20A/N: This chapter's song is Pigeon by Cavetown. I love it with all my heart and I hope you do too.
All of his insides were being eaten by thrashing flames. It was the epitome torture. Jace was about to explode from the inside outward. His head was pounding with the passion of a thousand hells, and his stomach contorted in the mournful way it did when it knew everything around you was lined with thorns.
He couldn't quite understand was he'd just seen or heard, tasted or touched—all his senses stood there, wide-eyed and in shock, the moment he saw his sister.
The sister whom he'd tried his absolute best to persistently annoy, whether it be pulling her hair or stealing the last strawberry on her plate. The sister whose tears were little knives, slashing into his heart so cruelly. The sister that loved him almost as much as he loved her.
The sister who was now nothing more than a stranger to him.
His tongue was spiked with this bitter sensation, dry behind his slightly parted lips, when he'd first glanced at the photo, folded and wrinkled. It drifted out of one of the folders he was about to put up in a cabinet, landing on his feet, feather-light like a barely-there kiss.
Camille was smiling, leaning against a grinning Clary, and beside her was a skinny, slightly offset boy with hair the color of mud. The last time Jace saw Camille smile, he'd slipped on grass and the little girl flooded the whole world with her laughter.
Woe, larger than the sky, bloomed so powerfully in Jace's chest, it could have just split right open—he wanted to be in that photo, so happy and free. And it was stupid and childish to want something he'd never be able to have.
He knew, under all the woe and sorrow and remorse, that he'd never be what Camille and their mother deserved; they deserved the sun, the moon, all the stars twinkling so proud in the sky. And he . . . he was the menace that moved the clouds to cover the sun and the moon and every radiant, irreplaceable star.
A thought didn't dare cross his impenetrable mind as he pulled out his phone, taking a photo of the blissfully smiling Camille, the mud-haired boy, and Clary's wide grin. Perhaps it was a smidge creepy, but there were these talons of greed gouging the rationality out of him, and he just couldn't help it.
Scrubbing every morsel of sorrow off his face like it was some kind of disease, he lifted himself from the ground, stepping towards the door.
Upon opening it, the words, "And—Jonathan, that fantasy brother that we've heard of twice in our lives? He's fucking back! In New York!", just assaulted his ears. That whole statement slowly seeped into his head and turned him blanker than ever.
Underneath his skin was a cesspool of emotions, but he remained stoic. His ability to hide, hide even the tiniest spot of humanity festering in his body, kind of scared him. It definitely scared others.
Within the blink of an eye, Jace had managed to bury Camille under an innumerable amount of burdens. It was almost as if he hadn't ever known he had a sister at all.
-()-
Jace didn't think it was possible for a single thing on earth to be more boring than witnessing the great feat of Amy Schumer doing anything. Watching the woman talk made him want to uninstall his life, but then he'd rejuvenate himself because he'd forgotten to shoot the TV.
But, surprisingly enough, Jace had been proven wrong today: meetings were the tax people paid for being alive. The most dreadful, awful tax there could have ever been. Milking a fucking cow was most entertaining than attending a meeting. Milking it with Amy Schumer? Even better.
They would have been doing god's work.
A girl named Amatis was drawing some sort of diagram, unusual shapes and unfinished sentences littering the whiteboard, and words were being shed from her mouth every once in a while, to elaborate on her abomination of a diagram. And the more those poor, unsuspecting words were being forced out, the more he wanted the whole building to fall and impact only her.
Out of sheer desperation to appease this growing sense of deadly boredom, Jace decided to peel his gaze off his reflection in the spectacularly polished table and drag it around the falsely intimidating meeting room. The air smelled very strongly of Clorox wipes, and if he sniffed hard enough, he could practically see them floating in the air.
The air made him feel unhygienic, even though such a thing was blasphemous.
Sitting to his right was one of the photo editors in his team: Maia Roberts. She was dressed in adventure, being one of the only people on the team that explored the riskier options. He wished he could've done such a thing when he was as young as her. Though, he'd never let that confession loose. As of now, however, her hands were tying and untying her hair discreetly, the bags under her eyes yelling for attention.
Next to her was the advertising executive. He'd heard her name decorate people's lips at least a few dozen times a day, and knew that she was Ms. Trueblood's spawn. The way her whole demeanor became progressively more scrutinizing against him was mildly unsettling to him, but he didn't care too much about it. To her credit, though, Isabelle seemed to be one of the only ones who had outrightly dared to close her eyes for prolonged periods of time.
Then, after Isabelle, was the fashion editor of the magazine. People around him, concluded Jace, automatically were flowing with the urge to be better than they already were. Magnus Bane was fearless, sure, but also powerful. Jace was inclined to believe the other man was immune to tricks, as if he'd seen every secret hidden behind every corner, every whisper under every breath.
Usually, flickers were what the meek did, because they happened before one second could finish, and that was all. Jace was not meek in any sense whatsoever.
When his eyes halted to the seat directly across from him, to the magazine's art director, his gaze forgot entirely what flicker even meant. It was subtle, his stare. It didn't bore into Clary, but it wasn't just brushing her, either.
He could feel that torturous fire licking his lungs again when he thought of the fact that Clary had talked to and cried and laughed with Camille. And he wanted to hate her, the fire was convincing him to, yet—hating someone Camille loved would distance him from her even more.
Then, her gaze clicked with his, and with the black kohl she had on, she was definitely more intimidating, and alluring, than he thought her to be. He raised an eyebrow at her, quickly finding the smirk that always seemed to lift his lips. Her eyes rolled seamlessly at him, a slight scoff crawling onto her face. His smirk stayed until she glimpsed back at the board.
Amatis's voice contaminated the meeting room for what felt like an age.
A/N: honestly I'm so tired and I've got a whole bunch of things to do for school tomorrow, but this seemed more important lmao. I hope you're all having good days though! I probably won't be uploading for a good while because of the crappy education I need to be employed, and also because I really need to figure out where to go from here storywise. I have the plot and all written down, but I can't have the next "big thing" for this happen just yet. Bear with me y' all ;-;
-RWMS