BLIND

"Hope is a waking dream," -Aristotle

The first time it happened caught Alec completely off guard. He was exhausted, his eyes heavy and content to move like his lids were made of sandpaper, but still two or three hours away from finishing his patrol for the day.

He had hardly even gotten used to the idea that Jace was missing, much less that he was devoting all of his time to looking for the shadowhunter. He had been missing for just two days, gone with Sebastian's body, and his workload had increased sevenfold because of it. Two days filled with worry and so much patrolling Alec would worry about the state of his abused feet if he wasn't so damn tired all the time since it had happened. His stride was slightly hopeful, but otherwise empty as he made his way past the windows and streets of New York he had known for nearly all of his life. He had this sense of purpose, a tether to keep him to the gum-speckled cement, but it was fading to a tired hollowing of his body and heart that always followed the utter exhaustion he'd been experiencing for the last day.

Looking back, it wasn't actually all that bad, the first time. It was like a sample, a test, simple, not too extravagant, but it was still among one of the worst times due to the helpless feeling of not knowing. It was a moment he would loathe for the rest of his existence, whatever that ultimately amounted to. It was the beginning of all of this stupidity, this nonsense, the lying, the reawakening of the self hate that had been quietly festering inside of him. It had started with an unknown hand on his shoulder, pulling him back into a blur of motion his starched eyes could barely track and into a dim place he didn't recognize, his bow clacking to the ground outside of the place Alec would soon find to be more than slightly unpleasant.

But recognition wasn't overly important as he thrashed out, confused and uncertain and threatened, only to find himself pinned under Sebastian-no, Jonathan- immobile for a dazed moment. He remained frozen for a quick second as his slow and fried brain tried to process, before doubling his efforts towards maiming that fucker, escape be damned. This shit had killed his brother.

The small struggle, if the futile attempts could even be called that, ended with Alec winded on the cold cement floor, a small, but no less efficient, blade just inches from the underside of his chin. He was completely overtaken, breathless and dominated, at Jonathan's mercy-or lack thereof.

As his chest began to accept air once again, he gasped out, his mouth flopping for air like a fish dying from being out of water for too long. He managed to ask in a strained voice why he was there. Then, where Jace was. As he regained his breath, still stuck underneath Jonathan, he asked questions like he'd never done before. But Jace had never been missing before-well, not like this. So his mouth took on its own life because he just had to know if his brother was safe.

Where were they? What the hell had the demon-blooded shadowhunter abomination done with Alec's Parabatai? What was he going to do to Alec? What was happening, angel damn it?

He was met with a smile and a spat 'call me Sebastian,' which Alec met with firm opposition and was smacked for. But he didn't want to disgrace the dead shadowhunter, Verlac, though it might have been an odd thing for his mind to strike up at the time.

It took less than a minute, however, for Alec to realize he might need those stray thoughts, to keep his mind away, as if it would ever do that. He was a shadowhunter; he wasn't supposed to flee. The smack wasn't the only pain he'd be receiving, which took some time to understand. When firm hands hauled him up off the cold floor he gratefully couldn't feel too much through his gear, and shoved him against a slightly inclined wall, his wrists quickly being bound into frigid metal cuffs of a type he wasn't familiar with, that in itself making him weary as fear sickened his stomach with thoughts that he'd never get away, thoughts that he'd never get away from, that would be stuck in this torture endlessly with him and Jonathan, he wanted to run.