Chapter Text
Alec
The first thing that Alec noticed when he woke up was that Magnus wasn’t beside him.
The second thing was that he was lying on a cold, metal floor, in the dark. That had him sitting up, a flick of his fingers trying to summon Magnus’ magic to light the space — only to find it blocked. Wards.
Instinctively, he reached out for Magnus along the bond between them; to his relief, he could feel Magnus as clearly as ever. He was waking up, confusion mounting; presumably, he was in a similar situation.
How had they ended up here? The memories washed over Alec as he cast his mind back: a sudden upswing of a particular species of flying demon in New York; portalling over with Magnus to lend a hand; a warlock, Runi Graves, trapping them and railing at Magnus for betraying warlocks everywhere by killing Lilith; Graves’ magic reaching out and knocking both of them unconscious.
He didn’t have time to guess at where Graves had brought them. A Projection of the warlock appeared suddenly in front of Alec, providing enough light for him to make out metal walls boxing him in — the room seemed to be about one metre long, one and a half metres wide, and not quite tall enough for Alec to stand. A feeling of claustrophobia rose in his throat; it didn’t look like there were any gaps in the walls to let in air.
“Hello there,” Graves said, smiling cheerily in direct contrast to his dreary surroundings and the rage that’d been on his face when he’d knocked Alec out. “I see you’ve both woken up and are getting accustomed to your accommodations. I hope you like them; they’ll be the last place you ever see.”
Magnus
“Where did you take us?” Magnus growled, getting to his feet in the small metal box. The surge of protectiveness and anger in his chest was only partially his own. “Where’s Alec?”
“Oh, you’re both asking about each other. How sweet.” Graves’ smile was more like a grimace now, his anger showing through. “Unfortunate that you’ll never see each other again. You see, I’ve warded your rooms to prevent sound from getting through, and the whole place is warded against magic. As I said before, you won’t be leaving this place.” The grimace was fading into a look of triumph.
“Why?” Magnus bit out. He tried to send tendrils of magic out to test Graves’ wards, but nothing doing; his magic was completely cut off. An ingenious way to ward — he couldn’t break the wards if he couldn’t access any of his magic. He might’ve been impressed if the ward wasn’t keeping him and Alec trapped, if it wasn’t separating them — from what Graves had said, it sounded like Alec was in a box like his, right next to him, but impossible to reach.
“Because of what you’re doing.” The anger was back full-force, twisting Graves’ features. “You killed Lilith, our Mother. You’re destroying the world, the two of you — you’re traitors, especially Bane—” An abrupt feeling of fury cascaded through the bond, followed by stinging knuckles, and Graves laughed. “You can’t hurt me, little Shadowhunter.”
Alec, Magnus gathered, had tried to attack the Projection of Graves in his own room and — judging by the bleeding knuckles Magnus could feel — had ended up punching a wall. Anger was burning hot in Alec’s chest, but Magnus found himself smiling fondly. Alec always defended him, even when he could do little, even when it wasn’t necessary.
The smile dropped from Magnus’ face as Graves went on. “Anyway, you won’t be much longer for this world, either of you. There’s no way out of there, so don’t bother trying. The box is airtight; assuming you don’t panic and start breathing too heavily, you’ll go unconscious from lack of oxygen in—” he made a show of glancing down at his watch “—fifteen minutes.”
Then the Projection vanished, and the room was dark once more. Magnus felt his breath start to come faster — he felt like the lack of oxygen in the air was suffocating him already, and it was too much like water rising over his head, he needed air—
Alec pushed calmness through the bond, and Magnus grabbed hold of it with desperation, using Alec to ground himself and slow his breathing. Freak-outs aside, he probably still had those fifteen minutes of air; he wasn’t suffocating. (Yet, at least.)
Through the bond, Magnus felt Alec try to use his faerie magic, but the wards apparently worked on it as well as they did on Magnus’ magic. Then came a small burst of angelic power as Alec drew or activated a rune — and the walls of Magnus’ cell trembled slightly.
Immediately, several bursts of angelic energy came through the bond as Alec drew the rune again, and the walls trembled more, but the wards didn’t fall and no cracks formed. But maybe if Magnus drew runes, too, from his side — he scrabbled in his pocket for the stele he’d taken to carrying around ever since the permanent Alliance rune had made it practicable—
He found the stele, and it lit up red in his grasp, but he didn’t know what rune it was Alec had drawn. He tried the regular open rune, but it did nothing; Alec was probably using one of Clary’s special runes, which Magnus hadn’t yet learned.
Alec was still drawing runes, but nothing more was happening beyond the faintly trembling walls. He’d likely figured out that Magnus needed to be able to draw the rune, and that Magnus didn’t know the rune; helplessness rose in both of their chests.
It was an ignominious way to die, Magnus thought, suffocating to death in a metal box.
Alec
Despair was heavy in Alec’s throat.
What was the point of being bonded to somebody if you couldn’t communicate beyond vague emotions? Admittedly, Magnus and Alec had learned to read each other well; sometimes it was almost like they shared thoughts, especially when they had the context to guess at the reasons behind the other’s emotions. But right now, that was useless; the metal was cold against his side, and Alec wished he were with Magnus.
But no. One of the four walls of his room was separating them; Alec didn’t even know if Magnus was to the left or the right of him, but it didn’t change much. They were separated.
Marshalling his determination, Alec focused on drawing Clary’s modified open rune again, and again, and again. Runic power depended on several things — the exactness of the rune and the intent behind it were important; parabatai could draw runes on each other that were stronger than most; Clary’s runes often had a power boost. But apparently all of Alec’s focus was insufficient, because the walls shook but didn’t break.
The rune was similar to the open rune, only varying in a few places; Alec closed his eyes, visualising it, imagining pouring angelic power into every stroke. The image of it burned in his mind’s eye, the rune itself stood strong and bright on the metal — but it wasn’t enough.
Without warning, a feeling of excitement, of discovery, came rushing through the bond — somehow, Alec knew, Magnus had figured out how to draw Clary’s rune. Before he could guess at the how, the walls of the metal box shook as Magnus drew the rune.
The how didn’t matter, anyway; Alec reached for Magnus through the bond, and they drew the strokes of Clary’s rune together, steles moving in perfect tandem. It glowed brighter than it had before; Alec felt hope swell in his chest as metal screeched on metal, the wall beginning to break apart, the ceiling about to tear open—
And then, from the gap in the top of the box, water rushed in.
Magnus
The water poured into Magnus’ box, and he tried to use his magic to keep it out, but the wards were still up — the box was filling rapidly, water sloshing already around Magnus’ arms, and he felt already like he couldn’t breathe—
A rune flashed into his mind through the bond, bright lines drawn in the gold of Alec’s angelic power, and Magnus didn’t bother trying to remember what it did before he scrawled it on his skin. The water reached his shoulders, lifting him off his feet and slamming his head against the top of the box; he finished drawing the rune as the water rose up above his nose and he couldn’t help drawing in a desperate breath—
And, somehow, he could breathe.
Clear-headedness returned with air. Alec had sent him an image of the rune for breathing under duress; it wouldn’t last forever, but hopefully it would be long enough to get out of the box.
(He tried not to think about the water piling up over his head. Panic would help precisely nobody.)
A hand reached down from the hole in the ceiling, a familiar gold ring on Alec’s finger, and Magnus reached up to pull himself out of the hole, a portal forming as soon as he was outside of Graves’ wards and dumping the two of them — along with a substantial amount of seawater, which Magnus vanished — onto the roof of the loft.
Alec wrapped him up in his arms, and Magnus let out a breath as he relaxed into the familiar hold. For a moment in there, he’d thought he might never—
A warm feeling wrapped around him. Shh, it’s all right, he could practically hear Alec saying; he wasn’t sure if the words had somehow been sent through the bond like the runes had been, or if he’d simply imagined them based on the emotions Alec was sending, but he let their comfort soothe the aching places inside.
I love you, Magnus whispered through the bond, unsure if Alec could hear him, but he didn’t want to pull away far enough to speak aloud.
Alec did understand, if the warm love humming between them was any indication. I love you, too.
Reluctantly, Magnus began to pull away; the fear — of losing Alec, of suffocating in the dark, of the water pouring in over his head — had abated somewhat, and they needed to deal with Graves.
“Graves can wait five more minutes,” Alec replied. Let me hold you a little longer.