Notes: Written by the prompt, 'Magnus and Jace find common ground over their daddy issues' on the Shadowhunters Prompt Ficathon. Feedback is welcome!
By the time Jace woke up, Magnus had been just starting to fall asleep.
In his defence, he hadn't slept in a while, the room was warm and the constant glow of his magic was far too consistent for him to stay focused. He'd been in there for hours with no distractions whatsoever and he was only human. Or, well, mostly.
But this? This was enough to shock him awake all at once.
"Stay still," he warned, eyeing the medical equipment the Shadowhunter was wired to and wincing when Jace scrambled back in his bed as soon as Magnus reached out.
"Don't touch me." He was breathless, as if he'd run a marathon and his eyes were wide and unfocused, so Magnus drew his hand away.
"I won't," he soothed, shifting in his chair so that Jace could get a better look at him in the dim light that the streetlights threw into the room. "It's okay. You're safe here." He didn't look too convinced, so Magnus went on. "Alec's outside, and I can call Clary or Isabelle if you want me to."
"No!" Jace looked even more terrified now and Magnus frantically searched through everything he'd said so far. He'd thought that the familiar names would calm him down, but it was clear that he'd thought wrong. "Don't touch them. I'll stay here. I'll do anything, just stay away from them."
Jace was looking at him but he wasn't seeing him, Magnus realised. It wasn't hard to guess what had happened and he felt his heart clench, not out of pity as he'd expected but out of pure, blinding hatred.
"When we were trying to get Clary's memories back," he started slowly, "we had to give up memories of the person we love the most. Clary saw her mother, Isabelle saw Alec, and Alec-"
"-Alec broke the circle." Jace relaxed against his pillow. He'd ran out of energy to fight, it seemed; even more so now that he felt relatively safe. "I'm sorry. I had to make sure."
"It's nothing," Magnus assured him. "Don't you remember leaving the ship?"
"I do." Jace gave him a fleeting, mirthless smile. "I just thought it was another trick."
"It's not." Of course, that was exactly what the product of a trick would say, but he hoped that Jace was too out of it to think of that. "You're in the Institute; we moved you from the infirmary to your room, but you can't tell anyone I'm here. The Clave issued a ban on Downworlders entering."
"Oh, you're real all right." Jace somehow managed to look irritated and relieved all at once. "This sounds like the Clave we know and love."
Magnus tried to avoid that particular detail as much as possible. It was humiliating to have to sneak into the Institute through unauthorised portals just so he could heal someone, but he did it. He couldn't not do it, no matter what the consequences could be.
"I think you're allowed visitors." He steered the topic into safer territory. "Do you want me to tell them you're awake?"
Jace considered that for a moment. He missed them, Magnus could see that much, but even without looking at himself he probably realised that seeing him would only make them worry more.
"I could use some more sleep," he said at last and Magnus nodded.
"If that's what you want. I'll stay here just in case something goes wrong."
There was a lot that could go wrong given Jace's current physical – and mental – condition and they both knew it, so the Shadowhunter didn't protest.
"Night, Magnus."
Magnus had no intention to sleep – he wouldn't repeat his earlier mistake – but he smiled anyway. "Good night, Jace."
o.O.o
The next time Magnus saw him, Jace was still confined to the Institute even if he'd been allowed to walk around once he'd been thoroughly questioned with the Mortal Sword. The ban on Downworlders had been lifted too; Magnus had heard about it from Alec first and his message had been shortly followed by one from the new Head of the Institute. Magnus had decided to accept the invitation – among other things, it gave him the chance to check on his self-appointed patient once he got there.
"Alec healed most of the wounds," Jace said when Magnus approached him about his condition. He was still chewing on his scrambled eggs from lunch and he seemed much more comfortable now, both in the Institute and in his own skin. "But if you still- Well. You're here anyway."
"Yes?" Magnus tried to be patient – the boy had gone through a lot – but he wished he could just spit out whatever was bothering him.
"There's something runes can't help with." Jace had lowered his voice and he already looked like he regretted speaking at all. "But maybe magic could."
Magnus mournfully thought about how busy his schedule was and then accepted that his priorities had shifted slightly over the months he'd spent unusually close to the Shadowhunters of New York. "I'll meet you in your room in half an hour. I have to talk to your brave leader first."
Jace grimaced. "Good luck."
Unfortunately, Magnus could feel that he was going to need it.
The only reason Victor Aldertree had put an end to his Downworlder-free approach to leadership was because the Institute's wards needed to be strengthened again. Letting in just Warlocks – and him in particular – would have seemed too desperate, Magnus supposed, so now everyone who was Shadowhunter-approved could enter. Alec had given him a key to the front gates as well, but Aldertree didn't need to know that. What he did need to know was how much the wards would cost, and Magnus could already sense that there would be some resistance to the price he'd chosen.
When he finally got to Jace's room, it was an hour and a lot of negotiations later, but he hoped that the Shadowhunter would still be there. Runes could help with almost anything, so t was unusual to hear the opposite.
"Come in," Jace's voice called out once Magnus knocked and he pushed the door open, unsure what waited for him on the other side. As it turned out, Jace was lying on his bed and put his book aside as soon as he saw him. "You came."
"Of course I did. Whenever a Shadowhunter admits that the Marks can't help them, I know things are bad."
"It's not just about the Marks." Jace looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Alec was the one who healed me, but I never told him. Maybe Clary's runes would have helped; she's got this... ability to make them more powerful, but I didn't- Maybe this was a bad idea."
"Jace," Magnus sighed as the Shadowhunter stopped his fussing for a moment. "Whatever you want me to do, I'm sure someone's asked me to do much worse in the past. Are you hurt?"
"Not exactly." Jace's voice was muffled as, to Magnus's slight confusion, he tugged his shirt over his head and turned around. "They're just scars. Can you get them off?"
Magnus tried to speak, but found his breath stuck in his throat as he examined the damage. The scars were thin, long lines that disappeared and reappeared haphazardly over the expanse of Jace's back. Thin, but deep, he noticed and to his horror, he could tell exactly what kind of whip had been used to inflict them.
"Magnus?" Jace was standing completely still; had been since he'd taken his shirt off, but alarm had crept into his voice. "Will it work?"
"Yes." Magnus had managed to find his footing again. "Yes, of course. Sit down."
Jace's skin was hot under Magnus's fingers as he focused on each individual scar, trying to watch the shimmering traces of the magic pouring out of his hands rather than its target. "Are they new? It might be easier that way?"
"Yes." Jace hesitated. "I didn't expect it to leave scars. It never did before."
"It depends on a lot of things," Magnus shrugged, grateful that the Shadowhunter couldn't see his face. Before. He'd arrived in New York when he'd been eleven; how had Valentine managed to inflict enough damage in eleven years that Jace could still remember it in detail now? "It doesn't matter. Anything can be reversed."
It was a lie; one that Jace could probably see through. Still, he pressed the matter further. "Anything?"
"As long as it's physical, yes. Do you have something in mind?
"Not really." Jace flinched as Magnus's magic got a little more insistent. "You know a lot about- those things."
"I do."
"What happened?"
Shadowhunters had no concept of tact; Magnus had discovered that a long time ago. If they wanted to say something, they said it and usually it was easy to ignore them, so it was surprising that Magnus found himself compelled to answer. Maybe it was because Jace had trusted him with this and he felt like he had to give something back. "I set him on fire."
Jace's stunned silence was an answer enough. "Did you ever regret it?"
"I didn't do it on purpose," Magnus admitted. "I was ten. But no. Attack is the best form of defence, right?"
"Right." Jace didn't sound sure. "But if he'd never tried to hurt you-"
"Yes, but he did," Magnus stressed. "He did it again and again, and when it got too bad, I snapped. Sometimes it's either that or sitting down and waiting to die."
"It's not the same." Magus had been just starting to idly wonder whether they'd steered the topic in a different direction. Apparently they had. "He's my father."
"So was he," Magnus said. "As much as I had one, that is. Doesn't mean he meant well."
"That's not what I'm saying." Jace sounded almost offended. "It wasn't like that before. It was just the two of us and we were fine."
"But you're different now. The Lightwoods changed you and he doesn't like it. And because he's Valentine, he has to experiment to see what works." Magnus went on with his work in silence for a few seconds. "I kept wondering what happened to the real Michael Wayland."
If Magnus was honest with himself, he hadn't been wondering at all. The members of the Circle and their respective fates after the Uprising were all equally uninteresting to him, but he felt that mentioning it would get Jace's attention. And he'd been right.
"What do you mean?"
"If Valentine was impersonating him, then he must have got rid of him first."
"Yes," Jace said, voice softer than before. "Yes, he must have."
Magnus hadn't wanted to dig deeper into Valentine's crimes – he was Jace's father, after all, and even if he wanted the Shadowhunter to stop making excuses for him, he wasn't harsh enough to try and do it like this – but he'd wanted to empathise the point nevertheless. Michael Wayland died twenty years ago. There was no way for Jace to have known him, even if it was clear that he still made a distinction between him and Valentine, as if he thought that if he could keep telling them apart, only what had happened on the ship would matter.
"All done," Magnus said, breaking the silence that reigned over the room. "There's not a trace of them."
He was proud of his work, and apparently Jace so was Jace, if his pleased expression as he tried to see his back in the mirror was anything to go by. He glanced at him over his shoulder, clearly unsure what to say, and Magnus decided to spare him the trouble. "I'll see you later." 'Later' would probably mean a few days in the very least, but Magnus didn't need to specify that. The last thing Jace needed was a reminder that his treatment wasn't over. "I need to talk to Maryse before I go."
"See you." Jace was still distracted and Magnus let himself out, though a part of him was still lost in thought. He wasn't sure what he'd thought would come out of his visit, but it hadn't been this and the thought was strangely unsettling. Actually, that wasn't quite right; what unsettled him was the fact that Jace Wayland kept surprising him and he knew, deep down, that a part of him hoped that the later he'd mentioned would come sooner than expected.
o.O.o
Just as Magnus had suspected, things got worse before they got better. Most of Jace's scars weren't as easy to remove as the ones on his back – in fact, most of them were impossible to remove and Magnus hadn't even bothered trying lest he hurt him even more – and the Silent Brothers couldn't help with that. The general philosophy Shadowhunters applied to their especially traumatised soldiers was to encourage them – with increasing impatience and decreasing subtlety – to put themselves together no matter what it cost them. It was clear that no one had introduced the concept of therapy to them – or at least to Jace – and Magnus found himself using every opportunity he had to help however he could.
Putting this into consideration, it wasn't that unexpected of Jace to show up at his flat without a warning. It was slightly unexpected for him to show up when it was nearing midnight and there was a thunderstorm raging outside, but Magnus let him in anyway, stopping in the middle of his greeting when the Shadowhunter started talking the moment the door was open.
"No one paid you for me."
"What?" It wasn't Magnus's most eloquent response to date, but it was all he could manage before he got his bearings. "Do you want to come in? You're soaking wet."
"No one paid you for healing me." Magnus closed the door behind Jace's back and watched him as he plopped down in the chair near the fireplace. "You made it sound like Maryse did, but she didn't. Alec let it slip today and-" Jace's eyes narrowed. "Was it Alec? Did he ask you to do it?"
"No," Magnus said hastily, then hesitated. "Yes. He was the one who called me first and he tried to discuss payment, but I told him not to worry about it." Magnus looked away from Jace's piercing gaze and at his own nails. It was easier to talk to him when he wasn't looking at him, he'd found; otherwise Jace could get a little... intense to deal with. "But that was at first. The next time, when you asked me to help with the," he gestured vaguely, trying not to delve into detail, "I never told him about this."
"Why not?" The answer seemed obvious, but it was clear that it wasn't to Jace. He looked lost, and it was worse than almost everything else Magnus had seen from him so far.
"You didn't want anyone to know," he shrugged. "It wasn't my secret to tell." Magnus took pleasure in overpricing the Institute outrageously for the simplest task, but it hadn't even occurred to him to do the same with Jace's case. He wasn't sure when he'd stopped thinking about the money at all, and he wasn't sure why. It had just happened; he'd allowed himself to become concerned and hadn't even realized.
Jace still looked a bit mystified. "So it wasn't about Alec."
"This has never been about Alec."
"Okay." Despite the simple response, Jace still seemed to be thinking and Magnus smiled.
"Come here; let's find you some dry clothes before you freeze to death."
"No frozen corpses in the living room, then; I'll try to remember that," Jace said, obviously grateful for the change of topic.
"Please do." They'd have time to talk about everything later, Magnus thought; Jace was here now and didn't seem too eager to leave. As long as that didn't change, they had all the time they could need.