"Robbers" is a completely beautiful song written by a certain band thay goes by the name of "the 1975". The song is based on the story of Bonnie and Clyde and the music video is really fucking hot as badass. So please PLEASE listen to the song either before or while you read this. This is my first one-shot so it may suck. You have been warned.
She had a face straight out of a magazine.
Absolutely, stunningly, undeniably beautiful. Defined cheekbones. Pink mouth. Stormy green eyes, almost dark enough to be mistaken as black irises.
Her hair was flaming red, yet it always seemed to change color. Sometimes it would be an alluring, dark auburn shade. Sometimes it would be a red so fluorescent it almost seemed orange. Her luxe lashes and sharp eyebrows were of the same color.
Her face was pretty, even when she was screaming at him.
They were fighting. Again.
He was outrageously angry with her, and he rebounded every single defiling insult that she shot at him, firing his own profane collection of selected words back at her. Each abusive remark stung like hell, and by now he was sure his face had grown as red as her stupid hair. But he couldn't bring himself to stop arguing with her, because he knew for a fact that she was wrong, and that he was right. That she was being unfair.
Though, frankly, he wasn't being very fair either.
They'd never worked out very well.
All morals of being "the bigger person" had been chucked out the window of his grungy flat in the midst of Manhattan.
She was wrong.
He was right.
Why did she have to be so stubborn? So unreasonable? So idiotic? So infuriating?
He didn't enjoy this banter. He knew that there were other couples who thought that fiery bantering was cute and endearing, even entertaining and funny.
But the truth of the matter was that fighting relentlessly, mercilessly with the only one person you've ever loved in your entire life sucked more than anything in the world.
It was like there was no way to escape it, because no matter what they did - no matter if they signed up for couple-counseling sessions or researched methods depending on physiological therapy, they would forever and always, simply clash.
He and Clary had always clashed. They clashed terribly, in the worst ways possible.
He often liked to think of it in the terms that she would've evaluated it with - with art.
In a romantic relationship, each half of the couple would be their own color.
For Simon and Isabelle, Isabelle was red, Simon was yellow.
Red and yellow made orange.
Alec was blue, and Magnus was purple.
Blue and purple just made more purple.
Clary was a million different colors. Definitely a lot of red, but also a large portion of yellow, with sections of blue and flecks of green and purple scattered everywhere with the occasional shade of teal or crimson.
Jace, well, he didn't know what color he was. But all he knew was that when his color mixed with her's, they just made an ugly, unsure shade that was not in existence, and wasn't for a reason. It would always turn out differently, and it would never just stick with just one simple ugly color. Sometimes black. Sometimes dark brown. Sometimes a color so disgustingly revolting to the eyes that it could not be given its own name.
He was angry with her. So angry. Not only for whatever stupid thing that she or he had done, or the fact that she would not cease to blame every single little unfortunate incident that happened on this planet on him, but because he was so annoyed with the fact that they would never work. They couldn't.
But God only knows that he'll never leave her.
He watches as the tears run down from her bloodshot eyes. He sees the tortured stare in those emeralds, melding unwillingly with his gold. Her expression reflects his current state of extreme annoyance and utter frustration, though he sees something smaller under that mask. Beneath her layered make-up and the guard she keeps up around anyone who is willing to love her. She's tired, and she's finally had enough.
And he can see, suddenly, so clearly, that her balaclava is starting to chafe.
She purses her lips, the way she does when she's stressed and uncomfortable.
Their yelling stops when she finally snaps.
She's broken and cracked many times, from when he forgets to catch her and leaves her to fall on her own.
But this time, she breaks. Straight through the bone, directly to the heart.
"I'm done."
"What do you mean you're done?"
"Can you not fucking see that this relationship-" she gestures between them frantically, her hand motions moving rapidly through the air, and he catches that her nails are painted dark blue, "is parasitic?!"
He makes a move towards her, but she just steps back. His eyes follow her as she quickly begins to dart around his flat, taking her paintbrushes and books out of his cabinets and drawers and stuffing whatever will fit into her Kate Spade purse, continuing to speak in a desperate, rushed tone.
"You know how they say, 'If you love someone, set them free'? Jace, we can't do that. We can't just break up and 'set this free' because this thing between us will still be floating around in the air like some stupid goddamn fly that won't leave us alone no matter how many times we swat it away and it'll just keep coming back to us."
"We're experiencing a major crisis in our romantic relationship and you decide to talk about flies?"
She ignores him and continues, "The only way to stop this fly from bothering us is to kill it. We need to kill this. I need to kill this. Kill off all means of contact, kill off everything. Never to be awoken again. The dead can never return. That's what we need."
He catches her as she rushes past him to reach her dishware in the kitchen. He pulls her back to him, roughly, knocking the air out of her lungs.
She's panting as she presses her forehead into his leather-clad shoulder. He leans down, to whisper into her ear, and his senses are suddenly clouded with the overpowering scent of her. She smells like paint and vanilla and black coffee (like her soul) and he even smells some of his own cologne that had rubbed off on her earlier that day.
"Stay," his lips brush her ear as he repeats the word, "Stay. Stay"
She speaks into his shoulder, her voice coming out muffled and slurred, "I'll give you one more time. We'll give us one more fight."
"And then we're done."
She nods, "Yes."
"We say that every time."
"Yeah, I know."
"Clary," he breaths, "how would you know if ending this is the solution? How will we know if breaking up is either right or wrong? If you never shoot, you'll never know. If it's right, it'll still hurt. If it's wrong, it'll still hurt. Whether right or wrong, it still hurts either way."
She sighs, "How do you know how that pain will compare to this pain? I'm sick of taking risks."
"We're still trying, Clary. Risks are inevitable."
He releases his grip to look at her.
She had a pretty kind of sad face.
She was miserably beautiful, her expression beautifully miserable.
"You'll stay?"
"I'll stay."
But eventually, in the end, they fall apart.
Reality began to police them and soon enough they were arrested for their felonies. You could only fight so much before love began to rot away.
Sometimes love just wasn't enough.
It didn't matter that she had every single tattoo inked on his body memorized perfectly, the designs etched into the back of her mind, or that he could go on for hours and hours describing the wonders of her deep green eyes.
Her walls were too thick. The more he grew to love her, the more guarded she became, until eventually she couldn't hear him at all and it just became unbearable for him.
He still would've done absolutely anything for her.
If she had been able to take off her mask, she would've found that everything had gone wrong. She would've been able to see what she was doing. That he loved her passionately, relentlessly more than anything in the world.
No one was the same afterwards.
It was almost like they were dead.
Just like that "stupid, goddamn fly".
Though, every once in a while, the happy memories would come in flashes. Like the feeling you get when you drive past your old school. The memories would come flooding back in such brightness and vibrancy that you couldn't help but grin to yourself. Those moments when they were not battling. Those moments when their armor fell. Those sweet kisses and buttery movie nights. How he would casually sling his arm around her and how she would immediately lean into his figure. Black coffee and tattoos and red hair and gold eyes and everything would seem okay for a moment. The period of time in which they were together was like an era to them. They could recognize a certain scent or a specific scenery in the City that would awaken the dead trails of their love.
However, the dead can be awoken.
She's hardened him. She's taught him her ways. She's robbed him of his own form of innocence. He used to believe in true love.
Now he's learned to never trust anyone. Now his walls were thick. Now he was guarded, just like her.
Never the less, she still thought he looked dashing at Simon and Isabelle's wedding. He was best man and she was the maid of honor. The suit showed the sturdy plane of his shoulders and the tie just seemed so endearing on him and she suddenly really wanted to just kiss him. To tangle her hands into his blonde hair and to smear her red lipstick all over his stupid face. Her heart ached as she watched him. Unlike her, he seemed to be paying attention to Isabelle as she walked down the aisle and beamed at an ecstatic Simon, but Clary could spot that Jace was also watching her, out of the very corner of his eye.
She could tell that she had changed him. In the bad way. His jaw seemed more set, as if he was always on edge. His eyebrows almost always seemed furrowed in deep concentration. She worried.
They met at the top of the aisle when it was their turn to follow Isabelle. They looped their arms, as they were supposed to.
They touched for the first time in two years.
She flashed him a grin, because she really missed seeing that smile on his face, with that one chipped tooth that served as the only visible piece of evidence that he was not a Veela (she loved her Harry Potter references).
It worked. He smiled back in surprise and his entire face lit up and she felt her heart flutter and drop to her stomach.
"Like my suit?"
"Love it," she winked at him, "you look so cool."