Warning: There will be consensual Clebastian in this. I am coming to see that this seems to be a huge point of contention in the fandom, but it serves the story, so it's happening. Don't panic when it does.

You are My Nothing

Eres mi nada, cuando la gente me encuentra con la mirada perdida y me pregunta: ¿En que piensas?

-Mario Benedetti

Chapter 1

Clary glanced over at the blonde guy sitting several seats down from her in the lecture hall to find he was watching her—again. It had been going on for weeks, him always watching her, and at first she'd simply told herself she was being vain or paranoid. However, they were nearly two months into the semester now, and Clary was positive; he was watching her.

At seeing her glance in his direction, he casually looked away, twirling a pen between long, deft fingers with almost blinding dexterity. She turned back to the front of the lecture hall where the professor was still droning blandly on about the different between colorito and disegno in Italian Renaissance Art, trying to dislodge the knot between her shoulder blades by taking a deep breath. It didn't work, and soon enough she could feel the blonde looking at her again, studying her face in profile as if he meant to draw her. She found herself battling the urge to turn and snap at him to stop.

She couldn't say what about him always looking bothered her so much—a year ago she would have been elated to have an upperclassmen this hot paying attention to her. However, when her mother had died halfway through her second semester, everything had changed. It had stripped Clary of almost everything she knew and loved about herself, and she felt constantly raw. Everyone had assured Clary that healing took time, and that eventually the pain of losing Jocelyn, who was Clary's best friend as much as she was her mother, would fade. However it had been more than six months, and Clary felt no different than she had the day she'd walked her mother's casket be lowered into the ground.

Clary bit her lip and tried not to think of Jocelyn. Missing her was a constant ache, but when Clary delved too deeply into it, the careful stitches she'd formed through therapy and anti-depressants because to strain and tear, and the rancid pain would gush up. It was a hideous feeling, and it made her all the more liable to freak out on her psuedostalker.

Having all but given up on colorito and disegno for the day, she hazarded a glance back at the blonde to find that, for once, he was looking away, texting. She took the opportunity while he was distracted to study him in earnest, the way artists were trained to do. He was older, probably a junior or a senior, and he was honestly so good-looking she wasn't even sure he was attractive. He was a walking laundry list of anatomical perfection, from his sleek feline cheekbones to his lithe legs, which were stretched out and crossed at the ankle. She could see a dark swirling tattoo slithering up from beneath the collar or his members-only jacket. She found herself mesmerized by his hands as he typed. They were deft and graceful—the hands of an artist. She wondered immediately if he was a performance major of some sort, and if so, what instrument he played. He seemed too impatient for the cello or violin, too cool for either brass or winds. Piano, she decided, eying his long fingers.

Her reverie was interrupted when he unexpectedly looked up and caught her studying him. He didn't smile, but a look of self-satisfaction lit his amber eyes, flickering in them like dying firelight. She flushed and turned away, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her blush. Still, she didn't know why he seemed so pleased with himself; surely he used to having an effect on women. Not that he was affecting Clary in that way, of course, but he didn't know that. Besides, why did he seem to specifically interested in her? She knew she was attractive—she'd never been one of those girls who annoyingly insisted they were plain when they weren't—but she wasn't on this guy's level. No one was. He should have been dating a supermodel. Hell, he practically was one himself.

She supposed with disinterest that if she tried harder—ate less carbs and contoured more—she could be the sort of girl guys like that always went for, but the reality was she had no inclination to do that. She liked who she was, and she wasn't going to change any of it just in an attempt to please some 5th Avenue reject.

She could tell even as she glanced back up at the front that he was still looking at her, and she rolled her eyes. Someone bolder like her roommate Maia might have confronted him after class and demanded to know what his problem was, or flirtatiously insisted that if he was going to continue to gawk, he might as well do it over dinner. However, Clary found she wasn't terribly interested to find out what he wanted, and knowing boys in their early 20's—particularly handsome ones—she could probably already guess anyways.

Besides, there was something deep down, something almost instinctual, that told her he was dangerous. No, not dangerous; the feeling had no sharp edge to it. Different. And not different in a romantic, "tortured hottie with a past/paranormal teen fiction" kind of way, either. Truly, fundamentally, primally different, a genuine Otherness she was sure she'd never encountered before. And yet despite that, there was another dimension to it that felt familiar, and that oddly reminded her of her mother.

As the professor announced the end of class and the test on Friday, her eyes flicked over to him a final time. Clary half expected to feel something as they made eye contact, a jolt of recognition or a spark of chemistry, something to validate her instinctual reading of him. However, in the end she only felt awkward, and hurriedly she shut her notebook and scrambled up and out of the classroom, his eyes on her back as she went.

Alec was at the apartment they'd be assigned when Jace arrived back, tossing down his ridiculous bookbag (all college students used them, Maryse had insisted) and flopping on the couch. Alec's energy changed immediately when Jace entered, became someone brighter and tighter, but Jace didn't seem to notice.

"How's the Mundane?" he asked, glittering eyes drinking Jace in as he tucked his arms beneath his head, the movement tugging his shirt up and revealing a strip of taut flesh in the process.

"She's not a Mundane," Jace replied in a bored voice. "And she's—I don't know. Confusing."

This got Alec's attention, and his back stiffened as he whirled on Jace.

"Confusing how?"

Jace didn't immediately answer, and after a minute he was saved from doing so entirely when Isabelle strode through the front door, still in a cocktail dress from the night before. Ignoring Jace's sardonic expression and her brother's irritated one, she cross the the fridge and took out a sparkling water

"Where have you been?" Alec demanded peevishly.

Isabelle gave a delicate shrug.

"Out. We're supposed to be blending in, remember?"

"No," Alec said. "We're supposed to be watching Clarissa Morgenstern and reporting back to The Clave. She could be in league with her father."

Isabelle bubbled her lips in condescenion.

"Spare me. Whatever her mother did to her, she's a Mundane now. I don't think she even have the sight."

"We don't know that."

"You don't," she corrected. "But I do. Besides, last night wasn't my turn, thank the Angel. I hate watching her. She's so boring. She never goes out. She's always with her churchmouse of a boyfriend."

"Simon Lewis isn't her boyfriend," Alec said, rising to the petty and pointless bait. "Did you even read your file?"

"What does it matter?" Isabelle said with an eye roll.

"It does matter," Alec said. "She could be Valentine's new weapon, and we—"

"I don't think she's boring," Jace interrupted from the couch, and both siblings turned to look at him.

"What?" they said in unison before scowling at each other.

Jace shrugged and sat up as Alec's expression darkened.

"You're joking, right?"

Jace shrugged again.

"I didn't say she was the most fascinating creature on earth, but she—" he paused. "There's something different about her that I find...alluring."

"Alluring?" Aleco repeated contemptuously, seeming somewhere between horror and disgust.

"Besides," Jace continued. "She is very easy to look at. That doesn't hurt."

Aleco only scoffed.

"You don't think so?"

"No," the sibling said together again.

Jace supposed he shouldn't be surprised; it was Isabelle's natural disposition to dislike girls whose beauty she feared rivaled her own and Alec's to dislike people in general, so the girl really didn't have a chance.

"What do you mean 'alluring'?" Alec pressed.

"I just mean she's thrumming with all this untapped Seraphic energy. I can feel it every time I—"

"Ew, stop," Isabelle cut in imperiously. "Keep your weird Fairchild fantasies to yourself."

"You know what I'm talking about, right?" Jace said to Alec, sidestepping Isabelle's directive. Of course he'd already imagined having sex with Morgenstern girl; she was beautiful, and he was a guy. Still, it didn't mean anything, and it was better not to tell Alec and send him into a fit about rules and restrictions. They weren't to make contact with her with her in any way; The Clave had been inescapably clear on that.

"No," Aleco said in a tart, almost bitter voice. "I don't."

Jace sighed his annoyance and flopped back, remember the look he'd seen glimmering in her jade tinted eyes, which were a smoky mixture of grey and actual green. There was something different about her, even for a Nephilim. Alec would be quick to point out that it was likely demon blood, the same type Valentine had used on his son before he was burned to death at Fairchild Manor as a baby. Jace wasn't so sure, though. He knew demons, knew their aura and the bitter taste of their blood on the air, and he didn't sense any of that from Clarissa Morgenstern. What he got from her was strong and somehow unknowable, even to him. Even so, he felt like it was calling his name; it had been since the first time he'd seen her.

"I have to go," Isabelle said, interrupting his musing. "Clarissa and I have Qualitative Reasoning in ten minutes, and I've already been called out by the professor twice for being late."

"Is!" Aleco said, indignant. "Low profile!"

Isabelle shrugged.

"I can't help it; I like this college thing overall, but the lessons part is dreadful."

Jace gave a scoff of amusement as Aleco scowled.

"Go on, Is, you're going to be late."

She grabbed her own superfluous bookbag and flounced out, slamming the door behind her.

"I have to go, too," Alec said, rising and throwing on his jacket, which had be flung over the chair. "I have a debriefing at the Institute."

"To tell them what?" "We haven't even come in direct contact with her."

Alec raised a dark eyebrow without humour.

"Let's keep it that way."

With that he strode out after his sister, slamming the door just as loudly and making Jace groan as his thoughts faded back to Clarissa. It was amazing to him that she could be so highly sought after and yet so unaware of it. Absently he wondered if any part of her knew she wasn't Mundane. That she was like them. After all, blood called to blood, and she hailed from two powerful Nephilitic lines; her blood was thicker and more blue than most.

Something in her eyes had told him she did, and then some. That not only was she a Shadowhunter, but that she was prodigious, a singularity among them destined for more. There was no real denying—especially when he was alone—how badly he wanted to understand that part of her, The Clave's warnings be damned, and even as Alec's consternation echoed in his head, he wondered at a way to do just that.