Two years later
Jace's recovery wasn't straightforward. It took time. A lot of time. And patience on Clary's part. But still, no matter what, she never left his side.
Clary smiled as the golden haired boy ran his hand over the seraph blade, a smile upon his lips. It had been two years since he'd been allowed to handle one. But at long last, here he was. His Shadowhunter blood was calling him back into action, and he was eager for it.
Even though they usually just talked by thoughts, Clary said aloud, "excited?"
Jace nodded, his eyes sparkling with excitement. "So much." Clary watched as he went through all of his old routines until there was sweat clinging to his forehead. But when he lowered the blade, she knew it wasn't from exhaustion.
"Jace?" Clary frowned lightly before calling mentally, Jace!
The boy blinked, shaking his head a fraction. "Yeah?"
Clary stepped over to him, leaning up and placing a kiss upon his lips. "You spaced out again."
"Ah. Damn it."
"Don't worry about it." Clary was smiling as she took the seraph blade from his hands, setting it down upon the side. "You're getting better. No…" her smile grew. "You are better."
Jace shook his head, resting his chin atop her shoulder. "Not completely. There's always going to be a part that's weaker than the rest of me."
"Surviving what happened doesn't make you weak. You're the strongest person I know, Jace."
Jace tutted, letting his lips find her own and muttering out, "not as strong as you." And then they were kissing as if the world was about to end. Clary wound a hand into his honey colored locks, allowing him to hitch her up onto his hips. She locked her ankles around him and captured his face in her hands as she deepened the kiss until it was more than fiery. When they broke apart, Clary let her forehead rest against his own, laughing out breathlessly with her heart pounding. "Control yourself."
"Where's the fun in that?" Jace teased, placing soft, persuasive kisses along her jaw line. Clary's eyes closed as she murmured out, "I shouldn't even be kissing you this much. What if-?" but her words were silenced by his lips upon her own again. Clary gave up arguing, twining her arm around his neck as she pressed her body to his own.
It had only been a month since Clary and Jace could kiss so much. Too much emotion or pressure caused Jace to lapse in control. Before, they'd kissed and things had very nearly gone too far. Too far for Jace. She'd found hands around her neck, a snarl upon his lips. But then he'd come to and even though Clary was fine, he felt like a monster.
The first year was the worst. Clary couldn't remember how much she cried those first two months. But then she'd gotten used to it. Jace's frame of mind didn't upset her anymore.
She loved him. All of him.
The second year was easier, but not by much. It was only in the past few months that Jace truly started to improve. When he started to be sarcastic and rude, Clary couldn't have been happier. Every little snappy, snarky comment just made her smile.
The old Jace was returning. Little by little. Day by day.
"I think," he said quietly, biting at the underside of her chin playfully, "it's about time I dragged you into my room."
Clary froze at that, knowing full well what he meant. Jace was eighteen now, a man. And Clary would be the same sooner rather than later. An adult. That word still hadn't sunk in with the pair of them. As soon as Clary hit eighteen, Jace was intending on taking her with him around the world, visiting other Institutes. With Clary now a fully fledged Shadowhunter, even though her mother disapproved, she couldn't wait.
"Okay," she laughed, taking Jace aback. Clary arched a brow, slipping down from his hips. Her hand took a hold of his own. "Lead the way."
"Don't you know it?" Jace teased, tugging her towards the door. Clary just scoffed, getting a cheeky grin in return.
All the hardship. All the tears and pain. It had been so worth it.
It was when they were twenty two, relaxing at the Cannes's Institute in the south of France that Jace sunk down onto one knee, asking Clary if she remembered his words from when she bought him back so many years ago. That she promised that when he was better, she'd marry him. She did. Jace asked with none of his usual cocky self, "do you find me… better? Normal enough to ask you to marry me?"
Clary had gone silent before sinking down onto both knees before him, saying with her voice and eyes so full of love and devotion, "I would marry you even if you were still mad. My heart is yours. It always has been."
Jace hadn't cried in years. Not since the day's where he'd lay almost comatose. But he did then. With a smile upon his face the entire time as he tugged off the family ring from his hand and sliding it onto Clary's own. They knelt there hugging each other for so long, the sun had set, talking to each other inside their minds. How much they loved each other.
To anyone looking on, it was like they were simply hugging in silence.
Even though it was a Shadowhunter wedding, Jace snuck in Simon Lewis just for Clary. Drew fake runes upon his arms and seated him next to Isabelle before she returned to walk behind Clary as a bridesmaid and prayed no one realized there was a mundane in the audience. Jace was sure they'd get married, and a year later, he was right. Isabelle and the mundane. Jace still wondered how the hell it had happened, but never questioned it.
But he never would have predicted his parabatai being gay. Or more specifically, hooking up with the same warlock that had re-linked him and Clary back together. It was a small world. And you couldn't help who you fell in love with.
Jace had stood in the Hall of the Angel in special Shadowhunter gear emblazoned with golden runes upon black. His heart had been racing, breathing deep and even. As controlled as he could make it. The entire day, they hadn't even talked with their thoughts. Everytime Jace had cracked, wanting to talk to her, she threw up a mental barrier that kept him out.
And then Clary had entered the room with Luke by her side, and Jace just found himself staring. He thought her beautiful in every way before, but she was simply radiant now. They weren't children anymore, but adults. Clary was still small, but there was a leanness to her that she'd never had as a teenager. But in that moment, Jace saw the girl from prom. The first time he'd ever clapped eyes upon her. But this dress wasn't emerald, it was gold. As dark a gold as his eyes. Jace realized then that she'd taken the aureate color of his eyes and matched it for the fabric of her wedding dress.
He'd never found her so beautiful or enchanting. Jace couldn't wait to lift up that veil obscuring her eyes, to kiss her and let the world know that she was his forever.
Even though the vows were spoken aloud, the true words of devotion were voiced inside their heads.
Clary… I don't know what to say other than I love you. I love you so much. No prepared speech could mean as much as that. He knew he was rambling, probably making a fool of his love struck self. But Clary had merely giggled and replied, don't you think we've been through the worse of 'for better or worse?'
Jace found that more amusing than he should have.
When the time came and he could finally lift that veil, he did it instantly and crashed his lips to Clary's own before he'd even been given the go ahead to kiss her. After the first kiss, he simply took her face into his hands and kissed her again while the crowd lost their senses from applause and cheering. Their last kiss at the alter, officially husband and wife, was long, lingering and sweet with tears burning in both their eyes and smiles upon their lips.
I love you, Clary had simply told him during the third kiss. Jace smiled against her lips. As I love you.
That night they had rolled around in bed together, their bodies bare while they drew the rune for love on the others arm with a stele, then the final Mark. The unity rune over their hearts.
Then the stele fell onto the floor and Jace rolled them over, his chest stinging in the best way possible from the rune Clary had drawn there.
Like any marriage, it had a few downs.
The biggest down was when Jace had been twenty four. Ambushed by a gang of demons that left him close to death. But he bounced back. He always did. Just this time, there was a dirty great scar adorning his chest and stomach.
When they were almost twenty five, they had something else to face.
Clary fell pregnant.
It was a shock, but a welcomed one. Clary reminded Jace of his words so long ago "Would you have kids too?"
Well she was now.
Despite the hissing and yelling Clary often aimed at Jace while she was pregnant, blaming him for knocking her up, she gave birth to a girl a little under the due date. Ariana. With her father's hair and eyes, her parents knew she'd be beautiful when she was older. But then, she had her mother's height. A bundle of sunlight with her mother's temper.
Three years later, their son arrived. Eric.
Jace had gone pale the first time he'd seen his son, for the boy's hair was as white as snow. But his eyes were Clary's. It made Jace remember the young man who had the same hair color as Eric- Jonathan Morgenstern. It unnerved him that the little boy shared the same color hair. Clary had sighed and taken her husband's face into her hands, telling him softly, "Eric is nothing like Jonathan. Where that hair came from is my father. My father had white blonde hair too. Relax and hold him, please?"
As soon as Jace held his son, the doubt and fears vanished instantly. There was nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all.
Clary and Jace weren't the only ones to have children. Isabelle and Simon had a set of twins. Both boys. When they were both two, an ambush by vampires on Simon left him one of them. The fact he was going to grow up and see his children and friends die, never changing from his twenty five year old self very nearly destroyed him. He told no one other than Clary. But his wife guessed soon enough.
Eric and Ariana grew up used to their parent's connection, possessing none of it themselves. When Jace sat with his children teaching them how to play the piano, occasionally he'd laugh out loud. As if sharing a joke that they couldn't hear.
When Ariana and Simon and Isabelle's boys turned twelve, they were given the first Marks of being a Shadowhunter. When Eric was of age, he was given them as well.
Where Simon stayed the same in looks, the others grew older. Jace's features grew hard and fierce, but still so handsome. He often teased his wife that at least having children had made her boobs grow bigger. Clary enjoyed slapping him whenever he said that.
Time never diminished Clary and Jace's love for each other. Not one bit. Even when age was starting to slow them down, they still fought with their backs pressed together. Seraph blades in their hands and dangerous glints in their eyes as they made short work of their enemies. No demon could tear them down.
Age didn't weaken their mental link either. One winter morning, their children all grown up and their grandchildren who had inherited Clary's fiery hair were playing in the snowy garden, they lay in bed together. Clary's arms were around her husband's form, as his were around his wife's.
I think it's about time we broke the link for good, Clary had laughed, tangling her legs with his own, closing her eyes against his chest. The heartbeat that had gone so strong for years was finally slowing. For the final time. You can rest now, my warrior.
When Ariana had come upstairs to check on her parents, she found them in each others arms. Both gone. No one even knew who had died first. But because of their link, of how close they were, suspicions were raised that maybe their lives were tied as well as their minds. But no one knew for sure.
For Simon, they were the last ones to pass over. And one of the worst as the grief truly hit him that he'd never see Clary again. Or Isabelle who had died a few years before.
He spent a little time with Magnus Bane after the deaths of Clary and Jace.
"After so long, you forget what they look like," Magnus had told him quietly, thinking of his blue eyed boy, loss still heavy on his heart. "There's nothing you can do about it. Time will dull the details."
Simon didn't want to forget. He didn't want Clary and Jace's mental connection to be forgotten either. It was the stuff of legend. How they'd managed to stay connected without losing their minds until the grand old age of seventy one… he couldn't have done it.
Since word of mouth could be twisted and warped, Simon set pen to page and wrote. Wrote about the Shadowhunter's he'd known. The ones that had died. His friends. The life he'd had as both human and vampire with them.
He wrote about Clary and Jace. Their connection. About Jonathan Morgenstern, the boy who never would have been a monster if it hadn't been for fate being so unkind.
Simon handed the book over to Eric Herondale who frowned at it. "What is-?"
The vampire shook his head. "I don't want the world forgetting who your parents were. Who Isabelle was. Or Alec. Everyone. Too many heroes are overlooked. This way… no detail will fade."
Eric watched the vampire walk away with a frown on his face. He never saw him again. Neither did both of Simon's sons, or his grandchildren.
The Shadowhunter's eyes flickered down to the black embossed title of the emerald leather bound book. The book that held the life of so many others. Love. Loss. Marriage. Deaths and so much more.
The Book of Existence
And… that is IT! Wow. It's been a long, hard ride to get to here, the epilogue. This chapter was written with tissues next to me and lots of sobbing to friends over Skype. (Looking at you Amanda) So really, my lovely, lovely readers… THANK YOU. It's through your support and encouragement that got me here. So I dedicate this story to each and every one of you. I guess, now that this story is finished, I'll start a new Clace sooner or later once I'm back off holiday later this month. For now, I think I might take a little break from writing big stories.
Again, thank you so much for reading this entire story. Clary and Jace's journey. I love you all. Especially Queen Cassie for thinking up these amazing characters. Have a great night/day and I hope you all leave me final reviews! They'd be lovely to wake up to.
x Nicola