#lumenlignum

Carbon Leaf: (Accepting)

He doesn’t know how long it’s been. Magnus hasn’t left the garden since they buried Alec beneath the soft loam. He knows it’s been long enough for Max to have only faint memories of Alec, there and gone glimpses that might be more Magnus’ hopes than reality. 

But Max was a little boy when it happened. Six years old and unable to understand what was going on around him. Why his father wouldn’t wake up. It’s been decades upon decades since then. Magnus is the one with the name branded on his heart. He’s the one who can’t move on. 

Max has met a seelie knight. One with dark curls and mischief in his eyes. A part of Magnus appreciates the fact that his son has the same taste in men that he does. Soldiers with kind eyes. 

He sees his boy a little more often now, with Max spending less time in the mundane world and more time in the Summer Lands. They come through with fae treats and honeysuckle wine and Magnus pretends as if these were social calls, and not his son worriedly watching out for him.

But they come, and Magnus pretends like he’s doing well. He pretends like the specter of death doesn’t sit like a dappled shadow over his shoulder and keep him rooted to the Earth here.

His grief is an old thing, a tired thing. Max comes to him with a milky, gilded invitation to a party being thrown for his one hundredth birthday party. Magnus can see how Max prepares himself for a ‘no’. It’s been seventy years since he left this garden. 

He has to leave. If only for an evening. The agreement gets him a warm hug, and Magnus drags himself from the depths of moss and sweet grass and summons himself a better suit. His boy is turning one hundred. He needs to look his best. 

Magnus brushes his fingers across a patch of bone white Lilies of the Incas he hadn’t noticed growing before, and takes a deep breath before he portals himself out into the mundane world. 

The party isn’t what he expected. Then again, Max isn’t the same flamboyant creature Magnus was at one hundred. It’s a small group, warlocks and vampires, and even a few seelie. Max’s friends are all immortal, and there’s a sigh of relief at that. No more death.

(Death still came for Alexander. Even as ancient and unyielding as he was.)Magnus drinks to drown out his heartache, and he chimes in and plays coy and charming when need be. The world is a grey thing without Alexander, and he finds no joy in being here. 

Thankfully, around midnight the party moves to somewhere a little more wild, and no one bats an eye at Max’s father slipping away. 

There’s comfort in stepping back into the garden. It’s an exhausted comfort, sadness like a blanket around his shoulders. Magnus pours himself a drink and settles in between the roots of the massive tree. 

He talks to his Alexander, as he does every night. He tells him what a wonderful young man their son is. How kind his friends are. Magnus tells stories to hear something other than silence, but the words trail away as he tracks his gaze back over to the lilies. 

They’re unearthed, laying trampled in churned dirt. Magnus’ heart clenches in fear in his chest and he lights magic in his palm. The dusky shadows of the garden fall away, and Magnus follows dirty footprints into the tree itself, and bedroom inside. 

His knees nearly give out at the sight that awaits him. 

Magnus:... why is there dried soda all over your desk?

Alec: ‘Cause Jace stabbed a can of it with a sword yesterday.

Siken Starters: (Accepting)

Guilt sits hot and heavy in his gut. Simon was the one who kept thinking maybe we should leave it alone even as Alec was broken and furious and always on the verge of falling to pieces.

(Selfish, it was selfish. He didn’t want anything else to hurt Jace. But it still did. Always.)

And when Jace came to him, pale and exhausted and determined, Simon knew what was coming. Even if he didn’t want to go. Even if he was terrified. Simon was going, because Jace was going. 

Because Magnus would have done it for him. 

“I didn’t do anything, not really. It was the uh...it was the mark. So you don’t have to do that.”

@lumenlignumRichard Siken Starters

“I am so great, and I will do it, thanks.” He grins at Alec as he nudges him out of the way, prepares to open the lock the old fashioned way instead of trusting shadowhunter runes.

( Roderick S. Kasun was a warlock once, isn’t now, traded his magic and his immortality when he made himself a monster. This is important. )

There’s a little gesture as he walks up to the door, an old habit. There’s– a sound like shearing metal, like wind howling through a hole in the universe, and the door doesn’t so much open as get consumed by a corruption of a portal, mirror-black and wet.

There’s–power and power and power, slick and corrupted in his veins but there more solidly than his own magic ever was. ( there’s a steadily growing area of the brickwork around the door vanishing into the expanding portal. ) Roderick reflexively clenches his fist and the portal shuts at the same time the magic goes dead again; doesn’t howl at the sudden, second loss of it, but it’s a near thing.

Well. That can’t be good.

i once told him he was family and it shut him up for a full thirty minutes

            “ ---- it’s not. it’s not your job.”

it’s sharp, punctuated too intently by the effort she has to put in to keep her teeth from chattering. but she means every ounce of it, jaw clenching as she presses her palms to her front to keep her hands from shaking. he had always been the one -- successful, good at what they did, what they were MEANT to do -- and family aside, handling her withdraws, her problems, had never been on that list. she wouldn’t see him fail -- step aside from their responsibilities, just to handle things when she failed. not now. not ever. not even if she wanted him there. “you’re a shadowhunter. go be a shadowhunter.”

Magnus knows that he will owe Raven an apology when they get back home from this long vacation. (Maybe longer still, because Magnus doesn’t want to give this feeling up just yet.) Because his magic has returned in force. Not to mention he’s sleeping better. 

Happy and whole and hale in a way he hasn’t been in a very long time. 

And possibly dreaming. Because that hand on his knee has slid from the fabric and is being held out to him while the band strikes up a song, slow and sweet and jazzy. 

Magnus’ throat is so tight with love that he can barely breathe. His toes can handle the onslaught, if it means having this moment.