A Mortal Instruments Fanfiction: Part 1 - SACRIFICE

Chapter 12

In London, there is a beautiful park. It fits neatly by Pall Mall and Buckingham Palace, and in summer tourists and commuters and city dwellers alike bask under the shady leaves, sipping expensive and wholly undrinkable tea from polystyrene cups, and shooting furtively nervous looks toward the swans who allegedly can break a mans arm, and who are owned by a certain old lady living in a palace not so far away.

  In St. James Park in 1878, Buckingham Palace was still nearby, and it was still resided in by an old lady, and swans could still break a mans arm. But swans were the last thing on Tessa Grey's mind. She was staring at the water of the expansive lake at the heart of the park, turning a folded piece of paper over and over in her hand. In it was written a farewell and an apology to the London institute. She had spent the last two hours writing it, subsequent to Charlotte telling her something quite alarming. Tessa had panicked, and, feeling that her head was once and for all in too deep, had run to the park with the intention of writing and hiding the note somewhere where one of the others was bound to find it. From there, she wasn't quite sure what she would do. But staying in London certainly wasn't an option. Now though, she was having doubts. Sighing, she reopened the note for the hundredth time.

 Dearest Charlotte (it read),

My apologies for fleeing in such a manner without giving you so much as an explanation. I know, more than anyone, that it is the least you deserve after all the kindness you have shown me. Although when you read this I shall - fortune allowing - be far away, I can only hope you read it soon. I must emphasise that you are at no fault whatsoever for what I am about to do. Know that I am safe - of course I wish I could know the same of you, but it is my uncertainty of this that has driven me away. Forgive my cowardice, dear friend, but my leaving you was undoubtedly going to happen. I am not a shadowhunter. I do not flatter myself that I am one. I do not masquerade as one. But that is not to say I do not wish to be one; if I were, I would not be so harshly seperated so soon from the closest friends I have ever had the good fortune to make.

 I digress. To be plain, I am still coming to terms with my immortality. What a sentence that is! What I mean is that, while grappling with the fact I cannot - will not - see any of you outlive me, I cannot embark upon life threatening endeavours to a time over a hundred years from now which, over a hundred years from now, I will experience again. I am, of course, referring to Magnus's 'time travel' idea. Perhaps you, with your mere fifty years life left ahead of you, cannot comprehend my disdain of such a plan; I am misled that Magnus himself is not more paralleled with my thoughts, him being of the same circumstances as I. I do not blame you; indeed I cannot blame you, for not being of coinciding opinion with me, when I myself do not truly comprehend what it means to shirk death. What I do comprehend, though, is that to rescue a person from death who is not within even the same twelvemonth as us, is surely perilous, be the aforementioned Clarissa Fray your final descendant or not.

I am so sorry to leave on such terms as this. But you cannot expect me to consent to something that may haunt me for centuries, when you will be free of such a burden so soon.

Yours, Tessa Grey

 Slowly, mechanically, Tessa picked up a nearby pebble and folded the letter carefully around it.

 Before it had even hit the water's surface, she was striding back the way she had come, back to the London Institute, back to the future.

 A swan rose off the lake gracefully, cawing mockingly at her retreating figure.