"It's not a weapon, Jace. I can fix it."
xxx
And she try's, she really does, because she is getting tired of being useless herself. She can't fix it. But she can't tell him, can she? Her brother would be disappointed.
So she hides the shattered parts of all that she has left of her mother who she is sure she will never see again, and she cries every night.
She is so broken.
xxx
Fighting was not just part of his life anymore; it was his escape. What that said about him, he wasn't sure. But he knows what makes a good fighter; the slight hope that maybe this time you will get killed. He has known people like that, and he knows he is far better than they were.
Maybe because his hope of death is more than slight.
Death is the only thing that will break him, he likes to think.
But then he looks at the fresh tear tracks on his sisters (bitter pain engulfs him when he thinks this) face each morning and knows that that it isn't.
He is so close to being just like her mothers stele, it scares (and fascinates) him.
xxx
It was a demon. She turns around to see Jace charging at it, weaponless, as the creature backs down from the position it had taken on in readiness to spring on, Clary assumes, her.
Clary wonders why he didn't just wait for Isabelle or Alec to handle it as in shock she watches as he is cut down in mid-air, landing on the ground 30 meters away from her with a dull, hollow thud. She runs to him as Alec kills it with a single arrow.
He is bleeding. She takes out her (new) stele to try to fix him, but he holds up his right arm, and she nearly vomits she's so disgusted. It is hacked, the forearm only hanging on by a thread. When the demon had taken him down, it had used its deadly sharp claw and now Jace was dying...
Isabelle walks up behind her, tears streaming down her face as she bends over and hands Jace a dagger. Clary doesn't understand.
"What...I could...I can fix you, Jace. The Instatute... We could..." He shakes his head slowly at her.
"Broken weapons are useless, every Shadowhunter knows that."
And he plunges the dagger into his heart.
xxx
Isabelle and Alec say words she can't understand, and she cries and cries and cries.
She thought she was broken before?
She had no idea.