Title: Our Dance
Fandom: The Mortal Instruments
Characters: Jace and Clary
Rating:T for minor cursing
Summary:"Wanted, Jace. Not want."
Author's Notes: Italics in the beginning are direct quotes from the book.

"I'll just be your brother from now on," he said, looking at her with a hopeful expectation that she would be pleased, which made her want to scream that he was smashing her heart into pieces and he had to stop.

"That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

It took her a long time to answer, and when she did, it was a short, humorless, mockery of a laugh.

"Jace, do you not know how things work between us by now?"

He looked at her in bewilderment. "Wha-"

She cut him off, stating with a cold, even tone that sounded nothing, absolutely nothing like Clary, "From the beginning, we've always done that dance of one step forward, one step back. When I first saw you in Pandemonium, I was drawn to you, not that you noticed, too busy being distracted by the fact I could see you."

"Come on, you were just wondering why I was murdering a 'human'." Clary glared and him but dipped her head to concede the point made.

She immediately resumed her rambling, "Then you became interested in the mystery I presented, and I backed off because you were a pompous conceited ass."

"Hey," Jace snapped indignantly, "An ass maybe, but not conceited or pompous," He spit out that last word as if it were poison.

Clary went rigid in her seat and gave him a glare that, if he hadn't been a Shadowhunter all these years, he might have crawled under the table, and maybe he still would now...

She slowly, painfully, enunciated, "Do. Not. Interrupt. Again."

"Or what, I'll be glared to death?"

"JACE, SHUT UP!" she howled, causing stares from customers across the room.

He started fiddling with his napkin, wondering how it got to this, her screaming at him right after he told her what she wanted to hear.

Clary's eyes glazed over. "Then on my birthday night, we, we ki-" unable to say the word she gestured with her hand to her lips. "In that moment we both stepped forward, and then Valentine ruined it all by, by" her voice was on the edge of breaking, and she knew it, and he knew it so she took a breath to regain her composure. "By making us family, and then we both stepped back."

Jace hadn't really had a coherent thought since she yelled at him, just trying to process what she was saying. Her words weighed a ton each, sinking into him and through him as if he were a ghost, or a sponge. Didn't she say that this was wrong? Didn't she say didn't want this? And what was with this stepping analogy?

He tried to tune back into her,"-and then you were just there after the fact, and even though you were a mess, a beautiful mess, a mess who decided to damn the rules to hell and get what he wanted as long as it made him happy. But I was scared, so stupidly scared. Of what was wrong, what was right, if it should matter or not, if you would eventually find 'us' disgusting because everyone else certainly would."

She was whispering at this point, and both of them mirrored the other, arms and elbows on the cheap plastic table, their bodies jammed up against the edges, and Clary's face was inches away from Jace's, and her eyes were like solid granite, or like a solid door that shut him out from the world that was behind them, a world of possibilities that were infinite. His eyes had taken on the look of false indifference, the one that convinced all but the closest to him that he could care less. Those who were close to him, though, knew that this look was one he wore when he had no fucking clue what was going on, and was trying to not look like he did while trying to figure it out.

"So I stepped back two steps for each advance you took in my direction, and eventually I backpedaled into Simon." Both flinched at the name, for different reasons. "Then after all that happened this past week, and all that I learned today, and I raced here, trying to catch back up to you."

Jace took a sharp, short intake of breath. She meant 'catch up' in the obvious sense of finding him right, right? He couldn't keep up with all the switching between the literal and the figurative, it was sort of like losing his sense of reality.

Clary sucked in a small amount of air. Although she had taken a lot of pauses, she hadn't been able to catch her breath since the start of the conversation.

"And now we're here, and you've finally given me what I wanted."

So she did mean the literal sense. Good, he thought as he finally exhaled. Her eyes darted down to his chest at the sudden movement; Except for her lips, they might as well have been statues.

"Jace," she blew out her lips, realizing he wasn't getting it. "Wanted, not want." He froze again, his hand forming a fist.

"But I'm going to let you step back, hell, run like I did, because it would be unfair if I didn't let you do your part of the dance." She unclenched her jaw, realizing for the first time how stiff and how close they were. She leaned back onto the nice fake leather of the booth. She crossed her arms, and for the first time, wondered if she just should have said yes. Jace resembled the angel he was descended from, except for the look that twisted up the inhuman features of his face.

She wondered why he wasn't speaking. Then she remembered her temper tantrum.

"Anything you want to say Jace?" she half bitterly laughed, half nervously giggled.

Why, he meant to howl. Why now, why here, why not then, how could you change your mind like that? He wanted to scream at her, shake her senseless, and kiss her all at once. He looked at her, leaning as far back from him as possible, her arms crossed in the way she did when she was preparing herself to be yelled at. Something broke inside him at that and he started to go for her hand. He pulled her forward gently, and held her chin delicately with two fingers, forcing her to stare into his eyes. He nearly lost himself in her eyes and lips.

Clary felt her body relax and tense and hum with energy all at once. She didn't know what to expect, she had expected screaming, and running and calling her all sorts of filthy things. When he pulled her forward she nearly fainted.

When staring into her eyes, he thought of her beauty and how Isabelle's could never match it. Isabelle, he thought with a jolt. And Alec. Max. Maryse. Magnus. The Clave. His fingers left her chin, and he saw the hurt and confusion enter her eyes. He leaned forward and pressed the lightest of kisses on her forehead before standing up and inching out of the booth.

Jace opened his mouth for the first time in what had felt like a lifetime.

"I'm sorry Clary, I'm so sorry. I just can't be like Valentine. I'm too much like him already."

And so Clarissa Fray's heart was shattered and then blown away like those sand castles she made as a child.

So not exactly a happy ending. I just finished City of Ashes and was pd off at the ending. In my opinion, Clary was too strong to just sit there and take it, she'd say her piece not sit there like a mute.

Ho hum, another year to wait before the final book and can't wait long enough.