This chapter isn't much, but I thought since I hadn't posted in a while, I'd just put this up so I could ask you guys, because I hate when authors post Author's Notes with no content. But seriously, you guys gotta give me some ideas of what you want. I'm kinda running out here. I can do some from the children's POV. Maybe them meeting their Parabatai or something. I can also just do some cute scenes of like Church and the children or them visiting Uncle Magnus or Uncle Jace or something. Some scenes where Jem is teaching violin or Tessa is reading a story. I have an idea for the next chapter, that I really want to post because I think it's an adorable idea and I'm excited to write it. I think Wessa fans will also appreciate this next one (as well as Jessa fans). This is just an inbetweener.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sometimes it was hard to remember that it was real. For so long happiness was only something that Jem could find in dreams and brief wishes of a future he knew he could never have. When he had been young, and even in the early years on the Brotherhood, he had dreamed of this future. Of being married to Tessa, being able to give her a tenth-anniversary gift, children… so many dreams, that he almost thought he was dreaming now.

"Papa," Elizabeth squealed and bounded over to Jem, who sat on the sofa in their little library-music room, a family favorite where they all enjoyed spending time. He was working on some music, his violin beside him and a few sheets of paper in his hands. Jem stifled a grin as he took in his five-year-old daughter and her companion. "Papa, look." Church dangled from her arms awkwardly, a moody expression on his face. "Isn't he pretty?"

Jem assumed she was referring to the cat, who wore a very large, very purple bow on his head.

"Very pretty, Ellie," he agreed. Sitting his violin to the table, he reached down and pick up his daughter, sitting her in his lap. The cat scuttled off and began to scratch at the bow in an attempt to get it off.

Ellie curled into Jem automatically, putting her arms around his neck and laying her head on his shoulder. Jem smiled and kissed her head, smoothing back her dark hair and the thin strip of silver that cut through the darkness of it.

"Are you tired?" he asked. If there was one thing Ellie could be relied upon for, it was finding her father when she was sleepy or upset or angry. Judging by the way she snuggled deeper into him and the flutter of her eyelashes against his neck, he could guess which she was.

The two often took a nap on the sofa in the afternoons. A small ritual of theirs. Sometimes William would crawl up and join them, but he could normally be found with his mother. At three, their son was still small enough to be clinging to Tessa's skirt.

"Hmm-mm," Ellie mumbled.

"Ah, well that doesn't sound terribly convincing."

Jem smiled at Tessa, who stood in the threshold of the room, her own arms full just as his were, but she held a small boy in hers, his dark hair fanned out against her shoulder and his eyes closed.

"Hi, Mama," Ellie muttered, turning her face out of Jem's shoulder to blink up at Tessa.

"Hello, Love." Tessa bent down and kissed her daughter's forehead. It wasn't the most graceful thing with her arms full, but it was one of the most beautiful moves Jem thought he had seen her do. Tessa turned to her husband and kissed him on the cheek. "You wouldn't mind if Willie joined you two, would you?" she asked them. "I've got some things to do and I don't think he'll be waking up anytime soon."

Jem opened his other arm and Tessa gently moved her son from her arms to her his. The little boy hardly stirred before he buried his head in and fell back asleep.

Jem pulled both of his children closer laid down on his back gently, so William ended up wedged between his chest and the sofa cushion and Ellie was sprawled out on his chest, her breathing evening out.

Tessa grabbed a throw blanket from the chair and tossed it over them. "I'm taking a picture," she whispered to Jem.

Jem only smiled. It was something she did often—take pictures, and he would never deny her it. He knew that if one day she and their two beautiful children would be gone, he would want to take pictures too. He would want some form of the past with him. Even if he knew Tessa well enough to know that when he and William and Elizabeth were gone, she would hide the pictures away in a box and look at them once a century, he wouldn't deny it to her. She still had many of Will and James and Lucie. All black and white of course, but they could color in the lines with memories well enough. Many of the pictures were still in the London Institute, but she had plenty with her. Tessa enjoyed sitting William and Elizabeth down and showing them.

"And this is your Uncle Will," Jem had walked in as Tessa pointed out a person in a picture one day.

Jem had just gotten back from grocery shopping. The children had stayed at home with Tessa. They were all seated around the table, an old trunk open and pictures and objects strewn around. Jem's eye caught on a silver box with a woman pouring water from a vase depicted on the lid, and his throat caught.

"He's your Papa's Parabatai," she continued. Jem didn't know if she noticed she was saying 'is'.

"Will?" William asked, his mind connecting the name to his own.

"Yes," Tessa smiled and tucked a piece of hair behind her son's ear. "You have his name, and Will's son," her voice caught. "His name was James, like your father."

Tessa was petrified of telling the children about Will, James, and Lucie. She thought that they would hate her for it—somehow think that because she had had children before and watched them die, that she was okay with watching them die too. She thought that because she had had another family, that they would think her love was split or diminished by time and loss.

Jem didn't blame her for the fear, but he also didn't think lying to them, or rather omitting facts from the past, like the fact that Will was also her husband, and that Will's son James was also her son, would not do her any credit when the truth came out. And the truth would come out.

"This is him—Jamie," she pointed at another picture, the pet name slipping out as she lost herself in the past. Jem knew it had been years since Tessa had seen the pictures. Probably not since James and Lucie had died in the late fifties and early sixties. "And that girl beside him is his sister, Lucie."

"She's pretty," Ellie said, bending over the picture.

"Yes," Tessa's smile was sad. "A lot like you."

Tessa had gone on to explain some more faces—Charlotte, Henry, Cecily, Gabriel, Sophie, Matthew, Cordelia, the Lightwood children and other important faces.

Ellie and Willie were fascinated, and Tessa was more than willing to share stories. Stories of Will and Jem, who she said worked as a Silent Brother then—they didn't know that it wasn't a job one usually retired from—of James and Matthew and their adventures they thought she didn't know about, and how Cordelia was always keeping Lucie out of trouble. Stories that even Jem didn't know and stories he played an intricate part in.

In the end, Jem had joined in with some of his own stories and aided Tessa in hers. By the night's end, William was hanging off Tessa's hip and Ellie was curled into her father and they had decided it was time for bed. Jem knew that Tessa could have gone on for days longer. He could've too.

Tessa had denied herself too long. So much suppression of her own emotions, and that night he had held her as she cried. She had cried about Will and the fact that he never got to meet William and Elizabeth, for Jem and Will and how they never got what they deserved together, for James and Lucie because she missed her babies, for the siblings that never got to meet each other, and the future that she would spend alone.

"Say cheese." A light flashed in Jem's face and caught him off guard, his mind ripped back to the present.

"I never understood that phrase," he muttered, smiling at Tessa who stood above her family with a happy grin of her own.

But right now is good, he thought. Right now, she had a man who called her his wife, people who called her their friend, children who called her Mama and Aunt Tessa, and so much more good things, so he would listen to what she had told him at the end of that night when her tears had dried and she had no more left.

"Don't worry about the future Jem," she had said, her voice thick and croaky, "nor the past, for one is gone and the other is not here. We had plenty of time to think about yesterday yesterday, and we will have plenty of time for the problems that come our way tomorrow then. But you are here, and I am here, and we are together, and that is enough for me if it is enough for you. I am not saying we cannot grieve, but do not make every day sorrowful."

Jem knew that she was talking to herself more than him, but saying something out loud to a witness always made Tessa more inclined to stick with it. As if someone hearing it made it into a testimony.

He looked up at her now. Her eyes were alight with love and warmth.

"My loves," Tessa murmured as she rubbed Ellie's hair back. "My miracles."

What would you guys think about me writing a story about their children, with a plot, relationships and all that? Not just Jem and Tessa's children, but JaceXClary, AlecXMagnus, SimonXIzzy, JulianXEmma, and the rest. I have a really good idea for an antagonist that I'd like to use that I think would play out well.