Clockwork Prince Spoilers Below.

Well, of course I enjoy writing them both. The parabatai bond is a lot of fun to write about.  There are a lot of kinds of great loves in fiction besides the romantic — family love, and friendship love being among them, and parabatai gives me a structure by which to write about them.

Jace and Alec are great friends, and it was a lot of fun to write Alec graduating from having this sort of crush of Jace to this new place, and one of the things I always liked about Jace was that he loved Alec and wasn’t the least bothered by Alec having a crush on him. Jace has a lot of Very Dramatic Problems and relationships—with his father, with Clary, with Sebastian, and one of the fun things about his relationship with Alec is that it’s very regular and more low-key, the kind of thing that happens in the real world—boys close as brothers, who really get each other and really get along, (but not brothers so crushes can happen) — but in the end, rock solid. Alec and Jace’s bond is relaxing and easy to write, always flowing very naturally, and is indeed familial, because Alec forms part of the family that is the rock for Jace to stand on, that lends him the strength to defy Valentine and love Clary. One of those everyday miracles you get with love, and there are some lovely moments in CoLS that were fun to write that had to do with Jace and Alec’s connection.

Now with the Infernal Devices, I made the conscious decision to explore the parabatai bond differently, to make it one of the more dramatic and fraught relationships in the series — an integral part of what makes the love triangle a triangle. Their characters make it so, but also their circumstances.

Jem is literally all Will has in the world, for years. Jem and Will don’t belong to a family together, really, the way Jace and Alec do (Henry and Charlotte are great, but really too young to be adopted parents for Will and Jem): they are orphans in the storm clinging one to the other. [Specifically, despite Jem being the one dying, Will is clinging on to Jem.]

Will and Jem don’t casually get each other, the way Jace and Alec do (While Jace gets that Alec fancies him, and then Magnus, and Alec is always clued in that Jace fancies Clary, Will doesn’t realize Jem fancies Tessa, and nor does Jem realize Will does…though Jem has more excuse there, because Will’s trying to hide it and Jem is not). They can’t get each other like that, because Will simply does not allow it.

Of course, Will has his reasons. But Jem doesn’t know that. 

It is an amazing piece of luck for Will (poor Will, the only luck he has) that he met Jem, and that Jem is there to say—despite the evidence of my own eyes and ears, despite the opinion of everyone around me, despite everything you say and everything you do, despite the fact you mostly seem to hate everyone and sometimes that includes me, acting in a way that is not only horrifying and hurtful to me but potentially harmful to yourself, I love you, and you are good. 

Will sometimes lets his guard down around Jem, but not that much—Jem is my great sin, he says to Magnus, and he means that sometimes he shows Jem something like his true self. But of course, Will doesn’t do it often—feeling that it is sin and being terrified it will kill Jem, he’s drawn back a thousand times from showing Jem he loves him. He shows it in secret ways, like buying Jem’s drugs, and fussing over him when he’s passed out. He doesn’t call Jem a barren prostitute monster (which is for the best, Jem would be puzzled…) but he does leave Jem in a place where only Jem’s rock-solid faith in Will allows him to continue to believe that Will is essentially good.

And of course, the looming fear that makes Will seek Magnus isn’t that he will lose Tessa or Jem but that he will lose himself, and part of the creeping horror of his confession to Magnus is that it is happening, that he becomes more and more tainted by his act as time passes, because acting like you don’t care at all means you actually do start to care less and less: you lose your empathy and your ability to understand what will and won’t hurt other people.

For example, In CP, Will takes opium, and of course he’s deeply upset when he does it, but it never even occurs to him that taking drugs might hurt Jem—who is literally dying because of drugs, slowly and painfully, who hates what he must put into his own body, and who loves Will. Will knows these things about Jem, but he doesn’t think—because of the effects of the curse. Jem always thinks of Will, but he doesn’t know things about him—because of the curse. 

And it doesn’t occur to Will how upset Jem would be to see Will take drugs anyway. Opium is basically heroin. It can kill you. Jem knows that. He is not taking a High Moral Stance when he hits Will and is furious with him; he is like a man whose own life has been ruined by, say, a gambling addiction, watching his brother steal from their parents to pay for his own growing addiction: terrified and angry. Jem knows he’s dying: without him to care for Will, if even Will doesn’t care for Will—how long is Will going to live? And the constant terrible question—was Will ever worth caring about, in the first place? Was he worth all Jem’s sacrifices of time, the last time he will ever have, his hope, faith, the good opinion of others, all the possible friendships he could have had but threw over for this one, this one other person in the world?

Of course, Will realizes what he’s done when it is shown to him, and he is sorry because he loves Jem (and apologizes, as he damn well should). But it is not dissimilar to later, when he is going to Jem after his confession to Tessa, to we-know-not-what (beg him to give up Tessa, is the implication) and realizes that he barely recognizes Jem happy because he’s never spared a thought before for whether Jem was happy or not. Much as Will loves Jem, Jem has always been the one who gave up more for Will’s sake than Will gave up for his; at the end of CP, that balance starts to shift, and that guides what happens next in Clockwork Princess.

Will’s desperate action to end the curse—real to him and them all in its effects, anyway— mean that he, and everyone else, is allowed to learn that in the end Will really is the person who Jem (and only Jem) believed he was —without proof, with simple faith.  Will is not perfect. Jem is not perfect. But without Jem, Will would not be the person he is, would not be anything like a hero, would not have tried to break the curse because he would no longer have cared, would probably not be able to love Tessa or be lovable himself at all. This is the parabatai bond that saved a soul: that’s pretty epic stuff.

The next parabatai bond is going to be pretty epic too. ;) But I like them all—I’m not going to pick a favorite.