Too Similar

by Souma Sumire

Ms. Lovelace is annoying. She is rude and ungrateful and a brat and... rather like how Will himself pretends to be... Nah, Will is just pretending. She is naturally snobby... right? Will Herondale is so infuriating! He knows nothing about Jessie and should not assume things and judge her based on them! But then why is the best of them all?

1. Chapter 1

Will watched as Charlotte tried to treat the girl. The girl kept recoiling from her touch, screaming at her not to come near her. She was screaming about how much she hated the shadow world, shadowhunters, about how she would never become one, that she just wanted to have a normal life. She was annoying.

But annoying as she was, Charlotte had called her Ms. Lovelace. Will knew that name. His dad had made sure to mention them every time the topic of his marriage to mam or of his leaving his previous shadowhunter life had come up. "I owe them my courage to leave that which was everything to me before your mam came into my life," he would say.

So Will went up to Ms. Lovelace, bent down to grab hold of the bandages and reached for her fractured hand. She tried to jerk it away but Will grabbed it, tight enough to send another sharp jolt of pain through it, and spoke to her in the voice he had been using on everyone he met for the past 2 years, the only difference was that he wasn't faking it this time, "I am only doing this because my father was fond of the Lovelaces. Don't think I'm unnecessarily concerned for someone who isn't even grateful for the help she is getting."

Will heard Charlotte beside him start to scold him and subside when she saw that the girl was no longer struggling. He made quick but precise work of the injury and put down the bandages.

He stood up, looked at the girl and the dollhouse beside her. She had leaped out of her burning house from the first floor and injured herself protecting the dollhouse. At first, he had been astonished to hear that she had valued a stupid toy more than her own life but after observing her for half an hour, he doubted it was the dollhouse that was so important to her. It was what the dollhouse represented. He guessed it was a gift from her parents.

He understood. He himself had barely brought anything to remind him of home but that was because the knowledge that had it not been for him foolishly opening that Pyxis, he would still be there was too painful. He understood her wanting something to tie her to her family.

However, she was most likely going to live at the institute from now on and this seemed like the easiest way to have her hate him, so he said, "All that for some stupid dollhouse as if you were some 7-year-old," and walked out of the room ignoring both her and Charlotte's indignant protests and Jem's resigned sigh.