The mall was beautiful in a way Clary seldom had the chance to recognize. All these people in one place, brushing past each other as the walked, each presence individual but also part of a larger crowd. She was immediately welcomed into a group that formed from having one common desire; to consume, to shop. It was the group of teenage girls, laughing absurdly as the walked past the storefronts, and the family walking with their kids in their arms, the life in every body passing, that mesmerized her.
She could remember going to a mall this big only once before, when she was very, very young, and when her mother still had to perch her on her hip as they window shopped. She mostly remembered the smell, strange as that is. Large groups of people had an innate human smell, not good or bad, just another signal of their presence, and Clary could feel it hanging around her right now. She had been isolated as a kid, when she went to school she didn't talk, didn't make friends, she stuck to herself for fear of her father's anger. He couldn't risk her having friends with the way he brought his business into their home. But when her mother died- was murdered- her father pulled her out of school, kept her home to tend to his needs. She never got to go to the mall. She barely left her house the last few years of her life, save for grocery shopping.
"What's going on in that head of yours, Blondie?" Jace murmured into her ear as they started on their way back to the car. Isabelle was walking far enough away to not hear him, and Clary had the sneaking suspicion that he'd asked her to do so. She'd been reserved since her revelation in the change room, the quiet just a symptom of her introspection.
The quiet worried Jace, Clary could see that now. It wasn't a benign thing to him, and if it was a symptom, its disease was fatal.
His voice was filled with hesitant curiosity, concern, and slight doubt;Clary noted this as she responded. "Just thinking about how you're going to ravish me in my new clothes." A playful smirk flit across her lips, indicative of the dark side neither of them had touched in a while.
But Jace stilled, his arm tightening where he'd placed it on her shoulder. She caught his gaze and was surprised to find rarely any heat in it, but rather sternness. He was strangely serious. "Clary I..." he trailed off. " I-you don't have to joke around. If something's bothering you-anything-I'd like to...be there for you? I guess?" He shook his head and darted his amber eyes away from hers, looking around for the words that refused to fall from his lips. He huffed a laugh, "I'm sorry I'm terrible at feelings and- I just want you to be able to talk to me about that shit-stuff, those things. Feelings. And, yah." His arm had fallen from around her shoulders so his hand could scratch the back of his neck. A nervous tick. Adorable, in a way, that he was nervous around her, that she could do that to him.
"I was thinking about my life before, about Valentine." It was barely a sentence, her voice sliding just above a whisper as she looked deep into his eyes. They snapped back to hers, surprised to see she actually did as requested. "It wasn't much of a life at all." She'd talked to him about her life before, and it had been good. This part was easy. It was the emotion part that got in the way.
Jace's eyes filled with understanding, the look of someone who also experienced trauma. Not pity, but a certain knowing, of the sadness and insanity that she had to deal with. "I sometimes get flashbacks to the night my parents got murdered. I used to have a tutor, a therapist of sorts, that told me to ground myself in the real world when I think or talk about what happened to me. Like touching something. I didn't really listen, I sort of just took it out on others, got into fights, made bad jokes. But talking...it helps you know?"
Clary was so tired, exhausted at the thought of tackling any of her demons. She didn't want to talk about her horrible childhood, she wanted to go to the Lightwood's and start investigating Valentine's files. She didn't want to spend hours crying about how shitty and awful she'd felt for the majority of her life, she wanted it to just be gone. And god forbid she talked about it with Jace, someone who made her happy and confident and believed in her. The very thought of sharing something so dark with him sent shivers down her spine. And Jace was the one who told her to not go home in the first place; to not investigate further. Jace was the one who told her to keep running. Why did he have a sudden change of heart now?
She didn't have the time to figure out. And God she hated that she even cared about this shit right now!
She'd lost track of her mission, without the Voice's constant reminders. She'd lost sight of her end goal.
"Jace, I think it's best we just leave it alone. I just...need some space." Clary whispered, throat raw. She wanted nothing but revenge. That was it. These friends, this life, was simply a bonus. She needed to search her father's files, come up with some lead on where the other killers might be. She didn't need to talk about something that ruined her with every thought, when her life actually felt good. Isabelle yelled for them to hurry up, saving her from the conversation. Yet it didn't save her from the look on Jace's face. Drooping brows, turned down lips, his beautiful golden eyes glazed with emotion. Clary felt the her throat constrict, not wanting to hurt him, but refusing to hurt herself. He buried the sadness in his eyes and smirked at her.
She felt her heart drop. She needed space, sure, but she didn't want to lose him.
"Then we best get to ravishing, huh?" An arm slung over her shoulders and pulled her tight to his chest. A smirk that was as plastic as a doll's. A mask. He was so solid beneath her, but she'd seen before how fragile he was underneath. Alec's warning echoed in her head, and she wondered how close Jace was to truly breaking. How may layers of glass made up this breaking boy?
There was tension between them. Jace recognized that as soon as they slid into the doors of the institute. Clary had detached herself from his side and stood partly away from him. He fought back his self-hatred, refusing to let it convince him that he was repulsive, that she was rejecting him, getting bored of him, slowly isolating herself until she finally left him just like everybodyleaveshim-
He took a deep breath.
"So, ravishing?" he asked a little awkwardly. She chuckled halfheartedly, waving a hand toward the staircase behind them.
"I was actually thinking of a nap. Some time alone maybe? I feel very..." he waited. How she felt? Jace didn't think he could ever guess. "Tired."
Jace nodded. "You can go to our room, I was going to go to the library anyways, research...ah...police records, I guess, for any more info on Carlin."
The last word that came from his lips, the very sound of it, fell into the air like a rock into a still pond. Anticipation settled in the ripples it caused, silence languidly drifting into the space between them, each waiting for the other to say something. They looked into each other eyes, waiting, waiting, waiting...
God, it was so painfully awkward. Jace wasn't awkward around girls! Jace wasn't awkward ever!
Clary curtly nodded, walking away, and a feeling of wasted opportunity settled over his bones. He felt a surge of panic in his chest, couldn't stop himself from calling out, "Red!"
She turned around, eyes kind but, true to her word, tired. "Yes, Jace?"
He loved the way her lips wrapped around the sounds of his name.
But what could he say? I've become attached to your presence and now any thought of you leaving scares the shit out of me? I want you to open up to me so i can validate my place in your life? I can't talk about my feelings because I don't want them to scare you away? It's probably my horrible commitment issues and skewed loyalty complex? You can't say that to a normal woman, let alone one as emotionally isolated as Clary. So he just said "Sleep well."
She nodded, something a little disappointed in her posture as she turned away. At his response? Did she want him to be emotional? His nostrils flared. How could he be expected to be open when she wouldn't?
And so he walked (Read: stormed) away, in the opposite direction of her, away from her. Their whole relationship felt like a bad joke. Two emotionally stunted people walk into a bar...
He burst through the library doors and started pacing in front of the bookshelves. He didn't know what he expected, but when he asked her to share her feelings he didn't want her to isolate herself further! Did he misread something? Was he misinterpreting their passion, their chemistry? God, it was all just so frustrating!
Jace's ringing cell phone interrupted his internal monologue, the screen reading 'J'. Shit. He forgot to phone Jonathan back from the mall.
"I need to talk to you about something incredibly important, and you must keep it confidential, do you understand?" Jonathan started.
"Well hello to you to, Mr. Congeniality."
"I need you in person, in front of my desk, in 10 minutes Jace. 10. No later" He droned on, mono toned but serious on the other end of his cell. Jace hadn't even taken off his jacket, and he reached for the keys in his pocket.
What better way to blow off steam than to speed down the street in his favourite possession?
"I'll be there in 5" he grinned.
It was quiet in Jace and Clary's room as Clary closed the door behind her, shutting her inside a bubble of comfort. Clary didn't realize how much social interaction, like shopping, would take out of her. She felt drained. Isabelle must have placed Clary's shopping bags beside the bed while Jace and Clary had that awful conversation at the bottom of the stairs. She didn't want to think about the tension that arose between them, but it stuck to her mind like an old piece of taffy.
Clary shuddered as she fell onto the bed. She stole herself one moment alone, shut her mind off so no thoughts ran through it, and lay in the quiet warm blankets of their bed. Their bed. Hers and Jace's. More warmth spread through her, blushing her cheeks at the thought of something being theirs. She was a part of a 'their's' now, she was a part of a together, ours, we. Her heart beat once in that moment, and though it was a normal heartbeat, Clary felt it shudder through her bones.
She opened her eyes and they landed on her beat up old backpack, stuffed with all the answers she needed, filled with revenge and the inevitable death of those who wronged her.
The moment was officially over. And she was suddenly a singularly thing again.
She stretched to reach the backpack, fiddling with the edges of the straps before finally finding a grip and hauling it onto their bed. Emptying its contents all over the sheets probably wasn't the smartest idea, but that didn't stop Clary from turning it over and letting the files fall out. Pushing aside a spare pair of clothes (the only thing Clary'd possessed when leaving Jace's, she stacked all of her father's old files on top of one another. There were lots of papers, some marked with a stamp to indicate their importance, all the files marked with a name (person or group) and a date. She rifled through them, stopping on a familiar name.
Luke Garroway.
The man she'd shot at one of Jace's parties. She couldn't remember much about that night, in fact she only remembered focusing on Luke. No other details had entered her mind. She remembered recognizing the man Luke was with, Jonathan, that was his name, but Luke was such a focal point she rarely registered or processed the evening.
Now that she thought about it, she felt like she'd ignored some crucial piece of her puzzle, lost in her bloodlust.
She flipped open his file, which was small compared to the others she'd taken with her. The date next to his name read Dec, 16, 2000. Clary would have been only a month or so old at that point. She wondered briefly what the dates meant. Why were they marked? The file featured a picture of Luke, with her father, and a neat pile of receipts. Valentine was grinning, an arm looped around his newly indoctrinated 'buddy'. But Luke wasn't smiling, save for a tilt of his lip. And he wasn't looking into the camera but above it. At the camera person.
Mom always took the pictures.
Clary knew that because she'd had to do the job once after her mother died. Only once. Valentine didn't have many new friends back then.
She fiddled with the picture. Luke looked sad. It was... off putting to say the least.
She looked further into his folder, reading through her father's notes on the man. He'd been with Valentine for a while, leaving him just after Jocelyn's death. Valentine wrote that Luke was a 'suspicious character, conversing with enemies'. Luke was Valentine (and therefore Jocelyn's) best customer, always paying on time, always following the rules Jocelyn had set up. Valentine sounded jealous in his writings, jealous of the way her mom looked at Luke, jealous of the time he'd caught them laughing instead of fucking on paid time. And so Valentine kicked him out, and when Jocelyn died...
Clary's eyes widened, her free hand coming up to touch her lips, convincing them to not let out the gasp, curse, exclamation, that she'd almost let out.
When Jocelyn died, Luke had gone to meet up with Valentine's 'personal enemy'- Carlin.
Clary knew there had to be some connection between Carlin and her father, all of her targets were Carlin's collaborators.
But now it wasn't just suspicion, it was proof. Clary filtered through the other files. There was the short man from the last party, the one they'd murdered in the bathroom. And bodyguard she'd killed at her first party. All of them ran to join the mysterious Carlin. All but 3.
Jonathon. He'd stayed with her father. Up until a month before she'd killed Valentine. He'd left after a mutual falling out.
His file was almost bare. One page, no picture though Clary remembered him well enough, with just a brief history of his work with Valentine and some notes made on the side about being trustworthy. Trustworthy enough to be held in high esteem by a man that hated even his daughter. Trustworthy enough to perhaps know some of Valentine's secrets. Like the whereabouts of his co-workers.
Clary closed the file folder, resolve settling in her heart. Jonathan was her key. She needed to know what he knew about her father. Perhaps about Carlin. She would torture it out of him if she had to.
But in the end, his fate was set.
She was going to kill the fuck out of him.
Clary laid in bed, the files folded neatly in her bag, hidden under her clothes and stuffed somewhere deep in the wardrobe. It was dark now, and Jace still wasn't back. She had gone out looking for him after finishing with the files (she'd made an exhaustive list of who to kill based off their connections with her father, Carlin, and her mother), but she hadn't seen him anywhere. Lunch rolled around and Isabelle took her to train, Alec joining in to teach her more about gun basics. By the time dinner was served and Jace still wasn't back, Clary was worried. When evening fell and dusk settled in the shadows of the halls, that worry had morphed into a small monster, gnawing a pit in her stomach.
She hadn't meant to upset him. She hadn't meant to push him away. You should be pushing people-she just needed space- being close is dangerous you should just-Clary cut her own thoughts off. She wouldn't let the Voice take hold of her again. They were okay. Jace was still close with her, she reassured herself. They just had a hard time with emotions. Yeah. That's all.
Sure.
She'd been laying in bed for an hour, back facing the door, the moonlight casting a blue-white light throughout the room, when she heard the door creak open. She didn't turn around as she listened to him unbuckle his weapons belt, drop it to the floor, and shuck off his jacket. A rustle of clothes, then the dip of the bed as he slid in behind her.
"Clary?" he whispered, voice raw. She didn't answer. She didn't know why. She just pretended to sleep. His hand brushed the hair off her neck. He pressed a kiss there.
"Goodnight."
And though she could feel her worry turning to frustration, and a little bit of anger, his arms still felt like home as the embraced her.
Home and Jace. Synonyms. What a terrifying thought.
So I'm still kind of making this up as I go along lmao, sorry if there are inconsistencies. Jace and clary need to confront their emotion problem (which will be coming up next chapter or so). And the bonnie and clyde side of our duo will come back to play soon. I hope you guys are having as much fun with this as i am, and thank you to the beautiful new reviewer who made my day with their comments. Bless ur soul.
Ok cool, thanks for reading y'all. I'll be back soon.
