City of Clockwork

Déjà Vu

London 1878

Clary was worried about going to breakfast that morning. Sophie had already come in to get her dressed and told her everyone was having breakfast in the dining room in twenty minutes. She did not want to face the her New York Institute friends. They would ask so many questions she either could not or would not answer to protect them. Clary waited a full twenty minutes before heading down to the dining room.

On her way out Clary ran into Alec. He was wearing an outfit similar to the old fashioned gear she was wearing. She smiled. Good I'm not the only one late to breakfast. Then she saw the look on his face. It was the same look he had given her that day... the day he threatened to kill her. The memory-one she had not thought about in a long while-sent chills up her spine.

Flashback

"Clary!"

She turned around in surprise. Alec was loping down the hall after her, hurrying to catch up. He stopped when he did. "I need to talk to you."

She looked at him in surprise. "What about?"

He hesitated. With his dark skin and pale blue eyes he was as striking as his sister, but unlike Isabelle he did everything he could to downplay his looks.The frayed sweaters and the hair that looked as if he had cut it himself in the dark were only part of it. He looked uncomfortable in his own skin. "I think you should leave. Go home," he said.

She'd know he didn't like her, but it still felt like a slap. "Alec, the last time I was home, it was infested with forsaken. And Raveners. With fangs. Nobody wants to go home as much as I do, but-"

"You must have relatives you can say with?" There was a tinge of desperation in his voice.

"No. Besides Hodge wants me to stay," she said shortly.

"He can't possibly. I mean, not after what you've done-"

"What I've done?"

He swallowed hard. "You almost got Jace killed."

"I almost-What are you talking about?"

Running of after you're friend like that-do you know how much danger you put him in? Do you know-"

"Him? You mean Jace?" Clary cut him of in midsentence. "For you information the whole thing was his idea. He asked Magnus where the layer was. he went into the church to get weapons. If I hadn't gone with him, he would have gone anyway."

"You don't understand," Alec said. "You don't know him. I know him. He thinks he has to save the world; he'd be glad to kill himself trying. Sometimes I even think he wants to, but that doesn't mean you should encourage him to do it."

"I don't get it," she said. "Jace is a Nephilim. This is what you do, you rescue people, you kill demons, you put yourselves in danger. How has last night any different?"
Alec's control shattered. "Because he left me behind!" he shouted. "Normally I'd be with him, covering him, watching his back, keeping him safe. But you-you're dead weight, a mundane." He spit the word out as if it were an obscenity.

"No," Clary said. "I'm not. I'm Nephilim- just like you."

His lip curled at the corner. "Mabye," he said. "But with no training, no nothing, you're still not much use, are you? You're mother brought you up in the mundane world, and that's where you belong. Not here, making Jace act like-like he isn't one of us. Making him break him oath to the Clave, making him break the Law-"