Work Text:
Magnus leaves her on Tuesday. The better part of two centuries passes before Camille sees him again. It takes a little longer than that for her to realize that’s he's gone for good.
They part ways in London. As he goes, Magnus wears the wound of her betrayal like a mourning garb. Camille is flippant and dons her infidelity as if it were merely her dressing gown. She thinks he just needs time to throw his tantrum. He’s young, compared to her, and will outgrow childish notions like forever faithful. He’ll learn, she tells herself. He’ll learn—someday. Until then, she resolves to entertain herself with pretty, fleeting playthings.
They’ve got all the time in the world. She can wait.
Years drift as years do. Slowly one by one and, simultaneously, suddenly all at once. Camille changes scenery and bedwarmers as it suits her, and everything blurs together as expectedly plebeian. The only thing that can reliably hold her interest are the tidbits of Magnus that float to her over decades and continents. She collects them like souvenirs, and, every now and then, she takes them off the shelf of the past to recollect her travels. Ah, Morocco 1925—Magnus was somewhere Thailand—Siam back then—mixed up in a matter of intrigue with the local fey.
Camille elects not to put much thought into her method of memory. Magnus is simply an easy figure to organize change around—a convenient constant.
In the infancy of the twenty-first century, Camille and Magnus come to share a city again, New York and its millions of lights. He’s risen to High Warlock of Brooklyn, she to the leader of the formidable Manhattan clan. But they stay in their circles, their private microcosms of the world, and the divide remains. Perhaps his nearness stokes the flames of her restlessness. Or maybe one hundred and thirty-six years of utter boredom is simply too much to endure. Either way, Camille becomes reckless—a costly extravagance—and she pays for it when Raphael, her second-in-command, commandeers the clan. He cradles in his arms her latest indulgence, an exsanguinated boy, as she is yanked from her throne. Chained inside a coffin cell, Camille feels the bond connecting her to the boy, her newest fledgling, flare to life. In the same hour, she twists in agony as the tie is severed.
Later, weeks after her escape, she learns Raphael has taken her fledgling as his eternal companion, a claiming that slashes her status as the boy’s sire to shreds. Yet, this theft of clan and child is the least of what is stolen from Camille. The windfall of loss has yet to crescendo.
The stench of shadowhunter sullies the reunion. Magnus reeks of angel blood, his eyes hard and unyielding as they fall upon her.
“You’re still upset about my dalliance with that short-lived Russian,” she sneers, stilettos clicking like sharpened blades against cold marble.
“Upset?” he drawls, “No, I gave up feeling anything for you over a century ago.” Initially, she presumes he’s merely nursing his pride, and she’s willing to indulge him. A tinge of excitement even sparks in her chest, a sensation she had nearly forgotten the taste of. But then they start debating the life expectancy of love, and she can see it in the softening of his expression, in the vulnerability that bleeds into his eyes.
There is someone else. An angel-blooded usurper of hearts.
The enemy is called Alexander. Black-haired and blue eyed, he’s the epitome of Magnus’ type, though Camille hardly sees that as an advantage. Beauty is a temporary state for mortals, and time, Camille’s most trustworthy ally, will erode the boy’s looks shortly before consuming his life. Camille supposes that victory will be hers if she bides her time for three or four more decades. Perhaps not even that long—shadowhunters, given their submersion into an everlasting war, tend to meet their end far earlier than the mundane human. But her patience has been depleted. Her forbearance pushed past its limits. And, if she were more honest, she would acknowledge the simmer of terror that heats her artic blood—the premonition of defeat that overtakes her when Magnus says the foe’s name.
Camille wages war. The bodies pile high, attracting the ire of the Clave. Shadowhunters are dispatched to bring her in, Alexander leading the charge, just as she hoped. But Camille is mistaken in believing he’s easy to kill. He proves to be more than her match, and she retreats, telling herself that it is only the battle, not the war, that has been lost.
But it is over, long over, and the prize has already been claimed.
This truth strikes like a poisonous arrow sailing through the dark. On a clear December night, Camille hovers motionless outside the window of Magnus’ bedroom, while, on the other side, Magnus allows Alexander to take everything precious that had ever been hers. Venom seeps deeper still, as Alexander is granted even more than that in the spreading of Magnus’ thighs. In the envelope of his arms.
Before she goes, Camille presses her hand against the glass. When she pulls it back, her fingerprints evaporate instantly under the force of the heat from inside.
It’s a Sunday when Magnus traps her to deliver her to the judgment of the Clave. He tells her that the usurper is not the reason and babbles on about Raphael, friend and foster son, who he will not let suffer punishment in Camille’s place. She defends herself with Magnus’ weakness. His fear of loneliness.
“I’m the only one you can count on to be here for you forever,” she argues. “You know that. That’s why you love me. And you always will. Choose…me.” She delivers the speech with convincing certainty and none of the desperateness throbbing beneath her skin. Even now, as the last thread holding them together frays, she cannot drop the bravado. Cannot dispense of the armor and reveal her naked self.
The thread breaks, and he sends her away.
“I thought you loved me.” On her execution day, she thinks of these words. The last words she’ll ever say to the man who decided that her heart is not a thing worth wanting. Reflecting, Camille realizes these words were not what she should have said in that final moment with him. And she should have not have spat them like an accusation or hurled them as if they were knives. How is he ever to know now?
The concluding minutes of her existence approach, and Camille recalls the debate they had so many times over the centuries.
“Love is fleeting,” she would say.
“And yet,” he would reply, “true love never dies.”
If she had more time, she would go to him and concede defeat. She would reveal everything she never told him. Everything she should have.
“Yes, true love never dies,” she would say, “and you are the closest I’ll ever get to immortality.”