He was losing it. It's as simple as that. There's no other way to describe it.

He gripped at his head, kneeling on the floor of the green house, gasping and heaving. The strong scent of plants, greenery, and flowers permeated the muggy, heavy air. His hair was disheveled and held none of it's usual careless grace. It flopped in all the wrong places and stuck up where it didn't normally. His shirt stuck to his back with sweat and his forehead shimmered with it.

Quickly, I darted to his side, searching his face till his gaze found mine. "Jace what's happening? What's the matter?" I asked urgently.

"They're in my head. Telling me to do things. Trying to force me to do what they want. You think I sound crazy but I'm not. I hear it." He said desperately.

"Who? Saying what? Jace, you're not making any since. Tell me what's going on." I tried to keep my voice calm, level, in this state there was no telling what would set him off. "I know you're not crazy, Jace. Well-not like that. I know."

His gaze remained on mine but it seemed to shift in and out of focus. "Valintine, Sebastian, the Seelie Queen. All of them. Clary, I don't know what's going on but- but it's not good. You have to get away from me. It's not safe for you." His voice was a jumbled rush, and I leaned forward as if it would help m understand. He flinched away.

That gave me pause. What was wrong with him? Poison? Sleep deprivation? A curse?

"Jace you of all people should know I'm not good at doing what I'm told. In fact why did you tell me that? You would know that being told what to do does absolutely nothing except give me more ideas."

His face screwed up, confused. This Jace was a very messed up Jace. He wasn't acting right. In that moment, the moment I looked away from him to gather my thoughts I saw a glimmer of something- a flash of reflected light. I ducked backward as Jace swung at me with the knife his father had owned.

The moment after I ducked I did a backward somersault, jumping up and out of it, into a defensive position. In that same moment Jace jumped up, knife at the ready, its blade reflecting menacingly in the fading light. And in that moment I also realized one key fact that saved my life. This was not just a messed up Jace. This was not my Jace.

His face contorted into a very familiar smirk. Sebastian. How had he gotten here? And why the hell did he look like Jace? "Pretty convincing disguise, huh? It took quite a bit of warlock magic. Quite expensive. Though when I payed I wasn't sure it would work. I guess I expected too much of you."

I nearly growled in frustration. Here I was, in my own home- or the closest thing I had to one- and Sebastian had got in under the guise of my boyfriend. "I can't believe you fell for that" He said as though reading my thoughts, laughing as he did so, "They're in my head! Honestly, didn't Jace teach you any better? I can't see why he keeps you around. It's pathetic, really."

Sebastian leapt at me at me, knife slashing once more, but not before I initiated my own brutal attack, all fingernails and bones jutting and scratching and clawing and jabbing. I kicked at his wrist then pulled it at the last minute and gave him a hard upper cut to the jaw. He reeled back as I felt my the skin on the back of my knuckles split. They bled sluggishly but the pain was minimal. "Not going to underestimate me again, are you?" I asked through my teeth.

"That is most certainly right. I won't. Which means, if I were you, I would run now."

He dashed toward me and it was all I could do to blunder out of the way, but not quite in time. He cut a deep slash into my arm and immediately the blood began to flow down my arm, sticky and sickeningly hot.

He flashed forward again, and slashed at my neck. I jumped and he cut a ragged line into my collar bone. No matter how hard I kicked and punched, he acted as though nothing had happened. It became a game of block the more vital parts of my body, and take the blows. I had let him back me into a corner and my body was bloodily paying for it.

Finally, in one last ditch effort I planted one foot on the wall my back was against, my hand on the wall at my side, pushed into the air and forced myself over Sebastian's head and three feet behind him. Mid-air I kicked at the middle of his spine, thanking Jace for the lessons as I did so, and twirled to land on my feet.

Wide eyed he turned, but I didn't wait to see what happened next. I took his advice and ran for it. Down the stairs. It didn't even occur to me that it was a trap. I wish it had.

At the base of the stairs strong arms encircled me, unrelenting and impenetrable. There was no hope for me then.

"Did you get him?" Sebastian asked from the middle of the staircase. My captor, who I could not identify in the dim lighting as the air being was squeezed out of me the way it was.

"Well-no-I mean... Sean is after him now. He told me to come get the girl-" at that I felt him gesture at me with his head, "But I see that that wasn't necessary. You were here all along."

"Yes, well as right as you are, you did make my job easier. Tilt her head back."

My body was a mess of bruises and bloody cuts. It was not clear to me how much blood I was losing, but it was enough to make my head spin and my vision blur. The man holding me did so, yanking on my pony tail and then forcing my mouth open. Of course I fought, struggled, scrambled and pulled but to no avail. Sebastian tipped the contents of a small vial down the back of my throat, giving me no chance to spit it out.

The taste was a mixture of lemon gone bad and over ripe peaches. In other words absolutely awful.

I gagged at the taste and waited. Waited for something to happen. Sebastian nodded at the man holding me who swiftly issued a well placed kick the the back of my knee effectively sending me sprawling. I hadn't the strength to get up, but it quite obviously wasn't whatever it was he had poured down my throat. I was fatigued from fighting and blood loss, but that seemed to be the extend of my issues.

What had he given me? What would it do? And why wasn't it doing anything? It had clearly been made for something...

Suddenly the sound of footsteps- at least three or four pairs- storming up the stairs reached our ears. Sebastian and his cohort flew up the staircase, most likely to escape from the roof, or out one of the numerous windows of the green house.

Isabelle's concerned face swam into view above me just before my blood loss turned into the hazy nothingness I learned to associate with unconsciousness. "Jace! I found her! She's right here! I think she's fine, but she'll need an iratze or two."

The footsteps quickened. I tried to stay awake. I had to tell Jace about-about what had just happened but I couldn't move my mouth and my eyes wouldn't stay open and-

Nothing. Just black nothing. I hadn't had time to do so much as blink my eyes, let alone tell him. And what a shame it was. All that pain could have been so easily avoided, as we later found out. The cure, oddly enough, wasn't that rare, or difficult. It was quite simple.

A/N: This was written as an afterthought and request to the first chapter, as an explanation. It's based somewhere in the third book, City of Glass, before they know who Sebastian really is (If you haven't gotten past that, sorry!) and in between when they are in Alicante. Assume they went back to gather the forces for the demon battle and THIS HAPPENED. please review and if you have and request, be sure to submit them. This will have at least one other chapter. We'll see how far it goes. Thanks!