sudden & violent

ginny doesn’t care about status and she never has. what’s the point in having wealth and power if it’s empty ?? she’d rather be exactly who she is and be happy with it than spend her time grovelling at the feet of people so boring and empty that they think their money makes them special. ❝ and you’re willing to indulge them rather than get actual friends. must suck having no real friends. ❞ in the morning, she’s sure she’ll be horrified by how mean she’s being, but at the moment she just wants him to go away so she can go back to attempting to enjoy herself for the sake of her friends.

at his comment, she rolls her eyes. does he really not get the hint or does he think that persistence is key ?? maybe if he keeps pushing her, she’ll suddenly swoon and admit how desperately she wants him ?? she’d rather eat her own shoe. staring him dead in the eyes, she takes another sip of her drink. ❝ then i’m not drinking anything. ❞ hopefully that’s clear enough. if it isn’t, she’s not sure what else she can do other than write ‘ not interested ’ across her forehead.

for a moment, she’s surprised by the quick response, but she doesn’t let it show. she’s not about to allow him any satisfaction, especially not with such a narcissistic quote. ❝ a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality. ❞ good old shakespeare. he knew about fuckboys before the word even came into existence. ❝ maybe you should have skipped theatre class and worked on your ego. ❞

❝ real friends are a hard thing to have. ❞ her words have hit him harder than he expects them to. for a moment, he stands, staring at her, his lips parted slightly as he realizes he has nothing more to say. it’s a simple thing -- with the security and the background checks, who’s willing to stick around ? wes knows he’s difficult, that he isn’t always the best person to be around, and that has scared more than a few people away. he’s never tried to hold them back. but this vapid bunch of people with him tonight ? at least they know how to laugh, they know how to have fun. they might be leeching off of him but every evening is something different, a distraction he feels he more than deserves. a smile has risen to his lips, lacking humor and more self-deprecating than any expression seen on his face prior. ❝ glad to see you have me pegged. took you less time than the paparazzi, and they’ve been following me my whole life. ❞

there was something undeniably appealing about her saying ‘no’ to him, but his mood has been soured by this little blonde thing who thinks she has him made. his entire life, he has been able to get whatever he desired before he had the time to ask twice. this girl, though ? she has told him ‘no’ more than once now. she’s a challenge, one he’s willing to rise to meet, but the frustration wes is feeling is bordering on annoying now.his jaw is clenched, and he’s sure his irritation is written across his face. ❝ more for me then. ❞ he turns away for a brief moment, stepping to the bar and ordering another whiskey. if he’s going to keep talking to her, he feels like he needs to be less sober for it to happen.

the cobbles that line the street are uneven beneath allegra’s feet, and as she walks she pulls her jacket closer to her body. she feels the cool air as it blows across her cheeks and nose, but it is no bother. gone are the days where her fingers turned blue from being exposed for too long a time, no longer need she worry about losing feeling in the tips of her nose and ears. in truth, she could shed her coat right where she stood along with her fur-lined boots and cap, but what stops her is the knowledge that she should not. her own personal rules keep her in line, and they had already served her well for over two centuries. she cannot help but find truth to the notion ’why fix what’s not broken?’

too many close encounters, too many accidents have left her uneasy. she is skeptical of people who try to grow close to her – this is no fault of theirs, instead it is rooted in her neuroses, her doubts of herself and her insecurities. she lets their soft words slip past her ears, until they blend in with the sounds of wind, until they’re nothing more than white noise. she sticks to corners of rooms, she joins few conversations. there was a time where she was not a solitary creature, but that had long past. her goal is not to stick out. if anything, she is too content being a wallflower. she is content being looked over, and not remembered. she wears coats and scarves and gloves despite not needing them. she will drink wine with nothing but a terse smile on her lips, letting the liquid settle uncomfortably in her stomach, an excuse that she is no big drinker escaping her mouth. she will do what a situation calls for, no more and no less.

for an evening night in prague, the small dive bar she had grown fond of is packed – she can see this before she even steps inside. it’s small and tucked into a corner of a corner of a street. tourists avoid it. she appreciates the history of it. the idea of going somewhere else is appealing to allegra, and for a brief moment she considers it, but she cannot help but argue with herself that that would mean breaking her routine. the watch on her wrist is a glaring reminder to her of how much she does appreciate routine. she would leave here in perhaps an hour to find something to eat that would provide her an actual meal. her patronage at the dive was only a means of wasting time until darkness cloaked the city completely.

a sigh escapes her parted lips as she pulls the door open and steps inside. she finds herself uncomfortable as she tries to move through the crowd of people. despite her best efforts, her shoulders collide with people to either side of her, and promiňte after promiňte slip from her lips. there is a corner table towards the back she prefers, and she would rather be damned than sit elsewhere. to her luck, it is open. close to the door that leads to the kitchen, it’s not a table most prefer. they complain there is too much hustle and bustle, they claim a distraction from their meal and conversation. allegra appreciates both of these things.

her fingers work quickly to unfasten the silver buttons on her coat, and she slips her arms out of it just as soon as she finishes so that she can drape it over the back of her chair. sitting down, it is with an idle motion that she picks up the menu that had been left on the table. she only ever gets the same thing. an order of dumplings that perhaps she would appreciate more if it provided her anything, a drink she could pretend to be too interested. someone walks to stand by her table and all she says is, “chtěl bych limonádu, prosím.” as asocial as she comes off, no one can deny she is anything by polite. her shoulders fall as she settles into her chair with a slouch.

with as many people she had met, she always found it a wonder that she never grew tired of watching people. they were all different. this is something she never appreciated in her youth, blinded by both immaturity and naïveté. no longer do her eyes gloss over people who looked plain – no, she stops and appreciates. she notices their habits, she notices scars and tics. she is never obtrusive with her curiosity. a quick glance can tell her more than most. when she looks around the bar, a mixture of familiar faces and foreign greet her. there is the man who hides his wedding ring in a zipped coat pocket, the group of girls who always manage to have a full tray of drinks bought for them. these little familiarities are comforting, though likely only to her.

her eyes roam slowly. she lingers a moment on each person’s face, she looks at what they’re wearing and how they present themselves. she tries to come up with stories of who they are. it’s a silly thing to do, but she draws a sense of solace from it, considering it a welcome distraction. her drink arrives and she reaches for it, drawing the straw to her lips to take a sip. when she looks up again, the crowd has shuffled. new people are sitting, new people are walking about. allegra tries to find the person she was last looking at, and she would swear she was just about to find them, but her focus is ripped away. had her heart been beating, it would have stopped. instead, it feels like her head is rushing, and it is like her silly game never existed at all. her eyes widen as her eyes lock with fleur’s. is this happening? she feels like she is choking. she wants to leave. she wants to talk to them. allegra finds herself frozen. she is stuck in her seat, her focus unwavering. their name forms on her lips and she speaks it aloud, breathless. ❝ fleur. ❞ 

if she were her sister, she’d have something clever and perhaps cruel to say, but she’s not. she’s just clara and anger doesn’t sit well on her, no matter how hard she tries. in her heart, she knows ethan deserves all the vitriol she can throw at him – he made the choice to crash her party and ruin her night – but even with as thoughtlessly cruel as him and his friends have been, she hates the idea of anyone hurting because of her. ( how does he handle the weight of the guilt ?? does he even feel it ?? )

❝ help how ?? ❞ she’s incredulous and it permeates her voice, strain obvious. ❝ you…you already broke m-my favorite cup and my grandma’s v-v-vase and you ate the cupcakes i baked and…and you… ❞ her voice cracks and while it’s obvious that she’s trying to be angry, there’s another wave of tears and she buries her face in her arms. ❝ go away. there’s n-nothing left for you to ruin. ❞

ethan hesitates before saying, ❝ i’ll be right back. ❞ he doesn’t address her answer ( rude ?? maybe ) before he’s already out of the room. this is weird. this is out of character for him, and he’s completely aware of that. but he is already saying, ❝ get up ❞ and ❝ get out, ❞ before he is off of the staircase as he heads back downstairs. he figures that kicking out all of the party-crashers ( minus him obviously ) is step one to maybe making her feel a bit better, and at the very least it’ll prevent anything else from being broken. his friends give him strange looks at his sudden declaration but he’s folded his arms across his chest. ❝ i’m serious. take whatever bottles you can hold and leave. throw something out on your way to the door, too. ❞ he doesn’t bother listening to any complaints ( which are numerous and loud but he does a good job at ignoring them ), and he kicks one of his friends with the side of his foot in attempts to get him up and leaving. ❝ party’s over. we’ll do something tomorrow. ❞ it takes a while to get them all up and moving. they’re drunk and annoyed ( and so is he ) but they listen to him. he says they’ll do something tomorrow night, and that somewhat appeases them.

it’s not fair. clara knows she’s not popular, not one of the cool kids. she’s awkward, shy and bookish, not even managing to intimidate people into liking her the way her sister does. all she can do is sit in the corner with a book and hope that someone else starts the conversation, but at least that’s left her with a friend or two. even then, she’s nothing in the high school social hierarchy. ( or, she supposes, in any hierarchy at all. ) so when the most popular guy in school–one could even argue in town–decides to crash her small birthday party, there’s nothing she can do to stop it. her quiet protests are drowned out by their drunken shouting and the sound of her favorite cup shattering on the back porch and it’s all she can do to retreat to her bedroom and wait for them to leave.

her parents are going to kill her. they’ll be so mad and she almost feels angry at the fact that she’s going to suffer for someone else’s crimes, but clara figures that’s just how the world works. people like ethan do what they want and people like her clean up the mess. another wave of tears rushes out and she pulls her knees up to her chest, trying to muffle the sound as the door creaks open. ❝ go away, ❞ she manages to say, voice weak and shaky.

this isn’t the first time ethan and his friends have crashed a party, and just a few minutes prior he would have said that it likely wouldn’t be the last. it’s fun, they claim. they show up, usually drunk or at least on their way there, and they drink and fuck about until they’re too tired or too drunk to do anything else. usually they crash at a friend’s house, someone they know -- it’s easy that way -- but not tonight. why ?? ethan had heard from someone ( he can’t remember who ) that clara bennett was having a little party. wasn’t hearing about it basically the same as getting invited ?? he thought so. he had joked that maybe they’d show up and turn it into a party that people would actually want to attend -- and so that’s what they did. they took over the party with their raucous laughter and their alcohol. soon enough, it had become their party and not clara’s.

❝ i’ll be back in a sec -- ❞ ethan grins at his friends before he stands up, his arms outstretched to his side so that he can try to keep his balance ( he’s surprised at how much the ground underneath his feet seems to move -- when had he managed to drink that much ?? he doesn’t remember ). his friends are sprawled out in the living room, some are lying on the couch and most are on the floor, but they all are wearing wide smiles as they laugh and continue to drink and ethan can’t wait to get back to them. he walks over one of them before heading up the steps. already, he’s bored being away. he passes a broken vase, and one of the paintings on the wall looks like it’s upside down ( but he doesn’t know art, so maybe it’s actually right side up ). 

no, she wouldn’t be so lucky as to have him actually leave when she rejects him. that would be too easy and obviously, he’s too much of a fuckboy to live and let live. she wonders if other girls fall for his bribery and good looks and she figures they must ;; otherwise he wouldn’t be nearly as confident as he is. ❝ close friends then ?? i’m sensing a lot of affection. ❞ it’s a sarcastic little comment, not very biting as her tone strays towards bored. he’s not her type, not in the slightest, and she has absolutely no interest in getting to know him further.

as he reaches forward, ginny pulls her drink away, raising it up to her lips and taking a sip. ❝ i’m having whatever spoiled boys aren’t willing to buy, ❞ she huffs. normally, she’s a lot more sweet, but the loud music and the crowds have her on edge enough  that her words have a sharp edge. ❝ i’d like to go home and read a book, maybe water my plants. unless you’re an expert on shakespeare or zinnias, i really don’t want your help.  ❞

it isn’t often that someone rejects him. usually all it takes is the offer of buying a drink and a smile and a girl will swoon. he can’t help but think that’s all it should take. what’s there not to like ( or lust for ) about him ? he knows he’s attractive, and his name and status should only be the icing on the cake. frankly, he doesn’t like being told no, and he doesn’t like when things don’t go how he’d like them to. he’s a true product of his environment, for sure. he doesn’t flinch at her comment, and this time he doesn’t bother to look towards his friends. he keeps his gaze trained on her. ❝ affection, ❞ he scoffs, tipping his head back as he laughs. ❝ they’re sycophants. ❞

his hand falls back towards his side at her rejection. it’s his pride and his confidence that has kept him in front of her this long -- and he doesn’t plan to walk out of the bar without her by his side now. ❝ pity for you -- there’s nothing i’m not willing to buy, ❞ wes challenges. he has felt taken aback by some of the things she’s said already -- he isn’t used to the repartee she’s bringing to the table but it would be a lie to say he isn’t enjoying the challenge.  

she can tell that eyes are on a man across the club─the one with the cocky attitude that’s downing enough shots to make her liver cringe in embarrassment─but she doesn’t know enough to care. maybe he’s a celebrity, maybe he’s just a hot guy ;; it doesn’t matter to her. ginny has never been the type to keep up with things outside of her studies, let alone the tabloids that would tell her about someone as misbehaved as he is. her type tends to have their nose stuck as far in a book as hers is, not buried in the crook of the neck of girl their never going to see again.

yet, somehow, her luck seems to be getting even worse as she spots him walking towards her like she’s prey and he’s the predator. The thought makes her chuckle to herself, but any smile is quickly replaced by annoyance as he stops in front of her and she feels his gaze slide across her body. suddenly, her dress is a bit too short. ❝ i think your boyfriends would appreciate a drink more than me, ❞ she grumbles, gesturing towards his group of friends. ❝ why don’t you buy them a round ?? ❞

wes never has had a type. so long as they’re pretty and look good on his arm, he doesn’t care what they’re like. he was shallow at best and he knew it. but he was fine with that. there were few expectations of him, and fewer when he was behind closed doors. the nation’s best kept secret, his advisors would say. he could never quite tell if they were amused or relieved at this. god knows there’d be a field day in the media if word of just how promiscuous and selfish he was got out. behind closed doors, he could be whoever he wanted. in the eyes of the world, he had to meet their expectations and then go beyond.

clary doesn’t know what to do. it’s her least favorite feeling in the world, knowing that there’s a situation that she can’t handle, but how could she have prepared herself for this moment ?? she’s dreamt about it more times than she’d ever admit, mind full of fantasies of gabe coming home, but it’s nothing like reality. daydreams didn’t prepare her for the full weight of the hurt, of the anger, of the love she still feels for him. now that she’s actually looking at him, she feels more lost than she ever has.

her gaze flickers down to cassie as he apologizes, wishing her daughter wasn’t there to see everything that’s happening. young as she is, she’s got her mother’s brains and that means there’s no way any of the details are slipping past her. it’s a blessing and a curse in equal measure, but at the moment it feels like the latter. cassie knows her mother is lying. she doesn’t know what the lie is, but she feels the emptiness in the words and the waver in her voice as it gets caught in her throat. 

he turns to leave and it takes everything she has not to fall to her knees like he’s walking away with all the strength she’s ever had. let him leave, her mind says, there’s no place for him in the life you’ve built. clary is trying to listen to it, desperate to believe in the rage that used to come so easily, but her heart is louder. don’t let him go, it whispers like a secret, if you let him go, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. she already has too many regrets for her body to hold, so the dam of her heart breaks.

❝ gabe. ❞

her voice shatters on impact with the air, fingers tightening on the edge of her daughter’s shirt. she doesn’t know what’s supposed to come next, but she knows she can’t watch him walk away again. ❝ maybe… ❞ she’s lost, stumbling over her words in a way that doesn’t suit her. ❝ come inside. i can…maybe i can help you find who you’re looking for. ❞ 

she doesn’t want to make a promise she can’t keep. the girl he loved is dead, buried under an unmarked headstone in a cemetery she never visits. he should know, shouldn’t he ?? clary might have buried her, but gabriel was the one who killed her.

gabriel wasn’t the type to beg. he wouldn’t fall to his knees in front of her, pleading and asking for a chance or even for forgiveness ( but he thought he might have if she asked him to ). but it felt like the last tangible hope he had had been ripped from his grasp, and he hated himself for for laying it all onto her. he had gotten it in his head that maybe she could have been salvation, but instead he felt himself drifting further and further from any sort of respite he could have been offered.

what to do now, what to do now. he could feel her eyes watching his back, and he almost wished she had gone inside and shut the door on him already. wouldn’t that be easier ?? it would almost be a clean break, him knowing that she wanted nothing to do with him, but instead she stared and every moment that passed caused ragged edges to rip even further. he had no idea where he was going. any bridge he might have had had long since been burnt.

he wouldn’t let it show that he was about to lose it. not in front of clary, not in front of that little girl -- his heart ached at the thought of all that he had lost and what he could have had if things had been different. gabriel had been a stupid punk ass kid with a temper, and now he was seeing the consequences of that. it was salt in the wound. but he couldn’t stay here. he’d wait till he was out of their sight, he’d try to push them out of his mind. only then would he let himself break.

but he heard his name and his step faltered. what if she didn’t say it what if he was hearing th -- he turned around slowly, raising his gaze to meet hers. his words were nearly a whisper. ❝ you don’t have to do this. ❞ but i want you to. but i need you to. he wanted to talk to her. he wanted to see her, he wanted to learn about all that he had missed. 

clarisa’s life hasn’t gone according to plan, but maybe that’s for the best. the way she’d been going when she met gabriel, she’s not sure she would have survived to see eighteen. every choice she made had been horrible, self destructive and violent as she tried to carve away the parts of her that she couldn’t bear. she’d been rage, been hurt and jealousy wrapped up in the body of a girl not big enough to hold it all in. the pain her father left in her made her hurt other people and maybe they weren’t innocent, but they didn’t deserve the things she’d done. 

she’d been a monster and he loved her anyway.

yet, he still left. she wonders if maybe he was a monster too and she just didn’t see it, so enamored with someone that could look at her with love instead of resentment that she missed the warning signs. it feels like she missed something, like she should have been smarter or quicker or colder and maybe then things wouldn’t have happened how they did. then again, if things had happened differently, would she have been the target of his anger ??

her heart says he loved her. her heart says he was a good man. her heart tells her to wait for him to come home, but her heart has always been a terrible influence. 

it didn’t help her when he was gone and the pregnancy test came back positive.

no one helped her, as it turned out. her mother was ashamed, her father was violent as ever and everyone she thought she could call her friend turned away from her. clary was left alone, her child’s father locked up and her entire world ripped out from underneath her, but still she couldn’t bring herself to give up her child. so she carried her baby to term, struggling through labor alone until finally, she wasn’t alone anymore.

cassie was the most beautiful thing clary had ever seen, even if she saw her father every time she looked at her. her daughter changed her, forced her to grow up and accept responsibility in a way that she never had before. someone was depending on her and this time, she couldn’t screw it up. she wasn’t going to become her father─unforgivably cruel and selfish─and she wasn’t going to become her mother─too passive to save the one thing that mattered─so she knew she had to become someone better, even if she didn’t know how.

there was a lot of trial and error, but eventually she graduated, moving onto law school and balancing school, work and raising cassie on her own. popularity is no longer a focus for her, which is probably a good thing given the fact that being the teenage single mom on campus doesn’t exactly win her points. still, she is happy. cassie is happy. even without any other family, they have each other and clary is sure that things are going to be okay.

the knock at the door catches her in the middle of writing an essay, delaying her long enough for cassie to reach the door first but she isn’t concerned. they live in a relatively safe neighborhood and most people know cassie as much as they know clary, so as long as there isn’t any screaming, things are probably fine for a few seconds.

the small, red-headed girl gives a little nod, brushing bright hair back out of her face as she rocks on the balls of her feet. ❝ mama !! ❞ she calls, a slight spanish lilt to the word as it echoes through the apartment. ❝ someone is looking for you. ❞ there’s the distant sound of laughing and the scratch of a chair across a floor, followed by the sound of a pencil dropping onto a table. ❝ of course they are. i’m so popular. ❞

bare feet make little noise as she moves into the entryway, soft pink sun dress settling loosely on her lithe frame. her hair is pulled up into a loose bun and she’s not wearing makeup. she looks like an adult, like a mother, like everything she is.

but then her gaze lands on the man in the doorway and she’s a teenager again, all that hurt rushing back like a forest fire lit by a forgotten cigarette. he’s not supposed to be here. he’s not supposed to come back. she’s spent the past seven years learning how to live without him. now gabriel is standing in front of her like a vision and all she can think is how badly she wants to invite him inside and never let him leave.

there goes her heart again, telling her things she shouldn’t listen to.

❝ i think you have the wrong address. ❞ her voice doesn’t sound nearly as confident as she wants it to as she steps closer to cassie, one hand resting on her daughter’s shoulders. ❝ whoever you’re looking for doesn’t live here anymore. ❞

she came into sight and it felt like he was fucking seventeen years old. to be so tongue-tied and unsure was startling, but god his heart started beating like he had just received a shock. it was unexpected, it was startling. how could feelings have lasted so long ? how could they not have waned by now ? gabriel couldn’t remember the last time he had felt like this -- alive -- but the sight of clary had struck a cord within him. 

it had been so much easier to not feel when he was incarcerated. he had steeled himself against yearning for things -- for people -- he wouldn’t touch, for those he wouldn’t see. he didn’t let himself miss anything until green grass was under his feet and stone prison walls were behind him, and then suddenly it felt like everything had hit him at once. seven years of numbness would treat no one well, and gabriel was no exception.

he had realized this as he was on his way to clarisa’s home. the looks of people on the bus, the whispers -- they made his skin crawl and the whole time he had focused his attention on his hands. maybe they weren’t talking about him, but the cacophony of sounds was overwhelming. it wasn’t the dull drone that had buzzed in his ears for so long. it was different, it varied. he couldn’t stand it. by the time the bus reached his stop, nails had dug crescent-shaped indentations into his palms and he couldn’t get away fast enough. it would take time to readjust, they had told him. he had been loathe to pay much attention to their words at the time, but now he wished he had.

they were there to help him, they had repeated this a thousand times over. but gabriel didn’t know how to let people in, he didn’t understand how to trust someone without knowing he’d take a bullet for them first. so he had listened to their words with indifference, sitting across from them as they passed over pamphlets and pointed at posters on the wall. he had nodded and murmured ‘ok’s when it seemed appropriate, he repeated the words they said back when they asked. they told him there were halfway homes, they said there were charities. god, he was unprepared. he was going to wind up in trouble sooner or later, he knew this before he’d even left, but seeing clarisa sparked a seed of hope in him for the first time in ages. seeing her reminded him of who he had once been.

now, gabriel had never been gentle, not even when he was a child, but there was a new hardness to him that was unfamiliar. in the past, at least, there were times he could pretend to be soft. he’d shut his eyes and forget the harshness the world had offered him, the unfair hand of cards he’d been dealt. it seemed like that would be hard to do now. but he remembered when mild words would spill from his lips, when they were unfamiliar and delicate, though something about them had still been appealing. they reminded him things weren’t as black and white as he tended to see them. but still things always turned backwards no matter how hard he tried. soft became razors and his tongue would bleed as he spoke words that he knew would hurt. 

but it had never been his mouth that got him in trouble. it was his fists and his knuckles, the ones that had acquired a taste for blood from a young age. he had a temper. words got under his skin, stinging like pins and needles until he couldn’t help but swing at whoever was nearest. sawyer had told him time and time again that he could do more, that he could be more, if maybe he could reign in his anger. and he tried. gabriel tried. for his brother, he would have done anything. but in the end it didn’t matter. sawyer was dead in the ground and gabe still ended up behind bars. the waites would never amount to anything. he had heard that time and time again when he was younger, but it left a bitter taste in his mouth when he realized it had come true.

sawyer and clary were the two things he had never appreciated as much as he should have while he had them. his brother who would have laid down his life, and the girl that made his grey world just a touch less bleak. why they ever had the faith in him they did was baffling, but god when he was younger it was a good feeling. the idea that everyone had given up on him haunted him now, but he still remembered what it was like. he still remembered what it had been like to have them and to love them.

he stared at clary just as he had done with the little girl, his gaze shifting between the two. he wanted to ask, he wanted to know -- but he didn’t know if he should. all he was certain of was that she held the upper hand. it wasn’t his turn to say anything. he’d let her get the first word out. 

i think you have the wrong address.

the air rushed out of his lungs. he deserved that. she didn’t have to see him. it was her choice, he knew. that was rational thing, that was the smart thing to do. for a moment, he shut his eyes. he took a deep breath, exhaling loudly before looking at her once more. ❝ i guess that i d, ❞ he offered her a wavering smile before his eyes fell to the girl at her side once more.

❝ i’m sorry for bothering you. both of you. ❞ the words caught in his throat. ❝ i’m just -- i’m sorry. ❞

the words hung in the air between them. there was more meaning to them than just a simple apology for a disturbance. they both knew it. but she had made what she wanted clear. he would accept that. he owed her that, but that didn’t make him feel any better. he turned to walk away from them both, taking a few steps before glancing over his shoulder. his voice is soft. ❝ goodbye, clary. ❞

it sounded so final, so definite. goodbye.