Hey! Hey everybody! So, other than me having absolutely no spare time, you can blame my lack of updating on me rereading through Hate. To say I'm embarrassed would be a complete understatement. I practically rewrote the first chapter, and it took me an entire week to do so because it was so bad. Can I just thank you all so much for still wanted to read my story?

On top of trying to give the beginning/middle of this story an extreme makeover, Hate will soon be coming to a close. Happy New Year and thanks for sticking with me!

If any of you guys have already read the last "chapter", which was really just a preview to this one, skip the beginning of this chapter! I alert you guys when the new content begins!

Trapped:

~Clary~

"We need to go," Jace said at once, his hold around me tightening as he planted one last, rather hasty kiss on my forehead, before he let go of me altogether and took my hand in his. He busied himself with setting the fire extinguisher down with his free hand, his expression wary. I could see it in his face—by the way his brows were furrowed, and how his lips were pulled taught together grimly, as if he was already expecting something to go wrong—that he was scared, scared of the impossible situation we were in. That I put him in. Recalling back to my father's last words, the school was on fire and it was only a matter of time before there'd be no way out. For anyone. Not to mention my said father was only unconscious and he could wake up at any time, and there was still Hodge to worry about, and the whole school-on-fire thing again; just this big, never- ending loop of catastrophe.

Hand-in-hand, the two of us raced out of the room and down the hallway, the smell of smoke becoming more and more arresting. "Jace!" I called to him, already breathing heavily. "There-re was a gunshot—there could be—"

Without even looking my way, and leading me towards one of the few staircases, he shook his head. "No. It was Miles," he explained, "and the police. The doors were locked and he shot through the glass."

My eyes went wide. "Everyone—"

His gold eyes met mine. "Is safe."

I nodded, feeling this undeniable weight lift from my shoulders. I couldn't imagine losing Kaelie or Isabelle or Simon, or anyone—even people I didn't know all that well—to the hands of my father. It was my fault that he was here and it was my fault that everyone was in danger. I brought him here, and I couldn't imagine if it lead to a school-wide massacre of all its students and teachers and staff.

"The entire East wing is gone," Jace breathed, first to get to the stairs as we began to hurriedly descend them. "The library, everything."

Unwanted tears pricked at my vision. My fault. This is all my fault.

"We can't get to the commons anymore," he continued on, "unless we want to get barbecued."

We sharply rounded a corner, resulting in my narrow-escape from getting my shoulder clipped on the edge of brick. Jace, clearly oblivious and just wanting to move, gave me a brief look over his shoulder, continuing to drag me along. "You okay?"

I nodded quickly. "Y-yeah!"

"We're almost there—"

Suddenly, we were being showered in water, making the two of us stop—but only for a second. The sprinklers overhead, combined with the overwhelming congestion of now-noticeable, black smoke, made it practically impossible to see anything more than an arm's length away. "We need to keep going," Jace said, his voice cracking slightly. The air was so dry. "We can't risk going back the way we came."

Another corner. Another corridor. Another turn.

We were flying, until, at last, the infamous fire nearly blinded my vision. I slid into Jace's back, my entire body drenched in the downfall of water, and coughed violently into my free arm as he cursed loudly. "Dammit!" The fire was blocking our way, blocking the only other exit in this school. Jace rubbed at his face haphazardly and looked down at my surely distraught expression. He roughly cusped the side of my face and leveled his gaze with mine, water pouring off of him. "We're going to have to go back!"

My eyes widened as the onslaught of fear crawled along my spine, and I shook my head rapidly. "Jace. No, we can't—"

"Clary, there isn't any other way out of here. Your father should still be knocked out—"

"But he could also be awake, looking for us right now—"

Jace straightened up and released my hand, throwing both of his down to his sides. "What do you suggest then? We jump out a window? The school is on fire and the only way to get out is if we go back the way we came."

I tried not to let his tone get to me; it was the first time, since the beginning of the year practically, that he'd ever raised his voice, much less acted out towards me. He was frustrated and I couldn't hold that against him, not now, not when our lives were literally at stake and one moment timed wrongly could result in our either being burned or cornered by my father.

I nodded at him, keeping my expression indifferent even as I registered the regret immediately flashing in his eyes. "Come on," he said, his voice noticeably softer but still strained somewhat.

We were back to running again, in the opposite direction, towards my father and whatever else we'd be met with.

Notice: Everything here, from this point on, is new content!

Jace was the leading force out of the two of us; without him, I probably would've already been trapped helplessly in a ring of fire. No, without him, I would've still been with my father and awaiting God only knows what he had planned. I knew he was a leader, and not just because he was captain of the football team at AHS, but because he's always quick to think of solutions in class—even when the kid doesn't know what we're talking about because he "accidentally" forgot to do the reading the night before. That, and he's just one of those people that, no matter the circumstance, you look to first when there's a problem. He's strategic naturally, and, I was beginning to find, even more so under pressure.

Sure, he was probably just as scared as I was on the inside, but he kept his demeanor calm on the outside, which was both admirable and greatly appreciated. For all knew he didn't really know what he was leading us back into. I mean, my demented father, who, might I add, was the one that set the school on fire and had originally been prepared to burn everyone in it, could easily be awake right now, heading right towards us. And there was Hodge, who had disappeared the moment he'd been sent off by my father to see what the commotion going on downstairs was about. He was loyal to Valentine, for whatever reason, and I'm sure that if he saw Jace and me running about, he'd do something to put an end to it. But Jace, being the sensational actor that he was, and outstanding at selling an idea, even one that he wasn't so sure about himself, made me more than willing to go along with whatever he said.

I was too afraid, regardless of my boyfriend, to look behind me. Jace kept sending frantic glances over his shoulder, resulting in him tugging on my arm even more so than he'd been doing a couple seconds ago to speed up our pace. By this point we were full-out sprinting.

It was also hard to see anything anymore; I couldn't even tell which hallway we were in. It was as if an explosion had gone off and the aftermath, being smog and ash and debris, was heavily lingering in its wake with absolutely no signs of going away any time soon. That, and the water overhead was still strongly showering us, making it near impossible to keep up at the rate we were going at without slipping every couple of feet. It was chaos.

Somehow, though, Jace was able to locate the staircase we'd gone down before, and proceeded to shove me in front of him—neither aggressively nor all that gently—and push me up it. "Come on Clary. We gotta move," his voice warned.

I wanted to hit him so badly, but instead settled for adhering to his overly-pushy demands, knowing that starting a fight with him was the last thing that needed to be added to our plate. I knew he was only being this overbearing because he was adamant to get me to safety, that he was doing it out of love and didn't know how else to express how dire our situation was to me without outright saying, "Here's the deal, toots: There's a forest fire-like inferno threatening to lick our heals if we don't hurry the hell up, and, we're also racing towards a new, perhaps even more dangerous threat that could also result in our inevitable demises. I love you, Clary, I do, but you're as slow as a second-stringer defensemen in the off-season."

That being said, Jace ended up practically carrying me the rest of the way up the stairs. Without even a second's worth of recovery, he was taking my hand in a vice-like grip once again and we were flying down the hallway. Towards my father. The only real positive to our change in direction was that we were now running on sopping wet carpet as opposed to tile, and the air was considerably less congested. It was only a matter of time, however, until the fire would reach us once more and then we'd really have a problem.

"What-t a-bout Hodge?" I managed to get out. My throat was absolutely killing me. It were as if I was swallowing blisters and nothing but heat, the water doing nothing to soothe the aching of my throat.

Jace, clearly not wanting to have to answer if it meant slowing down, kept hauling me after him. "I didn't u-use the fire extinguisher to just knock out your father."

"You knocked out our teacher?" I rasped, disbelieving.

Jace couldn't help but smile over his shoulder at me. "I've been wanting to do it since the start of freshmen year."

I made noise somewhere in between a laugh and scoff, that came out as neither because my throat was so damn dry. Jace noticed. "Try not to speak anymore, Freckles."

I almost stopped at that. Freckles. A pet name that Jace had been so delighted to use that, for the longest time now, I thought he'd forgotten about it; I hadn't heard him use the ridiculous name since a couple weeks or so after our first movie night. I don't know why, but hearing him say it immediately brought me at ease. I smiled after him, making a conscious effort to keep up with his impressive strides.

After every corridor or so, and Jace making sure that I was all right, and me practically heaving like an animal in labor trying not to slow us down, we reached the hallway in which Mr. Starkweather's history class was located. Just the mere thought of having to see my father again made me freeze up, and Jace, clearly not wanting to face any more obstacles, allowed our pace to slow down to a light jog. We were dead silent, the only sound coming from the light drizzle overhead. The water was having trouble seeping into the floor, however, and was puddling in small, shallow pools, making it that much easier to detect our footsteps as they swashed rather loudly.

"Pick up your feet," Jace whispered to me, cringing noticeably as he failed to do this himself.

We slowly progressed down the hall, doing our very best to remain deafeningly silent, and wincing every time we made a mistake that resulted in our feet to either slap against or swash in the water. Starkweather's classroom, despite how postponing our movements were, continued to grow nearer, a feeling of dread settling in the pit of my stomach along with it. Jace squeezed my hand every couple of yards in assurance, sending me comforting smiles as he did. It was true that I wouldn't want to have to go through this with anyone other than him, but even he couldn't lessen the anxiety bubbling inside my chest.

Valentine could very well already be awake, watching us right this second and waiting until we were close enough to make his move, or he could still be passed out and wake with a start if either Jace or me were too loud. It was so unsettling, and yet we kept creeping towards the source of it.

Leave it to me, though, to assure that Valentine does wake up. One moment I'm clinging to Jace and we're moving like snails, and the next my foot snags against a loose piece of carpet and I'm falling. To say the impact was soundless would be a pathetic excuse for a lie; the water lapping gently against the walls momentarily went wild, followed by the onslaught of waves, that were fabricated by the indecisiveness of my movements, noisily erupting into alarms. Wake up! they said. Wake up! Wake up! Wake UP!

I went still, looking towards the daunting presence of the classroom door that had still yet to move. Jace, nearly hissing at the sound, cautiously lowered himself to the ground next to me, his eyes playing ping pong between to the door and the burden that just so happened to be his girlfriend. Ever so slightly, he looped an arm around my waist and hoisted me back up to my feet, one of my arms going around his neck and the other latching on his hand. We did this slowly, so slowly, as if we were on a thin sheen of ice threatening to break.

When we accomplished the very grueling task, and looked towards the still-unmoving door, we both let out a near-silent sigh in relief. The two of us just stood their, wrapped in our embrace, for a couple of moments to allow our heart rates to slow down. Jace rested his forehead against the top of my head, relaxing at once. This was definitely not the time to rest, though, and, after our eyes met in an agreement, we were back to journeying down the hallway extra carefully.

When we passed Starkweather's classroom, I held my breath. We both did. I was too afraid to look inside it to see if my father was still there, but, somehow we made it past it and carried on. For a second I allowed myself to believe that he'd given up and was already outside the building, making his escape, but then, just as we became adjacent with a new hallway, Valentine stepped out into the open. Turns out he had been watching us, just not from where I thought he'd been.

Jace noticeably tensed beside me. He protectively positioned himself in front of my own body and took a step back, forcing me to do the same.

We stood in a standstill. Valentine observing Jace, Jace observing Valentine, and me looking between them with fear clawing at my insides. "You look much different face-to-face," my father suddenly said to Jace, not sounding at all threatening. If anything, he sounded...casual.

"Yeah, well, pictures can only capture so much," Jace said bitterly.

"Jace," I warned, taking notice of the way my father's eyes flashed. "Don't."

I knew he heard me, but hearing someone and listening to them are two entirely different things. Jace was naturally protective of me, even when there was a boy or something that let his gaze linger my way a little longer than he could tolerate. He especially didn't like people like Sebastian being around me, people he knew had hurt me in someway. For the longest time, he wouldn't even let Isabelle, his own sister, be alone with me. And now he was being faced with my father, the person that had abused me throughout my childhood and had gone as far as to violate me when I was innocent and undeserving. I probably shouldn't have told him everything about Valentine all at once, but either way Jace would've persisted to get closer to me and he would've found out. I also had trouble withholding anything from Jace because I trusted him too much.

The trust I had for him, though, went both ways. I knew Jace trusted me more than anyone, and he cared about me, and, hell, he loved me. Even if he didn't know or still hated me, Jace would've allowed himself to stand between me and danger; that's just who he was. But he was very, very defensive when it came to the people he loved.

I should've felt touched by this, and I did, but I was more so distressed. I didn't want Jace to protect me if it meant that he'd be the one to get hurt, and I didn't want him to dodge a bullet for me if it mean that he'd be the one to take it. I knew what my father was capable of, and I didn't want Jace here, period, because Valentine made no exceptions when it came to who he inflicted his wrath upon, and I had a feeling that he'd be even more ruthless towards Jace considering that he was the only thing standing in between his daughter and himself. I wanted Jace out of here. Safe.

Valentine swallowed down his anger, his self-restraint proving to be most alarming. Usually, by this point, I'd already have a black eye. "I'm going to give you one chance," he drawled, eyeing Jace levelly. "You can leave right now and I won't kill you. Save yourself, boy, don't be stupid."

"Like hell," Jace spat back, not missing a beat.

"Think about your family," Valentine continued, clearly displeased. "Think about all the people you'd leave behind to morn over your death. I hear you have a bright future ahead of you...It'd be a shame to stop short of it, and all because of a single girl, wouldn't you agree?"

"Jace—" I tried, tugging on his arm.

"If you think for one second that I'm leaving, you've got another thing coming for you," Jace said, his voice unwavering, ignoring me altogether.

My father raised a brow at this, not amused. "Very well," he shrugged nonchalantly, as if he didn't really care—and I knew he didn't. I watched with a baited breath as he reached behind him, untucking something that I knew very well to be a gun. Time seemed to freeze. I held onto Jace tighter, just barely concealing a whimper, as he aimed the handgun at Jace and positioned his finger over the trigger.

Jace didn't even look away. He was too strong for that.

Me, however, I was on the verge of tears. "Jace," I said to him desperately, "please, please—"

"Okay," Valentine breathed. "One more chance: you either leave here and do the logical thing, or...you stay and get shot right between the eyes, in front of your precious Clary. I won't kill her when you go. She's my daughter, I'd never kill her. All I want is to take her home with me, where she belongs. Either way, she's coming with me; it's up to you, though, how it happens. Think about how devastated she'd be if she had to witness you, the boy she loves, dead before you even hit the ground. You'll be leaving her in good hands—"

Jace was practically shaking with anger and bit out a cutting-edge laugh. "Are you really trying to get me to believe that Clary is safe with you? That it's for the best? You're clearly not right in the head, Valentine," he told him, enunciating his name with disgust. "You don't set a school on fire to get something you want, you don't hurt your family—people you're supposed to love and protect, and you don't ever put your hands on your daughter."

Valentine tilted his head at this and looked to me. "I'll have to teach you how to keep your mouth shut, Clarissa."

Jace stepped forward, towards the gun. "You won't be teaching her anything."

I watched as my father lazily turned his expression back on Jace, seemingly annoyed. "As soon as he's out of the picture," he drawled, his finger pressing against the trigger as he cocked it towards him.

I sprung into action and threw myself in front of Jace, breathing heavily. "NO!" I shouted. "Please."

I stood with my back against Jace's chest, not acting as much as a shield considering my size. "Please," I said again, looking directly into my father's eyes. "Don't kill him. I'll do anything you want. I'll go with you—"

"No, you won't," Jace contradicted, sounding outraged if anything, his breath stirring my hair. "That's out of the question."

Valentine sighed, rubbing at his forehead with the same hand that he held the gun in. Jace grabbed hold of my arms and used them to pull me tighter against him. He pressed his lips fervently against my ear. "You're going to run, Clary."

"What?" I said, panicking as I tried to face him but his hold wouldn't allow me to. "Jace, no—"

"You. Are. Going. To. Run. Trust me," he said with finality.

"I'm not running," I told him defiantly. "No matter what. Not without you."

I heard Jace sigh sadly, his grip relenting and granting me access to turn and look up into his eyes. In them was enough love to melt my heart.

In one moment, however, Jace was throwing me off to the side, resulting in me hitting the wall with enough force to wind me. I slid down to the floor, trying to catch my breath, and looked towards the sudden commotion going on in time to see Jace tackling Valentine to the ground. It was all happening so fast, and the agonizing worry I felt jostled me awake. I jumped to my feet and ran towards the mass of swinging fists and elbows and legs, only to stop short.

The gun went off.

Dun dun dunnn! So, sorry if the quality towards the end of the chapter is lacking, but I'm going to go back and add some more stuff to it eventually. Hey, at least I updated! If it sucked, though, which I'm pretty sure it did, I am truly sorry.

Gosh. I wish time would just slowww down. School started back up again, I have friends to worry about, and, on top of all that, I started dating someone and he's taking away from my writing. Jerk.

Like I said, though, I am not giving up on any of my stories. I know it's so rude to leave you guys hanging for as long as I do in between updates, but I'm really trying! Thanks so much for sticking by me!

Until next time, peace.