A/N- I'm sorry for the lack of updates. Writers block…*sigh*

Her plan was to wake early and head to the hospital on the subway. She imagined Jace waking with her, being all lit in early dawn light, all blue and comforting, and bidding her farewell with his sleepy kisses at the door. This never happened, though, because Clary awoke with an upset stomach in the night. She'd only been asleep for about two hours. It was not yet dawn. She was wrapped in a knot of his arms and his bed sheets, but still unnaturally cold. The shirt she wore, thin and not hers, caused her to shiver, caused her to question a fever. She wanted to stay in the warmth, there in the bed. It would have been other-worldly to stay. But she couldn't stay.

She gently tugged herself out of Jace's grip. She got out of his bed, shivering in her underwear. The band shirt was practically nothing against her skin. Her lower half ached, like she thought it would, and it was a reminder of what they'd done. Walking over to the other side of the room, she fought the overwhelming urge to throw up and hold herself for warmth.

The clock said it was five in the morning. Three hours from now she was meant to be sitting in a hospital bed, hooked up to her next round. Treatment. She couldn't miss treatment. No matter what. No matter that she was hopelessly fucking in love. And no matter that she was a big, empty fake.

She collected her bra from the bathroom. Jace had hung it on the doorknob, and she didn't know if she should have laughed at this. She left him sleeping. She left not knowing whether to close the bedroom door or not.

Creeping down the stairs in search of the laundry room, she found herself noticing the photos on the wall. There were several framed, professional portraits of Alec and Isabelle. She noticed the hard, heavy, black, faces of who could only be Jace's foster parents. The Lightwoods were the type of family that probably had a fancy plot in a graveyard somewhere. They probably had lavish family reunions, they probably had their own special places in country clubs. They golfed, as she could see from a framed photo of a dark haired man swinging a 9 iron. Jace's father. Foster-father. She didn't know what to call them, she wasn't acquainted enough.

There was only one photo of Jace that she could see. It was near the bottom of the stairs, and she stopped herself, surprised by the sudden blondeness amid a sea of black haired portraits. It was Jace, younger, gangly and pubescent. He was maybe fourteen in this photo, looking behind his shoulder at the camera. There was a wide lake in front of him and his arm was swung around another boy's. It was Alec, probably, but he was not looking at the camera the way Jace was. They both looked like they were about to go running into that still water. Swim trunks, young and tanned summer skin. His face was so thin, almost gaunt. Clary's fingers gently brushed over the glass, simultaneously she brushed over the empty spot inside herself where Jace was. She felt him there like some kind of infection, but there was so much about it that was uncovered. She wanted to compare photos with him. Where her pictures would be in hospital settings, with freshly shaven heads, he might have these few photos of his skinny, lonely self.

The laundry room was on the first floor. She found it in the dark with stubbed toes. Her sweater and jeans were soft, still warm from tumbling in the drier. She slipped the sweater on overtop the shirt she borrowed from him, deciding that she was not above stealing. She was already a liar.

Eventually, she slipped out of the house and made it about a block and a half before throwing up in some East Sider's bushes. If it was chemo or nerves, she didn't really know.

The subway station was mostly dead, since it was too early for the commute to work, and too late for the party goers. She rode in the almost empty car, a sort of weightlessness about her that was entirely unpleasant. She was looking at herself very objectively, at the mess that she was making of this shitty life she'd been given. The honourable thing would have been to tell her boyfriend the truth. Tell him that he was invested in poor stocks. She was a bad catch. And it would have been so nicely self-deprecating of her to think only this, and put all the blame and fault on herself, but she also felt that uneasy pull of self-pity.

Being a cancer kid, and having all that pity constantly rained on you by your parents, and the doctors, and the nurses, and your peers, you would think that Clary would have no room for self-pity. The fact of the matter was, however, that she was feeling sorry for herself and she wanted to cry her eyes out.

The train rattled on down the underground tracks, the lights flickered, and the homeless looking guy on the other end of the car gave a death-rattle cough. Nothing about the world was changing on the outside, New York was trivial as ever, but Clary felt like last night (and pretty much every night since she'd met Jace) had turned everything into this upside down vision. Every night had been an experience with this tenuous connection to this other Clary that was so different from herself. And it had been such a veil, such a lie, she realized this. There was never some "night owl Clary". That other Clary was just herself, just herself ignoring the sickness long enough to enjoy life.

So last night, they'd done it, and they'd said it, and it was real now. She was not some alternate persona pretending to be in love with him. He was not in love with this alternate persona. He was in love with her.

As much as that simple fact filled her with happiness, it was also twisted with a deep sadness. It made the fear of death that much closer. It made her hate what she was. She hated what she was doing. She hated this lie.

The train ride took about an hour and a half with all the stops, so by the time she emerged above ground in her neighbourhood, it was nearly six in the morning. She made it up the steps of her fire escape, feeling like every step shook the metal enough to wake up the whole building. Finally, climbing into the window that she left open just a crack, she felt the plush of the carpet on her feet. And then she looked up.

"Clary," said her mother. She was sitting on her bed with crossed arms and crossed legs. "You know I come in to check on you, and sometimes you're just not here. I don't know where you go or what you're doing when you leave."

"Mom," she started, but Jocelyn stood up and she looked sharply at her.

"It's 6:30 AM, Clary. Your appointment was at 6:15. They had to reschedule you for late tonight. That means the whole night at the hospital, Clary."

"I thought it was at 8:15." Had she really lost track of her appointments? Chemo wasn't something that she was supposed to take lightly. It wasn't like missing a dentist appointment.

"I have no idea what you're doing out there Clary. What are you doing?" She pointed out the window.

Clary considered spinning another web of lies to get her out of this. She could easily get Simon to vouch for her, and it wouldn't be a big deal if she said that Simon and her were off doing things. Jocelyn knew about Jace, though, at least a little bit, so maybe that lie wouldn't work. The stress of trying to come up with some excuse was eating away at her stomach very quickly. She opened her mouth, and before she could stop herself, the truth came out.

"I was with Jace."

Her mom breathed in a long breath through her nose. She nodded.

"I thought so." She sat back down on Clary's bed, but Clary stayed standing by the window. The cold morning air hit her back. Jocelyn said,

"Do I want to know what you were doing?"

Clary touched the back of her neck as she thought about last night. The sounds of his breathing as he lost control. His guitar calluses brushing over every part of her.

"We were…we-," she said. God, why was she telling her mother this? "I shouldn't have done it."

"Done what, Clary?" Her voice was so tight.

"Done it."

Jocelyn shook her head, and then Clary started crying. She sat down on the carpet, put her head in her hands, and cried. She couldn't stop now that it started. She sobbed an endless trail of sobs, losing control of her voice. It hurt. Everything with Jace should have been perfect, but now it hurt because she knew that soon it would end. Soon, she would bring the hammer down on this perfect thing and shatter it.

"Baby, what happened?" her mother's voice said. She didn't look up, though. She couldn't bring herself to pull her head out of her hands. She felt Jocelyn on the carpet next to her, pulling her head down to her shoulder. She cried against her mother's soft sweater for awhile without listening.

"What happened?" she asked again.

"I love him," she said softly. Her breath rattled and she coughed. She made a mess of her mother's shirt, but Jocelyn would never care.

"What did he do?" Jocelyn's voice was tight again, but her arms around her daughter were tighter.

"He didn't do anything," Clary said. "God, Mom, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I lied."

"Lied?"

"He loves me and I haven't even- I can't - I can't do it to him, Mom." Clary sobbed again, another long, seemingly endless wave of despair pushing her tears out like sad rain.

"You don't want him to know that you're sick?"

"I don't want to be sick."

Clary pulled her messy face away from her mom's sweater, and she looked at her mother's eyes which were red-rimmed and close to tears themselves. Jocelyn smoothed her hair back.

"I don't want you to be sick either, baby."

She helped Clary up and guided her over to the bed. Exhaustion was wearing her down now. She felt her stiff, tired limbs drag along until the soft embrace of linen and cushion enveloped her. She continued to softly cry. Jocelyn lied down in the bed next to her, pulled up all the sheets so that they were bundled and burrowed. She held Clary against her chest.

"I'm sorry I missed the appointment. I'm sorry."

"Stop being sorry, Clary. You're allowed to mess up. You're a teenager."

This caused Clary to laugh, which was hard to do, trying to pull a speck of laughter through the heavy weight of sadness. She breathed in her mother's scent and for the first time, realized that she was allowing her mother to be there to hold her together. It had nothing to do with vomiting or medicine administration, and maybe that's why she was letting her. She didn't need another nurse, she needed this, her mother.

"Tell me about him," Jocelyn said. Clary took a big breath. What could she say about him? How could she describe him? She didn't try to premeditate it, she just started to talk and the words came so easily.

"He's really tall. Compared to me, anyway, he's tall. My head fits perfectly under his chin, you know? So when he hugs me it's like…it's like," she said, stopping to sniffle. "It's like perfect. And he makes believe that he's this bad guy, that he's some kind of rebel or whatever, but I think he's really smart, and those bad guys, they just don't care like he does. He cares about everything."

Jocelyn began rubbing small circles in her back, and Clary continued to spill out everything she knew about Jace.

"His family is really rich. His foster parents. His mother is an oncologist, I think, and I'm so worried that…that she'll recognize me. I was in his house and I just kept thinking that I could be one of her patients or something, and how would that look, right? His house was…so big and he said he used to live in worse places. I think…he was probably abused, but we don't really talk about it. There's all this stuff we don't know about each other, but it's like it doesn't matter. I don't know- I don't know how it doesn't matter, but when I see him and talk to him, it's just like…I just…I wish I could call it something stupid, and call it 'puppy love'. But it doesn't feel like that."

She expected her mother to say something about it, to tell her that she was too young to know what real love was like, but Jocelyn just stayed quiet. So Clary kept on.

"He plays guitar in this band and he's so good, Mom. He makes everyone dance and he makes everything…all lit up."

"Your father was in a band," her mother said suddenly.

"He was?"

"He was a singer. He was the same way. Everyone loved him." Jocelyn's voice seemed a bit far away. This made Clary's nerves jump.

"Is that how you met him?"

"We met at a protest against the UN. Back when the Rwandan war was happening. He was the organizer, had a big megaphone and made all these… amazing speeches. Everyone loved him there, too."

"Did you love him?"

Jocelyn was quiet for a long time and Clary forgot about her own sadness as anticipation settled in. Finally, Jocelyn said,

"At first I did. But things changed, honey. We'll talk about it some other time. I promise."

Clary sighed as her mother's hand brushed away her hair. This was the most she had ever heard about her father in one sitting. She imagined her mother, an angry protestor, waving a picket sign and chanting something anti-government in a crowd. She imagined her father, a faceless man above everyone, fist pumping and shouting into a megaphone. It was a nice image, it was clearer than anything else she had come up with herself.

When she was little, she would pretend that her father was something awesome and impressive like an astronaut. Maybe he was gone because he'd gotten lost out in space. Or maybe he had been a spy, and was still deep undercover somewhere. Sometimes, she'd even imagine that Luke was her real dad, and that there was some unknown reason why he was living as this book owner alias. She had even asked him once,

"Luke, are you my dad?"

And he'd laughed, kind of quietly, and said,

"Oh, I wish Clary."

She had not fully understood what he meant when he said that, but thinking about it now that she was older, she knew exactly why Luke was so regretful. Sixteen years of loving her mother had crystallised him into this waiting, hopeful guy. A sixteen year tug-of-war with Jocelyn, always wanting for her to lay her cards on the table, but it never happening. He wished he was her father because he wished Jocelyn was his wife.

After a while, Jocelyn asked Clary what she wanted to do. What did she want to do about Jace, about her cancer, about the problem.

"I want to tell him." Her voice was not sturdy. "I don't want anything to change. And then I want to get better."

Her mother sighed, as if she was now bearing the weight of her daughter's heartbreak as well. Clary thought that talking about it might make her feel better, but it didn't change much. She still cupped Jace in her hands like he was a bit of smoke, but it was getting old. It was getting too drawn out.

Soon, her hair would fall out and she'd shave it off as not to prolong the inevitable. What would she do, wear a wig when she was with him? Pretty soon, she might not be able to be with him like she was last night. Pretty soon, everything would come apart as easily as a house of card falls.

Later that night, when her mother woke her up, and she pulled her worn out body from the bed, she felt heavier than ever before despite the fact that she was steadily losing weight.

They went to the hospital and commenced the chemo appointment, but beforehand, they were meant to meet the doctor in her office. This doctor was not Dr. Franz, but someone who apparently specialized in at-home treatment. She looked at her mother questioningly.

"At home care? But that's…that's way too much mom. That's out of our league."

Jocelyn tucked her purse tightly against her side and shrugged.

"It's not full time at home care, honey, I just wanted to meet with her about getting a dispenser. They have a new system, and the insurance policies are changing. It might be doable."

At home chemo. It sounded too good to be true. She speechlessly followed her mother through the door of the office after the nurse called them from the waiting room. It was later, and most of the doctors had probably gone home, but this one was still sitting behind her organized desk, and had still made this late appointment. The largest file cabinet she'd ever seen took up most of the room. The lights were surprisingly dimmer in here, creating a more homey feel than she'd ever felt in a hospital.

"You must be Clary and Jocelyn?" said the woman behind the desk. She was very professional looking, but she didn't wear a white coat like most doctors did. Her hair tied back tightly in a bun. It was black and her eyes were familiar. She sat in the chair that the doctor gestured to, her mother sat beside her. Clary got the sense that she'd seen her before, perhaps around the hospital.

"So, how are you feeling today, Clary?" asked the woman. Her voice was very curt, and it didn't match the homey feeling of this room. Clary must have looked like a mess, with her puffy eyes and messy bed hair.

"I'm okay," she lied.

From there, they started talking about her treatment regimen, and the series of drugs she was on. Her mother thankfully answered most of the questions for her, so she just sat there and stared at the walls of room. There were framed university degrees, photos that Clary couldn't quite make out in the dim lighting. She looked back at the doctor as there was a knock at the office door, and before the doctor answered, the door opened.

"Mom, I was going to take the car-" said a familiar voice. Clary turned her head and saw Alec Lightwood standing in the doorway.

"Alec, I'm with a patient right now," said the doctor with a tone of annoyance, whose nameplate read Maryse Lightwood, M.D.

Clary's eyes met Alec's, and everything snapped into place, along with the fact that this was her worst fear. Dr. Lightwood hastily introduced Alec to them as her son, and asked him to wait outside, please. Jocelyn looked from Clary to Alec, seeming confused. There must have been something in her face that revealed horror. Absolute horror. She felt the house of cards fall and blow away in the hellish, stormy breeze that seemed to fill this office.

"Hey, Clary," he said. His eyes were unwavering.

"Hey, Alec."