Chapter 28: Old Friends.
I've gotten so many reviews, follows and favourites on the last few chapters to thank you very much! For the next month or so I'll be uploading twice a week - pretty much until my university starts again. Hope you enjoy the chapter!
If Clary had figured anything out in Jace's absence, it was that it was extremely difficult to raise two babies while you were becoming increasingly pregnant. Clary was now in her seventh month of pregnancy, and was also solely taking care of two ten month old babies.
Sure, all of her friends would come over almost everyday to help her, and she was so grateful, but they weren't there during the night when the babies would still cry sometimes. And they weren't there in the morning when the twins would crawl all over the house instead of having breakfast or changing their diapers or getting changed. And they weren't there at night when the twins would scream out in pain because their teeth were coming through.
And Clary was exhausted. There was no other work for it. In the beginning she had been optimistic. Only Ella had been crawling, and Jace would come home each weekend and clean the house and make sure everything was ready for the next week, but he quickly stopped coming home, and the twins quickly began growing up. And it didn't help that she couldn't drink coffee.
"Your daddy," Clary tells Ella one morning, "is a good man. But sometimes I wish he didn't love his job so much. Because then he could be at home with us. Daddy's in Spain right now-"
"Dada," Ella cuts in.
"Oh my God! Ella you just said Dada! You can speak. This is amazing… and Jace missed it. Daddy didn't get to hear you talk, baby," Clary says, becoming disappointed.
"Dada," Ella says again, and then giggles.
"You're so clever… let mommy go get her phone, and we can call daddy and tell him!" Clary says, hurrying away to get her phone.
When she comes back, Ella and Teddy are babbling away to each other the same way they had been for a few weeks.
"Yeah, hey Clary is everything okay?" Jace asks quickly after answering the phone.
"Everything is more than okay!" Clary says, momentarily forgetting all of her exhaustion and stress. "Ella said Dada!"
"Are you serious?" Jace says. "Did you get a video? Can you send it?"
"I didn't get a video," Clary says, "they were just eating breakfast… it's not something I really film, but here-" she puts the phone on speaker. "Hey Ella, say Dada!"
Ella laughs, but just continues to babble away to Teddy.
"Hey Ella!" Jace says through the phone, and both the twins look at it, smiling, "can you say Dada for me?"
Ella laughs again, and knocks her bowl of fruit off the tray in front of her, and both babies laugh.
"Great," Clary mutters, putting the phone down to start cleaning up the mess.
"Okay well…" Jace says through the phone, sounding annoyed "just try and film it next time. I gotta go."
"Are you seriously annoyed at me for not recording it?" Clary asks, slowly standing up and taking the phone off speaker.
"It's not very hard, Clary," Jace says.
"Sorry I don't walk around with a camera strapped to my chest!" Clary says.
"Obviously that's not what I'm asking." Someone says something in the background. "Look, I've got to go. Just… whatever. Bye Clary." And then he hangs up.
Clary throws her phone onto the kitchen bench. "Dada!" Ella says again.
Clary laughs a little, "He's not here, Ellie. Dada's not here…"
A few days later, while giving Ella and Teddy a bath, Teddy says his first words.
"Mama!" he yells out.
"My little Teddy-Bear!" Clary cries out, "you're so clever!"
Clary quickly picks up her phone this time and starts recording, and thankfully, manages to record the next few times he says it.
Clary calls Jace again, but he doesn't pick up. She assumes he must be filming or something, so she dries the twins, gets them into their pyjamas and asleep before trying to call him again. But he still doesn't pick up.
Annoyed, Clary sends the video without a message, and starts preparing her dinner, which she eats alone and in silence.
Clary wakes up very early the next morning to her phone ringing. She rubs her eyes, and sees that it's Jace calling. She reluctantly picks up the phone.
"Hey," he says softly.
"Jace. It's four in the morning," Clary says, holding down a yawn.
"Oh shit. Sorry. Hey, go back to sleep. I'll call later tonight." Jace says.
"There's no point now," Clary says, pulling on her slippers and a sweater. "The twins'll be up in an hour anyway. What do you want?"
Clary picks up the baby monitor and quietly and slowly walks down the stairs and out onto the back deck.
"I was just calling… we didn't get to talk yesterday. And you sent that video of Teddy talking for the first time. Sorry I missed your calls," Jace says. Clary wants to forgive him, but then she hears talking in the background, and Jace says "Hey Clary, can you hold on for a minute."
When he tells her he's back she quickly says, "it wasn't his first time talking. It was just the first time I got to record it."
"Oh," Jace says. "Well thanks for trying, I guess."
"Yeah," Clary says. What were they doing here. She was absolutely exhausted. And she was scared - she had given birth to the twins by seven months last time. She could go into labour any day, and he would completely miss it.
Some combination of the exhaustion, stress and fear, mixed with her hormones makes her start crying, and now that she's started, she can't stop.
"Clary? What's happened? Are you okay? Is everyone okay?" Jace asks, sounding worried.
"I can't… do this… anymore," she says between cries. "I… need you."
"You can't do what?" Jace asks, sounding a little less concerned.
"All of it. I can't raise two babies alone and be pregnant. I can't get blamed for you missing things. I'm scared of having to do this all alone - I've always been scared of that. And now you're not here… and I'm alone," Clary says.
"Clary you're not alone… Izzy and Alec and Magnus and-"
"They're not you!" Clary practically yells. "My kids need their father." And I need my husband, she thinks to herself.
"So they're your kids now?" Jace asks, raising his own voice.
"That's what it feels like!" Clary says back. She'd stopped crying now.
"Clary, I'm doing this for them!" he yells back. "How can you not understand that?"
"Because it's not true!" Clary says, outraged. "You're doing this movie for yourself, and yourself only! If you really cared about the twins, you'd be here. Taking care of them." And me.
"Don't you dare tell me I don't care about my kids," Jace yells back.
"Well, if you do care about them, you have a funny way of showing it!" Clary says, "I've had to give up practically everything that isn't the twins because I just don't have the time or capabilities. I don't remember the last time I left the house that wasn't for a doctor's appointment! I don't remember the last haircut I got, or the last time I got my nails done, or went to a cafe."
"Because all of those things are so important!" Jace says, laughing.
"Yeah Jace, they are. I'm seven months pregnant. I hate the way I look. And those things help a little bit. So sorry for wanting to feel good about myself, even just for a little bit," Clary says, finally snapping.
"Clary-"
"No, and you don't even get to say something like that," she tells him. "Because you don't know what it's been like. You haven't had to deal with two crawling and teething twins alone. And you've never experienced being pregnant. So don't stand here all high and mighty while you're off doing what you love at exotic locations. And that's not me saying I don't like raising our kids - I do. But I'm just so goddamn tired Jace. And I don't know how much longer I can do this alone."
"Well I can't just come home because you call!" Jace says.
"Well I just wish you never left!" Clary yells back.
"Well you should have fucking told be before I left," Jace replies.
"I told you in all the ways I could," Clary says, becoming more exasperated.
"Really?" Jace says, "because you didn't fucking just tell me not to. You could've said 'Jace, don't do this movie,' and I would have said okay. I even told you I wouldn't do a movie if you asked!"
"That was me asking!" Clary says, slowly sitting down on the deck. "You stupid man?"
"You should have just outright said it, Clary, because it's too late now!" Jace says.
"I couldn't just tell you," Clary says.
"And why the fuck not?" Jace says.
Clary looks out at the waves and sunrise for a moment. "Because you would resent me for it. And I didn't want you to resent me. But now I'm starting to think it may have been better than this."
"I wouldn't resent you, Clary," Jace says, sounding slightly surprised. "I could never…"
"But you would," Clary says. "You would see the premier and how well it was doing at the box office and think to yourself 'that could've been me, but Clary said no.' And then I would be the villain, and I just don't need that. But apparently, I'm the villain anyway, because I can't do anything right in your eyes. So maybe it would've been better for you to hate me and be here, than hate me and be over there."
"Clary, I don't hate you. I could never hate you," Jace says sadly. He had no idea she was thinking all of these things.
"Then come home," Clary begs. She hears one of the babies start crying on the baby monitor, but leaves it for a moment, desperate for Jace's reply.
"Clary… I can't. You know I can't do that," Jace says.
"Fine," Clary says, struggling to stand back up. "One of my kids is crying, so I've got to go. Have fun Jace." And she hangs up the phone before he can reply.
She knew she should've given him a chance to reply, but she was so angry at him that she didn't care. How could he not tell that she wanted him to stay in the first place, and now she needed him.
She goes up to the twin's room and starts another long, and lonely day.
Clary's due date was in exactly four weeks, and she still had no idea when Jace was coming home. He was meant to finish filming in two days, but he had gone on about some bullshit about being behind schedule, and that he wasn't going to come home for at least another week, maybe longer.
She had already given birth months ago with the twins but will all the added stress she wasn't sure that this pregnancy wouldn't end early as well. And if it did, Jace would miss it. And Clary would never forgive him.
She had already gotten Kit to come over and help move the twins into their new rooms so that the nursery would be ready for the new baby. And she'd dragged him along to buy some new things for the baby while she left the twins at home with Diana.
She also had plans in place about what to do if Jace wasn't home when she went into labour. She was going to call Magnus and Alec, who would both come over with Raph. Magnus was going to stay home with all the kids while Alec took her to the hospital. If it was at night, Magnus was going to wait until the next morning to call Izzy, Simon and Kit over to help him look after all the kids, otherwise. And Alec was going to stay with her at the hospital so she didn't have to be alone. She had done it before, but she was still scared about everything that could go wrong, and was really glad when Alec said he'd stay with her.
She wakes up the next morning and stares at the ceiling for a little while until she hears cries come from Teddy's room. She slowly gets up, ready to start the day, when the cries stop. She turns on the baby monitor, and can hear a soft shushing coming from the room. With her heart racing, she quickly picks up her phone, and gets out of bed as fast as she can. She grabs Jace's baseball bat which she slept with next to her bed, and moves down the hallway as quietly as she could.
Holding the baseball bat in front of her, ready to swing, she opens the door. She drops the bat.
"That's a warm welcome," Luke says, smiling at her, and then the bat, and then Teddy in his arms. "Good to know that mommy will protect you."
"Luke?" Clary says, feeling relief wash over her body.
"I would've told you but everything happened so quickly. And I was hoping you'd be able to sleep in this morning - I just let myself in. I hope that's okay?" Luke says, still softly bouncing with Teddy in his arms.
"It's more than okay! Thank you, so much," Clary says. She hears Ella babbling in the room next door, so she waddles off to go get her.
"Do you want some breakfast?" Clary asks when she comes back to Teddy's room with Ella in her arms.
"We can get some breakfast for these two first," he says, following Clary outside and down to the kitchen.
"Not that I'm not ecstatic to see you, but why are you here?" Clary asks.
"Magnus called. He said you were struggling, and I knew you could use some help," Luke says kindly.
"But what about the shop?" Clary asks, putting Ella into her highchair. "You can't be away for too long."
"Maia's got it all under control. I'm staying until Jace get's back whether you want me to or not."
"Well thank you, I do really appreciate it."
Luke being there made a world of difference. Clary was no longer doing everything alone. And she no longer had to rely on all of her friends so heavily. Luke would be able to take Clary to the hospital and stay with her, which made everything else so much easier.
When Jace still hadn't come home a week later, Clary had pretty much convinced herself that she was going to have to do it all without him. That's why Clary is so shocked when she sees him sitting in the kitchen, feeding Teddy in the morning.
When she walks into the kitchen, he turns and smiles at her. "Hey, Clary."
"What are you…" she asks, not really sure what to actually ask.
"I didn't want to wake you up," Jace says, "but I'm glad you're here. They don't seem to want to have their milk."
Clary looks at Teddy, who was pushing the bottle away, and then over at Ella, who Jace had clearly already given up on. The bottle was sitting on the tray on her high table, untouched.
"That's because they usually have fruit and yogurt for breakfast. I only really give them milk if they're still hungry after a meal," she says. Why did she have to explain this to him?
"Oh, right. Okay. Umm, well I can help you get that ready?" Jace says.
"It's pretty much already done," Clary says, walking to the fridge and taking out the container of pre-cut up fruit. She empties a little bit into two bowls, and then adds a dollop of yogurt on top. "But if you wanted to feed Teddy, that'd be great."
Jace nods and takes the bowl from her, and then, cautious not to mess up again, he watches Clary feed Ella for a little while. But then Teddy starts crying and Clary looks over at Jace annoyed. "Are you just going to stand there?"
"Sorry," he says, and slowly starts to feed Teddy. Clary looks over every few moments, but doesn't say anything.
"Well Luke should be down shortly, so-" Clary starts saying.
"Luke's here?" Jace asks. Why would Luke be here - they hadn't talked about that.
"He's been here for a couple days. He's been helping me out…" Clary says, softly resting her hands on her stomach. It's only then that Jace notices just how big she's actually gotten. He knew her due date was soon, but it just didn't occur to him that she would have gotten so much bigger in the time he was gone.
"You look…" Jace says not wanting to say bigger, but not knowing what else to say.
She looks down at her stomach, "you've been gone a while Jace," she says. Her voice sounds weird, and when Jace looks back up at her face, he sees that she's trying not to cry.
"Shit, no - you don't look bad. The opposite! You look amazing," he says quickly.
"Thanks," Clary says drily. "Anyway, Luke will be down any moment to help me clean up the twins. You can go have a shower or whatever."
"I can help you," Jace says, eager to be of some use.
"Right," Clary says, "I suppose you need to learn, anyway."
"Learn?" Jace says, "what've I got to learn? I've given them plenty of baths."
"Like I said Jace, you've been gone a long time. A lot's changed," she says.
"Not that much could have changed," Jace says.
"Okay," Clary says. "If you were giving the twins a bath, who would you put in first?"
Jace is about to reply that it doesn't matter, but quickly judges by Clary's face that it in fact does. "Ella?" he answers.
"Put Ella in first and she'll scream bloody murder for Teddy, which makes him upset and he won't want to get into the bath and Ella will want to get out," Clary quickly says.
"Okay, so I'll put Teddy in first," Jace says like it's no big deal.
"And who do you dress first?" she asks.
"Teddy," Jace says, assuming that it's the same answer.
"You have to dress them at the same time, otherwise they try to get away," Clary says.
"How do you even…" Jace begins asking, but then Luke walks into the room.
"Jace?" he asks.
"It's my house!" Jace says, annoyed. "Am I not allowed to be in my own house, feeding my own children?"
"You are," Luke says, "but last I heard you were in Spain, so forgive my surprise." He clearly wasn't too happy with him for leaving Clary.
"Sorry," Jace says. "There's just a lot happening."
Clary laughs at this statement, and then picks up Teddy, and Luke picks up Ella and follows Clary to the bathroom.
Jace practically follows Clary around all morning, learning how to look after his children.
"Since when have they been in different rooms?" Jace asks as Clary puts Teddy in one room and Luke takes Ella into another one.
"Since Kit helped me move them. I needed to get the nursery ready for the new baby," Clary says. "Now can you go wait outside or something? I need to get them down for their naps."
Another thing Jace learnt is that they now also had new Lullabies. Teddy's was Beautiful Boy by John Lennon and Ella's was Isn't She Lovely by Stevie Wonder.
"I'm just gonna go for a walk on the beach for a while," Luke says, eyeing Clary. She nods and once he's gone, Clary sits down on the couch.
"They've gotten so big!" Jace says, sitting down on the couch, but a little distance from Clary.
"That happens," Clary says.
"Look, I know I've been gone a while, but there's no reason to treat me like I don't know my own children," Jace says, trying, and failing, to not raise his voice.
Instead of arguing, Clary asks, "What's Ella's favourite food?"
When Jace left, she was still only drinking milk. He knew she ate food for breakfast… "Apple."
"And Teddy's?" she asks.
"Pear?" Jace guesses.
"Ella's is cucumber and Teddy's is sweet potato," Clary tells him. "What's their favourite show?"
"Mickey Mouse?" Jace says, beginning to realise how much he doesn't know.
"It's a show called Storybots Super Songs. They like the music," she says. "Who crawled first? How spoke first? How had the first tooth come through? Which one of them got the cold first? Who blew bubbles in the bath first?"
"Umm… Ella spoke first," is all Jace is able to answer. He didn't even know they had gotten colds.
"That's all you can answer?" Clary asks.
"That's not fair Clary," Jace says.
"No, you know what's not fair? Leaving me here, alone," she says. When Jace doesn't say anything back, she says, "but at least you're here now. At least you're home now."
"I have to go back in two days…" Jace says. It was only for another week of filming, but the movie hadn't finished filming yet.
"What?" Clary asks.
"I can't just not go back, Clary. I'm the main character!" Jace says.
"I never wanted you to do this stupid movie!" Clary yells at him.
"Well, you should have told me!" Jace yells back.
"I shouldn't have had to," Clary tells him. "You should've known that I would need you. You shouldn't have wanted to leave your children."
"Well I can't deal with this right now, Clary," Jace says, walking out of the room.
"That right, leave!" Clary yells after him. "Leave like everyone always does," she says to herself.
So... everything isn't going too well for Clary and Jace at the moment! Let me know what you think is going to happen next! I hope everyone is happy and healthy, and Ill see you at the next chapter :)