Disclaimer: Cassandra Clare owns TMI and all things associated.
Sitting. Sitting here and waiting is all we've done. Clary is out there, somewhere, and we are sitting here like children, letting the Clave do the work! We all know they're slow when it comes to search parties, and they always give up. Most of the Clave members aren't even real shadowhunters, not in my mind. Sitting around on your ass and arguing about what to do is unacceptable and cowardly, and I'll be damned if we sit here and wait.
Jocelyn's been hysterical about it all, I mean her daughter is in the hands of her psychopathic demon-child, who wouldn't be going crazy? Luke has been holding her, whispering to her and trying to calm her down enough to partake in our game plan. Isabelle has been just as hysterical, minus the tears and that's only because she can feel that Clary is alive, well- for now at least.
I've been sitting here for a while now, silently contemplating all the ways I can kill that bastard when I get my hands on him, and I swear by the Angel I will. But for now, I can't do anything until we actually find them. Magnus and Alec have been searching the maps for what seems like decades; still no clues. No leads means that he's covering his tracks well, which is to be expected, but he has slipped up before in his greed and haste. We're all holding onto that slim hope of a misstep like leeches.
I rub my hands over my face and sit back with my pounding head resting on the back rest of the sofa. Simon is at one end of the other love seat and Isabelle is laying down, finally catching some sleep with her head in his lap. I'll give it to her; she's been tough and strong, not letting anything slow her down from searching. That is, except her pasty daylighter of a boyfriend forcing her to slow down for a minute. I'm honestly thankful for that, though. She's the most likely to run herself ragged with worry- even more so than Clary's own mother- burning through rune after rune to stay awake while as Jocelyn will pass out from exhaustion rather than using runes. The second she lays down and tries to relax, she knocks out- even Iz needs sleep now and then, apparently.
"Tell me again. From the beginning," I mutter to Simon, trying to keep the volume down as to not wake Isabelle. Simon groans and leans into the sofa, gently resting a hand on Isabelle's hair, stroking the downy raven-black locks that are currently splayed here and there, her once perfect hairdo long forgotten when she found that Clary was missing.
"Seriously, Jace? It's got to be the fifth time!" Simon hisses in annoyance, causing Isabelle to stir and toss her head, but thankfully she didn't wake up; if she were to wake, she'd either scold us for waking her, or she'd be in hysterics all over again. I myself have burned through dozens of calming runes, but they roll off me in a blaze of anger and distress that is palpable from everybody else. I know that I messed up big time with Clary, but it really doesn't matter anymore. Even after all is said and done, I don't care if Clary hates me, as long as she is safe and Jonathan is out of the picture for good.
"Don't piss me off Simon, I am not in the damn mood now," I spit at him after a moment, finally finding a release somewhere. "Just repeat it again." I lean my head back against the sofa, closing my eyes and drumming my fingers against my knee with bruising force. Every single nerve in my body is lit up with heavenly fire, ready to burst outwards at the first thing that comes in its way. Maybe I need to spar it off, or take a long run, anything to blow off steam. Simon mutters something under his breath and my head snaps up in his direction sharply. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for your infidelity.
The second my eyes meet Simon's, his eyes go wide in an oh shit moment. I stand up slowly and jerk my head towards the door before turning and stalking out, leaving the door wide open for him to follow.
"Shit, man, I shouldn't have said that," Simon stammers as he follows me out, Isabelle left sleeping on the couch. "I was just pissed off for a minu-"
"Shut up. Just shut your mouth for Raziel's sake," I growl and walk up to tower over him, my shadow completely enveloping his. "You think I don't regret that? Huh?" I ask when he doesn't reply. Well, I am not in the mood for regret, I want to argue, to take this pent-up anger somewhere else, to get the fight out of me so that maybe I can think straight.
"Answer me, dammit!" I shout when he keeps his mouth shut in a thin line, eyes hard and focused straight ahead, refusing to look at me.
"Jace, lower your voice before Isabelle or Alec come out here. We're all under a lot of stress, okay?" Simon says calmly, but while the soothing voice of Alec would douse the fire, Simon's adds to it, his annoying voice grating on my last nerve.
"Don't tell me what to do, downworlder," I push him by the shoulders, sending him stumbling back a few steps in surprise. I step forward with him, and he continues to back up, which pisses me off even more. If he were anything resembling a real man, he'd-
"Jace," he says again, and this time I push him to the ground. "Go-" he starts and chokes on his tongue, the simplest of words unable to make its way out of his eternally damned body. I lean down and pull him up by the shirt with a cold, hard laugh, mocking his lack of ability to pray to God up above. When I have him back up on his feet, his shirt stretching in my fist, he struggles to free himself, and I can't help the instincts of the fight that come over me. My hand automatically pulls back, my prey is an easy target and who would I be to not take the opening?
Before my fist can even swing, something hot and sharp wraps around my wrist, jerking my arm back with a strength that jars my whole body. "Jonathan Christopher Lightwood!"
My head snaps up and my nostrils flare at the name- that is not my name, that is the name of the monster that kidnapped my Clary. I resolve to seriously injure whoever just called me that, but when I see my sister standing there with her whip tightly in hand- and still around my wrist- with bed head and almost black circles around her eyes, I wake up.
What the hell am I doing? Pummeling Simon to a pulp is not going to help anything. I need to keep a clear head, keep everything open so I don't get distracted; all of my efforts should be to find Clary. I lower my wrist, letting Isabelle's electrum whip slide off as I carefully set a very shocked Simon steadily onto his feet.
Isabelle's eyes flit from me to Simon and I can see tears in her eyes. She runs to him and wraps her arms around him, pulling him away from me as if I am going to hurt them. Isabelle doesn't ever cry, but she is about to because of me, of what I did; my baby sister is afraid of me. Afraid.
I can't handle it anymore- by now, Alec, Magnus, and Clary's parents are standing near the door or inside near the windows, watching the commotion. I can't handle the stares, I can't think clearly, and I sure as hell can't stay here. I almost snapped on Simon for nothing, I almost attacked him. He was right though, I cheated on Clary. I didn't want to or even mean to, but it still happened nonetheless; it was as if something was keeping me glued to the spot while Adira tried to jump by bones, but shock isn't a reason to let somebody kiss you. You're supposed to say no, to move away, but I didn't. I didn't even try.
So I run- I have no clue where I am going, but I run off without a single glance back at the people I love, my family, because I can't stand to see the disappointment in their eyes. All my life I've been a disappointment, running into things head first, never thinking things through thoroughly like Alec would. I have a slight tendency to act on instinct, to run with the wind and see what happens. I can't even remember when I started acting like that...reckless. I mean, it must have been since I was orphaned, when I first came to the Institute as a sarcastic, headstrong boy. I suppose it was due to the freedom I was given by Maryse and Robert; it must have done something to my mindset, made the part of my brain in control of reason, simply go dormant.
Of course, I still use my reasoning skills. Sometimes, usually only for strategy and the likes. Times like these, though, I can't control it. Rage so easily overwhelms me, warps my mind until I see red, as do I when on a hunt. That rage almost always starts off as something small, some guilt or annoyance stuck in the back of my head, growing like a parasite, feeding off of me until it reaches its breaking point, snapping like a rubber band when I hardly expect it. Snapping on Simon, trying to attack him for a mere slip-up. Clary would be so disappointed in me.
"Shit," I slow down my pace to a jog, coming to a slow walk, my breathing returning as even as if I were sitting down. The grass beneath my feet crunching under my weight, the cold wind nipping at my skin, reminding me that I forgot a jacket back at the house; yet another small thing that I forgot in my rush to leave.
As I come upon another bend in the damp and woodsy trail that I've been following since leaving Amatis' house, I hear the soft lilting of an oddly familiar fake, slightly annoying laugh; it makes me shudder at the memories it rises to the surface. With another quiet expletive, I pull the slim adamas stele from my pocket and trace a rune of silence into my forearm, directly atop of the faded silver one from the other day. The burn is unnoticed as always, and my stele moved directly under the fresh mark to reflexively draw a rune of hearing, often matched with the silence rune and very useful for eavesdropping, which is what I plan on doing.
Kaelie Whitewillow, a half-pixie with which I had multiple flings with, stood slightly off the path of the trail, which is not a very smart place to hold a private conversations, is standing with her arms crossed over her chest, leaning in to hear something the other fey is saying. The other man is tall and willowy, as are most of the Fair Folk, with a sort of green armor that looks like thick vines weaved into chain mail. His black leather boots looked like they wouldn't protect much if I happened to stomp on his foot with my steel-toed ones- and his conservative, but probably durable, armor is a sure indicator that he is a Knight of the Seelie Court.
The leader of the Seelie Knights is Meliorn, but from the odd angle, seeing as how I am craning my neck around a cluster of trees to see, and the dense shadows of oncoming nightfall, I can't make an accurate identification. As they speak, I hear small snippets of what they are saying, but not quite enough to draw a clear picture in my mind.
"No," Kaelie exclaims quietly, shaking her head in disagreement. "I can't. I won't."
The man, who I'm just starting to assume is Meliorn, takes a threatening step closer and raises an accusing finger to Kaelie. She flinches at his low words, but stays silent nonetheless. "You know what will happen if you don't," the man hisses and pulls his hand away from her face. He mutters something else undecipherable to the girl, and I can't help but get pissed at the hearing rune that isn't working well enough to my liking right now. Whatever it is they are arguing about, it's important, and I can't hear them. When I catch the words Jonathan and tomorrow evening, I can put the pieces together easily enough.
If it has anything to do with Jonathan, then I know something bad is going to happen tomorrow, something awful. Is he planning on attacking Idris? He got through the Wards once, but could he do it again with all the high security personnel that have been added since then? Of course he could. He's not of this world, he's something darker, something worse than just plain evil.
Adolf Hitler was evil; he killed millions of people just because they didn't have a 'pure' hair and eye color. Osama bin Laden is evil. Valentine Morgenstern is as sure as hell evil. All of these people killed others for no good, justifiable reason besides prejudice.
Jonathan Morgenstern, however, is much, much worse in my eyes. He will kill and kill until there is nobody else to kill, until the demons are pillaging the streets of New York, L.A., Moscow, London. Valentine would have offered some sort of mercy if we were to surrender to him. But Jonathan will not. He will pillage and murder just for fun, just to prove that he can. His father only wanted to purify the blood lines and cut alliances with downworlders, which in all honesty wasn't as bad as what it has become over the course of months. It's become a living hell full of dark magic and killing people that were once close to you, people turned into heartless creatures by Valentine's very own son.
His legacy will be the death of us all.
Soooooo, haaaaai guys. Has it been a while? Cuz I can't remember... I have a fuzzy memory, so I blame that...Uh yeah. xD
Well, I know this chapter is tedious, but this was mainly a character building chapter, where I just wanted to work mainly with Jace's inner thoughts and feelings. I know it's not that great, and lately I've been feeling that this story isn't that great, especially since it started as my first fanfic. When I started this, I didn't really know where the story was going, just a vague outline.
I have a bit better of an idea of where Sweet Revenge is going, so I guess we'll see how that one will turn out. The new chapter of SR will be up soon hopefully, it is being edited by my lovely and awesome Beta! She's seriously a lifesaver, sometimes I don't even catch stupid little things, but she does!
Anyways yeah there ya go. Hope you enjoyed! I seriously love you guys and I really want you to know how much this all means to me.
One last thing, I gots me a Tumblr account for fanfiction stuff! Don't know if I've mentioned it but yeah, its mrsjacewayland-herondale so if you have any questions, you can ask there or in the comments here, I'm always on Tumblr and fanfiction! I'm thinking of doing one-shots to help as writing exercises to strengthen myself as a writer (: So, drop a picture and short idea in my Ask box on Tumblr, PM me, or just leave it in the comments if there's anything you want to see me write, I'd SOOOO appreciate it! Thanks guys!
Drop a review, it makes me happy! ~Emily