When Jace next opened his eyes, he was aware of two things. One: his head was throbbing sickeningly and two: he was lying down on a small cot, with one wrist cuffed to the metal bed frame. He narrowed his eyes at the cuff before sitting up, the motion making the pain in his head double.
Jace closed his eyes to block out the spinning of the room, his hand coming up to hold the tender, aching spot on his temple, when he heard the door being unlocked.
The heavy metal door opened and Jonathan entered, carrying a tray in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. Jace dropped his hand back down on the mattress, his eyes growing dark.
"Oh good, you are still alive." Jonathan said smugly, kicking the door shut behind him with a bang. "We got worried there for a second." he said in an ironic voice, his smile wide enough to bring out dimples in his cheeks. Jace slid his legs off the bed, turning to face him.
"Yeah, I'm sure you both were beside yourselves with panic." he said tonelessly.
Jonathan laughed as he approached him, setting the tray down on the table next to the bed. Jace looked down at it with disinterest. Pre-cut steak, potatoes, and green beans; not something you usually feed someone on lockdown. Jace flicked his suspicious gaze up from the food. Jonathan met his eyes.
"You should eat that." Jace cocked an eyebrow.
"You'd like that wouldn't you."
Jonathan smiled a little before reaching out and plucking a green been off the tray and popping it in his mouth. He chewed and deliberately swallowed, his eyes on Jace.
"See? It's just food. Nothing extra…no special ingredients. Father doesn't want you dead."
"Could've fooled me."
"He doesn't want you dead. Trust me." Jonathan said as he turned away, heading back to the door.
"Cause it's always been in my best interest to trust you…" Jace mumbled.
"Anyways, you should really eat that. You're going to need your strength." Jace blinked.
"Need my strength for what?" Jonathan stopped and looked back at him over his shoulder, a grin tugging up the corner of his mouth.
"You didn't really think that this was your punishment did you?" he said sinisterly before continuing to the door. Jace stayed silent. Jonathan laughed. "Like I said…you're gunna need your strength. Don't say I never do anything for you."
Jace rolled his eyes and looked at the wall. He was so maddeningly unhelpful.
Jonathan paused at the door, his hand on the knob, when a frown creased his face. He stood there, unblinking, until he could feel Jace's eyes on him.
"Why do you do it?" Jonathan asked in indecipherable tone. Jace narrowed his golden eyes.
"Why do I do what, Jonathan?" His brother dropped his hand and turned to face him, his expression very blank but his eyes hard and intense.
"Why do you make your life so much harder than it has to be?" Jace laughed on his exhale of breath, his eyebrow raising in disbelief at the question.
"You mean why do I rebel?" Jonathan crossed his arms.
"Yeah. Why do you do it. Why can't you just obey and make things easier for yourself?" Jace shook his head.
"I don't expect you to understand why I do the things that I do."
"Then explain it to me." Jace gave him a suspicious look.
"Why do you want to know." Jonathan paused, then smiled with the gleam back in the black depths of his eyes.
"Must be that contagious curiosity of yours." Jace rolled his eyes and looked away again at the whiteness of wall. Jonathan leaned back against the door. "So explain it to me. Because for the life of me I can't figure it out."
For a long time, Jace was quiet. This was so pointless.
Trying to explain right from wrong to Jonathan was like trying to teach Shakespeare to a pigeon. But what the hell, Jonathan said he wanted to know and he could always fly away when it bounced right off of him.
"Did you ever get the feeling…that something Father said or did was just…wrong?" Jace asked. Jonathan stared at him, not blinking.
"No." Jace scoffed.
"Why am I even wasting my breath?" Jace mumbled as he reached out for the bottle of water, finding savage pleasure in the crack the seal made as he twisted it.
"Okay, okay…" Jonathan watched as he downed the water almost as if finishing it would guarantee him peace and quiet. "I haven't…but obviously you have."
Jace shook his head as he replaced the cap on the water and tossed it away from him.
"Yes, you have, Jonathan. You're just not admitting it or you've forgotten it…or he's made you forget it." Jonathan met his gaze and his eyes lit and seemed to sparkle with a dangerous black humor.
"Sure." was his quiet response. Jace glared back at him. Jonathan's dark eyelashes lowered slightly, veiling the amusement that glittered in his eyes like the bright sheen of oil in sunlight.
"Don't make the mistake of thinking that you and I are cut from the same cloth, Angel Boy. Just because you've had that feeling of wrongness around Father, doesn't mean that I have. Maybe you're the wrong one. Did you ever think of that?"
Jace didn't answer him. He stared down at a crack on the floor, his golden eyes glazed, with a brooding look on his face. It was a few long seconds before he spoke again.
"Do you remember when we were about six or seven…Father was gone away doing something for the Circle and we were here with the tutor?" Jonathan looked back at him with blank eyes. Jace continued.
"And we had finished all our assignments for the day and the tutor had fallen asleep. We stayed in our desks for awhile but then we couldn't take the boredom and the old guy's snoring…" Jonathan's expression was slowly becoming more and more stone like as he began to remember the time Jace was referring to.
"There was nothing to do…so we went out in the yard." Jace met Jonathan's stare, a small smile sweeping across his lips. "You remember what we did?"
Jonathan leaned his head back against the wall, his black eyes becoming dull and unfocused like he was seeing something else.
And Jace knew what he was seeing: two blonde Shadowhunter boys, running through the grass faster than they should be able to, leaping over stone walls, doing graceful back flips from the branches of high trees; with laughing smiles on their faces…two brothers playing together.
"We played tag." Jonathan said finally. Jace smiled.
"Yeah. You remember how much fun we had? How impossible it was for one of us to stay It for longer than thirty seconds?"
The corner of Jonathan's mouth twitched in an almost smile. Their abilities had been so evenly matched even then; but that's part of what made it so fun. They had to really try to catch each other. It had been challenging, but Jonathan could not remember another time when he had laughed so carelessly.
Jace watched his brother reminiscing, enjoying the peaceful expression he wore. He almost wished he could just leave him be because Jonathan so rarely ever looked peaceful. Part of him wished he wasn't about to say what he was about to say.
"We were out in the yard playing tag…and do you remember what happened then?" Jace asked, surprised at how much bitterness his voice suddenly held.
Jonathan blinked, and a small crease appeared between his eyebrows as he frowned slightly.
In his mind, he saw a seven year old Jace sprinting across the emerald green grass, sun light glinting off his hair, before he turned and peered back at him over his shoulder, a grin of challenge on his face and eyes bright with happy arrogance; even back then Jace thought he was the greatest boy alive.
But it was of no importance. In a few seconds, Jonathan would catch him and tag him and Jace knew it because he laughed louder and ran faster through the grass, delighted that he had suggested they play this impossible to win game.
They hadn't even seen him standing there. Hadn't heard him approach, hadn't felt his black, disapproving glare.
They were so absorbed in their game, it was like he was a part of the background. Thinking back on it now (the memory was acutely vivid for him), Jonathan wondered how they could have missed him, dressed in a sharp black suit, looking like a spot of soot on a photograph of somebody's perfect summer.
It wasn't until Jace suddenly changed direction and sprinted right at him did Jonathan actually see him. He had been so startled that he couldn't speak, couldn't warn Jace. Not that it would have done him any good.
Jace was running too fast. So fast…it all happened so fast.
Jace, looking back at Jonathan, slammed into Valentine and the force knocked him to the ground so hard it was like he had been struck by lightning. Valentine looked down at him and blinked, clearly not at all affected.
And Jonathan had finally slid to a stop in the gravel surrounding the grass, but lost his balance and fell when Valentine's black eyes flicked up from Jace to him.
Jonathan could remember the hot, burning pain of his skinned palms, could remember looking down at the blood that mixed with the dirt from the rocks and the torn skin that stuck up in pale, jagged peaks along his hands.
But when his father spoke, he forgot all about it…in fact he didn't think about his hands at all again after.
"What…do you think you're doing?" Valentine asked softly, his voice barely audible over the sound of the birds and the wind whistling through the leaves of the trees.
Jonathan looked around him, squinting a little in the bright sunlight.
Surely, this was all wrong? A setting like this was supposed to be happy…like it had been a few minutes ago.
He looked over at Jace, who had rolled over onto his side and was holding his bleeding elbow.
If the situation had happened now, when he and Jace were both seventeen, he supposed Jace would look up at Valentine and say, real snarky, "Is that supposed to be rhetorical?" but at the time, Jace hadn't been the smart ass that he was now.
At the time, Jace was seven, and he looked over at his older brother with wide eyes that showed Jonathan the panic that he was trying to get under control.
"We were just playing." Jace said quietly, his golden eyes becoming dull as he realized just how angry their father was…
Jonathan pulled himself out of his memories with effort.
He glanced over at Jace and saw not panic and innocence in his eyes, but an anger that was so raw and primal that he had to look away, for he had begun to clench his jaw and felt the beginnings of a slow burning rage in his own eyes.
"And then what happened?" Jace repeated. Jonathan took a slow, calming breath.
"Father came home." Jonathan felt his brother's burning golden eyes on his face like they held fire.
"Was he happy to see us?" he asked, violence coloring his voice.
Looking over at Jace, Jonathan got the impression of a very pissed off lion in a cage.
Except Jace was more dangerous. He was the kind of lion that didn't make a lot of noise when he was angry. The only clue that you had was the furious stare he would give you but then he would deceive you with his relaxed body language. He just tricked you into getting close enough, made you think he was calm and under control, and that's when he would rip your face off.
"He was really mad."
"And?"
"And he punished us." Jace narrowed his eyes as his voice dropped.
"You remember what he did?" Jonathan flicked his eyes back up to Jace's, his face hardening stoically.
"Yeah. We had to kneel on those broom sticks."
"For how long?"
"About an hour." Jonathan said in an overly light tone. Jace cocked his head as his mouth twisted into a sneer.
"Do you remember the bruises? How we couldn't stand or walk after that hour was up?" he said it the way Jonathan had; lightly, downplaying it like it wasn't important. Jonathan's eyes darkened.
"So what? We've both dealt with bruises before…" he let his voice trail off and Jace caught the implied end of his brother's bitter but truthful sentence.
And we both know that they aren't the worst that he can do. Jace stared back at him, his hand clenching into an involuntary fist on the mattress.
Yeah, you're right. But he's already done much worse than bruise us hasn't he?
Jonathan looked away from Jace's cold stare, pretending he didn't understand when Jace knew that he had, and it only made him angrier.
Jace took a calming breath and fought against the urge to bring up the demonic marks he had seen on Jonathan's chest and make him admit that he knew what Jace's look had meant.
If he was going to do this right though, it would have to be done slowly and painfully,with one unjust cruelty at a time.
"So are you saying the crime fit the punishment?" Jace asked, his eyes traveling up the wall idly. Jonathan re-crossed his arms and stared at him with a narrow look.
"It doesn't matter. I don't question Father because I know my place." Jace rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah and you think I would do well to learn mine, look," he turned on the bed to face him, making the chain on the cuff rattle against the metal bed frame.
"We were punished like that for what? For playing. The tutor had fallen asleep and we had finished all of our work, it's not like we stopped what we were doing to go run around like little monkeys. I could see then why he would be mad. But we had finished and there was nothing to do…and what do kids do when they're bored? They go outside. They run around and play tag." he leaned forward intently. "Jonathan, we didn't do anything wrong. Don't you see that?" Jonathan smiled with out humor.
"Alright, if you know so much about it then why did he get so mad if we weren't doing anything wrong?"
"You know the answer to that." Jonathan seemed to sneer back at him.
"No, no, no. You supposedly know the inner workings of Father's head, so why don't you just spit it out? Go ahead and enlighten me, Angel Boy. Did he get so pissed because he was missing out on all the fun? Or was it because we were running on his grass? I'm betting it was because of the grass; it was a remarkable shade of green and damn us to hell for running on it like lawless little bastards."
"God, Jonathan don't you see what he's doing to you? You're so mad and spiteful that you're starting to sound like me."
Jonathan blinked at him. Ugh. He's right. Gross.
"If that isn't proof…" Jace looked at his brother meaningfully. Jonathan pushed up off the door with his shoulders.
"No, all that means is that I've been in this room with you for too long and your stupid sarcasm is starting to rub off on me." he said as he turned angrily and reached out for the door handle.
"Wait. You wanted to know why he got so mad when he saw us, okay I'll tell you. It was just because we were playing, Jonathan. Honest to God, that's it." Jonathan stopped, his hand clenched around the handle of the metal door.
"That doesn't make any sense. Why would he get mad because we were playing?"
Jace's eyes filled with intense sorrow; a look that his brother didn't see because his back was turned.
"Just think about it for a second."
Jonathan exhaled heavily and dropped his head back as he looked up at the ceiling in an extreme version of an eye roll.
He let go of the handle and spun around to face his brother, his anger igniting like a struck match.
Jonathan was disarmed to see the complete open vulnerability in Jace's eyes. He had never been able to read his brother's emotions so well, or Jace had never allowed him to.
Looking across the room at him now, Jonathan could see the sadness in those strange golden eyes. And underneath that, unsurprisingly, was anger. And deeper still, underneath that, was pain. Jonathan frowned and Jace continued to look back at him, not dropping his eyes or hardening his stare to hide the emotions he knew were visible.
"Come on, Jonathan, you're not stupid. Why would Father be mad when he saw us playing together?" Jonathan blinked slowly, thoughtfully.
"Because he didn't want us to get along. Not like that anyways." A small flicker of something lit up in Jace's eyes.
"But he's our father. Surely any father would be happy that his sons were getting along and playing together?" Something was building subtly in Jace's voice.
"You'd think so." The flicker in his brother's eyes was getting brighter.
"But that wasn't the case. We were punished for playing, for doing what little kids are supposed to do…and our father punished us for it. We were getting along, having fun…actually being brothers for the first time Jonathan, and he came home, yelled at us, and made us believe that we had been doing something wrong. And did you notice, that after that little incident, we never played again? That after that we started to grow farther and farther apart? Then as we got older, the rivalry set in…" Jace's eyes darkened with shadows. "Then came the hatred…and voila. Here we are. Now it's so bad between us, everyday is bordering homicide. And did you notice Father's position in all this?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, as he was driving us away from each other…where was he?" Jonathan felt his eyes growing cold.
"Right in the middle. Waiting with open arms." Jace smiled slowly, his eyes lit up with determination; Jonathan was finally getting it.
"But why? Why would he do that? Why drive us apart and make us hate each other? What's the thinking?" Jace asked quickly, knowing that the quicker he asked the quicker Jonathan would get there; his brain, like Jace's, was trained to work better under pressure.
"He didn't want us to be close. Because then it would be us and him. He probably figured later it would get to be us against him." And he would've been right…Jace thought.
"So he cleverly taught us to hate each other from an early age and made us dependent on him, that way it would never be us against him. It would pretty much just be him." Jace finished, hearing the acid that had slipped in his voice with the last sentence he spoke.
Suddenly Jace felt extremely tired, like he had aged sixty years in the past sixty seconds. He rubbed his eyes before running a hand through his hair, trying to keep it together for a little bit longer.
"So yeah, Jonathan. Sometimes the man does things that I don't readily agree with. Like, punishing us for being brothers. Call me out of line but that there, seems a little wrong to me."
Despite his fleeting and sarcastic tone, Jonathan could tell that Jace was actually upset. He realized that Jace used sarcastic humor to hide the fact that he was hurting…he couldn't believe he had just now figured it out.
"I get it." Jonathan said quietly.
Jace flicked his eyes up to his brother's black ones and for a moment it seemed that their color had darkened to match Jonathan's.
"Do you?" Jace asked before he clenched his teeth together so tightly his jaw ached. "Because there's a bigger picture, Jonathan. And it doesn't just have to do with me." Jonathan hooded his eyes but didn't say anything.
Jace took this as an invitation.
"I don't know if you've noticed this, but we're not really experiencing what most people would call a 'normal' upbringing."
"What do you mean?" Jace narrowed his eyes at him and raised his arm, making the chain that cuffed him to the cot jangle loudly.
"This isn't normal. Parents don't do this to their kids, Jonathan." His older brother blinked once in confusion.
"Then what's grounding?" Jace fought for his patience.
"Not this. This is what mundanes call child abuse. But you and I, we call it…detainment. We're so fucking desensitized to it all, Jonathan. This is normal for us but it shouldn't be. Parents don't literally lock up their kids. Even Shadowhunter parents, who don't live by the same rules. But our parent does. Why is that?" Jonathan raised his eyebrows.
"Are you really asking me or are you just ranting?"
Jace pinched the bridge of his nose, making his chain rattle again. When he spoke again, his voice was slower but no less intense.
"It's because we aren't kids to him, we never really were. You know what we are to him? He tells us all the time…"
Jonathan looked into the cold eyes of his younger brother, feeling a shiver of shock at how much icy hate they held.
"Soldiers. We're his soldiers."
Jace smiled bitterly and that smile paired with the coldness in his eyes made the familial resemblance so striking it made Jonathan uncomfortable. Now he's been around me for too long…
"Exactly." Jace murmured. "And you can lock up your soldiers when they disobey. Nobody has a problem with that. That's how he justifies it." Jace scooted back on the bed, stretching his legs out in front of him and pressing his back to the wall.
"And what do all soldiers have in common? Even though they don't like to admit it or think about it?" Jonathan shrugged. Jace turned his head and looked at him, his eyes alight with dark humor.
"They're expendable, Jonathan. Easily replaced."
"You think Father would replace one of us?"
"Oh definitely. It might take awhile, because he would have to find some kid to steal and then train but yeah. I think he would."
"Why do you think that?"
"News flash, big brother: he doesn't care about us. Not like he should. You want proof, as if the past seventeen years aren't enough, then take another look at that demon spell he burned into your chest."
Jonathan's eyes widened in surprise; how did he know about that? Jace dropped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
"I can only imagine what kind of sick shit you see because of his twisted demon spells."
Jonathan didn't reply. He wasn't going to mention that his burns were not like Jace's.
Jace didn't know how good he had it. He only had to see things when he disobeyed. He didn't have to deal with the whispering that kept him awake at night and the emotions that weren't his…but Jonathan was used to the darkness at this point. By now he considered it to be a part of him. And in truth, he sometimes found it hard to separate the demon's hateful emotions from his own.
Jace turned his head back to him and opened his eyes.
"We don't matter to him the way sons should matter to a father. And that's because he thinks we're his possessions. You know it's true. He talks like we're his weapons. Point and shoot; with no stray thought of us as he does it."
That tone was back in his voice, the quiet but intense promise of something…
It was dangerous, definitely fueled by his anger, and as much as he hated to admit it, Jonathan felt himself being drawn to it.
It sounded bitter, but at the same time righteous; like it was worth feeling and worth fighting for...Retribution was a toxic and fatally compelling concept...
"So what's your point?"
Jace looked over at him, his eyes glittering, and knew that he had his brother on a hook.
"So sometimes weapons backfire."
