#* my fic

Clary arranges his pillow as Jace lies back on the bed, a strategically cut sheet of plastic that just manages to cover the bed placed under him.

“Okay?” she said, then shakes her head. It’s a stupid question.

Jace tries to smile for her. It doesn’t reach the brilliant shine of his eyes.

“It’s all good, Clary. No more I’m sorrys, remember?”

“I love you,” she offers, as small it feels, and brushes a loose strand of hair out of his eyes to tuck it behind his ear. Jace opens his mouth like he’s going to respond, but he chokes on it, and when Clary looks down, his shirt is soaked through with blood.

They’ve tried dressing the wound before. There’s not much point when it heals back up after he wakes, like it was never there, and when his blood is fully replenished. Like it never happened.

Still, “I’m sorry,” Clary says and holds his hand through it. She’s not sure how much pain he feels and how much is lost to numbness. She never asks. “I’m sorry.”

She stays there until the tight grip of his hands goes lax and his eyes flutter closed.

If she was any less selfish, she’d stay with him the whole time, whether it takes hours or minutes. It varies a lot.

As it is, though she can’t leave the room—someone needs to be here when he wakes—she can’t quite bring herself to stay at his bedside, his skin growing colder against hers, his face growing sick and pale and alien to her.

So she grabs her sketchbook from her bookshelf, and then sits with her back to the side of it, legs crossed and back stiff against the dark wood.

The whole scene doesn’t coax much inspiration from her.

What would she even draw? Her boyfriend dying? His greying skin? Their other friends? Izzy, with her trusting, unknowing eyes, and Simon with that smile that’s always believed in her goodness. It’s laughable.

Or the mother she couldn’t save, didn’t save, didn’t wish for.

Or then there’s Alec, with dark circles painted under his eyes, panic and terror masking themselves as anger in his unyielding expression.

Jace has deluded himself into thinking that Alec can’t feel it. Clary, for her part, knows they’ve ruined his life, too. He’s stopped asking questions, but he’s also stopped speaking to either of them much at all, except to send them out on mission.

They’ve been making it work, but Clary wonders how long that can last. There are few things she fears more than the day when they’re late getting back and he goes down and doesn’t get up again. When a demon spots how weak she’s made him in the moments afterward, when he breathes back to life, disoriented.

When he dies on her for real.

Clary shakes her head out of the thought and looks back over to where Jace lies.

Yup, still dead.

Unbidden, her mind conjures swirling images, merged together from memories of some mythology class she took in school—Prometheus, who stole fire. Sisyphus. And that goddamn boulder.

All the legends are fucking true, Clary thinks, and without conscious thought, she slams her sketchbook shut and lets it clatter to the ground as she pulls her knees to her chest. She closes her eyes, but not for long, because when she does, she’s back at Lake Lyn, the salty breeze of it on the tip of her tongue, the angel bright and solemn, on the very precipice of this existence. The way she’d forced her will into becoming his.

Valentine’s eyes as she worked the dagger in. Once, then twice, then three times for good measure. After she’d already slit his throat, too.

She leans her head back against the wood.

It’s worth it, she thinks, even as she turns to Jace and he’s still lying there, the room nauseatingly quiet. It has to be.

Clary feels acidic bile rise in her throat. But she chokes it back. And then she picks up her pencil.

Clary arranges his pillow as Jace lies back on the bed, a strategically cut sheet of plastic that just manages to cover the bed placed under him.

“Okay?” she said, then shakes her head. It’s a stupid question.

Jace tries to smile for her. It doesn’t reach the brilliant shine of his eyes.

“It’s all good, Clary. No more I’m sorrys, remember?”

“I love you,” she offers, as small it feels, and brushes a loose strand of hair out of his eyes to tuck it behind his ear. Jace opens his mouth like he’s going to respond, but he chokes on it, and when Clary looks down, his shirt is soaked through with blood.

They’ve tried dressing the wound before. There’s not much point when it heals back up after he wakes, like it was never there, and when his blood is fully replenished. Like it never happened.

Still, “I’m sorry,” Clary says and holds his hand through it. She’s not sure how much pain he feels and how much is lost to numbness. She never asks. “I’m sorry.”

She stays there until the tight grip of his hands goes lax and his eyes flutter closed.

If she was any less selfish, she’d stay with him the whole time, whether it takes hours or minutes. It varies a lot.

As it is, though she can’t leave the room—someone needs to be here when he wakes—she can’t quite bring herself to stay at his bedside, his skin growing colder against hers, his face growing sick and pale and alien to her.

So she grabs her sketchbook from her bookshelf, and then sits with her back to the side of it, legs crossed and back stiff against the dark wood.

The whole scene doesn’t coax much inspiration from her.

What would she even draw? Her boyfriend dying? His greying skin? Their other friends? Izzy, with her trusting, unknowing eyes, and Simon with that smile that’s always believed in her goodness. It’s laughable.

Or the mother she couldn’t save, didn’t save, didn’t wish for.

Or then there’s Alec, with dark circles painted under his eyes, panic and terror masking themselves as anger in his unyielding expression.

Jace has deluded himself into thinking that Alec can’t feel it. Clary, for her part, knows they’ve ruined his life, too. He’s stopped asking questions, but he’s also stopped speaking to either of them much at all, except to send them out on mission.

They’ve been making it work, but Clary wonders how long that can last. There are few things she fears more than the day when they’re late getting back and he goes down and doesn’t get up again. When a demon spots how weak she’s made him in the moments afterward, when he breathes back to life, disoriented.

When he dies on her for real.

Clary shakes her head out of the thought and looks back over to where Jace lies.

Yup, still dead.

Unbidden, her mind conjures swirling images, merged together from memories of some mythology class she took in school—Prometheus, who stole fire. Sisyphus. And that goddamn boulder.

All the legends are fucking true, Clary thinks, and without conscious thought, she slams her sketchbook shut and lets it clatter to the ground as she pulls her knees to her chest. She closes her eyes, but not for long, because when she does, she’s back at Lake Lyn, the salty breeze of it on the tip of her tongue, the angel bright and solemn, on the very precipice of this existence. The way she’d forced her will into becoming his.

Valentine’s eyes as she worked the dagger in. Once, then twice, then three times for good measure. After she’d already slit his throat, too.

She leans her head back against the wood.

It’s worth it, she thinks, even as she turns to Jace and he’s still lying there, the room nauseatingly quiet. It has to be.

It also meant he’d gotten used to all the peculiarities that came with Royals. Every wooden panel in the corridor need replacing and carving? They’d done it. Marble tiles needed a domino pattern? Hunted down the white marble from Tyvia and gotten it in less than three weeks. Light fittings his father called the Outsider’s dark magics? Faith had been ignored and each outlet set in the wood to look seamless set like. The Emperor wanted a secret room put in? They would take the location to their grave. Man had to have his professional pride, see. 

Even if in his very private thoughts, nobles were a weird lot. But in his never mentioned but often muttered to himself opinion, no one was as weird as the Royals themselves. Especially lately. Especially with what everyone was saying about the Lord Protector being able to move throughwalls and that every rat in the city was his spy. He wasn’t a superstitious man, but even he knew there was something queer about it. Enough that he felt a need, privately of course, to strike an accord with the little white fluffy so-and-so that liked to steal the left overs out of his office from where it lived in the corner. 

Never mind that now, of course, he had bigger problems - 

“Every one? They want every single one replaced?”

“Yes, sir.” 

“And lowered?”

“By a foot, they said, sir.” 

“That’s nearly a hundred light fittings!” 

“That’s what they said, sir!” 

“What on earth do they need a ‘sturdier’ chain for? They were balanced perfectly the first time around!”

“I know, sir.”

“What are they doing to throw them off, leaping around the top of them? Swinging off of them? Having a bloody party on top of the throne room chandelier?”

The young man -- Phillip, Demitri’s apprentice, a small man with a set of freckles and an expression that seemed almost constantly startled  -- made something he could only call a distressed whine. “The Lord Protector asked hisself.” He never knew how the boy could get his voice to sound just so squeaky. “He said it was of up-most im-por-tance, on account of his knees, sir. I felt sure you’d know what that meant.” 

Demitri tapped his fingers, reading over the letter he’d been sent again under the heavy frown. He looked up again and cleared his throat pointedly. Well yes, of course if the Lord Protector had asked, that means this had come from the Empress herself. “Oh, well, yes of course. Only a fool wouldn’t, Phillip, something only working with the Royal family and their -- ” 

He paused on the word he wanted. They said the Lord Protector could hear through the ears of every rat in the city. He looked in the corner of the room where some how, yet again that small, white, fluffy bringer of plague and death and suffering sat gnawing on no doubt someone’s loved one that it held between it’s delicate little paws, had gotten into his study again. He looked at it, it looked at him, Phillip gaggled like an idiot not understanding the political undercurrents going on around him. 

The rat sniffed and then it went back to eating. Little bastard. 

“-- close members of household for a life time will give you. One day, when you’re ready, I will of course explain it to you. ” 

“But I thought you said that Royal were all just --”

The rat primly cleaned it’s long whiskers. 

“Shut it, Phillip.”

“Of course. Shall I fetch the men, sir?”

“Yes, there’s a good lad.”

With an all to trying look on his face that he had perfected just for apprentices, he shooed the boy off, letting him get started. When the door closed behind him and he was sure he was out of ear shot, Demitri leaned forward on his desk heavily with a disgruntled noise. 

“Bloody weird royals.”