Author's note:

Hello again and welcome to the second to last chapter (before the epilogue of course) of From Ragged to Golden. This fic has my full attention because it is so close to the end, so I may not update my other two for a little bit.

So, I miscalculate last chapter. There is only this one to go, the next chapter and an epilogue.

Now, originally this fic had twenty nine chapters and an epilogue (but I crunched down or else some chapters would have only contained 500 words)

Okay, I know you are all dying to know what happens next, you probably skipped this and I really hope you didn't because these notes sometimes contain important info.

So if you have read it, at the top or bottom of your comments write 'Awkward Turtle'. I also love hearing your guys' opinions when I ask questions so let me know;

Do you like the cover?

Do you think I should edit out the lemon (in case FanFic takes this down because they are apparently taking down sexually explicit fics)?

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Okay? Let's go.

X

"You know," Jonathan said as he taped up the last box. "You sure do have a lot of stuff for someone who came from the streets." Clary stiffened at his words and he backtracked. "I mean, shit, you, I just—"

Clary laughed at this display. "Jonathan it's okay. Jace just—he wanted me to have a lot of things. I feel weird taking them but I'd feel stranger leaving them."

"Why?" He asked, genuinely curious.

"Because I don't want anything of me left here."

Clary knew this sounded silly, but she also knew that if she left anything that could remind Jace—or any of them—that she lived here. That she was here, it would put him over the edge.

She kept seeing his face at court. The look in his eyes when she told him she was leaving. He looked so broken, but she had to do it. Even then, standing there and looking at her as if she was the most precious thing in the world to him and he had lost her, he didn't tell her that he cared for her, he didn't repent what he said in the car and Clary realised that he never would because Jace Wayland, young bachelor and billionaire did not disclose his feelings, especially to someone like her.

A nobody.

She was a somebody now, everyone wanted to talk to her, interview her but she didn't give in. Where were they when she needed them? Instead of doing stories on Celebrity babies and ugly dogs they should have been out in the streets, helping those that needed it the most.

Clary could never forgive them.

She had had many called, from local news stations to big talk shows and even publishers wanted to publish her story and film companies wanted to show her story. She always snorted and hung up. It had been going on for a little over two weeks, ever since she broke her silence in a press conference and before the hearing.

She wondered if she should go on one of these shows and ask them where they were when she was in that horrid orphanage or when she was left out on the streets at sixteen, struggling for food and water, sometimes having to resort to sleeping with someone for money.

Clary then had a brilliant notion which she was about to voice to her brother when his next question stopped her in her tracks.

"Do you love him?"

Clary stared at her brother, trying to fathom why he would ask her this.

"I—" She could have lied to him, she could have told her she felt nothing but mere gratitude for Jace Wayland, but she didn't want to lie to her brother, her only family. "What I feel for Jace...it's complicated."

"How?"

"Because, Jace was the one who found me and brought me here and gave me this life and I will always be thankful to him for that but..." And she told him. She told him about waking up in Wayland Manor, about her first job and then starting work at Jace's company. She told him about everything in her life that had happened when Jace came into it. How she was finally happy, how she wanted to be with Jace and then what he had told her in the car.

"It seems like he likes you Clary." Jonathan said once she was done.

"I think he does but, he said he wasn't ready and I'm not ready to wait for him. I have spent my entire life waiting. Waiting for a family, waiting to be saved, waiting to die alone and cold on the streets. I waited and I'm tired of waiting. I've just started my life and I want to live it, not to stay in the corner and wait for Jace to change. Wait for him to—to stop sleeping around and finally commit to a relationship. I can't wait and if I could, I don't want too."

"Clary, maybe you should reconsider."

"Reconsider what? Jonathan, I have considered, I have thought about waiting for him but, if he really cared about me, who wouldn't make me wait. He'd want to be with me just like I want to be with him. He would—no. I'm not making excuses for him. Jace made his choice. He doesn't want the things I want."

Jonathan looked at her, studying her for a moment. She knew she wore a less than happy expression, but Clary didn't care.

"I've known Jace for a long time. I may not have been his friend in that time, but I know of his reputation. I've heard the rumours, seen the stories. I can honestly say though, in every photo I have seen of the two of you he—I have never seen him that happy."

Clary looked at her brother as she folded the last of her clothes into a suitcase. She knew he was telling the truth, it must have been a sibling thing and the thought made her almost smile, almost.

"It doesn't matter. He may be happy with me around but...I won't be happy with just being around."

Jonathan nodded and picked up the box he had just sealed. They had hired a moving truck and Clary was, temporarily, moving into Morgenstern Manor. She didn't want too but she had no other choice, unless she wanted to go back to the streets or stay in a hotel. She only agreed to stay at Morgenstern because she could tell it was something Jonathan wanted, he wanted to spend time with her and get to know her. She smiled at the thought.

"I'll take this to the truck and the ones downstairs."

"Thanks."

He left the room and Clary zipped up her suitcase. Clary looked around the room. She remembered waking up here and her first coherent that, making her release a small chuckle.

"This is definitely not hell," She whispered the words now. "It's too well decorated."

That thought still held true today.

She remembered how overwhelmed she was by the items in the house, everything was so expensive looking and she felt as if she would dirty things if she touched them. She remembered her first meal here, served in bed and she remembered Isabelle comforting her after she had thrown the contents of her wardrobe on the ground.

Clary realised then that most of her memories here were good ones.

There were bad ones. The day Jace yelled at her for not firing someone, walking in on Jace and Kaelie doing it, Jace being cold to her after they had had sex and the first time she had seen Jace and Isabelle, when Isabelle had wondered if she was a drug dealer.

She— and they probably—never thought that she would be so special. That she was the heiress to a vast fortune. That she had a father and brother. She never knew it either and she still was waiting, waiting to wake up on the streets and find it was all a dream.

A knock sounded on her door. Clary had been running her hands over the bed and gazing around the room. She turned as the person entered the room and instantly stiffened.

"I'd like to think that hell would be decorated to everyone's least favourite tastes."

"How," Clary began in a shaky voice as Jace approached her, slowly, purposefully. "How long have you been listening?"

"Long enough." Jace came to a stop in front of her. Clary had backed up as much as she could and now the back of her knees were hitting the bed. If she tried to move any further from him, she would fall onto the bed, which was not a good position to be in with Jace.

"Clary," Jace began. He made no moves to touch her but they were so close, Clary's nose nearly touching his chest, the toes of their shoes touching. "I—"

"Don't, okay? Just don't try and change this. If you were listening to all of it, you know it isn't going to change anything."

"Clary," He grabbed both her hands in his. "You can't leave. I—I'm not ready for you to go."

"That's why I have to go."

"Why?"

"Because you said you're not ready for me to go and I'm not ready to wait for you." Her voice was thick with tears. Tears that welled in her eyes as she gazed at the boy whose heart she was breaking and realised that in breaking his heart, she was breaking her own.

"Clary—"

"No Jace, I'm sorry." She pulled her hands away from him and slide past him until she was standing away from the bed. "Jace, what I want you're not ready to give me."

"Clary, I want to give you everything. What do you want?"

"You know what I want!"

Clary was suddenly angry. Angry over Jace and his words from the car, angry that she finally had a fairy tale life but her prince was missing.

"Clary listen—"

"No, you listen! All my life I have waited, waited for something to come and you did! And now, when everything seems impossible, when my life has changed completely, the one thing I want most in the world doesn't want me."

"How can you say I don't want you? Look at what I have done for you! I took you in when no one else would! I gave you clothes, money, a job and a chance! Without me you wouldn't have the things you have now!"

"I will never stop being grateful for what you have given me Jace. I could never repay you, but those things, they aren't enough."

He seemed to deflate; it was the first time that Clary thought she had seen him completely vulnerable. Clary wanted to reach out and comfort him, but she had to hold back. She couldn't give in to him, as much as she wanted too.

"How isn't this enough?" He asked his voice uncharacteristically quiet.

"Because," Clary said, her tone filled with finality. "I don't want any of this if I can't have you."

Jace looked up at her and Clary remembered the first time she had seen him. When he picked her up and brought her back here, she thought he was her angel and he was, in a very different sense but angels weren't all good.

"Please Clary," He whispered, walking over to her and pressing his forehead against hers, his hands in hers, their fingers entwined. "Don't leave."

Clary met his gaze, loosing herself in the bright gold irises, and she did the only thing she could do, although she would regret it, she needed to do this. One last time.

Leaning forward, Clary pressed her lips gently to his, a small kiss, but with Jace, it was like lightening. They kissed, their lips moving in synch but neither one opening their mouths to the other, neither one trying to deepen it, because they both knew what this was.

It was a goodbye kiss and they were prolonging it as much as they could.

Clary felt a few stray tears fall down her cheeks and she remembered, right after she had told Jace she intended to leave, she remembered the words that stung her heart.

She was swallowing away at the lump that had been forming in her throat ever since she left the court room.

The image of Jace, his eyes shattering, his smile falling...It was too much for her, she had to leave. She waited outside the court room for Jonathan, hoping he could take her to Jace's to get anything she had left there—though she was fairly certain that everything there, Jace had given her.

"How could you?"

Clary had took a seat on the bench, her head in her hands, but at the sound of that quiet voice she looked up and saw Isabelle Lightwood, glaring down at her.

"How could you do that to him?"

"I didn't do anything to him." Clary said, defeated as she stood, hugging her elbow. She began to walk away when Isabelle walked in front of her, turning to face Clary.

"Bullshit. You've broken him!"

"How?"

"How? Clary, that boy is falling for you and you are just going to leave?"

"Isabelle, with all due respect, I made my feelings for Jace clear—"

"Really? It doesn't look like it! This whole time you have been pining after him and now you've decided because you're rich you're just going to dump him?"

"Excuse me? I told him that I was falling in love with him and do you know what he said to me? Or are you just trying to make me the bad guy?"

"I don't care what he said to you Clary. You broke his heart. He could call you a wh—"

"He told me that we were only friends and that he wasn't ready to 'jump into something yet'. You know what? I am ready to jump, I have already jumped and now I am free falling and I don't want to land in a heap and be wounded, I want to come away strong and the only way for me to do that is to leave Jace."

"You can't wait for him? He has never gotten into a relationship before, he needs time to adjust, his life hasn't been easy."

"His life hasn't been easy? Are you serious? I have never been in a relationship; I have never loved or liked anyone in my life, but here I am, ready to take the plunge and he isn't and I'm not going to sit around and wait for him to come around, because for all I know, I could be waiting a very long time."

"Well then, I think you should go."

"What do you think I'm doing?"

"No, I mean it Clary. Leave. Get everything you have ever worn, touched or even looked at from that house and never come back. Jace shouldn't need to remember you whenever he take a walk in his own house."

Clary tighten her jaw, not showing how much the words hurt. She had thought Izzy and she had become friends, but Isabelle seemed intent on making Clary the enemy.

"Fine. Goodbye Isabelle." Clary brushed past her, deciding to wait for Jonathan outside instead.

"Goodbye Clary."

She didn't know if it was imagined or not, but Clary thought that she heard a crack of emotion in Isabelle's voice. A crack that told Clary that Isabelle didn't want Clary to leave anymore than Jace did.

As the memory washed over Clary and she came back to the present she noticed a few more tears had escaped.

Damn, this was supposed to be non teary.

She kissed Jace once more and pulled back. The look he wore was one of utter defeat and Clary longed to hold him, like they had after Luke died, hours of cuddling in bed, talking about them. Clary had never been happier than she was in those moments and longed for their simplicity now.

"Goodbye Jace." She moved towards the bed and grabbed the suit case of her. She turned to the door but Jace grabbed the wrist of her free hand and she turned back towards him.

"Please Clary," He said, his tone pleading with her as he pressed his forehead to hers. "Please don't go."

Her heart twisted, she wanted nothing more than to drop her suitcase and leap into his arms, kissing him, ravaging him, but she didn't and she wasn't going to.

"I'm sorry Jace," Clary pulled away from him. "I'm done waiting."

She turned on her heel before he could say anything else. She walked with a quick swiftness and started running once she saw the door, she could hear him behind her but she couldn't turn—she wouldn't turn. She saw Jonathan leaning against the car, the truck already gone and when he saw her and heard the commotion behind her he opened the passenger door and ran to the driver's side. Clary slid into the seat, suitcase on her lap and slammed the door. Jonathan drove off as fast as he could as Clary stayed still, eyes forward, fingers clenched around the handle of her suitcase. It wasn't until they were off the property that Clary allowed herself to breathe properly again. She pushed her suitcase into the backseat and buckled her seat belt.

Although she was gone from the manor, she could still feel the burning gaze of its owner as the car left.

#####

"I'm sorry Jace," She said, pulling away from him. "I'm done waiting."

She turned and walked out the door, her hand firmly clutched on the handle of her suitcase. It took Jace mere seconds to respond before he shot out after her.

"Clary wait," She was going down the stairs, he was nearly at the top. "Clary stop," She was off the staircase, heading straight for the door. Jace jumped down the steps two—three at a time, racing after her. "Clary!" She ran out the door as Jace reached the bottom of the stairs and broke into a run after her. He was out the door as he saw her door slam and Jonathan start the car.

"Clary!" He called running to the car, it began pulling away from him and he ran after it, his hand reaching out for it. It was too fast and Jace stopped running, his hand falling to his side.

He stood in the spot the car had been parked in moments ago and watched it leave, his breathing heavy and ragged, his eyes wide. He couldn't believe it, he was a fool. He had been so stupid, assuming Clary would always be around, waiting for him to come around. He didn't even know why he had rejected her like that, why he hadn't immediately jumped at the prospect of being with her.

He couldn't admit it to himself but he was scared. He was scared that if he started a relationship with Clary and things didn't work out, he would never see her again and he didn't want that.

A hand on his shoulder shook him from his thoughts. He looked next to him to see Simon there and he knew that behind him and on his other side, the rest of his family stood. Magnus, Alec and Isabelle.

Jace breathed out, he didn't want to admit to them or to himself, but he had to get the words out, because they were true and he needed to accept them. So, with a resigned sigh he said them and had never felt such heartache.

"She's gone."

I.

Love.

Every.

Single.

One.

Of.

You.

And.

Your.

Amazing.

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