I. Finding

He was falling.

He didn't know how or where to or even why, but the heavy feeling of gravity pulling him towards the ground – a ground he couldn't even see – was a clear fact in his mind.

His stomach twisted and turned, his nerves fluttering in a way that made his heart race ad his palms feel sweaty and cold.

Alec wanted to scream, names tumbling through his mind, almost automatically settling on the one of his parabatai.

"Jace!".

The scream ripped through his throat but he made no sound. There was only silence around him, nothing reaching his ears.

It made him feel disorientated, almost scared, like he could be drowning in it if he wasn't careful enough.

He was about to try screaming again, but he choked on his own words when he suddenly hit the ground, crashing face first into a hard surface.

He groaned, expecting the pain to wash over him and maybe even knock him out - but there was none.

The impact should have broken or at least hurt his nose, but it felt just fine.

Confused, Alec decided that it was a good idea to sit up and finally have a look at his surroundings. His hands still felt cold, but his heart wasn't threatening to jump out of his rib cage anymore, which he guessed was a good thing.

His first thought when he looked around was that he had no idea where the hell he was.

He noticed that he wore his usual black clothing and that he didn't feel any different than he should, but nothing about his surroundings felt familiar to him.

The walls around him were almost bare, the blueish wallpaper looking like it had been ripped off half-heartedly by someone who hasn't had the strength to finish his work.

The rest of the room looked just as worn down.

There was barely any furniture; only a table that had been knocked over and what looked like a few things that were meant for a cat: Bowls, a sleeping space and a scratching post.

Who owned this place? And where was that person? And how did he get here?

Alec stood up when he felt like his knees felt strong enough for it, and started walking around the pretty much empty, but spacious room, trying to look for any hints about the owner or at least his general whereabouts.

Looking out of the large window barely gave him any sense of direction, since all he could see where wide fields, trees and a river stretching far into the north. Thick rain clouds where gathering in the sky, but until now not a single drop was coming out of them and Alec hoped that it stayed that way. If he had to escape he would rather do it while it was still dry.

His boots sounded heavy on the wooden floor, and he cursed quietly, reminding himself to be more careful even in his disorientated state.

He could do better than this.

When he stepped to the corner of the room he noticed that there were spaces on the walls that looked less dusty than the rest, the wallpaper itself not damaged. Judging from the sizes and shapes, the spaces had once been covered by what he guessed must have been picture-frames.

Why had they been taken down? Had the owner moved and he was worrying without any reason to?

But why were the cat's things still here if he had? Why had the table been flipped over and the wallpaper been ripped off so carelessly?

Alec felt the start of a headache pounding in his skull and let out a quiet, annoyed sigh. He couldn't be hurt by crashing full force into the ground, but a simple headache was still in?

Ridiculous.

He flinched when a sudden voice startled him out of his useless thinking process.

"No! I am done with talking about this, Clary! Stop calling me! I'm fine!".

It was Magnus. He was obviously talking to someone – to Clary – on the phone and not to him, as he had first assumed.

But what had he been talking about? To her?

The Warlock put the phone away and Alec noticed that his hands were shaking.

His cat-like eyes only now seemed to focus o the room and he suddenly looked directly at him, but not like he was actually seeing him. More like he was staring right through him at the empty spaces on the wall.

And then something unexpected happened.

Magnus started crying.

It wasn't the overly dramatic kind of crying that some people might would have expected from him, but the contrary.

Silent tears rolled from his red-rimmed eyes to his pristine cheeks, leaving tiny, wet stains in their wake.

Alec's eyebrows almost went up to his hairline, the surprise about seeing Magnus – The High Warlock of Brooklyn - crying being too much for his already confused brain.

He couldn't think of any words to say, so he instead stepped up to him, raising his hand hesitantly to maybe, possibly put it on his arm in an helpless effort to comfort him. Like Magnus had done it to him way too many times in the short span they had known each other.

The touch had always felt kind of foreign to him; Magnus' soft skin on his own unusual, but not unwelcome.

Maybe it had been the magic that was constantly flowing through his veins, his every cell, or maybe it had been something completely different, but the feeling had always almost immediately calmed him down a bit.

Alec didn't want to think about that.

But he wanted to do the same for him.

When he reached out to carefully place his hand on the Warlock's arm, which was clad in the soft-looking fabric of a black coat, it went right through.

He couldn't touch him.

Alec's heart started racing again and he desperately tried again, trying to convince himself that he had missed his form the first time, that somehow-...

But nothing happened. His fingers touched nothing solid, only wandering aimlessly through the air, until he pulled his arm back against his side.

What the hell was going on? Where was he?

What if Magnus was using some kind of magic on him, making him unaccessible?

No. That wasn't it. It must be the same reason for why he hadn't hurt himself earlier.

He wasn't there.

He wasn't real here.

He must be in some parallel universe, a different dimension of some sort.

The realization hit him like a brick. His guts twisted again and he gasped for air, feeling a sudden wave of dizziness washing over him.

Alec tried to pull himself together, almost wanting to laugh at himself for how he acted. Stranger things had happened to him and still here he was, behaving like a five-year old that had been left alone by his parents in a supermarket.

But this was different and he knew it. His head was swimming with other things that occupied his mind: The wedding, his parent's past, Izzy...

He could barely concentrate on anything, thoughts drifting in and out of his conscience, nor did he have any time for this.

Alec shook his head, closing his eyes and breathing in deeply. Breathed out.

He opened his eyes and looked at Magnus again, like he hoped that he could somehow see him, now that he had recomposed himself a little bit.

Magnus had stopped crying. Instead, his gaze flickered through the room, his eyes suddenly looking wild.

"Alec?".

His voice sounded so desperate, so broken that Alec visibly flinched, the urge to touch and reassure him growing so much stronger than before.

The tears that stained Magnus' cheeks glistened on his flawless skin and Alec only then noticed that something was off about him. Even more so than it already was.

It didn't take him long to figure out what it was.

He wasn't wearing any of his usual glitter. The sparkles that normally reached across his skin, around his eyes, usually glowing and shimmering like tiny stars – they were gone.

In fact there was nothing glamorous about his appearance, now that Alec payed attention to it.

He was clad in all black: His shoes, his pants, the coat. Dark, smudgy make-up was the only thing that highlighted Magnus' eyes.

His hair wasn't spiked up, nor was it styled into one of his famous quiffs. Instead the loose, almost greasy strands simply fell into his forehead, as if even his hair was sad.

To put it short: He looked absolutely miserable.

"I'm here", Alec found himself saying, his words sounding desperate, almost pleading, but his throat felt dry and the words barely tumbled out of his mouth.

Magnus suddenly pressed his hands to his ears, then to his eyes, as if he couldn't stand to hear or see anything anymore.

"I'm going insane", he whispered, his voice eerily hollow.

And then he started to say something, three little words that he repeated over and over again, like he was trying to convince himself of the truth they held this way.

"Alec is dead. Alec is dead. ALEC IS DEAD".

Thank you so much for reading!

This is my first ever Shadowhunters Fanfiction and I'm very excited for it!

It's going to have five chapters and maybe a bonus chapter afterwards.

I would like to hear your thoughts! 3

Cross-posted on Archive Of Our Own.