Jem played snippets of things on the violin but wouldn't commit to a piece. It might have been annoying but it made Tessa smile. It was a little like knowing what he was thinking. She knew exactly which melody was playing in his head and why he wouldn't play it while Will was in the room. He wanted to play the story of Will's life. Each snippet of song failed when he started to turn it into that other melody and stopped himself.

Jem sat by the window with his feet up on a second chair and picked at the strings or ruffled through the sheet music in the shallow wooden box beside him. Every few months he'd reorganize the music based on some new system but within days it would be a disaster again. It was a mess right now. He knew where things were but it was all shuffled together in a way that made no sense to her at all.

Tessa could see both of them from where she stood on the balcony. Will had been reading through her book titles. She was waiting for him to start asking questions but he hadn't yet. He was just pulling things off the shelves and reading the covers or a few pages before sliding them back into place. She found herself watching his fingers as they ran over the spines or pinched at pages. His fingers were long and more graceful than fingers really had a right to be.

She had spent a life time waking up to graceful fingers playing through her hair or over her skin. She looked back at the city and hoped that the darkness would cover the fact that she was blushing. Some memories were just words or fragments of images but others still held all their strength. This one came with enough force that she half expected to find his hands on her shoulder on their way to trace down her back.

Sunrise was coming and she could see the sky starting to lighten. She tested her magic but it was still stretched too thin to work properly. She was no longer deeply ill but she hadn't regained enough strength to do any magic without it hurting.

"Will?" she said and braced herself for when he looked up from the bookshelf to meet her gaze. Dark blue and unmistakable his eyes kept shaking her fragile ability to keep her composure. She wasn't going to sob on him again. She simply wasn't. He'd been treating her carefully since she'd done it and she didn't want to make him more nervous.

She reached out a hand and motioned him out onto the balcony. Jem looked up at them but didn't say anything. He ruffled back through the music again and started an actual song instead of just fragments. She couldn't name it but it was all softness and quiet mornings. Will started to take her hand and then pulled away. She leaned forward and grabbed his hand before he was out of reach. Will across the room she could manage but Will close enough to touch wasn't something she could resist.

"Don't look down right away," she said smiling at him and holding his hand. There were these moments of hesitation in him when she touched him before he responded and the smile seemed to break the hesitation and his fingers wrapped around hers.

"What am I looking at?" he asked.

"Sunrise over New York," she said pulling him in a little closer to her and the railing. He was warm and tense. Her voice was quieter and gentler than it needed to be when she said, "We're very high."

Jem was still playing and Tessa looked over at him. He gave her a small smile. He was barefoot which had once seemed almost indecent to her but had long ago just become a part of Jem at home. It was either the battered blue shoes or nothing. He hadn't bothered getting dressed and the pajamas he wore had a hole in one of the legs, probably a gift from the cat. He looked like home. She held his eyes and let the music wrap itself around her for a moment until she was steady enough to speak to Will.

"The sun rises along the buildings here," she said pointing past him with her free hand. The sun was just breaking over the tops of the lower buildings to paint the world in orange. Will followed her finger and she took a second to stare not at the view but at him. He'd been beautiful every day of his life but there was something incredible about the lines of his face in the early morning light. Unconsciously she squeezed his hand a little tighter and he answered it.

They stood together until she wavered. The floor was suddenly unsteady or maybe it was her feet. Her balance went. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder and closed her eyes. Her fingers were holding onto his not for comfort but to keep herself upright.

"Tess?" he said.

"I'll be fine," she said but had to force the words out. Panic curled in the pit of her stomach but she was too tired to give it the voice it wanted.

"Inside, now," Jem said. She hadn't noticed the music stopping but he stood in the doorway looking alert and concerned. The bow was in his hand but not the instrument itself.

Inside the apartment the weakness faded and she could see what had alarmed Jem. The warding was usually invisible but when it was under attack it glowed. It was a sort of built in warning.

It glowed now.

Lines of magic were joined by knots of runes. Unlike most warding, Tessa's wasn't purely warlock magic. There were Gray Book runes scattered here and there. The mix of magics made the barrier stronger. She'd learned that while still living with the Clave. By calling on two types of magic, she had woven stronger barriers with less effort. It was technically illegal but no one had ever been in a position to notice except for Jem.

"We need to leave," she said in a moment of panic. "If it comes down whatever is pushing on it will be able to get in."

"I don't think you can. You started collapsing before the wards started glowing. I'm not taking you out into whatever it is," Jem told her. He waved at the walls and the space in front of the windows where the magic glowed and pulsed, "It's holding. You spent months on this, Tess, it will hold."

"Were you expecting this?" Will asked. "This is some powerful defensive magic."

"It's better to expect the worst," Tessa said with a little half shrug. She just barely caught Will's concerned look before the magic shuddered and pulled her attention. She didn't need to hold the spells, they'd been drawn and cast and held on their own but the crackling magic still set her on edge. Usually if she needed to she could catch the magic if it started to fall but that wouldn't be possible today. It brought that twist of panic back.

Tessa turned and went for the phone. Will still held her hand and he didn't drop it immediately. She was walking away before his fingers let go of hers. He was lost and confused for a moment and Jem caught her eye and the silent agreement to pretend they hadn't seen it passed between them. Will was smooth and confident again a moment later.

At the phone, she dialed a familiar number and Jem caught up to her and stood close. He didn't touch her first. As the phone rang she shut her eyes and leaned. She knew that Jem would be there and he was, solid and warm and wonderful. She'd been pretending that it was over, that this morning was peaceful and safe and not the day after an attack in a battle that wasn't over.

"Magnus?" she said when he answered.

"No, me," Alec said. "Um, Alec."

"I know who you are Alec," she said. "Something's trying to get into my house, can Magnus come and check my warding for me?"

She hadn't introduced herself but either call display or the familiarity of her voice had identified her. She was surprised by how even her voice sounded. She sounded calm and confident and unruffled even to her own ears.

She was none of those things. She was still fighting back the urge to cry over Will and nothing had attacked her wardings at any of her houses in a long time. In five years, every home she and Jem had built together was safe and secure. That something was trying to batter down the walls now was deeply unsettling.

And with that thought, she was immediately angry. How dare this bastard follow them home?

"I have to go the Institute, like now, fifteen minutes ago really," Alec said.

"Oh," Tessa said the flash of anger fading as quickly as it had come on. She couldn't yell at Alec over this. Being angry wasn't going to help and so she just let it drain away.

Magnus and Jem had befriended the whole little crew of Shadowhunters from the New York Institute and Tessa had found herself spending time with them. Not a lot, not really, but more time than she had spent with Shadowhunters since she had left the Clave behind a lifetime before.

Of that group, Alec was the one Tessa knew best. It didn't matter that Jace was family or that she had known Clary since she was an infant. Tessa often saw Clary as Jocelyn's child more than as a woman in her own right though that was changing a little more each time they spoke. She hadn't told Jace who she was, it wasn't a conversation she knew how to start, and the secret stood between any true attempts at building a friendship.

None of that baggage stood between her and the Lightwoods. Alec was the one she knew best because Alec was the one that Magnus cared about. Magnus had married him. Magnus had built a life with him. Tessa loved Alec for making Magnus happy, for bringing Magnus back to earth when he needed it.

Alec was the calm center to everyone else's hurricanes. He was the counter balance to Jace's impulses. He brought out all the softer parts of Magnus that no one else ever got to see. Magnus was not often a person with a home, places to stay yes, lavish places to stay but never really a home. Tessa had never seen him build something like he had built with Alec.

She looked up at the wards. Nothing was giving an inch. They wobbled with the attacks but didn't bend. Jem was right. Now that the initial panic and rage of being attacked at home was gone she could see that. The wards weren't going to collapse. There were few places that were safer.

"It's secure here. He can bring her, just leave the portal open in case we need to drop her back through," Tessa said to Alec.

The little girl Alec and Magnus had taken in was only two years old. Far too young to be left alone. Neither of them had quite known what to do with a baby when they'd found themselves with her sitting in their laps. Magnus did not have many friends who had had children and so he had called Tessa more than either of them admitted to ask all manner of questions from the exceptionally mundane to the terrifyingly profound. How to deal with teething was a very different sort of question from how to tell if you were ruining a child's future. Tessa had fielded many of them.

"I'm not sure about that," Alec started but then the phone rustled.

"What?" Magnus growled into the phone.

"Why are you so pissy?" Tessa asked.

"Oh," he said, "Not who I thought you were. And don't ask who I thought you were. What's up?"

She explained what was going on and heard the flurry of argument - though not the actual words as Magnus and Alec talked with the phone held away.

"Should I bring wine?" Magnus asked when the argument had settled. Tessa wasn't sure what it had been about or what the decision had been.

"Only if you can find that blue label stuff from Paris on such short notice," she said. Tessa didn't have many true friends and she had no friends who knew her as well as Magnus did. It didn't need explained what he was really asking or what she was really saying.

In first years just after she had lost Will, Tessa had found Magnus in Paris. They had drank cheap wine while talking about love and loss and whether it was all worth it. The night that Tessa had started making lists of reasons to keeping moving forward they had been drinking their way through a case of blue labeled Bordeaux. It had been one of the few cheap wines they'd found that was truly good.

The first list that night had just been names of people she loved but there would be others in the months and years to come. Lists of places to see and things to do and books to read. She still had them all, bundled together in a little leather folder. She hadn't read any of them since writing them but she held onto them in case she ever needed them again.

Magnus was asking her how upset she was to have Will there. She was telling him that it hurt but she was holding herself together. Not even Jem would be able to understand what she was saying.

"Don't doubt my skills, Gray. If that vineyard still exists, I'll find it. Give me ten and I'll drop in," he said.

She laughed softly and looked at the warding again. It was still being tested but it wasn't showing any weak spots. It wasn't an attack now, it was an exploration. Magnus might be able to see weakness that she missed as he was simply more experienced. She was deeply grateful that he would come by just to check.

Tessa turned to Will and Jem and found them involved in a conversation that didn't include as many words as normal people used. They were talking through the same contingencies and worries that Tessa was running in her head but they were doing it with two people instead of just one. When Tessa had sat down to talk to Magnus, Jem had pulled Will to the side and she could just barely hear their conversation.

She could count number of times she'd seen them together like this, bouncing ideas back and forth, both alive and painted in vibrant colours. It didn't feel like a high enough number. All of the reservations Jem had with other people fell away with Will. Tessa had never seen it from the outside before.

She didn't put herself into it. She slipped out of the room and waved off Jem's silent offer to come with her. Will didn't notice. He would look up in ten minutes and be surprised that she'd moved but for now all the intensity of his energy was focused on Jem.

The pretext that she was going to check her warding in the other rooms fell away as soon as she was alone. She wrapped her arms around her waist and gathered all the little pieces of her heart together. They'd been broken and regathered so many times that it took a lot to rattle them loose. Each shard had been fit back into place and held there first with effort then by habit and then by Jem.

It wasn't her loss that left her leaning against the wall with its glowing pattern of magic. It was Jem's. Jem who hadn't had a lifetime with Will there to bounce ideas and jokes off of. Jem who kept cracking little half smiles whenever he was reminded that Will was in the room. Tessa had thought once that it must be easier to not have the weight of those years together to press on the broken pieces but it wasn't true.

Jem wasn't crying and she had to pull herself in tight to avoid doing it for him. Her anger flashed back. When the next prod came at the warding she hurled the last little bit of magic she had left at it. The wards stretched and amplified the magic. She hoped that it had worked and it had hurt to be on the other side it.

"Leave us alone," she said and sank down to put her head on her knees as the dizziness came back.

Notes:

Just take a second and imagine Magnus calling Tessa and asking for baby advice. Just imagining it makes me happy.

I love writing Dad Magnus a lot. I will probably write more standalone Dad Magnus in the future.