#circle10

(Circle!verse)

The first time it happened was an accident. 

Jace had just fresh returned from a mission and he hadn’t meant to do it, surely; he’d only intended to study the ring, to see if any information could have been learned from it regarding Valentine’s whereabouts. No, his hand had been slick with blood and ichor and he had simply slipped as he rolled the metal between his fingertips, the edge of it caught on his forefinger. It hadn’t even been all the way on him, really, but perhaps Valentine had been waiting for it, for the call of magical power, and his reply had been almost immediate.

“Jonathan.”

And Jace had frozen in place, every instinct in him screaming to remove the ring, to fling it away, to destroy it, but instead of doing any of that, he’d looked up, met his father’s gaze head on. “Why?” he asked of the projection of Valentine’s form. He was exhausted and battered, sitting on the edge of his bed. There was nothing else on his mind– he was numb, bleeding from a finishing cut that no one else could see. “Why did you do it?”

There was no need to elaborate; his father knew what he was asking. For a moment they simply stared at one another, with Jace quite unable to match the impassive expression that his father so casually wore. His imprisonment at Chernobyl had come on the heels of a revelation that Jace still couldn’t quite wrap his head around, his familial love for his father warring with the conditioning that Valentine had so clearly been trying to impress upon him. 

Jace hated the Circle and everything they stood for, but none of that changed his childhood. That didn’t change the fact that he’d been trained to think that any hardship that Michael Wayland had put him through was a lesson, and that any punishment he was given thereafter was deserved.

Did I deserve Chernobyl? Jace couldn’t bring himself to ask it out loud, but Valentine heard it anyway. He could read him, Jace knew, as clearly as he could when he’d been eleven.

Instead of answering directly, however, Valentine inclined his head. “You’re injured,” he observed, and Jace flinched.

“I was on a mission,” he said. “With my team. Injuries happen on missions.”

But Valentine had circled him, his gaze flickering over his battered form. “Demons, by the look of it,” he said. “Raveners, judging by the ichor.” He paused as he eyed the shreds on the back of Jace’s leather jacket, the stinger puncture that had barely missed taking out a kidney by an inch. “You said you had a team?”

That had been the first time. It hadn’t been the last.

The atmosphere in the Institute grew increasingly tense as the week wore on, and though the stolen moments that Jace had with Alec were an oasis in a desert, he was well aware that each time brought them closer to discovery. He couldn’t bring himself to ask Alec to stop coming to him, though, as their time together was his only reprieve from the pressure of the escalating tension.

Adam and Alicia were not pleased by an ex-Circle member’s involvement with mission strategies, and their sentiments were spreading among the other hunters. Jace could see it in the increasing hostility that he received from the people he had to work with, and while he endeavored to continue on with his customary professionalism, it was growing increasingly more difficult every day. They couldn’t touch Alec because Lydia was so obviously utilizing him, but Jace was a soldier just like everyone else, and the fact that he’d brought Alec in as an asset was a good enough reason to make him a target.

It wasn’t that Jace didn’t have allies, however– Clary was still firmly trying to spread her views on downworlders and many of the younger shadowhunters agreed with her, but the types of people that she could sway were hardly the sort that got sent on the missions that Jace received. Clary and Isabelle were kept busy with trying to maintain peaceful relations with Downworlders, and while he appreciated what they were trying to do, good tidings could hardly stop a demon from ripping into his back if no one would agree to watch it.

Jace had been known as the best shadowhunter of his generation, and now he surmised that it was really the only thing keeping him alive. A less gifted hunter would have been killed a dozen times over by now, and he’d changed his fighting style to adapt out of necessity. It didn’t help that Lydia assigned him to almost all of the Circle-related missions, and the fact that she used his presence to keep Alec from betraying them was not lost on him.

Tonight’s mission appeared to be more of the same, and Jace walked briskly down the Institute halls with a confidence that couldn’t be further from the truth. He was joined by Adam and Alicia along the way, their weapons already in their hands as they matched his stride and headed into the small conference room that Lydia used for briefings.

As was customary with Circle missions, Alec was already there with her, and Jace met his eyes and nodded briefly before turning his gaze forward. Beside him, Adam was clearly bristling at Alec’s presence, and Alicia’s mouth was a grim line as she glared at him. Wonderful.