The world seemed to have forgotten that they'd once been parabatai, but Luke couldn't.

He wanted to see Valentine as the evil villain Clary saw him to be. He wanted to see him with hatred and pure fury and white-hot rage like the Lightwoods saw him. He wanted to think of him as a demon. A demon that needed to be killed before he killed them, like the Clave saw him.

But he just couldn't.

Because what everyone else had seemed to forget, he remembered.

He remembered stepping into those twin circles of fire, remembered drawing the parabatai weapon on Valentine's skin, remembered the burn of his friend's stele against his own flesh.

He saw Alec interacting with Jace and could not help but be reminded of himself and Valentine-the banter, the fights, the sparring, the unspoken language between them-that was what being parabatai meant. Understanding each other without saying a word, dying for each other.

And in the end, it's not the fact that Valentine hurt Jocelyn that makes Luke so angry. It's not the fact that he's killing and that he's dark and that he's a horrible person. Luke had seen that bitter, corrupting darkness in his friend from the start. His terrible actions now are in no way a surprise.

In the end, it's the fact that Valentine broke their oath.

That he hadn't had Luke's back when it mattered most.

The twin circles of fire blazed on the ice-cold floor of the Silent City.

Valentine was staring at him over the fire, gaze steely and firm, but a smile brightened his face as Luke stepped up to his own circle.

Ready? his friend's eyes asked.

Taking a deep breath, Luke nodded.

They stepped into their circles and the fire blazed up, illuminating Valentine's pale hair and flushed cheeks. Speaking as one, they chanted the words of the parabatia oath:

Whither thou goest, I will go;

Where thou diest, will I die

And there will I be buried:

The Angel do so to me, and more also,

If aught but death part thee and me.

With the last word Valentine stepped forward, wielding a stele. Luke met him in the center of their fire-circles and pulled back the collar of his shirt, bearing his chest. He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs and that he was sweating. Valentine's fair hair was sticky on his forehead, Luke saw as he neared, and felt a flash of relief that his friend was just as nervous as he was.

Reaching for his own stele, Luke pressed the tip to Valentine's shoulder.

The burn of the rune that Valentine was drawing against his own flesh was sharp and sudden, like being branded. Luke cried out, and heard his friend grit his teeth against the pain.

But at the same time something twined between them, connecting them, tugging at Luke's center.

It was in that moment that he realized what the Clave meant that to be parabatai was to knit your souls together.

He raised his eyes to Valentines. Blurred as they were by tears and the burn of the stele, he saw his friend smile.

Luke grinned back, as the fire's died and the Silent Brother's voices whispered, it is done.

Being a Shadowhunter was a different experience once they became parabatai.

They started mirroring each other, finishing each other's sentences. They started moving in perfect synchronization, shadowing each other, covering each other, until their fight became a skilled dance. They fought together, they bled together, they cried over wounds until Valentine told him that warriors did not cry, and then Luke did his best never to cry again.

But sometimes, when he did not manage it and he did cry or even when he was sobbing dry sobs after breaking his arm in three places, Valentine would come and grip his shoulder with gentle fingers. "I'm right here, Lucian," He said. "We're okay. We're gonna be alright. Both of us."

Today, what Luke misses the most is the use of that plural.

Us.

We.

Together.

He misses hearing his parabatai, not this cruel creature Valentine's become, voice in his ear, whispering pointless jokes just to make him laugh.

Valentine had always said that Luke was to cautious.

They'd traded places during hunts in the front and back position, but Valentine preferred the back. "I know you always look over your shoulder, Lucian," He'd laugh when Luke questioned him, "But at least now you know I'm guarding your back and you have nothing to worry about." He'd flashed him a smile. "Besides, you deserve to get a little demon blood on your hands."

Luke had grinned back and cuffed him over the head, "you just don't want to get ichor all over your new gear."

Valentine's answering laugh-free and unburdened and so young-still haunts Luke's dreams, even today.

The first Change, the first full moon, was harder than all the others.

He's run and hid in the forest when his joints started aching, but then it was the ripping and the clawing and the terrible aching pull in his chest-

He'd screamed, screamed like he never had before, because he couldn't breathe. The invisible cord that had bound him to his parabatai for more than ten years was breaking, fraying and tearing and ripping apart. He was losing part of his soul.

Luke screamed. Screamed and screamed and screamed until his cries turned to howls.

He'd fled Jocelyn, eventually.

He'd been tired and cold and so broken, half wild with self loathing and grief covered in dead werewolf blood. He was the back leader now. He'd won his place.

"Lucien?" She'd gasped, and he'd seen a little girl with bright red hair and big green eyes peek at him shyly around her leg before Jocelyn sent her away to her room.

She'd taking him in, cleaned him up and given him a new life, a new name.

Sometimes, they'd talk about Valentine, but not often. It was something that went mostly unspoken between them, the fact that they still loved this man, even with all his cruelty and terror, they loved him.

For so long, Jocelyn had been the only one to call him Lucien.

He'd been Luke for so long that he'd almost forgotten what his own name sounded like.

Until the hotel at Renwick's, with Valentine staring at him with those cold, cold eyes, and mouthing the word, the syllables running together, flowing and melodic and familiar.

"Hello, Lucian."

They'd fought, fought like they never had before, and although Luke was bruised and battered and bloody and fighting for his life, he still found something exhilarating in their battle.

Because a small part of him still saw his parabatai in this vicious, mad Shadowhunter, and he didn't want to let that go.

They hadn't really seen each other since then.

After Renwick's the Shadowhunter's had been forced into a war. It was a whirlwind of running and Jace nearly killing his pack, and Mayrse hating him and Clary running off to fight and Luke letting her, and Alec and Magnus and Council and Clave-

But then everything seemed to stop, when Jace came to him in mourning clothes the morning after the battle in Alicante, and told him he was going to kill Valentine.

For half a second Luke had almost told him no. Almost told him that he wasn't ready, that he didn't want Valentine dead, not really-

But he did.

Valentine needed to die.

Luke swallowed hard against the bile that rose in his throat in response to that thought, but it was true. Valentine was out of control and could not be reasoned with. He was no longer the fair-haired, wild brother that Luke had grown up with, that he'd tied his soul to, only to be cruelly ripped apart because Valentine hadn't been paying attention.

So he sent Jace on his way and went back to the battle, joining his pack.

It wasn't until he actually saw Valentine's body on the beach that the truth hit him.

Clary and Jocelyn were hugging somewhere to his left, and to his right the Lightwoods were huddled in a circle, Isabelle with her arms around Jace and Alec, Alec and Jace, their heads bent close together.

But all Luke saw was Valentine.

Valentine, sprawled on the sand, his fair hair whipped by the wind, his face relaxed in death. He could have been sleeping. In him, despite the hard planes and angles of his features, Luke saw his best friend. A hard lump formed in his throat and he blinked back tears.

Warriors do not cry.

Falling to his knees, Luke reached out and closed Valentine's sightless eyes with two fingers. "Ave Atque Vale, Shadowhunter," he whispered, and added silently, my brother.

Because despite everything, Valentine was still his parabatai. They'd intertwined their souls once, and even though they'd been separated long ago, that act could not leave one without scars and memories and love so fierce that it burned in him even now.

Jocelyn was looking at him with concern over Clary's shoulder. He offered her a small smile to show he was going to be alright before he stood and walked up the beach to stand alone, staring at the lake.

He spent a minute remembering. Remembering years of training and laughter. Decades of that cord that bound them tugging and pulling him in all directions. He remembered the feeling of Valentine brushing his back as they fought, two perfect halves of the other.

The world seemed to have forgotten that they'd once been parabatai, but Luke couldn't.

And he was grateful for that.