All right. This is the moment we've all been waiting for: the last chapter. Two years in the making, and written completely off of the top of my head, without so much as a real plot line to go off of or any organization whatsoever, Hate is a reflection on my growth as a writer. As some of you know, I'm going back and editing all of the earlier chapters, which are unequivocally horrible as of right now. However, they represent me going back a couple years ago when my writing was...bleh, but my passion for it was just as strong as it is today.

I started writing Hate when I was thirteen or fourteen, and I'm now sixteen and a sophomore in high school. I originally adopted this story from musicluver008, and her original version was out-of-this-world amazing. That being said, I had to live up to the exceedingly-high standard that she left off on. I'm not sure if I've accomplished just that, but, as I said, I'm going to be giving my story an extreme makeover. It probably won't be a while until Hate is officially complete, but I'll post a little notice when the time comes. I know my updating has been rocky at best, but here we are today, on the last chapter (not including the epilogue) for a story that I started years ago.

Before you guys freak out, know that I'm going to be updating an epilogue soon enough that will hopefully make all loose-ends tied. I can't thank any of you enough for your continued support and uplifting encouragement. I don't want to get too sappy, but I always had your kind words to pick me up when I was having a bad day, and, well, thank you!

Hope you guys enjoy!(:

~Clary~

I stumbled backwards, colliding with the wall, unable to restore the lost balance. The world was without any gravity and I kept falling, waiting for the ground to come, waiting to be regurgitated by reality's abyss-like mouth; waiting and waiting and waiting. All except for the ringing in my ears, as persistent and loud and deafening as a flat-line on a heart monitor, sound was warped into a another dimensional continuum, out of reach and prompting a symphony to go off inside my own body; blood pounding, pulsating, heart drumming, echoing, bones grating, protesting.

Somehow I did end up on the floor, leaning heavily against the lockers and reaching one arm above my head to cling to one of the dials, as if I could possibly use the leverage to pull myself back up. I only noticed this—my positioning—when my eyes finally became seeing again. When they blinked away the haze and focussed. Along with sight eventually came everything else: My father struggling under Jace's weight, the gun—that had gone off only seconds before still firmly grasped in his hand, and the pooling of water below them taking on a pinkish-tinge.

Blood.

I started to panic and looked at the scene before me in complete and utter dread, finding it oddly enough to be unchanged. Jace had managed to tackle my father to the ground in time with the gun being fired, only, if he had been hit, there was no way he could be jabbing his elbow into Valentine's neck and breaking bones to get to the lethal object that was held between his fingers. Jace even had the upper-hand; he was practically suffocating my father beneath him, a man who towered over him in both weight and stature, and was, without any hesitation or any moments' worth of reprieve, delivering blow after blow after blow, fighting with dangerous precision despite the acceleration of events.

I looked him over for any injuries, thinking somewhere in the back of my mind that it was his adrenaline keeping him afloat, that he had been shot and was merely ignoring the pain. I scrutinized every inch of his body, becoming dizzy in the process as he never stayed in one place for more than a couple seconds at a time. I almost started crying at the possibility that the boy I loved more than anything in the world had been hurt, had a bullet somewhere inside him, but I kept coming up short; I couldn't, other than the inevitable bruising and minor scathing, distinguish any blood coming off of him. There was certainly no open-wound gushing red rivulets, and he certainly wasn't acting like there was either. Jace hadn't been shot.

The thought didn't bring me any comfort, though. Jace was still in a tangled web of limbs with a man holding a firearm with the ever-present possibility to shoot him.

"J-ace!" I screamed for him. It never dawned on my that I sounded as if I had pudding stuffed in my mouth; I sounded foreign and lethargic, but ultimately slow. I didn't know what was wrong with me, and I had no intention to waste any time and figure it out. Jace was in trouble.

I folded in on myself as I tried to find my feet, never getting that far and settling for crawling on my knees. As I got closer and closer to the mass of destruction, but most importantly Jace and his head of damp, gold-colored hair, and his blue t-shirt and dark-wash jeans, and his warm body and his hugs and kisses and sweet nothing's whispering over and over again in my ear, and his safety, the possibility that Valentine could've been shot became lost to me. I no longer cared anymore because Jace wasn't hurt, because I knew that he was only a few feet away and I could be in his arms and he could love me.

The only thing that I even remotely registered was just that.

I wanted to be with Jace. I wanted to hear him call me Freckles and mock my eating habits and joke about my size. I wanted to see him smile and rub at the back of his neck and furrow his brows in concentration. I wanted to feel him around me, planting soft kisses along the column of my neck, his warm breath fanning out across the flush of my skin. I crawled towards the niche that was Jace, seeking him and his love and his everything. Nothing sounded more appealing in that moment than to be with him.

As if he could sense me approaching however, he jabbed the heel of his hand into Valentine's nose, giving him the opportunity to whip his head around in time to see me reaching out my hand for him to take. His eyes widened marginally. "What are you doing! Get out of here! RUN! Run, Clary! GO!"

My face morphed into that of utter confusion as I tried to make sense of his words. His mouth kept moving, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. In fact, I could hardly make out his face anymore; he was just a blur of all different shades of gold. I grasped what I hoped to be his arm, tugging harshly on the loose fabric. "W-we need to go. It's time to go," I told him, feeling as if I were the one being pulled down by something.

"Oh Clary," Jace suddenly exclaimed. His face swam into my vision, molten eyes burning with so many different emotions that my head spun. I blinked, clinging to our close proximity and smiled because that was all that I wanted. He was getting closer, and I think his mouth was moving, murmuring something unknown to me. I let my head fall forward, craving his warmth and savoring the moment my cheek became cushioned by the shirt covering his chest, feeling exhausted by the time I could finally close my eyes. Then Jace's arms were holding me to him and he was whispering, "Hey, Clary. No, no, no, no, no," so fast that all of his "no's" jumbled up into one. No, no, no, no, no. "Hey, we need to stay awake right now, okay? We're fine. You're fine."

I was jostled in his hold and I almost wanted to snap at whoever was trying to take me away from Jace, but I was too comfortable to move and I held onto him harder. "Clary, please," he exclaimed. He sounded far away, but he was right here, right in front of me.

"Anything you want," I told him.

I was suddenly yanked from the comfort of his embrace, and Jace was gripping my shoulders harshly, shaking me once in his hold. His eyes were glossy, their color magnificent, like an inferno of caramel and mocha and honey. They were desperate, vulnerable it seemed, and fearful. I wanted to take all his worry away, and so I reached out one of my hands and used it to cradle the side of his face. Jace released his hold on my right shoulder and wrapped his remaining arm fully around my upper back, using his now-free hand to grasp my own and hold it between our nearly-touching chests. "You need to stay awake right now, got it?" He was adamant that I do this, and, because I would do anything for him, I nodded.

"I need to hear you say it, Clary," he demanded.

I nodded again, not fully comprehending.

"Say it," he enunciated.

"Okay," I told him. "Okay. Okay." I meant it, too, but by the time Jace was opening his mouth once more, I was already being pulled back under. I was already resting against Jace's chest again and letting my eyes close. I was already too far gone.

"No, Clary."

"Okay. Okay."

"Promise me you'll stay awake."

"I promise."

"Clary."

"Okay."

~Jace~

Oh God, no.

As soon as the gun had gone off I waited. Waited to feel the bullet shred painfully through the top layers of my skin and embed itself in my body. I waited to feel red-hot, agonizing waves of brutality sear the muscles off of my bones and deliver a lasting punch to my furiously-beating heart. I waited to fall to the ground and choke on my own blood, to feel dread and hopelessness and what it meant to be a failure. I waited to leave Clary forever without so much as a goodbye, with the last real words I said to her, which were in no way charming, to scar the mark I'd leave on the world.

In the time between I feinted towards Valentine and our bodies collided like a gator's jaw, the bullet had scorched past me—just barely nicking my ear—and disappeared out of my plane of sight, along with it my greatest fear that I'd never be able to see Clary again, and worse, leave her in the hands of her father. I don't know what came over me then, but I was determined to shut Valentine down. For good.

All I saw was red as I hit him again and again and again, and, if I hadn't known all of the horrible and cruel things he'd done in his past to his own family, I would've felt bad for the poor guy. I was never much of a fighter, not even when my parents first left and I was forced to adapt to an entirely new family—the Lightwoods. I mean, yeah, just like any teenage boy I let my anger get the best of me and I've done some things on the field that I wish I hadn't, but I wasn't exactly the guy you'd point out in the hallway to help you get a bully off your back. Then again, I'd never shy away from a fight either. I had no problem punching an asshole in the jaw and sending him to the nurse's office.

And Valentine certainly qualified as an asshole.

Not only has he refused to leave Clary and her mother alone, after they easily went to hell and back just to be where they are today, but he's been stalking them for God only knows how long, and toying with them; drawing out their misery. And the man was all for burning down a school full of everyone in it, including my sister and brother. Valentine wasn't right in the head, and if anyone deserved to burn today, it was him.

All I thought of in that moment was Clary. Once her biological father was out of the picture, she'd be free to be happy, to walk to work if she wanted and go to the movies, and out to dinner with me. Her brother was back, her mother was getting married to Luke, she was doing great in school, and the only thing that was keeping her from being completely at ease and confident enough to seize whatever it was that she wanted, was the man that I now had the power to get rid of. I had him right where I wanted him, right where I needed him.

I knew that Valentine hadn't been expecting me to put up a fight, and neither had I when I first saw the giant mass of silver hair and cold, coal-like eyes; Valentine was huge. Not big, no, not slightly tall or broad, but unequivocally large. He had the body type of a NFL football player, and enough muscle to back it up. I was definitely the underdog in the match, but I was admittedly playing dirty and using my stamina and agility, built up thanks to years of playing football myself, to slowly beat him down, punch by punch.

My knuckles were pulled taught, the skin once covering them a mess of blood. While Valentine had been able to get in a few good hits here and there, my left side was killing me and my jaw felt like it was going to fall off.

To think that Valentine, considering his size and all, had abused Clary and her family made me blind to it all, though. Clary was tiny even now, and I'm sure that when she was eleven that she had absolutely nothing to her; Valentine, knowing that she couldn't fight back even if she wanted to, had brutalized and abused and took advantage at every turn when it came to his daughter. It was sick. He'd hurt her and it just wasn't fair. The imbalance of power he'd had over her, instead of using it to make her wiser and stronger and ready to take on the world, had all been directed to demeaning and belittling and breaking her.

I took this all into account with every punch, kick, elbow, knee, and swing that I took at him. I wanted him to hurt just as bad as he'd made Clary hurt, but I also knew that I was letting my emotions delve too much into my actions, that I was getting distracted. I needed to focus on what was really important at the moment: Valentine still had a loaded gun in his possession. He'd missed me once, but I didn't think myself lucky enough to dodge it a second time.

All while pinning him down the best I could, what with him fighting back just as aggressively, I reached for the handgun, straining every inch of my body to do so. I was this close to grabbing in when I heard clumsy swashes in the water behind me, becoming closer to me. My initial thought was that it was Hodge, that he'd returned from the storage closet I'd shoved him into after surely giving him a severe concussion, to help Valentine. I was just barely holding down the latter, so I broadened my hand, the one that had been reaching for the gun, and jabbed it violently into Valentine's nose. I didn't look long enough to see the blood gush from the impact, but my hand hurt enough that I knew that I'd broken bone. That he wasn't going to be able to recover as quickly as he had been.

I spun around, already expecting to see danger and prepared to defend myself, when my eyes immediately went wide at the sight of Clary crawling like an infant towards me. All this time, while I'd been fighting Valentine to protect Clary, Clary had been just feet away; she'd see everything that I'd done, and probably had a pretty good idea as to what I was planning on doing. I'd told her to run, and I thought she'd done just that. I thought she was safe from her father. Instead she was seeing things that can never be unseen and I almost felt like hitting myself, but I screamed at her instead. "What are you doing! Get out of here! RUN! Run, Clary! GO!"

As if she couldn't register the words, she kept nearing me, getting closer to not only me but Valentine—who was holding a gun. Glancing at her father, seeing him on the verge of losing consciousness and holding his nose, I kicked out at his hand, sending the gun a couple feet away from him where it was completely submerged in water. I didn't really think about handling Valentine then, though, because...Clary. Why was she here?

"Clary? What are you doing? Get out of here."

She just kept getting closer, her movements all disoriented. On instinct I was moving towards her, and, by the time I'd moved a yard or so, she was practically sitting on my lap and tugging on my sleeve, nearly incoherent as she told me that we needed to leave. I wanted to know why she was acting so strange, and I found my answer not even a second later.

No.

Pooling near the middle of her abdomen was blood, a deep and dark wound lying at the center of it, confirming my dreaded suspicions: Clary had been shot. She'd been the one. I almost broke down at the horrible sight of it, thinking the worst. It looked bad. He'd hit her right in the gut, and the worst part was was that she seemed to be completely unaware of it. "Oh Clary." My voice broke. She completely collapsed against me, then, leaving me in a stage between wanting to hyperventilate and cry like a baby, and hold her to me until she could hardly breathe, to the point where she was smaller than she was and shielded away from the rest of the world.

It was gut-wrenching to see her, the girl I loved, the girl I intended on marrying and spending the rest of my life with, the girl who was strong look so weak. She was hardly breathing, hardly moving, hardly alive. I stared at her collected, little form in my lap, her head buried in my chest, her small hands clinging to my shirt like a life-line. I looked up, not knowing what to do, too shocked to cry, too afraid to say anything. I hoped with that one look, that whoever was up there was watching, and understood that I couldn't live without this girl. That she couldn't die. That this sole prayer was the only one I wanted to be heard, the only one that I wanted to be taken to heart and listened to and acted upon.

"Hey, Clary. No, no, no, no, no," I managed, rocking her gently in my hold, trying desperately to see her face, her eyes, a sign that she'd be okay. "Hey," I told her, pressing my lips to her head, "we need to stay awake right now, okay? We're fine. You're fine."

I shifted her in my embrace, the now-very real, very daunting possibility that she may not make it out of this alive hindering my thought processing. No, Clary would make it. I looked down at her as if to convince myself that I was right, that her merely breathing after all was said and done was reasonable, but she wasn't moving. "Clary, please."

"Anything you want," she murmured, sounding so drained.

I looked down at her and saw all that I could ever hope for in my future. I saw my future. My whole world. Before Clary and I got close, before I fell in love with her so hard that I nearly fell through the floor-boards, I honestly didn't see myself five, ten, fifteen years later; it was a mystery that unnerved me late at night and gnawed at my insides, that made me dread growing up because I didn't know what more there was to life than high school and football and girls and popularity. I guess I could blame that on my birth parents, considering that they lived up to so much and allowed a new chapter in their lives to overtake the very part of them that made them human, and I guess that I was still pretty messed up by their spirits. Sure, I had a great family, and I had support, but I didn't have any motivation to take another step forward.

It was easy to take five steps back when the prospect of the future arose, to turn my head the other way when I was faced with decisions that'd impact the rest of my life. I didn't know what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I still don't, but now I have a purpose at least. Now I have reasoning, and the very source of that reasoning is Clary.

She is...wow. I still can't believe that I can call her mine, I still can't believe that an estranged and mangled, but equally beautiful soul like her, could be claimed, let alone touched by an outside force in the form of someone as pathetic as myself. I can't even remember what it was like when she wasn't next to me, making me laugh or think or be stunned into silence. She was this small, independent vessel commanded by her own self-righteousness and empowerment; she was a pain in the ass, but a pain in the ass that I can no longer live without nonetheless. Someone so hardheaded and strong, someone so unaffected by conformity and social acceptance, someone who made herself a light in all the lives that she stepped into just by simply being herself, someone so...unflinchingly passionate and hopeful shouldn't have wanted to be around someone else that could taint her purity. And yet, somehow, here I was and here she was, both in love.

Clary snuck up on me. She creeped into my life, and her very presence—her tinkling laughter, sparkle in her green eyes, dazzling smile, the way she'd raise both eyebrows because she was unable to raise the one when she was trying to be stern, her easy blush, eminent passion, strong voice and opinions, and unwillingness to let her past define her—draped over my shoulders like an itchy, but warm blanket, until it became a hat and she was all that I could think about.

I admired her more than I admired anything because of her strength alone. And now, because I let her believe that letting the outside on the inside was a good thing, because I made her vulnerable to all that she'd been scared of, she was lying nearly lifeless in my arms. I couldn't let her die—I wouldn't let her die. We'd both get out of this, and then... then I'd be the best boyfriend there was. I'd be the best person there was and do anything I could to help the world in pension to Clary's life. After this, Clary would no longer have to worry about her deranged father ever finding her again, and she'd never have to doubt love because I'd give all of mine to her; I'd lavish her in kisses and massage her feet and cook her luxury meals and carry her up flights of stairs if that's what she wanted; I'd treat her like the treasure she is, and protect and care for her, and always make her feel secure. It was my promise to the world.

She was not going to die.

I yanked her upright, suddenly springing into action, determinedly shaking her shoulders. "You need to stay awake right now, got it?"

Her eyes, almost glazed over but aware, met mine and, at the thought of never seeing them again, I wanted to give up. She nodded, endearingly lost. Funny that because before her I was lost, and she'd found me. And now I had no way of knowing if I could find her. I need to hear you say it, Clary," I demanded.

She nodded a little again, frowning.

"Say it," I practically spat. I was angry, but not at Clary, never at Clary. I was angry that she might be taken away from me, and I wanted more than anything to be proven wrong.

"Okay," she said quietly, the sound of her voice alone bringing an overwhelming amount of relief over me like a bucket of ice water. "Okay. Okay."

But then she was needfully positioning herself back in my arms, letting her heavy eyelids droop until they closed altogether.

"No, Clary."

"Okay. Okay," she murmured, sounding almost peaceful, and in no way representing her true intent. She was in a state of being half-awake, half-asleep, and that scared the living hell out of me because if she went to sleep, even for a minute, she could never wake up again.

"Promise me you'll stay awake."

"I promise."

"Clary."

"Okay."

I looked fervently down at her every couple of seconds, demanding that she respond to me in a way to assure me that she was still hanging on, and pulled her completely in my arms. I held her diagonally across my torso, holding her suffocatingly close as I rose to my feet. Valentine, from what I could see was just now regaining focus and sitting up. Now that Clary was back in the middle of our spat, I was more worried about getting us out of there than finishing off her father.

Before I could give him enough time to come to, I was racing past his dazed form and sprinting around the corner, towards the exit. It only dawned on me then that I'd forgotten about the gun. Surely Valentine would find it. I should've kicked it further. I shouldn't have kicked it all. I should've take it for myself.

I kept going, though, knowing that turning back around was a death sentence to not only myself, but to Clary as well. There was no telling how much time she had left. "Clary, how are you doing?" I said absentmindedly, putting an extra bounce in my step to bring her back.

"Mhfmm," she moaned.

"Clary," I said more assertively.

"Fine," she said.

I was running, making good progress, rounding corner after corner until I reached a clear path to the exit. All I had to do was descend a flight of stairs and we were free.

"Clary. You awake?"

She didn't answer this time.

I jostled her rather roughly in my hold. "Clary."

"Yes," she managed.

I reached the first step and hurriedly raced down the rest of them, the neon green-lit EXIT sign making my heart leap in my chest. "How are you doing Clary?" I panted.

"Mmm."

"I need a real answer."

"Mmm."

"Clary—"

"Fine."

When I finally made it to the bottom step, I was all too eager to round the staircase—only to have something large and metal and painful collide with my face. I went down hard, my mind pulling me in two different directions; on one hand there was Clary, who was dying in my arms, and on the other I hurt badly and could barely see straight. By the time my back was slamming into the floor, Clary was sprawled out next to me, her muffled whimper bringing me back to reality. I tried sitting up immediately, tried getting to Clary to protect her, but my head was pounding like a jackhammer against concrete and the rest of my body seemed to be in a paralyzed trance, too heavy to function.

One moment I'm looking up at the ceiling, and the next a looming figure is in my plain of sight, all too blurry at first before distilling into one solid picture: Mr. Starkweather.

"Thought this was the only fire extinguisher in this school. Hurts, doesn't it?" he gritted out irritably, leaning against the staircase and clutching the side of his head. Through the slits of his fingers I could see a disgusting-looking bruise accompanied by a fair amount of blood. "You had a good run, I'll give you that," he muttered, dropping the extinguisher by his feet and taking out a handkerchief from the inside of his coat to wipe at his face. "But, Valentine will be along soon enough. You're done for, kid."

I tried sitting up, letting out a disgruntled moan and unable to help but look over at Clary. She looked so small and weak, her red hair a stark contrast to her now-pale, clammy, almost blue complexion.

I squeezed my eyes closed, urging the pain to go away, before opening them and staring unashamed up at our history teacher. "Please, sir," I breathed heavily. "Look at her. She needs help."

Mr. Starkweather didn't even flinch. In fact, he merely rolled his eyes and continued on with blotting at his forehead.

As if sensing that Clary's father was near, he looked up the stairs in time to hear a cursing and infuriated Valentine grunting every step of the way as he neared the stairs. I dragged myself over to Clary, wishing that I could just move properly, wishing that we could be anywhere else than here, and covered her body with mine. Valentine made quick work of the stairs and kept on with his incoherent, angry babbling until he realized that Hodge, along with myself and his daughter were all waiting for him.

I didn't even look his way, rather pulled Clary closer to me and peered down at her beautiful, still face. I rubbed circles into her cheek, kissing her profusely. This was the end.

"You had a chance," Valentine drawled, sounding as if he were closer to us than I'd originally thought. "You had a chance to run, to live...And you chose in opposition of a long, happy life. All I wanted was to take my daughter home, to have my family back; I didn't want to have to kill you."

I tensed as I sensed him approaching us. "Clary," I whispered.

If I was going to die, all I wanted was to hear her voice one last time.

"Hey," I coaxed her gently.

"And I still don't want to have to kill you, but...unfortunately, you're much too capable of following us once I leave here with Clarissa. So, I'm sorry."

As I registered Valentine's words, my brows furrowed in confusion as to what he meant. I refused to look up at him, to give him the satisfaction of seeing my face when he'd do whatever it was that he was planning on doing, and waited in deafening silence.

All too late I heard a gun chamber click into place and then I was screaming in pain. My hands automatically wrapped around my lower thigh, where the bullet had sliced through bone, tissue and all to shatter my kneecap. It was unbelievably, indescribably painful, so painful that white, hot light flashed in my vision in waves of fire-like lashes. Blood pumped in my ears and rushed to my head, and all I could do was barely suppress my sounds of torment and roll on the floor like a madman, pleading for it to end.

Valentine swam in my vision, holding the gun once again at me, only this time at my upper-body. "I truly am sorry that I have to do this to you. You shouldn't die; you'll get help before you bleed out, but..." he scrunched his bloodied and mangled face together, his nose like a giant blueberry squashed beneath a boot, leaking berry-blood like a faucet on high. "I don't think you'll ever be the same after this."

Then he shot me again. And again.

"Goodbye, Jace," he told me, the sounds of the bullets still ringing in my ears and drowning out his voice. I watched through slitted eyes, the world around me like a blurry kaleidoscope, as Valentine's large figure moved past me. Towards Clary.

"No," I called helplessly.

Then, something amazing happened.

Ha, so, I was super motivated to write at the beginning of this chapter, but, as you've probably noticed, the quality just kept getting lower and lower and lower. Holy crap. I'm sorry. So, I intend to rewrite the last half of Jace's POV because, well, it totally sucks. Check back next Saturday (at the latest) to see the new, modified chapter.

Sorry guys! Hopefully it wasn't too bad!

Look for the epilogue because I promise it'll be sweet(:

Until next time, peace.