Notes: /title taken from Desiderii Marginis's Come Ruin and Rapture, because this was my soundtrack the entire time/
So! I finally have the time to write and am working my way through some ideas that hung around with me after the finale and that I never really got the chance to explore until now. This in particular focuses on the idea of a version of events where Alec does end up killing the Owl and the aftermath of that. I've had this on my mind for a while and am sort of satisfied with how it turned out, but it's... vague and weird and generally bad, so please mind the tags and please excuse any typos; I was really eager to finally post this even though it's one in the morning.
Hope you enjoy it and feedback is always welcome!
In the end, it's much more painless than the knife would have been, or so Alec likes to think.
Really, his arrows are meant for demons. They're soaked in heavenly fire with the sole purpose of making them evaporate in a moment and the one he uses now does exactly that. It pierces through the very core of Jace's being until it finds the disease. It's done in seconds – Alec can see the Owl fighting for survival and then vanishing; can see Jace falling to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut off.
By the time he rushes to his side, Alec knows that he won't be able to do anything but be there for him. He'd aimed his last shot very carefully – no iratze would be enough to help now.
Jace, as it turns out, knows that already, and it's fine. It's more than fine – he's grateful, one trembling hand reaching up to cup Alec's cheek as he smiles.
"Thank you." It's simple and honest and heartfelt and nothing has ever hurt more. "I knew I could trust you with this." Another hitched, shuddering intake of breath as Jace's hold on him tightens convulsively with the determination that his touch can't quite pass on any longer. "Parabatai."
And then it's over.
Just like that. And the pain is back; the same pain he'd experienced not at all long ago, the same memories flashing through his head in farewell with only a few new additions to hang on to. It's not much – a handful of flashes of Jace's determination to keep going even as he'd faded in the background of his own mind more and more – but it's all that Alec has and he clings to it as much as he does to his parabatai. He'd had to do it, he'd had to and reminding himself of that is the only thing keeping the world from falling apart.
Still, it does exactly that - bit by bit, Alec feels everything around him fade away, dampening itself to a whisper as his senses grow duller than before and Jace's soul is pulled away from him strand by strand until there's nothing left. By the time he sees the light of a portal opening behind him reflected on the brick wall he's leaning against, it feels as if he himself has died; as if his body is as much of a shell as the one in his arms.
"Alexander—" There's magic sparkling at Magnus's fingertips, but he shakes his head.
"It's gone," he hears himself say. "I killed it. It's gone. It's not— He doesn't need—"
Another anchor to the world – Magnus's hand on his shoulder – is all he needs to finally crack.
The rite of mourning is a quiet affair, although it's crowded. The people who had known Jace in life are devastated and so are the ones who'd never met him and it makes sense - he'd been a known hero, the last of the Herondale line, and it had all been so tragic, so pointless especially after the war against Valentine - but Alec wants nothing more than to have it over with. Jace has no family left and it falls to him as his parabatai to name him during the ceremony and it's just what they do, it it's how Nephilim have always said goodbye to their dead, but that doesn't make it any easier to bear.
The body in the shroud next to him doesn't matter. That's what everyone's crying over, Alec's own family included, but he doesn't need – can't handle – to look at it to know that Jace can't hear them. Jace had died almost twenty-four hours ago on an unknown street in the middle of the night, surrounded by demonic magic and Alec's arrows and free from the power that had imprisoned him. It's not the story Alec tells and it's not the one anyone wants to hear, but it's the truth and he's just about to tell all about it to Izzy – she deserves it, if no one else even if he feels terrible for thinking that way of the rest of his family – when she tells him that Clary's vanished. There's no body to prove it, but they don't need one – the upper half of the building had exploded, Simon is the sole survivor and there's no way for her to have made it.
It's another blow, if a duller one. Everything's felt that way recently, he notices – as if half his senses are missing because they are – but Alec's still surprised by how tired the news make him. It's not difficult to imagine why, really. He has his siblings and parents to grief with, of course, and they've known Jace for as long as he has, but Clary had been the only one who had even halfway understood last time. She had been the one to bring his parabatai back from the dead – the one who had bent the laws of the world to achieve that. The circumstances had been different then, of course, and he hadn't really hoped— but she had still done what no one else but Alec himself would have dared to. It had been something and now that she's gone, that makes the loss hurt even worse than it already would have.
But somehow, he manages to take the news in, burying them deep along with everyone else they'd lost during the war; much deeper than he'll ever manage to do with the memory of Jace's last words to him. I knew I could trust you with this. He had been so sure and he'd been right – whatever comes next, Alec needs to take it in stride.
Somehow, life manages to go on. The ache of loneliness in his side – in his soul – still startles him every time he opens his eyes in the morning, but that becomes part of his world as well, as it does for every other parabatai left behind, he assumes. A few people approach him about it, but it's clear that they don't know what to say on the matter other that tell him that they're there if he needs them. There's nothing to be said, though, they all know it, the loss is too great to be encompassed by words, but it helps. It works. He makes it work.
Everything else passes in a blur, too – Alec's so focused on getting the Institute back to its feet and salvaging what can be salvaged from the alliances with the New York Downworlder even with Magnus's strife with the new High Warlock and the loss of his magic – that a stray question about his father and his candidature for the new Inquisitor, asked by someone who clearly assumed that he would already know everything about it, comes like a bucket of cold water even before Robert himself appears make the announcement in front of the family. He had been doing fine recently. His daily routine is soothing enough because he knows how to get through it; knows the right things to say to people to get them to act the way he wants them to. Izzy and Magnus throw him for a loop occasionally and he understands, he really does – they had lost as much as he had, but he can't bring himself to do anything that would actually help. It's too much effort for now and maybe one day— maybe one day. For now, just holding on above the surface is enough. It needs to be.
So in the end, when Robert arrives, everything about the situation is unwelcome. His father makes himself comfortable in what was once his office, shuffles through Alec's things, tries to get him to talk and all he really wants is to go back to the peace and quiet everyone had been offering him ever since the funeral. It's bearable when it starts, but he snaps at the sound of the first 'Someone had to step up, you know', looking up at his father with a stare so sharp that he hopes it'll make him look away. It does, eventually, but not before the majority of Alec's anger manages to evaporate.
"Did it have to be you?"
"You think I wouldn't be a good choice?" It's a challenge and he doesn't seem offended by the question, which only makes everything that much more irritating.
"I think you have bigger things to worry about," Alec says instead of letting it show. "How's Max doing?"
"He's well. His tutors think he'll be able to move away from Idris and become an active field agent if he doesn't want to pursue a career in politics." Now his father looks away, fiddling with one of the documents on Alec's desk, twisting the edges absent-mindedly. "If he does stay with me, we can make it work. His mother would have been a good influence on him, but—"
"Let him make his choice." Alec isn't particularly eager to let his brother come to the Institute and be exposed to the daily threats of it and neither is Isabelle from what he'd last heard from her, but Max is old enough to decide for himself now and they can't keep ignoring that forever. "If you do become an Inquisitor, you won't have any time left for him anyway."
"You're right." The agreement alone is surprising enough to keep Alec's attention, but that's not all his father has to say, apparently. "There's something else I wanted to tell you about and you might want to come back to Idris with me to see it firsthand. The Herondale family tomb—"
"No." This hadn't been part of the plan. It isn't something Alec can dare to think about. If he does, something terrible will happen, he feels; something much worse than the gaping empty pit he's forced to live with and the absence that haunts him day and night.
"Listen to me." His father hasn't been this firm in years, but he doesn't let that stop him. "You have to. There's no one else— He was the last one. You are still his parabatai and there are decisions that need to be made."
"He would have preferred the City of Bones."
"Did he say that after he realised he has a living family?"
"I don't think it would have made a difference." There's a pleading edge to Alec's tone now, one he can't – doesn't want to – hide anymore. "I can't do this. You know how this feels. You've felt it too and you were left with nothing. Would you have cared about the details?"
He's dead. That's all that matters. Alec's hold around his pen tightens until it almost breaks in his hand and it all comes back, flooding his senses – his arrow and the demon's laughter and Jace falling, falling with no one to catch him into an abyss that his parabatai had followed him through even if he's supposed to cling to the here and now.
"That's not what it was," his father interrupts, but he looks exhausted, as if he's suddenly much more reluctant to have this conversation. Serves him right. He misses Jace too, of course, he'd loved him more than words can say, but it's not comparable to what Alec's got in mind. "Even after the bond was severed, I had your mother and you, and then your sister—"
But Alec's already shaking his head, almost frantic but still resolute. His father had tried to move on – had even tried harder than Alec himself, perhaps – but Michael Wayland is still there in everything he does; in his family, in his choices, in his who knows how many affairs, in Alec and Jace, even, and in his determination to get him to act now. "You had nothing. That's all we're left with."
It's the truth and it hurts, but it sets them both free, he thinks, at least by a fraction.
"I shouldn't have done this," Alec says and he can feel his father's phantom pain from a separation less severe but just as final as his own as he speaks, "I should have never said yes."
"Don't say that." There's no heat in his father's tone. "It was worth it. It always is. But it's over."
It isn't, but it should be and finally, Alec obeys.
The crypt he'd been directed to is right next to the one Alec's ancestors rest in and it's just as crude and ancient in appearance, the large stone blocks along with the wind making him shiver as he pushes the door open. Jace's parents might be in the Cemetery of the Disgraced, but they're an exception – here, he makes his way through rows and rows of names going back centuries until he gets to the Inquisitor's effigy and there, by her side, is another tomb. It's clear that a lot of effort has gone into it even if it's less decorated and it's unmistakable who it's supposed to be for. Jace Herondale, 1993-2017, died in the war against the forces of Edom.
It's the truth – a kinder version of it than the one Alec will remember – and he's grateful for it as he trails a finger over the statue's sculpted features. This is what history will remember centuries from now, when they're both nothing but ash. Jace. Not Jonathan, just Jace, finally nothing but that and maybe this is the right place for him after all. His hands are shaking and this is it, if he hasn't said goodbye yet, he must do it now and the finality of it is overwhelming even before he decides that he's made a choice. This is it. It has to be. This had been the reason his father had brought him here – for one last farewell. His parabatai is dead and nothing will ever fix the lack of everything that he'd left behind, but others have learnt to live with that before; he must be no different.
Later, when he comes home, Isabelle tells him about the demonic energy she can still trace around the city and about her hypothesis how Clary might still be here, but just not in this plane of reality. We have to do something, Alec, she says and somehow it makes sense coming from her, because what if we can save her? We could send a team to look through the hell dimensions again. If she survived, then Lilith and Jonathan might have too. We can't be sure— And he doesn't need her to convince him, really. Alec reaches for the opportunity, ready to grasp it before anyone else has had the chance to try.