The Curse
When Clarissa Fairchild was born a curse was laid upon her by The Clave. To quench any future rebellions, they wanted to make an example of Valentine’s daughter, to show people that the risk was not worth the reward.
The Clave proclaimed to the Shadow World that her crime was being of Morgenstern blood – the honour is in the name and if a family had no honour, it’s corrupted for generations. But for Clary, her crime was simply being born.
Her punishment was a twist on a Mundane fairy-tale which prophesised that on Clary’s eighteen birthday she would prick her finger on a cursed rose which would send her to an eternal sleep – only to be awoken by her true love. The Clave, not believing in such things as ‘true love’ saw this as the ultimate punishment, the ultimate example. Who would dare defy them after this?
Horrified, Jocelyn stole away with her daughter into the Mundane world, protecting Clary from all forms of magic in the hopes that she would never be in danger of coming across a cursed rose.
But surely, Jocelyn should have known, magic is inescapable.
----
When Clary awoke on the dawn of her eighteenth birthday, she could feel it in her bones. Today was special. Excitement thrummed through her as she pushed the covers off and burst out of her bedroom. Her mother, who had been cooking waffles, turned to smile at her daughter, her gaze rich with affection.
“There’s the birthday girl!” Luke said, who had been setting up the table. He moved to scoop her up in to his arms and press a kiss to her forehead. “You excited to be eighteen?”
Clary grinned up at him and said, “I don’t know how to explain it but I just feel like this is the beginning of something so important.”
Luke and Jocelyn’s happy expressions faltered. Luke was quicker to school his features, guiding Clary to sit at the table as Jocelyn handed her a plate of waffles.
“What?” Clary demanded, “What did I say?”
Luke turned to look at Jocelyn, waiting for her to say something.
“I…” her mother faltered, “Well… You know how difficult it is, seeing your only daughter become a woman.”
Clary rolled her eyes, “Seriously, Mom? C’mon, it’s not like I’m going to go off on some magical adventure. I’m just turning eighteen.”
“Seconds ago you were saying that you ‘felt like it was the beginning of something special’,” Jocelyn countered.
“I didn’t mean it like I’m expecting Dumbledore to burst into our apartment and hand me the keys to Hogwarts,” she drawled.
“Pretty sure that’s not the plot of Harry Potter,” a voice from their doorway said.
Leaping from her chair, Clary cried, “Simon! I wasn’t expecting to see you until tonight!”
She threw her arms around his neck and she felt his chuckles vibrating in his chest. “It’s your eighteenth, Clary. Of course I’m going to spend the day with you. I mean it’s the least I can do with you re-designing my truck every-”
“What’s tonight?” Jocelyn interrupted.
Releasing Simon from their hug, Clary explained, “Oh, Simon, Maureen and I were going to go down to Pandemonium tonight – y’know, seeing as I’m eighteen and all.”
“Absolutely not,” she replied, “We’re staying in for a family meal.”
“Mom, come on,” Clary protested, “I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah,” Simon agreed, “I won’t let her out of my sights – I promise.”
She continued to shake her head. “Clary, it’s too dangerous. And regardless, you’re too young. You need to be twenty-one to drink.”
Another eye-roll. “That’s what fake IDs are for – Luke, pretend you didn’t hear that.”
Her pseudo-father, who had been leaning on the kitchen counter, watching the argument with a furrowed brow, said, “Don’t worry, cop-mode is off for today.”
Sending him a grateful look she turned back to her mother, “Please, Mom. I’m only going to turn eighteen once.”
“Yes, I’m aware. That’s why I want to spend the day with you.”
“You’ll spend the day with me just not the night!”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I don’t know why you’re being so difficult about this!”
“I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn.”
“Oh! I’m the one being-“
“Clary. Jocelyn. Stop,” Luke interrupted, silencing them. They both crossed their arms, Clary looking annoyed and Jocelyn looking pleading.
“Maybe it would be best if I just meet up with you later?” Simon suggested, already backing towards the front-door. “Just shoot me a text when all this gets figured out, okay?”
“Okay,” she said and once he was out the door she turned back to her mother and said hotly, “Great! Now Simon’s gone. Good job, Mom.”
Before she had time to retaliate Luke interrupted again saying, “Jocelyn, don’t you think you should just tell her.”
“Tell me what?”
Luke sat back, sipping coffee from a mug which said ‘World’s Best Dad’ whilst Jocelyn nibbled nervously on her lip.
“Tell. Me. What?” Clary demanded again.
“Clary, sit down,” her mother finally said.
Nervously, Clary returned to her seat at the table, the untouched waffles still warm. She waited as her mother and Luke settled to sit opposite her.
“This is… a long story,” Jocelyn began, “but the easiest way to start it is by saying that all the legends are true. Vampires, werewolves, fairies, demons – you name it – they’re real.” Clary opened her mouth to protest but Jocelyn continued before she could say anything. “And when you were a baby you were cursed to fall into an enchanted sleep on your eighteenth birthday.”
Jocelyn paused. Clary gaped.
And then she got angry.
“Seriously, Mom? You couldn’t think of a good enough excuse to keep me in the house so you decided to recite to me the plot of Sleeping Beauty? Great. So glad I’m finally experiencing being treated like an adult,” she snapped. She pushed away from the table, abandoning her waffles.
“Clary wait-!” Luke began.
“I don’t want to hear it!” Clary shouted back, already storming towards her room. “You want me to stay inside so much? I will. Just don’t come knocking on my door when you realised you ruined my birthday for no good reason.”
The door slammed behind her.
----
It was coming up to noon when Jocelyn finally cracked. She had been pacing outside of Clary’s room for ten minutes before she finally, reluctantly, knocked.
“Sweetheart… Please come out. I want to apologise.”
No reply.
Jocelyn had always been told that her own stubbornness would come to bite her in the ass. Her daughter was, and always had been, twice as fierce and stubborn as herself and whilst it made her proud to see the woman Clary had become, in moments like these, she’s painfully aware of how her mother felt raising Jocelyn.
“Clary, I know it’s your birthday and you want to go out with Simon but I wasn’t lying when I said things are more dangerous than you realise,” she insisted.
Still no reply.
“Are you sure she’d even in there?” Luke asked tiredly.
Jocelyn snapped back to stare, wide-eyed, at Luke. “She wouldn’t.”
“Like the kid of Jocelyn and Valentine wouldn’t sneak out of the house.”
She was torn between yelling at Luke for not saying anything before and breaking down the door.
The latter won out.
The door crashed against the wall, revealing Clary’s very empty bedroom.
“Call Magnus. Now.”
----
Clary felt peace settle upon her as she walked through Central Park. Manhattan, as it always was in summer, was sweltering and humid. The sun spun ribbons through the gaps in the leaves and a pleasant breeze wove its way between tree trunks.
She didn’t quite know why she decided to come to Central Park, she just knew she had to be anywhere but home. She found a particularly nice patch of grass and settled down on it, taking out her phone to text Simon to meet her there.
He had just replied saying he was on his way when Clary noticed the flowers. They were just across the path adjacent to her, bunched together at the roots of an old oak tree. It was a beautiful, colourful assortment of summer flowers, and Clary itched to draw them.
She hadn’t the foresight to bring her sketchpad so she decided to walk over to them to take a picture so she could draw them later. Leaning over them, with her tongue sticking out in concentration, she took the photo. The colours didn’t pop in the picture the way they did in real life and Clary felt irritation climb up her skin.
It was her birthday and nothing was going right.
So, she decided to start plucking different flowers from the grass. She was pretty sure she wasn’t allowed to do that, but she was also fairly sure she didn’t care. If this was the only way of making sure she replicated the rich colours of the flowers, then yes, she would yank them right from their soil home.
She had collected a fairly balanced assortment of flowers when she noticed a bright red rose poking up from the back. Grinning, she leant over and wrapped her fingers around it and-
“Ow. Fuck.” Clary withdrew her hand sharply and examined it, finding a small pin-prick on her ring finger. “Damn thorns.”
Determined to retrieve the rose, she shook off her pain and went to grab it again when suddenly she was hit with an odd feeling.
It was like a head-rush but all over her body, her skin tingled and the place where the thorn had pricked her throbbed painfully. Black dots swam across her vision and before she could even brace herself for impact, she was collapsing onto the flowers and falling unconscious.
----
There were a hundred things (probably more) that Isabelle would have rather been doing than being on patrol. It was the first day in weeks that the weather in New York hadn’t been unbearable. The streets and parks were overflowing with people who were attempting to savour the breeze which had arrived with dawn.
Alec had insisted that this only made patrol even more important as there were more people at risk. But all Isabelle could hear in her head was ‘buzzkill’.
(Not to mention, he had assigned himself the area which covered Magnus’ apartment, the little sneak.)
Fortunately, Isabelle had Central Park, so she could at least pretend that she was having a good day. She walked down the paths, and in and out of trees, keeping alert and searching for any unusual activity. She was just coming to the end of her patience when she heard a shout-
“Someone please help!”
Immediately she was galvanised into action, sprinting towards the origin of the sound. When she finally arrived, she found a man and woman around her age. The man, sporting glasses, was kneeling beside a red-haired woman who, for all intents and purposes seemed unconscious.
“What’s wrong?” Isabelle demanded, coming to settle on the other side of her.
He seemed to jump, as if he didn’t expect anyone to actually help. “I-I don’t know,” he stammered once he got over his initial shock, “She texted me to meet her here but when I got here she was unconscious and she won’t wake up.”
Isabelle shifted her gaze to the woman in question. Her hair spilled out around her and her mouth was slightly parted. Her shoulders and nose were dotted with freckles and her eyelashes fanned against her cheeks. Isabelle gently lifted her wrist and was relieved to find a steady pulse – a face that pretty would have been a sore loss.
This was probably a mundane issue and Isabelle could already hear Alec chastising her for getting involved. But the man looked so pleading, and she so vulnerable – how could Isabelle not try to help?
Isabelle began to look around, to see if there were any signs to what could have happened to her when she spotted the flowers that she was lying on.
They seemed odd. They reminded her of the flowers from the Seelie Realm, or at least, sort of. There was clearly something magical about them. She knelt beside them and looked closer – and then she noticed what the woman had clutched in her hand.
A crimson rose.
Isabelle sucked in a breath. Surely it wasn’t… She had always assumed that it was simply an old wives tale told to scare the new generation of Shadowhunters into obedience.
Nonetheless, she whipped out her phone and called her brother.
Alec’s response was immediate.
“What’s wrong?”
“You remember the stories Mom used to tell us about Valentine’s daughter?” she asked, trying to ignore the glasses-man who was looking increasingly worried.
“Yes. Why?”
“I think I found her.”
----
“I didn’t think the stories were true.”
It was Jace who said this, hovering behind Isabelle as she sat next to Valentine’s daughter, who slept peacefully on one of the Institute’s infirmary beds – as if she didn’t know she’d been cursed for her parents’ mistakes.
“I didn’t either,” she replied, her lab coat becoming stifling with all the people milling about the infirmary.
“Do you think you can wake her up?” Jace asked.
“There is no waking her up,” said Maryse, cutting off Isabelle’s response. “The curse stated that only true love’s kiss could wake her up and we all know that doesn’t exist.”
‘Just because your marriage with Dad is a mess,’ Isabelle thought bitterly, out-loud she asked her mother, “What do we tell Simon then?”
Simon, the apparent best friend, was currently sitting outside the infirmary, in a state of absolute panic. He clearly loved her very much and Isabelle’s heart ached at the thought of telling him that her prospects seemed bleak.
“We tell the mundane to go find Jocelyn Fairchild and bring her here. I suspect she’ll want to know where her daughter is,” Maryse said.
“Okay,” Jace agreed, “I can go with him.”
Maryse flashed him a proud smile as he left the infirmary and Isabelle turned her gaze from her patient to her mother. “I want to try and wake her. I don’t care what the curse says, I want to try regardless.”
She frowned at Isabelle’s words, “Don’t you think that will distract you from your duties?”
“I won’t let it,” she promised, “Plus, last week Lydia offered to take some of my patrol slots so I can use that free time to work on her.”
“Is Clarissa Morgenstern really worth your valuable time, Isabelle?” As per usual, Maryse’s tone was condescending.
“I believe that Simon said she goes by Clary Fray,” Isabelle corrected, “And yes, if I can save her, it’ll be more than worth my time.”
“The Clave will not approve.”
Isabelle lifted her chin, facing off against her mother. “Well the Clave is convinced that the only way to wake her is by true love’s kiss. So I’m sure they’ll have nothing to worry about.”
----
Isabelle spent the rest of the day with Clary, gingerly taking blood samples and searching through it for traces of detectable magic.
By the time Jocelyn Fairchild burst through the infirmary doors, Isabelle was making notes on what she’d discovered so far (that being very little). She jumped at the sudden entrance but quickly recovered, standing to offer her hand as she introduced herself, “Isabelle Lightwood. I’m taking care of Clary.”
Jocelyn was undeniably Clary’s mother – the same hair, the same mouth. “How is she?” Jocelyn asked, rushing to the bedside where Clary slept.
“Her condition is stable; it hasn’t changed since I found her in the park.”
“You found her?” Isabelle nodded. The corners of Jocelyn’s mouth tugged, the ghost of a disapproving frown on her lips. “If only Magnus had been quick enough,” she muttered, mostly to herself.
“You mean Magnus Bane?” Isabelle inquired.
“Yes,” Jocelyn said, almost reluctantly, as if Isabelle wasn’t to be trusted with that information, “He’s a family friend.”
“We should bring him in,” Isabelle mused, “A warlock who knows the family well would have a stronger ability to search her for magic.”
“Magnus isn’t just some ‘warlock’ you can bring in when it suits you,” Jocelyn snapped.
Isabelle raised an eyebrow. “I’m aware of that,” she replied coolly, “However, since he’s dating my brother, he has on many occasions insisted that we call him whenever we need him.”
Looking taken aback, Jocelyn said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I… It’s been a long day.”
“I promise I’ll do everything in my power to save her,” Isabelle assured her.
“Typical Shadowhunter,” Jocelyn scoffed, “Don’t you know that your power isn’t infinite? The Clave purposely made this curse so that it can’t be broken.”
“Actually, I’m fully aware of the limitations of our race. That’s why I’m almost certain that The Clave is wrong. Undoubtedly they had to work with a Downworlder to create this curse, so I’m willing to bet that the Downworlder created a loophole just to get back at The Clave,” Isabelle said, “So, what the plan is, I find who created this curse and I get them to talk.”
Jocelyn turned away from Isabelle, shaking her head. “I tried to protect her from all this. This world. It’s all so toxic and bitter. And I got her landed in the crux of it with my mistakes.”
Isabelle hesitated, not sure how to handle this woman who was so filled with bitterness and distrust for Shadowhunters (despite being one herself). “The Clave is also at fault. They should have never cursed a child – it’s completely barbaric.”
“If they see you searching for a cure, they’ll try to stop you,” Jocelyn warned.
Isabelle smirked, “You underestimate The Clave’s hubris. They’ll never imagine that there could possibly be a cure other than true love’s kiss. I’ll be fine.”
“Why are you doing this for her?”
“I’ve spent my life saving people, it’s what I do,” she explained with a shrug.
Jocelyn nodded. “Call Magnus in then. And Luke Garroway – leader of the New York Werewolf Pack. He’s worried sick.”
Isabelle nodded, “Of course. I’ll be right on it.” Then she left the infirmary, leaving Jocelyn to be alone with her daughter.
----
When she finally collapsed into bed that night, Isabelle was shattered. With the arrival of Clary and her extended family (which somehow included the glasses-wearing mundane), the Institute was in chaos.
Maryse had nearly burst a blood-vessel upon seeing a werewolf in the Institute, but between that and Magnus greeting Alec with a kiss, she had decided to go to bed early – leaving the chaos in the hands of her children.
It took lots of arguing, but they managed to get thing settled. Luke had said that he would return to the Fray loft, seeing as he still had to work full-time as a cop, and had convinced Simon to go home too, promising that he would drive Simon to the Institute every day. But Jocelyn decided to stay, insisting that it was her fault that Clary was in this situation, so she wouldn’t leave until it was remedied.
(Isabelle had seen Alec readying up to say, “Well that might be never.” but fortunately Magnus had decided to announce that Alec and himself were going on a walk, and not to wait up for them.)
Jace, upon seeing how shattered Isabelle was, said he would help Jocelyn find a place to sleep which was near the infirmary.
Isabelle shot him a grateful smile and had trudged down the hallways to her room. She quickly washed off her makeup, brushed her teeth, threw on some PJs and sank in to her bed.
‘Just when things were starting to get boring around here,’ Isabelle thought to herself, tiredly, curling up under the covers and drifting asleep.
----
When Clary opened her eyes again, everything was a little foggy and she wasn’t quite sure where she was.
She was standing in a large room but any detail past that seem impossible to focus on. Her skin prickled with fear.
This wasn’t right.
“Hello?!” she called, panic slowly crawling up her throat. “Is anyone there?!”
Her cries echoed around the room, drumming in her ears so painfully that she had to clamp her hands against her head and her knees buckled. Her head swam and honestly she should have felt the floor against her knees but she didn’t. She just knew that she was now kneeling.
Her vision became foggier and her echoes became louder – unbearably loud.
“Clary.” A voice cut through the confusion – a piercing voice which brought her all back into focus. A woman with long dark hair and concerned eyes was crouched down in front of her.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Isabelle. I found you at the park. I guess that’s why our subconscious are connected.” Her voice was soothing, and what she was saying sounded important but Clary was finding it hard to concentrate on facts.
“The park…” Distantly Clary remembered – her birthday, the fight with her mother, the park, the rose… “What happened to me? Am I… dead?”
Isabelle shook her head. “No, it’s a long story.”
“Tell me,” Clary insisted.
“Well, the best place to start off is by telling you that all the legends are true.”