Clary's eyes were beginning to ache, not because she was holding back tears, but because the bright lights in the hospital were bothering her. They had always bothered her. When she used to come in for her chemo, she always asked the nurses (if they were the nice ones) to turn off the lights so that she could sit in the dark with her IV drip. She and her mother were in Dr. Franz's office, a large, white room with a view that overlooked the Brooklyn Bridge. There was a stack of paper and a computer, each held all her medical files, from the time she was first admitted when she was twelve until now. The most recent test was in Dr. Franz's hands. His hands were steady, soft, and had examined her more than once. Jocelyn's hands were shaking.

"Okay," her mother kept saying. "Okay. So what's the next step?"

Dr. Franz closed the file that held the test results.

The test results that showed cancerous cells in her bone marrow.

Her race against the five year mark was suddenly over, leaving her panting in the middle of the track, wondering where the hell all the spectators had gone to.

"Clary's going to have to go back on the donor list. We'll start her on the first round of chemotherapy…" He went on, but Clary had stopped listening. Her mother was nodding her head, asking questions, eyes ever so slightly widened. Maybe Jocelyn hadn't expected this. Clary didn't know what she was expecting.

Instead she looked out the window at the Brooklyn Bridge. So many people were moving down there, all the cars and people flowing like a healthy bloodstream. It looked like the bridge was alive. Clary's finger's itched to draw it the way it was right now, at morning rush hour, so full of life, so opposite of this white room which was still and frozen in this tragic moment. She'd give anything to get the hell out of there.

She noticed that Dr. Franz had tone in his voice that was sort of relaxed, like he wasn't in the least bit surprised by Clary's test results. It wasn't that she didn't like Dr. Franz, he was good enough, she supposed. It was just that she'd come to associate him with bad news, and not seeing him for a year and a half had been great. Sitting in this room, she felt like she was thirteen all over again, in the middle of a storm of doctors and treatments. She thought of her long hair and touched it. Good things were never meant to last.

For the second time in her life, Clary felt like she was dying. Perhaps she'd been dying this whole time, and only now it was evident that the process of dying was actually going to effect her. Dying had been easier to handle as a kid because she had trusted everything her mother said, truly believed she'd be perfectly fine if she kept getting chemo and the marrow transplants. When she was younger, she had no philosophical questions to ask, nothing to compare her life to. Now that she was older, the world seemed to be laid out in front of her like a map, and she could see everyone else moving forward, and she could almost pick her feet up and move on. But she was stuck in this office. Stuck on her little corner of the map. Why did she avoid talk of the future so much? It was because her future was fluid, and it just kept getting snatched away from her by Dr. Fucking Franz.

She kept stiff and rigid until the doctor gave them her next appointment cards, a couple of pages worth of more prescriptions that she would have to add to her daily pill regimens. She'd be going through prep for chemotherapy and starting it next week, she'd have to come and be given an IV which would add to her ever-growing scar tissue. Almost immediately, Jocelyn wrote it all down in her daybook. Watching her mother as she collected herself and shook the doctor's hand, Clary was nervous, as if Jocelyn was an unstable chemical mixture that had just been shaken up.

They left to brave the hallways, the walls of which were covered in finger paintings and success stories. All children's wards were the same. Sterile, an obvious clinical décor, but with the ghosts of childish things; toys in the waiting areas, teddy bear wallpaper bordering the middle of the white walls.

She couldn't think of anything to say to Jocelyn. I'm not worried, Mom, she thought, but that was a lie. Clary was already beginning to panic about the bone marrow and how long she'd have to wait for a matching donor. She could say, I think we'll get lucky, but really, Clary didn't believe in luck. Instead, she said nothing and in the elevator ride down, Jocelyn put her arm around Clary's middle as a small sign of support. She didn't think Jocelyn could say anything either. Raging disappointment had just come up out of nowhere like a tsunami and wiped them out. What was there to say?

Clary looked in the reflection that the shiny elevator doors made. She looked a lot like her mother like this- when the image was just murky enough to obscure their faces. They were both short and they both held themselves the same way, though Clary was much skinnier than Jocelyn. She would only get thinner now. Her hair and Jocelyn's was the real resemblance. Red as passion, thick, always doing something unruly. Clary let her sight linger on the reflection until the doors opened and a sick boy and his mother wheeled in.

She was getting the distinct feeling that her mother needed to be alone. She kept her hand around her middle, but she had a slightly detached look about her that Clary knew well. Usually when Jocelyn became emotional about something, she'd go excuse herself to do some kind of non-existent task, but there was no way that Jocelyn was going to willingly leave her side right now. They just carried on out of the hospital without words, and a hopelessness began to settle in between them.

Clary's body ached from last night, from the running. Though she had gained some muscle over the past year, she could feel her body getting weaker again. Maybe that was another symptom she'd been ignoring. Her limbs ached like she'd run for miles and miles, pins and needles in her feet. She would only get weaker, only get slower from now on, so she guessed that it was a feeling she'd have to get used to. Still. she walked slowly out of the hospital's lobby and winced a bit, hoping that Jocelyn wasn't picking up on her abnormal gait. She hardly approved of her going out last night at all, and Clary couldn't see Jocelyn being thrilled that she was chased through Manhattan by the cops, especially considering her test results.

Luke was waiting by the curb for them with his truck, but he was standing outside pretending to check the air in the tires. He didn't look very good, he looked like he hadn't slept. Luke always had that sort of dishevelled way about him, like he had just got finished doing something physically exerting, though she'd only ever seen him lift boxes at the book store. When Clary got closer, she saw that he hadn't shaved, that he'd even forgotten his glasses. Jocelyn and him exchanged a look as soon as they paused in front of the truck, but they said nothing for a moment. Really, unless Jocelyn and her had come out smiling, there was no need to clarify what had just happened in that hospital. They were all used to this dance of bad news. Awkwardly, Clary found herself standing in front of Luke, also trying to think of something to say, but coming up short.

"No dice, eh?" he said, finally. Clary laughed in spite of herself. If her life was a betting game, she was in the hole about three million dollars.

"Not this time. Chemo next week." She could have thrown in some kind of sarcastic comment like, yay me, or can't wait, but the whole situation, the whole silence that kept going on and on seemed bitter enough without her anger.

Luke's eyes tried to look sympathetic, but he was coming off as defeated. Clary slid out of her mother's tenuous hold and over to the passenger side of the truck. This truck was a very prominent part of her childhood. It was the vehicle that took her to all those appointments when her mother refused to ride the subway with a sick child, it was the vehicle that drove her and Simon around when they got free time away from hospitals and tutors. It always smelled the same, too, like peppermint and old books. She climbed into the passenger side and waited for her mother and Luke to finish whatever quiet conversation they were having. She tried to listen, but all she could make out was Luke saying,

"It's nothing we haven't beaten before, Jo."

In her room. Clary bit on her tongue, trying to see if she could draw blood. Once, when she was younger, her and Simon had pricked themselves with a little thumbtack and tasted their blood. They had to spend long stretches of boredom in the hospital, so they did everything under the sun to pass the time. They were trying to see if they could taste the cancer or not. Simon said he thought it would taste like garbage or something equally as gross, but it was just blood. Metallic and boring blood.

A familiar song pulled her out of the memory, and she let go of her tongue.

It was a text from a number she didn't recognize and it said,

Come to Pandemonium at midnight.

Her heart missed a painful beat. She realized that she'd been secretly waiting for this all day. She'd spent the afternoon in her room with this impatient feeling. It was strange of her to feel this way because she had confirmation now, that the cancer had grown without her knowing, like some kind of weed that kept coming back. Could she just dig her claws into her blood and rip it out, rip out its roots? It was always the mystery that got to her, the constant wondering. She had been sitting with this feeling like something was supposed to happen for a year and a half, and today it finally happened, but she was unsatisfied.

She dissected the text, read each word carefully and considering everything. The only person who knew her well enough to text her was Simon, or maybe Hodge to let her know that a lesson was cancelled, which left only one hopeful possibility; Jace. Of course she was waiting around for him. She felt like a love stuck school girl. Maybe it was unhealthy, like some kind of worship that made the feminist in her itch uncomfortably, but Clary thought it was just interest. She was interested in him, wanted to know more.

Jocelyn had locked herself in her room with apparent "homework from the office", and would stay there all night, but Clary knew that was just another one of the non-existent tasks that required her to be alone so that she could cry, or not, or do whatever it was the Jocelyn did to get by. Clary didn't like to think about what happened behind closed doors too much. There was enough to worry about when she could see it.

The clock said 11:03, which would leave her only just enough time to catch the metro to the part of town where she knew Club Pandemonium was. She walked past it enough, and it was clear in her mind because there was always such a mix of color outside the building. Kids in costumes, leather, fairy wings, and elaborate makeup. She'd never been inside, but always wanted to go. The lure of the eccentricity was powerful. And now Jace, the one other thing that was luring her out of her shitty apartment, would be there.

She was going. It was final.

In her closet, she put on an old green coat that used to belong to her mother because it was the most colourful thing she owned, and a black dress that she wore to a hospital kid's dance the year previously. The dances that they occasionally put on in the ward were kind of pathetic, full of ill kids who wouldn't dance or ill kids who couldn't. Simon and her always brought their handheld videogames and parked it on the middle of the floor with the complimentary punch that no one spiked.

She felt telltale signs of heartbreak as she let down her hair and shook it. Don't think about, she told herself, not tonight.

Clary left through the fire escape, abandoning all her reason and caution in her room with her pillbox.

The subway car was already full of half-drunk people on their way to a different club, and too-drunk people on their way home. She was sandwiched between a couple who looked like they were getting to third base, and a man in a nice suit who was clutching onto his briefcase like Clary would try to steal it. Clary touched the back of her neck nervously. The kissing couple was making her think more and more of the possibilities of tonight. She imagined dancing with Jace, getting close enough to smell his scent like she had been that night at the Minx Bou.

When the car slid to a stop, she was the first one out the door. She made her way out of the underground slowly until she came up for a breath of thick, late night Manhattan air. She was going to start appreciating things like smells. She was going to remember everything that she smelled, everything she touched, heard, and felt. She walked steadily past the people of the streets, and with each passing face, she closed her eyes and envisioned them again. Maybe she'd try to draw everybody, everywhere.

Pandemonium had a pulse. She could feel it shaking through the building and moving into the pavement of the street beside it. Her own heart started to beat along with whatever strange house music was playing inside. She stood slightly separated from the crowded line, her eyes moving frantically over every costume and every couple, searching.

But he came from behind her.

"I didn't know if you knew where this place was."

His voice was omniscient, like it was coming from above her. If she looked up, she wouldn't have been surprised to see his sharp, handsome face hovering up there with the stars. She didn't look up though, she turned around and saw that he was really there, really just a person like her, but he was godly beautiful.

"I knew where it was," she answered.

Jace seemed satisfied by all this. He smiled widely, the lion smile that she had been thinking about for what seemed like forever. His hair was the same as it was last night, long and looking like it had been pushed back several times. He wore a t-shirt, but didn't shiver despite the temperature. His jeans were old, ripped, worn and loved the way most of Clary's clothes were. But then again, Clary had a penchant for things like old clothes, hand-me-downs, and childhood toys. He took her hand, saying,

"Let's go."

She sucked in a steadying breath while he wasn't looking. As they walked toward the club, she was unable to wrap her head around the reality of the situation. How was it that yesterday she had been standing below the stage, fantasizing about the hot guitarist and now she was here, feeling his hand overtop of hers? She thought they'd join the line, but Jace moved to the front and put on this big, happy face for the bouncer. The bouncer was a tall, broad black guy with neat dreads that had been cut to about his shoulder. Jace held onto Clary's hand so that they were joined, so that she seemed with him.

"Vinny, what's going on?"

"Jace, my man, how's the moms?" Vinny the bouncer asked. Clary hadn't thought about Jace's mom or who she could be. To her, Jace seemed like the type who didn't live anywhere, maybe just in the sky, and he materialized out of nowhere to play shows and sweep unsuspecting girls off their feet.

"She's great, how's the girl?" Jace said, throwing his arm down so that they could shake hands warmly.

"The same, you know how it is." As he said this, he unclipped the rope and stepped aside so that Jace and Clary could enter.

"You're a good man, Vinny," he said over his shoulder. He didn't let go of her hand once they were inside.

The club was rightfully called Pandemonium. All at once, the force of bodies dancing, the music, the people who looked like creatures- it hit her in a pleasant frenzy. It was like one great, big, glorious freak show of fun. Clary couldn't stop herself from smiling like a dork as they pressed themselves further into the mass of people. She had never been to a place like this, this was the kind of club she used to imagine with Simon in the hospital, the kind of place that she fantasized her teen self would go to.

A boy with blue hair passed her by, and before she could tell him no, he'd pressed a little bag of pills into her hand. She tried to signal him to give them back, but Jace was pulling her along and the boy had disappeared somewhere else. She let the baggie fall to the floor without another thought.

Suddenly they stopped in the middle of the dance floor, and Jace pulled her around so fast, she thought she left her mind behind her and just her body slammed against his. He was quick to pull her into a slow dance, though the music was fast and endless. He moved her in a circle, his feet never stumbling over hers.

"I don't dance much," he confessed in her ear. It was strange to hear his voice above the music, to feel his breath. She was ultra aware of everything, his closeness, the weight of his hand on her hip.

"Neither do I."

Clary did something she wouldn't have normally done if she hadn't been told that she was sick today. Perhaps it was like those stupid things that people said on the internet, you only live once, but she felt the need to squeeze out every little drop of perfection from the night. She reached up and touched Jace's hair. It was soft, exquisite, and soon she was running her fingers through it with ease. He didn't look that surprised, just calm as he lifted his hand from where it had been resting and ran it through her own hair. She could feel the follicles breathing when his fingers touched the curls. He grazed her scalp softly. It was sensational, like the way her mother used to do it, only it was a him and he had this smile on his face that made her want to kiss it off.

Their heads were farther apart now, and they both looked kind of funny with their hands caught in each other's hair. She laughed and let go of the strands in her fingers, moving in closer so she could shout in his ear. He kept his hand in her hair.

"Great hair," she said.

"Speak for yourself," he shouted back.

She knew it was stupid to ruin this moment, but her thoughts automatically went to what would happen in the next few weeks when she went through radiation. The hair in his hands would start to fall off until all that was left was a patchy red mess. She tensed and Jace must have sensed her sudden discomfort, and he let go of her hair. Without his hand there, it felt a little lifeless.

But she didn't want him to quit touching her, so she pressed herself even closer to him and swayed along, opting to close her eyes and enjoy his scent.

"So.." he started. "What else can we deface tonight?"

A/N- Thank you great people for the feedback, you're wonderful. I'll try to keep the chapters coming.