I saw her before she saw me and the sight of her took my breath away. To anyone else, she was simply one of the crowd, looking as mundane and human as everyone else did. But I knew better. Behind the blue top, boots, scarf, I saw the beautiful woman in a golden, Victorian dress that I'd fallen in love with.
Memories overwhelmed me, a wonderful, painful jolt of images, feelings and thoughts. I saw grand buildings towering high, golden pocket watches ticking slow and steady, faces of people that I held close to my heart. Most of them were gone now, victims to time's cruel judgement, but here she was, unchanging though everything around her was. I followed her movements as she touched the pearl bracelet on her wrist and a twist in my heart was reflected in her eyes as we both thought of Will. I remembered him giving her that gift on their anniversary, the gleam in his pansy, blue eyes.
I missed my parabatai, my best friend, and I quietly mourned him in that moment along with Tessa. For the past few years, we'd met here on this bridge, just as long-lasting friends. But I wanted to be so much more to her, and now I could be.
"Tessa?" Her name sounded like a spell on my lips and I savoured the sound of it as it filled the space between us. She didn't turn around at first, so I assumed she hadn't heard me and I went to say it again. Before I could, she did and stared at me.
"Jem?" she breathed, her striking, grey eyes wide and beautiful as they took me all in. I could only smile, shoving my hands in my pockets. She said my name again, even more breathlessly than before, "Jem." Then, it was as if a dam had broken out in her head and she started speaking rapidly, "You are – this is permanent? You are not bound to the Silent Brothers any more?"
The mention of them sent a shiver down my spine, the memories of the curse of silence, the brutal runes I'd had to take. "No," I said quickly, "I am not." She gulped, her long, brown hair blowing in the wind.
"The cure – you found it?" My mind flashed back to that group of shadowhunters, Will's golden-haired descendant, the blinding burn of fire then... well, here I was.
"I did not find it myself," I said truthfully, "But... it was found." And thank the angel it had been.
"I saw Magnus in Alicante only a few months ago. We spoke of you. He never said..." Tessa was still gazing at me in awe, as if she couldn't believe I was really here. I couldn't really either.
"He didn't know. It has been a hard year, a dark year, for Shadowunters. But out of the blood and the fire, the loss and the sorrow, there have been born some great new changes." I thought back to Valentine's son, the devil in his smile as he wrought destruction, then his sister, with a hope blazing in her eyes that reminded me of Charlotte. "I myself have changed."
"How-" Tessa started, but I cut her off.
"I will tell you the story of it. Another story of Lightwoods, Herondales and Fairchilds. But it will take more than an hour in the telling, and you must be cold." A tenderness kindled in the hearth of my heart and I reached out to touch her, to caress her like we'd once done. Then I drew back, my own words echoing in my head: Changes. We'd all changed, for the better and for the worse. Who said our feelings hadn't either?
"I..." Tessa looked shocked, searching my face, as if trying to etch it into her memory, trying to match this stranger with the silver-haired boy in the past that she'd married. It pained me to think that she could not love anything beyond this new me, that she couldn't accept this, "But – after today? Where will you go? To Idris?"
Her question came crashing down and I realised I didn't actually know the answer myself and it scared me, "I don't know. I've never had a lifetime to plan before."
"Then to another Institute?" Her words sounded like she wanted me to go, but I sensed in her tone and her eyes that that was a lie. I paused, wondering how I could say it to her. That I wanted to be with her more than anything.
"I do not think I will go to Idris, or to an Institute anywhere. I don't know how to live in the world as a Shadowhunter without Will. I don't think I even want to. I am still a parabatai, but my other half is gone. If I were to go to some Institute and ask them to take me in, I would never forget that. I would never feel whole."
I noticed that Tessa's knees were shaking, that she was just as nervous as I was and that bought me courage, "Then what-"
"That depends on you." There, it was finally out.
"On me?" She looked helpless, biting her lip and I recognised that faraway look in her eyes, and I'd have given anything to know what she was thinking, what was going through her head. Did she even still love me? I felt my heart start to break at her silence, and I spoke to fill in the wrenching gap.
"I..." I looked down, unable to meet her gaze, and poured my heart out, "For a hundred and thirty years every hour of my life has been scheduled. I thought often of what I would do if I were free, if there were ever a cure found. I thought I would bolt immediately, like a bird released from a cage. I had not imagined I would emerge and find the world so changed, so desperate. Subsumed in fire and blood. I wished to survive it, but for only one reason. I wished..."
I couldn't bring myself to finish. She prompted me gently, "What did you wish for?" You, Tessa. Only you. The words wouldn't come so instead I admired her bracelet.
"This is your thirtieth-anniversary present." The pearls were cool and smooth to the touch, "You still wear it."
I saw her throat move as she swallowed, "Yes." This was it, I needed to know.
"Since Will, have you never loved anyone else?" I waited, coming close to passing out, I was breathing so heavily.
"Don't you know the answer to that?" Tessa, always answering in riddles when you were so desperate for the truth.
"I don't mean the way you love your children, or the way you love your friends. Tessa, you know what I'm asking."
"I don't," she said simply and the frustration tore at my heart, "I think I need you to tell me."
"We were once going to be married," I blurted out, "And I have loved you all this time – a century and a half. And I know that you loved Will. I saw you together over the years. And I know that that love was so great that it must have made other loves, even the one ant. You had a whole lifetime of love with him, Tessa. So many years. Children. Memories I cannot hope to-"
The painful truth slammed into me and I faltered off. What had I been thinking? What kind of stupid dreaming had made me think that this could work? That me and Tessa could be together again? After all this time...?
"No." I said finally, dropping her wrist, abandoning her touch, "I can't do it. I was a fool to think – Tessa, forgive me." Then I ran away from her, into the crowds, not wanting to see her face at my confession. How stupid I'd been...
I stood at the railing, tears gleaming in my eyes though they didn't fall. My heart was ice, everything around didn't matter any more. Until a jolt of warmth pulled out of my misery and a breathless voice brought back the sun.
"What... What were you trying to ask me, Jem?" My name on her lips was a song that I wanted to play on my violin for eternity. My eyes widened as I stared at her, this angel that enchanted me with her never-ending hope.
"Tessa... you followed me?"
"Of course I followed you. You ran off in the middle of a sentence!" I smiled, despite the situation. This was one of the reasons I loved Tessa; she could be warm and bright even in the most drastic of situations.
"It wasn't a very good sentence. I never was the one who was good with words," I whispered, "If I had my violin, I would be able to play you what I wanted to say." And it was true. The strings as I played them sounded like words of poetry to my ears and Tessa was one of the only people to ever share that with me.
"Just try." Her words were a spark of hope.
"I don't – I'm not sure I can. I had six or seven speeches prepared, and I was running through all of them, I think." Then she took my wrists in her hands, and I shivered at the delicious warmth of her skin against mine.
"Well, I am good with words. So let me ask you, then. You asked me if I had loved anyone but Will." she said, "And the answer is yes. I have loved you. I always have and I always will." I gasped. These words I'd wanted to hear from her all these years, now put before me, and I didn't know what to do now that they were in the open.
"They say you cannot love two people equally at once," Tessa smiled at me, "And perhaps for others that is so. But you and Will – you are not like two ordinary people, two people who might have been jealous of each other, or who would have imagined my love for one of them diminished by my love for the other. You merged your souls when you were both children. I could not have loved Will so much if I had not loved you as well. And I could not love you as I do if I had not loved Will as I did."
I watched her in astonishment as she let go of my wrists, reaching to her neck and pulling out the jade pendant I'd given her as a wedding present. She'd kept it... she'd worn it...I didn't need to look, I knew the inscription by heart: When two people are at one in their inmost hearts, they shatter even the strength of iron or bronze.
"You remember, that you left it with me? I've never taken it off." I swallowed, gazing at Tessa, at the love shining in her eyes that was for me. Me.
"All these years," I whispered, unable to find the strength to speak any louder, "All these years, you wore it? I never knew." Her fingers curled around the pendant almost protectively.
"It seemed that it would only have been a burden on you, when you were a Silent Brother. I feared you might think that my wearing it meant I had some sort of expectation of you. An expectation you could not fulfil."
I went quiet at that, the memory of that life of silence and darkness I'd endured. I remembered seeing Will and Tessa, so colourful and brilliant compared to my drab existence. Those times were over now, though, and I didn't need to dwell upon them any more.
"To be a Silent Brother," I began, "it is to see everything and nothing at all at once. I could see the great map of life, spread out before me. I could see the currents of the world. And human life began to seem a sort of passion play, acted at a distance. When they took the runes from me, when the mantle of the Brotherhood was removed, it was as if I had awoken from a long dream, or as if a shield of glass around me had shattered. I felt everything, all at once, rushing in upon me. All the humanity the Brotherhood's spells had taken from me. That is because of you. If I had not had you, Tessa, if I had not had these yearly meetings as my anchor and my guide, I do not if I could have come back."
Tessa's eyes lit up even more, "But you have," she breathed, "And it is a miracle. And you remember what I once told you about miracles." I smiled at the memories, sweet thoughts that drowned out the horrific ones.
"'One does not question miracles,'" I quoted with a grin and she grinned back, "'or complain that they are not constructed perfectly to one's liking'. I suppose that it is true. I wish that I could have come back to you earlier. I wish I were the same boy I was when you loved me, once. I fear that the years have changed me into someone else." She searched my face, cocking her head to the side slightly as if to look at me from a different angle.
"The years have changed me too," Tessa smiled, her grey eyes clouding with memories from another life, another time, "I have been a mother and a grandmother, and I have seen those I love die, and seen others be born. You speak of the currents of the world. I have seen them too. If I were still the same girl I was when you knew me first, I would not have been able to speak my heart as freely to you as I just have. I would not be able to ask you what I am about to ask you."
The undeniable hope was overwhelming as I got the courage to finally touch her, cupping her cheek gently. Her skin was milky soft in my palm, "And what is that?"
"Come with me," she said and my heart soared, "Stay with me. Be with me. See everything with me. I have travelled the world and seen so much, but there is so much more, and no one I would rather see it with than you. I would go everywhere and anywhere with you, Jem Carstairs." I sighed, tracing my thumb over her cheekbone and she shivered in delight. It made me ecstatic to see her react to my touch the way I reacted to hers, proving our love was equal, that we felt the same way. It felt like an impossible dream.
"It seems unreal," I thought aloud, "I have loved you for so long. How can this be true?"
Tessa put her hand over mine, leaning towards me, "It is one of the great truths of my life," Tessa's lips parted and I felt mine do the same, "Will you come with me? For I cannot wait to share the world with you, Jem. There is so much to see."
Before I knew it, her body was pressing against mine, the scent of her hair making my breath go wild as I whispered into it, "Yes, of course, yes". Her sweet breath murmured in front of my mouth and I reached for it, tasting her, and in the joy of it all, the memories came flooding back. Our wedding night... the night we'd met... Will? Will, is that you?
She curled her hand around the back of my neck, pulling me down to meet her height, whispering, "Bie zhao ji." Don't worry, don't worry. It cast all doubt from my mind, and I shivered in delight as she kissed me, my cheek, the corner of my mouth and then pressing on my lips, as if wanting to show her love to every part of me, to show it mattered to her.
I felt her hands tentatively touching my chest and I sighed in her mouth at the feel of her soft, small fingers, untainted by time and just as soothing as all those times over a century ago when she'd comforted me. A century... all that time passed... would we ever change from now?
I pushed the questions aside about the future, what that mysterious zone of time would hold. Right now, with my hands cupping Tessa's waist, our lips pressed against each other, I wanted to stay in this moment and lose myself in it.
Regardless of memories of the past or the ones to come.