Clary had been incredibly understanding when he had told her of his plan. Jace had found it surprising considering that the reason behind it was not completely clear even to himself.
He had no idea if she had other plans or not - these days there always seemed to be a new funeral to attend – she only wrapped her arms around him and told him in no uncertain terms that she would come with him. Not even Jocelyn or Luke had tried to persuade them otherwise or asked them to go with some security - not that Jocelyn ever said much since Jonathan's death.
The atmosphere in Alicante was unusually fleeting. Despite the high number of Shadowhunters staying in the capital after the war, people drifted past each other as if they were completely alone, and the city was as bustling with noise as it had only few times before, with people popping from house to house with good wishes or condolences.
He let himself inside Amatis' old house and found Clary eating breakfast with her family, the three of them sitting quietly around the table, the subdued atmosphere only broken by the occasional murmur to pass the bread or pour orange juice. Jace grabbed the one empty chair left and slid down next to Clary, pressing his lips to hers in greeting. It was soft and gentle and chaste and maybe there were no fireworks or sparks, but it was better than that. The brief contact sent a wave of warmth through him - spilling out from his heart, rushing to every corner of his body - and for a moment the heaviness he felt in his chest loosened.
"Don't stay out until dark," Clary's mother warned, smiling weakly as Jace helped hoist Clary up on the horse he had rented for the trip.
"We will be back for dinner," Clary promised, "Ready?" she asked him quietly.
Jace nodded silently and felt her small hand grip his tightly.
They threaded lightly along the path, his hands sweaty despite the wintry chill as he held the reins. Jace wondered if Clary could hear his heart thrumming in his chest as her cheek rested against his back, her arms clasped around his torso.
He kept the pace slow, riding out of town without haste. It wasn't too late to change his mind, Jace told himself, he could still turn Wayfarer back and return him to the stables. He didn't have to go through with this. The mountains rose in the distance, their peaks white with snow, and the trees along the side of the road that led back to Alicante from the lake were stripped bare, their leafless branches making lacelike patterns against the bright sky.
He stopped their leisurely pace as Wayfarer came to the top of a small hill, and then Jace reined him in so they could look down to where the road split in two. One direction led back toward Alicante - the glowing points of the demon towers visible in the distance — while the other curled back down the side of the hill and toward a large building of mellow golden stone, surrounded by a low wall.
Jace felt his body go rigid with tension as the house came into view, his knuckles turning white where they were clutching at the reins.
Now that it was approaching lunchtime, the sun had risen higher in the sky and Jace could feel the heat of it against the back of his neck. He took advantage of the fact to reach for the flask he had stored in the saddle and waste a few more moments by taking a long sip of water.
He could feel Clary leaning over his shoulder behind him, looking around curiously. "Do you still want to go inside the house?" she asked quietly.
"Yeah, I still want to go," said Jace after a beat. "I've got to sooner or later, right?"
"You don't have to do anything," Clary told him.
Jace swallowed against the lump in his throat. It was kind of her to try not put any pressure on him, but he knew deep in his heart that now that he had claimed the Herondale name as his own he would inevitably be forced to deal with his past. "Let's go."
Wayfarer flicked his tail and trotted down the dirt path that led to Herondale Manor. It was strange, approaching the old, ruined house with the rusted iron gate and low wall surrounding its boundaries. Jace looked to the window and half expected to see his father – Stephen - through it, a boy not much older than himself, walking through those halls unaware those were the last times he would be able to do so, but instead all he saw was a bird, flitting from the overgrown front garden up to a nest under the rail of the stone terrace.
Jace felt his heartrate pick up as he slid from the back of the horse and reached up a hand to help Clary down after him.
"Here we are," he said, turning to face the imposing gate.
There was no turning back now. It was time to face the ghosts of his past, a past he had only known through some old photographs and letters.
The gate was in a bad shape. It had surely been sturdy when it was made, beautiful too, decorated with an iron motif of flying bird, but it had not been taken care of for nearly twenty years and the rust had set in. Jace opened it with the same care he used to peel the pages of the old volumes back at the Institute's library and brought it to a loud, screeching close behind him.
"I bet this place was really wonderful," said Clary, her hand reaching out to grasp his in a show of support.
Jace nodded, and looked up at the ruined house, the rubble scattered over the lawn and the ivy creeping in through the broken windows. Inside the gates, the dirt path had been replaced by a gravel drive, in the center of which was a stone fountain long gone dry.
Clary followed him up the cracked path and onto the slate doorstep.
Up close, he could see that the door at one point had been well cut and varnished, but over the years the paint that protected the wood had flaked and faded away, leaving it to rot and the brass doorknobs were now dull and stained. At the sides of it, two large vases made of clay welcomed them, the soil inside it dry and barren. It was such an unusual touch, Jace wondered briefly if it had been his mother's idea to decorate the house with flowers. He found it hard to believe that his grandmother, the cold, stern and grim Inquisitor, was the kind of woman to bring this kind of homely touch to her house.
He swallowed and lifted the hand that wasn't holding Clary's, placing it on top of the door's cold surface. The Herondale family ring on his index finger glinted in the midday sun.
The door moved in by about a centimeter and Jace felt a draft of cold air from inside the house through the slight gap. It creaked and groaned as he pushed on it, and barely moved with the stiffness from disuse and the rust on the hinges. But eventually it relented, and with a scrape it opened, leaving him stumbling slightly into it.
The house was enveloped by darkness, the only light reaching inside the one coming from the gap of the door. He released a deep breath he wasn't aware he was holding. His hand dropped limp at his side and Jace was grateful that Clary had the preparedness to pull out a witchlight out of her pocket because he felt like his body was frozen on spot.
The air was cold and stale, the many particles of dust dancing in the sunlight. Their footsteps echoed on the stone floor, and for a moment Jace was too overcome with emotions and simply stood there, looking around in silence.
To his right, there was a staircase leading up to the upper floor and, Jace guessed, towards the bedrooms. On the left was the door to the living room, he could see white sheets draped over the various pieces of furniture, untouched since the day they had been put there.
"Jace…?" said Clary, her voice far more gentle than it had been before.
"Can you believe this is where I would have grown up?" he blurted out as he walked to the left, through the open door, into the living room.
Jace walked swiftly forward and pulled off the sheet off the sofa with a rustling whoosh. A cloud of dust rose into the air, he waved some away from his face with impatience and looked down at it, half expecting to see some traces of his parents ever using it, but of course it was ridiculous – it had been seventeen years since anyone had sat on that couch.
"I can't imagine living in a place so full of dust," he attempted to joke even though his voice came out awfully hoarse.
He felt Clary's hand on his shoulder, the warmth of his seeping through his winter clothes. "Your cleanliness would have driven you insane," she said teasing although her tone careful, "Are you sure you-?"
Jace could scarcely hear her. His legs were like stone as he stared down at the piece of furniture, and tried to imagine a life where his parents hadn't died, a life where he would have known this room, this whole house like the back of his hand. He tried to imagine sharing it on long evenings, squeezed between his mother and father and giggling madly as they read him a book, them collapsing onto it in exhaustion when he was a new-born, lounged over each other on it as they listened to the wireless.
Suddenly, he felt that he couldn't look at it a moment longer and turned away, moving his attention onto the rest of the room. He started removing the sheets off the various furniture, an armchair, a little table and chairs, the grandfather clock, a piano even.
Almost in a daze, Jace moved next door, into a smaller corridor. Through an open door he could see the kitchen; granite counters, ceramic floor tiles, stainless steel appliances, utensils on hooks, matching cups, folded towels. Lining the walls, he could see torches powered by witchlight but the stones had been removed from the sockets, rendering them useless.
He walked past it and opened the next door walking straight into the library.
The air was stuffy and stale, the shutters closed over the windows and the curtains pulled tight. Dust collected everywhere as far as the witchlight's rays allowed him to see; around books, on top of the shelves and stands. Jace stepped close to the closest rows of books, trying to read the titles on the dusty spines. He was surprised to find the upper shelves were packed with mundane books. There were so many volumes written by mundane authors and poets, some of them old and clearly purchased when they had been first published, and some others new and clearly more modern readings. Someone in the house had loved fiction, for there were as many novels as non-fiction.
"Jace," Clary called from where she was dusting off the spine of a book, "Come look at this."
A cloud of dust rose from the pages as she flipped it open. Jace stared.
It was a photo album, and it was filled with pictures of his father, ranging through his childhood and him as a teenager, in the arms of a much younger, much happier Imogen and a man who looked strikingly like him, but with much neater hair. There were pictures of Stephen as a child on the steps of the London Institute, waving gleefully at the camera and, in another, a slightly older version of him with his father crouched behind him while Stephen proudly displayed the Sight rune on the back of his hand. In one, a cringing teenage Stephen tried in vain to dodge his mother's kiss, while another showed his father, looking much like Jace did now, but surprisingly dressed in mundane clothes; studded leather jacket, tight acid-washed jeans, blond hair gelled into preposterous spikes.
"Oh my god," Clary giggled behind her hand, "I know you shouldn't talk ill of the dead but his hair looks ridiculous!"
"I doubt that's what people mean when they say that," Jace replied distractedly as he skimmed through the pages. He saw some photos taken during the years his father had joined the Circle, photos recognizable by the many familiar faces that accompanied Stephen; Jocelyn, Luke, Amatis. Valentine. They were much scarcer and much more far between than before, he noticed.
Jace flipped the page, reaching the end of the album.
There, tucked in between the cover, there were two other pictures, unusually unattached from the pages.
Hands trembling, he reached for the first one. It was a photo of his parents wedding day. There was Stephen, in his ceremonial gear and whose hair was no longer all spiked up but, instead, gelled back in a way that reminded Jace eerily of Valentine. He looked somber, his back straight and face unsmiling. Then Jace's eyes swept on his mother. She was a stark contrast from Stephen, looking positively radiant - alight with happiness - in her wedding gown.
The other photo was dated November 1990, according to the cursive scrawl on its back. It portrayed his mother alone. She was sitting in front of the fireplace, in the same living room they had just passed, and her round stomach was impossible to miss. Jace took a shuddering breath, and closed the album almost reverently, placing the two pictures in his pocket. His hands were shaking slightly, and Clary took them in hers.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Yes," he lied, feeling slightly embarrassed to hear his voice crack. He suddenly wished he were alone, that Clary couldn't see him like this, but he knew that if he were alone he would want her grounding presence at his side instead. "I'm going to go upstairs," Jace said abruptly.
He tried not picturing what his mother's last minutes could have been like, as he went. The young, fragile girl of the picture he had just seen climbing those very stairs, some members of the Clave at the door having just announced the death of her husband, only to never come back down again.
She had been so close to giving birth back then, but not even that had stopped her from taking her life, Jace thought bitterly. He pushed those thoughts away and, instead, busied himself looking at the photos along the wall, swiping a hand over each one to clear the dust. Generation after generation of Herondale, some looking quite a bit like at him more than others. Some of them looked positively Victorian, drawings and tiny portraits of dark haired men and women that smiled demurely out at them.
His parents room had a stunning view over the vast grounds in the back of the Manor and the mountainous landscape of Idris, the gleaming peaks of the Demon Towers visible behind the luscious green hills.
A large bed with what looked like a homemade quilt over it occupied most of the wall and a delicate vanity dresser for his mother. Jace went over to it and opened the ornate jewelry box. There wasn't much inside, Jace supposed his mother hadn't been fond of wearing jewels often, just a few simple necklaces including the now dusty pearls he had seen her wear in her wedding photo and a couple of rings. He tried imagining what she would have looked like wearing them, maybe to attend one of those balls organized in Alicante, but it was hard to imagine his parents as actual people as opposite as seeing them in photos or hearing about them from others.
Inside the wardrobe the clothes were now moth eaten, but on his mother's dresses … He wasn't sure if he was imagining, it, maybe just hoping, but there was the trace of some flowery scent in the air, maybe jasmine…
Jace exited the room, moving on towards the last door, the only one that had been closed with a rune. A quick Opening Rune on the knob later, the door opened with a wince-worthy squeak and he pushed forwards almost impatiently, only to remain stuck in his place from the shock.
The nursery was all soft tones of pastel blue and white with pops of a darker blue from the occasional toy or the blanket folded at the feet of the crib, beautifully matching furniture and a large carpet on the vast space at the center of the room which looked perfect for a baby to roll in or learn how to crawl.
His throat tight with emotion, Jace skimmed his fingers over the spines of the few books left to accumulate dust on the upper shelves of the welsh drawer. They were mostly nursery rhymes - after all Shadowhunters didn't have fairytales book to read their children - the edges of the pages illustrated with runes and Shadowhunter soldiers wearing different kinds of gears.
"Jace…?" called Clary softly, her hand a gentle pressure on his back.
"This was supposed to be my room," Jace blurted out. He crouched down in front of the dresser and opened the lower drawers. Inside, folded neatly, there were rows and rows of baby onesies and clothes of all sorts, "Look at all this stuff… they had prepared everything."
Clary was across the room, examining the delicate wind chimes hanging over the wooden crib. A faint, delicate jingle carried through the room as her fingers came to contact with the small tubes. She looked over at him as he spoke, and her eyes trailed to the contents of the drawers. "It makes sense, your mother was weeks away from giving birth," she said, kneeling next to him and wrapping a comforting arm around his shoulders.
"I wish I could know more," he said, "I have no connection to the Herondale name outside my blood and there's no one out there who can help me understand. And I do want to understand. If I have to carry this name for the rest of my life the least I can do is trying to understand the people who gave it to me, understand the choices they made and try to avoid making the same mistakes."
Clary pressed a kiss to his cheek and rested her head against his shoulder. "I know that the Clave put you in a though spot asking you to pick a name for yourself in such a short time, but I believe you took the best decision by coming here." Jace pulled her close and kissed her forehead. She looked up at him and squeezed his hand once more. "I just hope you do not regret coming here."
"No," he said, after a long pause. "The time wasn't right last time, but… No, now I know," he said firmly. "I can't say I've suddenly made peace with my parents but at least now that I've come here, I know what this house used to be. But, at the same time, I realized I could never be happy here. Not fully. Even if I moved here and rebuilt the whole house from scratch, made it my own, even if I swapped rooms around, I'd always be thinking, this is where my mother died, the place my father had to share with a family he didn't want. How could I ever have children here, and not think about what happened?"
That line of thought surprised even himself. It was the first time he had mentioned having children, not just out loud, to Clary, but perhaps ever in his life. Jace had lived all his life believing he wouldn't live to become old and gray. That he would die in the heat of a battle, still young and with no one but the Lightwoods left behind to mourn him. But the possibility of a future, a happy one, maybe even a family lay before him now, and he knew that it was what he wanted.
Jace rose to his feet, avoiding Clary's gaze slightly embarrassed, slightly worried, that he had admitted such a desire to her. "Sorry, I'm just rambling…"
"Don't be ridiculous." Clary said, standing up herself and squeezing his hand in reassurance, "I'm glad you wanted me to come with you today."
He looked at her and felt a sudden, overwhelming surge of love towards her. "I want…" The words stuck in his throat. "I love you," he said to her.
She smiled brightly. "I love you too."
"And I hope you will be still with me in that future," he blurted out at last. "Is that… Is that what-?"
She kissed him, deeply, and his hands reached into her soft, sweet-smelling hair, her hands brushing up his chest and onto his shoulders.
A strange sensation of calmness enveloped him as he and Clary returned downstairs and the old, heavy door of the Manor closed behind their shoulders, that serene calmness that came after a liberating cry. There was a heavy sort of peace in the room. The cacophony of birds outside and the growing light wrapped around them like a blanket.
"We're going to be all right, aren't we?" he whispered to Clary.
She hesitated for a beat. "Eventually, yes. It might take a while, though."
As they reached the gates, Jace glanced over his shoulder, taking a last look at the decaying Manor. The remote feeling that always came to his mind when he thought of this place had dimmed considerably. Where his thoughts had been pulled to the past these last few days, now they were drawn to the future. He couldn't see with clarity what would come, but Jace could easily picture a room filled with soft furniture and laughter and happy, green eyed children.
Clary had not strayed from behind him all this while and it gave him immense strength just to know that she was there, that she would be with him no matter what.
"That's fine," Jace said as he hoisted her back on the horse. He climbed up behind her and rested his chin on top of Clary's bright head. "I'll be incredibly lucky to have you with me."