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I was as pure as a river
But now I think I'm possessed
They were ambushed by a handful of Shadowhunters, but Jace didn’t put much of himself into the fight that broke out. He didn’t need to – it was so easy, cutting them down, one after the other. His old-self would’ve hesitated, downright refused to face off against his former comrades…and that would’ve prevented him from winning. How weak.
No, Jace Herondale, the new, the reformed, the better Jace Herondale that he was now, with no more silly inhibitions such as love or honor to hold him back, was truly a force to be reckoned with.
Finding himself face to face with the tip of an arrow was therefore merely a surprise. He hadn’t expected him to be there.
“If it isn’t dear Alec, my…former parabatai.” Jace, sword in hand, raised his arms in a mocking gesture of surrender. “I’m afraid we’re not on the same side anymore.”
Alec’s face was set, a mask of determination, but with something else swimming behind his eyes – probably something pathetic like sorrow.
“We’re always on the same side,” Alec said, firm but hoarse, as he lowered his bow.
Jace arched an eyebrow. “Are we, now? You’re saying that you want to defect to our side?” His and Jonathan’s and Clary’s, the only side that would ever matter. Yet, Jace doubted that was what Alec meant, his own question to him nothing more than a provocation.
“No,” was, in fact, Alec’s reply. “We’re on the same side because we’re parabatai, and we’ll always be, no matter all the spells or tricks that might make you think otherwise,” Alec continued, cracks in his voice.
Jace smiled – cruelly, if he said so himself. “You might be right. Being parabatai is irreversible…too bad my former self didn’t think it through, when he chose to bind his soul to someone so weak.”
Alec blinked at the words, but his stony expression didn’t change. Jace, however, didn’t need to see the hurt on his face to know that it was there, and that his hit had had its effect. The way Alec’s grip on his bow tightened only broadened Jace’s smile. “Unless, you want to prove me wrong. C’mon, shoot me.”
Alec’s arm twitched, but he didn’t raise it. “I won’t shoot you.”
Jace chuckled. “No? Well then, you want to fight with our swords? Careful though…you could never beat me.”
“I beat you, once,” Alec shot back.
Jace rolled his eyes, remembering the fight they’d had outside the entrance to the City of Bones an eternity ago. He had, obviously, let him win, plagued by the pain of fighting his own parabatai. He felt embarrassed for that Jace.
“But I won’t beat you today,” Alec went on unrelented, “because I’m not going to fight you.”
That said, he took his swords from their holsters, and threw them on the ground.
Jace’s eyes widened for a moment, honestly surprised at that gesture...before resorting back to his smirk and a raised eyebrow. “Wow. Beside weak, you’re stupid, too. How do you plan on getting out, then?”
“I don’t plan on it.”
Alec sounded sad, tired even, and anybody else would’ve thought him defeated…but Jace was suspicious. He advanced, slowly, towards Alec, his sword at the ready.
“You don’t? Do you realize that I could kill you any second?”
“I do.”
Jace was only a few feet away from him, when Alec dropped unceremoniously to his knees. He was holding his head high up though, a challenge, and Jace’s eyes turned into slits, as he surveyed him carefully. He placed his sword against Alec’s neck.
“No matter what your plan is, no one can come here fast enough to save you,” he told him, spelling out his words, as if he was talking to someone with slow comprehension skills.
“No one is coming. So, do it,” Alec said. His eyes were wide, vulnerable, but on fire, staring unblinking into Jace’s own. Jace could feel them starting to burn, but he didn't dare to blink, too. “I don’t want to be alive if we’re on different sides, Jace.”
A flash. A sword to his throat. The familiar, beloved face above him set in a way that was unrecognizable; it was painful to look at it. "DO IT! I don’t want to be alive if we’re on different sides, Alec!"
Jace gasped, his grip on the sword faltering against his will. The images in his brain hurt, rushing to the surface, claiming his heart’s attention. But he pushed them back, gritting his teeth until they started throbbing for the pain, his hand tightening around the hilt again, as he pushed the blade more forcefully against Alec’s neck. Alec flinched, only barely, when it bit his skin, drawing blood – but he didn’t budge. And a hot-white fury flared up in Jace. “Are you trying to trick me?! Is that what this is about?!”
Alec took his sweet damn time to respond, as he kept staring at Jace, calm – as if it could be in any way possible for him to have the upper hand with a sword at his neck, while Jace’s gaze alone could’ve killed him! But Alec was reveling in the reaction he had caused in him, Jace could bet on it. And by the time Alec spoke again, Jace was positively fuming, mad with himself above all - for the fact that he had let on so much, and that one sentence had been able to make him relapse.
“There is no trick, Jace, just the truth. You used to feel the same, once…but you seem to already remember that.”
Jace’s blood was beyond boiling, his face the mask of his anger as he bared his teeth – only hate in his heart for the man he had before him, nothing more. How dared he? “I remember, sure enough. I remember you fighting me because you were in love with me.”
Alec’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, and that was all Jace needed to get the upper hand back... His smile came back in full force. “Hit a nerve? You’re telling me that your little self-sacrificial crusade right now is about that? You are still in love with him, with me, after all this time...” And he started laughing, his entire frame shaking from the mirth, even as he was careful enough not to let his blade move from Alec’s neck. “You are a pathetic fool. Do you really think that I, any version of me, could ever love you back?”
Alec took a deep breath, his neck grazing against the blade so that a little rivulet of blood started falling from it, but he stayed otherwise still, wordlessly watching Jace’s amusement. Then, he smiled too, a little sad kind of smile. “Love…love is not there in the hopes of being loved back. It just is, for no reason, with no condition, nothing to be gained. And you ask if I still love you?” He chuckled lightly. “When I’m dead, and my soul has risen to the heavens…even then I will love you, Jace Herondale.”
Jace felt as if a thick layer of ice had placed itself over his face. He couldn’t move a muscle.
“And the Jace I know…Jace loved more intensely, more deeply than everybody else. He did everything for love, he gave his own life, even when he thought it was making him weak. You might think it now, too...but there has never been more strength in a person than when Jace loved. And I know you’re still that person, Jace.”
Jace huffed, but there was no real fire behind it. A vein in his temple was pulsing wildly. “If it helps you sleep at night…” But he could only say that in a whisper.
Alec was still holding his gaze. Lights were dancing in front of Jace’s eyes.
“Try all you want to forget it,” Alec pressed on, “but I know it. I might not be able to feel you anymore, you might be cut off from me, but you’re in my soul, Jace. And I’m in yours.”
Jace felt an electric shock run through his body, and he was back in it, out of his trance. His shouts rang painfully in his own ears, “You mean nothing to me! If I could squash that piece of your soul that I have in me, I would!”
“Then do it!" Alec yelled back. "Kill me! Prove it to me! If I really mean nothing to you, why am I not dead yet? You can only gain from it, you’d be free of me…then why aren’t you doing it?!”
Jace’s hands were, in fact, not moving. He was holding as still as never before, the blade in his hand neither going forward nor retreating. Why couldn’t he move?
But he did, when Alec leaned into the sword... He pulled the sword back, even if only slightly, the deeper cut that was opening up on Alec’s neck making his breath quicken, inexplicably.
No! That wasn’t happening! Why was he hesitating to hurt Alec?
He’s in your soul.
NO. He had forfeited that life. Alec meant nothing. He had a true parabatai!
Alec’s face was morphed by fury, his teeth bared, as he yelled at him once more, “Kill me, I said!”
“Shut up! Shut up!”
With a jolt, pushing Alec's chest with one hand hard so that he ended up on his back, Jace removed the sword altogether…and he had stalked away – his breath echoing in his ears, the pumping of his heart constricting his chest – before the drops of blood on his blade even hit the ground.
The only thing he could hear, the fit of laughter (or was it crying?) coming from the place he had just left.
You put a fever inside me
And I've been cold since you left