Hey guys! Look at me, updating on time for once! Probably due to having nothing else to do (what with everything going on in the world keeping me indoors and bored out of my mind) but it's still an accomplishment.
I hope you have your tissues ready for this chapter, because it's a doozy. It's a little on the shorter side, but I think you might need the break after what I throw at you at the very beginning.
Once again, thank you to @sereneur for making the gorgeous creation below!
After giving Clary her support, Celeste decided it was best to leave the girl in peace with her mother as she processed the day's events. However, she still wanted answers about what had happened after she left, so she set off to find the only other Shadowhunter who could give them to her.
It hadn't taken long to find her boyfriend. When he wasn't in his room, the very next place she checked was the training room. Sure enough, there he was, relentlessly pummeling a punching bag as a sheen of sweat covered his body. What really shocked her was that for the second time ever she saw two colors surrounding someone.
Just like with Lydia, Jace's usual light brown color was joined by a dark red surrounding it. She still wasn't sure what these colors meant, but she was pretty sure the second color had to do with strong emotions and it didn't take a genius to realize what emotion he was feeling right now.
"Jay." She called out, just loud enough for him to hear over the sound of his fists hitting the bag.
She knew he'd heard her because she could see the muscles in his back tense at her voice as he paused his assault. But it only lasted a couple of seconds before he continued his attacks as if she wasn't there.
Jace knew that this conversation was coming, but he'd been dreading it. Despite knowing this, he'd still been holding on to the thin string of hope that he could ignore all of the events that had taken place in the last few hours.
With her standing behind him, he knew there was no hiding from it now, but that didn't stop him from ignoring her in hopes it would give him just a little more time.
"Jay, stop." She placed a hand on his shoulder and was shocked when he shook her off. "Jay! Talk to me, what happened when you went to find Valentine?"
Jace threw one more hit to the punching bag and spun to face her with what she could only describe as a wild expression on his face. She'd never seen him like this before, and that worried her greatly.
"We didn't have to find Valentine. He was already with us!" He exclaimed at her.
Her brows furrowed. "Wait, take a breath and start from the beginning. I don't understand."
He knew that Celeste was trying to get him to calm his anger, but he held on to it tightly. Anger was the only emotion he'd let himself feel right now. If he let his anger go, he'd be forced to feel the guilt and sadness he was trying to distract himself from knowing where this conversation was leading.
"We didn't have to find Valentine because he was already with us. He was pretending to be Michael Wayland with a powerful glamor. He was there the whole time and I didn't even know it!"
"Jay, none of us knew it. This isn't on you." She tried to placate him.
"Do you want to know the worst part? He'd been Michael Wayland this whole time. I was raised by Valentine. And to top it off, I'm not even a Wayland. I'm a Morganstern." He spat at her.
Celeste's eyes widened as she processed everything she was hearing. "What? But that would mean--"
"That Valentine is my father? That Jocelyn abandoned me? That Clary's my sister?" He cut her off. "Exactly."
"Oh Jay..." She breathed and tried to step closer and reach out to him. "I'm so-"
"Sorry?" He finished, stepping out of her reach. "Of course you are. Because you always want to fix things. You always want to help people. You are an angel in every sense of the word. And I-" He stopped for a second, his voice cracking as some of the emotion he was holding back slipped through. "I'm Valentine's son."
Celeste paused for a moment, letting her hand drop back to her side. "Where are you going with this?" She asked softly, preparing for the worst. Judging by the fading dark red color and the appearance of dark blue it wouldn't be anything good.
"My father is a monster. What does that say about me?"
"Nothing. It says nothing about you. He's Clary's father too and that says nothing about her."
Celeste's calm tone seemed to anger him even more, and she watched the red overtake the blue again.
"She didn't spend ten years of her life with him!" He yelled at her. He sighed, forcing himself to calm down just a little bit when he saw Celeste take a step back. "He raised me to be just like him." He finished.
She shook her head frantically, recognizing the look in his eye. He had made some sort of decision, and he was shutting down the conversation. She wasn't so sure she wanted to know what this decision was, so she had to get through to him quickly.
"That's not true. You're nothing like that monster."
"But I am." He said sternly, not letting her finish the speech she was preparing. "When Clary and I rescued Jocelyn, I let Valentine go. And part of me wanted to go with him." He admitted.
"But you didn't. You're here at the Institute with your real family. It is your actions that determine who you are."
It was like he'd hardly heard a word she said as he shook his head. "There's darkness in me, Celeste. It's always been there. And I can't let my darkness put out your light."
The combination of the resigned look in his eyes, his words, and his tone was more than enough to put up red flags for Celeste. But as the red changed to a dark blue one more time, she realized that whatever he was about to say next, she probably wouldn't like it.
"What are you saying?" She asked, crossing her arms over her chest in a pointless attempt to protect herself from his next words.
Jace sighed and couldn't meet her eyes. "I'm saying we can't be together anymore."
Celeste's breathing hitched as her heart squeezed painfully. "What?"
Her strained whisper was barely audible, but it hit him like a brick wall and he wished he hadn't heard it at all. A quick glance at the girl showed the tears already welling in her eyes, her hands gripping tighter to her arms.
He almost wanted to take it all back, but her knew that he couldn't. Celeste deserved someone better than him. Someone with the same enthusiasm for life, someone with a heart as big as hers. Someone who wasn't raised by a monster.
"I'm breaking up with you." He told her, and walked from the room as quickly as he could, ignoring the soft cries he heard from behind him. He knew if he were to turn around that he'd change his mind.
Celeste watched his blurry figure leave as she struggled to breathe, feeling as if the whole world was crashing down around her. She stayed in the same spot for another hour, hoping he would come back.
But he never did.
Celeste wasn't sure how it was possible she still had tears left to cry, but somehow they kept coming. It had been almost five hours since Jace had broken up with her, and her tears continued to flow off and on. Each time she got a hold of herself she'd think it was over, but something would push her over the edge again.
She had tried everything to keep her mind off of Jace and to keep herself from reliving the memories they had created together, but nothing had worked.
She'd tried taking a walk through the institute, but every single room seemed to remind her of some sweet moment the couple had shared. She'd tried researching more about angels in the library, but all she could think about was their many study dates as he helped her prepare for her exams. She'd tried training, but she was pretty weak after expending all her energy from crying. She'd even tried a late night snack, but just the sight of food made her feel sick.
Trying to sleep though was probably the worst. Every time she closed her eyes, all she could think about was Jace. His smile. His laugh. His kiss. His gentle touch.
There was one last thing left to try, and that's what led her down the hallway to a familiar doorway.
"Al?" She called into the silence, opening it just enough to fit her head through.
It was three in the morning, so she wasn't surprised that her brother was fast asleep. But that didn't stop her from closing the door behind her as she made her way to the empty side of his bed.
Alec woke with a start as Celeste lifted the covers and climbed in next to him.
"Celeste?" He asked, wiping the sleep from his eyes and sitting up as he noticed the moonlight from his windows reflecting off the tear streaks on her face. "What's going on? What happened?"
She just shook her head and threw her arms around him, cuddling into her older brother's warm embrace, just like she did when she was younger. His questions brought about another round of sobbing as she buried her face in his shoulder.
He rubbed circles on her back as he pulled her in tightly, trying to calm her down as his mind ran wild with thoughts as to what could have caused this.
The last time he'd seen Celeste so distraught was after the very first time she'd had what she called her "bright light nightmare." She'd been so spooked by it, it had taken almost an hour for he and Izzy to calm her down and get her back to sleep.
But this time it wasn't a nightmare. It was real. And her brother's warm embrace that chased away the monsters wouldn't work this time.
Celeste didn't get any sleep that night, and when the clock hit six thirty she pulled herself out of bed knowing that the institute would be coming to life again. With that in mind, she slipped from Alec's room without waking him and made her way to her room to get ready for the day.
Running on fumes, she didn't have the energy to go through her full morning routine, skipping her daily shower and settling on throwing some water on her face and brushing her teeth. The one upside to her lack of sleep was that her wings were still firmly strapped down from when Izzy had redone them last night before she started packing to leave, so at least she didn't have to deal with that this morning.
Force of habit had her heading straight to the baggy sweatshirts in her closet. Unfortunately, most of her sweatshirts had previously belonged to Jace. Quickly getting frustrated, tears welled in her eyes yet again. She slammed the closet door shut and walked out of the room in her pink and white striped pajama pants, a solid pink tank top, and a pair of white fuzzy socks.
She kept her head down in the hallways, not wanting to answer any questions, and made her way to the kitchen just like she would any other morning. Once again doing the bare minimum, she poured herself a bowl of cereal and sat at the far end of the dining room table.
The lack of sleep was now getting to her, as her mind finally gave her relief from the constant barrage of memories and instead seemed to flip a switch and go blank.
The Shadowhunters who walked in to grab something quick to eat noticed her stirring her cereal and eating at the painfully slow rate of a spoonful a minute, but none of them thought too much of it. They all assumed she was just tired from an early wake up call.
It had been at least twenty minutes and her cereal was more than just soggy by the time someone finally spoke to her.
"Wake up sleepy head. You've got a long day ahead of you." Raj told her as he walked by, holding his coffee cup in one hand, and messing up her hair with the other. "Izzy wants your help with the wedding."
He chuckled at her groan on his way out the door, assuming she was dreading the many hours she'd spend on her feet today organizing and decorating the place for her brother's wedding. He couldn't have been more wrong though.
Celeste was dreading having to keep up a cheerful attitude for her siblings when all she wanted to do was sleep for a week and forget about the last twelve hours.
Poor Celeste! I'm so sorry you guys, I did warn you though. I've had this planned for a very long time now and I myself was dreading writing it.
I don't know about everyone else, but I'm going a bit stir crazy with the social distancing quarantine. But because of this I've had a lot more time on my hands, and that includes time to write! However I've run into some writers block on this story (if you have any ideas feel free to send me a message), so I started writing another story in a different fandom in hopes it will get my creative juices flowing again. So this leads me to my question of the chapter:
What other fandoms are you in?
Before I say goodbye for this chapter, I wanted to point out to everyone that we are very close to 100k reads and 2.5k votes! So I am going to challenge you all to help get this story to those achievements. If we achieve both of those things, I will update within 24 hours. If not, have no fear I will still update at the planned update date below.
Next Planned Update: April 24th, 2020