Some door throwing and crashing into rooms for a change. I do owe the idea to incorporate a shared nightmare to TeachMePatience and her fic "Morally Gray" /works/14672853 which is fabulous. Do check it out if you are looking for something to read.

—

Jace had slept for the better part of the day with a caring Clary watching over him. After Isabelle had woken up, rest seemed the most obvious choice for everyone, after a night of terrors, pain and almost dying. And so Clary had forced Jace to sleep in his bed in the bell tower, while Magnus was just as preoccupied to steer Alec into his room for rest while Maryse had decided to stay with Isabelle taking comfort in each other's presence.

The day had come and gone and somewhere in the late afternoon Clary had woken up not remembering why she was in Jace's room. She was still not completely used to the confusing sleeping schedules of her new life. She'd gone in search of some food in the institute's cafeteria and when she came back with a surprisingly healthy sandwich to Jace's room, she noticed the change in her boyfriend immediately. He hadn't moved an inch from the center of the bed or changed his position significantly, but the level of tenseness in his still resting form immediately told her that something wasn't right.

Trapped in a nightmare, he shivered, then moaned the most painful moan she had ever witnessed any human being produce. Drawn out, and so full of anguish and despair.

They say that you weren't supposed to wake people that were trapped in nightmares or sleep wandering… but the sounds he produced as an outside signal for whatever was haunting him in his dreams, was so unlike the tall, self-confident Jace that she was tempted to forcefully shake him out of his sleep, just to make it stop.

Clary was still considering the choice when the door suddenly flew open and a dishevelled Magnus appeared on its step.

"It's Alec. I cannot wake him."

He had barely spoken when Jace sat up without warning, wide awake, a scream stuck somewhere between his vocal cords and his throat. Clary was instantly beside him, wrapping her arms around his trembling frame. He was breathing heavily, trying to dispel the rest of the nightmare as best as possible until he noticed Magnus in the middle of his bedroom. Confused, he looked up at the stressed warlock who standing in his doorway.

And then it hit him. He felt it. Alec was in pain and it reverberated through their bond like a heavy wave of tar and destruction.

"Magnus…! Something is wrong…"

They all ended up in Alec's room where the unconscious leader of the New York Institute was lying on his bed, dressed only in a sweat pants. His white skin was covered in a tell-tale sheen of deep fever, the bones of his face even more apparent than usual. His chest was still covered in disappearing bruises. From time to time a shudder shook his whole body. It was the only exterior sign that he was still alive. He looked so sick.

"This is all my fault. Why didn't I insist on healing him last night…?" Magnus whispered below his breath. "Come off it, Magnus." Jace looked intently at the warlock who was standing beside Alec. "He wouldn't have let you. This is who he is. He suffers in silence until the silence kills him." The words held the frustration and fear that reverberated unfiltered through him.

Magnus motioned him over, ignoring the statement for the degree of unbearable truth it held. "I need to check his wound."

Jace came to sit on the side of Alec's bed and pulled his brother into his arms. He started to peel off the tape that had held the bandages in place. Under the white gauze, the gash had almost closed all the way through, but the skin around the wound was black and deep dark tendrils told all of them the level to which the demon poison had taken hold of Alec's body.

"Damnation." Jace's eyes snapped upwards to look at Magnus. He'd never heard Magnus actually swear. Or at least he couldn't remember. "Drawing on the bond, Isabelle's healing, it's weakened him so much that the poison had free reign with him. WHY didn't I see this? WHY didn't YOU…?!" Before a speechless Jace could even begin to answer, Magnus reached out with his magic, wrapping Alec's back in a blanket of blue energy, simply glaring at Jace.

Of course Magnus was just voicing what Jace was feeling. It would have been his duty to pay attention to his parabatai. He had been so tired after the healing bond, and the night, it hadn't as much as slipped his mind, but he simply was too tired to think about it.

They all looked at Magnus who, a frown on his forehead, felt into the injuries of his lover's body. Mending where he could, neutralising where and what he could, but something was resisting him. As the minutes passed, Jace could feel Alec's body temperature return to a more acceptable warmth as opposed to the shocking level of burn he had felt him in before. Under Magnus' hands the wound finally closed all the way, leaving a dark grey scar, running all the way from the top of his right shoulder down to his spine. The warlock growled somewhere deep in his throat the rest of the demon venom was absorbed and the tendrils finally disappeared.

Jace lowered Alec back down, observing him closely. He was fully expecting him to wake up any second now.

Except Alec didn't wake up.

"Magnus…?" He had barely finished speaking Magnus' name when a pain as sharp as a knife made him cry out and fall from the bed onto his knees. Magnus' anger at Jace instantly disappeared and with Clary, they were on him in an instant.

"It's Alec. The nightmares were his."

Only then did they realise that the cry they had heard, was actually coming from Alec. It transformed into a pained moan and for a moment, things in Jace's mind and body mixed and mingled to a point where he couldn't tell his or Alec's experience apart anymore. After the healing, they had done nothing to tend to their bond or even think about closing it for some kind of comfort or discretion. They had just trusted that it would happen as usual. And it usually did. But usually, there wasn't any demon venom to complicate things.

"What's going on… Jace?" - "He's scared and hurt. Our bond… it's completely open." - "We need to wake him. Now!" Magnus looked expectantly at Jace. "I am trying!", was all he could reply.

Magnus turned back to the bed and Alec who was unmoving and unconscious once more.

"Alexander. Love. Please, wake up." He delved again into his magic, taking comfort in the way it swirled around his hands allowing him a direct link to Alec's soul. A soul that was tormented, tucked away, retreated far off into the back of Alec's existence. "Please wake up. Now. It's just a nightmare."

"It's not working. Why is it not working?" Jace looked pleadingly up at Magnus from where he was still sitting on the floor, his head pounding. He gasped once more, this time clutching his chest just above his heart. He could feel his mind slipping, a sensation as if he was being pulled under water. Resisting it was futile, and simply impossible. Clary had pulled him in her arms and he could still vaguely make out her face.

"He's being pulled into Alec's nightmare! Jace, Jace… listen, you have to shut out Alec and protect the bond." Magnus was finally piecing everything together. "No." And of course, Jace wasn't having any of it. "No.", He muttered as his mind stayed conscious and he became a willing spectator of Alec's torment.

He found himself standing beside Alec in a deserted hallway of the institute. But the vision was distorted, the whole place was tinted in pale blue, icy, and cold. In front of them, stood another Jace, anger distorting his face as he spoke: "This is your fault. Izzy is dead because you failed to protect her. What are you even good at? You're supposed to be a leader! OUR leader! You can't even lead them into battle. You are useless! And in the end, you couldn't even be enough of man to not let her die alone … ! You left her. You are nothing more than a coward! I despise you."

The words hit Alec head on and a blade couldn't be more hurtful. Through their link, Jace could feel Alec's emotional pain as his own, while he received the hurtful insults in silence.

"NO…!", he yelled back at the Institute his mind stuck between two realities of two worlds. Clary looked at Magnus for help who could give her none. "Magnus, please, help him." Jace's words just came out as whispers as he drifted once more back into Alec's nightmare. There was nothing between them anymore and he experienced Alec's side of the bond as if they had been one. Which, of course, they were. He was incapable of shutting it down or Alec out, too afraid to lose him forever.

Back in the blueish tinged nightmarish world of Alec's subconscious, they were all of a sudden, at Magnus' loft. It looked different, darker, unwelcoming. "You are a coward, Alec. Death is inevitable. The way you couldn't overcome your fear of your own emotions when your sister was dying, tells me much more about you than the months we've shared as a couple. You prefer to abandon, before you face what hurts you. I don't even recognise what I saw in you before."

Again, the words were received in silence. The only outward sign of a reaction were tears on Alec's pained face and for a second Jace wondered what would happen now. Would he remain blocked in an incessant loop of people refusing him his humanity? His weaknesses? Of throwing his guilt in his face?

"Come on, Jace… talk to me.", Clary's voice was low. She was desperately trying to hold on to Jace, who she felt slipping way too far into Alec's mind. She was afraid for the both of them and again, she resented the fact that she knew so little of the parabatai bond in order to be of any assistance. Rune magic and pure angel blood, be damned.

Jace was whispering incomprehensible things under his breath now, his eyes half closed, privy to a scene in his mind that neither Magnus, nor Clary could see or understand.

In Alec's mind however, things had already moved along, and Jace was suddenly standing together with Alec in front of the Seelie Queen, locked in a serious argument.

"I don't care about the price to pay or the consequences. I just ask for freedom from my life and my memories."

"Oh, Shadowhunter. It is no small thing, you ask of me." A quaint smile played across her lips. "But,…", her smile deepened, "…if you choose to become a knight in my court, then I might be convinced to grant you what you seek." She stood now, to her full height which always seemed to be this much bigger than she actually was. "But, I warn you. It will not be without pain." She looked pointedly at him before stating: "Deruning never is."

"I don't care. Make me forget who I was." Alec stood in front of the Seelie Queen, his shoulders hunched, but with a determined look in his eyes.

The Queen looked satisfied with his answer. "So be it then." And with the flick of her wrist, she conjured up her wand. "There will be memories resurfacing. Things that will try and hold you back from your transformation. You'll need to resist them." And while she explained the finer details of the transformation, a couple of Seelie knights in armour grabbed Alec by his arms and shoulders, pulling his left arm forward and exposing it to the Seelie Queen. Their grip was so complete that he wouldn't dream of resisting and Jace, who was only spectator to the scene, was incapable of interfering. The Queen used the wand to draw a symbol on Alec's arm. Not dissimilar to a rune, but unknown to anything Jace knew. It felt like being burnt with ice and he could feel the pain of the wound through the bond, just as Alec's pained cry became his as if echoed across the bell tower back in the Insitute.

The Seelie Queen had marked Alec and through an unspoken command to her soldiers, they exposed Alec's side now, the parabatai rune strong and dark against his skin.

Alec closed his eyes to the nightmare in which he was tormented as the Seelie Queen lowered her wand to burn away the one rune that had defined Alec like no other these past years and the better part of his life.

—

Ouch. A bit of a mean Cliffhanger, but not too cruel. I promise, it will get better. Soon. Again, please tell me what your thoughts are, what you liked and what you didn't like and my thanks are with you for sticking this out until the end. Blessings!