Once Upon A Time In Brooklyn

Chapter Seventeen: Pants on Fire

"Magnus it is over. Please accept it," Ragnor said, sitting on the edge of Magnus' bed. The warlock hadn't left his apartment in months. Summer had given way to Fall and yet Magnus' melancholy had not lifted.

It was possible that the Lightwood boy had broken him in ways that Camille could have only dreamed of.

Ragnor was less convinced, as time passed, that his own meddling in this situation had truly been for the best. Magnus seemed no more likely to pursue Camille and break the curse than he had before, and he was downright miserable about it to boot.

"I have no desire to get out of bed, Ragnor," Magnus said from beneath his quilt. Ragnor sighed and awkwardly patted Magnus' leg.

"Your shadowhunter is not going to come back to you just because you spent a season in bed," he said and that caused movement. Magnus sat up abruptly.

Ragnor realised he hadn't seen Magnus without make-up on in centuries and the bareness of his friend's face was perhaps the most unsettling thing.

"Come back? Nothing will bring Alec back except Alec himself," Magnus hissed.

"So you've tried to contact him then," Ragnor replied. Magnus' eyes skirted to the side before he handed Ragnor his phone.

Every day, at sunset, Magnus had sent a message to Alec. It was always the same.

" The future hasn't been decided yet ," Ragnor read aloud. He remembered Magnus, fresh of his first real lay with the boy, telling him those words. But now it was repeated, day after day, to the boy's inbox. Ragnor scrolled through, months and months worth.

Alec had stopped even reading them after the first few. Marked as sent but never read.

And yet still Magnus sent them.

"I am sorry, old friend," Ragnor said. "If I had known the harm the boy could do-"

"Harm? He wasn't the one who harmed me!" Magnus yelled, burying his hands into hair that had grown too long for it's style. "I offered him a pretty picture. The Magnus Bane Show. And he bought it, he bought it and I never let him see the darkness, I never let him see the truth. I reap what I sow, my dear cabbage."

"I do wish you'd let that nickname drop, Magnus," Ragnor said, for lack of anything better to say. Magnus flopped back into his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

"The future hasn't been decided yet," Magnus repeated and Ragnor glanced down at the phone in his hands.

Perhaps... Perhaps it hadn't.

*

"Alec, there's some weird vampire activity I want you to look at," Isabelle said, bringing up the footage on the monitors. She began to cut out the piece she specifically wanted him to look at but as she was doing so, she realised that her brother hadn't moved an inch.

She turned to see him staring at his phone. He seemed focused on it. Intent.

A moment later, 18:47pm, just as the last of the sun's rays died, his phone buzzed across the table. He closed his eyes until the screen had gone blank then reached over, picking it up and pocketing it without even looking at the screen.

Isabelle knew that look. It was a look she'd grown used recently. It was the look that said nothing and everything all at once. It was about Magnus Bane, the curse that ailed him, the curse that had driven her brother to remove himself from the warlock's presence at a cost so great that from the looks of him, it was almost as though Magnus had died already.

"Alec?" she prompted. Alec looked at her, looking surprised to be called. She guessed he hadn't heard her the first time. "Um... Can you take a look?"