How's James feeling after last night?
**This is all that came to mind, I might think of more later**
He feels pretty lost. Heās never been on this side of a murder before, and he canāt help seeing Jayanās point. To arrest those responsible feels hollow and useless, and I think if James were ever to go against everything he believes and get all vengeance-y, it would be against Tessā murderers.
I think to understand how heās feeling, we have to look at what Tess meant to James/what she was to him. Before he met Tess, James felt more hopeless and disillusioned than he ever had before. Heād been surrounded by Watchers who humored him (Penelope) and those whoād spent the entirety of their relationship calling him stupid, jokingly or otherwise (Maggie). Between Ameliaās death at the hands of a demonic law firm (loss of one of the few friends heād managed to make, on top of things crashing and burning with Maggie, the person heād gotten closest to to date), a recognition of the existence of a demonic law firm, and then this hegemonic Council structure treating itself as above the law, he was starting to question the point of doing his job at all. Why even play at justice, when all of these forces were gonna ignore it?
And then suddenly there was Tess. She came out of left field, and he was legitimately suspicious of her for how much her worldview aligned with his own. A Watcher who believed in working within the confines of the law, insofar as it was possibleā¦who didnāt think he was useless, who actually respected and even admired what he did for a livingā¦she knocked his world upside down. I think he had a crush on her, even then, whether or not heād admit it to himself. But she was exactly what he needed at that moment, an intermediary between the Council and the law. And with that foundation in place came the island. She legitimately saved his life. Tack on the sexual tension, and his crush just built on itself.
I feel the need to reference back to this, as it still comes into play here (six months later). Even in my application sample, I mentioned how he needed someone who understood him, particularly in terms of his job dependency. Ā This definitely still holds true. MaggieĀ felt culpable to duty/responsibility, but she never understood his point of view, or showed that she was trying to. It was very much āmy duty is better/more important/correct than yoursā to the point of it wearing on him. Which leads me to another point: He needed someone to extend him some agency. Throughout his thing with Maggie, it was very much a āpoor man, canāt do anything; sit in the corner, dear, and let the grown-ups handle it.ā He picked up on that, and it bothered him. This Council elitism, seeing Watchers as superior and cops as bumbling idiots. Tess was the opposite, and came around just as he needed it most. She lived and breathed her job in ways he could understand and relate to, but never gave off the impression that what she did was in any way better than what he did, insofar as their goals overlapped.
She was, by all accounts, perfect, in Jamesā eyes. Not perfect as weād normally assume perfect to be, but perfect to him/for him. He came to rely on her. She helped reaffirm his worldview in times when heād start to question it, help him reconcile the supernatural with the law, etc. She afforded him agency/believed he contributed, admired him and his job, and didnāt see herself as above the law. She simultaneously reaffirmed the validity of what he was doing/could do and gave him hope about the Councilās role in all of it. Sheās the one who was there when he was broken, and she (knowingly or unknowingly) helped put him back together again (when they first met, on the island, after the island, after his colleagues died, etc.). And James, despite all his fear of love stemming from his recognition of how much she was coming to mean to him (see ask), fell in love with her.
And just like that, she was gone. Logically, he knew after 72 hours because of his years of police experience. He knew that for as strong and resourceful and independent as Tess was, that she loved her Slayers and wouldāve called them. That there was a blizzard. That she was in her motorized chair with one working arm. That everything from the broken glass to lack of contact pointed towards a conclusion he didnāt want to draw, and for all of this he couldnāt help the glimmer of hope that sheād prove him wrong. Because she was Tessā¦and if anyone could manage the impossible, it was her. But he didnāt get so lucky. He blames himself for leaving her house that night, even though he did so with good intentions. He had to separate himself from her and the Council, at least visibly, so his position could be used to greatest effect (so as not to seem biased), and Tess agreed. But heād left knowing sheād asked him out, that when everything calmed down, they would go a on a date. That she wanted them to be more than friends with benefits. Yet he left, and he hates himself for it. He doesnāt know what happened yet, exactly, but heāll know soon enough and is observant enough to guess. He doesnāt think heād necessarily have changed the outcomeāsomehow stopped them from taking her. But he would have tried. Maybe heād have died too, or maybe heād have actually managed to save her. The point is that he wouldāve been there to do something, whereas he wasnāt. And he canāt help shouldering that blame. Because he hadnāt ever thought of his being there as for Tessā own good so much as his being the one in need of protection. And the universe made him pay for that assumption.
To sum: Heās devastated and lost, full of self-blame and āwhat ifā-style hypotheticals. His first impulse was also to be very bitter at Penelope, in an āIād rather it have been youā sense, which only makes him feel worse. For all of this desire to curl up into a ball and grieve, he keeps having people remind him of what Tess would want. And despite it all, he wants to keep being the man he was when he was with her, that sheād want him to beāthe man, as Mallory says, that Tess mightāve eventually fallen in love with. So heāll find her killers as he would any others (though I canāt 100% guarantee he wonāt go off-book in terms of what happens to them) and keep doing his job. Heāll also dedicate himself whole-heartedly to the Slayers, because Tess valued them above everything else.Ā
But when heās alone, heāll let himself grieve.
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