Needing You - Malec AU

When New Early-Morning Paths Lead to Unknown Territory

So this is a very quick turn around for me, considering it is my longest chapter yet!!!! I really enjoyed working on this chapter and I hope you all enjoy reading it!

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When Alec left his house the following morning he hadn't gone to the gym with Jace. He simply woke early to avoid his parents and went out for an early morning walk to clear his head.

He hadn't slept very well all night; the vision of the new boy, Magnus, haunting his dreams. I'm his slumber the boy was being pummeled repeatedly by Sebastian. Except the dream was not the same as it had been the day before. He wasn't reliving the moment, he was creating a new one. This time Alec wasn't watching by chance he was being made to watch and he could not help Magnus this time. He could not save him. He was being restrained, his hands being held tightly behind his back in a firm grip while he watched the assault take place right in front of him.

The sensation was unbearable. He could feel that the situation was a dream and was nothing more than that and yet he still flinched and struggled in his sleep all night, twisting beneath the sheets and breaking out in a sweat as he struggled to save the boy.

He could remember it now as he ran through the near by neighborhoods the cool breeze hitting him in the face with every stride of his long legs. The hands that held him back from saving Magnus. The grip the that tightened the more he struggled. The faces that processed such strength and power in the clamped fists.

Maryse and Robert Lightwood.

They were who Alec envisioned holding him back. The people he spent his entire existence trying to please for their own sake but not his own. The parents he loved and treasured. His heroes who in one endless nightmare had become the villains of his own tragic tale. How close love and hate had become, he thought, squinting as the new sun rays glinted off the top of a car roofs and shone into his eyes attempting to blind him.How close they had merged and almost conjoined into one mess of confusion. Of course Alec understood that the dream was not real. this event had not happened. It was purely fantasy. The fiction of his imagination, toying and playing with his emotions until it produced a symbolic representation of his relationship between himself and his parents. Except they weren't the only figures there in the dream.

Jace stood beside him, but not looking at him, no matter how loud he called to his brother and crush, he did not help. He didn't even flinch.
Alec thought about the meaning behind the present and yet absent Jace in his dream as he continued to move down each street casually.

Then the thought occurred to him. What if Jace was ignoring him because he knew what Alec was, knew who he was and who he had feelings for? Alec's heart began to race at the idea of Jace discovering his secret, his desire He had to stop thinking about it, pushing it to the back of his mind with every step he took traveling further from home. The dream glazed over then, as if his mind had taken an empty glass cabinet in his brain and locked the dream in it, still visible for him to see and remember, but out of reach of others as well as himself.

He now focused on a empty can he had found on the street, kicking it ahead as he walked, enjoying the feeling of an empty mind as he watched it roll and bounce slightly from the agile force of his foot. It was a game that could be played by one person and remain strangely amusing, yet he contemplated how if it had been the late afternoon and busy in the street he would have just walked past the can without a second glance. He wouldn't dare to be seen kicking litter around in the street by anyone, but being alone caused him to act differently, helped him to understand himself better. Being alone let him be Alec and nothing more. No expectations. No rules. No judgement...just Alec. He liked being himself. It made a change.