Author's Note: Because parabatai is just another word for drift-compatible. 🙂
***
Jace Wayland had known Alec Lightwood would be his parabatai from the moment he saw him. Later, hed tell journalists interested in the parabatai who'd saved the world that it happened on the training mat, in a rain of hard blows of kendo sticks that never once connected with flesh. The truth was hard to explain to anyone whod never had a parabatai. Jace, however, was one of the few people to have known such a connection and survived its loss; so when he laid eyes on Alec, standing behind their chief scientist Magnus Bane with a ream of candidate papers and a look of naked longing in his eyes, hed immediately recognized their compatibility, the sheer rightness of it.
That day, a part of himself that hed thought dead and lost along with his foster father in the cold waters of the Atlantic had come to life again. After that, he hadnt cared one whit about anything Maryse Lightwood had to say on the matter of candidate selection, even if she was the Head of the Parabatai Program, the last hope of the human race against the demons that had erupted from the ocean. Alec himself had needed some convincing, too, despite his long-held dream of becoming the pilot of one of the Shadowhunters, but it had all been more than worth it when they formed the bond that enabled humans to operate the complex machines.
Both of them knew theyd soon be risking their lives in a desperate gamble to close the Rift between Earth and the demons homeworld, together with the only other surviving Shadowhunter pilots, Clary Fairchild and her parabatai Simon Lewis. However, when Jace felt the touch of Alecs mind, his very soul, against his own, there had been no room for fear or trepidation. Instead they smiled at each other, both knowing the other shared their own joyful sense of wonder. And for the first time since the day Michael Wayland's mind had been ripped from his, Jace felt complete.
More than that - through Alec he knew warmth and acceptance in a way his father's harsh love had never made him feel. Together, they could save the world; Jace was sure of it.
***
