Chapter Playlist:
Driving- The One That Got Away by Katy Perry
Aftermath- Cancer by My Chemical Romance
Waking up- Afraid by The Neighbourhood
Drawing/Tattoos- Video Games by Lana Del Rey
There were tears smearing her vision, just like the splatters of rain on the windshield of her car. She was so distraught, not wanting to listen to other's as she had ran out of her car. Almost as loud as the sound of her sobs was the sound of her car speeding up, nearly soaring through the air when she hit a bump. Her phone was ringing nonstop, the contact picture changing from her mom, Simon, Isabelle, and then finally Jace. But she couldn't answer him.
If she squinted through the fog of precipitation, she could make out the edges of cliffs and the future sharp turns she'd have to make as she drove at a dangerous speed. The engagement ring that was usually on her left hand was now tossed somewhere on the porch of her and Jace's house. She didn't want to return to that porch, to that place, to him.
She sped up along the cliffside, the speed increase making itself known through a continuous thunder that outlasted the storm above her. Her hair was wet, sticking to her forehead, making her even angrier as she sped her way through california. She knew moving here was a mistake. Moving here with Jace was a mistake. It was too soon, they were too young.
It was impossible when the odds were always being stacked against them.
"Shut up!" She screamed at the ringing phone that was taunting her each time someone checked on her safety. But it wouldn't stop, not until she had the nerve to answer one of the many people that were calling her. She didn't want to talk to any of them, especially him.
She looked in the rearview mirror, looking to see if any cars were behind her. The road was clear, empty, the only thing keeping her company was the ringing of her phone and the roars of the car engine. The mirror reflected what she already knew to be true. Her eyes were red, glazed with tears. Her mascara was smeared beyond repair, and nose was red with the constant rub it got from her hoodie's sleeve. And as her eyes roamed, the landed on the edging of a picture, but she didn't have to pull it out to know which one it was.
But she did it anyway.
There they were, laying on the grass, Jace holding up that stupid camera he'd bought for her once they'd moved in together. This was one of their first photos together, the first one being at Simon's gig at a cafe. His hair was longer in this one, and she was glad that he'd let it grow out to its wonderful waves. He had his eyes focused on the reflection of them in the camera's lense, but she was looking at the clouds, probably wanting to sketch something stupid. Clary wondered if she could have that again. That love, but it was foolish to think it would come easy. That the world would somehow let them be together.
Because, in a way, they weren't.
The arguments they had gotten in were little compared to the catastrophe that was this one. No, this wasn't an argument, this was a full on fight. Their previous yelling was a mere whisper to her screaming and his roars as they snarled harsh, cruel words at each other. She could feel herself grow dizzy with anger as she snapped at him without breaths in between. Jace had probably pulled hair out by the ends as he struggled to remain calm, to remain in control. But like all their quarrels, it was about the wedding that had them going at each other. If they were too young. Whether or not they were ready. If she was ready. It scared her to know that for him, she was all there was to life. That her, this small, average looking girl, was enough to satisfy him for however much longer he lived. It was fucking terrifying. And this was why she was driving on a cliff side going what would surpass eighty easily.
She couldn't stop finding little things to pull them apart: what everyone else was saying, if he wanted children, money. Anything that stood in her way was what she threw at Jace. And this time, he fought back, calling her a coward, saying that she was just too scared to admit that love was terrifying to her. That she didn't love him.
Clary didn't even think when she grabbed a plate and threw at him, the fine china scattering across their kitchen tile. He tore her paintings from the wall, accidentally ripping a letter that was tacked to the wall that her father had written her before she was ever born, and before he died.
In an instant, she turned her feet and was storming outside the house. Jace was following her, and in an attempt to hurt him, she threw the ring across the grass that was slick with rain, and her house key. She didn't know why she threw that one, but it seemed right at the moment.
Now, as he called her over and over again, probably readying his string of apologies and a fear of losing her. Even now, as she drove further and further away at a speed that was going faster and faster, she wanted to go home to him. To fix whatever it was that made them argue. To find that innocent passion that had brought them together. That made them see the promise of happiness in each other.
And the next time he called, she answered.
"Clary! Don't hang up!" He said in a voice that was thick with worry and frustration. If her tears weren't producing rapidly before, they sure were now, nearly blinding her as the brimmed her eyes and landed on her jean-covered thighs. "Fuck, just come home, Baby." He sobbed.
"You were right, Jace." She croaked nearly missing a sharp turn on the highway.
"No, I'm wrong. I'm so wrong, Baby. Just come back to me and we can fix this, we can fix us." She began shaking her head, her fingers going numb at the steering wheel that was needed to be constantly turned without crashing into the many mountains around her.
"What can we fix, Jace? How can we fix us when we're both so broken?" She asked him.
"I don't care! Don't say things like that when we both know we can't stay away from each other!" He growled. "Please tell me you're not driving, Baby." Jace asked worriedly.
"I needed to think." She reasoned. From their years of childhood friendship, he'd known her to always reach higher ground in times of distress.
"Just pull over and tell me where you are, I'll come and get you." He instructed. Her fear climaxed, fear of confrontation. Her breathing increased and all she could do was press the gas pedal until she couldn't hear anything but the sound of the engine deafening her. It was a constant thrum in her ear, reminding her of the need to get away from everything. Including him.
There was something in the road, and had it not been raining would she have recognized it to be the branch of a tree that grew far above her on the mountains. But by the time she saw it, actually saw it, she panicked, stepping on the breaks.
Her mother had always warned her of just hitting something would be better than using her breaks. Would she have listened to her would her car not have nose-dived into the road, doing a couple of cartwheels before finally turning on its side to roll for what felt like forever; her head smacking every surface imaginable. The seatbelt gripped her so tightly that her shoulder popped louder than the sound of her car breaking against the road. Clary tucked her head in, moving into the fetal position as the car rolled endlessly. The screech of metal on pavement was so painful she felt as if her ears would bleed more than her head wounds.
Then it stopped, the time on her car radio showing that not even a minute had passed since the car started turning.
"Clary?! Answer me, Baby! Are you okay?" Jace! She gasped loudly, feeling her face being pressed to the rough asphalt of the road. Each movement her face made would make the road tear at her cheek. Her palms were bloody, bruised even, and she persevered as she tried to push herself off of the ground. The wrecked car was on top of her, like some sort of metal tent; her being stuck inside as it rested upside down. Each ragged breath she inhaled would crack her ribs as they extended to allow in oxygen.
But she was alive.
"Jace?" She croaked, blood pooling from her throat and into her mouth. Her head felt dizzy, and then there was a moment of pause, where she wondered how she'd gotten there. Clary shook her head, hoping to release the confusion.
"Baby? Please, tell me you're okay?" He sounded like he was crying. He as in… Jace. Jace! She needed to get help, to have someone fix however many injuries she had in her head. Besides the possibility of broken ribs and a concussion, she was fine.
"I'm okay, Jace." She shouted to her phone that was a few feet away from her. She reached a broken nail out to it, but it was out of her reach.
"Where are...?! I'm...way!" He shouted. Clary grunted as she tried to lift herself once again. There was something blocking out the entirety of his sentence, and one she realized what it was, she panicked; for it wasn't the occasional thunder of the storm above, but of the thunder of an engine… heading her way.
She knew that the car wouldn't see her, and that made her so calm for someone who was going to find out if there was a God. If her father would be waiting for her on the other side, where everyone who died was supposed to be.
"Jace… I love you." She said, a sob being crushed between her sentence.
"Don't say that! I'm going to find you and then we're going to fix this, we're going to fix us!" He cried out. She could see the flash of headlights bearing into her skull, and she wondered if this what death was all about: fearlessness. This sudden realization that all the little problems in a person's life were meaningless if there wasn't a life to live, a person to live them.
"I love you so much." She continued, having to say her words a little louder to be heard over the purr of a speeding car.
"NO!" He roared into the phone, probably hearing what she was too: the car that would end their conversation. Her eyes lazily moved over to something trapped between the tire of her car.
The photo.
She focused on his smile, on the sparkle in her eyes as she dreamt of the endless possibilities of their future. Had she known that this was it, she'd be screaming into the camera.
And she did scream, sitting up in her hospital bed crying out in fear of the ghost of the oncoming truck. The machine that was monitoring her heart went wild, alerting the staff that she was having some sort of panic attack. She didn't know how she got the hospital so quickly, why she was surrounded in darkness without the assistance of the nurses to heal her… wounds?
She lifted her hands up, seeing the faint scars of when the car had rammed into hers, sending her skin grinding against the road until there was nothing but blood to smear on the wet pavement.
There wasn't any pain in her ribs when she took in air, and her hair was no longer wet. But her heart was racing, faster than any car could go. As the machine got louder and louder and her screams reached a volume just as high, doctors and nurses alike stormed into her room and held her arms.
"Let go of me!" She growled, tugging her arms away from the grip of the nurses, but the held on to her, whispering calm words into her ear as she fought for her freedom. She was so, so confused, wondering why they all knew her name, or how they managed to know what she was going through.
"It's the amnesia, she's having a panic attack!" The nurse yelled, holding onto Clary as if she were a child having a seizure: scared that Clary would do something to hurt herself. Someone pushed down on her chest, adding weight to her screams and tinging her cheeks red with effort.
"What's going on? What are you doing?!" Clary screamed, thrashing around as the doctors wrote down notes. "Jace!" Clary screamed out to the ceiling, wondering if he was there to hear her call out for him. If he even cared after their argument. "Jace! Jace where are you?" She sobbed, her struggle losing its power. The nurses gave her pitiful frowns as the straightened her arms out.
"Jace!" Clary screamed again, stifling a few sobs in the process. "Jace, I'm waiting for you! Don't leave me! Jace, I'm right here! I'm right… here?" Confusion sprouted in her head, making her question why she was speaking so loudly. "I'm right here." She said in a more subdued tone. The nurses and doctors stopped their whispering and just stared at her. Then she remembered that Jace wasn't there and the screaming began again, along with her strength.
"Jace!" Her voice sounded hoarse, tired.
"Clary, you need to calm down." A nurse hushed. Clary shook her head, dismissing the thought as she called out for her true love.
"J-Jace!" Clary shouted, her the confusion muddling her thoughts and making her stutter. She could feel herself caving in, another persona taking her place. Her skin tightened, her head throbbed, and all she could think about was the screeching of tires as the slammed into her wrecked car. And then she began to think of waking up, of the strangers that were waiting for her. No, they weren't strangers, they were her parents and friends, and the man she loved, loved more than breathing in each weighted breath in this confusing world that had become her reality.
"I don't want to leave!" She wailed, closing her eyes and feeling pressure on her head.
"Clary, you're not leaving. You're right here, with us, in the hospital." A doctor reassured, but his voice sounded distant, a whisper as it reached her. She felt so far away and yet so close as they spoke to her, with her body quaking in the struggle it was putting forth.
"Please, I'll do anything, just-just don't make me leave…" Clary sighed, her brows furrowing in concentration as she spoke each heavy word.
"No one's making you leave, Clary." A nurse worried, and Clary became less aware of their hands on her arms, on the pressure each fingertip exerted. On how cold they felt to her.
"Jace," she hiccuped. Fear blossomed in her chest, and she was back to raising her voice again, scared that if they didn't hear her, they'd lose her. She'd get lost again. "Jace! J-Jace! Ja-ace." She sucked in a breath of air, pulling in energy, or hoping to regain the amount she was losing. Someone stormed into the room, not someone.
It was him.
Dressed in a white shirt and jeans that were wrinkled, shocking her perfectionist view of him. He looked so much more exhausted than the last time she'd seen him. Or, argued with him. His hair wasn't that different in length, and she wondered why, why it grew so fast. His arms were tucked in a leather jacket, the same one he'd let her wear whenever it rained and she was foolish enough to go without a jacket. Images of it around her small shoulder played into view, the colors more brighter, more louder, as if she were watching it all from a cheap camera.
A doctor pushed him back, saying something that he didn't want to hear, or would never want to hear. He pushed the man aside, struggling to get to her. Clary stretched her arms out to him, wanting him to hold her. To protect her from the racing car that would eventually hit her.
"Clary!" There, he said it, her name, and yet she was slow to process it, as if he'd asked it through a styrofoam wall. The nurses shouted something at him, telling him to leave the room, but Clary couldn't hear it too well over her blood racing and memories hitting her repeatedly.
"Don't let them take me away!" She sobbed to him, and his struggle pursued, security holding his arms tightly as he spat words of release at them. The security guard tugged on his leather jacket, the sleeve pulling back along with the neckline of his white shirt to show his shoulder, and a strange, white ink tattoo that was placed there. It made her only tear up, wishing he was closer to her. That's our sign, she remembered, shaking away the confusion with little success.
"Jayssss! Juh….jay…"
Why were the lights on?
And more importantly, why were there people looking at her like that? Their faces so contorted in fright as if she were a wild animal that fought submission.
"Clary!" Someone shouted, startling her. She was unresponsive for a bit, waiting for the someone to answer the call until she came to realization.
"Oh, right, that's my name." She said quietly. Those around her sighed with frustration, and the nurses let go of her. Tentatively, she sat up in her bed, eyeing everyone. She recognized someone in the room. He was the man that was there when she woke up… Jay? Jace. That was his name. He was the one that had said her name.
"Clary?" He called again, his voice much more strained and his eyes more reflective.
"What's going on?" She asked clearly, making sure he'd hear her.
"You- you don't remember?" Jace asked with disbelief. She looked around, seeing if it were just her that appeared not to recall anything but a blank space in her memory. She stared at him, at his lost eyes that bore deep into her persona… and she could not feel anything back. "No!" He shouted, scaring her to press her back into the uprighted pillow of the bed. "No! You-you love me! You can't do this to me! I need you!" The strong men at his sides were pulling on his arms as he slid his feet on the white tile in an effort to reach her. "Clary-" he began.
"Stop calling me that!" She shouted, startling them more than the loudest of his yells ever could. They looked at her, wary of what she'd do or say next; but she was just as surprised of her outburst as they were. "I'm not her! I'm not that woman! She isn't me, and I... I will never be her! So stop treating me like I'll remember whatever it is that we did, because I can't! And I never will!" She snapped, pulling at her hair angrily. The brightness in the man's golden eyes dimmed to a dark, hopeless shadow.
The men at his sides released him, and he gladly pivoted and exited the room without a second to spare. She was aware of the heart monitor beeping away, the clock ticking, and the sound of a pen tracing along paper. She was so confused as to why this had happened, but she didn't dare show it, didn't show that part of her that was angry at herself for not knowing the slightest bit about the person she was occupying.
She was blanked canvas, a shape to a beautiful image, but without the paint, was unrecognizable. Was nothing, just the start of something that wouldn't live up to the masterpiece it used to be.
"Can I- I want to sleep." She swallowed, and the doctors nodded to her, shutting off the lights and leaving her alone with just her thoughts and void memory. Next to her bed was a pen and paper, and she figured that she'd put some use to it. The twitching of her fingers urged her to reach for it, and so she did, satisfied by how her fingers wrapped almost perfectly around the average pen. As if it were a substitute for something that she'd much rather prefer.
With only the luminescent glow of moonlight, her hand began to move. She didn't know what it was that she was drawing, only allowing the pen to mark the clean sheet of paper with her selfish urge to create. To create, whatever it was that she was drawing. It looked like an animal of some sort, with its predatory stare that she drew first. Eyes that opened the windows to the soul and yet refused to do the same. Thick curls reached out towards the intimidating eyes, but never touching them…
"Don't cut your hair."
"Why"? He smiled.
"What else will I pull on?" She said, kissing him softly before the demeanor turned passionate.
Her hand slid across the paper, ruining whatever unconscious image was being formed. Looking down, it was a man, with is eyebrows furrowed as if he were thinking, but at her, and his lips were full. Lashes cascaded shadows on his prominent cheekbones, and his jaw was the crevice of his testosterone. There were specks spreading out across it; stubble. The man looked playful in the picture, almost beckoning her to join him in whatever land he existed in.
Her fingertip slid down his chin, somehow knowing what the real thing would feel like. What he felt like. But there was so much more to him, so much more to his sexy smile and intimidating stare. Yet, she couldn't say what it was that she felt, only that it increased her heart rate. Made her stomach flip oddly inside of her.
Some part of her could feel the man, could feel his gaze on her, but another part was just as confused, wondering why she felt such a thing for a simple meandering of ink from a cheap hospital pen.
Crumbling up the paper, she tossed it in the bin next to her bed and laid down. Her eyes, however, did not shut. Instead, they stared up at the ceiling, tracing more pictures with just her eyes. There was image that kept repeating in her head, over and over again until she could almost look away and still see it in the same spot.
It's lines were simple, and yet so confusing to those who didn't understand the meaning. And, she saw it clear, it speaking to her. The image was laced with loyalty and… love? As if she knew what that felt like.
Because you do.
She was almost frightened by the voice, not hearing it for so long that she assumed it was gone. It sounded tired, worn and raspy as it chided her with sarcasm clear in its feminine tone. She wanted to shout back at it, the only thing stopping her was the cold hands of the nurses holding her down as if she were a mad woman.
She pulled back the sleeve of her hospital gown, gasping at the star-shaped mark there. It was the same one that she kept repeating in her head, except instead of being as dark as she'd imagined it, it was white, pure. It was a tattoo of some sort, and she was mortified that it was only their because of some meaning she couldn't remember, and now it would always be there. A chilling reminder of how she was no longer that same girl who would lay down on the grass with her boyfriend and take pictures.
No, not the same girl at all.
AU: Like I said, lengthy chapters. At least for what I normally write.
Instead of them sharing the same birthmark, I opted for matching tattoos.
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