Disclaimer: Clearly, I don't own Mortal Instruments.
Also, this dabble was randomly thought up and it's been forever since I've read the series. This is more of an AU in which Clary is slowly loosing it, and it's my first story for this fandom, so please don't judge me based on this. If it turns out bad, I'm sorry.
- one -
Clary is alive for the first time and it's terrifying. The thing - the demon - is in her house and in her walls and they've escaped, but the adrenaline is still coursing through her veins painfully. Her head is throbbing beneath a bed of scarlet locks, her hands still shaking. This is the beginning of the end, it seems, and she hates that her senses are awakened and heightened in the middle of such a terror. How can this - this madness, this nightmare - be more real and invoking that anything she's ever known?
Why does she feel like this is how her life should be?
Clary Fray is many things, but dangerous was never one of them. She was naturally curious, clever, friendly, pretty, but none would call her dangerous. Adventurous in and of itself was a stretch, and yet could her brain even comprehend an adventure this incredible? This terrible?
She simply didn't know. The events of the last few minutes were enough to shift her worldview so completely that her life simply shattered into pieces. There would be no return from the existence of monsters (demons, the boy corrects, but she refuses to expand her beliefs to that aspect just yet; if demons existed, angels must, but that would mean too many divine forces in one day).
Maybe it makes sense. Maybe she's the crazy one, living like the world is normal when it's always been a little insane.
Clary gets the feeling, as he offers her his hand, that she's falling down the rabbit hole. She's Alice, immersed in a new and foreign reality. Clary's not so sure she wants to fall.
She does, anyways, and grabs for his fingers regardless. His name is Jace.
- two -
A week passes, then a month. The members of the Institute are slowly becoming her friends an family, which should seem alarming but it's not.
There's Isabelle, who is strong and beautiful but inherently made for this. She's fierce and sharp around the edges in absolutely everything, but despite that, she's kind. It's enough to let Clary call her a friend, and that is that.
There's Jace, and he's not at all straightforwards. He's backwards and strange and wrong, but she loves him a little for it. He's so sarcastic and infuriating and unlike anybody she's ever met, yet his mood changes at the drop of hat or the roll of a dice. Behind it all, he's slightly broken. He's in need of something to rely on, to lean on, and a small part of Clary longs to be that person. She's inexplicably drawn to his goodness, and that's all that matters, really.
There's Alec, who loves Jace. He's aloof and sassy at times and every inch as fierce as Isabelle. He doesn't care for Clary as much, and she understands. She stole away Jace, after all, and continues to snatch the blonde away without remorse. Alec isn't exactly her favorite person, and she knows she isn't his, but they've started to know eachother, just like she knows with absolute certainty that he'd die to protect any one of them.
Simon, she knows. Simon is the same Simon she's always known, the quick-witted, caring, protective figure she's come to love as a brother. He loves her in ways a brother will never love his sister, and she knows. The problem is that she's attracted to Jace, an unattainable romance seeing that he may or may not be her sibling. Jace is confused as to what to do about his feelings for her, and she's doubtful that they'll be acknowledged any time soon. But Simon is also attracted to Isabelle, and this presents a number of complications. No matter what, it seems that Alec will be pining for Jace, Jace will be after Clary, who would be after him if not for mistaken biology, and Simon is there, but he may chase after Is with enough time.
It's a tangled, tangled web her new family weaves, and she's beginning to wonder if it was better that they found her now that so many hearts are going to be shattered.
They have angel blood flowing in their veins, correct? Clary thinks that they're all angels, her friends - just not the pure white ones. They're the jagged shards of glass, the broken, about to fall breed, the ones that come with flaws. They're incomplete angels, ones without wings.
Even Valentine had wings, after all, even if they weren't in the flesh. His wings were crafted from greed and ambition, darkness and damnation. They were the lust for power in his mind, the poison in is heart.
Though Clary is starting to become a real shadowhunter, a defender against the demons, she sins, too. She lusts for things just like Valentine, though they aren't boys; she lusts for normalcy, for ignorance and ease again. Sometimes she wonders if things will ever be so effortless and regular again. She wonders this, as she looks at the mortal cup they have secured, and she prays to whatever angels are listening that the monsters will leave her family alone.
- three -
Jace is accused of conspiring with Valentine, and none of them can really believe it. It's not true, because Jace is Jace, and he would never betray them. Jace is the one that hide pain behind arrogance, the one to rage into a battle and come out victorious, the one who loves them for sticking around. Their Jace simply wouldn't do that, and despite skepticisms of the opposite, he wouldn't be capable in their minds.
Nevertheless, he is held captive, and Simon, the reliable one, is afraid of turning into a vampire. She's on her own.
It's terrifying, being alone. Alone is lonely. Alone is isolated, and she's never been so isolated in her life. Even when everything went to hell and a handbasket, she always had her mother. But Jocelyn isn't awake now, is she? She's still in her potion-induced coma, and Clary doesn't know what to do without her. The world has never been so off the rails before.
While she's alone, she takes the opportunity to explore the Institute. While in the library, away from the horror that is their story, she finds a book of quotations. She flips through it, finding it both thought provoking and strangely comforting, knowing that somehow, she still has the advice and guidance of others at her disposal.
The section on madness, though, was more relatable and appropriate than she expected.
"Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be." ~ Miguel de Cervantes
"There is always some madness in love. But there is also some reason in madness." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
"In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom." ~ J. G. Ballard
"The most beautiful things are the ones madness prompts and reason writes." ~ Andre Gide
"What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough, for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams." ~ Pedro Calderon de la Barca
"No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness." ~ Aristotle
The words and names were not only on the page, now; they were dripping off, soaking into Clary's fingers as they smoothed down the frail paper. This unorthodox book soothed the unorthodox girl.
"If this is the meaning of madness," the redhead pondered out loud, sitting in the corner of the wide room all on her own, "then I think I'd prefer to mad." She silently shut the book and replaced it on its shelf, allowing the worry and desperation to flow over her mind again. With a sigh, she walked towards the door, deciding to pay her mother a visit. "Maybe I'm a little mad already."
- four -
"We stopped checking for monsters under our bed when we realized they were inside of us." Rewind.
"We stopped checking for monsters under our bed when we realized they were inside of us." Rewind.
"We stopped checking for monsters under our bed when we realized they were inside of us." Rewind again.
Clary is watching Batman and something about what the Joker is saying seems to resonate. She rubs her arms - it's summer, but she's chilled to the bone for some reason. Her pale skin is marred by runes painted across her body, pen scribbles, and bruises. But that's life, Clary, and that's how things go. One day everything is fine, the next your boyfriend is possessed and your brother is evil and your best friend is in a heap of trouble.
"What are you watching?" comes Simon's voice, and she relaxes slightly. With Simon, she feels more like herself. He understands Clary inside and out and that has always been his role.
"Batman," she mumbles, and he sits next to her, willing to share. "Am I a monster, Simon? For all the things we've done, I'm the good guy, right?" she asks, desperate for the answer that had been silently killing her.
"You're the best, Clary. And if you're a monster, then I don't even know what I am. I look like Valentine next to you, sometimes," he says with a smile, and she sighs with relief.
"Thanks."
"Anytime." It's them, and he's sharing in that small piece of her madness. She stops rewinding the video and lets the scene play out, dropping the control.
No stops, no breaks.
- five -
The events of Lake Lyn are set and done, and Jace - not her brother - is at her side. Her mother is back. Alec has moved on. Life should be good.
Simon's memories are far beyond fractured, though, and it's depressing. Simon was the boy who remained her best friend throughout everything, and now he is absent.
It's almost too much to bear, once the revelation hits her. Even when they were separated from eachother, he was only a phone call away, a walk down the street. There is a border between them now, and she hates it.
Slowly, he gets better. Slowly, he is reintroduced to their world, and Isabelle feels more relieved each day.
Sometimes it doesn't feel like enough. The demons in her mind are hard to ward off without him, some days.
Jace's thumb slides over her knuckles, a silent sign of support, and she accepts that she's a little crazy. She's crazy, kind of, but Jace is there. Her mom is there. Luke is there. Isabelle and Alec and Magnus and so many others are there. So being crazy shouldn't matter.
- six -
What is madness but an escape from reality?
What are demons but the doubts inside your own mind?
What are angels, really, but instruments of goodness, the constructs created to drive back the darkness?
Clary looks around their bedroom, hers and Jace's, and she knows.
She's finally all gone.
She laughs, because what else is there to do? Everything is over now, everything is done. Madness and monsters and doubts and perception and fundamentals are all just chains, really, and she's too insane to care. She's too insane to care that they are finally at peace, a year after things have quieted down. She's out there, in the realm known only by god and daydreams, and life is over just like everything else.
The light glows beneath her lashes, she thinks, as she feels herself slipping. There's a knife in her hands, dripping with regrets, and she doesn't quite know how it got there, only that a fire is spreading through her gut somehow.
It prickles, a little.
It burns, but if she squints, maybe it can be mistaken for pleasurable.
Jace jumps out of their bed, horrified, tears streaming down his face as he strokes her hair and examines the wound. His fingertips come away red.
"Stay with me, Clary, please be alright," he states desperately, grappling around the room for something that would help. He's a fumbling, bumbling mess, an absolute wreck unlike usual.
"I love you," she slurs, smiling at him. She would like to go out smiling, after all.
Then the light behind her lashes grows brighter, softer, like the warmth of the sun is hidden in them, and she reaches for that light.
Clary Fray is no more.
.
. .
. . . then she is ripped apart.
- one -
Clary awakens to the face of Magnus, crouched over her form with worry in his knit brow. She awakens to her mother, tears streaming down her face in concern and sadness. She awakens to Simon and Isabelle and Alec, stand by her bed like the most loyal of friends. Jace, sitting in the corner, looks sewn apart, even more so when he sees she's awake.
She's awake to a second chance, a new day, one without the danger and depth she's become accustomed to. It's finally complete, she realizes, and she grins without any of her demonic madness.
She's awake, and for the first time since meeting the shadowhunters, Clary Fray feels as though the world is sane again.
It is.
Life is good.