Fires from heaven

The payment to see the future is not going to be cheap.

                         ________________________________________

                                 You know I will trust you with my life,

                                Even with the scars I will still survive;

                        For every wound inflicted will eventually heal,

                               And the trust will never be repealed.

                      But it is the matter of heart that I fear the most,

                      For the wound of heart is the highest of cost;

                I've wanted so much to hand the fragile trust to you,

             But the past heartaches refrain me from coming through

                   ________________________________________

Clary paced worriedly. She was hoping that after Valentine death, all four of them could take a long, uninterrupted breather. But this news troubled her. As much as she didn't like the fact that Alec could be seeing the dark and unpleasant future, the thing that worried her the most was  the effect the visions had on Alec.

Clearly, the vision hurt Alec. Clary stole a glance at Alec's pale face. Okay, it had hurt Alec a lot. Still... she wondered whether the vision that Alec had had come from the same source as her runic vision. She wondered whether the vision came from the Angels.

Because they could never identify the scorched mark surrounding Alec. The red-orange tinged scorched mark.

"What are you thinking, Clary?" Jace asked.

Right now, they were in Alec's room. Clary realised that this was the first time she was here since the night she came back from Valentine's ship. She remembered seeing Alec's almost lifeless body laid on the bed with Magnus mixing whatever concoction next to him. It was the night Clary realised the depth of the parabatai bond. It was unfathomable because Clary didn't know how it felt losing half of your soul. When Isabelle explained to her that part of Alec's soul was lost because it was searching for Jace, she knew that she couldn't compare the bond she had with Jace with the bond Jace had with Alec. It didn't mean that Jace loved her lesser, it was a different kind of love but no less soul-consuming, no less heart-wrenching.

For someone who had been raised by the cold-hearted Valentine, Clary was ceaselessly amazed by the capacity of Jace's heart to love.

Currently, Alec was lying on his neatly made bed, his head resting on Isabelle's lap as she apparently was still reluctant to let her brother out of touch. Clary could see how the incident had badly shaken Isabelle that Clary was secretly relieved for not being there to see Alec receiving the vision. Even though Jace had a firm hold on her heart, there was always a piece of her that had never been able to handle seeing either Alec or Izzy hurt. Maybe it was because the Lightwood siblings were the first friends she had in the Shadowhunter world, especially after losing her mother.

Jace was lounging on one of the two chairs in Alec's room, close to the bed as well. Clary's heart tightened at the blood stain on Jace's shirt's neckline, suddenly remembering the awful, awful moment when Jace had temporarily died. She knew that the memory would always stay with her even when they were both white-haired and wrinkled and old.