***DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS FRANCHISE OR ANY OF ITS CHARACTERS.***
Will hopefully post more for The Aftermath. For now, enjoy this one shot!
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"Ugh," Clary sighed, ripping out yet another page from her sketch book. She had been trying to draw Jace as he lay, sprawled on the floor by the fire reading, and was now on her twelfth attempt. It was not going well.
He looked up from his book as she hurled the crumpled ball of paper across the library.
"What was wrong with that one?" he reached to pick it up but drew his hand back quickly after a vicious growl from his girlfriend.
"I just can't draw you right. I cant draw anything right! I've been through 6 sketchbooks in the last fortnight alone! Nothing is coming together in my head. There is way too much going on in there. I can't focus!"
Chuckling at her frown, Jace jumped up and joined her on the love seat. He gingerly slid an arm around her, his face pinched slightly in concentration as he kept the heavenly fire in his veins under control. In a calming voice he leaned to murmur in her hear,
"Clarissa Fray, you are an amazing artist. You have had a seriously ... stressful few weeks. You are allowed to be highly strung. Things will settle down, love, and when they do, you'll have a much clearer grasp on your creativity."
The next day, in the early afternoon, Clary went back to the institute. She had spent the morning with her mother, who was in serious wedding-mode, and was eager to see Jace for a few hours. Maybe she would even manage to coerce him into an extreme make out session... who knew? She was wearing that shirt he liked, after all.
She day dreamed about this for much of the subway ride over, and was so submerged in her own thoughts as she headed toward the elevator, that she nearly walked straight into a flustered Izzy who was hurrying to meet Simon. Shaking her head at Clary's clumsiness, the girl called over her shoulder that Jace and Alec were out patrolling, and most likely would not be back for at least another hour or so, before disappearing out of the heavy oak doors.
Sighing, Clary headed upstairs anyway, content to wait for him in the library. She had some catching up to do with her demonology studies, and this seemed like the oppertune time to do so.
After making herself a cup of coffee, however, Clary found herself wandering to Jace's room to wait, hoping that the clinical furnishings would help declutter her mind so she could draw peacefully.
When she walked into the room, that wish soon dissolved. Whereas the bed was still made with hospital ward neatness, the walls of Jace's room were adorned with page after page of artwork, her art work. Every single terrible drawing from the past two weeks that she had thrown away, he had saved. Even the ones she had torn into pieces were carefully taped back together. She circled his room in disbelief, until her eyes rested on the drawing she had done of him the day before, which was pinned up right next to a small photograph of her, taken by Izzy during those few weeks after the battle at Alicante, when everyone believed they would finally get a happy ending. A huge wave of emotion took her, and for the first time in months she felt an intense need to draw her feelings. Clary quickly grabbed her sketchpad and pencils from her bag, sprawled herself on the bed, and began to draw.
Late in the afternoon, Jace trudged to his room, stiff, sore and covered in ichor. Alec limped along behind him, in a similar state. The pair had come across some Shax demons in an abandoned warehouse and the battle that ensued wasn't pretty. At his door, he nodded to his Parabatai, who with a groan began to climb the flight of steps to his own room. Eager for a shower, Jace pealed of his shirt as he walked into the room.
There on the bed, lay a sleeping angel, haloed by flaming red hair, her sketch book abandoned on the sheets next to her. Jace leaned to pick it up, and studied the most recent drawing, which was of both of them, surrounded by a faceless darkness. Yet the darkness did not touch them, they were protected buy a small circle of light, it cocooned them. He was not depicted as an angel as he so often was in her artwork, but as a normal man, and she a normal woman, facing their foe together as equals. A reminder of the promise they had made each other that day in the infirmary after she had stabbed him with Glorious.
We are always and absolutely better together.
Smiling, Jace placed a soft kiss on Clary's forehead, and padded off to shower.