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Jace didn't like to lie. He'd never been very good at it, and now that he was lying to Mary Ann, it just felt worse. She didn't deserve his deception, but she was also just a kid. More than that, she was a kid Porter had hurt. To know Jace was mourning the death of this man would just upset her.
He had already driven out here and was staring at the last message Mary Ann had sent him. He would have loved to explain it to her, and he could imagine how angry she was about his evasive answers right now. A sad smile tugged on the corner of his mouth as he thought of how her tail would twitch. By now, he knew how she showed emotion, what the smallest change in her body language meant. Mary Ann was not a person of many words, but she communicated just as much as anyone else.
I'm sorry, bug.
She read it, typed, stopped typing. No answer came through. He deserved this, but it still stung. Maybe he should stop coming out here altogether. After all, Porter had not only hurt the kids.
Jace had met Jawbone two times since their first talk. The third time he had said "Yes, thank you" to Jawbone's offer for tea. It was nice talking to somebody, but it also made Jace aware of scars he didn't even remember the wound for. The way Jawbone tended to tilt his head and apologize for what happened made Jace uneasy.
Since realizing the weight of Porter's actions beyond what he had done to the kids, he also felt like he was doing something wrong, coming here. Visiting a headstone without a grave, coffin, or a body to belong to.
He got out of his car, and slammed the door shut a bit too loudly. It should have echoed, but the forest swallowed the noise. It was just a small patch of overgrown trees, hedges, and rotting leaves, but it was old and no one seemed to come here. It would have been fitting to put the headstone somewhere in the Far Haven Woods, but that was too close— to where it had happened, to home, to everyone Jace cared about.
It was shame that had driven him out here the first time, and something much more complex that had him coming back the next. In the end, he didn't know for certain, and it was probably best not to dwell.
Jace wandered into the forest. It wasn't a long walk, but one that strayed from the path pretty early. He had to make his way through thorny bushes and knee-high grass. Behind him, the forest closed again, and didn't show his steps or the branches he had bent out of his way. He didn't want anyone to stumble over the headstone and wonder who it belonged to— or worse, know, and destroy it.
The closer he got, the faster he walked. He needed to see it, needed to reassure himself it was still there, that he still had something to hold on to that was as cold and hard as the truth.
The clearing was small; too small to have actually fit a proper grave for a man of Porter's size. The trees all had taken a step back from this place and left the ground rough and full of hungry roots. They ate up the sound of Jace's steps, but he knew they'd also keep his cries hidden from everyone. This was the only place for Jace's grief. He was glad to have found it. He was glad it was cut off from everything.
"You're here," he gasped, as he broke into the clearing, stumbling, falling to his knees. He reached out, touched the stone. The sun had warmed it a bit. The last time Jace had been here, a lizard had been sunning itself on the headstone and he had aimed a deadly shot at it before remembering himself.
He didn't want to kill anymore.
It was a conscious choice, and he had to make it over and over and over and over again. Not that he was running around, thinking of murdering people, but from time to time he had to look into a mirror —
"You're here," he whispered again. Jace couldn't tell to whom or what exactly he was talking. The headstone? Porter? The memory of him that Jace had connected with this lonely grave?
For a few moments he didn't say more, but got himself together again. He put his back to the side of the headstone, resting his head on his forearms and resting them on his knees. He curled up into himself and let the grief take him, bite at him from all sides. Sitting like this, Jace gave it less room to attack, but he also made himself smaller in relation to the picture of Porter in his mind.
The first time out here, when he had created the headstone, the memory of Porter had been so much bigger than him. He had loomed over his still weak body like a mountain. Even looking up at him in his mind, the only things he was able to feel were shame, and fear. Maybe with the creation of the headstone, he had made something far more terrible than he could have imagined.
Yet, still, he came back. Again and again and again, without regard to the state it left him in. The stone knew about Mary Ann moving in with him, knew about the panic Jace had felt seeing the kid so terrified, knew about how much they loved waffles and the chaos they had brought into Jace's life, but also the softness. He didn't deserve her trust, not after what he had done to her, and not while he was lying to her about where he was going. Or, not lying, but rather not telling her the truth, and refusing to do so under the guise of protecting her.
"Mary Ann asked me again, where I was going," he said to the headstone, to Porter. "I wish I could just tell her the truth. She must suspect it has something to do with you, or else I wouldn't try to keep her away from it so urgently. She wouldn't understand, I fear. To her, you are the one who did all those horrible things. I am the one that killed her, but somehow … she's not blaming me. I don't know how they came to that conclusion, but they did."
The headstone stayed silent. Jace felt the pressing, sticky cold of loneliness.
He had thought about bringing Porter back from the dead, ripping his soul out of hell, but he didn't dare to. What if he did something wrong? What if Porter was irrevocably lost? What if the person that came back wasn't Porter anymore, but something wrong, something sinister? What if the Porter he'd bring back was exactly the one he had seen last?
"I talked to Jawbone again, about you. Not this, here, but the memories of you. I fear he doesn't like you very much. I also fear that I'm starting to see why."
Another reason why it was good— the headstone was just that: was. Jace could call Porter a bad person and not hear anything back. Not sweet whispering — Oh, Jace, I thought you knew me. I thought you trusted me. Not a threat, not anger — You think I am bad now? You have no idea what I am capable of, my star. Just the noise-filled silence of a forest. Still, a shiver ran down Jace's spine and made his head jerk a little. A tic he had had since he was a child, but since had understood it as an indicator for how stressed he was.
"You weren't always a bad person, that I am sure of. But in the end … I didn't recognize you anymore. I told Jawbone you killed me, but he said that wasn't the first thing you did wrong." He raised his arms to hide his face in his hands. Tears pressed against his eyes, but he fought to keep them from falling. He had promised Mary Ann a quick return and crying now would make him break that promise.
"Why did you ask this of me? Why didn't you let me get away earlier? I really want to believe it's because you loved me too much to see me go, and not because you were afraid of me telling on you. I wouldn't have, just so you know." His hands came away wet, and shame mixed with the confusion he already felt. Jace cried so much easier these days, and even if he told himself it wasn't weakness, it still felt like it. Jawbone had told him it was normal to cry right now — as you are realizing what he did to you. And what you did to others.
Jace didn't understand how Jawbone could look at him and see someone who did wrong, as well as someone who was wronged. He saw Jace as the monster he thought himself to be, and at the same time, as a man who had been hurt and in love despite it. Maybe seeing a dichotomy and putting the two unmatched halves against each other felt easier to him, being a werewolf and all.
He could not show himself that kind of mercy.
It was not noble to suffer, but Jace had never thought himself a noble man. He'd been raised on principles that should have made a hero out of him, but he threw everything that would have made him a good person away, for love. The longer Jace thought about it, the more he wondered if Porter gave up love for being something greater.
He could have been the god Jace turned to in prayer, but a devil was always meant to fall. History repeated itself and it will continue to do so. It was foolish to hope to be the exeption.
"I miss you," he whisper. "I wish you were here, the old you. Before you got obsessed with being more than you were. You were everything to me already."
Jace didn't have the energy to call himself pathetic for crying again, his soft sobs filling the clearing. Better to cry all the tears out now, better to fall apart out here, than back home. He mustn't show weakness in front of Mary Ann, has to keep it together. In a way they forced him to deal with it, to cut off the infected body part and leave it out here instead of carrying it with him all the time. There was a Jace that went to work, took care of chores and made dinner for himself and the kid living in his spare bedroom. And there was a Jace that drove out to a forest he didn't know the name of to break himself in grief and lost love and anger and shame.
"The worst thing is that Jawbone said is that he understands why I miss you. He said, 'You loved him and that wound needs time to heal,' and I don't … my love for you is not a wound, is it? I am not wounded for having loved you. No, let me … I am … You hurt me, but not because I loved you. It's because I let you. F-fuck." Jace pressed his hand against his chest. The hollowness inside it was burning, a sharp pain like the edges of a crystal digging into his bones.
"Why didn't love save us?"
No answer. Just his cries, a bird singing, the wind. Jace muffled a scream behind his hands.
He had to let go of his chest for that, and it felt like his scar had split open again.
Every time he came here, he died for a moment, but he never stayed dead. It was just his mind playing tricks on him. His scream still sounded through the forest, was swallowed by trees and thickets and left him gasping for air.
He was not dead.
He had to get home.
It took him some time to gather himself again. Jace had to stitch the metaphorical wounds closed, put the shattered remains of his heart back where it belonged and wipe the tears from his face.
He made sure to brush some leaves off the headstone, gently tracing the letters of Porter's name. He had written it in Jotun to disguise the grave, but also to show where Porter had come from. Jace pretended it mattered, and wasn't that how anything gained meaning, anyway?
"Until next time, my love." His voice didn't waver for those last words, but it was still soft. Porter probably didn't deserve it, but it was better than saying "I love you" to the headstone of a man that killed him.