Smokescreen 》Alec Lightwood

9

4+comments/votes for the next chapter! Thank you to those who do comment and vote, it gives me motivation to write :) the gif above is Alec's eye roll mentioned towards the end of the chapter. Next chapter is when things should start to get interesting, so this chapter gives a bit of background on Izzy/Adelaide and Alec/Adelaide. 

'We all are stranger creatures than when we all started out as kids. Culture forbids, we have romantic fantasies about what dying truly is, fall off the grid.'
(Glowing Eyes, twenty øne piløts)

Adelaide flinched as the door slammed.

Magnus looked at the girl, her hair messy from her training and her cheeks red from her activities and her anger at Jace.

'How did he find you?' Magnus asked when it became clear she wasn't going to be the first to speak.

Adelaide's voice shook slightly when she answered. 'Clary didn't tell anyone where she was going, so he came looking for her and she didn't think to block her location either.'

'She's new at this Adelaide-'

'I'm not angry at her Magnus.' Adelaide said truthfully.

Magnus' eyebrows shot up in surprise. 'Well, then who are you angry at? Jace?'

Adelaide shook her head, turning to meet the warlock's confused expression. 'I'm not angry with Jace or Clary, I'm angry with myself. Jace has every right to hate me.'

'The things he said –'

'Were justified. I am not the same person they knew, Magnus.' Adelaide's tone made it clear the discussion was over.

'I'm going to have a shower.' Her voice softened as she left the room.

Magnus watched the shadowhunter leave. Adelaide may not have been angry at Jace, but Magnus was furious.

*****

Isabelle's words had unsettled Alec.

He hadn't realised how much Isabelle had watched him after Adelaide's disappearance, and it was true that he hadn't mentioned Adelaide to her or Jace after the memorial they held for her. The only time she had talked about her recently was when Clary interrogated him for answers. But that didn't mean he didn't think about her.

He thought about her all the time.

She knew parts of him that no one else did and she had never judged him for anything he shared with her. It was her who had noticed the way he withdrew into himself sometime around his sixteenth birthday, and it was her who pulled him out of it. Alec knew he wasn't a very open person, even now with Izzy his personal life was just that - personal. But Adelaide had a way of making him talk; making the truth find it's way out into the open.

'Alec? Can I come in?' Adelaide was standing outside Alec's bedroom door in the institute. She had snuck away from Isabelle and Jace who were discussing their training when she noticed Alec trying his hardest to go unnoticed as he left his friends in the training room.

'It's open.' Alec didn't feel like talking to anyone, but he knew Adelaide had only good intentions so he let her into his bedroom. He didn't have to tell her anything anyway, he could tell her he felt unwell, he supposed.

'Alec? What's wrong?' Adelaide sat beside him on the bed leaning her back against the wall just as he was doing. Alec refused to look at her expression.

'Nothing. I just don't feel well.' Alec shrugged.

Adelaide nodded as if she believed him. 'Okay, now tell me the truth.'