Chapter Text
We hide our emotions
under the surface
and tryin' to pretend
And just as it had started, the pain stopped, abruptly, definitively.
Jace blinked, once, twice, finding himself kneeling on the ground, barely able to recollect the previous moments when he had collapsed onto it, clutched into the arms of a consuming, white-hot agony.
As he fought the constriction in his throat that made breathing freely impossible, his heart pumped wildly into his chest, threatening to burst out. His thoughts were a jumble of pure, unadulterated panic.
He knew it, he had known it, it was only right…you don’t bring people back from the dead without consequences. You just don’t.
Was he about to die again? Was this only a small grace granted by the Angel to have him make his peace and say goodbye to the people he loved? Or would he live, after all...forever slave to the anguish of his body, longing to be returned to the land of the dead?
Neither option was appealing. Either way, he was doomed; he had been doomed since the moment Valentine had plunged a knife into his heart. His life as he knew it was over, no matter how much he wished it wasn't. Valentine was dead and the war was won…yet, he didn't seem destined to ever truly enjoy it.
A bitter anger took ahold of Jace. He was furious with everything in the world that had made his life so…unfair, even if that made him whiny and pathetic. That feeling was too much of a strangling plant coiling around his heart, stabbing its thorns into it, for him to simply ignore it. His eyes were burning...but he couldn’t let the tears escape. He wouldn’t let it get to that. He got up instead, taking in his surroundings as if he were seeing them for the first time.
It was a blessing he had done that, because a moment later Clary got out of the Hunter’s Moon and came up to him, a smile in place. Before she could notice anything was wrong with him, Jace rubbed at his face and turned around, smiling back at her.
“There you are! I couldn’t find you anymore,” Clary called out to him.
Jace cleared his throat. “Yeah, I was just…I needed a breath of fresh air. So many people in there.” He hoped he only sounded tired, like he would have any right to be.
Clary regarded him. “Everything okay?”
Jace looked at her face, so unguarded, open, loving, the face of the one who had saved him…and he took her hand. “Yeah, everything’s alright.”
Clary’s smile only brightened.
They got back to the Institute together, hand in hand, and Jace was almost able to forget. When they reached the door to her room, it was only right that he followed her inside.
“Are you sure?” Jace had to ask her.
“Never been surer,” Clary said, firm, intense.
And he kissed her.
If those were really his last moments, they weren’t bad ones to have; love was still a strange concept to him, but he thought they managed just fine.
Later, he laid in bed with Clary hugging his chest, while he stared at the ceiling of her bedroom unable to fall asleep.
How long do I have?
Shadowhunters were raised to expect death at any moment, and to embrace it. He more than anyone had been willing to lay down his life for their cause. But like this? A betrayal, a defeat, a divine intervention by someone else’s request? It wasn’t honorable, it didn’t have a purpose or benefitted anyone. It just sucked. That’s why that question couldn’t help but be his only – persistent, gripping – thought.
Until it came again.
He opened his mouth, gasping for breath, as that same rush of something inexplicable started forming at the center of his being. He got out of bed without waking Clary only by miracle, he put on some clothes as his limbs were all about to spasm, and he could only manage to reach the bathroom before collapsing on the floor for a second time that night.
He couldn’t explain, not even to himself, what it was that gripped his body like that. It was a pain he had never experienced, that alien, hissing something that burned under his skin overwhelming his consciousness, until he ended up looking from the outside at the contorted figure on the ground that was supposed to be himself, but that didn’t feel like it.
The cold bathroom tiles beneath him were the only other thing that he could feel, as he twisted on the floor in a silent scream for he couldn’t tell how long. Clary never woke, never found him like that; he hoped she never would.
Because, if he called her and had her comfort him out of his panicked state, she would realize that what she had done to help him hurt him like this, and she’d most likely blame herself, her well-deserved happiness getting tainted as a result. She loved him, and he loved her, they had just made love for the first time...so, even if she was the only one who knew about his death, thus the only one he could confide in - if he didn’t spare her that kind of pain just to wail about his poor, unfair struggles, what kind of selfish person would he be? He couldn’t do that to her.
Besides, deep down, he knew who he really wanted – needed.
Why hadn’t he told Alec that he had died? His parabatai had felt his soul die, he had seen the rune disappear…so why had he denied, twisting Alec’s perception of the happenings of their bond?
It was just that...when Alec had arrived at the lake and Jace had looked at his shocked, confused, stricken face, he hadn’t been able to bear bringing up his death to him. If he knew the truth, Alec would waste the rest of their celebrations worrying about him, watching over him, researching other similar cases that would help his...no, he couldn’t have done that to him, either. Plus, in all honesty, in that moment Jace had wanted to forget himself that he had died and pretend nothing had happened or changed and that everything was just as it had always been. He had hugged his parabatai then, burying himself into him, reveling in the comfort that his unwavering, immutable love always provided, all the while hoping beyond hope that their connection had truly come out of it all unbroken, unfazed. Unlike me. If he lost the solidness and certainty that was Alec…he would be lost.
But that was also the reason why, right then, there was no other person that he wanted near him, as his future became more and more unsteady in the form of an incomprehensible phenomenon. Alec would say Everything will be alright, we’ll figure this out as he looked him firmly in the eyes, and Jace would believe him. Alec would hold him, and Jace would breath more easily.
When the pain subsided again, Jace spent the following moments trying to slow down his breathing, collecting himself as best as he could. Then, he retrieved his phone from the pocket of his pants.
He clicked on the contact Alec. He stared at it. He stared at it some more.
He hadn’t seen Alec at the party anymore, at some point. He hadn’t seen Magnus either. They had probably gone home together.
And, suddenly, Jace realized that he couldn’t tell what Alec was feeling. He could sense his presence, pulsing and throbbing at the other end of their bond…but he couldn’t tell anything beyond his own apprehension. It was probably taking up all the space in their connection, and Alec’s time with his probably-boyfriend-again was getting spoiled. What would he say, if he interrupted them? Please, Alec, stop what you’re doing and come here and hug me, cause I lied and actually died, and I might be dying again, and I need you now more than ever?
Alec would rush there in a second if he said that…and Jace couldn’t have that, no matter his own need for him. The word Alec on the screen seemed to be staring disapprovingly at him.
Ignoring the knot in his stomach, Jace turned off the phone with a swipe of his thumb, and went back into Clary's room, laying down on the bed. He let her circle her arms around him again, and resumed his staring at the ceiling.
It feels like
there's oceans
between you and me
Alec had dozed off, but he suddenly woke up to a sense of nausea pooling up in his stomach, the latter twisted in a way that he couldn’t explain on the beer he had drank earlier. It felt more like a state of anxiousness, as if something bad was happening…or about to happen. Despite the comfort of the bed, Alec had to remove Magnus’s arm from around him and get up.
His eyes still stuffy, he put on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, picked up his phone, and entered the living room to get to the balcony.
Once out, the chilly air helped him clear his head just enough that so he'd be able to examine the sensation better.
Dread. Every breath he inhaled, every breath he exhaled, he felt a dread that brought him to close his eyes...but that was a mistake, because the ghost of the blinding agony he had endured that day rushed back into him.
It’s – Jace, he had said, the word strangled out of him, since in that moment the name had been the last thing he would’ve wanted to associate with that kind of pain. Yet, it hadn’t been Jace…somehow.
He didn’t know what exactly had happened at the lake, since Clary and Jace hadn’t said much about it, but Alec had sworn to himself that he’d gauge something more from them, once everything had truly settled. For now, however, they had all chosen to take a break…so he had resigned himself to only have Clary’s, I killed Valentine, nothing else weird happened, as an explanation. The party had been nice, after all; a hard-earned celebration that had everyone drink around and be merry with each other. And everything had turned out for the best, apparently, with Valentine dead and everyone safe.
That was why he had felt it was time that he put an end to his strain with Magnus; Alec had never wanted to hurt him, and he was glad he had taken him back, despite the mess he had made. Balancing command of an Institute and a boyfriend was harder than he had thought, and he would have to be more thoughtful in the future...because, no matter the good intentions he'd had to save the Downworld, he knew he had probably deserved the cold shoulder from Magnus. Sometimes good intentions are simply not enough, if they're not met with the right actions...he understood that now. After all this, at least, he hoped he and Magnus had learned a lesson and they'd come out of it stronger, able to face other eventual conflicts without imploding.
For now, though, spending the night together had been enough.
Still, it’d take more than parties and kisses to truly take in the fact that the war was over, and that they could, in theory, relax. It didn't help that every time he thought of the blank, suspended moments in time that he had lived thinking Jace had died, the need to collapse on the ground and never get up again came back to him all over again. Those moments had truly felt like walking the Earth untethered...and his insides were already quavering uncomfortably at the reminder.
Alec hadn't been able to believe his luck – he still quite couldn’t – when it had turned out his parabatai was alive. The solidness, the warmth of Jace when he had hugged him had felt as real as the bow he gripped in his hand until his knuckles became white, so he couldn’t have imagined any of it. Jace was alive, and he hadn’t disappeared even after they had - eventually, reluctantly - broken apart. Yet, something weird had happened, he couldn’t skirt around the issue. The pain he had felt, the parabatai rune disappearing…it couldn’t be nothing, even if Jace claimed he didn’t know what could’ve caused it. They would have to investigate it, whether Jace wanted to or not; their bond might depend on it.
And Jace must sense that something was wrong, that something had gone down beyond their comprehension, because that constricting sensation in his stomach could only come from him. It came from Alec as well, without a doubt, but he was pretty sure that that nauseating feeling in particular wasn’t his. And the fact that he was only pretty sure about it…didn’t help quench his fear about the strangeness surrounding the parabatai bond.
Suddenly, an irrational thought filling his entire being, bile rose in his throat, and Alec had to raise his shirt…but the rune was still there, sharp and bright as ever before. Alec’s heart was in his throat nonetheless. Even when he placed a tentative finger on it, and he sighed at its warmth, the dread from his own side only doubled ten-fold.
Because the truth of the matter was...he hadn’t felt it return, he was certain about that. Jace was indeed there at the other end of their connection, he could tell that now, but he felt afar, faint, as when he had literally been in another dimension. The rune was clear and the same as it always was, but his parabatai…wasn’t.
Alec had to make sure everything was alright: if only he could hear Jace's unmistakable voice and turn out to be wrong about his fears...
Taking his phone from the pocket of his sweats, he went to Jace’s contact. Alec stared at the name on the screen, his thumb hovering over it, as another thought suddenly occurred to him.
Jace’s smile and demeanor at the party had looked fake and forced, Alec had noticed it with painful clarity…but Clary had been at his side through all of it. They had rekindled their connection, Alec knew that, he had seen it, and he could also tell how much Jace cared about her. He could be happy with her, she would ease his fears and discomfort better than Alec ever could. The two were probably together in that very moment.
What would a nosy and stressfully worried parabatai do for Jace right then? Hey, I just wanted to check in if you were doing alright. At 4 a.m. Interrupting you and your girlfriend…
Right.
Alec blinked once, twice, the light of the screen burning his eyes…then he swallowed down his idiocy, and turned off the phone. He went back inside.
“Everything alright?” Magnus asked him groggily, as he laid down in bed facing away from his boyfriend.
Magnus went to place an arm around him again, and Alec nodded. “Yeah, I just went to the bathroom.”
He didn’t really sleep.
I want you
And nothing comes close
To the way that I need you
I wish I can feel your skin
And I want you
From somewhere within