The Infernal Devices Appreciation Week; Day Five Favorite Quote; –
And perhaps for others that is so. But you and Will—you are not like two ordinary people, two people who might have been jealous of each other, or who would have imagined my love for one of them diminished by my love of the other. You merged your souls when you were both children. I could not have loved Will so much if I had not loved you as well.
Daniel Sharman as Jason in Soon You Will Be Gone
dear heart, who knows your courage better than I?
happy holidays, @thewildhuntt!
every glance in his direction is another weight upon her heart, another night of wrapping hands about a FIREPOKER fresh from the flames, the lick of heat sizzling against tender skin all the way up to her inner wrist. she loved him. she loved him. oh, she loved them both. but theymustn’t know that. it shall be a secret she shall harbor in her heart all of life ( and she will live to see the end of time ) jem and will are so, so close, two souls knit into one, and she steadfastly refuses to come between them, to sew bitterness into such a union, nor will she stand aside from jem, for she LOVES him, too, FIERCELY, and could not bear to do such harm to him, to part from him.
will will move on from her ( won’t he? ) surely, he merely thinks he’s in love with her. anything that might have developed between them, anything at all, could not have stood the test of time. he told her so himself. there is no future for shadowhunters who dally with warlocks. one day he will find a shadowhunter girl who makes him happy, and this will be something they can look back on fondly. ( that is—- so long as her feelings for him fade with time, also. and if they do not. . . she will continue to hold him dear to her heart, glad that he is no longer plagued by such feelings for her )
their banter is entirely off and it causes her to find more interest in her tea than it rightfully deserves. when were they ever so civil with one another? their conversations are usually littered with banter—- banter and books and playful hidden affection. now she feels that he’s speaking to her as if she were jessie—- woefully uninterested in what they do as shadowhunters. with a glint of determination, her gray eyes are wide and steady when they are uplifted from her teacup.
‘ i wouldn’t go boasting of that if i were you. the pair of you have a certain GIFT for trouble finding you. ‘ just because she cannot admit her feelings for him, does not mean she wants him out of her life—- selfish, selfish tessa. so she does her best to strive for normalcy between them. ‘ but i’m glad you’re both alright. i tried waiting up for you, but i must’ve fallen asleep. . . did you get in terribly late? ‘
it was so foolish, the way his heart still sputtered at the sight of her. those warm gazes & soft touches were not his to behold any longer; for she belonged to another, now, another by the name of one james carstairs. there had been no attempt to hide the want he kept inside him for so long, that night in the library ( a hard kiss against a bookshelf, hands cupping either side of her face ), but that had to be locked away, again, again. will would have always done the honourable thing for his parabatai—would have gladly chosen jem’s happiness over his own. jem would make tessa happy, and she him. will, though. what did it matter?
don’t say that.
in theory, it would be easy: to stop loving her, to find another girl to fancy, and treat her the way he never should have treated tessa: with cold glares & hurtful words, and the belief that he never cared for her, for them ( quite the opposite, really—one look from her had begun the journey to unravel his curse, to better himself, yet... i am not that good a man ). there is no future for a shadowhunter who dallies with warlocks, he had once said, and his fingers had clutched the side of the railing so hard they left marks on his palms. practically, though, it was near impossible, even when he saw that jade pendant about her throat, or her hand in jem’s, or the way they looked at each other when they thought no one was looking.
i love you, tessa. i love you.
“you should know how equally good we are at getting ourselves out of trouble, then, tessa.” tess, tess, tessa—was there ever a more beautiful sound than your name? "would you? we were covered in ichor and blood, and... demon corpses don’t smell the best. james would have looked absolutely horrendous, and i would have looked even more stunning by comparison.”
me logging into this account for the first time in YEARS: lol why is my actual blog set to hidden??? me, still An Innocent: unlocks blog my blog: LMAO you foO L YOU NEVER FINISHED YOUR LAST THEME RE-VAMP
MICHELLE MICHELLE MICHELLE MICHELLE MICHELLE
Daniel Sharman attends Bloody Weekend in Brasil
*analyzes all 3 tid books thoroughly* *has a bunch of will herondale quotes taped to the wall* *dissects each quote & finds at least 3 different meanings in each of them*
me: *looks at notes* in conclusion........ william owen herondale is a huge ass nerd
moodboard for @cursedthisway
gloves will become an essential accessory, she believes.
the fabric rubs against the raw skin of her palm, BEGGING to be itched. sophie had properly fussed at her when she caught tessa tugging at it this morning on their way to breakfast. ‘ it needs to breathe, miss, ‘ she had said, the downward pitch of her mouth turning her scar into a white line. but tessa had been steadfast in her refusal, clinging to her glove with the persistence of a child to her mother’s hand. she had earned the discomfort, the throbbing pull of sinew with every flex of her fingers.
even now, seated at the breakfast table, she tugged the gloves down her wrists, hiding the angry red marring her skin for as long as she can, swiftly chased by running digits over the two chains looped about her throat—- at each end, one hung an ANGEL with folded wings, the other, a jade pendant. both helped to ground her, to pull herself from her wallowing enough to glance across the table. two boys. her gaze upon one lingered and even through her sadness he brought to life the ghost of her smile, the starting notes of a HOPEFUL SYMPHONY. jem.
i love you.
the other, was a glance in the briefest of seconds but it still SCORCHED her heart—- and her palm, once again. he cannot know. will most of all cannot know what lies beneath her glove, what she did to express the depth of her feelings for him. her fingers find their way beneath the table to clench in her lap, hidden. TOO MUCH. everything with will was too much. too much emotion, too many mysteries, TOO LATE.
i’m sorry.
i love you, too.
“ good morning. i trust the two of you didn’t find yourself too much trouble last evening. “
another too much. another secret, seared into her hand by the glow of a fire poker.
@cursedthisway
she had looked beautiful on the night she broke his heart into a million pieces & this morning was no different. it had been days since then but the wound still felt FRESH, as if it had just happened. before, there had been a hint of optimism, just a little, that she would say what she did in his daydreams : tell him she understood, tell him she forgave him, tell him she had always known it wasn’t the REAL him. tell him she loved him too. but none of that happened, of course, because those things were dreams for a reason. will had basically ensured she would never love him – chipping away at her heart with his cold demeanor & his uninvited insults, BREAKING what little trust she had left for him that night on the rooftop, & then hurling it back in her face by saying he meant it. he didn’t, he could never have, but she could have never known. until now.
it’s too late.
he wasn’t all right but she didn’t need to know that. the only matter was this : the walls he had built around his heart, the ones he’d DESTROYED just for her, had to be built up again. brick by brick, swiftly & efficiently, even when his mind screamed of reluctance & his heart contracted at the mere thought. he had to. not for himself but for the two people he loved most. because even though he wasn’t all right, jem didn’t need to know about it either.
swallowing hard as she sat down at the breakfast table across from him : could she tell ? could she tell by the way he looked at her, if only for a moment, that there was LONGING in his eyes ? he hoped not. the last thing he wanted to do was remind her of that night : his love for her had become a burden, one she would only endure out of politeness. he shouldn’t have been STUPID enough to hope that she loved him too but she was the embodiment of hope in his eyes. his first dream. with hope at last, will herondale.
those words, scribbled in the beginning of the book he had planned to give her, were now haphazardly shoved between one of the many books on his shelf. forgotten but the MEMORIES were still there & the ink still remained on the pages.
he forced himself to unclench his fists at his sides, “ good morning, ” then he forced himself to breathe. “ patrol was quite slow yesterday, just a few vetis demons on the east that needed to be taken care of. we probably couldn’t have gotten into trouble even if we wanted to. ” normally there would have been a flash of a smile here, or he would have called her tess, but no longer. perhaps if he kept this up long enough his FEELINGS would fade.
❛ —- You insinuated that I would answer your question despite your rude behavior. There truly is a firm difference. If you were a little more polite, this conversation could have been going in a slightly different direction. ❜ ( F͟͡E̷̶̢E͏L̸͞IN͏G͞͠ ̀҉THR̡̨EAT̴E̡̨͏NE̷̢D͜,̷ ͠͠Q҉͡UE̢̨͜E͘Ń̵̀I͢E̡͟? ) ❛ But, I understand —- indefinitely, you are only looking out for your own well-being. No matter how brazen you think you are. ❜ ( Q̵̀UĘ̷É̛N̡͜I҉̡E͏̸ ̛͝I̴͢҉S̷ ̨SAY̧I͜N̶̛G̷͢ ̡B͢͝E̡ C̷͢͟AŔ̛EF̸̴̵U͢L̶.͘͢͝ ).
She is motionless where she sits. An almost eerie stillness to the twilight monarch born of both shadow and gold. Silver flecks in an archaic mouth, ivory in her teeth —- a broken down television painting the walls an infernal gray with the lights flickered off and curtains ripped off their hooks. Her mouth presses into a gentle line, a softer sign of trepidation in the cadences of silence, static, and sound. And here she wavers; a child of darkness that lingers between the altars when the candles of the monasteries are lit and burning.
❛ —- Admittedly, I do not know as much as I should. Nephilim —- shadowhunters, specifically —- are creative in keeping themselves hidden. I’ve met very few; some encounters are very similar to this one. From a scuffle in an alley to a shared drink in a London bar nearly a century ago, I’m genuinely surprised I’m communicating with one now. Furthermore, unless you can translate the mother tongue of Latin almost perfectly, you will have very little luck finding me —- or my kind —- in any sort of translatable document. ❜
Her inquiry hit a nerve.
The air almost decompresses.
Any slight movement does not go unnoticed in the simmering seconds of filtered light and dancing onyx. She sees the slightest tremor to his hands, could nearly hear the heartbeat in chest while the static arching around her throat seldom exhales. He is right; she is bigger than what she actually presumes to be. Yet, she is oddly gentle; a juxtaposition to a demeanor normally cold and distant.
❛ You were not apprehensive around me before. Do not be now. You know me as Emily, but —- Empathy is the most familiar name I have. Created by Death himself. A nice little family we have; dinners can be a little strange when both Balance and Time are at the table. Balance insists on cannibalism sometimes, but —- she is older than I, my dearly beloved sister. ❜
Careful; one can never know if she is making a joke or not.
heart beats too quickly against a solid rib cage : he is gilt & rust at the same time, a strange combination of stars & shadows. “ you’re referring to my intrusion into your manor ? “ he said it so he wouldn’t have to say the other thing he did. the mask of CRUELTY was a difficult one to take off ; shackled to it by arbitrary bursts of harsh words & actions. a shell of a person, there were still skeletons in his closet & he’d yet to dust off the self he had abandoned for YEARS ( rotten soul & LUCIFER’S smile ). such words are a realization, giving him an incentive for him to look down at ichor stained gear, ichor stained boots. now ichor stained floor. a hiss where it had touched the marble -- the sound could have rivaled the screams of the demons he had just slayed.
“ i must say you give off quite a strong presence. i had suspected there was a greater demon or a warlock at work here, most likely the former. “ how wrong he had been. “ because the area around your place REEKS of them. ” && he had a broken seraph blade with a corroded hilt lying somewhere in her expansive lawn to prove it.
“ glamours & wards, that’s all there is to it. once you learn to peel it away you will find that the shadow world isn’t as hidden as you make it sound. ” they could have been creative methods, perhaps, to mundanes, but she was not a mundane. biting back a quip about how she ought to prepare to feel DISAPPOINTMENT from meeting shadowhunters after him, none of them were nearly this handsome -- “ your kind ? ” he echoed & the words bounced off the walls. his latin wasn’t the best, it wasn’t his most fluent language but that was because he had pored most of his time into studying the other four demonic languages he was required to learn. not that it mattered : if she had such FEW encounters with the nephilim then only select members of the clave would know about it. that or it was hidden away in classified documents & books sealed with powerful runes or spells.
hesitation creeps into his mind ; she had noticed, even the little reactions that he had trained himself over the years to SUPPRESS. his questions do not go unanswered but somehow that just left him more curious, more perplexed. empathy. time. balance. & death. the other three didn’t sound nearly as bad but the idea of death personified, like she was, struck a nerve within him. one that whispered about dead sisters. ( WHAT WAS SHE ? ) “ i never knew ... death ... could create anything. ” no ; it stole the breaths of the dying until they were gasping out their last ones. “ i thought it could only TAKE AWAY. destroy. “
✤ — a memory that involves romance/love☤ — a memory of death/loss
MEME: memory memeSTATUS: accepting
✤ — a memory that involves romance/love
the patrol had gone on far longer than they had expected it to & now they were in jem’s chambers. exhaustion had crept over both of them & will was sprawled out across jem’s bed. it was getting late, the room was dark save for the stray beams of moonlight filtering through the curtains & it was almost quiet except for the sound of their breathing & the din of chatter from downstairs that somehow still seeped through the cracks of the closed door. it was rare to have one of these PEACEFUL moments so will didn’t complain, he just let himself bask in the feeling.
jem broke the silence first. “ you didn’t need to do that, you know. “
he sat up. “ what ? “
“ what you said, to charlotte. she was only trying to be nice & you hurled it back in her face. “
“ oh, “ he said because there was nothing else he could say. he remembered. there was an argument & a few choice words had been thrown around & he had stormed out in the end ( ‘ we all care for you, will, ‘ charlotte had said and will had responded with ‘ i wish you didn’t. ‘ ). the patrol helped him blow off steam & forget some of the anger & hatred he harbored toward HIMSELF but now it was coming back. where had the old will gone ? he was a shell of himself, all harsh words & cold eyes & an inability to take back the things he had said.
“ don’t say that, “ jem replied. he didn’t sound angry but he probably was. will tried to find some semblance of the WALLS he had let down around jem & build them up again. it usually worked but not when his parabatai talked to him like this. “ && i know you won’t care, or will pretend not to care, but charlotte cares for you. she practically raised you to this point & you treat her like a stone in your shoe. everyone cares, will, because they think you’re better than this. i think you’re better than this. “
will only shook his head. “ i’m really not. “
“ any semblance of love, and you destroy it. “ jem had continued and will looked up at him, sapphire meeting silver. he braced himself for jem to ask why but he never did. he whispered, “ not you. even if i wreck everything else i can’t ruin this. y o u. us. this is all i have. “
he waited for jem to ask why again but he never did. sometimes he thought about whether the members of the institute did wonder. wonder why the little boy of twelve who had never wanted to join the shadowhunters ran to them one day and begged them to send their parents away. then harden himself, turn into the boy he was today. probably not ; they most likely thought he was that kind of person ANYWAY. never some far-fetched idea like a stupid curse. will was so caught up in his thoughts he didn’t realize how much closer they had gotten together when jem said, “ it doesn’t have to be that way. “
“ yes, “ said will. “ yes, it does. “ jem is my great sin.
jem frowned and said, “ will. “ he finally noticed how close they were because he could feel jem’s breath against his skin. this close, his SILVER eyes were like shillings in the dark. will spoke, his words stumbling over each other as he rushed to get them out, so he could push out other thoughts. it didn’t work. “ i am not a good, or honorable, you’re the better part of me & with you i’m a better person. but alone – no, i can’t, i’m not even a fraction of that. i could never be. “
“ will, “ said jem again, in a firmer tone this time. he tried to use that strategy again but this close his mind was reeling & the words wouldn’t come. they were both silent except for the sound of their breathing. jem was the one who made it into a kiss – there was a little nagging voice in the back of his mind that told him it wasn’t right but he dismissed it temporarily. he didn’t know he wanted something so badly until he had gotten it, mouth parting to take in more of the taste. silver powder & ashes. suddenly the voice was back & this time it spoke of curses & broken promises & dead children. it was loud enough to make him pull back.
“ i can’t do this, “ he said, breathing raggedly. not you, not us. i. there was a brief pause, and then, “ i’ll show myself out. “ jem would never see it but he strode out of the room with clenched fists and rammed them into a wall when he got back to his own chambers. so hard they had left red marks on his knuckles but he didn’t care. all who love you shall die. how could he ever forget ?
he would blame all of it on the fatigue later but for the moment he only hoped jem would too.
☤ — a memory of death/loss
he would never get used to the bare room that once housed his best friend. STRIPPED of its belongings, of music, of fond memories. the violin now collected dust in the music room & his yin fen box was on will’s nightstand. it was unfair, sometimes to the point where it was laughable : he didn’t want a stupid box, he wanted jem. but jem was in the silent city, robes like parchment around his thin frame – living among DECAYING BONES && the ashes of the once-living. he didn’t deserve it. he didn’t deserve any of the things that had happened to him but fate never took any of that into consideration.
sometimes he was so unused to it that he forgot : that jem wasn’t going to be there at his elbow during breakfast, getting ready to roll his eyes or laugh at some stupid joke he made. that he wasn’t going to be lulled to sleep by the sweet strains of violin music. that his parabatai rune was broken, severed down the middle, faded. that he didn’t have a parabatai anymore.
those moments of realization were when it hurt the most, when he felt the need to LOCK himself within the confines of his room & think. but even that didn’t work because thinking about it just made it even clearer that he was swimming in fading memories & that jem was never coming back. many people had whispered when they thought he wasn’t listening that it would have ended up like this either way. he was a boy shackled to DEATH by silver powder & hacking coughs, bound to be LOST some time. the path of a silent brother should have been considerably better because at least he was still ALIVE. & perhaps will should have been happier, pray in the wake of such a MIRACLE instead of moping about but he knew it would never be enough.
often he thought about how he could have done things differently to the point where they were irrational. searched harder for & found a cure. STAYED with him even as he was told to go find tessa. be there as he took his last breaths as a shadowhunter, as he took on the painful runes that transitioned him into a silent brother. he had told all these things to tessa ( with his head pressed against her shoulder & he did that thing where he felt like he was going to cry but didn’t ) and she had let him talk & hadn’t said a word even when his sentences turned incoherent & incomprehensible, she just held him. because she understood : maybe not in the exact same way, his bond with the two of them were different, but she knew what it was like to have half of one’s heart ripped out of their chest. will had told her he would try his best to mend himself for all three of them but didn’t know how well he could keep that promise.
& days, weeks, months would pass and he would have liked to think he was beginning to keep that promise. but it always came back to this : their last conversation. there were daggers on the floor & daggers embedded in walls. reminiscent of their FIRST conversation. he had told jem, wo men shi sheng si zhi jiao ; he had told him, go in peace, james carstairs. he had said in his mind, ave atque vale, a commemoration of what they were. hail & farewell, brother, because in every meeting there was some of the sorrow of parting, but in everything parting there was some of the joy of meeting as well. he understood now, finally understood the brevity of that thought. & that alone was enough to fill the cracks in his heart, heal it just a little.
it would never be enough but it was a start.
Amy Reed, Clean (via quoted-books)
There are so many worse things than death.
she had walked the earth as a SPIRIT long enough to know when she reached the BOUNDARY line, the invisible walls b l o c k i n g her out from a world that she could not touch. ( not that she MINDED. not anymore. ) she hadn’t C A R E D for that in a long time. she had what she w a n t e d. didn’t need anything else. / why would she ? she chose to stay where she DIED, not moving on. she had the d u t y to protect the place & people that she once BETRAYED. life was never what LAY in store for her. what was there l e f t ? a much better ghost than a REAL PERSON.
old cloth still hung from her body, crimson color still STAINING the front. the wound that caused the bloodshed no longer visible, the cut in her dress only showing PALE skin, translucent through death. once beautiful locks fell across h a r s h features, darker hues watching the WORLD pass her by. as she had for many years : waiting for SOMETHING to happen. the words of the other brought her head up SUDDENLY, having g r o w n out of the constant habit of being S E E N by few others, now that they grew up themselves. the voice had belonged to someone she K N E W to be gone. saw the g r i e f on the faces of so many shadowhunters. ( oh, we’ll MISS him too, my dear ! always knew he would go far ! ) the same words over & over, faces that looked to be filled with sorrow, even when they were ONCE filled with disgrace, H A T R E D !
❝——WILLIAM. ❞ words were laced with a small piece of h o p e. that perhaps she wasn’t just imagining figures that weren’t there. yet shock was clear against now AGELESS features as eyes watched with i n t e r e s t. ❝ . . how are you even here ? i’ve heard S T O R I E S of course, but . . have you seen TESSA ? or p e r h a p s even jem. they aren’t here, though. haven’t r e a l l y been for awhile. ❞ after she stopped seeing the FAMILIAR faces of people who once wanted to accept her, it took some time to a d j u s t. maybe she hadn’t even done so yet.
he oft wondered how long it had been since someone had spoken to her. G H O S T S — it was rare, even among shadowhunters, to be able to sense their presence, let alone SEE them, hear them. but he doubted the members of the enclave, even the ones who were able to see her, bothered to acknowledge her existence. he knew. when he was a boy he’d taken the full brunt of their INSULTS & harsh words & learned to not care, he didn’t so much lift a finger afterward. it was only when the NASTY remarks about the rest of the institute filtered from the rest of the din of chatter to his ears that he had to physically restrain himself from walking into the crowd to find the right person to hit.
they had never liked jessamine. she was a girl who didn’t take pride in her A N G E L I C blood, one who wished for the normal life of a mundane. one who would take extreme measures to ensure it happened, including BETRAYING the ones who raised her, the ones who loved her. it was the truth but the clave loved to bring it up, all the time, as if her betrayal justified her death. it hadn’t. because they had failed to mention, failed to even acknowledge, that she had also saved them all from certain DESTRUCTION by mortmain.
( ‘ idris. ‘ )
so he had tried to fill that gaping hole of LONELINESS for her. he wasn’t the best person for the job but he was one of the only people qualified. sometimes charlotte or tessa or someone else would ask him to tell her certain things so he did. she always appeared on the steps, always when they were alone. most of the time she appeared without warning but that was okay. they would talk about things that had happened and she would show him small accomplishments, like how much f u r t h e r she could step towards the institute. they had never really been friends when she was alive but he supposed ( he hoped ) the term was applicable to them now.
both of them AGELESS : neither young nor old. like the blurred edges of an old photograph, unaffected by the TEST OF TIME ( they had more in common now than they liked to admit ). “ i haven’t chosen to pass over … not yet. i’m w a i t i n g. “ && he wouldn’t need to specify, she must have known what he was referring to. whither thou goest, i shall go …
he was at the boundary of it, by the RIVER, but he would wait on the shores until him & james carstairs could cross together. “ i know they haven’t. i’ve seen them. tessa … she can be hard to find, sometimes. she can’t exactly hear what i have to say to her but she told me she was glad i came anyway. “ her words were in his mind & he gained a sort of wistful look as he recollected them : ‘ you’re worried that you made a mistake in coming. you’re afraid this is a burden on me. you didn’t, it isn’t. you will never make it worse, william herondale. ‘ “ it’s hard for jem to make time. the many duties of a silent brother are time-consuming & strenuous. “ he turned to her. “ how about you ? how is london faring ? “ he hadn’t been in england for a while, not since the great war.
