The Malec Chronicles

Remembering

Alec sends letters.

Magnus doesn't answer.

He reads them over and over, fingers tracing over the scribbled sentences, picturing Idris and Simon thrown in jail and the new Penhallow cousin that Alec finds slightly off in a way that can't be put into words.  He reads about when Clary arrives and hears about how much that screwed Jace up, and more about Jace, Jace, Jace, always Jace. 

He doesn't answer, but they keep arriving.  They were impersonal at first (to the high warlock of brooklyn) and then they were practical (they told me they sent him home, Magnus, but could you check the portal activity for me?  And write back this time) and then confused (why aren't you writing back?  Did I do something?).  And the very last one, the one that very nearly made Magnus break in his resolve and write him back, only held two words.

I'm sorry.

Magnus was sorry, too. 

He lets them pile up, picking them up just to leaf through them and see the familiar handwriting.  They paper the ground and cover up his work table.  The collection on his nightstand spills over onto his pillow so the first thing he sees every morning is a piece of Alec's handwriting.  He stuffs them into cupboards on accident and the Chairman picks them up in his mouth and bats it around in the hallway.  It wasn't a problem, exactly, but it was certainly starting to be one.  At the very least, he could understand that it was a strange choice in décor.

It's not that he doesn't want to answer them.  It's more along the lines of that he had suddenly become very aware at how terrified he was of the strength of his feelings, finally understood how stupid this attempt at love was.  He'd gone without someone to love long enough that he forgot what it was truly like, forgot how it brought you the most exquisite kind of pain even when it was good, and how on the bad days it would shatter your soul into a million pieces.  He had prided himself on being open to new things and new feelings and love and wonder and surprise, all those ideals that would keep him from calcifying and turning his heart to stone, but suddenly, he's afraid that he failed.

He's afraid that he failed, because he hadn't really felt anything for a long time before he met Alec.  He would let himself bounce from club to club, paint on smile after sparkly smile, throw himself into the dangerous and outrageous.  But he hadn't felt pain or love or amazement for a while, not since the night that Alec told him that maybe, just maybe, they should stop this for a while, just for when he was in Idris.

Magnus had forgotten love, and he had forgotten pain, and now he was getting a reminder of both.  He should have known this was doomed from the start, loving a man made from angels when he carried with him the curse of the demons.  Alec's blood burns with the fire of heaven, a fire that was made to consume and destroy, and Magnus loved him in the same way.

He's not sure loving someone was something worth remembering how to do, if all it brings him is a house full of letters and nothing to say.