Chapter Text
“So? There's two of us and one of you, and whenever we feel like it, we can be three. That's love too, you know.”
S. Dora, Three
Will slams the door to the drawing room behind him, pausing for only a few moments as if waiting for Tessa to call after him. But there is only silence from behind him, and would Will could shut all the agony of his wounded heart up behind him as easily as he can shut a simple door.
There is some vague plan in his head to go to Jem, as if his parabatai is the lodestone drawing him ever back to true north and the path he ought to walk. But no sooner has the idea appeared in his head does he see Jem coming towards him down the corridor. There is a conversation they need to have, Will knows, somewhere far more private than the corridor just down from the drawing room.
“Is Tessa in there?” Jem asks. “I knocked on her bedroom door, but there was no reply.” Will feels as though he cannot speak, his throat locked tight, but he manages a nod. The smile that breaks over Jem’s face is like the first light of dawn coming over the horizon; Will does not know, how he could have been so blind. “I was opening the case of my violin when I considered, what sort of man would rather be at his music than spend time with so lovely a fiancée?”
“Quite so,” Will replies, his mouth full of the jagged edges of the words he cannot bring himself to say. Not to Jem, dearer to him than his own blood and bones and breath, the better half of his soul. He could not imagine any other more worthy to be Tessa’s husband, since she is never to be Will’s own.
Jem opens his mouth again to continue, but the words are lost in the scream that echoes down the hall. Near, far too near, and Will’s thinks Tessa even as he sees dawning horror, a twin expression to his own, cross Jem’s face.
They move together, as one, the way they always do in battle. Will is fumbling for the weapons’ belt he does not have and Jem is nearly barrelling the door down in his haste to get to Tessa. And oh, the sight of her crumpled on the floor, crying as though the world has ended – there is nothing in him that could endure the sight of that.
“Tessa,” he says, but Jem is faster; his silver hair in disarray, his face a mask of terror and bewilderment, he crosses the room in a few brief strides to crouch beside Tessa on the floor. Will can only watch, helpless, feeling like an interloper and a voyeur as Jem touches Tessa gently on the shoulder, murmuring things in a soft comforting tone that Will cannot for the life of him hear from so far away.
Tessa’s reaction is immediate. She pushes herself away from Jem, as though she cannot bear to have him near her. She is almost in the fire, and confusion and sorrow has darkened Jem’s face. “Come away from there, Tessa, I beg of you,” he says in a low voice, his hands on Tessa’s shoulders, trying to pull her away from the blaze. Will turns away, unable to endure the sight of Jem’s hands on Tessa, and sees Sophie poke her head around the doorway.
“What on earth is going on here?” she asks, and Will hushes her sharply, an act she takes none too kindly to.
“Jem has things well in hand,” Will informs Sophie quietly, and the maid glares at him.
“Then why are you here?” she asks acerbically, and Will has no answer. Still, she goes, pulling the door firmly shut behind her, and Will turns back to find that Jem has manages to pry Tessa away from the fire. Will feels sick all the way through his body, as though he has brought this sudden malaise of the spirit onto her through the verbalisation of his ardour for her. Although Will knows well he should leave, he can’t help but edge closer to his parabatai and his parabatai’s fiancée.
“By the Angel, Tessa,” Jem says, his voice low and pleading, “by God himself, please tell me what ails you. Let me help.” Will is horrified to realise the awful noise coming out of Tessa’s throat is a laugh, perverted as it is by the tears thickening her voice.
“You cannot help,” she says, her hands over her face. Never has Will seen Tessa give herself so thoroughly over to grief; not when her brother died, or when he betrayed her. She seems to have completely given up on hiding her feelings; this unabashed sorrow is very unlike Tessa. Will considers it must be a great torment to her, whatever it is; the worst kind of soul-ache, to rid her so exhaustively of her composure.
“Of course I can help,” Jem says. “I am your fiancée, I’m to be your husband. It’s my responsibility to look after you.” If anything, Tessa only sobs harder, and Jem looks up at Will helplessly. I don’t know what to do, his eyes say, and Will can only shrug harder.
“Jem,” Tessa says, and Will’s focus snaps back to her. “I don’t deserve you. I can’t lie to you any longer.” Rigid with horror, Will attempts to catch her gaze, but her eyes are fixed firmly on Jem.
“Lie?” echoes Will’s parabatai, a thread of something unknown entering his voice. “What do you mean?” Tessa’s sobbing has abated, but tears still trickle down her face. Against his volition Will steps closer, his shadow falling over the couple on the floor, and Jem looks up. The firelight glints upon his silver hair and his coin-bright eyes, now darkening with something like revelation. “Tessa,” Jem says, his voice as cold as Will has ever heard it, “What do you mean when you say you can no longer lie to me?”
Tessa turns her head to look up at Will and, like prey staring into the eyes of a snake, he is frozen into place. How long they communicate only with their eyes, each unable to look away from the other, Will does not know. The silence is only broken by the low noise of dumb animal pain that is ripped from Jem’s throat, a moan of torment that transcends humanity and demons and all that crawls or swims or flies on the surface of God’s earth. It snaps the invisible cord between Tessa and Will, frees them from their momentary fixation.
Will takes a look at Jem, and wishes he hadn’t. His parabatai is as pale as the grave, his skin stretched over his cheekbones tight as a drum, his eyes darting between Will and Tessa, putting two and two together and coming up with five. Tessa is reaching out to touch Jem, but he pulls away from her sharply, rises to his feet. There is still enough gentleman in him to assist Tessa up as well, but the moment she is standing upright, he drops her hand as if one burned.
“Tell me it is not true,” Jem says in a low, controlled voice. “That there is nothing but friendship between you both. That my parabatai is not in love with my fiancée, and she is not in love with him. Tessa –” Jem’s voice breaks, his fists twitching at his sides. “Tell me, please, quin ai de, do you love Will?”
“Yes,” Tessa says immediately, her breath leaving her in a great rush, as though a vast weight has been lifted from her shoulders. Jem, on the other hand, flinches as though he’s been struck, hard, somewhere around the region of his chest. And Will? Will cannot hear a thing through the rush of air in his ears. Tessa. Tessa loves him. “Jem, please, say something,” Tessa is pleading, and Will comes back to himself at just the right moment to feel the whistle of air past him as Jem storms from the room, slamming the door as Will himself had done only a few minutes prior. Has it only been a few minutes? It feels like forever, and like no time at all.
“Oh, God,” Tessa says softly, and Will itches to go to her, to wrap her in his arms and kiss the tears from her cheeks. But even if she loves him, she has promised Jem. She is no longer Will’s to comfort. So instead he watches mutely as Tessa gropes for a nearby armchair and sits down hard. “Jem will never forgive me,” she says quietly, and Will opens his mouth to contradict her, to offer some meagre measure of comfort. But despite his best intentions, what comes out of his mouth is something completely different.
“You love me,” Will says, watching Tessa’s drawn face for any flicker of doubt. When none comes, and Tessa nods, Will continues. “And you love Jem. You love us both, equally, not one more than the other.” Tessa flinches back into the shadows of the chair, but her spine is straight; her voice, when it comes, is level.
“I cannot help it,” she says softly. “If I could give myself to both of you, I would.” Her breath hitches. “There must be something wrong with me. To be capable of loving two people, equally – perhaps it is the demon in me. A taint on my soul, one that can never be scrubbed away.”
“Tess, no!” Will says in shock. “There is no taint on your soul. You know that.” Tessa finally looks at him, her face red and blotchy from crying, her eyes wounded and aching, like bruises set into her face.
“Tell that to Jem,” she replies.