Clary adjusted the straps of her worn backpack as she stepped off the bus and onto the cracked pavement of Hathien. The city was alive in a way she had never experienced—chaotic, grimy, and humming with an energy that made her heart race. It smelled of sweat, decay, and freedom. She ran a hand through her freshly dyed hair, the pale pink strands streaked with blonde feeling like a badge of rebellion. Her mother would have called it a sin, but Clary thought it was beautiful.

 

She had waited until she left New Orleans to make the change. Standing in the bathroom of a dingy motel, armed with a box of hair dye she’d bought with the last of her cash, she had stared at her reflection in the mirror. The girl looking back at her had her father’s caramel skin, her mother’s green eyes, and the same shy, uncertain expression she’d worn her whole life. She wanted to be someone else—someone brave, someone free. When she rinsed the dye out and saw the vibrant pink, she smiled.

For the first time, she felt like herself.

Clary’s childhood had been anything but free. Her parents, devout to the point of obsession, had kept her isolated. Rules governed every aspect of her life—what she wore, what she said, and even what she thought. When she showed the slightest hint of rebellion, their punishments were swift and severe. They had sent her to a strict Catholic boarding school, hoping the nuns would mold her into the perfect daughter. Instead, Clary spent her teenage years in loneliness, ostracized by her classmates for her towering height and awkward demeanor.
The other girls whispered behind her back, calling her a freak and laughing at the oversized uniforms that hung awkwardly on her athletic frame. She had no friends, no confidants. She had never been invited to a party, never held hands in secret, never stolen a kiss under the stars. At 21, she was still a virgin, untouched and inexperienced, with no idea what love—or even attraction—really felt like.

 

Yet, for all their strictness, her parents were not without secrets. Late at night, when they thought she was asleep, she heard their hushed arguments. Words like betrayal, sin, and redemption echoed through the thin walls of their home. Sometimes, her mother wept. Other times, her father’s voice carried a sharp edge that made Clary shiver. She didn’t know what they were hiding, but she knew it was something dark, something they had vowed to keep from her at all costs.

 

Her decision to leave had been both sudden and inevitable. On the night of her 21st birthday, alone in her dorm room, Clary realized she couldn’t live like this anymore. She packed her few belongings into a battered backpack, scrawled a note to her parents—
"I’m leaving.
Don’t look for me.
I need to find my own life."

—and boarded the first bus out of home town.

Hathien was everything her old life wasn’t. The city was loud, filthy, and unapologetically raw. It was a place where people did what they wanted, consequences be damned. Clary felt out of place but exhilarated. Her towering six-foot-three frame, caramel skin, and newly dyed hair drew attention, but she didn’t care. For the first time, she didn’t have to.

She found work quickly, joining the Fire Department of Hathien (FDH) as a probationary firefighter. The job was grueling—long hours of training, hauling heavy equipment, and enduring the relentless teasing of her colleagues. Yet Clary thrived on the physical challenge. Her body, honed by years of athletics, was built for the work, even if her mind still wrestled with the doubts her parents had instilled in her.

The city, however, was a test of her resilience in ways she hadn’t expected.

Hathien was infamous for its violence and vice. Murders, assaults, rape and corruption were as common as potholes. Clary heard the stories from her colleagues, reading articles in the Observer and saw the aftermath in the neighborhoods she passed on her way home. Yet she had been lucky so far, avoiding the worst of the city’s darkness. She couldn’t avoid the reality forever, though—

Hathien had a way of forcing itself upon you.

One evening, after a particularly uneventful day spent cleaning the firehouse, Clary decided to take a different route home. The narrow alley was quieter than the main streets, the hum of the city muffled by the close-knit buildings. She appreciated the solitude and let her mind wander. She had never felt so exhausted and yet so alive.
The sound of footsteps behind her brought her back to reality. They were steady and deliberate, getting closer with each passing second. Her pulse quickened and she glanced over her shoulder. A figure loomed in the shadows, a man in a trench coat. As he came closer, Clary could see that this man was wearing NOTHING but the trench coat and was pleasuring himself as he staggered towards her, groaning and gasping.
"Come here you little minx, I'll give you sugar”he moaned and continued to come towards her.

Clary felt her breath catch and she was paralyzed with fear. She wanted to run, she wanted to scream but no … nothing happened, she stood there like the deer on the street frozen in place.

The pervert now stood close to her and orgasmed, spurting his thic sticky cum against her breasts, gasping and pleased with himself, he wiped his cock on her skirt and moved swaying into the next side alley.

Clary collapsed, whimpering and crying, how long she stayed there in that filthy alley she couldn't tell, was it seconds, minutes or hours ... At some point she got up and moved back to her apartment as if in a trance. She didn't talk to anyone about it, the city had opened up to her in a spectacular way and shown her what could happen here. The next day she got herself some pepper spray and never left her apartment again without it.