The Time of Two #7
“Because of what happened to Max? The other Max, I mean.”
“It was a lot of things,” Clary said, when it became clear Jace didn’t necessarily want to answer that. “But she still grieved him, when he died. We all did.”
“I’ll admit, I was surprised to hear they were together.” Max shook his head. “From what I remember of Robert Lightwood, he and Maryse were incredibly different. Robert was afraid of his own shadow, and Maryse was never afraid of anything.”
“But then they grew up,” said Clary. “And they changed.”
“Does that mean that Robert got braver, or that my sister learned to be afraid?” said Max quietly.
“I think a little of both,” Jace said. “Life wasn’t easy on either of them.”
Max paused, then said: “If I did come to the wedding, would I be able to come as myself? Max Travis, ex-Shadowhunter, current mundane?”
Jace and Clary exchanged a look. Clary realized in that moment that they should have discussed this before, come up with some kind of answer to the sorts of questions Max would obviously ask if they got that far.
Maybe they just hadn’t believed that would really happen.
But now it had, and they didn’t have an answer.
“I mean, you could always—” Clary began.
“Magnus could help us with a disguise for you,” said Jace.
Max’s eyes crinkled as he frowned wearily. “A disguise,” he echoed. “Yeah, that’s about what I thought.”
—
The final errand was less of an errand and more of a meal. If you could use that word to describe two slices of stale, flavorless, not-worthy-of-the-name pizza.
“Best pizza in town,” Max had promised them.
“I’m sorry to inform you, but this is not pizza,” Jace said. “This is…this is like if you rolled a slice of Wonder Bread into a tube and called it a bagel.”
Max laughed. “Go on, tell me how all pizza is inferior to the holy New York City slice.”
“You disagree?” Clary said.
Max shrugged. “Wouldn’t know. I’ve never gotten close enough to try one.”
“You live two hours from the city and you’ve never…” Clary trailed off. Of course he’d stayed away from New York City. He knew who lived there.
On the other hand, he was the one who’d chosen to live only ninety miles away.
Clary forced down another flavorless bite of pizza. “I know you don’t want us to tell you anything about Maryse’s life now, but—”
Max tensed. “I told you, I have my reasons.”
“But,” she pressed on, “will you tell us about what she was like? When you were kids?”
“Oh.” Max hesitated, looking off into the distance as if, were he to stare hard enough, he could see straight into the past. Then he smiled, with only a hint of pain.
“I’m guessing a lot like she is now. Even as a little girl, Maryse was like a forty-year-old woman stuck in a five-year-old’s body.
Strong. A little bossy, very insistent on following the rules. At least when it suited her.”
Clary laughed. “Sounds familiar.”
“All good qualities to have in a mother, I imagine,” he said to Jace. “Occasionally annoying in a little sister. And man, she hated being so much younger. Especially once I was old enough that my parents started taking me out on patrols.”
Jace looked down, a trace of pain on his face. Clary wondered if he was thinking of the other Max, and how desperately impatient he’d been to grow up.
“She hated being left behind at home. She always said it was because she wanted the chance to fight—but I think she was just terrified that we wouldn’t come home again.”
Max seemed like he’d forgotten they were there. Like he’d forgotten he was there, in the present day, in the mundane suburbs, and not back in Idris, with his baby sister. Clary kept very quiet, afraid to remind him.
“She never let me leave until I promised her I’d be back.
You big-brother swear it? she asked me once, and after that, I said it every time.
Big-brother swear I’ll come home. A bit of a promise, a bit of a prayer.
I always wondered if it saved my life now and then—if I fought a little harder, not wanting to disappoint her.
” He sighed. “I said it again when I left on my travel year. And I did come home, that time. I couldn’t have known I would come home different. ” He fell silent.
The moment stretched on. Clary didn’t want to break the spell, but decided to risk it. “Was that when you met your wife?”
He nodded. “I was in London. I’d gotten interested in ancient civilizations. That was the year I discovered how much the so-called mundane world had to offer. How much we were depriving ourselves of by walling ourselves away.”
Clary thought about how she’d once dreamed of growing up to be an artist, before she had grown up to be a demon-killer.
How at first the Shadowhunters felt to her as if they lived in a different time, purposefully ignorant of the modern world.
Over time she came to understand why they walled themselves away as much as they did—the Shadow World was a dangerous place, and their belief was that it was safer for mundanes to know nothing about them.
The Law demanded they keep themselves apart, that they remember they were warriors, meant to defend the world rather than to fully inhabit it.
Sometimes Clary wondered if it would be really that bad if Shadowhunters allowed themselves to be open to more of mundane culture.
Then again, sometimes it was refreshing to be around people who’d never heard of Instagram.
But it was part of their duty, and a part Clary often thought carried a high price: Few Shadowhunters ever created art, as mundanes did.
Clary still drew and painted, but she knew her real identity was warrior, not artist—a truth that applied to all the Nephilim.
Max went on. “Karina was studying ancient Greek cosmology. She grew up in Manila and she’d never been so far away from home, but”—he shook his head as if even after all these years, he couldn’t believe it—“she had no fear. Of anything. She was so hungry for novelty, for experience. Foods, sights, ideas—the more unfamiliar the better. The older I get, the more I appreciate what a rare quality that is. But even at the time, I knew she was…special. I told myself it couldn’t last. When I went back to Idris, I did try to forget her, but. ”
“Making yourself fall out of love with someone isn’t so easy,” Jace said. “Even when you know the love is impossible.”
“This was before the rise of the Circle,” Max said.
“But your Valentine didn’t come out of nowhere.
These leaders never do. Men like Valentine need willing followers.
And there were already plenty among us who wanted to go back to the old ways, who thought anyone different was lesser.
It felt like Idris had changed. But maybe I had.
The boy I’d been would never have risked writing letters to Karina, telling her the things I did: about who I really was, about the Shadow World, all of it.
But the man couldn’t resist. Even knowing it was only a matter of time before I got caught.
The Inquisitor didn’t have to give me a choice, you know.
I’d already violated enough of the Law that I should have been punished regardless.
But he let me choose. And I made the only choice I could. ”
“You chose your wife,” Jace said.
“You asked me what Maryse was like, when she was young? Before I went into exile, I told Maryse I would find some way to come home to her, no matter what. Someday. Big-brother swear, I told her. I’ll come back. You know what she said? Don’t.”
—
They pulled into the driveway of Max’s house after nightfall.
Clary felt like a failure. All those hours together and they’d gotten no closer to persuading Max that he should ever speak to his sister again, much less come to a family wedding.
For all she knew, the moment she and Jace left, Max would change his name and move away, the better to never be found again.
So it was a surprise to both Jace and Clary when Max suggested they stay the night.
They’d been sitting in the back of Max’s Mini Cooper (currently parked in the driveway of his home) whispering to each other about getting back.
They’d have to Portal, since the last trains back to New York had already left, but didn’t want to alarm Max with Clary’s unusual abilities.
They had just decided to walk a few blocks away and Portal from there when Max, who’d been drumming his fingers irritably on the steering wheel, sighed and said, “Look. With no trains, your only option would be a taxi, which would be insanely expensive.” He hesitated, as if he was arguing with himself, then came to a resolution.
“My son is staying with his grandparents tonight. So you could have the spare room. I won’t have to explain who you are. ”
Jace and Clary shot each other a look as soon as Max said the words my son. But neither of them asked any follow-up questions; Jace only nodded and accepted the invitation.
Max unlocked the front door of his home and beckoned them inside.
The house was cozy and cluttered, its shelves crowded with family photos.
Clary picked one up: Max was cheek to cheek with a very pretty woman with long dark hair.
A gap-toothed kid in a Phillies hat was squeezed between them. “Is this him? Your son?”
Max took the photo from her, and traced a finger across the faces of his family. “Yeah. Noah.”
Clary swallowed hard. “He looks so much like you.” What she wanted to say, of course, was that he looked so much like Max Lightwood. Jace saw it too. To anyone else, his face would have seemed impassive. To her, it was a naked wound.
“Your wife was beautiful,” he said. “When did she die?”
“Two years ago. She had an inherited heart condition. It got worse and worse. And then it killed her.”
“I’m sorry.”