The Other World (A Shadowhunters Fanfiction)

Chapter 11: Ceilings

Cordelia woke, later, in a small room.

The room was equipped with a cot and a dresser, bolted to the floor—everything made of thin metal rails, grimey with dust that stuck to her skin and clothes.

For a few moments, in that silence, Cordelia just laid on that unsympathetic cot and stared at the slats on the ceiling, her entire body trembling. For a time, she lost herself in numbness, but it inevitably came rushing in; the longer she waited for sleep, the more certain she grew that it wouldn't come.

She trembled and felt afterwaves of that pain. Blood dripping to the floor, getting in her hair, coating her hands; a voice above her, a boot kicking her in the side. Defend yourself, oh, great Shadowhunter! Why do you cower at my feet?

The pain was so bad it had made her vision split. She saw spots, felt her head ringing like a bell, puked up so much blood she didn't think there should have been a damn drop of it left in her body.

She opened her eyes and fixed them on the ceiling—focused on the scratchy fabric of the cot against her hands. It was so goddamn uncomfortable, this cot; she couldn't find any comfort, couldn't find any warmth in it or any solace at all.

She'd made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a scream, and it still echoed in her ears. Every time the pain had gotten so bad she was sure she'd pass out from it, Belial would reel her back from the edge, give her just enough rest to make her raw with relief, then cut her mind open again until she began to plead, to beg, Please make it stop. Make it stop. Kill me now, fucking kill me, MAKE IT STOP—

Belial was so silent that it was as though he hadn't even heard her. She was sobbing, gasping the words, with bloody spittle on her lips.

Cordelia had never hated anyone so much in her life. She felt sure she would die of the pain, felt sure that, every time it spiked, she had hit the ceiling of how much her body was capable of hurting. But the agony only continued to worsen—until she began to fear she had no idea what the true human capacity for pain was. Until she began to fear that the ceiling did not exist.

She was not sure when she fell asleep, but the dreams were as bad as reality.

James, with Grace in his arms, stumbling into Cordelia's bedroom to make love to her—the fine-boned, light-haired girl—like he had forgotten she ever even existed. Thank God, he said, whispering into the girl's skin as he undressed her. Thank God you are okay. Thank God you are finally here.

She dreamed of Matthew, dying in her arms in the alley, murmuring her name: Cordelia, Cordelia, I need you. I love you, even if James does not. She dreamed of the life leeching out of his eyes, out of his face, the same way it had done when this realm's James had died.

She dreamed those deaths—the deaths of this James, this Lucie—over and over again: Lucie's head hitting the wall, her blood pooling in the dust. James' neck breaking with a fleshy snap, anger dying right there on his lips, as if his love for her had never even existed.

She dreamed it all over and over, until she awoke in the night with her cot and her Gear stinking of sweat.

She sat for a moment, trying not to let herself cry. She could not break down here and now, could not let her body dehydrate any further. The silence rang in her ears, the silence of a house with nothing but demons and automatons in it—none of the rustle from James' bed nextdoor, none of the soft tread of [PLACEHOLDER]'s footsteps just outside the door.

By the angel, how she missed James.

Even in her false marriage, she had not been truly alone, because she had had her best friend. She ached with the loneliness, the absence; she felt it like poison, a virus in her body, something malignant beneath her skin. She feared what would happen if she gave into it, but it festered there in her bones nonetheless, and she knew she would not forever be strong enough to survive it.

She dragged herself out of the bed. Every limb ached, shook, and oh god, was there no comfort in this world or the next? She could not imagine any balm for this, anything strong enough to soothe her. She caught her breath, closed her eyes, focused on tuning out the ringing in her ears; she let her lips form the name she so desperately wanted to forget, because he did not love her and would not help her now.

"James," she whispered. "James."

She wrapped her arms around herself and gazed, almost deliriously, at the vanity in the wall—at the girl looking back at her, the girl she didn't recognize. Blood stained her fingers, her chin, her shirt—from vomiting, over and over. She couldn't think. Do not give in, she told herself. Do not give in. She would not despair, she would not.

She could not cry; she was full of useless adrenaline that chipped away at her, festered in her, eroded away every certainty she had ever known and every good thing she had ever felt, every brave part of herself she had always clung to. She lay back down and clenched her fists in her red hair, running through every good memory she could think of in her mind, but there seemed less and less goodness in them each time she turned them over, searched for solid ground in them, any foothold on this cliff-face. Elias, her father, buying her frivolous things as a child; but then, many of those memories were followed by his mood swings and his hours locked away sick in his room, while she sat in her own room alone. Alastair, ignoring her throughout what should have been the closest years of their school life, shrugging her off in cold disdain any time she approached him.

James, kissing her in the whispering room, holding her like it would kill him to let her go. But he had. He had let her go, and he had gone on fine.

No happy memory was enough. No joy held her through the dark, in the absence of all other comfort.

In the end, all she could manage to hold on to was the memory of how Cortana's hilt felt in her hands when she'd driven it into Belial's heart.