He forgot entirely about Zoya.
There was training for this but he had never had to use it. He always had a stele handy. Icy panicked calm settled over him. The feeling he associated with seeing Jem go down in a battle. He tore back her clothing to find a gash high on her stomach.J ust below her ribs. Angry torn skin and far to much blood. Deep. He held onto the calm. Folded his shirt into something like a compress. Tried to slow down the bleeding.
"Tess?" he said. He sat as close to her as he dared in case he injured her more. Though her eye lids fluttered at her name she didn't answer. He leaned down to talk to her in a soft even voice. As calm as he could be, "It will be alright Tess. Look at me."
"Jem?" she muttered.
"He's not here yet, he'll be here soon," Will told her.
His head snapped up to look at the street. Zoya was gone. She was either still in the road or had made a run for it. In her place a blue skinned warlock with snow white hair was skidding to a stop beside them. She looked over the scene and the blood and then turned on her heel to scan the rest of the street before dropping to her knees beside Will in the pool of Tessa's blood.
"What happened?" she asked brusque and to the point.
"Do not touch her," Will said when she reached for Tessa.
"Herondale right?" she said, "Your whole family is stubborn and over-protective aren't the? She's currently bleeding to death. I can fix that problem, you can't."
"Who are you?" Will said. His defensiveness wasn't dropping. He had no idea who this woman was. He wasn't prepared to let her touch Tessa without some sort of proof that she was on the right side. He was keyed up for a fight and his mind was still caught in the stark black and white lines of battle: us versus them.
"Catarina!" someone else answered the question and they both looked up to see Jace appear on the corner. Black and gold and moving fast, he barely slowed down to ask, "Where'd she go?"
"No idea," Catarina said. Will glanced between Jace and the blue skinned woman for just a second before sitting back. Catarina was not paying attention to Jace nor Clary who was only a few seconds behind him. They tore off towards the street in search of Zoya. Catarina took the shirt he had had in his hands and moved it away so she could poke a few times at Tessa's wound which pulled a soft hurt sound from her that almost made Will let loose a litany of threats. He reasoned himself down from it. He didn't have any medical training and what he did have had been washed away in the panic that still hung around him.
Catarina on the other hand carried a bag and dealt with everything with sure, deft hands as though this was just another day. Will wondered what kind of medical training she had but trying to distract himself with thoughts like that didn't work. Something happed and Tessa flinched a little. His fingers were blood soaked but he ran them through her hair anyways whispering things in Welsh that he didn't want to say in front of a stranger.
"Was it a runed blade?" Catarina asked.
"Yes," Will said.
"That explains all the blood," she said and kept working. The blood had slowed but it was everywhere. Whatever Catarina was doing was working but Tessa was pale and reacted less and less. Her fingers weren't moving anymore, they lay limp on the concrete and Will gathered them up in his hand. Her skin was too cool but she was still breathing.
"Is she going to recover?" Will asked and though he had managed to bite back the angry demands that she fix it immediately the anger was there in his voice.
"She's managed to drain a lot of her energy as well as getting stabbed by a Shadowhunter weapon designed to kill things as efficiently as possible, but stomach wounds aren't usually fatal so once the bleeding is stopped, yes, she will recover," Catarina said.
Will nodded and watched as Catarina sealed the wound and added something that smelled of mint and something more acrid. Tessa flinched again and Catarina said something gentle Will didn't catch. There was no more blood seeping through the salve and though shallow, Tessa's breathing had settled to an even rhythm.
Beyond Tessa and the barrier Will's panic had cast over his attention, things were happening. There were more people on the street now. Glamours were being drawn to push the mundanes away. Will barely noticed. He sat with Tessa. He gave short answers when asked questions managed to say thank you when someone found a blanket to cover her and handed him an extra t-shirt.
"You need to get inside," Jace said coming to sit down beside him, "If she comes back or sends something else after you, you probably won't survive it twice. No one's that lucky, not even Herondales."
"I'm not leaving her," Will said and was surprised by how even his voice was. He hadn't managed to pull himself back from that iced over panic and probably wouldn't until she was awake but he sounded collected. Jace looked between them with a very small frown on his face. Will couldn't see himself when he looked at Jace but when he looked like that, he could see his father. He wasn't sure what it was. It might have been the shape of his face or the expression itself but Will looked up and for a moment saw Edmund and homesickness washed through him.
"You love her," Jace said.
Will considered lying but it didn't seem worth it. He nodded. Jace dropped himself down onto the pavement beside them. Will sat with Tessa's head cradled in his lap while Catarina made a telephone call about getting her moved to someplace safer. Jace sat down at Will's shoulder, facing the street with his sword still at hand.
"You aren't going to be any good for defending yourself like that," Jace said. Will felt a deep affectionate wave of gratitude for this man, this stranger who was somehow family.
Will ran his fingers over Tessa's face. He could feel Jace's attention on him but he couldn't care. "Not going to give me any advice about not falling in love with my best friend's wife?" Will asked. He hadn't had a chance to say it aloud to anyone but Tessa herself. He'd never even really said it to Jem though they both knew. Even now that everything was different he felt surprisingly grateful to have it not be a secret.
"I do not give advice about falling in love with the wrong person. I wrote the book on falling in love with the wrong person, I just got lucky," Jace said and Will couldn't see what he was looking at from that angle but he could assume it was a young woman with bright red hair.
There was a brief hostile argument wherein Will refused to leave her so she could be transported to the hospital. He was too much of a danger to be put in a hospital with other patients in the building. Truly, he was too much a danger to be allowed to stay on a street full of mundanes but he was too stubborn to leave though he did not want to bring down an attack on other people. He was about to give up arguing to stay with Tessa when Catarina came to his defense saying there was little to be done in a hospital that couldn't be done out of one.
"It won't do to have her there either. She's as much of a target as you are," Catarina said.
"What makes you think that?" Will asked.
"Zoya tried to kill the two of you with a knife," Catarina said and it took Will a moment to understand as she continued, "Knife fights are usually personal. You go after someone with a knife if you want them hurt. Zoya was the stronger warlock. If she had used magic, she would have been able to tear through Tessa's defenses pretty quickly. You'd both be dead if the attack hadn't been physical. She attacked with stolen knife she'd pulled out of her own body. That was a terrifying sort of rage."
Will hadn't thought of it in quite those terms, he was still close to that panicked state but now he found himself worrying more deeply.
Catarina came along with Jace and Clary when they moved them in the back of a commandeered van driven by Simon. They weren't going home. He was surprised to realize he thought of the apartment like that. Their home perhaps but still it was the closest thing he'd had had to that word in a long time. If he could have thought of a way to guarantee that they weren't going to bring death down on Tessa and Jem's neighbours he might have demanded it. As he couldn't, they were headed to the Institute. Again.
To Will's relief, Tessa got a room rather than a bed in the infirmary. Once she was settled Catarina left and Jace wasn't far behind her. Will settled down in a chair and stared at her and tried to settle his heart. She was better than a hundred and fifty years old and he had very nearly gotten her killed. Her blood was still on his hands and his borrowed shirt for no other reason than because he'd been there.
The curse wasn't real. The demon had said, "all those who love you will die," but it wasn't real. It felt like he was in a precarious position of being able to make it true simply by existing in this time and this place. He could bring death down on them just by being there.
Jem appeared in the room as Will's thoughts were spiraling down into worries that he couldn't quite control. Will heard the door and leaned around the arm of the chair to look at the intruder. When he saw who it was he was up and crossing the space before he'd made the conscious decision to do so. Jem looked normal, not blood soaked or disheveled or in any other way hurt. Will chest eased just to see him.
"She's recovering, she's going to be fine," Will said.
"Are you hurt?" Jem asked catching his face between his hands. Will still wasn't quite used to Jem's touching him like this. Gentle and careful and drenched in emotion. Once they were touching he relaxed but each time Jem started it Will's heart jumped sideways.
"Me?" Will asked.
"Everyone, since I came through the door, since I phoned Jace for an explanation, everyone has promised me that she is recovering and that she is fine. No one has told me anything about you," Jem said pulling him a little closer. He was more than worried, his expression bordered on distraught. Will wondered if this was another moment of emotional instability. He stepped in a little closer so they were almost touching in the hopes that being close had the same effect on Jem. His nearness was calming and exhilarating all at once.
"I'm fine, minor injuries," Will said reaching up to take Jem's hands down and hold them in his own. Jem leaned in and pressed his forehead to Will's. They only stayed like that for a few moments before Jem was steady enough to look over his shoulder at Tessa. He crossed the room to sit down on the bed beside her and touch her hand with just his finger tips like she were made of glass.
Will told him the story as he touched her hands and smoothed her hair and started to calm. It was a little like watching the construction of a building. He watched Jem build back up all the pieces of himself around his chaotic emotions. There were other defenses he left down. This wasn't Zachariah, this wasn't even the public Jem that the Shadowhunters treated with such deference. This was calm, collected, normal Jem. Will smiled to himself as he watched him because normal wasn't quite the right adjective for James Carstairs on any day.
Jem had been driving when Tessa's messages had gone out and he hadn't gotten them until he'd stopped at a little restaurant outside the city to eat. He claimed driving helped him think and process everything that had happened in the past few days. As he'd said that he reached out to touch Will's hair as though reminding himself of the things that had happened in the past few days.
It had only been a few days. It had really only been a few days since Will had been pulled into this century. So short and yet it had changed him. He felt different. He liked it, this person he could imagine himself becoming but he didn't quite understand it yet.
The personality-less room was exactly the same as Will's own a floor above and it could have been a room in any Institute in any century. If they'd all gone and dressed up properly, Will couldn't shake thinking of it as properly, it would have looked like it belonged Then. This room looked as it would have in 1878, the details were a little different but the heavy wood furniture was older even than that and the modern conveniences of the bathroom or the central heating were hidden away.
"Do you miss it?" Will asked and Jem looked at him but waited for him to explain his train of thought before answering. Will waved his hands, "The world as it used to be."
"Yes," Jem said. "I haven't lived in the centuries as Tessa did. I watched it from a distance. I wasn't really a part of the 1920s or the 1980s or anything else between the day I joined the Brothers and that day at the Iron Citadel. It was a little like waking into a world that felt like I'd dreamed it up. I'd imagined a world of cars and cellphones and transcontinental aircraft. I spent a lot of time imagining as Zachariah. It was a way to hold on to who I had been," he smiled just a little as he amended, "Who I would be again. I still don't always believe that this world is entirely real."
"Like if you peel back enough layers of it the regular world is beneath it, still full of horse drawn carriages and fog like soup and people dressing in proper clothing," Will said.
"Yes, like that," Jem agreed.
Will went to change so he wasn't sitting in jeans soaked in stiffening blood stains. Exhaustion swept him once he was alone. It wasn't physical. It was like his heart was tired. He stared at the plain timeless space for a few minutes and his eye caught on the pile of books from Tessa. He chose a few options and one of Simon's comic books before going back downstairs. His emotions rattled around inside his chest like trinkets loose in a the hull of a ship. The storm was worse when he wasn't with them.
Jem had settled in atop the blankets beside her and was just watching her sleep. She looked like she was sleeping now that her colour was back and her breathing deeper. Will paused in the doorway and Jem waved him over before he could offer to leave them alone.
"What'd you bring for story time?" Jem asked.
Will showed him titles and Jem pulled him over so he sat on the bed with them. Each time he found himself in a situation that felt like theirs he had that moment of discomfort. A sense that he did not truly belong there and someone was going to ask him to leave. Or worse, that they wished he would and were too polite to ask it of him. Jem's words about "we" being bigger than just two people came back to him and he sat down with his back against the foot board. Will stretched his legs out and rested his knee against Jem's where they crossed about halfway down. It was just a little bit of contact, the kind he'd started craving long before he'd considered how much closer it might be possible to have Jem.
Will pushed all the other worries aside and read aloud. It was a favourite habit. He had read to Jem when they were young and Jem had groaned at just about every piece of poetry until Will had started taking pride in digging up the most sentimental drivel possible. Jem would settle down and listen to a story though, provided he thought it was a good one with sufficient fight scenes and drama.
Will had, when his mental strength failed to stop them, reoccurring day dreams of curling up with Tessa so they could read aloud, passing a book back and forth and taking turns to explore a story together. As he started with the sentence, "There is one mirror in my house," and Jem added little bits of commentary as he read, he found himself expanding the fantasy. He imagined curling up with Tessa against his chest, passing the book back and forth while Jem editorialized and cuddled in as he had that morning.
He pushed worries about furious, murderous warlocks down and moved his leg so it lay over Jem's and let himself get lost in words and stories and the newly expanded sense of who "we" really meant. This was what he had to protect and he wasn't going to be caught unprepared and improperly armed again.