Chapter Text
Jace ducked with a triumphant grin, avoided the claws that sailed over his head, and leapt up and swung in a wide arc, slicing down the demon before him with his seraph blade. He landed neatly, and was immediately spinning, searching for the others, to make sure that they were all ok. He had had enough of seeing his loved ones hurt. Clary was fighting alongside Izzy, and Jace knew that Izzy was keeping one eye on Clary, even as she took down the demon before her with a precise snap of her whip. Clary seemed to be handling another of the demons just fine on her own, however, ducking and dodging with her seraph blade, and Jace felt a flicker of pride at the sight of it. He looked for Alec next, and found his parabatai with bow in hand, firing arrows in quick succession, taking down demons with graceful ease. Well, Jace had expected no less. There were other Shadowhunters from the Institute too; Lydia and Raj and the others, but a quick scan of them all showed that there were no fatalities so far. There were a few people with bloodied limbs and faces, but nothing that an iratze or their supplies at the Institute could not fix.
But it was not just Shadowhunters in this fight. Blue sparks lit the sky from where Magnus was crackling like a spectacular hurricane, throwing balls of light across the parking lot. Luke and his pack were somewhere in the vicinity. He could hear the snarls of the Werewolves from the next street, and he could hear the hisses of the vampires, because they were here too. Simon wasn’t far from Clary, as always, but Jace only found himself glad of it. Simon’s newfound powers, including the enhanced speed and strength of a vampire, meant that he was more than capable of racing to Clary’s aid if she needed it, at a faster speed than even Jace could. Raphael and some of his clan were there too, dispersed across the lot.
Before his eyes, Jace could see the numbers of the demon hoard diminishing with pleasingly alarming speed. He allowed himself to become distracted in taking down another two, and by the time he was done with that, the fight was over.
There were a number of Shadowhunters and Downworlders bleeding, limping, or clutching wounds, and one Shadowhunter was down on the floor, but he appeared to be alive and was immediately tended to.
There was a sudden flurry of motion to his left, and Jace, still alert, whipped around to see what was happening. It turned out to be Magnus, who was striding towards them across the parking lot. Jace was not surprised when Magnus reached out with a hand to Alec’s chin to quickly scan his face and then his body for injuries, but Jace was surprised when, seemingly satisfied, Magnus swept around the group to Simon, and having given him a quick once over, sailed with some urgency past the others and past Jace, towards where the vampires had been fighting.
“Raphael,” Jace heard Magnus say, with a tone that Jace had only ever heard him use with Alec.
Jace turned to stare, as Magnus reached Raphael, who had ordered his clan members to disperse, and was standing alone several paces away, bleeding from a laceration across his cheek.
“Are you alright?” Magnus was asking him worriedly, before he took Raphael’s face in his hands and tilted it up towards him.
“I’m fine,” Raphael said in his usual gravelly put-upon tone, and Jace raised an eyebrow.
He turned around to see if the others were seeing this too. Whilst Izzy and Clary were watching the strange happenings in front of them with the same surprise that he felt, Simon and Alec looked significantly less affected. Alec, forever able to sense Jace’s gaze on him, looked over at him with a poker-faced expression, and Jace frowned at him, before turning back towards Magnus and Raphael.
“You must stop getting yourself wounded, darling,” Magnus was telling Raphael, “It is doing nothing good for my frayed nerves.”
Jace blinked, and turned back towards the others. “I’m not the only one thinking this is weird right? Alec, this is weird, right?”
He was half-expecting Alec to be glaring at Raphael, because there was clearly something intimate going on between the warlock and the vampire; Magnus did not just go about calling everybody ‘darling’, because if that had been the case, Jace would definitely have earned himself a ‘darling’ or two by now.
Well…actually, when he thought about it, probably not.
He was expecting Alec to look angry, but instead Alec’s lips quirked up in an amused smile, and then Jace just found himself feeling suspicious.
If there was some weird threesome thing going on here, Jace absolutely did not want to know. But by the angel he would also be furious that Alec had not even told him about this. It would blow Izzy’s unapproved-of supernatural boyfriends out of water, if Alec was seeing both a warlock and a vampire at the same time.
Izzy and Clary still looked confused, so Jace decided to put a voice to their shared bewilderment and get some answers.
He turned back towards Magnus, who was now fretting over Raphael, healing his face with a gentle blue glow of his fingers and muttering quietly to him, whilst the vampire stood there like a sullen teenager, glaring towards Simon as if daring him to say anything.
“So,” Jace asked, aiming for casual but falling in the realm of downright curious, “What,” He said, waving a hand at Magnus and Raphael, “Is all this about?”
Golden cat eyes swivelled towards him, and Raphael’s sharp, dark eyes found him a second later.
If Jace were honest, he was kind of hoping for the threesome revelation, if only to officially declare his parabatai an utterly rebellious badass, but what was revealed instead, was a bit of a confusing anticlimax.
“Raphael is family,” Magnus said simply, before turning his yellow gaze back towards his work, finishing the healing of the cut on Raphael’s face with a flick of his wrist and dash of blue light. “There,” He said to Raphael, “And I hope that that is the last time I will be healing your face again for a long time, my boy.”
“We have a lot of time,” Raphael warned softly, “I can’t make any promises.”
Family? My boy? What?
“Say again?” Jace asked.
“It’s none of your business, Shadowhunter,” Raphael snapped defensively, straightening his suit jacket.
“Now, now, Raphael,” Magnus scolded fondly, “Don’t be rude.” Magnus turned towards Jace with an intentionally over-dramatic flourish, clearly relishing in the spectacle that this bizarre scenario must appear to them, and smiled. “Over my many centuries I have taken many an unsupported fledgling Downworlder under my wing. I see them as my family. As I cannot have children of my own, they become like children to me. Raphael is one of them.” Magnus cast his gaze around the group before him and rolled his eyes. “Oh please, don’t act so surprised,” he said, with a haughty sniff that may or may not have been genuine, and he brushed invisible debris from the right shoulder of Raphael’s embroidered suit jacket. “Where did you think his impeccable dress sense came from?”
Magnus as adopted-father to a number of Downworlders? It was nowhere near as big of a revelation as Jace had expected, and with some hindsight, he found that it did not actually surprise him that much at all.
“And his flair for dramatic entrances,” Jace added, “Yes, I can see it now.”
Raphael’s lip curled, but Magnus just looked thoughtful, “Yes, I suppose so.”
Jace looked to Alec, to see what he had to say for himself, but Alec just shrugged his shoulders in a ‘My warlock boyfriend is the adoptive father of a bunch of Downworlders, what can you do?’ kind of way.
“Oh, Alexander already knows,” Magnus said, clearly following Jace’s chain of thought.
“Alec?” Izzy asked their brother with gleeful curiosity.
Alec shifted awkwardly, now that all the attention was on him and not Magnus. “Magnus explained it to me and we went out for drinks at Pandemonium; me, Magnus, Raphael…and Simon.”
And then their disbelieving stares turned to Simon.
“What?” Simon asked, bemused. “It’s nice to know that as a new vamp I’ve got support from Magnus. Being a part of that…well, it’s nice. Me and Raphael were even civil over our blood cocktails, weren’t we amigo?”
“No.”
Simon cleared his throat, “‘No’ actually means something different in Spanish,” He informed Clary conversationally.
No-one bought that. Most of them spoke Spanish.
Raphael smirked at Simon, clearly pleased with himself, and then turned to speak in Magnus’ ear, voice so low that they could not hear him. Magnus nodded, and then Raphael looked back at them.
“Shadowhunters, I would say it was a pleasure but…” He shrugged, “See you the next time you come pleading for our help.” His dark eyes cut across the group, “Alec,” He acknowledged with a nod that appeared genuinely respectful, “See you soon, Simon,” He said, with a quick quirk of a smile, and it sounded like a promise, and Jace wondered how often Simon and Raphael actually did see each other. More than Simon probably told Clary about, for sure. A second later, Raphael was gone, moving so fast that he was just a blur across the tarmac and concrete.
“Well, that’s that then,” Magnus said, brushing down his own waistcoat and walking back towards them. “Now you know. So you can tell Aldertree and all the others like him that if he attempts to torture my boy again – any of my children – that they will have me to answer to.” Magnus’ voice had gone cold and dangerous, and Jace was once again reminded that Magnus was not somebody that you would want to piss off.
“Torture?” Clary asked, clearly horrified, looking to Simon for answers, “What? Simon?”
“It wasn’t me,” Simon said, “Aldertree used new methods of ‘questioning’ on Raphael.”
Jace was appalled. If that was true, then Aldertree was using very questionable methods that were dangerously toeing the line of against the Accords. Jace looked to Alec again, to see if what Magnus was saying was true.
“I will tell you later,” Alec told him and Izzy, his gaze darting between them.
Izzy nodded, severe and all-business, “If that is the truth of it, Magnus, we will look into it for you.”
Magnus nodded, “Thank you, Isabelle.”
Izzy smiled genuinely, and then it slid into slyness, “So Magnus, does this mean you will be intervening in Alec and Simon’s dress sense too? You know, I’ve tried my best with Alec especially,” She sighed audibly, “But I seem to have no influence.”
Alec and Simon both looked terribly affronted, and Magnus’ brief moment of fury shattered to make way for delighted deviousness as he said, “Oh I am working on it, believe me.”
Alec glowered half-heartedly, and Jace grinned, “Alec, I can imagine you and Raphael getting on remarkably well, what with your shared penchant for brooding silences.”
“I think he would play the role of Downworlder-stepdad rather well,” Izzy agreed thoughtfully.
“Oh, leave me alone,” Alec complained, plucking irritably at the string of his bow.
“Yes, leave him be,” Magnus scolded, but he did not sound particularly defensive, and Jace wondered if that was because Magnus liked the thought of Alec co-adopting vampires or faeries or warlocks or werewolves with him. “Alexander,” Magnus rested his hand on Alec’s upper arm, and the fidgeting immediately ceased, “Let’s go back to the Institute so that you can report back on the mission, and then I can take you out for dinner.”
Alec looked up at him and smiled that smile he only ever smiled for Magnus. It was what had won Jace over so quickly to Magnus; the way that Alec smiled for him.
“Yes,” Alec agreed, still endearingly shy with Magnus even now, after their first couple of dates had already been and gone, “That would be good.”
Magnus smiled back, the fond smile that lit up his eyes as much as his cat-eyes could, and then he looked around at them all, “You are all more than welcome to join us. Simon? Isabelle? Clarissa? Jace?”
That was something that Jace was always grateful to Magnus for. Magnus liked to call people by their full names, sometimes, but he had never ever called Jace ‘Jonathan’.
“That would be lovely,” Izzy agreed, taking her brothers arm as Magnus took Alec’s other hand and led the way back to the Institute.
Jace watched them go; Izzy still teasing Alec and Magnus about their adopted Downworlder children as Alec ducked his head bashfully, and Simon explaining the situation in further depth to Clary as they followed.
Jace wondered how many Shadowhunters Magnus had adopted into his family before. Or was it a Downworlder-exclusive thing, because Shadowhunters did not have the immortality to find themselves under Magnus’ long-term care? Jace didn’t think so. By the looks of it, Magnus’ family had at least grown to include the four Shadowhunters that he had asked along to dinner, and Jace found himself agreeing with Simon. That was actually a nice thing to know; that they were a part of that, to be seen by Magnus as part of his family.
Clary turned back to look for him, and Jace smiled and followed.