Work Text:
“I won't lose you,” Alec insists, firmly. Mind made up. “I can't.”
“This,” Magnus says, very slowly, voice hard, “is my choice to make. Not yours.”
Alec startles, but he reins himself in again quickly. “Magnus, if you don't let Lorenzo take the magic away you could die. You can't be considering this.”
But he is. From the moment he woke up in that bed and Alec grabbed his wrist, not roughly but also not too gently, thoughts have been flickering through his mind, ideas, options, theories. Desperate measures. Anything.
Because he can't go back.
The notion alone is--
And Alec is still staring at him as if he's not making sense, as if he's lost his mind. And he might have. He doesn't know anymore. He doesn't know anything anymore.
Just that he can't lose his magic again. It's the only thing holding him together.
“Magnus, you can't..” Alec shakes his head. Uncomprehending.
The words tear out of his chest before he can hold them back. “You said you know how important magic is to me and you don't. Alec. If you're still asking me if this is worth risking my life for then you don't understand it.”
Alec jerks back as if he's been slapped. He swallows, throat working hard.
“But....” Alec pauses. Blinks rapidly. Soldiers on. “But you still have me. I promise, Magnus, I swear.” He swallows again. “Isn't that worth something?” he asks, quietly, his voice fragile and vulnerable and so so small.
Magnus closes his eyes, pained. “Sometimes it's not about what you still have left. Sometimes it's only about what you've lost.”
Even as the words leave his mouth he knows Alec won't be able to understand them. And how could he? He's never lost himself like this, shattered into a thousand pieces that refuse to fit back together. Even Magnus, in all his centuries and his darkest times of anguish has never felt like this. A stranger in his own skin. He doesn't even recognize himself anymore.
“Magnus.”
It takes all he has to oblige Alec's toneless plea and meet his gaze.
Alec is a mess. He looks like Magnus stabbed him in the chest, his broken heart glinting in his eyes.
“Please Magnus,” he whispers. “Please. I can't watch you lose your life over this. Please don't do this.”
It tugs on Magnus's heartstrings, or where his heart used to be. His beautiful shadowhunter, so entirely out of his depth. So unequipped to deal with this.
He looks almost as lost as Magnus feels at the prospect of returning to that gnawing, yawning emptiness.
He can't go back to living less than half a life, being reduced to less than nothing. He can't.
But he also knows he can't go on.
He lied. He's not fine. Every cell in his body is rejecting Lorenzo's magic and he can feel it. But he's pushed through pain and exhaustion and fatigue before, when it mattered, when he knew that failing would have terrible consequences. Why can't he now? If he could just hold on, maybe.. maybe there could be light at the end of all this darkness.
Or death.
He's willing to take his chances.
But he can't.
The reason is standing two feet away from him, tears running down his cheeks, on the cusp of devastation.
He knows that he'd be torn apart in the fallout of Magnus's ruins.
He can't go through with it.
Maybe Alec is right, maybe this is for his own good. Right now, it only feels like the last nail in his coffin. But the decision is made.
And so he nods, even though it shreds his soul, and agrees to give up his magic for Alexander a second time.