"Come on, it's perfectly safe," Jace reassured the next day. She might have felt soothed, except his voice was strained from holding back laughter.

"I swear you've got like, a demon hiding in the engine or something," she informed him grouchily. He'd apparently woken up with the impression that she really ought to learn how to ride one of their motorcycles, since obviously there was no other way to get around efficiently besides walking, and announced this over breakfast. None of the other inhabitants of the Institute had seen anything wrong with this, so there they were out on the curb.

Jace snorted. "Please. I have several."

She glared, pulling on gloves worn with use. "Reassuring much?"

"You have me, I'm right here," he laughed. "I'm not gonna let you wreck my baby."

"And here I was hoping you'd say you weren't going to let me get hurt," she rolled her eyes, throwing her leg over the leather seat.

"That too." His voice took on a much different quality as he crouched next to her, eyes lighting up in the way they did whenever he was explaining something. In the bright morning, the sunlight cast the same effect on them as they would a shot of whiskey, illuminating their amber depths so they glowed. Her fingers twitched with the sudden urge to paint him as he was now, in cream and copper.

"…Clary, are you listening to me?"

She blinked rapidly. "Um. No."

Jace's shoulders slumped dramatically as he sighed before getting on the bike behind her, arms bracketing her as he grasped the handlebars. "The thing about motorcycles," he practically hummed in her ear, "is that you have to be smooth. Think smooth. Gentle. It's not like in the movies, you know."

She tensed as his hand came to wrap around hers, delicately maneuvering her wrist. "Shh, relax. So your right hand has both the acceleration and the brakes, right here. You want to twist your wrist gently, see, like this. Gently, I said. The lever here's for your front brakes, you use two fingers. There you go. Don't yank too hard, or you'll crash. Your right foot," he tapped her knee lightly, and she forced back a shiver, "has the back brake. You mostly use your front brakes, but we'll be going at low speed later, so you'll be using the back ones today. You following me?"

After a half an hour of stationary instruction, he'd finally persuaded her to try actual movement. "I… I don't know about this," she let out a small yelp as the bike growled and lurched underneath them, sliding forward.

"Relax, you're a natural," Jace said somewhere above her head, sounding proud. She could feel the rumbling rise and fall of his voice in her ribcage. "See? This isn't so bad."

She considered it as they cruised along the empty street. "You're right, it's really not that bad…" Clary gave the throttle an experimental tweak.

"Clary, are you sure –" His question was lost in the wind as the bike surged onward, her hair whipping around her in brilliant tendrils the color of scrubbed pennies as stores and buildings went by in a glorious blur, Jace's hands warm around hers.

It took her a moment to realize they were both laughing.

"Come on, Clary, turn left, we have to go back now," Jace's amused voice eventually filtered down to her.

She obeyed, albeit reluctantly, swinging the bike back down the curve of the street back to the church that was their sanctuary. "You never told me this was so much fun," she said accusingly as the bike came to a shuddering stop.

Without seeing him, she could tell he was rolling his eyes skyward as he hopped gracefully off the motorcycle. "Is this the same girl who was telling me over breakfast she was afraid she'd die a violent and flaming death if she even got on a motorcycle, let alone ride it? Do we have a growing thrill-seeker on our hands?"

"I'm not the one who goes charging into danger because it's exciting," she retorted. "In fact, I think you've corrupted me." Clary laughed, her legs shaking with residual adrenaline. She swung her leg off the motorcycle, but her knee clipped the top of the seat ungracefully.

Clary stumbled, and somehow she was in his arms, and he was kissing her.

His eyes were widened in surprise inches from her own, as if he'd never meant for it to happen, but his lips were moving against hers hard enough to bruise, and he'd reached up a hand to cup her jaw lightly in callused fingers that skated across her skin with infinite tenderness. He tasted like the maple syrup from the morning's pancakes and something salty-sweet and distinctively Jace.

She closed her eyes after that, because it was too much; too much as he made a noise of pleasant surprise when she daringly darted her tongue over his lower lip, too much as his teeth nipped at hers in playful retaliation. Too much as she tugged her gloves off hastily to discover if the curls at the back of his neck really felt like silk between her fingers, like she'd always thought, too much as his lips found and lingered by her pulse and her breathing hitched as her entire body trembled like the strings of a violin under his touch for a reason that had nothing to do with blisteringly fast motorcycle rides.

"We really shouldn't be doing this," Jace murmured as they pulled apart for breath.

She smiled. "You're right, Izzy would never let us live it down," Clary agreed against his lips, instinctively reaching out to pull him closer, but he didn't laugh like she expected.

"No, really." The warmth of his arms around her waist suddenly disappeared. "I'm sorry, Clary."

She scrunched her eyebrows in confusion. "Wait, what's wrong?"

All the light in him seemed to have faded as he looked down at her. "Another time, another place, maybe. But it won't work out. We can barely manage to live as it is, let alone work out – whatever it is we have."

"We're living on borrowed time already," Clary pointed out, crossing her arms. "Shouldn't that be incentive instead?"

He smiled wearily. "If the world hadn't ended, we never would have met."

"Are you saying that if things had been normal, we'd never be even interested in each other?" she spat out incredulously. "Jace, don't you care about me at all?"

"More than you know," he shook his head, leaning over to brush a flyaway strand of hair on her cheek. She resisted the urge to lean into his touch. "Please, Clary, don't make this harder than it is on me. Please."

Furious and confused, she tilted her head up to meet his gaze. "Forgive me, then," she bit out icily, "for being such a burden to you."

Ignoring the look in his eyes, she turned around and stomped away, slamming the doors of the church behind her.

They avoided each other as much as possible over the next couple of weeks. In their group of seven, it was surprisingly simple – especially when Jace seemed as hell-bent as staying as far away from her as possible as she was, training with Alec and apparently becoming new best friends with Jordan.

She'd thought she'd been doing a pretty good job at hiding her tumultuous feelings about the whole affair until Magnus had leaned over her shoulder as she read on the living room sofa after dinner and whispered, "Lovers' spat?"

A red line had appeared on her thumb where she'd sliced the skin as she turned the page abruptly. "Um… I have no idea what you're talking about."

Magnus' catlike eyes had narrowed slowly. "Hmm," he'd nodded, with that air that made him look so much older and wiser than his nineteen years, "no, you apparently don't." His lips had twitched thoughtfully as he looked over in front of the fire they'd recently started getting in the habit of lighting, as the heating unit had coughed and died a week ago.

She had followed his line of sight. Jace had apparently pestered and badgered the usually stoic Alec until the other boy had finally snapped and they were tussling good-naturedly on the threadbare rug like overgrown puppies. The firelight had brought out the brilliancy of Jace's hair, and his eyes, as they had met hers for the brief flash of a second, were bright with laughter, before they had darkened slightly as he registered her gaze.

She had turned away, swallowing hard. "It's… complicated."

Given the fact that she had been trying her hardest to not pay attention to his comings and goings, she hadn't noticed that Jace and Alec were even gone the other day until they never showed up for dinner.

"They're probably just off fiddling with the bikes or something," Izzy had written it off, shrugging casually.

"Or, you know, avoiding your cooking," Jordan had mumbled in an undertone as Maia chuckled quietly, elbowing her boyfriend into silence at Isabelle's glare.

They hadn't shown up an hour after dinner, unabashedly grinning with smudges of grease on their hands and faces, proclaiming their ravenous hunger.

They hadn't shown up two hours later, either.

Uneasy, Clary had gone upstairs and found her sketchpad, balancing it on her knees. Her sketches were a contained world onto themselves, tiny, controllable facsimiles of the real thing, simplified down to lines and shape, perspective and the many shades between black and white. She had focused on the creamy ivory of the blank page, losing herself shading the brindle coat of an enormous wolf.

Her pencil had gone veering off the page as Isabelle screamed.

" – you did what?!" Isabelle had been screeching as she'd run into the sanctuary.

Alec and Jace had been leaning heavily on each other. At first that was all she'd seen, just the two best friends, arms around each other's shoulders, standing just in front of the doors, as if Izzy had stopped them as they walked in.

And then she'd noticed the blood dripping onto the floor.

Clary had looked up and found the shadows she had written off as being cast by their dark clothing were bruises blooming across collarbones and cheekbones, networking across skin that was paler than usual, the way they had been leaning not out of affection, but more like the only things keeping them from falling to the floor were each other. Alec had shifted his weight completely onto his left side, right foot dangling off the ground with an air that on anyone else would have looked casual, and Jace had been holding his arm strangely, his shoulder stiff.

He must have seen the look on her face somehow, because he had smiled lopsidedly – she tried not to wince at how this revived a cut on his lip – and hastily said, "Don't worry, most of the blood's not ours."

Isabelle had made a delicate scoffing noise. "Most?"

"What – what the hell did you do?" Clary had demanded, once she had regained her voice.

"A building may or may not have fallen on us," Jace had admitted, as the both of them started hobbling towards the kitchen.

Alec had been biting his lip so fiercely it was a wonder he hadn't broken the skin yet. "Don't look at me like that, Izzy, it was obviously not my idea."

"You let him do it anyway," Isabelle had hissed, but she'd helped them over the threshold anyway.

Her cry had apparently roused the entire household, however, as Magnus and a bedraggled Maia and Jordan were arriving with strangled noises of horror. The dinner dishes had been immediately swept away under a tide of bowls of hot water and towels, piles of fresh bandages and dishes of some Oriental herbal poultice Magnus insisted on making. It had been beginning to smell like a hospital before Alec had snapped that they were indeed, despite all evidence to the contrary, not mortally wounded, and the best thing in mind for all of them was sleep.

Except, of course, two hours later, she couldn't sleep. She'd felt the restlessness climbing up her spine as she'd padded up the stairs and down the hallway to her bedroom, had sensed the familiar ghost of insomnia was perching on her shoulder, but she'd tried in vain as she curled into her blankets. There, she'd tossed and turned until eventually, she slid out of bed, curling her toes at the coolness of the hardwood floor.

Clary crossed the room, slipping out hallway and shutting the door quietly behind her. Light from the ancient sconces set into the wall illuminated her way as she lightly padded down the hallway.

Her feet stopped as if of their own accord in front of a familiar door, and she almost laughed at the irony, remembering a night that had been broken with a panel of yellowish light glimmering across her bed. Bracing herself, she opened the door, entered, and shut it quickly.

"Jace?"

He was awake instantly, she saw, the flicker of metal shining in his hand. "Can I talk to you?"

"Clary?" The knife clattered back onto the bedstand. "Yeah. Sit down."

She perched lightly on the edge of the mattress obediently. He struggled to a sitting position, letting out a barely audible hiss as he moved. "You – you didn't take any painkillers?"

He chuckled in the dark. "No. I have a very high pain threshold. You know that."

She did. She also knew he was much too proud and stubborn to take anything even if he was in pain. Her hair skimmed her bare shoulders as she shook her head in frustration. "God, you're such an idiot."

Even if she couldn't quite see him, she could feel him raising a sardonic eyebrow in the blackness. "You came here in the middle of the night to insult me?"

"Yes!" The answer rang out before she could stop herself. "No. I don't know. Just – what on earth happened?"

He shrugged, moonlight clipping the one good shoulder as it lifted casually. "I don't go looking for danger, it just finds me." She made a dubious noise, and he chuckled again. "I just have this magnetism, you know." His tone turned serious. "If you have to know, Alec and I were checking out an abandoned building for more survivors. We thought we heard someone calling for help."

"Alone?" Now it was her turn to raise her eyebrows incredulously. "What were you thinking?"

"It looked fine," he said dismissively. "And it was. Really. Until the building collapsed. Must have been too old. Couldn't handle me, I guess."

Clary scoffed. "I don't believe you." Her hands clutched the blanket convulsively. "I really don't. You're crazy."

"It really wasn't that bad –"

"It was!" She cut him off, not caring how her voice raised angrily. "I can't believe you're joking about this! You could have died."

He was quiet for a few seconds. "Clary," he started, and if it had been anyone else, she would have sworn he was almost hesitant. "Clary, why are you crying?"

"I'm not."

"You sound near tears." His voice gentled. "Come here."

Reluctantly she slid closer. He leaned forward, his breath ghosting over her cheeks. "Clarissa, why are you crying?"

She couldn't take it any longer. She reached out, the lines of his jaw firm under her palms, and pulled him to her, slanting her mouth over his.

Almost automatically his lips softened against hers, his hand climbing up to pull her hair of its ponytail, slender pianist's fingers twining in the curls before they paused.

"Clary," he panted against her lips, "I told you we shouldn't do this."

She shook her head vehemently. "I don't care," she growled, "I don't care, I don't care if you think this is crazy, because that's what we are, and I don't care if you think we can't make this work, because we can. I'm tired of holding back, Jace. I'm tired of pretending that I don't care about you."

He was the one that surged against her at that, but it was still too gentle, still too restrained. She pushed back with everything that she has, every single ounce, biting down hard and licking away the copper taste of blood.

Clary wished she could see him, but even in the blackness his eyes were glowing like embers and she could spend her rest of her life watching how they were darkening into deep amber, slivers of gold around enormous pupils. He kissed her hard enough to bruise, all clacking teeth and tongue, and suddenly it was war as she fisted her hands in the soft material of his shirt, feeling much too far away. The heat of his body was a siren's lure, the racing rhythm of his heart under her hands intoxicating as his breath slid over her skin. He planted open-mouthed kisses with just enough suction to drive her absolutely mad along her jaw and down the side of her neck with devastating precision, but she smirked in short-lived triumph as he gasped when she tugged just so on his curls at the back of his head. The way he whispered her name into the dimple above her collarbone after he nipped it is the best song she'd ever heard, and if the fingers digging the skin two inches above her hipbones left bruises in the morning, she'd wear them proudly.

He pressed a smirk into her skin as she arched under his touch, but then she was suddenly aware of his teeth flashing white in the dark in a grimace. She reached out, tracing his cheekbones lightly and humming in concern as he leaned into her touch. "You really ought to sleep," she whispered, sliding off his lap.

"Since when have I ever done what I ought to do?" he murmured obstinately, but obediently laid down anyways. "Stay with me?"

She curled into his side, pressing her lips chastely to his jaw. "I'll stay as long as you want."

He turned slowly to face her, resting on his good shoulder. "Does this mean you forgive me for earlier."

"Shut the hell up, Herondale," she snapped in a whisper, nestling so the top of her head fit under his chin. His arms wrapped around her lazily. "I'm sure you can think of ways to make it up to me."

He chuckled into her hair. "Challenge accepted, Fray," he said lightly. She smiled before yawning. "Goodnight, Clary."

The next week passed by in an euphoric blur.

Jace turned out, rather predictably, to be the worst patient ever, insisting on getting out of bed the very next day, much to her own chagrin. However, since he wasn't exactly seriously wounded, nobody really minded. Even more embarrassingly, they didn't really seem to mind when Magnus caught them kissing in the library two days later.

He had merely winked and said, "I knew it," before stalking out with some rather rude comments about preserving the integrity of age-old books.

"You're awful," she had informed Jace afterwards, smoothing down her ruffled hair.

Jace had merely put on his most innocent expression, looking just about as angelic as a lamb, were it not for the smirk. "Hey, I was reading. It's not my fault you jumped me in the library."

"God, you're lucky you're cute," she'd griped, rolling her eyes skyward.

He had tugged her over to him by the waist. "I am not cute. Witty, yes. Clever, yes. Handsome, yes. Cute? No."

Clary had given him an exasperated look. "You're ridiculous."

"You wouldn't have it any other way," he'd laughed, kissing the corner of her mouth until she had finally given in and smiled.

Outside, as winter neared, the undead grew by the day, the city she'd spent her whole life in decaying and crumpling slowly like the massive skyscrapers were made of children's construction paper. But it was hard not to think of the Institute, their personal sanctuary, as a whole other world altogether, the greenhouse flowers and vegetables blooming under Magnus' surprisingly watchful eye, Maia and Jordan on the most ridiculous bookstore raids to find Isabelle simple cookbooks. Even taciturn Alec had warmed towards her somewhat, his dry sense of humor appearing more often than not.

Not to mention the last thing she saw every night and the first thing she saw every morning was a pair of mischievous golden eyes.

She was drawing late one night, lying on her stomach in Jace's bed, sketching as he lay in front of her, reading Dante's Inferno, their legs lazily tangled together, when she realized the feeling that was rising in her chest so often now was contentment. She was happy, she realized, happy in this huge labyrinthine church-that-wasn't-a-church, happy even when the world had ended, because life had kept going on. Happy, because she loved him.

"You're staring at me," Jace observed, not even glancing up from his page. "Why are you staring at me?"

Clary stretched across to press her lips to his, loving the way his body tensed in pleasant surprise and he blinked rapidly the way a swimmer blinks when he's rising out of the waves, book forgotten as he kissed her back slowly, languidly, comfortably. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

When the soles of her boots had given out running from yet another overrun grocery store, they went on a raid looking for a new pair.

It was the two of them, walking through the slush and snow. For the first time this year, she had been dismayed to find it snowing, as had the rest of the Institute's inhabitants – winter meant less food to stretch around the seven of them, less warmth, and the necessity of more raids even as most of their original gathering places had become new dens for the undead.

She entered the mall, shivering only slightly in her layers of sweaters and scarves, and headed straight for the shoe stores with the same nonchalance she would have shown had the place been glowing with neon and florescent lights and bustling with people like it once had been. How times have changed, she thought drily, peering through the darkened store for combat boots in her size.

"I never understood why women liked shoes so much," Jace remarked wryly, twirling his gunblade around a finger absent-mindedly.

"Don't you find heels sexy?" she huffed, sliding a box one of the higher shelves and trying them on. Perfect.

"Depends on the girl wearing them," he shrugged before tensing. "Clary."

"Yeah?" She looked up from tying the laces, tossing her bangs out of her eyes. "I love this pair. It's so comfortable."

He was tensed, coiled like a cobra, weight shifted to the balls of his feet as he bent his knees slightly. "That's good, because we have to go."

Clary walked out of the store slowly, coming to stand next to him. They were gathered in the shadows on the upper floor, shuffling down the steps of the spiraling stairs she'd once found so charming. If their faces had still been capable of expression, she would have called the look in their eyes something between predatory glee and naked hunger.

"Run!" He took her hand and they galloped for the exit, leaping through the open doors and careening down the street.

Jace was working up a steady stream of curses as they zigzagged through. "I swear that place was clean when we went there yesterday, they're growing far too fast for my liking, fuck it, why didn't we take the bikes?"

They climbed up the rattling metal fence at the end of an alley, her feet stinging with the impact through the soles of her new boots as they jumped down on the other side, the zombies coming up against the wirework, their moans of protest rising up towards the gray sky.

"They're stuck back there. We're fine." she sagged against a brick wall to catch her breath. "Mmm, now I want a hot shower."

He laughed, sending a billow of curling white into the air. "Is that an invitation, Clary?" Jace slung an arm around her shoulder as they picked their way out of the alley and back onto the street.

She bumped her shoulder against his side teasingly. "Hey, last time we did that, Izzy almost caught us. In fact, I think she knew. You have no idea how many of weird looks I got from her when we were cooking dinner."

He shrugged. "We're doing her a favor, though, really. Water conservation and all that. Plus, it's not like she says anything to Maia and Jordan."

Her peal of laughter quickly transformed into a scream as a zombie lurched out of a side-alley she hadn't even noticed, its mouth gaping wide.

Jace was already leaping forward, gunblade slashing through dull flesh, the brilliant metal of the dagger obscured in blackish blood. He didn't have to tell her to run as he took her hand, the both of them firing into the crowd that was spilling out into the street.

They bolted, flying down the pavement and down yet another side-alley. A year ago she'd have never made it, but now she was stomping through the refuse of an overturned trash bin, navigating the twisting turns with confidence.

"Keep going, keep going," Jace panted behind her before she vaulted over a low brick wall. They hurdled through a series of long-abandoned yards, streaking through the weeds that were choking rose bushes that had probably been someone's pride and joy, climbing arduously up a fire escape. She jumped off a small store's roof and rolled onto the top of a trash bin, heart pounding in her chest as she crawled out and headed down the alley that she knew would lead home.

"Jace, we made it, we made it," she panted, leaning forward to place hands on knees. "Jace?"

Clary turned around slowly. "God, Jace, you better watch out, even I'm outrunning you now," she teased, coming up to him.

He recoiled as soon as she got within three feet. Pausing in surprise, she looked up to find his gaze steely. "Don't get any closer."

Jace's hands were flexing at his sides uneasily. A thin rivulet of scarlet was twining down his wrists like a streak of her own paint, staining his fingers slowly.

"No," she shook her head vehemently. "No."

His shoulders had lost their usual proud, upright line. "I don't know when it happened." She heard what he really meant. I don't know how long I have.

She forced a weak smile. "Jace, don't be ridiculous, it could just be from falling off that roof, or, or, or – "

" – I know what it is. Trust me," his voice was so, so quiet. She didn't want quiet, she wanted his obnoxious comments, she wanted his explosive laughter vibrating in her bones, she wanted his sarcasm, anything but this stillness.

She held out her hand for his gunblade. "At least let me do it."

Jace retreated, jerking back as if hurt. "No," he gave her a bitter smile. "This is one thing you cannot do for me. When you kill someone you care about, they haunt you, waking or sleeping, forever. I would never wish that on you."

"Who says I wouldn't want that?" she whispered in a breath.

He looked at her. "Oh, Clary."

She'd always loved the way he said her name, the hard c, the singsong of the two syllables. Sometimes he made it sound like a war cry, urgent and angry and far away, like she was a lighthouse and he was a ship lost at sea, and sometimes it was a teasing warning before his arms wrapped around her as he nuzzled her cheek playfully. Now it was a whisper, a prayer, an "I love you" that should have been whispered in her hair on a moonlit night and now never would be.

"Clary, I want you to do one last thing for me. Will you? Please?"

She bit down on her lip hard. "You know I will."

He smiled. Radiantly, like the way he'd done it a thousand times over at her, as he woke up, his hair mussed and the sunlight in his eyes. "Start running and don't look back. Understand? Don't look back, whatever you do. Promise me."

"I promise." I love you too.

She soaked up the way he looked, in that moment, all flyaway blond curls rumpled by their run, the strong angled lines of his face that she had traced so many times, the way he looked in all black, the way his golden eyes were doing the same thing to her.

His mouth unfurled in one last smirk. "Go on. And don't look back. Remember, Clary."

Not trusting herself to speak, she turned around slowly and started to run.

The gunshot retort echoed in her ears.