LEAPFROG
Alec Lightwood/Magnus Bane, angst and romance, rated T. Post-CoLS and maybe post CoHF. Sebastian is dead, all "Team Good" is alive.
Sergey Smolyakov's quotes are in italics.
~.~
There is a silver shining of pigeon's feather under his feet, and it feels like autumn is coming. It reminds him of autumn even more than yellow leaves usually do.
No, not "remains" and not "feels". It smells. It reeks.
Yellow leaves are just leaves, the fall of the leaves comes every year, but it's not every year when you see a dove hit by a car. Alec sees that only about third time in his life.
It would be funny, if Isabelle found him grey-haired. Silver locks on his head would look like the dove's feather on the dark ground, but… Well, it wouldn'tbe funny.
Honestly, Alec is just surprised he is still not grey-haired.
He doesn't care about that dead bird. And he doesn't care about himself.
It doesn't look like a death. Alec thought it would be something similar, but no, no and no. He breathes, and his chest slowly rises and slowly goes down. He breathes despite of his lungs started to wheeze. He walks – one hour and a half in the morning and one hour and a half in the evening, from the Institute to whenever the fuck his feet want, no fatigue at all. He kills demons and finds himself nodding when Irina Cartwright tells him that his children could be really beautiful. And blue-eyed.
It doesn't look like a death, but, moreover, it doesn't look like a life.
Simon is the only person who understands him.
Simon is the only person who understands him, and that's why Alec wants to ask him about some favor. It would be really the easiest way. A little bit of pain, a little bit of blood, a couple of bites, nothing personal, nothing unusual, but at least his un-life would find its justification.
His un-death. Vampires all are undead.
One of the possible benefits is the opportunity to sleep all over the day. In the coffin.
Simon was the one who told him this myth, but now he frowns when Alec reminds him about it. Sure, he frowns. Simon doesn't have to sleep in the coffin – he sleeps well in the Isabelle's room.
Alec is poor older brother. Alec lets them do what they want.
.
~.~
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"It is just such a time," Isabelle says when he comes at home.
Alec is all covered with mud, blood and disinclination of doing something at all. The mud can be washed by a hot shower, the blood can be washed by a holy water, but the disinclination cannot be washed.
He just killed Maureen and he was just killed by Magnus, so he doesn't give a fuck about anything at all.
"It is just such a time," Isabelle repeats, her voice is unsure. She sits behind the blind while he's taking his shower, and it seems like she's afraid he is going to kill himself now. "It cures us. Time cures all things, that is what Clary says."
Alec would like to answer that Clary is not a source of a wisdom. Alec would like to answer that the time they have will never enough. Alec would like to answer, but his lips are still silent.
So Isabelle continues.
"You'll get together again. There is nothing you cannot fix, really. Perhaps, both of you just need a little time to—" and then the noise of water makes her words muffled. These words become indistinct, inaudible, confused in the steam and lost in Alec's own mind. "If it matters for you when you should stop fighting—" Isabelle says slowly, painfully slowly when Alec finally turns off the water.
And then she stops.
Probably, she thinks that she gave him something to think of.
So Alec thinks. He thinks that it doesn't really matter where he should stop fighting. It doesn't really matter where to fight and it's doesn't really matter where to stop. He has already stopped. He won't start the fight. It's absolutely pointless, he knows.
"Stop being so sentimental," he says, pulling his hand toward and Isabelle gives him a towel. "You may think your words smell like almond, but it's already strychnine."
Probably, strychnine would be useful.
.
~.~
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"How to make everyone feel alright?" Clary's hands squeeze her temples and the brush she is holding makes a little blue stripe on her hair.
Jace smiles and bites an apple. He's obviously and absolutely in love with Clary's spontaneity, and 'how to make everyone alright' is a thing he doesn't care about. Obviously. Absolutely.
All of them are alive – well, except Sebastian, and the other things are unimportant.
After all, what's going on with Alec, that doesn't look like a death. So he has no reason to bitch around and pretend to be poorer than he really is.
But Clary thinks the other way. She cares about everything and everyone. Alec doesn't know why, but she wants peace all over the world, and she wants an opportunity to grow older for Simon, and a baby for Jocelyn and Luke, and a mental equilibrium for Alec, and new shoes for Isabelle.
Honestly, Alec isn't sure if his mental equilibrium takes a place before Isabelle's shoes in Clary's wish list.
Honestly, in his own wish list there is no mental equilibrium.
He is reeling. Maybe, it's just a deck like the one on that ship, or maybe it's some stupid swings when right here and right now you feel really bad, but then, twenty seconds later, you realize you feel even worse now. These swings are probably broken, because they never come to the point of "I'm well".
Perhaps there is no "well" in the world. Yes, it's true. There's no "well". Magnus took it away when he left. Magnus took it on his fingertips, and it was shivering and shining with a little blue flame, and warm, and alive. Magnus left and the "well" left with him.
He took it away and then threw it under the wheels and then crushed it like a little bird, and there are only blood-red scraps smeared on the dirty asphalt. Only blood-red scraps left from their "well" now.
And this is disgusting. Moreover, this is ugly enough to never think what the next is.
.
~.~
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"What do you want from him?" Isabelle is angry. She whips Alec's checks – just hands, not her whip, because she will never use her whip on her brother, but Alec feels like her hands are not enough.
He wants to feel real pain. He wants to feel real pain, and this is the reason why he gets in the thick of fight every time, but always ends up okay and alive.
Well, not okay, but… If from the outside you cannot see that everything inside is broken and mixed with dirt, so it's the sort of all right, isn't it?
"Alec, please, stop it," she whispers, and Alec tries to figure out what Isabelle is talking about.
She gives him his phone.
Alec screws up his eyes and recalls.
…Hi, sweetie, I'm your Daddy's whisky, my name is Johnnie Walker, and it seems to me like you haven't called your ex-boyfriend for ages. What? You don't like the word "ex-boyfriend"? Sorry, darling, but I don't really care…
"What do you want from him?"
Alec would like to answer simply "I want him", but that is so stupid so he feels himself sick (though, perhaps, that's because of Johnnie and his bitter truth). Alec would like to answer "Nothing", but that is such an obvious lie. Alec would like to answer, but his lips are silent.
So Isabelle continues.
"Our mother wouldn't like it, if you ask me," she says.
Alec doesn't like this himself, but who cares? He shrugs and throws himself back leaning his head against the wall. There's always hope that Isabelle will just turn her back and go away. That she will slam the door so hard so Clary's drawing water will splash out from the glass, or will say something terrible, but will go all the same.
Isabelle doesn't move.
With a sob she kneels before him.
"How much you can—" asks Isabelle, her tears falling down. "People meet, people fall in love, people break up, people get over this—It's pretty normal. It's what everyone has to go through."
Alec can't realize whom she tries to convince – him or herself, so he doesn't say anything. He doesn't move, and he doesn't change his position, and he doesn't even want to breathe anymore.
"Do you want me to kidnap Magnus and bring him to you?"
"No," his voice sounds bitter.
It's impossible to kidnap Magnus. It's impossible because no one knows where he is. Magnus Bane doesn't want to take part in this war – so Magnus Bane doesn't take part in this war. The only thing – or the only person, – that was worth of his fighting and suffering betrayed him. And now this person sits on the cold floor holding the phone in his hands and listening to Isabelle.
The calls go on anyway – in nowhere, and Isabelle goes on, too.
"I can do this, really. Do you want me to cut off a lock of his hair?"
If only that was so simple. Alec shakes his head. His swings come to the point of "Fucking awful", and everything convulses inside, he feels a short flash of pain, a kind of cramp from his throat to his spine, and the idea of sleeping in a coffin becomes especially attractive.
Even more attractive than usual if only it's possible.
"No," he says realizing that Isabelle still waits for an answer.
Her eyes wide open.
"Do you want me to bring his blood in a test tube to you?"
Alec tries to give her a weak smile. This is really absurd. The fleeting sops are enough for a while, but not forever, so nothing Isabelle is offering now would ever replace Magnus Bane. They both understand it.
So there is only blackmail left for her.
"If you don't stop, I will start to cry and stamp my feet," Isabelle says, sobbing.
"You are already doing this."
It doesn't embarrass her.
"Then I'll jump out the window!"
"There are only two stories."
But it doesn't take away the hope to wring his own neck. His hope, not Isabelle's.
"Our mother wouldn't like it—"
"I don't like it either," Alec can't take this anymore.
He calms Isabelle. It's pointless to tell her that everything is going to be alright in the end because that's not truth and he is a very bad liar. So Alec just presses her to his chest and strokes her head, her hair mixed with his, tickling his neck, leaning into his mouth, and Isabelle's cheeks are so wet.
"Time is a great healer," she says a minute later, staying in front of the doorstep. "It cures. It cures us."
"Time cures us only to let us commit suicides," Alec answers. Nothing personal, just a beautiful phrase.
.
~.~
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Looking at the dead dove, Alec thinks he need to buy some apples to Jace.
He has no idea how these two things are related together, but why not? Buy some apples to Jace and have some talk with Simon (Magnus always forgot his name and called him Sheldon or Shuster or something like that). Of course, Simon will say 'no' for the hundreds of times, but constant dropping wears away a stone, that's what Clary says.
Alec would like tell himself that Clary is not a source of wisdom. Alec would like to tell himself that Simon won't agree even if the number of Alec's requests will go over half of a million. Alec would like tell himself anything, but his lips are still silent.
Blue-grey feather. Yellow leaves. Autumn. Summer was hauled down to the Hell, a handful of land was threw on the lid of its coffin. Sebastian is in the Hell, too, and there's no war anymore so Magnus can return to his Brooklyn if he only wants to, but Alec is sure he will never come back.
Everyday Alec walks – one hour and a half in the morning and one hour and a half in the evening, three hours to tell himself that he didn't deserve anything good, and he was a jerk, and he screwed it all up. It doesn't bother him that he tells himself these things all the time. Nothing bothers him, because a half of an old Johnnie's bottle is still waiting for him at the Institute.
Alec doesn't understand where he's going, but he goes. He goes to the familiar building, passing by dead pigeon, passing by people and cars, passing by everything.
The key, which still is on his neck, burns his collarbones. The familiar window is wide opened and the rainbow-colored blinds are fluttering with the wind.
Alec swallows. He's got a weird feeling of déjà vu – as huge as a Greater demon is and as angry. It bites, it rolls up around Alec's neck, it pricks his eyes with its scorching needles, it tiptoes in Alec's lungs and painfully prevents him from breathing.
It's stupid, but he still remembers how many steps there are from the entrance to the door of High Warlock's Penthouse.
It's pointless, but he goes upstairs as quickly as it's only possible.
The key, which burns his fingertips, still fits the key-hole.
"Alexander?" Magnus is inside the dark hall. He turns his head and at first Alec is surprised Magnus have noticed him, but then Alec sees that Magnus stands in front of a mirror. It means Magnus can see everything even if it's happened behind this back.
Like this.
Magnus' voice makes Alec sober. He recalls that bloody scraps won't be a bird ever again – no matter how many spells would you use to correct it, and apples for Jace are for sale not in here, but in the other place, and, perhaps, if he asks Simon for a five hundred thousand and the first time then it works.
"I—" he says, feeling stupid, "I just—Don't know what was I thinking of. Forget it. I didn't come here, you haven't seen me, nothing had happened." Maybe he tries to make Magnus believe or maybe it's Alec who tries to believe. "Nothing had happened, so – nothing! – nothing means anything."
It sounds like a perfect motto for salvation or something like that. But Alec can't go. He can't be saved. Won't be saved?
And there are black circles under Magnus' eyes and some wrinkles at the lips.
"I got out of it. I threw it away," he says irrelevantly, and Alec fears he talk about Chairman Meow. "I mean my immortality," Magnus adds hesitantly.
This time Alec doesn't want to be silent, but no words come to his mind. On the other side, there's no need in words. Chairman Meow rubs its head against Alec's legs, Magnus smells sandalwood, and the key goes back to Alec's neck – to its place. Everything comes back to its places: lips to lips, bodies to the canary-yellow sheets, the swings – to the range from "good" to "fucking perfect".
And this is what really doesn't look like a death and doesn't look like a life. It's about billion times better.
What about apples for Jace… The familiar snap of Magnus' fingers is enough to get them.
And, honestly, Alec likes it so much.