Chapter Text
This is a lot worse than Thomas imagined it being. This is so much worse.
He’s no stranger to death, or to funerals. That’s how it is when one is a Shadowhunter. Death is a fact, and a matter of when, not how.
He’d said goodbye to Barbara a bit before Christmas, and he and the rest of the Enclave—in the days following Belial’s takeover of London—paid their respects to the Shadowhunters who’d been murdered, not having had the chance to do so earlier.
Basil Pounceby. Filomena di Angelo. Lilian Highsmith. Elias Carstairs.
The first few were easy, or as easy as funerals get. Lilian Highsmith’s was admittedly upsetting, given the woman had been nothing but kind to Thomas and his friends when they were growing up, and Filomena’s because she’d died so tragically young. But theirs and Basil Pounceby’s funeral had nothing on Barbara’s.
They had nothing on Elias Carstairs’s, either.
Cordelia and Alastair were emotional wrecks, in their own ways. While Cordelia sought comfort in her mother and in James, putting on a brave face for the Enclave during the funeral, Alastair stood silently before his father’s pyre, his eyes swimming with a pain so palpable that Thomas felt his heart split in two. It was only afterwards, when they’d sent the last of those passing on their condolences away, that Alastair dragged Thomas into one of the drawing rooms of the Lightwood’s manor, and allowed himself to break.
Only now does Thomas realise that those funerals, Alastair’s grief over his father, the deep pang of having lost Barbara, were just distractions. Momentary pauses in which Thomas could forget, just for a little bit, about his own soul being ripped to shreds.
There’s no hiding from it now as he stands with his family, donned in white and marked in red. No pretending it never happened as his aunt Cecily openly weeps, his uncle Gabriel gasps shakily, and his cousin Anna grips his hand like a vice, her stony expression cracking at the edges when the Silent Brothers appear with a bier.
On it lies Christopher.
Thomas feels the ground open up beneath him.
This is so much worse.
So much worse.
Emerging from Westminster Abbey, Alastair by Thomas’s side and, behind them, Matthew and Cordelia carrying a bleeding, exhausted James, the scene that greets them is a familiar one, albeit strange.
Puppeteered Watchers lie crumpled on the ground, their strings long cut, and the stench of ichor and the iron tang of blood fill the air. The Shadowhunters of the London Enclave are in various states of almost mechanical disarray: nursing wounds, applying iratzes, staring in sombre silence at the world around them, and talking idly with each other. Thomas barely notices any of it as he desperately seeks out the faces he’s known since childhood, an odd mix of fear and hope broiling in his stomach.
Eugenia. Anna. Lucie. Christopher—
His gait staggers, almost the same as it had earlier when a Belial-possessed James flung him backwards. He vaguely registers the gentle hand on his arm and the soft voice murmuring his name—Alastair, there’s no doubt about it—but Thomas finds his throat too clogged up to speak.
Grief is a funny thing, and it works in many ways.
For some, it harrows the soul for years and years, and ultimately makes one bitter, like Tatiana Blackthorn. It’s sometimes a dull, pounding ache deep in one’s chest, choking them despite them still breathing. Other times it’s a shroud, a veil, a piece of cloth covering a person like one does a birdcage, shutting the world out in favour of darkness and despair. And sometimes all it does is stay stagnant for a long, long time, growing and growing like a snowball rolling down a hill, until it reaches a tree and smashes into a million pieces.
For Thomas, especially in the past few weeks, grief has been a driving force to keep busy. It’s gnawed at his heart, his soul, but he’s shoved it aside in favour of making himself useful. To do anything, anything, humanly possible to spare anyone else being torn into jagged rags by these sharp shards edged with ice. He’s like his father, in that way. Perhaps he’s unconsciously picked up some habits from him for Gideon, in his worry and grief over his son’s sickly status as a child, never sat still.
‘As your uncle Gabriel once said, your father must have something to do when bad things happen,’ Sophie, his mother, used to say when Thomas asked her why his father was always running around. ‘And because he loves you so much, he’ll do anything to ensure that you stay with us for a very long time. As do I.’
Although Sophie never said it out loud, Thomas knew she, too, had grieved in her own way. Grief came to her in gentle touches and shadowed hazel, shaking fingers and trembling breaths, and a smile with a slight downward turn at the corners.
He was too young then to understand why his parents were grieving and not just simply worried.
He does now.
And Thomas hasn’t had ample time to grieve properly for his sister. Barbara’s death came too suddenly, too soon. Belial’s antics to rule their world and Tatiana’s plot of revenge and malice made sure of that, eating into any sliver of a moment where he could’ve sat down and thought about his older sister; where he could have gone to Idris with his family, held his mother’s and Eugenia’s hands, and sat in silence with his father, head on his shoulder and eyes staring out the window at the demon towers of Alicante.
Now, however… now he has all the time in the world to grieve. For Barbara… for Christopher.
And for the first time in his life, Thomas doesn’t know what to do or what to feel.
‘...Thomas? Tom!’
Snapping out of it, Thomas catches Alastair gazing worriedly at him, his dark eyebrows pinching severely in the middle. He tries to smile, to reassure Alastair that he’s alright, but finds he cannot.
After all, is he, really, alright?
He doesn’t know the meaning of the word anymore.
It takes him a second to realise that he doesn’t need to do anything for Alastair is pointing at something close by and saying, ‘Look, Tom, over there—they’re okay. They’re alive, and I’m sure they know where the others are.’
Fondness floods Thomas’s chest. Bless Alastair Carstairs and his sharp eye.
He takes Alastair’s hand and squeezes it, hoping his gratitude shines through the touch. He then squints at the crowd, following the direction Alastair is pointing in. When he sees it, he freezes.
His heart soars, lighter yet so much heavier than before.
Uncle Gabriel… Anna…
They’re seated together on a low wall, gear covered in ichor stains and dried blood, their hair streaked with dust and dirt in shades of beige and grey, and they’re alive. Curled into each other, visibly exhausted, weapons laying at their feet, and they’re okay.
But the idyll picture of a father and his daughter basking in the aftermath of a victory is shattered by their expressions.
In all his life, the amount of times Thomas has seen his uncle cry can be counted on one hand, and out of those few times, only two fingers can account for him having been genuinely sad. However, seeing him like this puts those instances straight into the gutter.
Gabriel is by no means a small man. As a child, Thomas always thought his father and Uncle Gabriel were the biggest men he’d ever seen in his life: Gabriel tall and lean, and Gideon, though shorter than his brother, broad and stocky. And now that he’s several inches taller than everybody else in the Enclave, Thomas is still of the opinion that they are the biggest men he’s ever known—and that’s with Charles in mind, too, who himself is tall and lanky.
But the manner in which Gabriel rests his head on Anna’s shoulder, their elbows interlocked loosely together and eyes set on their shoes, he has never looked smaller. Even from where he’s standing, Thomas can see the new lines etched deeply into his forehead, the corners of his mouth, and under his eyes—lines attributed to someone having experienced a terrible loss.
Thomas is familiar with those lines. He has seen them on his own face, and on Eugenia’s, and more so on his father’s and mother’s: acute, cavernous lines like valleys and mountain ranges tinged with an impenetrable darkness.
After all, there’s no greater loss for a parent than losing their child.
Gabriel’s head shifts slightly on his daughter’s shoulder then, his gaze lifting and flickering absently over the crowd. When it lands on Thomas, it stops, stunned, and Gabriel’s expression ripples with thousands of emotions that change too quickly for Thomas to catch a single one.
The next thing he knows is his uncle’s flown from Anna, staggering clumsily to his feet, and is racing towards him, shouldering past any Shadowhunters who are in his way. Thomas has no time to swap a look with Alastair, or see where Matthew and Cordelia have gotten to with James, for Gabriel crashes into him and clings onto him like his life depends on it. Thomas places his hands tentatively against his uncle’s back, and the sheer solidness of him is almost enough to undo him.
‘Uncle…’
‘Thank the Angel,’ Gabriel rasps, and his fingers dig deep into Thomas’s gear. ‘Thank the Angel you’re alright. I was so worried you—’
He breaks off, his voice thick like tar. His hands are shaking as he steps back and holds his nephew’s jaw in his palms. The green of his eyes are glassy, shiny, like the surface of a lake, and the edges are laced with red.
‘I could not bear the thought of having lost another. You reckless boy. You absolute foolhardy—’
Thomas draws him in and wraps his arms around him tightly this time, too overwhelmed to do anything else. He tries to breathe, if not for Gabriel’s sake, who is gasping raggedly against his shoulder, but it’s proving to be an arduous task.
‘I am not sorry for doing what I did, Uncle,’ Thomas confesses, forcing the words out through the lump jumping in his throat, ‘but I am sorry for worrying you.’
‘I know,’ Gabriel whispers, and his tone hardens somewhat as he adds, ‘but if you’d died, what do you think that would’ve done to your parents? That between our two families, we have to bury not one but two sons?’
Thomas sucks in a harsh breath and squeezes his eyes shut.
‘I’m sorry,’ he rushes to say, ‘I’m sorry—’
‘Hush now, it’s alright.’ Pulling back a second time, Gabriel runs a hand through Thomas’s hair. A knowing smile forms along his lips, and Thomas listens in a daze as he says, ‘Raziel knows what we all did at your age. While we cannot lay claim to fighting a Prince of Hell, we can certainly attest to fighting an enemy who sought to inflict evil and harm on us all. I know what it’s like to feel helpless, Tom. To fight for ourselves because there’s no one else to watch our backs. But bloody hell, child, you have support. You have us, your family, if no one else. Always.’
‘I know…’ Thomas murmurs. He hangs his head. ‘I’m sorry… I’m sorry about everything, about Chris—’
Gabriel leans in and kisses his forehead, surprising Thomas and causing him to stammer into silence.
‘I’m sorry, too,’ Gabriel says in a low, wavering voice. He then lifts Thomas’s face by his chin, forcing him to look him in the eye. ‘Anna has vaguely mentioned what transpired between Tatiana and Christopher, and the rest of you at the Institute and outside of it. Whatever the specifics are, it wasn’t your fault. Do you understand me?’
But it is my fault, Thomas thinks. I should’ve been with him. With all of them.
‘Thomas Lightwood,’ Gabriel enunciates sternly, ‘do you understand me?’
Clearly Thomas’s thoughts are shining through his face, plain as day. Not trusting himself to speak, he simply nods.
‘Good. Good…’ Gabriel says, more to himself than to his nephew as he lets go of his chin. His eyes dart to the left of Thomas’s face, and he visibly pales to a near ghostly pallor in less than a second. ‘Bloody Christ. James—’
‘He’s alright,’ Thomas tells him hurriedly. ‘I know he doesn’t look it, but he’s alright. We all are, I promise.’
Turning around and seeing James, Matthew and Cordelia trudging up the street together towards them, Thomas can sympathise with Gabriel’s reaction.
James looks awful.
It goes without saying that he looks as though he has been through Hell and back—which, in reality, he has. But compared to the rest of the limping, bleeding Shadowhunters, James’s pale skin, unrulier-than-usual hair, purple eyebags, sluggish pace, and shadowed gaze are next to none.
And Thomas tries not to stare at the large patch of drying blood over James’s heart. He really tries.
He’d listened in muted horror to Cordelia’s soft, detached explanation of how James stabbed himself to kill Belial, and how for a fleeting moment she thought he’d died alongside him. Matthew immediately fretted over his parabatai, hands shaking and expression caught between showing his true fear and a bout of nonchalance, as if James stabbing himself is a regular occurrence. Alastair inhaled sharply through his nose and grabbed Thomas’s wrist, looking vaguely sick as he’d gazed sympathetically at his sister.
Thomas merely stood there, frozen, heart skipping madly and the execrable thought of James nearly having joined Christopher in death rolling around in his head like a wayward marble.
He knows what it’s like to be alone without his closest friends, his family. He’s aware of the suffocating silence, locked within and settled in the Institute walls, the ghosts of laughter echoing up from the depths of the crypt to the rooftop. He’s become acquainted with the gaping hole in his soul, endless yet constricting, one which only blond hair and outrageous waistcoats, bookish wit and shrewd smiles, and harsh chemical smells and lavender eyes can fill.
He doesn’t want to go through that ever again.
It would destroy him. Thomas knows that with ironclad certainty.
So he’ll take James’s frightening appearance with open arms. He’ll take that stained spot over James’s heart with a prayer and a whisper of gratitude along the lines of thank you for sparing him. Thank you for not taking another.
It’s a miracle they all got out of this alive. If it were another set of circumstances, Thomas is sure they, save a couple, wouldn’t have survived.
He shudders at the idea.
Clearing his throat slightly, Thomas faces his uncle and repeats, ‘He’s alright,’ and hopes this time it’s with a bit more conviction.
‘I believe you,’ Gabriel says, his green eyes serious, ‘but that still doesn’t excuse him from receiving the same treatment I just gave you.’
Thomas’s lips curl in an automatic smile as Gabriel pats his arm and moves towards the trio. Angel knows how many times in their lives they’ve been on the receiving end of Gabriel’s stern but logical scoldings, often relating to them climbing trees too high or running around with scissors, and often with Aunt Cecily laughing loudly and telling her husband to forgive them in the background—
Thomas suddenly grabs Gabriel’s arm to stop him as the thought crosses his mind.
‘Aunt Cecily—’ he croaks the moment his uncle’s confused gaze meets his troubled one. ‘The others—’
‘Cecy and Alex are in Idris,’ Gabriel says softly, gravelly, ‘with Christopher. As is Henry. Charlotte and the others are here, and they’re all okay.’
The ball consolidated of almost nothing ballooning in his chest is expelled through a breath Thomas didn’t even realise he was holding. Though a rock quickly replaces it, settling deep in his gut, unmoveable.
‘Thomas.’ Gabriel sounds regretful as he turns half away from him. ‘Go find your parents. And Genia. They’re worried sick about you.’
With that, he leaves, and Thomas’s hand falls uselessly to his side. The facts congeal in his head, sticking to him like glue, and Gabriel’s calm voice roams in his ears.
Parents… Genia… worried sick…
Alive… they’re all alive…
‘Oh, thank Raziel,’ he gasps, and clutches a hand to his chest. He turns and says, ‘Alastair, love, they’re—’
But Alastair is not there.
Thomas blinks, perplexed.
‘Alastair?’
It makes no sense. He was just here.
Where has he gone?
Alarmed, he examines every face in the crowd. At each familiar and unfamiliar person he sees, concern coils into a tighter and tighter knot deep in Thomas’s stomach—and it only unravels when he locates Alastair in the near distance a minute later. He appears to be having a serious conversation with Ari, their heads close together and expressions grave. Ari looks as wrecked as Thomas feels: her dark hair is escaping the confines of her hairpins and curling along the edges of her jaw, her stature is slightly slouched, clearly exhausted, and her gear is tattered and spotted red. But aside from that, she appears to be fine, despite what’s transpired in the past couple of days.
Almost as if knowing Thomas’s eyes are on him, Alastair glances over and aims a small, understanding smile his way. Thomas breathes out a sigh of relief at the sight.
I thought you’d need a moment alone with your uncle, Alastair’s eyes say. But I’m still here.
There’s no knowing if that’s exactly what he’s trying to convey, but Thomas’s eyes start to sting. How did he get so lucky to have someone as selfless and empathetic as Alastair in his life?
He returns Alastair’s smile with one of his own and inclines his head. Alastair then returns to his conversation with Ari and Thomas seeks out his family.
Anna stands by the low wall she and her father had sat on, her body stiff with apprehension. There’s no doubt she watched the entire exchange between Gabriel and Thomas, and Thomas frowns at the thought of her simply standing nearby and not coming over as well. Despite this, Anna’s eyes are trained on him as he approaches her, and he’s sure he sees some of the tension leaving her shoulders.
When he comes to a stop in front of her, neither of them say anything for a moment. The question is burning in deep blue, glaringly bright like witchlight, and Thomas knows the answer even before she asks, ‘Is he…?’
‘Dead,’ he confirms. ‘No doubt about it.’
Blowing out a short breath, Anna drops back down onto the wall and grips her knees.
‘So it’s over,’ she says slowly. ‘It’s really over.’
‘Yes. He can’t hurt us anymore, at least not more than he already has. He’s gone, Anna, just as Tatiana is. James and Cordelia killed him.’
Anna closes her eyes, taking it all in, and worries her bottom lip between her teeth. Thomas, with all the graces of a baby deer, takes a seat next to her and ignores how the edges of the wall dig painfully into his hamstrings.
Silence follows, but Thomas’s mind roars. There’s so much to do, to say, to accept and understand, but he can barely settle on a sole thought, let alone try to make sense of it.
That is, bar one.
He swallows and wipes his damp palms against his trousers.
‘Anna—’
‘Don’t,’ she spits. She regrets it immediately, her expression spasming into a grimace as her eyes open. ‘Don’t, Tom. Don’t say you’re sorry.’
‘But I am,’ Thomas says gently. ‘Irrevocably so.’
Anna sets her piercing gaze on him, and the bitter twist to her mouth sends the bottom of Thomas’s stomach plummeting somewhere unreachable.
‘Why?’ she asks him shortly, though not unkindly. ‘Why, in Raziel’s name, are you sorry? You didn’t kill Chris. You weren’t responsible for this insanity. You didn’t cause our bleeding aunt’s mad descent into consorting with a Prince of Hell. You weren’t the one who made James and Lucie targets. So please enlighten me, Tom, why you are sorry, because I cannot find a single reason for you to be.’
She cannot be serious, Thomas thinks miserably. How can she not see?
Shaking his head slowly, he wrings his hands in his lap and says with utmost severity, ‘For being so selfish that I’d leave you all behind at the Institute when you needed help the most.’
For the first time in what seems like the longest while, Anna’s blank façade bursts into life: her eyebrows shoot high up on her forehead, her eyes grow alarmingly wide, and her jaw falls open.
‘Selfish?’ she repeats incredulously. ‘What, for helping Alastair with his breakdown? That’s selfish?’
Thomas gapes at her. ‘How did you…?’
‘He may have mentioned it,’ she informs him offhandedly, ‘though not in great detail.’
‘When?’
‘When he said to me exactly what you just did. That he was sorry for not being there to help when Tatiana made her move on us at the Institute. It was while you were resting,’ Anna explains at his baffled look, ‘after the chimera attacked you at Paddington. Before Ari and I left for the Silent City’s old entrance at St. Peter Westcheap.’
Thomas accepts this with a solemn nod, and stares at his hands. The lines of his palms are dark with dirt, the crescents of his nails blackened like ink stains. There are new blisters forming at the ridges where fingers meet palm, sitting on top of hardened calluses and old blister scars from years of training.
They’re large hands now, no longer fragile with paper-thin digits incapable of throwing a mere dagger.
And yet they couldn’t save his best friend. They didn’t even get the chance.
Thomas thinks he’s going to be sick.
‘Thomas, look at me.’
When he doesn’t, Anna grabs his hand, filthy and all, and crushes it to the point of pain.
‘Look at me,’ she reiterates, and when he does, says, ‘and listen. Retrospection in a situation like this is a cruel notion, and an even crueller master. But believe me when I tell you that there was no way on this earth that we were all getting out of that fight alive. If you and Alastair had been there, yes, perhaps our chances would have been higher, but not absolute—we were outmatched and outnumbered. And it was certainly not without the very likely prospect of resulting in more than just Christopher’s death.
‘Cordelia could have died if not for him stepping in front of her. Lucie could have died instead of Christopher if she’d stepped in front of her parabatai-to-be, or both of them simultaneously—perhaps even James or Matthew or Ari or myself. Alastair, if he were there, definitely would have, because like us, he puts his family above everything else. And we cannot say that Tatiana would not have turned her attention on you. The woman was hell-bent on revenge, and I doubt causing Barbara’s death would have been enough pain to inflict on Uncle Gideon, in her eyes.’
Thomas flinches, but doesn’t make the effort to disagree. She’s right, of course, about it all. There really is no way of knowing how events would have turned out had Thomas and Alastair been a part of the fight.
But—
‘I still feel as though I failed you all,’ he whispers. ‘That I failed him.’
Anna sighs heavily, and a dark cloud passes over her features, transforming her eyes into glass marbles: frigid, blank, but full of swirling vehemence Thomas knows is aimed at herself.
‘You and me both, Tom,’ she murmurs, and the confession is like a knife to his heart. ‘You and me both.’
Before Thomas can protest, to tell her that she hadn’t failed her brother, Anna lets go of his hand and stands again, brushing some dust off her trousers. She shoots him a smile, more like a sketch on paper than an actual movement of her mouth, and gently pats his cheek.
I love you, the actions say, and my heart aches with yours, but I need a moment alone.
So he makes no move to stop her, just grabs the hand on his cheek and kisses the palm in goodbye, and then watches her walk away. She goes not towards Ari and Alastair or her father—who is rebuking a sheepish James and gesticulating wildly—but into the crowd, where she disappears amongst tattered gear and crumpled parchment robes and white gowns belted with demon-wire. Thomas only moves to save himself from his own mind, afraid that it’ll paralyse him if he sits still. Yet not even the dull ache on the backs of his thighs as he rises from the low wall, or the action of stepping away from the bricks, are enough to quell the storm in his head.
He looks over at Alastair and Ari, at Gabriel and James, Matthew and Cordelia, and turns away from them all. He can talk to them later. Right now, Thomas needs to find his parents and Eugenia.
His eyes look ahead, on a mission, and the crowd becomes a blur around him—and it’s amazing how even now, he continues to really hate crowds.
How is he going to find them in this mess? There’s so many—
‘Thomas! Thomas!’
His heart flies into his mouth at the shout, and he swivels around to see both Gideon and Sophie Lightwood running towards him, barging through the crowd with no care in the world for politeness. There’s something climbing up his throat, something wild and grateful and bone-shattering, and it escapes as a garbled cry. It’s a noise he’s not made for years, but Thomas finds himself not bothered by the likelihood of sounding like a pathetic little boy as he takes a step on a shaky leg, desperate to meet his parents halfway.
Sophie reaches him first. She throws her arms around his neck, Thomas’s name bursting from her mouth in a mimicry of a sob, concealed in a breath, and her hands find purchase in his hair. Gideon follows suit a second later, his arms wrapping around his wife and son, and his soft endearments in Spanish hit the shell of Thomas’s ear. Thomas embraces them both tightly, crushingly, and buries his face in his mother’s shoulder.
He hated being fussed over as a child. He hates being fussed over now as a young man on the precipice of adulthood. It makes him feel as though he is that tiny, helpless thing again, confined to his bed with his lungs rattling around in his chest and his heartbeat fluttering like a trapped bird; as though he is that small, invisible boy no one except his family, friends, and Alastair took seriously.
Yet there lies a huge difference between being sickly and small, and nearly dying through the actions of a Prince of Hell, and demons in the shapes of Silent Brothers and Iron Sisters.
So Thomas, without complaint, lets his parents run their hands through his hair, press kisses to his temple, his cheeks, his forehead, and grip onto him as if he’ll slip through their fingers like water otherwise. He lets them sob against his neck, scold him like Gabriel did for being reckless and stupid, praise him for being so brave and selfless, and thank the Angel that he’s alright.
He doesn’t take note of the fact that they’ve all sunk to their knees on the ground, or that the person kissing the top of his head is Eugenia, having bolted to her family the second she saw them, leaving a bemused Rosamund and Catherine in her wake. Not until it’s evident that his parents are of a similar height to him, and that Eugenia’s face is right in front of his, covered in grime but sparkling with life.
Relief floods his entire being.
Thank the Angel. Thank you. Thank you…
Thomas pulls away and sniffs greatly. But Sophie’s watery gaze and Gideon’s trembling lips and Eugenia’s proud expression undo him, separate him piece by piece, and bare him open. He grabs onto his family, whatever he can reach, and allows himself to quietly fall apart.
Thomas doesn’t realise he’s crying. He doesn’t realise he’s stopped breathing. He doesn’t realise he’s clawing at his chest and grasping his shirt with a tremor in his hand and that his knuckles are turning an odd shade of white.
Not until Alastair reaches out and grips his hand tightly, fearfully; until Eugenia cards her fingers through his hair and presses a lingering kiss to his shoulder; until Matthew and James are in front of him with tears rolling down their faces, their voices soft but firm and begging him to breathe—breathe, Thomas bach, breathe—
The first breath feels like there’s broken glass embedded in his lungs.
The second burns like he’s swallowed fire.
The third comes through in a sob, ragged and deep and shaking his core.
The fourth is a gasp, soft, barely-there, hastily covered up as Thomas rips his gaze away from the Silent Brothers setting Christopher’s bier on his pyre.
He’s thankfully spared from being forced to watch as Lucie steps in between her brother and Matthew and gently cups Thomas’s face in her hands. Her eyes are swimming with tears, rimmed in the same shade of red as the runes on their clothes.
‘Focus, Thomas,’ she whispers. ‘You don’t have to look. Alright? Focus on me, if it helps.’
Barely anyone thinks about or even considers the bond Thomas and Lucie have, not when Lucie has James for a brother and Cordelia as her future parabatai, and when Thomas and Christopher were joined at the hip. Not quite cousins, many assume they’re amicable with each other at most, or family only by association or because their parents are related to one another in this-and-that way.
They can’t be further from the truth. Lucie and Thomas are so much more than that. Lucie is the younger sister Thomas never had, the outspoken, mischievous and confident counterpart to his reserved, sensible and bashful self. Thomas is the one who keeps Lucie’s chaotic ideas in check—where James, Matthew and Uncle Will would only indulge her—and Lucie the one who helps bring Thomas out of his shell at parties and social gatherings, where he would otherwise stay in the most convenient corner.
They talk constantly of poetry, of art and of writing, and the woeful nature of being creative. They encourage each other in their studies of the Persian language, brainstorming ways to remember difficult sentence structure and pronunciations, and holing themselves up in the Institute library to practise with rudimentary, handmade flashcards of individual characters from the Alefbâye Fârsi. They’re keen opponents when it comes to food, their unspoken competition always in play whenever there’s a large spread at hand—and just as well that the others don’t have as large an appetite as Thomas and Lucie do. Matthew, especially, finds their antics thoroughly entertaining, and even acts as the judge whenever the opportunity arises.
Only, that’s merely touching the surface. Lucie is the only one who knows Thomas writes, and writes well. Thomas is the only one who knows Lucie bakes at midnight when everyone else is asleep. Lucie is the only one who’s sat with Thomas on the rooftop of the Institute and observed his ability to wax poetic about the mundane with a genuine smile on her face. Thomas is the only one who has permission to critique her stories on the basis that he gives out honest and fair comments. Not that Lucie would ever admit this out loud to anyone, and the thought makes Thomas smile every single time.
He knows her, and she him, and he’s grateful for her in this moment as he lets go of Alastair’s and Anna’s hands, wraps his fingers around Lucie’s slender wrists, and looks directly into eyes the colour of a clear summer sky.
‘It’s not fair,’ he states under his breath, his voice so soft only Lucie should be able to hear it. ‘Luce, how is this fair? Why him? Why Kit?’
Lucie’s expression crumbles, and a sob of her own wracks her tiny frame. But she doesn’t remove her hands from Thomas’s face, doesn’t blink as tears spill over her bottom lashes, doesn’t flinch when Thomas’s hands slide down her arms and wrap around her shoulders. She only leans into the touch, her forehead meeting Thomas’s chest and her body trembling under his equally shaky palms.
Over the top of her head, Thomas watches as Cordelia runs a hand through Lucie’s hair. Her eyes, full of sympathy and a pain only those who’ve lost someone carry, meet Thomas’s, and her smile is sad as it stretches across her lips. They aren’t particularly close, not like she is with Lucie, or him with James and Matthew—not yet, by any means, though Thomas knows they will be, in time. They’ve got the others in common, at the very least, especially Alastair. But in this moment, Thomas feels as though he knows Cordelia through and through, and can read the shattered remains of her heart in her gaze and in the pull of her lips as though they are pieces of a story in a novel.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Thomas.
He tries to smile, but fears he can only manage a grimace, one outlined by fat tears streaming down his cheeks.
What a frightful sight he must be.
Thomas has never been a loud crier. In fact, no one in his family aside from Eugenia are loud criers. They all cry quietly, silently, in solitude or as far away from prying eyes as possible.
But they make up for that silence in intensity. Thomas knows how his father’s shoulders heave, how his eyes are covered by a shaking hand, and how his breathing is reduced to haggard, reverberating gasps. Thomas knows how his mother’s cries are soft, though deep and heart-wrenching when a whimper or a sob slips out, buried in a handkerchief or the crook of her elbow or the palms of her hands, shying away from the world and begging for a moment of privacy. Thomas knows how Barbara used to press her lips into a thin, defiant line, daring anyone who saw her to comment on her “hysteria”, how she’d hug herself or run her fingers through her brother’s hair or play with her sister’s ribbons to calm herself down, and how her sniffles were paired with hiccups and harsh rebuttals of, ‘Oh, stop it, Barbara, you stupid girl.’
He’s no different. When Thomas cries, it’s like he’s being flipped inside out, baring himself for the world to see. When he cries, he cries deeply; feels it deeply, raw emotion aggressively clawing its way out of his soul and leaving destruction in its wake. And he thinks, if he’s feeling like this, he cannot begin to imagine what his uncle, aunt and Anna are going through right now—
Guilt rears its head, like a dragon poking its head out of its lair and baring its teeth, and Thomas draws in a sharp breath.
How dare he? Who the hell does he think he is?
Who is he to cry like this when Cecily and Gabriel have lost their son? When Anna has lost her brother, the one whom she’d frantically tried to save and watched life leave him so violently with her own eyes?
What right does he have to fall to pieces like this when his family needs someone to be their anchor? Gideon is doing it with grace, an arm slung over his brother’s shoulders as silent tears trail down his cheeks. Sophie holds Cecily flush against her side, her hands gripping Cecily’s tightly, and her expression so grim the scar on her cheek paves a jagged, shining path to dark, glassy hazel.
That’s what Thomas should be doing. He casts Anna a quick side glance, seeing a face void of emotion, but eyes alight with confliction and grief. He should be standing by her, like his parents are with her parents, be that unmoveable presence should she have the need to hide or break or take her frustration out on something. Ari is doing just that, not touching her in any way aside from their hands being loosely interlocked in between them. She’s saying nothing, but her presence alone speaks volumes. Thomas should mirror her, and not just stand here snivelling like a child and rely on other people to make him feel better.
There’s nothing else for it. It takes everything in him to do it, but he steps away from Lucie. He offers her a small smile when she looks up at him in confusion, mouths, ‘I’ll be alright, thank you,’ and avoids meeting narrowed, reprimanding blue eyes. Lucie, however, lets him go and moves to the side, but not without reassuringly squeezing his arm as she goes.
And from there, Thomas pats his cheeks dry with the cuff of his jacket sleeve, tries to curb any further tears from forming, and forces himself to look directly at the pyre. It’s the only way to stop this nonsense. He needs to look reality dead in the eye. Once he accepts that, then he can be there for Anna without any hindrances.
Or so he thinks. Something slams into the centre of his chest at the sight of Christopher’s still figure, and his eyes sting in protest.
Enough, Thomas. Enough—stop this madness. Pull yourself together, man. Anna needs you.
It’s unbecoming for a man to show any trace of emotion, let alone cry in polite company, or so the mundanes say. Thomas is thankful that Shadowhunters have, at least, forgone this trait, because there is no possible way he would be able to stop himself otherwise.
Thomas, at this particular moment, wishes he was still small, that he’d never had his insane growth spurt, that he still had the ability to conceal himself behind his mother’s skirts and dry his face in the folds of wool and satin, and that it was his friends who towered over him, and not him over them.
Despite being so sickly, being small wasn’t all that bad. It was easier to be out of sight, to be unnoticed, to go about his day without being ogled at or scrutinised, to live in the shadows of those far better and far greater than him. He didn’t mind it. Truth be told, sometimes he preferred it. Being tall and broad has its advantages, of course, but not when it acts as a glaring signpost for all and sundry—and if there’s one thing Thomas absolutely abhors, it’s being the centre of attention.
Strangely enough, Thomas’s mind wanders, and he finds himself yearning for the days where he could fit under a table without knocking his head on its underside, giggling madly with Lucie as they stuffed their faces with a small selection of miniature Bakewell tarts and biscuits and ices with fierce competitiveness, hoping they don’t get found out by Cook, or Bridget if they were at the Institute. Where they’d both laugh at the loud smack James’s head made when it collided with the table as he’d crawl in after them and join in, where they’d shush each other at the sound of footsteps, their faces turning red from forcing down explosive cackles at the unladylike swearing from Cook or Bridget upon discovering the missing portions of the desserts, all of which would be tucked away in three bellies. Where Matthew would sidle in not long afterwards with a grin like the cat who got the cream and green eyes alight with furtiveness, producing a spread of cranberry scones and clotted cream and a special jar of vanilla-spiced jam from the depths of his jacket, and where Christopher, smelling of smoke and bleach, would wonder in a raised voice why they’re all under this one table, and who they’d quieten with a plethora of lemon tarts and harried hisses.
Christopher, who would usually be the one who gave them away after loudly announcing the results of his latest experiment around a mouthful of lemon curd. Christopher, who’d share his tarts only with Thomas, not even his own sister. Christopher, whose pockets were full of the treats he’d stuffed down them while the others got told off by Cook or Bridget, and who’d present them in the drawing room once they’d all gotten kicked out of the kitchen.
Christopher, who’d whisper in Thomas’s ear that he’d seen the recipe for trifle lying in wait on the kitchen bench, and they should try and sample some later tonight when everyone was asleep.
Christopher, who’s lying flat on his back, dressed in white, eyes bound with silk, and no longer breathing.
Thomas squeezes his eyes shut and buries the sob bubbling up his throat somewhere deep, deep in his chest.
What he would give to return to those days. At least Christopher is there, alive and unapologetically himself, bright and inquisitive and always with a new idea ready to be tested with a vigour none of them can replicate. At least there Thomas can look into his face and see his cheeks warmed with colour, not ghostly white and cold and a shadow of what they once were.
Oh, shut up, Thomas. Shut up, you stupid man.
Traitorous tears fall, and Thomas hastily wipes them away.
He has to stop.
He needs to stop.
He cannot cry.
He can’t, he mustn’t, it isn’t fair.
Stop, stop, stop it, just stop it, just stop it—
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Anna’s voice erupts in his ear, harsh and snapping at him like a cornered animal, and it startles him so much he physically jolts.
‘If you are seriously thinking that you do not deserve to be crying as you are because Christopher is not your son or your brother, then you’re a bigger fool than you are tall.’
Someone, Thomas is not sure who, hisses out a horrified, ‘Anna!’ but he pays them no heed. He simply stares at his cousin with round eyes, tears beading along his lashes and too startled to fall.
Her gaze is fire, burning hot on Thomas’s skin as it roves over his features. Her mouth is a vicious slash across her face, contorted at the edges and quivering from a restraint Thomas can only associate with wanting to break everything at hand. Not that he would blame her for doing so, if she did.
‘Don’t hold back. Don’t you dare. Cry, Tom. Cry for those of us who can’t, because if we do,’ Anna demands, her voice cracking and dropping to a whisper, ‘we will break beyond repair, and we will have no way of returning to a semblance of normalcy no matter how hard we try.’
Something indescribable crashes over Thomas, cold and shivery and all-encompassing, like someone has thrown a large bucket of ice water over his head. Gasping, he sweeps his cousin into a tight embrace. Anna breathes out shakily and clutches onto him for a few seconds before pulling away. Thomas lets her, knowing if he doesn’t, she might just shatter into a thousand pieces right there in front of him.
They say nothing. They do not watch as the Silent Brothers step back from Christopher’s pyre. They care not for the pitiful stares from those from the Enclave. They barely acknowledge the gentle hands and whispered assurances from their loved ones.
Thomas simply cries and Anna trembles from the tears she cannot shed.