A/N: Just a reminder that this series is *very* OOC. Apart from that, I hope you enjoy!

"You're such an ass," Clary seethed, unfiltered anger erupting from her. There were crazed flames behind her eyes, fed by the embarrassment and hatred swelling within her. She'd made sure the door to Ms. Trueblood's office was sealed shut, and that Jace was following her as she walked, beating the carpeted floor with her heels.

And now, she just didn't fucking care. Didn't care that she was overreacting and being vulgar and disrespectful and letting the hot-headed nature of her brain control her. Especially when this random, very hot guy she'd known for zero-point-two seconds was making a fool out of her for no reason.

She could feel the bloody bastard rolling his eyes. "You're mispronouncing 'thank you'," his tone was lathered in sarcasm and arrogance, and all it did was make the anger in her hiss and flood.

A humorless laugh trudged out of her, a discreet snarl tampering with her features. "And what, exactly, should I be thanking you for? Humiliating me in front of myboss?" She was borderline yelling, and could not have been more thankful for the fact that there seemingly weren't any people around. The urge to smear dirt all over Mrs. Trueblood's name came to her easily, but, for the thousandth time, she pressed down on it. God knew who was listening. "Because if so, I'm very sorry to disappoint. And by the way, jackass, the woman hates me so much already, so if you're trying to get me on her bad side—I'm a long-time resident there."

For some reason, the sickeningly bright lights on the ceiling seemed too bright, and the walls were too blank. Her office—which she was hurrying to, because she didn't care about the damn bathroom— was too far away, and the pace at which she was walking was too slow.

She was so tired of this place.

The soft sound of footsteps behind her stopped abruptly, and tide upon gushing tide of frustration raced all through her body. Whirling around, some of her cherry hair falling against her cheeks, she saw that his face was sincerely apologetic, his mouth set in a thin line and his brows drawn together. He winced.

"Look," began Jace carefully. "I'm truly very sorry for my sins, alright. But it would still make my day if you gave me at least a tiny thank you." The not-quite sheepish grin that he boasted was the one thing that prevented the remaining kindness in Clary from dissipating.

"If you're so desperate for my gratitude, then please tell me why I should give it to you."

Sheepish-but-not-quite tore quickly into accomplished. "I'm not desperate per se, just deserving."

She barked a laugh. "Okay chief, whatever you say."

"If it's not obvious enough, I got us both out of there. God, I could feel myself aging in there. And while the walls were crying because she was talking so much, she mentioned something about one of her editors not submitting her papers on time, and that she'd have a word with them…" He smirked a cunning smirk. "Someone with an IQ level of negative forty would be able to figure out that, that lucky editor was you." He noticed how her fingers tightened their grip on the papers in her hand.

"So," she drawled, lifting her brows, "your barely-functioning brain thinks it's okay to ask me if I'm 'alright' and to 'correct you if you've assumed wrongly'?" That phrase pissed her off so much. 'Correct me if I've assumed wrongly.' Was this the fourth century? Who even spoke like that?

Crossing her arms, she threw him a look of disbelief. She remembered when her mother used to give her the same exact look when she was a kid whenever the stupid side of her would barge in.

"I mean, sweetheart, did you see your face?" The smirk she was sure he'd been supressing, finally came out in full force. "I didn't think one person could be so disgusted at once."

"You're saying you're not used to people wearing that same face when they're around you?" She put a hand over her mouth, mock surprise pouring into her eyes.

"You tell me," Jace challenged, stepping towards her and shoving his hands in the pockets of his pants. The over-the-top lighting drowned his face in shadows, and Clary hated it. Hated that he looked so damn good—it drove her insane. She clenched her fists in anger and disappointment. Why did he have to be such an ass? "Did your boss look like she wanted to kill someone while talking to me?"

She huffed, slightly relieved when he stopped a few feet away from her. "Dude, she wants to kill everybody. I'm sure you'll get to that stage in your . . . relationship with her one day. Like, you're already calling her Maryse, who knows where this would go?"

A small chuckle rolled out of him, smugness sprayed all over him like perfume. "Wouldn't you like to know," he muttered, loud enough for her to barely hear it. "I could totally be having a steamy hot relationship with her. Right now."

"Could you now?" she said, almost as quietly him, because suddenly his keen gaze was latched onto her, and her body was humming and burning and she didn't know what else to do. "It's your own grave, not mine."

"Just swear you won't tell anyone," Jace requested in a hushed voice. Smiles had abducted both of their faces, and Clary's incessant anger receded a little. Her eyes trailed his finger is it came in front of his lips, and she bit her own without meaning to.

And through her ebbing laughter, she said, "No promises."

Drywall fell like snow from the ceiling as Clary slammed her apartment door shut, dropping her keys into the glass bowl sitting on the breakfast bar. She dropped her purse and jacket onto one of the barstools. Muted laughter from the living room cascaded through the house, brushing an inkling of a smile onto her face.

Camille was home.

Abandoning her heels, which were the devil's children anyway, she coyly waltzed into the living room, throwing on her cockiest smile. Frasier was playing on the TV, and the moment Clary spotted a blonde head on the couch, she hollered, "Honey, I'm home!"

"Really?" Camille, her full-time best friend and roommate, responded. "Gosh darn it. I thought you were in Narnia, really."

"I hate just leaving my room, and you're over here thinking I'd be brave enough to go to Narnia? For shame." Clary padded over to her bedroom, her stress from work filing away quickly at the comfort the space gave her. Everything, from the infinite amount of throw pillows and lavish comforter, to her wall of polaroid pictures that costed too much—it all seemed to make her feel as weightless as a whisper.

"Oh my god," Camille's exasperated voice crawled into her room, and a laugh jumped out of Clary. "Do you take classes on how to be dramatic or are you just a natural at it?" Clary stopped in front of the mirror on her dresser, grabbing her comb to straighten out the jungle she called her hair. The first few seconds of combing unveiled assortments of tangles, as if a bomb of knots exploded in her head.

"I'm so natural, people would want to sell me at a farmer's market," Clary said ostentatiously.

"What the hell are you even saying?" yelled the blonde, thoughtless amusement sprayed all over her words.

"Do you really think I know?" Clary asked back, brushing her ends and throwing her hair into a bun.

"Well, you should."

The living room greeted Clary as she made her way to the couch where Camille was sitting. "I'll figure it out on a day my brain is present."

Camille's hand was pointing the remote of the TV, and the volume rocketed. Somewhere beneath the artificial laughter spurting from the show, Clary could hear her friend mutter, "You're never figuring out."

When Camille was younger, she and Clary would strut around their neighborhood, wearing black and red pumps they'd stolen from Clary's mom because they wanted to be adults at the age of eight. They would make paper purses sometimes, too, and would write their names on the purses with those metallic sharpies, which never really seemed ink in them. Camille always hated how Clary's handwriting was prettier than hers.

Purse or not, though, they'd walk to the little lake in front of their art teacher's apartment on the weekends and get mosquito bites trying to find a place to sit. And once they did find a bench or a rock, the sun would watch them talk until it slept, then the depthless night sky would scare them home.

And a dozen years later, they did the same thing. Except, the lake became too far for them, they weren't limited to the weekends, and the depthless night sky was only a negligible complication.

The same night sky was draped above the two as they waited in one of those prim and proper restaurants for the mountains of food they had ordered. Camille got her pay check a few days ago, and since the dent in the sofa from where she was sitting started to get depressing, she convinced the both of them that the best thing to do was eat out and splurge.

Though, Clary's hair was still trapped in the messy bun she'd put it in earlier, and instead of wearing a simple dress like Camille, she wore jeans and a sweatshirt.

"My attitude gives me class, so putting on something classy would just overwhelm everyone," Clary had claimed when Camille stared at her outfit with immeasurable disapproval.

And now, the redhead was ranting about something that happened at work, her eyes blown wide in anger and her lips curling disgustedly.

Camille was smiling all the way through, absolutely fascinated by the absurdity of what her friend was saying. Waiters passing by would occasionally slide worried glances at Clary, forcing Camille to glare at them back.

"Wait, so let me get this straight," Camille said calmly after Clary's words ran out. "Some guy embarrassed you, and told you to show him where the bathroom was, and you yelled at him. Are you—are you mentally okay in the head?"

"I swear to god, Camille, don't you dare make fun of me. The situation was dire." As if on command, the light from the candle in the center of the table dramatically flickered across her face.

"You overreacted."

"You overreacted," Clary fired back childishly, hiding her face behind the sleeves of her hoodie.

"Clary." Camille's voice was flat, but her eyebrows were curved upwards.

"What?"

"Don't play games with me, child." A frustrated laugh floated out of Camille.

"I'm older than you."

"But somehow you have the mentality of a baby?"

Huffing impatiently, Clary muttered, "You and this guy—I dislike you both very much right now."

"Did he at least apologize?"

There was something about silence that irked Camille, so she had to twiddle her thumbs under the table to keep herself occupied as Clary's words seemed to gather slowly on her tongue. "I mean, well..." More silence. Camille's thumbs were going in hasty circles now. "I guess so."

The blonde's patience tipped over. "Oh my god, you've been friends with me since you thought horses were dinosaurs and not even a shred of my common sense has rubbed off on you?"

"In my defence—" Reasons rushed up and down like tides in Clary's head, and she tried to form sentences that simply refused to come together. And finally, she gave up, because all of her deformed sentences sounded suspiciously like excuses. "Okay, fine. You win. I overreacted."

The accomplished smile that burst onto Camille's face went well with the black dress she was wearing. "Just go up to him tomorrow and apologize. Not a big deal."

"What would I even say?"

"That sounds like a personal problem, Clary." Camille glanced pointedly at her. "Figure it out."

"Sometimes, you're honestly zero help."

"Sometimes, I know that you've got a brain." And just then, the tell-tale sound of a ringtone barged right into their conversation. Camille reached into her purse and took her phone out, the screen reading Mom. She gave Clary an apologetic look and said, "It's my mum; I'll be back in a few minutes. Don't die when I'm gone, okay?"

Clary was starting to get worried when their food made its grand entrance, and Camille still hadn't. A few minutes had dissolved into ten, then fifteen, and then the little seeds of worry in Clary erupted disastrously.

And this was how she found Camille in the marble-clad bathroom of the restaurant, dark branches of runny mascara extending across her cheeks. Camille, wiping furiously at her tear-stained face, had somehow found an attachment to the gleaming floors, refusing to get up no matter how hard Clary tried. The girl was in such a disgruntled state, that the few words that Clary managed to fish out of her brought with them an endless chain of tears.

After a few minutes of irrational sulking and crying, Clary couldn't handle it anymore. "Okay, I get that you're borderline dying right now, but you've got to tell me what's going on if you want me to be of any help," she stated firmly.

Usually behind Camille's eyes was some kind of emotion: infectious love, unwavering attitude, copious amounts of anger. Even on the drab days, when her preferred pass time was sulking, there would be a grain, if not more, of some type of feeling.

But now it was hauntingly empty, dark.

Clary could hear her heart shattering, the sound gruesome and resonant. "Camille," she whispered, joining her miserable position on the ground. "Whatever just happened, it can't be that bad, can it?"

"I guess." All the tears made Camille's voice come out all disoriented. "My mom's been lying to me, Clary. She lied to me."

Camille's mom, Celine, was one of the most down-to-earth and honest people Clary knew. She'd always been there for Clary when she was a kid, so naturally, her first instinct was to defend the woman. "Celine would never do that—"

"You don't know what my mom would do." Clary felt like a bullet of shock just kicked through her guts. Her friend's expression bled venom.

It took a few moments for Clary's mind to refocus, and calmly, she said, "Then explain it to me."

"I don't know what drugs mom's been taking, or what motivated her, but she's supposedly talking to my dad." No words were exchanged between the two for a while, just a look of anger on Clary's face and the lazy twiddling of Camille's thumbs. "He called her a long time ago using an unknown number or some shit, so my mom wouldn't know it was him calling." Her tone was made of stone, unmoving, unforgiving.

Meanwhile, churning disgust coated Clary's stomach like paint. "He's sick."

Camille's father was the shoe that shamelessly crumpled a flower beneath its sole, the voids of black that obscured all the color, the menacing smile beneath the tears. And after what Celine Montclair favored to call a "mutual decision", her and Camille's father filed for divorce. Though, each still carried reminders of the other. Celine took care of their daughter, Camille. And their son—Camille's brother, Jonathan, was swept away by their dad.

"That's what I believed my mom thought, too," admitted Camille. A scoff threw a bucket of distaste onto the stone of her face. "But I guess the stupid thing about believing is that it all ends up being in your head. Everything. And then when it's all gone, you feel so fucking dumb."

"Oh, Camille." The tears peeping out of Camille's eyes splintered Clary's trust in Celine further. She felt a gaping hole in her chest where so much faith in Celine used to fester, and now she could sense it all draining out onto the floor. "Has your mother apologized?"

"So many times; it got to the point where it seemed like her purpose on earth was the apologize." They shared small smiles. "Though, she was completely unapologetic about the fact that Jonathan was moving in with her, because apparently dad wanted him to 'reconnect with his maternal side'. Since when has my dad given half a shit about this kind of stuff?"

"Maybe he's a different person now, Camille. Plus, it's not a bad thing that your brother's closer to you."

"It's not, it's really not. Apart from the fact that he used to give me hell when I would visit dad's house sometimes as a kid. And, my mom never even fucking told me! I haven't seen my brother in years, Clary, years! Did she not trust me enough to even give me a hint? Did I do something wrong? Am I that big of a bitch that my own mother just stops telling me important things like the fact that she's been talking to my asshole dad for the past few months?"

"I'm sure your brother's changed in about a decade's time. If he did remain the same, then you could probably buy him fucking hot wheels for his birthday and he'd be fascinated. Your brother isn't our issue right now."

"You're right."

"But you know what is our issue?"

"You?"

"No. Shut up."

"Make me."

"Our lonely, expensive food outside could do the job."

A/N: I've always thought Camille was an interesting character, so why not make her a major part of this story?

Idk when I'll update but I hope it's soon ;-;