Fourtris Meets Clace

Chapter 11 - Tobias

TOBIAS

I sit on the couch, opposite Jace. It's been two hours. We've eaten lunch and watched some rubbish television, and for ten minutes we've sat together in silence. The awkwardness is unreal.

Jace clears his throat for the fifth time in five minutes. He studies his fingers. Some of them have the strange tattoos on - one of them looks like a demented eye.

Just to break the silence, I say, "What do the tattoos mean?"

He looks at me, not knowing what to say, and blushes. I've never seen Mr Confident blush before. "Um," he says. "They just... I liked the designs when I went to the tattoo salon."

"Oh," I say.

There is about a minute of silence, and then he says something.

"You really love her, don't you?"

A shocked expression passes over my face. "Tris?" I check, just in case he thinks Clary or something. He nods. I clear my throat. "I do. I really do. If anything happened to her, if anyone hurt her at all... I'd kill them. I promise I would."

"I know," Jace says, softly almost. "The way you look at her... it's weird. She moves, you move. Like magnets, almost."

"I love her," I say firmly. "And she loves me."

"I can see that," Jace says.

"What about you? And Clary?" I ask. "How did you meet her?"

"The first time I met her, I saved her life," Jace says. "If I tell you what from, it'll ruin the experiment. And Evelyn will go mental. But I saved her. And I fell in love with her. But her son of a... her father, Valentine - he's dead now - told us that we were brother and sister, just to keep us apart. He wanted an army, see, and he treated me as if I was his son, to get me on his side."

"What was the army for?" I ask curiously.

"I can't tell you." He shifts in his seat, uncomfortable. "But he wanted to overtake my world by using weapons and violence. Anyway, I wouldn't have gone on his side if he hadn't told me I was his son, because I hated him before that. Plus, I would have protected Clary. But when he said we were related, I thought I couldn't love her anymore, because she was my sister. I did consider it, but I didn't join him, in the end. And then he died, and Clary's mom told me that we weren't related; in fact, my father was a totally different man, and a woman who I hated was actually my grandmother. So, yeah."

"That's a messed up story," I say truthfully. "You thought your girlfriend was your sister, and then that turned out to be a lie. Wow. No drama like that in my world."

"I guess not," he says. "So, any guesses on who I am?"

"You're Jace," I say. "You have a girlfriend called Clary. You wear black and you have strange tattoos."

"Hey, you're pretty similar to me," he says. "You have a girlfriend. You wear black sometimes, and you have that weird neck tattoo."

"That's from my old life, for your information," I say hotly. "I wish I could get rid of it. It was an adrenaline-fuelled dare."

Jace laughs. "I know," he chuckles.

Sometimes I do want to punch him, but I guess he's not as much of an... annoying person as I thought.