Remember | The Mortal Instruments AU

Chapter Eighteen: She Never Will

"So um, I'm sorry I haven't come for a while-"

"It's only been-"

"Yeah I know but I needed to decide something," that was sort of true. I hadn't stayed away because I had become wise and realised I couldn't live this way anymore. I'd stayed away because I was scared. I'd only realised I couldn't live this was anymore by accident. But I had needed to decide it, it had needed to be decided a long time ago. It should of been decided the moment Clary gave up her memories and yet here I was.

Nearly 2 years later.

I hadn't even knocked on the door when I'd been outside. I'd just walked in and shouted Jocelyn and Luke, who wasn't here. Jocelyn had been pissed- super pissed, what if Clary had been home? She'd shouted at me. But I didn't care.

Not anymore.

I was moving on.

I was living.

But that didn't mean this decision came easy to me.

Quite the opposite.

"I needed to-" my voice cracks and suddenly becomes deep, telling that I'm trying my hardest not to cry. Out of the corner of my eye, I see something: a picture. Of Clary. "Is that a new picture?" I knew it was, I knew every inch of this house and the furniture in it so I don't know why I asked but I had. "She looks beautiful, like always," but it was more than that. "She looks happy- is she happy?"

It was true, there she was in all her glory standing beside Jocelyn, smiling like she'd just discovered the sun for the first time.

"Yes," Jocelyn says in a soft voice. She's trying to get me to calm down and that's evident in her voice but I don't know why, I'm not angry, excited or really upset- okay, I'm upset but it was more to do with the decision than the picture. The picture just reinforced my decision.

Clary was happy, so why couldn't I be?

"Yes she's happy, she had a good life but- it doesn't matter," doubt had crept into her voice.

"No tell me," I push.

"But sometimes she gets this look, as though she's terribly, miserably, extremely sad and she can't remember why," she told me without much persuasion which surprised me. Where had feisty Jocelyn gone?

"I catch it in her eyes sometimes but then I think she convinces herself she's crazy but it breaks me- every time. I hear her screaming from nightmares sometimes and I don't go to her and I know that makes me a bad mother but," her voice catches and I can tell she's going to cry and yet I stay still. All these times of me confessing my heart to her, she'd never confessed anything to me. Not really.

"I know she's dreaming of horrid beasts and I can't go to her because if I did then I'd have to tell her that those things don't exist and I can't live under another lie," she'd lived under a lie for the first 16 years of Clary's life- what had changed now?

As if answering my question she says, "It was different before she met you, she'd never known the shadow world and so she had nothing to miss and I didn't really have to lie because she had no idea but now she's seen it all and she misses it and she has no idea," her voice croaks and yet I still stay still.

"So I can't go to her when she's screaming because I'm a coward," at this I reach across the table and grab Jocelyn's hand to give her what comfort I could.

"And I can't lie to her another time. It just- I'm sorry I had a rough day at work and it's made me emotional," she apologies- which finally breaks me. Jocelyn never apologises.