The Other Wayland

A Quiet Lunch

Elizabeth's POV
We sat down at a table in the small quiet restaurant. It was almost empty but the smell coming from the kitchen was mouth watering.
"So what do you think you want?" I asked Joe studying the menu.
"Are you okay?" He asked me in response narrowing his eyes at me, studying my face.
"Yes! Stop asking me that. If I wasn't okay then I'd tell you."
"No, there's something going on. I know it. I know you." He said slowly. "I saw your face when you first came round, you were terrified and crying." I sighed and I knew that he wasn't going to drop this until I gave him the answers he wanted.
"Fine but if I tell you you gotta promise you won't think I'm crazy."
"You mean no crazier than usual?" He asked laughing slightly. I glared at him, this really wasn't the time for him to be joking.
"You know how I told you I saw my dad?" I started.
"Yeah." He said warily.
"Well he talked to me, told me not to tell either of you."
"You told me that."
"Well before that he was telling me that he'd find me, that he wanted me to join him."
"What? He's dead, how can you join him?" He asked staring at me eyes wide.
"I don't know but just now when I got all dizzy, he was talking to me again." I said quietly feeling like I was insane.
"You saw him again?"
"No, I just heard his voice. He called me Ellie. He is the only one who called me that." I continued, the look on his face making me feel even crazier.
"What was he saying?"
"He was telling me that Jace didn't love me, that he wished I'd never found him. Dad told me to let him find me, that he loved me." I couldn't meet his eyes after admitting when had really happened.
"Liza?" Joe whispered. "Look at me." I met his eyes and all I saw was his amazing grey eyes that swirled different colours and the concern they held. There was no sign that he thought I was crazy in those eye. "I don't think that you are crazy. I think that you have had barely any sleep recently, that you have been under a lot of stress lately and that the brain finds funny ways of dealing with things."
"You think that this is just my brains way of coping with what has happened?" I asked hopefully. I so wanted to believe that.
"Yeah. We've been through a lot." He reminded me.
"Thank you." I said simply.
"For what?" He asked cocking his head.
"For not thinking I'm going crazy and for listening."
"I will always listen to you." He vowed. "Not matter what I will always be here for you." And it was at that moment that I realised that it wasn't the big things I was going to miss the most, it was in these little tiny moments together that I would miss him the most. The times where I needed to talk to someone, when I just needed someone to listen and not judge that I was going to feel his absence the most. I also realised that the big things on our bucket list didn't really matter, it was the small things, one last training session, one last fight, one last dinner together that mattered, those were the things where we were going to make the most memories of each other.
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Joe's POV
I watched her face. She was lost in her head again. She was distracted, her face was so calm but her eyes held so much sorrow in them. She must have been thinking about her dad again. That always made her miserable. I supposed I was lucky in a sense, that I didn't have to witness my parents death like she had. One minute they were alive, the next I was being told that they had been killed in a demon attack. Closure was what I had when it came to that, the demon was killed and they had a proper shadowhunter funeral but Liza, my poor girl, witnessed her father being murdered in front of her, the men who did it were never found and she never had a funeral for him.
"Do you know what you want to order?" The waitress brought us both out of our heads. We both ordered some pasta and a garlic bread.
"Liza?" I asked.
"Yeah?"
"What are you thinking about?" I asked genuinely curious about what was going on in her head.
"About how long it's been since we last had a proper lunch together." It was true, we had been so busy recently that most of their meals had been eaten from the site of one demon attack to the other. It had been months since they sat down alone and eaten a proper meal together.
"It has been awhile." I shrugged. "It's been a busy few months."
"Yeah, the demon numbers in Edinburgh spiked strangely." She shook her head. "We never found out why."
"Anyway, what do you feel like doing tomorrow?" I asked thinking back on the long list of things we wanted to do.
"I don't know. Maybe we can just have a lazy day. We could train all morning then just watch movies in the afternoon?" She suggested.
"You know what?" I asked.
"What?" She asked curiously.
"That sounds like actual heaven!" I sighed unable to remember the last time we took a day just to do nothing.  "We could watch that new movie you bought with the spies?"
"Sounds good. By the Angel I am hungry!" She exclaimed as our food arrived. "It smells so good." She said practically moaning. She took a mouth full and actually moaned.
I laughed. "That good then?"
"The best I've had in awhile." She smiled. After taking a mouth full of my own pasta I found that it was really good, some of the best pasta I'd had.
We ate in silence and once we had finished Liza said. "I suppose that we should go back and face the music." She smiled sadly. "Jace is going to be mad."
"Well it was worth it." I retorted. "Let's go then." We stood up, paid and left. The moment we left the safety of the restaurant the heavens opened and rain fell in heavy sheets.
Liza giggled lightly. "I sensed this storm in the air." I laughed in response and we walked back to the institute hand in hand laughing and happy despite the rain and the darkness of our future.