𝒅𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒍, 𝒅𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒍.

an independent writing blog for   sebastian morgenstern   of the shadowhunter chronicles.   heavily canon divergent,  headcanon and meta based.  19+ mutuals only.

[ . . . ] i knew you were crazy, but i didn’t realize you were absolutely, spectacularly out of your god damn mind. 

a study in : being driven to madness,  a burning world,  conditional love,  war over childhood.  

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against the storm of questions   sebastian sharply leveraged his way,  kenneth entertained a total of none.  his expression was clear,  as it always was,  that perfect balance between listening and utter void.  too often sebastian wanted a reaction out of him that would conform to whatever nightmare scenario he’d conjured for himself in his mind that would reaffirm his thoughts,    cruel and self-afflicted thoughts,    that did nothing to cure his pain but allow him to drown in it.  he took comfort in being unable to breathe,  which was why kenneth imagined he’d sought out solitude here  —  alone and despairing,  he could sink himself in blood and anger.  so when he asked,  kenneth did not answer,  but stood up and faced him quietly.

⍘  fine,  ⍘    he said sternly.    ⍘  but if i win,  i stay and you talk to me like a normal fucking human being.  ⍘    kenneth turned without another word,  shucking off his cloak and his armour,  letting it clatter aside until he was left with just the basics:  his tunic with its cut sleeves,  and wraps tightened around his weak left hand.  he faced sebastian,  his stance even,   and at the count of three,  they fought.

it took six and a half minutes to put sebastian on his back the first time.  the boy dropped with a thump,  kenneth’s fingers wrapped around his twisted wrist and his boot jutting up against his torso in warning.  he let go,  only after staring him down with indifference.     round two and three,  then four and five.   at round six,  he glanced at the window side and noticed the sun had climbed down its ladder to the sea.    ⍘  ready …  ⍘    but sebastian hadn’t gotten up,  so he stopped and gave a grunt.    ⍘  get up.  ⍘

he only needed a moment to stare up at the slats in the ceiling,   his legs like lead and his arms weaker than jelly.  a few steady rise and falls in his chest before he manages to drag his body back up.   a grin ever apparent on his face,   despite the utter fool he was making of himself.   stubborn and unyielding,  he charges in for another round,    not wasting the breath it took to give a warning.  but ken didn’t need one,  he was ready and moved fast.  his skeletons were buried beneath a cozy maisonette in the city,  while sebastian’s were still clinging onto his back.   they were weighing him down in a way he was unfamiliar with.  his frustration turned to anger,   which he’s been getting good at projecting onto ken,   and it kept him on his feet for about five minutes. letting out his irritation through every blow he struck.  but even that gave out eventually.   he dropped onto his back,   and tapped out against ken’s arm,    which pinned him down by the shoulder.

he’d kneeled beside him,    arm braced against his thigh and his eyes falling back on sebastian.  waiting out his tantrum,  he listened carefully to the track of his thoughts and followed him there to the cold corners of his mind still haunted by the underworld.  that kenneth could understand,  could still see in the back of his eyelids,  as he’d forgone his worst fears of the lupercal and dive backed into the mouth of the cave that would take him to the land of dead.  all for him,  without a second thought.  without anything to gain from it but his best friend returned to him.    ⍘  i was here to see you.  grudge or no grudge.  ⍘

he turned the axe under his hand,  the point of its blade twirling a slow circle into the wooden floor.  it left a small circle dent there,  slowly and surely piercing.  kenneth looked away to watch it,  his eyes quiet and expression thoughtful.    ⍘  i don’t care if you’re calm.  would you like me to go?  ⍘    letting go of the weapon,  hearing it clatter beside them,  he took a hold of sebastian’s wrist now that he’d sat himself up,  and pushed it against his own shoulder.  their eyes met,  and he remembered again why it had all been worth it just to see the green pair of them before himself once more in life.  and every day after that,  despite the myriad of secrets he kept padlocked in his chest.  when he talks his voice is just above a whisper.    ⍘  make me go,  then.  ⍘

“   aren’t there more important things you could be doing right now?   ”   a glare,  green as apples,  matching ken’s golds and brown all the way to the arched eyebrow and neutral stare.    “   is everyone afraid i’ll go off the rails? have you come here just to make sure i haven’t?   ”    he scoffs,  and breaks the stare,    the other half of the room just catching his interest more.   would you like me to go?  he should say yes,  but the word won’t come out.   the venom just won’t form,   so he falls quiet instead.   this used to not be such a problem,   but he’s been giving up faster than he used to,  he’s been dragging himself more than he used to.   just a corpse,   pulling his body from one place to another.    it was no question why his relationship fell apart.   there was hardly any patience left for himself,   let alone her.    so he cut that thread loose just to feel less heavy.   but this one?   this thread was dulling his axe.   an excessive sawing back and forth, but it just would not give.   as stubborn and relentless as ken’s stare,  drilling into the back of his neck.  

eyes as still and unfeeling as his, one would think he was both judge,  jury and executioner no matter where he found himself standing.    he knew before he’d ground to a stop that it would be the one beating constant,  hidden like a secret in his chest,  that would give him away to the legionnaire currently wrestling with both his spirits and his weapons in the centre of the training ring.  sebastian’s hearing was about as sharp as kenneth’s nose,  and as his eyes watched him crumple down over the floor,  nothing pulled his eyes away with a sweep of disinterest than those sharp,  double-edged words.  kenneth didn’t answer   (  he often did not  )   and soundlessly made his way to the heart of the room,  his red cloak sweeping the floor with its shredded hem,  like burnt paper.  he stopped beside sebastian’s head,  his black boots an inch from his cheek,  and those same unfeeling eyes pressing down over his face.

⍘  ingratus puer.  ⍘    moving his boot,  he pushed sebastian’s arm,  voice low and bored.    ⍘  get up.  your whining is rusting the axe.  ⍘    then he turned his face away,  crouching down to where the discarded battle weapon lay above sebastian.  the son of bellona had once opted for a sword,  a brutal thing gifted from the past.  he hadn’t seen it again since his return,  and one day he had come back with this sledgehammer sized treasure instead.  he picked it up by the end,  dragging it hilt up with its blade digging into the wood.    ⍘  you’re angry still.  with me or yourself?  ⍘

“    does it matter?   ”    vague words don’t indicate which of these sentiments he was responding to.   angry?  well, of course he was.   and he was entitled to it,   to wrap his metallic fingers around it until it suffocated.    because if no one was going to grieve him,   he’d just have to do it himself.   despondent, angry, denial laid around the room in shredded training dummies and the scuffs on the floor from his axe.    he should feel lighter now,  but he does not.     the familiar pieces of who he was before were starting to peel off his skin like rotting flesh,   exposing the bones beneath.  falling out of their sockets,  his eyes watch the centurion drag the edge of his blade across the wooden floors,   it occurs to him how easy it would be for ken to swing it up,   and bring it down across his middle.    and the thought no longer sparks something in him,   he doesn’t itch to move.   weighed down by exhaustion,   he just watches the axe defeated.  “  i’ll never get the hang of that thing,  anyway. i don’t even want to look at it.  ”    ...    “   or you, for that matter. you still haven’t said why you’re here.  ”   

his heart sits heavy and hollow in his chest,  rolling around his rib cage like a rock shut into a box as he moves throughout the training room.  he was still holding his axe like a sword,  swinging outwards instead of up.   muscle memory guiding his movements before getting cut abruptly by himself.   he’d curse under his breath,   and frustratingly start again back at the beginning.   ten reps turn to fifteen,   and the ones he gets wrong don’t count.     feet planted back at the start,   and he moves until his burning shoulders tell him to stop.  blade dropped onto the ground,   he drops next to it.   pulling the hem of his shirt to his face,  he’s wipes away the sweat before peeling the shirt off altogether and tossing it aside.   and that’s when he noticed something changed along the way,   was it the uneven shift behind him,   weight transferred from foot to foot?     or had it been the gradual   thud thud thud thud thud thud ....  inside his own chest?    “   i know you’re there.  ”   he says,  tossing his eyes over his shoulder.    ken looked like a sentry,  clad in armor,    red cape sweeping the floor.    he usually found it funny:    the grave look that he wore in a position of authority.   but nothing was very funny anymore,  and he didn’t even crack a smile.   he left work to come here.  he doesn’t look happy.   “  how long have you been standing there?  are you here to deliver any more bad news?   who died this time?      actually.   don’t tell me until you’ve brought them back.    ”