The Other World (A Shadowhunters Fanfiction)

Chapter 4: Hymn For The Missing

48 Curzon Street, main realm

James was numb.

He couldn't even remember the first three days, after learning of Cordelia's passing. Couldn't remember anything except falling to his knees and crying out—and pain like he had never known before. He had never realized how deep a love he was capable of until that moment. Until she was gone.

He wasn't sure if he had slept; he thought he remembered somebody telling him he needed to stop, but it seemed wrong to sleep, when Cordelia was—if she was dead, what was the point? How could he go on, how could life go on, and maintain the rhythms of sleep and waking that they always had before? What was the point of these things now?

After those first agonizing moments, he could barely feel anything. It was the voice of Tessa, his mother, that eventually brought just a little of him back to himself on that fourth day, enough to bring him back to his own body.

He was in Cordelia's room, again, without being sure of how he had arrived there, and Tessa was sitting in a chair beside the bed, holding James' hand between her own. "James," she said. "Please, James. Talk to me."

James met her eyes, and immediately wanted the shelter of numbness again. He felt tears burn his eyes, and he pulled his hand away from hers as he sat up, buried his face in his hands.

How was he supposed to do this?

Tessa just sat with him while he cried; she didn't try to comfort him, not now, and James was grateful for it. He did not need comfort, he needed Cordelia; but she was not here, and never would be again.

Had they really parted that way—had the last words she ever heard him say really been words to Grace Blackthorn? Had she really died, not knowing how James loved her? It didn't matter if she felt the same, now. She had died only thinking that James had betrayed her, and her friendship, for Grace Blackthorn. She would never know—James could never tell her the truth, never tell her that he was hers. Never call her Daisy again. They had never even had the chance, the option, to be together, and now it was all over, and she was gone.

They were that way for a long time, in silence, and James' well of grief did not run dry, would never run dry. But when Tessa spoke again, anxiously, James answered.

"Please, tell me what I can do, James."

James took a breath, tried to focus. There was a world beyond that grief—people, and one person specifically, who deserved answers from James. And James needed answers from him.

"Bring me Matthew," James said. "Tell me where Matthew is. I need to talk to my parabatai."

James took a breath, tried to focus. There were few people in the world he had loved like he loved Cordelia and Matthew--but then, other people loved Cordelia and Matthew, too, and were surely hurting as badly as James was. James thought, strangely, of Alastair, who had so recently lost a father, and now a sister, too. He thought of Charlotte, of Charles, who had each loved Matthew, though Charles had rarely shown it. He thought of Lucie, who had raised Jesse only for him to be trapped in the Silent City, and had now lost a friend whom she'd planned to be parabatai with; another in a long list of things Cordelia had had stolen from her, and never had the chance to have. He thought even of his own parents, and how it must worry them to see both of their children in so much pain.

The door opened; disoriented, James thought immediately that it was Cordelia, coming to talk to James, but the one opening the door was only Will, with a grim look on his face. "Tessa, it's time to go. Jem and the Silent Brothers have arrived at the Institute with news." He looked at James and said, "Are you—"