Tessa often hears violin music, drifting through the windows of her small apartment, or wafting through the thick, smoggy air, or emanating from the radio as she drives down the road, and it hurts her somewhere deep down. The soft notes are achingly familiar, despite the muffling of them within her head through the many years of dormant music lying untouched in her memories, and the lull of it puts her at ease, if only for a moment. The bright flashes of memory that accompany the sound are brief, and unforgiving, and all too vivid for her liking.
In the images she sees, there is Will, ruffling Jem's hair after his parabatai makes a joke, laughing and smiling and shining like the brightest burning star there ever was.
There is Jem, with his moonlight and fragility, and he's smiling over at her through the thin veil of his silver lashes, the violin held lovingly in his care.
It happens so frequently nowadays that Tessa just sits and lets the memories overtake her, and today is no different.
She closes her eyes, the humming of music reverberating through her skull and down her spine, and watches as Jem's nimble fingers play a song just for her, and he clutches a jade pendant within his weak grasp, blood spotting the collar of his cotton shirt as Will leans over him, worriedly pressing two fingers against his neck to check for a pulse, and that makes her so angry. She feels rage, and unhindered sorrow, and a fire ignites within her. Even in the memory, she is offended, clenching her fists as she runs to them, because Jem is more than just an unsteady pulse, an unreliable sign of life.
He's a boy, whom she loves more than anything else-except Will, who turns to her with grief flashing across his features, and they are in Mortmain's prison, wrapped up together in their tears, and her sobs rack both of their bodies. Tessa lets herself forget everything after that, so caught up in the moment and the sensations and the love written within Will's unwavering gaze, and the way Magnus stares at them as they wake up, limbs tangled and sheets crinkled, sends her heart pounding with the ghost of shame.
The music stops, suddenly and swiftly, and Tessa is pulled from the past violently, returning to herself as she sighs, nostalgic for what once was.
She doesn't wear her wedding ring anymore, but the pearl bracelet remains around her wrist, just as the jade pendant rests against her collarbone, that sacred inscription scrawled across the back. Her clockwork angel no longer resides with her, nor does the angel that once lived inside it, and she finds that she doesn't care about the necklace she'd worn for so long.
Sixteen years is nothing compared to a century.
Tessa sits, rigidly, upon the small sofa in her apartment, and the hustle and bustle of outside New York echoes through the open window as she glances over at the skyscrapers near her building.
If only Will could sit with her, gaping at the progress the world has made, holding her hand with his tender touch as they speak of the children and their lives, the grandchildren that will soon grow up to start families of their own, the grey strands living amidst his head of inky black hair, his fingers hurriedly brushing through them as he searches frantically for a mirror.
But all of that has passed, she thinks.
If only Jem could play his music again, standing before her with his silver hair and light eyes, smiling softly as he pours all of his heart into a song he wrote for her only, and they could speak of the hilarity of the cannibal ducks at Hyde Park, or the day when Henry nearly got his eyebrows blown off in a lab mishap, and he could gaze down at her with his knowing smile and murmur loving whispers to her in Mandarin.
But he can't, not ever again.
He walks, living but not alive, and forever remains just out of her reach, wearing Jem's face and carrying within him the ghost of Jem's heart.
And Will, Will is ash in the wind, a small marker upon the ground being the only sign that he ever lived at all, and the memory of his laughter has long since disappeared.
Tessa hears the music again, and the tears on her cheeks dry just as fast as they pour out of her grey eyes, and she can't find the will to wipe them away.
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