sounded strange and foreign on Simon’s tongue.
“Nothing,” Alec replied shortly, pleased when Hamish gradually bent to set the mugs on the smooth tabletop. They were cleaned with his wife’s Seelie magic every day - for a mundane, Ewanson was surprisingly knowledgeable about the Shadow-world and had even begun possessing both angelic and demonic traits himself.
“Well, if it’s some derogatory slang or something, I’d like to know-”
“Simon,” Alec said coldly, stopping the mundane in his tracks. Immediately, Alec felt bad. “It just means mundane. Normal. Completely uninteresting.”
There was silence once more as Simon glanced away, embarrassed and upset that he’d caused such a ruckus. Ewanson, ever the polite one (that was a lie - he was a dick at the best of times unless you were a regular), asked the boy, “you be havin’ anythin’, then?”
Simon brightened. “One hot chocolate with mini marshmallows and whipped cream? Oh, and some fresh cocoa powder if you have any, just sprinkled on the top?”
Ewanson raised his unibrow. “We got giant marshmallows that’s three years out o’ date and some hot chocolate mix.”
“Er...I’ll have a water, please…?” Simon asked feverently, seeming as terrified of Hamish’s brow as the Scotsman wanted everyone to be. It was hard to become a regular with a guy like this serving you,’ Alec thought to himself as Simon dropped his glass of water on the ground when Ewanson came back with it. Blood drained from the boy’s face and the owner turned blood-red.
Adelita snickered.
Magnus crossed his legs over one another elegantly, looking entirely at home on Catia’s plush, gold satin sofa that she had kept for the warlock especially.
“Catia,” he purred, taking a dainty sip of his steaming tea,” what can I do for you, my dear?”
“You’re the one who asked to come,” Catia stated dryly. It was too early for Magnus bloody Bane’s extravagance. The warlock grinned, cat eyes flashing in the low light.
“That I did.” He leant forward suddenly, chest and long necklaces brushing his crossed knees. Catia fought back the urge to recoil in her seat across from him, not used to so much concentrated magic being so close to her. Some valkyries (and Seelies, too, for that matter) relished the awareness they had of magic in the world, but Catia had never taken to it.
“The Shadow-world of New York assumed that you were the only valkyrie left in America. High Valkyrie of the North, at the very least...but there I was, making potions as any warlock does when I received a delightful fire message from Isabelle Lightwood concerning her brother, Alec.”
“This must have been quite some time ago, Magnus,” Catia said, trepidation creeping into her voice. The Shadow-world knew that at least one valkyrie existed, but they had never bothered to actively track Catia down. Alec, though...a male valkyrie, and one with such an impressive display of power? He’d been slaughtered for his feathers, murdered for his all too unique blood. What did Magnus want with him?
“It was, yes, about one or two...or five years ago, but I assure you, I am still quite invested in his case. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about him and his natural magic, would you? I sensed it when I removed the charm on his mind, removing his memories in the process,” Magnus said flippantly, twirling his teacup as if it were a wine glass.
“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come on, Catia! We’ve been friends for decades, you can’t just spill this tiny detail. No one else will know of him. I’m quite protective of the boy, you see.”
“As am I,” Catia murmured softly. “Alright,” she said finally,” he is a valkyrie. He shows an amazing deal of natural magic, but he can’t access it properly - apparently he’s only knowingly used it three times, which is how many times I’d use my magic in a day. But, he does have a phenomenal control over his shifting.”
Magnus processed this for a moment. “And you think because of this, he’ll be hunted?” There was a dangerous lilt to the High Warlock’s voice that Catia enjoyed immensely.
“I guarantee it.”
“Well…” Magnus said casually, leaning back into his chair, “I’ll just have to keep a closer eye on my people and their going-ons. For my sake, not Alec’s, of course.”
Catia smirked. It was quite a simple, but an effective cover story. “Of course.”
Alec had met every Downworlder he knew well at Ewanson’s. There was Adelita - she was wearing makeup now, and push-up bras filled with tissue paper. Alec couldn’t have been prouder - and Rory - he was Ewanson’s son, but he was far too intelligent to continue the family business. No, Rory belonged in the sciences, not baristaring (despite Hamish trying to convince him that coffee was indeed a science). Jamie had been killed by rogue werewolves during the time Alec had been controlled by a warlock (still a sore topic) and the valkyrie still cursed the fact he hadn’t been able to attend to poor boy’s funeral.
It seemed customary, at the very least, to meet new Downworlders over a drink of some kind. It was how Alec had met Maia.
The Hunter’s Moon was small, for a bar, and hidden, cupped away in the recesses of Brooklyn’s nightlife. Alec was surprised he had never gone, to be frank - he’d taken a liking to going to typically downworlder-friendly bars, glamoured as a mundane - it had never been an issue when he was at Ewanson’s, because he had been with Catia. It was a strange habit, but he knew that most downworlders hated most shadowhunters and vice versa. Hiding in plain sight was the only way that Alec could be around downworlders, some of the only people he actually felt connected with.
However, he wasn’t glamoured now, nor did he have the strength to bother applying a glamour rune. He had demon blood and it burnt like hell fire when he tried to draw runes on himself. So far, the only rune that hadn’t actually worked was an iratze, and it always a pain when Alec refused the rune when he was injured and had to endure the slow healing and worried interrogations from his sister.
As soon as he sat down at the bar at the Hunter’s Moon, eyes snapped to his leather-coated back. Werewolves, Alec guessed. They had probably smelt him coming from a mile away. He wondered briefly if he carries the scent of demon blood as well.
“What can I get you?”
Alec’s gaze jolted up from the whorls of wood on the bartop, meeting the eyes of an attractive black woman, her hair almost like a halo and red lips like cherries. If Alec hadn’t been gay…
“Just a water, please,” Alec murmured, resisting the urge to squirm under the bartender’s gaze as she stared at him for a drawn out moment. There were three long scars on the left side of her neck that Alec hadn’t immediately noticed. A werewolf, then, too.
“You do know that this is a bar, right? People tend to come here to get drunk.”
“I, er...alcohol is painful,” Alec stuttered out. The werewolf across from him arched an eyebrow, obviously not used to shadowhunters walking into her bar and confessing that they were hurt by her drinks. There was a faint tweak to her ruby lips now, one that Alec certainly appreciated. She looked good when she smiled.
She left him to sit in silence for a few seconds before returning with a large glass of water. Alec wasn’t sure if he would be given time to drink it before he was kicked out by the patrons sitting by the window, poorly hiding the agitated curve of their no longer concealed fangs.
“As I said, this is a bar. Specifically a bar for downworlders. It’s sort of the reason it’s so hard to find, especially by your kind,” the bartender stated, her words calm, if the tiniest bit guarded. Alec chuckled softly, unable to help himself.
“What you mean they don’t like shadowhunters down here? That’s so weird,” he murmured, sipping his water. It was cold. The lycanthrope looked like she was about to reply, seemingly somewhat offended, but Alec quickly tried to amend the situation. “I could swear there’s no reason to dislike us - it’s not like we’re all racist, bigoted assholes, with views that should have been left behind in the Middle Ages.”
The woman outright laughed, loud and bright. Alec smiled against the rim of his glass, watching her carefully through his lashes. He liked her, but he was accustomed to being tense all of the time, as if someone was to try and attack him when he was vulnerable and calm.
“You’re much prettier when you laugh, you know. You look happier,” Alec said, without thinking, the words tumbling from his mouth in an undignified heap. Oh, curse his inability to talk to anyone attractive, no matter the fact he didn’t exactly swing this werewolf’s way.
Her smiled dropped, but not completely. Obviously Alec’s statement had brought up some bad memories.
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but I don’t tend to go for boys who are too pretty for their own good anymore. It never really went well in the past,” her tone was harder now, and Alec felt like flinching. Secretly, he was a little relieved. He enjoyed the company of women far better if he knew they weren’t going to think he wanted them...romantically. This was a perfect opportunity to mention Alec’s typical attractions.
“Well, I guess we’re both in luck because I don’t really go for girls who are too pretty for their own good either,” Alec murmured, before figuring that sounded like a bit of a douchey, insulting thing to say and added, “Actually, I don’t tend to go for girls at all. But that lovely gentleman in the corner certainly looks like he could use some company, and I really wouldn’t mind being it, if you know what I mean.”
Of course she didn’t know what Alec meant. Alec didn’t even know what he meant.
The guy in the corner was pretty cute though.
“What? Not only are you a shadowhunter who waltzes into downworlder bars without a second thought and asks for water, but you’re also not a racist jerk and you’re gay and seemingly very accepting of yourself? Buddy, which planet do you come from?”
Alec snorted in a rather undignified manner, almost choking on the water he’d gulped down. “What can I say? My mother always taught me to accept myself. I do think she meant accept myself as an attack dog for the Clave, but I took it to mean it was up for interpretation.”
Oh. It looked like Alec had had time to finish his drink before he was thrown out. The empty glass seemed like an omen to leave now, especially considering he seemed ahead. The bartender didn’t look like she wanted to rip his head off with her teeth.
“Well, I should be going. It was lovely meeting you,” Alec murmured, tugging out his wallet to pay for his meagre drink. A tight grip on his arm stopped him from reaching his back pocket and Alec almost panicked for a moment before the body connected to the hand holding him hostage slid into the barstool next to him.
“You’re Alec Lightwood, aren’t you?” the man asked, his timbre deep and calming. Alec nodded slowly and satisfied, the tall black man let his arm go.
“My name is Luke Garroway, and this is Maia Roberts,” Luke introduced himself, smiling faintly. He’d been watching the shadowhunter and his packmate for a while and was decidedly pleased with the choices Maia made with her friendships. “You’re not like most Lightwoods, are you?”
Alec bit back a laugh as he thought of his wings and his mother and father’s distinct lack of them. “I guess you could say that.”
“I’m glad. Put your wallet away. You’re staying and you’re meeting the pack. Bear in mind that some aren’t so open to shadowhunters, but if Maia and I like you, most probably will,” Luke said, his smiled growing slightly wider at the dazed look in Alec’s eyes.
Maia laughed, saying a quick goodbye and good luck to Alec, assuring him that she’d be there for him once her shift finished. Somehow, despite Alec only knowing her for a few minutes at most, it made him feel much better.
The light euphoria in his chest stilled as Luke pulled him rather gently aside to murmur in his ear, “I don’t know what you are, Alec, but you definitely aren’t a shadowhunter.” At the sight of the new tension wrought in Alec’s shoulders and back and the quickening of his breathing, Luke pulled away with a bright, wide, genuine smile. Alec’s nerves calmed.
“There’s no way in hell I’m telling anyone. Don’t you worry. As far as I’m concerned, if you’ve made Maia happy, you’re a miracle, kid.”
Alec wondered briefly why it seemed like such a feat to make Maia happy considering how easily she had laughed before he was guided over to sit at a semi-crowded table of friendly looking fanged patrons.
“Everyone - this is Alec,” Luke announced, his voice loud and foreboding. The werewolves around the table eyed him warily for a moment before glancing up at Luke - Alec swore he wasn’t the Alpha of the New York pack, although he certainly looked powerful enough to be - and then finally at Maia, who was none the wiser as she served another lycanthrope at the bar.
“What, is it werewolves only night, or something?” Alec found himself saying and then immediately wanted to take it back. By the Angel, it sounded like something stupid Jace would say. “Not that that’s a bad thing, just maybe it’s bad for business. You all seem like lovely people, though, I’m sure you’re very nice to have a bar full of.”
Shit.
As Alec was contemplating the creation of a rune that would make the ground swallow him whole, a petite woman with muscles that Alec strived for chuckled lightly, patting him comfortingly on the arm. “Oh, you’re just so precious, aren’t you? I’m Marie, by the way.”
Alec smiled and nodded in greeting. “Well, you’re making Maia happy, so you’re good in my books,” another wolf murmured, her stark white hair catching the light as she flicked it away from her face. “My name’s Gretel, precious,” she snarked, obviously not as welcoming to the idea of nice shadowhunters as the rest of her pack were.
“Maia’s freshly turned,” a young man explained, as if sensing Alec’s utter confusion. “It was her first full moon a week ago and she ended up hurting a mundane. She’s pretty messed up about it, but I think she’d already feeling a bit better because she finally has a pack and apparently someone she can laugh with.”
“This is Alaric, he’s one of the most trusted members of the pack,” Luke explained, grinning behind Alec’s shoulder at the sight of the young boy’s bright smile and even brighter hello. He definitely seemed a lot more comfortable with the downworlders than he ever had with the shadowhunters when Luke saw them together in passing.
Introductions carried on for a few more minutes, the group of werewolves, other than perhaps Luke and Marie, rather cold towards Alec as they peered at him over the rim of their beers. Alec was about to suggest he head off after some attempted small talk, but then Maia gracefully slinked down into the seat beside him, bearing a drink for herself and for him.
“It has a little bit more of a kick than water, but less of a burn than straight up vodka. Thought you might like it,” she explained, sipping at her own fruity concoction. Humming his thanks, Alec tentatively tasted the candyfloss pink drink in his hand, feeling a little bit self-conscious considering the other downworlders had beers with overly manly names. Raspberries burst on his tongue and he mumbled happily about the taste to Maia until the conversation at the table turned to something else.
“So, precious. Why’d you come to the Hunter’s Moon tonight?” Gretel asked suddenly, her steely gaze locked in on Alec’s own. He almost bristled at the nickname Gretel had already adopted for him, but resisted the urge, instead smiling in a benevolent sort of way.
“A drink and some good company,” he answered, hoping that that would be the end of the interrogation. It wasn’t.
“Yes, but why here? You must have known it was a downworlder bar by just looking inside. So, tell me, precious, what’s so bad about the shadowhunters that you can’t go home to them?”
Silence fell over the table. It felt like every other werewolf at the bar turned to look at Alec, their glares like hot brands against the back of his neck. He shifted uncomfortably, and a strong-gripped hand came down on his shoulder.
Luke stared down at him, face impassive, but still comforting. Breathing somewhat shakily, Alec turned back to Gretel, who seemed calmer than she had before. The lull of conversation from the other werewolves elsewhere continued, but the table that Alec sat at was quiet. Luke’s hand on Alec’s back didn’t drop, but Gretel’s harsh gaze did.
“Welcome to the pack,” she murmured, almost inaudible. “Theo, our Alpha, might not like you, but we certainly do. And werewolves are fiercely protective of those they care about.” Maia’s smile grew wider at Gretel’s words and Alec couldn’t help but join her in her excitement.
“My kind are also fiercely protective of those they call their friends,” Alec replied, meeting Gretel’s probing gaze.
“Shadowhunters-”
“I didn’t say shadowhunters,” Alec interrupted. It would cause a stir of confusion among the werewolves, but as Luke’s hand tightened in solidarity against his back, a rather paternal gesture, Alec knew he had made the right decision in alluding to his own demon blood.
“Well...I guess you’re a little more than we originally thought you were, Alec. It’s good to have you as an ally,” Alaric stated matter-of-factly, leaving no room for Alec to disagree about their strange new alliance.
“I’ll drink to that,” Maia crowed, glad to be the distraction from the all too serious conversation. She giggled and downed her drink, throat convulsing as she swallowed everything in one go. Alec arched an eyebrow before doing the same, followed by the other members of the table.
The toast was followed by raucous laughter as Marie spluttered on her beer, and then the cold stoniness that had permeated the atmosphere was gone. Stories were traded as the moon waned above them, slowly dropping to be replaced by the early morning sun. Alec glanced out the window, startled to see the first rays of sunlight filter in through the dusty windows.
“I really should be going,” he murmured reluctantly. Although exhaustion weighed heavy on his bones, he didn’t want to leave the pack, or face his sister’s wrath at having stayed out incredibly late.
“Wait, let us give you our numbers,” Maia said, pleased when Marie and Luke agreed quite loudly. Marie was rather tipsy, which was saying something for a werewolf, but Alec handed over his phone for everyone to input their contacts. Admittedly, they were all stalling, not wanting anyone to leave, but time was dragging on, and Alec was supposed to be on patrol in twenty minutes. He wasn’t sure where he was going to fit in some rest, but he figured a stamina rune, however much it hurt, would have to do.
“I’ll make sure to message you,” Alec promised, before turning awkwardly on his heel, reaching the front door of the bar before he stumbled and fell straight into the arms of an impeccably dressed Asian man and holy fuck, Alec could feel his muscles under his shirt and he was ripped.
“Pretty boy?!” Alec cried, recognising the poor man from the bar earlier, the one he had pointed out to Maia. He really was more gorgeous close up. “Wait, no,” he stammered out, “That’s not what I mean. Well, I do, you’re beautiful, it’s just that sounded kinda dickish, I just meant that that’s the name me and Maia gave you cos you’re, you know...pretty.”
This was a losing battle.
Alec braced himself for the hostility of a Straight Dude™, but the man - who was wearing absolutely stunning make-up, by the Angel, Alec wanted to climb him like a tree - only laughed, deep and calm. His eyebrows were slightly pinched together with amusement and his lips, glossy and pink, pressed together in appreciation as he glanced Alec up and down.
“You’re not too bad yourself, shadowhunter,” he mumbled, taking in Alec’s dark clothing and even darker runes. His eyes, when he looked up at Alec again, were critical and crisp...and they were amber cat eyes.
“Oh my God…” Alec mumbled under his breath, something inside his sternum lurching as he took in the man’s face once more with the new addition of really quite brilliant cat eyes.
The warlock chuckled - and yes, of course he would be the type of person that could pick out the lustful neediness in Alec’s voice at the sight of his true eyes, could see the tiny way Alec’s tongue flicked out to wetten his inviting lips.
“Where on earth did the werewolves find you? I’m tempted to just take you home for myself, but…” he sighed, gesturing elegantly with ringed fingers towards the dawn outside. “I do think that you should be heading home to your Institute, don’t you?”
Alec nodded stupidly, barely processing the warlock’s words after ‘take you home for myself’. “Er, yes.”
The downworlder laughed again, smiling in a way that showed off his perfectly formed teeth. “Go do your job, shadowhunter. Perhaps we’ll be meeting again.”
Nodding again, Alec turned briskly on his heel and escaped the bar, crisply cold morning air helping to soothe his bright red face. Meanwhile, back at the Hunter’s Moon, Magnus dropped his smile into a self-satisfied smirk. He hadn’t exactly gone against the rules Catia had decided for him - he hadn’t actively sought Alec out. The Fallen had done just that - fallen into his awaiting arms.
Oh, this was going to be fun.