my lady, the tiger

Jocelyn Fairchild - The Mortal Instruments

“ But Jocelyn Morgenstern was not the kind of woman who wept, not the kind of woman who broke, or Valentine would have broken her long since. ”

DOT/JOCELYN

(everyone loves a quiet tragedy)

TSCfemslash week day 3: favourite rare pair

↳   Jocelyn Fairchild x Maryse Trueblood

Jace not knowing what a GI Joe is just made me remember how much I want fics where Jocelyn and Luke have to figure out how to raise a mundane kid.

Like I know they’d have to figure out how taxes and home insurance and other normal stuff works but I mean fics where neither of them know what to get like a five year old Clary for her birthday because what do mundane kids even like

And they wind up having to ask Magnus for advice because he’s lived in the mundane world for so long; plus if she’s 18 now that means Clary was a child in the late 90s so can you even imagine:

“I’m gonna get her that Cabbage child doll, what do you think, Magnus?”

“It’s cabbage patch doll, first of all, and we go through this EVERY YEAR Jocelyn, just get her a Tamogotchi.”

“Is that some kind of Japanese river monster because I swear, Bane–”

“No, it’s like an electronic pet; it goes on a keychain–you know what just give me 20 bucks and she can have my old one, I can’t keep the stupid thing alive anyway.”

And when she’s in that “I know everything, and am too cool for you phase”, Jocelyn having no clue what to do, because while in Idris it was okay to give your kid a wooden sword and make them spar you and train until late at night when they mouthed off, apparently that’s frowned upon.

I love this. I am very into the idea of Jocelyn learning how to be a mundane. Can I add some more?

Jocelyn almost definitely had servants. She probably struggled with grocery shopping and doing the dishes as well. Oh God and cooking. I bet Clary ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and take out because Jocelyn can’t successfully boil water. Clary writes it off as “scatterbrained artist” but it’s really, “so privileged she can’t function in the real world” and is still learning stuff like that you can’t put dawn in the dishwasher.

“Can we get a TV?”

“A what?”

And Clary thinks her mom isn’t listening but she actually doesn’t know what a television is or why a six year old kid would want one.

“Oh those screen things? Why would she want one of those screens? Does she want to watch the news or sport games?” Which are what most tvs in public places play so I would imagine that’s what Jocelyn would assume they were for.

Jocelyn is immensely intelligent and dedicated and she never makes the same mistake twice but dear lord, those first mistakes are ridiculous.

As a side note, the local muggers never bother her because she has put five of them in hospital.

circle of raziel series//jocelyn fairchild m o r g e n s t e r n

–> “i bet you kiss your knuckles right before they touch my cheek”  

she was lethal and always will be: hair bows, french nails, polished daggers, acid smiles.  small girl, sharp girl, scarlet freckled like a blood splatter.  she has paint under her nails.  is that paint?  is it charcoal on her sleeve, staining black and splotchy?  yes, yes.  she has a wall in her room encrusted with hearts, each struck through with nails and pins.  she’s not a heart breaker, she’s a thief.  she’ll keep your pulse and drag it out.  she barely notices addicts she inspires, because her eye is on the prize.  she’s vicious for her secrets, her liberties, her toothaching truth.  would you believe how much she’s d o n e?

These gentle pastel Jocelyn Fairchild edits….. I don’t get it. 

Jocelyn’s aesthetics to me are paint and knives and blood and dark angry red and messy living rooms and stacks of books with secrets pressed between them and more knives.

That crumbling grandeur of someone born into luxury and living in poverty - tarnished jewelry and chipped china and that arrogant finishing school vocabulary while waiting in line at Wal Mart because it’s the only place where you can afford to buy socks for your daughter. 

Paint and longing and half finished portraits that she can’t look at any more and finished ones that aren’t nearly as true as she wants them to be. Faces she is forgetting so she tries to put them down into sketch books to hold onto them but they’re never quite right. 

Desperation and crying in the shower and so much anger. And knowing. Knowing that she could go home, she could take the mortal cup and go home a conquering hero but to do it she would have to take Clary back to Idris and she’d have to trust the Clave to keep the cup away from Valentine and she doesn’t trust them as far as she can throw them. 

Escape routes from every location, houses with two doors and a fire escape, potions hidden in jewlery boxes and weapons tucked under mattresses. It’s learning to shoot a gun while the neighbour watches her daughter. Counting pennies in the hope of buying a car because they can’t be that hard to drive and it’d be worth it to be able to run and run fast if trouble found them. 

Red so dark it is almost black, the rich purples and navy of long gone aristocrats. Black leather and heavy boots that you can run in, always run in. 

Grief and loss and a fierce protectiveness because once you’ve lost so much you can’t afford to lose any more. Big cats prowling behind bars because they can never go home again. 

Always remembering what it was like to be the best and the brightest. To have been a queen among warriors and beloved among friends and to have given it all up because it was the right thing to do. 

Sideways glances because some loves are too big to borne and others are too big to be admitted to and besides she doesn’t really believe she deserves better. Clary deserves better. Everything is about Clary. 

Baby pictures and mementos. Art projects from kindergarten. All of it saved and categorized. Prized and displayed. Every good deed Clary does immortalized. 

Blood and anger and tears. Knives and paint and baby pictures. Scars and secrets and that stretching silence of things unsaid. These are the things that make up Jocelyn Fairchild. 

couple aesthetics: jocelyn fray and maryse lightwood

Jocelyn & Maryse

Maryse/Jocelyn though

They’ve always had a tense relationship, the sharpest edges of their personalities rubbing against them, as Clary would say. There’s tension, maybe some competitive desire in them both that never died, stoked to burning years ago.

But even despite this antagonism, Jocelyn clutches her heart upon learning that Maryse is alive after all this time, and sees her daughter and forgets for a moment that Maryse couldn’t possibly be that young anymore. There’s a history, a fascination. And I wonder how often they crossed each other’s minds in those years apart.

And their relationship would be built on the scars of so many wounds between the two of them, many left by the same man to begin with. These scars are the reason Maryse could never trust another man–and it’s so nice to curl up on Jocelyn, who’s not–and why Jocelyn would rather kill everything in herself that was once a nephilim, than be seen by one again–and it’s a relief, to know that she won’t be hurt, and she doesn’t have to hide these parts of herself from Maryse.

And they’ve both seen their children grow up, both seen them die, both have the scars of failed marriage runes remaining. They’ve both traced their own too many times, alone and livid with the wold.

But with a touch against her arm, Maryse forgets about the faded lines, and Jocelyn forgets to keep herself hidden away, and kisses aren’t healing, per se, but a side effect of it. A reward for surviving long enough to heal.

And scar tissue is stronger, anyway, so why not build a love on it?