decay and follow me down

Clary looked over Jace confused by his actions. So he had been the person watching her this entire time. She had no idea he was acting like such, like he was almost afraid of something. If it wasn’t her she had no idea what it was. She watched him closely trying to pinpoint what was making him like such but there was nothing that had risen to her mind. 

Clary had known the entire shadow world existed and yet she knew there was gaps in her memory but she could’t quite place what wasn’t there so for the most part she had just accepted the fact for that time being. 

“Yeah, that is kind of the point. It’s not like your invisible” she said remembering the first time she had ever seen him. This was just like that moment but also quite different in so many ways. The first time they had met she with Simon after he had preformed and now they stood in a completely different world or it so seemed to be that  way. 

“Of course I know who you are. Your Jace Herondale, a shadowhunter” the female said once again. 

@sweetsprites​

he couldn’t do this. he couldn’t. his lungs struggled to breathe in enough air, and he could feel his hands starting to shake, the slightest bit. no one who wasn’t close to him would notice anything was wrong. on the outside, jace was a rock. hard, impenetrable, the warrior valentine had broken down,b it by bit, until there wasn’t much left. on the inside he was raw, ripped open from the inside out.

“clary...” the word is barely more than a breath. he takes a step forward as if her mere presence is enough to make him move. but he stops, his hands making fists. before slowly, carefully, pulling out a seraph blade. he remembers that night on the ship. the cold wind as valentine tricked jace with clary’s image. he points the blade at her, narrowing his eyes. 

this doesn’t make sense. the last thing he remembers is reading her letter, her goodbye. and now they’re here and she knows him, but alec doesn’t? maybe a demon, jace thinks, though his mind isn’t clear enough to take a guess as to who it could be. maybe it pulled them into a different dimension where it’s all backwards.

“how do i know it’s you? how do i know you’re real?” if it weren’t for the weapon in his hand, jace would appear completely calm, detached. but his grip is white-knuckled, and his eyes can’t stop examining her face, like that’s enough to give him the truth.

so while it is surprising to see this particular face here in sallow hills, it is less suprising to see her holding a man against the wall. at least the very last thing he’ll ever see is a face that beautiful... or not.

“alright, that’s enough of that, i think.” he steps close, hands in his pockets. “let the poor bastard go, alma. look at him, he needs a change of undies. i’m sure you won’t want any of that to get on such a lovely outfit. come on, let go.”

      If he hadn’t heard them call out his name first, Alec wouldn’t have reacted so calmly to being hugged by someone he definitely didn’t know. He knows all of two, technically three, people in this town. And only two of them was he friendly with, and as much as he likes Chloe he doesn’t think she’d just grab him for a hug. They weren’t that friendly yet. However, the familiarity in the strangers voice and in his words tell Alec that they know him very well. And he wishes he could say the same, but nothing about this boy is familiar except for the hug.

      He’s heard of body memory before, and how sometimes with amnesia patients it’s their physical memory that comes back first. And Alec may not remember this boy, but the hug itself hadn’t made him recoil. It just brought a sense of warmth, and something at his side felt like it was tugging at him. 

      He must have looked as lost at he feels, because now the guy is asking him if he’s okay. It takes Alec a second to find his voice. ❝ I’m…fine. ❞ He’s aware that sounded more like a question rather than an affirmation, but that’s not too far from the truth either. Has Alec been okay since he woke up here? No, not at all. Maybe this, this person, is the first step to figuring out exactly who he is.

      ❝ I’m sorry. I think that I’m supposed to know who you are, you clearly know who I am, but…I can’t remember. Are you alright? I don’t know what’s going with this place or why I’m here but if you need help, I’ll- I’ll help. If I can. ❞ A pause and then, ❝ We’re friends? ❞ 

jace wasn’t prepared for the way alec looked at him. like he’d never seen him before. like all the years, the wars fought side by side, the runes drawn on each other’s skin, the vows they once shared, where thou diest, will i die, and there will i be buried... like it meant nothing.

jace stepped back, arms crossed over his chest as if that could protect him from the sudden emptiness. 

“you don’t know me.” it wasn’t a question. this was more the type of stupid joke jace would pull, not alec. alec wouldn’t do this unless he was completely serious about it. had the angels not had enough with taking clary? if they took alec from him too, jace would strike down raziel with his own blade. he’d find a way. clary was his great love, if he thought it was best for him to let her go, he would try. he was strong enough. but alec? alec was half his soul. part of himself.

“we’re friends sometimes. other times i’m pretty sure you just want to punch me in the face, but you don’t do it because... well, look at me. in fact, you had a crush on me for a long time, but really, who can blame you? it was cute, really. slightly incestuous, but we’ve all been there.” he winked. if he acted like everything was fine, maybe everything would be fine. he’d make alec remember him. one way or another... did he remember their sister? his husband? or was it just a cruel punishment for jace? 

jace had not learned anything except that mundane healing led to sexy, sexy scars. girls liked scars. scars made him look rugged and tough and even more like a bad boy than he already did. of course, he could’ve drawn his own healing rune, but he’d always liked it better when the lightwoods did it. he would’e gone to alec, but... jace didn’t want to think about him.

“you just wanted an excuse too look at my face for an extended period of time. you should know by now izzy, all you have to do is ask. you don’t have to play at being a mundie doctor for that. even if it is an exceptionally beautiful face.”

                                 ― ◊ ◊ ◊ ―

HE shook his head,  a smile gracing his lips.  ❝trust me,  i don’t sell myself short.   just don’t have anything to offer that hasn’t been given to someone else.❞   he had no idea where poe was,  hell what he even wasto poe.   but whatever it was,  he’d given his everything to it.

he looked around,  spotting an open booth and heading towards it.   he hesitated for a moment before sliding into the side with his back towards the door.  he didn’t like it,  but he knew some people needed to watch the door (like rey).   he drummed on the table until matt came back.  

❝i have a hard time you’re not interesting yourself,❞  he said.  ❝what do you do?  where are you from?❞

“yeah, i get that.” he did, in a way. he’d tried his best, at least. his last relationship had been doomed from the start. he tried to love her in the way she wanted to be loved. and he knew she had tried as well, even if it didn’t always seem like she did. but he knew what it was like to give all od you to someone. he just wished that someone had wanted what he had to give. “i still think whoever that someone else is, is a lucky person.”

he made a ittle small talk with his co-worker as he waited for their coffee and told her he’d see her tomorrow before walking a way to find finn. he sat down with a small grunt, but he smiled as he handed finn one of the cups, the irght one this time. “well, you know there’s not that much to say. used to be the star jock with a big head and now i’m not.” he shrugged. as much as he loved football, he knew he wouldn’t be bale to get back to that life even if he’d been able to. “i work here, actually. today’s my day off. i know it’s weird to come here when i don’t have to, but i like sticking to what’s familiar, you know?”

“i’m from california. what about you? are you from around here?”

Oh finally. Rhiannon felt a little bit of that “human” veneer fall away upon seeing one of her employees. Hard workers, the both of them. There was no need to be charmingly human around them, like she needed to with customers. If it was just her and Varen or Nana, she could let her more… cosmetic glamour drop. The little things that pushed Rhiannon towards the more questionable side of the uncanny valley that she usually kept hidden. The clear way that magick instead of human blood ran through her veins, the length of her teeth, the way her eyes screamed of a supernatural parentage. All the little things that made Rhiannon other. They knew enough not to breathe a word to her.

Or at least, she thought they did. She paid her two employees well enough to account for silence at any oddities they might encounter as a hazard of working there.

She ducked behind the large front counter, rummaging along one of the shelves until her hand fell upon cool, dark leather. Bringing it up with a flourish, she set it back down on the counter.

“This one, right? If you had any pens though, you’ll have to find those yourself,” she patted the sketchbook softly. So much energy in those pages, it almost made her giddy.

“Some customer had tried to take it from the shelves,” she mused, returning to her original task of hanging up necklaces. “Thought it was free because it didn’t have a price tag, tried to argue with me- in my own shop- about how prices supposedly work.”

Rhiannon turned to Varen, a too-sharp grin forming. “Don’t worry, he didn’t look in it. But if you do hear blood curdling screams at around 3:33 am tonight, pay them no mind. He was rude, he deserves a little visit from a wraith or two.”

Cursing rude customers was one of her favorite parts of owning a shop. They would either be polite or Rhiannon would personally ensure that rude behavior never happened again. She was doing the town a service, after all.

varen smiled in that way they only did when there were no strangers around. sincere and warm, not a hint of sarcasm to be found. it was a special kind of magic on its own, being trusted enough to witness rhiannon without her more human disguise. he liked her more like this. strange and other. they were different kinds of strange, but it made him feel at home.

“that’s okay, i have plenty of pens.” they let out a relieved breath. though this journal contained nothing of other worlds, it was still a vessel for varen’s thoughts and feelings. for his dreams, the kind that didn’t follow them when they woke. it was also a home for his most unrefinded art. quick sketches, incomplete ideas, poems that he could never find the right words for. the kind of things you didn’t let anyone see.  he stepped closer, taking the sketchbook from her. “thank you, i’ll try to not be so careless next time.” 

there was a raised eyebrow, and interested look. after so many years, varen couldn’t think of a human who had received a punishment from rhiannon who didn’t deserve it. back int renton he’d had to deal with customers being awful all the time. kids thrwoing ice cream on the floor on purpose, fights breaking in the middle of the store, people trying to take money from the register. and varen couldn’t do anything except wait for them to be done and then clean up the mess himself.

“well, that wasn’t very smart of him. are you thinking more emotional or physical scars? he does sound like an ass.”

but the detective was a different story. he’d been ready to share everything with her so early on in their relationship. if there hadn’t been any meddling celestial relatives around, who knows how their story would have gone? a shorter route to getting here, hopefully. 

he could even imagine himself enjoying having the little urchin around. just the three of them... and, he supposed, the occasional visit from detective douche. he was the child’s father, after all. maybe having amenadiel, doctor linda and charlie over for breakfast every so often wouldn’t be so bad. and he couldn’t leave miss lopez and mazikeen out, of course. his little earth family.

he walked into the kitchen singing sweet child o’ mine to himself. singing to himself, smiling for no reason, thinking of her all the time. it was all so very teen-girl-with-a-crush of him, but he didn’t care. he was, for the first time, truly happy. even with the mystery of why he couldn’t remember so many things the way she could, all he cared about was that she was here, that she was living with him, and that he got to make breakfast for her.

“good morning, detective.” he turned with a smile, she looked beautiful in her domestic simplicity. he could get used to this. he could do this exact same thing every day for the next thousand years and he’d be just as happy. he motioned for her to take a seat. “oh, do sit down. the pancakes are almost ready.”

but she doubted she’d feel the same about her if he saw her now. she’d told her father that if it had been abby, she would’ve wanted him to do the surgery, to let her go to save the world. but she knew he wouldn’t have just resigned himself to losing her. but he wouldn’t want her to be who she is now. the man who helped a zebra escape a wired fence just because he was kind, who wouldn’t even have tried to hurt a child if there had been any other way... he would despise the woman abby had become. he would think she was a monster.

she was sitting across form leia now, noticeably more comfortable since finding out she’d been officially cleared as a suspect. even if leia and kate had both believed in her innocence abby had not been able to let her guard down. she’d needed some time to process what leia had tolde her about her father, and she supposed her own confession would need time to be understood. but it was a huge weight off her shoulders to know that leia was still willing to meet.

“do you think... maybe you’re so willing to forgive my cruelty because you wish your father would show remorse for his in the same way that i have?” she says, twirling a leaf she’d plucked from a nearby bush between her fingers. not to say remorse made her deserving of forgiveness, especially because she could not say that if she could do it all over again she’d do it differently. “i know it has to be a complicated situation. for both of you.”