Malec One Shots

63. Mother

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Song ~ On An On - Drifting
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Maryse Lightwood lived vicariously through the successes of her children.

She buzzed in the limelight when Isabelle got top of her class in the academy, and thrived when Alec was branded the best of the best. She even loved the attention and praise she got when they took in Jace, people saying how proud her children should be that they had such caring parents.

But being prideful and attentive to the success of your offspring does not mean you are a good parent. Sometimes it meant the opposite.

Although it was no excuse, Maryse had been brought up a Trueblood. With the key word in her name, blood purity was an important affair. You married for success, hardly ever for love, and they had to be of the highest class. Maryse had been lucky to fall in love with a man who had such a powerful namesake, and even after Robert had torn her apart she kept the lie up that everything was okay. Because families in the shadow world either succeeded together or failed completely, losing status. And Maryse wouldn't risk that.

Admittedly, she wasn't a brilliant mother. A leader, an instructor, she was meant to be. That's how she ran things in the Circle and that's how she ran things at home. She loved her children yet couldn't show it. She worked Alec until he bled, not that he'd show her or ask for help, even if she knew. She drilled into him that to be the oldest was to be a protector. He'd train until he collapsed, fight until he was screaming for release, and she'd still push him. To give up was to show weakness, and the Lightwoods were not weak.

So Alec kept going. He ate his vegetables, he cleaned his weapons, he did his work, and he did not cry. Maryse Lightwood had trained her son to be more a soldier than a child, and left him to pick up his sister and parabatai as proof of discipline and order. He was at the top, as the eldest, and he couldn't stray. Even if his siblings refused to follow that path with him.

When Alec made a friend while in Idris, Maryse agreed to let him have this one thing. He and Jace were parabatai but they'd always clash. That wasn't a bad thing necessarily, they fit like yin and yang, but Alec never did find a like-minded person to talk to. Alec was thirteen, and his friend was a Castleton. A boy of the same stature but of African descent, his parents governed the Zimbabwe institute. For the short week Alec stayed in Idris, he spent most of his waking moments with the Castleton boy. For once Maryse believed she made a mistake in pursuing Jace and Alec's brotherhood, for the Castleton boy seemed to mean much more to Alec than she thought he would, and yet while sitting in the manor's front garden while braiding Isabelle's hair, she bristled as she saw Alec clutching the boys hand and swinging it as they walked back through the gates. She felt fury towards her son for the first time in his life, and forgetting Isabelle entirely, marched over and pried their small palms apart. She'd pulled Alec until he was a few feet away from the Castleton boy, before shouting at him to get inside. Alec never saw his friend again, and it wasn't until he was sixteen that Alec realised why he'd been denied contact.

She knew, now. She'd known back then, too. Alec didn't love women, as he was supposed to. And Maryse didn't tell Robert. She vowed to never hurt her children, but she knew Robert would.

After the incident with Castleton, though, Alec threw himself into training. The family moved back to New York, and Alec was as militaristic as expected. He and Jace did everything together, and when she heard crying from Isabelle's room she'd stop in front of it just long enough to hear Alec singing her back to sleep. It almost made her forget about how much pressure she'd put on him and how it would make him explode sooner or later.

And it did.

As soon as Magnus Bane had waltzed into the wedding hall, one hand buttoning his blazer, the other clenched at his side, Maryse had been blinded by rage. Everyone had heard what Magnus had said to her, and although disliked him, couldn't refute it. As Maryse had turned to see her son letting go of Lydia and shifting in his stance, she knew. Yet she was angry. So when Alec had shut her down with one word, the only defiance he'd ever shown towards their family, she froze in place.

When Alec pulled away from the warlock's mouth he was shocked himself. She knew that face. There were emotions running through his head at a million miles per hour both positive and negative and Maryse stormed off, trying to ignore what had happened like she had all those years ago when Alec was thirteen.

And then the defiance just grew from there. Alec broke free from the chains he'd been tied down by and while Maryse was proud of him for not giving up on himself she was still furious. All because of her promises to herself. Family protects family, and Magnus Bane had not long ago been a target by the Circle. He'd fought and ruined her team, and Maryse had gotten the brunt of the punishment all because it was her idea to go after him. It wasn't, Maryse realised, because Magnus was a man; but because it was Magnus Bane. So through gritted teeth she tried to tell Alec that it wasn't either of their faults, it was her own, and what she'd grown up with. She didn't want to be angry, not when her son was the happiest he'd been since thirteen years old. So she took some time away.

In that time away, she realised that she'd been projecting her feelings and mistakes onto her children, but not all of them. Just Alec. And she'd drove him to it. She had a breather, separated from Robert, and started rebuilding herself.

She started making an effort to prove her love for her children; taking Izzy for brunch, having gossip sessions with Jace, and going for bi-weekly dinners with Alec and Magnus. It felt better, made her heart lighter, and she felt happy.

She doubted she'd ever feel like Alec did for Magnus ever again.

Because watching as Alec tended to a fretting Magnus in the doorway of the kitchen made her eyes blur with tears. He was so gentle, so careful with the man who'd caused so much destruction, though she couldn't deny she'd done just as much. Alec's archer hands simply brushed a splatter of beef broth from Magnus' cheek, and a calloused thumb found home between the crease in Magnus' eyebrows, smoothing the crinkled lines out until Magnus was looking at Alec like he hung the moon. Maryse felt guilty for looking, as if she was intruding on something painfully intimate, and yet she couldn't look away. Not when Alec straightened Magnus' shirt collar out and pressed a kiss to his forehead, murmuring something intelligible there that made magnus chuckle and smack him lightly on the arm.

And Magnus had become family, though barely a year ago she'd have hated to say it. He and Maryse drank together more often than not when Alec was working late shifts, sharing stories and little anecdotes, or AlecDotes, as Magnus had coined them. One night, they'd been pleasantly buzzed off a sweet cherry merlot while sat on the roof terrace in hammocks, giggling as Maryse failed to kick her shoes off as she laid down, and Alec had come up to watch as Magnus tried pulling her up only to pull her straight out of the hammock and onto the concrete. "Good evening." Alec had chuckled, pulling Magnus up and planting a kiss to the inside of his wrist, before pulling his mother up and pressing a kiss to the back of her hand. Alec had set her up in the guest bedroom, taking Magnus to their bed where he passed out while drooling cherry purple into the silk sheets.

Maryse had felt some strong emotions in her life, but never had she felt so much pride. Not when she sat in the front row seats beside Luke Garroway, their hands twined between their chairs as they waited for the ceremony to begin. She beamed when Magnus stood at the altar, Raphael behind him and holding a tiny velvet pillow. And she cried, by the angel she cried when Alec walked down the aisle in his blue three-piece suit, arm-in-arm with none other than Zachariah Castleton, after finding him a good fifteen years after losing contact.

She was proud. Proud without repercussions. Because Alec was happy. He still was a soldier, a shadowhunter, but he was a man first. A husband. A father. And Maryse vowed like she did all those years ago to love those grandchildren of hers, not rule over them like an inquisitor. She was a grandmother, not a war general.

She was Maryse Trueblood Lightwood.