Title: Max Russo's Box

Summary: There's a box that sits on Max Russo's former desk...inside rests thirteen items. What are they and what are they for?

Rating: T

Warnings: Suicide, murder, death, general icky stuff, read at own risk.

A/N: Well, I was TRYING to write a happy oneshot. Epic fail on this one. A bit gloomy, yes, but give it a try. Please?

Disclaimer: I don't own Wizards of Waverly Place.

There's a box that sits on Max Russo's desk.

It's not small, but not particularly large, either. It's not ornate or simple, and there doesn't seem to be a purpose for it. It simply is—a carved, good-sized wooden box that's always been there, ever since he was sixteen.

Inside rests thirteen items; a singed paper flower, a cracked glass rose, a small spiral-bound notebook, a dog tag and a silver heart necklace, a business card, a broken lock, paintbrush and broken wand among them. The only thing these items have in common is that they're all broken or destroyed in one way or another.

The small vial of blood, to some, was gruesome, but to others, absolutely gorgeous. The crystal and the blood would sparkle when one held it to the light—it was dark and beautiful, just like Juliet. Indeed, the vial of blood represented Juliet, as she was the first to go—she evaporated into dust three days after she left with Mason. The vial of blood was sent to Justin by Juliet's parents, and from that day on, it lived in the wooden box that Justin conjured up. It was only the first of the items that would rest there for eternity—and the first that the remaining Russos would shed tears over. No one said a word as he placed the vial in the box, and the whole family hoped beyond belief that the Van Heusens were wrong that their daughter was dead and Justin would be whole again, not suicidal like everyone knew he was, even though he swore he would live forever if Juliet couldn't.

The spiral bound notebook is ordinary—it almost doesn't belong in that box of broken hearts. Inside, thin lines of dark, black cursive march in military rows across the page, a neat record of something or other. Dark, reddish-black fluid stains the bottom right corner, though, and an inspection of a few seconds will reveal that it's blood. This notebook represents Justin, for all that it was Justin's, unlike most of the other items in the box. It was ironic, Justin's death, in that he'd sworn to live forever for Juliet. He was tracking down a monster and was led straight into a trap. Justin never returned home. Max and Alex had to go retrieve his body and well, Alex returned with a scar slashing across her cheek and Max with a slight limp in cold weather, but what remained of Justin's body was interred in the family cemetery. Alex became the next family monster hunter, and her first active job was to track down the monster that killed Justin. She succeeded.

The cracked glass rose is beautiful, but for that one, fatal flaw. It would be perfect, a work of art, if it wasn't cracked, and for that reason, it was thrown away. This rose represents Stevie, one of the first true people they lost. She would've been part of the family, and it turns out, she was. Megan had married a wizard and they'd had two children—Stevie and Warren, separated by eleven months. Warren always acted much older, while Stevie was always the youngest. The rose had been given to Stevie by Warren for her eighth birthday—on the day she died, it cracked and was never the same. It was only recently that Warren had finally allowed Max to put it in the box, even though Stevie had died nearly two decades before.

The paintbrush too, is slightly cracked, but unlike the glass rose, it was clearly well used and cracked through use, not fragility. This paintbrush represents Megan Russo, the Russo sibling's aunt and the mother of Warren and Stevie. Alex had confronted her about why she'd let her daughter become that way—and in anger, pushed Megan. Unfortunately, they were arguing on the roof—and Megan lost her balance, tumbling over the edge to her death, eight stories below. Judges ruled her death a suicide, but everyone knew that Alex had something to do with it, especially when she returned home, chalk-pale and terrified.

The paper flower is slightly charred around the edges and is essentially whole—but truly, it is disfigured. This flower represents Harper—pure, simple, playful, naive and innocent but utterly destroyed. Harper was the first to leave—three days before her eighteenth birthday, she was beaten, raped and murdered in a dark alleyway. It had been two days before her body could be identified, and that was only through DNA testing. The paper flower had always been pinned to the wall above her bed, and when she was attacked, it had fluttered down onto a candle and burned. Somehow, the Future Harper still survived, and now only went by Hannah Jane Darling.

The dog tag has a name on it, but you can barely read it. It looks like it might be Mike or Mason or Nolan or something like that. In reality, it reads Mason Grabeck. This tag portrays Mason. The second to leave, the tag was something he'd always worn. It's scratched and chipped, but he always wore it. When he was lost to the world as a wolf, the tag remained with him, enchanted to stay so. The Russos only knew he was dead when Alex received it in the mail. It took her days to calm down—yet she had already lost so much more. No one knew how Mason had died, and no spell, expedition or amount of investigation could reveal how it had happened.

The silver heart necklace was the next in the box, and some person from the past had linked the necklace and the dog tag together. It was tarnished and there was a smear of dried blood, reddish-brownish, but it was still elegant and beautiful. Alex was twenty-four when she received Mason's dogtag. The silver heart necklace she always wore for him represents her. After losing Stevie, Harper, Justin, Juliet and now Mason, Alex was heartbroken. She spun into a deep depression, and one morning, Max and his parents picked up the phone to a police officer. Alex had slit her wrists and had been discovered in her bathtub. Max had taken Alex's necklace and put in the box before burying his sister next to their brother.

The wand is snapped in two, but held together by a strand of pure, silver magic. The wand represents Kelbo, who was broken when his family was, but kept himself together with the magic his brother had given him. Always the reckless one, Kelbo was killed on a magical expedition on the volcanic river. The wand was Kelbo's once, but he'd given it to Max on Max's sixteenth birthday. Four days later, Max added it to the box; the death certificate had come in the mail. Kelbo's body was never recovered, due to the fact that the lava burned it clean to ashes. There was nothing left to bury.

The business card once was jetblack with gold lettering—sometime when Max took it out to look at it, the sunlight faded the vibrant black to grey. There are two names on it, Jerry and Teresa Russo. It's leftover from the day and a half the Sub Station was futuristic, and it's one of the few things Max still has of the elder Russos. On the back, in his mother's tidy print, there's a short message. Jerry: Went out for groceries, be back soon, love you very much! To which Jerry had written back in the messy scrawl his children had inherited, Love you too, sweetheart. Like every other item in this box, it represents someone, although this one represents two, rather than one. In Max's box of death, this little card represents his parents, Jerry and Theresa. They were the only two to die in a natural way—Theresa by cancer and Jerry by a heart attack.

The broken lock once hung on the outside of the box. Max had always locked it after adding something new, thinking that if he kept them forever hidden, they'd never come back to haunt him. The lock represented Max the most—strong and sturdy on the inside, but able to be broken and removed at any other time. After his entire family had died, after everyone even slightly important to them had passed on to whatever was after life (he liked to believe in heaven and hell), he'd broken down and revealed to the whole world about magic. The lock had broken when magic poured into the mortal world—mortal items simply couldn't withstand the amount of magic and shattered.

A USB drive, when plugged into an ancient computer, reveals thirteen documents. Each one has a name--Juliet, Mason, Justin, Alex, Teresa, Kelbo, Megan, Jerry, Stevie, Max, Harper, reasoning and who. Each file is a life story of a person and the other two explain absolutely everything, including the story of their lives, in the dry hopes that someone will find it and understand what happened to these people.

The last item in the box is a thick, white folder. Inside are eleven death certificates, starting with Juliet van Heusen and ending with Max Russo.

Name: Juliet van Heusen.
Cause of Death: Unknown.
Age: 2194 years old.

Name: Mason Grabeck.
Cause of Death: Unknown.
Age: 242.

Name: Stevie Nichols.
Cause of Death: Frozen and Shattered.
Age: 16.

Name: Harper Finkle.
Cause of Death: Rape and Murder.
Age: 17.

Name: Alex Russo.
Cause of Death: Suicide.
Age: 24.

Name: Megan Russo.
Cause of Death: Pushed Off Building.
Age: 41.

Name: Justin Russo.
Cause of Death: Monster Hunting Accident.
Age: 21.

Name: Teresa Russo.
Cause of Death: Cancer.
Age: 62

Name: Kelbo Russo
Cause of Death: Volcano Rafting Accident
Age: 46.

Name: Jerry Russo.
Cause of Death: Heart Attack.
Age: 66.

Name: Max Russo.
Cause of Death: Execution.
Age: 38.

There's a box on Max Russo's former desk. In the 472 years since his death, it hasn't been moved, not once. No one can open or move it—no one but a Russo, and all Russo's died out when Max did—or so they thought. Warren Russo-Xing changed his name after his sister's death, and one of his descendents—a young girl named Carolyne—lifted the lid.

To Carolyne, it is nothing. Just a box of junk. But she still takes it to her mother and her mother to the Wizard Council.

To the wizarding world, it is a treasure. The only glimpse they have of the ones who set magic free—the glimpse of the famous—and now extinct, Russos.

The only glimpse they have of their heroes.

The wizarding world honors the Russos as the saviors of the world, forgetting that they were the ones responsible for their deaths.

The world is filled with ironies, no?