#ooohhhh wwweeeeellllllllll

[constantfluxx]

My World Ends With You, pt. 2

[-pt. 1-] [–soundtrack–]

A loud, cacophonous chord.

A sudden, bursting pillar of flames.

A jarring, otherworldly scratch.

Alec dropped his hands, eyes still wide in disbelief - a feeling he didn’t think he, or any Shadowhunter for that matter, was quite capable of. He turned his bewildered stare to the odd woman beside him, who appeared both ignorant of his incomprehension and a bit too enthused by the destruction raining down around them.

“Fuck yeah!” she yelled, unceremoniously tossing her guitar so it swung around her torso by its strap. It fell against her back, but she seemed hardly affected by its heavy landing, too busy throwing the last of the exploding Noise the bird to care. “Scurry on back to yer damn masters, ya fuckin’ trash!!!”

In spite of everything going on, Alec winced. “Is that really necessary?” he muttered.

She turned a raised brow down at him - suddenly self-conscious about it, he quickly finished brushing the sand from his hands and stood upright. “You fuckin’ serious?” she snarled at him. “We just beat the shit out of those things! Thanks to yours truly, might I remind. You should be clapping your damn heels in the air, for crying out loud!”

“I don’t have the slightest clue what the hell is even going on,” he dryly reminded her. Unable to pass up an opportunity to claim equal ground, he threw in, “I hunt demons on a daily basis. This is hardly anything special.”

He instantly regretted it.

“Oh, you did, huh? That how you died?” she quipped.

“So did you, right?” he growled back. “That’s why you’re here?”

She scoffed, but backed down - somewhat. “He catches on at last.” She shoved her hand in her jacket pocket, and after a moment of fishing around pulled out a few pins and tossed them his way. “Alright, I’ll admit it - you’re a good fighter. Way better than me, if I’m honest.” Suddenly, she was jabbing a finger in his face. “But you tell anyone that and I’ll smash your fuckin’ head in, you got that?!”

Hardly intimidated, he just rolled his eyes. “Who’m I going to tell, anyway?” He gestured helplessly to where his sister had been consoling that man - Magnus, if memory served - and tried to swallow his disappointment at the belated realization the pair of them had left. “My own sister can’t see or hear me. I’m assuming the same holds true with my parabatai and the rest of the Shadowhunters.”

He face screwed up. “Your what?”

Alec hesitated. “My...” His brow furrowed. What was his name? Finally, he dragged the answers out from their blur. “Jace. His name was - is - Jace. He’s my brother. And also my... It’s like more than a brother. Partners.”

Her quirked brow summoned more instant regret. “Fuck buddies?”

“No!” he yelled. “It’s... Nevermind. The point is, I can’t talk to them - right? I can’t talk to anyone?”

She shrugged. “Not like they’d be much help. I’m assuming none of them have ever played The Reapers’ Game before.”

“All this is a game to you?” Alec gawked at her.

“Shit no!” she scowled back. “This is all that screwball Composer’s idea!”

Alec couldn’t keep his deflation out of his voice. “Composer? Noise? What does any of that have to do with reapers and games?” He gestured exasperatedly to the world around them. “And, you know. Dying.”

“Long story short,” she sighed, “when you die, this shithead we call The Composer makes us play The Reapers’ Game. If you win, you get one wish - returning to life tends to be the popular choice.”

“And... we win by defeating Noise?” Alec extrapolated.

“Bingo!” the woman replied with a snap of her fingers. Then, after a momentary hesitation, “...Well, generally speaking, anyway. The Reapers set up objectives for us Players to complete. We have to complete them all if we wanna get our wish.”

“Like returning to life.”

She shrugged, then turned and began walking off, casually strolling through where Alec had slammed into an invisible wall just before their fight with the Noise. “Sure, if that’s your poison.”

He raised an eyebrow, pocketing the pins she’d given him without much thought and following in her wake. “It’s not yours?”

“I’ve got bigger fish to fry,” she muttered. “Namely, putting this damn asshole and his stupid fucking game back in the ground where they fucking belong.”

“I’ve got to say - I can’t see this guy granting that particular wish.”

“So I’ll ‘wish’ with my fists,” she spat back. “My brother got rid of this shit years ago. So I’ll find a way to do it again.” She hesitated, almost causing Alec to bump into her, then suddenly continued on.

Alec glared at her. “What?” he demanded. “Hey. If we’ve got a ‘pact’ or whatever, that means you’re dragging me along for your personal crusade, right? So fill me in. At the very least, I’m not going to be of much help if I don’t know what all’s going on.”

She muttered something under her breath, then suddenly stopped again, this time turning to face him. “My brother. I’m not supposed to remember him. See, to play The Reapers’ Game, you have to pay an entree free - whatever’s most valuable to you. For me, that’s my brother, but I remember him. Everything about him.”

He blinked, then glanced over his shoulder to the beach. That man... Could he be... ?

“HEY!” the woman yelled, snapping him back to attention. “Don’t you fucking care?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” he quickly replied. “Your brother. I mean, if those are the rules, then isn’t the answer pretty obvious? There must be something more valuable to you than–”

“No,” she abruptly cut him off, her snarling face suddenly so close to his he could feel her breath on him. “There. Isn’t.” Just as abruptly, she whipped around and continued storming off.

“Right,” he mused with a roll of his eyes. “Of course there isn’t.” After a few more moments of silent following, he prompted, “Hey, where are you going? Shouldn’t we be... doing those... objectives, or whatever?”

“We are,” she curtly replied. She threw her hand in the air - somewhere along the lines, she’d apparently pulled out her cell phone. “Check your messages. ‘Meet me at the bridge.’ That’s the objective.”

“This is New York,” Alec groaned, fishing for his phone. “Which bridge?”

She smirked over her shoulder at him. “Wouldn’t be much of a game if it were that easy.” They finally stepped off the beach, where she turned to begin heading down the main road. “I’d be more concerned about who we’re meeting.”

Finally, Alec found his phone. Sure enough, a new message was waiting for him - and nothing else, no contacts or pictures or anything, much to his disappointment. He opened the message and frowned. “It doesn’t say.”

“Yeah, but The Reapers’ Game is new to New York,” his companion explained. “There’s only a handful of Reapers, and only one of them is interested in cat-and-mouse objectives - some she-bitch named Kaelie.”

Alec double-took so hard he practically tripped over himself. “Her?!”

The woman paused, throwing an intrigued look over her shoulder. “You mean, of all the shit going on right now, you recognize her?”

He gave her an unamused glare, then blinked. He turned his head, quickly gaining his bearing. “Central Park,” he murmured, and then it was his turn to take off.

His partner blinked. “Huh?” Not one to be left behind, she swiftly turned and chased after him. “Central Park? You mean that stupid little creek?”

“When she was alive, Kaelie was one of the Fair Folk,” Alec called over his shoulder. “She’s not referring to a physical bridge. She’s talking about–”

WHAM!!!

Another invisible wall.

"Oh for fuck’s sake!!!”