It's been a long time since I wrote the first piece, and it was really nice revisiting it. I hope you enjoy, Britt! (There is also a moodboard for this across on my twitter and tumblr if you'd like to go have a look!
Healing was hard.
Healing was painful.
It was traumatic.
It was harder than anything else Jace had ever done in his life.
Some days it felt as though he should give up, that he should disappear—that even though he hated everyone and everything at least things had made sense before and he knew what he was doing and now he just felt as though he was spiralling out of control half the time.
He thought that his time with Clary had at least been half the journey.
He was far from right.
There was so much that he had needed to work on that was buried under the icy golden surface that Clary had helped to melt and crack open, and she had eventually been able to encourage him to see a mind healer, a close friend of the warlock who had raised her. Dorothea Rollins was someone that had helped Jace see past his prejudices, unlearn the things that had been buried deep and chanted to him since he was a child, seeing the way that Dot would give her life for Clary, despite the differences.
Letting go of his hate had been a long, slow process…Especially the hate that he felt toward himself.
That had been the hardest.
That was the one he was still working on.
Sometimes the healing process actually made it worse, realizing the way he had treated people who had only ever loved him—especially people like Isabelle and Alec.
When he had announced that he was leaving—retiring hadn't sounded like the right word to use since he was only twenty-four—there had been a lot of reactions, most of them negative, even if they hadn't always been loud, like some that Maryse voiced.
Not Alec and Isabelle.
Not once.
Their support was strong and positive, they had his back one hundred percent, in private and public.
Jace wasn't sure how he would ever make it up to them—and the way that they spoke to him, looked at him and touched him was something he was still learning to accept.
They told him they'd always loved him, that they didn't understand fully because Jace had just closed them off but that they forgave him, that they would never stop being there for him.
For a while there, that had made things worse, because Jace didn't feel he deserved that, any of that.
He didn't deserve their forgiveness—anyones—and he didn't deserve love, especially from people he had been actively hurting for years.
And especially from someone as pure and soft as Clary.
But she was there—she was always there.
Not in the way that was stifling and overwhelming, but in this comforting, solid presence that told him there was always someone who had his back. Someone who had heard and seen and watched first hand as Jace had done horrible things, and still offered him her hand to anchor him in the dark, to help him find a way out.
And he was.
He was finding the light.
Clary watched Jace out the window, his shirt straining across his shoulders as he swung the axe forward over his head, splitting the wood in half. Their dog, mainly Jace's dog if they were all being honest, was running around nearby, darting in close when the axe was lowered safely, before she was taking off at a run to explore when he was swinging. Jace paused after he had thrown the newly cut wood toward the rest of the pile, leaning down to give Jenny a scratch behind her ears and threw a stick that had her sprinting into the overgrown field nearby.
She loved him.
She loved everything about him.
She loved his hands, his eyes, his mouth.
She loved his strength and determination and courage.
She loved everything that was beautiful and golden, and everything that was broken and shattered about him.
She loved the way he was finally starting to love himself the most.
Clary had watched as he had grown—they had grown together, really, given she had been nineteen when he had come into her life, and he had only been twenty-one, both so young and lost—and she was relatively certain she knew him better than anybody else. She had seen him in some low, dark, consuming points in his life, and she had seen him glowing with happiness.
She loved the way he held her and looked at her and kissed her. He put his arms around her and held her tight and protectively, as though she was the thing that he treasured most in the world, and she knew he did.
She loved his dedication to his job—his new job—the way his outlook and ethic had changed as the spark of hope had grown inside him from a flicker, realizing his ability to affect change. Being so closely connected with the Morgenstern and Lightwoods had helped him being able to slip into something else, something that wasn't closely connected with the violence that had surrounded Jace his whole life. Magnus had helped a lot as well, a friendship now formed between Jace and the warlock that was a little snarky and sarcastic, but warm. He was deftly learning how to use his connections to his advantage, especially now that he believed in something.
She loved how much he cared, how much he loved, how much he enjoyed life—something he had only started letting himself do in the past few years. And while the nightmares and the bouts of depression obviously weren't things that either of them cared for—she would take them all on if she could—she would never change anything about Jace. She had been there every step of the way with him, from the moment she'd met him, learning when he needed comfort or when he needed space, finding the right lotions and brews that Magnus and Dot recommended, holding him in the night when he shook awake.
And the way he was learning to forgive himself, to heal, to love himself…Clary hadn't known Jace as long as Alec and Izzy, and even her parents had, but he had been in her life for almost ten years now and she had seen his growth just in that time. The way he stood taller, the way he interacted with those around himself, the way he now allowed himself space and time to breathe.
She loved him.
Jace's head jerked up at the sound of Jenny barking in the distance, Clary watched the way his body stiffened to an alert position, always hyper-vigilant even though he had left behind his Shadowhunter lifestyle almost three years ago, and even when surrounded by fields of flowers and whistling trees. He watched as Jenny ran after a bird happily, and his posture relaxed, visibly drawing in a breath before he was lifting his axe and bringing it down on another piece of wood. His back flexed in the thin shirt he was wearing, stretching over his shoulders and a little sweaty as it clung to his body. She scrunched up her nose and shook her head, because she really should be focussing right now, blueberries and strawberries piled up on the table behind her.
By the time Jace was stepping inside, the yard had been tidied up with a fresh pile of chopped wood stacked up under the hanging shelter beside their shed, and Jenny was trotting happily at his heels, her tongue hanging out the corner of her mouth. Clary had finished canning half the blueberries from her big wooden bowls and had set out another big pot to cool in front of the double windows over the bench. Jace came up behind her, wrapping an arm around her, pulling her in tight against his sweaty body and then letting out a low, rough laugh that made her shiver when she let out a yelp.
"Are you done in here for now? Can you take a shower with me?" He asked, pressing his mouth against her ear and feeling her shiver against him.
"Yeah, I can take a break," Clary leaned back against him and let herself go lax. There was tension in her shoulders and her arm ached a little from all the chopping and stirring and pouring.
"Come with me then," Jace kissed her cheek loudly before he was kneeling down and scooping her up in his arms, not giving her a chance to respond. Clary just grinned as she buried her face into his sweaty neck, her arms wrapping tight around his neck, always happy when he used his strength on her.
He had always regarded it as bad—a tool to hurt people, kill people even.
His strength and the muscles he had built had all been in order to make himself into a better weapon, to carry out orders.
He had to be strong or he would fall, but for most of his life, it had just been anger that was fuelling him, pushing him forward.
Now he had someone to protect.
Someone he loved.
Someone that he wanted to live for, to grow old with.
It had made him nervous at the beginning—for a long time at the beginning—worried he would break her, bruise her, taint her in some way that she didn't deserve. Especially when she pushed him a little, her eyes all glittery and playful, and she wanted him to be a little more rough, more dominant. Because she knew that was what he wanted too, something he had admitted to her on more than one occasion, usually after some wine that was infused with spices and something that Magnus charmed it with, that sometimes he wanted to see her crying for him, begging him as he made her to cum over and over again.
He'd also said he hated himself for it.
It took a lot of convincing to talk about it with her sober, it took even more time to convince him that he was wrong.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with what he wanted.
Jace hadn't listened at first, not for a while, not until he was ready. And even then, he held out, patiently waiting as Clary made him watch videos produced by Mundanes, and booklets that she'd apparently been researching with, and then some…Dirtier videos that were much more explicit and surprisingly exactly the type of thing he had been thinking.
Clary wanted bruises, not ones that hurt, but ones that marked her as Jace's.
Clary wanted him to hold out, to tease her, to make her spell out exactly what she wanted—but she only wanted it if he did.
If they both wanted it.
And that's what was so different, between what Jace had done previously, with his hands, his strength—it was something that both of them wanted, something they would both be consenting for.
Jace was still careful with her—he always was—but…That didn't mean he didn't get a little rough sometimes.
"Jace!" Clary's voice was loud and echoed around their small cottage, and it wasn't the first time that they'd been glad that they didn't have neighbours for miles. That was kind of the point of them living here, actually. The shower water was pouring down around them, their hair a darker shade now that it had been soaked all the way through, and Jace was on his knees, big hands splayed out around her waist and holding her in place firmly, against the tiled walls. "Jace, I—" her words were cut off by a heaving breath as his tongue sunk inside her warm folds and her knees almost gave out. His thumbs were firm against her hip bones, hard enough that he would leave smudged fingerprints against Clary's pale skin, marks to adore later, and his hold was strong enough to keep her in place.
The way that Clary writhed against the tiles, her body golden and freckled from the summer sun and her red hair was splayed out, her eyes closed with her head tilted back and her lips swollen from Jace's kiss…She was the most beautiful being Jace had ever seen.
Everytime Jace looked at her, all he saw was her goodness and her love and her grace.
She was all the softness in life that he had never trusted himself with before, and somehow she was his.
His.
"Jace…" her voice was breathier, a hand reaching out to curl into his hair and tug as she let out a low moan that was the final thing Jace heard before he was cumming in his hand, jerking himself roughly through his orgasm before he was pulling his mouth away from Clary and curling two fingers inside of her. Clary's legs buckled with a gasp at the intrusion, so wet inside that Jace could see her starting to cream around his fingers as he pumped them inside. "Fuck!" Clary's knees gave out, and Jace's hand left his cock, his arm quickly grabbing her and helping to control her fall to the floor in front of him. Clary giggled breathlessly before it was broken with a groan as his fingers started moving inside her again. "Ah, fuck…"
"My sweet thing," he whispered, his wet lips pressing against her forehead as his fingers easily rolled inside of her, the pressure constant and her body already so sensitive that it didn't take much more before she was spilling over his fingers, against his palm, the shower water instantly washing away any evidence of her orgasm. Her body was shaking and her eyes were squeezed shut as Jace gathered her in close, pressing his mouth against her wet hair, her temple, her cheek, whispering over and over how much he loved her.
He didn't go back outside once they'd dried off, he helped her in the kitchen. Something that he would never have spent any time doing before—food was to be consumed for energy and strength, not something to be enjoyed and prepared with love—but just another thing that Clary had helped change his mind on. It wasn't as though he was the best in the kitchen, but he was always eager to help, and Clary always found something for him to do.
"Magnus and Alec are going to come to dinner this weekend," she mentioned as she was stacking away the freshly sealed cans of fruit. "I still need to find out if we're making dinner, or if Magnus wants to portal us somewhere halfway around the world."
"Of course," Jace half snorted under his breath, because the last time Magnus had taken them somewhere it had been a country where Jace couldn't speak the language or read the menu. He also hadn't really been satisfied with the food brought out, everything very soupy and no meat, and Magnus had agreed to stop them by in Chicago on the way home for pie. It was cute, the way that Magnus and Jace sniped at each other, but quietly helped one another out. Not something that they liked pointed out though.
Jace just considered himself lucky, so lucky.
Just to be standing here, in a small farmhouse in the middle of a forest in the Netherlands, hidden away from the world, safe from everyone with wards that Dot and Magnus both checked on frequently, their only ways quickly in and out of their property and to the rest of the world were through portals, and that was exactly how they liked it.
Not cut off from everyone, because they left often, it wasn't as though they only stayed at the cottage, but at a distance, protecting their peace. Jace left at least three times a week for work, and he and Alec met up most weeks for beer at a Downworlder bar a friend of Magnus' ran. Clary took her paintings into markets and auctions, and had several private sellers who commissioned her, and she often spent days back in Dot's loft—where she had grown up—painting with Dot and interacting with the customers that visited the warlock. She also had a relatively good relationship with her parents, something that had gotten better in the past few years, but they would visit their cottage in the woods more than Clary was comfortable going to visit them in Idris. With permission, several people were able to visit whenever they wanted, but the wards kept most out, sending Mundanes, Downworlders and Shadowhunters into confusing dizzy spells.
Safe and secure.
"I should just be gone for a day—I'll be back by dinner tomorrow," Jace whispered, keeping his voice low as he knelt beside the side of their bed. It wasn't even six in the morning yet, the sun still low and barely any light in the sky, and Jenny was curled up at the bottom of the bed, her head raised to watch Jace pressing a soft kiss to her cheek as he waited for her to stir. It took her a moment, like it always did, but Jace had time, this was all part of a regular routine that he adored. She blinked at him slowly, something he could only make out because of the dim fairy lights that Clary hung around her bookshelf above their heads, and her smile curved upward sleepily. "Hey, baby," he murmured, and Clary hummed back. "I'll be back tomorrow. I'll call you tonight, okay?"
"Okay," she mumbled back, stifling a yawn but only succeeding in making an adorable scrunched up face before she was yawning up his nose. Jace huffed out an amused laugh under his breath, shaking his head before leaning in to give her a kiss. "I'll miss you."
"I'll miss you more." Jace from ten years ago would have cringed at the thought of saying such things. Jace now wished that he had another half and hour before he needed to leave so that he could say even more. "I love you, baby."
"I love you more than anything," Clary replied with a tired, fond smile and a sleepy blinks that made her look like an adorable rumpled kitten, especially when she scrunched up her nose as she felt Jenny crawling up the bed to try and nuzzle under her arm now that she was safe. "Come home to me."
"You're the centre of my universe," Jace whispered. "I'm always going to come home to you."
Clary fell back asleep within seconds after Jace pulled back and stood up, but Jenny was still awake, even as her head was resting on Clary's stomach, eyes tracking Jace as he leaned forward again, this time to give Jenny a few pats.
"You look after my girl for me, huh, Jen?"
Jace loved his job.
He loved his life, and he couldn't do that without loving his job.
He always thought he'd loved his job, but it turned out it was because it was the only thing he had ever known, the only choice he thought he'd had, and that was nothing like love at all.
But it wasn't, and he never thought he would actually feel fulfilled, like he was doing good.
He really didn't think he would ever have a werewolf child looking up at him as though he was someone safe and trustworthy, or a seelie teenager awkwardly come to him for advice on their first date, or work side-by-side with two older witches, who had accepted him despite the runes that were still scarred into his skin, and their disdain for those who wore them.
But that's where he was, it's who he was.
Isabelle said she barely recognised him anymore, and she smiled wide when she said it.
Alec said that he had never regretted, not for one day, becoming Jace's parabatai.
Max actually spoke to him now, rather than watching him from a distance with wide, nervous eyes.
And then there was Magnus, and Dot, and his friends, and Maryse and Robert, and Clary.
There was Clary.
"Jace? Hey, Jace," Naryssa Everstream waved her fingers in front of Jace's face and he blinked, smiling when he saw her there. He glanced to the side and saw her wife, Lilly Everstream, was up on the big wooden balcony that wrapped around the house, a toddler in her arms. When she saw Jace and Naryssa were looking in her direction, she lifted a hand to wave at them before turning back to a few kids on the wooden outdoor seating. "You were faraway."
"I'm here," he replied with a half smile, rolling his shoulders back and straightening up, squinting as he looked up at where the sun was in the sky. He'd been outside for longer than expected, and it made sense that Naryssa and Lilly were home. He'd honestly been surprised that no one had interrupted them working in the gardens—technically they could use magic, but Lilly in particular insisted that the land thrived better when worked with love and sweat. When he looked back over his shoulder, Sam Levi was resting now, the young werewolf slumped under a tree with an arm over his eyes. "Oh—how long has he been over there?"
"A while, you seemed distracted," Naryssa shrugged an amused shoulder, pushing her braids back over her shoulder. "Come inside, help us get dinner ready. Then go home to our lovely Clary." She had known Clary since she was young, both her and Lilly good friends with Dot, working together when it came to protecting children of those caught in the ever ongoing clashes between Downworlders and Mundanes and Shadowhunters. It had been Dot and Clary who had introduced him to Naryssa and Lilly, but it had been Magnus who had suggested that he work together with them, and Jace is pretty sure that he was the one who convinced them originally to take him on. He'd been uncertain then, almost two years ago, not sure if changing what he was doing completely was a terrible idea and something he was going to regret, since he'd only ever known one thing. But at the end of the day, he realized he was doing the thing now that he had always wanted to do—helping people. Without any of the killing and blood on his own hands.
The portal that Jace took back from the Everstream house to his own was one that Naryssa needed to create to let him through, it wasn't a permanent feature like the one that Magnus had spent days creating for Clary and Jace's home, and he stepped through after kissing her on the cheek. He blinked as it was suddenly earlier in the day, their home in a different timezone, and instead of a darkened sky, the sun was only just sinking, painting everything in romantic orange and yellow hues. He dropped his bag off his shoulder, tossing it toward the couch as he looked around for Clary. Jenny wasn't already at his side, so he assumed that they mustn't be inside as he walked toward the front door, which was propped open with a brightly painted clay statue.
She was out the back near her flowers.
Jenny heard him the minute he stepped out of the house and onto the pebbles, her head darting up from where she had been chasing after clothes that were hanging out on the clothesline, and running toward him, but Clary was distracted. It was a hot day here, sticky in the air and with the promise of rain probably through the evening, and Clary was dressed the part, in a tiny yellow sundress that was caught up around her thighs and showed off hints of the cotton underwear was music playing closeby, either from something Mundane or from some rune that Clary dreamed up—Jace could barely keep up with the ways that she stunned him—and it seemed enough to be distracting her from realizing someone was approaching. It wasn't until he was half a step behind her that she stiffened and began turning around when he caught her around the waist and turned her around.
"Jace!" Clary squeaked out happily as she grabbed at his shoulders.
"Baby," Jace grunted as his mouth sought hers out immediately, smothering any words that she might have.
Sometimes he couldn't control how much he wanted her.
How possessive he felt over her.
This almost animalistic urge to protect and love.
It felt almost overwhelming and consuming and unhealthy, but…Jace didn't care.
He'd had things in his life that were bad for him, that risked killing him, that were destructive and harmful—and this wasn't that.
This made him better.
It hadn't even been forty-eight hours and he was hungry to feel every part of her under his hands.
"Shit, Jace, I—" whatever else she had been about to say was muffled as Jace pressed their lips back together, and was then curving an arm around her waist and practically lifted her off the ground as he turned her around, softening the fall as he tugged her down into the long grass behind her flower patches. Jenny ran toward them playfully, but Jace pulled away from Clary long enough to shout out a command that had her running back toward the open door of the house. Clary laughed underneath Jace as he turned back to her, and he shook his head. "She never listens that quickly when it's me."
"Because you're so soft on her," Jace's response was mumbled as he ducked his head down, his lips finding the soft skin of her neck and instantly teasing it between his teeth. He felt the shuddery intake of breath from Clary as she grabbed at his shoulders, one hand sliding up his neck, under his long hair, her long nails scratching at the sensitive skin there, making him grunt against her throat.
"You're soft on her," Clary retorted playfully and Jace just snorted.
"You're the only one I'm soft on," he responded.
"That's a lie to save face, but I'll let you have it because I missed you," Clary grinned and Jace pulled back, bracing a hand beside her head in the grass and staring down at her.
"I fucking missed you," he responded with a shake of his head, staring down at her red hair messily splayed out around her in the green grass with the tiny yellow flowers, and sometimes Jace felt a cold, dark twist for the reactions he had to her, but…When he reached out, easily curling the front of her flimsy dress in one fist and tearing it down the middle, he heard the hitch in her breathing and the way her body arched upwards toward him, into his chest, and he remembered it was okay.
She was soft, and loving, and gentle, but she was strong.
She wasn't brought up surrounded constantly by death, and blood, and war, but she knew that Jace had been, and she never turned away from him.
Even when he left bruises on her thighs or teethmarks in her neck, the way she smiled as though she was proud of the marks he had left on her, it soothed the ache that told him he was only there to hurt.
Because he didn't—he would never.
He'd hated that proud flare of possessiveness inside of him the first morning they had woken up and he had seen his fingerprints smudged against her hip, anger at himself for wanting to leave more, wanting her to always walk around with some imprint of him on her.
He'd tried to hide it, gentle his touches at all times, treated her like she was a cloud that might evaporate and escape through his fingers if he wasn't delicate enough.
But then she would playfully push, she would see something in his face that would prompt her to lift his hand up to her throat with a trust in her eyes he couldn't understand.
But he'd never hurt her.
Never.
Clary cried out as the rest of her dress was torn, messy cotton strings tangling around his fingers as he pulled it away from her torso, so that her tits were completely bare to him as well as the pretty pale slope of her stomach that dimpled delicately as his fingers pressed into her hips, pulling at the rest of the dress until it tore to the hem. Underneath she was only wearing a flimsy pink pair of cotton panties that were easy enough to push to the side to sink a finger inside her, and Clary's yell changed, becoming something light and breathier that made it feel as though the air was staticky around them. Jace pushed himself up, so that he was on his knees between her pale thighs, and Clary didn't try to hide herself from him, smiling up at him with those glittering green eyes and her pink pussy beginning to soak through the thin material of what was left of her panties, trying to ride his hand.
"Cum for me, angel," his golden eyes flicked up to her face, to the way her head tipped back into the grass as a second finger easily joined the first, and then down to where she was so easily sucking him in, her hips rolling eagerly toward. "Want you to be dripping when I get inside you."
"Shit," Clary whined under her breath, and he felt as her legs shifted on either side of him, planting her feet on the ground to brace herself properly so that she could lift her hips to meet his hand. Jace grinned at her eagerness, heat flaring through him at the way she gave herself over to him so easily, in the long grass that surrounded their home. "I-I need—"
"Do it, Clary," Jace growled and a second later, he felt her gush all over his hand. Her chest heaved and her face was flushed, and Jace unlaced the front of his pants and pulled himself out, not bothering to push them down any further than what he needed. One hand wrapped around her hip, the other sinking back into the grass beside her head as he fell forward and shoved inside her. There was a loud gasp from Clary but she welcomed him in so easily, wet and so fucking sweet, her rosebud mouth curling up in the corner as she twisted her head to the side, fingers curling into his shirt and trying to pull him closer.
The way she touched him, the way she let him touch her.
The way she looked at him, right into his soul and past all the bullshit; the way she let him look at her, and see her for everything she was…
Jace rolled over in the grass, pulling Clary on top of him so that the setting sun surrounded her, bright and beautiful, and it felt like seeing an angel as the sun shone around her hair and created a glowing halo, especially when she slipped him back inside her and squeezed him. It felt like heaven.
His own personal heaven after the hell he'd been through, and she was his angel.
And he'd love her forever.
I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think :)
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