Morning sunshine :). Sorry it took so long for me to update.

So I know it's like, taboo to explain things to the readers, but I will anyway because whateves. Just try and stop me you crazy kids.

I gave Ginny a relationship with everyone (her weakest is with Annabeth IMO but u get what I mean) to show her symbolic position in the relationship of the six. Um. Yeah. That was all I had to say.

Oh and I was like on a reread and...holy cow this story was so bad. So so bad. How the hell did you all keep reading? Oh my god. At least you can see how I've improved over the last two years or so...but...ugh. Little description of action between dialogue really gets my goat.

Thank you all so much for all your reviews,follows and favourites :)

Jace

There was something off with Clary when she spoke. Something chilling. Something wrong.

"I know what to do."

"Yeah?" Annabeth asked, a little offended she'd been interrupted, who'd been detailing spells that they might be able to get Hazel to cast to slow Chaos down.

Clary nodded slowly. "Do you remember the rune I drew?"

There was a pause.

"Look," Percy said. "You're going to have to be a bit more specific."

Clary actually smiled when he said that, her face passing from happiness to despair to determination in such a brief amount of time that it was almost as if it had never been there at all. "When I needed to sleep, at Hogwarts. I drew a rune to help me knock myself out."

"I remember that," Ginny frowned. "We had to shake you for like, three hours." Then she narrowed her eyes, as if she suspected what Clary was going to say. "Why?"

And then I realised, and her eyes locked with mine. It was a curious feeling, that filled me then. Understanding and victory, because Clary was right, there was a way to control the thing. All we needed was a diversion, someone strong enough to get close enough...

The euphoria dropped off pretty quickly when I ran over the semantics of the whole thing.

"You want to use the rune to slow Chaos down," Annabeth summarised. "Right, ok, and then what?"

Clary shook her head. "Not just slow it down, knock it out completely. I was thinking, looking over the rune, and I couldn't figure out what I done wrong. I had pictured it perfectly, but must have messed it up in the dark. Even a line out of place could mean something entirely different."

I nodded slowly. "That's right."

"So my rune had a line drawn to the left, rather than the right," Clary explained. Then she shook her head, smiling, bemused. "God, after all this time and still..." She sighed. "Whatever. Not important."

"So we get close enough to land the mark," Annabeth said slowly, a grim smile slowly beginning to billow out on her soot smudged features. Then her grin slowly faded off. "We get...close enough to land the mark."

Percy glanced around and caught my eye, his face as solemn as it had ever been. Six kids and all we had in the world was each other and this monster knocking on Heaven's door. He understood the nature of things like this. He knew the nature of sacrifice. I saw Ginny, and she just looked angry, and then Harry, who looked younger than I'd ever seen him. World weary and aged at the same time. Annabeth just looked lost, like she was running around and around in her mind, trying to think of some way to do it without fail, without danger.

Then I looked at Clary and she looked scarily calm. Her eyes moved to each as mine did, and met mine as I met hers.

"No," I said sharply. I saw her, I knew her. "No way. Not in a million years."

"You can't stop me," Clary said cooly, not attempting to deny it.

I raised my eyebrows. "I can try."

"Whoa, whoa, what the Hell are you talking about?" Ginny asked, looking frazzled, still looking as mad as she had when she realised, along with everyone else, that this sort of defeat wreaked sacrifice. "Clary-"

"I'm the only one who knows how to draw the rune," she shrugged. She looked nonchalant, beautiful and brave, but her hands were tight and clenched, and for just a moment her resolve wavered, and she looked scared, scared and small. She always held herself like she was taller than she was, like she was older than she was, and sometimes she made it easy to forget how fragile she was. She breathed heavily, shrugging. "It can't be anyone else. It has to be me."

"Like Hell," I stated.

"I'm with Jace on this one," Annabeth stated, watching Clary with a mixture of horror and respect. "No one sacrifices themselves. We figure this out, ok?"

"Wait, you're with Jace?" Percy asked.

Annabeth's mouth puckered at the side for a smile. "I'm as surprised as you are."

Clary struggled for a moment, swallowing and closing her eyes. Then, when she flashed them open, they were angry. "Look. It's my choice. Me or the world? What kind of decision is that to talk me out of?"

"You might not even succeed," Harry pressed.

"We have to try," Clary snapped. "I'm not sitting around her for the rest of the world wondering about the What if's. Don't..." she took a desperate breath and closed her eyes again, looking away from me. "Don't look at me like that."

Everyone fell silent.

"Clary-" Percy started.

"No," Clary said, angry and desperate and sad, that wall she had built crashing down. "Don't belittle my sacrifice. Don't talk me out of it. It's me, or the world guys."

I clenched my jaw and bit down as hard as I could. I could hardly talk, knowing that if I opened my mouth, I'd sob, or scream, knowing that if I unclenched my hands I would run towards her and trap her here. Not let her go.

"And what about us?" I demanded, suddenly, breaking free of the holds I'd placed on myself. "We're supposed to just...let you die?"

"Yes," Clary stated defiantly.

"You ever been the one to survive, Clary?" I demanded, hating the tears that were springing up in my eyes, the ones I refused to let fall. "After a sacrifice? After someone kills themselves to save you?"

Harry stilled consciously and closed his eyes, rubbing a hand across his tired face.

Clary stood resolute and raised her chin, to still it from trembling or to assert her dominance, I guessed a mixture of the two. "No. But it's this, or the world, Jace."

"That...that's so selfish," I snapped. "You die and we mourn you for all eternity? We're supposed to just have to deal with that sort of guilt."

Clary frowned at me and I felt her despair and her anger, to me, mostly. Selfish? I call her sacrifice selfish?

"You're the only one thinking of you here, Jace," Clary said coldly, looking away from me again, setting up the walls around her psyche, around herself, so she could become nothing more than instinct driven, nothing more than a tool. I swallowed, ashamed, and bowed my head.

"You promised," I said, but stopped, looking down unseeingly and working my jaw again, the thickness of my voice melting all sorts of embarrassing pictures for our friends to have to see. You promised you'd never leave me. Not like this.

"I never did," Clary said, heartless, cold, aloof and at terms with what she had to do. And if pushing me away helped her achieve her plans, then that's what she would do. God, she was still only a child, and here she was, ready to die, ready to die. "And you can't convince me."

Annabeth was crying. I heard it in her voice when she spoke, I saw it in the tears that had made their way, a river through the black on her face. "How are we even supposed to get you there?"

If you survive, how will we get you back? I wanted to ask. Because I could. Because it was fruitless, because it might make her change her mind. But I didn't, because saying those words, saying them out loud...as much as I hated it, despised it, she was our only hope.

"I'll create a portal and get as near to it as I can," she delivered it so smoothly, so calmly, that it was almost as if she had never lost it before. Never all but told Harry to remember her, never all but told me that she didn't want to go, but that she had to. She delivered it so perfectly that I wondered how long she'd been thinking about this, wondering when she was planning on breaking the news. Whether it had been when she'd wanted, or when need had called.

I closed my eyes. So many things I wouldn't be able to ask her, and they collected themselves in front of me in a pile of rubbish, in a steaming heap. What her freckles would do in somewhere like Africa, what she'd do with my phone if I left it unlocked with her for too long, what she would say if I, perchance, asked her to marry me. What would happen if I kissed her, just so. What her eyes would look like in a rainforest, what she would say if consoling someone with a broken heart, what someone would say to her to make it all alright. Whether she would laugh or groan when her mother pulled out the baby book for her 21st, whether she'd hug Luke or kiss him on the cheek when he handed her the next Christmas present he would be buying.

Such small things, snowballing and collecting into a tangible, broken, bleeding thing. Insatiable and untameable.

Clary looked at me, and her mouth held tightly, nodded slowly, nodded once.

"Let me come with you," I said slowly. "Through the portal." Then my eyes widened. "Let me learn the rune."

Clary's face finally softened and she finally looked close to tears, as close as she should be, lost and alone and facing the last hours of her life at 17. "No. I won't."

I tilted my head, angry and confused. "Why? Why are you so determined to sacrifice yourself?"

She looked at me, long and hard. "Better me than you."

Then a great cry came from the battle field, from the last stragglers, the last people on that bloodstained atrocity. The six of us drew to the window and across from the fire of Chaos, saw a gathering of dark, a twisted cyclone of thorns and lace.

"What the hell is that?" Ginny gaped.

Harry shook his head and took her hand. I looked over and Clary was watching impassively, her emotions buried again, her head held loosely on her shoulders, like it was just another Thursday evening.

"More like, who's that," Annabeth frowned, squinting her eyes next to me and peering into the dark mess, where now a figure was taking shape. She shook her head, at a loss. "I've never seen her before."

Percy shared her little knowledge. "Neither. She's not a goddess we've met before."

"Angel?" Clary asked absently.

I shook my head in answer. "Angels have wings. And they're on our side. Hopefully."

"Lucifer wasn't," Ginny pointed out.

"Thanks for that, Ginevra," I said.

Ginny paused and then reddened. "I'm going to kill Ron."

Harry coughed nervously. "Good idea."

Ginny scowled up at him.

"All of us but Ginny will slow her down," Annabeth said curtly, put off that they'd redirected the conversation. "Attack her from all sides. She seems pretty impossible, but if we can distract her for long enough, it might be enough for the Gods to recognize the threat to the extent it is and come down to help."

"Where are they now?" I asked, looking skyward and scowling.

"In a council, probably," Annabeth said hesitantly. "Deciding on what to do."

"Now?" I demanded.

"More like, still," Annabeth explained. "Gods have a warped sense of time compared to humans. They also have a warped sense of threat. Chaos has only threatened the lives of humanity, but soon it will threaten the Gods and the underworld."

"Can we count on them then?" I asked scathingly.

Annabeth tightened her jaw and old resentments seemed to bubble to the surface. "Who knows?"

"When are we going?" Clary asked airily, but I could see her hands fiddling with themselves behind her back.

"We go first," Annabeth ordered. "She's come to protect and help Chaos. If we can get her distracted, or destroyed, that'll give you a chance to rip it a new one."

Clary smiled faintly at Annabeth's words. "Sounds promising."

"It's not my best plan," Annabeth shrugged. "But it'll do. Come on."

I figured that when Annabeth was upset, she focused on planning, thinking, fighting to distract her. I seared Clary's face into my mind and glared across at Chaos and the woman who protected him.

What can I say? I could relate.

I looked across at Clary and stalked forward, clasping her head behind my hand and leaning down, my forehead pressing against hers, my eyelashes brushing softly against hers, my nose inches from hers, my body weaving around hers. Hers. I was hers. Hers, hers and she was mine.

"You don't have to go," I said lowly.

"Jace," she said warningly, pulling away so that there was room enough for a breath of air to wriggle through.

"I know," I said quietly, and looked down, and she pressed her forehead to mine again, perhaps more firmly than the time before, looking deep and achingly into my eyes, hers a sparkling green. "But you have to know that there's a choice. That no one will think any less of you if you don't."

Clary closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and then when she opened them again, looked straight at mine, unblinking, alert, strong. "I know. But this choice, it's the right one."

I nodded slowly, dejectedly. "I know."

Clary looked at me, surprised. "Wait, really?"

"I'm not going to lie to you," I said carefully. "I don't want you to go. But, if it's what you want...and you're sure―"

"I am sure," Clary interrupted, before I could go further, talking myself out of my acceptance and her out of going in the first place. She smiled softly and pressed her lips to mine, not in that hot, passionate frenzy that seemed to always overtake us, but in the quiet moments, two people comforting each other for the last time.

"Jace!" Ginny called and gestured with her head for me to join them when I looked over. "We're nearly ready to leave."

I looked back to Clary and she nodded, her red hair atop her head swaying with the generated breeze, her bright green eyes and smattering of freckles. I wanted to count them, the spots on her skin, I wanted to see how it would change over summer, how many she'd lose in Winter. I wanted to know all these things.

I suppose that now, there just wasn't the time.