Archive of Our Own ^beta

Echoing footsteps

The sky was black and the smell of the night so familiar and pungent. It entered his nostrils, kissed his skin like a devoted lover, glued itself to the fabric of his clothes.
The night almost accentuated all the odors. The silence sharpened the sense of smell.
Will was used to the night. Like almost every evening, he found himself outside the Institute, after a night spent out, ready to recount stories of adventures and madness that never happened.
He just had to place the palm of his hand for the massive door of the old church to open ajar. Blood of Nephilim didn't lie. Only they could access it.

The hall was empty being late at night, and mostly dark, but the witchlights in the dining room cast shadows all the way up the hall.
Will heard Briget tirelessly singing one of the - questionable - ballads.

My love he built me a bonny bower,
And cladi t a’ wi’ lilye flour;
A brawer bower ye ne’er did see
Than my true love he buit for me.

There came a man by middle day,
He spied his sport and went away,
And brought the king, that very night,
Who brake my bower and slew my knight.

Will took the wide ancient stairs that led to the upper floors, and the shadow swallowed him. He didn't need to use a witchlight, years and years of walking those same steps, and having applied a night vision rune during the night was enough to keep him from tripping.

He stopped on the floor where Jem's room was. And Tessa’s, she thought involuntarily.
He closed his eyes in pain at the mere thought of the girl. Behind his lids he still had vividly painted her expression during their last conversation. Every word carefully chosen with the purpose of hurting.
Words like arrows shot with the precision of an archer.
That day, all Will would have wanted was just to put both his arms around her, beg her forgiveness, and tell her that in reality he loved her and that was the reason for so much wickedness. He was just protecting her. Protecting her from himself.
The boy, one gloved hand resting on the handrail, almost as if it were from it that he drew the strength to stand up, thought back to the words that the girl had written in the letter to her brother.
If no one in the world cares about you, do you really exist?
He felt he knew Tessa, he had lost count of the number of re-readings of those intimate letters. He almost felt dirty reading them, they were so personal.
But in an existence like his, solitude was the order of the day. Jem was all that allowed him a tolerable existence. The light in the dark that allowed him to find his way when he was groping.
Besides his parabatai, only his novels gave him respite. They were a distraction from the real world. But simultaneously, they were more than that; he read of intricate plots of torment, of blood, of unrequited love. He ran his fingers through thousands of pages looking for a story that made him feel understood.
Like Tennyson's words, I seemed to move in a world of ghosts, and to feel myself the shadow of a dream.
He couldn't call his existence real, it didn't seem like one.

A melody awakened him from his brooding. Musical notes as flowers in the spring that bloom. A harmony that spoke of death and rebirth, of growth and hope.
Will didn't know much about music, which Jem thought was a waste, given his piano-playing hands, but he knew that music well.

He took the corridor and stopped to lean against the jamb of the half-closed door of his parabatai's room.
Despite his padded step, Jem, who knew him as she knew his own heart, didn't need to turn around.
“Will? Will, is that you?”
Jem gave the door his back and kept playing. His arm moving delicately creating harmonious sounds with the violin bow.
He was dressed in baggy light pants and a collarless shirt, with a loosely knotted black silk dressing gown over it.
The black of the dressing gown contrasted with the paleness of his skin and the silvery hair at the nape of his neck.
The fabric of the pants made his legs appear even thinner and Will's heart sank at the sight of his friend.
Every time he looked at him he felt opposite emotions. Jem was his anchor, his strength, yet he was also his greatest weakness.
Seeing him so fragile made him think of his illness, and inevitably, also of his death.
He dismissed that thought. Life without Jem would not have been worth living. Jem was all that was good about him.
If he died, his heart would be made entirely of darkness, secrets and treachery.
"The one and only," Will replied.
Jem stopped playing and turned away.
"Your hair is wet," Jem said. “Did you went out? Where did you go tonight too?”
"Here and there," he smiled crookedly. “Mainly at the Devil Tavern. To be a bad boy. As always. You know, women and booze. My ideal evening.”
Will sighed and leaned against one of the bedposts.
“Didn't they ban you from coming back after the fight with Nigel-Six-Fingers?” Jem, still standing, looked at his friend with apprehension and a little reproach.
Will shook a hand in front of him as if he were swatting away a fly. “You know I despise bans.”
The Nephilim was telling the truth, he had never been particularly loyal to the rules, on the contrary, more often than not he seemed more than willing to break them. Yet Jem knew he was lying.
Will hadn't been to the Devil Tavern that night. Nor ever.
He had secretly followed his parabatai in the past to witness one of his famous night of shenanigans, but it had turned out to be the opposite of an adventure.
By now he knew that Will was lying, he didn't spend the hours either in pubs, or filling up with alcohol or with 'capricious women', as defined by the boy himself.
The revelation had been enough to calm Jem, but he couldn't deny feeling a little concern and curiosity about his friend's intentions.
Why did he make up bluster to put himself in a bad light?
Despite the curiosity, between the two there was an unwritten pact. Jem didn't ask questions that he knew Will wouldn't gladly answer.

After checking to see if his friend was okay, Will went back to his room.
It must have been around three in the morning, Will thought. The witchlight burned low. His room was further away from the others, it was located in one of the gothic towers that rose at the four corners of the Institute.
The particular location gave the room a circular plan.
His room was one of the least austere in the institute. Perennially untidy, three or four cups of tea were kept precariously balanced on the small low bedside table.
Books open on the heavy wooden desk, clothes carelessly thrown on the bed.
Sophie seldom came in to tidy up his room, courtesy of Charlotte, after Will had let her find well-orchestrated pranks.
The Nephilim collapsed onto the bed, kicking his muddy shoes ungracefully on the floor.
He opened the nightstand drawer and took out a sheet of paper.
Sentences upon sentences stood out on it written in ink. The familiar handwriting with the eyelets and the letter r written in that peculiar way he had come to know and love.
Tessa's handwriting.
Will closed his eyes, Tessa's letter to Nate between his chest and open palm, and fell asleep with her words ringing in his ears.

I feel myself dissolve, disappear into thin air…