Work Text:
Eyes blinking open to fading light, Alec shifts a little, registering the weight of his younger son in his arms. He stays silent for a long moment, mind still sluggish, and comes to the conclusion that he must have fallen asleep while looking after Max. His five year-old blueberry is not a passive child, and although Alec loves him either way, he can’t deny that taking care of him is exhausting.
Then he blinks once more, and his dim surroundings resolve into somewhere that is definitely not the loft. He is sitting propped against a brick wall, in what looks to be a dark alleyway, and Rafael is by his side, eyes closed and chest rising and falling steadily in what appears to be sleep. As Alec looks on, his elder son’s dark eyes open blearily, vision clearing as he slowly takes in his surroundings. Rafael turns curious eyes on him and asks, “Daddy, where are we?”
All around them are low buildings of brick and wood, none of the familiar skyscrapers of New York anywhere in sight. The sky is gray and smoggy, the air heavy and vaguely smelling of smoke. Beneath him, the floor is hard and bumpy, and a quick glance down shows a rough cobblestone path.
“I don’t know, Rafe,” Alec admits as he eyes the bright blue sparks that are falling from Max’s hair.
“But I have a feeling your Papa might have something to do with this,” he continues, a wry grin twisting at his lips. “Come on, let’s get to the nearest Institute, they can tell us where we are.”
As they walk, Alec commits his surroundings to memory, the uneven cobblestones and low shophouses reminding him of Alicante. He thanks the Angel that Magnus has a perpetual glamour on Max that can be activated as and when needed, because the trio are already getting strange looks from passersby on the street, and letting mundanes see a child with blue skin is probably not the best idea.
He sees men in full three-piece suits, ties and cravats, hats atop their heads, and women in full skirts and lacy hats, parasols clutched in dainty fingers and hair in formal updos.
A horse-drawn carriage -an actual carriage, with a driver sitting on an elevated platform at the back and a closed compartment between driver and horse, nothing like the novelty open-air carriages in New York- trundles past, and abruptly, Alec knows what happened. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that Alec’s been accidentally time travelled by a warlock. Max must have accidentally flung them into the past, not the first magical accident which had happened since his little warlock had started coming into his own magic. Time travel should, theoretically, have been a complicated enough spell to prevent a five year old from casting it, but that didn’t account for the fact that Max literally lived and breathed surrounded by the magic of one of the world’s most powerful warlocks, strong enough that even a five year-old’s core magic could be boosted to accidental temporal manipulation levels.
And, well, Alec isn’t particularly concerned about how they would get back to their own time- he had full faith that either the Institute of this time could help, or that his own husband would be on his way to pick them up soon. The true problem is that he knows nothing about the time period that he’s currently in, not even which year it is, save that it is likely the Victorian era. He would have to be careful, at least. Who knew what could happen?
Especially the nineteenth century, which wasn’t exactly open minded about race or sexuality, and seeing as Rafe wasn’t white, and Alec himself definitely didn’t conform to the role of straight, well, Alec didn’t really want to know what people could do to them if he wasn’t careful.
Then Alec turns the corner, and catches the whiff of smoke and rot that emanates from the cramped, almost unseen alleyway that he now faces.
Demons.
Alec hears a man’s voice yell something, and hears the splatter of liquid against a hard surface, hears the clang of metal on demon claws.
There are people in trouble in that alley, and Alec doesn’t need his Nyx rune to see what’s happening in the shadows. A seraph blade blazes in the semi-darkness, and there’s a screech as a demon implodes, ash falling around the fighters.
It is a group of two men and two women in the alleyway, clad in the black gear of the nephilim, and when one of the men spins on his heel to stab the demon trying to creep up on him, Alec reels back, seeing a flash of blue eyes exactly like his own.
One of the women -black-haired, like the man- darts forward with a sharp war cry, so light on her feet that she’s just a flash of red and the silver-white of her seraph blade. She leaps through the air and draws her blade across the demon’s throat, and a severed demon head thuds to the ground. The woman lands just out of range of the spray of ichor and burst of demon ash, and a toss of her head flips her hair out of her face. Alec pauses at the sight. The woman has Izzy’s silky black hair, looks almost like a clone of Izzy save for her height, and… save for her eyes, which are the same bright blue that Alec sees in the mirror everyday. A bright red ruby the size of a bird’s egg glints in the hollow of her throat, pulsing like a heart, and Alec realises with a jolt that it’s the exact same ruby that Izzy has around her neck.
It’s then that Alec puts together the physical appearance -the trademark Lightwood black hair, the Lightwood heirloom around her neck- with what he knows of his ancestors coupled with knowledge from Magnus, and then it strikes him.
This is Cecily Lightwood, his almost direct ancestor. He doesn’t know exactly how many generations removed she was, but- she is likely something akin to his great-grandfather’s great-grandmother.
He knows, from Magnus, that Cecily was a close friend, one of the shadowhunters that he’d helped back when he was staying in London, which meant- well, it was good to know where exactly in the world he was, even if he still wasn’t sure exactly when.
A screech sounds then, unearthly and high-pitched and grating, and Alec’s gaze is drawn to where the fight still rages, where the other woman -brown hair and back facing him- throws a dagger with remarkable accuracy, nailing her target right between the eyes. The demon bursts into ash and ichor with a dying shriek, and Alec winces as the woman doesn’t step back quite fast enough, and a spray of ichor lands on exposed skin. Somehow, the woman strikes familiarity into Alec, a niggling sensation that he should know her, but with her back turned and Alec’s own attention split between the fight and his children, placing her in his memories is impossible.
Alec has the brief thought that he should try to remove both himself and his children from the fight, and already he is backing up , one hand on Rafe’s shoulder and the other curled around Max, trying to remove them from the fight. He doesn’t want his sons in the middle of a battle, even if the demons weren’t focused on them, even if there was a group of four other nephilim handling the situation with reasonable skill and ease.
And, of course, that’s when an Elapid demon lunges at him, and it’s pure instinct that has Alec grabbing a seraph blade from his belt and swinging it in an arc that severs the Elapid’s snake head from its body, the body bursting into ash in a shower of ichor that Alec has to twist to shield Max and Rafe from, hissing as the ichor burns through his shirt and sizzles on his skin, thanking the Angel that he was already Marked from an earlier patrol with Jace and Izzy.
The demons have noticed him, then. It’s too late to retreat. Alec backs up against the brick wall, making sure to put Rafael between himself and the wall, crouching to put Max down as well. Max is stirring, one hand coming up to rub at his eyes, and even with his sense on high Alec’s heart warms at the way Rafe immediately curls a protective arm around Max’s shoulders. He turns back to face away from the wall, knowing that the boys are in the safest place that he can get them to be in the current situation. It’s the most defensible position he can get at this point in time, and at least this way he knows that no demon can get to the boys without going through him.
Rafael is silent, behind him, and even at seven he knows that now isn’t the time to draw attention to himself. He’s mature for his age, Alec knows, and then hides a wince as he recalls just why that is, the memory of a dark alley and demons and a scared, defenseless, half-starved boy cowering in the corner flashing through his mind. Alec reaches a hand behind him blindly, squeezes Rafe’s shoulder comfortingly, and prays that this scene -demons in a dark alley, the shrieks and the screeches and the hiss of ichor on stone- don’t bring back unwanted memories. There’s no time to comfort his son now, no time to hug him close and shield him from the world with his embrace like Alec wants to, but at the very least he can always remind Rafe that he’ll always be there.
Pulling his thoughts from his children, Alec eyes the dark alley and the flashes of light from blades, knowing that the flare of light when he’d activated his blade must have drawn attention. He looks into the dim lighting of the alley, and meets the narrow-eyed gaze of the same blue-eyed male shadowhunter he’d seen earlier.
Those eyes are wary, as suspicious as Alec himself would be if a random nephilim not even in hunting gear had abruptly shown up, but that isn’t his priority right now. So Alec ignores the gaze, and focuses on making sure no other demons get past him. He’d be damned if he let any of these monsters hurt his boys.
There’s movement out of the corner of his eye, and Alec spins, stabbing a Ravener in the back as it skitters toward them, watching the carcass disappear with satisfaction. No demon is getting past him, not today.
He kills another Elapid and decapitates a Croucher demon and when he looks up, the fight has ceased, the four other Shadowhunters looking slightly worse for wear, small rips in their gear and a cut or two, but nothing seems worth mentioning. Alec pulls out his own stele and scratches out an iratze on his forearm, feeling the ichor burns and bruises he’d gotten healing, then he looks back up at the four others who have come to a stop in front of him.
Two of them are clearly siblings, Alec notes, the blue-eyed male shadowhunter who’d met his gaze earlier on, and the woman he’d identified as Cecily Lightwood. The brown-haired woman who he’d found so familiar, it turns out, is truly someone he knows. Seeing more than just her back view now, Alec immediately recognises Tessa Gray, Magnus’s warlock friend who worked with the Spiral Labyrinth, although he’d never thought he would ever see her in shadowhunter black. But she was a good friend, the kind that you had tea with and ganged up on mutual acquaintances with- or, at least, the kind that he found solidarity in bullying Magnus into having healthier living habits together with.
The shadowhunter gear wasn’t unexpected, in all honesty, but it was a bit of a surprise. Alec knew she’d spent her early years in the London Institute, trained with the Shadowhunters there and raised a family with Will Herondale, who, now that he thought about it, fit the description of the black haired man that was standing beside her perfectly.
There had once been a time when Alec would have immediately gone flush with jealousy at even the barest mention of Will Herondale’s name, but that time was long past. He was secure in his relationship with Magnus, and he knew that Magnus loved him just as Alec loved him. He knew he had something special with Magnus, something that none of Magnus’s many lovers had had before, and Alec had long grown past the stage where his jealousy reared its ugly head at the slightest mention of a past romance.
(Of course, it helped that Magnus had told Alec the entire story behind Camille’s assumptions on their relationship.)
The last man is a tad harder to place, with features that Alec hasn’t seen before, tousled brown hair and striking green eyes. His face is pulled into a suspicious scowl, eyes narrowed, fist tight around his blade.
“Who are you?” He growls, and his stance and body language would have been intimidating had Alec been a shorter man, but as it was Alec’s height rivalled the other male’s, and Alec couldn’t bring himself to be afraid. He feels Rafael tense behind him, bristling at the unfamiliar voice and harsh tone, but Alec subtly maneuvers a hand behind himself and calms the boy down, keeping his sons within reach.
“You’re nephilim,” Will Herondale says, and it’s not a question. Alec knows his Marks are in plain sight, and the seraph blade in his grip is telling, but he nods anyway.
“How did you get here, and why aren’t you wearing gear? What are you wearing, in fact?”
Alec looks down at his clothes, smoldering with ichor as they are, and abruptly realises that a t-shirt and jeans must be even more foreign to them than top hats and cravats are to him.
“My name is Alexander Lightwood,” he starts, and hears the splutter of outrage from the brown haired man.
“Impossible!” the man says. “I would know all my relatives, and none are in London save my brother and myself!”
A Lightwood, then. That begs the question of which Lightwood, but the way Cecily Lightwood places a hand on his chest and the immediacy with which the man subsides tells Alec that this is probably her husband, Gabriel Lightwood.
There’s no harm in telling them he’s from the future, right? It’s not like he could change much of the past, and judging from the last time Magnus had accidentally catapulted him into the past, anything that he might say or change would be wiped from the memories of the past Shadowhunters the moment he left. His present would remain unchanged.
“There was an accident with magic,” Alec continues once Gabriel has quietened down. “I’m from the future, an accidental spell sent me back here.”
Gabriel Lightwood scoffs. “From the future? You cannot surely expect us to believe that!”
Alec arched an eyebrow. “We are in a world where vampires and werewolves and fae exist, a world where warlocks who wield magic at their fingertips exist, and you don’t think it’s possible for time travel to happen?”
Will Herondale shrugs. “He has a point, Lightworm.”
“It’s Light wood!” Gabriel snaps, and Alec hides a grin. It’s far from the worst insult he’s ever heard, and even he has to admit that Gabriel Lightwood’s reaction is amusing. It’s almost like teasing Jace about his multitude of surnames.
Tessa Gray steps forward then, rolling her eyes at the two bickering men behind her and offering a hand.
“My name is Tessa Gray,” she says, and Alec takes her hand.
“This is Cecily Herondale,” the female warlock continues, gesturing to the other woman beside her, who raises a hand in greeting. “And those two squabbling like children are Will Herondale and Gabriel Lightwood. An ancestor of yours, I would presume?”
Alec nods. “A direct ancestor, if memory serves.”
Then Max tugs on his pant leg, and Alec turns to check on his sons, grabbing Rafe by the hand and bringing the boys into view.
Tessa’s eyes widen, and Cecily startles.
“These are my sons, Max and Rafael.”
“How precious,” Tessa coos, before her brow furrows.
“The younger one is a warlock, is he not?” She asks, clearly confused, and Alec knows that while the glamour Magnus put around Max was strong enough to fool even those with the Sight should they not be paying close attention, the Tessa he knew had almost always been able to see through Magnus’s magic.
“He is,” Alec confirms, wary of their reply. The Tessa of his time was one of the most accepting people he’s had the pleasure of knowing, but there was no telling if this Tessa, almost two centuries younger, would hold the same values.
“Yet he is your son?” Cecily asks, and Alec inclines his head, wary.
“They’re adopted,” he answers. “Both my sons, but blood doesn’t make a family. I love them no less than I would my own blood.”
The two women nod, immediately accepting it, and Alec hides a smile.
Max rubs at his eyes, and Alec can tell the younger boy is still tired from presumably casting the spell that had brought them here in the first place. Max turns his gaze up to the woman that his dad was talking to, and his lips stretch into a smile.
“Aun’ Tess!” The young warlock squeals, and Tessa’s hand comes up to cover her mouth in shock.
“H-He knows me?” Tessa stutters, stunned. “ You know me? In the future?”
Alec winces. He should have seen this coming. Max had always loved Tessa -after Izzy and Cat, she was the one who spent the most time with the boys.
“I-” Alec starts, hesitant. Just because it wouldn’t affect his future didn’t mean that he wanted to have to explain his entire life story. “We-
“Yes,” Alec admits, resigned. “I know you.”
Tessa’s eyes are wide, unblinking, and she stays silent for a long moment before finding her words. “How d-”
Then Cecily’s necklace pulses sharply, and the girl’s head jerks to look at it.
“We should head back to the Institute,” the girl says, gaze darting between Tessa and Alec. “We are not in the proper condition to do battle with more demons, not when there are two little ones to protect.”
Tessa meets Cecily’s gaze and visibly shakes herself before nodding. “We will continue this at the Institute, I trust?”
Alec’s lips pinch together, but he nods nonetheless.
When the group reaches the Institute, they are greeted at the doorway by a petite woman with brown hair and a man with sandy blond hair and gray-green eyes, one who looks similar enough to Gabriel that Alec can tell that this must be the brother he’d mentioned earlier.
Gideon Lightwood, then, the man from whom Alec had gotten his middle name from.
“Goodness,” the brown haired woman gasps the moment her gaze settles on Alec and the two children in tow. She hurries to clear the way for Alec to enter the Institute, expression startled. Alec wonders for a second what she could possibly be surprised by, before he realises that he must look a wreck. His hair is a rat’s nest, and he knows that there’s a trickle of dried blood down his temple from where one of the demons had gotten a lucky hit, and the multiple burn holes in his shirt probably aren’t helping matters.
“Are you quite alright?” The woman asks, and Alec can’t help the grin that crosses his face at her fussing. It’s been awhile since anyone other than Magnus or Izzy hovered over him in such a way.
“I’m fine,” he answers, hefting Max in his arms, the young warlock already half-asleep in his embrace, and Alec inclines his head in Max’s direction. “I would appreciate a place to put him down, though.”
The petite woman smiles, waving an arm down the hallway. “Of course. My name is Charlotte Branwell, I am the head of the London Institute. All nephilim and their guests are welcome.”
“Come,” Tessa says then, and then Alec is following the younger version of the woman who is like a sister to his husband into a witchlight-lit sitting room.
Alec stands even as Tessa takes a seat, unsure of the etiquette of the late 1800s, flushing as Tessa laughs and gestures for him to take a seat as well, the rest of the Shadowhunters of the London Institute filing into the room as well. Alec sinks into one of the nearby armchairs and props Max up against his shoulder, pulling Rafe to lean against him.
“Daddy?” Rafael whispers, too soft for the rest to hear. “Where are we? What’s happening? I want Papa, Daddy.”
Alec’s melts at the sentiment, and he brushes a soft kiss over Rafe’s hair and pulls him closer. “It’s okay, Raf, everything’s fine. Blueberry here just had a little magical accident, we went back in time.”
Rafael’s eyes widen. “Are we gonna go back home soon?”
“I’m sure we will,” Alec replies, smiling softly, and Rafe returns the smile, burying his face in Alec’s side and subsiding.
When Alec looks down to check on Max, he discovers that the younger boy is already fast asleep in his arms, snuffling softly and burrowing into Alec’s chest. Alec smiles and deactivates the glamour over him -it’d been one of the things Alec and Magnus had agreed on early into their adoption of Max: He would never have to wear a glamour unless absolutely necessary, never have to be ashamed of his warlock’s mark.
The moment the glamour comes down, Alec hears a soft intake of breath from the other Shadowhunters. Right. He’d forgotten that most of them probably didn’t have enough experience with magic to see through a glamour of the strength that Magnus had placed on Max.
“Perhaps you would like to share your story again,” Cecily prompts, and Alec looks up, nodding.
“Right. Um, well the first thing you guys should probably know is that I’m from the future. There was a little magical mishap, I’m assuming, and when I woke up I was here.”
“You had insulted a warlock?” Gideon asks then, and Alec laughs.
“No, of course not. I’m assuming it’s Max’s doing; he’s just coming into his magic, we’ve had a lot of magical accidents lately.”
Charlotte cocks her head, confusion showing on her face. “And Max is?”
“Oh,” Alec flushes -he’d forgotten that with the exception of Tessa and Cecily, none of the rest had heard his explanation earlier. He gestures to the boy curled in his arms, then to the other boy pressed to his side. “Max is my son, as is Rafael.”
“And you are?”
“My name is Alexander Lightwood, but you can call me Alec.”
“Lightwood?”
Alec winces, nodding towards Gideon and Gabriel. “Um, yeah. They would be my ancestors.”
Will shudders theatrically, expression pulling into an over-the-top grimace. “The Lightworms multiplied? By the Angel.”
Tessa slaps him across the chest and Alec watches, amused, as Will immediately adopts a sheepish look.
“Be nice!” Tessa berates. “You seem to have forgotten that your sister is being courted by a Lightwood.”
Will shudders again. “And I have full confidence that Cecily will have the sense to reject him.”
“William,” Tessa chides, rolling her eyes.
Will pouts, but mumbles what could possibly be taken for an apology.
Alec grins. It’s… nice, that even two centuries into the past there’s someone who reminds him so much of his parabatai that it’s almost comforting.
Speaking of…
The corner of Alec’s lip pulls up into a smirk as he considers his next words. “My parabatai is a Herondale,” he offers, and watches as Will flails and promptly falls off the arm of the couch that he’d been perching on.
“Impossible!” Will splutters. “No self-respecting descendant of mine would-”
Alec rolls his eyes at the theatrics, but it’s not anything he’s not used to from Jace. “By the Angel, Magnus said you were dramatic but I never thought it’d be this bad.”
The room stills.
“Magnus? Magnus Bane?” Tessa asks, and Alec nods, warily. He hadn’t meant to say that aloud.
“Is that how you know me in the future?”
“Yes,” Alec answers, and leaves it at that.
“If you are certain that it is a magical mishap that brought you here,” Charlotte says, breaking the tension that had begun to build. “Perhaps we could call for a warlock to send you back?”
Alec nods, shoulders losing some of their tension. “That would be great, thank you so much.”
Of course the warlock they called for would be Magnus, Alec thought resentfully. Of all the warlocks in the world they had to call for Magnus Bane. They couldn’t have called for Ragnor, who was the current High Warlock of London, or any other warlock who was actually in London, but instead took it upon themselves to call Magnus back from where he was in New York.
And Magnus actually came, although not without a fair amount of half-hearted complaints. But Alec could read Magnus’s body language, even when there was a time difference of almost one and a half centuries, and Alec could tell that this past version of his lover was happy to have an excuse to visit his friends.
“Tessa, darling,” that familiar velvet-smooth voice echoes through the halls of the Institute as the sound of footsteps draw nearer. “Pray tell what in the world could have possessed you to call me back here not a fortnight after I left for your hometown?”
“Papa?” Max murmurs under his breath, Rafael’s eyes growing wide at the echoing voice as well. Alec has to immediately drop to the boys’ eye level and explain the situation in a hushed voice.
Angel be merciful, he thinks. Please don’t let the others find out about Magnus and I.
It would be for the best if none of these Shadowhunters found out the truth of his relationship with Magnus. They’d accepted Max easily enough, accepted the unconventional idea of a warlock child raised by a Shadowhunter easily enough, but they were bound by their time period, and who knew how they’d react to a relationship between two men?
Even if it was hard to go back into the closet after almost a decade of being out.
“And who is this beautiful specimen of nephilim?” Magnus’s voice cuts across the room, and Alec jerks back into reality.
A quick glance around the room shows that no one is particularly surprised or scandalised by Magnus’s outburst, and, well, Alec didn’t expect the past Shadowhunters to be particularly tolerant of men liking men, much less seemingly accepting, but as it turns out they all seem pretty used to it.
Alec feels some of the tension melt from his frame, and he gets to his feet, schooling his expression into one of polite greeting even as he holds out a hand.
“Alec Lightwood,” he introduces, before rubbing at the back of his neck sheepishly. “I’m the reason Tessa called you here.”
“He claims that he’s from the future,” Will calls from across the room. “Him and his two sons.”
“Oh?” Magnus arches a perfect eyebrow, and Alec is happy to note that even now, in the late 1800s when the Accords had barely begun to take effect, Magnus wears his cat's eyes with pride. “And where are these children of yours?”
Max peeks out from behind Alec’s legs, and Rafael comes to stand beside Alec, grasping the fabric of Alec’s pants tightly in one hand, and Alec hides a smile at the stunned expression that overtakes Magnus’s face.
“A warlock child…” Magnus murmurs, cat's eyes wide in his face, before he turns back to face Alec. “You would call a warlock your son? You would raise a warlock alongside nephilim and teach them to be brothers?”
Alec can’t help the rush of sympathy that floods through him as he hears the wonder in Magnus’s voice, the hope, and he’s painfully reminded that Magnus has faced discrimination in almost every aspect of his life, Shadow World or not.
“They’re my sons,” Alec replies carefully, unsure of how much he should give away. “Blood or not, I would love them with all I have.”
Then Magnus’s eyes narrow.
“The glamour around the child,” he starts, and Alec sees blue sparks taking form around Magnus’s fingers. “It is dormant now, but it is no simple spell. And it is warlock magic. Familiar warlock magic.”
Alec bites his lip.
“It is my magic,” Magnus continues, and he sounds shaky, as unsure of himself as Alec has ever seen him, and Alec takes a deep breath and swallows down his nerves.
“We’re close,” he explains, keeping to half-truths. “In the future, you and I.”
He keeps himself from letting out a relieved sigh when Magnus seems to accept the statement.
“Well then, let’s get you home, shall we?”
As it turns out, sending Alec home isn’t as simple as just making a Portal or snapping fingers -Alec is mildly embarrassed to admit that over the years he’d grown used to Magnus using his magic for every little thing, the very essence of convenience at their fingertips.
But no, apparently getting someone back to their own time when you’re unsure of what that time is is a tricky and precarious thing, and unless Magnus can be completely sure of which exact moment in the future Alec’s from, a bunch of things could go wrong, including him possibly colliding with himself in the timestream and pretty much destroying the space-time continuum.
The possible consequences leave Alec wide-eyed and stunned, but thankfully Magnus tells him that the chances of that happening are pretty low, and easily prevented by analysing the magical energy residue on his body.
So Alec stands still allows Magnus’s magic to retrieve the information it needs, trying not to openly revel in the caress of familiar magic, the residual magic in his veins reaching out for the blue wisps circulating him.
Alec feels the blue sparks that leap to his fingertips a little too late, a not altogether unpleasant side effect of Alec and Magnus having used the Alliance rune almost daily. The rune wasn’t meant to be a permanent one, at least Clary didn’t think so, but constant usage of it had apparently switched its use into something far more similar to the parabatai rune. Not that Alec was complaining.
Of course, the blue sparks that jump from Alec’s fingertips aren’t missed by the audience that he has.
Almost immediately, Alec feels Magnus’s magic retreat and can practically taste the tension that skyrockets in the room.
“Y-you have magic?” Comes the hesitant, inevitable question, and Alec turns, startled, when he realises that the question isn’t from Magnus.
It’s from Tessa.
“Do you have warlock blood as well? Are you-” Tessa hesitates then, gray eyes glimmering with unshed tears. “Are you like me?”
Alec feels his own eyes widen at the implications, knows how Tessa sometimes feels left out, unable to fit in with either half of the Shadow world, and he feels a pang of sympathy when he has to answer her in the negative.
But how to explain his affinity for magic? The truth? But they would wonder why Magnus would share his power.
But there really was no other way to explain it.
“I-” Alec starts, biting at his lip. “There’s a rune, in the future, that allows Downworlders and Shadowhunters to share their powers in times of crisis. Magnus and I share that rune.”
“And you can access my- his magic?” Past-Magnus asks, expression endearingly confused, and Alec can’t help the grin that spreads across his cheeks.
“Yes,” he answers. “And he my training and skills, and the effects of whatever runes I wear at the time.”
“Shadowhunters willing to share their angelic power with Downworlders. I never thought I’d see the day.”
Alec’s lips turn down at the reminder of the discrimination. “Downworlder sentiment is only a little better in my time, I’m afraid. The Clave is willing to accept them a tad more, more willing to see them as people, but discrimination still runs rampant. I do whatever I can to combat it, but it’s hard to change a mindset that’s been centuries in the making.”
It almost physically hurts to see Magnus deflate as Alec’s words strike him.
Then the warlock straightens up again, and Alec sees his eyes brighten.
“There is one more thing I’d like to ask,” Magnus starts. “Is it a residual effect of this rune you mentioned, or is it something else entirely that causes your body to fully accept my magic? Because I have never seen a person, mundane or nephilim or otherwise, that has ever accepted my magic so completely. It recognises it, embraces it like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
Alec swallows nervously. The truth is that Alec’s body accepts Magnus’s magic because he’s surrounded by it everyday, because Alec trusts Magnus with his heart and soul, because he loves Magnus like he will never love anyone else.
But he can’t tell them that. No matter how well they’d reacted to Magnus’s brief flirtation earlier on, there was a difference between a single pick-up line and an entire life spent being married to another man.
The easiest way to answer that question would probably be letting them think it was a part of the Alliance rune’s powers, but Alec has never been the best liar, especially not to Magnus, even if this Magnus doesn’t know him as well as his Magnus does.
“I-” he starts, and that’s when a swirling Portal opens up right in front of the assembled group of Shadowhunters and warlocks.
“Alexander, darling, there you are,” a voice -Magnus’s voice, his Magnus’s voice- floats out of the Portal. “Do you know how I found the loft when I got back? A complete mess, let me tell you! Max’s toys all over the floor, Rafe’s train set tipped on its side, remnants of Max’s magical signature all over the furniture. I was more than ready to call Cat and panic before I noticed the temporal displacement effects.”
Then Magnus steps through the Portal in all his glittery glory, still dressed as he was when he left to attend to a client in the late morning, in a maroon trench coat and bright red skinny jeans, an off-white button-up with gold embroidery completing the ensemble. His nails are a shimmery plum and his eyeshadow a neutral but glittery tan, his eyeliner still perfect despite the fact that he’d been wearing it for at least half a day now. Magnus’s gold-green cat’s eyes are piercing, beautiful and on display, leaving little doubt as to who he is.
Alec feels his shoulders loosening, relaxing as he feels relief coursing through his veins. He takes a step forward, ready to pull Magnus into a hug when Rafe and Max beat him to it, darting out from behind his legs and dashing across the room to tackle Magnus with twin cries of, “Papa!”
The cat’s out of the bag, then. Still, even as the entire room falls silent in shock, Alec can’t find it in himself to worry, though, not now when his Magnus was here, when everything was alright again.
Their audience is staring, but Magnus just bends down and wraps his arms around both boys, grinning.
“Hello, my little blueberry,” he greets, ruffling Max’s hair before he pulls Rafe closer and presses a gentle kiss to the boy’s forehead. “And hello to you too, mi ángelito.”
Then Magnus turns to Max, frowning. “And you, blueberry, what have I said about using magic when Papa isn’t around, huh?”
Max pouts. “I just wanted to make a Portal like you, Papa!”
“So you wait until Daddy isn’t looking and I’m not at home to try? You know you just have to ask if you want to know something, Maxie.”
Max looks down, lips still firmly in a pout. “Yes, Papa.”
Alec grins and makes his way over, hefting Max in his arms. “As long as you promise not to do it again, blueberry.”
Max nods vigourously in agreement, and both Magnus and Alec exchange amused grins.
“Come on, Alexander, let’s get you home before the Institute finds out you’re missing and falls apart,” Magnus says, laughing when Alec blanches.
“Oh my God, Izzy and Jace are gonna murder me.”
They’ve turned towards the Portal and are about to step in when they’re stopped in their tracks by a whispered, “I have a family? I raise children with a shadowhunter?”
And Magnus - his Magnus-, turns back and smiles. “And you’re the happiest you’ve ever been.”
Alec turns back as well, gaze sweeping across the stunned expressions of their audience, and he smiles.
“Thank you for accommodating us,” he says, before his eyes land on past-Magnus.
“And Magnus?” He calls, and both Magnuses gazes snap to him before his Magnus looks away, clearly knowing that Alec’s not speaking to him.
Alec shoots the man a small grin, and holds up his hand, fingers intertwined with Magnus’s.
On Magnus’s left ring finger is a ring plainer and simpler than the bejewelled ones on his other fingers. It’s a simple silver band with engraved flames and a simple monogrammed ‘L’.
It’s the Lightwood family ring.
On Alec’s forearm the marriage rune is clear, the Wedded Union rune stark and simple on the back of his hand.
“Magnus,” Alec starts again, his smile soft. “You once told me no one had ever wanted to marry you before, and you told me that you wouldn’t marry me until we could marry in gold. Just know that both those things did happen, and that you are happy, and you are loved.”
Leaving behind a room of startled Shadowhunters and a consoled warlock, Alec enters the portal, hand-in-hand with his husband, a son in each of their arms. He steps back into a familiar but messy loft, and narrowly misses death by stepping on a Lego, but even as he sidesteps and stumbles into the wall instead, his husband and children laughing at him, there is no place he’d rather be.