Things to note: I wouldn't call these 'warnings,' just…things to note. Yeah. This fic has several things that may be squicky: Jessamine/Will. Jem/Will/Tessa (in just about every order). Jessamine/vaguely mentioned OFC. A random warlock lady who basically serves as the voice of reason.

Warnings: Future fic, very gratuitous writing, a T rating that leans toward the higher side, and language that is more modern than Victorian.

But at its heart, it's really just a 'what-if' story that's one part Jessamine, one part the emotional clusterfuck that is Will.

That being said, I hope it's decent gratuitous writing, and that you enjoy this weird and possibly cracky fic. :D

Other Note: title taken from Florence + The Machine's "Kiss With a Fist."

My Black Eye Casts No Shadow

In Spain, Jessamine meets Will again.

He is a bit different – his shoulders are inclined inwards, his face is tanned and lined around the eyes, and there is a semi-permanent wrinkle to his brow that ages him a few years. But he grins, quick and sly, when he catches sight of her, and exclaims, "Why, Jessie, look at you – here I'd thought that you'd died in that ugly little prison of yours."

He ambles over to her spot under the courtyard's only tree, collapsing beside her with a hefty sigh that ruffles her cropped hair. The book in her hands is plucked out, and Jessamine rolls her eyes as he reads aloud the title: Pride and Prejudice.

"I didn't know you could read," he says. "The library was always more my abode than yours."

"So were brothels, if I remember correctly," says Jessamine. She rests her back against the trunk of the tree; when she had first come to Spain, it had been rough and unfamiliar. Now, she half suspects her constant presence here has rendered the tree's trunk smooth and shaped to the curve of her back. "Brothels for you, cells for me. That's a nice pair, don't you think?"

He laughs, a short barking sound, and then pauses as if wondering where it came from. She isn't surprised; in all the years they grew up alongside one another, the only instances he laughed because of her were when he laughed at her. Jessamine was not known for her humor as a child, or as a young woman. Her legacy came in the form of a mundane boy who presented her with a wedding ring that cracked down the middle, and, well. That is a story for its own book.

"I didn't expect to see you here," he says. He glances at her, offhand, his gaze resting a moment longer on the fading pinkish scars running down her left cheek and the edge of a mark rising over her collar. "How long has it been – two years, three?"

"Four," she says. "Four years in a month or so."

"Oh." He fiddles with the edge of his shirt. "That's a long time."

Jessamine remembers Will as a boy on the cusp of idiotic manhood, one who strung nonsense words together to render others speechless. To see him without his eloquence is – odd, to say the least. To see him in Madrid without Jem is odder still.

A girl in a red dress goes past them, and she raises her eyebrows at Jessamine, who shakes her head. The girl lifts her shoulders in a shrug – your choice, the gesture seems to say – and goes on, though not before smiling quickly at Will. Jessamine hides a laugh into her hand; this is the same, of course. People staring at Will is one of the few constants of the world.

"Where is Jem?" She takes her book back when Will blinks, taken off guard.

"In Paris, I think," he says. "With Tessa. You did hear about their wedding?"

She nods, flicking through the pages to find where she had left off. "My judgment was some time after, but I did hear of it, yes. I was surprised," she adds, looking up at him. "I didn't think the Clave would allow a Shadowhunter to marry a warlock. Or that you wouldn't have something to say about it."

He laughs again. "Why? Because Jem is my parabatai? I approve of Tessa—"

"No," says Jessamine, hovering between an exasperated smile and an amused grimace. Will's compulsive lying hasn't changed, either. "You know what I mean."

"I don't."

Words dance at the tip of her tongue. You loved her, she's tempted to say. You probably still do, it's painted onto your face. But Jessamine is four years older than the girl who would have jumped at the possibility to bicker with Will, and she knows better than to push this issue.

The Gray siblings, she realizes now, have this – manner around them, this breathless way of taking the people around them and charming them so they feel this pressing need for more, more, more. Jessamine remembers quite well that pull, how it wrapped its vines around her and whispered promises of wealth and a life away from steles and scars. Sometimes, she thinks she can hear his voice at night, an echo like those she had grown acquainted with in the Silent City.

"All right," she says. Her book slips shut. "You don't."

The girl in the red dress peeks her head around a column outlining the courtyard. She frowns. Jessamine chews on the inside of her cheek, her fingers tapping a senseless rhythm onto the cover of her book.

"Charlotte never said much about you, after…"

"After she imprisoned me." Jessamine slides her hand across a shelf of books, feeling engravings etched into spines and creases where they have been held for too long by too many hands. She smiles at Will, who stares back. "You can say it. I wouldn't say I've come to terms with it, but it happened. It's not a part of my life I can ignore."

He stands beside her, one hand tucked into his trouser pocket and the other tracing the title of Wuthering Heights. The Madrid library has a surprising amount of English works, though Jessamine has started to take a liking to Spanish novels; they hold fewer memories of Will huddled into his corner of the London Institute's sprawling library, of Henry mumbling his way through the aisles to find some obscure tome that would help his newest invention.

"That's admirable," he says at last, dropping his hand. A trail of dust follows after it. "It seems as if your time there was good to you."

At that, Jessamine laughs. "Yes," she says, "my time in a cell improved both my disposition and my temper." She waves off his retort. "But you are right, in a way. I… I suppose you could say I had a lot of time to just be, and to think."

"I didn't know a person could think under all that blonde hair," he says mildly, a shine from the seventeen year old Will taking over his face. Jessamine considers hitting him – but she is, after all, a guest here in Madrid, and though it has been five months since her arrival and hardly a week since Will's, she knows who the residents would side with should they actually break out into an argument.

Being in the City of Bones allowed her to think. It also taught her patience and foresight. Shadowhunters know her name, if not her face, and they judge based on presumptions and the actions of a lovesick girl. Jessamine hardly blames them, but it does make for inconveniences.

She goes to the next aisle and asks, "What are you doing here, anyway?"

Will's voice is muffled: "Gideon suggested it. I was in Mumbai for a time, and when the heat threatened to kill me I left for home."

Home. Jessamine falters, holding onto the bookcase for support. Home.

"We cannot fault you for acting like the untrained child you are, and so your punishment is thus: you will remain bound to the Clave. You and yours will walk the path of the Nephilim, but none of your blood will ever be allowed again into the Institute of London."

Steadying her voice, she says, "He and Sophie are married, aren't they?"

"Engaged," says Will. He peers into her aisle from the space created by a missing book on the shelf; his blue eyes are as stunning as ever, and Jessamine can't help but compare them to the sky outside. "The Clave didn't grant them the same leniencies as they did Jem and Tessa. Gideon, after all, isn't a dying, foolish boy."

"But Jem never did die." And he hadn't – Jessamine does not listen to much news concerning London, but she does make sure to keep an ear out for the latest Shadowhunter deaths. She is banned from their Institute; she is not banned from their funerals. "And you never found a cure, either."

"Apparently his love for Tessa helped keep the monsters at bay." The sarcasm in his voice slides through the air like a whip, only just belying the regret and bitterness. "I don't know how true that is, but for whatever reason, James is still breathing – and for that, I am grateful. It could be demon pox for all I care."

She snorts. "I still can't believe demon pox is actually…real."

"You should ask Benedict Lightwood someday," Will says cheerfully. He skips into her aisle, grinning. "I hear he's living a modest life amongst the mundanes now, but I'm sure he'd love to tell a pretty girl like you all about his time with the demons. He's more into your type these days; Gabriel says his father is walking the path of a simple man with simple desires, but he only told me that after making me promise to get Cecily off his back, so he could have been lying."

The name rings in her mind – Cecily, Cecily, Ella Ella Ella – and she says, "Cecily Herondale. Your sister. I didn't know you two had contact."

"She came to the Institute not too long after you left," says Will, shrugging. "It's fate that she started trilling after Gabriel the way Titiana did to me, but she fell head over heels for some Trueblood fellow about a year ago."

"Weddings everywhere," murmurs Jessamine. Her own wedding had been a rushed meeting in a crumbling building on a darkened London street with a priest in borrowed robes. "You must have enjoyed those."

He settles onto the ground while she skims the gathered books. "Not at all," he says, spreading his arms in a woeful gesture. "All of those stuffy Clave members into a single place time after time – it was horrible. Magnus made it somewhat better, but he stopped turning up after Tessa's wedding."

"I saw him," Jessamine says abruptly. She turns to Will, who looks surprised. "Before I was released – he came to see me. He had some words of advice." And he had told her the story of a cursed boy who could never love, but she thinks she will keep that to herself; Will's story had been given to her out of a need for someone to hear, that was all. "He told me to come to Madrid sometime," she adds. "I like it here, the sun shines more and the lessons are more interesting."

Will's eyes are on the curve of her neck, where a new rune sits from her training that morning. He nods. "I'm glad," he says. "It's about time you start learning. You can't use a parasol all the time."

He doesn't look away, and Jessamine allows her hands to drop from the shelves.

When she returns to her rooms she scrubs herself until her skin gleams red and the only runes that remain are the ones burned onto her middle.

They fall into a pattern.

Hello, he says.

Hello, she says.

They talk. They read. Sometimes they go to his room and others hers. Sometimes they sit in the courtyard, never touching, and they wonder about the ones who have continued on with their lives in other places. They create stupid memories and memories of a cat falling on his face, or her tripping into a dung-filled puddle. They laugh and they smile and they rage and they cry—

You're not him, you're not him and Tessa Tess Tess.

What they do is known by a handful of people – the head of the Institute who says nothing; the girl in the red dress who tells Jessamine there is no point; and a fifteen year old boy who scowls at Will whenever he passes – and what they do is known by them as a simple agreement. Jessamine declares the rules early: there are no rules, only an understanding that he is a placeholder for a boy whose name she cannot say, and she is a blonde reminder of the girl who took her place.

It is not right, and it is not healthy either. That's what the girl in the red dress had explained to Jessamine when she had first stepped foot in Madrid: "What you had with your husband was not good for you. It wasn't, and you have to let that go if you want to be rid of that foolish girl who killed Thomas."

But still. Still, it is something, a tangible inch of the past (if things had gone on normally, Jessamine knows – knows without a doubt – that they would have settled for each other, they would have and even Will knows it somewhere in his stupid brain that is locked away with Tessa Gray and James Carstairs).

And it isn't – bad, either. Before, all Jessamine had was the feel of a rotting sofa smothering her back and the weight of a clammy body above her, a voice murmuring Jessie Jessie Jessie. It isn't so different now, it feels a little better – or maybe she is just older – and the voice is rougher, the name a thrum of Tessa Tessa Tessa (and, sometimes, a painful, almost silent Jem).

He places a rune onto the back of her bare shoulder one day. The light spills in cracks from her shuttered window, stumbling along her floors and the stacks of books pushed into corners. Strands of her hair catch fire, the rest remaining a steady yellow pushed off to the side as Will puts away his stele and blows over the fresh mark. Goosebumps shudder into life on her skin, and she turns onto her back to allow a beam of light to rest over her stomach.

"Do you think," she says, absently tracing the permanent foresight rune above her left ribs, "that you've sinned enough yet?"

Half of their time together in bed is just that – time. The other half is Will attempting to degrade himself into a person who does not deserve to love Tessa, and Jessamine knows. She's known from the start. Will has always been an alarmingly simple boy.

And her reasons for letting him – well, Jessamine has always wanted what was worst for her.

He raises himself on an arm and frowns at her. "I'm not sinning," he says. "This is…an excursion."

"An excursion of the female form. Funny," she says, "I would've thought that you already had a complete understanding."

He snorts, flopping down onto the bed. The mattress swells up, and then dies back down. "I think I might go back to London soon. Jem sent a letter a few days ago, asking…to see me." He sighs, the breath blowing bits of her hair over the sheets. "Magnus sent me a letter, too. One line. 'He's getting worse.'"

Her fingers stop. Then they start again. "You're leaving, then. No thinking about it."

"No," he agrees slowly. "None."

"She won't fall into your arms," says Jessamine. She looks up at her ceiling, where the cracks convene to resemble something like a roaring dragon. "You know that, but you might need to hear it from another – she won't go falling into your arms, and you don't want her to. Not yet. She's an immortal. She'll find you, eventually."

Will laughs into her pillow, his shoulders shaking. His tan stops just above them, curving to a rest at the base of his neck. "My brother's widow," he says, still laughing. "You think my brother's widow is going to come find me after her mourning period is over?"

Jessamine turns to brush her lips against the skin of his elbow. "I found you, Will. Here," she moves to kiss his shoulder, "and here," and then she kisses his temple. "She'll find you. I think that was the point of all this. You were meant to all love each other, but that went to hell so you've got yourself a second best path."

"Jem─"

"Jem knows. I think he's known for a long while."

He waits. Then: "You're telling me that when my brother dies, I'm supposed to just…step out with his widow?"

"No." She sets her chin on his shoulder, feeling the heat of his body seep into hers. "I think that Jem was right. That love is the answer."

He scowls at her, and Jessamine continues with a faint smile: "I think that sometimes things happen for a reason. I told you – those months in the City made me think. And I think that you were all meant to be with one another, and if you go back, things will be all right. Not at once – but eventually, Tessa will find you. That's what I meant, Will. Jem doesn't need convincing, it's just her and her…ladylike ways."

"The Law says," mumbles Will, "the Law says that parabatai cannot fall in love with each other. They can't."

She laughs into the curve of his shoulder. "Will, you already love him, and he you. Nothing's happened."

There is a long pause, during which she can only hear Will breathing, a steady in out in out that reminds her at the heart of all this, underneath the black and pale scars, he is still only a man. And she is only a woman, but Jessamine doesn't think the title of 'woman' suits her much anymore. She believes herself more of an in-between – a lady and a person, a widow and a warrior.

"How," he says, barely more than a whisper, "can you say all of this like you know it's fact? You haven't been home in years. You haven't seen any of us in years, and most of what we do isn't talking."

She shrugs. Thinking and reading, she wants to answer – but really, the answer isn't one Jessamine has. She knows Will, and Jem, and she knows Tessa too. She knows that left to their own devices, they would fumble in the dark, perfect fits to an aging three-piece set. And they are her family; family is first. She realizes that now.

"I don't have many wise words," she says softly. "Or even any good past experiences. But I remember wanting to be loved so bad, and wanting to love in return. I still want that. And you do too, Will, it's on your face every day, every time we do this. I can't give you that. No one can give you that, except for Jem and Tessa.

"Do you remember that girl we saw in the courtyard? The one with the red dress. She's a warlock, older than Magnus. I keep telling you all I did was think in that cell – she helped me sort it all out. And she told me that love should make you happy, Will. I love you, I do, and you love me – but this is contentment. What you have at the Institute with Charlotte and Henry and everyone else, that just makes you content. Like it's easier to breathe. With Jem and Tessa, it's like you can fly."

"You sound like my conscience," he says. His face is blank, his arms folded underneath his head. "You're not supposed to sound like that. You're supposed to sound like─"

"One part Jessamine, one part a girl you don't plan on seeing again," she finishes, and Will flinches. "It's all right, Will, it's all right. I wanted this because I did. You wanted it because you don't know what to want. I'm telling you because…" because I have dreams of the boy I didn't save, because I have dreams of the one I did, because you're my family, mine, and it's more than just a doll house. "Because it's what we do," she says, the words feeling not quite right on her tongue. "Because you and me, Charlotte always did say we were too much alike."

He's shaking his head, but Jessamine can see the wrinkled smile fighting on his lips.

"That place must have done something to your head," he murmurs, and then he presses his mouth to hers, very lightly. The ghost of his words float beside her ear long after he leaves.

Thank you, Jessie.

"That boy is gone."

The girl in the red dress is wearing one of bright yellow today. Jessamine has to turn away from her, shielding her eyes with her hand. She is sitting in the courtyard again, against her tree, and the girl stands, examining her booted feet.

"I liked that boy," says the girl. "Very pretty. Did you enjoy fixing him?"

The book in her lap is coverless, and its pages are yellow and cracked. The ink rubs off onto her fingers and the letters themselves are little more than smudges of old declarations of love. "I didn't fix him," she says, pushing back a thick strip of hair that had flopped into her vision. Sometime after leaving the solitude of the Silent City, she had raked her nails down the left side of her face and had since combed her hair to hide that portion. The scars are still there, faint, but as of late her hair is snipped short to look like the boy she had once pretended to be.

"Of course not." The girl sounds impatient. "That's pointless. No, you just threw yourself at him and then let him go."

Jessamine laughs. "Maybe," she says. "I did enjoy that part."

The girl shakes her head, scoffing. "Shadowhunters," she mumbles. "You're all incestuous." She looks down at Jessamine, who plays with the stalks of grass beside her. "Well, then? I may be old, Nephilim, but I am not all-knowing. Would you like to explain why you let him go?"

"Because he's not mine," says Jessamine. She starts to braid together the grass, the book falling to the ground. "Never was, really. I guess I wanted to see if there was a chance – just to see – and when there wasn't, I thought I might push him towards the ones he does have a future with." She smiles at her finished braid, its ridges prominent. "You could call it an experiment."

The girl huffs, blowing back locks of black hair. "I don't understand humans," she says. "And you – I don't understand you at all."

"Perhaps I'm simply ahead of your time," says Jessamine, who laughs again when the warlock girl glares.

They come to see her some five years later.

Jessamine sips at her tea with a Frenchwoman when Jem enters the shop, and his face lights at the sight of her. Excuses are made, and then warm, strong arms wrap around her, nearly lifting her off the ground.

"Hello, Jem," she says into hair that has darkened slightly. The arms around her grow tighter, and relax when a female voice says,

"Oh, let her go, Jem. She can hardly breathe."

Tessa is the same as Jessamine remembers – forever sixteen, tall, willow-like with a haze of soft brown hair. She smiles almost hesitantly at Jessamine, who pauses, and then smiles back. Will has his arm interlocked with Tessa's, and the grin on his face is wider than Jessamine has ever seen.

They make for an odd trio, two growing men with a girl whose beauty shines through with each laugh. But there is something there, in the way that Jem shoves at Will's shoulder and how Will teases Tessa and how Tessa reaches for Jem's hand, that has her biting her lip and smiling, because this – this is why she pushed Will, this is what she knew would happen.

Three parts of a perfect set.

Will slips to her side while Jem and Tessa wander off to a haberdashery. He hasn't grown any taller, but the stoop to his shoulders is gone and the glint to his eyes has returned.

"How have you been?"

The equilibrium rune, placed on her shoulder by Will himself in a musty room in Spain, tingles. She leans into him, and his arm goes around her. "Fine," she says, and this time, the word feels just right. "I've been fine. Good, even. I think you were right – that cell did do wonders. And you?"

He laughs, and she feels it in her ribs. "Good," he says. "I think we're going to stay a while. We've missed you."

"And I you," she says. "You're welcome to stay in Marie's house with us – though if you make any jokes, William Herondale, I will throw you out myself." She tosses her hair and the rune on her neck – strength, today – burns bright.

His response is cut short by Jem's arrival; he is wearing a pink, feathered hat that strikes towards the sky and Tessa trails behind him, a hand to her mouth and a shake to her shoulders. Will has no restraint – he doubles over, breathless with laughter, and can only point a trembling finger at his brother. Jessamine, still under Will's arm, bends over with him and finds that his laughter is contagious.

Home, she thinks.

Jessamine has not been to London since she was sixteen, but it's not until this very moment, that she comes to the old realization that home is where her loves are, and right now they're red-faced in a Paris street where passerby stare and whisper behind gloved hands about the strange foreigners.

In France, Jessamine meets her family again.