The Malec Chronicles

Horrors

Magnus isn't expecting him to come, since they've spent the past nights dealing with strained conversations that turn into old arguments that go no where, but he still opens the door anyways. He prepares himself for another snide remark or an excuse, almost says one himself and prepares to turn Alec away just because he can't deal with it right now, but then he catches sight of Alec's tear stained face and shaking hands and realizes that maybe now isn't the best time to be petty.

Which is a shame, because Magnus is very good at being petty.

"Can I come in?" Alec asks, voice thin and shaky, looking like he expects to be turned away and knowing that Magnus would be within his rights to do so, but Magnus can't bring himself to do that, not when more tears are gathering in his eyes and Alec is doing his best to hide it. Like this is something to be ashamed of.

"Yeah," Magnus says, stepping back, but Alec steps towards him instead, surprising Magnus by burying his head into Magnus' chest and clinging to him, holding him in a way that Magnus associates with the night of the broken mirror, a set of events he would rather not have to deal with again. It sends the first stab of fear into him, the feeling that something is wrong, that the something bad Alec had told him he was waiting for had just arrived at his doorstep. "What's wrong? Is it Izzy?"

It wasn't Izzy. It was babies, Alec said, babies that could have been whole and healthy but weren't, because they're parents got caught up in something they didn't understand and confused it with a home, so they came out warped and wrong but still human and needing love, how they must have spent their short moments in this world in unbearable agony and with no mother well enough to love them. How they probably had never been held, never fed, never had their cries quieted by soothing noises, had nothing to send them gently into the black abyss that was awaiting them. How they had claws for hands, how Alec had turned and left Izzy there because his hands were shaking too badly to hold his seraph blades, how the first time ever he wanted to stumble to the side and throw up like Mia was doing, but he couldn't because he was the oldest and an official member of the Clave and had to deal with things like that.

"How could you do that?" Alec asked, after all his tears were gone and it was the two of them sitting on the couch over cups of chamomile tea, him staring blankly at the floor and Magnus staring at him worriedly. "How could you do that to a baby?"

He says baby like you might think of something precious, like nothing bad should ever come to harm it, and Magnus can't help but think of all the littles ones in the world that were turned away and hurt and abandoned. How this reminded him of the time Catarina worked in the childrens ward and would come back with blank eyes because the mother drank, the mother smoke, the babies addicted to this or that or something worse, and there's nothing I can do, or the one time he fell in love with a social worker that would come home and cry herself to sleep because of what she had had to deal with that day. People are cruel, he wants to tell Alec, but he doubted that would be helpful.

"I checked every single one," Alec says, and his hands start up the shaking again. "Looked for a pulse. Pulled back the blanket, just to see if one of them was okay, if one of them had been kept from..."

He's crying again, and Magnus feels a surge of love for this man, the kind of man that goes from cradle to cradle and pulls back each blanket just on a hope, a whim, a wish that this one might turn out different. The way he must have put his fingers to each cold, tiny wrist and counted, waiting for something that would never come, and then moving on to the next one. How Izzy must have told him to stop, and then finally left the room, and how he had been alone, checking, checking, wishing, hoping.

"I'm so sorry." Magnus says, at a loss for what to do, a loss for words, because he had seen horror before (the world is full of horrors, and most of them human) but there is something different about the pain that children suffer, mostly because they are incapable of giving pain in return and most likely don't understand any of it. "I wish I could fix it."

"Just tell me you love me." Alec says, burrowing into him, hands twisting in the fabric of Magnus's shirt. They've come a long way, but he is still the same person as when Magnus first met him, still a boy desperate for attention but thinking he doesn't deserve it. "Tell me everything's okay. That I'll wake up tomorrow and have this be someone else's problem. Even if it's a lie."

"There's no lie in the way I feel about you," Magnus says, and wonders if that's true, because while hiding isn't a lie (hiding past loves, past promises, past hurts, old worries and new pain) it isn't exactly the truth, either. But this thing right now, with Alec clinging to him like Magnus is the only thing that could save him from drowning, is real. "I'm always going to love you."