Gasoline & Matches

"Just how deep do you believe?

Will you bite the hand that feeds?

Will you chew until it bleeds?

Can you get up off your knees?

Are you brave enough to see?

Do you want to change it?"

She knew Jace had been rescued by a member of the Clave. Her father had even told her as much. There really wasn't a reason to hide facts from her anymore. She pulled on her black shirt and it felt strange not to have to pull hair out from beneath the back collar. She shoved the stele into its holder and the short knife into its.

She knew there was a war coming like Death on a pale horse, whether she was ready for it or not. She had decided it would be best if she were ready. She knew her father didn't fully trust her anymore; she could hardly blame him. She knew the Clave would never trust her at all. She knew she was something ugly, like an AIDs orphan, something that no one really wanted but that had to be dealt with. She also knew that if she was an orphan she was the fucking James Bond of orphans because she could kick any other orphan's ass into next week.

What she didn't know, even if her father or the Clave wouldn't believe her (which they wouldn't), was who's side she was headed into battle on. She knew the facts well. She also knew there was no black and there was no white and Jace was a particularly stunning color of gold. And everyone wanted gold. She knew that if her father was any color in this world, he was stained with red. He didn't deny it and she respected the honest conviction of red. She walked to her window of the outpost where her father had stationed her, far from the real battle.

Golden was the color of victory, but red was courage and bravery and righteousness against all odds. She wasn't yet sure which her color was, but by the end of this night the entire world would know.

xoxo

Her fingers trembled and her charcoal slipped. She cursed out loud, then kicked the lamp she was trying to recreate hard, smashing its ceramic bowl. She flopped back on her bed, groping her fingers, blackened with charcoal, through her hair. She groaned and shoved the sketchbook off her stomach as she gritted her teeth and stared up at the ceiling of her room.

It had been a week since Jace had laid siege to her brain. At first she just pushed his face away when she left the stall, ignoring the sound of his voice that echoed nights into her ears. But it was becoming oppressive. After two days of her special brand of questioning, she, on her father's suggestion, had brought out the hot irons. Jace's screams had haunted her like a ghost since then. She had barely gotten sleep and now she couldn't even relax in her usual method. Her drawings frustrated her and her charcoal smudged when she thought of Jace. Her hands trembled. She ran her hands over her face.

There was a knock on her door and Clary sat up on her bed. "Come in," she called, knowing it could only be one person. Her father entered and, on seeing his daughter's charcoal-smeared face, suppressed a smile.

"Going to be a ninja for Halloween this year?" He asked from the doorway.

Clary's face formed a frown of confusion before she realized what he meant and rubbed her face with her sleeve. "Sorry," she mumbled. "Just drawing."

"Hm." Valentine entered the room fully then, dressed in riding clothes. "May I see?"

"Um..." Clary bit her lower lip but knew better than to resist her father's desires. "It's not very good."

Valentine walked over to the bed to lift up the sketchbook and look at the half-smeared depiction. He frowned. "You're right, it's not." He cast it down again. "Why?" He asked, tone hardened.

Clary sighed, scratching the back of her head then pulling up gobs of red hair into a big, loose bun atop her head. "I think I just need more sleep."

"Hm." Valentine said, and she could tell he was figuring her out. "Is it the prisoner?"

Clary shrugged. "It's going fine. I'll break him. It's just taking longer than I had thought it would."

Valentine nodded slowly. "It's taking longer than I thought it would too."

Clary winced at the words but spoke up again quickly. "But don't worry; I'm really close. I can feel it. He's almost talking." She was a convincing liar, but her father could usually tell.

"Good," Valentine surveyed his daughter then turned to leave. "Because I'm giving you one more day. If you can't get him talking by then..." he trailed off as he left Clary alone in her room with her broken lamp. "And get that cleaned up!" He called from down the hall. Clary grunted in response.

One thing was for sure. Clary wasn't going to let any man haunt her thoughts. She wasn't ever going to lose sleep over someone else. She had decided that one night when she was six years old and crying because her father had yelled at her for falling from her horse trying to jump the stream after him. Because it wasn't her father that had to harden Clary's resolve, she had discovered, it was herself. And though she loved and trusted her father, he wasn't going to ruin her self-esteem. Clary wasn't going to give anyone the keys to that, much less prisoner Jace. If he had somehow wormed his way into her brain, then she would just have to cut him out again.

xoxo

Jace's heart lurched when he heard the sound of footsteps through the stables. They were light and quick and he knew they were Clary's. His mission needed only a few more hours with her; he could tell she tired. She might have been Valentine's daughter, but torture was not the game for her, no matter what Valentine wanted. Torture, Jace thought bitterly, shouldn't be a game for anyone.

When she entered the stall Jace wondered if today might be the day. She looked tired, hair up in a bun with strands dangling along the outline of her heart-shaped face. There were dark bags under her pretty green eyes and her hairline had begun to break out with acne. She wore a long-sleeved gray shirt instead of a tight-fitting tank top and simple, loose-fitting jeans. She was tired and she was yielding. And honestly, Jace didn't know how much more of her torture he could take. She might have been an amateur and clearly hated doing it, but it wasn't like she was bad at it either.

He drew in a breath and his face spread into a cocky grin. "Back for more, baby? I know it's hard to stay away."

Clary didn't say anything, she just shut the stall door behind her. Her left hand held a towel and her right hand was moving behind her as she approached him while Jace stood in his chains.

"Nice outfit. Very comfy looking; are we going to watch some Roseanne reruns later? I mean, talk about tort-" but Jace gasped out the last syllable, his whole body jerking forward as Clary put her entire body into the stabbing motion that hit his lower abdomen. He sagged against her, chin on her shoulder and blood spurting from his lips. "Um." He gasped out. "Ouch."

Clary helped into to the ground then knelt before him as Jace felt himself bleeding out. "Sorry about this," Clary sighed, wiping the blade on the towel.

It's not fatal," Jace observed through a choke as he rested back against the wall, teeth gritted and jaw muscles strained.

"No," Clary admitted. "But if you bleed out it will be."

"That would take..." Jace figure it. "About ten minutes."

"Yeah," Clary nodded as she slipped the knife into her back pocket again. "So are you going to talk to me now? My father's only giving me this last day with you."

"If you can't break me, no one can. Is that it?" Jace smiled and his teeth were outlined in red. Clary shrugged. Jace laughed. "You're a regular Delilah."

"Where is the Mortal Cup?" She countered.

Jace did his best to shrug. It was surprisingly difficult in his current position. "I lost it. That or my Grandma threw it out during spring cleaning. She goes on rampages, a regular harpy."

Clary sighed, eyes cast to the ceiling. "Why are you doing this?" She gestured to the wound in his side. "You'll die."

"No, I won't." Jace stared her in the eyes. "Because you won't let that happen."

"Really." Clary rubbed her temple, too exhausted from lack-of-sleep and trying to deal with Jace to even protest his arrogance at this point. "And why's that? Because I'm a weak-minded girl?"

"Hardly." At that, Clary looked to him again. There was an iron to his speech, something dangerous in its truthfulness. "Because I'm going to tell you the truth about your father. And you're going to believe me."

"Will I?" Clary refused to acknowledge that interest had been peaked. "Why would I trust you?"

"Because you're a smart girl." Jace hypothesized. "And you know that there's something not right about him." His golden eyes were like two challenges gleaming before her, and when he spoke his smooth voice soothed the screams in her head.

"Well, you've started out correct." Clary sat down fully before him. "I am smart." Jace's face glinted into a smile which turned briefly into a grimace of pain. "Best hurry though," Clary mocked concern. "Your nine lives are slipping down your pants."

"Your father, Valentine Morganstern," Jace recognized the start in Clary's eyes that he knew her father's full name, "is a traitor. He betrayed the Clave and tried to start a war against the Downworlders. He wants the Mortal Cup to change humans into Shadowhunters and begin another war." Jace waited for a reaction.

Clary smiled. "Hm." She nodded in understanding. "So you're saying that I should, what? Join up with the good side, release you and gallop off into the sunset to wage war against my father?"

Jace's body had begun to shiver from loss of blood and his face had paled. "You know I'm right, Clary. He hates Downworlders; even someone as sheltered as you could see that. And why else would he keep you here, separated from everyone?"

"What?" Clary looked shocked, "You mean unless he was going to start an Uprising akin to his namesake?" She grinned. "Sure, Jace, whatever you say. Besides," she mused, glancing up at the ceiling. "I like the view from here better. If there were to be a war, I'm sure that Father would make me a general. On your side, I'd probably be a war criminal."

"Clary..." Jace's voice had declined to not much over a whisper. "Please believe me. You know there's reason you've never seen another human besides your father and a few of his closest friends. You know there's a reason he raised you to be a killer. You know there's reason he sends his sixteen-year-old daughter into a stable with a prisoner to beat and torture him for the location of a cup." Jace's words were harsh but his limbs had grown weak. He leaned his head back against the wall now not because he wanted to, but because he hadn't much strength left and he was saving what he had. "That doesn't sound like love to me."

Clary drew in a breath. Jace's logic was more sound than she would have liked. She typically knew lies when she heard them, and though Jace's story was ridiculous, his reasonings into her life sounded just plausible enough to be true. But this was her last time with him, and she wasn't so easily convinced of anything. She just shook her head at Jace. "Regardless of whether the little fantasy story you tell has any grain of truth to it, I regret to inform you that your time is almost up. I see reasonable doubt and that's enough for me." She readied herself to rise and leave him.

"Wait!" Jace gasped out, whole body trembling. "Do you... think about me?"

"What?" Clary snapped, eyes hardened like jade.

Jace took in a shallow breath. "I... Just want to know. This isn't part of my 'fantasy story.' It's just..." Jace's eyes had slipped half-shut. "I think about you. I just wanted to know, before you leave."

Clary just shook her head, incredulous at the question and refusing to even really consider it. "So what if I did?" She demanded to know. "It hardly has baring on anything now."

But she watched as Jace, despite his pallor and pained expression, forced himself off the wall. He faltered but remained upright. He leaned forward, reaching a hand out to cup her cheek. Their eyes met evenly, gold-on-green. His lips were cracked and laced with blood, but his face was beautiful and Clary didn't draw away.

"Because, Clary, if you think about me, whether it's in pity, regret, guilt or something else..." he murmured so she could barely hear him at all. "Then there's hope that you're not like your father." And he reached forward to press his lips to her's.

Clary wasn't surprised his time, nor did she pull away. His hand was warm on her cheek and his lips were rough but he wet them with his tongue. They moved gently against her's, and she let her's part just slightly and felt his breath against her tongue. A shock went through her, like electricity, like fire and magic and the loud burst of a ballon, but at that moment Jace collapsed backwards against the wall with a thud. His eyelids fluttered shut and his skin had taken on a new color of pale.

Clary wiped her mouth on her sleeve and pulled her stele from her other back pocket, brandishing Jace's chest with a healing rune and waiting for it to take effect. She almost held her breath because it was taking too long and what if he really did die and what did he mean by her not being like her father and was that a good thing? It frightened her to realize she thought that it was.

But Jace's golden eyes flickered open and a smile spread across his features even before it should have been able to. "Told you you wouldn't let me die." He whispered.

xoxo

Thanks for reading, and thanks for the reviews! To Lena3, thanks for the suggestion of drawing, and to everyone else that had suggestions or comments, they were great. Constructive is awesome! :)