Hello again! Hi, sorry, I promised I'd have this up ages ago. But then I didn't. It's been a really busy few weeks. I had my exams and everything, so I freaked out about that for a while. It's okay, I passed. I got A's in all but one (I got a B in that one).

DISCLAIMER: Uh, if I owned M.I I wouldn't need to use the word disclaimer. If I owned M.I I wouldn't be sitting in my room at 2 am writing fanfiction.

Enjoy the story!

Hazy, yellow white sunlight glared through the windscreen as Clary blinked the sleep out of her eyes. She could tell by the position of the sun that it was late morning.

She slumped, curled up in a ball on the cracked leather seats of the old falcon. For a few moments she blanked, and completely forgot everything she had done the night before. Then, in a rush, it all came back to her.

She'd run away. She'd run away from home; from her family, from her friends, from her tiny, insignificant life. She'd run away from her home and family and friends and tiny, insignificant life with Jace, of all people. A boy who she had only met less than 18 hours ago. A boy she didn't even know.

She sat up in her seat, feeling the joints in her shoulders and back click into place, and waited for the feeling of regret to seep its way into her mind.

Nothing.

There was no feeling. Odd, she thought, it should be there.

But it wasn't.

Huh.

She didn't feel anything extreme really. Just kind of light.

The window had been left open, letting in the hot, late June air. Clary squinted and peered outside. She appeared to be at a gas station parking lot. She could hear the bubbly laughter of children coming from the playground a few yards away, and there was music playing somewhere. A twangy guitar melody and high, fluttery voice to accompany it. Across the parking lot was three other vehicles; A silver people mover, a faded red Ute and a stained, white campervan, which the music seemed be sourced from.

Clary yawned and stretched, stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position. She was about to push the door open when she realised she was still wearing the pink dress she had been last night. Reaching into the back of the station wagon, she snatched up her duffel bag. Slinging it over he shoulder, she pushed open the stiff door and stepped out into the oven like heat.

Looking around, she could see that they were in a remote looking scrub covered area of country, the gas station being situated off to the side of what appeared to be a main highway. Now that she was out of the car, she could hear the distant rumbling and whooshing of passing cars.

She made her way across the parking lot to the gas station store. Still no sign of Jace. A paranoid part of her brain was buzzing, convinced that he'd dumped her in the middle of the desert with no way of getting back home. She knew it was stupid though. There was no way he would have left a car like that out in the middle of nowhere. Clary didn't know all that much about cars, but she did know how much effort it took to get an old car like that to even run, let alone purr along the road like this one did. Jace must have slaved for hours over that thing.

Sure enough, when Clary stepped into the cool air-conditioned gas station-store, she was pleased and slightly relieved to see a messy, but cheery looking Jace scanning one of the many isles of overpriced snacks. Hanging from one of his hands was a ratty calico bag, into which he appeared to throwing various items. He had just picked up a bottle of shampoo when Clary snuck up behind him, poking him in the ribs.

Jumping slightly, Jace turned to see a smug looking Clary. He beamed at her. She couldn't help but smile back, the guilelessness of his smile taking her by surprise.

"Morning, sleepy head." He chucked the shampoo into the bag, "How did you sleep?"

"Mmmm, fine." She blinked lazily up at him, "I'm guessing you didn't?"

They walked together to the front desk. "Not entirely true. I sneaked in a few zees around eight."

Clary frowned.

"What time is it now?"

"'Bout eleven thirty." They arrived at the desk. "Pump seventeen." He said to the middle aged Asian man manning the desk.

Jace began pulling things out of the bag. There was a couple of bags of chips, a bottle of shampoo, a packet of pens and yellow note pad, area map, two bottles of chilled ice coffee and two bottles of diet coke.

"You like diet, right?"

"Yeah," She smiled sheepishly, "I'm kinda addicted."

It was true. She drank so much of the stuff, it was almost ridiculous. It was partly because she liked the taste, she couldn't stand the real stuff. But it was also partly because she didn't like drinking water and milk made her feel sick. So she went for the less healthy, more expensive alternative.

Jace paid for the gas and the items. He looked down at her, and then at the duffel bag under her arm.

"I'm guessing you want to change?" She nodded.

He smiled, "There's a bathroom at the back of the store."

xxxx

Sighing in relief, Clary slipped out of the uncomfortable dress. The pink chiffon had created red marks along the back of her thighs, and she hadn't even realised how tight the bodice had been until she was released.

She pulled on a loose blue tee shirt out of her bag, along with a pair of denim shorts. Exiting the bathroom stall, she glanced at herself in the chipped, smudged mirror. She looked halfway to decent, considering she'd been sleeping in a car. Her hair was pretty awry, the starch orange curls flying in all different directions around her head, and her eyes held light gray bags underneath them. Her pale cheeks still retained red indents from the car seat. Sighing, she pulled a brush through her hair, pulling out the knots but causing the red ringlets to spring up further. She splashed water on her face and dried it using a rough paper towel that might as well have been sand paper. Figuring that that was about as good as she was going to get in these conditions, she pushed her way back out of the grotty bathroom and into the equally grotty store.

xxxx

Jace, squinting in the bright sunlight, leaned on the hood of his car. He pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and slipped them on. He liked wearing sunglasses. He imagined they gave him a sort "Blues Brothers" look.

At this point in time, he was having trouble actually grasping the immensity of what he had done; of what he had convinced Clary to do. Clary of all people.

Clary. Just the mention of her name caused his heart to stutter in his chest. Clary was not an ordinary girl, for him at least. Jace was honest; he knew that she was nothing like the type of girl that usually caught his attention. It's not like he only dated dumb sluts or anything. His most recent girlfriend, Kaelie, had been very smart. He'd liked her. But she'd wanted something long term and Jace didn't do well with long term. To be honest, no girl had really caught his attention for long enough.

But Clary was different, so very different. She was... He didn't even have words to describe her.

To be truthful, he hadn't even taken any notice of Clary until that fateful day, last January. He'd just come back from Christmas break, and was walking through the Art room. It wasn't a place he usually found himself, but Sebastian had just come back from College, was driving him to school for some "brotherly bonding" and had dropped him off on the wrong side of the school.

It was when he'd passed by Art room #3 when he saw it. It was just a small art piece, black and white, and simple, just one of many others in the window. It couldn't have been bigger than an A4 sheet of paper. But there was something in the curve of lines, the smoothness of the blackbird's wings. There was something that stood out to him, fascinated him. In the bottom left corner lay a name, scrawled lightly in led; Clary Fray.

Like the herb, he'd thought.

That was the first time he had even heard of her. And for weeks the name lay, dormant in the back of his mind, nothing more than a small, tickling undertone to his thoughts, like a cloud that floated idly through his dreams. But then, in the third week of the semester, he'd been called to the office to deal with a Timetable issue. There's been an overflow of oncoming students applying for your "Leisure and Recreation" Class they told him, you're going to have to switch classes.

He must have had Clary's name in his mind when he looked at class list, because the moment he saw Fine Art listed in between Photography and Band, he'd blurted it out before he could stop himself.

And that's how Jace had found himself in Ms Richards Fine Art class, two rows back from Clary, who was seated in the middle row, off to the side. He'd known it was her, straight away. There was no way he could have mistaken her drawing.

And she was so beautiful. Her untamed ringlets were always pulled up into a loose bun, half falling off the side of her head, and her pale face seemed like porcelain to him. Clary, he had noticed, seemed to almost want to stay anonymous. She never dressed outrageously or even fashionably, sticking to oversized cardigans, skinny jeans and converse. She never really spoke to anyone, keeping to herself aside from the occasional polite interaction with the teacher or the kid that sat next to her.

The funny thing he'd found, was that she spent half of her time in class looking out the window. He'd expected her to be more into it. But she seemed to want to do only the minimum amount of work required, with only the minimum amount effort required to pass. But even then, her art had been magical. He was seated in the ideal place to watch her draw. They were all in black and white, but shaded deceptively, in a way that almost made you believe there was colour. It took his breath away.

The entire time he'd been in that class, he had never been able to bring himself to talk to her. Not because he was nervous – he didn't get nervous, it wasn't in his nature. But because she'd never seemed like she wanted to be disturbed. Even when she was staring out the window, lost in her own, private world, she'd seemed closed off. He felt as if he were to approach her, he would ruin it and break her out of her reverie. Burst her bubble. And that, to him, seemed worse than if he never got to talk to her. She was so beautiful when she was lost in her head. Her eyes glassed over, and she got this peaceful, blissful look on her face. He wanted to crawl inside her head and see whatever it was that she saw. It seemed to him that her usual bored, tired expression lifted when she daydreamed, like she was thinking of better, more important things than what lay before her in the classroom. Better and more important things than him.

It was during those art classes that he began to realise that Clary did not belong in a classroom. Clary did not belong in that school and Clary did not belong in that town.

It was also during those art classes that he began to wonder whether he belonged in that classroom, that school, that town.

It wasn't until he saw her in the Pandemonium that he'd felt okay to talk to her. And he wanted to talk to her so bad. She'd been sitting by herself, like she usually was, but this time it was different. This time she seemed lonely.

This had made him unbelievably angry. It outraged him that anyone in their right mind would let a girl as beautiful as Clary get lonely. He found himself fuming, completely outraged at her friends, the two dancing, laughing idiots, to leave Clary by herself. He wanted to go slap them both in the face repeatedly for being so foolish.

So he'd gone up to her and sat himself down in front of her, his heart leaping hurdles in his chest. He was surprised that he had even managed to speak, let alone keep his calm and smooth demeanour that he always had around girls. It wasn't until they were alone in the parking that he let anything completely honest slip through.

When he saw her in the Diner he knew that there must be something else working there. Whether it was the universe or God, he didn't know, but there had to have been something higher than pure chance working with him that night. To run into someone, who he usually only ever saw once a day in scheduled classes, twice in a four hour period was more than just coincidence. It had to be.

It was that thought right there that prompted him to suggest her leaving with him. It was a plan he'd had in his head for a few weeks, but it had only ever involved him driving alone. He'd never dreamed that he'd even get to talk to Clary, let alone convince her to drive across the country with him. But sitting there, in the old Diner, bathed in starch fluorescence it had seemed within his grasp. So he'd grabbed at it. Even when at first she'd said no, he'd still hung on to the small glint of hope that burned in his chest. When she'd left, though, he'd pretty much given up on it.

Great. He'd thought, The first time you speak to her you manage to not only freak her out, but convince her that you're a psycho as well. Well done, Wayland. Well done indeed.

Maybe he thought about her too much. He thought that maybe he was a bit stalkerish, but it wasn't like he followed her around or took photos through her bedroom window. He only ever really looked at her in art. He wasn't even sure what he felt for Clary yet. He knew he cared for her, but he wasn't ready to call it love. More like infatuation.

But then she'd called. She'd actually called. Literally thirty seconds after his clock had struck three am, she'd called. He hadn't thought she ever would. But she did. And he'd turned up; of course he'd turned up. He'd been slightly terrified, as he drove up the neat row of carefully trimmed suburban houses that she wouldn't be there. That she'd pulled out and stood him up.

But she hadn't. She was there, and she was waiting for him. It might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn he saw relief on her face as he approached her, his headlights lighting up her body and the little pink dress that she hadn't yet taken off.

He still couldn't believe it; couldn't believe that she was here with him, couldn't believe that it was her crossing the gas station parking lot, crossing to get to him. It made him almost giddy with happiness.

"Hey," She said when she got within earshot of him and Jace had to strain to keep his smile from overtaking his face, "You ready to go?" She was smiling too. Was it his imagination or did she seem almost as happy as him?

"Only if you are." He answered. Slipping around to the passenger side of the car, he opened the door for her. Rolling her eyes, she laughed.

"You know, I can open a door for myself." She got in the car and he closed the door behind her.

"I know," He began as he crossed over to the driver's side, "But my mother taught me nothing if not to be a gentleman." She smiled at him.

"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark and we're wearing sunglasses."

Clary laughed and looked at him like he was crazy.

"But we're not going to Chicago, neither of us smokes and it's the middle of the day."

"It's a quote!" He exclaimed as they pulled onto the freeway. She blinked at him.

"Blues Brothers?" He tried. Clary's face remained blank.

"C'mon!" He laughed and she shrugged.

"I'm sorry!" She said, giggling, "I've never even heard of it."

"Damn girl, you have not yet lived!" she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, bathing in the sunlight as the warm wind from the freeway flew through the car through the open window, lightly brushing around them, tangling Jace's hair against his temple, "We've got to get some good movies into you."

She smiled, peering at him sideways. They kept on talking like that, laughing as they cruised down the road, basking in the reality that they had all the time in the world.

Neither of them mentioned Middleton.

xxxx

Meanwhile...

"Luke!" Jocelyn called from the kitchen where she was stripping fresh yellow roses to replace the wilting ones in the sitting room.

"Yes dear?"He replied, getting up. She probably already had a list of things to fix around the house for the weekend.

Luke was a very patient man, even when it came to Jocelyn. She was always having him fix something up in the house. Whether it was repainting all the door frames or trimming the hedges in the front garden, there was always something to keep him occupied for the day.

He didn't mind, not really. Jocelyn was a perfectionist, always had been, even when they were children. So the never ending list of chores didn't bother him because he was making her happy. That was all he cared about; that and Clary.

He worried about her sometimes. Her mother's constant need to create perfection tended to weigh down hard on the young girl, who wasn't really her mother's vision of "prefect". Clary was messy, disjointed, quiet and absent minded. Luke knew that Jocelyn would be a lot happier if Clary had turned out to be the cheerful, athletic, neat, straight A student that she had been. But Luke also knew that Clary was not that person. So he did worry about her sometimes.

"Could you get Clary up, please?" Jocelyn asked now, "It's almost midday! She'll miss the entire day."

"Yes, of course sweetheart."

Luke pulled himself of the couch and made his way up the stairs. As soon as he reached the landing he could sense something was different. Concerned, he picked up his pace, reaching his step daughter's bedroom door.

Pushing it open, he was alarmed to find it empty.

It was also very clean. The bed had been made to perfection, hospital corners and everything. The desk had been cleaned off, the rug straightened and the full length mirror had been wiped of smudges. Even the lamp shades had been dusted. On the bedside table closest to Luke lay a stack of envelopes. On the top of the stack lay an envelope with his name scrawled in Clary's messy scrawl across the front of it.

He picked it up and gently, he peeled open the carefully seeled fold.

Inside was a note written in blue biro. It read;

Dear Luke.

Before I say anything, I want you to know that I'm sorry. This wasn't your fault, or Mom's, or anyone's really. This was all me.

I'll be long gone by the time you read this. It's hard to explain, but I've left. I know pretty ambiguous right? But that's basically all there is to it. I've left.

I've left with my friend Jace. I trust him. Don't worry; he's not my boyfriend or anything, so this isn't one of those notes. He's just a friend. I wish I could give you more of an explanation, more information, but I don't have any. I don't know where we're going. Hopefully somewhere warm, closer to the equator.

I'm not going to college. I'm sorry. I've been thinking, and I don't think I was supposed to go to college, you know?

I just don't think I can stay in this town much longer. It might be the right place for you and Mom and even Izzy and Simon, but it's not the right place for me. Don't tell Mom that part. She won't get it, you know how she is. I'm hoping you'll understand this Luke. I think you will.

This isn't a decision I made lightly. But I think I need this. I'm suffocating.

This isn't forever, you know. I will come back. I don't know when, but I'll come back. I wish I could say goodbye in person, but I don't want to see you or her cry.

Look after Mom okay? I love you, never question that. But I think I need to do this, for me. I'm sorry; I love you, and Mom.

Goodbye. I love you.

Luke sat down on the bed heavily, the words on the note sinking into his brain. Then he smiled and chuckled a relieve chuckle to himself.

It's about time, he thought.

"I love you too baby girl," He said, then, half to Clary, half to himself, "Good luck."

What do you think? Any good?

So, we get an insight in to Jace's view of what's been happening, and why he asked Clary to come with him. This chapter is kinda for Ashley, who was wondering why Jace was so keen on taking Clary with him.

Do you think I'm taking it too fast? Do you think Jace is too full on?

Review? Please? I love reviews. They are my main energy source :3