Chapter Text
As they knelt there together in the bloodsoaked dirt, the sun creeping below the horizon, all that red became indistinguishable from the black. A breeze picked up, but Luke couldn’t tell if the tremors wracking Jace’s body were from the cold or something much harder to treat.
“Jace, I know I said we didn’t have to get up, but I really want to get a healer to look you over.”
He didn’t respond. In the half-light, his golden eyes seemed somehow less human than Luke’s own. They stared blankly at that small patch of dirt still dry. He didn’t blink.
“Jace?”
As Luke watched, tears welled up in Jace’s eyes, so terribly slowly, and then, like the rest of him, trembled gently, but didn’t fall.
Although, with Jace unable–or at least unwilling–to get up off the ground, maybe something in him had been felled in the battle. It would almost be better if this were physical, bodily harm that could be painted over with runes, hidden like the damp in his first apartment until it rotted clear through the walls and the whole room came down around him.
Bad metaphor.
“Jace?” His voice cracked a little.
Jace blinked.
A tear fell, landed on that dry patch of dirt and stained it like all the rest. There wasn’t light enough to differentiate between one and the other anymore.
He blinked again, and frowned.
“Luke?”
Thank fuck.
“I’m here, Jace. You’re alright.”
“Did I- Did I do all this?”
Shit. Luke resisted the urge to cover his mouth from the sudden wave of grief that passed through him. Poor kid.
“I don’t know, Jace. I don’t know.”
“I did, didn’t I? I killed all these people. I- Shit, I- I can’t- Luke, I can’t-”
“You’re alright, Jace. Just- Just breathe for me, please, just- Just breathe.”
“I don’t know-”
“Shit, can I- Can I hug you?”
He gave the smallest of nods.
Luke sprawled forwards, wrapping his arms around Jace’s shoulder, pulling him close into his chest. The shaking in his shoulders became more violent as he began to sob in ernest, face buried away from the world, away from what he’d done and how he felt about it.
“Shh,” Luke soothed, stroking one hand across Jace’s blood- and sweat-stiffened hair. The other he ran across the boy’s body, giving in to his wolf’s demand to protect and ensure the safety of his pack.
Most of the blood was at least half-dry, tacky against Luke’s hand, but some of it…
“Jace, you’re bleeding. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, but I really want to get you to a healer, or at least another Shadowhunter, or someone who can put a rune on you. If that’s-”
“Okay,” Jace said into his shoulder. “You can- I don’t mind.”
Luke squeezed his eyes tight shut in relief, squeezed Jace against him too, then leaned back a bit, to give the kid the space he needed to stand up.
He didn’t.
He sort of fell into the space Luke had left clear.
“Jace?”
“Hm?”
“Jace, can you get up for me? I can help you if you need it.”
“I don’t think so.”
No pause. No hesitation, or shame, and usually Luke would celebrate that, but right now all he wanted was for the kid to be himself again. Not this… shell.
“Shit,” he said, eloquently. “Okay. That’s okay, Jace. You just sit there, I’m gonna get help.”
“No!”
He jumped, again.
Lifted his hands in surrender.
“Okay, okay, alright. I’m not going anywhere.” The wolf agreed, glad not to leave the kid’s side. His pack was wounded. His pack needed help. He couldn’t leave a pack member injured and alone on a battlefield.
He looked again at the boy only upright because of Luke’s hands on his shoulders. He’d always been small. Not short, necessarily, but not overly tall either, and never bulky. Jace rode the line between lithe and lanky, between strong and slender. Somehow Luke had missed him getting even thinner.
Luke’s wolf howled inside him appreciatively at his plan.
He tucked his arms underneath Jace’s knees and back, lifted with his knees creaking still as he stood, and held the boy against him tight as he set off towards the Shadowhunters on the edge of the battlefield.
He walked, at first. A few steps. Then felt something hot running down his front from Jace’s side. Heard the cut off sound of pain, high and tight in Jace’s throat.
His pace quickened until he was in a dead sprint across what once had been natural beauty and now was a wasteland, leaving the circle of destruction–Jace’s circle of destruction–far behind them both.
In minutes, he was laying Jace down on the steps of some building, calling desperately for any Shadowhunter to help.
He was holding Jace’s hand as the boy’s gear was pulled off piece by piece to reveal ruined flesh beneath, half-clotted wounds and fresh ones beside each other. New scars to add to Jace’s growing collection; some were old enough already that even an iratze would still leave their marks behind.
He was holding Jace’s hand as the runes were applied, as he screamed through clenched teeth at the burning pain the healing caused.
He was holding Jace’s hand until his other two kids came running, Lightwoods in tow, and knelt beside him, beside Jace, a tight circle to ward away the cold and the dark, to scare away anyone who might come close enough to do his pack harm.
The wolf bared its teeth, but ached to lick at the wounds instead, though he had no way of helping now.
Jace would be fine, physically, by the time light bled back into the sky above the city.
Luke just hoped that that bloody circle would be left behind like a dream when he awoke. Or, at least, that Jace could grow to see them as Luke did now: proof that Jace was alive, proof that he would remain that way, proof that Luke didn’t need to worry, at least not always, at least not about all of his kids.
Mostly, Luke hoped that when Jace woke up tomorrow, he would still let Luke help.