Chapter Text
Three years ago
His alpha looks strange when Magnus finally gets home from the meeting with Ragnor, which makes Magnus wince guiltily. He can’t exactly blame Camille for being upset with him; he knows that she refused to be a part of Pandemonium to keep it Magnus’s, and he knows that Ragnor hates her for reasons Magnus has never really managed to grasp, and that probably didn’t help her attitude either, and now with the speech in the Senate he has been spending quite a lot of time in his office in Pandemonium and not attending to his alpha.
“You’re late,” Camille says, looking up at him from the kitchen counter. The mug in front of her is steaming and Magnus isn’t, in fact, late, but he chooses not to point it out. She has the right to be annoyed.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and he crosses the distance between them.
She kisses him, slow and deep and possessive and he relaxes a little. He can still make it up to her. Can be really good for her tonight, the way they both enjoy, and then once the speech in the Senate is done and slavery is on its way to get outlawed, they can go on the vacation in Paris that Magnus has ready for her, and he can be there for his alpha the way she deserves.
“You’re always sorry,” Camilles says when they part, the grip she has on his back almost painful. “I got us Thai, since you weren’t here to tell me what you want.”
Magnus presses a kiss to the back of her palm.
Only a few more days.
Then they can work on this, they can fix this, and Magnus can be the kind of person that Camille fell in love with, that she chose to mate with despite Magnus’s excesses and flaws.
“Thank you,” he says, gratefully taking one of the takeaway boxes.
God, the law is really taking its toll on him and Ragnor both.
He eats in silence, glancing at Camille a few times. His alpha is staring into her phone with lips pressed tightly, which means something is not going well. Magnus isn’t sure what exactly. He really needs to be here for her more.
“You need to drop out of the law, Magnus,” Camille tells him suddenly and Magnus lets out a startled laugh.
“I love your humour,” he answers, pressing another kiss to the back of her palm.
Camille doesn’t smile.
“I mean this,” she says. “Magnus, you can’t let this happen. The economy is built upon- fuck, Magnus, do you have any idea what outlawing enslavement of the omegas would do to the economy? To the corporations?”
“Yes,” Magnus replies dryly. He suddenly feels dizzy, the world around him spinning. “That’s one of the reasons why I’m doing it. You know. In addition to the part where I do not agree with innocent people being sold and raped over and over.”
Camille sighs.
“Right,” she says. “I really thought you were going to be reasonable.”
Everything goes dark, after.
-
Blinking himself awake, Magnus is somehow both surprised and not at all to find out he is still in his own loft, even though he has apparently been moved to the sofa. His left hand is handcuffed to the edge of it. He can’t really manage to stop his heart from beating, desperate.
“Oh, good. You’re back,” Camille tells him. She is sitting in the sofa next to him, her scent having shifted from the jasmine to the more citrusy tones that Magnus hasn’t been able to scent on her in years.
Magnus doesn’t reply. He is too busy glaring daggers at the man sitting in his sofa in front of his.
Magnus hated Valentine Morgenstern in the negotiation room. He hates him even more, now, lounging in his home as though it belongs to him and grinning at the piece of paper laying on the conference table between him and Magnus, and the two armed guys in the doorway.
Magnus doesn’t even need to read through the paper. He could recognise the form anywhere. He has seen it a million times once they managed to get people out of the trade and into Pandemonium, has spent weeks and weeks with Ragnor looking for the errors in formulations and ways to annulate the signatures of omegas who signed their lives away drugged and manipulated and scared and lied to.
“You are going to sign this,” Camille says. She sounds almost apologetic. “Because if you don’t, Valentine will kill Ragnor Fell.” She says it with a casual ease as though the words don’t send a shiver down Magnus’s spine, as though she doesn’t sound like someone else, someone Magnus doesn’t recognise. “He was going to threaten me, at first,” she continues easily. “But I told him it was never going to work. You don’t love me enough to sign the papers. Ragnor on the other? Absolutely. Him, and Loss and Santiago and that pathetic bunch of sluts you call residents.”
Magnus still remembers the time he learnt the exact details of his conception, from a half-drunk Asmodeus boasting about slaves he had had. Still remembers the feeling of emptiness and dread spreading all over his body like a terrible sort of a perfume, the final confirmation of who and what he is, that he can never escape his father guilt, that he will always carry it with him by his mere existence.
He feels around the same, now. Camille doesn’t even look sorry anymore, the anger somehow outshining the guilt. With the small part of his brain that is currently not drowning in terror, Magnus wonders how the hell he could have missed the signs.
“Camille,” Magnus manages to say. It comes out strained. “You don’t have to do this. We can still- we can figure this out, I promise.”
“Camille, I’m really getting bored here,” Valentine says. “The deal was that you make him sign and I won’t have to kill him. If you aren’t upholding your part of the deal, I don’t see any reason to uphold yours.”
“Kill me,” Magnus tells him immediately. “Please. I know you own half of the FBI and most of the local police authorities. No one is going to care if you kill me. Just leave Camille and my friends out of this. It’s me you’ve got a problem with, not them.”
Valentine chuckles. “Now, that’s true,” he agrees. “Without you, Pandemonium isn’t much of a threat. I’ve done my research. Fell and Loss and Santiago, they are all great in their jobs, but none of them is you. And I was originally very excited about killing you, it’s true. But the more I thought about Camille’s offer, the more fond I am of it. There are many of my friends who would love to see you break, Bane. Actually, quite a few of them would love to be the ones breaking you.”
“Good luck with that,” Magnus growls back. It comes out braver than he feels. He knows more than enough about what happens to omegas once they enter the trade.
Knows of the training and the humiliation and pain, of peeling off layers and layers of who they used to be until there’s nothing left.
“Really, it’s simple,” Valentine tells him. “You sign, and your friends will survive. You don’t sign and I will tear Ragnor Fell, Catarina Loss, and Raphael Santiago apart in front of your very eyes.” He winks at Camille. “I bet Camille here will even help. She really seems to dislike them.”
Camille smirks. “Dislike is such a strong word,” she says. “They’re pathetic. And Magnus has always been way too attached to them and to that silly little project of theirs when he should have been caring about his alpha.”
Valentine winks at her. Magnus thinks he might be sick for more than one reason. “Oh, we’ll take care to remedy that.”
As much as Magnus wishes he had a better control over his scent, he knows that both alphas can scent his mounting panic, which… isn’t ideal.
The fact that Valentine isn’t alone and that his two lackeys look way too trigger-happy isn’t ideal either.
And even if Magnus could somehow take Valentine down - which he could, Asmodeus for all his faults has more than seen to that - he has studied Valentine as much as the alpha has apparently studied him.
Valentine Morgenstern never acts on his own.
There are people behind him ready to do anything he wishes and Magnus is good, but he isn’t so good that he would manage to overpower Valentine and two of his bodyguards alone and find a way to contact Ragnor in time.
He can’t even look at Camille.
If he does, he’ll break down and he isn’t going to grant Valentine the satisfaction.
In the end, with Ragnor’s and Cat’s and oh God, Raphael’s lives on the line, the choice isn’t even difficult; if it meant keeping them safe, Magnus would happily let all Valentine’s sociopathic friends have their way with him at once.
Somehow, his hand doesn’t even shake when he wraps his fingers around the pen and signs on the dotted line.
Now
Alec Lightwood looks like he is going to be sick.
“It doesn’t matter,” the alpha says, his voice gentle and his scent the carrying the softest traces of vanilla and leather in addition to the by now well-known and usually prominent cinnamon. “Magnus, no matter what happened, no matter how you got into the trade, it is not your fault and it doesn’t… it doesn’t mean you didn’t deserve to be saved and that you don’t deserve safety. You do. We both know how fucked up the system is.”
For a moment, Magnus considers telling him the truth. Considers pointing out that he fell in love with Camille, that he still loved her even after the law was saying he wasn’t a person, that he let her break him in so many ways that there was nothing left, and how pathetic is that? He doesn’t say anything, in the end.
He doesn’t think he could survive seeing the disgust in Alec’s eyes right now, and Alec, gentle and soft and way too good for Magnus Alec, doesn’t order him to speak, and so they just keep standing in silence.