Fall from heaven

To Ash and Shadow

It had been a sunny day, when Connor felt his phone vibrating in his back pocket. He had been watching the sunset from the rooftop of the New York institute. As he looked at his phone, he couldn't help but smile. He recognised the number as his sister's and picked up the phone.

"Are you coming down or should we leave without you?" She yelled.

"I told you I just needed five more minutes," he replied, grinning to himself, "and those minutes aren't over yet, my dear sister." 

Annoying his sister had always been his favourite game, only because she got annoyed so quickly. Only two years older and thinking she could order him around like a little puppy. He heard her sigh on the other side of the line as she said:

"That's it! We're leaving!"

"Come on, Elly, only" ,he checked his watch before continuing, "sixteen more seconds."

"Alright!" He picturerd her throwing her hands up with a roll of her eyes, like she always did, "But if you're not down here in a minute, we will leave."

She hung up on him and he started to get up as the sun slowly dissapeared behind the high buildings of New York City. As he made his way off the roof, careful not to fall, he remembered the first time he'd come to New York. He'd come here with his sister due to some Shadowhunter foreign exchange program. They had to leave behind their home and family at  the Glasgow institute, but after a while, it seemed worth it. The New York institute was so different than theirs, though not in a bad way. He'd made some pretty good friends here and some friends for life and wasn't just about to leave. He walked through the empty halls of the institute, quickly grabbed his jacket when he passed his room and made his way outside. His sister stood waiting there, checking her watch, the impatient person she was. 

"Am I in time?" He asked, looking to the Shadowhunters that stood by her. One of them, Darius Crossheart, shook his head with a smile on his face.

"No," his sister answered, "but we were waiting for someone else." He saw her eyes shift from his face to the door behind him and he quickly turned around, only to cringe as he saw who walked down the steps.

"Seriously?" He whispered to his sister, "You had to bring her?"

She kicked him and went to greet her friend as he cursed and grabbed for his ankle. That had always been his weak spot.

"You love making her wait, don't you?" said a voice by his elbow. 

He looked over, right in the bright eyes of Darius.

"I tempt to do that from time to time." He said innocently.

Darius smiled back and glanced at the girl his sister was chatting with.

"Such a shame she wanted to come with us. I'm sure you two'll ruin the party again."

 "I would never do such..."

"Darius!" A sharp voice exclaimed. The girl strode past Connor to hug Darius, not without throwing her hair over her shoulder - and accidentially into his face - while passing him. It seemed from the look Darius gave him, he wasn't really pleased with the hug, either.

"Hey Anny, good to see you too." He said to catch the girl's attention. It worked like a bait on a fish, because she immediatly whirled around and corrected:

"Only friends can call me Anny. For you, it's Analys." After the that, she strode away to greet the other people. 

Analys Aldertree, a nightmare of a girl and he still couldn't believe he'd ever dated her. In the beginning she'd seemed like an innocent, pretty girl that had lost her father a couple of years ago. But once he'd started dating her, well, he'd seen demons he would rather hang out with. He'd always thought it was a miracle he'd been able to dump her and being alive afterwards. 

"This is goin to be a long night." He whispered to Darius as his sister shouted they had to follow her.

 The Pandemonium club was full of weird dressed people who danced like they had a snake in their pants or had taken some serious drugs. Some danced like they had both. If you wanted to party, you came to the Pandemonium club, which had improved a lot in the last years. But none of these parties could ever match Magnus Bane's famed parties. Connor had succeeded to sneak in one time and those had been the best 10 minutes of his life, before he'd been kicked out. He stood by the bar, talking to Darius and occasionally buying a drink. Sometimes a girl would stumble past and stare at them like they were angels, which was only half wrong. The other half may have depended on which drugs she'd used. Mostly a smile from Darius would set them off gigling, but some tended to stick around. Like the girl that was trying to get his number at that moment. Help me, he mouthed at Darius, but his parabatai to be was suddenly very busy drinking his empty glass. After he managed to get the girl off him with a fake number, his sister appeared at his side. 

"Well, little brother," she had to yell because of the loud music, "aren't you dancing?" She gave a sign at the waiter to fill a glass for her. Her tawny hair, an old family trait which he didn't share, hung loose and locks of it fell in front of her amber eyes. He wanted to answer, but then a guy appeared behind her.

"Elora," he shouted, "come back to the dancefloor!" The Shadowhunter he recognised as Emyll Greenhallow, took hold of his sister's hand as she finished her drink. As he pulled her with him, she rubbed a hand through Connor's dark hair and said:

"See you later, my baby brother."

She gave him a taunting smile over her shoulder as she walked away. She surely knew how to annoy him too. He watched her dance with Emyll to the loud electronic music, but then turned away as they started making out.

His sister was as beautiful as she was a replica of their father, Eron Goldhawk, leader of the Glasgow institute. They had the same hair and eyes; the old family traits. Connor on the other hand, had inherrited his dark hair from his mother, but his amber eyes still made it clear he was a Goldhawk. He was 17, his sister 20 and they'd been in New York for almost four years now. He was getting used to this big and hectic city by now. He thought coming to New York was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He knew his sister would go back home to run the institute one day, but he planned on staying here, with his parabatai.

He'd known Darius from the day he got here. They immediatly became friends, which didn't happen very often in Connor's case. They always fought togheter, Darius wielding his sword and he his bow and arrows. The Goldhawk family was famed for being skilled archers, thanks to their great eyesight. Darius was the one thing he couldn't explain. He just always was there when he needed him and mostly calmed him down when he was being a little too impulsive. They would become parabatai in a week, two weeks before Darius' eighteenth birthday since Shadowhunters were only allowed to become parabatai up to the age of eighteen.

"You have your thinking face on again." Darius noticed, "Don't make your brain explode."

Connor sighed and looked at the partying people around him. This night, he didn't particularry feel like partying. Darius was right; He was thinking too much, so he forced out the thoughts and let his head be filled with the deafening music.

Another girl came hanging at the bar right next to them, and this time, he let Darius take charge of getting rid of her. It wasn't like he didn't like girls, but he wasn't the kind of guy that believed in love on the first sight. While talking to a few other Shadowhunters that had come with them about what demons they had killed in the last week, he got a call. As he picked up the phone, he heard his father's voice, but couldn't exactly understand what he was saying because of the music. He made his way to a back room that and when he stepped in, the words of his father hit him all at once and it felt like all air was sucked right out of his lungs.

"You have to come to Idris, Connor. Your mother's dead"