mostly extinct is not extinct enough.

"Yeah," Alec said into the phone, his voice even more subdued than his normal quiet tone. "I know, I didn't mean for a week to go by without... yeah. Things were wei-- I know. Sorry, Iz. Love you too."

He hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment before putting it back down on his desk. Then he didn't have anything to stare blankly at anymore, so he just looked at his hands. Hands that had shot Jace the other day in that weird place. Of course he'd had ample reason, and he'd been smart to avoid getting injured again, especially as he'd had a few responsibilities at the time, but... still. It was still the image of Jace's bloody wrist that kept flashing behind his eyes -- that and the helplessly guilty mantra that whatever had happened had been his fault, that Jace would never have gotten cursed if Alec had been looking after him better, that anyone else Jace might have hurt had been because of him.

That, not everything that had happened after, was what was sticking with him right now.

Well. That and -- a remark Jace had made that he was trying to avoid dwelling on. But he was Alec. Dwelling was sort of his thing.

Now that he thought of it, he almost missed the guilt-trippy phone call with Isabelle. That had at least had let him focus on something other than his own mistakes for a while.

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