Chapter: Epilogue
A man trudged up the steps to the London Institute with a heavy heart. He was in his late twenties, tall and slender, with light olive skin and silky dark hair. The curve of his eyes, black and shiny as an ebony piano, revealed his ancestry as not entire English. What truly set him apart in the crowd, however, was twofold: the loose-fitting clothes he wore in a perfectly crisp shade of white, and the swirling black tattoos that covered his skin. He knocked curtly on the heavy wood doors. Knock. Knock. Knock. As a Shadowhunter he was of course granted automatic entrance, but it was common courtesy. This was no longer his home.
The doors opened and a beautiful woman, all shining gold hair and belly swollen with pregnancy, smiled out at him. "James," she said warmly in a throaty French accent. "Will is expecting you." She stepped to the side and Jem walked in.
"It's good to see you, Maddie," he said quietly, though honesty. "How are the children? All… how many do you have now?"
She let out a silvery laugh and folded her hands over her stomach. "This will be my sixth. James, Juliet, Alistair, Thomas, Emma, and this one." She winced and her hands clenched tightly around each other as her skin whitened to an alarming degree. "If you will excuse me, I ought to return to bed. I was never of the strongest constitution and I fear childbearing only weakens me further."
Will's wife of seven years, Madeleine Herondale (nee Benoit) was the daughter of Jacques Benoit, who ran the Institute in Marseilles, France. The relationship began as a mere coincidental visit, a continuation of Will's mission to travel the world, and ended with pregnancy– their firstborn son, James, a perfect miniature of his father in looks if not in manner.
The marriage began as one of coincidence– the boy needed his father and Maddie had fallen hopelessly in love with Will– but around the birth of their fifth child and second daughter, red-haired green-eyed Emma, Will realized that somewhere along the line he had learned to love his wife. They ran the Institute together after the Branwells took over the Institute in Yorkshire (old Starkweather, who had been running it, finally died). It took up a lot of time, and Jem could only guess what the couple did in their spare time, though he presumed it had much to do with producing children.
As if on cue, five children appeared at the grand staircase and came down as fast as they could. "Jem, Jem," the eldest girl cried. She was the spitting image of her mother even at age six, with straight blonde hair and warm brown eyes. She was trailed closely by her older brother, who was calling for her to wait up. The five-year-old twins, Alistair and Thomas, brown-haired and brown-eyed, peeked around either side of Juliet, mischievous grins lighting up their faces.
Lastly, there was tiny Emma, age three, who was frail and often ill with one thing or another. She went right over to Jem and held up her arms in the universal symbol for "pick me up". Jem obeyed; he had a soft spot, as did everyone, for Will's 'genetic miracle', as he called her. Her red-gold curls, dark green eyes, and freckles were so unlike the rest of her family.
"Hello, everyone," Jem smiled. "You've all grown so much since the last time I saw you! Maybe I should come home more often, hm?" Jem ran the Institute back in Shanghai. He had no children of his own, nor a wife. Just a year previously he courted Emily Nightshade, but she had been killed by a demon before they could be married. In his darkest, most bitter moments, he thought it was just as well; he had liked her well enough, and she had loved him, but there was no way he could be expected to give his heart away again.
"Stay," Emma begged. "Don't go."
Jem kissed her temple. "Oh, sweetheart. I'll stay as long as I can, okay?"
Just as she nodded tentatively, the door to the kitchen opened and a tall, muscular man strode in. Power was etched into every line of him, from the strong angles of his face that would have looked delicate on a smaller man to the rippling biceps that flexed under a thin white shirt. A mass of dark curls formed a halo around his face, pale and slightly worn but still beautiful with enormous blue eyes, the color of the night sky in Hell. "What did I tell you," he remarked in a good-natured but authoritative voice, "about crowding visitors? Jem's only just arrived and you're all clustered around him?"
"Will," Jem reprimanded. "You can't blame your children for wanting to see me. I haven't been here in a year." He let Will take his youngest daughter and kiss her fondly before setting her down.
"Shoo," Will said, waving his hands at his children, who giggled but ran off to do the Angel knew what. "James," he murmured then, embracing his parabatai, who was trembling. "We knew this wasn't going to be easy."
"It's been ten years to the day and it doesn't hurt any less," he whispered. "I lost her ten years ago today and it could have been yesterday. I can't ever take a wife, or a lover, or anything. It just feels… wrong."
"Emily? I thought she might…"
He shook his head. "She was a lovely girl but I couldn't. I couldn't ever do that again. It wouldn't have been fair, anyway. You know I couldn't love again."
Will shook his head sadly; it hurt so much more than he thought to see his best friend, brother really, so miserable. He knew that every day Jem woke up entirely conscious of the sacrifice that had been made so that he could see the sun, so that he could make plans years in advance, so that he could be independent of the drug. He treasured every day, but the guilt festered in his soul and wouldn't disappear. It had changed him; the carefree, calm Jem Carstairs had been replaced by a quieter, sadder version of himself. He rarely smiled and never laughed. He stopped playing the violin.
"We should go," he said softly. "We still need to make sure the others made it all right."
Jem nodded and followed Will out of the Institute, down the streets and to the small grave under the cherry trees in Hyde Park. It was glamoured to hide it from mortal eyes, but the Shadowhunters knew where to look. It was a small marble stone in the ground, still shining and blank. Jem hadn't known what to write on it, so he put nothing. He thought she might've liked that, the intrigue of an unmarked grave.
Magnus Bane, looking young as ever but much more glittery than the last time Will and Jem had seen him, was waiting with Gabriel Lightwood, who was still the same with ruffled brown hair and curious green eyes that no longer shone with resentment– he and Will and resolved most of their difficulties in the face of mutual loss– though he wore a gold wedding band around his finger. The Daylighter Riley appeared from behind a tree, rubbing the back of his head. He still looked sixteen, all gangly limbs and untamable auburn hair, though the pain in his eyes was greater than any sixteen-year-old's had any right to be.
"The gang's all here," he said with a wry smile and a trace of an accent; ten years of living in London had started to wear away his American tongue. "Is there anything we wanted to say as a group, or just… by ourselves?"
There was a bit of silence. "It's been a lonely ten years," Magnus said finally. The others nodded their agreement. Riley stepped up to the grave first and bent down, murmuring things the rest of the group hadn't the heart to listen in on. Jem thought back to the day he was cured.
He was so happy. He was saved, he was a live, he could have a whole lifetime with Will at his back and the love of his life at his side. Oh, how he couldn't wait to tell her! Surely she had been worried about him. He had been ill, nearly dead, for three days, and she always worried. She would want to know he was safe.
The bell rang. Will, wild-eyed and looking horrified, ran for the door, but a bewildered Jem followed close behind. It could be her, couldn't it, since she couldn't come in by herself. He stopped at the foot of the stairs as Will tugged the door open.
Magnus stumbled in, and she was in his arms, but what she was doing there? Was she hurt? She could walk, so why wasn't she moving? Why was she just lying there in his arms? And he was crying but why, what had happened, was he going to be all right, and why wasn't she moving?
Jem heard the story as though from a distance as Magnus quickly explained it to Will. He heard what she had done for him. What she had given up for his cure. He heard himself wail, the brokenhearted sobbing cry of a mother who has lost her child, because there she was, the one who belonged to him, and she was in Magnus's arms and she was wearing all gold and she was beautiful even in the stillness of death, dressed in a wedding dress she would never see herself wear.
The funeral was the next day. Gabriel Lightwood and his brothers were there, including Michael's wife, and Riley, and Magnus, and the inhabitants of the Institute sans Jessamine. There was even a tall blonde man with all-black eyes who introduced himself as Matthew Renault, her brother.
When Jem learned that Will knew what was to come, that he let her die, that he didn't stop her, he didn't speak to him for three weeks. He could have done something, Jem shouted, but he didn't, because he apparently didn't know that Jem's life depended on it. Not in the way Magnus proposed. Not the cure. His existence was guaranteed by the white potion in the little glass flask, but his life, his heart and soul and mind, were shattered.
Back in the present, everyone had said what they needed to but Jem. He stepped forward and looked down at the black marble, seeing his own miserable reflection. Tears welled in his eyes as he remembered the orange-blossom scent of her that always clung to his sheets even when she wasn't there, the ringing of her laugh and the brush of her kisses, the bittersweet taste of her mouth and the whispered I love yous late at night when there was nothing but starlight and each other.
There were so many things he could have said to her then, no matter where she was, Heaven or reincarnated or any other version of the afterlife. There were many things he should have said, things that might ease his own burden and perhaps allow him to begin to move on. In the end, though, the tears choked him and he only managed one word, one simple word to mutter, and at that moment those five letters, that one word, was the most perfect thing he could have said:
Belle.