Work Text:
There are many things Magnus misses, besides Jules. Steven’s tuneless humming as they shared the workshop, days spent idly perusing the wares of other merchants, the security of knowing exactly what the day ahead would hold. More often than not, when they’ve set up camp, and Merle hands him a bowl of miscellaneous stew (Magnus doesn’t ask, and figures he’s better off not knowing), he longs for his old kitchen, a cut of venison to roast, spices. Domestic life had suited him well, made him happy, had left him with a ring of fat around his sturdy abdomen and deeply-etched smile lines.
It’s just that no matter what comfort he pictures, she is always there with him. Her quick hands, her quicker smile, her brown eyes rolling in fond exasperation at his cornier attempts at humour. More fool him, but Magnus had fastened his idea of home with Jules in the centre.
Jules knitted him a deliberately hideous beanie one year for Candlenights, a pink and orange monstrosity that she claimed took months to perfect. Magnus wore it every moment of every day until she snatched it from his head and threatened to burn it, and it had a pride of place on their mantelpiece every day after that.
He’d torn through the rubble for hours looking for it, looking for something, anything. to serve as a keepsake. There was nothing left but fragments; splinters from what might’ve been their dining table or his workbench, cloth burnt beyond recognition, endless clumps and piles of dust.
His mind was doing an admirable job of holding onto her just the same. When Jules visits Magnus (in thoughts, in memories, in dreams), she is still painfully clear, carries all the wholeness of real flesh, seems like she would not dissipate when he reaches out to touch her. She does, regardless, with all of the playfulness she had in life. Jules teases him with the same vim, tells him how old he’s starting to look, pokes fun of his companions, reminds him to be kinder to new people. When Magnus tells her how much he misses her, tells her that they’ll reunite one day, she asks him to keep her waiting.
In his mind, Jules is a sweet, singing agony. Magnus cannot bear the possibility of her becoming being less.