Hey.

I am so glad that you all seemed to like my virgin attempt of slash. Hopefully I will get better, but that was my first attempt. I feel sort of gangster…

But onto another issue that I really need to brief you on, so even if you don't generally read my A/Ns (which apparently you guys don't mind too much, so I will let my rants go free) READ THIS PART!

Okay, being the long and tedious fic this is, a lot of you probably skim my poorly placed essentials, so I need to bring attention to this tiny thing which I have turned into a massive as deal right here.

You all remember Alec flipping out over that dream a couple of chapters ago because the demon took over his mind and gave him petrifying nightmares, right? Okay, so during that chapter, it is explained that Alec only gets these nightmares if he is in regular sleep (ie, not unconscious/runed/spelled to sleep). It was thus given to Magnus as a DUTY to put Alec to sleep every night, otherwise the nightmares would continue to plague the lovely Alec, and all would be lost.

And basically, Magnus has been magicking Alec to sleep every night… except he might have forgotten after their sexual encounter… And maybe he just made a very, very bad decision…

Random Fact No. 3049712309478: The word 'idiot' is derived from the ancient Greek word 'idiotes', which referred to a person of this time who did not vote in an election. The word was later used more commonly to refer to a nitwit, numbskull, and your favourite Miss Regina Star.


It wasn't altogether unusual to hear screams in the morning in the Lightwood Institute. The walls were thick enough to keep privacy, but screams were different. They seemed to slice through the air like a knife. As Maryse and Robert leapt out of their bed that morning, however, they doubted that this was a normal scream.

Sure, there had been episodes where Izzy had actually gotten the boys to agree to eat her breakfast dishes, only to have been literally poisoned. It had happened once to Jace, on purpose, though she maintains that she never meant to actually nearly kill the greatest shadowhunter of their generation, and once to Alec, accidentally. Somehow, Maryse doubted that Isabelle had poisoned Alec at 6 o'clock in the morning, especially since she had been forbidden to make breakfast these days.

And the scream that she heard now as she and her husband ran through the Institute to reach their son was heartbreaking. It was loud and shattering, and died away only when she heard a loud crash, as though something had been thrown across the room. She quickly rounded the final corner with Robert on her heels, almost crashing into Isabelle. Apparently they hadn't been the only ones alarmed by what went bump in the night.

Without speaking to her daughter, they continued, reaching Alec's door just moments after Jace, who looked furious as he wrenched Alec's door open. Maryse looked at her adoptive son, before walking swiftly behind him and glancing into the room and feeling her blood run cold with rage.

If this were an ordinary person's room, it might have looked relatively normal. The bed was tragically unmade and clothes littered the floor. Relatively normal, had she given birth to something of the likes of that Simon boy. But on closer inspection, the clothes were not simply on the floor so much as strewn across the room. The room smelled like sex, and the lube which had lazily been kicked beside her son's mattress did not fail to get her attention.

But that didn't even matter.

Not compared to the fact that her eldest son was quivering beneath his desk, clawing at his own flesh with his nails. Not when Alec was sobbing, and shaking and whimpering apologies to… Magnus. Magnus, who was trying to coax Alec back to his side, wearing only some underwear. Magnus, who Alec flinched away from as though he had an electric charge.

Without warning, she saw the golden figure of her now youngest son leap across the room and tackle the warlock to the ground. Magnus didn't even seem to put up a fight as Jace struck him across the face, mercilessly.

"You idiot! You Goddamn idiot!" Jace seemed furious to the point to tears, and Maryse wasn't even sure what to make of it. Her confusion was not aided when the quivering mess of her raven haired son crawled out from under the desk with an odd sense of urgency, lightly grabbing Jace's shoulder and pulling him away. Jace could have easily defied him, but he didn't. He simply turned to look at his brother, eyes desperate and angry and… scared. Very scared.

"Alec," he pleaded, slowly reaching up to touch his brother's face. Alec flinched a little, but allowed his hand to remain on his tear stricken cheek. "Alec, he did this to you. It's his fault. Whatever you saw last night wasn't real. Whatever the… whatever the illness showed you didn't happen. It's alright now. You're safe."

Alec shook his head, tears falling clumsily down his face. "C-c-can you see it Jace? Can you see the… the blood? I hurt Magnus. I hurt him… so much. And the blood…" Alec's faint little voice cracked whenever he spoke. "It's on my hands, Jace." Alec raised his hands and put them before the other boy. They were completely clean. "He's hurt because I hurt him. The walls are covered in… in his blood. I t-tore his heart out. I t-tore it out of his chest and laughed. D-do you see where I left it? I lost M-Magnus's heart…" Alec's eyes were darting around frantically, looking for something that was beating safely in that idiotic warlock's chest.

Jace turned back to Magnus, who had made no attempt to stand, and lay on the floor, hopeless.

And without a drop of blood on him.

"Alec, brother, calm down-"

"I hurt you too. And Isabelle, but not as much as…" Alec's eyes were clenched shut, as though he were forcing himself to remember. "It was only a glimpse, so brief, but I saw my hands clasped around your neck… I strangled you. Are the bruises s-still there, Jace?" Suddenly Alec snapped Jace's chin up, revealing clean, unmarked golden skin. Alec went ghostly pale and ran into the bathroom, leaving behind only the sound of his wretches. Maryse couldn't take it anymore.

"Magnus Bane, you were given one single simple task. You were told that you needed to put Alec to sleep every night, not an extraordinary amount of magic, and Alec compensates you anyway, and you just neglected-"

"I know."

The answer was weak and childlike, and infuriated Maryse to no end. Suddenly she sympathised with Jace, who had leapt on top of the warlock and struck him.

"You are not a child, warlock! You may be dating my son, and you can act like one all you like – have your bloody parties and be as carefree as you wish – but you and I both know that you are centuries old! You are not helpless. You know better, but you give in and forget, and you have no idea what responsibility is." She could hear her son in the bathroom. The sounds of him being sick had halted, but the sobs seemed to escape noisily. She knew Alec would be embarrassed. "How could you…"

She knew she was saying this for a variety of reasons. She knew that she really ought to be humbled and grateful to Magnus for all that he had done to help Alec – even Brother Eli agreed that he had a positive influence – but that was if she was a normal, rational human being. She tried her hardest, but deep down she was still a mother, who was furious that her son's lover had shirked his duties and had made love to her innocent, broken son in the night.

She turned to look at Robert, begging him for something. He cared for Alec, probably almost as much as she did. She knew he had favoured Max and Isabelle a little more, simply because they were more conventional and visible when he was actually in New York, but she saw the pain in his eyes.

Being a man of few words, Robert turned to the Silent Brother who stood at the back of the room, like a ghost. "What has happened to my son?"

A moment went by, and Maryse almost thought he wouldn't answer.

He had a bad dream.

Maryse heard a humourless laugh from Magnus, who was starting to sit up, gazing at the Brother. Out loud, he asked, "What did it make him see?"

It's hard… to read it with the demon energy, but… it isn't good. It wasn't just one dream, either, not like last time. It looks like a hundred dreams in succession.

"Did I kill him again, like last time? Is that why he won't let me touch him?" Magnus's voice wavered with resigned failure. Maryse, against her better senses, perhaps found a scrap of pity inside herself. Not enough to feed a sparrow, but at least she didn't want to throttle him any longer.

No… it is learning. Learning that Alec would rather die than hurt you… The Brother Eli sounded almost like he was saddened, or at least felt pity for Alec. And perhaps a little bit bitter towards Magnus. It made him watch, over and over, images of himself ripping you apart. He had to watch himself tear your heart from your chest and write on the walls with your blood. Sometimes he drank it, or smeared it on his own body. He listened to your screams for hours on end. There were occasional flashes of other things, like the one where he strangled Jace, but it was mostly you.

Maryse felt her knees go weak, but she refused to fall, forcing her body to stiffen.

"And what can he see now? Why does he insist that Magnus is bloody, and that Jace is bruised?"

You didn't really think that this wouldn't take its toll on him, did you child? Maryse knew that Brother Eli was only six or seven years older than Alec, but she held her tongue. He has been fighting it, but you honestly didn't think that he would just win hands down, did you? It's making him see things that aren't there, as to be expected. It cannot be helped that your son is losing his sanity. You are lucky he has fought as admirably as he has. My apologies, but things aren't going to be getting too much better from here.

Maryse felt her heart stop. Alec had been suffering, she knew that, but now… this was so much worse. She felt furious with Magnus, and scared for Alec, and just so… lost. She didn't know what she would do. Not if this continued. She couldn't lose Alec, but he was fading. She quickly went over to sit on her son's soiled sheets, and didn't even say a word as Magnus stood up and entered Alec's bathroom.


Magnus felt like he was in one of those dazes people always talked about, but never personally experienced. The one where you are so in shock, have so many thoughts hurtling around inside of you that everything just goes numb and stops.

He had felt Jace leap on top of him, and he had heard Brother Eli's words, which had been so close to Alec's own just the previous night. It suddenly made a lot of sense why Alec had allowed such intimacy between them; he had known that something like this would happen.

There had been a lot of bad things – excruciating things – but throughout all of Alec's slips of sanity, he had never stayed down like this. Usually when it passed, Alec would be shy and timid and scared and hurt, but it had never been like this. He had never been rendered to helpless to even pretend that he was okay.

But Magnus couldn't feel a thing.

It felt as though he had hit a climax of fear, and beyond that it was just unreadable.

Alec was hallucinating.

He was actually seeing things which weren't there – blood, of all things – and it was all Magnus's fault. He had known to put Alec to sleep. He had been doing it for over a week, but it had just felt so nice to lay side by side and fall into that beautiful darkness together that the very serenity had made him completely forget about Alec's needs.

He had been so selfish, so ignorant.

And when he saw Alec, clawing at his now bloody arms, shuddering and panting beside a basin dirtied by his own sick, Magnus felt all composure just slip away as he began to make his way over Alec, torn between leaping onto him and crying, and running out of the room and telling everyone else to care for Alec, that he couldn't take seeing him like this, that it hurt his every fibre, and that it was just… it was too much.

It was only when the warlock sat beside Alec, even as the boy flinched away from him, he knew that he hadn't been torn at all.

He would never leave Alec.

"Alec, darling, tell me what you see."

Alec's eyes were drenched in tears. Magnus knew Alec wouldn't let himself be touched, so he spelled his lover so that he would stop ripping his own arms to shreds. What Magnus hadn't been expecting was for Alec to bash his head against the cabinet, adjacent to where he was sitting on the stone cold tiles. Magnus quickly put a stop to this too, though his voice trembled as he muttered the spell. And then another to heal Alec's self-inflicted wounds.

"Is this… M-Magnus, is this real?" Alec's voice was so quiet, but the words were unmistakably there. Magnus sighed, wanting to hold Alec so badly, knowing that he couldn't. That it would only comfort himself.

"Alec, please tell me what you see." It was so quiet. Magnus could faintly here Jace and Maryse hissing at each other outside the bathroom, the older woman sending the others outside, but the bathroom seemed quiet, if not ominous.

"I see b-blood," stated Alec, softly. Magnus nodded for him to continue. "I d-dreamed last night, again. It was like the other dream, where you… where you k-killed me, except… except this t-time, there were more."

Magnus hesitated. Had this been what the Silent Brother had mentioned? "More what…?

Alec's eyes looked even more pained. "More dreams! Last time there was one – just one! This t-time… so many. I k-killed you a thousand times, I heard you scream s-so loudly, and I j-just kept going. Sometimes I was m-me, carving you into pieces, sometimes I was… I was just watching in the shadows… but other times I was you! I watched the twisted ugly smile on my own face as I took you away, and I screamed, and screamed…"

Alec made an attempt to claw at himself like he had been before, but Magnus's spell restricted his movement.

"When I woke up this m-morning, nothing had changed. I thought… b-but I was wrong. On the walls, there was blood… where it had splattered and where I had used my fingers to write with." Alec made a strange noise at the back of his throat, almost like a laugh. "'I love Magnus Bane. I love Magnus Bane. I love Magnus Bane.' I wrote it over and over again. I d-danced around your body, I licked away the b-blood. I c-couldn't stop myself, and it's all still here." Suddenly Alec reached a hand out near Magnus's chest, but he refused to make contact. "Where d-did I leave your heart, Magnus? Where did I put it?"

Magnus felt his stomach tie itself in knots, and didn't even realise that tears were streaking down his face. Alec had been okay last night, hadn't he? He hadn't imagined that he had been fine, he had really been relatively alright, and now…

"None of that happened, my love. The demon is making you imagine it, but none of it is real." Magnus held out his hand to Alec, palm up. His whole hand trembled. "Do you see blood on my hands?" Alec nodded, looking ill. "Touch it."

Alec reached out his hands, and Magnus felt a stab of horror as he saw Alec's own blood beneath his nails. Alec's touch only lasted a moment, but when Alec's eyes met his, there was something new.

"They're dry." Alec sounded astounded as he grabbed Magnus's hand again, clenching it and stroking it at the same time, looking as though he was drowning. "How are they dry? They are drenched, completely drenched. I remember, they were bloody – they still are. I c-can see it, but it isn't there…"

"Alexander. I promise you will be okay-"

"I'm seeing thing which aren't there." Alec sounded appalled, and Magnus felt himself give a shudder. "I knew I would go crazy. I knew I would – everyone knew I would – but I was meant to be better than this. W-why can't I fight, Magnus? I still see the writing on the walls, I know it isn't there, but it won't go away! Agh!" Alec yelled loudly in frustration, which contrasted with his previous soft voice. A moment later the bathroom door flew open to reveal Maryse looking panicked. It only took Magnus a moment to realise that she thought Alec's outburst to be a cry of pain.

In many ways, Magnus supposed, it was.

Alec paid his worried mother no attention as he stood up and looked at his reflection in the mirror with contempt, before looking at the reflections of Maryse and Magnus.

"I want t-to die. Kill me!" Suddenly Alec had abandoned his soft whisper for a hardened, rough plea. He spun around swiftly on his heel, staring at the two figures. "Kill me! Kill me before this," Alec made a gesture at the walls which were stained with imaginary blood, "becomes a reality. Let me die!" Alec made to hit himself again, but Magnus used his magic to stop him, and Alec gave him an uncharacteristic glare.

"Alexander, what happened to courage? You can do this, Alec, I know you can-"

"'It takes a world of courage to live your life, but just a moment's courage to take it away. Be courageous'," Alec quoted, a funny expression crossing his face. "But what if I don't have enough for either? Please, Magnus, stop it from hurting! Just take it all away!"

Alec sank to the floor again, and Maryse followed him, her face showing more motherly concern than Magnus had ever seen from the woman. On her knees, Maryse crawled over to Alec and placed his head in her lap and let him cry. Apparently the 'no physical contact' rule didn't apply people Alec hadn't dreamed of brutally murdering.

"Alexander, don't wish for that. We love you, we all love you." Maryse petted her son's sweat drenched locks of hair as she looked at Magnus accusingly. "Magnus, for all the good that you've done tonight, I think you should leave."

She was right, probably. Magnus knew that he was only fooling himself, trying to be Alec's knight as he sank deeper and deeper into something intangible and unreal.

"No!" choked Alec, startling both of the adults as he wrenched his head away from his mother's lap, looking back and forth between them, a look of sheer horror on his face.

"What-"

"No, you can't send him away! You c-can't! I… I love him. I need him. Please, don't make him go!" Alec was struggling onto his knees, fresh tears escaping his eyes. Magnus wanted to reach out and wipe them all away.

"Alec," Maryse sighed, frustrated. "Alec, that isn't what I meant. He isn't doing you any good. Last night, if he hadn't taken advantage of you, you would be okay-"

"He didn't." Alec was looking at the walls again, like a distracted cat. "He didn't take advantage of me. I wanted it. Look at me now, mother. Look at me, how whatever is left of my life will look like. Can you honestly imagine me doing that like this? I needed to show him – and me – how much I love him, even if it won't mean anything when I… when I'm like this."

"Alec, maybe your mother has a point." Magnus felt his own heart, still beating steadily even as the rest of him just wanted to wake up from whatever the nightmare was that was taking him hostage. "Maybe I shouldn't-"

Alec had staggered to his feet and nearly bowled the warlock over as he pulled him into an embrace, pushing his face against Magnus's chest and breathing in pants.

"Alec, I thought you couldn't touch me."

"Even if you are covered in b-blood… even if only I am out of my mind enough to see it, I would rather drench myself with your blood that I spilled than let you think that you leaving is possibly what is best. I will only ever be completely… 'okay' when I have you by my side."

Magnus wound his arms around Alec, even as Maryse shot him what must have been the most conflicted glare the world had ever seen, before abruptly looking away the moment her eyes locked with Magnus's. Magnus knew he was unworthy of this, but for a mother to have to watch her son place all of his faith into someone… someone like him, it would have been agonizing.

"I love you, Alexander Lightwood. I will always love you, and will be by your side as long as you will allow me to be there." It was as much a vow as a proclamation.

"B-but you won't kill me?"

Magnus stiffened. "No. No, I will not kill you. You do not kill that which you love."

"I know that – I always knew that…" mumbled Alec harshly, stiffening and trembling at the same time.

Magnus instantly regretted his words as Alec winced and pulled away, his eyes replaying the warlock's death in a hundred different ways. Smiling darkly to himself Alec looked up at his boyfriend.

"I love you too, Magnus Bane. Then again, it's written all over the walls."


Okay, this chapter is sort of evil, especially after last one's hopeless/hopeful medley. Well, it gets worse, and has (probably) five chapters left (so stick around... please?)!

If you have just read this, and gone 'What the devil?', and DIDN'T read the A/N at the start... well, maybe you could read it? If you have read this and found that it made little to no sense, and you DID read the A/N, drop a review asking any queries you have, and I promise to give you whatever answers I can.

Teaser:

Alec was kissing Simon...