Chapter Text
Alexander was going to die. He was going to be ripped apart by the demon barreling towards him and there was nothing Magnus could do.
He tried to get his feet under him, to push himself up; to gather his strength and do something, anything, to prevent his worst nightmare for happening. But he couldn’t, Magnus could barely keep himself conscious and upright even in the position he was in, groveling pathetically on his knees.
How did it end up that way? The fighting was supposed to be over. Valentine was done, the Clave traitors had been dealt with; the Downworlder mutiny had successfully been averted, though Magnus couldn’t deny his shame for having a hand in almost causing the uprising to begin in the first place. But it was done. Valentine was dead, killed by the hands of his own flesh and blood; if that wasn’t karma then Magnus didn’t know what was.
So how did they end up there?
The skittering little buggers Magnus would have had no problem disposing off with just a wave of his hand any other time; why now? Why here?—why them?
There must have been a reason; demons wouldn’t usually attack with this much force without something else being at work behind the scene. The whole thing left nothing but a bitter taste in Magnus’s mouth, but that could have just been the blood he was coughing up.
Alexander was fighting all of them by himself and Magnus had never felt more powerless and useless than he did in that moment. It was a terrible feeling.
But try as he might, he just couldn’t get his feet under him.
It was a physical exhaustion unlike any he’d felt before and he had experienced plenty. Emotional and mental exhaustion; sadness beyond words and devastation; fear and anger bundled up into one overwhelming feeling of just rage. But that kind of bone deep tiredness; the inability to lift up his arms or even muster up the strength to gather his magic usefully, the kind where he could barely keep his eyes open much less even think about getting himself upright and keeping himself that way; that was new, and it was a terrible feeling. Especially because he could sense Alexander getting weaker and weaker behind him, his movements were getting much less graceful and precise. He was missing demons at his side that he could have usually killed with his eyes closed. Alexander was also beyond exhausted, and yet he was still there, he was still fighting while Magnus could do nothing but be a useless spectator in the fight. He didn’t think he had ever been more disappointed or frustrated at himself than he was at that moment.
All of a sudden there was a shockwave of demon energy and Magnus could smell the stench of the creature before he could even see its foul presence swooping down on them, fast. Too fast for Alexander to be able to do anything given his state; his entire body covered head to toe in blood, ichor and sweat, exhausted beyond words; he could barely lift his arms up past his shoulders and yet there he was swinging at the demons still unrelenting in their attack. Magnus had never seen a sight more beautiful and awe inspiring in his life, and yet, he could do nothing but watch from the sidelines as Alexander continued to put his body on the line and pushed himself to his absolute limit
Alexander was going to die bloody—like they all did—and Magnus could do nothing.
He could never do anything when it mattered the most; he couldn’t protect his mother from dying, he couldn’t protect Ragnor from dying; he couldn’t stop people from leaving him over and over again even though he would have done absolutely everything and given absolutely anything to make them stay. Ultimately whatever he did was never enough. Everything he was was never enough. He was never enough and deep down he’d accepted that he was never going to be enough.
And then Alexander showed up suddenly in that club and turned his world completely on his head.
It wasn’t going to last, he knew that, he expected that, deep down he was prepared for that; as prepared as he could ever be, but it never made it any easier standing by helpless watching the receding backs of the people he loved disappearing into the horizon.
He was watching Alexander’s back, but it wasn’t receding, it wasn’t disappearing into the distance out of his reach; walking further and further away leaving Magnus in the dust holding the door.
Alexander’s back was right there, within reaching distance but he might as well have been a million miles away because Magnus couldn’t get to him no matter how hard he tried. It was the most terrified he’d ever felt and he’d experienced more than most.
He was staring at Alexander’s back, but it wasn’t going away. He wasn’t going away.
‘I can’t live without you,’ he’d said—what did that even mean? That he couldn’t survive if Magnus wasn’t there to help him out with trouble—if Magnus wasn’t around to keep the wards intact and portal them every which way always? That he couldn’t carry on doing his job if Magnus decided to just stop being available to answer his or any of their calls for assistance.
Or did he mean that he couldn’t stand waking up and not seeing Magnus’s face the first thing he opened his eyes? That he couldn’t bear the thought of going to sleep at night without Magnus’s face being the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes? Did he mean he couldn’t imagine a world where Magnus wasn’t there showering him in kisses as often as compliments and looking at him like his existence was the last beam of the setting sun shooting out across the sky in the horizon? Or did he mean that he couldn’t live without Magnus’s presence in his life, the same way Magnus couldn’t live without his?
Could he have meant that?
Instead of turning his back and walking away, leaving Magnus to stare longingly; mourning all the memories they didn’t get a chance to make, the possibilities of a future he was taking away with him and the chance at happiness that he’d desired for so long; Alexander turned his back and stayed, when he should have walked away; when he should have run. Magnus would not have begrudged him that, in fact, Magnus would have given absolutely anything to have him run then, because the beast was barreling down on them, one of his father’s favoured creations for all the havoc and destruction they reined. But Alec was unmoving, steadfast and strong even though he was nearly dead on his feet.
And yet Magnus was on his knees, groveling like a wretch. Just earlier that day he’d called himself the High Warlock of Brooklyn, but look at him now. It might have been karma for the way he’d unfairly treated Alexander after their heartbreaking yet mutual estrangement. He found himself falling back on old, bad, habits and Alexander became the victim of his unfair and uncalled for bitterness.
Maybe this was his punishment for all the sins of his past—they were many—and he was doomed to keep on staring, reaching out at the back of people he loved walking away from him.
But Alexander wasn’t walking away.
And he was going to die because of it.
Then all of a sudden all he saw was red; blood red, clouding his vision and invading his senses. He could smell the stench of blood and the way it reeked like burned metal. It wasn’t his blood that he smelled.
It was Alexander’s.
He could smell the poison, he could hear the screeching, he could feel the vibration of Alexander’s heart thundering in his chest, but that could have been his own. He could feel the heat of the fire lapping at his consciousness. He could hear the cackling of voices; a myriad of them all combined into one echoing, thundering noise inside his brain. He could feel the palms of his hands getting hotter and hotter like his blood was boiling under his skin. His hands should have been charred and blistered – seared down to the bone, but he felt no pain because that fire was a part of him, it always was and it always will be, but over time he’d gotten used to ignoring the seductive voice calling his name with such familiarity.
The voice used to be his mother’s; the soft lulling tones that sang him to sleep at night. The older he grew and the more he began to forget what his mother’s voice used to sound like, it morphed into a voice that was more of the same and yet so different at the same time. The familiar enchanting purr that had the ability to make him do absolutely everything and Magnus did nearly everything for that voice—but he never accepted—and so Camille’s voice, twisted and mutilated, sounding like a low guttural snarl coming from a throat choking on wet coagulated blood would curse at him and spit at him and threaten everything he held dear.
But in that dark alley that night, with his energy completely drained and his magic depleted; with his barriers down and walls unprotected, he came to hear the voice again. This time, the voice reached deep inside his soul with a poisoned claw and grabbed onto his weakness; it tore through his already damaged barriers and latched on.
This time Magnus couldn’t turn away, he couldn’t pretend to be unhearing, he couldn’t focus on anything else besides the soft, deep rumble and the hint of the New York accent and the way he would sometimes skip the last syllables in a word in a way that was distinct only to him.
Instead of his mother’s soft soothing voice reassuring him or Camille’s seductive purr alluring him, this time the voice said only one thing in the voice that was so familiar and yet so unfamiliar.
‘Magnus,’ Alexander’s voice said, ‘Will you watch me die?’
And that was all it took for Magnus to let it in.
Magnus could hear the voice in his head howling with laughter, insolent and vindictive; cocky yet gleeful, but he could only concentrate on the overpowering ruby tint that now clouded his vision. He could feel the familiar tingle of magic accruing at his fingertips, growing larger and larger and more concentrated, swirling with tinges of pitch black that radiated off his very being. It wasn’t just his magic—the magic he kept locked away deep inside himself never to see the light of day. It was magic being channeled to him from a place far beyond reality and human comprehension; from a place he’d rather forget even existed and the ties he’d sooner severe with his own two hands.
And yet there he was accepting the power like it was his for the taking; like it belonged to him.
‘Magnus, will you let me die?’ Alexander’s voice said again.
And in that moment, Magnus no longer saw red; he could only see pitch black as everything in his surrounding melted into nothing until it was only him, Alexander and the demon, before the power exploded from deep inside him, eradicating every single Shax demon within a hundred feet of their position.
Magnus got to his feet and without even thinking about it, flicked his wrist barely a fraction and he felt rather than saw Alexander’s confused, pained yelp as he was flung through the air and crashed into the wall at the far end of the alley. He was down and he was unmoving, but he was alive and breathing and in that moment, that was all that mattered.
The Asmodei was close; Alexander’s blade had impaled it through the leg and already the limb was burning away like cinder ash in a fireplace. The demon was dying quick but not quick enough.
Magnus didn’t feel the talons when it pierced him through the chest, ripped through his insides, sending them both of them soaring deeper into the mouth of the alley and impaling him against the far end wall. Everything happened barely in a split second, all it took was a pulsating wave of magic before the already disintegrating demon perished in a blistering fiery burst.
But just before it disintegrated, he could hear the sound of an almost feminine voice laughing, coming from deep inside the demon’s fiery depths, her voice both melodic and gravely; the language she spoke wasn’t one he was familiar with, and Magnus was familiar with most. It was ancient, long forgotten, or not spoken at all, only by those who already spoke it. It was the language of the greater demons and yet Magnus could somehow understand it rumbling inside his head like the growling of a beast.
He could hear it spitting wrath and fury when it said, ‘Nephilim spilled the blood of my child; I will have blood as recompense, Wǽrloga, Child of Asmodeus.’
And then there was nothing.
No sound, no sight, no hearing; no nothing, only the feel of his heart pounding against his ribcage and the blood he could already feel backing up out of his damaged lung and into his windpipe. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t inhale oxygen into his body but there was no pain and Alexander was alive and for that moment, that was enough.
Everything after that happened as if Magnus was watching it and listening to it from deep under water; except that the water was a river of blood and he was drowning in it.
His mother’s body was drenched in blood much like that and for a moment, Magnus was nine years old again; he’d just seen his mother dead and his step father’s fury and he’d never felt more terrified in his life, but then Alexander all of a sudden appeared in his periphery and Magnus couldn’t keep his smile at bay even when his gaze slipped from Alexander’s beautiful concerned face and the dirty, unyielding ground came rushing up to greet him. He tried to prepare himself for the impact, not that he could have, his descent was too quick and the ground was immalleable; he couldn’t even muster the energy to bring his arms up to protect himself—did he even have arms still attached to his shoulders? He couldn’t feel anything other than frigid numbness.
But the ground stopped before it reached him, about a foot away from his face and Magnus could do nothing but stare dumbfounded at the filth and the grime on the stone pavement so close in his sight, and that was when the pain all of a sudden flared up.
It was like fire in his chest, raging through his insides; intense and agonising. It was like thousands of little needles lining his chest cavity, stabbing into his lungs every time he tried to take a breath. It was like inhaling burning lava through a straw while he was trying not to choke on his own blood.
It was like dying, or what Magnus assumed dying felt like; it was always such an abstract concept to him. People died, yes, but he knew he wouldn’t, and to suddenly find himself in that position; dying, choking on his own bodily fluids, feeling his insides burning and the blistering hot blood trickling down his arm and through his fingers; feeling it being pumped out of his body where it belonged, onto the cold pavement under his knees with each waning pump of his heart. It was an odd sensation.
Was this what people truly felt before they died—a bitter sense of disappointment and frustration instead of fear and sadness?
That was the only thing Magnus could think in that moment. He was dying. His body had failed him, or rather; he had failed to protect his body. He’d been stupid and careless and he let himself get caught completely off guard. Nothing in his four hundred years of experience had been of use. He let lesser beings get the better of him. He was going to die and it was disappointing and messy and it was ugly and he’d never been angrier at himself than he was in that moment.
But then all of a sudden Alexander was in his line of sight once again. His chest had exploded with pain and he heard himself cry out without even realizing the sound had left his lips but Alexander was there and Magnus remembered that he hadn’t walked away even when he could have. He turned his back to Magnus the way everyone in his life always did but it wasn’t the same. Alexander wasn’t the same. He was never the same. He was an anomaly that fell into Magnus’s lap and for some reason stayed.
He stayed when he could have left.
He stayed when he should have left.
Magnus found solace in the fact that at the end, he died to protect the person who meant most to him. He’d failed to do so, so many times in his life, in so many instances in his history. He’d watched the people he loved most walk away from him. He’d let people he cared about die bloody, but at the end of his long life, he died to protect Alexander and somehow, he was okay with that.
Alexander was speaking but Magnus couldn’t concentrate on anything else besides his eyes. Alexander spoke more with his gaze than he ever did with his words; it was a quality that was the most endearing yet the most frustrating because Magnus could listen to Alexander speak for hours, and yet, Magnus was always the one saying the most. But Alexander always spoke with the intensity in his eyes; the sparkling hazel that would occasionally bleed into the mesmerizing green; Magnus would always find himself getting lost in Alexander’s gaze just as he did in that moment. He could barely inhale oxygen into his body and the flames of agony raging through his chest were both frigid in his bones and like lapping fire in his veins.
Alexander was speaking and Magnus tried to listen because he didn’t speak often, but when he did, he’d only say what truly mattered and that’s what made Magnus love him so much.
In that instance, Magnus realized that it was true. He did love Alexander. Alexander said those words more than once, and he’d reciprocated more than once but there was still a small piece of his soul that kept questioning whether it was true; whether Alexander really did love him, or more importantly, whether Magnus really truly loved him back.
He’d loved many people, many times in his life, and every time they left they took a little bit of his love with them until a point where Magnus wasn’t sure whether he had any more love left to give.
But he did, and he gave it to Alexander with the hope that this time, his love would mean as much to the other person as their love meant to him.
Magnus was used to protecting others; it came with the territory. He was used to people needing his help, needing his magic, needing his knowledge and his riches; needing absolutely everything he had to give except his love. But Alexander didn’t want anything besides his love, besides him.
‘I can’t live without you,’ he’d said and Magnus wanted to say ‘I don’t want to live without you,’ in return but he could no longer find his voice.
Alexander was dipping in and out of focus; his beautiful eyes wide and teary, Magnus wanted to tell him not to cry, but he couldn’t find the words. He couldn’t remember how to speak. He could hear the sound of a voice calling him from the darkness; calling him a name that wasn’t his, a name that didn’t belong to him; he was Magnus and he would always be Magnus.
His mother used to call him a different name; his old name, the one he could no longer even remember. Sometimes he could still even hear her words; ‘Tidur, anakku sayang,’ that she’d say before putting him to sleep at night; before she realized what he was; before her care turned to fear; before her love turned to disgust; before he could only remember her words dripping with venom and her voice distorted and mutilated; back when he could hear her words resounding like a song in his ear and the way she used to roll her r’s; back when she was mother instead of another nightmare that plagued his sleep.
But the way Alexander called his name; the way he said it almost with reverence, like he took much pleasure in the way the name rolled off his tongue. It wasn’t like the way Camille called his name, like the name belonged to her and she’d say it with a seductive purr, almost in a sing-song voice, like she was both summoning him and teasing him at the same time. It wasn’t like the way Catarina called his name, like it was both a source of fondness and a source of great frustration at the same time; the same way she’d say Ragnor’s name in the exact same tone.
But that was back then, Catarina hadn’t mentioned the name Ragnor in a while and Magnus didn’t deign to remind her. It was still a topic of great sadness and tragedy for the both of them and most of the time, Magnus had to force himself to stop drinking at the point where he’d almost forget that he used to have a friend named Ragnor.
But the way Alexander said the name Magnus was like the name was meant to be said by him in that tone, with that voice and the way he was always so light on the M; like he was as fond of saying the name as Magnus was of hearing him say it.
He wanted to hear him say it one last time, but he could no longer hear.
There was only darkness.
--
The thing Magnus remembered the most clearly were the mosquitoes. There were always so many come the dusk, just as the light of the setting sun fully disappeared behind the hills in the distance, plunging the paddy fields and the little ramshackle huts scattered through the little village landscape into darkness. When the faintest of lights would shine out the windows from the oil lamps the villagers would burn inside their homes, and the distant crowing of the birds flying overhead and the mooing of the buffalos that plowed the paddy fields from their shed, resting for the night, would sound in the background.
Magnus always hated the mosquitoes but he always tried to not kill them regardless, up until the point when being in the immediate vicinity of him killed them anyway and that was before his mother realized what he was. Perhaps in a way, it had been the contributing factor to her realization.
Then she died; she killed herself in her own bed because she could no longer stand the shame of being responsible for bringing a monster into the world.
An abomination, she said. Malapetaka was the word she used; anak sial was what she called him. He would bring on the end of the world, she’d mutter in a hysterical rage and he could do nothing but pull his knees closer to his chest and continue listening to her tirade from his hiding place in the dirt and the sand under the house, leaning against one of the wooden stilts and watching her shadow walking back and forth above his head through the cracks in the ratty floorboards.
But he didn’t cry.
He never cried except once and he vowed to never cry again.
But then in this memory; the twisted nightmare of his past that he found himself reliving, all of a sudden his step father was standing in front of him, yelling at him, cursing at him in a language he’d long pretended not to know and Magnus became so angry he saw only red. His step father had his hands on him, holding him down, touching him; his skin cold to the touch almost like ice. Magnus hated the cold; he always did because that was the clearest memory he had of how he felt on the inside for decades; before Catarina, before Ragnor…
Before Alexander.
He knew an Alexander once and the onslaught of memories slammed into him like a battering ram; a sheepish smile; gorgeous hazel eyes opening slowly at the dawn, framed by a halo of shimmering gold, a grin; a head of tousled black hair and gentle hands, calloused and strong, reaching out to caress his face. But he blinked and once again it was his step father’s face bearing down on him, his expression ugly, twisted in rage. His hands were still on him but they weren’t just his hands, they were many hands clawing at him, tearing at his limbs, scratching his skin and ripping him apart and he found himself too powerless to fight back. He couldn’t lift his arms up to resist or to struggle, he couldn’t inhale oxygen into his lungs; it was like his chest was on fire and the oxygen was scorched ash, burning away like a rotten limb. It was a leg first and the sound of a terrible screech assailing his senses and the stench of a thousand corpses condensed into one horrid, mutated creature.
Alexander was going to die bloody and Magnus was too powerless to save him.
But he had. Alexander was alive. He killed the demon. He killed all the demons, even the one that raged within him; the one who sang to him with his mother’s voice and the one who seduced him with Camille’s; the one who spoke to him softly in Alexander’s voice, with his beautiful, kind face always hovering somewhere in the back of his mind like a fond memory that constantly lingered but was always just out of reach.
But this time Alexander wasn’t asking him a question, he wasn’t asking whether Magnus would sit back and watch him die. He didn’t ask Magnus to let him in. He didn’t ask Magnus to say yes. He said, ‘please…let us,’ over and over again with a voice that was too raw; a voice that was dripping with too much emotion; a voice that had seen tears and the sound of sobbing far too recently.
So Magnus listened this time. He was too tired, too drained. He was too powerless and he wanted to just lie back down and do nothing; he wanted to be nothing, just the way he felt on the insides too many times for too many years.
Alexander’s voice was too soothing and too close; the warm droplet that splashed onto his face felt too real and Magnus just surrendered to the darkness until he became nothing. He spared a small smile to the shadows before he was enveloped and then there was only pain.
Magnus had felt pain before, but it was a different sort of pain; the kind that couldn’t truly be healed by magic, only by time; the pain that always seemed to linger somewhere in his periphery like a shadow.
But even compared to that, there was little in comparison to the kind of all-encompassing sort of agony that all of a sudden assailed his senses. Once in a while for what seemed like an eternity, Magnus could perhaps forget that it was there for a moment’s respite. Other times the pain would come at him like a beast, unwilling to be ignored, up in his face like the hurt had just been inflicted. It was like the beast that raged within him, threatening to tear him apart from the inside out, clawing at his insides and tearing at his organs and burning the tissue under his skin.
It was agony.
It was terror.
It was like dying, over and over again for eternity and in that moment, Magnus actually wished for death.
But death never came, as it would never come for him. He’d been turned away over and over again, left at the door by everyone he loved and by death itself and it was an agony that he knew he’d never truly be free of.
But he could see eyes looking at him through the darkness and he latched onto the memory; he latched onto the voice; the sound of a woman’s voice, older and weary, singing a sweet tune in a language he couldn’t remember; the voice that mutated into that of a Siren, as beautiful as it was dangerous but he always found himself floating closer and closer to that voice no matter how much his heart warned him against it, no matter how much it pulled him away; the voice that morphed again and again; a woman’s voice, strong and steadfast and familiar; straightforward and no-nonsense; a man’s voice; perpetually pernickety with a soothing accent; a woman’s voice, begging for help and a little girl’s, scared and confused; and thousands of voices he’d heard through the centuries, every gender and countless languages and in the end it all faded away into silence but for a single, deep voice with a hint of a New York accent saying his name;
“Magnus.”
And then there was nothing.
--
Slowly; painfully slow, his senses started returning to him, one by one. Sound and smell and taste; everything was far too sweet and his surrounding was far too loud.
He remembered feeling the magical currents raging through his body, but it was like it happened in a nightmare. Like it happened to another person’s body and he’d been around, hovering like a spectator, helpless and unable to stop it. Unable to stop himself. It was his body and it was his magic, but at the same time, it wasn’t his magic. It was remnants of a power that didn’t belong to him, that didn’t have any business being in his body. He’d accepted the power; he’d let it in. He allowed the darkness to course through his veins and he knew, in a bitter part of his heart that fragments of that power would be left behind, latching onto his soul. He could feel it there, hovering, tainting him; bleeding into the bright spots of his mind and his spirit.
But there was also a darkness that hovered close; it wasn’t a darkness inside him, but a darkness that was familiar nonetheless; one that hung in the air around him, hissing at him, spitting at him, growling at him in a language he understood once when it spoke into his mind. It wasn’t his darkness, but the darkness was close to him and he could feel it bleeding into the air like a cancer.
All he could remember was the dark; all he could see was the dark; that, and the silence. It was suffocating and it was lonely and it was terrifying, but it was the pain that kept him grounded.
There were hands on him; there were spirits shining brightly around him. There were sounds of footsteps walking around and the hushed whispers of voices that he knew but couldn’t place. He was lonely, but he wasn’t alone, that was the immediate first thing he realized.
The pain not only kept him grounded, but it also kept him rooted in place; moving hurt, breathing hurt, thinking hurt, just existing hurt, like his entire body was one giant festering wound, but there were hands on his and somewhere in the darkest, most jaded part of his soul, he realized that he knew who those hands belonged to.
They were strong, the fingers were long and calloused, but they were warm and they were familiar and they were the hands that once upon a time stroked the side of his face with such gentleness that it unknowingly unlocked a part of his soul that he’d kept locked away for centuries.
Alexander… that was his name. That was the person those hands belonged to.
But Alexander wasn’t there, was he? He was… somewhere else—somewhere in a distant place, in a distant memory out of reach. Magnus could still feel the tip of fingers brushing against the hem of Alexander’s jacket. The jacket that smelled like leather and blood and sweat and metal and Alexander’s familiar musky scent. The jacket that had been torn to pieces and drenched in blood and grime and ichor. The jacket that he wore when he died, when the demon tore him in half; when the demon flayed him like cattle; when the demon ripped through him with its claws laced with poison and its teeth dripping with venom.
When Magnus threw him against the wall, out of its path; when Alexander hit the stone wall with the thump and a painful moan.
When he landed on the ground, hurt, but alive.
Alexander was alive, Magnus had to remind himself. He’d saved him, and the thought brought on an overwhelming sense of relief Magnus didn’t know he could ever have felt again.
Alexander was alive. That was all that mattered.
The ground wasn’t stained red with his blood and that was all that mattered.
Crimson, Ragnor would have said, as he’d always been a stickler for the details, as Magnus himself was, but seldom in regards to colour. To Ragnor blue was not blue when it was azure or teal and crimson and maroon and burgundy and carmine were not the same thing. To Magnus green was green and blue was blue and red was red. The only thing that truly mattered was how good it looked on him.
But hazel – hazel was a distinctive colour in its own special category.
Semantics, Ragnor would have scoffed with a derisive eye-roll and Magnus would have either argued about Ragnor being a pot calling the kettle black, or he would have shooed him off to go look at one of his gaudy paintings.
It was weird for a colour to bring on such an intense feeling of comfort inside him, especially for one that wasn’t even really a colour. Was it brown or green? That was always the pressing question; brown or green? Green or brown? Eventually Magnus realized that it didn’t matter because hazel came to represent just one thing most of all.
“Alexander.”
Seeing the way his eyes widened, the way the green was overlapping the brown in a way that almost made it sparkle; seeing the relief that flooded his expression and the way he almost exhaled the name when it came tumbling from his lips, it filled Magnus with such a feeling of warmth and a sense of relief that he found himself unable to do anything other than stare.
“Magnus,” came the almost hopeful cry as Alexander rushed to his side. “How are you feeling?” he asked, taking a seat at Magnus’s side and quickly reaching for his hand.
Magnus didn’t really have time to process what was happening; he could barely recall what had actually happened, but Alexander was there at his side, his worry as apparent as the redness of his eyes so Magnus latched onto him with as much desperation in return. “I’ve felt better,” he said, “I’ve probably looked better too.”
Alexander smiled at that and Magnus didn’t think he’d ever seen a sight more gorgeous. “You look absolutely perfect,” he said.
Once again Alexander proved that he didn’t have to speak often to be able to say the things Magnus wanted and needed to hear the most. “You on the other hand,” he found himself saying, “Look dreadful, my love. When was the last time you slept?”
“I think you slept enough for the both of us,” said Alexander. His tone turning bittersweet which sobered Magnus up instantly. “It’s been almost a week since the ambush,” he explained and all of a sudden Magnus could see every second of it stacked up high on Alexander’s tired shoulders.
“You’ve been here the entire time?” he found himself asking before he could even stop himself.
“Of course,” Alexander said, like he was offended that Magnus even thought to ask that question. “We all have,” he added.
“We?” For a split second Magnus couldn’t even begin to fathom who ‘we’ could possibly be, before there was a high pitched squeal sounding from the door and all of a sudden he felt a body – and then a second – almost barreling into him. It jarred the part of his chest that had felt strangely numb; causing him to wince when the ache came like a firecracker burst and an involuntary pained gasp escaped his lips. The figures half sprawled over him immediately stilled in place.
“Sorry,” said Clary and Isabelle immediately, looking up at him concernedly and half guilty. Magnus hated being the reason for that look so he quickly reached over to cup both of them by the side of their cheeks, running his thumb across the length of their cheekbones in a reassuring manner.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, my dears,” he said, and felt the warmness spreading through his insides when Clary and Isabelle both smiled at him.
It was an unnerving feeling, but not one that he disliked. It felt good to be wanted and to be missed.
He glanced over at Alexander who had straightened up and was standing back, giving Clary and Isabelle room at Magnus’s side, his expression melancholic almost, pensive, but he looked up when he sensed Magnus’s eyes on him and the smile that spread across his face then was worth all the precious stones in the world.
It felt strange being present and in the moment then, seeing the people who would walk in and out of his room – something he frowned on most of the time – from Clary and Isabelle to Jace and Luke to Raphael. Raphael took a bit of coaxing before he would even enter the room fully; much less actually approach the bed. Magnus couldn’t really blame him and he didn’t. The relationship between him and Raphael wasn’t something that could be explained simply. He considered Raphael almost like a son, but not really in a parent-child sort of way, not the way the Nephilim treated their offspring and definitely not the way mundanes did. But when Raphael made his way into the room, for the first time that day barren of visitors sans Alexander – who all of a sudden remembered that he was needed in the kitchen for some inexplicable reason – his steps strangely slow and cautious and his eyes looking at anything and everything except in Magnus’s direction, Magnus knew that something wasn’t right and deep down he knew what it was.
After all he’d felt the same kind of fear many times through the centuries.
The very real fear of loss.
But unlike his own experiences with it in the past, he was still there; he was still around; alive and kicking. He could still reach out and embrace Raphael when he buried his face in his shoulder and latched on like he was afraid of letting go; he could still hold on just as tightly with the kind of sympathy born from familiarity and experience, the kind he wouldn’t wish even on his worst enemies. He understood what Raphael was feeling and he knew that Alexander empathized with him the same way and that was why he stepped out, giving Raphael and his moment of vulnerability the privacy he would never have asked for. Magnus appreciated it on Raphael’s behalf just as much.
It was weird, to put it simply, everything that happened to him over the course of the last… couple of weeks? Sometimes it actually felt like he was on the outside looking in at all the people who kept passing through his life and his room. Clary and Isabelle were slightly less befuddling because he could somehow understand what they felt and the way they thought; they were more similar to him in that sense than most people. He understood holding on to a loved one and wanting to be near them, wanting to hold them close and in that he understood Clary and Isabelle the best.
The fact that he was the focus of their worry and their concern was something he understood maybe a little less. After all, he was more experienced being the worry-er, than he was being on the receiving end.
But between Clary and Isabelle and Luke and Raphael and the oddly absent Simon, Magnus didn’t know where to even begin focusing his confusion. It was something he could safely say that he’d never truly experienced in his four-hundred years of life. Sure he had people love him, or a version of love that felt good enough at the time; he had people care about him – perhaps the kind he’d come to associate as care because that was the only kind he ever really knew. But the kind of selfless love and care and worry that he found himself being the subject of… that was slightly more bewildering.
At first he thought that he was still stuck in some sort of dreamland, a fantasy he’d created to compensate for everything he wished he had in life, but the dream continued without a record-scratch and a fade-away to black, and at some point Magnus was forced to come to the realization that somehow this was actually reality; that this was actually real and it wasn’t happening just inside his own head. He was forced to realize that these people were actually there, they were real just like he was and their care and their concern and their… love? – was actually directed towards him and it didn’t fail to give him pause every time the thought of if crossed his mind.
And then there was Catarina.
Catarina was his oldest and closest friend in the world – really the only one left – so to see her by his side when he opened his eyes, her eyes sharp, almost a furious glare, really wasn’t the most unexpected thing. She’d gone off on him then, her grief half concealed and buried under a thick layer of anger that he could see right through so he just sat back and accepted it silently, it was the least he could do after what he put her through after all.
But when it was all said and done, after Catarina had released all the frustration and the fear that was in her heart, that was when her real emotions shined through and she frowned and hugged him and held him the way he hadn’t been held in centuries; not since he was eight years old and his mother didn’t yet look at him like he was her biggest regret.
Magnus finally let his tears fall the way they hadn’t fallen in centuries. Catarina just held him close but said nothing because it wasn’t her words that Magnus needed; it was just her.
Alexander on the other hand was an entity entirely of his own spectacular merit and amazingness. Magnus really had no words to truly describe Alexander to the common folk.
Alexander was special; the kind of person that comes into someone’s life only once and somehow, for some reason he ended up destined to be in Magnus’s. More so than that, he chose to do so; he chose to stay when so many in his place would have left, when so many had left and Magnus didn’t think there were words in the common tongue or otherwise to describe just how much it meant to him. But somehow with Alexander, he knew he didn’t have to. With Alexander he didn’t have to say much and he had even less to prove; he didn’t have to constantly prove his love because Alexander just knew. The only thing he had to do was love Alexander as much as Alexander loved him in return, and to Magnus nothing in the world was easier than that.
Alexander was easy to love; he might be hard to understand or get a grasp on a lot of the times, but to love him was the easiest. Magnus couldn’t tell what he was thinking most of the time but he could always tell what he was feeling, especially when those feelings were directed towards Magnus – it was easier to see than to believe sometimes but Magnus was trying just like Alexander was trying. Their very relationship was a poster child for trial-and-error – a Shadowhunter and a Downworlder – more so than that, a warlock (and some might argue, the warlock) who really could have ever imagined? Certainly not Magnus and certainly not the Clave.
But Alexander had just taken it all in his stride. It wasn’t easy, as it would never be easy, but Alexander stayed when he could have left. It would have been so much easier on him and on the both of them if he had. But one thing Magnus and Alexander both had in common was the fact that they were never about taking the easy way out, that’s what made them the kind of leaders they were – the fact that they didn’t easily back down. And if Magnus wasn’t the kind to back down in his beliefs and his life, he definitely wasn’t about to start doing it in his relationships, especially when it was obvious, perhaps for the first time, that the person he loved, loved him back just as much. If that wasn’t reason enough, then nothing else would ever be.
It was him and Alexander in bed that morning. Everyone else had finally left his apartment at his insistence. After the week they had, Magnus knew he owed them all breakfast every day for all eternity.
He could see the beam of the dawn illuminating the tops of the buildings outside his window. He was awake, as he’d been for at least a couple of hours. Really, he’d probably slept enough to last him a century over the last week or so and as it stood, there were far more interesting things to focus his attention on in that moment than boring old sleep.
Alexander was asleep beside him, his eye closed and his lashes thick and dark and almost brushing against the highest point of his cheekbones, one hand tucked under his cheek. Magnus couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight.
He’d known many Shadowhunters through his life and he always thought he’d had them all down pegged: a militaristic organization of mindless followers, creating havoc in the name of order and imposing their superiority at every turn. The last word Magnus would ever use to describe a Shadowhunter would have been vulnerable, but that was exactly what Alexander was at that moment; exposed, unprotected, with his barriers completely down, showing the kind of trust in Magnus that he ever only showed his own kind, perhaps not even then.
Magnus found himself reaching over and with the softest touch, running his thumb across the side of Alexander’s cheek. He wasn’t all that surprised when the briefest contact caused him to stir. His brows furrowing for a split-second before his eyes actually opened. The moment his gaze finally focused and he found Magnus staring back at him, he smiled. It was just a small quirk of the lips, but to Magnus it was the most gorgeous sight to behold.
“Hi,” he said, almost a whisper. His hand trailing down Alexander’s torso to rest on the curve of his waist, causing him to shudder slightly.
“Hi,” said Alexander, his voice slightly hoarse with sleep. “How are you feeling?” he asked and Magnus couldn’t help but smile at the question.
“Much better now that I’ve seen your smile,” he said.
“I’m serious, Magnus,” said Alexander with a small pout although he would undoubtedly deny it being such.
“So am I, Alexander,” he replied, “You just have the innate ability to make everything better.”
Alexander turned silent then, his eyes darkening slightly which made Magnus a little concerned.
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly.
“What? Why? You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for,” he said, wracking his brain for anything that would have caused the sudden apology.
Alexander didn’t answer for a while and Magnus could feel his concern rising.
“I’m sorry you got so hurt,” he said suddenly, “I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to protect us both. It was my job and I failed at it. I should have been stronger or faster or –”
“Oh, Alexander,” said Magnus, raising a hand up to stop him, reaching out to cup the side of his face. “You didn’t fail at anything. You protected us both by yourself for longer than you should have had to. I was the one who should be sorry; for not being stronger, for letting you shoulder the bulk of everything, for not being able to protect us both. You were the strongest, most magnificent sight I’ve ever seen in my life, Alexander; we’re both only alive because of you. Sure, we didn’t come out of if completely unscathed, but the alternative would have been… even more unspeakable. So… please don’t apologize. Please don’t think you failed in any way. We’re both alive because of you.”
Alexander stayed silent through Magnus’s entire speech, gazing at him intently with his gorgeous eyes.
“Plus, I heard chicks dig scars,” added Magnus after a while, “I wonder if it applies to incredibly hot, tall, dark and handsome Shadowhunters as well.”
Alexander’s frown morphed into a smiled then, which then grew into a wide grin that Magnus would never get tired of looking at.
“I suppose I really have no other choice in the matter,” said Alexander, “I’ll just have to learn to live with it.”
Magnus couldn’t help it, he laughed at that. The sudden jolt was painful on his body but the laughter itself was like a balm on his soul, even more so when Alexander joined him soon after.
It felt good being alive. Magnus didn’t think there would come a time where he could truly believe those words in his heart again.
The End