Jonathan's Angel

Chapters 3-4

Chapter 3- Remembering and Condemning

The light bleeding in through the curtains leaks into Clary’s vision, waking her from sleep, from the dream of dark, endless night, running from something endlessly chasing her.   She opens her eyes to the gray paint of an unfamiliar room and the high window letting in slivers of red dawn light.  Where is she?  Her eyes wander around the walls, plain and unremarkable.  The curtains on the window, looking out at the sunrise over an ocean, are black.  She doesn’t live near an ocean, she lives in New York.  New York is inland, the only water feature the dirty Hudson River.  She frowns at the wall and stretches under the plush, warm comforter wrapped around her.  She looks down at herself, running a hand over her tender, aching skin.  Naked, why is she naked?  She doesn’t sleep naked.  Why does her pelvis ache?

She rolls over and brushes against a rock hard wall of flesh.  A naked body, warm and firm, breathes softly, her brother.  Why can’t she remember how she got here?  Why is she not screaming in terror and horror at being in bed with her brother?  Why is he naked also?  And in the same bed with an arm draped around her waist?

He took her in because… the Lightwoods kicked her out.  Why did the Lightwoods kick her out?  Jace died.  She chokes on her breath.  All the memories smack into her with the weight of a freight train.  Jonathan had made her forget with his lingering touch and pulsing skin.  He is her refuge because her parents died, Jace died and she was rejected.  By her own kind and they threw her out on the streets.  They blamed her for Jace’s death… because it was her fault.

She’s sobbing now, her eyes darting across the ceiling, searching for something that can consolidate her.  Nothing does, until she can feel a warm hand running down her side, pulling her shaking body into another, solid one.  A hot kiss is placed on her neck then her jaw then her cheek. She pulls away from the kiss, it’s too soft for the sharp, digging edges of her grief and it won’t help.  But the arms just pull her closer—despite her struggles.  The strong, warm arms lock around her waist, holding her in place.  Finally the heat reaches her mouth and envelops hers, partially subsuming her grief.  The grief hits her as if it’s fresh, that it just happened but tenfold.  Instead of each event happening in steady progression they bombard her all at once.

She remembers the horror she felt when she walked into the Institute to find Izzy bent over a table with a white cloth draped over it.  The feel of her burning gaze as she turned on Clary and screamed at her to get out, to never come back, it’s her fault.  The screams of Alec, after she had left, knowing that she would get him killed one day.  The grief stricken face of Maryse, yelling for her to never come back.

She remembers the Enclave member showing up at her doorstep of Luke’s house.  Somber faced and pitiful as he delivered the two bodies.  The crushing realization that her entire family is gone.  That she only had Simon.  The flames reaching high into the Idrian sky when she burned her mother and Luke’s bodies, burying their ashes in the Greymark crypt.

She remembers Raphael dumping Simon’s dead body in front of her then bolting off into the night like the pale faced coward he was.  The lifelessness of Simon’s eyes as she closed them for the last time.  The heat of his pyre, the stinging grief as she had to burn her closest friend.  The feel of Raphael crumbling to dust as she dragged his weak, staked but still undead body into the morning light, bit by bit and watched him burn.  She remembers his pleas and apologies.

“Apologies won’t bring Simon back you undead, heartless bastard,” was her only response to his plea.

Her eyes are shut tightly as the hot lips press against hers and a body straddles above her, radiating heat.  Hands trail down her body and caress her core, turning her sobs into reluctant moans, interspersed with the occasional whimper or cry.  She grips the sheets, trying to control the raging pain inside her chest.  Why is he doing this?  Why can’t her brother leave her to die in the pain and loss?  Jonathan’s mouth moves to suck at her neck and she can’t help but moan as his teeth graze her skin and his tongue trails along her pulse, his fingers methodic and infuriatingly distracting.