A/N: I kind of feel like I was dared to write this, almost. Both by people and by the text and implications in Clockwork Princess and The Midnight Heir. Anyway, this thing got angsty. And long. Unintentionally so on both accounts, but there ya go.

—-

The day Magnus finally said it, she'd jerked her hand from his own like a whip.

"Oh, you'll want again, my dear. Even if it's not love. You've been married. Widows get lonely. I'm sorry, but it's true."

Tessa had stormed out of the Warlock's hotel suite. To speak on such a personal, private topic and so callously…

Tessa tightened her fist and flinched at the memory. She bore an open wound along her arm that she knew she shouldn't budge. Not only was the cut long and bloody, but enchanted, with some demon's poison that thankfully, she knew from her books could be removed. But only by a silent brother. So she waited patiently as she could for Brother Zachariah.

She did allow for honesty and sometimes thought of him as "Brother Zachariah" with more frequency now. There was no Will anymore. No Will to insist that he be called Jem despite his vows and the Marks on his face. No Will…

Lily, the new maid, knocked on the door, "The bruthah here to see yeh, mum."

"Thank you, Lily."

I seem to make her nervous. Did you tell her that I play charades?

She choked out a laugh despite her near tears. He was doing it again. He was trying extra hard to make things easier, cracking light and simple jokes that no longer came naturally to him. Drawing on the things that had been theirs alone, and never her husband's.

The shadow of his tall silhouette fell over her like shade on a hot day. The flowing movement of his robes made him seem like a gliding water creature from the deep, and as he raised his head, she was drawn firstly to the wide, black, unmistakable Marks on his cheeks, but then to the pale bruises of skin about his eyes. There had been no such dark lines when they had first infused the stele lines onto his skin, but with time, his palor had grown pale once more. It was not like in his youth—sickly and bloodless—more like that of a statue, smooth and even.

She extended her arm, and as she did so, she realized that there was still a faint bit of Henry's glitter clinging to her elbow. She frowned. Bathing would only fix so much. It seemed that even a week after a visit with Magnus, she would still find the leavings of his favorite accessory on her skin.

Magnus. His audacity still made her burn: speaking to her as though she were some sort of animial, ruled by base cravings. It was not so. In truth, bedroom activities between her and Will had ceased long before his death. And fine—she had missed it—but she had still been happy to be with him. Her husband's age and increasing infirmity and begun a gradual process of breaking her heart, of which his death had only been a culmination. But she'd borne it gladly. Sacrifices were to be made because the one the doing the sacrifice deemed it worthwhile.

Tessa jolted back to reality as the pain in her arm refocussed her once more. He was running his hand along the open line of her skin, barely brushing over the darkened raised veins that gave away the poisoned nature of the gash so clearly. His hands were cold, mercifully cold. They would have eased the burn of the pain, had the injury not been so adverse to the slightest pressure as well.

Tessa? Tessa, please. Tell me.

"It's a minor burn until I move it, then I can feel the spell travel. The process is slow, but I assure you that I did not put this off. I know better than to let it reach my heart."

It was an indelicate choice of words, and she felt Zachariah in her mind, remaining present, but letting the silence stand.

Yes. You are very careful about what reaches your heart these days.

Tessa blinked.

"I… I am sorry. I did not mean to be cold to you."

It is no trouble.

Of course it wasn't. Tessa felt ashamed. She had been walking around in a daze since the funeral five months ago. It had been a luxury the man before her could not afford. He was bound by rules. Rules that meant he could not ask for anything. If she was clipped and short with him, he could say nothing. He had been robbed of the right to inquire after a smile. Officially. Only officially. And damned if Tessa hadn't learned by now that "officially" was only meant to go so far.

"It IS trouble. And I AM sorry. I—"

Stars and streaks of pain erupted before her eyes. Only his voice in her mind pulled her from the sudden swirl.

Lay down. I'll have the poultice ready in a moment.

He put his hand at her waist to guide her as she fell backward against his arm, eventually feeling the hard infirmary mattress along her back. His fingers still felt natural there, long and tapered, though they had not poured forth their forbidden music for nearly half a year.

Tessa watched through half-lidded eyes as those same fingers paused on her hand before resuming their work. It was a careful, caringgesture that was nothing at all like the saddened hugs from her daughter or futile pats on the shoulder from her son.

She watched him work, even when the angle of her recline prevented her from seeing his hands. His brow would still make infinitesimal movements with his concentration, though his eyes remained ever closed. But when she watched—really watched—she could see that his eyes did move beneath those lids.

There are times when you want to open your eyes, Tessa thought.

He paused. She blushed. She had to be careful about putting thoughts into words in her head. When she strung it all together, it hung plain in the air for him to see.

I have no comment for that, I'm afraid.

That was yes. His and Will's words for yes, when they knew they would be taking the tolerance of the Clave too far by using the actual phrase.

Could he open them? She did not know. He could when they had first "turned" him, so to speak. He had spoken candidly with her, and his eyes had already begun to turn a healthy dark, the likes of which she had never before seen on him.

He paused in his assembly of herbs, liquid, and rune-marked burlap to lay his hand upon her forehead. It was not unlike the gesture of a physician checking a patient for fever, but Tessa knew better. It was to comfort. Because he was still human enough to understand how comforting simple touch could be. Tessa relaxed her features and blinked slowly. It let him know his actions were effective, even if she did not have it in her, in that moment, to smile.

Hers was the only family he touched, and she was the only one he touched that way.

She knew from their meeting at the bridge last year that though he was still considered an initiate, Brother Zachariah had officially begun to make the rounds, receiving calls from various Shadowhunter families for his healing and ritual services. He had witnessed for women other than herself, overseen the final rites for men besides her husband, and healed children other than hers. But her Jamie was the only child he would tenderly pat on the leg when he endured his first Marks. Her Lucy the only one who's hand he would hold. But the face? It was a terrible intimacy for a Silent Brother to brush his fingers there with no reason given. And yet she felt traces of musician's calluses at her temple, and knew it to be real.

She leaned into the touch, only to flinch in the next instant as she felt the finished poultice on her arm. She heard the equivalent of soft mutterings in her head, things he thought mostly for his own benefit as he worked, things not directed at her. Though Tessa had never chanced wearing runes like a shadowhunter—for all had deemed it too dangerous—they had found through trial-and-error that some things with Marks upon them could affect her positively. She felt the indirect affects of healing and arcane Marks take hold, and sighed as the tingling of it flowed through her.

There. Not so bad, I trust?

Tessa snorted. She was certain she had not proved that difficult a patient, but perhaps he needed the teasing more than she did.

But then, as if still in the spirit of such teasing, he leaned down and kissed her cheek.

Such a small, innocent gesture really.

It felt like a match set loose upon a trail of gunpowder.

Mourning… marriage… a period of thirty years fell away as her mind helplessly raced back to a more visceral time. She recalled those same lips upon her cheek, as shaking fingers attempted to set her tussled clothing to rights in a darkened hallway.

Her eyes flicked to the crease of his robes as an even sharper memory came to mind.

It was past midnight. She wasn't sure of the time beyond that, but she knew it was past midnight when the gate opened and Henry, Gideon, and Jem came stumbling through. Tessa hung back as Charlotte fussed over them all and Will complained of the three of them leaving to fight demons without him.

"Then perhaps you should have been present when we were sent to deal with them," Gideon sensibly interjected.

Will had merely rolled his eyes and retired to bed.

With the way clear, Tessa sidled up to Jem and took his hand. He'd smiled at her, but she did not miss the way he continued to hold his other hand at his side.

Charlotte told them all to retire to bed, and none were so foolish as to complain, but as soon as Tessa could tie together her evening gown, she slipped out of her own room and headed for Jem's.

Halfway there, Church joined her, flitting about her ankles as she lightly knocked on the door.

"Tessa." He said it softly, but not with surprise. He could now differentiate her knock and her step from Will's. And perhaps she even rivaled Will now for the title of Jem's most frequent visitor. It struck her that such a thought might be petty, but it pleased her anyway.

As she stepped in, she noticed he was still dressed in his gear. But with his posture relaxed, she also noted that her suspicion was confirmed. Three gashes lay along the side of his armor, one clearly deep enough to penetrate, since she could see the shine of blood, even on the dark leather.

She reached for it, but her hand hovered above the wound, afraid to aggravate it.

"You're hurt." She hadn't meant for it to sound like an accusation. But he had hid it from her.

"I'm a shadowhunter." He said it almost like an apology for her worrying.

"And that makes it alright?" If it were someone else, if it were Will, she could anticipate such a dismissive response. But it was Jem. Jem, who should know that a wound to him was a wound to her, that such things should not be hidden.

"No," he whispered, cupping her shoulder with his hand, "But it makes it temporary."

Tessa gave a shuddering sigh, "The codex said that some demon's talons leave poison in their wake. How do you know a simple rune will fix this?"

Jem sighed, "Because I know the demon. It was a minor ravener, and for that, a rune is all it will take…" and something in his demeanor changed then, and his voice became less certain as he backed away from her and pulled out his stele, "Would you like to see for yourself?"

Tessa felt her ears burn. Not at Jem's words, necessarily, but at the sudden realization that if she really hadn't believed his statement in the first place, she would not have taken time the way she did. She would not have bothered to dress in her nightclothes before coming to see him. And perhaps she would not have met him in secret like this, but rather, made a point of his injury aloud to Charlotte and the others as they all came in the door. She was concerned, yes, but even her concern was far more minor than she had initially admitted to herself.

But as her Aunt Harriet once said, it was never too late to practice honesty.

"Yes, I would like to see."

He swallowed and looked away, his eyes were hidden by the bangs of silver hair that were a bit in need of a cut, but they didn't hide the pink that stained his cheeks, even while his hand worked to undo the clasps along his jacket.

It was a heavy material, so dark that it made Jem in all his light pallor look like a ghost, and the sound it made as it fell to the floor in the quiet room was clamorous enough to make her flinch.

The thin white shirt he wore underneath seemed to return him to a more human appearance, though her apprehension spiked as her eyes drew to the blatant tear of red.

He used one hand to remove his bracers and knives, laying them on a chair, but to remove his boots, he required both hands. Placing the stele between his teeth, he unceremoniously balanced on one foot, pulling the heavy footwear off.

Shadowhunters and their steles. They were special weapons, Tessa had come to understand, tools that could only be wielded by the decedents of angels, and yet Jem casually held it between his teeth like a schoolboy trying not to misplace a pencil. The thought made her smile.

Once he was down to his shirtsleeves, he hesitated for an instant, meeting her eyes. Then he bowed his head again to remove the shirt, flinching once it was half-way over his head.

It's sticking to the blood, Tessa deduced. She moved forward to help him.

How strange, then, to be facing each other and so close as it came over his head, still wrapped in both their arms. Without a word, she took it from him, and he took his stele in hand.

The gash looked deep. It lay under his top-most rib, following the curve of the one below it.

Jem stepped back to his bed, and gingerly sat down. He flipped the stele, pointing it inward, not quite touching the skin of his sternum. The pose of it nagged at Tessa, like Juliet about to end herself on a knife…

But Jem looked up at her then, and the twitch of his lip belied a mischief that quickly erased her sense of foreboding, replacing it with an altogether different sort of nervousness.

"Would you steady my hand?"

It wasn't exactly an essential request. He must have done this on his own a hundred times before, or had he? Did one shadowhunter generally require another to help them with such a thing? Tessa wasn't sure, but she placed her right hand over his own regardless.

She was careful to touch only his hand and not the stele itself. Uncertain of her origin as she was, Tessa did not take her chances with runed objects, at least not on such short notice. Despite her caution, half her mind stewed over the fact that Jem's hand was cold, and rather than deter her, the fact made her want to grip it tighter, infusing his skin with her own warmth.

The stele began to glow once it touched him. Jem's lips tightened into a thin line, and Tessa focused to remember the shape of a healing rune as her arm moved in unison with his. Her curiosity abated as she realized the answer to her unspoken question. His request wasn't pointless. The application hurt, probably every bit as much as the original injury. His hand, by the strength of his fortitude, remained steady, but his shoulders shook, and she saw the muscles of his stomach twitch, the fine light hairs along them standing on end.

She placed her left hand at the back of his neck to help him remain still, and he exhaled. Then his jaw clenched tight again, and held until the final curve of the ink-black Mark was finished.

"I've done it alone before," Jem whispered, "But the smoother the rune, the more effective it is and I—"

"I understand. Oh!"

His eyes followed hers to the miniscule scratch on his arm, watching it close like a mousetrap. Jem grinned.

"And that is why shadowhunters bear no scars."

Tessa chuckled, "Except for the obvious. Is that why you placed the Mark beneath your chest? Does it work the fastest on the closest lesion?"

Jem bit his lip, "Not really."

She paused, her voice lowering to match his tone.

"James, where do healing runes usually go?"

"On the arm."

Then why did you put it in such an intimate place?, went unspoken. But then again, the answer was not much of a mystery.

"The last time I got a scratch on my face," Jem interrupted, "You were most put out to find it healed without your help when you came back into the room. You promised to take my next injury and kiss it better before it closed."

"And you wanted to be sure that I wouldn't opt for kissing a rune on your arm in place of the actual cut?"

Tessa grinned.

"By the Angel. I am discovered." Jem replied dryly.

They laughed then, and though they both shifted in their laughter, Tessa still did not let go of the back of his neck. His hair was rougher than usual, still stiff with sweat, and Tessa noted how strange it was, that the messiness of it did not bother her in the slightest.

As their merriment grew quiet, she adjusted her grip. Her heart began to pound, out of sync with the angel at her throat as her voice returned to a whisper.

"Well then…"

She drew him downward. He followed her hand with the utmost compliance, laying on the bed. His silvery eyes were only half open, watching her with a tentative sort of hope.

"Are you going to say it, or shall I?"

"What?" Tessa started.

"We really shouldn't be doing thi—"

She kissed him. Jem spoke truly, his protests were a flimsy formality at best, and they were both so very far past caring. Her lips pressed against his, and moved with them as he opened his mouth. She could taste the dark sweetness on his breath, tempered by bitter tea.

His hands gripped her arms one moment, and cupped her face the next, and she could hardly continue to kiss him him for the way their mouths both broke into grins. She pulled back then, and surveyed their work together. He really was healing, the laceration was already smaller, the skin about it fresh beneath dried blood. She stroked the skin around it as it sealed.

"Again," he breathed, and unsure of which he meant, she both kissed him and skimmed a finger along his rib.

Growing bolder, she braced her hands on his sides and ducked her head down, kissing the newborn scar which was already fading into obscurity.

He began to murmur in Mandarin, and Tessa recognized only the words for love and touch and music.

She had seen him sans shirt before, but not relaxed like this, not with the freedom to look her fill. He blushed when he realized what she had paused to do, but he did not disparage himself. Did not insult his spare frame or compare himself to another.

And when she smiled, he reflected it back.

They kissed and touched until cat's claws on the door reminded them of the time.

There were many things still saved for their wedding night.

Tessa could not have known it would be the last time Jem removed his shirt for her.

… Tessa? I hope I have not upset you…

She blinked.

Other scars faded quickly for shadowhunters, true, but Marks did not. Marks took a great deal of time to fade. And Silent Brothers carried the last marks to be laid on their bodies into eternity.

"Upset me? No. Not at all."

She stared at his parchment robes, wondering. Was it still there? The irtaze? Curiosity had always been her besetting sin, and it burned at her now. Taunted her with what she could not touch.

Jem was the only one to trust her to guide his stele like that. Will never had. He feared the consequences of mixing Marks with her demon heritage, though he ordered custom unmarked blades for her when she insisted on fighting as a true member of the institute. After she had nagged him for three years. Will was always trying to protect her in some way. But Jem seemed to understand from the beginning that she did not break easily.

If anything, she was more than capable of doing the breaking.

She looked down to realize he was done with the healing of her arm. He was gently wrapping a clean linen around her treated burn in a smooth rhythm, barely brushing her skin as he did so.

With each brush, she felt with increasing urgency that it was not enough. She watched his thin wrists in circular motion, his closed mouth, his elegant throat, the streaked dark hair that tussled his brow and still looked soft as silk.

She was no longer that unworldly girl to whom kisses had meant the heavens. She wanted more, and was all too aware of what more she wanted. She wanted those glass-stem fingertips on her breasts, those narrow hips cradled between her thighs. She desperately wanted those bruised eyes to open, uncaring if she found light silver or inky darkness underneath. She wanted those smooth lips to move, first in speech, then perhaps in a moan, and finally in a glide over her neck and chest, ending in a whisper of love against her hip.

Her mind's eye could not decide if, when the robes came off, she would find a drug-ravaged youthful frame, or older more muscular flesh. She would take either; she did not care.

Above all, she wanted to open his damned robes and see the one thing she prayed she'd left behind.

She wanted to know. She needed to know. And without further adieu, she darted forward, and parted the parchment cloth to look.

She heard his gasp, but her mind would not inform her if he'd said it aloud or into the realm of thought.

Gone.

It was gone.

She felt something plummet inside. Or was it simply so faded, she could not see it in the given light? His firm, washed-out skin was overwritten with thick black runes she had never seen on another shadowhunter, runes that few nephilim ever saw except in the depths of the codex. Underneath it all, the faded remnant of an iratze would be difficult to see, but perhaps not impossible if she peered closer. But it was then that she realized that he was trying to pull away from her.

Tessa? Tessa?!

For all her thoughts, she had put none of them in words and projected nothing. He was in the dark when it came to her motivations. In the cold, silent dark and she could only upset him now.

A little voice spoke up in her own mind, Now who is taunting whom with what they cannot have, little warlock?

The voice sounded a great deal like Magnus.

Tessa jerked back.

Jem—Brother Zachariah—clutched the robes closed. His hand shook, and at once he seemed more human again but in the worst way.

How to explain? How to even organize the thoughts?

"I'm sorry."

There was no going back.

"I didn't mean to be cold to you, Jem. But I can't be warm either."

She left then. Abruptly. Because there was no leaving smoothly. Lily informed her when he had finally gone.

Later, she would stand on a bridge biting her nails and wondering if she had truly gone to far, but then, four minutes late, she would see him.

It would be as if none of it had happened and they would talk of anything and everything.

Everything save that day.

f.i.n.