Author's Note: Magnus' perspective. The characters do not belong to me and neither does the poem.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

-Absence by Elizabeth Jennings.

I remember walking through these gardens before. He was holding my hand. His grip was so tight that for a brief moment I wondered if we had somehow become magically bonded; melded together as if we were a single entity. But if that had been true then I would not find myself, here once again, alone.

Nobody holds my hand now. There is no shy young Shadowhunter to look up at me through black eyelashes, eyes shining like precious stones set encrusted in to marble.

It makes my heart hurt just to remember how it used to be. What has become of me? Once colour and vibrancy ruled my life. The grass was not green, it was emerald and the morning dew was like tiny crystals. The sun did not just shine, no; it shone with a fiery brilliance.

My world swam with eccentric adjectives. Metaphors and similes were my everything and now they have all evaporated from my mournful mind. The world has become so dreary and literal.

And it is for lack of him. Yet he embodied literalness. He was a fighter, a doer, not a fantasist. Things either were or they weren't. He preferred to wear black more than anything else. In that respect we were opposites. But not on the inside. On the inside we had so much in common. It is possible to describe these common features but I know they were there; they were what strung us together.

My little Shadowhunter, he was so very dear to my heart. May all colour fade away save black and white, the shades of pure innocence and brutal experience. Let there be no grey in-between.

The demons killed him. Now I have only to stare in to my quivering reflection in the fountain (where we once sat and talked as if tomorrow would never come) to see the marks of evil in my eyes. I can see that foul beast casting him aside as if he were merely a loose leaf barely clinging on the tree of life. Oh how I despise that the blood of such beasts pierce through my veins like a reminder that I am as poisonous to my enemies as I am to all those I hold dear.

I lay this single white rose in this peaceful undisturbed garden where once he said, "I do."

It is in memory of him.

So why am I now allowing blue fire to seep from my hands and turn it all to ash? The place where he became mine turning to cinders through my actions. But then again, how dare the flowers still bloom and the birds still sing while he cannot draw another breath?This garden deserves no sympathy because it is selfish enough to ignore my sorrow as if it were meaningless. Nature cares not for any loss; instead it mocks me that the way of things is for me to live and for him to die.

I don't think I want to remember.

It hurts too much.

The flames are all around me now. Let the place burn to hell and join my heart and soul on the winds of turmoil.

But this one small place I will preserve, where this white rose shall lie, for eternity. The rest of this garden, this illusion of peace, shall suffer for its indifference to your absence.

Goodbye, sweet Alexander Lightwood.