I was stood near the entrance to the Institute, leant up against the wall as I flicked around on the tablet in my hands, checking up on leads we had on who it was that had been killing downworlders and draining them of blood when Clary and Jace breezed by me.

"I saw something behind your friend," Jace said, illuminating his seraph blade at his side

"You're not going to kill Simon are you?" Clary asked, sounding as though she genuinely thought Jace might kill a mundane for no reason other than dislike. They'd caught my attention, and I placed the tablet down on the desk nearest to me and jogged to catch up with them.

"What's going on?" I asked as Jace was speaking.

"Protect the humans, kill the demons, you'll get it eventually." He turned his head to me and I could feel the annoyance seeping from his pores, "The mundane has shown up here." I simply laughed as we pushed open the door of the Institute and stepped out into the night.

"So why can't Simon see you?" Clary asked us as we made our way over to the mundane.

To answer her, Jace lifted the corner of his black t-shirt, as I explained "That is a glamour rune, it makes us invisible to mundanes."

"It's a shame really, 'cause I'm denying them all this." Jace added, casting a glance down at himself. I couldn't stop my eyes from rolling so hard they almost rolled out of my head.

I had to stifle a laugh at the mundane's expression when he saw Clary who was wearing Izzy's leather dress.

"What do you have on? Clary, let me take you home." The mundane said, I recalled faintly that his name began with an S or something but I wouldn't have put all of my money on it.

Clary faltered at the mention of going home, "Uh, I don't think I have one anymore."

"Why? What do you mean?" He asked, handing her is hooded jumper which Clary obligingly put it on over the dress that didn't leave too much to the imagination. She started to try and explain when a voice shouted from behind us. Within the blink of an eye Jace and I had turned, seraph blades raised for attack.

"Clary Fairchild!" A man in a dark suit with dark hair and a seraph blade in hand bellowed at us, and I barely even noticed Jace move until he came up behind the man and wrapped his arm around his neck.

I could vaguely hear the mundane muttering in the background, completely clueless about what was going on beyond his vision.

"If you give us the girl I'll let you live." The man said, and all of a sudden his circle rune on his neck stood out to me, it only made sense that a member of the circle would turn up at the Institute to find Clary.

I laughed at him, "You're not really in a position to be making many rules fella." I said, and a second later his elbow connected with Jace's face and Jace lost his grip on the Circle member. He charged towards me and our seraph blades connected, and so did our eyes as he growled in a low voice at me.

"We'll never stop hunting her." I slashed at his leg with my seraph blade, causing him to cry out.

"This is for my father." Jace said, before stabbing him through the chest with his seraph blade, a second later the man dropped to the ground.

"Jace!" Clary squealed, shrugging off the mundane's jumper and running over to him. The mundane looked completely baffled, which certainly helped make me feel a little more light-hearted following coming face to face with a member of the Circle.

"Is he dead?" Clary asked, pointing to the body of the man.

"Nah, he's just taking a lil nap." I quipped, only to be met with a scowl from Jace for joking around with the precious little redhead.

"Is who dead?" The mundane asked, frowning. He spoke to soon though, as the glamour faded and the body appeared to him.

"What the?"

"Could you de-glamourise or whatever so that my best friend doesn't think I'm losing my mind?" Clary asked us in an exasperated tone before she took a couple of steps towards the mundane to try and comfort him.

Jace and I exchanged a look before we both passed our steles over the invisibility rune, de-activating it.

The mundane blinked at us a few times, "Um," he swallowed loudly, "What is happening?"

"We don't have that luxury right now kid, everyone back inside." Jace said, his tone starting to show the very little patience he had left with this mundane.

"Clary who are these two? Your meth dealers?" Clary disregarded the absurd accusation, and turned her attention back to the dead body.

"I've seen him before at the police station." She informed us, and it hadn't really occurred to me before that the Circle members would've found her so quickly, chances are they'd been tailing her for a while now.

"He's a member of the circle, Clary, he's here for you."

"He's with the people that took my mother," she deduced, and clearly she'd learned more about the Circle than I had anticipated. Jace had obviously taken his duties of protecting her to a different level if he'd started telling her about the Circle, given that it is forbidden to talk about it.

"Indeed he is, but he wasn't here to just have a quick chat, Clary. He was here to capture you, and probably kill you once he was done getting information." I said, not even bothering to meet Jace's annoyed gaze as he tried his hardest to catch my attention without having to actually tell me to stop being such a bitch.

"There's a dead body there we have to call Luke," the mundane started muttering worriedly. Clearly seeing his first dead body was proving to be a bit of a traumatic experience. Mundanes, I thought to myself as I might as well have rolled my eyes were I not having an inward conversation with myself about how ridiculous they were. I would make sure to go and laugh with Alec about them later.

"We can't trust Luke, Simon, we can't." Honestly I was starting to tune out, I mean it's one thing not being used to seeing a dead body but if Jace and I were going to have to fight off another Circle member I was going to kick the pair of them in the shins for wasting time quibbling about the dead fella on the floor.

"Clary, I need to keep you safe. I promise you, I am going to help you find your mother but you're one of us, you're a shadowhunter."

"Oh by the Angel, Jace can you hurry up? You carry the guy and I'll carry Clary, but can we just get inside?" I crossed my arms over myself and frowned in irritation.

"What are you talking about? Clary, you don't know this guy alright, come with me I can get us help."

"Mundie, we are the fucking help." I growled, placing the palm of my hand on my forehead, trying to keep calm at how much time we were wasting and how irritating Jace's gooey-eyed gaze at Clary was getting.

Quite comically, Clary was stood between the two of them, Jace and the mundie - like she was trying to choose her fate.

"Clary, please." Jace pleaded, with the most kind tone of voice I think I'd ever heard him achieve.

"Clary come on, Clary, come on, we gotta go." Simon said, taking a step backwards away from the Institute.

With a sigh, Clary took hold of his hand, "Simon, I think Jace can help us."

Finally, Jace turned around towards me and we started to head in to the Institute. "Finally." I grumbled at him, and he simply admitted a low tut at me.

"How do you know Mick Jagger and Emo girl are even gonna try?" Simon asked Clary in a voice he thought was quiet, but I didn't even need any kind of rune to hear it.

"Hey, watch it buddy. I could chop a limb off you before you can call me that again." I gave him a light shove, and narrowed my eyes at him. His eyes widened in fear and it was enough to make my expression soften as I chuckled. Out of him and his little ginger friend, he was the one I was finding easier to tolerate.

Under it's glamours, the Institute looks pretty destitute and not somewhere that a mundie would probably willingly walk into and so when Simon cast a worried look at Clary, I smiled at him in the most encouraging way I could muster. "Just wait." I said, as Jace rolled his eyes at Simon's expression and pulled out his stele and began drawing a rune on his forearm.

"I know, trust me." Clary reassured him, clearly thinking that he wasn't going to listen to anything I said and find me trustworthy just yet.

"He's like… burning himself."

Jace grabbed hold of Simon's hand, the reluctance written all over his face and it was met with a similar sort of reaction from Simon.

"Buddy, what's going on man? I'm not your type man, I don't even-" His protests were cut off as the Institute began to reveal itself to him. The dank and dingy hallways faded away into a warm golden light that glowed from the hallway, leading into the hub of the Institute that always seemed to have a blue hue to it from the many computer screens and monitors. Advanced technology that gained some of its power from angelic runes that were far surpassing anything the humans had, despite the fact that we had definitely stolen some of our ideas from human inventors no doubt. Other Shadowhunters milled around, pressing buttons on screens and going about their daily business of dealing with the war against demons that had been plaguing our species for countless years.

"Where are we? What the hell, Clary, is there a war going on that I don't know about?" Simon asked, turning to look at Clary.

"There is now," Jace answered for her before she could open her mouth, and he motioned his head towards me as he walked off and I didn't even think about following, just simply did.

"You coming?" Jace called behind him, and I spotted Alec and Izzy sat off to my right at a set of monitors and plodded over to them, pulling myself onto the desk and flashing them both a grin.

"Where have you two been?" Alec asked, his face always seemed to be in a light frown at all times and it was pretty off-putting to everyone who met him for the first time, but it was precisely what made me love him so quickly because he was almost as bitter as I was about everything in the world, ever.

Alec didn't even need me to answer as he noticed Simon waltzing into the room behind Clary, wide-eyed and completely taken aback by the sight before him.

I raised my eyebrows and smirked, "The redhead brings friends with her to sleepovers, didn't you know?"

"Hey at least he's kinda cute." Izzy added, craning her neck out so that she could look past me to get a better look at Simon and I fake wretched to show my disgust. "What? Geeks are cute too."

Alec grumbled, irritated by the way Jace was starting to disregard every single rule the Clave had set out since before time began or whatever. Sometimes I wondered how those two ever came to love each other enough to become parabatai they might as well have been polar opposites, maybe that was the reason.

Mr Rule-Keeper marched off to the screen where Jace had brought up the security footage of outside the doorway, where the NYPD had now turned up. Nothing to be worried about, the NYPD must've had every single officer on their squad turn up at our door at one point or another by now.

"What is going on, why is there a mundane in the Institute?"

Jace sighed, looking at Simon with disdain, "A circle member followed him, to get to Clary."

"A Circle rune just like the guys that took my mother." Clary clarified for us.

"What exactly is a circle member and why are they trying to kill us?" Simon asked, his words becoming faster and closer strung together the more worried he was getting with all this new information being thrown straight in his face.

"All we know is, a long time ago the Circle led a revolt a lot of shadowhunters got killed," Jace took a deep breath, steadying himself emotionally, "including my father."

"And since the revolt we've been forbidden to even hear abut the Circle." Alec then added, taking the heat off the fact that Jace's father had been killed in the revolt. All of us had grown to learn that talking to Jace about his father was just a disaster waiting to happen.

"But how's that even possible i-it's your history?" Clary really had so much to learn about what it was to be a shadowhunter, this girl was in way over her head.

Jace folded his arms over his chest and snorted as he cast a glance to a smirking Alec, "Says the girl who didn't even know she was a shadowhunter."

"Yeah, yeah you're right and now the only person who knows the truth is missing so I don't care about your rules or whats forbidden I'm - there's gotta be someone out there who can tell us why they took my mother."

"Big words from such a small girl." I said as I raised my eyebrows, you had to give it to the girl she had a lot of fire for someone so tiny and seemingly insignificant in strength.

"There is, you coming?" Jace asked, and didn't even wait for a reply as he headed off in the direction of the training room. Followed by both Clary and Simon.

"No no no, not you." He said, holding a hand out toward Simon's chest to stop him in his tracks.

"Hey, we're a package deal."

Simon puffed out his chest a little and grinned that Clary had defended him, "Yeah," He said smugly.

"There are runes all over the training room floor that will kill your mundie boyfriend." Jace explained, raising his eyebrows at the pair of them.

Clary and Simon both stammered at the same time, obviously embarrassed by Jace referring to Simon as Clary's boyfriend. "He's not my…" / "we're not, I'm…"

Alec and I, stood side by side both looked at each other with raised eyebrows as we stifled our laughter, mine coming out as a loud snort that refused to be contained by the hand I had clapped over my mouth.

Alec's mouth stretched out in a grimace, before he mouthed the word "awkward" at me.

"We're, uh, just friends," Simon then explained, and Clary smiled at him as she spoke.

"Best friends." Which earned a wide grin from Simon in response. Sickening, truly sickening.

"Yeah, and I'm tough" Simon then added, as Jace folded his arms and raised one eyebrow at him, intrigued whilst the rest of us smirked at the mundie making such big claims. Simon slapped the back of his hand against Jace's arm "So bring on the runes." Hiding the pain well aside from having to shake his hand off a little, earning a snort in response from Jace, Simon then remembered to ask, "So what exactly are runes?"

Enter Izzy, who stepped forward and pulled her stele from her pocket, running it over the angelic rune on her forearm as she explained, "They give shadowhunters our demon fighting powers."

"So hot," Simon muttered under his breath and the look on Jace's face almost made me cry out with laughter. Jace might as well have bared his teeth at Simon, but opted for clearing his throat in an annoyed manner.

"Uh, the rune, I mean." Simon said, trying to dig himself out of the grave he was making for himself as Izzy began to laugh lightly at the pair of them.

"Don't worry Clary, I'll watch over the - best friend - in fact I was about to make breakfast."

Jace sucked in a breath and looked to Clary, "On second thought, the runes might be less lethal."

Izzy tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows at her adopted brother, "I'll pretend I didn't hear that." She warned, "Please excuse my brother's lack of manners, this is Alec." She said, pointing behind her to Alec, "And Anya, cause Raziel knows she won't have introduced herself either. And I'm Isabelle." She extended her hand out toward Simon and smiled prettily.

"Lewis, Simon, Simon Lewis." Simon stammered, shaking her hand rather than kissing it like Izzy had been angling for. "It's two first names… Am I still talking?" Izzy laughed, taking too much of liking to the mundie in my eyes, but Izzy found males from another species much more interesting than any of the Nephilim boys. I really couldn't blame her, most shadowhunter boys had the ego the size of the moon.

"See, best friend's safe and sound here." She reassured Clary with a smile.

"Jace, if anything happens to him."

"Come on Clary, what are we going to do, eat him?" I said, shaking my head at her inability to trust us as if saving her life several times already wasn't enough proof that we were on her side.

"Go on, I'll be fine, I think." Simon said with a shaky laugh, which was the only go-ahead Clary would actually listen to.

"Where are we going?" Clary asked impatiently.

"Training room," Jace said, and whilst Clary began up the few steps toward the training room, Jace hung back and smirked as he placed a hand on Simon's shoulder.

"Hey um, don't eat the food, dangerous." He raised his eyebrows quickly and almost laughed before he walked off, following Clary.

"Come on, Simon. Let's go get some breakfast." Izzy said, taking Simon's arm and leading him toward the kitchen, away from the runes of the training room floor. At that moment I turned and looked to Alec who was staring after Clary and Jace with a scowl set across his features.

"Turn that frown upside down, Alexander." I teased, jabbing into his side with my elbow.

His scowl soon turned my way as he looked down on me. I'm not exactly small at five eight, but Alec practically makes me look like a dwarf.

"Not funny Anya, look at all this trouble she's causing." He said, exasperated by the recent turn of events. "Not only is she not a real shadowhunter, she's bringing mundanes along for the ride like it's just some little adventure out into the woods to find fairies."
I had to bite down on my lip to stop myself from chuckling at his irritability at the mere thought of Clary Fairchild, Fray, whatever.

"She is a real shadowhunter Alec, she's just untrained. And you, my lovely almost-brother, are jealous." I said as I shuffled my feet a little to face Alec fully, looking up at him.

"I am not jealous, Anya."

I said nothing at first, simply shrugged and tilted my head to the side with a smug smile stretched over my features. "Of course you're not, Alec."

"Oh give over, like you're Clary's number one fan." His scowl relaxed a little though, but I could sense his desire to hold on to this annoyance for as long as possible. Sometimes I felt like bitterness fuelled Alec, not food.

"Hey, I just make fun of her to help me tolerate her presence, works a treat. I don't even think she's realised I'm doing it half of the time." I sat back on the desk, and Alec chose to sit in the chair, clicking absent-mindedly on the screen, watching surveillance footage from outside the Institute where the NYPD had since left our doorstep.

"We never got to the bottom of those demonic killings." He said with a sigh, and it was as though I could physically see his brain working.

"The Circle?" I mused, "It makes a lot of sense. Didn't Valentine experiment with demon blood and such?"

Alec frowned at me, "How do you know so much about the Circle and Valentine? It's forbidden to hear about or talk about."

"By the Angel, I have lived here for four years Alec, do you really not know me well enough?" I rolled my brown eyes at him and reached across the desk a little to press buttons on the monitor, bringing up a file I had found whilst snooping almost three years ago. It required a passcode, one that I had watched Robert Lightwood tapping onto his screen from across the room without him even noticing me watching him.

"Anya, what the hell?"

"Live a little, Alexander." I sighed in disdain at him, about ready to stitch "Mr Rule-Keeper" onto every t-shirt and shirt he owned so everyone would know.

I cleared my throat as the file opened, revealing page upon page of information that the Clave had on the Circle and what went on, around eighteen years ago. Alec's expression was incredulous, and he barely knew where to start.

"How long have you known about this?" He asked, turning to look at me with disbelief.

"Been sat on it for a while, wasn't really important until now."

I didn't have it in my heart to tell him the document I had come across in there, decreeing that his parents had been involved in the Circle. I had moved it to a secret file the moment I saw it, knowing that I could never show my friends this file without breaking their hearts if that document remained in full view. I felt awful for lying to Alec, he was practically family. But I knew him too well to know what that information would do to him.

"Wait, Clary's mother is named Jocelyn right?" Alec asked, flicking through the documents on the screen, scanning them carefully.

"Yeah, I think so, why?" I turned my attention to the page he had stopped on, a photo of a young redhead, next to a handsome young man and at the bottom, two names. Jocelyn Fairchild and Valentine Morgenstern.

"No way," I breathed, leaning closer to the screen. "She looks just like Clary, that has to be her mother."

"She was a member of the Circle, Anya." Alec stated simply, sitting back in his chair. We both looked at each other and I exhaled loudly, not knowing what to do with this information. The strange mystery as to why Clary's mother had been taken by the Circle was by no means something I completely understood, but it was starting to get a whole lot clearer. Whatever trouble Clary had brought into our lives had barely just begun.

A/N: So, it's been a little while since I update this fic and here we are, I finally found some motivation! Reviews would be appreciated greatly, but I hope you enjoyed this lil chapter although it's mostly scenes from the show, but the next chapter shall be more, if not wholly off-screen Anya time xo