Chapter Text
Alec
Seeing as Alec had actually started a rebellion within the Clave, he should’ve been exceptionally good at spotting the signs of one. But, clearly, he wasn’t.
To be fair, he’d been busy throughout the night before, trying desperately to resolve a conflict with the Seelies. And he had guessed that something was up, though he’d had no idea how bad it was already. The core of overly-devout Shadowhunters who wanted nothing more than to destroy all Downworlders had been devastated by Alec’s Resistance, but there were still several of them alive and well (and starting new rebellions).
One of them had apparently found a group of younger Shadowhunters willing to follow him, and he’d managed to convince them to stage a coup. The first step was, of course, to assassinate Magnus and Alec.
(Hence the crowd of at least fifty Shadowhunters who’d pouted without warning from nearby streets as Alec and Magnus walked home from the latest Council meeting.)
The whole resurgence was ridiculous, of course — killing Alec would be a blow, yes, but he had plenty of people ready and willing to take his place. The New Clave wouldn’t fall because of under a hundred assassins, and Alec was certain that what he saw in front of him was the majority of the new rebellion’s people.
Still, no matter how impossible it would be for this coup to succeed in toppling the government that Alec had so painfully set up, they had a very good chance of succeeding in killing Alec — and Magnus.
They hadn’t had a chance to draw the Alliance rune before they’d been ambushed, and Alec hadn’t had his bow and arrows. He did have a seraph blade in his belt — he was almost never without one, thanks to years of Shadowhunter training — but that was all he had, and seraph blades were most effective at fighting demons, not fellow Shadowhunters. Magnus was unarmed, other than (of course) his magic. The area was empty aside from them and their would-be assassins — it was a less-occupied part of Alicante, left silent in the absence of everyone who’d died in the Battle of Alicante — so there wasn’t going to be any backup.
Which left them largely at the mercy of luck.
Magnus blasted several Shadowhunters away from himself, tossing them backward and into the ones behind them, while Alec knocked blades out of hands and drew his seraph blade across their owners’ necks. Blood spurting onto him, but he ignored it, because there were more people behind the ones he’d killed and still more behind them, and behind them, and he wished fervently that he and Magnus had had the chance to get into an alleyway or something where only a few people could come at them at a time—
A gap in the crowd, and Alec took a risk, lunging forward to stab a woman in the chest while he knocked a man over with the momentum. He was back at Magnus’ sides in moments, but a Shadowhunter was closer to him than he’d like, and while he was fending that one off, another one struck at him with a blade—
But Magnus’ magic roared to life, blasting the Shadowhunter into dust. Alec, however, had only a moment’s respite — somebody was trying to take advantage of Magnus’ moment of vulnerability as he defended Alec, blade raised high as they attacked—
Alec stepped in front of his boyfriend, seraph blade rammed into the Shadowhunter’s stomach, but with the last of the strength that they had, the Shadowhunter brought the pommel of their blade down on Alec’s head.
For a moment, Alec wavered, head spinning dizzily. Magnus, he thought, and I have to protect him, but the world shattered into fragments and faded away and Alec knew no more.
Magnus
Alec fell.
It was a simple thing. A mistake on Magnus’ part, and Alec took the consequences of it — Magnus shoved the guilt aside for now. He had more important things to think about, such as Alec, who was on the ground. His magic screamed in fury, in pain, with the need to take revenge on these people who’d hurt his love.
Magnus needed to get rid of the thirty or forty Shadowhunters who were still surrounding him, but he didn’t bother with throwing fireballs, or blasts of magic to push them back, or even disintegrating them into sand. Those tactics were all well and good; they were specific, directed, targeted. No risk of hurting bystanders or allies. And they were showy, a demonstration of power to strike fear into the hearts of all who watched.
With the way that Magnus’ magic was screaming to protect Alec, he knew that it would never harm the man crumpled at Magnus’ feet. He didn’t need to think about being showy, either, because everyone in this street would be dead. (The bodies would hopefully serve as a deterrent to any future attempts.)
So Magnus didn’t bother with any of those other methods. He didn’t move, didn’t raise his hands; he wielded power at the highest level, the stuff that only Princes of Hell — and their children — could harness. He dealt not in magic but in death, in breaking the connections that held the bodies here, alive, and the corpses dropped near-silently to the ground, strings cut as easily as a knife through butter.
This kind of magic wouldn’t work on demons, because their bodies weren’t really bodies at all, only manifestations — a complicated bit of magical theory that most didn’t pay attention to, though it was obvious when a demon died and their corporeal form faded away to ichor and ashes. (Angels were like that too, Magnus supposed, energy that took on a body in this realm but didn’t really belong in that body, wasn’t really part of it. They had blood, yes, as evinced by Clary and Jace, but they were more than the body.)
What Magnus was doing now was for those with bodies, cumbersome heavy bodies that took energy to move, that needed food. They took energy to toss to the side, too, or to kill, even when it was simply snapping their necks. Energy to blast them to pieces, or to make them bleed. Energy could be better put to other purposes.
So Magnus simply went around the bodies, severed the connection between the body and life — or the soul, if you were feeling religious, which Magnus rarely was. It was a rough magic, a blunt instrument, a wave of power that attacked indiscriminately — as likely to hurt an ally as an enemy, which was why Magnus rarely used it — but he could use it now. It was brutally efficient, destructive beyond anything else, and that was precisely what he needed right now.
Magnus didn’t even slump from the use of power. His magic was much more efficient this way, no excess energy expended on light or explosions or destruction. Killing the Shadowhunters was no harder than summoning himself a martini, and substantially easier than creating a portal.
He struggled to pull his magic back under control; it was still snapping at his skin, sparking around him with fury and vengeance. But he needed to heal Alec, that was the most important thing, which meant that the magic needed to calm itself.
Before he could wrangle it back to himself, however, Alec’s eyes were blinking open, and Magnus realized that his magic had healed Alec’s injuries even before it had killed the Shadowhunters around them. He rather approved of his magic’s priorities.
Alec
When Alec opened his eyes again, he saw Magnus first. “Are you alright?”
Magnus let out a half-choked laugh. Sparks of magic, red and blue, were dancing around him. Like a halo, almost, Alec thought. “Am I alright?”
“Yes, you.” Alec raised an eyebrow at him as he sat up, Magnus’ magic immediately curving under his shoulders to help support him. “You’re the one who was fighting the Shadowhunters alone.”
A shrug, and an expansive wave of the hand to the area around them. Alec followed Magnus’ gesture, taking in the bodies on the ground.
A few were bloody, killed before Alec had gone down, but the vast majority were simply slumped on the ground. No blood, no visible injuries. “How long was I out?”
“About three seconds.” Alec felt his eyes widen, and Magnus shrugged sheepishly. “I know it’s… vicious, all of this, and brutal, but—”
“It’s impressive,” Alec said, cutting him off before he could belittle himself. Or convince himself that he’d done something bad. Alec could tell from his expression that he was worried about Alec’s reaction, and he hurried to reassure him. “Magnus, I’ve told you before — I’m not scared of your magic. You saved me, and yourself, by killing them.”
Magnus frowned, still looking slightly reluctant, but Alec leaned up to kiss him and successfully distracted him.
Before they left, Alec gritted his teeth, then pulled out a seraph blade and jabbed it into the chest of one of the apparently unharmed Shadowhunters. “I’m guessing most warlocks can’t do what you just did,” Alec told him in explanation, “and I’m also assuming that it would be bad for you if everyone found out that you can do this.”
Magnus blinked at him for a moment in shock. “I mean — yes, I suppose so.” A flick of his fingers left blade marks on the Shadowhunters’ chests and necks, burns as though from fireballs, blood. In a few moments, there was no sign of whatever magic it was that Magnus had cast.
“Let’s go home,” Alec said.
Magnus
Back at the loft, Magnus magicked himself a drink, almost automatically. He knew that Alec would want to talk about this, and he knew that they really should talk. He even, deep down, wanted to tell Alec about this, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t worried about how Alec would react.
“Aren’t you running low on magic?” Alec asked, fingers reaching up to cup Magnus’ face.
Magnus smiled slightly. “The magic I used is… efficient. It doesn’t tire me out.”
“Why don’t you use it more often, then?” Alec tilted his head to the side, curious.
“Well, it doesn’t work on demons, for one thing,” Magnus said. “Because they don’t have proper corporeal bodies.”
“Which is why they dissolve into ichor when they’re killed.” Alec nodded. “But that can’t be the only reason.”
Magnus let out a breath. “It’s — not directed. Not easily directed, at least. I’m essentially killing everyone within a certain radius of me, which means that if there are allies nearby, I risk killing them as well.” He paused.
“But I was there, and it didn't hurt me,” Alec said, pointing out the obvious to encourage Magnus to keep on going.
“Yes, well, my magic was protecting you. Like it protects me — I’m not going to accidentally kill myself while doing that, after all. You’ve wielded my magic, with the Alliance rune, and my magic likes you quite a bit, so it protected you as it would me.”
Alec smiled, leaning in to press a kiss to his lips. “I like your magic, too.”
Magnus couldn’t help raising an eyebrow. “Even after what I just did?”
“As I said earlier, Magnus, I’m not going to be upset because you saved both of our lives, or because you killed a bunch of people who were trying to kill us.” Alec’s thumb was tracing circles on Magnus’ cheek, and Magnus leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering closed. There was such devotion in Alec’s eyes, such certainty, and he needed to take a breath.
“I love you,” Magnus said at last.
“And I you.”