BLIND

Encapsulate Part 6

"All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you'll be quite a lot!" Dr. Seuss

BLIND Chapter 6: Encapsulate

Alec vaguely tried to keep some semblance of normalcy. He would have thought he was past that, so far gone, but he found himself clinging to it. Normalcy. It was all he was wishing for, the idea that was circulating his head and drowning him. He was getting dragged down by the waters, the whispers that said that he should get over it and be a big brother. Go to the Clave meeting as Isabelle insisted. He could pull himself together to do that, scraps arranged and shell smeared on backwards in some places, leaving jagged patches of his well-being stapled to his outside.

He was having trouble walking, a limp, but the burning of his insides were out of mind. Out of sight, buried inside him, hidden. Forgotten, he was just going to exist, nevermind the fall in his step, a spy for his sister and the meeting she craved for whatever reason. Alec didn't know what it was about, despite being so proud of being able to attend, but that seemed like it had been years ago. A life time, a time, perhaps, when he'd been alive. It had been a month, maybe. How the cards had been stacked was not in his favor, but that had never really been much of a doubt.

Alec walked back to the Institute. He let his legs rub against the pavement of New York, his hands uncertainly straying into other people's' lives as he passed them on the didn't look to the sky, his eyes didn't wander from straight ahead. Straight ahead, looking at nothing. He wasn't really sure if he was thinking, though that idea of thought never occurred to him. He was just moving, and there was a buzz in the back of his head, a white noise that was to thick for anything else but too thin to be of worth. Something was scurrying around his brain but he wasn't chasing it, there weren't any games left to be played.

The Institute looked bigger than it ever had when he approached it. He had glanced, at first, but then stopped to let it ease into his head. The tallness, the grandiosity, were all a part of his home. It briefly struck him as odd, but he went in anyway. He went in for other people because he was no longer governing.

The room was large, and already filled with shadowhunters and some downworlders, when Alec entered. He slipped in with Jia Penhallow addressing the group from what had been made into the front of the room. She was in the middle of something, and he could tell he'd been late. Her dark hair was scraped back and pinned, and he could tell she had some sort of passion for what she was talking about. Clary, he heard her name, and listened closer.

"...and while what the girl has done is horrific, she has nothing wrong by the name of the law. She has broken no rules except the expectations we set. She is not guilty of anything more than being a foolish girl in love." Penhallow finished. There was a mutter of dissent from the crowd, but no one stood up to objectify. Alec understood why Isabelle wanted a spy, then. For Clary, Alec was doing this for Clary, not for Isabelle. It didn't really seem to matter, though their faces could never blur together.

"But there are more important things to discuss." Another Clave member continued as Jia stepped back into the crowd. "There is a more urgent threat. We received word from the Moscow Institute this morning that the wardings over Wrangel Island have been smashed through." There was a surprised shuffle among the audience, nearly a gasp. A panic spreading through dying bodies. It meant even more demons, they were realizing. "We are still not completely sure what has happened. But as the investigation continues it is clear that our defenses need to be strengthened, and there is a need for more focus on this problem. The search for Jonathan Morgenstern and Jonathan Wayland have turned up fruitless, despite the best efforts of the Clave. With unsuccessful tracking charms, our leads have all turned up dead. It is in our best interest to prioritize the Wrangel Island wards by taking away man-power from the manhunt for the boys."