Clary lay in her hotel bed, staring up at the ceiling, her thoughts spinning through her head. Her breathing was laboured, her throat thick, her eyes teary. She couldn't stop thinking about him. He used to be her Jace, her wonderful, beautiful Jace…and now…now he was nothing. She felt dried out, used up, empty; abuse was a fragile place and Clary was just having a hard time grasping that her and Jace were over. It had been brewing for a while, the pain Clary felt in her back from his abuse was a clear indicator. But sometime things happened for a reason, not that Clary believed Jace abused her for a reason, she knew it was just an excuse, but still. His good days never left her brain; all she dreamed of was Jace before Alicante, before the beatings started, before everything went to shit. She brought her hand up to gently wipe away the tears that were falling. She wished she knew what had made his eyes grow cold and what had made him abandon her.
Simon was in the small living room of the hotel room, perched on the couch, listening to Clary tossing and turning, her faint sniffles. His heart was breaking for her a million times over; after all, she was the one he always loved. He ran a hand through his dark hair and thought about going in the room to talk to Clary, to hold her tight, to tell her that he was always going to be there. But he didn't want to break her heart anymore than it was already broken, because he knew uttering those words would make it more real to Clary that the Jace she once knew was gone, that he would never be back. He buried his face in the arm of the couch, biting his lip. He sighed, god, he never could've imagined even in the worst situation that it would be like this, Clary utterly broken. He couldn't just leave her like this…could he? He didn't want to invade on sensitive territory by telling her that he still felt for her, but he also just couldn't walk away…Simon had never learned to walk away.
The vampire stood up and walked across the room to Clary's door, knocking on it lightly.
"Come in," was Clary's soft reply, her voice strained.
"How're you feeling?" Simon asked as he opened the door, peering around it. Clary rolled onto her side and propped her chin up on her hand, looking at him with red-rimmed eyes.
"As good as I can feel when I've broken up with the guy who was my life at one point, and the guy who beat me because we were each other's lives, it's kind of a continuous cycle of pain," Clary said with a pained smile, pulling at her bright red hair. Simon closed the door and leaned up against it, watching her, unsure of what to say. He opened his mouth after a few moments of thinking,
"I don't want to tell you everything will be okay, because I can't promise you that. I don't want to tell you you'll get over it, because I can't promise that you will. I can't promise that Jace will be sorry about this; I can't promise you that you will forgive or ever forget. The only thing I can tell you is that there are people who love you, your mom, Luke, Alec, Isabelle, and the rest of the Lightwoods and me. These people will always be here for you, no matter what," He said softly. Clary looked down, picking at the comforter.
"Thanks Simon, that means a lot to me," she said gently. The vampire shook his head,
"Clary, it's the truth. The only thing I'm doing is reaffirming what you should always know," He said.
"Simon, can I have a hug?" She asked, looking at him with the expression of a child.
"Of course," Simon said, covering the ground between the door and the bed in a few long strides. Clary stretched up to meet him, and he held her to him tightly, his face buried in her hair, and her face buried in the hollow of his neck. He sat down beside her as he began to feel her body shake, and wetness pooling on his skin. Suddenly, her ragged sobs were breaking the silence as she cried for what she had lost. It had once been a Cinderella story…where Jace was a bit of a jerk of a prince charming, but he was still hers; now her love story had shattered into pieces. And she didn't know what to do. She was haunted, plagued by the memories of her lover. And all Simon could do was hold her while her sobs broke against him, and her cries were deep and full of pain.
Jace walked up to the front desk of the rehab centre.
"Excuse me miss, but what's your fastest alcoholic rehabilitation clinic that you put on?" He asked, gnawing on his lip nervously.
"Two weeks, would you like to check yourself in?" the woman asked. Jace nodded mutely.
"Well, I'll ask you to sit on the chairs over there, and fill out this questionnaire," The woman handed him a clipboard and a cheap ballpoint pen and pointed him towards a waiting area.
Jace shoved his unruly gold hair back from his eyes and sat down, scanning the survey as quickly as possible, answering each of the questions honestly, even if it was hard for him to do. Most of them were generic, asking him what problem he was admitting to having, and what program he was checking into, whether he preferred group therapy or one on one therapy. One-on-one was his answer, he just couldn't deal with telling a huge group of people what he'd done, one psychologist was enough. The last question?
Why are you checking into the rehabilitation centre?
Jace gripped the pen tightly and wrote
'To win back the woman I love.'