Summary: (human au, dystopian future) When you are taught all your life that the only way to live is under direction, how can you break free? All her life, Clary has felt as though there was something missing, some absent freedom of choice that she didn't know was offered. When a mysterious boy named Jace Wayland shows her the flip side of society, she finds that she has a choice: safety or rebellion.
Notes: This is the fic that won the poll by a few votes, and I love dystopian universes, but the first bit may be confusing, so I'll clarify a few points.
— The first chapter is a prologue, and is longer than the rest of the chapters will be (depending on the chapter). It stands at five thousand words, and describes Jace's reason for joining the rebellion.
— Jace will not be thirteen for the entirety of the fic. In the next chapter, he will be seventeen, and will remain that age for the most of this fic. Again, his current age is a setting.
— jaceisabelle is not a pairing in this fic — she and Jace have a brother-sister relationship. The reason that she and Jace met first in this fic is because they are the same age, not because they will have romantic relationships in this fic.
— The author notes will not usually be as long as this one.
This chapter was beta-read by sharine (tyrells), my wifey / parabatai (such scandal much illegal)
Disclaimer: I do not own "The Mortal Instruments".
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. december 3, 5606 .
Jonathan Wayland was sitting in a plain bedroom made of steel walls and a floor designed to look like wood, and he felt like throwing up.
He had no reason to feel so nauseous (other than the fact that he knew he was about to have the shit beaten out of him), but he felt like the walls were about to close in on him—his bedroom was small. Too small, with the illusion of being even smaller than it already was.
He had no clue why someone would want to design a miniature room to look even more like a mouse's home, but he didn't have the talent of peering into the mind of some sort of architect. When he thought of it, he didn't have many talents—he got mad easily, and he was strong, but he didn't have the precision to throw the jaw-breaking hits that his constant anger demanded for.
A thirteen-year-old boy should not have been so constantly angry, but having a father who found joy in taking a belt to his son was a good reason to have issues with anger. He liked to think of it as something of an excuse, but he knew that blaming his own issues on his father was cowardice, and pure idiocy.
The small room had little means of amusement—the only interesting thing inside of it was a book about different metals and their properties—but he found it a hell of a lot more entertaining than going outside and having a 'conversation' with his father (a conversation that would surely lead to Jonathan receiving a bloody lip and black eye).
He wondered if it would be different if his mom were alive.
Jonathan did not have the sob story of a mother he only knew through pictures and stories from his family, but he wished that he did—having loving memories of a mother seemed worse than having no memories of a mother if the thoughts brought back those of a mother's death.
He supposed that his father turned bitter when his mom was killed by officials, but he often found himself wondering if his father was only hiding how wicked he was in front of his wife. Jonathan had other theories, but he chose not to listen to the theories of how his father could have beat his mother, and how his mother was too terrified to leave him.
If Jonathan was a bird, he was sure that he would fly away from his father—if he was a bird, his father could not find him. He could not be hurt.
Footsteps against a metal floor sounded, and Jonathan winced—he did not have a mother, friends, or anyone else who could have been passing by. There was only one person: his father, and he usually didn't come to his son wishing to wrap and arm around him and ask him how his day was.
"Jonathan," His father's voice cracked through the air, and Jonathan glared at the door, "Jonathan!" The clipping footsteps increased in volume, and Jonathan rose from where he sat on his bed.
"Do you spend all of your time in here?" Jonathan's father's voice came out as something bitter, and the boy only shrugged his shoulders in a display of casualty.
"I don't have very good company, so it seems as though there's nothing better to do but sit in here and watch metal rust." To prove his point, Jonathan dramatically rolled his eyes towards the white-metal wall and watched it with a faux fascination.
"You could try and focus on your studies, or figure out what the hell you want to do with your life. You have three years, Jonathan." His father's words had a caring denotation, but the look in his eyes and the bitter tone of his voice said otherwise.
"Oh, I have three years to sit back and let someone else decide what I do with my life? Fantastic. Because gee Dad, I want to be a lawyer, but they might make me into a—dare I say it—doctor." Jonathan's voice was dripping with sarcasm, and his father could easily see it—he never called him 'Dad' unless he was trying to make some sort of twisted joke. Imitating a boy who loved his father, perhaps.
"Figure out how you won't get fired from the perfect occupation for you because you decided to fuck around." Cursing was not a rare thing for his father—there was hardly a time when his father used less than a dozen curses in an argument—and was the person who taught Jonathan how to curse so profoundly.
"That won't be a problem—the only thing I need to worry about is how to not turn into you." Jonathan said nastily, his luminescent eyes narrowing. "But I suppose that it isn't too much of a hardship to try and keep from turning into an abusive asshole of a man with a dead wife and a son who wants you de—"
"ENOUGH," Jonathan's father's hand seized out and grasped Jonathan's shoulder, and he was confused for a moment as to why he didn't go for the face of stomach. He swung his son and released him after he gained enough momentum to fall back after he was released, and tripped over his feet.
The trip and the heavy push caused the light blonde boy to pinwheel into his bookshelf (something useless seeing as it only housed one book) and crack the glass shelves into both large and small jagged pieces. A small yell came from Jonathan's throat, and he stumbled to the floor laced with glass shards.
Jonathan winced as the shards of glass dug into his exposed skin—it was a bad time to be wearing shorts and a T-shirt—and drew inky blood from the skin that came in contact with the glass. Stupidly, he held out a hand to his father so that he could help him up, but he only gave a sadistic smile to his son and let the door closed.
"Fuck you too," Jonathan murmured, attempting to flip off the closed door and instead burying the shards of glass further in his hands. He let out another string of curses towards his father and searched for a spot not covered in glass so that he could help himself up, but the slivers of sharpness were scattered everywhere.
He leaned upwards to grasp one of the broken shelves that was still partially attached to the wall, but the larger shard of glass only came crashing down underneath his grip. Yet another expletive came from his mouth, and he finally pushed through the broken glass to push himself up and examine his cuts from the glass.
In school, Jonathan learned a hundred and one useless things, but none of them were how to treat wounds from glass—their utopia assumed that no one would get hurt as long as they followed its rules.
With his father, many of the rules changed. Jonathan was sure that he would enjoy the perfect world if not for his father (and the utter lack of choice), but he didn't think there was any other way to deal with it.
Gritting his teeth, Jonathan stripped off his clothes and delivered himself to the bathroom connected to his room. He slipped in the shower and turned on the faucet, automatically wincing—the shower was set to the 'perfect' temperature, something that felt to be burning his skin.
He sat on the floor of the shower and pulled his right foot into his lap, using his short fingernails to pull the glass out of his foot. When he finished plucking the shards from his foot, he moved to the other foot, then his hands, then the upper parts of his legs that came into contact with the glass shards. It was both a long and tedious process, and he did a sloppy job—there were still deeper shards of glass—but he managed to fish the worst of the glass from his body.
Jonathan's body was more filthy than it was before he showered—he was more focused on removing the glass than he was cleaning himself—and in result ended with badly tangled hair and patches of skin stained with his blood, but he didn't mind too much.
He tried to dry himself with the spongy towel his father provided him, but it felt like metal grating against his skin and prying open the glass. The feeling of the invisible glass rubbing against him only fueled his anger, and he pulled on underwear, jeans, and a hooded jacket in as angry of a fashion that he possibly could.
He pulled the jacket more tightly around him and winced—the material was made of advanced fiber to protect against heat and cold, but the only thing Jonathan felt was uncomfortable. He slipped into a pair of socks and sneakers (each step brought the glass farther and farther into his skin, but he could only think of getting away from his father) and started walking out the door, but he was quickly stopped by his father.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"On a walk. Maybe, fresh air will keep me from strangling you—or was that what you had planned for me tonight? Sorry for ruining your evening." Jonathan heard his father call after him, but the voice dissolved into the light wind as he slammed the door.
Jonathan shoved his hands in his pockets—though the jacket was uncomfortable, it was warm. As he walked, he looked down at the jacket, something molded to look stylish. To him, it looked like a grey triangle of discomfort and random design, but everyone else seemed to enjoy the 'ingenious' design, and nothing much else was available.
He may have been bitter, but even his jeans and shoes he hated—the pants were called jeans because they were loosely styles off of the denim clothes of the past, but the pants he wore felt like they were made of burlap and looked like they were made from black fiber. The shoes were flimsy, and he always thought that they were to keep people from running away from the society.
Jonathan kicked a white stone along the sidewalk, following the stone—he had no destination in mind, so following an inanimate object seemed like the better choice. It was a far cry from following a higher power, but it was something to help guide him.
After about thirty full minutes of simply kicking a rock around, his foot shot too far, and the ball scampered ten feet away from him. Jonathan growled—somehow, the rock rolling away from him made his bad mood worse, and by the time he reached the rock, he felt about ready to try and smash it (and fail, because one normally did not succeed at smashing rocks).
The rock was pinned under the foot of a shoe with a spike on the end, and Jonathan frowned—the shoes with the tall spike at the end were strange, and seemingly illogical—and Jonathan followed the shoe to a girl about his age.
She was pretty, clad in tight black pants and a black top with thin straps that looked much more comfortable than his jeans were. With the spiked contraptions on her feet, she was almost as tall as him, but she looked to be both more mature and more worldly than she was.
Her skin was extremely pale, and her hair was close to the color of ink. Her lips were painted red with something that looked like paint, and she was wearing a smirk on her lips, one not too different from his. With a slight movement of her foot, she rolled the rock back to him, and opened her mouth to speak.
"You have strange clothes," Jonathan commented, looking her up and down.
"Your clothes look uncomfortable." The girl replied, reaching over to tug on Jonathan's sleeve, "What the hell is this made of?"
"Do I look like I specialize in God-awful clothing? I don't know." Jonathan snapped, rolling his eyes at the raven-haired girl.
"You're in a bad mood, Blondie." She rolled her eyes, "Did you place second in your beauty pageant?"
Jonathan ran a hand through his blonde hair, looking to be almost defensive of his wavy hair, "Nah, I'm running away from home. Just your typical teenage drama—asshole father, tormented and breathtakingly handsome boy get into a fight, the boy runs off, the father has an epiphany, and they all get together and hug it out when it's over."
"Where are you running away to, Blondie?" The pale girl asked, twirling a lock of her inky, long hair on a single fingertip. "In your typical teenage drama, he runs to a lonely house in the woods, finds a girl who has had her face ripped off by her ex-boyfriend, and dies. Is that the sequel to your tale?"
"Are you the girl with an ex-boyfriend who wants to rip your face off?" Jonathan asked, an amused smile playing over his face. She began walking, and he followed—it was a better thing to follow than a rock.
"Shit, you must really be lost. What did the old man do?" The girl asked, waiting for the young man to walk in pace with her. She walked with an air of maturity though she was no more than thirteen as he was, and he found himself wondering where she found the elegance that she did.
"That's a bit personal—usually, I don't give out my darkest secrets until we've at least borrowed each other's clothes." Jonathan said, and the brunette girl rolled her eyes, giving him a hard look, "I've never seen you at the school. Are you from this society?"
"I'm not from a society." She said, and Jonathan gave her a strange look, "Have you ever heard of a rebel?"
The information was new to Jonathan, but he gave guessing a try, "You mean someone who goes against someone?"
"In a sort." She walked more quickly, and he was surprised as to how quickly she could walk with the spikes connected to her feet, "It's people who want the world to be the way it was before the war. It's people who admire the freedom of the past, and go against the societies to make our own people who follow the ways of the old years."
Jonathan had heard someone reference 'old years' before, but he hadn't a clue what they meant—he had never thought to ask, but he was already interested in whatever they were. But he wasn't an idiot, and could assume that the old years were the years before the war, and before they decided that the way to prevent future wars was to take away their freedom (and therefore, their determination to begin a war).
"Are people born into that way of life?" Jonathan asked, still walking after her. He was a few miles from home, but he kept walking—she was the kind of person who seemed like she knew where she was going, and by this point, he didn't give a damn about whether or nor his father knew where he was.
Additionally, he wanted to know more about what she was talking about, "I was born into the Rebellion, but there's recruits. There's people who recruit people—my brother being one—to join. Basically, they find people who want out of their shitty life, and they show them the allure of life with choices."
"Sounds pretty damn alluring," Jonathan offered the girl a smile, and her face seemed to visibly light up. He didn't know why she was smiling, but he decided to keep smiling so that he wouldn't seem stupid.
"You do?" When Jonathan shrugged his shoulders and nodded, she asked, "How does leaving your crappy father forever sound?"
"Sounds pretty damn alluring," Jonathan repeated, then paused. "Are you fucking around, or are you seriously asking me if I want to join . . . whatever you're trying to make me join?"
"As a heart attack." She said, and Jonathan gave her a strange look—the phrase made no sense to him, "Give me two hours, Blondie. I can sell you on it."
"Why do you care about selling me on this?" Jonathan asked.
"My big brother does it, Blondie. I've never tried, but I've always wanted to—I've just never met someone who was messed up enough to be sold." Her eyes—also inky—were hard, and he knew that she wasn't joking.
"Look, I don't even know your name. I don't know—"
"It's Izzy. And you don't need to know anything—you were willing to tell a complete stranger that you were 'running away from home'. I'm pretty sure you weren't planning on actually running away from Daddy, but you have a chance. And here, you'll never get a chance—or a choice—ever again." The wind blew in her face, and her inky hair was whipped around her. "Now, are you coming or not?"
"I'm coming."
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. december 3, 5606 .
After walking for ten more minutes and listening in on a strange call on an old phone, Jonathan heard a rolling sound in the distance, something soon followed by the sound of something blaring and Izzy's bright smile. The blonde boy looked over at the smiling girl, but she started running before he could open his mouth to ask what she was smiling about.
Her tall shoes clicked against the cement as she ran, but she was still surprisingly quick. Jonathan watched her run, taking a moment to wonder how she was sprinting so quickly. She glanced over her shoulder, but did not pause in her sprint, "Are you coming, Blondie?"
Jonathan took off running after her, and caught up in a few moments—there was not much of a reason to run in the society, but there were treadmills so that people could keep themselves thin. He usually hated the treadmills—they were too slow for the most part of the time, and they were made of metal fibers that made it easy to slip. When he slipped, the metal made the falls hard, and he often found the fall on the treadmill to be more painful than the launch off of the still-moving platform after he slipped.
When he caught up to her pace, he found himself smiling—it was more thrilling to run on the streets than it was to run on a mill of torture. She quickly sped up when he moved into her pace, and he peered around the corner, curious as to why she was so excited to get to where she was running.
A huge red thing veered around the corned, and Jonathan nearly tripped over his feet, "What is that?" Jonathan demanded, stopping when the vehicle slowed its pace. It rolled on wheels, similar to a train, and was shaped with a back to tow things around and a front to hold people in. An Asian man in the front was turning a wheel, and pushing a knob back and forth every so often.
"It's a pick-up truck," Izzy threw the door open before it fully stopped and swung herself in next to a boy who looked similar to her, "You machines are so sweet."
"Machines?" Jonathan repeated. Izzy shot her hand out of the truck and grabbed Jonathan's shoulder, pulling him towards the truck. He took the message moments after he was grabbed, and threw himself into the red truck.
"Machines. As in, what the society tries to form innocent people into." The man in the front seat elaborated, starting to drive. A lever pointed to a number that read '85' after about ten seconds, and Jonathan felt his body lurch forward. He swore, and the Asian man laughed (or rather, a boy—he was fifteen at the oldest, possibly the cause for his reckless driving) and looked back at Jonathan, "Suck it up, Machine."
"Stop calling me that." Jonathan snapped, and he saw the three people in the car trying to restrain a string of laughter. Jonathan rolled his eyes and watched as they rolled onto ground made of rocks and brown powder—possibly a dried form of the soil he usually saw—as they wheeled onto grounds that was completely unfamiliar to the blonde boy, "Where are we?"
"In between two societies, and going a little ways up. It's twenty miles, but with Bane driving, we'll get there in fourteen." Jonathan had trouble understanding her—the way she spoke was not too different from the way that she did, but the information that came from her was a bit too difficult for him to process so easily.
"Are we on a road?" Jonathan asked. He wasn't too sure how cars were supposed to get around—in societies, you were moved to where you were most needed, and you didn't need to go many places. When you wanted to go to the other end of your society, you took a train. When you needed to go less than three miles, you walked. With trains, there were less crashes, and therefore less deaths.
"I was hoping that the lack of tar and presence of dirt and rocks would answer that question, but no, we are not on a road." Izzy informed him, muttering something about pretty boys always being dumb ones. Jonathan was usually complimented by someone mentioning his physical appearance, but he was still in shock over the full of the experience.
Instead of engaging in a conversation with the three—they were busy talking about the leader of the society Jonathan was from (coincidentally both the largest and most powerful society), and some politics that Jonathan had heard under a good light a thousand times. They made his leader sound worse than he was ever came off to be, but they made surprisingly fair points in the argument. It mostly consisted of how much of an asshole he was, and how he was the worst of the appointed leaders, but Jonathan was tuning them out at that point.
Instead, he let his golden eyes trail out of the window and fixate on the passing ground underneath them. A hundred questions filled his mind—would he come back? Would he want to come back? Would he miss home?—but the answer to the most of them seemed to be a foggy haze.
But when he thought of the abuse that waited for him at home, he was half-decided.
Jonathan could easily imagine his father hitting his son simply for being out after their society's curfew, and he visibly winced simply thinking of his father's clenched fist connecting with his cheek.
Once, Jonathan pointed out that his father's fist was not curled in proper form, and told him that he should have had enough experience hitting people to know how to make a proper fist. He said it simply to get a rise of his father, but his father reacted badly, and pulled his belt from his jeans to instead lash Jonathan across the face. Jonathan always believed that he deserved it for speaking to his father that way, but he could not help but wonder what it would be like to live under a roof that was not made of fear.
Jonathan's weight was thrown forwards, and he felt his face nearly being slammed into the seat in front of his. Barely restraining himself from releasing another string of curses, he clutched the side of his seat and looked out of the window to see a man working something of a toll booth. Jonathan grinned—he knew what a toll booth was, and for once did not feel like an idiot—and watched as the Asian man said a few words to the pale man at the booth. He nodded, and a sheet of metal lifted to lead into something that looked like a canyon.
Again, something he knew, but only vaguely, and from geography. He wondered why it was in such a strange location—protection, maybe, but against what? His gold eyes lifted from the windows, and the car veered to a stop. Immediately, the three emptied from the truck, and Jonathan followed suit.
The canyon was filled with life—it was small, but Jonathan could count about seventy people out in the canyon. They watched Jonathan with some curiosity, and he avoided their gazes, "Where are we?"
"For me, it's home," Izzy said, a smile coming over her face. "I'll give you a tour."
Over the span of the next hour, Izzy walked Jonathan around the fields, homes, and entertainment of the canyon. He noticed that she did not refer to the others as people, but instead as rebels, and she spoke about the features of the canyon with an animated fascination.
The houses were made of scrap metal, but they were sturdy enough to survive through wind, rain, and storms. They were simple shards taken from the society's structures, but they were enough for these rebels to attempt to live off of. It wasn't much, but it was a way of living for them, and the looks in their eyes told Jonathan that they were comfortable with the way it was.
The canyon was large, and it seemed to be both a play-area for the small children and a training field for the young adults. There were not many people close to Jonathan's age—the children were less than seven years old, and other than Izzy, the blue-eyed man, and 'Bane', the teenagers were nearly in their twenties.
"We're hidden here, in a sense—out in the open, they could rope us in and cut off all of our resources. But they don't know. All they know is that there is a rebellion somewhere, and they want to find us." Izzy finally spoke after ten silent minutes of leading the blonde boy around. Jonathan was more interested in looking into the small caves inside of the canyon, but the bitterness in the young teen's words stopped him.
"Why?" Jonathan questioned.
"Because we're strong. We can't be controlled, and we want to be our own person. We want independence, our own mind, and they hate that. We came here so that we could think for ourselves, but they find independent thoughts as a threat to society. Only the officials and the leaders have their own thoughts, but even they can be controlled by a higher power."
"I'm not being controlled by anyone." Jonathan was quick to reply, but his father's face flashed behind his eyes, My father is an official. He can't be controlled, or calmed.
"You aren't sixteen." Izzy said, shrugging her pale shoulders elegantly. "Before Choosing Day, your mind is safe, but after? Something . . . something happens that prevents people from rebelling. None of us know what—all that we know is that no one who has gone through the ceremony has their own mind."
By this time, more than a few people had gathered around the blonde boy. The most of them were watching him simply because he was a new face, but he heard a few murmurs about his eyes, and wondered if they were curious or disgusted.
"Luke," Izzy called, and a man in his late twenties came from the parting crowd. He looked more rugged than the most of them, and had dark brown hair and scruff around his mouth. Jonathan had never seen someone with facial hair before—it was 'unclean'—but it made the man look interesting.
"How've you been, Izzy?" Luke nodded his head in greeting, but he seemed to be more focused on the blonde boy next to her. "Are you one of Isabelle's recruits?"
"I am," Jonathan crossed his arms over his chest, bringing his gaze to meet the taller man's stare. Luke seemed to take the movement as some form of confidence, and he nodded in approval. "I'm sure that I'm one of her more impressive recruits—perfect specimen are difficult to find."
"I like this one, Izzy," Luke laughed deeply, but his laugh turned to a frown, "But you should not have brought him here."
"Luke, I—"
"You know how it goes, Isabelle. You find the ones who seem tormented, and you bring them here when they're sure of staying—not before. This one could expose us. If he doesn't want to stay, he could tear the rebellion apart, and we would have to abandon this place. We know nothing more than his face, and I'm doubting that you even got his name."
"My name is Jace," The blonde boy spoke in a commanding tone, and the eyes in the room quickly settled on him. The name was unfamiliar on his tongue, but he liked it, and knew he could not go by Jonathan anymore. Jonathan was the weak boy. The boy who had no mind. The boy who let his father beat him every night without fail. "And I'm staying."
I am no longer Jonathan Wayland.
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Question of the day:
What is your favorite song? I deleted all of my music off my phone (my friend messed it up with her music) and need new songs. / Right now, my favorites are Dance, Dance by Fall Out Boy and Welcome To The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance.
feed my review box c: