AN: This is a multi-chapter fic that will be quite long before it is done. You can expect an update about once a week. Someone asked for shipping notes: I ship everyone with everyone and that will come out pretty strongly in this story. So yes, lots of Jessa - lots and lots of Jessa. There are also huge chunks of the story that are Heronstairs and Wessa so if there is a ship in this fandom that you hate you probably aren't going to like this.

2014

Tessa had two phones. When the black one had rang out it did so with a snippet of a rap song in something other than English that played on electronic loop. Tessa looked up from what she was doing and sent her husband to deal with it. He answered it carefully. James Carstairs was tall and thin with a fall of dark brown hair and runes across the arches of his cheekbones. He picked up the phone and looked at the screen for a long moment before he swept a finger across the screen to unlock it and answer. He'd been a Shadowhunter once as had Tessa. They were both more complicated these days.

"Tessa Gray's phone, can I help you?" he said.

The second phone, the same model but in a case plastered with literary quotes and a background that was a picture of the two of them on a beach sat beside this one, silent. That was Tess Carstairs's phone and he wouldn't have been so careful answering it. It was the number that her friends called. The black phone's number went out to warlock contacts and people who might call with business. She claimed to have had the same number for the past 35 years.

"I had heard she'd gotten married but no, apparently she'd gone and gotten herself a secretary!" the voice on the other end of the phone was female and slightly accented though he couldn't immediately place where it was from. She spoke grandly and he imagined the arm waving that went with the pronouncement.

"She can't talk right now, can I give her a message?" Jem said ignoring everything else.

"The fuck she can't talk right now," the voice wasn't quite angry, it was almost jovial even through the swearing, "Put the hoity-toity bitch on the phone. Tell her it is Natasha and remind her that she fucking owes me. Can't talk. The fuck is that?"

Jem stood still and speechless. He considered his response before he spoke. Rather than getting angry he asked, "Hoity-toity?"

"Listen, Secretary," Natasha said, "I'm working on a very interesting project and I could use someone who can track spells and isn't an idiot. Your hoity-toity, fancy pants wife matches both those requirements. So go give the bitch the phone."

Tessa had appeared at his side while the profanity laced tirade was going on. She'd been elbow deep in some concoction in the spare room when she'd sent him to answer the phone and was still wiping the herb mixture off her arm. The hand towel looked like it had been used to kill something bloody and green. She raised her eyebrows at him. He turned the phone so she could see the display which was a photo of an orange haired warlock with curling horns and a toothy grin.

"Has she suggested anything anatomically impossible yet?" Tessa asked but she used Mandarin not English. When they'd been young he'd taught her the basics but in the years they had spent apart she'd mastered it. She spoke with an English accent but her vocabulary was broader than his: encompassing modern words that hadn't existed when he'd been a child speaking the language with his mother. The first time she'd had to explain a modern grammatical quirk that he had told her was an error, she'd been smug and teasing for days. Jem had found it adorable. Annoying but adorable.

"I can hear her, speaking in foreign tongues does not hide her voice. Listen, I can do it too," Natasha drawled in his ear before launching into a stream of something rapid and Eastern European though he couldn't place the language.

"Just insults," he answered Tessa still in Chinese. She smiled at him. Her green magic goo had gotten on her tank top and she wore a pair of very old, very tattered jeans. They had long dried paint on them that matched the kitchen walls. They'd been the ones to do the painting when they'd moved in. He found it hard to care about Natasha and her very interesting project when Tessa's shirt had slipped up and left her hip bare. They'd been married five years and she could still reduce him to a distracted boy with a crush with just a hint of skin. Sometimes all it took was her presence in the room to draw his attention from everything else.

"A good secretary passes on the phone, asshole," Natasha said and he finally held it out to Tessa who rolled her eyes but took it.

"What did you call him?" she said a soon as the phone was up to her ear. Her voice was all annoyance and anger but her expression wasn't nearly so hostile. Her face broke into a smile and Jem was left to wonder at this friend who was allowed to call Tessa by names like hoity-toity bitch and it could make her smile. He understood it. His best friend had called him bastard almost as often as he'd called him by his given name and after all these years just those memories could make his heart hurt a little.

"Want to go to Venice?" she asked him shaking him out of his own memories.

"The one in California or the one in Italy?" he asked.

"Italy," she answered.

"Anywhere and everywhere," he said. "We haven't been to Italy yet."

"No, Nat," Tessa said to the phone, "He's non-negotiable and you know that other people can't do what I can do," a pause that Jem imagined was full of swearing. Tessa gave a careless shrug that Nat couldn't see, "That's your decision."

Tessa was still arguing in that soft authoritative voice that she had learned from Charlotte Fairchild decades before. Most people crumbled under the force of that voice but Nat didn't seem to be wavering.

They stood in the kitchen of their apartment in New York. The phones were plugged in on a little shelf that was easy to walk by on the way from the front door. Tessa made an exasperated noise and left the room. If she weren't barefoot the action might have counted as stomping.

The living room was sunken below the kitchen and entrance way to allow for 12 feet of east facing windows on one wall and 12 feet of bookshelves on two others. There were stairs on either side but Tessa vaulted the railing that separated the upper hall from the lower and he heard her hit the sofa below with a soft thump. Jem followed her but didn't jump down. He leaned on the rail and looked out at the view. New York spread out around and below them. The rising sun heated this room intolerably on summer mornings but it was late afternoon now and the buildings were awash in bright light.

He'd been born in a world that didn't get this high. The first true skyscrapers didn't rise until after he'd joined the Silent Brothers and left the world and its inexorable march of progress behind. Sometimes the vertigo would catch up to him. When it did, he went and leaned against the glass and steel balcony with its now decimated herb garden and stare straight down. It didn't always chase the vertigo away but it was such a human feeling - such an alive feeling - that he didn't really care. He challenged the fear and the feeling of falling and always came away the winner.

"Did she agree?" Jem asked when Tessa clicked off the phone. The couch was green and old fashioned like something they might have had if they'd been married when they had intended back in 1878. Tessa tilted her head back. The cat, curled in a ball on the matching arm chair across the room, opened one yellow eye and surveyed them both as though calculating his chances of getting out of this without having to travel. He was old - very old - and grumpy but was a terror to leave at shelters or with friends so he usually got dragged along with them which made him only moderately less of a terror.

"Not really but she gave up fighting with me," Tessa said.

"That's almost like winning an argument," Jem said. "It's how Will used to win all of his."

"That's not true," Tessa said.

"It's almost true," he said. "It was very true when he was fifteen."

"That I will concede. Go pack," she said laughing. Some days, Will was just a piece of their past. Other days, talking about Will could leave them both grief struck and clinging together.

Today was the former and Jem was thankful for it. He couldn't imagine having weathered the loss of Will with all his emotions intact if he didn't have her. Will had died while he was a Silent Brother. He hadn't felt the force of that loss until a lifetime later. He couldn't imagine how she had done it. He leaned forward and reached out a hand. She climbed onto the sofa back and took it to balance herself before she kissed him. She was the strong one, that had always been true. He kissed her again.

"Pack," she said. "I'll get us a hotel."

"Will I like Venice?" he asked.

"I've never been," she said which made him smile. He liked her little tours when they found themselves somewhere she had been before. She knew the stories and she picked out the landmarks. It was nice but he loved the chance to discover a place together.

"I'm going to pack right this instant," he said before she could tell him again but he pulled her in and kissed her one more time. She smelled of her herb mix but tasted of coffee and something sweet. Her smile was soft and happy when he pulled away. He really didn't care what Natasha's big project was. It didn't matter. They were going together. That was the important part.

Chapter 2: So Far Apart

Chapter Text

1878

Cool summer rain ticked against the library windows but a fire kept the room where William Herondale was not reading warm. He sat by the fire, though really it was too warm for it, and held a book of poetry as though he were engrossed in every word. Black hair fell forward around his face, it needed to be cut but he just hadn't had the time or the energy for it. It obscured his vision which was a problem in a fight but something of an asset at the moment.

He wasn't alone in the room. Gideon sat at one of the table cleaning weapons. Charlotte would purse her lips and tell him that they had a weapons room for that purpose but he hadn't yet been caught at it. Gideon was silent except for the clink of blades as he moved them around on the mat he'd spread over the table. Destroying the surface of the table with nicks and smears of ichor would get him in real trouble.

Will's self preservation failed and he looked up. His hair was in the way but at the other end of the table Jem and Tessa were visible leaned together over a spread of papers. All her attention was on him as it so often was when they were together. She was concentrating with a tiny frown line between her eyebrows. Will dropped his attention back to the words on his page.

They were so happy.

He wanted them to be happy. He needed them to be happy. But neither wanting it nor needing it stopped them from breaking his heart a little more with every soft laugh.

Jem was explaining how pronunciation differences could change a word's meaning in Chinese and she was struggling with it. For Jem, language was music and he could talk about sound for hours. For Tessa, language was meaning and Will could see when she lost the thread of what he was saying and got frustrated again. He dropped his eyes again.

He would not watch them.

His attention flicked up again and he forced it back to the book.

If he got up, he could sit down on Tessa's other side and fill in the gaps that Jem was unintentionally leaving. He'd learned the language the same way, listening to Jem and his music metaphors and he could help it make sense for her. Jem would tell stories about Will's failures and successes and she'd laugh. They'd make room for him in their little circle.

But then, then he'd have to sit there, right beside her. Right beside her but so far apart. She would smile at him, listen to him and then turn her unwavering attention back to Jem. His heart hurt just to imagine it.

He closed his book and stood up without actually deciding what he was going to do. He was either going to cross the room and make some comment and drop himself into that chair or he was going to run. His feet, without a conscious decision from his head, marched him right out the door of the library. Jem called something after him and he tossed back a joke that he didn't remember later.

He ran away to hide and let his heart be broken where no one else could see it.

His feet hit the wet pavement and he pulled his hat down more securely over his too long hair and headed out into the London night. His plan was simple, walk until he was too tired to think. It would be easy. Perhaps he'd come home after Cecily had gone to bed and avoid having to argue about writing a letter home as well. He wouldn't be able to have that argument like this. He wouldn't be able to remember all the reasons why and he would get snappish.

The rain was warm and just heavy enough that it soaked through his suit jacket. Will walked down toward the river, glamoured and moving fast. It was late and rainy but not enough of either to stop the people. The streets weren't quite empty. He passed police officers in bell shaped hats and urchin children in doorways without anywhere else to go. A pair of them huddled out of the rain, a boy and a girl, in the entrance to the storeroom of a closed bakery.

Will glanced down the dreary road and then leaned over them and drew a rune near the lock. He pushed it open a crack and continued on. The law was the law but he'd been that pitiful and hungry for just a few days on his trip from Wales to Institute as a child. A few days was enough to be memorable. He was invisible to them. It was just an improperly shut lock. No one had to know.

At the river side, Will looked down at the stinking Thames. Its surface was pocked with the rain that fell heavier now. He was wet and miserable.

"Must you wallow?" some voice in his head asked. It might have been Jem's but it wasn't something Jem would say. Magnus perhaps. Magnus would tell him that. So would Cecily if she knew but thankfully she didn't. Tessa was his secret. He knew. She knew. Magnus knew. How much he loved her was still a secret to everyone else. Some days he felt almost normal but those were the days where he managed to not see her. If he saw her, his heart all fell to pieces.

He whirled away from the river and took off at a run. He had nowhere to go but getting there as quickly as possible was suddenly essential. Any part of him that wasn't already drenched was soaked by the water spray from his feet pounding into the puddles in the cobbles. Filth and water and his hat was gone somewhere.

He rounded a corner and was brought up short by a glow. The street ahead of him was lit like a summer afternoon. He pushed his hair back with both hands and it slicked to his head before the rain started pushing it back towards his face again. Bright summer sunshine made him squint. The street ahead looked dry. Water streamed into his eyes as the sky opened up and he stared at this gap in the world.

The light was getting stronger. He pulled a blade out of a wrist sheath he had worn more out of habit than an expectation of running into trouble. It glinted where it was held low as he inched forward into the building light.

The street he had been able to make out details of a moment ago was being swallowed in light. Blurring and vanishing.

The light pushed towards him. Brighter and closer.

He adjusted his grip on his knife. He would have retreated if it hadn't happened so fast.

The light expanded.

It pressed in against him with a gentle weight like a heavy blanket.

It wrapped him up and swallowed him whole before he had a chance to move.

Then it winked out.

The London street was dark and wet again. The light, the dry street within it and the boy with the dripping hair were all gone. A passing carriage carrying a family home to their warm dry home trampled a gentleman's hat where it had rolled into a puddle.