Hello beautiful people! So it's another lovely spring day in the western US and instead of going outside and running like I should, I'm updating my fanfics. Isn't that just peachy? In other news, I made the legendary Buffrito from John Green's "Looking For Alaska" today and I cried a little. I also woke up at noon and my brother was playing Jack Johnson's "Banana Pancakes", so I made those too. How I'm not 1000 pounds absolutely beats me. Anyways, here's another chapter of "Project Golden Boy" which will provide some more backstory, although not at all complete, and a shocking twist of events.
Disclaimer: I don't own TMI, or Jace Herondale (sobs violently)
Chapter Three
Oh Shit.
The words resounded in Clary's mind as she saw Jace in the doorway, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, staring at the situation unfolding before him.
She threw a quick glance to the Lightwood siblings, urging them to take care of the demon, who was still sputtering crap about Valentine and the pits of hell, while Clary salvaged the Project.
She grabbed Jace's wrist and yanked him into a different storage room, away from the demon-slaughtering occurring in the next one over.
Closing the door, she examined the Golden Boy's expression. He obviously possessed the Sight, from the shell-shocked expression he donned on his face.
"You know what you really saw, Jace, so don't even try to claim the thing tied up was a human." Clary stated, narrowing her eyes. Ichor was crusting on the edges of her cardigan's sleeve, up she ignored it. Worse things have happened.
"What did she mean about your father?" Jace asked, words tumbling out of his mouth.
Of all the things the pretty little boy could have asked, he chose that? Clary let out a mixture between a groan and a chuckle. Mundanes.
Although, he wasn't a mundane, wasn't he? He was purebred Nephilim, from a long line of respectable Shadowhunters, just like Clary. Not counting her father, of course.
"Just go home Jace, and for your own sanity, don't tell Stephen and Celine what happened here tonight." Clary sighed, placing her face in her palms.
What she didn't know was that Jace's golden eyes were trained directly on her right hand, where the Sight rune was fully on display.
It was like the murky curtain covering the world was lifted from Jace Herondale's eyes.
He could now clearly remember the girl's eyes, unnaturally bright, like anti-freeze. He could see the black marking traced upon Clary's skin.
And he could definitely see the tormented look etched upon the pretty redhead's face.
Something else hit him.
"How do you know my parent's names?" Jace asked, narrowing his eyes at Clary.
"Let it go, Herondale. Please, just let it go. Forget what you saw tonight, and go home." Clary whispered, before stalking back into the club.
How had his date with a seemingly perfect girl take such an insane turn? What the hell had just happened?
He didn't know much, but if he knew one thing, it was that he was certainly not going to let tonight go.
"By the Angel, Clary! For someone who can create new runes out of thin air, you couldn't think up a simple memory swiping one?" Screeched Isabelle, frantically running her fingers through her raven hair.
Simon and Jace had both disappeared, and their cover was blown with the latter. This is what Mayrse Lightwood would call "a disaster of Raziel proportions."
In other words, they were royally screwed.
"What are the chances the kid will just forget about it?" Alec asked as they were riding the subway back to the Institute. Yes, feared demon-hunters rode subways too.
Clary snorted. Knowing the Golden Boy, he'd be too stubborn to heed Clary's warning. It would be much simpler for him if he did, but when was any situation in Clary's life ever simple?
"He's even more stubborn than Isabelle, Alec. We're really in for it this time." They all murmured their choice of curse words, praying Mayrse would find a way to salvage their project before it was too late.
As it turns out, Mayrse did have a few opinions on the matter, and no, none of them were very savory towards the teenagers.
"I entrust you two with one simple task- to befriend Jonathan Herondale and het him to trust you, and you ruin it within a week?" She shouted in a very Isabelle like fashion. Like mother, like daughter. Clary scuffed her brown boots against the hard mosaic floor of the library, eyes cast downwards as her adoptive mother scolded them. She felt guilty, but not because she failed the Clave.
She could honestly care less about their big plans for Jace. She just wondered if he was okay.
The more she thought about it, the more she realized the similarities between her and Jace. They were both experiments, and both grew up in the mundane world.
A realization dawned upon Clary, and she suddenly knew what she needed to do to right this, and maybe gain insight into the mind of Valentine Morgenstern, a topic Mayrse would never talk indulge her in.
She needed to talk to Celine and Stephen Herondale.
With images whirling around in his mind, Jace almost ran face first into his apartment's front door.
He kicked aside the welcome mat to retrieve the hidden key underneath it. His parent's were so cliché. It was like everything they did came out of a movie.
He barely noticed a few of the living room lights were on, and a figure was perched on one of the armchairs. His thoughts were too disturbing.
"Jace, it's nearly midnight. Why are you home so late?" His mother scolded him, breaking Jace out of his reverie. Her blonde hair was tied up, and she had been reading a book, obviously worried for her only son's safety.
It took everything Jace had not to break down and cry.
Instead, he slumped down on the floor beside his mother's chair and allowed her to stroke his hair like she did when he was little. When he looked up, he froze.
There were black marking, just like Clary's, on her right hand and arms. The one shaped like an eye seemed to bore into his soul.
Jace jumped back, flinching away from his mother's touch. He must've been going insane.
Celine glanced down at her arms, noticing her marks, and sighed.
"I'm surprised it took this long for it to wear off." She said simply, offering no other explanation.
"What are you talking about?" Jace questioned, wondering why nothing in his once simple life made sense anymore.
"I was always against it, but your father insisted you couldn't know the truth. It would only make it easier for him to find you." Celine continued to ramble, despite her son's state of perplexity.
"By the Angel. I should probably start at the beginning." Celine stated, using that strange expression she and Stephen sometime's slipped into conversation. He could have sworn he heard Clary and Isabelle use it once or twice, also.
Not waiting for Jace's response, Celine launched into her tale.
"We were young, Jace, and impressionable. I was only 16 when I was recruited, when most others were 18 and nearly done with their schooling. The country where your father and I grew up, Idris, is a beautiful place. You would have loved it. It's in a small nook between Germany and France. Most mundanes believe nothing is there, besides Switzerland, but it's there, with its rolling hills and glistening sunsets. I moved there when I was 15 from Paris to study at the Shadowhunter Academy. I'm a Shadowhunter, as is your father, as are you. We're descended from the Angels, baby, and it's our mandate to protect the mundanes. A mandate your father and I have broken for the past 17 years. Anyways, I chose to move to Idris because of my father. He was an alcoholic, and very abusive, so I ran. I was naïve when I met a man named Valentine Morgenstern. He was charismatic, and kind. Everything I wanted in a new friend, so when he offered me a place in his little clique called "The Circle", how could I refuse? I met your father there, along with many others that I came to call my friends. Unfortunately for me, Stephen was already married to a lovely woman named Amatis Graymark, the sister of Valentine's best friend. I hid away my feelings for Stephen, until one day, Lucian and Amatis were thrown out of the Circle. I didn't question it when Stephen was ordered by Valentine to wed me. I embraced it, because it would make him happy. All we ever wanted to do was make him happy. All except Valentine's own wife, Jocelyn Fairchild. She was beautiful, with long scarlet hair and piercing green eyes that always shone with defiance. We became close friends, Jocelyn and I, once I was pregnant, and she had an infant son. We flitted around the Shadowhunter politics our husbands were so caught up in, and only once voiced how truly unhappy she was. How she was scared of Valentine, and how she missed Lucian Graymark. I was only 17, confused on how anyone could find Valentine scary. Yes, he spoke of inane ideals, of overthrowing the Clave and wiping out Downworlders, but I was happy with Stephen, and we had a baby on the way. Valentine gave me supplements during pregnancy, which I gratefully took, despite the objections in Jocelyn's eyes. I know now why she could not voice her discontent, why she could not warn me. Valentine was always watching. The Circle was ready to attempt to overthrow the Clave, and Stephen and I were already questioning our loyalty. Downworlders are people just as much as Shadowhunters, so why must they all die? Valentine was plotting to slaughter them all, right in the capital of Idris. Jocelyn came to us, explaining what Valentine did to her first-born, and how she needed to leave before he did the same to her second child. She and Lucian Graymark plotting against Valentine, arming the Clave and the Downworld, giving them a fair chance against the ruthless Circle. It worked, but many of our friends were killed. We were gone by that point, but we heard the gossip spread like wildfire. Valentine had manipulated them all into fighting for him, while he was busy murdering his family instead. We moved to New York, pledging never to have anything to do with the Shadowhunters ever again. We would raise you as a mundane, a normal boy, with no speak of Vampires, Faeries, Werewolves, Warlocks, or Demons ever again. Until now, I see."
Celine regained her breath, shaking her a head a little as she remembered the past. It had been nearly 18 years, and the regret was still fresh in her heart.
Jace, on the other hand, had no idea what his mother was saying. Shadowhunters? Idris? Uprisings? Accords? The words were all foreign to him, but a few sentences stuck in his mind.
"Do you have a picture of Jocelyn?" Jace asked, speaking for the first time in what seemed like hours. Celine gave him a funny look, but complied, pulling out a wooden box from a locked cupboard, engraved with herons in flight. She dug through, until extracting an old photograph, handing it to her son.
There must have been two dozen people, teenagers, lined up with their arms around each other, smiling like they didn't have a care in the world.
There was a man in the center, with white blonde hair and pitless black eyes, who was so clearly the leader. He had his nose upturned, and his arms around a beautiful woman. Jace inhaled a sharp breath.
"Clary." He exhaled, not believing it. The woman, who his mother described as Jocelyn Morgenstern, Valentine's wife, was Clary's spitting image. To their left, he saw a woman that resembled Isabelle, as well.
It was all too much for Jace, and he nearly passed out. He still understood nothing, but he knew one thing- it was no coincidence he and Clary met.
There was a knock on the door, and Celine rose to answer it, leaving her son to his thoughts.
"Jocelyn?" Celine nearly screamed, hand over her heart, golden eyes squinting. Jace sprang upwards, forgetting his attempts to piece together the holes in his mother's story. His answers were here.
"No, I'm sorry. Jocelyn died a long time ago. I'm her daughter, Clarissa, and I'm afraid your cover is blown. You and your family need to come back to the Institute with me." A familiar voice rang through the apartment. She had changed her modest, girly outfit from earlier, and was now wearing some badass looking leather.
She never looked better, in Jace's eyes. Although, she was wearing a fierce scowl once Jace entered the foyer.
"Well, Golden Boy, it looks like you're coming with me."
After Celine had gone off to fetch Stephen and her suitcases, Clary and Jace sat awkwardly on either side of the Herondale's couch, neither quite looking at each other. Isabelle thoughoughly rejected to Clary's plan, but she gained Mayrse's stamp of approval, allowing her to go forwards.
She had no idea what would happen once the Herondale's came to live at the Institute, but she knew that Project Golden Boy was far from being over.
"So, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you and Isabelle applying to my school was not a coincidence." Jace asked, attempting to sound nonchalant, though Clary could discern notes of betrayal and confusion in his voice.
She ran a hand through her hair, wondering what she could and could not say. It was hard not having Mayrse around all the time to call the shots.
"No. I don't suppose it was." She replied evenly, matching his tone.
Jace waited for a more satisfactory answer before realizing it would never come.
"I see. So, you've been lying to me this whole time, have you?"
Clary stopped breathing momentarily. Was she lying? Or did she truly have feelings for this Golden Boy? She allowed herself one glance over at him; only to find those aureate orbs glaring back at her. She gulped.
"I'm a Shadowhunter. My only alliance is to the Clave, and they enlisted Isabelle and I to find out what you knew about the Shadow World, which, incidentally, is nothing. I also gladly took the job because I thought your family might know something about what happened to my mother…" Clary trailed off, inwardly cursing herself for revealing such pertinent information. Jace opened his mouth to respond, but Stephen and Celine had reentered the room. She noted the similarities between Jace and his father.
Stephen was scowling at Clary, who looked right back. His light blue eyes looked menacing, but Clary wasn't afraid. What could he do to her anyways?
She stood up, making the first in a long line of mistakes.
"By the Angel. You invade my household for just a few minutes and you're already acting like you own the place. I shouldn't have expected any better for a child of Valentine's." He spat at her with so much venom, Clary unconsciously shrunk backwards, hitting the wall.
She straightened up, not wanting the man to see her sweat. "Valentine is not my father." Clary muttered, wishing her voice would've come out more commanding. Unfortunately, she did not do well under stressful situations. Stephen scoffed at her, earning him a fierce glare from his wife.
"You cannot denounce your bloodline, Morgenstern. You may have the blood of Angels running through your veins, but you're just as much of a devil as your brother, and the one who sired him."
Clary's heart stopped beating, and the memories flooded her mind until there was nothing but blackness.
What do you think will happen next? Review, and you'll find out sooner than later!
xoxo, A :)
P.S., check out Scandals and Secrets, my still most popular fic, and read up since it's next on the chopping block to be updated, and ALMOST COMPLETE!
I can't believe I'm actually going to finish a fanfic for once.