A/N: Here goes folks! Chapter Ten in which Clary and Jace tell pretty much everyone. FLUFF + Magnus, with a little plot point squeezed in at the opening. I feel like I should apologise for the fluff in this... but I won't.
Chapter Ten
The sky was gold and pink and silver, and Clary was sitting on the beach, her toes curled in the sand, watching a cherub with red-gold hair and tiny fluffy wings like a baby bird's playing in the shallows. Slowly, the child crouched down and starting poking the soft wet sand with its pudgy fingers, and then it turned back to Clary and smiled, pointing.
Runes were written in silt, intricate, unknown lines, ones that had no meaning as far as Clary knew. The cherub-child giggled as a wave splashed its feet and washed the marks away, and Clary laughed back.
There was a sound of flapping and a dark shape splintered the last few rays of sunlight. A huge, winged creature, like a large bat, swept onto the beach. The child was screaming, and Clary was running as it was lifted up, legs kicking, and the creature soared away into the rapidly descending night.
Clary looked down and saw her trainers stained with blood.
Clary woke with a slight jolt and saw Jace standing over her, grinning. Immediately, any fear the dream had left dissolved.
"Today's the day!" he said, with a smile that reminded her of Felicity at Christmas.
Clary groaned and rolled over. Today she was officially three month's pregnant, passed the danger zone. Today she had agreed that it they could the rest of their friends and family. What she had not bargained for was "today" beginning at 7am.
"Don't go back to sleep!" Jace rocked her. "Come, woman! We have good news to spread!"
"And relatives to seriously piss off if we turned up at this ungodly hour. Let me sleep!"
"Come on! If I'm up, you should be too."
"You," Clary hissed, "can have coffee. I, on the other hand, only have one cure for tiredness, and that is sleep. Go away."
"But-"
"GO AWAY, JACE."
Jace jumped off the bed. "Ah. That would be the mood swings talking, wouldn't it?"
"Jace, have you ever read a book called How to Annoy all Women?"
He laughed. "No, why?"
"THEN GO AND WRITE IT."
Whether Jace did or not was beyond her, but at very least he tip-toed out of the room. Clary rolled over and hurriedly went back to sleep, no longer plagued by dreams of angel children being snatched away.
An hour later, she was much more sociable and ready to go. She had already promised Jace that they could tell Robert and Maryse first, partly so she could appease her guilt over telling Simon before him.
Clary had been avoiding them slightly for the last few weeks; Maryse had a mother's keen sense and Clary was sure that any prolonged conversation with her would make her secret obvious. But the lack of contact had itself acted like a pointed finger, and by the time all four of them were sitting down at the Institute, the Lightwoods were exchanging knowing glances.
Despite their separation, the Lightwoods still saw a lot of each other. Although Robert was the Inquisitor, and Alicante his primary residence, he still liked to visit the Institute and "check on the order of things". He met up with his ex-wife every fortnight, to have lunch and talk business. The were more civil to each other in this setting than they had been for years of their marriage.
For a moment, all four of them sat in silence eyes dancing around the room. Robert poured everyone a cup of coffee, and watched slyly as Clary didn't drink.
"So..." Maryse said, "what's-"
"We're having a baby!" Jace jumped up from his seat and at least a foot into the air. Clary remained firming on her seat, blushing furiously.
"Oh!" Maryse clapped her hands, standing up to embrace her adopted son. "How wonderful!"
"Congratulations, the pair of you!" Robert shook Jace's hand and sandwiched Clary into a fatherly hug. "That's brilliant news!"
"We had no idea! How lovely, Clary."
They were beams and congratulations all round, and Maryse rushed off to find "some cake we've got just lying round".
The rest of the visit passed very quickly, as Jace and Clary announced their intention of telling everybody else in one day so no one would have to keep it secret. Maryse promised to fish out her old baby things from when her children were little and bring them over sometime in the week. By the time they left, the couple were almost bouncing with the same excitement Jace had shown delivering the news. There was a very warm glow warming Clary from the toes.
We made them that happy.
Clary was more nervous about telling her family. She was sure Jocelyn was going to take one look at her and know the baby wasn't planned, and be more worried for her daughter's mental well-being than excited over the prospect of being a grandparent, and she so wanted her to be excited...
Yet, when she finally spilled the means, Jocelyn did exactly the right thing, immediately yelling out her claim of surprise and wrapping her daughter in her arms, while Luke stood on, his gast well and truly flabbered.
Felicity just frowned and tugged on Clary's shirt. "You can't be a mommy until I'm a grown-up!"
"Why's that?"
"Because I'M the baby, that's WHY!"
Luke looked as if a very large hammer had stamped a smile into his face. He gave the word 'dumbfounded' new meaning. "I'm going to be a granddad!"
"You can't be a granddad till I'M a mommy!" scowled Felicity, stamping her foot to reiterate her comment, the only way she knew how. "I'm your daughter, not her!"
"Fleecy," said Jocelyn passingly, given Jace a warm hug, "you really must learn to share."
"No!"
Clary laughed, bending down and trying to tease her stubborn little sister's folded arms away from her chest. "No! No! He's MY daddy, not YOURS!"
It was impossible to be annoyed with someone who looked so cute when they were furious, but there was a lesson to be learnt. "Luke's my Dad too, you know."
"No he's not."
"Yes he is. Luke, am I yours?"
"Sure are, Clary." Luke said, stepping over to wrap her in the tightest of hugs. "One-hundred-percent."
The next on the list was Magnus and Alec. Clary and Jace could only imagine how difficult the last few weeks had been for Magnus, keeping the juicy piece of gossip to himself. They announced their intention of coming over in the afternoon, and arrived to a table of exquisite china, laden with tiny sandwiches and cakes, with pots of fancy tea.
"Wow, Magnus," said Clary, as she bit into a slice of fruit cake. It was rich and tangy. "You really went all out!"
Magnus beamed, setting down a tea cloth adorned with the Queen of England's face. "Well, you know, it's just something I whipped up on a whim..."
"He's been on about this all day," Alec groaned, dumping himself unceremoniously on the opposite couch. "He wouldn't shut up about it. It was most annoying."
"I just wanted something a little different! It's not often these two come and visit! Why, I don't think I've seen you in months! How are you?"
Clary and Jace shared an amused look.
"We're well, thanks Magnus," said Clary, still looking at Jace.
"In fact, we've got a bit of news..."
"Yeah, actually..." Clary reached out for Jace's hand at the same time he went for hers. They both squeezed. "I'm... we're pregnant."
"You're having a baby? That's fantastic news! I had no idea!" Magnus clapped his hands delightedly. "Darling, isn't that simply sublime?"
Alec was sitting on the couch with his hands open expectedly, a look of joy radiating across his face as if someone had just handed him the world's cutest puppy. "This is the happiest day of my life."
"The happiest day of your life?" Magnus glared, unhappy about the implication.
"I'm going to be an uncle! You know, I'll probably never have kids of my own, so stealing my siblings' is the only chance I've got! Congratulations!"
He leapt off his seat and launched himself at Jace with almost cartoonish glee, flinging his arms around him and not quite suppressing a jump. When he finally let go of his brother, it was only to pull Clary into his embrace and squeeze her.
"So sorry," he said, pulling back abruptly. "I got a bit carried away there. Hope I didn't hurt the little guy..."
"A bit?" Jace raised an eyebrow.
Alec ignored him and crouched down at Clary's feet, giving her an affectionate pat on the tummy. "Hello, little one. I'm you uncle Alec..."
"What are you going to call it?" asked Magnus, still looking at them coolly from his seat. "I've always found Magnus to be a strong, manly name-"
"Magnus," said Jace, with as straight a face as he could manage, "you're wearing glitter."
"A true man is comfortable whatever his attire."
"You don't want Magnus anyway. You want Alexander! Now that's a strong name! And the great thing is, it works for a boy and a girl!"
Jace glanced at Clary. "We'll add it to the list."
"Do you know what you're having? Boy? Girl? Hermaphrodite?" asked Magnus.
"No, not yet. We want the surprise."
"It certainly will be, if it's a hermaphrodite."
Clary glared. "Thank you for that, Magnus."
"What do you even know about kids?"
Magnus clapped a hand to his chest, deeply wounded. "I am offended, Jace Herondale! I have been around for eight hundred years! I know more about babies than many a person who has them. As a matter of fact, I spent the 1950's serving as a midwife in London's East End."
"Wow, really?" Alec looked amazed. "That's incredible. You never said- oh, wait, you're joking."
"Indeed. Although I have helped a few women give birth to Warlock children, through the years. And a werewolf child, once. A case of being in the wrong place and the wrong time... many, many, wrong times..." he clapped Clary on the shoulder. "Good luck! Just... lie back and think of New York! I'm told it's a hell of a town."
"I'm deeply, deeply regretting telling you right now."
"But you won't," Magnus said with a wink, "when you receive my custom-made baby-clothes."
After a day of visiting almost everyone she knew, Clary was ready to go home after finishing up at Magnus and Alec's, but Jace clearly had other ideas. They'd barely stepped out onto the sidewalk before he was pulling her away like a dog on a lead.
"Where are we going?" Clary asked.
"Shopping!"
"Shopping?" Clary pulled a face. "Must we?"
"Yes!" Jace replied, with considerable conviction. "We must. You don't want Magnus choosing the baby's entire wardrobe, do you?"
Clary groaned. "No. But-"
"No buts, woman!"
Clary offered a few more unenthusiastic retorts and feeble excuses before they reached the stores, but Jace was persistent, and it was, she decided, when she watched him perusing baby garments and ogling the little babies out shopping with their mothers, rather cute to see him so excited. A lot of the other dads in the store (all three of them) looked more like her- sceptical and slightly nauseated and clearly not there out of choice.
Jace, on the other hand, was leaping from shelf to shelf like a child in a toy store. Clary couldn't remember ever seeing him so excited before, at least not in public. He was throwing things into a basket with glee, making several of the women in the store eye Clary enviously.
When was it, she mused, that became so lucky?
When Jace started on his second basket, Clary stepped in.
"Jace, Luke and Mom are going to send over a bunch of Fleecy's old things. We don't need all this junk."
"Junk! Junk?" Jace looked heartily offended."I object. Look at this adorable Noah's ark playset. Is this junk?" he held up a chunky model boat with brightly-coloured hand-carved animals. Even Clary had to admit that it was quite exquisite, especially for a child's toy.
"OK, we can get that. But then that is it. We're going to have so much stuff..."
Jace shrugged. "I don't care. I want our baby to have everything."
As the assistant rang up there purchases and placed them in several bags, Clary thought about Jace's room back at the Institute, how bare and empty it had been, and how Isabelle had told her once that he had only brought a single toy with him when he came.
He must have had so little as a child. No wonder he wants so much for this one.
She shared his excitement on the cab ride back, looking over each little toy, every gender-neutral outfit, blanket and bottle, and imagined what it would be like in a few months to hold the baby that went with them. It was thrilling and terrifying in equal measure.
Jace unpacked everything into the spare room next to theirs. He brought up the crib from the basement, lined it with blankets and a stuffed toy, and the two of them moved it into the centre of the room. Clary looked at the plain walls and imagined filling them up, a dozen different designs flitting through her mind.
Jace just looked at the cradle, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing tightly. "I can't think of a single thing," he whispered, his breath hot against her ear, "that would make this day more perfect."
Clary smiled. "I can," she said, and wondered if he could tell, just looking at her, what she was going to say. She felt like she was radiating warmth, that light was dancing through her pores. This was the feeling she had been waiting for. Not the sickness, or the vomiting, the grogginess or light-headedness that came whenever she so much as sniffed the wrong foods. This solid, gentle glow, the feeling of someone well and truly living inside her.
"Jace, our baby just moved."
A/N: And, voila! One new chapter.