Hello! This fic is dedicated to CherrySlushLover cause she deserves to finally get her happy story :).
I haven't read CoHF yet ( not out in my country :( ) so if something is non-canon remember about it. And also, remember that I'm not a native speaker. When you find a mistake, please tell me, I'll correct it.
So. Hope you'll enjoy Please, review, it's really important for me.
The first time ever Jace Herondale feels this strange taste on his tongue, is on his wedding day.
Perfect day, dreamlike, fairy-tale like, with soft breeze, Shadowhunters and Downlanders dancing under the blue, blue sky. His bride in his arms, all golden and flame, her bright green eyes looking into his, her dress caressing her skin.
And he feels it; the taste of lemons, the taste of sage, the sweetness and one more that reminds him of sunlight ( if sunlight had taste).
But he doesn't think about it. It's not like that, that's something important. He's too busy with Clary; with holding Clary, touching Clary, looking at Clary, Clary, Clary, like a melody, a symphony of his soul, a song of love and life.
But that was the first time . The first time, but not the only one.
Lemons are back, when he touches Clary's baby bump carefully and his daughter kicks him.
He tastes sage, when he holds his son for the first time and looks into his green eyes and his whole world burns itself and builds itself back from ashes.
The thinks about sweetness, sweetness of a candy, when Sage stands straight and receives her first Mark and doesn't shed a single tear.
And every time he looks at Clary, Clary who is painting, singing while cooking, braiding Bonnie's hair, hugging Jamie, taking shower, crying, smiling, laughing, dancing, every time he sees her, he tastes sunlight.
After all his years, after battles won and lost, long after the times his hair were golden like lion's mane, he likes to think about how he, cursed, broken, suicidal boy, has got to know the taste of happiness so well.
For Simon, happiness tastes like blood and pain.
No matter how hard he tries to break this connection it appears as strong as it was before. Or even stronger.
`Because happiness was clearing Isabelle's blood from poison. Was receiving Cain Mark and giving it back. Happiness meant fighting by his friends side- fighting not in D&D, but in a real life, he, the nerd, he was fighting and having the time of his life. Happiness isn't given for nothing, at least not for Simon. It is closely connected with letting go; letting go Clary, letting go Isabelle, letting go his mother. It is connected with the pain of setting something free and praying for this thing to come back for you.
Happiness is and probably always will, the feeling of doing the right thing, no matter how much it hurts.
Simon feels the true taste of happiness, when Clary phones him at the two a.m. and opens the door for him- six months pregnant with her first child, dark circles under her eyes and Jace holding her hand. When she bites her lips and draws on the white page the same mark, over and over again. Complicated Mark, full of twists and tangles, dangerous mark.
The taste of blood from his supper when he feels her cold stele on his arm and his eyes closed but opened.
And pain, like fire which consumed him and burned immortality from the inside of him.
Happiness is watching Isabelle sleep and making her pancakes with chocolate and mint and burning your hand on hot frying pan.
Happiness is becoming old and tired, is finding white highlights on your once hazelnut brown hair.
Happiness is letting you beautiful, wild wife to go out every night and risk her life, because she loves doing it.
Happiness is kissing your best friend since forever on her death bed.
Happiness is watching as your kids make their own mistakes and learn from them.
Happiness is kissing the women you love and telling her goodbye.
Is welcoming death like an old friend.
This is happiness- blood and pain and doing the right things and nobody can convince Simon otherwise.
The first breakfast ever Jace made to Clary are strawberries.
Fresh and red like blood, their juice coloring her lips and this amazing scent- sweetness and sourness.
They are eating them in bed; covers and pillows are later permanently stained red and their fingers become sticky and when he kisses her, she tastes strawberries once again. She's not thinking about anything, not saying anything, not worrying about anything; she is swimming in the ocean of light which is getting to the room through half-opened window, enjoying the warmth she feels and letting herself to get lost in her husband's arms.
And that is all. The pure happiness is, for good and bad, tied with red taste of strawberries.
Strawberries are all she asks for when she's pregnant. No weird things like boxes of ice-creams, tuna or tomato soup from Taki's. No, just strawberries. Jace starts to joke about their children having red skin and green leaves instead of hair and she punches him and keeps on eating, cause she just can't get enough.
Maybe that's why, when after long hours of screams and pain, she finally kisses her children' heads, she can smell the sweet scent of strawberries.
Maybe that's why Sage has ruby red lips and Jamie blushes red when he's ashamed of something.
They are both so sweet, so beautiful, so perfect in her eyes.
Bonnie is more sour, more like a permanent stain on her hear than the taste on her tongue. They are alike, mother like daughter- even Clary sees it- and Bonnie is widely known for her undying appetite for strawberries.
But why Jace always tastes red, tastes like sweetness and sourness?
Why the world is red when she is painting?
Why there was a scent of strawberries in the air on her daughter's wedding day?
She doesn't know, but she doesn't really think it's a question to be answered. Maybe everybody has their taste of happiness.
Alec is seven when his sister dares him to spend the night outside.
He does. It's not even half as scary as he expects it to be, but still, not a really good fun
He hides in his sleeping bag, tries to get some sleep but when he eventually falls asleep, the rain wakes him up. It's not a cold, unpleasant rain, but summer rain; warm and sweet, caressing his skin and cleaning it from sweat and nightmares. He stands up and lets himself get completely soaked and then doors open and Isabelle runs to him, hugs him and starts to apologize, her voice high-pitched, because she's worried.
They hug under the stars and he tastes the rain.
Alice is beautiful and unexpected – pale and thin, all dark curls and blue eyes wide opened.
She is supposed to sleep at their apartment just for one night
( just one night, everybody says, somebody will take her, just one night)
And so she stays. Dressed in blue night gown way too big for her she politely answers on Alec's questions and smiles when Magnus shows her her bed.
But when Alec is waken up by a storm and goes to her room, to check if she's okay, she's not sleeping.
She's standing in front of an open window; tiny figure, delicate like a porcelain doll and letting the rain to soak her.
He doesn't act like his supposed to do, he doesn't closes the window and tells her it's stupid and reckless to do this kind of things when it's a raging storm outside.
Instead, he stands beside Alice, puts one hand on her arm and tastes the sweetness of the rain along with her.
Alice doesn't stay just for one night. She stays for many other night and grows up, with her name taken from Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland with Clary's illustrations, with her black hair, just like Maguses and her bright blue Lightwoods' eyes, although she is not a Lightwood in blood.
She dances with them in the rain when she is ten and kills her first demon along Alec when she's fourteen and marries Alaric Lightwood in pouring rain when she's twenty one.
And Alec tastes rain even when it's sunny outside. He tastes it when Magnus gives him good morning kiss, when Alice shows him how she's shooting with his old bow, when Isabelle hugs him just like that one time when he was seven and she was five.
Rain means redemption. Rain means love. Rain means sweetness. Rain on his tongue, rain in his mouth,, rain on his skin.
Alexander Lightwood dies in rain and he's happy, because rain means happiness.
Little Isabelle drinks milk when she's sad, and it's not long until she starts to believe that milk can solve pretty anything when you drink enough of it.
Alec mad at her? A glass of cold milk offered to him with a big hug.
Max can't sleep and doesn't let anyone else sleep neither? A bottle of warm milk and everything is okay.
Jace teases her? A whole bottle of milk poured on his head and suddenly the kitchen becomes a battle place.
Parents are shouting? Drink so much that this empty hole inside you becomes full again.
But there are some things that can't be solved even by a river of milk.
Her parents' marriage. Max.
She, herself.
But milk helps. It helps her every time she needs to find comfort.
After Simon-Maya. After Sebastian-Jace. She, wild Isabelle Lightood, doesn't look for an oblivion in ten shots of vodka but in white, hot milk she drinks in empty kitchen and which is a bit salty because of her tears inside it.
Milk is not always salty. Sometimes it's sweet, like when on their first date, when Simon makes them cereal and they watch Star Wars together. Or when he enters Institute and she tastes milk without actually drinking it as she is crying in his arms.
On her wedding day, her dress is stained with milk, because she drinks a whole bottle, not to feels so nervous.
Her son smells like milk and dreams when she kisses him, just like her daughter's hair.
Her husband gives her a whole glass of milk every morning for thirty years .
But milk she tastes on her tongue is also bitter, when she holds her daughters lifeless, pale body in her arms. It's sour, when Simon kisses her one last time. It's salty every time she cries and she has plenty of occasions to do it.
Isabelle Lightwood deepest despair tastes like milk. But her biggest happiness tastes like milk too. And maybe that's strange, but that's how things are.