#I ignore CC saying Thomas is not very with poetry for the grand evidence he reads a lot if poetry and that I want to

[astriefer]

Thomas writes songs about Alastair in his head, we all just know it. They're sweet and revering, a potion made of love and trust.

Now with Cot out, let me add the bitter, more angsty version: Thomas writing songs about Kit.

After things settle down and they have time to process what's happened, Thomas is a trainwreck, he's gasping and crying at the funeral and he cannot pick up the shreds of his heart, left beyond repair and scattered on the ground to cut at him each time he breathes. His sister died. His world collapsed. He tried to build himself back, slowly, with cuts on his hands, just for the world to crush him under the sole of its fit.

So he joins patrol after patrol. This evil is different, but what does it matter? It came from the same source. So Thomas fights.

At some point Alastair confronts him the way he deals with the agony is destroying him, gnaws at him, and it must stop. He encourages him to find an alternative. He guides Thomas to bed very gently that night, telling him he loves him and that he must try, that there's always a different way.

He eventually settles on poetry.

Thomas's way of grief is coming up with songs and poems in his head about what he feels.

Thomas made them in his head for some time. He told no one and shared them with no one. He didn't think they were very good, or that he had a poetic mind as good as others. But he does it anyway if only to try and pour his pain into the world and set it free.

The sharp agony, the feel he is stumbling on his own without Kit, without him to make him laugh and smile, how much he misses him and how the world seems lacking without him by his side. He breaks down and pieces himself together every time, all the time. Because like a broken clock, time has flown differently since his cousin, the brother of his heart, has passed.

Alastair returns from patrol one day to find Thomas sitting on the couch of their flat, face in his hands, a single piece of paper with barely a sentence written on it. He can only rock Thomas, lull him to restless sleep full of bright lilac eyes full of laughter he used to see all the time.

On other nights, Thomas is drowning in pages of pages of words he wishes he could say. Regret, for all the times he listened half-heartedly. Anger, that Kit slipped so fast from life's delicate hands. He isn't mad at his Kit, he is furious at life, that let the kindest and brightest man he knows slip away. Wistfulness, for he wishes he could hear the laugh of his cousin - no, brother - one more time, like he used to do all the time.

He finally shows one to Alastair. And he has to look away because the crushing sadness that settles on his lover's face is just too much to bear.

Alastair composed melodies to some of Thomas's poems, each note stark and bare and full of meaning, with the thought of a hole in his and his loved ones' heart that would be empty forever.

They play one of them to the family on Kit's anniversary day. Cecily and Gabriel's sobs can be heard starting the second verse, Anna is hugging herself, and Thomas is in shreds. They all are. What can be said, now, that would make it better?

Nothing, Thomas knows, while the notes and the words he wrote are echoing around them, surrounding them. Nothing will change the fact the the brother of his heart is gone.

#...too early? #I ignore CC saying Thomas is not very with poetry for the grand evidence he reads a lot if poetry and that I want to #at least I believe he's not aware he IS quite good. instead he tells himself to shut up :) #kit lightwood #christopher lightwood #the last hours #alastair carstairs #tlh #chain of gold #chain of iron #tsc #the shadowhunter chronicles #thomas lightwood #chog #thomastair #thomastair headcanons #tlh headcanon #tlh headcanons #chot spoilers #cot spoilers #cw death #it has been in my draft for two years for Barbara but... yeah #chain of thorns spoilers #chain of thorns