undertow.

Chapter One - statue

Chapter One

He'd been dying for months now, this wasn't new territory to him and yet he still felt as if he'd not been given enough time to accept what would eventually happen to him when the world finally turned dark. God had a cruel sense of humour when the symptoms started to act out into his daily routine. He no longer just felt sick and nauseated – a couple of weeks ago it was twinned with the way his body started to fail slowly and surely every day that passed... it made him wish the end was just around the corner.

The day his pale broken skin peeled off his knuckles when he'd hit the wall in a moment of delirious anger was followed closely by the morning his tears dried up no longer able to protect his eyes in the stinging wind as he walked through the unprotected catacombs of The Institute and when balance started floating away from him, he knew it was more than just the alcohol that comforted him each night that was the cause. No amount of iratzes that decorated his torso soothed the ache. His muscles seized up between rounds of training and a couple of days later his stomach contents ended up all over the bathroom floor spotted with flecks of blood.

He'd died before. He was sure it was only in a dream, but it was never as painful as living these death days... he'd just slipped away then, falling on a cloak of petticoats and she was there, the woman who bore him, mother...

It wouldn't be long. He'd wished for summer before his passing, desperate to feel the sun upon his bruised and cracked outer shell, the grace it provided as it soothed every wrong he had yet to right. There were so many wrongs Jace had left to right... Not least the fact that he had neglected to mention to Alec or Isabelle that he was in fact dying and not just sick with the Winter chills and an abominable flu bug that kept him awake every night with excruciatingly painful nightmares. His nightmares featured only one thing. Red. Red, red everywhere, chasing him, biting him, enveloping him and bleeding with him... Red. A colour that was clear in it's absence from his life. Red was killing him, red bled from his mouth and danced behind his eyes when he couldn't breathe. Red cradled him in a deep hold with no mercy and whispered it's chilling words in the deepest, darkest of nights. It curled around his heart and squeezed, questioning why he was still alive.

Red.

His damaged mind remembered Red... it was a fleeting memory, like a dream of something he once loved, but like the broken pieces of skin that cracked and showed red oozing out – his memories of the red love faded as swiftly as a Winter blizzard that whipped around The Institute on an smog filled afternoon late in January; it's visual disruption pulled at Jace's heartstrings... could he have cried at that moment he would, his soul, able to do that which his eyes could not, sang in the haze for all and everything he had lived for these passed 17 years. A memory danced across his features and he remembered it a small smile creasing the side of his lips.

He carefully, thoughtfully penned his note to Alec and Isabelle, it was by far the hardest thing he had had to write. Saying goodbye to friends is hard, how do you say goodbye to family? Family as pure and divine and as big a part of your existence as you yourself.. His breathing was shallow as he threw the cloak over his shoulders, his stele left next to the note on Isabelle's bed. The cold had advanced up his arms, creeping into the bones as it invaded his body like a ghost.

It was time.

Stealing out of the wooden doors of The Institute and slipping down the stairs onto the street below, his purposeful walk hampered by the freezing wind, eyes burning beneath the hooded cloak; the creaking joints and itching between his shoulder blades. He hunkered down and strode away from all he had ever known, all who had ever loved him and all his heart had ever dared to love in return. He was still a number of blocks away, the further his body gave way the more the anxiety of not reaching the target hit his nerves sending bolts of angst fuelled lightning coursing through his veins.

It was as alive as he had felt since this farce had all begun.

When his feet half dragged, half glided through the gates of his destination; the Trinity Church Cemetery; his lungs vomited out a spluttering sigh of relief and when he found the person he'd been looking for all along his face contorted, eyes blinking, raggedly dry throat swallowing and the tears would not come but the pain remained etched on his face. He knelt, one hand leaning on the tomb for balance, the other, washed with wax like fingers brushed over the embossed letters like they remembered what his heart no longer could. His discarded cloak lay beneath other abandoned clothing as Jace peeled off his shirt, the runes barely visible on his colourless skin, the shirt floated to the snow covered grass, ivory coloured feathers drifted out and blended with the white nestled all around the tombstones, cushioning the loved ones lost.

~

I should go now quietly,

For my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep...

... In the darkness I will meet my creators

~

A shadow unfurled behind him, building up in the background, stretching tall and thin into the air above him; crawling now Jace pulled his beaten body into a stoop atop the tomb that scripted "Celine Herondale" on it's face – the shadow rose up unfolding in it's glory two perfectly sculptured wings, twice the height of Jace's bony and fae like figure, they stretched gracefully to the sky gently shielding him from the fierce wind and slowly falling snow, billowing out demanding attention from the lifeless graveyard around him. Jace's hands were the first to turn, feet followed mere seconds later, his legs freezing, blending with the tomb below him. One last breath forced from his lungs, a puff of air escaped his lips and there he remained... another willowy concrete angel posed over the grave of his mother who'd died before he was born.

The last thing his frosted eyes saw in the distance dancing in the midst of graves... Red... amongst trees hit by the blizzard that froze his soul...

-

(Lyric Credits: "Smother" by Daughter")