JACE'S P.O.V

Some people spend their whole lives in the shadows. They hide behind the strong, the bold, the kind. They're not particularly anything. They're average.

I've spent my life fighting for the opposite. I have always wanted to be extraordinary. Now, it seems that all I am is an extraordinary asshole.

I ran through the lobby and up to my room without even thinking about where I was going. I needed a door that locked. A room that was quiet. A place where I could hate my PTSD and how it seemed to destroy everything that matters to me.

I let my fingers brush across the scars on my stomach, feeling the burn of them like they were new again. Clary is the type of girl who can look past the ugliness of the scars. But I'm not sure even she would want to be with me once she learns just how deeply wounded I am.

There's a knock at the door. I don't say anything hoping he'll go away. Another knock.

"Go away, Alec."

"It's not Alec." Clary's unmistakable voice reaches my ears. I don't say anything, holding onto a childish hope that she'll go away. "If you didn't want anyone to know you were in there, you shouldn't have said anything." Despite everything I feel myself smile and go to open the door. She slides in and stands in front of me, crossing her arms over her bare stomach. She looks menacing, despite the fact that she has to crane her neck to look up at me.

"What the hell was that about?"

"It's a long story, Red."

"Don't you 'Red' me. I saw that look on your face. I know it was the PTSD." I feel the grin slip from my face. Her red hair, made darker by the water, is plastered to her face. I brush it away with my fingertips and push it behind her ear. Her eyes soften.

"Why don't you go change?"

"Jace…"

"We'll talk when you're more comfortable." Her eyes hold mine. "I promise." Her small hand with their artists fingers reach up to brush against my cheek.

"Five minutes." Her thumb slips over my cheekbones and then she turns and leaves. I leave the lock bar down so that the door would be open for her.

I've only conveyed the story of my scars twice; once during a mandatory briefing while I was still in the hospital and the second to the Lightwoods. I walk into the bathroom and pull my shirt off. The image of the angry red scars bounces back at me. I touch the one made over my heart; the deliberate carving made by the leader of a terrorist cell. I trace the too familiar curves and lines, recalling with startling clarity the feeling of a knife slicing through skin and muscle. I let my fingers stop where the mark ends.

I splash my face with water, trying to wash away the feeling of fear. When I straighten up, I hear a gasp. I see Clary in the mirror, dressed in jean shorts and a t-shirt, her hand covering her mouth. She shakes off her surprise, gently grabbing my arm and turning me to look at her.

Her hand gently touches my chest, covering most of the scar. "That's why I've never seen you shirtless." She stares at her own hand, the edges of the scar peeking out from between her fingers. Her left hand trails down my stomach, ghosting over the other, smaller scars while her right hand stays on my chest. "I can feel your heart pounding," she whispers. I gently grab onto her hand and remove it from my skin.

"You tend to have that effect on me." She turns her hand in mine to intertwine our fingers. "I think it's time I tell you what happened to me."

"Are you sure?" I take a minute to think about it.

"You deserve to know." I grab a towel and dry my face before pulling my shirt back on then lead us over to the two chairs near the windows overlooking the ocean. "I joined the service right out of high school. I was young and the Lightwood's already had to pay for Alec and Isabelle and I wanted to make things easy for them. They had taken me in when I was 10 after my parents died." I see Clary's eyebrows wrinkle in surprise and remember I hadn't told her about that either. "I came home from a friend's house and found my parents dead in the study. They never found the killer." She leans forward and grabs my hand.

"I'm sorry." I nod in acknowledgement. "Is that the room you couldn't go into?" she asks me. I nod again. I try to push away the memories of them, dead before I ever had the chance to really know them.

"So it turned out that I was a good soldier," I say, quickly changing my train of thought, "and was quickly promoted to Lieutenant. And that's where I met James Bragford." I have to pause there. I wait for the assault of images to stop before continuing. "He was assigned under my leadership, but he was clever and funny and…he was my best friend over there."

"You play, Lieutenant?" James Bragford asks me. The piano invites me to it.

I watch the scene play out, a silent third party, unable to warn this younger me of what's about to happen. I tell Clary what I see. I try not to feel.

I pick out a quick melody with my left hand and smile at him. "I play."

"That's it? Chopsticks?" I laugh and pull up a chair. My fingers rest on the home keys and I flash Bragford a small smile. My fingers begin to fly across the keys and the other soldiers gather around. The notes radiate around me, along with the sounds of the raucous laughter of the soldiers. I feel myself smile. The tune picks up into the more upbeat melody of "Don't Stop Believin'".

I remember feeling drunk on excitement. Two more weeks, then home.

"Is that all you got?" a soldier asks me. I laugh and unleash my fingers upon the ancient keyboard. They fly across the keys, being used for something other than violence for the first time in months.

"Which is when everything went to Hell."

"Weapons down! Weapons down!" a man in a turban holding a US issued M16 shouts at us. His accent muffles his poor English, but we get the message. We remove the guns and knives we have strapped onto us and place them at the floor at our feet. I keep one knife on me, hidden in my boot. He levels the gun at my head as more enemy soldiers stream in behind him. I snarl at him and the grin falls from his face. "Hands up! Weapons down!" he yells. We comply. "This is your leader?" he asks, walking towards me and grabbing me by the collar of my shirt.

The soldiers stay silent, loyal until death. They know that the higher up in rank you are, the worse they treat you. "Answer me! Answer!" The soldiers remain silent. He lifts the massive gun and awkwardly points the barrel at my temple.

My eyes close like they did then, not wanting my last sight to be my murderer.

"No!" Bragford says before he can fire. "I'm the leader." I turn my flashing eyes to his. The enemy soldier turns his gun on him.

"He's lying," I snarl. "If you don't believe me look at my jacket. My collar," I shout. The man curses in his native language, unsure who to believe.

"I know nothing of your silly American system," he says then pushes me roughly forward and nudges my shoulder with the tip of his gun. "Into the truck." I silently thank Bragford, falling into step alongside him. The vehicle we used to get here sits alone in the empty street.

After they board us, they blindfold us and tie our hands. Bragford's shoulder presses against mine. I hear five gunshots and I know somebody has died. I wish I knew who.

But I do know, I have to remind myself. I sent flowers to their families. Their bodies were the ones that were found first.

"Jace?"

"I'm fine." She scans my face carefully, her green eyes picking up on everything I'm not telling her. "For awhile they kept us in a dark room and fed us once a day. I don't know how long it was. Then one day, after they had worn us down, they started demanding answers."

"You. With the light hair. Come." I glare bitterly up at the man and spit on his shoes. He didn't like that very much. He grabs me by the collar and lifts me up, pressing me against the wall with his forearm. My hands are still tied behind my back, my wrists chafed from days of trying to break free. The man pulls out a knife and holds the point at my throat. A rivet of blood trails down my neck, rolling over my collarbone and staining my filthy shirt. He says something in a foreign language and his companions laugh. I defiantly hold his gaze. He yanks me forward and pushes me out of the room.

This started becoming daily. Three or four men, sometimes different, sometimes the same, would come in and pick us up and bring us to dark rooms where they would threaten us and try to get us to talk. Some of the others did. I can't really blame them.

I didn't talk. I couldn't do that to my fellow soldiers.

A couple times we would hear gun shots and know that our numbers were dwindling. Guards were constantly posted outside of the room which made communication difficult. We started counting the days by the change of the guard.

I remember the stench of fear that accompanied everything we did. All we could do was sit there and pray that the army was coming for us.

"One day, I pushed too far."

On the day they find the knife in my boot, I fight back. With a roundhouse kick, I manage to send one guard to the floor. With my hands still tied behind my back, I can't fight very well, but I do what I can.

I'm not the victor for long. His comrades grab me quickly, their faces marred with anger.

"That's it." They say something else that I don't understand and one of the men leaves the room. When they come back, they have their leader, a man I have only seen twice before. Once when we were captured and again a few days ago when he was counting those of us left alive. In his hand, he holds my knife. The terrorists start speaking amongst themselves. I feel my heartbeat pick up in tempo. I'm not very strong anymore. There are times where I barely have the energy to keep my head up. Other times when I barely have the will to keep my heart beating.

Two men push my jacket off of my shoulders, then cut my undershirt in half. I look down at my bare chest, The lean muscle I had before has withered away. I can count my ribs. I look away, disgusted by my weakness.

"Jace?" I blink at the sound of my name. Clary's hands are around mine. "You're scaring me," she whispers. Her eyes are full of tears. "Your hands keep shaking," she says, "and your eyes can't seem to focus on anything."

"I'm sorry." I grab her face in my hands and wipe away her tears. Her still wet hair is getting some of its curl back.

"Are you okay?" I nod at her, surprising myself with just how alright I am.

"Do you want me to keep going?" I ask her. I can see her thirst for knowledge. She's waited a long time to find this out about me. But I can see it warring inside her with her worry for me.

"Not if it's hurting you."

"I'm fine, Clary. I promise."

The feeling of the knife being pushed into my skin makes me dizzy. I feel the deliberate lines, the careful calculating precision the leader uses to mark me.

"I remember thinking the blood loss was going to kill me."

And then I saw Bragford, his hands free after working tirelessly at those knots for God knows how long. He's weak, like the rest of us. He flings himself at the leader, snatches the knife from his hand (the knife covered with my blood) and stabs him right in the chest. The terrorist screams. Then Bragford does, too, as a bullet tears through his chest. I find myself on the floor, crawling over to him, my blood staining the dirt floor crimson. The other man is still breathing, his screams echoing against the walls of the tiny room. I push on the knife, shifting it up and deeper so that it punctures his heart.

I collapse into a heap next to Bragford and play dead. Bragford's breaths are labored, and I know that he is going to die. I know that I probably will too.

"Thank you," I whisper to him. Barely loud enough to be a sound at all, but I think he understands. He looks at me, straight at me and he nods. I watch as his eyes go glassy.

"That, right there, was the single worst moment of my entire life."

The terrorists took their leader away. They kept Bragford's body and my own bloody mass in the room for the other soldier's, as a sick reminder of what it would be like to defy them. I hold my jacket to my chest, keeping my body weight on it to stop the flow of blood.

Then I got very, very lucky. Or at least I thought I did.

"After we had killed the leader, the terrorists hurried to finish negotiations with the U.S. Army. They got their ransom money, gave the Army our coordinates. The rescue squad believed they had left us for dead. They were wrong."

I see my savior. A man in a regulation helmet and fatigues, gun held firmly in his hands. I pull myself up, using the last of my strength to show them I'm alive. And then the bomb goes off. One last surprise.

The blast throws me against the wall. I was far enough away to avoid most of the shrapnel, and I know I'm lucky. Thinner cuts leak fresh blood on top off the old. My ears ring and my skin sizzles with the heat of the nearby fire. The man I saw before grabs me around the waist and drags me out, limping heavily and struggling under the weight of my emaciated body. He puts me in a tank where there are medics who immediately start working on me. They give me some sort of painkiller, but don't wait before they start stitching. I know I'm screaming. I don't stop until I pass out.

Clary looks at me like she never has before. Some mixture of sadness and pity. I look away.

"That's why you got that medal," she says. "And why you can't watch the news." I can tell her brain is going through every question she has ever had about me and processing it, trying to make it fit with everything she just heard. "Jace," she whispers. She crushes her lips to mine, holding my face fiercely in her hands. "If you had died…If I had never known you…" She shakes her head, trying to ward off thoughts she is better off not having. She pulls me to my feet so she can wrap her arms around me.

I hold her against me and let the steadiness of her breathing and rhythm of her heart lend me their strength.