A/N: Okay, I'm really sorry for being absent for so long. The plot bunny was not paying any visits, but thank to some encouraging reviews (thank you RealLifeShipper and Lost-In-A-New-World) I finally got myself together and wrote something decent enough to publish :P This is another two-part (if not more) story. The first part features Emma, Julian, and JACE OMG! It's honestly been so long since I've written anything with Jace in it, so I loved writing this. The second part will feature Cristina, Mark, and Diego (maybe more), and it will once again be the same time frame, just from a different perspective. I hope you all enjoy! :)

Similar Situations and Shared Griefs

A Blackstairs fanfic, by OTP-addict

Emma Carstairs didn't cry. Not since the dark war. Not since her parents' deaths.

And yet, here she was. Sitting at the foot of her bed, facing the door, softly sniffling while salty tears made their way down her agonized face.

It was the look on his face. The look on her parabatai's face as he watched her and Mark. She couldn't bear the hurt and betrayal evident in his expression, the emotions reserved solely for her, the cause of all his pain.

There was a knock on the door. Emma hastily wiped her cheeks as the door opened slightly, and she thought, Not him. Please, not him.

Jace Herondale poked his head inside. When he saw her tearstained face, the rest of him quickly followed, and he closed the door again behind him. "Hey," he said, compassion and worry visible on his face.

Emma sniffled quietly. "Hey."

Jace sat down next to her on the bed. "What's wrong?" He and Clary were staying at the Los Angeles Institute while investigating a demon episode alongside Diana.

Emma heaved a small sigh and shook her head. "Can't tell you," she said, wishing that she could. Her lip trembled. She desperately needed someone to tell her that what she was doing was right, and Cristina was with Diego.

"I'm sorry," Jace said.

Emma's brow furrowed. "About what?" she asked.

"Your situation," Jace simply said.

Emma's eyes widened. He knows? she thought. She looked at him, her gaze guarded and alert.

"I was in one quite similar many years ago, you'll remember," he said gently.

Emma didn't move. "Except everything worked out for you," she said, a sliver of ice creeping into her voice. "It won't for me." Her voice fell to a whisper.

Jace shrugged. "I don't know about that. You never know when things might make a turn for the better."

Emma met his gaze, her eyes displaying perfectly that she did not think that was the case.

"Alright," Jace said, his hands up in a defensive, slightly resigned gesture. "Then I'll just express my utter and sincere sympathies."

Emma turned her head away, more tears emerging, then travelling down her cheeks. A thought suddenly appeared in her head about that time when Clary and Jace thought they were related. "Did either of you ever lie to the other?" she asked, turning back to face him. Jace looked confused. "When you thought you couldn't be together," she clarified. "Did either of you lie to… push the other away, to make the other stop loving you?"

"Well, I sort of acted like a jerk to Clary at one point," Jace said, his expression indicating that he wasn't pleased to be reliving it.

"How did you cope with the guilt?" Emma asked. "How did you live with the fact that you were causing the person you loved pain?"

Jace sighed. "I told myself it was for the best," he said. "I was sure she was better off hating me than the both of us suffering because of something we couldn't change. I mean, I could live with her hating me if it meant she wasn't doomed to live with false hope."

Another knock sounded at the door. Emma looked up and wiped at her tears again. "Just a second," she shouted at the door, hoping her voice didn't betray her conflicting emotions. She turned to Jace. "Thanks," she said.

"I haven't actually helped, have I?" Jace said, frowning somewhat.

"You have," Emma protested. "A little. It's always nice to have someone to share your grief with." She smiled, albeit bitterly.

Jace got up and bowed in a mocking fashion. "Always at your service, my lady," he said and smiled charmingly, and for a second he reminded Emma of Mark and his formal behavior when he first came back to the Institute.

Emma walked Jace to the door and opened it, revealing Julian.

Jace waved at Julian, simultaneously greeting him and bidding him farewell, then Jace disappeared down the hall.

Emma swallowed. Julian scrutinized her face. "What's wrong?" he asked.

She simply shook her head at him, looking down at the floor. He placed one hand on her shoulder, the other under her chin, and tilted her face up to look at him.

"What's wrong?" he said again, slowly, carefully, dragging the words. "Is it Mark?" As Julian said his brother's name, his face changed, as it always did, into hurt and betrayal, but this time with a hint of anger, as well. "Did he do something? Did he hurt you?"

Emma shook her head again, but she couldn't keep the tears back anymore. After nearly five years of perfect self control, of keeping her emotions in check and at bay, she had opened up the emotionally despairing part of her mind, and apparently she was not about to close it again. She bit her lower lip, which had resumed its quivering, as her eyebrows knit together in hopelessness.

"Oh, Emma," Julian breathed and embraced her tightly, kissing the top of her head.

For a moment, with Julian's strong arms around her, Emma was able to forget that they couldn't be together, that they would never kiss again, that they would never date or marry or have children. That they would never grow old together in any other way than as parabatai. For just a moment she hugged him back and imagined that they were just two people, a boy and a girl, in love.

Then reality hit her like a wave in her face. She stopped crying, and she pulled away from him, her face blank. "Was there something you wanted?" she asked.

Julian looked at her like he didn't know her. "No," he said, turning around. She watched him turn a corner and disappear from sight. Just a moment after, Mark suddenly appeared, coming around that same corner.

"Mark," Emma said, her eyebrows rising a fraction. She wondered if there were still signs of crying on her face. If there were, he didn't say anything about it. In fact, he didn't say anything. He strode up to her and kissed her, no greeting, no hesitation.

The impact left Emma swaying backwards, but she regained her balance and found herself leaning into Mark's embrace. She needed to forget as much as he evidently did. She briefly wondered what had happened to make him like this. But the thought soon left her mind as she and Mark stumbled into her room and the door shut behind them.

They didn't know Julian was watching.