One Step Away From Home
One-shot
The Clave had banned use of the rune years ago, long before they were born and decades before their grandparents had been. For the most part, they'd cut it from history books, erasing the page from the Gray Book's section on parabatai,and did their best to pretend it had never existed at all.
As he sat alone on Jace's bed and stared at the wall in a night-darkened room, Alec thought bitterly that Clave pretended a lot of things didn't exist. The rune. The Uprising. Valentine's return. Hodge's trickery. People like him. They willfully ignored the faults in the law he spent his whole life striving to follow.
The same law he wasn't sure he could follow anymore.
The book in his lap stared up at him, lines of text only interrupted by the neat drawing of the rune no one was supposed to remember. Jace had found it by chance months after they'd sworn their oath, tucked away in an old corner of the library Hodge had never gotten around to cleaning out. It had gone forgotten, probably one of the only survivors of the Clave's purge when they tried to erase the rune from the world.
They'd been so young then, shoulder-to-shoulder as they read and jumping at every noise like they'd known they would have gotten in trouble if they got caught. Jace had been entertained by the idea of its effects, but Alec had read the text like flashing warning signs. He'd argued it wasn't worth the risk, that their lives were too unpredictable to put something like that to chance. Even if it was, using a rune like that could be enough to get them stripped and exiled, effectively a death sentence if the book was right.
Jace called it a backup plan, insistent that they needed it in their back pocket in case something ever separated them. They needed a way to find each other, he'd said with bright eyes and so much intensity that Alec's stomach flipped. They were stronger together.
Alec folded, folded like he did every time Jace looked at him like that and said my parabatai as if he were swearing on the Angel. Only as a last resort, he'd told himself. Nothing in their lives should ever go so bad that the rune would be necessary. The risk was too great for something that might never happen. They'd sworn to fight by each other's side. There was no reason to ever think they wouldn't be together until death tore them apart.
But then, Clary came into their lives and nothing was the same after that. Typical shadowhunter life turned into something Alec barely recognized as he struggled to keep his head above water and save his family in the same breath.
When Jace disappeared with Valentine, Alec felt his heart break and his stomach drop into his shoes. Gone. Separated. They were on different sides again, but this time was worse. No one had been siding with Valentine last time and even if the battered remains of his heart told him Jace chose Valentine to save them, his mind remembered how lost Jace had become and how dark he'd threatened to go near the end.
They'd searched until they ran themselves into the ground. Clary went to pieces and Alec tried his hardest to hold himself together. Their bond—weak and recovering as it was—wouldn't have been able to handle another tracking attempt, and even if they'd tried, he was sure Valentine's wards would have blocked it. They never would have been able to find Jace that way and Magnus' attempts had come up empty.
They were out of options. The realization—reluctant and painful—felt like a stab to the gut, but as Alec stared down at the book, he thought the rune might be a death sentence. He knew it was a death sentence. Once the Clave found out, it wouldn't matter that he'd used it to save Jace. The law is hard, but it is the law. He'd followed it his whole life, had almost given up everything to follow it and save his family, but this…
He began to pace, the book abandoned on the bed, and ran his hands over his face. Over his hair. Over his parabatai rune. He ached for the punching bag and the sharp pain of his knuckles hitting plastic and leather, but there were eyes there and he settled for raking his nails over the back of his neck instead.
They'd lose everything. They'd give up their lives to do it, sacrifice everything for a chance. They'd put their parents through the shame of their getting exiled. They'd put their family and their friends through the heartache of losing two sons, two brothers, two friends and even if their mother couldn't seem to stand the sight of him anymore, he thought she might mourn him too. Saving Jace might mean killing them both in the end.
"I don't want to be alive if we're on different sides, Alec."
They were on different sides, though, split up and pulled apart by a zealot no one knew how to stop. A war was coming and realism said they might not survive long enough for the Clave to punish them. They might both die—they could all die—or only one. The idea of only one being left behind was enough to make him choke and second guess himself, but the numb feeling in his parabatai rune made the decision for him.
He breathed Jace's name like a prayer and an apology wrapped into one and stripped his shirt off, shivering against the persistent chill in the Institute. His stele clutched in a shaking hand and his witchlight in the other, he drew the rune. Large. Circular. It looked like a complicated Celtic knot as its lines connected to the lines of the parabatai rune it was surrounding until he couldn't tell where one rune ended and the other began. It burned as he seared it into his skin and he bit his lip against it, repeating a mantra of Jace's name in his head. A twist. A curl. Black covered the scar left from the tracking rune, hiding the painful memory like a blanket.
People would find out eventually, Alec was too much of a realist to think they wouldn't, but it had to be after Valentine was defeated and Jace was back with them. When the time came that they were caught and exiled, they'd do it together. They'd descend into madness together.
He applied the final stroke of the rune and Alec felt the world explode.
He woke up when the sun was up and his phone was ringing with the techno beat Magnus had programmed himself. One. Two. Three. Four rings and it quieted as his boyfriend was sent to voicemail. Still, Alec didn't move. He stayed where he was, sprawled out on Jace's bed and cringing against the pain stabbing at his temples. He wondered if his head could split apart just from the force of it, but the thought conjured up mental images he didn't want and he tossed it away.
He heard it at the same time he was considering knocking himself out, soft and just as pained as he was, but there. A whisper of his name, but he'd recognize Jace's voice anywhere. He expected Jace to ask him what he'd done or make a comment about how he never thought Alec would actually do it, but the echo of his parabatai's voice went from hurting to relieved to something that made his eyes go glassy.
Jace kept repeating his name until it all seemed to blend together and Alec knew it was worth the risk as relief flowed through one and into the other. A mental link between parabatai, melding their minds together the same way the first rune had tied their souls. It had been a brilliant gift when the Angel gave it to them, but there were too many horror stories of what happened when the runes broke. Breaking a normal parabatai rune threatened to destroy the one left behind or to shock him into death if the bond was strong enough, but the mental link... It promised madness as their minds were torn apart. There was no coming back from that. Madness would come and when the Clave caught them, they'd both pay the price.
Alec didn't think they'd live long after it was done, but he didn't regret the mark he'd seared into their skin. He couldn't, not when it was the only thing bringing them back together. Not when it was their only chance. If they were going to die, he wouldn't let it be with Jace in Valentine's hands. They'd be together. Jace would be with his family.
We're going to fix it, he promised. We're going to bring you home.
Jace didn't say anything, but he could feel how much his other half believed him and—watery as it was—for the first time in months, Alec smiled.
The End