The morning light filtered in through a tiny crack in the curtains. For a moment, Jace forgot where he was and who was lying beside him in the bed. It wasn't until he went to lift his hand up to rub at his eyes that he felt the slight pull of fingers laced with his own. His breath hitched in his throat, his heart pounding rapidly.

Clary.

Turning his head to the side, he looked at her in the dim lighting. The deep red of her hair looked even darker spread across the pale pillowcase like it was. Her eyes were closed, her long eyelashes casting tiny shadows on the pale skin of her cheeks. Plush lips were parted in sleep, her breaths soft and even. He let himself stare at her for a long time. Too long. Much longer than he should have.

All the things he had told her last night came rushing through his head once more. It hadn't been something planned. In fact, Jace had never, never intended to tell Clary he loved her – especially since he loved her in a way that he definitely should not have as her…brother. Even thinking it felt wrong somehow.

A lie.

And what was worse?
He didn't care.

If Clary opened her eyes in this instant, looked directly into his gaze, and told him that she loved him, too, and she didn't want him to go anywhere…he knew he would stay. He could fight hoards of demons. He could take on vampires and werewolves.

But he was not strong enough to stay away from her if she told him not to go.

And that was precisely why he had to leave before she woke up.

It took a monumental effort for him to unlace his fingers from hers, letting his fingertips slide across her palm. It was wrong. He knew it was wrong. But he wanted to do nothing more in that moment than to close the few inches of distance between them and kiss her. The times he had touched his lips to hers in the past didn't quite seem real, and he wanted to do it just one more time to remember how it felt, to be reminded that someone so pure – such an angel – could exist in this world.

But he didn't.

With the grace and ease of years of training, he got up off the bed without disturbing the mattress in the slightest. Clary slept on, deep breaths unabated. He stood beside the bed for another long moment, arms held loosely at his sides, and just looked at her. Relaxed in sleep, she appeared to be so peaceful. There were no worry lines on her forehead as there had been every time she had looked at him of late. She wasn't smiling, but she wasn't frowning, either; and with her eyelids closed, he couldn't see the angst in her gaze. That killed him more than anything else.

The last thing he had ever wanted was for the mere sight of him to hurt her.

Hands clenched into fists as he turned from the vision of her lying there and slipped his boots on, lacing them up. He bent over, picking his weapons belt off the floor, and strapped it on as well, the white jacket of mourning following it.

He moved towards the window, ready to leave, but paused. The metal of the ring he wore around his neck suddenly seemed to press heavily against his chest, almost digging into his skin. One hand reached up to touch it through his shirt. It shouldn't matter to him, this ring that belonged to a man he hated, but it did; and the thought of it being lost forever wasn't a thought he enjoyed entertaining in his head. If something were to happen to him today, he would want this ring to still be around.

Maybe it was a last-ditch effort at leaving his mark on the world, and maybe it didn't make much sense, but the feeling of having just this little bit of control over something made him feel just the slightest bit better about what he was going to do.

Jace lifted his hands to the clasp at the back of his neck and unhooked it with deft fingers. The silver chain pooled in a small pile as he placed it down on the nightstand, the ring nestled on top. Could he just leave it here with no explanation? Tawny eyes moved back to the sleeping girl on the bed. Didn't Clary deserve at least some sort of reason as to why she would be waking up alone?

His heart thudded in his chest as he forced himself to look away from her again. Each minute he spent in this room with her only made it more difficult for him to actually leave. Taking in a deep breath, he turned towards the desk in the corner of the room. Surely there was paper and a pen in here somewhere...there.

He paused again, staring down at the blank paper. How on earth was he supposed to write a letter to the girl he loved but could never have? How was he supposed to tell her that he was going to try and kill Sebastian, perhaps Valentine if he had the chance, and that he fully assumed he wasn't going to survive?

As he lifted the pen, he saw the tremors; he gripped it tighter to make them stop. Jace Wayland – for that's who he would think of himself as – didn't shake.

His eyes started to shift to the side, seeking to see her face just one last time, but he couldn't let himself. There was only so much his heart could take, so many hits the walls that he had put up in his mind could bear before they came crumbling down around his ears. And what would happen then was anyone's guess, but he knew it wasn't something he could allow to happen.

Before he could change his mind, he touched the pen to the paper and began to write:

"Despite everything, I can't bear the thought of this ring being lost forever, any more than I can bear the thought of leaving you forever. And though I have no choice about the one, at least I can choose about the other."

Swallowing past the rising emotion in his throat, Jace scrawled a letter that attempted to explain to Clary what he was doing, why, and how much he wished he could have stayed with her. They were all things she knew, or at least could figure out on her own, but he couldn't resist leaving this last bit of himself with her.

When he was finished, he folded up the paper and slipped the ring into it, leaving it on the nightstand where he was sure she would see it. Moving to the windows and pulling back the curtains, he reached forward and pushed the panes open. His hands gripped the frame tightly, his entire body tense as he fought the urge to turn and look at her.

But he didn't.

Clenching his teeth, Jace climbed up into the window and dropped soundlessly to the ground below. As soon as his feet touched the dirt, he took off at a sprint, putting as much distance between himself and that window as he could.

Even though every single step felt like a stab in his chest.

Each foot of distance between himself and Clary cutting into him a little deeper than the last.

But it was pain that he understood best.

Pain that he deserved.

Because I'm a monster.

A/N: First off, thanks for reading! I'm fairly new to writing as Jace, so all reviews are appreciated! Also, I just wanted to point out that the sentences in bold are actually from Cassandra Clare's book "City of Glass." I thought it would be better if I had the actually lines from the letter here. Hope you liked it!

-Running