#trigger_

for @vcrlac on her birthday!!  Happy Birthday Talia!!

                                     Jonathan Morgenstern  ✚   Jace Herondale

                                 Baby I'm preying on you tonight, hunt you down, eat you alive                                   Maybe you think you that can hide, I can smell your scent for miles

this has been in my head for a while now, so i decided i wanted to make this post. 

all of this last year, but specially these last days, i have been slowly learning about all of the different specific ways in which i suffered childhood abuse and neglect, and all of the many, many ways it screwed up my life, my sense of self, and my self image. and how it caused me quite a few very real impairments, that then were only exacerbated when they were blamed back on me, and i was made to believe i somehow didn’t do my best on purpose, because i was a bad child, and a bad person. 

it took me 26 years to even start to believe that what had been done to me was, in fact, abuse, and not something i just deserved because something was wrong with me. you know what gave me that first spark of wanting to maybe believe it, even a little while before i started on therapy, and that gave me strength, and helped me understand what i was learning through it? jace herondale. 

jace helped me understand, handle, and accept, all the many subtle ways in which i was neglected, manipulated, abused and plain expected to be an adult before i had any conditions to be one. jace helped me deal with understanding how hard it is to accept what’s happened when it’s done to you by people you love, and that in their way, love you back, and how it is to accept that you BOTH hate and love them. and jace made start to think about the way he saw himself, and the way the fandom saw him, and how he was anything BUT what he thought he was, and how angry it made me that he, and so many others in his and our real life, would think he was indeed bad, broken, and unfixable. and the angrier i felt, the more a little, very little, thought, started to occur to me, that if i was so willing to fight for him, and to see how good he truly was, why wasn’t i willing to even give myself the benefit of the doubt? 

jace has been with me through this journey, and through a flurry of pain, confusion, and trying to come to terms with the fact that i’d spent my whole life blaming myself for what had been done to me, so fiercely, that when someone finally pointed it out to me four years ago, i didn’t believe them. but i believed jace’s journey, and i believed in him. because it’s ONE thing to have someone point that out to you, that you think can’t possibly know what your life really is like, and it’s another to see it written down in words that finally make sense of those loose puzzle pieces in your head, and resonate with you so much, you can no longer deny them.

and the sole reason i am making this post, and writing all of this down, is to ask you, beg you, to please, please, do not erase jace’s abuse journey from him. 

much like me, i KNOW there are others who this character has helped the same, and others that it might help still, and it’d break my heart if someone’s so tenuous willingness to start to believe in themselves, and on what was done to them, was snuffed out, because they were made to feel that they were relating to a character that had never actually been through all of those things at all, and it was all just in their heads. don’t. i know it might feel like text interpretation to you, and like it doesn’t really matter, but trust me, it does. jace herondale matters for many reasons, but ALSO, for this one. he mattered to me, and i just KNOW he can help so many others yet, if they just get a chance to let him. 

trust me, there is more than enough lack of validation in most of the lives of people that have had similar stories to mine, and when you erase that part of him, you might just be making someone doubt that little spark, and take away their hope that they are NOT unfixable, and that they are not to BLAME, and that they are not destined to live their lives this way. that it CAN get better. 

───   jace herondale,    t h e   f a i r   f o l k

book and show mix of jace herondale  after day of atonement

                                                   jace closed his eyes for a moment as he played, it was an exercise he did since he was a child, close his eyes and feel the keys, instead of seeing them, and try to play perfectly the same tune again and again and again — see with his ears if he’d followed the sheets to a t.

the soft, gentle, tones of the piano filled the room, and he knew they were echoing beyond, through the hallways of the institute, for anyone passing to listen to, but he wasn’t thinking about that now. 

and now, my boy, you’ll know what it means to be a herondale. jace worked through the grave part of the song, lips pressed in a tight line.  h e r o n d a l e. he tested the name on his tongue, even inside his mouth. if yesterday was anything to measure by, he wasn’t so sure the herondale family would want him in their history. they’d be so proud of you. he tried to imagine that. but all he could think of was valentine smiling as he cut the strings on the back of the dummy just right, and the mannequin fell apart. it had been hours before he got it just right from the first plunge. it was gray and cold when they started, and black and cold when they finished. that was the kind of task he was good at completing, the way he knew how to make a parent proud. you have your mother’s looks. he frowned. his mother... had she loved him? his father, he was valentine’s right hand after luke was gone, but everyone had described him as a good man. was he just fooled by valentine like everybody else? like jace, himself, had been? was loving valentine a weakness in his very blood? 

jace kept on playing. don’t hesitate, jace. he worked his long fingers through the keys. when he was eight, he couldn’t reach all of them. yes, you can, i know you can. he’d never want to disappoint father, because when he disappointed father, father didn’t love him, and if father didn’t love him, who would?

to love is to destroy. don’t let your emotions cloud your judgement. can you pledge your loyalty to the clave? no. jace didn’t want to think it. didn’t want to dwell on it. but if that was really how his grandmother thought, felt, acted, was there really a difference between his new family and his fake one? you sound like valentine. what was so different between the way valentine acted, and what the clave did? was alec right and his new name just the other side of the coin to his old one? the clave could be argued with, his father couldn’t. could his grandmother be argued with? could she one day be an advocate for changes in the clave? somehow he doubted it.but he had to believe if he wanted to keep on fighting.

you’re a herondale, get used to the perks. was that what it meant now? that he wasn’t one of them anymore? did alec resent him for having been shoved into yet another family he never sought out? only he didn’t know if he hadn’t WANTED this one. for one moment, for one single moment, he had, actually. the moment that ring was placed around his neck, the weight of it cold against his chest, jace never thought he could have felt prouder, the feeling of belonging punched the air right out of him. now his grandmother was gone without another word, alec had looked at him the entire day before like jace’s very presence disappointed him, and he wasn’t sure he belonged anywhere. again. you were never a stray. wasn’t that what he’d always been?

jace you can’t do this. there was so much death. so much death on top of him. downworlders, shadowhunters, all now skinned alive and screaming. jace couldn’t save them. but he’d had to TRY. no. he’d begged but it wasn’t enough. he’d tried but it wasn’t enough. he couldn’t reach the keys — maybe if we snap the ligaments you’ll be able to stretch, would you like to try that? or would you like to try harder? 

you just let it happen?! he had before, hadn’t he? had let valentine happen, had let him keep on living, had let him activate the sword, had not even been strong enough to keep him from USING it. had let kaelie get completely out of control and take it out on his people. had never seen. had never noticed. had never sensed those same hands that ran over his skin would be the ones ripping it off his comrades, killing them with agony. 

jace tell her to stop, you know this is wrong. could he really? could he tell imogen herondale to do ANYTHING? and if he DID, would she stop? valentine never had. valentine would have hit him on the mouth for daring to speak up against him, punishment would be a lot more than that if jace had dared tried to tell him what to DO. imogen didn’t struck him as someone that would had restrained her hand if her child had done the same. and wasn’t that clue enough? but then again, maybe it was that jace just didn’t WANT to believe, just couldn’t make himself believe that the one family he finally got was this. that maybe he’d been better in valentine’s hands, and what kind of thinking was that? was his new family, the royal herondales, was it all that was left of its history really that bad? was every piece of jace that dishonourable? make me proud. he didn’t think he could.

i’m doing my best. and he was, wasn’t he? even when he was just trying to follow heavy orders in even heavier times, and had no actual, practical control over any of it, he was just trying his best. if he refused, what would have kept imogen from just picking another shadowhunter to do her bid? what would then be of the downworlders that were innocent and that jace wanted to make sure to save? were a few hours in a spacious jail cell really that hard to take, for clearance and tracking the actual killer a lot faster without wasting their efforts in keeping an eye on every damn suspect that came their way? jace didn’t think so, but then, maybe he was biased, he was used to being trapped in much smaller spaces than that, after all.

you know, not too long ago, everyone thought you had demon blood. if you weren’t a herondale, she’d be locking you up too. that one had hurt most of all, hadn’t it? clary’s eyes unforgiving as she lashed out the words, and jace’s mind filled with every excruciating thought that had crossed his mind on those weeks he spent thinking he was a monster (in the very words of the woman he thought was his mother), and every bad thing he ever did, had now a cause and explanation. he’d been more than willing to destroy himself, then, to make sure all of those people that were now under suspicion, were SAFE. he had failed then of, course. so maybe that was what clary meant. that no matter on what side he was, he couldn’t make things better, that his best wasn’t good enough, and might never be, because he was cursed, as valentine had always known, because he couldn’t bring anything to the world other than death and misery, demon blood or no demon blood. 

it had been so easy, after all, for clary to stop loving him, and he never quite saw it so clearly until that moment. clary couldn’t love him, and why had he thought different? clary was loving, strong, not damaged at all, courageous and moral. she’d seen all of his flaws, all of his darkness, after all, there was no way she could had ever wanted a part of it. how could he ever blame her? clary was right. and this new name, this new family he had foolishly thought would maybe one day be a reason for pride, and dare he say, how stupidly he thought, happiness, was just another bitter, foul, gift, wrapped and handmade by valentine. valentine delivered him to imogen like a prize, knowing full well how it’d end, the herondale name damaged and jace remembering every lesson valentine had taught him on that ship about the clave. 

you deserved it. he had no answer for it. he did. he always did. didn’t he? if only you had tried harder. i really didn’t want to do this, jonathan. do you see what you put us both through when you fail? he had failed, had failed all of them. the song got faster.

he hadn’t seen alec anymore, hadn’t heard from him, hadn’t talked to him, had felt nothing but confusion and hurt through the bond, and then an odd surge of happiness. his phone had stayed silent. clary had taken simon away and hadn’t called either, hadn’t had reason to.

was that why he went? fix it, fix it. if he couldn’t fix it for anyone else... the wall, hands, claws. his fingers stumbled and then clashed on the keyboard. jace stared, panting, and for a second expected the blood, expected the blow. this is it, the end of the line. do you think you did well, jonathan? it didn’t come.