Right back where you began
Torn apart from the inside
Race back into your skin
By the crawl you bring

Jocelyn

I know that you will read this and think that none of what is written is done so with genuine emotion. I know that you don't think that I am even capable of such feelings; not the ones that humans can experience, anyway.

Anger, envy, hatred and disquiet – that is the language and way of demons. Not love, kindness or compassion. In most respects, you're right. I don't love in the same ways that you can and neither do I mourn the fact that I cannot. Human emotions are difficult and I don't envy that I've never fully grasped the concept of most of them. But that isn't to say I can't feel them at all. I am half demon, but I am also half human - mortal in the same ways as you, Clarissa and Lucian. Perhaps this half-life is all I am meant to understand - and included amongst that is the half-sentimentality of what humanity means.

I'm not writing this letter to inspire your sympathy or to change your mind about what you think and feel me to be. You hate me, I know that. When I was younger, I used to take small comfort in the fact that the feeling was entirely reciprocated. I'm not going to lie to you and say that I don't hate you, because I do. I've done many things that I imagine you would say are terrible and only some of them were at the behest of the man you used to call your husband.

But then again, so have you. You conspired behind your husband's back, plotted against him and hurt him in ways I doubt you even know of. You were reacting to the circumstances which you were in, I realise that much. Valentine had his secrets and lies too.

It's not blame I'm looking to place upon anyone's shoulders however, my father's least of all. He loved me in the best way he knew how to and even if that love was sometimes cruel, it was better than nothing. You only need ask Jace and he would doubtless attest the same.

I ask you to imagine how I may have turned out if it weren't for Valentine; if it weren't for the humanity, however bitter, that he did show me. If nothing else, that is one thing for which I thank him. He could have turned away as you did, but he didn't. Not once, no matter how brutal or inhuman I appeared to be, he persisted, and in so doing bestowed some form of humanity within me, however little and however fragile. Perhaps it was just persistence that brought out whatever humanity was left in the first place; whatever parts that had not been burnt away by Lilith's blood.

I don't care if you don't wish to know any of this. You turned away from Valentine many years ago and I'm sure that in so doing, it was your intention to forget that life, your husband and your child along with it, as if it were really that simple to do. That's why you ran away with Clary, isn't it? She told me that you cried for me, but I didn't believe her at the time. I'm not sure that I believe her now, either. I find it impossible to believe you could ever mourn a son you hated then and still do now. Perhaps you fooled yourself into thinking you could mourn me. But then, how can you mourn for a child that you never loved? You saw me as a monster from the first moment you laid eyes upon me, and when you met me all those years later, you greeted me with a blade. You have never mourned for me Jocelyn, just for the child you could have had in my place. Valentine mourned for that child, too. I could see it sometimes in brief glances, as if he were asking himself just what I really was.

It's an interesting query in itself, isn't it? Just what am I? You've wondered it yourself, I don't doubt. So have I. Not that I give it as much thought as you or Valentine might have done. I am what I am and that is that; I don't argue with my existence. What being does? That isn't to say I haven't questioned it, but once you've realised that you're everything you were meant to be, what else is there really left to ask? "Why does nobody love me?", perhaps? I'm beyond such sentimentality.

I am a warrior. I am Valentine's son. I was built to endure, fight and to survive; things I am innately good at. But I am also hated and hunted and it is not in my nature to be forgiving. So I write to you now, Jocelyn Fairchild, the mother who gave up on me, not in the spirit of resentment or anger, but in the spirit of a Morgenstern, for that is all that I am and all I will ever be. But I also write to inform you that all that follows from hereon in, all the blood, loss and sacrifice, is a consequence of the choices you pursued.

Remember that when I burn down all that you hold close and dear, I will be looking to you amongst the screams and blood Jocelyn, so that you can see your son one last time to know all that he became, he became without you.

J.C Morgenstern

A/N: Working with my Sebastian muse, we've been thinking about his feelings regarding Jocelyn just lately. This is a letter I imagine him writing sometime after the events of Lost Souls, but before what he plans to do next. It looks so much better written down in elegant writing than it does here. It's hard to see the raw emotions behind the words when it's all in plain font, but I hope you can feel them, anyway.

As always, please take a moment to review, review, review.

Opening lyrics: Hexes by Chino.