Hope y'all like this chapter! There's a bit of foreshadowing in it ;). Be sure to leave a review!

"What-"

"-the-"

"-hell?"

Clary woke to each of those words being spoken by a different friend. First Izzy, then Magnus, then Alec. Simon stood in silence. Upon seeing said friends, Clary fell off the couch that she had been sleeping on. Upon her falling off the couch, Jace was disturbed and thus woke as well.

The next move that Clary made was for the remote that controlled the monitors. She hit the power button and they all turned off. Then, she turned to her friends who were still standing in the doorway.

"Good morning," Clary greeted them, her voice hoarse.

"Did you at least use a condom?" Magnus questioned and Jace buried his face into the couch though his muffled laughter could still be heard.

"Nothing happened!" Clary insisted. "We were just working on something and then we fell asleep. End of story."

"What were you working on?" Alec asked looking past Clary at the monitors behind her.

"None of your business." Clary crossed her arms over her chest with a huff. Alec put up defensive hands. "What are you all doing over here anyway?"

"Well, the four of us were going to head out for breakfast, but I had to grab something from the apartment first," Simon said.

Clary scowled. "So, everyone came upstairs?"

Simon shrugged. "I was kind of hoping to catch you guys in some position like that, so yeah."

Clary grabbed a pillow off the couch and whipped it at Simon. He ducked, and it hit Alec instead. "Nothing happened!" Clary shouted as she stormed back into her room.

Jace sat on the couch, his hands clasped in his lap. "Lovely morning, wouldn't you say?"

Simon shook his head suppressing a smile. "I'll just be a minute, guys." He disappeared into his room for a few seconds before coming back out.

"Not going to invite me out for breakfast with you guys?" Jace fake pouted.

Alec opened his mouth to reply, but Isabelle put a hand in front of his face and answered instead. "Only if Clary comes too."

Jace raised an eyebrow. "You know she was being serious, right? Nothing happened." Izzy only shrugged. "Fine, I'll go get her."

"Yeah, you will," Magnus said under his breath but everyone heard it. They all turned to him, and he just smiled.

Jace knocked on Clary's door and when she answered with a "What?" he opened the door. She turned to him and put her hands on her hips. "Can I help you?"

"That depends, do you want to go out for breakfast with everyone?"

She opened her mouth but was cut off when her own stomach growled. Rolling her eyes, she grabbed her wallet which had been on her dresser. "Fine."

The group headed out to Taki's. Since there were so many of them and Taki's was fairly close by, they decided to walk. This led to Clary once again being recognized and once again being bombarded by fans of Badger and Blindeye. The rest of her friends ended up getting pushed away from her as people swarmed around Clary asking her all the same questions that she'd been asked the day before.

"For the last time!" Clary practically screamed. "I am not dating the Badger!"

"But do you want to?" A voice shouted and suddenly everyone wanted her to answer that question and that question only.

"Let's just say, that I'm happy as I am. Okay?" Clary spotted Simon through a few people and reached out for him. He grabbed her arm and pulled her through the crowd. Once she was free, she made a run for Taki's. When there, it took another few moments for the rest of the group to catch up. Clary grabbed a booth for them all to sit in. When her friends finally joined her, they all just stared at her. "What?"

"What was that all about?" Alec demanded.

Clary shrugged. "Ever since my kidnapping, my face has been plastered everywhere. People love the idea of me and Badger dating."

"That's rather ironic, but go on," Simon said quickly.

"There's nothing more to say." Clary picked up her menu purposefully avoiding the gaze of her friends. After a full minute of silence, she finally looked back up at them. "What?!"

"What do you mean 'what?'" Isabelle scoffed. "I need more details."

"What details?"

"Details like," Izzy started, "are you and Badger dating? Because people always lie to the media when they're dating someone famous and I would totally understand if you were too but there's no reason for you to be lying to us because we are your friends."

Clary wanted to bury her head in the ground like an ostrich. "You literally caught me sleeping on the couch with Jace this morning, why would you think I'm dating Badger?"

"So then you're dating Jace?" Magnus gasped. All eyes were then on Jace but he was just smiling hard, clearly trying to contain a laugh.

"No!" Clary exclaimed. She held her head in both of her hands as she tried to shake this nightmare from her mind.

"Jace, do you have anything you would like to add to this?" Alec asked his friend.

Jace shrugged. "Nah, I'm just really enjoying watching this train wreck."

Clary lifted her head slightly only to glare at the golden boy. He winked and she groaned dropping her head again.

"So are we going with believing that Clary is dating Badger or that Clary is dating Jace?" Isabelle posed the question to the group.

"Why not both?" Simon added and Clary whacked him on the arm, hard. He scowled and rubbed his reddening arm.

"A triangle," Isabelle considered. "Mags, what do you think?"

"I think she could pull it off. She's cute enough."

"I agree." Isabelle clasped her hands together. "It's settled then, Clary is in a love triangle with the Badger and Jace. Any objections?"

Simon and Alec both muttered no and when Isabelle directly asked Jace, he just shrugged. "I'm fine with that."

"And is no one going to ask me?" Clary whined.

"No, darling," said Magnus, "because we already know what you're going to say and, quite frankly, we don't care."

"As expected," Clary said giving up. "I suppose we can then change the subject now that that's been decided?"

"Fine, fine," Isabelle said waving a dismissive hand at Clary.

That morning was spent talking about various topics. Clary didn't pay much attention. Her mind was stuck on Jace. She closed her eyes hard because her mind shouldn't be on Jace. He's just a distraction. She had always done so well as Blindeye- keeping the secret, not being distracted- but then Jace showed up and she didn't even know who she was anymore. She needed a way to fix this. She needed to just lose her memory or something. Lose her feelings for Jace...

"Clary." Simon's voice broke her from her trance. Everyone was standing up. Apparently they were leaving. "You ready?"

She looked down at her half-eaten plate not having been all that hungry in the first place. Then, she nodded and stood up. "Yeah, sorry. I was just spacing out."

When they were walking out the door, Jace slowed down to Clary's pace and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Thinking about the Black Angels?"

Clary pursed her lips. "Something like that."

Clary spent the rest of the day holed up in her apartment watching the camera feed. Jace was out patrolling as Badger, and Clary found herself periodically refreshing her Instagram feed to see a few new pictures of him with civilians every now and then. It seemed that he was doing more showing off than patrolling.

Simon was at work and so Clary found herself all alone. She didn't necessarily mind the solitary, but it was getting rather boring.

When Jace showed up on one of the cameras, Clary turned her attention to it. He glanced at the camera but didn't otherwise make an acknowledgment of it. People weren't supposed to know they were there. Instead, he approached one of the copies and Clary zoomed in so it was focused on the two of them.

Jace waved a hand in front of the Black Angel. He walked around the thing and jabbed at it a couple of times. Clary cocked her head at him, wondering what he was doing. Then, he pulled out the sword strapped to his back. He wound back and just as he swung forward, the copy ducked. It didn't fight back, it just ducked and stood back up. Jace narrowed his eyes looking upset. He swung again, this time from a different angle, and the copy dodged him yet again. This attempt was made two more times and both times the attack was dodged.

When Jace stepped out of sight of the camera, Clary leaned back in her chair letting her attention go from one screen to the next. She pulled out her phone, about to check Instagram again, when the front door opened. Turning, she saw it was Jace.

"What were you doing?" Clary asked him as he stepped towards her and the screens.

"I wanted to test if they would react," he answered. "They do, but not how I had expected." He slowly lowered himself into the chair beside Clary and stared at the screen that showed where he had previously been.

"So, they don't fight back," Clary started, "but we can't kill them."

"Maybe... they're saving their strength?" Jace offered. "Maybe the real Black Angel just can't use his powers to focus on giving them fighting orders right now."

"I don't know." Clary ran a hand through her hair. "Sebastian's been getting stronger."

"What if we talked to him?"

Clary furrowed her eyebrows at Jace. His expression was serious and full of concern. She shook her head at him and looked away. "I have no idea where he lives."

"But he's-"

"I know that he's my brother!" She snapped. "I haven't seen him in years."

Jace didn't say anything in reply to that. Hopefully, he had realized that he'd crossed a line. He pursed his lips together, his eyes fixated on the screen. He was holding something back. Part of her wanted him to say it aloud, the other part didn't want to know any of what he was thinking.

"We're outnumbered," Clary muttered under her breath, sick of the silence. "We're out powered. I don't know why we haven't given up already."

"Because we can still win." Jace set a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened and looked down at it before looking back up and meeting his eye. "We always win."

Clary broke her gaze from Jace. She stared intently at the screen for a few moments until she felt his hand drop. "Don't make promises you can't keep," was all she said.

Jace stood up and walked back towards the door. He paused though and turned to Clary. "You wanna go on patrol?" he asked. "I can stay here for a little while and watch the monitors."

Clary opened her mouth but stuttered. It might be nice to get out for a little. And it was getting late so there would be fewer civilians out to gawk at her and question her relationship with Badger. Yeah... she couldn't escape those questions no matter what persona she was disguised in.

"Sure," Clary ended up saying to her own surprise. She got up and Jace started back to her. "Just for a few hours, then I'll come back to watch with you."

Jace only nodded but he was smiling. The boy took his seat back and pulled his mask off his face. He wasn't looking at Clary now but she found herself watching him for a few extra moments. Then, she shook her head at herself and opened the front door.