Fragile Hearts (TID - Will Herondale fanfic)

Chapter 58: Not Dead Yet

Will shifted in the armchair by the side of Jem's bed. He had been here for hours now, and his back was growing stiff, but he refused to move. There was always the chance that Jem might wake, and expect him there. Nora was beside him. He couldn't be alone, and Nora was also Jem's Best Friend.

  Nora had fallen asleep, her injuries still not having healed totally. Her head was laid down on Will's lap, her hair splayed out. Will absentmindedly combed through it.

Her Brother had left, saying that he needed to be somewhere. Will wondered where. Devil's Tavern? Another party to search for his father?

  At least it was not cold. Bridget had built up the fire in the grate; the damp wood popped and crackled, sending up the occasional blaze of sparks. The night outside the windows was dark without a hint of blue or clouds, only a flat black as if it had been painted on the glass.

  Jem's violin leaned against the foot of his bed, and his cane, still slicked with blood from the fight in the courtyard, lay beside it. Jem himself lay still, propped up on pillows, no color at all in his pale face. Will felt as if he were seeing him for the first time after a long absence, for that brief moment when you were apt to notice changes in familiar faces before they became part of the scenery of one's life once again. Jem looked so thin—how had Will not noticed?—all extra flesh stripped away from the bones of cheek and jaw and forehead, so he was all hollows and angles. There was a faint bluish sheen to his closed eyelids, and to his mouth. His collarbones curved like the prow of a ship.

  Will upbraided himself. How had he not realised all these months that Jem was dying—so quickly, so soon? How had he not seen the scythe and the shadow?

  "Will." It was a whisper at the door. He looked up dully and saw Charlotte there, her head around the doorway. "There is. . . someone here to see you."

  Will blinked as Charlotte moved out of the way and Magnus Bane stepped around her and into the room. For a moment Will could think of nothing to say.

  Nora had woken up, of course. She sat up, and was rubbing Will's back, thanking Charlotte for him. What would he do without her?

  Magnus dropped his gloves on top of a table and moved toward the bed. He put out a hand to brace himself against one of the posts as he looked down at Jem, so still and white that he could have been carved on top of a tomb. "James Carstairs," he said, murmuring the words under his voice as if they had some incantatory power.

  "He's dying," Will said.

  "That much is evident." It could have sounded cold, but there were worlds of sadness in Magnus's voice, a sadness that Will felt with a jolt of familiarity. "I thought you believed he had a few days, a week perhaps."

  "It is not just the lack of the drug." Will's voice sounded rusty; he cleared his throat. "In fact, we have a little of that, and have administered it. But there was a fight this afternoon, and he lost blood and was weakened. He is not strong enough, we fear, to recover himself."

  Magnus reached out and with great gentleness lifted Jem's hand. There were bruises on his pale fingers, and the blue veins ran like a map of rivers under the skin of his wrist. "Is he suffering?"

  "I don't know."

  "Perhaps it would be better to let him die." Magnus looked at Will, his eyes dark gold-green. "Every life is finite, Will. And you knew, when you chose him, that he would die before you did."

  Will stared ahead of him. He felt as if he were hurtling down a dark tunnel, one that had no end, no sides to grip to slow his fall. "If you think that would be the best thing for him."