A New World For The Winning

A/N: Hey! So, still having Clockwork Princess feels, terrible ones, so I need to express them. I ship Jem and Tessa way too much...but here's a quick, but sweet, one shot about Jem and Tessa after the epilogue. They make their way to Tessa's apartment, and they talk about the New World.

His hand slid into hers easily, as they eased into the back of the London cabbie. Her soft thumb ran itself over the back of his scarred hand, and Jem knew that it would take awhile for the scars to heal, but they would eventually.

Nearly a hundred years where he could not even speak of her, his Theresa Grey, had nearly driven him mad. It was only on that set date, that date of salvation, when he could convince himself that he could go through one more year without her. Every year, seeing her beautiful face and form, always in new attire and always with that same expression on her face. An expression of happiness, yet hesitation. He knew, back then, she had been able to fall in love with both of them, Will and himself, but that she thought he wasn't nearly as human. In the end, however, he was the lucky one. Will had died years ago. Even if he hadn't been human, he felt that string, that vicious string of pain in his chest, that his parabatai was gone. To see his unmoving form had been even worse, but he did what he always would've done. Play the violin, like William would've wanted him to. For now, though, he could be content with the fact that she was now here beside him, no longer looking at him like he was a monster or a freak. But as the human being he was always meant to be.

"London is beautiful." Her voice slips its way into his mind, and he slowly turns his head to see her staring outwards, observing London with that familiar glint in her eyes. He was she had seen London every day, every hour of every minute in the past hundred years, but perhaps it was more beautiful in her eyes, now that the love of her life was with her for good.

"It's different," he says softly, watching the yellow cabbies pass their cars. Before, when he had been sickly and when the world had been younger, cars were thicker, and required much manpower to navigate. Now, they were sleeker, thinner and shinier. Though his encounters as a Silent Brother throughout the years forced him to tour the city, he had never been able to observe it as this proximity. That was just one of the few things that were different about the New World as opposed to the old one he had known. The skies...they were still grey, and though there was no rain, sunshine was barely gleaming through the clouds.

Tall, glimmering buildings towered above the cabbie, as they made their way through London. Tessa pointed out local landmarks he would or wouldn't have known prior to his removal of the Silent Brothers. Tower Bridge, standing majestically and powerfully, as it held the weight of millions of cars. The Shard, a large torpedo of a building, standing out amongst the thousands of gigantic buildings, seeming to soar into the heavens. Double decker buses, he stares up at, seeing the people sit comfortably amongst a moving, metal beast. How strange, to know these people have lived in this century, becoming accustomed to its ways, and ignoring the strains of the past, unlike his Tessa...

"Different can be good, can't it?" She turns her body to his, rotating so her gaze met his. Dressed in modern day clothes, Jem can't help but remember the first time he met Tessa, so beautiful, yet so different from the girl he knew now. Had she lost her ability to shape shift? Had she lost her sense of humanity, knowing she wasn't one amongst the millions of humans that wandered around her throughout the years? Even if she was different, he knew she wouldn't let herself change the world, though she held the power in her hand.

"Course it can. I used to be different." Shadows of his sickly past, of his dying state re-appeared in his mind, and he forced himself to push away the memories, the sensation of burning in his chest and a knife in his back, the yin fen running its course through his body, fire in his veins. "Now...I'm definitely different...but...I suppose it's for the better."

"The world is different," she replies softly, moving his hand to her cheek, and he can't help but rub her smooth skin with his scarred thumb, "And so am I...but I won't let that change me..."

"As long as I need you," Jem slowly brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, the afternoon sun blazing down on them through the glass, and illuminating her figure from behind. She looked like an angel, and he noted that she still wore her Clockwork Angel. The one that had transformed her into Ithuriel all those years ago, when the Angel took her form and killed Mortmain. She would always be his Angel, his Clockwork Angel, "I don't care what form you take, or what you do. I will never betray your trust," he leans in slowly, and kisses her forehead, his lips brushing her pale forehead, "I love you, Tessa."

"I love you too, Jem..." she whispers in return, and that was the end of it. Wrapping her arms around his body, she holds him close, never wanting to let go. There, as the cabbie drove the pair of them into the New World, they were ready to take it onto their shoulders together, hearing the people sing the world's praises. As long as they needed each other, they would never depart each other's sides, and with their fingers intertwined together, there was one more day together.

The colors of the sky rained down on them, expressing the colors of their emotions. Red, the color of passion and beauty. Blue, the color of trust, loyalty, and faith. The faith they had in each other. A paintbrush painted the colors of the new world across the canvas of a sky, and they knew, they would see what God in heaven had in store for their future, their hearts intertwined, an unspoken promise spoken in that silence. To never leave each other's side, from the very beginning, when they met each other in that grim night in the Institute, to the end of the New World as they knew it.