Jace

I had stopped blowing bubbles into my drinks by the time I was six, in part because I once went out to eat with my dad—when the guy could actually take some time out of his busy schedule to spend a little quality time with the family—and he nearly threw a gasket upon seeing his first grade son launching a fizzy Mr. Pibb bomb all over himself, but mainly because I actually cared about what people thought about me when I was in public. Surprising, I know. But, I think the nostalgia of sitting across from my mom, just the two of us at a lax coffee shop, was screwing with my brain. While it wasn't Mr. Pibb in front of me but a pipping hot latte, I kid you not that I was this close to reverting back to my old habits.

They really do die hard.

For my mom, too, it seemed.

She was jabbering on about something or another, expertly evading any conversation that could go beyond skin-deep, and, hell, the restraint I had just sitting there like a gentlemanly junior-going-on-senior in high school was impressive even to my own acknowledgment. Mom was sipping daintily at her coffee, flipping a wayward strand of her blonde hair over her shoulder absently (every five or so seconds), and talking about the latest movie Edmund had taken her to see: a kid's animated flick about animals running society, Zootopia.

"...adorable. Cecily saw it as well with her new boyfriend, Gabriel—he's a fantastic young man. You'd get along with him, I'd like to think. And Will, of course. Cecily is a bit of a handful at times; she has no reservations towards me as her step-mom and treats me as any teenage girl would her real mother. Sure, we fight some, but I finally have someone to get nails done with and shop around in stores at the mall for more than thirty minutes at a time..."

I think at some point or another, my mom became aware of the fact that I was completely zoned out to any word she uttered because she fell silent in between one passing second and the next, averting her attention to a random coffee-goer exiting the shop and sounding off the bells hanging above the front door. The breath left her, deflating her shoulders, as she stared longingly outside the enlarged windows. We were positioned in such a way within the discount Starbucks that her face was reflected back to me for easy-made scrutiny. I could see that it took every muscle she had in her—strained to the point of fine wrinkles—to maintain her smile. She looked tired, and to an extent it was obvious that she was, but her appearance was mainly due to her guilt over this entire situation.

Guilt brought on sleepless nights, calls at 3 in the morning made to me, and the most prominent symptom of hers, word salad. Mom was one of those people who could talk for hours just in circles, beating around the bush until it was dead and shriveled up, and still not have managed to say much of anything at all. Clary was one of those people, too. And, I suppose, Luke. But I was not.

"I get that this is hard for you," I said, pulling her attention back to me, albeit not without hesitation. Somewhere in the back of my head I hated myself because I was giving up so easily; seeing her for the first time in a year, I actually thought that we could mutually find it in ourselves to admit our wrongs and strengthen whatever relationship we still had between us, but it was clear that I'd have to be the driving force behind any reconciliation. I was still so angry at her, but Clary had taught me something I had come to begrudgingly accept and integrate into my character, and that was to swallow my pride when I really didn't want to. My sigh was long and drawn out; I happened to be swallowing my pride a lot lately. "It's hard for me too," I continued. "We're both unsure of how drinking coffee together will fix anything but still hopeful that it'll do just that. The only way that's going to happen, though, is if we talk. Really talk."

My mom frowned, cupping her coffee with both hands as she stared down at her lap for a belated second. "I don't know where to begin, Jace," she said, her words oozing with shame and self-reproach. She shrugged in an unpredictable, jerky motion, her head shaking back and forth as her eyes slowly raised to meet mine. "I don't like the fact that I have something to be sorry about. That doesn't sound right, I know, but it's true. All your life, I was there for you. Neither of my parents were for me and when I first had you, I vowed that things would be different. I'd be your mother and a damned good one. Maybe I went about it wrong in some ways, but I figured, not really knowing much of anything, that the more involved I was in your life, the more you'd think of me as a good mom. I was smothering. I know I was smothering, but..."

A mirthless laugh escaped her. "You still left with your father to New York. In the end, it didn't matter how involved I was because you still left."

I sat up a little straighter in my chair, protest on the tip of my tongue. "That wasn't because I thought you were a bad mom, Mom. I left because—"

She held up a slim, manicured hand. I don't know how I missed the outlandish, vibrant purple polish before, but it was glaringly obvious under the dim lighting of the shop. It was probably something Cecily picked out just for her on one of their "dates." "I know, Jace." She smiled neutrally but lovingly; she was a whole textbook of contradictions. "The point I'm trying to get at is that I'm mad—I'm so mad—at myself that I took out how hurt I was on you to the point of becoming completely uninvolved in your life. It's stupid, but I thought that one day you'd be standing on my doorstep with your luggage—like in the movies." She scoffed at herself. "This whole thing has taught me that being a good mom or parent doesn't necessarily come down to involvement, even if it's just as important as drinking water, but how willing you are to put your child first.

"I know that you don't hate me—you're too good of a person for that—but that you are nonetheless disappointed in me." Her magnificent blue eyes flitted to the ceiling as her mouth caught on a grimace. "Oh, I loathe that word. Disappointed," she said, her eyes crinkling. She drew out a deep breath. "You're angry at me, Jace. You're holding back everything you want to say to me to spare my feelings because, somehow, the child I raised is more mature than I could ever hope to be; it's just in your nature to put people before you, isn't it?"

"Where do you think I learned that from?" I said rhetorically, mindful that I wasn't bitter-sounding.

Her smile was more weighed down than usual and hard to reciprocate. "It took an event like this—me getting a call at the crack of dawn that you're in the hospital and police are involved in a domestic violence case that you somehow got in the middle of—to come to you. I feel awful about it, and I'll probably never forgive myself, if I'm being honest."

"I'm going to be a senior in high school, Mom," I told her, something in me wanting to do everything in my power to lessen her burden, the other part wanting to clap my hands together in an applause and shout YEAH! Where were you?! "It's not like Dad knew about Clary, or anything like that, either. You guys—well, you mostly—raised me to be independent and to stand up for people. That's what I did. I didn't need help doing it."

"But you do need support," she inserted, sighing again.

I didn't bother arguing that.

"The distance is what makes this so hard," my mom said quietly. "Being away from you is...the most difficult thing I've ever had to go through. I didn't even feel this way when your father and I first got our divorce; so many different things led up to that point. I knew years in advance that our marriage was dead. But you...I was just—I cut myself off from you cold turkey."

I looked to the ceiling, almost tempted to hit myself upside the head because what I was about to do was so much worse than just swallowing down my pride. It was the equivalent to relenting an entire year's worth of anger and hurt and betrayal; I had to toss it straight out of a figurative window, knowing that if I took this next step, I couldn't ever fall back on it. "We're both sorry to each other," I said, my shoulders deflated, tension within my body diffused. All that was left now was just emptiness. A good kind of emptiness. I was an open jar waiting to be filled to the brink with a new emotion—very possibly, an assortment of them. "We've both said it before. But, I think we need to put this year behind us. I won't hold it against you if you don't. I want you back in my life just as badly as you say you do, and if the two of us want the same thing, then there shouldn't be anything keeping us from having it. You're forgiven, Mom. So, I suggest you forgive yourself and we can move on."

Tears welled up in her eyes. She was so that mom. I watched as she abandoned her coffee and as her leather handbag—potentially filled with bricks—fell to the floor, effectively drawing the attention of the entire café on us. One minute I was inwardly rolling my eyes at her theatrics, the next I had a mouthful of her fur-lined coat and a nose inundated with her bottle-perfume selection and a pair of sloppy, red-stained lips pressed against my cheek. In between finding air through her insufferableness and hugging her back, I caught the eye of a guy around my age giving me the "I know how you feel"look. We're in this together. He just so happened to be sitting across from a very mom-like figure himself, seemingly on the verge of pulling out his hair.

I guess it could be worse.

"And there's no way I could convince you to come back with me?" she cried, already knowing the answer, accepting of it, but gutted all the same. She pulled away, aggressively wiping away the lip mark she'd stamped on my cheek, and looked at me straight-on with a pair of watery sapphires. "You don't have to answer that. I know you're happy here."

"Maybe when you finally meet Clary, you'll know why," I said simply, my chest constricting ever so slightly at the thought of her and my mom and overbearing half-sister, Cecily, all out on a girl's date together. I don't know whether I was more amused or horrified at the idea; the things the two of them could do to my enigma girl were...well, panic-worthy. The things they could tell her about me were the things nightmares were made out of.

My mom's entire face lit up like a Christmas tree, the tears streaming down her cheeks somehow making her look even more obscenely happy. That was my mom for you: Sobbing one moment, and the next, giddy and giggling like a school girl. The only thing my mom had in common with the colors black and white was the fact that they two were polarized opposites, as were most of her emotional implosions. Above all, though, she was just passionate—sometimes a little too much. Like, at my third grade soccer championships, she threatened to "throw-down" with another soccer-going mom whose son was very much on my team. She mortified me, smothered me, coddled me, "Jacey-wacey'd" me, but, she loved me. And what kind of son would I be if I didn't love her back?

An asshole. That's what.

If I could help it, I wasn't one of those.

"Do you think she'll want to meet me?" My mom sounded uncharacteristically nervous, wiping at her tears as she snatched up the seat to my left as opposed to her original placement opposite me. It didn't matter that her salt-water, goopey hands clasped mine on the tabletop, or that I could smell the girl's locker room up close and personal coming off of her, what mattered was that she was here and all ears. "I mean, from what you've told me, this girl must be special. She's a redhead? I never asked specifics—auburn or sangria?"

I scrunched my eyebrows. "San-what-a?"

"The color of her hair!" my mom exclaimed urgently, her hands tightening their hold—her nails unintentionally digging into the top several layers of my skin. "Freckles? All over or just the nose area?"

"Her hair's more like...a cherry," I answered lamely, trying my best to muster up an image of Clary when her hair was still long and easy to observe. Now that she'd cut it, I was sure that the shade had darkened some; her curls had developed more without the weight of the extra inches, framing her heart-shaped face attractively, though she usually had the front pieces tucked behind her ears. I wouldn't go as far as to say she had fire engine-red hair, but she was definitely somewhere in between the Little Mermaid and a ripened cherry's skin. "And she has plenty of freckles, but there are more around her nose. She's cute." Cute was not the word that had come to mind, but I definitely had to censor myself considering who my audience was.

My mom squealed. "She sounds darling. And Clary must be strong, all things considered." Her voice was strained towards the end, hesitant and careful as her eyes weighed my reaction; she at least had the decency to know when she'd treaded into dangerous territory.

I cleared my throat a little, not knowing how much was acceptable to dish out to my mom all in one sitting. "She is strong," I finally told her. "Her dad's a total psycho; the way he treated her and her little brother, it's just messed up. The entire situation is." I decided on a whim not to tell my mom that Clary's dad also attempted to kill me, fearing that her nails would literally tear the flesh from my hands if I did, but more so concerned about taking the attention off of what really mattered in this situation: Clary. She'd told me so much the other night about what her dad had forced her into—some really dark, scary situations she was in no way responsible for yet still managed to find it in her to blame herself. It killed me to think about it.

Every day after school, she'd had no other choice but to go home and face the sick man who impossibly shares half of her genetics. She'd done it solely and dutifully for Matt. Clary was so good that she didn't care much of anything for herself if it meant ensuring her little brother was safe and had a shot at getting out of that house when the time was right; she didn't care if she had to sacrifice two more years of her life, and I'm sure if it came down to it, an entire lifetime. When the truth was exposed, that's what mattered. She was, in every sense of the word, amazing. Fucking amazing. But, I still, as we speak, have to remind myself that her dad had sexually abused her practically all of her adolescents; Clary would be dependent on me for support. Always.

If I lost my temper or if I pressured her into doing something she wasn't ready for, she'd never forgive me or look at me the same. I chose her, though; maybe I didn't choose to fall in love with her, but because I did—in the sappy John Green-type of way—my role in Clary's life moving forward didn't feel like an obligation, but a privilege. It didn't matter that Clary was strong. Even if she was six-feet taller and capable of knocking over buildings, she still needed a person who could love her in the right way and carry her past her demons. I'd be that person.

"You look like you want to say more," my mom murmured, now taking to rubbing the pad of her thumb over the back of my hand.

"I just..." I trailed off, looking at the table as opposed to her or anything else. I didn't know if it was healthy or not to feel so much for a person you had only known for less than a year, or if being emotionally invested to the point of imagining their pain as your own was past the point of sanity. If the answer was 'no,' I seriously needed to be admitted into a psych ward. One preferably where Clary could come visit me and we could banter through a glass barrier. "It really sucks that she had to go through all of that."

"Is her little brother adjusting well to the situation?" my mom said delicately. It was her attempt at steering the conversation mostly clear of Clary before I, a high schooler, started balling in the middle of a café over his new girlfriend.

I managed a tight smile. "Clary took most of the abuse from their dad. All Mattie knew was that he didn't like the man he lived with. I can tell you now, though, that he's definitely over-the-moon."

My mom's eyes shined. "Why's that, sweetheart?"

"Luke, mine and Clary's boss at that ice cream shop dad used to frequent, is adopting them. He lost his daughter to a domestic dispute situation some time ago, which can explain his affect and tough-love motto, but he's always had a soft spot for Clary. The only times I've ever seen him smile are when she or Mattie are around."

The tears returned again. "Oh," my mom gushed, "that's just so...beautiful."

To hell with my own fluctuating hormone levels. I was seriously concerned about my mom's emotional stability.

"Bring it in," I said, rolling my eyes. My arms widened for her and, without a second's worth of hesitation, she was sobbing against my chest, a total incoherent, blubbering mess of a woman. Again, my eyes found that random guy's from across the café. It seemed that he'd taken a page out of my book, because now, he too was embracing his mom. She also happened to be a crying mess—but I'm sure for an entirely different reason. Looking around me while trying not to let slip a sarcastic, insensitive remark that could effectively upset the mood, I found that it was just me, Mom, and the other hugging duo. And the baristas trying not to eavesdrop.

The outside scenery had a new backdrop: evening.

It was time to get back to my enigma girl.

Case closed.

Clary's dad took his own life about a year later. The other inmates residing in the penitentiary didn't take too kindly to pedophiles, gave him a piece of his own medicine in daily dosages, and drove Valentine Morgenstern to using a belt to hang himself. I had been with Clary before she first found out; in fact, we'd both been at Happy Cones working a shift together. Clary had insisted keeping her job despite Luke having "officially" fired her when she'd been in the hospital, a day or so after her father had put her there. We'd been talking about our plans for the future at the time, with me being a senior and all, and making promises to each other the both of us were intent to keep—and had yet to break. And we'd also been making inventory of the new ice cream selections Luke had shipped in (in the form of taste tests.)

Luke shut down the shop early that night and took Clary back to their apartment. I was worried, keeping my phone on me, expecting a call from Clary until I finally received one from her a grueling set of hours later. Her voice had been the exact opposite of what I now registered as normal coming from her: indifferent, detached, emotionless. It had scared the hell out of me. Then she'd started telling me about how her father had taken the "coward's way out"; a prison guard had found his body collapsed onto the ground of his cell 5 that very morning, the belt having effectively snapped his neck proceeding to snap itself, but he was thought to be dead hours earlier.

I didn't know how to take the news. Clary and I had gotten on in our relationship to the point of not having to censor ourselves when we were around each other. Sure, there were topics we skirted around or avoided altogether, but there was no one I could be more myself around than Clary until the news of her father's death had me in a figurative choke hold. Looking back on it, I was so glad she wasn't able to see me through the phone. If I was being honest, a part of me was—and still is—relieved. The trial meant to sentence him to life in prison was coming up fast and Clary had a hard time not distancing herself from me or Izzy or some of our other mutual friends; just because she was a minor, didn't mean she could get out of testifying against him if she wanted her case to be presented accurately. And that's what she'd wanted, more than anything.

But, the ever-looming prospect of having to face her father again definitely got to her.

Something really scary about Valentine Morgenstern's suicide, however, wasn't in the suicide itself, rather the hundreds upon hundreds of letters he'd kept stowed under his bed and decorated the walls of his cell with. He'd never sent them, obviously, but they'd—nearly four hundred them—had been addressed to Clary. Once the gist of their content was relayed to her, she, in addition to turning a shade of green, didn't want anything to do with them. I could only imagine the sick things he'd written in his free time away from what he's always known: power and dominion. He was dethroned, without a castle, and psychotic. So psychotic that just one of those letters wasn't meant for his daughter, but for me.

It had been dated as the last letter he wrote before he killed himself.

Unlike Clary, and without mentioning it to her until a month or so after the affair, I read it:

Jonathan Herondale,

I will take my last breath in the moments to come, but I swear that this is not the last you will see of me.

I swear that when we do meet again, I won't hesitate to rectify the justice that has been lost to the world.

I swear on Clarissa.

-Valentine M.

Let's just say, I was thankful that I had stopped fearing ghosts back in middle school. To think that his year spent in prison was circulated around his daughter and his hatred towards me was more than a little unnerving. He had to have known that there was no chance in hell that he'd be getting a sentencing any less than a lifetime and that any efforts on his part to change his situation were futile; so, like any other coward, he laid himself, his twisted reality, and grudge for me to rest. I hadn't told my dad or my mom about Valentine's farewell letter, and I hadn't shown it to Clary or told the truth about its contents. They didn't need to know.

After a couple of off-weeks after the news, Clary had righted herself back up. I still didn't know if she was exactly over her father's death, or how she felt about it—if she too was relieved but, after having lived with the man her whole life, depressed—but she'd never mentioned it to me or anyone else until, one weekend when my dad was out of town, she'd showed up at my door. Clary had been crying; it must've taken me ages to calm her down and get her talk about what was bothering her.

"Am I a bad person, Jace?" she'd finally asked me.

I had answered hysterically, without missing a beat. "You? Clary—what? No! Of course you're not a bad person—" Mind you, my girlfriend had been sobbing her eyes out and was inconsolable up until that point, and I had been desperate to make her feel better.

"Then why do I care that he died?" she'd said.

A strong pause had settled over us. I remember that the words had come to me like it was second nature; looking at her, knowing her, being with her, I just had to tell the truth. So that's what I had done. I'd told her that she cared because she was still the person she always has been, that just because her father had done terrible things to her and her brother, he was still her dad and it was okay to love him. "You caring doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you an incredible one," I'd said, and I'd meant it with everything in me. I still meant it. I guess in the theory of everything, it was possible to love and hate someone. Exhibit A: I hated Luke when he made me close down the shop on a school night, but I also respected the man enough to the point of likability (at times.)

Clary's algorithm went a little more like this: she hated her father for who he was and what he'd done, but she still couldn't help but love what he once stood for in her eyes. She loved the idealization of him, not the reality of him.

She's been a lot more open with me since that "hurdle" of sorts in our relationship. I've been a lot more open with her. As weeks transitioned into months and months into another year, it became all the more apparent to me that what I had with her wasn't some "high school fling"; there was still passion and that fresh excitement in my bones at the prospect of seeing her, she could make me laugh and smile like a doofus past the point of normalcy for an extended period of time, and there wasn't a single person out there that compared to who she was as a person. The more layers she stripped down solely for me, the more I was compelled to strip down another layer of my own—a layer, of course, in the non-clothing sense.

Would now be a good time to address the elephant in the room?

You know, the figurative elephant? In my case being that of sexual progress?

Let's just say that my graduation present was entirely unexpected and I still had to take cold showers regularly as a result.

I'm leaving it at that.

Anyways, Clary and I are both in college together at NYU now. Somehow, my soccer aptitude made up for my B-average grades and got me into a school that's marketed as "high end," and Clary was always a shoo-in candidate, what with her impeccable grade point average and a watered-down version of what she's had to go through on the table. Not only was she rewarded scholarships aplenty, but accepted full-ride on the terms of entering the honors dorm—a privilege she so charitably extended my way. This meant Happy Cones-reminiscent ice cream on those nights studying up until five in the morning with material up to my eyeballs, pool tournaments, top-notch coffee, a dorm room absent of a pesky roommate, and, by extension, full, unlimited access to my lovely girlfriend.

You're not going to believe this part, but Isabelle Lightwood—another attendee of NYU—was now exclusively seeing that one dorky kid, Simon Lewis, who used to be infatuated with Clary during my junior year of high school. He was over at The Cooper Union, a private school for the gifted engineer protégées, and took to tagging along with myself and Clary and Izzy on some of our outings together. It wasn't all that uncomfortable considering Clary had helped Iz and Simon get together, and, if you want to get into technicalities, I could almost tolerate the kid. I wouldn't go as far as to say he was worthy of someone like Isabelle Lightwood, but he seemed to make her happy; that, for the meantime, was enough for me.

Jordan was doing well for himself. In addition to his enrollment at Lehman College, he and Clary had formed an almost-friendship; they, I suppose, "liked" each other's company. As in, sometimes Jordan would make Clary laugh harder than I could and I'd have to restrain myself from "accidentally" and fatally pushing him off the side of a building. Cough, I mean skyscraper. If it weren't for his on-again-off-again relationship with his high school sweetheart Maia, who was attending college in her home state of Florida, I'd have forbidden the sleaze-ball from being within a five mile radius of Clary. Regardless, I never let the two be alone together.

Clary thought my antics were absolutely ridiculous. But that didn't stop her from swarming me with "good boyfriend" compliments and my ego from inflating.

In the time between Clary was in critical condition in the hospital a little over two years ago and the present, my mom had moved herself and Edmund out to New York about five or so blocks over from where my dad was stationed. Once Will and Cecily were seen off to college, Mom had all the leverage she needed to find herself a permanent residence closer to me. Until then, she'd definitely been more hand's on during my senior year of high school; every other month, she was on the first plane ride over to come and visit me and to spend some quality "girl-time" with my girlfriend. (She absolutely adored Clary, if there was any question.) That, on top of insufferable phoning sprees, and it'd felt like she'd lived across the hall from me when, really, she lived across the country.

I saw plenty of her now. Sometimes I'd walk out of my calculus 3 class and there she'd be, waving in a crowd of college students. I'd tried telling her that it wasn't normal for the parents of students to pop up randomly like she did, much less wander a college campus when she had Central Park at her whim, but she still hadn't gotten the memo. Yeah, I got weird looks, and yeah, my mom would haul me off to lunch when I had another class in thirty minutes, but did I care? Well, kinda. At least I had Clary to burden some of my mom's suffocating-ness. Ergo, if I wasn't available, she'd find my poor and undeserving girlfriend.

And if we were both available, then we got to be victims together.

Luke was the happiest I had ever seen him be. He visited Clary and me monthly and was always generous in his care packages that he sent out. On more than one occasion, he's admitted to me that he'd be on campus weekly if it weren't for his very legitimate fear that he'd compare to my mom in the "hover" department as far as parenting goes. All the matter, Clary loved it whenever she got to see him and he brought along Mattie. The three of them had a pretty nice family dynamic; Luke didn't in any way look related to my girlfriend or her brother, but there was genuine love there in his eyes for the both of them. Anyone could see it. If I had to place a bet, it'd be that Luke would do anything—at any time of the day, no matter how impossible—for his adopted children. Clary had realized this long before I had and it turned out to be contending factor in her willingness to go to college and leave her little brother behind in his care.

Mattie hadn't yet assimilated the importance of distance. That, in combination with Luke introducing the kid to a little thing called Skype, and he talked to Clary and me every other day or so—for hours at a time. I can't tell you how many times he's tried reaching me while I'm in class. One teacher got so fed up with my incessant phone ringing that he projected Matt's call for the entire class to see; Matt was in for a surprise when he saw a hundred-plus college students beaming up at him, but wasn't phased enough to refrain from asking me if I could perhaps "accompany" him to the latest Transformers movie that Friday. A movie which I paid for and fell asleep half-way through.

He'd adjusted to his new routine, though. Max and the rest of the Lightwoods were a big part of that. Clary was always going the extra mile to ensure she'd be there for every major event in his life, including his each and every back-to-school-days and graduations. It wouldn't be long before he'd be going off to middle school as a sixth grader, which was, in short, absolutely crazy to think about.

As for my Enigma Girl, I can honestly say that she was on her way. Not necessarily to full recovery or complete peace, but to life outside of the one she once had. Her strength was astounding and brilliance undeterred. She was going to be a school teacher if things looked up right, and she was going to be an artist on the side. A damned good one, too. I had decided my second year of college that I was willing to sacrifice another several years of school to pursue a career in law, realistic in determining that soccer would only get me so far. Clary was endlessly supportive.

She was everything to me.

A comfort that aided me throughout Simon Lewis's one-sided conversation with me about something along the lines of evidence behind alien existence and their 'inevitable invasion' to come. "...one or two cases would be somewhat plausible to pass off as a hoax, but we're talking about millions of reported sightings yearly! You can't tell me that's not incredulous—are you even listening to me?"

I found it incredulous that an engineer major was on about greed bug-eyed humanoids and was in no way joking about it.

My eyes had rolled for at least the fifth time in a ten-minute interval, averting in time to catch a glimpse of red. Clary was walking over to our table with Isabelle on her right; the girls were talking emphatically about something or another, Clary looking animate and lively—her new norm. Her hair had grown out some, past the length of of her shoulders, into pretty ringlets, the color as cherry-like as ever. The cold weather had stained her cheeks and the tip of her nose pinker than usual, only adding to her vibrancy and the natural glow of her complexion. She was radiating good health and vibes, attracting and turning heads as she went by with her much taller, dark-headed friend.

That was another thing I had to deal with now that Clary had come out of her shell: guys were all over her. I couldn't really blame them; she was beautiful and fun and sporadic and endearingly quirky. She had a light about her that was in itself attractive. But she also had a boyfriend who was slightly (well, a lot) overprotective and capable of permanently getting rid of unwelcome attention sent Clary's way. Between Clary and Isabelle, I was more or less their personal security entourage.

Clary's green eyes flashed when they caught mine from across the restaurant, that smile of hers growing more bold as she waved a single hand in my direction. Isabelle broke off from her to greet Simon with a smothering kiss as I stood to properly embrace Clary. Stepping into my arms, she rose to her toes and planted a single sweet kiss to my cheek, a little breathless as she told me all in one go about how Isabelle had gotten them completely lost. "It had taken us nearly an hour to get back to where there was any service. We had to go around asking people where this stupid place was, and apparently we weren't even pronouncing it right, so they all just kind of looked at us like we were crazy. It was so lucky we ran into this one guy. He showed us the way and was really nice about it."

Isabelle cut off her compliment of Simon's "stylish" sweater short, snorting. "Please. He was only nice because he thought the both of us were single. When Clary let slide that our boyfriends were waiting for us, he pointed in the direction of the restaurant—which was still a couple of blocks away—and stalked off."

Clary blushed, ducking her head and my arms as she slid into her reserved seat. "Well, I thought he was still nice," she said lamely, distracting herself with the menu in front of her. I caught Isabelle's knowing look with one of my own, the both of us fighting back smiles as I took my seat beside Clary and hugged her back into my side. She melted with a little laugh, shaking her head at herself. "He at least didn't ask for any cash. That says a lot about a person who lives in New York."

There was some more talk on the matter—well, of me pestering Clary on whether or not I had to go hunt some New York street-walker down, until Simon, still enthused from our previous discussion, finally broke his silence. "Ladies," he interjected politely, holding a scholarly air about him that was comical if anything. "I was just telling Jace here about the very real possibility that aliens—if they aren't already—will soon be upon us."

Clary muffled her grin, shooting me a sideways glance.

"Were you now?" Isabelle said, thoroughly amused. "And what did Jace have to say about it?"

Simon looked genuinely stooped. "Well...he didn't, really. He just kind of sat there..."

We all had our laughs from that point forward.

Over our dinner of overpriced pasta and senseless talk about aliens (on Simon's behalf), I was living in the moment and grateful for the love of my life sitting with her hand intwined with mine underneath the table and the friends we had surrounding us. We all had bruises, some of us more than others, but in the grand scheme of things, it was truly good people who could help make the pain fade away. Even if for only a little bit at a time.

I was excited for what the future had to hold.

And I was even more excited to know that I wouldn't have to go at it alone.

Bruises is done, guys. I hope it left an impact on you like it did on me.

All of your continued support is unconditionally appreciated; I can honestly say that more than half of what makes this story so special is how differently each person who reads it can find meaning where even I couldn't. This was definitely a tough one and carries a lot of emotional baggage, but who really wants to read about rainbows and butterfly-pooping unicorns? (Well, maybe that'd be cool. Hmm...something to think about.)

Anyways, thank you, thank you, thank you.

If I have any news pertaining to any new fanfictions or original stories of mine, you'll hear it from here with a potential one-shot of Bruises's Jace and Clary in the future.

Until next time, peace.

Did anyone catch my very large reference at the end?

Hint: ALIENS?!

Ha. I'll tell you I'll edit, but let's be honest here. I probably won't.