Chapter Text
The day after Max had been taken to the Emergency Room, Alec sends his mother a text telling her they need to talk. It doesn’t take her very long to respond and they set a time to meet up at Maryse’s house. He leaves Magnus at home with Max, not bothering to tell his mother he’s the only one coming over today. She’ll figure it out soon enough.
Max may not outright say it but he’s scared and Alec doesn’t want him there when he tells Maryse what he and Magnus have decided to do. Considering the fact that she broke Max’s wrist, her opinion doesn’t mean anything to Alec right now.
Alec knocks on the door and takes a step back, preparing himself for what’s no doubt going to be an explosive conversation with his mother. “Max isn’t here?” Maryse says, glancing behind Alec’s shoulder, the second that she opens the door.
“No,” Alec says, picking nervously at his nails. “He’s with Magnus.”
“Hmm,” she says, turning around to head back inside without another word. Alec follows her into the sitting room and the two of them sit in awkward silence before Alec finally gathers up enough courage to start the conversation.
“You broke his wrist, Mother,” Alec starts, crossing his arms across his chest. “Your temper and apparent inability to control yourself caused a hairline fracture in his wrist.”
“What?” Maryse says incredulously, shaking her head. “There’s no way I broke his wrist, I barely even touched him!”
“You knocked him down,” Alec says, trying his damnedest to keep himself from exploding. “You fucking slapped him and he fell and broke his wrist.”
“I thought you said it was a hairline fracture, it’s not as bad as –” Maryse starts, as if that somehow makes it better, and Alec all but loses it.
“That doesn’t fucking matter,” Alec says clenching his fists together tightly. “Are you joking? You hurt him, badly, and it’s not okay. You broke his wrist, he’s gonna have a cast for at least a month. Nothing you can say is going to make this any better.”
“I already apologized for what happened,” Maryse says, sounding remorseful. “You know I would never intentionally hurt Max; I have never hit any of you before. It was a one-time accident; it’s not going to happen again.”
“How am I supposed to know that?” Alec asks, suppressing the urge to start glaring. “Seriously though, how am I supposed to know this isn’t going to happen again? How can I possibly trust you to be alone with Max after what you did to him?”
“He’s my son,” Maryse scoffs, offended Alec would even say such a thing. “Of course he’s safe with me. I just… I lost my temper and it’s not going to happen again.”
“And if that situation happens again,” Alec asks, “what are you going to do? If Max gets scared again and he starts having a panic attack and needs Magnus or I to calm him down, how are you going to react? Are you going to show the same blind rage as you did before? Are you going to strike out at him again?”
“Panic attack?” Maryse says, blinking a few times in confusion, and Alec suddenly realizes Maryse doesn’t even know why Max wanted so desperately to go home yesterday. “What do you mean?”
“Max was scared and on the verge of having a panic attack,” Alec continues, trying to explain the situation to his mother who apparently wasn’t aware of exactly how badly she had messed up yesterday. “He was terrified and trying to calm himself down but you only made it worse, that’s why he wanted us and not you. Because we know how to calm him down when it gets bad. You reacted badly, you made the situation worse, and then you slapped him because of it.”
“I didn’t even do anything to him,” Maryse says, still confused about the situation, and Alec is beginning to realize just how little Maryse even knows about her youngest son. “How could I have triggered a panic attack?”
“You brought him to an event you planned to meet Shawn at, what did you expect him to do? Be okay with it? No one in our family is okay with being around Shawn,” Alec says, “and you can’t expect a nine-year old to want to sit with the man who made my life a living hell. When he told you he was scared you made him feel pathetic and small, like his opinion didn’t matter. Of course he started to panic, the fact that you continued to yell at him made it so much worse.”
“Max probably doesn’t even remember who Shawn is,” Maryse says, rolling her eyes with a soft little tsk, “how could he possibly have bad memories of him.”
“You don’t remember?” Alec says, face trained on the rug in front of him. His eyes trace over the patterns displayed there, unable to look up and meet his mother’s gaze. “That doesn’t surprise me, you never paid attention before so why would you start after everyone found out about the abuse?”
Alec stops, swallows hard, and tries to keep himself under control. He now regrets not having Magnus here with him because it seems like he’s going to dig back into the memories he’s tried so hard to repress. Having his fiancé here, the man who made his life infinitely better, would help immensely. But he isn’t here and Alec has to do this himself; he hates how weak that makes him feel.
“After everyone found out,” Alec says, fingernails scratching absentmindedly at the worn denim of his jeans, “I was not in a good place. I could barely make myself eat and shower and sometimes I couldn’t force myself to get out of bed. I thought about it constantly, every fucking day, and I couldn’t stop. I still tried to take care of everyone, Izzy and Jace needed me and I couldn’t just give up on them because I was depressed, but I felt so pathetic and worthless it was hard to make myself do anything.”
Alec doesn’t know why he’s opening up about this, especially to his mother of all people who is the least likely person to truly care, but once he starts the story he can’t stop himself from finishing it.
“Max was still his bubbly self and I remember one day while he was here in New York with you and Dad he tried to get me to play with him. It was one of my worst days so I definitely didn’t want to do anything but this was Max, he was a baby and he didn’t know any better. All he wanted was his big brother to take him to the park and how was I supposed to explain to a four-year old I was too depressed to even get out of bed that day?”
Alec takes a deep breath and clenches his fists tightly. “So I told him I wasn’t feeling good, that I was feeling a little sad, and wouldn’t be able to take him to the park. I felt like an ass but he just nodded and retreated from my bedroom. He came back fifteen minutes later with a glass of juice, some animal crackers, his favorite stuffed animal, and three different animated movies.”
Alec can’t help but smile as he thanks back on one of his all-time favorite memories of Max, even if it’s directly related to the worst time in his life. “Izzy helped him carry it all because he was too little to carry everything before she left us alone. He told me that Izzy had told him there was a mean man who had made me sad and he decided that he needed to try and cheer me up. He brought me all his favorite things – his favorite juice, snack, movies, and stuffed animal – and told me they were what made him smile when he was sad. All he wanted to do was make me smile and that was the only way he knew how.
“We stayed in my room for hours and watched movies together,” Alec says, coughing a few times to clear his throat, “and it was the first time since before I had started dating Shawn that I actually felt good about myself. Max may not know what Shawn did to me, I would rather die than have Max find out the details of what happened, but he knows he hurt me and he didn’t want anything to do with him. You overreacted, you caused Max to hyperventilate and start to panic, and you hurt him.”
Maryse is quiet for a long time and Alec sits there, waiting for her to say something. Maryse had forbidden him to talk about Shawn after everyone found out and he had never told anyone, not even Magnus, how messed up he was after the relationship had ended. He hadn’t told anyone, despite how badly Izzy and Jace wanted him to talk to someone, about how he felt when everyone found out. His mother hated him, his father couldn’t look at him, his little brother didn’t understand why he was so sad all the time and Izzy and Jace didn’t know what to do.
The longer they sit there in silence the more nervous Alec gets. He can feel a deep set feeling of dread pooling in the pit of his stomach and Alec has to fight the urge to get up and leave. He doesn’t know how she’s going to react and he’s terrified of what she’s going to say to him.
“It was five years ago, Alec,” Maryse says, voice softer than Alec has ever heard it before. She doesn’t look angry or sad or annoyed, she just looks blank. Alec doesn’t know what to make of her reaction. “It’s time we leave that in the past and move on.”
“I can’t leave it in the past,” Alec says, stomach queasy at the very thought of Shawn and what he had done to him. “I can’t forget that, nothing I do will ever make me forget that. It is ingrained in my head, in my memories, in my thoughts. Shawn will never disappear, no matter how hard I try to will away his memory. He’s always going to be there. He nearly ruined me, I wasn’t okay for a long fucking time because of him, and I still get days where I don’t want to get out of bed because of everything going on in my head.
“Magnus is good for me, Mother,” Alec says, trying his damnedest to keep back his tears, “he is good to me. He’s helped me more than I could ever even begin to explain and I’ve come so far from how I used to be. But it doesn’t just go away, I can’t just forget it. I’m better now, I’m in a good place and I have a good fiancé and I’m actually happy for the first time in my life but that doesn’t mean my memory will let me forget it. I don’t get that luxury.”
“What do you want me to do, Alec?” Maryse says, anger starting to creep into her voice. Whatever was holding her back before is gone and now she just seems angry. “It’s been five years, there’s nothing I can do to fix what happened to you. I’m sorry that Shawn treated you badly and that you aren’t able to get over it but am I supposed to let that affect my life? There’s nothing I can do to make it better. It’s in the past, forget about it.”
“You can cut ties with him,” Alec says, starting to get angry himself. “You can stop associating with the man that hurt me. You can, for once in your life, try and have a genuine conversation with me about what happened. You can accept blame for what you and Dad did to me. You can own up to your mistakes for once in your life. You can keep my baby brother away from my abusive rapist.”
That shuts Maryse up real fast. She opens her mouth, as if she’s about to say something, before she quickly closes it again and remains silent. Alec can hear his heart beating hard against his chest, feel the blood rushing through his ears as he tries to keep himself under control. The rage he had experienced only a few moments ago is gone, replaced by an overwhelming sadness and sense of fear that buries him in old feelings of worthlessness.
He hates the fact that just the thought of Shawn can still cause this reaction in him, that his mother still can’t own up to everything she’s done, that he’d revealed a part of himself to someone who doesn’t truly care. Every instinct in him is telling him to run, to leave, but he still has unfinished business here. He can’t leave until he talks about Max.
“It doesn’t matter, mother,” Alec says once he’s calm enough to start up the conversation again. “I don’t even know why I told you, it just kind of popped out. I found out long ago that you don’t really care about me or my issues so there’s no point in talking to you about them. I didn’t come here to talk about me or Shawn or delve into the past, I came here to talk about Max. The point is, you messed up royally and you’re trying to blame everyone but yourself for how things played out.”
“It was an accident,” Maryse says, shifting uncomfortably on the sofa across from Alec. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, I’ve never laid a single hand on any of you kids and you know I would never intentionally hurt Max.”
“You still lost control,” Alec says, “and you broke his arm. You didn’t just slap him; you broke his arm. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone with Max. At all. From now on he’s going to stay with Magnus and I, even if you or Dad are in town.”
“Okay,” Maryse scoffs, “like you have any authority to keep my son away from.”
“I have all the authority, actually,” Alec says. “I’m his legal guardian, I am legally capable of making all his decisions for him. You still have your parental rights but I’m responsible for him.”
“You’re joking right?” Maryse says, disbelief creeping up on her face. “You’re not taking my kid away from.”
“I’m not taking Max away from you, mainly because that’s not what Max wants. Your son loves you, he doesn’t want to stop seeing you. But he’s scared and he doesn’t want to be alone with you right now. He thinks you’re going to hate him and he’s afraid that you’re going to hurt him again.”
“You expect me to just sit here and just take this without fighting for it?” Maryse says, crossing her legs. “I can fight this, you know I can. I’m not going to let you dictate when and where I can see my son. That’s not how this arrangement works, Alec.”
“By all means, mother,” Alec says, shifting forward slightly in the chair he’s sitting on, “take me to court. You’re underestimating Magnus’ influence and his money. It’s not going to be an easy trial, it’s going to be long and drawn out and everyone is going to be talking about it. There’s going to be reporters everywhere, asking questions and fabricating stories, especially after the child abuse claims come in to play. Everyone will know about it and the Lightwood name is going to get dragged through the mud.”
“Since when have you ever cared about the Lightwood name?” Maryse asks. “You’ve never cared about what people think about us before, why has that changed all of the sudden?”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about our reputation or what people think about our name,” Alec says. He sets his hands on his knees in an attempt to help keep himself calm. “But I care about Max, a lot. He’s the only thing that matters right now and he’s the only reason I really care about not getting everyone involved. I don’t want him dragged through a trial, I don’t want news outlets bringing him into anything, I don’t want people at school talking about what his mother did to him. I’m trying to protect him from the media backlash that’s bound to happen because nothing in this city stays confidential when it comes to well-to-do families.”
That was the main reason. The last thing Alec wanted was for Max to become a pawn to be fought over. Maryse doesn’t do quiet, there’s no way she’d do anything low-key, and Alec would be forced to fight for his brother. But that wasn’t the only reason. Alec knows how the system works and how hard it can be to get custody away from abusive parents, especially if they have money. Jace’s father had broken his arm twice, his leg, and dislocated his shoulder without having anything done to him. It took Jace being placed in the hospital for two weeks before his father was finally taken to prison and Jace was placed in foster care.
And Jace’s father was a habitual child abuser, he always had people throwing accusations at him. Maryse may have broken Max’s arm but she’s never physically harmed him, not once, before. Yes, she’s an absent mother and Alec does everything for Max. But there isn’t much evidence to prove she isn’t fully capable of taking care of Max. Not to mention the fact that the courts almost always rule in favor of the mother, no matter what the reasoning is.
Alec is afraid if he takes this to court he’ll lose and Maryse will get full custody of Max. If that happens, she’ll never let Alec see him. Alec doesn’t want to fail his brother, he can’t.
“Are you threatening me?” Maryse snarls.
“Of course I’m not threatening you,” Alec sighs and takes a deep breath. “I’m just telling you how it will go. You know this is going to get messy, you know it won’t stay quiet, and you know there is a very good possibility that you will lose. I know you care a lot about your reputation, you really want to go that route?”
Maryse doesn’t say anything and Alec takes that as confirmation enough. “This is the best solution for everyone. I can’t trust you not to hurt Max, Mom. I just can’t. Not only that but Max doesn’t want to be alone with you right now. He’s scared and he’s hurt and he doesn’t understand what’s going on. You need to get your anger under control, you need to sort out your priorities, and you seriously need to learn how to evaluate situations because all you seem to do is make them worse.
“You can’t explode and start yelling at Max and expect things to go smoothly, that will never work with him. You have to understand how he’s feeling, how bad his anxiety is, how close he is to panicking. You can’t scream at him, especially not when he’s crying, and you can’t just tell him to grow up. He’s working through his issues and he has come a long way but you can’t just will them away, that’s not how it works. He’s a child and his thoughts and feelings and fears matter. Until you understand all this, I can’t trust you around my brother.”
“Are you saying I don’t know how to handle my son?” Maryse says quietly, unable to meet Alec’s eyes.
Alec doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t need to. Maryse can play all the games she wants but they both know it’s true – she doesn’t know how to handle Max and that lies at the root of all their issues. He’s got to give her some credit though. Unlike Robert who barely ever comes to New York, she usually comes to the states at least once a month and she always sees Max even if it’s just for a short amount of time. There’s still a long way to go, she hardly ever spends real time with him and she still makes horrible decisions, but at least it’s a start.
“You’re welcome to call and skype Max as much as you want, I’m not going to cut off contact,” Alec says, changing the subject. “I wouldn’t do that to Max. I’m just saying that until I can trust you not to hurt him and until Max feels safe alone with you again I’m not going to let Max around you by himself. You’re welcome to come over and hang out with him, you’re welcome to take him anywhere, you’re even welcome to have him stay the night. But if you have Max, Magnus or Izzy or Jake or I have to be with you. I won’t budge on that.”
“You can’t possibly expect me to actually abide by that, can you?” Maryse says.
“If you want to see Max, yes. I told you I don’t play around when it comes to Max’s safety,” Alec reiterates. “I don’t want to have to do this but I’m not budging. You have things you need to work through, things you need to learn, and you have to understand that you can’t play around with Max’s feelings. You broke his wrist, you can’t even admit to yourself that you are the one who broke his wrist, and you still make excuses for what happened. You haven’t learned anything and until you do Max will not be left alone with you.”
“This is absolutely ridiculous, what the hell are you trying to do here?” Maryse asks. Her voice is still as angry as it has been the entire conversation and Alec can tell she hates what he’s decided to do. Alec doesn’t care. Maryse may have never hurt Max before, but she’s gone and broken his arm now. Alec will never forgive himself if he acts like nothing happened and the next time she loses her temper with Max she hurts him even worse.’
“I don’t know how long you’re going to be in town for but I’d be happy enough to set up a time for you guys to meet, if that’s what Max wants,” Alec says, ignoring what Maryse had just said to him. “He goes to therapy once a month and his next session is sometime next week. He usually goes to them by himself but I can talk to Max and his therapist and ask if it’d be okay for you to sit in on it if that’s something you’d want to do. Max is very private about his therapy sessions though so I’m not sure how he’ll feel about it. Honestly, it all depends on what you’re willing to do see your son and what Max is comfortable with.”
“Max goes to therapy?” Maryse asks and Alec can’t believe what he’s hearing.
“Yes, your son goes to therapy,” Alec scoffs. “I’ve tried talking to you about this before, but you always shut me down. Max has night terrors, anxiety, and abandonment issues. The fact that you didn’t know anything about this proves my point, your relationship with your son is already on the verge of collapsing. You need to fix your problems, get your priorities in line, and work on your relationship with Max.”
“I’m sure that’s all my fault to, isn’t it?” Maryse asks, shaking her head. “Everything is always my fault.”
“It’s not all your fault,” Alec says honestly. “Dad is never in New York, Max hardly sees him at all, and I don’t think you realize how much that hurts him. I’m not going to say that you’re completely innocent because you’re not but there’s a lot of factors that contribute to his problems.”
Neither Alec nor Maryse talk for a few minutes. The silence is not entirely uncomfortable but Alec doesn’t like sitting there. He feels like he’s being scrutinized and he still wants to go home as soon as possible. “I’m not okay with this, Alec, I don’t like the fact that you think you can just sit there and tell me when I can and can’t see my kid. He isn’t your son, he’s mine, I will always come first in his eyes.”
Alec doesn’t say anything, he knows this isn’t going to go anywhere, so he stands up and claps his hands together. “I get where you’re coming from, but it doesn’t change anything. I don’t think we’re going to accomplish much else, this conversation is going nowhere, so I’m gonna go. If you want to see Max, you can call me and we can set something up. I’ll call Max’ therapist when I get home and talk to him and Max, see if it’s okay for you sit in next week.”
“This isn’t over Alec,” Maryse says as Alec starts to walk out the door. “I’m not going to sit here and let you take my son away from me.”
“Again,” Alec says, stopping in the doorway that leads out of the sitting room, “I’m not taking your kid away from you. I’m trying to fix your dwindling relationship with your son before it completely falls apart. Do what you have to do but you know as well as I do that this is the best decision for everyone. I can’t trust you with my brother, mom, I just can’t right now.”
And without another word Alec turns around, ignoring Maryse’s protests, and heads out the front door.