ClaceAndPeeniss4eva, xBabySnapsx, riley207, Guest, laurenvaughan: Everyone loves badass Clary hahaha

ravenwalker321, sarahstories, YayitsCaroline: thank you

SuShadowhunter from Ravenclaw: She runs a gang- one that rivals Jace's in being the biggest and most feared in New York, she does have it in her haha. Jace is Jace, he'll mess with her anyway ahaha.

Crazypoptartdude: you do not want to know.

The room was dark but the small boy's eyes had grown used to it after two days. He didn't get up and move around, knowing that if he did his punishment would be more than being slung into a dark room without food or drink. It happened a lot. It wasn't a big deal. It was his fault for picking up the wrong type of knife in training. It was obvious. He was just dumb- any 7 year old would know what knife to use. Not that he had ever met another child but he assumed that they would know anyway. Daddy didn't do this to be nasty, he did it to make him stronger. He was doing it to help him. That's what daddy told him so it must be true. Daddy was a wise man. Daddy was a good man.

The boy didn't need other children anyway, daddy told him. He was taught well enough at home. With maps and just his daddy's wise brain. He didn't need friends. Friends were distracting. Why would he need to go out and play when there was training to be done? Friends would tell him not to study but he needed to because daddy quizzed him and was disappointed when he got things wrong. The little boy didn't want to disappoint daddy. He wanted to make him proud. He wanted to be like him.

The boy could see through the gaps on the boards on the window that it was a full moon. Something that always interested the boy. He liked seeing the details of the moon even though it was so far away. The craters, the differing colours- greys and whites. He had often wondered whether the sun and the moon were actually the same thing. He never saw them together at the same time. Maybe they didn't like each other, he thought. Just like mummy and daddy. They don't like each other. He never sees them at the same time. Except when daddy's very angry, of course, but that's not mummy's choice. The moon was daddy. Dark and mysterious. The sun was mummy. Shining and helpful. Even though she was only shining when daddy was out doing whatever his 'work' was.

That's what he called it. Work. He'd come back late at night with blood on his fists. Sometimes he wouldn't come back for days, weeks. Is this what all daddys do at work? The little boy wouldn't ask. He daren't. He's not allowed to speak unless he's spoken to. That's why he hasn't asked about the moon. He would very much like to. He would like to know what it would feel like. He would like to know why it wasn't smooth and perfect, like the sun seemed to be. It was all cracked and imperfect. He would like to know why, more than anything, he felt such a connection to the moon. Maybe it's because the moon was like daddy. Maybe it's because the moon was like the little boy.

2am. Did it count as morning or night? Jace didn't know nor did he care as he sat on his bedroom windowsill, smoking a cigarette and staring at the full moon. He'd never liked the idea of time. It was made up. What if there was supposed to be two sunsets in one day? We would have been doing it all wrong for centuries. Time was restricting, oppressive. It meant schedules, not spontaneity. It didn't mean living in the moment, it meant planning. And as OCD as Jace was, he could not bring himself to care about allocated time slots. He had been on schedules since he was born, now he didn't need them, he did not want to use them.

He raised his hand and his fingertips brushed the glass that separated him from the outside. The way his fingers were positioned made it look like he was touching the moon but he knew better. There has always been something blocking him from the moon, physical or otherwise. Distance, lack of knowledge, a wall. Always something. Jace detested it.

The moon was underrated. Unappreciated. People looked at it but they didn't really see it. They looked at it and often commented on its beauty but they didn't look close enough to see the defects.

Jace sighed. He knew this wasn't just about the moon. It was what it represented. He knew that now. He was the moon. The cracks, the craters, the imperfections. He was a night person, that much is obvious. It was so much more intriguing during the night. Imperfections came out. Smudged make up on drunken women, sloppy sex in alleyways, eyes drooping with exhaustion, the workers' stress of the day take off shoulders with an off centre tie and an untucked shirt. The moon. Always back to the moon. Jace opened the window and threw out the cigarette end, shaking his head trying to clear it of an insomniac's constant daze.

He took his family ring off his left ring finger. It had a 'H' on and had birds engraved into the silver. When it was on, it hid a thick horizontal scar that stood out on his slightly tanned skin. The scar didn't follow the ring all the way around to the inside on his finger, just on the top of his hand. It was a reminder of the day when he was 12 and had his first kiss. He got home and his father asked him why he was smiling and he replied that he had his first kiss. His father pulled out a knife and chopped at his ring finger telling him that "to love is to destroy". Jace thought he chose that particular finger because it was where you put the ring at weddings. That was his father; never doing things without a reason. There were more scars across his thin hands. Tiny ones, mostly. Jace had a memory for each of them, no matter how much he tried to forget.

He put the ring back onto his finger, covering the scar again. Nobody liked scars. Jace liked his. They proved that he was human. That, even though he had never fallen in love and rarely showed emotions that weren't forged, he was still physically human. Flesh and blood. Not a robot. That he was still living after all of these injuries, big and small.

The ring had been given to him by his mother. She told him not to show his father, which he had always thought was odd because it was passed on through males, so he had heard. That's why he kept it in the box. She gave it to him before she hanged herself. Before she left him alone with that bastard. Which 15 year old can cope on his own with an abusive father like that? Not Jace, that was for sure. By 15, he was already inside his head. Regardless, Jace loved his mother. She was the only person he had ever loved. He tried his best with her. Cleaned her up when she was drunk (which was every day by the time he was 15), took the brunt of his father's beatings, did the things she couldn't do in her drunken state, kept her away from his father. He tried to be a good son and, by her suicide letter, he apparently was. After she died, he put the ring on but hid it from his father.

Jace glanced subconsciously at his bed. Underneath it was a box that his mother left him. It also had a 'H' and birds engraved into the front of the old wood. The letter was in there along with the ring was before he took it out, a picture of him as a baby with her and tattered sheet music because he played the piano when he was younger when his father wasn't there. He refused to get it out. He thinks about it a lot but he only gets it out on the anniversary of his mother's death.

The day his mother died, he couldn't believe it. It was like the actually sun had died out. Even when she was drunk, little bits of light would peek out. That day was the first time he had beaten his father during training. His father was the one who had driven her to it. He abused her, physically, mentally and emotionally. He turned her into a robot under his command. Jace had often wondered why she stayed with him but never asked; it was another on his long list of unanswered questions. After Jace beat his father in training, he got whipped. He didn't feel it though. He was numb, still reeling from his mother's death. He cleaned his wounds afterwards on auto-pilot stretching to reach, as usual, until a servant came in and helped him with it. Moments like that were always a bitter reminder that servants seemed to care more than his own father.

He looked back out of the window at the moon and he thought- not for the first time- that if anything could replicate the inner Jace, it would be the moon.

I hope you guys liked the little insight into Jace's mind and life. Next chapter will be the same with Clary.