Notes: There were supposed to be two chapters to this, not three and I actually have more material written already, but it felt right to leave it off here before it got disproportionately large compared to the first chapter, so... the conclusion is coming next. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this and I'd love to know what you think!

It had been a week. A week since Jace had woken up in the Institute surrounded by corpses; a week since he'd captured Valentine and handed him to the Inquisitor; a week since nothing had changed even remotely despite of that.

Jace wasn't sure what he'd expected. Even if they had wanted to – and he doubted that greatly – there was no way for the Clave's decision to be reversed. They couldn't ignore him either; there was no precedent for his situation and no one knew quite what to do with him now. So they'd done what Shadowhunters did best – they had tried to pretend it had never happened.

No one else had followed that example, no matter how much Jace wished that they had. If he'd been able to get around the Downworld before without being recognised before, activating the Sword had put an end to that. Everyone knew who he was now; almost every Downworlder in the city had lost someone they'd known in the attack in the Institute and everyone knew that Valentine was responsible, but that wasn't quite where their focus was.

Valentine had been captured. There was nothing more to be done on that front. Jace, on the other hand, was right there. It was far easier to have someone close by when thinking of vengeance, Jace had discovered, and that had made his life harder than it had been before in ways he'd been unable to predict. Where he'd been warmly welcomed before, he was now barely tolerated and he suspected that even that was mainly out of fear.

Still, there were people – a rather small minority – that had managed to warm up to him. Magnus hadn't said a thing and Jace didn't need him to; he was well aware of the truth and he'd even made an effort to try and pacify some of the Warlocks in the city. That, at least, had been a successful strategy – Warlock never went out of his way to bother him.

No, despite his troubles in the Downworld, the most persistent race in Jace's life hadn't changed despite his lack of runes.

Even though he was still forbidden from coming into contact with anyone he'd known before, the presence of Shadowhunters in his life hadn't lessened at all. If anything, it had only increased; Clary was trying to get him to talk about what had happened every chance she got and while she knew that she wasn't his sister – he'd told her so – she still seemed determined to be as supportive as possible.

Or maybe it wasn't out of a sense of duty, Jace sometimes thought. Maybe she just did what she thought was right, just like she always had.

He would never fully understand mundanes well enough to be one of them; he was sure of that now. They were just so fundamentally different that even Clary – Clary, with her angel blood and ever-growing knowledge of the magic surrounding her – stood out like an anomaly in the Institute for her way of thinking as much as he did because of her heritage.

Without fully realising it, Jace had given up on the notion of even trying to detach himself from the Shadow world. He wasn't happy with the way things were – he wasn't entirely sure he'd ever manage to be at least content with his life again – and he wasn't home, but he wasn't too far from it either. For now, it would have to do.

He had his moments of resolve – usually fuelled by his frustration at the Clave's inability to see reason when it came to Valentine and at his own inability to do anything about it – when he wanted to leave everything behind and never look back, but they never lasted too long. He still had too much to lose, too many people to miss, and with every passing day, the idea seemed more and more unbearable.

He mainly had Alec to blame for that, Jace suspected. His parabatai had taken to filling him in on anything that happened in the Institute every time they met and while Jace was sure that he meant well – Alec always meant well, especially when it came to him – it only made the exile that much more painful; the taste of separation even more bitter than it had been before.

As much as he craved for it, though, the change was still a shock when it happened.

He'd known that something was wrong with Magnus as soon as he'd seen him that night (or maybe some part of him had believed Alec when his parabatai had voiced his concerns about what Valentine had said), but by the time the Warlock had locked him up in his bedroom an set up the hologram that would let them talk to the Inquisitor, he was already aware that despite the body and the magic that went with it, Magnus hadn't been around for quite a while. And when Valentine – Valentine, who had apparently decided that Jace hadn't exhausted his uses yet – had presented him to Imogen Herondale and had threatened her with his murder, he had been filled with something close to amusement. Was he really desperate enough to resort to this?

As it turned out, he hadn't been desperate at all. If anything, he'd been planning this for a while and even if Jace didn't think that he'd predicted the body switch, he knew perfectly well just how resourceful his father was.

What he hadn't known was how much of an impact his words would have on the Inquisitor.

She had made a mistake. A terrible one, according to her own words; one that she could never take back, and the pill hadn't been easy to swallow on either side. She had issued an order on her grandson's deruning and while Jace had tried to be sympathetic – mainly because he wanted to learn as much as possible about his parents and she was the only one who had the answers – but he couldn't really bring himself to be; not after everything that had happened.

Alec was furious. It didn't really show – it rarely did with him – but Jace was still able to tell by the frosty edge of his tone alone.

"A mistake," he scoffed, turning the Herondale family ring in his hands absently. The Inquisitor had given it to Jace without a second thought despite his mundane status and he suspected that the order that kept him from contacting the Institute had been quietly lifted. The apology was a welcome one even if it was far too late to change anything and Jace clung to what he'd been given like it was a lifeline, desperate not to let this last trace of the life he could have had slide away from him. "If she's only seeing that because of your last name, then how do we know that we can trust her judgement on anything?"

"Valentine killed her family," Jace shrugged, the slight movement more than enough to send yet another sharp shot of pain down his arm.

"Yes, your parents," Alec acknowledged quietly. "And even if they weren't– she had no right to prosecute you for what Valentine did, Jace. None."

The words were jarring despite the circumstances – if Alec was questioning the Inquisitor, then he had to be even more upset than Jace had assumed he was – and Jace looked up, searching for his parabatai's eyes. He reached out when Alec looked away, only to have him grip his hand to examine his wrists, his gaze fixed on the wounds there.

"Valentine restrained you." It wasn't a question, but Jace nodded anyway, for the first time noticing the soreness of the skin where the shackles had been. It was more uncomfortable than painful – or at least it had been before Alec, with a gesture brought forward by years of hunting together, drew out his stele only to drop it back into his pocket. He stood up abruptly, leaving Jace on the bed as he called out over his shoulder, "I'm going to get bandages."

"I was thinking of asking Magnus to heal them later." He hadn't, but it was a better explanation than the actual one: he'd been too preoccupied with everything else to care about the pain. For once, Alec didn't notice; he just shook his head while cleaning the bruises with painstaking care. The sting of it was almost enough to distract Jace from the fact that his parabatai seemed even more closed off than usual. Almost; the lack of any information coming from the other end of their bond was even more irritating than usual now and it was all Jace could focus on as he tried to read his expression.

"Might not be a good idea," Alec said, picking up the bandages he'd left on the nightstand. "I don't think he's feeling well."

"Because of the body switch?" Jace couldn't begin to imagine how intrusive it could have felt for Magnus to know that Valentine had inhabited his body for hours and it only made sense for the Warlock to be as shaken as he had looked when he'd last seen him.

"That too," Alec nodded. "But– I think it was the agony rune. It brought out something he'd thought he'd forgotten, or so he says."

"Maybe you should go and talk to him," Jace suggested, making to draw his arm away. "If he needs help–"

"I don't think he wants that." Once he'd secured the bandage, Alec moved to Jace's other wrist, starting the same process almost absent-mindedly. Shadowhunters rarely healed their wounds the mundane way – if an injury was too serious for an iratze, a Warlock was usually called – and the thought that Alec had to do it for him now, possibly for the first time since they'd met, made something clench painfully inside him. They'd never seemed so different until now, not even after his runes had been taken away and for a moment it was almost unbearable; the realisation that Alec was careful with him because he had no other choice now. "I don't know what he wants, except to be left alone. If he needs space, then I need to step away."

"How much space is that?" The question was tentative, but it felt necessary. Alec had sounded just a bit too upset for this to be something he thought they could go through; something in his words had been a bit too final for that to be true. "If he needs to be alone–"

"That doesn't include you, Jace." Alec still hadn't looked up from his task, but his voice suggested that he was stating the obvious. "He wouldn't just make you leave; not right now."

"That wasn't what I was worried about," Jace waved him off. It really wasn't; if anything, he'd been trying to figure out a way to get out of Magnus's hair for a while now. The Warlock hadn't said anything – he never would, Jace suspected, unless he started causing trouble – but he still wanted to organise everything well enough to know that he didn't have to rely on anyone for anything. It was the only way for him to make sure that he had things under control and he knew that he would have acted on it already if he'd only had the chance. "I was talking about you. Are you okay?"

"Me? I'm not the one who should be upset. He was telling me the truth and I didn't listen." When Jace didn't respond, still waiting for his answer, Alec sighed. "I'm fine. You don't need to worry."

He didn't seem to be lying, but then again, Jace could never be sure now: while he'd known Alec for half of his life, he had always relied on their bond more than he had on his parabatai's facial expressions and it was like getting to know him all over again; like a glimpse of a world where being separated wouldn't tear each of them apart the way it had.

Unable – and unwilling – to stop himself, Jace took Alec's hands in his own. He complied easily enough now that he'd finished his work on the bandages and he let Jace draw him into a hug so tight that it almost hurt.

Sensing the way Alec practically melted into the embrace, Jace hid his smile in the crook of his neck. They'd both needed this, it seemed, and it only made sense: neither of them had shied away from physical contact before because it only seemed to draw them closer together, but now it was all they had left and the impact of it was all the bigger for it. Jace was acutely aware of his parabatai in ways he never had been before; all the sensations raw and somehow too little and too much all at once.

It didn't matter what it was; it was enough, Jace decided. It would have to be.

o.O.o

Alec's visits became slightly less frequent after that day. It made sense – he didn't want to make things between him and Magnus even tenser than they already were – but it also meant that Jace had to think of new and increasingly difficult to find meeting places. He'd become well acquainted with the New York Downworld now that he wasn't a Shadowhunter so the task didn't prove to be too hard. Still, Alec's presence occasionally made the residents of the most magical establishment Jace had led him to even more uncomfortable than they had been at the start – while things were finally settling down, Jace could still feel everyone's eyes on him and dragging one more Nephilim along wasn't exactly helping, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Things only changed when one day, while Jace had been trying to make a bargain with a werewolf for a vial of faerie dust, he received a call from the Institute. Jace debated the situation for a moment, finally deciding that whatever news he was about to receive was more important than a bit of glamour as he picked up the phone.

"Alec," he greeted, stepping to the side to avoid the downworlder's curious eyes. "Is something wrong?"

"It's me. Hello, Jace." Isabelle's tentative greeting floated over the line and Jace found himself smiling in spite of the worry that usually arose every time someone called him from the Institute. He hadn't talked to Izzy in ages – she'd closed herself off almost as much as he had and Jace had yet to discover why – and he'd missed her more than he'd realised. "There's something you need to know."

"Is everyone all right?" Angel, he hated this; hated how in the dark he was about the people who mattered the most to him.

"Yes, everything's fine." The words were brimming with an emotion Jace couldn't quite decipher; excitement mixed with something far more apprehensive. "I just wanted to tell you– the Inquisitor just portalled back to Idris. And she left the Institute in Alec's hands."

"That's amazing! Where is he?" Come to think of it, for news of this calibre, Alec would have called himself and the fact that he hadn't made Jace stand on edge despite himself.

"He's in a meeting. His first one, actually." Now it was much easier to tell what Izzy was feeling by her tone alone. Pride. "But that's not the reason I called. Jace – I think we might be able to get you home."

o.O.o

"This is insane." It wasn't exactly what Jace had meant to say, but it was as honest as he could force himself to be. "No one would ever allow it, Alec, you know that. It's insane."

"I heard you the first time." Alec looked exhausted, more so than Jace remembered ever seeing him. They were back to holding their meetings at Magnus's place under the guise of Alec's attempts to put together the Downworld cabinet he'd started planning. "Don't you think I know that? There's a reason why I haven't mentioned it to anyone but Izzy yet. But there's something that Clary said that could probably help us."

"Clary?" So it had been her idea. It all made sense now – of course it would be Clary, with her inability to give up even after she'd learnt just how unforgiving their world was – but the thought of Alec actually listening to her was both troubling and heart warming. "What did she do?"

"Nothing new. Just, her powers– you both have the same blood, right? Maybe if she can create new runes, you're able to do something special too."

"What exactly are you suggesting? I can't be a Shadowhunter without the runes."

It wasn't like he hadn't considered the possibility of that before. He'd thought about it more times than he could count, but that didn't change anything – he knew that he was a capable warrior, but it would never be the same without his Marks and the fact that Alec of all people was stubborn enough to try and convince him of the opposite was what surprised him the most.

No, not stubborn, Jace realised. Desperate. Alec had been awfully quiet around him after the night of his deruning and while Jace had always had an inkling that his parabatai was doing his best not to remind him of anything that he could miss from his old life unless it was absolutely necessary, it only now occurred to him that Alec had been struggling just as much with Jace's absence despite all the work he'd had to do in the Institute. And of course he had; their bond was – had been – a two way street, but it was so easy to forget that when he couldn't feel Alec's soul intertwined with his own.

He would never get that back, no matter what either of them did. He knew that perfectly well, but he could still feel his resolve crumbling under the weight of Alec's gaze.

"Jace, please." Attuned to him as ever regardless of the distance between them, Alec reached over the table, squeezing Jace's hands in his own in encouragement. "Maybe I can't fix you, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try."

There were countless things that Jace could have said to that, I don't need to be fixed being the first of them. But it was a lie – he'd said so himself moments before he'd picked up the Mortal Sword; there was no life for him as a mundane – and even now, he wasn't too inclined to be dishonest with his parabatai. He couldn't; he had never been good at turning Alec down when he really insisted on something and he didn't need to peer into Alec's current state of mind to see the earnestness in his eyes.

He could have still declined, Jace knew, or convinced him that it wasn't a good idea. But he had never been good at lying to Alec and Alec had never been good at giving up on him and not for the first time, Jace was more grateful for that than he could express.

"Okay." Gripping Alec's hand in response, Jace leant in closer and lowered his voice almost subconsciously. It was a small step and the chances of failure were bigger than ever; it was only natural that no one but Alec would hear him consenting to it. "I'm listening. When do we start?"

o.O.o

Runes or no runes, fighting again – really fighting, instead of just abusing the equipment in Magnus's training room – was even better than Jace had imagined it would be.

The Seraph blade had come alive under his fingers the moment he'd touched it and while Jace had expected it, the feeling was still exhilarating and he swung the weapon at the nearest demon more eagerly than ever before. He could still remember his first hunt with crystal clarity and the memory couldn't even compare to the sudden adrenaline rush now.

It was his first hunt in a way, he thought as he sliced through one of the tentacles scaling the wall to his left. After he'd resigned himself to never doing it again, he hadn't even imagined that things would end up like this and the victory of it made every gesture all the more vicious.

It was strange, borderline unnerving to be unable to feel Alec's movement through their bond, but Jace managed somehow. He could still see him from the corner of his eye and he grinned as yet another demon burst into flames under his parabatai's attack.

"I think that was the last one," he said, the elation in his tone so clear that he could barely recognise his own voice at first. "And you thought an unsanctioned mission would be a bad idea." Jace turned around, puzzled by the lack of response. "Alec? Alec!"'

He hurried to his parabatai's side when he saw him leaning against the nearest wall with one hand pressed to his side. It didn't really help – Jace could still see the blood as it soaked through his shirt.

"Where's your stele?" The demon had stung him, it seemed, and Alec nodded at one of his jacket's pockets. Jace reached into it, hands trembling and panic seeping into his voice when he found it empty. "It's not here!"

"Must have– dropped it." Alec's breathing was laboured and he motioned Jace to come closer, his free hand resting on his shoulder. "We just need to get back to Magnus's place."

"We need to stop the bleeding first." Slowly, carefully, Jace lifted up Alec's shirt until he could examine the injury. It looked like just about any other demonic poisoning – he could tell by the blackened skin around the wound that it was spreading quickly. Magnus's flat was at least twenty minutes away and it would provide safety – aside from Magnus himself, there was at least an additional stele or two, but they weren't close enough; especially since Alec's condition would take a turn for the worse sooner rather than later. Jace vaguely recalled the pain of the same demon species that had stuck him in the alternate dimension he'd visited with Clary and the thought was more sobering than any other until now. He would not let Alec go through the same, no matter what it cost him.

The determination crashed over him like a tidal wave and it felt like all sorts of conflicting sensations – like there was something inside him struggling to get out that couldn't reach the surface. He chased after it without giving it a second's thought – maybe this had always been meant to happen, maybe this would help – and the next thing he knew, Alec's wound was stitching itself up right in front of him.

Jace couldn't tear his eyes away; not even when he heard Alec's relieved gasp. He hadn't imagined it, then. The pain had stopped, at least for now, and when Alec spoke up again, his voice sounded much less strained.

"Thank you. It won't hold for long, but until we get back– Jace?"

"I don't have your stele." But he'd seen the rune activate itself; had seen the faint shimmer of it through the thin fabric of Alec's shirt. Jace laughed; a sharp, hysterical sound born from both relief and incredulity. "It just– I wanted to do something and–"

"You activated it," Alec finished for him. He sounded almost in awe and he persisted when Jace shook his head. "That's the only possible explanation. I told you before; there must be something special you can do. Maybe this is it."

"Activating other Shadowhunters's runes," Jace clarified, tone more sardonic than he'd meant for it to be. "You're right, that would be really useful in battle."

"It was definitely useful today," Alec shrugged. Their minds still worked in sync, it seemed, and this – the ichor dripping from their clothes, the half-buried fear that their wounds weren't completely healed yet and the leftover restlessness from the hunt – was close enough to the way their lives had been before for Jace to almost believe that nothing had changed. Almost. "But I think it might be more than that. Look at your hands."

Jace complied, dropping the Seraph blade he'd still been holding in one hand. "Are you saying that I can channel angelic power through them?"

"I'm saying," Alec lifted up one of Jace's sleeves just enough to expose his wrists entirely, "that all your bruises are gone."

They were. Come to think of it, Jace felt overall better than he had this morning before the hunt, all the little injuries from his daily training that could usually be fixed with an iratze now disappearing completely.

"That's not possible." Worse, it was unheard of. Additional angel blood or not, Shadowhunter who's been deruned could never use runes again. Even if he was different, it had always been accepted as the undeniable truth and even thinking about questioning that felt like he was being far too optimistic for his own good.

It was unimaginable, he knew that, and even this sliver of hope was much more than he could afford.

That was enough to make it irresistible.

"We have to go." Under different circumstances, he would have probably left Alec enough time to answer him and they would have probably delved into all the new possibilities that had presented themselves, but as it were, taking Alec back to the flat took priority. "We'll talk later."

Jace wasn't sure whether the prospect of that excited him or terrified him more.

o.O.o

"Maybe we should wait."

Jace, who had already braced himself for the first touch of Alec's stele against his skin, let out the breath he'd been holding. "Wait for what? Nothing's going to change unless we do this, Alec."

"And what if it doesn't work?" They'd been through this already, but Alec never seemed to get tired of that particular argument. "No one's ever done this before and you know what the consequences are if things go wrong."

"Whatever happens, trust me, I've had worse." It wasn't necessarily true, but it wasn't a lie either. Once he'd came to live in New York, Jace had realised that his father had Marked him when he'd been far too young and, when he'd got the chance to witness a runing ceremony from the sidelines – namely Izzy's – he'd been surprised by how relatively painless the process had been. When he'd asked Maryse about it later, she'd said that runing children younger than the age of ten brought to many risks with itself and that it was always better to wait and Jace had realised just how lucky he'd been to live to tell the tale of his own much more private ceremony.

It had taken him years to take in that it hadn't been luck at all but rather a calculated move on Valentine's part. He'd known exactly how far he could push him without killing him and he'd done it and if he'd survived that, he would survive this too.

Or at least, that was what he'd told Alec and later on, Izzy, when they'd asked. He'd spared Clary the information because no one had bothered to inform her that the pain of being Marked could be excruciating if not done correctly. She had received her first rune while she'd still been unconscious, Jace himself had placed it there, and he preferred it that way. He'd told Alec early on in the entire ordeal that it was better for her to stay in the dark about it because he knew her well enough to know that if she knew that his life was in danger, she would be too unpredictable for them to trust her to keep it all a secret at first. Clary was happy. If possible, Jace wanted her to remain that way even in the world they lived in; if there was one thing he wanted to help her preserve, it was the humanity she'd somehow kept until now.

He hadn't been surprised at how readily Alec had agreed to that proposition. What surprised him more was his parabatai's unwillingness to proceed now that they had finally made a decision. Alec had done everything in his power to keep Jace as close to the world he'd grown up in as he could and for him to have doubts now was too frustrating for Jace to keep quiet.

It wasn't that he couldn't understand his fear. He couldn't feel it, but he could see it in Alec's eyes, hidden under layer upon layer of determination that he'd worked up to for Jace's sake. In the past few months, Jace had got much better in guessing what Alec was thinking by his face alone and while it had been out of necessity at first – there was no bond for them to rely on any longer – it had turned into something much different. Without even realising it, Jace had started getting to know him all over again and the process was just as tentative as it had been the first time around. Alec apart from him was an uncharted territory and try as he might, Jace couldn't force himself to see him the way he had in the past. When they'd still had the bond, it had been different. Alec had been a constant presence, staying by his side – by his soul – no matter what and since their forced separation, things had changed. The helpless anger that had risen during every conversation they'd had in the first month or two had disappeared in favour of something far more tender; something that drove his soul and mind to find their way back to Alec in ways different from the ones they'd lost.

And in the end of the day, it wasn't just Alec. It was Isabelle and Clary (and, he recalled, they hadn't even told the girls that they'd be doing this today so as not to give them false hopes) and all the people that he would never get to see again; an entire life that he'd have to forget about. It was worth the risk, even if he was putting everything on the line.

"Do it," he said, wrapping his fingers around Alec's wrist and pressing the tip of the stele against his angelic rune. "Otherwise we'll never know if it's even possible."

Alec's grip around the stele tightened just a fraction. "It's going to hurt."

"I know," Jace said. He found it in himself to smile, to reach over and cup Alec's face in one hand; the touch just as comforting as it had ever been. "And I know I don't have any guarantee of success, so I need to do things right this time. In case this doesn't work–"

"Don't." Alec's voice was strangled, but Jace pressed on. The last time, with the Mortal Sword, everything had been far too rushed for him to say goodbye. Now, he felt as if he had all the time in the world. And it wasn't just that; back then, he'd looked Alec in the eye as he'd made the decision to end his life – the same life that he'd just dared to try and start again.

"In case this doesn't work, there's something I need you to know. On the night when I activated the Sword, all that I could think about was that I had nothing left. It was the only option I could see." Mindful of the stele still hovering over his chest, he leant in even closer, drawing Alec into the closest thing to a hug that he could manage just now. "Thank you for proving me wrong."

"Jace–"

"Come on, Alec." His smile was more sincere now, widening in spite of himself. If he needed to say goodbye, the last thing he wanted to do was to part with him like he had the last time. "Don't keep me waiting."

The reluctance was still clear in Alec's eyes as he lowered his gaze and Jace was almost convinced that he'd change his mind again when he pressed his stele against the scorched scar of Jace's angelic rune.