A/N: If you have a problem with run-on sentences don't read on, then...
Disclaimer: Not profiting, not owning, fun having.
Jace can be closed off at times. He loses himself in battles and comes back bloody but triumphant. His eyes are dark and unfathomable and he always has dirt under his fingernails. He is never the composed angel of a man she likes to think she knows so well. They're getting older and they're learning that nothing can always be faery lights and blue twilights. They're learning to compromise but there are still differences so vast it seems like the problems have become physical barriers.
It is days like those that Clary wishes she could be fighting with him. So she comes to the Institution after school everyday without fail. Whether it rains, pours, snows, or floods until the streets are covered with water like the world is ending she trusts her heart to tug her all the way through the glamoured church doors and into the large, room inlaid with stone. She trusts her heart to tell her she must learn how to fight to truly be part of Jace's world. She trusts her body to run all the way down three flights of stairs and learn years of stuff she should have been taught much, much earlier.
"Faster. You're not moving fast enough! Run harder. You need to be like lightening. You need to be even faster than that because demons don't wait for you to move, do they?"
Maryse may not be holding a whip but her words just might be enough because with each syllable Clary is forcing down her urge to flinch. No weakness. Move faster. She pumps her arms and races to the other side of a seemingly endless plane of gray that resides under the Institution. The younger Shadowhunters have to be protected from the unholy, don't they? Clary reaches down and touches a throwing knife lying on the ground. She grasps the hilt and throws it as hard as she can at Maryse.
"You're closing your eyes as you throw. Do you think you're going to hit me like that? Swing with your whole body!" Maryse shouts. Her face is impassive and she doesn't move at all even as the knife whistles past her with inches to spare. Last month there had been a number of feet to spare. Clary almost feels proud before Maryse turns and plucks the knife out of the air and throws it back at Clary without seeming to waste a single movement. The motions she goes through are liquid and her pale, blue eyes are focused on Clary's green ones. She stares straight into Clary's face and Clary forces herself not to flinch again when the knife whistles past her head and shaves off a few inches of her hair. She can feel the strands settle onto her clothes.
"You're planning to be a Shadowhunter are you? You think you're just going to make a rune to become faster? To become better?"
The way Maryse says those words make her them sound like sins. Clary has thought about it. But she doesn't think she should make them. She's heard of how Jace, Alec, and Isabel got their marks through years of training and learning and hard trials that tested their abilities. She doesn't want to just make her own because even though she hasn't been raised like they have she realizes there's something innately wrong about spiting all those generations of Shadowhunters.
"You wouldn't be able to use your enhanced abilities anyway. You can't replace pure skill." Maryse continues when Clary tunes back to her rant.
At least her mile times during P.E. are getting better. She's down to six minutes and that's just because she doesn't want to seem inhuman. Before she started this insane training program with Maryse she had been running eleven minute miles. What could she say? She was an artist, not a jock.
"Run twenty more and throw thirty knives at the west wall. Aim for the bull's eye and keep your eyes open, please. Come up when you're finished. And if you think about messing with the counting runes on the walls, all I can say is that it's your life you'll be forfeiting on the battlefield. That is, unless you happen to have a handy angel in your pocket the next battle too."
Clary knows that Maryse means well. Or at least, she thinks she does. Marye is trying to get her to finish and do well and the only way Maryse encourages her is with sharp barbs and the like. She treats her children the same way. Clary's seen the way she rules over them in the training room with an iron fist. But there's never been any animosity at the dinner table, so Clary just assumes that it's all good. Clary knows that her mother would have been just as happy to help her in all these exercises of "battle" but she didn't want her mother to feel bad for her or console her after these sessions. Her mother would try and go easy on her. At least with Maryse there was a guarantee she could get honest feed back and brutally efficient lessons.
It's not like she doesn't love her mom. She just trusts her a little less than she did before. She trusts her own judgement a little more. An even trade off of sorts.
Maryse glides out the room and up the stairs. Clary listens very hard to hear Maryse's soft pads up the steps. The first few days she couldn't even hear Maryse. She's improving.
She's still breathing a hard when she starts to run those twenty laps that Maryse demanded of her. Then she does some basic cool down stretches so her arms don't shake when she throws and she suddenly decides on a whim for every knife that misses the three inner rings she'll run two more laps. In the end she runs ten laps at the end of her knife throwing practice and walks up the stairs with legs like lead and arms like jello. She should have known Maryse would put weights in the hilts of those knives. At least she only missed the inner circles five times.
She stumbles onto the ground floor and heads the empty room where her backpack was stowed to change back into her regular clothes. She usually wore an old t-shirt and a pair of light shorts when she exercised. Just as she was walking down the walk way to the room, Jace walks down the stairs from the second floor and wraps his arms around her waist from behind. She's so tired she doesn't even hear him coming up behind her.
"Hey." He says with a grin. He leans down to kiss her but she pushes him away.
"I'm gross and it's getting late and I have homework." The last word is more of a groan than anything. Clary sounds tired even to her own ears and she offers Jace a smile like a consolation prize.
He just laughs and puts a hand on her shoulder to kiss her anyway. He still smells like lemons and soap and his fingers dig into the muscles in her shoulder and wiggle. She squeals but when he pulls his fingers away her shoulder feels better than it did before. It certainly hurt less.
"You don't have to do this." He breathes into her ear softly. But she see's his eyes after their first skirmish after their return from Alicante. His eyes had been wild and haunted and empty like there's something that was missing from the fight. He's integrated himself into her life. He does silly little things like give her flowers or goes places with her on the holidays. He lets her drag him to all the places she wants and regale him with mundane lore and lets himself be pulled into her small, small circle of friends she's made recently. He swallows his pride and lets her pull him into this life she's created that's something more than just being a Shadowhunter. She wants to be there with him in his world too. She wants to be able to remind him that there's nothing missing and that if everything goes to Hell they go together.
"Yeah, I think I do."