WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T READ CITY OF LOST SOULS. MAJOR SPOILS.
I just finished City of Lost Souls and the idea of Alec and Magnus being over wouldn't leave me alone so I wrote this. I don't know if Tessa or Magnus are in character, and I'm sorry if they aren't. This might continue on as a "what happens next in the book" sort of story but I'm not sure. It might just be a two-shot. I guess it depends if you guys like it or what you want it to be. I hope you enjoy it.
Magnus turned, retracing his path through his apartment. His chest ached from the unhealed wound, but he ignored it. That pain was nothing compared to the lurching of his heart. It dragged at him, nagging in consequence to his words. He had lost his Alexander, that soft-spoken boy with the blue eyes. Pushed him away more like, yet what else could he do? His betrayal tore at him, seeing him with his own eyes make those steps that would cause the destruction of his very self, was an unconquerable foe. He loved, but could not love. And the sadness was killing him.
He could not cry, would not allow himself to cry. He hadn't cried in a hundred years, had never let himself be so close to someone to feel the need to, but his eyes ached with that unfamiliarly familiar sting and he blinked several times to clear it. It had been two days since he walked away, two days since he left Alexander, and he had seen nothing of the boy. He did not realize his heart would ache for the boy that fit so perfectly between him, that he would find himself calling for him in the night, or reaching for his hand that would no longer be beside him. The yearning to see the boy – just one last time – tore through his heart better than Amatis's knife could have even hoped.
Yet the boy did not come. His things were packed neatly – Magnus couldn't bear the thought of Alec searching around the apartment to find them or of him staying any longer than absolutely necessary, but no one showed up to claim the boxes. No Alec, no Isabelle, no Jace. Nobody. He had tried to tell himself he didn't care, that if no one showed up within a few days he would throw the things out, but he did. The thought of leaving it like this, of his last memory being Alec calling him back, begging for that last chance Magnus wouldn't give, was too unbearable. Even if they said no words, he wanted to see him, needed to see him. But no one showed.
He turned again, the ache burning as his ribs protested the sharp movement and the sting in his eyes returned. He could not shake the impenetrable feeling that something was wrong. Alexander wouldn't leave it like this, he knew. He would come back, maybe not speaking, or with his blue eyes unreadable, but he would be back for that last time. He would have showed and the thoughts of why he hadn't scared Magnus. Frightened Magnus in a way that he had not felt for the Angel knew how long. Not since Tessa –
There was a flash of light, a pure white that burned at his eyes and lit his apartment floor. It shimmered as if a flame, and burned at his skin. He remembered Raziel and how the Earth seemed to burn within the golden light and thought this to be similar. But this light was more human, softer in its burn, like the soft caress of a mother's warm hand or the glow of firelight, and he knew who was calling onto him. He did not know why she was there but as her soft, feminine form came into view, her light brown hair billowing in an invisible wind and her sharp gray eyes gazing solely on him, he found himself relieved in some way. This was not an enemy of his nor an unfriendly angel, her features were familiar and her presence welcome.
She landed softly, silently, onto his floor. She wore a simple white dress– it was always white for she was always paying penance to her sorrow – and he could see the pale peach of her bare feet just hidden under the hem. The dress was long-sleeved and billowed slightly on the floor as she walked – a dress from the Earth's youth before all this darkness came. Perhaps from when the darkness arrived, Magnus thought wryly as the ethereal figure stopped before him. For it was that time when he became entangled with the Shadowhunters- the time he was with Camille, the time he met his first Lightwood. And the time his life began that spiral that led him to Alexander. And it was that time that led to his heart break. He could not say he was happy to see her.
"What do you need?" he asked, rather wishing he could be alone, despite his initially warm reaction towards her. He could see she could sense his coldness but she did not back away as she might have, decades before. Instead she smiled. It was a dispassionate smile, a smile that had seen the worst and the best in the world and was inclined to sit through the rest quietly. She had lived her life and why she was back was unknown.
"I need nothing, Magnus," she spoke, her voice calm and light, not cold or flat by any means, but unlifted by any discernible emotion. Once that voice held the dark slope of anger and the tilt of joy, but all that was gone, leaving an ethereal calmness and a sense of disattachment Magnus never could succeed at. A wave of jealousy at the thought of his friend being above the pain of human attachment burned across him and he glared instinctively. She merely continued her soft smile, her grey eyes – more silver now at the faded years – sighing softly that she too understood. "I came because it is you that needs something."
Magnus arched a perfectly sculpted black eyebrow up at her words, swinging his arms out wide as if to encompass the whole room, "I need nothing Theresa, I am happy and content." His words were sarcastic, cruel in a way, but she seemed unperturbed.
"You need happiness Magnus. You almost got it and you let it slip through your hands like water in a sieve. You need love, Magnus."
Magnus, in a fit of cold anger and mild hysteria, laughed derisively. "What, Theresa, do you know about love? You who have cast yourself away from the tumultuous humans below you, what can you have to tell me about love? You, who lost two loves, what can you tell me about saving mine?" Her eyes flashed, a spark of emotion erupting inside for perhaps the first time in a century, and she spoke passionately, reminding him of the human girl she once thought she was.
"I can tell you not to take it for granted, not to lose those ties that make you human, Magnus. I may not have loved well; I watched one man change before me into something unrecognizable and yet another died before me whilst I could do nothing. I may have retreated from this world and left the humans to their lives, but I remember what it was like to be one. I remember what love felt like, Magnus, and I know what it looks like now. Alexander loved you." Magnus, who had flinched at the mention of Theresa's loves, sparked indignantly at the mention of Alexander.
"Alexander betrayed me." He retorted stiffly, glaring at the woman. She merely shook her head once more, the emotions again vacated from her face.
"He would have never have done it. I watched him with his meetings with Camille," Magnus flinched at the thought, "never once did he consider doing it. He could not put you through that Magnus."
"Then why did he go?" His words, meant angry and defensive, came out quiet and pleading, his sorrow coloring the words blue. It sounded pathetic even to his own ears.
"Because she gave him something you never did. She gave him you." Magnus was confused by her words and it must have shown because she began an elaboration. "She told him who you were, where you were from. She gave him information you never did. He may have met with her, may have even briefly entertained the idea of stripping you of your immortality, but never out of anger or betrayal. He did it because you pushed him away. You pulled him close enough to love him, yet far enough to hurt him. It was not he who betrayed you, but the opposite. For he was nothing but forthcoming, in his own way, and you kept your distance. You kept your secrets and in that you kept him away. You wished to protect yourself from the heartbreak of Camille and in doing so broke both of your spirits."
Magnus felt weight bearing on him at her words, an unbearable weight that pushed at him until he could no longer breathe. There was truth in her words; he had kept Alexander enough to try and protect himself. It was better than if he used a spell, the way he twisted Alec's love into a weapon. He took from Alec what he refused to give. He may have felt betrayal, but he betrayed Alexander long before the meeting with Camille. "Why are you telling me this?" he gasped out, his emotions pushing against him painfully.
Theresa – once a shimmering youth brimming with emotions called Tessa, now a hallowed woman withdrawn from the world – smiled sadly at him. "Because I watched two men I loved die and could do nothing. You face the same fate with Alexander if you do not act soon, and I wish that fate to no one." Her body was already fading – he should have realized she was never truly there – but her words struck him as sharply as if she had been there to physically harm him.
"What do you mean, what has happened to Alexander?" he grasped for her dress, knowing in his mind that she wasn't there, and coming up with air.
"You shall find him in the place you last left him, go before it's too late." Was her parting words, leaving the warlock fearful – afraid of his treacherous emotions that would not allow him to stop loving and for his hated love whose fate was unknown.