Work Text:
All that time before the end of the world, Angus was alone.
And then there was the time just before the end of all things, when he was not. When he had Lucretia and Carey and everyone. When he had Magnus and Taako and Merle.
(He had them all after, too, but it was different, after. Like everything.
The end of the world changed them. The end of the world changed Angus.)
He saw the prophecy the same as anyone, and he saw himself, chasing a beautiful golden retriever through the park while Magnus watched, throwing a ball every so often, and looking happy. Angus felt a hunger of his own spark deep in his chest and he stared, wide-eyed at the vision until he thought he might will it into being. That if he reached into it, pierced the veil between reality and prophecy, he could fall into that moment and be that Angus.
But it faded and he was left starved. Magnus put a hand on his shoulder, and Angus saw clearly that his cheeks shined. He wiped at his own and felt glad to have seen it, wrecked that it might not come true –
hungry for a future that should have belonged to him.
It should have been his all along.
And now it could be. So he would do anything to get it.
And then, in the after, when the world was alive and no one needed to starve for much of anything anymore, Magnus lifted him. Held him tight. He was bleeding, he was weak, he was bruised and someone was clamoring for his attention, but he held onto Angus and he did not let go.
“We're gonna get there,” he whispered. “You and me.”
Angus opened his mouth to agree, but all that came out was a sob. All that spilled from him was longing. He wanted this so much, he wanted it to be real so bad and now Magnus was promising it to him, Magnus was telling him it could be real and all Angus could do was stop himself from howling because – he had been alone for so long. And now he'd never have to be again.
They moved to a house in the country. Somewhere Angus could go to school, but Magnus could have his quiet. Their first house was just a cottage on a large plot of land. It was that year Magnus taught Angus how to draw up plans for a house.
“Tell me what you want your room to look like,” he said. It was a gentler side that Angus had never really seen before – none of the raucous laughter or ax swinging he typically associated with Magnus. The cottage had a single bedroom that Angus slept in, and a cot in the living room that Magnus tossed and turned on. It was enough for now, but Magnus had dreams of a house their entire family could live in. He'd gotten them back, he reasoned. And now he needed them to stay.
“I lost my...my other family,” he'd told Angus. “I lost my wife. And my father-in-law.”
Angus swallowed. He hadn't known Magnus had been married up until recently, and this was now no longer new information. The way it was delivered though was...final. Before, it was if Julia Burnsides was simply wandering the hills behind their house and would be back soon. But the way he said it then, it was as if she were truly gone from the world, though Angus knew quite well that the ring around his neck was an immovable part of him. Magnus had forgotten who killed his wife, but he knew certainly that she had died for no good reason.
Their new house, Angus suggested, should have lots of windows, because he remembered a statement, slurred to him on a night when Magnus was finally exhausted – “Julia loved the sunshine. She opened every window she could.”
“Lots of windows,” Angus said, and Magnus smiled.
“To let in the light.”
Taako and Lup came by often, their respective partners occasionally in tow. Barry and Kravitz were like extra limbs – things seemed wrong when they weren't there, and Angus did often worry when they weren't. But they came, and so did Merle and everyone else sometimes, to help with the house. More often than not, it was just Magnus who did the work, with Angus and a group of men from the town below helping him out. Taako and Lup were happy to lounge, drinking lemonade Angus wasn't allowed to have from large purple goblets and teasing Magnus about the colors he'd chosen for the outside.
It was Kravitz who said, “Julia liked lavender,” when Lup teased about the shutters, and she clamped her mouth shut. Magnus, in all honesty, hadn't heard much of the teasing at all. He was hammering away, humming to himself, mouth full of nails which gave Angus more anxiety than it probably should have. He was surprised, of course, to find Lup suddenly hard at work on the house, and more surprised to learn she was quite proficient at it.
(Later, Taako told Angus in a low voice, “He's building it for you, you know. And I think a little for her, to remember her by.” He paused. “Make sure he builds some of it for himself, won't you?”)
Angus had designed Magnus's room. It was a surprise, he said, and wouldn't tell him which one was his until the day it was done.
“I'm building the damn thing,” Magnus muttered, but grinned over their little dinner of chicken and rice, pointing across the table. “You're sneaky.”
“You already knew that.”
Magnus chuckled. “I did.” He leaned back and stretched. Angus had noted that in the weeks since they'd started building the house, Magnus was properly exhausted at night. The dreams seemed to come less, though Angus wished he'd just sleep with him in the too-large bed in the actual bedroom.
(A memory, somewhere, of crawling into bed with his mother and father after a storm.
Another, somewhere, crawling into bed with his grandfather while lightening raged outside.)
That night, rain pelted the house like it was the end of the world all over again, and suddenly Angus found that he was not alone. Magnus crawled into the bed and held out his arms.
“I could hear you,” he said. “I didn't know you were afraid of storms.”
Angus shook. “P-p-petrified.”
“Easy, kiddo, easy.” And then Magnus kissed the top of his head, and Angus wanted so much to ask him if he could call him papa, of all things, because he was suddenly homesick for a life that had not been his in so long and Magnus wanted to keep him and take him to the park and buy a dog and make sure he went to school and had a good life.
Magnus wanted to be his dad, and Angus desperately wanted to be his son.
He just had no idea how to say it.
When the house was finished, they had a party, and Magnus reluctantly let Lup and Taako decorate, with minimal suggestions from Merle who did provide them with some of the typical seaside decorations known to his people.
“This looks just great over a mantle.” Angus watched Magnus take the large shell in his hands and laugh.
“Damn. I love it, Merle.” He placed it right in the center over the fireplace and stepped back. “I really do. Ango!” Angus rushed over and Magnus put a hand on his shoulder. “What do you think?”
“I love it, sir.”
Magnus gave his shoulder a little shake. “We talked about that,” he said, and Angus looked up at him with a grin.
“I love it, dad.”
In the years after Magnus had officially adopted him, in the years after their first dog and then their second. In the years after Angus finished school and went on to university and became quite proficient at magic – their world kept changing.
Angus had been accepted to a prestigious magic school up north, and Barry had told Magnus he'd be a fool not to let him go.
“It's a good school, he'll have work after.”
“What kind of work? How is...how is magic work?” Even after it had saved the world, Magnus would always be a bit bitter about magic and the things it could do. It had, after all, robbed him of some years of his life, of the memory of the man who'd killed his wife, even as it saved and protected them. A weary respect is what he called it, but he still didn't understand.
“Angus could be an artificer, Magnus. Like the ones we met.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Magnus, please, it doesn't have to be like it was!” Barry pleaded as Magnus stood from the table, and Angus slid down the wall and listened to them argue. Fear met hope all at once and Angus seemed to understand the man who had become his father both more and less.
“He could be anything, I swear it. There's use for magic, Magnus. This world has not been completely rebuilt. We still have work to do. It'll take him places.”
“He should learn something useful, something like law or medicine.”
“And he could. But you shouldn't say no to this. You should let Angus be the wizard that Taako saw in him.”
Magnus looked up sharply. Any mention of Taako or Merle always seemed to bring him back down. They were, despite everything, still his closest friends. Lucretia and the others were family, but Taako and Merle had become like brothers, and Magnus revered their opinions over all others.
It was Taako, later, who said, “Don't be a dummy and let the kid go to wizard school,” while Lup filed her nails beside him.
And so Magnus agreed, and Angus left.
They stood at the train station, and it was then that Angus became aware of how much he had changed.
He had stayed a small, spindly boy for a long time, but when he had turned fourteen, he shot up like a weed, and was soon almost eye level with Magnus. It made it harder to leave him, because he had to look him in the eye and say the words, “Bye, dad.”
“Hey, you'll...you'll be back. We've got a lot of work to do in the garden, me and Noelle.” Their aging retriever had been named for their robot friend, and soon Angus knew he'd get the letter saying she'd gone on to join her. But for now, she was Magnus's slow moving companion in the yard.
It was then, standing under the shadow of the train, trying to think around its blaring whistle, that Angus noticed how much more grey Magnus had. He wondered how much of it was Angus-induced, how much was the fight, how much was just...being human.
“I love you,” Magnus said. “And I'll miss you like hell.”
“I love you, too.” And Angus threw his arms around him, held tight, and wondered if the world would keep going if either of them just...never let go.
“It's an absolute travesty that we don't have the relics.” The girl sitting across from Angus in the quad had been loudly voicing her opinion on this particular subject for the last – Angus checked his watch – seventeen minutes.
“They caused a war,” said another girl, looking completely stricken. “Why would we want them? Even the people who made them didn't want them around.”
“They're powerful examples of artificery. We shouldn't have let it go to waste.” She crammed the rest of her sandwich in her mouth. “If you ask me, the people who made them in the first place should be in trouble anyway, and they should have to explain how they did it.”
“We know,” said a boy. “We all heard the stories.”
“Yes, but we don't know precisely how. Imagine if we did! Imagine what we could make if we had that knowledge.”
Angus's neck was hot. He wanted to die, a little, or at least get up. But these were, he supposed, new friends. Magnus had told him to make a good impression, and storming away from their shady spot on the quad simply because this young woman really didn't know what she was talking about seemed ill advised. He chewed thoughtfully on his own sandwich, and said nothing. That was his usual response any time something about the Grand Relics or Magnus and the others came up.
Besides, he thought. It's not like anyone would believe me anyway.
“Hey,” he could say. “My dad is one of the guys who made them, and you need to shut the heck up about it before I curse you six ways from Sunday.”
But he did not say this. Instead, he chewed in silence, and got up with the rest of them when they moved on.
School was like this. Magnus had told him to make friends, but he'd also urged him to live a life separate from what they'd had before. “You can sort of...remake yourself. Just for a while. You won't be Angus, boy detective who saved the world. You can just...be Angus.”
That caused a sort of mixed bag of emotions, if he really thought about it. On one hand it made a lot of sense. Magnus was famous wherever he went. He and the others were known now, and people often had one of a handful of reactions. Usually there was crying and gift giving, sometimes there was storytelling, and sometimes there was even anger. People who thought they'd brought the Hunger to them, without really understanding what the Hunger had been in the first place. Not really getting that they'd been given what they desperately needed – more time.
Like this girl, who insisted more often than not that what the members of the IPRE had done was wrong, and they needed to explain themselves.
(Magnus told him not to start any fights. Taako offered to finish them for him. Merle offered to teach him how to cast Zone of Truth, just to make sure everyone fought fair.)
Angus swallowed his anger and went about his life.
He came home for the holidays, and it was like breathing again. Angus loved being at school, loved learning and practicing and studying. These were things he loved to do.
But nothing beat coming home and finding Merle and Davenport playing cards at the table, while Taako and Lup cooked in the kitchen, Barry played the piano, and Magnus and Lucretia debated rose varieties. Often times he could sneak in, surprise them all.
Other times Magnus was alone, sitting in his chair and reading or whittling at something, Noelle stretched out by his feet. The door would open and he'd look up, grin wide, and get up to wrap Angus in a bone-crushing hug.
“There's my boy,” he'd say. “There's my boy.”
When he finished his magic studies, Angus went on to study law. It made sense. He liked to solve puzzles, and each case was like a little mystery. He had to put together timelines, figure out which rules went where and what evidence matched which testimony. Magnus was unbelievably proud, and also a bit put out when he realized all the laws he'd broken in his life. But it didn't seem to matter. Their entire extended family showed up when he graduated, and Angus felt, for the first time in a while, like it was okay to be part of the story again.
They celebrated at the house, everyone sleeping in their own rooms, just as Magnus had always imagined.
(Magnus's bedroom was on the top floor of the house and formed the octagon shaped pillar that seemed to anchor the whole place. He had thought it was Angus's own room, and had cried when he found out it was his. “I told you,” Angus had said, “I said it'd be perfect.”
“It is,” Magnus had murmured, and knelt down to wrap Angus in his arms. “It really is.)
It was, eventually, a bit of a hassle. Angus had seen Magnus slow down somewhat over the years, but the change in him became stark one year when he came home for Candlenights, and Magnus took longer than a minute to get out of his chair.
“Everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah.” He stretched. “Just these bones. They've been through a lot.” Even though this was his second body, it had aged just as all bodies do. Magnus was human. He would grow old.
Eventually, he would die. Long before Merle and long before Taako – Magnus would most certainly die.
He morbidly commiserated over this with Lucretia, who had aged rather gracefully, and had recently stepped down from her position as the head of the Bureau. The BoB had helped rebuild Neverwinter, and would continue to help rebuild this world and make it stronger. But Lucretia had grown old, and everyone felt she had earned some long-deserved rest.
“I think I'll die first,” he said one evening. Angus choked on his wine.
“Why are we talking about this?”
“Well it's going to happen.”
Lucretia shook her head. “That's distressing, Magnus, you shouldn't talk like that. Especially in front of your son.”
“He knows,” Magnus said. “He gets it.”
“I do not,” Angus snapped. “And I don't want to talk about you dying. That's a terrible thing to talk about.”
“It's life,” Magnus said firmly. “This isn't something we get to run away from. We're not elves. We're certainly not those druids.”
Angus set down his glass. “We're not discussing this anymore,” he said. “Not another. Second. Longer.”
Magnus held up a hand. “Alright, alright. It's your trip home, I won't talk about it.” He drained his wine glass and Lucretia filled it again. “It's good to have you here. Lucretia, did Angus tell you he has a girlfriend?”
“He didn't,” she said, smiling. “Go on, love. Tell us.”
Grateful for the distraction, Angus told her about Lily, about his new apartment in Goldcliff, where he'd moved even after Magnus expressed his disapproval. They didn't talk about death for the rest of the trip.
For a while, everything stayed the same.
And then, all at once, everything changed. Everything being Magnus.
Angus got the message on a Friday morning that Magnus had fallen down the stairs. He'd taken the train home, spent the weekend and some days making sure everything was alright, and making the decision without argument to move Magnus's things downstairs.
Well, Magnus argued. But everyone else agreed.
After, Angus hired a nurse, which Magnus protested. Just someone to come in a few times a week and make sure he was feeling alright and had groceries in the kitchen and wasn't trying to move his bed up the stairs to his old room. Again. This was the sole reason Angus went through eleven nurses, before finally getting a reference from Killian about a cousin she had who she thought could really keep Magnus in line.
After that, no more stair adventures.
Then came the doctors to make sure he was alright. Angus spent whatever he needed to on this particular venture, until he finally settled on one. The timing was perfect, at a place in his life where timing had seemed to be anything but.
Magnus never did move back upstairs. The top of the house was empty, unless Lup and Barry were there. He continued to make his bets with Lucretia on who would go first. Angus continued to try and keep his father alive for as long as he could, because Magnus was his father, as much as a man could be. He needed to keep this, for as long as he could.
Everything was starting to slip.
Magnus was dying. Merle was finally starting to look...old. Davenport, too, and Carey and Killian. Angus looked down at his hands one day and found them to be strangers. When had they gotten so rough? When had he grown these lines?
When, he wondered, had his reflection begun to look this way?
How long, he thought, could he keep Magnus on this plane?
He dreaded visits from Taako, who stood at the side of the grim reaper. He understood Angus's apprehension, but reasoned as only Taako could:
“We got to live together for a century. That ain't anything to gripe about.”
“You owe debts,” Kravitz muttered, but didn't seem keen to act on them. Angus worried more and slept less. Mortality was fickle. He knew he had years ahead of him, but what was he supposed to do about Magnus? How could he keep him?
The answer was, of course, that he could not.
On a Sunday morning, the doctor called and said it was probably time to say goodbye. The cough Magnus had developed in the winter had grown, and his lungs and his heart were weak. They were now stamped with an expiration date, and Angus had to do something.
So.
He bought a train ticket, and he went home.
This was going to be the last time Angus took this particular train. The last time he rode to this particular stop. It was about tobe the last time for a lot of things and Angus didn't know how to move forward without logging them all.
And the house, when he arrived, was filled to the brim.
Everyone seemed to have been notified that, perhaps, it was time to say goodbye. Avi was there, looking old himself, and so were Killian and Carey, Merle and his kids, Davenport and Lucretia. Taako, Kravitz, Lup and Barry.
(The presence of the reaper himself did not unsettle Angus this time around.
Now, it felt natural.
Death, he reasoned, was just...life.)
In bed, Magnus did not really look like himself. He'd grown thinner in his old age, but he was still a bulk of a man, and his hand dwarfed Angus's when he took it.
“Hello, sir.”
“Hey there, Ango.” Magnus gave his hand a squeeze. “You made it.”
“I'll always make it. Any time you ask, you know--”
“It's time to say goodbye, though,” Magnus said quietly. “It's time to start letting go.” He sighed, sinking deeper into the pillows. “I want to hang on, you know. But I...” He looked up at the ceiling.
Angus swallowed. “You want to see her.”
“Yes.” Magnus looked at him. “Yes, I do. But you--” he reached out, lifting Angus's chin. “You're my boy. You know that, don't you?” Angus nodded. “You're my family, and leaving you behind is going to be the hardest thing I do.” He let his hand fall. “I love you. I don't ever want you to feel lonely, do you understand?”
“How could I?” Angus leaned forward, resting his chin in his hand. “The house is full of people.” Angus stood. “Can you walk? I'll help. I'm sure everyone wants to see you.”
Magnus chuckled. “Yeah, I'll bet.” He tried to lift himself, falling back when he could not. Angus gave him a hand to hold, and they made their way out of bed, into something more decent to keep company in (“Reputation,” he muttered. “I'm not wearing pajamas in front of the twins, they'll never let me live it down.”), and made their way out of the room.
It was, in the end, the party to end all parties. There was wine and macarons and food practically spilling out of the oven. They told stories, stories Angus had heard in the song, but never from anyone in particular. And they sang songs, too. They sang piece Johann had written, they played music and they laughed. They laughed so much and Magnus wheezed with it, clutching Angus's hand and grinning ear to ear.
This was the man he'd met on the train, he realized. The bravado and the aesthetic and the call to action – it was all Magnus. Nothing about him had ever really been affected. He was as authentic as a creature could be, and Angus suddenly felt his heart threatening to burst, his body ache with a need to preserve this man for as long as he could.
He was Angus McDonald, all his life.
After, he was Angus Burnsides, and the life he started living was nothing less than authentic.
Magnus died in his sleep, and Angus liked to think he was dreaming of Julia.
He liked to think he was dreaming of that pesky boy he'd taken in all those years ago, too, and he figured it wouldn't be too far from the truth to believe it.
Leaving you behind is going be the hardest thing I do, Magnus had said. Angus liked to think it was a little easier, in the end. Surrounded by family, and a dog at his feet, Magnus Burnsides simply...left them. It was as if he'd only stepped out for milk, and he'd be back whenever he could. Angus woke holding his hand, and felt its stillness clearly.
Kravitz was at the doorway, and he nodded.
Angus was not afraid.
He stood and leaned over to kiss the top of Magnus's head. “I love you,” he said.
And one more soul was shepherded beyond.
There was a story Magnus told him, about standing in the gazebo, waiting for Julia to walk down the aisle.
He told him that the sun was at the perfect angle that day. It began to sink as the ceremony began, and as Magnus turned to watch her walk toward him, it shone just behind her head, and she was illuminated. Everything around her was fire and glow and light and Magnus burned with love. He could not believe she had said yes, could not believe he was ever that lucky.
“It was worth it. I'd always do it again.”
They cremated him, and Lucretia lit the pyre. Smoke curled up toward the sky, and Angus thought about that story, and how the sun had been in perfect form. And when he looked up, the sun seemed to strike the world just so, curling around smoke and fireflies –
And their family was illuminated.
And Angus burned with love. And grief. And pain. And joy.
He had been gifted these things by way of family, by way of being taken into the arms of someone who had lost so much, and still wanted to give and give and give.
Angus wanted so much to reach out and grip the large, warm hand that had covered his own and lifted him up, and he knew it would haunt him for as long as he lived, that Magnus's presence could simply not be called upon, that he would never say his name again and know he would be right there.
“Death,” Lucretia said, “does not define a life. And so it will not define this one, which gave until it could not, and loved until the very last second.” She tossed a rose into the pyre. “We long for you, Magnus Burnsides.
“And we will see you again, someday, on the other side.”