(A/N)Hi! I have received a comment on my one-shot series A Collection of Colorasking me to do a one-shot of Jem's POV when he learns that Will has feelings for Tessa (which is a one-shot I will do eventually, I promise!). But I, being a hardcore Wessa fan, decided to do Will's POV of the scene in Clockwork Prince where he finally realizes that he isn't cursed and he confesses his love for Tessa. My main inspiration for this one-shot is the song "Let Her Go" by Passenger. I was so caught up in writing this that I literally hammered it out in one evening. I cried for Will writing this, and I hope you enjoy it too! Please review or PM me - I would love to hear what you guys think!

Disclaimer: All dialogue, characters, and some words belong to Cassandra Clare

Rain lashed against the windows with unrelenting force, serving only as punctuation for the jarring motion of the carriage over the cobbled Strand. Inside, conditions weren't better: the view of the streets was blurred by condensation, the passengers were sharing breaths, and the overall atmosphere was distinctly damp.

He hardly noticed; for the first time in his 18 years, he felt truly weightless.

Because finally, after what seemed like years of torture and heartbreak, he could look at her and admire her and love her without fear of her demise.

Elation and adrenaline pumped through every fiber of his body, filling him with giddy joy. He could feel Tessa beside him, warm and full of life, and hadn't it been for the presence of Charlotte and Gideon in the carriage with them, he would have pulled her against him to taste her, to remember if her lips were really as soft as they looked.

She glanced at him, her forehead puckering in confusion as an unasked question played across her mouth. It was all he could to to remain seated as he was beside her, and he thought, as he had for almost every second of their carriage ride, that the horses couldn't possibly move any slower. His body was taut as a bowstring: his fingernails had dug into his palms, carving crescent grooves into his skin; arms made sure in battle were straining against the fabric of his flimsy shirt, and every molecule of his body was fighting to be closer to her.

After what seemed like a frightful eternity, the carriage jolted to a bumpy halt. Like a racehorse from the gate, he bolted out of the carriage, narrowly avoiding a puddle and soaked shoes, by a slim margin. The rain had stopped for the time being, but the saturated ground gave evidence to the prior downpour. He glanced down and caught his reflection in a puddle, and the joy in his face startled him - he looked fully and completely alive. Another face joined his reflection, and he caught a whiff of subtle lavender perfume. Tessa.

In the weak sunlight filtering through the turbulent clouds, she was breathtaking, with dark curls whipping across her face, wind in her cheeks, and life sparkling in her gray eyes. Seeing her without the curse looming over his head was like coming up for a breath of fresh air; he had been drowning his whole life, but she had been his life raft, his constant, his rock. Now that he was saved, he was finally free.

"Come along," he whispered, his heart expanding under his breastbone as he took her by the arm.

Tessa hurried after him, her small steps quickening to keep up with his long strides, even as she glanced back at Gideon and Charlotte. "We ought to wait for them, oughtn't we-" she began.

He shook his dark hair into his eyes, not for an instant releasing his grip on her arm. He'd been waiting a thousand lifetimes to tell her the truth, and he wasn't about to let Charlotte or Gideon postpone his happiness any longer. "Charlotte will be blathering at him for ages about what room he wants to stay in, and how grateful she is for his help, and all I want is to talk to you." Words that he had stifled for months were rising up in his mouth, pushing their way through his teeth meeting no resistance, and he had no power to stop them, or to even think clearly about what he was saying.

Tessa just stared at him as they stepped inside the Institute, her wide eyes entirely locked on his face. He felt her scrutinizing shock, but he wasn't looking at her. Everything in the Institute seemed brighter and animated: the tapestries, the paintings, the witchlight torches. An impulse to skip like a schoolboy burst into his mind, and a lighthearted smile threatened to bisect his face into two equally exuberant halves. "I can't wait to tell Jem about our meeting," he blurted as they climbed the stairs. "He'll never believe that scene - for Gideon to turn on his father like that! It's one thing to tell secrets to Sophie, another to renounce your whole allegiance to your family, yet he cast away his family ring."

"It is as you said." Tessa's voice was serious and calm, if not somewhat breathless. "Gideon's in love with Sophie. People will do anything for love."

His head snapped to look at her, and the grin imprisoning his lips captured his entire face. "Amazing, isn't it?"

Her mouth opened, a witty, charming answer on her lips for sure, but they reached the drawing room. Lit with a blazing fire to ward off the damp chill of the bleak London winter, the chamber was warm and bright and cozy. Tessa sighed unconsciously as she set her hat on a table and started pulling her gloves from her fingers. His eyes never left her as he followed her inside, turning away only to secure the door with a bolt.

She looked up in surprise, her eyes widening first in confusion, then narrowing in suspicion. "Will, why are you locking-"

He didn't allow her to finish.

Every ounce of pent-up tension and frustration and love that had been locked in the innermost recesses of his being burst forth from him, like water gushing from a broken dam. In two strides, he caught her in his arms, each minuscule fiber of his body pulling him closer and closer to her until she was pressed against the wall. Instantly his hands were cradling her, savoring her skin as they slid up her shoulders, her neck, into her hair, his fingers tangling between the damp curls. And then he was kissing her, without even consciously deciding to move impossibly closer, but simply because he couldn't have done anything else. He was desperate for that breath she was holding. It belonged to him, and he fiercely wanted it back. Her lips were even softer than he remembered; she tasted of rain and sky and Tessa. From somewhere far-off, he felt her hands on his chest, in his hair, but the sensation barely even registered. His world thoroughly and completely filled with her.

And then it wasn't.

Her palms met his chest with surprising force as she pushed him away in a single exhale. "No."

Pain, sharp and sudden, ripped him through from head to toe, and he couldn't hide his surprise. "But last night? In the infirmary? I...you embraced me..."

"I did?" The authentic shock that flashed brightly in her eyes pained him more than anything else. A fresh blush rose to her cheeks as she tried and failed to compose herself. "I... I thought I was dreaming..."

His mind started to spin. This couldn't be happening; it just couldn't be. She had to love him, didn't she? After everything: the curse, the stolen kisses, the battles and losses - all to win her back. It had never even crossed his mind that Tessa might not love him; he had refused to even acknowledge the possibility. "But even today. I thought you - you said you were as eager to be alone with me as I was..." He was stammering now; the grand words and sweet syllables tripping from his mouth in charmless, befuddled confusion.

"I imagined you wanted an apology!" Temper and exasperation flared in her eyes. "You saved my life at the tea warehouse and I am grateful, Will. I thought you wanted me to tell you that - "

The giddy exuberance of the morning was fast fading, replaced with strangulated exasperation. "I didn't save your life so you'd be grateful!"

"Then, what?" Her voice rose, her tone matching his. "You did it because it's your mandate? Because the Law says-"

"I did it because I love you!"

Deadly silence.

Taking notice of her shocked expression, he let out a shaky breath. "I love you, Tessa, and I have loved you, almost since the moment I met you."

He saw her hands lace as an attempt to cover her slipping composure. "I thought you couldn't be any crueler than you were on the roof that day." Those lips, once so soft and warm, were drawn in a cool, unyielding line across her face. "I was wrong. This is crueler."

Shocked tears blurred his vision, and he blinked them away as he shook his head, denying her words more for his purpose than anything else. "You...don't believe me?" he asked softly, hating the vulnerability in his voice.

"Of course I don't believe you," she snapped instantly. "After the things you said, the way you've treated me..."

"I had to," he said desperately, despising himself for begging even as the words tumbled out of his mouth. "I had no choice. Tessa, listen." She was biting her lip against tears as she moved for the door; he scrambled after her like a dog after its master. "Please listen. Please." His voice caught on a growing lump in his throat and he stared passionately into her eyes, willing her to stay, to listen, to love him.

After a few long seconds, he realized with astonishment that she had hesitated and was eyeing him with wary suspicion, as opposed to shoving him away or screaming for help, like he had feared. She was willing to hear him out. But suddenly, he discovered that he had absolutely no idea where to start. All words he had possessed had left him entirely, leaving him with nothing but his wretched, scarred heart to pour out before her.

"Tessa," he began desperately, his fingers threading through his hair in agitation. "What I am going to tell you I have never told another living soul but Magnus, and that was only because I needed his help. I have not even told Jem." He took a breath to steady himself, and realized that his heart was racing. "When I was twelve, living with my parents in Wales, I found a Pyxis in my father's office."

Her eyebrows rose in mild surprise. "A Pyxis? But why would your father keep a Pyxis?"

"A memento from his Shadowhunting days? Who can guess? But do you recall the Codex discussing curses and how they can be cast? Well, when I opened the box, I released a demon - Marbas - who cursed me. He swore that anyone who loved me was doomed to die. I might not have believed it - I was not well schooled in magic - but my elder sister died that night, horribly. I thought it was the beginning of the curse. I fled my family and came here. It seemed to me the only way to keep them safe, not to bring them death on death. I did not realize at first that I was walking into a second family. Henry, Charlotte, even bloody Jessamine - I had to make sure that no one here could ever love me. To do so, I thought, would be to put them into deadly danger. For years I have held everyone at arm's length - everyone I could not push away entirely. "

She simply stared at him, her eyes locked on his face, and he watched as she connected everything together: the unpleasantness, the forced cruelties, the lies, the hiding, and then... "Jem," she whispered finally.

He had never felt more miserable. "Jem is different," he whispered, hopeless. The people he loved had never been in danger of a curse; they were in danger of him. Curse or no, he could still keep no one safe.

"Jem is dying." Realization dawned on her face. "You let Jem in because he was already near death? You thought the curse wouldn't affect him?"

"And with each year that passed and he survived, that seemed more likely. I thought I could learn to live like this. I thought when Jem was gone, after I turned eighteen, I'd go live by myself, not inflict myself or my curse on anyone - and then everything changed. Because of you."

"Me?" Her voice was quiet. Stunned.

The faintest smile crossed his lips. She was completely ignorant of the attraction of her grace and beauty and intelligence, and it only added to her loveliness. "When I first met you, I thought you were unlike anyone else I had ever known. You made me laugh. No one but Jem has made me laugh in, good God, five years. And you did it like it was nothing, like breathing." And as he uttered the words, he realized that Tessa was not only his joy: she was his life, his breath, his heart - so intricately intertwined with his soul that he couldn't imagine a life without her.

"You did not even know me. Will - "

He didn't even notice her protest. His face was fierce with conviction; his only purpose in this moment, right here and right now, was to open his heart and show her the deepest recesses of his soul - every crevice and secret and dark place. "Ask Magnus. He'll tell you. After that night on the roof, I went to him. I had pushed you away because I thought you had begun to realize how I felt about you. In the Sanctuary that day, when I thought you were dead, I realized you must have been able to read it on my face. I was terrified. I had to make you hate me, Tessa. So I tried. And then I wanted to die. I had thought that I could bear it if you hated me, but I could not. I realized you would be staying in the Institute, and that every time I saw you, it would be like standing on that roof all over again, making you despise me and feeling as if I were choking down poison. I went to Magnus and demanded that he help me find the demon who cursed me in the first place, that the curse might be lifted. If it was, I thought, I could try again. It might be slow and painful and nearly impossible, but I thought I could make you care for me again, if only I could tell you the truth. That I could gain your trust back - build something with you, slowly."

"Are - are you saying the curse is lifted?" Her eyes were very large in her face, vulnerable and beautiful. "That it's gone?"

He felt like laughing, but not for joy. "There is no curse on me, Tessa. The demon tricked me. There never was a curse. All these years, I've been a fool. But not so much a fool that I didn't know that the first thing I needed to do once I learned the truth was to tell you how I really felt." He stepped closer to her hesitantly, expecting her to step away.

But she held her ground, her eyes fixed firmly on him. He stared down on her in awe, memorizing every inch of her: her dark hair curled wildly with humidity, her rosy complexion, her knowing smile, and those ocean-gray eyes, made blue by her dress, that saw him in all of his raw, desperate imperfection. The sun was setting behind cloudy London sky, casting brilliant rays of gold and violet and scarlet across her cheeks. She was all ethereal beauty and otherworldly grace, and in that instant he thought that even the heavenly angels from whom Shadowhunters were created could not have been more breathtaking.

"Why me?" she whispered, in a voice so vulnerable and so exposed it made his heart ache. "Why me, Will?"

He hesitated. "After we brought you back here, after Charlotte found your letters to your brother, I...I read them."

To his surprise, she remained calm. " I know you did. I found them in your room when I was there with Jem."

Startled, he felt an embarrassed flush rise to his cheeks. "You said nothing to me about it."

"At first I was angry," she admitted. "But that was the night we found you in the ifrit den. I felt for you, I suppose. I told myself you had only been curious, or Charlotte had asked you to read them."

"She didn't," he said softly, then with more certainty. "I pulled them out of the fire myself. I read them all. Every word you wrote. You and I, Tess, we're alike. We live and breathe words. It was books that kept me from taking my own life after I thought I could never love anyone, never be loved by anyone again. It was books that make me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt... I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamed. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted, and then I realized that I truly just wanted you. The girl behind the scrawled letters. I loved you from the moment I read them. I love you still."

She was trembling slightly, her mouth slightly agape. Her hands were pressed against her heart, her eyes flooded with emotion, and his hopes rose. But then she shook her head. "It's too late," she whispered.

Those words, in all of their vile simplicity, were a death sentence, sending his hopes into a frenzied freefall, closer and closer to the razor-sharp rocks of reality. "Don't say that," he whispered brokenly. "I love you, Tessa. I love you."

Her eyes pleaded with him even as she shook her head. "Will...stop."

Ragged breaths forced their way through his teeth. "I knew you would be reluctant to trust me," he said. "Tessa, please, is it that you do not believe me, or that you cannot ever imagine ever loving me back? Because if it is the second-"

"Will." Her face was pained, but her voice was firm. "It doesn't matter..."

"Nothing matters anymore!" he cried desperately, his voice cracking. "I know that if you hate me it is because I forced you to. I know that you have no reason to give me a second chance to b regarded by you in a different light. But I am begging you for that chance. I will do anything. Anything."His voice cracked again, giving evidence to the tears he was restraining.

Something flared in her eyes - love? - but it was gone before he could identify it. "No," she whispered finally. "It isn't possible."

"It is," he said desperately, pleading like a child for a new toy. "It must be. You cannot hate me as much as all that..."

"I don't hate you at all," she said quietly. "I tried to hate you, Will. But I could never manage it."

"Then, there's a chance." He latched onto this last hope, desperately hoping, desperately wishing. "Tessa, if you don't hate me, then there's a chance that you might-"

"Jem has proposed to me," she blurted all in a rush. "And I have said yes."

It was is if he had received an especially hard blow to the head with a mace; his brain was swirling in confused disbelief and denial. "What?"

"I said that Jem has proposed to me," she whispered hesitantly. "He asked if I would marry him. And I said I would."

It took several seconds for him to grasp what she was saying; the entire quantity of blood from his head had suddenly taken up residence in his heels, and the room appeared to be spinning at a violent pace. "Jem," he whispered in astonishment, feeling as though he were about to be sick. "My Jem?"

A nod.

Feeling as if he were on a carnival carousel, he staggered dizzily, feeling suddenly lightheaded. His hand grasped tightly to the back of a chair for balance. "When?" he managed, unable to say more on account of the rising nausea in his throat.

"This morning." Tessa's voice was a very quiet whisper. "But we have been growing close, much closer, for a long time."

"You...and Jem?" He wanted to laugh. No, he wanted to scream until his throat was raw and his voice was gone, or break all the Institute's crockery with his bare hands until his palms were filled with blood and china. Anything but listen to the girl for whom he had broken his heart to save tell him of her engagement to none other but his best friend. If her fiance had been anyone else, he wouldn't hesitate to resolve the matter with a couple of right hooks and a bit of blackmail. But her fiance was Jem. Jem, who had lost everything: his parents, his homeland, his childhood and soon, his life; Jem who was the best person he knew, the only person on this earth who trusted him in his madness, loved him in his cruelty and had faith in his soul. His parabatai deserved the world and more, and he wouldn't think twice about sacrificing his own well-being for Jem's happiness. But this wasn't a battle or a demon hunt or a late-night outing for Jem's yin fen; this was Tessa.

Her fingers rose to touch a pendant of jade, Jem's jade, at her throat. "He gave me this," she said quietly, her voice very small. "It was his mother's bridal gift."

The green iridescence of the pendant stood out with vivid clarity against her pale skin, but no matter how hard he stared, his brain could not adjust to the incongruity of the necklace around Tessa's neck; it was Jem's necklace, Jem's last piece of his old life, and the pendant on Tessa's chest was a visible sign of the claim Jem had made upon her. But a harder pill to swallow was that he hadn't even noticed. His parabatai was his best friend and brother, yet somehow, in his frantic quest to break his curse, he had neglected to notice that his blood-brother was falling in love with the girl he was fighting like hell to save. "He never told me anything," he whispered in dazed shock, mostly to himself. "He never said a word about you to me. Not that way." His bones were quaking inside his body, and he ran a hand through his hair unconsciously to steady himself. "Do you love him?"

"Yes, I love him. Don't you?"

No, no, no, he screamed internally. This must be a dream; this can't be happening to me. In his shock and dazed confusion, a desperately selfish thought wormed its way through his subconscious to his mouth. "But he would understand," he blurted hopefully, looking back up at her. "If we explained it to him. If we told him...he would understand."

It was a horrible, disgusting thought to have. Of course Jem would understand; in his kind and mild way, he would wish the two of them all the happiness that the world could offer. But deep in his heart, he knew that taking Tessa from Jem would be the most horrible of atrocities. Jem had never shown interest in any girl, in all of the 6 years of their friendship, and the fact that he had proposed to Tessa and given her his pendant was a monumental gesture of love. In their friendship, Jem played second fiddle and both boys knew it. Jem was quiet and kind and gentle, but he himself was the bright star, full of dramatic looks and speech and dagger-like charm. He had always been the admired one, the boy everyone wanted to be or be with, but Jem? Jem had always been content to stand in his shadow.

Until now.

To deny Jem of Tessa, he knew he would be breaking a precious piece of Jem that could never be regained; his best friend would be broken at his own hands. And even if Tessa did agree to call off the engagement, he would be torturing his friend by parading Tessa in front of him like a carrot before a caged rabbit, showing Jem everything he had that his parabatai would never have the lifetime to find again. In the parabatai ceremony he had sworn to protect Jem no matter what, and no matter how hard he tried to convince his conscience that Jem would understand, he knew that the remainder of his best friend's life would be spent in pain and heartbreak. It would kill both of them; he would die of a guilty conscience and Jem with a broken heart. And Tessa? Asking her to choose between them was a burden she should never have to bear.

She looked at him coolly, all calm and collected poise. "Told him what?"

Her words were a blade to his heart, her voice the cold hand that twisted the knife deeper as his life, his will, his joy poured forth from him like torrents of blood. "Jem would forgive me," he heard himself say, from somewhere very far off. But even as the words left his mouth, he knew it was futile: Tessa was Jem's, and he could never have her.

"He would," she said. "He could never stay angry at you, Will; he loves you too well for that. I do not even think he would hold anger toward me. But this morning he told me he thought he would die without ever loving anyone as his father loved his mother, without ever being loved like that in return. Do you want me to go down the hallway and knock on his door and take that away from him? And would you love me still, if I did?"

He knew she was right. When he imagined taking Tessa from Jem, all he saw was the small, silvery boy who had boldly approached him in the training room the day they met whose eyes told tales of great loss and deep sorrow, but who cast aside his own sufferings to ease those of the cruel, jaded boy from Wales of whom he knew nothing. Jem's life was an endless litany of selflessness and hidden agonies, and in his heart of hearts he knew that, for all Jem had sacrificed for him, he needed to let her go.

Deflated of all life, he sank into the armchair, the weight of his head falling into his hands. "You promise me," he said finally, gathering what little resolve he had, "that you love him. Enough to marry him and make him happy."

"Yes."

"Then if you love him," he said quietly, hopelessly, "please, Tessa, don't tell him what I just told you. Don't tell him that I love you."

"And the curse? He doesn't know..."

"Please don't tell him about that either. Nor Henry, nor Charlotte - no one. I must tell them in my own time, in my own way. Pretend I said nothing to you. If you care about me at all, Tessa..."

Her face, that beautiful, angelic face, grew even more serious. "I will tell no one," she said. "I swear it. I promise it, on my angel My mother's angel. And, Will..."

He gripped the edge of the armchair for fear that if he let go, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from throwing his body headlong into the fire. "I think you had better go, Tessa."

"What you have endured," she said, her voice as firm as her stance, "since you were twelve years old - it would have killed most people. You have always believed that no one loved you, that no one could love you, as their continued survival was proof to you that they did not. But Charlotte loves you. And Henry. And Jem. And your family. They all have always loved you, Will Herondale, for you cannot hide what is good about yourself, however hard you try."

Dark blue eyes met gray as his head lifted to look at her, hopeless despair flooding every inch of his being. "And you?" he whispered. "Do you love me?"

Her knuckles turned to ashes as her fingers dug deep into her palms. "Will," she said.

His eyes bored into hers intensely, as if my sheer will alone he could change her mind. "Do you love me?"

"I..." She took a breath to steady herself, and he watched her fight a pained expression from her face. "Jem has been right about you all this time. You were better than I gave you credit for being, and for that I am sorry. Because if this is you, what you are truly like, and I think that it is - then you will have no difficulty finding someone to love you, Will, someone for whom you come first in their heart. But I..."

That was the last straw.

A strangulated sound escaped him, somewhere between a laugh and a gasp. "First in your heart," he heard himself almost sneer. "Would you believe that is not the only time you have said that to me?"

Bewilderment filled her face as she shook her head. "Will, I have not..."

"You can never love me." He meant to spit the words like fire, but they rang flat on his own ears. When she did not respond, he couldn't quite identify why a shudder of pain wracked his body; he had suspected that she, in fact, did not love him, but her confirming silence was more than he could bear. Fresh agony flooded his body, and he rose, crossing the room in stiff unsteady strides. When he reached the bolt, he found that his hands, which were made strong and sure and lithe in battle, were suddenly weak and trembling like those of an octogenarian. It seemed a lifetime before he found the the bolt and fumbled it open, acutely aware of Tessa's eyes on his back and the wordless chasm that was widening between them. And then, without even consciously deciding to, he slammed the door behind him as he stalked into the corridor, his brain whirling with fury and hurt and pain.

As the doors resonated behind him, he stood, motionless, in the hallway. The previous 48 hours, he had been completely electrified - his curse was a mere shadow, and he could finally win back the only girl he had ever loved - but now, with no curse to break and no girl to love, he found himself completely purposeless for the first time in his life. His life was entirely held together by specific purpose. When he was a child growing up in Wales, his only goal was to best his sisters in everything. Then for the past six years, his sole purpose was to keep the world at an arm's length in order to protect the lives of those around him. And ever since that night on the rooftop, the single thing that kept him from taking his life was his mission to break his curse. He latched onto these purposes, temporary as they were, because they provided him with something concrete to fuel his will to live.

But now he had nothing. He was broken, and completely alone.

He found himself at his bedroom door, with no recollection of how he got there or what he was thinking. Everything was muddled and murky, all emotions and though diffused in the deep abyss of his loss; the only thing he could feel, in crystal-clear distillation, were the shards of his heart slicing him to ribbons from the inside out, leaving him hollow and sore all over. As soon as he shut the door behind him, his knees buckled, and he sank to the floor

Tessa. Tessa. Tessa.

Her name pounded against the inside of his skull, like a tribal incantation, over and over and over. He was vaguely aware of the tears tracing down his cheeks, over his jaw, but he was too exhausted to wipe them away. A keening, animalistic noise reached his ears, and he realized that the sound was coming from himself. Sobs threatened to break him into pieces, shaking his body in violent tremors as he rocked back and forth, head clenched tightly between his hands. Before, on the rooftop, he thought he had lost everything, but he was wrong. Even cursed, he still had possessed a chance to break his curse and win Tessa back. But now he truly had nothing.

Tessa was gone.

And he had let her go.

Cause you only need the light when it's burning low

Only miss the sun when it starts to snow

Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you've been high when you're feeling low

Only hate the road when you're missing home

Only know you love her when you let her go

And you let her go...