Perfect Hunter

Angels, yes.

“Why are you already out of bed?” 

Calliope lets out a chuckle, walking into Isabelle's room with two mugs of hot chocolate in hand. Setting down the mugs on the side table, tugging the turtle neck’s neckline up to hide the hand shaped bruise, she sits on the chair next to Isabelle's bed. “Believe it or not, I wasn't the one who was stabbed,” she tells the raven haired girl. 

“Well yeah, but I wasn't the one who almost choked to death,” Isabelle grinned, getting herself ready to sit up with Calliope's help. “Thanks babes,” Isabelle thanked when Calliope handed her a mug. 

“Anything for you, hun,” Calliope winked. Taking note of the trembling hand Isabelle had when she reached out to hold the mug, Calliope sipped on her own hot chocolate. Enjoying the silence between friends, the inevitable question hanging on by a thread waiting to drop on them. 

“You know you don't have to keep it together in front of me, Calli,” Isabelle tells Calliope, holding onto Calliope's hand squeezing it. “I know how much you loved your mom, and it's okay to cry.” 

Calliope bites the inside of her lip. She's studied how a human mind works and how the mind processes devastating events. But studying about it and experiencing it were vastly different things, entirely different. She doesn't know which stage of grief she was in, but not much tears have been shed since she woke up. 

“Calli, tell me how you feel. Be honest,” Isabelle encourages her, bringing the brunette back to where she was. In Isabelle's room, having hot chocolate. 

“I don't know what to feel,” Calliope admits. “I never knew a life without my mom until we discovered the shadow world. We spent so long looking for her, and just when we got her back I was roped everywhere that wasn't next to her. And when I finally have the chance to be with her again, she's gone, and this time I’ll never get her back.”

“I’m so sorry, Cal,” Isabelle frowned, sad for what her friend has been going through. 

“If I had a penny for everytime I hear the word sorry,” Calliope tries to joke before frowning again. “I don't know how to process this. All of this.”

“Then you should go.” 

Calliope looks at Isabelle as if she grew a second head. “Go where?” 

“Away from New York, go to Idris, Cals. I know Lydia is there to recover, but I’m sure she’ll still take you under her wing.”

Calliope shakes her head. “This is not the time to think about leaving, Clary needs me—”

“She has me, and Jace, Simon and Magnus,” Isabelle tells her. “You need a break. You’ve lost so much, think about yourself for a change.”

“What if I don't want to leave?” Calliope frowned. Leaving is the last thing she needs right now, she wants to stay with everyone, especially when the people she cares about could disappear the second she gets comfortable. 

“Well, are you ready to grieve?” Isabelle asked her. 

“Am I not grieving yet?” 

“You're a psych major, you tell me.”

Calliope never knew it was possible to loathe someone you barely knew until today. Until she leaned against a pillar next to Isabelle as Victor Aldertree rambled on and on about what happened to the city of bones while a demon was loose in the institute. 

“Does he always do this?” Calliope whispered to Isabelle who lazily glanced at Calliope before shrugging herself. 

“What exactly? Have a noble stick up the ass and still get on everyone’s nerves?”