Merp, I've kinda lost track of my updating schedule? *Throws updates and internet cookies*
Clary only managed to get a few hours of sleep.
In fact, she was pretty sure she didn't actually get any sleep, just kind of closed her eyes and tried not to think about everything that had happened in the past few hours, and she would feel as though maybe she was drifting into unconsciousness, but then her eyes would open of their own accord and she would be wide awake again.
She was in her old room and it felt strange to be back here without any particular reason. And while it was her old room, it wasn't the room that she had grown up in. It was the room that she had been in since she was seventeen, and she had only been in for just over a year, and then when she had come back for visits, which really hadn't been often. It had a lot of her stuff from her bedroom growing up, a lot of the pictures in childish photo frames, books and magazines in the book shelf and her desk organized with her old laptop and pencils and a few writing books. There were still a lot of old clothes in her drawers and wardrobe, and it was lucky that Clary really hadn't grown all that much since she was eighteen—she had always been petite and with werewolf metabolism, it wasn't as though she had ever really put on much weight, just shifting a few pounds here and there.
It was the sun was only just rising outside when Clary got up, moving quietly around the room and over to her drawers. She opened the middle drawer and there were some jeans and shorts and leggings inside. She found a pair of grey and purple leggings and pulled them on, noting that they were a bit tighter around her ass than they would have been a while ago. She didn't know if she was happy or pissed about that, turning on her side to look at her shadowy figure in the mirror and tipped her head to the side as she looked at the curve of her ass. It did look a little bigger than it did a few months ago. Her attention shifted as she fished a sports bra out of her bag and tugged a shirt on and then slipped her phone into the slim pocket against her thigh. She had only packed one other pair of shoes when she had been coming here from here apartment, but there were a pair of running shoes in her wardrobe, so she pulled them on and walked out of her room.
She was glad she was on the first floor, because there was a good chance that she would wake people up if she was on the second floor. Although Luke had mentioned that he was getting the walls reinforced with sound proofing, something that was pretty much a requirement when being a werewolf, given how acute their hearing was.
Clary closed the front door behind her, taking in a deep breath of the crisp, morning air that smelt absolutely nothing like New York. She was hit with so many memories as certain smells twined together, reminding her of growing up, and she shook her head, jerking her hair back roughly in a ponytail before jumping down the couple of stairs leading up to the deck, and was then running.
Her wolf was happy.
She was preening and jumping and running around inside Clary, stretching out through her limbs and pushing her to run faster, faster.
Clary ran in the city, of course, but she couldn't run like she did here. She couldn't open herself up and let herself be free, and holding herself back had actually become so second-nature to her, that she actually had to force herself to remember that she could let go. The toes of her shoes dug deeper into the ground, pushing herself to go faster and actually feeling the muscles of her body straining a little as she ducked and weaved and then all of a sudden she was skidding to such a fast stop that her body seized up a bit and then she was crashing to the ground and rolling over and she could feel branches and stones tugging and scratching at her, but none of the pain lasted very long, all of them healing quickly when she finally stopped rolling and stared up at the sky through the leafy branches above her.
Her breathing slowed down and she squeezed her eyes shut.
There were certain smells that were never going away.
There were certain memories that were never going away.
Clary turned her head to the side and the clearing that she had grown up in was right in front of her.
Jace had been right, the whole place looked so much different from how it used to, and it smelt a whole lot different as well—it smelt better, because it could never smell any worse, although there were still familiar scents still wound into the very fabric of this place.
Clary swallowed hard as she lifted herself up so that she was sitting, legs spread out in front of her, dirt and thin slivers of blood scattered over her arms from the cuts that were already healed, and she let her eyes travel around. The place where the old house had been was now a clearing, and it was filled with little bushes and trees that were a lot newer than the ones around it, but that had taken root and were beginning to grow and climb.
Because of how much newer these trees were, it was obvious that this was a young part of the forest, but someone who walked by would never have guessed the horrors that went on here.
The person that had nearly killed Clary, and her mother, and her brother.
And the other person who had killed her father.
Clary wasn't sure how she was meant to react, being back in this place after six years of refusing to set foot in it, had refused to be in the same part of the country as it most of the time. She didn't feel sad—she had long ago stopped feeling—and she didn't feel angry, because the anger that she had felt in the years that had followed that fateful afternoon had been nearly enough to consume her, and she refused to let herself feel that way again.
She felt...Resigned, she guessed.
Maybe she wished that she felt a little more relieved and happy that this whole place was gone and it was never going to inflict any more pain on her again, but she didn't, because even all these years later, she was still feeling all the wounds that this place had inflicted on her. She still had scars on her body that even werewolf healing hadn't been able to fix, not from the silver and the wolfsbane whips and lashes that she had received. The physical scars weren't the ones that affected her everyday, though.
It was the emotional ones that ran a lot deeper, and that stopped her from being able to trust someone with her wolf and with her heart, even her own mate.
Clary took in a deep breath through her nose and still caught hints of ash and soot that was buried deep in the dirt underneath her feet. She let her eyes open and glow gold as she stared back up at the sky, which was beginning to turn blue, and then the silence was broken by her phone ringing and vibrating against her leg. Clary let her eyes shift quickly back to their human bright green and reached into the pocket to pull out her phone.
Raph.
Clary didn't think twice before swiping her thumb across the screen to answer the call, lifting it up to her ear.
"Hey," she answered, feeling her body relax.
"Hey," Raphael answered, his voice smooth and calm. "I wanted to give you a call to make sure everything was alright before I went to sleep." Clary pulled her phone away from her ear and saw that it was almost half past six. She did the math in her head and wrinkled her nose as she brought her phone back to her ear.
"Shit, it's after nine back home," she told him. "You should be asleep."
"Not before I talked to you," Raphael continued. "Is everything okay?" Clary let out a long breath, rolling her shoulders and her neck, letting her body loosen up.
"I'm going to be," Clary responded.
"Is this to do with everything that's been going on with you for the past few months? Because there's been so much magic around you recently...I know that you're needing Simon's help just to get through the day," Raphael said and Clary winced because it was true. Raphael had only mentioned it once or twice, even though it was glaringly obvious to anyone supernatural, but especially to a vampire who had over a hundred years of experience who had known her for nearly two years and had seen the way she had gone downhill.
"Yeah, I guess it is," Clary didn't really get into it, even though she knew that Raphael deserved a better explanation that what she was giving him. It wasn't as though he didn't know about Jace, and he definitely knew that something had happened with her family, although he had never pried very much. He had a lot that had happened with his own family, and Clary knew that his only living relative was his younger sister who was now in a rest home.
"Okay, well, you have my number, so you ring whenever you need it, even if it's in the middle of the day," Raphael told her and Clary couldn't help her smile. She knew that Raphael would be there for her, even if it was one in the afternoon in, which was the same as one in the morning for the rest of them.
"I know, thanks," Clary murmured. Raphael didn't say anything for a few long moments, and Clary just felt better knowing that he was on the other end of the phone.
"Alright," Raphael said quietly. "I'll talk to you later."
"Bye, Raph," Clary replied before taking her phone away from her ear. She looked down at the screen for a few beats, waiting until the screen turned black and then she tucked it into the pocket down the side of her leg. Things with Raphael were easy, and they were that way because both of them knew that they weren't going to last forever. Raphael knew that Clary had a mate, and Clary knew that Raphael was going to outlive her by decades. They both got on and they were comfortable with each other and things were relaxed and she liked what they had.
But what they had was nothing compared to just a few seconds of that fire that she felt when Jace had touched the back of her neck.
Clary spent a few minutes breathing in the air, just thinking about what she was meant to be doing for the rest of the day—for the rest of the week—she had no idea how long she was going to be here for, and then decided to get back to the house. It took her ten minutes to run back, going at a slower pace than before, even though her wolf wanted to be reckless and run as fast as she could go, and when she broke through the treeline, she couldn't help but feel love bubble up inside her.
Catarina Loss was sitting on the deck of the house, on the swing seat that was very similar to the one that had been on the deck of their first house. She had a thick blue blanket wrapped around her, and her unruly hair was in a braid over her shoulder. She didn't look in Clary's direction as she came toward the stairs, but there was a gentle smile on her face which said that she knew Clary was right there.
"Hey, baby," Catarina murmured as Clary came over and got onto the seat next to her, and she lifted her arm to wrap around the younger girl. "It's been a while since I've seen you. I knew you would be back," she smoothed Clary's hair away from her face, the strands that escaped the hair tie. "You belong here, baby."
It annoyed Clary when Simon told her that she needed to go back to Del Mar, and it annoyed Clary when her mother said it.
It was different when it was Catarina.
The woman was the emissary of the Greymark pack, and she had been the emissary of the Morgenstern pack before then. She was a powerful warlock, a healer, and she was one of the only members who had been there through the whole mess that was Clary's childhood, and then through Valentine's downfall and now she was still here.
Clary snuggled herself into Catarina's side, pulling her legs up onto the swing seat as well, and she turned her head into Catarina's shoulder, taking in deep breaths of the healer scent, of the comforting magic that surrounded her, and she let herself be lulled into sleep finally.
So songs I recommend are I Think I'm OKAY by MGK, Yungblud and Travis Baker, which I absolutely adore, and the song and especially the music video give me intense early 2000's feels, and Lost by Dermont Kennedy, which is so damn beautiful, I've completely fallen in love with it. Also Lost Without You by Freya Ridlings, which was sent to me by Reppinda5o3 and is completely heart breaking. Umm...I can't really think of many movies and TV series I've been watching lately. Sorry :(
Okay, so, questions; what's your lockscreen/homescreen/blah blah blah? My lockscreen is Dominic Harrison and my homescreen is Demi Lovato, both total babes.
Umm...What are you go-to feel good movies? Mine are—not in any type of order—Princess Bride, The Swan Princess, Stardust, Spirit and Frozen. Lol. Not even sorry. I think Catch and Release might be working its way onto this list as well.
...'Please tell me I'm your one and only/Or lie and say at least tonight/I've got a brand new cure for lonely/And if you give me what I want/Then I'll give you what you like'...
xxxxxxx