Chapter Text
Being a Lightwood is hard.
Harder then it was to just be a shadowhunter.
He had learned that much at a very young age.
there was an expectation, for the old familys, and expectation for the children of the old family's, it seemed the older the family the higher the expectation.
the same was true from the lightwoods.
there was expectation, put up on the lightwood children- by both their parents and the clave, to not only do well in training, excel in their study's and be compleatly perfect in maters of diplomacy.
there was this expectation, this pressure to be abseloutely perfect.
For all of the lightwood children, but Alec espesseally/
Being a child in the lightwood family was hard, but being the eldest lightwood, heir to the family name was even harder.
Everything was expected of him, perfection and more still.
He needed top marks in every class, he had the be proficient in things he didn't even study otherwise he was slow, stupid.
but when he didaccomplish those things, it wasn't some great feat, it was the bare minimum, there was no celibration, to nothing, it was be the best or you were automatically a discrase.
And most of all, on top of the fact that he needed to be better then anyone, to have the intelect of an adult and the cool, level head of a trained soldier.
But he also needed to know his place.
He could do things for his parents, things that were out of his job description as a student, but only as long as it was making their life easyer.
He wasn't allowed to have opinions though, because he was just a child, and he was too young to know how the world works.
It pissed him off to no end.
How was he meant to be a leader but not allowed to have opinions.
It made his skin crawl and his blood boil.
And for that he was called emotional.
And to be fair, he was, to and extent. i mean,
throughout the years Alec has had a lot of emotions, so, yes, but so did other people, hell, Isabelle still threw tantrums for heavens sake.
And yes, in the beginning he didn't know how to handle his emotions, but that was years ago, when he was 3 and 4 and he would have tantrums, like any kid his age, but all his mom would do is yell, scream at him, tell him to stop, that no one perseeve him as strong, as a leader if he cried in front of them and broke down.
It didn't matter that he didn't want to calm down, it didn't matter that the only reason he was throwing the tantrums was because he wanted his mom to just, notice him, talk to him for reasons other then to lecture him on his failure to do perfectly on his schoolwork and his downfalls with his weapons training.
He'd cry, he'd cried a lot as a kid, he'd cry and tell her that he didn't want to calm down. He didn't want to do this, he didn't want to do that.
But, his mother would never fail to take or create an opertunity to express her authority over him.
'It's not about what you would like to do, it is about what must be done'
That's what she would say, followed by a firm tap on the cheek.
"It's not about what you would like to do, it is about what must be done' "
Those words were a constant in early childhood.
Who was he kidding, they had continued to be a constant far into adulthood aswell.
He was always falling short, always just out of reach of greatness, witch never made any sense because his siblings were doing great, exselling in their respective fields, they were his parents pride and joy.
But if you looked back on the reports. On their grades, Alec always scored higher then them,
He haddnt gotten less then 100% on a test sense he was 8 years old, sometimes going as far as seeking out extra credit, bumping his scores up to 101 or 103.
He was better, objectively speaking.
He had higher grades, he had honors and degrees in public speaking and politics.
He had quite literally invented the class on descalation tactics.
A class that is now a requirement for every shadowhunter to attend at least once a year.
He had been barely 14 and running an entire instetute from the shadows.
He had been crowned the best archer in the United States, 3rd best in the entire world by the time he was 17.
He could do things that no one had done In hundreds of years, he was on track to be the youngest head of instetute in history. And he was already the youngest commanding officer in new york sense the 17 hundreds.
He had gone above and beyond then further still, and he still wasn't good enough.
No.
It was always:
"why can't you be more like Jace, you know he just surpassed his combat instructer"
Never mind that Alec had done the exsact same thing when he was just a year older then Jace.
And
"Why can't you be book smart like issabelle, you know she's been given license to give a lecture on the differences between shadowhunter and mundane crime scenes, she's also writing a book on indroduction to biology"
Never mind that Alec had written and presented more lectures then he could even count. Written and rewritten rules and procedures, sifted through and typed up official clave documents.
And yes, his siblings were better at some aspects of their studies.
Jace is better at hand to hand combat. He's virtually unmatched with a blade and he's probably the fiercest warrior sence Johnathan shadowhunter himself.
And Izzy would forever be smarter then him in terms of her knowlage of phorensics and biology.
But it wasn't enough for Maryse Lightwood, it was never enough for her.
But the thing that his mother and his father always seemed to forget was that he was not studieing those things, he was an archer, and he was a politician, he was studying different things, and if you were to quiz Alec, Jace and izzy on somthign random, that none of them specialized in, Alec would garentee that he'd get the highest score.
But it dosnt matter, because his younger siblings would be forever better then him in every way, because that's just the way things were.
It didn't matter that Alec had accomplished more then any shadowhunter in the whole of New york, including his parents.
No, it didn't matter.
Because he was Alec lightwood.
Which meant that nothing he ever did would ever be good enough.
It didn't matter how hard he worked or how much extra slack he picked up.
It didn't matter that his siblings slacked off, I mean one look at their attendance record and you could tell.
No.
It didn't matter, nothing seemed to matter to his mother except for the knowolage that he's not good enough.
That he'd never be good enough.
So he turned to training, sure he was an archer but if his mom wanted him to be as good as Jace in hand to hand then he would sure as he'll try to be.
And thus started his pattern of overtraining.
Working his body until he was broken and bloody and brused, he would spar with his superiors for hours, he trained more then he slept, and then he would go out on patrol.
But him mom didn't notice, didn't care.
And so he stopped using the Irazi to heal the dammage he did to his knuckles, stopped mending the split skin, he let them heal and scar and fade.
So that hopfuly, she would notice, she would see how hard he had been pushing himself to be better, pushing himself to be what she wanted him to be.
The constant training had payed off, his hand to hand had improved, that's for sure, he could take on most of the instetute with his eyes closed and a hand tied behind his back.
But nomatter how hard he pushed himself.
He still couldn't hold a candle to Jace.
And it turned out that the scars on his knuckles had the oposite effect the he had intended.
Instead of his mother recognizing his efforts, she condemned him for being so reckless and neglectful of his body, the weapon he had been gifted by the angels.
Becaus how was he to fight if he ruined his hands.
An archer with broken hands isn't worth anything afterall.
But, her warnings had also backfired.
Instead of listening to her he fell deaper into training, it was near never that his hands were fully healed and unscathed.
But, he had it under controll, he really did.
Or at least he used to.
And then he started thinking about Jace In a way he wasn't suposed to, then Clary came along and Jace started acting like an asshole.
And it kinda fucked up his whole rythem.
Alecs... issues got worse, but Jace didn't care, he was too busy with Clary.
And it broke alec.
It fucking destroyed him.
-----
It had gotten the worst after he had agreed to marry Lydia.
He was so mad at himself, the pain that he felt. It was so powerful that it was a phisical feeling.
He had stormed into his room that night, broken and angry and hating himself, drawn a hasty soundless rune on the door and he had screamed his throat horse, cried until his whole face ached, and punched his -very, very much brick- wall until both of his wrists broke.
He had collapsed against the wall, leaning his head against the blood stained brick, and he had cried himself to sleep.
He had walked out of his room the next morning as if nothing had happened.
No one mentioned the fresh blood on his wall, and no one mentioned the iratzis on either wrist.
Not even Jace, who must have felt his pain.
He had to have.
Alec felt like he was falling apart at the seams, and everyone knew but no one cared to help him.
Not even his own parabatai, no, Jace was far too busy trying to get into the redheads pants.
And that was more important then Alec's issues, because there was always something more important then alecs issues.
He tried to pretend that it was fine, like he wasn't hurt by it, but he couldn't help it.
It got worse leading up to the wedding.
But it didn't seem to get any better when it was canceled- er, crashed.
Yes, he was with Magnus now, and he was elated everytime he got the chance to kiss the man, but, no mater how much he tried to push it down, there was still somthing, fundamentally broken in Alec.
And no one cared.
But it was fine, he was fine, he was Alec lightwood, so it was fine.
I mean, why did he care so much about it now.
No one had ever shown concern for him before, why would they now?
It's fine, because he's Alec, he dosnt need anyone's help.
It dosnt bother him that no one cares.
Because, it's Alec, why would anyone care.
Afterall.
He's worthless.
I mean.
In the end, what use is an archer with wounded hands.