Returning to training is a sort of homecoming to Clary. When she first became a part of the Shadow World, every second in here felt like she was earning her place. Every hit, every new skill, every sparring match marked new territory gained for Clary the Shadowhunter over Clary the mundane. Now, every sensation brings a memory to mind; the sound of bo staffs colliding, the feel of the floor beneath her bare feet, the smell of sweat and blood and adrenaline filling the air. The training room is busy today, as it tends to be after a Clave meeting. Everyone in the Institute wants to burn off the restless energy that comes with listening to Nephilim who haven't been on a hunt in years tell you how to do your job. Most of the practice weapons have disappeared from their slots, busy in the hands of the numerous pairs and trios dotting the room. Clary supposes that she could have waited till tomorrow, but today marks the end of her six-week recovery period. She has waited long enough for this. Even if she's not entirely sure if her body remembers what it's supposed to do.
Izzy, standing beside her, nudges her shoulder with her own. "You sure you're ready?"
Sometimes Clary wishes Izzy wasn't her parabatai. Sometimes she wants to fake it till she makes it without someone calling her bluff.
"Yeah," she says anyway. "Let's do this."
They begin with basic hand-to-hand, throwing around a few simple moves to get themselves warmed up. Clary relishes the motion; the way her blood sings and her heart beats hard and steady. She was made for this.
As always, Izzy senses it. "Feels good, huh?"
"You have no idea. Now I understand why Jace has been coming here every day." Clary lands a solid roundhouse kick to Izzy's side, knocking her to the ground. A hand up, a dusting off, and they begin again.
Ultimately, Clary only lasts an hour before she is exhausted. Izzy tells her that they are done for the day, phrasing it so it sounds like her work is the cause rather than Clary's weakness. Though Magnus said six weeks was her minimum recovery time, he also said getting back into fighting shape would be another process. "Take it slow," he said, day after day after day. "No one says you have to get through this overnight."
What he couldn't understand, what no one could understand, was that Clary needed this. For years, all she could rely on was her body, her strength. She may have lost all her biological family, but she could spar. She may have been the cause of her best friend's vampirism, but she could hunt demons. She may have done terrible things while bonded to her brother, but she could train until her knuckles bled.
The attack, and losing the baby, made Clary feel weaker than she ever had. She couldn't rely on her body anymore, not to carry a child, not even to walk around the Institute. It was a full week before she was able to go to the dining hall for meals, to stand long enough to paint at her easel. Now that she is able to train again, she needs her body to be what it once was. She needs it to be strong. Powerful.
Then, maybe, she won't lose anyone else.
After showering, Clary heads to the ops centre, hoping that helping to organise a hunt will provide enough of an adrenaline fix even if she can't go on any herself yet. Jace has been on one since before sunrise. For a moment, jealousy curls in her stomach, tensing her muscles. But it leaves as quickly as it came. She can still be of use here. She strides purposefully into the room, pretending not to notice the eyes that snag her as she walks. Izzy is standing by a monitor, writing a fire message and looking at a map of the city at the same time. Her gaze flits to Clary, and she sighs in relief.
"Perfect timing," she says, finishing the fire message with a flourish. "I have about a thousand meetings to go to. Can you run things here?"
"Of course." Clary takes Izzy's place and scans the map. She dispatches a team of three to Queens, Simon and two Shadowhunters to take care of a vamp den in Chelsea, and another pair to Staten Island.
Jace finds her there hours later, filing Simon's report alongside a request to have the offending vampires sent to the Gard. He wraps his arms around her from behind.
"Hi," she says. "How was the hunt? You were gone a while."
He groans. "As soon as we got rid of the Raum demon we found a fight between a few vamps and some rogue werewolves. They were chasing each other all through the city, it took us hours to track them down. Had to get the Praetor involved."
"Sounds exciting."
She shifts in his arms so they face each other. His eyes search hers. "How are you?"
"I'm good. Trained with Izzy this morning."
"Oh right, your six weeks are up. How'd it feel?"
"Good." Clary ignores the twinge in her gut that she gets whenever she lies to him, even though it's only a partial lie. "Want to train later?"
He shakes his head. "I've got reports to write and you have got to rest."
"I'm fine. Izzy needs me here, anyway."
"If Izzy needs help, Luke or Helen or Aline will be more than happy to stop by."
He's not wrong there. Since their last mission together, Helen and Aline have been Portaling to the Institute at least once a week to check in and fill the space Clary has left during her recovery. Though she knows they'd do it regardless of what happened between them, she also knows how guilty they feel about what happened.
"Just promise me," Jace says, "that you'll slow down if you need to."
She knows what he's searching for, when he looks into her eyes. He's searching for an indication that she's okay. Because if she's okay, then he can be okay.
"I will," she promises. "But I'm fine."
She gets herself in a little routine over the next week or so. She trains in the morning with Izzy or Jace or Simon, then works in the ops centre. If Jace isn't around for lunch, she'll go to Taki's and hang out with Maia or Simon. Then she heads back to the ops centre until someone - usually Jace or Izzy - nudges her away.
And if Clary is always moving, always doing, always thinking about the next thing, is that really such a problem? She's not pushing herself too hard physically. She's met with Catarina; she knows what her recovery's supposed to look like, and she's on track to get back in fighting shape without injuring herself. She just. . .
She has to be fine. She has to.
"Izzy, I swear on the Angel, if you're not out here in the next thirty seconds we are leaving without you," Jace yells, pounding on his sister's door.
"Not your call, my parabatai's making the Portal!" Izzy crows.
Jace looks pleadingly at Clary, who shakes her head. "She's right. I won't leave without her."
"Come on, she can take the bus."
"To Alicante?"
"Oh, right. Forgot they live there now. Izzy!"
Clary doesn't understand how they can have so much energy this early in the morning, especially since Izzy was working late last night and Jace only got back from patrol a few hours ago. But before she can watch her husband and her parabatai continue bickering, Simon appears in front of them with a whoosh, flustered as usual. "What's going on?"
"Your fiancée's taking forever," Jace replies. "I don't get it, it's only Alec and Magnus'."
"You will never get it, Jace," Izzy says as she sashays out of her room. She plants a kiss on Simon's cheek, leaving a mark in red lipstick, before turning to the rest of the group as if she has been waiting for them instead of the other way around. "Are we ready to go?"
They step through the Portal and directly into Alec and Magnus' living room. Sunlight bounces off the demon towers, causing rainbows to shoot through the windows and onto the floor. Though it is not yet dawn in New York, it is midmorning here in Idris, and as such Magnus has laid out a typical New York brunch on the patio, with his own flair. Champagne flutes fill themselves beside plates piled high with bagels and french toast and fruit, while vases of tulips lie scattered all over the patio. After hugs and hellos and a bit of ribbing aimed at Luke and Maryse, who are the last to arrive even though they were already in Alicante, everyone sits down to eat. Clary watches Alec and Magnus as they keep giving each other odd little looks. Something's going on, but she isn't sure what.
She doesn't have to wait long, because a few minutes later Alec and Magnus stand up.
"We have some news," Alec says.
"Catarina recently alerted us to a warlock baby that was abandoned and needs a home," Magnus continues, "and we have decided to be that home."
It takes a moment for it to sink in, but once it does the group erupts with joy.
"I'm going to be a grandma!" Maryse cries, her face happier than Clary has ever seen her.
"I need to see pictures immediately," Izzy demands. Magnus is more than happy to provide. He pulls out his phone and the group crowds around, looking at the photo of a small baby boy with skin the deep blue of lapis lazuli.
"Does he have a name?" Simon asks.
"Thomas," Alec says, his chest puffing out in pride. "He comes to us next week, after Catarina has put all the necessary protections on him."
Jace squeezes her hand under the table. "This is great, guys, seriously."
"Yeah, I'm so happy for you," Clary says. Magnus and Alec look at her with eyes that shine with unshed tears.
And because she isn't lying to Jace, she doesn't feel the twinge.
Besides, it was only a little lie. She is happy.
Mostly.
By the time the celebration has wound down, the early start has caught up to the New York natives. Though none of them are strangers to running on little to no sleep, everyone is decidedly exhausted, so they congratulate their hosts once more and bid them goodbye. With their business in Alicante concluded, Luke and Maryse join the others through Magnus' Portal back to the Institute. They land in the library, a place thankfully devoid of any overly eager Shadowhunters desperate for advice. Clary doesn't think she could handle anyone asking for advice right now. But she's fine, really.
No one else seems to think so. Everyone is looking at her and Jace with concern, that sympathetic expression she's grown sick of in the last few weeks.
"How are you two doing?" Luke asks. It reminds her of the time Duncan Mayfair stood her up at the prom. It makes her feel childish and small and weak.
Izzy sets a hand on her arm. "Luke's right," she says. "That couldn't have been easy for you."
And suddenly it's all coming up to the surface, all the pent-up anger and hurt and absolute sickness of being treated like she's made of glass. "I'm fine!" Clary snaps, breaking away from Izzy's hold. "I just need everyone to stop treating me like I'm fragile, okay, because I'm fine!" She looks at them; every person now staring at her as if she might burst into flames.
"I'm fine," she says again, but it is less sure now, as if she is the one who needs convincing. Then she turns heel and bolts.
She finds herself in the greenhouse. She collapses onto a bench, her head hunched over her collapsed hands. Before the baby, before everything, she'd only been there once or twice. But during her recovery, she had a lot of time on her hands. She'd come here to sketch, or just to take a breath. The air is fresh, here, purified by the plants and possibly a bit of warlock magic.
She could use some of that fresh air right about now. She feels like her lungs are about to burst; a pressure in her chest she doesn't know how to relieve. She wants to punch something. She wants to stop feeling like this so she can actually be happy for her friends. She wants her mom.
A sob breaks free from her mouth of its own volition. She gasps her way through another, and another. She hadn't even realised she needed to cry. Distantly, she hears the sound of heels clacking towards her, and along with it the familiar rhythmic steps she knows as well as her own. Izzy and Jace, coming to comfort her.
She doesn't deserve their comfort. Shouldn't need it, after all they've done for her the past six weeks.
The heels approach her, their owner sitting next to her on the bench. Jace sits on her other side but doesn't reach for her. She ignores them both. The three of them sit there in silence. Clary's head does not lift, even when Jace reaches soundlessly for her hand. She lets him take it; feels the warm roughness of his palms, the cool adamas of his wedding ring against her skin.
It is only when she finally looks up that she realises that it is not Izzy on her other side but Maryse.
"When I was twenty-five," she begins, "I had a miscarriage. I was like you; I hadn't even known I was pregnant until I wasn't anymore. Alec and Isabelle were just toddlers. They had no idea that I spent a month hardly able to get out of bed."
Clary opens her mouth to say something, but realises she does not know what to say. She thinks of the pain she feels and cannot possibly imagine feeling that pain while having two children to take care of.
Maryse brushes off Clary's obvious concern. "It was a long time ago. I grieved, and life went on. I had Max, and then Jace came into our lives. But I never forgot the baby I lost." Her eyes gain a distant, hazy quality, as if she is trying to remember the baby now. Clary knows how it feels to grieve someone you have no memories of.
But then Maryse looks at her, at Jace, at both of them, and the love in her eyes is strong and fierce. "It's okay to need time," she says. "It's okay to feel grief and to feel it in ways that don't look how everyone thinks it should. And yes, be happy for Alec and Magnus. I know how much you love them and this is a wonderful thing. But it's also okay to be jealous of them, to wish that you got to have that too."
"I just," Clary murmurs, her voice tight, "I just feel so weak. I think about what we lost and I can't breathe. Sometimes I think it would be easier to feel nothing at all."
"This pain isn't something you can push past, Clary. You have to feel it." Maryse looks past her to Jace. "Both of you."
Clary curls into Jace, and he catches her, his strong arms wound tightly around her. His tears fall into her hair.
And as Maryse leaves, the two of them stay there, holding each other up.
That night, Clary and Jace talk, really talk, for the first time in weeks. They lie facing each other on their bed.
Clary fiddles with a loose thread on the comforter. "How are you? Really?" she asks him.
"I-" Jace looks around the room, clearly blinking back tears. "I can't stop thinking about it. I'll be training and imagine how you would've looked further along. Or I'll be patrolling with Simon and suddenly all I can think about is if it was a boy or a girl, and what we would've named it. And I hate how we have to call it it because it wasn't even big enough to be a person yet."
"I know. That's all I can think about, too." She pauses. "Why didn't you tell me earlier? I thought you were doing okay."
"In the beginning, you thought it was your fault. I didn't want to heap my pain on top of what you were already feeling. What you're still feeling."
"I'm stronger than that, Jace," Clary says. "I can be there for you while being in pain myself." She sighs, the realisation hitting her like a freight train. "Which is exactly how you feel about me."
He nods slowly, a mirthless chuckle falling from his lips. "You'd think we'd have figured this out by now."
"I love you," Clary says firmly, pushing away all of her guilt. "And I don't want to lie to you anymore."
"I love you, too." He brings her hand up to his lips, kisses her knuckles. "When we ask each other how we are, we need to get an honest answer."
"How's this for an honest answer: you are the person I trust most in the world, and if there is anything I know for certain it is that the two of us can make it through anything."
She reaches for him, and he reaches back, and it is the two of them the way it has always been. Fighting through the darkness together.
Two weeks later, Jace and Clary stand at the edge of a lake in Central Park. Jace watches Clary make a small paper boat, something his Shadowhunter childhood never taught him to do. The paper is white, but it has been marked with runes; guidance, love, remembrance.
They've talked a lot in the past couple of weeks, more than they had in the six before that. They've kept their promise to one another. They ask for honesty, and they give honesty back.
In one of those conversations, Clary mentioned the need to say goodbye. Goodbye to the dreams of what could have been. Goodbye to the regret and the guilt. Goodbye to the baby they never got a chance to hold.
So here they are. Clary kneels to set the boat on the water. With a gentle push, she launches it towards the other side. She and Jace watch as the paper begins to weaken, the boat sinking slowly into the water.
"Ave atque vale," Jace murmurs. "Hail and farewell."
A single tear rolls down Clary's face as he pulls her to his side. The sun is warm on her face, and she can hear the gentle breeze through the trees. It's beautiful.
"Goodbye, baby," she whispers.