Archive of Our Own

One day, I’d dare them to make a victim

out of me. One day, 

I’d scour the badlands of my body; climb 

the peaks of the words they used against me; 

paint pictures of dead men on the palms of my hands 

so there could be no such thing as surrender.

-Ashe Vernon, The Pomegranate

Maia Roberts knows what it is like to born with teeth in your neck.

Or, at least, claws in your neck.

She carries the scars to this day of the attack. She doesn’t think she’s ever going to be able to work it away, through thought, through dream, through blood.

She is a werewolf because she trusted a boy who was strong enough to ruin her. A boy who was beautiful, and made her feel beautiful, and then broke her.

Jace and Simon are both beautiful, and strong, and have the potential to be brutal.

Simon is a dork, a musician, but he is also a vampire, with a bloodlust unmatched by any other species, Downworlder or otherwise; Jace is a nephilim, a Shadowhunter, who comes from a society that view Downworlders—that views people like her—as less.

There is every potential in the world for them to break her. For them to sink their teeth, their nails, their blade, into her if she trusts them enough to give them even an inch.

She kisses Simon at Magnus and Alec’s party, but when the warlock shows up, she calls it off. She hooks up with Jace, once, but the next time he comes to the Hunter's Moon, she pushes him out.

She tries, in fits and starts, but she keeps failing, because she can’t look at them and not see the wreckage that could result.

Jace kisses the underside of her jaw and she has him on the floor. Simon tries to hold her hand and she snatches it back as the magic swirls in the air and she has to bite back the need to fight.

There is every reason not to trust them, no matter how much they flirt, especially when they have both shown that their first loves will always be Clary Fray. Will always be a girl who is a Shadowhunter, who is so different from Maia, who needs to be protected and saved from her own decisions.

Maia Roberts can fight for herself. She doesn’t need to have her head turned by beautiful boys. She doesn’t need to have her mind warped by crushes that will inevitably crush her.

---

So what happens when she is locked in a room with a starving Simon?

The world is ending. Valentine is trying to take over the world. Maia is supposed to be trying to find Clary so that she can’t activate the Soul Sword.

But she’s not being useful, because her wrist is cuffed to the fucking wall, iron preventing her from turning, and it feels like when Luke locked her up, except while that was betrayal without danger, her life is on the fucking line right now.

But it’s not as on the line as Simon’s life is, because Simon Lewis is starving.

This isn't where Maia thought that she would end up, when she went to find Simon in order to figure out what to do about the Soul Sword, to make sure that he didn't end up in the Shadowhunters' crosshairs as he has so many times before.

She doesn’t want to offer her blood.

She can’t offer her blood. Not from her neck. Not from beneath the ropy scars that Jordan left there. She couldn’t let Jace kiss her there, she couldn’t let Simon touch her there, she can’t let anyone get even close to those scars, that evidence of a trust that destroyed her.

But—Simon is dying.

Simon is dying, his skin growing paler, and she can hear the murmured prayers beneath his tongue in Hebrew, the occasional gasp of pain when his mouth stumbles over the word HaShem, and Maia doesn’t understand much Hebrew, hasn’t known it since she was a teenager, but she does know what it’s like to be laying alone on the asphalt, gasping through the throes of death as your body turns on itself, ache and agony eating your body whole, praying to a god that will never answer.

Maia left behind faith the first night she transformed into a wolf, alone, because Jordan had destroyed her. Had killed some human part of her.

Simon clung to it. He clung to some sense of humanity. He clung to some sense of personhood beneath everything that was scraping at him, trying to take a part of him, trying to make him into a monster.

And in some ways, she hates him for it, because he clung to his friends from his human life, clung to Clary, loyal to her just as much as Luke still is.

Maia was locked up in a room because Luke couldn’t bear to have Maia find the person who was responsible for so much Downworlder destruction. The person who could turn the Soul Sword into a beacon of destruction for their people.

And Simon still cares about the girl that is determined to wreck the Downworld with her recklessness, something that is actively a danger for everything that Maia cares about, but she can’t—

God, she can’t watch Simon starve.

“C’mon, Simon,” Maia says, and offers up her forearm to Simon’s teeth, trying not to look down at the unblemished skin, the arm that hasn’t been scarred like her neck has been, “I know that old debate about whether or not vampires drinking blood would be kosher. You don’t need to worry.”

Simon looks up at her, eyes startled. “You—" he rasps, more a startled question than a fully-formed statement.

Maia rolls her eyes, trying to maintain some sort of levity despite the death that is clinging to the room like rot. “My mom was, yeah. I had my bat mitzvah when I was a kid. Kinda left behind religion when I was Turned. But I know that the rabbis say that you need to take what you can to survive. So—" Her breath shudders as it exits her mouth, and she’s not shocked that it does, because she’s never done this before. She’s never offered up a part of herself like this.

But Simon is her friend. He is someone that she cares about. Someone that she has hung out with in the Hunter’s Moon and in the boathouse and under a dozen other circumstances.

And for all of his faults, Simon doesn’t deserve to die like this, a feral animal driven by starvation. No one does.

So Maia takes a deep breath and offers up an arm for him to feast on. For him to draw sustenance from. It's not her neck—she couldn't let anyone get close right there without losing her mind, without summoning ghosts that she swore she would leave behind with her caterpillar past—but it's still blood. Demon's blood, sure, but still—vampires have fed on werewolves and warlocks and even seelies before. She knows that. Simon can get at least a little bit of blood and he can live.

But Simon turns his head away from her.

“I can’t—" Simon swallows, hard and dry, and she can hear the rasp of his throat, the protest of a body that is more dead than alive but still can consume, still needs to consume to survive. “I can’t drink from you, Maia. I can’t do that to you. You—" 

Maia wants to believe that the reason why he won’t do it is because they’re friends. Because he cares about her. 

But that's not a good enough reason not to drink. That's not a good enough reason for him to die. As a matter of fact, that is the very reason why he shouldn't lose himself to the grave for a second time once a Shadowhunter barges in here and sticks a seraph blade through his chest.

And Maia wants to stab something. She wants to transform. She wants to force him to drink, in order to survive, in order to live, because they can’t just let Valentine and the Clave get away with kidnapping them using a sorceress, can’t let Valentine get away with eradicating one more vampire, can't let Simon die.

"Please," Maia says, and she swore a long time ago that she wouldn't beg, not again, and she's trying not to beg, but she needs him to listen to her. She needs him to decide to live, to take just some of her blood, because it will keep them both alive and able to figure out how to get out of here, how to survive, but he turns his head and he won't fucking listen to her—

The door bursts open, Clary in front of Valentine, darting forward to Simon's side, a hand reaching up to cup his cheek, to cradle his jaw, checking his eyes to see if he's okay.

Because Clary voluntarily turned herself over to save Simon, because of course she did, because no one ever turns themselves over to save Maia. No one ever cares about her. Not like vampires that are the childhood best friends of reckless Shadowhunters—

But then Clary's gaze darts to the side, to Maia, and she swallows as she looks back to Simon. "You need blood," Clary says, voice hard, and it's not a question. "You need to drink."

"Clary," Simon rasps, shaking his head, but Clary has always been more stubborn than is good for her, because she pulls out her seraph blade and slices open her wrist in front of Simon, holding it up to his fangs.

"Drink," she orders, voice as hard and bright as a seraph blade.

Maia doesn’t know what exactly does it. What causes Simon’s pupils to blow wide. If it’s the fact that Clary—for once in her life—was smart enough to slice open her wrist and make it impossible for Simon to look away, an action that Maia hadn’t thought to take. If it’s the fact that it’s nephilim blood, intoxicating, addicting, to vampires.

If it’s the fact that Simon held off so long in an attempt to protect Maia that he can’t hold himself back any longer.

(It can’t possibly be the fact that Simon cares more about keeping Maia alive than Clary, because Clary is his best friend, his first love, while Maia was just a relationship that only lasted a couple of weeks before cracking and falling into ruin.)

But whatever the answer is, Simon's too starving, too thirsty, too wan, to turn down a source of lifeblood.

And so Simon sinks his teeth in and drinks from Clary, from a nephilim, manna in the fucking desert, and Clary is crying. The tears are falling, diamond-bright, against her skin, and it looks like ecstasy on her face even as she is drained, and as much as Maia is terrified of Simon drinking her dry, some part of Maia hates and loves Clary for it, because she is keeping Simon alive, because she can give Simon something that Maia can't, because they are close in a way that Maia can never feel safe enough to be—

Valentine roars, “Get him off of her," because Clary is his beloved daughter, because even monsters have those that they love.

Then, as Simon is ripped away from Clary, her small shoulders ripple outward, becoming broader, copper hair shortening into tarnished gold, and Jace Wayland is sitting there between them.

Not Clary, Maia thinks, something struck shocked inside of her chest, Not reckless, human, impossible Clary Fray. No, the grandson of the Inquisitor, Jace fucking Wayland, just offered his blood to a vampire.

It’s an impossible thing to comprehend. A Shadowhunter of such vaunted stock, raised by Valentine himself, not just offering his blood to a Downworlder, but succeeding in getting Simon to drink of it.

Simon stares at him, eyes glassy with hunger, with satiated thirst, with the sort of glassy high that Maia knows comes when a vampire drinks from a Shadowhunter. She’s heard rumors about such things, as rare and impossible as they might be, about how it feels like, and she can't begin to imagine what he's feeling right now.

“You’re a fool,” Valentine snarls at his son as his guards go to kill Simon, a seraph blade burning against Simon's neck—

And Maia’s body surges forward, her bones cracking to shift on instinct, to protect Simon, but she can’t shift, she is arrested in a half-aborted transformation before she can make it forward by the seelie-touched iron around her wrists—

Another guard has their blade up to Maia’s neck and she wants to bite, to thrash, to claw, to save this idiot vampire's life, but Jace gets there first, his own blade rising up to kiss Valentine's throat. “You try to get to them, you go through me,” he growls, "Don’t you dare kill either of them," and it almost feels as if he is the feral creature, now, a dog protecting, which makes no sense, and yet—

Jace is swiftly disarmed, but he’s glaring up at Valentine, what he has left to challenge other than his words. 

Valentine scowls. “What makes you think that you have any power here?”

Jace looks between them, and there is something desperate in his eyes as he says, "You want me to help with the Soul Sword, don't you?"

It's tossing himself onto the altar as a sacrifice, and it's something that Maia doesn't understand, Jace being willing to turn himself over for the vampire he has a rivalry with, for the werewolf girl that rejected him and tossed him out of her bar, for the Downworlders that no Shadowhunter save maybe Alec Lightwood, clearly biased as he is, would even think of trading themselves for.

And yet, Valentine leaves with Jace, yanking him out of the room, leaving Maia and Simon behind to be watched by his little warlock girl, and Jace goes willingly.

---

Simon and Maia don’t get out of the room in time.

Valentine drags Jace off to somewhere and they only get out when Magnus Bane shows up to grab Valentine’s little sorceress and is able to shield all of them out just in time for the burst of light to fly up through the Institute.

The light fades and the air in the Institute is still. Quiet. Almost unnaturally silent.

It feels like the air has left the institute. Like the entire world is holding its breath.

Maia knows that the smart thing to do would be to just leave. To put as much space between her and Simon and whatever is about to go down with the Soul Sword as possible. Whatever the burst of angelic power was in the air, it has left Magnus Bane is trembling, likely from the strength of the magic that it took to defend them all from whatever unholy force just rippled through the Institute, slamming into Magnus’ shield.

Maia swallows. Magnus Bane is the High Warlock of Brooklyn. A leader centuries older than her. Whatever force hit him was enough to knock him off of his game, which means that it must be something greater than what any ordinary werewolf could handle.

But Jace Wayland is stuck out there somewhere, after he just sacrificed himself to Valentine to keep her and Simon alive, and that is not the sort of thing that a wolf forgets lightly. It’s not something that you forget at all.

So Maia says, “You should take the little girl away from here. Just, before you do, if you don’t mind—" She holds up her hands. Magnus’ gaze drops to them and he waves his hand. A small burst of magic summons the keys from the pockets of one of the dead guards around her, who were easily overpowered by Simon’s teeth and Magnus’ magic after Valentine left with Jace.

Then he nods at her. “I am going to go take Madzie to my friend Catarina and then go check to see what happened with Alexander. But Miss Roberts, Santiago—promise me that you’ll be safe.”

“Of course we will,” Maia promises, even if there is some part of her that thinks that she is about to step into the most dangerous maelstrom that she’s ever faced.

Still—Valentine doesn’t seem to be in the building, not anymore, or she thinks that Magnus would be freaking out more than this. 

All that could be left is Jace himself.

So Magnus nods. “Take care of yourself. I’ll be back with Alexander soon enough, I am sure.”

Magnus portals out, the little warlock girl in his arms, leaving behind her and Simon.

Maia turns to Simon. “You should leave,” she says, and there is something in her that trembles, that protests against letting Simon go, that protests against going into whatever she’s about to face alone, but she didn’t nearly risk her life to save him just for him to die as well.

(Jace didn’t offer up his lifeblood just so that Simon could throw that sacrifice down into the toilet, either.)

But Simon won’t let her go alone.

Simon reaches out to take her hand in his, and his hand is shaking, too, but he’s firm as he says, “Listen,” he says, “You can’t go out there alone.”

There is still a seraph-burn against the side of his neck. Blood is still drying on Simon’s jaw. There is crimson staining his skin, evidence of the fact that he drank from Jace Wayland, from a nephilim, from a Shadowhunter.

In any and every other circumstance, Simon would be dead as a coffin nail right now. Nothing more than hunger and bones.

But Jace Wayland offered up his blood without hesitation, in order to save Simon’s life, and in turn, neither Simon nor Maia were able to stop him from being dragged off to do whatever Valentine wanted with him and the Soul Sword.

Once upon a time, both Simon and Maia were teenagers who trusted the wrong people, who loved the wrong person, and had to bury their human selves in order to emerge alive.

And now, today- Simon wouldn’t drink from her.

There is a burn on his neck. It will likely disappear, heal on its own, soon enough, especially while he has nephilim blood in his veins, counteracting the effects of Valentine’s follower’s seraph blade, especially because the edge of the blade only touched his skin and did not pierce or slice through it.

For all that Simon is not a fighter, not like her, he is still a survivor.

Maia takes a deep breath and says, “You stay behind me.”

Simon opens his mouth, as if to protest, but then he swallows hard and nods. 

And so they enter in to find Jace Wayland looking near catatonic, on his knees, his own blade in his hands.

The Soul Sword is missing.

The Soul Sword is missing, but there are giant burn marks on the walls around them, and the unnaturally still hollow in the air feels like it means one thing and one thing only.

The Soul Sword must have been activated, and the blast of angelic power must have nearly burned them all to a crisp. It would have burned Simon and Maia alive, the demonic blood inside of their veins boiling, if it hadn’t been for Magnus.

Jace Wayland is staring at the blade in his hands. At the ash on the ground. And the blade is moving upward, towards the brachial artery, the barely healed-wound there, the very arm that Simon just fed from, and there are tears wet on his cheeks, and it looks like he’s about to—

Maia can’t be right. There’s no way that Jace Wayland is about to throw himself on the sword.

And yet, when he hears the door creak open, when he looks up at them, his eyes are wet, glassy, but stubbornly bright. 

“I didn’t mean to do it,” Jace rasps, and it sounds like he’s been crying, like he’s been drying out his throat with the salt water of his own sobbing, and something unholy seizes the inside of Maia’s chest. The Soul Sword is gone. The Soul Sword is gone, and it’s been activated, and that means that Valentine has it.

“I thought it was going to—I thought it would destroy me, and I would destroy it. I thought that I was going to end everything. Me, the blade, all the fighting. But instead—instead—” Jace lets out a small, choked sound, and looks down at his own seraph blade. “You should do it,” Jace says, “Unless you want me to. For what I did.”

Simon is still not quite with it at Maia’s side. He’s still swaying, just a bit, because he needs blood, he needs to rest, he needs to be anywhere but here, in the middle of the Institute, a Shadowhunter’s blood in his veins.

But he lets out a strangled noise. “Jace, what the fuck, man, we’re not gonna—"

So Jace pivots instantly. He knows his audience, Maia has to give him that. He looks directly to her, the one who has never been his friend, the Downworlder who turned alone, who has never had a soft underside in her heart for Shadowhunters who don’t deserve her loyalty because they have been nothing but arrogant and cruel to Downworlders since the world began.

And he fucking chucks his seraph blade away, letting it clang against the side of this room that looks so much like a chapel, all of those glorious stained-glass kaleidoscope colors filtering over all of them. Tilts his neck. Offers himself up on the altar. "You can do it," he says, and he almost sounds like he's pleading for her to go through with it. For her to use teeth and claw to inflict justice for the entire Downworld. "Just—do it, okay?"

And some part of her, the part of her that was just freed from those cuffs, the part of her that wants to defend her pack, the part of her that was waiting for each of these boys to betray her, starts to shift. 

The bones crack.

The eyes start to glow.

The teeth start to drop.

And Jace does nothing to defend himself.

All he does is keep his head dropped, his throat tilted, and says, “I just want you to know that I’m sorry. And there’s nothing that I’ll ever be able to do to make up for it.”

Here Jace Wayland is, offering up his life as some sort of sacrifice, as if that will do a single thing to bring back the werewolves that likely died already

And this time, there is nothing to stop Maia from taking that sacrifice, that justice, except for herself. For her own humanity.

And it’s the hardest decision that she has ever had to make.

Somewhere out there is a Soul Sword that Jace activated. A Soul Sword that is going to destroy so many Downworlders. A Soul Sword that is likely going to target her own pack.

And it’s not fair, that Maia cares about a Shadowhunter, that she has somehow become the person that makes sure that Jace Wayland doesn’t kill himself, but she sees his neck, the neck that she once made the ill-guided decision to kiss, to nibble at, to laugh into as she and Jace both worked out some of their frustrations in an alleyway, and she feels the ropy scars on her own neck, feels Jordan carving into her, and she recognizes that self-destructive instinct inside of Jace, and she thinks—

I can’t do that.

I can’t kill him.

As a werewolf, she thinks that it would be just to get revenge on someone who has led to so many people dead, but as a person, knowing that Jace wanted nothing more than to save Simon’s and her lives, that he never would have put a hand on the hilt of the Soul Sword if he’d known that this was what would happen…

Just as strong, Maia thinks: And he doesn’t get to kill himself, either.

Maia isn’t religious. But she thinks about her mother and the lessons she taught before she abandoned her daughter, the foundation that was built into Maia’s very bones before the world tried to steal it away from between her shaking, empty fingers when she woke up with her boyfriend’s claw marks in her neck and a wolf inside of her veins.

She thinks about Simon. She thinks about the lessons about justice and forgiveness and the way that you don’t get to just die if that isn’t the right punishment for the crime. That earning forgiveness isn’t about offering up your life, but about doing what you can to make up for it.

“You don’t get to throw yourself on the sword and let Valentine win,” Maia says, and Jace’s head jerks up to look at her with wide, wet eyes, blond hair flopping into his eyes. “You don’t get to apologize unless you’re going to do something to make up for it. You have to prove that you’re willing to work for forgiveness.”

Jace blinks, looking like he’s been rocked right off of his foundation, and it’s clear that he doesn’t believe her, but also that there is something inside of him that wants to believe. That wants to set himself by a chance to be something more than the reckless soldier, than his father’s son, than the Shadowhunter who makes his own decisions at the cost of everyone else's.

But then—then he swallows, nods, and in a moment, she turns him from sacrifice.

"Now," she says, and she's exhausted. She's tired. She fought back a Turn, she has two boys who have just barely been turned away from the verge of death in front of her, and she needs to collapse as much as Simon needs to clean the blood from his face and Jace needs to use an eratz on his arm. "Let's get the fuck out of here. We can let someone else deal with all of this. But we all need to be far, far away from her."

And she has to give it to them—both of them listen to her.

---

Maia wakes up with the sun, as usual.

It’s something that she’s tried to stop, over the years, because it really messes her up any time that she wants to sleep in the summertime after a long night of dealing with Downworlder issues, but there’s an internal clock that comes with being a wolf that only seems to be able to be overwhelmed by moments of absolute exhaustion. She would have thought that last night counted as such, but apparently not.

Simon is tucked away in her room, sleeping on the end of her bed curled up into a ball, and there is something in her that aches, just a bit, at him clearly making himself so small, clearly trying not to take up any space. She leaves him to sleep, though is careful to draw any curtains on her way out of the room—with the sun coming up, she wants to make sure that he doesn’t get burned after everything that they did to make sure that he survived last night.

She pads out of her room to find none other than Jace Wayland on her futon, where he is slowly waking up as the sun pokes itself through the window, bathing Maia's tiny apartment in golden light.

In this late, as he yawns, Jace Wayland seems far more human than he ever has before. Not a gleaming warrior, a shining example of a Shadowhunter, but rather a person struggling to shrug off grogginess. Without some sort of rune activated for energy, he’s just another twenty-year-old guy who flashes a fake ID at bars, not because he’s been forced to be a soldier for so long that childhood feels like a foreign term, but because he’s twenty and that’s what you do when you’re young and you want to stretch your wings—

Simon stumbles out of her room, bleary eyed, yawning. His face is cleared of last night's blood from when she shoved him into the bathroom before collapsing into bed, so there is a similar youth to his face that is hard to shake off.

“Can y’all turn that light off?” he whines, rubbing at his eyes, “It’s keeping me awake. Who had the bright idea to blast the living room lights like that anyway?”

Maia registers what’s wrong before Simon does.

Simon.

Daylight.

Maia’s only half awake, but instinct kicks in.

She cannot let Simon Lewis burn.

In an instant, she is across the room, pushing him back, Jace’s hand right next to hers.

Maia blinks. Jace Wayland moved in the same instant that she did, both of them pushing Simon out of the sun, trying to do what they could to keep him out of the sun before he burned himself to a crisp like an idiot—

“Holy shit, guys, if you just wanted to get your hands on me, you could have said,” Simon says with a grin, humor kicking in on instinct, she knows, she knows that it is Simon Lewis’ nature to try to use humor and sci-fi references to deal with things, to ease tension, but— 

While Jace just rolls his eyes at Simon and his flirting—the sort of thing that Jace himself would do, she knows—Maia cannot handle that after the day that they had yesterday, after everything that they went through to protect him and Jace. She nearly lost both of these idiots yesterday, lost them to blood and bone and blade, and like hell is she going to let either of them throw that work away.

“You just nearly killed yourself,” Maia says, “After everything we did to save your life, are you insane—"

Simon frowns. “What do you mean, I tried to kill myself? I was just trying to turn the lights off—"

And that, he pushes a hand past both of their hands on his, as if to gesture, but it’s in the moment that sunlight hits his skin and doesn’t do anything that Simon finally seems to register the source of the light, as they both try to push him back but can’t, because vampires have a certain internal strength that werewolves and Shadowhunters can only match when fully Turned or with their runes activated.

And Maia and Jace freeze, as well, as Simon’s arm is hit by the sunlight, as the sun touches Simon's pale skin and does nothing save reveal the fact that the scar on his neck did exactly as Maia predicted it would, thanks to Jace’s blood in his veins: it healed. There is no scar on his neck, not like the one on hers. For a moment in time, they matched, but now, they don’t.

Simon reaches out a trembling hand in front of her window, exposing more of his skin to the illumination, and—

Nothing. Despite the bright New York City sunlight streaming in through the window, Simon Lewis is completely unharmed.

An impossibility.

A fucking miracle.

Maia freezes. That's impossible, she thinks, because she's lived this life for so long, she knows the recklessness and futility of hope, she knows that people don't get miracles like this—

But Jace smiles, this almost giddy thing, as if he's happy for Simon getting his wish.

How long did you pray for this? Maia wants to ask, but she can’t find the words to do so. She can’t find the words to ask for how many holidays Simon made his prayers outside of a synagogue that he could no longer step foot inside of, how many times Simon craved matzah or challah or empanadas and couldn’t have them, how many times Simon likely debated whether blood was kosher with himself, how many times Simon stopped during Passover and wondered why the angel of death didn’t pass him over but instead left him shivering after he crawled out of his own grave, no longer human, now something different, something that could not be described in the pages of the Torah.

Maia doesn’t ask, because she doesn’t want to wonder how many of that number overlaps with her own experiences, and why Simon got his miracle when she didn’t.

For a moment she can't bear to interrupt Simon's excitement, his ecstasy, as he shrieks in delight and spins around in front of her window, sunlight illuminating skin that has not seen the sun in months, looking half an angel in the golden glow—

But some part of Maia knows all too well that: “You can't let anyone know.”

“Why not? This is a miracle—”

She doesn't want to crush Simon's dreams, his divine excitement, the sort of thing that must feel like prayers being answered, but no matter what sort of question exists between them, no matter how much she doesn’t trust anyone to get in as close as Jordan once did, Simon is her friend. She wants him to live. She wants him to be able to have a life.

And she also wants Jace to have a life, too.

“Because the reason the sunlight isn’t burning you might be because you drank Jace's blood. It might be because of something with the Soul Sword. Who knows? But if you let people know, both of you become targets.”

The reminder of the Soul Sword, of course, has Jace's expression crashing, his lips pursing tight, his head turning to side in shame.

“Don’t want anyone to attack Simon’s pretty face,” Jace says, but his voice is breaking apart beneath him.

Maia is sure that if Simon had the blood to blush, he would be, from the way that the corners of his mouth curve upward, pleased with the compliment, but he still has the presence of mind to respond: “We don’t want them to attack yours, either."

Jace swallows, hard. And if the weight that sent him to his knees in the Institute is any indication, then she has a feeling as to what he is carrying around. "If that's true, then you're the only one who doesn't. My father—Valentine, I mean—he always taught that me that love was a weakness. There was a falcon that he gave me as a kid, that I was supposed to make into a weapon, but I trained it like a pet, like a companion, and when I showed it to him because I thought I had it trained, he was furious, and he broke its neck, because weapons are supposed to obey, not love. And that was the moment that I realized that I was always meant to be his weapon. And tonight, I—" His lips press tight together, his breath skipping in his throat, she can hear the harsh trip of air in his throat, the way that his heartbeat slows and skips. "I became his weapon. I gave him exactly what he wanted."

"Dude," Simon says, horror in his voice, "Your dad's a dick."

Understatement of the century, Maia thinks, Jace's father is a genocidal dictator on top of being a shitty father, but it makes Jace snort. "You're not wrong," he says, but then sobers as he asks, "I just—how am I supposed to walk in the sun knowing what I did? What he used me to do? Those experiments—he flooded me with angelic blood in order to destroy people I care about." His gaze flicks from Simon to Maia, and Maia doesn't think about what that's supposed to mean. What he might mean with the word care, with the way that his gaze lingers on both of them. There's no reason why he should care, except—he did offer up his life to Valentine to protect both of them, and that means something, she knows, it has to mean something, it has to carry the sort of weight that she can barely look at without blinding herself. "I can't look Magnus or Alec in the eye, can't imagine going back to Magnus’ apartment or the Institute after what I did. I want to fix things, but all I know what to do is destroy and be destroyed. I don't know how you expect me to live.”

The answer is not to dwell in his guilt. "I told you what you can do," Maia says.

Jace's gaze jerks up to her. "What's that?"

"Protect downworlders," Maia says, "Make up for what you did. And don't—don't blame yourself in the process. You're just one guy, and your father took advantage of you." Trust Maia, she wants to say, she knows what it's like to have someone that you love betray that trust and turn out to be a monster. "Don't inflate your ego and think that you're that big of a weapon."

Jace rolls his eyes, that usual cockiness showing up. "I am quite the weapon, thank you very much."

"Wayland. Seriously. Just—give yourself a chance at grace, okay? Patrol around here, prove to the Downworlders that you care about them, that you're not your father's son, but do what you can to save people without destroying yourself in the process. Don't let your father win."

Jace swallows hard, a muscle in his jaw twitching, clearly working over a thought. 

And then he looks at them both, something charged in his gaze, as he says, "Fine. I'll take up the challenge. I'll fight for the Downworlders, not against them. Fight to save them, not the Clave. And not fucking Valentine."

It's a reckless thing to say, and any other Downworlder, any other Shadowhunter, might immediately turn him into the Accords for making such a vow—

But Maia and Simon both take in Jace's words and Simon smiles and Maia says, "I'm looking forward to you proving yourself, Wayland."

---

After the debacle with the Soul Sword and the efforts to get it back from Valentine, with Alec Lightwood declaring that the New York Institute is on the side of the downworld, with Luke proving that he cares far more about Clary, about a Shadowhunter, than he ever has about her, with Luke getting a dozen werewolves killed in the attack against the Institute, the pack makes an unprecedented decision: stripping Luke of his title as alpha.

Luke doesn’t lose his life, but the title of alpha goes to one of his lieutenants.

And there are so many goddamn reasons why Maia shouldn’t wreck herself in order to gain it, no matter the fact that Luke tries to tell her that he believes in her.

(She can’t be sure if she believes in him. Once, she would have taken his endorsement, his encouragement, and held onto it with everything that she has. But now, after what he did to her, after he locked her up so that she wouldn’t go after Clary- she can’t be sure if she believes in him. Not anymore.)

She’s smaller and she’s newer and—

And she’s hungrier for it. 

That’s the thing, at the end of the day. The reason why she should say yes. The reason why she should step up to the Arena and throw her hand into the ring.

She has every reason in the world to become leader of the pack. To change the way that things are run.

She trusts Luke, still, to some extent. She agrees with some of the things that he did to save the pack, to protect the mundanes, and she wants to make sure that the more vengeance-driven wolves don’t get the title of alpha.

But she also needs to be loyal to her pack above all else. She needs to be the sort of alpha that this pack needs, someone who is attentive to their needs, someone who pays attention, someone who values the safety of the wolves above nephilim.

(Maia was a human before she was a wolf. She has never had a loyalty to the Clave. She bristles beneath their rules. But she will do what she can to protect the humans around them.)

So she goes into the fight against two of Luke’s other lieutenants and she does what she couldn’t to Jace Wayland—she exits the fight with someone else’s throat between her teeth, a chewtoy for her wolf instincts.

One lieutenant is killed by the other before she gets to him, but the one she catches, the one who did the killing—she lets him stumble away, teeth marks in his neck. She lets him live.

But then he does the stupid thing. He charges at her, teeth bared, eyes lighting up neon green, and Maia is a wolf that is not afraid of killing in self-defense.

Still, there is some part of her that is shaking when she makes her way back to her apartment to put herself back together after the pack, blood caked beneath her nails even in human form, the mantle of Alpha settling into her bones.

The New York City wolf pack listens to her, now. She carries the crown upon her curls, not through election, not through blood, not through magic, but through her own teeth and claws.

Simon is there waiting for her on the futon, and his eyes go wide, his nostrils flaring, as she enters the room.

And she knows that vampires crave blood above all else. That the blood spilled on her body—that the couple of healing wounds, one of them more gaping than the other, a werewolf’s claws doing their job to keep the wound open—must attract Simon’s hunger. That he starves just as much as she does, for food, for recognition, for connection, for blood— 

His fangs are dropping, it must be said, and some part of her recoils from the clear weapon in the room, the clear hunger, the clear want to devour her whole— 

And yet, he swallows, and his fangs retreat just slightly, and he reaches out, and she remembers him being starving in the room with Valentine and yet not feasting on her offered hand. 

And she would never say it aloud, would never admit to it in any sort of way that would lead to him getting close to her heart, but she trusts him, no matter how dangerous it is.

So she lets him sit her down on the futon and take care of her. To bandage up the claw mark on her arm, so close to matching the ones at her neck, but she was a human then and a wolf now and so she knows that this one is less likely to scar.

(And even if it does scar, as permanent as a rune, well—she chose the fight, this time. She threw herself into the battlefield, knowing what might happen.

These scars are hers, not her opponent’s, not her boyfriend’s. She chose them. And that makes them badges, not chains.)

As Simon is finishing up the bandaging—he’s not trained in medicine, that’s clear, but he does a decent enough job, and the tenderness of his hands against her skin are worth more than the actual bandaging, really, to Maia’s aching heart—the door swings open to Jace Wayland, a bag on his back, because at some point in the last week, Jace left Magnus Bane’s apartment and he settled onto her couch in her apartment above the Hunter’s Moon, and even though she still only half-trusts him, there is some part of her that understands a thing or two about needing to leave the place that you’ve called home for so long.

“Alpha, huh?” Jace asks, arching an eyebrow.

“Didn’t think I could do it?” Maia parries right back. She is so fucking tired of men with power thinking that she is a pushover, ready to roll over, ready to offer his neck up.

But instead of shaking his head, his lips split into a smile. “Nice work, Roberts. Never doubted you in an instant. You’re one of the only two sparring partners I’ve ever had that could put me on my ass.”

Maia rolls her eyes even as some part of her warms at the compliment. She’s not close to Alec Lightwood, not in the least, but she knows that he’s a decent warrior—he’d have to be, in order to be Head of the New York Institute—and she knows that he’s Jace’s parabatai above all else, and that such a title means things to Shadowhunters.

“C’mon in,” Maia says, “You get to buy the takeout, tonight.”

It’s an olive branch, she knows, one that makes Simon grin, one that makes both of their lonely hearts squeeze, and she doesn’t think about it. She refuses to think about the layers to what she’s offering.

---

So Maia gets used to having two additions to her up until now rather controlled life. 

Sometimes Jace comes in exhausted after fighting a demon, ichor on his jacket, dark shadows under his eyes.

The longer she spends with him, the more she understands that it’s not about just being a hot-headed soldier with a need for vengeance, but about proving something. What he’s proving now is different than he was then, but that drive is still sticking him through the worst of it. He’s determined to make up for what happened for the Soul Sword, which is still somewhere out there, being hunted by Shadowhunters and Downworlders alike, by protecting this small area of Brooklyn, this area not inhabited by Shadowhunters but by Downworlders. He’s stubbornly dedicated to his challenge of protecting werewolves and vampires, most of all, but also any warlock or seelie that happens to wander into the area.

Simon, in turn, visits. He doesn’t always stay the night, not at first, but as time goes on— 

Simon has never felt quite at ease in the Hotel Dumort, and he has been staying in Luke’s boathouse for the past few months, and nowadays, now that he’s a Daylighter, he could move back in with his family—

But while Maia doesn’t know what exactly went down between Simon and his family, she does know that there are many reasons why someone wouldn’t be able to stay with their family after they’ve been made into a Downworlder.

And so it’s no surprise, really, when somedays, the sun rises and Simon and Jace are both in Maia’s living room, Jace passed out on the futon, Simon usually in the armchair, but sometimes Simon gets here before Jace’s patrols are over and his sleep schedule is fucked nowadays and so he ends up curled at one end of the futon, passed out by the time Jace gets home.

There’s one day where she exits her room to find Simon and Jace have actually fallen together at some point in the night, the golden sunlight spilling across them both, across dark hair and golden hair alike, highlighting them and the way that they're tangled together in gold.

For a bloodthirsty vampire and one of the most notorious Shadowhunters in New York City, there’s something almost…adorable about the two of them curled up together.

And Maia wonders what they’re doing here, instead of by Clary’s side, but she knows that Jace made his promises to become better, to prove himself, and Simon, well— 

She has less of a rational excuse for Simon, save the fact that he’s a vampire, and not easily allowable in the Institute, and that this might be more convenient and stable than a Hotel he’s been kicked out of or a boathouse that he might get kicked out of, but it still lacks the girl that they've both lost their minds for over and over again.

And yet—

She gets used to both of them in her apartment. She also gets used to them both coming to the Hunter’s Moon, paying for their drinks, tipping decently, and Maia doesn’t mind filching some heavy tips out of the Institute’s coffers.

They come over so often that Maia doesn’t even blink when there are two technical-pack-outsiders when a pack dispute comes up one night at the bar.

A small hiccup occurs between the New York City pack and the New Jersey one when some of the New Jersey pack decide to take a trip up the turnpike and over the river to the city.

(Fucking Jersey kids. People from South Jersey get all the reputation, but those from North Jersey are just as annoying, a thorn in her paw.)

Maia steps in to take care of the issue when it looks like a fight is going to go down outside of the Hunter’s Moon, and both Jace and Simon are there in the shadows. Simon isn’t much of a fighter, she knows that, he’s a musician at heart, but he’s still there, emotional support she didn’t realize that she needed.

And Jace Wayland is nothing if not a soldier.

But for all of his reputation for doing what he wants, not what the Clave instructs, Jace, the eternal rebel, turns to her to take instruction, and there is a moment where she thinks: no matter how much I sometimes feel like a rabid dog, Jace Wayland can be far more of a guard dog than people give him credit for.

Many people who see Alec and Jace fighting side by side, two parabatai guarding each other’s backs, assume that Alec is the guard dog due to his choice in weapon, the fact that Jace charges in first, but anyone who spends even a little bit of time with them realizes that it’s the reverse. That Alec Lightwood is a leader, the Head of the New York Institute, and Jace charges in first because he is a dog who wants to defend the people he loves, who has no regard for his own safety, who craves a way to be more than just his father's son.

Some part of her wants to know what he would do if she told him to heel. If she told him to bark. 

(If she told him to kiss her.)

He would argue and tease and bicker, she knows, because that's who Jace is, contrarian for the sake of it, and yet, in this moment, he’s heeling to her without her even asking. Without her laying down the law.

There is a certain power in that that makes her shiver. To have a Shadowhunter that listens to her, and for it to be Jace Wayland, more than anything else.

But she doesn't instruct Jace to attack. Of course she doesn't. Maia talks them all down, because while she’s not afraid of a fight, she’s had enough bloodshed between Downworlders, and she’s not letting her pack’s first dispute with another one end in a civil war, not when the Soul Sword is still out there and they still need to find it.

“The Shadowhunters are the problem, they’re the ones who constantly disrupt the Downworld,” Maia says to the gathered werewolves, and they look to her because she’s an alpha, but also because she’s from here, she’s a child of Brooklyn, she’s someone who knows what it’s like to scrape and bite and claw for what she has. She knows that it’s reckless to say such a thing in front of a Shadowhunter, but considering the fact that Jace’s adoptive father is the one that caused so much of the damage in the first place—the one who tricked Jace into doing so much of said damage, and his reaction after the fact—she has a feeling that Jace isn’t going to argue with her, not like he used to before the Soul Sword was wielded like it was. "Not each other. We need to work together, not let pack divisions cause war between us—"

One werewolf snarls at her. “Says the pack leader with a pet Shadowhunter of her own,” he spits, dismissive, and Jace’s eyes flicker in the moonlight, his fingers twitching towards his belt, proof of its own, in a way—

But Maia reaches forward and slams the werewolf's neck to the ground, bones cracking beneath her skin, eyes glowing. She doesn't permanently injure him, she wouldn't do that to another pack's wolf if they didn't attack her first, but she's not afraid to make her example. "Says the alpha who is determined to make the New York City pack a safe place for any werewolf to live without making it dangerous for humans, too. I'll stand up to whoever I need to in order to do it, just fucking watch me."

When she looks up, she finds Jace and Simon both looking at her in a way that almost looks—

The last time either of them looked at her like that, she was kissing Jace in an alleyway, she was kissing Simon at a warlock's party, she was tasting the iron and the sweat on their tongues.

---

The pack dispute resolves itself, in the end, with offers of alcohol and a discussion of hunting grounds—with New York's strict rules regarding the hunting of humans not budging, but at least giving the New Jersey wolves some wiggle room when it comes to other animals—and while most New Jersey wolves dissolve into the wind, a few stick around for drinks and pool, mingling with Maia's own pack.

Simon grins at her as he slides into a stool in front of her at the bar, where she's leaning against the counter, admiring the work that she's done to make this bar a meeting place of Downworlders rather than a place of civil war. “I hope that the wolves know that they’re lucky to have you."

Maia grins, and she lets herself take in Simon's compliment and the way that warmth flushes through her chest, a flower beginning to bloom. "Glad you think so."

"He's not wrong," Jace agrees as he sidles up to the bar next to Simon. "You're the best alpha this pack has seen in ages."

Maia rolls her eyes. "What would you know about good alphas?"

Jace shrugs. "I can just leave, if you two want," he offers, and she can't quite tell if it's joke or it's sincere, but either way—

Maia doesn't want him to leave, so she rolls her eyes. “Happy hour is starting,” she says.

“It’s two in the morning,” Simon says, almost earnest in his confusion, and Maia just arches an eyebrow.

“And it’s my bar, that caters specifically to Downworlders. Nightdwellers. Vampires, just like you,” Maia says, and it’s a poke of a reminder. Simon is supposed to be a creature of the night to everyone else, even if he currently sits at some strange cross-section of Downworlder and Shadowhunter and human, something special that no Downworlder or Shadowhunter could ever have predicted.

Simon winces. "Right," he says, but Jace just grins. He gets a beer and Simon gets a glass of blood, and Simon still prays the shehakol even if the word HaShem burns his tongue, and there’s something almost…domestic about how they end up playing pool late in the middle of the night, Maia even using her break to come over and join them by hustling them both even when they play 2 v 1.

And maybe she enjoys the sight of both of them bent over the table, Jace’s skills with the pool cue just as endearing as Simon’s awkwardness with it, even if she embarrasses them both.

(…Though it’s hard to call it embarrassing when Simon cheers her on and even though Jace is cocky about his own skills, he looks at her with something dark and hungry in his eyes when she teases him and then kicks his ass.)

There is some part of her that is attracted to them. Some part of her that wants to know if Simon's mouth still tastes like iron. If Jace’s neck still arches when she digs her fingers into his hips.

But right now, she is starting to feel just a little bit comfortable with them in a way that she wouldn't dare if they were romantically involved.

Simon wouldn’t feed from her when he was dying. Jace would rather die than be the reason that they died.

That is far more than anyone else has ever done for her, and she doesn’t want to ruin this with romance. With getting too close.

---

After she became a wolf, Maia got a butterfly tattoo as a promise to herself to think of her past as a caterpillar. Of the horrors of what Jordan did to her as a chrysalis. Sure, it was one forced on her, but she would make something beautiful out of it. She would make something better out of the horrors that she'd been put through. 

Somedays, she almost believes that she's there. That there she has spun something beautiful out of the shattered stained glass of her life.

Simon plays his guitar in the apartment and Jace rolls his eyes but she knows that it’s how he falls asleep, and a part of her has also started to accept it as a lullaby as well, the pluck of the guitar strings, the gentle sweep of Simon’s singing voice against her eardrums, as soothing as hot chocolate on a cold winter’s night.

They all attend Simon’s first concert, Jace and Maia leaning against the walls at the back of some random bar on the other side of Brooklyn, some Bushwick warehouse that she never would be in otherwise, considering pack obligations, but for this one night, with her smiling at the music, letting Simon's music sweep over her, taking in Jace's smile—for once easy—right next to her, it almost feels like a da—

Maia comes home from work and finds the boys there. Finds someone waiting for her, whether it be Jace groggy from a patrol or Simon dropping by (though at this point, she's not even sure if Simon lives anywhere else. Sure, he likely has a place to store his things, but where else does he sleep? Where else does he exist in the hours that he shouldn't? The Hunter's Moon and Maia's apartment are the one place where he can be himself, and that must be it, that must be the reason why he's here, because he trusts her and Jace, they've made themselves a safe place, it has nothing to do with romance, because it can't have to do with romance, she can't let that happen—)

Hell, one time she even comes home to find take-out that someone grabbed from the one Haitian place down on the East Side, a certain walk away, just because she mentioned that she loved it once, because she mentioned that she missed her father's cooking.

It’s such a dangerous temptation, to just let herself sink into this. To just accept that this could be a regular thing. That this could be her life, her and these two in her apartment over the Hunter's Moon, one pack downstairs, one pack upstairs.

But then there are the days that she sees the flash of a rune beneath a leather jacket. The tip of a fang poking out when they're all at the pool table and they get drinks and Simon's is no alcohol, all blood. The way that a seraph blade flashes as Jace tucks it away before he enters the Hunter’s Moon, because this is her sanctuary, her space for Downworlders to feel safe, and even if she is starting—she refuses to use the word trust, regardless on if she allows herself to sleep in the same apartment as him—to accept Jace into her life, there are boundaries that have to be kept, spaces that have been carved away that she will not let the boundaries of to soften.

It’s hard to feel completely at ease.

It’s so tempting, though.

It’s so tempting to imagine a world in which she gets to spread her wings and see panes of colored glass instead of clipped feathers. It’s so tempting to imagine that there is a world in which she can set down faith and not see it shattered against the ground by a controlling boyfriend and deadbeat parents and a pack alpha that locks her up for the sake of a stepdaughter she can never compare to.

It’s so tempting to imagine a world where there are two people who consider her a sanctuary just as much as she considers them the same.

---

Maia is the alpha of the pack by the time that Jordan comes back, but all of the power in the world cannot stop her from nearly losing it. From nearly falling apart.

“Just because one of the others said that you could be part of the pack doesn’t mean I won’t kick your ass,” Maia growls, and Jordan turns to her.

And for a moment, when she sees his brown eyes, no amount of guitar strings or cocky smiles over pool can stop the way that her heart seizes when she sees Jordan, when she sees a version of herself that was loose-limbed and open-hearted, every chamber of her heart turned towards hope and dreams rather than being carefully stitched back together from the bloodied, chewed-up, raw chunks that remain of the organ.

There is some part of her that feels like a rabid dog. Some part of her that will never forget that feral need to escape.

The part of her that remembers being pinned beneath Jordan, begging for mercy, begging for an answer.

Maia Roberts has never been given mercy. She has never been given grace. Everything that she has she has had to fight for and she has never gotten a chance to just breathe unless she clawed the air for herself.

And now, it’s impossible to breathe at all, because Luke locked her up in a small room, because Jordan is back, because she is facing the very face that turned her into a werewolf in the first place and it has taken everything that she has to grasp for control over her own body, her own wolf urges, but all of that is slipping between her fingers.

Her shoulders are cracking. Her bones are bending. The wolf wants to lash out, to protect her pack, to protect herself, because no one protected her and the last time they were in the same room, Jordan ruined her.

But Maia’s rational mind knows that she can’t lose control in front of her pack. She can’t lose control because Jordan is back. She is the alpha, and she fought for this position, but if she loses control, then she could so easily lose the balance she’s sought for so long.

She wants nothing more than to reach out a hand to Jace or Simon, but she has to do this on her own. 

“You are forbidden from stepping foot in New York City,” she orders, and it’s the first time she’s ever banished someone as an alpha, but what her word says goes, and she will not back down from this. Jordan can live, but he will live elsewhere, far from this sanctuary that she has carved out for herself with aching claws. “For breaking the Accords.”

She knows that there are plenty of werewolves in her pack that have sympathy for someone that turned a human. She knows that there are werewolves who fight under her that want nothing more than to replenish the population of the pack after the Soul Sword incident.

But she will have a rational reason for them for kicking Jordan out, something that is about protecting all of them, rather than just her own wounded heart—

“Maia, sweetheart—" Jordan reaches out, to touch her, to pull her in, and like hell is she going to let him close. Not again. She's played this game and she's lost it before and she refuses to do so again.

In an instant, her claws are out.

She doesn’t even think about it, pinning him against the counter of the Hunter’s Moon, this place that has given her peace, this place that has given her a home.

But she still does it. She still gets him pressed up against the bar, because he is in her space, and she is the one who gets to decide what happens here. She is the one who is the reason why Jace is standing in the corner of the bar, hand twitching towards his belt but not grabbing it out because he knows what her rules are about Shadowhunters and he hasn’t broken them since the incident with the Soul Sword, unlike every rule of the Insitute’s that he’s splintered and shattered over the years. She is the one who is the reason why Jace’s hand is on Simon’s wrist, why Simon is swallowing and withdrawing his fangs, both of them looking to her for instruction, because they trust her, because they believe in her.

Maia holds him against the counter, an alpha’s strength flowing through her veins, but she does not hold him down. She does not claw him open, no matter how much she might have dreamed of such a thing over the years. Because she is not him. She might be angry, she might be grieving, she might want to scream and sob and break down, but she is not a creature of anger. She made that promise to herself and to the pack when she became an alpha.

“I am not your sweetheart. I am this pack’s alpha. And you have broken the Accords. You turned someone who never asked to be a wolf. Someone that trusted you. The person you were turning was screaming at you. Sobbing. Begging. And you turned her, anyway. And even if it wasn’t for the Accords, that is not the sort of pack that I run. I refuse to let that be what this pack stands for.”

I loved you, once, Maia thinks, and the backs of her eyes burn. She wants to sob. She wants to scream. 

But she doesn’t, because she has to be a leader, because she has to seem rational, because she needs to seem as if she doesn’t have any weaknesses that anyone in the pack could easily exploit.

Maia Roberts is an alpha, not just Jordan’s ex-girlfriend, his victim, and she might not have wanted to be a werewolf in the first place, might have been terrified when the Turn first started, when her bones cracked, when her eyes glowed, when her muscles burned, but she has made herself into a leader. She has made herself into someone who means something.

The wolves in her pack don’t need to know what Jordan once was to her. They don’t need to know that she would rather start a hunt than let him live, and yet, she’s choosing Banishment because she can have mercy, because she won’t let anger override the humanity that she claimed for herself after Jordan tried to steal it away from her.

But when she looks up at Jace and Simon, there are looks of sympathy on their faces. They have figured out who Jordan is without her even having to tell them. They have put the pieces of her broken heart together.

And she hates it. She hates that she has their sympathy. She hates that she might have their pity.

She doesn’t want people to know her weaknesses. She doesn’t want people to understand her vulnerabilities.

She’s supposed to be an alpha. A leader. A pillar of strength, an anchor for her people. Not someone who collapses. Not someone who falls apart.

She looks away from them and back to Jordan, who she finally lets go of.

“Get out of here,” Maia orders, and her voice is firm, unyielding, cold as can be, “You have until midnight to get your shit and get out of this city or the hunt begins.”

Jordan opens his mouth, as if to protest, but she tilts her head just a bit. Just enough to show off the scars that she has had to carry for so long. The scars that he gave her.

And maybe there is some human left in him, after all, because he winces and nods. “I’ll head out of the city right now,” he says, with a small bow of the head, an acknowledgement of her title, of her power, of her decision.

And maybe someone else might forgive him, but Jordan isn’t Jace. He hasn’t earned his forgiveness. He hasn’t done anything to make up for his mistakes or even to apologize in the first place. He hasn’t even acknowledged that he did wrong.

So Jordan leaves, and all Maia wants is to be alone. To collapse. To crumble. To fall apart into fucking dust, as she hasn't been able to do since the day that Luke found her in that ambulance, hands covered in blood, trying to find any way to cling to herself.

When her parents abandoned her, when she had to move into a new apartment, when Luke locked her up, when Simon was starving in that room, when Jace tried to throw himself on the sword when the Soul Sword was activated, when Simon found out he was a Daylighter, when the pack needed an alpha, when she had to start over again and again and again—

She wasn't allowed to fall apart. She wasn't allowed to collapse. She had to be strong. She had to be strong without being angry, had to be strong without raging and grieving and aching, had to be nothing but what everyone else fucking needed.

But when she gets up to her apartment, they’re both there. They're both there, because they're always there, because they've been at her side for so long, and it's too much, why the fuck did she let this happen, why did she let them worm their ways into her heart, why did she let them place down roots in her apartment, why did she let them rip all this away from her.

“Get away from me,” she snarls, but her hands are shaking. Her eyes are burning. She is close to begging and she hates it.

She wants someone to take care of her. She wants someone to give her peace.

But all the world has ever done is steal from her. Demand that she grow up too quick, demand that she let go of her dreams and her hopes and her childhood naivety, and all she ever got in return was a scarred neck and nightmares and stolen faith and a taste for raw meat.

"Listen, Maia, we're here for you," Jace says as Simon reaches out, hand reaching for her wrist, and her claws come out as she spins around to twist his arm behind his back.

But Jace doesn’t flinch, because he's a soldier. Neither does Simon, because he's a musician with a heart that has always cared too much.

And she can’t breathe.

She can’t fucking breathe.

There is a knot in Maia’s throat, squeezing tight across her airways, choking out all air.

“Maia,” Simon says, and whether she likes it or not, whether she knows that she needs to stand or not, he helps her sit down on the futon. Jace's jacket is draped over the edge of the futon, Simon's guitar is in the corner of the room, and neither of these things are strange despite the fact that they should be strange, and it's not fair, it's never been fucking fair, why did she ever let them get this close—“I can hear your heartbeat, hammering like a drum. But you’re—you’re okay.”

No, I’m not, Maia wants to scream, but she can’t get the words out. She can’t get anything out, not when Jordan’s name is blanketing itself across every word that wants to rip itself from her throat. How can I be okay when he’s back in town, when he looks exactly the same as he did all of those years ago when he left me in the midst of Turning, when he attacked me and left me screaming, my very bones breaking inside of my body as a wolf ripped itself from my muscles?

I could have died. I should have died, if Luke hadn’t found me, if a Shadowhunter had found me first.

Jordan violated me, left me for dead because he was a fucking coward who couldn’t handle me once he couldn’t control me, and it took me months to put myself back together. Some days, I’m not even sure that I did put myself back together, that I’m not still that girl screaming in that alleyway, that I’m not still thrashing through the pain of the wolf taking over, if I’m not still rabid, if I’m not some feral, wild thing— 

Jace kneels down in front of her, those bright eyes of his staring up at her, and there is something in her that rears back at the Shadowhunter, at the vampire, at the seraph blade, at the runes, at the teeth, at the potential thrall, some part of her that wants to scratch, to hide, to run, to fight—

But the two of them are what they have been for so long: a light left on, even in the darkest nights, the promise of the sunrise at the end of the night.

Jace kneels in front of Maia like she is the altar. Like she is his alpha.

Simon holds her hand, fingers stroking the inside of her wrist, as he murmurs a Hebrew prayer that she almost recognizes even after all of these years, and Maia thinks of the words that were spat from her mouth, all of those months ago: I don’t have anyone who cares about me.

She’d said it to Luke, who had taken care of her and then abandoned her the moment that her wellbeing came in conflict with his stepdaughter's, and there is every reason to believe that Jace and Simon will do the same for Clary Fray, because the entire world seems to have bent itself in her favor—

And yet, Simon says, “I know you’ve been holding it together for so long, Maia, but you can fall apart now.”

And something in her breaks. 

A sob rips itself from Maia’s throat. “I can’t-” Her breath hitches. “I don’t know how to-”

Jace’s hand is warm against her knee. Simon’s hand is cool against her hand.

Maia Roberts has been holding it together for so long, trying to keep every brittle chunk of humanity from spinning out beneath her, but in this moment, she collapses.

Maia buries her face in Simon's neck, falling down, falling in, shoulders shaking, and he still smells of the iron tinge of iron and the liquid ache of the night, and it shouldn't be comforting, shouldn't be anchoring, and yet—

“It's okay, Maia,” Simon murmurs, “We've got you. You're safe. You can let go.”

Simon hums into her hair, a lullaby, as her tears soak his shirt, as she gasps into his chest, as Jace kisses her shaking hands, more tender than she ever would have guessed him capable of, before reaching over and fumbling with the remote—nephilim, some surprisingly fond part of her heart thinks, that boy never learned the most normal things in the world like tvs and the like until he started spending the night at Magnus’—and puts on Doctor Who.

The comforting sounds of the theme song wash over her, a welcome relief, a wonderful anchor, because he's paid attention, because both of them have, and between the two of them, it's the most care that anyone has had for her in years.

Maia Roberts has been everyone else's leader. Everyone else's punching bag, and enforcer, and anchor.

She's had to make decisions, over and over again, for other people's lives, and she has tired herself out after all of these years.

But now, someone is taking care of her.

So she lets herself sink into that. Lets herself sink into the idea that for all of the home that she's provided others, Jace and Simon are now determined to provide her sanctuary of their own. To give her a place where she doesn't have to be her strongest, but rather, can lean on these two, trusting that they won't demand that she give herself up for them, but rather that they are okay with leaning on each other.

---

Eventually Maia's sobs dry themselves out and she has a headache, of course she does, because the fact that she's a wolf isn't stopping whatever links a person's tearducts to their headaches, but Simon goes for the Tylenol—because like hell Jace Wayland ever learned normal ways to take care of himself when he’s sick, no way he was ever taken care of when he was sick, what with Valentine—and Jace gets out her bonnet, because apparently he's been paying attention to how she sleeps, how she wakes, and she's never had someone care this much for her before, not like these two do.

But as Maia wraps her curls in the bonnet and takes the Tylenol, Jace goes to leave to head back to the futon, to give her room, but Maia's hand flings up to catch his wrist before he can leave.

Jace freezes, at first, despite the fact that he’s hooked up with people a number of times, but she has a feeling that he's never been here before. Never been coaxed into cuddling, never been pulled into bed not for sex, but for comfort.

And Maia is tired of pushing them both away. She's tired of Jace thinking that he's not enough, that he's not supposed to be loved, that he's not supposed to have something like this. She's tired of Simon seeking where he cannot find.

And so she tugs on Jace's jacket, pulling him down between the two of them, the warmth between the heat of her wolf's blood and the cool of Simon's vampire bones, because if she’s going to be taken care of, then all of them are.

"Stay," Maia murmurs, her arm stretching around Jace's waist, her fingers tangling with Simon's, and it's the closest she'll ever come to a prayer again. Stay with me. Stay with us.

Simon is the easiest of the three of them to fall into whatever this is, as he leans forward and presses his mouth to the side of Jace's throat, a kiss folded into aching skin. "What she said," Simon says, and he manages to make the words sound so romantic, "Stay with us."

Jace's body collapses between the two of them, letting out a deep breath, shoulders relaxing, and she doesn't know what war he fights with himself in order to come to the conclusion in his brain, but he does emerge with an answer of: "Entreat me not to leave thee; for whither thou goest, I will go."

A rune flares at his side as he says that, and Maia doesn't have the sort of long academic study or practical experience of runes that a Shadowhunter or even a warlock would, but she can tell that he's just made some sort of serious vow, something that has carved itself in angelic language, binding him to two Downworlders.

And so she turns her head, as well, and kisses Jace Wayland's mouth, and he tastes of heavenly fire.

---

The next morning, Maia wakes to the sun rising, and Maia still doesn't believe in HaShem, but there is some part of her that looks at these two in the golden light of the sun and thinks that she might have something small and divine and holy right in front of her—

Especially when they wake up and Simon wastes no time in leaning over and pecking both Jace and Maia's cheeks, an absolute beam on his face, and Jace rolls his eyes even as the brightest smile she has ever seen on his face spreads across his lips, absolutely earnest, full of hope, and then both of them are turning in bed, kissing her, kissing her cheeks and her mouth and targeting her until she is laughing and laughing and there is still so much to deal with, Soul Swords and ex-boyfriends and the Downworld and the like, but in this moment, the world is filled with light.

I know that the bar closes at 11

But I hope you never finish that beer

You know all the words to "Just Like Heaven"

And I know why he wrote them now that you're standin' right here

I think we might go really nice together

If you let me stay the night

Well, I think I might just have to stay forever 

-Olivia Rodrigo, Drop Dead