a/n: for angelbear, who is the sexiest panda ever and who is just a lovely person in general. c:
an idea pre-/city of heavenly fire/.
{|redbreast|}
|.I.|
His fingers dart nimbly in and out, sending out spools of cerulean fire, every blast accompanied by a whiplash of sound and a roar that seems to come from his chest and it rattles his ribs, sets his veins alight in the sway of magic. There's a demon in front of him, one of Belial's kin. It looms over him, hydra-esque in its grim magnificence, all of its heads shrieking like wind through the floorboards, and he curses his bad luck, summons a blazing fireball to one palm as the heads lunge forward, coordinated and precise.
There is a sound from behind it, a twang and a release as an arrow flies from its bow and strikes true, piercing one of the heads and skewering it, showering the streets with a hissing spray of the demon's black ichor. Two, three, five more shots follow, each one measured and deadly, all of them ending up sticking out of the demon and stained tar-black, the rune-etched wood beginning to smolder as the blood starts eating through it.
Alec Lightwood stands in its wake, quiver strapped to his back, gloved hands holding the bow in question, something bitter etched on his features.
"Magnus."
It rings like an accusation. The warlock bows his head.
|.II.|
The Shadowhunter boy's eyes had been the most noticeable, and yet - subdued, in a strange sort of paradox. They were electric in their scope, brilliant like the sky on an idyllic summer day, or maybe the white flash of lightning as it touches down. He'd tried to conceal them with downward glances and floppy black fringes and guarded scowls and pointless posturing, but, if anything, that had only made them even more vivid.
He thinks, sometimes, that those eyes had been like chips of stained glass, those cheekbones like razors, that mouth like a blade, and put altogether, the boy had been sharp edges and acid and nothing else, the rest of him dulled underneath Nephilim vestments - leather, armor, daggers and seraphim blades, a jacket draped over heavy shoulders as a weak attempt at normalcy.
The boy was beautiful, then - a hollowed, broken thing, ripping apart at the seams, and here he was, standing at the door with a glass of absinthe in hand, easy smiles and winks, already shaping the request on his lips - "Not interested in the party? Wouldn't you fancy a drink?"
When they kissed, the Shadowhunter tasted of cheap wine, some cigarettes, and grief.
|.III.|
Morning comes and Alec is out of the bed at the first ring of the alarm clock. He tenses, every hair on his body standing on end, heart beating a tattoo against his chest until Magnus shuts it off with a flick of the wrist and a groan, massaging his temples.
"It's only six-something in the AM," he slurs. "Come back to bed."
Alec doesn't wait; he tugs on his jeans while Magnus watches him, fascinated by the play of muscles across his back, the slender Marks crossing his arms, loops and mystical sigils etched on his biceps, his abdomen, and the white scars of faded ones imprinted all over like too-deep paper cuts. He smells like beer and his hair needs a cut; as he tugs on his jeans, the warlock observes how hesitantly he moves, as awkwardly as a fish on land, everything about him suddenly cast in a different light. Something harsher and also lenient, dulling the maturity about him, how silently he treads, like he's afraid he'll disintegrate at the slightest gesture.
Marks for bravery, strength, protection are wreathed around his collarbone, his neck, black and drawn in a careful hand. Alec's dexterity, when he's level-headed, is remarkably delicate, the prints like spiderwebs, whipcord-thin, and Magnus looks at Alec, thinks about the Marks seared into his being as surely as his Nephilim blood runs through his veins, and feels something akin to longing.
"I'm going," the boy announces, callously, a bit ruthlessly, and something lances through him, skewers a part of his lungs.
"So soon?" he drawls, clambering out of bed in nothing but his boxers, standing next to Alec and feeling his breathing accelerate, hitch, lodge in his throat like a stone. "Aren't you going to have anything to eat, first? I could make coffee."
Alec makes an irritated sound and slips out of his grasp without an answer, the door hinges rattling as he slams it shut behind him, leaving a trail of t-shirts and unwashed mugs in his wake, his own little trail of destruction.
It's hard to begrudge the Shadowhunter boy for these kinds of things, he knows, but there was something in the way his palm burned against Alec's sweatshirt, something in the way he turned away, eyes hissing winter, that hurts like a thorn lodged in his side.
|.IV.|
Camille shows up like too many old memories and vampiric hostility, ruby lips curved into a crescent, immaculate and glass-shattering in her defiance - life radiates from her pores like carbon dioxide, and when he brushes against her, he feels a spark and a snap and her lupine eyes regarding him solemnly.
He forgets, sometimes, the centuries before, has to remind himself yes, she was mine when Belcourt's courtiers growl at him and the queen herself deigns to speak to him in the quiet of her prison, manacles branded with the Angel's signatures dripping from her willowy arms like rusting blood, a truth clenched in her teeth.
"Magnus," she purrs, and it is a broken, bereft sound, her hands held out to him like a child. "Please."
She is brittle, and he runs his fingers through her white hair, marveling at how deceptively soft she still is; she is still a huntress, the years have not stripped that from her like many other things. He thinks when they had been wealthy beyond compare, the nights with the torn pillows and the scorched headboards and gossip in dainty French voices, a forgotten language now bubbling up with her emergence.
Afterwards, when he cleans the smell of her from his palms, he looks into the mirror and imagines Paris, London, Dublin and Munich, all the money sitting in the basement with his wines and notes and manuscripts, silently moldering away without hesitation. Euros. Pounds. Antique currencies stored away in chests, locks calling out through the layers of dust, open us and see, and when he thinks about the things buried there, it makes his eyes water and the glass crack, it makes him want to shout.
No, he feverishly argues. No, I won't, I'm not going back.
The thought of cobwebs across his shirtsleeves crosses his mind, and with it, all manner of things, and he feels sick to his stomach.
|.V.|
Alec Lightwood is like all lovers: caring, adoring, but also envious and bitter. He rises so quickly, so furiously, that it is terrifying, sometimes, to look down at the Shadowhunter boy, expecting blue and instead seeing the untamed fire burning behind those shadowed eyelids, like a vision of Heaven or something darker.
"Did you love her?" the boy asks one night, bare-chested and cold, and Magnus cradles his boyfriend's head on his lap, decides what to say in an instant.
"Never," he murmurs. "Only you," he adds, a bit like an afterthought, and maybe it's the exhaustion or the food or just Alec, but the Shadowhunter gives the smallest of nods to indicate acquiescence to this statement. He swallows it like a bird swallows a worm: simply, easily, without resistance. Food in the form of words, statements. Information devulged and thrown around like birdseed to a flock of squabbling city pigeons.
The boy's breathing slows, his heart a fragile thing underneath Magnus' spread fingers, hair like a spray of black feathers fanning across his cheek, his eyes, the nape of his neck.
He is still beautiful, so easy to get lost in. As he sleeps, he reaches out for Magnus, and the warlock reciprocates the gesture.
They lie like that, fingers entwined, until their breathing rates synchronize, until the blood that flows through them both becomes indistinguishable. Until the glassy lines and razor angles get softer, smoother, and that electricity pulsates like a living drum. The Lightwoods' son is inexorably definite; Magnus is more intangible, like a lightning flash.
|.VI.|
The disappearance and implied resurrection of Jonathan Morgenstern comes as a blow to both of them.
He finds Alec on the skyscraper after the news has had time to diffuse and filter through the ears of the Nephilim ranks gathered below. When he reaches for the Shadowhunter, the Lightwood boy smells like Lilith's magic, thick and strong and sinuous, coiled around him like a nest of snakes. It strikes him like a punch to the face, the kind that makes your nose crunch and your teeth fall out; the inherently familiar sway of his ancestor's shifting aura, a vicious blend of color that encapsulates Alec in red and black and blue and green, and everything else in between.
"Hey," he whispers. "You alright?"
It's impossible to discern anything at first. That is, until he pulls Alec around so that they are face-to-face, and he sees the boy's walls crumbling. A lip trembles. A face contorts. A gleaming tear drops from one eye and splashes onto the concrete, molten and acidic, painful to the touch. He catches bits of it still, hugs Alec and kisses him with the fever of desperation, a million questions burning through him, a million questions going unanswered. For now.
"Magnus, I-" The Shadowhunter chokes off a sob. "He killed my brother and I just let him... get away."
He killed my brother he killed my brother he killed my brother! Alec's mind screams, as deafeningly loud as a foghorn, and Magnus holds him close and smells fear, rage, snakeskin and New York labyrinths, and while the last of the four is the most intriguing, he allows Alec to cry into his shirt and holds that fragile monument of hair and skin and stone and lets all the poison leak out, scalding as it reaches him.
|.VI.|
A week later, he finds Alec shitfaced inside a tunnel, caution turning to wariness and then horror as Magnus snuffs out his light with a muttered incantation in Logos.
Nothing is said at first because nothing needs to be said; both of them are equally aware of the gravity of the situation.
"Magnus-"
"I talked to Camille," he begins, starting out leisurely, examining his fingernails.
Silence from the other end.
"I have to say, I'm disappointed in you."
"I can explain," the boy pleads, grasping for another opportunity at redemption, but he's had enough; he knows it might be hypocritical, he's had his own share of lies, but at least he has the decency to keep them to himself. This is blatant disregard, a boundary to vital to their relationship has been severed, and he feels like he is untangling, sinking into the gutter watter in little threads and pieces, staring at this radiant, electric boy; his shirtfront is still stained red, his hair tousled, he looks like a redbreast sparrow perched awkwardly on a tree limb, staring at him like he might be a larger bird of prey.
"I'll forgive you the previous liaisons," he intones. "But my life? You had no right-"
"I had every right!" Alec screams, shouting with every ounce of his lungs, sending Magnus reeling. "You think I don't notice? You think you could keep me blind for this long? I had the right to know who you'd fucked!"
"Are you happy that you know now?" Magnus shoots back, surprised at the ease with which the fury springs to the forefront of his lips, the carelessness with which he sends his words scattering towards the Shadowhunter like arrows. "Are you, Alec?"
And that question hangs over them, like the silver blade of a guillotine: are you happy, Alec, is this what you wanted all along?
Invariably, the answer is "no".
They stand awkwardly like herons, legs in the water, crumbling dust and moss flaking down on their heads from the ceiling like flecks of bread mold. Alec tries to muster a response, fails, and remains mute, lips shut. Magnus stares at him. They are like trees, then; rooted firmly in the ground, unyielding, unmoving.
"I trusted you," the boy manages weakly after some time.
"I know," he replies. "I trusted you, too."
It could not be any easier to decipher the subtext, the second meaning to their admissions. A lingering, faded goodbye beckons from the vestiges of their argument, and Magnus grabs one hand and Alec grabs the other, allowing those grey-skinned farewells to lead them away.
|.VII.|
On Halloween, he journeys to the Institute with a parcel in hand, hastily strung up with gold thread and green wrapping paper; it pokes out of one sweater-clad arm like an odd vegetable, stringy and bland.
The city is too brightly lit, too festive, the apartment doorsteps laid with lit pumpkings, warped and lumpy like the crude results of a child's attempt at pottery. Gaping eyes and wide mouths leer at him from the railings, grinning with candles blazing through their crumbly orange teeth, a mocking sneer, a snide laugh, a voice that says, I spit on you, and likes it.
Before him, the illusion peels apart like apple skins, the church shooting out sunbeams through its stained-glass windows, candelabras lit and dishes clattering and the sound of fists against sandbags, clashing swords and ringing steel; the Nephilim still train through the holidays, he remembers. They are a warrior breed, born to the sound of war and raised with Latin and arrows, blades and whips. The armaments of God, spread amongst his children, his soldiers.
Gingerly, he reaches out, touches the black iron of the doorway, and recoils, smoke wafting from his singed fingertips. Like ink, patterns emerge from the arches and bars, Nephilim Marks rendered by a light hand, a swift one, looping and curling like constellations. Stars of David. Chthonic pentagrams circumscribed with invocations and prayers, spells of banishment and subjugation. A lost language imprinted on his nails, his hands.
It is majestic, but it hurts like scorn, like rejection. The details are black and gold, shimmering trails gliding through the runes like rivers. He drops the gift, watches it hit the ground and topple into the rainwater, soaked through and muddy. The box had held a scarf, folded like origami and to be presented as an offering, a futile attempt at civility, if not reconciliation.
He looks up, sees one of the windows with its curtains parted. The boy is looking at him, hair like feathers, eyes flashing white-blue against the night sky. A stele is cluched in one (trembling) hand, a metaphorical spear rather than a literal one. Somehow, it hurts even more.
The crows have gathered on the trees like curious parishioners, beady eyes observing. Magnus waits a little longer, gazing up at Alec, silhouetted by lamplight. It's curious, the burning. Like dipping his fingers into ice water and keeping them there for hours.
Sparks leap from him, static discharge that puffs into flame against the barriers. The Shadowhunter still watches, unmoving, wolfish and unafraid, cloaked by illumination. It makes him all the more terrified, and he stands until he cannot watch anymore, and that's when he leaves with his hood drawn over his eyes, footsteps making the puddles burble and steam. The curtains draw closed with a snap and a whoosh of fabric.
The birds take off, cawing.
|.XIII.|
Clary drops in to tell him about Jonathan, a pair of angel wings, and the decisions of the Clave.
"It's pretty clear that it's going to bloody," she says, sipping espresso from a cracked green cup, eyes aglow with that mythic, dreamy quality that she has when she's deep in thought. "The wings were a challenge, a threat. It's very serious, you know, not to mention disturbing." She looks at him, her gaze unflinching. "It's almost impossible to kill an angel. But he did it, and just to make an example, to mock us. Like, look at me, and how I spit on your sacraments." A shrug. "The Clave hasn't taken it well. They're drawing on the treaty again, calling on the Downworlder groups to prepare for war a second time."
"Have they asked you to help?" he asks, elaborating when she gives him a stare, "you know, with your... talents."
She pauses, quiet for so long that he wonders if he's struck a nerve. At last, she replies, "They haven't directly approached me, but I sense that they will. Understandable, of course. And when they do, politely, I won't hesitate to help."
"The last time-"
"It went well, yes, but I could have done without the bullying and the doubt." She laughs, a glimmering, white sound in the autumn chill, a copper curl dropping over one shoulder as her fingers trace patterns in the table - an artist's preoccupation, he thinks, always searching, wondering about how to better capture the world with finite materials, to expand the scope of their mortality and encompass more. "I might badger them a bit if they don't give me the respect, if they think I'm just a girl. I think I deserve more, you know?"
She rips apart a packet of artificial sweetener and dumps it in, stirring it with a thin-limbed spoon. "It might sound presumptuous, arrogant, but it's the truth. I don't want to hold my power over them like a bomb; I just want acknowledgement. Equality. Taking dreams and feelings, weaving that into a single Mark, basically taking all of their hopes and desires and making them tangible, something to be seen and heard, well..."
Her eyes rove over to him, sitting across with his hands folded primly, just the slightest bit detached but still aware. "That kind of burden isn't easy to bear. If they're to make me bear it, to infringe upon holy territory - because really, as much as I'm capable of doing it - pulling these lost Marks is sort of a crime, like burglary even when the owner gives you permission to steal; if they're to make me do it for them, I'm not willing to shoulder that kind of weight without reciprocation, from their side. Nothing in the way of spoils, just recognition. Not glory and pedestals, but more like... like awareness. That I can do it, and I think that deserves some amount, no matter how meager, of credit, don't you think?"
"On the topic of arrogance, maybe you should have thought it through before you spoke the words aloud," he jabs, and although Clary smiles at his sarcasm, he does not fail to notice the way her eyes are shadowed, the way she hikes up the sleeves of her sweater over her wrists, the way she looks down every now and then at the stele tied to her belt, glancing at it to discern whatever it is she wants. Guidance? Support? Courage?
What it means is that he does not shy away from the burning question, and when he asks it, she seems unconsolable, breakable for a moment - a suspended moment, in which he can see the cracks and crevices in the girl, Jocelyn's girl, so fragile and glass-like that if he reached out, touched her, she might shatter - but the moment passes, as it must, and when she looks up at him again, it is with eyes blazing proud, fierce, strong.
"I am," she answers, without a hitch to her voice, without hesitation in the way she tells him, freely, of Jace. "I've been working on it, searching for something to counteract Raziel's piercing. It's hard, and I've had no luck yet, but-" Here, she draws in a breath, warm and scaly, and places her hands over his, a kind gesture, something like consolation.
"-but, I will rectify this," she whispers, the words coming out in a rush. "I'm going to save him, same as he's saved me, and I'm going to find whatever it is I need to find. I don't care if I have to kill an angel-" There, that fire, that spark, so bright and bold. "-I am going to make it right. I would travel to both ends of the earth for him, to hell and back, and he'd do the same."
The girl is so like her mother, then: a lioness, great and regal and strong, unbent and unyielding, so radiant that she seems to light up the room in her sun-glow, all that the angels are and more. She is a Shadowhunter, a true member of their society; she is a warrior-girl, the mightiest of all threads, binding worlds and carrying them on her shoulders without fear, without pity for her role. He wishes, there, in his apartment kitchen with the lioness' daughter holding him, that he might be able to obtain even a scrap of her heart, her lionheartedness, so that he can stand as tall and straight as she has done, so that he might be more than one of the sons of Lilith, a pariah and a coward.
He seems to falter, like a branch in a strong wind, and she says, clasping onto him even more firmly and urgently, "I'll tell him about everything, about you-"
"Please," he croaks. "Please."
He wishes to have a lion's heart more than anything, so that he might stand and not fall.
|.IX.|
His floor is burnt, smoking and charred wood floating upwards. The pentagram edges blur as the man inside it stands, sinuous and serpentine, rising to his full height. A smile plays across his lips, arrogant like a politician, surrounded by cunning and ease, an eldritch being from the seas of R'lyeh.
"The fight is coming," he tells the demon. "You, of all people, must know this, at least."
Azazel grins, lounges on an invisible chair. "I glean my information from my vassals, and they are only able to elude His Majesty through careful deception. I've known about this for years. The Downworlder circles, even the esteemed ranks of the Nephilim..." His guest stretches out his arms genially, businessman-like. "But obviously, you did not call me here to discuss the war. Why have you summoned me, son of Bane?"
"I'd like to make a deal," he answers, and he leans in close, close enough to smell the demon's brimstone scent and feel the magic wards crackling, close enough so that Azazel's tongue can snake through the air like a worm and almost touch him, tear out his throat.
He tells the prince of his proposition, and when he has finished speaking, Azazel cackles, throwing his head back.
"Boy," he howls, "you must be joking."
Magnus' eyes are flint as he replies, "I speak with certainty. Do not doubt me, or my conviction."
"A fool you are," Azazel laughs, "but an amusing one. Show me, then, your will, your desire. Prove yourself."
A command in Logos opens up his skin, a slash cutting across his arm cleanly, knife wielded by a surgeon's steady grip. He flicks out his palm, and the droplets fly into the fray, into the storm, where they hang suspended as the demon inspects them. Elegantly, the prince lifts a drop to his lips and swallows. His eyes darken.
"A promise, then, written in your blood as well as mine," says Azazel, and tears his own wrist open with his teeth, scatters his blood towards Magnus, who daubs the black strands onto his own wound, sealing it and leaving a graceless line, obsidian and vine-like.
"Consummatum est," murmurs the man. "It is done."
The warlock flicks a hand out towards the fireplace, setting it afire. This time, the flames blaze a bloodred plume into the chimney, lyrical as it strikes the wood, igniting like a song.
The demon smiles benevolently like a shepherd to his flock.
|.X.|
Raziel's brood stride boldly into the battle tides, an army of men and women dressed in black, stoic and calm and undeterred by Jonathan's own assortment of monsters and Nephil, the demonic residing among the pure-turned-corrrupt. Their lips have drunk of Lilith's blood; they stare at their former comrades with eyes black as coal and traceries of it running tightly near their skin, their arms and their necks. The blackest stigmata of a legion of the damned.
He stands with them, ablaze in scarlet and orange, flames dancing on his arms like fiery plumage, his chest thatched with embers and coal. Alec stands next to his parents, to Clary, who leads the charge with a roar resounding from her lungs, wielding the seraphim blades clutched in her thin fingers like they could be separate limbs, extensions of the same splendid being. The field dissolves into angelic flashes of steel, searing and whistling as they slice through the air, the clangs and clashings of the other side, of corrupted weaponry, an infernal arsenal birthed for this purpose alone. Jonathan stands above it all, a dark king draped in the tattered black feathers of a Xiz demon as he stretches out one clawlike hand and orders his forces onward.
All around him is choked with the tang of smoke and blood, of shrieking hellspawn wheeling overhead, slithering underneath, or charging them directly, brutal and bloody with Nephilim blood staining their bodies. He lets fly a dozen raging arrows, sunbursts as they fly from his outstretched fingers and impale the enemy, pinioning them, flaying them into ash, lacerating and crushing as he scatters an inferno from himself and gives it free reign.
It happens, a minor detail-
|.XI.|
-a Leviathan spewing chilling water, covered in glistening eyes, latching onto a solitary figure with his arms above his head like a bird or a martyr-
-himself, combating a turned Nephil, magic dancing and swaying-
-some teeth-
-and the boy's shirtfront, suddenly leaking, clutching at it as he falls, legs in the air like a redbreasted finch, so beautiful as he crumples.
Consummatum est. It is done.
|.XII.|
They bury him the third day of the battle, as both parties take a glorious reprieve from the fighting. It takes a while to sort out which body belonged to which side, to sift through the demon carcasses and find, sometimes, only a hand or a leg or a scrap of fabric left, the rest devoured or eroded away by some foul poison.
Their funeral is a personal, small one, imitated by all the others; there is little consolation to be taken from the other Nephil, no matter how close they might be, all being the children of Raziel. None but those closest to them can truly feel the extent of their mourning; on this day, only the parents, the siblings, the relatives and the parabatai shall mourn, and for familiar faces only, nothing else. Clary stands vigil for him, still in her dark clothes, her fighting clothes. There is no white to be found amidst the ruins; everything is too filthy to be salvaged, too soaked in the ripples of the cataclysm to amend itself.
The elders, the traditionalists, they murmur, "It is not fitting for one of our own. He should be buried in white, in the color of purity."
And Clary spins upon them, full of fury, and spits, "See if you can find among yourselves one clean thing, one thing not yet touched by this war, and we'll dress him in it."
Needless to say, they cannot. So, it is that Alexander Gideon Lightwood is buried on a Sunday, on the outskirts of Idris, the holy city, wearing nothing but the clothes he had brought to battle and certainly mourned by all, but most deeply by Maryse and Robert Lightwood, by Jace and Isabelle Lightwood, by Clary Fray and Simon Lewis, and by Magnus Bane.
|.XIII.|
"It was not your fault," Clary tells him later, after the mourners have dispersed. They still watch over the newly-dug grave, and Magnus touches the mound of earth above the casket and feels a pain so deep, so visceral, it fills every ounce of him and does not abate.
"It wasn't," she presses, placing a hand on his shoulder, and he leans against her, a bird on a branch, shaking all over.
"I will never forgive myself," he half-whispers, half-cries to her, and the wind. "Never."
|.XIV.|
Morning finds his tent abandoned, with not a single breeze stirring it, not a single insect daring to tread on the place where he walked.
|.XV.|
The Morgenstern son, the true one, beckons the Nephilim with an easy smile on his lips, a hand crooked, calling to them with a taunt, a promise.
Come to me, say the unspoken words, dancing from limb-to-limb, laughing with every crossing sword. Come, you disciples, you noble ones, you of the pure and clean, and let me defile you. Let me twist you, let me despoil all your sacred things, let me make sacrilege upon your Jerusalem. Let me speak blasphemy against your God. I am Destroyer of Worlds, and you shall be mine.
Their battalions swarm like ants, smashing like waves against the shore. Their faces streaked with grime, with the last throes of their pilgrimage, they eke out the last of their defense with fervor and devotion, with upward-aimed prayers cresting on their lips as they are struck down, robins and goldfinches downed by wintry tides.
Come, says the dragon. Come, and let me show you your futility.
In his fist is a clenched flame, brimming and bubbling as he soars, higher and higher, on wings of his own making. They are glossy, feathers drawn from the night sky, talons wicked and gleaming as they tear into their prey, closing around the ferrets and mice of the woodlands, a string of carrion dangling from each claw like rosary beads.
Let me undo you, as I had undone him, that Lamb, so fresh in its innocence, its admiration. A dark chuckle floats across the sky, comes to him like a thundercloud. Let me do to you as I had done to him.
He rises until he is far above them, until he cannot see their ranks being slain, until he can almost forget the sight of the Shadowhunter boy lying as a redbreast on that unforgiving soil, infinitely far from his homeland and with the last traces of a final supplication drying on a cold cheek.
Come.
He drops down.
a/n: reviews make my day :)