Will Herondale

by everydaynerd

Tessa holds Will's copy of A Tale of Two Cities as Jem plays in the other room, each of them attempting to cope with the day of Will's death in their own way-until Jem's parabatai rune begins to glow the black that it once did. Two-shot

Biting her lip, Tessa ran her fingers over the spine of the book. She had her own copy, of course, with the most amazing inscription, but she had never been able to bring herself to give away his copy-it had been this book that the two of them had always shared, that had always seemed to cut right to the heart of her relationship with both Will and Jem.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." And so it was. She finally had Jem back-a gift she had never dared imagine, her teenage fiancee alive in every sense of the word and every bit by her side. But being with Jem always reminded both of them quite how much Will's loss still ached, just as being with Will had always reminded them that Jem was no longer theirs. Two sides of the same coin that brought her both the greatest joy and the darkest pain.

Jem made her happy, so breathtakingly happy, but today was the day they had lost Will-something neither of them could ever recover from. She pressed down on the letters of the title, taking a rattling breath. She would give anything to see him again, anything at all. Tessa squeezed her eyes shut, her mind solely on Will as she gave into the grief for a moment, allowing herself to feel his loss as she never did quite as deeply as on the day he was lost to her. Without any effort on her part, she began to Change unconsciously as she hadn't in over thirteen decades.

/

Jem set the violin and bow on the nightstand, pacing the room with frustration. Having been a Silent Brother when Will died, he had never before fully felt the loss so acutely, and he couldn't bear for Tessa to see how much pain he was in. His parabatai, his brother; half of his heart gone.

He had never prepared himself to face the idea of losing Will; it had always been him who would die first, the clock long ticking on his life. The turn of events was almost more than he could handle.

He put his head in his thin hands, then jumped up just as quickly as he felt a searing pain in his shoulder. He tugged his shirt to the side, expecting to see blood or a burn, but the sight that greeted him was his parabatai rune, long since faded silver, glowing and vacillating between the black of an alive pair and the silver of the lost.

Shocked, he turned to shout for Tessa, and just as soon as he had he heard a sharp intake of breath.

"Jem? James, is that you?"