AN: A Wessa chapter for my shipper friends.
In a plain looking apartment not too far from where the church smouldered in early morning sunlight, Magnus Bane had made a portal. Will hadn't seen him at the battle until the very end when he had appeared near the pair of Shadowhunters who kept calling Jem "Zack" and flung magic up at some of the last circling demons.
He'd been snapping orders to get everyone, including the injured and the two dead, from the square to the portal when he'd caught sight of Will and given him a very strange look. Everyone else was already moving and Magnus made his way through the stream of people moving the opposite direction to come stand in front of them.
Jem still held Tessa and stood beside him. Will had been casting little glances at her when no one else was watching just to make sure that she wasn't any worse. She was pale but peaceful with her cheek pressed against Jem's shirt. He wanted to ask if she was still cold because she had been so cold when he'd pulled her out of the building. He didn't.
"Nobody mentioned this," Magnus said looking at Will with his head tilted a little and his cat eyes glinting strangely in the half light of dawn. He wore black but his shirt had a design picked out on it in some sort of glittering black beading. His hair had been hit by some errant water spell another warlock had thrown during the battle but even wet and disheveled it had a bit of a sparkle to it. Anyone else would have looked comical.
"We didn't know," Jem said.
"Really? Magnus asked.
"We weren't sure," Jem said.
"How could you tell?" Will asked looking at Jem. Inside, Tessa had been shocked but maybe she had not really been surprised by his arrival.
"We're parabatai," Jem said as though it explained everything. Will wasn't sure if it was Magnus's expression or his that made Jem explain it, "Yesterday afternoon it was back. The parabatai link is a thing you can feel. I hadn't felt it in more than a century. I'd almost forgotten what it was like."
"Hmm," Magnus turned to Will, "Are you still cursed? I hope not because holy hell was that an annoying phase," Magnus asked before Will could ask Jem all the questions he wanted to about losing the link in the first place, about the brothers, about getting it back. It was such a part of him that he couldn't imagine living without it.
"No," Will said. "I have you to thank for that."
"True you do. You should consider thanking me with food and good wine," Magnus said.
They were moving now. Jem had his hands full with Tessa and Magnus and Will had found themselves in charge of carrying a warlock with a head wound. Without glamours the little train of people would have caused quite a stir but magic made sure that those out for early morning strolls or on their way to their places of employment found anything else to look at.
"The man with the metal robot things, is he still a problem?" Magnus continued the questions. "I can't remember his name, Mudvayne? No, I think that's a band."
"Yes, Mortmain's still a problem," Will said.
"So no caves then," Magnus said and Will saw Jem shoot him a look but it didn't mean anything to Will so he ignored it.
He was saved having to answer any more questions by their arrival at a building that looked like all the other buildings on the street. Magnus left Will to shoulder the weight of the warlock who groaned periodically and muttered complaints while he opened the doors and led the way inside.
The group hadn't been quiet but they'd been easier for Will to block out in the street. Inside the little room all the worried flutters of conversation were pressing in and Will wanted to turn around and leave. He might have if Jem and Tessa weren't there.
Across one wall an arch of runes had been drawn in a hasty hand. Will picked out a few from the Gray Book but most were warlock runes he couldn't identify. It all glowed green. Magnus had made his way to stand beside it and was shooing people away from it as he fussed with the final preparations for the spell.
Near the back of the group Jem and Tessa stood. Tessa was awake enough that Jem had set her down. She leaned into him but stood on her own two feet. The two Shadowhunters from the battle were talking to them. After lying the man he was carrying down with the other injured, Will made his way back to the little knot of them. He stood at Jem's side where he would have back home and they both looked at him. He didn't quite put himself between them and Tessa but he put himself close enough that he could have if they proved a threat.
The blonde one had strange eyes, almost gold. The other had black hair and blue eyes though a much lighter colour than Will's. They both wore gear and carried seraph blades though from the conversation they were having with Jem they were not there with official Clave approval.
"And if we show up in New York, my mother will kill us all," the dark haired man said.
"You're 25 and you're still scared of our mother?" the blonde asked. They didn't look anything like siblings but there was a sense of unity about them that being brothers might explain. They had the air of being unshakably on the same side of any fight.
"Don't lie, you're afraid of her too," he said.
"I'm 152 and I'm a little afraid of your mother," Jem said. "But that is not the point. We need to get those three in to see Catarina, that means New York." There were three seriously injured, including the man Will had been carrying and Edith who was capable of walking but had been bitten on the shoulder deep enough that without a capable doctor she would lose her arm.
Jem pushed on in a quiet authoritative voice, "Keeping it a secret will just make it worse. This is not a secret. It was an emergency requiring expediency. Besides, she is the head of the Institute and will hardly be surprised that any of us are operating off script."
"Aren't you supposed to know better?" the blonde asked.
"Oh no, he's almost as bad as you are, Jace, trust me on that," Tessa said with a half closed eyes and a twitch of a smile. All her sharp edges had been smoothed off by exhaustion. Will often had the urge to protect her from everything but seeing her like this made that need so much stronger. When it snuck up on him like this it was almost like forgetting how much he loved her and discovering it anew.
"He hides it better than most people," Will said. "People always assume that James is the good one."
"Yes, well, compared to you, I am," Jem said then turned back to the others without introductions which was a very un-Jem-like lapse in good graces, "Go get us clearance to bring everyone through. Tell Maryse she can blame us if she needs someone to tell off. It was our idea."
Once he'd chased the others off and they'd started cajoling people up to the runes that had been drawn onto the wall, Jem turned to Will. He was both Jem and a stranger and it made Will uneasy. Jem was a constant, a foundation but now he'd gone off and lived a long life and become someone else. Someone with deep brown eyes that were almost black and carried years in them in a way that had nothing to do with the age of his face.
"One of us has to go talk to Maryse and probably Robert and Ethan or one of the other cronies from the Inquistor's office," Jem said and Will didn't miss the easy way in which he and Tessa were simply "us" though Jem didn't seem to notice it.
Tessa's gray eyes found Will's face for a moment before fluttering shut again. She wasn't injured but she how ill she was still terrified him. Will curled his fingers into his pockets as Jem spoke because reaching for her in that moment would have been ridiculous and inappropriate. His fingers itched to touch her cheek or her hair. He wanted to be able to tilt her chin up so she looked him in the eye the way that Jem did.
"I'm going to go and talk to them," Jem said when she was looking at him. "You're going home."
Tessa closed her eyes and frowned, "I'd rather stay."
"Liar, you think you need to stay because you think everything that went wrong is somehow your fault," Jem said, "You don't and it isn't. Once everyone else is gone, take Will and go home."
"Will?" she said and her voice was weaker than it had been. She braced her hands on Jem's chest but she was wavering. Jem gave him another look over the top of her head and this time it was a clear message. He was being asked to take care of her.
"Take him home, I'll find you there when the Clave has finished asking questions," Jem said. Tessa nodded and though she hadn't actually crumpled, she leaned heavily into him again.
Jem held her tight for a moment. Everyone else had filtered through the portal and Will still had no idea how it worked. Magnus stomped over before he left too just to say, "I saw nothing." It was as close to permission to use the portal as they were going to get. When Magnus was gone it was just the three of them.
The first time he said it, Will assumed he was talking about Tessa and said, "Are you sure you shouldn't stay with her? She should be with someone she trusts if she's hurt."
"Are you hurt?" Jem repeated, touching his shoulder and frowning just a little. His voice was as even as it had been when he'd been talking to Jace and Magnus but there was a force behind the words that hadn't been there before.
"Nothing the iratze won't fix," Will said. He held up the arm that Edith had bandaged, it was still wrapped but there was an iratze drawn above the bandage near his elbow that was already starting to fade as it worked.
Tessa had faded as well and while Jem did whatever it was that made the portal activate, Will took his place beside Tessa. He wasn't paying any attention to how the magic worked. She was still cold. He'd expected to just need to provide an arm for her to lean on but once the audience of strangers was gone Tessa had stopped putting so much effort into acting normal. She was far worse than he thought she was and it terrified him that he might to fail her in some way while she was so vulnerable.
"Promise me that you'll both be fine," Jem said.
"We'll both be fine," Tessa said immediately.
"I love you, go to sleep, I'll see you soon," Jem said to her. Before he pushed them towards the portal and through it, Jem stopped and leaned his shoulder against Will's. They were a little knot of three people for a moment before Jem flashed a grin and said, "Be safe, please." The smile erased Will's lingering sense that this person was a stranger as well as his friend. He was only Jem when he smiled and Will smiled back more out of relief than anything else.
Will had to almost carry Tessa through the portal. He looked back, expecting to see Jem on the other side of some window but he was gone. They had stepped through into a little sitting room with huge bookshelves and curtains that let in only slivers of light from what Will assumed were the street lamps of the city.
Tessa stepped away from him and collapsed onto the vague outline of a piece of furniture. He knelt down with her intending to ask her what she needed but her expression was all unreadable intensity again and it froze him in place. Her hand fluttered toward him again but at the last moment she leaned over and lit a lamp on the table.
She hadn't touched him. He had touched her, had picked her up and carried her around. She hadn't touched him. He pulled back and sat on the edge of a low table nearby so he wouldn't be nearly so intrusive.
The sofa she sat on was dark green and she looked pale against the rich colour. Her hair was a mess and there was something smeared across her cheek that could have been ash or even dried blood or just dirt. He didn't reach to wipe it away. He was beyond improper already and did not want to make it worse.
"Will," she said.
"Tess," he said with a little smile.
"You're hurt," she said and her hand moved toward his bandaged arm. It fell away again before she touched him. "I'm sorry. I should have turned them in the moment Nat told me what was happening. I'm so sorry you got caught in it. You should be home."
"Don't be sorry. You did nothing wrong," Will said. "I'm not sorry to be here. How many people can say that they've seen what the future will be?" He wasn't sure he felt quite that cavalier about the entire thing but he couldn't talk about his worries with her as she looked ready to collapse.
She frowned like she was about to begin an argument and shivered. Will reached out to touch her hand to see if it was any warmer but stopped short of it. He got up instead and looked around the space. The lamp lit enough of a circle of light that he could find a blanket that had been tossed over a nearby chair. When he picked it up a piece of sheet music fell off the chair and drifted to the ground. He put it back on the chair and returned to drop the blanket over Tessa's shoulders. She looked up at him and her gaze followed him as he sat back down in front of her.
"You're here," she said. Incredulous and still far too intense.
"I've never been to New York," he said though he knew it wasn't what she meant. He tried to keep the conversation light and easy because that was what you did while visiting people who were ill. His mind wouldn't settle on how he felt about being there and he didn't want her to ask about time travel or impossibilities. He pushed on, knowing that he was nattering, "I always imagined that if I came to America, I'd come by ship. Where should I visit?"
There was another moment of hesitation but this time she reached out and put her hand on his. He had leaned forward so his elbows were braced on his knees and his hands hung between them. Her fingers were cold and he didn't move. She traced just her finger tips down the back of his hand then she curled her fingers around his.
He forgot how to breathe.
It wasn't the fingertips though they didn't help. It was the look on her face. It was that unreadable one that his imagination kept trying to fill in with wishful thinking. Once she held one of his hands in both of hers the hesitation came back. It was like balancing on an edge and she was going to push him over. Either direction was going to hurt.
"Come here?" she made it a question as she tugged on his hand just a little. This was going to hurt because she wasn't his to hold. He wasn't a good enough person to deny her anything even if it was wrong. He sat down beside her and she rested her head on his shoulder. She still wore his jacket, too big and tattered.
"I miss you," she whispered and he gave up on his attempts at propriety and wrapped his arms around her. He was going to say something stupid, something she didn't want to hear if he opened his mouth at all so he pressed his lips to her hair instead. The tension left her as she gave up her attempts to stay awake.
He hadn't noticed how tired he was until he was settled back against the corner of the sofa with her close enough that he was aware of her heartbeat. He closed his eyes and pulled her in so that she rested close to him. He could forget that this was wrong when she shifted and brought herself just a little closer. He gathered her cold hands in one of his and held them near his heart.
She whispered something that must have been, "I miss you" again but his infinite capacity for wishful thinking filled in a different word. He could feel her fall asleep, her breathing changed, her body relaxed, her hand no longer held his but just lay in his palm.
He fell asleep moments after she did with the words she mustn't have said still ringing in his head.