“No one understands what you feel but me, and no one understands what I feel but you, so can we not feel together?”

“In some ways, we've been through something no one else can ever understand but the two of us... And it made me realize. We are always and absolutely better together.”

“What I do know is that if we are born again, I will meet you in another life, and if there is a river, you will wait on the shores for me to come to you, so that we can cross together.”

“It’s me,” he said, and cleared his throat. “I could understand if you didn’t believe me, but I swear on the Angel, Iz, it’s me.” Alec said nothing, but his grip on Jace’s hand tightened. “You don’t need to swear,” he said, and with his free hand touched the parabatai rune near his collarbone. “I know. I can feel it. I don’t feel like I’m missing a part of me anymore.”“I felt it too.” Jace took a ragged breath. “Something missing. I felt it, even with Sebastian, but I didn’t know what it was I was missing. But it was you. My parabatai.”

“What you said was true. we don't live or love in a vacuum. There are people around us who care about us who would be hurt, maybe destroyed if we let ourselves feel what we might want to feel.”

“It's been so long that I think I was unsettled by the idea of feeling like I belonged anywhere. But you made me feel like I belong.”

“We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.”