This is the first part of the whole fic; it ends where Ch. 22 of City of Bones does. Hope you like it!

Jace was thinking: everything was a lie.

I...

Was a lie.

A feminine voice punctured the cool silence. "Jace!" His name was uttered in a low, distraught bow, infused with relief; a longing, soaring call that immediately struck him with a freezing jolt of shock.

For a moment, he allowed himself to languish in the denial: that he did not recognise that voice. That that voice, since he had first heard it, had not enthralled his mind, that it did not smear itself over his thoughts, that it did not taunt and tempt him in his dreams. That he did not so hatefully adore its accent, its laugh, its cadence. That he was familiar and intimate with it on terms that he had never meant, or thought he ever would have been.

He closed his eyes.

He was nearly flung against the glass windows, as she wrapped her arms around him. It was a hard embrace, he thought, carelessly affectionate. He turned around, about to push her away, but he could not do it. How could he ever?

An unexpected, skittish thrill went through him, then, turning to see her bright red head of hair – copper streaks shining floridly in the candlelight – nestled confidingly into his stomach; the pressure telling him of her worry, her relief, that she sought protection and comfort, and from him. She wanted him to put his arms around her. She wanted him. He felt weak with a kind of sensuous joy.

It wrangled afflictively with another sensation: of lingering trauma, realised in Valentine—Valentine, is my father. It was him all along. After that had violently collided into everything he once thought he was, he had been trying to rearrange the shattered bits and pieces of him around this enormous, gaping truth. But he felt as helpless as a small child. Inside his voice, a voice said to darkly to him, and so you are the son of a murderer. Of everything you are fighting against.

And then another replied, but my father is alive. He is real again. He has returned. I can belong again.

"Clary," he heard himself say. He sounded unreal, like a dream. "What are you doing here?"

She said, her voice muffled, "I came for you."

He thinks about how this is possible; how she knew he was here, how she must have got past all the Forsaken Valentine had guarding Renwick's – and survived? With barely a scratch, it looked like. He was at once horrified and hugely impressed. She'd done this alone? By the angel, she could have died. She could have died a horrific death. Just for me? Why is she always so thoughtless? The next words that came from him sounded grindingly angry. "You shouldn't have." He let her go—he'd been holding her?—and stepped away. Then, his voice was gentle as a whisper. "You idiot, what a thing to do."

His fingers were reaching out again anyway, craving to touch her, the backs of them softly caressing the bridge of her nose, the freckles over her cheekbones – and he marvelled, so this is what her skin feels like. And a mad part of him wanted to grin, or laugh aloud. His hands were cradling the back of her head, stroking her hair and thinking with amazement that, right now, he was finally doing it – enacting all those little fantasises he didn't even know he'd been jealously creating and hoarding in the back of his mind.

He did not mean to, though he heard himself say aloud, "Why don't you ever think?"

Neither of them acknowledged the fact that, only days previously, they would have laughed to be so shamelessly vulnerable with each other. Like this: arms wrapped around each other, murmuring things like no one else in the world could see, or hear. No Izzy, or Alec, or the mundane—Simon. Just them.

There was no going back now.

She pulled away, and tilted her head back to meet his gaze. Her tone was perplexed, and hurt. "I was thinking. I was thinking about you."

Clary, don't say that. To think I could have been the reason for your death...He closed his eyes, suddenly anguished and disgusted at that thought. "If anything had happened to you," he felt her arms in his hands again, obsessively tracing the shape of them over and over and committing it to memory. This, right now, is what I want to remember. "How did you find me?"

"Luke," she said. "I came with Luke, to rescue you."

This soothed Jace somewhat, but only slightly. He did not trust Luke. Although he knew this man had been like a father to Clary, he disapproved of her eagerness to trust him after he so horribly betrayed her. Had they not both witnessed him renounce Jocelyn and she whilst being interrogated by Pangborn and Blackwell? Suddenly, he recalled the manacles that he'd found in Luke's house—the dried blood, how the nails were loose in the wall from being yanked—by the angel, he was a werewolf,Jace realised. Luke is a werewolf. It's obvious. Chaining themselves up during the Turn – historically, it's virtually common practice. Of course. Jace felt burningly ashamed that he had not realised it before. Perhaps, said a voice inside his head, you were too focused on impressing Clary. He glanced down at the window, though he could see no sign of the werewolves. "So those are—you came with the wolf clan?" he asked.

"Luke's," she said. "He's a werewolf, and—"

"I know," Jace interrupted. "I should have guessed—the manacles." He scanned the room. "Where is he?"

She seemed to hesitate. "Downstairs. He killed Blackwell. I came up to look for you—"

What?! Jace realised that the werewolves were probably here with the intention of killing said, with as much composure as he could muster, "He's going to have to call them off."

Clary's expression was baffled. "What?"

"Luke," Jace repeated emphatically, "He's going to have to call off his pack. There's been a misunderstanding."

Clary sounded distraught. "What, you—kidnapped yourself?"

Jace did not know what to say to this.

"Come on, Jace," Clary grabbed his wrist, and pulled hard, but he resisted.

His gaze snagged on her shirt and jeans, which were dirty and bloody. In turn, he saw her step back and examine him very slowly and closely: his clean, white shirt and neat blank pants and recently washed hair. She had never seen him like this before, he thought. Anticipating her reaction, he swept aside some stray strands of hair nervously.

"Are those your clothes?...And you're all bandaged up..." Her voice faded out. She sounded distinctly unnerved when she commented wryly, "Valentine seems to be taking awfully good care of you."

He did not know how to tell her. He felt exhausted from everything that happened to him in the last few hours, and his simultaneous joy and concern robbed him of words. What would she think? What would she say? Would she understand? Would she run away? Would she tell him he was crazy? He smiled sadly at her, saying, "If I told you the truth, you'd say I was crazy."

Emotions flitted rapidly across her face as her eyes widened. She shook her head a little. "No, I wouldn't."

He was going to have to say it. Just say it. "My father," even the words felt wrong somehow, incongruous and misshapen things in his mouth, "gave me these clothes."

Her head shook harder in refusal to accept this. "Jace." She said, looking at him intently, her voice slipped into an ominous, authoritative tone, "your father is dead."

"No. I thought he was, but he isn't. It's all been a mistake," he felt weightless, curiously euphoric, at this declaration. It freed him. It'll all be alright now. I grieved my father for so long, but now he's back.

Still, she shook her dead determinedly at him. "Is this something Valentine told you? Because he's a liar, Jace. Remember what Hodge said. If he's telling you your father is alive, it's a lie to get you to do what he wants."

"I've seen my father," Jace replied. "I've talked to him. He gave me this," with his forefinger and thumb, he plucked his shirt away from his chest. "My father isn't dead. Valentine didn't kill him. Hodge lied to me. All these years I thought he was dead...but he wasn't."

Still, it nagged at him: yes Hodge might have lied...but so did your father.

Clary looked frantically around the room. He watched her eyes dart to the magnificent emptiness of the long mirrors that glaringly reflected her horror. To the glassware that glistened on the laid table. To the sickly candlelight that flung wide, burnished shadows over the cavernous corners of the room. The aromatic burning of candle and wick, folding over against the stone walls. She said, with a heavy dash of sarcasm, "Well, if your father's really in this place, then where is he? Did Valentine kidnap him, too?"

She really is stubborn, isn't she? "My father—"

Stepped into the room, just then, closing the door behind him. As always, Jace's father was dressed regimentally, impeccably. He looked the same as when he last saw him, but seeing his face again was still stunned Jace into silence. Valentine—his father, he reminded himself—did not look very different, Jace thought, as to when he was younger. Perhaps there were a few more lines; his muscular frame had gathered extra bulk; his white-blond hair had drained away to a white-steel colour, closely cropped, as always. But all the planes of his face were essentially the same: angular, flinty, armoured, impervious. And yet, somehow, there was no hint of brutality; in fact, there was a kind of clever elegance to it – reflected in the precise flares of his freshly runed neck and arms. A true Shadowhunter's face, Jace had always thought. A huge broadsword was strapped to his back from a waist sheath. He rested his hand atop the hilt calmly as his undeniable voice projected across the room, "So, have you gathered your things? Our Forsaken can hold off the wolf-men for only so—"

Clary had been standing in the shadow, but, after he'd begun, Valentine's eyes had pricked—and found her. Then, his father's expression transformed into something Jace had never seen before: shock. Pure, unadulterated shock. It was transient, but enough to unsettle Jace – the widening of Valentine's eyes, the frown, the slackening of his jaw, his panic even bleeding into his stance as his hand fell from his sword, to his side. Bewildered, Jace glanced at Clary, but he could not see what caused his father's reaction. "What is this?" Valentine demanded shortly. He was still glowering at Clary, though Jace knew this was directed at him.

Before he could answer, he glimpsed Clary dig around in her waist for something—and produce a glinting dagger. She drew her hand back—NO—

Jace dove forward, wrenching her wrist back. "No," he told her emphatically.

She looked insulted and incredulous as she glared up at him. "But, Jace—"

"Clary," he said sternly. "This man is my father."