A/N: Italicized portion at the very beginning is taken directly from City of Heavenly Fire, to refresh your memory, and I diverge from canon after the italics stop.
Tessa smiled radiantly and disappeared into the crowd, saying she was going to bid Jocelyn good-bye; Zachariah gathered up his coat and her wrap, Clary watching him curiously. "I remember once you told me," she said, "that you had loved two people more than anything else in the world. Was Tessa one of them?"
"She is one of them," he said agreeably, shrugging himself into his coat. "I have not stopped loving her, nor my parabatai; love does not stop when someone dies."
"Your parabatai? You lost your parabatai?" Clary said, feeling a sense of shocked hurt for him; she knew what that meant to Nephilim.
"Not from my heart, for I have not forgotten," he said, and she heard a whisper of the sadness of ages in his voice, and remembered him in the Silent City, a wraith of parchment smoke. "We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss."
Alec and Magnus had come up behind her while Zachariah spoke, standing beside her.
"Love and memory doesn't bring Max back," Alec said bluntly.
Magnus shot him a look, but Zachariah gave a sad smile. "No, and I am terribly sorry for the grief your family has been given. But he is not lost to time if he is remembered and loved even after he is gone."
Alec looked at Zachariah with a strange expression, his gaze returned by deep, steady eyes.
"You don't sound like a stranger to grief," Alec said finally.
"No," Zachariah agreed. "I suppose I am not."
"There are questions Jace wanted to ask you, questions we all wanted to ask you," Alec went on, Clary nodding. "Will you ever be able to answer them?"
Zachariah hummed thoughtfully, eyes distant as he grew lost in thought. "Not tonight," he said after a moment. "Tessa and I have something of a plan, and I have kept her waiting long enough in our lives. But perhaps someday soon, when I return to New York."
"Thank you," Clary said. "For everything."
"Tell Jace Herondale that he plays Chopin quite well," he replied, smiling and moving to leave.
Magnus, who had been silent until now, caught his thin wrist before he could move away. "Hey," he said in a low voice, "Are you going to be okay?"
Zachariah nodded slowly. "I shall do what I have always done," he said, squeezing Magnus's hand appreciatively. "I shall endure."
He slipped away into the crowd, leaving Clary behind with more questions and the lingering feeling of a deep sadness older than she could know.
•~•~•~•~•~
It was several quiet months before they received word from either Tessa or Zachariah again.
Then, one day in the late fall, a letter arrived at the Institute, addressed to "Miss Fray and Co." in neat script.
Should you still have questions for me, I am in New York for the week. Magnus will know where to find me.
I hope you all are well. - Zachariah
Clary showed the note to Jace, then Izzy, then Alec.
"Do you still want to talk to him?"
Jace exhaled slowly, nodding. "He was... Cryptic, when we saw him last. He knows about my family. If I'm going to wear this ring," he said, absentmindedly fiddling with the Herondale ring around his finger, "I'd like to know the story of my line."
"And I'd like to know why the hell Magnus would know where to find him," Izzy piped in, earning an eye roll from Alec. "Come on, is no one else curious?"
"Isabelle Lightwood. You are not allowed to grill Zachariah about his personal life."
"I don't know, I'm kind of curious too."
"Goddammit Fray."
She laughed, tucking the note into her back pocket. "Call Magnus. Let's get our answers."
•~•~•~•~•~
Magnus came into the Institute unannounced and said that he would be there sometime that afternoon. Zachariah arrived several hours later, looking for all the world like an ordinary modern man, albeit dressed more sharply than most.
As he came up the front steps of the Institute, smiling warmly in greeting, Isabelle leaned over and whispered in Alec's ear.
"I stand by my statement. January through December of the Hot Silent Brothers calendar."
"If you don't already have a birthday gift for me," Alec replied with a smirk, relishing in Magnus's shocked expression, "that should be it."
"Hello," Zachariah said with a smile, a crisp English accent sounding very out of place on the streets of New York. "Glad to see you're all in one piece."
"Mostly," Jace shrugged.
"Given the job, that's an accomplishment in and of itself," he said, turning to Magnus. "You still keeping an eye on this lot?"
"Somebody has to," Magnus said, heaving a long-suffering sigh.
Zachariah laughed. "I'll keep watch in Los Angeles if you take New York?"
"Deal. I can't keep all those Blackthorn children straight anyhow, there's far too many. Now, I am given to understand you recently celebrated a birthday, my dear Zachariah, am I right?"
"I'm surprised you remembered."
"Yes, well, it was an important one. 153 and all."
Zachariah laughed again at the shocked expressions of everyone else on the steps. "Yes, that's about right."
Jace, for once at a loss for words, stepped inside the Institute, waving a hand to everyone else. "Come on inside."
Izzy and Alec whispered back and forth as they went inside.
"Iz, he is way too old for you. Like, over a century too old. Also you have a boyfriend and he's smitten with Tessa."
"I know. But he's ridiculously beautiful."
Zachariah, kindly enough, pretended not to have heard them, walking down the hallway of the Institute and looking at the walls with a distant expression.
"So much changes," he murmured, "And yet these places stay much the same."
Jace opened the doors to the library, settling on the sofa with Clary beside him, Isabelle on her other side, and Alec perched on the arm of the sofa. Magnus sat in the adjacent chair, and Zachariah sank down opposite them, still moving with the quiet grace of the Silent City.
For a moment, the room was suspended in silence.
Zachariah grinned a little. "It's not like the Herondales to go quiet so easily. What did you want to know?"
Jace thought carefully for a moment before speaking. "Why do you know the Herondales so well? Were you one, when you were a Shadowhunter?"
"Heavens, no," Zachariah said with a laugh. "No, I'm not a part of the Herondale bloodline." He took a deep breath. "My name is not Zachariah, though it has been for decades now. When I returned to the world, my greatest loss was still too new to take up my old name again. But I have made my peace with it now. My name," he said, "is James Carstairs."
"Good to have you back, Jem," Magnus said, looking proud.
James flashed him a quick smile before turning back to Jace. "My fate has been tied with that of the Herondale line since I was twelve. I was orphaned and my home, the Shanghai Institute, was destroyed in an incident with a Greater Demon. I went to London alone, and when I arrived at the Institute there... I met Will." His gaze had gone impossibly fond, as if even saying the name had the power to transport him back more than a century. "William Herondale."
"And he was your parabatai?" Jace leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.
"After a while, yes. I had to be... Persuaded. I did not think the bond would be in Will's best interest."
Magnus's brow furrowed a bit, seeming lost in an old pain as the rest of the room blinked in confusion.
"You said Will was the other person you cared about," Clary said, nearly questioning.
"Yes. Will Herondale was the first great love of my life. You have met the second."
"Then why were you reluctant to be his parabatai?"
"We were very young at the time. Twelve... I may have been newly thirteen. A parabatai bond is once in a lifetime, and it is sacred. I was not anticipating to see my seventeenth birthday, and I didn't want Will to waste that bond on me."
Alec looked startled. "Back up," he said slowly. "You were dying?"
"Yes. Rather dramatically, at that."
Magnus looked worriedly at James, furrowing his brow as he began to tell the story of two lost and broken boys meeting in London and gravitating together, respinning an old tale of Herondale heroics and Fairchild ingenuity and Lightwood cunning, answering the questions of children who had no one else who could tell them these things. He sat for hours, talking until his voice was hoarse and the sun was going down, leaving the library in dusk.
After a while, the flood of questions slowed and eventually stopped. "Thank you," Jace managed after a moment. "I don't think any of us realized how much we needed that."
"They would all be very proud of you," Jem said softly. "And of the people you are becoming. You are all stronger than I wish you had to be, and full of love and hope and light. We fought our war, and you've been fighting in yours. At times, being around you feels nearly like being home. Your family lines are very strong, and you are making them proud." He turned to Jace, amused. "You have never been anything but a Herondale. I was going to tell you myself, when you were ready."
Jace looked down and grinned at his hands self-deprecatingly. "Thanks."
Magnus stood. "Okay, run along now, kiddos, I'd like to speak to James for a moment."
"I hate it when he does that," Clary grumbled as she left and pulled the door shut behind them.
As Magnus had suspected, Jem dropped his head to his hands almost immediately.
"You okay?"
"By God, it's like talking to Will," he sighed, a bit shakily. "Looking at Alec but listening to Jace..." Jem laughed humorlessly. "I almost expect to be seventeen again, and then I come back to myself and remember that..."
"Remember what?"
"And then I remember that I am far from anywhere I ever called my home, a much older and much different man than I was at seventeen, thrown back into the world of the Nephilim with my heart cracked and bleeding and aching for its other half," he said in a whisper. "I do not know how to be a Shadowhunter without Will. I have tried, kept an eye on his family and the ones they care about, protected them and shielded them and healed them all their lives, but I still do not feel right. Tessa helps ground me a bit, but I miss him so deeply sometimes I cannot breathe with the force of it."
Magnus looked at Jem sadly, knowing all too well the effects of a prolonged life. "The best advice I can offer you is to start over. He would want you to be happy, Jem. He would be thrilled about you and Tessa. He would not want you to pine away and let your life stay cold and empty."
"I know. I'm trying, but sometimes the loss feels new. It was so muted, when I was in the Silent City, that the second I was human again, I collapsed under the weight of my own grief. I was never supposed to outlive him." Jem's voice, which had gotten stronger, trailed off into almost nothingness. "I was never supposed to lose him."
"You just told his stories until you nearly lost your voice," Magnus said fondly. "He is alive and well in your heart and your mind. Isn't that what you told them? There is no true loss if we have love?"
"I am hoping they can be better than I've ever managed," Jem replied with a wry grin, looking around the library wistfully.
"Do you need me to stick around, or will you be okay?"
"I will be alright with time," Jem said, standing and stretching a bit.
"Will you be okay alone right now?"
"Yes," he said, one hand running absentmindedly over a bookshelf. "Go. I believe you have someone waiting for you."
Magnus left without another word, leaving Jem alone with the room that reminded him of his old love more than any other.
Memories came flooding back, memories he'd not dared bring up to the children.
Whispered confessions of love on the rooftop, hands seeking each other out to reassure that yes, there he was, living and breathing and so perfectly wonderfully terribly alive, at the age of thirteen.
A hurried and quiet first kiss among the bookshelves in London's library, Will's mouth warm and hesitant against his own at the age of fourteen.
Laughing and playful wrestling that somehow turned into Jem sitting in Will's lap, on the hard floor with both of their hearts racing, weapons tossed aside and a long, certain kiss at the age of sixteen.
Countless nights of hands in his hair and gripping his own as he languished in the painful grip of a fever, cooling his skin and holding him close until he could breathe again, all their lives.
The better nights spent in his bed when neither one of them was sick or injured, just very much in love and very much afraid of running out of time. He remembered the first one of those nights, age seventeen and on top of the world before it began to crumble beneath their feet.
He remembered Will the way Will had been for him, soft and warm and loving and witty, with strong hands and a big heart and a crooked smile and curls falling into his face. He remembered soft kisses and tight, worried embraces and kind words and dark runes that bound them together forever.
He remembered the warmth that blossomed in his chest and the simple joy of waking up in Will's arms and the bittersweet relief of knowing Will would be loved after his own death. He remembered excruciating pain tempered by Will's love, and the color of Will's eyes against the backdrop of the ceiling of his old room.
He remembered everything, every poem Will had quoted and every song he'd written for Will, and the comfortable familiarity he'd never found with anyone else.
He remembered, but he tried desperately to forget the soul-wrenching pain of losing all of it as his fingers landed upon a copy of "A Tale of Two Cities."
Voice hoarse from storytelling and choked with his own remembrance, Jem closed his eyes and sank to the floor with his back against a bookcase, holding the book to his chest and whispering into the still air, hoping the words could somehow reach him.
"Ave atque vale, my Will. I love you."
A/N: *posts at 11:59* Sorry for the angst! See you tomorrow for Day 4!