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Magnus Burnsides’s life is a history of fights, written in scars on his knuckles and chips in his teeth.
His first fight, the one that sets the tone for years and years to come, is small and bruising and painfully telling. Three boys, bullies and far bigger than him, and a dog. So Magnus throws himself into the fray. He’s left lying in the dirt, front tooth gone, nose bleeding, and one rib cracked. The scrapes and scuffs are innumerable. But the dog escaped, ran as soon as the bullies shifted their focus to a small but courageous child. So Magnus smiles, wearing his bleeding face as a badge of victory.
His life follows in a similar pattern. Magnus protects. He stands up for the small, the weak, the ones who can’t protect themselves. He stands up for justice, for what he believes is right, to spite those who believe otherwise. He doesn’t like bullies, whether they’re terrorizing a dog or a city, and he makes that abundantly clear.
But in all these battles, these thousands of tiny wars, there’s a trend.
You see, Magnus fights. But he never wins. Oh, he accomplishes what he sets out to do - he protects. But the scars and cracked bones in his fists, in his axe-swinging arms, are nothing compared to the rest. Magnus fights, and he succeeds, but he never comes out the other side the victor. That’s not the important part to him, really. And that’s evident in the deep knife scar in his side, when he came between a robber and a shopkeep. The rippling gash up his leg, so close to an artery, defending travelers from a dire wolf. A cracked femur from when he dove in front of a racing horse. A myriad of quick straight cuts on his arms, legs, torso, remnants of fights so numerous that they blur together.
The burns and rippling scars on the palms of his hands, from tearing through still-glowing rubble, from the one time he lost without even a chance to fight. The ones that mark a new intensity, a new pattern in his fights, one he refuses to acknowledge.
And on top of those, there are scars he should have, he did have, and now he doesn’t. Some are small - nicks on fingers from carving wood, scrapes and tiny burns. Others are larger, more significant. The claw marks on his arms, from sparring with the Power Bear. The pock-marks of acid on his legs, remnants of a truly unpleasant plane. The cut on his big toe when he stepped on a seashell. The ripping puncture wounds of the Hunger’s horrors.
All are replaced in an instant with a black eye, transient and eternal. And then they start again.
And maybe that’s part of it. Maybe that’s why when he fights, the scars and cracks and marks don’t bother him so much. But more of it, really, is this - they’re reminders. They’re proof. Magnus Burnsides fought, and this scar means he saved someone. Yes, at cost to himself, but that doesn’t matter. The important part is by taking the hit, he saved someone else from it.
He carries these scars, anywhere and everywhere. They’re not subtle, and he doesn’t try to hide them. They’re not bad, most of them. He’s not ashamed. These scars represent who he is and what he stands for. They tell a story - one of love, of righteous anger, of an unwavering moral compass.
And there are the other kind of scars. They’re few, but they’re there, and each one is etched into his mind and heart as much as his skin. Because they’re the scars of when he wasn’t enough. The blow of a halberd that shattered his shoulder blade, slowing his shield arm just enough. The scrapes and road rash from a battlewagon race, covering the ripping scars from thorny vines. And, as mentioned, the burns.
They’re reminders. They are why he fights.
But then - Wonderland. He fights, and he fights, and he fights, on and on and on. And he’s scarred, takes indelible marks on his body and his mind. He makes his sacrifices, always standing up, always stepping in, taking brutal hits to himself rather than risking others. He greys, he burns, and there’s a part of his brain that sees his form and for reasons he cannot comprehend - (yet)- thinks, “huh. That looks right.”
But then it doesn’t matter. Because then he’s gone, and then he’s back.
He goes into that final fight a blank slate, an unpainted canvas. He has none of the calluses and scrapes of his childhood, none of the wounds and twisting scars of his adulthood, and none of the marks of the interminable time between (though at least that’s familiar). He has none of the history, the marks that tally his fights, record his sacrifices and his successes. His losses, his successes. Never his wins. Magnus Burnsides doesn’t win, and his skin showed that quite profoundly.
But that’s gone now, and he goes into this fight naked, both figuratively and literally. Those ideals are still with him, are always with him, regardless of the marks they do or don’t leave behind. Magnus has been shaped his entire life by fighting for others, for losing in their stead. That’s not something that can be changed by something as simple as erasing his skin.
But there is a difference, this time. Because it’s not enough, anymore, to not lose. The Hunger isn’t a bully, isn’t something he can hold off on his own. It’s not enough to throw himself on its sword, per se. And he doesn’t quite want to this time anyway.
He’s been through hell, almost literally. He’s spent his entire life looking for the right cause to fight for, and then after Julia, the right cause to die for. And then… and then he met a couple other assholes, and a ragtag secret society, and a detective and an agent of death and many, many others. And he learned, and he grew, and unraveled mysteries and was faced with choices he could hardly comprehend. And every time he’s fallen, every time he’s broken and beaten and downed… someone has helped him up.
Magnus Burnsides is going to fight. And like any other fight, all other fights of his life, he’s going to come out of it with scars. But these are different, will have a different meaning than before, because he’s not just going to succeed, to solely fight for others.
Magnus Burnsides is going to fight for his world, his family, and that includes himself, because now after years and years, he’s found a cause to live for. And this time, from now until the end, these scars will show that he won.