It's TMI Tuesday, so I am updating this TMI fanfic.
And if you're interpreting TMI the other way, I'm prepared for that too: In the Clockwork Princess Epilogue, I experienced a very strange, uncomfortable transition from wanting to marry Will to wanting him to be my dad.
This has been a glimpse into the mind of the author.
Now, an apology. To those of you who reviewed, I probably (almost definitely) said something about how crazy long this chapter was going to be. And while it isn't short, per se, nor is it crazy long. While I was working on it, I stubbornly rejected splitting it into two chapters even though it was the right decision, and then last night I finally decided to do it. There are a few reasons for that, which I am only explaining as part of my apology for misleading you all (and not out of a misled belief that you actually care why I did it):
1) Even though I knew it would be long, I didn't realize until a few days ago just how ridiculously long it really would have been. No one would have enjoyed reading that much at a time.
2) The second part of "this chapter" (which will now be the next chapter) was giving me a lot more trouble than the first part. A lot more than I expected. And I want to take my time with it, but I also didn't want to keep you waiting any longer. So here we are.
3) As I mentioned, it was the right decision plot-wise anyway.
4) Bonus: Since I was working on the next chapter as part of this chapter, it's already almost done. So the next update won't be too far away.
"They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too." – Oscar Wilde
After exiting her apartment by way of the fire escape to avoid her eccentric landlord, Clary hopped into an old, large blue van to see Simon at the wheel, looking quite striking in a black t-shirt that emphasized the paleness of his skin. She told him so.
"Striking?" he repeated with a laugh. "Well, thanks. If that was a compliment."
"It was," she assured him as he pulled out of her alley and into nighttime traffic; bustling and bright and loud.
"Remind me where we're going, again?" Simon asked.
She recited the address she had been memorizing since that morning.
Simon narrowed his eyes. "That isn't in the city."
"I figured it wouldn't be…" she said. "But I forgot to mention it to you. Sorry."
"It's fine. Eric's with his girlfriend; he won't miss the van. It would help to have a better idea of where we're going, though. Do you have the name of a town or something?"
She shook her head. "I just got the address from Casper when he did the tracking spell… Should I call him and ask?"
"If you don't mind."
She sighed as she pulled out her phone, half-relieved and half-dreading when Casper answered on the second ring. "Clarissa," he drew out her name in a long, laughing shout, and she heard a loud roar of voices in the background – girlish laughter and boyish shouts and music and other miscellaneous noises.
"Having fun tonight, Casper?"
"Not as much as I do with you, lovely."
"Right," she said, unamused. "I called to ask if you could give me a better idea of the location you got from the spell. When I got the address from you earlier, I forgot to ask."
"Sounds like a problem you wouldn't be having if you had let me take you, like I offered." His tone was still lighthearted, but she knew she had irritated him earlier when she said she would find a different ride.
"Casper," she whined. "I don't have time for this. Please, just tell me."
"Why don't you come spend some time with me, and I'll take you there in a little while?"
"I'll take this opportunity to remind you I haven't gotten your book yet."
Casper sighed wearily. "I knew I shouldn't have let you trick me into doing the spell early. Remind me to be more careful of your guile in the future."
"Casper," she warned.
"You're right, it's kind of hot. Alright, I'll tell you."
He launched into a set of directions that Clary didn't understand in the slightest, and she threw a hopelessly confused glance at Simon. He gestured for the phone, and she interrupted Casper, "Here, wait. Simon's driving me, tell him."
She handed over the phone and, from the side of the conversation she could hear, Simon was having better luck with the directions than she had.
"Got it, thanks," Simon said after a while, and he began to hand the phone back to her but then stopped, confused. "What?" he asked in surprise, but she couldn't hear what Casper was saying. Simon looked at her with wide, embarrassed eyes, stuttering. "I… I don't know… What? No, I don't, we don't –"
Now Clary could make out Casper's laughter, loud and rude and taunting. "Fuck you, Casper," Simon snapped sullenly before he hung up and handed her phone back to her.
"Yep, hate him," Simon declared, as if his conversation with Casper had affirmed a guess.
"What did he say?" she asked.
Simon only shook his head, and even without the telltale blush a human would have had, she could see he was flustered.
Clary hummed sympathetically. "He isn't exactly a ray of sunshine, I'll admit."
Simon shook his head again. "I don't know how you spend so much time with him."
"I don't spend that much time with him. But he isn't that bad, really. He's interesting, at least."
"Interesting," he repeated. "Is that what matters to you?"
"Well," she hesitated. "Sort of?"
Simon didn't offer comment or criticism, didn't let even a note of emotion into his voice when he had asked, but she had the uncomfortable feeling of being judged anyway.
"Will it take us very long to get there?" she asked, changing the subject.
"Hour and a half, maybe two hours. It's out in the country. A farm, probably."
His answer made her glad she had decided to ask him for a ride rather than accepting Casper's offer. Two hours with Casper in an enclosed space would be a disaster. And Simon put her at ease as often as he challenged her, which made him as comforting as he was interesting. She caught herself at that word again – interesting. Was it wrong to think about people that way? She had never thought so. But why else would Simon have asked?
Aside from the emotional benefits of Simon's company, he was making her increasingly aware of the fact that she wasn't at all used to the world outside the isolated manor she had grown up in. She had met many people, but never really seen anyone aside from her brother and her father. She was prone to momentary distractions – boys visiting for the summer, other girls her age; fascinating creatures that she met at large events where she could observe and go unnoticed – but she always returned to her family as her only real option for companionship or emotion. Any time she got close to another person, she was quickly driven back by customs she was unfamiliar with, behaviors that didn't make sense to her, emotions she would rather not feel – an entire world of things she didn't understand.
Her father had taught her how to be charming. How to make people like her, how to get what she wanted from them. He had taught her to analyze people and decipher their motivations, their strength as it related to hers, and above all, their weaknesses. But he had never taught her to understand them. A part of her – an instinct, a whisper of what might have occurred naturally if not for her father's interference – was able to glean this understanding on a metaphysical level. But whenever she tried to take those emotions and process them, understand them, put them into words – they became mangled and distorted and slipped through her grasp like water.
But now, thrust into the world outside of her home, she was forced every day to see people. To force her way past her initial instinct to see them as tools and toys and distractions and accept the fact that they had emotions and thoughts. And, even more than that, to accept the fact that those emotions and thoughts meant something. That they were important. That they had a larger purpose than her father – cynical and aloof as he was – had taught her to expect.
"When you called," Simon interrupted her thoughts, "To ask for a ride. You said… that you're going to see your mother?"
"Yes," she answered.
"Why does Casper know where your mother lives?" he asked, not accusing but curious. "And why don't you?"
For a moment, she hesitated. Telling Jace had been one thing – her father wanted to trust Jace eventually, and he wanted Jace to be included in their plans. Simon – a vampire, a Downworlder – was a different matter entirely.
But then Clary realized she wanted to tell Simon. She felt the words crawling up her throat, dragging her sadness with them, and she couldn't help but feel that telling kind, gentle Simon about the source of her anguish might alleviate it, at least a little.
"I've never met her before," she said. "I came here to find her."
"Does she know you're coming?"
"No."
Her nervousness must have been present in her answer, because he turned to her and gave her knee a reassuring squeeze. It was such a simple gesture, and yet she spent a long while thinking about it, because no one had ever done that to her before. She figured it must be normal, considering the natural ease with which Simon had done it.
When she looked at him, she saw a faint smile playing at the corner of his lips, and she was confused by him even more.
"Why are you smiling?" she asked him perplexedly.
He explained, "Now I know why you said you didn't have a mother, the other day. I guess… it's just nice to understand you, for once."
"I'm difficult to understand?"
"Why do you sound surprised? Of course you are."
"I guess… I didn't realize that."
"No one's ever said that to you before?" Now he sounded surprised.
"No…" He shook his head with a disbelieving smile, like she had confused him again. "I don't know much about you either, you know," she pointed out defensively.
"Unlike you, I'd tell you if you asked." Though the words were critical, he said them playfully. "Go ahead, ask me anything."
It took her a minute to decide what to ask him. She realized she had never had to get to know anyone before – she had grown up with her brother, and had never cared enough about anyone else.
She began with something easy. "What kind of music do you listen to?" Music was safe, but it was important too. At least, to her it was.
"'You' as in me or 'you' as in people who didn't grow up in an isolated country for the angelic warrior elite?"
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "You as in you. Simon."
He excitedly rattled off a few names she had never heard before, and, upon noticing how lost she was, he laughed. He reached across her to open the glove compartment, rifling through the discs inside with a critical eye. After a moment, he sighed in defeat, rolling his eyes. "Eric's music sucks. I can't believe we're in the same band."
"You're in a band?" she asked, surprised.
"Yeah, we're awful," he said with a self-deprecating laugh. "You should come hear us play sometime. We'll never land a real performance, but we practice a lot."
She nodded. "That sounds…"
"Interesting?" he finished with a smile.
She smiled too, the action coming easier to her now that they were getting further and further from the city. She did like the chaos and the noise and the excitement; it suited her. But she also missed home; the deep forests and calm waters and the clean air, and though the countryside of New York couldn't compare, it was a slight relief to the aching homesickness in her chest.
Her aching for her brother, however, wasn't soothed at all. If anything it almost worsened; the trees made her remember her adventures with Jonathan in the forest. The sight of her skin, bared by the sleeveless shirt she had chosen because of the heat, looked strange without the blue-black bloom of flowering bruises. Her heart felt light, like a weight had been lifted from it. But the weight that she found missing from her wasn't a burden; it had been a comfort. It had been the weight of knowing she belonged to someone; the weight of another heart pressing against hers, beating to the same rhythm.
You still belong to him.
But she didn't, at least not in the same way. Clary was different from Seraphina. She had the same soul, the same heart, but "Clary" had never lived with Jonathan. He had never exerted his control over her. She had never worn his bruises or had dark adventures with him in a deep forest or stayed up at night to draw pictures of his handsome face until her eyes ached or whispered to him in the darkness that everything would be alright, that she loved him. She had those memories, she had the same feelings for him; but it was different, somehow, in a way she couldn't understand. She would have to see him again for it to make sense.
Without the weight of her brother's dark heart, she felt lost. Like her heart was an abandoned house that anyone could enter. Like it might float out of her chest and disappear from her, and she would be helpless to stop it. She had never lived this way, so alone and unburdened. She didn't like it.
As her own restlessness grew, she became aware of a similar anxiety in Simon. It was hard to detect such things without the physical signs a human would show; the stuttering, thunderous beat of a restless heart; skin flushed with scarlet fear. But there were other things, things that made her killer's edge extend its cruel-tipped claws. His eyes were wide, darting, dark-filled; his muscles twitched with restless bursts of energy.
"Are you alright?" she asked him.
He turned to her with wide eyes. "Hm? Yeah. Yes, I'm fine."
She stared at his still-jittering leg, raising an eyebrow. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, I just…" He looked at her and then back at the road. "I'm not really supposed to be doing this."
"I thought you said your friend didn't mind."
Simon shook his head. "No, he doesn't. I don't mean the car. I'm just… I'm not allowed to leave the city without permission. And I'm probably not supposed to be with a Shadowhunter, either."
She sat in stunned silence for a moment, staring at him, but he wouldn't meet her eyes. "Why are you doing it, then?" she asked finally.
"I… don't know." He seemed uncomfortable.
"I didn't know those things," she said quietly. "Why didn't you say anything when I asked? You didn't have to do this for me."
He met her gaze for a single moment, his eyes large and dark and earnest. He looked away again before he answered, "I wanted to spend time with you. I didn't know when else I would get the chance."
He didn't say anything after that, and she didn't either. His affection for her, and his gentleness, soothed a dark part of her heart that she had become certain would be restless and mangled forever. But she also knew it was very, very dangerous. For both of them.
And if that weren't enough, she felt undeserving in the face of his kindness – guilty, even. Because she knew she didn't deserve it. Because one day, Simon would be dead. And it would be because of her. Her father would wield the sword that eradicated the Downworlders, but only because she had been created and perfected to help him, only because she was compliant with his wishes.
For the first time, she recognized the irony of the situation she was in. Retrieving the Mortal Cup was the first part of Valentine's plan, and she had enlisted the help of a Downworlder to get it. She shrank into her seat as she realized how cruel and selfish she was. And all of this without even realizing how awful she was being. She knew her father was right, that the world needed to change. Even Simon, friendly and innocent as he was, would die, and it would be for the better because no other person would lose their soul to immortality as he had.
She heard Valentine's voice in her mind, cyclical and certain and impossible to ignore. Downworlders aren't capable of selflessness; they're hardly capable of independent thought at all. They're pack animals. A part of her submitted before the words. Another part couldn't help but think they didn't sound… right.
Simon was being selfless and going against his coven – defying two rules that her father had claimed applied uniformly to Downworlders. The thought that her father could be wrong in anything was unfamiliar and jarring, but she knew she was right about Simon. She knew this wasn't some farce that he was putting on to fool her, she knew his innocence was real. Her hunter's heart had sensed his innocence the first time she met him.
There were exceptions to every rule, she decided. Simon wasn't a monster, but that didn't mean all vampires had redeeming qualities. An unwelcome memory of Felix affirmed the thought.
Maybe Simon was just special, somehow. Maybe there was something about his soul, something strong enough to overpower the demonic influence that had overtaken his body, stolen his mortality. Or maybe every Downworlder was like this, at first. Clinging to their humanity with the last of their strength. Maybe, eventually, Simon would lose his gentleness and kindness and his human-like qualities as he inevitably became more and more a part of Downworld. Maybe all she was observing was a natural process, a gradual loss of humanity opposed to the sudden transition she had once thought.
The more she thought about it, the less everything made sense. A part of her longed for Jace's company; things were less complicated with him. Like they already knew each other, and they didn't have to think about it. They had had another argument before she left to meet Simon – they argued often – but she knew, somehow, that he would still be welcoming when she returned to the Institute, and that she would be glad to see him too.
"Simon," she said to break the uncomfortable silence. "Thank you for giving me a ride. I don't think I've said it yet, but I'm glad I asked you and not someone else. So… thanks." He deserved that much, didn't he? Her gratitude for his kindness, at least? She wondered if, when he died, he would know of her part in Valentine's plans. When he died, would he remember moments like this, where she was Clary and she enjoyed his company and she didn't treat him like a monster? Or would he know she was Seraphina by then, and see her as something more monstrous than even he could imagine?
She hoped it was the former. She hoped that her father wouldn't make her be the one to kill him. Which meant her father could never know she had carried on a relationship like this with him. If he ever discovered how cordial she was being towards Simon, he would make sure she was the one to kill him just to make sure she learned her lesson, that she never made the same mistake. He had done it before, and he would do it again.
She resolved to keep Simon a secret from her father. She couldn't save him, but she could save herself from the pain it would cause her to see his death. It was selfish to think that way, and it was wrong to keep things from her father. But still she was decided, comfortable in her own awareness of her horridness. Simon would be her secret, kept in the darkness with all of the others. Safe and soft and furtive.
Simon had been silent for a few moments, his expression unfathomable, and then he nodded once without taking his eyes off of the road. "I'm glad I came with you, too."
They spent a few more minutes in silence, Simon perpetually wincing at Eric's awful music and Clary fighting an urge to do the same. To her relief, Simon eventually lost his patience and shut off the music with a sharp gesture, groaning. The silence afterwards was equal parts relief and dread. Clary was no longer at ease with the serenity of the nature around them. The silence meant her thoughts were louder, and all she could imagine was what would await her when she found her mother.
Casper had performed the tracking spell on Luke's ring earlier and she had gone to meet him that morning to get the address (eliciting yet another argument with Jace, who was irritatingly entitled when it came to who she spent time with). And since then, she couldn't help but imagine every scenario in which she might meet Jocelyn, her mother, for the first time. Would she be greeted with fear? Hatred? Violence? Or was her father right, and it would be a hesitant welcome, a tentative willingness to speak with her?
For what seemed to be the millionth time in just one month, Clary wished for a normal family.
"Don't be afraid," said Simon, misinterpreting her discomfort and anxiety for fear. "I'm sure your mother will be glad to see you."
She couldn't help the bitter laugh that distorted her voice, the anxiety that jumped in her stomach. "I'm sure she won't be."
"Why wouldn't she want to see you?" Simon asked, confused.
"She left me. She never wanted me."
Simon seemed to think for a moment. "I think it was your father she left. Not you."
"My father was a large part of it. But she didn't take me with her. She didn't want me either." She had never said those things out loud, only thought them, and the sound of those thoughts verbalized was so ugly and cruelly truthful that hurt cooled her heart against her will.
"I'm sure that can't be true," Simon argued. "You don't know everything that happened when she left."
"I know enough."
Simon didn't press her, but he seemed deep in thought for a while as they drew closer and closer to the address Casper had given her. Closer to Jocelyn. A woman who had abandoned her, reviled her, hidden from her and ran away, but would somehow – her father claimed – be glad to see her. It didn't make any sense. Nothing made sense, and hadn't in a very long time.
Simon broke the silence. "What could you have done that would make her want to leave you? What could be so wrong with you?" He asked the question as though there was no logical answer. He couldn't begin to imagine the truth. And the thought of him thinking of her that way, as someone that no one could find fault with, brought the guilt in her heart to a sickening crescendo.
She was spared having to answer when a dark shape leaped from the trees and ran into the road, startling both of them. Simon yelled as he jerked the wheel to swerve around it. As the car spun past with screeching tires, Clary made out sharp fangs, glinting eyes, a mass of fur all in a dark blur, before they collided sharply with something and the world shattered into swirling colors and shattering glass and the loud bangs and screeches of the van rolling across the pavement.
When they finally came to a stop a timeless span later, they were upside down. Her head was spinning and there was blood in her mouth, and sharp pains in her collarbone and her wrist told her she had broken bones. She coughed, shattered glass tinkling as she moved.
"Clary," Simon gasped from beside her. "Are you okay?"
"Yes." Her voice was raspy and feeble. "I think so."
With some maneuvering, Simon was able to undo his seatbelt and drag himself through his window, and then he was next to her, helping her do the same from outside of the car. Her stele had fallen from her pocket, and she tore the skin of her hands on shattered glass as she dug for it among the wreckage, blood pooling into her mouth every time she coughed.
Simon hovered nervously with his hand on her back as she finally found her stele and drew several iratzes on her skin, relieved to feel her sharp pains dull into ignorable aches. When she was finished, she rose shakily to her feet and Simon followed. They were alone on the dark road, but even in the silence Clary was aware of creatures moving in the forest, watching them.
"Werewolf," she said, referring to the shape that had jumped into the road.
Simon grunted in agreement. "I can smell it. It did that on purpose didn't it?"
"Making us crash? I assume so." She surveyed the trees around them for a sight of the wolf, but she didn't see anything. "It must have known you would try to avoid it."
Simon's laugh was bitter and sharp. "That was awfully optimistic of it."
"Well, it was right, wasn't it?" she said, a bit disgruntledly.
"You think I should have hit it?" he asked, surprised.
"Duh," she said, gesturing to the wreckage behind them.
Simon sighed. "Eric's going to kill me."
"I'll tell him it was my fault."
"That might not be a bad idea," said Simon. "He definitely wouldn't stay mad at you for long."
"Why's that?" she asked, already beginning to walk along the road the way they had been travelling before the accident. She wasn't letting Luke's dogs keep her from her mother.
"You're, as he would say, a 'hottie with a body,'" Simon said, following her.
"Ugh," she groaned. "He doesn't actually talk that way, does he?"
"Oh, he says far worse things than that," Simon said with a short laugh.
"Well, I'm glad you don't."
Simon smiled, and she was struck again by how nice he was. It was strange; comforting and sickening at the same time. She had never met anyone as kind as him. And he was a vampire.
"If my bearings are right, the fastest way to the house is through the forest," she said, averting her course from the road to the dense grass before the trees. She paused before stepping into the forest.
"Look, Simon," she said, stopping to turn and face him. "I think you should… Well, I should probably handle this by myself from here."
"You don't want me to come?" he asked, confused and a bit hurt.
"I just don't want you to get hurt. I didn't know Lucian would have his werewolves guarding the place, and I'd feel awful dragging you into this mess with me."
"I volunteered to go into this mess with you," he argued.
"That was before you knew how messy it was. I appreciate the ride, Simon, really. And I owe you a huge favor. But now your mortal enemies are all over the place, and, like you said, you were already taking a risk just coming here at all."
He groaned. "I shouldn't have told you that. And you don't owe me anything. This is what friends do. I want to help."
Friends. The thought of it made her pause, and Simon began walking again now that she wasn't arguing with him. Were they really friends?
"Simon," she called after him when she recovered, jogging to catch up with his long stride. She had never noticed how tall he was. "Really, Simon, you don't have to –"
"I'm not leaving, Clary. I know you're an amazing fighter, but even you can't take on an entire werewolf pack on your own."
"Will you make much of a difference?" she asked uncertainly.
"Ouch," he said, wincing. "Harsh."
"I didn't mean it like that. It's just… have you ever trained, or anything?"
"When the older vampires have the time, they teach us some basic moves. But no, not really." Despite his admission, he was still marching resolutely onward into the dark forest, his jaw set and his pace confident and unhurried.
She grabbed his arm. "Simon, please just wait by the car."
"What's left of it," he corrected with a grin.
"This isn't funny!" she whined. "Simon, there are werewolves everywhere. And you're a vampire."
"You don't need to remind me. Today I tripped into a patch of sunlight and got a bald spot."
"Where?" she asked excitedly, instantly distracted from their argument.
"It grew back, thank you very much," he said, laughing as he dodged her attempts to pull his head closer to her. She abandoned her efforts when she realized, with disappointment, that his bald spot was nowhere to be found.
"I didn't know vampires tripped. Aren't you supposed to be graceful, or something?" she asked.
"I'm not like most vampires," he said sarcastically.
"You aren't," she agreed more seriously. "I've never met a vampire like you before."
"Have you met many?"
"No," she admitted. "But enough to know you're different."
"I think you just had a bad draw with Felix. We really aren't that bad."
She didn't agree with him, but she didn't want to start an argument. She thought about asking him to go back to the car again – because they were friends, she had realized, and she didn't want him to be hurt. But he had been very resolute when he told her that he wasn't leaving her side, and his presence was more comforting than she was willing to admit.
Noticing her silence, he had slowed his pace and turned to her, his skin luminously pale in the moonlight. "Are you afraid?" he asked her softly.
With the throbbing pain from her recently broken bones and the imposing darkness of the forest, and the soft, distant growls in the night, she didn't have the energy to deny it. She nodded, remembering how it had felt to have her skin torn open by vicious wolves in a dark forest, remembered staring into brown eyes, so like Simon's, and watching the life ripped away from them as her father's arrow tore through flesh and blood to halt a beating heart. She remembered murdering two lovers and watching them die staring into each other's eyes, while all the while it felt like she was the one who was dying.
Simon threaded his fingers through hers, his hand cool and gentle, and the chaos in her mind blurred into a distant roar. She was grateful for his calm, steady presence next to her as they traipsed over roots and through thick, thorny plants. The forest was thick here, obviously untraveled, but along with discomfort it also meant that the wolves weren't bothering them. Clary knew they would be waiting, though, near Jocelyn. She knew she should just admit defeat, that she was being selfish dragging Simon into her fight, but she couldn't find it in her heart to give up. Every moment of desperation and doubt and anguish in the past days of searching for Jocelyn had led to this – to finding her, to being closer to making her father happy. She couldn't give up.
About twenty minutes later, they emerged from the forest to find themselves on a hill above a small, picturesque farmhouse, and before it the forest formed a tall, dark crescent around a clearing bathed in moonlight. Clary had forgotten what true silence was like, after so many days in New York, but standing there above a lonely house, with only the sound of the wind whistling through the trees, she remembered. She longed for home with a harrowing ache that almost surprised her with its force.
And then howls broke the silence of the night with a haunting wail, and lithe shadows emerged from the trees on all sides of the clearing at the foot of the hill on which they stood. More than a dozen wolves bayed and snarled into the darkness in a vicious challenge, their rough howls singing of blood and killing.
"Wow," said Simon beside her. "Maybe your mother really doesn't want to see you."
"Told you," she said, but the words lacked conviction. A part of her had hoped he was right about her mother. That was stupid.
She turned to Simon, surprised to see that he was fairly calm – though she did see fear in his dark eyes and the set of his jaw. "Last chance to wait for me by the van," she offered.
He met her eyes. "No, I'm still coming. Maybe if I tell the other vampires I killed a bunch of werewolves, they'll finally stop calling me The Little Vampire."
Clary stared as the number of wolves in the clearing grew; all of them angry, all of them vicious and snarling and ready to kill. "How did he know I was coming?" Clary wondered aloud to herself.
"Who?" Simon asked, keeping his gaze on the wolves below them.
"Luke. I assume those are his wolves; he's a leader of a pack in the city. I knew he was with my mother, but I didn't think he would bring his wolves with him. In fact, last I checked, he didn't."
"The Downworld in New York is larger than you'd think. And more interconnected. You never know who might have seen you, or when. Someone must have warned him." With those words, Clary was reminded of the reason she had befriended Simon in the first place, and her guilt at disobeying her father in that regard abated somewhat.
"When I invited you, I never thought I was getting you into this much trouble," said Clary apologetically.
"Believe it or not, I had a feeling you would get me into this much trouble. And I came anyway. So stop feeling bad."
Clary stared at the wolves for a moment longer, her brow furrowing.
"You didn't stop feeling bad, did you?" he asked.
"No."
Simon sighed. "I can take care of myself. I'm older than you, remember?"
"Only by a year," she argued.
"Yeah, but I'm a vampire. You'd be surprised how much dying ages you," he said with a grin.
She rolled her eyes. "It's so endearing how you make light of your own damnation," she said sarcastically.
"Striking? Endearing? Might want to slow down with the compliments before I get the wrong idea."
Clary told him to shut up, but she couldn't help her smile or help marveling over how, even in a situation like this, he had managed to push back the darkness.
"I want to go back home," she said suddenly, surprising even herself.
"Really?" Simon asked with raised eyebrows. "But finding your mom is… important to you."
"Not this important. Not important enough to get both of us hurt, or worse. She isn't worth it." Her father would be furious for letting this opportunity slip past her, but she realized just how much she meant those words. Simon – who had taken it upon himself to befriend her despite her meanness and her efforts against it; who had given up his night to follow her into danger, knowing he had nothing to gain and everything to lose – didn't deserve to die for Jocelyn – who had betrayed an entire organization of people she had once considered friends and allies, fellow Shadowhunters; who had abandoned her children with the very man she found so insane and abusive and awful.
"We're leaving," she told Simon definitively.
She grabbed his hand and turned back to the forest behind them when a noise stopped her in her tracks. The crack of a twig, a soft padding against dry leaves. And then a low snarl, vibrating through the summer air with deadly softness. And then another joined it, and another.
"I don't think we're going anywhere," said Simon dubiously.
"Your commentary isn't helping," she told him shortly. "Let's go."
Using her grip on his hand, she turned around and propelled them down the hill to the clearing where the farmhouse lay, just as the wolves behind them burst from the trees with loud howls. The wolves below them sprang into action, and Clary realized that this had all been a trap. One group had herded them here, to this clearing, while another waited to tear them apart. She couldn't help the sting of betrayal that sparked in her chest. She really had underestimated her mother's vehemence in avoiding her. Her father had said she would be at least somewhat willing to receive her, or at least see her. But Jocelyn quite obviously wanted nothing to do with her.
Jocelyn quite obviously wanted to kill her.
She didn't have time to think about why her father had misled her so horribly. She didn't have time to think of whether she was disappointed or relieved that her mother wanted a war instead of a relationship. Because a pack of bloodthirsty werewolves was rushing towards her and Simon, fangs bared and snapping.
She increased her speed to pull in front of Simon, drawing a Seraph blade from its sheath and whispering its name into the tense silence before the chaos began. Time slowed, her heart sped, and the night air, already heavy with the heat of midsummer, sparked with an ancient anger and brutal bloodlust. The light of her Seraph blade was reflected in the black eyes of the wolf closest to her, and for a moment everything was suspended in weighted silence.
And then the world erupted into chaos. The first wolf yelped as her blade swiped through its shoulder with a bone-crunching crack, another snarled as it sprang for Simon. She whirled around and drew her dagger, throwing it with deadly speed and watching as it impaled the wolf's shoulder, sending it crashing to the ground with Simon unharmed before it.
Simon was smart enough not to stay in one place, darting to the side just as another wolf leaped for where he had stood. When he landed a hit on a grey wolf that sent it sprawling to the side, she turned her back on him completely to deal with the wolves before her. There were too many of them; Simon would have to fend for himself.
The fight was too close for weapons, so Clary relied on hand-to-hand combat – which proved more complicated than she anticipated, considering her opponents didn't have hands. Luckily, the wolves, though vicious, didn't seem to want her dead. As she noticed them slashing their claws at her ankles and wrists rather than going for deadly blows, she guessed they were under orders to drive her away but not kill her.
Unfortunately for them, she had no such orders. And she was angry.
Whenever it was possible, she darted her gaze away from the battle for a moment to glance at the farmhouse, each time finding it lifeless and dark. Her blows on the wolves only became more and more vicious as her frustration grew, and she noticed that many retreated into the forest once they had been injured, even if the blow wasn't crippling. They weren't taking the fight very seriously. They weren't risking their lives for this.
Their lack of interest in victory could only mean one thing: they were only a distraction.
A distraction, most likely, to give Jocelyn and Lucian time to run. Again.
And then she saw it – a flash of orange flying past one of the front windows for a brief, heart-lurching moment. Clary stared at the farmhouse intently, only half of her mind focused on the fight, ignoring the horrible pain in her wrist when an eager young wolf tore into her skin with vicious excitement. Jocelyn. The name rang through her mind, pulsed through her body at the same rate as the lurching beats that sent blood pooling across her skin.
And then, just after she dismantled the wolf that had injured her, she saw it again. Pale skin, red hair, a small figure darting through the dark farmhouse with hurried purpose. Jocelyn. Clary could feel that it was her mother, just as poignantly as she felt claws tearing into her skin.
Her blows became even more brutal, as if she could pour the grief and anger in her own heart into the souls before her, the hearts bared by battle. She was faster than them, maybe not stronger, but smarter. But there were too many of them.
Even after all these years, Jocelyn was a coward. Judging by their size, the werewolves before her were young. Not much older than her. And Jocelyn was hiding behind them, watching from the window of a perfect little farmhouse as they suffered injury and tried to tear her daughter apart.
Clary wasn't sure she had ever felt an anger like this. This must be hatred, she thought distantly.
Jocelyn, Jocelyn. Her mother's name was a mantra running through her mind, a sick chant sending hatred and fear and bitter rage pouring into her chest and pooling into her mouth. Find her. Her worry for Simon was consumed in the chaos, and then she was running across the clearing, destroying everything in her path. A warning instinct restrained her to crippling rather than fatal blows, but her control wavered with her desperation, and by the time she reached the fence near the farmhouse she had claimed several souls with her killer's hands. She knew it wasn't in her best interest – she wanted Luke's trust, eventually. But he had set his wolves on her in the first place.
As a werewolf lunged toward her, teeth bared and snarling, Clary caught sight of a flash of orange in the window again. Jocelyn. The sight made her vision run red, and she viciously broke the wolf's neck before she ran for the house.
But a strangled cry, familiar and agonized, tore through the noise of snarls and growls and halted her in her tracks. She whipped around to see Simon only barely fending off a pair of wolves, an alarming amount of blood pouring across his pale skin, and her heart clenched. She tore her gaze away from him to stare at the house again, but she couldn't see Jocelyn anymore. If she didn't act quickly, Jocelyn would manage to get away and Clary would lose her.
Which is why she cursed herself as she turned away from the farmhouse and sprinted across the grass, lunging for one of the wolves and managing a brutal slice of her Seraph blade at the other while she was at it. Simon took on the wounded one as she grappled with the other, and later she took on his opponent after neatly slaying her own. Simon collapsed as soon as their assailants were dealt with – one dead and the other dying – and Clary leaped forward to slow his fall, wrapping her arms around him as he slid to the ground.
"Simon," she breathed worriedly, as finally the wolf beside them rasped its dying breaths. Clary scanned their surroundings and saw that the remaining wolves were retreating into the forest, called off by a silent cue she couldn't recognize. She glanced at the house and then paused in surprise – Jocelyn was still standing at a window, no longer rushing about within the farmhouse but watching her. Her heart jumped. She couldn't see the woman clearly through the glare of the moon against the glass, but she saw orange-red hair, pale skin, a small figure. She knew that Jocelyn was staring at her, too.
But then Simon lurched beneath her hands, and she tore her attention back to him. "Simon," she said again. "Can you hear me? Are you alright?"
He nodded feebly, but the blood covering his skin told a different story. His eyes rolled back into his head and she heard the gurgle of blood in his throat, and worry and terror constricted her chest so tightly that she couldn't breathe and she could barely think.
"Simon," she said his name, over and over. "What do I do? Simon."
He managed to open his eyes, barely, slits of deep brown in the paleness of his face as he looked at her. She felt tears pool in her eyes at the sight of him, so hurt and helpless, and she took the hand he offered her with shaking fingers. "Clary," he whispered her name. He jerked beneath her hands, his muscles shaking and tensing as his eyes slid shut once more. She tightened her grip on him, but she had no idea how to help him, no idea what was happening or what he needed. And then he went limp in her arms, still and silent.
"Oh, God," she whispered. Was he dead? There was no way to know. His heart was already motionless in his chest, his skin already pale with the touch of death and eternal night.
And then a thought occurred to her. Blood. What if he needed it, to replace the blood he had lost? A throbbing pain brought her gaze to her wrist, and she saw that a long gash was sending blood pooling across her arm. She stared at the wound, and then at Simon, and felt a riff tear her heart in half. All she needed to do was bring her wrist to his mouth, let him drink for a few seconds. He didn't need to touch her, his fangs didn't need to touch her; she was losing the blood anyway. It wouldn't be hard.
But she couldn't. She tried to make her wrist move, stared at Simon's lifeless body and felt the pain in her heart and told herself that this was what she wanted. But she couldn't do it.
She heard her father's voice in her mind, so certain and persuasive as he told her that even Downworlders who used to be human didn't deserve to be alive, that they had already died and their existence was a soulless second-life, a shadow of the human lives they had had before. Maybe it would be a mercy to let him die; the death he was supposed to have had months ago. Maybe it would be cruel to drag him back to this life. Empty, meaningless, soulless, unnatural.
She applied those words to Simon and they didn't fit. They met the gentleness of his heart and his firm, resolved kindness and they faltered and shattered, obliterated by the memories she had acquired of his soft smile and his warm eyes and his tender touch.
The sound of car tires on gravel road broke the silence of the night, but she barely heard it. She was completely consumed by her conflict, so immersed in her memories of Simon and her father that they had begun to join and mingle in strange ways. Vampires are parasites, empty vessels that once housed the souls of innocents. Those souls are gone now, and only a demon's instinct remains, driven to carnage and parasitism to fuel its own existence and heed it's creator's will, her father explained, and behind him was a poorly-made drawing of a mundane superhero, and Simon was beside it, laughing as he showed it to her.
Her father's arm flashed toward her and she felt an awful, bright pain in her face as Simon held her hand softly in a dark forest.
Her wrist twitched, moving towards Simon's lips.
And then Simon gasped, his eyes flying open as he coughed roughly. She tightened her grip on him, helping him into a somewhat sitting position as he caught his breath – unnecessarily, she thought, but it seemed normal.
"Simon," she said, and she had said his name so often by then that it had lost its meaning, becoming an unfamiliar string of sounds. It was a beautiful sound. "Are you alright?"
He nodded, but he still leaned heavily against her, his bones pressing into her skin. "Yes," he said, his voice rasping. "I'm alright."
"What happened?" she asked, glancing around them to make sure the werewolves were still gone.
"Werewolf got me pretty bad," he explained, wincing as he probed his ribcage. "I think one of my ribs punctured something. Nothing that can't heal itself, but werewolf saliva slows our healing process."
"Could you have died?" she asked softly.
"Maybe," he said, seeming to consider the thought. "I thought I was dying. But it doesn't matter; I didn't. I'll be fine, I promise."
Now that she wasn't mindless in her worry for Simon, she remembered a noise – tires against gravel – processing it now, and she realized what it meant. She hunched over, her hands pressed to her face in almost disbelieving agony. She had lost Jocelyn. Again. Why was this happening to her? She was supposed to be finished by now. Home, with her brother.
"Clary?" Simon asked worriedly, and she felt a cool weight on her shoulder. It was his hand, gentle and comforting. "Are you hurt?"
"My mother," she said. "She's gone. She left."
Simon's hand tightened on her shoulder before he let go. "I'm sorry. I distracted you, I shouldn't have –"
"No," she interrupted, turning to look at him. His eyes were black in the moonlight, almost like her brother's but not quite as dark. "It isn't your fault. Like I said, I shouldn't have dragged you here in the first place."
"Like I said, you didn't drag me. I knew what I was doing."
"I thought the werewolves would focus their attack on me, since I'm the one they really wanted to keep away. But I should have realized they would be vicious with you, since you're a..."
"Vampire?" Simon finished bitterly with a small, sad smile. She nodded. "I don't like saying it either," he murmured.
His words surprised her. All this time, she had thought of his vampirism as something she had to worry about, something that created conflict and doubt in her heart. She realized now that she had been selfish. She had never thought about what it must feel like for him. To lose your life so violently, and then to wake up and realize you had lost much more than that. Your family, your soul, an entire world of sunlight and innocence and blissful ignorance.
"I'm so sorry, Simon," she whispered. "This is my fault. I knew from the beginning that I should just handle all of this by myself, but I… I can't."
"You shouldn't have to," he said, and then he was the one holding her.
He sat up, shifting so that he could wrap his arms around her, and even though he was even colder than she was, it was comforting. For a moment, she was able to forget the awful mess she was in.
Only for a moment, though, and then it all came rushing back. How was she going to fix this? She could find Jocelyn again, of that she was certain. But if Jocelyn was this adamant about keeping her away, what was she supposed to do? Maybe it was time to ask her father for help. Maybe Simon was right, and he shouldn't have asked her to do this alone in the first place.
She couldn't think about Jocelyn anymore. That woman didn't deserve Clary's anguish.
But Simon did. "The sun will be coming up soon," Clary said. "We need to get you home."
"How?" he asked; surprisingly unconcerned, considering the rising sun meant his imminent death. "The van's ruined."
"I know what to do. Come on." She helped him to his feet, relieved that his strength seemed to have returned. They stayed close together as she led them up to the farmhouse, their arms brushing against each other's; Clary was more than prepared to help him if he looked weak again, but Simon seemed perfectly fine. She shook herself out of the uneasiness it caused her by reminding herself that Shadowhunters had their own ways of miraculous healing. There were certainly aspects of Simon's vampirism that were unnerving, but this didn't need to be one of them. She didn't want to be unnerved by him anymore. She didn't want to feel so conflicted about him all the time. It was exhausting, and neither of them deserved it.
The door to the farmhouse was unlocked, and they entered into a dark living room. Paintings adorned the walls, and Clary wondered if they were her mother's. A painting that captured almost precisely the appearance of Brocelind Forest in the moonlight answered her, like a whispered beckon. Come home, it said.
I'm trying.
She tore her gaze away from the paintings. She didn't want to see her mother's dreams imprinted on canvas. She wouldn't have anything to do with Jocelyn at all, if it were up to her.
"Do you want to look around?" Simon asked.
She shook her head.
"Then… What are you looking for?" he asked, following her as she looked into every room she passed.
"The right wall."
"The right… what?"
"I need to find the right wall. Then we can go home."
She darted into a door on their left and found herself in a small bedroom. "Found it," she called to Simon.
"Found the… wall?" he asked, his cool presence settling behind her right shoulder.
She nodded, gesturing to the wall before her. "It doesn't have windows, and there isn't furniture blocking it. It's perfect."
"It's so beautiful," Simon breathed, and she shoved him.
"Shut up. You'll be grateful soon enough."
She ignored his laughter as she stepped forward, drawing her stele. She took a deep breath to calm her shaking hands, still haunted by the memory of Simon's lifeless body beneath them. He's alright, he's alright, she repeated to herself, while glowing swirls and angles spun from the tip of her stele as she drew angelic power into the plain white plaster.
When she was finished, a point of color swirled in the center of the rune. And then it was growing, expanding in all directions until a spectrum of ever-shifting colors consumed the wall with brilliant light.
She gestured for Simon to stand beside her. "Alright, Simon, this is important. This is a portal. We're going to use it to get you home." When he nodded his understanding, she continued, "I've only been to your house once, so I don't trust myself with this part. Think of somewhere we could exit the portal where no one would see us. An alley or something, close to your house. Whatever place you choose, you need to keep that image in your mind, and make sure you include details so we don't end up somewhere else."
"I think I know a place," he said, but he sounded nervous.
"Then let's go." She nudged him forward, closer to the portal.
But then, "Wait!" she stopped him. "My dagger, I forgot…"
"It's right there," he said, halting her dash to the door.
She looked down and, sure enough, the fairy dagger was in its sheath. "But… That isn't possible. I threw it, I know I did…"
"Maybe you picked it up and forgot," he suggested, far less concerned than she was.
"Maybe…" she said doubtfully. A glance at the portal shook her out of her musing over the dagger. "We don't have much time before the portal starts to close."
Simon stepped forward, squaring his shoulders. "Alright… So, I just walk through? No magic words?"
She shook her head. "No. As soon as you're ready, just walk into it."
"What about you?"
She took his hand, threading their fingers together. "I'll be right behind you. As long as we don't let go of each other, we'll end up in the same place."
He nodded, blowing out a deep breath. He closed his eyes, furrowing his brow as he concentrated on whatever location he had chosen.
And then he tightened his hand around hers, stepping forward until they were consumed by bright light and swirling colors. And then there was only blackness – heavy silence, Simon's hand in hers, both of them weightless and breathless and floating and being dragged forward, as if into a black hole.
They fell into reality with a jolting lurch, both of them stumbling on concrete with uneasy steps until they steadied themselves, still holding hands.
"Right place?" Clary asked Simon, glancing around at an alley occupied only by dumpsters and puddles and a single, terrified cat that skittered away from them.
"Yeah," he answered. "My house is only a few blocks away."
With a glance at the lightening sky above them, she dropped his hand and made for the mouth of the alley. "Better hurry," she called back to him. "I think we've had enough close calls for one night, don't you?"
"More than enough," he muttered, catching up to her. "I never want to see another werewolf again."
She sighed in agreement. "Awful, aren't they?"
They lapsed into silence after that,
"Simon," she said, after they had traveled a few blocks in silence. "When I thought you were dying, earlier," she began, and he turned to look at her. "I didn't know what to do. But…I want to know. I want you to tell me. If something like that happened again, and you were really dying… what should I do?"
He didn't answer her right away, and he avoided her gaze as they continued along the dark, empty street.
"Blood," she breathed, her voice soft with the effort it took to force the ugly word through her lips. "That's what you would need, isn't it?"
Simon stopped walking so suddenly she almost ran into him, and he was surprisingly assertive, almost angry, when he turned to her. "I never want you to do that for me," he said firmly. "Not ever."
His fervor startled her, and she didn't start walking again until a few seconds after he did. His answer had surprised her, but the more she thought about it the more she realized it wasn't surprising at all.
As she followed him to his house, she tried to forget about all the times she had caught him looking at her with something frighteningly deep and gentle in his eyes, searching and marveling. She tried to forget the tender, cool press of his skin when he noticed she was upset or hurt or nervous.
She tried to forget that, if he had died, his last word would have been her name. Clary, he had said, as if he could pour every ounce of the pain and longing and light in his heart into a single word. Her name.
Her thoughts came to a sudden halt when she recognized Simon's small, brick house and stopped before it, gazing up at Simon as the setting moon cast a luminescent white light across his pale skin. His eyes looked fathomlessly deep in that light, and she wished she were better at painting; a drawing could never capture the look of Simon's eyes in the darkness.
"Thank you," she told him, trying to pour her emotion into the words the same way he had, so that he knew she meant it.
"I'm sorry things didn't go the way you planned," he answered.
"So am I."
"Goodnight, Clary," he whispered, wavering uncertainly before the gate to his front yard as he gazed into her eyes. Blood – his blood – was flecked across his neck, and looking at it she was overcome by everything she had tried so hard to ignore that night.
He had begun to walk away from her, but she reached out to grasp his wrist. He turned back to her, his eyes burning with a fierce hope that she couldn't bear to look at. She wrapped her arms around his thin waist, burying her face in his chest to escape his eyes. And then he was holding her too, his arms gentle but steady, and she could feel his ribs under her arms and the sharpness of his shoulder blades beneath her fingers, and she couldn't help but hold him tighter.
"Simon," she whispered his name into his shirt, and his fingers tightened on her waist. For a moment, she marveled at the feeling of him. Of how delicate his bones felt against her despite his height, of the smell of soap in his skin, the way his breath stirred her hair and the careful way he held her, as though she was precious and delicate and he knew she was falling apart.
The moment felt incredibly fragile. And when they pulled away from each other it shattered like a thousand falling stars, and she was left alone in the sparkling ruins with nothing to show for it but blood on her clothes and the scent of Simon's soap in her skin and an aching hole in her chest. Simon looked down at her and she saw remnants of it in his eyes, a shining glimmer of grief and uncertainty, and she imagined the same thing was reflected in her eyes too as she stared up at him, once more plunged into indecision and obscurity about how she felt. For a moment it had been clear to her – who he was and how she felt about him – but then her father's teachings and her memories had rushed back into her, and there they clashed with her instincts and her sentimentality and she was torn in half.
Simon, either sensing her conflict or uninterested in doing so, didn't press her for more than what she had given him. "The sun is coming up," he said quietly, gazing at the horizon. "I should go inside." He turned back to her. "Regardless of what happened, I'm glad we were together."
She nodded. "Me too. But I'm –"
"Not sorry," he interrupted. "Don't be sorry. Everything's fine Clary. It almost wasn't, but it is." As careful and controlled as over, so careful it was almost hesitant, he leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Don't worry about me. I'll see you soon."
He didn't leave her time to answer as he turned away and retreated into the darkness of his house. She stared after him for a moment, feeling the shadowy ghost of his cool weight in her arms, before she turned away and began the long, lonely journey home.
Though she had told Jace she would be back that night, she went to her apartment instead of the Institute. She wanted to be alone. Her mind was so swollen with worry and confusion that she felt she might collapse under the weight of it.
Earlier that night, she had resolved herself to the idea of Simon's death. But the reality of it had been so, terribly different. She had thought herself indifferent to him – affectionate, maybe, but only in that supercilious, aloof way she allowed herself on occasion for people who sparked her interest. She had admired his kindness without processing how extraordinary it was. She had reveled in his gentleness without realizing how much she needed it – with a desperate, lonely thirst that throbbed in every bone in her body.
And then he had disappeared from her, for only a moment, and all of those things came crashing into her. In a rational realm of consciousness she told herself she barely knew Simon, that it was ridiculous to be so upset by a vampire's near-brush with the death he already belonged to. But Simon was no longer a vampire – he was Simon. And the kindness that she had taken for granted meant more to her than she had realized. And she didn't want to live without it. And she didn't know if she could.
Eventually, after hours of tortured musings, she drifted into a restless sleep. She dreamed that Simon was dying, and she tried to save him. She watched him collapse to the ground, his muscles slack and weak as blood poured across the moonlight pale of his shivering skin, and as she watched she felt her own heart stutter and thunder as if it were dying in place of the heart that had already died in his chest.
A knowing as old and deep as the angel's blood that bore her knew what would save him. This time, she found the courage. This time, she knew she didn't want him to die. She leaned forward, bared her throat, felt his arms wrap around her as he nuzzled her neck, deceptively tender. Their breath mingled, the world silent around them as he brushed the hair away from her neck and rested his cool lips against her warm skin. She shivered. And then his fangs were piercing her skin and sinking into her veins, and she felt her blood drawn out of her and into his heart in lurching pulses. She felt her blood moving through him, felt the essence of herself filtering through a gentle mind and pooling into a heart filled with light.
But her blood burned him, and he died before her eyes. Her blood was molten gold, and he choked on it even as she watched it ignite his veins with heavenly fire, and then he was burning, burning from the inside out, and she screamed and held him as he burst into flames that didn't burn her skin but burned him to ashes. All that remained were his eyes, floating in nothingness, gazing at her with sadness and pain but none of the anger that she deserved.
And then her father rose from Simon's ashes like a phoenix re-born, shining gloriously as if the rays of a thousand splendid suns were bursting through him, and he flooded the world with blinding white light. Only she remained in darkness, alone and empty, forgotten and cold. And she stayed there forever, her blood leaving her body in golden drops that scorched the earth she lay on, poisoning the life within.
Even though I had a list of excuses for the whole chapter length thing, I do feel like a jerk about it. Sorry. But, like I said, the next chapter is almost done.
Look, guys, I know updates take a while, and I'm genuinely sorry. But during theses breaks, I'm not just writing one chapter, I'm working on the entire story. I'm in this for the long haul. Like, so long you'll probably get tired of me. If you aren't already.
Long
haul.
Again, thank you for the reviews on the last chapter. Guest reviewers - sorry I can't answer you personally, but I appreciate you guys just as much.
I think you'll like the next chapter.
Thanks for reading. I hope to hear your thoughts.
