Do yall want my Jace/Yolanda thoughts or should I just jump off a cliff? Nvm, you're getting them anyway 😘
This fully stems from them playing a similar kind of role to their students. Both acting as a mentor and a guide for their students while they figure things out. Whether it be innate magical ability or divinity and religious studies.
Yolanda's a much more well respected teacher than Jace is, and there are so many interesting Jace+Aguefort staff dynamics to explore but one of my favorites is Jace/Yolanda. We knew so little of her bc of how the seasons shake out but what if when Jace started working at the academy she was the staff member to give him the full tour and rundown.
Their classrooms are far apart and outside of meetings and their polite exchanges in the breakroom they don’t talk much. Jace was never religious, not really, not until Porter, but Yolanda doesn’t push or proselytize. He likes that about her and he finds himself really fascinated by the way she discusses religion and how vast it can be.
At the end of his first year, he’s completely drained. He knew Aguefort was notoriously A Lot™️ but he didn’t think he’d slam head first into burnout by the time finals roll around. He’s committed to his students, they’re great kids (mostly) so, he spends a lot of late nights grading papers and reviewing his lesson plans, making notes and additions when he hears a little knock at his classroom door.
Yolanda gives him a little wave and comes in. She didn’t expect anyone to still be in the building but it’s a nice surprise. Jace looks as exhausted as she feels.
“How do you feel about ice cream?” Not too long after she asks, they’re sat across from each other at Basrar’s talking about how the school year’s been, their students, plans for the summer. It’s good and exactly what they both needed. They make a tradition out of it, to meet up and get ice cream every year during finals.
By the time Junior year rolls around and she comes to him with the info about Lucy everything in him breaks. He knows what he has to do or everything he and Porter built together crumbles. He hates that out of all their coworkers it had to be her. Yolanda, one of his dearest and kindest friends.
He isn’t sure how all knowing and all seeing Porter is quite yet, but keeping it from him could ruin everything. Jace is a fixer but he’s also obedient when his back is against the wall, so he tells Porter.
“Tell me what you want me to do.” And he’s not sure if Porter is just being cruel or if the amount of time they’ve spent together made him generous. But Jace takes no pleasure in giving the order. In asking Porter to kill his friend. All because she cared too much. She always did, even when she’s in the lion’s den and he’s telling her about the far haven woods.. She just cares so much.
He doesn’t join Porter. He makes himself scarce for the rest of the evening, smashing his crystal to bits so that for once he doesn’t have to hear Porter’s stupid voice after a kill. How exhilarated it makes him to take a life. Even the lives of those whose only crime was caring too much.
After that Jace is changed. Quieter, colder, disgusted by the person he’s become. The person Porter remade him to be. The closer the end of the school year gets the more nightmares he has, of Yolanda’s death, of his own, the Rat Griders. He wakes up screaming most nights, so much so that he goes back to sleeping in his own bed. Porter doesn’t seem too put out by it. He’s different now too, barely notices or talks about anything but the plan. When Jace looks at him, he sees Porter covered head to toe in blood. It gets harder to meet his eyes without feeling repulsed.
There’s no more ice cream, only blood. When he dies, he wonders if he’ll find her in the afterlife, he doesn’t, of course. Where ever she is now, it has to be better than his purgatory. He’s back in the same blood-red inferno he found himself in after Porter killed him.
For a brief moment he wonders if he even deserves the life being offered back to him by Ankarna.
And when he sees Yolanda again, he wants to run. He wants to disappear into thin air, he wants to reverse time and choose death. But the kind, caring look in her eyes makes him ignore it all. He wraps her up tight in his arms and apologizes. She doesn’t owe him forgiveness, he feels a pit in his stomach when she offers it though. She's a better person than he ever was.
“I believe we’re due for some ice cream, Mr Stardiamond,” and Gods he shouldn’t be crying but he is.
Through his tears, he agrees, “Lead the way, Professor Badgood.”