There was a space at Jordan Lyra couldn't have noticed was missing before. Roger was missing somewhere inside of her to be sure, but back at Jordan she knew where he should be but wasn't. She would turn brightly to the space for months and find Will. He never stood in the space though, his shoulders were too broad. He'd follow her to the ends of the world the same, but he'd hold her hand and guide as much as she did. He stood next to the Roger space, but while the bits that were Roger from the moment after he stepped from the world of the dead could be there invisibly as Lyra's memory, Will was real, he was solid, and Lyra loved him for it.
Lyra wondered sometimes how she could ever have continued without Will next to her. She'd never thought before that she couldn't be on her own but that it was just unpleasant. Her heart said she needed Will. It wasn't the same as being weak or leaning on someone for comfort or praise, it was Will and it was love. It had almost seemed like the most natural of things leading Will around her Oxford, as jaw dropped as she'd been in his own, introducing him to their world.
Kirjava, now cat formed, lept lightly onto her lap. Lyra gasped. It was always a small thrill to her and she looked to find Pantalaimon sneakily climbing an apple tree on the far side of the garden.
"Will wants you to meet him in Bodley's." Kirjava said quietly.
"Just a messanger now, Kirjava?" Lyra goaded as if the dæmon were her own. Kirjava lept quietly from her lap, just as she'd come and Lyra thrilled again at their powers of seperation - Kirjava was so far! Only Will could do that without being caught, she marveled proudly at him and picked herself up to go see him.
"I just want you to know." Will whispered quietly between the shelves of books towering above them. Even if he'd spoken loudly though the library would not have noticed. The rafters were high and peaked into a ceiling arch somewhere far to their left. The old books consumed sound nearly as well as their tattered covers gathered dust. Will, in a gesture unlike himself, bit his lip, grinned, and kissed Lyra twice, and grabbed her hand. Happy endlessly, Lyra pulled him back for another kiss before allowing herself to be led through the library. Even if she didn't go to Bodley's library much before her journey to the North, afterward Lyra had learned something to respect in the old bindings here, she'd learned the library as if it were the very streets of Oxford she'd only needed once to be threatened banishment from to become inclined to learn the whole area. This was in case the person the threats came from every became a serious enemy, she'd told Hugh Lovat. She'd also continued with a story about a fight at the covered market where the son of some Gyptian lord had been caught and his father blackmailed because of just such an error in forethought.
Will stopped at the end of the next bookshelf and caught a hand to his forhead, looking from side to side.
"Will, where we going?" Lyra asked. Not that she wasn't enjoying his unfamiliar helplessness in the library, he'd only been in Oxford a few months now and already he'd learned most of what Lyra had taught him about the city, she didn't expect him to fit in so well so fast. But, she thought, he's Will.
"A through E?" He toned and picked another row to follow down, neglecting tiled placards along the ends of shelf rows.
Far above, Pan, who'd been following their twisted path by leaping and flowing along the book shelves, jumped the gap to the next row and called to them "Over here, Lyra."
"Right." Lyra responded and took over leading. "Before the wardrobe, this would've been nearly the longest I spent in a library." Lyra laughed. The two and their dæmons had often found themselves played the little game they'd played so long ago just to talk:
"What if we hadn't hidden in that wardrobe that night, Pan?" Lyra would start. It was the beginning, they'd decided.
"There would've been a whole lot less trouble!" Pan would like to have responded, but Kirjava was sitting next to him, cat paw pressed lightly on his pine marten back. "A lot would be different, Lyra." He'd settled on.
"And what if we hadn't seen that window on the ring road? What if we'd gone to a different café at Ci'gazze?" Will would ask next. Lyra loved that he had a "we" now also. She'd thought he'd looked so alone at first, just him with no dæmon. She didn't know how he figured things out himself or what he did if he was just alone with no one around him. She and Will had both found all those answers in the land of the dead. But it wasn't the last time she'd seen what alone really was. She blinked against a tear that wouldn't stop. Now. That's what Will'd said, there is now. And everything until Then is Now and it's us living.
"Here." Kirjava let out something like a low whistle to indicate a particular heavy brown edition of The Encyclopedia.
Will bent down and picked the book up rather more carefully than is necessary for any normal inquiries into A through E. He opened the cover. Flipped one, two pages, and there - a hole, cut with such precision.
Lyra looked over the shards of the subtle knife. "Will..." she whispered, "But why"
He took the book from her hands and looked at her seriously. "This is our here, Lyra. This is our now. For us there is no elsewhere. There's nothing but this, for us. No more specters, no more Dust leaks. The knife shouldn't have been created, but I can't say I'm not glad it was."
"But, Will -"
"Lyra, I've been selfish too, using the knife like I have. Doing this was selfish, something that shouldn't have happened. I have to make sure that it's done. It's what I can do that's responsible. I can't make up for the specters I've made, I can only try to do enough to make up for the Dust I sent into the abyss. But breaking the knife is the only thing that really ensures none of that can ever happen again. It's our responsibility to do what's best when we know we can." His voice was passionate and low.
"But what about..." They both knew. Everything he'd said was against him being here now. She'd told him before. He could only smile now.
"Iorek!" She started, but he was shaking his head.
"I made a window into my world before I broke the knife. Lyra, there's no point in that book. There isn't one in this world. The knife will never be whole again, I had to make sure. I love you Lyra. I didn't even know that kind of love before you showed me it was there, but I love you now and I will always. I can't let you hurt -" His voiced cracked and he looked away for a moment. He coughed slightly and continued. "like mum. I think she thought, she must've thought for so long he was coming back. You've got to know that that's the end when it comes. Please, Lyra, promise me it's the end." His eyes were begging her now, pleading through their love. Not blind, but willing to be blinded, a happy sacrifice to satisfy a need.
"I promise." She whispered weakly. Pantalaimon flowed into her arms to comfort her. He hadn't even said anything to them.
2)I don't know what Bodley's Library looks like. I've gone into the gift shop of the Bodlien Library but not any farther, so library-ish works for now.