The Omega

Chapter 6 - Revelations - Part 4

Izzy anxiously paced outside the bedroom door. It had been three hours since her brother's mate had carried him inside. It broke her heart seeing her brother this way. He had always been the strongest of the strong. Before his presentation he was everyone's go-to guy for everything. He knew everything, he could do everything. He was who she wanted to be when she grew up, well, the girl version. Even though they were only separated in birth by a few minutes, it had always felt as though he was so much older than she was, that he could do so much more. Overtime, as children, she started noticing why. She didn't notice at five what she started to notice at eight, before their formal training had started nine. At five, she was playing with dolls and with the children of the other Shadowhunters at the Institute, not knowing that while she played, her big brother was sitting at a desk in the library memorizing and practicing runes from the Grey Book at their fathers insistence. Or studying demonology, whatever else their father had wanted him to learn. While she was having tea parties, he was practicing tumbling with their then training master, Hodge, in a make-shift training room in the Institutes basement. He was never able to play when she had asked. His days were full. But she didn't know that then. The only reprieve he had ever received as a child from his constant early morning training and daily studies was sleep, yet even then she didn't know that he was being woken up hours before her for breakfast. During those early morning hours was when he had released his first flimsy arrow into a soft target twenty feet away, where it had struck home. But by eight she began to notice things, like bruises on his forearms and knuckles. Little nicks on his hands and arms. She didn't know that he had already long since started his weapons training. Back then he had always been mostly closed off and shy, but little by little, over time, she had slowly started to get him to speak. Then one day while she was trying to get him to talk to her it just all came flooding out, like a dam had burst in him. All of the things that she didn't know, all of the things that she should have noticed, came gushing to the surface. She was so angry. At herself, at their parents, but more so at herself. She was his twin. She should have known. She was so mad she wanted to punch someone; and she did actually; Jen Havens, breaking her nose. So the next day, even though she was grounded, she was outside her brothers bedroom door at 5:05 am, waiting. She knew their father would be inside, waking her brother. So when her father hustled her still sleepy brother out into the hallway from his room for his daily tumbling and weapons training, she was there. Their father had tried to shoo her off, to tell her to go back to bed, that it was too early to be up; that was the first time that Isabelle Lightwood had fully put her foot down, laying the foundation for the badass woman she would come to be. By the time she had finished her rant at their father, he finally just agreed to let her come along. And it was the same the next day, the day after that, and the day after that, until their father had just come to accept her accompaniment, muttering under his breath about 'female stubbornness'. It wasn't long after that it wasn't just her waiting outside the door anymore, it was the team, the friends that she had played with at five. Alec had always been friendly towards them, but he had never had the chance to get to know them. But that day, that was the day he made his first friends. And they had been inseparable ever since. The Institute had tried a few times after their 'official training' started at nine to split them into other training teams 'so they could share their skills and knowledge", the things that her brother had taught them, with the other kids in their class. But her brother had, in no uncertain terms, refused. He had gotten nose to nose with Hodge, and whoever else tried again later, and said 'no, they stay with me', despite their alpha commands. They had made a pact the year before to stick together, no matter what, and her brother never broke a promise. Her brother didn't become their commander at fifteen like he was supposed to, he became their commander at nine when they had needed him to, to keep them together. At twelve he had fallen ill with severe pneumonia. He had trained everyday as usual for days, despite our protests, until he had started coughing up blood. That was when Hodge had carried him to the infirmary where he had spent six days receiving around the clock intensive treatment. When he was released on the seventh day with orders of bedrest and no exertion by the doctors, he was pulled back into training on the eight day by their mother. 'He's had a week' she had said, 'that's more than enough'. That was the day she had come to truly hate their mother. They had tried to go easy on him in training that day, but her brother wasn't having it. If he was going to train, he was going to train, and so where they. It might have taken him three times longer to fully recover than it should have, but he was there, each day, to train with his team. And it had been that way ever since.