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Everything is ringing. Magnus’s head resounds with pounding noise, echoes of something he can only distantly remember. He coughs but doesn’t hear the sound of it, spits blood and dirt out of his mouth and tries to get his bearings.
He’s collapsed on the ground amidst the detritus of an explosion. Dust radiates in circles around him, dust that he’s pretty sure was once solid objects, a cell, maybe, the walls of a building, maybe. The bodies of his captors, maybe. Just at the edge of his blurry vision he can make out slanted slabs of concrete, splintered wooden beams. He’s exhausted, and it’s hard to remember, but Magnus is pretty sure he must have done this, destroyed all of this in a blast of magic the likes of which he hasn’t seen from himself in a long time.
“Magnus!”
Magnus startles at the sound of Alec’s distant voice, calling for him. He tries to push himself up on his forearms, but is trembling too hard and falls back to the ground. More blood drips from his nose.
It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Magnus was supposed to have this under control. He’d volunteered for this mission, volunteered to be captured so they could nab the ring of ex-Circle members hunting warlocks. He doesn’t— he doesn’t know what happened. It was all supposed to be under control. Alec’s team was tracking him—however virulently Alec had argued against Magnus’s involvement, Magnus knew he was still tracking him, that he was on top of his part of the plan—and Magnus was powerful, these Shadowhunters were no match for his magic if he really needed to escape, he just had to play their game long enough to find out where the rest of the warlocks were being held—
He sucks in a breath as his memory clears enough for him to remember. Play their game. Magnus had. He’d played with all he had, feigned injury, feigned weakness, listened to the Circle members disparage him and his people, listened to them try to tear down his and Alec’s relationship. That was all bearable, mostly.
Then one of them had snatched his wedding ring from his hand.
Magnus could have stopped them, was the most frustrating part, but doing so would have meant admitting that he could get out of his cuffs, that he was playing them, and he hadn’t gotten the information yet. So he just sat there, furious beyond belief as this cruel, ignorant Shadowhunter played with the one piece of his jewelry that wasn’t just jewelry, the one ring that meant everything to him, as he threatened to destroy it just as he would destroy Magnus’s sacrilegious marriage when he finally killed both him and his husband.
How the Shadowhunter actually managed to destroy it, Magnus still doesn’t know. He thinks it may have been a reaction between the man’s seraph blade and the protections Magnus had placed around the ring.
Either way, Magnus saw white. The pain that roared through him was surprising in its intensity considering it was just a ring he was losing. But in losing it Magnus lost the last shreds of control that he’d already been barely holding onto with his teeth, felt his magic burst forth in a wave that incinerated everything around him. It whited out the pain, too, for a moment.
Now, Magnus pants where he lays, hands trembling with the expense of magic, and wants to scream at himself. It was just a ring. And now he’s ruined everything.
“Magnus!”
Alec skids to his knees beside him, dropping his bow, hands hovering over him. Magnus tries again to push himself up, but he can’t, he’s too weak, he’s too weak. He shouldn’t have used so much magic. He coughs more blood into the dust and winces at Alec’s harsh intake of breath.
“Hey, shhh, don’t try to move.” Alec shifts closer so he can gently lift Magnus’s head to rest on his thigh. His touch is tentative, he must think Magnus is seriously injured rather than just drained. He turns over his shoulder to yell into the hovering dust. “I need help over here!”
Magnus winces at the noise and grabs Alec’s hand. “It’s okay,” he rasps, throat dry, “I’m not hurt. Just—” he coughs again, which isn’t really helping make his case— “out of magic.”
Alec exhales slowly, and even through his exhaustion Magnus can see the tension in him. He realizes, for the first time, what his dramatic grief-spurred explosion must have looked like from Alec’s perspective.
“I’m sorry,” Magnus breathes, curling into Alec’s thigh. Though he’s not sorry to have his husband holding him after so many hours being tormented by deranged Circle members.
Alec runs a hand through his hair. “What happened, Magnus?”
Magnus closes his eyes. “I lost control. Ruined the mission.”
There’s a long pause. Magnus waits for Alec’s disappointment.
Finally, Alec says, voice dark, “What did they do?”
It’s not the reaction Magnus was dreading. “Nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary for Circle members. It was stupid, I should have had better control over my feelings.”
“Magnus, what did they do?” Alec sounds like he’s about to leap up and kill the Circle members himself, even though they’re already dead.
Magnus stays silent and just squeezes Alec’s hand. Talking is starting to hurt his head. Listening to Alec all but absolve him of his failures is starting to hurt his heart.
He knows the moment Alec looks down at where their hands are entwined because his whole body goes rigid.
“Your ring.”
Magnus presses his face deeper into Alec’s thigh. He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to think about it.
“Magnus.”
The horror in Alec’s voice strikes Magnus in the heart, and before he can shove those feelings away again he bursts into tears.
Alec gathers him into his arms, holding him close and shushing him. Magnus buries his face in his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps, and he doesn’t even know what he’s apologizing for. Ruining the mission? Losing the ring?
“Shhh,” Alec says, “I have you now. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” Magnus sobs, and God, he needs to get himself under control. Instead, he just keeps crying as Alec runs a hand through his hair, clearly at a bit of a loss for how to help. In any other circumstance, Magnus thinks, Alec would be punching a Circle member’s face in, except Magnus has already reduced them all to ash with his outburst. It’s a pity, as Magnus would have loved to see Alec’s fist connect with a Circle member’s nose, especially right now.
“We found the warlocks,” Alec finally says, still petting at Magnus’s hair. “They were unharmed.”
Magnus doesn’t want to think about how unlikely it is that they would have stayed that way for much longer.
“You did so well,” Alec says.
Magnus huffs, finally calming. “I didn’t do anything.”
“No, you distracted them long enough for us to get a lock on their location. We couldn’t have rescued the warlocks without you. Even if I hate that you had to be involved like this.”
Magnus supposes his wedding ring is a small price to pay to save lives, even if it hurts his heart.
“I know it’s not a replacement,” Alec eventually adds, “but I’ll get you a new ring. Something special. Or you can make a replica of mine, if you want. I know it meant a lot to you.”
“You mean a lot to me,” Magnus says. He finds Alec’s hand again and holds it. “You, my husband, mean everything to me. The ring is just… my way of carrying you with me when you’re not there. My way of telling the world about you without having to say anything. I feel so proud when I get to show you off like that.” When I get to remember that someone loved me enough to ask me to marry them.
Alec’s quiet for a moment. “Even when it gets you hurt?”
“Even then.”
Alec sighs. “Well, I guess it’s not like these assholes didn’t get their comeuppance for it, at least.”
Magnus smirks, looking around them at the circle of dust. “Yes, let it be known across the lands that anyone else who dares disparage the marriage of Magnus and Alec Lightwood-Bane will meet a similar fate.”
Alec laughs wetly and holds Magnus closer in his arms. “Trust me,” he says, “there will not be anyone else.”