Author's Note: This was maybe going to be a continuing thing, but when I wrote it, it was midnight and I was only halfway through Clockwork Prince, so... Maybe a one-shot, maybe longer. We shall see. This is my version of what happened after the ifrit den. Therefore, there is no Tessa and Jem kiss. So if you're looking for Tessa/Jem romance, then you'd better head off somewhere else, cuz it ain't here :)

When Tessa returned to her room, she felt strangely empty, as though her heart had been surgically removed from her chest. She should have followed Jem, she knew. He had stormed off to his room, he had been angry, far angrier than she had ever seen him by a lot. If Jem was angry, he was also hurt. If he was hurt, she should go to him, comfort him, console him, and most certainly persuade him to forgive Will and to know that Will hadn't meant it as an insult. Had he?

No, of course not. Not even Will could be so cruel. Could he?

Tessa cursed herself. How could she even think such thoughts? Will? Never. Not even cold, unfeeling Will could do something so savage, so vicious as to mock the very thing that was killing his friend and blood brother.

But still, she had to wonder, why did he do the things he did? Why did he push everyone away? Why did he pretend to carouse at night and really wander the London streets alone? Why did he act so charming at times and so surly at others? And most of all, why did he kiss her and then push her away? And what did he mean "I can't?"

As those questions became too much for her, her mind bursting, she felt something in her sleeve. It was the handkerchief, still wet with Will's blood. Tessa gulped. That wasn't fair... She had an unfair advantage. Asking Will was one thing, but becoming him, Changing into him, to search through his mind was another. He couldn't even defend himself, but then... He couldn't lie either.

And Tessa had the feeling that Will would lie if asked. If he said anything at all.

Tessa pulled the handkerchief from her pocket. She felt a twinge of guilt and she wondered what Jem would say if she told him what she was thinking about doing, Jem who never asked, but tirelessly continued loving Will even as Will burned every bridge he made behind him.

But Tessa had to know. She somehow felt that Will needed something. Behind his eyes that day after Mortmain left, when Will thought she was dead, his eyes had betrayed him. He had let more through than he had wanted, and she had thought there might be a pain more than that of losing her. There had been an emptiness and a hole, akin to that which she had felt when she became Camille Belcourt for the first time: that of having one's heart ripped out of one's chest.

Tessa gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. Then she began to concentrate. She felt the sense of Cyril on the handkerchief, where he had left traces. After all, he had owned it before he had donated it to the purposes of Tessa, cleaning blood from Will's face where Jem had punched him.

Jem.

There was a trace of him there too... Perhaps the term "blood brothers" was a little more literal than she had thought. There were ceremonies, after all, magics and runes binding them to eachother.

Tessa pushed past Cyril and Jem, impatient to reach the dark hair, midnight blue eyes and angelic features she knew she would find. She knew there would be barriers, walls to keep people from seeing him for who he really was, but whatever she had expected, it had not been this.

In front of her, there was stone wall, grey stone towering through Will's mind like the walls of a castle, and keeping her from reaching him.

Oh, Will, thought Tessa, scanning the wall for an opening, What do you have behind there that is so secret and horrible that you will let no one in?

But further on down the wall, there was a crack, there were crumbling stones, as though a cannon had blasted into Will's mental walls and they were slowing coming down.

Tessa scrambled into Will's memories curiously, her mind swimming with a million questions. She began to open her eyes, when it hit, her, the first memories.

And then Tessa saw herself.

She was everywhere, her name floated on the breezes of Will's mind. She stood in the middle of the training room floor, Gabriel's arms around her, and she felt a knife stab into her heart with jealousy. She felt a pain in her hand and saw herself cornered in her dirty small bedroom in the dark sister's house after she had hit him with a jug. She saw Camille Belcourt screaming as Nate slumped tied to a chair. She saw herself rolling as an Automaton swooped downward in the woods in York and felt numbness and horror. She saw herself in a pool of blood next to the fountain in the Sanctuary and wondered if her heart were breaking. Then something she couldn't place, not her, no, but another girl, with Will's dark hair lying on a bed, bloated, swelled, and horrid. The image left her gasping, but Will's memories flew by and she felt herself kissing Will's lips in the attic, felt the soaring sensation, felt the tingling all over her body, then-

Tessa gasped.

A library, a box, the box open, the images flashed by like lightening striking. Then a demon, huge and blue with red, red eyes and a long tail. She screamed. A girl with a seraph blade in front of her. The girl who was dead.

"I banish you."

The demon laughed.

"No," gasped Tessa, hearing Will's deep voice coming from her lips and hearing it crack.

The girl on the ground. The demon looking at her. Tessa opened her mouth to scream, but found she could not, only sink to her knees and let the memory take her.

"It is you father I would destroy, but as he is not here, you will have to do. I curse you. All who love you will die. Their love for you will be their destruction. It may take moments, it may take years, but any who look upon you with love will die of it, unless you remove yourself from them forever. And I shall begin with her."

Tessa heard Will's screaming, heard his mingled with a woman's crying as she bent over the body of the girl, Will's sister, Tessa realized. Ella, Will's mind told her. My sister is dead. Will screams continued, mixing and becoming another girl's screams. Cecily? Tessa wondered, until no, she opened her eyes and realized that she was screaming.

She lay on the floor, curled into a ball, clutching her head in her hands and shaking. She heard a hard knocking on the door, then the rattling of the handle. Thank God she had bolted it.

"Tessa? Tessa? Are you alright?" It was Jem.

"Miss Tessa?" Sophie. "Do you need help?"

"Tessa?" Jem's urgent voice cut through to her very bone. "What is it?"

"Nothing," she gasped, struggling for breath. "Nothing," she said louder. "Just a nightmare, that's all. I'll be fine. No need to worry."

Jem seemed unwilling to go. But Tessa would not allow him to stay. She could not see Jem now.

"Just go. Get some rest. I will be fine."

She stifled her tears, still on the floor until she heard Jem's door shut across the hall. Then she let the tears come, pouring down her cheeks and into her hair which spread out across the floor. She sobbed silently for Ella, for Will's mother, and for Will.

Will.

Will.

Will, who had been cursed to never be loved, who had lived his life as unkindly as possible to keep others safe. In between those spurts of memories, Tessa had been the twelve-year-old Will making his way along the road from the Welsh countryside to the crowded, stifling streets of London. She had seen Charlotte's annoyed face when he had been rude to her and remembered crying about it later. She been him making fun of Sophie and moping about the training room afterwards. She had seen his midnight treks across London and felt his silent tears along the Thames. She had seen the underside of his bed, crying as she heard his parents voices calling his name and felt his pain at leaving them there to mourn his loss as well as his sister's.

And she had felt more than seen the way it felt for Will to shun her, pretend she didn't exist, didn't mean anything to her. And it felt as if someone had wrapped iron chains around her heart and was squeezing them tighter, crushing her heart smaller and smaller until she felt it could only disappear.

Tessa rolled onto her back. She looked at the ceiling.

With a sigh of resignation and pity, she allowed herself to picture Will's face as he had held her in the Sanctuary that night, so long ago it seemed...

That was what she had seen, that fear and raw pain that she had felt. What had the poor boy not felt in the last five years since he arrived at the institute?

Tessa sat up and the blood rushed to her head. How long had she lain there? An hour? Two?

Even one hour was too long. Tessa rose and went to the door.

And she set off into the corridors to find Will.