Hey.

It is this story's birthday today. I hope you wish it well.

I feel like… I have a lot to say. I have so much to say, yet I do not want to force my pathetic babble onto you. Firstly, though it seems lame, I would truly like to thank everyone who has reviewed. I asked you to, last chapter, and I was overwhelmed by the response. So much so that I am still replying. I am sorry for that, but I swear to get back to all of you. As for the link:

http : / magnus-and-alec. blogspot. com. au/search/label/Magnus%27s%20Vow

Remove the spaces.

I have fretted over this for a whole year. I have tossed and turned and wondered what I could do to hurt Magnus and Alec more than the last chapter. And now I am saying farewell.

To anyone who likes music, again, I have a few suggestions. If you are into Christina Perry (Made famous by Jar of Hearts), 'Arms' is the perfect song for Alec. 'Sad Song' works too, if you don't take the words too much to heart. She has a voice which isn't too distracting while you think or read. I urge you to listen to 'Arms', though, with the lyrics. 'Born to Die' by Lana Del Ray is also nice, just the atmosphere opposed to the meaning.

I would like to thank everyone who has read this. That in itself was an enormous feat. I am so grateful for all of you, putting your faith into me to even finish. Apparently some people even had to use Google Translate to read it, and that really touched me. But if you ever read my reviews page, you will realise immediately why it was never even an option for me to abandon this fic. The fact that you are here, on this page, makes all of the banging my head against my pillow worth it.

So we made it. We did. To be honest, I am afraid to finish. But here it is.

Random Fact No. 31120113112012: No matter who you are, no matter what you do, there is always someone who can love you. As a friend, mentor, parent or lover, there will always be someone who cares. You just have to wait.

Magnus looked at his reflection in the mirror, searching for something different.

Sometimes he would do that, just stare at himself and look for something, something which had left a mark or a sign that Magnus was of the world of mortals, and he would take it away. He would mend the scars, the burns and marks which usually covered other, more short-lived people's bodies. He would take them all away and become untouchable, a creature born of darkness. He had always thought it made him beautiful. It was better to be unbreakable. He had believed that for a very long time.

Then he had met Alexander.

The mirror reflected his silky caramel skin, long shadows cast by the bright lights which beamed overhead tinting his skin, making him look older. His hair was in neat disarray, and caught the multi-coloured lights like a dark halo. He had the same eyes as he had had for years, the same bizarre pupils over yellowish green, but they were different. No matter how many things Magnus had done to himself to insure that he didn't end up looking human, some things had changed.

As a familiar pair of arms wrapped themselves around his waist, he knew he didn't need to look any farther.

The boy's skin was dead white and icy, and Magnus clasped his hands in his own. Gradually, Magnus turned around, abandoning the mirror and his desperate search for change, and looked it dead on.

Alec was dressed in a suit, his shirt and tie varying degrees of red. The fabric hung off his thin body in the way it had been tailored to, and Alec's hand clutched Magnus's own. Magnus held it back.

"Do you worry about him?" asked Alec, and Magnus just laughed. Around them were groups of people, all dressed nicely for the occasion. They danced and swayed to soft faerie music in a large hall decorated in shades of majestic reds and blues. But of course Alec was worried. Magnus would have been startled if he wasn't.

"Why?" asked the warlock, mouth pulling up into a smile. This was the part where Alec would start to babble, and Magnus would laugh at him, and Alec would blush and turn away.

"Because… he is getting married, Magnus! He is getting married, and what if they don't look after him? He won't want me checking in on him all the time, and he certainly won't, but what if he gets upset, and no one knows what to do…?" Alec looked down, clearly upset. Magnus got the idea that this was a very inappropriate time for Alec to be a Best Man.

A few years ago, Alec had found a young vampire in the process of dying in an alleyway. It wasn't a rare sight, to see a vampire lying on the pavement in an alley, but with the sun rising… Alec had picked him up and taken him to their old apartment. As it turned out, the boy had once been a shadowhunter who lived in another Institute, but he had been kicked out once he Turned. After that a circle of vampires took him in, knowing he was an ex-shadowhunter, and had fed him drugged human blood for laughs.

Once you get attached to tainted human blood, you don't come back. You lock them out and let them burn, because they get cravings for human blood and lose their mind so badly that they aren't worth rehabilitating.

Magnus could remember coming home and finding this boy – Eugene Verlac – sprawled on top of Alec, draining his blood. Magnus had shoved him off, but Alec would always let him drink from him when he needed to. He promised the boy that he would save him.

Looking around at the wedding reception, Magnus supposed that he had.

"I always thought he might have loved you, you know," observed Magnus, softly.

"What?"

"It's just… remember that silly game you would play with him, whenever he got hungry? He would tell you to push him away if he took too much, and you would say no, that he should just promise not to take too much. You would make him promise, a stupid shadowhunter-vampire looking for human's blood, not to drain you. And for some reason, he always kept his end of the bargain. For a while," Magnus continued, more slowly, "I thought you wanted him to love you."

Alec had a way of making people like him. Most people knew of Alexander Lightwood. The crazy one, the immortal angelic warrior. People would expect to find some sort of twisted, paranoid creature, but that was not Alec. Alec was kind and gentle, if not a little jumpy. There was hurt inside him that no amount of time could mend – nightmares that still struck him these years later – but he had come very far, and Magnus knew that one day everything that happened with the demon's venom would be forgotten.

"Of course I did. He is like a brother," replied Alec, his gaze fallowing Eugene's dancing figure as the boy threw his head back and laughed in his husband's strong arms. The other man was also a vampire. He had a reputation of being a gentleman, but Alec was bothered by him all the same. "Love can help you heal, but it can also burn you. I don't want him to get hurt. He doesn't know what he is doing."

Magnus frowned, and knew that this was one of those things that Alec shared with Eugene from experience. When Magnus had suggested that they told Eugene to move out after the vampire had drained Alec a little over his usual limit, Alec had started sobbing. Magnus had been confused until he heard the words 'You don't know what it is like', and suddenly it had made sense.

"That boy," Alec continued, eyes cast downwards, "has no idea how much he can hurt Eugene. He isn't alright in the head yet, he isn't responsible for his actions. That boy could really hurt him-"

"Like I did?" asked Magnus, swallowing.

"There were times," replied Alec, very softly, "when I tried to please you. When your mind is weak, when you feel so awful about everything you do… all you want to do is please the one who loves you. That is why I worked so hard to get close to Eugene, and that is why I used to be so frightened. Do you remember that day, when I cooked dinner-"

"Alec, don't."

"You worked so hard to make me alright again. I was so angry at myself, that no matter what I did, I always made you unhappy. I would see how you wanted to leave the house, and feel awful that I was holding you back. I saw how you wanted to touch and hold me, and I would be so upset that I wouldn't let you, and… and when you were out, I just figured that I could cook you dinner, and make you happy. Just a simple spaghetti… I should have been able to do it, but for some reason it tasted awful, it wasn't good enough-"

"Alec, please!" The memory rocked through Magnus. He had been late coming home from a client's house, and when he came back he had found Alec crying softly on the sofa. He could smell something burnt, and when he asked Alec what was wrong, he had simply cried harder about how 'it wasn't good enough'. It took another few minutes for Magnus to find the bright red burns up Alec's legs from where he had knocked the boiling water and sauce onto himself. But that had been years ago.

"I always tried to make you happy, Magnus." Somehow, his words weren't an accusation. "I really tried. Eventually I had to realise that nothing I could possibly do would help to make you happy. It was never enough. You were so good to me, and I could never do anything to help you. That's why I was so careful with Eugene. If I let him think he could make me happy…"

Magnus pulled Alec in closer, holding his face close to his own, and suddenly the party of vampires and shadowhunters, and everything in between… it all just vanished.

No one ever liked to bring up what had happened to Alec, but it haunted him, the ghost of his former madness creeping into written memory and reputation alike. After Alec had woken up from his final demonic nightmare, it had taken the Clave less than a month to realise what had happened. More Silent Brothers were sent out, and most of them had been told to put Alec down, to let him die a humane death. It had taken months to show them that Alec could improve, and longer to convince them that he could improve enough. Magnus used some spells on Alec's memories, and potions to calm him down while Clary and the other shadowhunters used whatever marks they could think of. Through all of that, it had taken three years for the Clave to consider Alec a shadowhunter again, and a decade for them to take away the mark beside his name that labelled him 'unstable'.

When Alec had adopted a twenty something year old vampire after fifteen years, Magnus had thought he had relapsed. When he fed him on his own blood and insisted he was fixable, everyone had laughed at him. No one had even taken him seriously. But Alec had proven them wrong, and Magnus was proud of him.

"You were very good for him. I know… I know I wasn't that good for you, when you needed me." Magnus shivered, thinking of how sometimes he used to get annoyed at Alec. He would get frustrated because everyone said that Alec was better off dead, and sometimes… on occasions he had been forced to agree with them. That he couldn't recover. He had watched Alec pick up Eugene, look at him, and never lose faith in him. He knew that he should have been like that. That had been what Alec had needed.

Alec smiled, looking a little pained. "I know how that boy felt." Alec gestured over at Eugene, who was still wearing a smile, looking like he was having the time of his life. "Not many people do, but the moment I saw him sitting in the alleyway before dawn, not caring whether he lived or died, just that the pain went away… I knew exactly what that felt like. That would have been me. That should have been me, but I had something to hold onto. That was all he needed."

"Alec, I was hardly-"

"Twenty-seven times. I tried to kill myself twenty-seven times over twenty years. The one who saved me – the one who kept the count that low – was you. You watched me, and you promised to stay with me. Even though I was afraid of disappointing you, you kept me afloat. Eugene had nothing. Everyone had left him. What happened to him could have happened to me, except I had people who loved me… I had – I had you…"

Magnus ducked his head and smiled. There were circular dining tables scattered along the edge of the floor, but they just stood by the dancers as they twirled.

"I gave you hell for years, and you never gave up. You are the reason I lived, and the reason I want to continue for as long as I can spend my life with you. Without you, I would be dead. Without you, I would not be here. For all that I did for Eugene, all the understanding and kindness I could give him, you gave me everything, and I will always be grateful."

Magnus felt tears in his eyes as he pulled Alec in closer. It had been twenty years since that fateful day Alec had been attacked by Servus Deminutio. Twenty years since they had been thrust into the dark and forced to find a way out of a place of deaf hears and blind eyes. All the worries that Alec would not make it alive, all of the times Magnus wondered what he would do without Alec… they were gone. There had been times when they fought, times when it seemed like it could never get better, but they had made it. Together.

"Do you remember," asked Alec, softly, taking Magnus by the hand and inviting him to lead him into a dance, "the greatest story ever told?"

Magnus spun Alec beneath the soft lights, the pinks and baby blues tinting Alec's skin and reflecting in his ebony hair. Somewhere Eugene was watching them, probably smiling at Alec, silently wondering what it was like to be so in love, only to look at his side and know. Maybe he looked at Alec, and saw himself, the way Alec saw himself in Eugene. Perhaps they were kin, in a sense. And Magnus supposed that they were. Because their great tales, their pages filled in with love and passion, they were only just beginning.

"I do, Alexander." Magnus smiled.

Smiling up at the roof, Magnus told him. Told him everything. His plans, his dreams. His wants and desires. How much he loved him, how he saw them together, living side by side. He remembered the first time he had told him that, when it had only seemed like a dream, something impossible and out of sight. They had been crying then too.

"And we will never have to be apart. Never again, I swear." He had said those words with false certainty, once. He had known, but only in his heart. You didn't need a heart to hear the truth in the words now.

"I want that…" Alec was smiling radiantly. He looked Magnus directly in the eyes. Something about him was more real this time, and Magnus knew that after all of the tragedy over the years, he still adored him. The soft, human smile that Alec wore each day made everything worth it. "I really, really want that."

"We will have it. Everything you want. We will dance in the grandest halls," Magnus said softly, almost playfully as he spun Alec in a neat circle, "and dine at the highest peaks. And I will never let go of you. Never."

And this time around, no one had to get hurt. They would remember what had happened, the way Alec had cried and smiled all at the same time when he had found out that he wouldn't have to leave Magnus's side, that he was immortal. They remembered the way Alec would still wake up occasionally, gasping and clinging to Magnus for dear life, or the way Alec had tried to take himself away and 'relieve' Magnus of him when they had started the recovery process.

And then they would look at each other, and it would fade away.

Magnus slipped his hand up Alec's back, placing a hand on his cheek. The ring around his finger – the one that matched Alec's – dragged along his skin, and the boy smiled. Slowly, Magnus leaned down a little and captured the boy's lips into a gentle kiss and closed his eyes.

Somewhere in the room, a clock was chiming twelve. Magnus thought ruefully of how that was the time when all the magic ran out, where a dream ended and all that was left was a memory.

Pulling slightly away from Alec, just far enough to see his damp, beautiful eyes, Magnus could only look at him.

"A hundred years. A thousand years. I have never adored someone as much as I adore you, at this moment and always."

Alec buried his face in Magnus's chest, and Magnus felt his shoulders shaking. When Alec looked back up at him, he was smiling. "It isn't possible that after everything, I can feel so… happy."

"Then," said Magnus softly, "I just hope the magic lasts."

And as the dances went on long after the clock chimed twelve and Alec's presence at his side never strayed, Magnus knew that magic had nothing to do with it.

Pulling him possessively into his arms, Magnus knew that no magic, no darkness, nothing could touch them.

Never again.

-The End-

I would love to hear whatever you thought, for there must have been something, if you made it this far.

Also, and though I suppose it seems unlikely, if you want a copy of the very word document I typed this up on, you can PM your email. Just in case you want to flick through it. I could sign it if you would like (shh, Miss Regina, no one bloody well wants you to sign a fanfiction!).

I was considering writing a one-shot about what happened to Eugene (it would probably help this chapter make sense). Is that something worthy of being written, or a silly idea by a silly author?

Disclaimer (because I should probably throw these in occasionally): I do not own The Mortal Instruments. It owns me.

It has truly been an honour to write for you,

-Miss Regina Star