Seeeeeqqqquuuueeeeeellllllll!

Okay, let me just clarify so there's NO CONFUSION WHATSOEVER. This story will NOT be updated like my other stories (i.e. fast-ish), because it's just too hard. There are a lot of metaphysical blah blah things going on, so I need time to think it all up.

Alright, with that said, you probably want me to just get on with it huh?

I don't own them…still…sigh.

Chapter Song: Nothing Else Matters by Apocalyptica (great cello cover of Metallica. I just love it.)

Alec woke slowly, afraid to open his eyes. His entire body, having been engulfed in internal flames not two seconds earlier, felt cold all over from the loss of the heat he'd grown accustomed to in his final moments. His muscles felt like he'd been tensing them for a week straight. They were all sore to the very core, and it hurt to even breathe, so he stopped.

He stopped breathing. Somehow, he didn't need to.

This seemed like a bad sign.

He went from not breathing at all to hyperventilating, which did nothing to alleviate the pain in his entire body, but he couldn't stop. He kept trying to catch his breath, looking for the relief that was supposed to come, like when you stopped holding your breath after a long moment and finally took that deep intake of air. But the feeling never came. It felt…unnecessary. It was bizarre, to say the least. He tried to control his panic, and slowly it began to subside, his breathing returning to a normal pace and eventually stopping again.

He didn't think he would get used to that feeling, but he tried to let it rest at the back of his mind. He slowly, painfully, came into a sitting position. He felt his back ache horribly, and couldn't help but let out a small cry. Small, because he discovered that his voice was nearly gone.

He tried to think back on the last few moments before he woke up here. There was so much fire. So much pain. It seemed like a haze that just wouldn't lift. He tried harder to remember; he knew he was in an unfamiliar place. He was lying on something hard. Oh, so much pain. It came rushing back to him in waves, the internal burning that made his blood boil and his skin blister. He looked down at his arms, where his Marks used to be. All that was left was charred skin, shaped like Marks, but badly drawn ones. They were distorted and they made no sense.

Inside his chest, he felt an odd sensation. It was like a fluttering, a palpitation of his heart. It didn't feel right at all. He thought he might still be panicking, but even his attempts to alleviate it did nothing to slow the sensation that felt like hummingbird wings were flapping in his chest. Also, it had an odd rhythm; sometimes it was lightning fast, other times it would jerk to a stop, only to start up again even faster after a few seconds. It was like his heart was trying to jumpstart itself, but it had the wrong speed setting.

His head ached as he tried to think back further. Lying on something hard. Clawing at his body. Tears rolling down his face. Screaming. Screaming. So much screaming.

Magnus.

Magnus.

"Magnus!"

The verbalization of it brought the physical pain of his throat to the forefront, but he didn't heed it. He looked around frantically, only now noticing his surroundings.

He was in a very pale yellow room. The walls, floor and ceiling were all painted the same pastel buttercup color. It was quite unsettling, because he couldn't really distinguish the walls from the ceiling and floor. It was bizarre. What was this place? And why was he alone?

Still thinking back… The pain. His heart slowing. Wishing it would just end. His vision sharpening incredibly, even though the rest of his body was in a pain-filled haze. Seeing Magnus. His face contorted in agony. I love you. Then, nothing.

Dead.

He was dead.

Was this heaven?

Magnus. He just wanted Magnus.

As he glanced around, he faintly noticed the walls were a very slightly brighter shade of yellow. They were more like the centers of daisies now. Odd.

He couldn't get his mind off the weird rhythm of his heart. Well, if he was dead, not needing to breathe would make sense. But why, then, was his heart rate skyrocketing? And at such a weird, unsteady pace?

He tried to take stock of the rest of his body. It seemed to be all in one piece, but very cold. His veins felt like they were filled with jello, and it was hard to move right. Like his blood was congealed, moving slowly despite the rapid pace of the muscle in his chest.

He wished Magnus was here. He was so warm, so comfortable. His arms, his slender body pressed against Alec's muscular one. All he wanted was Magnus.

This time, he was looking at the walls when they changed. The yellow got brighter, he was sure of it. What was this place? If he was in heaven, weren't there supposed to be others around? The Angel waiting to take him in? Something? Not this endless abyss of yellow. And why the hell yellow? He was baffled.

He slowly tried to stand, only managing to get to his knees before his muscles gave out. He felt so weak and sore, it was unbelievable. He still couldn't remember what had brought this on. He just remembered seeing Magnus' face, so painful, so agonized, before his oddly acute vision went dark.

There it was again. The walls got brighter. They were the color of corn on the cob now.

Alec wished Magnus was here, so he could heal this horrible soreness in his muscles.

Again, the walls brightened. Alec thought for a moment. It didn't make any sense.

Magnus.

Another shift in color.

Magnus.

Still brighter, almost the color of lemons now.

Magnus.

All of a sudden, color burst forth toward him, and he felt like he was being crushed by some hideous weight. It felt like an elephant was sitting on his chest. He started gasping for breath, knowing it would do no good, since he had no need to breathe in the first place. It kept getting heavier, heavier, until he was sure his body would be crushed. He could feel his bones cracking, shattering, but he felt no pain except the feeling of being trapped by this huge weight. His vision started to get blurry, then darken. It darkened, and darkened, never stopping, until he couldn't see a thing. His heart was racing like wildfire now. He was in full panic mode.

He pushed hard against the weight, only to cause a painful burst of soreness from his muscles. He screamed in his hoarse, barely there voice. But he kept screaming, hoping against hope that someone else was trapped in this place and could hear him and take away this excruciating burden that was crushing him to death…well…again.

He was still screaming when he felt a gentle shake of his shoulder. He tried to yell at whoever it was to "TAKE IT OFF ME!" but it seemed they wouldn't listen. They just kept shaking him gently, as if trying to wake him up. Jesus, he couldn't be more awake right now. He was suffocating, even though he didn't need to breathe. Even the logistics of it were killing his already dead body. He thrashed and thrashed under the weight, trying so hard to push against it, but to no avail. He knew the end (again) would come soon. He stopped pushing, just wanting it to end, and suddenly his whole body went limp and his vision went black.

He opened his eyes and sucked in a panicked breath. He pushed at the weight on him, and it flew up and off of him with such little effort he was startled. It was soft and pliable. He was surrounded by softness. And yellow. Bright, canary yellow.

The hand against his shoulder squeezed and let go, only to go up to his face and swipe the hair out of his eyes.

"Calm down, baby. You just had a bad dream, okay? It's okay."

Dear Angel. That voice. He felt relief wash over him like a tidal wave, just at the sound of the one voice in the entire world he longed to hear.

He looked over, only to have his relief be short-lived.

He expected to see Magnus as he usually was in the mornings (on the rare occasion he'd gotten to see him in such a setting). He expected to see black hair hanging down, brushing caramel shoulders that were inked with dozens of tattoos from different centuries. He expected to see eyeliner, smeared around piercing cat-like eyes, left on from the day before. And glitter. Lots and lots of glitter. He expected to see his Magnus.

What he saw was something different entirely. The face before him was devoid of any makeup whatsoever. Not even a leftover spec of glitter on an eyelid. The silky black locks that Alec loved to run his fingers through barely reached his ears. He had always had that endearing strand that seemed to fall in his face constantly, but it wasn't there; it was messy, but not the tangled mess that Magnus' hair could get to.

Another red flag was that the man next to him was wearing a button up flannel pajama top. His Magnus most certainly slept in the nude. And even if he put on something to make Alec feel a little more comfortable, Alec was fairly sure the warlock didn't own a damn single article of flannel.

The eyes were also unnerving. He registered faintly that before Alec had died, Magnus' eyes had been like normal human eyes because of something that was done to him. But normally, his eyes were slits like Chairman Meow's. But this Magnus had regular, greenish yellow, sleep-glazed eyes with round human pupils.

The most unnerving, bizarre sight of all, though, was the entire package when observed as a whole. Magnus Bane had looked 19 years old for the last eight centuries. He liked to joke about his age sometimes, because he would be forever young. It had always caused Alec a little pain that he himself would grow old while Magnus stayed youthful, but they had kind of put it off for future discussion.

This man, however, looked undoubtedly older. He looked about ten years older. Alec guessed him to be about 27 or 28. Alec had never imagined what Magnus would look like older, because it was never going to happen anyway. Seeing the sight in front of him was the most ridiculously crazy thing he could have imagined. Even slightly more crazy, was the fact that Magnus' beauty seemed magnified by the intervening decade.

Nearly-30-Magnus was still looking at him with concern. "Are you okay? What did you dream about?" he asked in a soft voice, reaching for Alec's hand under the covers. Alec registered that he himself was wearing jersey knit pajama bottoms and a t-shirt.

"I…I don't…I was being crushed by something," he stammered, still not believing his eyes.

"You must have finally died," Magnus said.

Alec's head snapped up to look at him. "What?" he cried.

"You know," Magnus said, a stricken look on his face after Alec's outburst. "When you're dreaming and you die, you wake up finally. I've been shaking you for a good ten minutes. You've been yelling and thrashing about so much, I couldn't sleep. I love you and everything, sweetheart, but it's three in the morning and I have to work tomorrow, and so do you. We could both use a decent night's sleep, yeah?"

His face was so open and kind, Alec couldn't do anything but nod. He just couldn't get over it. It was all so incredibly weird.

"Come on, go to sleep. I'll see you in the morning," make-up free Magnus said, leaning in to kiss him on the nose.

"Okay. Goodnight," Alec said dumbly. There was no way he was sleeping right now.

"Goodnight," Magnus said, and turned over, making himself comfortable again and his breathing evening out.

"Magnus," Alec said all of a sudden, startling himself in the darkness.

"Yeah, baby?"

"I love you. More than anything." He just felt compelled to say it, before this whole thing faded into nothing and he lost the chance, even if this Magnus wasn't the same as his own.

"I love you, too." Another kiss, this time a chaste peck on the lips, and he rolled over again. Alec could tell he drifted off in a matter of seconds.

After he was sure older Magnus was asleep, Alec decided he needed a drink of water, if only to jolt him fully awake. He slowly slid out of the bed and crept towards where he remembered the door in Magnus' bedroom to be. But when he got there, he couldn't find the knob. He felt around over and over, moving along the wall until he knew for sure he was in the completely wrong place. But suddenly, his hand ran over a doorframe and after that, a knob. Odd.

He opened the door, turning to go down the hall and smacking into a wall. He tried not to let out a yelp as his nose connected with plaster, and he turned around in the other direction, finding no barrier. It seemed like the whole apartment was turned around.

Slowly, he made his way down a hall that seemed way too long to be in Magnus' apartment. When he reached an opening archway, he felt around on the wall next to him until he found the light switch. He flipped it on, and his jaw dropped.

Mwahahahah! Are you interested now? I'll allow you to have your speculations in the reviews, but I'm not telling anyone anything. Although I wouldn't encourage speculation just yet, because honestly if you just read this chapter, it makes no damn sense. The actual situation might dawn on you after 3 or 4 chapters though. If not, I'll give you guys hints and such. I'm really taking my meta writing to the next level with this one, and I'm taking my time with it because it's complicated. But, in the meantime, I really hope you guys enjoy it. And I hope I relieve some of the death threat craziness that set in at the end of the first story.

As always, reviews are LOVE. Please. I need all the love I can get.

New chap of MLG will prolly go up tomorrow night, just lettin' ya know.