standing {in your} shadow :: riley

[South]

we're throwing stones though we live in glass houses
we talk shit like it's a cross to bear
you're only relevant until you get older
keep your friends close
and your enemies closer, enemies closer

The harsh clang of metal on metal doesn’t hold the grating quality for me the way it does for most others. In the oddest of ways it manages to sound almost musical, a discorded symphony that sings of battles lost and won and a validation that I give to myself since I can’t get it from anyone else. Maybe they’re right and I’m not good for much in this world, but I’m a damn good Shadowhunter and I refuse to let anyone tell me otherwise. It’s a bragging right honed from a plethora of factors, a fairly accurate ratio thrumming loud and demanding from the speakers in the corner of the attic where my iPod is docked on a training playlist. 10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure and 50% pain… I’m typically not one for rap but I’ve found that long training sessions pass a little easier when I have something harsh and guttural and angry (like me) pounding in my ears like a second heartbeat. He doesn’t need his name up in lights, he just wants to be heard…

Damn right he wants to be heard. Too bad he never will be.

A snarl ripples across my lips at the bitter thought, blooming into a feral sort of growl as I take another vicious swing at the training dummy, the electrum-bladed falchion in my hand feeling familiar and steady in a world that’s anything but. It’s been a hellish nightmare of a day. I’m used to criticism, can handle it fairly well after dealing with a constant stream of it for eighteen years, but there’s a line between criticism and malice that my mother and Casper both crossed a long time ago. One week. It’s been one week since the incident with the mass demon breakthrough at Dearborn Station, one week since I had a massive Scorpios stinger jabbed through my chest and had to be dragged home half-dead by Avon and Kiera, one week since I lay in a fog of poison-induced hallucination and unbearable agony in the infirmary, shrieking for unattainable relief until my voice gave out. An injury like that takes more than a week and a handful of healing runes to be completely cured, anyone with half a brain knows that, but bright and early this morning I was greeted with an insistent pounding on my door and curt orders to get up and go take care of your duties. The others have been picking up your slack for days, Kaelen, stop being so shamefully lazy. So I did. I took care of my duties. I rolled gingerly out of bed, changed my bandages, ran errands with Jacob, interviewed some Downworlder informants about a rogue vampire that’s been on the loose, then came home. And now? Now I’m training.

There’s a sort of nirvana in something this intense, this focused, a few moments of calm where I can get out of my own head, become nothing but muscle and bone and an icy wrath that could shake the foundations of the earth. In this second, this time, I am the same nothing that the rest of the world believes me to be, all of that pent-up bitterness and hate that constantly sears beneath my skin released bit by bit with every strike on the training dummy. I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here, the passage of time measured only by the fact that the old sweatpants and v-neck I use for training clothes are completely soaked through with sweat along with my rumpled hair and that the not-quite-healed wound in my chest begins to throb more intensely with every movement, the pain working up to a dull roar that steals my breath but I press through nonetheless.

A little more, just a little bit longer, my willpower keeps up a running, whispered mantra in my mind, the same philosophy I use to get me through the day. A little more, work a little harder, be a little stronger and maybe one day you’ll be good enough. My playlist runs out as I finish up practicing a left parry, the outward jerk of my left arm pulling at the bandaged portion of my abdomen so sharply that I double over before I can grit my teeth and push through it, a low groan of pain cutting the silence eerily. The silent figure that’s been holding the dummy still peeks out concernedly, bespectacled eyes and honey-blond hair a mask of worry.

”I’m fine,” I hiss, pulling myself slowly, carefully upright and trying to remember how to breathe through the agony. The grip of the sword feels slick in my sweaty hand and I subconsciously wipe it off on my shirt, forgetting that the damp fabric isn’t going to be much help. Trying not to look like the movement hurts too much (it does, I feel like I’m being ripped open with every step), I walk over into the corner and start the playlist over again, loud guitar riffs of some angry metal song screaming through the silence. ”Again. I’m sloppy on those parries.”

Leveled eyes, a concerned look. No move made to get back and hold the dummy in place. I try to sigh irritably but it ends up as an attempt to cover another agonized gasp. ”Riley. Again. I said I’m fine.”

i'm not a hero, i'm a liar, i'm not a savior
i'm a vampire sucking the life out of all the friends i've ever known
we're a train wreck, not winners
on a soapbox preaching down to the sinners
saints without a cause, we're not listening

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[Isabella]

spare me your judgements and spare me your dreams
cause recently mine have been tearing my seams
i sit alone in this winter clarity which clouds my mind

The music sounding from the corner of the room was almost rough enough to make Riley cringe. He had never enjoyed this sort of music - rap or metal, he supposed. Personally, he preferred anything that had a nice, calm melody. But he wouldn't dare say anything about the music; he would never purposely do anything to pester his brother. Plus, he knew Kaelen was already in a bad mood. But when wasn't he? Instead, Riley retreated into his worrisome mind as he held the training dummy for Kaelen, trying not to let it move around too much.

He began to think about his day so far; how he'd woken up at dawn to eat breakfast before truly beginning the day. Riley had never been one to skip a meal, especially not breakfast - he hated training and doing errands on an empty stomach. Something he disliked more than running around on an empty stomach, however, was training itself. It wasn't like he was lazy or completely unmotivated though sometimes he would appear so; he just felt terribly self-conscious and anxious doing such things in front of people. Riley knew better than anyone how terrible he was at everything that his kind lived for; he could barely hold a weapon without shaking and looking at it with disgust; he couldn't even draw a simple rune without a shaky hand. But somehow, that all disappeared when he picked up his beloved guitar.

He also knew that the others at the Institute (and anyone who'd seen him in action) would talk and think about how Riley couldn't seem to do anything right. Yet, somehow, his parents still believed he would become the brilliant Shadowhunter son they wanted. And Riley so desperately wanted to be what they wanted; he wanted people to look up to him...or at least think he was a decent. Anything better than he was now; he'd give anything to be at the level of Gallifrey, his adoptive sister who could be rather ditsy, and he meant that affectionately, but a good demon-slayer nonetheless. No matter how hard he tried, how much he tried to practice, he couldn't change what he'd become. It was his mindset, he decided; his brain wasn't wired to be a Shadowhunter. It was weak, he was weak. He knew that.

Still, Riley kept a smile on his face as often as he could. Things like that, no matter how big, weren't to dwelled over for long. He would much rather be happy, even if it was a somewhat artificial and guilty-filled happiness, than to act depressed and sit in his room all day like he sometimes wanted to. Besides, it's not like his ineptness was all he thought about. Who thought about that sort of thing all day long, anyways? Riley was sure that even the most sad people in the world didn't pity themselves all day long; they had to think happy thoughts too, right? Riley certainly had it better than that; he wasn't depressed - at least, he didn't think he was.

He began to drift out of his endless thoughts, instead focusing on listening to Kaelen strike the dummy over and over; the sound of metal blurring into an almost constant screech that he'd become used to in the past...oh goodness, how long had they been training? Riley had so easily lost track of time. Honestly, he was more worried about his brother and parabatai than normal - should he really be straining himself so early? It couldn't have been more than a week ago that he got injured; victim to Riley's lack of attention and skill. It was his fault, really, that Kaelen got hurt - had Riley been fully aware, he probably would have been able to get out of the way, to save Kaelen the pain of such a ferocious injury. That thought by itself would have brought Riley back to his endless cycle of wishing he was better...if it weren't for the painful groan that sounded through the silence of an empty playlist.

Riley quickly looked around the side of the dummy, wide eyes looking down at Kaelen's doubled-over figure. He opened his mouth to speak, but Kaelen was quick to assure he was 'fine'. Riley shook his head as Kaelen started the playlist up again. He was pushing himself too much; it was too early to work so hard, and for so long.

"Again. I’m sloppy on those parries." He says - no he isn't. Kaelen isn't sloppy; he's one of the best Shadowhunters Riley has seen in his seventeen years. Still, he refused to let Kaelen practice anymore.

Ignoring Kaelen's second request, Riley shook his head and looked toward Kaelen, his eyes full of worry. "Come on, Kaelen. You've been training for a while. Just go rest for a bit, yeah?" Riley told him, almost tentatively.

alone in the wind and the rain you left me
it's getting dark darling, too dark to see
and i'm on my knees, and your faith in shreds, it seems

[South]

i wrote the gospel on giving up, you look pretty sinking
but the real bombshells have already sunk, primadonnas of the gutter
at night we're painting your trash gold while you sleep
crashing not like hips or cars, no, more like parties
this ain't a scene, it's a goddamn arms race

“Come on, Kaelen. You've been training for a while. Just go rest for a bit, yeah?” Riley says, voice soft and phrased in more of a request than a command. This is the man who will one day lead the Chicago Institute in its never-ending war on evil, I muse with an ironic quirk of my lips. Riley’s my brother and I love him more than my own life, but the fact remains that if he goes to meet his destiny as he is now, we’re all doomed.

In a normal life, Riley would have flourished. He would have been that popular guy in any high school that lounges around with his guitar and holds a smile for everyone, the likeable boy-next-door with the whole world ahead of him, a prospect of a safe, happy, mundane future that allowed people with kind hearts and noble ideals to succeed. But as it were, we were both born Shadowhunters, warriors of Heaven whose chances of survival revolve solely around never showing the weakness of kindness. In a way, Riley’s lost more than I have. Even in a normal life I’d still be a cold, angry pariah, the snarky bastard kid that nobody wants. At least the world wasn’t cruel enough to give me the chance of a brighter existence and then tell me I could never have it. Sometimes I think it’s a wonder that Riley isn’t as bitter as I am. Maybe that’s the inherent goodness in him, not even allowing him to hold animosity for a life that goes against everything he is at his core. That’s fine, though. I’ve got enough anger for the both of us, and I’d never wish the oppressive sense of hopeless entrapment that I deal with every day on Riley. I’ve learned to deal with it, but I know him well enough to be certain that it would shatter him.

“Pah, rest. Rest is boring,” I quip, tossing the sword back on the rack in favor of a nicely-balanced throwing knife that I twirl speculatively between my fingers before snapping an arm forward and sending it whirling across the room, lodging dead-center in one of the pockmarked wooden targets. “I’ve been sitting on my ass, eating junk food, playing Mario Kart and watching Doctor Who reruns for a week, Ri. I’m done resting. I want to hit something.”

That inherent restlessness and violent disposition is something that the world outside these stone walls would frown upon, but in here it’s the norm. A lazy Shadowhunter’s a dead one, and I don’t need Casper’s constant sermons to tell me that when I’ve got a lovely, massive puncture wound in my torso to remind me. It was all I thought about in the aftermath of that agonizing night in the infirmary – maybe if I’d spent a little more time working on my agility, maybe if my reflexes had been better, maybe if any number of things hadn’t slipped beneath my notice I could have managed to shove Riley out of the way and still spare myself a week out of commission and a particularly nasty healing process. As if to mock me in the middle of that thought process, my midsection gives another violent twinge when I reach back for another throwing knife, something more raw and visceral than the pain I’d just felt. Wincing, I pull my shirt up and look down at the span of bandages wound around the stick-thin taper of my abdomen, or more precisely the tiny flower of red starting to bloom there.

“Great,” I mutter darkly, fishing my stele out of my pocket and scrawling a quick iratze over the crimson splotch, cringing again at the initial sting but then sighing as the pain dissipates. “It’s like I’m made of paper, I swear. I move the wrong way and the damn thing opens up again. What’s the point of healing runes if they don’t work?”

That’ll be the poison, I suppose. That was the worst part of the injury, much worse than the actual trauma and bleeding and possibly ruptured spleen. I’d read somewhere before that Scorpios venom made you feel like your veins were on fire, but that had possibly been the biggest understatement in the history of mankind. And as an added bonus, it apparently slows down the healing process. Joy. The next few weeks of running missions with a wound that bleeds at the slightest provocation sounds like the opposite of fun, but I’ll do it because without me to lead the team the task falls to Riley, and in all reality I’d rather deal with a little pain than listen to Casper’s explosion if my little brother comes home with a boo-boo and I wasn’t there to protect him from it.

“I meant to thank you,” the words bloom over my lips softer and less harsh than usual, almost contemplative. “You and Jake, for handling my stuff for me last week. You didn’t have to do that.”

But that’s how Riley and I work. We pick up for each other’s shortcomings, and the end result is that together we can be something almost functional.

i'm a leading man, and the lies i weave are oh so intricate
i'm a leading man, and the lies i weave are oh so intricate, oh so intricate
all the boys who the dance floor didn't love
and all the girls whose lips couldn't move fast enough
sing until your lungs give out

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