![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Title: Inevitable Passing
Fandom: The Infernal Devices
Rating: PG
Word Count: 400 exactly
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Since Tessa could not let go of the two ghosts that haunted her past, they eventually came for her. Will/Tessa/Jem for a prompt on Tumblr.
The vice around her heart is too tight for her to care if they are real or not. When she blinks and catches the merest glance of Will’s curling black hair out of the corner of her eye, she starts. Every fiber of her body coming alive the way her very soul has not for the past two hundred years. Will has always been the first to catch attention, but once she breathes deeply and sits still, she can feel Jem’s presence like a tangible warmth against her back.
She goes to the nearest library, a place of quiet and dry dust—and among the shadowy stacks she finds Vathek, Byron, and A Tale of Two Cities. There are marks on the pages. Scrawled attempts at mediocre poetry in the first, circling of beloved passages in the second, and bookmarking rips at every page pertaining to Sydney Carton in the third. The ancient books smell of ancient books—as well they should—but they also cary the faintest essence of holy water and blood.
She finds a window seat corner and curls against it, leaning her head against the window. The pane is cold against her ear, but even as she flinches, she pulls closer. Music drifts through. A sidewalk performer with a gift for Bach. The tang of burnt sugar mixes with the mustiness of fragile paper. She closes her eyes and swears that she feels long thin fingers entwining with her hand, brushing her thigh… Endearments whisper through her mind. Gentle, joyous, and ultimately passionate, an interwoven symphony of Mandarin and her native tongue.
She never opens her eyes. Rather, she chooses to let the reality before her slip away, and at once, she can see those sharp blue eyes she has missed so long and so well. Her fingers run through silken silver, and runes surround her in all the glory of their mystic ink and half-healed flesh.
All at once, Tessa Gray is home.
And Tessa Gray is no more.
When the rare stranger passes by that tiny corner, and that drafty window-seat, she finds a strange scattering of material. Dusty dog-eared copies of well-read tomes. A jade pendant with it’s original luster long-fled, marking the place of a love-sick poem. And at the center of the cobweb, a device of copper and gears, still attached to a dangling chain.
A clockwork angel, incessantly ticking as if infernally possessed.

[*] [*] [*] [*]
Fandom: The Infernal Devices
Rating: PG
Word Count: 400 exactly
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Since Tessa could not let go of the two ghosts that haunted her past, they eventually came for her. Will/Tessa/Jem for a prompt on Tumblr.
The vice around her heart is too tight for her to care if they are real or not. When she blinks and catches the merest glance of Will’s curling black hair out of the corner of her eye, she starts. Every fiber of her body coming alive the way her very soul has not for the past two hundred years. Will has always been the first to catch attention, but once she breathes deeply and sits still, she can feel Jem’s presence like a tangible warmth against her back.
She goes to the nearest library, a place of quiet and dry dust—and among the shadowy stacks she finds Vathek, Byron, and A Tale of Two Cities. There are marks on the pages. Scrawled attempts at mediocre poetry in the first, circling of beloved passages in the second, and bookmarking rips at every page pertaining to Sydney Carton in the third. The ancient books smell of ancient books—as well they should—but they also cary the faintest essence of holy water and blood.
She finds a window seat corner and curls against it, leaning her head against the window. The pane is cold against her ear, but even as she flinches, she pulls closer. Music drifts through. A sidewalk performer with a gift for Bach. The tang of burnt sugar mixes with the mustiness of fragile paper. She closes her eyes and swears that she feels long thin fingers entwining with her hand, brushing her thigh… Endearments whisper through her mind. Gentle, joyous, and ultimately passionate, an interwoven symphony of Mandarin and her native tongue.
She never opens her eyes. Rather, she chooses to let the reality before her slip away, and at once, she can see those sharp blue eyes she has missed so long and so well. Her fingers run through silken silver, and runes surround her in all the glory of their mystic ink and half-healed flesh.
All at once, Tessa Gray is home.
And Tessa Gray is no more.
When the rare stranger passes by that tiny corner, and that drafty window-seat, she finds a strange scattering of material. Dusty dog-eared copies of well-read tomes. A jade pendant with it’s original luster long-fled, marking the place of a love-sick poem. And at the center of the cobweb, a device of copper and gears, still attached to a dangling chain.
A clockwork angel, incessantly ticking as if infernally possessed.

[*] [*] [*] [*]