Warnings: Self-harm, mild gore, implied main character death
ooo
When I Get to Heaven
ooo
Magnus has become so accustom to the sting of the blade, he barely feels the knife slice through his skin. Blood wells from the cut immediately, running thick and red down his wrist into a plastic container set up on the asphalt. He watches the flow carefully, and steadies his arm with his other hand as he feels it begin to weaken, making sure it stays lined up with the bucket. He doesn't want to stain his clothes. It discomforts his neighbors, and he doesn't want to have to move again so soon. It's a nice neighborhood, where he lives.
When the stream of blood begins to slow, he ties a quick tourniquet to his upper arm and sets to work healing his wrist. It takes longer than it used to –without the tourniquet, he probably would have passed out, may have died even, and wouldn't that have been funny, to die when he's so close— the bright blue sparks he calls up dull, a dim echo of their old radiance. They flicker against his skin, winking in and out like fireflies, and leave behind a thin line of a wound that is, while still pink and raw, at least no longer bleeding.
The sight makes him smile. One step closer.
The blood loss leaves him to clamper up on unsteady feet, clinging to the wall of the alleyway as the world tosses beneath him like an ocean during a tempest. Magnus clings to the brick, pressing his face into its chill and grit to anchor himself in reality as his vision wavers. For a moment the dank alleyway he placed himself in distorts, wavering like the broken reflection cast by a clear river, like his face had, looking back at him just before strong hands gripped his shoulders and pressed down, down until his head shattered the water's surface and Magnus was under, the water rushing over and under and around him, his open lips and the bubbles escaping his screaming mouth—
It takes a tremendous amount of conscious effort to pull himself off of the wall, but Magnus manages as he has managed countless other distasteful tasks before it. He steadies his gait as he walks to the body he'd left lying in a heap like so much trash, cast carelessly upon runes and demonic sigils burnt into the ground. Lightheaded or not, he has a reputation to keep. Magnus Bane is always graceful.
He slides to his knees gratefully, even as he takes a mental note to burn the pants he's wearing. The knees are surely ruined now, covered in ash and the sticky remains of the blood the Shadowhunter had shed before being taken down. Good thing he wore black. Leaning over her, he rifles through the pockets of her gear, apologizing under his breath when his nose brushes over her cheek. She's cold, the poor girl. Magnus would conjure a blanket for her if he still could. If only she hadn't needed to die. She has such a sweet face, probably has parents who love her, maybe an older brother or sister, even a significant other, someone who loves her because they choose to, entirely independent of birth or blood. He hopes she knew that feeling before she died. Sometimes it's the only thing that comforts Magnus at night, the knowledge that, if nothing else, Alec knew Magnus still loved him—
An extra stele is tucked away in her boot. Magnus pulls it free quickly and places it on the ground beside him, taking up the vial he'd left beside the tumble of her blonde curls before his ritual bloodletting. In the light of the moon, her blood looks almost silver inside the glass. Magnus knows intimately that it's not. It bubbled red over her teeth as she choked on it, stained the white cuffs of his shirt like rust, seemed almost black as he collected it, even with the ruins beneath her glowing fierce and bright.
Wrestling the cork out of the vial takes several tries, because he can't get his fingers to stop shaking no matter how hard he presses them into the glass. He bites back a sob when it finally comes free, and he tosses it away from him in a fit of pique that he feels only briefly. The blood in the vial is partially congealed by now, cold and thick, but Magnus presses it to his lips and drains it anyway.
In the beginning, when he'd first begun this endeavor, he remembers how he'd gagged it down, swallowing past every violent heave of his stomach. He'd thrown up only a few minutes later anyway, and all the effort, the taste of iron clinging to his tongue for days, was for nothing. Thankfully, Magnus has moved past that, and the vial is as empty as he can get it in seconds. A thin residue clings to the bottom and sides of the glass, but he ignores it. No need to try to wrestle out every drop, not when he can get another if he still needs more.
"Almost done," Magnus mumbles to himself, jerking one sleeve up, and then the other when he finds that forearm already filled. "Almost done, almost done."
The burn of the stele is the only thing Magnus has never adapted to. No matter how many times he presses it to his skin, no matter how many times he applies the same Mark, it always, always hurts, hurts him somewhere deeper than his flesh or his blood or his bone. Deeper than his soul, he thinks, if he still has one. It throbs in that nameless space within him, wherever that space may be, constantly. It aches the way a splinter stuck in a fingertip does, like something foreign, something wrong, has been stabbed inside him that isn't meant to be there. If that's to be his price—to hurt for the rest of eternity, from now till death to ever afterward, maybe— so be it.
Anything is worth getting Alec back. Anything is worth seeing him smile again; to hear him say Magnus's name, just one more time; to feel his hands pressed into his back, pulling Magnus closer, until all their boundaries are erased and they sift slowly into each other, trading bits and pieces to carry with them—
The Mark is dark on Magnus's skin when it's finished, burned black into his flesh, the newest amongst dozens of identical others.
Angelic power.
Afterward, Magnus feels just the slightest bit brighter, and wonders how many more times he'll need to complete this ritual before he feels confident enough to use an iratze. Maybe when his healing magic peters out completely. Surely if his magic has devolved to the point he can't even heal a simple laceration, his demonic blood will be diluted enough to accept other Marks? It makes sense, one type of healing for another. Equivalent exchange.
He gets to his feet carefully, apologizing to the girl who sacrificed herself for Alec so nicely when he nudges her with his hand. The vial, abandoned, rolls across the ground with a series of steady tink tink tinks. Magnus leaves it and his own collection of blood for the Shadowhunters who investigate the girl's disappearance to find.
He hopes they find everything. He hopes they find it all and it stokes their need for vengeance. He hopes that when they do, it will lead them straight to his door.
Every Nephilim is another stepping stone to heaven, another step to Alec.
Let them come.
A/N—Last night, I had a dream where Magnus was a villain of the post-TMI series, killing Nephilim and stealing their blood. I filled in some of the gaps of why that might be, and decided to write it to get it out of my head. Whether Magnus is actually replacing his demonic blood with that of the Shadowhunters, or he's just going mad from all of the Marks is up to you. ;)