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Jem was rudely awoken much earlier than he wanted to be by the sound of his door slamming open and somebody shouting “James! Wake up!”
Jem was still too asleep to recognize the voice and immediately thought that someone was waking him up to tell him that Will was sick or dying or something of that nature. His eyes snapped open and he sat up, turning towards the door and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Instead of a panicked Charlotte standing in the doorway, Will was standing there panting and grinning like it was Christmas morning. He was practically vibrating in excitement and looked like he was about two seconds away from jumping up and down.
Jem rolled his eyes and laid back down. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but judging from the very faint light coming through the curtains, it was very early and he was not happy to be awake. “What do you want?” he asked, closing his eyes again. He would listen to Will, and then he was going back to sleep.
There was no answer for a few seconds and Jem hoped that it meant that Will had just gone back to his own room. That hope was immediately dashed when the mattress suddenly dipped and he received a knee to his ribs in Will’s desperation to apparently climb over him. He opened his eyes again and was about to ask Will what exactly he was trying to accomplish by waking Jem up at an ungodly hour and then climbing on top of him when he saw Will pulling the curtains open and staring outside in a way that Jem had never seen him do in the almost two years that he had been at the Institute. He sat up and, after pushing Will over a few inches to make room for himself, he looked out the window to try and see what exactly Will was looking at.
It was snowing. At some point during the night, the entire city had been covered in a fresh blanket of white that the smog hadn’t touched yet. It was at least a few inches thick by now and there was still more coming.
“William,” Jem asked, “does the snow have anything to do with why I am awake right now?”
“Oh, it has everything to do with it,” Will said. He leaned his elbows on the windowsill and then rested his chin on his hands like he was five and not fifteen. “I want to go out in it.”
Jem laid back down again but didn’t close his eyes. He was already very much awake and there was no way that Will was going to let him go back to sleep, so there was no point in trying. “You know Charlotte probably won’t let you. She didn’t last year.”
Will frowned. “She will this year. I’m older now.”
Jem hadn’t come to the Institute until February of 1874, but from what he had heard from Charlotte, Will had gotten very sick from the journey from Wales to London and had spent most of November and December in bed. Even after he recovered, Charlotte hadn’t let him out in the cold for more than a few minutes for fear that he would end up right back where he started. The next winter hadn’t had any long illnesses, but Charlotte still hadn’t let Will go outside for longer than she felt was necessary. This wasn’t helped by the fact that the cold air made Will cough every time he went outside. It didn’t mean that there was anything wrong, but it made her panic every time anyway.
“Even if she does let you go out, there are things that need to be done first,” Jem said.
“Like what?” Will asked, still staring out the window.
“Like your therapy, breakfast, actually getting dressed for the snow…”
“Well, we can get one of those things out of the way and just do my therapy now,” Will said, clambering over Jem again and leaving the room.
Jem knew Will was expecting him to follow, but he suddenly found himself laughing too hard to get up. The entire five minutes that he had been awake so far had just been strange. Will had come barging into his room, climbed over him to get to the window, stared out at the snow like a child, and then told Jem to do this physical therapy. It usually took some convincing to get Will to do it in the morning, even on better days. The fact that he was willingly having it done was a testament to how badly he wanted to go outside.
Jem shook his head in wonder and was just about to push the blankets off when he heard, “Jem! Hurry up and get in here!”
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All of Will’s shouting had apparently woken Charlotte, because she came into his room a few minutes into doing his physical therapy looking very unhappy. “Will,” she said, “is there any particular reason as to why I was woken up this early in the morning?”
Jem had just finished with Will’s upper back, the first area for his therapy, so he pulled his hands away and handed Will the bowl as he started coughing. “When you’re done with that you can explain to Charlotte why both she and I were woken up.”
Will nodded as enthusiastically as possible while still coughing. They had to wait a few minutes, but as soon as he was done, he handed the bowl back to Jem, took a few deep breaths, and said, “It’s snowing and I want to go outside.”
Charlotte frowned and shook her head. “I’m not sure that that’s a good idea.”
“Please?” Will begged. “I know I couldn’t go out my first year but you didn’t let me go last year and I’ve never gone out in the snow in my life! I feel fine right now and if that changes while I’m outside I promise I’ll come right back inside.”
Charlotte was silent for a minute as she thought about it. Jem didn’t want to say anything to get Will even more excited, but he also wanted to go. The only contact he had ever had with snow was touching it once on the way from the front door of the Institute to the carriage.
“You’ll have to dress appropriately,” Charlotte finally said. “Both of you.”
Will looked confused for a second, but once he realized what Charlotte meant, Jem was almost knocked over by the speed at which Will got off the bed as he ran to hug Charlotte. As he was hugging her and thanking her profusely, she looked over his head at Jem, who just shrugged. He had absolutely no idea why the snow had suddenly turned Will into a child again.
After a minute of this, Charlotte pushed Will off of her and held him by the shoulders. “You can stay outside either until lunch or until you feel that you’re done, whichever comes first. And if anything, and I mean anything is wrong, or if you don’t feel well, you will come back inside immediately. Do you understand me?”
“I understand,” Will said rolling his eyes. Charlotte nodded in approval and let go of his shoulders so he could go back to the bed and let Jem finish his therapy.
“I’ll see if Agatha can start breakfast a little early today,” she said as she left the room.
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Jem was sure that his coat hadn’t been quite so tight the last time he wore it. Then again, he hadn’t been wearing three sweaters under it last time. He’d tried to convince Charlotte that just one sweater was enough, but she refused to listen. Across the entryway, Will seemed to be having some trouble putting his arms down all the way as Charlotte wrestled a third pair of mittens onto him. She had already tied one scarf around his neck and had tried to put another one over his mouth, but Will had told her that he wouldn’t have been able to breathe well enough with it on. It wasn’t entirely true, but she believed it anyway.
Once she had gotten both mittens on Will and given Jem a second hat that he had no choice but to wear, Charlotte turned to face both of them and asked, “All ready?”
Will nodded enthusiastically. He was still almost vibrating with excitement, but it was much more obvious now that all that stood between him and the snow was one simple door. Jem nodded too, but his was much more subdued than Will’s. He was excited too, but not as visibly so as Will was.
“Good,” Charlotte said. “Now, be careful.” With that, she turned the door handle and pulled the door open.
Will shot off like a rocket and went barreling past her while Jem followed at a much slower pace. By the time he got outside, Will was already hunched over coughing. Jem had been expecting it, since the cold air made Will cough every time he went outside in the winter. He would be fine in a few minutes and Jem wasn’t at all worried. Charlotte, on the other hand, was standing in the doorway and wringing her hands.
“Maybe this was a bad idea-” she started to say before Will cut her off with a raised hand. It took a minute, but he eventually straightened up and said, “If you even think about making me go back inside I will track snow all over the Institute and leave it to melt.”
Charlotte sighed. “Fine. Just please be careful,” she repeated before going back inside and closing the door behind her.
As soon as she was gone, Will turned to Jem and said, “Should we make a Brother Enoch snowman? We could call him Brother Snownoch.”
“We could certainly try,” Jem said, “but I don’t know if there’s enough snow for the robes.”
Will nodded and looked around at the snow. “I think you’re right. We could try making those things that mundanes think look like angels.”
“It can’t be too complicated,” Jem said.
He was very wrong.
Five minutes later, Will was laying on his back in the snow while Jem stood next to him to make sure he was doing it right. So far, they had only succeeded in making silhouettes of themselves all around the yard and their “snow angels”, as the mundanes apparently called them, were looking rather wingless.
“I think you’re supposed to move your arms up and down,” Jem said.
Will stuck his arms in the air and frowned. “Like this? I’m not going to get any wings with my hands up here.”
Jem had to quickly stifle a laugh and was very glad that Charlotte had made him wear a pair of gloves and a pair of mittens as they muffled it perfectly. “No, not like that. Put your arms above your head.” Jem waited until Will had done so, then continued. “Now bring them down to your legs.”
He apparently hadn’t made his instructions clear enough because Will picked his arms up off the ground and put them back down next to his legs.
“No, no, no…” Jem said, burying his face in his hands. It was partly because of his shock at just how stupid his parabatai was sometimes, but mostly because he was laughing too hard.
“Oh, like you could do any better!” Will said, scowling and hitting Jem’s leg from his position on the ground.
As soon as Jem could look at Will without bursting into laughter, he tried again. “Okay, put your arms up by your head again. Now- put them back down!” he said as soon as Will starting lifting his arms up. “Don’t lift them up, but bring them down by your legs.”
Will looked very confused, but he followed Jem’s directions and brought his arms back down. This left a trail of compacted snow that vaguely resembled wings, although any Shadowhunter would say that they looked nothing like wings at all. Will lifted his head up as much as he could while laying down and looked at the “wings” his arms had made. “Oh, that makes so much more sense,” he said.
Jem took deep breaths to keep himself from laughing too hard and nodded in approval at Will’s creation. “Now you have to do the legs.”
Will dropped his head back down and said, rather loudly, “What in Raziel’s name do I have to do the legs for?”
“You have to make it look like a skirt.”
“I am certainly not making it look like a skirt,” Will said, crossing his arms. “How is somebody supposed to fight in a skirt? I think my angel would much rather wear pants.”
Jem shrugged. “To each their own, I suppose. Then the next step is getting up without messing it up.”
“That’s easy,” Will said confidently.
“I’m assuming you won’t want my help then?” Jem asked.
“No, Jem, I do not want your help.”
Will was able to sit up easily, but after a minute of looking around for a place he could put his feet and hands without messing up his angel, he sighed and looked up at Jem. “I might need some help.”
“That’s what I thought,” Jem said. He grabbed Will’s hands and pulled him up, then looked down at the snow angel.
Will brushed himself off and turned around to admire his handiwork. “Not too bad,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it looks like an angel, but it does look pretty good.”
“You wouldn’t see its likeness in any Shadowhunter books, but it does have some angel-like qualities,” Jem said.
“Like what?”
“Well, it has wings… and that’s about it.”
Will shrugged. “I doubt those wings would get it off the ground at all, but does look slightly angel-like. Besides, it’s probably best if the mundanes don’t know what they really look like.” He looked at his snow angel for another few seconds, then turned to Jem. “Now it’s your turn.”
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Jem wasn’t sure how long they’d been outside, but he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He could see the evidence of their time in the snow all around them. The snow covering the yard of the Institute had been perfectly smooth and unblemished when they had gotten outside, but now it was covered in imprints from their attempts at snow angels, a few completed snow angels, and a mound of snow where Will had attempted to make a snowman that had collapsed very soon after its completion. Jem could clearly tell the difference between his snow angels and Will’s because he had actually used his legs to make a skirt while Will kept insisting that angels didn’t need skirts.
As Jem was thinking about how much fun he was having, he inadvertently left himself open to attack. He didn’t notice his attacker sneaking up behind him until it was too late to defend himself. He suddenly felt a pair of hands on his back and didn’t realize what was happening until he was lying face down on the ground with a mouth full of snow.
Jem was frozen in surprise on the ground for a few seconds, trying to figure out how he had ended up there. His question was immediately answered when he heard Will laughing hysterically behind him. Jem rolled onto his back and grabbed a handful of snow to retaliate. Will was laughing too hard to notice what was in Jem’s hand and he would be a very easy target.
Jem sat up, pulled his arm back to throw the snow, and-
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?!”
Jem dropped the snow he was holding and Will immediately stopped laughing. They looked at each other in fear before looking up at where Charlotte was leaning out of her office window and looking absolutely murderous.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Will said, feigning ignorance. Jem would have done the same, but something told him that it was too late.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Charlotte said, scowling. “I saw you push Jem over. I told you to be careful and this is what you do?”
Jem stood up and prepared himself to defend Will. He wasn’t exactly happy about being pushed face-first into the snow, but he wasn’t about to let Will get sent back inside after waiting his whole life for this. “He won’t do it again,” he told Charlotte. “Right, Will?”
Will nodded. “Exactly.”
Charlotte looked down at them for a minute, then nodded. “Alright. But if I see anything like that again…”
Jem shook his head. “You won’t. I promise.”
Charlotte sighed and disappeared back into her office. Jem waited until the window was completely closed, and as soon as he made sure that the snow was deep enough where they were standing, he pushed Will over and ran.
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Charlotte had been trying to get work done for the entire two hours that Will and Jem had been outside, but she hadn’t been very successful. She had sat down at her desk and started reading over the documents that she needed to look at, but she couldn’t resist getting up every few minutes to go to the window and check on them. She had only gotten through one page of the documents by now and she still had at least twenty pages to go.
It hadn’t been entirely a waste of time, though. Every time she looked out the window, there was something even more entertaining to look at. At one point, she had seen Will laying on the ground and looking very confused with his arms in the air while Jem had been trying to hide his laughter. Another time, she had seen Will wrestling the head onto a snowman and looking very proud of himself until it collapsed seconds later. She hadn’t been very entertained, however, when she looked out the window just in time to see Will push Jem over into the snow. She had told them to be careful, but they clearly hadn’t listened to her.
Then again, they were young and having fun. Jem hadn’t been harmed in any way after being pushed over, and she knew Will would never purposely hurt him. She shouldn’t have been that hard on Will, but she had been worried. She knew that Will could easily get sick from the cold, and although she didn’t know if the cold could affect Jem at all, she didn’t want to risk anything.
Charlotte got up again from her desk and went over to the window. For some reason, Will was chasing Jem across the yard with snow in each hand. She was tempted to tell them to stop before one of them starting coughing, but they were clearly enjoying it. Will had been so excited to go outside, and even though she wanted them back inside where it was warm and safe, she couldn’t imagine how sad he would be if she made them come back in.
There were still a few hours until lunch. When it was time, she would bring them in and have tea and soup and blankets ready. Until then, she would let them be children.
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When Charlotte opened the front door of the Institute, Will immediately thought that it had only been an hour or two since they had come outside and she was already making them come in. When she announced that it was time for lunch, he was very surprised.
Once they were inside, Charlotte took their coats and sent them up to their rooms to change. When they were both done and the wet clothes had been left in the hampers to be collected for the laundry later, they went down to the dining room, expecting to have lunch.
Charlotte caught them at the dining room door and brought them to the library. In a few minutes, they both had a blanket over their shoulders, cups of tea and bowls of soup in their hands, and Charlotte was sitting them down in armchairs and then leaving the room.
“Well,” Will said when she was gone, “she’s never let us eat in here before.”
Jem nodded. “I guess we should enjoy it while we can, then.”
Will immediately started inhaling his soup, but Jem waited a few minutes before starting on his. He had been mad before, but now he was glad that Will had woken him up so early. If he had just gone back to sleep, he wouldn’t be sitting in the library with his parabatai and wrapped up in a blanket while watching the snow fall outside the windows. He had had a lot of really good days since coming to the Institute, but he couldn’t help but think that this day had been the best one yet.
His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a loud slurping noise coming from where Will was sitting. Jem turned to see him slurping his soup from his spoon as loudly as possible. He stopped when the spoon was empty and Jem was sure that that was it, but Will scooped up another spoonful and started slurping again. Jem wished that Will was just doing it on accident and would realize how loud he was being, but something told him that that was not what was happening.
It was probably the fact that Will was looking him directly in the eye as he did it.
Jem turned away from him before the attention encouraged him more. While he waited for Will to get bored and stop his slurping, he would just eat his soup and drink his tea quietly and watch the snow fall.