Restless Heart Syndrome

Chapter 8: Ignorance

"Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love."

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Restless Heart Syndrome Chapter 8 Ignorance

Alec bites his lip, staring at the phone. The glossy green outer shell, sitting there innocently, haunting Alec as he struggles to make up his mind. It's just a few numbers he'd have to type in… but what would the consequence be?

The werewolf woman has left, along with any distractions she presented to keep Alec's mind off of himself. She took the soup with tired thanks and a smile, and Alec had to fight off the urges to ask her every question he could think about regarding giving birth and being pregnant and all of those odd questions that men never ask. It might give him away (along with a healthy dose of embarrassment), so he didn't comment on the whirl of curiosity overtaking him. It would be his own to mess about with, to decipher. Not a werewolf woman's problem, especially one he hardly knew.

Sighing, Alec picks up the smooth phone, dialing in the numbers he's long since memorized, despite his misgivings and the doubt that cripple his reason. His fingers tremble as he brings the phone to his ear, and invites his sister over for lunch. She's not busy, thank (or curse) the angel, and promises to be there in twenty minutes. He puts down the phone, struggling against the weight of his own mind. He relaxes into the plush couch, letting its grip on him become more firm as he loses himself in his mind. Or more, loses himself trying to get out of him mind while still trying to remain actively in it, creating order out of a sparring match that has had far too many murders.

He feels like an invisible, and completely intangible, weight has settled in his thoughts, making them muddled and incomplete. There's the undeniable feeling that something awful is going to happen, the absolute worst, but what exactly that consequence is is unknown. His mind is thick, trying to distract his even breathing, trying to evoke the worst possible reaction from his body. It's trying to get him to shut down so he doesn't have to think about it, so his head is free of burden while it ignores the symptoms his body suffers.

The weight of his mind seems to catch in his throat, and everything seems so wrong. There's a touch of foulness on everything, Alec realizes, his head spinning around the room. It's contaminated, he's contaminated, everything's eating at him and he's-

Alec is broken out of his panic by a knock on the door, shortly followed by the click of a key in a lock and the opening of Magnus's door. Alec gets up, albeit slowly, greeting his sister with a grim smile.

"Hey," She says, hugging her brother while avoiding the protruding swell of his stomach as much as possible. "How are you?"

"I've been better," he sighs, leading her to the kitchen. "Grilled cheese?"

"Sure," She nods, noting the fragile way Alec carries himself around the kitchen. He hasn't been training, maybe that's it. Or the bags under his eyes from nights of unrest, and invisible heaviness pressing on him. "So... What's up?"

"I need to talk to you," Alec says, putting butter on six slices of bread. Magnus would probably like a sandwich, and it's not as if they're very difficult to make. Turning the burner on low, he puts a rather large frying pan over the heat and begins the melting of cheese and toasting of bread.

"What about?" Isabelle asks, propping herself up on one of the counters Alec isn't using. Her brother ignores the question, pretending he hasn't heard it with a frown to himself, and she takes the hint. "Still into cooking, then? Maybe I could come over and make something for you and Magnus sometime. I bet it would be fun."