Work Text:
1.
Alec Lightwood was always a quiet child.
He spent his days stuck to his books, eyes always bared down, never raising his voice or speaking out of tone. He kept to himself, content with his own company.
Shadowhunters sometimes watched as the oldest Lightwood, the heir to one of the oldest bloodlines still alive, monitored the world pass him in the shadows. They whispered about him. How odd he is. How dutiful. How unlike a bold Shadowhunter his blood demanded him to be.
Alex River is a bright child.
He giggles running down the corridors of his family’s home. His hands always reach out to grab anything in his grasp, his mind far too inquisitive for his mind. He speaks far easier than an average child. And Alex never wakes up without a smile.
And though Alex River enjoys reading and finds himself drawn to the wonderful worlds inside pages of words, he’s equally besotted with the real world.
For Alex River has a beautiful childhood.
2.
Alec Lightwood never had a good relationship with his father.
Robert Lightwood was a hard man. He had been raised under a leadership of hatred and superiority, a man eager to better himself, to rid the world of vermin that he deemed unworthy of the life they were unrightfully honoured with.
His harshness never transcribed for a loving fatherhood. He scolds Alec when he messes up his studies. His hand was quick to find the boy’s face when he saw the child make a mistake. He might have been a dedicated leader, a bloodthirsty politician but he could not understand how to comfort the same way he knew how to punish.
So Alec Lightwood learnt that his father’s love was found in cold eyes, quick, hurtful words and an eager hand.
Alex River finds that his dad is his favourite person in the world.
Mostly, he adores his dad’s hugs, as they are so warm and secure. He likes how his dad can wrap his large arms all around him and that his strength means that Alex can be placed on his lap.
Alex doesn’t mind that his father isn’t a very vocal man. He shows his love through his easy affection. He gives soft forehead kisses. Heartfelt pats to Alex’s shoulder are common. And his dad smiles all brightly when Alex comes home from school with a perfect report. Alex knows it’s a real smile ‘cause his skin wrinkles around his eyes when he does it.
And when sometimes Alex awakes screaming, seeing demons and swords and magic in his dreams, his dad says nothing but curls around his child, as his silent protector.
3.
Alec Lightwood had looked up to his mother all his life.
She was what he wanted to be someday. He wanted her power, her political manipulations and smarts. He wanted to command like her. He would be the force of reckoning that she was.
And Alec always did try so hard to please her. Every time she graced Jace an approving compliment when he wielded his sword just so, Alec forces himself to train till he was battered and bruised and alone. And when she pointed out how smart Izzy was as she picked up science like she breathed, Alec read every book in the Institute library, eyes swimming from exhaustion.
He waited everyday to have such pride shown to him. Alec stood in the darkness of siblings’ shadows, eyes wide and hopeful to return each evening to his bedroom with a furious determination. His mother’s eyes simply trailed over him. He was the ghost of the family.
But it was okay.
Someday his mother would see him past the light of family’s greatness. Alec just had to patient.
He was patient for many, many years.
Alex River dislikes his mother, simply because he never actually met her.
She disappeared after giving birth to him, leaving Alex alone with his father. She is the silent presence over his shoulder when he goes to parents’ evenings with an empty chair next to his dad, when his classmates draw full families and he can’t because he doesn’t know what she looks like.
But when Alex wakes up to black horns on his forehead and dark empty eyes, tears shining at his reflection, Alex hates her. For she has cursed him. And no matter how his father tells him that’s it’s okay, that he is normal and loved and human as he is, Alex knows it to be false. Alex is whisked away to a woman with strange webbed hands called Giselle Love to help him control his new found burden.
Alex now knows that his nightmares are not just nightmares anymore. Giselle tells him they are a sign of his magic, of his power. Alex thinks of it as a cruel vindication offered by his mother.
His mother’s one and only gift to him.
4.
Alec Lightwood was not normal.
He started having dreams about kissing Jace, about hands that were large and calloused instead of delicate and smooth. When many boys his age talked about boobs and lips and girls, Alec looked at muscular bodies with no such femininity to be found and wondered where he went wrong.
Alec was good at plays games, though. He joined the conversations with devotion. He became parabati with a strained smile. He pushed his thoughts away to the shame of his bed and its covers and his unsure hands. Even if Izzy knew, it was fine because she never understood. She never knew how much it pained his heart to be different.
How desperate he had been to be normal.
And Alec disguised his sob when he was forced to oversee his father derune a man for being in bed with another man. The man left the Institute, bloody and ashamed, Alec watching from the sidelines. His father held Alec’s neck as he did so. No words need to be passed between them. Alec understood.
Alex River comes out as gay with gusto.
He tells his dad first, head high and eyes hard with simple but blunt words. His dad accepts just as easily, with a hug and a proud nod. Alex goes to bed that night with a small but real grin on his lips.
He tells Giselle next, who fondly rolls her eyes at him, tells him she’s gay too and makes him redo the healing potion of that day. Alex tells his friends in a similar fashion and they all, accept him, even going as far as to attend the Pride march in New York with him, Sybil in particular raising her own bisexual flag and Andrew holding an ace flag too.
Alex knows assholes sometimes whisper slurs at him, and if they find themselves tripping over their own feet then it’s their own fault. But Alex lives securely in the knowledge that he has a good life, with people who love him.
And if he dreams of a man much like himself but with a life with a lot less joy, then that is his own business. No matter how much he weeps over him, and the childhood he was robbed of, whoever he is.
5.
Alec Lightwood lived and died with the knowledge of his own mortality.
It was, after all, the Shadowhunter life. Die young, saving the world from demons, that was what they were supposed to do. It was looked down upon to live to an old age. Cushiony political roles still had the threat of assassination or a wayward demon. No Shadowhunter with their reputation in tact died with grey hair and wrinkled skin.
But there was a time when Alec found that he wanted the stiff limbs, the soreness of his back, the weakening of his eyes. When he watched his children grow, his husband a constant at his side - Alec wanted to taste that sweet ambrosia of age. Even when lines stiffened around his eyes and he spied a single grey in a mop of otherwise youthfulness, Alec imagined himself hunched and greying but happy beside his immortal love.
But that was not the Shadowhunter way.
And so Alec Lightwood died at forty three, a good, solid age, taken down by a demon after Rafael and found that his death tasted sour in his mouth. Alec looked up at the evening sky, the clouds dispersed as the red glory of sunset played before him. His hand had twitched, perhaps in a want to hold his husband one last time, or maybe just from pain.
The blood around him soon grew cold. As did his body. That was the passage of time, after all.
Alex River is confronted with the truth of his immortality.
He has known it to be a fact since Giselle had sat him down and explained his parentage, his demon blood and his newly minted Warlock powers. But he only truly begins to understand what it means when his friends and family start to age around him, and he stays forever twenty two.
Alex glamours himself to age with them. He holds his dad’s hands, now stiff with arthritis, saying nothing. They watch the fire he conjured, crackling away merrily, and Alex realises that being immortal is no gift if he has no one to share it with.
He is a Downworlder still heavily entrenched in mundane life. And Alex wonders which one of his friends he’ll have to bury first. And who will be the last that he holds as their bodies grow empty and cold. They all know about him, but the knowledge still hurts.
He allows them to marry, to have children. Alex stays single, unable to commit to a relationship because he dreams of cat’s eyes and a man with blue skin and a wedding band on an empty finger.
He still wishes, now and then, that he had been like them, entirely human. But for now, he is happy. Life has blessed him in this life. He never forgets that.
+1
Alec Lightwood loved a Warlock called Magnus Bane.
He left everything he knew for the man. He walked down an aisle twice for him, once in deference to a life he hated and again toward a life that he would love and cherish. Alec Lightwood-Bane devoted his entire being to his husband. He was the reason he breathed, the reason that Alec was no longer ashamed of who he was. Magnus Bane had made him alive, and Magnus Lightwood-Bane provided his heart every beat it took.
It was as simple as that. With every achievement he had, for very promotion and accomplishment, it shadowed under the glory of reality that was being Magnus’ heart. That was what Alec wanted to be.
He didn’t want to be remembered for being Consul. He simply wanted people to remember that Alec Lightwood had loved a man once so much that he changed the world for him.
Alex River loves a Warlock called Magnus Bane.
They meet in far less turbulent circumstances, in an understated park, on an average day in New York City. Alex spies the man from a park bench, and finds his breath stolen from him. Memories, for now he knows they are memories, not dreams, spill before him.
He sees weddings, heartbreak and war and so much love that tears spill from his eyes. Alex stumbles with an unknown force, heart beating once more, finally, at long last. Then he’s close enough to touch.
Magnus Bane turns.
The world stops.
Alex River can’t stop the smile threatening to break his skin. Magnus sobs, reaching out to cradle a once more youthful face.
“Alexander,” he says, awe so potent.
Alex River finds himself thankful for the life of Alec Lightwood because no matter the devastation they have both lived, Alec Lightwood has blessed him with this.
And so he replies, “yes Magnus, I’m here.”