AN: This is a request by one of my followers :) Feel free to send me any other prompts that you would like me to write! Jace is looking at his son for the first time, and so he writes a letter to his son, as his father wrote a letter to him.
His hand wrapped around the twenty six year old piece of paper in his pocket as he stared, unblinking, at the squished little face bundled up and laying in the small bassinet, sleeping peacefully and dreamlessly.
Jace Herondale was completely enthralled by the small figure of his son, Max Herondale, in a way he didn’t think could ever have been possible. He didn’t think he could ever love anyone as much as he loved Clary, but oh, how he was wrong. When he’d first held Max in his arms, he’d felt a mix of terror, exhilaration, and elation all at once. And when his son was taken from his arms so that the Silent Brothers could take his vital signs, he’d dropped his hands and looked up to find his exhausted wife smiling at him with amusement.
“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” she’d said tiredly.
Jace hesitated for a moment. “He looks like an alien.”
Clary had laughed herself into an exhausted sleep.
Now Jace stood in the nursery of Alicante’s only hospital, watching his son sleep, with his own father’s letter to him in his pocket. To my son...
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If you are reading this, then you have grown past my own imagination, out of my household, and into the world.
I don’t know what the past 18 years have held, for you. For me, they are still in the future. I watched you begin your life today, brought into the world by the most beautiful woman in the world, into the most beautiful place in the world. And you are one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
I want you to know that I know I’m going to make mistakes with you. In raising you. But I’m going to try my best to do right by you, because my own father never had the chance to do right by me. Anything I do for you will be done out of love.
I want you to know how lucky you are. You will likely grow up with both of your parents, who love each other, and who would do anything for each other. Many children do not have that luxury. I did not have that experience and neither did your mother. Neither do most Shadowhunters. Uncle Alec and Aunt Izzy grew up with both of their parents, but their childhoods were not easy.
I will always be here for you. I will always do my best to set an example for you. I will always love your mother.
Most of all, I will always love you. And I never want you to forget that.