Chapter 36

Clary knew it was a dream before prying her eyes awake.

The living room was much the same as it had been when she'd tried to murder Jonathan, cold and sterile as ever. It was even adorned with the surprisingly appropriate furniture piece of a man bleeding out on the floor, as it had been earlier that day. Jonathan was markedly absent, as he often was in these types of nightmares. Evidently even her brain was aware that a Jonathan she couldn't see was far more frightening than one she could.

She entered the room slowly, clutching the piece of the picture frame she'd armed herself with the day before. This time, however, the wood was digging into her flesh so fiercely she could feel blood trickling down her palm. Unlike yesterday, her body had bypassed fear and apprehension and had skipped straight to horror and dread. She couldn't recall arming herself, but she was certain she'd known it was hopeless when she did so.

And she'd been right, of course.

The only thing her eyes could focus on when she entered was the body lying prone in the center of what some might ironically call the "family" room. He was dead. Luke was dead and it wouldn't really have mattered if she'd been there in time to watch him die or not. He'd been dead when she'd agreed to leave him behind. There was no use lying to a corpse.

It had just begun to dawn on her that this was a dream when the body let out a strangled gasp.

She was at the dying man's side before she had time to process what she was doing. The dagger was gone from his chest, but she could quite clearly draw its image to her mind. She as if it'd been waiting for her arrival, fresh blood began to bloom on his chest, spreading more quickly than she could prepare for across his white t-shirt. Her hands fumbled across his chest in search of the wound, eliciting a harsh groan from her poor victim.

"Where were you stabbed?" she asked, pleased at the only slight tremor in her voice as her eyes scanned his bleeding torso.

"Clary," a familiar voice hissed out, pain etched into every vibration.

Her heart nearly stilled as surely as her hands did as realization wrapped itself around her throat like a cloud of smoke.

"This is a dream," she stated, her eyes finding purchase in the oblivion out the window and her voice steady.

She felt him lift his hand more than she saw it, as his whole body shifted with the movement and it was accompanied with another pained gasp. His arm creakily moved towards her, lifting past her neck to land on her cheek.

Trying to focus on the dampness of the blood on his fingers rather than the calloused roughness she knew well against her cheek, she whispered, "This is a dream."

"Look me in the eye when you kill me, Clary."

Her eyelids fluttered shut instinctively as the sound of her name on his lips wrapped itself around her shoulders like a blanket, even as the rest of his words shattered her tentative self-control.

"C'mon, firecracker," he wheezed once more as the blood drained from her face.

His hand tilted her face downward so that her hair hung around them like a curtain of wildfire and she had to suck in a steadying breath before she opened her eyes.

"Oh Jace."

It was as much a prayer as it was a statement of fact. Even though his pale, drawn face was a fiction she'd never seen, it managed to chill her to the bone. Jace was dying, and though it wasn't real, he broke her heart.

His lips curved weakly upward, like her eyes were some relief to him at last, and it took the sight of tears on his cheeks for her to realize that she was crying.

"Oh Jace," she echoed, fisting his white shirt in her own bleeding hand. "I'm so sorry."

He blinked slowly, looking peaceful despite the pain that must've been setting in like a favored friend. He seemed to exude forgiveness at a constant contrast with her mind's intentions with setting up this scenario, but it was a forgiveness she couldn't accept.

"I'm sorry," she repeated, steeling her mind against the tragedy that threatened to swallow her whole.

"But you're not real."

Jace's eyes widened in shock and, for one excruciatingly long moment, he looked hurt by her statement. Once the moment was over, it was as if she'd broken the spell and he was gone. She was alone for only a couple of seconds before she woke up and even then, it was with a sense that perhaps she should've always been alone.

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The remaining Morgensterns fell into a relative routine despite themselves.

Jonathan, Clary noticed, woke up every morning at 5 a.m. with a start, jerking up so quickly the mattress creaked almost imperceptibly. If she was being more accurate, he actually woke up for the first time at 3:37 a.m., the second time at 4:52 a.m. and the final time at 5:19 a.m., before actually rising from his bed. Clary at first assumed he was waking himself up periodically to check on her. But when she didn't hear his footfalls come towards where she slept in one of the guest rooms a few doors down from his, she realized the decision to come into consciousness was less of a decision and more of a consequence of his lifestyle.

She liked to imagine that he had nightmares about the horrible things he'd done, but imagining Jonathan with a conscience was a dangerous pastime. More than likely, he was paranoid, a purely Valentine trait he seemed to have inherited.

When he rose, he took approximately 23 minutes to prepare himself to see her. This entailed, Clary suspected, washing his face, brushing his teeth and his hair and masturbating until he felt his urges were under control. Clary was certain Jonathan had heard the phrase "go fuck yourself" enough to have seriously considered it as an alternative to forcing himself on his sister, though the habit in no way made her safe with him.

Then, he'd appear in her doorway clad in only his boxers and a white wife beater, an obvious excuse to display his strength and size to her, as if he only need show her what she was missing to make her his.

"Clary," he'd state, his voice cold despite his best efforts. He'd clear his throat once, maybe twice if he was particularly frustrated and continue, "I'm hopeful you slept well."

This, like so much else between them, was a façade. She'd be perched on the window seat, her knees drawn tightly to her chest as if she could compress herself small enough that she'd cease to exist. Her bed would be made as it had been when she'd been shown this room on her first night, untouched as a symbol of Clary's resolve. The dark circles under her eyes continued to give her a haunted look.

The two of them ate breakfast together without argument after the first few days. When he'd first expected her to join him, she'd staunchly resisted and they'd argued about it so intensely that he lost his temper and had dragged her to breakfast by her hair. When she'd still persisted in refusing to eat, he'd had his men hold her down and he'd forced food down her throat, growing more and more violent the more and more she bitten him and spat food out.

He'd laughed though, the entire time. Her antics, more than anything else amused him. She was serving as an elixir for him and she knew it. She watched the profound effect she'd had on him as he seemed almost relaxed when she saw him around the house and could almost see why he'd been so desperate to have her back.

Almost.

After the third day, her resistance had simply fizzled out, a fact he too noticed with equal parts dismay and satisfaction. She joined him for dinner willingly and painted when he asked her to. When he'd been so bold as to ask for a kiss nearly a week into her return, she'd acquiesced with a gentle touch to his cheek, though she'd admittedly looked visibly shaken at the request.

He began to worry that he'd been to brutal with her the first few days, but his actions of violence and aggression had only strengthened her resolve in the past. Had he successfully broken his darling Clary? What was different between them now?

His only guess would've been her complete absence of hope. With Lucian's death, he'd certainly asserted his absolute power and she knew that there was no leaving him, especially if she valued that man as much as she seemed to.

The timidity between them was palpable. Clary knew Jonathan would make his move on her soon, if only in the vain hope that her own lack thereof would make her more susceptible to accepting and reciprocating his love for her.

She tried not to think about Jace. Though her mind ached for the comfort of his gold eyes, there was something about the Morgenstern home that felt too dangerous to harbor even the idea of Jace.

He still popped up though. In her drawings. When she was forcing herself awake. When she inevitably drifted off.

When she was planning the end.