I love dabbles. Izzy is fantastic.

I don't own the Mortal Instruments.

She doesn't know what city she's in. She doesn't know what her name is anymore. She doesn't know why she doesn't know -though she suspects it has something to do with the empty bottles lying around her, all of which reeked of alcohol. She doesn't know why her chest hurts. She doesn't know who the boy she's kissing is.

And, quite frankly, she doesn't care. Thus, Isabelle Lightwood has achieved the state of sanity -or insanity, as it were- that she had been hoping for. Not that she remembers that -right now she's incapable of remember much of anything, especially of figuring out how her knees work so she can stand up and leave.

-

To say that Isabelle Lightwood has changed would be an understatement. She no longer tries to put up with the pleasantries that she used to - like coming home sober and not smelling of sex, of attempting to cook and having semi-polite conversations with people.

She did away with those awhile a go. When she made mistakes that weren't reversible and she realized that somehow she had become unbearable, even to herself. When she hadn't been able to fight for the things she had lost, and had been unable to defend something -someone- that couldn't be replaced.

Now, she has less makeup sitting on her vanity, and a stack of comic books in her closet that -when she is sober and no one is home- she takes out and looks at. When she looks at them, she cries and ends up getting improperly drunk before anyone gets home. Alec is the only person who knows she has, or had, them- he is unaware that they are intact; he's under the assumption that she burned them when she was intoxicated. Actually one is singed and she got a third degree burn down her arm when she pulled it back out, something a healing rune -which is incredibly hard, not to mention painful, to draw on with a blistered and blackened hand- fixed right on up. Alec is still pissed at her for that, but she doesn't tell him she still has them -she doesn't want to share.

Now, she doesn't look at his bedroom door, ever.

Now, she fights twice as hard and makes no mistakes -because mistakes are unacceptable and she can't afford to make anymore.

Now, she avoids the people she cares about so that they can't be hurt either.

Now, whenever she sees someone who remotely looks like Sebastian -Jonathan- she chases after them. Which may or may not have led to screaming at her brother in an ally while Jace looked at her like she was crazy and Clary looked about ready to cry all while the guy in question was blacked out in a crumpled heap on the ground, a heel print on his forehead.

Now, she sees his face everywhere. In the stares of others and the dirty gutter water. In the stars and the blood of demons. In the fairy circles and Magnus' spiked hair. In the kids playing in the park and in her shimmering whip. In leaves and sometimes in the men she beds -that's not an experience she wants to relive again, she's never gotten dressed so fast before in her life.

Now, she clings to Simon -because people won't kill him with his Mark and he'll stay the way he is forever. Immortality seems like a fleeting dream to her- to be strong, fast, and there forever, not just a haunting memory in a sister's head.

Now, she won't say his name, ever -it's completely taboo since she threw a dagger at the last person who uttered it, she doesn't think her mother has ever been more frightened, or pissed, at her than she had been at the moment.

Now, she strives for a sanity that lets her not remember -because remembering hurts and forgetting everything is the only -sufficient- way she's come up with to cope with the fact that he's gone. Gone and never ever coming back. She'll never be able to tell him to go to his room ever again, or yell at him for going through her stuff.

Now, she knows that it should have been her. She wishes it were.

-

When she finally figures out how her knees work, she leaves and gos home to find her family gathered around the elevator doors with varying expressions plastered on their faces -disappointment, regret, remorse, sadness, pity, and boredom; the latter of which was Jace, so she really doesn't think it counts.

Now she knows, her family wishes it were her, too.