Inside of Me ━ Isabelle Lightwood

X. SET FIRE TO THE RAIN

For a while after they left the warlock's hide out, Isaac forget how to breath. Everything was revealed. Finally, the question he had been asking so long had been answered, and he wasn't sure if he wanted it to. Yeah, he always felt like he belonged in the Fray household, but this...now it was like he was always supposed to be there, but he never was.

If there was one thing he had learned from Jocelyn, it was that she did everything for her children. So, a part of him understood why he was raised in Beacon Hills instead of Brooklyn. But the other part didn't understand why she left him with that family, the place where nightmares were born and you were taught at a very young age that dreams never come true.

And it wasn't just the news of his parents that surprised him. It was also the fact that he had a younger sister, with fiery red hair and a need for her mother. But there was also a boy – man now – who grew up the same way he did, without a mother. Really, he didn't know what happened to his brother, but he knew he had one now, and it really felt like he had two brothers. Camden, though he wasn't Isaac's true brother, was still family. He was the one who tried to protect him from their 'father', he was the one Isaac went to when he had a bad dream when he was younger. He had done much more than his actual siblings.

(But Isaac had to remind himself that it wasn't their fault, but Jocelyn's for keeping them apart.)

(And then he had to beat himself up for thinking that because the real reason was their father.)

Isaac knew that he reacted differently from Clary when he realized who his father was. She was betrayed and broken, thinking about all the lies her mother had told her, but Isaac was used to having a monster as a father. He had been raised by Joseph Lahey, a man who didn't know care or compassion, at least not after his wife died, so Isaac knew the worst of the worst. But Clary had grown up in a house full of love, with a mother she could tell anything to, unlike Isaac. So he understood why she reacted so badly to the news, while he was just shocked about how they were actually related.

And all the night, he kept thinking about everything. His mind was awake and not a single moment of sleep came to him, but he was used to it. He had gone many days without sleep, and even though that might not be healthy, he couldn't help it. Isaac's monster under the bed had never been the Boogie Man or the dark, it had been people. So that's why he could never sleep, because the people were real and they were only so far away from him.

But his mind kept coming back to the fact that Clary didn't know. He knew now. Isaac knew about his parents and his siblings and the fact that he had been living with his sister for two years without knowing and comforting his mother when times were hard, he knew that. But she didn't. Isaac was used to knowing things and keeping secrets, it made him feel powerful in a way. He could tell Clary, but what good would it do? She would think he had known all along, and hadn't just found out the night before, but keeping this secret would not do him any good either.

So what to do...what to do. But Isaac liked secrets, he liked having the upper hand and knowing things others didn't, and while that might be a bad trait, he couldn't help but not want it to stop. So he had finally reached a conclusion to his never ending questions at about three in the morning; don't tell Clary.

•••

"Isaac!" he heard the voice of Isabelle Lightwood call out to him as he sat in the kitchen, slowly eating some buttered toast.

"What?" he asked, his mouth full of the crunchy goodness, causing Isabelle to roll her eyes at him.

"Do you know where Clary is?" Isabelle asked, "I wanted to talk to her about what happened with my brother."