cassandraclare:

iamqueeninmyworld said: But why do you say that the Carstairs owe the Herondales? Shouldn’t it be the other way round? Shoudn’t the herondales owe the carstairs because jem helped will so many times and even forgave will for sleeping with tessa (even though it was not his fault and was done in a moment of grief still most people would feel hurt by it). Is there something i missed? Also we say that will and jem knew each other so well but jem didn’t realize will’s curs and that will was in love with tessa and vice versa

It is both ways round. (As Jace says, “But from now on the Herondales owe the Carstairs.” Jem did extraordinary things for Will’s happiness. And Will did extraordinary things for Jem’s happiness.

And the connections between the two families, in which the Carstairs and Herondales continue to do extraordinary things for each other, continues down through The Last Hours. It is not like that story is over. It is not even over in TMI/TDA in which the Carstairs and Herondales continue to do things for each other.

Jem helped Will. Will helped Jem. Will loved Jem and paid for his drugs and watched over him and gave up his hope of a relationship with Tessa for him and would have died for him. And Jem would have died for Will. You don’t quantify that kind of love, as in who loved who more, or whether it’s a big deal that Jem forgave Will for sleeping with Tessa or that Will forgave Jem for I don’t know, punching him in the face? Becoming a Silent Brother? You can always find an imaginary grievance if you want to look for one, but I don’t think either of them has anything they need to forgive the other for by the end of CP2.

I don’t think you missed anything except that trying to assign numerical values to who loves who more and who owes who more and who wronged who more never works with TID. :)

As for why Jem didn’t notice Will’s feelings for Tessa and vice versa, I decided to resurrect an old post I did on the topic after Clockwork Prince. In fact it might be kind of fun to revisit all those posts, now, knowing what we know!

cassandraclare:

I think that, when presented with a really painful situation like the one at the end of Clockwork Prince, there is a sort of natural desire to assign blame. It makes it less painful to imagine that what’s going on is someone’s fault — Tessa’s selfish! Will is entitled! Jem is blind! — than to think that these are basically decent people trying hard to be good, and they get screwed anyway. Because one is a moral lesson (always a bit comforting, as it offers the illusion of control) and the other says life is a agonizing lottery of tragedy and chance (not comforting at all.)

Now, to the specifics of the question. First, Jem noticing Will noticing a pretty girl is hardly equivalent to Jem noticing Will being in deathless love. Will notices pretty girls all the time. It’s in fact, part of his persona. Jem noting that Will thinks Tessa is pretty in CA is not about him commenting on Will’s feelings so much as it is him getting confirmation for his own. [Sometimes, my husband offers, when you think a girl is a babe, you want confirmation from your buddy that she is, in fact, as babelicious as you believe.]

Jem is an observant guy. But he is under no illusions that he knows everything about Will, and he is frank about that. From Clockwork Angel, when he tells Tessa he has no idea why Will won’t speak to his family:

““And you’ve never asked him why?”
“If he wanted me to know, he’d tell me,” Jem said. “You asked why I think he tolerates me better than other people. I’d imagine it’s precisely because I’ve never asked him why.”

Nor does Will think Jem knows everything about him.

“I don’t know,” Tessa said. “I’m not sure anyone does understand you, except possibly Jem.”
“Jem doesn’t understand me,” Will said. “He cares for me— like a brother might. It’s not the same thing.”

What Jem offers Will, what makes their relationship unique and workable, is precisely this: unconditional love without demand, perfect trust without perfect understanding. Will’s statement that Jem doesn’t understand him is not a criticism of Jem. He does not want Jem to understand him, because he doesn’t want his curse understood. He deliberately lies and hides things from Jem, and Jem knows it and accepts it because he loves him, but it’s a far stretch from that to “Jem ought to be able to read Will’s mind.”

Only Professor X can read minds.

Certainly Jem is able to tell that Will is in no good mood, but Will is often in no good mood, and much of Will’s upset during Clockwork Prince can be put down to his awful near-encounter with his family and his panic over their well-being. Because a lot of it is about that, and Jem would not be incorrect in assuming so. There seems to be an assumption here that Jem and Tessa ought to be able to see through Will like glass, even though Will says over and over that he isn’t interested in Tessa. If Jem and Will are really all that close, the assumption seems to be, surely Jem would be able to read Will’s mind and see he loves Tessa? But the flip side of that assumption is: since Jem and Will truly know each other, Will also knows exactly how to lie to Jem and make it stick. As for poor Tessa, we’ve been over this: there is no reason to assume a guy who repeatedly says he isn’t interested in you or commitment is not serious. Really, that way lies misery and ending up on Tool Academy with your loser boyfriend.

[Also, if the suggestion is that parabatai ought to be able to read each other’s mind: why is Will so dense as to go off and drug himself up at an opium den and have no idea what that would do to Jem? Will doesn’t notice Jem’s feelings for Tessa for a million reasons, most of which have to do with the fact that he spends CP in a panic over his family, and also, as he says himself, he thinks about Jem constantly but his thoughts are about Jem surviving, not about whether Jem’s happy or whether he likes a girl. I mean Will himself is shocked that he missed that Jem loved Tessa, but he has never thought of Jem as a source of anything that might hurt him, only as a source of good things, which is why he says “My Jem?” in shock when Tessa tells him.

And lastly, it’s not like Jem doesn’t have his own stuff going on. He’s dying, and dependent on a drug whose continued availability is limited. He’s in love with a girl, but knows that being a dying man, he doesn’t have a lot to offer. When she unexpectedly accepts his proposal, he’s joyous. Meanwhile, the last time he saw Will, Will was in a terrific mood (as he’d just had the curse lifted.) So Jem’s sitting there, basically overwhelmingly happy for probably the first time in his life since his parents died, and when Will comes in, he’s supposed to flip like a switch and suddenly care about nothing but the possibility that Will might be unhappy despite the fact he hasn’t mentioned it and was just fine an hour ago?

C’mon, let the guy have his moment of happiness. After all, as we know, life is a meaningless lottery of tragedy and chance, as my dad used to say.