I don't own TSC. Title is from "Her Strong Enchantments Failing" by A.E. Housman, which is the poem at the beginning of part three of QOAAD because I couldn't think of anything better.

Not my best work. Please be kind to my reputation and pretend I didn't write this while not paying attention in class.

It's canon that both Clary and Jace stop eating when they get stressed. They also both bite their nails. Just a couple facts in case you forgot.

The Blackthorns listened in solemn silence as Clary, Jace, Cristina, Mark and Kieran explained what had happened in Faerie and where Emma and Julian were. If you had told a mundane family that two of their members had vanished through a portal into another world possibly never to return there would have been tears and panic, but the Blackthorns took the news with blank faces. After all, so many bad things had happened to them, it was almost unsurprising that something else had gone wrong.

It was very sad.

When they were finished with the tale, Ty retreated upstairs, Kit trailing along behind him like a ghost. Dru talked quietly with Tavvy, while Helen just looked completely out of their depth. After a while, Jace borrowed Aline's cellphone to call Alec and Isabelle. Aline headed into the kitchen like a woman on a mission and after a moment Helen followed her. Mark and Cristina left together perhaps looking for Kieran who had drifted away when no one had been looking.

Clary settled herself stiffly into one of the library's armchairs and stared out the window, not quite sure what it was she was waiting for. Emma and Julian to suddenly reappear in the middle of the room? Not likely. Clary wasn't sure if even she was capable of making a portal which could go between worlds, there was little reason to hope that two ordinary Shadowhunters with no extra angel blood would be able to find their way home.

Jace came back from talking to his siblings gray-face and exhausted, like hearing the full details of how Robert Lightwood and Livvy Blackthorn had died had drained the last of his energy. Maybe it had. "I'm going to ask Aline if there's a shower we can use," he said, rubbing his face, hand rasping against his stubble.

"That sounds like a good idea," Clary said. "Are you okay?"

"Of course," Jace said with a ghastly smile. "After all, we're not the ones who went through a random portal to another world."

He had a point, but the sheer number of things that needed to be dealt with was overwhelming. Emma and Jules were missing. The Cohort was destroying everything. There was the blight and the warlock sickness and the Faerie courts and Ash. And she needed to figure out what to do about her relationship with Jace now that she knew she wasn't about to die. She probably should tell him, but when? She knew him well enough to know that he'd never broach the subject of marriage again unless they talked about it. It wasn't that he'd changed his mind-she was pretty sure he hadn't-but he'd never ask again while he thought she didn't want it, and regardless of his protests to the contrary, she knew that was what he thought.

Jace headed off before she could figure out whether she should bring it up and perhaps that was for the best. They were both exhausted and probably couldn't use any more drama than they were currently facing. Clary found herself wandering aimlessly through the Institute, both thinking about all their problems and desperately not thinking about them. After a while, Helen turned up. "There you are," she said. "I opened one of the spare bedrooms for you and Jace and found some clean clothes for you. Luckily the Cohort left some stuff behind when they cleared out. I couldn't find anything that would fit you, though."

Neither of them pointed out that Livvy's clothes were far more like to fit Clary than anything the Cohort had left.

It turned out that what Aline had been doing in the kitchen was making the world's largest amount of boxed mac and cheese. When Clary found her way there, a large vat sat on the back of the stove in all its artificially colored glory. Clary and Jace hadn't been fed with any regularity while being held prisoners and when they had been given food it hadn't always been food they could safely consume. Clary wasn't exactly hungry, but she was aware that was more from stress than anything else. She needed to eat and so did Jace.

Carrying two bowls, she made her way up to the room Helen had opened up. It was a simple space with nothing but a large bed, a desk and a dresser. There were two doors besides the one leading into the room, one to a closet and the other to the bathroom. The walls were pale blue and the bedspread matched. Two large windows stood on either side of the bed, showing a view of the ocean and the gathering sunset. A stack of clothes sat on the bed, presumably for her.

The shower was still running even though it had been much longer than Jace's showers normally took. She thought briefly about joining him, but then decided it would be better to just give him whatever time he needed to collect himself. Instead she settled down the desk chair and began to eat her mac and cheese, gazing out the window at the ocean.

She was almost finished eating when the shower finally turned off. After a minute or two, Jace let himself out of the bathroom. He was holding his old clothes neatly folded to his chest. The clothes Helen had found for him were too big in a "holy shit you've lost a lot of weight" sort of way. Clary was sure she would be the same way. He'd also shaved despite his insistence that he liked the beard, but Clary had been expecting that. When he got this stressed back in New York he tended to deep clean Isabelle and Simon's room for them. He would shave to exert some kind of control over his life.

Jace crossed the room and set the clothes carefully inside the laundry bin that stood next to the closet door. When he didn't immediately turn back she realized he was putting something off.

"Is something wrong?" she asked. Something beyond the obvious, of course.

Jace took a deep breath. "You'll get a kick out of this," he said in a tone of voice that suggested she would not, in fact, get a kick out of it, then he turned around and Clary saw that he was wearing a tee-shirt with the words, "I'm just here to establish an alibi" printed on it.

It was the kind of shirt that a Shadowhunter would only get from being friends with Simon. In all the commotion, Clary had forgotten that a lot of Simon's Academy friends had gone on to the Scholomance which was a haven for the Cohort.

Simon had once said that he would pay money to see Jace in a tee-shirt with a witty saying on it, but both Clary and Jace knew that they would never tell Simon about this. Simon had tried so hard to change things at the Academy and the idea of telling him just how thoroughly he'd failed was too horrible to contemplate. Of course, there was always the possibility that not all of the Centurians here had been part of the Cohort, but Clary didn't think she or Jace wanted to consider it enough to speculate.

"Here," Clary said after a moment, holding out the second bowl of mac and cheese. "Aline made a ton of mac and cheese."

A look of vague nausea crossed Jace's face. "I'm not hungry."

"I'm not either, but we both need to eat," she offered the bowl again. "Come on, Jace."

After a moment, he crossed the room, took the bowl from her and dropped down to sit cross-legged at her feet. Clary slid out of her chair to sit on the floor with him. They ate in relative silence: there was nothing to say.

When Clary finished eating, she reached up to set the bowl on the desk. Jace glanced up at her as she got to her feet. "Finish eating," she told him. "I'm going to shower; I won't be long."

She took the clothes Helen had found and headed into the bathroom. As much as she wanted her shower to be quick, that didn't turn out to be the case. It took her a hideously long time and way too much conditioner to get the matted clumps out of her hair. When she was finally clean, she toweled off and dressed quickly. The pants were training pants which had a drawstring which she could tie tightly enough to keep them up. The shirt was thankfully just a plain tee-shirt; she didn't think she could handle seeing another shirt which could only be from Simon and having another reason to wonder what side his Academy friends were on.

She let herself back out into the bedroom. Jace had closed the shades to block out the light of the setting sun. As her eyes adjusted she saw that he was in bed with the blankets drawn up so that only the top of his head was visible.

She crossed to the laundry bin and placed her clothes inside. When she returned to the desk she saw that Jace's bowl was sitting next to hers still half full.

"Jace…" she sighed.

He shifted a little but didn't lift his head. "If I eat any more right now I'm going to be sick," he said. "I'll eat more in the morning."

Clary thought about ripping the covers off him and refusing to give them back until he finished his food, but she was too tired for that. Their time in Faerie had been draining even before they'd spent a week in the dungeons. Not to even mention the deaths and Emma and Julian literally vanishing through a portal. Clary was ready for this day to be over.

She slid under the covers and curled up against Jace, her arm thrown over his waist. "Look at us going to bed before the sun has even set," she joked. "We must be getting old."

Jace huffed his little "you've startled the laughter out of me so you know I actually think what you said is funny" laugh. "I suppose there's some truth to that; Emma and Julian are older than we were when we saved the world."

"Don't remind me," Clary said with perhaps a bit less humor than normal. She did not want to think about Emma and Jules. "Were we ever really that young?"

Jace chuckled and rolled over. They wrapped their arms around each other and tangled their legs together. They lay silently for a few minutes, just listening to each other breathe.

"We should probably sleep," Clary said. "The world will still be messed up when we wake up."

"Yeah," Jace chuckled hollowly. "If we're lucky, it even might not get any worse while we sleep."

It wasn't really funny, but Clary made herself laugh anyway. The alternative was too difficult to contemplate.