Overwhelmed [3] 《SHADOWHUNTERS》

Chapter Twenty-Five

Jace's dreams had been awful. The lines between reality and fantasy remained scuffed in his subconscious. When Imogen appeared before him and told him that she forgave him, he nearly fell over. The thin, worn hand on his cheek brushed him gently. It felt too real and it hurt him. He knew how his sister felt about discovering they had family. Family that knew her before Valentine had plunged his claws into their lives and stolen her away from them. The chance to have someone there for her, someone that she felt could take over in the slightest to help carry the burden of protecting her family, was all she had ever needed. Imogen had been a glimmering beacon of that.

And it felt so real. He didn't know how to tell anymore. The time-telling things, the counting of fingers – nothing had worked. He couldn't read the letters in front of him when he had been driven by Lilith, he comprehended them but they would swim and sting. He had felt like he couldn't run when in truth, he had crossed an entire ballroom's-length in impossible instants. By the Angel, that feeling in his chest that something was wrong, deadeningly so, hadn't left him since it all began. At first it had been instinct, and now it was fact. He was wrong. He had done so much wrong.

But Imogen forgave him. With her dark, straw hair and her hard wrinkles. She had met one she described as the devil himself, and she didn't compare the man she stared upon to such things. Jace shook his head and he didn't know when he had begun crying. He tried so hard to keep it all at bay unless he was under the piercing stream of the shower head that it now came through in his sleep; dreams where he was surrounded by the ones that should be there for him as sobs wracked him, and they all watched on. If they ever asked what was wrong, he could not provide an answer through tears that felt dry and faked. He woke up at the same rate of hyperventilation every time, though, panting and disoriented and forced to halt his own shouts.

"It'll be okay," she told him in that rough voice that he no longer had access to. Imogen reached for his shirt collar and he glanced down to find a smooth button up swallowing the shadows. Her hand approached him with a grey stele balanced caringly. It reminded him of Isabelle, the touch gentle as Imogen found the top, shiny button and met his gaze. The familiarity threw him off. The hardest thing melted into pools of paradise, warmth, and safety– his sister. He wondered how anyone could have ever seen the two in the same room together and not found the resemblance, though hindsight was twenty-twenty with a rune in each eye.

The tip of the stele washed them in light, even though it seemed to come from all around them already. Imogen gestured for him to give her access to his skin. "This will help." Her voice was light and swift, like a breeze swept through him. He found himself fumbling with the buttons, just a bit too big for the holes cut for them in the fabric. "You'll be you again."

When his skin was available to her, she pressed the burning tip of the angelic tool to a bare spot just under his collarbone. He closed his eyes, wincing through the burn. The scent of charred skin hit him and he scrunched up his nose even further. Something wasn't right. The deceased Inquisitor didn't speak like that.

His golden gaze flashed open, only to find his old mentor on the other end of the stele. His heart skipped. This didn't make sense. None of it had, he was beginning to realize. Hodge's large hand found Jace's shoulder, a firm and calloused touch that had always comforted him through failures. If the man had known what he'd done, he wouldn't want to be that close to him. "We'll get you back." He promised.

The adamas ripped through Jace's tan complexion, the swirl that had been carved out by Imogen now struck through with a painfully straight line. He yelped, cursing his mentor. Hodge's grip just tightened and held Jace firmly in place with the hand that he had severed. The pain did not cease, the scrambled scrawl unnatural in shape and motivation. Jace finally found it in himself to break through the invisible bounds that held him back and he shoved the man away.