Note: Title taken from the song by The Darling Buds, Jamie Campbell Bower's band. I do not own them or the characters from TMI; they belong to Cassandra Clare. However, if you could let me know where I could get a Jace Lightwood or a Jamie Campbell Bower, I would not be averse to the idea.

She could hear them above her own thundering footsteps, above the heavy drum of her heart, above the blood rushing in her ears – the slow scraping of their feet across dilapidated hardwood floors, inexorable as the tide, coming to sweep her away.

If only she could find a way out of this stupid, stupid place, she thought furiously. It had seemed harmless enough, just a hotel that had once been beautiful and proud, now dying away. She'd entered it in the hopes of finding her mother, since she'd been there last to paint the fading grandeur – a feeble hope, but better than never knowing what had happened to Jocelyn Fray. Or at least, she'd thought that at the time. Now, with a rising horde of the undead trailing after her as she fished in her jacket for a pistol, Clary felt hopelessly outnumbered.

They came closer, slowly, painfully, blood-streaked and filthy. Their eyes were the worst part, she decided, eyes that had once been human, but were now dull. Dull as their feet on the marble floor, dull as their voices, raising in a wordless moan.

But the crackle of glass shattering was as sharp as a knife as a black figure rolled through the window.

At first she thought it was another one, but as the figure somehow gracefully landed by her side, the idea seemed more and more ridiculous. It was impossible to mistake this young man, his hair a tousled lion's mane around the angles of his face, as anything but alive, especially not when he looked down at her with eyes the color of crystallized amber.

"Who the hell are you?" Clary demanded, as he brandished what looked like a revolver attached to the handle of a machete as long as his forearm.

Despite the shadows converging in on them, his eyes shone with a fierce sort of joy, even as he turned from her to the crowd approaching them. "Someone who saw you walk into a den full of zombies."

"You came in after me," she felt the need to point out mutinously.

He shrugged. "Maybe I just like rescuing pretty girls."

Then he was already leaping forward at the first of the undead's ranks before she could respond, slicing through the ones that stepped too close. Suddenly re-energized, she squeezed the trigger of her own gun, the sweet smell of gunpowder flaring up around her.

"Get behind me," the man panted, suddenly drawing nearer to her once more. His fingers rested lightly on the crook of her elbow. "If we can get to that door," he jerked his chin at a door at the other side of the room, "there's a staircase down to the alley outside."

She casted a wild glance about her as she fired a round off into the flannel-covered chest of a man – rather, what once was a man. Behind her, he was deftly shearing off the head of another with the blade, before shooting into the crowd. "We can't – there's too many of them."

"Have a little faith," he replied, and even through the blood and gore, his voice was as cool and sardonic as if he was commenting on the unfortunate color of the wallpaper. All of a sudden, bullets sprayed from outside of the windows, shards of glass scattering like fallen stars across the floor. "Mmm, just in time."

On the other side of the room, a young woman kicked down the door, the coils of something thick and heavy resting in her arms like a giant black serpent. "Over here!"

Clary found herself being tugged through the crowd as her rescuer alternately cleaved and shot through it, the rhythmic pop of gunfire accompanying them. Ahead, the woman at the door fiddled with something, and all of a sudden the serpent in her arms writhed to life, water blasting out of it with a screeching roar. The stinging pressure of the fire hose caused the undead around them to throw up their hands, crying out in pain, while the woman yelled an impatient "Come on!"

Heavy breathing fogged up her ears as she was jostled along in the dark, the woman on her heels and the man jogging lightly ahead of her, his grip on her hand only loosening when they reached the end.

The door finally swung open the third time he threw his shoulder against it, releasing them into the urban filth that was a New York alley. She'd never been more grateful for the sight, bolting through the puddles of refuse to the street, where three motorcycles were parked up against the curb.

It wasn't until they were in the sunlight of afternoon did she realize that her rescuers weren't adults at all, but teenagers only a few years older than herself, just a girl flicking a long dark plait over her shoulder and a boy who was turning back at her with amusement. Another one had emerged out of nowhere, a black-haired boy with a sniper rifle on his shoulder and the same pale skin and tall frame as the other girl. Her brother, Clary guessed.

She wasn't given much time to make note of this, however, before an impish grin flashed at her, bright as a blade. Amused eyes met hers. "Quit staring and hop on."

The moment she slid onto the seat, the bike veered away from the curb with a rumbling growl, forcing Clary to throw her arms around the waist of her rescuer. She felt rather than heard his laughter. "It's alright, I'm an excellent driver."

She would have made a derogatory remark at this, but then he made such a sharp turn that Clary shrieked and clutched his belt (though she later would deny this).

She would not, however, deny that she was grateful when he finally pulled to a stop. As she shakily dismounted, she peered up at him. "I think there's glass in your hair."

He arched a blond eyebrow with a smirk. "Well, I've often been told I'm quite dazzling to the eye."

She ignored him and turned, noticing the high arches and white plaster of the building in front of them. "Why are we at a church?"

A female voice cut in, irritated and sharp as a whip. "Yes, indeed, Jace, why are we at the church? Why did we bring her here?" Clary whirled around only to find the black-haired girl from earlier converging on her like a harpy. "Why the hell did you even wander in that hotel in the first place, stupid girl? You almost got Jace killed."

Clary lifted her chin. "I was trying to find my mother. That was the last place I saw her."

"See, Isabelle? She probably doesn't have anyone else or anywhere else to go. Why not bring her here?" Jace pointed out. She whirled on him, about to bite out a response, but he just raised both eyebrows innocently. "What, you don't, right?"

She sighed exasperatedly. "Well, no."

"We can't just bring in outsiders," Isabelle's brother stepped up. Though his eyes were a brilliant blue compared to his sister's dark brown, the unwelcoming look in them as he glanced over at her was the same.

"Why not?" At this point, Jace's voice was beginning to have an edge to it. "I thought that was what we were trained for. To help others in times like this."

Clary glanced around in confusion. "What do you mean, 'trained for'? Do you mean for… attacking the undead?" Strange as it sounded, it made sense once she thought about it – no three normal teenagers had that much skill with firearms and fighting.

"Now you've done it," the other boy threw his hands in the air. "Honestly."

Jace glared, crossing his arms. "It's not like there's anyone else anymore, Alec. There's no harm in her knowing if we're the only ones left."

Isabelle clenched and unclenched her jaw slowly, her thoughtful gaze sliding over to Clary uneasily. "Oh, alright. We can discuss this inside then."

They called the church "the Institute". Once a training ground for some division of the government assigned to prepare for "events such as this", as Isabelle airily put it, it was now a shelter for the three teenagers, seeing their families had been lost when the apocalypse had first shaken their world.

"So we were trained, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, to find survivors and protect them," Alec informed her stiffly as they sat in the pews. Behind him, Jace leaned against a wall, twirling his pistol sword on a finger casually.

"And that's why you came after me," Clary raised an eyebrow at the blond. "I don't need your protection."

He placed a hand to his chest, eyes widening at her as if hurt. "How quickly you dismiss my sense of chivalry. Well, if you despise my company so, you can leave if you like."

"Wait," she cut him off before he could fling open the massive doors of the church. "Like you said, it's not like I have anywhere else to go."

She would have sworn there was a glint of relief and maybe triumph in those sunlit eyes as he turned around. "Well, now. Are you asking to stay?"

And that is how she came to call the Institute her home, over the next couple weeks. Jace was only too happy to give her a tour of its grounds, which were surprisingly extensive behind the main sanctuary. It made a strange home, but she learned to navigate its winding hallways and the quirks of both the building and its inhabitants. Isabelle, she learned, had to be avoided at all costs whenever she was "cooking" in the snug kitchen, because to enter would be to court disaster and possible food poisoning, while Alec was normally found in the training room or the weaponry, cleaning the rifle that was practically an extension of his arm. And if she heard rippling sonatinas and etudes trailing through the chambers of the abandoned cathedral at night, that was Jace at the piano, in the music room only he and Clary ever seemed to enter.

Alec and Jace had boarded up the stained-glass windows of the first floor, but she'd gotten used to the light that made its way through the slits in between the wooden panels, casting a kaleidoscope of reds and greens and blues across the floor. She loved to lie on the cool wood, sketching the gilded angels that flew above on the ceiling.

"You're rather good," Jace commented once out of the blue, leaning over the back of the pew.

She turned, nearly knocking her nose into his jaw. He was so close she could smell him, soap and limes. Thankfully, he was too busy looking at her drawing to see her blush – or maybe he had. In the short time that she'd known him, she'd rapidly grown to understand that Jace noticed everything. Clary shook her head. "You should have seen my mother's drawings. They were beautiful. Everything she did was," she said. "I know it's sort of hard to believe now –"

He glanced up from the sketchbook, eyes meeting hers, so close she could see the individual flecks of darker gold. The light from the windows cast dancing patterns in his hair. "No, I can believe that."

She jumped like a scalded cat as a jarring cough resounded behind them. "Excuse me, but Izzy wants to go shopping before the electricity dies."

Alec was leaning against a column, looking mildly irritated. "Shopping?" Clary echoed, her voice embarrassingly uneven.

Jace shifted next to her, whatever it was she had seen glinting in his eyes earlier replaced by his usual wry amusement. "You didn't think we had an endless supply of food and clothing, did you? Or weapons, for that matter."

Clary raised an eyebrow. "They sell weapons at Costco?"

Alec made a strangled noise. It took a second for her to realize he was laughing, shoulders shaking with the effort of holding it back. Jace, on the other hand, was rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. "Dear Heaven, the innocents that we have been entrusted with." He shot her a wide smirk. "Clarissa, anything and everything can be used as a weapon. In the hands of an expert, that is."

"That's the catch, isn't it," Alec mumbled.

It was eerie, pushing a shopping cart down aisles completely devoid of people. She'd always been used to the hustle and bustle of children begging for snacks, mothers evaluating two different brands of merchandise, the beeping and clicking of the check-out machines. Now even the squeaking of the cart's wheels as they bumped along the slick floor and Jace's teasing at Isabelle up ahead couldn't hide the oppressing silence.

Clary eyed the overflowing shelves. "This feels so weird."

"I feel the same way," a voice came up from behind her. It was Alec, his voice quietly sympathetic. "Almost sacrilegious, like we're disturbing it. Wrong, somehow."

She nodded in agreement, and Alec smiled. Unlike his sister, it seemed to be a rare motion for him, but whenever he did, it lit up his pale, carved features, making his cobalt blue eyes look like twin will-o'-wisps. "Yeah. But you know, you do what you have to do to survive." He glanced over at them, Jace hip-checking Isabelle as she longingly scraped her fingers along the front of a fur-trimmed black parka. "And I'd do anything to keep them safe and happy, you know?"

She followed his line of sight. Isabelle had taken the parka and was currently slapping Jace with the sleeves as he tilted his head back, hands thrown up against the fabric onslaught and flaxen curls shaking with laughter. Almost as if he had sensed her gaze, he turned, mouth twisted in that infuriating lopsided smirk. "I know what you mean."

It was on one of these excursions that they met Maia, with her bouncing brown ringlets and no-nonsense attitude, and Jordan, her gentle giant of a boyfriend with a sweet voice that gradually started to accompany the sound of Jace's piano at night. Magnus came later, with his multitude of colored scarves and angled, catlike eyes that shone green-gold that would wink with mischief.

They saw other survivors, sometimes, as they paced the streets, but they would skitter away like startled pigeons into the shadows that they came from. She grew used to the frightened stillness, the lack of the obnoxious roar of traffic that she had missed so much at first, that one never-ending rumble that had characterized her New York City. Neon signs that had once crackled through the night dangled precariously off plaster walls, while the glossy windows of storefronts were now full of gaping holes more often than not. She caught their reflection in one of the few intact storefronts and had been almost startled at the sight, lean, hardened teenagers with their angular faces and blunt gazes, a certain sharpness to their features that softened whenever they looked at each other. Like they belonged, somehow, together, in this crumbling, dangerous new world.

A heavy and black-inked arm descended on her shoulder. "Well now, are you liking what you're seeing?"

She glanced up at his face in the reflection. "Hmm, not as much as you're probably enjoying your view, my narcissistic friend."

He returned her smile from under a pair of dark Ray Bans he'd stolen somewhere. "Oh, more than you know."

"That's very nice and all, but if you're done admiring yourselves, there's more interesting things inside the building." Isabelle called out irritatedly.

Jace grumbled, "I highly doubt that," but entered the abandoned Walmart anyway. Magnus had apparently noticed some lost survivors around the place the other day, so they'd all come down to check it out and offer help.

The familiar red logo Clary had seen all her life was hidden under layers of dust and cobwebs. Overhead, the florescent lights had long since died out, but some of them occasionally crackled back to humming life for a few seconds. Fallen bottles of nail polish spilled a rainbow of sparkly liquid across the dirty tile, mixing with Cheerios from an overturned shelf in the dry food section. Glass from the screen of what she suspected was an HD TV crunched underfoot.

"Magnus, you sure you saw someone here?" Maia whispered in the dark, scanning her flashlight over their surroundings as they passed through the aisles gingerly.

Magnus nodded. "I don't know what happened to them."

Isabelle shrugged before cupping her hands around her mouth. "Hello? Anyone there?" Her voice echoed unsettlingly off the walls. "Hello?"

Shadows moved at the edge of her peripheral vision. She whirled. "Hey, Maia, shine your flashlight over here." Maia turned, moving her arm obligingly.

Clary almost wished she hadn't.

There was a whole pack of them, their eyes glassy as marbles in the yellowish beam of the light, some of their throats gaping and open under the collars of work shirts and t-shirts, teeth the color of aged ivory bared in grotesque smiles in faces like crumpled paper.

"I guess you know what happened to them now," Jace muttered, right before he yelled, "Run!"

They bolted like deer, scattering in the dark. Ahead, Jordan was knocking shelf after shelf after shelf over in an attempt to slow them down, and Isabelle's heels clattered like gunshots in her ears just above the steady stream of Magnus' cursing. Maia had found the aisle of fire extinguishers, the undead's skulls crumpling under its weight as she wielded them like a hammer whenever the white foam ran out.

"Jace…" She said uneasily, as she aimed for a zombie's eyesocket.

The sound of his gunblade shearing through flesh and bone never stopped. "What now?" He asked brusquely from his position atop a glass display, his breathing harsh.

Her knife sliced through someone's chest cavity, and she tried to ignore how the blade came away slick with blood so dark it was almost black. It never got easier for her, no matter how much training Alec or Isabelle or Jace gave her. "There's too many."

She never understood how his laughter came so easy even in bloodstained, screeching chaos. "You said that the first time we met."

Clary almost smiled involuntarily. "This is an entirely different situation."

The display came toppling down at last, but he had already leapt down beside her. His breath was hot on her cheek. "I only reserve the term 'situation' for times of great distress. This is not a situation." Despite his words, his eyes were troubled, darting over the crowd uneasily as he reloaded.

Bullets falling like rain all around her, Clary finally noticed the dim red glow of a familiar sign. "Emergency exit, everybody get out!" She reached out and grabbed Jace's sleeve, pulling him along as the group thundered through, leaping over counters and fallen merchandise.

"They'll – they'll follow us," Alec panted in front of them.

Isabelle's braid was lashing through the dark like a whip after her as she ran. "Just get out, we've got to get out –"

Jugs of some unknown liquid sloshed all around her as Clary's shoulder knocked into a shelf. Jace pulled her to her feet roughly. "Come on, Clary, come on!"

She groped around her, barely recognizing the smell. "No, wait, hang on a second –"

" - We don't have a second!" His voice was the most panicked she'd ever heard it. Ahead of them, Magnus and Alec had already reached the exit, Isabelle and Maia loping close on their heels. She refused to look at what was coming behind her as she took out her knife and started slicing through the thick gray plastic. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Just trust me!" A torrent of liquid stained her boots, the smell of gasoline heavy in the air. Jace had finally gotten the idea, eyes wide, and was cleaving through the larger aluminum tanks with the same relentless fury he'd used to deal with the undead. "Now give me your gun."

He looked at her like she was insane. "What? Clary, we won't get out in time!"

"I'm out of bullets. Give me your gun, Jace." She gave him a half-smile over the last tank. "You're fast. You'll be fine."

He exhaled sharply before handing his handgun over, looping his arm in hers. "I'm not leaving you here."

The first of the undead came around the corner. "Then run!"

They flew towards the exit, Jace pulling her along, boots squeaking on the tile, and just at the last moment, she half-turned and shot directly into the stream of gasoline.

A warm body slammed her into the ground of the parking lot before the explosion hit.

For a moment before she closed her eyes, all she saw was red fire and golden hair.

When she opened them, the world was soft blackness. And then it moved.

"You okay?" Jace was still on top of her, staring down concernedly. His face was streaked with soot and blood.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," she said, breathing hard. "And I think I lost your gun."

He laughed as he rolled off of her, lying on his side in the asphalt. "That's alright. It doesn't matter." Jace glanced over. "I've got you, don't I?"

She froze. His amber eyes shone in the light of the flames that were consuming the building, mere inches away. And she couldn't look away.

"Clary! Jace! Oh my God, are you guys okay?" The rest of the gang had found them, fluttering around anxiously.

Jace rolled to his feet first, chuckling wryly as Clary slowly sat up. "Izzy, Izzy, calm down, we're fine," she soothed.

"Really, we are. Although I am starving," Jace stretched, arching his back like a cat.

Alec rolled his eyes. "If that doesn't tell you they're fine, I don't know what will."

Halfway down the avenue as they strolled back to the Institute, somebody's arm coiled lazily around Clary's shoulders. "You're crazy, you know that?" Jace's breath tickled the shell of her ear. "Absolutely crazy."

She looked at him, bruised and weary and still giving her that crooked smile. "I learned from the best."

They were walking down a similar avenue on a different day, she and Jace, when she saw Simon.

Maia and Isabelle were apparently busy attempting to bake, while last she had checked, Jordan and Alec were in some sort of knife-throwing competition with Magnus as judge, so it was just the two of them.

" – it's absolutely ridiculous, everyone knows I'd beat them both hands down," Jace was saying jokingly, but Clary had long stopped listening ever since she'd seen the shadow with a familiar "NERDS RULE" t-shirt. "Clary? Wow, if you think I'm boring, there are other ways to let me know without hurting a man's feelings…"

She was squinting down the street, looking for the familiar glint of sunlight reflecting off a black pair of square-lensed glasses. Seeing her face, Jace's tone immediately turned serious. "What's wrong?"

It couldn't be. Not her best friend, not the boy who had carried her to the nurse when she'd fallen off the swings that day in preschool, not her gangly, dorky, gamer boy who had always been there for her, through countless sleepovers and movie marathons and every fight she'd ever had with her mother, who'd joined a band in middle school that she privately thought was the worst ever, who she'd always thought of as her twin brother, no. Not her Simon, who'd known her better than anyone else in the world.

Clary raised her voice tentatively. "Si?"

The zombie jerked in its tracks, some form of memory causing it to turn at the sound of her calling that nickname only she'd ever been allowed to use, heading down the street. She lunged. "Simon!"

Immediately tattooed arms wrapped around her.

She lashed out thoughtlessly. "Let me go, let me go! Simon! Simon! Jace, let me go!"

Instead of loosening, his grip only tightened, pulling her back against a strong chest. "Don't, Clary. You can't go to him."

"He's my best friend," she shrieked. "Let me go, please! Simon!"

She wasn't even aware Jace had pulled out his gunblade until she heard the bullet ricochet off the asphalt, Simon's gray body recoiling. "What are you doing? You're hurting him!" She made a dive for the weapon, but his right arm was still firmly snug around her.

"No, look closer." His voice was level, even, as he pulled the trigger repeatedly. She quieted momentarily to watch as Jace, who never missed, hit the ground around Simon's feet over and over again.

She squirmed in his arms. "Stop, you're scaring him off, stop!" He finally lowered it, but Simon was already turning away, heading back into the alley from where he came.

Clary wailed, "What have you done?" She turned on him suddenly, raking his cheek with her nails, not caring when blood welled up under her fingertips. "What have you done?" He barely flinched. "Let me go, goddamnit, Jace, let me go!"

He continued to remain in infuriatingly silent, accepting her blows without a word. They sank to the ground together in a heap of limbs as she pounded on his chest helplessly.

Eventually his arms did loosen, and she toppled to the pavement at the sudden motion. She glared up at him. His expression was stony as he regarded her quietly, the four welts across his cheekbones pulsing and red.

"I hate you," she spat furiously. A small measure of triumph blossomed in her at the way he flinched before she stalked back to the church, fuming silently.

She marched straight into her room, slamming the door behind her. Underneath her, she could hear the sound of Isabelle's concerned footsteps pattering on the linoleum in the kitchen, the rise and fall of Magnus' questioning voice, Jace's low answering rumble, uncharacteristically empty of its usual sarcastic lilt.

Clary thought back to when she had scratched him. His eyes had narrowed in pain when she'd hissed in his face, even as he had accepted her nails scraping on his skin without a blink. As if her hatred were worse than any injury she could ever inflict. But then she remembered Simon, in the faded green t-shirt she'd bought him herself for his last birthday, and his hair, matted and tangled but unmistakably that chestnut shade she'd painted once, in a portrait of their families together for Christmas, Jocelyn's loving expression next to his goofy smile.

That was all before, she thought, before the world had ended and her mother had disappeared and Simon had become one of them, before she'd been stuck in this echoing, enormous church with a family she'd never thought she'd ever have, and now she'd probably gone and lost them. She rolled over at this thought, burying her face in her pillow, overcome with loneliness.

She wasn't aware that she had even fallen asleep until someone opened her door. A panel of light fell on the bed and disappeared just as quickly as the door shut. She squeezed her eyes shut and pretended to sleep as light footsteps, soft as a cat's, crossed the floor.

"Clary?"

She opened her eyes and met serious golden ones for a heartbeat before rolling over. "Go away, Jace, I don't want to talk to you."

He sighed. "That's alright, I'll just talk to you." There was a rustling noise, and the mattress dipped as if he'd sat on the edge of her bed. "I never told you Alec and Isabelle had a brother, did I?"

He didn't wait for a response, just continuing quietly in the dark. "His name was Max. I think you would have liked him – at least, he would have liked you," he chuckled. "He liked animes, mangas, that kind of thing. He was – he was like the little brother I never had. Maryse and Robert, Alec and Isabelle's parents, they practically raised me. My mother died when I was born, and my father never really paid attention to me after I turned ten." His voice turned almost wry. "That collection of weapons in the library and my gunblade were the only things he left me.

"Anyway, Max loved to follow us around. Everywhere. It was like having a puppy always at your heels. He was more like Isabelle than Alec – never mind the danger, as long as he was part of the action."

She rolled back over. "That's more you than Isabelle."

He smirked briefly. "That may be. Listen now. The day after the apocalypse, Alec, Isabelle and I left him home and went to investigate to see if we could find their parents. When we came back, he was gone." The laughter had completely left his face now. "He came back, though. We found him at the garden gate a little over twelve hours later, in the morning. He had Turned. He was only ten, all big blue eyes staring at us through the iron gate. How could we not let him in?"

She sucked in a breath, but Jace kept on going, the words falling out of him like stones. "We kept him in the toolshed and brought him food and water. We thought, you know, he's so young, maybe he's different, maybe we can train him, wake up his memories of being human somehow. We came out every day to come see him. I spent hours in that toolshed. We got to the point where he could talk, a little, just his name. He was tame, we said. Until one day Izzy came down to the shed with his breakfast and he nearly bit her like a rabid dog."

Clary propped herself up on her elbows, eyes wide. "What did you guys do?"

"What we had to do." He raised his eyes to meet hers, and suddenly she didn't have the heart to ask which of them had done it.

She exhaled slowly. "I'm still mad at you for holding me back, but I understand why you did. And, for what it's worth, I'm sorry for scratching you." Reaching over in the dark, she traced the lines her nails had left in his pale golden skin gently. "You know, you'd think that one of these days you'd realize you don't need to rescue me."

"I know that." He reached up to catch her hand in his. Biting his lip thoughtfully, he appeared to be searching for words – her Jace, who never ran out of sarcastic comments and teases. "I wasn't trying to rescue you from Simon. He loved you enough that he still knew you, he remembered you. He wouldn't have hurt you, not deliberately, not until the very end, like Max, when all of the human in him was gone. But I knew you'd try to help him somehow, and it wouldn't have worked. I know you, Clary – you'd do anything in your power to save someone you loved."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence after that. She settled down on her left arm, her other hand warm in his grasp. "Can you – can you stay?"

He shrugged. "I'll stay as long you want."

She smiled, pressing her cheek against the cool cotton sheets. "Jace?"

"Yeah, Clary?"

"You know I don't hate you, right? I never did."

She didn't hear his response, because she had fallen asleep.