16. How do you sleep?
Lucian Graymark had faced a number of terrifying and dangerous beasts and foes in his lifetime.
Demons of all shapes and sizes, both as a shadowhunter and as a werewolf; downworlders and shadowhunters alike; his own best friend and parabatai at one point.
And yet the cold blankness and brazenly displayed distrust of the green eyed boy in front of him had him take a step back the moment he walked into Magnus Bane’s Brooklyn apartment.
The warlock looked immensely content with disappearing within a second of walking into the room, leaving him with Sebastian and Clarissa in the foyer of apartment.
He wasn’t sure what to say, or if he should be the first one to speak or not.
Where Sebastian’s distrust and dislike wasn’t particularly hidden, Clary - and did he even have the right to still call her that? - hadn’t settled on what to feel towards him.
Her expression on the way back alternated between distrust, hope and confusion the whole time.
She was the first to speak. “Shall we take a seat? Sitting will be less awkward than having to stand at least,” she tried, aiming for sarcastic and ending up just shy of hopeful.
When Lucian started walking, Sebastian’s eyes narrowed minutely. It wasn’t until all three of them sat down - Clary and Sebastian next to each other on the couch, Lucian on a sofa basically opposite from them - that he spoke. “Mighty familiar for someone who didn’t know his parabatai’s children were alive.”
The words were dark against his jovial tone, but the despite the latter, it was clear that he wasn’t amused.
Clary’s eyes widened slightly and she frowned. “You’ve… you’ve been here before?”
Instead of answering that question, Lucian clasped his hands together against his stomach and took a deep breath. Then he started speaking.
“Thirteen years ago, the Circle attacked your family,” Clary gasped in surprise, but Sebastian’s expression didn’t change. Lucian would have wondered if he had even been listening to him at all, had it not been for the way his green eyes never strayed away from the werewolf. “Your father and mother had been expecting them, ever since your father had returned and tried to clean up the mess he had somewhat helped create.”
And what a mess.
When Valentine Morgenstern had first turned up, after years and years of sending the downworld in puddles of fear with just an utter of his name, claiming he wasn’t thinking straight and that it wasn’t him he hadn’t wanted to do/start the Uprising, Lucian hadn’t believed him.
In fact he had punched his former parabatai in the face and told him to get the fuck out and to not even dare to get anywhere near Jocelyn and his former family.
But Jocelyn had heard them, heard the voice of her husband - former? - and had cried out his name, rushing outside with little Clary in her arms and Sebastian trying to keep up with his mother.
She had wrapped her arms around her love, telling him that she knew he was back, she had always known he’d be back, Clary fussing in her arms and trying to get down while her parents sandwiched her into a hug.
And when Valentine Morgenstern had started crying, sobs and pain wheezing out of his body, Lucian started believing him a little bit more.
Lucian wasn’t too sure of the whole story, to be honest. Valentine had been back for about a week before -
Which meant he hadn’t had a chance to explain all that had happened in those four years that the Uprising lasted.
“I was just about to head to your house to speak to Valentine when I saw shadowhunters and demons alike heading towards the house.” Lucian refused to look at the children in front of him. “I don’t know or understand how demons made it into Idris and Alicante, but they were there. I managed to howl, to let your parents know that something was incoming before joining the fight.”
He didn’t recount the details of the battle. He couldn’t do that to them, couldn’t tell them that the shadowhunters he had grown up with attacked them and killed Valentine. “Your mother rushed upstairs at some point during the battle, after Valentine…” he cleared his throat. “I kept fighting till she came back; but of after she did, I don’t recall much. I was knocked out - and to this day I feel like it was Jocelyn herself who did it - and when I came to, I was in the woods outside and your parents were nowhere to be seen.
“I didn’t know what to do. I tried to get back into the house, but you can’t get in without being let in by someone in the house, and the only way for the gate to open is with Morgenstern blood. I couldn’t go directly to the Clave to tell them what I saw, because at this point I didn’t know who to trust anymore. And I didn’t know - your mother never told me where you two were sent. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, and I just,” he shook his head. “I’ll admit it. I gave up. I stopped looking after one year. I never thought that you would be here, living as mundanes.”
“So when you saw me at the library,” started Clary, ignoring the surprised look on her brother’s face and staring at the werewolf in front of her.
Lucian nodded a little. “It was like a dream. You look,” his voice caught in his throat, “You look so much like Jocelyn, and I knew it was you immediately. But what could I say? What could I do? It’s been thirteen years, and you didn’t even recognise me. You didn’t remember me; what right did I have to barge into your life and remind you of such a painful time in your life? You looked happy.”
Sebastian regarded him coolly. “I would have remembered you,” he told him, voice flat and emotionless.
No, not emotionless; disappointed.
Hurt.
Then his gaze turned hard. “My dad was stabbed. That day.”
Clary looked down at her hands, but Sebastian stayed steady.
Lucian felt a bitter taste in his mouth. He hadn’t even realised that the boy had seen his father succumb to Hodge Starkweather’s blade. That would harden anyone, let alone Valentine Morgenstern’s son.
Part of him wanted to tell him. Tell him how the parabatai bond still existed, how there was a chance - the smallest chance - that Valentine was alive. Somewhere, still alive. Perhaps waiting for them, ready to surprise the entire shadow world the same way his children had.
Then he saw Clary’s eyes, that hopeful spark in them that she didn’t hide, that hope that if Luke was wrong - because as much as he wasn’t dead dead, Valentine Morgenstern wasn’t alive - would hurt 13 years harder.
And Lucian had already disappointed these children enough now.
“He’s dead.”
Sebastian nodded, like that was exactly what he expected to hear, and Clary’s eyes disappeared behind her red curls.
Lucian only felt the slightest bit bad about it.
Better than he be wrong than he give them hope and hurt them again.
When you see your father being stabbed to death in front of you and then your mother proceeds to throw you through a portal because she’s being attacked, you become pretty good at compartmentalising.
Sebastian was very much aware that his parents were dead. He had accepted it somewhere in the thirteen years where they were forced to live with the warlocks. It hurt sometimes, in the middle of the night, when there was no one else around and he felt so alone his chest could break; it hurt.
But still, it was okay, because Sebastian had accepted it. It was just another fact in his life.
But when your godfather who, for all intent and purposes, you believed was dead suddenly shows back up in your life, all your neatly compartmentalised shit seemed to break free from every corner of your life.
He took a deep breath and settled back on his bed, hands behind his head as he stared back up at the ceilings.
Already he had gotten reckless a few hours before - with Jace Wayland, of all people, and now the memory of his hands on-
He shook his head, refusing to go down that particular train of thoughts. Thankfully Magnus had instructed the Lightwood-Wayland clan to return to the Institute and investigate if perhaps the shadowhunters who had disappeared from there were somewhat linked to the downworlders.
Magnus hadn’t said it in so many words but the sentiment “check if there is a new Circle raising in New York” was clear enough that all three walked away, not paying any further attention to the family drama.
Family.
Up until he was 4 years old, family meant 2 people to him: his mother and Clary.
Of course, Sebastian loved his father, now. But back then, Valentine had been living and breathing the ‘cause’ of the Circle, and his mother called him a madman and kicked him out when she was still pregnant with Clary.
The only two people who mattered to him, his family, was Clary and Jocelyn.
Then Uncle Lucian - he went by Luke now - had started hanging around them more and he too became family to Sebastian.
And now here he was, 19 years old, and wondering if he could still think the words family while looking at the stranger.
Because his godfather was a stranger to him.
He no longer lived just down the road from them; he no longer put Clary on his back and played airplane with her while Sebastian ran around them too, excited and happy; he no longer sneaked him presents when his mother wasn’t looking, winking at him and telling him that it was their own little secret.
Hell, he no longer had the same name.
A small knock came from his bedroom door.
“Sebastian?”
The blond turned to look at the door, lips pursed slightly.
Clary was so unwaveringly loyal, sometimes it frightened him. Whatever he did, no matter what, she stood with him. He knew he would die before he let anything happen to her, but the just as steady knowledge that she would do the same for him was almost terrifying.
He couldn’t - wouldn’t? - trust Luke Garroway, because no matter what he looked like, Luke Garroway was not his uncle Lucian Graymark.
And Clary - who barely even remembered the man to begin with, and who had the chance of getting to know him without the memories from the past - wouldn’t trust him just because her brother didn’t.
When he had attacked Hodge Starkweather - and had that been only couple of weeks ago? - Clary had probably not even recognised exactly who he was, but he had drawn his sword and she had drawn hers, ready to kill just because Sebastian was.
“Come in,” he called, and the door immediately opened, the redhead appearing in the doorway.
She had already changed in a pair of pyjamas, and was looking at him with something like worry in her eyes.
And wasn’t that just great.
“I’m fine, Clarissa,” he told her, before she could ask.
The girl nodded to herself, climbing in the bed next to him. Sebastian didn’t move, barely glanced at her as she fit herself with her head on his chest and some of her hair in his face. It tickled.
“I’m not,” she admitted a few seconds later. “Fine, I mean. I’m not fine.”
Sebastian didn’t say anything, still staring up at the ceiling. She would talk once she was ready, he figured.
For a few minutes they both said nothing, and Sebastian remembered when they first arrived at Magnus’ place. Even though they were siblings, Magnus insisted that they both had separate bedrooms and beds; and yet, no matter what the warlock did, every night Clary would end up in her brother’s bed, curled up at his side with her head to his chest.
When asked why she always did that, 3 years old Clary had told them that she needed to make sure “His heart never stops beating, Magnus. Like Mommy and Daddy’s.”
They had stopped forcing her in her own bed after that, until Clary herself decided she could deal with being separated from her brother at night.
“You never,” she started, and Sebastian refocused on her again. “You never told me what happened, that day.”
Sebastian felt himself tensing slightly.
He hadn’t.
When they were younger and Clary asked him what happened, he simply told her that daddy and mommy got hurt and were in trouble, and had sent them to Magnus. Then, when weeks became months, he told her that they died and that Hodge Starkweather was among the men who attacked them.
But he never told her exactly what he saw that day, before they were pushed into a portal and their lives changed forever.
“You were three years old.” he said, but that was half the reason and they both knew that. “What do you want to know?”
“What do you remember? I only remember being in the wardrobe and mo- mom saying that we were going on an adventure.”
Sebastian freed one hand from behind his head and put it in his sister’s hair, gentle. Then he hummed.
He didn’t like reminiscing that day. Didn’t like remembering how useless he had been, how he hadn’t been able to do anything to help. But he could look at it from a clinical perspective. That’s what he always did.
“We were having breakfast all together. Then there was a howl,” Luke, his mind offered, “and mom sent us both upstairs. We were just there, playing with mom’s jewellery, when suddenly we heard screams and shouts and the sounds of battle downstairs.” Clary was so quiet, Sebastian had to wonder if she was even still breathing. “I told you to hide in the wardrobe and I went downstairs.”
To this day, Sebastian can recall everything like it was a picture seared in his brain in fire. The demons, the way the smelt, the bite marks from Luke and the knife wounds all around.
“They were all fighting and I stayed on the stairs, petrified,” he spat out the word, and Clary’s smaller hand was on his in a second.
She squeezed him gently. “You were 6.”
Sebastian didn’t reply to that. “And then I saw Hodge Starkweather burying his knife in dad,” Clary held her breath, but Sebastian didn’t stop there. “Mom kept fighting and Luci- Luke let out this horrible scream. I assume the parabatai bond hurt him or something.
“Anyway, dad was bleeding out with that knife in his chest, but no one pulled it out, and mom grabbed me and brought me back upstairs after injuring some of the people and demons around and then she got you out of the wardrobe and sent us off to Magnus. The end.”
Clary didn’t move away at the end, so Sebastian kept stroking her head like one would the pelt of a cat.
It wasn’t that much of a story, really. But it was still the somewhat brutal murder of their father at the very least and an ambush of their family that they had barely escaped unharmed.
“Do you think,” she started and Sebastian knew exactly what she wanted to ask.
“No.” He answered, not bothering to soften his voice. “They’re dead.”
“Okay,” whispered his sister, breathing slowly. “Okay.”
She sniffed, and Sebastian stiffened, preparing himself for the tears that usually followed emotional one to ones from the younger girl.
But she didn’t cry.
Unlike him, Clary cried. When she was hurt, when she was in pain, when someone she cared about was hurt or in pain.
She cried a lot, so he was surprised and relieved that she didn’t cry about this.
“Do you miss them?” she finally asked a few moments later, and turned her head so that she could somehow see his face.
Sebastian wished she hadn’t and grimaced slightly.
Did he miss his parents?
The correct answer, the easy answer, the normal answer would be ‘yes’. His parents had been killed when he was six years old for crying out loud, and he had been sent to live with people he never knew and forced to grow up faster so that he could take care of his younger sister.
He should miss them.
But did he?
As much as he remembered more things about them than Clary ever could, he didn’t recall them being particularly good parents.
He loved them, of course he loved them: and that’s where the heartbreak at them being dead often came; losing a loved one always hurt.
But missing them was a completely different ball game.
He didn’t recall them being parents to him, no matter how much he tried.
Valentine left when he was about 2 years old and returned when he was 6, just one week before tragically dying in his own living room. The only real memories he had of the man were the memories of that week together.
And his mother?
She had never been a really good parent, once Valentine was gone. She wasn’t up to being a single mother, and, at the beginning, she was also part of the Circle. Even if, fundamentally, she was a good person, Jocelyn had also took part in the whole Uprising.
Which meant that a lot of the time, he had been left on his own devices with toys and games and books and friends, but not much of his mother.
She was more around when Clary was born, realising the mistake in her ways, but Sebastian - even as a child - had just been waiting for the other shoe to drop and her going back to being always gone.
And when Clary was born, well, she had a newborn, right? It wasn’t like she could spend that much time with Sebastian anymore.
She loved him, he knew that, of course.
But still…
“No,” he decided, truthfully. He didn’t lie to Clary, no matter what a shitty person it made him. “I don’t miss them. I wish they weren’t dead, sure. But I don’t miss them, not really. Not how I should.”
His sister kept staring at his face and then nodded, as if satisfied by his answer.
“Me neither,”
Clary sometimes lied to him.
+
When Magnus walked into the bedroom a few hours later and found the siblings curled into each other like when they were younger, his heart swelled in his chest.
He would have to tell them about Raphael, he knew that. But for now, he was glad that they had each other.
He pulled a blanket over their sleeping bodies and turned the lights off.
Meliorn wasn’t too sure of where he was. His head hurt incredibly, and his entire body felt stiff.
But he was a soldier of the Seelie Queen, so he kept his mouth shut even as he slowly let his awareness spread, trying to figure out where he was and what exactly was happening.
He knew he was somewhere cold; somewhere that was not the mundane club he had been at earlier. He was laying on a dirty floor and his fae senses were screaming at him, which meant he must be in some sort of small enclosed space. Perhaps a basement of some sort.
The last memory he had was being shoved aside by something that smelled terribly of death, and strife, and blood, and pain, before his head hit the wall, painfully hard. That must be the source of his head pain.
He was also vaguely aware that he was the only person there, so he kept his eyes closed.
There was of course the chance that the person - demon? - who was there with him could hear his heartbeat, but he would rather be caught pretending to be still passed out than being caught openly observing around.
“Xarzath!” bellowed a voice, and Meliorn renewed his efforts of staying still and not looking around him.
The voice had sounded from all around him at once, like some sort of disembodied entity; it meant Meliorn would not have been able to find the owner of the voice without giving away the fact that he was awake.
And then he was suddenly glad he was pretending to be asleep, as the sound of strong paws hitting the floor resounded in the room - house? basement? - he was inside.
Even before the scent - of pain, and screams, and strife, and destruction - hit his nose, he was already aware it was the beast that had attacked him and brought him there.
“How dare you touch her!”
The voice was angry, a scorching fire level of anger that, had Meliorn been a weaker man, would have had him whimpering. There was also a little lilt in his voice that hadn’t been there before, an almost familiar cadence that his brain hurt too much to try and decipher.
“I gave you very specific pointers to bring me a leader, any of the three leaders, and not only you bring me a fae guard,” he - because the voice definitely belonged to a man - spat out the last bit, and the monster whimpered, “you also dare to injure my queen!”
Something about his tone, about the way he was shouting, the mention of three leader - when there had been four at the meeting - made Meliorn think he wasn’t referring to the Seelie Queen.
The monster whined just like a dog would, but instead of making him sound more adorable, it made bile rise in Meliorn’s throat. It was dangerous, and when dangerous things could somewhat become more palatable to human beings, they were ten times more dangerous.
He would know, he was a fae.
“And now we can’t attack any of them without giving up our cover, because they’ll all be on high alert, expecting an attack.”
Meliorn wanted more than anything that this villain would finally start on his expositional villain monologue so that he would at least be able to offer something back to the Seelie Queen before he inevitably died.
But the man never did, and, as suddenly as he had noticed them, he heard - no, felt would be a more accurate word - them disappear outside.