Lady Midnight (After the Iratze)

Kidnap

Julian may have had a nightmare, but Emma was living one.

She had been jolted suddenly from sleep by the suffocating feeling of a cloth being roughly shoved into her mouth.  Her captors were cloaked, hidden and mysterious.  As one had tied the gag around her head, the other had bound her hands.  Within a few seconds, they had bound her feet as well and swept her from the room, leaping from the window and landing impossibly lightly on the hard earth outside.  The gag must have been soaked in chloroform, because she had passed out before they exited the grounds of the Los Angeles Institute.  Now she was locked in a pitch-black room, the dimensions of which she had no way to know.  The cloth had been removed from her face, but she was now bound to a hard and uncomfortable metal chair.

The longer she sat, the angrier Emma became.  Her captors must want something from her, so why on Earth weren't they checking up on her? It had to have been at least two hours since she had woken up.

"Hello?" she yelled.  "Anybody there?  Come on, you stupid f***ers, show yourselves!"  She writhed her hands, trying to free her wrists from the ropes that bound her, but to no avail.  She stretched and strained, but all the knots held.  She let out a scream of frustration.  She couldn't believe she had allowed herself to be kidnapped.  Stupid.  I'm so stupid!  Why wasn't I more alert?

She felt naked without her gear, without Cortana.  The only thing she had on her was her stele, which had still been in the inside pocket of her jacket when she'd fallen asleep, exhausted from patrol duty with Christina.  Just a few hours ago, they had taken on a couple of Eidolon demons who had been causing quite the stir in a downtown LA club.  Luckily they'd managed to kill them, banishing them back to the demon realms, before any mundanes had been murdered.  It was strange to think that so recently she had been laughing and joking with her best girlfriend as they wiped ichor from their blades, walking back to the Institute exhausted but high from the thrill of combat.

Usually Emma felt so tough, so invulnerable.  Never one to be modest, she knew herself to be among the most technically skilled Shadowhunters alive in the world today.  She was fast, clever, and adept at the use of all manner of weapons, especially in the use of her short-sword, her Cortana.  Now she had none of that.  Being skilled with weaponry was of no use when you were tied to a chair.  Even if she could get to her stele, runes had never been her forte.  Although there was that iratze, with Julian...

Julian.  Her heart skipped a beat.  Julian would know there was something wrong.  He would probably sense she was not at the Institute the minute he woke up, before anyone else could notice.  She wished beyond anything that she could get a message to him.  As much as she felt empowered by the presence of her weapons, Julian's presence was even more strengthening.  The oath that bound them made them stronger, heightened their senses and allowed them to fight in perfect unison.  She missed him now more than ever.  Emma was not used to feeing helpless, but she needed her parabatai to be her strength now.

"Hello Emma."  A cold, crisp voice broke the silence, and an unfamiliar figure appeared through a doorway in front of her.  Emma was nearly blinded by the bright light streaming through the opening.  So it must be morning already, she thought to herself.  She didn't know how long she had been passed out, and she wanted to mark the passage of time as well as possible.

The figure came into the room, approaching her with a slow, deliberate pace.  As her eyes adjusted to the light she saw that he was quite beautiful.  Young, dark-skinned, but with eyes the color of a robin's egg.  But the features that stuck out most to her, the ones that made her realize just how bad her situation was, were the pointed ears sticking out from his dark curls.  This man was fey.  And she was in deep trouble.

"Emma Carstairs," said the fairie.  "It has come to the attention of the Wild Hunt that you and your...friends...are hunting one of our members.  According to the intelligence we have received, it seems that you fancy yourselves a rescue party. What have you to say to this?"

Emma stayed silent.  She knew it was necessary to be extremely careful when speaking to faeries.  She wished she were like Julian.  He was so much better with words than she was.  Maybe that's why they had chosen to kidnap her: the impetuous one, the overconfident one, the impulsive one, rather than the one who always kept a cool head under pressure.

She decided to stall, rather than give a real answer.  "I cannot say what my friends think, can I?  I am not all-knowing, and can therefore only speak for myself."

The Huntsman smiled a little, as if amused by her attempt to delay the inevitable.  "Perhaps you would rather have this discussion with someone a little more... familiar to you."  He gestured toward the door, and another slim male figure entered.  He had white-blonde hair and mismatched eyes-one blue and one gold.  Physically, he looked exactly the same as he had the last time Emma had seen him.  He seemed not to have aged a day in the past five years.  But the look in his eyes was different from anything she remembered.  It was cold, distant, aloof, and disdainful.  He came to a stop only a foot in front of her chair, gazing down at her as if she were an enemy.  It was so different from how he had always looked at her, and it hurt.

Her mind was assaulted by a barrage of memories.  His eyes sparkling with amusement and exasperation when she and Jules had decided to paint the walls of the training room one day back at the Blackthorn manor.   The concerned and affectionate way he had held her when she had broken her arm practicing her falls.  The teasing glances he had given her five years ago, when he must have known she had a crush on him.  The way his eyes had pleaded with her to go, to run, to save the others when Jonathan Morgenstern had taken him from his home, from his family.  That boy had loved her, had always treated her as if she were another sister to him.  But this was not the boy she had known.

Her voice caught in her chest as she breathed his name, a whisper of uncertainty and pain.  "Mark."

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A/N: Comment if you like where the story is going! Sorry no fluff or feels in this chapter, but I wanted to put in an actual plot line. Even though the fluff is the most fun to write :)