Chapter 5 of Clockwork Prince from Will's POV.

All he's ever wanted to do is hold her, protect her, do everything in his power to keep her safe and make her laugh. She is everything, heart, soul, light; take her away and the world would have lost the sun and his body its purpose.

He knows she is strong with the enduring, shining strength of a diamond, but he can't help but want to shield her from all the pain and darkness of the world. He hates that she has ever experienced pain, felt fear, known the horrors that had been inflicted upon her.

When he hears her cry out in the night, it all he can do no to break down her door and sweep her into his arms, all he can do not to kiss her until she is drowning in his love. As if the circle of his arms could possibly protect her from the horrors that linger in her imagination. He has spent countless nights since saving her hovering at her door, a cry from her sleeping lips startling him awake as if she lay in the room next to his and not down the hall. He sits and waits for her to quiet, knowing that he cannot save her from her imagination, but desperate to believe his presence can make an impact, even if it is through the door.

Now, after spending the wee hours of the evening prowling the streets of Yorkshire alternately trying to banish the sight of her fainting into Jem's arms and the shocking contents of the spoils room from his mind, her dream scream draws him to her bedroom. Perhaps it's the distance from the Institute, or, more likely, the image of her horrified and bloodless face haunting him, but as she cries out again and again, he cannot stop himself from running to her room and to her defense.

The bedclothes are a disaster, twisted around her thrashing form. Tears are on her cheeks and when he reaches to shake her awake, she clutches his arm with feverish fingers.

"Tess, Tess, it's a dream! Tess, wake up! Tess, Tess." She gentles her thrashing at his touch, but her eyes are still wild beneath her lids, tears still creeping down her cheeks, hands still clutching at his arm.

"Tess, Tess, Tess," In other circumstance, it would have been a gift to say her name so many times, "you're dreaming. Wake up. Wake up!"

She wakes with a choking gasp, a flurry of dark hair and pale skin. She is shaking, her eyes wild and wide. He bridles the urge to pull her into his arms, to stroke her hair and to kiss the tears from her cheeks.

"It was a dream?" her voice is unbelieving, foggy from sleep. "It felt so real, so utterly real-" Her eyes focus on him and he can't breath for a second.

"Will." She is awake now and his name on her lips makes his heart pound. She sweeping her eyes over his rumpled clothes and mussed hair and he has to school his features into nonchalance, lest she see the concern, the love, for her in them.

"What did you dream?"

As she explains her nightmare, his heart constricts painfully from the need to hold her. He would give his left hand to be able to take away her nightmares and the experiences that had wrought them. He realizes, belatedly, that his hands are still on her shoulders, but he cannot bring himself to remove them.

"Tess," her name is sunlight in his mouth. Against his volition, his fingers are in her hair and he's sliding the silky tangle that's escaped from its plait behind her ears. "God damn that devil Starkweather for showing you what he did, but you must know it's not like that anymore." His fingers are still wrapped in her tangled locks, their tips just a breath away from brushing the oh-so-soft skin of her neck. "The Accords have forbidden spoils. It was just a dream."

She draws a deep breath, as if to calm herself, but it comes out sounding like half a sob. "Where have you been?" she asks. "You smell like nighttime."

The nonchalance falls from his lips, but it takes effort, instead of being a force of habit. "Out kicking over the traces." Trying to make myself not love you. Trying to save your life. Trying to save my life, for if you die I shall die too. "As usual."

In spite of himself, he is touching her face again and he is vaguely alarmed at how cool her cheek is. But perhaps that is only because the proximity to her has made him nearly feverish.

"Can you sleep now? We're meant to rise early tomorrow. Starkweather is lending us his carriage so we might investigate Ravenscar Manor. You, of course, are welcome to remain here." Though I am loath to leave you in this house of horrors. "You need not accompany us."

She flinches beneath his fingers and her whole body shudders. "Stay here without you? In this big, gloomy place? I would prefer not to."

Her strong reaction makes his stomach clench. He hates that she has reason to be afraid. "Tess, that must have been quite a nightmare, to have taken the spirit out of you so. Usually you are not afraid of much." My Boadicea, my warrior princess.

"It was awful," she replies, her voice gone soft and her eyes dark with fear, "Even Henry was in my dream. He was taking apart my heart as if it were made of clockwork."

He hates himself for making her relive the dream, hates Starkweather for revealing that room of horrors, hates Charlotte for sending them here, hates Mortmain for giving her reason to be afraid. He feels sick with self-loathing and tries to make her smile, using his humor as self-defense.

"Well, that settles it. Pure fantasy. As if Henry is a danger to anyone except himself."

But she does not smile, her eyes are still wide and haunted. It crosses his mind that her smile is the chink in his armor, a mallet to the stone walls he has built around his heart. But she does not smile. He wonders how she cannot know that she is safe with him. How can she not know how much he loves her? How can she possibly not see that the thought of her hurt makes him see red? He aches for her. The words fall out of his mouth before he can bottle them in:

"I would never let anyone hurt a hair on your head, you know that don't you?"

Their eyes lock, and he loses his self-control because her eyes are the sea and he is drowning in them. Even the voice in the back of his mind, the constant reminder that for her to love him is for her to die, is silent, caught up in the darkness and the need to love her, kiss her, protect her, cherish her always. Her body bends towards his and when she lifts her lips towards his, he cannot stop the rush of air that comes from the sweet relief of being able to kiss her as he has wanted to for so, so long. He doesn't realize his hands have come up to cup her face until his thumb brushes the corner of her mouth. It is almost his undoing.

When, at the last possible second, she turns away and his lips meet the softness of her cheek instead of the fullness of her lips, it is like having a bucket of cold water dumped on his head.

"No," her voice too loud, to wrong for the situation. "No, I don't know that, Will." It's like his heart has been dregged in ichor, hearing those words is so painful. It is a feeling contrary to every fiber of his being to let her question the truth of his devotion to her.

"You have made it very clear what kind of use you have for me. You think I am a toy or your amusement. You should have not come in here; it is not proper."

The words bounce around in his head, painful and true. He realizes, belatedly again, that his hands are still cupping her face and drops them.

"You called out-" he manages to croak, feeling, for all the world, like he's been stabbed.

"Not for you."

There is nothing he can say in reply, for it is true. She does not love him. Perhaps she had, once, but he had killed it, broken her trust and her heart.

Hastily, he tries to build up the walls before he can pull her into his arms and tell her what lies those words had been, before he can kiss her and cradle her and make her see how precious she is to him.

"Do you regret what you said to me that night on the roof, Will? The night of Thomas's and Agatha's funeral? Can you tell me you did not mean what you said?"

He wonders if she is hoping he'll renege those words. He pulls away from her, dropping his head so his hair hides the battle that he knows would be revealed in his eyes. He loves her more than anything. The thought of anyone playing with her heart makes him angry and the knowledge that he has hurt her, that he used those words to make her stop loving him is a knife ripping his heart to shreds.

"No," his voice is broken, even to his own ears. He is shocked, frankly, that his love for her, his desire to keep her alive and will, is able to overcome his fierce desire for her to know how much he loves her, for her to know that he thinks she is the purest, most beautiful thing in his life. "No, the Angel forgive me, I can't say that."

He feels more than sees her withdraw from him, putting space between them as she wraps her arms around herself, like she's trying to physically hold herself together. Her entire body bespeaks pain and defensiveness, but she speaks, there is an underlying strength in her quiet words:

"Please go away, Will."

It is agony, the purest agony he has felt since he was twelve and he realized that his family had finally left him at the Institute. Her sending him away is a wound that has reopened that old one and both are bleeding fresh.

"Tessa," he begins, knowing that he can fix this, if she will just give him enough time, he can fix this and while she may not love him, at least he will not have broken everything good that is between them.

"Please."

The word is firm and cold and quiet, the death knell to what might have been this night. He feels as if all the air has been sucked from the room and he cannot breath. It is as if his is bleeding from a thousand cuts, as if the contents of his mind have all been wiped clean except for the repeat tattoo of this one word. Please. He longs to tell her the truth, longs to pull her into his arms and kiss her until neither of them can think or breath or feel anything but how much he loves her.

But she is alive, which means she does not love him. He has protected her from himself well. She does not love him, he has seen to that. She will never die because he wasn't careful enough. She does not love him and she will live long and be happy and that will have to be enough. He loves her too much to let himself kill her.

These are the thoughts that force him to stand up and walk across her room. These are the thought that allow him to close the door without looking back behind him. These are the thoughts that keep him from turning around and running back into her room and gathering her up into his arms when he hears her let out a breath that is half a sob. These are the thoughts that will keep her alive.