Chapter Text
Magnus stares at the hotel door in front of him. He checks the note in his hand for the millionth time that day, making sure he has the right place. Alec is back at their house with Aline and Helen to keep him company, though his boyfriend knows where he is going. Magnus would never try to do this behind Alec’s back. With a deep sigh, he knocks on the door.
Isabelle is the one to answer the door, swinging it open with a little more force than necessary. He feels a bit bad that the excitement on her face drops when she sees that he is alone, her azure wings sag behind her.
“Hello,” she greets.
“Hello, mind if I come in?” Magnus asks, sneaking a glance around her to see if Jace is there. A small part of him is happy that the brother is not here. He must not be as subtle as he thinks because Isabelle is snorting.
“Jace went to the market to get us groceries,” she answers, nodding her head inside. “Come in.”
Magnus steps into the room and takes in the single bed which is lined with cheap bed sheets. He would have thought that a family as wealthy as the Lightwoods would settle for something more, luxurious.
“Cozy hotel room you both have decided to hole up in,” he comments, taking a seat at the small table in the room.
“This place is a piece of crap,” she scoffs, taking the seat across from him. “But it’s what we could afford with the little money we have.”
“Correct me if I am wrong, but Alexander has stated that you are from a wealthy background.” Though that was more an observation on his part when he was scoping out his next target all those years ago. Magnus gestures to the room they’re in, “This doesn’t really scream the type of place your family would stay at.”
“If we hadn’t come here behind our parent’s backs, we would have made sure to take more money,” she admits with a shrug. “Once we overheard them discussing what they were planning on doing, we tried to beat the bounty hunters here to warn Alec. As you know, we did not.”
Magnus hums, clasping his hands together to stop himself from fidgeting too much. “I am very aware of the fact that you two did not arrive in time and decided that barging into our home was the best idea instead.”
Isabelle winces at his sharp words. “I agree, that wasn’t the smartest way to go about wanting to see our brother. I am sorry for how Jace acted.”
Magnus holds up a hand to stop her. “I would rather the person who charged at me be the one to apologize. You did try to hold him back.”
“That still doesn’t excuse the fact that I didn’t do more to hold him back and then when Alec-.” Her breath hitches and her eyes start to shimmer. “When we saw Alec at the top of the stairs looking down at us with panicked eyes. Looking at us in the same way he did when people in our town would go after him.” A sob escapes her lips and she raises a hand to cover her mouth. Her azure wings hug tightly to her back. “I never wanted Alec to look at us that same way.”
Magnus opens his mouth to speak when the room door opens. Jace halts his steps as he takes in his sister crying and Magnus sitting there. Magnus sees the moment that anger from last night seeps in. No, not anger, he realizes now it’s protectiveness. Groceries fall to the ground as the brother storms his way over to him.
“What the hell did you say to her,” he demands. His golden wings puffed out behind him to look as big as possible.
Magnus can’t help but snort and roll his eyes. People with golden wings always have too much confidence. “Does this mean I won’t be getting an apology anytime soon?”
Izzy lets out a wet laugh next to him as Jace gets even more in his face. “Jace stop, Magnus didn’t do anything.”
“Then why are you crying?” He asks.
“Because I miss our brother,” she says, breath hiccuping. “Magnus came here to talk to us, so please don’t attack him.”
Magnus doesn’t even try to hide his amused face when Jace continues to glare at him.
“Jace,” Izzy says, her tone sharp.
“Fine,” Jace grumbles and turns to pick up the groceries he left on the ground. “So what does the red man have to say?”
“My name is Magnus. You should probably be more kind to the man who has been taking care of your brother for the past two years.”
“Taking care?” Jace snorts moving to the mini kitchen, slamming cans on the counter. “You took him from us! Made us believe he was dead! I don’t think you get to say that when we mourned our brother for two years.”
That throws Magnus for a loop. “Dead? I never sent anything saying I had killed your brother to the Lightwood house. That’s not what I do.”
“Is it not?” Jace asks, slamming a cabinet close.
“Jace enough,” Izzy snaps, making her brother flinch. “Even after what I heard Mom and Dad say in the kitchen last week, you’re still acting like this was Magnus’ fault.”
“How do we know that he wasn’t in on this?” Jace jabs a finger in his direction. “That Mom and Dad didn’t hire him to kidnap and kill Alec and he just didn’t go through with it? We know nothing about you.”
“Maybe if you’d let me speak, I could tell you,” Magnus retorts, crossing his arms. “I understand that you are both worried for Alexander, but maybe try not to piss off the one person who’s going to decide whether or not you get to see him.”
“Jace if you don’t sit down and shut up I will make you wait outside,” Izzy threatens. She turns to Magnus with apologetic yet annoyed eyes. “I’m sorry, he means well. Alec and him were very close, practically attached at the hip. We all were. But people were less inclined to say things to Alec’s face if Jace was there. Mainly because he would start fights with anyone who looked at our brother funny.”
“That I am not surprised by, given the way he barged into our home,” Magnus snorts, ignoring Jace’s noise of disagreement. “Still waiting on an apology, Blondie.”
“I’ll apologize when you tell me what really happened two years ago,” Jace huffs, plopping himself down on the bed. Anger leaves his features and is replaced by what Magnus can only describe as emptiness.
“When our parents told us Alec was found dead in the woods, that we couldn’t even see his body for how mutilated it was-,” Jace takes a shuddering breath, it’s clear that this is hard to talk about. He glances at Isabelle and sees that she’s not even trying to hide her tears. “Izzy and I didn’t sleep for days, maybe even weeks.
“I promised Alec that where he goes, I go. And the one time I didn’t accompany him on a hunt he-.” Jace presses his lips together, clenching his jaw. “I will never forget that day. Even though I know Alec is alive now and still has his wings.”
“Last week,” Izzy sniffles, wiping away tears, ”I overheard our parents talking about Alec, I thought it had to do with the anniversary of his death. Instead I heard them upset, angry that Alec was still alive. They said that they thought by not replying to the ransom that his kidnapper would have killed Alec but without proof of his body, I guess they assumed you had gotten rid of Alec when you realised you weren’t getting paid.”
“I didn’t even say I would kill Alec in my ransom. I just said that if they didn’t hand over the money, their son would suffer,” Magnus shrugs. That of course gets a heated stare from the both of them. Magnus raises his hands, “I don’t actually do what I say in my notes. It’s more so to get stuffy, rich parents to do as I say.”
Their glares don’t go away and Magnus takes a deep breath. He goes into details of how his “kidnappings” work. He makes sure to be as detailed as possible about everything, realizing that this is the first time that he’s had to explain the heists he used to pull. He of course stopped after Alec agreed to come with him. As if he could have ever said no to Alec when the man was terrified whenever someone even looked at him. When he gets to the part of how he asked Alec to come with him, he can’t keep the smile off his face.
Alec has come so far since they met. The quiet, shy man that Alec was has completely faded away into the confident person he is now. Magnus is pretty sure that if he could put Alec now next to Alec then it would be two different people. He’s also positive that he would break down crying and hold past Alec in his arms which would probably terrify the man.
“After I healed him up, I gave him the option to come with me. To get away from the town that shunned him and made him an outsider just for the color of his wings. I honestly didn’t think he was going to say yes,” he chuckles. He remembers feeling like his heart was about to beat out of his chest.
“When he did agree, I couldn’t have packed my bags quicker and gotten out of that town. And now we’re here, in Edom. We own a house together, I have a job with a wing grooming salon, and Alec works in the marketplace in the city’s square. Just a few months ago we celebrated the day he agreed to come with me and said I love you to each other for the first time,” he grins at the memory of that night. “He makes me happy and I like to think I do the same for him.”
The siblings don’t say anything, just continue to stare at him with shocked expressions. It makes him slightly squirm in his chair that they haven’t said anything. He wonders what’s going on in their heads, if they think he manipulated Alec into coming with him, if he was a horrible human. Before his thoughts start to spiral further, Jace starts to laugh, hard. Like clutching your stomach laugh, Isabelle joins in as well.
It’s Magnus’ turn to look surprised by the turn of events. Completely caught off guard by their laughter. He expected anger, frustration, yelling, not this.
“Oh my god,” Izzy cackles. “It would just be like Alec to run away with the first person to show him kindness that wasn’t us.”
“What?” Magnus squeaks, not understanding what’s happening.
“I told you he read too many of those fantasy books about princes and princesses getting rescued by knights,” Jace giggles, wiping tears from his eyes.
“I don’t understand.”
“Our brother, Alec,” Izzy tries to start, but continues to giggle. She holds up a finger asking for him to wait as she tries to control her laughter. “He spent most of his life at the town’s library. Since I can remember, if Alec wasn’t with one of us or out hunting, he was either at the library reading or in his room reading.”
“Alec adores everything fantasy, his favorites being about damsels in distress,” Jace adds on with a chuckle. “Alec would always sneak into our rooms at night to read us a bedtime story. It was always about a princess locked away in a tower waiting for prince charming to come and rescue her.”
The siblings share a grin before looking back at him. “Guess Alec found his Prince Charming,” Izzy teases.
Magnus feels his cheeks heat up at the comment. “I expected you two to be upset, furious with me,” he flusters. “Not happy about it!”
To be completely honest, he thought that he would get punched by Jace, maybe slapped by Isabelle. Somewhere in the back of his head, he always wondered what he would do if Alec’s family somehow found them. How he would react and what he would do. This reaction didn’t even cross his mind.
“Magnus, you gave Alec exactly what he wanted. What we failed to give him.” Isabelle reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. “You gave him happiness.”
Magnus' breath catches at the words. He feels his eyes start to water.
“As much as Jace and I want to be mad, to be upset. There was nothing more that we wanted than for Alec to be happy,” she smiles.
“Alec always put himself last,” Jace shrugs. “Never once thought about himself and what he wanted to do in life. The amount of times I tried to tempt him with the idea that we should all just run away and every time he said no, afraid of the repercussions that we would get.” Jace gestures between him and Izzy. “He didn’t care what happened to him.”
“I think he knew that he wasn’t going to last long in that town,” Izzy whispers, chewing on her bottom lip. “I could see it as each day passed by that the brother I knew was fading away and if something wasn’t done soon, Alec was going to be gone forever.”
Magnus closes his eyes as a shiver runs its way through his body at those words. He thinks that he too somehow knew that was going to happen. When he came into that room seeing Alec plucking out his wings, he knew he had to save him. Something told him that if he didn’t ask Alec to come with him, that Alec wasn’t going to go back to his family.
“This isn’t how I thought this was going to go at all,” Magnus chuckles, wiping at his eyes.
“If you want me to punch you I still can,” Jace offers, resulting in a slap on the arm from Isabelle. “Ow! Hey I was just offering, I wasn’t going to do it.”
“You wouldn’t even have been able to land a hit on me,” he jokes.
“That right?” Jace sizes him up, wings puffing out. Magnus feels his own start to rise at the taunt.
“Jace, don’t fight Alec’s boyfriend,” Izzy sighs, shaking her head trying to hide her smile. “Speaking of Alec… Do you think we could see him?”
Isabelle asks so quietly that Magnus almost doesn’t catch it. “I think I need to talk with Alexander about it first. He’s still trying to process what happened, but he does want to see both of you. He just can’t leave our house and that’s his safe place. So it’s gonna take a moment for him to warm up to the idea. How long are you two able to stay in town?”
“As long as it takes,” Jace answers immediately, perking up. “We just found out our brother was still alive last week. We owe it to Alec to stick around and explain everything that happened. Why we didn’t try to find him. If that means waiting another day, week, month then so be it.”