Her body ached, but not from what they had done, from what they hadn't done. She half expected him to be lying next to her on her bed, but instead she was alone. Alone, something she thought she'd be used to by now. For the past few days, she'd woken up to peppering kisses and tracing tongues. When she woke up today, there was nothing to sizzle against her skin as she lay clothed in her cold bed. Today she would have to see him, and pretend that whatever happened last night meant nothing to her, that she'd actually been fine when she cried herself along the cold walk home.
"Be strong Clary." She told herself when she looked at her face in the mirror. She hadn't even bothered to change when she arrived home. Her mascara was smeared like the drunken girls she had to drive home. It infuriated her that Jace had insinuated her to be exactly one of them.
Clawing off her shirt, she replaced it with a silk top that her mother had bought her on her birthday. Since her jeans were clean, she opted to stay in them. The girl in the mirror stared back at her, looking as if she were struggling to hold in tears that had already been cried out. Clary shook her head, not wanting to cry over a man that had insulted her as he was about to unbutton his jeans. He cared about her, just not enough to actually be with her of course. He didn't even call her after she'd left his home, as if he didn't know that she had drove along with him to his house, expecting a good outcome from her question.
There was one person that Clary could count on that wouldn't want to talk about the ending of her brief intimacy with Jace, and that person was Simon. As awkward as he was, there was no chance he'd want to know about they way Jace held her as they rocked together in her medium sized bed.
"Hello?" Simon chirped after the third ring of her calling.
"Simon! Are you doing anything right now?" Clary questioned.
"No, unless that's a universal question, because right now I don't know where I'm headed right now. If I could be doing so much more!"
"Not a universal question, dummy. I meant to ask if you could pick me up?" Clary's voice climbed a few octaves as she asked her best friend, begging him not to ask about Jace
"Uh, sure. Be there in ten, Fairchild. I'll honk twice. After that, you gotta jump in." She could practically hear Simon smile on the other line. Hanging up with a groan, Clary looked at herself one last time, making sure every curl was in place, and ever streak of eyeliner was perfection in its truest form. She placed her keys in her pocket, ready to take her car from the precinct parking lot after work.
Just like he said, Simon honked twice, starting to pull out before he heard her screeching at him to stop, pulling out her badge to warn him of her anger. He stopped of course, not without laughing at her as she had to smile to settle the scared pedestrians. They were partners, and doing so meant that they could be this way with each other without question.
"I noticed your makeup isn't smeared, wanna talk about it?" Simon perked up a brow, seeing if she would open up to him at least.
"Maybe later. All I want to do right now is bury myself in work." Clary shrugged, staring out the window to avoid looking at her best friend, for if she did, Clary didn't know if she could hold in the tears that were starting to brim her eyes.
"I'm sorry, it's protocol," Simon said, sliding a CD into the waiting slit. At first she didn't know, but the moment the song I'm Just a Kid started playing, she started to growl.
"Why the hell are you playing this now? Can't you play it when I'm in a better mood?" Clary seethed. Simon shrugged guiltily.
"You know our deal. If you're nervous in the car and we're on our way to work, this song has to be played. Makes you feel like the new kid." Simon explained. She knew of this deal, they played the damn song when Clary and Simon arrived for their first day on the job. The brick building arrived in sight, just as the song began to reach its climax. Just as the song demanded, she put on a worried frown and gathered her bag, slinging it over her back as if she were in fact the new kid.
"Have a nice day!" Simon called from the car, about to leave her to park it, but not before making a scene.
"I wanna go home!" Clary sobbed into her hands.
"Sweetheart, we both know that this job will help us." Simon soothed falsely. She couldn't help the small grin that was spreading to her face. "Did you pack your lunch?" Simon asked in his motherly voice.
"Yes, Mom!" Clary huffed, rolling her eyes. "Stop embarrassing me!" She whined to him. Simon clutched his mouth as if he were holding back sobbs, wiping a false tear from his humored eyes.
"Remember what I taught you sweety, open mind, closed legs!" Simon said before veering off with a squeak. Clary's mouth hung open in actual embarrassment as several arriving officers stared at her with gawking eyes and masked chuckles. Flipping them the bird, she trudged into the precinct with a prideful smile. Simon had done a good job cheering her up, despite the embarrassment.
"I heard Simple Plan! What's wrong?" Jem said, sprinting to her with open arms. Clary let out a breath at the hug that seemed to take forever to arrive, soothing the personal hell that was brewing inside her. She smothered her head into his clothed shoulder, Jem hugging her tightly, much to her relief.
"Can we not talk about it right now?" Clary whispered, eyeing her co-workers. He pulled back from their hug, Jem was so kind, to kind to be working at a place who dealt with people who knew of no such thing.
"Talk later, yeah?" Jem asked, she nodded, starting her stroll to her desk that was perched amongst the madness of the friday criminals. Some woman was screeching at a man, saying that he had touched her child while another man was yelling that his boss had wrongfully accused him of stealing, slamming a handwritten note on Simon's desk. At least it wasn't Jace that had approached her, not yet anyways. Jace looked far too confident to let her break things off smoothly.
Her phone rang, pulling her out of her daydreaming to answer the crying machine.
"Detective Fairchild, to whom may I be speaking to?" Clary asked, sounding formal. There was a noticeable pause before the caller answered with a shy, feminine voice.
"Detective Fairchild, this is Maia Roberts." Clary pressed her brows together in confusion, not knowing just who was calling. The caller spoke up again. "You previously knew me as Maia Kyle, at my apartment, hair being pulled and such." She answered. Clary's thigh throbbed at the clarification, as if she could be hurt again just by hearing the last name. "I was wondering, if it would so bad as to ask you visit with me, to give you a thank you?" Her voice squeaked, and Clary found herself shrugging, looking at the small stack of paper on her desk.
"Um, sure. Where at?" Clary asked timidly.
"Ever heard of Taki's diner?" Maia questioned.
"Yeah." Clary answered, nodding to herself.
"Well, if you wouldn't mind coming now, I could be there in around four minutes." Maia confirmed.
"Then I'll see to it that I get there soon." Clary hung up, already slinging her jacket over her shoulders and slid her purse over her right arm. She sucked in a deep breath, gathering her thoughts before marching up to Jem's office.
"I got a call," She said, gesturing to her desk phone. "Maia Roberts, previously Kyle, wants to meet up and talk." Jem's eyes widened in shock. "I was wondering, Captain, since I can't really do much here, if I could go meet her?" He cleared his throat, stacking up some papers before facing her again.
"If you think it's a good idea, then go. But I swear if another Kyle pulls a gun out on you, I will seek vengeance." Jem vowed. Clary gave a sympathetic smile before fluttering out of his office dashing across the tile floors of the precinct. Simon quirked an eyebrow as she crossed the threshold that led to the chaos that was her workplace.
"Later, Mom!" Clary shouted, laughing as she walked toward the front doors to exit. She thought she heard him say something back, so she turned to listen in, not paying attention to just what and who was in front of her.
"Sorry." She mumbled as she turned back, not being able to hear Simon. Someone pressed their arm against her shoulder, stopping her completely. "Huh?" Clary blurted, her head whipping out to face the person who was halting her exit.
"Clary?" Jace verified. Whether or not he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, they looked wrinkled, as if he'd slept in them. Clary reminded herself that if he truly cared for her, that he'd be looking fresh, having gotten a night's worth of sleep after they made what she might have called love if they'd known each other longer.
"I, uh," Her eyes started to sting and her throat started to swell, all because he looked at her with those same pained golden eyes that captivated her every time she looked at him. He was engrossing, deliciously engrossing, even as he was dressed in wrinkled clothes and his hair a mess with matching bags under his eyes. "I have to go..." She said to him before pushing his shoulder aside.
"Clary, wait!" Jace called after her, probably see her wipe her arm across her face in an attempt to conceal her now runny nose. "We need to talk!" He shouted at her, halting her with anger that began to pool in her stomach. She wanted to kick at his ankles, but perhaps that would reveal too much if she did so. Instead, she wore a cold stare that made him shiver.
"Talk?" She repeated, him nodding nervously. "What is there to talk about Jace? You told me everything I needed to hear last night." Clary snapped, finally trudging to her parked car after seeing his shocked expression. His feet had moved toward her, as if he wanted to dash to her side, like he didn't last night, Clary added.
Once her key slid into the ignition, she allowed herself to cry against her steering wheel, cursing the Herondale man.
"I'm so glad you came." Maia said warmly, Clary pressing a cup of coffee to her lips. "Look, I know you think I'm going to apologize profusely for Jordan's actions, and I am sorry, but I wanted to talk to you because I was hoping you would be the one person that wouldn't ask me why I didn't leave him." Maia let out a gust of air after the quick sentence.
"I've seen cases like this before, it isn't your fault the way he was." Clary softly promised, giving Maia an honest expression. The woman looked relieved.
"Maybe it's because I wanted to keep my family together, or that I didn't want my daughter to grow up asking about her father?" Maia shrugged, thinking out loud to the detective.
"My mother, she got together with my father because she couldn't believe a guy like him would like a girl like her, let alone love her." Clary began hesitantly. Maia seemed to be observed in her family history, so she continued. "They did everything by the books, you know? Date for a few years before getting married, and eventually she had my brother, Jonathan." Clary spoke. "It wasn't until after that until my mother began to realize my father was a crooked cop, arresting the innocent based on his own rules. She read one of his journals, how he'd detail his brutal interrogations." Clary swallowed hard, clearing her throat afterward.
"He was recruiting followers, to involve people in his scheme. My father was a smooth talker, and of course people listened to him. He sent my mother's best friend, Luke, on a faulty drug bust. He was stabbed with a needle full of heroin, and my father told Luke to kill himself after he'd become addicted. Instead, he ran away to rehab. My father was the cause of a violent shoot out, leaving several dead and even more imprisoned. After he was arrested, my mother found out she was pregnant with me. Our family name was tarnished, and it was her idea to change my last name. Jonathan wanted to keep our father's name, hoping to bring light to the tarnished name when he'd gotten a job in law enforcement." Maia was engrossed in the story Clary told.
"So what was that all supposed to mean?" Maia whispered.
"It means that there's still hope after such devastation. My mother turned from being the wife of a wicked man, to a woman who had two successful children and moved on to marry her best friend Luke, even having another child." She clarified.
"Really?" Maia asked.
"Really." Clary promised.
"So why did you invite me to your office?" Jace asked Captain Carstairs.
"You went undercover in the military right, special ops?" The captain asked him. Jace nodded with a grim expression. "Well," He began. "Our precinct has gotten seen drug trafficking increase dramatically over the past few years. A name has come up, Camille Belcourt." He explained. "Word has spread that she's in New York, and I want you to go undercover." Captain Carstairs finished.
"What?" Jace whispered.
"Look, I know you're new, but everyone else has family, a weakness in the eyes of our enemies. From your background, it says you're an orphan, adopted to a Mr. and Mrs. Lightwood. Now, it took special digging to find that out, so they'd be safe." He reassured. "Unless, there is something keeping you here?" Captain Carstairs questioned.
Jace thought about Clary, about how mad she'd been at him today. She deserved better than an emotionally mute man for a lover. She was so fragile, more than she let on. Jace had seen enough to know that if he'd ever break her heart, her already tender heart, there wouldn't be much for her to hold on to. Her fiery hair was the flame lighting the monstrous shadows in his world, and if letting her go meant that the flame would continue to burn, then so be it.
"I'll do it."