Chapter Text
Alec doesn’t let a sound leave his lips even as his body screams in agony. In the silence his quiet anguish leeches into the very atmosphere, until the very air is drenched with his pain. But no one cares and the wards of Alicante’s banishment room greedily devour his suffering.
Alec finds that he hates everything. Even everything that he once held dear, he hates fervently.
Alec doesn’t know if this is his new normal, or if the hate will fade when the pain does —if the pain ever fades.
And in this moment of weakness Alec hates with a fury that is only matched by anguish he’s being tortured with. The Clave official is taking his time. Going as slow as he possibly can, as if Alec’s torture delights him as much as it hurts Alec.
And so Alec hates everything. There are no emotions left that can survive the pain besides hate. Even if that hate stems first from love.
The worst part. The part that hurts the most —as he’s coughing up blood and bile and tempted to bite through his own tongue, to end this on his own terms, rather than the Clave prolonging his deruning in an attempt to kill him.
The worst part is that Alec made a deal. Max will be spared, the only one who will be. He’s already been taken away and Alec picked his guardians, the Penhallows. They aren’t disgraced circle members and they will finish raising Max and someday, Max will be the HOTI in New York. Max who is the only sibling left who Alec could try and protect and so he had. Max, the little brother, who still betrayed him, but had been innocent of the depth of consequences they would face.
And Alec rages at this worst, the truest betrayal, that Izzy and Jace hadn't just risked Alec, but they'd risked Max as well.
Jace and Izzy know the true risk of their betrayal, but Max is too young to have been taught, and so Alec protected him once more, for one last time, since Alec now understand no one else will.
And now, as the stele presses against his last rune, his parabatai rune, he loses the fight and he screams.
It’s agonizingly slow and for once it’s not the Clave officials fault. It’s the bond itself that fights, that struggles to stay tied to his soul and his body and just like every moment in this battle, Alec loses.
Jace is stripped away from him and as Alec feels a piece of his soul being torn from him, he wonders bitterly if Jace even notices the break.
And Alec is alive, but his soul is broken and bleeding.
Alec claws his way out of the Silent City, through the permanent entrance in New York. His mind is so unclear he can’t think and so he lets his instincts take over.
It isn’t until he’s huddled against the ward line of Pandemonium that he realizes his instincts told him to find Magnus, and to try and huddle in the safety that is Magnus’ magic.
It’s embarrassing and doesn’t make sense. They didn’t end on good terms, no matter how Alec wishes differently, and it was Alec’s fault.
It isn’t until bronze tipped boots enter his line of sight that Alec realizes he’s not alone. He knows who it is instantly. Because his instincts, his live wire instincts that are the only thing keeping Alec together and breathing, still trust Magnus. Even when Alec can’t trust himself.
“Bane.” Alec says quietly, hoarsely, he hardly deserved to use Magnus' name when the warlock was interested, he surely doesn’t now. “Sorry, didn’t know you’d be here.” His brow furrows, his mind dazed with pain and confusion, “you shouldn’t be out here. Should be hiding. Isn’t safe.”
Because if the Clave is so willing and eager to derune and destroy the Lightwood heir, then they won’t hesitate to murder and torture Magnus too.
And above him, when Alec manages to tip his head against the brick wall holding him up, he finds Magnus staring at him in horror, every bit of it obvious on his gorgeous, immaculately tended face.
—
“Alexander, what happened?”
Magnus asks, his hand reaches out and he stills when Alexander’s body tenses and his weary face realigns with the panic of a wounded predator, one that knows it can’t defend itself any longer.
Alexander laughs. It’s a brutal sound and it breaks a part of his heart. Even furious with himself and Alexander, he never wished any kind of pain on his almost lover.
“Let me take you to my loft, please?” Magnus asks and he very slowly reaches out and gently grips Alexander’s chin, cupping his jaw. Alexander seems wounded by the tenderness of the gesture. As if he’s been so battered that even a touch he allows, he still expects it to hold pain.
In the darkness of the alley, Magnus’ fury grows.
He manages to secure some consent, Alexander nodding against him weakly and only making quiet noises of pain as Magnus picks him up.
Magnus portals him to the loft and onto a couch that he summons, long and sturdy enough to hold Alexander’s tall form safely.
“What happened?” Magnus asks as he uses magic to undress Alexander, dissolving his shirt into oblivion, but he finds nothing but bruises and already healed scars.
There are no injuries, and there are no runes.
Alexander looks naked without them and he turns, hiding his face from Magnus and only exposing his empty back and bare neck.
“I was deruned for treason.” Alec’s hoarse voice trembles as he bites back his pain and tears. “Because the Clave thinks I willingly let my parabatai, sister and the daughter of Valentine steal the Mortal Cup from the protection of my Institute and that I delayed in telling I had it to the Clave.”
When he had denied Jace, Izzy and Clary his help in stealing Alexander’s stele, he’d thought that would be the end of it. He had protected both himself… and Alexander —the last time he would protect the shadowhunter that was almost his.
“How?” Magnus asks, baffled as he uses magic to continue stripping Alexander. “I told them no.”
He doesn’t realize what he’s said until Alexander sobs underneath Magnus’ hands and magic.
There’s pain, fury and betrayal in Alexander’s gaze when he raises his head. And when Magnus looks at him, all he can think of is how devastated Alexander is. Like his entire world has imploded, and it has.
But there is a sudden flicker, a tiny flare of hope.
“You, they asked you?” Alexander asks him.
“Yes.” Magnus lets the answer lay between them and then kneels down, hand moving up Alexander’s spine, to his shoulder, and then to clasp the back of his shadowhunter’s neck in a firm grip.
“And I said no, Alexander. I told them no, and even when they told me of Lydia, I still said no.”
“You, they’re who told you about Lydia?” Magnus sees a part of Alec break further —as if there was anything left to spare— but then the flicker grows stronger, latching onto Magnus. “They told you so you’d be mad and you werent,” Alexander gasps out the words under his grip and Magnus digs his fingers deeper into Alexander’s nape. “They told you so you’d do it. And you didn’t?”
Alexander is crying, silent tears running down his bruised cheeks like diamonds sliding across a broken dream.
“Oh darling,” Magnus breathes out and he lets himself lean closer, pressing his lips to Alexander’s clammy brow.
“Sweetheart, you truly owed me nothing, despite how much I wanted you too. And even if you had, I would never have broken something as precious as your trust. Not after you told me I had it.”
Magnus feels as though he’s said something obvious, but Alexander breaks against him. Lunges forward, into the crevice of Magnus’ neck and shoulder; fits into it as if it was made for him and cries.
His pain is silent; as if he’s never been allowed to scream with the agony he’s feels— and Magnus knows that Alexander has felt agony, that he’s enduring it even now.
Magnus' shirt grows damp and strong muscles —the body of a protector— trembles under Magnus touch.
Alexander is no less strong than the nephilim Commander he was, but he will no longer have the protection of his runes, nor the boost they gave him.
He is vulnerable, in a way no nephilim that lives outside of the boundaries of Idris is.
Magnus soothes Alexander until he sleeps, and then picks up, carrying him not to the room he created for Luke to use, but to Magnus’ own room.
Magnus lays him in Magnus’ own bed, rubs Alexander’s bruised and raw skin with tinctures and oils and when Alexander is safely lathered in potions and magic, Magnus finally lets himself be angry.
Alexander is cocooned in soft blue magic and around him the room is torn apart by red.
Glass shatters and is remade and shattered again. Until magic can no longer repair what has been broken and Magnus tears it from existence.
When it was over. Only the bed and its precious treasure is left untouched.
Magnus breathes out and settles himself, his magic restoring the room to the quality he requires.
The walls are repainted, the floors redone, the ceilings replaced with higher beams and more windows upon the walls.
Trinkets and furniture from the dimensional spaces he stores them in replace everything destroyed. The room is filled with less delicate furniture now. Things that are sturdy and can survive being knocked against… things that are meant for two, not one.
And then Magnus opens his eyes. His glamour has been gone since he found Alexander, leaning against the wards of Pandemonium like he was trying to find a glimpse of relief.
And Magnus found him. And Magnus gave him that relief, and gave him hope.
Magnus finds himself in a powerful position, but he won’t waste the gift given to him.
He will also not leave Alexander defenseless in a world about to turn to war. So he sends out four fire messages.
One to Catarina, to tell her to lay low and not offer services to shadowhunters.
One to Ragnor, to warn him to hide deeper and away from the trouble.
One to Tessa, that he needs the expertise only she can offer.
And one to a Silent Brother, one who has kept Magnus’ confidence for far longer than he’s held vows to Raziel.
Magnus will not let anything stop him. He will protect himself, his people and his Alexander. For by the very actions of his own family and people, Alexander has drifted so far as to lose himself, and only by anchoring his devotion to Magnus, has he saved himself.