Hey everyone! This is my first Shadowhunters story and I'm not really sure how the fanfic base is for the fandom but I'm just trying it out. This story is an AU that will contain spoilers for the season so far so if you haven't watched it I wouldn't read this. It begins basically after they free the angel from Valentine's chains.
Also want to put it out there that while this show has very quickly become my favourite, I still haven't read the books. So the story is based of the TV show. If I get stuff wrong it's based on limited information. At this point I'm making stuff up as I go along to work with the plot. Feel free to tell me if I have incorrect information or if things I write are mostly right except for a few details! But even so it is AU so things may be fine even though they don't directly follow the series.
Lastly, this story will likely just be a two-shot, and I will be posting it on Ao3 as well under the same pen name. Please enjoy and review!
Where are you? We have a mission.
The text rings through Clary's phone like a deafening reminder that she couldn't just have a normal day to just... exist. She hasn't had time to really grieve over losing her mother, she hasn't exactly made up her mind about how she feels about Jace (how she's supposed to feel and how she does feel are entirely different points). She hasn't even really found the time to look in to her new ability to create runes that didn't before exist.
All she wanted was to be at home, in her apartment, with her mom and Luke - Simon, too, scarfing a huge plate of chicken cacciatore.
Instead, she's at the pack's den by the pier, hanging out in the restaurant, staring blankly at the walls. She doesn't know what to do about Valentine. Every time she thinks they're making headway on him, she finds herself back to the drawing board.
She sighs. At Luke's. On my way.
She stands up and hugs Luke firmly, not wanting to leave. "I'll see you around," she promises. "Gotta go be a Shadowhunter." She drops her shoulders as she sees herself out and she calls Alec.
He picks up almost instantly. "Yeah," he answers.
"I'm on my way back to the Institute now," she informs him.
"Actually, no, meet us in the alley way half a block from the Hotel DuMort," Alec tells her instead. "Izzy isn't joining us this time. She doesn't know."
Clary chuckles. "You're keeping a secret from your sister? That's unlike you."
"She needs help," he explains. "I'll explain more when we meet you but she got a hold of yin fen somehow and I don't know how."
"You're going to have to tell me what that is, too because I have no idea," she replies, heading south towards the downtown area.
"Right." You can practically hear the eyeroll. They hang up then and Clary makes her way to the meeting point.
Clary likes walking the streets of New York at night because it's beautifully lit up and she can pretend - if even only for a moment - that she is that eighteen year-old girl that roadied for Rock Solid Panda when they were Champagne Enema. And the same girl who would regularly hit up bars with a fake ID. Her life was so easy. So... mundane. What she wouldn't give to taste that old life again. Since she met Jace and decided that him being an abrasive asshole wasn't okay and followed him inside Pandemonium, her life has flipped on its axis. Suddenly her best friend is undead, her mom is really dead, and her father isn't dead. There's nothing right about the whole situation.
She turns a few corners and nears the alleyway. She wonders briefly what yin fen is and why it's so disturbing that Izzy has it. She wonders if Alec will ever recover from killing her mom. She wonders if Jace will ever confront what's bothering him. Her mind takes very complicated paths to get a single coherent thought sometimes.
She gets to the alley and uses her stele to activate her invisibility rune, so she doesn't look like a random girl hiding in the dark to pedestrians as they walk by. She leans on a wall, the brick terribly uncomfortable but also not caring. She checks her phone periodically for a message from Alec - or Jace, even. Eleven minutes past the meeting time she begins to worry. Alec is always on time. There has literally not been a time since meeting him where he has failed to be on time for anything.
She checks her phone once more as Alec runs around the corner in to alley, taking her by surprise. She jumps a little. "Alec, what took you so long? Everything okay?"
He nods and catches his breath. "Jace wouldn't come. I tried to pry him off a Seelie but neither of them were interested in becoming unglued no matter what I said." He huffs. "You and I will just have to do this."
She nods, uncomfortable knowing that Jace is hooking up with random girls. She shakes her head and starts to walk off out of the alley. "What are we going to the Hotel DuMort for?"
"The mission," Alec says awkwardly.
She turns around to give him the stink eye but suddenly his hands are around her neck and are pinning her to the brick wall. "A-Alec, what the hell?" she chokes out. She never truly understood his strength until this moment - until her life was literally in his hands.
He keeps pushing her hands to her side and away from her throat. She tries to gasp in a panic and he just chuckles while she begins to flail beneath his grip.
""Al-Ale-c" she breaths. She can see the whites behind her eyes but does her damnedest to fight him. She gets a small kick in which only appears to aggravate him more and as she reaches for her stele he rips it from her hands and pitches it down the alley. Alec then takes her seraph blade and drops it a few feet away, too far out of reach. "A-Al," she tries. She can't form the words properly so settles on a desperate, "please," before her body gives way and she falls unconcious.
He lets her sink to cold ground and he stands over her. "You're just a distraction," he spits. He suddenly shifts in to an entirely different person - an older man with the mark of the Circle. He crouches over her body and speaks, venom in his voice. "Valentine is too hung up on trying to get you and that Wayland kid to join the Circle. He has the Cup and isn't using it to its full potential." He tucks a strand of Clary's hair behind her ear. "There's a pretty little reward in the form of a pardon from your daddy's wrath if you're returned to him unharmed. That was the goal. But you and your little Shadowhunter friends keep getting in the way of the Downworlders. Rumor has it that there's an alliance forming between everyone to just off you the second they see you." He smirks. "The way I see it, if I just kill you now, Valentine will be too busy trying to find the Downworlder responsible and his guard will be down so we can make our move on the Cup. I used to be his biggest ally. But then I was turned in to a demon during a mission and completely exhiled from the Circle. This will be my revenge."
He lays Clary on her back then and picks up her seraph blade a few feet away. It doesn't activate as he anticipates but he knows that it'll do exactly what he needs it to. He turns the hilt of the blade to the sky and carefully angles himself away. Then he takes both of her hands, limp at her side, and wraps them around the handle of the blade. In an instant, it activates and the blade is thrust directly in to her stomach. Clary's body seizes for a moment and stills again.
Just then, Alec - the real Alec comes around the corner in a flurry and sees the demon hovering over Clary. His heart stops but his bow and quiver are out in an instant and an arrow is shot through the ex-Circle member's skull. He is incinerated and disappears in to the air.
Alec runs to Clary and checks for a pulse and finds one, albeit dangerously slow. He takes out his cell phone and calls Magnus. "Magnus, I don't have time to explain," he practically shouts. "I need you to open a portal where I am that takes me to the Institute and I need you there when I get there, it's an emergency!"
No questions asked, a brilliant shade of purple appears in front of Alec and a portal is formed. He picks up Clary, unsure about what to do with the seraph blade firmly lodged in her abdomen, and rushes through the portal, praying to whoever the hell is out there that she doesn't get stuck in limbo. He hopes that since she doesn't know she's going through it she can't become displaced by the magic.
He steps out of the portal in to the command center of the Institute and is met by a round of blood-curdling screams and gasps. "Help," he bellows. Magnus portals in just then and is at Alec's side in an instant, completely taken aback by what he sees. In all his hundreds of years, he's never, not once, seen a Shadowhunter stabbed by his or her own weapon.
A few people come running to their sides and try to get her on to a gurney. Frantically, Alec tries to stop the bleeding around her wound but it's no use. "Magnus," he whispers, while the others rush Clary to the infirmary. Magnus halts in his tracks to turn to Alec. "The seraph blade is designed to destroy it's target. Why didn't it tear Clary apart?"
"I don't know Alexander. Perhaps because it's made of angel blood, and Shadowhunters have angel blood." He takes Alec's hand. "I have to get in there and check it out." Alec nods and starts to go after the others but Magnus stops him. "You need to get cleaned up. And then you need to find Jace. We need all the brain power we can get." Alec hesitates but eventually nods before walking to his chambers.
Magnus scurries after the others and uses his magic to conjure appropriate clothing for an emergency procedure as his casual warlock garb wouldn't suffice in times like these.
"Okay," he starts. "I want this seraph blade out and run for testing faster than a New York minute and I want to know exactly everything about it down to the last residual microfiber left on it. I need the rest of you using your steles to activate her healing rune - I don't think that will work but I just need it to keep her at bay without her being at risk of dying before I have a chance to look at her myself." He conjures a phial and syringe. "I need to test her blood to look for any unusual properties that may explain why the seraph blade didn't vaporize her and instead seemed to freeze in her body."
Alec rushes through his shower at a record pace and, using his parabatai bond with Jace, locates him to be at the Downworlder bar still - where he left him less than half an hour ago when he refused to come on the mission.
He thanks his lucky stars that the place is only minutes on foot from the Institute and barges in there like it was his job to break doors. He finds Jace in the corner like before and doesn't wait to drop it on him. "You need to come now. This isn't a joke - this an emergency. With Clary. She's on the verge of death."
Jace stops abruptly and jumps up from the group of Seelies that were hanging on him. "What do you mean, 'verge of death', Alec," he demands lowly.
"I mean an ex-Circle member demon used the fact that Clary is a Shadowhunter to stab her with her own seraph blade and no one knows what's going to happen now except that it's in her stomach - still activated even though she isn't touching it. It's still glowing. She's hardly breathing, Jace."
The two of them are out the door in in an instant - Jace doesn't even so much as look back at the group of half naked women pining for him. The guys glamour themselves and take off down the streets in a sprint, wordlessly. Alec feels helpless and Jace grows increasingly pissed off with himself for not coming on the mission.
In maybe five minutes, they storm the institute and beeline for the infirmary.
Alec squeezes in first and is at Magnus's side. "How is she, what do you know?" he demands. Jace rushes to Clary and holds her hand, eyes locked on her wound.
Magnus swallows deeply and looks to them both. "I found something I haven't seen in all my hundreds of years. I, uh, didn't even know it was possible."
"What did you find, Magnus?" Jace stands and approaches him carefully.
"Clary has angel blood," Magnus answers lowly.
"Wait, I don't understand," Alec interjects, "we all have angel blood. We're Shadowhunters."
"Yes, Alexander, you're right. But Clary... she has pure angel blood."
"What does that mean?" Jace grows weary.
"I don't know exactly," Magnus admits. "It means that she is even more special than any of us realized. It means that the weapons designed for Shadowhunters are more potent when she uses them. It means-" he stops abruptly. "Oh no," he runs to the blood sample on the counter in the corner.
"What?" Jace and Alec demand in unison, following him.
"Clary has pure angel blood," Magnus says in a low whisper.
"Yeah, we've established that," Jace complains, annoyed. "What's your point?"
"Only angels can activate the Soul-Sword because of their blood."
Jace and Alec look at each other and in the next second Jace's fist creates a hole in the wall of the infirmary. "Damn it," he yells.
"Valentine wants Clary so she can activate it for him," Alec infers. Magnus only nods. "Okay but that doesn't explain this attack. If he needs Clary for the Soul-Sword, why sanction an attack on her life when he needs her alive?"
"He didn't," Jace replies, wincing over his hand. "You said he was a demon."
"Right, but he had the Circle rune on his neck, too. Magnus, how is that possible? I didn't really stop to think about it before I killed him."
"There are stories," Magnus explains. "But I didn't know they were true. Valentine sometimes would send independent parties out to hunt demons and Downworlders - just one or two people at a time - and most of the time they returned. But when they did, they were almost always newly turned in to whatever they were hunting. Valentine figured that if you let yourself get turned then you weren't loyal to the Circle. His mentality was that if you didn't win, you didn't fight hard enough. They would always be exhiled. He would let them go free so long as they didn't return, because he knew they'd be killed by his people anyway."
"I still don't understand why the Circle, demon, whatever, would try to kill Clary when Valentine wants her alive," Jace wonders. He hisses when his hand starts to hurt again and Magnus approaches him with his hands outstretched to heal it. "Thanks. Wouldn't he want to bring Clary to Valentine in an effort to redeem himself?"
Alec stands over Clary's still body, feeling indescribably guilty. "Not exactly," Magnus whispers.
"What do you mean?"
The warlock sort of evades their gazes and retreats to a corner of the room and sits down before explaining. "There's a bounty throughout the entire Downworld and demon world alike to kill Clary on sight. I thought it was just because she's Valentine's daughter. It's possible that enough people already know that she has angel blood and are trying to prevent her from touching the Sword. Once she does that, it will annihilate every being with so much as an ounce of demon-blood in their bodies. That includes me, Lucian, Jace."
It gets quiet. "Why didn't you tell us this before? About the bounty?" Alec asks.
"People are literally always after Clary," Magnus reasons. "There isn't enough time in a day for me to list every single person that wants her dead."
"Okay, well explain this," Jace continues, motioning to her lifeless body. "Why is she still like this? Didn't you heal her?"
Magnus sighs. "There were and I'm sure will be even more unforeseen obstacles to my magic. I may be the High Warlock of Brooklyn but there are still limits to what I can do. The blade is out and a few of the people here are examining it in the laboratory downstairs, and I did heal her as much as I can. The issue is that a warlock cannot heal an angel, and even though she is technically half-human, the half that isn't is the part getting in the way. Angels can only be healed by other angels. And I don't know how to work with that."
"Can't we just find an Angel?" Jace suggests.
Magnus deadpans. "I encourage you to find one. Go on, let me see know how that goes."
Jace glares at him. "You know we actually did find one the other day."
"No, Clary found him, with what I assume is an angelic blood bond. You would have a harder time finding one anyway because of the demon blood in your body, I absolutely could not find one, Alec may struggle with such a task because of your parabatai bond, and Izzy is out for the count right now and still would not be of use because of the yin fen."
The room is silent for a minute. Two. Three, until Jace speaks up. "Well then what the hell are we supposed to do, Magnus? We can't just let Clary die."
"My only suggestion is to assemble a team and screen them for any demonic properties in their blood and then get their help. But one of you needs to find Simon and Lucian and explain the situation on our hands and get their help assembling their teams. We'll help inasmuch as we can after we find an angel because we can secure perimeters and use magical Protections if we have to ensure a safe encounter with Clary. But finding one, that will be up to whatever team you bring."
The boys sigh and nod. "Jace, why don't you assemble the team," Alec suggests. "I'll talk to Luke and the vampire. You can stay in the Institute with Clary. I'll see if Izzy's in any shape to help."
Jace nods and Alec kisses Magnus on the cheek, taking him by surprise. "I'll be back," he promises, taking off out of the infirmary.
"I'll be here," Magnus smiles, smitten.