the beauty of mortals // a fic about tessa's last day on earth.
Tessa always thought immortality was a romanticized thing that in reality was truly awful. Especially when nearly everyone she had ever loved was mortal. She'd seen most of them be born and had watched most of them age and die. Sometimes, she would look at herself in the mirror. Who was she? She wasn't the 16 year old plucky, headstrong American that she was over a century ago. No, she was someone who had seen it all, and would be there to see it all. She would see the end of the world.
The end of the world was nothing but a concept to Tessa. To her, the world ended when you no longer had people to face it with.
If that were the case, she thought, the world would have been long gone for her.
She sat on the edge of Blackfriars Bridge, the rushing tide of the Thames beneath her, like she did every year, even after Jem passed. She thought about her family. Kit and Ty were long gone. Mina died in a raid years back. Everyone was gone. Alec, Isabelle, Clary, Jace, Simon, Julian, Emma, Cristina, Mark, Helen, Aline, Drusilla, Octavian, Rafael. They'd all lived their lives. But theirs ended. It ended before they had no one to face the world with. That was the beauty of mortals. They were truly never alone.
Then she thought about Magnus. Magnus, the man Tessa saw as her older brother. Magnus, the man she thought had no weaknesses.
Magnus, the man who couldn't take it anymore.
Over the years that Alec was alive, Tessa and Caterina had taped together one big montage of his life for Magnus. When Alec died, they took turns keeping watch over him. Then a year later, when they thought he was doing better, when he stopped replaying the bits where Alec smiled and said he loved him, they found him, in his apartment, with the same sword his mother had used to kill herself through his heart.
Whenever Tessa closed her eyes, that was what she saw.
But she supposed it was like what her aunt Harriet said. "People can live for a hundred years without living a minute."
But now, she felt as if she couldn't live a minute longer.
@revolutionarywriters event 1: "People can live for a hundred years without living a minute."
tagging: @matthewfaichild @magnus-the-maqnificent @immyownghostwriter @upsidedown-cats @lily-chen-deserves-better @foreverfallentoast @we-are-all-of-us-alone @themostawesomehuman @morgnstern @cecilyfightwood @zoyanazyalenskiy
